XII
The friendship between John and Jim was of the sort that has its roots deep in the past. They had been playmates and chums since early childhood.
Jim was two years the elder and one of his first memories was of wishing he had a mother like John’s. His own mother had died when he was an infant and Mrs. Winter gave the lonely child many a happy hour mothering him along with her own child.
Jim’s father, a dry minded man who owned a hardware store, was mystified by the boy’s quaint fancies.
“Are the flowers lonesome at night?” the child asked Mr. Sprague one day. And once when it was raining he said, “The sky is crying and the trees are sorry,” as the latter bent in the wind.
His father always laughed at such speeches and advised him not to be a fool. At first Jim would slip from the room and weep, but later he learned to conceal his hurt feelings as his father whipped him if he found him crying. So the child gradually acquired the habit of keeping his thoughts to himself.
Though Jim’s faith in things mystical had in early childhood been the most eager and ardent, he was the first of the two boys to become a sceptic. Mr. Sprague in his hardware store had a business which seemed to be an appropriate emblem of his nature, and he had never attempted to meet his imaginative son halfway; but it was Jim’s own habit of inquiry regarding the world around him, rather than the fault of his unsympathetic parent, which brought about a change in his childish outlook.
“I don’t believe in Santa Claus any more, John,” he confessed the first Christmas after his faith had forsaken him.
“Well I do!” John answered indignantly. “He’s going to bring me a new sled too. You’re jealous because he’s not going to bring you one.” And John ran away out of earshot of heresy.
Jim went home and threw himself face downward on the bed in the bare room where he and his father slept. While he lay there he admitted to himself that he was jealous of John but that did not alter his painfully won conviction.
Jim loved companionship with animals. A tailless cat, a lame gosling, chickens, and anything else that needed care, shared his affection. If one of these outcasts became ill he ministered to it as though it were a baby. One Sunday he sat for three hours holding a dying puppy in his lap.
Mr. Sprague did not like pets and was often cruel to Jim’s charges, refusing food for them. Then Jim would deny himself and save the food from his plate for his protégés. His father grew angry at this, regarding it as disobedience to the spirit of his commands, and one day ordered Jim to turn the pets loose, in his rage kicking a little puppy. Jim rebelled and, as was usual on such occasions, was whipped. As soon as his father released him Jim gathered up the hurt puppy tenderly. After this he tried to keep his pets out of his father’s sight.
At school John was, as a rule, the head of his class, but Jim always had to help him with his mathematical problems. Jim never obtained more than fair marks except in mental arithmetic, in which study he rapidly became the pride of all his teachers.
Although Jim took the initiative and led in all their games and expeditions it was tacitly understood that John was, in some way, the superior of the two. This tradition dated from their earliest memories. It was not founded solely on the fact that John had a mother, for John’s father, too, was a cultured man and wrote for a religious review, while Jim’s only sold hardware. Even in later years when Jim faced life and weighed values this attitude never quite left him.
During their high school days John fell in love with Gertie Pierce, who had red cheeks and yellow hair. This lifted him still higher in Jim’s opinion. John wrote poetry about Gertie, which he read to Jim. In these poems he called her a “dryad,” explaining to Jim what the word meant, and pointing out how beautifully it rhymed with “sad.”
As a rule Jim paid scant attention to his girl acquaintances and schoolmates. They made him uneasy with their giggling and whispering, and he always imagined that they were talking about him and making fun of him.
After his graduation from high school Jim entered his father’s store. It had been decided that John was to go to college and he left the following autumn. Jim, robbed of the old companionship, felt his isolation more than ever before in his life. He wanted something, he hardly knew what. It seemed to him that life was cheating him, but he looked in vain for understanding from the boys and girls with whom he had grown up. Occasional enthusiastic letters from John in which college life was described to the stay-at-home, not without a note of condescension, added to Jim’s dissatisfaction and unrest.
One day, about a month after John’s departure to attend college, a young widow of the town, Mrs. Johnson, whom Jim had often seen on the street and admired for her brilliant coloring and dashing though somewhat overdressed appearance, came into Mr. Sprague’s hardware store. She wished to order some gas fittings for her house, which was being remodeled. Jim had heard laughing references to her powers as a siren and these remarks were of a nature that reflected rather darkly on her moral conduct, so when he went forward to wait on her it was with some inward trepidation.
He advised her to choose plain square brass brackets which he thought much prettier than the ornate scrolled gilt ones which she seemed to prefer. She hesitated and then looked up at him.
