“WHAT’S the difference, lady?”
The remark she had heard the salesgirl make to the critical shopper was often in Grace’s mind. What did anything really matter! But the aisles at Shipley’s were crowded with importunate holiday shoppers, and she was able to forget herself in her work. She had been complimented by the superintendent of the store; she was already one of the most successful saleswomen in her department. She had earned as high as fifty dollars a week, not a contemptible sum, even if to earn it she had become Number Eighteen at Shipley’s!
Four days passed and still no word from Trenton. On two nights Grace cried herself to sleep in a confusion of emotions—loneliness, fear that some evil had befallen him, mortification that she had listened to his protestations of love, and hope that he would yet explain himself. Her repeated efforts to shut him out of her mind failed miserably. She had not known until his communications ceased how much she counted on him, or how completely he had captivated her imagination.
As she waited for a customer to decide upon a wrap her gaze fell upon a young woman whom she recognized, after a bewildered moment of uncertainty, as Mrs. Bob Cummings.
Briskly summing up the arguments in favor of the garment her customer was considering, Grace was disagreeably conscious that Evelyn appeared to be waiting for an opportunity to speak to her. Grace answered perfunctorily the last question of her customer and made out the charge slip. As she concluded the transaction and bade her customer good morning Evelyn crossed the room.
“Please pardon me, Miss Durland!” she began, half extending and then withdrawing her hand.
“Is there something I can show you?” asked Grace in her most business-like tone.
“Not a thing, Miss Durland,” said Evelyn and smiled ingratiatingly. “You are terribly busy I know, but there’s something I want to say to you; it will take only a minute. I’m sorry I was so rude the other night; may I—apologize?”
“That’s quite unnecessary,” said Grace coldly, and was instantly vexed that she had thought of no better response. Evelyn, embarrassed for a moment, smiled again. She was much prettier than Grace had thought her at McGovern’s.
“It was all so ridiculous!” said Evelyn, now perfectly composed. “Bob’s such a baby! I didn’t mind at all your going out to supper with him. What I did mind was his acting like an idiot when I walked in on you. Jimmie was just as idiotic—the idea of explaining anything! And then Bob must try to explain! That bored me just as it bored you. Of course I wasn’t going to let him explain! But I’m sorry I lost my temper and spoke to you as I did. Won’t you forgive me?”
“If there’s any forgiving to be done let’s both do it!” said Grace; and they smiled at each other.
“Men are such fools!” exclaimed Evelyn, as though greatly relishing the statement. “Nothing ever pleased me more than the way you made Bob take you home. And then he came back to McGovern’s and complained—actually complained to me!—that you had given him the slip! He did that—really he did! Can you imagine it?”
Her mirth over the affair had communicated itself to Grace. It hadn’t occurred to her that Bob might have returned to McGovern’s when she left him.
“Bob is so obvious!” Evelyn continued. “He’s just got to have sympathy. Really, he wanted me to sympathize with him because you shook him in the road! Jimmy and I teased him till he cried for mercy. Bob’s a dear boy but he needs just the jar you gave him. You were perfect! And you won’t think the worse of me will you, for losing my temper?”
“Certainly not!” said Grace, “I’ve known Bob so long——”
“Yes; the moment Jimmy spoke your name I knew all about you, and understood everything. He wanted sympathy and being a sentimental person he sought you out of the score of old friendship. Just like him! Selfish is no name for him! But to think he was afraid of me! He gave himself away terribly! He’s so meek now it’s positively pathetic!”
To be laughing over Bob’s frailties with Bob’s wife was something that hadn’t figured in Grace’s calculations. The superintendent, on his way through the department, frowned to see Number Eighteen neglecting her duties to chat with a caller, but recognizing Mrs. Cummings he asked deferentially whether she was finding what she wanted.
“Miss Durland is taking excellent care of me,” Evelyn replied. “I’m violating all the rules, I suppose,” she said when the man had passed on. “If they scold you let me know and I’ll speak to Mr. Shipley about it. Just one thing more! Bob has told me about your father and the way Mr. Cummings, senior, treated him. It wasn’t fair; Bob says that. I’d like you to know I’m sorry——”
“It was all in the way of business,” said Grace. “I have no feeling about it; I’m only sorry for my father and mother. It was a blow they hadn’t expected.”
