THE repentant mood induced by the spectacle of the football game and John Moore’s visit still lay upon Grace the next morning when she went down to the Durland eight o’clock Sunday breakfast.
“I’m sorry you hurried down,” said her mother cheerily. “I don’t want you girls to come into the kitchen Sunday mornings; you’re both tired from your week’s work and I want you to make the Sabbath a real day of rest.”
“Oh, I’m for getting up when I wake up,” Grace answered. “I’m feeling fine. Let me do the toast, Ethel. I just love toasting.”
She led the talk at the table, recurring to the football game, exploring the newspaper for the sporting page to clarify her impressions of certain points in the contest.
“John was simply a scream! He talked of everything under the sun. You might have thought he didn’t want me to know what was going on at all!”
John was the safest of topics; they had all liked him; and Grace related many stories illustrative of the young man’s determination to refuse no task by which he could earn the dollars he needed to lodge, clothe and feed himself while gaining his education. Now that they had seen him at their own table they could the better enjoy Grace’s enumeration of John’s sturdy qualities.
This was the happiest breakfast the Durlands had known since Grace came home. It was in her heart to do her full share in promoting the cheer of the household. The unfortunate revelation of her duplicity of Friday night would no doubt be forgotten if she behaved herself; and she had no intention of repeating the offense. Nevertheless she was glad that she had asserted herself. It had done no harm to declare her right to independent action and the exercise of her own judgment in the choice of friends; she would have had no peace, she assured herself, if she hadn’t taken a stand against an espionage that would have been intolerable. She persuaded herself that her mother and sister were treating her with much more respect now that she had shown that she couldn’t be frightened or cowed by their criticisms.
Before breakfast was over Ethel asked quite casually whether Grace wouldn’t go to church with her, and Mrs. Durland promptly approved the invitation.
“You can go as well as not, Grace. Ethel has her Sunday school class first, but she can meet you right afterwards. I don’t want you girls bothering with the Sunday dinner.”
Grace didn’t question that this matter had been canvassed privately by Ethel and her mother; very likely it had been Ethel’s suggestion; but she decided instantly that it would be good policy to go. Her church-going had always been desultory and her mother had ceased to insist on it. But the situation called for a concession on her part.
“Why, yes; thank you ever so much, Ethel,” she said. “I haven’t been in ages. I’d meant to do some sewing but that can wait.”
“I think,” said Mrs. Durland, “we all need the help and inspiration of the church. Stephen, wouldn’t you like to go with the girls? I don’t believe you’ve ever heard Dr. Ridgley; he’s very liberal and a stimulating speaker.”
Durland mumbled an incoherent rejection of the idea; then looked up from his reading to explain that he had some things to attend to at the shop. There was nothing surprising in the explanation. He always went to his shop on Sunday mornings. Even in the old days of his identification with Cummings-Durland he had betaken himself every Sunday to the factory to ponder his problems.
As the congregation assembled Grace yielded herself to the spell of the organ, whose inspiring strains gave wings to her imagination. Always impressionable, she felt that she had brought her soul humbled and chastened into the sanctuary. Here were the evidences of those more excellent things that had been pointed out to her from her earliest youth. The service opened spiritedly with the singing of a familiar hymn which touched chords in her heart that had long been silent. She joined in the singing and in the responsive reading of a selection of the Psalms. She had read somewhere that the church, that Christianity indeed, was losing its hold upon the mind and the conscience of mankind. But this church was filled; many men and women must still be finding a tangible help in the precepts and example of Jesus.
Ethel, sitting beside her, certainly found here something that brought her back Sunday after Sunday, and made her a zealous helper in the church activities. Bigoted and intolerant, unkind and ungenerous as Ethel was, there was something in her devotion to the church that set her a little apart, spoke for something fine in her, that for the moment caused Grace a twinge of envy. In her early youth she had “joined” the West End church that her mother attended; but before she left high school the connection had ceased to interest her. Dr. Ridgley’s congregation was composed largely of the prosperous and well-to-do. Did these people about her really order their lives in keeping with the teachings of Jesus? Was the Christian life a possible thing? Were these women in their smart raiment really capable of living in love and charity with their neighbors, eager to help, to serve, to save? Absorbed in her own thoughts she missed the text; found herself studying the minister, a young man of quiet manner and pleasing voice. Then detached sentences arrested her truant thoughts, and soon she was giving his utterances her complete attention.
