CHAPTER EIGHT

On the Sunday which Grace had reserved, the Moseses came home in ill humor from a vaudeville show and a walk. It was a cold November afternoon, blanketed in the lethargy of the day of rest, with a wind which swept along the closed shop windows on Fifth Avenue and between the people on Broadway and left both streets naked--naked and dull. Harold wished to return home as quickly as possible, but Letty said the walk would do them good. He suspected that she had promised not to come back before a certain hour.

Nor did their house seem much more cheerful to him than the street. It consisted of a tiny entrance, one square room, and behind that a doorless alcove through whose looped, glossy curtains twin beds could be seen. There was also a bit of tiled kitchenette near the entrance. Everything was in order. Everything shone with the chill, dustless luster of the apartment house itself, its mirrored elevator and its hall boys. And over everything lay a special Sunday atmosphere, like a heavy gray enamel.

Blake and Grace were sitting on the couch, rolling private jokes between them. _They_ were happy enough. To Harold their good cheer was the final straw. One couldn't even be alone in one's own house with one's own troubles without the mood of those two interfering. He went into the bathroom, the only unoccupied room in the house, and banged the door.

Grace lifted her brows in sincere surprise. "What is it now?"

"Oh-h," said Letty with a long, a gusty sigh, "don't ask me! It started with his insurance and then went on and on and on."

She threw off her coat and sat down beside Blake. He put an arm around her and they kissed each other while Grace regarded them with an encouraging, a mock-coy amusement. She often spoke of the attachment between Blake and Letty. She even urged them to flirt a bit, serving up Letty's kisses as an extra fillip to Blake and feeling secure with the knowledge that these were passed out always through a window in the solid barrier of Letty's loyalty to her, a window which had been opened by her permission and would be sealed at her behest. It was not so much that she trusted Letty--only Letty was that kind of a girl; her friends' preserves were so enclosed in her mind that they were practically invisible. Of course, if their friendship no longer existed--"If I should die for instance," Grace often said meditatively, "you two might--start something."

Harold understood the situation, too, but this did not mean that he enjoyed it. He went to the armchair by the window. Grace and Blake were now rolling their special jokes on to Letty, but Harold was left to smile out in the cold; not intentionally, more as if the circle of three had too close a harmony to need or permit of additions. From experience, he knew that it would not be possible for him to start a new conversation. If he tried, if even Letty tried, Blake's voice, which was a little hoarse, as if with weariness, and Grace's contralto and Grace's characteristic laugh would separate the words, brush them aside, distract the attention. Neither Harold nor Letty could attach as much importance to what each said as Blake and Grace apparently could to what they said. Grace made of each laugh a particular tribute to Blake as king, to herself as queen. It was too deep and too prolonged for a snigger, but she laughed, drawing the laughter inside of herself, arching her shoulders, curling her lips, lifting her head, making a distinct point of each gesture, as if her amusement had a distinct significance, an appreciation peculiar to herself and necessarily transcending all other appreciation.

"Tell us about Harry Strauss and his nickel," said Blake to her.

"Oh, yes. The other day I was telephoning and Harry, as usual, was listening. Before I got through he called, 'Don't hang up; I want to talk to him.' Well, you know how it is when you're--busy and you're telephoning. When I was through I--instinctively hung up, just as Harry made a move to grab the phone. He shook his head, went 'Teh. Teh,' and I said, 'Oh, I'm sorry, I'll get him right back,' and I started to--call the number again. And Harry said, shaking his finger at me, 'Listen, my dear, you ought to be more careful. Every time you do that it costs a nickel!'"

Letty trilled laughter. "Oh, my Gosh! Why'n't you tell him you'd give him the nickel?"

"Oh, I couldn't do that, Letty," said Grace reprovingly. "But Blake and I--" she began to curl her lips and arch her shoulders, looking from person to person--"Blake and I--have decided to call him It-costs-a-nickel-Harry!" And she began her deep, prolonged, continuous snigger.

