CHAPTER FOURTEEN
PATRICIA REGISTERS FURY
Patricia waited a week. One day at the office when she happened to be alone for half an hour, she jerked the telephone hook off its shelf and looked up Cohen’s studio number. Inwardly she was furious. She would be a long time forgiving Gary for forcing her to speak the first word. She could see no possible excuse for such behavior, and her voice, when she spoke into the mouthpiece, was coldly impersonal.
“Will you please tell me where I can get into touch with Mr. Mills’ company?” Patricia might have been calling up the freight office to put a tracer on a lost shipment of ground barley.
“Mr. Mills’ company is out on location,” replied a voice which Patricia mentally dubbed snippy.
“I asked you where I could get in touch with Mr. Mills’ company. This is important.” Patricia spoke into a dead telephone. The snippy one in Cohen’s office had hung up.
While Patricia was still furious, she wrote a note to Gary. And, since her chin had squared itself and her head ached and she hated her job and the laundry had lost the collar to her favorite vestee, Patricia’s note read like this:
“Los Angeles, Calif.
“June 17, 1921.
“Gary Herbert Marshall,
“Cohen’s Studio,
“Hollywood, Calif.
“Dear Sir:
“Kindly return the papers which you carried off with you a week ago last night.
“Very truly,
“P. Connolly.”
Patricia mailed this letter along with a dozen invoices, fourteen “please remits” and a letter to the main office in Kansas City. She felt better after she had poked it into the mail box. She could even contemplate buying a new vestee set without calling the laundry names.
Patricia waited a week and then called Cohen’s studio again. She was quite prepared for another snub, and perhaps that is the reason why she got it. Mr. Mills’ company was on location; and Patricia could believe that or not, just as she chose. Patricia did not believe it. She barked a request for Mr. Gary Marshall.
“We do not deliver telephone messages to actors,” the snippy one informed Patricia superciliously, and hung up before Patricia could enunciate the scathing retort she had ready.
That night at seven o’clock Patricia called Gary’s apartment. Her mood was such, when she dialed the number, that a repair man had to come the next day and replace a broken spring in the instrument. She held the receiver to her ear a full five minutes and listened to the steady drone of the bell calling Gary. Had Gary been there to answer, he would have had a broken engagement within five minutes to hold him awake nights.
After awhile little Pat Connolly wiped the tears of rage from her eyes and called the landlady of Gary’s apartment.
The landlady assured her that Mr. Marshall hadn’t been near the place for two weeks. At least, she had not seen him. He might have come in late and gone out early—a good many of her tenants did—and in that case she wouldn’t be so apt to see him. But she hadn’t noticed him around last Sunday, and most generally she did see him Sundays because he slept late and if she didn’t see him she was pretty sure to hear his voice in the hall speaking to some one. She could always tell Mr. Marshall’s voice as far as she could hear it, it was so pleasant——
“Oh, my good heavens!” gritted Patricia and followed the example of the snippy office girl at Cohen’s. She hung up while the landlady was still talking. Which was not polite of Patricia, but excusable.
Well, perhaps Gary was out on location. But that seemed strange, because even after quarrels Gary had never failed to call Patricia up and let her know that he was leaving town. After quarrels his voice would be very cool and dignified, it is true; but nevertheless he had never before failed to let her know that he was leaving town.
Patricia spent another week in mentally reviewing that last evening with Gary and in justifying herself for everything she had said to him. Gary really did need to be told the plain truth, and she had told him. If he wanted to go away and nurse his injured vanity and sulk, that merely proved how much he had needed the plain truth told him.
She waited until Friday morning. On Friday, because she had not heard from Gary, and because she had lain awake Thursday night telling herself that she was thankful she had found him out in time, and that it didn’t make a particle of difference to her whether she ever heard from him or not, Patricia manufactured an errand down town for her employers. Because she was a conscientious young woman she attended to the manufactured errand first. Immediately thereafter she marched into the branch office of the Examiner.
In years Patricia’s chin had never looked so square. She was not in the habit of wetting her pencil, but now she stood at the ad counter, licked an indelible pencil defiantly, and wrote this, so emphatically that the pad was marked with the imprint of the letters seven pages deep:
WANTED: Man to take charge of small cattle ranch in Nevada. Open range, living springs, imp. Completely furnished on shares. Phone 11270 Sun.
Patricia read this over twice with her lips buttoned in tightly. Then she licked the pencil again—indelibly marking her pink tongue for an inch down the middle—and inserted just before the ’phone number, the word “permanent” and drew two lines underneath for emphasis. This was meant as a trenchant warning to Gary Marshall that he need not trouble himself any further concerning Patricia’s investment nor about Patricia herself, for that matter.
Patricia paid the display ad rate and marched out, feeling as irrevocably committed to cynical maidenhood as if she had taken the veil. Men as such were weak, vain creatures who thought to hold the heart of a woman in the curve of an eyelash. Meaning, needless to say, Gary Marshall’s eyelash which should not longer hold the heart of Patricia Connolly.
Patricia’s telephone began ringing at six o’clock on Sunday morning and continued ringing spasmodically until ten minutes past twelve, when Patricia dropped the receiver off the hook and let it dangle, thereby giving the busy signal whenever 11270 was dialed.
For six hours and ten minutes Patricia had felt a definite sinking sensation in her chest when a strange voice came to her over the ’phone. She would have wanted to murder any one who so much as hinted that she hoped to hear Gary say expostulatingly, “For heck’s sake, Pat, what’s the big idea of this ad? I can’t feature it!”
