Saturday followed, a busy day, devoted to house-cleaning. Rosaleen swept
and dusted and cleaned, took down curtains, beat rugs and sofa cushions,
and baked a cake, all according to custom. And Sunday, too, passed as it
always did. They all went to church in the morning, and spent the
afternoon in dignified drowsiness. Even Rosaleen was affected; she sat
in the front room with them, reading a book, but near the window, so
that from time to time, when there was an interesting sound of
footsteps or voices, she could look out into the street. So many couples
going by, arm in arm....
On Monday she was quite ready to go to Miss Waters’ again. Art had lost
its charm, to be sure, but it was something after all. Very little
compared to Love, but a great deal when compared to solitary
confinement.
She went into the studio and sat down before her still unfinished
landscape, opened her paint box, and tried to begin her work.
“Is that you, Rosaleen?” called a cheerful voice from the bedroom.
“Yes, Miss Waters.”
“You naughty girl!”
“I know it.... I’m sorry I didn’t come down on Friday. But....”
“My dear! I was young once myself! I don’t blame you, not the least bit
in the world. I don’t blame you for forgetting all about work! He’s
_per_fectly charming!”
“_Who!_” cried Rosaleen.
“Oh, I know all about it!” said Miss Waters archly. “That nice young man
of yours. You know that day we went to the library together? Well.... He
came tearing after me as I was walking down Fifth Avenue, and he asked
me if you’d gone home.... The most beautiful manners, my dear!... A
real Southern gentleman!... He was so disappointed when he found you’d
gone. He said he’d seen us go _in_, and he was waiting for us to come
_out_. And he walked all the way down here with me, talking about you
all the time. And I said why didn’t he go to call on you? And he said he
would--that very evening.”
“_Oh!... Miss Waters!_”
The desperation in her voice startled the European Art Teacher. She came
out of her bedroom, still fastening the crooked little “vestee” of her
brown dress.
“Did you miss him?” she asked, anxiously.
“He never came!”
“That’s queer! He said he would.... He sat down and talked--the longest
time.... No one could have been nicer.... He asked all sorts of
questions about you.”
“Well, what did you _tell_ him?” cried Rosaleen. “He never came!”
Miss Waters sat down and thought, with a deep frown.
“My dear, it couldn’t have been anything I said. Not possibly. I didn’t
speak of you except as an artist. I said how talented you were. And what
a lovely disposition you had. Nothing else at all.”
No one could have better appreciated the situation than Miss Waters, no
one could have better understood the need for the most extreme care and
caution in dealing with men. The poor defrauded creature was convinced
that at least three of the sentimental “disappointments” of her past had
come from trifling mistakes she had made, minute errors of judgment
which had frightened away the elusive and fastidious male. Her eyes
filled with tears.
“My dear!” she said. “I hope there’s no misunderstanding! So many young
people have had their lives absolutely wrecked and ruined by
misunderstandings.”
Rosaleen shook her head.
“No,” she said. “There isn’t any misunderstanding. There couldn’t be....
But I don’t understand it.”
She picked up her brushes and began to paint, and Miss Waters, to keep
her company, sat down before her easel, to put the finishing touches to
a copy she was making of one of her earlier works--“The School,” she had
called it, five puppies and five kittens, some in dunces’ caps, some
wearing spectacles. She was aware that she could no longer conceive and
execute such paintings now, she had to be satisfied with imitations of
her past virtuosity.
Absorbed in their dismal reflections, they scarcely noticed the flight
of time. Miss Waters looked up startled when the clock struck one.
“_One o’clock!_” she observed. “I never imagined! Rosaleen, you must
stay and have lunch with me!”
Rosaleen had nothing on earth to go home for, so she agreed, and the
hospitable Miss Waters rushed out to the French delicatessen nearby,
where she could buy curious and economical things.
And whom should she see on the corner but that young man, standing there
patiently! She came up behind him, cautiously as a hunter stalking a
deer, and touched him on the arm.
“Well!” she cried, in pretended surprise. “Mr. Landry!”
She knew that he was waiting for Rosaleen, but she knew also that he
wouldn’t like her to know that. Oh, she did understand something of men!
She knew that his pride must be saved at any cost. So, when she saw a
bus drawing near, she pretended to believe that he was about to get into
it, and entreated him not to.
“Oh, don’t get in!” she cried. “I wish you’d just stop in at my studio
and have a little lunch with Rosaleen and me. You’re not in too much of
a hurry, are you?”
He smiled down at the dishevelled and anxious creature with streaming
white hair--like a witch, he thought. He was pleased that she thought
he had been waiting for the bus, and he was very glad that neither she
nor anyone else knew that he had waited there on that corner on Friday
as well, remembering what he had been told were the days and hours of
Rosaleen’s lessons. And he was delighted that he could see Rosaleen and
pretend that it was accidental. He was surprised and a little ashamed at
his own longing to see her, by this feeling which he could not deny or
resist, for a girl of whom he knew nothing.
“I’d be very pleased,” he said. And turned and walked down the street,
with Miss Waters hanging on his arm, both pockets of her famous fur coat
bulging with delicatessen.
“How is your work coming on?” he asked Miss Waters. “‘The School?’ The
one you showed me?”
“Oh!” she cried, archly, delighted at his remembering. “The idea! I
haven’t done much more on it since then. However, I’ll show you.”
She led him down the hall, and at the door of her flat turned, with a
finger at her lips.
“Surprise her!” she whispered.
Landry followed her to the studio and stood obediently quiet on the
threshold, to contemplate his unconscious Rosaleen. And became lost,
absorbed in looking at her.
