Jim Dyckman

“ Never a homeless dog slinking through an alley in search of a sidelong ash-barrel to sleep in felt more poverty-stricken, woebegone, than Jim Dyckman. He moped along the stately road, as much afraid of his future as Kedzie had been, trudging the same highway. ”

“ And on this same train, in this same car, unnoticed and unnoticing, sat Kedzie.
Jim and Charity grew increasingly embarrassed as the train drew into New York. Charity was uncertain whether her husband would meet her or not. Jim did not want to leave her to get home alone. She did not want her husband to find her with Jim.
Cheever had excuse enough in his own life for suspecting other people. He had always disliked Jim Dyckman because Dyckman had always disliked him, and Jim's transparent face had announced the fact with all the clarity of an illuminated signboard. ”

“ Any woman might have blazed with pride at being asked to marry Jim Dyckman. The little villager was almost consumed like another Semele scorched by Jupiter's rash approach.
In Dyckman's clasp Kedzie felt how lonely she had been. She wanted to be gathered in from the dangers of the world, from poverty and from work. She had not realized how tiny a thing she was, to be combating the big city all alone, until some one offered her shelter.
People can usually be brave and grim in the presence of defeat and peril and hostility. ”

“ Minds were equally diversified—maternal young girls and wicked old ladies, hilarious and sinister, intellectual and athletic, bookish and horsy, a woman of a sort for every mood.
And Jim Dyckman was so wealthy and so simple and so likable and important that it seemed nobody would refuse to accept him. But he wanted Charity.
Later in the afternoon he gave up the effort to snub her and went to the Noxon home. It was about the hour when Kedzie in her new flat had been burning her fingers at the gas-stove. Jim Dyckman was preparing to burn his fingers at the shrine of Mrs. Cheever. ”

“ But Dyckman said that he had come to try and engage Mr. Ferriday, and that sounded so splendid to Kedzie that she snuggled closer. Ordinarily when a woman cowers under the eaves of a man's shoulder it is taken for a signal for amiabilities to begin.
Dyckman could not imagine that Kedzie was already as bad as all that. She wasn't. She was just trying to get as close as she could to a million dollars. Her feelings were as innocent and as imbecile as those of the mobs that stand in line for the privilege of pump-handling a politician.
Jim Dyckman kept forgetting that he was so rich. ”

“ Even to bend and lift some one else up alongside involves a risk of falling or of being pushed overboard.
But at present Jim Dyckman was thinking of the other girl, Charity Coe Cheever, perched on a peak as cold and high as his own, but far removed from his reach.
Even the double seat in the sleeping-car was too small for Jim. He sprawled from back to back, slumped and hunched in curves and angles that should have looked peasant and yet somehow had the opposite effect. ”

“ Cheever might be as wicked as Caesar, but his wife must be as Caesar's.
When Charity Coe was garrulous and inordinately gay, Jim Dyckman, who had known her from childhood, knew that she was trying to rush across the thin ice over some deep grief.
When he saw how hurt she was at not being met, and he insisted on taking her home, she chattered and snickered hysterically at his most stupid remarks. So he said:
“Don't let him break your heart in you, old girl.”
She laughed uproariously, almost vulgarly, over that, and answered: “Me? Let a man break my heart? That's very likely, isn't it?” ”

“ She promptly told Cheever that his precious wife had been having a lovely affair with Jim Dyckman. Cheever showed her where she stood by forbidding her to mention his wife's name. He told Zada that, whatever his wife might be, she was good as gold.
He left Zada with great dignity and made up his mind to kill Jim Dyckman. In his fury he was convinced of the high and holy and cleanly necessity of murder. All of our basest deeds are always done with the noblest motives. Cheever forgot his own wickednesses in his mission to punish Dyckman. ”

“ He thought all the way home what an angel she was, and Charity was thinking at the same time what a fool she had been to let Peter Cheever dazzle her to the fact that Jim Dyckman was the one man in the world that she belonged to. She needed just him and he just her.
CHAPTER XII
Sometimes Jim Dyckman was foolish enough to wish that he had been his wife's first lover. But a man has to get up pretty early to be that to any woman. The minxes begin to flirt with the milk-bottle, then with the doctor, and then to cherish a precocious passion for the first rag sailor-doll. ”

