The Empty Sack Part 43

"What sort of things?"

"For one, that it's no use living any longer-that the world's so bad that the best thing left is to get out of it. She says you can't help the world, or hope to see it improve, because human beings will always reject the principles that would make it any better."

He smiled gently.

"I've heard people talk like that who weren't considered unsettled in their minds."

"Oh, but she doesn't stop there. She tells Teddy he was quite within his rights in taking money from the bank, and when she goes to see him she begs him to be brave and not be sorry for anything he's done."

"And is he sorry?"

"I don't know that you could call it sorry. He's dazed and bewildered.

He knows he took the money and that he killed a man; but he thinks he was placed in a position where he couldn't help it."

"And does he say who could have helped it?"

As she looked down at that twisting and untwisting of her fingers which was the chief sign of her effort at self-control, her color rose.

"He says your father could have helped it; but I don't believe he's right."

"No, he isn't right-not as dad himself sees it. I know he's been worried ever since your father left the bank; but he thinks he couldn't help dismissing him. Life isn't very simple for anyone-not for my dad any more than it was for yours. If I could see Teddy-"

"Would you go to see him?"

"Go to see him? Why, that's what I came back for! I'd like to do it this very afternoon, if you'd tell me first how it all came about. You see, I don't know anything, except the two or three bald facts dad mentioned in his cablegram."

It was not easy to tell this story, even to a man whom she knew to be so kind. The fact that he was her husband didn't help her, for the reason that it was because he was her husband that her pride was in revolt. Had he not been her husband, he would have been free to withdraw from this series of catastrophes. Now he could not withdraw. He was tied.

Moreover, the sordid tale of domestic want became the more sordid when given fact by fact. It was the intimate story of her life in contrast to the intimate story of his. The homely family dodges for making both ends meet which had been the mere jest of penury between Gussie, Gladys, and herself became ghastly when exposed to a man who had never known the lack of service and luxury, to say nothing of food and drink, since the minute he was born. She felt as if it emptied her of any little dignity she had ever possessed, as if it denuded her of self-respect. She could more easily have confessed sins to him than the s.h.i.+fts to which they had been put to live.

Nevertheless, she went through with it, brokenly, with great effort, and yet with a kind of dogged will to drain all the dregs of the cup.

"He'll see me as I am," was part of her underlying thought. "He'll know then that I can't go on with this comedy of having married him. Even if I have, we've got to end it somehow."

But on his side the reaction was different. He had never heard this sort of tale before. He had never before been in contact with this phase of poverty. He had known poor men in college, and plenty of chaps who were down on their luck; but the daily pinching and paring of whole families just to have enough to eat and to wear was so new as to astonish him.

For the minute it made Jennie less an individual than a type.

"My G.o.d!" he was saying inwardly, "do human beings have to live so close to the edge as all that?"

When she had told him of the incident of the cutting off of the gas because they couldn't pay fifteen dollars on account, the turning point of Teddy's tragedy, his exclamation was embarra.s.sing to them both: "Why, I pay twice that for a pair of shoes!" Though she knew he meant it as a protest against the straits to which they had been put, it seemed both to him and to her to make the gulf between them wider.

"And you were going through all that," he said, when she had finished her recital, "during the months when I was seeing you two and three times a week at the studio. My G.o.d! how I wish you could have told me!"

It was the first time that a little smile came quivering to her lips.

"You don't tell things like that-not to anyone outside your family.

Besides, it isn't worth while. You get used to them."

"You weren't used to it-when your mother cried-and Teddy forked out the money."

"Not to that very thing-but to things like it. If Teddy hadn't forked out the money, we should have worried through somehow. That's the awful thing about it-that if he hadn't done it we shouldn't have been much worse off than we'd been at other times. A little worse-yes-even a good deal, perhaps; and yet we could have lived through it. I couldn't have told you, because people of our kind don't talk about such things, not even with their neighbors. We just take them for granted."

It was this taking it for granted that impressed him with such a sense of the terrible. It left so little room for living, so limited a swing to do anything but sc.r.a.pe. Sc.r.a.ping was the whole of Jennie's history.

He could see it as she talked. She had never in her life had fifty dollars to do with as she chose. Perhaps she had never had five. It was not the lack of the money that overwhelmed him, but of any freedom to move, of any scope in which to grow.

Forgetting his reserves of the morning, he caught her by both hands, holding them imprisoned in her lap.

"But that's all over now, Jennie. You're my wife. You're coming to me-right off-to-day-this very afternoon."

"Oh, Bob, I couldn't!" If he was to be "got out of it," she felt it essential to gain time. "I couldn't leave them. Don't you see? There's no one but me to keep house or-or to decide anything. Momma's given up entirely, and Gussie and Gladys are both so young that I couldn't possibly leave them alone."

"Then we'll have to manage it some other way."

"No; not yet. Let's wait. Let's see."

"Waiting and seeing won't change the fact that we're man and wife and that everyone knows it. It's been in the papers-"

"Yes, but why did you put it in?" It was her turn to seek information.

"To me it was like a thunderbolt."

He gave her the contents of his father's cablegram.

"I took it for granted that you must have told him."

"I shouldn't have done that. I did-I did tell your mother, Bob-but then I couldn't help it."

He started back, releasing her hands which he had continued holding.

"What? You've seen the old lady?"

She nodded. "Yes; she sent for me to go out to Marillo Park."

"For Heaven's sake! What made her do that?"

She was aware of her opportunity. If she wanted to "get him out of it,"

now was her chance. She could tell him part of the truth and keep him dangling-or the whole of it and let him go. "Fairer to him-and easier for me" was the thought on which she based her decision.

"She-she wanted to thank me for-for not having taken you at your word and married you."

"Oh! So you had to tell her that you had. And what did she say to that?"

"She was lovely."

He beamed with pleasure.

"She can be when she takes the notion, just as she can be the other way.

She must have liked you."