Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

“Who won, by the way?”

“We did... And I have a suite. Would you like to see it?”

“... Jack, I’m afraid I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“For the same reason I’m here so early to head you off from coming to see me. So I won’t have to have you at my house... Jack, it happened. If it just took us by surprise so we had a lovely night — oh, all right, two lovely nights and a long, dreamy day — and I’m not ashamed. Life is like that, and it has little lyric poems in it, as well as other things. But a lyric is one refrain, and there’s no second verse. I loved you, for one week end, as beautifully as I’m capable of loving. But I couldn’t go on with it. And not here. I forgot to tell you, I guess. I’m prominent. I belong to clubs and things. I have friends, who wouldn’t understand. And you’d be most difficult to explain.”

“Why?”

“Well — who are you?”

“A guy in love.”

“Yes, but — they’d expect to know more.”

“All right, tell them more.”

“What, for instance?”

“A guy in love that you’re engaged to.”

“That wouldn’t do.”

“People get engaged, you know.”

“Grown women, with children, don’t get engaged to babies going to college — or if they do, they don’t expect anybody to believe it. What they get taken for is what they are, somebody’s sweetie. And that I won’t have.”

“All right, a guy in love, that you’re married to.”

“What?”

“They get married, too.”

“When?”

“Today.”

“The bureau’s not open on Sunday.”

“Then tomorrow.”

“Jack, please be serious.”

“I am.”

I began to lean on it, then, to get it through her head that I meant business. I told her about myself, the money I’d made singing, the way I was going ahead at the mechanical engineering, and all the rest of it. I said we’d sell my stock, if that was what we’d have to do, and she could come with her kids and live at College Park, or I’d come to Easton and make a deal with Lafayette to play football. Or, I said, I’d quit school and we’d start over, here in Easton or wherever. She looked at me sharp when I spoke of the stock, asked me some questions, and said I’d better check on it, as things had happened. Then: “Jack, I see I’ll have to tell you the truth. Let’s go up to your suite.”

So we went up there and she called her home and told the maid she wouldn’t be in until supper. Then she was in my arms and it was late afternoon before we did any talking. But when she started she hit it on the nose: “Jack, I think I’m going to get married.”

“To me?”

“No.”

“Well — that’s making it plain, so a guy can understand it. When did all this happen, or do you mind my asking?”

“It hasn’t happened.”

“You’re just considering?”

“Not even that. But — it’s being considered.”

“I see.”

“A woman knows, I suppose, when something of that sort is in the wind, and I’m quite sure at the proper time, in the proper way, I’ll be asked. I’ve done nothing with you I’m not free to do, nothing I’ll feel bound to mention, as it concerns nobody but ourselves. Just the same, it makes sense, and you don’t.”

“Why not?”

“You’re a baby, for one thing.”

“Just an infant. But why does ‘it’ make sense?”

“‘It’ was a friend of my husband’s, and he’s known me since I was married, and he’s fond of the kids, and they’re insane about him, and — I hate to bring this up, but it’s important: He’s very rich, and—”

“I got it now.”

“I don’t think you have.”

“Do you love him?”

“Not as I love you, here and now.”

“But, he’s rich—”

“Jack.”

“What?”

“Stop being offensive.”

“Am I?”

“Yes... If I were myself alone, and you asked me to do this mad thing, I don’t say I wouldn’t. I might. It’s mad enough, to be with you, like this. But I’m not myself alone. I have children, family, friends, position, all sorts of things to think of, that I will not give up. To have you I must give them up, for as you’ve said, it will involve a complete new start. With him, I do nothing much about it, and life goes on, pleasantly, sensibly, satisfactorily. And one other thing: When did riches become so loathsome?”

“All right.”

“They’re the foundation, at least moderate wealth is, of practically everything people want out of life, and this idea they’re so horrible, that a woman should never consider them, is just plain silly. Of course, that’s a man’s idea. No woman ever had it.”

She put her arms around me and came close. After a long time she said: “It’s not so terrible now, is it?”

“I just hate it.”

“You won’t.”

“Time the great healer, I suppose?”

“Partly. Partly that after you’ve thought it over, and the romance has palled, you’ll be turning handsprings I did marry somebody else. Because you’re not ready yet, for a wife and two children that aren’t even yours. You’d have to quit school, and I’d have to keep on with this job I’ve got, and — a lot of things. But, Jack.”

“Yes?”

“Send me one red rose a year.”

“All right.”

“You love me?”

“Yes.”

I guess trains run between Baltimore and Easton, because if they had one to take me there it looks like there’d be one to take me back. But I don’t remember any train, any change at Philly, or anything of that kind. All I remember is wandering around that night, on a bridge over some river, on a street with picture shows on it, and up and down a hill near Lafayette College, trying to get through my head what was going to happen, so I could kill what I felt for her and get used to it she was going to marry somebody else. As to what it meant, from where he sat, if he ever heard of it, that she’d go around with him and then spend a week end with me, I tried not to think and I can’t even make sense of it now. I guess, when you come down to it, if it was cockeyed enough, it could be what she said, a lyric, to be sung once and then forgotten. Then next day, Monday, I was home, in my room, going through the whole thing again. I thought it was funny my aunts had so little to say, specially about running off after the football game. But they just said hello and asked me no questions, and the house was so still you could hear the kids playing outside. Then along toward dark I heard my father’s voice downstairs, and Nancy called that he wanted to see me.

He was in the study, and didn’t look at me when we shook hands. He had nothing to say about the football game, or anything, until I had sat there some little time. Then: “Jack, I’ve bad news for you.”

“Yeah? What about?”

“Your securities.”

“... Oh. I’ve been hearing about them.”

“Then you know of the crash?”

“What crash?”

“Of Black Tuesday, as they’re calling it.”

“I’ve been — playing football.”

“Yes — I should have congratulated you.”

“It’s not important.”

He began, then, telling me about the stock-market drop, twisting his face with his hand, or untwisting it, maybe. He told me about this stock and that I’d had, how some of them had been sold and replaced with others, how he’d watched the dates so I’d always have dividend checks coming in, some due one month, some another. It seemed to give him quite a lot of satisfaction I’d had some profit on some of the deals, and that for four or five years now I’d been cashing dividend checks at the rate of twenty or thirty dollars a month. “But — I’m broke, Dad, is that it?”

“I don’t know yet. I didn’t do what many did, throw everything overboard for salvage value. I thought it over, I even resorted to prayer, I’m not ashamed to confess. And I decided if I held on, at least the stock was the stock. If, as, and when, the market recovers, it’ll be there, it’ll have a value, and it’ll pay dividends, or so we hope. Except, of course—”