Blake, walking up Broadway on a January afternoon, was full of a new, a dreaded necessity for kindness which he had had to swallow and which now Grace would have to swallow or reject. He had a reason which caused his memory to stumble back through the passage of the months, past various milestones which he had never considered before but which he found he recollected surprisingly well. He had a good memory which he kept to himself. The urging and the pleading were blurred because they had been so distasteful, but it was not so with a certain promise that he had made to Grace, all the circumstances of which appeared to him with a double distinctness. He understood why he had made the promise and why the promise had been called for. He understood also why he had broken the promise. And how was he to explain it? He could shift the blame and he could not shift the blame at all honorably. He had a defense and yet, before accusing eyes, it crumbled into no defense at all. He could not help remembering the dark glare of those eyes, whose suction was, more often than he cared to admit, a source of wonder to him, focused on him as Grace said, in all tense seriousness, "If that ever happened, I—I would kill you. I would."
And yet, what had he to blame himself for? Who had made the choice if not Grace, while he kept himself consciously aloof, while, unconsciously, how could he help that he had willed to aid the choice? He could not bear to see the tangle, wished with all his heart to turn his head and avoid it, as one avoids the ugly sight of some mangled animal by the wayside, but he found it, with loathing, with embarrassment and dismay, impossible, for he was within the snarl, he was part of the mangled animal.
Even when he did not wish to see Grace, when what he had to say would be much better said by letter, by written word, not face to face, those eyes were steadily drawing him through the traffic, up Broadway, around that special corner, and nearer, ever nearer, to her. He had never before quite guessed how many arid spaces there were in his life and how, from Grace's eyes, like deep, pliant pools, he drew their constant and necessary refreshment.
He found her already sitting at their table. She wore an almost springlike hat of pale silk, for it was one of those winter days which give promises of spring that cannot possibly be kept. This day had succeeded only in losing all its red corpuscles and was wan, languid, dampish.
The hat shaded her eyes. To gain time he commented on it.
"Have you got your raise, then?" he asked, and Grace seemed surprised. It was usually she who made the first allusions to her work. Seeing him so concerned, however, she described a hopeful interview with Harry Strauss and told him news of Mamie.
"Only, I thought he'd let me handle it myself, and now Al is in on it, too, which makes things—very annoying. I feel as if I have to be on my guard," she said disconsolately.
"Mm. He would cut throats all right."
"I don't understand that—sort of throat cutting," said Grace. "If I were in his way—but I'm not at all. I have a feeling he thinks Harry Strauss is grooming me, sort of, to take his place, at less money. But that's silly, if Al really has an interest in the business, as he says."
Blake thought, but had no advice to offer. The subject tired him on the whole. He did not see why Grace could not do her work on the surface, day by day, without peering and boring into underground channels, like a woman. Besides, he was too unhappy and could not bear his unhappiness alone and did not see how he could find the way to make her share it. Why didn't she see, of herself?
Grace watched him under her new hat with dark, unlighted eyes. Something was wrong between them to-day, and to-day she felt too weary herself to make the effort to set it right. She ventured one usual question, but without verve or hope.
"Everything—as usual?"
Now was the way opened. He glanced up with a sense of relief and saw by Grace's posture, her eyes drooping over the table, the answer she wished to-day. He nodded quickly. So that subject was closed. Their tea dragged on.
Then, putting on her gloves, Grace said, "I have to dash to the photographer's before he closes. Will I see you to-morrow?"
He nodded again, resigning himself with resentment to another day's sole confusion and apprehensive thought, and walked on to pay the check.
Grace could not, however, leave him yet. She stood by the door. "I thought you might—walk up with me," she said, and glued her eyes to him to see whether this was a mistake. He did not take her arm but they walked on together.
Suddenly he had such a longing to rid himself of his burden of suspense, even of anguish, that he wanted to halt in the middle of the street and cry, "Look here, don't walk with me. I—my wife and I—we're going to have a child," and have done with it and breathe while he waited to see what would follow. His feet even paused for a second, then he clutched her arm and pulled her on. Grace turned to him her questioning eyes, just beginning to fear, saying nothing.
"Do you remember what you said—that you'd kill me—if——?" he said swiftly. The memory rose at once to the surface of Grace's eyes. "Well, you can do it now," he said, with a sneer at his pain and her pain, and turned his face away.
She understood, but the understanding would not rise and surge within her as easily as the memory had. She nodded her head several times slowly, to make sure she knew, taking some slow breaths, making the first minor inward adjustments quickly, quickly, holding back terror, hugging hope fiercely, as people do who see the overwhelming flood on the horizon. When she spoke her voice was calm though strained, as if she called for news across a slight distance. She asked him how it had happened. This he told her shortly, for this at least he owed her. And when the baby was coming. This he hadn't asked and did not care to know himself. It was a long way off.
They went on.
"It'll be sort of hard on you—I mean financially," she remarked. He hardly dared to listen.
They went on.
"Babies are very expensive," she said in the same level voice.
After a while, something less than a sound, the feeling behind a sound, moved him to look at her again. They walked on a street of endless garages. Between the brim of the new hat and the collar of her coat she was weeping openly, without noise. When she noticed his eyes on her she bent her head completely away, almost back, and fumbled from far off in her purse for a handkerchief.
"Oh, I forgot," she said with bitterness. "I mustn't cry. You don't like that." This bitterness, this first and only bitterness, she would permit herself.
Without thinking how or why any longer, they stopped in the middle of the street and Blake found and clung to her hand. He looked so white, so thin-faced, so stern. He hated to use the words of tenderness and gazed at the pavement, clinging to her hand.
"When you don't cry any more, Grace, I'll know that you don't care any more."
Their fingers clutched at each other's, intertwined tightly. He, hugging his misery, could not think of her own. She, comforting him, let it go till she should be alone. It would keep, never fear, it would keep.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The photographer said that she would have to wait for the pictures.
He said, "Make yourself comfortable."
She heard him finally and sat down.
It was not the child itself that mattered—that there would be a child. It was not the betrayal that mattered, the infidelity with the other woman, the wife, the very woman against whom she had particularly to be on guard, the very woman against whom he had promised himself to be on guard. No. That was an entirely physical betrayal, the circumstances of which he had explained, and which, no matter how she might revolt against them, she could not help but understand. But such waves of outrage, of hatred, of envy, of misery, of she knew not what, stormed through her that she was bent double with them in her chair. She bit her lips tightly to contain them and buried her face in her coat collar. No part of it was visible but a white speck of cheek and huge, dark eyes.
Back of her mind there had been a vague feeling, a vague wish, scarcely credible and certainly not possible, for a child, one particular child, Blake's child. Why? She had no interest in and no sentiment about children, "the little brats!" And now through a trick (pleading, crying that he no longer loved her; being above all, so near, so close, so there), through a trap, planned and intended, no matter how desperately planned and how pitifully intended, the other woman would have the child.
With what passionate vanity Nature works first in some women in the matter of having a child! Many a woman's first thought is to bear a child by a man she loves not because, as the saying goes, she wants his child, not because she wants any child, but because ecstasy is so unimaginable when in the course of time it has fled; because it is so impossible to articulate, translate into words as a keepsake, that she wants the child as a not-to-be-belied, an actual, factual reminder. A "pledge of love"—no, not that—but a child is a pledge to remember, so that passion can never wholly be buried under mounds of time and two look at each other and wonder with their brains, their senses having entirely lost the responses, and try to recollect and not really believe. When the memory wavers and the body is quite oblivious, the child remains to certify the old emotion to the groping mind.
