CHAPTER VII
She woke with a start at the sound of the alarm. Her sleep had not refreshed her. Her body felt wooden, and there was a gritty sensation behind her eyeballs. Dressing and hurrying to the office was like a nightmare in which a tremendous effort accomplishes nothing. The office routine steadied her. She booked the night messages, laying wet tissue paper over them, running them through the copying-machine, addressing their envelopes, sending out messenger-boys, settling their disputes over long routes. Everything was as usual; the sunshine streamed in through the plate-glass front of the office; customers came and went; the telephone rang; the instruments clicked. Her holiday was gone as if she had dreamed it. There remained only the recurring sting of Mrs. Campbell's words, and a determination to leave her house.
She tried several times to talk to Mr. Roberts. But he was in a black mood. He walked past her without saying good-morning, and over the question of a delayed message his voice snapped like a whip-lash. She saw that some obscure fury was working in him and that he would grant no favors until it had worn itself out. Perhaps he would be in a better humor later. She must ask him for some money before night.
In the lull just before noon she sat at her table behind the screen, her head on her arms. She did not feel like working at the instrument. Mr. McCormick was lounging against the front counter, talking to Mr. Roberts, who sat at his desk. They would take care of any customers; for a moment she could rest and try to think.
"Miss Davies!"
"Yes, sir!" She leaped to her feet. Mr. Roberts' tone was dangerous. Had she forgotten a message?
"I'd like to show you the batteries. Come with me."
"Oh, thank you! I'd like to see them." She tried by the cheerfulness of her voice to make his frown relax.
She followed him gingerly down the stairway to the basement. The batteries stood in great rows on racks of shelves, big glass jars rimmed with poisonous-looking green and yellow stains, filled with discolored water and pieces of rotting metal. A failing electric-light bulb illuminated their dusty ranks, and dimly showed black beams and cobwebs overhead.
"It's awfully good of you to take so much trouble," she began gratefully.
"Cut that out! How long're you going to think you're making a damn fool of me?" Mr. Roberts turned on her suddenly a face that terrified her. Words choked in his throat. He caught her wrist, and she felt his whole body shaking. "You—you—damned little—" The rows of glass jars spun around her. She hardly understood the words he flung at her. "Coming here with your big eyes, playing me for all you're worth, acting innocence! D'you think you've fooled me a minute? D'you think I haven't seen through your little game? How long d'you think I'm going to stand for it—say?"
"Let me go," she said, panting.
She steadied herself against the end of a rack, where his furious gesture flung her. They faced each other in the close space, breathing hard. "I don't know—what you mean," she said. Her world was going to pieces under her feet.
"You know damn well what I mean. Don't keep on lying to me. You can't put it over. I know where you were last night." His face was contorted again. "Yes, and all the other nights, all the time you've been kidding yourself you were making a fool of me. I know all about it. Get that? I know what you were before I ever gave you a job. What d'you suppose I gave it to you for? So you could run around on the outside, laughing at me?"
"Wait—oh, please—"
"I've done all the listening to you I'm going to do. You're going to do something besides talk from now on. I'm not a boy you can twist around your finger. I don't care how cute you are."
"I don't—want to. I only—want to get away," she said. She still faced him, for she could not hide her face without taking her eyes from him, and she was afraid to do that. When the silence continued she began to drop into it small disjointed phrases. "I didn't know, I thought you were so good to me. We couldn't help the boat being late. Please, please, just let me go away. I was only trying to learn to telegraph. I thought I was doing so well."
She felt, then, that he was no longer angry, and turning against the cobwebbed boards, she covered her face with her arms and cried. She hated herself for doing it; but she could not help it. Every instant she tried to stop, and very soon she was able to do so. When she lifted her head Mr. Roberts was gone.
She waited a while among the uncaring battery jars, steadying herself, and wiping her face with her handkerchief. When she forced herself to climb up into the daylight again there was no one in the office but McCormick, who sat at the San Francisco wire, gazing into space, whistling "Life's a funny proposition after all," while the disregarded sounder clattered fretfully, calling him.
Of course she would leave the office. She put on her hat and did so at once, but when she was out in the sunlight, with the eyes of passers-by upon her, she could do nothing but writhe among her thoughts like a flayed thing among nettles. The side streets were better than the others, for there fewer people could see her. If it were only night, so she could crawl unobserved into some corner and die.
It was a long time before she realized that her body was aching and that she was limping on painful feet. She had reached a street in some residence sub-division, where cement sidewalks ran through tangles of last year's weeds, and little cottages stood forlornly at long intervals. She stumbled over an expanse of dry stubble and green grass and sat down. She could not suffer any more. It was good to sit in the warm sunshine, to be alone. Life was vile. She shrank from it with sick loathing. She had been so hurt that she no longer felt pain, but her soul was nauseated.
