The next morning Roger reached the office at half past nine but Hilary
was already there. It was the first morning of a clear sunshine after
weeks of rain, and Hilary, even more groomed and manicured than usual,
looked as if he, too, had emerged into a new mood. There was a new
crispness in his manner; business efficiency sparkled in his quick
movements, his hasty finishing of a memorandum, the way he nodded to
Roger.
"Just a moment, Barton. I'll be through in a jiffy." Usually Roger
passed on to his own partitioned end of the room, and began on work
arranged the night before. But now he sat down and waited for Hilary.
Seated so, to one side and just a little behind Hilary, Roger saw him
spiritually foreshortened in the reflection of last evening. He looked
tight and secure, encased in his own assurances of safety as in a
spiritual corset. In a moment he had blotted the paper and turned to
Roger.
"Well," he began genially, "we didn't put it over, did we? Not
discouraged, I hope?"
"Not at all."
Hilary seemed balked, reconsidered what he had arranged for his next
sentence, and said instead:
"I rather over-reached myself in having Tom O'Connell. He's an
uncertain quantity, a regular firebrand. And he isn't the power he
thinks he is. When it comes to a pinch, the men will desert him.
They're more level-headed than he gives them credit for."
"The men forced to scab," Roger inquired, and, at the sharp look Hilary
darted to him, added "by the pinch of hunger?"
Hilary tapped for a moment, then made his decision with a quick frown.
"Barton, just where do you stand on that meeting last night?"
"With Tom O'Connell," Roger said and rose.
Hilary rose too. They looked at each other. Roger smiled first.
"I suppose it was bound to come," Hilary said, relieved.
"Yes. I have thought for some time--yes--it had to come." Roger almost
respected him for his honesty and when, with a truly regretful smile,
Hilary held out his hand, Roger was able to return the shake without
scorn. "We see things too differently to work well together."
"Yes. I feel like a fish out of water, more so every day."
Hilary twinkled. "Well, if you're going to jump into the sea I think
you're headed for--I hope you won't drown," was his comment.
"I'll try to swim," Roger agreed, and then followed a short talk of
work Roger was leaving undone. "If it will help out, I'll stay till you
get some one."
"N-o, you needn't. I'm taking on Hawthorne from the auditing department
as my private secretary. In fact, I'm thinking of changing the angle
of some of the work quite materially. It's no good wasting brains and
money on conditions that aren't ripe for them."
"None at all," Roger agreed.
At the end of a quarter of an hour it was over. Roger was out again in
the warm morning sunshine. And then he thought of Anne.
Would Anne understand? Once he would have been sure. Now he did not
know. He was getting to know less and less how Anne would stand on
many questions. Last night she had seemed to grasp the power and soul
of Tom O'Connell, and then, when the one great fetish of the sane
and respectable middle class was violated, when the conventional
sanctity of marriage was imperiled, Anne had retreated behind the
great bourgeois virtue of "decency," as smug and prim and spiritually
corseted as Hilary himself.
Roger went slowly up the long flight of steps and came on Anne, weeding
the trailers from a border of violets. Bent so over the bed, her hands
and arms spattered with rich black earth, her silvery blonde hair
shining in the sun, Anne looked like a little girl. Tenderness touched
Roger. Anne looked up.
"You've quit," she said quickly.
Roger nodded.
"I think I knew you would--last night." Anne rose and shook the loam
from her fingers. Still her tone had told Roger nothing.
"Do you think I did wrong? Are you angry?"
"Why, Roger, what a silly question. If you felt it was wrong to work
with him, of course you did right. And I would never be angry at your
doing what you thought was right. I don't think that's quite fair, do
you?"
And still Roger did not know how she really felt.
Anne picked up the basket and trowel and Roger took them from her.
"Finished? You look as if you had just started in." Ten minutes earlier
Roger would have been disappointed that Anne could go on with the
ordinary day's work in face of the great event; now he resented her
silent attitude that the course of the day had been terminated by his
act. He walked beside her to the kitchen door, but it seemed impossible
to go in between walls and leave the pungent earth and blue sky.
"I say, let's celebrate. Let's go over to Tamalpais. We've never taken
that scenic trip. We'll make a whole day of it, have lunch at the
inn." Still, in her centuries of rest, the Sleeping Beauty lay along
the ridge. "Look at the old girl, isn't she clear? I was always a bit
uncertain about her nose, but there it is. Quite a feature; looks as if
she were sniffing this gorgeous day. Well, do we sniff too?"
Anne smiled and put her gardening things on their shelf by the door.
