The Game

J >> Jack London >> The Game

THE GAME


CHAPTER I


Many patterns of carpet lay rolled out before them on the floor--two of
Brussels showed the beginning of their quest, and its ending in that
direction; while a score of ingrains lured their eyes and prolonged the
debate between desire pocket-book. The head of the department did them
the honor of waiting upon them himself--or did Joe the honor, as she well
knew, for she had noted the open-mouthed awe of the elevator boy who
brought them up. Nor had she been blind to the marked respect shown Joe
by the urchins and groups of young fellows on corners, when she walked
with him in their own neighborhood down at the west end of the town.

But the head of the department was called away to the telephone, and in
her mind the splendid promise of the carpets and the irk of the pocket-
book were thrust aside by a greater doubt and anxiety.

"But I don't see what you find to like in it, Joe," she said softly, the
note of insistence in her words betraying recent and unsatisfactory
discussion.

For a fleeting moment a shadow darkened his boyish face, to be replaced
by the glow of tenderness. He was only a boy, as she was only a girl--two
young things on the threshold of life, house-renting and buying carpets
together.

"What's the good of worrying?" he questioned. "It's the last go, the
very last."

He smiled at her, but she saw on his lips the unconscious and all but
breathed sigh of renunciation, and with the instinctive monopoly of woman
for her mate, she feared this thing she did not understand and which
gripped his life so strongly.

"You know the go with O'Neil cleared the last payment on mother's house,"
he went on. "And that's off my mind. Now this last with Ponta will give
me a hundred dollars in bank--an even hundred, that's the purse--for you
and me to start on, a nest-egg."

She disregarded the money appeal. "But you like it, this--this 'game'
you call it. Why?"

He lacked speech-expression. He expressed himself with his hands, at his
work, and with his body and the play of his muscles in the squared ring;
but to tell with his own lips the charm of the squared ring was beyond
him. Yet he essayed, and haltingly at first, to express what he felt and
analyzed when playing the Game at the supreme summit of existence.

"All I know, Genevieve, is that you feel good in the ring when you've got
the man where you want him, when he's had a punch up both sleeves waiting
for you and you've never given him an opening to land 'em, when you've
landed your own little punch an' he's goin' groggy, an' holdin' on, an'
the referee's dragging him off so's you can go in an' finish 'm, an' all
the house is shouting an' tearin' itself loose, an' you know you're the
best man, an' that you played m' fair an' won out because you're the best
man. I tell you--"

He ceased brokenly, alarmed by his own volubility and by Genevieve's look
of alarm. As he talked she had watched his face while fear dawned in her
own. As he described the moment of moments to her, on his inward vision
were lined the tottering man, the lights, the shouting house, and he
swept out and away from her on this tide of life that was beyond her
comprehension, menacing, irresistible, making her love pitiful and weak.
The Joe she knew receded, faded, became lost. The fresh boyish face was
gone, the tenderness of the eyes, the sweetness of the mouth with its
curves and pictured corners. It was a man's face she saw, a face of
steel, tense and immobile; a mouth of steel, the lips like the jaws of a
trap; eyes of steel, dilated, intent, and the light in them and the
glitter were the light and glitter of steel. The face of a man, and she
had known only his boy face. This face she did not know at all.

And yet, while it frightened her, she was vaguely stirred with pride in
him. His masculinity, the masculinity of the fighting male, made its
inevitable appeal to her, a female, moulded by all her heredity to seek
out the strong man for mate, and to lean against the wall of his
strength. She did not understand this force of his being that rose
mightier than her love and laid its compulsion upon him; and yet, in her
woman's heart she was aware of the sweet pang which told her that for her
sake, for Love's own sake, he had surrendered to her, abandoned all that
portion of his life, and with this one last fight would never fight
again.

"Mrs. Silverstein doesn't like prize-fighting," she said. "She's down on
it, and she knows something, too."

He smiled indulgently, concealing a hurt, not altogether new, at her
persistent inappreciation of this side of his nature and life in which he
took the greatest pride. It was to him power and achievement, earned by
his own effort and hard work; and in the moment when he had offered
himself and all that he was to Genevieve, it was this, and this alone,
that he was proudly conscious of laying at her feet. It was the merit of
work performed, a guerdon of manhood finer and greater than any other man
could offer, and it had been to him his justification and right to
possess her. And she had not understood it then, as she did not
understand it now, and he might well have wondered what else she found in
him to make him worthy.

