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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Joe Hardy and Edith Patterson, coworkers in a New York office, finally confront the feelings they have been quietly harboring for months. A violent rainstorm forces them into a taxi together, and the emotional tension breaks into mutual confession and an impulsive engagement. Their tenderness is immediate and overwhelming, mixed with fear and awe at what they are stepping into...
"HAVEN'T you any umbrella?" asked Hardy, with a frown.
"I have one," answered Miss Patterson, "but not here."
She was dignified, he was somewhat severe. Both were important, preoccupied, adult persons, full of business concerns; nevertheless, they did not quite know how to proceed with the conversation. They stood side by side in the lobby of the office building, looking not at all at each other, but at the steady and violent rain. Miss Patterson was reluctant to walk off in such a downpour, and Hardy was determined that she should not.
"Silly kid!" he thought. "In that flimsy suit and those fool shoes!"
Any number of other girls ran past, some with newspapers over their hats, some laughing, some gravely worried, but he was not perturbed by them. They could stand it. No other living girl was so peculiarly fragile as Miss Patterson, or beset with so many dangers.
"I think it will stop," said she.
This annoyed him. She was trying to make light of a most serious situation.
"Why?" he demanded.
"Because it always does stop," she said. "At least, it always has, in the past."
He turned his head to look at her, and he grew a little dizzy. In the bleak light of that dismal day, Miss Patterson seemed to glow with a strange radiance. Her light hair was like a nimbus under her hat, her blue eyes were lambent, and she chose just that moment to make the color deepen in her cheeks. It was not fair!
"I'll get a taxi," he said.
"Oh, no!" she protested. "Please don't! I live miles and miles uptown."
"Doesn't matter," said Hardy, and off he darted.
He stopped a cab with the air of a highwayman, and returned to Miss Patterson. As he put her into the vehicle, a curious change came over them. Hardy ceased to be masterful and severe, and Miss Patterson was no longer dignified. They looked at each other steadily, with a strange sort of despair.
"Look here!" said Hardy, in an uncertain voice. "Can't I come with you?"
"Oh, no!" cried she. "Oh, no! Oh, you'd better not!"
But they both knew that he was going with her, that he must, that the inevitable moment had come, the moment foreseen by both of them all through the winter.
"What's the address?" he asked.
That was the last thing needed. Now he knew where the human, unofficial Miss Patterson lived. She was disassociated from business now. She was not a typist, but a girl.
She seemed aware of all this, for, as he got into the cab beside her, she looked at him in a new way—a look so bright, so clear, so gentle!
"Look here!" he said. "I—I don't want to be a nuisance. If you'd really rather I didn't come—"
She only shook her head. If she had tried to speak, she would have ended in tears.
He didn't know that he, too, had a new look—that his young face had grown pale and strained, his eyes dark with his great fear and his great hope. And this was the splendid, vainglorious Mr. Hardy from the import department, the young man of whom great things were expected, who was to be made assistant buyer when Mr. Hallock left at the end of the year.
The other girls had talked about him a good deal, for he was a figure to capture the imagination—a handsome boy, swaggering a little in the honest pride of his young manhood: only twenty-three, and going to be made assistant buyer!
"You know," he said. "I've often wanted to—to have a little talk with you. I—I often noticed you."
"Did you?" said Miss Patterson, ready to laugh through her unshed tears, for he needn't have troubled to tell her that.
"But you see," he went on, "I didn't know—I couldn't tell whether you—"
She was very glad to hear that, because sometimes she had been afraid that he could tell, could read in her face what was in her heart.
"You know, you're so different from any one else," he said. "Every time I saw you, I—whenever I saw you, it seemed—that is, I thought you were so different from any one else."
He stopped, aware that he was doing very badly, and filled with horror at his own idiotic words. She would think he was a fool.
Yet how could he possibly convey to this ethereal, fragile, and unworldly creature any idea of his own tempestuous love without alarming and offending her? He had no business to love her. It was a gross impertinence. She was an angel, and he was nothing but a clumsy—
The taxi turned a corner sharply, and he was flung sidewise, so that his shoulder brushed hers.
"I'm sorry!" he cried earnestly. "I couldn't help it!"
"But you're soaking wet!" said Miss Patterson.
Her gloved hand rested on his shoulder, and her voice—no, impossible!
"You're not—crying?" he asked incredulously.
