CHAPTER IX

In the mornings Helen went to work. The first confusion of the Merchants' Exchange had cleared a little. She began to see a pattern in the fluctuations of the market quotations. January wheat, February wheat, May corn, became a drama to her, and while she snatched the figures from the wire and tossed them to the waiting boy, saw them chalked up on the huge board, and heard the shouts of the brokers, she caught glimpses of the world-wide gamble in lives and fortunes.

But it was only another great spectacle in which she had no part. She was merely a living mechanical attachment to the network of wires. She wanted to tear herself away, to have a life of her own, a life that went forward, instead of swinging like a pendulum between home and the office.

She did not want to work. She had never wanted to work. Working had been only a means of reaching sooner her own life with Paul. The road had run straight before her to that end. But now Paul would not let her follow it; he did not want her to work with him at Ripley; she would have to wait until he made money enough to support her. And she hated work.

Resting her chin on one palm, listening half consciously for her call to interrupt the ceaseless clicking of the sounder, she gazed across the marble counter and the vaulted room; the gesticulating brokers, the scurrying messengers, faded into a background against which she saw again the light and color and movement of the night when she had met Mr. Kennedy. She heard his voice. "What's the use of living if you don't hit the high spots?"

She hurried home at night, expecting she knew not what. But it had not happened. Restlessness took possession of her, and she turned for hours on her pillow, dozing only to hear the clicking of telegraph-sounders, and music, and to find herself dancing on the floor of the Merchants' Exchange with a strange man who had Mr. Kennedy's eyes. On the eleventh day she received a letter from Paul, which quieted the turmoil of her thoughts like a dash of cold water. In his even neat handwriting he wrote:

I suppose the folks you write about are all right. They sound pretty queer to me. I don't pretend to know anything about San Francisco, though. But I don't see how you are going to hold down a job and keep up with the way they seem to spend their time, though I will not say anything about dancing. You know I could not do it and stay in the church, but I do not mean to bring that up again in a letter. You were mighty fine and straight and sincere about that, and if you do not feel the call to join I would not urge you. But I do not think I would like your new friends. I would rather a girl was not so pretty, but used less slang when she talks.

The words gained force by echoing a stifled opinion of her own. With no other standard than her own instinct, she had had moments of criticising Louise and momma. But she had quickly hidden the criticism in the depths of her mind, because they were companions and she had not been able to find any others. Now they stood revealed through Paul's eyes as glaringly cheap and vulgar.

Her longing for a good time, if she must have it with such people, appeared weak and foolish to her. She felt older and steadier when she went home that night. Then, just as she entered the door, the telephone rang and Louise called that Gilbert Kennedy wanted to speak to her.

It was impossible to analyze his fascination. Uncounted times she had gone over all he had said, all she could conjecture about him, vainly seeking an explanation of it. The mere sound of his voice revived the spell like an incantation, and her half-hearted resistance succumbed to it.

Before the dressing-table, hurrying to make herself beautiful for an evening with him, she leaned closer to the glass and tried to find the answer in the gray eyes looking back at her. But they only grew eager, and her reflection faded, to leave her brooding on the memory of his face, half mocking and half serious, and the tired hunger of his eyes.

"Have a heart, for the lovea Mike!" cried Louise. "Give me a chance. You aren't using the mirror yourself, even!" She slipped into the chair Helen left and, pushing back her mass of golden hair, gazed searchingly at her face. "Got to get my lashes dyed again; they're growing out. Say, you certainly did make a hit with Kennedy!"

"Where's the nail polish?" Helen asked, searching in the hopeless disorder of the bureau drawers. "Oh, here it is. What do you know about him?"

"Well, he's one of those Los Angeles Kennedys. You know, old man was indicted for something awhile ago. Loads of money." Louise, dabbing on cold-cream, spoke in jerks. "His brother was the one that ran off with Cissy Leroy, and his wife shot her up. Don't you remember? It was in all the papers. I used to know Cissy, too. She was an awful good sport, really. Don't you love that big car of his?"

Helen did not answer. In her revulsion she felt that she was not at all interested in Gilbert Kennedy, and she had the sensation of being freed from a weight.

Momma, slipping a rustling gown over her head, spoke through the folds. "He's a live wire," she praised. She settled the straps over her shoulders, tossing a fond smile at Helen. "Hook me up, dearie? Yes, he's a live wire all right, and you've certainly got him coming."

