Ever since that memorable tea at Enoch’s, when he had covered Sue’s
hand with his own in the twilight, and sat there under the spell of her
voice, Joe had been working like a beaver. A whole week had passed,
and though they lived under the same roof, he had only seen Sue twice.
Once in the presence of her mother, and two days after Lamont’s visit,
which she did not mention, when he had taken her to see the menagerie
in Central Park. Those few moments in the twilight at Enoch’s had made
them friends--good friends--a brotherly sort of friendship, which Joe
was too frank and honest, and too timid to develop into anything like
Mr. Lamont’s European love-making, and which Sue was the happier for,
since she had not yet quite recovered from that tragic afternoon that
had left her dazed, and in a state of remorse that took all her courage
to conceal from her mother. There is nothing that wins the heart of
a pure young girl more than implicit confidence. Yet no one was more
in ignorance of this than Joe. In the Park they talked on before the
eagle and the bear, the sleepy lioness, and the alert pacing wolves,
of a lot of happy, wholesome things, and when he finally brought her
home she left him with her promise to walk with him again “whenever he
pleased,” and with that he left her, elated, remembering he had also
promised her a variety of things, one being that he was going to do his
best to make a success in his profession.
To Atwater’s slow amazement, a change had come over his partner--this
time for the better. Joe got down to the office on time, and left it
late. Atwater had a punctilious idea about time that disgusted Joe.
He even went so far as to place a neatly ruled pad in the entrance of
their modest office, with a pencil tethered by a string attached, so
that their two aids, the conscientious Swiss draftsman and the silent
Swede, whose methodical calculations on building strains guaranteed
that Joe’s artistic architectural dreams would not fall down and kill
people, might truthfully record the hour of the Swiss and the Swede’s
coming and their going. Joe considered it an insult. He appealed
to the dignity of his partner about it, as suggesting the rigorous
discipline of a sweat-shop or a penitentiary. He argued that both
the Swiss and the Swede were honorable fellows, whose heart and soul
were in their work, and that it was no way to get the best work out
of a man by treating him every morning and evening with humiliating
distrust and forcing him to swear to his presence to the minute over
his signature. Atwater was adamant, however. He could not see the
idyllic loyalty which Joe imagined. He explained to Joe that the Swiss
was a high-priced man; that time was money, and that they were paying
him fifty dollars a week; as for the Swede, he got thirty. Then there
was that baseball maniac of a red-headed office boy, who got five,
and who hoped some day to escape from slavery and pitch ball for a
salary. Atwater proved he was right. The Swede got to be popular in a
near-by café, and the conscientious Swiss fell in love with a girl who
lived on the horizon of Brooklyn; whereas the office boy forged the
lack of promptitude of both for remuneration enough to provide himself
liberally with pink ice-cream and cigarettes. And when finally Atwater
fired all three and replaced them by three seemingly worthy successors,
Joe began to see the wisdom of the time system, and even signed it
himself.
* * * * *
There were late afternoons now when Joe lighted the whistling
gas-jet over his drawing-board and kept on working after the closing
hour--Atwater often leaving word with the janitor that “Mr. Grimsby was
still up-stairs.” More than this, Joe had been pegging away over his
new idea in gauche and gray paper, and had already made a stunning big
drawing in color for the Lawyers Consolidated Trust Company Building, a
job he and Atwater had recently tackled in competition, with the result
that it was hung in the crypt of the Academy, away down underneath
the stairs in a corner, where a prowling critic with a lighted match
discovered it and gave it an honorable mention in an evening paper.
“A clever and original rendering,” said he, “is shown by Mr. Joseph
Grimsby in his competition drawing for the Lawyers Consolidated Trust
Company. We predict for this young architect a brilliant future.” It
was on the tip of his pen, no doubt, to add: “Call again, Joe,” since
the beginning of his career as an art critic dated scarcely two weeks
previous, when he had been a reporter on the weekly news of his home
town on the Hudson, a journal devoted to live stock and visiting.
What the painters said was different. These strongly opinionated
personages spoke a different language. They considered Joe’s basement
effort “clever,” but were frank in saying that his somewhat amusing
trick in gauche and gray paper had no artistic value whatsoever.
Certain important members of the hanging committee poohpoohed it,
hesitated--and condescended finally to send it to the basement.
