The next day at noon Grace went to a trust company where she kept an
account that represented the aggregate of small gifts of cash she had
received through a number of years at Christmas and on her birthdays.
As she waited at the window for her passbook, Bob Cummings crossed
the lobby on his way to the desk of one of the officers. She wondered
how he would greet her if they met, and what her attitude toward
him ought to be in view of the break between her father and Isaac
Cummings. She found a certain mild excitement as she pondered this,
her eyes occasionally turning toward Cummings as he leaned against
the railing that enclosed the administrative offices of the company.
Grace had always liked and admired him; and it had hurt her more than
she ever confessed that after the removal of the Cummingses from the
old neighborhood Bob had gradually ceased his attentions. Perhaps
his family had interfered as her mother had hinted; but it made no
difference now that he had married and passed completely out of her ken.
Cummings had finished his errand and was walking quickly toward the
door when he caught sight of her.
“Hello, Grace! I’m mighty glad to see you,” he said cordially.
“Why--” He checked himself and the smile left his face abruptly as he
remembered that their friendly status had changed since their last
meeting.
Grace relieved his embarrassment promptly by smilingly putting out her
hand.
“I’m very glad to see you, Bob,” she said. “It’s really been a long
time, almost three years!”
“Just about,” he answered slowly.
“Old Father Time has a way of romping right on!” she remarked lightly.
They were in the path of customers intent upon reaching the cages and
she took a step toward the door when he said, glancing toward a long
bench at the side of the room, “If you’re not in a rush let’s sit down
a minute. There’s something I’d like to say to you.”
“Oh, very well,” she assented, surprised but not displeased.
He was the son of a man who had dismissed her father from the concern
in which their names had long been identified; but in so public a
place there could be no harm in talking to him. Her old liking for him
at once outweighed any feeling she had against his father. He was a
big boy when she was still a small girl and he was her first hero. He
was always quiet, thoughtful and studious, with a chivalrous regard
for the rights and feelings of others. They had been chums, confiding
their troubles to each other. It was to her that he had revealed his
succession of boyish ambitions, and she had encouraged his fondness for
music when other youngsters twitted him for taking piano lessons like
a girl. He had never thought he would like business; he wanted to be a
musician, with the leadership of an orchestra as his ultimate goal. It
was because his brother Merwin had from an early age shown a refractory
spirit that the parental authority had thwarted Bob’s aspirations; one
of the sons at least had to go into the business and Bob was now a
vice-president of the reorganized Cummings Manufacturing Company.
“I’ve been hoping for a chance to see you, Grace. It’s not easy to
speak of it but I want you to know I’m sorry things turned out as they
did. About your father and the business, I mean. You must all of you
feel pretty hard about it. I hope it doesn’t mean any change in your
plans for finishing at the university. I know how you’d counted on
that.”
“I’ve given it up; I’m home to stay,” she answered. “But you needn’t
feel badly about it. Of course it must have been necessary--about
father and the business, I mean.”
He was embarrassed by her cheerful acceptance of the situation, and
stammered, leaving one or two sentences unfinished before he got hold
of himself.
“I want you to know I did all I could to prevent the break. It seemed
a pity after your father and mine had been together so long. But
for some time the plant had needed an active superintendent; just
trusting the foremen of the shops wouldn’t serve any longer, and you
won’t mind my saying it but your father never liked executive work. I
suggested another way of handling it that would have made Mr. Durland a
vice-president and free to go on with his experiments, but I couldn’t
put it through. I did my best; honestly I did, Grace!”
There was the old boyish eagerness in this appeal. He regarded her
fixedly, anxious for some assurance that she understood. She understood
only too well that her father had become an encumbrance, and that in
plain terms the company couldn’t afford to keep him at his old salary
any longer. It was unnecessary for Bob to apologize; but it was like
him to seize the first possible moment to express his sympathy. She
had always felt the gentleness in him, which was denoted in his blue
eyes, which just now shone with the reflection of his eagerness to
set himself right with her. He turned his hat continually in his
hands--they were finely shaped, with long supple fingers. At the base
of his left thumb there was a scar, almost imperceptible, the result
of a slash with a jack knife one day in the Durland yard where he had
taken her dare to bring down a particular fine spray of blossoms from
an old cherry tree. In his anxiety to deliver it unbroken on the bough
he had cut himself. She remembered her consternation at seeing the
injury, his swaggering attempt to belittle it; his submission to her
ministrations as she tied it up with a handkerchief. She was twelve
then; he sixteen. He saw the direction of her eyes, lifted the hand and
with a smile glanced at the scar. She colored as she realized that he
had read her thoughts.
