It was an afternoon very much like many other afternoons. Leadenhall
stood on the corner waiting for her. He was so weary, and still so much
absorbed in the work he had just left, he had waited for her so often,
and he was so sure of her coming, that he scarcely thought of her at
all.
It was five o’clock of a fierce July day, and the sun still blazed
unabated in a cloudless sky. Before him, along Fifth Avenue, went an
unceasing stream of busses and motor cars. The noise, the heat, the
reek, the tireless movement, exasperated him. He wanted to go home for a
cold shower and a quiet smoke. He wanted to be let alone.
Then he saw her, and there was nothing else in the world. She was coming
down a side street with that eager, beautiful gait of hers, so straight
and gallant, so self-possessed and debonair--and so touchingly slight
and young. He noticed for the first time, with an odd contraction of the
heart, how thin she had grown this summer.
She had stopped at the corner. She smiled at him across the stream of
traffic, and a pang shot through him, because her dear face was so
tired. He raised his hat, but he could not smile in return. All the
other things--the minor things that had troubled him--were lost in his
great anxiety for Jacqueline. He dashed across the street, with the luck
of the foolhardy, and stood before her, looking at her in alarm.
“Jacko!” he said. “Jacko! You’re tired!”
“Well, I know it,” she answered, laughing. “So are you! Who isn’t, this
awful weather?”
But she stopped laughing as their eyes met. They stood there, looking at
each other in silence for a long minute. Then the color rose in her
cheeks, and she turned her head aside.
“Barty, don’t be silly,” she said.
He did not answer. He took her arm to pilot her across the street again.
It seemed to him a terribly frail arm. He seized it tightly, in a sort
of panic. She meant to make a laughing protest against being hustled
along in this fashion, but somehow the light words would not come. A
glance at Barty’s face made her heart sink.
“Oh, he is going to be silly!” she thought, in despair. “And I’m so
tired, and so hot, and so--unconvincing!”
It had been decided between them that spring that they were to be simply
good pals--until a more propitious season. They were not even engaged.
No, they were both perfectly free. She had insisted that it should be
so, and so it was. She was free to worry about him and yearn over
him--even to cry over him night after night, if she liked. He was free,
too, to do as he chose; but when she looked at him now, at the close of
this weary day--
“You don’t take one bit of care of yourself!” she said suddenly, in an
angry, trembling voice. “I know perfectly well you’ve been smoking too
much, and I know you didn’t eat a proper lunch. Just look at you!”
He was startled.
“There’s nothing the matter with me, dear girl,” he said. “It’s only--”
“I wish you could see yourself!” she cried. “You have a big black smudge
on your chin!”
“Well, that’s not fatal,” he said, beginning to laugh; but then he saw
tears in her eyes. “Jacko! You’re nervous and upset. You’re overworked.
You’re tired. You’re--Jacko, you look like the devil!”
“Thank you!”
“I can’t stand it,” he went on doggedly, “and I won’t stand it! I want
to take care of you!”
“You said you wouldn’t be silly, Barty!”
“Silly!” said he. “I’ve been a fool! I won’t go on like this. If you
love me at all, if you care for me even a little, you won’t ask me to.”
They had entered the park, and were walking down their usual path at
their usual brisk pace, only that to-day Barty held her by the arm, like
a captive, and their customary friendly conversation failed. The hour
she had dreaded had come.
Barty was not easy to manage. Her ideal had been not to manage him, not
to use any feminine arts to beguile him, but to be frankly and
splendidly his comrade; but somehow that didn’t work. She could not
reason with Barty, she could not persuade him, she only could make him
do as she wished by the power she had over him. He loved her so much
that for love he would yield, and she did not want that. A true friend,
a good pal, would not stoop to managing.
“Barty,” said she, “let’s sit down here and talk.”
So he sat beside her on a bench and listened. All the time she spoke,
she saw--with dismay, and yet with a queer little thrill of
delight--that her words made absolutely no impression. Of course, she
spoke of Stafford, because Stafford was the dominant factor in their
problem. If Barty were to marry now, it would seriously offend Stafford,
and that would be the height of folly.
A queer fellow, Stafford was--sensitive and touchy. He had done a great
deal for Barty, and he expected Barty to appreciate it. Certainly he
gave a great deal, but it had always seemed to Jacqueline that Stafford
got the best of the bargain.
He was one of the foremost architects in the city. It was an honor for
the obscure young Barty to be singled out by such a man, to be taken
into his office, and, just recently, to be asked to share a studio
apartment with the great man; but in return he got all Barty’s honest
enthusiasm, his fidelity and gratitude. He had Barty’s companionship,
Barty’s sympathy for the many affronts this rough world offers to
sensitive men.
Indeed, Jacqueline thought, he had a most unfair share of Barty’s life;
but Barty did not see that, and she was not going to mention it. Not for
any consideration on earth would she speak one word against Barty’s
hero. Not for any possible gain to herself would she tarnish his faith
in his friend, or injure his prospects for the future. She simply spoke
in a quiet, reasonable way of all that he owed Stafford.
“And when it means so much,” she said, “to both of us--when it affects
your whole future--”
“Well,” said Barty deliberately, “I dare say you’re right.” She glanced
up hopefully. “But I don’t care,” he went on. “I love you, and I won’t
go on like this any longer! I’ve tried, and I can’t--that’s all. I can’t
stand seeing you thin and miserable and shabby--”
“I’m not shabby, Barty!”
“You are--for _you_,” he said. “You ought to have everything in the
world! You’re so beautiful and wonderful! And you won’t let me do
anything for you. You won’t--”
“I would let you,” she said hurriedly. “I’d let you--I’d love you to do
all sorts of things for me, Barty. I’d marry you to-morrow, if--”
“If what?” he demanded.
This idea had been so long in her mind, these words had been so often on
the tip of her tongue, that now she was going to speak them, whether he
liked it or not.
“If you’d just get married--unostentatiously,” she said.
“Unostentatiously?” he repeated. “I don’t know what you mean, Jacko.”
“I mean, just go down to the City Hall and get married, and you go on
with your work, and I’ll go on with mine, and we won’t tell any one.”
“Oh!” said he. “You mean secretly, do you?”
He was looking at her with an expression she had never seen on his face
before. There was a hard, cold look in his gray eyes.
“It’s no use talking about that,” he said curtly, “because I won’t do
it.”
But he did. Later on, she remembered that hour with bitter regret and
remorse--the hour of her victory and his defeat. She had been unfair,
cruelly unfair. She had made use of those tears which he could not
endure. She had held out to him the prospect of gaining everything and
losing nothing, of having her and yet not alienating Stafford.
He was ambitious, and she tempted him. She took advantage of his
hot-headed, unreasonable love for her, and she conquered him; and his
defeat was bad for her and worse for him.
She meant only to do him good, to help him; but she was very young, and
she was a woman, and she had all a woman’s blind and beautiful and
absurd determination that her beloved should have his cake and eat it,
too. Barty needed her, and he should have her; and he needed Stafford,
and he should have Stafford too. Barty should have everything--except
his own way.