Don-A-Dreams/Part 4/Chapter 7
VII
It seems that the sailor who survives a shipwreck accepts the fact of his escape not as a warning of the dangers of his life but as an assurance that they are not deadly, and goes to sea again with a veteran's contempt of storms. The crisis through which Don had passed did nothing to reform his impracticality, but rather developed and confirmed it. "Didn't I tell you we'd be all right," he exulted to Margaret, celebrating his good fortune in an evening at the theatre. "You certainly did," she laughed, "but you didn't look as if you believed it."
"I did, though," he assured her; and he thought that he was telling the truth. "All the time, I felt certain of it. It'll Now it's your turn. We'll organize your campaign now, won't we?"
She nodded, to conceal thought. She had not told him what success her afternoon's quest had had, but she had admitted that her mother's letter had ordered her home peremptorily and that she had tried to make the gentle reply that turns away wrath even while it refuses obedience. She was doubtful of the issue of her evasion. "I'll hear in a day or two."
"Well, don't worry," he counselled her. "I have If you run out of money, you must let me 'stake' you until you find what you wish."
She touched his arm to silence him as the lights were lowered and the curtain rose; and she let her hand remain on his sleeve either absent-mindedly, or as an apology for turning from him, or merely as a sort of place-mark in their conversation, like a finger on the page of an interrupted reading. It was to Don the tingling pole of an emotion that quivered through him electrically; he sat rigid, for fear that his slightest movement might break the current coming to him out of the darkness in a circuit of friendship and sympathy that joined her to him among all these strangers, secretly, like the hidden clasp of fingers. When, at length, she drew back slowly, he relaxed to an easier position with a sigh.
The play was a "costume drama" in which the love of a court beauty caused duels and intrigues and various dissensions among gentlemen in perukes and satin smalls; and Don listened and watched with his soul in his eyes. It inspired him with the desire to do great deeds, to be famous, to live a coloured and wonderful life. It filled him with high desires of love and magnanimity. It raised him above the sordid commonplaces of his commercial days. It intoxicated him with that wine of romance which makes the historical novel the cordial bottle of a shop-wearied civilization. Between the acts, to the quickened sympathy of the girl beside him, he freed himself of an almost vinous need of confiding to someone his ambitions, his vague plans, his shy hopes of a future as a playwright, laughing at himself tentatively, but touched to find that she did not laugh too. "I never had a chance to work before," he said. "I have always been worried—by all sorts of things—and upset. Now, with twenty-five dollars a week, and lots of time to myself, I'll be able to do something—something worth while." And on their way back to their lodgings—all his worries untangled, and his future as straight and level as the street before him—he walked with her on his arm, as stiffly as a schoolboy who marches beside the music of a military band, almost strutting, his face stern with ambition and as pale as if the shock and glory of battle were awaiting him at the foot of the street.
Walter Pittsey took him, in the morning, to be "outfitted," and lent him money for his purchases, and advised him on the styles with the experience of a man to whom the art of economical good dressing has been a study. Pittsey knew where to find ready-made clothing that could not be known from tailor-made; he chose a necktie with deliberation; he spent an hour in search of an overcoat that should fill out Don's shoulders and still preserve the distinction of his lean height; he made Don try on several different styles of shoes, frowning and shaking his head as he studied over them; and when he had finished, Don, for thirty dollars, was apparently a young gentleman of fashion dressed in the faultless simplicity of quiet good taste. "Now," Pittsey said, "I've noticed that you have the English trick of saying 'sir' to your elders. You had better cut it out with Kuffman; he doesn't understand that sort of thing, you know. Just behave with him as you did with Kidder, at first—as if Well, I suppose if you were conscious of it, you couldn't do it. But don't, for anything, let him think you need the 'job.'"
The warning was not necessary; for Don was already, unconsciously, playing the part for which his clothes had made him up. He had luncheon with Pittsey, and he accepted the assiduous deference of the waiter with a pleasant condescension. He accepted Kuffman, as he had accepted Kidder, in that boyish indifference of disinterest which had impressed the supers' agent. He was, in fact, content to leave all intercourse with Kuffman in Pittsey's hands. And since the ticket office was to be opened on the morrow, he was able to devote himself to helping Pittsey arrange the tickets in the pigeon-holed case beside the grated window, while he listened attentively to the instructions which Pittsey gave him concerning his small duties as relief man at the wicket during the "off" hours.