There was no refuge into which she could crawl. There was no time to heal her bruises, no one to help her bear them. The afternoon was almost gone. At the house there was Mrs. Campbell, at the office—she could get more money from her mother and go home to stay. She owed her mother a hundred dollars—months of privation and heartbreaking work. She could not shudder away from the hideousness of life at such a cost to others. Somehow she must find strength in herself to stand up, to go on, to do something.
Mr. Roberts' recommendation was necessary before she could get another telegraph job. She did not know how to do anything else. She owed him ten dollars, which must be paid. Paul—shamed blood rose in her cheeks when her thoughts touched him. She must face this thing alone.
In the depths of her mind she felt a hardness growing. All her finer sensibilities, hurt beyond bearing, were concealing themselves beneath a coarser hardihood. Her chin went up, her lips set, her eyes narrowed unconsciously.
After a long time she rose, brushing dead grass-stalks from her skirt, and started back to town. A street-car carried her there quickly. On the way she remembered that she should eat, and thought of Mrs. Brown. The half-punched meal-ticket was still in her purse. She had shivered at the thought of ever seeing Mrs. Brown again, and many times she had intended to throw away the bit of paste-board, but she had not been able to do so because it represented food.
She got off the car at the corner nearest the little restaurant, and forced herself to its doors. It was closed and empty, and a "For Rent" sign was glued to the dirty window. Under her quick relief there was a sense of triumph. She had made herself go there, at least.
In a dairy-lunch she drank a cup of coffee and swallowed a sandwich. Then she went back to the telegraph-office.
She held her head high and walked steadily, as she might have gone to her own execution. She felt that something within her was being crushed to death, something clean and fine and sensitive, which must die before she could make herself face Mr. Roberts again. She opened the office door and went in.
Mr. Roberts was at one of the wires. McCormick, frowning, was booking messages at her high desk. She hung her hat in the cabinet and took the pen from his hand.
"Well, Little Bright-eyes, welcome to our city!" he exclaimed in his usual manner, but she saw that he was nervous, disturbed by the sense of tension in the air.
"After this you're going to call me Miss Davies," she said, folding a message into an envelope. She struck the bell for the next messenger-boy. Well, she had been able to do that.
It was harder to approach Mr. Roberts. She did not know whether she most shrank from him, despised him, or feared him, but her heart fluttered and she felt ill when he came through the railing into the office and sat down at his desk. She went over the day's bookings, and checked up the messenger books without seeing them, until her hatred of her cowardice grew into a kind of courage. Then she went over to his desk.
"Mr. Roberts," she said clearly. "I'm not any of the things you called me." Her cheeks, her forehead, even her neck, were burning painfully. "I'm a perfectly decent girl."
"Well, there's no use making such a fuss about it," he mumbled, searching among his papers for one which apparently was not there.
"I wouldn't stay, only I owe you ten dollars and I've got to have a job. You know that. It was all the truth I told you, about having to work. I got to stay here—"
"How do you know I'm going to let you?" he said, stung.
"I'm a good clerk. You can't get another as good any cheaper." She found herself on the defensive and struck wildly. "You ought to anyway let me keep the job, to make up—"
"That'll do," he said harshly. Turning away from her he caught McCormick's eye, which dropped quickly to the message he was sending. "Go take those messages off the hook and get them out, if you want a job so bad."
She obeyed. It startled her to find she was meeting McCormick's grin with a little twisted smile almost as cynical. What she wanted to do was to scream.
Late that afternoon she was leaning on the front counter, watching people go by outside the plate-glass windows and wondering what was the truth about them, when she felt McCormick's gaze upon her. He came a step closer, putting his elbow on the counter beside hers, and spoke confidentially.
"Well, I guess you got the old man buffaloed, all right."
"I wish you'd leave me alone," she said in a hard, clear voice.
"Oh, what's the use of getting sore? You're a plucky little devil. I like you." He spoke meditatively, as if considering impersonally his sensations. "Made a killing at poker last night," he went on. When she did not answer, "There's no string tied to a little loan."
But this, even with the flash of hope it offered, was too much to be borne.
"Go away!" she cried. He strolled back to the wires, whistling.
She was checking up the last undelivered message at six o'clock and telling herself that she must go back to Mrs. Campbell's for the night, when Mr. Roberts laid a telegram on the desk beside her. "I'll try to keep the office going without your assistance," he said with an attempt at sarcasm. "Don't bother about me. Just get out."
The flowing operator's script danced before her eyes. She read it twice. "See your service this afternoon. Can offer Miss Davies night duty St. Francis hotel forty-five dollars a month report immediately.Bryant, Mgr."
"San Francisco?" she stammered, incredulous, gazing at the SF date-line. Across the yellow sheet she looked at Mr. Roberts, seeing in his eyes a dislike that was almost hatred. "I'll go to-night," she said. "I think everything's in order. That Ramsey message was out twice."
When he had gone, she borrowed ten dollars from McCormick, promising to return it at the end of the month. She hardly resented his elaborately kissing the money good-by, and holding her hand when he gave it to her. But she spent twenty-five cents of it to send a message from the station to Paul, though McCormick would have sent it for her as a note, costing nothing.