Grace turned to a waiting customer with a kindlier feeling for all the
world. She was uncertain whether in like circumstances she would have
been capable of the kindness and generosity Evelyn had manifested. It
pleased her to believe that her education in the ways of the changing,
baffling world was progressing.
Evelyn Cummings was evidently a young woman without illusions; she
knew exactly how to manage a temperamental husband. Marriage, as Grace
viewed it with the three different illustrations afforded by Kemp,
Trenton and Cummings, was of the realm of insubstantial things. Even
the spectacle offered in her own home by her father and mother, between
whom disappointment and adversity had reared a wall no less grim
because of their steadfast loyalty, was hardly convincing on the other
side of the picture. Stephen Durland and his wife were held together
by habit, by a deeply implanted sense of duty to their children. Grace
could not remember when her father had kissed her mother, or in any way
manifested any affection for her. And yet in the beginning they must
have loved each other. She wondered whether it was always like that!
She had given up all hope of hearing again from Trenton when on the
tenth day she received a note postmarked New York, that set her heart
fluttering.
My Dear Little Girl:
What must you think of me! I think pretty poorly of myself, I can
tell you. Picked up a cold on my way East. Pretended it didn’t amount
to anything; motored down into New Jersey for a week-end with some
old friends. Got chilled on the drive; pneumonia almost. My host
was afraid I’d die on his hands and made a frightful row--couple of
doctors, nurse and all the other frills.... I had no way of letting
you know. Found your letter when I came into town this morning. I’m
away behind on my jobs.... The great thing is that I want to see you
and look into those dear, dark eyes again.... One day at twilight
down there in the country, I thought of you so intently that I really
brought you into the room! The nurse was sitting beside the bed,
then suddenly you were there, your dark head clearly outlined in
the dusk. You lifted your hand to touch your hair--that’s a pretty
trick you have! You have so many dear ways--and you smiled--another
sweet way you have!--the smile coming slowly, like a dawn, until it
brightened all the world. The illusion was so perfect that it wasn’t
an illusion at all, but really you! I was terribly indignant at the
nurse when she turned on the light and I lost you.... The doctor says
I may travel in three or four days and my thoughts carry me in only
one direction. You haven’t sent me the telegram I hoped for; never
mind about that. Please wire me that you are well. And if you put in
a word to say that you want to see me I shall be the happiest man
alive. Be assured of my love always.
He hadn’t forgotten her; he really cared! She moved with a quicker
step; her work had never gone so smoothly. While she had been
doubting him, trying to put him out of her heart he had been ill.
She was unsparing in self-accusation for what now seemed the basest
disloyalty. She tried to picture the room to which his longing had
summoned her. Those lines in his letter moved her deeply and set her to
speculating whether such a thing might not be possible in the case of
two beings who loved each other greatly.
There was no intimation in the letter that his wife had been with him
in his illness. Grace grew bitter as she thought of Mrs. Trenton, who
was probably roaming the world preaching a new social order to the
neglect of her husband. In countenancing Trenton as a lover Grace found
Mrs. Trenton’s conduct her most consoling justification. It came down
to this, that if Ward Trenton’s wife failed in her marital obligations
there was no justice in forbidding him to seek happiness elsewhere.
This view was in fact advanced in Mary Graham Trenton’s “Clues to a New
Social Order.” It seemed a fair assumption that Mrs. Trenton wouldn’t
advocate ideas for all mankind that she wouldn’t tolerate in her own
husband.
At her lunch hour Grace went to the telegraph office and sent this
message:
“Greatly troubled by your illness. Please take good care of yourself.
You may be sure I shall be glad to see you.”
“Straight telegram, paid,” the clerk repeated perfunctorily, and swept
the message under the counter. The sending of the telegram gave Grace
a gratifying sense of kinship with the larger world which Trenton’s
love had revealed to her. She found happiness all the afternoon in
wondering just what he would be doing and how he would look when the
message reached him. She wrote that night the longest letter she had
yet written him. She thought often of what Irene had said about wanting
to be loved. To be loved, in the great way that Miss Reynolds had said
was the only way that counted,--this had become the great desire of her
heart. Old restraints and inherited moral inhibitions still resisted
her impulse to fashion her life and give herself as she pleased. She
meant to be very sure of Trenton and even more sure of her own heart
before committing herself further. She was not, she kept assuring
herself, an ordinary or common type. She dropped into her letter
several literary allusions and a few French phrases with a school
girl’s pride in her erudition. There were times when Grace was very
young!
