'You won't make an out-and-out idiot of yourself, will you Ursula?'"You won't make an out-and-out idiot of yourself, will you Ursula?"
The brother and sister dined alone. Clayton was, finding his club a more comfortable place than his home, in those days of his wife's disillusionment and hesitation about the future. Many weak creatures are curiously armed for the unequal conflict of existence—some with fleetness of foot, some with a pole-cat weapon of malignance, some with porcupine quills, some with a 'possumlike instinct for "playing dead." Of these last was Fitzhugh. He knew when to be silent, when to keep out of the way, when to "sit tight" and wait. His wife had discovered that he was a fool—that he perhaps owed more to his tailor than to any other single factor for the success of his splendid pose of the thorough gentleman. Yet she did not realize what an utter fool he was, so clever had he been in the use of the art of discreet silence. Norman suspected him, but could not believe a human being capable of such fathomless vacuity as he found whenever he tried to explore his brother-in-law's brain.
After dinner Norman took Ursula to the opera, to join the Seldins, and after the first act went to Josephine, who had come with only a deaf old aunt. Josephine loved music, and to hear an opera from a box one must be alone. Norman entered as the lights went up. It always gave him a feeling of dilation, this spectacle of material splendor—the women, whose part it is throughout civilization to-day to wear for public admiration and envy the evidences of the prowess of the males to whom they belong. A truer version of Dr. Holmes's aphorism would be that it takes several generations in oil to make a deep-dyed snob—wholly to destroy a man's or a woman's point of view, sense of the kinship of all flesh, and to make him or her over into the genuine believer in caste and worshiper of it. For all his keenness of mind, of humor, Norman had the fast-dyed snobbishness of his family and friends. He knew that caste was silly, that such displays as this vulgar flaunting of jewels and costly dresses were in atrocious bad taste. But it is one thing to know, another thing to feel; and his feeling was delight in the spectacle, pride in his own high rank in the aristocracy.
His eyes rested with radiant pleasure on the girl he was to marry. And she was indeed a person to appeal to the passion of pride. Simply and most expensively dressed in pearl satin, with only a little jewelry, she sat in the front of her parterre box, a queen by right of her father's wealth, her family's position, her own beauty. She was a large woman—tall, a big frame but not ungainly. She had brilliant dark eyes, a small proud head set upon shoulders that were slenderly young now and, even when they should became matronly, would still be beautiful. She had good teeth, an exquisite smile, the gentle good humor of those who, comfortable themselves, would not have the slightest objection to all others being equally so. Because she laughed appreciatively and repeated amusingly she had great reputation for wit. Because she industriously picked up from men a plausible smatter of small talk about politics, religion, art and the like, she was renowned as clever verging on profound. And she believed herself both witty and wise—as do thousands, male and female, with far less excuse.
She had selected Norman for the same reason that he had selected her; each recognized the other as the "grand prize." Pity is not nearly so close kin to love as is the feeling that the other person satisfies to the uttermost all one's pet vanities. It would have been next door to impossible for two people so well matched not to find themselves drawn to each other and filled with sympathy and the sense of comradeship, so far as there can be comradeship where two are driving luxuriously along the way of life, with not a serious cause for worry. People without half the general fitness of these two for each other have gone through to the end, regarding themselves and regarded as the most devoted of lovers. Indeed, they were lovers. Only one of those savage tests, to which in all probability they would never be exposed, would or could reveal just how much, or how little, that vague, variable word lovers meant when applied to them.
As their eyes met, into each pair leaped the fine, exalted light of pride in possession. "This wonderful woman is mine!" his eyes said. And her eyes answered, "And you—you most wonderful of men—you are mine!" It always gave each of them a thrill like intoxication to meet, after a day's separation. All the joy of their dazzling good fortune burst upon them afresh.
"I'll venture you haven't thought of me the whole day," said she as he dropped to the chair behind her.
It was a remark she often made—to give him the opportunity to say, "I've thought of little else, I'm sorry to say—I, who have a career to look after." He made the usual answer, and they smiled happily at each other. "And you?" he said.
"Oh, I? What else has a woman to think about?"
Her statement was as true as his was false. He was indeed all she had to think about—all worth wasting the effort of thought upon. But he—though he did not realize it—had thought of her only in the incidental way in which an ambition-possessed man must force himself to think of a woman. The best of his mind was commandeered to his career. An amiable but shakily founded theory that it was "our" career enabled him to say without sense of lying that his chief thought had been she.
"How those men down town would poke fun at you," said she, "if they knew you had me with you all the time, right beside you."
This amused him. "Still, I suspect there are lots of men who'd be exposed in the same way if there were a general and complete show-down."
"Sometimes I wish I really were with you—working with you—helping you. You have girls—a girl—to be your secretary—or whatever you call it—don't you?"
"You should have seen the one I had to-day. But there's always something pathetic about every girl who has to make her own living."
"Pathetic!" protested Miss Burroughs. "Not at all. I think it's fine."
"You wouldn't say that if you had tried it."
"Indeed, I should," she declared with spirit. "You men are entirely too soft about women. You don't realize how strong they are. And, of course, women don't resist the temptation to use their sex when they see how easy it is to fool men that way. The sad thing about it is that the woman who gets along by using her sex and by appealing to the soft-heartedness of men never learns to rely on herself. She's likely to come to grief sooner or later."
