CHAPTER XIX
AND it might not have been impossible for Reba to have carried her secret concealed to her grave if her path had continued simple and straight and undeviating. There are plenty of women who succeed in keeping their mistakes hidden in the dark deep recesses of their souls, with the world never the wiser. Nathaniel Cawthorne was not the kind of man to insist upon legal claims, and Reba's life in the city was not one that offered complications as far as her marriage was concerned. She was surrounded by women on all sides—lived, worked and played with them. Her activities as an Alliance secretary (for such she became at last) thrust before her few opportunities for meeting men on a social basis, and she shrank now from seeking opportunities. That, however, was no great hardship for Reba. As much as she still deplored the meagerness of her knowledge of the opposite sex, it was a relief to her that she possessed so justifiable an excuse for avoiding men as her marriage.
It was during her second autumn in the city that Reba was offered a position at the Women's Alliance. She did not seek it. It had never occurred to Reba that she possessed qualities useful to an organization like the Women's Alliance. She drifted into her officialdom. But it was none the less precious to her. No secretly ambitious man ever drifted into a high position with more inward joy than Reba acquired her modest desk in the Alliance's office.
The whole course of events that led up to that desk was a series of intoxications to Reba Jerome. From the early spring day when Miss Park first asked her to help her with the beginners at the noon dancing classes ("You know the steps so well yourself now," she had explained) all along through the following requests, from this secretary and that, to help in little ways here and there,—it didn't matter how simple and trivial the assistance rendered was, Reba was as childishly pleased as a debutante who finds herself in constant demand. First it was Miss Park asking her to help with the dancing; and then Miss Bartholomew wondering if she would mind calling the roll at gymnasium drill; some other secretary requesting her to attend to the telephone during a congested morning hour in the office; and still another placing her inside the cashier's cage in the cafeteria one noon—that is, if she had nothing else very important to do just then. Reba performed these little services tremblingly at first, but with growing assurance as they mysteriously increased week by week.
The day that Miss Park asked Reba if she would not like to become one of the Alliance's real helpers, "with a big H, I mean, and a little salary," she tucked in, Reba's cup of joy flowed over.
"Me? Oh, do you think I could be of any help—any use—really?" Reba had gasped, blushing over the presumption of her question.
"Why, you are already," had smiled back Miss Park. "You'd just be filling officially a position you've created for yourself around here, my dear, these last few months by being so willing and ready to help any and all of us. Your office will be sort of general First Aider to whatever disabled department needs you. Do you see? Sort of official Filler-in," explained Miss Park. "Naturally, you'll have to give up the Alliance's courses you're taking, and those at the Art Museum" (for Reba had availed herself of opportunities outside as well as inside the Alliance), "but aren't you over-coursed by this time, my dear? Still," Miss Park shrugged and turned away, "you may not care to try it. It will take up most of your time." Then abruptly turning back, "How does it sound?" she asked point-blank.
"Like the ending of a fairy-tale!" exclaimed Reba, eyes shining.
"How pretty she can look!" thought Katherine Park.
A week later Reba was given her desk—a small, flat-topped affair, with a telephone on it, and over it a thrilling little piece of shellacked oak with "Miss Jerome" painted on it in clear black letters. It was difficult to believe that the competent-appearing young woman with the quiet unself-assertive manner seated beneath that small oak shingle was the same embarrassed, painfully ill-at-ease wisp of scared femininity who but a short eighteen months before, tightly pompadoured and primly dressed, had slunk timidly around the edges of the Alliance's class-rooms and parlors. Responsibility brought out latent qualities in Reba, as Katherine Park had persuaded the Board of Managers it might. Her shy, retiring manner still clung to her, of course—always would. She colored whenever a stranger approached her desk; and had to low and fight for composure whenever any one made an unexpected inquiry.
But the defenses she built up about this supersensitiveness of hers were probably the secret of her success. For to avoid the discomfort of unfamiliarity with any feature of her position, she studied diligently every detail of it. And it wasn't long before she established for herself a reputation for accuracy and thoroughness. Also her determination to conquer her diffidence, to overcome her quailing dread of conspicuousness, demanded that she never beg off from any service asked of her, howsoever difficult.
