The rest of that troublous day passed hazily for Mary Louise. She
avoided Maida, who in her turn seemed disposed to avoid her. She made
a hasty escape after the tea-serving hour and hurried home.
The sun was setting as she entered her room; the tall spire of the
First Church was all ruddy with the glow of it as she threw open the
window, and as she paused for a moment with palms on the sill, she
looked down into the deepening shadows of back passages and alleys,
nooks and recesses, where lurked ash and garbage cans and heaps of
rubbish. A black cat came slinking around the corner of an old
gray-brick stable, disappeared for a moment in a passage, and a moment
later she saw him spring to the top of a rotting board fence, pause,
and then lightly let himself down into the shadow of the other side.
And just a hundred feet to the left--she could barely see past the
front cornice of the four-story dwelling below her--Broadway was
thronged with its sleek, pleasure-loving, home-going crowd. You could
never tell the back from the front.
She withdrew from the window, walked slowly across the room, and sank
into a chair. She felt curiously ill at ease and sat staring blankly
before her at the wall.
For the difficulty, which in some ways was trivial enough, no solution
presented itself. Maida Jones, her companion and business associate,
had developed a side that had never been taken into account. Or
perhaps she had merely presented it for the first time. So much the
worse. If so, then her judgment had been all the more faulty.
She had thought she had known Maida, known her well enough to count on
her. She had known she was lazy, known she was a bit slipshod and
indifferent. To offset this she was good-natured and compliant. She
had had the money, enough for her share in floating the venture. There
had been no complexity in the problem at the start.
It was unfair for her to pan out so. Mary Louise felt in a way that
she had been swindled. She had felt all along that she could dominate
the tone of the establishment, and in fact she had done so. Maida was
not made of the stuff to furnish opposition. That had been one of the
considerations of the partnership. And in all the months of their
association nothing positive had ever cropped out in her. Why, she did
not have the strength to say "no." That was why--Mary Louise's thought
checked itself sharply here and paused. For a while her mind wore
itself out in short, futile meanderings of suppositions. Directly the
dim headlines of the paper she had brought with her claimed her
attention, and then tiring of that she dropped the paper and stared
emptily out of the window. Why, she decided suddenly out of nowhere,
she didn't even know the girl.
A swinging white finger of light came feeling across the sky in her
window. She watched it grope for the brass ball on the peak of the
spire, saw it slip off and fumble and come feeling again, settle with
a determined grasp as if to say, "There, I've got you," and then go
wandering off eastward across the sky. It was the searchlight from the
new Odeon theatre, she remembered. And it might be barely possible
that it was entirely an honourable affair. They might really care for
each other, grotesque as it might seem. Mary Louise granted for the
moment that she had been a detached, impersonal sort of companion and
such a thing might well be possible without her knowledge. But if such
were the case, Maida needs must be apprised at once of the
proprieties. The tea room was a business proposition purely. She would
wait a bit until the proper time and straighten out the kinks.
Somewhat relieved in mind, she leaned back in the chair and rocked
slowly. She began to grow restless, and thought for a moment to switch
on the light. But the room was a bare sort of thing, had nothing of
her in it, and the thought of its bleak primness was repellent. She
decided that a walk was what she needed, to clear out the cobwebs.
Slowly she arose to her feet and groping along the edge of the table,
felt her way to the door. An hour's walk would be enough; she would
not need her coat. Slowly and thoughtfully she opened the door.
Just beyond the threshold in the dim-lit hall stood Maida, fumbling in
her bag for her key. She looked up in alarm as Mary Louise opened the
door. It was ludicrous, the expression on the flat face. Behind her
stood the cook--the man from the army. He turned away as Mary Louise
stepped out and pretended to look out the hall window.
Mary Louise had decided on a more moderate course. She had decided to
forget the matter for the time being. But the sight of the boy, there
in the hall, was disconcerting. Nevertheless, it was with a forced
cheeriness that she spoke:
"Don't need your key, after all. I was just going out for a little
while." It was trite enough civility.
