VI
“I would never have told you,” said Blanchard. “I would have gone on the best way I could, without you; but now—”
Pem looked at him across the table. By the light of the gold-shaded electric candle his thin face was almost incredibly fine. He looked, she thought, a little inhuman, with his delicate features, his dark, glowing eyes, and the silvery gleam of white on his temples. His tremendous consideration for her, his squeamishness, had made his story such a long one!
After all, she wasn’t a girl just out of school.
“I’ve seen more of life than he has,” she reflected; “and yet it has taken him two hours to tell me that his wife is going to divorce him. I suppose it’ll take another hour before he can tell me that he hopes I can marry him when he’s free. I suppose it ought to take me a week to answer him!”
She stifled a sigh. It was nonsense for him to try to shield his wife from Pem, who had two months in which to observe her savage egotism. Such a dilemma for his chivalrous soul—to make it clear to Pem that his wife had no just cause for divorc[Pg 147]ing him, and yet to protect the woman against the implication of cruel unreasonableness. All things considered, he had done very well.
“A—a mutual agreement,”, he had called it. “I think you’d better not go back,” he went on gently. “She’s very much upset. Her sister and her mother are with her.”
Silence fell between them. The orchestra was playing in a gallery behind them—a gay and delicate air. The rooms were filled with the sort of people Pem liked about her, with light, laughing voices, faint perfumes, and the smoke of cigarettes.
One of Blanchard’s hands was extended on the table—a slender hand, beautifully tended. He was so fastidious in everything, so kind, so honorable, so appealing in his masculine assumption of her ignorance and helplessness. He wanted to take care of her and shelter her. He would have been horrified at the thought of her living in a little flat on a third mate’s pay. He would have turned pale at the sight of that poor, poor little ring.
“You’re very quiet,” he said, a little anxiously. “I hope I haven’t—”
Pem looked up with a smile.
“No!” she thought, as if defying a voice that had not spoken. “It’s no use! I’m not like that. I couldn’t stand it. I shall be happy with Everett. It’s his kind of life that I want.” Aloud she said, in the ladylike, noncommittal tone he expected of her: “I’d better be going back to Nickie now.”
Blanchard took her back in a taxi, and all the way he talked of impersonal matters—not a word of love. She knew he wouldn’t mention that until he was free to do so honorably.
He left her at the door. She turned as she entered, and saw him standing bareheaded in the street—a handsome and distinguished man, yet somehow pitiful to her, with that touch of white at the temples.
The flat was empty when she got in. Nickie, of course, had gone to her case. Arthur Caswell—she couldn’t imagine his destination.
On the kitchen table were the disorderly remains of a tea for two. The sitting room, too, was very untidy, as Nickie always left it. Pem turned on the electric light and began to set it in order. She emptied the ash tray, full of the stubs of those horrible cheap cigarettes she had seen Caswell smoking. She picked up the magazines that lay on the floor, and straightened the chairs.
The piano was open, with music on the rack. She went to close it. The lid slipped from her hand, and, falling, jarred the strings with a queer, trembling discord. She could have imagined it the faint, distant echo of a voice—a young voice.[Pg 148]
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
APRIL, 1924
Vol. LXXXI NUMBER 3
His Remarkable Future
THE STORY OF A RAPTUROUS BUT SOMEWHAT TUMULTUOUS ENGAGEMENT
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
“HAVEN’T you any umbrella?” asked Hardy, with a frown.
“I have one,” answered Miss Patterson, “but not here.”
She was dignified, he was somewhat severe. Both were important, preoccupied, adult persons, full of business concerns; nevertheless, they did not quite know how to proceed with the conversation. They stood side by side in the lobby of the office building, looking not at all at each other, but at the steady and violent rain. Miss Patterson was reluctant to walk off in such a downpour, and Hardy was determined that she should not.
“Silly kid!” he thought. “In that flimsy suit and those fool shoes!”
Any number of other girls ran past, some with newspapers over their hats, some laughing, some gravely worried, but he was not perturbed by them. They could stand it. No other living girl was so peculiarly fragile as Miss Patterson, or beset with so many dangers.
“I think it will stop,” said she.
This annoyed him. She was trying to make light of a most serious situation.
“Why?” he demanded.
“Because it always does stop,” she said. “At least, it always has, in the past.”
He turned his head to look at her, and he grew a little dizzy. In the bleak light of that dismal day, Miss Patterson seemed to glow with a strange radiance. Her light hair was like a nimbus under her hat, her blue eyes were lambent, and she chose just that moment to make the color deepen in her cheeks. It was not fair!
“I’ll get a taxi,” he said.
“Oh, no!” she protested. “Please don’t! I live miles and miles uptown.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Hardy, and off he darted.
He stopped a cab with the air of a highwayman, and returned to Miss Patterson. As he put her into the vehicle, a curious change came over them. Hardy ceased to be masterful and severe, and Miss Patterson was no longer dignified. They looked at each other steadily, with a strange sort of despair.
“Look here!” said Hardy, in an uncertain voice. “Can’t I come with you?”
“Oh, no!” cried she. “Oh, no! Oh, you’d better not!”
But they both knew that he was going with her, that he must, that the inevitable moment had come, the moment foreseen by both of them all through the winter.
“What’s the address?” he asked.
That was the last thing needed. Now he knew where the human, unofficial Miss Patterson lived. She was disassociated from business now. She was not a typist, but a girl.
