hear.
“What’s the matter, Joe?” she asked, with a tenderness the power of
which to thrill him she knew full well.
“Oh, nothing,” he said. “I was only thinking–and wishing.”
“Wishing?–what?” Her voice was seduction itself, and her eyes
would have melted stronger than he, though they failed in calling
his up to them.
Then, deliberately, his eyes lifted to hers. “I was wishing you
could see me fight just once.”
She made a gesture of disgust, and his face fell. It came to her
sharply that the rival had thrust between and was bearing him away.
“I–I’d like to,” she said hastily with an effort, striving after
that sympathy which weakens the strongest men and draws their heads
to women’s breasts.
“Will you?”
Again his eyes lifted and looked into hers. He meant it–she knew
that. It seemed a challenge to the greatness of her love.
“It would be the proudest moment of my life,” he said simply.
It may have been the apprehensiveness of love, the wish to meet his
need for her sympathy, and the desire to see the Game face to face
for wisdom’s sake,–and it may have been the clarion call of
adventure ringing through the narrow confines of uneventful
existence; for a great daring thrilled through her, and she said,
just as simply, “I will.”
“I didn’t think you would, or I wouldn’t have asked,” he confessed,
as they walked out to the sidewalk.
“But can’t it be done?” she asked anxiously, before her resolution
could cool.
“Oh, I can fix that; but I didn’t think you would.”
“I didn’t think you would,” he repeated, still amazed, as he helped
her upon the electric car and felt in his pocket for the fare.
THE GAME
7
CHAPTER II
Genevieve and Joe were working-class aristocrats. In an environment
made up largely of sordidness and wretchedness they had kept
themselves unsullied and wholesome. Theirs was a self-respect, a
regard for the niceties and clean things of life, which had held
them aloof from their kind. Friends did not come to them easily;
nor had either ever possessed a really intimate friend, a heart-
companion with whom to chum and have things in common. The social
instinct was strong in them, yet they had remained lonely because
they could not satisfy that instinct and at that same time satisfy
their desire for cleanness and decency.
If ever a girl of the working class had led the sheltered life, it
was Genevieve. In the midst of roughness and brutality, she had
shunned all that was rough and brutal. She saw but what she chose
to see, and she chose always to see the best, avoiding coarseness
and uncouthness without effort, as a matter of instinct. To begin
with, she had been peculiarly unexposed. An only child, with an
invalid mother upon whom she attended, she had not joined in the
street games and frolics of the children of the neighbourhood. Her
father, a mild-tempered, narrow-chested, anaemic little clerk,
domestic because of his inherent disability to mix with men, had
done his full share toward giving the home an atmosphere of
sweetness and tenderness.
A
n orphan at twelve, Genevieve had gone straight from her father’s
funeral to live with the Silversteins in their rooms above the candy
store; and here, sheltered by kindly aliens, she earned her keep and
clothes by waiting on the shop. Being Gentile, she was especially
necessary to the Silversteins, who would not run the business
themselves when the day of their Sabbath came round.
And here, in the uneventful little shop, six maturing years had
slipped by. Her acquaintances were few. She had elected to have no
girl chum for the reason that no satisfactory girl had appeared.
Nor did she choose to walk with the young fellows of the
neighbourhood, as was the custom of girls from their fifteenth year.
“That stuck-up doll-face,” was the way the girls of the
neighbourhood described her; and though she earned their enmity by
her beauty and aloofness, she none the less commanded their respect.
“Peaches and cream,” she was called by the young men–though softly
and amongst themselves, for they were afraid of arousing the ire of
the other girls, while they stood in awe of Genevieve, in a dimly
religious way, as a something mysteriously beautiful and
unapproachable.
For she was indeed beautiful. Springing from a long line of
American descent, she was one of those wonderful working-class
blooms which occasionally appear, defying all precedent of forebears
and environment, apparently without cause or explanation. She was a
beauty in color, the blood spraying her white skin so deliciously as
THE GAME
8
to earn for her the apt description, “peaches and cream.” She was a
beauty in the regularity of her features; and, if for no other
reason, she was a beauty in the mere delicacy of the lines on which
she was moulded. Quiet, low-voiced, stately, and dignified, she
somehow had the knack of dress, and but befitted her beauty and
dignity with anything she put on. Withal, she was sheerly feminine,
tender and soft and clinging, with the smouldering passion of the
mate and the motherliness of the woman. But this side of her nature
had lain dormant through the years, waiting for the mate to appear.
Then Joe came into Silverstein’s shop one hot Saturday afternoon to
cool himself with ice-cream soda. She had not noticed his entrance,
being busy with one other customer, an urchin of six or seven who
gravely analyzed his desires before the show-case wherein truly
generous and marvellous candy creations reposed under a cardboard
announcement, “Five for Five Cents.”
She had heard, “Ice-cream soda, please,” and had herself asked,
“What flavor?” without seeing his face. For that matter, it was not
a custom of hers to notice young men. There was something about
them she did not understand. The way they looked at her made her
uncomfortable, she knew not why; while there was an uncouthness and
roughness about them that did not please her. As yet, her
imagination had been untouched by man. The young fellows she had
seen had held no lure for her, had been without meaning to her. In
short, had she been asked to give one reason for the existence of
men on the earth, she would have been nonplussed for a reply.
As she emptied the measure of ice-cream into the glass, her casual
glance rested on Joe’s face, and she experienced on the instant a
pleasant feeling of satisfaction. The next instant his eyes were
upon her face, her eyes had dropped, and she was turning away toward
the soda fountain. But at the fountain, filling the glass, she was
impelled to look at him again–but for no more than an instant, for
this time she found his eyes already upon her, waiting to meet hers,
while on his face was a frankness of interest that caused her
quickly to look away.
That such pleasingness would reside for her in any man astonished
her. “What a pretty boy,” she thought to herself, innocently and
instinctively trying to ward off the power to hold and draw her that
lay behind the mere prettiness. “Besides, he isn’t pretty,” she
thought, as she placed the glass before him, received the silver
dime in payment, and for the third time looked into his eyes. Her
vocabulary was limited, and she knew little of the worth of words;
but the strong masculinity of his boy’s face told her that the term
was inappropriate.
“He must be handsome, then,” was her next thought, as she again
dropped her eyes before his. But all good-looking men were called
handsome, and that term, too, displeased her. But whatever it was,
he was good to see, and she was irritably aware of a desire to look
at him again and again.
As for Joe, he had never seen anything like this girl across the
counter. While he was wiser in natural philosophy than she, and
could have given immediately the reason for woman’s existence on the
THE GAME
9
earth, nevertheless woman had no part in his cosmos. His
imagination was as untouched by woman as the girl’s was by man. But
his imagination was touched now, and the woman was Genevieve. He
had never dreamed a girl could be so beautiful, and he could not
keep his eyes from her face. Yet every time he looked at her, and
her eyes met his, he felt painful embarrassment, and would have
looked away had not her eyes dropped so quickly.
But when, at last, she slowly lifted her eyes and held their gaze
steadily, it was his own eyes that dropped, his own cheek that
mantled red. She was much less embarrassed than he, while she
betrayed her embarrassment not at all. She was aware of a flutter
within, such as she had never known before, but in no way did it
disturb her outward serenity. Joe, on the contrary, was obviously