Ellen could not consider the bearing of this upon the business; she could not dwell upon the effect of it upon Di. Jay Rountree was coming home; and to think of Sam Metten's fat, flabby arms about Di was to be cast, by contrast, into Jay's arms. She was cast, by her mind, into his arms, where she had never been. Startlingly this morning she longed for physical touch with him; startlingly, she felt the restraints within her broken down. She would catch them up again; she must, of course. He was coming to the office within two hours; he was in trouble again. What sort of trouble? Because of a girl?
Was he coming home from a girl whom he had held in his arms? He held other girls in his arms; many another girl, of his own sort—of course, he did.
Arms of many men enfolded Di; many kissed her. Di liked it. How could she?
Jay kissed other girls, undoubtedly. Ellen did not wonder how he could. It was different with him. The idea of it only heated her longing. She rubbed, hard, at her lips. She sat before her mirror to powder before going out and, staring at herself, she tried to imagine how she seemed to him.
She gazed at him in the pictures and realized, with a sudden throb of joy of which she could not be cheated, that she would see him and speak with him this morning, whatever happened; and hereafter each day, until the end of the Christmas vacation, she would be in the office with him often; any opening of the door might bring him; any time she answered the telephone, she might hear his voice.
She thrust her pictures far back in the drawer, then deserted Di for the cafeteria across the street. In spite of the outside cold, which aided other appetites, Ellen wanted only coffee and a roll; and she was shaking, as she served herself, in the ecstasy of her increasing excitement. She drove her mind back to Di. Should she have said more to Di? It was no use talking to Di; something had to be done about her; and the thing could be no easy, futile shift of responsibility such as a letter to Di's father to summon her home.
Di would laugh at the idea of returning home. What would she do at home, especially in the winter? Ellen well knew Di's home, which was neighbor to her own, a quarter mile away across the white hills and deeply drifted dales of Emmet County, Michigan, at the very tip north end of the opposite shore of the roaring, snowswept lake.
Ellen's father lived there because he had been born on the land and because the house, which once had been a farmhouse, was a fine place for the family of a man who had taken to the lakes and who, on a skipper's pay, had a wife and six children.
Adrian Powell was master, now, of the ore-carrier Blenmora, which, from the first day in spring when the ice-breakers cleared a channel through Whitefish Bay until the zero cold of December again "closed" the Soo, must bear iron, iron, iron from Duluth to Chicago. Back and forth, ceaselessly, with the shortest possible delays for loading and discharging ore, the Blenmora must make the most of its nine months season. Gargantuan loaders chuted in ten thousand tons to the holds; enormous mechanical maws—"clamshells"—withdrew the ore, a thousand tons to the hour, so that incredibly the Blenmora docked, full laden, and cleared in ballast between dawn and twilight of the same day.
It mattered little where the skipper's wife awaited him throughout these months while the ship steamed south, deep-laden; red iron heaped to the tops of the holds. North, light; south, laden again. So, from the spring break-up of the ice to the winter freeze-up, Selina Powell watched the lake from the old, fresh-painted farmhouse which Adrian could just see in his spyglass as a white spot against a green hill as the Blenmora bore west onequarter north out of the Straits of Mackinac before the swing south around Waugoshance shoals.
When he passed at night, always—for his wife followed the shipping—a point of light gleamed for him, a love star on the black shore. It was his beacon, telling him all was well.
To compensate for his long absence, as absolute (save for the spyglass and the light) as though he voyaged to the antipodes, he was home while the winter held the lakes in leash. Winter, in Ellen's girlhood, meant her father. It meant little, loving mother happier and no longer waiting and watching the water; it meant love and man's tenderness and man's heartiness in the house—big, steaming breakfasts of meat and battercakes; pipe smoke; men in and out; the girls doubling (Ellen had three sisters) to supply a guest room for Curley, father's second officer, or for the Blenmora's chief engineer; guns and snowshoes; men's heavy things drying before the stove; men's stories and talk and laughter. From this home, Ellen had come to Chicago.
