CHAPTER SEVEN
Thesecond evening with Trenton was very like the first except that after dinner at the Sycamore they attended a concert given by a world-famous violinist. Again as under the spell of Bob Cummings’ playing at Miss Reynolds’, Grace was caught away into a wonder-world, where she wandered like a disembodied spirit seeking some vestige of a personality that had not survived her transition to another realm. She was assailed by new and fleeting emotions, in which she studied Trenton and tried to define her attitude toward him, conscious that the time might be close at hand when some definition would be necessary. Now and then she caught a glimpse of his rapt look and saw the lines about his mouth tighten. Once he clasped his hands as though, in response to some inner prompting, he were attempting by a physical act to arrest some disturbing trend of his thoughts.
There was a fineness in his face that she had not before fully appreciated, and it was his fineness and nobility, Grace assured herself, that appealed to her. Then there were moments when she was undecided whether she loved or hated him, not knowing that this is a curious phase which women of highly sensitive natures often experience at the first consciousness of a man’s power over them. She saw man as the hunter and woman as his prey. Then with a quick revulsion she freed herself of the thought and drifted happily with the tide of harmony.
When they left the theatre Trenton asked whethershe felt like walking. The night was clear and the air keen and stimulating.
“Of course; it would be a shame to ride! That music would carry me a thousand miles,” she answered.
As soon as they were free of the crowd he began to talk of music, its emotional appeal, its power to dissociate the hearer from material things.
“I never felt it so much before,” he said. “I’m afraid there’s not much poetry in me. I’m not much affected by things that I can’t reduce to a formula, and I’m a little suspicious of anything that lifts me off the earth as that fiddle did. If I exposed myself to music very often it would ruin me for business.”
“Oh, never that! I feel music tremendously; everybody must! It wakes up all manner of hopes and ambitions even if they don’t live very long. That violin really made me want to climb!”
“Yes; I can understand that. For a few minutes I was conscious myself of reaching up the ladder for a higher round. It’s dangerous to feel so keenly. I wonder if there ever comes a time when we don’t feel any more—really feel a desire to bump against the stars; when the spirit goes dead and for the rest of our days we just settle into a rut with no hope of ever pulling out? I have a dread of that. It’s ghastly to think of. Marking time! Going through the motions of being alive when you’re really dead!”
“Oh, don’t even think of it! You could never be like that!”
“Maybe I’m like that now!”
“You’re clear off the key!” she cried. “Of course you’re not at the end of things. It’s wicked to talk that way.”
“Do you really think that?” he asked eagerly. “Do you see any hope ahead for me?”
“You know you see it yourself! We wouldn’t any of us go on living if we didn’t see some hope ahead.” Then with greater animation she added:
“You’re not a man to sit down at the roadside and burst into tears because things don’t go to suit you! I don’t believe you’re that kind at all. If you are—well, I’m disappointed!”
“Now you’ve got me with my back to the wall!” he laughed. “No man ever wants a woman to think him a coward. I’ll keep away from all music hereafter except the snappiest jazz. But give music the benefit of the doubt; it may not have been the fiddle at all!”
“More likely you ate too much dinner!”
“Impossible! The ostrich has nothing on me when it comes to digestion. Maybe you’re the cause of my depression! Please consider that for a moment!”
“Oh, that’s terribly unkind! If I depress you this must be our last meeting.”
“You know I didn’t mean that, it’s because——”
“Don’t begin becausing! You know you’re in a tight corner; you hint that I’ve given you a bad evening just by sitting beside you at a concert—and a very beautiful concert at that.”
“The mistake is mine! You haven’t the slightest respect for my feelings. I show you the wounds in my very soul and you laugh at them.”
“I certainly am not going to weep my eyes out merely because you let a few bars of music throw you. I had a fit of the blues too; several times I thought I was going to cry. How embarrassed you’d have been!”
“No; I should have held your hand until you regained your composure!”
“Then we’d both have been led out by the ushers!”
He joined with her in playing whimsically upon allthe possibilities of their ejection. They would have been arrested for disturbing a public gathering and their names would have figured in the police reports, probably with pictorial embellishments. This sort of fooling was safe; she thought perhaps he meant to maintain the talk on an impersonal plane but in a moment he said:
“I’m going away tomorrow, first home to Pittsburgh for about a week; then to New York. I may not get back here for two or three weeks; I’m mixed up in some things that I can’t neglect. I’d like to think you’ll miss me!”
“Oh, I always miss my friends when they go away,” she replied. Then realizing the banality of this she laughed and added: “How silly that sounded!”
“Then you mean you wouldn’t miss me?”
“Of course I didn’t mean that!”
Under a street lamp she saw in his face once more the grave troubled look that she had observed at intervals during the concert. It was foolish to question now that his interest in her was something more than a passing fancy. Her thoughts flew to the other woman, the wife of whom he had spoken at The Shack only to apologize for it in his letter from St. Louis. He was thinking of her of course; it was impossible for him to ignore the fact that he had a wife. And again as so many times before she speculated as to whether he might not still love this woman and be seeking diversion elsewhere out of sheer loneliness. But as they passed into the shadows again, her hand resting lightly on his arm, she experienced suddenly a strong desire to be kind to him. She was profoundly moved by the thought that it was in her power to pour out to him in great measure the affection and comradeship which he had confessed he hungered for.
They had crossed the canal bridge and were nearing the Durland house. Trenton was accommodating himself perforce to her rapid pace. The tonic air kept her pulses throbbing. She was sure that she loved this man; that the difference in their years was as nothing weighed against his need for her. Tonight, she knew, marked a crisis in their relationship. If she parted from him without making it clear that she wished never to see him again she would be putting herself wholly at the mercy of a fate that might bear her up or down. With only a block more to traverse she battled with herself, summoned all her courage to resist him, only to find that her will was unequal to the contest.
