IV
The strong romantic strain in her was quickened by the meeting. All afternoon her thoughts played about Bob Cummings. She reviewed their associations in childhood on through those last attentions after the Cummingses left the Military Park neighborhood. Her mother had probably been right in saying that if fortune hadn’t borne the Cummingses steadily upward, leaving the Durlands behind, Bob might have married her. It had been a mistake for him to marry a society girl who was, she surmised, incapable of appreciating his temperament. A matter of propinquity very likely; she had heard that the girl was not rich but belonged to one of the old families; and very likely on her side it had been an advantageous arrangement.
Why did men marry the wrong women? she asked herself with proneness of youth to propound and answer unanswerable questions. There was Trenton, who had so frankly admitted the failure of his own marriage and with equal frankness took the burden of his failure upon himself. No two men could be more utterly unlike than Ward Trenton and Bob Cummings, and she busied herself contrasting them. Trenton was practical-minded; Bob a dreamer, and save for his college experiences the range of his life had been narrow. If both were free which would she choose? So great was her preoccupation with these speculations that her work suffered; through sheer inattention she let a promising customer escape without making a purchase.
In the afternoon distribution of mail she received a letter from Trenton. It began, “Dear Grace” and read:
“I expected to see you again this week—that is, of course, if you’d be willing; but I’m called to Kansas City unexpectedly and may not touch your port for ten days or so. I’m not conceited enough to assume that you will be grief-stricken over my delay, and strictly speaking there’s no excuse for writing except that you’ve rather haunted me,—a welcome ghost, I assure you! I talked far too much about myself the other night. One matter I shouldn’t have spoken of at all. No question of confidence in you or anything of that sort. But it’s something I never discuss even with old and intimate friends. You have guessed what I mean. Bad taste, you probably thought it. It was quite that! I want you to think as well of me as you can. I’m counting very much on seeing you again. I hope you are well and happy and that nothing has happened to your eyes since I saw them last!”
This was all except that he named a Kansas City club where he could be reached for the next week if she felt moved to write. She hadn’t expected to hear from him and the note was a distinct surprise. At every opportunity she reread it, and, catching her in the act, Irene teased her about it.
“Oh, you’ve started something! I’ll wager he signed his name in full; that’s just like him. Tommy never writes to me and when he wires he signs an assumed name. But Ward Trenton’s different. I think if he decided to commit murder he’d send his own account of it to the papers. He didn’t talk to you about his wife, I suppose, when Tommy and I left you alone so long at The Shack? Tommy’s known him for years but he says he wouldn’t think of mentioning his wife to him. I’d like to see Ward in love! These quiet ones go strong when they get started.”
“Oh, his letter’s just a little friendly jolly. He’s had to go to Kansas City instead of coming back here right away.”
“Of course he just had to explain that!” Irene laughed. “I can see this is going to be a real case. See what you can do with that woman just coming in. She looks as though she might really have some of the mazuma.”
It was not so easy as Grace had imagined in her spiritual ardor of Sunday to begin retreating from Irene. She realized that Irene would hardly listen in an amiable spirit to the warning she had thought in her hours of contrition it was her duty to give her friend. Irene’s serenity as she paced the aisles of the department, her friendliness and unfailing good humor were all disarming. Irene wasn’t so bad perhaps; Grace was much more tolerant of Irene than she had thought on Sunday would ever be possible again.
The letter from Ward Trenton had the effect of reopening a door which Grace had believed closed and the key thrown away. She found herself wondering whether he might not always write to girls he met and liked; and yet as his image appeared before her—and he lived vividly in her thoughts—she accepted as sincere his statement that he had broken an established reserve in talking of his wife. This of course was what he referred to; and she saw a fine nobility in his apprehension lest the recipient of his confidences might think the less of him for mentioning his wife at all.
Grace was again tormented by curiosity as to whether Trenton still loved his wife and the hope that he did not. She hated herself for this; hated herself for having lost her grip upon the good resolutions of Sunday to forget the whole episode of Kemp’s party. She knew enough of the mind’s processes to indulge in what she fancied was a rigid self-analysis. She wondered whether she was really a normal being, whether other girls’ thoughts ran riot about men as hers did; whether there might not be something vulgar and base in her nature that caused her within a few hours to tolerate the thought of two men, both married, as potential lovers....
It occurred to her that she might too effectually have burned her bridges when she left the university. There were young men she had known during her two years in Bloomington whose interest she might have kept alive; among them there were a number of sons of well-to-do families in country towns. But she was unable to visualize herself married and settled in a small town with her prospect of seeing and knowing the world limited by a husband’s means or ambition. There were one or two young professors who had paid her attentions. One of them, a widower and a man of substantial attainments, had asked her to marry him, but she was unable to see herself a professor’s wife, beset by all the uncertainties of the teaching profession.
She had always been used to admiration, but until now she had heavily discounted all the compliments that were paid her good looks. She found herself covertly looking into the mirrors as she passed. Trenton had been all over the world and no doubt had seen many beautiful women; and yet he wrote that she haunted him, which could only mean that he was unable to escape from the thought of her. Again, deeply humble, she scouted the idea that he could have fallen in love with her; he was only a little sorry for her, thinking of her probably as a rather nice girl who was to be pitied because she had to work for her living.
He had spoken of being lonely. Maybe it was only for lack of anything better to do that he fell to thinking of her as he sat in the club in St. Louis and wrote to her out of his craving for sympathy. At twenty-one Grace did not know that the only being in the world who is more dangerous than a lonely woman is a lonely man.