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Title: Common sense
Author: Helen R. Hull
Illustrator: William Percy Couse
Release date: October 16, 2026 [eBook #79807]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Harper & Brothers, 1923
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79807
Credits: Jens Sadowski. This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMMON SENSE ***
Common Sense
Helen R. Hull
Illustrations: W. P. Couse
Harper’s Magazine, vol. 148, Dec. 1923, pp. 97-108.
“Thirteen gross large, seventeen small.” Sheldon Thorpe set down the
figures opposite _Stork safety pins_ at the end of the long typed list.
“Straighten up those boxes, Red.” He pushed the green eyeshade up his
forehead, moistened a finger, and flipped over the sheet. “That’s all
now but the toys.” He glanced down the long aisle, honeycombed with
booths; the eyeshade laid a sallow band across his patient, spectacled
face.
“Toys aren’t as bad as these flim-flams.” The boy climbed down the
step-ladder, rattled it together under his arm, and strode ahead of
Sheldon. “Needles and pins and darning cotton and—pshaw!” He spat
vigorously as he rounded the end of the aisle. Sheldon reached up to the
light in its wire shield, snapped it off, and followed. At the far end
of the basement gleamed another light. He saw it as he turned, and went
meekly back to snap it off. Have to be careful about such items. Red was
whistling and banging up there in the toy booth. Well, toys weren’t so
thick in a June inventory. Take Christmas now—
“This cheap stuff for kids is sure a crime.” Red stuck a doll back into
its box, and pawed behind the first layer of boxes. “Only nine of these
X277. Got them in just last week, too.”
“Nine X277. Good seller. What’yuh mean, crime?” Sheldon held his blue
pencil firmly in the column.
“Five gross sketch books, B83. Crime to give kids such ugly stuff. Cheap
and ugly. American made.”
“Sells all right. They must like it. How many B84?”
“Sells!” Red clattered the short step-ladder into position and mounted
it. “That’s all you think of. Twenty-eight—no, twenty-nine gross. Well,
I’m through, you bet.” He stretched an arm into the next booth, his
curly bright head shining under the ceiling light.
The next fifteen minutes they worked in swift silence, save for the
announcement and repetition of figures. Then Sheldon folded together the
thin sheets, clipped them, and brought his fist down on them.
“That’s done. Now I can work out the statements to-morrow. Say, Red, why
don’t you stay on? If I get moved to a bigger store I’d take you along.
We work pretty good together.”
“Me stay?” Red’s eyes, very blue under their sandy lashes, were round
with derision. “To-morrow night I’m a free man. I got cash enough for my
fare to the coast, and a job on a sheep boat out of Baltimore.”
Sheldon sat down on a box, staring up at the thin, gangling figure
lounging against the ladder.
“You could work up, you know.” The green shade with its sallow
reflection distorted his face.
“God! What to? You sound like a mother. Keep a steady job, my boy, and
work hard. I’m going to Paris, I tell you. That’s the only place for an
artist. And I’m going right now, before I lose my nerve and begin to
worry for fear I won’t be able to line my belly.”
The narrow aisle, reaching back the length of the basement, bandied his
words back and forth in the silence. At a footstep overhead Sheldon
started, peering nervously up. It was outside, on the street; some late
passerby. The basement ran out under the walk.
“How old are you?” Sheldon’s hands dropped over his knees, long, thin,
with prominent knuckles, white under the grime of stock-handling.
“Eighteen.” Red straightened his shoulders. “Time I was getting down to
real work. That night stuff at Chicago was good, but I want better than
that. Real artists. I just stopped off here to see my folks and earn a
wad to take me farther.”
“I went to work when I was fourteen,” said Sheldon. “In a grocery
store.” He stared at his hands; they looked limp, sick, something apart
from him. “I used to play the violin, nights. You get over those ideas.”
“I don’t,” said Red. “Folks want you to. Like I said—keep a steady job
and settle down. That’s what they tell you. Say—” he leaned forward—“you
don’t like this, do you?”
Sheldon lifted his head. His knees drew up slightly, as if his whole
body made a horrible contraction, a wrenching of rejection. Round him
flowed a faint odor, damp, dusty, of cardboard, paint, tin, caught there
in the cellar, and holding him.
“Naw, you hate it. I’ve seen you.” Red nodded wisely. “What d’you stick
it for?”
