We Can't Have Everything Part 12

But she returned to the normal speed, for he did not come home to dress or to dine or to go to the theater. No word came from him until Charity Coe was all dressed; then a clerk telephoned her that her husband regretted he could not come home, as he had to rush for the Philadelphia train.

Charity could not quite disbelieve this, nor quite believe. She had spent the evening debating married love and honeymoons that wax and wane and wax again, and a wife's duty and her rights and might-have-beens, perhapses, and if-only's.

Charity had put on her jewels, which had not been taken out of the safe for years, but he had not arrived. Alarm and resentment wrestled for her heart; they prospered alternately. Now she trembled with fear for her husband; now she smothered with wrath at his indifference to her.

Who was he that he should keep her waiting, and who were the Cheevers that they should break engagements with the Coes? It was only at such times that her pride of birth flared in her, and then only enough to sustain her through grievous humiliations.

But what are humiliations that we should mind them so? They come to everybody in turn, and they are as relentless and impersonal as the sun marching around the sky. Kedzie had hers, and Charity hers, and the streetcar conductor Kedzie had rebuffed had his, and the Czar with his driven army had his, with more to come, and the Kaiser with his victorious army had his, with more to come. Even Peter Cheever had his in plenty, and of a peculiar secret sort.

He had honestly planned to spend his evening with his wife. She seemed to be coming back into style with him. But the long arm of the telephone brought him within the reach of Zada L'Etoile. Zada had plans of her own for his evening-dinner, theater, supper, dance till dawn. Peter had answered, gently:

"Sorry, but I'm booked."

Zada had seemed to come right through the wire at him.

"With that--wife of yours, of course!"

She had used a word that fascinated the listening Central, who was lucky enough to transact a good deal of Zada's telephone business. Central could almost see Peter flush as he shook his head and answered:

"Not necessarily. It's business."

"You'd better make it your business not to go out with that woman, anywhere," Zada had threatened. "It's indecent."

Peter winced. A wife is not ordinarily called "that woman." Peter sighed. It was a pretty pa.s.s when a man could not be allowed to go to the theater with his own wife. Yet he felt that Zada was right, in a way. He had forfeited the privilege of a domestic evening. He was afraid to brave Zada's fantastic rages. He could best protect Charity Coe by continuing to ignore her.

He consented to Zada's plan and promised to call up his wife. Zada took a brief triumph from that. But Peter was ashamed and afraid to speak to Charity even across the wire. He knew that it has become as difficult to lie by telephone as face to face. The treacherous little quavers in the voice are multiplied to a rattle, and nothing can ever quite imitate sincerity. So much is bound to be over or under done.

Cheever made a pretense of rushing out of his office. He looked at his watch violently, so that his secretary should be startled--as he politely pretended to be. Cheever gasped, then rushed his lie with sickly histrionism:

"I say, Hudspeth, call up my--Mrs. Cheever, will you? And--er--tell her I've had to dash for the train to--er--Phila"--cough--"delphia. Tell her I'm awfully sorry about to-night. Back to-morrow."

"Yessir," said Hudspeth, winking at the gaping stenographer, who looked exclamation points at her typewriter.

Hudspeth called up Mrs. Cheever. He was no more convincing than Cheever would have been. A note of disgust at his task and of deprecatory pity for Mrs. Cheever influenced his tone.

Charity was not convinced, but she could hardly reveal that to Hudspeth--although, of course, she did. She was betrayed by her very eagerness to be a good sport easily bamboozled.

"Oh, I see. Too bad! I quite understand. Thank you, Mr. Hudspeth.

Good-by."

She did not hear Hudspeth growling to the stenographer as he strolled over and leaned on her chair unnecessarily--there were other chairs to lean on, and she was not deaf:

"Rotten business! He ought to be ashamed of himself. A nice wife like that!"

The stenographer sat forward and snapped, "You got a nice wife yourself." She was a little jealous of Zada, perhaps--or of Mrs.

Cheever--or of both.

Peter left his office to escape telephoning Charity, but he could imagine how the message crushed her. He felt as if he had stepped on a hurt bird. When he met Zada he kept trying to be patient and forgiving with her, in spite of her blameworthiness.

