UNSUSTAINED APPLICATION
"Mr. Kendrick, do you understand typewriting?"
Judge Gray's assistant looked up, a slight surprise on his face. "No,
sir, I do not," he said.
"I am sorry. These sheets I am sending to the Capitol to be looked over
and criticised ought to be typewritten. I could send them downtown, but
I want the typist here at my elbow."
He sat frowning a little with perplexity, and presently he reached for
the telephone. Then he put it down, his brow clearing. "This is
Saturday," he murmured. "If Roberta is at home--"
He left the room. In five minutes he was back, his niece beside him.
Richard Kendrick had not set eyes upon her for a fortnight; he rose at
her appearance and stood waiting her recognition. She gave it, stopping
to offer him her hand as she passed him, smiling. But, this little
ceremony over, she became on the instant the business woman. Richard saw
it all, though he did his best to settle down to his work again and
pursue it with an air of absorption.
Roberta went to a cupboard which opened from under bookshelves, and drew
therefrom a small portable typewriter. This she set upon a table beside
a window at right angles from Richard and all of twenty feet away from
him; she could hardly have put a greater distance between them. The
Judge drew up a chair for her; she removed the cover from the compact
little machine, and nodded at him. He placed his own chair beside her
table and sat down, copy in hand.
"This is going to be a rather difficult business," said he. "There are
many points where I wish to indicate slight changes as we go along. I
can't attempt to read the copy to you, but should like to have you give
me the opening words of each paragraph as you come to it. I think I can
recall those which contain the points for revision."
The work began. That is to say, work at the typewriter side of the room
began, and in earnest. From the first stroke of the keys it was evident
that the Judge had called to his aid a skilled worker. The steady,
smooth clicking of the machine was interrupted only at the ends of
paragraphs, when the Judge listened to the key words of the succeeding
lines. Roberta sat before that "typer" as if she were accustomed to do
nothing else for her living, her eyes upon the keys, her profile
silhouetted against the window beside her.
As far as the mechanical part of the labour was concerned, Richard had
never seen a task get under way more promptly nor proceed with greater
or smoother dispatch. As he sat beside his own window he nearly faced
the pair at the other window. Try as he would he could not keep his mind
upon his work. It was a situation unique in his experience. That he,
Richard Kendrick, should be employed in serious work in the same room
with the niece of a prosperous and distinguished gentleman, a girl who
had not hesitated to learn a trade in which she had become proficient,
and that the three of them should spend the morning in this room
together, taking no notice of each other beyond that made necessary by
the task in hand--it was enough to make him burst out laughing. At the
same time he felt a genuine satisfaction in the situation. If he could
but work in the same room with her every day, though she should
vouchsafe him no word, how far from drudgery would the labour be then
removed!
He managed to keep up at least the appearance of being closely engaged,
turning the leaves of books, making notes, arising to consult other
books upon the shelves. But he could not resist frequent furtive glances
at the profile outlined against the window. It was a distracting
outline, it must be freely admitted. Even upon the hill, seen against
the blue-and-purple haze, it had hardly been more so. What indeed could
a young man do but steal a look at it as often as he might? There was no
knowing when he should have such another chance.
Things proceeded in this course without interruption until eleven
o'clock. The Judge, finding it possible to get ahead so satisfactorily
by this new method, decided to send on considerably more material to be
passed upon by his critical coadjutor at the Capitol than he had
originally intended to do at this time. But as the clock struck the hour
a caller's card was sent in to him, and with a word to Roberta he left
the room to see his visitor elsewhere.
Roberta finished her paragraph, then sat studying the next one. She did
not look up, nor did Richard. The moments passed and the Judge did not
return. Roberta rose and threw open the window beside her, letting in a
great sweep of December air.
Richard seized his opportunity. "Good for you!" he applauded. "Shall I
open mine?"
"Please. It will warm up again very quickly. It began to seem stifling."
"Not much like the place where you want to build a cabin and stay alone
in a storm. Or--not alone. You are willing to have a dog with you. What
sort of a dog?"
"A Great Dane, I think. I have a friend who owns one. They are
inseparable."
By the worst of luck the Judge chose this moment to return, and the
windows went down with a rush.