“It wasn’t nice,” said Evelyn decisively. “I wish we could really become acquainted. I’m going to ask you up for dinner soon—please don’t say no! There are some young people I’d like you to meet. Good-bye and thank you ever so much.”
Grace turned to a waiting customer with a kindlier feeling for all the world. She was uncertain whether in like circumstances she would have been capable of the kindness and generosity Evelyn had manifested. It pleased her to believe that her education in the ways of the changing, baffling world was progressing.
Evelyn Cummings was evidently a young woman without illusions; she knew exactly how to manage a temperamental husband. Marriage, as Grace viewed it with the three different illustrations afforded by Kemp, Trenton and Cummings, was of the realm of insubstantial things. Even the spectacle offered in her own home by her father and mother, between whom disappointment and adversity had reared a wall no less grim because of their steadfast loyalty, was hardly convincing on the other side of the picture. Stephen Durland and his wife were held together by habit, by a deeply implanted sense of duty to their children. Grace could not remember when her father had kissed her mother, or in any way manifested any affection for her. And yet in the beginning they must have loved each other. She wondered whether it was always like that!
She had given up all hope of hearing again from Trenton when on the tenth day she received a note postmarked New York, that set her heart fluttering.
My Dear Little Girl:
What must you think of me! I think pretty poorly of myself, I can tell you. Picked up a cold on my way East. Pretended it didn’t amount to anything; motored down into New Jersey for a week-end with some old friends. Got chilled on the drive; pneumonia almost. My host was afraid I’d die on his hands and made a frightful row—couple of doctors, nurse and all the other frills.... I had no way of letting you know. Found your letter when I came into town this morning. I’m away behind on my jobs.... The great thing is that I want to see you and look into those dear, dark eyes again.... One day at twilight down there in the country, I thought of you so intently that I really brought you into the room! The nurse was sitting beside the bed, then suddenly you were there, your dark head clearly outlined in the dusk. You lifted your hand to touch your hair—that’s a pretty trick you have! You have so many dear ways—and you smiled—another sweet way you have!—the smile coming slowly, like a dawn, until it brightened all the world. The illusion was so perfect that it wasn’t an illusion at all, but really you! I was terribly indignant at the nurse when she turned on the light and I lost you.... The doctor says I may travel in three or four days and my thoughts carry me in only one direction. You haven’t sent me the telegram I hoped for; never mind about that. Please wire me that you are well. And if you put in a word to say that you want to see me I shall be the happiest man alive. Be assured of my love always.
He hadn’t forgotten her; he really cared! She moved with a quicker step; her work had never gone so smoothly. While she had been doubting him, trying to put him out of her heart he had been ill. She was unsparing in self-accusation for what now seemed the basest disloyalty. She tried to picture the room to which his longing had summoned her. Those lines in his letter moved her deeply and set her to speculating whether such a thing might not be possible in the case of two beings who loved each other greatly.
There was no intimation in the letter that his wife had been with him in his illness. Grace grew bitter as she thought of Mrs. Trenton, who was probably roaming the world preaching a new social order to the neglect of her husband. In countenancing Trenton as a lover Grace found Mrs. Trenton’s conduct her most consoling justification. It came down to this, that if Ward Trenton’s wife failed in her marital obligations there was no justice in forbidding him to seek happiness elsewhere.
This view was in fact advanced in Mary Graham Trenton’s “Clues to a New Social Order.” It seemed a fair assumption that Mrs. Trenton wouldn’t advocate ideas for all mankind that she wouldn’t tolerate in her own husband.
At her lunch hour Grace went to the telegraph office and sent this message:
“Greatly troubled by your illness. Please take good care of yourself. You may be sure I shall be glad to see you.”
“Straight telegram, paid,” the clerk repeated perfunctorily, and swept the message under the counter. The sending of the telegram gave Grace a gratifying sense of kinship with the larger world which Trenton’s love had revealed to her. She found happiness all the afternoon in wondering just what he would be doing and how he would look when the message reached him. She wrote that night the longest letter she had yet written him. She thought often of what Irene had said about wanting to be loved. To be loved, in the great way that Miss Reynolds had said was the only way that counted,—this had become the great desire of her heart. Old restraints and inherited moral inhibitions still resisted her impulse to fashion her life and give herself as she pleased. She meant to be very sure of Trenton and even more sure of her own heart before committing herself further. She was not, she kept assuring herself, an ordinary or common type. She dropped into her letter several literary allusions and a few French phrases with a school girl’s pride in her erudition. There were times when Grace was very young!
