We Can\'t Have Everything

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While he rhapsodized once more about her future she was thinking of
her immediate penury. As she approached the street of her residence
she realized that she must either starve till pay-day or borrow.
It was a bad beginning, but better than a hopeless ending. After
several gasps of hesitation she finally made her plea:

"I'm awfully sorry to have to trouble you, Mr. Ferriday, but
I'm--Well, could you lend me twenty-five dollars?"

"My dear child, take fifty," he cried.

She shook her head, but it hurt her to see the roll of bills he
dived for and brought up, and the careless grace with which he
peeled two leaves from the cabbage. Easy money is always attended
with resentment that more did not come along. Kedzie pouted at her
folly in not accepting the fifty. If she had said, "Lend me fifty,"
he would have offered her a hundred. But the twenty-five was
salvation, and it would buy her food enough to keep her and her
useless husband alive, and to buy her a pair of shoes and some
gloves.

As the car drew near her corner she cried that she had some
shopping to do and escaped again at the drug-store.

She found her husband at home. There was an unwonted authority
about his greeting:

"Well, young woman, you may approach and kiss my hand. I am a
gentleman with a job. I am a Chicago gentleman with a job."

"You don't mean it!" Kedzie gasped; and kissed him from habit with
more respect than her recent habit had shown.

"I mean it," said Gilfoyle. "I am now on the staff of the Deshler
Advertising Agency. I was afraid when Mr. D. offered me an
unsolicited position (he could say it to-day) that it was the red
wine and not the real money that was talking, but he was painfully
sober this noon, took me out to lunch, and told me that he would be
proud to avail himself of my services."

"Splendid!" said Kedzie, with sincere enthusiasm. It is always
pleasant to learn that money is setting toward the family.

But something told Kedzie that her late acquisition of twenty-five
dollars would not be with her long. Easy come, easy go. "How much
is the fare to Chicago?" she asked, in a hollow voice.

"Twenty-two dollars is the fare," said Gilfoyle, "with about
eight dollars extra. I couldn't borrow a cent. I've got only
five dollars."

"I thought so," said Kedzie.

"Thought what so?" said Gilfoyle.

"Nothing," said Kedzie. "Well, I happen to have twenty-five
dollars."

"That's funny," said Gilfoyle. "Where did you get it?"

"Oh, I saved it up."

"From what?"

"Well, do you want the twenty-five, or don't you?"

Gilfoyle pondered. If he questioned the source of the money he
might find it out, and be unable to accept it. He wanted the money
more than the hazardous information; so he said:

"Of course I want the twenty-five, darling, but I hate to rob you.
Of course I'll send for you as soon as I can make a nest out there,
but how will you get along?"

"Oh, I'll get along," said Kedzie; "there'll be some movie-money
coming to me Saturday."

"Well, that's fine," Gilfoyle said, feeling a weight of horrible
guilt mingled with superior wings of relief. He hesitated, hemmed,
hawed, perspired, and finally looked to that old source of so many
escapes, his watch. "There's a train at eight-two; I could just
about make it if I scoot now."

"You'd better scoot," said Kedzie. And she gave him the money.

"I'd like to have dinner with you," Gilfoyle faltered, "but--"

"Yes, I'd like to have you, but--"

They looked at each other wretchedly. Their love was so lukewarm
already that they bothered each other. There was no impulse to
the delicious bitter-sweet of a passionate farewell. She was as
eager to have him gone as he to go, and each blamed the other
for that.

"I'll write you every day," he said, "and I'll send the fare to
you as soon as I can get it."

"Yes, of course," Kedzie mumbled. "Well, good-by--don't miss your
train, darling."

"Good-by, honey."

They had to embrace. Their arms went out about each other and
clasped behind each other's backs. Then some impulse moved them
to a fierce clench of desperate sorrow. They were embracing their
dead loves, the corpses that lay dead in these alienated bodies.
It was an embrace across a grave, and they felt the thud of clods
upon their love.

They gasped with the pity of it, and Kedzie's eyes were reeking
with tears and Gilfoyle's lips were shivering when they wrenched
out of that lock of torment.

He caught her back to him and kissed her salt-sweet mouth. Her kiss
was brackish on his lips as life was. She felt a kind of assault in
the fervor of his kiss, but she did not resist. He was a stranger
who sprang at her from the dark, but he was also very like a poet
she had loved poetically long, long ago.

