and I found the hours spent in Mayhew's gambling rooms were more valuable than I had dreamed. The average man reveals himself in gaming more than in love or drink, and I was astonished to discover that many of the so- called best citizens had a flutter with Mayhew from time to time. I don't believe that they had a fair deal; he won too constantly for that; but it was none of my business so long as the clients accepted the results; and he often showed kindness by giving back a few dollars after he had skinned a man of all he possessed. Naturally, the fact that I was working with her husband threw me more into Mrs. Mayhew's society: twice or so a week I had to spend the afternoon with her, and the constraint irked me. Kate, too, objected to my visits: she had seen me go into Mrs.
Mayhew's and I think divined the rest, for at first she was cold to me and drew away even from my kisses. «You've chilled me,» she cried. «I don't think I shall ever love you again entirely.» But when I got into her… really excited her, she suddenly kissed me fervently, and her glorious eyes had heavy tears in them. «Why do you cry, dear?» I asked. «Because I cannot make you mine as I am all yours!» she cried. «Oh!» she went on, clutching me to her, «I think the pleasure is increased by the dreadful fear and the hate-oh, love me and me only, love mine!» Of course I promised fidelity, but I was surprised to feel that my desire for Kate, too, was beginning to cool. The arrangement with the Mayhews came to an unexpected and untimely end.
Mayhew now and then had a tussle with another gambler, and after I had been with him about three months, a gambler from Denver had a great contest with him and afterwards proposed that they should join forces and Mayhew should come to Denver. «More money to be made there in a week,» he declared, «than in Lawrence in a month.» Finally he persuaded Mayhew, who was wise enough to say nothing to his wife till the whole arrangement was fixed. She raved but could do nothing save give in, and so we had to part. Mayhew gave me one hundred dollars as a bonus, and Lorna one unforgettable, astonishing afternoon which I must now try to describe. I did not go near the Mayhew's the day after this gift, leaving Lorna to suppose that I looked upon everything as ended. But the day after that I got a word from her, an imperious, «Come at once; I must see you!» Of course I went, though reluctantly. As soon as I entered the room she rose from the sofa and came to me. «If I get you work in Denver, will you come out?» «How could I?» I asked in absolute astonishment. «You know I'm bound here to the university and then I want to go into a law office as well. Besides, I could not leave Smith: I've never known such a teacher; I don't believe his equal can be found anywhere.»
She nodded her head. «I see,» she sighed. «I suppose it's impossible; but I must see you,» she cried. «If I haven't the hope-what do I say-the certainty of seeing you again, I shan't go. I'd rather kill myself! I'll be a servant and stay with you, my darling, and take care of you! I don't care what I do so long as we are together. I'm nearly crazed with fear that I shall lose you.»
«It's all a question of money,» I said quietly, for the idea of her staying behind scared me stiff. «If I can earn money, I'd love to go to Denver in my holidays. It must be gorgeous there in summer, six thousand odd feet above sea-level. I'd delight in it.» «If I send you the money, you'll come?» I made a face. «I can't take money from-a love» (I said 'love' instead of 'woman': it was not ugly), I went on, «but Smith says he can get me work and I have still a little.
I'll come in the holidays.» «Holy days they'll be to me!» she said solemnly, and then with quick change of mood, «I'll make a beautiful room for our love in Denver; but you must come for Christmas, I could not wait till midsummer. Oh, how I shall ache for you-ache!» «Come upstairs,» I coaxed and she came, and we went to the bed. I found her mad with desire, but after I had brought her in an hour to hysteria and she lay in my arms crying, she suddenly said,
«He promised to come home early this afternoon, and I said I'd have a surprise for him. When he finds us together like this, it'll be a surprise, won't it?» «But you're mad!» I cried, getting out of bed in a flash. «I shall never be able to visit you in Denver if we have a row here!» «That's true,» she said as if in a dream,
«that's true. It's a pity: I'd love to have seen his foolish face stretched to wonder; but you're right. Hurry!» she cried, and was out of the room in a twinkling. When she returned, I was dressed.
