GRETCHEN’S FORTY WINKS

The sidewalks were scratched with brittle leaves, and the bad little boy next door froze his tongue to the iron mail-box. Snow before night, sure. Autumn was over. This, of course, raised the coal question and the Christmas question; but Roger Halsey, standing on his own front porch, assured the dead suburban sky that he hadn’t time for worrying about the weather. Then he let himself hurriedly into the house, and shut the subject out into the cold twilight.

The hall was dark, but from above he heard the voices of his wife and the nursemaid and the baby in one of their interminable conversations, which consisted chiefly of “Don’t!” and “Look out, Maxy!” and “Oh, there he goes!” punctuated by wild threats and vague bumpings and the recurrent sound of small, venturing feet.

Roger turned on the hall-light and walked into the living-room and turned on the red silk lamp. He put his bulging portfolio on the table, and sitting down rested his intense young face in his hand for a few minutes, shading his eyes carefully from the light. Then he lit a cigarette, squashed it out, and going to the foot of the stairs called for his wife.

“Gretchen!”

“Hello, dear.” Her voice was full of laughter. “Come see baby.”

He swore softly.

“I can’t see baby now,” he said aloud. “How long ‘fore you’ll be down?”

There was a mysterious pause, and then a succession of “Don’ts” and “Look outs, Maxy” evidently meant to avert some threatened catastrophe.

“How long ‘fore you’ll be down?” repeated Roger, slightly irritated.

“Oh, I’ll be right down.”

“How soon?” he shouted.

He had trouble every day at this hour in adapting his voice from the urgent key of the city to the proper casualness for a model home. But to-night he was deliberately impatient. It almost disappointed him when Gretchen came running down the stairs, three at a time, crying “What is it?” in a rather surprised voice.

They kissed—lingered over it some moments. They had been married three years, and they were much more in love than that implies. It was seldom that they hated each other with that violent hate of which only young couples are capable, for Roger was still actively sensitive to her beauty.

“Come in here,” he said abruptly. “I want to talk to you.”

His wife, a bright-colored, Titian-haired girl, vivid as a French rag doll, followed him into the living-room.

“Listen, Gretchen”—he sat down at the end of the sofa—”beginning with to-night I’m going to—What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I’m just looking for a cigarette. Go on.”

She tiptoed breathlessly back to the sofa and settled at the other end.

“Gretchen—” Again he broke off. Her hand, palm upward, was extended toward him. “Well, what is it?” he asked wildly.

“Matches.”

“What?”

In his impatience it seemed incredible that she should ask for matches, but he fumbled automatically in his pocket.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Go on.”

“Gretch——”

Scratch! The match flared. They exchanged a tense look.

Her fawn’s eyes apologized mutely this time, and he laughed. After all, she had done no more than light a cigarette; but when he was in this mood her slightest positive action irritated him beyond measure.

“When you’ve got time to listen,” he said crossly, “you might be interested in discussing the poorhouse question with me.”

“What poorhouse?” Her eyes were wide, startled; she sat quiet as a mouse.

“That was just to get your attention. But, beginning to-night, I start on what’ll probably be the most important six weeks of my life—the six weeks that’ll decide whether we’re going on forever in this rotten little house in this rotten little suburban town.”

Boredom replaced alarm in Gretchen’s black eyes. She was a Southern girl, and any question that had to do with getting ahead in the world always tended to give her a headache.

“Six months ago I left the New York Lithographic Company,” announced Roger, “and went in the advertising business for myself.”

“I know,” interrupted Gretchen resentfully; “and now instead of getting six hundred a month sure, we’re living on a risky five hundred.”

“Gretchen,” said Roger sharply, “if you’ll just believe in me as hard as you can for six weeks more we’ll be rich. I’ve got a chance now to get some of the biggest accounts in the country.” He hesitated. “And for these six weeks we won’t go out at all, and we won’t have any one here. I’m going to bring home work every night, and we’ll pull down all the blinds and if any one rings the door-bell we won’t answer.”

He smiled airily as if it were a new game they were going to play. Then, as Gretchen was silent, his smile faded, and he looked at her uncertainly.

