We Can\'t Have Everything

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"I'm afraid so," said Charity. "But you're the only one that has
imagination about me."

"Bosh!"

"My husband can't see me at all."

"Oh, him!" Jim growled. "What's he up to now?"

"I don't know," said Charity. "I hardly ever see him. He's chucked
me for good."

Jim studied her with idolatry and with the intolerant ferocity of
a priest for the indifferent or the skeptical. The idol made her
plaint to her solitary worshiper.

"I'm horribly lonely, Jim. I don't go anywhere, meet anybody, do
anything but mope. Nobody comes to see me or take me out. Even you
kept away from me till I had to send for you."

"You ordered me off the premises in Newport, if you remember."

"Yes, I did, but I didn't realize that I was mistreating the only
admirer I had."

This was rather startling in its possible implications. It scared
Dyckman. He gazed at her until her eyes met his. There was something
in them that made him look away. Then he heard the gasp of a little
sob, and she began to cry.

"Why, Charity!" he said. "Why, Charity Coe!"

She smiled at the pet name and the tenderness in his voice, and
her tears stopped.

"Jim," she said, "I told Doctor Mosely all about my affairs, and
I simply spoiled his day for him and he dropped me. So I think
I'll tell you."

"Go to the other extreme, eh?" said Jim.

"Yes, I'm between the devil and the high-Church. I've no doubt
I'm to blame, but I can't seem to stand the punishment with no
change in sight. I've tried to, but I've got to the end of my string
and--well--whether you can help me or not--I've got to talk or die.
Do you mind if I run on?"

"God bless you, I'd be tickled to death."

"It will probably only ruin your evening."

"Help yourself. I'd rather have you wreck all my evenings
than--than--"

He had begun well, which was more than usual. She did not expect him
to finish. She thanked him with a look of more than gratitude.

"Jim," she said, "I've found out that my husband is--well--there's
a certain ex-dancer named L'Etoile, and he--she--they--"

Instead of being astounded, Dyckman was glum.

"Oh, you've found that out at last, have you? Maybe you'll learn
before long that there's trouble in France. But of course you know
that. You were over there. Why, before you came back he was dragging
that animal around with him. I saw him with her."

"You knew it as long ago as that?"

"Everybody knew it."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I'm a low-lived coward, I suppose. I tried to a dozen times,
but somehow I couldn't. By gad! I came near writing you an anonymous
letter. I couldn't seem to stoop to that, though, and I couldn't seem
to rise to telling you out and out. And now that you know, what are
you going to do about it?"

"That's what I don't know. Doctor Mosely wanted me to try to
get him back."

"Doctor Mosely's got softening of the brain. To think of your trying
to persuade a man to live with you! You of all people, and him of
all people! Agh! If you got him, what would you have? And how long
would you keep him? You can't make a household pet out of a laughing
hyena. Chuck him, I say."

"But that means the divorce-court, Jim."

"What of it? It's cleaner and sweeter than this arrangement."

"But the newspapers?"

"Ah, what do you care about them? They'd only publish what everybody
that knows you knows already. And what's the diff' if a lot of
strangers find out that you're too decent to tolerate that man's
behavior? Somebody is always roasting even the President, but he
gets along somehow. A lot of good people oppose divorce, but I was
reading that the best people used to oppose anesthetics and education
and republics. It's absolutely no argument against a thing to say
that a lot of the best people think it is outrageous. They've always
fought everything, especially freedom for the women. They said it
was dangerous for you to select your husbands, or manage your
property, or learn to read, or go out to work, or vote, or be in
a profession--or even be a war nurse. The hatred of divorce is all
of a piece with the same old habit good people have of trying to
mind other people's business for 'em."

"But Doctor Mosely says that marriage is a sacrament."

"Well, if a marriage like yours is a sacrament, give me a nice,
decent white-slave market."

"That's the way it seems to me, but the Church, especially our
Church, is so ferocious. Doctor Mosely preached a sermon against
divorce and remarriage, and it was frightful what he said about
women who change husbands. I'm afraid of it, Jim. I can't face the
abuse and the newspapers, and I can't face the loneliness, either.
I'm desperately lonely."

"For him?" Jim groaned.

"No, I've got over loving him. I'll never endure him again,
especially now that she has a better right to him."