"There's truth in all that," said Norman. "Enough to make it dangerously unjust. There's so much lying done about getting on that it's no wonder those who've never tried to do for themselves get a wholly false notion of the situation. It is hard—bitterly hard—for a man to get on. Most men don't. Most men? All but a mere handful. And if those who do get on were to tell the truth—thewholetruth—about how they succeeded—well, it'd not make a pleasant story."
"Butyou'vegot on," retorted the girl.
"So I have. And how?" Norman smiled with humorous cynicism. "I'll never tell—not all—only the parts that sound well. And those parts are the least important. However, let's not talk about that. What I set out to say was that, while it's hard for a man to make a decent living—unless he has luck—and harder still—much harder—for him to rise to independence——"
"It wasn't so dreadfully hard foryou," interrupted Josephine, looking at him with proud admiration. "But then, you had a wonderful brain."
"That wasn't what did it," replied he. "And, in spite of all my advantages—friendships, education, enough money to tide me over the beginnings—in spite of all that, I had a frightful time. Not the work. Of course, I had to work, but I like that. No, it was the—the maneuvering, let's call it—the hardening process."
"You!" she exclaimed.
"Everyone who succeeds—in active life. You don't understand the system, dear. It's a cutthroat game. It isn't at all what the successful hypocrites describe in their talks to young men!" He laughed. "If I had followed the 'guides to success,' I'd not be here. Oh, yes, I've made terrible sacrifices, but—" his look at her made her thrill with exaltation—"it was worth doing. . . . I understand and sympathize with those who scorn to succeed. But I'm glad I happened not to be born with their temperament, at least not with enough of it to keep me down."
"You're too hard on yourself, too generous to the failures."
"Oh, I don't mean the men who were too lazy to do the work or too cowardly to dare the—the unpleasant things. And I'm not hard with myself—only frank. But we were talking of the women. Poor things, what chance have they got? You scorn them for using their sex. Wait till you're drowning, dear, before you criticise another for what he does to save himself when he's sinking for the last time. I used everything I had in making my fight. If I could have got on better or quicker by the aid of my sex, I'd have used that."
"Don't say those things, Fred," cried Josephine, smiling but half in earnest.
"Why not? Aren't you glad I'm here?"
She gave him a long look of passionate love and lowered her eyes.
"At whatever cost?"
"Yes," she said in a low voice. "But I'msureyou exaggerate."
"I've done nothingyouwouldn't approve of—or find excuses for. But that's because you—I—all of us in this class—and in most other classes—have been trained to false ideas—no, to perverted ideas—to a system of morality that's twisted to suit the demands of practical life. On Sundays we go to a magnificent church to hear an expensive preacher and choir, go in expensive dress and in carriages, and we never laugh at ourselves. Yet we are going in the name of One who was born in a stable and who said that we must give everything to the poor, and so on."
"But I don't see what we could do about it—" she said hesitatingly.
"We couldn't do anything. Only—don't you see my point?—the difference between theory and practice? Personally, I've no objection—no strong objection—to the practice. All I object to is the lying and faking about it, to make it seem to fit the theory. But we were talking of women—women who work."
"I've no doubt you're right," admitted she. "I suppose they aren't to blame for using their sex. I ought to be ashamed of myself, to sneer at them."
"As a matter of fact, their sex does few of them any good. The reverse. You see, an attractive woman—one who's attractiveasa woman—can skirmish round and find some one to support her. But most of the working women—those who keep on at it—don't find the man. They're not attractive, not even at the start. After they've been at it a few years and lose the little bloom they ever had—why, they've got to take their chances at the game, precisely like a man. Only, they're handicapped by always hoping that they'll be able to quit and become married women. I'd like to see how men would behave if they could find or could imagine any alternative to 'root hog or die.'"
"What's the matter with you this evening, Fred? I never saw you in such a bitter mood."
"We never happened to get on this subject before."
"Oh, yes, we have. And you always have scoffed at the men who fail."
"And I still scoff at them—most of them. A lot of lazy cowards. Or else, so bent on self-indulgence—petty self-indulgence—that they refuse to make the small sacrifice to-day for the sake of the large advantage day after to-morrow. Or else so stuffed with vanity that they never see their own mistakes. However, why blame them? They were born that way, and can't change. A man who has the equipment of success and succeeds has no more right to sneer at one less lucky than you would have to laugh at a poor girl because she wasn't dressed as well as you."
"What a mood!Somethingmust have happened."
"Perhaps," said he reflectively. "Possibly that girl set me off."
"What girl?"
"The one I told you about. The unfortunate little creature who was typewriting for me this afternoon. Not so very little, either. A curious figure she had. She was tall yet she wasn't. She seemed thin, and when you looked again, you saw that she was really only slender, and beautifully shaped throughout."
Miss Burroughs laughed. "She must have been attractive."
"Not in the least. Absolutely without charm—and so homely—no, not homely—commonplace. No, that's not right, either. She had a startling way of fading and blazing out. One moment she seemed a blank—pale, lifeless, colorless, a nobody. The next minute she became—amazingly different. Not the same thing every time, but different things."
