Liberty, 15 July 1924
I
At the Great American Lunch Hour young George O’Kelly straightened
his desk deliberately and with an assumed air of interest. No one in the office
must know that he was in a hurry, for success is a matter of atmosphere, and it
is not well to advertise the fact that your mind is separated from your work by
a distance of seven hundred miles.
But once out of the building he set his teeth and began to run,
glancing now and then at the gay noon of early spring which filled Times Square
and loitered less than twenty feet over the heads of the crowd. The crowd all
looked slightly upward and took deep March breaths, and the sun dazzled their
eyes so that scarcely any one saw any one else but only their own reflection on
the sky.
George O’Kelly, whose mind was over seven hundred miles away,
thought that all outdoors was horrible. He rushed into the subway, and for
ninety-five blocks bent a frenzied glance on a car-card which showed vividly
how he had only one chance in five of keeping his teeth for ten years. At 137th
Street he broke off his study of commercial art, left the subway, and began to
run again, a tireless, anxious run that brought him this time to his home — one
room in a high, horrible apartment-house in the middle of nowhere.
There it was on the bureau, the letter — in sacred ink, on blessed
paper — all over the city, people, if they listened, could hear the beating of
George O’Kelly’s heart. He read the commas, the blots, and the thumb-smudge on
the margin — then he threw himself hopelessly upon his bed.
He was in a mess, one of those terrific messes which are ordinary
incidents in the life of the poor, which follow poverty like birds of prey. The
poor go under or go up or go wrong or even go on, somehow, in a way the poor
have — but George O’Kelly was so new to poverty that had any one denied the
uniqueness of his case he would have been astounded.
Less than two years ago he had been graduated with honors from The
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and had taken a position with a firm of
construction engineers in southern Tennessee. All his life he had thought in
terms of tunnels and skyscrapers and great squat dams and tall, three-towered
bridges, that were like dancers holding hands in a row, with heads as tall as
cities and skirts of cable strand. It had seemed romantic to George O’Kelly to
change the sweep of rivers and the shape of mountains so that life could flourish
in the old bad lands of the world where it had never taken root before. He
loved steel, and there was always steel near him in his dreams, liquid steel,
steel in bars, and blocks and beams and formless plastic masses, waiting for
him, as paint and canvas to his hand. Steel inexhaustible, to be made lovely
and austere in his imaginative fire . . .
At present he was an insurance clerk at forty dollars a week with
his dream slipping fast behind him. The dark little girl who had made this
mess, this terrible and intolerable mess, was waiting to be sent for in a town
in Tennessee.
In fifteen minutes the woman from whom he sublet his room knocked
and asked him with maddening kindness if, since he was home, he would have some
lunch. He shook his head, but the interruption aroused him, and getting up from
the bed he wrote a telegram.
“Letter depressed me have you lost your nerve you are foolish and
just upset to think of breaking off why not marry me immediately sure we can
make it all right — ”
He hesitated for a wild minute, and then added in a hand that
could scarcely be recognized as his own: “In any case I will arrive to-morrow
at six o’clock.”
When he finished he ran out of the apartment and down to the
telegraph office near the subway stop. He possessed in this world not quite one
hundred dollars, but the letter showed that she was “nervous” and this left him
no choice. He knew what “nervous” meant — that she was emotionally depressed,
that the prospect of marrying into a life of poverty and struggle was putting
too much strain upon her love.
George O’Kelly reached the insurance company at his usual run, the
run that had become almost second nature to him, that seemed best to express
the tension under which he lived. He went straight to the manager’s office.
“I want to see you, Mr. Chambers,” he announced breathlessly.
“Well?” Two eyes, eyes like winter windows, glared at him with
ruthless impersonality.
“I want to get four days’ vacation.”
“Why, you had a vacation just two weeks ago!” said Mr. Chambers in
surprise.
“That’s true,” admitted the distraught young man, “but now I’ve
got to have another.”
“Where’d you go last time? To your home?”
“No, I went to — a place in Tennessee.”
“Well, where do you want to go this time?”
“Well, this time I want to go to — a place in Tennessee.”
“You’re consistent, anyhow,” said the manager dryly. “But I didn’t
realize you were employed here as a travelling salesman.”
