by W. S. Lewis
IX
By a coincidence, the two men arrived at ten minutes to twelve. Theyfound Nancy in a rather pathetic state of excitement. She had beenrunning up and down stairs and from one room to another and she met themwith the elaborate calm of one about to give himself up to a capitaloperation.
"We have a nice day for it, anyway," she said bravely. Any agreeablecondition, however remote it might at first appear from the business athand, was welcome. "Tell me," she asked Tom, "do you think I'm dressedsuitably?"
"Perfectly."
"Some social workers go down in the slums in the worst old clothes theycan find, but I've heard that the people down there like to see nicethings, so I compromised. This is just a gingham dress, you see, but I'mwearing my pearls."
"I should think that's just right. Didn't Henry, the Labour expert, helpyou?"
"Oh, I didn't bother him. He's not interested, you see."
Leofwin, who had been fidgeting around for an opening, now burst forth."I came early," he said, "to find out if I can't do the lungs too; I'vebeen practising them along with the heart, you know, and I think itmight go well dashing them in somewhere. What?" Leofwin's "what's" werenoteworthy. They were in a higher key than the rest of his conversation,which was itself high, and he drew them out to almost exquisite lengths.They were nearly all that was left of his week-end with the patron inSuffolk.
"Oh, dear me, no," replied Nancy with considerable spirit.
"I think you will like my heart," he continued undismayed. "I've beendoing them all morning. I dug up some priceless old Beaux Arts crayons.It will be nice when we get to the brain. It's awfully romantic, Ifind," and he gave Nancy a killing smile. She gazed at him placidly andthen turned to Tom. "What time is it?" she asked.
"Nearly twelve."
At this point Edmund drove up, and with renewed palpitations the partyproceeded to the Mill.
As they passed in through the gates Tom noticed with sickening dread ahuge sign in flaming letters, "ARE YOU PHYSICALLY FIT? _Mr. Reynolds ofWoodbridge Will Address You----_" They were met by Bob Whitman, a heartyyoung man who had just been made an officer of the Company. He stared atLeofwin in amused bewilderment.
"Mr. Balch is helping me with the diagrams," explained Nancy. "And nowwhere do we go?"
"Well, you'd better just sit here for a minute or two until they getsettled with their lunches. I'll take you to where you go; and what'smore, Nancy, I'll introduce you!" Nancy received the word "introduce" asa surgical case receives the initial injection of morphine. The firststep had been taken, and nothing could save her. "As for you, Tom, yourlecture room's over there, and I'll get the foreman to introduce you."
"Don't think of it," said Tom quickly, "I'll just introduce myself; getto be one of them, you know what I mean. Just one of the boys."
"Well, Miss Whitman, let's you and I get to be just one of the girls,"tittered Leofwin.
"I think we might as well go in," said Nancy without noticing Leofwin'sjest, which appeared singularly hollow.
"You're sure you don't want some one to start you off, Tom?" asked Bob.
Tom was certain of it; and before entering his room, he waited untilNancy's party had disappeared around the corner. He then opened the doorand, going over to a man who was ruminating vacantly upon a huge chunkof bread, sat down. "There's going to be some sort of lecture here,today, isn't there?" he asked.
"I dunno," replied the man.
"Yeah, there is," spoke up a hand nearby. "I seen it on a sign thismorning. Some guy from the college."
"That's what I thought," said Tom. "I thought I'd just come in and seewhat he had to say. Can't stay very long, though," he added, looking athis watch. Then after a pause, "Pretty nice place you got here."
"Oh, it's good enough, I guess."
The room was a large one, filled with three or four dozen tables bearingcomplicated-looking machinery. There were twenty or thirty men sittingaround solemnly chewing their food.
"Pretty slow now, isn't it?" asked Tom.
"Yeah, they laid off about a hundred last week."
"This laying-off stuff would have gone bigger a couple of years ago--inthe army--wouldn't it?"
"I'll say it would."
"Have a cigarette?" said Tom. "What outfit were you in?"
The prospect of free cigarettes and army talk, which already in lessthan three years had taken on a romantic glow, attracted the other men,who, as they finished their lunches, came up and joined the circle. Tomwas holding forth in the centre; and when Bob Whitman glanced in on hisway home he could see that Tom, by making his talk informal, was gettingit across in great style.