She could not bring herself at first to tell him what she knew
of Zada, but at length she confessed that she had listened to the
dictagraph and had heard that Zada was to be a mother. Dyckman was
dumfounded; then he snarled:

"Thank God it's not you that's going to be--for him--Well, don't you
call that divorce enough? How can you call your marriage a sacrament
when he has gone and made a real sacrament with another woman? It
takes two to keep a sacrament, doesn't it? Or does it? I don't think
I know what a sacrament is. But I tell you, there was never a plainer
duty in the world. Turn him over to his Zada. She's the worst woman
in town, and she's too good for him, at that. I don't see how you
can hesitate! How long can you stand it?"

"I don't know. I'm ready to die now. I'd rather die. I'd better die."

And once more she was weeping, now merely a lonely little girl. He
could not resist the impulse to go to her side. He dropped down by
her and patted her wrist gawkily. She caught his hand and clenched
it with strange power. He could tell by her throat that her heart
was leaping like a wild bird against a cage.

His own heart beat about his breast like a bird that has been set
frantic by another bird, and his soul ached for her. He yearned to
put his long arm about her and hold her tight, but he could not.

He had never seen her so. He could not understand what it was that
made a darkling mist of her eyes and gave her parted lips such an
impatient ecstasy of pain.

Suddenly, with an intuition unusual to him, he understood. He shrank
from her, but not with contempt or blame. There was something divine
about his merciful comprehension, but his only human response was
a most ungodly wrath. He got to his feet, muttering:

"I ought to kill him. Maybe I will. I've got to beat him within
an inch of his life."

Charity was dazed by his abrupt revolt. "What do you mean, Jim?
Who is it you want to beat?"

He laughed, a bloodthirsty laugh. "I'll find him!"

He rushed out into the hall, caught up his hat and coat, and was
gone. Charity was bewildered out of her wits. She could not imagine
what had maddened him. She only knew that Dyckman also had abandoned
her. He would find Cheever and fight him as one stag another. And
the only result would be the death of one or both and a far more
odious disgrace than the scandal she had determined to avoid.

CHAPTER XXXI

Dyckman was at least half mad, and half inspired. Charity had been
his lifelong religion. He had thought of her with ardor, but also
with a kind of awe. He had wanted to be her husband. Failing to win
her, he had been horrified to see that Cheever, possessing her, was
still not satisfied.

He had never dreamed what this neglect might mean to her. He had
not thought of her as mere woman, after all, with more than pride
to satisfy, with more than a mind to suffer. When the realization
overwhelmed him her nobility was not diminished in his eyes,
but to all her former qualities was added the human element. She
was flesh and blood, and a martyr in the flames. And the ingrate
who had the godlike privilege of her embrace abandoned her for
a public creature.

Dyckman felt himself summoned to avenge her.

It happened that he found the Cheever limousine waiting outside.
He said to the chauffeur:

"Where does Miss Zada L'Etoile live?"

The chauffeur was startled. He answered, with a touch of raillery:

"Search me, sir. How should I know?"

"I want none of your back talk," said Dyckman, ready to maul the
chauffeur or anybody for practice. He took out his pocket-book and
lifted the first bill he came to. It was a yellow boy. He repeated,
"Where does Zada L'Etoile live?"

The chauffeur told him and got the bill. It was better than the
poke in the eye he could have had instead.

Dyckman had sent his own car home. He had difficulty in finding
a taxicab on Fifth Avenue along there. At length he stopped one
and named the apartment-house where Zada lived.

The hall-boy was startled by his manner, amazed to hear the famous
Dyckman ask for Miss L'Etoile. He telephoned the name while Dyckman
fumed. After some delay he was told to come up.

Zada was alone--at least Cheever was not there. She had been
astounded when Dyckman's name came through the telephone. Her
first thought had been that Cheever had met with an accident and
that Dyckman was bringing the news. She had given up the hope
of involving Dyckman with Mrs. Cheever, after wasting Cheever's
money on vain detectives.

When Dyckman was ushered in she greeted him from her divan.

"Pardon my negligee," she said. "I'm not very well."

He saw at a glance that the dictagraph had told the truth. She was
entirely too well. He felt his wrath at Zada vanishing. But this
also he transferred to Cheever's account. He spoke as quietly as
he could, though his face revealed his excitement.

"Sorry to trouble you, but I had hoped to find Mr. Cheever here."

"Mr. Cheever?! Here?!" Zada exclaimed, with that mixture of the
interrogation and exclamation points for which we have no symbol.
She tried to look surprised at the unimaginable suggestion of
Cheever's being in her environs. She succeeded as well as Dyckman
did in pretending that his errand was trivial.

"Er--yes, I imagined you might happen to know where I could find
him. I have a little business with him."

