IV
Kirby stood where he was until she had gone up the steps and into the house. Then he paid the cab and set off on foot for the Pennsylvania Station. When he got there he found that there was an hour to wait for the next train, and again he set off to walk about the streets, his hands in his pockets, his pipe between his teeth. All the time her voice echoed in his ears—her quiet little voice.
“Good Lord!” he said to himself angrily. “It’s no tragedy! I asked the girl out to dinner, I tried to give her a good time, and that’s all there is to it.”
But still her voice echoed in his heart, and still he felt that bitter ache of regret. Let him walk as far as he would, he could not escape from it.
“She was unhappy,” he thought, and the thought pained him. He went on walking, and when he got back to the station he found that he had missed his train. It was the last for that day; the next one left at four o’clock in the morning.
He didn’t really care. He went to an all-night restaurant and had coffee and bacon and eggs. Then he strolled back to the waiting room where he had met her, and sat down there. He had the place to himself; there was nothing to disturb his reflections.
“The trouble was,” he said to himself, “that I was disappointed.”
And, like an audible response, the words shaped themselves in his mind:
“Well, what about her?”
He had never been more unhappy in all his life. He dozed a little during those long hours; but whether he slept or waked, he was conscious all the time of that bitter ache of regret.
There was an air of unreality about the early morning train. It was almost empty, and such passengers as there were seemed to Kirby to be very incongruous. For instance, where could that neat little gray-haired woman be going at such an hour? Or that Italian with a fierce mustache, who carried a square package wrapped in newspaper?
The world outside, seen through the train window, had the same unreal air. It was still dark, but this was not the serene darkness of night; it was, he thought, more like the dim silence of an auditorium before the curtain goes up. There was a feeling in the air that something tremendous was about to happen, and that a myriad creatures waited.
He felt the thrill of that expectancy himself. The window beside him was open, and the wind blew in his face with a di[Pg 523]vine freshness. He could see the trees and the sharp lines of roofs, as if they had stepped forward out of the night’s obscurity. There came a drowsy chirping; the curtain had begun to rise.
Then all the birds began to wake, and the chorus swelled and swelled. The insects were chirping, and he could hear the lusty crow of barnyard cocks—such little creatures, raising so sublime and tremendous a “Laudamus.”
“The sun’s coming up,” said Kirby to himself.
When he got out of the train the sky was gray, with only a thin veil before the face of the coming wonder. There was a single taxi at the station, and he hesitated, because two women had got out of the train after him; but one of the women set off briskly along the village street and the other one took the road, so he got into the cab.
A moment later he had passed the woman on the road. There was light enough to see her now.
“Stop!” he cried, but the driver did not hear him. He banged on the glass. “Stop! I want to get out!”
Giving the man his last dollar bill, Kirby jumped out and turned back.
She was coming toward him steadfastly, a straight and slender figure in a dark dress and drooping black hat. He could see that the dress was shabby, that her shoes were dusty and a little worn. Her face was pale, and there was a smudge on her forehead.
“Emmy!” he cried.
She stopped short. A hot color rose in her cheeks, and ebbed away, leaving her still paler.
“Emmy!” he said uncertainly. “You look—you’ve changed!”
“Well, no,” she answered, in that serious little voice. “You see, I’d borrowed those clothes from a girl at the office. I stopped at her house to leave them, and I missed the train.” She paused a moment. “I’m sorry I ever wore them,” she said; “only she’s been so awfully dear and kind to me, and she said she wanted to make me look nice.”
“You did look nice!” said Kirby.
He felt a sort of anguish at the sight of her. Why hadn’t he known, all the time, that she was like this? She was innocent and honest and lovely—and he had so grossly offended against her! He had taken her to that third-rate place; he had been surly, obstinate, utterly blind; and, worst of all, he had judged her so arrogantly!
“I’m so sorry!” he said. “You don’t know—I didn’t mean—”
“I’m sorry, too,” she said. “I never went out like that before, and I wish I hadn’t done it.”
They stood facing each other, standing in the middle of the empty road. She was downcast, but he was looking at her with amazement. She was not that little flippant painted thing, like a thousand other girls! How could he ever have thought so? Neither was she the wise, aloof young goddess. She was just Emmy, rather shabby and very tired, with a smudge on her forehead.
“You don’t know,” he said, “how beautiful you are—in the daylight!”
Again the color rose in her cheeks, and as swiftly receded.
“I’ve got to hurry,” she exclaimed, with that earnest politeness of hers. “You see, my little brother’s taking examinations to-day, and I promised I’d make pancakes for his breakfast.”
“Oh, Emmy!” he said, and began to laugh.
She smiled herself, reluctantly.
“Well, I did promise,” she declared.