Certainly it was not allowed to mar the ensemble of the galleries
up-stairs, hung with the product of good, bad, and indifferent
painters, many of whom had a highly estimated opinion of their own
work, and deplored the lack of artistic sense in the general public
to appreciate it. Narrow minds and narrow lives make few friends. For
several years Enoch had seen the exhibition open. It always seemed
to him to be the same exhibition--revarnished and rehung. The same
cows came down to drink, the same fishing-smacks put out to sea in
melodramatic weather, and the same sweet and unapproachable girl in
the colonial doorway smiled on with her constant companion, a red,
red rose. There were soggy wood interiors with rippling turpentined
brooks; slick sunsets and sunrises, stippled beyond a finish; but what
were lacking, Enoch declared, “were men who saw nature freshly and
vigorously, with open eyes, and the dear courage of their convictions
to smash pat upon a canvas something that was really real.”
Enoch had again made his annual tour of the galleries and came
down-stairs in so savage a humor, grumbling to himself over the “rot,”
he called it, he had seen, that more than once he stopped on the broad
flight to express his views to a painter of his acquaintance, finally
opening up on Mr. Combes, the famous collector, with so much vibrancy,
that it took the old connoisseur’s breath away.
“Rot, Combes,” he repeated; “scarcely a canvas in the lot that has a
vigorous note in it. A lot of tomfoolery in paint. That’s what our
modern art is coming to--and what’s more, Combes,” he exclaimed out
loud (unheeding that he was in ear-shot of others, and not caring if
he was), “it gets worse yearly,” and with this he started to go out,
chucking the catalogue he had purchased away in the vestibule, when he
caught sight of the small exhibit beneath the stairs, turned back and
glanced hurriedly over it, and to his surprise and delight found Joe’s
competition drawing.
“By the gods!” he exclaimed, rewiping his spectacles and searching out
every inch of the big drawing in gauche. “And so that good fellow did
that, did he? No wonder they stuck it out of sight--too good for ’em.”
He sprang back up the stairs after Combes, found him after a search
through the galleries, and insisted on his coming down with him.
“Look at it, man!” he cried with enthusiasm. “See how he’s handled that
sky. Look at the truth and clearness of his shadows. Knew where to
stop, too, didn’t he----”
“Very original, Crane,” confessed the connoisseur. “Um! Very original,
indeed. A new method, as you say--but not a very interesting
subject----”
“What’s the subject got to do with it?” retorted Enoch testily. “I tell
you a fellow who can do that can do anything. It opens a brand-new
field in water-color. It’s his vigorous handling, never mind the
subject. How many architectural drawings have you seen that come within
a mile of it? Why, the boy’s a genius.”
“Know him?” ventured the connoisseur, fearing a fresh outburst.
“Know him! I should think I did know him. One of the cheeriest and best
fellows in the world. Lives in my house. Simple as they make them.
You’ll hear more of him some day, my friend, mark my word.”
Then the two strolled out together, Enoch’s exit being noticed by more
than one painter with relief. He had expressed his opinions openly
before in the galleries, and was not popular. He had also made several
speeches relative to his views on modern art at several public dinners,
which did not increase his popularity, either. Furthermore, he had
taken the pains to write a series of articles--one upon the lack of
good taste in both modern painting and architecture, which made him
enemies--strongly accenting, as he did, the timely necessity of giving
architecture a far more distinguished place in art than it was given.
“A place,” he would thunder away, “which Greece gave it, and which the
world has recognized for centuries.” He used to expound upon the beauty
and plain common sense in the classic compared with the hodgepodge
of new styles--or, rather, the attempt to create a new style, which
always amounted to the usual jumble and stupid elaboration. “There’s no
jumble in the classic,” he’d declare hotly, with all the vehemence of
his conviction. “Start from the very ground--the foundations of their
buildings, and you can trace a logical growth of base, column, capital,
and architrave, to the apex of roof, not an unnecessary detail--more
than that, the Greeks knew the value of a plain surface as a rest for
the eye.” At which there was always sound applause from the architects,
and a doubtful grumbling among the painters, whose failing it was,
declared Enoch, “always to overelaborate.”
“Some of you fellows,” he’d cry out, “never seem to know when to stop.”
It was a favorite expression with him to say the next day:
“I got on my hind legs, and gave it to them straight from the shoulder.”
