“Yes, it’s been selling fairly well—for poetry,” said the clerk. “There’s really no demand for new poetry. Ninety-one cents. You’ll find the verses very pretty.”
Poetry—verses—Stilson a verse-maker! Emily was surprised and somewhat amused. There was no author’s name on the title-page and it was a small volume, about twenty poems, the most of them short, each with a mood as a title—Anger, Parting, Doubt, Jealousy, Courage, Foreboding, Passion, Hope, Renunciation—at Renunciation she paused and read.
It was a crowded street-car and she bent low over the book to hide her face. She had the clue to the book. Indeed she presently discovered that it was to be found in every poem. Stilson had loved her long—almost from her first appearance in the office. And in these verses, breathing generosity and self-sacrifice, and well-aimed for one heart at least, he had poured out his love for her. It was sad, intense, sincere, a love that made her proud and happy, yet humble and melancholy, too.
As she read she seemed to see him looking at her, she felt his heart aching. Now he was holding her tight in his arms, raining kisses on her face and making her blood race like maddest joy through her veins. Again, he was standing afar off, teaching her the lesson that the love that can refrain and renounce is the truest love. It was a revelation of this strange man even to her who had studied him long and penetratingly. So absorbed was she in reading and re-reading that when she glanced up the car was at One hundred and fourteenth street—miles past her house. She walked down to and through the Park in an abandon of happiness over these love letters so strangely sent, thus accidentally received. “I must never let him see that I know,” she thought—“yet how can I help showing it?”
She met him the very next day—almost ran into him as she left the elevator at the news-department floor where he was waiting to take it on its descent. For the first time she betrayed herself, looking at him with a burning blush and with eyes shining with the emotion she could not instantly conceal. She passed on swiftly, conscious that he was gazing after her startled. “I acted like a child,” she said to herself, “and here I am, trembling all over as if I were seventeen.” And then she wrought herself up with thinking what he might think of her. “Where is my courage?” she reassured herself, “What a poor love his would be if he misunderstood me.” Nevertheless she was afraid that she had shown too much. “I suppose it’s impossible to be courageous and restrained when one loves.”
But when she saw him again—two days later, in the vestibule of the Democrat Building—it was her turn to be self-possessed and his to betray himself. He was swinging along with his head down and gloom in his face. He must have recognised her by her feet—distinctive in their slenderness and in the sort of boots that covered them. For he suddenly gave her a flash-like glance which said to her as plainly as words: “I am in the depths. If I only dared to reach out my hand to you, dear!” Then he recovered himself, reddened slightly, bowed almost guiltily and passed on without speaking.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
A FORCED ADVANCE.
IT was the talk of the Sunday office that Emily was being “frozen out.” The women said it was her own fault—her looks had at last failed to give her a “pull.” The men said it was some underhand scheme of Gammell’s—what was more likely in the case of an attractive but thoroughly business-like woman such as Emily and such a man as Gammell, oriental in his ideas on women and of infinite capacity for meanness. Both the men and the women reached their conclusions by ways of prejudice; the men came nearer to the truth, which was that Gammell was bent upon punishing Emily, and that Emily, discouraged and suffering under a sense of injustice, was aiding him to justify himself to his superiors. The mere sight of her irritated him now. Success had developed his natural instinct to tyranny, and she represented rebellion intrenched and defiant within his very gates. One day he found Stilson waiting in his office to look over and revise his Sunday schedule. He hated Stilson because Stilson was his superior officer, and each week—in the interest of the reputation of the paper—was compelled to veto the too audacious, too “yellow” projects of the sensational Gammell.
That day at sight of Stilson he with difficulty concealed his hate. He had just passed one of his enemies—Emily in a new dress and new hat, in every way a painful reminder of his discomfiture. And now here was his other enemy lying in wait, as he instinctively felt, to veto an article in which he took especial pride.
Stilson was not covert in his aversions. Diplomatic with no one, he rasped upon Gammell’s highly-strung nerves like a screech in the ear of a neurotic. The wrangle began quietly enough in an exchange of veiled sarcasms and angry looks—contemptuous from Stilson, venomous from Gammell. But the double strain of Emily and Stilson was too strong for Gammell’s discretion. From stealthy sneers, he passed to open thrusts. Stilson, as tyrannical as Gammell, if that side of his nature was roused, grew calm with rage and presently in an arrogant tone ordered Gammell to “throw away that vicious stuff, and let me hear no more about it.”