Part 5

Her belief was orthodox, but it did not hold her as vividly as it held the old folk in the old days. Had she lived nearer to the miracles of the sun going down in darkness and coming up in light; or thunderstorms and young oats springing green out of black, with wild mustard interspersed among them like deeds of sin; of the frost coming out of the ground; and the leaves dying and the trees sleeping; she would perhaps have lived nearer to the miracles of bread and wine, of Christ sleeping that the world may wake.

But she lived in a place of obvious cause and effect. When the sun went down, the footlights came up for you if you had a ticket, and man's miracle banished God's even though you might be in the flying balcony and the tenor almost a block away. Thunderstorms meant that it was reckless to telephone; oats, wheat and corn, something they controlled on the board of trade; the melting of the snows showed the city hall was weak on the sewer side--what else could you expect of politicians?--the dying leaves presaged the end of the Riverview season and young Al's excitement over the world's series.

Living in the country puts a God in one's thoughts, for man did not make the country and its changes, yet they are there. Farmers pray for rain or its cessation according to their needs. To live in the city is to diminish God and the seeming daily want of Him, for man built his own city of steel and steam and stone, unhelped, did he not?

God may have made the pansies, but He did not make "the loop." His majesty is hidden from its people by their self-sufficing skill, and they turn their faces from Him. West-siders do not pray for universal transfers.

Never had Georgia questioned her faith. Its extent remained as great as ever. She had consciously yielded no part of her creed. But its living quality was infected by the daily realism of her life, as spring ice is honeycombed throughout with tiny fissures before its final sudden disappearance.

So she talked to Stevens of her convictions, but in a calm dispassionate way, without emotional fervor.

Stevens' great-grandparents whenever they referred to the Romanist Church, which was often, spoke of "the scarlet woman" or "the whore of Babylon." His grandparents, products of a softer, weaker generation, stopped at adjectives, "papist," "Jesuitical," "idolatrous."

His parents receded still further from the traditions of the Pilgrims. Indeed his father, being a popular horse doctor, kept his mouth shut altogether on the subject, and his mother seldom went beyond remarking that there was considerable superstition in the Catholic service and too much form to suit her.

As for the son himself, he could as soon have quarreled about the rights and wrongs of the Mexican war as he would about religion. He wasn't especially interested in either. He thought there was a lot of flim-flam for women in all religion, especially in Catholicism. But it was an amiable weakness of the sex, like corsets. So he let Georgia run on, explaining her faith, without interruption.

Then most wretched luck befell them. Georgia looked up from the tips of her toes, being vaguely engaged, as she talked, in stepping on each large pebble in the gravel path and her eyes rested squarely upon her mother. Mrs. Talbot mottled; Georgia blushed.

All progress was temporarily arrested; then the older woman puffed out her chest and waddled away with all the dignity at her summons. But she could not resist the Parthian shot--what Celt can!--and she turned to throw back over her shoulder, "Who's your girl-friend, Georgia?" Her teeth clicked and she continued her departure.

Stevens realized that there had been a contretemps of some sort and that it was his place, as a man of the world, to laugh it off.

"Who's the old pouter pigeon?" he inquired.

"Mama."

"Oh!"

Feeling that candor was now thrust upon her, Georgia proceeded to explain to Stevens that she had never explained about him to her mother, for mama couldn't possibly understand, being old-fashioned and prejudiced in some regards.

"So you've made me fib for you," she finished. "Aren't you ashamed!"

"Yes," said he, in truth much gratified by her clandestineness.

"But what I don't see is----," he began, then broke off.

"Is what?"

"Is why you should be so disturbed about your _mother's_ knowing."

"I've told you--for the sake of peace and a quiet life."

"But what about your husband?" He blurted it out suddenly, the word which had crucified him since his one and only visit to her home; the word which he had kept dumb between them until now. "What about him? Doesn't he mind?"

"He left me six months ago. You never supposed I would take a man's bread and--fool him, did you, Mason?" She called him by his name for the first time.

