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Roy Glashan's Library
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The Munsey Magazine, November 1922, with "Like a Leopard"
A young husband's jealousy, pride, and fear of humiliation drive him into a night of near-madness—only for him to discover that his wife has not betrayed him at all, and that his own imagination was the true danger.
IT was a frightful night. Brecky turned up the collar of his overcoat, pulled his cap lower over his eyes, and left the shelter of the railway station for the open road. He heard the train that had brought him from the city pull out again and rush whistling through the fields and marshes. When it had gone, everything human had vanished, leaving him alone with the great and terrible wind and the cold rain.
He made what haste he could along the muddy road, his head down against the gale. The driving rain half blinded him, the tumult confused him, with the unceasing rush of the wind and the dull sound of the sea. His way lay through immeasurable desolation, past house after house empty and black, shops all closed and shuttered, streets in which there was not one human creature. It was a sort of Pompeii, a deserted village, a nightmare; but to the practical Brecky it was nothing more or less than Shorehaven, a summer resort, naturally deserted in midwinter.
He was not a man of imagination, this Johnny Breckenbridge. He was a wiry young chap with an impassive, weather-beaten face. He dressed very soberly, but he had an incorrigibly sporting air, and there was something rakish and jaunty about him. He was nimble, alert, and just a trifle bow-legged. He was never tired, never discouraged. He had all his wits about him, and knew his way in the world.
He had been, one might say, born a jockey, and he had been a good one, too, for years; but he had grown tired of the restrictions of a jockey's life. He was fond of eating and drinking, and he liked to be his own master.
He had continued his activities on the race track in a less official capacity. He had done well as a bookie, too, for he was shrewd, cautious, and trustworthy; but he had suddenly fallen in love and married.
"And that's no life for a married man," he observed to his many friends. "Got to settle down now."
Brecky was thorough in everything, and he wished to be a thoroughly married man. He took his new obligations with great seriousness. He intended to do well for his jolly little Kathleen. He knew that his duty in life was to make money for her.
He never thought of consulting her, however. She had been a waitress in a little restaurant in the city, and he had admired her brisk good humor and her common sense. She was a pretty kid, too—dark, small, vigorous. She had received a great deal of attention, but she was never silly or vain about it. She knew how to take care of herself. She liked a good time, but no monkey business. She was mighty independent, Kathleen was.
To Brecky's uncomplex mind, the wedding ring was to transform her completely. She was to be no longer Kathleen, but a wife; and to him all good wives were alike. They were kind, gentle, contented, and very helpful. You made money gladly for them; but if you were a real man, you didn't let them spend much of it.
He had looked about the world thoughtfully for a few months. Then he had taken nearly every penny he had saved and had bought a hotel at the seaside, with a heavy mortgage on it. To this place he had brought his Kathleen, that she might help and comfort him while he mastered his new business.
Extraordinary friends of his used to come down and give him advice. He listened and learned. He knew a number of men connected with hotels, night clerks, head waiters, and so on; and they were willing and anxious to help him, because every one liked him.
He had no iconoclastic ideas. He wished to run his hotel according to all the tried and tested rules of the business. He wore out his advisers. Those who came down to look over Brecky's hotel went away exhausted and squeezed dry, leaving whatever valuable knowledge they owned in Brecky's possession.
In midwinter, when the place lay like a frozen village on the shore of an inhuman sea, lights used to shine from the windows of Brecky's immense hotel, and to flit from one floor to another. That meant Brecky and some consulting friend, muffled in sweaters and overcoats, inspecting the rows and rows of bedrooms, discussing the wall paper, the flimsy furniture, debating with breath that congealed in the frigid air, whether this or that room was going to be cool enough, shady enough, airy enough.
But however the lights might flit about the building in those winter nights, there was one that remained steady and constant as the beam from a lighthouse. It came from the kitchen window. It sprang up every evening when dusk began to close in, and it always burned until nine o'clock or so. Brecky saw it now, as he turned the corner and struggled down the street at the end of which his hotel stood.
