It was really spring now, a wild, gay April day, and Miss Torrance felt
unusually restless. She was wearing a new suit, dark blue, very plain,
very smart, and what with that and the spring in the air, she felt
inclined to festivity. She thought it would be nice if she was going to
meet somebody for lunch. Well, of course she wasn’t, but instead of
going to the tea room where she had been going for years, she went to a
near-by hotel.
The first person she saw there was Olive, very cozily lunching with Mr.
Robertson.
Miss Torrance got away without being seen, and went back to the office,
for she did not want any lunch now. She went home a little earlier than
usual, but she left nothing undone that should have been done.
Olive noticed nothing amiss with her friend. When she left the office,
she didn’t hurry. She was glad to go slowly through the sweet afternoon.
The western sky was clear and clean, ready for the down going of the
sun, and the quiet and beautiful light of that most beautiful hour shone
full in her face. Seeing her at that moment, you could well understand
why poor Mr. Martin had been so suddenly overwhelmed.
She gave a last glance at the sky before opening the front door. Then
she entered the house and went upstairs. The door was closed, so she
knocked.
“Come in!” answered Miss Torrance.
She was on her knees, packing her trunk.
“What are you doing?” cried Olive.
“I’m packing,” answered Miss Torrance. “I’m--going away.”
“But why? Where?”
“I saw you!” cried Miss Torrance. “I saw you--with that man!”
Olive was silent, not by any means from guilt or confusion, but because
she was struggling against an unwonted anger. She thought of a good many
things to say in regard to this unwarrantable interference with her
affairs, but she did not say one of them. Instead, she looked down at
Miss Torrance, who was working away in hot haste, and every one of her
friend’s generosities and queer little kindnesses rose up before her.
She crossed the room and knelt by the other woman’s side, putting an arm
about her shoulders.
“Oh, my dear!” she said gently. “If I’ve done anything to--to hurt you,
can’t you forgive me?”
“It’s not that,” said Miss Torrance, in a hard, cold voice. “I’ve
nothing to forgive. It’s simply that I’ve--I’ve made a fool of myself.”
The tears were rolling down her cheeks, but she pretended not to know
it. “I’ve made the worst sort of fool of myself--and I will not face
that man again! I will not!”
“But, darling,” said Olive gently, “if you feel like that, we’ll both
go.”
“No!” cried Miss Torrance, with a loud sob. “I will not come between you
and your precious Mr. Martin!”
“What do you mean?” said Olive. “I don’t--” She stopped. “That’s silly,
darling,” she went on, in an airy sort of way. “I’ve forgotten all about
Mr. Martin, and he’s gone off to sea and forgotten all about me, long
ago.”
“He has not!” said Miss Torrance. “He wrote you two letters, and I tore
them up. Take your arm away, please, and let me get up!”
Olive, too, had risen.
“My letters!” she said faintly. “I didn’t think you would--”
“Well, now you know,” said Miss Torrance. “Now you know what a--a beast
I am!”
“Stop!” said Olive.
“I won’t!” said Miss Torrance. “I pretended to myself that I wanted to
save you, but to-day, when I saw you with that man, I knew that I was
nothing but a jealous, meddlesome old--”
Suddenly they were in each other’s arms, clinging to each other and
weeping.
“Of course I’m going with you!” said Olive. “You might have known!”
V
It was nothing--nothing at all--for Olive to give up the hope of seeing
Mr. Martin again. Twice only had her eyes rested upon his jolly,
sunburned face, and it ought to have been very easy to forget that. His
letters she had never seen, so they were surely nothing to think about.
Altogether, he and his letters were only the briefest sort of episode in
a life that might go on for thirty, forty, even fifty years longer.
She had so much to be thankful for--a good position, a comfortable home,
and the immeasurable gratitude and devotion of her friend. Well, to be
sure, she was as quietly good-tempered as usual, and gave no sign that
she had not forgotten the whole thing; yet Miss Torrance knew that Olive
hadn’t forgotten.
She could read it in the girl’s face, and she could read it in her own
heart. She could understand how Olive felt about her lost Mr. Martin.
She understood very well what it was to remember one face, one voice, so
constantly that all others were a weariness.
“It really is like that!” she sometimes said to herself, with a sort of
awe. “I didn’t believe it, but it’s true!”
She never spoke about this to Olive, nor did she think it necessary to
tell her that a week after they left the boarding house she had
returned there, to see Mr. Robertson, and to get from him the address of
the roving Mr. Martin. Mr. Robertson had gone away, the landlady didn’t
know where, so Miss Torrance was spared that humiliation, and had no
inclination to mention it. She had done away with the young man so
effectively that now, when she would have given her right hand to get
him back for Olive, she couldn’t find him.