Deep in her heart she did not want to send him away with no hope of seeing him again. He was her one link with the great world beyond the city in which, without his visits to look forward to, she was doomed to lead a colorless, monotonous existence. She was moved by a compassion for him, poignantly tender, that swept away all sense of reality and transcended the bounds of time and space. The very thought of losing him, of not knowing where he would be in the endless tomorrows, only that she would never see him again, was like a pain in her heart. The need in him spoke to the need in her—for companionship, help, affection.
They seemed vastly isolated in the quiet street, as though the world had gone away and left them to settle their affairs with only the stars for witnesses. It had been easy to parry Bob Cummings’s attempts to assume a lover-like attitude toward her. But with Trenton this would be impossible. With him it would be necessary to state in the plainest terms that their acquaintance must end.
Nothing had been said since her last remark andif she meant to thrust him away from her she must act quickly. In a winning fashion of his own he was frank and forthright. She found it difficult to anticipate him and prepare her replies. There was no leer in him and he did not take refuge in timid gallantries; he addressed her as a man who felt that he had a right to a hearing. And this, in her confused, bewildered senses, gave dignity to the situation. He loved her and she loved him—she was sure she loved him—and her heart was in a wild tumult. She was afraid to speak lest the merest commonplace might betray her eagerness to confess her love for him.
He stepped in front of her and clasped the hand that lay lightly on his arm.
“I’ve got to say it; I must say it now,” he said in grave even tones. “No woman ever meant to me what you mean. The first night I met you I knew it had come—the thing I had hoped for—and sometimes had dreaded,—a woman I could know as I’ve never known any woman, not my wife or any other! After I left you I couldn’t get you out of my mind.” He paused for an instant, then went on hurriedly with undisguised intensity of feeling. “You may think me mad when I’ve seen you so little; and I know I have no right to love you at all! But I do love you! I want you to belong to me!”
A gust of wind caught up a mass of leaves from the gutter and flung them about their feet as though to remind them of the mutability of all things. He had said that he loved her; almost savagely he had demanded that she give herself to him. It was incredible that he cared so much, that his desire for her could be so great.
He released her hand as though in sign that he wanted her to speak without compulsion. He waitedquietly, his shoulders thrown a little forward, and in the dim starlight she saw his eyes, bright and eager, searching her own.
“You know I care,” she said softly.
The words fell from her lips inevitably; no other reply was possible, and it seemed that a great weight had lifted from her heart and that in entrusting herself to him she had found security and peace. She questioned nothing, feeling his arms about her, his kiss warm on her lips. All her doubts were lost in the joy of the moment in which he had confessed his love for her. It was a strange place for the pledging of love and the moment was not to be prolonged.
“We must go on, dear,” she said laying her cheek against his for an instant. The touch of her face caused him to clasp her again.
“Oh, my dearest one!” he cried hoarsely.
As they went on, loitering to delay the moment of parting, they caught hands like happy children.
“I don’t see how you can love me,” she said with the anxiety of new love for confirmations and assurances. “I don’t belong to your world.”
“There’s the strangest thing of all!” he exclaimed. “We are born into a new world that is all ours. We have inherited all the kingdoms tonight.”
“And the stars up there—do they shine just for us?” she asked, bringing herself closer to him. “And can we keep every one else out of our world? I want it all to be our very own. Oh, it’s so sweet, so wonderful!”
“It’s a miracle beyond any words,” he said, “to know that you care. It’s easy for me to love you; I loved you in that very first hour we spent together.We don’t account for things like that, that come so suddenly and without warning; we merely accept them. I’ve fought this; I want you to know that I’ve fought it.”
“Oh, so have I! But—why did you fight it?”
Her voice betrayed her confused emotions. Her sense of right was as nothing against the belief that he loved her and that she loved him. A masterful tide had caught them up and borne them far, leaving them islanded on territory remote and touched with a mystical light that souls had never known before.
She was now fully persuaded that henceforth her life was to be bound up with his; that until death took one or the other they would never face separation. Space and distance were as nothing; if he went to far and waste places there would be still the strong spiritual tie which it pleased her to think was the real bond between them—something which, in her absolute surrender, she felt to be above all laws of men and of kinship with heavenly things. It struck her as odd that she was able so thoroughly to analyze her sensations, seeking and finding explanation and justification cleansed of all passion.
“I know I have no right to your love; none whatever,” he said steadily. “There are people who would call me a scoundrel for saying what I have just said to you. But every man in my plight feels that his case is different. I’ve thought of all this in the plainest terms, not sparing myself.”
“It would be like you to do that,” she replied.
Now that she had taken him for her lover she saw him as a paragon of generosity and nobility. He would not spare himself; she was anxious to apply balm to his conscience, to make him understand that her happiness was so complete that nothing else mattered.
“Just so you love me!” she said gently. “Nothing could be so dear as just knowing that you care. Oh, do I mean so much to you?”
“Everything,” he exclaimed and lifted her hand and kissed it.
“That’s the way it has to be—everything or nothing. I never loved any one before.”
“I’m so glad! I was afraid to ask you that. I had even thought there might be some one else—some younger man——”
“Stop! We’re not going to talk of ages,” she laughed, with a quick gesture laying her hand for a moment against his lips. “It must be understood right now that you’re not a day over twenty-five.”
“You’re going to spoil me! And you don’t know how much I want to be spoiled.”
“You poor dear! I’m going to love petting and spoiling you!”
Instantly it occurred to her that the other woman, the unknown wife of her frequent conjecture, had neither petted nor spoiled him and that this accounted for his eagerness for a new experience. A cloud crossed the bright heaven of her happiness. His wife was not to be relegated to oblivion merely because he had found another object for his affections. The wife had a very real existence in Grace’s imagination; to Trenton’s lightly limned sketch the girl had added a line here and there until she fancied she possessed a very true portrait of Mrs. Trenton. Somewhere there existed a Mrs. Ward Trenton, who wrote books and lectured and otherwise advertised herself as a vital being.
“Dear little girl!” said Trenton tenderly. “You are all the world to me. Do you understand?”
“I must believe that,” she said.