This was the hardest stretch, in the teeth of the terrific wind blowing inshore. It was like leaving the world and plunging into chaos. He went at it, head down, his eyes fixed upon the cheerful light, an agreeable hunger rising within him. That light meant Kathleen and the excellent dinner she was sure to have ready for him.
BRECKY stamped up the wooden steps and across the veranda, opened the front door with his latchkey, and entered the house. It was colder in there than it was outside. The place wasn't designed for winter occupation, and there was no means for heating it. Moreover, its construction was flimsy, and a wind like that now blowing found its way in without trouble, and went moaning through the hall, rattling the doors and windows.
He passed through the dining room. It was entirely dark, but there was no fear of running into anything, for all the tables were drawn back against the walls and the chairs piled on them. He pushed open the swinging doors into the pantry, and another door, and was suddenly in a different world, warm, light, filled with delightful savors.
"Ah!" he said, with a sigh.
He slipped off his overcoat, cap, and rubbers, and went over to the stove, holding out his numb hands to its welcome heat. Then he turned and kissed his wife, absent-mindedly, almost without looking at her, in spite of the fact that she was well worth looking at.
"Did Mullins come about those sash cords?" he asked.
"No—no one came. I haven't seen a soul all day," she answered; but he missed the significance of her tone.
She hurried back and forth with steaming dishes, and at last informed him, rather curtly, that his dinner was ready. He sat down at once and ate with good appetite, but in silence and abstraction, because he had to think about those sash cords. At last he finished and leaned back in his chair, ready for the amenities of life.
"Well, Kathleen!" he said. "You're one fine little wife!"
He was innocently oblivious of his wife's state of mind. It hadn't occurred to him that she kept on existing and thinking when he wasn't there. His remark was a match to dry straw.
"A fine little cook, I guess you mean!" she said with sudden asperity. "That's your idea of a wife!"
He laughed.
"Well!" he said. "They kind of go together, don't they?"
"Looks like it," she said; "only some cooks get paid."
It was his habit to ignore remarks like that. Women, he considered, were often fanciful and "touchy." It was better to leave them alone at such times. He lighted a big cigar, deliberately took his mind off his wife and all domestic concerns, and began to meditate on his business.
But the perverse creature continued to exist and to speak.
"I didn't start out in life to be a cook," she said, in an ominously calm and reasonable tone. "I'm glad enough to do it for your sake, Johnny; but I'd like you to remember that I'm not used to this kind of life."
"Yes, yes!" he said soothingly, and continued to smoke and stare at the fire.
"You never even look at me!" she cried suddenly.
"Yes, but I do!" he protested. "Sure I do!"
He looked at her then, with a smile, and saw that she was crying.
"For the Lord's sake, what's the matter?" he asked, with despairing good nature. "I'll look at you for an hour, if you like; only don't cry, that's a good girl!"
She put her handkerchief to her eyes, and went on crying. He swore under his breath, and, getting up, went around the table and put his arm about her.
"Come now!" he said. "You're as pretty as a picture, and you know I love you."
"Yes!" she said. "You want to make it up quickly and forget all about me!"
He couldn't help laughing at the woman's cleverness.
"Well!" he said. "If I do think such a lot about this business, who's it for? Don't be silly! It's all for you."
"It isn't! It's because you like it. You'd go on with it just the same if I was dead!"
He was a little in doubt what to do. Should he ignore her, and let her get over her inopportune temper alone? Or should he wheedle her?
He was really annoyed. He thought it all rather touching and feminine. They were all like that—wanted a man to spend his time making love and playing the fool; and yet, if he didn't provide all they wanted, or thought they wanted, they'd nag him to death. He kissed her again.
"We'll go in to the city some day next week," he said. "We'll take in a show, and all that. That's what you need."