She seemed so much younger, like a school girl, in her sailor blouse,
with her fair, untidy hair and her serious preoccupation with her work.
How dear she was! How innocent and fine and lovely!
“Rosaleen!” called Miss Waters, in a voice trembling with excitement.
Rosaleen glanced up, to meet the serious and unsmiling regard of her
hero.
They were both confused, embarrassed, almost alarmed; their eyes met in
a glance singularly bold and significant, belying their formal smiles,
their casual words.
“I missed you the other day,” said Landry.
“I know ... I was sorry ... I had to hurry home....”
He crossed the room and stood beside her, looking down at her drawing.
“It’s very pretty,” he said, with constraint. “What is it for?”
“Oh!... Just a picture!”
Miss Waters had been watching them like a stage director.
“Sit down, Mr. Landry!” she said.
“I don’t like to interrupt Miss Humbert’s work....”
“Nonsense! She’s a very good pupil, you know, and she can afford to take
a little holiday, now and then. And you’re going to stay and have a
little lunch with us, aren’t you?”
He yielded, because he hadn’t the heart to do as he wished--to ask
Rosaleen out to lunch and leave the poor old creature behind.
“I’ll have something nice and tasty ready in a jiffy!” she cried.
“Rosaleen, you entertain Mr. Landry!”
They were left alone, Landry standing beside Rosaleen, both of them
speechless. He looked stealthily down at her, at her light hair, at the
soft colour in her cheeks, at her pretty childish throat rising from the
open neck of her sailor blouse. And he bent down and kissed her cheek.
She didn’t look up; she bent lower over her work.
“Rosaleen!” he said. “You darling!”
“I’m awfully glad to see you!” she murmured. “I thought....”
“What did you think?”
“I thought--perhaps I shouldn’t ever see you again.”
“I had to come,” he said, truthfully, “I couldn’t help it.”
And fell silent, startled by his own words, by his own course of
conduct, so altogether different from what he had planned. He had
particularly wished to avoid seeing Rosaleen alone. He had certainly
not expected to kiss her, or to want to kiss her. He walked across the
room and pretended to be looking at Miss Waters’ picture. He was ashamed
of himself; he had no business to kiss her; it was dishonourable and
unkind. He stole a glance at her, and saw her, still bending over her
work, but with flaming cheeks and a hand that trembled. He couldn’t bear
that! He strode over to her.
“I’m sorry!” he cried.
Of course she didn’t answer; he didn’t expect her to.
“Please let me come to see you!” he went on. “I want to know you
better.... I’ll tell you all about myself....”
“Oh, no!” she cried. “I can’t! Really I can’t! I can’t have anyone! I’m
sorry, but--I can’t!”
“But--can’t I see you again, then? Don’t you--won’t you let me...?”
“Yes, I do want to see you,” she answered candidly. “Only--not at home.
Can’t we meet somewhere?”
“But don’t you see?” he said with an earnest scowl. “It--it isn’t the
thing. If you’ll let me come to your house, and--more or less explain
myself, it makes everything quite different. If I could see your
parents....”
“I--they aren’t my parents. It’s--an uncle.... But--what could I tell
them, anyway? If I said I’d met you like that, on the bus----”
“I quite understand that. But you could say that you’d met me here at
Miss Waters’. You have, you know. It would be true.”
“No!” she protested, with such vehemence that he was startled. “I can’t
let you come. I’ll meet you somewhere----”
“Look here!” he said, severely. “You can’t--it’s not the thing for a
girl like you to be meeting a man on street corners, like a servant
girl.”
Her face grew scarlet.
“Very well!” she cried. “You needn’t see me at all then!”
He retreated instantly before her wrath.
“All right!” he said, hastily. “I _will_ meet you--anywhere you like.”
“Oh, no you won’t!... I’m not going to....” A sudden loud sob
interrupted her. “ ... not--like--a servant girl....”
He was horrified at the sight of tears in her eyes.
“I didn’t mean that!” he cried. “Please don’t! Please don’t! I think
you--you’re perfect!”
And before he knew it, his arm was about her shoulder, and her head
pressed against his chest, a clumsy, a boyish embrace.
“Don’t cry, darling!” he entreated.
She remained motionless. And with a respectful hand he touched her hair.
“Please meet me!” he said.
“In the library--on Wednesday--at four.”
She didn’t ask; she commanded. And he submitted.
V
Miss Waters entered with the lunch on a tray, and young Landry sprang to
assist her. He was, Rosaleen observed, remarkably nice and tactful with
Miss Waters. He ate what she had provided and praised it. Afterward she
brought out a white china flower pot half filled with moist, bent
cigarettes, and offered him one; took one herself, too, though it caused
her to cough horribly and would very likely make her sick. However, it
gave a European touch. She was enchanted with the atmosphere, to find
herself nonchalantly smoking cigarettes in a studio in the company of a
young and attractive man.
She had a rhapsody of praise for him after he had gone, and Rosaleen
listened to it with delight. Then she too went home. She was proud,
triumphant, exultant. But it was a most perilous joy; she dared not
examine it. Those words haunted her. She mustn’t meet him on street
corners--like a servant girl.
She was dusting the top of Mr. Humbert’s desk.
“What else am I?” she asked herself, with terrible bitterness. “They
talk about my ‘advantages,’ and my being a ‘member of the household’....
But what am I really?”
She flung down the cloth.
“Oh, what’s the use!” she cried. “It might just as well end now, better
end now--than after he finds out.”