CHAPTER II
Genevieve and Joe were working-class aristocrats. In an environment
made up largely of sordidness and wretchedness they had kept
themselves unsullied and wholesome. Theirs was a self-respect, a
regard for the niceties and clean things of life, which had held
them aloof from their kind. Friends did not come to them easily;
nor had either ever possessed a really intimate friend, a heart-
companion with whom to chum and have things in common. The social
instinct was strong in them, yet they had remained lonely because
they could not satisfy that instinct and at that same time satisfy
their desire for cleanness and decency.
If ever a girl of the working class had led the sheltered life, it
was Genevieve. In the midst of roughness and brutality, she had
shunned all that was rough and brutal. She saw but what she chose
to see, and she chose always to see the best, avoiding coarseness
and uncouthness without effort, as a matter of instinct. To begin
with, she had been peculiarly unexposed. An only child, with an
invalid mother upon whom she attended, she had not joined in the
street games and frolics of the children of the neighbourhood. Her
father, a mild-tempered, narrow-chested, anaemic little clerk,
domestic because of his inherent disability to mix with men, had
done his full share toward giving the home an atmosphere of
sweetness and tenderness.
An orphan at twelve, Genevieve had gone straight from her father's
funeral to live with the Silversteins in their rooms above the candy
store; and here, sheltered by kindly aliens, she earned her keep and
clothes by waiting on the shop. Being Gentile, she was especially
necessary to the Silversteins, who would not run the business
themselves when the day of their Sabbath came round.
And here, in the uneventful little shop, six maturing years had
slipped by. Her acquaintances were few. She had elected to have no
girl chum for the reason that no satisfactory girl had appeared.
Nor did she choose to walk with the young fellows of the
neighbourhood, as was the custom of girls from their fifteenth year.
"That stuck-up doll-face," was the way the girls of the
neighbourhood described her; and though she earned their enmity by
her beauty and aloofness, she none the less commanded their respect.
"Peaches and cream," she was called by the young men--though softly
and amongst themselves, for they were afraid of arousing the ire of
the other girls, while they stood in awe of Genevieve, in a dimly
religious way, as a something mysteriously beautiful and
unapproachable.
For she was indeed beautiful. Springing from a long line of
American descent, she was one of those wonderful working-class
blooms which occasionally appear, defying all precedent of forebears
and environment, apparently without cause or explanation. She was a
beauty in color, the blood spraying her white skin so deliciously as
to earn for her the apt description, "peaches and cream." She was a
beauty in the regularity of her features; and, if for no other
reason, she was a beauty in the mere delicacy of the lines on which
she was moulded. Quiet, low-voiced, stately, and dignified, she
somehow had the knack of dress, and but befitted her beauty and
dignity with anything she put on. Withal, she was sheerly feminine,
tender and soft and clinging, with the smouldering passion of the
mate and the motherliness of the woman. But this side of her nature
had lain dormant through the years, waiting for the mate to appear.
Then Joe came into Silverstein's shop one hot Saturday afternoon to
cool himself with ice-cream soda. She had not noticed his entrance,
being busy with one other customer, an urchin of six or seven who
gravely analyzed his desires before the show-case wherein truly
generous and marvellous candy creations reposed under a cardboard
announcement, "Five for Five Cents."
She had heard, "Ice-cream soda, please," and had herself asked,
"What flavor?" without seeing his face. For that matter, it was not
a custom of hers to notice young men. There was something about
them she did not understand. The way they looked at her made her
uncomfortable, she knew not why; while there was an uncouthness and
roughness about them that did not please her. As yet, her
imagination had been untouched by man. The young fellows she had
seen had held no lure for her, had been without meaning to her. In
short, had she been asked to give one reason for the existence of
men on the earth, she would have been nonplussed for a reply.
As she emptied the measure of ice-cream into the glass, her casual
glance rested on Joe's face, and she experienced on the instant a
pleasant feeling of satisfaction. The next instant his eyes were
upon her face, her eyes had dropped, and she was turning away toward
the soda fountain. But at the fountain, filling the glass, she was
impelled to look at him again--but for no more than an instant, for
this time she found his eyes already upon her, waiting to meet hers,
while on his face was a frankness of interest that caused her
quickly to look away.
That such pleasingness would reside for her in any man astonished
her. "What a pretty boy," she thought to herself, innocently and
instinctively trying to ward off the power to hold and draw her that
lay behind the mere prettiness. "Besides, he isn't pretty," she
thought, as she placed the glass before him, received the silver
dime in payment, and for the third time looked into his eyes. Her
vocabulary was limited, and she knew little of the worth of words;
but the strong masculinity of his boy's face told her that the term
was inappropriate.
"He must be handsome, then," was her next thought, as she again
dropped her eyes before his. But all good-looking men were called
handsome, and that term, too, displeased her. But whatever it was,
he was good to see, and she was irritably aware of a desire to look
at him again and again.