“There’s nothing I can offer you now—neither ahome nor the protection of my name. It’s got to be just love that’s our tie. I’m not going to deceive you about that.”
“Yes, I understand what it means,” she answered.
“You must believe that I’ll do the best I can to make you happy. Love that doesn’t bring happiness is an empty and worthless thing. You don’t know how much I count on you. I’m laying a burden on you; I’m clutching at you for all the things I’ve missed out of my life.”
“Yes; I know dear.”
“There’s something not fair about it—about casting myself upon you as I’m doing,” he said doggedly.
“I’m proud that you want me! I want to fill your heart and your life.”
“You can; you do even now! But first of all I want you to be sure—sure of yourself, dear. There must be no regrets afterward. I can’t see you again before I go, but I’ll write.”
“I shall miss you so! Youwillwrite to me!” she cried, feeling already the loneliness of the days of his impending absence. His calmness was disconcerting but she readily forgave this as she would have forgiven him anything. He was thinking of the long future no doubt, planning ways of seeing her.
“Promise me you’ll consider everything.”
“It’s enough that we love each other!” she replied softly.
“You’re not a child but a woman, able to see it all in every light. You must be very sure that you care; that you do love me.”
“I’m very sure, dear,” she said, not a little disturbed by his solicitude, fearing that he himself might now be a prey to misgivings.
“You can write to me at the addresses I’ll send. And then wire me when you’re quite sure—not till then!”
“Yes; I’ll do as you say. But tell me again that you love me! I shall be so lonely without you!”
“With all my heart I love you. I wish we need never part again. Some day that will be. Some day I can have you with me always! But now——”
The sentence died on his lips. What could be now he did not say, shrank from saying perhaps. It was not for her to express in words what could be now. She felt a sudden strong impulse to speak of his wife; to ask him whether he did not still care for her. But it was in her heart, the battleground of many and confused emotions, to give him the benefit of every doubt. Her forces of defense had mutinied and left her powerless even to question him. The joy of the knowledge that he loved her and that she returned his love thrilled her like the song of triumphant bugles.
Her heart was throbbing as they passed through the Durland gate. At the door he took her in his arms.
“My dearest! I wouldn’t lie to you; I love you with all my heart. You will write me; and don’t forget the telegram. I shall come flying at the first possible moment after I get that. And don’t trouble about anything. I want you to say you trust me and are sure of me.”
His kisses smothered her replies.
“Promise to be careful of yourself, dear. I should die without you!”
There were tears in her eyes as she fumbled for her latch key. She watched him as he struck out with a long stride toward the city. She thoughtthat he looked back and waved his hand out of the shadows just as she opened the door.
It was long before she slept but she rose obedient to the summons of the alarm clock and assisted as usual in the preparation of breakfast. At the table her silence and preoccupation caused her mother to scrutinize her closely.
“You don’t seem quite like yourself, Grace. Don’t you feel well?”
“Oh, there’s nothing at all the matter. I had a hard day at the store yesterday.”
“Maybe you ate something for supper that didn’t agree with you.”
Grace read into this suggestion a hint that her mother and sister were not without their curiosity as to where she had dined and the manner in which she had spent the remainder of the evening. They had been accepting so meekly her silence as to her evenings away from home that it occurred to Grace that it would serve to allay suspicion if she told occasionally just what she had been doing.
“I had dinner at the Sycamore with an acquaintance—a man from out of town—and we went to the concert. The music was perfectly wonderful. And then we walked home. Nothing terribly exciting in that!”
“I thought I heard voices at the door just before you came in,” said Mrs. Durland with an effort at indifference that was only partly successful.
“Very likely you did, mamma. Mr. Trenton and I walked home; it seemed a pity to ride when the night was so fine and there was all that music still ringing in our ears.”
She was pleased with her own audacity and smiled as she saw Ethel and her mother exchange glances. But having ventured so far it would be necessary now to explain how she had met Trenton and she was prepared with a small lie with which to fortify the truth when she saw that something more was expected.
“Mr. Trenton, did you say, Grace?” inquired Mrs. Durland as though not sure she had heard aright.
“Yes, mother; Mr. Ward Trenton, of Pittsburgh. I knew his niece very well at the University, and as he comes here now and then Mabel wrote and asked him to look me up. He’s ever so nice. He’s been everywhere and talks wonderfully. He’s a mechanical engineer and rated very high, isn’t he, daddy?”
Trenton’s name had impinged upon Durland’s consciousness and he put down the morning newspaper to which he had been referring from time to time during the consumption of his breakfast.
“Ward Trenton? Yes, he’s one of the ablest engineers in the country. Did you say he’d been in town, Grace?”
“Yes, he comes here now and then. I had dinner with him last night at the Sycamore and we went to the concert. I meant to tell you about him. He knows of you; he says he’s always stumbling into you in the patent office records.”
“Did Trenton say that?” asked Durland, greatly pleased.
“Yes; he spoke of you in the kindest way, father.”
“You don’t say! I wouldn’t have thought he’d ever heard of me. He’s in touch with all the big industrial concerns of the country,” said Durland. “I guess there is hardly a man whose word is worth more than Trenton’s. I read just the other day, in one of the trade journals, an address he made somewhere on shopefficiency. His opinions are quoted a good deal; he knows what he’s talking about.”
Her father’s manifestation of interest in a man so eminent in his own field did not prevent Ethel from taking advantage of Grace’s unexpected frankness to ask:
“Was it Mr. Trenton you were with at the theatre a few nights ago? One of the girls in the office said she saw you there with a very distinguished looking man.”
“The very same!” Grace replied promptly. “You know Mr. Trenton is awful keen about Mabel, so when she wrote him that I was at Shipley’s he came in to see me.”
Having gone so far with the imaginary niece she thought it best to endow her with a full name.
“Mabel Conwell is awfully nice, though you wouldn’t exactly call her pretty.”
“Does she live here?” asked Mrs. Durland.
“Oh, no! Her home’s in Jeffersonville or New Albany, I forget which. It’s one of those Ohio river towns.”
