Chapter XII: Moxey's Sister

"You'll stand up with me, won't you?" Moxey asked, a bit anxiously.

"Sure, of course," said Al.

"It's at night, and"--here was to be at least one wedding where the groom was no lay figure--"dress suits de rigger, understand."

"Sure, of course," Al assented impatiently. Did Moxey think he didn't know anything?

"We ain't going to tell the old folks for a couple of weeks to save hard feelings on both sides, that's our motto. And the kids is to be Catholics, she stood pat on that."

"Sure, of course, what did you expect 'em to be, kikes?" Perhaps Al spoke a trifle too explicitly, for Moxey flushed as he frequently did. It was his last remaining signal to the world that his hide wasn't as tough as he pretended.

"I ain't marr'in' her just because she's a peach," Moxey rhapsodized, "but she is. Wait till you see her and I'll leave it to you. But she's got principle, too. Her uncle killed a fellow for wronging his daughter and Aggie says he done right, if he is still doing time in the old country. Oh, there's plenty of principle in dagoes, you can say what you like. When you go foolin' around their women you gotta take a chance."

It was as if Moxey had pressed a bell in his friend's mind and opened a chamber there, where vague shapes appeared and suspicion had been gathering. For Al had observed Georgia's mysteries and evasions, her care before her mirror, her new hats and pretty ribbons, her day-long Sunday absences. Twice he had met her on the street, walking and chatting most gayly with some strange man. Besides his mother had plainly hinted that all might not be right.

"What do you think a fellow ought to do if a man's after his sister?" Al asked slowly. "This unwritten law thing don't seem to work any more except down South."

"You can't lay down no rule," said Moxey. "Depends on if you like your sister."

"If you do?"

"Then go the limit and take a chance with your jury." He paused and great shame came to his cheeks again. "I had a sister, oncet ... and she, well y' understand.... I sometimes thought I oughta of killed him ... but I never did ... I kept askin' myself 'what's the good of killing him now? Becky's done for anyhow, and it'd just do for me, too.' ... The time to look out for a girl is beforehand, not afterwards."

There was no doubt about that, especially in theory. But Al contemplated somewhat dubiously the task of safeguarding Georgia. She was so blamed independent. She might say he was impertinent, or she might just laugh at him. She was fairly certain, at all events, not to acquiesce readily in any watch and ward policy which he might seek to institute for her benefit. Still--in a well conducted family the men were supposed to look out for the women and keep the breath of dishonor from them. He was the man of the family now, if he was only eighteen, and so it was up to him to find out if Georgia was in danger, and if she was, to get her out of it _beforehand_.

"I seen your sister once," remarked Moxey, guessing his thoughts.

Al was silent.

"Looked like she could take care of herself."

"Oh, she's got good sense," said Al, "but you know the riddle, 'Why's a woman like a ship? Because it takes a man to manage her.'"

"Yes," assented Moxey, "and they have more respect, understand, for the fellow who can say no to 'em when it's right."

So after supper that evening, instead of going over to the pool parlor, Al stayed at home waiting for his mother to go to bed, when he could have a talk with Georgia and pump her and find out about this strange man she knew, and if necessary say _no_.

His mother drew up to the lamp and darned his socks and talked and talked on endlessly it seemed to him. He felt a little abused when nine o'clock came, which was her bed time, and still she made no move to go.

She did get a little tiresome at times. He would acknowledge that frankly to himself, though he would not let her see it for worlds--except by staying away from her most of the time, and not paying attention to her when he was with her.

If his most affectionate greeting of the day came as a rule when he said "Good night, mother dear," he didn't realize it; and it would have amazed him to know that sometimes she sniffled for as much as half an hour after she went to bed, because he had shown so plainly that he was glad to be rid of her. She supposed in her sadness that he was an unnatural, almost unparalleled example of unfilial ingratitude; not suspecting he was only a rear rank file in the Ever Victorious Army of Youth.

Al wound his watch. "Gee, quarter of ten," he remarked, through a yawn. He stretched himself elaborately. Mother was certainly delaying the game. Until she went he couldn't have his round-up with Georgia, who was in one of her after-supper reading spells and had hardly said a word all evening.

She now had a fad for those little books bound in imitation green leather that constituted the World's Epitome of Culture series and cost thirty-five cents apiece, or two magazines and an extra Sunday paper, as she put it.

She had been through twenty of them already and was now on her twenty-first. He didn't deny that it was creditable to go in for culture. If that was the sort of thing she liked, why, as the fellow says, he supposed she liked that sort of thing. It's a free country. But as for him, when he was tired with the day's work, he thought he was entitled to a little recreation--a game of pool, a couple of glasses of beer, maybe a swim in a "nat"--he wasn't bad at the middle distances--and he couldn't see drawing up a chair under a lamp and going to work again, for that was what it amounted to, on a little green Epitome that you had to study over to get the meaning, or maybe look in the dictionary, as she was doing now. She had told him that they were more interesting than the other kind of books and had even got him to start on a couple she said he was sure to like, because they were so exciting--Marco Polo's Travels and Froissart's Chronicles--but they didn't excite him any, and he made only about thirty pages in each of them.