As for Joe, he had never seen anything like this girl across the
counter. While he was wiser in natural philosophy than she, and
could have given immediately the reason for woman's existence on the
earth, nevertheless woman had no part in his cosmos. His
imagination was as untouched by woman as the girl's was by man. But
his imagination was touched now, and the woman was Genevieve. He
had never dreamed a girl could be so beautiful, and he could not
keep his eyes from her face. Yet every time he looked at her, and
her eyes met his, he felt painful embarrassment, and would have
looked away had not her eyes dropped so quickly.
But when, at last, she slowly lifted her eyes and held their gaze
steadily, it was his own eyes that dropped, his own cheek that
mantled red. She was much less embarrassed than he, while she
betrayed her embarrassment not at all. She was aware of a flutter
within, such as she had never known before, but in no way did it
disturb her outward serenity. Joe, on the contrary, was obviously
awkward and delightfully miserable.
Neither knew love, and all that either was aware was an overwhelming
desire to look at the other. Both had been troubled and roused, and
they were drawing together with the sharpness and imperativeness of
uniting elements. He toyed with his spoon, and flushed his
embarrassment over his soda, but lingered on; and she spoke softly,
dropped her eyes, and wove her witchery about him.
But he could not linger forever over a glass of ice-cream soda,
while he did not dare ask for a second glass. So he left her to
remain in the shop in a waking trance, and went away himself down
the street like a somnambulist. Genevieve dreamed through the
afternoon and knew that she was in love. Not so with Joe. He knew
only that he wanted to look at her again, to see her face. His
thoughts did not get beyond this, and besides, it was scarcely a
thought, being more a dim and inarticulate desire.
The urge of this desire he could not escape. Day after day it
worried him, and the candy shop and the girl behind the counter
continually obtruded themselves. He fought off the desire. He was
afraid and ashamed to go back to the candy shop. He solaced his
fear with, "I ain't a ladies' man." Not once, nor twice, but scores
of times, he muttered the thought to himself, but it did no good.
And by the middle of the week, in the evening, after work, he came
into the shop. He tried to come in carelessly and casually, but his
whole carriage advertised the strong effort of will that compelled
his legs to carry his reluctant body thither. Also, he was shy, and
awkwarder than ever. Genevieve, on the contrary, was serener than
ever, though fluttering most alarmingly within. He was incapable of
speech, mumbled his order, looked anxiously at the clock, despatched
his ice-cream soda in tremendous haste, and was gone.
She was ready to weep with vexation. Such meagre reward for four
days' waiting, and assuming all the time that she loved! He was a
nice boy and all that, she knew, but he needn't have been in so
disgraceful a hurry. But Joe had not reached the corner before he
wanted to be back with her again. He just wanted to look at her.
He had no thought that it was love. Love? That was when young
fellows and girls walked out together. As for him--And then his
desire took sharper shape, and he discovered that that was the very
thing he wanted her to do. He wanted to see her, to look at her,
and well could he do all this if she but walked out with him. Then
that was why the young fellows and girls walked out together, he
mused, as the week-end drew near. He had remotely considered this
walking out to be a mere form or observance preliminary to
matrimony. Now he saw the deeper wisdom in it, wanted it himself,
and concluded therefrom that he was in love.
Both were now of the same mind, and there could be but the one
ending; and it was the mild nine days' wonder of Genevieve's
neighborhood when she and Joe walked out together.
Both were blessed with an avarice of speech, and because of it their
courtship was a long one. As he expressed himself in action, she
expressed herself in repose and control, and by the love-light in
her eyes--though this latter she would have suppressed in all maiden
modesty had she been conscious of the speech her heart printed so
plainly there. "Dear" and "darling" were too terribly intimate for
them to achieve quickly; and, unlike most mating couples, they did
not overwork the love-words. For a long time they were content to
walk together in the evenings, or to sit side by side on a bench in
the park, neither uttering a word for an hour at a time, merely
gazing into each other's eyes, too faintly luminous in the starshine
to be a cause for self-consciousness and embarrassment.
He was as chivalrous and delicate in his attention as any knight to
his lady. When they walked along the street, he was careful to be
on the outside,--somewhere he had heard that this was the proper
thing to do,--and when a crossing to the opposite side of the street
put him on the inside, he swiftly side-stepped behind her to gain
the outside again. He carried her parcels for her, and once, when
rain threatened, her umbrella. He had never heard of the custom of
sending flowers to one's lady-love, so he sent Genevieve fruit
instead. There was utility in fruit. It was good to eat. Flowers
never entered his mind, until, one day, he noticed a pale rose in
her hair. It drew his gaze again and again. It was HER hair,
therefore the presence of the flower interested him. Again, it
interested him because SHE had chosen to put it there. For these
reasons he was led to observe the rose more closely. He discovered
that the effect in itself was beautiful, and it fascinated him. His
ingenuous delight in it was a delight to her, and a new and mutual
love-thrill was theirs--because of a flower. Straightway he became
a lover of flowers. Also, he became an inventor in gallantry. He
sent her a bunch of violets. The idea was his own. He had never
heard of a man sending flowers to a woman. Flowers were used for
decorative purposes, also for funerals. He sent Genevieve flowers
nearly every day, and so far as he was concerned the idea was
original, as positive an invention as ever arose in the mind of man.
