Chapter XXV: Jim Reënlists

Georgia smiled a little woefully over the transparent intention of Stevens' letter. He was so obviously trying to do her a great kindness and disguise it as business by his talk of six per cent.

She knew that with young men and small sums interest rates lose their meaning. Everybody would rather have a quarter down than a cent a year forever. Any young hustler on a salary would rather have $270 cash than an unsecured promise of $16 annually.

Oh, he was naïve and boyish as ever to think she wouldn't promptly penetrate his little plan. She had always seen through his various tricks and stratagems in regard to her from the very beginning. She didn't remember one time when he had fooled her successfully. It was like having a young son who hardly needs to talk to you at all, you can read his mind so easily as it runs along from thing to thing.

She went to a newspaper office to answer one advertisement and insert another. The one she answered was for "A rapid typist--beginners not wanted. State name, experience, age, education." A blind address was given. "Y 672," care of the paper. She wrote an appreciative account of her talents, but was grieved to discover that Y 672 was none other than the Eastern Life Assurance Company. Evidently Mr. Cleever was going in for many changes.

Ten days later she was with a mail order house, in a huge reënforced concrete block-like building, just across the river on the west side. The roof of this enormous edifice, according to advertisement, covered 99 acres of floor space, or some such dimension. The firm didn't do a retail business in Chicago, so everything was rough and ready. The clerks worked in their shirt sleeves, usually blue ones. They were a bigger, thicker-necked lot than the downtowners, and freer-tongued before the women. She wasn't at all disconcerted, however, by any amount of the "damns" and "hells."

She was described on the books of the company as "Stenographer; Class A; Female; First six months' of employment; salary $12." The understanding was that if she made good she would be promoted, and this she promised herself to do, but didn't.

The advertisement which Georgia put in the paper was:

TO RENT--2667 Pearl Ave., beautiful double front room, near lake and park; single gentleman; breakfast if desired; reasonable. Connor, third flat.

Mrs. Talbot could not be brought to lowering caste by taking a roomer until Georgia explained about her debt to Mason. This veered the older woman's mind violently about, and she began immediately to figure if it wouldn't be possible to squeeze in two persons instead of one--which proposition Georgia promptly vetoed.

Jim acquiesced gloomily in the loss of the front room. He didn't see why paying Stevens' interest at six per cent wouldn't satisfy the nicest sense of honor. Six per cent was a good investment for anybody. Lord knows he wished someone was paying it to him. He would feel ashamed to have a visitor shown back to the dining room instead of forward to the parlor.

Al alone contemplated the subject with equanimity. He dismissed it by saying that it wouldn't get him anything one way or the other. To him the parlor meant the place where the family gathered together after supper to bore him. He'd rather sit in a back room and chin with the crowd across a round, yellow, slippery table, or go across to Jonas' and try to win a little beer money at Kelly pool. He seldom analyzed his emotions; he simply knew it was fun to squat down by the rectangular green cloth table, squint his eye, and sight his shot, while the crowd watched him through the cigarette smoke, then to straighten up decisively as if he had solved the problem, tip his hat back, whistle through his teeth, chalk his cue and put the ball in. Contrariwise it was darned little fun in the front room after supper.

The applicant for lodging with whom Georgia finally agreed on terms was Mr. Cyrus Kane, copy reader on an afternoon newspaper. He was a widower of forty-five, quiet, neat and regular pay. He never once had a visitor to see him. He didn't kick.

But to balance all these excellent qualities was one major drawback: his unalterable condition was that he should be served in bed with a pot of black coffee at five o'clock each morning. He explained he had to be at the office at six, and that he couldn't stir without coffee; in fact, he said he was a regular caffein fiend. Georgia hesitated, then added a dollar and a half to her price, which he accepted, agreeing to pay $5.50 a week.

Mrs. Talbot paled a trifle when informed that she had been elected to arise at 4:45 A.M. every day and set Mr. Kane's coffee on the gas ring until it was hot enough to take in to him. But she agreed because she felt that so she was helping to clear Georgia's honor. On the first Sunday morning of this stay Mrs. Talbot missed the coffee because she knew that Mr. Kane's paper didn't publish that day and supposed, or anyway hoped, that he would sleep late. At six the whole family was awakened by his loud mutterings to himself which percolated through the flat.

"They agreed to bring my coffee at five; they _agreed_; and here it is near seven and not a sign of it. _Not_ a _sign_ of it. ---- it. I'll leave, yes by ---- I'll leave!" He thrashed about furiously in his bed, turning over and over, and striking the pillow with clenched fists in his rage.

Mrs. Talbot, in sack and skirt over her nightgown, stockingless, her gray hair loose, went running in to him with his pot of steaming black dope. He smiled cherubically when he saw her. It was the only trouble they ever had with him.

On Mr. Kane's coming Jim had to clear out of the front room, so he went to Georgia's.

That evening as she undressed rapidly in the light before his approving eyes she had a sudden strange relieved feeling that after what she had been through in the past few months a little more wouldn't greatly matter one way or the other.

It would certainly be unpleasant to have Jim pawing her again, but she had successfully postponed it much longer than she expected, so now she had better be philosophical about it. As far as she could gather most women obliged their husbands and not themselves in the frequency of their embraces.

Why, therefore, excite her imagination and her sense of horror, and try to make a tremendous hard luck story out of what after all was a perfectly common and commonplace situation? Let her avoid it whenever possible and accept it with calm equanimity when necessary.

