Thropp had traveled long. Also there was a lot of her.

Kedzie gave her parents the welcome that the prodigal's elder brother gave him. She was thinking: "What will Jim Dyckman say when he learns that my real name is Thropp and sees this pair of Thropps? They look as if their name would be Thropp."

Adna made the apologies--glad tidings being manifestly out of place.

"Hope we 'ain't put you out, daughter. We thought we'd s'prise you. We went to the fact'ry. Man at the door says you wasn't workin' there no more. Give us this address. Right nice place here, ain't it? Looks like a nice cla.s.s of folks lived here."

Kedzie heard the rounded "r" and the flat "a" which she had discarded and scorned the more because she had once practised them. Children are generally disappointed in their parents, since they cherish ideals to which few parents may conform from lack of time, birth, breeding, or money. Kedzie was not in any mood for parents that night, anyway, but if she had to have parents, she would have chosen an earl and a countess with a Piccadilly accent and a concert-grand manner. Such parents it would have given her pleasure and pride to exhibit to Dyckman. They would awe-inspire him and arrange the marriage settlement, whatever that was.

But these poor old shabby dubs in their shabby duds--a couple who were plebeian even in Jayville! If there had not been such a popular prejudice against mauling one's innocent parents about, Kedzie would probably have taken her father and mother to the dumb-waiter and sent them down to the ash-can.

As she hung between despair and anxiety the telephone-bell rang. Jim Dyckman called her up to say that he was delayed for half an hour.

Kedzie came back and invited her parents in. It made her sick to see their awkwardness among the furniture. They went like scows adrift. They priced everything with their eyes, and the beauty was spoiled by the estimated cost.

Mrs. Thropp asked Kedzie how she was half a dozen times, and, before Kedzie could answer, went on to tell about her own pains. Mr. Thropp was freshly alive to the fact that New York's population is divided into two cla.s.ses--innocent visitors and resident pirates.

While they asked Kedzie questions that she did not care to answer, and answered questions she had not cared to ask, Kedzie kept wondering how she could get rid of them before Dyckman came. She thanked Heaven that there was no guest-room in her apartment. They could not live with her, at least.

Suddenly it came over the pretty, bewildered little thing with her previous riddle of how to get rid of a last-year's husband so that she might get a new model--suddenly it came over Kedzie that she had a tremendous necessity for help, advice, parentage. The crying need for a father and a mother enhanced the importance of the two she had on hand.

She broke right into her mother's description of a harrowing lumbago she had suffered from: it was that bad she couldn't neither lay nor set--that is to say, comfortable. Kedzie's own new-fangled p.r.o.nunciations and phrases fell from her mind, and she spoke in purest Nimrim:

"Listen, momma and poppa. I'm in a peck of trouble, and maybe you can help me out."

"Is it money?" Adna wailed, sepulchrally.

"No, unless it's too much of the darned stuff."

Adna gasped at the paradox. He had no time to comment before she a.s.sailed him with:

"You see, I've gone and got married."

This shattered them both so that the rest was only shrapnel after sh.e.l.l.

But it was a leveling bombardment of everything near, dear, respectable, sacred. They were fairly rocked by each detonation of fact.

"Yes, I went and married a dirty little rat--name's Gilfoyle--he thinks my real name's Anita Adair. I got it out of a movie, first day I ran off from you folks. I had an awful time, momma--like to starved--would have, only for clerkin' in a candy-store. Then I got work posln' for commercial photographers. Did you see the Breathasweeta Chewin'

Gum Girl? No? That was me. Then I was a dancer for a while--on the stage--and--the other girls were awful cats. But what d'you expect? The life was terrible. We didn't wear much clo'es. That didn't affect me, though; some of those nood models are terribly respectable--not that I was nood, o' course. But--well--so I married Tommie Gilfoyle. I don't know how I ever came to. He must have mesmerized me, I guess."

"What did he work at?" said Adna.

"Poetry."

"Is poetry work?"

"Work? That's all it is. Poetry is all work and no pay. You should have seen that gink sweatin' over the fool stuff. He'd work a week for five dollars' worth of foolishness. And besides, as soon as he married me he lost his job."

"Poetry?" Adna mumbled.

"Advertising."

"Oh!"

"Well, we didn't live together very long, and I was perfectly miser'ble every minute."

"You poor little honey child!" said Mrs. Thropp, who felt her lamb coming back to her, and even Adna reached over and squeezed her hand and rubbed her knuckles with his rough thumb uncomfortably.

But it was good to have allies, and Kedzie went on:

"By an' by Gilfoyle got the offer of a position in Chicago, and he couldn't get there without borrowing all I had. But I was glad enough to pay it to him. I'd 'a' paid his fare to the moon if he'd 'a' gone there.

Then I got a position with a moving-picture company--as a jobber--I began very humbly at first, you see, and I underwent great hardships."

(She was quoting now from one of her favorite interviews.) "My talent attracted the attention of the director, Mr. Ferriday. He stands very high in the p'fession, but he's very conceited--very! He thought he owned me because he was the first one I let direct me. He wanted me to marry him."

"Did you?" said Adna, who was prepared for anything.

"I should say not!" said Kedzie. "How could I, with a husband in Chicago? He wasn't much of a husband--just enough to keep me from marrying a real man. For one day, who should come to the studio but Jim Dyckman!"

"Any relation to the big Dyckmans?" said Adna.

"He's the son of the biggest one of them all," said Kedzie.

"And you know him?"

"Do I know him? Doesn't he want to marry me? Isn't that the whole trouble? He's coming here this evening."

To Adna, the humble railroad claim-agent, the careless tossing off of the great railroad name of Dyckman was what it would have been to a rural parson to hear Kedzie remark:

"I'm giving a little dinner to-night to my friends Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Mr. Apostle Paul."

When the shaken wits of the parents began to return to a partial calm they remembered that Kedzie had mentioned somebody named Gilfoyle--_Gargoyle_ would have been a better name for him, since he grinned down in mockery upon a cathedral of hope.

Adna whispered, "When did you divorce--the other feller?"

"I didn't; that's the trouble."

"Why don't you?"

"I can't find him."

Adna spoke up: "I'll go to Chicago and find him and get a divorce, if I have to pound it out of him. You say he's a poet?"

Adna had the theory that poetry went with tatting and china-painting as an athletic exercise. Kedzie had no reason to think differently. She had whipped her own poet, scratched him and driven him away in disorder. She told her people of this and of her inability to recall him, and of his failure to answer the letter she had sent to Chicago.

Her father and mother grew incandescent with the strain between the obstacle and the opportunity--the irresistible opportunity chained to the immovable obstacle. They raged against the fiend who had ruined Kedzie's life, met her on her pathway, gagged and bound her, and haled her to his lair.

Poor young Gilfoyle would have been flattered at the importance they gave him, but he would not have recognized himself or Kedzie.

According to his memory, he had married Kedzie because she was a pitiful, heartbroken waif who had lost her job and thrown herself on his mercy. He had married her because he adored her and he wanted to protect her and love her under the hallowing shelter of matrimony. He had given her his money and his love and his toil, and they had not interested her. She had berated him, chucked him, taken up with a fast millionaire; and when he returned to resume his place in her heart she had greeted him with her finger-nails.

Thus, as usual in wars, each side had bitter grievances which the other could neither acknowledge nor understand. Gilfoyle was as bitter against Kedzie as she was against him.