An immense happiness filled him. He knew now! He understood why those other fellows wanted to get married and set up homes! Bills and worries and even quarrels were not tragic, and not basely comic. They simply didn’t matter. The one great thing was this infinite tenderness. He did not want to worship a goddess any more; he wanted to take care of Emmy.[Pg 524]
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
NOVEMBER, 1927
Vol. XCII NUMBER 2
For Granted
A COLORFUL STORY OF A PICTURESQUE ISLAND COLONY WELL KNOWN TO MANY AMERICAN TRAVELERS
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
THE streets of Port Linton were empty under the brazen glare of the sun, so that Captain Vincey’s steps rang loud. They were unsteady, too. The heat came up from the white coral road in tremulous waves, and worried him. The blue sea and the blue sky, the white buildings and the white roads, and the great, fierce, brassy sun all dazzled him. He dropped his stick with a clatter, and from under the swing door of Willie’s Bar a dog ran out, sniffed at the stick, and ran back again.
“It’s the heat,” said Vincey to himself, as he straightened up.
But in his heart he was a little frightened by the giddiness, the surging in his head, and by the theatrically empty look of the world. He could not quite remember what had brought him out at this hour, but his footsteps were certainly directed toward the club.
He decided not to go there, and went on down the hill—a big, swaggering man, in a rumpled white linen suit and a green-lined helmet.
“A t-touch of the sun,” he said to himself.
He realized now that he could not very well go home alone, though he wanted to go home. He had had no lunch. He had sat in his office, looking over some papers, with a bottle of whisky on the desk.
“Got to c-cut down on that,” he thought. “Plays the devil with a man’s health!”
Sometimes, in his blackest hours, he felt that perhaps it was not only his health that had suffered. He would remember the James Vincey who had come to Port Linton twenty years ago, and sometimes he even shed tears, thinking of that promising young man and of what he had become.
Turning the corner, he saw before him the cool, dim office of the Green Arrow Navigation Company. He made for it with what haste he could. There was his refuge.
The doors stood open, and in he went. It was a dignified and handsome office. Along one side was a mahogany counter, and facing it were groups of wicker chairs and tables beneath palms in pots. At the end was a low wooden railing with a gate, and behind this a girl sat at a typewriter.
As he went toward her, she came hurrying out of the inclosure, shutting the gate behind her.
“Hello, Uncle James!” she said casually.
“’Lo, Joey!” he answered. “T-touch—sun.”
He sank heavily into one of the wicker chairs and took off his helmet.
“Shall I get you a carriage?” she asked.
“Might be ‘visable,” he said.
She turned, went back through the barrier to a door at the rear, and knocked.
“Come in!” said a voice.
She entered the private office, where a mild little gray-haired man sat at a desk.
“Uncle James isn’t feeling very well,” she said. There was no embarrassment in her manner, nor in the gray-haired man’s. “I want to get a carriage, and I left my purse at home,” she went on. “Can I get ten shillings, Mr. Brown, please?”
He pulled forward a little tin cash box, unlocked it, and took out a ten-shilling note. The girl, bending over his desk, wrote on a slip of paper:
July 8—ten shillings—J. Craig.
The transaction was a familiar one to both of them.
She was a thin young creature with dark gray eyes and bobbed hair cut square across her wide brow. She would have been[Pg 526] pretty, with more color and animation. She might even have been beautiful; but her face was pale and impassive, and she had an air of quiet indifference, like one accustomed to being taken for granted and thankful to have it so.
“Why don’t you drive home with him, Joey?”
“It’s only half past two, Mr. Brown.”
“There’s nothing much to be done, Joey. Sprague will be back in a few moments. You go along with the captain.”
“But the last day, Mr. Brown!”
“Pshaw!” said he. “Everything’s ready for the new man, Joey. Everything’s in order.”
“I’m going to miss you awfully, Mr. Brown!”
There was a subdued sort of distress in her voice that touched him. He patted her shoulder kindly.
“I’ll be coming back to the island in six months, Joey, and then I’ll look in now and then to see how things are getting along. This new man—I don’t fancy he’ll make many changes. Things will go on in the same old way. You go along home with the captain, Joey.”
“I wish you a good trip, Mr. Brown. Good-by!”
“Pshaw!” he said again. “Au revoir, we’ll say, Joey.”
“Au revoir, Mr. Brown, and thank you.”
They shook hands, smiling at each other.
“I’ll just step out now and say good afternoon to your uncle,” said Brown.
Captain Vincey rose politely, dropping his helmet and stick.
“Wish you—besht—short of trip,” he said.
He was perfectly aware that he was swaying on his feet and speaking indistinctly, and that his niece and Mr. Brown were both aware of it; but none of them felt constrained or embarrassed. Captain Vincey’s little weakness was simply to be taken for granted.
The hack driver took it for granted. He helped the captain into the carriage—carriages are the only vehicles in Port Linton—with a grave and sympathetic air. Joey climbed in on the other side, and they set off. Every one who saw them took it for granted.
“There goes Vincey—tight again! Joey’s taking him home.”
