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The Game
CHAPTER II
Genevieve and Joe were working-class aristocrats. In an environment
made up largely of sordidness and wretchedness they had kept
themselves unsullied and wholesome. Theirs was a self-respect, a
regard for the niceties and clean things of life, which had held them
aloof from their kind. Friends did not come to them easily; nor had
either ever possessed a really intimate friend, a heart-companion with
whom to chum and have things in common. The social instinct was
strong in them, yet they had remained lonely because they could not
satisfy that instinct and at that same time satisfy their desire for
cleanness and decency.
If ever a girl of the working class had led the sheltered life, it was
Genevieve. In the midst of roughness and brutality, she had shunned
all that was rough and brutal. She saw but what she chose to see, and
she chose always to see the best, avoiding coarseness and uncouthness
without effort, as a matter of instinct. To begin with, she had been
peculiarly unexposed. An only child, with an invalid mother upon whom
she attended, she had not joined in the street games and frolics of
the children of the neighbourhood. Her father, a mild-tempered,
narrow-chested, anaemic little clerk, domestic because of his inherent
disability to mix with men, had done his full share toward giving the
home an atmosphere of sweetness and tenderness.
An orphan at twelve, Genevieve had gone straight from her father's
funeral to live with the Silversteins in their rooms above the candy
store; and here, sheltered by kindly aliens, she earned her keep and
clothes by waiting on the shop. Being Gentile, she was especially
necessary to the Silversteins, who would not run the business
themselves when the day of their Sabbath came round.
And here, in the uneventful little shop, six maturing years had
slipped by. Her acquaintances were few. She had elected to have no
girl chum for the reason that no satisfactory girl had appeared. Nor
did she choose to walk with the young fellows of the neighbourhood, as
was the custom of girls from their fifteenth year. "That stuck-up
doll-face," was the way the girls of the neighbourhood described her;
and though she earned their enmity by her beauty and aloofness, she
none the less commanded their respect. "Peaches and cream," she was
called by the young men--though softly and amongst themselves, for
they were afraid of arousing the ire of the other girls, while they
stood in awe of Genevieve, in a dimly religious way, as a something
mysteriously beautiful and unapproachable.
For she was indeed beautiful. Springing from a long line of American
descent, she was one of those wonderful working-class blooms which
occasionally appear, defying all precedent of forebears and
environment, apparently without cause or explanation. She was a
beauty in color, the blood spraying her white skin so deliciously as
to earn for her the apt description, "peaches and cream." She was a
beauty in the regularity of her features; and, if for no other reason,
she was a beauty in the mere delicacy of the lines on which she was
moulded. Quiet, low-voiced, stately, and dignified, she somehow had
the knack of dress, and but befitted her beauty and dignity with
anything she put on. Withal, she was sheerly feminine, tender and
soft and clinging, with the smouldering passion of the mate and the
motherliness of the woman. But this side of her nature had lain
dormant through the years, waiting for the mate to appear.
Then Joe came into Silverstein's shop one hot Saturday afternoon to
cool himself with ice-cream soda. She had not noticed his entrance,
being busy with one other customer, an urchin of six or seven who
gravely analyzed his desires before the show-case wherein truly
generous and marvellous candy creations reposed under a cardboard
announcement, "Five for Five Cents."
She had heard, "Ice-cream soda, please," and had herself asked, "What
flavor?" without seeing his face. For that matter, it was not a
custom of hers to notice young men. There was something about them
she did not understand. The way they looked at her made her
uncomfortable, she knew not why; while there was an uncouthness and
roughness about them that did not please her. As yet, her imagination
had been untouched by man. The young fellows she had seen had held no
lure for her, had been without meaning to her. In short, had she been
asked to give one reason for the existence of men on the earth, she
would have been nonplussed for a reply.
As she emptied the measure of ice-cream into the glass, her casual
glance rested on Joe's face, and she experienced on the instant a
pleasant feeling of satisfaction. The next instant his eyes were upon
her face, her eyes had dropped, and she was turning away toward the
soda fountain. But at the fountain, filling the glass, she was
impelled to look at him again--but for no more than an instant, for
this time she found his eyes already upon her, waiting to meet hers,
while on his face was a frankness of interest that caused her quickly
to look away.
That such pleasingness would reside for her in any man astonished her.
"What a pretty boy," she thought to herself, innocently and
instinctively trying to ward off the power to hold and draw her that
lay behind the mere prettiness. "Besides, he isn't pretty," she
thought, as she placed the glass before him, received the silver dime
in payment, and for the third time looked into his eyes. Her
vocabulary was limited, and she knew little of the worth of words; but
the strong masculinity of his boy's face told her that the term was
inappropriate.
"He must be handsome, then," was her next thought, as she again
dropped her eyes before his. But all good-looking men were called
handsome, and that term, too, displeased her. But whatever it was, he
was good to see, and she was irritably aware of a desire to look at
him again and again.
