Sherwood was not in the outer office when Jane finally put away the work that she was doing, promising herself to stay Saturday afternoon and complete it after the rest of the office force was gone. She rushed home and made a quick change of dress, getting down to the station in time to meet Lauderdale’s train, as he had said it would save them time, and she had cut the afternoon so much anyway that she ought to be willing to do that much. So she made the best of an explanation to her mother and hurried away.
Lauderdale put her in a taxi and took her out into a new development of the city on the edge of the park where imposing apartment houses were going up. Into one of the largest of these he led her.
“Where are we going?” she asked interestedly. “I’ve never been over this way before, not since they began to build here.”
“Wait till you see,” said Lauderdale with a satisfied air as he pushed the button of a great bronze elevator in a spacious hallway.
They shot up to the twelfth story and walked down a long corridor. At the very end Lauderdale took a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door.
Then Jane stood back and said, “Where is this? Why are we going in here? Isn’t this a private apartment?”
“It’s an apartment, yes,” said Lauderdale, “but not private yet. It’s one of the show apartments fitted up for exhibition, and it’s the choicest one of the whole bunch. It stands high enough to get the best breeze and the view over the park to the river. Step in and see what a charming living room this is. See the bay window. Isn’t it pleasant? That arrangement of white curtains and ferns seems to me delightful. I wanted you to see it. Don’t you enjoy looking over new houses?”
“Why, yes,” said Jane, hesitating on the threshold. “But should we be in here without anybody? Isn’t there an agent or something? Won’t they think it odd we are walking into a furnished room this way alone?” Jane knew her mother would think this a very informal proceeding indeed.
“Oh no, the agent is downstairs,” said Lauderdale lightly. “He let me have the key. I told him I was bringing a friend to see it. Come in and see what a cozy and convenient and yet spacious place it is.”
Lauderdale threw open a door beyond a little archway, and disclosed a charming bedroom furnished in rose silk and mahogany. Jane could see the exquisite appointment from where she stood.
“Come on,” he said, leading the way into the inner room.
Reluctantly, she stepped to the doorway and glimpsed it more fully, the great windows opening two ways, full of sunlight, the delicate draperies, the comfortable chairs and dressing table, the fittings of the ultra-modern bathroom beyond, the dais on which the luxurious silk-draped bed stood, and then she retreated to the door again.
“But you have not seen half,” said Lauderdale, striding back through the living room and throwing open a door on the other side through which she could see a tiny kitchenette and dining corner, exquisite in green and white fittings.
“Could anything be more perfect?” he asked.
“It certainly is complete,” said Jane, taking in the beauty and harmony of the handsome furniture, and the care and thought that had been expended here to make a delightful abiding place.
“And now, Jane, come in, lovely. I want to give you your Christmas gift. I shan’t be able to get down Christmas week, as I’m due at a house party in Chicago, but I wanted to give you this personally.”
Now it is coming! warned Jane’s heart, giving a sudden lurch of fright. It is coming and what shall I say?
He brought out an exquisite white velvet box and touched the spring, disclosing to view a gleaming bracelet all of emeralds set in platinum, in the form of a serpent with diamond eyes.
Suddenly Jane turned cold from heart to throat and drew back, shrinking in a kind of horror she could not disguise, with her eyes fixed upon the jeweled serpent. And before she could think or stop herself, she put her hands to her eyes and turned away with almost a sob in her throat. “Oh Lew,” she said in a voice full of distress and disgust she could not hide. “Oh Lew, I’m sorry you have done this. I—couldn’t possibly take it!”
“Look at it, Jane, don’t be silly! Of course you’ll take it! I have taken great pains to get it for you. If you are foolish about snakes, you’ll soon get over it. It is only a notion. Look at it, see how beautifully it is shaped. The workmanship is wonderful. It is handmade, and the emeralds and diamonds are perfect. Put it on, lovely, and see how it sets off your pretty arm!”
“Oh no!” said Jane, stepping back into the hall and putting both hands firmly behind her. “No, I could never put on a serpent, Lew. I would never wear it. And anyway, I could not let you give me a costly thing like that!”
Jane was almost weeping now, and yet she was not a crying girl. She herself did not understand why she was so deeply shaken. She tried to speak with dignity. “I am not silly about it, Lew. But I do not like it. The serpent means to me everything that’s wicked, and I could never think of wearing it.”
“Nonsense! Let me put it on you, and then you will find it is beauty, not wickedness.”
“No, Lew, I couldn’t.” She shuddered. “And anyway I can’t let you give me costly presents like that.”
“Now, look here, Jane, we may as well have this thing out at once. I brought you up here to see this apartment because I want you to take it and move here. I feel this is the kind of setting you need, and I want to see you in it.” There was almost tenderness in his voice. She could not understand it. Was he asking her to marry him? Was he proposing that this was where he would bring her to live? No, surely not that. There was nothing of love in his manner, merely argument, determination to bend her his way.
“How in the world would you suppose I could get my family into a place as small as this?” asked Jane at last, looking at him steadily and maintaining her position in the hallway.
