II
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, very selfish!” 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.
Dear Joe:
I will marry you now, if you won’t ask me to give up my job.
“I don’t wonder you wrote it,” said Hardy, when he met her for lunch.
“Joe, it’s the only way!”
“It’s not my way,” said he.
She reminded him that he had promised her to do whatever she wanted, and he replied that he would do so—except in this instance.
“Well, I won’t let you have the burden of taking care of Aunt Bessie,” she told him. “It’s bad enough for you to think of getting married, anyhow, when you’re so young, and just at the beginning of a wonderful career—”
“Young, am I? Then what about you?” he asked. “No! When you marry me, you’ll be done with offices. That’s something I won’t argue about.”
She pretended to be angry, but in her heart she adored him when he was magnificent and arbitrary.