Una had hated the word “widower”; it had suggested Henry Carson and the Panama undertaker and funerals and tired men trying to wash children and looking for a new wife to take over that work; all the smell and grease of disordered side-street kitchens. To her, now, Julius Edward Schwirtz was not a flabby-necked widower, but a man who mourned, who felt as despairingly as could Walter Babson the loss of the baby who had crowed over the bunny-book. She, the motherless, almost loved him as she stood with him in the same depth of human grief. And she cried a little, secretly, and thought of her longing for the dead mother, as he gently went on:
“My wife died a year later. I couldn’t get over it; seemed like I could have killed myself when I thought of any mean thing I might have said to her—not meaning anything, but hasty-like, as a man will. Couldn’t seem to get over it. Evenings were just hell; they were so—empty. Even when I was out on the road, there wasn’t anybody to write to, anybody that cared. Just sit in a hotel room and think about her. And I just couldn’t realize that she was gone. Do you know, Miss Golden, for months, whenever I was coming back to Boston from a trip, it was her I was coming back to, seemed like, even though I knew she wasn’t there—yes, and evenings at home when I’d be sitting there reading, I’d think I heard her step, and I’d look up and smile—and she wouldn’t be there; she wouldn’t ever be there again.... She was a lot like you—same cute, bright sort of a little woman, with light hair—yes, even the same eye-glasses. I think maybe that’s why I noticed you particular when I first met you at that lunch and remembered you so well afterward.... Though you’re really a lot brighter and better educated than what she was—I can see it now. I don’t mean no disrespect to her; she was a good sport; they don’t make’em any better or finer or truer; but she hadn’t never had much chance; she wasn’t educated or a live wire, like you are.... You don’t mind my saying that, do you? How you mean to me what she meant—”
“No, I’m glad—” she whispered.
Unlike the nimble Walter Babson, Mr. Schwirtz did not make the revelation of his tragedy an excuse for trying to stir her to passion. But he had taken and he held her hand among the long grasses, and she permitted it.
That was all.
He did not arouse her; still was it Walter’s dark head and the head of Walter’s baby that she wanted to cradle on her breast. But for Mr. Schwirtz she felt a good will that was broad as the summer afternoon.
“I am very glad you told me. I do understand. I lost my mother just a year ago,” she said, softly.
He squeezed her hand and sighed, “Thank you, little sister.” Then he rose and more briskly announced, “Getting late—better be hiking, I guess.”
Not again did he even touch her hand. But on his last night at the farm-house he begged, “May I come to call on you in New York?” and she said, “Yes, please do.”
She stayed for a day after his departure, a long and lonely Sunday. She walked five miles by herself. She thought of the momently more horrible fact that vacation was over, that the office would engulf her again. She declared to herself that two weeks were just long enough holiday to rest her, to free her from the office; not long enough to begin to find positive joy.