“Well, if you think these are prettier, I’ll take them. Please have them sent around to the house this afternoon, for the plumbers are coming tomorrow.”
Jim, put at his ease by her deference to his taste, promised, and carried over the fixtures himself about three o’clock. Mrs. Johnson met him at the door. Jim, remembering the very stylish street costume she had worn that morning, was somewhat taken back by the sight of her none too clean wrapper, run over slippers, and hair loose down her back.
“Come in,” she invited, smiling and showing extremely pretty teeth. “If I’d known it was you who were coming I’d have fixed myself up. Take a seat,” she continued volubly, laughing as she removed some sewing from a chair. “I’m all alone.”
Jim deposited his hat and bundle on a table in the center of the room and seated himself. She drew another chair for herself very close to his.
“I expect I look the limit!” she exclaimed, leaning her head back and shaking her hair out in a rippling cascade over her shoulders. “I’ve been washing my hair.”
Jim glanced timidly at her wide opened pale blue eyes, smooth fair skin, pink cheeks, and the rounded arm which was displayed to advantage as she modestly held her wrapper together over a salient bosom. The sunlight fell on her blond hair which was really exquisite.
“I think you look beautiful,” said Jim impulsively, turning very red at his own temerity.
“I could almost kiss you for that,” she answered with another laugh. “Wait till I get you some beer to pay you for your compliment,” and she rose and went toward the kitchen, humming a tune as she disappeared.
Jim’s gaze followed her. Delia Johnson made a pleasant picture and Jim had missed the shallowness, indolence, and sensuality in her face and the incipient heaviness in her figure. As her yellow hair was lost to view through the doorway he gave a sigh.
She returned in a few minutes with a bottle of beer and two glasses.
“Good luck,” she chattered, laughing once more as she poured a glass for him and another for herself.
They clinked glasses and drank, Jim, who did not like the taste of beer, being careful not to make a wry face.
“Don’t you smoke, Mr. Sprague?” she asked when they had finished the beer.
Jim did not smoke, but in view of Delia’s eyes and the “Mr.” he answered, “Yes,” adding, “but I haven’t any cigars with me.”
“I’ll get you some cigarettes,” she offered, opening a drawer in the table. “I’ll have one too,” she went on with her inevitable laugh, as she removed a cigarette from the package before handing it to him.
They smoked a moment in silence, Delia inhaling her cigarette with evident pleasure.
“Are you a partner in your father’s business?” she inquired, at length, knocking the ash from her cigarette.
“No,” returned Jim hastily, “I’m only clerking for him. I’ve just finished high school.”
“How much does he pay you?” she pursued.
She was smiling at him bewitchingly and Jim put aside the crudeness of her questions.
“He don’t pay me anything,” he admitted honestly.
“That’s better,” she declared. “It shows that he intends to give you a share in the concern.”
Jim shook his head dubiously.
“I don’t know about that.”
“You’re his only child, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Of course he will,” she affirmed with emphasis, “and in time you’ll have it all. He’s rich, isn’t he?”
“Why, no,” began Jim.
“Pretty well fixed, anyway,” she put in laughing. “Well, there’s many that would like to be in your shoes, Mr. Sprague.”
Jim placed his half finished cigarette on the ash tray.
“Have some more beer?” she queried.
“No, thank you.”
“What’s your given name?” she demanded suddenly.
“James.” He was smiling now.
“Do they call you Jimmie?”
“No, Jim,” he replied, glancing at her hair.
“Then I’m going to call you Jim too.”
“All right, Mrs. Johnson, I’m—”
“You mean thing!” she interrupted. “I don’t believe you like me a bit!”
Jim looked surprised.
“Do you?” she insisted.
“Why, yes.” He studied her a moment, then, with increasing emphasis, “Of course I do. I like you fine.”
She reached over and touched his cheek lightly.
“Then you must call me Delia,” she stipulated, and added, “I like you, too, Jim, awfully well.”
He blushed and trembled a little at the caress.
“I—I must go,” he stammered, rising.
“Don’t be in such a hurry,” she pleaded. “Let’s talk a minute.”
Jim hesitated and then reseated himself. Delia moved her chair a little farther from him.
“Wasn’t that awful in the morning’s paper about their killing the strikers in Chicago?” She spoke in a more impersonal tone.
Jim drew a long breath.
“I think it’s terrible!” he exclaimed. “Those men have no other way of protesting against injustice than by striking.”
“The paper says they’re trying to wreck business.”
“They’re not any such thing!” he insisted. “They’re most of them fathers of families and dependent on their wages. It’s nonsense to suggest such things. What they want is enough to live on.”
“You aren’t an anarchist, are you?”
“No,” he disclaimed, “but I hate lies and hypocrisy, and that sheet” (pointing to the paper lying on the floor where Delia had dropped it) “is in the pay of the capitalists, and people read it and swallow any dope they hand out. This country will never progress till labor is represented in the capital at Washington and—and until things are reorganized on a basis of justice and equality,” he concluded rather lamely.
He was flushed and seemed somewhat startled by his own outburst.
“My, but you think a lot!” Delia applauded admiringly.
“It’s time men began to think,” resumed Jim, encouraged. “It’s the duty of citizens to think and act. The good men stay away from the polls and let things slide, and the bad element gets in its dirty work, and the poor suffer. When I’m old enough to vote I’m never going to miss—”
“Why, aren’t you twenty-one yet?” put in Delia.
Jim was abashed.
“I’m only seventeen past,” he admitted reluctantly.
“You look at least twenty-two or three,” she insisted.
Jim was pleased and grateful.
“And you understand things so well. I like to hear you explain them, but I can’t talk—only about women’s things.” Delia looked demure.
Jim, who as a rule talked little on any subject, was uncomfortable over having expressed himself so freely. Delia changed the subject again.
“Have you seen Will Bennett since his wife died?” she inquired.
“No,” replied Jim, relieved.
“I saw him yesterday on the street,” said she. “Did you go to the funeral?”
“No,” answered Jim again.
“He looked as chipper as a sparrow. That’s the way men are. The funeral was beautiful,” and Delia launched into a minute description of the obsequies, Jim listening attentively.
“I really must go,” he declared, at last, rising once more as she concluded, and extending his hand.
“Well, you must drop in again to see me,” she invited, holding his hand as she spoke. “I’ve enjoyed it immensely.”
“Thank you. So have I,” returned Jim.
She released him as he took his hat from the table, and followed him to the door.
“Don’t forget,” she smiled.
“I’ll not forget,” he smiled back.
When Jim returned to the store Mr. Sprague looked up from his ledger.
“It took you a long time to deliver those fixtures,” he grumbled.
“I—I didn’t come right back,” stammered Jim.
Mr. Sprague scrutinized his son’s flushed face.
“I should think you didn’t. Well, next time you come right back! Do you hear?”
Jim passed behind the counter without replying.
Jim remembered his promise to Delia. He thought of her almost constantly during his waking hours. The day following his visit he walked past her house. The plumbers were laying gas pipe from the street through the yard. He did not see Delia and went on.
“It’s too soon yet,” he said to himself.
The next day he passed the house again. The window shutters were all closed and he did not ring the bell, telling himself that Delia was not at home. He continued to pass the house once or twice every day, without asking for admittance, wondering each time if she were there, or if someone else were with her, or if she really meant that she wanted him to come again. He was amazed that such a beautiful woman had remained without remarrying. He had decided that the slurs cast on her reputation were unjust. She was too innocent-hearted and Bohemian. The narrow minded people who made up the population of the town could not understand her. Jim found her like the heroine of a French novel he had been reading. He dreamed about her at night.
About three o’clock in the afternoon, a week after his first visit, he passed her house as usual and saw no sign of life. He proceeded down the street and walked a block or two. Then he retraced his steps. As he came by the house again he heard someone call his name. Before he could decide what to do the curtains in a window were parted and Delia’s smiling face confronted him.
“Why don’t you come in, Jim?” she called.
He hesitated.
“Wait, and I’ll unlock the door,” she added, and, with a final smile, left the window.
Jim entered the gate, and had not crossed the small lawn when the door was opened.
“You mean thing! You wouldn’t have come in at all if I hadn’t called to you!” was her greeting.
“I thought you weren’t at home,” he explained.
“Well, let’s not talk about it,” she said, shutting the door. “You’re here anyway. I’ve been wondering what had become of you. I thought you had gone out of town. Sit down and tell me about yourself,” she invited, leading the way to the sitting room he remembered so well. “Here! Give me your hat. You’re at home here.”
Jim was surprised to feel himself suddenly at ease.
Delia chatted volubly, smiling and laughing, without giving him an opportunity to talk about himself. She produced a flattering atmosphere of dependence and admiration that led Jim unconsciously to assume the part of the conquering male.
“You didn’t really forget me, did you?” she asked, her ingratiating manner anticipating his reply.
“Not quite,” Jim told her with newfound assurance.
Delia gazed into his eyes a moment and came over to his chair and, bending down, put her cheek against his.
“You didn’t, did you, Jim?” she repeated in a whisper.
He drew her to him and kissed her on the mouth.
Delia was in a fresh wrapper, with her beautiful hair becomingly arranged, and a scent of violets clung about her. Jim was considerably surprised at his own passion.
“You naughty boy!” she cried, laughing. Then she sat on his knees and pulled his hair. Jim kissed her again.
This was the beginning of frequent visits which soon became daily.
“I see you’re hanging around that Johnson woman,” Jim’s father remarked one evening at supper.
Jim turned pale, then red, and poured himself some more tea without replying.
“You stay away from there. Do you hear?” the elder Sprague went on.
“I hear, but I’ll do as I see fit,” retorted Jim.
“You’ll do as I see fit, or I’ll know the reason why,” snapped his father.
“Father,” began Jim, “I’m old enough to—”
“Old enough be damned!” Mr. Sprague fairly roared. “You’re old enough to do what I tell you until you’re twenty-one years old, and that ain’t all—you’ll do what you’re told, if you expect to stay in my house!”
Jim rose and seized his hat.
“I don’t intend to have you running around with a bitch like that at your age,” continued the older man, as though closing the discussion.
“You have no right to call her that!” Jim’s eyes flamed as he faced his father excitedly.
“How do you know what right I’ve got?” asked Sprague unmoved.
“Be careful what you say,” Jim was pale with anger, his fists clenching.
Mr. Sprague looked at his son with interest. Jim felt very young and at a disadvantage. He turned to go.
“Just see that you remember what I said,” Sprague commanded, as the boy reached the door.
Jim went out without a word. He went straight to Delia’s house.
“Who is it?” a voice demanded, as he knocked, forgetting to ring the bell.
“It’s Jim,” he replied.
The sound of bare feet in the hall was heard, and Delia, unlocking the door, pulled at his sleeve.
“Come in, Jim,” she whispered.
Jim began to explain his errand as soon as they reached the sitting room.
“Delia, we must be married at once,” he announced.
She was yawning, but stopped to gaze at him curiously. Jim returned her regard steadily. He was in deadly earnest. Her eyes avoided him but he continued to observe her hungrily. Her wrapper had fallen open at the neck and the swell of her full white breasts showed. Her hair was in two long braids.
“Why, Jim, what’s the matter? We’re all right as we are.” She yawned again.
“Something has happened, Delia. I owe it—that is, it is best for us to be—” He fell back on his first declaration. “We must be married right away.”
Delia went up to him and put her arms around his neck. Her loose sleeves slid back. As he looked down on her he could see only her white arms and bosom.
“People know. I’ve got you talked about,” he said as she kissed him.
Delia laughed.
“I don’t care about that,” she assured him.
Jim was puzzled.
“Come and sit down, dearie,” she added, pushing him into a chair and seating herself on his knees.
“But, Delia—”
“We can’t get married now, Jim,” she said. “You haven’t anything to support us and if I marry I’ll lose all the money Johnson left me.”
Jim’s face showed his revulsion of feeling. Delia saw the change and clung to him.
“Let’s just love each other, Jim, and everything will come out all right.”
“But, Delia, I want to do what’s right and—”
She kissed him passionately. Jim felt a curious sense of drifting.
“Come on, dearie,” she whispered.
It was late when Jim left the house.
Mr. Sprague said nothing more to Jim on the subject of Delia, which circumstance disconcerted and worried the boy more than he was willing to admit to himself.
He tried to consider the matter calmly but his thoughts seemed to dissolve in a mist of beautiful hair, wide opened blue eyes, and white arms and bosom.
“She is right,” he told himself. “We can’t marry now, and we love each other so much that we must be all in all to each other.”
However, his conscience made him very miserable. He felt that one who had no religion should be morally strong. With all this he continued to go to Delia’s house.
He did not understand why she designated certain evenings for his visits and forbade him to come on others. One evening, rather late, feeling very lonely and very much in love, he turned his steps toward her house, notwithstanding the fact that it was a proscribed day.
He had nearly reached the gate when a man emerged from the doorway, and Jim, halting beneath one of the large trees that shaded the sidewalk, recognized his father.
His first feeling was of anger that he was being spied upon, but this turned to amazement and cold rage as Delia called Sprague back and, through the half closed door, kissed him, straightening his hat which she had knocked awry, calling, “Good night, dearie,” as he went off.
Jim watched his father disappear, and, after a moment’s hesitation, walked away with rapid strides. He sought his home when it was daybreak.
The old standards by which Jim had measured values were of no more use to him.