CHAPTER XXIX
As time went on, it became increasingly clear to Mary that Wally wasn't happy—that the "one great thing in life" for him was turning out badly. Never had a Jason sailed forth with greater determination to find the Golden Fleece of Happiness, but with every passing week he seemed to be further than ever from the winning of his prize.
Mary turned it over in her mind for a long time before she found a clue to the answer.
"I believe it's because Helen has nothing useful to occupy her mind," she thought one day; and more quickly than words can describe the fancy, she seemed to see the wives at each end of the social scale—each group engaged from morning till night on a never-ending round of unproductive activities, walkers of treadmills, drudges of want and wealth.
"They are in just the same fix—the very rich and the very poor," she thought, "grinding away all day and getting nowhere—never satisfied—never happy—because way down in their hearts they know they're not doing anything useful—not doing anything that counts—"
Her mind returned to Helen's case.
"I'm sure that's it," she nodded. "Helen hasn't found happiness, so she goes out looking for it, and never thinks of trying the only thing that would help her. Yes, and I believe that's why so many rich people have divorces. When you come to think of it, you hardly ever heard of divorces during the war—because for the first time in their lives a lot of people were doing something useful—"
Hesitating then she asked herself if she ought not to speak to Helen.
"I didn't get any thanks the last time I tried it," she ruefully remarked. "But perhaps if I used an awful lot of tact—"
She had her chance that afternoon when Helen dropped in at the office on her way back from the city.
"Shopping—all day—tired to death," she said, sinking into the chair by the side of the desk. "How are you getting on?"
Mary felt like replying, "Very well, thank you…. But how are you getting on, Helen?…. you and Wally?"
Somehow, though, it sounded dreadful, even to hint that everything wasn't as it should be between Wally and his wife.
"Besides," thought Mary, "she'd only say, 'Oh, all right,' and yawn and change the subject—and what could I do then?" She answered herself, "Nothing," and thoughtfully added, "It will take a lot of tact."
Indeed there are some topics which require so much tact in their presentation that the article becomes lost in its wrappings, and its presence isn't even suspected by the recipient.
"How's Wally?" asked Mary.
"Oh, he's all right."
"When I saw him the other day, I thought he was looking a bit under."
"Oh, I don't know—"
As Mary had guessed, Helen patted her hand over her mouth to hide a yawn.
"How's Aunt Patty and Aunt Cordelia?" she asked.
Mary sighed to herself.
"What can I do?" she thought. "If I say, 'Helen, you know you're not happy. Folks never are unless they are doing something useful,' she would only think I was trying to preach to her. But if I don't say anything—and things go wrong—"
One of the accountants entered—the elder one—with a sheaf of papers in his hand. On seeing the visitor, he drew back.
"Don't let me interrupt you," whispered Helen to Mary. "I'll run in and see Burdon for a few minutes—"
Absent-mindedly Mary began to look at the papers which the accountant placed before her—her thoughts elsewhere—but gradually her interest centred upon the matter in hand.
"What?" she exclaimed. "A shortage as big as that last year? Never!"
The accountant looked at her with the same quizzical air as an astronomer might assume in looking at a child who had just said, "What? The sun ninety million miles away from the earth? Never!"
"Either that," he said, "or a good many bearings were made in the factory last year—and lost in the river—"
"Oh, there's some mistake," said Mary earnestly. "Perhaps the factory didn't make as many bearings as you think."
Again he gave her his astronomical smile, as though she were saying now, "Perhaps the moon isn't as round as you think it is; it doesn't always look round to me."
"I thought it best to show you this, confidentially," he said, gathering the papers together, "because we have lately become conscious of a feeling of opposition—in trying to trace the source of this discrepancy. It seems to us," he suggested, speaking always in his impersonal manner, "that this is a point which needs clearing up—for the benefit of every one concerned."
"Yes," said Mary after a pause "Of course you must do that. It isn't right to raise suspicions and then not clear them up…. Besides," she added, "I know that you'll find it's just a mistake somewhere—"
After he had gone, Helen looked in, Burdon standing behind her, holding his cane horizontally, one hand near the handle, the other near the ferrule. In the half gloom of the hall he looked more dashing—more reckless—than Mary had ever visioned him. His cane might have been a sword … his hat three-cornered with a sable feather in it….
"I just looked in to say good-bye," said Helen. "I'm going to take Burdon home."
"I need somebody to mind me," said Burdon, flashing Mary one of his violent smiles; and turning to go he said to Helen over his shoulder, "Come, child. We're late."
"He calls her 'child'…" thought Mary.
