"My wife died a year later. I couldn't get over it; seemed like I could have killed myself when I thought of any mean thing I might have said to her-not meaning anything, but hasty-like, as a man will. Couldn't seem to get over it. Evenings were just hell; they were so-empty. Even when I was out on the road, there wasn't anybody to write to, anybody that cared. Just sit in a hotel room and think about her. And I just couldn't realize that she was gone. Do you know, Miss Golden, for months, whenever I was coming back to Boston from a trip, it was her I was coming back to, seemed like, even though I knew she wasn't there-yes, and evenings at home when I'd be sitting there reading, I'd think I heard her step, and I'd look up and smile-and she wouldn't be there; she wouldn't ever be there again.... She was a lot like you-same cute, bright sort of a little woman, with light hair-yes, even the same eye-glasses. I think maybe that's why I noticed you particular when I first met you at that lunch and remembered you so well afterward.... Though you're really a lot brighter and better educated than what she was-I can see it now. I don't mean no disrespect to her; she was a good sport; they don't make 'em any better or finer or truer; but she hadn't never had much chance; she wasn't educated or a live wire, like you are.... You don't mind my saying that, do you? How you mean to me what she meant-"
"No, I'm glad-" she whispered.
Unlike the nimble Walter Babson, Mr. Schwirtz did not make the revelation of his tragedy an excuse for trying to stir her to passion. But he had taken and he held her hand among the long grasses, and she permitted it.
That was all.
He did not arouse her; still was it Walter's dark head and the head of Walter's baby that she wanted to cradle on her breast. But for Mr. Schwirtz she felt a good will that was broad as the summer afternoon.
"I am very glad you told me. I do understand. I lost my mother just a year ago," she said, softly.
He squeezed her hand and sighed, "Thank you, little sister." Then he rose and more briskly announced, "Getting late-better be hiking, I guess."
Not again did he even touch her hand. But on his last night at the farm-house he begged, "May I come to call on you in New York?" and she said, "Yes, please do."
She stayed for a day after his departure, a long and lonely Sunday. She walked five miles by herself. She thought of the momently more horrible fact that vacation was over, that the office would engulf her again. She declared to herself that two weeks were just long enough holiday to rest her, to free her from the office; not long enough to begin to find positive joy.
Between shudders before the swiftly approaching office she thought of Mr. Schwirtz. (She still called him that to herself. She couldn't fit "Eddie" to his trim bulkiness, his maturity.)
She decided that he was wrong about socialism; she feebly tried to see wherein, and determined to consult her teacher in ideals, Mamie Magen, regarding the proper answers to him. She was sure that he was rather crude in manners and speech, rather boastful, somewhat loquacious.
"But I do like him!" she cried to the hillsides and the free sky. "He would take care of me. He's kind; and he would learn. We'll go to concerts and things like that in New York-dear me, I guess I don't know any too much about art things myself. I don't know why, but even if he isn't interesting, like Mamie Magen, I like him-I think!"
§ 7
On the train back to New York, early Monday morning, she felt so fresh and fit, with morning vigorous in her and about her, that she relished the thought of attacking the job. Why, she rejoiced, every fiber of her was simply soaked with holiday; she was so much stronger and happier; New York and the business world simply couldn't be the same old routine, because she herself was different.
But the train became hot and dusty; the Italians began to take off their collars and hand-painted ties.
And hot and dusty, perspiring and dizzily rushing, were the streets of New York when she ventured from the Grand Central station out into them once more.
It was late. She went to the office at once. She tried to push away her feeling that the Berkshires, where she had arisen to a cool green dawn just that morning, were leagues and years away. Tired she was, but sunburnt and easy-breathing. She exploded into the office, set down her suit-case, found herself glad to shake Mr. Wilkins's hand and to answer his cordial, "Well, well, you're brown as a berry. Have a good time?"
The office was different, she cried-cried to that other earlier self who had sat in a train and hoped that the office would be different.
She kissed Bessie Kraker, and by an error of enthusiasm nearly kissed the office-boy, and told them about the farm-house, the view from her room, the Glade, Bald Knob, Hawkins's Pond; about chickens and fresh milk and pigeons aflutter; she showed them the kodak pictures taken by Mrs. Cannon and indicated Mr. Starr and Miss Vincent and laughed about them till-
"Oh, Miss Golden, could you take a little dictation now?" Mr. Wilkins called.
There was also a pile of correspondence unfiled, and the office supplies were low, and Bessie was behind with her copying, and the office-boy had let the place get as dusty as a hay-loft-and the stiff, old, gray floor-rag was grimly at its post in the wash-room.
"The office isn't changed," she said; and when she went out at three for belated lunch, she added, "and New York isn't, either. Oh, Lord! I really am back here. Same old hot streets. Don't believe there are any Berkshires; just seems now as though I hadn't been away at all."
She sat in negligée on the roof of the Home Club and learned that Rose Larsen and Mamie Magen and a dozen others had just gone on vacation.
"Lord! it's over for me," she thought. "Fifty more weeks of the job before I can get away again-a whole year. Vacation is farther from me now than ever. And the same old grind.... Let's see, I've got to get in touch with the Adine Company for Mr. Wilkins before I even do any filing in the morning-"
She awoke, after midnight, and worried: "I mustn't forget to get after the Adine Company, the very first thing in the morning. And Mr. Wilkins has got to get Bessie and me a waste-basket apiece. Oh, Lord! I wish Eddie Schwirtz were going to take me out for a walk to-morrow, the old darling that he is-I'd walk anywhere rather than ask Mr. Wilkins for those blame waste-baskets!"
CHAPTER XIV
Mrs. Esther Lawrence was, she said, bored by the general atmosphere of innocent and bounding girlhood at the Temperance Home Club, and she persuaded Una to join her in taking a flat-three small rooms-which they made attractive with Japanese toweling and Russian, or at least Russian-Jew, brassware. Here Mrs. Lawrence's men came calling, and sometimes Mr. Julius Edward Schwirtz, and all of them, except Una herself, had cigarettes and highballs, and Una confusedly felt that she was getting to be an Independent Woman.
Then, in January, 1909, she left the stiff, gray scrub-rag which symbolized the routine of Mr. Troy Wilkins's office.
In a magazine devoted to advertising she had read that Mr. S. Herbert Ross, whom she had known as advertising-manager of the Gas and Motor Gazette, had been appointed advertising-manager for Pemberton's-the greatest manufactory of drugs and toilet articles in the world. Una had just been informed by Mr. Wilkins that, while he had an almost paternal desire to see her successful financially and otherwise, he could never pay her more than fifteen dollars a week. He used a favorite phrase of commuting captains of commerce: "Personally, I'd be glad to pay you more, but fifteen is all the position is worth." She tried to persuade him that there is no position which cannot be made "worth more." He promised to "think it over." He was still taking a few months to think it over-while her Saturday pay-envelope remained as thin as ever-when Bessie Kraker resigned, to marry a mattress-renovator, and in Bessie's place Mr. Wilkins engaged a tall, beautiful blonde, who was too much of a lady to take orders from Una. This wrecked Una's little office home, and she was inspired to write to Mr. S. Herbert Ross at Pemberton's, telling him what a wise, good, noble, efficient man he was, and how much of a privilege it would be to become his secretary. She felt that Walter Babson must have been inexact in ever referring to Mr. Ross as "Sherbet Souse."