Part 7

And another time when they were going out together in the evening and she had come down from the upper floor with her wrap which he took for a moment:

“I’m sure you won’t mind, Pidge,” he said, “if I tell you that the little things you wear quite take me over. They actually hurt, and I never saw you look quite like to-night.”

This was the quality--more like the words of an older man; a touch of sentimentality upon them, as if he were diminished in her presence, something in him so whipped it did not dare appear on the surface. This was unpleasant to Pidge. The changeless want in his heart suffocated her at times; then her affection changed to revolt. She became irritable and uncentered, her temper hard to govern. She wanted freedom--freedom for something utterly undelineated, but freedom to Life (in Miss Claes’ meaning of that word of words) and she saw him in such times as one who stood in her way.

One night in the little upper room, in her own particular time of self-revelation, as Pidge lay on the borderland between sleep and waking, she saw herself like an ogre, and Dicky Cobden like a terrified child in a great house, and she was driving him from one room to another, from one floor to another, to an inevitable cornering in the farthest wing.

Finally an early October evening, and again his car had halted before 54 Harrow Street. Pidge sat beside him, but Dicky had not opened the door.

“Pidge,” he said suddenly, “I’ve got to the end of my rope. I’m not making good. I’m all blurred on what we’re trying to do. It’s--it’s too much for me here.... I don’t want France or Flanders. I’m going into the Near East for _The Public Square_ and a newspaper syndicate.”

“I knew it. I felt it coming, at least,” she said. “And I’ve failed, too, all the time. But, Dicky, back of everything, I know there must be somebody laughing at our seriousness and stupidity. We’ll see the puzzle straight some time. You’ll see.”

They both were sitting straight up.

“Nobody’s--nobody’s shoulder?” he asked with terrible effort.

“No, Dicky. It would only fog us up--all the more.”

XVII

NEW LODGERS FOR HARROW STREET

PIDGE MUSSER was ending her second year in the editorial rooms of _The Public Square_, when a short story came in from Rufus Melton. Meanwhile, his work had begun to appear in magazines of large popular appeal. This manuscript, called _The Boarded Door_, had doubtless not fitted into any of them. The chief thing about the story to Pidge was that her cheeks burned as she read.

This made her angry. Another thing, the story was so familiar to her. She seemed to be in and out of Melton’s mind, hearing his typewriter, understanding even his corrections. But also she saw what the author could not--his fluctuations of fancy, which uncentered the tale.

“He’s beginning to be read,” said John Higgins. “It’s not a bad story. We’d better take it.”

“It is not his best work. There’s a cavity in it,” said Pidge. “If it were by a new name altogether, we’d write the author suggesting that he work over the weak part.”

“Do it,” said John Higgins.

Pidge laughed nervously. “He won’t like it,” she said.

“Don’t mind that. Rufus Melton can write. He’ll have his hour, but go ahead and scuttle the ship, young woman. We don’t care about pleasing our passengers.”

Back at her own desk, Pidge was smitten with the idea that she wasn’t being fair. In the course of reading Melton’s story, she had not once forgotten that he had failed to pay back that fifty dollars. Not only that, Rufus Melton hadn’t mentioned it; and he was said to be making money right now. She had to write the letter to Melton three times. Films of ice formed on the sentences and had to be skimmed off, in spite of her most rigid effort. She carried the sheet, signed by “The Editors,” to John Higgins, with a restless feeling that damage was done.

“That’s just like what Dicky Cobden would say,” he remarked, handing it back. “Send it along with the manuscript.”

Pidge wasn’t allowed to forget Dicky Cobden, though Richard, himself, was across the world and remained across, apparently groping to find the exact antipodes from Washington Square, New York. Between Miss Claes’ affection for him and John Higgins’ and Nagar’s; considering her occasional use of his “parlor” in Harrow Street and her daily use of his old desk in the office, to say nothing of the position she occupied through his kindness and care--no, she wasn’t being allowed to forget.