Frederick Norman was too experienced a dealer with women deliberately to make the mistake—rather, to commit the breach of tact and courtesy—involved in praising one woman to another. But in this case it never occurred to him that he was talking to a woman of a woman. Josephine Burroughs was a lady; the other was a piece of office machinery—and a very trivial piece at that. But he saw and instantly understood the look in her eyes—the strained effort to keep the telltale upper lip from giving its prompt and irrepressible signal of inward agitation.
"I'm very much interested," said she.
"Yes, she was a curiosity," said he carelessly.
"Has she been there—long?" inquired Josephine, with a feigned indifference that did not deceive him.
"Several months, I believe. I never noticed her until a few days ago. And until to-day I had forgotten her. She's one of the kind it's difficult to remember."
He fell to glancing round the house, pretending to be unconscious of the furtive suspicion with which she was observing him. She said:
"She's your secretary now?"
"Merely a general office typewriter."
The curtain went up for the second act. Josephine fixed her attention on the stage—apparently undivided attention. But Norman felt rather than saw that she was still worrying about the "curiosity." He marveled at this outcropping of jealousy. It seemed ridiculous—itwasridiculous. He laughed to himself. If she could see the girl—the obscure, uninteresting cause of her agitation—how she would mock at herself! Then, too, there was the absurdity of thinking him capable of such a stoop. A woman of their own class—or a woman of its corresponding class, on the other side of the line—yes. No doubt she had heard things that made her uneasy, or, at least, ready to be uneasy. But this poorly dressed obscurity, with not a charm that could attract even a man of her own lowly class—It was such a good joke that he would have teased Josephine about it but for his knowledge of the world—a knowledge in whose primer it was taught that teasing is both bad taste and bad judgment. Also, it was beneath his dignity, it was offense to his vanity, to couple his name with the name of one so beneath him that even the matter of sex did not make the coupling less intolerable.
When the curtain fell several people came into the box, and he went to make a few calls round the parterre. He returned after the second act. They were again alone—the deaf old aunt did not count. At once Josephine began upon the same subject. With studied indifference—how amusing for a woman of her inexperience to try to fool a man of his experience!—she said:
"Tell me some more about that typewriter girl. Women who work always interest me."
"She wouldn't," said Norman. The subject had been driven clean out of his mind, and he didn't wish to return to it. "Some day they will venture to make judicious long cuts in Wagner's operas, and then they'll be interesting. It always amuses me, this reverence of little people for the great ones—as if a great man were always great. No—heisalways great. But often it's in a dull way. And the dull parts ought to be skipped."
"I don't like the opera this evening," said she. "What you said a while ago has set me to thinking. Is that girl a lady?"
"She works," laughed he.
"But she might have been a lady."
"I'm sure I don't know."
"Don't you knowanythingabout her?"
"Except that she's trustworthy—and insignificant and not too good at her business."
"I shouldn't think you could afford to keep incompetent people," said the girl shrewdly.
"Perhaps they won't keep her," parried Norman gracefully. "The head clerk looks after those things."
"He probably likes her."
"No," said Norman, too indifferent to be cautious. "She has no 'gentlemen friends.'"
"How do you know that?" said the girl, and she could not keep a certain sharpness out of her voice.
"Tetlow, the head clerk, told me. I asked him a few questions about her. I had some confidential work to do and didn't want to trust her without being sure."
He saw that she was now prey to her jealous suspicion. He was uncertain whether to be amused or irritated. She had to pause long and with visible effort collect herself before venturing:
"Oh, she does confidential work for you? I thought you said she was incompetent."
He, the expert cross-examiner, had to admire her skill at that high science and art. "I felt sorry for her," he said. "She seemed such a forlorn little creature."
She laughed with a constrained attempt at raillery. "I never should have suspected you of such weakness. To give confidential things to a forlorn little incompetent, out of pity."
He was irritated, distinctly. The whole thing was preposterous. It reminded him of feats of his own before a jury. By clever questioning, Josephine had made about as trifling an incident as could be imagined take on really quite imposing proportions. There was annoyance in his smile as he said:
"Shall I send her up to see you? You might find it amusing, and maybe you could do something for her."
Josephine debated. "Yes," she finally said. "I wish you would send her—" with a little sarcasm—"if you can spare her for an hour or so."
"Don't make it longer than that," laughed he. "Everything will stop while she's gone."
It pleased him, in a way, this discovery that Josephine had such a common, commonplace weakness as jealousy. But it also took away something from his high esteem for her—an esteem born of the lover's idealizings; for, while he was not of the kind of men who are on their knees before women, he did have a deep respect for Josephine, incarnation of all the material things that dazzled him—a respect with something of the reverential in it, and something of awe—more than he would have admitted to himself. To-day, as of old, the image-makers are as sincere worshipers as visit the shrines. In our prostrations and genuflections in the temple we do not discriminate against the idols we ourselves have manufactured; on the contrary, them we worship with peculiar gusto. Norman knew his gods were frauds, that their divine qualities were of the earth earthy. But he served them, and what most appealed to him in Josephine was that she incorporated about all their divine qualities.
He and his sister went home together. Her first remark in the auto was: "What were you and Josie quarreling about?"
"Quarreling?" inquired he in honest surprise.
"I looked at her through my glasses and saw that the was all upset—and you, too."
"This is too ridiculous," cried he.
"She looked—jealous."
"Nonsense! What an imagination you have!"
"I saw what I saw," Ursula maintained. "Well, I suppose she has heard something—something recent. I thought you had sworn off, Fred. But I might have known."