Then they wrung hands and called good-bys and he caught up his
suit-case and rushed through the door.

She hung from the window to wave to him as he ran down the street
to the Subway, pausing now and again to wave to her vaguely, then
stumbling on his course.

At last she could not see him, whether for the tears or for the
distance, and she bowed her head on her lonely sill and wept.

She had a splendid cry that flushed her heart clean as a new whistle.
She washed her eyes with fine cold water and half sobbed, half
laughed, "Well, that's over."

CHAPTER XI

Charity Coe Cheever was making less progress with her amateur
movie-show than Kedzie with her professional cinematic career.

Charity telephoned to ask Jim Dyckman to act, but he proved to be
camera-shy and intractable.

She had difficulties with all her cast. It was impossible to satisfy
the people who were willing to act with the roles they were willing
to assume.

Charity was lunching at the Ritz-Carlton with Mrs. 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."

He shook his head, resisting her for once, and answered:

"Go to the devil, Charity darling. You won't let me love you, so I'll
be cussed if I'll let you get me to working for you. I've had you bad
and I'm trying to get well of you. So let me alone."

That was how Peter Cheever, talking to the headwaiter at the head of
the stairs, saw his wife and Jim Dyckman with their heads together at
a table. He wanted to go over and crack a water-bottle over Dyckman's
head. He did not do it, for the excellent reason that Zada L'Etoile
was at his side. She had insisted on his taking her there "to lunch
with the bunch," as she expressed it.

She also saw Charity and Jim and Cheever's sudden flush of rage. She
felt that the way was opening for her dreams to come true. She was so
happy over the situation that she helped Cheever out of the appalling
problem before him.

He did not know how to go forward or how to retreat. He could think
of nothing to say to the headwaiter who offered him his choice of
tables.

Zada caught his elbow and murmured in her very best voice just loud
enough for the headwaiter's benefit:

"Mr. Cheever, I'm so sorry--but I'm feeling dizzy. I'm afraid I shall
faint if I don't get out in the air. It's very close in here."

"It is very close, madam," said the headwaiter, and he helped to
support her down the steps quietly and deferentially, just as if
he believed it.

Zada and Cheever thought they were escaping from a crisis, but they
were drifting deeper and deeper into the converging currents. When
they were safe in the motor outside Zada was proud.

"Some get-away, that?" she laughed.

"Wonderful!" said Cheever. "I didn't know you had so much social
skill."

"You don't know me," she said. "I'm learning! You'll be proud of me
yet."

"I am now," he said. "You're the most beautiful thing in the world."

"Oh, that's old stuff," she said. "Any cow can be glossy. But I'm
going in for the real thing, Peterkin. I've cut out the cocktails
and I don't dance with anybody but you lately. Have you noticed
that? It's the quiet life and the nice ways for me. Do you mind?"

"It's very becoming" he said. "Anything for a novelty."

Yet he liked her surprisingly well in this phase. She had been
cutting down his liquor, too. She had been cutting down his
extravagances. She had even achieved the height of denying herself
luxuries--one of the surest and least-trodden short-cuts to a man's
heart--a little secret path he hardly knows himself.

The affair of Zada and Cheever was going the normal course. It had
lost the charm of the wild and wicked--through familiarity; and
it was tending to domestication, as all such moods do if nothing
interrupts them. There are all sorts of endings to such illicit
relations: most of them end with the mutual treachery of two fickle
creatures; some of them end with bitter grief for one or the other
or both; some of them end in crime, or at least disgrace; and some
of them finish, with disconcerting immorality, in an inexcusable
respectability.

The improvement in Zada's mind and heart was, curiously, the most
dangerous thing in the world for Cheever. If she had stayed noisy
and promiscuous and bad, he would have tired of her. But she was
growing soft and homey, gentle as ivy, and as hard to tear away or
to want to tear away. After all, marriage is only the formalizing
of an instinct that existed long before--exists in some animals and
birds who mate without formality and stay mated without compulsion.

When Zada and Cheever had escaped from the Ritz-Carlton they took
lunch at another restaurant. Zada was childishly proud of her tact
and of Cheever's appreciation. But afterward, on the way "home"--as
she called what other people called her "lair"--she grew suddenly
and deeply solemn.

"So your wife is with Dyckman again," she said. "It looks to me
like a sketch."

