CHAPTER ONE

Anita used to have an instinct to make herself very small and very blank when she first visited Grace's house. She was such a weird phenomenon to Mrs. Kline. Rack her mind as Mrs. Kline would, and she often would, staring at Anita out of her round blue eyes, a little bloodshot, shaking her head almost imperceptibly from time to time, she could not remember anyone in her experience who had not come to New York to, at least at first, stay with relatives. This younger generation that one read about in the papers! But even Mrs. Kline, whose imagination on some points was lascivious enough to bring the blush to Grace's cheek, offered no hints about Anita.

"You're plain-spoken, Anita," Mrs. Kline would say to her after she had decided to approve of her and to permit her to cultivate a friendship with Grace which was already thriving. "Just like me. That's what I like in a person. You wouldn't hide anything, least of all from your mother, would you?"

Grace would retaliate to Anita with some remark meant for her mother. And thus Anita would sit at table, feeling like a ghost, while both spoke through her person, that obviously was only a little less intangible to Grace than to Mrs. Kline. And yet Anita came to the house more and more often, partly because of her own isolation, partly because of Grace's soft reaching toward her. All these months Grace had been to her simple, sad, clinging, and obliging. When, through some mood of her own, Anita sent an occasional rebuff, Grace accepted in silence, seemed to understand, forgot it. Each discovered certain ideas in the other that no longer needed to be solitary. When Anita wished to dislike Mr. Milford articulately, Grace listened; with her Grace mulled over ways out. Grace offered suggestions for a mitigation of loneliness which made Anita grateful though they were suggestions which would suit Grace's temperament and which were highly inapplicable for Anita. In turn, Anita, modest though she was and not altogether naïve, considered that the reason for Grace's friendliness could only be that Grace liked her. She was not of the least importance, she thought, and there was nothing of the least importance she had to offer anyone. And though, when Mrs. Kline, who was not subtle, showed a patronizing concurrence in this opinion, Anita might feel humiliated, she was not exactly hurt. She liked to watch Mrs. Kline and she liked to watch Grace. Long ago she had formed the habit of focusing her observations and her interest outside of herself on things which she humbly granted were more exciting.

Even when in a burst of final, desperate irritation she threw up her job with the _Dress Daily_, she did not deceive herself that the event, disastrous enough in her life, would cause much of a ripple when narrated in the Kline household. Blake's baby had been born and nothing could vie with that in Grace's mind. Anita would not bother to inform her. She lay about her room for a few days moping, thinking, till Grace sent a wire after her. Grace had a cold. Would Anita come up to see her and explain what had happened?

Mrs. Kline opened the door for her and at once began in her jarring voice a discourse on a dress that Anita had spoken of ordering.

"I'm not busy now, Anita; I could even buy the goods for you at a discount, and I'd make it up for you very cheap. Don't be afraid, I'd keep everything down for you like for my own child. You better speak up if you want it because soon I won't have the time."

Anita said shortly that it was out of the question as she had lost her job. She did not expect Mrs. Kline to be affected. But Mrs. Kline was--in a different sense.

"Grace never told me a word," she cried in consternation. "She never tells me a word." She tramped along with Anita up the hall to the small sewing room where Grace lay on a couch. "You never told me that Anita here lost her job," she shouted accusingly.

Grace looked out of wide, patient eyes and did not answer. The telephone, which the Klines kept in the sewing room, had been moved to the floor within reach of her hand.

"Don't you worry, Anita," cried Mrs. Kline, putting an arm about her. "There's plenty jobs around. If you want me to make that dress you know I could make it up for you and you don't have to pay me right away, you don't have to pay me till you like. And if God forbid anything should happen, you know you can always come up here with Grace and me." She patted Anita's shoulder, regarding Grace with an air of challenge. Then, with an effort, she added, "Now I guess you girls want to be left to yourself. I guess you have things to talk about," she said heavily, "you don't think I'm smart enough to hear. In my day, girls weren't too smart for their mothers, but nowadays they are and we mothers got to make the best of it." She lingered. Both girls kept still.

After she had straightened whatever in the room could be straightened and otherwise delayed her departure, Mrs. Kline had at last no choice but to keep her promise. She banged the door to, anyhow, as a slight expression of her feelings. A shudder passed through Grace; she placed a quick finger on her lip, signing silence to Anita. And, to be sure, there was a certain interval of time between the closing of the door and the retreating clamp clash of Mrs. Kline's feet.

"Anyhow, it's kind of her," murmured Anita.

