The Argosy, Vol. 82, No. 3 — page 83: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

TWELVE A go to a woman he has just married and tell her: : “T can’t make this game go, my dear. Let’s quit it.” And Arthur had paraphrased the only other thing he could say into something like the following ludicrously awful speech: “My darling, I love you. You’ve mar- ried me with the notion that you were going to live in a cozy little home of about the general sort you’ve been used to. You’ve spent your life’s savings to help furnish that home. I’m sorry to disappoint you; but no doubt you’ll be quite sufficiently comforted with the joy of having won an imbecile feeb who gambled on a_ two-thousand-dollar wedding present and won only spoons. “Come, my dear, I’ve just engaged a snug little three-room flat, all light rooms when you turn the light on, shaft-airy, with bath when you take the partition from be- tween the washtubs in a kitchen that’s none too big for a bathroom anyhow. “There are forty-five other families living in the house, each with six children, a player-piano and a dog or so. There’s a saloon on one side of the entrance and a boiler factory next door. “Tt’s what I can afford, darling. Aren’t we happily married, sweetheart?”’ He could fancy himself saying either of these things to Eleanor—but not fancy enough so that he wouldn’t say a lot of other, though less truthful, things first, and a lot of things he could only wish he hadn’t said after he had said them. On the morning that marked his return to work after the end of his honeyless honeymoon vacation, he went to the Mor- rison factory wondering whether he would find Eleanor upon his return, whether he deserved to find her. He hardly knew how it had started. She had asked him to leave money for some- thing, and he had asked what had become of the five dollars he had given her on Sat- urday morning. : He knew how it had ended—if the real end had been reached yet; and he would blush to his dying day to think he had rounded out his honeymoon with such words to his wife as he had spoken. He was utterly penitent—and utterly hopeless. And in this frame of mind he walked past one of the big excavations being prepared for a vast munitions factory. Suddenly the question of his ability to do the work was gone. He simply had to WEEK SHORT. 457 do it. He paused long enough to speak to the burly superintendent who assured him that there were daily vacancies, especially in the night shifts. He telephoned home to Eleanor that business would probably keep him quite late, that she had better not attempt to wait for his return. And such business! he thought. Such business! The day at the factory had been as long and hard as is usually the first day after a vacation. He had hurried out and snatched a cheap dinner at the rear of a cheap café. It would have been filling if he had had the appetite to eat it. The head-foreman of the first night-shift gave him a number-card for identification, and a pick and shovel, with the order to attach himself to a certain gang. He had come in a new suit of overalls purchased at noon. His arrival excited no curiosity, no interest. A stout Italian was bossing the gang in three languages, and a million gestures. It was a warm, humid night. No breeze came up with the setting of the sun to drive away the sticky heat of the day. Ten min- utes of the pick had Arthur dripping with sweat and gasping for breath. He turned to see if his working mates were not resting. The shrill voice of the foreman seemed to single him out with an oath that bade him, “Get on-a da job, you. What you think you do here?” And Arthur Bannock got on the job. In less than half an hour all semblance of interest in his work, even that tiny inter- est requisite to strike the stony earth squarely with the pick’s point, had disap- peared. Every muscle in his body was aching. He had raised a blister in the hol- low of his right hand, a blister big enough to torture until the pain of it was forgotten in other pains. He worked on—that is he raised and dropped the pick. Then he was ordered to take a shovel and found himself trying to hurl the loosened earth and stones into a wagon. ‘‘A-a-a-ah,”’ snarled the foreman, as half the shovelful went back to the ground against the side of the cart, “you weak! Wak-a up, you! You dam-a loafer!” There were other epithets no man had ever dared call Bannock before. He was already so nearly paralyzed with weariness that he could feel no resentment or interest in thé thought of beating the insulter. COMICLOOLX (C@