Frederick Bartlett - The Wall Street Girl

Not that she was naturally cynical, but her downtown experience had left her very skeptical about her ability to judge men from such details. Blake, for instance, could smile as innocently as a child and meet any woman’s eyes without flinching. But there was this difference between Blake and Pendleton: the latter was new to New York. He was fresh to the city, as four years ago she had been. In those days she had dreamed of such a man as Pendleton–a dream that she was sure she had long since forgotten. Four years was a long while. It gave her rather a motherly feeling as she thought of Pendleton from that distance. And she rather enjoyed that. It left her freer to continue thinking of him. This she did until she was almost carried beyond her street.

After that she almost forgot to stop at the delicatessen store for her rolls and butter and cold meat. She hurried with them to her room–hurried because she was anxious to reach the place where she was more at liberty than anywhere else on earth. She tossed aside her hat and coat and sat by the radiator to warm her hands.

She wondered if Pendleton would go the same way Blake had gone. It was so very easy to go the one way or the other. Farnsworth himself never helped. His theory was to allow new men to work out their own salvation, and to fire them if they did not. He had done that with young Brown, who came in last year; and it had seemed to her then a pity–though she had never liked Brown. This was undoubtedly what he would do with Pendleton.

But supposing–well, why shouldn’t she take an interest in Pendleton to the extent of preventing such a finish if she could? There need be nothing personal in such an interest; she could work it out as an experiment.

Miss Winthrop, now thoroughly warm, began to prepare her supper. She spread a white cloth upon her table, which was just large enough to seat one. She placed upon this one plate, one cup and saucer, one knife and fork and spoon. It was a very simple matter to prepare supper for one. She sliced her small portion of cold meat and placed this on the table. She removed her rolls from a paper bag and placed them beside the cold meat. By this time the hot water was ready, and she took a pinch of tea, put it in her tea-ball, and poured hot water over it in her cup. Then she took her place in the one chair.

But, oddly enough, although there was no place for him, another seemed to be with her in the room.

“Let me have your engagement-book a moment,” Frances requested.

Don complied. He had taken his dinner that night at the dairy lunch, and after returning to the house to dress had walked to his fiancée’s.

Frances puckered her brows.

“You are to have a very busy time these next few weeks,” she informed him. “Let me see–to-day is Wednesday. On Friday we are to go to the Moores’. Evelyn’s débutante dance, you know.”

She wrote it in his book.

“On Saturday we go to the opera. The Warringtons have asked us to a box party.”

She wrote that.

“Next Wednesday comes the Stanley cotillion. Have you received your invitation?”

“Haven’t seen it,” he answered.

“The Stanleys are always unpardonably late, but I helped Elise make out her list. On the following Friday we dine at the Westons’.”

She wrote that.

“On the following Saturday I’m to give a box party at the opera–the Moores and Warringtons.”

She added that, and looked over the list.

“And I suppose, after going to this trouble, I’ll have to remind you all over again on the day of each event.”

“Oh, I don’t know; but–” He hesitated.

“Well?” she demanded.

“Seems to me we are getting pretty gay, aren’t we?”

“Don’t talk like an old man!” she scolded. “So far, this has been a very stupid season.”

“But–”

“Well?”

“You know, now I’m in business–”

“Please don’t remind me of that any more than is necessary,” she interrupted.

“Oh, all right; only, I do have to get up in the morning.”

“Why remind me of that? It’s disagreeable enough having to think of it even occasionally.”

“But I do, you know.”

“I know it, Don. Honestly I do.”

She seated herself on the arm of his chair, with an arm about his neck and her cheek against his hair.

“And I think it quite too bad,” she assured him–“which is why I don’t like to talk about it.”

She sprang to her feet again.

“Now, Don, you must practice with me some of the new steps. You’ll get very rusty if you don’t.”

“I’d rather hear you sing,” he ventured.

“This is much more important,” she replied.

She placed a Maxixe record on the Victrola that stood by the piano; then she held out her arms to him.

“Poor old hard-working Don!” she laughed as he rose.

It was true that it was as poor old hard-working Don he moved toward her. But there was magic in her lithe young body; there was magic in her warm hand; there was magic in her swimming eyes. As he fell into the rhythm of the music and breathed the incense of her hair, he was whirled into another world–a world of laughter and melody and care-free fairies. But the two most beautiful fairies of all were her two beautiful eyes, which urged him to dance faster and faster, and which left him in the end stooping, with short breaths, above her upturned lips.

When Miss Winthrop changed her mind and consented not to seek a new luncheon place, she was taking a chance, and she knew it. If ever Blake heard of the new arrangement,–and he was sure to hear of it if any one ever saw her there with Don,–she was fully aware how he would interpret it to the whole office.

She was taking a chance, and she knew it–knew it with a curious sense of elation. She was taking a chance for him. This hour at noon was the only opportunity she had of talking to Don. If she let that pass, then she could do nothing more for him. She must stand back and watch him go his own way, as others had gone their way.

For one thing was certain: she could allow no further conversations in the office. She had been forced to stop those, and had warned him that he must not speak to her again there except on business, and that he must not sit at Powers’s desk and watch her at work. When he had challenged her for a reason, she had blushed; then she had replied simply:–

“It isn’t business.”

So, when on Saturday morning Don came in heavy-eyed for lack of sleep after the Moore dance, she merely looked up and nodded and went on with her work. But she studied him a dozen times when he did not know she was studying him, and frowned every time he suppressed, with difficulty, a yawn. He appeared tired–dead tired.

For the first time in months she found herself looking forward to the noon hour. She glanced at her watch at eleven-thirty, at eleven-forty-five, and again at five minutes before twelve.

To-day she reserved a seat for him in the little lunch-room. But at fifteen minutes past twelve, when Don usually strode in the door, he had not come. At twenty minutes past he had not come. If he did not come in another five minutes she resolved to make no further effort to keep his place–either to-day or at any future time. At first she was irritated; then she was worried. It was possible he was lunching with Blake. If he began that–well, she would be freed of all further responsibility, for one thing. But at this point Don entered. He made no apologies for having kept her waiting, but deposited in the empty chair, as he went off for his sandwich and coffee, a long, narrow box done up in white paper. She gave him time to eat a portion of his lunch before she asked:–

“Out late again last night?”