"You'll have to remember that you're a nickel-in-the-slot machine," Pittsey counselled, "and nothing more. The person outside puts in his money and gets his ticket. Never talk. Answer questions politely, but that's all. It's the only way to do the work. Never—never—never talk to anyone through those bars."
Kuffman, who was one of those fat men that overdress like dowagers, came into the office to give final directions about the tickets that were to be placed for sale at various hotel desks; and he asked Don suddenly: "Where did you get the necktie?"
Don turned, in his embarrassment, to Pittsey. "Where did we get it?"
Pittsey coughed deliberately. "Do you like it? I have the mate to it. We saw them in 's window"—he named a fashionable haberdasher—"and I bought one myself."
Kuffman admired the tie in silence and went out. "Here," Pittsey said, opening his penknife, "you'd better cut the label off that tie. And the next time he asks you about your clothes don't turn to me as if I were your valet."
Don obeyed him, bewildered. "Why did he ask me?"
"I suppose because he wanted to know."
"But you didn't tell him."
"Oh, 'get wise,'" Pittsey laughed. "'Get wise.'"
There were to be other incidents of a like nature in Don's ticket-office experience, but they did not seem to increase his stock of that sort of wisdom which Pittsey wished him to acquire. It was not long, however, before the fact that Don was a Canadian became known to his theatrical associates, and his simplicity was excused by them as the natural ignorance of a foreigner who in his own country would doubtless be "wise" to the strangest of native ways. Pittsey lost his patience for a moment when he found that he must teach his assistant even the art of "making change," for Don tried to subtract the price of a ticket from a five-dollar bill, as if he were doing "mental arithmetic," instead of using his coins as counters after the manner of the experienced clerk. But he was so eager to learn, so grateful for his tuition, and so full of admiration for his teacher that Pittsey could not remain angry with him. And his evident honesty, his devotion to his duties—which he accepted as a most sobering responsibility—and his engaging gentleness with the public, were qualifications for office that easily outweighed his defects.
He was to find it his good fortune that he was required to be merely an automaton in his work. Shut in behind the brass rods of his window and the wire screen of his locked door, he was to see the public go past in a procession of speaking heads and open hands that asked and were answered, gave, received and disappeared. There was to be something pleasant to him in the fact that although he could hear the slightest whisper of the purchaser at the open window, he had to raise his own voice to make himself heard in reply; that he could speak in an amused aside to Pittsey without being overheard by the expectant head at the wicket; and that the office, glowing with light and warmth, was as comfortable as home to him, while all the rest of the world seemed to be coming, like hungry street-children to a bake-shop window, to stare in at him from the cold darkness, red-nosed and with numb hands.
But these impressions were still in the future; for the present he was busy arranging the office to Pittsey's taste, with some of the glad anticipations of a young housewife moving into a new home. Miss Morris looked in on them for a moment, on her way from rehearsals, but she understood from Pittsey's manner that the ticket office was not to be used for social calls, and she withdrew as soon as possible. "Let me come and see you," Don proposed, as she went.
"But I'm rehearsing morning, noon and night," she said. "We shall have to wait till Sunday—unless I can meet you, some day, at lunch-time. I'll try."
She did not ask him about Margaret, nor did she mention Polk; and Don, with his faculty for self-deception, did not try to look below the smiling surface of her friendliness.
When the office had been closed for the night, he went with Pittsey to have dinner at the latter's hotel; but he went wondering how Margaret had spent the day and wishing that he could think of an excuse for escaping to her. He could not, in friendship, refuse to dine with Walter, but he was glad when Bert Pittsey joined them at table—his pocket full of newspapers and his head full of chatter—for his arrival relieved Don of the burden of conversation, and left him to his thoughts; and while he ate distractedly he went over in memory all the impressions of his busy day, and recalled Margaret, across the crowded interval of separation, as if he had not seen her for a month.
Bert, in his new position as "cub reporter," was doing what he called "leg work," and he had adventures to relate. He gave his account of them with his usual air of young deviltry. "Had an assignment this afternoon to root out a story of an old curb-market stock-sharp who was marrying a woman that owned a Sixth Avenue restaurant. They've been boarding in the same house. I couldn't see either of them, so I had to imagine them. I imagined him a Wall Street millionaire who had fallen in love with the beautiful waitress who used to feed him his lunch. It made a great story! The only trouble with reporting is that you're hampered by the facts in the case. I couldn't say that he'd fallen in love with her over a plate of corn-beef hash. I had to make it 'It is said' this and 'It is reported' that. That's the sort of thing that drives so many discouraged newspaper men into magazine work."