Once, during the conversation, Providence seemed to offer an opportunityof bringing in his lecture in such a way that no one would guess he wasgiving it.
His conscience bothered him a little, and he plunged ahead. One of themen told how his bunkie at Base Six in Bordeaux had died of heartfailure when under ether. In a somewhat parched voice Tom started toexplain how this could come about, but in no time he was talkinggibberish. "The aorta," he heard himself saying, "is the big main arterywhich comes out of one of the ventricles," and then he noticed the dazedlook on the men's faces and, floundering hopelessly, managed to laugh itoff. Well, he had tried to talk to them, anyway, and by consulting hiswatch he found that half an hour had gone by.
After his third cigarette--he had come plentifully supplied--he lookedat his watch again. He could go at last! It was ten minutes to one, andNancy had probably finished long ago. "Apparently this guy isn't comingtoday. I've got to run along. Well, I've enjoyed this talk a lot," andwith an inclusive smile and wave of the hand he went.
Nancy wasn't back in the car, and starting off in the direction they hadtaken, he soon came to her room. There must have been a hundred women init and it was Leofwin, not Nancy, who was talking to them.
Tom opened the door quietly and sat down on a stool in the rear. Nancy,pale and helpless, was sitting on one side of a resplendent circulatorysystem drawn to illustrate the subtleties of the designer's art.
"You will observe, ladies," Leofwin was saying in his purest Suffolkmanner, "that shading is done with the crayon well back, like this." Hemade a few swift lines on the corner of the System and looked up withhis bright, inquisitive smile. "Now are there any questions?" There wasa stony silence, amid which the one o'clock whistle blew.
The foreman, left in charge by Bob, rose. "I'm sorry, Miss Whitman, butI'm afraid we'll have to stop today."
The worker's friend and sister bowed to him and, clutching her notes andher bag, with firmly set lips and eyes fixed, marched to the door.Leofwin followed, bowing pleasantly right and left, to the intensegratification of his audience, and the trio retired.
"Jolly, wasn't it?" said Leofwin. "I'm sorry, though, we couldn't havehad more time. I didn't get to foreshortening at all. However, I think Iprobably helped them a good deal. Sometime I'd like to tell them aboutetching, you know, and aqua--and mezzotints."
Nancy received her assistant's remarks in complete silence. She was evenunable to do more than nod a good-bye to him. But she shook Tom's handin parting, and, with an air that might augur the worst, she asked himto come and see her on the next afternoon.
Nancy was particularly charming, Tom thought when he was again with her,and what was even more to the point, he found that they were to bealone. She got his tea ready without difficulty--he was flattered thatshe remembered his formula--and they settled back for a good talk andlaugh.
"I wasn't civil to him, but I really don't care! Did you ever know amore dreadful person?"
"Never. He's awful. But, tell me, how did it go until he took charge?"
"Why, not so badly. But, oh, Tom I heard about you!"
Tom flushed. "What did you hear?"
"Well, Bob was here last night and he said he saw you through thewindow. He told us how you got them all around you and how you mighthave been talking about anything." She was wholly admiring.
"Oh, I just talked to them," he s
aid. "I never could have gotten awaywith anything formal."
"Isn't it funny? I used to think that teaching must be the easiest thingin the world. I used to imagine myself lecturing to the whole college,but I can appreciate now what you and Henry are doing."
Tom was anxious to have the conversation move upon firmer ground. He wasalso in the dark as to what the next move in the campaign was to be.
Was it to be abandoned, or were they to try and carry on? The latterpossibility seemed too fearful. How could he go into that room again?But one must proceed cautiously. It would never do, for example, to comeout and treat the whole thing as a distinctly juvenile performance,something they had quite outgrown, until it was clear that they hadoutgrown it. Again, now was not the time to explain the real nature ofhis lecture. He could do that when the whole thing had become anamusing memory. "What are we going to do about Mr. Sprig?" asked Tomvaguely.
"You mean are we going to keep on with the lectures?"
"Well, yes."