“I’ve been sticking it for more than twenty years.” There was something
breaking in Sheldon, pulling apart like the strands of rotten rope. He
liked Red—liked his funny, crackling voice; his thin, awkward body
moving about; his impudent, casual ways. Red was going away. “You’re
young.” He tried to hold those rotten, fraying ends together. “You don’t
know yet.”
“Mebbe I don’t know everything.” There was in the strong thrust of Red’s
chin, a stubbornness not of youth nor of age. “I know a thing or two.
I’ve been good and hungry. That’s one thing. I’ve been crazy about a
girl. That’s another. I know I won’t stick at a job I hate. I know I got
to find out more about the way of putting down what I see. Look at you,
there! You’re a bunch of limp triangles, all sprawling out with their
apexes smashed together in your solar plexus, and that green light
dripping on your face. I could paint that, and that shadow behind you,
full of green. It would say something, I tell you. It’d say whether you
liked sticking your job. It’d be more than you, too. It’d be all the
other poor guys sticking jobs. But I couldn’t get that green now. Like
water, only thicker.”
“I don’t see any green behind me.” Sheldon sounded irritated; he pulled
the eyeshade up from his head and dangled it over a finger.
“You’d see it if I painted it. I can’t tell it to you.”
“Now that’s funny.” Sheldon’s foot crunched on a bit of excelsior from a
packing box, and he stooped mechanically to pick it up. “I remember I
used to think that way about a violin. There would be a way of saying
things.” His fingers twisted the shaving.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Why?” Sheldon threw aside the excelsior. The frayed rope had parted,
the rope which bound him silent and humble. “I’ll tell you! You think
all you got to do is go ahead and do what you want to. You can’t do what
you want to. My mother hated music. Hated the sight of a violin. She
thought it was an excuse to stay out late at night. A devil snare. My
father—he used to play. I never heard him. He ran away when I was a
baby. Left my mother without a cent. She worked—washing, sewing, nursing
sick folks. Then one day she got word he was dead in Texas. She had to
borrow the money to send for him and bury him. That’s what doing what he
wanted to did for him and us. I went to work then. ‘Keep my boy from
being like his father!’ I’d hear her praying that at night.” Sheldon
stopped; against his eyelids he saw, instead of Red, instead of the
shadowy, silent store, a half-opened door, a woman kneeling beside a
cot, face turned up so that the cords in her thin neck stood out, and
her voice—heavy with anguish—“Oh, Lord, make Sheldon a good boy.
Faithful, sober, hard working. Spare him. Keep him from the evil ways of
his father.”
“So I plugged away,” he went on, slowly. “I thought if I hated what I
had to do, that was a sign I was wicked. It would have seemed sinful to
do what you liked. So I worked up—to this. When I’d feel half crazy, as
if I couldn’t stand it—she’d say I was bilious. My wife, too. She makes
me take calomel. Calomel!” Sheldon laughed, and the booths along the
aisle took his laugh and knocked it back and forth like a grisly toy.
“When my head is full of wild notions. I think how if I set a match to
this excelsior and sat here while it burned? Or I think how I could run
through the store and knock the women’s heads together where they’re
pawing over pieces of me. That’s what it is, all this stuff. Spools and
jumping jacks and knives and kettle covers. Me, scattered around in a
million things. I ain’t anywhere else. I can’t stand it! Calomel!” He
stopped; his thin lips seemed to stick together, dry and hot; he could
feel cold sweat dripping down his chest. And there was Red, listening to
him.
“Whee—oo!” Red thrust his hands into the pockets of his overalls. “Say,
I didn’t know it was that bad! I thought you were just sorta fed up and
sore on it all, needed a vacation.”
“I ought not to talk this way to you.” Sheldon’s misery looked deeply
out of his tired, sunken eyes. “But you’re different, somehow. And now
you’re going off. I’d be all right, you know, if I didn’t think. If I
could stop thinking. There’s me, working around, steady, and then
there’s another fellow, thinking, like a clock in my stomach what won’t
stop ticking. Lately the thinking’s getting the best of me. And here on
Wednesday this man’s coming, Clinton. Firm representative. To look
things over, and if they’re o. k., to offer me a better job. Another
store. More things.”
“Turn him down, old boy.” Red’s voice was rough and friendly.