“Your family!” said Lauderdale half-angrily. “What has your family got to do with it? You didn’t suppose I want them around under foot every time I come down to see you, did you? I want you to take this apartment yourself and live your own lovely life here as other young businesswomen of the age are doing. I want you to come into your own and live your own life and be free from entanglements. You are big enough and fine enough to get beyond old-fashioned ways and hampering relatives!”
Jane could feel a constriction in her throat now and that coldness around her heart she had felt upon the mountainside.
“And how would you expect me to pay for a luxurious apartment like this?” she asked in tones of ice.
“I don’t expect you to pay for it, Jane, child. Don’t you understand, you innocent little old-fashioned girl? I will pay for it. It shall be my Christmas gift to you, and then we shall have a suitable place where I can come and see you whenever I choose, without a family underfoot. I—”
But Jane interrupted him, turning angry eyes in a blaze at him. This was no true love, no, this was insult! “What do you think I am? You will pay for it? How do you dare say such things to me? Mr. Lauderdale, I am not the girl you thought I was! I despise you! I loathe you! I never want to see you again!” And she turned and ran down the corridor. Oh, were there no stairs? Must she wait for that elevator? Oh, what a place!
He waited confidently to snap shut his jewel case and lock the door before he followed her and stepped inside the elevator just after her, an amused, half-haughty expression on his face such as one might wear toward a naughty child who was having a tantrum.
“You can think this over and let me know! You will feel quite differently in a few hours. You may write me at my club in New York, and I will come back when you are ready to see me. Here is my address.” He held out his card toward her, but Jane let it drop on the floor and did not attempt to take it.
“I shall have nothing more to say, now or ever,” she said and walked away from the elevator as soon as the door was open, her head up, her eyes blazing, her face a deadly white. Blindly she walked away into the sunshine of the afternoon and wond
ered if there were any joys that could ever wash the memory of this afternoon from her soul.
She got into the first trolley that came along and started home. How happily she had come away for her half vacation day, leaving her work in the middle of the rush. She ought never to have done it. She would go straight back and finish. It would be late by the time she could get there, but she could stay after hours and get all those envelopes addressed and out in the mail. That had been Mr. Dulaney’s wish, she knew, and it had only been his kindness that had put his wish aside.
She rushed into the house, changed her dress, flung a word of explanation at her sister in passing, and was out and down the street again in five minutes arrayed in her regular office garb, old felt hat, and plain dark coat.
Sherwood was not anywhere in the office when she entered, and most of the others had gone. The few who wore still at their desks were just preparing to leave. She knew that her absence had created a laxness among the others who were in a way under her now that she was taking Miss Forsythe’s place. She could see the disappointment in their faces as she walked in crisply, taking off her hat and coat as she went toward the inner office where she kept her things. “Oh, I thought you were off for the afternoon!” said Miss Tenney, who had already put her things in her desk and was getting out her handbag and gloves to soon leave.
“I was,” said Jane crisply. “I got back as soon as I could, and I’m going to finish addressing those circulars. They ought to go out tonight!”
“Oh Miss Arleth!” said one of the other two girls who had already abandoned all thought of further work. “You can’t possibly do it! It’s almost five o’clock now!”
“Not quite,” said Jane, glancing at the clock. “There’s a good half hour yet.”
“But there are three cases of envelopes yet to finish,” announced Miss Tenney.
“Haven’t you done any of them?” asked Jane reproachfully.
“Why, no,” said the Tenney woman defiantly. “I understood that the letters weren’t going out till Monday now, and Mr. Harold Dulaney wanted some dictation taken, so I thought it was more important to get that copied. He said he was in a hurry!”
“I’m sorry,” said Jane coldly. “I thought I made it plain that the envelopes were to come first. However, I’m back now, and suppose we get to work and see how much we can get done.”
“I couldn’t stay any longer than five,” said Miss Tenney. “I really couldn’t. I’ve got an engagement for dinner up at the Wonscot country club tonight, and I’ve got to take the quarter-to-six train.”
“Well, my mother is sick,” said Miss Bronson, “and I told her I’d hurry right home.”
“Very well,” said Jane, “but please work until five anyway, for these must get off tonight.”
Miss Tenney sniffed and slowly, leisurely, sat down again and opened her desk, put back her gloves and her purse, and sat with folded hands while Jane brought out the cases of envelopes and the sheets of lists.
“I can’t get all those done before five,” said Miss Tenney ungraciously, glancing at the clock with a sniff.
“Get as many as you can done,” said Jane pleasantly. “You are a prize addresser, aren’t you? Didn’t you win the championship a year ago in our thousand race?”
“Oh well,” sniffed Miss Tenney, with an air that said there was no inducement now to speed up.
The three girls began to work, and the clock ticked away monotonously. At exactly five Miss Tenney looked toward Jane, addressed one more envelope, and then arose.
“I’ve got to go now,” Miss Tenney said firmly.
“Good night!” said Jane, her pen flying over the white surface of the envelopes. “Just leave your work on the desk and mark what you have done.”
“I’m sorry,” said Miss Tenney offendedly. “If I’d known—”
“Yes, so am I,” said Jane.