"It isn't! What I need is some one to talk to. You never want to listen to me. You never ask me what I've been doing."
"But there's nothing you could do," he answered innocently, "except cooking and sewing and—"
He was really surprised at her outbreak, she was usually so cheerful and equable. He looked at her flushed and furious face, the tears still in her eyes, and an unpleasant conviction came to him that this was going to be serious—and lasting.
"You come in," she went on, "and you sit down and eat your dinner, and the only thing you can find to say to me is to call me a cook!"
"I said you were a fine little cook," he began ingratiatingly. "Nothing wrong in that, is there? Why, I'm proud of you, Kathleen! Only this afternoon I was telling Sawyer how you could cook."
"Well, you'd just better find something else to praise me for!" she cried. "I'm something more than a cook, and the sooner you learn it the better!"
He was astounded and somewhat shocked at her violence—dismayed, too. He had an uneasy feeling that he couldn't handle this situation adequately. So, according to his habit, he decided to go away, believing, as many other people believe, that if he weren't in the situation, there would be no situation. But his cool deliberations were upset. Moreover, his cigar was out, and he didn't like relighted cigars.
He got the books in which he was trying to work out a new idea of hotel bookkeeping, but he couldn't do a thing. He couldn't put out of his mind the image of that girl, that provoking and beloved girl, with her angry, rosy little face and her eyes full of tears.
"Women!" he thought savagely.
No denying, though, that she was a wonderful wife and companion. She had never complained before, she had never failed him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her get up and begin carrying the dishes over to the sink. He thought he would help her, and then he thought he wouldn't. It would be weakness.
Still, it would do no harm to conciliate her. Perhaps, if he did, his working mood would return. He watched her for a few minutes longer, bending over the dish pan. Then he got up, went over to her, and, putting an arm about her, drew her close against him.
Then a devil entered into him.
"Why, you silly kid!" he said, kissing her. "You're the best little cook!"
She turned and gave him a smart box on the ear.
He was so astounded that he couldn't speak. He stared at her flushed and furious face, his own perfectly blank. Then, very slowly, the color began to rise in his lean cheeks.
He was a man slow to anger, a man of self-control and sang froid; but when his temper was aroused, it was a bad one. His wife was secretly horrified at what she had done. She hadn't meant to do it. She knew he was only trying to be funny. She was ashamed and alarmed.
"What made you do that?" he asked slowly.
"Because I'm sick and tired of being called a cook, that's why!" she answered valiantly.
"Well, you'd better apologize!" he said.
"Well, I won't!" she answered promptly. "I'm glad I did it. I'm just sick and tired of—of all this—shut up here alone all day long!"
"All right!" said Brecky. "All right!"
She looked at him steadily for a moment. Then she began, very deliberately, to dry her hands. He turned away and walked back to his books, but she saw that his hands were clenched, and she knew that he was filled with fury. She was elated, and she was sorry.
He began figuring, but he grasped his pencil so fiercely that it broke, and he had to get up and look for another.
He saw Kathleen standing before the little mirror she had hung up on the wall, dressed in her fur coat and engaged in pinning on her hat.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Putting on my hat," she answered calmly.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"I'm not going to tell you."
He smiled.
"Well, good-by!" he said.
Taking the key out of the lock, he went out of the kitchen, slamming and locking the door behind him.
"She can stay in there and think it over!" he said to himself.
BRECKY made an effort to be light, careless, superior. He whistled as he went upstairs to the two rooms they used on the floor above—one as a bedroom, the other as a sort of office, where Brecky "saw people." He had plenty of material to occupy himself with here—letters and catalogues and estimates and so on. A little gas stove was burning in one corner, and the room was as neat, cheerful, and comfortable as it could be made by Kathleen's benevolent genius.
He had scarcely set foot over the threshold before a pang of remorse assailed him. Wherever his glance fell, there was something to speak of Kathleen and her care for him. He was by no means imaginative, but he was suddenly able to imagine his young wife alone all day in this huge, cold place. He began to have some idea of what her life must be.