“I got to go on. There’s my wife, Carrie, and the little girl.”
[Illustration: “I KNOW I WON’T STICK AT A JOB I HATE.”]
“Turn him down and find something you want to do. God, you don’t want to
go clean bughouse, do you?”
“What do I want to do?” Sheldon flung out his hands emptily. “This is
all I’m good for. And I ain’t good for this.”
“Selling jimcracks isn’t all the world,” said Red. “Take a look round.”
“There’s another thing.” Sheldon leaned forward, his shoulders hunched.
“I been looking at things, thinking. I had a notion—sorta nightmare, I
guess—as if I tiptoed along past the sideshows in a circus. You know,
the painted curtains they have to show what’s in the sideshow tent? Only
the tents are all empty. That’s the joke. Empty. There are the curtains,
bright pictures of what’s in the tent. When you peek in, nothing there.
Love, that’s one sideshow. Being respectable. What the neighbors think.
Common sense. Holding your job. Making money. Nothing behind, only folks
don’t know it. Mebbe painting pictures is another.”
“Mebbe it isn’t.” Red stood up, stretching. “I tell you.” He laid his
hand firmly on Sheldon’s shoulder. “You come along with me. That’s the
ticket! Take a year off. Look around. We—you and me get on fine. I’d
like a fellow along to speak English to. Beat it. Will you, huh?” He
slapped his thigh resoundingly. “Now there you got it. To-morrow night.
You could get a job on that sheep boat. Oo-la-la! Find a sideshow that
isn’t empty. Say, old boy, will you?”
Sheldon sat rigid. He felt Red’s wiry, hard enthusiasm boring into his
emptiness, gathering together the scattered bits of self.
[Illustration: “CARRIE, I WANT TO GO AWAY. I’VE GOT TO GO. OR GO
CRAZY.”]
“That’s—” he ran his tongue over his dry lips. “That’s what my father
did. Ran off.” Within him there went on a complete sundering of
himself—the Sheldon Thorpe who worked along, diligent, silent—and that
other feverish, thinking self. “I couldn’t do that.” The old Sheldon was
shrinking into a crumb. “I’ve got money enough to leave for Carrie. I
could tell her I was going.”
“That’d spill the beans,” declared Red, scornfully. “No skirt’ll let go
of a man for a year.”
Sheldon got to his feet. The floor came up in lurches to meet him, as if
he were drunk.
“I’ll not ask her. I’ll tell her I’m going, before I go crazy. It’s too
late for me to try the violin.” He held his hands out, shaking. “They’re
used up on packing boxes and figures—stiff; but there might be something
else—something a fellow could be interested in—”
“Sure there is!” Red clapped his shoulder. “Only—” he was doubtful. “If
you tell her she’ll keep you.”
“No!” Sheldon’s voice was a shout. “I won’t sneak off. Here.” He reached
into his pocket, fumbled with a wallet. “Here, you get me a ticket.” He
watched, not breathing, until Red had folded the bill and slipped it
behind his watch. “Now come on.” He stumbled over the filing board with
the sheets of figures, kicked at it, and strode down the aisle, Red at
his heels.
Outside the store he stopped automatically, tried the nightlock, and
peered through the draperies of embroidery in the window to see that the
office light still burned. Red watched him curiously, his cap twirling
in his fingers. Sheldon turned; his feet were steady enough now.
“You’d like me to go with you?”
“Sure as blazes!” Red tossed up his cap, ducked to catch it on his head,
reached out his hand for a quick handshake, and swung off down the
street.
[Illustration: “GIVING AN IMITATION OF A HARD-WORKING MAN, EH?”]
Sheldon set forth in the opposite direction. He would walk home, even if
it was late. He left the business street for dimly lighted side streets.
Never had he walked like this, head up, chest high; he could feel the
darkness fall aside in smooth waves, and his thoughts, random, inchoate,
bits of the old Sheldon, bits of the strange new Sheldon, spreading
behind him in a long wake. Only last night, as he had walked, he had
thought but one thought, over and over: I wish I was dead. I wish I
could die. And to-night!
He stopped a moment on the bridge across the river. He should think
about Carrie and what he should say to her. Under him the dark water
moved softly, and along the bank was the faint cheep of insects. There
at the bend of the river he caught the swift reflection of a star. He
went on more slowly.
