Chapter XXXV

Nelly had said--“Stay as long as you like--” but Melissa went house-hunting at once. On the Monday after she left Delano’s apartment, she began work as Mr. Brooks’ stenographer, Monday night she took her bags and the one rather battered old trunk which held all her belongings and moved into a small but comparatively well-aired and well-lighted room on Forty-ninth Street just off Fifth Avenue. Nelly’s advice again. Nelly knew the woman who rented the room. She took Melissa there and vouched for her, saw her settled, presented her, as a final touch, with a deliciously gay chiffon cushion for a chair that stood by the window.

“Utterly useless,” said Nelly, “it won’t last a month. But neither does the moon--and who cares? Question to ask about anything is--not how long does it last ... but how long will you remember it? ... that sounds like Luke. I must have heard him say it sometime. Are you seeing him, by the way?”

“I’m not seeing any one--except you,” said Melissa.

“Making a clean break, h’m’m?”

“Don’t you think it’s the only way?”

“It’s good enough, in any case. Until you feel you’ve got ground under your feet. Think you’re going to like working with Brooks?”

“I know I’m going to like it. You feel he’s getting at something. With the other people I worked for ... it was deadly routine ... putting one foot before the other all day long.”

Nelly smiled, a slow deepening of amusement.

“Maybe so--maybe not. Don’t forget--there’s a difference in _you_! You’ve had a spoon in the flesh-pots and discovered they aren’t as filling as you thought ... it’s just possible you’ve got a new slant on work of any sort. You _want_ it now, where, before, you resented it. No one’s any good at a job who doesn’t like doing it. That’s stale stuff ... don’t quote me! I merely imply that even your old job might seem different to you, now.”

Melissa didn’t argue the subject.

When Nelly had gone she sat down in the chair by the window with the frivolous rose-colored cushion behind her head, and tried to think what lay at the end of it all. Where she was going and why. To be on her own gave her a mind at peace--not a heart.

Melissa concluded, watching lights in windows across the street wink out one by one, watching curtains drawn and shades lowered, that the less attention she paid her heart the better for her, fewer aches and briefer bruisings.

“One ought to be able to fill up one’s time--with work. I couldn’t make a go of doing nothing. I’m obviously no good as a sheltered woman.” Nelly’s mocking phrase. Nelly, however, was self-sufficient, magnificently so. Melissa wasn’t. Melissa was--incomplete. Groping blindly, always after fulfillment.

--One room, one close, plain quiet room, after those high mellow walls, those crystalline high windows, that baronial fireplace ... the bedroom with the Burgundian curtains!

No telephone shrilling ... “Lissa--what are you doing, to-night? Want to go somewhere and dance? ... want to drive up the River...?”

No covetous hand settling fur and brocade about one’s shoulder with a disturbing pressure in the moment of withdrawal ... no eager masculine voice consulting one’s preferences in the matter of sole Marguery or crab-meat.

Melissa had dined--that first night of her moving--on a chop and a potato, neither worthy of special mention.

Chops and potatoes, she would very likely dine on, many a night again.

Paying the bill, however. Which now made anything palatable.

Deliberately she visioned dining across the table from Roderick, night after night ... listening to his pleasant easy laughter ... fat-man’s laughter it would be in just a year or so ... watching him savor his food and hearing him discuss it. Hearing his friendly knowledgeable comment on people and places. Wanting to talk books with him--only he didn’t read a great deal. Wanting to go somewhere with him and listen to music--only music bored him except the noisier sorts. Wanting to lay life on the table and the wherefores of love and death, talking it all out, to no conclusion perhaps save the soul-ease of two on the high tower of Babel speaking one tongue--only Roderick didn’t care about talking. Just talking--He liked action for his money--so he said. And paid for it. And got it.

Melissa came away from her rosy cushion and her lonely window not at all dissatisfied. She didn’t want Roderick. She liked him very much but she could think of him (looking into another woman’s eyes while he slipped a wedding-ring on her finger) without a qualm--unmoved by so much as a jealous shiver.... Even Luke--she missed Luke--but she didn’t want him too close. While as for that other--the man in the picture--it broke Melissa’s heart in her breast to even vaguely imagine his voice unsteady, his smile gone, his eyes shining ... for any one else in the world but Melissa, herself.

His voice would break--and his smile would go--Melissa could hear and see it till it was realler almost than she could bear ... when he stooped his head to a lifted face ... the look in those ironical eyes, the shining, unguarded, passionate heaven of possession and surrender....

If Melissa wasn’t to be the woman he looked at that way--it stretched her upon a rack, to think it might be some one else.

As far as she could, she endeavored not to think of him at all.

But having thought of nothing else for some time abrupt dismissal wasn’t easy.

Coming home each night, tired to the point of wanting nothing so much as dinner and bed, was all that helped her. She threw herself into the service of the harassed and over-burdened Mr. Brooks with an almost fanatic intensity. She was at her desk before nine and left it most often last of all the office force. She devoured all the work she could reach. She was undismayed, uncomplaining, before any amount of overtime.

“Looks like a find,” commented Mr. Brooks to Nelly who relayed the remark to Melissa by way of encouragement.

