"No. And I couldn't very well ask him." She perceived Evan in that. No, of course he would not ask. "He—I say, how did he get that bump on his head? He said he walked into something, in the dark."
"Oh, he walked into something," said Hope curtly, "but not in the dark."
"Why, you little devil," remarked Evan, rather joyously. "Jove, to think you gave am what he deserved. What'd you use? It looked as if it might have been a paving stone!"
She showed him, and he chuckled inordinately, with an unregenerate plaint that he could not have done . himself.
"Oh, he needed it," he said.
"Do you think so?" asked Hope.
She felt better. Evan was unconsciously exonerating his sex as a whole. A moral fog lifted from her mind. He reassured her, still chuckling.
So she went away, almost gay again, buoyant, as became her best. Nevertheless, she decided to wait a little, to satisfy herself in her narrow room, if possible, until her judgment ripened. Mere fastidiousness forbade the thought of another such encounter.
The next night the train carried her northward. She felt eager and wistful, and lonely, and intensely alive and capable of being glad. She had an immense, unfed appetite for life.
The train rushed on, and on, roaring through the dark. It seemed to have an object of its own. Her being aboard it appeared incidental and of no consequence to it. It was something like life.
She wished Evan had been there. He would have been warm, and human, and aware of her.
CHAPTER V
IT should have been spring, but the streets were grey and dry, and the wind brought dust instead of the scent of flowers. Dust—dust—it stung her eyes and the taste of it was on her lips. She felt it in her hair.
The town lay in a cup of the hills, where the rivet wound a lazy half circle. At the edge, just beginning to climb the slopes, hovered a fringe of skeleton dwellings still building. Then, abruptly, without even a sown field to frame it all, the prairie began. The houses were shriekingly new, and naked to the sharp sunlight, save on one or two short streets, where they sheltered gratefully behind rows of soft maple and cottonwood and a lapful of vivid green lawn. This was only in the very oldest part of town, where the houses were little and low, softened to a charming homeliness by the passage of twenty years or so since they had constituted the whole town.
"If I only had a little sackcloth," mused Hope. "I shall be twenty-one to-morrow!" She looked even less than that, which seemed a ripe age to her. Since seventeen she was very little changed, being still very slight, the narrow shoulders, with an almost imperceptible droop to them, giving her an unwarranted air of fragility. All her figure was girlishly flat; her bosom was barely curved, and her motions abrupt. Standing on the schoolhouse steps, she looked up and down the empty and profitless streets. The children had dispersed. Her mind hopped about inconsequently.
"Are you going home?" Mary Dark, coming up behind her, suddenly slipped an arm through hers. Hope started, turned and smiled, but said nothing "I came to take you to Mrs. Patten's for tea," Mary added. Mary was of a pale darkness, with a sorrowful, impish fare.
"I—I don't want to—just now," murmured Hope doubtfully. "I want—to run away." Her eyes searched the horizon of dun-coloured hills that met a pale, clear sky.
"Where to?" asked Mary. "And with whom?"
"Everywhere—nobody," said Hope. "All alone. If I don't, I shall explode. Do you know that somewhere people are doing things—inventing, exploring, writing, thinking. They've found the North Pole, and discovered X-rays, and built aeroplanes. We sit here, like chickens in a coop. Mentally, we're in the Dark Ages. I want to go and crowd in, to be part of it all—understand it. Things are happening, and I'm not there!" Her voice was almost a wail. "I want to be in the middle of the big commotion, to clutch the tail of the comet. I want an X-ray for breakfast, I want to fly. I want to go where real, new ideas are being thrown around like brickbats. I don't care if one does hit me behind the ear. When I left home it wasn't for this." She waved her hand contemptuously. "Want to watch the wheels go 'round. I thought I could do it- -get near to life. But if this is all, why didn't I marry one of those tow-headed Swedes on the next ranch? I tell you I want to see the world. And I don't mean simply cafés and loud, over-dressed people,"
"This is the world," said Mary Dark wisely. "I've seen it."
"Like the Sydenhams did?" asked Hope scornfully. '"You've heard, of course, you know them—I don't.
