The Fifth Wheel Part 8

Incidentally at Edith's dinners silent-footed servants pa.s.s you things; you take them; you eat a little, too--delicious morsels if you stopped to consider them; but you and your partner are having far too good a time (he is actually audacious, and so, if you please, are you) to bother about the food.

There's a little group of gla.s.ses beside your water, and once in a while there appears in your field of vision a hand grasping a white napkin folded like a cornucopia, out of which flows delicious nectar. You sip a little of it occasionally, a very little--you are careful of course--and waves of elation sweep over you because you are alive and happy and good to look upon; waves of keen delight that such a big and splendid life (there are orchids in the center of the table, there are pearls and diamonds everywhere)--that such a life as this is yours to grasp and to enjoy.

At Lucy's dinners the women do not wear diamonds and pearls. Lucy seldom entertains more than six at a time. "Shall we go out?" she says when her Delia mumbles something from the door. You straggle across the hall into the dining-room, where thirteen carnations--you count them later, there's time enough--where thirteen stiff carnations are doing duty in the center of the prim table. At each place there is a soup plate sending forth a cloud of steam. You wait until Lucy points out your place to you, and then sit down at last. There is a terrible pause--you wonder if they say grace--and then finally Lucy picks up her soup-spoon for signal and you're off! The conversation is general. That is because Lucy's guests are usually intellectuals, and whatever any one of them says is supposed to be so important that every one else must keep still and listen. You can't help but notice the food, because there's nothing to soften the effect of it upon your nerves, as it were. There are usually four courses, with chicken or ducks for the main dish, accompanied by potatoes cut in b.a.l.l.s, the invariable rubber stamp of a party at Lucy's. Afterward there's coffee in the living-room, and you feel fearfully discouraged when you look at the clock and find it's only eight-thirty. You're surprised after the guests have gone to find that Lucy considers her party a success.

"Why," she exclaims, cheeks aglow, "Dr. Van Breeze gave us the entire resume of his new book. He seldom thinks anybody clever enough to talk to. It was a perfect combination!"

As I said, I usually visit Lucy in rather a critical state of mind and hold myself aloof from her learned old doctors and professors. On this visit, though, she is so obviously careful of me and my feelings, that I find myself going out of my way to consider hers a little. One day last week when she so brightly suggested that we go to a tea given by the wife of a member of the faculty, instead of exclaiming, "Oh, dear! it would bore me to extinction," I replied sweetly, "All right, if you want to, I'll go."

I wasn't feeling happy. I didn't want to go. I had been roaming the woods and country roads round about for a month in search of an excuse for existence. I had been autobiographing for days in the faint hope that I might run across something worth while in my life. But no. It was hopeless. I had lost all initiative. I couldn't see what reason there was for me to eat three meals a day. It seemed as foolish as stoking the furnaces of an ocean liner when it is in port. In such a mood, and through the drifting mist of a complaining October afternoon, in rubbers and a raincoat, I started out with Lucy for her afternoon tea.

The other guests wore raincoats, too--we met a few on the way--with dull-colored suits underneath, and tailored hats. There wasn't a single bright, frivolous thing about that tea. Even the house was dismal--rows of black walnut bookcases with busts of great men on top, steel engravings framed in oak on the walls, and a Boston fern or two in red pots sitting about on plates. When I looked up from my weak tea, served in a common stock-pattern willow cup, and saw Lucy sparkling with pleasure, talking away for dear life with a white-haired old man who wore a string tie and had had two fingers shot off in the Civil War (I always hated to shake hands with him) a wave of intolerance for age and learning swept over me. I told Lucy if she didn't mind I'd run along home, and stepped across the hall into a little stupid room with a roll-top desk in it, where we had left our raincoats, and rubbers. I put on my things and then stood staring a moment at a picture on the wall. I didn't know what the picture was. I simply looked at it blindly while I fought a sudden desire to cry. I hadn't wept before. But this dreadful house, these dry, drab people were such a contrast to my all-but-realized ambitions that it brought bitter tears to my eyes. Life at Gra.s.smere--_that_ was living! This was mere existence.

