CHAPTER VI
"I never thought a nice girl could be in love with a man who is bad, and I s"pose Walter is bad. Kind of. But maybe he"ll become good."
So Una simple-heartedly reflected on her way to the Subway next morning.
She could not picture what he would do, now that it was hard, dry day again, and all the world panted through dusty streets. And she recklessly didn"t care. For Walter was not hard and dry and dusty; and she was going to see him again! Sometimes she was timorous about seeing him, because he had read the longing in her face, had known her soul with its garments thrown away. But, timorous or not, she had to see him; she would never let him go, now that he had made her care for him.
Walter was not in sight when she entered the offices, and she was instantly swept into the routine. Not clasping hands beguiled her, but lists to copy, typing errors to erase, and the irritating adjustment of a shift-key which fiendishly kept falling. For two hours she did not see him.
About ten-thirty she was aware that he was prosaically strolling toward her.
Hundreds of times, in secret maiden speculations about love, the girl Una had surmised that it would be embarra.s.sing to meet a man the morning after you had yielded to his caress. It had been perplexing--one of those mysteries of love over which virgins brood between chapters of novels, of which they diffidently whisper to other girls when young married friends are amazingly going to have a baby. But she found it natural to smile up at Walter.... In this varnished, daytime office neither of them admitted their madness of meeting hands.
He merely stooped over her desk and said, sketchily, "Mornin", little Goldie."
Then for hours he seemed to avoid her. She was afraid. Most of all, afraid of her own desire to go to him and wail that he was avoiding her.
At three o"clock, when the office tribe accept with nave grat.i.tude any excuse to talk, to stop and tell one another a new joke, to rush to the window and critically view a parade, Una saw that Walter was beginning to hover near her. She was angry that he did not come straight to her.
He did not seem quite to know whether he wanted her or not. But her face was calm above her typing while she watched him peer at her over the shoulder of S. Herbert Ross, to whom he was talking. He drew nearer to her. He examined a poster. She was oblivious of him. She was conscious that he was trying to find an excuse to say something without openly admitting to the ever-spying row of stenographers that he was interested in her. He wambled up to her at last and asked for a letter she had filed for him. She knew from the casual-looking drop of his eyes that he was peering at the triangle of her clear-skinned throat, and for his peeping uneasiness she rather despised him. She could fancy herself shouting at him, "Oh, stop fidgeting! Make up your mind whether you like me or not, and hurry up about it. I don"t care now."
In which secret defiance she was able to luxuriate--since he was still in the office, not gone from her forever!--till five o"clock, when the detached young men of offices are wont to face another evening of lonely irrelevancy, and desperately begin to reach for companionship.
At that hour Walter rushed up and begged, "Goldie, you _must_ come out with me this evening."
"I"m sorry, but it"s so late--"
"Oh, I know. Gee! if you knew how I"ve been thinking about you all day!
I"ve been wondering if I ought to-- I"m no good; blooming waster, I told myself; and I wondered if I had any right to try to make you care; but-- Oh, you _must_ come, Goldie!"
Una"s pride steeled her. A woman can forgive any vice of man more readily than she can forgive his not loving her so unhesitatingly that he will demand her without stopping to think of his vices. Refusal to sacrifice the beloved is not a virtue in youth.
Una said, clearly, "I am sorry, but I can"t possibly this evening."
"Well--wish you could," he sighed.
As he moved away Una reveled in having refused his half-hearted invitation, but already she was aware that she would regret it. She was shaken with woman"s fiercely possessive clinging to love.
The light on one side of her desk was shut off by the bulky presence of Miss Moynihan. She whispered, huskily, "Say, Miss Golden, you want to watch out for that Babson fellow. He acts like he was stuck on you. Say, listen; everybody says he"s a bad one. Say, listen, honest; they say he"d compromise a lady jus" soon as not."
"Why, I don"t know what you mean."