... “Leaving God out of the question,” he was saying, “what excuse have we to offer ourselves if we fail to do what we know to be right? We must either confess to a weakness in our own fibre, or lay the burden on some one else. We must be either captain or slave.... We hear much about the changed spirit of the time. It is said that the old barricades no longer shield us from evil; that the checks upon our moral natures are broken down; that many of the old principles of uprightness and decent living have been superseded by something new, which makes it possible for us to do very much as we please without harm to our souls. Let us not be deceived by such reasoning. There’s altogether too much talk about the changes that are going on. There are no new temptations; they merely wear a new guise. The soul and its needs do not change; the God who ever lives and loves does not change.... There’s a limit upon our capacity for self-deception. We may think we are free, but at a certain point we find that after all we are the prisoners of conscience.
“The business of life is a series of transactions between the individual soul and God. We can change that relationship only by our own folly. We can deceive ourselves with excuses; but the test of an excuse is whether it will pass muster with God. God is not mocked; we can’t ‘just get by’ with God. We may be sure that we are pretty close to a realization of the Christian life when we feel that we have an excuse for any sin or failure that we dare breathe into a prayer. There’s hope for all of us as long as our sins are such that we’re not ashamed to carry them to God.... Let us live on good terms with ourselves first of all and with God be the rest. Let us keep in harmony with that power above us and beyond us which in all ages has made for righteousness.”...
The minister was uttering clearly and forcibly the thoughts that had been creeping through her own mind like tired heralds feebly crying warning to a threatened fortress. Captain or slave, that was the question. She had told Trenton that she was afraid of the answers to vexed problems of life and conduct. She saw now the cowardice of this. Her intelligence she knew to be above the average, and her conscience had within twenty-four hours proved itself to be uncomfortably sensitive and vigilant. There might be breaks in the old moral barriers but if this were really true it would be necessary for her to stumble over the debris to gain the inviting freedom of the territory beyond. No; there would be no excuse for her if she failed to fashion something fine and noble of her life.
In the vestibule Ethel introduced her to the minister, who greeted her warmly and praised Ethel; she was one of his standbys he said. While he and Ethel were conferring about some matter connected with the young people’s society Grace was accosted by a lady whom she identified at once as her first customer at Shipley’s.
“Do I know you or not?” demanded Miss Reynolds pleasantly. “Hats make such a difference, but I thought I recognized you. I’ve been away so many years that I look twice at every one I meet. I was caught in England by the war and just stayed on. It gives you a queer feeling to find yourself a stranger in your native town. It was silly of me to stay away so long. Well, how are things going with you?”
“Just fine,” Grace answered, noting that Miss Reynolds wore one of the suits she had sold her, and looked very well in it.
The old lady (the phrase was ridiculous in the case of one so alert and spirited) caught the glance; indeed nothing escaped the bright eyes behind Beulah Reynolds’ spectacles. She bent toward Grace and whispered: “This suit’s very satisfactory!” And then: “Well, we’ve caught each other in a good place. My grandfather was one of the founders of this church, so I dropped in to have a look. Haven’t seen more than a dozen people I used to know. There was a good deal of sense in that sermon; the best I’ve heard in years. They don’t scatter fire and brimstone the way they used to.”
One would have thought from her manner that she was enormously relieved to find that fire and brimstone had been abandoned as a stimulus to the Christian life.
“I’m not a member,” said Grace, “but my sister is. I never heard Dr. Ridgley before. I liked his sermon; I think I needed it.”
Grace was smiling but something a little wistful in her tone caused Miss Reynolds to regard her with keen scrutiny.
“Do you know, you’ve come into my mind frequently since our meeting at the store? I’ve thought of you—uncommercially, I mean, if that’s the way to put it! I’d like to know you better.”