"I didn't know," he muttered, "I've been to hell and back thinking of it."

"How did you suppose it would come out?" she asked, fascinated objectively by the drama of her life.

"I felt we were playing bean-bag with dynamite--and we ought to quit--made up my mind--while I was waiting for you this morning to tell you this must be the last time, because we were drifting straight into----" He paused.

"Into what?" There was a touch of gentlest irony in her tone.

"Into trouble, lots of it." There was a touch of apology in his.

"And you didn't want trouble, lots of it?" Her irony was not less. "At least not on my account?"

"I was thinking of what would be best for all of us. I was trying to do the square thing--the greatest happiness for the greatest number." There was a pause, unsympathetic. "Wasn't that right?" he ended with no great confidence.

"Why, of course, perfectly right," she assented heartily. "It shows consideration. You considered the case systematically from all sides. Yours, and mine, and my husband's, and the rest of the family's, and the rest of yours, too, I suppose, didn't you?" She looked extremely efficient and spoke in her business voice with a little snap to her words.

She was quite unfair in taking this tack with unhappy Stevens, who, however often he thought of his duty in these twisted premises, would surely not have done it if she beckoned him away. For she owned the only two hands in the world which he wanted to hold.

A woman, however, prefers to be the custodian of her own morals and it gratifies her at most no more than slightly to find that her lover has been plotting with himself to preserve her virtue. It is for the man to ask and for her to deny, sadly but sweetly--and she doesn't care to be anticipated. Especially when she is self-perceptibly interested.

"But since you are already separated from----"

"Yes, that makes it pleasanter all around, doesn't it?" she led him on most treacherously.

"Why, of course--that's what I was saying," he blundered. "Now I can ask you to----"

"Mason, I've a frightful headache, the sun perhaps--and I think I will go home and lie down, if you don't mind."

He looked up in some amazement at the lord of day half hidden by the haze in his November station, and it suddenly occurred to him that woman is a various and mutable proposition always.

"What's the matter with you, anyway?"

"Nothing," she responded with deliberate unconvincingness, "nothing in the world, but a headache." She held out her hand. "Don't bother to come with me. We might be seen. Good-bye." And she was off.

It was a winding gravel path and she was lost behind a curving hedge before he started in pursuit. She quickened her pace when she heard his step behind and it was almost a walking race before he overtook her.

"Georgia," he exclaimed, somewhat ruffled by her unreasonableness. She neither turned her head nor answered.

"Georgia!" he repeated more loudly. Then he took her wrist and forcibly arrested her.

"Please let me go," she requested with supreme dignity, "you are hurting me."

"Not until you hear what I have to say. Will you marry me?"

"Marry you?" She dropped her eyes before his frowning ones. The shoulders which had been thrown so squarely back seemed to yield like her will and drooped forward into softer lines.

"Yes," he tightened his hold on her wrist, "will you?"

"I am a Catholic."

"But isn't there some way around that?" Your man of business believes there is some way around everything.

"No. Divorce and remarriage aren't permitted to us."

"Don't they ever annul a marriage?"

"Not if it has been marriage." A look of misery came over his face. She perceived it and went steadily on. "I had a child once--that died."

He dropped her hand, unconsciously to himself, but she felt it as a clear signal between them.

"You see how little you have known me," she said softly. "Poor old fellow, I'm sorry. Too bad it had to end like this." Her eyes were now swimming in tears which she did not try to conceal. "Don't you see, dear, that is why I kept putting off telling you things about my affairs, and why I had tried to keep it--friendship, because I knew when we came as far as this we would have to stop."

"It will never stop," he said tensely, "never."

Response seemed to sweep through her suddenly, bewildering her by its unexpected strength.

"Perhaps not," she assented slowly, "if--if we--dare."

"Georgia," he pleaded, "you know that I----"

"Yes," in a whisper, "I know."

"And do you care, too?"

She looked up, and her answer was plain for him to read.

"More than you will ever know, Mason," she said.

"Georgia, are you a devout Catholic? Does it mean all of life to you here and hereafter?"