Thus her agony surged through Grace and her jealousy clamored within her. If she quarreled with Blake to-morrow and went years without seeing him, soon, in a short time, their love would be lost from their minds; they could meet and talk and wonder and try to recall and it would be like trying to remember yesterday's sunsets or dawns seen long ago. But Edith, she, this other woman and this unloved woman, she would have the child, the living proof, something which she and Blake could grasp through the miasmas of long afterward—the common memory, through whose body, formed by their bodies, they could reach back and forever after not wholly deny.
She had a long time to wait for the pictures. A twilight, faintly violet, just stroked the windows, like a gentle hand. Behind a screen the photographer and his assistants were busy, doing something, drying the prints, and they talked and joked. Now and then one of the men would come out and use the telephone. One boy called the same number twice. The last time he said softly, quickly, "I'm tied up here, baby. Be up soon." He was tall and had a smug, wooden face. Grace looked him over with cold eyes and decided that he was a dull young man. A very dull young man. She disliked him at sight, nay, she hated him and all these satisfied, foolish dolts of photographers. She was shivering in her chair, her hands shook so that she clasped them, her very teeth chattered.
The photographer came over and said with concern, "Are you cold?" and poured her a drink of Scotch. It was powerful, vivid stuff and now made her shiver with its heat instead of with her cold. What was it someone had said about telephones—was it Blake? Oh, yes. Something about its being love that kept the wires busy and the company prosperous, something about the long lines of booths in the late afternoons being forever filled with men calling their wives and lovers calling their sweethearts. Something about a soulless corporation hiring hordes of operators and engineers and line-men, keeping great experimental stations for the purpose of expediting the course of love over the wires, paying fat dividends because Tom and Mary were enabled to hear each other's voices and smile and quarrel within a few seconds. Funny idea.
If those pictures weren't ready soon she wouldn't be able to stand it; she would have to get out, do something, do anything. That last thought made a sort of shriek in her. She rose from her chair. If she could walk, now, up and down; but that was not possible here. She sat down again, stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth and bit it. She would like to tear it, to tear something! Limb from limb. Yes, that was a very satisfactory description of a rending. To tear limb from limb.
"Here you are," said the photographer. "Sorry to keep you waiting."
She took the folder. She almost wished to make a bow to him. She inclined her head, anyhow, and said sweetly out of her white face, "Thank you so much."
What had Harold once remarked in an unguarded moment of sympathy with her? "Go out and walk. That helps." Walk. This miserable sky on this miserable day would not even darken but grew weirdly lighter, faded against the upspringing lights, grew yearning, grew wan. As she walked, she shuddered horribly with cold and felt herself flushing, red-hot, with the liquor. When she put a hand to her face the heat of her cheek amazed her and the cold of her hand was deathly.
At that special point in her misery a bus appeared and made her look about. She was on Fifth Avenue. The bus passed and stopped and took its place in her sorrow, like a hearse. Always thereafter it kept its place there, like a hearse. Whenever she remembered, she looked about and found herself all at once on Fifth Avenue, she watched the bus pass, black with people, and halt.
She saw in a moment of saving reality that she was near the street where Anita Vestry lived. When the moment fled it merely left her wondering when she had seen Anita last. She couldn't think. Not at the opening of Mamie. No. Even Letty had not come to the opening. And then she had a flash of acute brilliance, like a stroke of lightning. The whole world grew electrically light with it. Why, she could run to see Letty! No. Harold would be there. Harold would learn, but to-night she really could not have him know, to-night she could not have him see her white and trembling. He would think—she would see it in his face—that it was too bad but what did Grace expect? She had only reached what her road would lead her to. She paused before a shop window, pinning her eyes to coats and hats, trying to pin her mind to some object with the same intentness. Then, as fast as she could, almost running, running away from the solitary prison of misery, battling to escape it, she sped in the direction of Anita's room.
Fortunately, Anita had not yet gone to dinner. She was lying on the bed in a tiny room which held, besides, a small dressing table, an old rocker, and a bit of matting. She was resting, feeling bored, and she greeted Grace with pleasure. Since the opening of Mamie she and Grace had met just once at the office. Anita noticed that Grace hugged her coat about her and looked very white, that Grace clasped her hands tightly, and she asked in surprise, "Is it very cold out, now?"
Grace made no reply. In fact, now that she was here, she didn't know what she wanted to do or what to say, yet she did not want to go away either. She glanced around the room. She had seen it once before; it told her the same story. It was very bare. At last she roused herself and remembered a dim duty.
"Will you do something for me?" she said to Anita hurriedly. "Will you call up my mother and tell her I won't be home for dinner? I have to look in on Mamie."
After a few moments Anita replied in some astonishment that she would. She saw now that Grace was in trouble, what or how she could not imagine, and remained silent. Grace went over to the dressing table and took off her hat. But she did nothing, merely looked at herself in the mirror with vague eyes and turned away. She rearranged her hat.
"Have you had your dinner?" said Anita gently.
Grace made a gesture of distaste. "I'm not hungry." Then she seemed to try with determination for composure and added, "I'll go with you if you like."
"There's a tea room downstairs," said Anita. She felt that Grace would not, could not, walk outside.
Grace ordered coffee and sat, turned a little sideways from Anita, pulling her coat collar up about her face. The sight of Anita eating made her almost sick. Once Anita asked, because it seemed that she should, "Aren't you feeling well?" Grace shook her head.
Then Anita decided that she had better not notice. They were alone in the tea room, but the service was slow and they sat there a long time, a painful time. Anita sighed with relief when it was over, thinking that now she would be allowed to go back to the room which had seemed too empty before, which seemed overwhelmingly serene now. But Grace took her arm as they went out and begged, "Will you walk over to Mamie with me? You may have to stand, they're selling out, but you won't mind, will you? Really, it's an awfully good show."
In Grace's apparent state it would have been brutal to refuse. They walked across town to Mamie. Here Grace began to regain her poise. Though still white, she was businesslike, and Anita admired the calm, pleasant way in which she talked to the house manager, exchanged a few words with the box-office man, nodded to the ticket taker, and arranged for Anita to have one vacant seat in the back row. Grace stood behind her and viewed the theater with the professional interest of an habitué. She remarked to Anita that she was learning to "count up" the house. Throughout the first act Grace remained in the rear, and whenever Anita glanced around she was quiet and cool, with her eyes on the stage.
The show was pretty, the dancing good, the music gay and sweet, and Anita felt how comfortable it was to sit at ease and watch the enactment of passions lightly, certain of happy fulfillment, on a stage. She thought musical comedies very jolly and liked the lack of strain with which they translated easy emotions to the audience, easy sentiment—too sentimental because it was so easy. But what a lot of trouble that saved the audience! All it had to do was to watch the dancers and be gay; to hum one of the popular love songs and to be in love.
During the intermission Grace asked her whether she wanted to go back stage. "I must have a few words with the handsome hero, and see if I can get a Sunday story out of him," she said, haggard under the yellow lights, but quite self-possessed. Anita, however, felt too awkward to meet a hero as handsome as this one. She refused.