"Mrs. Silverstein is a dub, and a softy, and a knocker," he said good-
humoredly. "What's she know about such things, anyway? I tell you it
_is_ good, and healthy, too,"--this last as an afterthought. "Look at
me. I tell you I have to live clean to be in condition like this. I
live cleaner than she does, or her old man, or anybody you know--baths,
rub-downs, exercise, regular hours, good food and no makin' a pig of
myself, no drinking, no smoking, nothing that'll hurt me. Why, I live
cleaner than you, Genevieve--"

"Honest, I do," he hastened to add at sight of her shocked face. "I
don't mean water an' soap, but look there." His hand closed reverently
but firmly on her arm. "Soft, you're all soft, all over. Not like mine.
Here, feel this."

He pressed the ends of her fingers into his hard arm-muscles until she
winced from the hurt.

"Hard all over just like that," he went on. "Now that's what I call
clean. Every bit of flesh an' blood an' muscle is clean right down to
the bones--and they're clean, too. No soap and water only on the skin,
but clean all the way in. I tell you it feels clean. It knows it's
clean itself. When I wake up in the morning an' go to work, every drop
of blood and bit of meat is shouting right out that it is clean. Oh, I
tell you--"

He paused with swift awkwardness, again confounded by his unwonted flow
of speech. Never in his life had he been stirred to such utterance, and
never in his life had there been cause to be so stirred. For it was the
Game that had been questioned, its verity and worth, the Game itself, the
biggest thing in the world--or what had been the biggest thing in the
world until that chance afternoon and that chance purchase in
Silverstein's candy store, when Genevieve loomed suddenly colossal in his
life, overshadowing all other things. He was beginning to see, though
vaguely, the sharp conflict between woman and career, between a man's
work in the world and woman's need of the man. But he was not capable of
generalization. He saw only the antagonism between the concrete, flesh-
and-blood Genevieve and the great, abstract, living Game. Each resented
the other, each claimed him; he was torn with the strife, and yet drifted
helpless on the currents of their contention.

His words had drawn Genevieve's gaze to his face, and she had pleasured
in the clear skin, the clear eyes, the cheek soft and smooth as a girl's.
She saw the force of his argument and disliked it accordingly. She
revolted instinctively against this Game which drew him away from her,
robbed her of part of him. It was a rival she did not understand. Nor
could she understand its seductions. Had it been a woman rival, another
girl, knowledge and light and sight would have been hers. As it was, she
grappled in the dark with an intangible adversary about which she knew
nothing. What truth she felt in his speech made the Game but the more
formidable.

A sudden conception of her weakness came to her. She felt pity for
herself, and sorrow. She wanted him, all of him, her woman's need would
not be satisfied with less; and he eluded her, slipped away here and
there from the embrace with which she tried to clasp him. Tears swam
into her eyes, and her lips trembled, turning defeat into victory,
routing the all-potent Game with the strength of her weakness.

"Don't, Genevieve, don't," the boy pleaded, all contrition, though he was
confused and dazed. To his masculine mind there was nothing relevant
about her break-down; yet all else was forgotten at sight of her tears.

She smiled forgiveness through her wet eyes, and though he knew of
nothing for which to be forgiven, he melted utterly. His hand went out
impulsively to hers, but she avoided the clasp by a sort of bodily
stiffening and chill, the while the eyes smiled still more gloriously.

"Here comes Mr. Clausen," she said, at the same time, by some
transforming alchemy of woman, presenting to the newcomer eyes that
showed no hint of moistness.

"Think I was never coming back, Joe?" queried the head of the department,
a pink-and-white-faced man, whose austere side-whiskers were belied by
genial little eyes.

"Now let me see--hum, yes, we was discussing ingrains," he continued
briskly. "That tasty little pattern there catches your eye, don't it
now, eh? Yes, yes, I know all about it. I set up housekeeping when I
was getting fourteen a week. But nothing's too good for the little nest,
eh? Of course I know, and it's only seven cents more, and the dearest is
the cheapest, I say. Tell you what I'll do, Joe,"--this with a burst of
philanthropic impulsiveness and a confidential lowering of
voice,--"seein's it's you, and I wouldn't do it for anybody else, I'll
reduce it to five cents. Only,"--here his voice became impressively
solemn,--"only you mustn't ever tell how much you really did pay."

"Sewed, lined, and laid--of course that's included," he said, after Joe
and Genevieve had conferred together and announced their decision.