River Park Addition. His house was down here. Funny, how wound up and
twisted into one another things in life were. Six—no, seven—years ago
this summer a real estate agent had plotted off this land and made a big
sale. Sheldon’s mother liked the advertisements. She and Sheldon had
walked from the car line through the newly laid streets one Sunday, and
Sheldon had pulled off the ticket on lot ten. That meant he claimed the
lot. He had gone, the following noon, to the agent’s office. Carrie was
there, behind the desk, with smooth black hair and blue eyes. She seemed
to take a fancy to him. And his mother liked her. Demure and friendly.
Sheldon grimaced in the dark. He knew now. Another empty sideshow.
Carrie wanted a husband, and a home. She was tired of working in an
office. Well—maybe that was what women wanted. She had been good to his
mother. Planning the house with her, taking care of her when she was
sick. “Carrie’s a wonderful wife, Sheldon,” his mother had said. “Be
sure you deserve her,” just before she died.
And the little girl, Marjory—a quiet, docile child. Sheldon thought
sometimes that she liked him, but Carrie “wouldn’t have her spoiled.”
Yes, Carrie was a good wife, a good mother. She didn’t want any more
children.
Perhaps, after all—the leaves from the poplars of his own street
whistled under his feet; the dry spring was making them fall early.
Perhaps it would be better, as Red said, not to speak to Carrie. She had
so many ambitions: a bigger house, a car, a servant. “I’ve got to tell
her,” said Sheldon. “I can’t sneak off.”
* * * * *
Carrie was sewing, sitting close to the piano lamp with its new
varnished parchment shade. She looked up, moistening an end of thread on
her tongue, a series of regular high lights on her waved hair. Sheldon
felt uncomfortable whenever he looked at those waves. Carrie had saved
up for months the money for what she called a “permanent,” and she
hadn’t cared for his confession that he thought smooth hair prettier.
“My! you’re late,” she said. Often her voice had little undertones of
implications, even when her words were simple.
“Yes.” Sheldon hesitated. He could talk better standing up—but he could
lead up better if he sat down, maybe. He started toward the wing chair,
but Carrie spoke quickly.
“You’re probably all dust from your basement. Sit down there—” She
pointed at a little imitation Windsor chair. “I cleaned every bit of the
stuffed furniture to-day with the vacuum cleaner.”
Sheldon sat down.
“Well?” She looked up from her sewing. “You might tell me about the
reports. Are they good? Good enough to show Mr. Clinton?”
“I haven’t made them out.” Sheldon looked at his hands, spread on his
knees. “We just finished the inventory.”
“My! it takes you a long time, doesn’t it?” She was whipping lace in
place on a dress for Marjory, with brisk, snapping motions. “But you
know it’s been a good year, anyway. Clinton must do something for you.
He hinted he would.”
“I don’t want him to.” Sheldon drew one hand across his forehead, and
stared at it, expecting to see it glisten with cold sweat. “Carrie, I
want to go away. For a year. I—I’ve got to go. Or go crazy. I’ve got a
chance....”
Carrie dropped her sewing into her lap, her hands shut firmly on it; and
Sheldon, even in the intensity of his absorption, saw with a flicker of
alarm, that she was not surprised. She looked at him, her eyes as
expressionless as blue china, her wide, thin mouth shut firmly.
“I wasn’t meant for a storekeeper,” Sheldon hurried on. “I can’t stand
it. If I don’t go away, I’ll smash, that’s all. There’s money enough in
the bank for you for a year.”
“Where”—her voice was quiet—“are you planning to go, if I may ask?”
“I want a chance to look round, to see what I might do.” No use to
explain more to Carrie. He had just to go.
“You mean you have nothing in view? Nobody’s made you a grand offer, I
suppose?”
“Nobody’s made me any offer.” Sheldon drew a long breath. “But I have
things in view.”
“Just when you begin to make a decent salary for your family, when you
are going to have a bigger store offered to you, with all it means, you
think you can throw it over. Where _is_ your common sense? You must be
crazy!”
“I shall be, I tell you.” Sheldon shivered. What was there so formidable
in the lack of surprise in Carrie’s face? He had expected to find her
impregnable, just because she was Carrie; but she seemed to be saying to
herself, “I told you so!” She seemed to have lain in wait for him, traps
set, guns trained, as if she had known that he would come home with
these words, as if she had even seen him peering into the emptiness
behind the sideshow placards. “I tell you I can’t endure it any longer.