She seemed aware of all this, for, as he got into the cab beside her, she looked at him in a new way—a look so bright, so clear, so gentle!
“Look here!” he said. “I—I don’t want to be a nuisance. If you’d really rather I didn’t come—”
She only shook her head. If she had tried to speak, she would have ended in tears.
He didn’t know that he, too, had a new look—that his young face had grown pale and strained, his eyes dark with his great fear and his great hope. And this was the splendid, vainglorious Mr. Hardy from the import department, the young man of whom great things were expected, who was to be made assistant buyer when Mr. Hallock left at the end of the year.
The other girls had talked about him a good deal, for he was a figure to capture[Pg 150] the imagination—a handsome boy, swaggering a little in the honest pride of his young manhood: only twenty-three, and going to be made assistant buyer!
“You know,” he said. “I’ve often wanted to—to have a little talk with you. I—I often noticed you.”
“Did you?” said Miss Patterson, ready to laugh through her unshed tears, for he needn’t have troubled to tell her that.
“But you see,” he went on, “I didn’t know—I couldn’t tell whether you—”
She was very glad to hear that, because sometimes she had been afraid that he could tell, could read in her face what was in her heart.
“You know, you’re so different from any one else,” he said. “Every time I saw you, I—whenever I saw you, it seemed—that is, I thought you were so different from any one else.”
He stopped, aware that he was doing very badly, and filled with horror at his own idiotic words. She would think he was a fool.
Yet how could he possibly convey to this ethereal, fragile, and unworldly creature any idea of his own tempestuous love without alarming and offending her? He had no business to love her. It was a gross impertinence. She was an angel, and he was nothing but a clumsy—
The taxi turned a corner sharply, and he was flung sidewise, so that his shoulder brushed hers.
“I’m sorry!” he cried earnestly. “I couldn’t help it!”
“But you’re soaking wet!” said Miss Patterson.
Her gloved hand rested on his shoulder, and her voice—no, impossible!
“You’re not—crying?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes, I am,” said Miss Patterson. “I am. I can’t bear to—to think of your getting so wet and catching a cold—just to get me a—a taxi!”
“But I shan’t catch cold,” said Hardy. He was trying to bear in mind that her words, her tears, were nothing but an expression of her wonderful kindness and humanity. She would be sorry for any one who got wet and caught a cold in her service. That was all that she meant—absolutely all. “I shan’t catch cold,” he went on. “I never do: but you—you see, you’re so delicate—”
“I’m not!” said she. “Not a bit! But I remember perfectly well that last February you had the most—oh, the most awful cold!”
“Edith!” cried he, astounded, overwhelmed by this confession. “You remember that?”
Miss Patterson suddenly drew away, and ceased weeping.
“Well, yes,” she admitted. “I—yes, I remember.”
A silence.
“Then you must—must feel a little interested in me,” said Hardy.
Silence.
“I hope you do,” added Hardy.
The worst silence of all.
“Why do you hope that?” she asked, in a blank, small voice.
“Because I—ever since the first time I saw you, I thought perhaps you’d noticed.”
“Noticed what?” inquired Miss Patterson, and he fancied that there was a shade of coldness in her voice. He was in despair. Of course she had no idea what he was driving at, he was so appallingly clumsy and stupid about it. He must do better than this! He drew a long breath.
“My prospects are pretty good,” he remarked. “They’re going to make me assistant buyer at the end of the year.”
“So I’ve heard,” said she, and this time there was no mistaking the coldness in her tone.
“I didn’t say that to boast,” he assured her anxiously. “I only wanted to tell you because—I wanted you to know that I—”
“I shouldn’t blame you for boasting,” said Miss Patterson, in a polite, formal way. “Every one says you have a remarkable future before you.”
“Not without you!” he cried. “I don’t want any future without you! Oh, Edith, I don’t know how to tell you—”
The head of the auditing department, in which Miss Patterson worked, often praised her for the quickness with which she grasped new ideas. This praise seemed justified, for she understood Hardy without further explanation.
Nevertheless, they both had an enormous amount of explaining to do. All the way uptown they were engaged in explaining to each other, with the greatest earnestness, just how they felt, why they felt so, and when they had begun to feel so. When they reached the depressing West Side street where Edith lived, they hadn’t half finished.[Pg 151]
The taxi stopped, and the driver turned around, so that they couldn’t go on explaining, or even say good-by; but Hardy went into the dingy little vestibule with his Edith.
“Darling girl!” he said. “Shan’t I come upstairs with you and see your aunt?”
She turned away.
“I’d rather you didn’t, Joe,” she said. “Not just now, please!”
He was willing to do anything in the world she wanted, except to leave her; but that was almost impossible. She seemed to him so forlorn, so little and so young. The brightness had left her face now. She was downcast and pale.
“Edith!” he said. “Aren’t you happy at home?”
“No, Joe, I’m not,” she answered. “I’m wretched!”
When she saw what that did to him, how much it hurt him, she was overcome with remorse.
“Oh, but it doesn’t matter—now!” she said. “Not now—when I have you. Really and truly, Joe, I don’t care a bit!”
Her anxiety to reassure him, to send him away happy, touched Hardy almost beyond endurance. He had always been aware of something wistful, something a little sorrowful about her, like a shadow over her clear beauty. She had been the dearer to him for that. She was a thousand times dearer to him now because she was sad, and must look to him for her happiness. He meant to make her happy—at any cost!