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A change, even so small a change as from one boarding-house to another, is
caused by some definite force, some shock that overcomes the power of
inertia. The eleventh of June Sommers had gone to meet Alves at their usual
rendezvous in the thicket at the rear of Blue Grass Avenue. The sultry
afternoon had made him drowse, and when he awoke Alves was standing over
him, her hands tightening nervously.
"They have dropped you," he said, reading the news in her face.
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, until they had plodded down the
avenue for several blocks.
"Why did they do it!" she murmured rebelliously. "They gave me no reason.
It isn't because I teach badly. It isn't because of the married teachers'
talk: there are hundreds of married women in the schools who haven't been
dismissed."
"Well," Sommers responded soothingly, "I shouldn't hunt for a rational
reason for their act. They have merely hastened the step we were going to
take some day."
"What shall we do!" she gasped, overpowered by the visions her practical
mind conjured up. "We could just get along with my forty dollars, and
now--Oh! I've been like a weight about your neck. I have cut you off from
your world, the big world where successes are made!"
Her large eyes filled with pleading tears. She was generously minded to
take the burden of their fate upon herself.
"You seem to have been making most of the success," he responded lightly.
"The big world where Dresser is succeeding doesn't call me very hard. And
it's a pretty bad thing if a sound-bodied, well-educated doctor can't
support himself and a woman in this world," he added more gloomily. "I
_will_, if I have to get a job over there."
He jerked his head in the direction of the South Chicago steel works. But
the heavens seemed to repel his boast, for the usual cloud of smoke and
flame that hung night and day above the blast furnaces was replaced by a
brilliant, hard blue sky. The works were shut down. They had reached the
end of Blue Grass Avenue at the south line of the park. It was a spot of
semi-sylvan wildness that they were fond of. The carefully platted avenues
and streets were mere lines in the rough turf. A little runnel of water,
half ditch, half sewer, flowed beside the old plank walk.
They sat down to plan, to contrive in some way to get a shelter over their
heads. From the plank walk where they sat nothing was visible for blocks
around except a little stucco Grecian temple, one of those decorative
contrivances that served as ticket booths or soda-water booths at the
World's Fair. This one, larger and more pretentious than its fellows, had
been bought by some speculator, wheeled outside the park, and dumped on a
sandy knoll in this empty lot. It had an ambitious little portico with a
cluster of columns. One of them was torn open, revealing the simple anatomy
of its construction. The temple looked as if it might contain two rooms of
generous size. Strange little product of some western architect's
remembering pencil, it brought an air of distant shores and times, standing
here in the waste of the prairie, above the bright blue waters of the lake!
"That's the place for us!" Sommers exclaimed, gazing intently at the
time-stained temple. Alves looked at the building sceptically, for
woman-wise she conceived of only conventional abiding-places. But she
followed him submissively into the little stucco portico, and when he spoke
buoyantly of the possibilities of the place, of the superb view of park and
lake, her worn face gained color once more. The imitation bronze doors were
ajar, and they made a thorough examination of the interior. With a few
laths, some canvas, and a good cleaning, the place could be made
possible--for the summer.
"That's four months," Sommers remarked. "And that is a long time for poor
people to look ahead."
The same evening they hunted up the owner and made their terms, and the
next day prepared to move from the Keystone. They had some regrets over
leaving the Keystone Hotel. The last month Sommers had had one or two
cases. The episode with Dr. Jelly had finally redounded to his credit, for
the woman had died at Jelly's private hospital, and the nurse who had
overheard the dispute between the two doctors had gossiped. The first
swallow of success, however, was not enough to warrant any expenditure for
office rent. He must make some arrangement with a drug store near the
temple, where he could receive calls.
They invited Miss M'Gann, Webber, and Dresser to take supper with them
their first Sunday in the temple. Alves had arranged a little kitchen in
one corner of the smaller of the two rooms. This room received the pompous
name of "the laboratory"; the other room--a kind of hall into which the
portico opened--was bedroom and general living room.
