Edwin Balmer

“ Marjorie imagined Clara Seeley beside her and knowing what she did about some of these people; and she seemed to hear Clara say: "Kept wives!"
And to possess a mansion, to build for yourself the housing for a family with many rooms and with wide lawn and to fill it with servants enough to minister to many, to buy with your husband's money the display of appurtenances of a home for many children and for the woman to bear a single child for her justification for ease all her life; that became to Marjorie base and despicable. ”

“ Billy had missed that; he must have supposed, as this black-haired girl said, that Rinderfeld had Marjorie at Cragero's and, so supposing, Billy had not cared what happened to himself.
Hale went from the room. Marjorie, his daughter, was safe; that was, at least Rinderfeld had not harmed her; she had never been at Cragero's at all. That was what he had come to know; and, having ascertained it, there was nothing for him to wait for. Billy was dead; he had brought the news, and he had nothing useful to say to his daughter about it. Billy was dead. ”

“ Gregg was not deluding himself that it was over, because Bill was dead and Marjorie was home again with her father; of course it was not over, he was realizing; nothing can ever be "over" in the sense that its consequences become complete. But they can reach periods of intermission, those consequences, when they give you breath and rest, and a chance to get hold of yourself before once more they hurry you on. And so to-night Gregg, like Marjorie since he had taken her home, grasped at this sensation of pause. ”

“ In order to instance to her-self a single extraordinary event, she had to call up the twenty minutes she spent in an airplane flying over the city and the lake from the hangar just west of Evanston. No wonder Rinderfeld found her so ignorant of the world that he realized it was useless to try to explain what had happened to her; no wonder that the few men, with whom she held anything approaching a conversation, satisfied her when they spoke to her in never so much as half-truths concerning themselves and their world. ”

“ Billy repeated and laughed. "Insulting to Felix Rinderfeld!"
"You shan't!" she denied. "You shan't. Mr. Rinderfeld never came into my trouble of his own accord; we asked him to help me—you and Gregg and I. I went to him to have him help me, and he has helped me more than any one else, more than ever you have and in a way which should make you ashamed—ashamed of yourself for what you think and say of him and me. I didn't imagine a man could be as unpersonal and considerate of a girl in my situation as he has been. ”

“ Gregg looked up at her suddenly and much better understood her and much more fully comprehended what had happened. He found himself comparing her with the woman she had just mentioned, with the other woman who, at one time, had greatly attracted Charles Hale; and Gregg appreciated what this woman and Mrs. Hale had in common,—self-constraint and reserve. Hale, himself, wanted these qualities; he was a man constantly expressing himself, enjoying feelings and liking to stir others to feelings; so a girl, such as his wife had been, must have come to him as a sort of challenge. ”

“ He crumpled it in his hand and strode into her room to find that, in so far as he could reckon her wardrobe, Marjorie had gone off taking with her only the suit she had worn that day and that too low-cut dress her mother had given her for the Lovells' dance. Underwear, stockings, night-dresses and lingerie she might have taken, and probably had; he had no census of such garments. Some were left in her drawers but, he believed, not as many as she had. She had left her rings, pins and necklaces.
"What does she mean to do to herself?" he put his terror for her into coherent demand. ”

“ Marjorie finished quickly. "Oh, that I know; but it hasn't started you thinking, Billy; it hasn't twisted everything around for you and forced you to find yourself all over again. You're—going on just as you used to. You're separating people, as the Sunday-school cards used to show pictures of God doing, into a flock of sheep and a flock of goats; you see a person, Billy, as good, or you see him as bad. That's an awfully easy and convenient way to class people—as long as you can let it satisfy you. ”

“ You don't know a girl who ever has even thought about it the same way or who ever could; for it's an overwhelming matter to your sort of girl, make or break to her character; likely enough it's life or death for her. But it's not to a man if he goes in for it; it's not even the biggest thing in his life, if he's much of a man, as your father was! It's just something else in his life, along with all the other things in it. That's all Clearedge Street meant to him. And he never set Mrs. Russell in his mind above your mother and you."
"How frightful!" Marjorie breathed. ”

“ He always wishes to spare me, doesn't he, dear?"
"Yes, mother," Marjorie said again, wretchedly.
"He is quite, quite safe, Marjorie—Doctor Grantham assures me. Doctor will take me down to see him now. Of course, I understand your father's motives for wishing to keep his operation secret even from his friends. I realize I must not let my own feelings stand in the way of his business future. Kiss me, Marjorie.—There now, I'll go with Doctor Grantham; you mustn't think of going, child. You've been through too much already." ”