"Yes, I am," said Miss Patterson. "I am. I can't bear to—to think of your getting so wet and catching a cold—just to get me a—a taxi!"
"But I shan't catch cold," said Hardy. He was trying to bear in mind that her words, her tears, were nothing but an expression of her wonderful kindness and humanity. She would be sorry for any one who got wet and caught a cold in her service. That was all that she meant—absolutely all. "I shan't catch cold," he went on. "I never do: but you—you see, you're so delicate—"
"I'm not!" said she. "Not a bit! But I remember perfectly well that last February you had the most—oh, the most awful cold!"
"Edith!" cried he, astounded, overwhelmed by this confession. "You remember that?"
Miss Patterson suddenly drew away, and ceased weeping.
"Well, yes," she admitted. "I—yes, I remember."
A silence.
"Then you must—must feel a little interested in me," said Hardy.
Silence.
"I hope you do," added Hardy.
The worst silence of all.
"Why do you hope that?" she asked, in a blank, small voice.
"Because I—ever since the first time I saw you, I thought perhaps you'd noticed."
"Noticed what?" inquired Miss Patterson, and he fancied that there was a shade of coldness in her voice. He was in despair. Of course she had no idea what he was driving at, he was so appallingly clumsy and stupid about it. He must do better than this! He drew a long breath.
"My prospects are pretty good," he remarked. "They're going to make me assistant buyer at the end of the year."
"So I've heard," said she, and this time there was no mistaking the coldness in her tone.
"I didn't say that to boast," he assured her anxiously. "I only wanted to tell you because—I wanted you to know that I—"
"I shouldn't blame you for boasting," said Miss Patterson, in a polite, formal way. "Every one says you have a remarkable future before you."
"Not without you!" he cried. "I don't want any future without you! Oh, Edith, I don't know how to tell you—"
The head of the auditing department, in which Miss Patterson worked, often praised her for the quickness with which she grasped new ideas. This praise seemed justified, for she understood Hardy without further explanation.
Nevertheless, they both had an enormous amount of explaining to do. All the way uptown they were engaged in explaining to each other, with the greatest earnestness, just how they felt, why they felt so, and when they had begun to feel so. When they reached the depressing West Side street where Edith lived, they hadn't half finished.
The taxi stopped, and the driver turned around, so that they couldn't go on explaining, or even say good-by; but Hardy went into the dingy little vestibule with his Edith.
"Darling girl!" he said. "Shan't I come upstairs with you and see your aunt?"
She turned away.
"I'd rather you didn't, Joe," she said. "Not just now, please!"
He was willing to do anything in the world she wanted, except to leave her; but that was almost impossible. She seemed to him so forlorn, so little and so young. The brightness had left her face now. She was downcast and pale.
"Edith!" he said. "Aren't you happy at home?"
"No, Joe, I'm not," she answered. "I'm wretched!"
When she saw what that did to him, how much it hurt him, she was overcome with remorse.
"Oh, but it doesn't matter—now!" she said. "Not now—when I have you. Really and truly, Joe, I don't care a bit!"
Her anxiety to reassure him, to send him away happy, touched Hardy almost beyond endurance. He had always been aware of something wistful, something a little sorrowful about her, like a shadow over her clear beauty. She had been the dearer to him for that. She was a thousand times dearer to him now because she was sad, and must look to him for her happiness. He meant to make her happy—at any cost!
THOSE words, "at any cost," did not come consciously into Hardy's mind. He didn't really believe that happiness cost anything—or love, either. You found them, suddenly, on your way through life, and of course you had a right to keep what you found.
He did see difficulties, though. His prospects were good, but in his immediate present there were many things that troubled him.
His chief trouble was one which young fellows of twenty-three who want to get married have encountered before. It was money. His salary of twenty-five hundred a year was more than he needed for his own wants, and he had done a very sensible thing—he had begun buying stock in the company that employed him, turning in ten dollars of his salary every week for this purpose. He had four hundred dollars saved in that way, but no one ever repented a folly more heartily than young Hardy now regretted his prudence.
He couldn't touch that money. He knew very well that one of Mr. Plummer's strongest reasons for promoting him was that infernal stock he was buying. If he were to sell it, or to stop his payments, Mr. Plummer would want to know why, and Hardy's prospects would be in jeopardy. He couldn't marry without those prospects, nor could he very well get married without the money.