The house grew dark again. Some players appeared and pulled together strands of a cloying plot. When they danced they were graceful, when they sang they were soothing, but as soon as they opened their mouths in the spoken word they became vulgar. And what spoken words they uttered! Anita could not help writhing. She watched the people around her with wonder that they should remain unaffected.
Then a man half-sang, half-declaimed a mammy song. He bent over the footlights, he stretched out his arms, he made acrobatic sallies almost into the audience, all with a hideous vigor and a violent, an infuriatingly forceful, banality. Anita felt that she could not bear it any longer. It did not relieve her to grit her teeth, to grimace, or to glare at the concentrated faces about her. The whole theater stank for her with this cheap sentiment, like cheap perfume. She got up and disturbed half a row, stumbling over legs, braving angry looks and impatient mumbles, beating her way out. Grace now stood by one of the exits, in shadow.
Anita said, "Whew! I'm sorry, but I must get out, I can't stand this."
With unexpected sympathy, Grace whispered, "Yes, it is pretty awful. Yes, let's go."
The outside air was damp and heavy but at least odorless. They wavered on a street corner. Then Anita saw that Grace was shuddering, that she was no longer cool, that the skin under her eyes and on her cheeks was drawn and yellow, and she asked again, "Are you sick?"
"I don't feel well at all," said Grace with difficulty. "Will you ride home with me—please do. I'll take a taxi."
Grace huddled into one corner and Anita sat in the other. A black length of seat separated them. From time to time a light shone full on Grace and Anita saw her clasping her hands with a handkerchief between, her eyes huge and fixed on nothing. Anita held the silence. Soon Grace rapped on the window and told the driver to take them through the park. Anita did not know enough about New York to understand that Grace was postponing her arrival home as long as possible.
Sadly the park wove and unwove before them; the poor bare trees in the wistful air, the bulky clouds overhead, the big mists of houses around the farthest edges, the cheer of the electric baubles of lights subdued. In the midst of it, Anita, sighing, glanced at Grace again and saw a tear rolling evenly down one long cheek. She was frightened and lowered her eyes quickly so that she would not see, but she could not help murmuring, making one last attempt, "Can I do anything for you?"
Grace was so long with her answer that Anita decided she would not reply and settled back into the silence. She breathed heavily rather than sighed, and suddenly Grace replied in a cool voice that did not match the tear, "No. Blake's wife is having a baby. She thought—it would bring them together."
So that was it. But Anita was far from full realization. She was merely bewildered—and embarrassed. She moved closer to her side of the taxi and frowned, careful to stare out of the window.
In a very small voice, she said at last, "Oh."
Now they were reaching the end of the park. The lights already anticipated the beginning of great apartment houses and curtained, glowing windows. And, as if she were taking advantage of the last moment of confidential sadness and darkness, Grace turned to Anita, raised her head as if in challenge, and said, "I'm living with him. I suppose you know." Her lips curled in a sneer, a hard, grim sneer like a blow, as she peered into Anita's face.
But in Anita's face she saw neither sympathy nor comprehension nor blame, only the stupid, startled expression of a person stepping off into water almost beyond one's depth. Anita's mouth was actually open a little way. So she had guessed correctly that night! But she did not want to know; she would not know; she was frantic with an awed embarrassment. After a time she said again, in a very scared voice, "Oh."
This seemed so inane even to her that she hunted about wretchedly for some more suitable comment. Finally she breathed, "I'm sorry," without looking at Grace, and felt more scared than ever. She wasn't sorry, not at the moment; she wasn't not sorry. She wasn't anything. She wanted to open the taxi door and fly. Grace said nothing further.
Once in a while Anita stole a glance at her and saw her sitting there, huddled, with big eyes in a thin face, twisting her handkerchief tight enough to tear it, twisting and tearing with fingers like teeth. She herself kept very quiet, hardly taking breath so as not to disturb the dim compassion that rose like a mist between them and embraced them and held them both, wordless, in her shadowy arms.
Book II
THE BALANCE OF POWER
CHAPTER ONE
Anita used to have an instinct to make herself very small and very blank when she first visited Grace's house. She was such a weird phenomenon to Mrs. Kline. Rack her mind as Mrs. Kline would, and she often would, staring at Anita out of her round blue eyes, a little bloodshot, shaking her head almost imperceptibly from time to time, she could not remember anyone in her experience who had not come to New York to, at least at first, stay with relatives. This younger generation that one read about in the papers! But even Mrs. Kline, whose imagination on some points was lascivious enough to bring the blush to Grace's cheek, offered no hints about Anita.
"You're plain-spoken, Anita," Mrs. Kline would say to her after she had decided to approve of her and to permit her to cultivate a friendship with Grace which was already thriving. "Just like me. That's what I like in a person. You wouldn't hide anything, least of all from your mother, would you?"
Grace would retaliate to Anita with some remark meant for her mother. And thus Anita would sit at table, feeling like a ghost, while both spoke through her person, that obviously was only a little less intangible to Grace than to Mrs. Kline. And yet Anita came to the house more and more often, partly because of her own isolation, partly because of Grace's soft reaching toward her. All these months Grace had been to her simple, sad, clinging, and obliging. When, through some mood of her own, Anita sent an occasional rebuff, Grace accepted in silence, seemed to understand, forgot it. Each discovered certain ideas in the other that no longer needed to be solitary. When Anita wished to dislike Mr. Milford articulately, Grace listened; with her Grace mulled over ways out. Grace offered suggestions for a mitigation of loneliness which made Anita grateful though they were suggestions which would suit Grace's temperament and which were highly inapplicable for Anita. In turn, Anita, modest though she was and not altogether naïve, considered that the reason for Grace's friendliness could only be that Grace liked her. She was not of the least importance, she thought, and there was nothing of the least importance she had to offer anyone. And though, when Mrs. Kline, who was not subtle, showed a patronizing concurrence in this opinion, Anita might feel humiliated, she was not exactly hurt. She liked to watch Mrs. Kline and she liked to watch Grace. Long ago she had formed the habit of focusing her observations and her interest outside of herself on things which she humbly granted were more exciting.
Even when in a burst of final, desperate irritation she threw up her job with the Dress Daily, she did not deceive herself that the event, disastrous enough in her life, would cause much of a ripple when narrated in the Kline household. Blake's baby had been born and nothing could vie with that in Grace's mind. Anita would not bother to inform her. She lay about her room for a few days moping, thinking, till Grace sent a wire after her. Grace had a cold. Would Anita come up to see her and explain what had happened?
Mrs. Kline opened the door for her and at once began in her jarring voice a discourse on a dress that Anita had spoken of ordering.
"I'm not busy now, Anita; I could even buy the goods for you at a discount, and I'd make it up for you very cheap. Don't be afraid, I'd keep everything down for you like for my own child. You better speak up if you want it because soon I won't have the time."
Anita said shortly that it was out of the question as she had lost her job. She did not expect Mrs. Kline to be affected. But Mrs. Kline was—in a different sense.
"Grace never told me a word," she cried in consternation. "She never tells me a word." She tramped along with Anita up the hall to the small sewing room where Grace lay on a couch. "You never told me that Anita here lost her job," she shouted accusingly.