"And the little nest, eh?" he queried. "When do you spread your wings
and fly away? To-morrow! So soon? Beautiful! Beautiful!"

He rolled his eyes ecstatically for a moment, then beamed upon them with
a fatherly air.

Joe had replied sturdily enough, and Genevieve had blushed prettily; but
both felt that it was not exactly proper. Not alone because of the
privacy and holiness of the subject, but because of what might have been
prudery in the middle class, but which in them was the modesty and
reticence found in individuals of the working class when they strive
after clean living and morality.

Mr. Clausen accompanied them to the elevator, all smiles, patronage, and
beneficence, while the clerks turned their heads to follow Joe's
retreating figure.

"And to-night, Joe?" Mr. Clausen asked anxiously, as they waited at the
shaft. "How do you feel? Think you'll do him?"

"Sure," Joe answered. "Never felt better in my life."

"You feel all right, eh? Good! Good! You see, I was just
a-wonderin'--you know, ha! ha!--goin' to get married and the rest--thought
you might be unstrung, eh, a trifle?--nerves just a bit off, you know.
Know how gettin' married is myself. But you're all right, eh? Of course
you are. No use asking _you_ that. Ha! ha! Well, good luck, my boy! I
know you'll win. Never had the least doubt, of course, of course."

"And good-by, Miss Pritchard," he said to Genevieve, gallantly handing
her into the elevator. "Hope you call often. Will be charmed--charmed--I
assure you."

"Everybody calls you 'Joe'," she said reproachfully, as the car dropped
downward. "Why don't they call you 'Mr. Fleming'? That's no more than
proper."

But he was staring moodily at the elevator boy and did not seem to hear.

"What's the matter, Joe?" she asked, with a tenderness the power of which
to thrill him she knew full well.

"Oh, nothing," he said. "I was only thinking--and wishing."

"Wishing?--what?" Her voice was seduction itself, and her eyes would
have melted stronger than he, though they failed in calling his up to
them.

Then, deliberately, his eyes lifted to hers. "I was wishing you could
see me fight just once."

She made a gesture of disgust, and his face fell. It came to her sharply
that the rival had thrust between and was bearing him away.

"I--I'd like to," she said hastily with an effort, striving after that
sympathy which weakens the strongest men and draws their heads to women's
breasts.

"Will you?"

Again his eyes lifted and looked into hers. He meant it--she knew that.
It seemed a challenge to the greatness of her love.

"It would be the proudest moment of my life," he said simply.

It may have been the apprehensiveness of love, the wish to meet his need
for her sympathy, and the desire to see the Game face to face for
wisdom's sake,--and it may have been the clarion call of adventure
ringing through the narrow confines of uneventful existence; for a great
daring thrilled through her, and she said, just as simply, "I will."

"I didn't think you would, or I wouldn't have asked," he confessed, as
they walked out to the sidewalk.

"But can't it be done?" she asked anxiously, before her resolution could
cool.

"Oh, I can fix that; but I didn't think you would."

"I didn't think you would," he repeated, still amazed, as he helped her
upon the electric car and felt in his pocket for the fare.




CHAPTER II


Genevieve and Joe were working-class aristocrats. In an environment made
up largely of sordidness and wretchedness they had kept themselves
unsullied and wholesome. Theirs was a self-respect, a regard for the
niceties and clean things of life, which had held them aloof from their
kind. Friends did not come to them easily; nor had either ever possessed
a really intimate friend, a heart-companion with whom to chum and have
things in common. The social instinct was strong in them, yet they had
remained lonely because they could not satisfy that instinct and at that
same time satisfy their desire for cleanness and decency.

If ever a girl of the working class had led the sheltered life, it was
Genevieve. In the midst of roughness and brutality, she had shunned all
that was rough and brutal. She saw but what she chose to see, and she
chose always to see the best, avoiding coarseness and uncouthness without
effort, as a matter of instinct. To begin with, she had been peculiarly
unexposed. An only child, with an invalid mother upon whom she attended,
she had not joined in the street games and frolics of the children of the
neighbourhood. Her father, a mild-tempered, narrow-chested, anaemic
little clerk, domestic because of his inherent disability to mix with
men, had done his full share toward giving the home an atmosphere of
sweetness and tenderness.

An orphan at twelve, Genevieve had gone straight from her father's
funeral to live with the Silversteins in their rooms above the candy
store; and here, sheltered by kindly aliens, she earned her keep and
clothes by waiting on the shop. Being Gentile, she was especially
necessary to the Silversteins, who would not run the business themselves
when the day of their Sabbath came round.