“It was certainly kind of her to have Mr. Trenton look you up,” said Mrs. Durland. “But I wish you’d asked him to the house. It doesn’t seem just right for you to be going out with a man your family doesn’t know. I’m not saying, dear, that there’s any impropriety; only I think it would give him a better impression of all of us if we met him.”
“Oh, I meant to bring him up but he’s so terribly busy. He works everywhere he goes right up to the last minute. And it was much simpler to meet him at the Sycamore.”
“He’s married, is he not?” asked Ethel.
“Oh, yes!” said Grace, heartily regretting now thatshe had opened the way for this question. “His wife is Mary Graham Trenton who write and lectures.”
“That woman,” exclaimed Mrs. Durland, plainly horrified. “She is one of the most dangerous of all the foes of decency in this country! Last spring we had a discussion of her ideas in the West End Club. I hadn’t known how utterly without shame a woman could be till one of our members wrote a paper about her.”
“I’ve heard that she’s very wealthy,” interposed Ethel in a tone which suggested that, no matter how utterly destructive of public morals Mrs. Trenton’s ideas might be, as a rich woman she was not wholly beyond the pale. “It’s all the more remarkable that she’s opposed to marriage and nearly everything else, or pretends to be, when she belongs to one of the oldest American families and inherited her wealth.”
“I don’t know that Mr. Trenton accepts her ideas,” said Grace. “He hasn’t discussed them with me. He seemed rather amused when I told him I’d read her ‘Clues to a New Social Order’.”
“You haven’t read that awful thing?” cried Mrs. Durland.
“Why, certainly, mother; I read it last winter. It’s not so awfully shocking; I suppose there are a good many people who believe as Mrs. Trenton does.”
“How can you speak so, Grace! What would become of the home and the family if such ideas prevailed? That woman’s positively opposed to marriage.”
“Oh, I don’t believe it’s as bad as that! I think it’s more her idea that where marriages are unhappy it’s cruel to make people live together. But, you needn’t be afraid that Mr. Trenton’s trying to convert me to his wife’s notions. I don’t believe he isterribly tickled to have her gallivanting over the country lecturing.”
“You can’t be too careful, you know, Grace, about letting a married man pay you attentions. People are bound to talk. And Mrs. Trenton, being known for her loose ideas on marriage, naturally causes people to look twice at her husband.”
“And at any woman her husband pays attention to,” Ethel added.
“Of course I’m careful what I do,” replied Grace. “Mr. Trenton is a perfect gentleman in every way and just as kind and considerate as can be. He gave me two of the pleasantest evenings I ever spent. You certainly can’t object to my knowing a man like that.”
“No, dear,” replied Mrs. Durland, “except that it seems strange for a daughter of mine to be meeting a married man and having dinner with him and going to the theatre when I don’t know him at all.”
Durland had lingered, pretending to be looking for something in the paper but really prepared to support Grace in the event that his wife and Ethel showed a disposition to carry their criticisms further.
“I suppose we have to put up with such things,” said Ethel, “but that doesn’t make them right. I hope, Grace, you won’t let your independence carry youtoofar.”
“Well, Mr. Trenton has passed on and I don’t know when he’ll turn up here again, so you needn’t worry.”
“It’s fine you can know a man like Trenton,” Durland ventured from the hall door.
“Here’s an idea!” cried Grace, springing after him to hold his overcoat, “the next time Mr. Trenton comes to town I’ll try to have you meet him.”
“I think some of us ought to meet him,” said Mrs. Durland, who had begun to clear the table.
“By all means,” Ethel affirmed. “I think the family dignity calls for at least that!”
“Yes, we must preserve the family dignity at any hazard,” Grace retorted.
Having buttoned her father into his coat she snatched his hat and planted it at a rakish angle on his head. He submitted good-naturedly, pleased as he always was by her attentions.
“You bring Trenton down sometime, Grace. I’ve some old junk I’d be glad to show him,” he said, glancing furtively at his wife.
“Grand! Between us we ought to be able to put something over on him.”
She flung her arm across his shoulder and walked with him to the front door.
No highly developed talent for mind reading was necessary to an understanding of the mental operations of Mrs. Durland and Ethel in matters pertaining to the father and younger daughter. When Grace entered the kitchen she knew that she had interrupted a conference bearing upon her acquaintance with Trenton. Her mother and Ethel would study the matter in all its aspects. She derived a cynical satisfaction from the knowledge that her apparent frankness was probably causing them more anxiety than an evasion or a downright lie.
Grace’s thoughts raced madly in the days that followed. She saw herself in new aspects, dramatized herself in new and fascinating situations. She was like a child peering into a succession of alluring shop windows,the nature and value of whose strange wares it only imperfectly understands. Life was disclosing itself, opening long vistas before her. As to men she now believed that she knew a great deal. Confident that she loved Trenton and without regret that she had confessed her love she did not question her happiness. She lived in a paradise whose walls were fashioned of the stuff that dreams are made of. It pleased her to think of herself as a figure of romance and she got from the public library several novels in which young women, imaginably like herself, had given their all for love. She was satisfied that her own case was far more justifiable than those of these heroines.
Her heart was filled with kindness toward all the world. On the day that brought her Trenton’s first letter she went to her father’s new shop in the Power Building carrying lunch for two from a cafeteria. Her father’s silence in his hours at home, his absorption in his scientific books, had for her an increasing pathos. Mrs. Durland referred not infrequently to the fallen estate of the family in terms well calculated to wound him from the very tone of helpless resignation in which they were uttered.
Durland pushed his hat back on his head and stared as Grace appeared in the door of his little shop.
“What’s the matter, Grace? Anything happened?” he asked with his bewildered air.
“Not a thing, daddy. I just thought I’d come around and have lunch; so here’s sandwiches for two.”
“I never eat lunch,” he said, turning reluctantly from the bench at which he had been at work.
“Well, you’re going to today!”
