Mary Minds Her Business Part 37

"You were wrong, Mary, and you know you were wrong."

"I was right, Wally, and you know I was right. Because, don't you see?--if love is the only thing in life, and love fails, a person's whole life is in ruins--and that isn't fair--"

"It's true, though," he answered, more to himself than to her. Again he unconsciously a.s.sumed a listening att.i.tude, as one who is trying to catch a sound from afar.

"Wally!" said Mary. "What on earth are you listening for?"

Again it pleased him to answer her with a riddle.

"Italian opera," he said; and turning back to the keyboard he began--

"Woman is fickle False altogether Moves like a feather Borne on the breezes--"

"Did you ever sing when you were flying?" she asked, trying to shake him out of his mood.

The question proved a happy one. For nearly two hours they chatted and smiled and hummed old airs together--that is to say, Wally hummed them and Mary tried, for, as you know, she couldn't sing but could only follow the melody with a sort of a deep note far down in her throat, always pretending that she wasn't doing it and shyly laughing when Wally nodded in encouragement and tried to get her to sing up louder.

"Eleven o'clock!" he exclaimed at last. "That's the first time in three months--"

Whatever it was, he didn't finish it, but when he bade her good-bye he said in a low voice, "Young lady, do you know that you played the very Old Ned with my life when you turned me down?"

But Mary wouldn't follow him there, either.

"Good-bye, Wally," she said, and just before he went down to his car, she saw him standing on the step, his face turned toward the drive as though still listening for that distant sound--that sound which never came.

The riddle was solved the next morning.

Helen appeared at the office soon after nine and the moment she saw Mary she said, "Has Wally 'phoned you this morning?"

"No," said Mary.

Her cousin looked relieved.

"I want you to fib for me," she said. "You know the way the men stick together.... Well, the women have to do it, too.... At dinner yesterday,"

she continued, "Wally happened to ask me where I was going that evening, and I told him I was coming over to see you. And really, dear, I meant it at the time. Instead, a little crowd of us happened to get together and we went to the club.

"Well, that was all right. But it was nearly twelve when I got home, and he looked so miserable that I hated to tell him that I had been off enjoying myself, so I pretended I had been over to see you."

Mary blinked at the inference, but was too breathless, too alarmed to speak.

"He asked me if I got to your house early," resumed Helen, "and I said, 'Oh, about eight.' And then he said, 'What time did you leave Mary's?'

and I said, 'Oh, about half-past eleven.'

"Of course, I thought everything was all right, but I could tell from something he said this morning that he didn't believe me. So if he calls you up, tell him that I was over at your house last night--will you?--there's a dear--"

"But I can't," said Mary, more breathless, more alarmed than ever. "Wally was over himself last night--and, oh, Helen, now I know! He was listening for your car every minute!"

Helen stared ... and then suddenly she laughed--a laugh that had no mirth in it--that sound, half bitter, half mocking, which is sometimes used as ironical applause for ironical circ.u.mstance.

"I guess I can square it up somehow," she said. "I'll drop in and see Burdon for a few minutes."

Before her cousin knew it, she was gone.

"I'll speak to her when she comes out," Mary told herself, but while she was trying to decide what to say, the morning mail was placed on her desk and the routine of the day began. Half an hour later she heard the sound of Helen's car rolling away.

"She went without saying good-bye," thought Mary. "Oh, well, I'll see her again before long."

To her own surprise the events of the last few days worried her less than she expected. For one reason, she had lived long enough to notice that no matter how involved things may look, Time has an astonishing faculty of straightening them out. And for another reason, having two worries to think about, each one tended to take her mind off the other.

Whenever she started thinking about the accountant's report, she presently found herself wondering how Helen proposed to square it up with Wally.

"Oh, well," she thought again, realizing the futility of trying to read the future, "let's hope everything will come out right in the end.... It always has, so far...."

Archey came in toward noon, and Mary went with him to inspect a colony of bungalows which she was having built on the heights by the side of the lake.

Another thing that she had lived long enough to notice was the different effect which different people had upon her. Although she preserved, or tried to preserve, the same tranquil air of interest toward them all--a tranquillity and interest which generally required no effort--some of the people she met in the day's work subconsciously aroused a feeling of antagonism in her, some secretly amused her, some irritated her, some made her feel under a strain, and some even had the queer, vampirish effect of leaving her washed out and listless--psychological puzzles which she had never been able to solve. But with Archey she always felt restful and contented, smiling at him and talking to him without exertion or repression and--using one of those old-fashioned phrases which are often the last word in description--always "feeling at home" with him, and never as though he had to be thought of as company.

They climbed the hill together and began inspecting the bungalows.

"I wouldn't mind living in one of these myself," said Archey. "What are you going to do with them?"

But that was a secret. Mary smiled inscrutably and led the way into the kitchen.

I have called it a kitchen, but it was just as much a living room, a dining room. A Pullman table had been built in between two of the windows and on each side of this was a settee. At the other end of the room was a gas range. When Wally opened the refrigerator door he saw that it could be iced from the porch. Electric light fixtures hung from the ceiling and the walls.

"Going to have an artists' colony up here?" teased Archey, and looking around in admiration he repeated, "No, sir! I wouldn't mind living in one of these houses myself--"

They went into the next room--the sitting room proper--unusual for its big bay window, its built-in cupboards and bookshelves. Then came the bathroom and three bed-rooms, all in true bungalow style on one floor.

When they had first entered, Mary and Archey had chatted freely enough, but gradually they had grown quieter. There is probably no place in the world so contributive to growing intimacy as a new empty house--when viewed by a young man and a younger woman who have known each other for many years--

The place seems alive, hushed, expectant, watching every move of its visitors, breathing suggestions to them--

"Do you like it?" asked Mary, breaking the silence.

Archey nodded, afraid for the moment to trust himself to speak. They looked at each other and, almost in haste, they went outside.

"He'll never get over that trick of blushing," thought Mary. At the end of the hall was a closet door with a mirror set in it. She caught sight of her own cheeks. "Oh, dear!" she breathed to herself. "I wonder if I'm catching it, too!"

Once outside, Archey began talking with the concentration of a man who is trying to put his mind on something else.

"This work up here was a lucky turn for some of the strikers," he said.

"Things are getting slack again now and men are being laid off. Here and there I begin to hear the old grumbling, 'Three thousand women keeping three thousand men out of jobs.' So whenever I hear that, I remind them how you found work for a lot of the men up here--and then of course I tell them it was their own fault--going on strike in the first place--just to get four women discharged!"

"And even if three thousand women are doing the work of three thousand men," said Mary, "I don't see why any one should object--if the women don't. The wages are being spent just the same to pay rent and buy food and clothes--and the savings are going into the bank--more so than when the men were drawing the money!"

"I guess it's a question of pride on the man's part--as much as anything else--"