“So turn the dark clouds inside out,Till the boys come home.”
“So turn the dark clouds inside out,Till the boys come home.”
“So turn the dark clouds inside out,Till the boys come home.”
“Oh, God!” whispered Pem; for that boy would never come home, and the Pem who had listened to his gallant young voice was gone, too.
The singing stopped, only not for Pem. It went on sounding in her ears. The voice that she would never hear again and the living voice mingled together until she could bear it no longer. She must go in and see this other one—see with her own eyes that he was a stranger, in no way like—any one else.
Nickie welcomed her with a cry of joy.
“Here’s my pal!” she said, triumphantly. “Now you’ll all have to be good little boys. Pem, here’s Mr. Brown and Mr. Caswell and Mr. Hadley. Look ’em over!”
But the only one Pem wanted to see was Caswell—the boy who had been singing, the boy who must not look like some one else. Well, he didn’t. That one had been fair and this one was dark. There was no resemblance in a single feature; and yet the spell was not broken.
There was some quality in this man that stirred intolerable memories to life in Pem—something in his voice, in his smile, in the hearty grip of his hand. She looked and looked at him, trying in vain to catch that fugitive likeness.
She had never been so lovely, or so utterly careless of her own beauty. Her eyes were wonderfully luminous and soft in her pale face. Her hair, a little disordered by the hat she had pulled off, floated about her forehead in tiny, misty threads. She hadn’t a trace of that cool, quiet manner now.
Under that look of hers young Caswell grew suddenly ardent.
“I say!” he began. “You know—you’re simply—simply marvelous!”
“Didn’t I tell you so?” said Nickie, delighted. “Now sing some more, Cas. That’s what brought her to.”
“No,” said Pem. “Please don’t.”
The spell was slowly dissolving. She could see Caswell without illusions now—an ordinary nice-looking young fellow, unfortunately a little the worse for drink just now, like the others.
She had come in without any idea of staying, but for Nickie’s sake she resigned herself to a wearisome half hour. This was Nickie’s idea of a good time, and these were Nickie’s “awfully nice boys”! One of them offered Pem his pocket flask, but she declined, civilly enough, and sat down on the piano stool, so that Caswell couldn’t sing again.
She was quite aware that he was looking at her all the time. Very well, let him look! She felt a thousand miles away from him and the others, and somehow very lonely.
This sudden change disturbed Nickie. Now that she had got Pem here at last, it would never do to let the party prove a fizzle. She whispered to one of the men, and then called out:
“Pem, get your hat on! We’re all going up to the Devon to dance!”
“No, thanks,” said Pem firmly.
There was a chorus of protests.
“Oh, come on, Pem!” Nickie entreated. “I don’t want to go alone with three fellows, and I’m dying for a dance. Please, Pem, just for an hour!”
“No, thanks,” said Pem again. “I’m sorry, but I don’t feel up to it. I’m tired.”
And then, beside her, she heard a voice which, in spite of herself, she could not hear unmoved.
“I say, Miss Pembroke! Please!”
She shook her head, but she smiled, for once more she caught a glimpse of that curious likeness, and it made her gentle toward him. What was it? What could she see in this flushed, unsteady boy to put her in mind of that other, fine and stern, a young knight?
“Look here!” said Caswell, bending lower, so that only she could hear. “Please don’t—don’t judge me by this. I—I’m—I can’t tell you how sorry I am for you to see me—like this. I—I don’t do it, you know, I give you my word. You see, I’ve[Pg 142]just come back from Melbourne, and this was my first night on shore, and—if you’d just give me another chance!”
“All right, I will,” said Pem suddenly. “I’ll see you again. I’ll be glad to.”
And she meant it. She no longer wanted to deny the unreasonable, half scornful liking she felt for this man. She did like him, and that was enough.
“Oh, but, look here!” he cried. “We’re sailing to-morrow for Halifax. I’ve only got this one night!”
“But you’ll come back to New York, won’t you?”
“Oh, some day!” he answered bitterly. “God knows when—Idon’t. We’re running all over after cargoes. We may come back here from Halifax, and we may go anywhere. It may be months before I see you again.”
“Would that be so awful?” asked Pem, with a smile.
But he didn’t smile.
“Yes,” he said. “It would—for me!”
Pem was annoyed at her own response to his emotion. She wanted to laugh at him, and she could not. This was the worst sort of nonsense—the sort of thing Nickie was always telling her about. Nickie would call this “thrilling.” Well, Pem didn’t.
“I’m sorry for you,” she said ironically; but, as if there were magic in his eyes, the words turned to truth when she looked at him. “Please don’t be silly!” she added, in a quite different voice—gentle, almost appealing.
“The only silly thing would be to pretend it wasn’t like this,” said he. “I didn’t want it to be this way, but—it just happened. As soon as I saw you—”
Pem jumped up.
“All right, Nickie!” she called out. “I’ll go with you!”