Norman was angry. He wondered at his own exasperation, out of all proportion to any apparent provoking cause. And it was most unusual for him to feel temper, all but unprecedented for him to show it, no matter how strong the temptation.
"It's a good idea, to make her jealous," pursued his sister. "Nothing like jealousy to stimulate interest."
"Josephine is not that sort of woman."
"You know better. All women are that sort. All men, too. Of course, some men and women grow angry and go away when they get jealous while others stick closer. So one has to be judicious."
"Josephine and I understand each other far too well for such pettiness."
"Try her. No, you needn't. You have."
"Didn't I tell you——"
"Then what was she questioning you about?"
"Just to show you how wrong you were, I'll tell you. She was asking me about a poor little girl down at the office—one she wants to help."
Ursula laughed. "To help out of your office, I guess. I thought you'd lived long enough, Fred, to learn that no woman trustsanyman aboutanywoman. Who is this 'poor little girl'?"
"I don't even know her name. One of the typewriters."
"What made Josephine jealous of her?"
"Haven't I told you Josephine was not——"
"But I saw. Who is this girl?—pretty?"
Norman pretended to stifle a yawn. "Josephine bored me half to death talking about her. Now it's you. I never heard so much about so little."
"Is there something up between you and the girl?" teased Ursula.
"Now, that's an outrage!" cried Norman. "She's got nothing but her reputation, poor child. Do leave her that."
"Is she very young?"
"How should I know?"
"Youth is a charm in itself."
"What sort of rot is this!" exclaimed he. "Do you think I'd drop down to anything of that kind—inanycircumstances? A little working girl—and in my own office?"
"Why do you heat so, Fred?" teased the sister. "Really, I don't wonder Josephine was torn up."
An auto almost ran into them—one of those innumerable hairbreadth escapes that make the streets of New York as exciting as a battle—and as dangerous. For a few minutes Ursula's mind was deflected. But a fatality seemed to pursue the subject of the pale obscurity whose very name he was uncertain whether he remembered aright.
Said Ursula, as they entered the house, "A girl working in the office with a man has a magnificent chance at him. It's lucky for the men that women don't know their business, but are amateurs and too stuck on themselves to set and bait their traps properly. Is that girl trying to get round you?"
"What possesses everybody to-night!" cried Norman. "I tell you the girl's as uninteresting a specimen as you could find."
"Then why areyouso interested in her?" teased the sister.
Norman shrugged his shoulders, laughed with his normal easy good humor and went to his own floor.
On top of the pile of letters beside his plate, next morning, lay a note from Josephine:
"Don't forget your promise about that girl, dear. I've an hour beforelunch, and could see her then. I was out of humor last night. I'm verypenitent this morning. Please forgive me. Maybe I can do something forher. JOSEPHINE."
Norman read with amused eyes. "Well!" soliloquized he, "I'm not likely to forget that poor little creature again. What a fuss about nothing!"
Many men, possibly a majority, have sufficient equipment for at least a fair measure of success. Yet all but a few are downright failures, passing their lives in helpless dependence, glad to sell themselves for a small part of the value they create. For this there are two main reasons. The first is, as Norman said, that only a few men have the self-restraint to resist the temptings of a small pleasure to-day in order to gain a larger to-morrow or next day. The second is that few men possess the power of continuous concentration. Most of us cannot concentrate at all; any slight distraction suffices to disrupt and destroy the whole train of thought. A good many can concentrate for a few hours, for a week or so, for two or three months. But there comes a small achievement and it satisfies, or a small discouragement and it disheartens. Only to the rare few is given the power to concentrate steadily, year in and year out, through good and evil event or report.
As Norman stepped into his auto to go to the office—he had ridden a horse in the park before breakfast until its hide was streaked with lather—the instant he entered his auto, he discharged his mind of everything but the business before him down town—or, rather, business filled his mind so completely that everything else poured out and away. A really fine mind—a perfect or approximately perfect instrument to the purposes of its possessor—is a marvelous spectacle of order. It is like a vast public library constantly used by large numbers. There are alcoves, rows on rows, shelves on shelves, with the exactest system everywhere prevailing, with the attendants moving about in list-bottomed shoes, fulfilling without the least hesitation or mistake the multitude of directions from the central desk. It is like an admirably drilled army, where there is the nice balance of freedom and discipline that gives mobility without confusion; the divisions, down to files and even units, can be disposed along the line of battle wherever needed, or can be marshaled in reserve for use at the proper moment. Such a mind may be used for good purpose or bad—or for mixed purposes, after the usual fashion in human action. But whatever the service to which it is put, it acts with equal energy and precision. Character—that is a thing apart. The character determines the morality of action; but only the intellect determines the skill of action.
In the offices of that great law firm one of the keenest pleasures of the more intelligent of the staff was watching the workings of Frederick Norman's mind—its ease of movement, its quickness and accuracy, its obedience to the code of mental habits he had fixed for himself. In large part all this was born with the man; but it had been brought to a state of perfection by the most painful labor, by the severest discipline, by years of practice of the sacrifice of small temptations—temptations to waste time and strength on the little pleasant things which result in such heavy bills—bills that bankrupt a man in middle life and send him in old age into the deserts of poverty and contempt.
