“Six callers. Two good prospects and a couple that may work up into something,” Hutchinson answered. “Say, the Seals are certainly handing it to the Tigers. Won in the fifth inning.”
“That’s good,” she said absently. “Closed the Haas sale yet?”
“Oh, he’s all right. Tied up solid.” Hutchinson yawned. “How’s your man?”
“Dated him for the land next Wednesday. He’s live, but hard to handle. Taking him down in the machine.”
“Machine all right?”
“Engine needs overhauling, and we’ve got to get a new rear tire and some tubes. Two blowouts today. Time’s too valuable to spend it jacking up cars in this heat. I’m all in. But I can nurse the engine along till I get back from this trip.” She felt that each sentence was a load she must lift with her voice. “I’m all in,” she repeated. “Guess I’ll call it a day.”
However, she still sat relaxed in her chair, looking out at the quaint old redbrick buildings across the street. San José, she thought whimsically, was like a sturdy old geranium plant, woody-stemmed, whose roots were thick in every foot of the Santa Clara Valley. She felt an affection for the town, for the miles of orchard around it, interlaced with trolley-lines, for the thousands of bungalows on ranches no larger than gardens. Some day she would like to handle a subdivision of acre tracts, she thought, and build a hundred bungalows herself.
She brought her thoughts back to the Haas sale, and spoke of it tentatively. It was all right, Hutchinson assured her with some annoyance. The old man was tied up solid. He’d sign the final contract as soon as he got his money, and he had written for it. What did Helen want to crab about it for?
“I don’t mean to be a crab,” she smiled. “But—do you know the definition of a pessimist? He’s a man who’s lived too long with an optimist.”
Hutchinson covered his bewilderment with a laugh.
“You know, I’ve often thought I’d look up that word. I see it every once in a while. Pessimist. But what’s the use? You don’t need words like that to sell land.”
She had been stupid again, aiming over his head. He was right. You didn’t need words like that to sell land. You didn’t need any of the things she liked, to sell land. She was a fool. She was tired. But she returned to the Haas sale. The subject must be handled carefully, for Hutchinson was too good a salesman to offend, though he was lazy. Where was Haas’s money? Hutchinson replied that it was banked in the old country, Germany.
“Germany! And he’s written for it? For the love of—! You grab the machine and chase out there and make him cable. Pay for the cable. Send it yourself. Tell ’em to cable the money. Haven’t you seen the papers?”
Hutchinson, surrounded by scattered sporting sheets, stared up at her in amazement.
“Don’t you know Austria sent an ultimatum to Serbia? Haven’t you ever heard of the Balkan Wars? Don’t you know if Russia—Good Lord, man! And you’re letting that money lie in Germany waiting for a letter? Beat it out there. Make him cable. I’ll pay for it myself. Good Lord, Hutchinson—a fifty acre sale! Don’t stop to talk. The cable-office closes at six. Hurry! And look out for that rear left tire!” she opened the door to call after him.
The brief flurry of excitement had raised in her an exhilaration that vanished in a sense of futility and shame. “I’m getting so I swear like—like a land-salesman!” she said to herself, straightening her hat before the mirror. There was a streak of dust on her nose, and she wiped it off with a towel, and tucked up straggling locks of hair. In the dark strand over one temple a few white lines shone like silver. “I’m wearing out,” she said, looking at them and at her skin, tanned to a smooth brown. Nobody cared. Why should she carefully save herself? She shut the closet door on her mirrored reflection, locked the office door, and went home.
The small, brown bungalow looked at her with empty eyes. The locked front door and the dry leaves scattered from the rose-vines over the porch gave the place a deserted appearance. At all the other houses on the street the doors were open; children played on the lawns, wicker tables and rocking-chairs and carelessly dropped magazines made the porches homelike. There was pity in her rush of affection for the little house; she felt toward it as she might have felt toward an animal she loved, waiting in loneliness for her coming to make it happy.
The door opened wide into the small square hall, and in the stirred air a few rose petals drifted downward from the bowl of roses on the walnut table. She unlatched and swung back the casement windows in the living-room. Then she dropped her hat and purse among the cushions on the window-seat, and straightening her body to its full height, relaxed again in a long, contented sigh. A weight slipped from her spirit. She was at home.
Her lingering glance caressed the rose-colored curtains rustling softly in the faint breeze, the flat cream walls, the brown rugs, the brick hearth on which piled sticks waited for a match. There was her wicker sewing-basket, and beyond it the crowded book shelves. Here was the quaint, walnut desk she had found at a secondhand store, and the big, mannish chair with the brown leather cushions. It was all hers, her very own. She had made it. She was at home, and free. The silence around her was like cool water on a hot face.
In the white-tiled bathroom, with its yellow curtains, yellow bath