Caswell got into the taxi after her and slammed the door.
“Oh, Pem!” he said. “Pem, you wonderful girl!”
“You know you really are silly!” she protested.
“Then I hope to Heaven I’ll never be anything else! I’d give all the common sense and prudence and so on in the world for one night like this. Hang being sensible, anyhow! Let’s be silly, Pem!”
“I am—I have been—sillier than I ever was before in my life. Don’t, Arthur!”
She felt obliged to object to his putting his arm about her shoulders and kissing her—a very unconvincing little objection, however, to which he paid no attention.
“You do love me, don’t you, Pem?” he asked, and waited a long time. “Pem! I say, Pem! You do love me, don’t you?”
“Oh, I really don’t know!” she cried impatiently.
Was it love, she thought? It was not in any way the love she had felt before—not that strange and terrible thing, half pride, half humility, half anguish and half ecstasy.
“That couldn’t ever come again,” she thought.
It had been her consolation for so long, that never again would that intolerable emotion stir her heart. After she had lost that one man, there wasn’t another walking the earth who could capture her interest—until this evening.
She couldn’t understand the glamour that enveloped young Caswell, the inexplicable charm of him. He was neither very handsome nor very clever—just an ordinary nice-looking boy; and yet, when he said that he would give all the common sense and prudence and so on in the world for one night like this, she agreed with him in her heart.
They had gone to a restaurant and danced, they had taken a taxicab to another restaurant and danced again, they had had supper—that was all there was to it. It was simply one of those brainless “parties” so dear to Nickie—with too much drinking on the part of the men, too much smoking, the stupidest sort of talk and laughter. Then why had it been so beautiful? Because of that boy’s glance which always followed her, that look on his face, his fervent, halting love-making?
Suddenly she stopped trying to reason about it. Itwasbeautiful. She had been utterly happy again; she was happy now.
“Pem!” he said. “Oh, Pem! Can’t you tell me? I’m going away, you know.”
His voice broke, she felt the arm about her shoulders tremble a little, and her eyes filled with tears.
“I’m afraid I do love you,” she said.
She gave him one kiss, and then, with a little laugh, pushed him away.
“Don’t talk any more about it—not now,” she said. “Look! The sky’s getting light. It’s morning.”
“And I’m due on board at ten o’clock,” he said. “I’ll come back to you, Pem.[Pg 143]Pem, you won’t forget me? You won’t—you couldn’t, could you, Pem?”
“I don’t think so,” she answered.
The taxi had stopped before the apartment house, where Nickie and the two other boys, just arrived, were waiting for them in the street. A pallid light was spreading in the sky, and a strange quiet lay over the city. Trucks rumbled far away, but there wasn’t a voice or a footstep. The street lamps still burned wanly.
“It’s time for breakfast,” suggested one of the boys. “Let’s go to a beanery and have something to eat.”
“No!” said Pem sharply. “We’ve had enough. Good-by! Come on, Nickie!”
For she had seen on Nickie’s face something that hurt her—something that she had often seen in the mirror, reflected in her own eyes.
Nickie was lying on the bed, flat on her back, without a pillow, her eyes resolutely closed, in a stern effort to rest. That morning, just as she was saying good-by—very willingly—to the cantankerous old lady with a broken arm whom she had been attending for three weeks, Dr. Lucas had telephoned and told her that he wanted her for night duty on a pneumonia case. It was a bad case, and she had a bad night ahead of her. She must rest now; but she couldn’t. This wasn’t rest.
She heard the key turned in the latch, and the front door opened quietly.
“Hello, Mac!” she called.
But it was not Miss McCarty who answered. It was Pem.
“You home, Nickie?” she said. “That’s nice.”
She came into the bedroom. Nickie sat up and stared at her with wide eyes.
“For Pete’s sake!” she exclaimed. “What’s the meaning of all this, Pem?”
“I don’t know,” replied Pem slowly. She had taken off her hat and coat, and was looking at herself in the glass—at her carefully dressed hair, the artful touch of color in her cheeks, the new frock of navy twill with red leather buttons. “I look rather nice, don’t I, Nickie?”
“Yes,” said Nickie, “stunning; but—well, I suppose I’m not used to it. But what’s the reason, Pem?”
Pem’s explanation did not satisfy her. Pem said that her patient was a wealthy young woman suffering from a mild form of melancholia. She had to be diverted, and—
“I had to look halfway decent, going about with her,” said Pem. “She wanted me to.”
“Finished now?” Nickie asked.
“No—it may last for months; but I often get an afternoon off when her sister comes to stay with her. She likes me to clear out sometimes, so that she can tell her sister how awful I am.”
“Doesn’t she like you, Pem?”
“Oh, pretty well; but she doesn’t really like anybody but herself. That’s what’s the matter with her. She’s got everything on earth—money, and friends, and a wonderful husband. Lend me some of your powder, Nickie?”