“All you’ve got to do now is--stay with it!” finished Nelly approvingly. “It’s a good place. You ought to be able to work into reading plays for him sooner or later....”

“Oh--do you think so?” said Melissa, touched with a new hope.

“Why not?” said Nelly. “You’ve read a good bit on your own--you’ve a good head and at least average critical sense.... I’ve known readers with less.” She added abruptly.... “Are you satisfied? Not missing the other stuff?”

“I’m interested,” said Melissa.

“That’s as far as you’ll go--h’m’m?”

“Nelly--I’ve _never_ been satisfied....”

“Perhaps that’s just as well,” said Nelly coolly. “Keeps you fighting.”

Melissa saw Nelly once or twice a week--of an evening, mostly--when in the dimly-lighted studio, with the surf-like mutter of the city coming in at wide-opened windows, the two slouched pleasantly in deep shabby old chairs and talked by the hour. Melissa had never had a woman for a friend before. She grew closer to Nelly daily, in the most unexpected way. Nelly’s utter frankness ... her honest and slightly acrid acceptance of facts, pleasant or unpleasant, demanding merely that they be facts ... she was like a wind coming over mountains or off the sea. Melissa would never stand alone--as Nelly preferred to stand. But having known Nelly, she could never again accept dependence.

She thought of the Marchesa sometimes with an absolute violence of dislike--as one does of people who have seen one in unworthy attitudes ... she thought of Roderick--occasionally--with a sort of neutral friendliness.

One day she met him coming out of Brentano’s, of all places, where she had gone in search of a play Mr. Brooks wanted, for reference, and she stopped, almost without volition and put out her hand and called his name with a little laugh. Roderick was frankly bowled over.

He beset her with questions and reproaches, drawing her a little aside, standing between her and any possibility of escape.

“I have turned this darned town upside down,” he protested warmly. “Trying to find you. My aunt wouldn’t give me your address....”

“She hasn’t it,” said Melissa sweetly.

Undeniably pleasant to be the object of such search--however futile!

“You look like a million,” said Roderick. “What are you doing with yourself?”

“Working--mostly.”

“You don’t mean it!”

“I do--why not?”

“Melissa--that makes me sick!”

“How absurd--it makes me awfully happy.”

“Where are you living?”

“In a house.”

He put his hand on her arm and shook it gently, real reproach in his eyes. “No funny fooling! Aren’t you going to let me come and see you?”

“I haven’t any drawing-room--and I am not du Barry.”

“Let me take you out then--in the car.”

“Can’t be done. I’m a business woman now. No time for playing around.”

“You’ve got to play sometime. You’ll make yourself sick.”

“Do I look it?”

He admitted reluctantly. “No, you don’t ... you look wonderful. Melissa--honestly--what’s it all about? It gave me an awful jolt to have you slip away like that--without a word ... you don’t know....”

“I had to do it. I couldn’t go on that way any longer.”

“Not going to tell me any more than that? Have you broken with everybody? Aren’t you seeing any one at all?”

“Not any--men.”

“Em’ly Armistead?” asked Roderick with unexpected acuteness.... “Or Nelly Rivers?” He caught her flushing. “I’ll ask Nelly.... I’ll get Kenealy to ask her.”

“You won’t--if I’d rather not.”

“Do you really want to be--let alone?”

“Please!” said Melissa. “Yes--I’d rather--just now. If later on--or ever--I change my mind--I’ll call you. Will that do?”

Roderick said a trifle moodily--“I’m going to Canada next week--be gone about a month--on a shooting trip. Can’t I see you when I come back?”

“I’ll call you--if I decide--at the apartment.”

“It’s darned unkind of you, I’ll say--” said Roderick ruefully and slipped a hand inside her arm and turned her into the tide of the Avenue. “Come and have tea with me, anyhow--”

“I’ll let you put me on a bus,” said Melissa firmly. And would not even let him take it himself, as well.

She flickered her fingers at him standing disconsolate on the sidewalk as the bus lumbered away. She had a moment’s regret but stifled it instantly.

“You can’t run with the hare and hunt with the hounds and that’s that!” she told herself stubbornly.

Just friendship was by no means Roderick’s aim. No good having to decline him and his worldly goods all over again.

“I’ll stay with my stuff,” thought Melissa and would not let herself be forlorn about it.

If it had been Luke ... she missed Luke at times ... she wasn’t too sure she’d have been able to refuse seeing him ... if she’d had the chance.

Luke had been so utterly companionable, so infinitely swift of understanding. Melissa said to Nelly that she’d rather like to see Luke again--sometime--and three days later Nelly telephoned: “Run in on your way home from the office--just a minute--needn’t stay unless you want to.”

When Melissa ran in there was Luke, sitting in a window, smoking ... himself and none other, just as casual, just as charming, just as dear as he had ever been.... Melissa gave him both hands with a rush of delicious surprise ... but the moment after, Em’ly Armistead walked out of the bedroom, cigarette in one hand red hat in the other ... at which Melissa once more withdrew into herself like any chambered nautilus.

She thought it wasn’t too kind of Nelly. Pointing a moral so obviously.