Zada saw through his sullenness, and for a little moment was proud of her victory. Then she began to suffer, too. She understood the frailty of her hold on Cheever. His loyalty to her was in the eyes of the world a treachery, and his disloyalty to her would be applauded as a holy deed. She was becoming an old story with him, as Charity had become one.

She suffered agonies from the cloud on her t.i.tle and on her name, and she was afraid of the world. A woman of her sort has no sympathy to expect; her stock in trade vanishes without replenishment, and her business does not build. In spite of herself she cannot help envying and imitating the good women. As a certain great man has confessed, "There is so much good in the worst of us," that there is hardly any fun in being bad. It is almost impossible to be very bad or very good very long at a time.

So here was Zada already copying a virtuous domestic woe and wondering how she could fasten Cheever to her, win him truly for herself. She honestly felt that she could be of value to him, and make more of a man of him than his lawful wife ever could. Perhaps she was right. At any rate, she was miserable, and if a person is going to be miserable she might as well be right while her misery is going on.

Zada had dragged Cheever to a cabaret. She could lead him thither, but she could not make him dance. She was one-stepping unwillingly with a young cad who insulted her subtly in everything he said and looked. She could not resent his familiarity beyond sneering at him and calling him a foolish cub. She left him and returned to the table where Peter Cheever smoked a bitter cigar. It is astonishing how sad these notorious revelers look in repose. They are solemner than deacons.

"Come on, Peterkin--dance the rest of this with me," Zada implored.

Peterkin shook his head. He felt that it was not quite right for him to dance in public with such persons. He had his code. Even the swine have their ethics. Zada put her hand in Cheever's arm and cooed to him, but in vain.

It was then that Jim Dyckman caught sight of them. He was slinking about the roofs as lonely and dejected as a homeless cat.

His money could not buy him companionship, though his acquaintance was innumerable and almost anybody would have been proud to be spoken to by such a money monster. But Jim did not want to be spoken to by anybody who was ambitious to be spoken to by him. He wanted to talk to Charity.

He could not even interest himself in dissipation. There was plenty of it for sale, and markets were open to him that were not available to average means. Many a foolish woman, irreproachable and counting herself unapproachable, would have been strangely and memorably perturbed by an amorous glance from Jim Dyckman.

But Jim did not want what he could get. He was hungry for the companionship of Charity Coe.

When he saw her lord and master, Peter Cheever, with Zada, Dyckman was enraged. Cheever owned Charity Coe; he could flatter her with a smile, beckon her with a gesture, caress her at will, or leave her in safe deposit, while he spent his precious hours with a public servant!

Dyckman could usually afford to do what he wanted to. But now he wanted to go to that table and knock the heads of Cheever and Zada together; he wanted to make their skulls whack like castanets. But he could not afford to do that.

He was so forlorn that he went home. His sumptuous chariot with ninety race-horses concealed in the engine and velvet in its wheels slid him as on smoothest ice to his father's home near the cathedral. The house was like a child of the cathedral, and he went up its steps as a pauper entering a cathedral. He gave up his hat and stick and went past the masterpieces on his walls as if he were a visitor to the Metropolitan Art Gallery on a free day. He stumbled up the stairway, itself a work of art, like a boy sent to bed without supper: he stumbled upstairs, wanting to cry and not daring to.

His valet undressed him in a motherly way and put him to bed. The valet was feeling very sad. Dyckman realized that he was about to lose Jules, and he felt more disconsolate. Still, he surprised himself by breaking out:

"I wish you wouldn't go to the war, Jules."

Jules smiled with friendship and deference subtly blended:

"I wish I would not, too, sir."

"You might get killed, you know."

"Yes, sir."

"So you're a soldier! How long did you serve?"

"Shree years, sir."

"And I don't know the first thing about soldiering! I ought to be ashamed of myself! Well--don't get killed, Jules."

"Very good, sir."

But he did.

Jules said, "Good night, sir," and faded through the door. Dyckman tossed for a while. Then he got up in a rage at his insomnia. He could not find his other slipper, and he stubbed his toe plebeianly against an aristocratic table. He cursed and limped to the window and glowered down into the street. He might have been a jailbird gaping through iron bars.

He could not get out of himself, or his love for Charity.