Lem Dewitt, Di's father, was an automobile mechanic with a job, usually, in the garage at Hoster. He had been, once, the town beau and had married the town belle. Pansy was a faded, querulous beauty in this day, recognized by old suitors, who returned to town, by her auburn hair. Lem was lazy and let the place run down. It was a one-story, clapboard cottage, originally white, weathered to dirty gray and streaked by rusty water dripping through the rotted gutters. The roof wanted mending; the rooms wanted paper and paint; the flues wanted cleaning. Pansy complained about it all and herself lay late abed, "did" her dishes and housework in boudoir cap and a cheap, gaudy kimono. She had time to manicure her pink hands and massage her sagging cheeks but not to scrub the floor.
From this home, Diana, the eldest child, had fled to Detroit, whence she had come to Chicago to settle her dainty, dependent, man-desired self upon Ellen. In the two years since she had forsaken Hoster, Di never had returned; and she corresponded, when at all, upon picture postcards.
Her mother's letters were chiefly complaints, in response to which Di impulsively deprived herself of a flimsy blouse, worn a bit but not yet ready to be discarded, and mailed it home; or she would slip into parcel post a pair of new gloves or silk stockings from the constantly accruing meed of her admirers.
It was ridiculous to suppose that Di would go home or pay the slightest attention to parental exhortation, especially since she had discovered her powers to delight men at a business "party."
The Rountree company did not approve "parties." Mr. Rountree allowed no item on the company payroll, or in the expense accounts of his salesmen, for the services of party girls. He directed that business be got by business methods.
The Slengels operated by far more personal contacts and after far less stern ideas; and whatever one said of the methods, no one could deny that they were getting results. In New York, they had just taken away an account from Rountree and were in full cry after the Nucast business; and here they were after the Metten business—with Di in Sam Metten's lap.
What could Ellen do about Di? Mr. Rountree could not help her; he would tell her to make Di come back to his office. Ellen knew that Di would no more return to the typewriter than she would go home to Hoster. Jay Rountree would understand that. Why was a man like Mr. Rountree, who saw into no one, never in trouble, while Jay, who appreciated others so perfectly, forever was in difficulties himself?
What difficulty to-day? A girl? Did he love her? Ellen very well knew that he had never loved herself. No matter, if he loved, loved no one else. He did not have to love her to make her happy when he was at home—not happy enough, not nearly, nearly all the happiness that might be, but more than she could have with any one else. When she was with him, he pulled taut something in her heart which no one else touched at all. It hurt but she wanted it to hurt. The sight of him and his eyes on hers and him smile at her did it; when he spoke to her, in his nice, friendly way, he drew at something in her throat so that she could not speak. It hurt but she wanted it repeated; and harder. She wanted nothing so much as more of that hurt from him; and harder, harder. That was to love; to hurt and to want to hurt harder, harder. . . .
She reached the office and laid off her coat in the little closet between Mr. Rountree's room and her own beside it. The mail-clerk delivered to her the morning's tray of telegrams and letters for Mr. Rountree and left her alone with them at the big desk. Here was one from New York; on business.
"The Nucast business is safe," it said. That was good news; that would please Mr. Rountree. The Nucast account was a big one; bad to lose to the Slengels. More business messages: from Cleveland; from Baltimore; from New York. Another from New York, not business: personal, this; Amelia Cather Lytle signed it.
This was about Jay; for Amelia Cather Lytle was Mrs. Lytle, the mother of Lida. Not of Lida Lytle; the mother had married again, as wealthy people in New York so frequently did. Lida's name was Lida Haige; that girl in her teens at Miss Willett's school; that girl . . .
Then Ellen, with her hands pressed against her breast to stop the thumping of her heart, read the message.
Jay disembarked at the LaSalle Street station amid a medley of college boisterousness and business greetings. Mostly it was a college crowd clustered about the gates; posters in fisher and fox with small blue toques, like the girls on the train, brothers in raccoon gray, mothers in mink and fathers in ulsters waved welcome to the college people home for the holidays. The blizzard, with its blowing cold, increased the heartiness of handclasps and kisses. They shouted and whispered, laughed and linked arms. Christmas week and home again! Cold, and snow and ice sheathing the steps and flanks of the first cars of the Century which stood, in its four arrived sections on four side-by-side tracks, with two holiday sections yet to pound in; two more train-loads of college people and business men to be welcomed home. Christmas vacations and business.
The business groups broke up at the gates with elaborate handshakings and over-insisted repetitions of regard; and they separated, never looking back at one another.
