Chapter SIX: I (2)

“I wish every happiness for you, dear. I hope with all my heart that love will come to you in a great way, which is the only way that counts!”

VII

A moment later Bob Cummings appeared and greeted Grace with unfeigned surprise and pleasure.

“I’ll say we don’t need to be introduced! Grace and I are old friends,” he said, still unable to conceal his mystification at finding Grace established on terms of intimacy in his neighbor’s house.

“I inveigled Grace here without telling her it was to be a musical evening,” said Miss Reynolds.

“Oh, I’d have come just the same!” laughed Grace.

“We’ll cut the music now,” said Cummings. “It will be a lot more fun to talk. I tell you, Grace, it’s a joy to have a place of refuge like this! Miss Reynolds is the kindest woman in the world. I’ve adopted her as my aunt.”

He bowed to Miss Reynolds, and glanced from one to the other with boyish eagerness for their approval.

“That’s the first I’ve heard of it,” Miss Reynolds retorted with a grieved air. “Why don’t you tell him, Grace, that being an aunt sounds too old. You might both adopt me as a cousin!”

Grace and Bob discussed the matter with mock gravity and decided that there was no good reason why they shouldn’t be her cousin.

“Then you must call me Cousin Beulah!” said Miss Reynolds. Her nephews and nieces were widely scattered she said, and she didn’t care for her lawful cousins.

Grace talked much more freely under the stimulus of Bob’s presence. It appeared that Miss Reynolds had not known Bob until she moved into the neighborhood and their acquaintance had begun quite romantically. Miss Reynolds had stopped him as he was passing her house shortly after she moved in and asked him whether he knew anything about trees. Some of the trees on her premises were preyed upon by malevolent insects and quite characteristically she had halted him to ask whether he could recommend a good tree doctor.

“You looked intelligent; so I took a chance,” Miss Reynolds explained. “And the man you recommended didn’t hurt the trees much--only two died. I’ve bought a tree book and hereafter I’ll do my own spraying.”

When Miss Reynolds spoke of Mrs. Cummings she referred to her as Evelyn, explaining to Grace that she was the daughter of an old friend. Evelyn, it appeared, was arranging a Thanksgiving party for one of the country clubs. Bob said she was giving a lot of time to it; it was going to be a brilliant affair. Then finding that Grace did not know Evelyn and remembering that in all likelihood her guest wouldn’t be invited to the entertainment, Miss Reynolds turned the talk into other channels. It was evident that Bob was a welcome visitor to Miss Reynolds’s house and that she understood and humored him and indulged and encouraged his chaffing attitude toward her. That he should make a practice of escaping from a company at home that did not interest him was just like Bob! He was lucky to have a neighbor so understanding and amiable as Miss Reynolds. Perhaps again and often she would meet Bob at Miss Reynolds’s when he found Evelyn irksome. Grace rose and changed her seat, as though by so doing she were escaping from an idea she felt to be base, an affront to Miss Reynolds, an insult to Bob.

“The piano’s waiting, Bob”; and Miss Reynolds led the way to the music room across the hall.

Bob began, as had always been his way, Grace remembered, by improvising, weaving together snatches of classical compositions, with whimsical variations. Then, after a pause, he sat erect, struck into Schumann’s Nachtstuck, and followed it with Handel’s Largo and Rubenstein’s Melody in F, all associated in her memory with the days of their boy-and-girl companionship. He shook his head impatiently, waited a moment and then a new mood laying hold of him he had recourse to Chopin, and played a succession of pieces that filled the room with color and light. Grace watched the sure touch of his hands, marveling that he had been so faithful to the music that was his passion as a boy. It had always been his solace in the unhappy hours to which he had been a prey as far back as she could remember. There was no questioning his joy in the great harmonies. He was endowed with a talent that had been cultivated with devotion, and he might have had a brilliant career if fate had not swept him into a business for which his temperament wholly unfitted him.

While he was still playing Miss Reynolds was called away by callers and left the room quietly.

“You and Bob stay here,” she whispered to Grace. “These are people I have to see.”

