“I suppose it was too good to last. Anyway, it ended. We’d lived that way for six months when in the beginning of June the Dramatic School failed and I lost my job. It came on us with almost no warning, and it sort of knocked us out for a bit. I wasn’t as upset by it as Mrs. Carter was, but she—”
“Who’s Mrs. Carter?” said Dominick.
“My wife. That’s my name, Junius Carter. Of course the name I use on the stage is not my own. I took that in the Klondike, made it up from my mother’s and the name of a pard I had who died. Well, as I was saying, Mrs. Carter took it hard. She couldn’t seem to get reconciled to it. I tried to brace her up and told her it would only be temporary, and I’d get another place soon, but she was terribly upset. We’d lived well, not saved a cent, furnished the flat nicely and kept a servant. There was nothing for it but to live on what she made. It was hard on her, but I’ve often thought she might have been easier on me. I didn’t want to be idle or eat the bread she paid for, the Lord knows! I tried hard enough to get work. I tramped those streets in sun and rain till the shoes were falling off my feet. But the times were hard, money was tight, and good jobs were not to be had for the asking. One of the worst features of the case was that I hadn’t any regular line of work or profession. The kind of thing I’d been doing don’t fit a man for any kind of job. If I couldn’t do my own kind of stunt I’d have to be just a general handy-man or stevedore, and I’m not what you’d call rugged.
“It was an awful summer! The heat was fierce. Our little flat was like an oven and, after my long day’s tramp after work, I used to go home just dead beat and lie on the lounge and not say a word. My wife was worn out. She wasn’t accustomed to warm weather, and that and the worry and the hard work sort of wore on her, and there were evenings when she’d slash round so with her tongue that I’d get up, half-dead as I was, and go out and sit on the door-step till she’d gone to bed. I’m not blaming her. She had enough to try her. Working at her machine all day in that weather would wear anybody’s temper to a frazzle. But she said some things to me that bit pretty deep. It seemed impossible it could be the same woman I’d got to know so well at Mrs. Heeney’s. We were both just about used up, thin as fiddle-strings, and like fiddle-strings ready to snap at a touch. Seems queer to think that thirty-five dollars a week could make such a difference! With it we were in Paradise; without it we were as near the other place as people can get, I guess.
“Well, it was too much for her. She was one of those women who can’t stand hardships and she couldn’t make out in the position she was in. Love wasn’t enough for her, there had to be luxury and comfort, too. One day I came home and she was gone. No,” in answer to a look of inquiry on Dominick’s face, “there was no other man. She wasn’t that kind, always as straight as a string. No, she just couldn’t stand the grind any longer. She left a letter in which she said some pretty hard things to me, but I’ve tried to forget and not bear malice. It was a woman half crazy with heat and nerves and overwork that wrote them. The gist of it was that she’d gone back to California, to her sisters who lived there, and she was not coming back. She didn’t like it,—marriage, or me, or Chicago. She was just going to throw the whole business overboard. She told me if I followed her, or tried to hold her, she’d disappear, hinted that she’d kill herself. That was enough for me. God knows if she didn’t want me I wasn’t going to force myself upon her. And, anyway, she knew fast enough I couldn’t follow her. I hadn’t money to have my shoes patched, much less buy a ticket to California.
“After that there were some dark days for me. Deserted, with no money, with no work, and no prospects—I tell you that’s the time the iron goes down into a man’s soul. I didn’t know what was going to become of me, and I didn’t care. One day on the street I met an old chum of mine, a fellow called Defay, that I hadn’t seen for years. He was going to the Klondike, and when he heard my hard-luck story, he proposed to me to join forces and go along with him. I jumped at it, anything to get away from that town and state that was haunted with memories of her.
“It was just the beginning of the gold rush and we went up there and stayed for two years. Defay was one of the finest men I ever knew. Life’s all extremes and contrasts; there’s a sort of balance to it if you come to look close into it. I’d had an experience with the kind of woman that breaks a man’s heart as you might a pipe-stem, then I ran up against the kind of man that gives you back your belief in human nature. He died of typhoid a year and a half after we got there. I had it first and nearly died; in fact, the rumor went out that it was I that was dead and not Defay. As I changed my name and went on the stage soon afterward, it was natural enough for people to say Junius Carter was dead.
“I was pretty near starving when I drifted on the stage. I had learned some conjuring tricks, and that and my voice took me there. I just about made a living for a year, and then I floated back down here. I never played in San Francisco till now. I acted on the western circuits, used to go as far East as Denver and Kansas City, and then swing round the circle through the northwestern cities and Salt Lake. I managed to make a living and no more. I was cast in parts that didn’t suit me. The ‘Klondike Monologue’ was the first thing I did that was in my line.”
“Did you never see or hear of your wife?”
“Not a word. I didn’t know whether she was dead or living till last night.”