_ PART I. MARY LOUISE
CHAPTER IV
Joe had been right. There was a difference between an enterprise backed by popular sentiment and practically the same elements with the backing removed. In the first place, the patronage of the new tea room was not so brisk and what there was was more skeptically critical. There was not that carefree acceptance of things that overlooked deficiencies in the light of the cause they existed under. In fact, the helpful pressure that had held it all cemented had loosened. At the end of the first week the two cooks suggested a raise in pay amounting to ten dollars a month apiece. They did this in accord. And then, contrary to what might be expected now that the war was over, there was an insidious rising in the cost of everything, from table napkins to canned asparagus. Mary Louise began to feel that profits might not be so easy to estimate, after all.
Her coordinate, too, was constitutionally apathetic. She was a bovine creature who positively refused to get ruffled over obstacles, criticisms, or fate. Her name was Maida Jones. Two large pans of buns had burned. Mary Louise, seeking to fix the responsibility, had failed in doing so and was wracked at the prospect of frequently recurring waste. Responsibility to be effective must be undivided. Maida had only laughed. And Mary Louise removed herself from the scene of her defeat and stood in the doorway of the tea room proper and stared bleakly across a vista of deserted tables at a languid and heat-ridden thoroughfare. It was going to be a "hit-or-miss" proposition, a careless, slipshod affair--this tea room--unless she did something to prevent it--and it was too hot. That was what was the matter. It was too hot. She brushed back the hair from her face and slumped. Behind her came the clatter of dishes. And then someone laughed, a coarse, raucous laugh. Mary Louise shuddered. The post-office clock boomed six and she suddenly realized that the day was over. There would be no belated custom, for the service stopped at six and the room was empty. Irritation gave way to discouragement. The day's receipts had been slim indeed. Just then she noticed an automobile roll up to the curb outside, and a man got out. She saw him start for the door, and for a moment she pondered whether she would accomodate him or turn him away. He opened the door. It was Claybrook.
"Hullo," he said, catching sight of her. "Afraid I'd be too late. Come take a ride."
That was exactly what she wanted to do. "I can't," she said. "I have to wait till they get through back there," indicating with a jerk of the head those uncertain regions which had become suddenly quiet.
"Oh, let them take care of themselves. What is help for if you have to watch it every minute? Come on. It's too hot to work any longer, anyway."
She yielded. First she spent a moment or two before a mirror, tidying herself up, feeling as she did so a little thrill of anticipation. And then she stuck her head through the kitchen door and announced that she was leaving. "Don't burn the whole place up, Maida," she cautioned with a laugh as she caught sight of her sitting, humped forward in a kitchen chair, fat elbows resting on a table, placidly viewing a vast clutter of dishes that had not yet been put away.
Mary Louise escaped and clambered into the waiting car, into the vacant seat beside the driver.
They whirled away, turned a corner sharply, and soon were leaving the narrow, restricted streets of the down-town district which had been pulsing and glowering with heat all day. She caught a look at Claybrook in the seat beside her. He was as fresh and cool as though he had not been exposed to the weather at all. Instinctively she reached a restraining hand to her hair. It was blowing in wild disarray. A sudden stretch of stately old houses sitting well back on either side of the street, partly hidden by double rows of trees, caused her fresh doubts as to the fitness of her attire. In her shirtwaist and skirt she felt like an intruder.
A man from the sidewalk bowed to them. So busy was she with her hat that she could not see who it was.
"There goes Wilkes," said Claybrook. "You remember Wilkes out at Camp? Had charge of the Post Exchange."
She hoped she had escaped recognition. As if for protection she slipped farther down in the seat and was less troubled by the wind. The neighbourhood through which they were passing was becoming even more fashionable, and aristocratic nurse-maids with their aristocratic charges, alike in white, starchy, frilly things, were dotting the sidewalks on either side of the street, supplying a live motif to a prospect that might otherwise seem too orderly and remote. The lawns were beautiful, close cropped and freshly green, and frequent fountains sent a delightful mist across the pavement even to the street. It was all very cool and refreshing. She began to see where certain phases of city life might prove to be quite pleasant. The modern fleshpots may seem alluring not alone in retrospect.
At length they passed from the asphalt paving on to a roadway of yellow-red gravel, and up ahead, Mary Louise could see a stretch of open country and beyond, a ridge of misty blue hills. There was a double line of young maples on either side of the boulevard and the fresh young leaves were rustling vigorously in the evening breeze as they passed. Claybrook settled down in his seat us they gained the boundary between paving and roadway with what seemed almost like a sigh of relief. He turned upon his companion a satisfied smile, meanwhile cutting down their speed appreciably.
"This is something like it," he said. "Pretty hot down your way to-day?"