Grace looked out of wide, patient eyes and did not answer. The telephone, which the Klines kept in the sewing room, had been moved to the floor within reach of her hand.
"Don't you worry, Anita," cried Mrs. Kline, putting an arm about her. "There's plenty jobs around. If you want me to make that dress you know I could make it up for you and you don't have to pay me right away, you don't have to pay me till you like. And if God forbid anything should happen, you know you can always come up here with Grace and me." She patted Anita's shoulder, regarding Grace with an air of challenge. Then, with an effort, she added, "Now I guess you girls want to be left to yourself. I guess you have things to talk about," she said heavily, "you don't think I'm smart enough to hear. In my day, girls weren't too smart for their mothers, but nowadays they are and we mothers got to make the best of it." She lingered. Both girls kept still.
After she had straightened whatever in the room could be straightened and otherwise delayed her departure, Mrs. Kline had at last no choice but to keep her promise. She banged the door to, anyhow, as a slight expression of her feelings. A shudder passed through Grace; she placed a quick finger on her lip, signing silence to Anita. And, to be sure, there was a certain interval of time between the closing of the door and the retreating clamp clash of Mrs. Kline's feet.
"Anyhow, it's kind of her," murmured Anita.
"Yes," said Grace. "She means it, too, and she'd remember any kindness she did you to the bitter end."
As she lay staring at the ceiling, the telephone rang. She answered it in a low, cautious voice. She named no names, every word was noncommittal, a series of "ohs," one "better," some "yeses" and at length a phrase which Anita had heard from Grace before and which always made her smile with its unjustified consequence: "Well—what are—your plans?" Anita reflected that, while highly diplomatic, while perhaps necessary for secrecy, such conversations must provide a further diet of exasperation for Mrs. Kline.
She could not help noticing, too, how Grace had marshaled her illness, as it were; had arranged it, dramatized it. When Anita was sick she did not think how she looked or what were the conditions of comfort or discomfort about her, and as for how the outside world might be affected, that naturally never entered her mind. She was ill and paid as little heed to her illness as possible and wished to hide and get it over with. But Grace had dressed her hair as best became a sick person, very simply, brushed back from her nicely balanced smooth forehead and clasped with a barrette. Her dressing-gown had that fine symmetry, settled about her as evenly, as gracefully, as her clothes always did. There was a small atomizer on the table and a new book. The telephone rang. Grace's friends had apparently been informed or took the trouble to inform themselves. There was even a vase of red roses. Grace saw her looking at them.
"My baritone sent them," Grace said with her deep snigger. "It seems his heart is like a red, red rose. But tell me what happened."
When Anita began her story under Grace's attentive eyes she found that even less had happened than she supposed. She was so annoyed by Mr. Milford; she had fallen into the habit of revising his silly stories into some sort of sense, had been taxed with it, had foolishly argued—as if it mattered a whit to her—and before she knew it, she had heard herself saying, "I think I'd better leave."
Grace made only one comment. "If you had to leave, why didn't you get yourself fired and leave with two weeks' salary?"
Anita had never thought of this.
"You're not very good at business, are you?" said Grace, sighing. She considered. "Have you any money?"
Anita laughed.
"Then what will you do?"
Anita shrugged.
"But what will you do?" insisted Grace. "You must do something. Do you know anyone who might help you? Didn't you meet lots of people at the Dress Daily?"
"No one I'd ask for favors," said Anita stiffly.
Grace sighed again. "You're so proud. Pride's all right if you can afford it. But it's a question of choice. Wouldn't you rather give up a little pride—and get a job? What can you do otherwise?"
"I can go home," said Anita. "I can rest and think it over."
Grace opened her eyes. "To Trenton? Aren't you afraid?"
They understood each other, but Anita replied with a frown, "Why? My home isn't a prison."
"Well, mine is," said Grace. And suddenly she added, "Anita, I wish you wouldn't go. I'll miss you, truly I will."
She continued softly, with many pauses, as if she were feeling her way, testing with care for a response. "You know—I thought if I could ever really leave Ma—I could if I only made a little more money—we could—take a place together—maybe."
Anita did not quite know. Anyhow, it did not bear thinking of at present. She said in haste, "Well, that's a long way off. I haven't any money, you know, and I'm not likely to have."
But she appeared to satisfy Grace, who put an arm under her head and said with assurance, "We could manage that."
"Something's up in my own job," Grace added, moving and sighing on her couch. "I don't know just what, but I can feel something. To tell the truth, I haven't been paying much attention to it lately. I guess they see it—but—I can't help it. I—there've been other things." She fell silent.
Suddenly she began the motions of her laugh and searched Anita's face. "Do you know how I got this cold?" she said. She concluded, "Looking for rooms with Blake—for his wife."
She attempted to justify herself to the expression of withdrawal on Anita's face. "I suppose that—shocks you. But it was very natural. Their place isn't big enough with the baby and she can't go house hunting. Blake had to—so—I took the afternoon off and accompanied him, in the rain and all."
There was a pause. She added with a curved, one-sided smile, "I hope she's grateful."
The telephone rang again and Grace was upon it almost before the ring. She used the same formula, a little lower perhaps. "Oh.... Oh." A deep, "That's good!" Then, "What are—your plans for to-morrow?"
Grace hung up. She smiled a firm, a victorious smile, pressing her lips together.
"They've named the baby James," she announced to the ceiling, smiling up at it. "After her father."
She turned upon Anita a face bereft of the smile and said grimly through her set teeth, "He isn't a junior anyway. That's my little victory." Her cheeks had grown haggard and after a while she felt for a handkerchief under the pillow and dabbed at her eyes.
CHAPTER TWO
Every day young people came to Harry Strauss's office, armed with letters, fortified with introductions, to ask for work. Grace saw them all without appearing to see; nor had it escaped her that there seemed to be more of them, that they entered more expectantly and departed more hopefully. One would have thought that she had nothing to fear. She had got her raise, she had hinted for another. But she was well aware of and knew that Harry Strauss and Al were aware of a relaxation of the tight net of effort that she had at first spread over her job. She argued with herself that this was but natural; not even race horses were expected to keep up the pace with which they started. In any case she could not help herself. All she seemed to want now was to sweep away her work somehow so as to be free to meet Blake in the afternoons.
Something was in the air, something which had spread abroad and attracted these increasing numbers of job hunters, like the mysterious word that goes forth to crows or jackals that there is a carcass for the picking. One morning Grace saw Miss MacAlister with this obscure word in her eyes, watching her. Al was very quiet this morning. He sat at their table in the outer office and mulled over photographs, destined for the women's pages, of an opera singer who had been using some reduction method. This was strange. The opera singer belonged to Grace.
As she too bent over the table, Al said to her very low, "Did you have any words with Harry?"
"No. Why?"
Al murmured, "When I call you from Harry's office, come in and don't shut the door. Look out, she tells him everything."
They made perfunctory motions of work. Finally Al bustled into Mr. Strauss's empty office, and as he had planned, when he called her, Grace followed as casually as possible. They stood by the window, pretending to look out of it, while Al kept an eye on Miss MacAlister and on the door.
"You know I'm your friend here," began Al with emphasis. Grace said nothing. He hurried on. "Harry was asking for you yesterday afternoon. Where were you?"
