CHAPTER III
She came down the road again a little after seven o'clock. It was another cold night, and the stars glittered frostily in a sky almost as black as the hills. The road lost itself in darkness before her, and the fields stretched out into a darkness that seemed illimitable, as endless as the sky. She felt herself part of the night and the cold.
For an eternity she walked up and down the road, waiting. Once she went as far as the top of the hill beyond the bridge, and saw shining against the blackness the yellow lights of his house. She looked at them for a long time. She thought that she would watch them until he came out. But she was driven to walking up and down, up and down, stumbling in the ruts of the road. At last she saw him coming, and stood still in the pool of darkness under the oaks until he reached her.
"Helen?" he said uncertainly. "Is it you?"
"Yes," she answered. Her throat ached.
"I came as quick as I could," he said. Somehow she knew that his throat ached, too. They moved to the little railing of the bridge and stood trying to see each other's faces in the gloom. "Are you cold?" he asked.
"No," she said. She saw then that the shawl had slipped from her shoulders and was dragging over one arm. The wind fluttered it, and her hands were clumsy, trying to pull it back into place.
"Here," he was taking off his coat. "No," she said again. But she let him wrap half the coat around her. They stood close together in the folds of it. The chilly wind flowed around them like water, and the warmth of their trembling bodies made a little island of cosiness in a sea of cold.
"I got to go," he said. "It's a good job. Fifty dollars a month. I got to support mother, you know. Her money's pretty nearly gone already, and she spent a lot putting me through school. I just got to go. I wish—I wish I didn't have to."
She tried to hold her lips steady.
"It's all right," she said. "I'm glad you got a good job."
"You mean you aren't going to miss me when I'm gone?"
"Yes, I'll miss you."
"I'm going to miss you an awful lot," he said huskily. "You going to write to me?"
"Yes, I'll write if you will."
"You aren't going to forget me—you aren't going to get to going with anybody else—are you?"
She could not answer. The trembling that shook them carried them beyond speech. Wind and darkness melted together in a rushing flood around them. The ache in her throat dissolved into tears, and they clung together, cheek against hot cheek, in voiceless misery.
"Oh, Helen! Oh, Helen!" She was crushed against the beating of his heart, his arms hurt her. She wanted them to hurt her. "You're so—you're so—sweet!" he stammered, and gropingly they found each other's lips.
Words came back to her after a time.
"I don't want you to go away," she sobbed.
His arms tightened around her, then slowly relaxed. His chin lifted, and she knew that his mouth was setting into its firm lines again.
"I got to," he said. The finality of the words was like something solid beneath their feet once more.
"Of course—I didn't mean—" She moved a little away from him, smoothing her hair with a shaking hand. A new solemnity had descended upon them both. They felt dimly that life had changed for them, that it would never be the same again.
"I got to think about things," he said.
"Yes—I know."
"There's mother. Fifty dollars a month. We just can't—"
Tears were welling slowly from her eyes and running down her cheeks. She was not able to stop them.
"No," she said. "I've got to do something to help at home, too." She groped for the shawl at her feet. He picked it up and wrapped it carefully around her.
They walked up and down in the starlight, trying to talk soberly, feeling very old and sad, a weight on their hearts. Ripley was a station in the San Joaquin valley, he told her. He was going to be night operator there. He could not keep a shade of self-importance from his voice, but he explained conscientiously that there would not be much telegraphing. Very few train orders were sent there at night. But it was a good job for a beginner and pretty soon maybe he would be able to get a better one. Say, when he was twenty or twenty-one seventy-five dollars a month perhaps. It wouldn't be long to wait. They were clinging together again.
"You—we mustn't," she said.
"It's all right—just one—when you're engaged." She sobbed on his shoulder, and their kisses were salty with tears.
He left her at her gate. The memory of all the times they had stood there was the last unbearable pain. They held each other tight, without speaking.
"You—haven't said—tell me you—love me," he stammered after a long time.
"I love you," she said, as though it were a sacrament. He was silent for another moment, and in the dim starlight she felt rather than saw a strange, half-terrifying expression on his face.
"Will you go away with me—right now—and marry me—if I ask you to?" His voice was hoarse.
She felt that she was taking all she was or could be in her cupped hands and offering it to him.
"Yes," she said.
His whole body shook with a long sob. He tried to say something, choking, tearing himself roughly away from her. She saw him going down the road, almost running, and then the darkness hid him.
In the days that followed it seemed to her that she could have borne the separation better if she had not been left behind. He had gone down the shining lines of track beyond Cherokee Hill into a vague big world that baffled her thoughts. He wrote that he had been in San Francisco and taken a ride on a sight-seeing car. It was a splendid place, he said; he wished she could see the things he saw. He had seen Chinatown, the Presidio, the beach, and Seal Rocks. Then he had gone on to Ripley, which wasn't much like Masonville. He was well, and hoped she was, and he thought of her every day and was hers lovingly. Paul. But she felt that she was losing touch with him, and when she contemplated two or three long years of waiting she felt that she would lose him entirely. She thought again of that young couple at Rollo, and pangs of envy were added to the misery in which she was living.
He had been gone two weeks when she announced to her mother that she was going to be a telegraph-operator. She held to the determination with a tenacity that surprised even herself. She argued, she pleaded, she pointed out the wages she would earn, the money she could send home. There was a notice in the Masonville weekly paper, advertising a school of telegraphy in Sacramento, saying: "Operators in great demand. Graduates earn $75 to $100 a month up." She wrote to that school, and immediately a reply came, assuring her that she could learn in three months, that railroad and telegraph companies were clamoring for operators, that the school guaranteed all its graduates good positions. The tuition was fifty dollars.