"We will throw open the temple doors," she explained to Sommers, "and have
supper on the portico between the pillars."
From that point the lake could be seen, a steely blue line on the horizon.
But it rained on Sunday, and the visitors arrived so bedraggled by the
storm that their feast seemed doomed. Sommers produced a bottle of Scotch
whiskey, and they warmed and cheered themselves. The Baking Powder clerk
grew loquacious first. The Baking Powder Trust was to be reorganized, he
told them, as soon as good times came. There was to be a new trust, twice
as big as the present one, capitalized for millions and millions. The
chemist of the concern had told him that Carson was engineering the affair.
The stock of the present company would be worth double, perhaps three times
as much as at present. He confided the fact that he had put all his savings
into the stock of the present company at its greatly depressed present
value. The company was not paying dividends; he had bought at forty. His
air of financial success, of shrewd speculative insight impressed them all.
Miss M'Gann evidently knew all about this; she smiled as if the world were
a pretty good place.
Dresser, too, had his boast. He had finally been given charge of _The
Investor's Monthly_, which had absorbed the _La Salle Street
Indicator_. The policy of the papers was to be changed: they were to be
conservative, but not critical, and conducted in the interests of capital
which was building up the country after its financial panic.
"In the prospective return of good times many new interests will seek
public patronage," he explained to the company. "A new era will dawn--the
era of business combinations, of gigantic cooperative enterprises."
"Vulgarly known as trusts," Sommers interjected. "And your paper is going
to boom Carson's companies. Well, well, that's pretty good for Debs's
ex-secretary!"
"You must understand that people of education change their views," Dresser
retorted uncomfortably. "I have had a long talk with Mr. Carson about the
policy of the paper. He doesn't wish to interfere, not in the least, merely
advises on a general line of policy agreeable to him and his associates,
who, I may say, are very heavily engaged in Chicago enterprises. We are
interested at present in the traction companies which are seeking
extensions of their franchises."
"He's joined the silk-hat brigade," Webber scoffed. "The Keystone ain't
good enough for him any longer. He's going north to be within call of his
friends."
"How is Laura Lindsay?" Sommers asked.
"I saw her last night, and I met Mr. Brome Porter and young Polot, too."
"Did you tell 'em where you were going to-night?" Sommers asked, rather
bitterly.
"Say, Howard," Dresser replied, pushing back his chair and resting one arm
confidentially on the table, "you must have been a great chump. You had a
soft thing of it at Lindsay's--"
"I suppose Miss Laura has discussed it with you. I didn't like the set
quite as well as you seem to."
"Well, it's no use making enemies, when you can have 'em for friends just
as easily as not," Dresser retorted, with an air of superior worldly
wisdom.
* * * * *
Miss M'Gann had drawn Alves out of the talk among the men, and they sat by
themselves on the lower step of the temple.
"I saw Dr. Leonard the other day at a meeting of the Cymbals Society," Miss
M'Gann told Alves. "He asked where you were."
"I hope he'll come to see us."
Miss M'Gann looked at the men and lowered her voice.
"I think he knows what was the reason for dismissing you. He wouldn't tell
me; but if I see him again, I am going to get it out of him."
"Why, what did he say?" Alves asked.
"Nothing much. Only he asked very particularly about you and the doctor;
about what kind of man the doctor was, and just when you were married and
where."
Alves moved nervously.
"Where were you married, Alves?" Miss M'Gann pursued anxiously. "Here or in
Wisconsin? You were so dreadfully queer about it all."
"We were not married," Alves replied, in a quiet voice, "at least not in a
church, with a ceremony and all that. I didn't want it, and we didn't think
it necessary."
The younger woman gasped.
"Alves! I'd never think it of you--you two so quiet and so like ordinary
folks!"
"We are like other people, only we aren't tied to each other by a halter.
He can go when he likes," Alves retorted. "I want him to go," she added
fiercely, "just as soon as he finds he doesn't love me enough."