Cheever flushed. He hated her slang and he did not accept her
conclusion, but this time he did not forbid her to mention his wife.
He could hardly do that when her tact had saved him and Charity from
the results of their double indiscretion and the shame of amusing
that roomful of gossips.

Zada misunderstood his silence for approval; so she spoke her
thoughts aloud:

"If that He and She business goes on I suppose you'll have to
divorce the lady."

"Divorce Charity!" Cheever gasped. "Are you dotty?"

That hit Zada pretty hard, but she bore it. She came back by another
door.

"I guess I am--nearly as dotty as she is about Dyckman. First thing
you know she'll be trying to get free herself. What if she asks you
for a divorce?"

"I'd like to see her!"

"You mean you wouldn't give her her freedom?"

"Not in a thousand years."

He was astounded at the sepulchral woe of Zada's groan. "O Lord,
and I thought--oh--you don't love me at all then! You never really
loved me--really! God help me."

Cheever wondered what Zada would smash first. He hoped it would not
be the window of the car. He hoped he could get her safely indoors
before the smashing began.

He did. She was a grim and murky storm-cloud full of tornado when
they crossed the pavement and the vestibule of the apartment-house
and went up in the elevator.

But once inside the door, her breast began to heave, her nostrils
to quiver, her fingers to work. Her maid came to take her hat, and
paled to see her torment. Zada gave her her things and motioned her
away. She motioned her four or five times. The maid had needed only
one motion.

Cheever watched Zada out of the corner of his eye and wondered why
he had ever been fated to fall in love with such a creature. He was
convinced that he had been fate-forced into the intrigue. He had no
sense whatever of volition or wicked intent. He could only feel that
he had tried to be decent and play fair and be generous.

The thought of what the neighbors were about to hear made him sick
with chagrin. The fact that the neighbors were under suspicion
themselves only aggravated the burden of shame.

The hardest part of Zada's agony was her pitiful effort to take
her medicine like a lady. It was terrific how hard it was for one
of a wildcat heritage and habit to keep the caterwaul back and the
claws muffled. The self-duel nearly wrecked Zada, but she won it.
She was not thoroughbred, but she had tried to be thoroughgoing.
She was evidently not a success as a self-made lady. She kept
whispering to herself:

"What's the use? Oh, why did I try? Oh, oh, oh, what a fool I've
been! To think!--to think!--to think!"

Cheever was distraught. He had waited for the outbreak, and when
it did not come he suffered from the recoil of his own tension.

"For the Lord's sake, yell!" he implored.

She turned on him eyes of extraordinary abjection. She saw at last
where her lawlessness had brought her, and she despised herself. But
she did not love him any the more for understanding him. She saw at
last that one cannot be an honest woman without actually being--an
honest woman. She was going to get honesty if it broke a bone.

She told her accomplice: "I want you to go away and stay away.
Whatever you do, leave me be. There's nothing else you can do for me
except to take back all the stuff you've bought me. Give it to that
wife you love so much and wouldn't suspect no matter what she did.
You love her so much that you wouldn't let her go even if she wanted
to leave you. So go back to her and take these things to her with my
comp'ments."

Now it was Cheever who wanted to scream as he had not screamed
since he was the purple-faced boy who used to kick the floor and
his adoring nurse. But he had lost the safety valve of the scream.
He smothered.

When Zada began to peel off her rings and thrust them out to him he
swiftly turned on his heel and fled. He never knew whether Zada woke
the block with her howls or not when he left her forever.

He forgot to ask when he came back.

CHAPTER XII

First he went home to take his temper to Charity. On the way he
worked up a splendid rage at her for giving such a woman as Zada
grounds for gossip. He went straight to her room and walked in
without knocking.

Charity was dictating a letter to her secretary. Cheever surprised
a phrase before she saw him.

"'Thousands of blind soldiers and thousands of orphans hold out their
hands to us. We must all do what we can--' Why, hello! Where did you
drop from? Give me just a minute while I finish this letter. Let me
see. Where was I?"

The secretary read in a dull, secretarial voice:

"'Thousblinsoldiersorphs--wem'sdo'll we can.'"

"Oh yes," said Charity. "'You have never failed to respond to such
an appeal,' comma; no, semicolon; no, period. 'So I shall put you
down for a subscription of dash 'how much' question-mark. 'Thanking
you in adv'--no, just say, 'My husband joins me in kindest regards
to your dear wife and yourself, cordially yours'--and that will be
all for the present."