“Powder? Going out again now, Pem?”
Pem nodded.
“Who with?”
“With a man,” said Pem, laughing. “Don’t faint!”
“Of course it’s not my business,” observed Nickie, “but it—it isn’t the husband, is it?”
She waited a long time for an answer.
“I wish you’d tell me, Pem. I always tell you things.”
Pem turned and looked at her steadily.
“No, you don’t, Nickie,” she said; “not always.”
Nickie looked back at her friend quite as steadily.
“I do,” she said. “I tell you anything that really matters. You see, Pem, the reason I am asking this is because I thought you were rather gone on Arthur Caswell. You see, I’ve known him for a long while, so I—”
Pem turned to open the bureau drawer, and to take out a pair of white gloves and a handkerchief.
“I’ll tell you something, Nickie,” she said in a curt, cool voice. “He would never have looked at me that night if I had been my real self. I acted like a fool, and that’s what he liked. That’s what every one likes. After he’d gone, everything seemed tame and flat, and I felt so lonely that I couldn’t stand it. I’m going to keep on being a fool, Nickie. I’m going to make people like me. I’m going to live, and enjoy myself!”
“All right,” said Nickie; “but what about Arthur Caswell?”
“He’ll never come back.”
“Yes, he will.[Pg 144]”
“If he does, then—but he won’t. I’m not going to waste my life—or what’s left of it.”
“If I was going to waste any lives,” said Nickie, “I’d rather waste my own than any one else’s.”
Pem was astounded.
“What’s the matter with you?” she demanded. “Are you trying to preach to me, Nickie? It was you who started the whole thing—always pestering me to go to parties.”
“I never went out with a married man in my life,” said Nickie; “and I never would, either.”
“That’s a little too much, after that last party!” returned Pem scornfully. “You wouldn’t go out with a married man, but you don’t mind three fellows who’ve been drinking!”
“How do you know I didn’t mind?” cried Nickie, jumping up. “Just let me tell you, Pem—I knew Arthur Caswell’s people in Halifax. His father’s a strict Presbyterian. I know what he’d think about that, and I’d have stopped Arthur, too, if—”
Pem was about to make a sharp retort, but she changed her mind in time. Going over to Nickie, she put her arms about her friend.
“I’m sorry, little pal,” she said gently. “I didn’t mean to.”
Nickie gave her a rough little hug.
“All right, Pem,” she said. “I know! But, Pem, for my sake, please don’t go out with this man. You’ll be sorry for it—awfully sorry. It’s not like you. Don’t do it, Pem!”
“You don’t understand, Nickie. He’s a wonderful man, so honorable—”
“He’s not honorable if he goes out with you behind his wife’s back.”
“How can he help it, when she’s turned her back on him for good? She’s horrible to him. Nobody else would have put up with her as he has. He is honorable, Nickie; he’s a gentleman through and through. He’s so lonely—you don’t know what that is, but I do. He’s longing and longing for women to be nice and friendly to him. If his wife was ever halfway decent to him—”
She stopped short, because the doorbell had rung.
“There he is,” she said. “Nickie, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I wish you’d see him and talk to him. Then you’d understand. Open the door and talk to him while I’m getting ready.”
Nickie hesitated for a moment.
“All right!” she said, then. “I’ll talk to him!”
Without even troubling to smooth her unruly hair, off she went, down the passage. In a moment she was back.
“Pem,” she cried, “Arthur Caswell is here!”
They stared at each other in a sort of dismay, both speechless for a time.
“I’ll take him out, quick,” said Pem. “When Mr. Blanchard comes, tell him something—anything. I’ll see you later, Nickie. I’ll stop here before I go back to Mr. Blanchard’s.”
“All right,” Nickie said again.
When Pem had gone, she closed the bedroom door after her; but she didn’t even try to rest now.
Pem went down the passage with a lagging step and a heart strangely troubled and doubting.
“No,” she said to herself. “Of course it can’t be like that. I just imagined it. I’ve thought about it so much that—no, it couldn’t really have been so wonderful. He couldn’t have been so dear. When I see him again I shall get over being so silly.”
But that silliness was the best thing in her life. For weeks the glamour of that enchanted evening had colored all her days. The music they had danced to still sounded in her ears, faint and stirring. When she closed her eyes, she could see again the sparkle and glitter of that tinsel fairyland of Broadway, made true and fine by the boy’s love.
“I won’t be an idiot!” she told herself. “When I see him again, I’ll find that he’s—not really like that!”
So, with what fortitude she had, she entered the little sitting room. He didn’t hear her. He was standing at the window, with his back toward the room, his hands in his pockets—such a straight, stalwart figure!
“Hello!” said Pem. “It’s a surprise to see you here again!”
Then he turned, and it was true, all of it—that look she had remembered, that glamour, that enchantment.