Maida looked up at her dully, and Mary Louise stepped to the left and
was on the point of passing on down the hall. As she walked away, the
boy moved to the door, fingering his hat, and took one step across the
threshold after Maida, who had preceded him, into the darkened room.
And then Mary Louise turned around. At her step he paused and looked
quickly up.
"There's a chair by the window," she said, indicating a group of
armchairs clustered there and a tall fern in a glazed pot on a
pedestal. "You can wait there." She had spoken on the impulse, and her
voice sounded strangely vibrant and remote even to herself, like the
voice of a third person. She was trembling slightly.
The boy looked at her, flushed a little, seemed undecided.
The light switched on and Maida appeared at the door.
"Come on in, Tim," she said, looking strangely at Mary Louise.
An overpowering anger came swelling in the latter's veins. She walked
back to the door and stood before the placid bovine figure of her
room-mate. For a moment she could not trust herself to speak, she was
trembling so.
"I said for him to wait outside--there," she repeated with quavering
emphasis.
Maida's face looked flat and large and sober. There was a great, vast,
pasty blank of cheek from her sombre eyes to the downcast corner of
her mouth. "I heard you," she replied. "Come in, Tim."
Mary Louise felt impotent. She watched the face before her, stolid,
immutable, expressionless. She felt suffocated for breath. She plucked
at her skirts with her fingers. Finally she gasped out:
"Not--not into my room. If he does, I'm through with it--and you. You
understand?"
Maida shrugged her shoulders, and a slight smile curled the corners of
her lips. She turned away.
"That's your lookout, not mine. You're making an awful fool of
yourself, McCallum."
And then she closed the door.
Mary Louise walked blindly down the hall. She stumbled into the
elevator and did not answer when the elevator boy spoke to her. When
she gained the street the rush of the night air against her face
steadied her a bit. She turned off promptly north and struck out for
the down-town district.
By the time she had walked a block her faculties were returning. It
had all been preposterous, crude. She had blindly lost her temper.
Something kept crying out to her that she was an old maid. Perhaps she
shouldn't have minded. She was finicky and squeamish. A girl had to
have some privacy in the place she entertained her company. But
Maida--and the cook! The thought of that flat, pasty, sullen face
stirred in her a sudden repulsion.
She crossed Broadway and turned west toward Fourth, walking rapidly.
Maida! Maida! The girl she had known for eighteen months in the Red
Cross tea room! The girl who had sat through a year of war without
ever changing the vacuity of her smile! Sat--that was it, positively
sat. A woman with a figure like that had no right to a lover. And a
cook! An ordinary cook, hired out by the week! His beady, close-set
eyes and hair sleeked back. Like a rat! And _she_ was mixed directly
up in it, _she_--Mary Louise McCallum, the daughter of Angus McCallum.
She shuddered and hurried on.
As she passed Chestnut Street they were going into the "movie"
theatre. There was a long queue stringing out on the pavement. She was
hardly aware of it but kept on walking straight north. More than one
head was turned to watch her as she plunged resolutely on. Her
apparent fixity of purpose was incongruous for that time of the
evening.
The preposterousness of the whole affair kept hammering at her
thoughts. To think that she had tied herself up with such a creature.
To think that she had been so blind to the coarseness, the commonness
that must have been there all along. What would Aunt Susie think about
it? What would they all think? And in her own room! The brazen,
callous nerve of the creature! Like a big, fat, lumbering ox. She
trembled all over with sensitiveness.
Before she knew it she had come to Main Street. Beyond her dipped the
hill that led to the river. The lamps were dim, and sparsely lighted
the alleyways and loading platforms of the dark, forbidding
warehouses. She realized suddenly that she must make some decision.
She could not go back to the room. Slowly and thoughtfully she crossed
the street and retraced her steps on the other side. What was she to
do? She could not go back. Not under any circumstances. The friends
she had were mere casual acquaintances; she could not call on them.
