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_ The first evening after the marriage night Saxon met Billy at the
door as he came up the front steps. After their embrace, and as
they crossed the parlor hand in hand toward the kitchen, he
filled his lungs through his nostrils with audible satisfaction.
"My, but this house smells good, Saxon! It ain't the coffee--I
can smell that, too. It's the whole house. It smells ... well, it
just smells good to me, that's all."
He washed and dried himself at the sink, while she heated the
frying pan on the front hole of the stove with the lid off. As he
wiped his hands he watched her keenly, and cried out with
approbation as she dropped the steak in the fryin pan.
"Where'd you learn to cook steak on a dry, hot pan? It's the only
way, but darn few women seem to know about it."
As she took the cover off a second frying pan and stirred the
savory contents with a kitchen knife, he came behind her, passed
his arms under her arm-pits with down-drooping hands upon her
breasts, and bent his head over her shoulder till cheek touched
cheek.
"Um-um-um-m-m! Fried potatoes with onions like mother used to
make. Me for them. Don't they smell good, though! Um-um-m-m-m!"
The pressure of his hands relaxed, and his cheek slid caressingly
past hers as he started to release her. Then his hands closed
down again. She felt his lips on her hair and heard his
advertised inhalation of delight.
"Um-um-m-m-m! Don't you smell good--yourself, though! I never
understood what they meant when they said a girl was sweet. I
know, now. And you're the sweetest I ever knew."
His joy was boundless. When he returned from combing his hair in
the bedroom and sat down at the small table opposite her, he
paused with knife and fork in hand.
"Say, bein' married is a whole lot more than it's cracked up to
be by most married folks. Honest to God, Saxon, we can show 'em a
few. We can give 'em cards and spades an' little casino an' win
out on big casino and the aces. I've got but one kick comin'."
The instant apprehension in her eyes provoked a chuckle from him.
"An' that is that we didn't get married quick enough. Just think.
I've lost a whole week of this."
Her eyes shone with gratitude and happiness, and in her heart she
solemnly pledged herself that never in all their married life
would it be otherwise.
Supper finished, she cleared the table and began washing the
dishes at the sink. When he evinced the intention of wiping them,
she caught him by the lapels of the coat and backed him into a
chair.
"You'll sit right there, if you know what's good for you. Now be
good and mind what I say. Also, you will smoke a cigarette.--No;
you're not going to watch me. There's the morning paper beside
you. And if you don't hurry to read it, I'll be through these
dishes before you've started."
As he smoked and read, she continually glanced across at him from
her work. One thing more, she thought--slippers; and then the
picture of comfort and content would be complete.
Several minutes later Billy put the paper aside with a sigh.
"It's no use," he complained. "I can't read."
"What's the matter?" she teased. "Eyes weak?"
"Nope. They'ra sore, and there's only one thing to do 'em any
good, an' that's lookin' at you."
"All right, then, baby Billy; I'll be through in a jiffy."
When she had washed the dish towel and scalded out the sink, she
took off her kitchen apron, came to him, and kissed first one eye
and then the other.
"How are they now. Cured?"
"They feel some better already."
She repeated the treatment.
"And now?"
"Still better."
"And now?"
"Almost well."
After he had adjudged them well, he ouched and informed her that
there was still some hurt in the right eye.
In the course of treating it, she cried out as in pain. Billy was
all alarm.
"What is it? What hurt you?"
"My eyes. They're hurting like sixty."
And Billy became physician for a while and she the patient. When
the cure was accomplished, she led him into the parlor, where, by
the open window, they succeeded in occupying the same Morris
chair. It was the most expensive comfort in the house. It had
cost seven dollars and a half, and, though it was grander than
anything she had dreamed of possessing, the extravagance of it
had worried her in a half-guilty way all day.
The salt chill of the air that is the blessing of all the bay
cities after the sun goes down crept in about them. They heard
the switch engines puffing in the railroad yards, and the
rumbling thunder of the Seventh Street local slowing down in its
run from the Mole to stop at West Oakland station. From the
street came the noise of children playing in the summer night,
and from the steps of the house next door the low voices of
gossiping housewives.
"Can you beat it?" Billy murmured. "When I think of that
six-dollar furnished room of mine, it makes me sick to think what
I was missin' all the time. But there's one satisfaction. If I'd
changed it sooner I wouldn't a-had you. You see, I didn't know
you existed only until a couple of weeks ago."
His hand crept along her bare forearm and up and partly under the
elbow-sleeve.
"Your skin's so cool," he said. "It ain't cold; it's cool. It
feels good to the hand."
"Pretty soon you'll be calling me your cold-storage baby," she
laughed.