I’m going away, to look....”
“Just like your father.” Carrie folded her hands primly in her lap.
“Your mother warned me. I’ve felt it coming. The way you’ve sneered at
me. Picking at your food, and not eating. Sheldon, I won’t allow you to
disgrace yourself and your family.” Her voice was unwaveringly clear. “I
shall save you from yourself. Have you no ambition, no decency? Think of
your innocent child.”
“Ambition?” Sheldon felt his heart thundering against walls of ice. “To
make more money? No! I have an ambition, to find—to find myself. To find
something I can do, where I won’t wish I was dead every hour in the day.
I’ve been brought up to hate my father, sneaking off in the night and
leaving a woman with a baby. Maybe he couldn’t help himself. I’m telling
you I’ve got to go.”
[Illustration: IF HE NEVER CAME BACK WOULD CARRIE TEACH HER TO HATE
HIM?]
“Couldn’t help himself? If you aren’t wicked and weak you can help
yourself.” In each of Carrie’s cheeks, just under the prominent
cheekbones, flared a spot of crimson. “Perhaps you think I like what I
have to do, day after day. I haven’t complained, have I? I know my duty,
and I do it, I hope.”
“Do you hate it, day after day?” Sheldon stared at her, trying to fit
that idea into place. “You don’t wish you could die?”
“I’m not as wicked as that. Nobody likes what he has to do to get along.
Here I gave up a good position to be your wife, and I’ve been as good a
wife as I could.”
“Well, there!” Sheldon was suddenly triumphant. “That’s easy! You could
get your job back again, while I....”
“For heaven’s sake!” Carrie’s voice was almost shrill, but it dropped
immediately into its controlled level. “Announce myself to the world as
a deserted wife? Sheldon, what are you thinking of?”
“There’s money enough without that. For at least a year.”
“What do you suppose I’ve been working for? So that you could get ahead.
No man has ever had so much encouragement. First your mother, and then
me. You can’t do anything else. You’re too old to tackle a new kind of
work, and anyway, you’d get tired of that too. It isn’t,” she added,
with an undertone of sharp malice, “as if you were a genius. You have to
plod along to get anywhere.”
“You don’t know what I might have been,” cried out Sheldon, “if I’d ever
had a chance!”
“I know it’s taken you a long time to get where you can earn enough
money to support your family decently.”
“And you’d have me go on sticking it”—Red’s phrase came back—“so I can
buy you more stuffed furniture too good for me to sit on, and more—”
“Most men take some pride in what they can buy for their wives.”
“Even when I tell you I’m going mad—that I may kill myself—”
“Sheldon, you’re all tired out.” Carrie rose quietly and stood beside
him. “You come to bed. It’s only when you’re overworked that this weak
strain in you comes out. You better ask Doctor Riley for a tonic.
Something to brace you up.” She laid her hand on his shoulder.
[Illustration: HIS HAND TOUCHED THE LATCH OF THE SCREEN DOOR.]
Sheldon shut his eyes a moment. He thought her fingers crept up to his
throat, closed about it, choking him. Cautiously he lifted his lids—no,
he could see her fingers, lying softly there on his shoulder.
“I can’t take a new store, a larger one. I’ll fizzle it.”
“Nonsense.” She brushed away his words with a light gesture. “Come on to
bed. I’ve said all I’m going to. But you’ll take the store Clinton
offers you, and do well. We won’t even discuss it any more. In the
morning you’ll have more common sense.”
Sheldon stumbled to his feet and crossed to the dark bedroom. As he
heard Carrie lock the front door and snap out the light, he laughed. She
hadn’t fooled him! Back of that calm blue gaze of hers, she was worried.
She wasn’t sure. Talk! God, he didn’t want to talk any more. He’d said
all he meant to say. He’d warned her. He laughed again.