They drove through the little town and out into the country, along the white road lined with oleanders, rose pink, creamy white, and scarlet, under the blue, blue sky. When she had first come here, this loveliness had stirred Joey to delight, but not any longer. She dare not be stirred now. She saw before her a way interminably long and weary, and she went forward in a sort of blindness, not stopping, not thinking, only enduring.
The carriage drew up before a little house standing on a hill, and the driver got down to assist the captain. He had a great deal of trouble, for Vincey was a big man and he a small one.
Joey picked up the helmet and stick from the road, and followed them to the house. Mrs. Vincey opened the door and received her son, and Joey paid the driver. All taken for granted!
“Your Uncle James says he doesn’t care for any tea. It’s this heat.”
An unconquerable woman was Captain Vincey’s mother—slight and small, straight as a dart, always neat and dignified and smiling. She was nearly seventy, but she did not look it, so great was the spirit that animated her fragile body.
She had made a pot of tea, and she and her granddaughter drank it in the kitchen.
“Joey,” she said, “I’ll have to ask you to get me a little money to-morrow.”
“To-morrow? But the new man’s coming to-morrow, gran.”
Both were silent for a time, looking out of the window, where below them the blue Atlantic stretched, unendurably bright in the sun. Mrs. Vincey was thinking of her old home in Kent, of green fields and dripping trees under the soft blue of an April sky. It was strange that the days of her girlhood seemed so close to her, so much more real than all the years of wandering with her engineer husband in South America, in Canada, in New York. That was all a little nebulous. What was vivid was the memory of her Kentish fields.
But to Joey the memory of her girlhood seemed so remote as to be incredible. She was the only child of Mrs. Vincey’s daughter and her American husband, left an orphan now, and penniless. She had come to Port Linton from New York, three years ago, a jolly, lively schoolgirl of seventeen, ready for adventure; and she had found—this.
“I think you’d be happier if you found something to do, wouldn’t you, Joey?” Mrs. Vincey had said.[Pg 527]
Joey had gone to see Mr. Brown—who was expecting her—and he had taken her into his office.
Mrs. Vincey stayed home and kept house. With smiling dignity she faced tradesmen who explained why they could give her no more credit. Morning after morning she telephoned her son’s business partner, to tell him that “Captain Vincey was ill, and couldn’t come to the office.” She cooked meals and served them decently, out of Heaven knows what pitiful materials. She had kept the house neat, she had sat up at night, patching and turning and mending clothes for them all.
And she would not see, she dared not see, what was happening to Joey—the jolly schoolgirl turning into this pale, still woman. She would willingly have given her life for Joey, but she would not admit her son’s shame. It must be taken for granted!
Better to look at the dazzling blue sea than at Joey’s pale face.
“Another cup of tea, Joey?”
“Yes, thank you, gran.”
They did not mention the money again. Joey knew that her grandmother would not have asked for it, if it had not been urgently needed; and Mrs. Vincey knew that if it were in any way possible, Joey would get it for her at any cost.
The sun went down and a fresh breeze sprang up. The two women ate their supper of bread and cheese and more tea, in the kitchen, while Captain Vincey slept upstairs in his room. The moon came up and made a silver path on the dark sea, for prisoners to look at, if they chose.
“Good night, gran dear!”
“Good night, Joey. You’re a good girl, Joey. Sleep well!”
But Joey did not sleep very well. She sat up in bed, looking out at the garden, where the moon was shining. A breeze blew in her face, fragrant with jasmine.
“If only the new manager will be nice!” she thought. “Oh, please let him be nice!”
The captain was much better in the morning. He bathed and shaved, put on a clean white suit, and came down to breakfast in a witty and cheerful humor.
“Left my bicycle at the club,” he said. “You’d better telephone for a carriage, Joey. The walk into town is a little too much for me—at my age.”
As Joey had had to leave her own bicycle at the office the day before, in order to take him home, he asked her to drive in with him; but she said she would enjoy the walk.
Two miles of white coral road in the blazing sun, after an insufficient breakfast! It was better, though, than sitting beside the captain, driving in state past the shops where they owed money.
She was a little late, and the boat had come in unusually early. She was lying alongside the wharf, already unloading, and the door of the private office was shut.
“He’s come!” Sprague whispered to her. “He’s in there, talking to McLean.”
“What’s he like?” asked Joey.
“Hard as nails!” said Sprague.
She uncovered her typewriter and sat down before it, but she had no work to do. She could only sit there, with her heart like lead.
The door of the private office opened, and McLean came out.
“Mr. Napier wants to see you,” he said briefly to Joey. As he moved away, she heard him mutter: “New brooms sweep clean!”
She got up and went into the private office, and there, at Mr. Brown’s desk, sat the new man. It was a shock to find him so young. He looked almost boyish. He was thin and dark, with a careless, preoccupied air.
“Miss Craig?” he said. “Sit down! Take a letter, please. ‘Messrs. Pryden & Fort, P-r-y—’”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t take shorthand,” Joey interrupted in her quiet way.
He glanced up at her.
“I thought—” he began, and stopped short as their eyes met.