Well, any wise and experienced person could solve that difficulty for him. He must wait. Even Edith, who was neither wise nor experienced, told him that. They were having lunch together a few days after their great discovery of happiness, and Hardy had been explaining the situation in detail.
"We'll have to wait," said Edith. "Anyhow—"
"No," said he. "I can't stand seeing you so miserable!"
"But I'd be a hundred times more miserable if I thought I was doing you any harm!" said Edith.
As soon as the words were spoken, she realized that she had made a serious mistake, and tried hastily to remedy it.
"I'm really not miserable, Joe!" she cried. "Not a bit!"
He knew better, though. Without even having seen her, he was becoming acquainted with Edith's aunt, and learning to appreciate her talent for making people miserable. Edith never told him about it. It wasn't her habit to complain, but to any one who watched her as Hardy did, the thing was obvious.
One evening, when he was walking to the Subway with her, she had to stop in the drug store to buy a bottle of "nerve tonic" at two dollars a bottle.
"You don't take that stuff, do you, Edith?" he had asked anxiously.
"Oh, no!" she replied. "It's for Aunt Bessie. She's in very poor health, you know."
"What's the matter with her?" Hardy bluntly inquired.
He did not fail to notice Edith's troubled, face and rising color; and the answer that Aunt Bessie was "terribly nervous" seemed to him to explain a good deal.
Then he learned that Aunt Bessie was upset if Edith was a few minutes late in getting home, and that she would be still more painfully upset if Edith should even suggest going out in the evening.
"She's alone all day, you see," the girl explained, "and it does seem selfish to go out again."
"Oh, very selfish!" Hardy interrupted. "And what about Saturday afternoon and Sunday?"
"Well, you see, Joe, she's alone all week, and—and she hasn't any one but me. Anyhow, Joe, we see each other every day in the office, and we can have lunch together, can't we?"
He said nothing more just then, for he could see that Edith was unhappy and anxious. For those first few days even having lunch with her was almost too good to be true; but the day when Edith said they must wait, and Hardy said he wouldn't, was Monday, after he had spent a horrible Sunday without a glimpse of her.
"No," he said again. "We can't go on like this. I can't, anyhow."
Again she pointed out that they saw each other every day in the office, and could have lunch together. She added that they had only been engaged five days.
"I know," said he. "It would be all right if I could see you, but you won't let me come to your house, and you won't go out with me."
"But we see each other—"
"Yes, and we can have lunch together, for the next ten years, I suppose!" Hardy interrupted.
"It won't be anything like ten years, you silly boy! At the end of the year, when you—"
"Yes, and do you know what's going to happen then? They're going to send me to Europe, with Preble, for two months."
"Oh!" cried Edith.
For a moment she was silent, overcome by this news. Then she made a gallant attempt at a reasonable, calm, businesslike manner.
"But, after all—two months!" she said.
Her smile was a very poor one, and her voice betrayed her. Instead of helping her, Hardy became unmanageable.
"Look here!" he said. "September, October, November—that's three months that we can have lunch together. Then I'll be away for December and January: so perhaps after five months I may have a chance to—kiss you once more, if your aunt doesn't mind. Five whole months, and you won't let me see you alone for five minutes!"
"Oh, Joe, darling! Do be reasonable!"
"You're a little too reasonable," said he. "If you really cared for me—"
There is no better way to begin a quarrel than with those classic words. Edith grew angry, but her anger was such a mild little thing compared to Hardy's that she took refuge in flight, and left him sitting alone in the restaurant. All was over!
That afternoon they had four hours to think over their words. When Edith came downstairs, Hardy was waiting for her in the lobby.
"Edith!" he said. "Edith! I don't know how I could have been such a brute! Edith, I can't—"
"Oh, Joe, you weren't! I know it must seem heartless to you for me to talk that way: but you don't understand, Joe!"
As they walked toward the Subway, she tried to tell him. It was the hottest hour of that sultry September day, and she looked so jaded, so pale, that he was frightened. He held her arm, his tall head bent, to catch every word, his eyes fixed on her face.
"You see," she said, "I owe so much to Aunt Bessie. She took me when I was a tiny girl, after mother died, and she gave up everything for me—everything, Joe! She used the little bit of money she had to send me to a good school, and when that was gone she went to work. That's what ruined her health—working in an office; and she did it for me, Joe. If she's a little—a little trying now, I—you do see, don't you, Joe?"
