Chapter IV: The Head of the House

Each morning as Georgia entered the elevated train and spread open her paper, she cast off the centuries, being transformed from a housewife to a "modern economic unit."

She smiled at the morning cartoon or perhaps, in the celebrated phrase of Dr. Hackett, she sighed softly for the sake of its meticulous futility. Her penny to the news stand gave her full and free franchise upon the ever anxious question of the popularity of popular art. Other Georgias of Chicago were simultaneously passing like judgments in like elevated cars and the sum of their verdicts would ultimately readjust social distinctions in Cook and Lake counties, Illinois.

She always turned to the Insurance Notes next. It was her Duty to be Well-informed and Interested in the Success of Her Employer, for His Success was Hers. She hadn't been to business college for eight weeks not to know that.

Next a peek at Marion Jean Delorme's column of heart throbs, which she frankly regarded as dissipation, because she enjoyed it, and everybody who read it called it common.

By this time, home and its squabbling; its everlasting question of how far a pay envelope can stretch; her sullen contemplation of Jim's alcoholism; and irritability at her mother's pottering way had vanished into the background of her mind, where they slept through her working day.

She engaged herself with more appealing problems and a larger world. She deplored the litter of torn-up streets and the thunder of the loop, instead of the litter of the breakfast dishes and the squeak of the hinge. Not that clean dishes are less meritorious than clean streets, but, to such minds as hers had grown to be, less captivating. To change desks downtown was more fun than to change chairs at home.

She felt her solidarity with the other people who streamed into the business district at eight forty-five, to get money by writing or talking. It was the master's end of the game and she belonged to it. Outside-the-loop worked with its arms and hands--she worked merely with her fingers. The time might come when she would need to work only with her tongue--and triple her income. She was in line for that.

She was no mean citizen of no mean city throughout the day: at the lunch club where she coöperated; in the big white-tiled vestibule of her building where she exchanged ten words of weather prophecy with the elevator starter between clicks; in the rest room where they talked office politics, and shows, and woman suffrage, as well as beaux and hats; behind her machine which rattled "twenty dollars a week by your own ten fingers and no man's gratuity."

There were no oaths, no bonds unbreakable, no church to tell her she couldn't change her job, as it tells the housed and covered women who get their bread by wifehood.

If she didn't like the temperature of the room, or the size of her employer's ears, she could walk across the street and do as well--perhaps better.

If he had sworn at her, or come ugly drunk into her presence--but that was inconceivable. Employers didn't do that, only husbands, because they knew they had you.

It was the full life and the free life which she lived, she and her sisters of the skyscrapers. It was the emancipation of woman, and the curse of Eve was lifted from them.

But the tide of her being which flowed regularly each work-morning, ebbed regularly each night. Her horizon became smaller and less bold after she had slid her nickel over the glass to the spectacled cashier in the L cage and was herded for home on the jammed platform. Her boldness continuously diminished as station after station was called and she stood to her strap, glancing from the direct imperatives, "Uneeda Union Suit and We Can Prove It," "Hasten to the House of Hoopelheimer," "Smart Set Collars for Swell Spenders," "Blemishes Blasted by Blackfeeto," to the limp, sallow people who, like herself, had left their vitality downtown.

When she pushed away from the light of her home station into the gloom and up the ineffectually lighted street between rows upon rows of three and four story flats, her head slightly bent, scurrying along with the working woman's nightfall pace, like Lucifer, she felt the mighty distance. She had shrunk into a middle-class wife who had been a poor picker.

So it usually happened. But the day of her triumph over Miss Gerson was an exception, and the corona of the office extended and enveloped her through the rows of flat buildings and up two flights of stairs to the door of her own apartment.

She entered happily, gaily. And there was Jim sprawled in one chair, his dusty boots in another, without a coat to hide his soiled shirt sleeves, without a collar to apologize for his unshaven chin, a frazzled cigar between his fingers and a heap of ashes beside him where he had let them fall upon the carpet--her carpet that she had earned and paid for.

Ashes had fallen, too, upon his protruding abdomen. He breathed very heavily, almost wheezed. He looked up to speak. His eyes were rather swinish in recovery from debauch. His teeth were bad and the gap which had come under the cut lip was not a scar of honor. She hoped he wouldn't speak--but of course he did.

"Hello, Georgia."

"Hello," she answered mechanically.

"What you been doing?"

What a stupid question. What did he suppose she had been doing? For when a husband doesn't suit, he doesn't suit at all--his very attempts at peacemaking become an offense in him.

"Working," she said curtly and passed on to their bedroom.

"Oh, hell! cut out the everlasting grouch," he called after her, and went to the window and looked out, kneeling moodily on the window seat. He was Henpecko the Monk, all right. What she needed was a firm hand. Women took all the rope you gave them--they took advantage of you. He ought to have begun long ago to shut down on her nonsense. Other husbands did, and by God, he would begin. Then he rubbed his prickly chin and smiled ruefully. For hadn't he begun a great many times and had he ever been able to finish?

Besides, he was broke, and it was strictly necessary, most unfortunately in view of his present disfavor, for him to obtain a loan.