They came back from England last week, after spending a week there. Went over to 'do' the Continent for six months. They never saw the Continent. They've lived here all their lives, haven't they? And they came back here; said there was nothing over there, anyway!"
"Yes, I heard," said Mary, laughing. "But what ails you? Quarrelled with Ned?"
"M-mm-mph," Hope answered, with an indescribable sound and a shrug. "Nor with Tom nor Dick nor Harry nor whatever their names are. I wish there were even some real men here. Clerks, and retired grocers, and remittance men and things."
"But you flirt with them," Mary reminded her.
"I suffer fools—sometimes," said Hope disingenuously. "Oh, I'm suffocating. I really cannot bear ever to see one of them again. I'm almost twenty-one," she repeated hopelessly. "Is life really like this? I thought it would be all one glorious adventure, not an endurance contest in boredom—slow starvation."
"Come to tea, you idiot," answered Mary affectionately. "Fate put a little too much yeast in your lump of dough, I fancy. It will fizz out by and by."
"You," said Hope, studying the other's half-veiled eyes and close mouth, "have had your adventures. So you sneer at me. Look, there's a naughty-mobile. I want a ride. Oh!"
"I've had nothing," said Mary Dark. "And you're flirting with that chauffeur! Hope, you wretch!"
"Not," denied Hope, smiling sidelong. "I met him at the rink last night. I didn't know he was a chauffeur. I thought he was an oyster. He never speaks. But his eyelashes are remarkable."
"You are an abandoned wretch," remarked Mary severely. "I shall leave you here."
She turned the corner, but through her back hair she could see that the car had drawn up to the curb.
"Want a ride?" asked the boy of the eyelashes laconically, in a rich, husky drawl.
"I do," said Hope, and scrambled up beside him. "Whose car is this?"
"Mine—maybe," said the chauffeur, still drawling, and with a jerk of his wrist he sent the glittering monster hurtling down the road. It was true that he had remarkable eyelashes, and his warm, olive cheeks had a down on them like a ripe peach, and his eyes were dark, and ingenuous, like a child's. His leather cap and plain serge coat became him almost too much. Like Hope, he was just past twenty—in years. "Where to?" he inquired, leaning back.
"Anywhere," she said ecstatically, taking off her hat and putting it under her feet. They slid out along the river road, through the one bit of beauty nearby. The dust streamed out behind them, but they breasted clean air. Out of sight of habitations, the boy put his arm about her.
"Don't be a pest," said Hope crossly.
He removed it.
"All right," he agreed. "Didn't know."
"I only met you once," she said. "I even forget your name."
"Name's Allen Kirby," he drawled. "And I'll stick around, if that will help."
His face was expressionless; Hope laughed despite herself.
"Whose car is this?" she demanded again.
"I'll tell you—next time," he promised.
"But there might not be a next time."
"Won't you come?" He turned toward her, watching the road out of the corner of his eye. "Perhaps you fly too high for a chauffeur. You don't look like a school teacher."
"How did you know?"
"I spotted you a week ago. You look like a big-town girl. I asked to meet you. Drove around six times to-day before you came out. Don't know any other girls here."
It was a long speech for him. It astonished Hope immeasurably. She plied him wi
th questions as they fled through the waning afternoon. Sometimes he answered; sometimes he turned the point, drawling, immobile with the stillness of one who always watches. She forgot she had been bored. Here was a most authentic individual. Class distinction meant no more to her than a pterodactyl. Besides in those earlier days chauffeurs were outside of class. They were adventurers, a new species.
They drove on and on, and back through the dusk again, and she was sorry it must end. He put her down, at her request, at Mrs. Patten's door, and said negligently, "To-morrow," and purred off again.