"By gosh!" he thought. "After all, I don't know that I blame the poor girl for landing on me!"
And all at once the pathos of the thing overcame him—that poor little bit of a thing flying out at him like that—at him, who could have picked her up and shaken her like a kitten. He shouldn't have teased her. After all, there was more to her than her cooking. He hadn't fallen in love with her for that.
His impulse was to hurry downstairs and make it up; but he didn't see how one could make up a quarrel with a woman without giving her a present. It wasn't decent. Moreover, it would be too difficult. A present relieved a man from the necessity of making any sort of explanation, or of talking at all. You give the present, with a kiss, and it's done.
He walked up and down the room with his hands in his pockets, haunted by the image of Kathleen angry and Kathleen gay. The more he reflected, the more mysterious and oppressive was his sense of guilt, the more contrite and tender his heart. In the end he came to a decision extraordinary in one so stiff-necked. He resolved to go downstairs and say, quite frankly, that he was sorry, and that he loved her and didn't care whether she cooked or not.
The house seemed blacker and colder than ever as he descended the stairs. He wondered if she was crying in there, or scornfully washing the dishes. He unlocked the door, opened it, and entered.
He couldn't see her at all. He stared about the huge kitchen, which was well lighted. There were the dishes, just as he had last seen them, but no human being. Kathleen had gone!
He couldn't believe it at first. She couldn't have got out by the windows, for the heavy shutters were locked on the outside. There was no possible means of egress from that room except an incredible one; and yet, as she wasn't in the room, she must have got out that way. She must have gone down the flight of rickety wooden steps and through the cellar.
She had always been in mortal fear of the cellar, because there were rats in it. Brecky had always brought up the coal for her when she wanted some. In order to pass through it at night, she must have been in a desperate mood, he thought.
He was more disturbed than he cared to admit. Where could the girl go, alone, on a night like this, with a regular hurricane blowing? There was nothing for it but to put on his cap and overcoat and go in search of her.
The wrath of a woman had in it something peculiarly alarming and mysterious for Brecky. He felt that Kathleen was capable of the most amazing deeds, that she was not bound by any of his rules or scruples. He couldn't imagine what she would do. He was completely lost.
He opened the front door and stepped out into the tumultuous night. Fortunately there was only one direction in which to go, unless one wished to walk into the sea, and he didn't think that even an enraged wife would do that. There was nothing suicidal about Kathleen, anyhow. She was too sane, too solid, too honestly fond of life.
He was also aware that she was well able to withstand this weather. Where he could go, sturdy as he was, she could go, too. She was vigorous and resolute.
The wind was at his back now. He went with fierce impetus along the empty streets, and he went, inevitably, to the railway station. He entered the warm little waiting room, where a white-bearded agent dozed in his ticket booth.
The man looked up and nodded at Brecky.
"Too late!" he said. "She's gone!"
This might mean either a train or a wife.
"Ten minutes ago," the agent went on, full of the secret triumph he always felt at the spectacle of a thwarted traveler. "You'll have to wait two hours, and mebbe more."
Brecky sat down near the stove and set to work to frame a question which should in no way compromise his wife. He wished to seem aware of all her doings. He couldn't ask whether she had been at the station; but the agent assisted him.
"Your missus would 'a' lost the nine o'clock train herself, if it hadn't 'a' been near half an hour late."
"I'm glad she caught it, anyway," replied Brecky. "It's a case of serious illness. I told her to hurry along, and I'd follow as soon as I could."
"Your phone out of order?" asked the agent.
"Yes," said the quick-witted Brecky. "Did she telephone here?"
"Yep—said to meet the train when it got to the station."
"I wonder who she got on the phone!" said Brecky. "Probably her aunt or her cousin."
Splendid improvisation, for Kathleen hadn't a single relative in the city, to his knowledge!
