Джеймс Кейн - Root of His Evil [= Shameless]

When I came out into the sunshine, I was startled to see my own picture in the papers, very big, with Grant’s picture much smaller, and Muriel Van Hoogland’s just a little circle down at one side. It was the picture I had had taken when I graduated from high school in Nyack, and that meant it must have come from there, and that frightened me. And sure enough, there was a whole long item about the orphan asylum, and being a waitress in the hotel, and all the rest of it that I had wanted to keep to myself.

But what made something turn over inside of me was the big headline at the top of the page:

And the main story was all about how Clara Gruber said I had absconded with the union funds, and had sworn a warrant out for my arrest.

I went to a drug store and called the Solon, and told them I was quitting. I didn’t take a cab over to the apartment. I didn’t want to go that fast. I went clumping over on my two feet, and the nearer I got the slower I went. I went up in the elevator, let myself in, and Grant was in the bedroom making a phone call. It took several minutes, and seemed to be about somebody that was ill, whom I took to be Muriel Van Hoogland, but that was a mistake. I sat down and waited. He hung up, and came out and began marching around again, and seemed to be under a great strain. He went to the window and looked out. “It’s hot.”

“Quite.”

“By the way, I was thinking of something else this morning when you went out and didn’t realize what you meant. You don’t have to bother about that job. There’s no need for you to work.”

“I didn’t.”

“You — oh. That’s good. It’s terribly hot.”

“They’re on strike.”

“Who?”

“The girls. The slaves. Remember?”

“Oh. Oh, yes.”

The bell rang, and he answered. It was a reporter who had come up without being announced. “Well — I suppose you’d better come in.”

I remembered what Muriel Van Hoogland had done, and thought that was a pretty good idea myself. I went and slammed the door in the reporter’s face, then went back and took my seat again. “Now — suppose you begin.”

“About what?”

“About all of it.”

“I don’t quite know what you mean. If there’s something on your mind suppose you begin.”

“Who was that you were so concerned about just now?”

“My mother. This thing seems to have upset her.”

“You mean your marriage?”

“Yes, of course.”

“To a waitress?”

“—All right, to a waitress, but if I’m not complaining, I don’t see that we have anything to discuss.”

“I do, so we’ll discuss. Who are you, anyway?”

“I told you my name. In case you’ve forgotten it, you’ll find it on the marriage certificate. I believe you took it.”

“You seem to be a little more than Grant Harris, Esquire. May I ask who the Harrises are — why the newspapers, for example, give so much space to the marriage of a Harris to — a waitress?”

“U. S. Grant Harris, my grandfather, was perhaps the worst scalawag in American history. He stole a couple of railroads, made a great deal of money — $72,000,000, I believe was the exact figure — and died an empire builder, beloved and respected by all who knew him slightly — or at any rate by the society editors. He left two children — my father, Harwood Harris, who died when I was five years old, and my uncle, George Harris, head of Harris, Hunt and Harris, where I have the honor to be employed. My uncle carries on my grandfather’s mighty work — he stole a railroad in Central America only last week, come to think of it. I could have told him the locomotive won’t run, now that all the wood along the right-of-way got burned off in a mountain fire a few months ago, but he didn’t consult me, and—”

“Never mind the mountain fire. Whose house was that — where we spent the day yesterday?”

“...My sister’s, Mrs. Hunt’s.”

“Why did you say it belonged to a friend?”

“Well — of course, it really belongs to her husband. I hope I can call Hunt a friend.”

“I’d call him a brother-in-law.”

“I guess he is, but I never think of him that way.”

“Why didn’t you tell me all this sooner?”

“Well — you never asked me, and—”

“And, in addition to that, there was this little matter of — Miss Muriel Van Hoogland. Who is she?”

“Just a girl.”

“Whom you had promised to marry?”

“That was all my uncle’s doing. My uncle continues another pleasing custom of my grandfather’s, by the way — the negotiation of what he calls favorable alliances, meaning marrying his nephews off to girls who have money. It wouldn’t have meant anything except that my mother let the wool be pulled over her eyes and before I knew it, mainly to make her happy, I had got myself into something pretty serious.”

“And then Muriel went west?”

“Yes, that was in July.”

“To buy her trousseau?”

“That I don’t know.”

“Oh, I think we can take it for granted, that to be worthy of a Harris, Muriel would buy her wedding clothes at Adrian’s.”

“What she did in California I don’t-know and I’d rather we took nothing for granted, if you don’t mind.”

“And then?”

“And then you came along.”

“And then true love was so irresistible that you left Muriel stood-up at the airport and married me, is that it?”

“I guess that about covers it.”

“Well I don’t. You didn’t say anything about love when you asked me to marry you — not at first, and it hurt me, and I ought to have known that any other reason was an insult, and—”

“Is a marriage proposal an insult?”

“Oh, it can be, even from a Harris, if that one thing isn’t there—”

“Don’t you know how I feel about you?”

“Sometimes I know — or think I do. But that wasn’t why you asked me. It was all about the system and getting back at them, whoever ‘they’ are. Is that the only reason you wanted me, so you could get back at your uncle for trying to make you marry Muriel?”

“No!”

“Then what was it?”

“It would take me a week to explain it to you.”

“I’ve got a week.”

“They won’t let me do what I want to. They—”

“And who is ‘they’?”

“My uncle!”

“And your mother.”

“We’ll leave my mother out of this.”

“Oh no, we won’t.”

“I tell you my mother has nothing to do with it. If everybody in the world were as fine as she is — the hell with it! I... I’ve got to go see how she is. She’s my mother, can’t you understand that? And she’s sick. I’ve... I’ve brought this on her. I—”

He started for the door but I was there first. “And I’m your wife, if you can understand that. And you’ve brought this on me. You’re not going to your mother. I don’t care how sick she is — if she’s sick, which I seriously doubt. You’re staying here, and we’re going into it. I told you — I’ve got a week, I’ve got a lifetime. They won’t let you do what you want to do, I think that’s what you said. What is it you want to do?”

I still stood there by the door, and he began tramping up and down the room, his eyes set and his lips twitching. He kept that up a long time and then he dropped into a chair, let his head fall on his hands and ran his tongue around the inside of his lips before he spoke to stop their twitching. “Study Indians.”

“You — what did you say?”

He leaped at me like a tiger, took me by the arms and shook me until I could feel my teeth rattling. “Laugh-let me hear you laugh! I’ll treat you like a wife! Just let me see a piece of a grin and I’ll knock it down your throat so fast you won’t have time to swallow it! Go on — why don’t you laugh?”