Trenton’s next letter reported his complete recovery. He was working
hard to make up for lost time, but would leave for the West as soon as
possible and hoped to spend Christmas in Indianapolis. Incidentally
he had business there in which she might be able to assist him. This
was further explained in a typewritten enclosure which he asked her to
deliver to her father. He warned her that the inquiry might lead to
nothing, but there were certain patents held in Stephen Durland’s name
which he wished to investigate.
“The name Durland,” he wrote, “gave me a distinctly pleasant shock
when the memorandum turned up on my desk in the routine of the office.
There may be a place where I can use some of your father’s ideas; but
in this business we’re all pessimists. I appoint you my agent and
representative on the spot. Don’t let your father dispose of any of the
patents described in my letter till we can have an interview.”
She made the noon hour the occasion for one of her picnic lunches with
her father in his work shop.
He looked up from a model he was tinkering and greeted her with his
usual, “That you, Grace?”
“Very much Grace!” she answered, tossing her packages on the bench.
“What are you on today--perpetual motion or a scheme for harnessing the
sun?”
“A fool thing a man left here the other day; wanted me to tell him why
it didn’t work. It doesn’t work because there’s no sense in it.”
As he began to explain why the device was impracticable she snatched
off his hat and flinging it aside with a dramatic flourish handed him a
sandwich.
“Don’t waste your time on such foolishness; we’re only interested in
machines that work!”
She sprang upon the bench and produced Trenton’s letter.
“Let your eye roam over that, old top! And don’t tell me you’ve let
somebody take those things away from you.”
Durland pondered the letter, lifting the business sheet closer to his
eyes as he examined Trenton’s small neat signature. He walked to a
closet and extracted some papers from the confused mass within.
“Well, daddy, what’s the answer?”
“I got those patents all right; they cover my improvements on my old
gas engine Cummings is making. There’s already been a fellow nosing
round asking about ’em; from Cummings I guess. I got something now
that’s going to interest everybody that’s making motors; something I
been working at two or three years. Cummings can’t have ’em. He hasn’t
got any right to ’em!”
His eyes flashed as his hatred of Cummings for the moment possessed
him. Grace had never taken seriously her father’s hints that Cummings
might have got rid of him too soon. She had never before seen
him so agitated. He paced the floor, reiterating that his former
associate should never profit by his improvements on any of the old
Cummings-Durland devices. He paused, picked up an apple and bit into it
savagely.
“Now, daddy,” said Grace, “it isn’t at all like you to flare up that
way. Mr. Trenton hasn’t a thing to do with Cummings; I happen to know
that. But he’s a business adviser and particular friend of Kemp.”
“Kemp!” Durland repeated, lifting his head with a jerk. “You think
maybe Kemp’s interested? Kemp could use these patents; there isn’t a
thing in these improvements that wouldn’t fit right into Kemp’s motor!”
“That’s perfectly grand! Now that you’ve got your patents, what you
want to do is to sit back and wait. There must be something pretty good
in your ideas or Mr. Trenton wouldn’t be interested. Wouldn’t it be
wonderful if the dollars would begin to roll in?”
“I’ve been fooled a lot of times, Grace,” he answered, picking up
his hat, staring at it as though it were an unfamiliar thing and
clapping it on his head. “I guess you better not say anything about
this at home. If it doesn’t come to anything I don’t want your mother
disappointed.”
“Of course not; it’s our big secret, daddy. I just love having secrets
with you. After the row at home the other night about Mr. Trenton’s
niece we’d better never mention him.”
“What was that all about, Grace?” he asked frowning. “I didn’t get what
Ethel was drivin’ at.”
“Just making herself disagreeable, that’s all. I told a fib, but Ethel
had no business to attack me that way before guests.”
“Ethel’s kind o’ different somehow,” he said, drawing the back of
his hand across his mouth. “I guess she means all right. Funny, you
children ain’t any of you alike,” he went on ruminatively. “I don’t
ever seem to get much out o’ Ethel and Roy.”
“Roy and Ethel are both fond of you, daddy. And you know I adore you;
I’m simply crazy about you!”
She pounced upon him and threw her arms about his neck, laughing at his
struggles to avoid the kisses she distributed over such parts of his
face as were free of grime.
“You’re a mighty fine girl, Grace. There mustn’t anything happen to
you,” he said, freeing himself.
“Oh, you needn’t be afraid, you dear angel! Nothing’s going to happen
to me! Here’s where I skip--vamoose--disappear! I’m going to take you
to a show tonight--yes, I am! You be awfully surprised when I spring it
at supper.”