Zada thought to crush him with a condescension--a manicurial
sarcasm:

"Have you been to the gentleman's home?"

Dyckman laughed: "Yes, but he wasn't there. He isn't there much
nowadays--they say."

"Oh, do they?" Zada sneered. "Well, did They tell you he would be
here?"

"No, but I thought--"

"Better try his office in the morning."

"Thanks. I can't wait. What club does he affect most now?"

"Ask They," said Zada, ending the interview with a labored yawn.
But when Dyckman bowed and turned to go, her curiosity bested her
indignation. "In case I should by any chance see him, could I give
him your message?"

Dyckman laughed a sort of pugilistic laugh, and his self-conscious
fist asserted itself.

"No, thanks, I'm afraid you couldn't. Good-by."

Zada saw his big fingers gathering--convening, as it were, into a
fist like a mace, and she was terrified for her man. She scrambled
to her feet and caught Dyckman in the hall.

"What are you going to do to Mr. Cheever?"

Dyckman answered in the ironic slang, "I'm not going to do a thing
to him."

Zada's terror increased. "What harm has he ever done to you?"

"I didn't say he had done me any harm."

"Is it because of his wife?"

"Leave her out of it."

There was the old phrase again. Cheever kept hurling it at her
whenever she referred to the third corner of the triangle.

Zada remembered when Cheever had threatened to kill Dyckman if he
found him. Now he would be unarmed. He was not so big a man as
Dyckman. She could see him being throttled slowly to death, leaving
her and her child-to-be unprotected in their shameful folly.

"For God's sake, don't!" she implored him. "I'm not well. I mustn't
have any excitement, I beg you--for my sake--"

"For your sake," said Dyckman, with a scorn that changed to pity
as she clung to him--"for your sake I'll give him a couple of extra
jolts."

That was rather dazzling, the compliment of having Jim Dyckman as
her champion! Her old habit of taking everybody's flattery made her
forget for the moment that she was now a one-man woman. Her clutch
relaxed under the compliment just long enough for Dyckman to escape
without violence. He darted through the door and closed it behind
him.

She tugged at the inside knob, but he was so long that he could
hold the outside knob with one hand and reach the elevator-bell
with the other.

When the car came up he released the knob and lifted his hat with
a pleasant "Good-night." She dared not pursue him in the garb
she wore.

She returned terrified to her room. Then she ran to the telephone to
pursue Cheever and warn him. They had quarreled at the dinner-table.
He had left her on the ground that it was dangerous for her to be
excited as he evidently excited her. It is one of the most craven
shifts of a man for ending an endless wrangle with a woman.

Zada tried three clubs before she found Cheever. When she heard
his voice at last she was enraptured. She tried to entice him into
her own shelter.

"I'm sorry I was so mean. Come on home and make peace with me."

"All right, dear, I will."

"Right away?"

"After a while, darling. I'm sitting in a little game of poker."

"You'd better not keep me waiting!" she warned. The note was an
unfortunate reminder of his bondage. It rattled his shackles. He
could not even have a few hours with old cronies at the club. She
was worse than Charity had ever dreamed of being. She heard the
resentment in his answer and felt that he would stay away from her
for discipline. She threw aside diplomacy and tried to frighten him
home.

"Jim Dyckman is looking for you."

"Dyckman? Me! Why?"

"He wants to beat you up."

Cheever laughed outright at this. "You're crazy, darling. What
has Dyckman got against me?"

"I don't know, but I know he's hunting you."

"I haven't laid eyes on him for weeks. We've had no quarrel."

Zada was frantic. She howled across the wire: "Come home, I beg
and implore you. He'll hurt you--he may kill you."

Again Cheever laughed: "You're having hallucinations, my love.
You'll feel better in the morning. Where the deuce did you get
such a foolish notion, anyway?"

"From Jim Dyckman," she stormed. "He was here looking for you. If
anybody's going crazy, he's the one. I had a struggle with him. He
broke away. I begged him not to harm you, but he said he'd give you
a few extra jolts for my sake. Please, please, don't let him find
you there."

Cheever was half convinced and quite puzzled. He knew that Dyckman
had never forgiven him for marrying Charity. The feud had smoldered.
He could not conceive what should have revived it, unless Charity
had been talking. He had not thought of any one's punishing him for
neglecting her. But if Dyckman had enlisted in her cause--well,
Cheever was afraid of hardly anything in the world except boredom
and the appearance of fear. He answered Zada with a gruff:

"Let him find me if he wants to. Or since you know him so well,
tell me where he'll be, and I'll go find him."