Trenton’s next letter reported his complete recovery. He was working hard to make up for lost time, but would leave for the West as soon as possible and hoped to spend Christmas in Indianapolis. Incidentally he had business there in which she might be able to assist him. This was further explained in a typewritten enclosure which he asked her to deliver to her father. He warned her that the inquiry might lead to nothing, but there were certain patents held in Stephen Durland’s name which he wished to investigate.
“The name Durland,” he wrote, “gave me a distinctly pleasant shock when the memorandum turned up on my desk in the routine of the office. There may be a place where I can use some of your father’s ideas; but in this business we’re all pessimists. I appoint you my agent and representative on the spot. Don’t let your father dispose of any of the patents described in my letter till we can have an interview.”
She made the noon hour the occasion for one of her picnic lunches with her father in his work shop.
He looked up from a model he was tinkering and greeted her with his usual, “That you, Grace?”
“Very much Grace!” she answered, tossing her packages on the bench. “What are you on today—perpetual motion or a scheme for harnessing the sun?”
“A fool thing a man left here the other day; wanted me to tell him why it didn’t work. It doesn’t work because there’s no sense in it.”
As he began to explain why the device was impracticable she snatched off his hat and flinging it aside with a dramatic flourish handed him a sandwich.
“Don’t waste your time on such foolishness; we’re only interested in machines that work!”
She sprang upon the bench and produced Trenton’s letter.
“Let your eye roam over that, old top! And don’t tell me you’ve let somebody take those things away from you.”
Durland pondered the letter, lifting the business sheet closer to his eyes as he examined Trenton’s small neat signature. He walked to a closet and extracted some papers from the confused mass within.
“Well, daddy, what’s the answer?”
“I got those patents all right; they cover my improvements on my old gas engine Cummings is making. There’s already been a fellow nosing round asking about ’em; from Cummings I guess. I got something now that’s going to interest everybody that’s making motors; something I been working at two or three years. Cummings can’t have ’em. He hasn’t got any right to ’em!”
His eyes flashed as his hatred of Cummings for the moment possessed him. Grace had never taken seriously her father’s hints that Cummings might have got rid of him too soon. She had never before seen him so agitated. He paced the floor, reiterating that his former associate should never profit by his improvements on any of the old Cummings-Durland devices. He paused, picked up an apple and bit into it savagely.
“Now, daddy,” said Grace, “it isn’t at all like you to flare up that way. Mr. Trenton hasn’t a thing to do with Cummings; I happen to know that. But he’s a business adviser and particular friend of Kemp.”
“Kemp!” Durland repeated, lifting his head with a jerk. “You think maybe Kemp’s interested? Kemp could use these patents; there isn’t a thing in these improvements that wouldn’t fit right into Kemp’s motor!”
“That’s perfectly grand! Now that you’ve got your patents, what you want to do is to sit back and wait. There must be something pretty good in your ideas or Mr. Trenton wouldn’t be interested. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the dollars would begin to roll in?”
“I’ve been fooled a lot of times, Grace,” he answered, picking up his hat, staring at it as though it were an unfamiliar thing and clapping it on his head. “I guess you better not say anything about this at home. If it doesn’t come to anything I don’t want your mother disappointed.”
“Of course not; it’s our big secret, daddy. I just love having secrets with you. After the row at home the other night about Mr. Trenton’s niece we’d better never mention him.”
“What was that all about, Grace?” he asked frowning. “I didn’t get what Ethel was drivin’ at.”
“Just making herself disagreeable, that’s all. I told a fib, but Ethel had no business to attack me that way before guests.”
“Ethel’s kind o’ different somehow,” he said, drawing the back of his hand across his mouth. “I guess she means all right. Funny, you children ain’t any of you alike,” he went on ruminatively. “I don’t ever seem to get much out o’ Ethel and Roy.”