If he was often a convincing orator, despite his almost savage
brusqueness at times, it was because he was (and few people knew it)
a most able lawyer, though his business life was always more or less
of a mystery. That he actually had an office was known only to a few
friends. It was many years since he had practised law. Somehow that
modest office of Enoch’s in South Street contained memories that were
dear to him. He was loyal to it. Did he not pay its rent in its old
age? And now and then came to see it, to spend an hour there in the
company of his old desk--a solid, friendly old piece of oak, with
eighteen deep and comfortable drawers and plenty of room for his legs
beneath. Here he would sit thinking of many things of the past, of hard
fights that had won legal victories, under the spell of that pleasing
sensation that no human being could disturb him. Old McCarthy, the
janitor, attended to that, and kept his snug library of law-books very
decently dusted, and I verily believe that faithful Irishman would have
gone as far as to tell an inquisitive visitor that “Mr. Crane was long
since dead and buried, and his office sealed up by the estate”--if such
a thing were possible.
It was a cheerful, quiet little box of a place, after all, and the sun
when it shone never forgot to send its warm rays across its worn and
faded carpet. The whole place seemed to have been asleep for years, and
only awakened now and then to receive its owner. Very few were aware
that Enoch owned the building, but he did, the question of lease and
rent and payment passing through other hands, according to his orders.
How many of its occupants in years gone by had been in arrears and were
astonished to find that no one insisted on their departure! Somehow
they always paid in the end, yet they never knew that the testy and
crabbed old lawyer, whose tirades against certain shrewd visitors could
be plainly heard as far as the shaky, greasy elevator, was responsible
for the kindly delay. He was kind, too, to the book-agent, especially
the tired woman in the direst misery, bravely trying to sell one of
those thick and superb volumes that are so often utterly useless to
humanity. How many he talked to and sent away encouraged--often with
new and practical ideas to better their condition.
He reached home this afternoon, still grumbling over the exhibition,
and full of enthusiasm over Joe’s drawing.
“So Combes didn’t like the subject, did he? Combes is an ass,” he
muttered, and arriving at Joe’s door, knocked thrice, found him out,
hastily scribbled the following on his visiting card, and slipped it
beneath his door:
Hearty Congratulations to you, my boy. I’ve seen it. Splendid. Don’t
worry if it wasn’t hung on the line. It deserved it.
E. C.
Then he went on up to his room, where he made up his mind to pay his
respects to Joe at his office the next morning. He paced around his
centre-table, rubbing his hands with satisfaction.
“I’ll give him a surprise,” he smiled. “I’ll take that dear child with
me; he deserves it.”
By some miracle, not a word had yet reached his ears of Lamont’s call,
though Mrs. Ford had lost no time in telling the Misses Moulton the
very first time she found their door ajar, prattling on effusively to
Miss Ann about Lamont’s charm, his knowledge, and his princely manners.
As for Ebner Ford, he considered Lamont’s visit and his attentions
to his stepdaughter purely in the light of business prosperity, and
already foresaw, owing to Lamont’s social position, the patronage of
a vast horde of fashionable people for his laundry company. More than
once he was on the point of hunting up Lamont, and having a plain talk
with him, of explaining to him clearly, man to man, a proposition which
would mean dollars to them both. He decided to offer him something
really worth while--a five per cent commission on the net profits of
every client sent by him. He already saw Lamont persuading dozens
of housekeepers, whose wealth and social position were renowned, to
part with their laundresses and confide their delicate fineries to
The United Family Laundry Association--and had blocked out a circular
to the effect that the most expensive lingerie in the company’s care
would come out unscathed from the wash. If business warranted it they
would put in a separate plant of machines, exclusively devoted to the
fashionable set, replacing any garment damaged, for a price estimated
by an expert, and running ribbons for every lady client free of charge.
And all this he explained to his wife, whom he had been parsimoniously
spoiling of late with poor little Miss Ann’s money.
“Well, Em,” he concluded, “what do you think of it? Pretty encouraging,
ain’t it?” Possibly for the first time in her married life with him she
put down her plump foot firmly in opposition. She grew red and white by
turns, and felt like weeping.
“What do I think of it, Ebner?” she replied nervously. “Why, I never
heard of such a thing. Why, why, Mr. Lamont would be insulted. Why,
he’d never call on girlie again.” She looked at him with the set
expression of a small owl defying a hawk.
“Insulted, would he!” he broke out. “What’s he got to be insulted
about? Ain’t I offerin’ him a fair price? Ain’t I? You can bet your
life I am. There ain’t no man yet that ever got insulted over five
per cent. Know what it means? Course you don’t, or you wouldn’t talk
like you’re doin’. Figger it out for yourself. Them fashionable women
send more clothes to the wash in a week than some women do in a month.
Think they’re going to stop at an extry handkerchief? Not much.