“I’m not,” cried George desperately, “but I’ve got to go.”
“All right,” agreed Mr. Chambers, “but you don’t have to come
back. So don’t!”
“I won’t.” And to his own astonishment as well as Mr. Chambers’
George’s face grew pink with pleasure. He felt happy, exultant — for the first
time in six months he was absolutely free. Tears of gratitude stood in his
eyes, and he seized Mr. Chambers warmly by the hand.
“I want to thank you,” he said with a rush of emotion. “I don’t
want to come back. I think I’d have gone crazy if you’d said that I could come
back. Only I couldn’t quit myself, you see, and I want to thank you for — for
quitting for me.”
He waved his hand magnanimously, shouted aloud, “You owe me three
days’ salary but you can keep it!” and rushed from the office. Mr. Chambers
rang for his stenographer to ask if O’Kelly had seemed queer lately. He had
fired many men in the course of his career, and they had taken it in many
different ways, but none of them had thanked him — ever before.
II
Jonquil Cary was her name, and to George O’Kelly nothing had ever
looked so fresh and pale as her face when she saw him and fled to him eagerly
along the station platform. Her arms were raised to him, her mouth was half
parted for his kiss, when she held him off suddenly and lightly and, with a
touch of embarrassment, looked around. Two boys, somewhat younger than George,
were standing in the background.
“This is Mr. Craddock and Mr. Holt,” she announced cheerfully.
“You met them when you were here before.”
Disturbed by the transition of a kiss into an introduction and
suspecting some hidden significance, George was more confused when he found
that the automobile which was to carry them to Jonquil’s house belonged to one
of the two young men. It seemed to put him at a disadvantage. On the way
Jonquil chattered between the front and back seats, and when he tried to slip
his arm around her under cover of the twilight she compelled him with a quick
movement to take her hand instead.
“Is this street on the way to your house?” he whispered. “I don’t
recognize it.”
“It’s the new boulevard. Jerry just got this car to-day, and he
wants to show it to me before he takes us home.”
When, after twenty minutes, they were deposited at Jonquil’s
house, George felt that the first happiness of the meeting, the joy he had
recognized so surely in her eyes back in the station, had been dissipated by
the intrusion of the ride. Something that he had looked forward to had been
rather casually lost, and he was brooding on this as he said good night stiffly
to the two young men. Then his ill-humor faded as Jonquil drew him into a
familiar embrace under the dim light of the front hall and told him in a dozen
ways, of which the best was without words, how she had missed him. Her emotion
reassured him, promised his anxious heart that everything would be all right.
They sat together on the sofa, overcome by each other’s presence,
beyond all except fragmentary endearments. At the supper hour Jonquil’s father
and mother appeared and were glad to see George. They liked him, and had been
interested in his engineering career when he had first come to Tennessee over a
year before. They had been sorry when he had given it up and gone to New York
to look for something more immediately profitable, but while they deplored the
curtailment of his career they sympathized with him and were ready to recognize
the engagement. During dinner they asked about his progress in New York.
“Everything’s going fine,” he told them with enthusiasm. “I’ve
been promoted — better salary.”
He was miserable as he said this — but they were all so
glad.
“They must like you,” said Mrs. Cary, “that’s certain — or they
wouldn’t let you off twice in three weeks to come down here.”
“I told them they had to,” explained George hastily; “I told them
if they didn’t I wouldn’t work for them any more.”
“But you ought to save your money,” Mrs. Cary reproached him gently.
“Not spend it all on this expensive trip.”
Dinner was over — he and Jonquil were alone and she came back into
his arms.
“So glad you’re here,” she sighed. “Wish you never were going away
again, darling.”
“Do you miss me?”
“Oh, so much, so much.”
“Do you — do other men come to see you often? Like those two
kids?”
The question surprised her. The dark velvet eyes stared at him.
“Why, of course they do. All the time. Why — I’ve told you in
letters that they did, dearest.”
This was true — when he had first come to the city there had been
already a dozen boys around her, responding to her picturesque fragility with
adolescent worship, and a few of them perceiving that her beautiful eyes were
also sane and kind.