She passed out into the more crowded district again. She began to be a
little perturbed, forgot her anger; at least it was dimmed. Coming to
Spruce Street she saw the usual crowd of men hanging about the door of
the Ardmore. They always stood there, clustered about on the steps,
with their cigarettes and their half-burned cigars and their flashy
clothes and their burnt-out eyes and their appraising looks. For a
moment she contemplated crossing the street to avoid running the
gauntlet of their inspection. Where would she go then? Farther south
it was darker and more unfriendly, with great stretches of shade and
silence. She paused for a moment on the corner and watched the throng
about the steps across the street. People were hurrying in and out;
motors were humming; trolley gongs were clanging. She felt a sudden
fear of it, that familiar neighbourhood with the tea room less than a
block away. Hot, flushed, nervous, excited, she wanted to run
somewhere, slink down into a cool, quiet shelter as had the cat she
had seen from the window earlier in the evening. The world was a cruel
place. One had to know how to get along in it. Every scrap of
assurance seemed to have left her.
Suddenly she turned to the right and walked down Spruce Street. She
came to the lobby of the Patterson and walked boldly in. With her
pulses hammering she went up to the desk, took the pen, and signed
her name to the register.
A level-eyed man with a very naked head came forward and considered
her. His face was as cryptic as the outline on a mummy case. It was as
easy to read his thoughts. He merely inclined his head and looked
slightly away, suggesting that his ear was hers if she so desired.
"Single room with bath," faltered Mary Louise.
The clerk resumed his upright position. He looked at her gravely as
though she had said, "What will you take for your hotel?" He looked
past her into the vast stretches of the lobby and found there much for
philosophic speculation. Thus absorbed, he asked vacantly, "Any
luggage?"
"No," said Mary Louise. "I--it will be here in the morning."
He turned and stepped back into the sanctum of interwoven grilles and
partitions.
Mary Louise was desperately nervous. It seemed that a thousand eyes
were watching her; her back felt peppered with them. She shifted one
foot and leaned slightly against the desk. All about her men were
pressing up for mail, keys, reservations, information. She dared not
look around. There were no women in the constricted circle of her
vision except the telephone operator over to her left.
The clerk was taking a long time. She was getting even more anxious.
Suddenly she heard her name called. It startled her even while it
brought a tremendous sense of relief. She turned and Claybrook was
standing by her elbow.
"How's tricks?" he inquired.
For a moment she could not answer, only look at him gratefully.
"I've been out of town. Just got back. Was going to call you up this
evening, but I didn't have the chance," he went on.
She murmured something unintelligible.
"Waiting here for something?" At her nod of assent he came and stood
beside her, leaning his elbow on the desk, his gaze idly and
comfortably sweeping the lobby. "Hot to-night," he said.
The inscrutable clerk returned. Mary Louise felt his inspection before
she actually saw him. She turned, expectant.
"Sorry," he murmured. "Can't do anything for you."
Mary Louise received the blow standing. "But," she faltered, "Later
on?--I'm not in a hurry. Are you really all filled up?"
The clerk gravely smiled and shook his head.
She stared at him in desolate appeal. Her thoughts went rocketing off.
What was she going to do?
"How's this?" she heard Claybrook say. "Full up?" He had turned from
his idle inspection of the lobby. "Not in two weeks. You can rent a
floor in this hotel."
He looked at Mary Louise. "You want a room here?" He seemed a bit
surprised.
"Yes," she stammered. "For the night."
Claybrook turned to the clerk. "Tell McLean Miss McCallum wants a room
here for the night," he said.
"But----" interrupted the clerk.
Claybrook cut him off short, tossing a card across the desk. "Take
that to McLean and tell him Miss McCallum wants a room. And give her
the best service you've got."
The clerk disappeared again. Mary Louise was hot and embarrassed and
uncomfortable. She looked up and saw Claybrook regarding her
quizzically but kindly. He seemed very big and she warmed to him. He
asked her no questions. She was about to speak when the clerk returned
again and, calling a bell-boy, tossed out a key to him, bowed, and
murmured, "Six fourteen," indicating Mary Louise.