“Oh, thank you, Miss Reynolds; I’ve thought of you, too, and have hoped you’d come into Shipley’s again.”
“Oh, clothes don’t interest me a particle; I may not visit Shipley’s again for years! But that doesn’t mean I shan’t see you. I wonder if you’d come to my house some evening for dinner—just ourselves. Would that bore you?”
“It certainly wouldn’t!” Grace responded smilingly.
“The sooner the better then! Tomorrow evening shall we say? Don’t think of dressing. Come direct from your work. Here’s my address on this card. I’ll send my motor for you.”
“Please don’t trouble to do that! I can easily come out on the street-car.”
“Suit yourself. It’s almost like kidnapping and—it just occurs to me that I don’t really know your name!” Her ignorance of Grace’s name greatly amused Miss Reynolds. “For all you know this might be a scheme to snare you to my house and murder you!”
“I’ll cheerfully take the chance!” laughed Grace, and gave her name. The minister had now finished with Ethel, and Grace introduced her sister to Miss Reynolds, who did not, however, include Ethel in her invitation to dinner.
“She charmingly eccentric,” Ethel remarked as Miss Reynolds turned away. “And awfully rich; one of the richest woman taxpayers in the state.”
“Yes; I understand she is,” said Grace without enthusiasm. “But we needn’t hold that against her.” And then, recalling Ethel’s complacent tone in mentioning any social recognition by her church friends, Grace remarked carelessly, “She’s invited me to dine with her tomorrow night. I’m to be the only guest. She seems to have a crush on me!”
At the midday dinner Ethel disclosed Miss Reynolds’ partiality for Grace with all impressiveness.
“Why, Grace!” exclaimed Mrs. Durland, “do you fully appreciate what that means?”
“It means that a very nice lady has invited me to share her dinner,” Grace answered.
“I hope you realize,” said Ethel, “what a great compliment that is. Why, she can do worlds for you!”
“Here’s hoping she keeps a good cook!” Grace retorted, irritated that they were attributing so much importance to what she preferred to look upon as no more than an act of spontaneous kindness in a generous hearted woman.
“Miss Reynolds represents the old conservative element here,” Mrs. Durland remarked in a tone that implied her deep reverence for that element of the population—“the people who always stood for the best things of life. Her father was a colonel in the Civil War. They always had money. A woman like that can make herself felt. Now that she’s back, I hope she’ll see that she has a work to do. She has no ties and with her position and wealth she can make herself a power for good in checking the evil tendencies so apparent in our city.”
“She’s so quaint; so deliciously old-fashioned,” added Ethel, “and you can see from her clothes that she’s an independent character. I’m going to ask Dr. Ridgely to invite her to take the chairmanship of our girl’s club committee.”
“That would be splendid, Ethel,” exclaimed Mrs. Durland, “perhaps you could say a word to her about it, Grace. You know better than Ethel the dangers and temptations of the girl wage-earner.”
“I don’t know why I should,” Grace replied. “Please don’t talk to me as though I had a monopoly of all the wickedness in the world.”
“Grace, dear, I didn’t mean——”
“All right, mother. But I have my feelings, you know.”
“The old Reynolds house on Meridian Street has been turned into a garage,” said Ethel; “it’s too bad those old homes had to go. Miss Reynolds has bought a house not far from where Bob Cummings built.”
Any mention of the Cummingses, no matter how inadvertent, inevitably precipitated a discussion of that family from some angle. Mrs. Durland said for the hundredth time that they didn’t deserve their prosperity; she doubted very much whether they were happy.
“Bob’s the best one of the family,” she continued. “Tom and Merwin haven’t amounted to anything and they never will. It must have been a blow to the family when Merwin married a girl who was nobody, or worse. She worked in some automobile office.”
Ethel challenged the statement that the girl Merwin Cummings married worked in an automobile office. It was a railroad office, and though it didn’t matter particularly with which method of transportation the young woman was identified before her marriage, Mrs. Durland and Ethel debated the question for several minutes. Mrs. Durland had only heard somewhere that Mrs. Merwin Cummings had been a stenographer for an automobile agent while Ethel was positive that a railroad office had been the scene of the girl’s labors, her authority being another girl who worked in the same place.