"It just happens I heard the name," said the agent. "'Charley,' she says, 'I'm coming in unexpected, and you must come and meet me!'"
"I didn't know Charley was in New York," said Brecky thoughtfully.
"She didn't phone New York," said the agent. "I just happened to hear. It was New Chelsea."
"I see!" said Brecky.
HE took a cigar out of his pocket and began to smoke, and to think. His impassive face showed no trace of emotion. He was simply waiting for a train; but within he was in a panic, torn with rage, fear, and a frantic desire for action.
Who the devil was Charley? After all, what did he know of Kathleen? What did he know of women, anyway? He had left her alone for days and days, while he looked after business matters in the city. He had left her alone, partly because he wanted to go into the city, because he disliked solitude and quiet. How did he know what she thought of when he was gone? Charley!
He could scarcely endure it. His lean body trembled, like that of a nervous horse held brutally in check. He wanted to bolt. Charley!
Unfortunately, Brecky did not find it difficult to believe evil. His experience of life had been hard and definite. He had as high an opinion of Kathleen as he had ever had of a human being, but he was not trustful. He knew too much, and it was a one-sided knowledge.
It was possible that Kathleen was merely a fool, and didn't realize what she was doing; but this Charley wouldn't be like that. If women were more or less a mystery to Brecky, men were not. He had a sudden and very clear picture of Kathleen, neat, rosy, pitifully self-assured, alighting from the train, to be met by Charley.
All at once he knew who Charley was—that fat, owlish fellow who used to sit so often at Kathleen's table in the restaurant. Sands, his name was. He had money of his own, and used to bother Brecky for tips on the races. He used to sit for hours absorbed in the form sheets, trying to figure things out for himself—with the usual results. And Kathleen had turned from Brecky, the shrewd, the alert, the competent, to that fellow!
"I've got nearly an hour to wait, haven't I?" he asked.
Brecky's voice rang out sharply in the quiet little room. The agent opened his eyes, more startled than the words warranted. He fancied there was something in the other man's tone. He stared at him, instantly wide awake.
"I guess I'll have time to run home and get something," Brecky went on.
"Don't be late, though," said the agent. "This'll be the last train to-night."
Brecky vanished, slamming the door behind him. He retraced his steps with dreamlike ease. He was not conscious of progressing until he found himself once more at the hotel. He was filled with emotions so violent, with such a confusion of hatred, jealousy, and pain, that he was truly overwhelmed. His inarticulate soul could find no other words for his anguish than—
"No one's going to make a fool of me!"
He put his hand into his coat pocket for the key of the front door, but it wasn't there. He was obliged to go around to the back of the house and enter through the cellar. He felt his way through the piercing cold of that black underground cavern, and ascended the shaking wooden steps to the kitchen.
The kitchen gave him a shock. It was exactly as he had left it, neat, quiet, warm, with the clock ticking, the kettle gently steaming, Kathleen's apron across a chair. It was like the memory of a past irretrievably gone. Brecky's heart contracted with pain. He stopped for a moment, to muster all the resolution he had.
He went upstairs into the bedroom, and from a drawer of the bureau he took what he wanted. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, saw his face strained and hard beneath his inevitable cap, and he thought he looked like a criminal in the movies. Well, why shouldn't he?
He caught the train. He got in and settled himself comfortably in the smoking car, deserted except for two men playing pinochle.
The train ran on smoothly, stronger than the wind. Brecky could see very little from the window except the slanting rain and now and then a blurred light. The turmoil in his brain never ceased. He looked unpleasantly wide awake, staring, like a somnambulist. His gray eyes never seemed to blink, or his face to move a muscle.
And for all his grief and fury he had no other words than that pitifully inadequate refrain:
"No one's going to make a fool of me!"
His cigar was out, but he did not notice it. He sat with a curiously alert air, like a pointing dog, immobile, but terribly ready. He was thinking.
He stopped the conductor as he passed through the car.
