Out of the Air Part 8

"Glorious Lutie," began her ante-breakfast address, "we are not a millionairess; ergo, today we buy all the morning papers and read them at breakfast in order to hunt for a job via the ads. And perhaps the next time your Glorious Susie begins to earn money, you might advise her to save a little against an unexpected situation. Of course I shouldn't have squandered my money the way I did. But I never had had so much before in my life--and oh, the joy of having cut-steel buckles and a perfectly beautiful raincoat--and my first set of furs--and perfumery and everything."

The advertising columns were not, she found (and attributed it to the return of so many men from France), very fecund. Each newspaper offered only from two to six chances worth considering. One, which appeared in all of them, seemed to afford the best opening. It read:

"_Wanted_: A stenographer, lady-like appearance and address, with some executive experience. Steady job and quick advancement to right woman. Apply between 9 and 11, room 1009, Carman Building."

"I am requested to apply for this spectacular job at the office itself, Glorious Lutie," she confided on her return to her room, "and I'm going out immediately after it. It's a romantic thing, getting a job through an advertis.e.m.e.nt. I hope I float up to the forty-sixth floor of a skysc.r.a.per, sail into a suite of offices which fill the entire top story; all Turkish rugs on the highly polished floor; all expensive paintings on the delicately tinted walls; all cut flowers with yard-long stems in the finely cut crystal vases. I should like to find there a new employer; tall, young, handsome, and dark. Dark he must be, Glorious Lutie. I cannot marry a blond; our children would be albinos. He would address me thus: 'Most Beauteous Blonde--you arrive at a moment when we are so much in need of a secretary that if you don't immediately seat yourself at yon machine, we shall go out of business. Your salary is one hundred dollars a week. This exquisite rose-lined boudoir is for your private use. You will find a bunch of fresh violets on your desk every morning. May I offer you my Rolls-Royce to bring you back and forth to work? And,' having fallen in love with me instantly, 'how soon may I ask you to marry me?'"

Susannah took the Subway to Wall Street; walked through that busy city-canon to the Carman Building. She strode into the elevator, almost empty in the hour which followed the morning rush; started to emerge, as directed by the elevator-man, at the tenth floor. But she did not emerge. Instead, her face as white as paper, she leaped back into the elevator; ascended with it to the top floor; descended with it; hurriedly left the building.

That first casual glance down the corridor had given her a glimpse of H.

Withington Warner sauntering slowly away from the elevator.

"Say, Eloise," she said late that afternoon over the telephone to the friend she had made at the Dorothy Dorr Home. "When can I see you?...

Yes.... No.... Well, you see I'm out of a job at present.... No, I can't tell you about it. This is a rooming-house. There is no telephone in my room. I am telephoning from the hall. And so I'd rather wait until I see you. But in brief, I'm eating at Child's, soda-fountains and even peanut stands. I'm really getting back my girlish figure. Only I think I'm going to be a regular O. Henry story. Headlines as follows: _Beautiful t.i.tian-haired_ (mark that _t.i.tian-haired_, Eloise) _Blonde Dead of Starvation. Drops Dead on Fifth Avenue. Too Proud to Beg._ I hope that none of those wicked reporters will guess that my new shoes with the cut-steel buckles cost thirty-five dollars. All right! All right.... The 'Attic' at seven. I'll be there promptly as usual and you'll get there late as usual.... Oh yes, you will! Thanks awfully, Eloise. I feel just like going out to dinner."

Eloise, living up to her promise, made so n.o.ble an effort that she was only ten minutes late. Then, as usual, she came das.h.i.+ng and sparkling into the room; a slim brown girl, much browner than usual, for her coat of seash.o.r.e tan; with narrow topaz eyes and deep dimples; very smart in embroidered linen and summer furs. The Attic restaurant occupied the whole top floor of a very high, downtown West Side skysc.r.a.per. Its main business came at luncheon, so the girls sat almost alone in its long, cool quiet. They found a table in a little stall whose window overhung the gray, fog-swathed river which seamlessly joined gray fog-misted sky.