“Oh, Pem!” he said. “Didn’t you know I’d come?[Pg 145]”
For a minute she was utterly content in his arms, as if her restless and disconsolate spirit had at last found peace; but not for long. She moved away, still holding his hand, and looking at him with a misty smile.
“You’re so beautiful!” he said. “Sometimes I thought you couldn’t be as lovely as I remembered, but you’re a hundred times—”
The clock on the mantelpiece struck three.
“Let’s go out!” she said hastily.
He was a little taken aback.
“Can’t we stay here, Pem? I want a chance to talk to you.”
“Not here. We can talk somewhere else. I know a nice little tea room where we can dance.”
“I don’t want to dance,” said he; “and—look here, Pem! I’m a bit hard up, this trip.”
She couldn’t help kissing him for that.
“As if I cared! We’ll take a bus ride, then.”
“No, we won’t do that, either,” said he, half laughing. “We’ll stay where we are. I want to talk to you. I—does this suit you, Pem?”
From his pocket he pulled out a ring, carried loose in there, without a box, without even a bit of paper, and laid it in her hand. There it was, honest and unashamed, like himself—the tiniest little diamond. She stared down at it through a veil of tears.
“Best I could do,” he said a little forlornly. “You see, I never tried to save my pay, and it’s darned small, Pem, old girl. I’m only third mate. I dare say I don’t make as much as you do.”
“Never mind! That doesn’t matter,” she answered, so low that he could scarcely hear.
It seemed to her the most touching and beautiful thing that had ever happened, that he should come to her with his poor little ring, so simply and loyally offering her all he had.
“But we can manage,” he went on more cheerfully. “I’ve figured it out. We can take a little flat, you know, and if we’re careful, we can get on. You won’t mind a pretty quiet life, will you, Pem? Nickie told me you weren’t keen on going out and all that. I’m not, either—at least, not now. I was, you know, but not now. We’ll settle down—”
He stopped short, looking at her with a faint frown, but she did not meet his eyes. She was shocked, appalled, at her own traitorous thoughts. She glanced again at the ring, and tried in vain to recapture the tenderness and pity she had felt.
To settle down and marry this boy—not to dance with him, not to listen to his love-making to the accompaniment of music, in a bright dazzle of light, but to marry him and settle down to a deadly quiet life—she knew very well what that meant. She had often enough been in the sort of little flat they would have to live in. She went into such places when sickness was already there. She had seen all the makeshifts, all the sordid and pitiful anxieties of such existences—people who hadn’t enough towels and sheets, who couldn’t afford hot water bottles, who couldn’t afford even the necessary sunlight.
The quiet life! What had he to do with a quiet life? He had come suddenly into her own chill, somber existence, startling her into youth and gayety—that was why she loved him. A dear, honest, silly boy, to dance with, to be happy with for an evening, but—
“Pem!” he said abruptly. “What’s the matter?”
At his peremptory tone, she found it less difficult to speak. She put her hand on his shoulder and spoke as kindly as she could.
“I’m afraid you’re going ahead a little too fast,” she said. “After all, we’ve only seen each other once before, you know. Doesn’t it seem—”
“Do you mean that you don’t care for me?” he interrupted.
His bluntness disconcerted her.
“No,” she said, with a trace of impatience; “but we don’t really know each other. I think we ought to wait—until we’re sure.”
He was silent for a long time, searching her downcast face.
“You’re sure now, aren’t you?” he asked at last. “All right, Pem! All my fault! I might have known—”
And in the face of his sincerity, his honest and unresentful pain, she could give him no false hope, no false consolation, nothing but the truth revealed to him by her silence.
He took the ring from her hand and looked at it with a shadowy smile. Then, before she knew what he was about, he[Pg 146]threw it out of the open window into the street.
She came to the window and looked down, but she couldn’t see it in the street far below.
“Oh, why did you do that?” she cried. “Why, didn’t—”
A sob rose in her throat. She turned away her head, so that he should not see her tears.
“Don’t cry!” he said. “It’s all my fault. I should have known better, of course. I say, Pem! Please don’t cry! The whole thing isn’t worth it. Just—let’s say good-by, Pem!”
She held out both her hands. After a brief hesitation, he took them in his.
“I’ll never forgive myself!” she said unsteadily. “Never!”
“Nothing to forgive,” he assured her, with a gallant attempt at a smile. “I—anyhow, I’m glad I ever saw you. Good-by, Pem!”
If it could only have ended then! If he could have gone then, with that moment for them to remember! But it was their great misfortune that no such memory should be left to them.
The doorbell rang, and Nickie came out of her room.
“Shall I go, Pem?” she asked. “Or—”
Pem looked at her helplessly. As the flat was arranged, the front door could not be opened without affording a plain view of the sitting room.
“I’ll let it ring,” said Nickie, with a fine effect of carelessness. “No one we want to see.”
