“Whew!” said Edward to himself, wiping his moist brow with a still moister handkerchief. “Whew!”
Arthur had been found in the American House, and he had been difficult to handle. If Edward had not had such a thorough training in his business, he could never have handled the situation in so masterly a fashion. Arthur was a rich young man, and accustomed to being kotowed to. Edward, however, was accustomed to rich people who were accustomed to being kotowed to. Many times he had explained to wealthy and indignant customers facts which they had not cared to consider—that, for instance, the mere possession of enough money to pay one’s bills did not suffice for a credit department; that there must be a certain willingness to use the money for that purpose.
Edward had not kotowed to Arthur. He had been mighty firm with him, though kind, for he had felt sorry for the man. It had been a bad night for Arthur. He had been desperately worried about his wife. Patiently, inexorably, Edward had made him listen to reason, and in the end there was a touching and beautiful reconciliation. Arthur’s wife, with truly admirable unselfishness, had said that it did not matter who was right about the penny. Both of them had declared that they owed everything to Edward and would be his lifelong friends.
He was now at liberty to attend to his own little affair. Having no money to pay for a taxi, he set off on foot in the direction of his home. It was still raining, and as black as the pit, yet he fancied he could feel dawn in the air. Taking out his watch, he saw that it was half past four. He had been away all night. He remembered his last words to Mildred:
“If things happened as they should—”
She had said that they never did, but they had. He was strangely justified, yet he felt no triumph. The rain fell cold upon his uncovered head, and his spirit was cold within him.
“She must have been worrying,” thought Edward.
Indeed, that was an inadequate word for what he knew she must have felt. He thought about Mildred, not in her outrageous moments, but as she was at other times, when she was her unique and incomparable self. He thought about marriage, in a large, general way. He also thought about his own marriage, and what he had intended it to be.
At last he thought about himself. Soaked through to the skin, cold and weary, Edward groped after justice. It was a creditable performance—the more so because he was unaware of it. He groped, and he found a new and startling piece of wisdom.
He quickened his pace. The wind had died down and the rain had stopped, but he did not know that, for the drops still pattered thickly from the trees. As he turned the corner of his own street, he saw in the sky the first streak of dawn—a pale gray creeping up into the black.