"Um," Miss M'Gann answered. "Lucky you haven't any children. That's where
the rub comes."
Alves straightened herself with a little haughtiness.
"It wouldn't make any difference to _him_. He would do right by them
if he had them."
"I don't see how he could, at present," Miss M'Gann proceeded, with severe
logic. "It's all very well so long as things go easily. _But_ I had
rather have the ring."
After a little silence, she continued: "It must have had something to do
with that, I guess, your being dropped. Did any one know?"
"I never said anything about it," Alves replied coldly. She would have
liked to add an entreaty, for his sake, that Miss M'Gann keep this secret.
But her pride prevented her.
"That Ducharme woman must have been talking," Miss M'Gann proceeded
acutely. "I saw her around last year, looking seedy, as if she drank."
"Possibly," Alves assented, "though she didn't know anything."
"Well, my advice to you is to make that right just as soon as ever you can.
He's willing?"
"I should never let him," Alves exclaimed vehemently; "least of all now!"
"Well, I suppose folks must live their own way. But you don't catch me
taking a man in that easy fashion, so that he can get out when he wants
to."
Alves tried to change the subject, but her admission had so startled her
friend that the usual gossip was impossible. When the visitors rose to go,
Sommers proposed showing them the way back by a wagon road that led to the
improved part of the park, across the deserted Court of Honor. He and Alves
accompanied them as far as the northern limits of the park. The rain clouds
were gone, and a cold, clear sky had taken their place. On their return
along the esplanade beside the lake Sommers chatted in an easy frame of
mind.
"I guess Webber will get Miss M'Gann, and I am glad of it. Dresser wouldn't
do anything more than fool with her. He will get on now; those promoters
and capitalists are finding him a clever tool. They will keep him steady.
It isn't the fear of the Lord that will keep men like Dresser in line; it's
the fear of their neighbors' opinions and of an empty stomach!"
"Don't you--wish you had a chance like his?" Alves asked timidly.
The young doctor laughed aloud.
"You don't know me yet. It isn't that I don't want to. It's because I
_can't_--no glory to me. But, Alves, we are all right. I can get
enough in one way or another to keep the temple over our heads, and I can
work now. I have something in view; it won't be just chasing about the
streets."
This reference to his own work both pleased and saddened her. The
biologist, who had befriended him before, had given him some work in his
laboratory. The work was not well paid, but the association with the
students, which aroused his intellectual appetites, had given him a new
spur. What saddened her was that it was all entirely beyond her sphere of
influence, of usefulness to him. Living, as they should, in an almost
savage isolation, she dreaded his absorption in anything apart from her.
There were other reliefs, consolations, and hopes than those she held. He
was slipping away into a silent region--man's peculiar world--of thought
and dream and speculation, an intangible, ideal, remote, unloving world.
Some day she would knock at his heart and find it occupied.
She leaned heavily upon his arm, loath to have his footsteps so firm, his
head so erect, his eyes so far away, his voice so silent.
"You are not sorry," she murmured, ashamed of iterating this foolish
question, that demanded one answer--an answer never wholly satisfying.
"For what?" he asked, interrupting his thought and glancing out into the
black waters.
"For me--for all this fight for life alone away from the people who are
succeeding, for grinding along unrecognized--"
He stopped and kissed her gently, striving to quiet her excited mood.
"For if you did, I would put myself _there_, in the water beside the
piers," she cried.
He smiled at her passionate threat, as at the words of an emotional child.
Underneath his gentleness, his kindness, his loving ways, she felt this
trace of scepticism. He did not bother his head with what was beginning to
wring her soul. In a few minutes she spoke again:
"Miss M'Gann thinks Dr. Leonard knows why I was dismissed. Mrs. Ducharme,
she said, had been hanging about the Everglade School district. I remember
having seen her several times."
Sommers dropped her arm and strode forward.
"What did _she_ know?" he asked harshly.
