IV
It was still raining the next morning, still blowing. Charles Hackett had made his adieus, had been driven to the station in Wickham’s car, caught an early train, and got into the city. He came out of the Grand Central into the steady downpour, pulled the shabby hat down on his forehead, turned up the collar of the threadbare overcoat, and set off on foot.
The wet and the mud soaked through his worn shoes, and the fine polish was hopelessly lost. A very battered rover he looked; but the girl in the florist’s shop thought him a splendid figure.
“Charley!” she cried.
There was no one else in the shop at this early hour, and he went with her into the little back room, dim and chilly and bare, with a long table, upon which the carnations she had been sorting lay scattered.
“You’re so wet! Won’t you take off your coat, Charley?”
“Can’t, Betty. I’m sailing at eleven, and there are things—”
“Sailing, Charley? But—you’re not going away?”
She stood before him, a slender, fair-haired girl in a green smock. He had known her years ago in Havana, in the days of her father’s prosperity; and he had found her again here, a lonely, plucky little exile, earning her own bread. No one quite like her, he thought—no one else with eyes so clear and candid, with so generous and sweet a smile; but she was twenty-two and he was forty, and he hadn’t fifty dollars to his name.
“Yes, I’m going,” he said. “I don’t fit in here, you know, Betty.”
“But—I thought you were going to get a job and stay here.”
“Well,” Charles told her, “I’ve only had one job offered me, and it doesn’t suit me; so I’m going down to Nicaragua.”
“That’s quite a long way, isn’t it?” she said casually.
“Yes, it is,” replied Charles.
They were both silent for a time. The rain was rattling against the window. The room was filled with the spicy fragrance of the carnations.
“I—I thought you’d stay here,” the girl said.
He knew well enough that she was crying, but he took care not to look at her.
“No,” he said gravely. “I don’t fit in here. I’m a derelict, and a derelict can be a danger to navigation. I’ve known some pretty good craft wrecked that way.” He was talking half to himself. When she looked at him in troubled surprise, he smiled cheerfully. “So I’ve come to say good-by, Betty,” he ended.
“I’m sure I could help you to find something to do, Charley.”
He shook his head, still smiling, his teeth white against his sunburned face. She saw the fine lines about his eyes, his shabbiness, his invincible gallantry.
“Charley!” she cried, and threw her arms about his neck. “Oh, don’t, don’t go, Charley!”
He held her tight, clasped to his wet coat, and with one hand stroked her fair head lying on his shoulder.
“Oh, don’t, don’t go away, Charley!” she sobbed. “I do—need you so!”
He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face, streaming with tears. He looked straight into her eyes, and smiled again. There was something almost terrible in that smile, something inflexible, hard as steel.
“No, you don’t!” he said. “You’re a sentimental kid, that’s all. You’re going to forget all about me, like a nice kid, and six months from now you’re going to write[Pg 551] me a letter and tell me about the wonderful boy you’ve got.”
She could smile, too, quite as steadily as he.
“All right!” she said. “All right, if you want to pretend it’s that way; but you know I won’t forget.”
He did not smile any more.
“Anyhow,” he said, “it’s good-by now.”
She raised her head and kissed him. For a moment he crushed her against him; then, with just the lightest kiss on her young head, he let her go, took up his hat, and hurried off. He knew she had come to the door to watch him go, but he did not look back.
All gray the harbor was that morning, and noisy with the hoarse din of whistles and fog horns; but Charles Hackett stood on deck, in the rain, to see the last of it.
A lucky thing, he thought, that Wick hadn’t brought her down to see him off! Lucky that last night Wick had looked at his face, not hers! It had been so plain there to read—the doubt, the question, the fear, in the eyes of Wickham’s wife. She didn’t know yet, but she was beginning to know.
“Why am I to have no life? Why am I to be shut out, denied everything that is real?”
She had turned with her unspoken question not to Wickham, but to his brother. Charles had come to her, almost as if the sun of the tropics had risen in the cool skies of her homeland. He had danced with her, talked to her, with his vivid smile, his immeasurable careless vitality. He had had for her not only his innate charm, but the charm of the unknown.
Even his very shabbiness had enchanted her, because it was a regal thing. He, too, might have had his pockets well filled, but he had not cared for money. He had thrown everything away, and had laughed a careless laugh.
Then he had seen what was coming. He had seen the doubt, the dismay, which she herself did not understand. He had seen her turn to him, not to her husband.