"Can you stop at New Chelsea?" he asked.
The conductor shook his head.
"It's not an express stop," he said. "You'll have to go on to New York and then take a train back. You'll have to wait till to-morrow morning, too. No more trains to-night!"
Brecky reflected. He took it for granted that if Kathleen had telephoned to the fellow at New Chelsea, that was where he lived, and where he was most likely to be found. He pulled at the conductor's sleeve as the man was moving away.
"Do you slow down anywhere near there?"
"Not enough for—"
"Just you tell me when you're going to slow down a bit," said Brecky. "I've got to get there. You won't be responsible."
"I should be," said the conductor sententiously. "Morally speaking, I should be responsible."
Brecky knew every inch of that line. As they approached the desired destination, he got up and went out upon the platform. The pinochle players saw him standing there, in the wind and the rain. Then, suddenly, he vanished. He had climbed down the steps and jumped.
The fall stunned him, and he lay still for an instant. When he could breathe freely again, he rose, and mechanically tried to brush himself off. He was always a neat fellow.
The train had disappeared, and he was alone in the universe. He could still hear the sea, dull and menacing, and the demoniac wind still blew. He didn't quite know where he was. His plan was to follow the tracks.
Wet to the skin, a sinister enough figure with his face nearly hidden by pulled down cap and turned up collar, he went doggedly forward toward the next station. He presented the appearance of a highwayman.
Before long he saw the feeble light of the New Chelsea station ahead of him, blurred through the rain. With a sigh of relief he mounted the wooden platform, where he was for the moment sheltered from the weather.
He tried to open the door, but it was locked. He looked in through the window, and saw the dimly lit room, quite empty, and the stove, without fire. Evidently the station master had gone for the night. This was a blow to Brecky, for he had counted upon making inquiries here.
He prowled around the platform, scowling, trying to plan his course. To his right he saw a few scattered lights, which must be, he thought, the village of New Chelsea; and he went toward them, along a muddy road. In due time he reached the main street. There was a drug store, closed and locked, with a ghostly green light in the window. There was also a protective light in the window of a well stocked grocery; but not a human being to be seen, not a sound to be heard, except the yelping of a dog somewhere in the hills that rose behind the town and partly sheltered it from the wind. Only a sudden cruel gust, from time to time, met him full in the face.
He turned a corner, and at the end of the street he saw a distant form, walking with a slow and deliberate step very familiar to him. It was a policeman, and Brecky hastened after him.
"I've lost my bearings," he said. "Is Charley Sands's place anywhere near here?"
The policeman hesitated for a moment, with rural caution.
"What do you want to go there for?" he asked.
"Well," said Brecky, laughing, "I suppose because I don't want to walk around New Chelsea all night in this weather. Three of us started here in a motor, but we broke down a little way up the line, and we couldn't get our bearings. We each tried a different direction, and I guess I'm the lucky one. Charley will have to turn out with a lantern to find the other fellows."
"Oh, they'll be all right!" said the policeman, disarmed. "There's houses and little settlements all around this part of the country."
He directed Brecky to the house of Charley Sands. A good walk, about three miles, he should say—uphill, and mighty hard to find in the dark.
"Oh, I'll find it all right!" said Brecky cheerfully.
HE very nearly found something else that night. He lost his way entirely. He went on, as in a dream, along muddy roads, up hills so steep that he thought his weary heart would burst. He would not admit his intolerable fatigue, and the frightful ravages made by passion and bitterness. He wished to continue, inexorably, until he had accomplished his object.
The country was unfamiliar and hostile to this denizen of cities. When at last his strength was wholly gone, he did not know where to turn. He dared not wake any of the people in the dark farmhouses he passed. He crept up to a barn once, but a dog drove him away.