“Well, what’s the matter?” she broke out finally. “Do you expect me to jump up and sing? You do enough work as it is. If you try to do any more you’ll end up with a nervous breakdown. I read about a——”

“Don’t worry about me,” he interrupted; “I’m all right. But you’re going to be bored to death sitting here every evening.”

“No, I won’t,” she said without conviction—”except to-night.”

“What about to-night?”

“George Tompkins asked us to dinner.”

“Did you accept?”

“Of course I did,” she said impatiently. “Why not? You’re always talking about what a terrible neighborhood this is, and I thought maybe you’d like to go to a nicer one for a change.”

“When I go to a nicer neighborhood I want to go for good,” he said grimly.

“Well, can we go?”

“I suppose we’ll have to if you’ve accepted.”

Somewhat to his annoyance the conversation abruptly ended. Gretchen jumped up and kissed him sketchily and rushed into the kitchen to light the hot water for a bath. With a sigh he carefully deposited his portfolio behind the bookcase—it contained only sketches and layouts for display advertising, but it seemed to him the first thing a burglar would look for. Then he went abstractedly up-stairs, dropped into the baby’s room for a casual moist kiss, and began dressing for dinner.

They had no automobile, so George Tompkins called for them at 6.30. Tompkins was a successful interior decorator, a broad, rosy man with a handsome mustache and a strong odor of jasmine. He and Roger had once roomed side by side in a boarding-house in New York, but they had met only intermittently in the past five years.

“We ought to see each other more,” he told Roger to-night. “You ought to go out more often, old boy. Cocktail?”

“No, thanks.”

“No? Well, your fair wife will—won’t you, Gretchen?”

“I love this house,” she exclaimed, taking the glass and looking admiringly at ship models, Colonial whiskey bottles, and other fashionable débris of 1925.

“I like it,” said Tompkins with satisfaction. “I did it to please myself, and I succeeded.”

Roger stared moodily around the stiff, plain room, wondering if they could have blundered into the kitchen by mistake.

“You look like the devil, Roger,” said his host. “Have a cocktail and cheer up.”

“Have one,” urged Gretchen.

“What?” Roger turned around absently. “Oh, no, thanks. I’ve got to work after I get home.”

“Work!” Tompkins smiled. “Listen, Roger, you’ll kill yourself with work. Why don’t you bring a little balance into your life—work a little, then play a little?”

“That’s what I tell him,” said Gretchen.

“Do you know an average business man’s day?” demanded Tompkins as they went in to dinner. “Coffee in the morning, eight hours’ work interrupted by a bolted luncheon, and then home again with dyspepsia and a bad temper to give the wife a pleasant evening.”

Roger laughed shortly.

“You’ve been going to the movies too much,” he said dryly.

“What?” Tompkins looked at him with some irritation. “Movies? I’ve hardly ever been to the movies in my life. I think the movies are atrocious. My opinions on life are drawn from my own observations. I believe in a balanced life.”

“What’s that?” demanded Roger.

“Well”—he hesitated—”probably the best way to tell you would be to describe my own day. Would that seem horribly egotistic?”

“Oh, no!” Gretchen looked at him with interest. “I’d love to hear about it.”

“Well, in the morning I get up and go through a series of exercises. I’ve got one room fitted up as a little gymnasium, and I punch the bag and do shadow-boxing and weight-pulling for an hour. Then after a cold bath— There’s a thing now! Do you take a daily cold bath?”

“No,” admitted Roger, “I take a hot bath in the evening three or four times a week.”

A horrified silence fell. Tompkins and Gretchen exchanged a glance as if something obscene had been said.

“What’s the matter?” broke out Roger, glancing from one to the other in some irritation. “You know I don’t take a bath every day—I haven’t got the time.”

Tompkins gave a prolonged sigh.

“After my bath,” he continued, drawing a merciful veil of silence over the matter, “I have breakfast and drive to my office in New York, where I work until four. Then I lay off, and if it’s summer I hurry out here for nine holes of golf, or if it’s winter I play squash for an hour at my club. Then a good snappy game of bridge until dinner. Dinner is liable to have something to do with business, but in a pleasant way. Perhaps I’ve just finished a house for some customer, and he wants me to be on hand for his first party to see that the lighting is soft enough and all that sort of thing. Or maybe I sit down with a good book of poetry and spend the evening alone. At any rate, I do something every night to get me out of myself.”