But that was not Pem’s way. She came of an austere and stiff-necked family, living secluded on an exhausted little Vermont farm. They had nothing much but pride to keep them warm in winter, to feed and clothe them. Pride was the only heritage that came down to Pem, and pride would not allow her to refuse admission to Mr. Blanchard, no matter what it cost her. As for the possible cost to Arthur Caswell and to Nickie, that didn’t occur to her just then.
She opened the door herself.
“I’m afraid I’m a little late,” said a courteous, apologetic voice. “Please—”
Then, as he followed Pem inside, he caught sight of the others, and made a general bow.
“This is Mr. Blanchard, Nickie,” said Pem.
He looked altogether what Pem had called him—a gentleman through and through. He was a rather slight man in the middle forties, with a sensitive, harassed face, hair a little gray on the temples, and fine, dark eyes. He hadn’t in the least a furtive or shamefaced air. Indeed, there was a quiet sort of straightforwardness about him that favorably impressed Nickie, in spite of her prejudice against the man.
“I’ve heard a great deal about you from Miss Pembroke,” he said.
Nickie liked his smile, his voice, his well bred ease. She liked all this, and yet, when Pem presented Caswell to him, her liking was a pain. Arthur seemed so young, so awkward, such an immature and unimpressive creature, in contrast to his senior. She wanted to defend him against comparison. She wanted to force Pem to see, and Mr. Blanchard to see, the splendid qualities in the young sailor.
But she had no chance. Before she could interfere, Blanchard had mentioned that it was growing late. Pem had answered that she was ready, and off they went.
“I would never have told you,” said Blanchard. “I would have gone on the best way I could, without you; but now—”
Pem looked at him across the table. By the light of the gold-shaded electric candle his thin face was almost incredibly fine. He looked, she thought, a little inhuman, with his delicate features, his dark, glowing eyes, and the silvery gleam of white on his temples. His tremendous consideration for her, his squeamishness, had made his story such a long one!
After all, she wasn’t a girl just out of school.
“I’ve seen more of life than he has,” she reflected; “and yet it has taken him two hours to tell me that his wife is going to divorce him. I suppose it’ll take another hour before he can tell me that he hopes I can marry him when he’s free. I suppose it ought to take me a week to answer him!”
She stifled a sigh. It was nonsense for him to try to shield his wife from Pem, who had two months in which to observe her savage egotism. Such a dilemma for his chivalrous soul—to make it clear to Pem that his wife had no just cause for divorc[Pg 147]ing him, and yet to protect the woman against the implication of cruel unreasonableness. All things considered, he had done very well.
“A—a mutual agreement,”, he had called it. “I think you’d better not go back,” he went on gently. “She’s very much upset. Her sister and her mother are with her.”
Silence fell between them. The orchestra was playing in a gallery behind them—a gay and delicate air. The rooms were filled with the sort of people Pem liked about her, with light, laughing voices, faint perfumes, and the smoke of cigarettes.
One of Blanchard’s hands was extended on the table—a slender hand, beautifully tended. He was so fastidious in everything, so kind, so honorable, so appealing in his masculine assumption of her ignorance and helplessness. He wanted to take care of her and shelter her. He would have been horrified at the thought of her living in a little flat on a third mate’s pay. He would have turned pale at the sight of that poor, poor little ring.
“You’re very quiet,” he said, a little anxiously. “I hope I haven’t—”
Pem looked up with a smile.
“No!” she thought, as if defying a voice that had not spoken. “It’s no use! I’m not like that. I couldn’t stand it. I shall be happy with Everett. It’s his kind of life that I want.” Aloud she said, in the ladylike, noncommittal tone he expected of her: “I’d better be going back to Nickie now.”
Blanchard took her back in a taxi, and all the way he talked of impersonal matters—not a word of love. She knew he wouldn’t mention that until he was free to do so honorably.
He left her at the door. She turned as she entered, and saw him standing bareheaded in the street—a handsome and distinguished man, yet somehow pitiful to her, with that touch of white at the temples.
The flat was empty when she got in. Nickie, of course, had gone to her case. Arthur Caswell—she couldn’t imagine his destination.
On the kitchen table were the disorderly remains of a tea for two. The sitting room, too, was very untidy, as Nickie always left it. Pem turned on the electric light and began to set it in order. She emptied the ash tray, full of the stubs of those horrible cheap cigarettes she had seen Caswell smoking. She picked up the magazines that lay on the floor, and straightened the chairs.
The piano was open, with music on the rack. She went to close it. The lid slipped from her hand, and, falling, jarred the strings with a queer, trembling discord. She could have imagined it the faint, distant echo of a voice—a young voice.[Pg 148]
MUNSEY’SMAGAZINE
APRIL, 1924Vol. LXXXINUMBER 3
[Pg 149]
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
“HAVEN’T you any umbrella?” asked Hardy, with a frown.
“I have one,” answered Miss Patterson, “but not here.”
