CHAPTER THREE
Belle Mitchell was much taller than Anne or Hilda, with straight, very heavy brown hair and brown eyes. She had a jolly, even disposition, was rarely hurt herself, never knew when she hurt others, and felt competent to manage any situation in which she found herself. Her favorite expression was "look facts in the face." She loved Anne with the same protecting tenderness that Anne felt for Hilda, and never understood the chain of "highfalutin" reasoning by which Anne finally exploded into one of her rare rages. James Mitchell had always been a little afraid of Belle, but he agreed with Hilda that she "had a practical streak." This was supposed to have descended to her intact, like an heirloom, from James' Scotch grandmother.
At seventeen, Belle had looked over the possibilities of the future, left high-school and gone into hospital training. Four years later she was earning twenty-five dollars a week. She had then left the family and taken an apartment with two other nurses. As she explained to Anne:
"The only way to go on caring for your family is to get away from them."
She had paid for Anne's course in a good business college and supplemented the family income with five dollars a week, until Anne was making enough to pay her own board. Then she stopped.
"In some silly streak she'll call 'being honest with papa,' mamma will tell him, and some race-track tout will get that extra five. Or she'll have a fit of rebellion and go off at a tangent in another washing machine or bread mixer or aluminum contraption for getting a whole dinner under one lid, and nobody will have the benefit. But kidlets," and here Belle had put her arms about Anne in a way that always melted any hardness Anne felt for Belle's practicality, "this rule is not for you. If you want any extras—please, sisterkin, ask, won't you?"
Anne had promised, her amazement at Belle's ability to do these firm, decided things, mingling with a sense of disloyalty to her mother in recognizing their truth. She herself could never have left the house, nor stopped a contribution, unless she had done it as the final step against pricks that Belle would never have felt at all.
But now, as Anne sat in the cool darkness of her own little room, looking out into the fog-wrapped silence of the empty street, she was not thinking of Belle, nor of Belle's management of "her case." She was thinking again, in spite of her effort not to, of Roger Barton. He had passed out of her life, and yet, in some inexplicable way, he seemed to have suddenly entered it very intimately.
In the six months of his connection with Lowell & Morrison, Anne had seen more of him than of any man in any of the three offices in which she had worked. They had never talked of personal things, but of business details and the generalities into which these seemed inevitably to lead them; discussions, scarcely ever more than a few moments long, of plays and books and Life.
Anne envied Roger his university education and Roger envied Anne the courage which carried her, after a hard day's work, to extension lectures at night. From these she extracted a kind of sensory conviction of the complex and interesting world beyond her experience. A world of clear thinking, in contrast to the muddled and confused mental processes of her own family and of all the people whom she had ever known; of aims higher than the daily grubbing for food and shelter that they called living. In Roger Barton, Anne had encountered the first person who, born into an environment like her own, had forced his way through to this interesting and complex world. Anne often wondered how he had done it, but as he seemed to take his own progress for granted, and had never commented on the achievement, Anne had been too shy to ask him. And now she would probably never see him again. Through the monotony of the working day there would be no moment to look forward to; no memory with which to contrast the dullness of evenings at home.
Out in the great world open to men, Roger Barton would make another place for himself. Before his ability, his courage and his masculinity, everything was possible. He could leave to-morrow for distant countries and the far strange places he expected some day so confidently to see. He could seek beauty and romance, limited only by his own powers of physical endurance. He could work his way in ships about the world, or tramp alone across deserts. He was strong and free.
And she? In a few days she would begin again to look for another place. Perhaps she would better her salary a little, but she would come and go at fixed hours. For the greater part of the waking day she would sell her intelligence and strength to strangers. They would know nothing of the reality beneath, nor would she touch their lives at any vital spot. Her father would get over this spell of depression at his losses and his annoyance with her contradiction, and the house would run smoothly, like a narrow gauge train along a dusty, uninteresting depression between high hills; beyond these she would never see. It was all so flat, so gray, so dead. Anne shivered:
"Anything as ugly as this house and the way we live is WICKED."
Through the silence of the lonely street, Belle's firm step echoed clearly. The signal ring, three quick peals, brought Hilda running to the stair-head. The lever on the landing clicked, far below the door opened and closed with a slam, and Belle came gayly up the stairs, filling every cranny of the house with the force of her cheerful efficiency, just as if a strong breeze had been suddenly admitted.
"Hello, moms. Her Royal Highness decided she was well enough to let me off for an hour, and so I——"
All sound suddenly ceased. Then Belle, with a brisk "Hello, papa," followed her mother down the hall, past the dining-room, and the kitchen door closed behind them.
