XIII
“MOTHER”
“A MAN’S a fool before he learns technic,” John Higgins said, as he leaned back from a manuscript the next afternoon. “He’s a cripple while he’s learning it. When he’s learned it and forgotten he’s learned it—he begins to be a workman. That’s the freedom of knowledge.... As for this Tunis story of young Melton’s—it’s a subtle sort of botch.”
Rufus Melton came to the basement entrance at seven. Even if Miss Claes had not gone out to dinner, Pidge would not have taken him upstairs. He looked older, his back had a curious droop. He glanced at her ruefully, and around the room. Pidge stood beside the table.
“Mr. Higgins didn’t care for your story,” she said. “It has happened unluckily all around.”
His head had bowed before she began to speak. His eyes came up to her now, full of contrition and pain.
“I think the hardest thing I ever did was to come here to-night. Only one thing made it possible. I’d have started west, only New York is a curious old dump.”
“How is that?” she asked warily.
“You have to go north to go west. I mean the only way out is north, for a pedestrian.”
“You haven’t enough for the ferry or tube?”
Their eyes met.
“What I said last night holds good, you know,” she said with effort.
He turned slowly to the door as if in indecision, and Pidge watched. She knew she could make him take the money, but she wanted him to be ready to die first.
“There was nothing in the other stories, either—from Higgins’ point of view?” he asked.
Pidge was white. She felt like an executioner. “The package was mailed back to you to-day.”
For just an instant his head was bowed again, half turned to the door. Then he veered around and his hand came out to hers.
“Good night,” he said.
“Good night. But you—that quiet room in Cleveland——”
He shook his head with a slow, dawning smile.
“It’s great to know you. I’ve heard about such people being here in the Village, but it’s—‘It’s fourteen miles from Schenectady to Troy.’”
“It’s a long way to Albany before that,” she said.
“It’s a long way to One-Hundred-and-Tenth Street, Miss Musser, but it is easier than taking money from a girl.”
She breathed relief. “I came to fight it out here in New York on the same terms you did,” she said. “You can pay me back.”
Now his back was toward her, his face uplifted. She saw his hand grope for the knob of the door, and his shoulders rock weakly. She caught his arm and pulled him back to a chair.
“You see, you really couldn’t get away.”
He had suffered her to lead him to a dining-room chair, and sat very still, his head tilted back, eyes closed. She took the little package of bills from her dress and tucked it into his hand. There were voices in the hall; a vague frown crossed his white temples.
“What is it?” he said queerly.
“You are faint. I’ll go with you to a near place for something to eat. That’s all you need. Come—if you can walk a little way.”
He stood in a sort of confusion, holding the folded bills in his hand as one would hold a card.
“Put that in your pocket,” she said, but he did not seem to comprehend.
They were in the street, her hand steadying him. They found a dim restaurant with a counter and a few tables. He did not speak until the waiter came; then asked for coffee. Pidge had taken the money and thrust it into his coat pocket. Now she was tormented with the fear that he would lose the small roll, not knowing that he had it. She had not brought her own purse. He would be forced to pay; then he would have to see what he had.
He drank the coffee first, then ate sparingly.
“I learned that in the desert,” he said at last.
“Learned what, please?”
“Not to go mad over the taste of food when one has been without.”
The girl who waited on the table looked devotedly into Melton’s profile as she served. Twice as he started to speak, the Sixth Avenue elevated crashed by outside and he seemed to forget what he meant to say. It seemed more true here in the restaurant than it had been in the house in Harrow Street, that he was wonderfully good to look upon. The realization held a small tumult for Pidge. She was altogether different with him than with any one else. They had finished, and still he lingered.
“I’m sorry. I hadn’t intended to come out. I left my bag upstairs. Will you please pay?”
To his illness, a look of embarrassment was now added.
“It’s in your pocket. Right there——”
She pointed to his coat, and he drew out the bills wonderingly.
“Oh, I remember,” he said dully.
While the waitress was away bringing the change, he shoved the rest of the money across the table to Pidge, but she pushed it back, saying quietly:
“I want you to fix up the room rent and get a night train west. We’ll say no more.”
His lips whitened under a curious tightening.
“Let’s get out in the dark,” he said roughly.
They walked back to Eighth Street and over to the Avenue, entering the Square that way. The sooty grass was soft and damp; the faintest trace of fog among the trees.
“You’ve got something on me,” he was saying strangely. “You’re not like a girl, but like a woman and a pal, too. You had something on me last night, or I wouldn’t have fallen for you that way.”
“When you get back to that Cleveland room—perhaps a real story will come of all this.”
“A real story,” he repeated.
His eyes were bright and the pallor of his face intense enough to be visible. She was conscious of his inimitable charm as his head inclined to her and she heard his words in the lowest possible tone:
“Meeting you—that is the real story.”
She pushed away his hand that had lifted to hers.
“You’re all right now. I’m going back. Good night and good luck.”
He made no attempt to detain her.
That night Pidge lay for a long time without sleep. She was forlorn and troubled and restless, but underneath it all there was a queer little throb of happiness, like the recent night of the two letters. It would not be stifled. Every time she could get still enough, she was conscious of it, like the song of a bird that kept on and on, but was only audible in the lulls of almost unbroken traffic. She awoke in the night with the thought of him speeding westward on his train.
The next night when she came home there was another letter from Los Angeles, another check dropped out, and a clipping, which she read first—the wedding announcement of “Adolph Musser, the noted metaphysician, and Mrs. Hastings, wealthy widow of the late Rab Gaunt Hastings, firearms manufacturer of New England, at the Byzantine,” etc.
Pidge didn’t have her guard up. The choke and the shame were too swift for her self-control. For the first time in many days the tears broke, the extra scaldy sort. If she had only been permitted to keep that first check uncashed for a few days longer!...
The next was a day of dullness and misery, a May day of rain. Crossing Broadway, as she hurried to luncheon, she passed Rufus Melton in the crowd. Her lips parted to call, but she checked in time. He hadn’t seen her. She found herself standing loosely in the traffic, her hand to her mouth, until a taxi driver roared at her, and she swung into the stream of people again and reached the curb.