As for Joe, he had never seen anything like this girl across the
counter. While he was wiser in natural philosophy than she, and could
have given immediately the reason for woman's existence on the earth,
nevertheless woman had no part in his cosmos. His imagination was as
untouched by woman as the girl's was by man. But his imagination was
touched now, and the woman was Genevieve. He had never dreamed a girl
could be so beautiful, and he could not keep his eyes from her face.
Yet every time he looked at her, and her eyes met his, he felt painful
embarrassment, and would have looked away had not her eyes dropped so
quickly.
But when, at last, she slowly lifted her eyes and held their gaze
steadily, it was his own eyes that dropped, his own cheek that mantled
red. She was much less embarrassed than he, while she betrayed her
embarrassment not at all. She was aware of a flutter within, such as
she had never known before, but in no way did it disturb her outward
serenity. Joe, on the contrary, was obviously awkward and
delightfully miserable.
Neither knew love, and all that either was aware was an overwhelming
desire to look at the other. Both had been troubled and roused, and
they were drawing together with the sharpness and imperativeness of
uniting elements. He toyed with his spoon, and flushed his
embarrassment over his soda, but lingered on; and she spoke softly,
dropped her eyes, and wove her witchery about him.
But he could not linger forever over a glass of ice-cream soda, while
he did not dare ask for a second glass. So he left her to remain in
the shop in a waking trance, and went away himself down the street
like a somnambulist. Genevieve dreamed through the afternoon and knew
that she was in love. Not so with Joe. He knew only that he wanted
to look at her again, to see her face. His thoughts did not get
beyond this, and besides, it was scarcely a thought, being more a dim
and inarticulate desire.
The urge of this desire he could not escape. Day after day it worried
him, and the candy shop and the girl behind the counter continually
obtruded themselves. He fought off the desire. He was afraid and
ashamed to go back to the candy shop. He solaced his fear with, "I
ain't a ladies' man." Not once, nor twice, but scores of times, he
muttered the thought to himself, but it did no good. And by the
middle of the week, in the evening, after work, he came into the shop.
He tried to come in carelessly and casually, but his whole carriage
advertised the strong effort of will that compelled his legs to carry
his reluctant body thither. Also, he was shy, and awkwarder than
ever. Genevieve, on the contrary, was serener than ever, though
fluttering most alarmingly within. He was incapable of speech,
mumbled his order, looked anxiously at the clock, despatched his
ice-cream soda in tremendous haste, and was gone.
She was ready to weep with vexation. Such meagre reward for four
days' waiting, and assuming all the time that she loved! He was a
nice boy and all that, she knew, but he needn't have been in so
disgraceful a hurry. But Joe had not reached the corner before he
wanted to be back with her again. He just wanted to look at her. He
had no thought that it was love. Love? That was when young fellows
and girls walked out together. As for him--And then his desire took
sharper shape, and he discovered that that was the very thing he
wanted her to do. He wanted to see her, to look at her, and well
could he do all this if she but walked out with him. Then that was
why the young fellows and girls walked out together, he mused, as the
week-end drew near. He had remotely considered this walking out to be
a mere form or observance preliminary to matrimony. Now he saw the
deeper wisdom in it, wanted it himself, and concluded therefrom that
he was in love.
Both were now of the same mind, and there could be but the one ending;
and it was the mild nine days' wonder of Genevieve's neighborhood when
she and Joe walked out together.
Both were blessed with an avarice of speech, and because of it their
courtship was a long one. As he expressed himself in action, she
expressed herself in repose and control, and by the love-light in her
eyes--though this latter she would have suppressed in all maiden
modesty had she been conscious of the speech her heart printed so
plainly there. "Dear" and "darling" were too terribly intimate for
them to achieve quickly; and, unlike most mating couples, they did not
overwork the love- words. For a long time they were content to walk
together in the evenings, or to sit side by side on a bench in the
park, neither uttering a word for an hour at a time, merely gazing
into each other's eyes, too faintly luminous in the starshine to be a
cause for self-consciousness and embarrassment.
He was as chivalrous and delicate in his attention as any knight to
his lady. When they walked along the street, he was careful to be on
the outside,--somewhere he had heard that this was the proper thing to
do,--and when a crossing to the opposite side of the street put him on
the inside, he swiftly side-stepped behind her to gain the outside
again. He carried her parcels for her, and once, when rain threatened,
her umbrella. He had never heard of the custom of sending flowers to
one's lady-love, so he sent Genevieve fruit instead. There was
utility in fruit. It was good to eat. Flowers never entered his
mind, until, one day, he noticed a pale rose in her hair. It drew his
gaze again and again. It was _her_ hair, therefore the presence of
the flower interested him. Again, it interested him because _she_ had
chosen to put it there. For these reasons he was led to observe the
rose more closely. He discovered that the effect in itself was
beautiful, and it fascinated him. His ingenuous delight in it was a
delight to her, and a new and mutual love-thrill was theirs--because
of a flower. Straightway he became a lover of flowers. Also, he
became an inventor in gallantry. He sent her a bunch of violets. The
idea was his own. He had never heard of a man sending flowers to a
woman. Flowers were used for decorative purposes, also for funerals.