Reg’lar extravagance with ’em. They got tasty, dainty things by the
dozens. Take the shirt-waists and the summer dresses alone. You’ve
seen yourself how business has improved lately, ain’t you?” He nodded
significantly to the new clock on the mantel, and glanced likewise
at the new gilt chair with a hurt expression, as if neither had been
really appreciated. “There’s your new bonnet, and your new dress, too,
and there’s plenty more comin’ where they came from, little woman.”
She walked over to him and put her short, fat arms about his gaunt,
red neck, begging him tearfully to forgive her.
“There! I shouldn’t have said a word,” she declared, wiping her eyes.
“Only I’ve got daughter’s welfare to think of. And, oh, Ebner, you
can’t understand, but think of what Mr. Lamont’s friendship may mean
to her. Think of the entrée into society he can and will give her. I’m
just as sure of it as my name’s Emma Ford. He’d never in the world
agree to such a thing. He’s too much of a swell--holds his head too
high, dear.”
“There you go again,” he blurted out, pacing around her, his thumbs in
the armholes of his fancy waistcoat. “I’ve a good mind to see him now
and have a plain talk with him. He won’t refuse it, don’t you worry.
He’d be a fool if he did.”
“Oh, please, Ebner, don’t,” she begged. “I’d--I’d be mortified to
death.”
“Won’t cost him a cent, will it, to decide? Anyway,” he returned,
softening a trifle, “he can think the thing over, can’t he?”
She did not reply.
“Can’t he?” he insisted.
She subsided meekly on the sofa.
“I don’t ask you to promise me anything, dear,” she continued
feebly. “I’m not asking anything--am I?--only--” again her voice
faltered--“only I’m thinking of girlie. Have you spoken to her about
it?”
He wheeled around sharply and faced her.
“Spoken to her! No, I ain’t spoken to her, and I ain’t a-goin’ to.
She’s got idees about things that ain’t mine. She’s all dreams and
music and singin’. She’s got her own line of business and I got mine.”
“Ebner!”
“Well, what--ain’t I right? If I had to confine myself to song for a
livin’ I’d go and hang myself. Ever see anybody get rich on art?” he
sneered. “I ain’t. It’s noble, but there ain’t nothin’ in it. Never
will be, an’ never was.”
She sat listening to him--the fresh tears starting to her eyes, but she
had ceased to protest. What was the use? He was like that at times, and
she had learned to let him have his say, to the end, like a barking
dog. But in the end she felt convinced that for her sake he would spare
her feelings in regard to Lamont. She even ventured that it would be
better in any event to wait until he became an older friend, and that
he finally agreed to, adding:
“Well, Em, you’ll have your way, I suppose, as usual; you generally do.”
He had been more right than wrong. Lamont would have accepted the five
per cent gladly, providing the little transaction was kept in secret,
like that amiable agreement which existed between himself and his
tailor in appreciation of the clients he sent him. Practically half
his clothes were given him free of charge, and the other half for the
wholesale price of the cloth alone. The customers he sent paid the
difference. If it was a question of wines, he always recommended a
certain brut champagne from Rheims. In the matter of cotillons and
caterers, he also had a marked preference. Indeed, very few among those
of his women friends who entertained lavishly would think of deciding
the details of a cotillon or a large dinner without coming to “Pierre”
for advice. There was nothing he would not do for a woman. He was
kindness itself, organizing, arranging, and all with so much good taste
in everything, so much originality, too, that the affair was bound to
be a success. Was it not he who thought of the live little rabbits for
favors at the Jimmy Joneses’--a huge success. Some even took them home,
where they died from fright and rich food, or were given to the grocer
to be cared for and forgotten. Delicious idea!
* * * * *
That which had not yet reached Enoch’s ears was imparted to him
the next morning by Mrs. Ford when he called for Sue, with all the
effusiveness that her mother was capable of. Save for a sudden hard
expression that crossed his face for an instant, and which Sue noticed,
he received the news without a word of protest or remark. At the
mention of Lamont’s name and the fact that he had called, his square
jaw stiffened. He had set his heart on taking Sue to Joe. He did not
wish to spoil her morning’s pleasure, but in that brief moment his
disgust and bitterness toward Lamont reached a point which it took all
his self-possession to control, but control it he did. Mrs. Ford had
never seen him more gracious or more genial, and so they started off
together, Sue insisting on walking.
“But it’s a long way,” explained Enoch; “several miles, my dear.” She
shook her pretty head.