The Judge shivered, smiling at the pair. "You young things, all warmth
and vitality! You are never so happy as when the wind is lifting your
hair. Now I think I'm pretty vigorous for my years, but I wouldn't sit
and talk in a room with two open windows, in December."
"Neither can we--hang it!" thought Richard. "Why couldn't that chap have
stayed a few minutes longer--when we'd just got started?"
At luncheon-time Roberta's part in the work was not completed. Her uncle
asked for two hours more of her time and she cheerfully promised it. So
at two o'clock the stage was again set as a business office, the actors
again engaged in their parts. But at three the situation was abruptly
changed.
"I believe there are no more revisions to be made," declared Judge Gray
with a sigh of weariness. "I have taxed you heavily, my dear, but if you
are equal to finishing these eleven sheets for me by yourself I shall be
grateful. My eyes have reached the limit of endurance, even with all the
help you have given me. I must go to my room."
He paused by Richard's desk on his way out. "Have you finished the
abstract of the chapter on Judge Cahill?" he asked. "No? I thought you
would perhaps have covered that this morning. But--I do not mean to
exact too much. It will be quite satisfactory if you can complete it
this afternoon."
"I am sorry," said his assistant, flushing in a quite unaccustomed
manner. "I have been working more slowly than I realized. I will finish
it as rapidly as I can, sir."
"Don't apologize, Mr. Kendrick. We all have our slow days. I undoubtedly
underestimated the amount of time the chapter would require. Good
afternoon to you."
Richard sat down and plunged into the task he now saw he had merely
played with during the morning. By a tremendous effort he kept his eyes
from lifting to the figure at the typewriter, whose steady clicking
never ceased but for a moment at a time, putting him to shame. Yet try
as he would he could not apply himself with any real concentration; and
the task called for concentration, all he could command.
"You are probably not used to working in the same room with a
typewriter," said his companion, quite unexpectedly, after a full half
hour of silence. She had stopped work to oil a bearing in her machine.
There was an odd note in her voice; it sounded to Richard as if she
meant: "You are not used to doing anything worth while."
"I don't mind it in the least," he protested.
"I'm sorry not to take my work to another room," Roberta went on,
tipping up her machine and manipulating levers with skill as she applied
the oil. "But I shall soon be through."
"Please don't hurry. I ought to be able to work under any conditions.
And I certainly enjoy having you at work in the same room," he ventured
to add. It was odd how he found himself merely venturing to say to this
girl things which he would have said without hesitation--putting them
much more strongly withal--to any other girl he knew.
"One needs to be able to forget there's anybody in the same room." There
was a little curl of scorn about her lips.
"That might be easier to do under some conditions than others." He did
not mean to be trampled upon.
But Roberta finished her oiling in silence and again applied herself to
her typing with redoubled energy.
He went at his abstract, suddenly furious with himself. He would show
her that he could work as persistently as she. He could not pretend to
himself that she was not absorbed. Only entire absorption could enable
her to reel off those pages without more than an infrequent stop for the
correction of an error.
Turning a page in the big volume of records of speeches in the State
Legislature, which he was consulting, Richard came upon a sheet of paper
on which was written something in verse. His eye went to the bottom of
the sheet to see there the source of the quotation--Browning--with
reference to title and page. No harm to read a quoted poem, certainly;
his eyes sought it eagerly as a relief from the sonorous phrasing of the
speech he was attempting to read. He had never seen the words before;
the first line--and he must read to the end. What a thing to find in a
dusty volume of forgotten speeches of a date long past!
Such a starved bank of moss
Till, that May-morn,
Blue ran the flash across:
Violets were born!
Sky--what a scowl of cloud
Till, near and far,
Ray on ray split the shroud:
Splendid, a star!
World--how it walled about
Life with disgrace
Till God's own smile came out:
That was thy face!
Speeches were forgotten; he devoured the words over and over again. They
seemed to him to have been made expressly for him. A starved bank of
moss--that was exactly what he had been, only he had not known it, but
had fancied himself a garden of rich resource. He knew better now,
starved he was, and starved he would remain--unless he could make the
violets his own. No doubt but he had found them!
He followed an impulse. Rising, the sheet of yellowed paper in his hand,
he walked over to the typewriter. Without apology he laid the sheet upon
the pile of typed ones at her side.
"See what I've found in an old volume of state speeches."
