CHAPTER VI
When the train pulled into the big, dingy station Helen had been waiting for some time, her pulses fluttering with excitement. But her self-confidence deserted her when she saw the crowds pouring from the cars. She shrank back into the wailing-room doorway; and she saw Paul before his eager eyes found her.
It was a shock to find that he had changed, too. Something boyish was gone from his face, and his self-confident walk, his prosperous appearance in a new suit, gave her the chill sensation that she was about to meet a stranger. She braced herself for the effort, and when they shook hands she felt that hers was cold.
"You're looking well," she said shyly.
"Well, so are you," he answered. They walked down the platform together, and she saw that he carried a new suitcase, and that even his shoes were new and shining. However, these details were somewhat offset by her perception that he was feeling awkward, too.
"Where shall we go?" They hesitated, looking at each other, and in their smile the strangeness vanished.
"I don't care. Anywhere, if you're along," he said. "Oh, Helen, it sure is great to see you again! You look like a million dollars, too." His approving eye was upon her new clothes.
"I'm glad you like them," she said, radiant. "That's an awfully nice suit, Paul." Happiness came back to her in a flood and putting out her hand, she picked a bit of thread from his dear sleeve. "Well, where shall we go?"
"We'll get something to eat first," he said practically. "I'm about starved, aren't you?" She had not thought of eating.
They breakfasted in a little restaurant on waffles and sausages and coffee. The hot food was delicious, and the waiter in the soiled white apron grinned understandingly while he served them. Paul gave him fifteen cents, in an off-hand manner, and she thrilled at his careless prodigality and his air of knowing his way about.
The whole long day lay before them, bright with limitless possibilities. They left the suitcase with the cashier of the restaurant and walked slowly down the street, embarrassed by the riches of time that were theirs. Helen suggested that they walk awhile in the capitol grounds; she had supposed they would do that, and perhaps in the afternoon enjoy a car-ride to Oak Park. But Paul dismissed these simple pleasures with a word.
"Nothing like that," he said. "I want a real celebration, a regular blow-out. I've been saving up for it a long time." He struggled with this conscience. "It won't do any harm to miss church one Sunday. Let's take a boat down the river."
"Oh, Paul!" She was dazzled. "But—I don't know—won't it be awfully expensive?"
"I don't care how much it costs," he replied recklessly. "Come on. It'll be fun."
They went down the shabby streets toward the river, and even the dingy tenements and broken sidewalks of the Japanese quarter seemed to them to have a holiday air. They laughed about the queer little shops and the restaurant windows, where electric lights still burned in the clear daylight over pallid pies and strange-looking cakes. Helen must stop to speak to the straight-haired, flat-faced Japanese babies who sat stolidly on the curbs, looking at her with enigmatic, slant eyes, and she saw romance in the groups of tall Hindoo laborers, with their bearded, black faces and gaily colored turbans.
It was like going into a foreign land together, she said, and even Paul was momentarily caught by the enchantment she saw in it all, though he did not conceal his detestation of these foreigners. "We're going to see to it we don't have them in our town," he said, already with the air of a proprietor in Ripley.
"Now this is something like!" he exclaimed when he had helped Helen across the gang-plank and deposited her safely on the deck of the steamer. Helen, pressing his arm with her fingers, was too happy to speak. The boat was filling with people in holiday clothes; everywhere about her was the exciting stir of departure, calls, commands, the thump of boxes being loaded on the deck below. A whistle sounded hoarsely, the engines were starting, sending a thrill through the very planks beneath her feet.
"We'd better get a good place up in front," said Paul. He took her through the magnificence of a large room furnished with velvet chairs, past a glimpse of shining white tables and white-clad waiters, to a seat whence they could gaze down the yellow river. She was appalled by his ease and assurance. She looked at him with an admiration which she would not allow to lessen even when the boat edged out into the stream and, turning, revealed that he had led her to the stern deck.
Her enthusiastic suggestion that they explore the boat aided Paul's attempt to conceal his chagrin, and she listened enthralled to his explanations of all they saw. He estimated the price of the crates of vegetables and chickens piled on the lower deck, on their way to the city from the upper river farms. It was his elaborate description of the engines that caught the attention of a grimy engineer who had emerged from the noisy depths for a breath of air, and the engineer, turning on them a quizzically friendly gaze, was easily persuaded to take them into the engine-room.
