Part 4

Considering these manifold excellent qualities, the most remarkable thing about her, he thought, was that she had not long before been invited to embellish the mansion and the motors of a millionaire. He wrote enthusiastically to his mother suggesting that it would be nice to invite her to Rogersville for a portion at least of her coming summer vacation, which brought a most unhappy smile to his mother's lips. But since he did not repeat his request, the invitation was not extended.

The first time that he knew he regarded her as a woman rather than as a workwoman was one afternoon when the declining sun threw its light higher and higher into the big office. A ray shone on and from her patent leather belt and into his eyes. He looked up annoyed from his work. She was sitting a few desks ahead by the window, her back toward him. Before very long the thing had fascinated him and he found himself immensely concerned with the climb of the sun up her shirt waist.

It reached her collar in a manner entirely marvelous and then precisely at the moment when he was finally to know its effect upon her hair, she lowered the shade. What luck!

The next day was cloudy. The next was Saturday and she quit at twelve, before the sun got around to her window. Monday she lowered the shade before the light got even to her shoulder. Little did she know of the repressed anguish she was so bringing to the gloomy young hustler behind her. But on Tuesday the sunlight reached her hair momentarily as she leaned back in her chair and gleamed and glittered there, a coruscation of glory for fully thirty seconds--long enough to overturn in catastrophe his thirty years and their slowly built purposes.

He resolved hereafter to deal primarily not in life insurance, but in life, which meant Georgia.

VII

A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

During the ensuing days Mason was hopeless for work.

From the office books he found out where she lived, slyly as he supposed, but not so slyly that the information clerk didn't tell someone, who told someone who teased Georgia at the luncheon club, not thereby displeasing her. For he was a good-looking fellow and capable; furthermore, he had always kept himself to himself, so putting several noses out of joint, it was said.

He had moments of anguished self-reproach as he sat in his room in his boarding house, his chair tilted against the wall under the gas jet, his coat on his bed, his derby hat tilted back on his head.

He knew that his life had been utterly unworthy. He had drunk it to the lees, pretty near. But now he was through with all that. Hereafter, for her sake, he would conquer himself and others.

His sense of beauty was limited by inheritance and by disuse, but now he began to draw upon all the poetry in his soul--not to write to her, but to think of her.

His imagination, naturally fertile and strengthened by the practice of his profession, centered itself on the question of his first kiss from her--where, when and how should it happen? He called all great lovers from Romeo to Robert W. Chambers to his aid--it must be under the moon, the fragrance about them. And a lake, a little lake, for the moon to shine upon and magically increase its magic. He remembered the moon on the river back in Rogersville, with the other girl--the first one. What mere children they were. That was puppy love, but this was love; love such as no man ever felt before for a woman.

He was hard hit.

The lake suggested a train of thought, so he packed his bag on Saturday and went to southern Wisconsin. The resort dining room was full of noisy youths and maidens who, in his decided opinion had no proper reverence for love, though they seemed perfectly amorous whenever he suddenly came upon a pair of them as much as one hundred yards from the hotel.

He chartered a flatbottom after supper to row out alone and contemplate the moon and her, but the voices of the night and the frogs were overwhelmed by the detestable mandolins tinkling "My Wife's Gone to the Country, Hurray."

When finally he turned in he discovered there was a drummers' poker party on the other side of the pine partition, so it wasn't until nearly daylight he dozed off, to wake a couple of hours later when the dishes began to rattle.

The boat concessionaire reported pickerel in the lake and he joined the Sunday piscatorial posse. He returned with two croppies and the record of many bites, mostly on himself.

He concluded he wasn't interested in fishing anyway. It was just a device to cheat himself and make himself suppose he was having a good time. He couldn't have a good time and wouldn't if he could, until he knew her, until at least he knew her. Why he had never said ten words to her more than "Good morning" and "Good evening." He would call on her; he had her address. He would go to her apartment and ring the bell and say, "Miss Connor, I have come to call on you. Do you mind?"

