IV
“Whew!” said Edward to himself, wiping his moist brow with a still moister handkerchief. “Whew!”
Arthur had been found in the American House, and he had been difficult to handle. If Edward had not had such a thorough training in his business, he could never have handled the situation in so masterly a fashion. Arthur was a rich young man, and accustomed to being kotowed to. Edward, however, was accustomed to rich people who were accustomed to being kotowed to. Many times he had explained to wealthy and indignant customers facts which they had not cared to consider—that, for instance, the mere possession of enough money to pay one’s bills did not suffice for a credit department; that there must be a certain willingness to use the money for that purpose.
Edward had not kotowed to Arthur. He had been mighty firm with him, though kind, for he had felt sorry for the man. It had been a bad night for Arthur. He had been desperately worried about his wife. Patiently, inexorably, Edward had made him listen to reason, and in the end there was a touching and beautiful reconciliation. Arthur’s wife, with truly admirable unselfishness, had said that it did not matter who was right about the penny. Both of them had declared that they owed everything to Edward and would be his lifelong friends.
He was now at liberty to attend to his own little affair. Having no money to pay for a taxi, he set off on foot in the direction of his home. It was still raining, and as black as the pit, yet he fancied he could feel dawn in the air. Taking out his watch, he saw that it was half past four. He had been away all night. He remembered his last words to Mildred:
“If things happened as they should—”
She had said that they never did, but they had. He was strangely justified, yet he felt no triumph. The rain fell cold upon his uncovered head, and his spirit was cold within him.
“She must have been worrying,” thought Edward.
Indeed, that was an inadequate word for what he knew she must have felt. He thought about Mildred, not in her outrageous moments, but as she was at other times, when she was her unique and incomparable self. He thought about marriage, in a large, general way. He also thought about his own marriage, and what he had intended it to be.
At last he thought about himself. Soaked through to the skin, cold and weary, Edward groped after justice. It was a creditable performance—the more so because he was unaware of it. He groped, and he found a new and startling piece of wisdom.
He quickened his pace. The wind had died down and the rain had stopped, but he did not know that, for the drops still pattered thickly from the trees. As he turned the corner of his own street, he saw in the sky the first streak of dawn—a pale gray creeping up into the black.
His reasonable mind told him that there was no cause here for wonder, yet he did wonder. He stopped for a moment and watched the marvelous dawn—watched it make a fresh and utterly new day and a new world. His own house seemed to grow before his eyes, turning from a shadowy mass into something familiar and yet strange. He had come home—after what extraordinary wanderings![Pg 233]
He advanced, walking on the sodden grass, so that his steps should be noiseless. He entered his neighbor’s garden, thankful that they kept no dog. He took a ladder from the unlocked tool shed, and, carrying it with some difficulty, set it up against a certain tree on his own front lawn.
Then, still noiselessly, he stole up on the veranda, and, stooping, examined the doormat and the darkest corners. Unsatisfied, he went around to the back of the house; and there, against the kitchen door, he found that which he sought—a cat. He wished to tell Mildred that he had brought her cat down from the tree, and he would not lie. It should be true.
The cat was mutinous. She struggled as he held her under his arm, and it was difficult to ascend the ladder. However, he did so. He put the cat on a branch, and let go of her for an instant, in order to get a better hold on her for the descent. She began climbing higher up. He clutched at her, but she eluded him. She was a heavy cat, but she went up a slender branch, which bent perilously beneath her.
“Kitty! Kitty!” whispered Edward. “Oh, you fool!”
Her hind legs had slipped off, and for an instant they were kicking desperately in the air, reminding him of a Zouave in white gaiters.
“Come, kitty!” murmured Edward. “Come on, kitty!”
The creature clawed and clutched desperately, swung under the bending branch, came up on the other side, and began to come down, facing him with wild yellow eyes. He caught her as she came within reach. He thought the touch of a firm human hand would reassure the terrified animal, but it was not so. She appeared to be suspicious and resentful.
As the cat’s claws pierced his shoulder, Edward recoiled, and very nearly fell from the ladder. Probably he uttered some sort of exclamation, as almost anybody would. Anyhow, Mildred’s head appeared at an upper window.
“I’m getting your cat down,” Edward explained.
By the time he had reached the foot of the ladder, with the cat, Mildred had opened the front door. She was carrying something in her arms, which she set down in the shadow of the veranda. She gave it a gentle push with her foot, and it ran off, unseen by Edward.
Edward set down his cat, and she also ran off.
“There you are!” he said.
Mildred came down the steps.
“Oh, Eddie!” she cried.
It was quite light now in the open. He could see her face, and it seemed to him rather wonderful.
“Eddie!” she said. “You’re soaking wet! Oh, Eddie, it was all my fault!”
“I don’t know that it was,” replied Edward meditatively. “Some of it was my fault, I think.”
She came nearer to him.
“Oh, Eddie!” she cried. “It really doesn’t matter one bit whose fault things are, does it?”
