Winner Take All

". . . Raised strict?"

"I guess so—pretty strict."

"Rigid church people?"

"Yes."

A little time of silence.

"Gee, that's tough!"

And Felicity's gravity at last had caught at the other girl's attention. Slowly she looked up.

"Why?" she asked dully.

Felicity sat and studied her—pondered her. Felicity's face was harder than Cecille had ever seen it before, and infinitely more tender.

"I hate to leave you," she said. "I wouldn't mind so much if I could get you. If I could once get it through my nut what you're waiting for—what you expect there's going to be in it for you—it wouldn't be so hard. But I can't."

"I don't know what you mean." She had caught Cecille's interest now.

"Neither do I," she admitted. "Not exactly. That's why I'm talking. That's what I'm trying to get at." Her voice became half-absent-minded, ruminative, as though she were thinking aloud.

"They caught me young, too," she murmured. "Oh, that was a long time ago. Not measured in years, measured in time. There's a difference.

"A mission-school got hold of me. Good women, not brainless velvet pets from the younger set, looking for a new sensation. Good women, sincere women that wanted to help. Well, I was sincere, too. I wanted to be helped. I told 'em so; but I also told 'em I doubted if they could do much.

"I'd begun to get wise to one thing that early. I was seventeen, but I'd begun to see that all you got in this world was what you helped yourself to. But I was willing to try; I'd try anything once. If learning things out of a book would do it; if studying how to shoot the right language in the right spot and how to live sweet and pretty, inside and out, was going to get me what I wanted, well and good. Also, soft! There couldn't be any easier way, several well-known draymas to the contrary. So I gave 'em a chance.

"'Show me,' I said. And I stuck it out two years."

She stared at the ceiling, her eyes sardonic with reminiscence.

"Two years. Get that. Not two days, nor two weeks, nor two months. Two years. And did I see myself at the end of that time any nearer what I was after? I hadn't slacked, mind you. I'd worked! Everything they'd ever spilled I'd sopped up like a sponge. And did it finally bring me a chance? Sure it did, believe you me. A whiskey drummer with false teeth!"

Here she laughed, a slurring note or two.

"That cured me, I guess. I did stay a little longer, but I knew! I knew I was through. I stayed another week, and then I went to the mat.

"'Show me,' I said again. That was what I wanted, a show-down. And did they? Could they? Bah! They talked! They told me I was making wonderful progress.

"'Sure,' I admitted. 'I'm on my way. I see that.' But what I wanted 'em to slip me was a little info as to where was I going.

"Well, they talked. What did I hope for? What did I want? What did I expect to get out of it? And I told 'em. Well, that was a pretty large order for a girl of my station. My station didn't figure, I told 'em; we'd leave that out of it. And I told 'em so plainly that they neglected to refer to that any more.

"But they took another tack instead. The things that I'd mentioned were mere material things! Like that—scornful—as if they weren't worth mentioning at all. 'Merely material!' And there was a better world to live in—oh, my, yes—the world of the spirit.

"'Do you live in it?' I asked. 'Do you?' They wore sealskin coats, when it wasn't mink or chinchilla. They were driving downtown every day in their own closed cars to urge me to be content with the things of the spirit. And when I realized that—No, I wasn't sore. I was just hep, that's all.

"'I'll try Broadway,' I said then. 'If there's nothing, after all, in this climb-though-the-rocks-be-rugged stuff, no great harm done. I'm still young. But why waste more valuable time? I'll try Broadway,' I said. 'I'll have a whirl at the primrose path.'

"They didn't believe me at first. They thought I was just bluffing, just talking because I was discouraged. So they talked themselves some more—a whole lot more. Beautiful words—but they didn't mean anything. Not to me.

"Did any of 'em say: 'Sure, I understand. You're young and pretty, and it's natural you should crave such things. Here's my last year's coat and a perfectly miserable old last year's model car'? Did they? Don't make me laugh! Not that they woulda missed them. Nothing like that!

"And if they'd only come out flat in the beginning and admitted: 'Sure, it's a fight—we know that—a finish fight between women like you and women like us,' I could have liked 'em for it. If they'd said: 'We want these things, so do you, and only men can buy 'em—take 'em if you can,' that woulda been all right with me. But did they? You know the answer. They were telling me not to rough it, while they all the while, every chance they got, were hitting in the clinches! They were chirping to me, 'Oh, see how lovely the things of the spirit are,' while they were hanging with a death grip to everything material that they could get their hands on. I'd been honest with them—sincere. And with me they had been as hypocritical as hell!

"But when finally I made 'em see that I was on, and that I was in earnest, it sobered them. They quit then that line of chatter. They were battling now, and they pulled another one. Sure, just what you called it a minute ago. The old line of stuff. They pulled that. They tried to scare me. Me! But I wouldn't scare, not for a cent. I was already scared half crazy—scared of matrimony with a drummer with false teeth.