That night Wally was a visitor at the house on the hill—and when Mary saw how subdued he was—how chastened he looked—her heart went out to him.
"It seems so good to be here, calling again like this," he said. "Does it remind you of old times, the same as it does me?"
But Mary wouldn't follow him there. As they talked it occurred to her more than once that while Wally appeared to be listening to her, his thoughts were elsewhere—his ears attuned for other sounds.
"What are you listening for!" she asked him once.
He answered her with a puzzle.
"For the Lorelei's song," he said, and going to the piano he sang it, his clear, plaintive tenor still retaining its power to make her nose smart and the dumb chills to run up and down her back. She was sitting near the piano and when he was through, he turned around on the bench.
"Have you ever been the least bit sorry," he asked, "that you turned me down—for a business career?"
"I didn't turn you down," she said. "We couldn't agree on certain things: that's all."
"On what, for instance?"
"That love is the one great thing in life, for instance. You always said it was—especially to a girl. And I always said there were other things in a woman's life, too—that love shouldn't monopolize her any more than it does a man."
"You were wrong, Mary, and you know you were wrong."
"I was right, Wally, and you know I was right. Because, don't you see?—if love is the only thing in life, and love fails, a person's whole life is in ruins—and that isn't fair—"
"It's true, though," he answered, more to himself than to her. Again he unconsciously assumed a listening attitude, as one who is trying to catch a sound from afar.
"Wally!" said Mary. "What on earth are you listening for?"
Again it pleased him to answer her with a riddle.
"Italian opera," he said; and turning back to the keyboard he began—
"Woman is fickle
False altogether
Moves like a feather
Borne on the breezes—"
"Did you ever sing when you were flying?" she asked, trying to shake him out of his mood.
The question proved a happy one. For nearly two hours they chatted and smiled and hummed old airs together—that is to say, Wally hummed them and Mary tried, for, as you know, she couldn't sing but could only follow the melody with a sort of a deep note far down in her throat, always pretending that she wasn't doing it and shyly laughing when Wally nodded in encouragement and tried to get her to sing up louder.
"Eleven o'clock!" he exclaimed at last. "That's the first time in three months—"
Whatever it was, he didn't finish it, but when he bade her good-bye he said in a low voice, "Young lady, do you know that you played the very Old Ned with my life when you turned me down?"
But Mary wouldn't follow him there, either.
"Good-bye, Wally," she said, and just before he went down to his car, she saw him standing on the step, his face turned toward the drive as though still listening for that distant sound—that sound which never came.
The riddle was solved the next morning.
Helen appeared at the office soon after nine and the moment she saw Mary she said, "Has Wally 'phoned you this morning?"
"No," said Mary.
Her cousin looked relieved.
"I want you to fib for me," she said. "You know the way the men stick together…. Well, the women have to do it, too…. At dinner yesterday," she continued, "Wally happened to ask me where I was going that evening, and I told him I was coming over to see you. And really, dear, I meant it at the time. Instead, a little crowd of us happened to get together and we went to the club.
"Well, that was all right. But it was nearly twelve when I got home, and he looked so miserable that I hated to tell him that I had been off enjoying myself, so I pretended I had been over to see you."
Mary blinked at the inference, but was too breathless, too alarmed to speak.
"He asked me if I got to your house early," resumed Helen, "and I said, 'Oh, about eight.' And then he said, 'What time did you leave Mary's?' and I said, 'Oh, about half-past eleven.'
"Of course, I thought everything was all right, but I could tell from something he said this morning that he didn't believe me. So if he calls you up, tell him that I was over at your house last night—will you?—there's a dear—"
"But I can't," said Mary, more breathless, more alarmed than ever. "Wally was over himself last night—and, oh, Helen, now I know! He was listening for your car every minute!"
Helen stared … and then suddenly she laughed—a laugh that had no mirth in it—that sound, half bitter, half mocking, which is sometimes used as ironical applause for ironical circumstance.
"I guess I can square it up somehow," she said. "I'll drop in and see
Burdon for a few minutes."
Before her cousin knew it, she was gone.
"I'll speak to her when she comes out," Mary told herself, but while she was trying to decide what to say, the morning mail was placed on her desk and the routine of the day began. Half an hour later she heard the sound of Helen's car rolling away.
"She went without saying good-bye," thought Mary. "Oh, well, I'll see her again before long."
To her own surprise the events of the last few days worried her less than she expected. For one reason, she had lived long enough to notice that no matter how involved things may look, Time has an astonishing faculty of straightening them out. And for another reason, having two worries to think about, each one tended to take her mind off the other.
