"Oh, I don't hardly know what it is all about. My sales have been falling off, all rightee. But, good Lord! that's no fault of mine. I work my territory jus' as hard as I ever did, but I can't meet the competition of the floor-wax people. They're making an auto polish now-better article at a lower price-and what can I do? They got a full line, varnish, cleaner, polish, swell window displays, national advertising, swell discounts-everything; and I can't buck competition like that. And then a lot of the salesmen at our shop are jealous of me, and one thing and another. Well, now I'll go down and spit the old man in the eye couple o' times, and get canned, unless I can talk him out of his bad acting. Oh, I'll throw a big bluff. I'll be the little misunderstood boy, but I don't honestly think I can put anything across on him. I'm-Oh, hell, I guess I'm getting old. I ain't got the pep I used to have. Not but what J. Eddie Schwirtz can still sell goods, but I can't talk up to the boss like I could once. I gotta feel some sympathy at the home office. And I by God deserve it-way I've worked and slaved for that bunch of cutthroats, and now-Sure, that's the way it goes in this world. I tell you, I'm gonna turn socialist!"
"Ed-listen, Ed. Please, oh, please don't be offended now; but don't you think perhaps the boss thinks you drink too much?"
"How could he? I don't drink very much, and you know it. I don't hardly touch a drop, except maybe just for sociability. God! this temperance wave gets my goat! Lot of hot-air females telling me what I can do and what I can't do-fella that knows when to drink and when to stop. Drink? Why, you ought to see some of the boys! There's Burke McCullough. Say, I bet he puts away forty drinks a day, if he does one, and I don't know that it hurts him any; but me-"
"Yes, I know, dear. I was just thinking-maybe your boss is one of the temperance cranks," Una interrupted. Mr. Schwirtz's arguments regarding the privileges of a manly man sounded very familiar. This did not seem to be a moment for letting her husband get into the full swing of them. She begged: "What will you do if they let you out? I wish there was something I could do to help."
"Dun'no'. There's a pretty close agreement between a lot of the leading paint-and-varnish people-gentleman's agreement-and it's pretty hard to get in any place if you're in Dutch with any of the others. Well, I'm going down now and watch 'em gwillotine me. You better not wait to have dinner with me. I'll be there late, thrashing all over the carpet with the old man, and then I gotta see some fellas and start something. Come here, Una."
He stood up. She came to him, and when he put his two hands on her shoulders she tried to keep her aversion to his touch out of her look.
He shook his big, bald head. He was unhappy and his eyes were old. "Nope," he said; "nope. Can't be done. You mean well, but you haven't got any fire in you. Kid, can't you understand that there are wives who've got so much passion in 'em that if their husbands came home clean-licked, like I am, they'd-oh, their husbands would just naturally completely forget their troubles in love-real love, with fire in it. Women that aren't ashamed of having bodies.... But, oh, Lord! it ain't your fault. I shouldn't have said anything. There's lots of wives like you. More 'n one man's admitted his wife was like that, when he's had a couple drinks under his belt to loosen his tongue. You're not to blame, but-I'm sorry.... Don't mind my grouch when I came in. I was so hot, and I'd been worrying and wanted to blame things onto somebody.... Don't wait for me at dinner. If I ain't here by seven, go ahead and feed. Good-by."
§ 2
All she knew was that at six a woman's purring voice on the telephone asked if Mr. Eddie Schwirtz had returned to town yet. That he did not reappear till after midnight. That his return was heralded by wafting breezes with whisky laden. That, in the morning, there was a smear of rice powder on his right shoulder and that he was not so urgent in his attentions to her as ordinarily. So her sympathy for him was lost. But she discovered that she was neither jealous nor indignant-merely indifferent.
He told her at breakfast that, with his usual discernment, he had guessed right. When he had gone to the office he had been discharged.
"Went out with some business acquaintances in the evening-got to pull all the wires I can now," he said.
She said nothing.
§ 3
They had less than two hundred dollars ahead. But Mr. Schwirtz borrowed a hundred from his friend, Burke McCullough, and did not visibly have to suffer from want of highballs, cigars, and Turkish baths. From the window of their room Una used to see him cross the street to the café entrance of the huge Saffron Hotel-and once she saw him emerge from it with a fluffy blonde. But she did not attack him. She was spellbound in a strange apathy, as in a dream of swimming on forever in a warm and slate-hued sea. She was confident that he would soon have another position. He had over-ridden her own opinions about business-the opinions of the underling who never sees the great work as a rounded whole-till she had come to have a timorous respect for his commercial ability.
Apparently her wifely respect was not generally shared in the paint business. At least Mr. Schwirtz did not soon get his new position.
The manager of the hotel came to the room with his bill and pressed for payment. And after three weeks-after a night when he had stayed out very late and come home reeking with perfume-Mr. Schwirtz began to hang about the room all day long and to soak himself in the luxury of complaining despair.
Then came the black days.
There were several scenes (during which she felt like a beggar about to be arrested) between Mr. Schwirtz and the landlord, before her husband paid part of a bill whose size astounded her.
Mr. Schwirtz said that he was "expecting something to turn up-nothin' he could do but wait for some telephone calls." He sat about with his stockinged feet cocked up on the bed, reading detective stories till he fell asleep in his chair. He drank from unlabeled pint flasks of whisky all day. Once, when she opened a bureau drawer of his by mistake, she saw half a dozen whisky-flasks mixed with grimy collars, and the sour smell nauseated her. But on food-they had to economize on that! He took her to a restaurant of fifteen-cent breakfasts and twenty-five-cent dinners. It was the "parlor floor" of an old brownstone house-two rooms, with eggy table-cloths, and moldings of dusty stucco.
She avoided his presence as much as possible. Mrs. Wade, the practical dressmaker, who was her refuge among the women of the hotel, seemed to understand what was going on, and gave Una a key to her room. Here Una sat for hours. When she went back to their room quarrels would spring up apropos of anything or nothing.
The fault was hers as much as his. She was no longer trying to conceal her distaste, while he, who had a marital conscience of a sort, was almost pathetic in his apologies for being unable to "show her a good time." And he wanted her soothing. He was more and more afraid of her as the despair of the jobless man in the hard city settled down on him. He wanted her to agree with him that there was a conspiracy against him.
She listened to him and said nothing, till he would burst out in abuse:
"You women that have been in business simply ain't fit to be married. You think you're too good to help a man. Yes, even when you haven't been anything but dub stenographers. I never noticed that you were such a whale of a success! I don't suppose you remember how you used to yawp to me about the job being too much for you! And yet when I want a little sympathy you sit there and hand me the frozen stare like you were the president of the Standard Oil Company and I was a bum office-boy. Yes, sir, I tell you business simply unfits a skirt for marriage."
"No," she said, "not for marriage that has any love and comradeship in it. But I admit a business woman doesn't care to put up with being a cow in a stable."