"Oh no, like fun you don"t--him rubbering at you all day and p.u.s.s.y-footing around!"
"Why, you"re perfectly crazy! He was merely asking me about some papers--"
"Oh yes, sure! Lemme tell you, a lady can"t be none too careful about her reputation with one of them skinny, dark devils like a Dago snooping around."
"Why, you"re absolutely ridiculous! Besides, how do you know Mr. Babson is bad? Has he ever hurt anybody in the office?"
"No, but they say--"
""They say"!"
"Now don"t you go and get peeved after you and me been such good friends, Miss Golden. I don"t know that this Babson fellow ever done anything worse than eat cracker-jack at South Beach, but I was just telling you what they all say--how he drinks and goes with a lot of totties and all; but--but he"s all right if you say so, and--honest t"
Gawd, Miss Golden, listen, honest, I wouldn"t knock him for nothing if I thought he was your fellow! And," in admiration, "and him an editor!
Gee!"
Una tried to see herself as a princess forgiving her honest servitor.
But, as a matter of fact, she was plain angry that her romance should be dragged into the nastiness of office gossip. She resented being a stenographer, one who couldn"t withdraw into a place for dreams. And she fierily defended Walter in her mind; throbbed with a big, sweet pity for her nervous, aspiring boy whose quest for splendor made him seem wild to the fools about them.
When, just at five-thirty, Walter charged up to her again, she met him with a smile of unrestrained intimacy.
"If you"re going to be home at _all_ this evening, let me come up just for fifteen minutes!" he demanded.
"Yes!" she said, breathlessly. "Oh, I oughtn"t to, but--come up at nine."
- 2
Una had always mechanically liked children; had e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "Oh, the pink little darling!" over each neighborhood infant; had pictured children of her own; but never till that night had the desire to feel her own baby"s head against her breast been a pa.s.sion. After dinner she sat on the stoop of her apartment-house, watching the children at play between motors on the street.
"Oh, it would be wonderful to have a baby--a boy like Walter must have been--to nurse and pet and cry over!" she declared, as she watched a baby of faint, brown ringlets--hair that would be black like Walter"s.
Later she chided herself for being so bold, so un-Panamanian; but she was proud to know that she could long for the pressure of a baby"s lips.
The brick-walled street echoed with jagged cries of children; tired women in mussed waists poked their red, steamy necks out of windows; the sky was a blur of gray; and, lest she forget the job, Una"s left wrist ached from typing; yet she heard the rustle of spring, and her spirit swelled with thankfulness as she felt her life to be not a haphazard series of days, but a divine progress.
Walter was coming--to-night!
She was conscious of her mother, up-stairs. From her place of meditation she had to crawl up the many steps to the flat and answer at least twenty questions as to what she had been doing. Of Walter"s coming she could say nothing; she could not admit her interest in a man she did not know.
At a quarter to nine she ventured to say, ever so casually: "I feel sort of headachy. I think I"ll run down and sit on the steps again and get a little fresh air."
"Let"s have a little walk. I"d like some fresh air, too," said Mrs.
Golden, brightly.
"Why--oh--to tell the truth, I wanted to think over some office business."
"Oh, of course, my dear, if I am in the _way_--!" Mrs. Golden sighed, and trailed pitifully off into the bedroom.
Una followed her, and wanted to comfort her. But she could say nothing, because she was palpitating over Walter"s coming. The fifteen minutes of his stay might hold any splendor.
She could not change her clothes. Her mother was in the bedroom, sobbing.
All the way down the four flights of stairs she wanted to flee back to her mother. It was with a cold impatience that she finally saw Walter approach the house, ten minutes late. He was so grotesque in his frantic, puffing hurry. He was no longer the brilliant Mr. Babson, but a moist young man who hemmed and sputtered, "Gee!--couldn"t find clean collar--hustled m" head off--just missed Subway express--couldn"t make it--whew, I"m hot!"
"It doesn"t matter," she condescended.