He could hear Zada's strangled moan. How many times, since male
and female began, have women made wild, vain protests against
the battle-habit, the duel-tribunal? Mothers, daughters, wives,
mistresses, they have been seldom heard and have been forced to wait
remote in anguish till their man has come back or been brought back,
victorious or baffled or defeated, maimed, wounded, or dead.

It meant everything to Zada that her mate should not suffer either
death or publicity. But chiefly her love of him made outcry now. She
could not endure the vision of her beloved receiving the hammering
of the giant Dyckman.

The telephone crackled under the load of her prayers, but Cheever
had only one answer:

"If you want me to run away from him or anybody, you don't get your
wish, my darling."

Finally she shrieked, "If you don't come home I'll come there and
get you."

"Ladies are not allowed in the main part of this club, dearest,"
said Cheever. "Thank God there are a few places where two men can
settle their affairs without the help of womanly intuition."

"He wants to pound you to death," she screamed. "If you don't
promise me, I'll come there and break in if I have to scratch
the eyes out of the doorkeeper."

He knew that she was capable of doing this very thing; so he made
answer, "All right, my dear. I surrender."

"You'll come home?"

"Yes, indeed. Right away."

"Oh, thank God! You do love me, then. How soon will you be here?"

"Very shortly, unless the taxi breaks down."

"Hurry!"

"Surely. Good-by!"

He hung up the reverberant receiver and said to the telephone-boy:
"If anybody calls me, I've gone out. No matter who calls me, I'm
out."

"Yes, sir."

Then he went to the card-room, found that the game had gone on
without him, cashed in his chips, and excused himself. He was neither
winning nor losing, so that he could not be accused of "cold feet."
That was one of the most intolerable accusations to him. He could
violate any of the Commandments, but in the sportsman's decalogue
"Thou shalt not have cold feet" was one that he honored in the
observance, not the breach.

He went down to the reading-room, a palatial hall fifty yards long
with a table nearly as big as a railroad platform, on a tremendous
rug as wide and deep as a lawn. About it were chairs and divans that
would have satisfied a lotus-eater.

Cheever avoided proffers of conversation and pretended to read the
magazines and newspapers. He kept his eyes on the doors. He did not
want to take any one into his confidence, as he felt that, after all,
Zada might have been out of her head. He did not want any seconds
or bottle-holders. He was not afraid. Still, he did not care to be
surprised by a mad bull. He felt that he could play toreador with
neatness and despatch provided he could foresee the charge.

Among the magazines Cheever glanced at was one with an article on
various modes of self-defense, jiu-jitsu, and other devices by which
any clever child could apparently remove or disable a mad elephant.
But Cheever's traditions did not incline to such methods. He had the
fisting habit. He did not feel called toward clinching or choking,
twisting, tripping, knifing, swording, or sandbagging. His wrath
expressed itself, and gaily, in the play of the triceps muscle.
For mobility he used footwork and headwork. For shield he had
his forearms or his open hands--for weapons, the ten knuckles at
the other end of the exquisite driving-shafts beginning in his
shoulder-blades.

He had been a clever fighter from childhood. He had been a successful
boxer and had followed the art in its professional and amateur
developments. He knew more of prize-ring history and politics than
of any other. He often regretted that his inherited money had robbed
him of a career as a heavy-weight. He was not so big as Dyckman, but
he had made fools of bigger men. He felt that the odds were a trifle
in his favor, especially if Dyckman were angry, as he must be to go
roaring about town frightening one silly woman for another's sake.

He would have preferred not to fight in the club. It was the best
of all possible clubs, and he supposed that he would be expelled
for profaning its sacrosanctity with a vulgar brawl. But anything
was better than cold feet.

Finally his hundredth glance at the door revealed Jim Dyckman. He
was a long way off, but he looked bigger than Cheever remembered
him. Also he was calmer than Cheever had hoped him to be, and not
drunk, as he half expected.

Dyckman caught sight of Cheever, glared a moment, tossed his head
as if it had antlers on it, and came forward grimly and swiftly.

A few members of the club spoke to him. An attendant or two,
carrying cocktails or high-balls in or empty glasses out, stepped
aside.

Dyckman advanced down the room, and his manner was challenge enough.
But he paused honorably to say, "Cheever, I'm looking for you."

"So I hear."

"You had fair warning, then, from your--woman?"

"Which one?" said Cheever, with his irresistible impudence.

That was the fulminate that exploded Dyckman's wrath. "You
blackguard!" he roared, and plunged. His left hand was out and
open, his great right fist back. As he closed, it flashed past
him and drove into the spot where Cheever's face was smirking.