Over his protests she cleared a space on the bench and laid out the contents of her package—sandwiches, cakes and apples. She dusted off a chair for himand then swung herself on to the bench within easy reach of the food. She ignored his warning that there was grease on the bench and flung him a paper napkin.
“The banquet’s begun! Now proceed and tell me how every little thing’s a going.”
“Just about the same, Grace. I’m working on an idea or two. Not sure yet just what I’ve got, but I think maybe I’m on to something that’ll turn out big.”
“You’re bound to, daddy! You work so hard!”
“Cummings may have scrapped me too soon,” he muttered and looked at her with an ironic grin and a fanatical gleam in his eyes that caused her to wonder for a moment whether from his lonely brooding he might not be going mad.
A man came in to see about some patterns he had ordered. They were not ready and even while Durland expressed his regret at the delay Grace saw that his thoughts were still upon his inventions. The customer manifested impatience, remarking angrily as he left that if his work wasn’t ready the next day he would take it elsewhere.
“Really, daddy, you oughtn’t to keep people waiting when you take their jobs. If you’ll only build up this pattern and model business you can make a good thing of it.”
“You’re right, Grace. But I can’t keep my mind off my own work. I know all the weaknesses of my old things that Cummings is making. I’m going to put him out of business!”
“That’s all right, but you mustn’t take jobs for other people unless you mean to do them right away. This place is in an awful mess!”
As she began straightening up a litter of papers onone end of the bench a bill for the rent of the room caught her eye.
“Don’t look at these things, Grace!” he pleaded, as he tried to snatch the bill. “I’ll be able to pay that in a day or two. I got a check coming for a model and it’ll cover the rent.”
Her questioning elicited the information that the check had been expected for several weeks and that the man for whom the model had been made left town without leaving his address.
“It seems pretty uncertain, daddy, and this rent’s three weeks over due. I have a little money in the trust company and I’ll send my check for it.”
“I don’t like taking your money, Grace,” he said as she thrust the bill into her purse.
“Don’t you worry about that. I’d be ashamed if I didn’t help you when you’ve always been so good to me.”
“I don’t see where I’ve done much for you. I never expected you girls would have to work. You know I’m sorry, Grace!”
“Well, I’m perfectly happy, so don’t you worry.”
She took his old-fashioned watch from his pocket and noted the time.
“I’ve got to skip.”
“Nice of you to come round, Grace; but you’re always good to me. By the way, I guess you’d better not tell your mother about the rent. She wouldn’t like my taking your money.”
“Then we won’t say a word!” She whispered, touched by his fear of her mother’s criticisms. She flung her arms about him and hugged him till he cried for mercy.
Her savings account was further depleted the next Saturday. She was surprised to find Roy waiting for her when she left the department at her lunch hour.
“No, sis; I didn’t write I was coming. I’ve got to go back on the first train.”
“But of course you’ll see mother!”
“Well, I thought I might call her up,” he said evasively.
“Call her up!” Grace repeated sharply. “If you’re not going out home don’t call her! She’d never forgive you. Come and have lunch with me so we can talk.”
Roy Durland was tall and fair, a handsome young fellow, though his face might have been thought too delicate, a trifle too feminine. One would have known that as a child he had been pointed out as a very pretty boy.
“I hate like thunder bothering you, sis,” he began when they were seated in the lunch room. “But I’m up against it hard. Harry Sayles and I got a car from Thornton’s garage the other night and took a couple of girls out for a ride. It was Harry’s party,—he was going to pay for the machine. Well, we were letting ’er go a pretty good clip, I guess, when something went wrong with the steering gear and we ran smash into a barn and mussed things up considerable. Harry and Freda Barnes were on the front seat and got cut up a little. We had to wake up a farmer and telephone to Thornton to send out for us. Thornton wants fifty dollars to cover his damage and of course I’ve got to stand half of it; that’s only square. He’s pretty ugly about it and says if we don’t come through with the money he’ll take it up with the college people. Now I know, Grace,—”
“Yes, you know you have no business going on joy rides, particularly with a boy like Harry Sayles who’s always in nasty scrapes! Who’s Freda Barnes? I don’t remember a student of that name.”
“Well, she isn’t exactly a student,” Roy replied,nervously buttering a piece of bread, “but she’s a perfectly nice girl. She works in Singleton’s store.”
“That’s one girl; who was the other?”
“Sadie Denton; you must remember her; she was cashier in Fulton’s for a while.”
“No; I never heard of her,” said Grace eyeing him coldly. “You know plenty of nice girls on the campus and plenty of decent, self-respecting boys. There’s not the slightest excuse for you. I suppose Harry provided the whiskey. Therewaswhiskey of course. Come, out with the truth about it!”
“Well,” Roy admitted shamefacedly, “we did have a bottle but we didn’t drink enough of it to make any difference. Really, Grace, it was an accident; no one could have helped it.”
“I’m not so sure of that. I understand now why you didn’t want to show yourself at home. The day I left college you promised to behave yourself and put in your best licks on your work and already you’re mixed up in a nasty scrape. It would break mother’s heart if she knew it. Mother’s crazy about you; she’d sacrifice all the rest of us for you, and you evidently don’t appreciate it at all!”
“I understand all that, sis. I told you I’d be glad to quit and let you stay on and finish. My hanging on in the law school is all a mistake.”
“Well, don’t whimper! It’s too late to weaken now. You were old enough to know what you were doing when you took up the law. It begins to look as though you simply wanted to hang on at the university to loaf and have a good time. You don’t deserve any pity for getting into a mess like this. I suppose the story’s all over the campus.”
“I don’t think so,” he answered quickly, with hopelighting his eyes. “Thornton promised to keep his mouth shut if we’d pay his bill. And Harry and the girls won’t talk.”
“I imagine not! And you’re letting me into the secret merely in the hope of getting twenty-five dollars out of me.”
“Don’t be so hard on me, Grace! I know I’m a fool and haven’t sense enough to say no when anybody asks me to do things like that. But if you’ll help me out this time I swear never to bother you again.”
