CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The next morning Roger reached the office at half past nine but Hilary was already there. It was the first morning of a clear sunshine after weeks of rain, and Hilary, even more groomed and manicured than usual, looked as if he, too, had emerged into a new mood. There was a new crispness in his manner; business efficiency sparkled in his quick movements, his hasty finishing of a memorandum, the way he nodded to Roger.
"Just a moment, Barton. I'll be through in a jiffy." Usually Roger passed on to his own partitioned end of the room, and began on work arranged the night before. But now he sat down and waited for Hilary. Seated so, to one side and just a little behind Hilary, Roger saw him spiritually foreshortened in the reflection of last evening. He looked tight and secure, encased in his own assurances of safety as in a spiritual corset. In a moment he had blotted the paper and turned to Roger.
"Well," he began genially, "we didn't put it over, did we? Not discouraged, I hope?"
"Not at all."
Hilary seemed balked, reconsidered what he had arranged for his next sentence, and said instead:
"I rather over-reached myself in having Tom O'Connell. He's an uncertain quantity, a regular firebrand. And he isn't the power he thinks he is. When it comes to a pinch, the men will desert him. They're more level-headed than he gives them credit for."
"The men forced to scab," Roger inquired, and, at the sharp look Hilary darted to him, added "by the pinch of hunger?"
Hilary tapped for a moment, then made his decision with a quick frown.
"Barton, just where do you stand on that meeting last night?"
"With Tom O'Connell," Roger said and rose.
Hilary rose too. They looked at each other. Roger smiled first.
"I suppose it was bound to come," Hilary said, relieved.
"Yes. I have thought for some time—yes—it had to come." Roger almost respected him for his honesty and when, with a truly regretful smile, Hilary held out his hand, Roger was able to return the shake without scorn. "We see things too differently to work well together."
"Yes. I feel like a fish out of water, more so every day."
Hilary twinkled. "Well, if you're going to jump into the sea I think you're headed for—I hope you won't drown," was his comment.
"I'll try to swim," Roger agreed, and then followed a short talk of work Roger was leaving undone. "If it will help out, I'll stay till you get some one."
"N-o, you needn't. I'm taking on Hawthorne from the auditing department as my private secretary. In fact, I'm thinking of changing the angle of some of the work quite materially. It's no good wasting brains and money on conditions that aren't ripe for them."
"None at all," Roger agreed.
At the end of a quarter of an hour it was over. Roger was out again in the warm morning sunshine. And then he thought of Anne.
Would Anne understand? Once he would have been sure. Now he did not know. He was getting to know less and less how Anne would stand on many questions. Last night she had seemed to grasp the power and soul of Tom O'Connell, and then, when the one great fetish of the sane and respectable middle class was violated, when the conventional sanctity of marriage was imperiled, Anne had retreated behind the great bourgeois virtue of "decency," as smug and prim and spiritually corseted as Hilary himself.
Roger went slowly up the long flight of steps and came on Anne, weeding the trailers from a border of violets. Bent so over the bed, her hands and arms spattered with rich black earth, her silvery blonde hair shining in the sun, Anne looked like a little girl. Tenderness touched Roger. Anne looked up.
"You've quit," she said quickly.
Roger nodded.
"I think I knew you would—last night." Anne rose and shook the loam from her fingers. Still her tone had told Roger nothing.
"Do you think I did wrong? Are you angry?"
"Why, Roger, what a silly question. If you felt it was wrong to work with him, of course you did right. And I would never be angry at your doing what you thought was right. I don't think that's quite fair, do you?"
And still Roger did not know how she really felt.
Anne picked up the basket and trowel and Roger took them from her.
"Finished? You look as if you had just started in." Ten minutes earlier Roger would have been disappointed that Anne could go on with the ordinary day's work in face of the great event; now he resented her silent attitude that the course of the day had been terminated by his act. He walked beside her to the kitchen door, but it seemed impossible to go in between walls and leave the pungent earth and blue sky.
"I say, let's celebrate. Let's go over to Tamalpais. We've never taken that scenic trip. We'll make a whole day of it, have lunch at the inn." Still, in her centuries of rest, the Sleeping Beauty lay along the ridge. "Look at the old girl, isn't she clear? I was always a bit uncertain about her nose, but there it is. Quite a feature; looks as if she were sniffing this gorgeous day. Well, do we sniff too?"
Anne smiled and put her gardening things on their shelf by the door.
"Can't, dear, not to-day. Mamma's been waiting for me to come up and finish that house dress. To-day's the best for her. Pretty soon I won't have a thing I can wear."
