PART III (continued 2)

Then had come the impulse that prompted him to ask for Davy as a helper. Immediately sales had boomed. At his own suggestion the boy had taken the slack hours in the afternoon to go out on advertising excursions among his friends, and the result had been that both Saint and himself were kept going at top speed during the hours when the negroes came to do their purchasing.

Saint was amazed at the ease with which results were accomplished. Always before business success had seemed to him a thing separate from life—a feat of legerdemain requiring a certain sort of person for its accomplishment. Now he saw it for the first time as the outgrowth of personality—a by-product of the man himself. He had discovered too that it brought a thrilling satisfaction entirely aside from the money that it yielded. It was a game to be played. His imagination was as busy as ever, only instead of being what he now considered a vague and demoralising agency, it was wedded to actuality and was building high dreams over the shabby little commissary.

Some of these dreams he had talked over with Davy, who knew exactly what the negroes wanted and what they could afford to pay for it. Finally he had mapped out concrete plans and had asked Mr. Raymond for this interview, immediately after which he would have to go and tell Valerie good-bye.

Since the afternoon of Valerie’s visit to the mines he had seen her as often as possible. At first they had spent their Sunday afternoons at the museum or art gallery. The pictures were not on exhibition on Sundays, but Saint had gained admission through the secretary, and he and the girl had the big echoing room with all of its splendours to themselves. They would look at the pictures for a while, then sit on a settee and let their talk drift where it would. Valerie told him about her father. “The sweetest, the gentlest man alive. Everything to make an artist but the little essential spark.” Once she said passionately: “Only geniuses should be allowed to create. It’s cruel to let others try and fail. You see the pitiful thing is that Father knows good work. He’s his own judge. And the things that he has to do to keep alive! He will never go back to see them after they are done, and he won’t let us go to see them. He has a creed, and he must break it to live.”

Sometimes, in brighter moods, Valerie would tell of the other side of their life: the casual comings and goings of people who could sing, paint, act—New York, and the terrible splendour of its nights. Then Saint would momentarily revert to his old gods and exclaim: “I want that life, Val, I want it terribly,” or, “That’s the real thing. Can’t you just feel that, Val?” and she would reassure him with, “But, don’t you see, you can have all of that and more when you have succeeded at what you are doing. That’s what I want for you, freedom—then beauty.”

Then Mamba had taken a hand in their affairs. Employing her old tactics, she had insinuated herself into the good graces of Valerie and had attached herself to her as personal maid. Then one night, when Saint was telling Valerie good-night, she stumbled into them at the front door and asked them with the excessive innocence of manner that always masked some deep design if they would like to accompany her to a special midnight service at her church. Saint recognised the manner immediately and turned a knowing grin upon her. “Old Machiavelli,” he thought, “she has something up. I wonder whether she is really doing it for love of us or starting to run up an account against the next difficulty of one of her precious daughters.” He finally credited her with the double motive. Valerie was thrilled at the prospect of the adventure.

Mamba led the way through an alley so narrow that both walls could be touched at the same moment with the extended hands, and on into the labyrinth of back-yard passageways of lower East Bay, then suddenly through a side door into a darkened corner of the large room that served as a meeting house. This was no ordinary service subject to the occasional invasion of a white visitor in search of local colour. It was a section of Africa transplanted to new soil and, with the lapse of a century, still black with jungle mystery, crimson with jungle passion. Mamba, seizing a moment when the faculties of the swaying crowd were locked fast in the grip of a chant, got them unobserved into a dark corner near the door. Over them, like the crash of breakers, swept the terrific, cumulative intensity of the worship, now throbbing with an old terror of jungle gods, again lifting suddenly into rapt adoration of the new Christ. This, and the pounding rhythms of the spirituals, the amazing emotional release wrought by the music, so fascinated and yet frightened the white girl that she sat huddled against Saint, clinging to his hand with tense fingers, her head pressed against his shoulder. While between them and the nearest group of worshippers Mamba sat on guard with her rare and cryptic Mona Lisa smile playing incongruously about her grim mouth and baring the formidable teeth in a thin up-curving line.

It was in the art gallery on the following afternoon that the avowal had come. A silence had grown between them. The high, windowless walls muted the occasional street noises and surrounded them with a barrier of beauty against the importunate realities that waited for them out in the winter afternoon. The young lovers sat so quietly that a casual observer would have thought the room unoccupied, and in that deep silence there grew up between them so complete a communion that the final word seemed almost superfluous. Saint raised his eyes at last and found the girl’s fixed upon him with their intent, reading look. He took her hands and said very softly, “I love you, Valerie.” In the suddenly awakened silence, the words seemed to hover in the air about the girl, then she answered on a note that was almost one of sadness, “And I love you, Saint.” They leaned forward then, like two children, and kissed, and presently took their way home through the darkening street, carrying their miraculous secret so carefully past the street windows of their friends that they scarcely spoke again until they said good-bye.

But gradually, as the weeks passed, they began to substitute long walks in the country for the hours spent in the art gallery. Saint began to see his old enthusiasms for his guitar and his pictures as just a little absurd. It was the store and its possibilities now, and Saint did most of the talking. The old flair was still there, making him forget himself in an idea, but the idea now concerned itself with a bigger store, more stock, perhaps a second store some day. Sometimes, for nearly an hour, Valerie would have scarcely a word to say, and she did not always follow the soaring flights of his reapplied imagination.