He was tremulous in his devotion to her--as tremulous as was she in
her reception of him. She was all that was pure and good, a holy of
holies not lightly to be profaned even by what might possibly be the
too ardent reverence of a devotee. She was a being wholly different
from any he had ever known. She was not as other girls. It never
entered his head that she was of the same clay as his own sisters,
or anybody's sister. She was more than mere girl, than mere woman.
She was--well, she was Genevieve, a being of a class by herself,
nothing less than a miracle of creation.
And for her, in turn, there was in him but little less of illusion.
Her judgment of him in minor things might be critical (while his
judgment of her was sheer worship, and had in it nothing critical at
all); but in her judgment of him as a whole she forgot the sum of
the parts, and knew him only as a creature of wonder, who gave
meaning to life, and for whom she could die as willingly as she
could live. She often beguiled her waking dreams of him with
fancied situations, wherein, dying for him, she at last adequately
expressed the love she felt for him, and which, living, she knew she
could never fully express.
Their love was all fire and dew. The physical scarcely entered into
it, for such seemed profanation. The ultimate physical facts of
their relation were something which they never considered. Yet the
immediate physical facts they knew, the immediate yearnings and
raptures of the flesh--the touch of finger tips on hand or arm, the
momentary pressure of a hand-clasp, the rare lip-caress of a kiss,
the tingling thrill of her hair upon his cheek, of her hand lightly
thrusting back the locks from above his eyes. All this they knew,
but also, and they knew not why, there seemed a hint of sin about
these caresses and sweet bodily contacts.
There were times when she felt impelled to throw her arms around him
in a very abandonment of love, but always some sanctity restrained
her. At such moments she was distinctly and unpleasantly aware of
some unguessed sin that lurked within her. It was wrong,
undoubtedly wrong, that she should wish to caress her lover in so
unbecoming a fashion. No self-respecting girl could dream of doing
such a thing. It was unwomanly. Besides, if she had done it, what
would he have thought of it? And while she contemplated so horrible
a catastrophe, she seemed to shrivel and wilt in a furnace of secret
shame.
Nor did Joe escape the prick of curious desires, chiefest among
which, perhaps, was the desire to hurt Genevieve. When, after long
and tortuous degrees, he had achieved the bliss of putting his arm
round her waist, he felt spasmodic impulses to make the embrace
crushing, till she should cry out with the hurt. It was not his
nature to wish to hurt any living thing. Even in the ring, to hurt
was never the intention of any blow he struck. In such case he
played the Game, and the goal of the Game was to down an antagonist
and keep that antagonist down for a space of ten seconds. So he
never struck merely to hurt; the hurt was incidental to the end, and
the end was quite another matter. And yet here, with this girl he
loved, came the desire to hurt. Why, when with thumb and forefinger
he had ringed her wrist, he should desire to contract that ring till
it crushed, was beyond him. He could not understand, and felt that
he was discovering depths of brutality in his nature of which he had
never dreamed.
Once, on parting, he threw his arms around her and swiftly drew her
against him. Her gasping cry of surprise and pain brought him to
his senses and left him there very much embarrassed and still
trembling with a vague and nameless delight. And she, too, was
trembling. In the hurt itself, which was the essence of the
vigorous embrace, she had found delight; and again she knew sin,
though she knew not its nature nor why it should be sin.
Came the day, very early in their walking out, when Silverstein
chanced upon Joe in his store and stared at him with saucer-eyes.
Came likewise the scene, after Joe had departed, when the maternal
feelings of Mrs. Silverstein found vent in a diatribe against all
prize-fighters and against Joe Fleming in particular. Vainly had
Silverstein striven to stay the spouse's wrath. There was need for
her wrath. All the maternal feelings were hers but none of the
maternal rights.
Genevieve was aware only of the diatribe; she knew a flood of abuse
was pouring from the lips of the Jewess, but she was too stunned to
hear the details of the abuse. Joe, her Joe, was Joe Fleming the
prize-fighter. It was abhorrent, impossible, too grotesque to be
believable. Her clear-eyed, girl-cheeked Joe might be anything but
a prize-fighter. She had never seen one, but he in no way resembled
her conception of what a prize-fighter must be--the human brute with
tiger eyes and a streak for a forehead. Of course she had heard of
Joe Fleming--who in West Oakland had not?--but that there should be
anything more than a coincidence of names had never crossed her
mind.