"I can't do my work and be here every minute," said Grace sharply.
"I know that. I told him so. But Harry's a funny guy. He got mad and he said, 'That girl never shows up in the afternoon, she's never around when I want her.' I guess he was playing bridge the night before and lost a couple of dollars, so—Then he started talking about how he'd let you handle Madame Tallifer all by yourself to show what you could do—and you hadn't done so well with her, she's putting up a holler."
It was true. Grace hadn't done so well with the opera singer, Madame Tallifer. There were a thousand good reasons. There was little interest and no novelty to Madame Tallifer. She would complain in any event. But then, neither Grace nor anyone else was expected to heed reason in this business, this "racket," as Al called it. She was silent.
"So then he asked me what I thought," went on Al, "and I told him, I said, 'You know how it is, Harry. Grace hasn't got the experience you and me have. She's still learning. You got to go a little easy with her.'"
"You told him that!" exclaimed Grace. "You know very well and he knows too that I've done a lot better for the money he pays me——"
"I know all that, I know all that," said Al. "Sh! Listen, I had to tell him that, give him his way, you know, smooth things over. I'm your friend, see?"
Grace gave him an acute look and turned slightly away.
"Listen, think I want you to go? Wha'd'y'think I got to gain by it? It's no fun for me to break in a new girl," cried Al. "Listen, if you think I ever did or said anything against you, just ask Harry, that's all I want. Just ask him."
"Oh, let's drop it. Is that all you have to tell me?"
"Well, I was just going to finish. Just give me a chance. So a while after that Harry calls me in again and he's got a girl there. I didn't even catch her name, never heard of her, don't know her," he declared hastily, seeing Grace's eyes. "And he said to her, 'Would you work for thirty-five dollars a week?' And she said, 'Yes!' So then he said, 'Al, Miss—Whatshername—'ll be working with you next week.'"
Grace stared out of the window. After glancing at her once or twice Al began to fumble with papers on Mr. Strauss's desk. "Why don't you speak to Harry?" he suggested nervously. "Maybe you can fix things up."
But Grace shook her head and said, "No. I have to see Tallifer this morning." She picked up her coat, in passing, and went out.
Instinctively, she would not take impetuous steps across a bridge until she came to it. And she had to get out to think. This time she did not look at streets or shop windows or at the bright sky where even the clouds were a glittering, not a fluffy, white. The situation arranged itself like a chess game in her mind. Al wished to get rid of her. This girl was a friend perhaps. Or Al was afraid that she, Grace, might rise to some importance in the office. Well, she had never trusted Al. Just the same, he was sorry for her, too, sorry that it had seemed necessary for her throat to be cut. He had for her the futile, patronizing pity of sentimental people. She need not make an enemy of him. And Mr. Strauss—he would save fifteen dollars a week. It had been a mistake to suggest another raise—no chance there at all. But, if she knew Harry Strauss, he would not fire her (unless she begged for it) till Saturday, so that he might get the last ounce of blissfully ignorant effort out of her. Nice of Al to tell her—a small sop to his conscience perhaps—though perhaps he had planned that she would be disgusted enough and proud enough to leave pronto, of her own will, and save them the annoyance of a dismissal.
Anyhow, she had three days till Saturday. Of these she would make doubly sure by keeping out of Mr. Strauss's way. She had also an idea that she could manage to get a week's extra salary out of him by appealing to his particular vanity, which she had noted: his wistful desire of the born liar to be considered fair, square, to be believed. So she had nine working days of grace. She might not even have to tell Ma, if she began to angle at once.
She considered her problem skillfully, conscientiously, from every side, as a scientist might probe a new disease. She planned her procedure in her mind with swift instinct, a bold, logical poise, as a great general might plan a campaign. All other thoughts were excluded; ironic comparisons, the weakening, defeating insinuations of humor could not find a loophole. This was her trouble, her problem. For the time it encompassed her like the entire universe; for the time it was alone, itself, her universe; but it was a universe from which she did not shut everyone else out. No—it was rather a universe which it did not occur to her everyone else would not be pleased to share.
She had no intention of seeing Madame Tallifer. She went into a telephone booth.
Like any good general, Grace had never lost sight of her reserves. No matter how such she might be of the present, this did not prevent her from keeping herself alert for new opportunities, for ascertaining where, in an emergency, these might be more plentiful, for acquainting herself as much as possible with the people who had them to bestow. There were certain persons, too, as she realized—not perhaps entirely consciously—who, though not important themselves, might be used as keys to unlock the sources of opportunities beyond them. Mr. Milford was such a person. He could do nothing for her himself but he knew many people whose attention he could focus by means of a letter or a request. Grace was too shrewd to apply to Mr. Milford again; there were others, however, whom she had marked. Some might clamber up the rocky, direct road to strange offices and appear, scared and out of breath, to ask for work. Grace preferred the less simple, the roundabout, the easier way. She wanted a path prepared ahead of her, an entrance staged; a few laudatory wreaths strewn before, provided one's person seemed to become them, as hers did, always helped.
There was Tommy Manship, the assistant dramatic editor, who admired her, who had a job that forced press agents to pay court to him, and who could give her letters and suggestions. She arranged to see him first. Then there was her old boss, McTavish, at the Brooklyn Press. These were people with whom she could be frank. There were some women, too, women with money, women with valuable "contacts," of whom she had made friends from time to time. She had not been pleasant to them definitely because of their uses. At this time she was in general pleasant and, when necessary, obliging, partly because she liked to be so. She had never needed to shrink from people. From childhood she had been accustomed to the power of soothing and softening which her looks alone had, her great eyes, the glowing clarity of her skin. She enjoyed seeing the initial receptive expression on the faces of strangers; she preferred them to retain their admiration if possible. Besides, she understood without ever being told, without ever even thinking about it, how much of comfort and success, so desired by her, rested in the hands of other people.
When she left the telephone booth her routine for that day lay clearly ahead of her.
The next morning Grace came to the office early so as to avoid both Al and Mr. Strauss. She sorted a folder of Madame Tallifer's pictures in front of the stenographer and departed with it, remarking cheerfully that she had "planted" some woman's page features. Thus she hoped to record with Miss MacAlister her happy ignorance and her absorption in Mr. Strauss's affairs. She then walked over to the studio of a writing friend of hers, made herself at home, and carefully examined her toilette. She had an appointment with a Mr. Williams at the M.A.N. Film Company.
"Drop in to tea this afternoon," said her writing friend, Diana Porter Reece. "The man who runs the Enterprise Feature Syndicate is coming. He might help you."
Diana Reece was supported chiefly by a husband but did not let this interfere with her career. She did not care whether the men in her train were useful or futile, but inevitably, among the dregs, some would emerge who were worth knowing. Grace promised to come, though she had to see Blake at tea time too. She meant to overlook neither.
The way to Mr. Williams brought memories of her first day of job hunting—how she had worried over the sealskin coat, worn too early in the season, how her mind had been in conflict between Blake and work. This last year, in which she had fought no longer, in which she had succumbed to his invasion of her mind, seemed to have had an exactly opposite effect from what she might have supposed. Her mind was like a surrendered city which the conquerors believe they have at the moment of its defeat, only, upon settlement, to find themselves absorbed by an alien, negative host. The single thought of Blake was no longer in her mind, intruding on it, harassing her to eject it. It had become part of every thought there, and so it was no longer bitterly, distinctly there, apparent at all. She could not be distracted by the idea of Blake any more than she could be distracted by the idea of herself.
