The Tryst (Annotated) (Grace Livingston Hill Book) (27 page)

Monday morning Patty had promised to take some things to the dressmaker for Miss Cole, who was to call for her in the car at eleven. She was glad of the opportunity to get away from the house as well as to get in a bit of shopping, for she wanted to buy a Bible of her own. In spite of her intensive course in Bible for one year at school she found it most difficult to locate anything in Miss Cole’s fine print, faded, old book, and besides, she wanted one which she could feel free to mark, that the verses might come to her like old friends whenever she opened the pages. It was difficult enough to find them in the first place without losing them every time. It seemed somehow that this would be coming in touch again with those precious friends of that dear summer long ago. And John Treeves had quoted such wonderful things which he said were promises of God. It did not seem as if they could really be true. She felt as if she must search until she had located each one of them and made them hers personally. It was like finding a hidden treasure put away in the attic in old chests. It was exciting and wonderful! 

So she slipped out early from a servants' entrance, before the household were astir, being most wary, for her experience of Saturday had taught her that the guest did not easily fall into the indolent habits of the household, and might be about even earlier than she was. 

At half-past ten Horliss-Cole called his sister on her room 'phone: 

“Are you going to use your car this morning, Sylvia?” 

“Why, yes, I have to go to the dressmaker's. Why, did you want it?” 

“Well, both my cars seem to be out of commission this morning. The Sedan is out for repairs, and the other has developed something the matter with its engine, so Phillips says. Katharine wants to use the touring car to take a lot of women to something, and I promised to take that young minister out to The Plant. Besides, Marjorie has got it in her head that she wants to go along, and I thought you might enjoy the ride. It's a nice bright day--!” 

That was one nice thing about Horliss-Cole, he had never forgotten the days when they were both little and his sister used to sacrifice all sorts of things for him. 

“Why, yes, I'd like to go,” answered Sylvia Cole hesitatingly, “but I have to go to the dressmaker's, and there's Edith -- I sent her up with some material and promised to call for her at eleven--” 

If it had been any other of the employees of the Horliss-Cole household the head of the house would have promptly suggested telephoning her to return the way she had gone, but Edith Fisher was such a quiet, comfortable adjunct to the household. He liked Edith. She was never obtrusive, always ready to help, always quiet and well behaved -- a pretty little thing. A handy person to have around saving all trouble about wraps and cushions. 

“That's all right, take Edith along. There's plenty of room in the car. She can sit with the chauffeur. How soon’ll you be ready?" 

Miss Cole considered. She didn't relish having her little companion seated with the chauffeur, but of course that was the only way it could be done, and after all, what matter! The child might not like going and she wasn't altogether sure it was exactly square to her to take her unawares in this way, but she had not seemed to mind the church service yesterday; in fact, had looked very happy ever since, so perhaps she was getting over her extreme offishness about that young man, and anyhow she couldn't resist trying the experiment and seeing what it would do to him. It wasn't her arrangement, and there didn't seem any way out of it. Of course, after she had thought it over, if she felt it wasn't being quite loyal to the girl she could still telephone and explain the case. So she told her brother she would be ready in ten minutes, and the matter was settled. Then Miss Cole had all she could do to get ready and there was no time to telephone, so that was settled, too. 

She was quite relieved somehow when she went down to the car to find the young minister was not in it, although Marjorie did not seem to be so pleased about it. It appeared that he had gone on to visit a poor family living in a tiny apartment away up town. They were relatives of a comrade of his who fell in the war. 

“Very decent of him, of course,” commented Horliss-Cole. “I told him we would pick him up. I don't think he at all realizes what sort of a neighborhood he is going into, not at all the kind of people he will care to cultivate, of course, but then a minister is peculiarly situated. Of course he will realize later that he cannot keep up odds and ends of acquaintances that way.” 