At last, at very last, he found an open shed behind a church, used as a shelter for the buggies and the Fords of the worshipers; and he crouched in there, relieved for a time from the unendurable confusion of the dark and the wind. His cigars and matches were dry and safe in an inside pocket, and he began to smoke. He hadn't the slightest wish to sleep. He didn't even feel tired. He only wanted to stop for a moment, to secure a pause in his superhuman exertions. He knew very well that if he hadn't found this refuge, he would have been defeated.
Wide-eyed and reflective, he sat in his corner until he observed that the stormy dark was changing its aspect, that it was growing faintly and drearily gray. It surprised him. He had forgotten that morning was ever coming again. He got up and set out on his way once more.
An extraordinary thought occurred to him. It would have been better, he said to himself, if he had died. He had lost Kathleen; why was he to live? What had he left?
He had no longer any heart for revenge. He was sorry he had to see it through; but, according to his queer code, it was absolutely necessary to vindicate himself. Otherwise his self-respect would be gone, and he could neither live nor die in peace.
It was nearly eight o'clock when he approached the house of Charley Sands, which an early stirring laborer had pointed out to him. He had planned that hour. He had also looked up the time of the train he meant to take—when he had finished. It was due to his self-respect to make a valiant effort to escape, although he didn't really care.
It was a trim white house surrounded by placid lawns. He went up to it with careless audacity, his hand grasping the revolver in his pocket. What did he care? Let Sands see him, let him ask what he wanted; he would soon find out!
Brecky had made himself neater, after his horrible night, than almost any other man could have done; but at best he looked haggard and menacing. He knew it, and was glad.
The weather had cleared, but he was still wet to the skin and cold, although he was not aware of it. He walked along the gravel path, which crunched under his firm tread. He was making no effort to conceal his presence. He wished to be observed, to bring this thing to its climax, to be done with it.
He ran up on the veranda, and, with one of those queer impulses of an abstracted mind, instead of ringing the bell, he knocked sharply on the door. He heard some one coming down the stairs, and he smiled. If it was Charley—
But it was not. It was an entirely strange young woman, who looked at him with distrust. He was so taken aback that he could not speak. He stared and stared at her.
"Well?" she demanded impatiently.
"Sands here?" he managed to ask.
"What do you want with him?"
Brecky hesitated. His tired brain, flung loose from the pivot of his fixed idea, spun round helplessly. He couldn't really think at all. Another woman here!
He was roused by the sight of her preparing to shut the door in his face. He set his foot against it.
"I want to see him," he said. "You call him!"
She was alarmed then, and began to call "Charley!" in a shrill voice.
Down the stairs came bounding the fat and owlish young man.
"Well!" he cried. "Brecky!"
The young woman frowned.
"He didn't say who he was," she said. "I didn't know. Come in!"
Brecky entered, still dazed. They didn't seem at all surprised to see him, even at that hour of the morning, and in the lamentable state he was in. He sat down uninvited, threw off his cap, and lighted a cigar.
"This is my wife, Brecky," said Sands, in a tone of severe rebuke. "Kathleen's second cousin, you know."
"All right!" said Brecky.
His manners, usually punctilious, had deserted him entirely. What he wanted was for these people to clear out of their own room, and let him think for a moment; but the young woman sat down opposite him. She was rather nice-looking, in a shrewish way, but obviously hostile.
"She's here," she said.
Brecky sprang up.
"Let me see her!" he cried.
"I don't think she wants to see you," said the young woman. "I don't blame her. If she takes my advice, she'll never go back to you!"
Brecky looked at her steadily. He felt, however, that it was better not to say what he thought just then.
"You're just making a drudge out of her," the other went on. "It's a shame—a pretty, lively young girl like Kathleen shut up in that awful place! All you care about is getting your meals cooked. I wouldn't do it for any man. She's sick and tired of it, I can tell you—being your cook. If she takes my advice, she'll go back to her old job, where she'll have a little money to spend and see a little life."
"All right!" said Brecky again. "But maybe she doesn't want to take your advice. Anyway, I'd like to ask her."