"Can't, dear, not to-day. Mamma's been waiting for me to come up and
finish that house dress. To-day's the best for her. Pretty soon I won't
have a thing I can wear."
"I wish you wouldn't do so much sewing, Anne. Can't you buy baby
things and--and maternity clothes? I'd a lot rather you did or would
hire somebody, than refuse to go on picnics with me," he ended with a
pleading, boyish look, that did not influence Anne in the least. It
seemed hardly the time to suggest buying clothes or hiring help.
"Yes. But it's so much cheaper. I don't mind sewing."
Roger felt his pleasure in the picnic die. "All right, honey, run along
if you really want to. But let's go to somewhere for dinner to-night. I
feel spaghetti-ish. How's Ramillotti's?"
"Let's wait and see how we feel then," Anne parried. "A celebration
that's all cut and dried beforehand isn't much of a celebration, is
it?"
And then, because Anne did look so pretty in her big gardening apron
standing in the full sunshine, Roger picked her up and kissed her.
"Don't sew too hard and get all tired out. I think I'll go down to the
library for a while. There's a lot of reading I've been wanting to do
for a long time. I'll get a chance now."
Until Anne reached Hilda's front door, she wondered what she would do
if her mother were out. She could scarcely sit on the front steps and
she would not go back. But she was just in time. Hilda was half way
downstairs when Anne rang.
"Of all people! I just knew something nice was going to happen to-day."
Hilda trilled with a gay laugh, for Anne rarely came in the morning,
and Hilda adored all-day visits.
"You were going out, mamma."
"Not any place I had to. I just couldn't stay in alone to-day." They
went upstairs hand in hand.
"I thought, perhaps, we might finish that gingham. The idea of it's
hanging round half done has gotten on my nerves."
"Never felt more like sewing. A nice long day ahead always seems to
have so much more time in it than the same number of hours chopped up
during the week. You ought to be glad Roger doesn't come home to lunch,
Anne. When I was working at Belle's baby clothes it seemed to me as
soon as I got started it was time to stop and fix lunch. I'll just put
these dishes out of the way and we'll get right at it."
She took off her things, carried the unwashed breakfast dishes into the
pantry and closed the door on them. The broken egg-shell and scraps of
toast on the stove she swept into the coal-scuttle, the crumbs from
the oilcloth-covered breakfast table followed, and the scuttle was
deposited on the back porch. While she rolled the sewing-machine in
from the hall, Anne swept the floor.
"This is nice." Hilda's eyes danced; even the gray curls on her neck
seemed to bob merrily. "Now, if you'll just slip off your dress, I'll
fit it."
When it was pinned to the right length, Hilda leaned back on her heels
and admired.
"That's a fine pattern. Wonderful how they get things regulated now--no
riding up in front as you get bigger. Why, you won't scarcely show in
that at all, right up to the end."
Anne felt the same touch of distaste she always did when her mother
referred to her physical condition. There was something in Hilda's
manner that stripped the miracle to its physiological basis, and,
although she tried not to, Anne always felt naked before it. She had
endured a really difficult half-hour when she had first told Hilda of
Roger Mitchell Barton.
"It's pretty. What's more important, it will keep clean a long time
without washing."
Hilda laughed. "Getting practical at last. Nothing like a baby for
doing that. Do you remember the arguments we used to have when you were
fourteen, about that black sateen petticoat? You always insisted that
it must be just as dirty as if it were white, and wanted to send it to
the laundry every week?"
Anne nodded. How she had loathed dark clothes supposed not to show the
dirt! "I must have been a nasty child, always fussing about something."
"You weren't at all. But you were pretty finicky and highfalutin. I
never did know what was going to send you off. And how you loved pretty
things! Even as a tiny baby, I always felt you enjoyed having your best
things on. You used to feel one dress, rub your little hands up and
down it softly--it was really a lovely cambric; papa's boss's wife sent
it; her baby had outgrown it--and goo and smile. I suppose you would
have a fit to see his Highness dressed in any one else's cast-offs, but
I was glad to get it. How far along's the layette?"
"Most of the under-things are done, not quite all. I haven't begun on
dresses."
"I thought you were going to buy those, the best ones?"
"No--I don't--think I will. They'll be cheaper to make."
"But they're such close sewing and you don't like that kind of work,
tucks and hemstitching. Don't be a penny-wise and a pound-foolish and
get all frazzled out, Anne."
"No--at least--I won't be a pound-foolish. Roger's left Mr. Wainwright."
"Oh!" Hilda gasped. "Oh, Anne, when did it happen?"