Before following the waiting boy, she held out her hand impulsively to
Claybrook and looked into his eyes.
"Thank you so much," she said. "I don't know what I would have done
without you. It's all so ridiculous. Tell you all about it sometime."
She left him standing there in front of the desk, with a puzzled look
upon his face, a big, reliant, kindly figure. He had not asked her a
single question. He had come to her assistance when she needed it
sorely. His was a friendship worth having.
She waited until the bell-boy had left her in the room and then she
closed the door and locked it. Then she threw herself face down upon
the bed and buried her flushed cheeks in the pillow. What a
disgraceful, disreputable affair it all was. All on account of her own
blindness and folly. She felt like a little child helped out of a
scrape. But all the mischief was not remedied. She at least could find
other lodgings to-morrow. She would not wait another day. Thanks to
Claybrook she was in off the street. Suppose she had had to spend the
night on a park bench? Once that had had a humorous sound to it.
Claybrook _was_ a masterful person. He had made that clerk step
around. How humiliating it had all been.
She got up and switched off the lights. Then she lay down again and
watched the twinkle of the lamps of an electric sign about a block
away across the roofs. What was she going to do about Maida? What was
she going to do about the tea room? Something would have to be done.
It was impossible to go on with it any further.
She would have to buy Maida out. She could force her to sell, she
supposed. But where would she get the money? She was already in debt
for part of her share. Perhaps Maida would buy her out. What would she
do then? Go back to Bloomfield? Just when the venture was beginning
to pan out nicely? Not without a struggle, she wouldn't. Back and
forth she debated the question, her mind a welter of confused
decisions.
After a while she fell asleep....
Two days later she met Claybrook again. Nothing had been decided.
Maida had seemed utterly indifferent. "Perfectly satisfied with things
as they are," she had said; there was a diabolical stubbornness in her
manner. She made capital of her own inertia. She was as cool as if
dealing with an entire stranger. Finally, after two days of backing
and filling, of bickering and contesting, she had named her price.
"Fifteen hundred," she had said and there was nothing in the way she
said it that gave the slightest hope that it would be any less. It was
a hold-up.
Mary Louise met Claybrook; she was passing through the lobby of the
Patterson where she still had her expensive room. He saw the trouble
in her face and drew her to the lounge in the ladies' entrance.
"What's wrong?" he said shortly. "You've been hard to catch
lately--something's on your mind."
"No, there isn't. Honestly," she protested. She saw that he was not to
be put off. Moreover, she was feeling entirely weak and helpless, no
longer the masterful and self-reliant female. And she told him the
story--most of it.
When she finished he smiled at her. He seemed genuinely amused. "It's
quite a tragedy," he admitted.
"And what am I going to do?"
"That's just the point," he agreed. "Has the tea room been making you
money? Does it look good to you?"
"Yes," she said. "Too good to let go of." And then she launched into a
digressive and rather vague prospectus of its activities and profits.
"How much money would it take?" he asked at length.
She told him.
"Well, then, forget it," he concluded. "I told you that if you got in
a jam, to call on me. Well, I was not talking just to hear myself
talk. I meant it." He paused and stared away at the opposite wall.
"Meet me here this afternoon at three and I'll have a check for you."
Mary Louise was for the moment incredulous. Then a great sense of
relief flooded over her, and then a feeling of regret.
"But I couldn't," she faltered.
"Why couldn't you?" He rose to his feet and looked down at her.
"I couldn't take money from you. You don't know what I'd do with it,
don't know what sort of business woman I am, or anything."
"I know enough to satisfy myself," Claybrook assured her soothingly.
"And I'm not giving you the money. You can write me out a note for
it. Six per cent. is better than four," he added. And then he smiled.
Two days later Maida Jones moved out and Mary Louise saw her no more.