And here, in the uneventful little shop, six maturing years had slipped
by. Her acquaintances were few. She had elected to have no girl chum
for the reason that no satisfactory girl had appeared. Nor did she
choose to walk with the young fellows of the neighbourhood, as was the
custom of girls from their fifteenth year. "That stuck-up doll-face,"
was the way the girls of the neighbourhood described her; and though she
earned their enmity by her beauty and aloofness, she none the less
commanded their respect. "Peaches and cream," she was called by the
young men--though softly and amongst themselves, for they were afraid of
arousing the ire of the other girls, while they stood in awe of
Genevieve, in a dimly religious way, as a something mysteriously
beautiful and unapproachable.

For she was indeed beautiful. Springing from a long line of American
descent, she was one of those wonderful working-class blooms which
occasionally appear, defying all precedent of forebears and environment,
apparently without cause or explanation. She was a beauty in color, the
blood spraying her white skin so deliciously as to earn for her the apt
description, "peaches and cream." She was a beauty in the regularity of
her features; and, if for no other reason, she was a beauty in the mere
delicacy of the lines on which she was moulded. Quiet, low-voiced,
stately, and dignified, she somehow had the knack of dress, and but
befitted her beauty and dignity with anything she put on. Withal, she
was sheerly feminine, tender and soft and clinging, with the smouldering
passion of the mate and the motherliness of the woman. But this side of
her nature had lain dormant through the years, waiting for the mate to
appear.

Then Joe came into Silverstein's shop one hot Saturday afternoon to cool
himself with ice-cream soda. She had not noticed his entrance, being
busy with one other customer, an urchin of six or seven who gravely
analyzed his desires before the show-case wherein truly generous and
marvellous candy creations reposed under a cardboard announcement, "Five
for Five Cents."

She had heard, "Ice-cream soda, please," and had herself asked, "What
flavor?" without seeing his face. For that matter, it was not a custom
of hers to notice young men. There was something about them she did not
understand. The way they looked at her made her uncomfortable, she knew
not why; while there was an uncouthness and roughness about them that did
not please her. As yet, her imagination had been untouched by man. The
young fellows she had seen had held no lure for her, had been without
meaning to her. In short, had she been asked to give one reason for the
existence of men on the earth, she would have been nonplussed for a
reply.

As she emptied the measure of ice-cream into the glass, her casual glance
rested on Joe's face, and she experienced on the instant a pleasant
feeling of satisfaction. The next instant his eyes were upon her face,
her eyes had dropped, and she was turning away toward the soda fountain.
But at the fountain, filling the glass, she was impelled to look at him
again--but for no more than an instant, for this time she found his eyes
already upon her, waiting to meet hers, while on his face was a frankness
of interest that caused her quickly to look away.

That such pleasingness would reside for her in any man astonished her.
"What a pretty boy," she thought to herself, innocently and instinctively
trying to ward off the power to hold and draw her that lay behind the
mere prettiness. "Besides, he isn't pretty," she thought, as she placed
the glass before him, received the silver dime in payment, and for the
third time looked into his eyes. Her vocabulary was limited, and she
knew little of the worth of words; but the strong masculinity of his
boy's face told her that the term was inappropriate.

"He must be handsome, then," was her next thought, as she again dropped
her eyes before his. But all good-looking men were called handsome, and
that term, too, displeased her. But whatever it was, he was good to see,
and she was irritably aware of a desire to look at him again and again.

As for Joe, he had never seen anything like this girl across the counter.
While he was wiser in natural philosophy than she, and could have given
immediately the reason for woman's existence on the earth, nevertheless
woman had no part in his cosmos. His imagination was as untouched by
woman as the girl's was by man. But his imagination was touched now, and
the woman was Genevieve. He had never dreamed a girl could be so
beautiful, and he could not keep his eyes from her face. Yet every time
he looked at her, and her eyes met his, he felt painful embarrassment,
and would have looked away had not her eyes dropped so quickly.

But when, at last, she slowly lifted her eyes and held their gaze
steadily, it was his own eyes that dropped, his own cheek that mantled
red. She was much less embarrassed than he, while she betrayed her
embarrassment not at all. She was aware of a flutter within, such as she
had never known before, but in no way did it disturb her outward
serenity. Joe, on the contrary, was obviously awkward and delightfully
miserable.

