_ BOOK IV. AT THE SHIPYARD
CHAPTER VII
She reached the office late in spite of her early start. Davidge had gone. He had gone to Pittsburgh to try to plead for more steel for more ships.
The head clerk told her this. He was in an ugly mood, sarcastic about Mamise's tardiness, and bitter with the knowledge that all the work of building another
Clara had to be carried through with its endless detail and the chance of the same futility. He was as sick about it as a Carlyle who must rewrite a burned-up history, an Audubon who must repaint all his pictures.
Davidge had left no good-by for Mamise. This hurt her. She wished that she had stopped to tell him good night the afternoon before.
In his prolonged absence Mamise wondered if he were really in Pittsburgh or in Washington with Lady Clifton-Wyatt. She experienced the first luxury of jealousy; it was aggravated by alarm. She was left alone, a prey to the appeals of Abbie, who could not persuade her to promise silence.
But the next night Jake was gone. Abbie explained that he had been called out of town to a meeting of a committee of his benevolent insurance order. Mamise wondered and surmised.
Jake went to meet Nicky Easton and claim his pay for his share in the elimination of the
Clara. Nicky paid him so handsomely that Jake lost his head and imagined himself already a millionaire. Strangely, he did not at once set about dividing his wealth among his beloved "protelariat." He made a royal progress from saloon to saloon, growing more and more haughty, and pounding on successive bars with a vigor that increased as his articulation effervesced. His secret would probably have bubbled out of him if he had not been so offensive that he was bounced out of every barroom before he had time to get to the explanation of his wealth. In one "poor man's club" he fell asleep and rolled off his chair to a comfortable berth among the spittoons.
Next morning Jake woke up with his head swollen and his purse vanished. He sought out Nicky and demanded another fee. Nicky laughed at his claim; but Jake grew threatening, and Nicky was frightened into offering him a chance to win another fortune by sinking another ship. He staked Jake to the fare for his return and promised to motor down some dark night and confer with him. Jake rolled home in state.
On the same train went a much interested sleuth who detached himself from the entourage of Nicky and picked up Jake.
Jake had attracted some attention when he first met Nicky in Washington, but the sadly overworked Department of Justice could not provide a squad of escorts for every German or pro-German suspect. Before the war was over the secret army under Mr. Bielaski reached a total of two hundred and fifty thousand, but the number of suspects reached into the millions. From Nicky Easton alone a dozen activities radiated; and studying him and his communicants was a slow and complex task.
Mr. Larrey decided that the best way to get a line on Jake would be to take a job alongside him and "watch his work." It was the easiest thing in the world to get a job at Davidge's shipyard; and it was another of the easiest things in the world to meet Jake, for Jake was eager to meet workmen, particularly workmen like Larrey, who would listen to reason, and take an interest in the gentle art of slowing up production. Larrey was all for sabotage.
One evening Jake invited him to his house for further development. On that evening Mamise dropped in. She did not recognize Larrey, but he remembered her perfectly.
He could hardly believe his camera eyes at first when he saw the great Miss Webling enter a workman's shanty and accept Jake Nuddle's introduction:
"Larrey, old scout, this is me sister-in-law. Mamise, shake hands with me pal Larrey."
Larrey had been the first of her shadows in New York, but had been called off when she proved unprofitable and before she met Easton. And now he found her at work in a shipyard where strange things were happening! He was all afire with the covey of spies he had flushed. His first impulse was to shoot off a wire in code to announce his discovery. Then he decided to work this gold-mine himself. It would be pleasanter to cultivate this pretty woman than Jake Nuddle, and she would probably fall for him like a thousand of brick. But when he invited himself to call on her her snub fell on him like a thousand of brick. She would not let him see her home, and he was furious till Jake explained, "She's sweet on the boss."
Larrey decided that he had better call on Davidge and tip him off to the past of his stenographer and get him to place her under observation.
The next day Davidge came back from his protracted journey. He had fought a winning battle for an allotment of steel. He was boyish with the renewal of battle ardor, and boyish in his greeting of Mamise. He made no bones of greeting her before all the clerks with a horribly embarrassing enthusiasm:
"Lord! but I've been homesick to see you!"
Miss Gabus was disgusted. Mamise was silly with confusion.
