IV
They came to the house where she lived. It was late at night, and
the street was deserted. It was up to Jimmie to say good night, but
somehow he did not know how to say it. Comrade Evelyn gave him her
hand, and for some reason did not take it away again. Of course it
would not have been polite for Jimmie to have pushed it away. So he
held it, and looked at the shadowy form before him, and felt his
knees shaking. "Comrade Higgins," said the brave, girlish voice, "we
shall be friends, shall we not?" And of course, Jimmie answered that
they would--always! And the girlish voice replied, "I am GLAD!" And
then suddenly it whispered, "Good night!" and the shadowy form
turned and flitted into the house.
Jimmie walked away with the strangest tumult in his soul. It was
something which the poets had been occupied for centuries in trying
to portray, but Jimmie Higgins had no acquaintance with the poets,
and so it was a brand new thing to him, he was left to experience
the shock of it and to resolve the problems of it all alone. To be
rolled and tossed about like a man in a blanket at a college
ragging! To be a prey to bewilderment and fear, hope and longing,
despair and rebellion, delicious excitement, angry self-contempt
and tormenting doubt! Truly did that poet divine who first conceived
the symbol of the mischievous little god, who steals upon an
unsuspecting man and shoots him through the heart with a sharp and
tormenting arrow!
The worst of it was, Jimmie couldn't tell Lizzie about it. The first
time in four years that he had had a trouble he could not tell
Lizzie! He even felt ashamed, as he came home and crawled into
bed--as if he had done some dreadful wrong to Lizzie; and yet, he
would have been puzzled to tell just what the wrong was, or how he
could have avoided it. It was not he who had made the young feminist
so delicious and sweet and frank and amazing. It was not he who had
made the little god, and brewed the poison for the arrow's tip. No,
it was some power greater than himself that had prepared this
situation, some power cruel and implacable, which plots against
domestic tranquillity; perhaps it was some hireling of capitalism,
which will not permit a propagandist of social justice to do his
work in peace of soul.
Jimmie tried to hide what was going on; and of course--poor, naive
soul--he had never learned to hide anything in his life, and now was
too late to begin. The next time the local met, the women were
saying that they were disappointed in Comrade Higgins; they had
thought he was really devoted to the cause, but they saw now he was
like all the rest of the men--his head had been turned by one smile
on a pretty face. Instead of attending to his work, he was following
that Baskerville creature about, gazing at her yearningly, like a
moon-calf, making a ninny of himself before the whole room. And he
with a wife and three babies at home, waiting for him and thinking
he was hustling for the cause. When the meeting adjourned, and the
Baskerville creature accepted the invitation of Comrade Gerrity to
escort her home, the dismay of Comrade Higgins was so evident as to
be ludicrous to the whole room.