“All right, Roy. I haven’t the money here but I’ll walk over to the trust company with you and get it. But be sure this doesn’t happen again. I don’t want to rub it in but it may help you to keep straight if I tell you that it’s just about all we can do to get by at home. Father is earning nothing; the family’s clean busted. Mother’s pinching and denying herself to be ready to give you a start when you leave the law school. I’m not complaining; I’m only telling you this because I don’t think you mean to make it any harder for the rest of us than you can.”
“It’s all a silly mistake,” he said dully, “this trying to make a lawyer of me. I’ve a good notion to have it out with mother now and tell her I’ve come home to stay.”
“If you do you’re the rankest kind of quitter! You could have refused to take up the law when you graduated from college, but now that you have only a few more months you’ve simply got to make good. Mother would die of humiliation if you stopped. Come along; we’ve got to step lively.”
“Now, Roy,” she said as she gave him the money at the teller’s window: “Please behave yourself!”
He left her at the store, repeating his promises thathe would never again ask her for money and assuring her that he would make the most of his time for the remainder of the year.
She had dealt with him more severely than it was in her heart to do and she was a little sorry that she hadn’t shown more tolerance for his misadventure. Fairly considered, his joy-riding with undesirable companions was hardly more censurable than her participation in Kemp’s party at The Shack, a matter as to which her conscience was still at times a little tender.
Trenton wrote every day, letters in which there was no attempt to disguise his love for her. He hadn’t warned her against keeping his letters but she destroyed each one after writing her reply. These answers were little more than notes which she wrote and rewrote in trepidation lest she say too much or too little. Now that he had declared himself and was reiterating daily his complete absorption in her as to everything that affected his future she could afford to risk certain reserves and coynesses. But she did love him; she had positively settled this question. It was a tremendous thing that had happened to her, the realization of a great love, love awakened at a first meeting and endowed with all the charm of romance and the felicity of clandestine adventure. In one of her notes, written with her door locked—her family imagined her to be zealously devoting herself to her French studies—she wrote:
It is all like a dream. I never cease to marvel thatyoushould care for me.... Every note you send me is a happy surprise. If one failed to come Ithink I should die.... You wanted me to take time to think. That is like my good and true knight. But I want you to consider too,—everything.... Your world is so much bigger than mine. Any day you may meet some one so much finer than I am, so much worthier of your love.... I like to think that it all had to be just as it has been,—you and I wandering toward each other, guided and urged on by destiny.
It is all like a dream. I never cease to marvel thatyoushould care for me.... Every note you send me is a happy surprise. If one failed to come Ithink I should die.... You wanted me to take time to think. That is like my good and true knight. But I want you to consider too,—everything.... Your world is so much bigger than mine. Any day you may meet some one so much finer than I am, so much worthier of your love.... I like to think that it all had to be just as it has been,—you and I wandering toward each other, guided and urged on by destiny.
To her intimations that he might have regrets he replied in his next message with every assurance that he, too, shared her feeling that their meeting had been predestined of all time. Now and then in his life, he wrote, he had felt the hand of a directing and beneficent fate. She wondered how he would have replied to a direct question as to the forces that had combined to bring about his marriage to the woman he had no doubt loved at some time, but she refrained. In Grace’s thoughts, Mrs. Ward Trenton, the Mary Graham Trenton who sought clues to social problems and moved restlessly about the country proclaiming revolutionary ideas, was receding further and further toward a vanishing point.
At the end of a week she became restless, eager for Trenton’s return. She several times considered telegraphing him to make haste, but after going once to the telegraph office at her lunch hour and writing the message she tore it up. He had asked her to wire whenever she was sure; the mere sending of a telegram would commit her irrevocably. It was not so easy as she had imagined to write the words which meant that after pondering the matter with the gravity it demanded she was ready to enter into a relationship with him which would have no honest status, no protection,but would be just such an arrangement as Irene maintained with Kemp.
Irene, aware of Trenton’s daily letters, now refrained from giving her further encouragement to the affair. On the other hand she seemed disposed to counsel caution.
“Some days you seem as cheerful as a spring robin and then again you don’t seem so chipper. You don’t want to take your love affairs so hard!”
“Oh, we’re just having a little flirtation, that’s all,” said Grace carelessly.
“That’s not the way you’re acting! You’re terribly intense, Grace. I knew you had temperament, but I didn’t know you had so much. But I’ll say this for Ward, that he’s a fine, manly fellow,—frankly a much finer type than Tommy Kemp. Tommy’s a sport and Ward isn’t. Ward really has ideals, but such as Tommy has don’t worry him much.”
This left Grace, again a prey to doubts, wondering whether after all Trenton was so utterly different from Kemp. Intellectually he was a higher type than Tommy Kemp, but when it came to morals he was not a bit better.
Grace had not yet wholly escaped from the effect of Dr. Ridgely’s sermon, with its warning against the too-readily-found excuse for wrong-doing. She continued to observe carefully her associates in Shipley’s and other business girls she became acquainted with, and she had no reason for suspecting that by far the greater number were not high-minded young women who met cheerily all the circumstances of their lives. She found herself stumbling uncomfortably over theexcuses she made for herself. Other girls forced to labor and blessed with equal charm and wit did not find it necessary “to play around with married men” as the phrase went, or encourage the attentions of young unmarried men who were not likely to show them every respect. There were societies and associations whose purpose was to safeguard young womanhood; some of her new acquaintances were members of such organizations. She accepted invitations to go for lunch or supper to several of these, but thought them dull.
Finding that Grace hadn’t attempted to enlist Miss Reynolds in the girl’s club of Dr. Ridgley’s church, Ethel Durland had sent the pastor himself to invite that lady to one of the meetings.
“I hope you will come Tuesday night,” said Ethel, when she reported this to Grace. “We want Miss Reynolds to see the scope of our work and your being there will be a help. Maybe you’d ask some of the girls in Shipley’s? We want to have a record attendance. And we want the girls to bring their young men friends with them. It’s our idea that the girls should feel that the church is like another home.”