"Terrible," admitted Mary Louise. "I don't believe those walls will get cool again before Christmas."
He smiled without answering, being occupied at the moment with a little difficulty in the traffic. Directly he was free.
"Rare old boy--the other night," he said, still watching the road.
For a moment she did not catch the reference.
"Down in the Rathskeller," he added.
A hot rush of confusion struck her and she made no reply, but he went on:
"I've often wondered what these people were like fifty years ago--living on top of the world, best farm land anywhere, fine old homes, lots of servants--nothing to do but enjoy life. Let it slip away from them, didn't they? Must not have known what they had." He had relaxed and was driving comfortably. And as though wrapped in a mist of his own musing he continued, his eyes fixed on the road before him, "I've often thought that if I ever got to the point where I could afford it I would get me one of those old places--lot of land--stock it up well, fix up the house. I'd like to leave something like that to my family." He chuckled. "They might not appreciate it as much as I do, however."
"They might," she replied. "They might have just as hard a time trying to keep it as--as we have. Conditions might change again in the next fifty years."
He turned and smiled at her. "Hadn't thought of that." The crow's feet were thick about his eyes. "Who was the boy?--the one you were with the other night."
Mary Louise flushed in spite of herself. "Joe--Joe Hooper. You've heard me speak of him."
"Oh, yes. Lives in Bloomfield, doesn't he?"
"He did. Works here in town now--out at Bromley's."
He made no further reply, but somehow she felt an unuttered conviction, on the part of the man there beside her, of Joe's loss of heritage. And yet a certain compunction prevented her from making any explanation--that it was not Joe's fault. There was a sort of sacred inviolability about it. A hot little wave of feeling swept over her. She had treated Joe miserably. She had yielded to her feelings like a child. She ought to have been good sport enough to hide what she had felt. But she hadn't. She was a snob. She had hoped to conceal that she was not their sort--Joe and Mr. Mosby. In a sense, she had been going back on her own people. As if she were trying to pass them--trying to keep up with the procession. And yet that was exactly what she was doing. But to show it!
The straight level path of the boulevard came abruptly to an end and the road diverged to the left and mounted swiftly, skirting the incline of a white, chalky hill densely covered with a tangle of scrub oak, buckeye, cedar, and much underbrush. The slanting rays of the sun were shut off abruptly as by a shutter and they rolled between stretches of shade that were mistily fragrant and cool. Even the upper air currents in the spaces above the road, up toward the sky, seemed shadowy and unharried by the fierceness of the passing sunlight. The motor settled down to the business of climbing, and once Claybrook turned to her with a look of appreciation.
"Some park, this."
She hardly heard him, so intent was she on watching the road and the occasional glimpses, through the tangle, of declivitous stretches strewn with trunks of fallen trees and rank vegetation, down which the wind went wandering with vague whisperings. They had been suddenly transported out of the world of people into the world of hopes. The city had been left leagues behind.
They made a quick, sharp turn to the right, the road almost doubling back upon itself, and there was a steep grade for a short distance, during which time Mary Louise caught herself leaning forward and holding her breath in an instinctive impulse to help the labouring car. And then they gained the top. Before them lay a tableland of many acres thickly covered with trees. The grass, in the open spaces between, was sparse, and there was much moss and lichen and drifts of withered leaves, dried by the sun of more than one summer; and here and there in the northern shadow of some gnarled trunk and in dipping hollows the leaves were packed close in a damp and moulding compress. Great streamers of wild grape-vine hung precariously from weary limbs and swayed to and fro gently in the wind that came mounting up the slope from the west and went dipping away to the eastward, leaving a soft, shuddering wake. It was as if a mellower spirit hovered about the old giant knob resting there, watching with its head all venerably gray, though the sunlight ere it faded was elfishly splashing the shadow with golden green, and little flecks of crimson and orange came flashing through the tangle of branches as they passed, making light mockery. And then the trees suddenly opened and they came out upon a flat bare knoll, where the road, making a loop, signified that its journey was over. Around the outside edge was a wall of loose stones from which the hill sloped steeply in all directions, and before them, stretching away for miles, lay the country through which they had passed, till soft and green and gray in the distance. A huge smoke pall, its feathery top drifting slowly eastward, hung over a cup-shaped depression, and below it stretched a darker line, from which occasionally emerged a solitary stack, or above which a church spire, caught by an errant ray from the setting sun, would flash a momentary beacon. Slowly the mantle seemed to fade and mingle with the twilight, and even as they watched, a light flashed out, a single pin-prick of a light, and then another and another, as night, gathering in its intensity, swept over the valley, until it was met by an ever-increasing challenge. It was like a myriad host of fairy fire-flies, each diamond pointed, flickering, blinking, never still. And there settled on the under side of the smoke pall a lurid glow as of banked fires, waiting for the work of another day.