A sudden thought chilled Helen to the finger-tips. She fumbled with the hooks.

"He isn't married, is he?"

"Married! Well, I should say not! What do you think I am?" momma demanded. "Do you think I'd steer you or Louise up against anything like that?" Her voice softened. "I know too well what unhappiness comes from some one taking another lady's husband away from his home and family, though he does pay the alimony regular as the day comes around, I will say that for him. I hope never to live to see the day my girl, or you either, does a thing like that." There was genuine emotion in her voice. Helen felt a rush of affectionate pity for her, and Louise, springing up, threw her bare arms around her mother.

"Don't you worry, angel momma! I see myself doing it!" she cried.

At such moments of warm-hearted sincerity Helen was fond of them both. She felt ashamed while she finished dressing. They were lovely to her, she thought, and they accepted people as they were, without sneaking little criticisms and feelings of superiority. She did not know what she thought about anything.

Her indecisions were cut short by the squawk of an automobile-horn beneath the windows. With last hasty slaps of powder-puffs and a snatching of gloves, they hurried down to meet Mr. Kennedy at the door, and again Helen felt his charm like a tangible current between them. Words choked in her throat, and she stood silent in a little whirlpool of greetings.

There were three indistinct figures already in the tonneau; a glowing cigar-end lighted a fat, jolly face, and two feminine voices greeted momma and Louise. Hesitating on the curb, Helen felt a warm, possessive hand close on her arm.

"Get out, Dick. Climb in back. This little girl's going in front with me." The dominating voice made the words like an irresistible force. Not until she was sitting beside him and a docile young man had wedged himself into the crowded space behind, did it occur to her to question it.

"Do you always boss people like that?"

They were racing smoothly down a slope, and his answer came through the rushing of the wind past her ears. "Always." The gleam of a headlight passed across his face and she saw it keen, alert, intensely alive. "Ask, and you'll have to argue. Command, and people jump. It's the man that orders what he wants that gets it. Philosophy taught in ten lessons," he added in a contemptuous undertone. "Well, little girl, you haven't been forgetting me, have you?"

She disregarded the change of tone. His idea had struck her as extraordinarily true. It had never occurred to her. She turned it over in her mind.

"A girl ought to be able to work it, too," she said.

He laughed.

"Maybe. She finds it easier to work a man."

"I'm too polite to agree that all of you are soft things."

"You're too clever to find any of us hard to handle."

"Yes? Isn't it too bad putty is so uninteresting?"

She was astounded at her own words. They came from her lips with no volition of her own, leaping automatically in response to his. She felt only the stimulation of his interest, of his electrical presence beside her, of their swift rush through the darkness pierced by flashing lights.

"You don't, of course, compare me to putty?"

"Well, of course, it does set and stay put, in the end. You can depend on it."

"You can count on me, all right. I'm crazy about you."

"Crazy people are unaccountable."

Her heart was racing. The speed of the car, the rush of the air, were in her veins. She had never dreamed that she could talk like this. This man aroused in her qualities she had never known she possessed, and their discovery intoxicated her.

He was silent a moment, turning the car into a quieter street. There was laughter behind them, one of the others called: "We should worry about the cops! Go to it, Bert!" He did not reply, and the leap of the car swept their chatter backward again.

"Going too fast for you?" She read a double meaning and a challenge in the words.

"I've never gone too fast!" she answered. "I love to ride like this. Where are we going?"

"Anywhere you want to go, as long as it's with me."

"Then let's just keep going and never get there. Do you know what I thought you meant the other night when you said we'd go to the beach?"

"No, what?" He was interested.

She told him. This was safer ground, and she enlarged her mental picture of the still, moonlit beach, the white breakers foaming along the shore, the salt wind, and the darkness, and the car plunging down a long white boulevard.

"Do you mean to tell me you'd never been to the beach resorts before?"

"Isn't it funny?" she laughed.

"You're a damn game little kid."

She found that the words pleased her more than anything he had yet said.

They sped on in silence. Helen found occupation enough in the sheer delight of going so swiftly through a blur of light and darkness toward an unknown end. She did not resist the fascination of the man beside her; there was exhilaration in his being there, security in his necessary attention to handling the big machine. They passed the park gates, and the car leaped like a live thing at the touch of a whip, plunging faster down the smooth road between dark masses of shrubbery. A clean, moist odor of the forest mixed with a salt tang in the air, and the headlights were like funnels of light cutting into the solid night a space for them to pass.

