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The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig, a novel by David Graham Phillips |
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Chapter 25. Mrs. Joshua Craig |
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_ CHAPTER XXV. MRS. JOSHUA CRAIG "We change at Albany," said he when they were on the train, after a last hour of mad scramble, due in part to her tardiness, in the main to the atmosphere of hysteric hustle and bustle he created as a precaution. "At Albany!" she exclaimed. "Why, when do we get there?" "At midnight." "At midnight!" It was the last drop in the cup of gall, she thought. "Why, we'd get to Lenox, or to some place where we'd have to change again, long before morning! Josh, you must be out of your senses. It's a perfect outrage!" "Best I could do," said he, laughing uproariously and patting her on the back. "Cheer up. You can sleep on my shoulder until we get to Albany." "We will go on to New York," said she stiffly, "and leave from there in the morning." "Can't do it," said he. "Must change at Albany. You ought to learn to control your temper over these little inconveniences of life. I've brought a volume of Emerson's essays along and I'll read to you if you don't want to sleep." "I hate to be read aloud to. Joshua, let's go on to New York. Such a night of horror as you've planned will wear me out." "I tell you it's impossible. I've done the best thing in the circumstances. You'll see." Suddenly she sprang up, looked wildly round. "Where's Selina?" she gasped. "Coming to-morrow or next day," replied he. "I sent her to the camp for some things I forgot." She sank back and said no more. Again she was tempted to revolt against such imbecile tyranny; and again, as she debated the situation, the wisdom, the necessity of submitting became apparent. How would it sound to have to explain to her grandmother that she had left him because he took an inconvenient train? "I'd like to see him try this sort of thing if we'd been married six months instead of six weeks," she muttered. She refused to talk with him, answered him in cold monosyllables. And after dinner, when he produced the volume of Emerson and began to read aloud, she curtly asked him to be quiet. "I wish to sleep!" snapped she. "Do, dear," urged he. And he put his arm around her. "That's very uncomfortable," said she, trying to draw away. He drew her back, held her--and she knew she must either submit or make a scene. There was small attraction to scene-making with such a master of disgraceful and humiliating scenes as he. "He wouldn't care a rap," she muttered. "He simply revels in scenes, knowing he's sure to win out at them as a mongrel in a fight with a"--even in that trying moment her sense of humor did not leave her--"with a lapdog." She found herself comfortable and amazingly content, leaning against his shoulder; and presently she went to sleep, he holding the book in his free hand and reading calmly. The next thing she knew he was shaking her gently. "Albany," he said. "We've got to change here." She rose sleepily and followed him from the car, adjusting her hat as she went. She had thought she would be wretched; instead, she felt fine as the sharp, night air roused her nerves and freshened her skin. He led the way into the empty waiting-room; the porter piled the bags on the bench; she seated herself. "I must send a telegram," said he, and he went over to the window marked "Telegraph Office." It was closed. He knocked and rattled, and finally pounded on the glass with his umbrella handle. Her nerves went all to pieces. "Can't you see," she called impatiently, "that there's no one there?" "There will be some one!" he shouted in reply, and fell to pounding so vigorously that she thought the glass would surely break. But it did not; after a while the window flew up and an angry face just escaped a blow from the vibrating umbrella handle. A violent altercation followed, the operator raging, but Craig more uproarious than he and having the further advantage of a more extensive and more picturesque vocabulary. Finally the operator said: "I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself. Don't you see there's a lady present?" "It's my wife," said Craig. "Now take this message and get it off at once. You should thank me for not having you dismissed." The operator read the message. His face changed and he said in a surlily apologetic manner: "I'll send it off right away, Mr. Craig. Anything else?" "That's all, my friend," said Josh. He returned to his wife's side. She was all confusion and doubt again. Here they were back in civilization, and her man of the woods was straightway running amuck. What should she do? What COULD she do? WHAT had she got herself into by marrying? But he was speaking. "My dear," he was saying in his sharp, insistent voice, that at once aroused and enfeebled the nerves, "I must talk fast, as the train comes