The First Willa Cather Megapack

by Willa Cather

  One spring afternoon Remsen was closeted in his private office with his lawyer until a late hour. As he came down the long hall in the dusk he glanced through the glass partition into the counting-room, and saw Percy Bixby huddled up on his tall stool, though it was too dark to work. Indeed, Bixby’s ledger was closed, and he sat with his two arms resting on the brown cover. He did not move a muscle when young Remsen entered.

  “You are late, Bixby, and so am I,” Oliver began genially as he crossed to the front of the room and looked out at the lighted windows of other tall buildings. “The fact is, I’ve been doing something that men have a foolish way of putting off. I’ve been making my will.”

  “Yes, sir.” Percy brought it out with a deep breath.

  “Glad to be through with it,” Oliver went on. “Mr. Melton will bring the paper back tomorrow, and I’d like to ask you to be one of the witnesses.”

  “I’ d be very proud, Mr. Remsen.”

  “Thank you, Bixby. Good night.” Remsen took up his hat just as Percy slid down from his stool.

  “Mr. Remsen, I’ m told you’re going to have the books gone over.”

  “Why, yes, Bixby. Don’t let that trouble you. I’m taking in a new partner, you know, an old college friend. Just because he is a friend, I insist upon all the usual formalities. But it is a formality, and I’ll guarantee the expert won’t make a scratch on your books. Good night. You’d better be coming, too.” Remsen had reached the door when he heard “Mr. Remsen!” in a desperate voice behind him. He turned, and saw Bixby standing uncertainly at one end of the desk, his hand still on his ledger, his uneven shoulders drooping forward and his head hanging as if he were seasick. Remsen came back and stood at the other end of the long desk. It was too dark to see Bixby’s face clearly.

  “What is it, Bixby?”

  “Mr. Remsen, five years ago, just before I was married, I falsified the books a thousand dollars, and I used the money.” Percy leaned forward against his desk, which took him just across the chest.

  “What’s that, Bixby?” Young Remsen spoke in a tone of polite surprise. He felt painfully embarrassed.

  “Yes, sir. I thought I’d get it all paid back before this. I’ve put back three hundred, but the books are still seven hundred out of true. I’ve played the shortages about from account to account these five years, but an expert would find ’em in twenty-four hours.”

  “I don’t just understand how—” Oliver stopped and shook his head.

  “I held it out of the Western remittances, Mr. Remsen. They were coming in heavy just then. I was up against it. I hadn’t saved anything to marry on, and my wife thought I was getting more money than I was. Since we’ve been married, I’ve never had the nerve to tell her. I could have paid it all back if it hadn’t been for the unforeseen expenses.”

  Remsen sighed.

  “Being married is largely unforeseen expenses, Percy. There’s only one way to fix this up: I’ll give you seven hundred dollars in cash tomorrow, and you can give me your personal note, with the understanding that I hold ten dollars a week out of your paycheck until it is paid. I think you ought to tell your wife exactly how you are fixed, though. You can’t expect her to help you much when she doesn’t know.”

  That night Mrs. Bixby was sitting in their flat, waiting for her husband. She was dressed for a bridge party, and often looked with impatience from her paper to the Mission clock, as big as a coffin and with nothing but two weights dangling in its hollow framework. Percy had been loath to buy the clock when they got their furniture, and he had hated it ever since. Stella had changed very little since she came into the flat a bride. Then she wore her hair in a Floradora pompadour; now she wore it hooded close about her head like a scarf, in a rather smeary manner, like an Impressionist’s brushwork. She heard her husband come in and close the door softly. While he was taking off his hat in the narrow tunnel of a hall, she called to him:

  “I hope you’ve had something to eat downtown. You’ll have to dress right away.” Percy came in and sat down. She looked up from the evening paper she was reading. “You’ve no time to sit down. We must start in fifteen minutes.”

  He shaded his eyes from the glaring overhead light.