"No, not very devout. Nothing like mother, for instance. I have grown very careless about some things."

"Would you always be governed by the teaching of the Church in this matter--always--never decide for yourself?"

"When it came to such a big thing," she said slowly, "I don't think I'd dare disobey."

"What are you afraid of--future punishment?"

"Why, yes, partly that," she smiled; "it isn't a very jolly prospect, you know."

He was truly astonished. He supposed that everybody nowadays, even Catholics, had tacitly agreed to give up hell. Hell was too ridiculously unreasonable to be believed in any more.

"Georgia," he asked, "have you ever looked much at the stars?"

"Why, yes; once in awhile. Last Sunday evening at Bismarck Garden Al and I found the dipper--it was just as plain--is that what you mean? Of course I don't pretend to be much of an astronomer."

"Some nights," he said, "when it's clear I go up on the roof and lie on my back, and, well, it's a great course in personal modesty. Some of those stars, those little points of light, are as much bigger than our whole world as an elephant is bigger than a mosquito, and live as much longer."

"Of course," she answered, "we know that everything is bigger than people used to think, but still couldn't God have made it all, just the same?"

"Do you honestly believe," he rejoined, speaking very earnestly, intent on shaking her faith, if that were possible, "that Whoever or Whatever was big enough to put the stars in the sky is small enough to take revenge forever on a tiny little molecule like you--or me? Do you honestly suppose that after you are dead, perhaps a long time dead, this mighty God will hunt for you through all the heavens, and when he has found you, you poor little atom of a dead dot, that he will torment and pester you forever and ever because you had once for a space no longer than the wink of an eye acted according to the nature he gave you? If that is your God, he has put nothing in his universe as cruel as Himself."

She frowned in a puzzled way for a few seconds, looking at him with an odd little wide-eyed stare, then shook her head slowly.

"Yes," said he in answer. "Some day you will take your life in your own hands and use it. You're not the stuff they make nuns out of. There's too much vitality in you.

"How old are you?" he asked suddenly.

"Twenty-six."

"Twenty-six and ready to quit? I don't believe it."

"You don't understand, Mason," she answered, "you can't. You're not a Catholic. Catholicism is different from all other creeds. It is not just something you think and argue about, but it has you--you belong to it; it is as much a part of you as your blood and bones." There was a finality in her voice, a resignation of self, which bespoke the vast accumulated will of the Church operating upon and through her.

Stevens knew suddenly that she was not an individualized woman in the same sense that he was an individualized man, with the private possibility of doing what he pleased so long as he did not interfere with the private possibilities of others; he realized that in certain important intimate matters such as the one which had arisen between them she was without power of decision, the decision having been made for her many centuries ago; and he felt the awe which comes to every man when first he is confronted by the Roman Catholic Church.

"You mean there is no way out of it--but death?--your husband's death?" His self-confidence seemed to have departed as if he, too, had met fate in the road.

"Yes," she answered gently, "that is the only way." And then she smiled with some little effort, but still she smiled, for she detested gloom on her day off. "Oh, Mason," said she, "why wasn't grandpa a Swede?"

He looked at her with amazement and not without a trace of disapprobation, for her eyes were dancing. Was she actually making jokes about his misery--to say nothing of hers--if indeed she felt any? He was learning more about women every minute.

Now she was practically giggling. He frowned deeper and sighed. Perhaps, perhaps everything was for the best, after all. He might as well tell her so, too. No reason to make himself wretched for something she seemed to think hilariously humorous.

"Well, Georgia, I must say," he began portentously--'twas the voice of the husband--almost. She could hear him complain. Whereat she simply threw back her head and laughed again.

He noticed, as he had often noticed, that her strong little teeth were white and regular, that her positive little nose was straight and slender, and the laughter creases about her eyes reminded him of the time she thought it such fun to be caught in Ravinia Park in the rain without an umbrella.

So presently he tempered his frown, then put it away altogether, and his eyes twinkled and he turned the corners of his mouth up instead of down.

