TEMPTATION
Her kitchenette was a model of order and cleanliness.The carpenter who built its neat cupboard and fitted the drawers beneath the tiny gas range, had outdone himself in its construction.He had given the wood- work four coats of immaculate white paint without extra charge.Mary had insisted on paying for it, but he waved the proffered money aside with a gesture that spoke louder than words:
"Pooh!That's nothing to what I'd like to do for you."She was not surprised when he called the following Saturday and stood at her door awkwardly fumbling his hat, trying to ask her to spend the afternoon and evening at Coney Island with him.There was no mistaking the manner in which he made this request.
She had refused him as gently as possible--a big, awkward, good- natured, ignorant boy he was, with the eyes of a St.Bernard dog.He apologized for his presumption and never repeated the offense.
Somehow her conquests had all been in this class.
The tall, blushing German youth from the butcher's around the corner had been slipping extra cuts into her bundle and making awkward advances until she caught him red-handed with a pound of lamb chops which he failed to explain.She read him a lecture on honesty that discouraged him.It was not so much what she said, as the way she said it, that wounded his sensitive nature.
The ice man she had not yet entirely subdued.Tony Bonelli had the advantage of pretending not to understand her orders of dismissal.He merely smiled in his sad Italian way and continued to pack her ice- box so full the lid would never close.
She was reminded at every turn tonight of these futile conquests of the impossible.They all smelled of the back stairs and the kitchen.Her people had been slaveholders in the old regime of southern Kentucky.A kindly tolerant contempt for the pretensions of a servant class was bred inthe bone of her being.
And yet their tribute to her beauty had its compensations.It was the promise of triumph when he for whom she waited should step from the throng and lift his hat.Just how he was going to do this without a breach of the proprieties of life, she couldn't see.It would come.It must come.It was Fate.
In twenty minutes her coffee-pot was boiling, the lamb chops broiled to perfection and she was seated before the dainty, snow-white table, the kitten softly begging at her feet.Half an hour later, every dish and pot and pan was back in its place in perfect order.She prided herself on her mastery of the details of cooking and the most economical administration of every dollar devoted to housekeeping.She studied cooking in the best schools the city afforded.She meant to show her Knight a thing or two in this line when the time came.His wife would not be an ignorant slattern, the victim of incompetent servants.No servant could fool her.She would know the business of the house down to its minutest detail.
Not that she loved dish-washing and pot-polishing and scrubbing.It was simply a part of the Game of Life she must play in the ideal home she would build.There was no drudgery in it for this reason.She was a soldier on the drill grounds preparing for the battle on the successful issue of which hung her happiness and the happiness of the one of whom she dreamed.She might miss some of the dangerous fun which Jane Anderson could enjoy without a scratch, but she would make sure of the fundamental things which Jane would never stop to consider.
She threw herself on the couch in her favorite position against the pillows, drew the kitten into her arms and hugged him violently.
"It's all right, Mr.Thomascat; we'll show them," she purred softly."We'll see who wins at last, the eagle who soars or the little wren in the hedge close beside the garden wall--we'll see, Kitty--we'll see!"The room was still, the noise of the street-cars below muffled with the first soft blanket of snow.The street lamps flickered in the wind with a pale subdued light that scarcely brought out the furnishings of her nest.She was in the habit of dreaming in this window for hours with only thelight from the lamps on the street.
The Square, deserted by its tramp lovers, lay white and still and cold.The old battle with the Blue Devils was on again within.The fight with Jane had been easy.She had always found it easy to face temptation in the concrete.The moment Satan appeared in human shape she was up in arms and ready for the fray.It was this silent hour she dreaded when the defenses of the soul were down.
There was no use to lie to herself.She was utterly lonely and heartsick.
She had guarded the portals of life with religious care--with a care altogether unnecessary as events had proved.There had been no crush of rude men to assault her.Only an awkward carpenter, a butcher's boy and the ice man! It was incredible.Of all the men whose restless feet pressed the pavements of New York, not one, save these three, had apparently cared whether she lived or died.
The men whom she met in her duties in the schoolroom she had found utterly devoid of imagination and beneath contempt.They had each been obviously on guard against the machinations of the female of the species.They had, each of them, shown plainly their fear and hatred of women teachers.The feeling was mutual.God knows she had no desire to encroach on their domain any longer than absolutely necessary.
Perhaps she was making a mistake.The thought was strangling.Only the girl who waived conventions in the rushing tide of the modern city's life seemed to live at all.The others merely existed.Jane Anderson lived! There could be no mistake about that.She had mastered the ugly mob.Its cruel loneliness was to her a thing unknown.But Jane was an exception--the one woman in a thousand who could defy conventions and yet keep her soul and body clean.