When Bob ended with a Chopin valse, graceful and capricious, that seemed to Grace to bring the joy of spring into the room, he swung round, noted Miss Reynolds’s absence and then the closed door.

“My audience reduced one-half!” he exclaimed ruefully. “At this rate I’ll soon be alone.”

“Don’t stop! Those last things were marvelous!”

“Just one more! Do you remember how I cornered you one day in our old house--you were still wearing pigtails--and told you I’d learned a new piece and you sat like a dear angel while I played this--my first show piece?”

It was Mendelssohn’s Spring Song, and she thrilled to think that he hadn’t forgotten. The familiar chords brought back vividly the old times; he had been so proud and happy that day in displaying his prowess.

Her praise was sweet to him then, and she saw that it was grateful to him now.

“You play wonderfully, Bob; it’s a pity you couldn’t have kept on!”

“We can’t do as we please in this world,” he said, throwing himself into a chair and reaching for the cigarettes. “But I get a lot of fun out of my music. I’m not sorry I stuck to it as I did from the time I could stretch an octave. Are you spending the night with Miss Reynolds?”

“No; we’re not quite that chummy. Miss Reynolds said she’d send me home.”

“Not on your life she won’t! I’m going to run you out in my roadster. That’s settled. I don’t have to show up at home till midnight, so there’s plenty of time. You and Cousin Beulah seem to get on famously.”

Grace gave a vivacious account of the beginning of her acquaintance with Miss Reynolds, not omitting the ten dollar tip.

He laughed; then frowned darkly.

“I’ve been troubled about this thing ever since I met you today,” he said doggedly; “your having to quit college, I mean. I feel guilty, terribly guilty.”

“Please, Bob! don’t spoil my nice evening by mentioning those things again. I know it wasn’t your fault. So let’s go on being friends just as though nothing had happened.”

“Of course. But it’s rotten just the same. You can hardly see me without----”

She raised her hand warningly.

“Bob, I’d be ashamed if anything could spoil our friendship. I’m perfectly satisfied that you had nothing to do with father’s troubles. So please forget it.”

She won him back to good nature--she had always been able to do that--and they talked of old times, of the companions of their youth in the park neighborhood. This was safe ground. The fact that they were harking back to their childhood and youth emphasized the changed circumstances of both the Durlands and the Cummingses. It didn’t seem possible that he was married; it struck her suddenly that he didn’t appear at all married; and with this came the reflection that he was the kind of man who should never marry. He should have kept himself free; he had too much temperament for a harmonious married life.

“You don’t know Evelyn,” he remarked a little absently. And then as though Grace’s not knowing Evelyn called for an explanation he added: “She was away at school for a long time.”

“What’s she like, Bob?” Grace asked. “A man ought to be able to draw a wonderful picture of his wife.”

“He should indeed! Let me see. She’s fair; blue eyes; tall, slender; likes to have something doing; wins golf cups; a splendid dancer.... Oh, pshaw! You wouldn’t get any idea from that!” he said with an uneasy laugh. “She’s very popular; people like her tremendously.”

“I’m sure she’s lovely, Bob. Is she musical?”

“Oh, she doesn’t care much for music; my practicing bores her. She used to sing a little but she’s given it up.”

He hadn’t said that he hoped she might meet Evelyn; and for a moment Grace resented this. She was a saleswoman in a department store and Evelyn had no time for an old friend of her husband who sold ready-to-wear clothing. A snob, no doubt, self-centered and selfish; Bob’s failure to suggest a meeting with his wife made it clear that he realized the futility of trying to bring them together.

“You haven’t missed me a bit!” cried Miss Reynolds appearing suddenly. “Is the music all over?”

“Oh, we’ve been reminiscing,” said Grace. “And you missed the best of Bob’s playing.”

“I’m sorry those people chose tonight for their call. It was Judge Sanders, my lawyer, and his wife, old friends--but I didn’t dare smoke before _them_! You’ve got to stay now while I have a cigarette.”

When Grace said presently that she must go and Miss Reynolds reached for the bell to ring for her car, Bob stayed her hand.

“That’s all fixed! I’ll run around and bring my car and _I’ll_ take Grace home. Please say you don’t mind!”