Miss Cole was rather relieved than otherwise, it seemed so much less like a plot against her little girl, and when Patty came out she quite naturally took the seat with the chauffeur, for it had happened a number of times before that Miss Cole and her brother had taken friends out and that had always been her seat. She did not mind it at all, for the chauffeur was perfectly respectful, and it was fun riding in front. She was not a member of the family nor a guest, and this was her business position, why should she care? The day seemed blithe and gay and she was glad she was going to have a long ride. For company she would have her own thoughts and the wonderful sermon of yesterday to ponder upon. Did God really care like that for individuals? Why, it was all that she had hungered for her mother to be! 

Patty was not taking much heed as they went on into the narrower streets among the looming new apartments with cheapness written over their very sidewalks, where swarmed flocks of little children already fending for themselves. But when they stopped before the dingiest of the lot the chauffeur, scanning the numbers carefully, and getting out to disappear within, she was a bit surprised. It was not the way of the Horliss-Cole’s to be getting service from small individuals this way. They usually dealt with large employment places when they needed extra help. Of course it might be some fine embroidery or something of the sort. Mrs. Horliss-Cole had ways that were never foretellable. But when presently the chauffeur returned with John Treeves in his wake, Patty caught her breath and the color stole hastily up behind her ears and over the roundness of her cheeks. Miss Cole saw it and felt condemned, but satisfied. The child hadn’t forgotten him yet, anyway. Then she turned her attention to the young man. 

John Treeves evidently did not notice Patty until he was seated in the car just behind the chauffeur, where he had an excellent view of her sideface. By that time Patty had full command of her features, however, and the soft, lovely color which suffused her cheek might easily have been caused by the crisp morning air. Miss Cole saw him almost start as he looked at the girl, and pause in his speech to Marjorie; then instantly controlling his expression, he dropped easily into conversation once more, but from her vantage point behind Marjorie she could see that he cast furtive glances quite often at the front seat. 

Patty’s little gray duvetyne shoulders sat erectly indifferent, and her head was not turned a hair's breadth toward the back seat. She was as apart from the people behind her as if she had been riding in a car of her own. And yet somehow there was always that about her that would not let her seem like a servant even to the casual observer. 

Patty was glad; glad that she was not back there with them. She could not have controlled her eyes. They would have wandered and told tales of her identity, she was sure.  It was in the eyes where people really lived and looked and she was sure he could not have looked into her eyes at close range without recognizing her, as she could not looked into his without knowing him; no, not if it had many more years. She would not have trusted herself to herself oat of her eyes for long in his presence. But back can be a closed door and Patty locked hers and bolted. 

Marjorie Horliss-Cole was chattering away with more her usual fervor, Patty thought, and John Treeves answered her interestedly. They seemed to have a basis of friendliness that was more intimate than Patty would have ever experience between those two. It hurt her a little until she realized that had no business to hurt her, and then she resolutely put it off her thoughts and tried to enjoy the day; but in spite of self she was keenly conscious of all that was said in the back of the car, and of the eyes that were upon being more than the beauties of the day. 

They turned downward toward the river again and it in sight like a silver ribbon tied about the sparkle of the day, until they wound out into the open country and can length to the knot of buildings feathered with tall plant of smoking chimneys, set close beside the water and now bout with rows upon rows of small tiny houses, as like as in many pods, neat and clean and efficient looking as an incubator, reminding one that the details of life were reduce to the minimum and energy husbanded on a large scale. 

Horliss-Cole, suddenly roused from a seeming apathy, and began to talk eagerly: 