"Isn't it wonderful!" Helen sighed, and despised the inadequacy of the word.

"I like the bright lights better myself." After a pause, he added, "Country bred, aren't you?" His inflection was not a question.

She replied in the same tone.

"College man, I suppose."

"How did you dope that?"

"'Inhibitions,'" she answered.

"What? O-o-oh! So you haven't been forgetting me?"

"I didn't forget the word," she said. "I looked it up."

"Well, make up your mind to get rid of 'em?"

"I'd get rid of anything I didn't want."

"Going to get rid of me?"

"No," she said coolly. "I'll just let you go."

It struck her that she was utterly mad. She had never dreamed of talking like that to any one. What was she doing and why?

"Don't you believe it one minute!" His voice had the dominating ring again, and suddenly she felt that she had started a force she was powerless to control. The situation was out of her hands, running away with her. Her only safety was silence, and she shrank into it.

When the car stopped she jumped out of it quickly and attached herself to momma. In the hot, smoky room they found a table at the edge of the dancing floor, and she slipped into the chair farthest from him, ordering lemonade. Exhilaration left her; again she could think of nothing that seemed worth saying, and she felt his amused eyes upon her while she sat looking at the red crepe-paper decorations overhead and the maze of dancing couples. It was some time before the rhythm of the music began to beat in her blood and the scene lost its tawdriness and became gay.

"Everybody's doing it now!" Louise hummed, looking at him under her long lashes. The others were dancing, and the three sat alone at the table. "Everybody's doing it, doing it, doing it. Everybody's doing it, but you—and me."

"Go and grab off somebody else," he answered good-humoredly. "I'm dancing with Helen—when she gets over being afraid of me." He lighted a cigarette casually.

"Oh, really? I'd love to dance. Only I don't do it very well."

His arms were around her and they were dancing before she perceived how neatly she had risen to the bait. She stumbled and lost a step in her fury.

"No? Not afraid of me?" he laughed. "Well, don't be. What's the use?"

"It isn't that," she said. "Only I don't know how to play your game. And I don't want to play it. And I'm not going to. You're too clever."

"Don't be afraid," he said, and his arm tightened. They missed step again, and she lost the swing of the music. "Let yourself go, relax," he ordered. "Let the music—that's better."

They circled the floor again, but her feet were heavy, and the knowledge that she was dancing badly added to her effort. Phrases half formed themselves in her mind and escaped. She wanted to be able to carry off the situation well, to make her meaning clear in some graceful, indirect way, but she could not.

"It's this way," she said. "I'm not your kind. Maybe I talked that way for a while, but I'm not really. I—well—I'm not. I wish you'd leave me alone. I really do."

The music ended with a crash, and two thumps of many feet echoed the last two notes. He still held her close, and she felt that inexplicable charm like the attraction of a magnet for steel.

"You really do?" His tone thrilled her with an intoxicating warmth. The smile in his eyes was both caressing and confident. Consciously she kept back the answering smile it commanded, looking at him gravely.

"I really do."

"All right." His quick acquiescence was exactly what she had wanted, and it made her unhappy. They walked back to the table, and for hours she was very gay, watching him dance with momma and Louise. She crowded into the tonneau during their quick, restless dashes from one dancing place to the next. She laughed a great deal, and when they met Duddy and Bob somewhere a little after midnight she danced with each of them. But she felt that having a good time was almost as hard work as earning a living.

It was nearly two weeks before she went out again with momma and Louise, and this time she did not see him at all. Louise was astonished by his failure to telephone.

"What in the world did you do with that Kennedy man?" she wanted to know. "You must have been an awful boob. Why, he was simply dippy about you. Believe me, I'd have strung him along if I'd had your chance. And a machine like a palace car, too!" she mourned.

"Oh, well, baby, Helen doesn't know much about handling men," momma comforted her. "She did the best she could. You never can tell about 'em, anyway. And maybe he's out of town."

But this was not true, for Louise had seen him only that afternoon with a stunning girl in a million dollars' worth of sables.

Helen was swept by cross-currents of feeling. She told herself that she did not care what he did. She repeated this until she saw that the repetition proved its untruth. Then she let her imagination follow him. But it could do this only blindly. She could picture his home only by combining the magnificence of the St. Francis with scraps from novels she had read, and while she could see him running up imposing steps, passing through a great door and handing his coat to a dignified man servant, either a butler or a footman, she could not follow him further. She could see him with a beautiful girl at a table in a private room of a café; there were no longer any veils between her and that side of a man's life, and she no longer shrank from facing the world as it exists. But she knew that this was only one of his many interests and occupations. She would have liked to know the others.