Helen could not understand his explanations, but she was interested because Paul was, and found her own thrill in the discovery of a dim tank half filled with flopping fish, scooped from the river and flung there by the paddle wheel. "We take 'em home and eat 'em, miss," said the engineer, and she pictured their cool lives in the green river, and the city supper-tables at which they would be eaten. She was fascinated by the multitudinous intricacies of life, even on that one small boat.
It was a disappointment to find, when they returned again to the upper decks, that they could see nothing but green levee banks on each side of the river. But this led to an even more exciting discovery, for venturesomely climbing a slender iron ladder they saw beyond the western levee an astounding and incredible stretch of water where land should be. Their amazement emboldened Paul to tap on the glass wall of a small room beside them, in which they saw an old man peacefully smoking his pipe. He proved to be the pilot, who explained that it was flood water they saw, and who let them squeeze into his tiny quarters and stay while he told long tales of early days on the river, of floods in which whole settlements were swept away at night, of women and children rescued from floating roofs, of cows found drowned in tree-tops, and droves of hogs that cut their own throats with their hoofs while swimming. Listening to him while the boat slowly chugged down the curves of the sunlit river, Helen felt the romance of living, the color of all the millions of obscure lives in the world.
"Isn't everything interesting!" she cried, giving Paul's arm an excited little squeeze as they walked along the main deck again. "Oh, I'd like to live all the lives that ever were lived! Think of those women and the miners and people in cities and everything!"
"I expect you'd find it pretty inconvenient before you got through," Paul said. "Gee, but you're awfully pretty, Helen," he added irrelevantly, and they forgot everything except that they were together.
They had to get off at Lancaster in order to catch the afternoon boat back to Sacramento. There was just time to eat on board, Paul said, and overruling her flurried protests he led her into the white-painted dining-room. The smooth linen, the shining silver, and the imposing waiters confused her; she was able to see nothing but the prices on the elaborate menu-cards, and they were terrifying. Paul himself was startled by them, and she could see worried calculation in his eyes. She felt that she should pay her share; she was working, too, and earning money. The memory of the office, the advance she had drawn on her wages, her uncomfortable existence in Mrs. Campbell's house, passed through her mind like a shadow. But it was gone in an instant, and she sat happily at the white table, eating small delicious sandwiches and drinking milk, smiling across immaculate linen at Paul. For a moment she played with the fancy that it was a honeymoon trip, and a thrill ran along her nerves.
They were at Lancaster before they knew it. There was a moment of flurried haste, and they stood on the levee, watching the boat push off and disappear beyond a wall of willows. A few lounging Japanese looked at them with expressionless, slant eyes, pretending not to understand Paul's inquiries until his increasing impatience brought from them in clear English the information that the afternoon boat was late. It might be along about five o'clock, they thought.
"Well, that'll get us back in time for my train," Paul decided. "Let's look around a little."
The levee road was a tunnel of willow-boughs, floored with soft sand in which their feet made no sound. They walked in an enchanted stillness, through pale light, green as sea-water, drowsy, warm, and scented with the breath of unseen flowers. Through the thin wall of leaves they caught glimpses of the broad river, the yellow waves of which gave back the color of the sky in flashes of metallic blue. And suddenly, stepping out of the perfumed shadow, they saw the orchards. A sea of petals, fragile, translucent, unearthly as waves of pure rosy light, rippled at their feet.
The loveliness of it filled Helen's eyes with tears. "Oh!" she said, softly. "Oh—Paul!" Her hand went out blindly toward him. One more breath of magic would make the moment perfect. She did not know what she wanted, but her whole being was a longing for it. "Oh, Paul!"
"Pears, by Jove!" he cried. "Hundreds of acres, Helen! They're the tops of trees! We're looking down at 'em! Look at the river. Why, the land's fifteen feet below water-level. Did you ever see anything like it?" Excitement shook his voice. "There must be a way to get down there. I want to see it!" He almost ran along the edge of the levee, Helen had to hurry to keep beside him. She did not know why she should be hurt because Paul was interested in the orchards. She was the first to laugh about going down-stairs to farm when they found the wooden steps on the side of the levee.