«Go downstairs and wait for me,» she commanded, «on our sofa. If he knocks, open the door to him. That'll be a surprise, though not so great a one as I had planned,» she added laughing shrilly. «Are you going without kissing me?» she cried when I was at the door.
«Well, go, it's all right, go, for if I felt your lips again, I might keep you.» I went downstairs and in a few moments she followed me. «I can't bear you to go!» she cried. «How partings hurt!» she whispered. «Why should we part again, love mine?» and she looked at me with rapt eyes. «This life holds nothing worth having but love.
Let us make love deathless, you and I, going together to death. What do we lose? Nothing! This world is an empty shell! Come with me, love, and we'll meet death together!» «Oh, I want to do such a lot of things first,» I exclaimed. «Death's empire is eternal, but this brief task of life, the adventure of it, the change of it, the huge possibilities of it beckon me. I can't leave it.» «The change!» she cried with dilating nostrils, while her eyes darkened, «the change!» «You are determined to misunderstand me,» I cried. «Is not every day a change?» «I am weary,» she cried, «and beaten. I can only beg you not to forget your promise to come-ah!» and she caught and kissed me on the mouth. I shall die with your name on my lips,» she said, and turned to bury her face in the sofa cushion. I went: what else was there to do? I saw them off at the station.
Lorna had made me promise to write often, and swore she would write every day, and she did send me short notes daily for a fortnight. Then came gaps ever lengthening: «Denver society was pleasant and a Mr.
Wilson, a student, was assiduous: he comes every day,» she wrote.
Excuses finally, little hasty notes, and in two months her letters were formal, cold; in three months they had ceased altogether.
The break did not surprise me. I had taught her that youth was the first requisite in a lover for a woman of her type. She had doubtless put my precepts into practice: Mr. Wilson was probably as near the ideal as I was, and very much nearer to hand. The passions of the sense demand propinquity and satisfaction and nothing is more forgetful than pleasures of the flesh. If Mrs. Mayhew had given me a little, I had given her even less of my better self.
Chapter XII. Hard Times and New Loves
So far I had had more good fortune than falls to the lot of most youths starting in life; now I was to taste ill luck and be tried as with fire. I had been so taken up with my own concerns that I had hardly given a thought to public affairs; now I was forced to take a wider view. One day Kate told me that Willie was heavily in arrears: he had gone back to Deacon Conklin's to live on the other side of the Kaw River and I had naturally supposed that he had paid up everything before leaving. I found that he owed the Gregorys sixty dollars on his own account, and more than that on mine.
I went across to him really enraged. If he had warned me, I should not have minded so much; but to leave the Gregorys to tell me made me positively dislike him, and I did not know then the full extent of his selfishness. Years later my sister told me that he had written time and again to my father and got money from him, alleging that it was for me and that I was studying and couldn't earn anything.
«Willie kept us poor, Frank,» she told me, and I could only bow my head; but if I had known this fact at the time, it would have changed my relations with Willie. As it was, I found him in the depths.
Carried away by his optimism, he had bought real estate in 1871 and 1872, mortgaged it for more than he gave, and as the boom continued, he had repeated this game time and again till on paper and in paper he reckoned he had made a hundred thousand dollars. This he had told me and I was glad of it for his sake, unfeignedly glad. It was easy to see that the boom and inflation period had been based at first on the extraordinary growth of the country through the immigration and trade that had followed the Civil War. But the Franco-German war had wasted wealth prodigiously, deranged trade, too, and diverted commerce into new channels. First France and then England felt the shock:
London had to call in moneys lent to American railways and other enterprises. Bit by bit even American optimism was overcome, for immigration in 1871 1872 fell off greatly and the foreign calls for cash exhausted our inks. The crash came in 1873; nothing like it was seen again in these states till the slump of 1907, which led to the founding of the Federal Reserve Bank. Willie's fortune melted almost in a moment: this mortgage and that had to