Such an unique and trivial request as that of Josephine Burroughs being wholly out of his mental habit for down town, he forgot it along with everything else having to do with uptown only—along with Josephine herself, to tell a truth which may pique the woman reader and may be wholly misunderstood by the sentimentalists. By merest accident he was reminded.
As the door of his private office opened to admit an important client he happened to glance up. And between the edge of the door frame and his client's automobile-fattened and carefully dressed body, he caught a glimpse of the "poor little forlornness" who chanced to be crossing the outer office. A glint of sunlight on her hair changed it from lifelessness to golden vital vividness; the same chance sunbeam touched her pale skin with a soft yellow radiation—and her profile was delicately fine and regular. Thus Norman, who observed everything, saw a head of finely wrought gold—a startling cameo against the dead white of office wall. It was only with the second thought that he recognized her. The episode of the night before came back and Josephine's penitent yet persistent note.
He glanced at the clock. Said the client in the amusing tone of one who would like to take offense if he only dared, "I'll not detain you long, Mr. Norman. And really the matter is extremely important."
There are not many lawyers, even of the first rank, with whom their big clients reverse the attitude of servant and master. Norman might well have been flattered. In that restrained tone from one used to servility and fond of it and easily miffed by lack of it was the whole story of Norman's long battle and splendid victory. But he was not in the mood to be flattered; he was thinking of other things. And it presently annoyed him that his usually docile mind refused to obey his will's order to concentrate on the client and the business—said business being one of those huge schemes through which a big monster of a corporation is constructed by lawyers out of materials supplied by great capitalists and controllers of capital, is set to eating in enormous meals the substance of the people; at some obscure point in all the principal veins small but leechlike parasite corporations are attached, industriously to suck away the surplus blood so that the owners of the beast may say, "It is eating almost nothing. See how lean it is, poor thing! Why, the bones fairly poke through its meager hide."
An interesting and highly complicated enterprise is such a construction. It was of the kind in which Norman's mind especially delighted; Hercules is himself only in presence of an herculean labor. But on that day he could not concentrate, and because of a trifle! He felt like a giant disabled by a grain of dust in the eye—yes, a mere grain of dust! "I must love Josephine even more than I realize, to be fretted by such a paltry thing," thought he. And after patiently enduring the client for half an hour without being able to grasp the outlines of the project, he rose abruptly and said: "I must get into my mind the points you've given me before we can go further. So I'll not waste your time."
This sounded very like "Clear out—you've bored me to my limit of endurance." But the motions of a mind such as he knew Norman had were beyond and high above the client's mere cunning at dollar-trapping. He felt that it was the part of wisdom—also soothing to vanity—to assume that Norman meant only what his words conveyed. When Norman was alone he rang for an office boy and said:
"Please ask Miss Halliday to come here."
The boy hesitated. "Miss Hallowell?" he suggested.
"Hallowell—thanks—Hallowell," said Norman.
And it somehow pleased him that he had not remembered her name. How significant it was of her insignificance that so accurate a memory as his should make the slip. When she, impassive, colorless, nebulous, stood before him the feeling of pleasure was, queerly enough, mingled with a sense of humiliation. What absurd vagaries his imagination had indulged in! For it must have been sheer hallucination, his seeing those wonders in her. How he would be laughed at if those pictures he had made of her could be seen by any other eyes! "They must be right when they say a man in love is touched in the head. Only, why the devil should I have happened to get these crazy notions about a person I've no interest in?" However, the main point—and most satisfactory—was that Josephine would be at a glance convinced—convicted—made ashamed of her absurd attack. A mere grain of dust.
"Just a moment, please," he said to Miss Hallowell. "I want to give you a note of introduction."
He wrote the note to Josephine Burroughs: "Here she is. I've told her you wish to talk with her about doing some work for you." When he finished he looked up. She was standing at the window, gazing out upon the tremendous panorama of skyscrapers that makes New York the most astounding of the cities of men. He was about to speak. The words fell back unuttered. For once more the hallucination—or whatever it was—laid hold of him. That figure by the window—that beautiful girl, with the great dreamy eyes and the soft and languorous nuances of golden haze over her hair, over the skin of perfectly rounded cheek and perfectly moulded chin curving with ideal grace into the whitest and firmest of throats——
"Am I mad? or do I really see what I see?" he muttered.
He turned away to clear his eyes for a second view, for an attempt to settle it whether he saw or imagined. When he looked again, she was observing him—and once more she was the obscure, the cipherlike Miss Hallowell, ten-dollar-a-week typewriter and not worth it. Evidently she noted his confusion and was vaguely alarmed by it. He recovered himself as best he could and debated whether it was wise to send her to Josephine. Surely those transformations were not altogether his own hallucinations; and Josephine might see, might humiliate him by suspecting more strongly—... Ridiculous! He held out the letter.
"The lady to whom this is addressed wishes to see you. Will you go there, right away, please? It may be that you'll get the chance to make some extra money. You've no objection, I suppose?"
She took the letter hesitatingly.
"You will find her agreeable, I think," continued he. "At any rate, the trip can do no harm."
She hesitated a moment longer, as if weighing what he had said. "No, it will do no harm," she finally said. Then, with a delightful color and a quick transformation into a vision of young shyness, "Thank you, Mr. Norman. Thank you so much."
"Not at all—not in the least," he stammered, the impulse strong to take the note back and ask her to return to her desk.