in fifteen or twenty minutes-- the train for Chicago--for Minneapolis--for Wayne--for home--OUR home." She started up from the seat, pale, quivering, her hands clinched against her bosom. "For home," he repeated, fixing her with his resolute, green-blue eyes. "Please, sit down." She sank to the seat. "Do you mean--" she began, but her faltering voice could not go on. "I've resigned from office," said he, swift and calm. "I've told the President I'll not take the Attorney-Generalship. I've telegraphed your people at Lenox that we're not coming. And I'm going home to run for Governor. My telegrams assure me the nomination, and, with the hold I've got on the people, that means election, sure pop. I make my first speech day after to-morrow afternoon--with you on the platform beside me." "You are mistaken," she said in a cold, hard voice. "You--" "Now don't speak till you've thought, and don't think till I finish. As you yourself said, Washington's no place for us--at present. Anyhow, the way to get there right is to be sent there from the people--by the people. You are the wife of a public man, but you've had no training." "I--" she began. "Hear me first," he said, between entreaty and command. "You think I'm the one that's got it all to learn. Think again. The little tiddledywinks business that I've got to learn--all the value there is in the mass of balderdash about manners and dress--I can learn it in a few lessons. You can teach it to me in no time. But what you've got to learn--how to be a wife, how to live on a modest income, how to take care of me, and help me in my career, how to be a woman instead of, largely, a dressmaker's or a dancing- master's expression for lady-likeness--to learn all that is going to take time. And we must begin at once; for, as I told you, the house is afire." She opened her lips to speak. "No--not yet," said he. "One thing more. You've been thinking things about me. Well, do you imagine this busy brain of mine hasn't been thinking a few things about you? Why, Margaret, you need me even more than I need you, though I need you more than I'd dare try to tell you. You need just such a man as me to give you direction and purpose--REAL backbone. Primping and preening in carriages and parlors--THAT isn't life. It's the frosting on the cake. Now, you and I, we're going to have the cake itself. Maybe with, maybe without the frosting. BUT NOT THE FROSTING WITHOUT THE CAKE, MARGARET!" "So!" she exclaimed, drawing a long breath when he had ended. "So! THIS is why you chose that five o'clock train and sent Selina back. You thought to--" He laughed as if echoing delight from her; he patted her enthusiastically on the knee. "You've guessed it! Go up head! I didn't want you to have time to say and do foolish things." She bit her lip till the blood came. Ringing in her ears and defying her efforts to silence them were those words of his about the cake and the frosting--"the cake, maybe with, maybe without frosting; BUT NOT THE FROSTING WITHOUT THE CAKE!" She started to speak; but it was no interruption from him that checked her, for he sat silent, looking at her with all his fiery strength of soul in his magnetic eyes. Again she started to speak; and a third time; and each time checked herself. This impossible man, this creator of impossible situations! She did not know how to begin, or how to go on after she should have begun. She felt that even if she had known what to say she would probably lack the courage to say it--that final-test courage which only the trained in self- reliance have. The door opened. A station attendant came in out of the frosty night and shouted: "Chicago Express! Express for--Buffalo! Chicago! Minneapolis! St. Paul!--the Northwest!--the Far West! All--a--BOARD!" Craig seized the handbags. "Come on, my dear!" he cried, getting into rapid motion. She sat still. He was at the door. "Come on," he said. She looked appealingly, helplessly round that empty, lonely, strange station, its lights dim, its suggestions all inhospitable. "He has me at his mercy," she said to herself, between anger and despair. "How can I refuse to go without becoming the laughing- stock of the whole world?" "Come on--Rita!" he cried. The voice was aggressive, but his face was deathly pale and the look out of his eyes was the call of a great loneliness. And she saw it and felt it. She braced herself against it; but a sob surged up in her throat--the answer of her heart to his heart's cry of loneliness and love. "Chicago Express!" came in the train-caller's warning roar from behind her, as if the room were crowded instead of tenanted by those two only. "All aboard! ...Hurry up, lady, or you'll get left!" Get left! ... Left!--the explosion of that hoarse, ominous voice seemed to blow Mrs. Joshua Craig from the seat, to sweep her out through the door her husband was holding open, and into the train for their home. [THE END] _ |
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