Had she heard that, Patricia would have gloried in telling him, with the voice that went with the square chin, that she was sorry, but the place was already taken. Then she would have hung up and waited until he recovered from that wallop and called again. Then—well, Patricia had not decided definitely just what she would do, except that she was still firmly resolved upon being an old maid.
At seven o’clock in the morning the first man called to see her. Patricia was ready for him, clothed in her office tailored suit and her office manner. The man’s name was Hawkins, and he seemed much surprised to find that a young woman owned the “small cattle ranch in Nevada.”
Hawkins informed Patricia, in the very beginning of their conversation, that he was a fair man who never yet had cheated any one out of a nickel. He said that if anything he was too honest, and that this was the reason why he hadn’t a ranch of his own and was not independent. He said that he invariably let the other fellow have the big end of a bargain, rather than have the load on his conscience that he had possibly not been perfectly square. As to cheating a woman, well, he hinted darkly that killing was too good for any man who would take advantage of a woman in a business deal. Hawkins was so homely that Patricia knew he must be honest as he said he was. She believed practically everything he said, and by eight o’clock on a calm Sunday morning, P. Connolly and James Blaine Hawkins were partners in the ranch at Johnnywater.
James Blaine Hawkins was so anxious that Patricia should have practically all the profits in the deal, that he dictated terms which he facetiously urged her never to tell on him; they were so one-sided (Patricia’s side). Hawkins, in his altruistic extravagance, had volunteered to devote his time, labor and long experience in cattle raising, to almost the sole benefit of Patricia. He was to receive merely two thirds of the increase in stock, plus his living expenses. For good measure he proposed to donate the use of his car, charging Patricia only for the gas and oil.
Patricia typed the agreement on her machine, using all the business phrases she had learned from taking dictation in the office. The document when finished was a beautiful piece of work, absolutely letter perfect and profusely decorated with whereases, be it therefore agreeds and—of course—hereofs, party of the first parts and party of the second parts. Any lawyer would have gasped over the reading. But James Blaine Hawkins considered it a marvelous piece of work and said so. And Patricia was mightily pleased with herself and drew a sigh of relief when James Blaine Hawkins had departed with a signed copy of the Patricia-made AGREEMENT OF CONTRACT in his pocket. Patricia held the original; held it literally for the next two hours. She read it over and over and couldn’t see where one word could be changed for the betterment of the document.
“And what’s the use of haggling and talking and whittling sticks over a simple thing like this?” Patricia asked a critical world. “Mr. Hawkins knew what he wanted to do, and I knew what I wanted to do—and talking for a week wouldn’t have accomplished anything at all. And anyway, that’s settled, and I’ve got Johnnywater off my mind for the next five years, thank Heaven. Gary Marshall can go on smirking the rest of his life if he wants to. I’m sure it’s absolutely immaterial to me.”
Gary Marshall was so absolutely immaterial to Patricia that she couldn’t sleep nights, but lay awake telling herself about his absolute immateriality. She was so pleased over her agreement with James Blaine Hawkins that her boss twice stopped his dictation to ask her if she were sick or in trouble. On both occasions Patricia’s glance turned him red in the face. And her “Certainly not” gave the poor man a guilty feeling that he must have insulted her somehow.
Patricia formed a habit of walking very fast from the car line to Rose Court and of having the key to her mail box in her fingers when she turned in from the street. But she absolutely did not want or expect to receive a letter from Gary Marshall.
Curiously, Cohen’s telephone number kept running through her mind when her mind had every reason to be fully occupied with her work. She even wrote “Hollywood 741” when she meant to write “Hollister, Calif.” on a letter she was transcribing. The curious feature of this freak of her memory is that Patricia could not remember firm telephones that she used nearly every day, but was obliged to keep a private list at her elbow for reference.
Patricia did not call Hollywood 741. She did, however, write a second stern request for her papers which Gary had taken away.
On the heels of that, Patricia’s boss—a kindly man in gold-bowed spectacles and close-cropped whiskers—gave Patricia a terrific shock when she had taken the last letter of the morning’s correspondence and was slipping the rubber band over her notebook.
“Oh, by the way, Miss Connolly, day after to-morrow I leave for Kansas City. I’m to have charge of the purchasing department there, and I should like to have you with me if you care to make the change. The salary will be twenty-five a month more—to start; if the work justifies it, I think you could safely look forward to another advance. And of course your traveling expenses will be met by the firm.”
Patricia twisted her pencil in the rubber band. “My laundry won’t be back till Friday,” she informed him primly. “But I suppose I can go out there and pay for it and have it sent on by mail. What train are you taking, Mr. Wilson?”
In this manner did the dauntless Patricia meet the shock of opportunity’s door slamming open unexpectedly in her face. Patricia did not know that she would like Kansas City. She had a vague impression of heat and cyclones whenever she thought of the place. But it seemed to her a Heaven-sent chance to show Gary Marshall just how immaterial he was in her life.
She debated the wisdom of sending back Gary’s ring. But the debate did not seem to get much of anywhere. She left for Kansas City with the ring still on her finger and the hope in her heart that Gary would be worried when he found she was gone, and would try to find her, and would fail.
And Providence, she told herself confidently, had surely been looking after her all along and had sent James Blaine Hawkins to take that darned Johnnywater white elephant off her hands just nicely in time for the boss to offer her this change. And she didn’t care how much she hated Kansas City. She couldn’t hate it half as much as she hated Los Angeles.
It merely illustrates Patricia’s firmness with herself that she did not add her reason for hating Los Angeles. In May she had loved it better than any other place on earth.