A moon, opaque as a scarlet wafer, seemed to be pasted at a spot that could be either river or sky. The girls ordered their inconsequent dinner. They talked their inconsequent girl chatter. They drank each a gla.s.s of May wine.

Susannah had quite recovered her poise and her spirit. She described her new room with great detail. She suggested that Eloise, whom she invariably addressed as, "you pampered minion of millions, you!" should call on her in that scrubby hall bedroom. In fact, her narrative went from joke to joke in a vein so steadily and so augmentingly gay that, when Eloise had paid the bill and they sat dawdling over their coffee, suddenly she found herself on the verge of breaking her vow of secrecy, of relating the horrors of the last week.

"Eloise," she began, "I'm going to tell you something that I don't want you ever to--"

And then the words dried on her lips. Her tongue seemed to turn to wood.

She paled. She froze. Her eyes set on--

O'Hearn was walking into the Attic.

He did not perceive that instant terror of petrification; for it happened he did not even glance in their direction. He walked, self-absorbed apparently, to the other end of the room. But his face--Susannah got it clearly--was stony too. It had the look somehow of a man about to perform a deed repugnant to him.

"What's the matter, Sue?" Eloise asked in alarm. "You look awfully ill all of a sudden."

"The fact is," Susannah answered with instant composure, "I feel a little faint, Eloise. Do you mind if we go now? I really should like to have a little air."

"Not at all," Eloise answered. "Any time you say. Come on!"

They made rapidly for the elevator. Susannah did not glance back. But inwardly she thanked her guardian-angel for the fortuitous miracle by which intervening waiters formed a screen. Not until they had walked block after block, turning and twisting at her own suggestion, did Susannah feel safe.

"Oh, what was it you were going to tell me, Susannah," Eloise interrupted suddenly, "just before we left the Attic?"

"I don't seem to remember at this moment," Susannah evaded. "Perhaps it will come to me later."

Susannah did not sleep very well that night. But by morning she had recovered her poise. "Glorious Lutie," she said wordlessly from her bed, "I think I'll go seriously to the business of getting a job. It'll take my mind off--things. I'm going to ignore that little _rencontre_ of yesterday. Don't you despair. The handsome young employer with his romantic eyes and movie-star eyelashes awaits me somewhere. And just as soon as we're married, you shall be hung in a manner befitting your birth and station in a drawing-room as big as Central Park. I wish it weren't so darn hot. Somehow too, I don't feel so strong about answering ads in _person_ as I did two days ago."

On her way to breakfast she bought all the newspapers. She spent her morning answering advertis.e.m.e.nts by letter. She received no replies to this first batch; but she pursued the same course for three days.

"Glorious Lutie," she addressed the miniature a few days later, "this is beginning to get serious. I am now almost within sight of the end bill in my wad. In point of fact I will not conceal from you that today I p.a.w.ned my one and only jewel--my jade ring. You don't know how naked I feel without it. It will keep us for--perhaps it will last three weeks.

And after that-- However, I don't think we'll either of us starve. You don't take any sustenance and I take very little these days. I wish this weather would change. You are so cool living in that blue cloud, Glorious Lutie, that you don't appreciate what it's like when it's ninety in the shade and still going up. I'm getting pretty sick of it. I guess," she concluded, smiling, "I'll make out a list of the friends I can appeal to in case of need."

The idea seemed to raise her spirits. She sat down and turned to the unused memorandum portion of her diary. Her list ran something like this:

New York--

No. 1--First and foremost--Eloise, who, being an heiress and the owner of a check-book, never has any real cash and always borrows from me.

Providence--

No. 2--Barty Joyce--Always has money because he's prudent--and the salt of the earth--

P.S. Eloise never pays the money back that she borrows from me--

"Will you tell me, Glorious Lutie, why I don't fall in love with Barty and why he doesn't fall in love with me? There's something awfully out about me. I don't think I've been in love more than six times; and the only serious one was the policeman on the beat who had a wife and five children."

Providence again--

No. 3--The Coburns--nice, comfy, middle-aged folks; not rich; the best friends a girl could possibly have.