Then Blake told them about another publicity man who had the habit of adding, at the top of each news note, an impassioned plea for its publication, concluding with the bribe of eternal gratitude from him and his employer. His first name was Mike, so, as he and the employer were both notorious for their piety, some of the dramatic editors had nicknamed him For-Christ's-sake-print-this-Mike.

When he was done he looked solely at Grace and she rewarded him. They were, or considered themselves to be, too unsentimental to use endearments in front of other people, but they began a sort of wrestling match which was a form of endearment. It was a sophisticated wrestling match; merely a pulling and bending of arms with a vast deal of deliberate mirth on Grace's part. There was none of the apparent indelicacy of a pair cooing before others, yet they were so self-sufficient, they erased everyone else so completely, that even Letty sought to detach their interest from each other. As for Harold, he looked out of the window and smoked, first cigarettes, then a pipe. Harold would have liked Blake by himself; with Grace he frequently found him insufferable.

Finally Letty attracted Blake's attention by some question about what he would like to eat.

He paused in the wrestling match and said with complete naturalness, "I can't stay."

"You can't stay to-night?" cried Letty. "But----"

Grace was slowly disengaging herself. It was understood that Blake had to filch these Sunday afternoons from his wife; he was always supposed to be working on his play at a friend's house and he usually had to be back for supper. But--the same thought was in the minds of both girls--this was the first Sunday of his wife's absence, the first day in months which he and Grace had had absolutely to themselves.

She said, "Don't you want any supper?" It was a carefully surprised question, not a demand.

"Bill asked me over there for supper."

Something of Grace's rigidity penetrated even to him.

He glanced at her and muttered, as if against his will, "We were going to work to-night anyway."

For a second she could not answer. She had planned this Sunday to be so perfect, unmarred by that shade of prior claim, unjarred by the necessity for departure at a set hour. Sudden sensations of revolt swarmed within her like a disturbed hornet's nest. She felt her voice freezing with the effort to keep it tearless and unexacting.

Presently, she said, "Oh. I wish--you'd tell me those things in time--so I could--make--my own plans."

"Well, you can stay here now, can't you?" said Blake through tighter lips.

"So I can--now," she said quietly, "but I might have made--other arrangements."

She did not mean to let Blake depart in sullenness, however. It was one of her axioms never to permit even the slightest breach to remain unadjusted overnight, "never to sleep on a quarrel." No telling what depths it might borrow from the thoughtful spaciousness of the night! She followed him to the entrance, from which could be heard her special laughter accompanying their lingering embrace.

Then Grace, Harold, and Letty were left alone.

"You might go down and get something to eat," suggested Letty, speaking to Harold for the first time. "Everything's a lot cheaper at that little delicatessen on Broadway and they won't deliver. I've argued and argued with them and they won't."

"Of course they won't," grumbled Harold. "That's how they can afford to sell cheaper. Can't you get it through your head that when production costs are higher, prices must rise? You're like all consumers----"

"Oh, you and your old production costs!" cried Letty. "Very well. I'm a consumer and I don't care who knows it! I don't give a rap about producers. I'm a consumer. I consume." She flounced over to the telephone in the alcove.

Grace began to talk amicably to Harold, trying to "smooth him over."

"Speaking of production costs," she said, "do you know--you have an admirer? Remember that Miss Vestry who held forth on potteries? She was all het up--when I told her you were a manager in an underwear factory. Said she'd like to know one person in New York who didn't have some job connected with words."

"That's a funny idea," said Harold unwillingly.

And, "What was that?" demanded Letty as she flung herself back on the couch. "Have you been seeing her?"

"Yes. I had dinner with her last week. She's a funny girl but--sort of interesting. She's all alone here, lives in a weird rooming house. I asked her why she didn't try for a job in the Fashion Department and she said she hated the _Dress Daily_ and hated all the jobs that had sprung up around words. She said when Mr. Milford started to dictate she felt like--a fly caught in a spider's web! She told me she wished she could find something to do in a place where they _made_--things. No wonder she knew so much about potteries. It seems her father is a potter or something like that."