She was dignified, he was somewhat severe. Both were important, preoccupied, adult persons, full of business concerns; nevertheless, they did not quite know how to proceed with the conversation. They stood side by side in the lobby of the office building, looking not at all at each other, but at the steady and violent rain. Miss Patterson was reluctant to walk off in such a downpour, and Hardy was determined that she should not.
“Silly kid!” he thought. “In that flimsy suit and those fool shoes!”
Any number of other girls ran past, some with newspapers over their hats, some laughing, some gravely worried, but he was not perturbed by them. They could stand it. No other living girl was so peculiarly fragile as Miss Patterson, or beset with so many dangers.
“I think it will stop,” said she.
This annoyed him. She was trying to make light of a most serious situation.
“Why?” he demanded.
“Because it always does stop,” she said. “At least, it always has, in the past.”
He turned his head to look at her, and he grew a little dizzy. In the bleak light of that dismal day, Miss Patterson seemed to glow with a strange radiance. Her light hair was like a nimbus under her hat, her blue eyes were lambent, and she chose just that moment to make the color deepen in her cheeks. It was not fair!
“I’ll get a taxi,” he said.
“Oh, no!” she protested. “Please don’t! I live miles and miles uptown.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Hardy, and off he darted.
He stopped a cab with the air of a highwayman, and returned to Miss Patterson. As he put her into the vehicle, a curious change came over them. Hardy ceased to be masterful and severe, and Miss Patterson was no longer dignified. They looked at each other steadily, with a strange sort of despair.
“Look here!” said Hardy, in an uncertain voice. “Can’t I come with you?”
“Oh, no!” cried she. “Oh, no! Oh, you’d better not!”
But they both knew that he was going with her, that he must, that the inevitable moment had come, the moment foreseen by both of them all through the winter.
“What’s the address?” he asked.
That was the last thing needed. Now he knew where the human, unofficial Miss Patterson lived. She was disassociated from business now. She was not a typist, but a girl.
She seemed aware of all this, for, as he got into the cab beside her, she looked at him in a new way—a look so bright, so clear, so gentle!
“Look here!” he said. “I—I don’t want to be a nuisance. If you’d really rather I didn’t come—”
She only shook her head. If she had tried to speak, she would have ended in tears.
He didn’t know that he, too, had a new look—that his young face had grown pale and strained, his eyes dark with his great fear and his great hope. And this was the splendid, vainglorious Mr. Hardy from the import department, the young man of whom great things were expected, who was to be made assistant buyer when Mr. Hallock left at the end of the year.
The other girls had talked about him a good deal, for he was a figure to capture[Pg 150]the imagination—a handsome boy, swaggering a little in the honest pride of his young manhood: only twenty-three, and going to be made assistant buyer!
“You know,” he said. “I’ve often wanted to—to have a little talk with you. I—I often noticed you.”
“Did you?” said Miss Patterson, ready to laugh through her unshed tears, for he needn’t have troubled to tell her that.
“But you see,” he went on, “I didn’t know—I couldn’t tell whether you—”
She was very glad to hear that, because sometimes she had been afraid that he could tell, could read in her face what was in her heart.
“You know, you’re so different from any one else,” he said. “Every time I saw you, I—whenever I saw you, it seemed—that is, I thought you were so different from any one else.”
He stopped, aware that he was doing very badly, and filled with horror at his own idiotic words. She would think he was a fool.
Yet how could he possibly convey to this ethereal, fragile, and unworldly creature any idea of his own tempestuous love without alarming and offending her? He had no business to love her. It was a gross impertinence. She was an angel, and he was nothing but a clumsy—
The taxi turned a corner sharply, and he was flung sidewise, so that his shoulder brushed hers.
“I’m sorry!” he cried earnestly. “I couldn’t help it!”
“But you’re soaking wet!” said Miss Patterson.
Her gloved hand rested on his shoulder, and her voice—no, impossible!
“You’re not—crying?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes, I am,” said Miss Patterson. “I am. I can’t bear to—to think of your getting so wet and catching a cold—just to get me a—a taxi!”
“But I shan’t catch cold,” said Hardy. He was trying to bear in mind that her words, her tears, were nothing but an expression of her wonderful kindness and humanity. She would be sorry for any one who got wet and caught a cold in her service. That was all that she meant—absolutely all. “I shan’t catch cold,” he went on. “I never do: but you—you see, you’re so delicate—”
“I’m not!” said she. “Not a bit! But I remember perfectly well that last February you had the most—oh, the most awful cold!”
“Edith!” cried he, astounded, overwhelmed by this confession. “You rememberthat?”
Miss Patterson suddenly drew away, and ceased weeping.
“Well, yes,” she admitted. “I—yes, I remember.”
A silence.
“Then you must—must feel a little interested in me,” said Hardy.
Silence.
“I hope you do,” added Hardy.
The worst silence of all.