“Roy and Ethel are both fond of you, daddy. And you know I adore you; I’m simply crazy about you!”
She pounced upon him and threw her arms about his neck, laughing at his struggles to avoid the kisses she distributed over such parts of his face as were free of grime.
“You’re a mighty fine girl, Grace. There mustn’t anything happen to you,” he said, freeing himself.
“Oh, you needn’t be afraid, you dear angel! Nothing’s going to happen to me! Here’s where I skip—vamoose—disappear! I’m going to take you to a show tonight—yes, I am! You be awfully surprised when I spring it at supper.”
Trenton wrote again that he would reach town at noon of Christmas day and expected to remain a week.
“Why didn’t you tell me Ward’s been sick?” asked Irene when Grace told her that he was coming. “You’re certainly the secretive little one.”
“How did you know it?” Grace demanded. “You and Tommy made up?”
The girls were putting up stock at the end of the day and quiet reigned over the department, broken only by the voices of gossiping employees.
“I’ve been dying to tell you something all day,” said Irene holding up her hand on which the emerald had been restored to it’s old place. “Yes; Tommy told me about Ward.”
“Well——”
“Oh, I’ve just taken him back on trial,” said Irene with a sigh. “Poor Tommy! Minnie got me up to her apartment last night for supper and who should walk in but Tommy! He swore that girl in Chi didn’t mean anything in his life. He saw her just once when he had dinner with her and some other people; he was careful to mention the other people! I believed him even if he had denied the whole business on the telephone. Tommy looks terribly pathetic. He’s going to die if he doesn’t check up. His wife’s gone to California for the winter, and he’s drowning his sorrow in too much booze. Another victim of prohibition! Tommy’s one of the million who didn’t know he had to have it till they took it away from him!”
“Well, I’m glad you’ve fixed it up. It’s much nicer to be friends with him.”
“Just a friend, that’s all,” replied Irene, slowly shaking her head. “The poor boy really needs somebody to keep him straight. From what he said his wife went away in disgust. Why don’t these women stay at home and look after their husbands and not leave the job to us poor working girls!”
“Irene, you’re a perfect scream! Don’t make me laugh like that or we’ll never get this stuff put away.”
“It’s not a laughing matter,” said Irene, maintaining her tone of lofty indignation. “I can tell you right now that a woman who parks her husband’s taking an awful chance.”
Before they separated Irene warned Grace that Kemp had it in mind to drive them with Trenton to The Shack Christmas afternoon.
“He wanted us to have dinner out there but I told him nothing doing. I’d promised to play with my family and besides I can’t let him think I’m forgiving him too easy.”
On Christmas morning as Grace was helping in the kitchen John Moore called her on the telephone. He had moved to town the day before and thought it would be fine if they could ride to the end of one of the trolley lines that afternoon and take a tramp. Grace excused herself with the plea that she already had an engagement to go to a matinee.
She sang about her work, watching the clock to mark the approach of the hour of Trenton’s arrival. His coming would bring a crisis in her life. The exchange of gifts in the household, the cheer all the members of the family were trying to bring to the day and the train of associations the festival inevitably awakened touched her; but not as in other years. There was a difference now. She stood free, self-assured, confidently seeing in life a great adventure.
As quickly as possible after dinner she flew to her room to dress, and at half-past two reached Minnie Lawton’s, where she found Irene waiting.
“Tommy took Ward to The Shack from the train. They had dinner out there. Tommy’s car’s waiting, so we’ll prance right along.”
Grace was disappointed at not seeing Trenton at Minnie’s and on the drive to The Shack talked little.
“You either don’t want to see him at all, or you’re consumed with anxiety,” commented Irene.
Kemp had given her a thousand dollar bond for a Christmas present. Her acceptance of the gift she mentioned without apology. She was going to save her money, she said in her spacious manner; a girl who didn’t put away something for a rainy day was a fool.
The car was stopped suddenly just inside the entrance to Kemp’s farm and Trenton smilingly opened the door.
“Merry Christmas! Tommy refused to leave the fire!—the poor old salamander! But being of tougher fibre, here I am to meet you!”