"I wish you wouldn't do so much sewing, Anne. Can't you buy baby things and—and maternity clothes? I'd a lot rather you did or would hire somebody, than refuse to go on picnics with me," he ended with a pleading, boyish look, that did not influence Anne in the least. It seemed hardly the time to suggest buying clothes or hiring help.
"Yes. But it's so much cheaper. I don't mind sewing."
Roger felt his pleasure in the picnic die. "All right, honey, run along if you really want to. But let's go to somewhere for dinner to-night. I feel spaghetti-ish. How's Ramillotti's?"
"Let's wait and see how we feel then," Anne parried. "A celebration that's all cut and dried beforehand isn't much of a celebration, is it?"
And then, because Anne did look so pretty in her big gardening apron standing in the full sunshine, Roger picked her up and kissed her.
"Don't sew too hard and get all tired out. I think I'll go down to the library for a while. There's a lot of reading I've been wanting to do for a long time. I'll get a chance now."
Until Anne reached Hilda's front door, she wondered what she would do if her mother were out. She could scarcely sit on the front steps and she would not go back. But she was just in time. Hilda was half way downstairs when Anne rang.
"Of all people! I just knew something nice was going to happen to-day." Hilda trilled with a gay laugh, for Anne rarely came in the morning, and Hilda adored all-day visits.
"You were going out, mamma."
"Not any place I had to. I just couldn't stay in alone to-day." They went upstairs hand in hand.
"I thought, perhaps, we might finish that gingham. The idea of it's hanging round half done has gotten on my nerves."
"Never felt more like sewing. A nice long day ahead always seems to have so much more time in it than the same number of hours chopped up during the week. You ought to be glad Roger doesn't come home to lunch, Anne. When I was working at Belle's baby clothes it seemed to me as soon as I got started it was time to stop and fix lunch. I'll just put these dishes out of the way and we'll get right at it."
She took off her things, carried the unwashed breakfast dishes into the pantry and closed the door on them. The broken egg-shell and scraps of toast on the stove she swept into the coal-scuttle, the crumbs from the oilcloth-covered breakfast table followed, and the scuttle was deposited on the back porch. While she rolled the sewing-machine in from the hall, Anne swept the floor.
"This is nice." Hilda's eyes danced; even the gray curls on her neck seemed to bob merrily. "Now, if you'll just slip off your dress, I'll fit it."
When it was pinned to the right length, Hilda leaned back on her heels and admired.
"That's a fine pattern. Wonderful how they get things regulated now—no riding up in front as you get bigger. Why, you won't scarcely show in that at all, right up to the end."
Anne felt the same touch of distaste she always did when her mother referred to her physical condition. There was something in Hilda's manner that stripped the miracle to its physiological basis, and, although she tried not to, Anne always felt naked before it. She had endured a really difficult half-hour when she had first told Hilda of Roger Mitchell Barton.
"It's pretty. What's more important, it will keep clean a long time without washing."
Hilda laughed. "Getting practical at last. Nothing like a baby for doing that. Do you remember the arguments we used to have when you were fourteen, about that black sateen petticoat? You always insisted that it must be just as dirty as if it were white, and wanted to send it to the laundry every week?"
Anne nodded. How she had loathed dark clothes supposed not to show the dirt! "I must have been a nasty child, always fussing about something."
"You weren't at all. But you were pretty finicky and highfalutin. I never did know what was going to send you off. And how you loved pretty things! Even as a tiny baby, I always felt you enjoyed having your best things on. You used to feel one dress, rub your little hands up and down it softly—it was really a lovely cambric; papa's boss's wife sent it; her baby had outgrown it—and goo and smile. I suppose you would have a fit to see his Highness dressed in any one else's cast-offs, but I was glad to get it. How far along's the layette?"
"Most of the under-things are done, not quite all. I haven't begun on dresses."
"I thought you were going to buy those, the best ones?"
"No—I don't—think I will. They'll be cheaper to make."
"But they're such close sewing and you don't like that kind of work, tucks and hemstitching. Don't be a penny-wise and a pound-foolish and get all frazzled out, Anne."
"No—at least—I won't be a pound-foolish. Roger's left Mr. Wainwright."
"Oh!" Hilda gasped. "Oh, Anne, when did it happen?"
Anne tried to laugh. "This morning."
"Don't you think you'd better go right straight home, dear?" she whispered as if Anne had communicated Roger's sudden death.
"Why? There's nothing to do."
"N-o. I don't suppose there is. But—what happened, with the baby and everything?"
"Nothing special. They don't agree. It's been coming on for some months. Roger doesn't feel that Mr. Wainwright is sincere and he can't work with him."
"Well, I must say——"
"And I wouldn't have him stay a minute when he feels like that."
