"But the music?"
"There was a Russian girl who used to dance in the cabaret and she----"
Terry"s head came up with a characteristic little jerk. "I don"t believe it!"
"Better." She gazed at Terry with the drowsy look that was so different from the quick, clear glance of the Ruby Watson who used to dance so nimbly in the old Bijou days. "What"d you and your husband quarrel about, Terry?"
Terry was furious to feel herself flushing. "Oh, nothing. He just--I--it was---- Say, how did you know we"d quarreled?"
And suddenly all the fat woman"s apathy dropped from her like a garment and some of the old sparkle and animation illumined her heavy face.
She pushed her gla.s.s aside and leaned forward on her folded arms, so that her face was close to Terry"s.
"Terry Sheehan, I know you"ve quarreled, and I know just what it was about. Oh, I don"t mean the very thing it was about; but the kind of thing. I"m going to do something for you, Terry, that I wouldn"t take the trouble to do for most women. But I guess I ain"t had all the softness knocked out of me yet, though it"s a wonder. And I guess I remember too plain the decent kid you was in the old days. What was the name of that little small-time house me and Jim used to play?
Bijou, that"s it; Bijou."
The band struck up a new tune. Leon Sammett--slim, sleek, lithe in his evening clothes--appeared with a little fair girl in pink chiffon. The woman reached across the table and put one pudgy, jeweled hand on Terry"s arm. "He"ll be through in ten minutes. Now listen to me. I left Jim four years ago, and there hasn"t been a minute since then, day or night, when I wouldn"t have crawled back to him on my hands and knees if I could. But I couldn"t. He wouldn"t have me now. How could he? How do I know you"ve quarreled? I can see it in your eyes. They look just the way mine have felt for four years, that"s how. I met up with this boy, and there wasn"t anybody to do the turn for me that I"m trying to do for you. Now get this. I left Jim because when he ate corn on the cob he always closed his eyes and it drove me wild. Don"t laugh."
"I"m not laughing," said Terry.
"Women are like that. One night--we was playing Fond du Lac; I remember just as plain--we was eating supper before the show and Jim reached for one of those big yellow ears, and b.u.t.tered and salted it, and me kind of hanging on to the edge of the table with my nails.
Seemed to me if he shut his eyes when he put his teeth into that ear of corn I"d scream. And he did. And I screamed. And that"s all."
Terry sat staring at her with a wide-eyed stare, like a sleepwalker.
Then she wet her lips slowly. "But that"s almost the very----"
"Kid, go on back home. I don"t know whether it"s too late or not, but go anyway. If you"ve lost him I suppose it ain"t any more than you deserve; but I hope to G.o.d you don"t get your deserts this time. He"s almost through. If he sees you going he can"t quit in the middle of his song to stop you. He"ll know I put you wise, and he"ll prob"ly half kill me for it. But it"s worth it. You get."
And Terry--dazed, shaking, but grateful--fled. Down the noisy aisle, up the stairs, to the street. Back to her rooming house. Out again, with her suitcase, and into the right railroad station somehow, at last. Not another Wetona train until midnight. She shrank into a remote corner of the waiting room and there she huddled until midnight, watching the entrances like a child who is fearful of ghosts in the night.
The hands of the station clock seemed fixed and immovable. The hour between eleven and twelve was endless. She was on the train. It was almost morning. It was morning. Dawn was breaking. She was home!
She had the house key clutched tightly in her hand long before she turned Schroeder"s corner. Suppose he had come home! Suppose he had jumped a town and come home ahead of his schedule. They had quarreled once before, and he had done that.
Up the front steps. Into the house. Not a sound. She stood there a moment in the early-morning half-light. She peered into the dining room. The table, with its breakfast debris, was as she had left it.
In the kitchen the coffeepot stood on the gas stove. She was home.
She was safe. She ran up the stairs, got out of her clothes and into gingham morning things. She flung open windows everywhere. Downstairs once more she plunged into an orgy of cleaning. Dishes, table, stove, floor, rugs. She washed, scoured, swabbed, polished. By eight o"clock she had done the work that would ordinarily have taken until noon. The house was shining, orderly, and redolent of soapsuds.
During all this time she had been listening, listening, with her subconscious ear. Listening for something she had refused to name definitely in her mind, but listening, just the same; waiting.
And then, at eight o"clock, it came. The rattle of a key in the lock.
The boom of the front door. Firm footsteps.
