“Well—goodbye.”
“Goodbye. And you’ll come to see the new house soon?”
She watched his sturdy back disappear through the car-door. Her fancy saw the sure, quick motion with which he would fling himself from the moving train, and with her face close against the jarring pane, she caught a last glimpse of his eager face and waving hat beneath the station lights.
Smiling, she saw the street lamps flash past, vanish. Against rushing blackness the shining window reflected her own firm mouth, the strong curve of her cheek, the crisp line of the small hat. The swaying motion of a train always delighted her; she liked the sensation of departure, and the innumerable small creakings, the quickening click-click-click of the wheels, gave her the feeling of being flung through space toward an unknown future. Her cheek against the cool pane, she shut out the shimmering lights and gazed into vague darkness.
Her heart was warm with contentment; her love for Paul lay in it like a hidden warmth. She thought of the articles she meant to write, of the brown cottage on Russian Hill, of the little group of women she might gather there, Marian Marcy’s friends. With something of wistful envy she thought of the affection that held them together; she hoped they would like her, too. The friendship of women was a new thing to her, and the bond she had glimpsed among these girls appeared to her special and beautiful.
Wondering, she considered them one by one, so widely differing in temperament and character, and yet so harmonious beneath their heated arguments. One would say they quarreled at the luncheon table where they met daily, flinging pointed epigrams and sharp retorts at each other, growing excited over most incongruous subjects—the war, poems, biology, hairdressers—arguing, laughing, teasing each other all in a breath. But their good humor never failed, and affection for each other burned like an unflickering candle flame in all their gusts of controversy.
“It’s a wonderful crowd,” Marian Marcy had said inclusively, and Helen knew that her invitation to lunch with them indicated genuine liking. A stranger among them, she felt herself on trial, and a hope of gathering them all at her fireside and perhaps becoming one of their warm circle had been her strongest motive in taking the cottage.
Her days were full of work. With a kind of fury she threw herself into the task of conquering the strange world before her. There was so much to learn and so very little time. Her six months became a small hoard of hours, every minute precious. In the earliest dawn, while the sky over the Berkeley hills blushed faintly and long silver lines lay on the gray waters of the bay, she was plunging into her cold tub, lighting the gas beneath the coffeepot, tidying the little house. The morning papers gave her ideas for stories—already she had learned to call everything written “a story”—and she rode down the hill on the early cable-car with stenographers and shopgirls, thinking of interviews.
Her business sense, sharply turned upon magazine pages and Sunday papers, showed her an ever-widening market. She saw scores of stories on innumerable subjects; they came into her mind dressed in all the colors of fancy, perfect, clear-cut, alive with interest. Then at her typewriter she set herself to make them live in words, and through long afternoons she toiled, struggling, despairing, seeing fruitless hours go by, knowing at last that she had produced a maimed, limping thing. Her bookcases now filled her with awe. All those volumes so easily read, apparently produced so effortlessly, appeared in this new light tremendous, almost miraculous achievements.
“I can never write real books,” she said. “I am not an artist.”
She was not embarking upon an artistic career; she was learning a trade. But seeing about her so many newspapers, so many magazines, carloads of volumes in the department stores, she reflected that it was a useful trade. These miles of printing brought refreshment and wider viewpoint to millions. “If I can be only a good workman, producing sound, wholesome, true things, I will be doing something of value,” she consoled herself.
Mr. Hayden accepted the first story in the “San Francisco Nights,” series, refused the second. She began on a third, and when her article on immigration was returned from the East she sent it out again. She had better fortune with a story on California farming conditions, which sold to a national farm paper. Establishing a market for her work was her hope for the future; if she succeeded she could still work in Ripley, and the work would be something entirely her own.
She did not analyze this need to keep a fragment of life apart for herself, but quite plainly she saw the value of having her own small income. Her relation to Paul had nothing to do with money; in their love they were equal, and when Paul added the fruit of his work to the scale the balance would be uneven. She knew too well the difference between earning money and caring for a house to believe that her tasks would earn what he must give her.
Working against time, she poured her energies into building an acquaintance with editors, into learning their requirements. Meantime her department in the Post gave her the tiny income that met her expenses. Late at night she sat opening letters and typing prudent replies for its columns.
“And the unions are striking for an eight-hour day!” she said to Marian, encountering her amid clattering typewriters in the Post’s local room. “Me, I’d strike for forty-eight hours between sun and sun!”
“ ‘The best of all ways to lengthen your days is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear’!” Marian quoted gaily. Her piquant, kitten-like face, with its pointed chin and wide
