The Twenty-Fourth of June Part 8

He managed to keep up at least the appearance of being closely engaged, turning the leaves of books, making notes, arising to consult other books upon the shelves. But he could not resist frequent furtive glances at the profile outlined against the window. It was a distracting outline, it must be freely admitted. Even upon the hill, seen against the blue-and-purple haze, it had hardly been more so. What indeed could a young man do but steal a look at it as often as he might? There was no knowing when he should have such another chance.

Things proceeded in this course without interruption until eleven o'clock. The Judge, finding it possible to get ahead so satisfactorily by this new method, decided to send on considerably more material to be pa.s.sed upon by his critical coadjutor at the Capitol than he had originally intended to do at this time. But as the clock struck the hour a caller's card was sent in to him, and with a word to Roberta he left the room to see his visitor elsewhere.

Roberta finished her paragraph, then sat studying the next one. She did not look up, nor did Richard. The moments pa.s.sed and the Judge did not return. Roberta rose and threw open the window beside her, letting in a great sweep of December air.

Richard seized his opportunity. "Good for you!" he applauded. "Shall I open mine?"

"Please. It will warm up again very quickly. It began to seem stifling."

"Not much like the place where you want to build a cabin and stay alone in a storm. Or--not alone. You are willing to have a dog with you. What sort of a dog?"

"A Great Dane, I think. I have a friend who owns one. They are inseparable."

By the worst of luck the Judge chose this moment to return, and the windows went down with a rush.

The Judge s.h.i.+vered, smiling at the pair. "You young things, all warmth and vitality! You are never so happy as when the wind is lifting your hair. Now I think I'm pretty vigorous for my years, but I wouldn't sit and talk in a room with two open windows, in December."

"Neither can we--hang it!" thought Richard. "Why couldn't that chap have stayed a few minutes longer--when we'd just got started?"

At luncheon-time Roberta's part in the work was not completed. Her uncle asked for two hours more of her time and she cheerfully promised it. So at two o'clock the stage was again set as a business office, the actors again engaged in their parts. But at three the situation was abruptly changed.

"I believe there are no more revisions to be made," declared Judge Gray with a sigh of weariness. "I have taxed you heavily, my dear, but if you are equal to finis.h.i.+ng these eleven sheets for me by yourself I shall be grateful. My eyes have reached the limit of endurance, even with all the help you have given me. I must go to my room."

He paused by Richard's desk on his way out. "Have you finished the abstract of the chapter on Judge Cahill?" he asked. "No? I thought you would perhaps have covered that this morning. But--I do not mean to exact too much. It will be quite satisfactory if you can complete it this afternoon."

"I am sorry," said his a.s.sistant, flus.h.i.+ng in a quite unaccustomed manner. "I have been working more slowly than I realized. I will finish it as rapidly as I can, sir."

"Don't apologize, Mr. Kendrick. We all have our slow days. I undoubtedly underestimated the amount of time the chapter would require. Good afternoon to you."

Richard sat down and plunged into the task he now saw he had merely played with during the morning. By a tremendous effort he kept his eyes from lifting to the figure at the typewriter, whose steady clicking never ceased but for a moment at a time, putting him to shame. Yet try as he would he could not apply himself with any real concentration; and the task called for concentration, all he could command.

"You are probably not used to working in the same room with a typewriter," said his companion, quite unexpectedly, after a full half hour of silence. She had stopped work to oil a bearing in her machine.

There was an odd note in her voice; it sounded to Richard as if she meant: "You are not used to doing anything worth while."

"I don't mind it in the least," he protested.

"I'm sorry not to take my work to another room," Roberta went on, tipping up her machine and manipulating levers with skill as she applied the oil. "But I shall soon be through."

"Please don't hurry. I ought to be able to work under any conditions.

And I certainly enjoy having you at work in the same room," he ventured to add. It was odd how he found himself merely venturing to say to this girl things which he would have said without hesitation--putting them much more strongly withal--to any other girl he knew.

"One needs to be able to forget there's anybody in the same room." There was a little curl of scorn about her lips.

"That might be easier to do under some conditions than others." He did not mean to be trampled upon.

But Roberta finished her oiling in silence and again applied herself to her typing with redoubled energy.

