And no employee of the office suspected that anything lay beneath the surface reasons given for changing firms. She accepted the handsome farewell gift with as much apparent pleasure as if she were to be married and it were a start toward her silver chest. Mary, too, had learned how to pretend. Nor did she permit Steve to come snarling––masculine fashion of sobbing––at her in vain protests trying to shake her from her resolve.
During the last days of rushed work to help her successor find the way comparatively easy Mary kept Steve at arm’s length. The same strange joy at having told him her secret and released the tension was being relived again in knowing that she was to leave the tangle with the Gorgeous Girl in command of it, and go live her commercial nun’s existence in the offices of unromantic old graybeards who merely thought of her as a mighty clever woman who would not demand an assistant.
Mary felt that she had truly passed her commercial novitiate; she made herself admit that a commercial 271 life was hers for all time. She would leave a forbidden world of romance, watching Luke become a six-footer and an embryo inventor as her special pride and pleasure. It was good to have it settled, to have it a scar, pale and calm, throbbing only under extreme pressure. She even welcomed Beatrice’s hurried visit to the office and met with gentle patience her half-veiled reproaches for leaving her husband’s employ.
“I can’t see why you go,” Beatrice protested, undecided whether it was because Steve and Mary had come to some understanding, as Trudy hinted, and it would be wiser for Mary to be removed from the everyday scene of action; or whether Mary had never thought of Steve except as a man who would not pay her such and such a salary and therefore, being tailor-made of heart as well as dress, she coolly picked up her pad and pencil and was walking off the lot. With the complacent conceit of all Gorgeous Girls who fancy that clothes can always conquer, Beatrice really inclined toward the latter theory. But being a woman she could not resist having a few pangs of unrest and trying out her fancied detective ability upon Mary.
She brought her a farewell gift also––a veil case which had been given to Beatrice two summers ago. A fresh ribbon had made it quite all right, so she acted the Lady Bountiful as she presented her offering and listened carefully to Mary’s sensible reply.
“I can’t go running off to Bermuda and Florida like you people can. I am forced to find my recreation in my work––and hides and razors are a queer combination for a woman who really likes gardens and sea bathing.” She laughed so genuinely that 272 Beatrice told herself that Trudy was an unpardonable little fool. “I have stayed at the post for some time, and now that I’ve the chance to change my recreation to fabrics––I’m tempted to try it. I’m sure you do understand––and it is with great regret that I leave the office.”
“It will make it hard for Mr. O’Valley,” Beatrice continued, blandly. “Of course I have realized what an unusual man my husband is––his phenomenal rise and all that; and papa has always said he never met any one who was so keen as Steve. I have always tried to be diplomatic in whatever I said to Mr. O’Valley about his business; I never encourage his discussing it at home since it is not fair to ask him to drag it into his playtime. So I can’t talk over actual details with you. But I know it will be hard for him and he will have quite a time getting readjusted. He says this Miss Coulson is a nice girl but temperamentally a Jersey cow.”
Beatrice smiled at this; she had viewed Miss Coulson immediately upon the news concerning Mary’s resignation, and had felt more than satisfied. Even Beatrice realized that Miss Coulson was a nice pink-and-white thing who undoubtedly had a cedar chest half filled with hope treasures and would at the first opportunity exchange her desk for a kitchen cabinet and be happy ever after.
When Beatrice tried discussing the matter with Steve he responded so listlessly and seemed so apathetic about either Miss Coulson or Mary that Beatrice became vastly interested in fall projects of her own, telling Aunt Belle that her theory was correct: It was easier to be disappointed in one’s husband than in one’s friends, and that Steve was 273 the sort who was never going to be concerned about his wife’s disappointment; in fact, he would never realize it had occurred.
The night Mary left the office for good and all, leaving clean and empty desk room for Miss Coulson and the little tea appointments as a token of good will, Luke met her at the corner and they walked home together.