The attempt to establish a new high record of attendance brought twenty-five girls and four young men to the church parlors. Three of the young women were from Shipley’s and they had gone at Grace’s earnest solicitation; four were Servians, employed in a garment factory, and they were convoyed by young men of their own race.
“I wish you’d be specially nice to those Servian girls,” Ethel remarked to Grace. “It wasn’t easy to get them to come, but they brought their beaux with them. We must be sure they have a good time.”
The beaux did not seem to relish the hopeless minorityof their sex. The meeting was opened formally by Ethel as chairman of the entertainment committee. She introduced Dr. Ridgely, who expressed the hope that the club would develop into one of the strongest agencies of the church. He referred to religion only indirectly. Grace was again impressed by his sincerity; and he was tactful and gracious in his effort to put the visitors at ease. He would not linger, he said, as a reminder that they were in a church; the evening was theirs and he wanted the club to manage its own affairs and define its own policy to meet the tastes and needs of the members. No one of any shade of religious faith could have taken offense from anything he said or feared that the pastor wished to use the club for proselyting purposes. However, when he had left, Ethel Durland extended an invitation to those present who were not already enrolled in the Sunday school to become affiliated, and urged attendance upon the regular church services.
“How tactless! Why couldn’t she let well enough alone!” whispered Miss Reynolds to Grace. “Dr. Ridgely knows better than that.”
“My sister has a strong sense of duty,” Grace answered. “She couldn’t bear to let the opportunity go by.”
“She might have waited at least till they’d got their refreshments,” Miss Reynolds retorted.
A young lady elocutionist who had volunteered her services recited a number of poems after Ethel had prepared the way with a few words on the new movement in poetry. The audience manifested no great interest in the movement and seemed utterly mystified by the poems offered. However, Ethel now announcedthat the formal exercises were concluded and that they would repair to the basement where there would be dancing. Ethel, who did not dance herself and thought it a wicked form of amusement, had yielded reluctantly to the suggestion of the other members of the committee that dancing be included in the programme. Dr. Ridgely had given his approval on the ground that young people were bound to dance somewhere and as there was so much criticism of the prevailing fashion in dancing he thought it highly desirable to provide the amusement under auspices calculated to discourage the objectionable features complained of in the public dance halls.
“Well, where are all the young men?” inquired Miss Reynolds as she stood beside Grace in the basement. “Those four Servians look frightened to death and girls don’t enjoy dancing with each other. If the church is going to do this thing, why don’t they do it right? You’d think the committee would have got some young men here if they’d had to ask the police to drag them in.”
The music was provided by two negroes, one of whom played the piano and the other the drum. As Twentieth Century dance music it was not of a high order. The musicians, duly admonished by the Chairman of the entertainment committee, were subduing their performance in the attempt to adjust it to the unfamiliar and sobering environment. And the room itself was not a particularly inspiring place for social entertaining. A map of the Holy Land and several enlarged photographs of early members of the church were the only adornments of the plaster wall, and the chairs were of that unsteady, collapsible type that suggest funerals and give the sitter a feeling of undergoingpenance for grievous sins. The low ceiling was supported by iron pillars that added nothing to the pleasure of dancing.
A number of girls began dancing together and after some persuasion Grace succeeded in getting the four couples of Servians on the floor. The young men danced with something of a ceremonial air as though, finding themselves in an alien atmosphere, they wished fitly to represent the dignity and pride of their race. Grace picked out several young girls who were huddled helplessly in a corner and danced with them and then seized upon the young men and introduced them in the hope of breaking the racial deadlock. The young fellows proved to be painfully shy when confronted by the necessity of dancing with girls they had never seen before. Nevertheless Grace’s efforts resulted in putting some life and animation into the party. It had been said of her in college that she had the knack of making things go and it struck her suddenly that something might be done to inject some spirit and novelty into the occasion by asking the Servians to give their folk dances. One of the Servian girls undertook to instruct the negroes in the rhythms required for the folk dances and the young woman’s vivacity and the negroes’ good-natured eagerness to meet her wishes evoked much merriment. The dances were given with spirit in a circle formed by the rest of the company, who warmly applauded the quaint performance.
“I always wanted to try these folk dances myself!” cried Grace appealing to the tallest of the young men. “Won’t you teach me?”
He would be honored, he said, and the girl with whom he had been dancing went to the piano. Grace quickly proved herself an apt and enthusiastic pupil. Whenshe had learned the postures and steps of one of the group dances her instructor took her as his partner and she went through with it without an error. Others of the American girls now began trying the steps with the Servian young men and women, who entered zestfully into the work of teaching them. The result was the breaking down of restraint and by the time the refreshments were served the room presented a scene of gaiety and good fellowship.
“You have a genius for that kind of thing, my dear; you managed that beautifully,” said Miss Reynolds to Grace as they assisted in pouring chocolate and passing sandwiches. “You saved the evening! Dear me! There’s something wrong with this. As an effort to interest young people in the church this club can’t say much for itself. Girls won’t go where there are no young men; I imagine young men are not easy to lure into church parlors to hear poetry read to them, particularly poetry that doesn’t mean anything. And this cellar and the piano and drum can’t compete with a big dance hall and a real jazz band. This has been going on about like this for several years, but without as many girls as came tonight. I don’t know what could be done, but this doesn’t seem worth while.”
“I don’t know the answer either,” said Grace, who, more or less consciously, was observing this attempt to do something for working girls with reference to her own problems. Her reading had made her familiar with the efforts of church organizations to meet the social needs of the changing times. It seemed to her that these all presupposed a degree of aspiration in the class sought to be helped. And knowing herself to have enjoyed probably the best opportunities as to education of any girl in the room she was troubled, knowing how feeble was her hold on such ideals ofconduct as only a little while ago she had believed herself to possess.