“ Jim's mother was very much mother. She took into her breast every arrow shot at him. When she saw him she held him fiercely in her arms, her big frame aching with a Valkyrian ardor to lift the brave warrior on a winged horse and carry him away from the earth.
It is hard for the best of mothers to love even the best of daughters-in-law, for how can two fires prosper on the same fuel? It had been a little too hard for Mrs. Dyckman to love Kedzie. It was all too easy to hate her now and to denounce her till even Jim winced. ”

“ Noxon once swore down a mutinous stableman, how Miss Wossom ran away with her coachman. There was something finely old-fashioned and conservative about that. A new-rich would have run away with a chauffeur.
The driver knew Jim Dyckman's back and pointed him out. The girls laughed, remembering Kedzie's encounter with him. They laughed so loud that Dyckman turned, startled by the racket. But the carriage rolled them away and he did not hear them wondering what had become of Kedzie. The gloaming saddened them, and they felt very sorry for her. But Jim Dyckman gave her no thought. ”

“ All arguments prove too much and too little, and in the end become simply our own briefs for our own inclinations. Charity's mood being what it was, she adopted the line of reasoning that led to her own ambition. She spent much time on her knees, but communed chiefly with herself, and rose always confirmed in her belief that to marry Jim Dyckman was the next great business of her existence. ”

“ Noxon when she saw Jim Dyckman come in with his mother. Mrs. Noxon left Charity and went over to speak to Mrs. Dyckman. So Charity beckoned Jim over and urged him to accept the job of impresario.
He protested, but she pleaded for his help at least on an errand or two.
“Jim, I want you to go up to the studio of these people and find this great man Ferriday and get him to promise to direct for us. And by the way, that little girl you pulled out of the pool, you know—well, they promised to get her a job at the studio. You look her up and find out how she's doing—there's a darling.” ”

“ Miss Kedzie Thropp had never seen Fifth Avenue or a yacht or a butler or a glass of champagne or an ocean or a person of social prominence. She wanted to see them. To Jim Dyckman these things were commonplace. What he wanted was simple, complex, cheap, priceless things—love, home, repose, contentment.
He was on the top of the world, and he wanted to get down or have somebody else come up to him. Peaks are by definition and necessity limited to small foothold. Climbing up is hardly more dangerous than climbing down. ”

“ The ninety days following Charity's encounter with Jim Dyckman and his bride at Sherry's had been busy times for her and epochal in their changes. From being one of the loneliest and most approved women in America she had become one of the loneliest and least approved. Altruism is perhaps the most expensive of the virtues.
No less epochal were those months for the Dyckmans, bride and groom. Their problems began to bourgeon immediately after they left New Jersey and went to Kedzie's old apartment for further debate as to their future lodgings. ”

“ He'll hurt you—he may kill you.”
Again Cheever laughed: “You're having hallucinations, my love. You'll feel better in the morning. Where the deuce did you get such a foolish notion, anyway?”
“From Jim Dyckman,” she stormed. “He was here looking for you. If anybody's going crazy, he's the one. I had a struggle with him. He broke away. I begged him not to harm you, but he said he'd give you a few extra jolts for my sake. Please, please, don't let him find you there.”
Cheever was half convinced and quite puzzled. He knew that Dyckman had never forgiven him for marrying Charity. ”

“ There were plays and novels that counseled a neglected wife to show an interest in another man. Charity was tempted to use Jim Dyckman as a decoy for her own wild duck; but Dyckman had sailed away in his new yacht, on a cruise with his yacht club. ”

“ I'm not afraid of your little friend, and as soon as I get well I'll get him; but I want it to be purely an exercise in the fistic art, and not a public fluttering of family linen. So since you want Jim Dyckman, take him, by all means, and let me bow myself out of the trio.
“I'll give you a nice, quiet little divorce, and do the fair thing in the alimony line, and then after a proper interval you and little Jimmie can toddle over to the parson and then toddle off to hell-and-gone, for all I care. ”

