Their eyes met; no need to amplify.
“Dicky’s so deadly in earnest,” Pidge went on. “He sees what he sees the same at ten in the morning and at ten at night. His coming to Harrow Street didn’t mean a whim. His part that night of our Punjabi dinner didn’t mean a whim. Oh, but I’m so glad he hasn’t started out to save the world!”
“He’s preparing to work better than that.”
“I feel so ungrateful for not missing him more,” Pidge added unsteadily, “for not being more interested in this that pleases you. I can appreciate, but oh, Miss Claes, I don’t belong to your way of seeing things. I’ll always be Dicky Cobden’s hangman, always hurting myself more!”
They were standing close together.
“Nothing matters to me but myself!” Pidge moaned. “I’m hopelessly lost in myself—that’s what’s the matter! What room have I for Africa or the world? There’s more to me in the struggle of John Higgins not to get drunk—in the body hunger and body love of Fanny Gallup—in the lies of Rufus Melton! I can understand this world-service thing—oh, I can see the nations like chessmen on the table!—but I can’t fix Fanny Gallup or John Higgins, I can’t fix Rufus Melton. I can’t fix myself!”
XV
THE COBDEN INTERIOR
PIDGE heard about the assassinations in Bosnia as wearily as of a murder in little Sicily. She heard rumors of war in Europe with ennui—how could there be energy enough left in the human race to make war? She met Nagar in the lower hall at Harrow Street on the evening that war became a fact. He looked like a dead man walking in the twilight. She didn’t see Miss Claes at all that night. The next day in the office war began to show its personal aspects to Pidge Musser of Los Angeles. John Higgins was hours late in returning from lunch. She saw that he wouldn’t be down at all to-morrow. He looked old. He had on a black frock coat, as if dressed for pallbearing, though his face looked as if he were about to be borne himself. The little office was fumy, sweetish.
“Our blessed Savior moves in mysterious ways,” he remarked.
Pidge lingered at the door to get any significance that this might have for her.