But the face was gone. Cheever had bent his neck just enough to
escape the fist. He met the weight of Dyckman's rush with all his
own weight in a short-arm jab that rocked Dyckman's whole frame
and crumpled the white cuirass of his shirt.

The fight was within an ace of being ended then and there, but
Dyckman's belly was covered with sinew, and he digested the bitter
medicine. He tried to turn his huge grunt into a laugh. He was
at least not to be guilty of assaulting a weakling.

Dyckman was a bit of a boxer, too. Like most rich men's sons, he
was practised in athletics. The gentleman of our day carries no
sword and no revolver; he carries his weapons in his gloves.

Dyckman acknowledged Cheever's skill and courage by deploying and
falling back. He sparred a moment. He saw that Cheever was quicker
than he at the feint and the sidestep.

He grew impatient at this dancing duet. His wrath was his worst
enemy and Cheever's ally. Cheever taunted him, and he heard the
voices of the club members who were rushing from their chairs in
consternation, and running in from the other rooms, summoned by
the wireless excitement that announces fights.

There was not going to be time for a bout, and the gallery was
bigger than Dyckman had expected. He went in hell-for-leather. He
felt a mighty satisfaction when his good left hand slashed through
Cheever's ineffectual palms, reached that perky little mustache
and smeared that amiable mouth with blood.

In the counterblow the edge of Cheever's cuff caught on Dyckman's
knuckles and ripped the skin. This saved Dyckman's eye from
mourning. And now wherever he struck he left a red mark. It
helped his target-practice.

Cheever gave up trying to mar Dyckman's face and went for his
waistcoat. All is fair in such a war, and below the belt was his
favorite territory. He hoped to put Dyckman out. Dyckman tried
to withhold his vulnerable solar plexus by crouching, but Cheever
kept whizzing through his guard like a blazing pinwheel even when
it brought his jaw in reach of an uppercut.

Dyckman clinched and tried to bear him down, but Cheever, reaching
round him, battered him with the terrific kidney-blow, and Dyckman
flung him off.

And now servants came leaping into the fray, venturing to lay hands
on the men. They could hear older members pleading: "Gentlemen!
Gentlemen! For God's sake remember where you are." One or two went
calling, "House Committee!"

Such blows as were struck now were struck across other heads and
in spite of other arms. Both men were seized at length and dragged
away, petted and talked to like infuriated stallions. They stood
panting and bleeding, trying not to hear the voices of reason. They
glared at each other, and it became unendurable to each that the
other should be able to stand erect and mock him.

As if by a signal agreed on, they wrenched and flung aside their
captors and dashed together again, forgetting science, defense,
caution, everything but the lust of carnage. Dyckman in freeing
himself left his coat in the grasp of his retainers.

There is nothing more sickeningly thrilling than the bare-handed
ferocity of two big men, all hate and stupid power, smashing and
being smashed, trying to defend and destroy and each longing to
knock the other lifeless before his own heart is stopped. It
seemed a pity to interrupt it, and it was perilous as well.

For a long moment the two men flailed each other, bored in, and
staggered out.

It was thud and thwack, slash and gouge. Wild blows went through
the air like broadswords, making the spectators groan at what they
might have done had they landed. Blows landed and sent a head back
with such a snap that one looked for it on the floor. Flesh split,
and blood spurted. Cheever reached up and swept his nose and mouth
clear of gore--then shot his reeking fist into Dyckman's heart as
if he would drive it through.

It was amazing to see Dyckman's answering swing batter Cheever
forward to one knee. Habit and not courtesy kept Dyckman from
jumping him. He stood off for Cheever to regain his feet. It was not
necessary, for Cheever's agility had carried him out of range, but
the tolerance maddened him more than anything yet, and he ceased
to duck and dodge. He stood in and battered at Dyckman's stomach
till a gray nausea began to weaken his enemy. Dyckman grew afraid
of a sudden blotting out of consciousness. He had known it once when
the chance blow of an instructor had stretched him flat for thirty
seconds.

He could not keep Cheever off far enough to use his longer reach.
He forgot everything but the determination to make ruins of that
handsome face before he went out. He knocked loose one tooth and
bleared an eye, but it was not enough. Finally Cheever got to him
with a sledge-hammer smash in the groin. It hurled Dyckman against
and along the big table, just as he put home one magnificent,
majestic, mellifluous swinge with all his body in it. It planted
an earthquake under Cheever's ear.