Maybe Al would help him out and he wouldn't have to ask Georgia. There was an idea. It was more dignified, too.

He didn't know whether Al had come in yet.

He himself had occupied a twenty-five cent seat that afternoon near Mr. Frank Schulte, most graceful of Cubs, to get a little fresh air. It did a fellow good and took his mind off home, which a fellow had to do now and then if he was going to stand it at all.

On the return trip, to be sure, he had suffered from a twinge of fans' conscience as he realized that his activities of the day had taken about fifty cents out instead of putting any cents in. A rather keen twinge, too, inasmuch as Matty had been strictly "right." There is no fun in giving up half a dollar to see the Cubs vivisected.

"Oh, Al," he called to the back of the flat.

"What?" came the call back.

"Hear about the game?"

"Nope."

"I was out," said Jim.

That ought to fetch him--and it did.

Al entered expectant. He was an extremely good-looking boy of sixteen, with pink cheeks, clear blue eyes, and a kink to his hair. He might have been called pretty if his shoulders were not quite so broad.

"Who win? I was north on an errand late and couldn't get a peek at an extra after the fifth." So Al apologized to his brother-in-law for his ignorance. "It was one and one then."

"The Giants win, three to two, and believe me there was a rank decision at the plate against Johnny Evers. He beefed on it proper and got chased. That's what smeared us."

"Johnny ought to learn to control himself," said Al pathetically.

"Yep. He's got too much pep--that's what's the matter with that lad."

"And all the umpires in the league have banded together against him. I heard it straight to-day. And believe me"--there was an element of mystery in the boy's voice, "there's something in it."

Jim clenched his fist and brought it down hard. "If the Cubs win out against the empires this year," he stated his proposition with a vehement brandish of his fist, "they'll be going some," but his peroration rather flattened out--"believe me."

"Yes, sir, Jim. That's no damn lie."

"Say, Al, loan me a quarter?"

Unhappy pause.

All sportsmen, from polo players and tarpon fishers to Kaffirs in their kraals, like to talk it over afterwards. Al didn't want to interrupt his baseball palaver with Jim. It might last right through supper and until bedtime, as it often did when Jim stayed home.

He had a vast fund of hypotheses to tell Jim again, and some new ones. If he refused Jim the loan their interesting talk would stop. But if he granted it he would be a boob. It was certainly one dilemma.

Jim smiled and repeated his thought. "I'll do as much for you some time. Go on now."

Georgia came in quickly and angrily. "I should think you'd be ashamed, Jim Connor, trying to do a boy."

"Oh, so you've been rubbering, eh?" Jim sneered.

She had; but this, her weakness, was one she shared with many other women--likewise men. In petty lives are petty deeds. Downtown she did not listen, or tattle, or read other people's letters. There were more important matters to attend to.

"I got to have a little loan," said Jim--now was his time for boldness--"to tide me over till Monday."

She was obstinately mute.

"Let me have a two-dollar bill till then?"

"No."

"One?"

"No."

"What then?"

"Nothing."

"You didn't use to be such a tightwad."

"You taught me that, too, Jim. I'll never give you another cent to drink. It isn't fair to the rest of us."

Mrs. Talbot, Georgia's mother, the homebody of the household, came in from the kitchen to say that supper was now ready and she was sick and tired of the irregularity of the family meals, which she had never been accustomed to as a girl.

"Oh, cheer up, mother. I've good news to-day--a raise."

Georgia took her pay envelope from her handbag. "See!"

Mrs. Talbot flattened out the creases in it and read it aloud. "Georgia Connor--weekly--twenty dollars." And drew forth a wonderful, round, golden double eagle. Whereupon Jim let his angry passions rise.

His wife--this cold-blooded, high-and-mighty creature, with her chin in the air, refused him a loan on the very same day she was raised. It was plain viciousness. It was almost a form of perversion. Forbearance, even his, had its limits.

"Why, Georgia," continued the mother, reading the inscription from the envelope in her hand, "how's this, they call you 'Miss,' Miss Georgia Connor--weekly--twenty dollars."

"Oh--ho," exclaimed Jim roughly, for now he felt that it was his turn. "Passing yourself off as unmarried, eh? A little fly work--hey? If I am easy, I draw the line somewhere."

"I was ashamed to let them know I was married and still had to work out," she responded evenly.

That was just the way it always happened. Georgia invariably ended up with the best of it.

"Well, well, let it pass, though it's not right. But you ought to let me have a dollar or two, considering. Why, I've got a right to some of your money. You've had plenty of mine in your time."

"For value received."

"You talk of marriage as if it was bargain and sale."

Georgia's voice, which had been thin and colorless, grew suddenly thick with the bitter memories of seven years. "It is oftentimes," she said. "Bad bargain and cheap sale."

"And now and then it's a damned high buy, too, when a man gives up his liberty for a daily panning from his wife, and his mother-in-law, and kid brother."

"If I am a kid," the boy interrupted passionately, "I've brought in more and taken out less than you the last year."