Roberta's busy hand stopped. Her eyes scanned the yellow page upon which
the stiff, fine handwriting, clearly that of a man, stood out legibly as
print. Business woman she might be, but she could not so far abstract
herself as not to be touched by the hint of romance involved in finding
such words in such a place.
"How strange!" she owned. "And they've been there a long time, by the
look of the paper and ink. I never saw the handwriting before. Perhaps
Uncle Calvin lent the book to somebody long ago and the 'somebody' left
this in it."
"Shall I put it back, or show it to Judge Gray?"
He remained beside her though she had handed back the paper.
"Put it back, don't you think? If you wrote out such words and left them
in a book, you would want them to stay there, not to be looked at
curiously by other eyes fifty years after."
"That's somebody's heart there on that sheet of old paper," said he.
Apparently he was looking at the paper; in reality he was stealing a
glance past it at her down-bent face.
"Not necessarily. Somebody may merely have been attracted by the music
of the lines. Put it back, Mr. Secretary, and concern yourself with
Judge Cahill. It's to be hoped that you won't find any more distracting
verse between his pages."
"Why not? Oughtn't one to get all the poetry one can out of life?"
"Not in business hours."
He laughed in spite of himself at the failure of his effort to make her
self-conscious by any reading of such lines in his presence. Clearly she
meant to allow no personal relation to arise between them while they
were thrown together by Judge Gray's need of them. She fell to typing
again with even more energy than before, if that were possible, while
he--it must be confessed that before he laid the verses away between the
pages for another fifty years' sleep he had made note of their identity,
that he might look them up again in a seldom opened copy of the English
poet on his shelves at home. They belonged to him now!
In half an hour more Roberta's machine stopped clicking. Swiftly she
covered it, set it away in the book-cupboard, and put her table in
order. She laid the typewritten sheets together upon Judge Gray's desk
in a straight-edged pile, a paperweight on top. In her simple dress of
dark blue, trim as any office woman's attire, she might have been a
hired stenographer--of a very high class--putting her affairs in order
for the day.
Richard waited till she approached his desk, which she had to pass on
her way out. Then he rose to his feet.
"Allow me to congratulate you," said he, "on having accomplished a long
task in the minimum length of time possible. I am lost in wonder that a
hand which can play the 'cello with such art can play the typewriter
with such skill."
"Thank you." There was a flash of mirth in her eyes. "There's music in
both if you have ears to hear."
"I have recognized that to-day."
"You never heard it before? Music in the hammer on the anvil, in the
throb of the engine, in the hum of the dynamo."
"And in the scratch of the pen, the pounding of the boiler shop, and
the--the--slide and grind of the trolley-car, I suppose?"
"Indeed, yes--even in those. And there'll surely be melody in the
closing of the door which shuts you in to solitude after this
distracting day. Listen to it! Good-bye."
He long remembered the peculiar parting look she gave him, satiric,
mischievous, yet charmingly provocative. She was keen of mind, she was
brilliant of wit, but she was all woman--no doubt of that. He was
suddenly sure that she had known well enough all day the effect that she
had had upon him, and that it had amused her. His cheek reddened at the
thought. He wondered why on earth he should care to pursue an attempt at
acquaintance with one whose manner with him was frequently so disturbing
to his self-conceit. Well, at least he must forget her now, and redeem
himself with an hour's solid effort.
But, strange to say, although he had found it difficult to work in her
presence, in her absence he found it impossible to work at all. He stuck
doggedly to his desk for the appointed hour, then gave over the attempt
and departed. The moral of all this, which he discovered he could not
escape, was that though he had taken his university degree, and had
supplemented the academic education with the broader one of travel and
observation, he had not at his command that first requisite for
efficient labour: the power of sustained application. In a way he had
been dimly suspicious of this since the day he had begun this pretence
of work for his grandfather's old friend. To-day, at sight of a girl's
steady concentration upon a wearisome task in spite of his own
supposably diverting presence, it had been brought home to him with
force that he was unquestionably reaping that inevitable product of
protracted idleness: the loss of the power to work.
As he drove away it suddenly occurred to him that on the morrow, instead
of coming to the house in his car, he would leave it in the garage and
walk. Between the discovery of his inefficiency and his resolution to
dispense with a hitherto accustomed luxury there may have been a subtler
connection than appears to the eye.