Anne shrugged impatiently. No smallest change was ever accomplished in the Mitchell household without this background of tragedy. The news of her action in leaving Lowell & Morrison was now being "broken" to Belle and advice asked, exactly as if Anne had absconded with the funds or tried to commit suicide. There were no degrees of tragedy among the Mitchells.
"I don't care, let them talk it over until there isn't a shred of it left. I'm not going to explain. They wouldn't understand if I talked all night."
Anne closed the window, turned on the softly shaded lamp and chose a book from the small bookcase at the foot of the white enameled bed. Settled in the chintz-covered Morris chair, she opened the book and forced herself to follow the lines to the end of the first page. But Roger Barton's angry gray eyes moved between the words and Anne did not even turn the leaf. The book slowly slid to her lap. Across it Anne stared into the future.
The sound of Belle's step coming firmly along the hall drew her back to the present with a physical reaction of having been literally lifted from one spot and deposited in another. And before she had quite achieved equilibrium in the moment, Belle was tapping at the door. This tap of Belle's was not a motion of the fingers, but a denunciation of any pretense of absence you might be intending. It not only declared Belle's certainty that you were there but her knowledge of exactly what you were doing.
"It's me, kidlets; may I come in?"
Anne opened the door and Belle instantly filled the entire room. Closing the door, she smiled down upon Anne, flushed and a little stiff with the force of her decision not to be led into any apologetic explanation of her act.
"Well, you certainly have done it this time. I never saw such gloom, and that's going some. You'd think the sheriff was in the parlor and the morgue wagon at the door. Tell me the whole sad tale."
From an ivory cigarette case, "a remembrance from an officer patient," Belle drew a cigarette and lighted it.
"Come on, 'fess up."
"You've been out there half an hour and have heard the whole thing, more no doubt."
"From A to Z, and inside out and I haven't got it straight yet. Why did you do it? That's what has upset them, but they don't seem to know what it was. Why did you?"
"That's what they both asked."
"Their intelligence must be looking up. I gather that you were asked to do something your conscience didn't approve and that you up and quit."
"I wasn't asked to do anything. But John Lowell isn't straight and I won't work for him."
Through her cigarette smoke, Belle stared as Hilda and James had done.
"But, kiddie, you'll never find a business man that is straight, or an office or any place where you approve of everything. How long do you think I'd be a nurse if I had to approve of everything I see in an operating room; people cut up when there's no need; often carelessness that would make your hair stand on end. My relation to the surgeon is like yours to Lowell. I hand the instruments, and keep mum."
"And I quit."
"So I hear," Belle laughed. "But what are you going to do? Ask for a certificate of conscience from your next employer? I say, sisterkin, what do you think business life is?"
"That depends on what you want to make it."
"Rot. It's compromise from dawn till dark; from the cradle to the grave. When you start out you think you're going to do wonderful things, reorganize everything and everybody, because your own pet ideals are the very finest ideals in captivity. And—in the end you're lucky if you remember what they were. Why, even I, and nobody would accuse me of being sentimental, had all kinds of ideas about what a nurse's vocation might be, a kind of etherealized Florence Nightingale in a perpetual ecstasy; but when I came up against real patients, whining nervous women and men—well, Belle Nightingale gives her pills and powders now strictly according to the doctor's orders and forgets most of her patients with the last pay check. The whole thing's like Mom's pot-roast—a good solid makeshift for something better."
Anne shrugged. "If Moms had never fallen for that first pot-roast——"
"If Eve had never picked the apple."
"Well? You don't know what the world might have been like if she hadn't, do you?"
"I can make a guess. It would have been just about as it is—if not a little worse. She would have found a pear or a cranberry or a walnut, any old thing." Belle leaned slightly forward and peered with genuine concern through the thickening film of tobacco smoke at the small blonde figure, sitting stiffly now on the bed-edge. "Anne, do you know that I worry a lot about you sometimes? I know you're a good stenographer and as economically independent as any woman, but it always seems to me as if you were out of step with the world in some way. You don't plunk, plunk along with the rest of us. You—you——"
"Sit down on the curb-stone."
"No. You mince along reluctantly. I wish to Heaven you'd get married."
Anne flushed, but Belle was grinding her cigarette stub into Anne's lacquered pin tray and did not notice. She ground it into the polished surface as if the tray were the problem of Anne's future and the stub her own power of settling the difficulty. When she had burned the delicate surface to a black spot, she went on. "But I can't for the life of me picture the kind of man you would marry, not with your opportunities for meeting them. An ordinary business man would drive you as crazy as you would drive him. A professional man—well, there's not much difference. An up-to-date doctor, even an up-to-date minister, has just as keen an eye for the main chance as John Lowell—and that's what seems to upset you. And even if you found one straight in business—men are rotten morally, most of them, and you're so—I don't know just what it is, Anne, but you're like a cool drink in a very clean glass, and men want beer in an earthen mug when it comes right down to everyday diet. They want it in women just as much as they do in business."