No, that would hardly do. It was too bold. He mustn't seem at all crude to her, but mannerly and suave and self-possessed. A girl, and especially one of her sort, would object to crudeness. He must be very courtly, knightly. Flowers on her desk every morning, perhaps, not a card, not a word. A handful of sweet blossoms each day to greet her and bear her silent testimony that there was one who---- She would know, of course, in due time whence they came. Not that he would ever so much as hint at his gifts, but her woman's intuition would tell her. And when she did realize in this way his silent though passionate devotion, she would thank him, gently and sadly, and a bond would be made between them.

But then, what if the other people in the office had intuition, too, or saw him bringing in flowers! No, decidedly that wouldn't do.

And then--just in time for him to catch the 3:40--a blinding flash of warning illumined his whole being. What if, while he was there shilly-shallying at a summer resort, some other fellow was with her in Chicago at that very moment!

"What if"--a ridiculous way to put it. Wasn't it sure in the nature of things, that at that very moment some other man was with her?

He caught the 3:40. He would call on her that very evening and if indeed he didn't declare himself bluntly in so many words--hadn't he heard of numberless women who had been won at first sight!--he would at least intimate to her strongly, unmistakably, that she was the object of his respectful consideration and attention.

There were others in the field. It was time he declared himself in, too.

It wasn't until 5:37, when the train reached Clybourn Junction, that he began to repent his precipitancy. He was going to see her again in the office to-morrow, wasn't he? Wouldn't it look queer if he went out to call on her to-night without warning? She might be wholly unprepared for callers and annoyed.

But his presumable rival bobbed up again and spoiled his supper, so after dropping his bag at home, he walked presently into the entry way of 2667 Pearl Avenue. Her name was not on the left side; perhaps she had moved. No, here on the right, floor 3, in letters of glory--"Connor." Above it, "Talbot."

Who was Talbot? Married sister, roommate or landlady from whom she sublet? He raised his thumb to the bell. He had never before experienced a moment of such acute consciousness.

Wait a second--she might not be in. He walked out and looked up at the third floor right. There was certainly a light, a bright one, and the window was open and the curtain fluttering out.

Somebody was in. It might be Talbot. In that case he wouldn't go up or leave his name either. It certainly was none of Talbot's business, whoever Talbot was.

He pressed the button under her name. "Yes?" Heavens above, it was she, Georgia, the woman herself.

"Yes, who is it!" came the voice once more.

"Stevens."

"Mr. Stevens?" with a decided tone of interrogation. Evidently she did not place him at all. Probably not, with so many other men about her. It would be absurd to suppose anything else. She didn't place him--might not even recognize him out of the office.

"Mason Stevens of the office."

"Oh, Mr. Stevens of the office. How do you do?" and she spoke with a delightful access of cordiality. "Will you come up?"

"Just for a minute, if I may. I won't keep you long."

"Wait, I'll let you in." The click-click-click sounded and he was on his way upstairs. She opened the door for him.

A quick glance. There was no other man in the room, anyway.

"Good evening," she said. "Won't you come in?"

"Why, yes," then very apologetically; "that is, if I'm not putting you out."

"No, indeed." He sat and paused. She smiled and did not help him.

"You're nicely located here, Miss Connor."

"Oh, yes, we like it."

"Near the express station?"

"Yes. I usually get a seat in the morning, but not coming back, of course."

"About three blocks, isn't it?"

"Three long ones."

"A nice walk."

"Yes, this time of year, but not so nice in winter when they don't clean the snow off the sidewalks."

He felt that it was a bit jerky. Perhaps he should first have asked her permission to call. What a goat he was not to think of that beforehand instead of now. He paused until the pause grew uncomfortable.

She tried to help him out, "We're out of the smoke belt, that's one thing."

He was seated in a rocking chair and began to rock violently, then suddenly he stopped and leaned toward her, his elbows on his knees.

"I've been slow getting to the point," he remarked abruptly, "but I came here on business."