He went at his abstract, suddenly furious with himself. He would show her that he could work as persistently as she. He could not pretend to himself that she was not absorbed. Only entire absorption could enable her to reel off those pages without more than an infrequent stop for the correction of an error.

Turning a page in the big volume of records of speeches in the State Legislature, which he was consulting, Richard came upon a sheet of paper on which was written something in verse. His eye went to the bottom of the sheet to see there the source of the quotation--Browning--with reference to t.i.tle and page. No harm to read a quoted poem, certainly; his eyes sought it eagerly as a relief from the sonorous phrasing of the speech he was attempting to read. He had never seen the words before; the first line--and he must read to the end. What a thing to find in a dusty volume of forgotten speeches of a date long past!

Such a starved bank of moss Till, that May-morn, Blue ran the flash across: Violets were born!

Sky--what a scowl of cloud Till, near and far, Ray on ray split the shroud: Splendid, a star!

World--how it walled about Life with disgrace Till G.o.d's own smile came out: That was thy face!

Speeches were forgotten; he devoured the words over and over again. They seemed to him to have been made expressly for him. A starved bank of moss--that was exactly what he had been, only he had not known it, but had fancied himself a garden of rich resource. He knew better now, starved he was, and starved he would remain--unless he could make the violets his own. No doubt but he had found them!

He followed an impulse. Rising, the sheet of yellowed paper in his hand, he walked over to the typewriter. Without apology he laid the sheet upon the pile of typed ones at her side.

"See what I've found in an old volume of state speeches."

Roberta's busy hand stopped. Her eyes scanned the yellow page upon which the stiff, fine handwriting, clearly that of a man, stood out legibly as print. Business woman she might be, but she could not so far abstract herself as not to be touched by the hint of romance involved in finding such words in such a place.

"How strange!" she owned. "And they've been there a long time, by the look of the paper and ink. I never saw the handwriting before. Perhaps Uncle Calvin lent the book to somebody long ago and the 'somebody' left this in it."

"Shall I put it back, or show it to Judge Gray?"

He remained beside her though she had handed back the paper.

"Put it back, don't you think? If you wrote out such words and left them in a book, you would want them to stay there, not to be looked at curiously by other eyes fifty years after."

"That's somebody's heart there on that sheet of old paper," said he.

Apparently he was looking at the paper; in reality he was stealing a glance past it at her down-bent face.

"Not necessarily. Somebody may merely have been attracted by the music of the lines. Put it back, Mr. Secretary, and concern yourself with Judge Cahill. It's to be hoped that you won't find any more distracting verse between his pages."

"Why not? Oughtn't one to get all the poetry one can out of life?"

"Not in business hours."

He laughed in spite of himself at the failure of his effort to make her self-conscious by any reading of such lines in his presence. Clearly she meant to allow no personal relation to arise between them while they were thrown together by Judge Gray's need of them. She fell to typing again with even more energy than before, if that were possible, while he--it must be confessed that before he laid the verses away between the pages for another fifty years' sleep he had made note of their ident.i.ty, that he might look them up again in a seldom opened copy of the English poet on his shelves at home. They belonged to him now!

In half an hour more Roberta's machine stopped clicking. Swiftly she covered it, set it away in the book-cupboard, and put her table in order. She laid the typewritten sheets together upon Judge Gray's desk in a straight-edged pile, a paperweight on top. In her simple dress of dark blue, trim as any office woman's attire, she might have been a hired stenographer--of a very high cla.s.s--putting her affairs in order for the day.

Richard waited till she approached his desk, which she had to pa.s.s on her way out. Then he rose to his feet.

"Allow me to congratulate you," said he, "on having accomplished a long task in the minimum length of time possible. I am lost in wonder that a hand which can play the 'cello with such art can play the typewriter with such skill."

"Thank you." There was a flash of mirth in her eyes. "There's music in both if you have ears to hear."

"I have recognized that to-day."

"You never heard it before? Music in the hammer on the anvil, in the throb of the engine, in the hum of the dynamo."

"And in the scratch of the pen, the pounding of the boiler shop, and the--the--slide and grind of the trolley-car, I suppose?"

"Indeed, yes--even in those. And there'll surely be melody in the closing of the door which shuts you in to solitude after this distracting day. Listen to it! Good-bye."