The Glory of the Conquered Part 29

Yesterday had been her last day on the paper. She had felt queer about that thing of taking her last a.s.signment, though it was hard to reach just the proper state, for the last story related to pork-packers, and pork-packing is not a setting favourable to sentimental regrets. It was just like the newspaper business not even to allow one a little sentimental harrowing over one's exodus from it. But the time for gentle melancholy came later on, when she was sorting her things at her desk just before leaving, and was wondering what girl would have that old desk--if they cared to risk another girl, and whether the other poor girl would slave through the years she should have been frivolous, only to have some man step in at the end and induce her to surrender the things she had gained through sacrifice and toil. As she wrote a final letter on her typewriter--she did hate letting the old machine go--Georgia did considerable philosophising about the irony of working for things only to the end of giving them up. She had waded through snowdrifts and been drenched in pouring rains, she had been frozen with the cold and prostrated with the heat, she had been blown about by Chicago wind until it was strange there was any of her left in one piece, she had had front doors--yes, and back doors too, slammed in her face, she had been the b.u.t.t of the alleged wit of menials and hirelings, she had been patronised by vapid women as the poor girl who must make her living some way, she had been roasted by--but never mind--she had had a beat or two! And now she was to wind it all up by marrying Joseph Tank, who had made a great deal of money out of the manufacture of paper bags. This from her--who had always believed she would end her days in New York, or perhaps write a realistic novel exposing some mighty evil!

"Ah, well--it's all in the day's work!"--she had been saying that to herself as she covered her typewriter, and then, just as she was fearing that her exit would be a maudlin one, Joe called up to say that he did not think it would be too cold for the machine, and why not spin out somewhere on the North Sh.o.r.e for a good dinner? Now that had been nice of Joe, for it tided her over the good-byes.

To-day she was engaged in the pre-nuptial rite of destroying her past, indulging in the letter destroying ceremonial which seems always to attend the eve of matrimony. It was so that Ernestine found her when she stopped on her way from the university that afternoon.

Mrs. McCormick was sewing yards upon yards of lace on something when Ernestine came in. "She's right in there," she said, referring to Georgia in a sepulchral tone which might fittingly have been employed for: "The remains have been laid out in the front room."

Georgia herself, though not sepulchral, was subdued. "My, but I'm glad you've come," she said, brushing aside several hundred letters that Ernestine might have a place to sit down. "I'm having the most terrible twinge of conscience."

"Why, what about?"

Georgia pointed to the clock. "Think of my not being at the office! I ought to be hanging around now for an afternoon a.s.signment."

"You'll get over that," Ernestine a.s.sured her, cheerfully.

"Oh, I suppose so. One gets over everything--even being alive. Meanwhile, behold me,"--with a great sweep of her arms--"surrounded by my blighting past."

"That one looks like Freddie Allen's writing," said Ernestine, giving an envelope at her foot a little shove.

"It is," said Georgia, with feeling; "yes--it is. Poor Freddie--he was such a nice boy."

"I suppose he's nice still," observed Ernestine.

"Oh, I suppose so. I'm sure I don't know. He's way back there in the dim past."

"Well, do you want him up here in the sunny present?" Ernestine inquired, much entertained.

"No, oh no--if I had wanted him I would have had him," with which reversion to the normal Georgia they laughed understandingly.

She shook herself free of the dust of her past then, piled up the pillows and settled herself on the bed. "But we had some good times back there in the dim past, didn't we, Ernestine?"

"Some of them were good times," replied Ernestine, a little soberly.

"Of course our college life would have been happier if we had been able to pull down that soph.o.m.ore flag. I've always thought Jack Stewart might have done a little better with that. But as long as we kept Jim Jones away from every party in his junior year, perhaps we should be satisfied." Georgia sighed heavily. "And it is a joy to think back to your telling the dean he didn't have the courage of his convictions when he let them fire Stone for heresy. Oh there are a good many things to be thankful for. You always had lots of nerve when it came to a show-down.

You looked so lady-like, and yet you really weren't at all."

"Well, I don't know whether I like that or not."

"I mean not so lady-like that it interfered with anything you wanted to do. You'd speak up in the pleasantest, most agreeable voice and say the most dreadful things. I'll never forget the day you told "Prof" Moore in cla.s.s that you had always had a peculiar aversion to the Pilgrim Fathers."

"I always did," Ernestine said fervently.