About the same time that Rufus Melton’s story came in to the office, a dingy bit of white paper came to Harrow Street for Pidge. It was like a paper you would see in the street around a public school building. Pidge was awed at the unfailing magic of the post-office authorities, that the letter had ever been delivered. It was from Fanny Gallup, who had married Albert and left the pasting table shortly after Pidge’s change of fortune. Pidge had seen Fanny but once in the meantime, but had asked her to write or telephone in case of need.

Pidge found the hall designated in the third floor of a condemned building in Foley Street, and was directed to a door through which came the sounds of a crying child. Her knock was answered, and the caller gradually realized through the shadows that she was being grinned at. She smiled back, wondering if the shoeless creature were Fanny’s sister or mother. She wore no outer waist and a heavy plaid skirt that was splashed with wash water. An infant shrank into the hollow curve of her body, and another child sat wailing on the wet floor behind.

“I thought you’d come, Musser.”

It was Fanny herself. Pidge had crossed the threshold to look into eyes in which hate and hunger moved in a narrow orbit; narrow like the wet spot on the floor, in which the first-born played. Tired back, draggled hair, merely a stretched and faded vestige of a girl was Fanny Gallup now. Laugh and street talk were gone for the time, at least; gone as Albert, the barber, as much a myth as ever, so far as Pidge was concerned, though the place hypothecated a male parent. These three remaining seemed purposeless bits of life which a perverted scheme permitted to live on.

Pidge hated herself for becoming involved in the complication. For the moment, she hated New York that could not keep itself clean. No rent, no food, somebody else’s washing in the tubs, and the rags of Fanny and her children unwashed.

“... No, it ain’t no good to think of staying, Musser, because they’re tearing the buildin’ down.”

“How much rent do you owe?”

“Five weeks. But it ain’t no good to pay that, because I got to get out anyway. Gawd, Redhead, you look like a doll in a window!”

“Is there any place around here where you can go?”

“It’s hard to get in with the two, and you’d have to pay a month in advance,” Fanny said.

“How soon do you have to leave here?”

“Four days. That’s why I sent the letter.”

“Have you got any--anything to eat?”

“That’s why I sent the letter. That’s why they keep squalling all the time.”

“I’ll be back before dark,” Pidge said, turning into the hall.

“You’ll--sure--come--back?”

“Sure,” called Pidge.

She returned with her arms full of groceries, and went home promising to come back the next afternoon.

* * * * *

“... Bring them here. There is no other way,” Miss Claes said.

“But they’re not clean!” Pidge moaned. “They are too sick to keep clean.”

“We can freshen them up a little,” said Miss Claes.

“But there’s nothing Fanny can do, unless the two children are taken from her. I mean she’s held to the room with them now, and they’ve been crying so long that they can’t stop. They both cry at once, and she doesn’t hear them; they look and listen for a second and then go on crying. If one stops, he hears the other. The place smelled like a sty, and the packages of food I brought got wet and spoiled before they were opened.”

“Forget about them until to-morrow, Pidge, and then get a taxicab and bring them here. I’ve got a second-floor room toward the back.”

XVIII

AN OUTER CHANGE

MISS CLAES standing by the table in her own room heard a step upon an upper stairway; not on the immediate basement stairs, but of one descending from the second to the first landing. The tread was deliberate. She heard it now in the hall directly above. Miss Claes moved to the door, her hand against her cheek; then back to stand by the table again. Now the step was on the basement stairs. A fire was burning in her grate, and that was the main light of the room, for the winter morning was very gray. The table was prepared for one--plate and cup of ruddy gold, a cutting of white hyacinth in a purple vase. The footsteps approached in the basement hall; a heavy bag was placed down outside Miss Claes’ door; then Nagar appeared, a dark hat and an overcoat upon his arm. He came forward, and the two stood together for a moment.

“At least this once, I can serve you,” Miss Claes said.

Nagar smiled as he sat down to the table. Miss Claes went into the kitchen and presently brought a pot of tea in a Chinese basket and a covered dish. She filled a goblet from the water bottle, and stood behind his chair while Nagar ate. The house was strangely silent.