"Well, I hope she won't see you. I know what you'll do—make all sorts of promises, till you get her back there again, and then she can go right on cooking!"
"Do I see her, or don't I?" asked Brecky, still quite calm.
"I'll see," said the peppery young woman, and went off and left him alone.
He had a new idea to contend against, and one for which there was in his experience no precedent. He could comprehend an elopement, but any subtler reason for his wife's leaving him was extremely hard for him to grasp. It was his habit, though, to face facts, and he tried now.
He tried to imagine Kathleen as a human being, and not as his wife; but he failed. What more could the girl want? He was filled with rage at her ingratitude, and at the humiliating position she had got him into. He was certainly being made a fool of, for the first time. He had done his best, had worked for her, had been sober, kind, loyal. What more could the girl want?
Whatever it was, she wouldn't get it—that she wouldn't! She had left him, and she could come back, if she wished; but he wasn't going to ask her.
"That's not my way!" he said to himself, with a grimace. "I won't crawl for any one. I haven't done anything. It's all her fault!"
He was half inclined to walk out of the house then and there, but if by any chance Kathleen was going to be sorry, he didn't want to miss it. He discovered that he was extremely anxious for her to be sorry, and that if she were, he might perhaps not be so very angry. She needn't even say it. One nice smile, and the thing would be over.
"I don't know," he thought. "Maybe it has been hard for her. She's only a kid. Of course, it doesn't excuse her running away like that, and making such a fool of me, but—well, I don't know. Maybe, later on, I'll get a servant for her. I could afford it."
BRECKY wheeled about, for some one had entered the room. It was the rebellious Kathleen herself. She seemed to him to have grown miraculously prettier overnight, and he was still less angry.
"Well, Johnny?" she demanded.
He resented that tone very much.
"Well!" he said affably.
There was a long silence.
"I'm taking the nine forty train home," said Brecky. "Coming?"
"No," said she.
Without another word, he picked up his cap and made for the door; but he was met by Charley Sands.
"Here! Here!" said he. "Stay and have some breakfast first, old son!"
"All right!" said Brecky.
He wanted breakfast badly. He also wanted to show Kathleen how unconcerned he was, that he was not hurt and bewildered and angry. He stood in the hall, talking to Charley. He was aware of Kathleen's voice in a near-by room, talking to that vixenish young woman.
"Married life's a great thing!" said Charley dismally.
"Sure is!" said Brecky.
He couldn't imagine how any man could marry if he couldn't marry Kathleen. He despised and hated Kathleen, but in common justice he had to acknowledge to himself that she was the prettiest and sweetest girl in the world, and utterly superior to all other women. She was—
Just then he heard her speaking. She had a clear voice that carried well.
"No," she was saying. "I think I'll make some pancakes for Johnny's breakfast. But see here—you needn't tell him I made 'em, Grace. I don't want him to think—but he looks dead tired, and he does love pancakes!"
That did for Brecky. He ran down the hall and pushed open a door. It opened into the kitchen, and Kathleen, in an apron, stood at the table, before a large bowl. He paid no attention to the second cousin. He darted around the table and took Kathleen in his arms.
"Oh, come on home!" he said.
She began to cry at once, very comfortably, with her head buried in his coat.
"Don't be silly!" he said anxiously. "See here, Kathleen! Listen! We'll get a cook. We'll go to the theater, and—"
His wife raised her head and kissed him vehemently.
"Oh, Johnny!" she began, but stopped short, dried her eyes, and went on with great dignity. "Johnny," she said, "I wouldn't mind cooking and all that, for you, if you didn't—kind of expect it. That's what made me mad last night. You just expect—"
"Well, I won't any more," he assured her. "You come home, and I'll be darned surprised every time I get a meal!"
A few minutes later they all sat down to enjoy Kathleen's matchless pancakes. Eating them, Brecky also partook of the fruit of knowledge.
"You're one grand little cook, Kathleen," he thought; "but this time I won't say it!"
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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