Those were the offices in the wide building in the center to the right was the social club and hospital, to the left were factories, beyond the hotel, then the housings and the schools. He indicated the aisles of little gray one-story shacks, and miles of them, it seemed to Treeves, as he looked down the vistas and tried to fancy living in one with a family of eight or ten. “Bungalows,” their perpetrator called them. It had no more resemblance to the little cottage at the end of the home street than a dandelion has to a chrysanthemum. It made him heartsick to think of them in comparison. He glanced around the little company quickly for sympathy in his thought. Horliss-Cole was complacent; his sister wore an inscrutable look, watching him narrowly with a grim, half-mirthful twist of one corner of her mouth; Marjorie was utterly indifferent, not considering the familiar shanties any more than if they had been the grains of sand under her expensive little shoe; the chauffeur sat with eyes ahead, seeing nothing as good chauffeurs should. Instinctively his eyes sought Patty’s face, and he caught the echo of his own thought there, compassion and a longing to change it. He had somehow known that face would look like that. She lifted her eyes coolly, unseeingly, and glanced beyond the Hudson, and he turned quickly away. If that was not Patty he had no right to be looking at her, and every evidence seemed to point that way, except his inner consciousness, which cried out to insist that she look at him and be herself. 

His eyes went beyond the Hudson to the bluffs and hills shining in the cold sunlight, and then back to the river's edge, which was cluttered and bordered with warehouses and factories. The car, at the owner's bidding, rolled down one of the broader ways between the large buildings till it stood on a small pier. There was a bit of an artificial bay cut into the land just here, surrounded by buildings on the three sides, making a hollow square of water wide enough across for two large vessels to enter and dock without interference. Mr. Horliss-Cole had just given it to be understood that all the buildings on both sides of the little inlet belonged to The Plant and were constantly taxed to their utmost capacity. The great open doorways yawned from floor to ceiling in each story, each with an immense floor space behind, and windows at the back through which the sunshine blared and showed in some hurrying workers going about with large parts of automobiles working like a hive of bees. In the warehouses just opposite the Horliss-Cole car the doors were all open wide and the floors empty. A block and tackle, swaying idly from the peak of the roof, seemed but just set free from labor, and a steamer plowing away a few rods down the river with a curving silvery wake showed where the machines had gone that had filled the vacant floors. The city in the distance down the river, with its many tall shafts and chimneys belching smoke against a cold bright December sky, typified the world where the machines were going to be snatched up by the eager purchasers and whirled through space for business or for pleasure. John Treeves wondered what it all amounted to anyway? To make more machines for more people to struggle and buy, to catch up with the great mad procession of the world struggling to get all out of life that was in it --Ah! Why would they not see? Why must so many be blind? A great ache came into his soul to cry out a message that would be heard, a message that it was not all of life to do these things, that they were starving their souls and starving their brothers--! 

But into the midst of his cogitations came Horliss-Cole's oily satisfied voice: 

“Now, we’ll get out here and I will show you the points of interest. Marjorie, do you care to come? Sister, I suppose you would rather sit in the car, you've seen it all so many times.” 

Edith Fisher was ignored, much to her own content. She sat quietly watching the steamer move down the river like a sloppy old fat woman in a shawl with a basket, kicking her feet out behind as she walked. Then her eyes came back to the warehouses across the stretch of water. The sun was in such a position that every big window was lit up with brightness, and it looked like a house of glass. It was the warehouse next to the river end and built with a view to showing off the finished machines that were ready for transportation. A great electric arch spanned the hollow square of water from warehouse to pier with HORLISS-COLE in immense letters that blazed at night for miles, and were easily readable by day. Everybody knew Horliss-Cole. How strange that she, Patty Merrill, should have happened to drop down into this family and take a temporary root! And yet did anything just happen in this world? How strange that she should also have “happened” here on this old friend whom she had not seen for years and under such circumstances that she must remain a stranger to him!  

On the ground floor of the warehouse across from her Patty could see the head and shoulders of a young girl about her own age sitting at a typewriter making her fingers fly like lightning. Now and then the pages would come out and a fresh page go in, and the girl’s fingers flew on. Patty grew interested, wondering what kind of a girl this was and whether she lived in one of those funny little houses back there, or went back and forth from New York every day when her work was done. She was a slender little thing with delicate shoulders and her hair arranged carefully. It was hard to tell at such a distance, but she seemed to be very pretty. Once she came to the window and pushed up the sash a little way and dropped a bit of paper out into the water. It floated away down the stream and followed the wake of the steamer, which was only a speck in the distance now.