“Well, for god’s sake,” he said quietly. “For god’s sake, Lora mia, explain that if you can. You damn near pulled my hair out, and I damn near pulled your dress off. You don’t deserve that, you’re by no means good enough for it. Jackass — ho, ho, what a jackass!”
She did not reply, and abruptly he turned, and was gone. She heard him getting his hat in the hall, and an instant later the door slammed.
“As long as you admit I don’t deserve it,” she said aloud; and feeling something in her hand, looked at it and found a strand of fine blond hair twisted between her fingers. That’s a pity, she thought.
It was a month or more before he showed up again.
That night in bed she amused herself matching the after-noon’s episode with the Albert of four years back. He had always been direct, but directness like everything else is a matter of degree; he had always been stupid too, but never so stupid as this. Once she had been very fond of him; still was, for that matter, for she would never forget his blunt and unassuming kindness during a whole year, a year and more, before there was any hint of a reward. Nor would she soon forget the uncomfortable and all but hopeless situation out of which he had yanked her.
Five years ago, she thought; yes, all of that, for Roy would soon be five. Just think of it, so short a time ago there had been no Morris, no Helen, no Roy! Now Roy could read, Helen could talk, Morris would soon have a tooth. But that was a fix for you, five years ago. Steve had gone for good, with so natural and unembarrassed a brutality that she had felt no resentment or indignation, leaving her lying on a couch in the living-dining-bedroom of a tiny furnished flat on which the rent would be due in three days, with — to his knowledge — something under three dollars in her purse and seven months of his child in her womb. Anne Whitman — poor Anne she had thought even then — waiting at the door below for him to come down with his bags, had gone with him.
Anne had sought her out two weeks later — to apologize! She had gone first, she said, to the flat; the janitor told her that Miss Winter had gone, and after various inquiries she finally got an address from the girl at the drugstore on the corner. She explained this somewhat breathlessly after climbing three flights of stairs to the little furnished room on Fifteenth Street to which Lora had moved two days after Steve’s departure — the rent was only six dollars a week, whereas the flat had been three times that, and light and linen, clean each week, were furnished. They called it linen, a technical term, to be broadly interpreted.
There were two chairs in the room, one made entirely of wood, the other with a seat of green imitation leather. When Anne entered Lora was seated on the latter, sewing linings in coats. There were two piles of coats on the narrow bed, one with linings already in, the other without; the ready linings were at one end, and the wooden chair served as a sewing-table. Standing, Anne explained how she got there, stammering with embarrassment; then Lora moved the wooden chair over for her to sit on.
“It took a lot of courage to come, didn’t it?” Lora observed. “You needn’t have bothered. I have nothing against you.”
Anne had had to come, she said. It had taken courage all right. If Lora didn’t have anything against her she was an angel; she must have, she couldn’t help it. “I hate myself, I can’t expect you to forgive me,” Anne said. “I would have done anything, that’s all there is to it. I’d do anything for him, and he loves me, he does truly love me. You do believe he loves me, don’t you, Lora?”
Lora pitied her a little. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Yes, he loves you. He was through with me anyway.”
Anne nodded eagerly. “That’s it. He told me so a long while ago, two months ago, in March it was, you remember the night you wouldn’t go to dinner with us and we went to a party at Joe Curtis’s? I told him it wasn’t any use, he’d have to stick to you, he really ought to marry you I said, and he was wild, he swore you’d played a trick on him and were trying to force him into it and he wouldn’t stand for it. I didn’t believe that, of course I told him I didn’t believe it. We were in that little alcove at Joe’s, and he put his arms around me...”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Lora, who had resumed her sewing, wishing the little idiot would go.
“Anyway,” said Anne, and stopped. “I don’t know how to say it,” she continued, “but anyway it’s about money. I know you haven’t got any, and here—” she was fumbling in her purse — “here’s twenty dollars — of course it isn’t much—” She laid two ten-dollar bills on the corner of the bed; one of them slid to the floor and she picked it up and put it back. Lora looked at her, at the money, and back at her again.
“Steve didn’t send that,” Lora said.
“I get a little from my father,” said Anne. “Please don’t be angry. Steve doesn’t realize, it isn’t that he doesn’t care, he just doesn’t realize...”
“I need it all right.” Lora picked up the bills, folded them, and placed them on Anne’s lap. “Steve’s out of it, I wouldn’t even take the trouble to call him names. The only thing I’m concerned about is the baby. I need money all right, but I’d rather not take yours.” She grinned. “You’ll need it too, see if you don’t. Not for a baby maybe. Perhaps you’ll need it to get Steve out of jail, you’d better hang onto it.”
“Jail!” Anne stared at her.
“Don’t be frightened; nothing will happen probably. He got himself exempted by calling himself married, maybe he said I was pregnant too, I don’t know. I don’t blame him; I wouldn’t want to go to war either.”
Anne had jumped to her feet, fright and terror in her eyes. “I didn’t know — good god, they might shoot him — they might take him — if you don’t tell— Oh, Lora, for god’s sake don’t tell—”
“It isn’t that, why should I tell, but there must be people who know about it.”
Lora was sorry she had mentioned it, there had been no gratification in it anyway; and now she had a terrified and imploring Anne on her hands, begging her not to tell, begging her to do something — tell everybody they were married, for instance — anything to save Steve, careless and imprudent but well-meaning Steve. Finally with a flood of promises and reassurances Lora got rid of her — got her out of the room and the door shut, and heard her footsteps clumsily negotiating the dark narrow uncarpeted stairs. Then she restored the wooden chair to its office of sewing-table and picked up another coat. Stupid fool I was, she thought, to say anything about it.
Stupid too to have refused the money. Why shouldn’t she take it? Twenty dollars — that was four dollars more than she had got for the watch she sold yesterday — the watch Pete Halliday had given her. Almost would she have preferred to cut off her hair and sell it, the hair Pete had braided — not that, enough of that. She bit off a thread, compressed her lips, and started the other edge. She should have taken Anne’s money, why not? Idiotic stupid pride — if she wasn’t above that she might as well give up. Nothing in god’s world mattered but the baby, she was going to have that baby — ha, wasn’t she though! But it was about time she used her intelligence, everything she did was stupid. These coat-linings — she couldn’t possibly do more than fifteen a day — at eight cents that was a dollar twenty — the rent alone was nearly a dollar. Imbecile. Instead of jumping at this the minute that little tailor suggested it she should have waited, looked around for something worthwhile. She was handicapped by her condition, of course; she couldn’t get a job in a store or an office with her front bulging out magnificently like a dahlia and ready to burst; anyway, she simply had to lie down once in a while. If she could have stood it the baby couldn’t, she felt sure of that. If she could only see it! It was dumb to fix it so it couldn’t be seen; there ought to be an opening somewhere so you could look in, so you could touch it even; what if one of its legs got twisted or its arm doubled under? Lord, it would be ugly, an awful-looking thing probably, but how she would love to see it! You could see it move too, it certainly did move, no doubt about that.