Complete Stories Page 4

  He did not go ahead with it from there, much. He was not especially anxious to leave the advertising agency forever. He did not particularly dislike his work. He had been an advertising solicitor since he had gone to work at all, and he worked hard at his job and, aside from that, didn’t think about it much one way or the other.

  It seemed to Mr. Wheelock that before he had got hold of the “Oh, hell” story he had never thought about anything much, one way or the other. But he would have to disappear from the office, too, that was certain. It would spoil everything to turn up there again. He thought dimly of taking a train going West, after the 6:03 got him to the Grand Central Terminal—he might go to Buffalo, say, or perhaps Chicago. Better just let that part take care of itself and go back to dwell on the moment when it would sweep over him that he was going to do it, when he would put down the shears and walk out the gate—

  The “Oh, hell” rather troubled him. Mr. Wheelock felt that he would like to retain that; it completed the gesture so beautifully. But he didn’t quite know to whom he should say it.

  He might stop in at the post office on his way to the station and say it to the postmaster; but the postmaster would probably think he was only annoyed at there being no mail for him. Nor would the conductor of the 6:03, a train Mr. Wheelock never used, take the right interest in it. Of course the real thing to do would be to say it to Adelaide just before he laid down the shears. But somehow Mr. Wheelock could not make that scene come very clear in his imagination.

  III

  “Daddy,” Mrs. Wheelock said briskly.

  He stopped clipping, and faced her.

  “Daddy,” she related, “I saw Doctor Mann’s automobile going by the house this morning—he was going to have a look at Mr. Warren, his rheumatism’s getting along nicely—and I called him in a minute, to look us over.”

  She screwed up her face, winked, and nodded vehemently several times in the direction of the absorbed Sister, to indicate that she was the subject of the discourse.

  “He said we were going ahead finely,” she resumed, when she was sure that he had caught the idea. “Said there was no need for those t-o-n-s-i-l-s to c-o-m-e o-u-t. But I thought, soon’s it gets a little cooler, some time next month, we’d just run in to the city and let Doctor Sturges have a look at us. I’d rather be on the safe side.”

  “But Doctor Lytton said it wasn’t necessary, and those doctors at the hospital, and now Doctor Mann, that’s known her since she was a baby,” suggested Mr. Wheelock.

  “I know, I know,” replied his wife. “But I’d rather be on the safe side.”

  Mr. Wheelock went back to his hedge.

  Oh, of course he couldn’t do it; he never seriously thought he could, for a minute. Of course he couldn’t. He wouldn’t have the shadow of an excuse for doing it. Adelaide was a sterling woman, an utterly faithful wife, an almost slavish mother. She ran his house economically and efficiently. She harried the suburban trades people into giving them dependable service, drilled the succession of poorly paid, poorly trained maids, cheerfully did the thousand fussy little things that go with the running of a house. She looked after his clothes, gave him medicine when she thought he needed it, oversaw the preparation of every meal that was set before him; they were not especially inspira tional meals, but the food was always nourishing and, as a general thing, fairly well cooked. She never lost her temper, she was never depressed, never ill.

  Not the shadow of an excuse. People would know that, and so they would invent an excuse for him. They would say there must be another woman.

  Mr. Wheelock frowned, and snipped at an obstinate young twig. Good Lord, the last thing he wanted was another woman. What he wanted was that moment when he realized he could do it, when he would lay down the shears—

  Oh, of course he couldn’t; he knew that as well as anybody. What would they do, Adelaide and Sister? The house wasn’t even paid for yet, and there would be that operation on Sister’s eye in a couple of years. But the house would be all paid up by next March. And there was always that well-to-do brother-in-law of Adelaide’s, the one who, for all his means, put up every shelf in that great big house with his own hands.

  Decent people didn’t just go away and leave their wives and families that way. All right, suppose you weren’t decent; what of it? Here was Adelaide planning what she was going to do when it got a little cooler, next month. She was always planning ahead, always confident that things would go on just the same. Naturally, Mr. Wheelock realized that he couldn’t do it, as well as the next one. But there was no harm in fooling around with the idea. Would you say the “Oh, hell” now, before you laid down the shears, or right after? How would it be to turn at the gate and say it?

  Mr. and Mrs. Fred Coles came down the street arm-in-arm, from their neat stucco house on the corner.

  “See they’ve got you working hard, eh?” cried Mr. Coles genially, as they paused abreast of the hedge.

  Mr. Wheelock laughed politely, marking time for an answer.

  “That’s right,” he evolved.

  Mrs. Wheelock looked up from her work, shading her eyes with her thimbled hand against the long rays of the low sun.

  “Yes, we finally got Daddy to do a little work,” she called brightly. “But Sister and I are staying right here to watch over him, for fear he might cut his little self with the shears.”

  There was general laughter, in which Sister joined. She had risen punctiliously at the approach of the older people, and she was looking politely at their eyes, as she had been taught.

  “And how is my great big girl?” asked Mrs. Coles, gazing fondly at the child.

  “Oh, much better,” Mrs. Wheelock answered for her. “Doctor Mann says we are going ahead finely. I saw his automobile passing the house this morning—he was going to see Mr. Warren, his rheumatism’s coming along nicely—and I called him in a minute to look us over.”

  She did the wink and the nods, at Sister’s back. Mr. and Mrs. Coles nodded shrewdly back at her.

  “He said there’s no need for those t-o-n-s-i-l-s to c-o-m-e o-u-t,” Mrs. Wheelock called. “But I thought, soon’s it gets a little cooler, some time next month, we’d just run in to the city and let Doctor Sturges have a look at us. I was telling Daddy, ‘I’d rather be on the safe side,’ I said.”

  “Yes, it’s better to be on the safe side,” agreed Mrs. Coles, and her husband nodded again, sagely this time. She took his arm, and they moved slowly off.

  “Been a lovely day, hasn’t it?” she said over her shoulder, fearful of having left too abruptly. “Fred and I are taking a little constitutional before supper.”

  “Oh, taking a little constitutional?” cried Mrs. Wheelock, laughing.

  Mrs. Coles laughed also, three or four bars.

  “Yes, just taking a little constitutional before supper,” she called back.

  Sister, weary of her game, mounted the porch, whimpering a little. Mrs. Wheelock put aside her sewing, and took the tired child in her lap. The sun’s last rays touched her brown hair, making it a shimmering gold. Her small, sharp face, the thick lines of her figure were in shadow as she bent over the little girl. Sister’s head was hidden on her mother’s shoulder, the folds of her rumpled white frock followed her limp, relaxed little body.

  The lovely light was kind to the cheap, hurriedly built stucco house, to the clean gravel path, and the bits of closely cut lawn. It was gracious, too, to Mr. Wheelock’s tall, lean figure as he bent to work on the last few inches of unclipped hedge.

  Twenty years, he thought. The man in the story went through with it for twenty years. He must have been a man along around forty-five, most likely. Mr. Wheelock was thirty-seven. Eight years. It’s a long time, eight years is. You could easily get so you could say that final “Oh, hell,” even to Adelaide, in eight years. It probably wouldn’t take more than four for you to know that you could do it. No, not more than two. . . .

  Mrs. Coles paused at the corner of the street and looked back at the Wheelocks’
house. The last of the light lingered on the mother and child group on the porch, gently touched the tall, white-clad figure of the husband and father as he went up to them, his work done.

  Mrs. Coles was a large, soft woman, barren, and addicted to sentiment.

  “Look, Fred; just turn around and look at that,” she said to her husband. She looked again, sighing luxuriously. “Such a pretty little picture!”

  Smart Set, December 1922

  Too Bad

  “My dear,” Mrs. Marshall said to Mrs. Ames, “I never was so surprised in my life. Never in my life. Why, Grace and I were like that—just like that.”

  She held up her right hand, the upstanding first and second fingers rigidly close together, in illustration.

  Mrs. Ames shook her head sadly, and offered the cinnamon toast.

  “Imagine!” said Mrs. Marshall, refusing it though with a longing eye. “We were going to have dinner with them last Tuesday night, and then I got this letter from Grace from this little place up in Connecticut, saying she was going to be up there she didn’t know how long, and she thought, when she came back, she’d probably take just one big room with a kitchenette. Ernest was living down at the club, she said.”

  “But what did they do about their apartment?” Mrs. Ames’s voice was high with anxiety.

  “Why, it seems his sister took it, furnished and all—by the way, remind me, I must go and see her,” said Mrs. Marshall. “They wanted to move into town, anyway, and they were looking for a place.”

  “Doesn’t she feel terribly about it—his sister?” asked Mrs. Ames.

  “Oh—terribly.” Mrs. Marshall dismissed the word as inadequate. “My dear, think how everybody that knew them feels. Think how I feel. I don’t know when I’ve had a thing depress me more. If it had been anybody but the Weldons!”

  Mrs. Ames nodded.

  “That’s what I said,” she reported.

  “That’s what everybody says.” Mrs. Marshall quickly took away any undeserved credit. “To think of the Weldons separating! Why, I always used to say to Jim. ‘Well, there’s one happily married couple, anyway,’ I used to say, ‘so congenial, and with that nice apartment, and all.’ And then, right out of a clear sky, they go and separate. I simply can’t understand what on earth made them do it. It just seems too awful!”

  Again Mrs. Ames nodded, slowly and sadly.

  “Yes, it always seems too bad, a thing like that does,” she said. “It’s too bad.”

  II

  Mrs. Ernest Weldon wandered about the orderly living-room, giving it some of those little feminine touches. She was not especially good as a touch-giver. The idea was pretty, and appealing to her. Before she was married, she had dreamed of herself as moving softly about her new dwelling, deftly moving a vase here or straightening a flower there, and thus transforming it from a house to a home. Even now, after seven years of marriage, she liked to picture herself in the gracious act.

  But, though she conscientiously made a try at it every night as soon as the rose-shaded lamps were lit, she was always a bit bewildered as to how one went about performing those tiny miracles that make all the difference in the world to a room. The living-room, it seemed to her, looked good enough as it was—as good as it would ever look, with that mantelpiece and the same old furniture. Delia, one of the most thoroughly feminine of creatures, had subjected it to a long series of emphatic touches earlier in the day, and none of her handiwork had since been disturbed. But the feat of making all the difference in the world, so Mrs. Weldon had always heard, was not a thing to be left to servants. Touch-giving was a wife’s job. And Mrs. Weldon was not one to shirk the business she had entered.

  With an almost pitiable air of uncertainty, she strayed over to the mantel, lifted a small Japanese vase, and stood with it in her hand, gazing helplessly around the room. The white-enameled bookcase caught her eye, and gratefully she crossed to it and set the vase upon it, carefully rearranging various ornaments to make room. To relieve the congestion, she took up a framed photograph of Mr. Weldon’s sister in evening gown and eye-glasses, again looked all about, and then set it timidly on the piano. She smoothed the piano-cover ingratiatingly, straightened the copies of “A Day in Venice,” “To a Wild Rose,” and Kreisler’s “Caprice Viennois,” which stood ever upon the rack, walked over to the tea-table and effected a change of places between the cream-jug and the sugar-bowl.

  Then she stepped back, and surveyed her innovations. It was amazing how little difference they made to the room.

  Sighing, Mrs. Weldon turned her attention to a bowl of daffodils, slightly past their first freshness. There was nothing to be done there; the omniscient Delia had refreshed them with clear water, had clipped their stems, and removed their more passé sisters. Still Mrs. Weldon bent over them pulling them gently about.

  She liked to think of herself as one for whom flowers would thrive, who must always have blossoms about her, if she would be truly happy. When her living-room flowers died, she almost never forgot to stop in at the florist’s, the next day, and get a fresh bunch. She told people, in little bursts of confidence, that she loved flowers. There was something almost apologetic in her way of uttering her tender avowal, as if she would beg her listeners not to consider her too bizarre in her taste. It seemed rather as though she expected the hearer to fall back, startled, at her words, crying, “Not really! Well, what are we coming to?”

  She had other little confessions of affection, too, that she made from time to time; always with a little hesitation, as if understandably delicate about baring her heart, she told her love for color, the country, a good time, a really interesting play, nice materials, well-made clothes, and sunshine. But it was her fondness for flowers that she acknowledged oftenest. She seemed to feel that this, even more than her other predilections, set her apart from the general.

  Mrs. Weldon gave the elderly daffodils a final pat, now, and once more surveyed the room, to see if any other repairs suggested themselves. Her lips tightened as the little Japanese vase met her gaze; distinctly, it had been better off in the first place. She set it back, the irritation that the sight of the mantel always gave her welling within her.

  She had hated the mantelpiece from the moment they had first come to look at the apartment. There were other things that she had always hated about the place, too—the long, narrow hall, the dark dining-room, the inadequate closets. But Ernest had seemed to like the apartment well enough, so she had said nothing, then or since. After all, what was the use of fussing? Probably there would always be drawbacks, wherever they lived. There were enough in the last place they had had.

  So they had taken the apartment on a five-year lease—there were four years and three months to go. Mrs. Weldon felt suddenly weary. She lay down on the davenport, and pressed her thin hand against her dull brown hair.

  Mr. Weldon came down the street, bent almost double in his battle with the wind from the river. His mind went over its nightly dark thoughts on living near Riverside Drive, five blocks from a subway station—two of those blocks loud with savage gales. He did not much like their apartment, even when he reached it. As soon as he had seen that dining-room, he had realized that they must always breakfast by artificial light—a thing he hated. But Grace had never appeared to notice it, so he had held his peace. It didn’t matter much, anyway, he explained to himself. There was pretty sure to be something wrong, everywhere. The dining-room wasn’t much worse than that bedroom on the court, in the last place. Grace had never seemed to mind that, either.

  Mrs. Weldon opened the door at his ring.

  “Well!” she said, cheerily.

  They smiled brightly at each other.

  “Hel-lo,” he said. “Well! You home?”

  They kissed, slightly. She watched with polite interest while he hung up his hat and coat, removed the evening papers from his pocket, and handed one to her.

  “Bring the papers?” she said, taking it.

  She preceded him along the narrow hall to t
he living-room, where he let himself slowly down into his big chair, with a sound between a sigh and a groan. She sat opposite him, on the davenport. Again they smiled brightly at each other.

  “Well, what have you been doing with yourself today?” he inquired.

  She had been expecting the question. She had planned before he came in, how she would tell him all the little events of her day—how the woman in the grocer’s shop had had an argument with the cashier, and how Delia had tried out a new salad for lunch with but moderate success, and how Alice Marshall had come to tea and it was quite true that Norma Matthews was going to have another baby. She had woven them into a lively little narrative, carefully choosing amusing phrases of description; had felt that she was going to tell it well and with spirit, and that he might laugh at the account of the occurrence in the grocer’s. But now, as she considered it, it seemed to her a long, dull story. She had not the energy to begin it. And he was already smoothing out his paper.

  “Oh, nothing,” she said, with a gay little laugh. “Did you have a nice day?”

  “Why—” he began. He had had some idea of telling her how he had finally put through that Detroit thing, and how tickled J. G. had seemed to be about it. But his interest waned, even as he started to speak. Besides, she was engrossed in breaking off a loose thread from the wool fringe on one of the pillows beside her.

  “Oh, pretty fair,” he said.