“It must be wonderful,” said Gretchen enthusiastically. “I wish we lived like that.”

Tompkins bent forward earnestly over the table.

“You can,” he said impressively. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t. Look here, if Roger’ll play nine holes of golf every day it’ll do wonders for him. He won’t know himself. He’ll do his work better, never get that tired, nervous feeling— What’s the matter?”

He broke off. Roger had perceptibly yawned.

“Roger,” cried Gretchen sharply, “there’s no need to be so rude. If you did what George said, you’d be a lot better off.” She turned indignantly to their host. “The latest is that he’s going to work at night for the next six weeks. He says he’s going to pull down the blinds and shut us up like hermits in a cave. He’s been doing it every Sunday for the last year; now he’s going to do it every night for six weeks.”

Tompkins shook his head sadly.

“At the end of six weeks,” he remarked, “he’ll be starting for the sanitarium. Let me tell you, every private hospital in New York is full of cases like yours. You just strain the human nervous system a little too far, and bang!—you’ve broken something. And in order to save sixty hours you’re laid up sixty weeks for repairs.” He broke off, changed his tone, and turned to Gretchen with a smile. “Not to mention what happens to you. It seems to me it’s the wife rather than the husband who bears the brunt of these insane periods of overwork.”

“I don’t mind,” protested Gretchen loyally.

“Yes, she does,” said Roger grimly; “she minds like the devil. She’s a shortsighted little egg, and she thinks it’s going to be forever until I get started and she can have some new clothes. But it can’t be helped. The saddest thing about women is that, after all, their best trick is to sit down and fold their hands.”

“Your ideas on women are about twenty years out of date,” said Tompkins pityingly. “Women won’t sit down and wait any more.”

“Then they’d better marry men of forty,” insisted Roger stubbornly. “If a girl marries a young man for love she ought to be willing to make any sacrifice within reason, so long as her husband keeps going ahead.”

“Let’s not talk about it,” said Gretchen impatiently. “Please, Roger, let’s have a good time just this once.”

When Tompkins dropped them in front of their house at eleven Roger and Gretchen stood for a moment on the sidewalk looking at the winter moon. There was a fine, damp, dusty snow in the air, and Roger drew a long breath of it and put his arm around Gretchen exultantly.

“I can make more money than he can,” he said tensely. “And I’ll be doing it in just forty days.”

“Forty days,” she sighed. “It seems such a long time—when everybody else is always having fun. If I could only sleep for forty days.”

“Why don’t you, honey? Just take forty winks, and when you wake up everything’ll be fine.”

She was silent for a moment.

“Roger,” she asked thoughtfully, “do you think George meant what he said about taking me horseback riding on Sunday?”

Roger frowned.

“I don’t know. Probably not—I hope to Heaven he didn’t.” He hesitated. “As a matter of fact, he made me sort of sore to-night—all that junk about his cold bath.”

With their arms about each other, they started up the walk to the house.

“I’ll bet he doesn’t take a cold bath every morning,” continued Roger ruminatively; “or three times a week, either.” He fumbled in his pocket for the key and inserted it in the lock with savage precision. Then he turned around defiantly. “I’ll bet he hasn’t had a bath for a month.”

II

After a fortnight of intensive work, Roger Halsey’s days blurred into each other and passed by in blocks of twos and threes and fours. From eight until 5.30 he was in his office. Then a half-hour on the commuting train, where he scrawled notes on the backs of envelopes under the dull yellow light. By 7.30 his crayons, shears, and sheets of white cardboard were spread over the living-room table, and he labored there with much grunting and sighing until midnight, while Gretchen lay on the sofa with a book, and the door-bell tinkled occasionally behind the drawn blinds. At twelve there was always an argument as to whether he would come to bed. He would agree to come after he had cleared up everything; but as he was invariably sidetracked by half a dozen new ideas, he usually found Gretchen sound asleep when he tiptoed up-stairs.

Sometimes it was three o’clock before Roger squashed his last cigarette into the overloaded ashtray, and he would undress in the darkness, disembodied with fatigue, but with a sense of triumph that he had lasted out another day.