He was startled, for that was his own particular bit of wisdom, painfully arrived at. Mildred was a remarkable girl![Pg 234]
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
JULY, 1925
Vol. LXXXV NUMBER 2
Miss What’s-Her-Name
AN INEXPERIENCED TRAVELER’S EVENTFUL VOYAGE TO A SUMMER ISLE OF PALM TREES AND SAPPHIRE WATERS
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
MISS SMITH was a governess. She was not one of those beautiful young governesses so popular in romance, who live in the families of earls or millionaires and suffer all sorts of persecutions. Though young, Miss Smith was not exactly beautiful, and certainly she was not persecuted. On the contrary, the Pattersons were kind to her and thought very highly of her.
She was a brisk, sensible little thing, neat as a new pin, with crisp, curling black hair, clear blue eyes, and a lovely, healthy color. Her dress, her manner, her smile, were brisk and neat and sensible. Everything about her was pleasant—except for one great black shadow at the back of her mind, which she bravely pretended to ignore.
Sometimes, however, this lurking shadow refused to be ignored and crept out, clouding her clear blue eyes, troubling her nice, sensible thoughts, and making her, all in an instant, pale and downcast and dismayed. The shadow was a fear—fear of poverty, fear of defeat and failure, fear, above all, of romance.
Miss Smith’s charming mother and father had been a romantic couple, and she remembered what had happened to them. They had both been too poor and too young and too charming. They had had no business to get married, but they had got married, and their daughter remembered—
She remembered her mother putting a piece of cardboard inside her slipper, because of a great hole in the sole, and her father going down on one knee to kiss the slender little foot. It was very romantic, but Miss Smith had seen tears in her father’s eyes and in her mother’s.
She remembered a terrible quarrel over a boiled egg. There had been only two eggs. She, a little girl, had got one of them for her breakfast, and the other had been set before her father; but he wouldn’t have it. He said that Nora positively needed it; and Nora—her mother—said that she didn’t need it, didn’t want it, and wouldn’t have it.
In the end Mr. Smith had thrown the egg out of the window, where it lay in the mud, with the summer rain beating down on it. He had shouted bitterly that he was no good, because he couldn’t make enough money to buy enough eggs for his family; and the little girl had cried, and her mother had cried, and their poor devoted little servant—their servants were always devoted—had cried, too. It had ended with her father sitting on the arm of her mother’s chair, tenderly stroking that wonderful black hair, and herself sitting on her mother’s lap, while the little servant stood in the doorway, drying her eyes on her apron. Everybody begged everybody else’s pardon, and, after a while, they all laughed; and that very morning a devoted neighbor—for their neighbors were generally devoted, too—sent them a dozen new-laid eggs.
That was the sort of thing which was always happening to them; but Miss Smith remembered, not the gay ending, but the storm itself. Her mother had said, often and often, that her life had been a beautiful one, that she had been blessed above any woman she knew in the love and comradeship of her husband; but Miss Smith remembered too many tears, too many anxieties. She sometimes added, at the end of her prayers:
“And please, dear Lord, don’t let me do anything like that!”
She would not have made that particular prayer with such particular earnestness if she had not known how easy it would be for[Pg 236] her to do something like that; but she did know. She knew that the germs of that fatal disease called romance were in her blood, and she had to take frequent doses of a bitter sort of moral quinine to keep them inactive.
One of the best of these cures was in repeating to herself her full name—her poor, pathetic, dreadful name, which she never let any one know. Mr. and Mrs. Patterson were middle-aged and very serious, and Gladys Patterson, though only ten in years, was quite a settled and responsible character; and the life in that sedate West Side house was so calm, so orderly, that there was much time for idle, foolish thoughts. When any such came drifting through her mind, Miss Smith would repeat her name to herself with a stern smile, and would be deeply thankful for the “Smith” part of it, which was so thoroughly unromantic and sensible.
She tried to be thankful all the time. Before going to sleep she would tell herself how thankful she was for this nice, dignified, safe position, where she could probably remain five years longer, if she continued to do her duty. The very thought of having to leave the Pattersons and go out to look for a new position dismayed her; but she comforted herself by the thought that in five years’ time she would be twenty-nine—which is almost thirty—and that she would probably be much more sensible then than she was now.
In the meantime all she asked was that life should let her alone, and she would let it alone. She couldn’t bear the idea of change.
When Mr. Patterson first began talking about a trip to Bermuda, she was so much delighted with the idea that she knew it must be wrong, and became frightened, and hoped and hoped that that wonderful and dangerous thing would never happen. When the trip was definitely settled upon, she was increasingly miserable. Of course it wasn’t her business to give advice to Mr. Patterson, and she never said a word, but she knew that it was foolish. She knew how much better it would be to stay at home and be safe.
When Mr. Patterson talked about crystal caves and sapphire water and angel fishes, when he spoke of blue skies and palm trees and roses in December, she was ready to cry. She knew it was perfectly impossible for such things to exist, and still more impossible that she could ever see them. It was a dream, and dreams are terribly dangerous. She would not buy any new clothes for the trip, and she would not believe in it.
That is how matters stood on that dreadful Saturday morning when Miss Smith cried:
“Oh, I’ve forgotten my ticket!”