VIII
The thought with which he awoke in the morning was the resolve to which he had held himself as he fell asleep overnight: that he must do something decisive at once. He had no time to lose; her mother might arrive at any moment; they must be prepared with a plan of action to meet her.
There was one plan that was the obvious solution of their difficulty; but he found something repellent in the thought that he should take advantage of Margaret's situation to force her where her heart, perhaps, did not yet make her willing to go. He had looked forward to their marriage as a sort of crowning event for his success in life, when he would be able to offer her the happiness of his prosperity and give her a home worthy of her and of his love. He could not ask her to share a garret with him. He had even a ridiculous shame of letting her see the poverty of his wardrobe, of introducing her to the makeshifts of his dressing-room. His ideal of her demanded that she should be won by nobility and devotion, after the long persuasion of a courtship—not hurried into marriage like a girl of the tenements, against her will, by the pleading of a lover who would use her necessity to force her.
But in the meantime he might lose her. He must find a way to temporize. He must find it at once. And although it was not yet seven o'clock by his watch, he washed and dressed as if he had not a second to spare. The first thing to do was to consult with her. He knew that she would be awake. He tip-toed downstairs and tapped on her door. "Yes?" she answered.
"Come out," he said. "I'll wait at the front door for you."
He heard her patter, barefooted, across the floor. He went below and stood outside on the old "stoop," looking down on the hurry of clerks and shop-girls on their way to the elevated trains that would return them to drudgery. The sky was a sombre wash of smudged grey, heavy, unrefreshed, as if the day had been wakened too soon and was still sulky for lack of sleep. The air was thick with the chill and odour of night-damps. He buttoned his overcoat resolutely and put on his gloves. "Now," he said to himself, "let us see. What shall we do?"
The question was still unanswered—though he was pacing up and down the pavement with it, vainly trying to think—when he saw her descending the steps to the sidewalk. He hastened to meet her. "Have you thought of anything?"
She blushed faintly. "No."
"We must," he said. "Your mother may arrive any moment now. Does she know your address?"
"Yes."
"She'll come direct to the house, then?"
"I suppose so."
"Let us get away from here."
He turned his back on the bustle of Sixth Avenue and led her toward the quieter streets of old Greenwich. She went in a silence which left the affair wholly in his hands; and he frowned over it diligently.
He began: "It won't cost me ten dollars a week to live now, and I have twenty-five. Why can't you take the rest—the fifteen—for as long as you'll need it, and just tell your mother that you have money to keep you here and you intend to stay?"
"Because I" He did not understand her confusion. "Because I can't."
"Why can't you?"
"How can I? I have no There's no reason why you"
"Yes, there is. There's every reason." She shook her head. "Yes, there is," he insisted. "I've been waiting—I've been planning here, working and everything—because I knew you'd come to New York. And now, ever since you've been here, I've been—I've been so Haven't you been happy? Do you want to go?"
"No," she said gently. "I don't, Don. But it—perhaps it would be wiser for me to go home for awhile and then come back again." She added hastily, seeing the tragic change in his face: "I'll come back. Then when you're—when you're more sure of everything This is the first time you've had an opportunity to do your work, without being worried and upset. I don't know that I shall ever find anything. Not for years. I need to study. I could do that at home—study—while I'm teaching. We could write to each other. We could . . . wait."
"Wait!" His voice was almost a groan. "Haven't I waited? Haven't I been waiting all my life?" She took his arm to check him. He went on passionately: "I can't wait. I can't live here alone. I can't let you go again. I can't."
"Ssh!" She looked askance at the windows they were passing. "If we—if I didn't go, and then anything happened, I'd be"
"What do I care what happens as long as you don't go! You couldn't be any worse off than you'd be at home. Besides, nothing can happen. I'll see to that. Stay with me. Don't leave me. I"
"Oh, Don!" She clung to his arm. "We must be practical."
"Practical! What do I care whether we're practical or not as long as we're happy? I won't let you go! I won't give you up! If you leave me again, I'll—I'll go after you."
A man, approaching, stared as he came, and then, when he was near enough to see their expressions, he looked away guiltily, as if he had spied on a family quarrel. When he had passed, Margaret said brokenly: "It's so unreasonable! Blaming me! It's only for your sake"
"Then stay for my sake," he pleaded. "I'm only here—I'm only working for you. The money's for you. Everything I do is for you." She fumbled at the handkerchief in the bosom of her jacket. "We've been so happy. And now, with my work come out right—and all—to go away and leave it You won't! Say you won't."
She wiped her eyes in a frantic shame of such public emotion. "But what will we do?"
"We'll do what we have been doing. Wasn't that all right? I have my work now, and what do we care how long it takes to find yours? Well find it some day, Just as I've found mine, and we'll be together, and happy. You were happy, weren't you?"
"Yes. Yes."
"Well, then, what does anything else matter? That's all I ask, to have you with me, so that I can be happy and try to make you happy. Your mother can't do it—any more than my father can make me happy. She hasn't anything to offer you except what will make us both miserable. She hasn't even money. You'll have to work at what you don't like. And here you can wait until you find what you do like."
He did not voice the thought that was behind this temporizing—the thought that in the days to come he would win her to the act that would relieve her of all necessity of finding work for herself. But she knew that the thought was there, and she accepted it unsaid.