"I always hated stenography, too," declared Letty. "All that stew and fuss to write a lot of bunk!"

"You wouldn't know anything about it," put in Harold. "You were a bum stenog."

"That's right. Take it out on me!"

The food, when it finally arrived, also had a veneer, the enameled sheen of the delicatessen. They served themselves dabs of many things, one plate to a person, put the plates on paper napkins in their laps, and ate, mostly in silence till Harold remarked that, considering the young fortune Letty spent on food, it was remarkable how rotten this supper could taste.

"Yes," said Letty bitterly, "and you heard what I got, Grace, when I tried to save some money. And I was bawled out for extravagance all through a vaudeville show just because I asked him to raise my clothes allowance!"

Harold gave Letty a look which said, "How dare you bring that girl into our affairs?" All the same, he could not help defending himself. "I told you why I couldn't raise your clothes allowance. I'm taking out more insurance. Letty doesn't understand that that's more for her benefit than extra clothes."

"I'd rather have the clothes," said Letty. "You're always worrying about what would become of me if anything happened to you. I never worry. It's not as if we had a family. I could go back to work."

"Mm. What would you do? You were just saying how you hated stenography."

Letty tossed her head. "Oh, well, I wouldn't work forever. It sounds vain--but I know I could always marry somebody or get kept or something." She shrugged.

Grace began the preliminary motions to her deep snigger.

"I dare say--Paul--would be glad to step into Harold's shoes," she suggested, emphasizing the joke with a coy lift of her brows.

Harold went over to the phonograph and put on a record, and Letty behind his back made a warning "oh" of her mouth. She started to pile the dishes and carry them into the kitchenette, calling to Harold for assistance, but on her return trip she stopped by Grace and said something to her and giggled. Grace whispered, "You _did_ see him?" Then she put her hand hastily over her mouth. Harold had also stepped out of the kitchenette. She didn't believe he had heard, but the expression of his face was so enraged that she grew pale for a moment and thought that really Letty tantalized him too much.

Neither Harold nor Letty spoke for some time. Although Grace realized that the former was angry and the latter uneasy, it would not occur to her that she could be involved. After an evening visit to Letty she nearly always stayed the night, so, with the assurance of precedent, she got up, said she was sleepy, and went into the alcove.

Even more than the clandestine use to which she put the apartment, this habit of hers irritated Harold. He had had many a quarrel with Letty over the requisitioning of their place Sunday afternoons and only an idea of the futility of the procedure restrained him from forbidding it. Letty was quite capable of lending the key anyhow and Grace of arranging matters so that he need never know. Whenever Grace made ready to spend the night, the same fear of what Letty would do, plus a sense of middle-class manners, never let him go beyond the muttered comment: "Hasn't she got a home?" But to-night was different. To-night he was incensed beyond fear and beyond courtesy. Not only could he and Letty never seem to be mentally alone in their house; but often they couldn't even be physically alone! He said to Letty, "Go in there and tell her to go home."

"I will not," replied Letty at once.

"If you won't, I will. I expect to have my home to myself once in a while."

Unconsciously, Letty raised her voice. "As far as I'm concerned, you can have your old home to yourself--all to yourself--for ever and ever."

Grace now appeared between the curtains of the alcove. She had put on Letty's dressing gown and looked from one to the other, pale, with large, disturbed eyes. She had caught Letty's last words; still she never thought that the quarrel could include her. Only, she was sorry for both of them.

"We think you'd better go home to-night," said Harold.

She was so taken aback that her cheeks grew quite white and haggard, her eyes turned toward him with a dark, welling pathos. Harold moved his own eyes quickly.

"Don't mind a thing he says," cried Letty. "Don't go home. I want you to stay."

"No. I'd better go."

She walked, white-faced, into the alcove, followed by Letty. Her shadow had been pulled up short and she was, for the moment, stunned by the comprehension of what this might mean to her.