When the door closed behind her he rose and paced about the room uneasily. He was filled with disquiet, with hazy apprehension. His nerves were unsteady, as if he were going through an exhausting strain. He sat and tried to force himself to work. Impossible. "What sort of damn fool attack is this?" he exclaimed, pacing about again. He searched his mind in vain for any cause adequate to explain his unprecedented state. "If I did not know that I was well—absolutely well—I'd think I was about to have an illness—something in the brain."
He appealed to that friend in any trying hour, his sense of humor. He laughed at himself; but his nerves refused to return to the normal. He rushed from his private office on various pretexts, each time lingered in the general room, talking aimlessly with Tetlow—and watching the door. When she at last appeared, he guiltily withdrew, feeling that everyone was observing his perturbation and was wondering at it and jesting about it. "And what the devil am I excited about?" he demanded of himself. What indeed? He seated himself, rang the bell.
"If Miss Hallowell has got back," he said to the office boy, "please ask her to come in."
"I think she's gone out to lunch," said the boy. "I know she came in a while ago. She passed along as you was talking to Mr. Tetlow."
Norman felt himself flushing. "Any time will do," he said, bending over the papers spread out before him—the papers in the case of the General Traction Company resisting the payment of its taxes. A noisome odor seemed to be rising from the typewritten sheets. He made a wry face and flung the papers aside with a gesture of disgust. "They never do anything honest," he said to himself. "From the stock-jobbing owners down to the nickel-filching conductors they steal—steal—steal!" And then he wondered at, laughed at, his heat. What did it matter? An ant pilfering from another ant and a sparrow stealing the crumb found by another sparrow—a man robbing another man—all part of the universal scheme. Only a narrow-minded ignoramus would get himself wrought up over it; a philosopher would laugh—and take what he needed or happened to fancy.
The door opened. Miss Hallowell entered, a small and demure hat upon her masses of thick fair hair arranged by anything but unskillful fingers. "You wished to see me?" came in the quiet little voice, sweet and frank and shy.
He roused himself from pretended abstraction.
"Oh—it's you?" he said pleasantly. "They said you were out."
"I was going to lunch. But if you've anything for me to do, I'll be glad to stay."
"No—no. I simply wished to say that if Miss Burroughs wished to make an arrangement with you, we'd help you about carrying out your part of it."
She was pale—so pale that it brought out strongly the smooth dead-white purity of her skin. Her small features wore an expression of pride, of haughtiness even. And in the eyes that regarded him steadily there shone a cold light—the light of a proud and lonely soul that repels intrusion even as the Polar fastnesses push back without effort assault upon their solitudes. "We made no arrangement," said she.
"You are not more than eighteen, are you?" inquired he abruptly.
The irrelevant question startled her. She looked as if she thought she had not heard aright. "I am twenty," she said.
"You have a most—most unusual way of shifting to various ages and personalities," explained he, with some embarrassment.
She simply looked at him and waited.
His embarrassment increased. It was a novel sensation to him, this feeling ill at ease with a woman—he who was at ease with everyone and put others at their ease or not as he pleased. "I'm sorry you and Miss Burroughs didn't arrange something. I suppose she found the hours difficult."
"She made me an offer," replied the girl. "I refused it."
"But, as I told you, we can let you off—anything within reason."
"Thank you, but I do not care to do that kind of work. No doubt any kind of work for wages classes one as a servant. But those people up there—they make onefeelit—feel menial."
"Not Miss Burroughs, I assure you."
A satirical smile hovered round the girl's lips. Her face was altogether lovely now, and no lily ever rose more gracefully from its stem than did her small head from her slender form. "She meant to be kind, but she was insulting. Those people up there don't understand. They're vain and narrow. Oh, I don't blame them. Only, I don't care to be brought into contact with them."
He looked at her in wonder. She talked of Josephine as if she were Josephine's superior, and her expression and accent were such that they contrived to convey an impression that she had the right to do it. He grew suddenly angry at her, at himself for listening to her. "I am sorry," he said stiffly, and took up a pen to indicate that he wished her to go.
He rather expected that she would be alarmed. But if she was, she wholly concealed it. She smiled slightly and moved toward the door. Looking after her, he relented. She seemed so young—was so young—and was evidently poor. He said:
"It's all right to be proud, Miss Hallowell. But there is such a thing as supersensitiveness. You are earning your living. If you'll pardon me for thrusting advice upon you, I think you've made a mistake. I'm sure Miss Burroughs meant well. If you had been less sensitive you'd soon have realized it."
"She patronized me," replied the girl, not angrily, but with amusement. "It was all I could do not to laugh in her face. The idea of a woman who probably couldn't make five dollars a week fancying she was the superior of any girl who makes her own living, no matter how poor a living it is."
Norman laughed. It had often appealed to his own sense of humor, the delusion that the tower one happened to be standing upon was part of one's own stature. But he said: "You're a very foolish young person. You'll not get far in the world if you keep to that road. It winds through Poverty Swamps to the Poor House."
"Oh, no," replied she. "One can always die."
Again he laughed. "But why die? Why not be sensible and live?"
"I don't know," replied she. She was looking away dreamily, and her eyes were wonderful to see. "There are many things I feel and do—and I don't at all understand why. But—" An expression of startling resolution flashed across her face. "But I do them, just the same."
A brief silence; then, as she again moved toward the door, he said, "You have been working for some time?"