“Why do you hope that?” she asked, in a blank, small voice.
“Because I—ever since the first time I saw you, I thought perhaps you’d noticed.”
“Noticed what?” inquired Miss Patterson, and he fancied that there was a shade of coldness in her voice. He was in despair. Of course she had no idea what he was driving at, he was so appallingly clumsy and stupid about it. He must do better than this! He drew a long breath.
“My prospects are pretty good,” he remarked. “They’re going to make me assistant buyer at the end of the year.”
“So I’ve heard,” said she, and this time there was no mistaking the coldness in her tone.
“I didn’t say that to boast,” he assured her anxiously. “I only wanted to tell you because—I wanted you to know that I—”
“I shouldn’t blame you for boasting,” said Miss Patterson, in a polite, formal way. “Every one says you have a remarkable future before you.”
“Not without you!” he cried. “I don’t want any future without you! Oh, Edith, I don’t know how to tell you—”
The head of the auditing department, in which Miss Patterson worked, often praised her for the quickness with which she grasped new ideas. This praise seemed justified, for she understood Hardy without further explanation.
Nevertheless, they both had an enormous amount of explaining to do. All the way uptown they were engaged in explaining to each other, with the greatest earnestness, just how they felt, why they felt so, and when they had begun to feel so. When they reached the depressing West Side street where Edith lived, they hadn’t half finished.[Pg 151]
The taxi stopped, and the driver turned around, so that they couldn’t go on explaining, or even say good-by; but Hardy went into the dingy little vestibule with his Edith.
“Darling girl!” he said. “Shan’t I come upstairs with you and see your aunt?”
She turned away.
“I’d rather you didn’t, Joe,” she said. “Not just now, please!”
He was willing to do anything in the world she wanted, except to leave her; but that was almost impossible. She seemed to him so forlorn, so little and so young. The brightness had left her face now. She was downcast and pale.
“Edith!” he said. “Aren’t you happy at home?”
“No, Joe, I’m not,” she answered. “I’m wretched!”
When she saw what that did to him, how much it hurt him, she was overcome with remorse.
“Oh, but it doesn’t matter—now!” she said. “Not now—when I have you. Really and truly, Joe, I don’t care a bit!”
Her anxiety to reassure him, to send him away happy, touched Hardy almost beyond endurance. He had always been aware of something wistful, something a little sorrowful about her, like a shadow over her clear beauty. She had been the dearer to him for that. She was a thousand times dearer to him now because she was sad, and must look to him for her happiness. He meant to make her happy—at any cost!
Those words, “at any cost,” did not come consciously into Hardy’s mind. He didn’t really believe that happiness cost anything—or love, either. You found them, suddenly, on your way through life, and of course you had a right to keep what you found.
He did see difficulties, though. His prospects were good, but in his immediate present there were many things that troubled him.
His chief trouble was one which young fellows of twenty-three who want to get married have encountered before. It was money. His salary of twenty-five hundred a year was more than he needed for his own wants, and he had done a very sensible thing—he had begun buying stock in the company that employed him, turning in ten dollars of his salary every week for this purpose. He had four hundred dollars saved in that way, but no one ever repented a folly more heartily than young Hardy now regretted his prudence.
He couldn’t touch that money. He knew very well that one of Mr. Plummer’s strongest reasons for promoting him was that infernal stock he was buying. If he were to sell it, or to stop his payments, Mr. Plummer would want to know why, and Hardy’s prospects would be in jeopardy. He couldn’t marry without those prospects, nor could he very well get married without the money.
Well, any wise and experienced person could solve that difficulty for him. He must wait. Even Edith, who was neither wise nor experienced, told him that. They were having lunch together a few days after their great discovery of happiness, and Hardy had been explaining the situation in detail.
“We’ll have to wait,” said Edith. “Anyhow—”
“No,” said he. “I can’t stand seeing you so miserable!”
“But I’d be a hundred times more miserable if I thought I was doing you any harm!” said Edith.
As soon as the words were spoken, she realized that she had made a serious mistake, and tried hastily to remedy it.
“I’m really not miserable, Joe!” she cried. “Not a bit!”
He knew better, though. Without even having seen her, he was becoming acquainted with Edith’s aunt, and learning to appreciate her talent for making people miserable. Edith never told him about it. It wasn’t her habit to complain, but to any one who watched her as Hardy did, the thing was obvious.
One evening, when he was walking to the Subway with her, she had to stop in the drug store to buy a bottle of “nerve tonic” at two dollars a bottle.
“You don’t take that stuff, do you, Edith?” he had asked anxiously.
“Oh, no!” she replied. “It’s for Aunt Bessie. She’s in very poor health, you know.”
“What’s the matter with her?” Hardy bluntly inquired.