Indeed, it was his private opinion that Georgia was more or less bunking herself with this upward and onward stuff. She fell for it because it helped her feel superior. And then she worked herself up to believing she really liked it because people were surprised she knew so much and said she had a naturally fine mind. A vicious circle.

In all of which cogitations he was perhaps not entirely astray; though her chief incitement was more concrete than he supposed. She wanted to impress Stevens in particular, rather than people in general--she was determined to keep even with him so that he could never talk down to her as to a mere "womanly woman" who held him by sex and nothing more.

When at last Mrs. Talbot arose, Al hastened to her, kissed her affectionately, slipped his arm around her, impelled her towards the door, opened it rapidly, kissed her again, closed it firmly behind her, lit a cigarette, and began: "Georgia, I want to have a heart to heart with you."

"In a second." She read the last half page of her chapter so rapidly that she was compelled to read it over again for conscience' sake, then inserted her book-mark and turned to him: "Fire away."

"Who's the mysterious stranger!"

She had known it was coming for the last half hour. From the corner of her eye, she had spied the importance of the occasion actually oozing out of young Al. At first she thought of side-stepping the interview, but eventually decided not to, partly to please the lad and more still to hear how her case would stand when discussed aloud. She had been in a most chaotic state of mind ever since the agreement with Stevens to pretend; that which wasn't clear then was hazier now; she was of ten minds a day whether to give in to her lover or to give in to the Church. Now she would listen to Georgia and Al talk about the case as if they were two other people, in the hope of finding guidance in her eavesdropping.

"He is a man in the office whom I like," she answered.

"How much?"

"A lot."

"And he does, too?"

"Yes, a lot."

"Hmm--you know I hate to preach, but--" Hesitation.

"You think you will, all the same. Go on, I'm listening."

"You know I'm liberal. If you were just fooling with this fellow, I'd never peep, honest, I wouldn't."

She smiled, "I'll promise to only fool with my next beau."

"Now, this is no laughing matter," he rebuked her levity. "If you're really--stuck on each other--it may bust you all to pieces before you're done with it--unless you quit in time."

"What do you mean by 'quit'?"

"Give up seeing him altogether. It would be safer."

"Yes, so it would. But what's that got to do with it?"

"A woman can't afford to take chances," he retorted impressively.

"It seems to me the people who get the most fun out of life are the ones who do take chances. Your little tin hero, Roosevelt, for instance--you like him because he'd rather hunt a lion or a trust than a sure thing. Jim Horan didn't eat smoke for the money in it, but because he thought a wall might fall on him some day--or might not. That's what he wanted to find out. Well, perhaps I want to find out if a wall will fall on me some day--or not."

Al was astounded. There was something more than bold, something hardly decent in the comparison of her own dubious flirtation to a great fireman's martyrdom or a soldier-statesman-sportsman's courage and career.

"But, Georgia," he expostulated, "you speak like a man in a manhole. Horan and Roosevelt did their duty taking chances."

"Rubbish," she said. "They acted according to their natures and I will act according to mine--some day."

He looked unutterably distressed, for he loved her, and foresaw ruin enfolding her. He knew that women aren't allowed to act according to their natures, if their natures are as natural as all that.

"I haven't seen Jim for over a year," she went on, "nor heard of him for ten months. He may be dead. He is the same as dead to me. My heart is the heart of a widow--grateful for her weeds. The Church may say otherwise--and I might obey unwillingly--but my own being tells me that there is nothing wrong in my love for Mason Stevens--any more than it's sin to breathe air or drink water. That's how we're made. When I lived with Jim, I played no tricks. But that's over now, it's over for good. What's the difference whether he's under the sod or above it, so far as I'm concerned?" Her eyes were alight and she walked back and forth, gesticulating like a Beveridge, persuading herself that what she wished was just because she wished it. "I've got a few good years of youth left. I'll not throw them away for a religious quibble."

"You mean divorce and marry again--openly!"

"What does the ceremony matter? I'm not sure we'd take the trouble of going through it," she shrugged her shoulders, "the Church says that it means nothing anyway; that it makes the sin no less."

"But, Georgia," he was beginning now to fear for her common sense, "for God's sake, if you do such a thing, first go through the civil form anyway."

She laughed triumphantly. She had caught him. "There spoke your heart. Of course, we'll have a legal marriage. You see the Church hasn't convinced you, either, that divorce and remarriage is the same as adultery."

She had crystallized her vague desires into positive determination by the daring sound of her own words.