“Do you expect me never to go anywhere” — Jonquil demanded,
leaning back against the sofa-pillows until she seemed to look at him from many
miles away — “and just fold my hands and sit still — forever?”
“What do you mean?” he blurted out in a panic. “Do you mean you
think I’ll never have enough money to marry you?”
“Oh, don’t jump at conclusions so, George.”
“I’m not jumping at conclusions. That’s what you said.”
George decided suddenly that he was on dangerous grounds. He had
not intended to let anything spoil this night. He tried to take her again in his
arms, but she resisted unexpectedly, saying:
“It’s hot. I’m going to get the electric fan.”
When the fan was adjusted they sat down again, but he was in a
super-sensitive mood and involuntarily he plunged into the specific world he
had intended to avoid.
“When will you marry me?”
“Are you ready for me to marry you?”
All at once his nerves gave way, and he sprang to his feet.
“Let’s shut off that damned fan,” he cried, “it drives me wild.
It’s like a clock ticking away all the time I’ll be with you. I came here to be
happy and forget everything about New York and time — ”
He sank down on the sofa as suddenly as he had risen. Jonquil
turned off the fan, and drawing his head down into her lap began stroking his
hair.
“Let’s sit like this,” she said softly, “just sit quiet like this,
and I’ll put you to sleep. You’re all tired and nervous and your sweetheart’ll
take care of you.”
“But I don’t want to sit like this,” he complained, jerking up
suddenly, “I don’t want to sit like this at all. I want you to kiss me. That’s
the only thing that makes me rest. And anyways I’m not nervous — it’s you
that’s nervous. I’m not nervous at all.”
To prove that he wasn’t nervous he left the couch and plumped
himself into a rocking-chair across the room.
“Just when I’m ready to marry you you write me the most nervous
letters, as if you’re going to back out, and I have to come rushing down here —
”
“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
“But I do want to!” insisted George.
It seemed to him that he was being very cool and logical and that
she was putting him deliberately in the wrong. With every word they were
drawing farther and farther apart — and he was unable to stop himself or to
keep worry and pain out of his voice.
But in a minute Jonquil began to cry sorrowfully and he came back
to the sofa and put his arm around her. He was the comforter now, drawing her
head close to his shoulder, murmuring old familiar things until she grew calmer
and only trembled a little, spasmodically, in his arms. For over an hour they
sat there, while the evening pianos thumped their last cadences into the street
outside. George did not move, or think, or hope, lulled into numbness by the
premonition of disaster. The clock would tick on, past eleven, past twelve, and
then Mrs. Cary would call down gently over the banister— beyond that he saw
only to-morrow and despair.
III
In the heat of the next day the breaking-point came. They had each
guessed the truth about the other, but of the two she was the more ready to
admit the situation.
“There’s no use going on,” she said miserably, “you know you hate
the insurance business, and you’ll never do well in it.”
“That’s not it,” he insisted stubbornly; “I hate going on alone.
If you’ll marry me and come with me and take a chance with me, I can make good
at anything, but not while I’m worrying about you down here.”
She was silent a long time before she answered, not thinking — for
she had seen the end — but only waiting, because she knew that every word would
seem more cruel than the last. Finally she spoke:
“George, I love you with all my heart, and I don’t see how I can
ever love any one else but you. If you’d been ready for me two months ago I’d
have married you — now I can’t because it doesn’t seem to be the sensible
thing.”
He made wild accusations — there was some one else — she was
keeping something from him!
“No, there’s no one else.”
This was true. But reacting from the strain of this affair she had
found relief in the company of young boys like Jerry Holt, who had the merit of
meaning absolutely nothing in her life.
George didn’t take the situation well, at all. He seized her in
his arms and tried literally to kiss her into marrying him at once. When this
failed, he broke into a long monologue of self-pity, and ceased only when he
saw that he was making himself despicable in her sight. He threatened to leave
when he had no intention of leaving, and refused to go when she told him that,
after all, it was best that he should.
For a while she was sorry, then for another while she was merely
kind.
“You’d better go now,” she cried at last, so loud that Mrs. Cary
came down-stairs in alarm.
“Is something the matter?”
“I’m going away, Mrs. Cary,” said George brokenly. Jonquil had
left the room.