“ Midsummer was a beautiful but, to Marjorie Hale, almost a strange season in Evanston; for the women and children of fashionable Evanston long ago have affected the summer hegira to other, and not always cooler places. They merely "shut" their homes, if they can afford it, leaving a servant or two to keep up the house and lawn; or they rent their abodes, furnished, to women and children from other cities who look upon the comfortable, modern little city on the shore of the great lake as a most desirable summer resort. ”

“ Yearning for her as she had been, and as she might now be with him, he put more emphasis in, "You can't feel like yourself, and I can't feel like myself, Marjorie—I'm not even doing my work right at the office—as long as we're hiding from other people and from ourselves, dear. Sweetheart, we're just putting off, from weakness, what we know we have to face and we're making it harder for ourselves and every one else, when we have to do it in the end." ”

“ Other men at the Lovells' dance, and Gregg had been among them, also had lacked Billy's meticulousness for her; it was nothing new for Marjorie, when dancing, to have a man's bare hand below her bare shoulders; but there was something very definite—and something rather stupendous in its revelation—about the clasp of Mr. Saltro on her flesh.
To be fair with him, it was not individual to Jake Saltro; Sam Troufrie held her, not in the same way quite, but with the same sensation; other men—Clara's friends—held her so, with one exception. ”

“ Gregg said, as they both halted, staring at each other, "isn't what men do; you know, every woman knows what men do; the half don't realize is how little we think of it. You've just shown this when you claimed that your father, in doing what he did, put Mrs. Russell above every one and everything else. You think that because a woman—most any woman—to do it, would have to take the point of view you've expressed. A man doesn't. Good God, Marjorie, I'm not going to be any use to you putting up a bluff about things. ”

“ Of course Marjorie Hale, in her Evanston days, occasionally must have seen some of these people when boldly and with elaborate affront they invaded the hotels which the Sedgwicks, the Chadens, the Lovells, the Cleves, the Vanes and the Hales frequented but, when she noticed these intruders at all, it was rather with amusement or at least with condescension, and she imagined them lucky individuals from the new immigrants who, by extraordinary personal sacrifices or by isolated strokes of fortune, had got together a little money which they were half ridiculously, half pitifully parading. ”

“ What would have passed between Marjorie and Rinderfeld, if he had not been present, Gregg wondered; what would have been said, if he had not surprised Rinderfeld in that off-guard moment before the Hales' home? "Smooth!" Gregg said to himself. "The smoothest proposition I ever saw. He has her coming to him; he's going to keep her coming to him! Europe! He knows she's not going to Europe; but she thinks he wants to send her away; thinks he doesn't want to see her, except when necessary on business. ”

“ Instead of experiencing merely a renewal of the dread of her neighbors, of their mercilessness if they "found out," she was swept with a sharper pang of shame for the unworthiness of her home to stand among theirs; and the conduct of her father became betrayal, not only of his family, but of all their friends. No wonder Evanston had been slow in accepting newcomers; by choosing to live in a place like Evanston, you made a more definite profession of certain ideals than by going about the business of residing in a different sort of community ”

“ To be married would have meant to them only to go on together having a light-hearted, irresponsible, "good" time with the new thrills and joys of complete possession of each other's bodies.
But Gregg Mowbry since then had sat alone with Sybil Russell in that flat on Clearedge Street, while Charles Hale, unconscious, was carried to Fursten's; at Kilkerry's he awaited Russell's return; he had lost his job and left Billy; and gone to Cragero's for Bill; had taken Bill, just now, home; and he, Gregg Mowbry, had come back from Bay City alone. ”

“ Marjorie completed to herself; and then the Marjorie Hale, who was the daughter of Corinna Winfield Hale, reasserted herself. "Are you mad, planning to invite a girl out of a drug-store window to share a room with you?"
Yet, if the room was to be at that forbidden address of Jen Cordeen's, who better to have for your first friend than this smiling, I-take-care-of-myself girl in this window? Did she know what was the matter with Jen Cordeen's, Marjorie wondered, and was she meaning to take a room there, anyway? Or had no Mr. Dantwill warned her? ”

“ Charles Hale. He was proud of her for that; but pride in his mate was no substitute to him for love and passion. However, she could never understand that; what outrage she would feel—and what contempt for him—if he had told her that he, a matured man with a grown daughter, required passion still. So he had sought and found passion elsewhere; leaving his wife to continue going her own way, serene and perfectly satisfied with what she had. ”

“ He clung to an idea that possibly the long talk between Marjorie and Bill had not come to a conclusion; possibly they had been interrupted; possibly there had seemed more delight in waiting for a consummation at some better time or place; possibly she had been unwilling, even in her happiness, to do him the rudeness of cutting a dance. Gregg seldom had the sensation of dancing with a girl and realizing that she was absorbed in thoughts of some other man ”