She turned to thoughts of Paul as one comes from a dark room into clear light. At times she felt an affection for him that made her present life seem like a feverish dream. She imagined herself living in a pretty little house with him. There would be white curtains at the windows and roses over the porch. When the housework was all beautifully done she would sit on the porch, embroidering a centerpiece or a dainty waist. The gate would click, and he would come up the walk, his feet making a crunching sound on the gravel. She would run to meet him. It had been so long since she had seen him that his face was vague. When with an effort she brought from her memory the straight-looking blue eyes, the full, firm lips, the cleft in his chin, she saw how boyish he looked. He was a dear boy.

The days went by, each like the day before. The rains had begun. Every morning, in a ceaseless drizzle from gray skies, she rushed down a sidewalk filmed with running water and crowded into a street-car jammed with irritated people and dripping umbrellas. When she reached the office her feet were wet and cold and the hems of her skirts flapped damply at her ankles.

She had a series of colds, and her head ached while she copied endless quotations from relentlessly clicking sounders. At night she rode wearily home, clinging to a strap, and crawled into bed. Her muscles ached and her throat was sore. Momma, even in the scurry of dressing for the evening, stopped to bring her a glass of hot whiskey-and-water, and she drank it gratefully. When at last she was alone she read awhile before going to sleep. One forgot the dreariness of living, swept away into an artificial world of adventure and romance.

Christmas came, and she recklessly spent all her money for gifts to send home; socks and ties and a shaving cup for her father, a length of black silk and a ten-dollar gold piece for her mother, hair ribbons and a Carmen bracelet for Mabel, a knife and a pocket-book with a two-dollar bill in it for Tommy. They made a large, exciting bundle, and when she stood in line at the post-office she pictured happily the delight there would be when it was opened. She hated work with a hatred that increased daily, but there was a deep satisfaction in feeling that she could do such things as this with money she herself had earned.

The brokers at the Merchants' Exchange gave her twenty dollars at Christmas, and with this she bought a gilt vanity-case for Louise, gloves for momma, and Paul's present. She thought a long time about that and at last chose a monogrammed stick-pin, with an old English "P" deeply cut in the gold.

He sent her a celluloid box lined with puffed pink sateen, holding a comb and brush set. It made a poor showing among the flood of presents that poured in for momma and Louise, but she would have been ashamed of being ashamed of it. However, she let them think it came from her mother. She had not told them about Paul, feeling a dim necessity of shielding that part of her life from Louise's comments.

There were parties every night Christmas week, but she did not go to any of them. She was in the throes of grippe and though the work at the office was light it took all her sick energy. Even on New Year's night she stayed at home, resisting all the urgings of Louise and momma, who told her she was missing the time of her life. She went resolutely to bed, to lie in the darkness and realize that it was New Year's night, that her life was going by and she was getting nothing she wanted. "It's the man that orders what he wants that gets it." Gilbert Kennedy's voice came back to her.

Rain was beating on the window-panes, and through the sound of it she heard the distant uproar of many voices and a constant staccato of fireworks crackling through the dripping night in triumphant expression of the inextinguishable gaiety of the city. She thought of Paul. So much had happened since she saw him, so much had come between them. He had been living and growing older, too. It was impossible to see what his real life had been through his matter-of-fact letters, chronicle of where he had been, how much money he was saving, on which Sundays the minister had had dinner at his house. Only occasional phrases were clear in her memory. "When we are married—" She could still thrill over that. And he always signed his letters, "lovingly, Paul." And once, speaking of a Sunday-school picnic, he had written, "I wish you had been there. There was no girl that could touch you."

There was comfort and warmth in the thought that he loved her. When she saw him again everything would be all right. She went to sleep resolving that she would work hard, save her money, go home for a visit in March or April, and ask him to come. The hills would be green, the orchards would be iridescent with the colors of spring, and she would wear a thin white dress—

In February her mother wrote and asked for more money.

Old Nell died last week. Tommy found her dead in the pasture when he went to get the cows. We will have to have a new horse for the spring plowing, and your father has found a good six-year-old, blind in one eye, that we can get cheap. We will have to have sixty dollars, and if you can spare it, it will come in very handy. We would pay you back later. I would not ask you for it only you are making a good salary, and I would rather get it from you than from the bank. It would be only a loan, for I would not ask you to give it to us. If you can let us have it, please let me know right away.