Christmas came and went and he scarcely noticed that it was gone. He remembered it afterward as the day he completed the window-cards for Garrod’s shoes. This was one of the eight large accounts for which he was pointing in January—if he got half of them he was assured a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of business during the year.

But the world outside his business became a chaotic dream. He was aware that on two cool December Sundays George Tompkins had taken Gretchen horseback riding, and that another time she had gone out with him in his automobile to spend the afternoon skiing on the country-club hill. A picture of Tompkins, in an expensive frame, had appeared one morning on their bedroom wall. And one night he was shocked into a startled protest when Gretchen went to the theatre with Tompkins in town.

But his work was almost done. Daily now his layouts arrived from the printers until seven of them were piled and docketed in his office safe. He knew how good they were. Money alone couldn’t buy such work; more than he realized himself, it had been a labor of love.

December tumbled like a dead leaf from the calendar. There was an agonizing week when he had to give up coffee because it made his heart pound so. If he could hold on now for four days—three days——

On Thursday afternoon H. G. Garrod was to arrive in New York. On Wednesday evening Roger came home at seven to find Gretchen poring over the December bills with a strange expression in her eyes.

“What’s the matter?”

She nodded at the bills. He ran through them, his brow wrinkling in a frown.

“Gosh!”

“I can’t help it,” she burst out suddenly. “They’re terrible.”

“Well, I didn’t marry you because you were a wonderful housekeeper. I’ll manage about the bills some way. Don’t worry your little head over it.”

She regarded him coldly.

“You talk as if I were a child.”

“I have to,” he said with sudden irritation.

“Well, at least I’m not a piece of bric-à-brac that you can just put somewhere and forget.”

He knelt down by her quickly, and took her arms in his hands.

“Gretchen, listen!” he said breathlessly. “For God’s sake, don’t go to pieces now! We’re both all stored up with malice and reproach, and if we had a quarrel it’d be terrible. I love you, Gretchen. Say you love me—quick!”

“You know I love you.”

The quarrel was averted, but there was an unnatural tenseness all through dinner. It came to a climax afterward when he began to spread his working materials on the table.

“Oh, Roger,” she protested, “I thought you didn’t have to work to-night.”

“I didn’t think I’d have to, but something came up.”

“I’ve invited George Tompkins over.”

“Oh, gosh!” he exclaimed. “Well, I’m sorry, honey, but you’ll have to phone him not to come.”

“He’s left,” she said. “He’s coming straight from town. He’ll be here any minute now.”

Roger groaned. It occurred to him to send them both to the movies, but somehow the suggestion stuck on his lips. He did not want her at the movies; he wanted her here, where he could look up and know she was by his side.

George Tompkins arrived breezily at eight o’clock.

“Aha!” he cried reprovingly, coming into the room. “Still at it.”

Roger agreed coolly that he was.

“Better quit—better quit before you have to.”

He sat down with a long sigh of physical comfort and lit a cigarette. “Take it from a fellow who’s looked into the question scientifically. We can stand so much, and then—bang!”

“If you’ll excuse me”—Roger made his voice as polite as possible—”I’m going up-stairs and finish this work.”

“Just as you like, Roger.” George waved his hand carelessly. “It isn’t that I mind. I’m the friend of the family and I’d just as soon see the missus as the mister.” He smiled playfully. “But if I were you, old boy, I’d put away my work and get a good night’s sleep.”

When Roger had spread out his materials on the bed up-stairs he found that he could still hear the rumble and murmur of their voices through the thin floor. He began wondering what they found to talk about. As he plunged deeper into his work his mind had a tendency to revert sharply to his question, and several times he arose and paced nervously up and down the room.

The bed was ill adapted to his work. Several times the paper slipped from the board on which it rested, and the pencil punched through. Everything was wrong to-night. Letters and figures blurred before his eyes, and as an accompaniment to the beating of his temples came those persistent murmuring voices.

At ten he realized that he had done nothing for more than an hour, and with a sudden exclamation he gathered together his papers, replaced them in his portfolio, and went down-stairs. They were sitting together on the sofa when he came in.