“That was centuries ago,” he said. “We did use to have good times in
your back yard! Do you remember the day you tumbled out of the swing
and broke your arm? You didn’t cry; you were a good little sport.” And
then, his eyes meeting hers, “You’re still a mighty good sport!”
“If I never have anything worse than a broken arm to cry over I’ll be
lucky,” she answered evasively.
There was no excuse for lingering; he had expressed his regret at her
father’s elimination from Cummings-Durland, and it served no purpose
to compare memories of the former friendly relation between the young
people of the two families, which were now bound to recede to the
vanishing point. But he seemed in no haste to leave her. She on her
side was finding pleasurable sensations in the encounter. He had been
her first sweetheart, so recognized by the other youngsters of the
neighborhood, and they had gone to the same dancing class. And he had
kissed her once, shyly, on a night when the Cummingses were giving a
children’s party. This had occurred on a dark corner of the veranda.
It had never been repeated or referred to between them, but the memory
of it was not without its sweetness. She was ashamed of herself for
remembering it now. She wondered whether he too remembered it. And
there had been those later attentions after the Cummingses had moved
away that had encouraged hopes in her own breast not less than in
her mother’s that Bob’s early preference might survive the shock of
the Cummingses’ translation to the fashionable district, with its
inevitable change of social orientation.
Ethel and her mother had questioned the happiness of his marriage, and
her mind played upon this as she sat beside him, feeling the charm he
had always had for her and wondering a little about the girl he had
married whom she had never seen and knew of only from the talk at home.
But two years was not long enough; it was ridiculous to assume that he
wasn’t happy with his wife.
“We certainly had a lot of fun over there,” he was saying. “I suppose
the park fountain plays just the same and the kids still sail their
boats in the pond.”
“Yes, and go wading and fall in and have to be fished out by the
policeman! But we can’t be kids always, Bob!”
“No; that’s the worst of it!” he said with a tinge of dejection.
“I’m all grown up now and have a job. I’m a working girl!”
“No!” he exclaimed incredulously. “And Roy----”
“Oh, Roy’s to finish his law course; he’ll be through in June.”
“That’s too bad, Grace!” he exclaimed. “It’s you who ought to have
stayed on! You’re the very type of girl who ought to go to college. It
would have made all the difference in the world to you! And Ethel--is
she at work too?”
“Yes; she’s in an insurance office and I’m in Shipley’s!” she went on
smiling to relieve his evident discomfiture. “I’m in the ready-to-wear
and I’ll appreciate any customers you send my way. Call for Number
Eighteen!”
“Why, Grace! You don’t mean it! You have no business doing a thing like
that. You could do a lot better.”
“Well, I didn’t just see it. I’m an unskilled laborer and haven’t time
to fit myself for teaching, stenography or anything like that. You get
results quicker in a place like Shipley’s. That is, I hope to get them
if I’m as intelligent as I think I am!”
“I’m terribly sorry, Grace. I feel-- I feel-- as though we were
responsible, father and I; and we are, of course. There ought to have
been some other way for you; something more----”
“Please don’t! That’s the way mother and Ethel talk.”
She rose quickly, feeling that nothing was to be gained by continuing
the discussion of matters that were irrevocably settled. And,
moreover, his distress was so manifest in his face that she feared the
scrutiny of passers-by.
“Good-bye, Bob,” she said. “I’m awfully glad I met you. Please
don’t trouble at all about what can’t be helped. I haven’t any hard
feeling--not the slightest.”
“I don’t like it at all,” he said impatiently.
He kept beside her to the entrance, where she gave him a nod and
smile and hurried away. She was troubled at once for fear she hadn’t
expressed cordially enough her appreciation of his sympathy. Very
likely they would never meet again; there was no reason why they
should. He had merely done what was perfectly natural in view of their
old friendship, made it clear that he was sorry her father had been
thrust out of the company of which he had been one of the founders. She
was unable to see anything in the interview beyond a wish on his part
to be kind, to set himself right. And it was like Bob to do that.