“Of course, I don’t mind; but you needn’t think you’re establishing a precedent. The next time Grace comes I’ll lock the door against you and all the rest of the world!”

While Bob went for his car Miss Reynolds warned Grace that she was likely to ask her to the house again.

“You’ll be doing me a favor by coming, dear. And remember, if there’s ever anything I can do for you you’re to tell me. That’s a promise. I should be sorry if you didn’t feel that you could come to me with _anything_.”

VIII

“It’s only a little after ten,” said Bob as he started the car, “and I’m going to touch the edge of the country before I take you home. Is that all right? How long’s it been since we went driving together?”

“Centuries! It was just after you moved.”

“I was afraid you’d forgotten. I remember the evening perfectly. We stopped at the Country Club to dance and just played around by ourselves. But we did have a good time!”

His spirits were soaring; through his talk ran an undercurrent of mischievous delight in his freedom. “It’s just bully to see you again!” he repeated several times. “While I was playing I kept thinking of the royal fun we used to have. Do you remember that day our families had a picnic--we were just kids then--and you and I wandered away and got lost looking for wild flowers or whatever the excuse was; and a big storm came up and our mothers gave us a good raking when we came back all soaked and everybody was scared for fear we’d tumbled into the river!”

To Grace the remembrance of this adventure was not nearly so thrilling as the fact that Bob, now married, still chortled over the recollection and was obviously delighted to be spending an evening with her while his wife enjoyed herself in her own fashion at home. He would probably not tell Evelyn that he had taken the daughter of his father’s old business associate driving, a girl who clerked in a department store and was clearly out of his social orbit. Here was another episode which Grace knew she dared not mention at home; Ethel and her mother would be horrified. But Grace was happy in the thought that Bob Cummings still found pleasure in her company even if she was Number Eighteen at Shipley’s and took and accepted tips from kindly-disposed customers. He halted the car at a point which afforded a broad sweep of moonlit field and woodland.

“You know, Grace, sometimes I’ve been hungry and positively homesick for a talk with you such as we’ve had tonight.”

“Please drive on! You mustn’t say things like that.”

“Well, that’s the way I feel anyhow. It’s queer how I haven’t been able to do anything I wanted to with my life. I’m like a man who’s been pushed on a train he didn’t want to take and can’t get off.”

Here again was his old eager appeal for sympathy. He was weak, she knew, with the weakness that is a defect of such natures. It would be perfectly easy to begin a flirtation with him, possibly to see him frequently in some such way as she saw him now. It was wrong to encourage him, but her curiosity as to how far he would go overcame her scruples; it would do no harm to lead him on a little.

“You ought to be very happy, Bob. You have everything to make you happy!”

“I’ve made mistakes all down the line,” he answered with a flare of defiance. “I ought to have stood out against father when he put me into the business. I’m no good at it. But Merwin made a mess of things; father’s got him on a ranch out in Montana now, and Tom’s got the bug to be a doctor and nothing can shake him. So I have to sit at a desk every day doing things I hate and doing them badly of course. And for the rest of it----!”

He stopped short of the rest of it, which Grace surmised was his marriage to Evelyn. It was his own fault that he had failed to control and manage his life. He might have resisted his father when it came to going into business and certainly it spoke for a feeble will if he had married to gratify his mother’s social ambitions. She was about to bid him drive on when he turned toward her saying:

“I feel nearer to you, Grace, than to anybody else in the world! It was always that way. It’s got hold of me again tonight--that feeling I used to have that no matter what happened you’d know, you’d understand!”

“Those days are gone, Bob,” she said, allowing a vague wistfulness to creep into her tone. “I mustn’t see you any more. We’ve both got our lives to live. You know that as well as I do. You’re just a little down tonight; you always had moods like this when you thought the world was against you. It’s just a mood and everything will look differently tomorrow.”

“But I’ve got to see you, Grace; not often maybe, but now and then. There’ll be some way of managing.”

“No!” she exclaimed, her curiosity fully satisfied as to how far he would go. “I’ll be angry with you in a minute! This is positively the last time!”

“Please don’t say that!” he pleaded. “I wouldn’t offend you for anything in the world, Grace.”

