The Grain of Dust Part 19

As he entered the main room his glance sought the corner where Miss Hallowell was ensconced. She happened to look up at that instant. With a radiant smile she bowed to him in friendliest fas.h.i.+on. He colored deeply, frowned with annoyance, bowed coldly and strode into his room.

He fussed and fretted about with his papers for a few minutes, then rang the bell.

"Send in Miss Pritchard--no, Mr. Gowdy--no, Miss Hallowell," he said to the office boy. And then he looked sharply at the pert young face for possible signs of secret cynical amus.e.m.e.nt. He saw none such, but was not convinced. He knew too well how by a sort of occult process the servants, all the subordinates, round a person like himself discover the most intimate secrets, almost get the news before anything has really occurred.

Miss Hallowell appeared, and very cold and reserved she looked as she stood waiting.

"I sent for you because--" he began. He glanced at the door to make sure that it was closed--"because I wanted to hear your voice." And he laughed boyishly. He was in high good humor now.

"Why did you speak to me as you did when you came in?" said she.

There was certainly novelty in this direct attack, this equal to equal criticism of his manners. He was not pleased with the novelty; but at the same time he felt a lack of the courage to answer her as she deserved, even if she was playing a clever game. "It isn't necessary that the whole office should know our private business," said he.

She seemed astonished. "What private business?"

"Last night," said he, uncertain whether she was trifling with him or was really the innocent she pretended to be. "If I were you, I'd not speak as friendlily as you did this morning--not before people."

"Why?" inquired she, her sweet young face still more perplexed.

"This isn't a small town out West," explained he. "It's New York. People misunderstand--or rather--" He gave her a laughing, mischievous glance--"or rather--they don't."

"I can't see anything to make a mystery about," declared the girl. "Why, you act as if there were something to be ashamed of in coming to see me."

He was observing her sharply. How could a girl live in the New York atmosphere several years without getting a sensible point of view? Yet, so far as he could judge, this girl was perfectly honest in her ignorance. "Don't be foolish," said he. "Please accept the fact as I give it to you. You mustn't let people see everything."

She made no attempt to conceal her dislike for this. "I won't be mixed up in anything like that," said she, quite gently and without a suggestion of pique or anger. "It makes me feel low--and it's horribly common. Either we are going to be friends or we aren't. And if we are, why, we're friends whenever we meet. I'm not ashamed of you. And if you are ashamed of me, you can cut me out altogether."

His color deepened until his face was crimson. His eyes avoided hers. "I was thinking chiefly of you," he said--and he honestly thought he was speaking the whole truth.

"Then please don't do so any more," said she, turning to go. "I understand about New York sn.o.bbishness. I want nothing to do with it."

He disregarded the danger of the door being opened at any moment. He rushed to her and took her reluctant hand. "You mustn't blame me for the ways of the world. I can't change them. Do be sensible, dearest. You're only going to be here a few days longer. I've got that plan for you and your father all thought out. I'll put it through at once. I don't want the office talking scandal about us--do you?"

She looked at him pityingly. His eyes fell before hers. "I know it's a weakness," he said, giving up trying to deceive her and himself. "But I can't help it. I was brought up that way."

"Well--I wasn't. I see we can never be friends."

What a mess he had made of this affair! This girl must be playing upon him. In his folly he had let her see how completely he was in her power, and she was using that power to establish relations between them that were the very opposite of what he desired--and must have. He must control himself. "As you please," he said coldly, dropping her hand.

"I'm sorry, but unless you are reasonable I can do nothing for you." And he went to his desk.

She hesitated a moment; as her back was toward him, he could not see her expression. Without looking round she went out of his office. It took all his strength to let her go. "She's bluffing," he muttered. "And yet--perhaps she isn't. There may be people like that left in New York."