“Jessie didn’t speak any too highly of her,” Ethel added; “not that there was anything really wrong with the girl. She ran around a good deal, and usually had two or three men on the string.”
“A good many very nice girls keep two or three men on the string,” said Grace. “I don’t see that there’s anything so terrible in that.”
The next day at noon Grace went to a trust company where she kept an account that represented the aggregate of small gifts of cash she had received through a number of years at Christmas and on her birthdays. As she waited at the window for her passbook, Bob Cummings crossed the lobby on his way to the desk of one of the officers. She wondered how he would greet her if they met, and what her attitude toward him ought to be in view of the break between her father and Isaac Cummings. She found a certain mild excitement as she pondered this, her eyes occasionally turning toward Cummings as he leaned against the railing that enclosed the administrative offices of the company. Grace had always liked and admired him; and it had hurt her more than she ever confessed that after the removal of the Cummingses from the old neighborhood Bob had gradually ceased his attentions. Perhaps his family had interfered as her mother had hinted; but it made no difference now that he had married and passed completely out of her ken.
Cummings had finished his errand and was walking quickly toward the door when he caught sight of her.
“Hello, Grace! I’m mighty glad to see you,” he said cordially. “Why—” He checked himself and the smile left his face abruptly as he remembered that their friendly status had changed since their last meeting.
Grace relieved his embarrassment promptly by smilingly putting out her hand.
“I’m very glad to see you, Bob,” she said. “It’s really been a long time, almost three years!”
“Just about,” he answered slowly.
“Old Father Time has a way of romping right on!” she remarked lightly.
They were in the path of customers intent upon reaching the cages and she took a step toward the door when he said, glancing toward a long bench at the side of the room, “If you’re not in a rush let’s sit down a minute. There’s something I’d like to say to you.”
“Oh, very well,” she assented, surprised but not displeased.
He was the son of a man who had dismissed her father from the concern in which their names had long been identified; but in so public a place there could be no harm in talking to him. Her old liking for him at once outweighed any feeling she had against his father. He was a big boy when she was still a small girl and he was her first hero. He was always quiet, thoughtful and studious, with a chivalrous regard for the rights and feelings of others. They had been chums, confiding their troubles to each other. It was to her that he had revealed his succession of boyish ambitions, and she had encouraged his fondness for music when other youngsters twitted him for taking piano lessons like a girl. He had never thought he would like business; he wanted to be a musician, with the leadership of an orchestra as his ultimate goal. It was because his brother Merwin had from an early age shown a refractory spirit that the parental authority had thwarted Bob’s aspirations; one of the sons at least had to go into the business and Bob was now a vice-president of the reorganized Cummings Manufacturing Company.
“I’ve been hoping for a chance to see you, Grace. It’s not easy to speak of it but I want you to know I’m sorry things turned out as they did. About your father and the business, I mean. You must all of you feel pretty hard about it. I hope it doesn’t mean any change in your plans for finishing at the university. I know how you’d counted on that.”
“I’ve given it up; I’m home to stay,” she answered. “But you needn’t feel badly about it. Of course it must have been necessary—about father and the business, I mean.”
He was embarrassed by her cheerful acceptance of the situation, and stammered, leaving one or two sentences unfinished before he got hold of himself.
“I want you to know I did all I could to prevent the break. It seemed a pity after your father and mine had been together so long. But for some time the plant had needed an active superintendent; just trusting the foremen of the shops wouldn’t serve any longer, and you won’t mind my saying it but your father never liked executive work. I suggested another way of handling it that would have made Mr. Durland a vice-president and free to go on with his experiments, but I couldn’t put it through. I did my best; honestly I did, Grace!”