Mary Louise breathed a soft little sigh.
"It does get next to one, some way, doesn't it?" he said.
Rather to her thoughts she replied aloud: "To think of all those people living there, almost in the grasp of the hand. Think of them moving, scurrying about among those lights. It makes one feel it would be so easy to do things for them, move them about at one's will--from here. And yet----" She was silent a moment, thinking. "And yet even to be able to raise one's head above it all, to see--and be seen! Well----"
"That's what I mean to do." He spoke almost as if she were not there, and his voice, which was as though disembodied, and jarring a bit with its resonance, brought her back to the present.
"It's a hard thing to do and I've come to think it takes sometimes a lifetime, but--it can be done." He had turned and she could feel his warm breath in her ear. There was a note of assurance in his words and, as she watched, a change came over the scene before her and it all seemed like a huge graying blanket punched full of tiny, bright flat holes. Something had receded, escaped back into the darkness behind it all.
She made no reply.
"I wanted to tell you and it's about as good a time as any. You may be needing some help. It's not all so easy down there. And--well, if you need any help--make the way any easier for you--why, don't hesitate to call on me."
"That's good of you," she replied, and wondered at the lack of warmth in her own voice. "Perhaps I shall." But she could not help feeling that in some way she had seen what she had seen--alone.
They sat a little longer in silence, and then Mary Louise straightened in her seat and called to him briskly:
"We
must be going. Why, it must be eight o'clock. What have I been thinking of?"
"That's what I'd like to know," he laughed.
"Come, take me home, man. Maida will think--all sorts of things."
"You don't have to answer to her, do you?"
"No. But let's go."
He stooped over and switched on the lights and immediately two long, ghostly streamers went searching out across the wall and rested lightly in the tops of some ragged trees on the slopes, bringing them grotesquely into focus, while myriads of tiny motes danced down the twin circular paths off into space. Directly there was a roar of the engine, with an occasional sputtering cough--for the night air was cool--and then Claybrook's voice again:
"There really isn't any great hurry. We can stop at the Gardens at the foot of the hill and get a bite to eat."
"No, not to-night. Thank you ever so much."
"But why not? We needn't hurry then. It's a pretty good place." He seemed insistent, waiting, stooped there over the steering wheel.
"No," she said again. "I must get home. Maida will be waiting for me and I've some work to do. And besides, I don't want to go anywhere looking like this. I'm a fright, I know."
He muttered something to himself as he threw the car into gear, and they went whirling around the circle of the road in reckless disregard for the menace of the rock wall. It was pitch dark as they made their way across the level top of the knob, with occasional shadows of spectral limbs projecting their silhouettes against the sky, and once the jagged edge of a trailing creeper swished close to her head as they whirled along. Above the noise of the motor there was not a sound. Claybrook suddenly laughed:
"Some of the niggers down at the mill say this old hill is haunted."
She clung to the hand-grip of her seat, her mind filled with a tangle of impressions, with a shrinking from the sepulchral depths below them, and an effort to recall in detail that vision of the city.
"I have to shake it off before I can be any more good. It's like being moon-struck." He took another sharp curve at reckless speed, the tires grinding on the gravel, the brakes screeching.
Mary Louise held her breath for a moment and waited. And then she touched him lightly on the elbow. "Oh, please!"
He laughed and for a short time was more careful, slowing down at the curves which came every hundred yards or so. "Feels like they're coming after me. Like to get down to the level road again." He made a quick swerve to avoid a pointed rock. "Must have been great, driving to the top of this with a horse and buggy. Not for me."
And they were off again as swiftly as before. Twice they grazed the projecting roots of trees on the outside edge of the road by the scantiest of margins and once a board in a culvert snapped ominously as they swept across it, and Claybrook laughed aloud. And Mary Louise, wide-eyed, sat in a frenzy of preparedness, her gaze glued to the winding, ever-dipping road in fascination.
Suddenly a shadow seemed to leap out upon them, out of the darkness--the shadow of a man. There was a moment's hideous clamour of the brakes, a sickening swerve of the machine, a man's shout, a sudden instant's flash of gleaming trunks brought sharply into focus, and then a slow, gradual letting down of her side of the car, inch by inch. She grasped the arm beside her to keep from falling, and then all was still.