* * * * *
He was still laughing, inside, at breakfast the next morning, a mocking,
chittering laughter, like a flock of witless birds. Carrie, in fresh
blue gingham, pouring the coffee, bidding Marjory to tell her Daddy all
about the nice walk they had taken along the river; Marjory, her solemn
little voice running on and on. When he left the house, Marjory was
sweeping the poplar leaves away from the sidewalk with her ridiculous
red-handled broom. Stock number G582, mumbled Sheldon. He watched her a
moment. The slender neck, cream white, with a delicate hollow, under
cropped dark hair, stopped the chittering laughter. It began again as he
walked along, with the thought of Carrie hurrying into the bedroom where
he was looking for a clean collar. To see if he had taken any of his
clothes! He hadn’t. Wouldn’t need them, on a sheep vessel.
* * * * *
The long morning held a brief encounter with Red; Sheldon had followed
him down to the basement. Red held up a strip of green ticket.
“Still want it?” he grinned.
“Yes.” Sheldon touched it. “You keep it. I’ll meet you at the train.”
“Nine-ten she goes.” Red stuck the ticket away in a pocket. “Say, this
afternoon I got to leave early. My folks—and there’s a girl I got to
see. You don’t mind? So long as we’re both skipping.”
Sheldon knew he wanted Red there, every minute until he could lock the
front door of the store behind him. But he nodded. As he climbed the
stairs he heard Red’s loud whistle retreating behind the stock shelves.
He would figure up the reports. Might as well leave things all clear. He
worked steadily into the afternoon. Overhead, loss, sales. The figures
crawled like insects under his eyes. From his office, slightly elevated
at the rear of the store, he could gaze out over this fantastic
representation of his past life. It’s all right, he thought, if you
don’t look at it too hard. Take the matter of loss on goods, now. How
serious he had been, teaching the feather-brained clerks to keep their
goods fresh, not to let papers get wrinkled, or embroideries mussed.
Those crêpe paper decorations on the walls—he’d worked like a fool to
get them hung. And _what for_? A violent gesture of his hand sent a blot
sprawling over his neat page, and he reached mechanically for a bottle
of ink eradicator. The old Sheldon had taken all that seriously enough.
It was all right, so long as you didn’t begin to think.
“Well, well, how’s the chief administrator?” The loud, cheerful voice
was a hook, plucking him forcibly out of his circling thoughts. Mr.
Clinton leaned over the railing of the office, his hand extended, his
prominent blue eyes assaulting Sheldon. “Giving an imitation of a
hard-working man, eh?” His smile pulled his full lips back from uneven,
small teeth. “Didn’t expect me till to-morrow, I know. I got through
early at Fenton, and burned up the road a little between here and
there.”
Sheldon was mumbling something, shaking hands, shifting chairs to make
room for Clinton.
“I’m not ready for you,” he said. His thoughts were frightened minnows,
darting about. It wouldn’t make any difference, Clinton’s coming to-day.
Carrie wouldn’t know he was in town. Sheldon could stay late at the
store as he had planned. Clinton needn’t suspect. Damn the man, why
hadn’t he waited until Wednesday! “Been figuring the turnover.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Clinton lounged easily in the chair, knees crossed, a
neat clocked-silk ankle swinging. “The firm knows what it’s got in you.
Mere matter of form, asking you for reports now, you know.”
As he went on Sheldon listened to his deep, over-cheerful tones, and
watched the startled minnows darting. “It’s his silk shirts I hate, and
his eyes popping out of his head. His patronizing ways—well, my little
fellow, see how smart I am. Like to tell him—his eyes would stick out
some if I said I didn’t give a tinker’s damn for the whole
shooting-match.”
“So there’re these two stores in Class A,” Clinton was finishing, “both
in need of a good steady hand to jerk them up. One in Indiana, one in
Wisconsin. Which would you like to try? The firm believes in your
ability to take hold and pull them up. We haven’t got the business from
them they’re capable of. It’s the steady, quiet fellow like you that
makes the fine manager.”
“You better let me think it over.” “He expects me to look grateful and
impressed,” thought Sheldon, while an echo of the chittering laughter of
the morning rattled in his head. “To-morrow I can give you an answer.”
“That’s right. Talk it over with the wife, eh?” Clinton rose. “Then
there’s the matter of a little stock. You’ll have a fine bonus, and the
company likes its managers of Class A stores to hold enough stock so
they have a feeling of belonging to the firm. Not much is available. I
could arrange that for you. Well, I’ll look around a little. Don’t
bother to come.” He strolled off, his tall, thin body swaggering a
little, his protruding blue eyes searching out the pretty faces behind
the counters.