He sent Genevieve flowers nearly every day, and so far as he was
concerned the idea was original, as positive an invention as ever
arose in the mind of man.
He was tremulous in his devotion to her--as tremulous as was she in
her reception of him. She was all that was pure and good, a holy of
holies not lightly to be profaned even by what might possibly be the
too ardent reverence of a devotee. She was a being wholly different
from any he had ever known. She was not as other girls. It never
entered his head that she was of the same clay as his own sisters, or
anybody's sister. She was more than mere girl, than mere woman. She
was--well, she was Genevieve, a being of a class by herself, nothing
less than a miracle of creation.
And for her, in turn, there was in him but little less of illusion.
Her judgment of him in minor things might be critical (while his
judgment of her was sheer worship, and had in it nothing critical at
all); but in her judgment of him as a whole she forgot the sum of the
parts, and knew him only as a creature of wonder, who gave meaning to
life, and for whom she could die as willingly as she could live. She
often beguiled her waking dreams of him with fancied situations,
wherein, dying for him, she at last adequately expressed the love she
felt for him, and which, living, she knew she could never fully
express.
Their love was all fire and dew. The physical scarcely entered into
it, for such seemed profanation. The ultimate physical facts of their
relation were something which they never considered. Yet the
immediate physical facts they knew, the immediate yearnings and
raptures of the flesh--the touch of finger tips on hand or arm, the
momentary pressure of a hand-clasp, the rare lip-caress of a kiss, the
tingling thrill of her hair upon his cheek, of her hand lightly
thrusting back the locks from above his eyes. All this they knew, but
also, and they knew not why, there seemed a hint of sin about these
caresses and sweet bodily contacts.
There were times when she felt impelled to throw her arms around him
in a very abandonment of love, but always some sanctity restrained
her. At such moments she was distinctly and unpleasantly aware of
some unguessed sin that lurked within her. It was wrong, undoubtedly
wrong, that she should wish to caress her lover in so unbecoming a
fashion. No self-respecting girl could dream of doing such a thing.
It was unwomanly. Besides, if she had done it, what would he have
thought of it? And while she contemplated so horrible a catastrophe,
she seemed to shrivel and wilt in a furnace of secret shame.
Nor did Joe escape the prick of curious desires, chiefest among which,
perhaps, was the desire to hurt Genevieve. When, after long and
tortuous degrees, he had achieved the bliss of putting his arm round
her waist, he felt spasmodic impulses to make the embrace crushing,
till she should cry out with the hurt. It was not his nature to wish
to hurt any living thing. Even in the ring, to hurt was never the
intention of any blow he struck. In such case he played the Game, and
the goal of the Game was to down an antagonist and keep that
antagonist down for a space of ten seconds. So he never struck merely
to hurt; the hurt was incidental to the end, and the end was quite
another matter. And yet here, with this girl he loved, came the
desire to hurt. Why, when with thumb and forefinger he had ringed her
wrist, he should desire to contract that ring till it crushed, was
beyond him. He could not understand, and felt that he was discovering
depths of brutality in his nature of which he had never dreamed.
Once, on parting, he threw his arms around her and swiftly drew her
against him. Her gasping cry of surprise and pain brought him to his
senses and left him there very much embarrassed and still trembling
with a vague and nameless delight. And she, too, was trembling. In
the hurt itself, which was the essence of the vigorous embrace, she
had found delight; and again she knew sin, though she knew not its
nature nor why it should be sin.
Came the day, very early in their walking out, when Silverstein
chanced upon Joe in his store and stared at him with saucer-eyes.
Came likewise the scene, after Joe had departed, when the maternal
feelings of Mrs. Silverstein found vent in a diatribe against all
prize-fighters and against Joe Fleming in particular. Vainly had
Silverstein striven to stay the spouse's wrath. There was need for
her wrath. All the maternal feelings were hers but none of the
maternal rights.
Genevieve was aware only of the diatribe; she knew a flood of abuse
was pouring from the lips of the Jewess, but she was too stunned to
hear the details of the abuse. Joe, her Joe, was Joe Fleming the
prize-fighter. It was abhorrent, impossible, too grotesque to be
believable. Her clear- eyed, girl-cheeked Joe might be anything but a
prize-fighter. She had never seen one, but he in no way resembled her
conception of what a prize- fighter must be--the human brute with
tiger eyes and a streak for a forehead. Of course she had heard of
Joe Fleming--who in West Oakland had not?--but that there should be
anything more than a coincidence of names had never crossed her mind.