She had saved thirty dollars and had just drawn her half-month's pay. Momma would gladly wait for her share of the month's expenses. As soon as she was through work she went to the post-office and got a money-order for sixty dollars. She felt a fierce pride in being able to do it, and she was glad to know that she was helping at home, but there was rage in her heart.

It seemed to her that fate was against her, that she would go on working forever, and never get anything she wanted. She saw weeks and months and years of work stretching ahead of her like the interminable series of ties in a railroad track, vanishing in as barren a perspective.

For nearly three years her whole life had been work. Those few evenings at the cafés had been her only gaiety. She had copied innumerable market quotations, sent uncounted messages, been a mere machine, and for what? She did not want to work, she wanted to live.

That night she went to the beach with the crowd. Bob was there and Duddy and a score of others she had met in cafés. There again was the stir of shifting colors under brilliant lights, the eddy and swirl of dancers, sparkling eyes, white hands, a glimmer of rings, perfume, laughter, and through it all the music, throbbing, swaying, blending all sensations into one quickening rhythm, one exhilarating vibration of nerves and spirit. Helen felt weariness slip from her shoulders; she felt that she was soaring like a lark; she could have burst into song.

She danced. She danced eagerly, joyously, carried by the music as by the crest of a wave. Repartee slipped from her lips as readily as from Louise's; she found that it did not matter what one said, only that one said it quickly; her sallies were met by applauding laughter. In the automobile, dashing from place to place, she took off her hat and, facing the rushing wind, sang aloud for pure joy.

They encountered Gilbert Kennedy just after midnight. She turned a flushed, radiant face to him when he came over to their table. She felt sure of herself, ready for anything. He leaned past her to shake hands with momma, who greeted him in chorus with Louise.

"Back in our midst once more!" he said to Helen over his shoulder. He brought up a chair beside hers, and she saw in his first glance that he was tired and moody. She felt the lessening of his magnetic vitality; it seemed to have drained away through some inner lesion. He ordered straight Scotch and snapped his fingers impatiently until the waiter brought it.

"Who you with, Bert? Didn't see your car outside," said Duddy.

"Oh, I was with some crowd. Don't know where they are. Haven't got the car," he answered.

"Stick around with us then." "I bet you've been hitting the high spots, and smashed it!" Bob and Duddy said simultaneously. But the orchestra was beginning another tune, and only Helen noticed that in the general pushing back of chairs he did not reply.

She shook her head at the question in his eyes, and he asked no one else to dance. Of course, after that, she had to refuse the others, too, and they were left sitting at the bare table ringed with the imprints of wet glasses. An unaccountable depression was settling on her; she felt sorry and full of pity, she did not know why, and an impulse to put her hand on his smooth, fair hair surprised and horrified her.

"Rotten life, isn't it?" he said. It was a tone so new in him that she did not know how to reply.

"I'm sorry," she answered.

"Sorry? Good Lord, what for?"

"I don't know. I just am. I'm sorry for—whatever it is that's happened." She saw that she had made a mistake, and the remnant of her exhilaration fluttered out like a spent candle. She sat looking at the dancers in silence, and they appeared to her peculiar and curious, going round and round with terrific energy, getting nowhere. The music had become an external thing, too, and she observed the perspiring musicians working wearily, with glances at the clock.

"Funny," she said at length.

"What?"

"All these people—and me, too—doing this kind of thing. We don't get anything out of it. What do we do it for?"

"Oh, safety-valve. Watts discovered the steam-engine on the principle." His voice was very tired.

The more she considered the idea, the more her admiration for him grew. She was not in the least afraid of him now; she was eager to talk to him. Her hand went out detainingly when he rose, but he disregarded it. "So long," he said carelessly, and she saw that, absorbed in some preoccupation, he hardly knew that she was there. She let him go and sat turning an empty glass between her fingers, lost in speculations concerning him. Though she spent many of her evenings at the beach during several weeks, she did not see him again, and she heard one night that he had gone broke and left town.

She could not believe that disaster had conquered him. That last meeting and his disappearance had increased the charm he had for her. Her mind recurred to him, drawn by an irresistible fascination. She had only to brood on the memory of him for a moment and a thrill ran through her body. It could not be that she loved him. Why, she did not even know him.

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