"Yes," said Grace. "She means it, too, and she'd remember any kindness she did you to the bitter end."

As she lay staring at the ceiling, the telephone rang. She answered it in a low, cautious voice. She named no names, every word was noncommittal, a series of "ohs," one "better," some "yeses" and at length a phrase which Anita had heard from Grace before and which always made her smile with its unjustified consequence: "Well--what are--your plans?" Anita reflected that, while highly diplomatic, while perhaps necessary for secrecy, such conversations must provide a further diet of exasperation for Mrs. Kline.

She could not help noticing, too, how Grace had marshaled her illness, as it were; had arranged it, dramatized it. When Anita was sick she did not think how she looked or what were the conditions of comfort or discomfort about her, and as for how the outside world might be affected, that naturally never entered her mind. She was ill and paid as little heed to her illness as possible and wished to hide and get it over with. But Grace had dressed her hair as best became a sick person, very simply, brushed back from her nicely balanced smooth forehead and clasped with a barrette. Her dressing-gown had that fine symmetry, settled about her as evenly, as gracefully, as her clothes always did. There was a small atomizer on the table and a new book. The telephone rang. Grace's friends had apparently been informed or took the trouble to inform themselves. There was even a vase of red roses. Grace saw her looking at them.

"My baritone sent them," Grace said with her deep snigger. "It seems his heart is like a red, red rose. But tell me what happened."

When Anita began her story under Grace's attentive eyes she found that even less had happened than she supposed. She was so annoyed by Mr. Milford; she had fallen into the habit of revising his silly stories into some sort of sense, had been taxed with it, had foolishly argued--as if it mattered a whit to her--and before she knew it, she had heard herself saying, "I think I'd better leave."

Grace made only one comment. "If you had to leave, why didn't you get yourself fired and leave with two weeks' salary?"

Anita had never thought of this.

"You're not very good at business, are you?" said Grace, sighing. She considered. "Have you any money?"

Anita laughed.

"Then what will you do?"

Anita shrugged.

"But what will you do?" insisted Grace. "You must do something. Do you know anyone who might help you? Didn't you meet lots of people at the _Dress Daily_?"

"No one I'd ask for favors," said Anita stiffly.

Grace sighed again. "You're so proud. Pride's all right if you can afford it. But it's a question of choice. Wouldn't you rather give up a little pride--and get a job? What can you do otherwise?"

"I can go home," said Anita. "I can rest and think it over."

Grace opened her eyes. "To Trenton? Aren't you afraid?"

They understood each other, but Anita replied with a frown, "Why? My home isn't a prison."

"Well, mine is," said Grace. And suddenly she added, "Anita, I wish you wouldn't go. I'll miss you, truly I will."

She continued softly, with many pauses, as if she were feeling her way, testing with care for a response. "You know--I thought if I could ever really leave Ma--I could if I only made a little more money--we could--take a place together--maybe."

Anita did not quite know. Anyhow, it did not bear thinking of at present. She said in haste, "Well, that's a long way off. I haven't any money, you know, and I'm not likely to have."

But she appeared to satisfy Grace, who put an arm under her head and said with assurance, "We could manage that."

"Something's up in my own job," Grace added, moving and sighing on her couch. "I don't know just what, but I can feel something. To tell the truth, I haven't been paying much attention to it lately. I guess they see it--but--I can't help it. I--there've been other things." She fell silent.

Suddenly she began the motions of her laugh and searched Anita's face. "Do you know how I got this cold?" she said. She concluded, "Looking for rooms with Blake--for his wife."

She attempted to justify herself to the expression of withdrawal on Anita's face. "I suppose that--shocks you. But it was very natural. Their place isn't big enough with the baby and she can't go house hunting. Blake had to--so--I took the afternoon off and accompanied him, in the rain and all."

There was a pause. She added with a curved, one-sided smile, "I hope she's grateful."

The telephone rang again and Grace was upon it almost before the ring. She used the same formula, a little lower perhaps. "Oh.... Oh." A deep, "_That's_ good!" Then, "What are--your plans for to-morrow?"

Grace hung up. She smiled a firm, a victorious smile, pressing her lips together.

"They've named the baby James," she announced to the ceiling, smiling up at it. "After her father."

She turned upon Anita a face bereft of the smile and said grimly through her set teeth, "He isn't a junior anyway. That's my little victory." Her cheeks had grown haggard and after a while she felt for a handkerchief under the pillow and dabbed at her eyes.