“I know you wouldn’t, Bob,” she said kindly. “But there are some things that won’t do, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” he conceded with the petulance of a child reluctantly admitting a fault.

“I’m glad you still like me, but you know perfectly well this kind of thing’s all wrong. I mustn’t see you again.”

“But Grace, what if I just have to see you!”

“Oh, don’t be so silly! You’ll never just have to. You’ve got a wife to tell your troubles to.”

She wasn’t sure that she wanted to make it impossible for him to see her again or that she really preferred that he tell his troubles to his wife. His troubles were always largely imaginary, due to his sensitive and impressionable nature.

“You needn’t remind me of that!” he said.

“Oh, start the car! Let’s all be cheerful! We might as well laugh as cry in this world. Did you see the game Saturday? I had a suitor turn up from the university and we had a jolly time.”

“Who was he?” Bob demanded savagely.

“Oh, Bob, you’re a perfect scream! Well, you needn’t be jealous of _him_.”

“I’m jealous of every man you know!” he said.

“Now, you’re talking like a crazy man! Suppose I were to tell you I’m jealous of Evelyn! Please remember that you forgot all about me and married another girl quite cheerfully with a church wedding and flowers and everything. You needn’t come to me now for consolation!”

She refused to hear his defense from this charge, and mocked him by singing snatches of college songs till they were in town. When they reached the Durland house she told him not to get out.

“I won’t tell the family you brought me home; they wouldn’t understand. Thanks ever so much, Bob.”

Mrs. Durland and Ethel were waiting to hear of her evening with Miss Reynolds and she told everything except that she had met Cummings there. She satisfied as quickly as possible their curiosity as to Miss Reynolds and her establishment, and hurried to her room eager to be alone. She assured herself that she could never love Bob Cummings, would never have loved him even if their families had remained neighbors and it had been possible to marry him. He wasn’t her type--the phrase pleased her--and in trying to determine just what type of man most appealed to her Trenton loomed large in her speculations. Within a few weeks she had encountered two concrete instances of the instability of marriage. Love, it seemed, was a fleeting thing and loyalty had become a by-word. Bob was only a spoiled boy, shallow, easily influenced, yet withal endowed with graces and charms. But graces and charms were not enough. She brought herself to the point of feeling sorry for Evelyn, who probably refused to humor and pet Bob and was doubtless grateful that he had music as an outlet for his emotions. It was something, though, to have found that he hadn’t forgotten; that there were times when he felt the need of her. She wondered whether he would take her word as final and make no further attempt to see her.

IX

Grace addressed herself sincerely to the business of bringing all the cheer possible to the home circle. She overcame her annoyance at being obliged to recount the details of her work, realizing that her mother spent her days at home and save for the small affairs of her club had little touch with the world beyond her dooryard. Ethel’s days in the insurance office were much alike and she lacked Grace’s gift for making a good story out of a trifling incident. Even Mr. Durland enjoyed Grace’s account of the whims and foibles of the women she encountered at Shipley’s. Grace reasoned that so long as she lived at home it would be a mistake not to make the best of things; but even in her fits of repentance she had not regretted her assertion of the right to go and come unquestioned.

In the week following she left the house on two evenings saying merely that she was going out. On one of these occasions she returned a book to the public library; on another she walked aimlessly for an hour. These unexplained absences were to determine whether her new won liberty was really firmly established. Nothing was said either by her mother or Ethel, though it was clear that they were mystified by her early return, though not to the point of asking where she had been. On a third evening she announced at the table that she had earned a good bonus that day and would celebrate by taking them all to the vaudeville. Mrs. Durland and Ethel gave plausible excuses for declining, but not without expressing their appreciation of the invitation in kind terms, and Grace and her father set off alone.