"Oh, dear me," he mocked, half in fun and half not, "as the fellow says, 'we can't live with 'em and we can't live without 'em.'"

But she, who had been reading him like a book in plain print, asked, "Come, tell aunty your idea of a jolly Sunday in the park with your best girl. To sit her on a bench and make her listen while you mourn for the universe?"

"But what are we going to do about it?" he asked solemnly, "that's what I want to know."

"Do?" she responded with a certain gay definiteness, "do nothing."

"You mean not see each other any more at all?" he asked desperately. "I absolutely refuse."

"No, silly, of course I don't mean that. We'll go on just as before, friends, comrades, pals."

"When we love each other--when we've told each other we love each other?"

"Certainly. What's that got to do with it?"

"It would be the merest pretense," he declared solemnly.

"Then let's begin the pretense now, and go up and throw a peanut at the elephant. Come along." She hooked her arm into his. Her levity of behavior undoubtedly got past him at times.

"Georgia"--he was once more on the verge of remonstrance--"if you cared as you say you do, if you _loved_ me as I l----"

She unhooked her arm and now she was serious enough.

"Don't you understand," she said, "what I mean? We can't talk about that any more."

"You mean not at all?"

"Precisely."

"But what if I can't conceal the most important thing in my whole life? What if I can't smirk and smile about it? What if I am not as good an actor as you? What if I can't pretend? What then?" He was very, very fierce with her.

"Then I suppose I'll have to go home." They stood irresolute, facing each other, neither wishing to carry it too far.

"Not that that would be much fun---- Oh, come, don't be silly--let's go attack the elephant. What must be, must be, you know."

She paused to allow him time to yield with grieved dignity, then she headed for the animal house; he trailed in silence about half a step behind her during the first hundred yards, but finally sighed and surrendered and then fell into step and pretended during the rest of the afternoon with quite decent success.

So his education began. And though he was by no means pliable material, she managed, being vastly the more expert, to keep him pretending with hardly a lapse throughout the winter.

She found it more difficult, however, to keep herself pretending.

X

MOXEY

Moxey was a Jew boy and a catcher. His last name ended in sky, and he came from the West-side ghetto. His father and mother came from the pale in Russia when Moxey's elder brother Steve was in arms and before Moxey himself appeared.

Moxey would have been captain of the Prairie View Semi-Pro. B. B. Club, if merit ruled the world. But there was the crime of nineteen centuries ago against him, so they made McClaughrey captain; Georgia's sixteen-year-old brother Al played third base.

The Prairie Views had one triumph in the morning, it being Sunday, the day for two and sometimes three games. They had the use of one of the diamonds on a public playground from Donovan, the wise cop.

I have seen Donovan keep peace and order among eighteen warring lads from sixteen to twenty years old by a couple of looks, a smile and a silence. When there was money on the game, too.

There has been good material wasted in Donovan. Properly environed and taught the language, though he doesn't depend on language very much, he could have been presiding officer of the French Chamber of Deputies--and presided.

It was the ninth inning, last half, tie score, two out, three on, with two and three on the batter. In other words, the precise moment when the fictionist is allowed to step in. Moxey up.

He fouled off a couple, the coachers screeched; the umpire, who was also stakeholder, dripped a bit freer and hoped Donovan would stick around for a few seconds longer.

The pitcher took a short wind-up and the ball, which seemed to start for the platter, reached Moxey in the neighborhood of the heart. He collapsed. They rallied round the umpire.

"He done it on purpose--the sheeny--he done it on purpose, I tell you--he run into it----"

"Naw, ye're a liar!"

"Prove it."

"It's a dead ball--take your base--come in there, youse," waving to the man on third.

"We win. Give us our money."

All participated but Moxey, who lay moaning on the ground by the home plate.

Donovan strolled out to the debate and smiled his magic smile. "Take yer base," bawled the emboldened ump, and waved the run in. Al got five dollars for the day's playing and three dollars for the day's betting, and the Prairie Views walked off, bats conspicuous on shoulders, yelling, "Yah!" at the enemy.