Whatever the truth, he simply must make a stand. He knew women; no woman had the least respect for a man who let her rule--and this woman, relying upon his weakness for her, was bent upon ruling. If he did not make a stand, she was lost to him. If he did make a stand, he could no more than lose her. Lose her! That thought made him sick at heart. "What a fool I am about her!" he cried. "I must hurry things up. I must get enough of her--must get through it and back to my sober senses."

That was a time of heavy pressure of important affairs. He furiously attacked one task after another, only to abandon each in turn. His mind, which had always been his obedient, very humble servant, absolutely refused to obey. He turned everything over to his a.s.sociates or to subordinates, fighting all morning against the longing to send for her.

At half past twelve he strode out of the office, putting on the air of the big man absorbed in big affairs. He descended to the street. But instead of going up town to keep an appointment at a business lunch he hung round the entrance to the opposite building.

She did not appear until one o'clock. Then out she came--with the head office boy!--the good-looking, young head office boy.

Norman's contempt for himself there reached its lowest ebb. For his blood boiled with jealousy--jealousy of his head office boy!--and about an obscure little typewriter! He followed the two, keeping to the other side of the street. Doubtless those who saw and recognized him fancied him deep in thought about some mighty problem of corporate law or policy, as he moved from and to some meeting with the great men who dictated to a nation of ninety millions what they should buy and how much they should pay for it. He saw the two enter a quick-lunch restaurant--struggled with a crack-brained impulse to join them--dragged himself away to his appointment.

He was never too amiable in dealing with his clients, because he had found that, in self-protection, to avoid being misunderstood and largely increasing the difficulties of amicable intercourse, he must keep the feel of iron very near the surface. That day he was for the first time irascible. If the business his clients were engaged in had been less perilous and his acute intelligence not indispensable, he would have cost the firm dear. But in business circles, where every consideration yields to that of material gain, the man with the brain may conduct himself as he pleases--and usually does so, when he has strength of character.

All afternoon he wrestled with himself to keep away from the office. He won, but it was the sort of victory that gives the winner the chagrin and despondency of defeat. At home, late in the afternoon, he found Josephine in the doorway, just leaving. "You'll walk home with me--won't you?" she said. And, taken unawares and intimidated by guilt, he could think of no excuse.

Some one--probably a Frenchman--has said that there are always in a man's life three women--the one on the way out, the one that is, and the one that is to be. Norman--ever the industrious trafficker with the feminine that the man of the intense vitality necessary to a great career of action is apt to be--was by no means new to the situation in which he now found himself. But never before had the circ.u.mstances been so difficult. Josephine in no way resembled any woman with whom he had been involved; she was the first he had taken seriously. Nor did the other woman resemble the central figure in any of his affairs. He did not know what she was like, how to cla.s.sify her; but he did know that she was unlike any woman he had ever known and that his feeling for her was different--appallingly different--from any emotion any other woman had inspired in him. So--a walk alone with Josephine--a first talk with her after his secret treachery--was no light matter. "Deeper and deeper," he said to himself. "Where is this going to end?"

She began by sympathizing with him for having so much to do--"and father says you can get through more work than any man he ever knew, not excluding himself." She was full of tenderness and compliment, of a kind of love that made him feel as the dirt beneath his feet. She respected him so highly; she believed in him so entirely. The thought of her discovering the truth, or any part of it, gave him a sensation of nausea. He was watching her out of the corner of his eye. Never had he seen her more statelily beautiful. If he should lose her! "I'm mad--_mad_!" he said to himself.

"Josephine is as high above her as heaven above earth. What is there to her, anyhow? Not brains--nor taste--nor such miraculous beauty. Why do I make an a.s.s of myself about her? I ought to go to my doctor."

"I don't believe you're listening to what I'm saying," laughed Josephine.

"My head's in a terrible state," replied he. "I can't think of anything."

"Don't try to talk or to listen, dearest," said she in the sweet and soothing tone that is neither sweet nor soothing to a man in a certain species of unresponsive mood. "This air will do you good. It doesn't annoy you for me to talk to you, does it?"