She came out of her daze to hear Mrs. Silverstein's hysterical sneer,
"keepin' company vit a bruiser." Next, Silverstein and his wife fell
to differing on "noted" and "notorious" as applicable to her lover.
"But he iss a good boy," Silverstein was contending. "He make der
money, an' he safe der money."
"You tell me dat!" Mrs. Silverstein screamed. "Vat you know? You
know too much. You spend good money on der prize-fighters. How you
know? Tell me dat! How you know?"
"I know vat I know," Silverstein held on sturdily--a thing Genevieve
had never before seen him do when his wife was in her tantrums. "His
fader die, he go to work in Hansen's sail-loft. He haf six brudders
an' sisters younger as he iss. He iss der liddle fader. He vork
hard, all der time. He buy der pread an' der meat, an' pay der rent.
On Saturday night he bring home ten dollar. Den Hansen gif him twelve
dollar--vat he do? He iss der liddle fader, he bring it home to der
mudder. He vork all der time, he get twenty dollar--vat he do? He
bring it home. Der liddle brudders an' sisters go to school, vear
good clothes, haf better pread an' meat; der mudder lif fat, dere iss
joy in der eye, an' she iss proud of her good boy Joe.
"But he haf der beautiful body--ach, Gott, der beautiful
body!--stronger as der ox, k-vicker as der tiger-cat, der head cooler
as der ice-box, der eyes vat see eferytings, k-vick, just like dat.
He put on der gloves vit der boys at Hansen's loft, he put on der
gloves vit de boys at der varehouse. He go before der club; he knock
out der Spider, k-vick, one punch, just like dat, der first time. Der
purse iss five dollar--vat he do? He bring it home to der mudder.
"He go many times before der clubs; he get many purses--ten dollar,
fifty dollar, one hundred dollar. Vat he do? Tell me dat! Quit der
job at Hansen's? Haf der good time vit der boys? No, no; he iss der
good boy. He vork efery day. He fight at night before der clubs. He
say, 'Vat for I pay der rent, Silverstein?'--to me, Silverstein, he
say dat. Nefer mind vat I say, but he buy der good house for der
mudder. All der time he vork at Hansen's and fight before der clubs
to pay for der house. He buy der piano for der sisters, der carpets,
der pictures on der vall. An' he iss all der time straight. He bet
on himself--dat iss der good sign. Ven der man bets on himself dat is
der time you bet too--"
Here Mrs. Silverstein groaned her horror of gambling, and her husband,
aware that his eloquence had betrayed him, collapsed into voluble
assurances that he was ahead of the game. "An' all because of Joe
Fleming," he concluded. "I back him efery time to vin."
But Genevieve and Joe were preeminently mated, and nothing, not even
this terrible discovery, could keep them apart. In vain Genevieve
tried to steel herself against him; but she fought herself, not him.
To her surprise she discovered a thousand excuses for him, found him
lovable as ever; and she entered into his life to be his destiny, and
to control him after the way of women. She saw his future and hers
through glowing vistas of reform, and her first great deed was when
she wrung from him his promise to cease fighting.
And he, after the way of men, pursuing the dream of love and striving
for possession of the precious and deathless object of desire, had
yielded. And yet, in the very moment of promising her, he knew
vaguely, deep down, that he could never abandon the Game; that
somewhere, sometime, in the future, he must go back to it. And he had
had a swift vision of his mother and brothers and sisters, their
multitudinous wants, the house with its painting and repairing, its
street assessments and taxes, and of the coming of children to him and
Genevieve, and of his own daily wage in the sail-making loft. But the
next moment the vision was dismissed, as such warnings are always
dismissed, and he saw before him only Genevieve, and he knew only his
hunger for her and the call of his being to her; and he accepted
calmly her calm assumption of his life and actions.
He was twenty, she was eighteen, boy and girl, the pair of them, and
made for progeny, healthy and normal, with steady blood pounding
through their bodies; and wherever they went together, even on Sunday
outings across the bay amongst people who did not know him, eyes were
continually drawn to them. He matched her girl's beauty with his
boy's beauty, her grace with his strength, her delicacy of line and
fibre with the harsher vigor and muscle of the male. Frank-faced,
fresh-colored, almost ingenuous in expression, eyes blue and wide
apart, he drew and held the gaze of more than one woman far above him
in the social scale. Of such glances and dim maternal promptings he
was quite unconscious, though Genevieve was quick to see and
understand; and she knew each time the pang of a fierce joy in that he
was hers and that she held him in the hollow of her hand. He did see,
however, and rather resented, the men's glances drawn by her. These,
too, she saw and understood as he did not dream of understanding.