But she felt rebuffed and almost resentful. She listened abstractedly to Paul's talk about irrigation and the soil. He crumbled handfuls of it between his fingers while they walked between the orchard rows, and his opinion led to a monologue on the soil around Ripley and the fight the farmers were making to get water on it. He was conservative about the project; it might pay, and it might not. But if it did, a man who bought some cheap land now would make a good thing out of it. It occurred to her suddenly to wonder about the girls in Ripley. There must be some; Paul had never written about them. She thought about it for some time before she was able to bring the talk to the point where she could ask about them.
"Girls?" Paul said. "Sure, there are. I don't pay much attention to them, though. I see them in church, and they're at the Aid Society suppers, of course. They seem pretty foolish to me. Why, I never noticed whether they were pretty, or not." Enlightenment dawned upon him. "I'll tell you; they don't seem to talk about anything much. You're the only girl I ever struck that I could really talk to. I—I've been awfully lonesome, thinking about you."
"Really truly?" she said, looking up at him. The sunlight fell across her white dress, and stray pink petals fluttered slowly downward around her. "Have you really been lonesome for me, too?" She swayed toward him, ever so little, and he put his arms around her.
He did love her. A great contentment flowed through her. To be in his arms again was to be safe and rested and warm after ages of racking effort in the cold. He was thinking only of her now. His arms crushed her against him; she felt the roughness of his coat under her cheek. He was stammering love-words, kissing her hair, her cheeks, her lips.
"Oh, Paul, I love you, I love you, I love you!" she said, her arms around his neck.
Much later they found a little nook under the willows on the levee bank and sat there with the river rippling at their feet, his arm around her, her head on his shoulder. They talked a little then. Paul told her again all about Ripley, but she did not mind. "When we're married—" said Paul, and the rest of the sentence did not matter.
"And I'm going to help you," she said. "Because I'm telegraphing now, too. I'll be earning as much—almost as much, as you do. We can live over the depot—"
"We will not!" said Paul. "We'll have a house. I don't know that I'm crazy about my wife working."
"Oh, but I do want to help! A house would be nice. Oh, Paul, with rose-bushes in the yard!"
"And a horse and buggy, so we can go riding Sunday afternoons."
"Besides, if I'm making money—"
"I know. We wouldn't have to wait so long."
She flushed. It was what she meant, but she did not want to think so. "I didn't—I don't—"
"Of course there's mother. And I want to feel that I can support—"
She felt the magic departing.
"Never mind!" The tiniest of cuddling movements brought his arms tight around her again.
"Oh, sweetheart, sweetheart, you're worth it!" he cried. "I'd wait for you!"
They were startled when they noticed the shadows under the trees. They had not dreamed it was so late. She smoothed her hair and pinned on her hat with trembling fingers, and they raced for the landing. The river was an empty stretch of dirty gray lapping dusky banks. There was no one at the landing.
"It must be way after five o'clock. I wish I had a watch. The boat couldn't have gone by without our seeing it?" The suggestion drained the color from their cheeks. They looked at each other with wide eyes. "It couldn't have possibly! Let's ask."
The little town was no more than half a dozen old wooden buildings facing the levee. A store, unlighted and locked, a harness shop, also locked, two dark warehouses, a saloon. She waited in the shadow of it while he went in to inquire. He came out almost immediately.
"No, the boat hasn't gone. They don't know when it'll get here. No one there but a few Japanese."
They walked uncertainly back to the landing and stood gazing at the darkening river. "I suppose there's no knowing when it will get here? There's no other way of getting back?"
"No, there's no railroad. Ihavegot you into a scrape!"
"It's all right. It wasn't your fault," she hastened to say.
They walked up and down, waiting. Darkness came slowly down upon them. The river breeze grew colder. Stars appeared.
"Chilly?"
"A little," she said through chattering teeth.
He took off his coat and wrapped it around her, despite her protests. They found a sheltered place on the bank and huddled together, shivering. A delicious sleepiness stole over her, and the lap-lap of the water, the whispering of the leaves, the warmth of Paul's shoulder under her cheek, all became like a dream.
"Comfortable, dear?"
"Mmmmhuh," she murmured. "You?"
"You bet your life!" She roused a little to meet his kiss. The night became dreamlike again.
"Helen?"
"What!"
"Seems to me we've been here a long time. What'll we do? We can't stay here till morning."
"I don't—know—why not. All night—under the stars—"
"But listen. What if the boat comes by and doesn't stop? There isn't any light."
She sat up then, rubbing the drowsiness from her eyes.
"Well, let's make a fire. Got any matches?"