"'Hell!' That was what they threatened me with. 'Hell,' they tried to warn me. "'How do you know?' I came back at 'em. 'How do you know? Maybe there's been slander here. Maybe it's not so hot. Maybe it's only semitropical!' And they couldn't beat that. They couldn't even tie it. But they went right on trying.

"'The wages of sin,'—they began. But I beat 'em to that punch.

"'They're damned fine wages,' I said. The cuss-word slipped out. I was always sorry about that. I always aimed to be awful respectful. 'They're damned fine wages! A car to ride around in,—sure, merely material just like yours, but better than a strap in the subway with all the men sitting down. And clothes—not shoddy rags. Clothes! Silk things, with lace on 'em, and rosebuds. And a place to live in with trees in the lobby and a tub level with the bath-room floor, and a chaise-something-or-other.' Oh, I'd been reading! I hadn't been studying for nothing. I knew!

"'I want to live in a world where things smell better,' I said. 'I'm dead tired of a world that stinks!'

"Well, they kept a'trying. I'll say that for 'em. Game—you bet. I don't believe they overlooked much either. 'The gutter,' they said. 'I'm in it now,' I came back. 'Your self-respect,' they said. 'Nobody else respects me,' I trumped that, 'or even cares that I'm alive.' And then I went after 'em strong. 'But give me the car,' I said, 'and the apartment and the clothes, and see. Why, I'll have 'em walking the length of every hotel dining-room in town, just to be recognized by me!' 'The men,' they said. 'Sure,' I agreed, 'the men. Isn't that what counts? Don't try to tell me that this isn't a man's world. I know! And won't they?'

"That stopped 'em for a minute. They didn't want to answer. They thought an awful lot of the truth at times, for folks that'd lie to themselves all day long. 'Won't they?' I wouldn't quit it. I made 'em come through.

"'Perhaps,' they admitted then. Alas, that was the way of the world. But it was wrong!

"'Sure,' I agreed again. 'Sure. You're telling me no news. But if the whole world's wrong, who am I to stand out? Who am I?' I wanted to know. 'Let's make it unanimous.'

"'The wages of sin,' they tried it again. They'd expected to put me down for the count with that one, and they hated to see it go to waste.

"'Can you show me something just as good?' I asked. 'Half as good? A tenth as good? I want to be straight. I'd rather be straight. Here's a proposition. You folks have got more than you can ever spend on yourselves. Pool a little of it—ten of you—and give me a job that you don't figure sinful. I'm willing to work. I've proved that to you. Guarantee me something a tenth as good as the wages I've mentioned, at the end of ten years—I'll not be thirty then; I'll take a chance on still being able to enjoy 'em—guarantee me that and I'll scrub floors for you in the meantime.'

"And then they pulled the prize crack of them all. I hadn't heard it before. It was a new one on me.

"'Virtue,' they said, 'virtue is its own reward.'

"Honest, I laughed. I couldn't help it. I didn't want them to see that I was wise to them. I didn't even want to hurt their feelings. It was pretty serious to them, this step that I was taking. But I couldn't help it. I laughed. And then I got mad.

"'Virtue is its own reward? Is it?' I asked. 'Is it? Go out there and stand on Fifth Avenue,' I said, 'and watch 'em roll by. Your daughter! And yours! And yours! Ten thousand of 'em, no younger than I am, no prettier, and no more moral right now. Go out and watch them roll by and then try to tell me that. Violets and silver fox! Is virtue their only reward?'

"Well, they'd not meant it the same way, in my case. I kept getting 'em wrong, they said. They'd meant it in the abstract, applied to me. 'But what about the wages of sin, in my case?' Had they been abstract there? 'Death—the gutter.' That was concrete, wasn't it? It sounded like bedrock to me. Then they wanted to explain. I wouldn't let 'em.

"'If you had been on the level I could have respected you,' I said. 'If you had told me, sure this is a selfish world and we are of it, I'd have liked you fine. I'm strong for a rascal, if he's an honest rascal. But I hate a hypocrite.'

"I'd got 'em between me and the ropes where I wanted 'em, at last.

"'I've wasted two whole years,' I shot it over from the shoulder. 'Two whole years, trying to compete with them'—I nodded toward the Avenue—'according to their own rules. And you've been coaching me, when all the while you knew I was licked, that way, before I started. Now let them compete with me, according to my rules, for a change. Let them run to their dressmakers and order their gowns a little lower and their skirts a little higher and lie to themselves and say they must keep in style, when they know they've got to keep their men and don't care how they do it. Let them try it—damn 'em!'

"I shouldn't have cussed. But I couldn't help it. I was bitter. If they'd only been frank and man-to-man about it. The toughest birds in the world stand in the middle of the ring and shake hands before they try to murder each other. If they'd just said, 'This is no pretty game, this is a finish fight,' I'd have loved 'em for it. I guess women can't be frank and man-to-man.

"One set of rewards for me—and one for them! Abstract for me—and concrete for them! Two sets of rules! It's time some authority drafted a new set, to cover both ends of this deal. But in the meantime—'I don't want to play that way,' I said. 'I'd rather fight!'"