CHAPTER VIII.

The stagnant pool of Slocum was very considerably stirred by New York during the days when Mrs. Warrener was obliged to go in and out to look for her servants. For she had decided that Eliza should be replaced by two maids, one of whom should be dressed in apron and caps such as those worn by the trim person of whom she had caught a glimpse as she waited in Mrs. Bellamy’s drawing room.

When her husband came home one night, Gertrude was waiting for him in the window. She had had a hard day. Timid and abashed before the new and autocratic ladies for whom she felt no room in the house was good enough, she had vacillated on the verge of temper and tears. One of her characteristics was the complete control of her features and a passive exterior which hitherto no excitements had disturbed.

“George”--she drew her husband into the parlor--“I’ve got two girls.” She put her hand on the lapel of the overcoat he had as yet not taken off.

“_Two_ girls!” he echoed.

She was flushed and pretty--very pretty. He vaguely thought she was dressed up more than usual.

“I’m tired out!” she exclaimed. “Those intelligence offices are enough to wear you to death. I got two because--the work here is too much for any one girl.”

George looked around the microscopic room, and mentally saw, as well, the microscopic second floor.

“Eliza got through all right.”

Mrs. Warrener exclaimed: “Don’t talk to me of Eliza. She wasn’t fit to be seen.”

With the hope that the two servants together might not cost as much as one, he asked:

“What’s their wages?”

She hesitated.

“Why, I’d rather make it up some way--on a dress or a hat. They’re high. One twenty and the other twenty-five a month.”

“Gee whizz!” Warrener staggered back. “Why,” he gasped, “you’re _crazy_, Gert!”

Her hand fell back from the lapel of his coat. Tears of vexation and fatigue sprang to her eyes.

“Hush! _She’s_ there, in the dining room--she’ll hear you. I’m _not_ crazy, I’m sick of living like a tenement house.”

The master was prevented from saying anything further by the entrance of a pert-faced girl in cap and apron, who said briskly:

“Dinner’s served.”

Standing there in Eliza’s place between the cheap portières, she represented a convulsion in the clerk’s household. He had never been thus invited to a meal in his own house before. He got off his coat and followed his wife in to dinner.

The little, cozy room possessed for the first time an element of unrest. In eight years it had not altered so much as this. At first Gertrude, with a washerwoman, did her own work; then Eliza came blithely and good-humoredly on the scene. She had grown to be like a friend. Warrener liked her. In her oven, which she had at length triumphantly overcome, she baked him certain favorite little breads much to his taste. She ironed his collars and shirts “just right.” He could say to her:

“Look here, Eliza, just run down to Pearce’s and get me a couple of cigars.” He could never order this bustling individual in cap and gown in this manner. “A tenement!” The word touched his contented pride in his little household; already the golden sunlight was beginning to slip from the wall. Change and progression were following the tired man close on his heels to his very door.

A fortnight went by after her call at the house on the hill before the event reverently hoped for by George Warrener’s wife transpired.

Mrs. Bellamy in her French automobile drove up Grand Street and called on Mrs. Warrener.

Gertrude was out, and when she came home and found the bit of pasteboard lying on the hatstand and realized that Mrs. Bellamy had been--and had gone!--a feeling of desolation swept over her such as might attack a lonely occupant of a desert island on rushing to his island’s edge to see a ship slip over the horizon.

The disappointed woman could think of nothing to follow this occurrence, no future after it. She felt deserted and very miserable.

The waitress who answered the bell her mistress rang appeared now to be superfluous--the extravagance this splurge represented occurred to Gertrude for the first time. What was the good of the servants after Mrs. Bellamy had been and gone! Since Mrs. Bellamy would never come again, Eliza might just as well be there with her blowzy hair, her blue apron and her kind, smiling face. Gertrude felt a homesickness for her as excitement died out of her limited sky.

Katy’s manner was less flaunting and insolent than usual. Mrs. Bellamy in her handsome clothes and the automobile had impressed her.

“When did the lady come?”

“About half an hour ago.”

“Was there anyone else?”

Mrs. Warrener would not let herself think just who there might have been.

“There was only a little girl in the motor car.”

“She didn’t leave any message?”

“No, ma’am.”

Well, it was all over, and she might as well make the best of it. She had got on all right enough before the Bellamys came; she guessed she could live without them, anyhow. She would keep the girls till George’s summer vacation, and then they could get another place. That this provision would leave them stranded in a bad season did not disturb her.

She “just couldn’t” go upstairs to indolently sit down and contemplate at once the stupid days to be! There were George’s socks to mend, but she turned about where she stood, gratefully remembering that there was also the meeting of a card club of which she was a member. It would at least keep her doing something, and she went out again and started toward Mrs. Turnbull’s.