“ They motored back to New York and went to the theater to kill the evening. The next afternoon Jim called for Kedzie, and they motored again to Jolicoeur for the ceremony. Mr. and Mrs. Thropp went along as witnesses and to make sure.
The lawyer had found a starveling parson in Jolicoeur who asked the fatal questions and pronounced the twain man and wife, adding the warning, “Whom God hath joined, let no man put asunder.” Jim Dyckman was so befuddled that he heard it, “Let no man join whom God hath put asunder.” ”

“ She felt that the immortal crime of the Lusitania with its flotsam of dead women and children was more disgraceful to the nation that endured it than to the nation that committed it. She was very, very bitter, and Kedzie found her most depressing company, especially for a dinner-table.
But she excited Jim Dyckman tremendously. He broke out into fierce diatribes against the Chinafying of the United States with its Lilliputian army guarding its gigantic interests. He began to toy with the idea of enlisting in the Canadian army or of joining the American aviators flying for France. ”

“ Dyckman felt an almost uncontrollable desire to get away before he said something that might be true. He began to wonder what, after all, poor Gilfoyle had experienced from this hard-hearted little beauty. He saw that he was almost forgotten already. He thought, “How fast they go, the dead!” That same Villon had said it centuries before: “Les morts vont vites.”
The Thropps settled down to a comfortable discussion of future plans. One ledger had been finished. They would open a new one. Jim saw that Gilfoyle's departure had been accepted as a Heaven-sent solution of Kedzie's problems. ”

“ Jim pitied? Why? For what?”
“For the things you do, my dear, the places you go, and the hours you keep—and the friends you keep.”
“That's disgusting!” Kedzie snarled. “The long-tongued gossips! They ought to be ashamed of themselves.”
Mrs. Dyckman's fever began to mount. She dropped Kedzie's hand and tugged at the coverlet.
“You'd better go, my dear. I apologize. It's useless! When did age ever gain anything by warning youth? I'm an old fool, and you're a young one. And nothing will stop your ambition to run through life to the end of it and get all you can out of it.” ”

“ Dyckman. “I've never had a yacht of my own. It's a shame to take it from you, but you can get another. And of course you'll always be welcome here—which is more than a certain other big Dyckman will be if he doesn't look sharp.”
“For the Lord's sake, Jim, don't give it to her. She's the meanest old miser about her own things.” Dyckman senior pushed his chair back against the rail. ”

“ Dyckman broke in, “or you'll have me on your hands.” She needed only her husband's hostility to inflame her in defense of her son. “If he's married, he's married, and words won't divorce him. We might as well make the best of it. I've no doubt the girl is a darling, or Jim wouldn't have cared for her. ”

“ Kedzie laughed at the extraordinary inclusiveness of their High Exclusivenesses until she got her own home. And then she learned its bitter meaning. It was not that Mrs. Dyckman meant to freeze her out. She urged her to “come in any time.” But, as Kedzie told Jim, “an invitation to come any time is an invitation to stay away all the time.” Kedzie's pride kept her aloof. She made it so hard to get her to come that Mrs. Dyckman sincerely said to Cicely:
“We are too old and stupid for the child. She is glad to be rid of us.” ”

“ Then she told him what Cheever had said, but not how she had slapped. Jim was wild. He rose on his bad arm and fell back again, groaning:
“I'll kill him for that.”
Everybody is always going to kill everybody. Sometimes somebody does kill somebody. But Dyckman went over to the great majority. Charity begged him not to kill her husband, and to please her he promised not to.
Charity, having insured her husband's life, said: “And now, Jimmie old boy, I mustn't see you any more. Gossip has linked our names. We must unlink them. ”

“ And she talked the agent down to a rental of ten thousand dollars a year unfurnished. She would show Jim that she could economize.
When Kedzie told Mrs. Dyckman that she had decided to move, Mrs. Dyckman was very much concerned lest Kedzie feel put out. But she smiled to herself: she knew her Kedzie.
Jim was not at all pleased with the arrangement, but he yielded. In the American family the wife is the quartermaster, selects the camp and equips it. Jim spent more of his time at his clubs than at his duplex home. So did Kedzie. ”