Those people who are always afraid of new customs have dreaded public life for women lest it should destroy modesty and rob them of the protection of guardians, duennas, and chaperons. But the world seems to have to have a certain amount of decency to get along on, at all, and provides for it among humans about as well as it provides for the protection of other plants and animals, letting many suffer and perish and some prosper.
The anxious conservatives who are always risking their own souls in spasms of anxiety over other people's souls would have given up Mamise and Davidge for lost, since she lived alone and he was an unattached bachelor. But curiously enough, their characters chaperoned them, their jobs and ambitions excited and fatigued them, and their moods of temptation either did not coincide or were frustrated by circumstances and crowds.
Each knew well what it was to suffer an onset of desperate emotion, of longing, of reckless, helpless adoration. But in office hours these anguishes were as futile as prayers for the moon. Outside of office hours there were other obstacles, embarrassments, interferences.
These protections and ambitions would not suffice forever, any more than a mother's vigilance, maidenly timidity, convent walls or
yashmaks will infallibly prevail. But they managed to kill a good deal of time--and very dolefully.
Mamise was in peculiar peril now. She was beginning to feel very sorry for herself, and even sorrier for Davidge. She remembered how cruelly he had been bludgeoned by the news of the destruction of his first ship, and she kept remembering the wild, sweet pangs of her sympathy, the strange ecstasy of entering into the grief of another. She remembered how she had seized his shoulders and how their hands had wrestled together in a common anguish. The remembrance of that communion came back to her in flashes of feverish demand for a renewal of union, for a consummation of it, indeed. She was human, and nothing human was alien to her.
Davidge had spoken of marriage--had told her that he was a candidate for her husbandcy. She had laughed at him then, for her heart had been full of the new wine of ambition. Like other wines, it had its morning after when all that had been so alluring looked to be folly. Her own loneliness told her that Davidge was lonely, and that two lonelinesses combined would make a festival, as two negatives an affirmative.
When Davidge came back from his trip the joy in his eyes at sight of her kindled her smoldering to flame. She would have been glad if he had snatched her to his breast and crushed her there. She had that womanly longing to be crushed, and he the man's to crush. But fate provided a sentinel. Miss Gabus was looking on; the office force stood by, and the day's work was waiting to be done.
Davidge went to his desk tremulous; Mamise to her typewriter. She hammered out a devil's tattoo on it, and he devoured estimates and commercial correspondence, while an aromatic haze enveloped them both as truly as if they had been faun and nymph in a bosky glade.
Miss Gabus played Mrs. Grundy all morning and at the noon hour made a noble effort to rescue Mamise from any opportunity to cast an evil spell over poor Mr. Davidge. Women have a wonderful pity for men that other women cultivate! Yet all that Miss Gabus said to Miss Webling was:
"Goin' to lunch now, Mi' Swebling?"
And all that Miss Webling said was:
"Not just yet--thank you."
Both were almost swooning with the tremendous significance of the moment.
Miss Webling felt that she was defying all the powers of espionage and convention when she made so brave as to linger while Miss Gabus left the room in short twitches, with the painful reluctance of one who pulls off an adhesive plaster by degrees. When at last she was really off, Miss Webling went to Davidge's door, feeling as wicked as the maid in Ophelia's song, though she said no more than:
"Well, did you have a successful journey?"
Davidge whirled in his chair.
"Bully! Sit down, won't you?"
He thought that no goddess had ever done so divine a thing so ambrosially as she when she smiled and shook her incredibly exquisite head. He rose to his feet in awe of her. His restless hands, afraid to lay hold of their quarry, automatically extracted his watch from his pocket and held it beneath his eyes. He stared at it without recognizing the hour, and stammered:
"Will you lunch with me?"
"No, thank you!"
This jolted an "Oh!" out of him. Then he came back with:
"When am I going to get a chance to talk to you?"
"You know my address."
"Yes, but--" He thought of that horrible evening when he had marched through the double row of staring cottages. But he was determined. "Going to be home this evening?"
"By some strange accident--yes."
"By some strange accident, I might drop round."
"Do."
They laughed idiotically, and she turned and glided out.
She went to the mess-hall and moved about, selecting her dishes. Pretending not to see that Miss Gabus was pretending not to see her, she took her collation to another table and ate with the relish of a sense of secret guilt--the guilt of a young woman secretly betrothed.