“I don’t care,” she laughed. “Oh, do let’s walk, Mr. Crane,” she
pleaded, “unless it’s--that is--unless it’s too far for you.” And that,
of course, settled the matter. They set out at a good pace together,
Enoch stubbornly holding it, and was amazed to find when they got as
far as the post-office, that Sue confessed she was “not in the least
tired.” He strode along by her side, feeling younger, she keeping pace
with him with the stride of a slim young girl to whom walking was as
easy as laughing or breathing. Now and then they stopped at the big
store windows, Enoch explaining to her a host of interesting things
about the methods in manufacture of the articles displayed. Indeed, he
was as well informed as an encyclopedia, and where most young girls
would have been bored, Sue took a lively interest in everything, and
kept asking him more and more questions. He explained to her about guns
and fishing-tackle--the skill required in making a perfect hexagonal
trout-rod by hand, and how trout and salmon-flies were tied, mostly by
young girls and women, whose deft fingers were far quicker and more
skilful than a man’s. He described to her in the matter of gun-barrels
the difference between “twist” and “Damascus,” pointing out the beauty
of the old hammer-gun, in comparison with the new-fashioned hammerless,
which he considered ugly and dangerous, and which, having no hammers,
lacked the beauty of line and the true personality of a fowling-piece.
Before the windows of the furriers, she listened to him while he told
her of the habits of fur-bearing animals, and so they kept on, past the
jeweller, the wholesale cobbler, and the fireproof safer--past cotton
goods and babies’ caps--buttons by the million, and hardware by the
gross. It was a far different conversational stroll from Lamont’s. It
was so entertaining, clean, and practical. There was no subtle passion
of Chopin in it, and she was rather glad there was not. When at last
they reached State Street and entered the slippery entrance of the
banana and the lemon merchants’ building, and had ascended the dingy
stairs--dimly illumined by a single gas-jet flaring under a piece of
smoked tin, and at the end of a lemon-scented corridor had opened the
door of “Atwater & Grimsby, Architects,” and been sleepily greeted
by the new office boy, who yawned over Enoch’s card and carried it
languidly into the drafting-room beyond--Sue waited by Enoch’s side
with very much the same feeling that a young girl would who had been
persuaded into surprising a young man who had not the remotest idea in
the world she was there, and who, finding that she was, rushed out,
absolutely flabbergasted with delight. In his enthusiasm the young man
first gripped Enoch by both shoulders heartily, and then stretched
forth both hands in greeting to a young girl whom he considered far
above all other young girls. Then he dragged them both into the
drafting-room, where the two new draftsmen at work bowed to them
solemnly as they passed, and where Joe hurried into Atwater’s private
office to break the news to his partner, back of its board partition.
Atwater heaved a sigh, calmly rolled down his sleeves, washed his
hands, disconsolately combed his hair, put on his coat, and came forth,
but by this time the loveliest girl in the whole world was perched
contentedly on Joe’s high drafting-stool, and eagerly poring over a
mass of his sketches, Enoch bending over one pretty shoulder and Joe
over the other, while he explained how bad they were, and received in
return more than one sincere little compliment, and a look in her dear
eyes that thrilled him.
After a few brief moments of awkward welcome, Atwater excused himself
and retired to his den, where he took off his coat, hung it back on its
peg, rolled up his sleeves again, ran his fingers through his hair, and
was about to say “Hell” very plainly, but checked himself and contented
himself with “Gee whiz!” instead. They were more Joe’s friends than
his, he argued to himself, as he rebent himself over a new lot of
plumbers’ specifications. He knew there was no more serious work for
Joe that day. He had seen it in his eyes. He heard it now in his frank,
cheery laugh, that rang out and reached him over the board partition
of his sanctum. He knew, too, that Joe would be capable of anything
to make them feel at home, even to sending out for a little luncheon
and serving it himself on his drawing-board. But it was not Paris. It
was plain, hard, businesslike New York, where the conservative customs
of the Puritan still prevailed. There were no tender chickens, fresh
roasted--a half, a quarter, or even a wing--to be had within a stone’s
throw; no good-natured _marchand de vin_ to send up an excellent bottle
of Burgundy for twenty-three sous, and his wishes for the best of
appetites for nothing. Here it was all cold pie and business--a place
where even millionaires gobbled their sandwich luncheons standing,
a thing which even the poorest workman in Paris would not think of
doing--since to eat one must have not only plenty of time, but a
table, a chair, a knife and fork, clean plates and dean napkins,
_hors-d’œuvres_, a filled glass, salad and cheese and coffee and a
liqueur--all in a snug corner to his liking, where he can talk to the
proprietor and pay compliments to his wife, and discuss at his leisure
anything that enters his head to the strong, bare-armed girl who serves
him.