He always carried them, to light the switch-lamps in Ripley. They hunted dry branches and driftwood and coaxed a flickering blaze alive. "It's like being stranded on a desert island!" she laughed. His eyes adored her, crouching with disheveled hair in the leaping yellow light. "You're certainly game," he said. "I—I think you're the pluckiest girl in the world. And when I think what a fool I am to get you into this!"
There came like an echo down the river the hoarse whistle of the boat. A moment later it was upon them, looming white and gigantic, its lights cutting swaths in the darkness as it edged in to the landing. Struggling to straighten her hat, to tuck up her hair, to brush the sand from her skirt, Helen stumbled aboard with Paul's hand steadying her.
The blaze of the salon lights hurt their eyes, but warmth and security relaxed tired muscles. The room was empty, its carpet swept, the velvet chairs neatly in place.
"Funny, I thought there'd be a lot of passengers," Paul wondered aloud. He found a cushion, tucked it behind Helen's head, and sat down beside her. "Well, we're all right now. We'll be in Sacramento pretty soon."
"Don't let's think about it," she said with quivering lips. "I hate to have it all end, such a lovely day. It'll be such a long time—"
He held her hand tightly.
"Not so awfully long. I'm not going to stand for it." He spoke firmly, but his eyes were troubled. She did not answer, and they sat looking at the future while the boat jolted on toward the moment of their parting.
"Damn being poor!" The word startled her as a blow would have done. Paul, so sincerely and humbly a church member—Paul swearing! He went on without a pause. "If I had a little money, if I only had a little money! What right has it got to make such a difference? Oh, Helen, you don't know how I want you!"
"Paul, Paul dear, you mustn't!" Her hand was crushed against his face, his shoulders shook. She drew his dear, tousled head against her shoulder.
"Don't, dear, don't! Please."
He pushed away from her and got up. She let him go, shielding his embarrassment even from her own eyes. "I seem to be making a fool of myself generally," he said shakily. He walked about the room, looking with an appearance of interest at the pictures on the walls. "It's funny there aren't more people on board," he said conversationally after a while. "Well, I guess I'll go see what time we get in." He came back five minutes later, an odd expression on his face.
"Look here, Helen," he said gruffly. "We won't get in for hours. Something wrong with the engines. They're only making half time. I—ah—I don't know why I didn't think of it before. You've got to work to-morrow and all. The man suggested—"
"Well, for goodness' sake, suggested what?"
"Everybody else has berths," he said. "You better let me get you one, because there's no sense in your sitting up all night. There's no knowing when we'll get in."
"But, Paul, I hate to have you spend so much. I could sleep a little right here." A vision of the office went through her mind, and she saw herself, sleepy-eyed, struggling to get messages into the right envelopes and trying to manage the unmanageable messenger-boys. She was tired. But it would be awfully expensive, no doubt. "And besides, I'd rather stay here with you," she said.
"So would I. But we might as well be sensible. You've got to work, and I'd probably go to sleep, too. Come on, let's see how much it is, anyhow."
They found the right place after wandering twice around the boat. A weary man sat behind the half-door, adding up a column of figures. "Berths? Sure. Outside, of course. One left. Dollar and a half." His expectation brought the money, as if automatically, from Paul's pocket. He came out, yawning, a key with a dangling tag in his hand. "This way."
They followed him down the corridor. Matters seemed to be taken from their hands. He stepped out on the dark deck.
"Careful there, better give your wife a hand over those ropes," he cautioned over his shoulder, and they heard the sound of a key in a lock. An oblong of light appeared; he stepped out again to let them pass him. They went in. "There's towels. Everything all right, I guess," he said cheerfully. "Good-night."
Their eyes met for one horrified second. Embarrassment covered them both like a flame. "I—Helen! You don't think—?" They swayed uncertainly in the narrow space between berths and wash-stand. Did the boat jolt so or was it the beating of her heart?
"Paul, did you hear? How could—?"
"I guess I better go now," he said. He fumbled with the door. "Good-night."
"Good-night." She felt suddenly forlorn. But he was not gone. "Helen? It might be true. We might be married!"
She clung to him.
"We can't! We couldn't! Oh, Paul, I love you so!"
"We can be married—we will be—just as soon as we get to Sacramento." His kisses smothered her. "The very first thing in the morning! We'll manage somehow. I'll always love you just as much. Helen, what's the matter? Look at me. Darling!"