They had walked into a street that ended in a cul-de-sac, and they had to stop and retrace their steps; but his arguments, his pleadings, his promises went on without interruption, in a current against which she no longer tried to struggle. They lost themselves in a maze of those old Greenwich by-paths that wandered in aimless turns and circlings between rows of quaint red-brick houses with colonial doors and brass knockers. They came unexpectedly on a busy thoroughfare, noisy with street-car traffic, and he did not recognise it; but by this time she had surrendered her last objection, and they made a truce of their troubles in their attempts to discover where they were. A policeman directed them to a street that would return them to Sixth Avenue. They went back toward their little restaurant, for breakfast, in the silence of hunger and spent emotions.
He regained his usual optimism at the table, but he found that he could not raise her from her despondent apprehensions, and he had to content himself with the thought that after her mother had come and gone she would return to happiness. He parted from her in the hallway outside her door, exacting her meek promise that she would allow nothing to force her to leave him. He held her hand, lingering, on a desire to make a fonder leave-taking; but she seemed withdrawn from him by her anxiety, and he was afraid to intrude his love on her. "Good-bye," he said. "I shall not be able to have luncheon with you, but I'll be here at six o'clock."
She replied dispiritedly: "Good-bye."
The million interests of his morning's work rushed in over the thought of her in a confusion of incessant demands on his attention; for Pittsey, in order to break in his assistant to his duties, stood back from the wicket and made Don "handle the sale," interfering only to prevent an error or straighten out a snarl. "Sink or swim," he said, when Don faltered and wiped his forehead. "It's the only way you'll ever learn." Long before noon Don's head was aching and his wrists were weak, but his hands were beginning to move deftly, his voice came calm, and he had moments when he gained that mental detachment of the expert ticket seller who can do two things at once and watch himself doing them as if the thought and the action were the functions of two separate minds. "Now," Pittsey said, "you had better get your lunch and have a smoke. Don't come back here for an hour."
Don dropped his duties like a weight, with the feeling that he could not have supported the strain for another five minutes. Miss Morris was waiting for him in the foyer. "Goodness!" He took his breath, smiling and shaking his head at her. "I'm almost done out."
"Come along," she laughed. "What you need is a beefsteak and a glass of ale."
They went to a chop-house where he took the beefsteak but, to her amusement, declined the ale. She watched his plate like a grandmother, making him eat, but refusing to let him talk; and he was so grateful to her for her thoughtfulness that he did not ask himself whether it had not been she who had found a way to let Mrs. Richardson know that Margaret was on the stage. She spoke of indifferent matters: of her change of boarding-house, of Mr. Polk's new play, of the hope that if Polk's theatre were a success she might not have "to leave Broadway" all winter, of Miss Arden's "hit" in a comic opera, of the affairs of the "profession" at large. He listened, too tired to do more than smile. He returned with her to the theatre, rested and refreshed.
The afternoon passed as quickly as the morning had, but with less strain; for the first rush for tickets was over, and he worked with greater ease. When the box office closed, he excused himself to Walter, on the plea of an "engagement," and cut through the crowds to his car like the most breathless of those New Yorkers whose haste he had once envied as he sat idle in Union Square.
He ran upstairs to her room and rapped joyfully. Mrs. McGahn opened the door to him. He stared. "Where is she?"
"She's here. But it's no thanks to you! Come in here."
"What's the matter?" He came in wonderingiy, and stopped, frightened, at the sight of Margaret lying on a sofa. "Is she sick?"
"Sick! If she ain't, it's a wonder! I'd be sick meself!"
"Mother's been here," Margaret said faintly, her back to him.
"An' you're the sweet one!" Mrs. McGahn broke in. "To go off an' leave her to fight yer battles fer yuh. What 're yuh thinkin' of, to do it, man?"
He did not reply to her. He had scarcely heard her. He came to the foot of the sofa as awkwardly as a boy in a sick-room. "What's the matter?"
She rolled her head on the cushion. "I'll have to go home."
He dropped his hat. "Why?"
"Why?" Mrs. McGahn echoed. "Why! Because she's the girl's mother, ain't she?" She stopped at the ghastliness of his face. "Well, dang yuh," she cried in a humorous Irish exasperation, "yuh're the biggest fool alive. If yuh want the girl, why don't yuh marry her? Shilly-shallyin', an' kissin' in the halls at night, an' tormentin' her with yer goin's on! Why don't yuh marry her an' tell her mother to go off an' mind her bus'ness? Here!" She closed the door and came back to front him like a magistrate. "What 're yuh up to, young man? Will yuh marry her, er will yuh not? Fer, by the jukes, now, if yuh won't, yuh'll go out o' here this blessed minut' an' the girl 'll go home in the mornin' to where she belongs! Now! out with it!"
Margaret struggled to get up, rising on her elbow. "Mrs. McGahn!" she cried piteously.
"Be still, you." She rounded on Don again. "It's take it er leave it! She can't stay here—an' I won't have her here. She's her mother's daughter until she's a wedded woman an' out o' danger. An' home she'll go!"
Don did not so much as look at her. He was appealing to the girl with his eyes. "Don't go," he said hoarsely. "If you—if you'll do it. If you care enough for me to let me"
Mrs. McGahn, with a sudden understanding of what he was trying to say, took him by the arm and drew him to Margaret's side. "Here!" she said, and turning from them, she marched out of the room.