The secretary garnered her sheaves and went out. Charity said
to Cheever:

"Well, young man, sit down and tell us what's on your mind. But first
let me tell you my troubles. There's a match on my dresser there.
Peter, I'm in an awful mess with this movie stunt. I can get plenty
of people to pose for the camera, but I can't find a man to manage
the business end of it. I was lunching with Mrs. Noxon at the Ritz
to-day. I called your friend Jim Dyckman over from another table and
begged him to take the job. But he refused flatly, the lazy brute.
Don't you think you could take it on? I wish you would. It's such
a big chance to make a pile of money for those poor soldiers."

Cheever was lost. Unconsciously she had cleared up the scandal of
her talk with Dyckman. He remembered that he had seen Mrs. Noxon
at another table, standing. He felt like a dog and he wanted to
fawn at the heels he had prepared to bite. He felt unworthy to be
the associate of his sainted wife in her good works. He said:

"You flatter me. I couldn't manage a thing like that. I'm busy.
I--I couldn't."

"You've got to play a part, then," she said. "You're looking so well
nowadays, taking such good care of yourself. Will you?"

"I might," he said. "I'll think it over."

She was called to the telephone then and he escaped to his own room.
He moped about and sulked in his uncomfortable virtue. He dressed for
dinner with unusual care. He was trying to make a hit with his wife.

In going through his pocket-book he came across two theater tickets.
He had promised to take Zada. He felt like a low hound, both for
planning to take her and for not taking her. She would have a dismal
evening. And she was capable of such ferocious lonelinesses. He
had driven away all her old friends. She would recall them now, he
supposed. That would be a pity, for they were an odious gang. It
would be his fault if she relapsed. It was his duty, in a way, to
help her to reform.

The ludicrous sublimity of such an ethical snarl reduced him to
inanity. He stayed to dinner. Charity had not expected him to stop.
She had planned an evening's excavation into her correspondence and
had not changed her street dress. She was surprised and childishly
delighted to have him with her--then childishly unhappy as she
observed:

"But you're all togged up. You're going out."

"No--well--that is--er--I was thinking you would like to see a show.
I've got tickets."

"But it's late. I'm not dressed."

"What's the odds? You look all right. There's never anybody but
muckers there Saturday nights. We'll miss it all if you stop
to prink."

"All right," she cried, and hurried through the dinner.

He was glad at least that he had escaped a solemn evening at home.
He could not keep awake at home.

So they went to the theater; but there was not "nobody there," as
he had promised.

Zada was there--alone in a box, dressed in her best, and wearing
her East-Lynniest look of pathos.

The coincidence was not occult. After several hours of brave battle
with grief and a lonely dinner Zada had been faced by the appalling
prospect of an evening alone.

She remembered Cheever's purchase of the theater tickets, and she
was startled with an intuition that he would take his wife in her
place. Men are capable of such indecent economies.

Zada was suffocated with rage at the possibility. She always
believed implicitly in the worst things she could think of. If
Peter Cheever dared do such a thing! And of course he would! Well,
she would just find out!

She threw a lonely wineglass at the fern-dish and smashed a decanter.
Then she pushed off the table about a hundred dollars' worth of
chinaware, and kicked her chair over backward. She had been famous
for her back-kick in her public dancing-days.

She howled to her maid and went into her wardrobe with both hands.
She acted like a windmill in a dress-shop. Finally she came upon
what she was looking for--the most ladylike theater-gown that ever
combined magnificence with dazzling respectability.

She made up her face like a lady's--it took some paint to do that.
Meanwhile, her maid was telephoning speculators for a box. Zada
arrived before Cheever and Charity did. She waited a long time,
haughtily indifferent to the admiration she and her gown were
achieving. At last she was punished and rewarded, revenged, and
destroyed by the sight of Cheever coming down the aisle with Charity.
They had to pause to let a fat couple rise, and they paused, facing
Zada. Cheever caught her eye and halted, petrified, long enough for
Charity to sit down, look up at him, follow the line of his gaze,
and catch a full blast of Zada's beauty and of the fierce look she
fastened on Cheever. Charity's eyes ran back on the almost visible
clothes-line of that taut gaze and found Cheever wilting with
several kinds of shame.

