The Public Square

PIDGE was gone from Harrow Street from seven in the morning to seven at night. She had been absolutely blurred with fatigue at the end of the first days, but her hands were hardening, her back adjusting to the monotonous work at the big pasting table. She was actually learning like the other girls the trick of sinking into a sort of coma for an hour or more at a time. Sometimes (as one under the influence of a prying drug, which opens scenes, as from a past life) she would remember the palisades of Santa Monica, the ocean pressing its white fringes up against the gray sand; tirelessly pressing again and again, but never leaving its white lines of foam, unless the water was sick from the big sewer of El Segundo. Rarely a sail on that great sunny bay, but many wings—pelicans, sandpipers, gulls in hundreds, feeding out beyond the surf lines, or gathered in conference on the beaten sand—three strange and ancient bird types, gathered together in one vast audience facing the sea.

This was but one of her pictures. Other times she roamed the canyons, Santa Monica and Topango, and the cheerful and solitary mesas.... “Yes, that same creature—Pan Musser,” she once said, half aloud.... Then she would think of New York and Miss Claes and Richard Cobden; of the book she had actually written, and pretty nearly died for, the book around which there was a conspiracy of silence. In spite of the coma at the pasting table, and the moments of memory drift, the stimulated laughter in the washroom, or in the half hour for lunch as they heated their tea pails over the radiators at noon; in spite of the clatter of tins passing from left to right around the big table, and the tireless goading of Fanny Gallup’s cheerful boy-talk—the brown wool dress contained plentiful hells of the human heart.... And to-morrow would be Thursday, the next day Friday, the next day Saturday, and then sleep, and this was also New York.

The first Sunday afternoon of March was the afternoon of the new frock, a cheap little one-piece dress, bought on Seventh Avenue, neither wool nor brown. It had a tissuey and boxy smell. It was rapturously, adventurously new. Pidge had an omen as she put it on, that this was a sort of hour of all her life, that never another frock would mean quite the same. She was alone with Miss Claes when Dicky Cobden came for her at six, according to a plan made early in the week. They were to cross to Staten Island and find an old Georgian mammy, whom he knew, somewhere back of Stapleton on the wet roads, a mammy who could cook chicken and beaten biscuit.

Dicky seemed only to see her face. A great wonderment came up in Pidge’s heart, not disappointment exactly, but a sort of soul-deep wonder, that Dicky didn’t appear to see the new frock. Could it be possible that a man who managed the details of his own attire with such practiced art had never known what she suffered in the brown wool dress, in all that tragedy of shabbiness and dirt? Had he really not felt ashamed of her that night under the lights in the uptown theater? He turned to her now:

“You won’t mind, Pidge, just a moment or two, if I speak of a little matter to Miss Claes. Oh, I don’t mean for you to leave; in fact, I’d rather not. It is just a report about a long story that should have been made before.”

Then out of the inmost heart of innocence, Pidge was jerked with a crush. Before his next words she realized what she must face; she, sitting aside from them in the new frock.

“... About that book manuscript,” Dicky went on. “I have ordered it sent back to you, Miss Claes—doubtless it will be in the post to-morrow. I have read it, and John Higgins has read it. We’re both agreed on this particular manuscript—that it isn’t for The Public Square.”

Pidge stared at him like a child being whipped for the first time. All that was left of the meaning of the book in her own body and mind, and all hope concerning it, had suddenly been put to death. But the rest of her remained alive in a stupor of suffering; her eyes stared. She saw Richard Cobden as never before, saw him as a workman; as they saw him in the office. This was a bit of week-day that he was showing now, sincerely speaking to Miss Claes, having at length done the best he could in regard to the task which she had imposed.

“The thing is young, Miss Claes,” he went on. “There is fling and fire to it, but its freedom is the freedom of ignorance. This love and this sort of man-stuff would only do for the great unsophisticated. I’m not saying that some publisher couldn’t take hold of it and make a go. In fact, I’ve seen stuff like it in covers mount up to big sales, but the human male isn’t handled in it, Miss Claes. This is sort of a young girl’s dream of what men are. They drink and fight and love and die and all that, but——”

“There, there, Mr. Cobden. Don’t try so hard,” Miss Claes said laughingly. “I’m sure you’ve given the book its chance.”

But Dicky meant to finish his report.

“That’s just the point,” he said; “its chance with The Public Square is all I’m talking about. This is a shopgirl’s book, and there are myriads of shopgirls. The Public Square would like to have their patronage; yet one pays a price for that. John Higgins—this is the best thing that can be said about one of the best men I’ve known—John Higgins has never yet consented to pay that price.”

Pidge Musser found her head turning from side to side as one who tries to find in which neck muscle a troubling lameness lies. She stopped that. She glanced up at Cobden, who was pressing on his left glove with his bare right hand. Before she turned, she realized that Miss Claes’ eyes were waiting for hers. It wasn’t pity she saw in them, nor friendship, nor loyalty, nor laughter; it was something of each of these, yet something more. Only one word in English even suggests the thing that was pouring upon her through Miss Claes’ eyes—and that word is compassion.

Its power could not find her heart with its healing, but it seemed to gather around like a cloak, waiting for entrance. Pidge wanted to be alone with Miss Claes now. The ache was so deep that she felt it would be worth a life if she could go into Miss Claes’ arms and break. That was it, an utter break was the only thing that could ease this pain. Then she became aware of Cobden standing at her side. In a moment he would speak. She did not wait for the moment, but arose.

“Shall we start down toward the ferry?” she asked.

“Yes, all ready, Pidge.”

In the silence that followed, Dicky did not seem to notice anything wrong. At the door Miss Claes’ hand raised and hovered above Pidge’s shoulder, but did not touch. Pidge was grateful for that.