He drew a catching breath, and suddenly her lips were opening to his.
"Oh, you mustn't-you promised-" she moaned, when she was able to draw back her head.
Again he kissed her, quickly, then released her and began to talk rapidly of-nothing. Apropos of offices and theaters and the tides of spring, he was really telling her that, powerful though his restless curiosity was, greatly though their poor little city bodies craved each other, yet he did respect her. She scarce listened, for at first she was bemused by two thoughts. She was inquiring sorrowfully whether it was only her body that stirred him-whether he found any spark in her honest little mind. And, for her second thought, she was considering in an injured way that this was not love as she had read of it in novels. "I didn't know just what it would be-but I didn't think it would be like this," she declared.
Love, as depicted in such American novels by literary pastors and matrons of perfect purity as had sifted into the Panama public library, was an affair of astounding rescues from extreme peril, of highly proper walks in lanes, of laudable industry on the part of the hero, and of not more than three kisses-one on the brow, one on the cheek, and, in the very last paragraph of the book, one daringly but reverently deposited upon the lips. These young heroes and heroines never thought about bodies at all, except when they had been deceived in a field of asterisks. So to Una there was the world-old shock at the earthiness of love-and the penetrating joy of that earthiness. If real love was so much more vulgar than she had supposed, yet also it was so much more overwhelming that she was glad to be a flesh-and-blood lover, bruised and bewildered and estranged from herself, instead of a polite murmurer.
Gradually she was drawn back into a real communion with him when he damned the human race for serfs fighting in a dungeon, warring for land, for flags, for titles, and calling themselves kings. Walter took the same theories of socialism, single-tax, unionism, which J. J. Todd, of Chatham, had hacked out in commercial-college days, and he made them bleed and yawp and be hotly human. For the first time-Walter was giving her so many of those First Times of life!-Una realized how strong is the demand of the undermen for a conscious and scientific justice. She denied that stenographers could ever form a union, but she could not answer his acerb, "Why not?"
It was not in the patiently marching Una to be a creative thinker, yet she did hunger for self-mastery, and ardently was she following the erratic gibes at civilization with which young Walter showed his delight in having an audience, when the brown, homely Golden family clock struck eleven.
"Heavens!" she cried. "You must run home at once. Good-night, dear."
He rose obediently, nor did their lips demand each other again.
Her mother awoke to yawn. "He is a very polite young man, but I don't think he is solid enough for you, dearie. If he comes again, do remind me to show him the kodaks of your father, like I promised."
Then Una began to ponder the problem which is so weighty to girls of the city-where she could see her lover, since the parks were impolite and her own home obtrusively dull to him.
Whether Walter was a peril or not, whether or not his love was angry and red and full of hurts, yet she knew that it was more to her than her mother or her conventions or her ambitious little job. Thus gladly confessing, she fell asleep, and a new office day began, for always the office claims one again the moment that the evening's freedom is over.
CHAPTER VII
These children of the city, where there is no place for love-making, for discovering and testing each other's hidden beings, ran off together in the scanted parties of the ambitious poor. Walter was extravagant financially as he was mentally, but he had many debts, some conscience, and a smallness of salary. She was pleased by the smallest diversions, however, and found luxury in a bowl of chop-suey. He took her to an Italian restaurant and pointed out supposititious artists. They had gallery seats for a Maude Adams play, at which she cried and laughed whole-heartedly and held his hand all through. Her first real tea was with him-in Panama one spoke of "ladies' afternoon tea," not of "tea." She was awed by his new walking-stick and the new knowledge of cinnamon toast which he displayed for her. She admired, too, the bored way he swung his stick as they sauntered into and out of the lobbies of the great hotels.
The first flowers from a real florist's which she had ever received, except for a bunch of carnations from Henry Carson at Panama high-school commencement, came from Walter-long-stemmed roses in damp paper and a florist's box, with Walter's card inside.
And perhaps the first time that she had ever really seen spring, felt the intense light of sky and cloud and fresh greenery as her own, was on a Sunday just before the fragrant first of June, when Walter and she slipped away from her mother and walked in Central Park, shabby but unconscious.
She explored with him, too; felt adventurous in quite respectable Japanese and Greek and Syrian restaurants.
But her mother waited for her at home, and the job, the office, the desk, demanded all her energy.
Had they seen each other less frequently, perhaps Walter would have let dreams serve for real kisses, and have been satisfied. But he saw her a hundred times a day-and yet their love progressed so little. The propinquity of the office tantalized them. And Mrs. Golden kept them apart.
§ 2
The woman who had aspired and been idle while Captain Golden had toiled for her, who had mourned and been idle while Una had planned for her, and who had always been a compound of selfishness and love, was more and more accustomed to taking her daughter's youth to feed her comfort and her canary-a bird of atrophied voice and uncleanly habit.
If this were the history of the people who wait at home, instead of the history of the warriors, rich credit would be given to Mrs. Golden for enduring the long, lonely days, listening for Una's step. A proud, patient woman with nothing to do all day but pick at a little housework, and read her eyes out, and wish that she could run in and be neighborly with the indifferent urbanites who formed about her a wall of ice. Yet so confused are human purposes that this good woman who adored her daughter also sapped her daughter's vigor. As the office loomed behind all of Una's desires, so behind the office, in turn, was ever the shadowy thought of the appealing figure there at home; and toward her mother Una was very compassionate.
Yes, and so was her mother!
Mrs. Golden liked to sit soft and read stories of young love. Partly by nature and partly because she had learned that thus she could best obtain her wishes, she was gentle as a well-filled cat and delicate as a tulle scarf. She was admiringly adhesive to Una as she had been to Captain Golden, and she managed the new master of the house just as she had managed the former one. She listened to dictates pleasantly, was perfectly charmed at suggestions that she do anything, and then gracefully forgot.
Mrs. Golden was a mistress of graceful forgetting. Almost never did she remember to do anything she didn't want to do. She did not lie about it; she really and quite beautifully did forget.
Una, hurrying off to the office every morning, agonized with the effort to be on time, always had to stop and prepare a written list of the things her mother was to do. Otherwise, bespelled by the magazine stories which she kept forgetting and innocently rereading, Mrs. Golden would forget the marketing, forget to put the potatoes on to boil, forget to scrub the bathroom.... And she often contrived to lose the written list, and searched for it, with trembling lips but no vast persistence.