She tried her very best to atone. She no longer attempted to interfere
in Olive’s affairs, for she no longer felt herself supremely competent
to manage other people’s affairs. Indeed, the poor little woman was
sometimes so subdued, so crushed by remorse, that it was all Olive could
do to enliven her.
There were times when Olive found it rather a strain to enliven any one,
when she would have welcomed any one who would perform that kind office
for her. To-day was one of those days. The work in the office had been
very heavy, and the weather was warm and sultry. She wanted to go home
and rest, and yet she was reluctant to enter the new boarding house, so
discouragingly like the old one.
She closed the front door behind her, and sighed. The servant had
forgotten to light the gas, and the hall was inky black. There wasn’t a
sound in the house, and the only sign of life was a steamy smell of rice
and mutton ascending from the basement.
Olive was about to go upstairs when the doorbell rang furiously, and she
thought she would wait and see what it meant. There might be a telegram
for herself. She knew of no living person to send her one, but still,
who knows what may happen?
Anyhow, she lit the gas herself, and pretended to be looking at the
letters on the rack. She heard the maid coming up the basement stairs.
The bell rang again, louder and longer.
“Mercy on us!” said the servant. “You’d think it was a fire!” She opened
the door, and in came a man, in great haste.
“Miss Torrance!” he said. “I want to see Miss Torrance at once!”
“She ain’t in,” said the maid, as if pleased.
“Look here!” said the stranger. “I made them tell me at her office where
she lived, and this is the place, and I’m going to see her!”
“She ain’t--” the servant began again, when Olive stepped forward.
“Will I do?” she asked.
“You!” he cried.
Olive was not so much startled as he, because she had been looking at
Mr. Martin ever since he entered. Nor did she seem pleased. Mr. Martin
had apparently come here filled with rage against her Miss Torrance, and
that she would not tolerate.
“What was it you wanted?” she inquired coldly.
“I came,” said Mr. Martin firmly, “about this story--in this magazine.
It’s--it’s an outrage!”
“Oh!” cried Olive. “Oh! The--the story?”
He looked at her sternly, yet with a sort of compassion.
“Do you mean that you know about it?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Olive, in a faint little voice. “But--I didn’t think it was
so--so bad.”
Mr. Martin looked at her with growing horror.
“Look here!” he said. “You don’t mean--you can’t mean--it was signed
with a man’s name, but I felt sure Miss Torrance wrote it, because it’s
based on a story I told her myself, about Robertson. I called him
‘Smith,’ but I suppose she knew all the time--”
“No!” Olive interposed. “No! Mr. Martin, I’m awfully sorry, but--I wrote
that story!”
“What? You?”
“I’m awfully sorry,” Olive said again, and she looked so. “You see, Mr.
Robertson told me the story himself, and he didn’t say that it wasn’t to
be used.”
“Naturally he didn’t. It never entered his head that you would--”
“But, you see, I didn’t mean--I didn’t think--I only thought it was
funny.”
“Funny!” cried Mr. Martin, all his indignation returning. “You thought
it was funny to say--wait a minute!” He pulled a magazine out of his
pocket and turned the pages. “This!” he said in a terrible voice. “You
say, ‘The man went bowed under the weight of his infidelity. False to
his duty, false to his inmost self, he--’”
“I didn’t!”
“Here it is in black and white. ‘Raising his glass in his shaking hand,
he drank again, his bleared eyes peering--’”
“I did not!” cried Olive.
“You’ve made him out a drunken old beach comber--Robertson, the finest
fellow who ever lived! You’ve got all the facts there--any one could
recognize ’em. You say--”
Olive could endure no more of this nightmare. She snatched the magazine
out of his hands. “Remorse,” the story was called, and the author’s name
was given as “John Hunt.” She suddenly collapsed upon the bottom step of
the stairs.
For a moment the young man remained the just and stern judge. Then he
bent over her and said, in a voice of quite human solicitude:
“I’m--perhaps you didn’t realize. Look here--I wish I hadn’t said all
that! I’m--please don’t cry!”
“I’m not crying,” replied Olive, in a stifled voice. “Please forgive me!
It really isn’t funny, but--oh, oh, I just can’t help it!”
He bent nearer.
“Are you laughing?” he demanded incredulously.
“Oh, please forgive me! It’s horrible, but--I’ll stop in a moment. You
see, that awful story is Miss Torrance’s, but I wrote a story, too--only
mine was better, I think, and funnier. You see, we both--”
“You and Miss Torrance each wrote a story about Robertson?”
“Yes, both of us, and neither of us knew. Oh, imagine the editors, and
Miss Torrance, and poor Mr. Robertson, and you, and me--”
“Personally, I don’t see anything--” he began in a frigid tone, but it
was of no use.
The dull, dingy old house rang with his great, hearty laugh.