The windows were open now, and usually some one was speculatively looking down to the life on the pavement, eight stories below. At noon-hour the younger girls of the office strolled along the sidewalk in threes and fours, bareheaded, their arms about one another, their spring-time lane an irregular course between boxes in front of loft-buildings; or they ate their box-and-paper-napkin lunches on the fire-escape that wound down into the court. They gigglingly drew their skirts about their ankles and flirted with young porters and packers who leaned from windows across the court. Una sat with them and wished that she could flirt like the daughters of New York. She listened eagerly to their talk of gathering violets in Van Cortlandt Park and tramping on the Palisades. She noted an increased number of excited confidences to the effect that, "He says to me--" and "I says to him--" and, "Say, gee!
honest, Tess, he"s a swell fellow." She caught herself wanting to tramp the Palisades with--with the Walter Babson who didn"t even know her first name.
When she left the flat these mornings she forgot her lonely mother instantly in the treacherous magic of the tender sky, and wanted to run away, to steal the blue and silver day for her own. But it was gone when she reached the office--no silver and blue day was here; but, on golden-oak desk and oak-and-frosted-gla.s.s semi-part.i.tions, the same light as in the winter. Sometimes, if she got out early, a stilly afterglow of amber and turquoise brought back the spring. But all day long she merely saw signs that otherwhere, for other people, spring did exist; and she wistfully trusted in it as she watched and helped Walter Babson.
She was conscious that she was working more intimately with him as a comrade now, not as clerk with executive. There had been no one illuminating moment of understanding; he was impersonal with her; but each day their relationship was less of a mechanical routine, more of a personal friendship. She felt that he really depended on her steady carefulness; she knew that through the wild tangle of his impulsiveness she saw a desire to be n.o.ble.
- 5
He came clattering down the aisle of desks to her one May afternoon, and begged, "Say, Miss Golden, I"m stuck. I got to get out some publicity on the Governor"s good-roads article we"re going to publish; want to send it out to forty papers in advance, and I can"t get only a dozen proofs.
And it"s got to go off to-night. Can you make me some copies? You can use onion-skin paper and carbon "em and make anyway five copies at a whack. But prob"ly you"d have to stay late. Got anything on to-night?
Could you do it? Could you do it? Could you?"
"Surely."
"Well, here"s the stuff. Just single-s.p.a.ce that introductory spiel at the top, will you?"
Una rudely turned out of her typewriter a form-letter which she was writing for S. Herbert Ross, and began to type Walter"s publicity, her shoulders bent, her eyes intent, oblivious to the steady stream of gossip which flowed from stenographer to stenographer, no matter how busy they were. He needed her! She would have stayed till midnight.
While the keys burred under her fingers she was unconsciously telling herself a story of how she would be working half the night, with the office still and shadowy, of how a dead-white face would peer through the window near her desk (difficult of accomplishment, as the window was eight stories up in air), of how she was to be pursued by a man on the way home; and how, when she got there, her mother would say, "I just don"t see how you could neglect me like this all evening." All the while she felt herself in touch with large affairs--an article by the Governor of the State; these very sheets that she was typing to go to famous newspapers, to the "thundering presses" of which she had read in fiction; urgency, affairs, and--doing something for Walter Babson.
She was still typing swiftly at five-thirty, the closing hour. The article was long; she had at least two hours of work ahead. Miss Moynihan came stockily to say good-night. The other stenographers fluttered out to the elevators. Their corner became oppressively quiet.
The office-manager gently puttered about, bade her good-night, drifted away. S. Herbert Ross boomed out of his office, explaining the theory of advertising to a gasoleny man in a pin-checked suit as they waddled to the elevator. The telephone-girl hurried back to connect up a last call, frowned while she waited, yanked out the plug, and scuttled away--a creamy, roe-eyed girl, pretty and unhappy at her hara.s.sing job of connecting nervous talkers all day. Four men, editors and advertising-men, shouldered out, bawling over a rather feeble joke about Bill"s desire for a drink and their willingness to help him slay the booze-evil. Una was conscious that they had gone, that walls of silence were closing about her clacking typewriter. And that Walter Babson had not gone; that he was sharing with her this whispering forsaken office.
Presently he came rambling out of the editorial-room.
He had taken off his grotesque, great horn-rimmed gla.s.ses. His eyes were mutinous in his dark melancholy face; he drew a hand over them and shook his head. Una was aware of all this in one glance. "Poor, tired boy!"
she thought.
He sat on the top of the nearest desk, hugged his knee, rocked back and forth, and said, "Much left, Miss Golden?"
"I think I"ll be through in about two hours."
"Oh, Lord! I can"t let you stay that late."
"It doesn"t matter. Really! I"ll be glad. I haven"t had to stay late much."
For quite the first time he stared straight at her, saw her as a human being. She was desperately hoping that her hair was smooth and that there wasn"t any blue from the typewriter ribbon daubed on her cheeks!... He ceased his rocking; appraised her. A part of her brain was wondering what he would do; a part longing to smile temptingly at him; a part coldly commanding, "You will not be a little fool--he isn"t interested in you, and you won"t try to make him be, either!"
"Why, you look as f.a.gged as I feel," he said. "I suppose I"m as bad as the rest. I kick like a steer when the Old Man shoves some extra work on me, and then I pa.s.s the buck and make _you_ stay late. Say! Tell you what we"ll do." Very sweet to her was his "we," and his intimacy of tone. "I"ll start copying, too. I"m quite considerable at machine-pounding myself, and we can get the thing done and mailed by six-thirty or so, and then I"ll buy you a handsome dinner at Childs"s.