  “I’m afraid I can’t go anywhere tonight. I’m all in.”

  Mrs. Bixby rattled her paper, and turned from the theatrical page to the fashions.

  “You’ll feel better after you dress. We won’t stay late.”

  Her even persistence usually conquered her husband. She never forgot anything she had once decided to do. Her manner of following it up grew more chilly, but never weaker. Tonight there was no spring in Percy. He closed his eyes and replied without moving:

  “I can’t go. You had better telephone the Burks we aren’t coming. I have to tell you something disagreeable.”

  Stella rose.

  “I certainly am not going to disappoint the Burks and stay at home to talk about anything disagreeable.”

  “You’re not very sympathetic, Stella.”

  She turned away.

  “If I were, you’d soon settle down into a pretty dull proposition. We’d have no social life now if I didn’t keep at you.”

  Percy roused himself a little.

  “Social life? Well, we’ll have to trim that pretty close for a while. I’m in debt to the company. We’ve been living beyond our means ever since we were married.”

  “We can’t live on less than we do,” Stella said quietly. “No use in taking that up again.”

  Percy sat up, clutching the arms of his chair.

  “We’ll have to take it up. I’m seven hundred dollars short, and the books are to be audited tomorrow. I told young Remsen and he’s going to take my note and hold the money out of my paychecks. He could send me to jail, of course.”

  Stella turned and looked down at him with a gleam of interest.

  “Oh, you’ve been playing solitaire with the books, have you? And he’s found you out! I hope I’ll never see that man again. Sugar face!” She said this with intense acrimony. Her forehead flushed delicately, and her eyes were full of hate. Young Remsen was not her idea of a “business man.”

  Stella went into the other room. When she came back she wore her evening coat and carried long gloves and a black scarf. This she began to arrange over her hair before the mirror above the false fireplace. Percy lay inert in the Morris chair and watched her. Yes, he understood; it was very difficult for a woman with hair like that to be shabby and to go without things. Her hair made her conspicuous, and it had to be lived up to. It had been the deciding factor in his fate.

  Stella caught the lace over one ear with a large gold hairpin. She repeated this until she got a good effect. Then turning to Percy, she began to draw on her gloves.

  “I’m not worrying any, because I’m going back into business,” she said firmly. “I meant to, anyway, if you didn’t get a raise the first of the year. I have the offer of a good position, and we can live in an apartment hotel.”

  Percy was on his feet in an instant.

  “I won’t have you grinding in any office. That’s flat.”

  Stella’s lower lip quivered in a commiserating smile. “Oh, I won’t lose my health. Charley Greengay’s a partner in his concern now, and he wants a private secretary.”

  Percy drew back.

  “You can’t work for Greengay. He’s got too bad a reputation. You’ve more pride than that, Stella.”

  The thin sweep of color he knew so well went over Stella’s face.

  “His business reputation seems to be all right,” she commented, working the kid on with her left hand.

  “What if it is?” Percy broke out. “He’s the cheapest kind of a skate. He gets into scrapes with the girls in his own office. The last one got into the newspapers, and he had to pay the girl a wad.�
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  “He don’t get into scrapes with his books, anyway, and he seems to be able to stand getting into the papers. I excuse Charley. His wife’s a pill.”

  “I suppose you think he’d have been all right if he’d married you,” said Percy, bitterly.

  “Yes, I do.” Stella buttoned her glove with an air of finishing something, and then looked at Percy without animosity. “Charley and I both have sporty tastes, and we like excitement. You might as well live in Newark if you’re going to sit at home in the evening. You oughtn’t to have married a business woman; you need somebody domestic. There’s nothing in this sort of life for either of us.”

  “That means, I suppose, that you’re going around with Greengay and his crowd?”

  “Yes, that’s my sort of crowd, and you never did fit into it. You’re too intellectual. I’ve always been proud of you, Percy. You’re better style than Charley, but that gets tiresome. You will never burn much red fire in New York, now, will you?”