The question was one of those which confidently expects, even demands, a sincere and strenuous negative for answer. It fretted him, this matter-of-course a.s.sumption of hers that she could not but be altogether pleasing, not to say enchanting to him. Her position, her wealth, the attentions she had received, the flatteries--In her circ.u.mstances could it be in human nature not to think extremely well of oneself? And he admitted that she had the right so to think. Still--For the first time she sc.r.a.ped upon his nerves. His reply, "Annoy me? The contrary," was distinctly crisp. To an experienced ear there would have sounded the faint warning under-note of sullenness.

But she, believing in his love and in herself, saw nothing, suspected nothing. "We know each other so thoroughly," she went on, "that we don't need to make any effort. How congenial we are! I always understand you.

I feel such a sense of the perfect freedom and perfect frankness between us. Don't you?"

"You have wonderful intuitions," said he.

It was the time to alarm him by coldness, by capriciousness. But how could she know it? And she was in love--really in love--not with herself, not with love, but with him. Thus, she made the mistake of all true lovers in those difficult moments. She let him see how absolutely she was his. Nor did the spectacle of her sincerity, of her belief in his sincerity put him in any better humor with himself.

The walk was a mere matter of a dozen blocks. He thought it would never end. "You are sure you aren't ill?" she said, when they were at her door--a superb bronze door it was, opening into a house of the splendor that for the acclimated New Yorker quite conceals and more than compensates absence of individual taste. "You don't look ill. But you act queerly."

"I'm often this way when they drive me too hard down town."

She looked at him with fond admiration; he might have been better pleased had there not been in the look a suggestion of the possessive.

"How they do need you! Father says--But I mustn't make you any vainer than you are."

He usually loved compliment, could take it in its rawest form with fine human gusto. Now, he did not care enough about that "father says" to rise to her obvious bait. "I'm horribly tired," he said. "Shall I see you to-morrow? No, I guess not--not for several days. You understand?"

"Perfectly," replied she. "I'll miss you dreadfully, but my father has trained me well. I know I mustn't be selfish--and tempt you to neglect things."

"Thank you," said he. "I must be off."

"You'll come in--just a moment?" Her eyes sparkled. "The butler will have sense enough to go straight away--and the small reception room will be quite empty as usual."

He could not escape. A few seconds and he was alone with her in the little room--how often had he--they--been glad of its quiet and seclusion on such occasions! She laid her hand upon his shoulders, gazed at him proudly. "It was here," said she, "that you first kissed me. Do you remember?"

To take her gaze from his face and to avoid seeing her look of loving trust, he put his arms round her. "I don't deserve you," he said--one of those empty pretenses of confession that yet give the human soul a sense of truthfulness.

"You'd not say that if you knew how happy you make me," murmured she.

The welcome sound of a step in the hall give him his release. When he was in the street, he wiped his hot face with his handkerchief. "And I thought I had no moral sense left!" he reflected--not the first man, in this climax day of the triumph of selfish philosophies, to be astonished by the discovery that the dead hands of heredity and tradition have a power that can successfully defy reason.

He started to walk back home, on impulse took a pa.s.sing taxi and went to his club. It was the Federal. They said of it that no man who amounted to anything in New York could be elected a member, because any man on his way up could not but offend one or more of the important persons in control. Most of its members were nominated at birth or in childhood and elected as soon as they were twenty-one. Norman was elected after he became a man of consequence. He regarded it as one of the signal triumphs of his career; and beyond question it was proof of his power, of the eagerness of important men, despite their jealousy, to please him and to be in a position to get the benefit of his brains should need arise. Norman's whole career, like every career great and small, in the arena of action, was a derision of the ancient moralities, a demonstration of the value of fear as an aid to success. Even his friends--and he had as many as he cared to have--had been drawn to him by the desire to placate him, to stand well where there was danger in standing ill.