Katherine Park was very proud of the results of her suggestion to the Board of Managers. And she was not the only one proud of Reba either.
Aunt Augusta had sniffed, true enough, at the painted sign, and grunted, "Humph," at sight of the desk and telephone before which she found her niece seated, when she and Cousin Syringa dropped in on Reba at the close of one of Augusta's rare Boston shopping-days. "To find out," she told Reba dryly, "what nonsense they'd find her up to this time." But Reba learned later that Aunt Augusta had not been wholly displeased. Mr. James Perkins told Reba not long after her aunt's call that he overheard her say to Lena Hanscome's mother, after Wednesday evening meeting one night, that she thought it was real nice about her Lena's getting the assistant librarian's position down in Union, and, by the way, had she happened to hear yet about their Reba's being a general secretary at the Women's Alliance in Boston?
"A general secretary! Oh, Mr. Perkins!" Reba had replied. "I'm only a kind of general-utility-office-girl."
"Never mind, never mind, never mind," he had smiled. "I won't tell."
Reba would have been satisfied to have remained general-utility-office-girl, but the eagerness she showed for her little job, and the diligence she put into it were sure to bear fruit sooner or later.
In the spring preceding her appointment to an official position, the Women's Alliance had begun to take part in the Red Cross activities of the city. It offered courses in First Aid, Home Nursing, Surgical Dressing, etc., to its members at a reduced fee, and lately had opened a Red Cross sewing-room.
When in the early winter Miss Ellsworth, the General Secretary of the Women's Alliance, found it necessary to place some one in charge of the increasing responsibilities of this department, she looked over her corps of helpers and, summoning Miss Park one day to her office, asked her how she thought Miss Jerome would do. Did she not possess the very qualifications most essential? She had taken all the Red Cross courses herself, and had passed them with high credit; had sewed endless hours at the Red Cross headquarters, and had proved expert and conscientious with both scissors and needle. Of course there would be night work. Many of the Red Cross classes met in the evening and some one would have to be on hand to take responsibility, but, as she roomed at the Alliance, she would not feel the pressure of this as much as some one who lived at a distance.
The result of that talk was that Rebecca Jerome found herself re-installed at another desk, in another room, a fortnight later—happy and proud, but palpitatingly fearful that she would prove incompetent, unworthy of the increase in her small salary. Not that she cared about the increase for itself, for money was the last thing she needed, but a salary was proof of usefulness, and increase of salary was proof of growth.
Reba's whole soul was wrapped up now in her work. She thought of Nathan, of course, sometimes; wrote to him too, once in a while, but his less and less frequent messages, mailed from strange ports she had never heard of, dwindling finally to scarcely more than a "Dear Rebecca," and a "Good-by. Nathan," with a few stilted lines between, "hoping that she was well, as he was," portended nothing immediately frightening. The three years of freedom were fast passing. That was true. But in a recent message from Nathan he had intimated that the three years might be prolonged by another twelve months—that is, unless she particularly wanted him to return sooner. He could manage it easily, but would it make any difference to her? He would like to know (he repeated that), "Would it make any difference to you, Rebecca?"
Reba replied, by return mail, that it wouldn't make the slightest difference. There was no reason at all for him to hurry back.
Her once vital issue with her home people was also of less importance to Reba. She tried to spend a Sunday occasionally with them, but those Sundays were not very pleasant. Reba grew more and more intolerant of what seemed to her their confined lives and narrow outlooks. They persisted in criticising her to her face, however reconciled they might have become inwardly. And her father's miserliness affected her with growing impatience.
More than once after a Sunday in Ridgefield Reba would fiercely declare to herself after her return, "I won't get like him! I won't!" And the next morning the various war charities about Boston would receive an influx of mysterious one-hundred to five-hundred dollar money-orders, "From a friend." And Reba, safe back again among her precious responsibilities and blessed round of daily duties, would silently say to herself, "Oh, I'm so glad to be here! It would kill me to have to live in the stifling atmosphere of Ridgefield now."