In her cogitations Grace was convinced that nothing short of a miracle could ever improve materially the family fortunes. They had the house free of encumbrance, but it needed re-roofing, and the furnishings were old and dingy. Mrs. Durland had worked out a budget by which to manage the family finances, and it was clear enough to Grace that what she and Ethel earned would just about take care of the necessary running expenses. Mrs. Durland had received for many years an income of five hundred dollars a year from her father’s estate, and this Grace learned had always been spent on the family. The last payment had been put away, Mrs. Durland explained to her daughters, to help establish Roy after he completed his law course. It was impressed upon Grace constantly that all the hopes of bettering the family conditions centered in Roy. Ethel shared, though in less degree, her mother’s confidence in the son of the house. Grace kept silent when Roy’s prospects were discussed, feeling that it would serve no purpose to express her feeling that Roy had no special talent for the law, and even if he had the Durlands were without family or business connections that could possibly assist him in establishing himself.

X

Grace’s meeting with Bob Cummings served to sharpen her sense of social differentiations. Her mother had always encouraged the idea that the Durlands were a family of dignity, entitled to the highest consideration; but stranded as they were in a neighborhood that had no lines of communication with polite society, Mrs. Durland now rarely received an invitation even to the houses of her old friends. Grace’s excursions in social science had made her aware of the existence of such a thing as class consciousness; but she had never questioned that she belonged to the favored element. The thought assailed her now that as a wage-earning girl she had a fixed social status from which there was little likelihood she would ever escape. The daughters of prominent families she waited on at Shipley’s were no better looking, no more intelligent and had no better social instincts than she possessed; but she was as completely shut off from any contact with them as though she were the child of a Congo chieftain. With all her romanticism she failed to picture the son of one of the first families making her acquaintance and introducing her to his family as the girl he meant to marry. Several young men with whom she became acquainted in Shipley’s had asked her to go to dances, or for Sunday drives. Irene sniffed when Grace reported these overtures.

“Oh, they’re nice fellows; but what have they got to offer? They’re never going to get anywhere. You can’t afford to waste your time on them.”

However, Grace accepted one of these invitations. The young man took her to a public dance hall where the music was good, but the patrons struck her as altogether uninspiring; and she resented being inspected by a police matron. She danced with her escort all evening, and then they went to a cafeteria for sandwiches and soda water.

Irene had warned Grace that such young fellows were likely to prove fresh; that they always expected to kiss a girl good-night, and might even be insulting; but this particular young man was almost pathetically deferential. Grace was ashamed of herself for not inviting him to call, but she shrank from encouraging his further attentions; he might very easily become a nuisance.

Again, she went to Rosemary Terrace, a dance and supper place on the edge of town, in company with a young man who carried a bottle on his hip to which he referred with proud complacency, as though it were the symbol of his freedom as an American citizen. The large dance hall was crowded; the patrons were clearly the worse for their indulgence in the liquor carried by their escorts; the dancing of many of the visitors was vulgar; the place was hot and noisy and the air heavy with tobacco smoke. Grace’s young man kept assuring her that the Rosemary was the sportiest place in town; you didn’t see any dead ones there. His desire to be thought a sport would have been amusing if he hadn’t so strenuously insisted upon explaining that he was truly of the great company of the elect to whom the laws of God and man were as nothing. When Grace asked to be taken home he hinted that there were other places presumably even less reputable, to which they might go. But he did not press the matter, when, reaching the Durland gate, he tried to kiss her and she, to mark the termination of their acquaintance, slapped him.

These experiences were, she reflected, typical of what she must look forward to unless she compromised with her conscience and accepted Irene’s philosophy of life.

She had replied immediately to Trenton’s letter from St. Louis with a brief note which she made as colorless as possible. She knew that it was for her to decide whether to see more of him or drop the acquaintance. He was not a man to force his attentions upon any young woman if he had reason to think them unwelcome. Hearing nothing from him for several days she had decided that he had settled the matter himself when she received a note explaining that he had been very busy but would start East the next day. He hoped she would dine with him on Thursday night and named the Indianapolis hotel where her reply would reach him.

“Don’t turn him down!” exclaimed Irene when Grace told her Trenton was coming. “He wouldn’t ask you if he didn’t want you. Tommy skipped for New York last night so it’s a safe bet that Ward’s stopping on purpose to see you.”

“I don’t know--” began Grace doubtfully.

