So we began again our work together, only it was worse; for her fashionable friends were back in the city now, and they kept inviting her out to parties and one thing and another, until she was too sleepy to do her work in the morning and was rather irregular. Then she was ill, off for a fortnight. I had Peters hire me another stenographer, a man, and Miss Gentles still drew her pay. Peters winked at me when I suggested that he needn"t mention the fact of her absence in his report.
I suppose, if I had stopped to think of it, I should have considered it more businesslike of her to quit her society and parties when she found they were interfering with her work. It was human, though, that she should want to get a little fun out of her life, and not lose sight altogether of the gay world where they have time to amuse themselves.
And a pretty woman like her could hardly be expected to take stenography in a stock-yards office seriously.
Well, I missed her more and more, especially as I couldn"t see her now that she was ill, and had to content myself with nice little notes of thanks for the flowers and fruit I sent. She came back at last, looking weak and droopy, for the first time rather hopeless, as if she saw that she wasn"t fitted for the job and couldn"t keep up with her friends, either. I felt very sorry for her. She wasn"t made for work--any one could see that--and it was a cruel shame to let her boggle on with it.
Just then I had to go to Texas on business; when I got back a week or so later, Peters told me that Miss Gentles had left five days before. A cold little note on my desk said good-by, and thanked me for my kindness to her--never a word of explanation.
I was so upset that I didn"t wait to open my letters, but called a cab and started for the aunt"s to find out what was the matter. It was just as well I had been in a hurry, for in another ten minutes Miss Gentles would have been on her way to Louisville, and it would have taken a week to hunt out the small place in Kentucky where she was going. Her trunk was packed, and she was sitting with her aunt in the large, ugly parlor, waiting for the expressman to come. When I walked in, following the servant, she didn"t draw back her veil, but merely stood up and touched fingers with me. I saw that something was so wrong that it had to be made right at once, with no time to spare.
"You will kindly let me speak to Miss Gentles alone," I said to the aunt, who was inclined to stick. She went out of the room ungraciously.
"Now," I said, taking the girl"s hand and looking through her veil into her eyes, "what is the matter? Tell me."
Her eyes were large and moist, and her lips quivered. But she shut her teeth down hard and said stiffly: "Nothing whatever, Mr. Harrington. You are very kind to come to see me before I leave."
"You aren"t going to put me off with any such smooth answer as that," I said, "or you will have my company all the way you"re going, wherever it may be. Tell me the straight truth, and all of it."
She began to laugh at my bluffing words, and ended with a nervous sob.
After a while I learned the whole story. It seems that the man I employed talked out in the office about how he did all my work, and while I was South one of the "lady" stenographers had said something to Miss Gentles--a something she would not tell me. So she got up and took her leave, and knowing that her old aunt wouldn"t want her around if she had no job, she had written some cousins in Kentucky and was going to them.
The expressman came about this time, but he didn"t take her trunk. And when I left that chilly parlor we were engaged to be married. She said at the last, putting her hands on my coat: "You know I always liked you, even in the police station, Mr. Harrington--and--and I am so very, very happy, now, Van! It was terrible to think of going away. I had to, before you were due home. I was never so miserable before in my life!"
Something stirred from the bottom of my heart. I felt pitiful for all her trouble, her weakness, her struggle with a world she wasn"t made for. Then she said trustingly, like a little child:--
"And you will always be good to me, as papa was with mamma, and patient, and love me a great deal, won"t you? Yes, I know you will!"
I kissed her, feeling then that nothing in life could ever be like the privilege of loving and protecting this woman in her helplessness. I suppose that words like those she and I spoke then are common enough between men and women when they are in love. Yet those words have always been to me like some kind of sacred oath--the woman asking, out of her weakness, for love and protection from the one who holds all happiness and life for her, and the man, with his hasty pa.s.sions, promising of the best there is in him.
Many a time in later years, when it hasn"t always been easy to see things simply as it was then in our first joy, those words of hers have come back to me and given me that same soft tug at my heart. To hurt her would be to strike a child, to wring the neck of a bird that nestled in your hand. There are a good many kinds of love in this world, as there are of hate; perhaps about the best of all is this desire to protect and cherish a woman--the feeling that any man who is worth his salt has for the one he wants to marry....
Sarah walked part way back to the office with me that morning, then turned north, saying she must try to find Mrs. Dround and tell her. She was so happy she couldn"t go home and sit down quietly until I got back from the office. Mrs. Dround, she knew, would be specially glad to hear the news.
"For she thinks you are a very smart young man," Sarah added shyly.
"The lady must be a mind reader, then; for in the ten years I have been with the firm I can"t remember seeing her once."
"Oh, yes, she has seen you. She said so. Anyway, Jane knows all about you, you may be sure. There isn"t much that goes on around her that Jane doesn"t know about."