No. 4--

But here she yawned loudly and relinquished the whole proceeding.

That afternoon Susannah visited several employment agencies which dealt with office help. She answered all the inquiries that their questionnaires put to her; omitting any reference to the Carbonado Mining Company. It was late in the afternoon when she finished. She walked slowly homeward down the Avenue. Outside of her own door, she tried to decide whether she would go immediately to dinner or lie down first. A sudden fatigue forced decision in favor of a nap. She walked wearily up the first flight of stairs. Ahead, someone was ascending the second flight--a man. He turned down the hall. She followed. He stopped at the room opposite hers; fumbled unsuccessfully with the key. As she approached, she glanced casually in his direction.

It was Byan.

V

Dear Spink:

This is the kind of letter one never writes. But if you knew my mental chaos.... And I've got to tell somebody about the thing that I can speak about to n.o.body. If I don't.... What do you suppose I've done? I've bought a house. Yep-- I'm a property owner now. Of course you guess! Or do you guess? It's the Murray place. I could just make it and have enough left over for a year or two or three. But after that, Spink, I'm going to work because I'll have to.

I suppose you're wondering why I did it. You're not puzzled half as much as I am; although in one way I know exactly why I did it. Perhaps I didn't do it at all. Anyway, I didn't do it of my own volition. Somebody made me. I'm going to tell you about that presently.

Yes, it's all mine: beautiful old square-roomed house with its carved panelings and its generous Colonial fireplaces; its slender doors and amusing door-latches; an upstairs of ample bedrooms; an old garret with slave quarters; the downstairs with that little, charmingly incongruous, galleried, mid-Victorian addition; barn; lawn; flower-garden. And how beautiful I'm making that flower-garden you'll never suspect till you see it. But you won't see it for quite a while--I withdraw all my invitations to visit me. I don't want you now, Spink; although I never wanted you so much in my life. I'll want you later, I think. Of course it isn't from you personally--you beetle-eyed old scout--that I'm withdrawing my invitation; it's from any flesh-and-blood being. If you had an astral self-- I don't want anybody. I never wanted to be alone so much in my life. In a moment I'm going to tell you why.

And the wine-gla.s.s elms are mine; and the lilacs and syringas and the smoke-bush and the hollyhocks; and all the things I've planted; my Canterbury bells (if they come up); my deep, rich dahlias and my flame-colored phlox (if ditto). All mine! Gee, Spink, I never felt so rich in my life, because what I've enumerated isn't twenty-five per cent of what I own. In a minute I'm going to tell you what the remaining seventy-five per cent is.

This place is full of birds and bees. I watch them from the house.

Spink, we flying-men are b.o.o.bs. Have you ever watched a bee fly? I spend hours, it seems to me, just studying them--trying to crab their act. And the other day there was an air-fight just over my roof. A chicken-hawk attacked by the whole bird population. It was a reproduction in miniature of a bombing-machine pursued by a dozen combat-planes. Spink, it was the best flying I've ever seen. You should have seen the sparrows keeping on his tail! The little birds relied on their quickness of attack, just as combat planes do. They attacked from all angles with such rapidity that the hawk could do nothing but run for his life. The little birds circled about, waiting for the moment to dive. A combat-plane dives; its machines go ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta and it turns off before the gunner can swing his guns over. The birds dived, picked furiously at his eyes while the hawk turned bewildered from one attack to another. But the little birds did something that planes can't even attempt--they hovered over him almost motionless, waiting their moment to attack. Here I am talking of flying! Flying! Did I ever fly? When I got to New York, Greenwich Village seemed strange and unnatural, just a pasteboard dream. Pau--Avord--Verdun--were the only real things in my life. Now _they're_ shadows like Greenwich Village. Quinanog--the Murray place--and Lutetia--seem the only real things.

I'm going to tell you all about it in a moment. I sure am. The world seems to be full of landing-places, but for some reason I can't land.

Every time, I seem to come short on the field; or overshoot it. Perhaps it's because I feel it ought not to be told-- Perhaps it's because I feel you won't believe me--