His unexpected appearance had found Grace unprepared and she was grateful for the moment his banter with Irene gave her to adjust herself. He stood with head bared, the wind ruffling his hair. The astrakan collar of his overcoat, turned up about his neck, set off effectively his handsome head and high-bred face. He was indubitably handsome, a man to be noticed in a crowd. Grace felt a new pride in the knowledge that he loved her. She laughed at some mocking reply he gave Irene and found his gaze upon her, the grave eyes all tenderness.
“For heaven’s sake, get in, Ward!” exclaimed Irene. “You’ll catch your death standing there.”
“I’m going to live forever! Grace, are you shod for a walk? Then we’ll let Irene drive on!”
He led the way to a point where the driveway skirted a woods-pasture, and opened a gate. The sense of strangeness at being with him again passed quickly as he began answering her questions about his illness. He declared that he was too well-seasoned to be killed by a cold. And besides he had found that he had something to live for, and that made a difference. A year before he would have relinquished his life without regret; now through her he had found the hope and the promise of life.
“I couldn’t bear the idea of going indoors until I’d had you all to myself a little while.”
The trees rose tall and black against the bluest of winter skies. A southwest wind whined fitfully among the boughs overhead. Grace felt the power of elemental forces in her blood. She was a free spirit in a world where the children of men were created of all time to be free. Through what Trenton was saying and her replies this thought was dominant. It lifted her to a mood of exaltation; it seemed that she could touch the heavens with her finger tips. A branch of brier caught her skirt and Trenton was quickly on his knees to free it. He looked up into her face before he rose and she touched his cheek with her hand,—lightly and caressingly.
“I make you my true knight,” she said. “Arise, Sir Ward!”
He rose and took her in his arms.
“Oh, my dearest! This is worth waiting for; this is worth living for!”
“You are so dear,” she whispered; “you are so wonderful!”
“Have you missed me; have you really thought of me?” he asked. “Do I really mean something to you?”
“Not something, but everything!”
There was a sob in her throat. She clung to him, laying her cheek to his face, calling him by endearing names that were new to her lips. “Sometimes I doubted you, dear. When I didn’t hear from you I thought you’d forgotten; and it hurt me so!”
“I understand how that would be,” he said tenderly. “I’d have let you know if there’d been any way. I was afraid to ask my friends to telegraph; it would have involved explanations.”
“I only want your forgiveness. I’ll never doubt you again, dear!”
“We must have faith in each other; we must trust each other,” he said. “You know I’d trust you round the world.”
She clasped her arms about his neck and held him in a long kiss to seal his faith in her. As they went on she told him about Bob Cummings and the visit to McGovern’s.
“It was to give myself a chance to forget you. I wanted to see if I could forget you. All that day I had thought of you so steadily that I was unhappy. I hated the thought of going home and sitting in my room and thinking of you. Can you understand how that would be?”
As she began the story in a tone that was half self-accusation, half apology, he teasingly pretended to make something tragic of it, but when he saw that it was a matter of conscience with her to confess he hastened to make it easy for her. Assured that he saw in the episode no disloyalty she gave every humorous twist to the incident. He laughed till the woods rang when she described the manner in which she had slipped away from Cummings and taken the trolley home.
“I’m warned now,” he said, “but don’t you ever try running away from me!”
“Oh, I don’t know!” she cried. “I dare you to catch me!” She vaulted the fence into a corn field and alertly dodged him as he pursued her over the stubble and among the shocks. She was fleet of foot and easily outdistanced him. She ended the long chase by hiding behind a shock and then as he blundered about seeking her, she sprang out and flung her arms about him.
“It’s time to go to the house,” he said, glancing at the lowering sun. “Tommy threatened to have tea. We’ll take another way back; it’s longer!”
“Isn’t it too bad that things must end? I wish today could last forever!”
“Let’s think of it only as the beginning! Today I refuse to think of anything disagreeable. I only ask to be sure you belong to me.”
“Oh, dear and splendid one, you don’t question it!” A smile played about her lips and her dark eyes were afire. “I love you!” she whispered. “I love you! I love you!”
The path they were following paralleled the highway at this point and as they clung to each other a man passed in the road, walking rapidly toward town. He could hardly have failed to see their embrace.
It was John Moore, taking alone the tramp he had asked Grace to share with him. He paused and stared, lifted his hat and hurried on.