"No, dear, I don't suppose you would," Hilda hastily conciliated Anne's "condition." "But it does seem too bad that his conscience got worked up just at this time. A few months more——"
"This is the best possible time," Anne said decidedly. "There's no extra expense now."
"No. But when a woman's carrying, she likes to feel a good safe road ahead. It's nature, I suppose, like birds building nests and all that. If papa had suddenly given up his job when I was in your condition, like as not you would have been an idiot. I should have worried myself sick. But you always were a cool little customer."
Anne forced a smile and slipped the gingham over her head.
"If you'll stitch the skirt seams, mamma, I'll baste this collar. That's the only tricky part in the whole thing. Perhaps we can finish it to-day."
"We certainly can. We'll stay right with it till it's done."
And they did, stopping only for a cup of tea and some very stale cake, about one o'clock. At three the dress was finished.
"Now, you go lie down and take a nap and when you wake phone Roger to come up for dinner. He hasn't been round for ages, not since Christmas." Having become involved in the exact date, Hilda slipped over it quickly.
"We will some other time, moms, but I can't to-night."
The long day of sewing and chatting, and constant steering away from the subject of Roger, had exhausted Anne and she wanted her own quiet home, which, even if its peace were now disturbed, held its past security, and a calm, quiet cleanliness that her mother's never had. "I've got all the things in for a fussy kind of supper and they'd spoil."
"Then of course you can't." Death itself could not have been a greater deterrent. "What-all are you going to have?"
"Oh, a fussy pudding, and mayonnaise and things."
Anne was putting on her things in the bedroom and Hilda stood watching, a little envious of Anne's calmness. Mayonnaise and fussy pudding! Perhaps, if she had dared, years ago——
"You certainly have learned to be some cook, Anne."
"I like to try new dishes." Her things on, Anne moved from the room and when she had passed Hilda, said, "but it's the so-called fussy things that are easiest. Whipped cream and eggs make a great show, but any fool can beat them up. Lots of things are harder. I don't believe I could make a decent pot-roast, if I tried. I don't even know what part of the animal to buy."
"There are different parts. Cross-rib's fine, but chuck's cheapest, and I like it just as well."
"And it takes hours and hours, doesn't it?" Anne was still moving toward the stair-head, her back to Hilda.
"No, it doesn't. Lots of people think it does and they make those dry, leathery roasts. A piece big enough for us never took more than a couple of hours, going slow, with plenty of suet."
"Chuck, going slow, two hours, plenty of suet," Anne entrenched it in her memory, and then Hilda was saying:
"You never used to like it, but I'm sure I don't know why. I don't think there's any gravy like the gravy of a good pot-roast. And there's always plenty of it."
As usual, she walked down the stairs with Anne and kissed her again at the front door.
Roger was not in when Anne reached home. She lit the gas-range and put the pot-roast on before taking off her things. When it was simmering at the right rate, she shut the kitchen door to keep the odor from the living-room, changed into a kimono, and lay down on the living-room couch.
It was dusk, with the first faint stars winking uncertainly in the deepening twilight, when Roger came running up the stairs. He was out of breath, cool-skinned and glowing. He came straight to the couch and kissed her.
"Well, Princess, which is it, Pietro's or the Pheasant? I felt spaghetti-ish this morning but it's gradually worked round to planked steak."
Anne sat up and said gayly, "It's neither. It's pot-roast, and it'll be ready about six."
Roger stared, the sparkle in his eyes receding slowly. Still Anne smiled gayly at him. "It's the first one I've made and it's going to be a dandy."
But Roger took her hands in his, and Anne's gayety died. They looked at each other, and then Roger said:
"Anne, please, never do a thing like this again. Don't you trust me, dear? We believe in the same things, don't we? We're not afraid of anything, are we, honey?"
Something in Anne urged her to stand her ground. Something else made her want to cry and creep close to Roger and be held safe from her own fears and "common-sense." She was very tired. Her lips trembled. Roger drew her quickly into his arms. They clung so for a moment, as if holding fiercely against a force reaching toward them. Then Roger turned Anne's face to his.
"Princess, let's throw that damned pot-roast out."
Anne smiled faintly. "That would be silly. It's really an awfully good pot-roast. There, you can smell it. It must be going a little too fast."
But Roger did not smile. "I won't eat it. It smells—like death."
"Do you really feel like that?"
"I do, Anne, really."
"Then we'll go and have planked steak."
In the sweetness of reconciliation, Roger forgot to throw out the pot-roast. They had a gay and expensive dinner at the Pheasant and went to the theater afterwards.
But, for the rest of the week, Roger ate savoury ragouts, and meat pies which taxed Anne's ingenuity to the utmost, especially when the pot-roast had dwindled to a dry, outer rim.