There was the old boyish eagerness in this appeal. He regarded her fixedly, anxious for some assurance that she understood. She understood only too well that her father had become an encumbrance, and that in plain terms the company couldn’t afford to keep him at his old salary any longer. It was unnecessary for Bob to apologize; but it was like him to seize the first possible moment to express his sympathy. She had always felt the gentleness in him, which was denoted in his blue eyes, which just now shone with the reflection of his eagerness to set himself right with her. He turned his hat continually in his hands—they were finely shaped, with long supple fingers. At the base of his left thumb there was a scar, almost imperceptible, the result of a slash with a jack knife one day in the Durland yard where he had taken her dare to bring down a particular fine spray of blossoms from an old cherry tree. In his anxiety to deliver it unbroken on the bough he had cut himself. She remembered her consternation at seeing the injury, his swaggering attempt to belittle it; his submission to her ministrations as she tied it up with a handkerchief. She was twelve then; he sixteen. He saw the direction of her eyes, lifted the hand and with a smile glanced at the scar. She colored as she realized that he had read her thoughts.
“That was centuries ago,” he said. “We did use to have good times in your back yard! Do you remember the day you tumbled out of the swing and broke your arm? You didn’t cry; you were a good little sport.” And then, his eyes meeting hers, “You’re still a mighty good sport!”
“If I never have anything worse than a broken arm to cry over I’ll be lucky,” she answered evasively.
There was no excuse for lingering; he had expressed his regret at her father’s elimination from Cummings-Durland, and it served no purpose to compare memories of the former friendly relation between the young people of the two families, which were now bound to recede to the vanishing point. But he seemed in no haste to leave her. She on her side was finding pleasurable sensations in the encounter. He had been her first sweetheart, so recognized by the other youngsters of the neighborhood, and they had gone to the same dancing class. And he had kissed her once, shyly, on a night when the Cummingses were giving a children’s party. This had occurred on a dark corner of the veranda. It had never been repeated or referred to between them, but the memory of it was not without its sweetness. She was ashamed of herself for remembering it now. She wondered whether he too remembered it. And there had been those later attentions after the Cummingses had moved away that had encouraged hopes in her own breast not less than in her mother’s that Bob’s early preference might survive the shock of the Cummingses’ translation to the fashionable district, with its inevitable change of social orientation.
Ethel and her mother had questioned the happiness of his marriage, and her mind played upon this as she sat beside him, feeling the charm he had always had for her and wondering a little about the girl he had married whom she had never seen and knew of only from the talk at home. But two years was not long enough; it was ridiculous to assume that he wasn’t happy with his wife.
“We certainly had a lot of fun over there,” he was saying. “I suppose the park fountain plays just the same and the kids still sail their boats in the pond.”
“Yes, and go wading and fall in and have to be fished out by the policeman! But we can’t be kids always, Bob!”
“No; that’s the worst of it!” he said with a tinge of dejection.
“I’m all grown up now and have a job. I’m a working girl!”
“No!” he exclaimed incredulously. “And Roy——”
“Oh, Roy’s to finish his law course; he’ll be through in June.”
“That’s too bad, Grace!” he exclaimed. “It’s you who ought to have stayed on! You’re the very type of girl who ought to go to college. It would have made all the difference in the world to you! And Ethel—is she at work too?”
“Yes; she’s in an insurance office and I’m in Shipley’s!” she went on smiling to relieve his evident discomfiture. “I’m in the ready-to-wear and I’ll appreciate any customers you send my way. Call for Number Eighteen!”
“Why, Grace! You don’t mean it! You have no business doing a thing like that. You could do a lot better.”
“Well, I didn’t just see it. I’m an unskilled laborer and haven’t time to fit myself for teaching, stenography or anything like that. You get results quicker in a place like Shipley’s. That is, I hope to get them if I’m as intelligent as I think I am!”
“I’m terribly sorry, Grace. I feel— I feel— as though we were responsible, father and I; and we are, of course. There ought to have been some other way for you; something more——”
“Please don’t! That’s the way mother and Ethel talk.”
She rose quickly, feeling that nothing was to be gained by continuing the discussion of matters that were irrevocably settled. And, moreover, his distress was so manifest in his face that she feared the scrutiny of passers-by.
“Good-bye, Bob,” she said. “I’m awfully glad I met you. Please don’t trouble at all about what can’t be helped. I haven’t any hard feeling—not the slightest.”
“I don’t like it at all,” he said impatiently.