Gosh! I"ll even blow you to a piece of pie; and I"ll shoot you up home by quarter to eight. Great stuff! Gimme a copy of the drool. Meanwhile you"ll have a whole hour for worried maiden thoughts over going out to eat with the bad, crazy Wally Babson!"
His smile was a caress. Her breath caught, she smiled back at him fearfully. Then he was gone. In the editorial office was heard the banging of his heavy old typewriter--it was an office joke, Walter"s hammering of the "threshing-machine."
She began to type again, with mechanical rapidity, not consciously seeing the copy, so distraught was she as she murmured, "Oh, I oughtn"t to go out with him.... But I will!... What nonsense! Why shouldn"t I have dinner with him.... Oh, I mustn"t--I"m a typist and he"s a boss....
But I will!"
Glancing down the quiet stretches of the office, to the windows looking to westward, she saw that the sky was a delicate primrose. In a loft-building rearing out of the low structures between her and the North River, lights were springing out, and she--who ought to have known that they marked weary, late-staying people like herself, fancied that they were the lights of restaurants for gay lovers. She dismissed her problem, forgot the mother who was waiting with a demand for all of Una"s youth, and settled down to a happy excitement in the prospect of going out with Walter; of knowing him, of feeling again that smile.
He came prancing out with his copies of the article before she had finished. "Some copyist, eh?" he cried. "Say, hustle and finish. Gee!
I"ve been smoking cigarettes to-day till my mouth tastes like a fish-market. Want to eat and forget my troubles."
With her excitement dulled to a matter-of-fact hungriness, she trotted beside him to a restaurant, one of the string of Vance eating-places, a food-mill which tried to achieve originality by the use of imitation rafters, a plate-rack aligned with landscape plates, and varnished black tables for four instead of the long, marble tables which crowded the patrons together in most places of the sort. Walter verbosely called her attention to the mottoes painted on the wood, the individual table lights in pink shades. "Just forget the eats, Miss Golden, and you can imagine you"re in a regular restaurant. Gosh! this place ought to reconcile you to dining with the crazy Babson. I can"t imagine a liaison in a place where coffee costs five cents."
He sounded boisterous, but he took her coat so languidly, he slid so loosely into his chair, that she burned with desire to soothe away his office weariness. She forgot all reserve. She burst out: "Why do you call yourself "crazy"? Just because you have more energy than anybody else in the office?"
"No," he said, grimly, s.n.a.t.c.hing at the menu, "because I haven"t any purpose in the scheme of things."
Una told herself that she was pleased to see how the scrawny waitress purred at Walter when he gave his order. Actually she was feeling resentfully that no saw-voiced, galumphing Amazon of a waitress could appreciate Walter"s smile.
In a Vance eating-place, ordering a dinner, and getting approximately what you order, is not a delicate epicurean art, but a matter of business, and not till an enormous platter of "Vance"s Special Ham and Eggs, Country Style," was slammed down between them, and catsup, Worcestershire sauce, napkins, more rolls, water, and another fork severally demanded of the darting waitress, did Walter seem to remember that this was a romantic dinner with a strange girl, not a deal in food-supplies.
His wavering black eyes searched her face. She was agitatedly aware that her skin was broken out in a small red spot beside her lips; but she hoped that he would find her forehead clear, her mouth a flower. He suddenly nodded, as though he had grown used to her and found her comfortable. While his wreathing hands picked fantastically at a roll and made crosses with lumps of sugar, his questions probed at that hidden soul which she herself had never found. It was the first time that any one had demanded her formula of life, and in her struggle to express herself she rose into a frankness which Panama circles of courtship did not regard as proper to young women.
"What"s your ambition?" he blurted. "Going to just plug along and not get anywhere?"
"No, I"m not; but it"s hard. Women aren"t trusted in business, and you can"t count without responsibility. All I can do is keep looking."
"Go out for suffrage, feminism, so on?"
"I don"t know anything about them. Most women don"t know anything about them--about anything!"
"Huh! Most _people_ don"t! Wouldn"t have office-grinding if people did know anything.... How much training have you had?"
"Oh, public school, high school, commercial college."
"Where?"
"Panama, Pennsylvania."
"I know. About like my own school in Kansas--the high-school princ.i.p.al would have been an undertaker if he"d had more capital.... Gee!
princ.i.p.al and capital--might make a real cunning pun out of that if I worked over it a little. I know.... Go to church?"
"Why--why, yes, of course."
"Which G.o.d do you favor at present--Unitarian or Catholic or Christian Science or Seventh-Day Advent?"
"Why, it"s the same--"
"Now don"t spring that "it"s the same G.o.d" stuff on me. It isn"t the same G.o.d that simply hones for candles and music in an Episcopal Church and gives the Plymouth Brotherhood a private copyright revelation that organs and candles are wicked."
"You"re terribly sacrilegious."
"You don"t believe any such thing. Or else you"d lam me--same as they used to do in the crusades. You don"t really care a hang."
"No, I really don"t care!" she was amazed to hear herself admit.
"Of course, I"m terribly crude and vulgar, but then what else can you be in dealing with a bunch of churches that haven"t half the size or beauty of farmers" red barns? And yet the dubs go on a.s.serting that they believe the church is G.o.d"s house. If I were G.o.d, I"d sure object to being worse housed than the cattle. But, gosh! let"s pa.s.s that up. If I started in on what I think of almost anything--churches or schools, or this lying advertising game--I"d yelp all night, and you could always answer me that I"m merely a neurotic failure, while the big guns that I jump on own motor-cars." He stopped his rapid tirade, chucked a lump of sugar at an interrogative cat which was making the round of the tables, scowled, and suddenly fired at her:
"What do you think of me?"