* * * * *
“And what is this?” Sue asked with eager interest.
“Oh, that’s a little house we’re doing on Long Island for a
bride-to-be,” Joe explained, pushing aside the pile of sketches Sue had
been looking over, and revealing the pinned-down tissue-paper tracing
beneath he had been at work on when they arrived.
“How fascinating!” exclaimed Sue. “Do tell me all about it.”
“Well, you see, it’s one of those modest matrimonial jobs,” laughed
Joe, “where the fiancé and the bride-to-be want luxury and comfort, and
a stunning design, and plenty of closet room, and sea view, and sun in
every room, and----”
“For next to nothing,” remarked Enoch.
“That’s it, Mr. Crane. For so little that it isn’t easy. Every foot
counts--every inch sometimes.” And he began to explain the planning of
the three floors--placing one over the other, that Sue might better
understand their respective relations.
“I’ve given them a corking big dining-room, anyway,” Joe declared. “And
here’s the guest-room over it, with two dandy bay windows looking out
to sea.”
“And this room to the left?” ventured Sue.
“Oh! That’ll do for a billiard-room--or--or a nursery. It would make a
rattling good studio, too--you see, I thought it would be a good thing
to leave them one room they could do what they liked with.”
“But where’s the kitchen?” Sue asked seriously.
“Well, you see--that’s just it. I’m hanged if I know where to put the
kitchen. They’ll have to have one, I suppose. I’ve been worrying over
that kitchen.”
“Why don’t you put the kitchen up-stairs?” suggested Sue sweetly.
Joe started.
“But they never put kitchens up-stairs,” he exclaimed.
“I don’t see why they shouldn’t,” she declared. “I can see a nice, big,
airy kitchen under the roof--and then, of course, you’d get rid of the
smell.”
“By Jove! that’s an idea,” he cried. “A bully idea! Why, you’re
wonderful! How did you ever happen to think of that?”
“Oh! I don’t know,” she laughed, a little embarrassed. “It just seemed
to me practical, I suppose. I don’t see why people should always live
over their kitchens. Then you can have the kitchen and the servants all
on one floor, out of the way.”
“Corking!” cried Joe. “By Jove, I’ll do it.”
“May I make a mark?” she ventured, picking up his pencil.
“Anywhere you like--all over it, if you wish,” he declared eagerly.
They watched her--Enoch with grim delight, Joe in silent ecstasy, every
mark of his pencil that her little hand made dear to him--while she
crossed out the top floor partitions, indicating the new roof kitchen
and the arrangement for the servants’ rooms, with so much clever
ingenuity and womanly common sense that Enoch regarded her with pride
and amazement.
“There! Will that do?” she laughed, as she laid aside his pencil--warm
from the pressure of her fingers--a pencil which Joe seized the moment
they had gone, and kept in hiding in his top bureau drawer.
“Do? I should think it _would_ do. It’s glorious,” cried Joe. The marks
her pencil had made were precious to him now.
“What a wonderful housekeeper you would make, my dear,” declared Enoch.
But she only flushed a little in reply and slipped deftly from the high
stool before either Joe or Enoch could assist her.
A few moments later they were gone, and Joe returned to the throne her
trim little figure had abandoned and “got to work.” That is, he sat
on his high stool and, with his chin in his hands, dreamed over every
tender line she had drawn, but it was not architecture that absorbed
his thoughts.
To Enoch’s surprise, Sue insisted on returning home alone in a car.
“Please don’t bother about me,” she told him as he saw her aboard. It
is quite possible that she divined from his quickened step as they
left Joe Grimsby that Enoch had a pressing engagement, and that it was
already nearly noon. Enoch did not insist--the fact was he had made up
his mind to reach his club as soon as possible, waiting only for her to
wave him a cheery good-by from the car platform, and then turning at a
rapid pace set out for the up-town Elevated.
En route he told himself that Joe was in love with her, but that
Sue did not care for him. He felt this strongly. She had been too
cheery in his presence, more interested in Joe’s work than himself,
and had lacked that telltale silent manner, which is an unfailing
sign--the forerunner of melancholy, which is the sign of true love,
indeed. Lamont was paramount in his mind. He wondered what influence
he had had over Sue by his visit. Again he had determined to find
him. When he reached his club he shut his jaw hard as he ascended the
steps--muttering to himself, unconscious even that the doorman had
welcomed him with a respectful “Good morning, sir.”