He did not go to meet her, and she did not go to meet him. They came together and were in each other"s arms. She was weeping.
"Now, now, old girl. What"s there to cry about? Don"t, honey; don"t.
It"s all right." She raised her head then, to look at him. How fresh and rosy and big he seemed, after that little sallow restaurant rat.
"How did you get here? How did you happen----?"
"Jumped all the way from Ashland. Couldn"t get a sleeper, so I sat up all night. I had to come back and square things with you, Terry. My mind just wasn"t on my work. I kept thinking how I"d talked--how I"d talked----"
"Oh, Orville, don"t! I can"t bear---- Have you had your breakfast?"
"Why, no. The train was an hour late. You know that Ashland train."
But she was out of his arms and making for the kitchen. "You go and clean up. I"ll have hot biscuits and everything in no time. You poor boy. No breakfast!"
She made good her promise. It could not have been more than half an hour later when he was b.u.t.tering his third feathery, golden-brown biscuit. But she had eaten nothing. She watched him, and listened, and again her eyes were somber, but for a different reason. He broke open his egg. His elbow came up just a fraction of an inch. Then he remembered, and flushed like a schoolboy, and brought it down again, carefully. And at that she gave a tremulous cry, and rushed around the table to him.
"Oh, Orville!" She took the offending elbow in her two arms, and bent and kissed the rough coat sleeve.
"Why, Terry! Don"t, honey. Don"t!"
"Oh, Orville, listen----"
"Yes."
"Listen, Orville----"
"I"m listening, Terry."
"I"ve got something to tell you. There"s something you"ve got to know."
"Yes, I know it, Terry. I knew you"d out with it, pretty soon, if I just waited."
She lifted an amazed face from his shoulder then, and stared at him.
"But how could you know? You couldn"t! How could you?"
He patted her shoulder then, gently. "I can always tell. When you have something on your mind you always take up a spoon of coffee, and look at it, and kind of joggle it back and forth in the spoon, and then dribble it back into the cup again, without once tasting it. It used to get me nervous, when we were first married, watching you. But now I know it just means you"re worried about something, and I wait, and pretty soon----"
"Oh, Orville!" she cried then. "Oh, Orville!"
"Now, Terry. Just spill it, hon. Just spill it to Daddy. And you"ll feel better."
Farmer in the Dell [1919]
Old Ben Westerveld was taking it easy. Every muscle taut, every nerve tense, his keen eyes vainly straining to pierce the blackness of the stuffy room--there lay Ben Westerveld in bed, taking it easy. And it was hard. Hard. He wanted to get up. He wanted so intensely to get up that the mere effort of lying there made him ache all over. His toes were curled with the effort. His fingers were clenched with it. His breath came short, and his thighs felt cramped. Nerves. But old Ben Westerveld didn"t know that. What should a retired and well-to-do farmer of fifty-eight know of nerves, especially when he has moved to the city and is taking it easy?
If only he knew what time it was. Here in Chicago you couldn"t tell whether it was four o"clock or seven unless you looked at your watch.
To do that it was necessary to turn on the light. And to turn on the light meant that he would turn on, too, a flood of querulous protest from his wife, Bella, who lay asleep beside him.
When for forty-five years of your life you have risen at four-thirty daily, it is difficult to learn to loll. To do it successfully, you must be a natural-born loller to begin with and revert. Bella Westerveld was and had. So there she lay, asleep. Old Ben wasn"t and hadn"t. So there he lay, terribly wide-awake, wondering what made his heart thump so fast when he was lying so still. If it had been light, you could have seen the lines of strained resignation in the sagging muscles of his patient face.
They had lived in the city for almost a year, but it was the same every morning. He would open his eyes, start up with one hand already reaching for the limp, drab work-worn garments that used to drape the chair by his bed. Then he would remember and sink back while a great wave of depression swept over him. Nothing to get up for. Store clothes on the chair by the bed. He was taking it easy.
Back home on the farm in southern Illinois he had known the hour the instant his eyes opened. Here the flat next door was so close that the bed-room was in twilight even at midday. On the farm he could tell by the feeling--an intangible thing, but infallible. He could gauge the very quality of the blackness that comes just before dawn. The crowing of the c.o.c.ks, the stamping of the cattle, the twittering of the birds in the old elm whose branches were etched eerily against his window in the ghostly light--these things he had never needed. He had known. But here in the un-sylvan section of Chicago which bears the bosky name of Englewood, the very darkness had a strange quality.