Ben's mother and sister met him and Jay. They wanted to run Jay home in their car, but Jay told them he was bound for the office.
"I'll toss your bag in at your house," Ben offered; and Jay gave it to Ben before he remembered that, likely, he would not sleep at home that night; perhaps never again.
Ben had not intruded further into the affair of the telegram; and he referred to it for the first time since he had delivered it. "Want me to do anything for you?" he asked.
Jay said, "No; thanks." Mrs. Crosby invited, "Will you dine with us to-morrow?"
"Can't tell I'll be in town," said Jay.
"You needn't tell us," said Ben's mother, touching him. "Just come if you can; or whenever you can."
Jay went to the telegraph desk, where he wrote out the words that had been forming in his head for the last hour: "Don't be sorry," he read to himself in whispers after he had written it. "Be glad. I am." He signed it and dispatched it to Lida.
That bound the matter; that bound him. So, definitely committed, he went out to the blowing snow of the street and strode eastward, facing the blizzard. Glad? He was not glad. That was untrue; that was a lie, but of the sort that had to be told. The only way to do this was gladly; or as if you were glad; as if you wanted to. "Marry her; I marry her. Marry . . . Lyda; Leeda; my wife . . ." The idea ran into images of her in his arms; Lida embracing him; her kisses; his lips on hers.
Pleasant in a car to kiss her and embrace her; or under the trees after a dance. She was a warm little sprite. He liked her, that way. He had liked her very much as a companion in the light-hearted, reckless expeditions in Westchester county and Connecticut. She had delighted in them; and they had done no harm, no real harm—until Nucast.
When Jay had let her know that he would be in New York for a weekend, Lida would "sign out" at school but she would not go home. She and another girl would meet Jay and another man—never Ben—and the four of them would drive out in the country, sometimes to friends' houses; roadhouses, sometimes. Always, at night, he would leave Lida at some safe and chaperoned place such as his sister's home in Westchester county.
Margaret, his sister, was Mrs. Ralph Armiston and Ralph was sales agent for the Rountree Company in the East. It was at Ralph's and Margaret's that he and Lida had happened upon Nucast. For they had found Nucast as a house guest. Margaret and Ralph both were making a great fuss over him. They said nothing when Nucast, liking Lida, invited her to drive over to another party with him.
Jay had never seen Nucast before. "He's all right?" Jay asked Ralph.
"Of course he's all right," said Ralph.
He was not all right and Ralph had known it, but in the cause of his own advantage Ralph had risked Lida rather than anger Nucast. For Nucast's business was essential to Ralph; Nucast held, largely, the Armistons' prosperity in his hands. So they had let Lida go with Nucast.
Not until yesterday had Jay learned all that had happened later that night. Lida had supposed that Nucast was like other friends of Jay and the Armistons (not entertained for business advantage). Lida had proceeded in the confidence that her escort would, like Jay and his friends, look out for her, that he would stop her before she drank too much and that he would never take advantage. But Nucast had taken advantage.
Now there was nothing which Nucast could do for her; he was married. Moreover, Lida wanted never to see him again. She had come to Jay because she could trust him—and because he, having brought her into association with Nucast, was therefore responsible.
Fury flamed in Jay, not at Lida but at Nucast and Ralph and Margaret. But of what use to Lida were words with them? Ralph and Margaret were as helpless as Nucast to aid Lida. Of them all, Jay alone could be of any service; so he had offered himself to her yesterday; and to-day, she had accepted him.
The cold cut him. The wind was from the east and his father's office was on Michigan Avenue, confronting the lake. He reached the building. Warm in the elevator; men crowding him and each other; business men spending their days at selling something to some one else, or buying; holding the fates of others in their important hands—like Nucast.
He wanted to think what to say to his father; he tried to; but his mind would make no proper preparation for the story he was required to tell. His mind went back and back again to the truth which he must not impart to any one, least of all to his father. For his father, told the truth, would intervene; he would simply smash up everything which Jay had promised and prepared to protect Lida. No one else must know; he must go through with it.
Fourteenth floor. Out here. John Rountree and Company. That door, beyond which was his father!
Jay opened it and faced his father at his desk, with Ellen Powell near him. She was standing, very white. What big gray eyes she had! What big, steady eyes!
"Shut that door," his father commanded. "Shut that door."