Davidge kept away from the office most of the afternoon because Mamise was so intolerably sweet and so tantalizingly unapproachable. He made a pretext of inspecting the works. She had a sugary suspicion of his motive, and munched it with strange comfort.
What might have happened if Davidge had called on her in her then mood and his could easily be guessed. But there are usually interventions. The chaperon this time was Mr. Larrey, the operative of the Department of Justice. He also had his secret.
He arrived at Davidge's home just as Davidge finished the composition of his third lawn tie and came down-stairs to go. When he saw Larrey he was a trifle curt with his visitor. Thinking him a workman and probably an ambassador from one of the unions on the usual mission of such ambassadors--more pay, less hours, or the discharge of some unorganized laborer--Davidge said:
"Better come round to the office in the morning."
"I can't come to your office," said Larrey.
"Why not? It's open to everybody."
"Yeh, but I can't afford to be seen goin' there."
"Good Lord! Isn't it respectable enough for you?"
"Yeh, but--well, I think it's my duty to tip you off to a little slick work that's goin' on in your establishment."
"Won't it keep till to-morrow evening?"
"Yeh--I guess so. It's only one of your stenographers."
This checked Davidge. By a quaint coincidence he was about to call on one of his stenographers. Larrey amended his first statement: "Leastways, I'll say she calls herself a stenographer. But that's only her little camouflage. She's not on the level."
Davidge realized that the stenographer he was wooing was not on the level. She was in the clouds. But his curiosity was piqued. He motioned Larrey to a chair and took another.
"Shoot," he said.
"Well, it's this Miss Webling. Know anything about her?"
"Something," said Davidge. He was too much amused to be angry. He thought that Larrey was another of those amateur detectives who flattered Germany by crediting her with an omnipresence in evil. He was a faithful reader of Ellis Parker Butler's famous sleuth, and he grinned at Larrey. "Well, Mr. Philo Gubb, go on. Your story interests me."
Larrey reddened. He spoke earnestly, explained who he was, showed his credentials, and told what he knew of Miss Webling. He added what he imagined Davidge knew.
Davidge found the whole thing too preposterous to be insolent. His chivalry in Mamise's behalf was not aroused, because he thought that the incident would make a good story to tell her. He drew Larrey out by affecting amazed incredulity.
Larrey explained: "She's an old friend of ours. We got the word from the British to pick the lady up when she first landed in this country. She was too slick for us, I guess, because we never got the goods on her. We gave her up after a couple of weeks. Then her trail crossed Nicky Easton's once more."
"And who is Nicky Easton?"
"He's a German agent she knew in London--great friend of her adopted father's. The British nabbed him once, but he split on the gang, and they let him off. Whilst I was trailin' him I ran into a feller named Nuddle--he come up to see Easton. I followed him here, and lo and behold! Miss Webling turns up, too! And passin' herself off for Nuddle's sister-in-law! Nuddle's a bad actor, but she's worse. And she pretends to be a poor workin'-girl. Cheese! You should have seen her in New York all dolled up!"
Davidge ignored the opportunity to say that he had had the privilege of seeing Miss Webling all dolled up. He knew why Mamise was living as she did. It was a combination of lark and crusade. He nursed Larrey's story along, and asked with patient amusement:
"What's your theory as to her reason for playing such a game?"
He smiled as he said this, but sobered abruptly when Larrey explained:
"You lost a ship not long ago, didn't you? You got other ships on the ways, ain't you? Well, I don't need to tell you it's good business for the Huns to slow up or blow up all the ships they can. Every boat they stop cuts down the supplies of the Allies just so much. This Miss Webling's adopted father was in on the sinking of the
Lusitania, and this girl was, too, probably. She carried messages between old Webling and Easton, and walked right into a little trap the British laid for her. She put up a strong fight, and, being an American, was let go. But her record got to this country before she did. You ask me what she's up to. Well, what should she be up to but the Kaiser's work? She's no stenographer, and she wouldn't be here playin' tunes on a typewriter unless she had some good business reason. Well, her business is--she's a ship-wrecker."
The charge was ridiculous, yet there were confirmations or seeming confirmations of it. The mere name of Nicky Easton was a thorn in Davidge's soul. He remembered Easton in London at Mamise's elbow, and in Washington pursuing her car and calling her "Mees Vapelink."
Davidge promised Larrey that he would look into the matter, and bade him good night with mingled respect and fear.
