The names of University of Chicago professors (Economics Department) began to appear on the lists of aldermanic candidates. Earnest young men and women with notebooks and fountain pens knocked at barred doors, stated that they were occupied in compiling a Survey, and asked intimate questions. Down came whole blocks of rats’ nests on Clark and Dearborn, with the rats scuttling frantically to cover. Up went office buildings that actually sneered down upon the Masonic Temple’s boasted height. Brisk gentlemen in eyeglasses and sack suits whisked in and out of these chaste edifices. The clicking sound to be heard on Clark Street was no longer that of the roulette wheel but of the stock market ticker and the Western Union transmitter.
It was rumoured that they were going to close Jeff Hankins’. They were going to close Mike McDonald’s. They were going to banish the Washington Park race track.
“They can’t do it,” declared Gaylord Ravenal.
“Oh, can’t we!” sneered the reformers. Snick-snack, went the bars on Hankins’ doors and on Mike McDonald’s. It actually began to be difficult to find an open game. It began to be well-nigh impossible. It came to such a pass that you had to know the signal knock. You had to submit to a silent scrutiny from unseen eyes peering through a slit somewhere behind a bland closed door. The Prince Alberts grew shiny. The fine linen showed frayed edges. The diamonds reposed unredeemed for longer and longer periods at Lipman’s or Goldsmith’s. The Ravenal ring and the succession of sealskin sacques seemed permanently to have passed out of the Ravenal possession. The malacca stick, on the other hand, was now a fixture. It had lost its magic. It was no longer a symbol of security. The day was past when its appearance at Lipman’s or Goldsmith’s meant an I O U for whatever sum Gay Ravenal’s messenger might demand. There actually were mornings when even the Cockeyed Bakery represented luxury. As for breakfast at Billy Boyle’s! An event.
The Ravenals’ past experience in Chicago seemed, in comparison with their present precarious position, a secure and even humdrum existence. Ohio and Ontario streets knew them for longer and longer periods. Now when Magnolia looked into the motley assemblage of objects in the more obscure pawnshop windows, she was likely to avert her eyes quickly at recognition of some object not only intimate but familiar. Magnolia thought of Kim, safe, secure, comfortable, in the convent on Wabash Avenue.
“I must have felt this thing coming,” she said to Ravenal. “Felt it in my bones. She’s out of all this. It makes me happy just to think of it; to think of her there.”
“How’re you going to keep her there?” demanded Ravenal, gloomily. “I’m strapped. You might as well know it, if you don’t already. I’ve had the damnedest run of luck.”
Magnolia’s eyes grew wide with horror. “Keep her there! Gay! We’ve got to. I wouldn’t have her knocking around here with us. Gay, can’t you do something? Something real, I mean. Some kind of work like other—I mean, you’re so wonderful. Aren’t there things—positions—you know—with banks or—uh—those offices where they buy stocks and sell them and make money in wheat and—wheat and things?” Lamely.
Ravenal kissed her. “What a darling you are, Nola. A darling simpleton.”
It was a curious and rather terrible thing, this love bond between them. All that Parthy had grimly predicted had come to pass. Magnolia knew him for what he was. Often she hated him. Often he hated her. Often he hated her because she shamed him with her gaiety, her loyalty, her courage, her tenderness. He was not true to her. She knew this now. He knew she knew this. She was a one-man woman. Frequently they quarrelled hideously. Tied to you. . . . Tied! God knows I’d be happier without you. You’ve never brought me anything but misery. . . . Always finding fault. . . . Put on those fine lady airs with me. What’d I take you out of! . . . An honest living, anyway. Look people in the face. Accusations. Bitterness. Longing. Passion. The long periods of living in sordid surroundings made impossible most of the finer reticences. Garments washed out in the basin. Food cooked over the gas jet. One room. One bed. Badly balanced meals. Reproaches. Tears. Sneers. Laughter. Understanding. Reconciliation.