“Oh, have a heart! There’s no harm in eating dinner with a married man in a hotel where you’d get by even if all your family walked in and caught you! Of course Tommy can’t appear with me at any public place here at home, but it’s different with you and Ward. He doesn’t know a dozen people in town.”

“I wouldn’t want to offend him,” Grace replied slowly, a prey to uncertainty; but she withheld her acceptance until the morning of the day of Trenton’s arrival.

XI

When she reached the Hotel Sycamore at seven o’clock he was waiting for her at the entrance.

“On time to the minute!” he exclaimed. “I took you at your word that you’d rather not have me call for you.”

“Thanks; but it was easier this way,” she answered.

He had been so much in her thoughts, and she had considered him from so many angles that at first she was shy in his presence. But by the time they were seated in the dining room her diffidence was passing. He appeared younger than at The Shack, but rather more distinguished; it might have been the effect of his dinner coat; and she noticed that he was the only man in the room who had dressed for dinner.

“You’ve been busy of course and I’ve been up to my eyes in work,” he said; “so we’ll dismiss business. Shall we talk of the weather or see what we can do to save the world from destruction!”

“Oh, I’ve had a lot of ideas about things since I saw you,” she said. “Half of them were right and half wrong.”

“Oh,” he exclaimed, “our old friend conscience!”

“Yes,” she replied, meeting his gaze squarely. “I’ve been trying to decide a thousand questions, but I’ve got nowhere!”

“Terrible! But I’m glad to find that you’re so human; most of us are like that. Honest, now, you weren’t at all sure you wanted to see me tonight!”

“No,” she assented under his smiling gaze; “I didn’t send the answer to your note till nearly noon!”

“So I noticed from the hotel stamp on the envelope! But I’d have been very much disappointed if you’d refused.”

His tone was too serious for comfort. She felt that she must have a care lest he discover the attraction he had for her.

“Oh, you’d have got over it! You know you would. You needn’t have dined alone--Tommy’s out of town, but there’s Irene!”

“Much as I admire Irene she would be no substitute! I was sincerely anxious to see you again, if only to make sure you were still on earth.”

“Oh, I have no intention of leaving it!”

She was finding it easy to be flippant with him. Whatever liking he had for her was no doubt due to the seriousness she had manifested in their talk at The Shack. And the effect of that talk had been to awaken a sympathy and interest on both sides; in her case she knew that it was trifle more than that. She was sorry now that she had kissed him; she was puzzled that she had ever had the courage to do it, though it was such a kiss as she might have given any man older than herself in the same circumstances. She had heard of women, very young women, who were able to exert a strong influence upon men much older than themselves. She felt for the first time the power of sex--at least she had never before thought of it in the phrases that now danced through her brain. If he was annoyed not to find her as interesting and agreeable as at The Shack he was successful in concealing his disappointment. He continued to be unfailingly courteous, meeting her rejoinders with characteristic mockeries until she began to feel ashamed of her lack of friendliness. He deserved better of her than this.

“We’re going to the theatre; did you know that?” he asked toward the end of the dinner. “And we’re going to be fashionably late.”

“‘Stolen Stars!’ Oh, that’s perfectly marvelous,” she exclaimed. “I’ve been just dying to see it!”

“Then it’s lucky that you can live and see it!” Through the performance the thought kept recurring to her that he meant to be kind. No one had ever been so kind or shown her so flattering a deference as Ward Trenton. She was proud to be sitting beside him. When the lights went up after the first act a buzz of talk in one of the boxes drew her attention, and she caught a glimpse of Bob Cummings. At the same moment he saw her and bowed. There were six in the party and she decided that Bob’s wife was the young woman he most rarely addressed. Evelyn was not beautiful; she was gratified to have Trenton’s confirmation of her opinion on this point when she directed his attention to the box party.

“I’ll be here for several days,” said Trenton when they reached the Durland house and he stood for a moment on the doorstep. “Could you give me another evening? Tomorrow night I’m tied up with a business appointment, but may we say day after tomorrow?”

“Yes,” she assented, “but isn’t there danger of seeing too much of me?”

“I’ll take the risk!” he said. “And thank you ever so much.”

She fell asleep glad that she was to see him again.