"What do you think? Last night I was so sick about the whole thing thatI was ready to give it all up, but now I wonder if it isn't our duty togive it one more trial." Her words were disappointing, but thedispirited tone in which she said them was cheering, and Tom made sobold as to sing the lately revived "Duty, duty must be done, the ruleapplies to everyone, and painful though the duty be, to shirk the taskwere fiddle-dee-dee..."; a happy impulse, for when Henry arrived fromhis five o'clock he found Tom at the piano and Nancy sitting by him, theone in the role of the Mikado of Japan and the other as hisdaughter-in-law-elect.
When, however, on the following Tuesday they again climbed down from thefourth floor of the Whitman building, the light had indeed gone out ofthe undertaking. Mr. Sprig's subject, the digestive and excretorytracts, had not been a propitious one for so critical a time. Leofwin,who had invited himself along, had been captivated by the decorativepossibilities of the alimentary canal and had led the discussionfollowing the lecture with a vigour and thoroughness trying for thoseunfamiliar with an artist's training. "Don't you think it might be funto trace something all the way from the initial bite down?" he asked."Let's take an olive, a green olive. 'Back to Nature by A. Green Olive:A Drama in Six Acts and any Number of Scenes.'"
Tom was looking intently at the diagrams on the walls. At musicalcomedies and the movies, when embarrassing situations arose, one was, ina measure, prepared. The darkness, too, helped, and one could starestraight ahead until the relief, which was rarely long in coming,arrived. There was, finally, the comfort of numbers. But now they wereonly two--the artist and the scientist being immune to shame. It was,furthermore, extremely bright, everybody was out in the open, andalthough the amateurs had come prepared for a momentary brush with abowel or two, they had no reason to expect a prolonged causerie uponeven more intimate matters. Tom was, accordingly, hot withembarrassment, and he had reason to believe that Nancy was also.
As Leofwin rattled on, with frankness ever more Elizabethan, Tom glancedat Nancy. She was examining the point of her pencil with as elaborate aninterest as he had ever seen shown in any object. It seemed analtogether remarkable affair; but then, apparently, so was the eraser.They were complementary. A line could be made by the point, a delicate,straight line; and then, reversing the pencil, the line could be takenout by the eraser. The thing was complete.
Tom became angry. What right had that great calf to subject Nancy tosuch an ordeal? He turned to her and said without lowering his voice,"This is rather dull, don't you think? Let's go out and see the hens."
They went out, but couldn't very well see the hens, since they had nocandle and were above deceiving them with the porch light. Accordingly,they stepped back into the little hallway that led to the library. To goon into the library was to expose themselves again to the mortificationof the physiological vagaries of Leofwin. So they just stood in thelittle hallway. And then, they laughed.
The relief of a thunderstorm on a stifling day is proverbial, as is therelief of finding one's handkerchief just before one sneezes; but whatare these compared with the flooding joy that comes with release from anembarrassing situation with a young lady? The effect upon Tom was tomake him excited; more so, perhaps, than he had ever been. It was thesame swelling, throbbing excitement he had felt when, waiting in hisroom on the afternoon of his Election Day, he realized by the shoutingof the crowd below that his election was coming.
Nancy was really wonderful. From being curious about her, he had beenswept into the Problem of Living with which he had found her somewhatpathetically struggling. It had absorbed him in the brief time that hehad encountered it; and now that her first attempt at a solution hadended in ridiculous failure, she immediately rose above it in laughter!
And how happy was the cause of their laughter, after all. An experiencesuch as the one they had just come through must make or break afriendship. Their relationship could not remain the same; and with theirlaughter they had sealed the new bond.
They said little as they strolled home, alone, in the clear night. Ithad in it the first suggestion of spring; and neither, apparently, foundneed to hurry.
"Bob will have to straighten it out at the Mill," said Nancy, "and Ishall write Mr. Sprig. I think we ought to send him something, don'tyou?"
They had come to the Whitman gate. It was a high wooden structure,connected at the top, and in the spring it was covered with roses. Thefanlight in the old doorway shone down the brick walk and touchedNancy's hair.
"Of course we must."
They shook hands and bade each other good night. And then, as Nancyturned from him and went up the lighted walk and into the house, Tomknew without any particular surprise and quite without a risingtemperature, that he loved her.