"Yes, my darling girl, I see," he answered, more gently than she had ever heard him speak before. "I think—see here, Edith! Could you spare time for a soda?"
She thought she could. They went into a shop near by, and sat down at a little table in a dark corner. He stretched out his hand toward hers, which lay on the table, but he drew it back again. He wasn't going to do anything that might bother her, never again. He would be patient, he would do anything in the world she wanted. He was sick with remorse and alarm at her pallor and fatigue.
"I'll do whatever you want, Edith," he said. "Only—I love you so! If you would just tell me more about yourself! It's hard not to know."
It was her hand that grasped his.
"As if I didn't understand! Oh, Joe, I worried so awfully about you that time you got wet! If you had been sick, I couldn't have been with you. I didn't even know who there'd be to take care of you."
"Don't!" he said suddenly. "Please don't, little Edith! I don't need much taking care of. It's you! Do you mind telling me what—how you—how it is with you financially?"
She did tell him, readily and frankly, and he was appalled. She was supporting herself and her aunt on her meager salary. Two persons entirely dependent on this slip of a girl!
"Edith!" he said. "Won't you marry me now? My salary's enough for us to scrape along on."
Both her hands clasped his now.
"Joe, my own dearest, I can't!"
"We can take your aunt to live with us for a while, until I've got my raise."
"Joe, we can't!"
"I don't care how bad she is. If you can stand her, I can."
"You couldn't! Don't you see, Joe, that that would spoil everything? We couldn't start like that. But if you'd—"
"If I'd what?"
"Nothing!" she said hastily. "I'll tell you another time."
But instead of telling him, she left a note on his desk the next morning.
Dear Joe:
I will marry you now, if you won't ask me to give up my job.
"I don't wonder you wrote it," said Hardy, when he met her for lunch.
"Joe, it's the only way!"
"It's not my way," said he.
She reminded him that he had promised her to do whatever she wanted, and he replied that he would do so—except in this instance.
"Well, I won't let you have the burden of taking care of Aunt Bessie," she told him. "It's bad enough for you to think of getting married, anyhow, when you're so young, and just at the beginning of a wonderful career—"
"Young, am I? Then what about you?" he asked. "No! When you marry me, you'll be done with offices. That's something I won't argue about."
She pretended to be angry, but in her heart she adored him when he was magnificent and arbitrary.
"IT isn't really a lie," said Edith. "I really do go to the French class."
"It's too near a lie to suit me," said Hardy bluntly. "I'm sick of this hole-and-corner business. It's—can't you see for yourself that it's degrading to both of us? Edith, can't we be honest about this? Let me go and see your aunt, and tell her the whole thing. If she makes a row, I dare say I can live through it."
"I dare say you could," Edith answered briefly.
They were coming near to one of the gates of Central Park. Their walk together was almost at an end—a walk which only a few weeks ago would have been a delight almost unsupportable, a thing to lie awake at night remembering, to think of all through a busy day. Now that rapture, that glamour, was gone. With all their love, their hope, their blind tenderness for each other, they were bitter at heart.
It was a wild, bright October evening. The moon seemed rocking in the fitful clouds, the wind sprang like a kitten along the paths after the dry leaves, the bare trees creaked stiff and resistant. All the world was in motion, restless, hurried. All things were free—except themselves. It was intolerable to Hardy, an affront to his fine young pride in himself, his magnificent assurance. It was petty, base, shameful!
"Edith!" he said suddenly. "I won't go on like this!"
She stopped short in the middle of the path.
"I'm tired of hearing that," she replied, in a queer, unsteady voice. "You're always saying that—always blaming me; and you know we've got to go on like this—or not go on at all!"
"We haven't. That's what I'm always trying to tell you," he said stormily. "We don't have to meet this way—in this beastly, lying way—pretending to your aunt that your French lesson is for two hours instead of one, so that we can have one hour a week alone together. Tell her! Let her be upset! She'll have to know some time. Then at least I can come to see you in your own place, decently and honorably."
"I will not tell her now! You don't realize what it'll mean to Aunt Bessie. You don't care. She hasn't any one but me. I won't tell her now, and let her have all that long time to think about—losing me. She's going to be happy as long as possible."
Hardy took her arm.
"Come on," he said, "or you'll be ten minutes late, and she'll have a nervous attack and keep you up all night, as usual!"
But when he felt how she was shivering in her thin jacket, a terrible compunction seized him.