"Then one day when we had spent an hour trying to tell what Shakespeare meant by some line you said you thought quite likely he put it in just because there had to be another line. And "Prof" Jennings conditioned you on the whole year's work--remember?"

"I have reason to," laughed Ernestine.

"The funny part of it was that you never seemed to think you were saying anything startling. Like the day you contended in ethics that you thought frequently it was better to be pleasant than truthful. Kitty Janeway was so shocked at that. I wonder if Kitty Janeway is any happier with her second husband than she was with her first?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Ernestine in a rather far-away voice.

"I'll send all the girls cards," said Georgia, and again she sighed heavily. "The cards are going to look very nice," she added, a little more hopefully.

"Ernestine?"--after a little pause.

"Yes?"

"You and I are hanging right over the ragged edge of thirty."

"Horrors!--Georgia; is this your idea of furnishing pleasant entertainment for a guest?"

"But I was just thinking how many things have happened to us since we were twenty-two."

"I was thinking of that a minute ago myself."

"To you, especially. Now, I never supposed when we were in college that you were going to marry Karl Hubers."

"No," laughed Ernestine, "neither did I."

"I mean I never a.s.sociated you two with one another. And now I can't think of you separately. And then your father and mother, and then Karl losing--heavens, but I'm cheerful! Now, isn't it just like me," she demanded, angrily, "to act like a fool just because I'm going to be married? If I keep on I'll find myself weeping because Socrates is dead.

And I never do weep, either. I tell you that Joe Tank's a terrible man,"

she laughed, brushing away some tears.

"I don't think you're going to have much to weep about, Georgia. I know you're going to be happy."

"Well, if I'm not it won't be Joe's fault. Unless it is his fault on account of its _not_ being his fault. What I mean is that good-natured people are sometimes aggravating."

"Oh he'll not always be good-natured," she rea.s.sured her.

Ernestine said then that she must go, and was standing at the door when Georgia burst forth: "Oh Ernestine--I'm so glad I remembered. You really must go down to the Art Inst.i.tute and see those pictures by that Norwegian artist--I shouldn't dream of p.r.o.nouncing his name. They go away this week, and it would be awful for you to miss them."

A wistfulness, fairly pain, revealed itself for an instant in Ernestine's face. And then, as if coming into consciousness of the look: "I know,"

she said briefly. "I read about them. I've been--thinking about it. I did see some of them in Europe, but of course I should love to see them again."

"I wish you would, my dear; perhaps"--a little fearfully--"they'd make you feel like getting to work yourself. Ernestine,"--gathering courage--"it's awful for you to let your work go this way. Every one says so. I was talking to Ryan the other day--you know who he is? He asked all about you, and if you were doing anything now, and when I told him I was afraid not he fairly flew into a rage, said that was just the way--the people who might be great didn't seem to have sense enough to care to be."

That brought the quick colour. "Perhaps Mr. Ryan does not understand everything in life," she said, coolly.

"Now, Ernestine--he was lovely about you. Would he have shown any feeling at all if he didn't care a great deal for your work? Does any one fly into a rage at _my_ not painting? He said you were _one_ American woman who was an artist instead of 'a woman who paints.' It seems he saw the Salon picture. Oh, he said beautiful things about you."

Ernestine did not answer. She was standing there very quietly, her hand on the k.n.o.b. "Now, Ernestine," Georgia went on, after the manner of one bound to have it out, "I've tried all winter to cultivate repression. I don't know what it is you are trying to do over there in the laboratory.

You asked me to do two things--not to ask you about it, and not to mention it to Karl. I haven't done either, but I want to tell you right now if you have any idea of giving up your own work I think it's time for your friends to inquire into your mental workings! The very fact you don't want Karl to know about it shows you know very well _he_ won't think it's right. Anything that relates to his work can be done by people who do that kind of work a great deal better than you can. Really, Ernestine, the thing is positively fanatical. And anyway,"--this with the air of delivering the overpowering--"I don't think it is at all nice the way you are taking other men into your confidence and deceiving Karl."

She met that with a little laugh. "Dear me--what laudable sentiment. I've always heard there was no one half so proper as the girl about to be married. Never mind, Georgia,"--a little more seriously, a little as if it would not be hard to cry--"Karl will forgive me--some day."

"But, Ernestine, I want you to work! Can't you see how awful it is for you not to--express yourself?"

"I am going to express myself," she answered, lightly enough, but after she had gone Georgia wondered just what she had meant by that.