Mrs. Patten lay on a wicker chaise-longue, in a dark, straight gown and much comfort, nibbling Graham biscuits and talking gossip with Mary Dark, who smoked interminable cigarettes and listened. She had eyes like Mary's in that they were full of surface merriment with deep wells of shadow below. But hers were of a rare hazel-grey, and her features were modelled with classic regularity. If she was not known as an unusually lovely woman it was because she was too indifferent; she wore her beauty casually, as if, indeed, it truly belonged to her, rather than like a seller parading her wares. She must have been over thirty; but she had the same frank grace about that. And, though it was not so apparent, Lisbeth Patten had not only the courage of her convictions, but the courage to run counter to them. There were things very fine and very foolish about her: she was compounded of tact and indiscretion; of convention and generosity. And neither her friends nor her enemies knew why they were so.
Now she fixed Hope with one eloquent glance, and Hope wriggled uncomfortably. It was impossible to defend without being attacked. Mary Dark smiled with wicked humour. The three were friends, somewhat in the manner of castaways on a desert island. At heart they loved each other.
"Have a good time?" asked Mary, casting the gauntlet.
"I did," said Hope.
"Eleanor Travers was here this afternoon," said Mrs. Patten, pouring, with a peculiarly refined and graceful gesture, a cupful of tea quite black and cold and giving it to Hope absently. "She was asking about you, Hope. I think she means to call."
Hope understood, and did not understand. She understood the significance of the implication, but it would never be possible for her to see, with Mrs. Patten's eyes, the importance of it. Miss Travers was conspicuous in the town's inevitable "younger set." She "assisted" at half the social functions, and was an indispensable onlooker at the other half. Her three new gowns a season were described thirty times during that season in the weekly budget of society items in the one afternoon paper. Hope had been in the young city two years now, and said so, though without any especial animus.
"I know, dear," said Mrs. Patten. "And people are just beginning to know you."
Again Hope understood.
"I don't think so," she returned, dropping her lids. "Fortunately! But what must I do to be saved?"
They all laughed.
"But, seriously, Hope," began Mrs. Patten.
"Don't reason with her," said Mary Dark. "Ask her to do it for you. She has no intelligence!"
"No," agreed Hope happily. "But, is it necessary?"
"Perhaps not," said Mary, mildly exasperated. "But one might as well have what there is going. It would amuse you—the dances and teas and rubbish— above all, the scandal. What else is there in this backwater?"
"Well, I can make my own scandal," answered Hope. "But I can't dance all by my lone, of course. Ned Angell asked me to go to the next Tennis dance, and a card for it fell on me yesterday out of a clear sky. Is that a step forward? I hope you're satisfied, now I've progressed to—a bank clerk! Our crème de la crème!"
"Where did you meet Ned?" asked Mrs. Patten.
"I dunno," said Hope vaguely. "Wasn't it here? You told me about him. No? Well, somewhere. You know, one is always meeting men; stepping on them every minute or two. I never can remember where I meet any of 'em. He thinks I am an unappreciated genius. Because I made a picture of him behind the grille at the bank, and me feeding him with peanuts. Please don't take me literally; it never really happened. What shall I get for a new gown?"
They discussed the topic with animation for a time, and branched from that to a consideration of a play by Wedekind which Mary had just read, and the latest song by Strauss which Mrs. Patten played for them. And then when Hope thought she was safe they returned to her projected social career once more and talked around and under and across that, and she went away feeling vaguely apprehensive and bedevilled and docile. She would do anything for Mary Dark and Mrs. Patten—if she knew how to do it, and what for! In this instance she knew neither.
She was quite willing to go to the dance with Ned Angell, but she could not see why that should preclude her riding with Allen Kirby and becoming intoxicated with the innocent joy of being alive at the rate of fifty miles an hour. These things did not strike her as being in the least incompatible; and of the two youths, her dispassionate estimate placed Allen Kirby a notch higher. Chiefly because he had a fine young pair of shoulders beneath that serge coat, and he could drive like a demon. Ned Angell, she knew very well, drank —which she thought simply idiotic—and he had no chest; but he wore his clothes with an air, strummed the guitar and sang love songs to all the "buds," and was on the organising committees of the Assemblies and Tennis dances.