“Belonging to the firm!” Sheldon’s fists closed on the papers littering
his desk. “I’ll show ’em. Steady, quiet—bah! Be a good little boy, and
see what we’ll give you.”
He was crouched over the desk, his face stubborn and white, when a voice
at his elbow whanged into him. He lifted his head, to see Carrie, an
effect of restraint fluttering over her features, even over her silk
dress and flowered hat, and behind her, his Panama balanced on a finger,
Clinton.
“Isn’t this nice, Sheldon,” said Carrie. “Mr. Clinton says he can take
dinner with us. So lucky I dropped in. I came to rescue my poor husband,
Mr. Clinton. He works too hard for your old firm.” She pouted
ingratiatingly up at Clinton. “He said he wasn’t coming home till just
awful late, so I came down to insist. A chicken in the fireless cooker.
And now you’ll take potluck with us—”
“I’m not through here.” Sheldon eyed Carrie grimly. That demure, shy
fluttering of hers was a great bluff. He knew why she had come.
“No hurry about this work now, old man.” Clinton lounged beside Carrie.
“Or is he such a demon for work that he can’t join us in celebrating his
promotion, Mrs. Thorpe?”
That shook Carrie’s demureness for an instant. Her eyes leaped to
Sheldon’s face, hard, full of warning, of triumph.
“You’ve got it?” She turned to Clinton, her hands, neat and small in
silk gloves, pressed imploringly together. “Tell me about it!”
“If you’ll excuse me a minute.” Sheldon swung the gate open. “Just sit
down in here, both of you.” He had heard the banging of the cash
registers, which indicated that Miss Wilck, the floorwalker, was making
her evening rounds. Time to lock the doors. The long, sultry day was
over. He stood at the front door, to allow the few dallying customers to
depart. Sudden bustling animation behind the counters: goods jerked into
order, noses being powdered, a chattering renewal of life at the
prospect of escape. “Good-night, Mr. Thorpe. Good-night. Good-night.”
And back there in the office, those two. Suppose he walked out with the
clerks, down the street. He had a vision of himself skulking in alleys
behind the stores, hiding, and Carrie in pursuit. Where could he go
until that train was due?
Miss Wilck pressed into his hand the striped canvas money bag. He had to
put that into the safe. He didn’t intend to run off as a thief. The
store was empty now, silent, except for the two in the office. Carrie
had a queer laugh, he thought. Pitched too high.
No escaping them at this point. He would have to go home with them.
Plenty of time before the train, anyway.
* * * * *
“Pretty snug, eh?” Clinton settled himself behind the wheel in his
roadster. Carrie giggled softly. She was peering about, hoping, Sheldon
knew, for a glimpse of some one who would recognize her in the shining
red car. The touch of her light silk made his skin crawl sluggishly.
“So good of you to spare us an evening,” she was saying.
“Think of me having a chance at dinner in a home.” Clinton swung out
from the curb. “Home cooking! I want to get my teeth in that chicken you
were talking about. Now tell me where I turn. Let’s not get pinched for
speeding, heh?”
“Isn’t this an elegant car, Sheldon?” Carrie’s ears were pink under the
ripple of waved hair. “It rides so easy.”
Sheldon twisted his hand away from contact with her dress. This was what
Carrie liked. She should have married some one like Clinton. What kind
of wife did Clinton have?
Carrie thought she had him now, wedged in that seat, dragged home to
dinner, committed definitely. Nine-ten, Red had said. Not three hours
away. He’d have to make a bolt for it.
A nice little home dinner. Carrie spread her best linen, unrolled her
best silver from its cotton-wool wrapping, made little darts to the door
of the living room to cry out, “You’ll starve, I’m afraid! But I’m
hustling.” Marjory came home from the neighbor’s, stood shy and
unwilling while Mr. Clinton tried to coax her onto his knee, stared
round-eyed at his hearty, “Not old enough yet for that, eh?” and
disappeared for her supper. “Will you see that she’s in bed all right,
Sheldon?” Carrie called to him.
Sheldon was thankful to escape the grind of talk with the guest. He
stood beside Marjory’s cot. She wanted him to make a bow of the wispy
red ribbon about the neck of her fuzzy gray dog. How little she was! He
fumbled with the ribbon. If he never came back would Carrie teach her to
hate him? But he meant to come back. He wasn’t deserting them. Just
taking a little time to look round.