“Don’t feel so badly, George.” Mrs. Cary blinked at him in helpless
sympathy — sorry and, in the same breath, glad that the little tragedy was
almost done. “If I were you I’d go home to your mother for a week or so.
Perhaps after all this is the sensible thing — ”
“Please don’t talk,” he cried. “Please don’t say anything to me
now!”
Jonquil came into the room again, her sorrow and her nervousness
alike tucked under powder and rouge and hat.
“I’ve ordered a taxicab,” she said impersonally. “We can drive
around until your train leaves.”
She walked out on the front porch. George put on his coat and hat
and stood for a minute exhausted in the hall — he had eaten scarcely a bite
since he had left New York. Mrs. Cary came over, drew his head down and kissed
him on the cheek, and he felt very ridiculous and weak in his knowledge that
the scene had been ridiculous and weak at the end. If he had only gone the
night before — left her for the last time with a decent pride.
The taxi had come, and for an hour these two that had been lovers
rode along the less-frequented streets. He held her hand and grew calmer in the
sunshine, seeing too late that there had been nothing all along to do or say.
“I’ll come back,” he told her.
“I know you will,” she answered, trying to put a cheery faith into
her voice. “And we’ll write each other —sometimes.”
“No,” he said, “we won’t write. I couldn’t stand that. Some day
I’ll come back.”
“I’ll never forget you, George.”
They reached the station, and she went with him while he bought
his ticket. . . .
“Why, George O’Kelly and Jonquil Cary!”
It was a man and a girl whom George had known when he had worked
in town, and Jonquil seemed to greet their presence with relief. For an
interminable five minutes they all stood there talking; then the train roared
into the station, and with ill-concealed agony in his face George held out his
arms toward Jonquil. She took an uncertain step toward him, faltered, and then
pressed his hand quickly as if she were taking leave of a chance friend.
“Good-by, George,” she was saying, “I hope you have a pleasant
trip.
“Good-by, George. Come back and see us all again.”
Dumb, almost blind with pain, he seized his suitcase, and in some
dazed way got himself aboard the train.
Past clanging street-crossings, gathering speed through wide
suburban spaces toward the sunset. Perhaps she too would see the sunset and
pause for a moment, turning, remembering, before he faded with her sleep into
the past. This night’s dusk would cover up forever the sun and the trees and
the flowers and laughter of his young world.
IV
On a damp afternoon in September of the following year a young man
with his face burned to a deep copper glow got off a train at a city in
Tennessee. He looked around anxiously, and seemed relieved when he found that
there was no one in the station to meet him. He taxied to the best hotel in the
city where he registered with some satisfaction as George O’Kelly, Cuzco, Peru.
Up in his room he sat for a few minutes at the window looking down
into the familiar street below. Then with his hand trembling faintly he took
off the telephone receiver and called a number.
“Is Miss Jonquil in?”
“This is she.”
“Oh — ” His voice after overcoming a faint tendency to waver went
on with friendly formality.
“This is George O’Kelly. Did you get my letter?”
“Yes. I thought you’d be in to-day.”
Her voice, cool and unmoved, disturbed him, but not as he had
expected. This was the voice of a stranger, unexcited, pleasantly glad to see
him — that was all. He wanted to put down the telephone and catch his breath.
“I haven’t seen you for — a long time.” He succeeded in making
this sound offhand. “Over a year.”
He knew how long it had been — to the day.
“It’ll be awfully nice to talk to you again.”
“I’ll be there in about an hour.”
He hung up. For four long seasons every minute of his leisure had
been crowded with anticipation of this hour, and now this hour was here. He had
thought of finding her married, engaged, in love — he had not thought she would
be unstirred at his return.
There would never again in his life, he felt, be another ten
months like these he had just gone through. He had made an admittedly
remarkable showing for a young engineer — stumbled into two unusual
opportunities, one in Peru, whence he had just returned, and another,
consequent upon it, in New York, whither he was bound. In this short time he
had risen from poverty into a position of unlimited opportunity.
