"Not in the least. Absolutely without charm--and so homely--no, not
homely--commonplace. No, that's not right, either. She had a startling
way of fading and blazing out. One moment she seemed a blank--pale,
lifeless, colorless, a nobody. The next minute she became--amazingly
different. Not the same thing every time, but different things."
Frederick Norman was too experienced a dealer with women deliberately to
make the mistake--rather, to commit the breach of tact and
courtesy--involved in praising one woman to another. But in this case it
never occurred to him that he was talking to a woman of a woman.
Josephine Burroughs was a lady; the other was a piece of office
machinery--and a very trivial piece at that. But he saw and instantly
understood the look in her eyes--the strained effort to keep the
telltale upper lip from giving its prompt and irrepressible signal of
inward agitation.
"I'm very much interested," said she.
"Yes, she was a curiosity," said he carelessly.
"Has she been there--long?" inquired Josephine, with a feigned
indifference that did not deceive him.
"Several months, I believe. I never noticed her until a few days ago.
And until to-day I had forgotten her. She's one of the kind it's
difficult to remember."
He fell to glancing round the house, pretending to be unconscious of the
furtive suspicion with which she was observing him. She said:
"She's your secretary now?"
"Merely a general office typewriter."
The curtain went up for the second act. Josephine fixed her attention on
the stage--apparently undivided attention. But Norman felt rather than
saw that she was still worrying about the "curiosity." He marveled at
this outcropping of jealousy. It seemed ridiculous--it _was_ ridiculous.
He laughed to himself. If she could see the girl--the obscure,
uninteresting cause of her agitation--how she would mock at herself!
Then, too, there was the absurdity of thinking him capable of such a
stoop. A woman of their own class--or a woman of its corresponding
class, on the other side of the line--yes. No doubt she had heard
things that made her uneasy, or, at least, ready to be uneasy. But this
poorly dressed obscurity, with not a charm that could attract even a man
of her own lowly class--It was such a good joke that he would have
teased Josephine about it but for his knowledge of the world--a
knowledge in whose primer it was taught that teasing is both bad taste
and bad judgment. Also, it was beneath his dignity, it was offense to
his vanity, to couple his name with the name of one so beneath him that
even the matter of sex did not make the coupling less intolerable.
When the curtain fell several people came into the box, and he went to
make a few calls round the parterre. He returned after the second act.
They were again alone--the deaf old aunt did not count. At once
Josephine began upon the same subject. With studied indifference--how
amusing for a woman of her inexperience to try to fool a man of his
experience!--she said:
"Tell me some more about that typewriter girl. Women who work always
interest me."
"She wouldn't," said Norman. The subject had been driven clean out of
his mind, and he didn't wish to return to it. "Some day they will
venture to make judicious long cuts in Wagner's operas, and then they'll
be interesting. It always amuses me, this reverence of little people for
the great ones--as if a great man were always great. No--he _is_ always
great. But often it's in a dull way. And the dull parts ought to be
skipped."
"I don't like the opera this evening," said she. "What you said a while
ago has set me to thinking. Is that girl a lady?"
"She works," laughed he.
"But she might have been a lady."
"I'm sure I don't know."
"Don't you know _anything_ about her?"
"Except that she's trustworthy--and insignificant and not too good at
her business."
"I shouldn't think you could afford to keep incompetent people," said
the girl shrewdly.
"Perhaps they won't keep her," parried Norman gracefully. "The head
clerk looks after those things."
"He probably likes her."
"No," said Norman, too indifferent to be cautious. "She has no
'gentlemen friends.'"
"How do you know that?" said the girl, and she could not keep a certain
sharpness out of her voice.
"Tetlow, the head clerk, told me. I asked him a few questions about her.
I had some confidential work to do and didn't want to trust her without
being sure."
He saw that she was now prey to her jealous suspicion. He was uncertain
whether to be amused or irritated. She had to pause long and with
visible effort collect herself before venturing:
"Oh, she does confidential work for you? I thought you said she was
incompetent."
He, the expert cross-examiner, had to admire her skill at that high
science and art. "I felt sorry for her," he said. "She seemed such a
forlorn little creature."
She laughed with a constrained attempt at raillery. "I never should have
suspected you of such weakness. To give confidential things to a forlorn
little incompetent, out of pity."
He was irritated, distinctly. The whole thing was preposterous. It
reminded him of feats of his own before a jury. By clever questioning,
Josephine had made about as trifling an incident as could be imagined
take on really quite imposing proportions. There was annoyance in his
smile as he said:
"Shall I send her up to see you? You might find it amusing, and maybe
you could do something for her."
