II
Good pals don’t mind waiting. They understand how unimportant are tea engagements compared with careers. They understand that often a man simply can’t get away at a certain time. Even if he is too busy to telephone, even if he forgets the engagement altogether, why, a good pal accepts all that cheerfully.
Still, Jacqueline did not think it necessary to be superfluously cheerful. She was sitting at a table near the window of a down town tea room, waiting for Barty to join her.
The tea room closed at seven. It was now half past six, and she had been sitting there since half past five. The brightness of the September day had faded into twilight. The street outside, so crowded a little while ago, was quiet now. One by one people were leaving the tea room, so that she was surrounded by a widening area of empty tables. A group of waitresses stood in a corner, talking together. There was a general air of home-going; but she had no home.
“It’s not Barty’s fault,” she said sturdily, to herself. “It was my own idea.”
She had made Barty do this. She had insisted upon this sort of marriage. If it had turned out to be so much harder than she had foreseen, it was her fault, not his. She was gallantly determined to carry on to the very end, like a good pal. She did not want Barty to know how hard it was. She was glad he did not know, and yet—
If he had not become resigned to the situation quite so readily! They had been married seven weeks now, and his protests had ceased. He no longer rebelled. All his thoughts were of the future. He was working with a sort of dogged fury for that marvelous future, so that the present seemed scarcely to exist for him.
“It’s all for you, little pal,” he had often said to her.
She knew he meant that, and she loved him for his ambition, his energy, his determination. Presently he would come hurrying in, eager to tell her exactly what he had been doing, absolutely confident that she would understand, that she hadn’t minded waiting. He would talk about the fine things that were going to happen—in five years’ time. He would talk about large, impressive things. The little things—her things—would never be mentioned.
For she could not hurt and trouble him by telling him how her back ached and her head ached from typing all day, or how unreasonable, how beastly, Miss Clarke had become, how lamentably the meals had deteriorated in her little hotel under the new management, or how very awkward it was to explain to sundry young men that she would never go out with them, and wished to see them no more.
“It would be like throwing rocks on a railway track,” she reflected, smiling a little at the fancy. “It would derail poor Barty, just when he’s flying along so splendidly, too!”
A very nice young couple at the next table rose and went out, and Jacqueline looked after them with a curious expression. She decided that they were engaged, would soon be married, and would go to live in a new little house somewhere, or even a flat—any place where lamps would be lighted at this twilight hour.
“Miss Miles!” exclaimed a delighted voice. Looking up, she saw Mr. Terrill. “I just dropped in to buy some chocolates,” he explained, “and I saw you!”
He spoke as if it were the most amazing and delightful thing that could have befallen him. Never before had Jacqueline seen Mr. Terrill except in the presence of Miss Clarke, and she was surprised at the difference in him.
Miss Clarke, the authoress, somehow had a way of dwarfing all those about her. She was so brilliant, so handsome, so humorous. Jacqueline herself, secretary to this eminent woman, had always felt very young and very uninteresting, and Mr. Terrill had seemed to her an agreeable but rather insipid gentleman.
He did not appear insipid now. He had, thought Jacqueline, a really distinguished[Pg 208] air. He was a tall, slight man of perhaps thirty-five, with a sensitive, well bred face and a singularly pleasant voice. He was looking down at her.
“Miss Miles!” he said. “You look tired.”
“I am tired,” replied Jacqueline.
It was a relief to admit this, instead of pretending, like a good pal, that she was not tired and never could be tired.
“Can’t we have a cup of tea together?” he asked.
“I’m waiting for some one,” she told him.
“But can’t we have tea while you’re waiting?” said he. “The place will close in fifteen minutes or so, you know.”
A queer little anger arose in her. Barty would not like her to have tea with Mr. Terrill. He was more than an hour late already, but he would think nothing of that. He would explain casually that he had been too busy to get away, and he would expect her to understand. Well, it was her own fault—she had told him so many times that she did understand.
“All right!” she said to herself. “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t have tea with Mr. Terrill. It’ll do Barty good. Let him do a little of the understanding, for a change!”
But when the tea room had closed, and Barty had not come, she discovered that it was Mr. Terrill, after all, who exasperated her, because he was not Barty. It was her own Barty that she wanted, and no one else. The idea of Mr. Terrill presuming, even unconsciously, to take Barty’s place!
She was humiliated, too, that Terrill should have seen her here, waiting and waiting for some one who did not come. She was so tired, so dispirited!
Terrill was walking along the street beside her, in the direction of the subway, and he was asking her to go down to Long Beach in his car on Sunday.
“Sorry,” said Jacqueline curtly, “but I can’t. I have an engagement.”
“It would do you good,” said Terrill. “You look played out, Miss Miles. A day at the seashore—”
“I said I had an engagement,” Jacqueline interrupted pettishly.
Terrill was neither discouraged nor offended, and his patience and courtesy made her ashamed of herself; but, for some inexplicable reason, being ashamed of herself caused her to behave still more outrageously toward Terrill. She had never in her life been so disagreeable to any one.
The worst of it was that she found a wicked satisfaction in it, because she saw that Terrill regarded her little outburst of pettishness as an engaging feminine caprice. Apparently he did not care how trying she was. He seemed to think she had a right to moods and humors. Evidently he had no notion of her as a pal.