"Oh, I wasn't just sure what."

Stevens took half a dozen life insurance advertising folders from his pocket. "You know this literature we're using," he said, running two or three through his fingers and indicating them by their titles, "'Do You Want Your Wife to Want When She's a Widow?' 'Friendship for the Fatherless,' 'Death's Dice Are Loaded.'"

"Oh, yes." She took them from him and read aloud. "'Over the Hills to the Poorhouse,' with a photograph of it, 'Will Your Little Girl Have to Scrub?' with thumbnail pictures of scrub ladies. Ugh, what a gloomy trade we're in, aren't we, Mr. Stevens?"

"This is the line of talk that gets the business." He spoke earnestly, tapping the folders. "You can't make papa dig up premiums for forty or fifty years unless you first scare him and scare him blue about his family."

"Yes, I suppose so."

"And what I came for is--well, will you--would you just as soon help me get up some more of these?"

"You mean work with you on them?" She was truly surprised.

"Exactly."

She hesitated and then she said it was impossible, but that she appreciated his kind compliment, was flattered by it and thanked him deeply, deeply. For, of course, she realized that Mr. Stevens was one of the very best men in town at that sort of work and she was afraid she couldn't possibly be of any real use to him.

"Not at all, not at all;" he was talking business now and waved aside her objections with his customary confidence. Everybody always objected to his plans for them when he began talking, but in the end he was apt to change their minds. That was why he was considered a premier solicitor. "You've a clear head and a good ear for words, that's what's needed, and----"

"But--" she tried to interrupt.

"And ideas, that's the point, ideas. You're clever."

"What makes you think so?"

"I don't think so; I know."

"I'm flattered," she said firmly. "But no--really."

"Well, I won't take that for a definite answer yet." Of course not. He never did. "I want you to think it over. I have the utmost confidence in the scheme and your ability to carry it out. You can tell me Monday in the office what you decide."

"I can tell you now, Mr. Stevens."

He rose. "Think it over anyway. You may change your mind."

She rose, too, not encouraging him to stay.

"Miss Connor," he spoke gravely, "there was something else I came to ask you. I'd like to know you personally as well as in a business way, if you'd just as soon. May I come to see you now and then?"

She did not answer. She saw that it counted with him. He seemed really to care. She must not be brusque with him. He must not think her merely light-minded, unappreciative of the compliment of his interest. She must tell him of her marriage.

"Of course, if you'd rather not for any reason, why, that settles it," there was a check in his voice, "and we'll say no more about it." Still she did not answer. He held out his hand. "Well, good-bye, then."

"Good-bye."

He went to the door and opened it.

"Mr. Stevens."

"Yes, Miss Connor."

"I think you ought to know that isn't my name."

"What is it, then?"

"Mrs. Connor."

"Mrs. Connor? Missis Connor?"

"Yes."

He came down into the room. His glance traveled rapidly to the four corners, like a wild animal dodging men and dogs. He had one question left, one chance of escape.

"Are you a widow?" he said.

"No, a married woman."

Stevens went slowly out of the door without replying. The woman whom he loved belonged to another man. It was like the end of the world.

VIII

THE LIFE FORCE

If Mason had been in the _jeunesse dorée_ he must now have gone to Monte Carlo to buck the tiger or to India to shoot him.

As it was, he smoked all night and turned up at the office half an hour ahead of time in a voluble, erratic mood, brought about by suppressing so much excitement within himself. If he had known how to tell his troubles to a friend over a glass of beer he might have had an easier time of it in his life. But he wasn't that sort. He took things hard and kept them in.

He decided that the best thing to do with his sentiment for Georgia was to strangle it. Whenever he caught himself thinking of her, which would certainly be often at first, he must turn his mind away. He must avoid seeing her; if they met accidentally he would give no further sign than a curt nod.

He remembered the farmers used to say that there was one thing to do with Canada thistles--keep them under, never let the sun shine on them. His love for this other man's wife was like a thistle. He must keep it under, never let the sun shine on it.

