Rubenstein. “If you can bring me seventy-five next week or
to-morrow, and forty more in another week or ten days, why
not wait a week and bring the whole hundred and fifteen?
Then the coat is yours and no bother. Leave the coat.
Come back to-morrow and pay me twenty-five or thirty
dollars on account and I take the coat out of the window
and lock it up for you. No one can even see it then. In
another week bring me the balance or in two weeks. Then it
is yours.” Mr. Rubenstein explained the process as though it
were a difficult matter to grasp.
But the argument once made was sound enough. It really
left Hortense little to argue about. At the same time it
reduced her spirit not a little. To think of not being able to
take it now. And yet, once out of the place, her vigor
revived. For, after all, the time fixed would soon pass and if
Clyde performed his part of the agreement promptly, the
coat would be hers. The important thing now was to make
him give her twenty-five or thirty dollars wherewith to bind
this wonderful agreement. Only now, because of the fact
that she felt that she needed a new hat to go with the coat,
she decided to say that it cost one hundred and twenty-five
instead of one hundred and fifteen.
And once this conclusion was put before Clyde, he saw it
as a very reasonable arrangement—all things considered—
quite a respite from the feeling of strain that had settled
upon him after his last conversation with Hortense. For,
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174
after all, he had not seen how he was to raise more than
thirty-five dollars this first week anyhow. The following week
would be somewhat easier, for then, as he told himself, he
proposed to borrow twenty or twenty-five from Ratterer if he
could, which, joined with the twenty or twenty-five which his
tips would bring him, would be quite sufficient to meet the
second payment. The week following he proposed to
borrow at least ten or fifteen from Hegglund—maybe more
—and if that did not make up the required amount to pawn
his watch for fifteen dollars, the watch he had bought for
himself a few months before. It ought to bring that at least;
it cost fifty.
But, he now thought, there was Esta in her wretched room
awaiting the most unhappy result of her one romance. How
was she to make out, he asked himself, even in the face of
the fact that he feared to be included in the financial
problem which Esta as well as the family presented. His
father was not now, and never had been, of any real
financial service to his mother. And yet, if the problem were
on this account to be shifted to him, how would he make
out? Why need his father always peddle clocks and rugs
and preach on the streets? Why couldn’t his mother and
father give up the mission idea, anyhow?
But, as he knew, the situation was not to be solved without
his aid. And the proof of it came toward the end of the
second week of his arrangement with Hortense, when, with
fifty dollars in his pocket, which he was planning to turn
over to her on the following Sunday, his mother, looking
into his bedroom where he was dressing, said: “I’d like to
see you for a minute, Clyde, before you go out.” He noted
she was very grave as she said this. As a matter of fact, for
several days past, he had been sensing that she was
undergoing a strain of some kind. At the same time he had
been thinking all this while that with his own resources
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175
hypothecated as they were, he could do nothing. Or, if he
did it meant the loss of Hortense. He dared not.
And yet what reasonable excuse could he give his mother
for not helping her a little, considering especially the clothes
he wore, and the manner in which he had been running
here and there, always giving the excuse of working, but
probably not deceiving her as much as he thought. To be
sure, only two months before, he had obligated himself to
pay her ten dollars a week more for five weeks, and had.
But that only proved to her very likely that he had so much
extra to give, even though he had tried to make it clear at
the time that he was pinching himself to do it. And yet,
however much he chose to waver in her favor, he could
not, with his desire for Hortense directly confronting him.
He went out into the living-room after a time, and as usual
his mother at once led the way to one of the benches in the
mission—a cheerless, cold room these days.
“I didn’t think I’d have to speak to you about this, Clyde, but
I don’t see any other way out of it. I haven’t anyone but you
to depend upon now that you’re getting to be a man. But
you must promise not to tell any of the others—Frank or
Julia or your father. I don’t want them to know. But Esta’s
back here in Kansas City and in trouble, and I don’t know
quite what to do about her. I have so very little money to do
with, and your father’s not very much of a help to me any
more.”
She passed a weary, reflective hand across her forehead
and Clyde knew what was coming. His first thought was to
pretend that he did not know that Esta was in the city, since
he had been pretending this way for so long. But now,
suddenly, in the face of his mother’s confession, and the
need of pretended surprise on his part, if he were to keep
up the fiction, he said, “Yes, I know.”
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176
“You know?” queried his mother, surprised.
“Yes, I know,” Clyde repeated. “I saw you going in that
house in Beaudry Street one morning as I was going along
there,” he announced calmly enough now. “And I saw Esta
looking out of the window afterwards, too. So I went in after
you left.”
“How long ago was that?” she asked, more to gain time
than anything else.
“Oh, about five or six weeks ago, I think. I been around to
see her a coupla times since then, only Esta didn’t want me
to say anything about that either.”
“Tst! Tst! Tst!” clicked Mrs. Griffiths, with her tongue. “Then
you know what the trouble is.”
“Yes,” replied Clyde.
“Well, what is to be will be,” she said resignedly. “You
haven’t mentioned it to Frank or Julia, have you?”
“No,” replied Clyde, thoughtfully, thinking of what a failure
his mother had made of her attempt to be secretive. She
was no one to deceive any one, or his father, either. He
thought himself far, far shrewder.
“Well, you mustn’t,” cautioned his mother solemnly. “It isn’t
best for them to know, I think. It’s bad enough as it is this
way,” she added with a kind of wry twist to her mouth, the
while Clyde thought of himself and Hortense.
“And to think,” she added, after a moment, her eyes filling
with a sad, all-enveloping gray mist, “she should have
brought all this on herself and on us. And when we have so
little to do with, as it is. And after all the instruction she has
had—the training. ‘The way of the transgressor——’”
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177
She shook her head and put her two large hands together
and gripped them firmly, while Clyde stared, thinking of the
situation and all that it might mean to him.
She sat there, quite reduced and bewildered by her own
peculiar part in all this. She had been as deceiving as any
one, really. And here was Clyde, now, fully informed as to
her falsehoods and strategy, and herself looking foolish and
untrue. But had she not been trying to save him from all this
—him and the others? And he was old enough to
understand that now. Yet she now proceeded to explain
why, and to say how dreadful she felt it all to be. At the
same time, as she also explained, now she was compelled
to come to him for aid in connection with it.
“Esta’s about to be very sick,” she went on suddenly and
stiffly, not being able, or at least willing, apparently, to look
at Clyde as she said it, and yet determined to be as frank
as possible. “She’ll need a doctor very shortly and some
one to be with her all the time when I’m not there. I must
get money somewhere—at least fifty dollars. You couldn’t
get me that much in some way, from some of your young
men friends, could you, just a loan for a few weeks? You