"Oh, Edith!" he cried. "Edith, never mind all that! Darling little Edith, it's only our affair, after all! Let's get married now, before I go!"
"You know we can't," she said, with a sob. "Not when you're so obstinate and—and unkind. You know we couldn't manage for ourselves and Aunt Bessie, too, in any place where she'd be comfortable, just on your salary; and you're so unreasonable about my job!"
"Look here, Edith—I'll sell that blamed stock, and that'll provide for Aunt Bessie until I've got my raise."
"You won't! You shan't!" She pulled her arm away from him, and roughly wiped away the tears running down her cheeks. "Don't you dare to mention such a thing! I'm not going to ruin your whole life just for—"
"Well, you've ruined it!" said Hardy. "I can tell you that, if it's any satisfaction to you. I don't care now what happens to me, or whether I go on or not. You've shown me how little you care for me. You've—Edith!"
She had started running along the path, but he easily overtook her. All at once their arms were about each other, Edith's wet cheek against his, and all their pain, their bitterness, lost in a passion of tenderness and remorse.
STILL Hardy went about the office, magnificent as ever, very well aware of being a remarkable young fellow, who was to be made assistant buyer at twenty-three, a man talked about, admired, and envied. He was still proud of himself, still sure of himself, but some of the magic had gone out of it, some of the zest. He couldn't look forward to that trip to Europe with unmixed joy now.
Indeed, all the joys he had at this time were so mixed with anxiety and impatience that he could scarcely recognize them. He dreaded leaving Edith. He imagined all sorts of misfortunes that might befall her in his absence. Sometimes he even resented his splendid future, because it so burdened and harassed the present. He wanted to live now, not to wait.
Worst of all was the humiliation he endured from their furtive and hasty meetings. He had never before in his life been furtive, or even cautious. He had lived boldly and rashly, in the light of day, and it hurt and angered him to do otherwise. He wanted to love boldly and rashly. He wanted to be proud of his love.
Well, he wasn't proud; he was ashamed.
He couldn't understand Edith's viewpoint. Her life had been so repressed, so weighted down by unjust and inordinate demands upon her, that she was thankful for the briefest minutes of happiness. If she could meet Hardy for ten minutes on a street corner, she was joyous for those ten minutes—when he would let her be. He tried to let her. He would watch her coming toward him—such a gallant little figure!—and he would make up his mind to be tender and considerate; but when she was with him, when he saw her ill dressed and ill nourished, and couldn't help her, when he saw her glance at her watch even when he was speaking, his good resolutions only too often vanished, and he reproached her bitterly.
She didn't endure his reproaches meekly. He wouldn't have loved her, if she had. On the contrary, she replied to him vigorously, and so many, many times they had left each other in anger, to be paid for later by hours of remorse.
Neither of them was quarrelsome by nature, nor was there any lack of real harmony between them. They were both generous, quick to forgive, eager to understand, passionately loyal to each other. Every one of their disagreements would have been quickly adjusted and forgotten, if they had had time; but they never did have time, and neither did this fellow of twenty-three and this girl of twenty have any greater amount of patience and ripe wisdom than others of their age.
Sometimes a sort of panic seized them, and they felt it necessary to "explain." They had fallen into the habit of taking a little more than the allotted hour for lunch. Though Edith had been solemnly warned by her superior, she found it impossible to leave Joe in the middle of a speech. He was so unreasonable about her always being in a hurry.
So there was lunch almost every day, and the walk to the Subway, and that hour stolen from the French class once a week, all through October and November, until the trip to Europe was only a few weeks ahead of them. Mr. Plummer hadn't actually told Hardy he was to go, but the thing was understood. Mr. Loomis, the buyer, was taking pains to train him, and had once or twice said such things as:
"You'll see how that is for yourself, Hardy, when you're in France."
"It'll probably be before Christmas," said Hardy. "The idea is that I'm not to be told until Hallock is gone, because I might slack up on my present work. Silly, childish way to do—as if it was a treat for a good boy!"
"Well, it will be a treat, won't it?" said Edith. "You've always—"
He looked across the table at her. The cold air had brought no color into her cheeks. She looked weary, downcast. He could see that her smile was an effort, and in her eyes was the look that he couldn't bear.
"No!" he said. "I wish to Heaven I wasn't going! I mean it! If I have to leave you like this—"
"Joe," she began, and was silent for a minute. "I—I know it's selfish of me; but—oh, Joe, when I think of your going away—"
Mr. Plummer, who was also taking lunch in that restaurant, saw his promising young man lean across the table and lay his hand on that of Miss Patterson from the auditing department.