It was rather ridiculous to think herself a shrinking victim of masculine passion. She had borne this man a child, she was scarred with life, a matron of nearly ten years standing.

"And I look every bit of it," she commented half aloud, as she stood before the mirror slipping off her corset cover.

"What'd you say?" he asked, turning his eyes toward her. He was seated on the bed stooping over, trying to undo a hard knotted shoe lace with his blunt finger nails.

"I said hurry up--I'm sleepy."

"You just bet I will," he answered eagerly.

Not long after this domestic readjustment Jim was smoking, his wife reading and his mother-in-law sewing in the dining room after supper when the doorbell rang from the vestibule below. Georgia pressed the opener and admitted Ed Miles, the boss of the ward, "the big fellow." She wasn't a bit glad to see him. She thought that to keep Jim away from politics and politicians was the only way to keep him away from drinking.

The big fellow made a formal call. He sat on the edge of his chair, his gray derby hat pushed under it, and constantly addressed Georgia as ma'am. Although she mistrusted him every moment of his visit, she felt the power of him, the brusque charm of his vitality, the humor of his laugh.

When he rose to go he said good-bye politely to the women and then to Jim, who could tell by the pressure of the big fellow's hand that he wanted a word alone with him.

"I'll see you to the door, Ed," said Jim, and they walked out together.

Georgia noticed thankfully that her husband did not take his hat and that he was wearing slippers.

"I want you to do me a little favor, Jim. You know we have our ward club election the first Monday of the new year.

"Yes."

"Come around."

"I ain't a member of the club any more."

"I'll fix that--and your back dues, too."

"I promised my wife to keep out of politics."

"I don't blame her either. You were going some for a married man. But the fact is, they're trying under cover to take the organization away from us."

"I heard there was a little battle on."

"It's more than that. It goes deep. They've got backing. Now if my friends throw me down--"

"You know damn well I wouldn't throw you down, Ed."

"If you don't come to the front when I need you, it's the same thing. And I need you now. This is confidential, y'understand?"

"Sure."

"Because I wouldn't let it get out I was worried."

The two men were standing side by side on the front stoop in a stream of arc light from the street lamp.

"I want your vote," said Miles, "for old sake's sake."

"I dassen't go into politics regular, Ed."

"I don't ask you to."

"But I might slip up to the ward meeting one night, just doing my duty as a citizen."

"You're a good fellow, Jim." There was a trace of huskiness in the big fellow's bass voice and Jim felt himself again moved by his old loyalty to his leader. The two shook hands warmly, fervently, with the facile emotions of politicians.

"One thing about me--I never quit on my friends when they need me." There was a perceptible huskiness in Jim's voice also.

"I know it damn well," said the big fellow, throwing his arm about the other's shoulder, "because you're a thoroughbred." He thrust his hand into his side pocket and brought forth several dozen large glazed white cards bearing the legend, "For President Fortieth Ward Club, Carl Schroeder," with an oval half-tone of the fat-faced candidate.

"I don't know's I've got time to make any canvass, Ed," said Jim, slipping the cards back and forth through his fingers. "So you're running Carl, eh?"

The big fellow boomed a laugh. "You didn't know it--Reuben come to town. Sure we're running Carl, and he said only this morning if he could get you with him he'd walk in."

Jim was pleased. "Did Carl say that, honest?"

"Come on up to the corner and he'll tell you himself."

"I haven't got my hat."

"Take mine." The boss slipped his gray derby on Jim's head. It descended to his ears. "You're a regular pinhead," exclaimed the big fellow loudly, and they both laughed.

They walked up to the saloon, Connor's slippers flapping against the pavement flags with every step.

The saloon welcomed Jim as if he had been a conquering hero. It was light and warm and gay and full of men.

Carl Schroeder and Jim went into the private office and whispered importantly together for half an hour. When they came out, Carl was smiling and announced, clapping Jim on the back, "This old scout's brought be the best news in a week. What'll you have, boys?"

Jim took lithia, explaining he was wagoning, and they congratulated him and took whiskey themselves. He left reasonably early, half a dozen rounds of lithia having given him a rather sloppy-weather sensation within. Besides, the other fellows had got to feeling good and were talking to beat the band, and he just sat there like a bump on a log without a thing to say.

Not that the drinkers seemed particularly wise or witty, for some of them began to sound increasingly foolish as he listened to them, cold sober. But the liquor put them on a different plane from him, lower perhaps, but also wilder, freer, less deliberate and restrained. Their thoughts didn't follow the same sequence as his and he couldn't meet their minds as they seemed able to meet each others. He was self-conscious and glum and awkward, like a new millionaire in the hands of his first valet. And he knew that one drink of whiskey would alter all that and put him in right. But he didn't take it.

The big fellow saw him to the door, giving him a cap that he picked up in the private office to go home in.

"You'll do what you can for the organization in your precinct?"

"Sure."

"And we won't forget you."

"Thanks, Ed, that's mighty fine of you."

They shook hands; then Jim felt his fingers closing over a ten-dollar bill which had been pressed into his palm. It was easy money, he thought, as he paddled home in his cap and slippers. All he'd have to do to earn it would be to get around among the neighbors evenings for a couple or three weeks.

When Georgia, who had been waiting up for him with a peculiar fluttering of the heart each time that she heard a step on the stairs, found that he was entirely sober, she kissed him of her own accord.