"Chee," said Moxey to his playmates when they reached the family entrance, "me for the big irrigation." And it was so.

Moxey shifted his foot, called his little circle around him close and then inserted his dark, fleshless talon into his baseball shirt. "That gave me an awful wallop what win the game," he said; "if I hadn't slipped me little pad in after the eight', it might a' put me away, understand." He took out his protection against dead balls, an ingenious and inconspicuous felt arrangement to be worn under the left arm by right-handed batters. And all present felt again that there had been injustice in the preference of McClaughrey.

Whenever they asked Moxey where he lived, he answered, "West," and let it go at that. He always turned up for the next game, no matter how often plans had been changed since he had last seen any of them. That was all they knew about him. He caught for them, often won for them, drank beer with them and then disappeared completely until the next half-holiday.

Perhaps Al was his most intimate friend, and Al was the only one who learned his secret. "Say, Al," he blurted out almost fiercely one evening, "your folks is Irish, ain't they?"

"Irish-American," corrected Al.

"Well, mine's Yiddishers, and the most Yiddish Yiddishers y'ever see."

Moxey seemed very bitter about it and Al waited for more.

"My old man, well----" Moxey swallowed. It seemed to Al as if he would not go on, but finally it came out with a rush. "He pushes a cart--yes, sir--honest to God, he pushes a cart--I thought maybe I ought to tell you, Al."

"He does?" It was a shock to the Irish-American, which showed in his tone.

"Yes, sir, he does," Moxey answered defiantly, "and if you don't like it--why--well, I won't say nuthin' ugly to you, Al--you're only like the rest. S'long."

Al threw his arm around the other's shoulder. "Forget it, Moxey." Which was the only oath ever taken in this particular David and Jonathan affair.

Not long afterwards, Moxey proposed to Al attendance at a prizefight just across the State line, the Illinois laws being unfavorable to such exhibitions of manly skill or brutality, whichever it is. It was Al's first fight.

They boarded a special train, filled with coarse men bent upon coarse pleasure. But then, if they had been bent upon refined pleasure they wouldn't have been coarse or it wouldn't have been pleasure.

The prizefighting question illustrates well the gulf between the social and the individual conscience and demonstrates that the whole is sometimes considerably greater than the sum of its parts. Probably eight out of ten men in this country enjoy seeing two hearty young micks belt each other around a padded ring with padded gloves. But they hesitate to come out in the open and proclaim their enjoyment, for fear of writing themselves down brutes, and the deepest yearning of the American people at the present day is to be gentlemanly and ladylike.

So whenever sparring matches are proposed the community works itself up into a state of fake indignation. All the softer and sweeter elements telegraph the Governor and if that isn't enough, pray for him; and inasmuch as the Governor gets no immoral support on the other side from those who are afraid of jeopardizing their gentlemanliness, he yields, and appears in the newspapers as a strong man who dared beard the sports, whereas, he was really a frightened politician who didn't dare beard the Christian Endeavorers.

One of the most illuminating essays of the late and great William James concerned Chautauqua Lake. He spent a week at that beautiful camp, where sobriety and industry, intelligence and goodness, orderliness and ideality, prosperity and cheerfulness pervade the air.

There were popular lectures by popular lecturers, a chorus of seven hundred voices, kindergartens, secondary schools, every sort of refined athletics, and perpetually running soda fountains.

There was neither zymotic disease, poverty, drunkenness, crime or police.

There was culture, kindness, cheapness, equality, in short what mankind has been striving for under the name of civilization, a foretaste of what human society might be, were it all in the light, with no suffering and no dark corners.

And yet when he left the camp he quotes himself as saying to himself: "Ouf! What a relief. Now for something primordial to set the balance straight again. This order is too tame, this culture too second-rate, this goodness too uninteresting. This human drama without a villain or a pang; this community so refined that ice cream soda is the utmost offering it can make to the brute animal in man; this city simmering in the tepid lakeside sun; this atrocious harmlessness of all things--I cannot abide with them."