He sat down glum and scarlet, and Charity's heart began to throb.
A second glance told her who Zada was. She had seen the woman often
when Zada had danced in the theaters and the hotel ballrooms.

Charity found herself thinking that she was not Cheever's wife,
but only a poor relation--by marriage. The worst of it was that she
was not dressed for the theater. The gown she wore was exquisite in
its place, but it was dull and informal and it gave her no help in
the ordeal she was suddenly submitted to. Her hair had not been
coiffed by the high-elbowed artist with the waving-tongs. Her brains
were not marceled for a beauty-contest with her rival. She was at
her worst and Zada was at her supreme.

Zada was not entirely unknown to Charity. She had not been able
to escape all the gossip that linked Cheever with her, but she had
naturally heard little of it, and then only from people of the sort
who run to their friends with all the bad news they can collect.
They are easily discredited.

Charity had spent so many bad hours wondering at her husband's
indifference and had heard his name linked with so many names that
she had temporized with the situation. Cheever was of the sort that
looks at every woman with desire, or looks as if he looked so. The
wives of such men grow calloused or quit them.

Charity had not quit Cheever. She had hardly dreamed of it. She had
not outgrown being hurt. Her slow wrath had not begun to manifest
itself. This crushing humiliation smote her from a clear sky.

She was not ready for it. She did not know what to do. She only knew,
by long training, that she must not do what she first wanted to do.
She had been taught from childhood what Zada was only now trying
to learn.

Charity pretended a great interest in her program and laughed
flightily. Cheever was morose. He stole glances at Zada and saw that
she was in anguish. He felt that he had treated her like dirt. He was
unworthy of her, or of his wife, or of anything but a horsewhip.

He glanced at Charity and was fooled by her casual chatter. He
supposed that she was as ignorant of the affair with Zada as he
wanted her to be. He wished that he could pretend to be unconcerned,
but he could not keep his program from shivering; his throat was full
of phlegm; he choked on the simplest words. He thought for some trick
of escape, a pretended illness, a remembered business engagement,
a disgust with the play.

He was afraid to trust his voice to any proposal or even to go out
between the acts.

The worst of it was that he felt sorrier for Zada than for his wife.
Poor Zada had nothing, Charity had everything. How easily we vote
other people everything! Cheever was afraid of the ride home with
Charity; he dreaded to be at home to-night and to-morrow and always.
He longed to go to Zada and help her and let her revile him and
scratch him, perhaps, provided only that she would throw her arms
about him afterward. He never imagined that a duel of self-control,
a mortal combat in refinement, was being fought over him by those
two women.

Zada's strength gave out long before Charity's; she was newer to
the game. During a dark scene she surrendered the field and decamped.
But Cheever and his wife both caught the faint shimmer of her
respectable robe as it floated from the rail and vanished in the
curtains. It was like a dematerialization at a seance.

Cheever wanted to crane his neck and dared not. Charity felt a great
withdrawal of support in the flight of her rival. She had not Zada's
presence now to sustain her through the last act. But she sat it out.

She was bitter against Cheever, and her thoughts dark. The burden
of his infidelity was heavy enough for her to bear, but for him to
subject her to such a confrontation was outrageous. She had no doubt
that it was a cooked-up scheme. That vile creature had planned it
and that worm of a husband had consented to it!

The most unforgivable thing of all, of course, was the clothes
of it.

Charity, in the course of time, forgave nearly everybody everything,
but she never forgave her husband that.

On the way home she had nothing to say. Neither had Cheever. He
felt homesick for Zada. Charity felt homeless. She must have been
the laughing-stock or the pitying-stock of the whole world for
a long time.

When they reached home she bade Cheever a perfectly cheerful
good-night and left him to a cold supper the butler had laid out
for him. She did not know that he stole from the house and flew
to Zada.

Charity was tempted to an immediate denunciation of Cheever and
a declaration of divorce. She would certainly not live with him
another day. That would be to make herself an accomplice, a silent
partner of Zada's. It would be intolerable, immoral, not nice.

CHAPTER XIII

The next morning proved to be a Sunday and she felt a need of
spiritual help in her hour of affliction. Man had betrayed her;
religion would sustain her grim determination to end the unwholesome
condition of her household. The Bible said (didn't it?), "If thy
right hand offend thee, cut it off." That surely meant, "If thy
husband offend thee, divorce him."