Nagar arose. They stood together again for a moment by the mantel. He spoke in Hindi, and she listened, like one already weary, hearing of more things to do. Not until she smiled, did he turn away. She did not follow to the door, nor look toward the window, as he passed up the steps to the street. After a long time, she stepped to the cabinet for a cigarette and lit it standing by the fireplace.

XIX

FANNY DRIES HER TEARS

FANNY GALLUP was taking life easy. She had not been separated from her children, but relieved for the present from the hunger drive to support them. Pidge helped to pay Fanny’s room and board, but didn’t miss the fact that the main expense fell upon Miss Claes.

“There is a little fund back of me for just such cases, Pidge,” Miss Claes said. “I rarely divulge the fact, but there is no reason in the world why you should be inconvenienced.”

“Except that I brought her here----”

“I asked you to.”

“Except that she called on _me_ in her trouble, and I worked elbow to elbow with her for four months, and she pulls out the very devil from me every time I see her.”

“Your feeling of responsibility is what makes you what you are--I never miss that, Pidge. If you weren’t so hard and straight on all the tricky little matters of dollars and cents, you can be very sure I’d never tell you my secret of secrets, about the fund.”

“I’ll have to pay what I can, if only because I hate to so. But I can never pay for bringing her to your house.”

Miss Claes laughed. “That is only the way you see it. Fanny isn’t heavy on us here. Not at all. It’s the dear, possessive Pidge that is hurt. Do you suppose I am torn by what goes on in the rooms and halls? Not torn beyond repair from day to day, at least. Fanny’s only a little more simple than most, a little less secretive.”

“She’s unmoral,” Pidge declared solemnly. “The awful thing is, she doesn’t learn. Life passes through her like a sieve, leaves its muck on her, and she doesn’t learn.”

Philosophy seldom helped Pidge; she had heard too much of it, and money was invariably a serious affair. In the California life there had never been enough money for all needs. Adolph Musser was unable to do without what he wanted, even though the immediate tradespeople of the neighborhood were frequently forced to. The metaphysician relied upon the Law of Providence to take care of them; and this had hacked and hewed into Pidge’s disposition; this had meant red war to her soul up to the last hour in her father’s house.

Here in New York the fight had been different. Even with Miss Claes mysteriously back of her from the beginning, she had faced, in her first few months in New York, the ugly candor of starvation. There was established in Pidge both from Los Angeles and New York experiences, a determination to fix herself unrockingly on her own feet in a financial way; and now, just as she might have gotten a bit ahead, was the expense of Albert’s children, and the claims of their mother, which were getting to look as interminable to Pidge as a ninety-nine years’ lease.

Another trouble was that Fanny was beginning to show fresh traces of her sense of the “fun of the thing.” Her spine was stiffening a little with good food and rest, and curious little suggestions of starch showed in lips and hair and breast that had been utterly draggled. She was often seen hanging over the banisters; sure indication of renewal of life and hope. She didn’t weep over the departed Albert; in fact, Pidge Musser observed, as an added revelation of the hatefulness of life, that Fanny was back on the scene looking for a man--not earnestly, not passionately, but without compunction and entirely unwhipped. Fanny granted that she was nobody, that she never had been; but that was no sign why she should pass up anything that was going by. Pain and hunger were forgotten like a sickness.

One night as she was coming in, Pidge heard Fanny’s low laugh on the floor above, as she ran upstairs in time to shoo a lodger from Fanny’s arms in the doorway. Then she followed into the littered room and a light was made. The two women faced. The laugh remained unwithered on Fanny’s cheerful face.

“Oh, Musser, you look so cross,” she panted.

“Don’t you remember--?” Pidge began.

“Remember wot?”

“What you were in that beast’s nest in Foley Street?”

“That’s what you always want, Musser, always want me to keep rememberin’, just as I’m getting straightened out.”

The fashion of Fanny’s straightening out settled upon Pidge, as she looked around the room. Its awfulness was beyond tears to her, even beyond laughter.