These things struck her as extremely inadequate, regarded as virile occupations. They were in keeping with the general unsatisfactoriness of things. Three years before she had felt that now life must widen out before her, displaying new and unsuspected vistas of joyful and intelligent activity, and an ultimate purpose not theretofore clear. No such matter had happened. She had dropped into her new environment without a ripple, and lay there like a pebble at the bottom of a brook, with the clear, invisible current of life still flowing by in merely mechanical contact. She had wanted to be a little boat riding the stream, making headway toward the sea. And all around her the other little pebbles lay, apparently content with their lot, wedged in their muddy bed. No, they were not like pebbles; they resembled busy little waterbugs, flying madly about their own tiny pool, keeping away from the rapids below and the fresh springs above.
Now, it seemed, she might also be a waterbug, if she would. A magnificent goal, if she could shrink the boundaries of her land of dreams to this! There was, she gathered, one prime requisite. One must above all things take the waterbug life seriously. One must be a good waterbug! Ned Angell, now, was a perfectly good waterbug.
The enormous absurdity of it smote on her sense of humour, but still left her bewildered. She had been wont to assume life in its social aspects to be essentially simple. One met people; one liked or did not like them. So it was settled, and one chose one's friends. Of the arbitrary and rigid nature of formal social connections she had no conception. The claims of family, of money, of prestige, meant nothing to her. She had no feeling for the clan; not even a realisation of it. All her distinctions were personal; she had morally the eye of the artist, to whom clothes and appanages are drapery and ornament, not insignia.
For instance, the Round Up Club. It was the club. As yet there was no country club; this was a purely masculine affair. A group of the men who had made money had organised, bought a little house, and were wont to sprawl on the veranda of it, smoking ostentatious cigars and imbued with a terrific air of superiority. One could not doubt that they felt superior Because they sat on that particular veranda. The veranda, also, was sacrosanct because they sat on it. This led nowhere; it was funny, but perplexing. Also, the Round Up Club! The name alone.—They were mostly fat and tubby gentlemen, who would have been more than ill at ease on the hurricane deck of a bronco.
One she had seen the day before on the sacred veranda, though, was rather good to look at. Dark eyes, with a smile in them, and a lean, graceful figure She did not know who he was.
She wished she could feel serious about Eleanor Travers's projected call. Lately she had been reading Vanity Fair. Would Becky Sharp have spent so much diplomacy and duplicity to attain, say, to Mrs. Lockwood
's teas? Mrs. Lockwood, plump and placid, whose husband had made the most money, and who therefore "led society"?
Of course there was no real difference in being a Knight of the Garter and the Golden Fleece, and a master-butcher, so long as one was "first in the village in Gaul," but, since her part was to be all concerned with outward show and made no pretence of examining inward worth, Hope felt she ought at least to have the show. The game might not be worth the candle, but by every right there should be a candle, if there was to be a game. So far there was a difference between a Duchess and a butcher's wife, and Hope could understand Becky Sharp.
Becky's candle glittered very brightly, anyway.
But perhaps Eleanor Travers and the remoter Mrs. Lockwood might have something to offer of themselves. One ought to try it out. There wasn't anything else, as Mary Dark had said.
But there was; there was one's personal liberty. Yes, the mere right to talk to a chauffeur instead of a narrow-chested bank clerk, if one chose. Without some quid pro quo, Hope knew very well she would calmly keep her liberty. She hoped she might keep Mrs. Patten and Mary Dark also. Mrs. Patten taught French, German and music in the schools, where Hope instructed in English and drawing. Mary did multitudinous things in a newspaper office, and was taking a new and better paid place shortly as advertising manager for a big new firm of land promoters.
Neither had any more than she earned. For that reason, she would probably be able to keep them. It was their mutual poverty that constituted the desert island whereon their friendship flourished. If a ship with golden sails came for one of them, she must disappear over the cloudy horizon. These matters Hope meditated, and had the more leisure for that exercise since Allen Kirby failed to reappear. There had been no definite appointment; Hope assumed he had failed of finding her. She spent her evenings at home, reading omnivorously as was her wont, or at Mrs. Patten's, where she sat meekly under the veiled admonitions of her social mentor, and was therefore accounted a good girl. Eleanor Travers had a cold, and the call was postponed. The Tennis dance was a month off. Existence continued as a succession of impatient yawns.
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