Her father said he guessed that settled it.
But in the end she won. When he renewed the mortgage he borrowed another hundred dollars from the bank. Fifty dollars seemed a fortune on which to live for three months. Her mother and she went over her clothes together, and her mother gave her the telescope-bag in which to pack them.
An awkward intimacy grew up between the two while they worked. Her mother said it was just as well for her to have a good job for a while. Maybe she wouldn't make a fool of herself, getting married before she knew her own mind. Helen said nothing. She felt that it was not easy to talk with one's mother about things like getting married.
Her mother said one other thing that stayed in her mind, perhaps because of its indefiniteness, perhaps because of her mother's embarrassment when she said it, an embarrassment that made them both constrained.
"There's something I got to say to you, Helen," she said, keeping her eyes on the waist she was ironing and flushing hotly. "Your father's still against this idea of your going away. He says first thing we know we'll have you back on our hands, in trouble. Now I want you should promise me if anything comes up that looks like it wasn't just right, you let me know right away, and I'll come straight down to Trenton and get you. I'm going to be worried about you, off alone in a city like that."
She promised quickly, uncertainly, and her mother began in a hurry to talk of something else. Mrs. Updike, who lived on the next farm, was going down to San Francisco to visit her sister. She would take Helen as far as Sacramento and see her settled there. Helen must be sure to eat her meals regularly and keep her clothes mended and write every week and study hard. She promised all those things.
There was a flurry on the last morning. Between tears and excitement, Mabel was half hysterical, Tommy kept getting in the way, her mother unpacked the bag a dozen times to be sure that nothing was left out. They all drove to town, crowded into the two-seated light wagon, and there was another flurry at the station when the train came in. She hugged them all awkwardly, smiling with tears in her eyes. She felt for the first time how much she loved them.
Until the train rounded the curve south of town she gazed back at Masonville and the little yellow station where Paul had worked. Then she settled back against red velvet cushions to watch unfamiliar trees and hills flashing backward past the windows. She had an excited sense of adventure, wondering what the school would be like, promising herself again to study hard. She and Mrs. Updike worried at intervals, fearing lest by some mischance Mr. Weeks, the manager of the school, would fail to meet them at the Sacramento station. They wore bits of red yarn in their buttonholes so that he would recognize them.
He was waiting when the train stopped. He was a thin, well-dressed man, with a young face that seemed oddly old, like a half-ripe apple withered. He hurried them through noisy, bustling streets, on and off street-cars, up a stairway at last to the school.
There were two rooms, a small one, which was the office, and a larger one, bare and not very clean, lighted by two high windows looking out on an alley. In the large room were half a dozen tables, each with a telegraph-sounder and key upon it. There was no one there at the moment, Mr. Weeks explained, because it was Saturday afternoon. The school usually did no business on Saturday afternoons, but he would make an exception for Helen. If she liked, he said briskly, she could pay him the tuition now, and begin her studies early Monday morning. He was sure she would be a good operator, and he guaranteed her a good position when she graduated. He would even give her a written guarantee, if she wished. But she did not ask for that. It would have seemed to imply a doubt of Mr. Weeks' good faith.
Mrs. Updike, panting from climbing the stairs and nervous with anxiety about catching her train, asked him about rooms. Providentially, he knew a very good one and cheap, next door to the school. He was kind enough to take them to see it.
There were a number of rooms in a row, all opening on a long hallway reached by stairs from the street. They were kept by Mrs. Brown, who managed the restaurant down-stairs. She was a sallow little woman, with very bright brown eyes and yellow hair. She talked continuously in a light, mechanically gay voice, making quick movements with her hands and moving about the room with a whisking of silk petticoats, driven, it seemed, by an intensity of energy almost feverish.
The room rented for six dollars a month. It had a large bow-window overlooking the street, gaily flowered wall-paper, a red carpet, a big wooden bed, a wash-stand with pitcher and bowl, and two rocking-chairs. At the end of the long hall was a bathroom with a white tub in it, the first Helen had seen. There was something metropolitan about that tub; a bath in it would be an event far different from the Saturday night scrubs in the tin wash-tub at home. And she could eat in the restaurant below; very good meals for twenty cents, or even for less if she wanted to buy a meal-ticket.
"I guess it's as good as you can do," said Mrs. Updike.
"I think it's lovely," Helen said.
So it was settled. Helen gave Mrs. Brown six dollars, and she whisked away after saying: "I'm sure I hope you'll like it, dearie, and if there's anything you want, you let me know. I sleep right in the next room, so nothing's going to bother you, and if you get lonesome, just come and knock on my door."
Then Mrs. Updike, with a hasty farewell peck at her cheek, hurried away to catch her train, Mr. Weeks going with her to take her to the station, and Helen was left alone.
She locked her door first, and counted her money, feeling very businesslike. Then she unpacked her bag and put away her things, pausing now and then to look around the room that was hers. It seemed very large and luxurious. She felt a pleasant sense of responsibility when everything was neatly in order and she stood at the window, looking down the street to the corner where at intervals she saw street-cars passing. She promised herself to work very hard, and to pay back soon the money her father had lent her, with interest.
Then she thought, smiling, that in a little while she would go down-stairs and eat supper in a restaurant, and then she would buy a tablet and pencil and, coming back to this beautiful room, she would sit down all alone and write a letter to Paul.