“Nice daddy!” Marjory flung her arms round his neck.
“Little pipestems.” Sheldon touched her wrists gently, and patted the
sheet into place under her chin. “You ought to get fatter.”
He glanced back from the door. Funny little tyke, so solemn. “Think of
your innocent child,” said Carrie. He wasn’t doing her any good, just
sticking. If he could find something, could amount to something, then he
might.
* * * * *
Carrie manœuvered an aside as she carried the platter of chicken to the
table.
“For heaven’s sake, brace up! You make me ashamed, the way you act!”
Brace up, when all his being leaned perilously toward that nine-ten
train, when time—two hours now—had grown more tangible than space, and
he moved through it heavily, like a winded runner.
Clinton was spinning an interminable yarn about his first job with the
firm, and Carrie listened, poised in admiring attention. Why couldn’t
they eat and get through? He knocked a spoon to the floor and bent
clumsily to reach for it, trying to extract his watch far enough to read
the face. Eight. He’d have to allow a half hour from the house. No way
to get a taxi down here. He couldn’t run through the streets; someone
would see him. That meant forty minutes left. Forty—what was Carrie
saying?
“I suppose you never get discouraged, do you?” Her voice blurred into
undertones of meaning. “Tired of your work?”
“A man can’t allow that if he’s going to get ahead, you know.” Clinton
was masterful, assured. “The game’s to the fellow that goes straight
after what he wants, with lots of pep, forges ahead to success. That’s
the American business man. He isn’t tired. Discouragement belongs to the
fellows that keep park benches warm. The Go-Getter! He’s the man.”
“It’s just a matter of will, isn’t it?” Carrie’s glance pecked swiftly
at Sheldon as she rose to clear away the salad course.
“That’s the idea. Will and brains and pep. You’re a wonderful cook, Mrs.
Thorpe, if I may say so.”
Dessert and coffee. Sheldon’s tongue was swollen and thick, until he
felt that another mouthful would choke him. Would they never finish? He
couldn’t bolt away from the table, when Carrie was so pleased about her
dinner—humiliating her. Unbelievable, to be held fast by a web as frail
as that—just manners. But he couldn’t go. If he didn’t make that train,
if Red went without him, he knew, suddenly, that he would never go. It
was Red’s fire that had touched him into action.
“I wondered,” Carrie was saying, “if I might suggest—” she deprecated
astutely her daring in offering a suggestion to the great Mr. Clinton—“a
little vacation before Sheldon goes to the new store? He’s been working
very hard.”
“Fine! Much better than interrupting the work there later in the summer.
A little fishing trip. Or a motor trip—but you haven’t bought your car
yet, have you? Well—”
Vacation! Suppose he got up and said, “Keep your damned store. I’m
through. I’m leaving.” He couldn’t move his thick tongue. They were all
rising, now, going into the living room. Carrie had his box of cigars.
“No matches? Sheldon, dear—”
He plunged into the kitchen. The back door—if he had his hat. Could he
start for Europe without a hat? His hand touched the latch of the screen
door, jerked violently back at the sound of a step—Carrie, coming
through the dining room.
“Mr. Clinton’s going to take us for a little drive, Sheldon. I’m going
over to ask Mrs. Purdy to sit here with Marjory till we get back.”
She hurried past him, out of the door. He saw her pass the band of light
from the living-room windows, saw her outlined in the rectangle of
yellow from the Purdy’s side door. She could see him if he ran out. He
had to find Red! He’d wait till she came back, then dodge. Perhaps
they’d chase him in that red car. But he might make it. She was
laughing, the high, thin sound coming across the shadowy lawn. At last
she turned and hurried back. Sheldon drew out his watch. Time, that
dreary, lengthy track down which he had been running, spent and
thick-tongued, had come to an end. Round and round jerked the tiny
second-hand. Nine-ten, nine-eleven. Red had gone. Gone.
Carrie was at his side, catching his elbow in her hand.
“She’s coming right over. Sheldon, isn’t it splendid! Now come on, and
do cheer up!”
Transcriber’s Notes
Transcribed from Harper’s Magazine, vol. 148, Dec. 1923, pp. 97-108.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public
domain.
The original spelling and punctuation were mostly preserved.
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