Her feet were clad in shoes then in vogue, with thick, projecting soles and stubby ends. As her foot was ridiculously small, it looked less like a man’s--which masculinity it seems this heavy gear is intended to simulate--than like a sturdy little boy’s. Her short-length skirt showed a slender ankle in coarse black stockings, the skirt itself falling smoothly on her rounded hips; her coat lay smoothly across a flat back and shoulders, the small, supple waist was held in by a leather belt. Her collar, neither stiff enough nor high enough to be “smart,” was low enough to leave visible the back of her neck and the close growth of her hair. Men have been known more than once to follow a woman for the charm of the nape of her neck; that soft, pretty turn, the lovely part of the form where the head with more or less beauty--according to type--joins the shoulder and body.

Before Mrs. Warrener was within two blocks of her destination, she heard some one walking fast behind her, and not unnaturally turned to see who followed her with a step so decided in the lonely street.

It was Mr. McAllister.

The unexpectedness of this appearance on the afternoon when she had given up the idea of coming in contact with his like and circle again--the fact of meeting him in the open street, where there was no one but himself to critically observe her manner--gave her a shock of pleasure. She stammered: “How do you do?” and held out her hand to him with the _gaucherie_ of a child.

“What a dreadfully fast walker you are!” McAllister was out of breath. “And it’s not the first time I’ve noticed it. You don’t know how I ran down the hill behind you that night at the Golf Club.”

He had never spoken to such a painful blush before, as surprise and flattered pleasure deepened in the woman’s cheeks.

“It’s a splendid speed,” he approved, “and it’s given you a most glorious color.”

As he walked along by her side she managed to say:

“Your sister called to day, and I was out.”

“That’s too bad!” he exclaimed heartily. “She will be so sorry. She wanted to take you out in the automobile--I lent it for the purpose. Where are you going, and at such a pace--may I know?”

“I’m going to a card party at Mrs. Turnbull’s--it’s right here.”

Her companion showed plainly his disappointment. “I thought you were out for a good walk, and that perhaps I might join you.”

More sorry than he, and thoroughly regretting having told her stupid errand, she slowed her pace.

“Can’t I come in with you--and play as well?”

She smiled nervously. “Oh, no, there are only ladies in the club.”

“Only!” he repeated. “What better could one want? But I should prefer it in the singular. Can’t you seriously take me in under your protection and introduce me? What do you play? Bridge? I can play bridge. It would amuse me hugely.” He saw that she did not understand his use of the word and changed it. “Entertain me--do, please.”

Mrs. Warrener had not much imagination, but she could imagine the faces of Mrs. Turnbull and her fellow club members at the sight of Mr. McAllister and herself together under any circumstances. He looked so tall--so laughing and at ease--his attitude as if he had known her all his life bewildered her; her embarrassment was not yet relieved, although her pleasure was growing.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t, Mr. McAllister.”

“Do you like cards?” he demanded, with abrupt change of topic.

“Not much; I don’t play well.”

“I hate them, personally,” he admitted. “Why, then, do you go?”

As she made him wait for an answer he urged: “It’s a crime to sacrifice this afternoon in a hot, stuffy room before a lot of painted pasteboards. I don’t believe they expect you--do they?”

“Well, I don’t believe they do. I don’t often go. I just pay fines all the time.”

“Pay one this once, won’t you? Is this the house? Why, it’s a box, nothing more. Don’t go and be shut up in it!”

Gertrude thought with a pang that Mrs. Turnbull’s was twice as large as her own house--she had envied her.

“Don’t you want to show me one of the walks around here? There must be lots of nice tramps. It will do you good.”

She had never been spoken to in her life like this before. Strange as it may seem, it is, nevertheless, true that she had never exchanged half a dozen words with any man but her husband in her life--that is, any man save the tradespeople, whom she always talked to as long as she could. She had once acknowledged to herself: “I guess I like men better than women--I’d rather talk to the grocer than to any of the stupid Slocum women. It’s common of me, but it’s true.”

McAllister’s voice was like a cradle--she seemed to rock in it.

“He’s perfectly elegant,” she said to herself; “so handsome and polite.”

She would have suffocated at the Turnbulls’; the same atmosphere that had latterly pervaded all of her own surroundings began to surround the unoffending little house whose porch and front gate were reached.

She nerved herself to look up at Mr. McAllister, and with some assurance met his smiling eyes.

“I’ll go along a little further; there’s a pretty walk over along the old Lackawanna Station.”