"We can't," she gasped. "I'd be spoiling everything for you. Your mother and me and everything on your hands, and you're just getting started. You'd hate me after a while. No, no, no!"
They stumbled apart.
"What am I saying?" he said hoarsely, and she turned away from him, hiding her face.
A rush of cold moist air blew in upon her from the open doorway. He was gone. She got the door shut, and sat down on the edge of the berth. A cool breeze flowed in like water through the shutters of the windows; she felt the throbbing of the engines. Even through her closed lids she could not bear the light, and after a while she turned it out, trembling, and lay open-eyed in the darkness.
The stopping of the boat struck her aching nerves like a blow. She sat up, neither asleep nor awake, pushing her hair back from a face that seemed sodden and lifeless. A pale twilight filled the stateroom. She smoothed her hair, straightened her crumpled dress as well as she could, and went out on the deck. The boat lay at the Sacramento landing.
A few feet away Paul was leaning upon the railing, his face pale and haggard in the cold light As she went toward him the events of the night danced fantastically through her brain, as grotesque and feverish as images in a dream.
"You don't hate me, do you, Helen?" he pleaded hopelessly.
"Of course not," she said. Through her weariness she felt a stirring of pity. For the first time in her life she told herself to smile, and did it. "We'd better be getting off, hadn't we?"
The grayness of dawn was in the air, paling the street-lights. A few workmen passed them, plodding stolidly, carrying lunch-pails and tools; a baker's wagon rattled by, awakening loud echoes. She tried to comfort Paul, whose talk was one long self-reproach.
He hoped she would not get into a row with the folks where she stayed. If she did, she must let him know; he wouldn't stand for anything like that. She could reach him in Masonville till Saturday; then he would come down again on his way home. He hadn't thought he could stop on the way back, but he would. He'd be worried about her until he saw her again and was sure everything was all right. He had been an awful boob not to be sure about the boat; he'd never forgive himself if—
"What is it?" he broke off. She had turned to look after a young man who passed them. The motion was almost automatic; she had hardly seen the man and not until he was past did her tired mind register an impression of a cynically smiling eye.
"Nothing," she said. She had been right; it was McCormick. But it would require too much effort to talk about him.
The blinds of Mrs. Campbell's house were still down when they reached it. The tight roll of the morning paper lay on the porch. She would have to ring, of course, to get in. They faced each other on the damp cement walk, the freshness of the dewy lawns about them.
"Well, good-by."
"Good-by." They felt constrained in the daylight, under the blank stare of the windows. Their hands clung. "You really aren't mad at me, Helen, about anything?"
"Of course I'm not. Nothing's happened that wasn't as much my fault as it was yours."
"You'll let me know?"
She promised, though she had no intention of troubling him with her problems. It was not his fault that the boat was late, and she had gone as gladly as he. "Don't bother about it. I'll be all right. Good-by."
"Good-by." Still their fingers clung together. She felt a rush of tenderness toward him.
"Don't look so worried, you dear!" Quickly, daringly, she leaned toward him and brushed a butterfly's wing of a kiss upon his sleeve. Then, embarrassed, she ran up the steps.
"See you Saturday," he called in a jubilant undertone. She watched his stocky figure until it turned the corner. Then she rang the bell. There was time for the momentary glow to depart, leaving her weak and chilly, before Mrs. Campbell opened the door. She said nothing. Her eyes, her tight lips, her manner of drawing her dressing-gown back from Helen's approach, spoke her thoughts. Explanations would be met with scornful unbelief.
Helen held her head high and countered silence with silence. But before she reached her room she heard Mrs. Campbell's voice, high-pitched and cutting, speaking to her husband.
"Brazen as you please! You're right. The only thing to do's to put her out of this house before we have a scandal on our hands. That's what I get for taking her in, out of charity!"
Helen shut her door softly. She would leave the house that very day. The battered alarm clock pointed to half-past five. Three hours before she could do anything. She undressed mechanically, half-formed plans rushing through her mind. No money, next month's wages spent for these crumpled clothes. She could telegraph her mother, but she must not alarm her. Why hadn't she thought of borrowing something from Paul? There was Mr. Roberts, but she could never make up more money. Perhaps he would advance the raise he had promised. Her brain was working with hectic rapidity. She saw in flashes rooming-houses, the office, Mr. Roberts. She thought out every detail of long conversations, heard her own voice explaining, arguing, promising, thanking.