He did it thoroughly. He nodded to her in the most indifferent way in the world when they happened to meet, but he found no occasion to stop at her desk to chat an instant. Two weeks of his change of manner began to pique her. He was acting in a rather absurd way, she thought. After all they weren't lovers who had quarreled, but simply acquaintances, friends after a fashion, fellow workers. Why shouldn't they continue to be friends? It would be amusing to have some one besides the family and the girls to talk to.

She would not let him treat her in this stiff way any longer, just because she had had the bad luck to marry a bad man years before. What rubbish that was. And what self-consciousness on his part. Men had a very guilty way of looking at things.

They met quite or almost quite by accident in front of the office building during the noon hour of the following day. He was about to pass without stopping.

"How do you do, Mr. Stevens?" Her voice was quite distinct.

So he turned and lifted his hat. "How do you do!"

She did not precisely move toward him, but she did so contrive the pause that it was up to him, if he weren't to be boorish, to stop for a moment and speak with her.

She threw a disarming candor into her first question. "Is there any particular reason," said she, "why we are no longer friends?"

"Friends?"

"Yes. You've been frowning at me for about three weeks and I haven't the least idea how I've offended you."

He did not answer immediately and his expression hardened.

"There, you're doing it now," said she with apparent perplexity. "Why?"

"You know," he spoke doggedly.

"No, I don't."

"Yes you do, too," he answered curtly and roughly. "You do."

"Just as you please." She turned from him, apparently offended by his tone, slightly nodded and walked slowly away. She was of medium height, no more than that, and slender. A brute of a man bumped her with his shoulder as he passed her.

Stevens waited for the brute of a man, dug his elbow into his ribs and overtook her at the Madison Street corner.

"Miss--Mrs. Connor, I didn't mean to be rude."

"You were a little, you know."

"Will you excuse me?"

"Why, of course."

He didn't quite know what to do next, so he awkwardly extended his hand. She took it with a man-to-man shake of wiping out the score, which completely demolished his cynical attitude in reference to platonic friendship.

"Where were you bound for?" he asked.

"Nowhere, just strolling. Over to the lake front for a breath of air."

"May I walk along?"

"Surely."

On their way back they reflected that they had been without lunch, so they stopped at a drug store for a malted milk with egg, chocolate flavor, nutmeg on top.

They touched their glasses together.

"It's very nourishing," said he with wonderment.

"Very," she replied, delightedly; "very."

They returned to their work in that state of high elation induced by interviews such as theirs, wherein the spoken words mean twenty times what they say--and more.

IX

THE PRETENDERS

Georgia and Mason did not overpass the outward signs and boundaries of platonism, learning to avoid not merely evil, but the appearance of evil. When they met in the hundred-eyed office they were casual.

During the autumn they took long walks together every Sunday. There had been a dry spell that year, lasting with hardly a break from the fore part of June, which baked the land and sucked out the wells and put the Northern woods in danger of their lives. The broad corn leaves withered yellow and the husbandmen of the great valley protested that the ears were but "lil' nubbins with three inches of nuthin' at the tips, taperin' down to a point, and where'll we get our seed next spring?"

When the huge downpour came at last and by its miracle saved the crop which had been given up for lost a fortnight since, Mason cursed the day, for it fell on the first day of the week and cost him, item, one walk and talk with Georgia Connor. She stood so near his eyes as to hide from his sight a billion bushels parching in the valley--though he was country bred.

To her their Sundays together brought not a joy as definite as his, but rather a sense of contentment, of relief from the precision of the other days of her week. It pleased her to wander to the big aviary and look at the condors and cockatoos and wonder about South America where they came from, then to stroll slowly over to the animals and have a vague difference of opinion with him about whether a lion could whip a tiger.

