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The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig

D >> David Graham Phillips >> The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig




The idea of revolt, of refusing to go, appealed to her first anger
strongly. But, on consideration, she saw that merely asserting her
rights would not be enough--that she must train him to respect
them. If she refused to go he would simply leave her; yes, he was
just the man, the wild man, to do precisely that disgraceful
thing. And she would be horribly afraid to spend the night alone
in those woods with only the guides and Selina, not to speak of
facing the morrow--for he might refuse to take her back! Where
would she turn in that case? What would her grandmother say? Who
would support her in making such a scandal and giving up a husband
for reasons that could not be made impressive in words though they
were the best of all reasons in terms of feeling? No, if she gave
him up she would be absolutely alone, condemned on every hand, in
the worst possible position. Then, too, the break was unattractive
for another reason. Though she despised herself for her weakness,
she did not wish to give up the man who had given her that brief
glimpse of happiness she had dreamed as one dreams an
impossibility. Did not wish? Could not--would not--give him up.
"I belong to him!" she thought with a thrill of ecstasy and of
despair.

"But he'd better be careful!" she grumbled. "If I should begin to
dislike him there'd be no going back." And then it recurred to her
that this would be as great a calamity of loss for her as for him
--and she went at her packing in a better humor. "I'll explain to
him that I yield this once, but--" There she stopped herself with
a laugh. Of what use to explain to him?--him who never listened
to explanations, who did not care a fig why people did as he
wished, but was content that they did. As for warning him about
"next time"--how ridiculous! She could hear his penetrating,
rousing voice saying: "We'll deal with 'next time' when it comes."





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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