FullReads

V

For four days he ignored Emily. Oh, he waved goodnight; there was no reason for hurting her feelings by rudeness. But he did not watch her through the creeping office hours. And he called on Christine Parrish. He told himself that in Christine’s atmosphere of leisure and the scent of white roses, in her chatter about the singles championship and Piping Rock and various men referred to as Bunk and Poodle and Georgie, he had come home to his own people. But when Christine on the davenport beside him looked demurely at him through the smoke of her cigarette he seemed to hear the frightful drum fire of the Wedding March, and he rushed to the protecting fireplace.

The next night when Emily, knife-clean Emily, waved good-by and exhaustedly snapped off her light Bates darted to the elevator and reached the street entrance before she appeared across the way. But he was still stiff with years of training in propriety. He stood watching her go down the street, turn the corner.

Crackins, the bookkeeper, blandly whistling as he left the building, was shocked to see Bates running out of the doorway, his arms revolving grotesquely, his unexercised legs stumbling as he dashed down a block and round the corner.

Bates reached her just as she entered the Subway kiosk and was absorbed in the swirl of pushing people. He put out his hand to touch her unconscious shoulder, then withdrew it shiveringly, like a cat whose paw has touched cold water.

She had gone two steps down. She did not know he was there.

“Emily!” he cried.

A dozen Subway hurriers glanced at him as they shoved past. Emily turned, half seeing. She hesitated, looked away from him again.

“Emily!”

He dashed down, stood beside her.

“Two lovers been quarreling,” reflected an oldish woman as she plumped by them.

“I beg your pardon!” remonstrated Emily.

Her voice was clear, her tone sharp. These were the first words from his princess of the tower.

“I beg yours, but—I tried to catch your attention. I’ve been frightfully clumsy, but—You see, hang it, I don’t know your name, and when I—I happened to see you, I—I’d thought of you as ‘Emily. ’”

Her face was still, her eyes level. She was not indignant, but she waited, left it all to him.

He desperately lied: “Emily was my mother’s name. ”

“Oh! Then I can’t very well be angry, but—”

“You know who I am, don’t you? The man across the street from—”

“Yes. Though I didn’t know you at first. The man across is always so self-possessed!”

“I know. Don’t rub it in. I’d always planned to be very superior and amusing and that sort of stuff when I met you, and make a tremendous impression. ”

Standing on the gritty steel-plated steps that led to the cavern
of the Subway, jostled by hurtling people, he faltered on: “Things seem to have slipped, though. You see, I felt beastly lonely tonight. Aren’t you, sometimes?”

“Always!”

“We’d become such good friends—you know, our lunches together, and all. ”

Her lips twitched, and she took pity on him with: “I know. Are you going up in the Subway? We can ride together, at least as far as Seventy-second. ”

This was before the days of shuttles and H’s, when dozens of people knew their way about in the Subway, and one spoke confidently of arriving at a given station.

“No, I wasn’t going. I wanted you to come to dinner with me! Do, please! If you haven’t a date. I’m—I’m not really a masher. I’ve never asked a girl I didn’t know, like this. I’m really—Oh, hang it, I’m a solid citizen. Disgustingly so. My name is Bates. I’m g. m. of my office. If this weren’t New York we’d have met months ago. Please! I’ll take you right home after—”