She thought so because the lion was the king of beasts, but Mason didn't, because he'd read of a fight where it had been tried. Once he even grew a trifle heated because she wouldn't listen to reason and fact and stuck to the lion because he'd been called the king of beasts, whereas all naturalists knew the elephant and the gorilla and the rhinoc---- There she interrupted him with a laugh and called him a boy and too literal.

Every Sunday they had this same dispute until finally they both learned to laugh about it and made it a joke between them, and she told him he was doing much better. They walked by the inside lake and wondered if the wild ducks and geese on the wooded isle liked to have to stay there, and they took lunch when they got good and ready, perhaps not until two or three or even four o'clock in the afternoon.

She always went home for supper, but often she came out again afterwards, and took the car down town to a Sunday Evening Ethical Society which foregathered in an old-fashioned theatre building.

There was almost always some well-known speaker whose name was often in the papers, perhaps a professor or a radical Ohio Mayor or a labor lawyer, to address them on up-to-date topics like Municipal Ownership in Europe or the Russian Revolution or the Androcentric World, which showed women had as much right to vote as men, or non-resistance, a kind of Christianity that wasn't practical. Stevens didn't like that lecture much.

Jane Addams spoke once about the children that lived in her neighborhood. He thought her talk the best of all; so did Georgia. He said to her that Jane Addams was as much of a saint as any of those old-timers that were burnt and pulled to pieces and fed to lions, and a useful kind of a saint as well, because she helped children instead of just believing in something or other. Georgia didn't answer his remark at the time, but nearly half an hour later as she was bidding him good night she had him repeat it to her, and the next day she told him that what he had said about Miss Addams was very interesting.

They had organ music at these meetings and a collection, so that he felt it was the next thing to going to church. But Georgia in arguing out the matter with herself concluded that there was so little religion in the services that in attending them she violated the Church's law against worshiping with heretics hardly more than if she went to a political meeting. She would never go to a regular Protestant service with Mason, even if he asked her. She made up her mind firmly on that point. So perhaps it was as well he didn't ask her.

Her waking memories of Jim were now much fainter and dimmer. She tried not to think of him at all. She refused to let her mother or Al speak his name or make allusion to him. At the beginning, just after his departure, mama had harped on the subject until she thought it would drive her crazy.

Over and over and over again she traversed the same ground--about his being her husband, and Christian charity, and one more trial, and the disgrace of it, and that it was the first time such a thing ever happened in the family.

Finally in self-defense and to save herself from being upset every night when she was tired and worn out anyway, she told her mother that the next time she mentioned Jim's name she would leave the room. And she only had actually to do this three times before poor mama succumbed, as she always did when she was met firmly. However, she still managed to say a volume in Jim's favor with her deep sighs and her "Oh, Georgia's," but Georgia always pretended she didn't know the meaning of such signs and manifestations. Of course, especially at the beginning, her husband's face often came unbidden between her and her page, but she gathered up her will each time to banish it again, and it's surprising what a woman can do if she only makes up her mind and _sticks to it_.

But her dreams were the trouble. Jim would enter them. She didn't know how to keep him out. And he always came, sometimes two or three nights in succession, to bring her pain.

She usually appointed her Sunday rendezvous for an hour before noon at Shakespeare's statue in the Park, and sailed off cheerily in her best bib and tucker to meet Mason, leaving behind her a fine trail of excuses, a complete new set each week, to explain to mama why she couldn't go to mass. On this particular morning she said she had a date with a girl-friend from the office.

With the best intention in the world she was never on time and always kept him waiting. She was so unalterably punctual for six days a week that the seventh day it was simply impossible.

Stevens usually became slightly irritated during these few minutes--what business man wouldn't?--and referred to his watch at hundred-second intervals, determined to ask her once and for all why she wasted so much time in tardiness. But when finally he distinguished her slim little figure in the Sunday throng that was streaming toward him, his impatience left not a wrack behind.

They started gayly northward, bantering each other in urban repartee. As they passed gray Columbus Hospital their mood swerved suddenly and they talked of sickness and death and immortality.