The Auction Block. Rex Beach
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this juncture Mrs. Knight, having finished the supper dishes and set her bread to rise, entered the shoddy parlor. Jim turned to her, shrugging his shoulders with an air of washing his hands of a disagreeable subject. "Pa's weakened again," he explained. "He won't go."
"Me, a clerk—at my age!" mumbled Peter.
"I've been trying to tell him that he'd get a half-Nelson on Tammany inside of a year. He squeezed the sheriff's office till it squealed, and if he can pinch a dollar out of this burg he can—"
"You shut up! I don't like your way of saying things," snarled Mr.
Knight.
His wife spoke for the first time, with brief conclusiveness.
"I wrote and thanked Senator Fogarty for his offer and told him you'd accept."
"You—what?" Peter was dumfounded.
"Yes"—Mrs. Knight seemed oblivious of his wrath—"we're going to make a change."
Mrs. Knight was a large woman well advanced beyond that indefinite turning-point of middle age; in her unattractive face was none of the easy good nature so unmistakably stamped upon her husband's. Peter J. was inherently optimistic; his head was forever hidden in a roseate aura of hopefulness and expectation. Under easy living he had grayed and fattened; his eyes were small and colorless, his cheeks full and veined with tiny sprays Of purple, his hands soft and limber. What had once been a measure of good looks was hidden now behind a flabby, indefinite mediocrity which an unusual carefulness in dress could not disguise. He was big-hearted in little things; in big things he was small. He told an excellent story, but never imagined one, and his laugh was hearty though insincere. Men who knew him well laughed with him, but did not indorse his notes.
His wife was of a totally different stamp, showing evidence of unusual force. Her thin lips, her clean-cut nose betokened purpose; a pair of alert, unpleasant eyes spoke of a mental activity that was entirely lacking in her mate, and she was generally recognized as the source of what little prominence he had attained.
"Yes, we're going to make a change," she repeated. "I'm glad, too, for
I'm tired of housework."
"You don't have to do your own work. There's Lorelei to help."
"You know I wouldn't let her do it."
"Afraid it would spoil her hands, eh?" Mr. Knight snorted, disdainfully. "What are hands made for, anyhow? Honest work never hurt mine."
Jim stirred and smiled; the retort upon his lips was only too obvious.
"She's too pretty," said the mother. "You don't realize it; none of us do, but—she's beautiful. Where she gets her good looks from I don't know."
"What's the difference? It won't hurt her to wash dishes. She wouldn't have to keep it up forever, anyhow; she can have any fellow in the county."
"Yes, and she'll marry, sure, if we stay here."
Knight's colorless eyes opened. "Then what are you talking about going away to a strange place for? It ain't every girl that can have her pick."
Mrs. Knight began slowly, musingly: "You need some plain talk, Peter. I don't often tell you just what I think, but I'm going to now. You're past fifty; you've spent twenty years puttering around at politics, with business as a side issue, and what have you got to show for it? Nothing. The reformers are in at last, and you're out for good. You had your chance and you missed it. You were always expecting something big, some fat office with big profits, but it never came. Do you know why? Because YOU aren't big, that's why. You're little, Peter; you know it, and so does the party."
The object of this address swelled pompously; his cheeks deepened in hue and distended; but while he was summoning words for a defense his wife ran on evenly:
"The party used you just as long as you could deliver something, but you're down and out now, and they've thrown you over. Fogarty offers to pay his debt, and I'm not going to refuse his help."
"I suppose you think you could have done better if you'd been in my place," Peter grumbled. He was angry, yet the undeniable truth of his wife's words struck home. "That's the woman of it. You kick because we're poor, and then want me to take a fifteen-hundred-dollar job."
"Bother the salary! It will keep us going as long as necessary"
"Eh?" Mr. Knight looked blank.
"I'm thinking of Lorelei. She's going to give us our chance."
"Lorelei?"
"Yes. You wonder why I've never let her spoil her hands—why I've scrimped to give her pretty clothes, and taught her to take care of her figure, and made her go out with young people. Well, I knew what I was doing; it was part of her schooling. She's old enough now; and she has everything that any girl ever had, so far as looks go. She's going to do for us what you never have been and never will be able to do, Peter Knight. She's going to make us rich. But she can't do it in Vale."
"Ma's right," declared James. "New York's the place for pretty women; the town is full of them."
"If it's full of pretty women what chance has she got?" queried Peter.
"She can't break into society on my fifteen hundred—"
"She won't need to. She can go on the stage."
"Good Lord! What makes you think she can act?"
"Do you remember that Miss Donald who stopped at Myrtle Lodge last summer? She's an actress."
"No!" Mr. Knight was amazed.
"She told me a good deal about the show business. She said Lorelei wouldn't have the least bit of trouble getting a position. She gave me a note to a manager, too, and I sent him Lorelei's photograph. He wrote right back that he'd give her a place."
"Really?"
"Yes; he's looking for pretty girls with good figures. His name is
Bergman."
Jim broke in eagerly. "You've heard of Bergman's Revues, pa. We saw one last summer, remember? Bergman's a big fellow."
"THAT show? Why, that was—rotten. It isn't a very decent life, either."
"Don't worry about Sis," advised Jim. "She can take care of herself, and she'll grab a millionaire sure—with her looks. Other girls are doing it every day—why not her? Ma's got the right idea."
Impassively Mrs. Knight resumed her argument. "New York is where the money is—and the women that go with money. It's the market-place. The stage advertises a pretty girl and gives her chances to meet rich men. Here in Vale there's nobody with money, and, besides, people know us. The Stevens girls have been nasty to Lorelei all winter, and she's never invited to the golf-club dances any more."
At this intelligence Mr. Knight burst forth indignantly:
"They're putting on a lot of airs since the Interurban went through; but Ben Stevens forgets who helped him get the franchise. I could tell a lot of things—"
"Bergman writes," continued Mrs. Knight, "that Lorelei wouldn't have to go on the road at all if she didn't care to. The real pretty show-girls stay right in New York."
Jim added another word. "She's the best asset we've got, pa, and if we all work together we'll land her in the money, sure."
Peter Knight pinched his full red lips into a pucker and stared speculatively at his wife. It was not often that she openly showed her hand to him.
"It seems like an awful long chance," he said.
"Not so long, perhaps, as you think," his wife assured him. "Anyhow, it's our ONLY chance, and we're not popular in Vale."
"Have you talked to her about it?"
"A little. She'll do anything we ask. She's a good girl that way."
The three were still buried in discussion when