She looked very well; she owned a fall coat now. She was all in brown, a clear, pale brown of hat, dress, and chiffon stockings, a velvety brown of coat and shoes. And so with the feeling of light, easy, bounding power that seems to bring success in its wake, as its due, she went in to see Mr. Williams.
When she walked out she had her job. So simply! She almost wished to snap her fingers and walked along aimlessly, smiling, letting the light blue air of Indian summer, hazy as spring but without the springlike quiver, with a faint death-weariness in it, caress her face. Mr. Williams was not like Harry Strauss. He was a tall young man with a browned face and eyes as soft as Grace's own. He was susceptible and did not attempt to hide it. "Must have been a newspaperman," thought Grace. And so easy! He had merely told her what she would do and what he could pay, and that was sixty-five dollars a week. If Harry Strauss only knew! Really she had to gloat and declare holiday.
As she had expected, at the moment of handing her her check Saturday Mr. Strauss said: "Sit down a moment, Grace. I have sad news for you." That was one point in Harry Strauss's favor, Grace thought. Whatever he might do underneath, on the surface he wasted no oily sentiment, no hypocritical blather.
He now continued: "I suppose you see things are dull now. We've got to cut down. I asked Al about you and he said the work you were doing could be done just as well by an inexperienced girl——"
"Did Al say that?" cried Grace in spite of herself. "It's very unfair of him!"
Mr. Strauss sent her a keen, comprehending look.
"Well, I asked him and that's what he said. I can't keep track of you, you know."
"It was very unfair of him," repeated Grace, flushing. "In spite of the way you divided the papers, we've worked together on everything, as Al seemed to prefer. He can't claim any more credit for what we've done than I can."
Mr. Strauss nodded a number of times. "I know, I know all that. But that's what Al told me. If you don't agree, don't go out till Al comes and we'll have it out. Al is inclined to misrepresent things." He waited.
But a sudden idea shot through Grace's mind. Could they be working in unison? Was it a plan to get her to cut her own salary perhaps? Would people plot and counterplot with such narrow, shrewd subtlety for a few dollars? She felt highly superior to Harry Strauss and to Al. She brushed the matter aside with a curl of her lip.
"N-no," she said remotely. "I never could argue. If Al thinks that and you believe him——"
"I didn't say that, my dear," put in Harry Strauss. "I know nothing about your work. I have to ask Al and that is what he told me."
"Well, if Al feels that way about me——" She turned her eyes to the window.
"Well, what do you want to do?" said Mr. Strauss after a silence. "Do you want to leave?"
Grace lowered her eyes and took a deep breath. "Is that—the sad news you have for me?" she said in a very small voice.
"From what Al told me, I thought that would be best."
"If you're firing me," began Grace, "I have to go, of course." She spoke with dignity, but low, bowing to the greater force. She raised her eyes frankly to Mr. Strauss's face. "I can't afford to leave," she said. "As you know, it's not so easy—to get a job. And—I have my mother to support. It's very hard on me—without any notice." Her eyes, without a hint of a tear in them, took on the deeper pathos of tears just behind.
Mr. Strauss fussed with his papers. "Well, I'll tell you," he said at length. "I want to be fair to you. I'll give you a week to look around—and keep on with your work here. At the end of the week you come in and collect your pay as usual, but that doesn't mean you're to neglect your work here, you understand. Is that fair?"
So she had won. She had what amounted to a week's much-needed vacation with pay. It would be all right with Mr. Williams since she had thoughtfully arranged with him for this interval. It was hard to hide her elation. She got up and paused by the desk.
"I hope we—part good friends," she murmured with that curious advance of her eyes and retreat of the rest of her face. "I've liked—working here, and I'm sorry that you haven't found my work—entirely—satisfactory."
"That's all right, my dear," said Mr. Strauss. "You may have been lying down on the job here of late—I only know what Al tells me—but all the same I think you're a bright girl. After you're through here, drop in now and then. I might hear of something."
She thanked him. In the corridor, she met Al on his way back to the office.
"Well?" he inquired.
"Well?" she said haughtily.
"What happened? How'd you get along with Harry?"
Grace looked him over from top to toe before she replied. "He gave me a week in which to look around."
"I'm glad he did that anyhow," cried Al. "I'll see you around here then, but I want to wish you good luck right now, Grace." He put out his hand. "If I hear of anything—you know, I'm your friend."
Grace had a sudden moment of unguarded rage. She could and would permit herself to ignore the hand. She sneered. "Yes. I know what a friend you are to me."
"Jesus Christ! What's the big idea?" cried Al. Grace went on. "Women—! Women—!" called Al to Heaven, clutching his head and shaking it from side to side. He retreated into the office.
Still, some days later, Grace heard that Al was speaking of her as a "sweet girl," and when they next met they greeted each other as if nothing had happened. Neither cared or dared to make an open enemy of the other. Each had learned the Christian lesson of forgiving and forgetting, though not from motives of high magnanimity. To fight those who harm one and cherish those who aid one, to be proud, to be dangerous, and to be loyal is too primitive and difficult a process for this civilized world. It taxes the mind and emotions far less and is altogether better business to forgive and forget.
CHAPTER THREE
When Anita returned to New York winter was in full possession—a wet winter, a sickly winter, chilling the blood into sluggish mounds, turning a gray snow into slush and mud among the morass of cobblestones by the station. She had come to New York an energetic novice, had left it as a cool, experienced resident. She returned a stranger. New York did not recognize her, and in the midst of its docks and cobblestones, its trucks and wagons splashing mud to either side, foggy, gray with the drizzle, on the way to its markets, she was lost, very small, uncertain. A porter, noticing her in her brown coat by the cheap valise, indicated the Travelers' Aid Society. This made her laugh, though it hurt too. She felt like a person who had been cut dead by an old friend. And though she had resolved not to trouble Grace till she was settled, she went eagerly to a telephone booth and asked to see her at once.
On the way to the M.A.N. office she stopped by her old rooming house. A sign announced its sale; the wreckers had set their seals on its door and walls. With small-town faith, Anita had counted on this dreary house, the greetings of her landlady, on her old room or one just like it. Now there remained between her and complete disassociation only Grace.
She had to wait for Grace amid the heavy consequence of carpets, plush and oak. She was announced and ushered into the presence by a devious way through a great main office and short passages that made no attempt to keep the elegant promise of the reception room. Grace's desk in the Publicity Department was one of a number lost under pictures, papers, and telephones. Grace was typing and waved her hand. "Sit down a minute, Anita. I have to finish this."
She seemed to have taken on an impressive amount of assurance and a soft sheen, partly of grooming, partly of well-being, by which Anita, as she watched her, was more and more abashed. Her own shoes were sensible in rubbers, her gloves were not too fresh, and her hat bore traces of the drizzle. Grace, in a dark blue suit perfectly attuned to her like all her clothes, with the pale light of amber beads falling over the delicacy of her blouse, with her skin that appeared to have a richer glow over cheeks that had lost their hollows—this Grace was so aloof from her that no words and no attempted kindness could possibly reach across the space between them. Of course, Grace had to be polite for the sake of old times, old confidences—how old those times seemed suddenly!—but how could she have expected concern, the warmth of intimacy? She had better go, she thought. She was on the point of rising and going forthwith when Grace at last turned to her.
