“It’s only a little after ten,” said Bob as he started the car, “and
I’m going to touch the edge of the country before I take you home. Is
that all right? How long’s it been since we went driving together?”
“Centuries! It was just after you moved.”
“I was afraid you’d forgotten. I remember the evening perfectly.
We stopped at the Country Club to dance and just played around by
ourselves. But we did have a good time!”
His spirits were soaring; through his talk ran an undercurrent of
mischievous delight in his freedom. “It’s just bully to see you again!”
he repeated several times. “While I was playing I kept thinking of the
royal fun we used to have. Do you remember that day our families had
a picnic--we were just kids then--and you and I wandered away and got
lost looking for wild flowers or whatever the excuse was; and a big
storm came up and our mothers gave us a good raking when we came back
all soaked and everybody was scared for fear we’d tumbled into the
river!”
To Grace the remembrance of this adventure was not nearly so thrilling
as the fact that Bob, now married, still chortled over the recollection
and was obviously delighted to be spending an evening with her while
his wife enjoyed herself in her own fashion at home. He would probably
not tell Evelyn that he had taken the daughter of his father’s old
business associate driving, a girl who clerked in a department store
and was clearly out of his social orbit. Here was another episode which
Grace knew she dared not mention at home; Ethel and her mother would
be horrified. But Grace was happy in the thought that Bob Cummings
still found pleasure in her company even if she was Number Eighteen at
Shipley’s and took and accepted tips from kindly-disposed customers. He
halted the car at a point which afforded a broad sweep of moonlit field
and woodland.
“You know, Grace, sometimes I’ve been hungry and positively homesick
for a talk with you such as we’ve had tonight.”
“Please drive on! You mustn’t say things like that.”
“Well, that’s the way I feel anyhow. It’s queer how I haven’t been able
to do anything I wanted to with my life. I’m like a man who’s been
pushed on a train he didn’t want to take and can’t get off.”
Here again was his old eager appeal for sympathy. He was weak, she
knew, with the weakness that is a defect of such natures. It would
be perfectly easy to begin a flirtation with him, possibly to see
him frequently in some such way as she saw him now. It was wrong to
encourage him, but her curiosity as to how far he would go overcame her
scruples; it would do no harm to lead him on a little.
“You ought to be very happy, Bob. You have everything to make you
happy!”
“I’ve made mistakes all down the line,” he answered with a flare of
defiance. “I ought to have stood out against father when he put me into
the business. I’m no good at it. But Merwin made a mess of things;
father’s got him on a ranch out in Montana now, and Tom’s got the bug
to be a doctor and nothing can shake him. So I have to sit at a desk
every day doing things I hate and doing them badly of course. And for
the rest of it----!”
He stopped short of the rest of it, which Grace surmised was his
marriage to Evelyn. It was his own fault that he had failed to control
and manage his life. He might have resisted his father when it came to
going into business and certainly it spoke for a feeble will if he had
married to gratify his mother’s social ambitions. She was about to bid
him drive on when he turned toward her saying:
“I feel nearer to you, Grace, than to anybody else in the world! It was
always that way. It’s got hold of me again tonight--that feeling I used
to have that no matter what happened you’d know, you’d understand!”
“Those days are gone, Bob,” she said, allowing a vague wistfulness to
creep into her tone. “I mustn’t see you any more. We’ve both got our
lives to live. You know that as well as I do. You’re just a little down
tonight; you always had moods like this when you thought the world
was against you. It’s just a mood and everything will look differently
tomorrow.”
“But I’ve got to see you, Grace; not often maybe, but now and then.
There’ll be some way of managing.”
“No!” she exclaimed, her curiosity fully satisfied as to how far he
would go. “I’ll be angry with you in a minute! This is positively the
last time!”
“Please don’t say that!” he pleaded. “I wouldn’t offend you for
anything in the world, Grace.”
“I know you wouldn’t, Bob,” she said kindly. “But there are some things
that won’t do, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” he conceded with the petulance of a child reluctantly
admitting a fault.
“I’m glad you still like me, but you know perfectly well this kind of
thing’s all wrong. I mustn’t see you again.”
“But Grace, what if I just have to see you!”
“Oh, don’t be so silly! You’ll never just have to. You’ve got a wife to
tell your troubles to.”
She wasn’t sure that she wanted to make it impossible for him to see
her again or that she really preferred that he tell his troubles to his
wife. His troubles were always largely imaginary, due to his sensitive
and impressionable nature.
“You needn’t remind me of that!” he said.
“Oh, start the car! Let’s all be cheerful! We might as well laugh as
cry in this world. Did you see the game Saturday? I had a suitor turn
up from the university and we had a jolly time.”
“Who was he?” Bob demanded savagely.
“Oh, Bob, you’re a perfect scream! Well, you needn’t be jealous of
_him_.”
“I’m jealous of every man you know!” he said.
“Now, you’re talking like a crazy man! Suppose I were to tell you I’m
jealous of Evelyn! Please remember that you forgot all about me and
married another girl quite cheerfully with a church wedding and flowers
and everything. You needn’t come to me now for consolation!”
She refused to hear his defense from this charge, and mocked him by
singing snatches of college songs till they were in town. When they
reached the Durland house she told him not to get out.
“I won’t tell the family you brought me home; they wouldn’t understand.
Thanks ever so much, Bob.”
Mrs. Durland and Ethel were waiting to hear of her evening with Miss
Reynolds and she told everything except that she had met Cummings
there. She satisfied as quickly as possible their curiosity as to Miss
Reynolds and her establishment, and hurried to her room eager to be
alone. She assured herself that she could never love Bob Cummings,
would never have loved him even if their families had remained
neighbors and it had been possible to marry him. He wasn’t her
type--the phrase pleased her--and in trying to determine just what type
of man most appealed to her Trenton loomed large in her speculations.
Within a few weeks she had encountered two concrete instances of the
instability of marriage. Love, it seemed, was a fleeting thing and
loyalty had become a by-word. Bob was only a spoiled boy, shallow,
easily influenced, yet withal endowed with graces and charms. But
graces and charms were not enough. She brought herself to the point of
feeling sorry for Evelyn, who probably refused to humor and pet Bob and
was doubtless grateful that he had music as an outlet for his emotions.
It was something, though, to have found that he hadn’t forgotten; that
there were times when he felt the need of her. She wondered whether he
would take her word as final and make no further attempt to see her.