"I don't believe it." Anne spoke with such vehement assurance that Belle looked at her sharply.
"You don't? Why not?"
Anne wished now that she had not spoken, but the quickest way to escape from that gimlet-like boring of Belle's eyes was to go on. "It isn't true of all men in business and I don't see why it should be true of all men morally."
"Did you ever know an absolutely honest business man?"
"Yes." Anne felt her face beginning to burn, and to escape the look creeping into her sister's eyes she rose quickly and began doing something unnecessary to the window curtain. She felt Belle's eyes between her shoulder blades and knew that even the back of her neck was flaming. At Belle's low chuckle she bit her lip, dragged about herself the fast vanishing wrap of impersonal interest, and turned to her sister with an assumption of surprise that Belle's look shattered in a moment.
"Come on, sisterkin, this is getting interesting. Who is he?"
"I wasn't thinking of any special individual. I—there must be——"
"Cut it out, Anne, anyhow with sister Belle. When a working girl keeps her faith in men for five years, there is always an individual."
"Shut up, Belle. I loathe that cheap talk."
"And I loathe dodging round and pretending. Who is this torch-bearer in the darkness of the legal world?"
"He isn't a torch-bearer, but he's honest. Roger Barton." It was the easiest way, because Belle would prod until she got it.
"That good-looking young blond? Well, how does he compromise with his honesty and John Lowell?"
"He doesn't. He quit, too."
"Well—I'll—be darned. You both rode out of the office on the same white palfrey! When's the wedding?"
"Will you please get out of this room?"
"Not on your life. Not till I hear the whole thrilling tale. Are you engaged, Anne?"
"No. Will you stop?"
"What'll you bet that you won't be inside a month?"
Anne did not answer.
"All right. It would be a shame to take the money. Why, if dad had tips like that we'd have been rich long ago. What'll you bet, then, that he doesn't ask you?"
Anne's lips trembled. "Belle, please stop joking like that."
"But, kiddie, the most wily flirt in the world couldn't have done better. Any man would be flattered to death. You don't suppose he's going to let a kindred soul—and a pretty one—slip out of his life, do you? He'll look you up, anyhow."
"No, he won't. I won't be here. I'm—I'm going to take a vacation," Anne added in a sudden decision that startled herself.
Belle grinned, and then, at the tears that filled Anne's eyes, relented.
"Fine idea. You never did have a real one. Where are you going?"
"Quincy."
"Heavens! That's not a vacation. That's a penance."
"I never hated it the way you do. I don't mind Aunt Het, and I'm fond of Janet and Bab."
"If it's money, Anne, I'll be tickled to death—Tahoe or Yosemite—or any other real place."
"I loathe them."
"You don't know anything about them. Please. Don't be so highfalutin'. I can do it easily. Make it a birthday present if you like."
"No, thanks just the same. I don't mean to be highfalutin', but I love the bluff, really I do. And I am rather tired. I just want to lie out there on the dunes and think."
Belle's eyes twinkled. "Of course——"
"Belle Mitchell, if you go back to that I'll walk straight out of this room."
"Go back to what?" Belle rose and took the rigid little body in her arms. "Oh, come on, Anne, relax inside and out. Run along and have a grand time feeding the chickens and listening to Aunt Het reminisce and thank the Lord for your simple tastes. When are you going?"
"To-morrow."
"Moms know it?"
"Not yet."
The sisters smiled at each other. Then Belle drew Anne into her arms and held her close, her own cheek on the cool blonde hair, her eyes very soft and tender.
"You dear little thing," she whispered, "you dear—breakable—little thing."
Released, Anne tried to laugh, but she was too queerly excited about something that, as soon as she was alone, was going to slip out from behind the wall to which Belle's presence relegated it. The laugh stopped at her lips in a wistful little smile.
"Remember, Anne, if you change your mind you only have to phone me. I always have some cash on hand. You will, won't you?"
"Yes, I will."
"Honest?"
"Cross my heart to die. And—thanks—awfully——"
"Nonsense."
Belle opened the door and went briskly down the hall. Anne closed it softly, turned out the light, undressed and threw the window as wide as she could. Between the smooth, fresh sheets she lay waiting tensely for silence to settle on the house and leave her quite alone with her own thoughts.
At last Belle and her mother went downstairs, her father wound the cuckoo clock, the door below slammed and Hilda came slowly up. The hall light went out. Silence had come.
In the soft, black stillness, Roger Barton stood out clearly, his crisp blond hair electric with vitality, his wide mouth now tight with repressed anger, now whimsical with mirth.
Would he really look her up?