"Four years."
"You support yourself?"
"I work to help out father's income. He makes almost enough, but not quite."
Almost enough! The phrase struck upon Norman's fancy as both amusing and sad. Almost enough for what? For keeping body and soul together; for keeping body barely decently clad. Yet she was content. He said:
"You like to work?"
"Not yet. But I think I shall when I learn this business. One feels secure when one has a trade."
"It doesn't impress me as an interesting life for a girl of your age," he suggested.
"Oh, I'm not unhappy. And at home, of evenings and Sundays, I'm happy."
"Doing what?"
"Reading and talking with father and—doing the housework—and all the rest of it."
What a monotonous narrow little life! He wanted to pity her, but somehow he could not. There was no suggestion in her manner that she was an object of pity. "What did Miss Burroughs say to you—if I may ask?"
"Certainly. You sent me, and I'm much obliged to you. I realize it was an opportunity—for another sort of girl. I half tried to accept because I knew refusing was only my—queerness." She smiled charmingly. "You are not offended because I couldn't make myself take it?"
"Not in the least." And all at once he felt that it was true. This girl would have been out of place in service. "What was the offer?"
Suddenly before him there appeared a clever, willful child, full of the childish passion for imitation and mockery. And she proceeded to "take off" the grand Miss Burroughs—enough like Josephine to give the satire point and barb. He could see Josephine resolved to be affable and equal, to make this doubtless bedazzled stray from the "lower classes" feel comfortable in those palatial surroundings. She imitated Josephine's walk, her way of looking, her voice for the menials—gracious and condescending. The exhibition was clever, free from malice, redolent of humor. Norman laughed until the tears rolled down his cheeks.
"You ought to go on the stage," said he. "How Josephine—Miss Burroughs would appreciate it! For she's got a keen sense of humor."
"Not for the real jokes—like herself," replied Miss Hallowell.
"You're prejudiced."
"No. I see her as she is. Probably everyone else—those around her—see her money and her clothes and all that. But I saw—just her."
He nodded thoughtfully. Then he looked penetratingly at her. "How did you happen to learn to do that?" he asked. "To see people as they are?"
"Father taught me." Her eyes lighted up, her whole expression changed. She became beautiful with the beauty of an intense and adoring love. "Father is a wonderful man—one of the most wonderful that ever lived. He——"
There was a knock at the door. She startled, he looked confused. Both awakened to a sense of their forgotten surroundings, of who and what they were. She went and Mr. Sanders entered. But even in his confusion Norman marveled at the vanishing of the fascinating personality who had been captivating him into forgetting everything else, at the reappearance of the blank, the pale and insignificant personality attached to a typewriting machine at ten dollars a week. No, not insignificant, not blank—never again that, for him. He saw now the full reality—and also why he, everyone, was so misled. She made him think of the surface of the sea when the sky is gray and the air calm. It lies smooth and flat and expressionless—inert, monotonous. But let sunbeam strike or breeze ever so faint start up, and what a commotion of unending variety! He could never look at her again without being reminded of those infinite latent possibilities, without wondering what new and perhaps more charming, more surprising varieties of look and tone and manner could be evoked.
And while Sanders was talking—prosing on and on about things Norman either already knew or did not wish to know—he was thinking of her. "If she happens to meet a man with enough discernment to fall in love with her," he said to himself, "he certainly will never weary. What a pity that such a girl shouldn't have had a chance, should be wasted on some unappreciative chucklehead of her class! What a pity she hasn't ambition—or the quality, whatever it is—that makes those who have it get on, whether they wish or no."
During the rest of the day he revolved from time to time indistinct ideas of somehow giving this girl a chance. He wished Josephine would and could help, or perhaps his sister Ursula. It was not a matter that could be settled, or even taken up, in haste. No man of his mentality and experience fails to learn how perilous it is in the least to interfere in the destiny of anyone. And his notion involved not slight interference with advice or suggestion or momentarily extended helping hand, but radical change of the whole current of destiny. Also, he appreciated how difficult it is for a man to do anything for a young woman—anything that would not harm more than it would help. Only one thing seemed clear to him—the "clever child" ought to have a chance.
He went to see Josephine after dinner that night His own house, while richly and showily furnished, as became his means and station, seemed—and indeed was—merely an example of simple, old-fashioned "solid comfort" in comparison with the Burroughs palace. He had never liked, but, being a true New Yorker, had greatly admired the splendor of that palace, its costly art junk, its rotten old tapestries, its unlovely genuine antiques, its room after room of tasteless magnificence, suggesting a museum, or rather the combination home and salesroom of an art dealer. This evening he found himself curious, critical, disposed to license a long-suppressed sense of humor. While he was waiting for Josephine to come down to the small salon into which he had been shown, her older sister drifted in, on the way to a late dinner and ball. She eyed him admiringly from head to foot.
"You'vesuchan air, Fred," said she. "You should hear the butler on the subject of you. He says that of all the men who come to the house you are most the man of the world. He says he could tell it by the way you walk in and take off your hat and coat and throw them at him."
Norman laughed and said, "I didn't know. I must stop that."
"Don't!" cried Mrs. Bellowes. "You'll break his heart. He adores it. You know, servants dearly love to be treated as servants. Anyone who thinks the world loves equality knows very little about human nature. Most people love to look up, just as most women love to be ruled. No, you must continue to be the master, the man of the world, Fred."