"Do you know what I'm doing?" she said. "I'm justifying my college education. I figured out a way to connect George Bernard Shaw's Superman with Babe Jean, the baseball player, who's under contract to us for one picture. They call him the Sultan of Swat. So I suggested—why not cable G.B.S. and ask if we might not advertise Babe Jean as the—Superman of Swat. Shaw is always good for loads of newspaper space. And luck was with us! To-day we got a cable from Shaw: 'Never heard of her. Whose Baby is Jean?' And Mr. Williams thinks we'll make every front page in the country."
At this moment Mr. Williams hurried out of the inner office and leaned over Grace with a marked gallantry. "Are you through, Grace? Would you let me have the stuff, then? I want to hold it over for the morning papers. I'll plant it myself. That was certainly one swell hunch of yours!"
He ran his eyes swiftly over the page and a half, came to a point that pleased him and nodded vigorously. "Yop. You made your sale fine!"
"I'll see that you get full credit for it," he assured her, and hastened away.
When the door of his private office had shut Grace said to Anita with a small, sly smile, "He likes me." She stretched in her chair, a gesture of voluptuous weariness after enjoyed and appreciated effort. "I'm having a grand time," she confided. "I've even stopped—worrying so much. Roy Williams is awfully nice to me. I'm supposed to do mostly woman's-page stuff for the press books, fashions, and feature stories, but he lets me try my hand at anything that comes up. It's lots of fun and so much easier than the Strauss job."
She had not yet asked about Anita. Now she looked her over, seeming abstracted, and remarked, "You look well. Have you decided what you'll do?" She rose as she said this, took her coat from the back of a chair, picked up a pale amber-colored hat and various possessions from the desk. "Come out with me. We can talk better outside." Anita followed unwillingly.
She went with Grace to buy a pair of stockings. On the way she was regaled with such bits of gossip as Grace felt she would surely wish to know. Letty was engrossed with Paul. Harold had gone into the lace business with a friend. He was also growing more docile.
"He's even got to the point where he'll make lunch dates with girls," announced Grace triumphantly. "And he no longer turns up his nose at me—so much."
"How's Blake?"
"Very well," said Grace in a cool voice. "You know, it's interesting," she added reflectively, as if repeating an explanation that had often been in her mind, "to watch the—er—balance—waver between us. At first—Blake was the chief person and I was a nobody. I cared for him more than he cared for me. But gradually I've been watching the balance sort of—even up. And now on this job I've been doing so well and making so many new friends, I can see—the balance swing slowly over to my side."
Anita listened without much interest and wondered how she could leave, and where to go when she left. They turned a corner.
Grace urged her: "Come up to Diana Reece's place. It's right here. She's away but she gave me the key. I want to see what you think of it. You know—I was thinking—Dee's place is only thirty-five a month. I'm starting a feature for the Enterprise Syndicate on Wives of Famous Men, and if I could only make enough out of it to pay the rent—I'd be ready to leave Ma. Dee's awfully sweet to me; she said if I took over the place she'd let me have her furniture. So you see—I'm almost set."
Yes, Anita saw, and the contrast between their conditions depressed her more than ever. Not for the first time, this talent of Grace's for ranging and consolidating trifles to form a stable background, a stable shelter, a stable footing seemed to her enviable. With Grace, one thing always led to another and more profitable thing.
Diana Reece's studio was a tiny front room in an old house off Fifth Avenue. This house, soon to suffer the fate of all old houses, stood far back from the street in a courtyard decorated with plaster statues that belonged to the shop next door. The statues of lions and angels were ghostlike in the gray mist; the house, black stairs after black stairs of which they climbed, smelled of mold and ancient woodwork, and Diana Reece's room was icy.
Grace turned on an electric heater and sat by it, drawing fresh, sheer stockings over her white feet. The room took on an air of graciousness from her movements, of comfort, of animation. The stockings, with their fragile smoothness of new silk, just reward for Grace's labors, struck Anita with the full force of her own idleness. She felt the darns on her own heels and toes. And she was even a little older than Grace. And here she sat, idle, with a cheap valise checked at a station, little money, and no home. She got up.
"I really have to go now. I ought to find a room to-day anyhow."
Grace contemplated her out of startled eyes that grew deeper, larger, softer. "Haven't you a room?" she exclaimed. "Why didn't you tell me? Do you mean to hunt for a room in this weather?"
"Well, I have to," said Anita miserably. "Unless I want to go to the Y.W. And I don't care for that."
After a long pause Grace started to plan in her deliberate accents. "You're so funny, Anita. I suppose you'll turn on me for suggesting this, but—you know you could stay here for a while. I wanted to tell you, but I thought... Anyhow, Dee never uses the place except to work. If you got out before ten and came back around five, I know she wouldn't mind your staying here. I sleep here myself now and then. It's—convenient. All I have to do is walk down Fifth Avenue to the office. This couch is very comfortable, and see, you have a heater, and it wouldn't cost you a cent."
"It's awfully decent of you," murmured Anita. "I don't know..."
"Oh, don't be proud! Just this once, don't be proud—please. It doesn't mean a thing to Dee. Keep your suitcase under the couch, and she won't even know you've been here!"
With relief, Anita yielded.
"Er—I saw Mr. Milford the other day," added Grace carefully. "He asked about you. You wouldn't want your old job back, would you?"
"No!"
"Well. I only asked. And you know—I'll look around for you, if you like."
"Not if it's a bother to you," said Anita. "It's ever so kind of you. I thank you and all that."
She was grateful, some of the burden slipped from her mind, and as a small, immediate token of gratitude, she now gave deep attention to Grace's talk.
"I have a lunch date with Tommy Manship," Grace was saying. "Did I tell you about him? He's on the dramatic staff of the Times. He's a cute lad and we are progressing by leaps and bounds, you might say."
"How's your baritone?"
"Oh! My baritone! I can't get rid of him. The latest development is—that he wants to marry me. I almost think I would, too, if he weren't so—Italian and so jealous. That's not so good. But I'd like to marry someone, then get divorced right away. Blake, as you can imagine, doesn't think much of the idea. But really, if you've once been married it's such—an advantage. An old wedding ring is a sort of—ad that you're no longer a virgin, and no one cares to check up on you further. If I had my life to live over again, as the saying goes, I'd marry at the earliest possible moment, at sixteen, when it's easy because you can fall for practically anybody, and be divorced, naturally, pretty soon, and then I'd have that behind me. I could always say I'd been married and I could do just as I pleased. That's the advice I'm going to hand on to my daughter, if I ever have one, which seems—unlikely."
Anita smiled. "What's the matter with this Tommy Manship person?"
"Oh. He's too smart. He guesses about Blake, I think. Not that I take any great pains to hide the fact. By the way, I have another man—too. He sells plate glass and reads poetry. Honest. I like him. But—he's married, separated from his wife. They're all married and separated," said Grace with a sigh. "The older you get, the more married and separated they are."
Anita began to laugh.
"Wait," said Grace darkly. "You'll see. Unless you can get interested in children. I can't. Walk over to the Algonquin with me."