Walter heard him with the air of an elder brother listening to a precocious younger one. Don did not hear him at all—until Conroy's name, mentioned in the conversation, caught his ear. Then he looked up to catch Bert sayings in a low aside to Walter: "There's a lady in the case." And suddenly he remembered the hat and veil which he had seen on the dining-room table.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
But Bert Pittsey refused to tell. "Excuse me," he said. "I don't 'muddle' in any private affairs unless for purposes of publication."
"Who is she?"
He bowed, like a politician declining to be interviewed. "I have nothing whatever to say on that subject at present."
"She was there—wasn't she?—when I called the other day?"
"Very sorry, boys, very sorry. But you'll have to excuse me to-day. Fine weather we're having, is it not?"
Walter laughed. "You had better keep out of it," he advised Don. "You'll only get yourself into more trouble."
"Me too," Bert said. "I intend to dissolve partnership with your gentle cousin as soon as possible, and I desire that we shall part without any formal blows."
That was all that Don could learn of the matter. He thought it over. With the arrival of coffee and cigars, he concluded to let the affair rest until Pittsey's dissolution of partnership should make it possible to discover the whole truth. When Walter proposed that they finish the night at a theatre, Don said: "I ought to go—I have some letters I should write." But Walter would not hear of such a way of wasting an evening. "You haven't many more nights free," he said. And Don went with them irresolutely.
It was nearly midnight when he returned to his lodgings, but as he came cautiously upstairs he saw a thread of light under Margaret's door. He tapped on a panel and called under his voice: "How have you been?"
The door burst open as if it had been set on a spring. Margaret confronted him. "Someone She's coming! She knows I was on the stage. Someone has told her!"
Confused by the suddenness of the light in his eyes and by the anxious appeal for aid that sounded in the hoarse repression of her voice, he stammered: "Wh-what? Who?"
"Mother! Someone! She doesn't say who. She's coming—on her way—now. She won't wait for me to go. She's coming for me. What shall I do?"
She waited for him to answer. He said, at last, inadequately: "Well, tell her you won't go."
"But she'll make me!"
"How can she?"
She's—she's my mother! I can't"
"Well," he said weakly, "suppose she is. She can't take you if you don't want to go."
She stepped into the hall and drew the door to, behind her. "But what can I say? What can I tell her? I—I've failed to get anything. I've been going all day—yesterday too—and there isn't anything—nothing! They all tell me I'm not far enough advanced, that I should go home and study, and come down again in a year or two. I have nothing to tell her—not even a prospect of anything. I can't—I have to I won't have even a home. I haven't any money"
He put in eagerly: "That's all right. I have plenty now—enough for both of us."
"But if I don't I may never. It may be years. I"
"I don't care—as long as you stay."
"But I can't! I can't do that. Don't you understand?"
The hall was dark; he could not see her face. But there was an almost tearful exasperation in her voice, and he hurried to plead against that tone: "Don't leave me now, when everything's beginning to go right, when I'm just beginning to be able to help you. I can't let you go. What right has she? What has she to offer"
"But you She's my mother. That's her right. I can't tell her I haven't anything to tell her. It's you—it's we—that have no right."
"Well, what can I do? What do you want me to do? Shall I see her?"
"What good would that do?"
There was a despair of him in her voice. He reached her hand in the darkness, as if to hold her to the friendly sympathy of the past few days. "Don't—don't"
"But, Don," she whispered, coming as if unconsciously to the arm that supported her, "what are we to do? I know I don't want to go. I don't want to leave you." Her hand was on his shoulder; he held her like a lover. "We must be practical. We can't"
"I will," he choked. "I'll think of something. Don't let her take you away. I couldn't live here now, without you. I"
There was the rustle of a stealthy movement on the landing below them. She tried to draw back. He held her to a hurried "Good-night" and the kiss that accompanied it. He felt her relax in his arms. "Good-night," she whispered, warm against his cheek—and immediately she was gone.
He fumbled his way upstairs to his room, in the blind darkness, mechanically, every conscious faculty of his mind still entangled, bewildered, enraptured by the transport and sudden ecstasy of that caress.