With that she gave me a happy little nod and was off to the great stone house of my boss up north on the lake. It was a windy, dirty December day, but I was very content with the world as it was and thought Chicago was the finest city in the world. As I sat down to my desk my mind began to dance in a whirl of thoughts--of old plans and new combinations. I wondered what Sarah would say to some of my schemes to make our fortune.
Perhaps they would merely frighten her; for a woman is a natural conservative. I hurried up my business to get back to her and tell her that some day, not so very distant, she would be a tolerably rich woman.
For now it seemed only a step into the greater things I had seen all these years afar off.
The Drounds gave us a dinner not long afterward. I reached the house early, expecting to have a little time with Sarah before the others came. Pretty soon I heard the rustle of skirts, but, instead of Sarah, a tall, thin woman in a black lace evening-dress came into the room where the servant had left me. Instantly I knew that this was the face I had seen in the carriage the morning after the anarchist riot. She was a beautiful woman, with a dark, almost foreign look. She smiled cordially as she gave me her hand.
"Sarah is not quite ready. She wants to make herself very fine--the child! And Mr. Dround is late, too. I am glad, because it will give us a few minutes to ourselves. Come into the library."
She led the way into a long, stately room, with a beautiful ceiling in wood and gold. At one end, in a little arched recess, a wood fire was blazing. There were a number of large paintings on the walls, and queer Eastern idols and curios in cabinets. Mr. Dround had the reputation of being something of a traveller and collector. My first glance around that room explained a good deal to me about the head of our firm.
Mrs. Dround seated herself near the fire, where the light from a great candelabrum filled with candles flickered above her head. Her dark eyes gleamed under the black hair; it was a puzzle of a face!
She began pretty soon to talk of Sarah in a natural but terribly shrewd way.
"I wonder, Mr. Harrington, if you know your treasure," she said, half laughing. "It takes most men years to know the woman they marry, if they ever do."
[Ill.u.s.tration: _She was reading me like a book of large print._]
"Well, I know enough now to begin with!"
"Sarah is such a woman--tender, loyal, loving. It needs a woman to know a woman, Mr. Harrington. But she hasn"t a particle of practical sense: she can"t keep an account straight. She has no idea what economy is--only want or plenty. She is Southern, so Southern! Those people never think what will happen day after to-morrow."
It seemed queer that she should be telling me this kind of thing, which I should be finding out fast enough for myself before long. Perhaps she wanted to see what I would say; at any rate I replied clumsily something about not expecting to make a housekeeper of my wife.
"Yet," she said slowly, studying me, "a woman can do so much to make or mar her husband"s career."
"I guess I shan"t lay it up against my wife, if I don"t pull out a winner."
She laughed at that.
"So you think you are strong enough to win a fight without a woman"s help?"
"I"ve done it so far," I said, thinking a little of May.
"You have made a beginning, a good beginning," she remarked judiciously.
She was reading me like a book of large print, leaning back in her great chair, her eyes half closed, her face in shade except when the firelight flashed.
"I suppose the only way is to keep on as you begin--keep your eyes open and take everything in sight," I continued lightly.
"It depends on how much you want, perhaps."
"I want pretty much all that I can get," I retorted quickly, my eyes roving over the rich room, with an idea that I might like to put Sarah in some such place as this.
Mrs. Dround laughed a long, low laugh, as though she were speculating why I was what I was.
"Well, you are strong enough, my friend, I see. As for Sarah, love her and don"t look for what you can"t find."
Just then we heard Sarah"s laugh. She came into the room with Mr.
Dround, a smile kindling graciously all over her face. The two women, as they kissed each other, made a picture--the dark head against the light one. Then Mrs. Dround gave Sarah a cool, motherly pat on the cheek, saying:--
"I have been offering your young man some advice, Sarah."
"He doesn"t need it!" Sarah answered in a flash.
"Well, I don"t know that he does," Mrs. Dround laughed back, kissing her again. Every one loved Sarah in the same protecting way! Soon after this Mr. Dround came up, smiling genially at the women"s talk, and gave me his hand.
I had not seen the chief out of business hours before. I had never thought him much of a business man in the office, and here, in his own house, with his pictures and books and curios, he was about the last person any one would believe spent his days over in Packington.
It wasn"t to be a simple dinner that evening. Sarah whispered that Jane had insisted on inviting a lot of people, some important people, she said, to meet her young man. And presently the guests arrived,--Lardner and Steele and Jefferson with their wives, and a number of others. About the only ones I knew were big John and his very fat wife. They seemed to be as much out of the crowd as I felt I was, with all my coolness. But Sarah was perfectly at her ease. I admired her all afresh when I saw how easily and gayly she took the pretty things those men said to her.