“Good night,” said Miss Bronson, sidling out in the wake of Miss Tenney.
“Good night!” And Jane was left alone. Her pen flew faster, and the great stack of addressed envelopes grew and overflowed to another desk, and the piles in the cases grew less and less.
At half past five, Benny Gates, who was a sort of jack-of-all- trades of the company, came up from the floor below.
“Ho! You here yet, Miss Arleth?” he said, surprised. “I thought you went out this afternoon.”
“I did, but I came back later to finish this work. Are you going to close the safe pretty soon, Mr. Gates? I’d like to put these lists away. I’m almost through. Haven’t more than twenty more names to write.”
“That’s all right,” said Benny Gates. “I got a few minutes’ work to do for Mr. Dulaney. Take your time. It’s best to put the lists safe. There’d be the dickens to pay if one of those lists got lost.”
“I know!” Jane said, laughing.
Benny Gates passed into the inner office and on to the sanctum beyond that where Jefferson Dulaney’s desk stood, and the room lapsed into silence.
When the last envelope was addressed, Jane gathered up the lists, fastened them carefully with the clips according to habit, and went toward the door of the inner office from which opened the great safe where all important papers were kept. As she swung the door back, Joe, the night watchman entered from the outer door into the larger office and took off his old cap in salute.
“You here, yet, Miss Arleth?” he called in greeting, for he had been an office boy until a little while ago when he was promoted to be watchman, and knew Jane very well.
Jane did not bother to turn on the light in the inner office, though it was growing dark. The partitions were only ground glass, and reached up not more than six or seven feet. Enough light came through and over the glass to show her the way, and it was all very familiar ground. As she stepped into the safe she noticed the light in Mr. Dulaney’s office snap off. Benny must be done with his work. The she heard his voice calling, “That you, Joe?” and Joe’s voice answering from the other end of the building. “Yep. That’s me, sir!”
Jane stepped deep into the safe and found the compartment where her papers belonged, but someone had filled it too full, and as she tried to fit her own bundle in, some other papers slid out and landed at her feet. That came of trying to do things in the dark. She should have turned on the light. With her own papers still in her hand, she stopped to recover those that had fallen, and as she did so she heard Benny Gates call again, this time his voice just outside the inner office. “Miss Arleth gone home yet, Joe?” and from afar, “Yep! I think she has. She just said good night!”
And then, before she could get to the light to switch it on, before she could think or act, she heard the great door of the safe swing shut and the smooth bolts move in their well-oiled grooves like so many death warrants. Gasping and horrified, Jane stared into utter darkness and knew she was a prisoner!
Chapter 15
Lauderdale had stood watching Jane walk away from him with a cynical smile on his face and a glitter in his eyes. He was expecting her to turn back. Somehow he could not believe that she would go away from him that way. She was angry, of course, but the anger would pass, and when it was gone she was bound to swing back a little farther toward him than she had been before.
But he saw her take the trolley and pass from his sight.
“Oh well!” he said with a shrug of his shoulders and a light laugh to himself. “As well! She’ll come to it in time. They told me I’d have to tame her, but she’s got pep! It will be all the more interesting. She’ll make a high stepper.”
He sauntered back to the apartment house, took the elevator upstairs, and unlocked the door he had left but a few minutes before. Standing there in the doorway he tried to sense just what the vision had been to the girl. He had seen her eyes widen with pleasure at the beauty of everything. She loved beauty. He had watched her in the symphony concerts when she was all absorbed in the music and thought he was, too. He had been learning to read her face rather than listening to sweet sounds. He was
an artist in a way, and a dilettante, but he dealt more in human souls than in pictures or art or literature. Jane was a new specimen. He had thought he knew them all till he met her, but he had found something sweet and strong and irresistible, gentle and happy and biddable, yet at certain places impregnable as iron. But there must be a way to conquer her. He would find it yet.
He looked around the beautiful subtle room, with its delicate perfume of roses in a crystal bowl, and its more elusive fragrance of sachet violets hidden in cunning ways among silken cushions in couch and chair, its profusion of books and magazines, its air of ease and quiet harmony, and he could hardly see how the picture of it all would not linger with this artistic girl and lure her for him after he was gone.
He sat down at the costly desk loaned from one of the great furniture houses in the city, and, taking out some of the apartment house stationery, wrote a note to her:
Darling,
I am back again in the lovely room you have just left. The ache and the loveliness of your presence lingers here. Though you have left me in anger and spoiled our day together, which I had so much anticipated, I can see you standing yet in the doorway at my side as I write, and it gives me joy through the pain of your misunderstanding. For I know that the little place will draw you as it has drawn me. I know that you will come back. I am as sure of it as I am that you love me, and I have been sure of that for a long time.
Yes, you will come back, and we shall sit together here yet, many times. I can see you over there at the piano, playing some of those exquisite melodies that you and I have learned together, while I lie here in the big chair and watch the shimmer of the sunshine on your hair, bringing out the tints of red and gold. And you will sing to me. I know you have a voice, for I heard you singing on the mountain one morning out beside the lake. And you will sing for me, my lovely!