He did not fail to notice Edith’s troubled, face and rising color; and the answer that Aunt Bessie was “terribly nervous” seemed to him to explain a good deal.[Pg 152]
Then he learned that Aunt Bessie was upset if Edith was a few minutes late in getting home, and that she would be still more painfully upset if Edith should even suggest going out in the evening.
“She’s alone all day, you see,” the girl explained, “and it does seem selfish to go out again.”
“Oh,veryselfish!” Hardy interrupted. “And what about Saturday afternoon and Sunday?”
“Well, you see, Joe, she’s alone all week, and—and she hasn’t any one but me. Anyhow, Joe, we see each other every day in the office, and we can have lunch together, can’t we?”
He said nothing more just then, for he could see that Edith was unhappy and anxious. For those first few days even having lunch with her was almost too good to be true; but the day when Edith said they must wait, and Hardy said he wouldn’t, was Monday, after he had spent a horrible Sunday without a glimpse of her.
“No,” he said again. “We can’t go on like this. I can’t, anyhow.”
Again she pointed out that they saw each other every day in the office, and could have lunch together. She added that they had only been engaged five days.
“I know,” said he. “It would be all right if I could see you, but you won’t let me come to your house, and you won’t go out with me.”
“But we see each other—”
“Yes, and we can have lunch together, for the next ten years, I suppose!” Hardy interrupted.
“It won’t be anything like ten years, you silly boy! At the end of the year, when you—”
“Yes, and do you know what’s going to happen then? They’re going to send me to Europe, with Preble, for two months.”
“Oh!” cried Edith.
For a moment she was silent, overcome by this news. Then she made a gallant attempt at a reasonable, calm, businesslike manner.
“But, after all—two months!” she said.
Her smile was a very poor one, and her voice betrayed her. Instead of helping her, Hardy became unmanageable.
“Look here!” he said. “September, October, November—that’s three months that we can have lunch together. Then I’ll be away for December and January: so perhaps after five months I may have a chance to—kiss you once more, if your aunt doesn’t mind. Five whole months, and you won’t let me see you alone for five minutes!”
“Oh, Joe, darling! Do be reasonable!”
“You’re a little too reasonable,” said he. “If you really cared for me—”
There is no better way to begin a quarrel than with those classic words. Edith grew angry, but her anger was such a mild little thing compared to Hardy’s that she took refuge in flight, and left him sitting alone in the restaurant. All was over!
That afternoon they had four hours to think over their words. When Edith came downstairs, Hardy was waiting for her in the lobby.
“Edith!” he said. “Edith! I don’t know how I could have been such a brute! Edith, I can’t—”
“Oh, Joe, you weren’t! I know it must seem heartless to you for me to talk that way: but you don’t understand, Joe!”
As they walked toward the Subway, she tried to tell him. It was the hottest hour of that sultry September day, and she looked so jaded, so pale, that he was frightened. He held her arm, his tall head bent, to catch every word, his eyes fixed on her face.
“You see,” she said, “I owe so much to Aunt Bessie. She took me when I was a tiny girl, after mother died, and she gave up everything for me—everything, Joe! She used the little bit of money she had to send me to a good school, and when that was gone she went to work. That’s what ruined her health—working in an office; and she did it for me, Joe. If she’s a little—a little trying now, I—you do see, don’t you, Joe?”
“Yes, my darling girl, I see,” he answered, more gently than she had ever heard him speak before. “I think—see here, Edith! Could you spare time for a soda?”
She thought she could. They went into a shop near by, and sat down at a little table in a dark corner. He stretched out his hand toward hers, which lay on the table, but he drew it back again. He wasn’t going to do anything that might bother her, never again. He would be patient, he would do anything in the world she wanted. He was sick with remorse and alarm at her pallor and fatigue.
“I’ll do whatever you want, Edith,” he said. “Only—I love you so! If you[Pg 153]would just tell me more about yourself! It’s hard not to know.”
It was her hand that grasped his.
“As if I didn’t understand! Oh, Joe, I worried so awfully about you that time you got wet! If you had been sick, I couldn’t have been with you. I didn’t even know who there’d be to take care of you.”
“Don’t!” he said suddenly. “Please don’t, little Edith! I don’t need much taking care of. It’s you! Do you mind telling me what—how you—how it is with you financially?”
She did tell him, readily and frankly, and he was appalled. She was supporting herself and her aunt on her meager salary. Two persons entirely dependent on this slip of a girl!
“Edith!” he said. “Won’t you marry me now? My salary’s enough for us to scrape along on.”
Both her hands clasped his now.
“Joe, my own dearest, I can’t!”
“We can take your aunt to live with us for a while, until I’ve got my raise.”
“Joe, we can’t!”
“I don’t care how bad she is. If you can stand her, I can.”
“You couldn’t! Don’t you see, Joe, that that would spoil everything? We couldn’t start like that. But if you’d—”
“If I’d what?”
“Nothing!” she said hastily. “I’ll tell you another time.”
But instead of telling him, she left a note on his desk the next morning.