She came out of her daze to hear Mrs. Silverstein's hysterical
sneer, "keepin' company vit a bruiser." Next, Silverstein and his
wife fell to differing on "noted" and "notorious" as applicable to
her lover.
"But he iss a good boy," Silverstein was contending. "He make der
money, an' he safe der money."
"You tell me dat!" Mrs. Silverstein screamed. "Vat you know? You
know too much. You spend good money on der prize-fighters. How you
know? Tell me dat! How you know?"
"I know vat I know," Silverstein held on sturdily--a thing Genevieve
had never before seen him do when his wife was in her tantrums.
"His fader die, he go to work in Hansen's sail-loft. He haf six
brudders an' sisters younger as he iss. He iss der liddle fader.
He vork hard, all der time. He buy der pread an' der meat, an' pay
der rent. On Saturday night he bring home ten dollar. Den Hansen
gif him twelve dollar--vat he do? He iss der liddle fader, he bring
it home to der mudder. He vork all der time, he get twenty dollar--
vat he do? He bring it home. Der liddle brudders an' sisters go to
school, vear good clothes, haf better pread an' meat; der mudder lif
fat, dere iss joy in der eye, an' she iss proud of her good boy Joe.
"But he haf der beautiful body--ach, Gott, der beautiful body!--
stronger as der ox, k-vicker as der tiger-cat, der head cooler as
der ice-box, der eyes vat see eferytings, k-vick, just like dat. He
put on der gloves vit der boys at Hansen's loft, he put on der
gloves vit de boys at der varehouse. He go before der club; he
knock out der Spider, k-vick, one punch, just like dat, der first
time. Der purse iss five dollar--vat he do? He bring it home to
der mudder.
"He go many times before der clubs; he get many purses--ten dollar,
fifty dollar, one hundred dollar. Vat he do? Tell me dat! Quit
der job at Hansen's? Haf der good time vit der boys? No, no; he
iss der good boy. He vork efery day. He fight at night before der
clubs. He say, 'Vat for I pay der rent, Silverstein?'--to me,
Silverstein, he say dat. Nefer mind vat I say, but he buy der good
house for der mudder. All der time he vork at Hansen's and fight
before der clubs to pay for der house. He buy der piano for der
sisters, der carpets, der pictures on der vall. An' he iss all der
time straight. He bet on himself--dat iss der good sign. Ven der
man bets on himself dat is der time you bet too--"
Here Mrs. Silverstein groaned her horror of gambling, and her
husband, aware that his eloquence had betrayed him, collapsed into
voluble assurances that he was ahead of the game. "An' all because
of Joe Fleming," he concluded. "I back him efery time to vin."
But Genevieve and Joe were preeminently mated, and nothing, not even
this terrible discovery, could keep them apart. In vain Genevieve
tried to steel herself against him; but she fought herself, not him.
To her surprise she discovered a thousand excuses for him, found him
lovable as ever; and she entered into his life to be his destiny,
and to control him after the way of women. She saw his future and
hers through glowing vistas of reform, and her first great deed was
when she wrung from him his promise to cease fighting.
And he, after the way of men, pursuing the dream of love and
striving for possession of the precious and deathless object of
desire, had yielded. And yet, in the very moment of promising her,
he knew vaguely, deep down, that he could never abandon the Game;
that somewhere, sometime, in the future, he must go back to it. And
he had had a swift vision of his mother and brothers and sisters,
their multitudinous wants, the house with its painting and
repairing, its street assessments and taxes, and of the coming of
children to him and Genevieve, and of his own daily wage in the
sail-making loft. But the next moment the vision was dismissed, as
such warnings are always dismissed, and he saw before him only
Genevieve, and he knew only his hunger for her and the call of his
being to her; and he accepted calmly her calm assumption of his life
and actions.
He was twenty, she was eighteen, boy and girl, the pair of them, and
made for progeny, healthy and normal, with steady blood pounding
through their bodies; and wherever they went together, even on
Sunday outings across the bay amongst people who did not know him,
eyes were continually drawn to them. He matched her girl's beauty
with his boy's beauty, her grace with his strength, her delicacy of
line and fibre with the harsher vigor and muscle of the male.
Frank-faced, fresh-colored, almost ingenuous in expression, eyes
blue and wide apart, he drew and held the gaze of more than one
woman far above him in the social scale. Of such glances and dim
maternal promptings he was quite unconscious, though Genevieve was
quick to see and understand; and she knew each time the pang of a
fierce joy in that he was hers and that she held him in the hollow
of her hand. He did see, however, and rather resented, the men's
glances drawn by her. These, too, she saw and understood as he did
not dream of understanding.