"Too bad!" thought Mr. Plummer. "A boy with a remarkable future before him—and getting himself entangled before he's begun! Too bad! Too bad!"
Fortunately, however, he could not hear what monstrous folly the boy spoke.
"I won't go, Edith! I'll stay here with you. Nothing else counts with me but you—only you. I'll—"
"I want you to go, Joe, darling," said she, with quivering lips; "but I thought—only I know you wouldn't! I—if we could just get married before you go, and not tell any one till you come back—just so that we'd really belong to each other—then it wouldn't be so hard!"
And Hardy, the bold, the rash, the magnificent, who hated anything secret and furtive, looked only once at her dear face, and agreed.
"YOU'RE late again, Miss Patterson," said Mr. Dunne.
"I'm awfully sorry," said Edith. "I'll really try not to again."
But she didn't look sorry. She sat down at her desk, flushed and a little out of breath, and, to Mr. Dunne's great displeasure, there was a smile hovering about her lips.
"Miss Patterson," said he, "I'm afraid this is once too often."
Edith looked up in alarm.
"But, you see—" she began, and stopped.
She couldn't explain to Mr. Dunne that this was a most pardonable lateness, and not at all likely to happen again. Going to the City Hall for a marriage license wouldn't occupy much of her time in the future. Thinking of this, she smiled again—and lost her job. Mr. Dunne didn't like people who smiled when they were late.
So it happened that just when she badly needed a smile she hadn't one. The wretched little imitation she gave to Hardy, an hour later, didn't deceive him for an instant. He stopped beside her desk—a thing he had never done before.
"What's the matter?" he demanded, and would not be put off.
No use to tell him that he shouldn't stand there and talk to her! He knew that very well, and he didn't care. A mighty rage filled him. Edith, his Edith, his own girl, to be discharged and humiliated like this!
"Get on your hat and jacket," he commanded, "and come on!"
"Joe! You mustn't—"
"Look here!" said he. "I won't have you here like this. If Dunne told you to go, then go now. Good Lord! Haven't you any pride?"
She was too wretched to be angry at him. She did get on her hat and jacket, and, in full view of every one. Hardy walked out of the office with her at three o'clock on a busy afternoon.
"We'll go to the flat," he said, "and talk it over."
They had a flat of their own. Hardy had insisted upon this.
"We'll take it now," he had said: "and whenever we see anything especially good in the way of furniture, we'll buy it. Then, when I come back, we'll have a place of our own all ready for us."
It wasn't quite what they wanted, but Hardy had very little money just then, and their only time for house hunting was what they had been able to pilfer from their lunch hour; so they had taken the first one that seemed at all suitable. It consisted of three tiny rooms in a remodeled house west of Central Park.
They had already become inordinately fond of this future home. To be sure, there was nothing in it except a barrel containing a Limoges dinner set, which Hardy had bought from a shipment received at the office; but Edith had made a flying visit and measured the windows for curtains, and after that she could look upon the place as her own.
This afternoon, when Hardy opened the door with his latchkey, the place was obviously a future home. It was bare, bleak, and dusty, with slanting sun rays falling across the ill laid board floor of what was going to be the sitting room.
The door closed behind them, and there they were, alone, with plenty of time for talking now, and neither of them said one word. Hardy began walking about. His footsteps made a loud and somehow a melancholy sound. His voice in the empty little rooms was not at all his confident office voice, but boyish, and, to Edith, terribly touching.
She sat down on the barrel, struggling against her despair and misery, while he moved about in the kitchen, mocked by a gas stove with no gas in it, and water taps that gave forth no water. She knew how he felt; she knew what he would say.
"But I won't!" she thought. "I'll get another job. I won't let him take care of Aunt Bessie now. I won't! I won't! Not now, when he's just beginning."
If she were making resolves in the sitting room, so was Hardy in the kitchen. He hadn't been singled out by Mr. Plummer because of his gentleness and consideration. He had a remarkable future because he was remarkably persistent and clear-sighted about getting his own way, and Edith was no match for him.
"No!" said he. "No more jobs! We'll tell your aunt now, and we'll get married to-morrow, as we planned, and we'll move in here."
"We can't, Joe. We haven't any furniture, you know—"
"Then we'll get it."