And now, on this momentous morning, Saint stood upon the doorstep of Mr. Raymond’s colonial dwelling on lower Meeting Street, and listened to St. Michael’s measured announcement that the hour for his first interview had arrived. A step sounded beyond the closed door. He executed a tremendous effort of will, banished Valerie from his thoughts, and commenced to run over in his mind the things that he wanted from his employer: “more space—a line of fertilisers, and seed—new large piazza where visiting negroes could congregate—break all connection with Goodlow and do his own purchasing.” At that point the door was opened by a maid.

“Yes, sir,” she said in answer to his inquiry, “Mr. Raymond is expecting you in the library.”

He passed in and the door closed softly behind him.

Half an hour later he was again on the doorstep, with the big form of his employer filling the opening behind him. Mr. Raymond placed a large firm hand on his shoulder.

“Well, you have what you want, haven’t you?” he asked.

“I should say I have, sir.”

“Good luck to you, then. I must confess that I am surprised as well as pleased with your results. But blood will tell. It will be fine working directly with you in future. My congratulations, and warm regards to your good mother, please.”

Had he got what he wanted! Saint had to smile. A new wing for agricultural implements, fertilisers, and seed, a big piazza that would attract the negroes to idle and feel at home, authorisation to do his own buying and to be answerable to Mr. Raymond alone. Then, right on top of it all—right smack out of the blue—a salary raise to twenty-five dollars a week. The boy felt just a little intoxicated as he turned away from the big Meeting Street mansion.

When he arrived at Atkinsons’ Mamba admitted him; then, as nobody was looking, she gave him a proprietary pat on the back, accompanied by a leer that was distinctly a throw-back to the East Bay epoch of her life.

“Ain’t no use to hang back, Mr. Saint. Ah sho knows it when Ah sees it. She’s in de parlour now waitin’ for you, an’ she’s done all broke out wid it.”

“You’re a suspicious old devil,” he told her with a grin, “and if I didn’t have such a deep respect for the law I’d tell you to your teeth what I really think of you.”

Yes, Valerie was waiting for him. The street windows were closed, as is the custom in the old city, and the light in the room was dim and chill. An open fire strove valiantly but only half-successfully to bring it to life.

The girl came toward him and gave him both of her hands, glancing up into his face with a new shyness in her own. But Saint, usually so quick to feel the mood of another, was bursting with his triumph. His eyes were shining with excitement, and his colour was high under the tan of his skin. He did not linger over her hands, but gave them a short, vehement grip and released them.

“I have come for your congratulations, Valerie,” he exclaimed. “I have just been talking to Mr. Raymond, and he has given me everything I want. You can’t guess how exciting it all really is.”

“Oh,” she said on a short indrawn breath, “you’re happy to-day, aren’t you? I am very glad. Sit down and tell me all about it.”

With a new decisiveness of manner Saint led her to the sofa and sat beside her. He took her hand and held it between both of his, but his manner was abstracted, and his eyes gave her the odd impression of being focussed, not on her face, but on some remote point behind her. He talked rapidly, his enthusiasm vaulting minor details, hurdling obstacles, leaping at, and beyond, conclusions, so that she had very little idea what it was all about. Something very like egotism began to creep into his recital. The girl looked at him in dismayed wonder. She felt as though the sequence of their meeting—understanding—love had commenced to reel backward, and that presently she would find herself talking to a stranger. She drew her hand away from between his relaxed fingers and saw that he was oblivious of the fact.

When his first gush had spent itself it was as though he came slowly back into the room from some far place, and his eyes became cognisant of her face. He stopped speaking and looked at her in surprise.

“Why, what’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing, only I am wondering if I was wise when I went out to the store that day and tried to reform you.”

Instantly he was his old self and very contrite. “I am an ass,” he announced, “I have been babbling my head off. Please forgive me, dear. It’s that silly single-track brain of mine.” He took her hand again, and she let it lie cool and lax in his as he hurried on. “Why, how can you say that it might have been unwise? I can never tell you all that it has meant to me. See already what it has done. And I owe it all to you. I can never thank you enough—never.”

“But you are happy to-day,” she said with apparent irrelevance.

He was conscious of a note of accusation in her voice, and it mystified him. He said, “Why, yes, it’s a big day. The biggest in my business career, I guess.”

Her eyes rested searchingly on his face. “Yes, that’s what counts with men,” she said wearily. “We are different, after all. Well, I am glad for your success, but you must let me go and finish packing now. My train goes in an hour, you know.”

“Good God, Val, I forgot. Can you ever forgive me?”

“I don’t know,” she told him. “It hurts.”

“But I lay awake all last night thinking about you. And this business to-day—I wanted that for you.”

She looked into his rueful face. Suddenly her own changed and softened. She answered slowly, translating an idea into speech as it grew in her own mind: “Yes, I can forgive you. I understand you now. I never guessed that you could lose yourself in an idea like that. It makes you different.”

She stood with her face very close to his. Her eyes seemed to widen with the intensity of her gaze until at last Saint saw fright in them.

“What—what’s the matter?” he stammered.

“Oh,” she cried, “I was so sure that I was right until now. I was so certain I was saving you from defeat. But now I am frightened.” Suddenly her arms were about his neck, her face strained to his breast. “Oh, my dear,” she pleaded, “if you did have it in you to paint and I have blundered—please forgive me, please forgive me!”

Saint laughed softly, reassuringly. He was himself again, and vastly relieved that her fright was not the result of his neglect, but merely a fancied mistake on her own part.

“You funny, intense child,” he said, “of course you were right. I was always meant for business, only I didn’t have the sense to see it until this winter. And then you came and showed me how to go about it.”

PART IV