Chapter 16

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      True to her promise, the following day Hortense returned to Mr. Rubenstein, and with all the cunning of her nature placed before him, with many reservations, the nature of the dilemma which confronted her. Could she, by any chance, have the coat for one hundred and fifteen dollars on an easy payment plan? Mr. Rubenstein’s head forthwith began to wag a solemn negative. This was not an easy payment store. If he wanted to do business that way he could charge two hundred for the coat and easily get it.

      “But I could pay as much as fifty dollars when I took the coat,” argued Hortense.

      “Very good. But who is to guarantee that I get the other sixty- five, and when?”

      “Next week twenty-five, and the week after that twenty five and the next week after that fifteen.”

      “Of course. But supposin’ the next day after you take the coat an automobile runs you down and kills you. Then what? How do I get my money?”

      Now that was a poser. And there was really no way that she could prove that any one would pay for the coat. And before that there would have to be all the bother of making out a contract, and getting some really responsible person — a banker, say — to endorse it. No, no, this was not an easy payment house. This was a cash house. That was why the coat was offered to her at one hundred and fifteen, but not a dollar less. Not a dollar.

      Mr. Rubenstein sighed and talked on. And finally Hortense asked him if she could give him seventy-five dollars cash in hand, the other forty to be paid in one week’s time. Would he let her have the coat then — to take home with her?

      “But a week — a week — what is a week then?” argued Mr. Rubenstein. “If you can bring me seventy-five next week or to-morrow, and forty more in another week or ten days, why not wait a week and bring the whole hundred and fifteen? Then the coat is yours and no bother. Leave the coat. Come back to-morrow and pay me twenty-five or thirty dollars on account and I take the coat out of the window and lock it up for you. No one can even see it then. In another week bring me the balance or in two weeks. Then it is yours.” Mr. Rubenstein explained the process as though it were a difficult matter to grasp.

      But the argument once made was sound enough. It really left Hortense little to argue about. At the same time it reduced her spirit not a little. To think of not being able to take it now. And yet, once out of the place, her vigor revived. For, after all, the time fixed would soon pass and if Clyde performed his part of the agreement promptly, the coat would be hers. The important thing now was to make him give her twenty-five or thirty dollars wherewith to bind this wonderful agreement. Only now, because of the fact that she felt that she needed a new hat to go with the coat, she decided to say that it cost one hundred and twenty-five instead of one hundred and fifteen.

      And once this conclusion was put before Clyde, he saw it as a very reasonable arrangement — all things considered — quite a respite from the feeling of strain that had settled upon him after his last conversation with Hortense. For, after all, he had not seen how he was to raise more than thirty-five dollars this first week anyhow. The following week would be somewhat easier, for then, as he told himself, he proposed to borrow twenty or twenty-five from Ratterer if he could, which, joined with the twenty or twenty-five which his tips would bring him, would be quite sufficient to meet the second payment. The week following he proposed to borrow at least ten or fifteen from Hegglund — maybe more — and if that did not make up the required amount to pawn his watch for fifteen dollars, the watch he had bought for himself a few months before. It ought to bring that at least; it cost fifty.

      But, he now thought, there was Esta in her wretched room awaiting the most unhappy result of her one romance. How was she to make out, he asked himself, even in the face of the fact that he feared to be included in the financial problem which Esta as well as the family presented. His father was not now, and never had been, of any real financial service to his mother. And yet, if the problem were on this account to be shifted to him, how would he make out? Why need his father always peddle clocks and rugs and preach on the streets? Why couldn’t his mother and father give up the mission idea, anyhow?

      But, as he knew, the situation was not to be solved without his aid. And the proof of it came toward the end of the second week of his arrangement with Hortense, when, with fifty dollars in his pocket, which he was planning to turn over to her on the following Sunday, his mother, looking into his bedroom where he was dressing, said: “I’d like to see you for a minute, Clyde, before you go out.” He noted she was very grave as she said this. As a matter of fact, for several days past, he had been sensing that she was undergoing a strain of some kind. At the same time he had been thinking all this while that with his own resources hypothecated as they were, he could do nothing. Or, if he did it meant the loss of Hortense. He dared not.

      And yet what reasonable excuse could he give his mother for not helping her a little, considering especially the clothes he wore, and the manner in which he had been running here and there, always giving the excuse of working, but probably not deceiving her as much as he thought. To be sure, only two months before, he had obligated himself to pay her ten dollars a week more for five weeks, and had. But that only proved to her very likely that he had so much extra to give, even though he had tried to make it clear at the time that he was pinching himself to do it. And yet, however much he chose to waver in her favor, he could not, with his desire for Hortense directly confronting him.

      He went out into the living-room after a time, and as usual his mother at once led the way to one of the benches in the mission — a cheerless, cold room these days.

      “I didn’t think I’d have to speak to you about this, Clyde, but I don’t see any other way out of it. I haven’t anyone but you to depend upon now that you’re getting to be a man. But you must promise not to tell any of the others — Frank or Julia or your father. I don’t want them to know. But Esta’s back here in Kansas City and in trouble, and I don’t know quite what to do about her. I have so very little money to do with, and your father’s not very much of a help to me any more.”

      She passed a weary, reflective hand across her forehead and Clyde knew what was coming. His first thought was to pretend that he did not know that Esta was in the city, since he had been pretending this way for so long. But now, suddenly, in the face of his mother’s confession, and the need of pretended surprise on his part, if he were to keep up the fiction, he said, “Yes, I know.”

      “You know?” queried his mother, surprised.

      “Yes, I know,” Clyde repeated. “I saw you going in that house in Beaudry Street one morning as I was going along there,” he announced calmly enough now. “And I saw Esta looking out of the window afterwards, too. So I went in after you left.”

      “How long ago was that?” she asked, more to gain time than anything else.

      “Oh, about five or six weeks ago, I think. I been around to see her a coupla times since then, only Esta didn’t want me to say anything about that either.”

      “Tst! Tst! Tst!” clicked Mrs. Griffiths, with her tongue. “Then you know what the trouble is.”

      “Yes,” replied Clyde.

      “Well, what is to be will be,” she said resignedly. “You haven’t mentioned it to Frank or Julia, have you?”

      “No,” replied Clyde, thoughtfully, thinking of what a failure his mother had made of her attempt to be secretive. She was no one to deceive any one, or his father, either. He thought himself far, far shrewder.

      “Well, you mustn’t,” cautioned his mother solemnly. “It isn’t best for them to know, I think. It’s bad enough as it is this way,” she added with a kind of wry twist to her mouth, the while Clyde thought of himself and Hortense.

      “And to think,” she added, after a moment, her eyes filling with