Just as I was groping for a handkerchief some little fool of a woman exclaimed, "Oh, there she is--in the study! I thought she hadn't gone. O Miss Vars, there's somebody I want you to meet, and meet you. Here she is, Mr. Jennings. Come in. Miss Vars," I was still facing the wall, "Miss Vars, I want to introduce Mr. Jennings." I turned finally, and as I did so she added, "Now, I must go back to Dr. Fuller. I was afraid you'd gone," and out she darted. I could have shot her.

Mr. Jennings came straight across the room. Through a blur I caught an impression of height, breadth and energy. His sudden hand-grasp was firm and decisive. "How do you do?" he said, and then abruptly observed my tears.

"You've caught me with my sails all down," I explained.

"Have I?" he replied pleasantly. "Well, I like sails down."

"Please do not think," I continued, "that I am often guilty of such a thing as this. I'm not. Who was that woman anyhow?"

"Oh, don't blame her," he laughed, and he stepped forward to look at the picture which I had been staring at. I was busy putting away my handkerchief. "Who was that woman?" Mr. Jennings repeated, abruptly turning away from the picture back to me, "Who was she? I'll tell you who she was--a good angel. Why," he went on, "I'd got into the way of thinking that sympathy as expressed by tears had gone out of style with the modern girl. They never shed any at the theater nowadays, I notice.

I'm glad to know there is one who hasn't forgotten how."

I stepped forward then to find out what manner of picture it was to cause such a tribute to be paid me. It was called "The Doctor." A crude bare room was depicted. The light from a lamp on an old kitchen table threw its rays on the turned-aside, face of a little girl, who lay asleep--or unconscious--on an improvised bed made of two chairs drawn together. Beyond the narrow confines of the cot the little girl's hand extended, wistfully upturned. Seated beside her, watching, sat the big kind doctor. Anxiety, doubt were in his intelligent face. Near an east window, through which a streak of dawn was creeping, sat a woman, her face buried in the curve of her arms folded on the table. Beside her stood a bearded man, brow furrowed, his pleading eyes upon the doctor, while his hand, big, comforting, rested on the woman's bowed shoulders.

A cup with a spoon in it, a collection of bottles near-by--all the poor, human, useless tools of defense were there, eloquent of a long and losing struggle. Every one who recalls the familiar picture knows what a dreary, hopeless scene it is--the room stamped with poverty, the window stark and curtainless, the woman meagerly clad, the man bearing the marks of hards.h.i.+p.

Suddenly in the face of all that, Mr. Jennings softly exclaimed, "That's living."

Only five minutes ago I had said the same thing of life at Gra.s.smere.

"Is it?" I replied. "Is that living? I've been wondering lately. I thought--I thought--it's so poor and sad!" I remonstrated.

"Poor! Oh, no, it's rich," he replied quickly, "rich in everything worth while. Anyhow, only lives that are vacuums are free from sadness."

"Are lives that are vacuums free from happiness, too?" I enquired.

He took my question as if it was a statement. "That's true, too, I suppose," he agreed.

"How hopeless," I murmured, still gazing at the picture, but in reality contemplating my own empty life. He misunderstood.

"See here," he said. "I believe this little girl here is going to pull through after all. Don't worry. I insist she is. That artist ought to paint a sequel--just for you," he added, and abruptly he unfolded his arms and looked at me squarely for the first time. "I didn't in the least get your name," he broke off. "The good angel flew away so soon."

I told him.

"Oh, yes, Miss Vars. Thank you. Mine's Jennings. People mumble names so in introductions." He glanced around at the piles of raincoats and racks of umbrellas. I already had my coat on. "You weren't just going, were you?" he inquired brightly. "For if you were, so was I, too. Perhaps you will let me walk along--unless you're riding."