"And your voice is cool," he went on. "It gives me the feeling
just as your hand does when you rest it on my forehead. It's
funny. I can't explain it. But your voice just goes all through
me, cool and fine. It's like a wind of coolness--just right. It's
like the first of the sea-breeze settin' in in the afternoon
after a scorchin' hot morning. An' sometimes, when you talk low,
it sounds round and sweet like the 'cello in the Macdonough
Theater orchestra. And it never goes high up, or sharp, or
squeaky, or scratchy, like some women's voices when they're mad,
or fresh, or excited, till they remind me of a bum phonograph
record. Why, your voice, it just goes through me till I'm all
trembling--like with the everlastin' cool of it. It's it's
straight delicious. I guess angels in heaven, if they is any,
must have voices like that."
After a few minutes, in which, so inexpreasible was her happiness
that she could only pass her hand through his hair and cling to
him, he broke out again.
"I'll tell you what you remind me of. Did you ever see a
thoroughbred mare, all shinin' in the sun, with hair like satin
an' skin so thin an' tender that the least touch of the whip
leaves a mark--all fine nerves, an' delicate an' sensitive,
that'll kill the toughest bronco when it comes to endurance an'
that can strain a tendon in a flash or catch death-of-cold
without a blanket for a night? I wanta tell you they ain't many
beautifuler sights in this world. An' they're that fine-strung,
an' sensitive, an' delicate. You gotta handle 'em right-side up,
glass, with care. Well, that's what you remind me of. And I'm
goin' to make it my job to see you get handled an' gentled in the
same way. You're as different from other women as that kind of a
mare is from scrub work-horse mares. You're a thoroughbred.
You're clean-cut an' spirited, an' your lines ...
"Say, d'ye know you've got some figure? Well, you have. Talk
about Annette Kellerman. You can give her cards and spades. She's
Australian, an' you're American, only your figure ain't. You're
different. You're nifty--I don't know how to explain it. Other
women ain't built like you. You belong in some other country.
You're Frenchy, that's what. You're built like a French woman an'
more than that--the way you walk, move, stand up or sit down, or
don't do anything."
And he, who had never been out of California, or, for that
matter, had never slept a night away from his birthtown of
Oakland, was right in his judgment. She was a flower of
Anglo-Saxon stock, a rarity in the exceptional smallness and
fineness of hand and foot and bone and grace of flesh and
carriage--some throw-back across the face of time to the foraying
Norman-French that had intermingled with the sturdy Saxon breed.
"And in the way you carry your clothes. They belong to you. They
seem just as much part of you as the cool of your voice and skin.
They're always all right an' couldn't be better. An' you know, a
fellow kind of likes to be seen taggin' around with a woman like
you, that wears her clothes like a dream, an' hear the other
fellows say: 'Who's Bill's new skirt? She's a peach, ain't she?
Wouldn't I like to win her, though.' And all that sort of talk."
And Saxon, her cheek pressed to his, knew that she was paid in
full for all her midnight sewings and the torturing hours of
drowsy stitching when her head nodded with the weariness of the
day's toil, while she recreated for herself filched ideas from
the dainty garments that had steamed under her passing iron.
"Say, Saxon, I got a new name for you. You're my Tonic Kid.
That's what you are, the Tonic Kid."
"And you'll never get tired of me?" she queried.
"Tired? Why we was made for each other."
"Isn't it wonderful, our meeting, Billy? We might never have met.
It was just by accident that we did."
"We was born lucky," he proclaimed. "That's a cinch."
"Maybe it was more than luck," she ventured.
"Sure. It just had to be. It was fate. Nothing could a-kept us
apart."
They sat on in a silence that was quick with unuttered love, till
she felt him slowly draw her more closely and his lips come near
to her ear as they whispered: "What do you say we go to bed?"
Many evenings they spent like this, varied with an occasional
dance, with trips to the Orpheum and to Bell's Theater, or to the
moving picture shows, or to the Friday night band concerts in
City Hall Park. Often, on Sunday, she prepared a lunch, and he
drove her out into the hills behind Prince and King, whom Billy's
employer was still glad to have him exercise.
Each morning Saxon was called by the alarm clock. The first
morning he had insisted upon getting up with her and building the
fire in the kitchen stove. She gave in the first morning, but
after that she laid the fire in the evening, so that all that was
required was the touching of a match to it. And in bed she
compelled him to remain for a last little doze ere she called him
for breakfast. For the first several weeks she prepared his lunch
for him. Then, for a week, he came down to dinner. After that he
was compelled to take his lunch with him. It depended on how far
distant the teaming was done.
"You're not starting right with a man," Mary cautioned. "You wait
on him hand and foot. You'll spoil him if you don't watch out.
It's him that ought to be waitin' on you."
"He's the bread-winner," Saxon replied. "He works harder than I,
and I've got more time than I know what to do with--time to burn.
Besides, I want to wait on him because I love to, and because ...
well, anyway, I want to." _
Read next: BOOK II: CHAPTER II
Read previous: BOOK I: CHAPTER XV
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