Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 291, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 December 1910 — The Lucky Man [ARTICLE]

The Lucky Man

By JOANNA SINGLE

(Copyright, 1310, by Associated Literary Press.)

She was young—and pretty. But —a physical bloom and softness, the prettiness was mostly mere youth. There was a tight little look to her thin but rosy Ups, and a hard look in her blue eyes. But the young men in the case could hardly have been expected to see this. There were two of them—and a number more, but 3ene Turner and Ebe Fisher were ahead—or it looked that way. Also it looked as. if Gene was having the best of it, if by best is meant the lady’s favor. It was odd, too, according to the ideas of the other girls at the Cosmopolitan department store. They would have thought Suzanne—born Susan Jane—would require “some sort of real style in a fellah!’’ • Gene was not stylish, but he was Foung, and straight, and wore his working clothes with a jaunty grace. He even carried a dinner bucket, as if that were a matter to be graced in the doing. And he earned thrice, at tarpentering, what Ebe Fisher did aehind a dry goods chunter. Ebe had style. He was a good dancer and dresser, a matter which must have absorbed most of his salary, had the firls stopped to think about it Suzanne, whose final name was Ryan, had somehow escaped the warm-heartedness of her race, which was a pity. But she was a good clerks, with an undesirable pert prettines, a wealth of reddish hair, a milky skin and large, moist, bright syes. And she herself had all sorts as style. She was the best dancer in -he store. She lived with an old aunt to whom she gave three dollars out nf her weekly seven dollars, and to whom she paid scant attention. The front room” was, she made it understood, for her own especial use, and she tricked it out with some cheap tidies and albums, a lot of photographs of everybody who would give her one, snd a bright rug and a settee bought on the installment plan. For the rest, she owed it to herself to dress like a lady. Her immense self-confidence gave her a certain charm to the circle in which she moved—she was gay, saucy, independent, with that little touch of feline cruelty which men laugh at and love in a pretty girl, not realizing its real unless they marry her! AH winter she had danced and flirted and —worked. Ebe, as the most desirable man in her train, she had taken pleasure in playing with. She iiked to make herself envied by the other girls who counted Ebe Fisher a sort of a prize, but snubbing him in favor of Gene, who was nonchalant and independent as herself. It was this recklessness of consequences which made the store figuratively hold its breqth. They began, the girl clerks, and the men, too, to bet on which would be the lucky man. Even Gene had become really interested in the game. He liked to see how, carelessly enough, he could get two dances to Ebe’s one, two fealks to his one, the privilege of taking her out to the theater or a park oftener than Fisher could. At first he had been not at all in earnest, simply amusing himself. He made love to no girl, for he had an old mother to support who was the apple of his eye, and he was paying for a little lot and cottage. And Suzanne? She had merely used him for a foil; there had been only flirtation, less clumsy than his, but certainly, even then, none too subtle. She would not, at first, have dreamed of. marrying him, but somehow he was not a man to pick up and drop.

He left his mark, the mark... of personality which is hard to erase. And his independence matched her own. Late in the spring Gene took to running over in the evening, once a week or so, and sitting in the front room with the girl and chaffing her. Finally he made himself welcome in the little kitchen, which old Mollie, the aunt, kept shining and comfortable and which, with its old furniture, handmade by her dead husband, and her old blue dishes, was far prettier and more characteristic than all Suzannes cheap frippery. It irked the girl that the handsome, laughing young fellow should spend a good hour of his call sitting with the old woman, making her chuckle at his jokes, mending a thing for her, doing a bit of hammering or sawing and always in a jolly companionable way. Once the girl joked—rather seriously—at him on the subject. "A body’d think you were dead stuck on Aunt Mollie,” she said. ”1 am,” he retorted. “She’s almost half as nice as mother—l’m used to old ladies an' I like them. Come out home with me some night and visit mother. She’s a bit lonely, and I try to stay home with her a good deal.” The girl tossed her head. She had no mind to fuss with the old lady. But, secretly, she did want to see his house. She had in the back of her head a notion that a strong, independent man with a house of his own might not be bad to marry, she had no Idea of wasting her you th.ln a department * store —she intended to marry. And as for Gene; he had become fond of the girl. He was, at times, sure he was in love with her. But he was by nature deliberate—he never hurrying a thing. She would get aoguainted with his mother, it even

entered his head that, if she should care for him and would marry him, Aunt Molly could have her little house moved to a corner of his lot, and he and his girl wife could have ’he|r “old folks” under their eyes. He was a born son. He noticed that Ebe Fisher was becoming more and more frequent, more and more serious in his attentions to the girl,. It wakened his sense of rivalry. And, though he hardly” knew* it, he was sorry for Suzanne. He wanted her to have a chance to be quiet at home, to dress her hair like a real woman, instead of a hairdresser's dummy, to stop chewing gum, and talking part nonsense at every turn in her patm He wanted to protect her—even from herself. He finally decided to ask her to marry him, and to sea if she. loved him. His mind dwelt on her bright eye, her little, wishful smile. She was so sweet and young—he was sure her flippancy was a mere matter of working in a store. He did not like the flippancy, but he thought it woifld vanish when real ove came to her. These thoughts were subconscious. One warm evening late in May he wandered over to her little house. If the coast was clear he would tell her all his heart, and, pondering these things, he entered the small green yard with its old-fashioned flowers, and went upon the little porch. He knocked, but no one answered. He could hear Susanne talking in the kitchen, her voice raised as in argument, but he did not hear the words. He knocked again more loudly, with no response. Then he carelessly enough sank down in the old rocker and waited on the porch. Probably she would come out in a minute and find him and he would tell her. Then, without warning, he heard a door fly open, and a stream of words come thick and fast. He did not mean to listen, but he was so stunned that he forgot he was doing so until it was all over. The girl’s voice was sharp and angry. 2N0,” she said, “I won’t ask Gene to fix it; and I can tell you right now that you can keep out of the way when he corned! Do you think he comes to see*you? What’s eatin’ on you, anyhow, Aunt Mollie? Well, it I do marry him—and I shaH if he asks me, and he will —you can bet you needn’t think you’ll live with us. Nor his mother, either! I’m no such fool as that, if I do look easy, what do you take me for? I shan t keep any old ladies’ home, and if he’s countin’ on that he’s got another guess cornin’ to him. I’m payin’ you board, but I don’t need any chaperon. He’s asked me over to see his mother. I’ll go, but I bet if we’re ever married she can come over here and live with you. That will be close enough for a mother-in-law, an’—”

Without a word Gene rose, went down the path, and out at the gate, and straight home. He did not go near her aagin. One day she asked him If he was “mad.” He said that he was not and asked what made her think of such a thing? But his manner was a final thing. That next day she told him she was engaged to Ebe Fisher—she met Gene on the street, and stopped him with her news, her head very high. "Oh,” he said. “I shall have to wish joy to you—and the lucky man.” But in his heart, Gene knew that he himself was the luoky man.