  Percy did not reply. He sat looking at the minute-hand of the eviscerated Mission clock. His wife almost never took the trouble to argue with him.

  “You’re old style, Percy,” she went on. “Of course everybody marries and wishes they hadn’t, but nowadays people get over it. Some women go ahead on the quiet, but I’m giving it to you straight. I’m going to work for Greengay. I like his line of business, and I meet people well. Now I’m going to the Burks’.”

  Percy dropped his hands limply between his knees.

  “I suppose,” he brought out, “the real trouble is that you’ve decided my earning power is not very great.”

  “That’s part of it, and part of it is you’re old fashioned.” Stella paused at the door and looked back. “What made you rush me, anyway, Percy?” she asked indulgently. “What did you go and pretend to be a spender and get tied up with me for?”

  “I guess everybody wants to be a spender when he’s in love,” Percy replied.

  Stella shook her head mournfully.

  “No, you’re a spender or you’re not. Greengay has been broke three times, fired, down and out, blacklisted. But he’s always come back, and he always will. You will never be fired, but you’ll always be poor.” She turned and looked back again before she went out.

  * * * *

  Six months later Bixby came to young Oliver Remsen one afternoon and said he would like to have twenty dollars a week held out of his pay until his debt was cleared off.

  Oliver looked up at his sallow employee and asked him how he could spare as much as that.

  “My expenses are lighter,” Bixby replied. “My wife has gone into business with a ready-to-wear firm. She is not living with me any more.”

  Oliver looked annoyed, and asked him if nothing could be done to readjust his domestic affairs. Bixby said no; they would probably remain as they were.

  “But where are you living, Bixby? How have you arranged things?” the young man asked impatiently.

  “I’m very comfortable. I live in a boarding-house and have my own furniture. There are several fellows there who are fixed the same way. Their wives went back into business, and they drifted apart.”

  With a baffled expression Remsen stared at the uneven shoulders under the skin-fitting alpaca desk coat as his bookkeeper went out. He had meant to do something for Percy, but somehow, he reflected, one never did do anything for a fellow who had been stung as hard as that.

  THE DIAMOND MINE

  I first became aware that Cressida Garnet was on board when I saw young men with cameras going up to the boat deck. In that exposed spot she was good-naturedly posing for them, amid fluttering lavender scarfs, wearing a most unseaworthy hat, her broad, vigorous face wreathed in smiles. She was too much an American not to believe in publicity. All advertising was good. If it was good for breakfast foods, it was good for prime donne—especially for a prima donna who would never be any younger and who had just announced her intention of marrying a fourth time.

  Only a few days before, when I was lunching with some friends at Sherry’s, I had seen Jerome Brown come in with several younger men, looking so pleased and prosperous that I exclaimed upon it.

  “His affairs,” someone explained, “are looking up. He’s going to marry Cressida Garnet. That woman’s a diamond mine.”

  If there was ever a man who needed a diamond mine at hand, immediately convenient, it was Jerome Brown. I was an old friend of Cressida Garnet, and I had been away from New York. Therefore, I had not seen Cressida for a year, and I paused on the gangplank to note how very like herself she still was, and with what undiminished zeal she went about even the most trifling things that pertained to her profession. From that distance I could recognize her “carrying” smile, and even what, in Columbus, we used to call “the Garnet look.”

  At the foot of the stairway leading up to the boat deck stood two of the factors in Cressida’s destiny. One of them was her sister, Miss Julia; a woman of fifty with a relaxed, mournful face, an aging skin that browned slowly, like meerschaum, and the unmistakable “look” by which one knew a Garnet. Beside her, pointedly ignoring her, smoking a cigarette while he ran over the passenger-list with supercilious almond eyes, stood a youth in a pink shirt and a green plush hat, holding a French bulldog on the leash. This was Horace, Cressida’s only son. He, at any rate, had not the Garnet look. He was rich and ruddy, indolent and insolent, with soft oval cheeks and the blooming complexion of eighteen. He seemed like a ripe fruit grown out of a rich soil; “oriental,” his mother called his peculiar lusciousness. He and his aunt were waiting, in constrained immobility, for Cressida to descend and reanimate them—will them to do or to be something. Forward, by the rail, I saw the stooped, eager back for which I was unconsciously looking: Miletus Poppas, the Greek Jew, Cressida’s accompanist and shadow. We were all there, I thought with a smile, except Jerome Brown.