“Fanny Gallup, if you bring another baby here, I’ll--I’ll----”

“There ain’t going to be no other baby here, Musser. I ain’t nobody’s chicken like that.”

XX

THEY WALK IN CIRCLES

ONE day just as Pidge was finishing luncheon with John Higgins, she was startled to hear Melton’s voice. He moved around their table with a fling of his coat tails and held out both his hands. It actually sounded, though she never was sure, as if he said something like, “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

Pidge fancied a sort of rueful wonder on the old editor’s face, as he announced his haste to get back to the office, and bolted out.... She was recalling the baby carriage in Santa Monica. Melton’s face was slightly broader, she thought, and the poise of young success was upon it. One thing she had never known before was how remarkably well his curly head was placed upon its shoulders. The neck was not merely a nexus, but a thing of worth in itself, with arch and movement which made him look taller and intimated something light and fleet, touching memories which Pidge could not quite grip.

They were together in the street. Melton had asked her to walk with him to his bank. He seemed on both sides of her at once, his hand drawing her deftly this way and that through the crowd, his chat and laughter in her ears, and an old indescribable weariness and helplessness in herself.

“... Sure, I could have hunted you up. In fact, I would have done it eventually, but I haven’t been in New York all the time; running back west to get my stuff up, now and then.”

“I thought you lived in New York,” Pidge said.

“I keep an apartment in East Twenty-fourth Street,” he granted.

A lull for just an instant before he went on:

“You see, it’s handy to my publishers, and my bank is only a square or two away.”

Pidge wished she could accept him for just what he seemed--the upstart American in literature. She wished to forget everything else, save the youth who said, in effect, “This is my bank, this is my solicitor, this is my publisher.” But she could not smile her scorn and pass on. She felt like the parent of a child showing off. Back of the tinkle and flush of these big days of his, which he seemed to be drinking in so breathlessly, she felt more than ever that thing about him which was imprisoned. A thing it was that called to her, kept calling beseechingly.

“I’ll never forget,” he said, speaking of the fifty dollars--“I’ll never forget that night, when I left you--and the fog in the Square. Everything was different, after that.”

“You didn’t go to Cleveland that night, as you said,” she declared, watching the curve of his black lashes.

The eyes darted her way.

“Lucky, I didn’t,” he said. “God! How I wanted to! New York had me bluffed that night, before you came to the rescue.”

“Why didn’t you go?”

“I was up close to Grand Central with my bag, when the idea struck me--the idea that has since come out in the story series that has caught on. I could hardly realize that I had your money. I kept it in my hand--the hand in my pocket. That was a turning point in a life. New York had frightened me pretty nearly to death--the hunger thing, you know. All I wanted on earth was to crawl into that train for Cleveland, but it was as if you were calling on me to stay.”

She turned in pain and amazement. He was looking straight ahead and talking softly. She saw every twist and drive of his mind as he dramatized the situation unfolding to him. He was deeply absorbed in the pictures which his fertile brain uncovered one by one. It hurt her like the uncovering of something perverted in herself.

“Don’t go on like that,” she said. “You’re not working now. You are just walking in the street. You mustn’t make stories when you talk.”

He glanced at her sorrowfully, as one realizing in himself a truth so big that he is willing to wait for it to be believed.

“It is God’s truth,” he said. “That was the turning point in my career--that night--the night I turned back from the train. It was as if you were calling me, and it was as if the idea came from you. I knew I had to stay on and do the work here, close to the markets.”

She looked into his face and laughed.

“And you could forget me--forget the fifty dollars for nearly a year!”

“I don’t blame you for talking that way. I expect to be misunderstood--not me, but the thing I stand for.”

She was hushed. Could he mean that he suffered in conscious conflict? Could it be that he was aware at all of that imprisoned thing she saw back of his eyes? He had halted, and now she turned again for him to go on.

“I hoped that you, you of all, might understand,” he said. “Why, it was from you that the whole thing started.”

He seemed actually to be making himself believe it. She felt herself trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Do you know you’re changed?” he said, in sudden exultation. “Do you know you’re five times as charming? What’s happened?”

