The jolting of the train shook her relaxed body. Her cheek lay against the rough plush of the chairback, for she was too tired to sit upright. Against the black square of the window her life arranged itself before her. How many times she had seen her life lying before her like a straight road, and had determined what its course and end would be! But she was older now, and wiser, and able to control her destiny.
She was a land-salesman; she was a good salesman. This was the only thing she had saved from wreckage. At least she would succeed in this. She would make money; she would clear Bert's name, which was hers; she would buy a little house and make it beautiful. Perhaps Bert would want to come to it some day and she would have it waiting for him. She knew that she would never love him as she had loved him, for she saw him too clearly now, but she felt that their lives were inextricably bound together and that the tie between them was stronger because he needed her.
A letter from Clark & Hayward was in her box at the hotel. She tore it open quickly. As always, she had a wild thought that it contained news of Bert.
It said that the firm had given the oil fields territory to two other salesmen, Hutchinson and Monroe. The oil fields had proved a good territory, and it was too large for her to handle alone. She would turn over to Hutchinson and Monroe any leads she had not followed up. Doubtless she could make arrangements with them as to commissions; the firm hoped she would continue to work in the fields; Hutchinson and Monroe would expect an overage on her sales. Mr. Clark trusted they would work in harmony, and congratulated her on her success.
Her first astonishment changed quickly to a cold rage. Did they think they could take her territory from her? Her territory, that she had developed herself, alone? After her days and weeks of hard, exhausting work, after her hours of talking, of distributing advertising, of making sales that would lead to more sales, they were coming in and taking the fruits of it away from her? Oh, she would fight!
The clerk told her that Hutchinson and Monroe had arrived that afternoon. She asked him to tell them that she would see them in the parlor at nine o'clock. There would be some slight advantage in making them come to her.
She was sitting in the small, stuffy room, her eyes fixed on a newspaper, when they came in. She felt hard, like a machine of steel, when she rose smiling to meet them.
Hutchinson was a tall, angular man, who moved in an easy-going way as if his body had nothing to do with the loose-fitting, gray clothes he wore. His eyes were frank, with a humorous expression in them, but though his face was lean there were deep lines from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth, and when he smiled, which he did easily, two more deep lines appeared in his cheeks.
Monroe was older, shorter, and stout. There was a smooth suavity in the effect of his neat, dapper person, his heavy gold watch-chain, his eye-glasses. He removed the glasses at intervals, as if from habit, wiping them with a silk handkerchief, and at such moments his blandly paternal manner was accentuated. His eyes were set too close to the thin bridge of a nose that grew heavy at the tip, but his gray hair, the kindly patronage of his smile, and his soft, heavy voice were impressive.
Helen perceived that both of these men were good salesmen, and that their working together made a happy combination of opposite abilities. She saw herself opposing them, an inexperienced girl, and felt that the odds were overwhelmingly against her. But her determination to fight was not lessened.