She called the number of the old Gregory residence. "What'll I say
to him?" she thought in panic, as she waited for him to answer. "I
haven't any excuse for seeing him, have I?"
But to her intense relief, it was not Dick's voice, but Mother
Gregory's, that answered the phone.
"This is Gloria speaking," the girl said. "Is Dick there, please?"
"No, he's not!" Mother Gregory's full voice snapped off the words.
"He came home to dinner, but he's gone out for the evening."
"All right ... good-by," Gloria faltered.
"Wait a minute!" Mother Gregory cried. "I want to say a word to you,
Gloria.... I think you'd better not telephone Dick again. There's
no use in keeping him stirred up all the time.... You two have
agreed to disagree, and you'd better stick to it!"
Gloria had no answer.
"Glo-ree-a, did you hear me?" Dick's mother asked, after a moment.
"Yes," she heard Gloria whisper. And she hung up the receiver.
Mother Gregory turned away from the telephone to meet Dick coming in
from the back yard. "Why, I thought you'd gone!" she said in
surprise. "And I just told a fib without knowing it.... Gloria
called up, and I said you'd gone out for the evening."
Dick considered. "I guess it's just as well you did," he said after
a time. "We don't get anywhere talking things over. It's just a
waste of time."
His mother drew a long breath that caused all the black jet beads to
heave on her vast bosom. "I certainly am glad to hear you say that!"
she declared. "Your father and I have been afraid you'd go back to
her, all along. She's not the woman for you, Dick, and never was!"
Dick twirled his hat in his hands. "I came back here for my
brief-case," he said. "Have you seen it?"
His mother walked into the living-room and returned with it in her
capable hands. "'A place for everything and everything in its
place,'" she quoted. "If you'd only put that brief-case on the hall
table, you'd always know where it was! ... Where are you going?"
"Down to the office," Dick answered shortly.
His mother followed him out onto the wide side-porch that overlooked
the driveway and the back yard.
"Now don't be silly and call Gloria up," she said, as he bent to kiss
her good-by.
"She probably didn't want to say much of anything, anyway," Dick
answered. "But I think I'll give her a ring, and see what she
wanted."
He resented his mother's advice. Didn't she realize that he was a
grown man well over thirty? Or did mothers always feel that way
about their sons--that they were still little boys?
... At the first drugstore, Dick stopped, and went in to telephone
his wife, at her mother's house.
"Why, Gloria's not here!" Mrs. Gordon said, when she answered the
phone. "Don't you know where she is?"
"How should I know?" Dick asked helplessly. "When did she leave the
house?"
"About five o'clock."
"Well, she called me about an hour ago," Dick said. "When she comes
home ask her to call me at my office, will you?"
... He climbed into his car, and drove downtown at breakneck speed,
so as not to miss Gloria's next telephone message when she called
again. That is, if she did call again.
He unlocked the door of his office and went in. Miss Briggs was
sitting at her desk, with her long white hands draped over the keys
of her typewriter. She looked as if she had been sitting that way a
long time.
"I thought I told you not to work late these hot nights, Susy!" Dick
said severely, closing the outer door behind him.
"I'm not working," Miss Briggs answered, dully. "And it's not late.
Only eight o'clock."
As she spoke a clock somewhere across the roofs of the city chimed
eight.
"Has Mrs. Gregory called up here, to-night, for me?" was Dick's next
question.
Miss Briggs shook her smooth brown head. "No," she said, almost
inaudibly.
She sat motionless. Only her blue eyes moved as she watched him take
off his hat, and hang it up. He picked up his brief-case from the
chair where he had laid it, and turned toward his private office.
Sue Briggs could see that there was a sort of restlessness upon him.
He seemed to be waiting feverishly for something vital--stupendous.
"Be sure to call me if she does phone," he said, as he went into his
office.
In a minute or two he came out again.
"Call up Mrs. Gregory's mother, and ask if she's there, please," he
said. "You know the number, don't you?"
Miss Briggs knew the number. She had called it scores of times for
Dick during the months he had been engaged to Gloria.... It had
always hurt abominably to call that number. It hurt her now ... like
an old wound.
But she gave the number in a brisk cheerful voice.
"No, she hasn't come in," she reported to Dick. "Her mother says she
doesn't know when to expect her."
Dick ran his hand through his dark hair. "But, good Lord! Where is
she?" he asked, unaware that he spoke aloud.