“Nothing has happened,” said Pidge.

“It was the strangest shock, in the restaurant when I saw you. I knew it was you, and yet you’ve put on something--out of the ordinary.”

“Oh, don’t.... I must go back to the office now.”

“The bank is just half a block. We’ve been walking in circles. I hadn’t a check in my pocket.... I wanted to walk with you anyway. Do you really have to get back to the office?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Couldn’t you--couldn’t we go down on the river or to a show somewhere? I know what you’re thinking: that if this meant so much to me, how could I let it go for nearly a year. But you’ll understand. You’ll see what I mean and what I’m up against. The thing was too big for me to rush in. I had to wait. But now that you’ve come, I can’t let you go.”

“I must go back.”

“To-night then. Couldn’t I meet you at _The Public Square_ at five and have supper?”

“Oh no. I must go home--first.”

“May I call for you at Harrow Street, say at seven, or before that? Say, couldn’t we go to that old restaurant where we went that night?”

This idea had come to Pidge before he spoke; exactly, perhaps, as it caught his fancy.

“Yes, I could----” Pidge cleared her voice, and spoke again above the roar of the street. “Yes, I could.”

Then because she had lifted her voice, she seemed to hear her own tones unforgetably, as if her soul echoed back the words.

“But I must hurry back now,” she added.

“Let’s get this bank thing finished.”

But when they reached the door of the bank they found it closed for the rest of the day.

XXI

THE DINNER COAT

JOHN HIGGINS came up through the newspapers and magazine editorial rooms in those brave days when a typewriter did not always go with a man’s desk, but a cuspidor nearly always. Even yet, the editor of _The Public Square_ tucked a piece of fine-cut between his cheek and lower jaw after breakfast in the morning, and forgot about it just so long as it was there. The fact that he smoked from time to time caused no inconvenience to the wad of shredded leaf. He complained of indigestion and gave himself wholeheartedly to various forms of diet.

He kept Pidge Musser close at hand during these trying war days. His former stenographer languished. John Higgins found a singular peace in working with Pidge and was innocent enough to discuss it. He was an old integer so far as women were concerned, never getting beyond the rare confession (when a few drinks ripened his mind) that he had had a mother once. He didn’t hate women; nothing like that. He had just merely walked around them as you walk around the shore of an ocean. He wasn’t born with a bathing suit and the idea of taking off his shoes and stockings made him hoarse with fright. Pidge, however, had crept in through the business door, and John Higgins awoke to find her at his side.

Pidge found him like a somber relative of the elder generation, when she returned from her hectic walk with Melton that afternoon, but for once she could forget John Higgins easily. Twenty times in her mind, at least, Pidge went over the talk and walk with Melton, her face often turned away to the window with a sad but scornful smile. She thought it out with hard sophistication, all that he had said of receiving inspiration from her, but underneath she wanted it to be so; and deep among the secrets of herself, she felt that what he said was possibly truer than he knew.

Had he known that the bank would be closed? She would soon learn about that, for he had promised to bring the check to-night. Even if he didn’t, she could never forget that _calling_ to her, back of his actor eyes--calling like a child of her own. New York whirled by below; the manuscripts were piled high in front and side. A Mecca letter came in from Richard Cobden, intimating that he might go to India. Even that did not arouse John Higgins, nor startle Pidge Musser from the painful web she was in.

Melton was at the basement entrance at seven. As Pidge went down to meet him, Fanny Gallup was coming up. They met in the second hall. Fanny stood in the gaslight, her arms open wide, her dress open at the breast, her eyes laughing.

“I saw him, Redhead. He’s a God-awful, that boy. Don’t you bring no little baby to this house! I won’t stand for it.”

* * * * *

Melton wore a black cape coat, a dinner coat beneath. Pidge felt as if she had left all her light in the second hall. She was exasperated with herself for pushing past Fanny and not taking the joke gracefully, exasperated with Melton for togging up to come to Harrow Street, to take her to that old eating house. Couldn’t he resist showing off for just one hour?