We Cant Have Everything | Page 4

they slept standing. They had done harder, filthier jobs than the women who worked in machine-shops and in furrows, while the male-kind fought. She had gone about bedabbled in blood, her hair drenched with it. Her delicate hands had performed tasks that would have been obscene if they had not been sublime in a realm of suffering where nothing was obscene except the cause of it all.
She sickened at it more in retrospect than in action, and tried to shake it from her mind by a change of subject.
"And what have you been up to, Jim?"
"Ah, nothing but the same old useless loafing. Been up in the North Woods for some hunting and fishing," he snarled. His voice always grew contemptuous when he spoke of himself, but idolatrous when he spoke of her--as now when he asked: "I heard you had gone back abroad. But you're not going, are you?"
"Yes, as soon as I get my nerves a little steadier."
"I won't let you go back!" He checked himself. He had no right to dictate to her. He amended to: "You mustn't. It's dangerous crossing, with all those submarines and floating mines. You've done your bit and more."
"But there's so horribly much to do."
"You've done enough. How many children have you got now?"
"About a hundred."
"Holy mother!" he whispered, with a profane piety. "Can even you afford as big a family as that?"
"Well, I've had to call for some help."
"Let me chip in? Will you?"
"Sure I will. Go as far as you like."
"All right; it's a bet. Name the sum, and I'll mail it to you."
"You'd better not mail me anything, Jim" she said.
He blenched and mumbled: "Oh, all right! I'll write you a check now."
"Later," she said. "I don't like to talk much about such things, please."
"Promise me you won't go back."
She simply waived the theme: "Let's talk of something pleasant, if you don't mind."
"Something pleasant, eh? Then I can't ask about--him, I suppose."
"Of course. Why not?"
"How is the hound?--begging the pardon of all honest hounds."
She was too sure of her own feelings toward her husband to feel it necessary to rush to his defense--against a former rival. Her answer was, "He's well enough to raise a handsome row if he saw you and me together."
He grumbled a full double-barreled oath and did not apologize for it. She spoke coldly:
"You'd better go back to your seat."
She was as severe as a woman can well be with a man who adores her and writhes with jealousy of a man she adores.
"I'll be good, Teacher," he said. "Was he over there with you?"
She evidently liked to talk about her husband. She brightened as she spoke. "Yes, for a while. He drove a motor-ambulance, you know, but it bored him after a month or two. They wouldn't let him up to the firing-lines, so he quit. Have you seen him?"
"Once or twice."
"He's looking well, isn't he?"
"Yes, confound him! His handsome features have been my ruin."
She could smile at that inverted compliment. But Dyckman began to think very hard. He was suddenly confronted with one of the conundrums in duty which life incessantly propounds--life that squats at all the crossroads with a sphinxic riddle for every wayfarer.

CHAPTER III
Kedzie--to say it again--did not know enough about New York or the world to recognize Mrs. Cheever and Mr. Dyckman when she glanced at them and glanced away. They did not at all come up to Kedzie's idea or ideal of what swells should be, and she had not even grown up enough to study the society news that makes such thrilling reading to those who thrill to that sort of thing. The society notes in the town paper in Kedzie's town (Nimrim, Missouri) consisted of bombastic chronicles of church sociables or lists of those present at surprise-parties.
This girl's home was one of the cheapest in that cheap town. Her people not only were poor, but lived more poorly than they had to. They had, in consequence, a little reserve of funds, which they took pride in keeping up. The three Thropps came now to New York for the first time in their three lives. They were almost as ignorant as the other peasant immigrants that steam in from the sea.
Adna Thropp, the father, was a local claim-agent on a small railroad. He spent his life pitting his wits against the petty greed of honest farmers and God-fearing, railroad-hating citizens. If a granger let his fence fall down and a rickety cow disputed the right of way with a locomotive's cow-catcher, the granger naturally put in a claim for the destruction of a prize-winning animal with a record as an amazing milker; also he added something for damage to the feelings of the family in the loss of a household pet. It was Adna's business to beat the