Blood called to blood, and the clan of Talbot closed around the lone Connor.

"When he had to come out of school and go to work because you couldn't keep a job!" screamed the elder lady.

"You big stiff," Al brought up the reënforcement half-crying with rage.

"You shut up or I'll--" Jim answered hoarsely, drawing back his fist in menace.

Al jumped for a light chair and swung it just off the ground, meeting the challenge. So standing, the two glowered at each other--Jim wishing that he was twenty years younger, Al that he was three years older.

As Georgia stood back from them hoping that she would not have to interpose physically between the two, as had happened once or twice in the past year, she felt more intensely than she ever had before that her home life was very sordid and degrading to her. This eternal jangling which seemed to run on just the same whether she took part in it or not, was the life for snarling hyenas, not for a young woman with an ambition for "getting on," for rising in the social scale.

The two males, finally impelled by a common doubt of the outcome, tacitly agreed upon verbal rather than physical violence. The raucous quarrel broke out anew. Mrs. Talbot--but you, gentle reader, undoubtedly can surmise substantially what followed. You must have friends who have family quarrels.

Finally there was a lull, after all three had had their says several times over, and were trying to think up new ones.

"Jim," said Georgia slowly and deliberately, for she felt that the hour had come, "why not make this our last quarrel?"

"That's up to you," he returned belligerently.

"By making it permanent."

"What do you mean!" answered Jim, now a trifle alarmed.

"I mean that the time has come for us to separate, for the good of all of us."

She looked straight at him, until he dropped his red and watery eyes before her strong gray ones. There was a pause, a solemn pause in that poor family.

"Children," said the older woman softly and timidly, "there is such a thing as carrying bitter words too far."

"Mother, when two people come to the situation we're in, Jim and I," for the first time there was a semblance of sympathy for the man in her voice, "then I believe the only thing they can do, and stay decent, is to separate. To go on living together when they neither like nor love each other----"

"How do you know? I never said that," Jim said humbly.

"It is not what you say that counts. We don't love each other any more; that was over long ago; that's the whole trouble; that's why we quarrel; that's why you drink and I'm hateful to you--and it'll get worse and worse and more degrading if we keep on. Oh, I feel no better than a woman of the streets when I----"

"Georgia," Mrs. Talbot raised her eyes significantly, glancing at Al, to warn her daughter against letting her son know a truth.

"Oh, I have been thinking this over and over--for months," continued the wife, "and I kept putting it off. But now I'm glad I said it and it's done."

"The church admits of only one ground for this," said Mrs. Talbot desperately, fighting for respectability; "do you mean that Jim has----"

"I don't know----"

"No," Jim denied indignantly, "you can't accuse me of that anyway."

"And I don't care."

"You don't care?" That was a most astounding remark, clear outside his calculations. Why--wives always cared tremendously. Every man knew that.

"No, if need be I could forgive an act, but not a state of mind."

Mrs. Talbot found herself literally forced to take sides with Jim. This was an attack on all tradition, on everything that she had been taught. "Why, I never heard of such talk in my life."

But Georgia would not qualify. "Well, I think that's all." She walked to the door. "I suppose I have seemed very hard, but it was best to make the cut sharp and clean." There was no sign of relenting in the set of her mouth or in her narrowed eyes; and Jim knew it was nearly impossible to do anything with her when her nostrils grew wide like that.

"All right," he mumbled, "have it your own way."

"Try to brace up for your own sake, if you wouldn't for mine." That was her good-bye. She went from the room with Al.

The mother waited behind. "She'll think better of this by and by, Jim. I'll speak to her about it now and then," she said, "and keep you in her mind. And I'm going to the priest about it, too. It's sin she's doing. And Jim----"

"Yes?" he grieved humbly, almost crying.

"You better go over to Father Hervey and tell him all about it."

"Yes, I'll do that same."

"Well, good-bye for now--you better go to some hotel to-night," she gave him a dollar from the purse in her bosom, "and try and get work. It'll make your coming back easier."

"Thanks, mother, I'll do that same. Er--I guess I'll go in and change my collar. That'll be all right, won't it?"

"Yes, Georgia's in the dining room."

Mrs. Talbot left him. He rubbed his knuckles slowly across his eye, his breath catching quickly. Then he spied Georgia's hand bag. There was the trouble-money--twenty dollars, a round, golden double eagle. He opened the handbag to--well, to look at it. He spun it; he palmed it; he tossed it in the air, calling heads. It came tails. He tried it again and it came heads. That settled it. He slipped the coin into his pocket, and went out of the room. At least there was salvage in leaving one's wife.

After supper Georgia packed up his things, every stick and stitch of them, and with the aid of Al drew them out into the hallway.

Later in the evening a politician, one of Ed Miles', knocked at the door.

"Good evening, ma'am, I'm from the Fortieth Ward Club. I have a message for Mr. Connor. He's wanted at headquarters right away."

"He doesn't live here any more."

The politician was perplexed.

"Where does he live?"

"I don't know," answered Georgia, shutting the door.

It was not until the next morning that she discovered the loss of her money.