  The first member of Cressida’s party with whom I had speech was Mr. Poppas. When we were two hours out I came upon him in the act of dropping overboard a steamer cushion made of American flags. Cressida never sailed, I think, that one of these vivid comforts of travel did not reach her at the dock. Poppas recognized me just as the striped object left his hand. He was standing with his arm still extended over the rail, his fingers contemptuously sprung back.

  “Lest we forgedt!” he said with a shrug. “Does Madame Cressida know that we are to have the pleasure of your company for this voyage?”

  He spoke deliberate, grammatical English—he despised the American rendering of the language—but there was an indescribably foreign quality in his voice, a something muted. Poppas stood before me in a short, tightly buttoned gray coat and cap, exactly the color of his grayish skin and hair and waxed moustache; a monocle on a very wide black ribbon dangled over his chest. As to his age, I could not offer a conjecture. In the twelve years I had known his thin lupine face behind Cressida’s shoulder, it had not changed. I was used to his cold, supercilious manner, to his alarming, deepset eyes—very close together, in color a yellowish green, and always gleaming with something like defeated fury.

  I asked him if Cressida had engagements in London.

  “Quite so: The Manchester Festival, some concerts at Queen’s Hall, and the Opera at Covent Garden; a rather special production of the operas of Mozart. That she can still do quite well—which is not at all, of course, what we might have expected, and which only goes to show that our Madame Cressida is now, as always, a charming exception to rules.” Poppas’s tone about his client was consistently patronizing, and he was always trying to draw one into a conspiracy of two, based on a mutual understanding of her shortcomings.

  I approached him on the one subject I could think of which was more personal than his usefulness to Cressida, and asked him whether he still suffered from facial neuralgia as much as he had done in former years, and whether he was therefore dreadi
ng London, where the climate used to be so bad for him.

  “And is still,” he caught me up. “And is still! For me to go to London is martyrdom, chère Madame. I think I have told you about my favorite city in the middle of Asia, la sainte Asie, as I love to call it, where the rainfall is absolutely nil, and you are protected on every side by hundreds of metres of warm, dry sand. I was there when I was a child once, and it is still my intention to retire there when I have finished with all this. I would be there now, n-ow-ow,” his voice rose querulously, “if Madame Cressida did not imagine that she needs me, and her fancies, you know—” he flourished his hands, “one gives in to them. In humoring her caprices you and I have already played some together.”

  We were approaching Cressida’s deck chairs, ranged under the open windows of her stateroom. She was already recumbent, protected by lavender scarfs and wearing purple orchids—doubtless from Jerome Brown. At her left, Horace had settled down to a French novel, and Julia Garnet, at her right, was complainingly regarding the gray horizon. On seeing me, Cressida struggled under her fur-lined robes and got to her feet, which was more than Horace or Miss Julia managed to do. Miss Julia, as I could have foretold, was not pleased. All the Garnets had an awkward manner with me. Whether it was that I reminded them of things they wished to forget, or whether they thought I esteemed Cressida too highly and the rest of them too lightly, I do not know; but my appearance upon their scene always put them greatly on their dignity. Cressida took my arm and walked me off toward the stern.

  “Do you know, Carrie, I half wondered whether I shouldn’t find you here, or in London, because you always turn up at critical moments in my life.” She pressed my arm confidentially, and I felt that she was once more wrought up to a new purpose, was once more encouraged about living. I told her that I had heard some rumor of her engagement.