“Do I look all right?”
“Stunning! Aw, Helen, come through. Who is he? You’ve never told me a word.” Louise was wild with curiosity.
“Sh‑sh!” Helen cautioned. She drew a deep breath at the living-room door. Her little-girl shyness had come back upon her. Then she opened the door and walked in.
Momma, in her kimono, was sitting in the darkest corner of the room, with her back toward the window. Only a beaded slipper toe and some inches of silk stocking caught the light. She was obviously making conversation with painful effort. Paul sat facing her, erect in a stiff chair, his eyes fixed politely on a point over her shoulder. He rose with evident relief to meet Helen.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Masters,” she said, embarrassed.
“Good afternoon.” They shook hands.
“I’m very glad to see you. Won’t you sit down?” she heard herself saying inanely.
Momma rose, clutching her kimono around her.
“Well, I’ll be going, as I have a very important engagement, and you’ll excuse me, Mr. Masters, I’m sure,” she said archly. “So charmed to have met you,” she added with artificial sweetness.
The closing of the door behind her left them facing each other with nothing but awkwardness between them. He had changed indefinably, though the square lines of his face, the honest blue eyes, the firm lips were as she remembered them. Under the smooth-shaven skin of his cheeks there was the blue shadow of a stubborn beard. He appeared prosperous, but not quite sure of himself, in a well-made broadcloth suit, and he held a new black derby hat in his left hand.
“I’m awfully glad to see you,” she managed to say. “I’m—so surprised. I didn’t know you were coming.”
“I sent you a note on the wires,” he replied. “I wasn’t sure till last night I could get off.”
“I didn’t get it,” she said. Silence hung over them like a threat. “I’m sorry I didn’t know. I hope you didn’t have to wait long. I’m glad you’re looking so well. How is your mother?”
“She’s all right. How is yours?”
“She’s very well, thank you.” She caught her laugh on a hysterical note. “Well—how do you like San Francisco weather?”
His bewilderment faded slowly into a grin.
“It is rather hard to get started,” he admitted. “You look different than I thought you would, somehow. But I guess we haven’t changed much really. Can’t we go somewhere else?”
She read his dislike of momma in the look he cast at her living-room. It was natural, no doubt. But a quick impulse of loyalty to these people who had been so kind to her illogically resisted it. This room, with its close air, its film of dust over the tabletops, its general air of neglect emphasized by the open candy box on the piano-stool and the sooty papers in the gas grate, was nevertheless much pleasanter than the place where she had been living when she met Louise.
“I don’t know just where,” she replied. “Of course, I don’t know the city very well because I work all day. But we might take a walk.”
There was a scurry in the hallway when she opened the door; she caught a glimpse of Louise in petticoat and corset-cover dashing from the bathroom to the bedroom. She hoped that Paul had not seen it, but his cheeks were red. It was really absurd; what was there so terrible about a petticoat? He should have known better than to come to the house without telephoning, anyway. She cast about quickly for something to say.
No, he answered, he could not stay in town long, only twenty-four hours. He wanted to see the superintendent personally about the proposition of putting in a spur-track at Ripley for the loading of melons. There were—her thoughts did not follow his figures. She heard vaguely something about irrigation districts and water-feet and sandy loam soil. So he had not come to see her!
Then she saw that he, too, was talking only to cover a sense of strangeness and embarrassment as sickening as her own. She wished that they were comfortably sitting down somewhere where they could talk. It was hard to say anything interesting while they walked down bleak streets with the wind snatching at them.
“Whew! You certainly have some wind in this town!” he exclaimed. At the top of Nob Hill its full force struck them, whipping her skirts and tugging at her hat while she stood gazing down at the gray honeycomb of the city and across it at masses of sea fog rolling over Twin Peaks. “It gives me an appetite, I tell you! Where’ll we go for supper?”
She hesitated. She could not imagine his being comfortable in any of the places she knew. Music and brilliant lights and cabaret singers would be another barrier between them added to those she longed to break down. She said that she did not know the restaurants very well, and his surprise reminded her that she had written him pages about them. She stammered over an explanation she could not make.
There were so many small, unimportant things that were important because they could not be explained, and that could not be explained without making them more important than they were. It seemed to her that the months since they had last met were full of them.
She took refuge in talking about her work. But she saw that he did not like that subject. He said briefly that it was a rotten shame she had to do it, and obviously hoped to close the theme with that remark.
They found a small restaurant down town, and after he had hung up his hat and they had discussed the menu, she sat turning a fork over and over and wondering what they could talk about. She managed to find
