“He’s a gambler.”
“A what?”
“A gambler. Tom knows him well. And I guess I musta saw him when I was a little girl. He used to live up around Stroudsburg. They run him out of town.”
“I’ll never believe it.” But in her heart she did. That money—why, of course, his long hours, especially at night, his reticence—all this combined to make her recognize the truth.
“You poor thing. Of course you don’t want to believe it. That’s what I said to Tom. I said, ‘That poor thing, she’s got no notion of it.’ ”
It was intolerable, such pity! “Where is your brother, Annie?”
“Who, Tom! Prob’ly upstairs, he don’t go out to rehearsal till four.”
“Tell him to come here.”
Annie went out, whimpering a little, twisting her fingers in the folds of her white apron. She came back followed by a tall thin young man, dark, with kind, soft brown eyes. Maggie noticed that the hair in front of his ears was unshaven to form flat side-whiskers. “Siders” the boys used to call them. They had teased Sandy about them, for he had affected them in his college days.
She was standing by the table holding the envelope of the paper pattern in her hand. “Mr. Mason, what’s this you know about my husband?”
“Annie shouldn’t have told you, ma’am,” he said abjectly. “It was none of her business.”
“Well, she has. Sit down, please, and tell me all you know.”
“I’d rather stand, thank you, ma’am. Well if I must. Even when I was a little boy, Henderson Neal was knowed to be a cardsharp. There wasn’t nobody could stand against him. Used to wait for the men on a Saturday night, white and colored. He’d meet ’em in the bar and treat, and then ask ’em in on a little game. And they’d play, till they was cleaned out. Then he’d give ’em another drink, and clap ’em on the back. Perhaps he’d hand ’em back a dollar. ‘Better luck next time old man!’ And they’d come back the next Saturday night, the poor fools. Some of them blowed their brains out, they got so far back in their debts.”
She was tearing the envelope into bits, but her voice was steady. “You’re sure of this?”
“My uncle was one of them that killed theirselves. They was a colored minister come to Stroudsburg and he run him out of town. Then he crossed over to Phillipsburg, then down to Trenton. They made things too hot for him there, too. Then he got in with a white saloon-keeper in the mining districts in Pennsylvania. Finally things got too hot for him and he left the country for a while, was servant to an actor. He come back in about five years with another name.”
“An alias,” murmured Annie who read the papers.
“But pretty soon he started out again under his own name. You see he got some political protection in New York, and I guess he’s got the same here. Most people know about him a’ready. I’m sorry I had to tell you, ma’am.”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure. Would—would you mind leaving me now? You, too, Annie—please.”
She didn’t lie down and moan and cry as she had done—was it less than six months ago?—when she received Joanna’s letter. That was child’s trouble compared to this. She had wanted so to be decent, and she was a gambler’s wife. God! how funny!
Now she must think, she must think. Oh, what was she to do? Leave him, she knew that. But afterwards? She had no money. He had given her her very clothes. Her old ones were at her mother’s. Her mother!
“Poor Mamma!” she said again as on a former occasion. “What a hell her life’s always been!”
No wonder those people, those men in Atlantic City who knew him didn’t introduce their women folks to her.
“I suppose they thought ‘You thief! Dressing that girl on other men’s money!’ ”
Pretty soon he’d be home for dinner. She heard him presently coming up the stairs. There! He had stepped on the creaky one. That meant he was—now—just outside the door. He stepped in.
“Nice and warm in here.”
She barely allowed him time to take off his overcoat. “Henderson, I know how you make your money. You’re a gambler.”
He didn’t deny it. “Who told you that?”
“The nephew of that man, that Mr. Mason (she hazarded the name) who shot himself in Stroudsburg.”
“Where’d you see him?”
“What difference does that make? And I’ve been living like a queen off stolen money. I want you to know I’m leaving you this instant.”
He caught her by the arm. “Don’t be a fool, Maggie!”
She could see the blood mounting, as his temper rose, shadowing his dark face.
“That’s what I’m trying to do—stop being a fool.”
“Where will you go, how can you live? Off my money? You’ve none of your own.”
“I’ll make some.”
“I’ll never let you go. I’ll kill you first.” He crushed both slender wrists in his brutal hand and she went ashen with pain.
“I wish you would kill me.”
He flung her away from him then and she leaned back against the wall, breathing hard.
“I suppose you’ll go back to that man, that fine gentleman that didn’t want you.”
“Isn’t it likely he’d want me now? I was a nice girl then, not the wife of a gambler.”
He broke down suddenly at that, sank in a chair, buried his head in his hands.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to let me go.” Her voice was hard.
He lifted a wretched face. “You wouldn’t stay even if I was to do something else—something decent?”
But she couldn’t forgive him for dragging her into this abyss, this slough of degradation.
“You couldn’t change now, and anyway I wouldn’t live with you.”
To her amazement he got up, took his hat and coat and started for the door.
“I’ll go. You’re not the one to be turned out. You know I pay for these rooms a quarter in advance. This here’s the beginning of the second quarter. There’s some money in the top bureau drawer.”
“I don’t want