A moment later she could see that they were balanced on the edge of a culvert; to her right was the darkness; up ahead, the lights were glaring impotently off into space. And then she realized that an arm was encircling her waist in an iron grip and that the motor was still thrumming and that someone was running around in front of the car and then peering off down the slope where they tipped so perilously. These things came to her in just that order. And directly she was on the road, trembling just a little and feeling very helpless, and Claybrook's voice somewhere over in the darkness was giving directions, sharp, irritated. To her knowledge he had not uttered a word during it all. She could hear them somewhere over there crashing about in the underbrush, an occasional word, an occasional suppressed shout. Very unreal it was, with the stars shining faintly overhead, the black shadows all around, and those two shafts of light poking out into nowhere. She walked back to the inside edge of the road and sat down, and bye-and-bye she felt quieter. It had been such a childishly foolish thing to do and so useless. The minutes passed and she began to wonder what time it was getting to be. And then she felt a growing irritation and suddenly she was hungry. All she could hear was the threshing about of the brush and the sound of heavy dragging. Once she went around the rear of the car and peered down. She could dimly see that the rear wheel had passed completely over the brink, and below it lay a pile of sticks and brush. A little more and they might have rolled over, down into the darkness. She returned to her seat by the side of the road.
Just like a little boy he was, she thought--reckless, irresponsible, "full of the fullness of living." And his tone, when she had spoken of the dead-level of life in the city below them and the problem of raising one's head--"That's what I mean to do"--had seemed so like the confident tones of a child on the threshold of life. Were we all like that, after all--lifted up for a moment so that we could see; blundering forward the next, blindly, into pitfalls of our own making? His very offer of help, there on the hilltop, had been naive, and yet she was troubled by it. Why was he thrusting his stick into the still waters of her life? And yet she had felt very much alone and in need of the realization of another presence.
And then suddenly she realized why and how it was she liked him. She liked to think of him as standing by, liked the realization of his strength, his confidence. He was big, he was good-looking, and there was a tonic freshness about him. He was good as a friend. And he needed watching over, needed guiding, himself. That made it all the better. And then she felt hungry again. But she was no longer irritated.
The roar of the motor roused her from her musings. There was a ripping, grinding noise and she could see the outline of the car move, sink back, and then lurch forward again. There was another whirring and grinding and then Claybrook's triumphant shout. She rose to her feet and walked over to him. They had succeeded. The car was standing, all four wheels on the hard, level surface, the engine racing like mad.
"Hop in," Claybrook called to her a bit shortly.
She complied and he reached forward to throw in the gear, when the man walked around in front of the car and held up a restraining hand. She saw then, for the first time, that he was a park policeman.
"Let's have your name before you go, friend," he said.
"But what for? There's no harm done. I thought I made it all right with you?"
"You did--with me. But then you're pretty dangerous on these roads and I'll have to turn you in so that they can be looking out for you."
Claybrook sullenly complied. And then, throwing the car into gear, they slipped quickly out of sight. After they had rounded the curve, he turned suddenly to Mary Louise. "That's a new one on me. I tipped him for helping me get the car out, and then he turns and takes my name. You can't count on anybody these days--ever since the war."
"I think he has a sense of humour," she replied, laughing softly.
As they passed the road-house he suggested once again that they stop for a bite to eat, but upon her refusal he made no comment. The night was no longer clear; gathering clouds on the western horizon were gradually spreading across the sky, and as they crossed the line on to the asphalt paving again, it began to rain, a few scattering drops. At which she teased him about his altered driving. He laughed but made no answer.
But the shower did not come and directly they drew up at the curb outside her apartment.
"Don't stop," she said. "Don't bother. You must get in before the rain." She felt singularly good humoured.
"I'm sorry I made such a mess of things," he began clumsily, "and--and--you were pretty decent about it." It was a concession, but she could see he was rankled about something.
"I hope they won't fine you too much," she called after him as he started off. And then she walked thoughtfully into the hallway and stepped into the elevator and was carried swiftly upward.
"You've got to make allowances for them all," she decided mentally. "Yes," she added force to that decision, half aloud.
"What d'you say, Miss Mac?" inquired the elevator boy.
"I said, 'Seventh,'" she smiled at him.
She was met at the door by Maida with her hair in curl papers and a most prodigious yawning and rubbing of eyes. The ideal night life for Maida was that spent comfortably in bed.
"Thought you'd eloped," she ventured sleepily and then turned and shuffled off to the inner room. At the door she called over her shoulder, "There's a note someone left for you--about two hours ago."
Mary Louise looked on the table and, lying on a pile of magazines and newspaper supplements, was a plain, thin, white envelope. She picked it up and looked at it curiously, wondering from whom it could be. There was no address. She tore it open and read, and as she read she reached over one hand and steadied herself against the table. The note was from Joe, and laconic:
"They phoned me this evening your Aunt Susie had
had another stroke. They said you had better come."
That was all it said. There was no expression of regret. There was no offer of help. She had a sudden rush of anxiety. But behind the anxious feeling was one of wonder and a tiny one of hurt. She laid the letter down upon the table and slowly and thoughtfully took off her hat. _