Neither knew love, and all that either was aware was an overwhelming
desire to look at the other. Both had been troubled and roused, and they
were drawing together with the sharpness and imperativeness of uniting
elements. He toyed with his spoon, and flushed his embarrassment over
his soda, but lingered on; and she spoke softly, dropped her eyes, and
wove her witchery about him.

But he could not linger forever over a glass of ice-cream soda, while he
did not dare ask for a second glass. So he left her to remain in the
shop in a waking trance, and went away himself down the street like a
somnambulist. Genevieve dreamed through the afternoon and knew that she
was in love. Not so with Joe. He knew only that he wanted to look at
her again, to see her face. His thoughts did not get beyond this, and
besides, it was scarcely a thought, being more a dim and inarticulate
desire.

The urge of this desire he could not escape. Day after day it worried
him, and the candy shop and the girl behind the counter continually
obtruded themselves. He fought off the desire. He was afraid and
ashamed to go back to the candy shop. He solaced his fear with, "I ain't
a ladies' man." Not once, nor twice, but scores of times, he muttered
the thought to himself, but it did no good. And by the middle of the
week, in the evening, after work, he came into the shop. He tried to
come in carelessly and casually, but his whole carriage advertised the
strong effort of will that compelled his legs to carry his reluctant body
thither. Also, he was shy, and awkwarder than ever. Genevieve, on the
contrary, was serener than ever, though fluttering most alarmingly
within. He was incapable of speech, mumbled his order, looked anxiously
at the clock, despatched his ice-cream soda in tremendous haste, and was
gone.

She was ready to weep with vexation. Such meagre reward for four days'
waiting, and assuming all the time that she loved! He was a nice boy and
all that, she knew, but he needn't have been in so disgraceful a hurry.
But Joe had not reached the corner before he wanted to be back with her
again. He just wanted to look at her. He had no thought that it was
love. Love? That was when young fellows and girls walked out together.
As for him--And then his desire took sharper shape, and he discovered
that that was the very thing he wanted her to do. He wanted to see her,
to look at her, and well could he do all this if she but walked out with
him. Then that was why the young fellows and girls walked out together,
he mused, as the week-end drew near. He had remotely considered this
walking out to be a mere form or observance preliminary to matrimony. Now
he saw the deeper wisdom in it, wanted it himself, and concluded
therefrom that he was in love.

Both were now of the same mind, and there could be but the one ending;
and it was the mild nine days' wonder of Genevieve's neighborhood when
she and Joe walked out together.

Both were blessed with an avarice of speech, and because of it their
courtship was a long one. As he expressed himself in action, she
expressed herself in repose and control, and by the love-light in her
eyes--though this latter she would have suppressed in all maiden modesty
had she been conscious of the speech her heart printed so plainly there.
"Dear" and "darling" were too terribly intimate for them to achieve
quickly; and, unlike most mating couples, they did not overwork the love-
words. For a long time they were content to walk together in the
evenings, or to sit side by side on a bench in the park, neither uttering
a word for an hour at a time, merely gazing into each other's eyes, too
faintly luminous in the starshine to be a cause for self-consciousness
and embarrassment.

He was as chivalrous and delicate in his attention as any knight to his
lady. When they walked along the street, he was careful to be on the
outside,--somewhere he had heard that this was the proper thing to
do,--and when a crossing to the opposite side of the street put him on
the inside, he swiftly side-stepped behind her to gain the outside again.
He carried her parcels for her, and once, when rain threatened, her
umbrella. He had never heard of the custom of sending flowers to one's
lady-love, so he sent Genevieve fruit instead. There was utility in
fruit. It was good to eat. Flowers never entered his mind, until, one
day, he noticed a pale rose in her hair. It drew his gaze again and
again. It was _her_ hair, therefore the presence of the flower
interested him. Again, it interested him because _she_ had chosen to put
it there. For these reasons he was led to observe the rose more closely.
He discovered that the effect in itself was beautiful, and it fascinated
him. His ingenuous delight in it was a delight to her, and a new and
mutual love-thrill was theirs--because of a flower. Straightway he
became a lover of flowers. Also, he became an inventor in gallantry. He
sent her a bunch of violets. The idea was his own. He had never heard
of a man sending flowers to a woman. Flowers were used for decorative
purposes, also for funerals. He sent Genevieve flowers nearly every day,
and so far as he was concerned the idea was original, as positive an
invention as ever arose in the mind of man.