“Thank you!” she murmured.
He waited a moment, hoping perhaps for some sort of reciprocation, but
none came. So--
“May I sit down?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, do!” she answered.
A long time seemed to go by.
“I wish--” he said, and paused. “I wish I could see you again.”
There was a sort of self-assurance about him that somehow inspired her
with confidence in him. It had not the least trace of effrontery, nor
was there anything ingratiating about him. His air seemed to tell her
that, if she didn’t want to see him, she need only say so, and that
would be the end of it. He was quiet, courteous, but far from humble. He
was, in fact, rather lordly. And she liked it.
“Well...” she began. “I--I’d like to--pay you back that fare....”
“Perhaps you’d let me call?”
He was startled at her vehemence.
“Oh, no!” she cried. “Oh, no! You couldn’t! I’m sorry--but you
couldn’t!”
Her face had grown crimson and her eyes were filled with tears, and she
kept her head resolutely turned aside.
This surprised, embarrassed and a little annoyed him. Did she think he
was trying to force himself upon her? He said nothing more after that.
But at last, as they drew near his corner, he spoke again.
“Well!” he said, rising, with a slight sigh. “I’m sorry!”
She turned quickly.
“If--if you’d like ... to-morrow ... in the Fifth Avenue Library...?”
Again he was surprised, amazed at this sudden and anxious invitation.
But he politely concealed his surprise.
“Nothing I’d like better,” he said. “What time?”
“About three?”
“I’ll be there!” he assured her. “Just where?”
“Oh ... that hall that goes down to the circulating room....”
He stretched out his hand to ring the bell.
“But you haven’t told me your name!” he said.
“Oh! Rosaleen!” she said. “Rosaleen--Humbert.”
Then once more raising his hat with a smile that enthralled her, he had
vanished down the stairs, and a moment later she had seen him going down
a side street--a lean young figure with a long stride.
* * * * *
“I shan’t go!” she sobbed. “Of course not! What would be the sense? I’d
just better forget all about him.”
“It wouldn’t be fair!” she went on. “Because--if he knew ... he wouldn’t
want to see me....”
Useless to recollect newspaper tales of dukes and chorus girls, of
millionaires and waitresses, of Cophetua and the beggar maid in all its
modern guises. All those people were different. There was no other man
like him, no other woman like her. What is more, Rosaleen had no faith
in romance. Had not her history been what _anyone_ would call romantic,
and wasn’t it as cruel and dull and cold as any life could be?
She sat up and dried her eyes.
“No!” she said. “No use thinking about it.... No use making a fool of
myself.”
It had grown quite dark. She got up and lighted the flaring gas jet on a
wall bracket, and looked at the big impudent face of the alarm clock
standing on her austere bureau top. And at the same time caught sight of
her own face, stained and swollen with tears, but still lovely in its
pure young outline, with the wise innocence of those drowned grey eyes.
The type one calls “flower-like,” with the exquisite fineness of her
old, old race, the deep set eyes, the passionate and sensitive mouth,
the strange look of resignation. She was rather fair, with light brown
hair and a sweet and healthy colour; she was slender and not very tall;
she looked fragile, but she was not. She had a strength, an energy, an
endurance beyond measure.
An endurance well known and profited by in this household. She brushed
her fine hair and pinned it up tightly and carelessly; she bathed her
eyes in cold water and tied an apron about her waist. And went along the
corridor of the dark, old-fashioned flat to the kitchen. All neat as a
pin there. Potatoes closely pared, soaking in cold water, lettuce in a
wet cloth, a jar of lard set to cool on the window sill, ready for the
inevitable frying. She set to work briskly to prepare the supper, and
when it was cooking on the stove, she set up the ironing board and began
to press a pile of napkins and handkerchiefs. And began to sing to
herself in a low and mournful voice.
At six o’clock came the expected sound of a key in the latch, and
presently a venerable grey-bearded old gentleman put his head into the
kitchen.
“Well! Well! Well!” he said, benevolently. “Aha! Something very savoury
there, I think, Rosaleen!”
“I hope you’ll like it,” she said, smiling.
“Will it be long?”
“Not an instant. I’ll set the table now. Shall we wait for Miss Amy?”
“I think not. I think not. Better get it over with, eh?”
She smiled again, and putting up the ironing board, began at once to lay
the table for three. The venerable old gentleman had vanished into his
room, and was seen no more until she knocked on his door.
“Dinner!” she said.
He came out again very promptly, closing the door behind him, and took
his place at the head of the table. He bowed his grey head, Rosaleen
bent her sleek one, and he said a solemn grace. And then set to work to
carve the scraggy little steak. It didn’t take much to make him
grateful; their standard of living wasn’t exalted; tough meat, with
potatoes and a canned vegetable, that was the regulation; then as a
dessert either canned fruit or a pie from the baker’s. And the lettuce,
which it was considered necessary for his health that Mr. Humbert should
eat every evening.
Rosaleen sat opposite him, still in her apron, thankful for once for his
inhuman indifference. He wouldn’t notice that she had been crying. They
didn’t talk; they never did. What could they possibly have to say to
each other?
The light from two jets in the gasolier over the table shone clearly,
illumined every corner. All quite neat and clean, with a sort of bright
stuffiness about it; a greenish brown carpet on the floor, a couch bed
concealed by a green corduroy cover, four varnished oak chairs spaced
primly against the wall. In one corner stood a sewing machine covered
with a lace tablecloth, on which was a fern in a pot decorated with a
frill of green crêpe paper. On the mantelpiece stood a geranium
similarly ornamented, and on the table another. From the gasolier and
from the curtain pole over the doorway were suspended half coconut
shells filled with ferns. Hanging in the windows by gilt chains were two
“transparencies”; one was moonlight in Venice, all a ghastly green, and
the other was a church with lighted windows gleaming redly over the
snow: no doubt they were to compensate for the lack of any view except
that of the wall of a courtyard. Nothing in this familiar hideousness to
arrest Rosaleen’s glance; she looked restlessly about, longing for the
venerable old gentleman to have done with his coconut custard pie.
At last (of course) he did.
“Don’t forget to save something for Miss Amy!” he said, and disappeared
again into his cubicle.
While Rosaleen went about her solitary work, washed the dishes, scoured
the pots, boiled the dishtowels and hung them to dry, swept the floor,
and at last could put out the gas and go away, leaving her domain in
perfect order. Nothing more to be done....
Then was the time when the pain, the unhappiness which she had thought
to be conquered, and lost in resignation, came back to her again,
stronger, more bitter than ever. In all her hard life there had never
been anything so hard as the renunciation of this unknown young man.
“But I won’t go to meet him!” she said. “He’d be sure to find out. And
then it would be all the worse.... Now I’ve only seen him once, and if I
never see him again, I’ll soon forget him. Oh, much, much better not to
go!”
“But if he liked me _very_ much, he wouldn’t care _who_ I was!”
That thought, however, held no consolation. He _would_ care. She knew
it. She had read in every feature of his face the most obstinate and
tyrannical pride.
“But maybe he’d never find out?” she persisted, desperately.
And looked and looked in the mirror, with fervent anxiety. One might
have thought she expected to see her secret stamped on her brow.