He kept beside her to the entrance, where she gave him a nod and smile and hurried away. She was troubled at once for fear she hadn’t expressed cordially enough her appreciation of his sympathy. Very likely they would never meet again; there was no reason why they should. He had merely done what was perfectly natural in view of their old friendship, made it clear that he was sorry her father had been thrust out of the company of which he had been one of the founders. She was unable to see anything in the interview beyond a wish on his part to be kind, to set himself right. And it was like Bob to do that.
The strong romantic strain in her was quickened by the meeting. All afternoon her thoughts played about Bob Cummings. She reviewed their associations in childhood on through those last attentions after the Cummingses left the Military Park neighborhood. Her mother had probably been right in saying that if fortune hadn’t borne the Cummingses steadily upward, leaving the Durlands behind, Bob might have married her. It had been a mistake for him to marry a society girl who was, she surmised, incapable of appreciating his temperament. A matter of propinquity very likely; she had heard that the girl was not rich but belonged to one of the old families; and very likely on her side it had been an advantageous arrangement.
Why did men marry the wrong women? she asked herself with proneness of youth to propound and answer unanswerable questions. There was Trenton, who had so frankly admitted the failure of his own marriage and with equal frankness took the burden of his failure upon himself. No two men could be more utterly unlike than Ward Trenton and Bob Cummings, and she busied herself contrasting them. Trenton was practical-minded; Bob a dreamer, and save for his college experiences the range of his life had been narrow. If both were free which would she choose? So great was her preoccupation with these speculations that her work suffered; through sheer inattention she let a promising customer escape without making a purchase.
In the afternoon distribution of mail she received a letter from Trenton. It began, “Dear Grace” and read:
“I expected to see you again this week—that is, of course, if you’d be willing; but I’m called to Kansas City unexpectedly and may not touch your port for ten days or so. I’m not conceited enough to assume that you will be grief-stricken over my delay, and strictly speaking there’s no excuse for writing except that you’ve rather haunted me,—a welcome ghost, I assure you! I talked far too much about myself the other night. One matter I shouldn’t have spoken of at all. No question of confidence in you or anything of that sort. But it’s something I never discuss even with old and intimate friends. You have guessed what I mean. Bad taste, you probably thought it. It was quite that! I want you to think as well of me as you can. I’m counting very much on seeing you again. I hope you are well and happy and that nothing has happened to your eyes since I saw them last!”
This was all except that he named a Kansas City club where he could be reached for the next week if she felt moved to write. She hadn’t expected to hear from him and the note was a distinct surprise. At every opportunity she reread it, and, catching her in the act, Irene teased her about it.
“Oh, you’ve started something! I’ll wager he signed his name in full; that’s just like him. Tommy never writes to me and when he wires he signs an assumed name. But Ward Trenton’s different. I think if he decided to commit murder he’d send his own account of it to the papers. He didn’t talk to you about his wife, I suppose, when Tommy and I left you alone so long at The Shack? Tommy’s known him for years but he says he wouldn’t think of mentioning his wife to him. I’d like to see Ward in love! These quiet ones go strong when they get started.”
“Oh, his letter’s just a little friendly jolly. He’s had to go to Kansas City instead of coming back here right away.”
“Of course he just had to explain that!” Irene laughed. “I can see this is going to be a real case. See what you can do with that woman just coming in. She looks as though she might really have some of the mazuma.”
It was not so easy as Grace had imagined in her spiritual ardor of Sunday to begin retreating from Irene. She realized that Irene would hardly listen in an amiable spirit to the warning she had thought in her hours of contrition it was her duty to give her friend. Irene’s serenity as she paced the aisles of the department, her friendliness and unfailing good humor were all disarming. Irene wasn’t so bad perhaps; Grace was much more tolerant of Irene than she had thought on Sunday would ever be possible again.
The letter from Ward Trenton had the effect of reopening a door which Grace had believed closed and the key thrown away. She found herself wondering whether he might not always write to girls he met and liked; and yet as his image appeared before her—and he lived vividly in her thoughts—she accepted as sincere his statement that he had broken an established reserve in talking of his wife. This of course was what h