"I don't see how she could know anything except suspicions. You know she
was queer and a great talker."
Sommers's face worked. He was about to speak when Alves went on.
"I told Jane we had never been married; she asked me _where_ we were
married. I suppose I ought not to have told her. I didn't want to."
"It is of no importance," Sommers answered. "It's our own business, anyway;
but it makes no difference as we live now whether she knows it or not."
"I am glad you feel so," Alves replied with relief. Then in a few moments
she added, "I was afraid she might tell people; it might get to your old
friends."
Sommers replied in the same even tone,
"Well? and what can they do about it?"
"I wonder what a woman like Miss Hitchcock thinks about such
matters,--about us, if she knew."
"She would not think. She would avoid the matter as she would a case of
drunkenness."
The arm within his trembled. She said nothing more until they reached the
little portico. She paused there, leaning against one of the crumbling
columns, looking out into the night. From the distance beyond the great
pier that stretched into the lake came the red glare of the lighthouse.
Sommers had gone in and was preparing the room for the night. She could
hear him whistle as he walked to and fro, carrying out dishes, arranging
the chairs and tables. He maintained an even mood, took the accidents of
his fate as calmly as one could, and was always gentle. He had some well of
happiness hidden to her. She went in, took off her cloak, and prepared to
undress. His clothes, the nicety he preserved about personal matters, had
taught her much of him. Her clothes had always been common, of the
wholesale world; he had had his luxuries, his refinements, his individual
tastes. Gradually, as his more expensive clothes had worn out, he had
replaced them with machine-made articles of cheap manufacture. His
belongings were like hers now. She was bringing him a little closer to her
in such ways,--food and lodging and raiment. But not in thought and being.
Behind those deep-set eyes passed a world of thought, of conjecture and
theory and belief, that rarely expressed itself outwardly.
She let down her hair and began to take off her plain, unlovely clothes.
Thus she approached the common human basis, the nakedness and simplicity of
life. Her eyes lingered thoughtfully on her body; she touched herself as
she unbuttoned, unlaced, cast aside the armor of convention and daily life.
"Howard!" she cried imperiously. He stopped his whistling and looked at her
and smiled.
"Do you like me, Howard?" She blushed at the childishness of her eager
question. But she demanded the expected answer with the insistence of
unsatisfied love. And when he failed to reply at the moment, surprised by
her mood, she knelt by his chair and grasped his knees.
"Isn't it _all_ that you want, just the temple and me? Am I not enough
to make up for the world and success and pleasure? I can make you love, and
when you love you do not think."
She rose and faced him with gleaming eyes, stretching out her bare arms,
deploying her whole woman's strength and beauty in mute appeal.
"Why do you ask?" he demanded, troubled.
"O Howard, you do not feel the mist that creeps in between us, though we
are close together. Sometimes I think you are farther away than even in the
old times, when I first saw you at the hospital. You think, think, and I
can't get at your thought. Why is it so?"
He yielded to her entreating arms and eyes, as he had so often before in
like moments, when the need to put aside the consciousness of existence, of
the world as it appears, had come to one of them or both. Yet it seemed
that this love was like some potent spirit, whose irresistible power waned,
sank, each time demanding a larger draught of joy, a more delirious tension
of the nerves.
"Nothing makes any difference," he answered. "I was born and lived for
this."
She had charmed the evil mood, and for the time her heart was satisfied.
But when she lay by his side at night her arm stole about his, as if to
clutch him, fearful lest in the empty reaches of sleep he might escape,
lest his errant man's thoughts and desires might abandon her for the usual
avenues of life. Long after he had fallen into the regular sleep of night,
she lay awake by his side, her eyes glittering with passion and defeat.
Even in these limits of life, when the whole world was banned, it seemed
impossible to hold undisturbed one's joy. In the loneliest island of the
human sea it would be thus--division and ultimate isolation.
Read next: PART II#CHAPTER VI
Read previous: PART II#CHAPTER IV
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