"And Aunt Bessie—"
"We'll see Aunt Bessie now. Look here, little Edith! It's got to be this way. I couldn't have my wife running about looking for a job. I couldn't go away and leave you working in a strange office. It was bad enough in the old place. Look here, Edith, don't you think you can be happy with me? Don't you love me enough?"
"I love you too much, Joe! It's not fair to you. You'll—oh, Joe, you'll have to sell your stock, and Mr. Plummer—"
"Edith," he said, "I've been thinking lately—I don't know how to put it very well—but it seems to me that maybe it's a mistake to live so much in the future. Suppose there wasn't any future—for us? Suppose something happened to one of us? Edith, I can't stand thinking of that! Look here! Let's just live now, and not be afraid of what's going to happen. Let's start this thing"—he stopped for a moment—"with courage and confidence," he finished.
She put her hand on his cheek and turned his head so that she could look into his honest, steady eyes.
"Let's!" she said, with a very unsteady little smile. "I feel that way, too, Joe. We'll begin this minute, and unpack the china, just so that we'll—we'll feel at home!"
HARDY turned his back upon Mr. Plummer, and looked out of the window. It was a cold, rainy day. The people far below on the street were hurrying by under umbrellas.
"In that case, Hardy," said Mr. Plummer, "I'm sorry, but—"
"Yes, sir," said Hardy.
He couldn't, at that moment, say anything more. Something had risen into his throat and silenced him. He would have liked to speak, to tell the man who had shown so kindly an interest in him that he regretted his hasty and violent words. He hadn't meant all that he said. He had come to tell Mr. Plummer that he wanted to sell his stock. He had listened, as patiently as he could, while his employer remonstrated with him. He had endured a pretty stiff lecture upon his recent slackness and lack of attention to work, because he knew he deserved it; but when Mr. Plummer undertook to warn him about "entangling" himself with that "young woman in the auditing department;" all his genuine respect for his chief had vanished in an overwhelming anger. That "young woman" was his Edith!
He didn't like, now, to recall what he had said.
"I'm sorry, Hardy," said Mr. Plummer again. He was looking at the boy with an odd expression on his lined face, a look half respectful, half sorrowful. As a man, he liked Hardy the better for his outburst, but as a business man he deplored it.
"I wish you the best of luck, my boy," he said. "Refer to me at any time."
"Thank you, sir," said Hardy.
Off he went, with his words of apology unsaid, with five years of friendly interest unrewarded, and with his own heart like lead. He walked through the office for the last time, and into the corridor, leaving so much behind him.
Edith was waiting for him in the lobby.
"Oh, Joe!" she cried. "I found a place uptown where they promised to deliver the furniture this afternoon. Imagine! And I got the dearest material for curtains! I brought a sample to show you."
She was opening her hand bag, but he stopped her.
"No, don't," he said curtly. "Not just now."
Here she was, chattering about curtains, after all that had happened! He remembered how he had left her the evening before, after a horrible interview with her aunt. He remembered her pitiful attempts to soothe and comfort that hysterical old demon, and her anguish when she failed so utterly, and was told that if she married "that man" she would be cast off—except for the trifling communications necessary to continuing her support of the martyr.
"And I couldn't sleep for worrying about her!" he thought bitterly. "I thought she'd be ill, and look at her now—perfectly happy, talking about curtains!"
"Come on!" he said aloud, and then stopped, with a frown. "Haven't you any umbrella?" he asked.
"I have one," she replied, "but not here. It wasn't raining when I started."
"Edith!" he said suddenly. "Don't you remember?"
How could he have imagined that she was happy, or that her mind was filled with thoughts of curtains? That small, gallant, smiling thing, so pale, so troubled, with the shadow of her suffering dark in her eyes!
"It's nearly twelve, Joe," she said, looking at her watch. "We haven't much time."
"Oh, yes, we have!" he told her. "We have any amount of time, for I'm never going back there."
"Joe!" she cried. "Oh, Joe! Oh, no, no! Don't tell me you've—"
He drew a long breath, and then looked down at her with a grin.
"You've got a young man with a remarkably uncertain future," he said. "Never mind—we'll start a new future. Anyhow, I shan't have to go to Europe now, and leave you."
"Oh, Joe! What have I done?"
"I did it myself," he said sturdily, "and I'm glad. Thank Heaven, we've got time, now, for a nice, peaceful wedding!"
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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