The first flowers from a real florist’s which she had ever received, except for a bunch of carnations from Henry Carson at Panama high-school commencement, came from Walter—long-stemmed roses in damp paper and a florist’s box, with Walter’s card inside.
And perhaps the first time that she had ever really seen spring, felt the intense light of sky and cloud and fresh greenery as her own, was on a Sunday just before the fragrant first of June, when Walter and she slipped away from her mother and walked in Central Park, shabby but unconscious.
She explored with him, too; felt adventurous in quite respectable Japanese and Greek and Syrian restaurants.
But her mother waited for her at home, and the job, the office, the desk, demanded all her energy.
Had they seen each other less frequently, perhaps Walter would have let dreams serve for real kisses, and have been satisfied. But he saw her a hundred times a day—and yet their love progressed so little. The propinquity of the office tantalized them. And Mrs. Golden kept them apart.
§ 2
The woman who had aspired and been idle while Captain Golden had toiled for her, who had mourned and been idle while Una had planned for her, and who had always been a compound of selfishness and love, was more and more accustomed to taking her daughter’s youth to feed her comfort and her canary—a bird of atrophied voice and uncleanly habit.
If this were the history of the people who wait at home, instead of the history of the warriors, rich credit would be given to Mrs. Golden for enduring the long, lonely days, listening for Una’s step. A proud, patient woman with nothing to do all day but pick at a little housework, and read her eyes out, and wish that she could run in and be neighborly with the indifferent urbanites who formed about her a wall of ice. Yet so confused are human purposes that this good woman who adored her daughter also sapped her daughter’s vigor. As the office loomed behind all of Una’s desires, so behind the office, in turn, was ever the shadowy thought of the appealing figure there at home; and toward her mother Una was very compassionate.
Yes, and so was her mother!
Mrs. Golden liked to sit soft and read stories of young love. Partly by nature and partly because she had learned that thus she could best obtain her wishes, she was gentle as a well-filled cat and delicate as a tulle scarf. She was admiringly adhesive to Una as she had been to Captain Golden, and she managed the new master of the house just as she had managed the former one. She listened to dictates pleasantly, was perfectly charmed at suggestions that she do anything, and then gracefully forgot.