When he set out at length to call on Mamise he was grievously troubled lest he had lost his heart to a clever adventuress. He despised his suspicions, and yet--somebody had destroyed his ship. He remembered how shocked she had been by the news. Yet what else could the worst spy do but pretend to be deeply worried? Davidge had never liked Jake Nuddle; Mamise's alleged relationship by marriage did not gain plausibility on reconsideration. The whim to live in a workman's cottage was even less convincing.
Mr. Larrey had spoiled Davidge's blissful mood and his lover's program for the evening. Davidge moved slowly toward Mamise's cottage, not as a suitor, but as a student.
Larrey shadowed him from force of habit, and saw him going with reluctant feet, pausing now and then, irresolute. Davidge was thinking hard, calling himself a fool, now for trusting Mamise and now for listening to Larrey. To suspect Mamise was to be a traitor to his love: not to suspect her was to be a traitor to his common sense and to his beloved career.
And the Mamise that awaited the belated Davidge was also in a state of tangled wits. She, too, had dressed with a finikin care, as Davidge had, neither of them stopping to think how quaint a custom it is for people who know each other well and see each other in plain clothes every day to get themselves up with meticulous skill in the evening like Christmas parcels for each other's examination. Nature dresses the birds in the mating season. Mankind with the aid of the dressmaker and the haberdasher plumes up at will.
But as Caesar had his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell, and Davidge his Larrey, so Mamise had her sister Abbie.
Abbie came in unexpectedly and regarded Mamise's costume with no illusions except her own cynical ones:
"What you all diked up about?"
Mamise shrugged her eyebrows, her lips, and her shoulders.
Abbie guessed. "That man comin'?"
Mamise repeated her previous business.
"Kind of low neck, don't you think? And your arms nekked."
Mamise drew over her arms a scarf that gave them color rather than concealment. Abbie scorned the subterfuge.
"Do you think it's proper to dress like that for a man to come callin'?"
"I did think so till you spoke," snapped Mamise in all the bitterness of the ancient feud between loveliness unashamed and unlovely shame.
Abbie felt unwelcome. "Well, I just dropped over because Jake's went out to some kind of meetin'."
"With whom? Where?"
"Oh, some of the workmen--a lot of soreheads lookin' for more wages."
Mamise was indignant: "The soldiers get thirty dollars a month on a twenty-four-hour, seven-day shift. Jake gets more than that a week for loafing round the shop about seven hours a day. How on earth did you ever tie yourself up to such a rotten bounder?"
Abbie longed for a hot retort, but was merely peevish:
"Well, I ain't seen you marryin' anything better. I guess I'll go home. I don't seem to be wanted here."
This was one of those exact truths that decent people must immediately deny. Mamise put her arms about Abbie and said:
"Forgive me, dear--I'm a beast. But Jake is such a--" She felt Abbie wriggling ominously and changed to: "He's so unworthy of you. These are such terrible times, and the world is in such horrible need of everybody's help and especially of ships. It breaks my heart to see anybody wasting his time and strength interfering with the builders instead of joining them. It's like interfering with the soldiers. It's a kind of treason. And besides, he does so little for you and the children."
This last Abbie was willing to admit. She shed a few tears of self-esteem, but she simply could not rise to the heights of suffering for anything as abstract as a cause or a nation or a world. She was like so many of the air-ships the United States was building then: she could not be induced to leave the ground or, if she got up, to glide back safely.
She tried now to love her country, but she hardly rose before she fell.
"Oh, I know it's tur'ble what folks are sufferin', but--well, the Lord's will be done, I say."
"And I say it's mainly the devil's will that's being done!" said Mamise.
This terrified Abbie. "I wisht you'd be a little careful of your language, Mamise. Swearin' and cigarettes both is pretty much of a load for a lady to git by with."
"O Lord!" sighed Mamise, in despair. She was capable of long, high flights, but she could not carry such a passenger.
Abbie continued: "And do you think it's right, seein' men here all by yourself?"
"I'm not seeing men--but a man."
"But all by yourself."
"I'm not all by myself when he's here."
"You'll get the neighbors talkin'--you'll see!"
"A lot I care for their talk!"
"Why don't you marry him and settle down respectable and have childern and--"
"Why don't you go home and take care of your own?"
"I guess I better." And she departed forthwith. _