Susan Briggs cleared her throat.
"Mrs. Gregory came into the office this morning to see you," she
said, huskily.
Dick wheeled. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asked sharply. "Where
was I when she was here?"
"You had just gone out to lunch," Susan Briggs answered. "And--and I
forgot to tell you about it."
A tell-tale blush mounted to her face. She had not forgotten to tell
Dick! ... She hadn't wanted to tell him about Gloria's visit. And
Dick knew it.
She looked at him with her unspoken misery in her eyes.
"I suppose I ought to tell you something, Mr. Gregory," she said,
after a moment. "I was just going to telephone you about it when you
came in to-night."
Dick waited silently for her to go on,
"I don't know whether I should have done it ... but I gave Mrs.
Gregory the key of your house to-day," she said at last.
"Did she ask you for it?" Dick asked.
Susan Briggs nodded.
"Well, I'll bet that's where she is then ... at the house!" Dick
exclaimed. His eyes lighted.
"I wouldn't wonder," Sue Briggs answered dryly. It took all of her
nerve, her gallantry, to say those three small words in just that
tone.
From under her lashes she saw Dick go into his office. She heard the
creak of his swivel chair as he sat down in it. Then there was a
long silence....
She knew that he was making up his mind whether to go to his wife, or
not ... his wife who was waiting for him in the house that was his
and hers.
Not daring to move, Susan Briggs sat there. She knew that the
happiness of all her life depended upon whether Dick stayed there at
the office or went to Gloria, that night.
... And so certain was she of his decision that presently she began
to put on her hat to go home.
As she stood before the mirror tucking a stray wisp of hair behind
her ear, Dick came out of his office. He carried his hat and his
inevitable brief-case was under his arm.
"Good night, Susy," he said, in a matter-of-fact voice as he went
out. He did not notice that she had made no answer.
Miss Briggs stood there where he had left her, with her hands still
holding the brim of her hat. She did not move until the sound of his
retreating footsteps died away down the corridor of the building.
Then she opened the drawers of her desk and took all the things that
were hers from them. Pitifully few they were. Tablets and pencils,
a small box of talcum powder, a face-towel, and an old candy-box full
of odds and ends.
She looked around the room where she had worked for so many years ...
as if she were trying to print it on her memory. And yet she knew it
was the one place in the world that she never would be able to forget!
She took off her hat with a jerky, impatient movement, and sat down
at her desk. After a moment she put a sheet of clean white paper
into her typewriter, and began to write.
"Dear Mr. Gregory:" she began and could go no further....
What could she say to him? The truth was impossible.
She couldn't write to tell the man she loved that she wasn't going to
work for him any more because he was in love with his wife and not
with her!
She couldn't tell him that her heart was broken, and that there never
would be any happiness anywhere for her again. And yet that was the
truth! ... Anything else was a lie.
Well, then, she would have to tell him a lie.
She raised her hands above the machine, held them poised there an
instant, and then wrote rapidly: "I am taking this opportunity to
tell you that I am resigning my position at once for one where I will
receive a larger salary.
"Sincerely yours,
"SUSAN BRIGGS."
She neither dated it nor sealed it ... just laid it in the wire
basket on Dick's desk, where he would be sure to see it first thing
in the morning.
As she turned to go out of his office, she brushed against his old
office coat hanging against the wall. It smelled of the tobacco he
smoked in that villainous pipe of his. The sleeves of it still held
the shape of his arms....
Susan Briggs put her arms around it, hugging it close to her breast,
and laid her cheek against its rough tweed surface. Her mouth
twisted, and a tear slid from under her closed eyelids.
Suddenly she loosened her hold of the coat, and let it swing back
into place. She hurried out of the office.
In the outer room she picked up her belongings, snapped out the
lights, and went.
A cleaning woman was mopping up the floor of the corridor. Behind
her was a small girl with enormous black eyes and a mop of straight
black hair. As Susan Briggs passed her, she held up her doll for her
to admire.
"See Dolly?" she said. Miss Briggs brushed past her, and went on a
few steps. Then she turned around, and saw the small girl's eyes.
They were the eyes that all children have for strange and sudden
cruelties ... hurt and bewildered.
Susan ran back and pressed a nickel into the child's small grimy palm.
"Poor baby!" she said. Her eyes were blinded with tears, as she went
down the stairs and out of the building.