“Maybe,” said Miss Reynolds, “those people are right who say we’re running too much to organizations. We start a club like this and stick it in a church basement and are terribly pleased with ourselves. These girls are all good girls; naughty girls wouldn’t come; they can have a better time somewhere else. And they’re just the ones we’ve got to reach. Am I right about that?”
“I think you are,” replied Grace, wondering what Miss Reynolds would say if she could read her thoughts. To drop Trenton while it was still possible would make it necessary to reconcile herself to the acceptance of just such pleasures as Ethel thought sufficient social stimulus for girls who worked for a living.
“Why don’t the church members come to these meetings?” Miss Reynolds demanded, “or send their sons and daughters? The minister of this church has sense and I’ll wager he sees that side of it. A miserable thing like this only strengthens class feeling. I don’t believe there’s any way of making such a club go. The church is put in the position of tagging the rich and the poor so nobody can mistake one for the other. I think I’ll spend my time and money on individual cases—find a few young people who really need help and concentrate on them!”
At eleven o’clock the musicians left and the entertainment came to an end.
“I’m so grateful to you, Grace, for helping; this is the best meeting we’ve ever had,” said Ethel after she had pressed a folder describing the church’s activities upon the last of the company. “Don’t you think our work well worth while, Miss Reynolds?”
“I was greatly interested,” Miss Reynolds replied evasively.
She took Grace and Ethel home in her car but did not encourage Ethel’s attempt to discuss the evening. However, in bidding Ethel good-night she said she would send her a check for one hundred dollars for the girls’ club.
“Your work is important, Miss Durland; I sympathize with the purpose; but I don’t think you’ve got quite the right plan. But I confess that I have no suggestion worth offering. I realize that it’s not easy to solve these problems.”
Grace was not happy! Much as she tried to avoid the flat conclusion, the best she could do was to twist it into a question. Love was a worthless thing if its effect was merely to torture, to inflict pain. She had told Trenton that she loved him and had virtually agreed to accept him on his own terms. Why, as the days passed, was she still doubting, questioning, challenging her love for him?
At the end of a rainy day that had been full of exasperations Grace left the store to take the trolley home. The rain had turned to sleet that beat spitefully upon her umbrella and the sidewalks were a mass of slush. She was dreading the passage home in the crowded car and the evening spent in her room, thinking of Trenton, fashioning her daily letter. She had begun to hate her room where every object seemed to be an animate, malevolent embodiment of some evil thought. She had half decided to persuade her father to brave the weather and return down townafter supper to go to a picture show when, turning the corner, she heard her name called.
“Hello, there, Grace!”
“Why, Bob, is it you?” she cried peering out at Cummings from under her umbrella.
He took her umbrella and fell into step with her.
“Don’t look so scared; of course it’s I. Frankly this isn’t just chance alone; I’ve been lying in ambush!”
“This will never do!” she cried, but in spite of herself she was unable to throw any resentment into her tone.
“I’ve got a grand idea!” he said. “I’m playing hooky tonight. Evelyn called me up this afternoon to ask if I’d go to dine with an uncle of hers who’s having a birthday. These family parties are bad enough at Christmas and Thanksgiving but when they begin ringing in birthdays I buck. So I told Evelyn I was too tired to go and that I had a business engagement anyhow, and would get my dinner down town.”
“Do you realize that I’m getting wet? You beat it for your family party; I’m going home.”
“Please, Grace, don’t desert me!” he replied coaxingly. “Let’s have a cozy supper together and I’ll get you home early.”
“I told you I’d never see you again!” she said indignantly. “You have no excuse for waylaying me like this. It’s unpardonable!”
“Don’t be so cruel!” he pleaded. “I’ll be awfully nice—honestly I will! You won’t have a thing to be sorry for.”
Firm as her resolution had been not to see him again she was weighing the relief it would be to avoid going home against the danger of encouraging him.
“Where are your manners, sir? You haven’t even offered to drive me home.”
“God pity us homeless children in the great city tonight!” he cried, aware that she was relenting. “My car’s parked yonder by the Sycamore Tavern. The night invites the adventurous spirit. We’ll dare the elements and ride hard and fast like king’s messengers.”
“Will you keep that up—just that way—pretending we’re two kids cutting up, as we used to do?”
“Of course, Grace; you may count on it.”
“Well, I’m tired and bored with myself, and was dreading the ride home—I’ll go! But whither?”
“To McGovern’s house of refreshment at the border of a greenwood, known to Robin Hood in olden times!” cried Cummings, elated by her consent. “We’ll stop at the Sycamore and I’ll telephone the varlet to make the coffee hot.”
“I supped there once, years agone! But the crowd was large and boisterous,” she replied, now entering fully into the spirit of the proposed adventure. Their attempt at archaic speech recalled their youthful delight in the Arthurian legends in days when their world was enfolded in a golden haze of romance.
It was impossible to think of Cummings otherwise than as a boy, and a foolish boy, but amusing when the humor was on him as now, and to have supper with him would work injury to no one.
While he talked to McGovern she went into a booth and explained to her mother that she wouldn’t be home for supper, saying that she was going to a movie with a girl friend.
“All set?” asked Cummings. “That’s fine. We’ll move right along. You’ll be in early; that’s a cinch. Evelyn’s sure to be home by ten and I’ll be practisingChopin furiously when she gets back from her uncle’s. Mac wasn’t keen about taking us in as he shuts down at the first frost. But that’s all the better; nobody else would think of going there on such a night!”
They were planning with much absurd detail the strategy of their approach to a beleaguered capital when they reached McGovern’s and were warmly welcomed by the proprietor.
“It gets mighty lonesome out here in the winter,” he said. “The missus thought you’d like having supper right here in the living room so you could sort o’ chum with the fire.”
“That’s a heavenly idea,” said Grace, eyeing the table with covers laid for two. Mrs. McGovern, a stout woman whose face shone with good nature, appeared and bade her husband help bring in the dishes. Whereupon Cummings and Grace rushed to the kitchen to assist and filed in behind him, bearing serving dishes and singing a song they had learned in their childhood: