We Cant Have Everything | Page 9

learned it. He was sure that what she would do would be the
one right thing.
Yet he realized from her placid manner of parrying his threats at her
husband that she still loved the wretch and trusted him. It was up to Jim

to tell her what he knew about Cheever. He felt that he ought to. Yet
how could he?
It was hideous that she should sit there smiling tolerantly at a critic of
her infernal husband as serenely as a priestess who is patient with an
unenlightened skeptic.
It was atrocious that Cheever should be permitted to prosper with this
scandal unrebuked, unpunished, actually unsnubbed, accepting the
worship of an angel like Charity Coe and repaying it with black
treachery! To keep silent was to co-operate in the evil--to pander to it.
Dyckman thought it was hideous. The word he thought was "rotten"!
He actually opened his mouth to break the news. His voice mutinied.
He could not say a word.
Something throttled him. It was that strange instinct which makes
criminals of every degree feel that no crime is so low but that tattling
on it is a degree lower.
Dyckman tried to assuage his self-contempt by the excuse that Charity
was not in the mood or in the place where such a disclosure should be
made. Some day he would tell her and then ask permission to kill the
blackguard for her.
The train had scuttered across many a mile while he meditated the
answer to the latest riddle. His thoughts were so turbulent that Charity
finally intruded.
"What's on your mind, Jim?"
"Oh, I was just thinking."
"What about?"
"Oh, things."
Suddenly he reached out and seized the hand that drooped at her knee
like a wilted lily. He wrung her fingers with a vigor that hurt her, then

he said, "Got any dogs to show this season?"
She laughed at the violent abruptness of this, and said, "I think I'll give
an orphan-show instead."
He shook his head in despairing admiration and leaned back to watch
the landscape at the window. So did she. On the windows their own
reflections were cast in transparent films of light. Each wraith watched
the other, seeming to read the mood and need no speech.
Dyckman's mind kept shuttling over and over the same rails of thought,
like a switch-engine eternally shunting cars from one track to another.
His very temples throbbed with the clickety-click of the train. At last he
groaned:
"This world's too much for me. It's got me guessing."
He seemed to be so impressed with his original and profound discovery
of life's unanswerable complexity that Charity smiled, the same sad,
sweet smile with which she pored on the book of sorrow or listened to
the questions of her orphans who asked where their fathers had gone.
She thought of Jim Dyckman as one of her orphans. There was a good
deal of the mother in her love of him. For she did love him. And she
would have married him if he had asked her earlier--before Peter
Cheever swept over her horizon and carried her away with his zest and
his magnificence.
She rebuked herself for thinking of Jim Dyckman as an orphan. He had
a father and mother who doted on him. He had wealth of his own and
millions to come. He had health and brawn enough for two. What right
had he to anybody's pity? Yet she pitied him.
And he pitied her.
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.
Also Charity had loved Jim before she met Cheever, and she made no
secret of being fond of him still. In their occasional quarrels, Cheever
had taunted her with wishing she had married Jim, and she had retorted
that she had indeed made a big mistake in her choice. Lovers say such
things--for lack of other weapons in such combats as lovers inevitably
wage, if only for exercise.
Charity did not really mean what she said, but at times Cheever thought
she did. He had warned her to keep away from Dyckman and keep
Dyckman away from her or there would be trouble. Cheever was a
powerful athlete and a boxer who made minor professionals look
ridiculous. Dyckman was bigger,