Stubble Part 16

She preceded him to the pavement. He got a good look at her as she pa.s.sed through the door. Still the baffling resemblance!

Then she turned and faced him on the pavement. Again she looked at him shyly, and there were little dimples in her cheeks as she tried hard not to smile.

"I knew I'd get into trouble when I loaded myself down with all these bundles," she explained, reaching out for them.

Confidence was returning to him. He felt the old lazy relaxation of being amused.

"Can't I help you out of your difficulty--see that you get safely home with them?" he asked quietly. "I've my car here."

She raised her eyebrows, looked startled a moment, and then flushed slightly. "Oh, don't bother. I can get a taxi."

She made no further resistance and directly he was slamming the door behind her. He had caught a glimpse of black-silk stocking above a white buckskin pump that somehow disturbed his poise. As he walked around to the other side of the car he was wondering where it was he had seen her before. He could not remember.

He climbed into his place behind the steering wheel and observed her again. It was a setting that became her. Her shyness seemed to have all vanished. She was powdering her nose as he climbed in; a silver vanity case lay open on her lap. He noticed it, saw a hairpin and two nickles and a card or two. She had said she might take a taxi.

Directly she was smiling into his eyes. It made him just a little bit giddy in spite of himself. How old was she, he wondered? For a moment he busied himself with the car. There was nothing made up about her; it was a clear case of good looks. And she knew how to wear her clothes.

"I think I'm terrible," she was saying.

"How?" he answered, hardly hearing her.

"Letting you take me up this way." She finished her renovation to her evident satisfaction and packed away the puff with a snap.

"You couldn't expect to manage those bundles any other way," he a.s.sured confidently and quietly. It was an amusing game.

She gazed off toward the corner and wetted her lips.

He started the car. They turned the corner into Fourth Street and moved south. As if sensing the need of further explanation here on the esplanade, where all seemed acquainted, she began in a slightly more animated tone:

"Of course, it's not like we had never met."

He felt she was looking at him, but being busy with the car he was silent.

"I really believe you've forgotten."

He caught a glance at her. She looked charmingly provoked. The fact that she was centring her attention on him was in itself flattering.

"Not at all," he a.s.sured her and wondered to what she referred.

"It was at the American Legion Ball," she reminded him.

And then he remembered. It all came back to him. It had been a dismal evening, way back in April. He had noticed her that evening. She had worn a weird thing of silver and black. She had even sat beside him on a sofa by the door--she and her partner. But he had not met her; he was sure of that. He had remarked, he remembered now, how curiously alert her eyes were, how alive, taking everything in.

"You were in uniform," she continued.

"Yes," he replied. Nearly every man present had been.

For a few moments silence. Then reaching Broadway and less traffic they rolled along a little more easily, with less tension.

"I'm Myrtle Macomber," she at length essayed. "In case you had forgotten."

Joe grinned. Then he turned to her, "And my name's Hooper."

She gave him another one of her roguish glances through her lashes.

"I was trying to remember," she laughed.

Then he asked her the way home and she told him. After that she chatted more freely, made comments on some of the people they pa.s.sed.

The evening had turned out fine. Broad orange pennons streamed out of the west. The little fountain in the city park tinkled delightfully as they pa.s.sed.

"It's a pretty car," she said once; "so roomy and comfortable."

He made no reply and wondered if his silence were reprehensible.

Under her direction they turned into a quiet side street and stopped before a grayish frame house with a fancy bulbous tower at one corner and bilious green outside shutters. A woman was stooped over a flower bed in the centre of the yard. She arose stiffly at their approach.

Miss Macomber turned to Joe, but he had already alighted from the car and gone around to help her out. As he held the door open for her she seemed a bit distrait. Slowly they walked across the pavement to the gate. The woman in the yard came forward to meet them.

There was a moment's pause. And then: "This is Mr. Hooper, mama."

The woman gave him an appraising look, glanced at the car, then smiled and held out her hand. It was damp and flabby.

"Please excuse my appearance, Mr. Hooper," she smirked. "I was getting some flowers for the table, dearie," she added to the girl.

Joe wondered vaguely at the contrast. Here was another of nature's paradoxes. Mrs. Macomber looked worn and quite untidy. She was fat; her figure looked as though it had been allowed to run wild. Her face was heavily lined with wrinkles and was not too clean. And her eyes were tired. The house dress that she wore open at the neck and held together by a bleak-looking cameo pin might have been destined for dust rags in some families, and not extravagantly, either.

She gazed at her daughter with open admiration.

"Thank you so much, Mr. Hooper," said the latter, and as she spoke she barred the entrance through the wooden gate with a dainty arm in a long, white-silk glove. But she smiled at him archly. "Call me up sometime."

And then she turned and, gently pus.h.i.+ng the drab creature before her, went up the walk and into the house.

Joe looked back over his shoulder at them as he drove away.

CHAPTER XI

The rest of that troublous day pa.s.sed hazily for Mary Louise. She avoided Maida, who in her turn seemed disposed to avoid her. She made a hasty escape after the tea-serving hour and hurried home.

The sun was setting as she entered her room; the tall spire of the First Church was all ruddy with the glow of it as she threw open the window, and as she paused for a moment with palms on the sill, she looked down into the deepening shadows of back pa.s.sages and alleys, nooks and recesses, where lurked ash and garbage cans and heaps of rubbish. A black cat came slinking around the corner of an old gray-brick stable, disappeared for a moment in a pa.s.sage, and a moment later she saw him spring to the top of a rotting board fence, pause, and then lightly let himself down into the shadow of the other side.

And just a hundred feet to the left--she could barely see past the front cornice of the four-story dwelling below her--Broadway was thronged with its sleek, pleasure-loving, home-going crowd. You could never tell the back from the front.

She withdrew from the window, walked slowly across the room, and sank into a chair. She felt curiously ill at ease and sat staring blankly before her at the wall.

For the difficulty, which in some ways was trivial enough, no solution presented itself. Maida Jones, her companion and business a.s.sociate, had developed a side that had never been taken into account. Or perhaps she had merely presented it for the first time. So much the worse. If so, then her judgment had been all the more faulty.