“ Yet when Charles Hale found his thoughts dwelling with her, he caught himself up sharply, for he realized this meant he was desiring not love of a mate, but woman; and he swore to himself he would not let himself go on that road. No; to turn from his wife to the truer love—or what he could at least call the truer love of Sybil Russell—that was one thing; but to become a common follower of women was another. Yet, as matters lay, it was this or Sybil Russell for him now ”

“ Church bells were ringing—so many bells in Evanston—and booming with no wondering appeal; for people were going to church and as they passed, suddenly it was not Marjorie Hale but Marjorie Conway, roommate of Clara Seeley, who watched them from the window. There they passed, men and women, young and older; and just now Marjorie was thinking particularly of certain of the women, good and respectable by any ordinary reckoning. That was, they maintained honesty, verbal and financial integrity, agreeable manners, and professed faith, hope and charity, and practiced giving to the poor. ”

“ Stanway, would thank you? Anyhow, I'll not see Mr. Stanway taking his place. But I was almost ready to wreck everything, for the sake of feeling right, when you came."
"Then why in the world aren't you now?"
"Because you're so sure it must be right; and right isn't always the best; it's only always the obvious thing to do."
"Rinderfeld," said Billy, "I suppose, taught you that."
"No; I just saw it for myself, after talking with him."
Billy became conscious of the rigor of his hands and he relaxed his grasp of her. "You've made me perfectly sure what I must do, Marjorie. ”

“ Russell may be aware that all has not been regular with her and that they may have identified the man. For all practical purposes they are harmless; some of them undoubtedly feel sympathy for them both; some feel it is none of any one's else affair; a few, unquestionably, are shocked. But very few people, without some motive of self-advantage, take the trouble of disciplining others. They merely take it out in talk. There is one chance—perhaps as large a chance as one in a thousand—that some busybody from Clearedge Street may visit your home. ”

“ That was false; a direct, black, low lie, Billy. It slandered mother. I could have bitten my tongue out for it after I said it. If she'd come in, I'd have told her everything. But then I got thinking again of Mr. Stanway in father's place—after he put Russell up to making that trouble; that's what he did, Mr. Rinderfeld thinks. Did I tell you that the other day?"
"No," said Billy. "What difference does it make?"
"Whether he put Russell up to it? Billy!"
"I meant, what Rinderfeld thinks. That man's absolutely depraved. ”

“ You're just trying to do what Marjorie is—cover up and conceal; she thinks she can work out something that way. But she can't; she'll only get in deeper and deeper. I told her so to-night, Gregg; and she—she sent me away. I've quarreled with Marjorie; she told me to leave her house! Mrs. Hale invited me to dinner and Marjorie asked me to go; she didn't want me with her!"
With his hand still on Gregg's shoulder, he had forgotten Gregg's injury in new immersion in his own misery. And Gregg, too, forgot as he felt Billy's wretchedness. ”

“ Clara's eyes filled and her lips quivered so that she waited an instant before she repeated—"I just wanted to put my arms around and just take care of that big boy and keep him like he was. He wanted to do that to you. But you're not one to want to keep or be kept; you have to play the game, give and take. That's your Gregg Mowbry; he's out of a job and busted, I understand. Kid, if all this actually has come to mean nothing in your life now," Clara motioned generally around the room, "could you beat this time for going to your man?" ”

“ There was no end to blackmail, once you started paying it; each payment, instead of clearing you, only got you deeper in the toils of the blackmailer; and to think of Marjorie paying Russell to keep silent, of him coming to her with demands which she dared not refuse—no, horrible as this had been to Gregg, he was glad he had done it. ”

“ I could have made her reply; or made Rinderfeld lead me to her! You—you!" Billy was beside himself now. "You didn't want me to try; you wanted to keep her to yourself. That's why you tell me now, after you've found you can't do anything. You knew she was going, when you could have stopped her—or I could—because you wanted her to go so you could get her from me; you——" he thrust, breathless, before Gregg, who went white, believing at that instant that Bill meant to attack him. ”

“ Marjorie hesitated, trying to recall Clara's exact words, "a pure man."
"What d' I care about purity? Gawd, Marjorie, I ain't askin' the sky to fall. If I can see a man who actually forgets himself when seein' a girl—who don't think about himself at all but just her, who don't care what show he makes of himself, who don't even know whether they're laughin' at him, and who couldn't think of carin' a damn if they was or not, so long as he could maybe, perhaps do a little thing for her, that's enough for me! ”