She was busy with her gorgeous and trailing wraps and with her cigarette or she would have seen his confusion. He was recalling his scene with the typewriter girl. Not much of the man of the world, then and there, certainly. What a grotesque performance for a man of his position, for a serious man of any kind! And how came he to permit such a person to mimic Josephine Burroughs, a lady, the woman to whom he was engaged? In these proud and pretentious surroundings he felt contemptibly guilty—and dazed wonder at his own inexplicable folly and weakness.
Mrs. Bellowes departed before Josephine came down. So there was no relief for his embarrassment. He saw that she too felt constrained. Instead of meeting him half way in embrace and kiss, as she usually did, she threw him a kiss and pretended to be busy lighting a cigarette and arranging the shades of the table lamp. "Well, I saw your 'poor little creature,'" she began. She was splendidly direct in all her dealings, after the manner of people who have never had to make their own way—to cajole or conciliate or dread the consequences of frankness.
"I told you you'd not find her interesting."
"Oh, she was a nice little girl," replied Josephine with elaborate graciousness—and Norman, the "take off" fresh in his mind, was acutely critical of her manner, of her mannerisms. "Of course," she went on, "one does not expect much of people of that class. But I thought her unusually well-mannered—and quite clean."
"Tetlow makes 'em clean up," said Norman, a gleam of sarcasm in his careless glance and tone. And into his nostrils stole an odor of freshness and health and youth, the pure, sweet odor that is the base of all the natural perfumes. It startled him, his vivid memory of a feature of her which he had not been until now aware that he had ever noted.
"I offered her some work," continued Josephine, "but I guess you keep her too busy down there for her to do anything else."
"Probably," said Norman. "Why do you sit on the other side of the room?"
"Oh, I don't know," laughed Josephine. "I feel queer to-night. And it seems to me you're queer, too."
"I? Perhaps rather tired, dear—that's all."
"Did you and Miss Hallowell work hard to-day?"
"Oh, bother Miss Hallowell. Let's talk about ourselves." And he drew her to the sofa at one end of the big fireplace. "I wish we hadn't set the wedding so far off." And suddenly he found himself wondering whether that remark had been prompted by eagerness—a lover's eagerness—or by impatience to have the business over and settled.
"You don't act a bit natural to-night, Fred. You touch me as if I were a stranger."
"I like that!" mocked he. "A stranger hold your hand like this?—and—kiss you—like this?"
She drew away, suddenly laid her hands on his shoulders, kissed him upon the lips passionately, then looked into his eyes. "Doyou love me, Fred?—really?"
"Why so earnest?"
"You've had a great deal of experience?"
"More or less."
"Have you ever loved any woman as you love me?"
"I've never loved any woman but you. I never before wanted to marry a woman."
"But you may be doing it because—well, you might be tired and want to settle down."
"Do you believe that?"
"No, I don't. But I want to hear you say it isn't so."
"Well—it isn't so. Are you satisfied?"
"I'm frightfully jealous of you, Fred."
"What a waste of time!"
"I've got something to confess—something I'm ashamed of."
"Don't confess," cried he, laughing but showing that he meant it. "Just—don't be wicked again That's much better than confession."
"But I must confess," insisted she. "I had evil thoughts evil suspicions about you. I've had them all day—until you came. As soon as I saw you I felt bowed into the dust. A man like you, doing anything so vulgar as I suspected you of—oh, dearest, I'msoashamed!"
He put his arms round her and drew her to his shoulder. And the scene of mimicry in his office flashed into his mind, and the blood burned in his cheeks. But he had no such access of insanity as to entertain the idea of confession.
"It was that typewriter girl," continued Josephine. She drew away again and once more searched his face. "You told me she was homely."
"Not exactly that."
"Insignificant then."
"Isn't she?"
"Yes—in a way," said Josephine, the condescending note in her voice again—and in his mind Miss Hallowell's clever burlesque of that note. "But, in another way—Men are different from women. Now I—a woman of my sort—couldn't stoop to a man of her class. But men seem not to feel that way."
"No," said he, irritated. "They've the courage to take what they want wherever they find it. A man will take gold out of the dirt, because gold is always gold. But a woman waits until she can get it at a fashionable jeweler's, and makes sure it's made up in a fashionable way. I don't like to hearyousay those things."
Her eyes flashed. "Then youdolike that Hallowell girl!" she cried—and never before had her voice jarred upon him.
"That Hallowell girl has nothing to do with this," he rejoined. "I like to feel that you really love me—that you'd have taken me wherever you happened to find me—and that you'd stick to me no matter how far I might drop."
"I would! I would!" she cried, tears in her eyes. "Oh, I didn't mean that, Fred. You know I didn't—don't you?"
She tried to put her arms round his neck, but he took her hands and held them. "Would you like to think I was marrying you for what you have?—or for any other reason whatever but for what you are?"
It being once more a question of her own sex, the obstinate line appeared round her mouth. "But, Fred, I'd not beme, if I were—a working girl," she replied.
"You might be something even better if you were," retorted he coldly. "The only qualities I don't like about you are the surface qualities that have been plated on in these surroundings. And if I thought it was anything but just you that I was marrying, I'd lose no time about leaving you. I'd not let myself degrade myself."
"Fred—that tone—and don't—please don't look at me like that!" she begged.