CHAPTER XIII
“You don’t know how I’ve missed you,” Steve told Mary upon her return. “Don’t I look it?” he added, wistfully.
Mary had appeared at the office late one September afternoon rather than appear the following morning as a model of exact punctuality. She had had to force herself to remain away until her leave of absence expired. It was Luke who rejoiced in the freedom of the woods and the green growing things in which his sister had tried to take consolation, telling herself they would revive her common sense and banish absurd notions concerning Steve O’Valley. It was Luke who rejoiced at catching the largest trout of the season, who never wearied of hayrack rides and corn roasts and bonfires with circles of ghostlike figures enduring the smoke and the damp and the rapid-fire gossiping and giggling. Luke had returned with a healthy coat of tan and a large correspondence list, pledging himself to revisit the spot every season.
But Mary felt defeated in the very purpose of her holiday. The atmosphere of weary school-teachers trying to appear as golden-haired flappers foot-loose for a romance; the white shoes always drying outside tents or along window sills; the college professors eternally talking about their one three-months’ tour of Europe; the mosquitoes; the professional invalid, the inevitable divorcee; the woman with literary ambitions and a typewriter set in action on 184 the greenest, most secluded spot for miles about; the constant snapshotting of everything from an angleworm to a group of arm-entwined bathers about to play splash-me; the cheap talk and aping of such Gorgeous Girls as Beatrice Constantine––all this on one side, and a great and eternal loneliness for Steve on the other.
It was small wonder that defeat was the result. And yet in her heart of hearts Mary was glad that it was so. There is something splendid and breathless in trying to shut away a forbidden rapture, and being unable to do so; in telling oneself one will never try repression again but will shamelessly acknowledge the forbidden rapture and register a desire to thrill to it whenever possible.
Besides the irritations of the summer camp Mary had been forced to leave Hanover remembering Steve as ill, worried over business; of Beatrice’s hinting that she would usurp her place. There had been so many womanly trifles she would have done for Steve had she been in Beatrice’s position––a linen cover for the water glass; a soft shade on the window instead of the glaring white-and-gold-striped affair; exile for that ubiquitous spaniel; home cooking, with old-fashioned milk toast and real coffee of a forefather’s day.
Strange how such homey trifles persist in the mind of a commercial nun through two months of supposed enjoyment and liberty. In the same way incongruous associations of ideas spring into the brain with no apparent reason at all causing fossilized professors to write essays-under-glass that elucidate matters not in the slightest.
So Mary returned to the office two days ahead of 185 time, her heart thumping so loudly that she thought Miss Lunk would surely detect the sound. She deliberately dressed herself in a demure new suit and a becoming black-winged hat which made her seem as if delightfully arrayed for afternoon tea. And it was with a charming timidity that she tiptoed into the office.
Before Steve had asked her opinion she had given one swift look about the two offices, and she was glad that they looked as they did. It would have been disappointing to have found them spick and span and quite self-sufficient, without a hint that Mary Faithful was missed or irreplaceable.
Evidences of Beatrice’s brief sojourn in the business world still remained––an elaborate easy-chair with rose pillows, a thermos bottle and cut-glass tumbler, a curlicue French mirror slightly awry and, on her desk, a gay-bordered silk handkerchief, a silver-mesh bag, and a great amount of cluttered notations; all of which proved that the understudy secretary had not yet mastered the law of efficiency.