Josephine debated. "Yes," she finally said. "I wish you would send
her--" with a little sarcasm--"if you can spare her for an hour or so."
"Don't make it longer than that," laughed he. "Everything will stop
while she's gone."
It pleased him, in a way, this discovery that Josephine had such a
common, commonplace weakness as jealousy. But it also took away
something from his high esteem for her--an esteem born of the lover's
idealizings; for, while he was not of the kind of men who are on their
knees before women, he did have a deep respect for Josephine,
incarnation of all the material things that dazzled him--a respect with
something of the reverential in it, and something of awe--more than he
would have admitted to himself. To-day, as of old, the image-makers are
as sincere worshipers as visit the shrines. In our prostrations and
genuflections in the temple we do not discriminate against the idols we
ourselves have manufactured; on the contrary, them we worship with
peculiar gusto. Norman knew his gods were frauds, that their divine
qualities were of the earth earthy. But he served them, and what most
appealed to him in Josephine was that she incorporated about all their
divine qualities.
He and his sister went home together. Her first remark in the auto was:
"What were you and Josie quarreling about?"
"Quarreling?" inquired he in honest surprise.
"I looked at her through my glasses and saw that the was all upset--and
you, too."
"This is too ridiculous," cried he.
"She looked--jealous."
"Nonsense! What an imagination you have!"
"I saw what I saw," Ursula maintained. "Well, I suppose she has heard
something--something recent. I thought you had sworn off, Fred. But I
might have known."
Norman was angry. He wondered at his own exasperation, out of all
proportion to any apparent provoking cause. And it was most unusual for
him to feel temper, all but unprecedented for him to show it, no matter
how strong the temptation.
"It's a good idea, to make her jealous," pursued his sister. "Nothing
like jealousy to stimulate interest."
"Josephine is not that sort of woman."
"You know better. All women are that sort. All men, too. Of course, some
men and women grow angry and go away when they get jealous while others
stick closer. So one has to be judicious."
"Josephine and I understand each other far too well for such pettiness."
"Try her. No, you needn't. You have."
"Didn't I tell you----"
"Then what was she questioning you about?"
"Just to show you how wrong you were, I'll tell you. She was asking me
about a poor little girl down at the office--one she wants to help."
Ursula laughed. "To help out of your office, I guess. I thought you'd
lived long enough, Fred, to learn that no woman trusts _any_ man about
_any_ woman. Who is this 'poor little girl'?"
"I don't even know her name. One of the typewriters."
"What made Josephine jealous of her?"
"Haven't I told you Josephine was not----"
"But I saw. Who is this girl?--pretty?"
Norman pretended to stifle a yawn. "Josephine bored me half to death
talking about her. Now it's you. I never heard so much about so little."
"Is there something up between you and the girl?" teased Ursula.
"Now, that's an outrage!" cried Norman. "She's got nothing but her
reputation, poor child. Do leave her that."
"Is she very young?"
"How should I know?"
"Youth is a charm in itself."
"What sort of rot is this!" exclaimed he. "Do you think I'd drop down to
anything of that kind--in _any_ circumstances? A little working girl--and
in my own office?"
"Why do you heat so, Fred?" teased the sister. "Really, I don't wonder
Josephine was torn up."
An auto almost ran into them--one of those innumerable hairbreadth
escapes that make the streets of New York as exciting as a battle--and
as dangerous. For a few minutes Ursula's mind was deflected. But a
fatality seemed to pursue the subject of the pale obscurity whose very
name he was uncertain whether he remembered aright.
Said Ursula, as they entered the house, "A girl working in the office
with a man has a magnificent chance at him. It's lucky for the men that
women don't know their business, but are amateurs and too stuck on
themselves to set and bait their traps properly. Is that girl trying to
get round you?"
"What possesses everybody to-night!" cried Norman. "I tell you the
girl's as uninteresting a specimen as you could find."
"Then why are _you_ so interested in her?" teased the sister.
Norman shrugged his shoulders, laughed with his normal easy good humor
and went to his own floor.
On top of the pile of letters beside his plate, next morning, lay a note
from Josephine:
"Don't forget your promise about that girl, dear. I've an hour before
lunch, and could see her then. I was out of humor last night. I'm very
penitent this morning. Please forgive me. Maybe I can do something for
her. JOSEPHINE."
Norman read with amused eyes. "Well!" soliloquized he, "I'm not likely
to forget that poor little creature again. What a fuss about nothing!"