He looked at himself in the dressing-table mirror. He was almost
black with tan, but it was a romantic black, and in the last week, since he had
had time to think about it, it had given him considerable pleasure. The
hardiness of his frame, too, he appraised with a sort of fascination. He had
lost part of an eyebrow somewhere, and he still wore an elastic bandage on his
knee, but he was too young not to realize that on the steamer many women had
looked at him with unusual tributary interest.
His clothes, of course, were frightful. They had been made for him
by a Greek tailor in Lima — in two days. He was young enough, too, to have
explained this sartorial deficiency to Jonquil in his otherwise laconic note.
The only further detail it contained was a request that he should not be
met at the station.
George O’Kelly, of Cuzco, Peru, waited an hour and a half in the
hotel, until, to be exact, the sun had reached a midway position in the sky.
Then, freshly shaven and talcum-powdered toward a somewhat more Caucasian hue,
for vanity at the last minute had overcome romance, he engaged a taxicab and
set out for the house he knew so well.
He was breathing hard — he noticed this but he told himself that
it was excitement, not emotion. He was here; she was not married — that was
enough. He was not even sure what he had to say to her. But this was the moment
of his life that he felt he could least easily have dispensed with. There was
no triumph, after all, without a girl concerned, and if he did not lay his
spoils at her feet he could at least hold them for a passing moment before her
eyes.
The house loomed up suddenly beside him, and his first thought was
that it had assumed a strange unreality. There was nothing changed — only
everything was changed. It was smaller and it seemed shabbier than before —
there was no cloud of magic hovering over its roof and issuing from the windows
of the upper floor. He rang the door-bell and an unfamiliar colored maid
appeared. Miss Jonquil would be down in a moment. He wet his lips nervously and
walked into the sitting-room— and the feeling of unreality increased. After
all, he saw, this was only a room, and not the enchanted chamber where he had
passed those poignant hours. He sat in a chair, amazed to find it a chair,
realizing that his imagination had distorted and colored all these simple
familiar things.
Then the door opened and Jonquil came into the room — and it was
as though everything in it suddenly blurred before his eyes. He had not
remembered how beautiful she was, and he felt his face grow pale and his voice
diminish to a poor sigh in his throat.
She was dressed in pale green, and a gold ribbon bound back her
dark, straight hair like a crown. The familiar velvet eyes caught his as she
came through the door, and a spasm of fright went through him at her beauty’s
power of inflicting pain.
He said “Hello,” and they each took a few steps forward and shook
hands. Then they sat in chairs quite far apart and gazed at each other across
the room.
“You’ve come back,” she said, and he answered just as tritely: “I
wanted to stop in and see you as I came through.”
He tried to neutralize the tremor in his voice by looking anywhere
but at her face. The obligation to speak was on him, but, unless he immediately
began to boast, it seemed that there was nothing to say. There had never been
anything casual in their previous relations — it didn’t seem possible that
people in this position would talk about the weather.
“This is ridiculous,” he broke out in sudden embarrassment. “I
don’t know exactly what to do. Does my being here bother you?”
“No.” The answer was both reticent and impersonally sad. It
depressed him.
“Are you engaged?” he demanded.
“No.”
“Are you in love with some one?”
She shook her head.
“Oh.” He leaned back in his chair. Another subject seemed
exhausted — the interview was not taking the course he had intended.
“Jonquil,” he began, this time on a softer key, “after all that’s
happened between us, I wanted to come back and see you. Whatever I do in the
future I’ll never love another girl as I’ve loved you.”
This was one of the speeches he had rehearsed. On the steamer it
had seemed to have just the right note — a reference to the tenderness he would
always feel for her combined with a non-committal attitude toward his present
state of mind. Here with the past around him, beside him, growing minute by
minute more heavy on the air, it seemed theatrical and stale.
She made no comment, sat without moving, her eyes fixed on him
with an expression that might have meant everything or nothing.
“You don’t love me any more, do you?” he asked her in a level
voice.
“No.”
When Mrs. Cary came in a minute later, and spoke to him about his
success — there had been a half-column about him in the local paper — he was a
mixture of emotions. He knew now that he still wanted this girl, and he knew
that the past sometimes comes back — that was all. For the rest he must be
strong and watchful and he would see.
“And now,” Mrs. Cary was saying, “I want you two to go and see the
lady who has the chrysanthemums. She particularly told me she wanted to see you
because she’d read about you in the paper.”
They went to see the lady with the chrysanthemums. They walked
along the street, and he recognized with a sort of excitement just how her
shorter footsteps always fell in between his own. The lady turned out to be
nice, and the chrysanthemums were enormous and extraordinarily beautiful. The
lady’s gardens were full of them, white and pink and yellow, so that to be
among them was a trip back into the heart of summer. There were two gardens
full, and a gate between them; when they strolled toward the second garden the
lady went first through the gate.
And then a curious thing happened. George stepped aside to let
Jonquil pass, but instead of going through she stood still and stared at him
for a minute. It was not so much the look, which was not a smile, as it was the
moment of silence. They saw each other’s eyes, and both took a short, faintly
accelerated breath, and then they went on into the second garden. That was all.
The afternoon waned. They thanked the lady and walked home slowly,
thoughtfully, side by side. Through dinner too they were silent. George told
Mr. Cary something of what had happened in South America, and managed to let it
be known that everything would be plain sailing for him in the future.
Then dinner was over, and he and Jonquil were alone in the room
which had seen the beginning of their love affair and the end. It seemed to him
long ago and inexpressibly sad. On that sofa he had felt agony and grief such
as he would never feel again. He would never be so weak or so tired and
miserable and poor. Yet he knew that that boy of fifteen months before had had
something, a trust, a warmth that was gone forever. The sensible thing — they
had done the sensible thing. He had traded his first youth for strength and
carved success out of despair. But with his youth, life had carried away the
freshness of his love.
“You won’t marry me, will you?” he said quietly.
Jonquil shook her dark head.
“I’m never going to marry,” she answered.
He nodded.
“I’m going on to Washington in the morning,” he said.
“Oh — ”
“I have to go. I’ve got to be in New York by the first, and
meanwhile I want to stop off in Washington.”
“Business!”
“No-o,” he said as if reluctantly. “There’s some one there I must
see who was very kind to me when I was so — down and out.”
This was invented. There was no one in Washington for him to see —
but he was watching Jonquil narrowly, and he was sure that she winced a little,
that her eyes closed and then opened wide again.
“But before I go I want to tell you the things that happened to me
since I saw you, and, as maybe we won’t meet again, I wonder if — if just this
once you’d sit in my lap like you used to. I wouldn’t ask except since there’s
no one else —yet — perhaps it doesn’t matter.”
She nodded, and in a moment was sitting in his lap as she had sat
so often in that vanished spring. The feel of her head against his shoulder, of
her familiar body, sent a shock of emotion over him. His arms holding her had a
tendency to tighten around her, so he leaned back and began to talk
thoughtfully into the air.
He told her of a despairing two weeks in New York which had
terminated with an attractive if not very profitable job in a construction
plant in Jersey City. When the Peru business had first presented itself it had
not seemed an extraordinary opportunity. He was to be third assistant engineer
on the expedition, but only ten of the American party, including eight rodmen
and surveyors, had ever reached Cuzco. Ten days later the chief of the
expedition was dead of yellow fever. That had been his chance, a chance for
anybody but a fool, a marvellous chance —
“A chance for anybody but a fool?” she interrupted innocently.
“Even for a fool,” he continued. “It was wonderful. Well, I wired
New York — ”
“And so,” she interrupted again, “they wired that you ought to
take a chance?”
“Ought to!” he exclaimed, still leaning back. “That I had
to. There was no time to lose — ”
“Not a minute?”
“Not a minute.”
“Not even time for — ” she paused.
“For what?”
“Look.”
He bent his head forward suddenly, and she drew herself to him in
the same moment, her lips half open like a flower.
“Yes,” he whispered into her lips. “There’s all the time in the
world. . . . ”
All the time in the world — his life and hers. But for an instant
as he kissed her he knew that though he search through eternity he could never
recapture those lost April hours. He might press her close now till the muscles
knotted on his arms — she was something desirable and rare that he had fought
for and made his own — but never again an intangible whisper in the dusk, or on
the breeze of night. . . .
Well, let it pass, he thought; April is over, April is over. There
are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.