In the lobby of the Algonquin, with its air of hush and velvet duskiness, the pale lights being lost among the somber shadows of deep armchairs, like candlelights in a cathedral, Grace resumed her former preoccupation. Drawing herself up in her sealskin coat that shone in the dimness, she seemed to set herself apart within an intangible circle of cool importance as she nodded here and there from a height and called remote hellos to girls whose coats likewise shone, to men who walked briskly here and there, nowhere, deigning to greet others of their kind. As her luncheon partner rose she turned to Anita in an attitude of dismissal.
"I'll think about a job for you. I'll let you—know," she said, her eyes fixed elsewhere.
And these words, trite and chilly congé to the job hunter, spattered from Grace's lips like so many hard, cold drops of rain, one by one, on Anita's new mood of hope, made her shrink and huddle into herself as she walked back along the foggy streets to her room.
CHAPTER FOUR
Thus began some weeks of existence, almost without substance or foundation, like the existence of a haunting wraith. In the morning it was necessary to leave the studio bearing no traces of her presence. It was not safe to return before evening. Then Anita, like a ghost, would look wistfully at the marks impressed on it by less immaterial lives, teacups on the desk, the curtains drawn, the wicker chairs grouped cosily about the heater, a box of candy, a few flowers. She felt that she had sunk far beyond the reach of this other region, where people bought flowers and chatted over teacups, and when, now and then, a ray of kindliness struck from this world into her nether sphere, she was disproportionately touched. Sometimes Grace left word for her to see such and such a person who might "know of something." Once she found a note from Diana Reece urging her to eat breakfast at the Reece table as often as she cared.
It was generous of Diana Reece, but it never could have occurred to Anita to accept. She had discovered a cafeteria where, for exactly twenty-two cents, she ate baked beans, cornbread, and coffee every day at eleven o'clock. This served both as breakfast and lunch. Dinner at the same cafeteria cost no more than fifty cents if she chose sparingly. She got to know very well the park, the museums, the reading rooms and stone benches of the Public Library, and all the streets within walking distance.
Although she followed Grace's suggestions, nothing ever came of them and Anita, in spite of her predicament, was secretly glad. Grace counseled her to do as she, Grace, would have done—to take, if one had to, any job, no matter how unsatisfactory temperamentally, and unflinchingly mold either herself or the job into some sort of suitability, meanwhile keeping an eye on other mouseholes, or, as Grace put it, "waiting for something—to turn up." To Grace everyone was playing cat; you had to in order to get along and of course one wished to get along. There was no choice. Anita, however, knew that for her there were distinct limits to the amount of endurance she would invest in any undertaking; inevitably there would confront her the question as to whether the undertaking was worth so much irritation and so much effort to her; if the answer were negative, off she would go, not even stopping to choose a sensible exit.
In the end, Grace did not succeed in understanding; she succeeded only in being patient with what she considered a stubborn whim. Anita sometimes wished that she had not accepted Grace's aid in the first place, and often she wished with all her heart that Grace had not permitted her a glimpse of Grace's world. In spite of her suspicions, it seemed to be the only world in which she could and should strive for a foothold, a successful world. Moreover, it was enticingly open to her; it was Grace's helpful determination to keep it open for her, not to permit Anita to sink into the obscurity of, say, a factory hand or a waitress, as Anita might otherwise have chosen to do. Anita felt grateful; she felt the conscientious person's obligation to do her best to live up to what was expected of her, and yet somehow she was not so grateful after all. Emulation of Grace, a sort of competitiveness, the restlessness with which her first meeting with Grace had left her, the feeling which she had had in Diana Reece's studio when she thought that here she was even a little older than Grace and yet in so much more uncertain a position—such comparisons made a rope about her neck, strangling her initiative.
It was Grace who finally remembered that Harold Moses had once sympathized with Anita's interest in factories.
"He might know of a job you'd like," she said. "He used to do all the hiring for his firm. He knows a lot of employment people. And he's a cousin of Ella Alvyn, the one who's so mixed up in charities and child labor and that sort of thing. Be sure and get a letter to her."
So Anita went to see him. She found that, as Grace had indicated, his training as a husband had awakened Harold to his first close observation of women as people. A year ago he had thought her a little peculiar. Now, though he knew too much about factories not to laugh at her tentative remark that she would like to work in one, yet there was sympathy in his laughter for, underneath the suggestion, impossible enough as he saw it, there lay a feeling which they had in common, a feeling indefinable to him which had often come to him unreasonably in the midst of swarming, clacking, zooming power machines, the whirling black belts overhead, the Italian and Jewish operators singing—wailing rather—long and monotonous chants as the soft lengths of silk grazed their fingers. A feeling which he only realized through its resultant satisfaction. A sense perhaps of brushing through layers of cobwebs that clung to eyes, ears, and mind and at last seeing under his feet the worn yet still unwearied earth of toil—the least common denominator of toil—and he himself in it, sunk in that earth and drawing power from it, like everyone else. Ugly it was and smelly in a workroom, yet, as often happens with real ugliness, there was a weird harmony in its distortion—the features of beauty, placed, as it were, upside down—which equaled the charm of beauty for the fascinated and reconstructing imagination.
Now, one day in the week, he would borrow his partner's car and drive out to the cottages of the lace makers in New Jersey, ostensibly to collect their product but really to rid himself of the boredom of that work which, difficult though it was, yet seemed unreal—approaching buyers, showing samples, taking orders, outwitting competitors—and to stand again in the midst of a toil felt, smelt, heard and seen. Anita could understand this. Half-amused, he asked her if she would like to ride out with him that day.
It was the first afternoon since her return to New York on which she had felt alive. With work, the common, veritable substance of it all around her, she forgot that she was hunting for work herself. She forgot that she existed only by sufferance and through other people's occasional benevolence.
In New York the snow had melted into sodden remnants and was being shoveled away. Here, on the Jersey side, it covered gray streets with a robust splendor, reflecting the ice-blue sky; safe even in the sunlight which was accompanied by a beating wind. Anita waited in the car during the first calls, outside of low, long outbuildings like garages, that vibrated with the hum of the Schiffli machines. As they rode farther into town Harold pointed out cottage after cottage with its wooden structure beside it, sealed tightly without, warm and active within.
She was permitted to enter one at last and met the lace maker, a stooped German, all one color like the warped walls of his shed. With a sort of tender pride he exhibited the sweep of his Schiffli, he showed her the pattern, like a scroll of dots and dashes for a player piano, attached to a part of the machine, which thereafter repeated it time after time, mingled it in magical fashion with the threads of the net base. She did not care to ask many questions, just to see the wheels go round, the fine threads stretched on the framework of the machine that went the length of the building, the threads being picked up with a precise, an unceasing subtlety, and intertwined. The lace maker's young son walked back and forth on the ledge, watching the web. At a table in a corner his daughter threaded bobbins, while his wife sat in the sunshine under a closed window, skillfully patching places where the machine had not functioned. They all worked quietly, evenly, while the Schiffli droned in the background seeming to weld them also together. Each time the wife caught Anita's eye she smiled and Anita smiled; step by step the lace maker explained the processes of his machine, how it did not really make lace at all but embroidery on a net base, which base was later removed by a chemical bath. As they reached the end his boy looked up with a bashful grin.