I forgot just for a minute that I didn't want to see another man for years and years. He wasn't a man just then, but a bright and colorful illumination. He stood before me full of life and vigor. He was tall and straight. His close-cropped hair shone like gold in the pale gas-light, and there was a tan or glow upon his face that made me think of out-of-doors. His smile, his straightforward gaze, his crisp voice, had brightened that dull little room for me. I went with him. Of course I did--out into the rainy darkness of the late October afternoon, drawn as a child towards the glow of red fire.

CHAPTER XI

A WALK IN THE RAIN

Once on the side-walk Mr. Jennings said, "I'm glad to know your name, for I know you by sight already. Shall we have any umbrella?"

"Let's not," I replied. "I like the mist. But how do you know me?"

"I thought you would--like the mist, I mean--because you seem to like my woods so well."

"Your woods! Why--what woods?"

"The ones you walk in every day," he cheerfully replied; "they're mine. I discovered them, and to whom else should they belong?"

"I've been trespa.s.sing, then."

"Oh, no! I'm delighted to lend my woods to you. If you wear blinders and keep your eyes straight ahead and stuff your ears with cotton so you can't hear the trolleys, you can almost cheat yourself into thinking they're real woods with a mountain to climb at the end of them. Do you like that little rustic seat I made beside the lake?"

"Did you make it?"

"Yes, Sat.u.r.days, for recreation last year. I'm afraid it doesn't fit very well." He smiled from out of the light of a sudden lamp-post.

"You'll find a birch footstool some day pretty soon. I noticed your feet didn't reach. By the way," he broke off, "pardon me for quoting from you, but _I_ don't think back-season debutantes are like out-of-demand best-sellers--not all of them. Anyhow, all best-sellers do not deteriorate. And tell me, is this chap with the deep-purring car the villain or the hero in your novel--the dark one with the hair blown straight back?"

I almost stopped in my amazement. He was quoting from my life history.

"I don't understand," I began. I could feel the color in my cheeks. "I dislike mystery. Tell me. Please. How did you--I dislike mystery," I repeated.

"Are you angry? It's so dark I can't see. Don't be angry. It was written on theme paper, in pencil, and in a university town theme paper is public property. I found them there one day--just two loose leaves behind the seat--and I read them. Afterwards I saw you--not until afterwards," he a.s.sured me, "writing there every day. I asked to be introduced to you when I saw you tucked away in a corner there this afternoon drinking tea behind a fern, so that I could return your property."

"Oh, you've kept the leaves! Where are they?" I demanded.

"Right here. Wait a minute." And underneath an arc-light we stopped, and from out of his breast-pocket this surprising man drew a leather case, and from out of that two crumpled pages of my life. "If any one should ask me to guess," he went on, "I should say that the author of these fragments is a student at s.h.i.+rley" (the girls' college connected with the University) "and that she had strolled out to my woods for inspiration to write a story for an English course. Am I right?" He pa.s.sed me the leaves. "It sounds promising," he added, "the story, I mean."

I took the leaves and glanced through them. There wasn't a name mentioned on either. "A student at s.h.i.+rley!" I exclaimed. "How perfectly ridiculous! A school girl! Well, how old do you think I am?" and out of sheer relief I rippled into a laugh.

"I don't know," he replied. "How old are you?" And he laughed, too. The sound of our merriment mixing so rhythmically was music to my ears. I thought I had forgotten how to be foolish, and inconsequential.

"I don't know why it strikes me so funny," I tried to explain--for really I felt fairly elated--"I don't know why, but a story for an English course! A college girl!" And I burst into peals of mirth.

"That's right. Go ahead. I deserve it," urged Mr. Jennings self-depreciatively. "How I blunder! Anyhow I've found you can laugh as well as cry, and that's something. Perhaps now," he continued, "seeing I'm such a failure as a Sherlock Holmes, you will be so kind as to tell me yourself who you are. Do you live here? I never saw you before. I'm sure you're a stranger. Where is your home, Miss Vars?"

"Where is my home?" I repeated, and then paused an instant. Where indeed? "A wardrobe-trunk is my home, Mr. Jennings," I replied.