Well, she wouldn’t turn to him any more, for he would not be there. There would only be Wickham, chivalrous and quiet. She would forget the doubt and the question that would never be asked and never be answered. It was essential for Charles to go, never to be there again.
The rain and the mist almost hid the shores from his sight now. He could see only the tops of great buildings, like castles on a mountain top. His girl was there, the girl who had clung to him so.
He turned away from the rail, wet through.
“Not for me!” he said to himself.[Pg 552]
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
Vol. XCIV JUNE, 1928 NUMBER 1
“I DO LOVE YOU, DOUGLAS!”
SHE WHISPERED
[Illustration]
Inches and Ells
A STORY WHICH EXPLAINS WHY MILDRED GRAHAM DECIDED, AS MANY OTHER GIRLS HAVE DECIDED BEFORE HER, THAT MEN ARE QUEER
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
SHE listened to his footsteps, going down and down the stone stairs, until the echo died away; and still she stood as if she were listening, one hand on the back of a chair, her lips parted, a faint frown on her brow.
But the silence settled about her, and even her own fast-beating heart and quickened breathing grew quieter.
“He’s gone,” she said aloud.
Very well! She had told him to go, and she wanted him to go. She turned away from the doorway and went toward her bedroom.
“I never should have let him call here,” she thought. “He doesn’t understand. He’s impossible. I knew it, too. I knew that if I gave him an inch, he’d take ells and ells!”
She was surprised and displeased to feel tears running down her cheeks.
“How silly!” she said to herself. “I’ll see him again to-morrow; and if he’s sorry—if he apologizes—”
She clasped her hands tight, struggling against a sob.
“I’ll go to bed and get a good night’s sleep,” she thought. “In the morning—”
But the tears would not stop. She saw her orderly little room in a mist. The silver on the dressing table made a dazzling blur, and the edge of the mirror was like a rainbow.
“Silly!” she said to herself.
There before her were the precious photographs of her father and her mother, in a double frame. She picked them up and looked at them, blinking away the tears until the beloved faces were clear to her. They had trusted her to come to New York alone, to manage her own life with dignity and discretion; they counted upon her not being silly.
At this moment they would be sitting in the library at home, in the serene quiet of their mutual affection and understanding. Perhaps her father would be writing at his table, his gray[Pg 554] head bent over some scientific treatise, and her mother would be sewing or reading; but whatever they were doing, their child would not be forgotten. The thought of her would come to them at any moment. They must miss her, but they were proud of her and sure of her.
“I’ve got to make Douglas see,” she said to herself. “He’s got to show decent respect for me. I know he’s fond of me, but—”
The tears came again in a rush.
“I know he’s fond of me,” she thought, and remembered the ring.
Imagine his coming like that, with a ring to put on her finger, before he had even asked her if she liked him! The very first time she had asked him here, too! Catching her roughly in his arms and kissing her!
He had shown no trace of delicacy or respect, no appreciation of the honor done him in being asked here. He knew that she was quite alone, and he had taken advantage of it. Kissing her like that, when she had forbidden him!
Well, she had made him realize her just resentment. She had sent him away, him and his ring, not angrily, but quietly.
“If he had even said he was sorry,” she thought. “Perhaps he will to-morrow.”
All the time she undressed, the tears were running down her face.
“Because I’m so disappointed,” she told herself. “I didn’t think he’d be like that.”
She had seen him in the office every day for two months, and once she had gone out to lunch with him, and once to dinner; and she had felt that a very beautiful thing was beginning. She had seen in his gray eyes a look that made her heart beat fast, had heard in his voice a queer, grudging tenderness not to be forgotten.
She had known, of course, that he was not quite the man she had dreamed of, no knightly figure of romance. His manner was abrupt and domineering. More than once she had seen him lose his temper with some unlucky fellow worker, and speak in a grim white anger that distressed her bitterly; but he was so honest and so uncompromising! She had respected that, and had admired his tireless energy, his undoubted cleverness.
There were not many men of his age who had gone as far as he—head of a department at twenty-four. Yes, she had been justified in liking him; but there were those other things, those unreasonable things. When she thought of him, it was not his business ability that she remembered, but his quick smile, his steady glance, his way of scowling and running his hand over the back of his head.
“If he just says he’s sorry to-morrow,” she thought. “If he’ll just realize that he was—horrible!”
She fell asleep in a troubled and confused mood, and waked the next morning with a heavy heart.
“I won’t be weak and silly,” she thought. “If he’s not sorry—if he can’t show the proper respect for me—then it’s finished!”