The young operator with the green eyeshade, for instance, always regarded her with a cynical and slightly amused eye, which she resented without knowing why. When she laid messages beside his key, he covered her hand with his if he could, and sometimes when she sat working he came and put his hand on her shoulder. She was always angry, for she felt contempt in his attitude toward her, but she did not know how to show her resentment without making too much of the incidents.
“Mr. McCormick, leave me alone!” she said impatiently. “I want to work.”
“Just what is the game?” he drawled.
“What do you mean?” she asked, reddening under that cool, satirical gaze. He looked at her, grinning until she felt only that she hated him. Or sometimes he said something like: “Oh, well, I’m not butting in. It’s up to you and the boss,” and strolled away, whistling.
Much looking at life from the backdoor keyhole of the telegraph-operator’s point of view had made him blasé and wearily worldly-wise at twenty-two. He knew that every pretty face was moulded on a skeleton, and was convinced that all lives contained one. Only virtue could have surprised him, and he could not have been convinced that it existed. When he was on duty in the long, slow evenings, Helen, practising diligently behind her screen, heard him singing thoughtfully:
“Life’s a funny proposition after all;
Just why we’re here and what it’s all about,
It’s a problem that has driven many brainy men to drink,
It’s a problem that they’ve never figured out.”
Life seemed simple enough to Helen. She would be a telegraph-operator soon, earning as much as fifty dollars a month. She could repay the hundred dollars then, buy some new clothes, and have plenty to eat. She would try to get a job at the Ripley station—always in the back of her mind was the thought of Paul—and she planned the furnishing of housekeeping rooms, and thought of making curtains and embroidering centerpieces.
It was spring when he wrote that he was coming to spend a day in Sacramento. He was going to Masonville to help his mother move to Ripley. On the way he would stop and see Helen.
Helen, in happy excitement, thought of her clothes. She must have something new to wear when they met. Paul must see in the first glance how much she had changed, how much she had improved. She had not been able to save anything, but she must, she must have new clothes. Two days of worried planning brought her courage to the point of approaching Mr. Roberts and asking him for her next month’s salary in advance. Next month’s food was a problem she could meet later. Mr. Roberts was very kind about it.
“Money? Of course!” he said. He took a bill from his own pocketbook. “We’ll have to see about your getting more pretty soon.” Her heart leaped. He put the bill in her palm, closing his hand around hers. “Going to be good to me if I do?”
“Oh, I’d do anything in the world I could for you,” she said, looking at him gratefully. “You’re so good! Thank you ever so much.” His look struck her as odd, but a customer came in at that moment, and in taking the message she forgot about it.
She went out at noon and bought a white, pleated, voile skirt for five dollars, a China-silk waist for three-ninety-five, and a white, straw sailor. And that afternoon McCormick, with his cynical smile, handed her a note that had come over the wire for her. “Arrive eight ten Sunday morning. Meet me. Paul.”
She was so radiantly self-absorbed all the afternoon that she hardly saw the thundercloud gathering in Mr. Roberts’ eyes, and she went back to her room that evening so confidently happy that she rang the doorbell without her usual qualm. Mrs. Campbell’s lips were drawn into a tight, thin line.
“There’s some packages for you,” she said.
“Yes, I know. I bought some clothes. Thank you for taking them in,” said Helen. She felt friendly even toward Mrs. Campbell. “A white, voile skirt, and a silk waist, and a hat. Would—would you like to see them?”
“No, thank you!” said Mrs. Campbell, icily. Going up the stairs, Helen heard her speaking to her husband. “ ‘I bought some clothes,’ she says, bold as brass. Clothes!”
Helen wondered, hurt, how people could be so unkind. She knew that the clothes were an extravagance, but she did want them so badly, for Paul, and it seemed to her that she had worked hard enough to deserve them. Besides, Mr. Roberts had said that she might get a raise.
She was dressed and creeping noiselessly out of the house at seven o’clock the next morning. The spring dawn was coming rosily into the city after a night of rain; the odor of the freshly washed lawns and flowerbeds was delicious, and birds sang in the trees. The flavor of the cool, sweet air and the warmth of the sunshine mingled with her joyful sense of youth and coming happiness. She looked very well, she thought, watching her slim white reflection in the shopwindows.
VI
When the train pulled into the big, dingy station Helen had been waiting for some time, her pulses fluttering with excitement. But her self-confidence deserted her when she saw the crowds pouring from the cars. She shrank back into the waiting-room doorway; and she saw Paul before his eager eyes found her.
It was a shock to find that he had changed, too. Something boyish was gone from his face, and his self-confident walk, his prosperous appearance in a new suit, gave her the chill sensation that she was about to meet a stranger. She braced herself for the effort, and when they shook hands she felt that hers was cold.
“You’re looking well,” she said shyly.
“Well, so are you,” he answered. They walked down the platform together, and she saw that he