Whenever she started thinking about the accountant's report, she presently found herself wondering how Helen proposed to square it up with Wally.
"Oh, well," she thought again, realizing the futility of trying to read the future, "let's hope everything will come out right in the end…. It always has, so far…."
Archey came in toward noon, and Mary went with him to inspect a colony of bungalows which she was having built on the heights by the side of the lake.
Another thing that she had lived long enough to notice was the different effect which different people had upon her. Although she preserved, or tried to preserve, the same tranquil air of interest toward them all—a tranquillity and interest which generally required no effort—some of the people she met in the day's work subconsciously aroused a feeling of antagonism in her, some secretly amused her, some irritated her, some made her feel under a strain, and some even had the queer, vampirish effect of leaving her washed out and listless—psychological puzzles which she had never been able to solve. But with Archey she always felt restful and contented, smiling at him and talking to him without exertion or repression and—using one of those old-fashioned phrases which are often the last word in description—always "feeling at home" with him, and never as though he had to be thought of as company.
They climbed the hill together and began inspecting the bungalows.
"I wouldn't mind living in one of these myself," said Archey. "What are you going to do with them?"
But that was a secret. Mary smiled inscrutably and led the way into the kitchen.
I have called it a kitchen, but it was just as much a living room, a dining room. A Pullman table had been built in between two of the windows and on each side of this was a settee. At the other end of the room was a gas range. When Wally opened the refrigerator door he saw that it could be iced from the porch. Electric light fixtures hung from the ceiling and the walls.
"Going to have an artists' colony up here?" teased Archey, and looking around in admiration he repeated, "No, sir! I wouldn't mind living in one of these houses myself—"
They went into the next room—the sitting room proper—unusual for its big bay window, its built-in cupboards and bookshelves. Then came the bathroom and three bed-rooms, all in true bungalow style on one floor.
When they had first entered, Mary and Archey had chatted freely enough, but gradually they had grown quieter. There is probably no place in the world so contributive to growing intimacy as a new empty house—when viewed by a young man and a younger woman who have known each other for many years—
The place seems alive, hushed, expectant, watching every move of its visitors, breathing suggestions to them—
"Do you like it?" asked Mary, breaking the silence.
Archey nodded, afraid for the moment to trust himself to speak. They looked at each other and, almost in haste, they went outside.
"He'll never get over that trick of blushing," thought Mary. At the end of the hall was a closet door with a mirror set in it. She caught sight of her own cheeks. "Oh, dear!" she breathed to herself. "I wonder if I'm catching it, too!"
Once outside, Archey began talking with the concentration of a man who is trying to put his mind on something else.
"This work up here was a lucky turn for some of the strikers," he said. "Things are getting slack again now and men are being laid off. Here and there I begin to hear the old grumbling, 'Three thousand women keeping three thousand men out of jobs.' So whenever I hear that, I remind them how you found work for a lot of the men up here—and then of course I tell them it was their own fault—going on strike in the first place—just to get four women discharged!"
"And even if three thousand women are doing the work of three thousand men," said Mary, "I don't see why any one should object—if the women don't. The wages are being spent just the same to pay rent and buy food and clothes—and the savings are going into the bank—more so than when the men were drawing the money!"
"I guess it's a question of pride on the man's part—as much as anything else—"
"Oh, Archey—don't you think a woman has pride, too?"
"Well, you know what I mean. He feels he ought to be doing the work, instead of the woman."
"Oh, Archey," she said again. "Can't you begin to see that the average woman has always worked harder than the average man? You ask any of the women at the factory which is the easiest—the work they are doing now—or the work they used to do."
"I keep forgetting that. But how about this—I hear it all the time. Suppose the idea spreads and after a while there are millions of women doing work that used to be done by men—what are the men going to do?"
"That's a secret," she laughed. "But I'll tell you some day—if you're good—"
The friendly words slipped out unconsciously, but for some reason her tone and manner made his heart hammer away like that powerful downward passage of the Anvil Chorus. "I'll be good," he managed to say.
Mary hardly heard him.
"I wonder what made me speak like that," she was thinking. "I must be more dignified—or he'll think I'm bold…." And in a very dignified voice indeed, she said, "I must be getting back now. I wish you'd find the contractor and ask him when he'll be through."
She went down the hill alone. On the way a queer thought came to her. I sha'n't attempt to explain it—only to report it.
"Of course it isn't the only thing in life—that's ridiculous," she thought. "But sooner or later … I guess it becomes quite important…."