XXTHEY WALK IN CIRCLES
ONE day just as Pidge was finishing luncheon with John Higgins, she was startled to hear Melton’s voice. He moved around their table with a fling of his coat tails and held out both his hands. It actually sounded, though she never was sure, as if he said something like, “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
Pidge fancied a sort of rueful wonder on the old editor’s face, as he announced his haste to get back to the office, and bolted out.... She was recalling the baby carriage in Santa Monica. Melton’s face was slightly broader, she thought, and the poise of young success was upon it. One thing she had never known before was how remarkably well his curly head was placed upon its shoulders. The neck was not merely a nexus, but a thing of worth in itself, with arch and movement which made him look taller and intimated something light and fleet, touching memories which Pidge could not quite grip.
They were together in the street. Melton had asked her to walk with him to his bank. He seemed on both sides of her at once, his hand drawing her deftly this way and that through the crowd, his chat and laughterin her ears, and an old indescribable weariness and helplessness in herself.
“... Sure, I could have hunted you up. In fact, I would have done it eventually, but I haven’t been in New York all the time; running back west to get my stuff up, now and then.”
“I thought you lived in New York,” Pidge said.
“I keep an apartment in East Twenty-fourth Street,” he granted.
A lull for just an instant before he went on:
“You see, it’s handy to my publishers, and my bank is only a square or two away.”
Pidge wished she could accept him for just what he seemed—the upstart American in literature. She wished to forget everything else, save the youth who said, in effect, “This is my bank, this is my solicitor, this is my publisher.” But she could not smile her scorn and pass on. She felt like the parent of a child showing off. Back of the tinkle and flush of these big days of his, which he seemed to be drinking in so breathlessly, she felt more than ever that thing about him which was imprisoned. A thing it was that called to her, kept calling beseechingly.
“I’ll never forget,” he said, speaking of the fifty dollars—“I’ll never forget that night, when I left you—and the fog in the Square. Everything was different, after that.”
“You didn’t go to Cleveland that night, as you said,” she declared, watching the curve of his black lashes.
The eyes darted her way.
“Lucky, I didn’t,” he said. “God! How I wanted to! New York had me bluffed that night, before you came to the rescue.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“I was up close to Grand Central with my bag, when the idea struck me—the idea that has since come out in the story series that has caught on. I could hardly realize that I had your money. I kept it in my hand—the hand in my pocket. That was a turning point in a life. New York had frightened me pretty nearly to death—the hunger thing, you know. All I wanted on earth was to crawl into that train for Cleveland, but it was as if you were calling on me to stay.”
She turned in pain and amazement. He was looking straight ahead and talking softly. She saw every twist and drive of his mind as he dramatized the situation unfolding to him. He was deeply absorbed in the pictures which his fertile brain uncovered one by one. It hurt her like the uncovering of something perverted in herself.
“Don’t go on like that,” she said. “You’re not working now. You are just walking in the street. You mustn’t make stories when you talk.”
He glanced at her sorrowfully, as one realizing in himself a truth so big that he is willing to wait for it to be believed.
“It is God’s truth,” he said. “That was the turning point in my career—that night—the night I turned back from the train. It was as if you were calling me, and it was as if the idea came from you. I knew I hadto stay on and do the work here, close to the markets.”
She looked into his face and laughed.
“And you could forget me—forget the fifty dollars for nearly a year!”
“I don’t blame you for talking that way. I expect to be misunderstood—not me, but the thing I stand for.”
She was hushed. Could he mean that he suffered in conscious conflict? Could it be that he was aware at all of that imprisoned thing she saw back of his eyes? He had halted, and now she turned again for him to go on.
“I hoped that you, you of all, might understand,” he said. “Why, it was from you that the whole thing started.”
He seemed actually to be making himself believe it. She felt herself trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Do you know you’re changed?” he said, in sudden exultation. “Do you know you’re five times as charming? What’s happened?”
“Nothing has happened,” said Pidge.
“It was the strangest shock, in the restaurant when I saw you. I knew it was you, and yet you’ve put on something—out of the ordinary.”
“Oh, don’t.... I must go back to the office now.”
“The bank is just half a block. We’ve been walking in circles. I hadn’t a check in my pocket.... I wanted to walk with you anyway. Do you really have to get back to the office?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Couldn’t you—couldn’t we go down on the river or to a show somewhere? I know what you’re thinking: that if this meant so much to me, how could I let it go for nearly a year. But you’ll understand. You’ll see what I mean and what I’m up against. The thing was too big for me to rush in. I had to wait. But now that you’ve come, I can’t let you go.”
“I must go back.”
“To-night then. Couldn’t I meet you atThe Public Squareat five and have supper?”
“Oh no. I must go home—first.”
“May I call for you at Harrow Street, say at seven, or before that? Say, couldn’t we go to that old restaurant where we went that night?”
This idea had come to Pidge before he spoke; exactly, perhaps, as it caught his fancy.
“Yes, I could——” Pidge cleared her voice, and spoke again above the roar of the street. “Yes, I could.”
Then because she had lifted her voice, she seemed to hear her own tones unforgetably, as if her soul echoed back the words.
“But I must hurry back now,” she added.
“Let’s get this bank thing finished.”
But when they reached the door of the bank they found it closed for the rest of the day.