Part 20 (1/2)
”Who with?”
”Cora.”
”Why, she was here, callin' for you, not more'n an hour ago.”
Tessie, taking the hatpins out of her hat on her way upstairs, met this coolly. ”Yeh, I ran into her comin' back.”
Upstairs, lying fully dressed on her hard little bed, she stared up into the darkness, thinking, her hands limp at her sides. Oh, well, what's the diff? You had to make the best of it. Everybody makin' a fuss about the soldiers: feedin' 'em, and askin' 'em to their houses, and sendin'
'em things, and givin' dances and picnics and parties so they wouldn't be lonesome. Chuck had told her all about it. The other boys told the same. They could just pick and choose their good times. Tessie's mind groped about, sensing a certain injustice. How about the girls? She didn't put it thus squarely. Hers was not a logical mind, trained to think. Easy enough to paw over the menfolks and get silly over bra.s.s b.u.t.tons and a uniform. She put it that way. She thought of the refrain of a popular song: ”What Are You Going to Do to Help the Boys?” Tessie, smiling a crooked little smile up there in the darkness, parodied the words deftly: ”What're you going to do to help the girls?” she demanded.
”What're you going to do--” She rolled over on one side and buried her head in her arms.
There was news again next morning at the watch factory. Tessie of the old days had never needed to depend on the other girls for the latest bit of gossip. Her alert eye and quick ear had always caught it first.
But of late she had led a cloistered existence, indifferent to the world about her. The Chippewa _Courier_ went into the newspaper pile behind the kitchen door without a glance from Tessie's incurious eye.
She was late this morning. As she sat down at the bench and fitted her gla.s.s in her eye the chatter of the others, pitched in the high key of unusual excitement, penetrated even her listlessness.
”An' they say she never screeched or fainted or anything. She stood there, kind of quiet, lookin' straight ahead, and then all of a sudden she ran to her pa--”
”Both comin' at once, like that--”
”I feel sorry for her. She never did anything to me. She--”
Tessie spoke, her voice penetrating the staccato fragments all about her and gathering them into a whole. ”Say, who's the heroine of this picture? Somebody flash me a cut-in so I can kinda follow the story. I come in in the middle of the reel, I guess.”
They turned on her with the unlovely eagerness of those who have ugly news to tell. They all spoke at once, in short sentences, their voices high with the note of hysteria.
”Angie Hatton's beau was killed--”
”They say his aireoplane fell ten thousan' feet--”
”The news come only last evenin' about eight--”
”She won't see n.o.body but her pa--”
Eight! At eight Tessie had been standing outside Hatton's house envying Angie and hating her. So that explained the people, and the automobiles, and the excitement. Tessie was not receiving the news with the dramatic reaction which its purveyors felt it deserved. Tessie, turning from one to the other quietly, had said nothing. She was pitying Angie. Oh, the luxury of it! Nap Ballou, coming in swiftly to still the unwonted commotion in work hours, found Tessie the only one quietly occupied in that chatter-filled room. She was smiling as she worked. Nap Ballou, bending over her on some pretence that deceived no one, spoke low-voiced in her ear. But she veiled her eyes insolently and did not glance up.
She hummed contentedly all the morning at her tedious work.
She had promised Nap Ballou to go picnicking with him Sunday. Down the river, boating, with supper on sh.o.r.e. The small, still voice within her had said: ”Don't go! Don't go!” But the harsh, high-pitched, reckless overtone said: ”Go on! Have a good time. Take all you can get.”
She would have to lie at home and she did it. Some fabrication about the girls at the watch works did the trick. Fried chicken, chocolate cake.
She packed them deftly and daintily. High-heeled white kid shoes, flimsy blouse, rustling skirt. Nap Ballou was waiting for her over in the city park. She saw him before he espied her. He was leaning against a tree idly, staring straight ahead with queer, lack-l.u.s.tre eyes. Silhouetted there against the tender green of the pretty square he looked very old, somehow, and different--much older than he looked in his shop clothes, issuing orders. Tessie noticed that he sagged where he should have stuck out, and protruded where he should have been flat. There flashed across her mind a vividly clear picture of Chuck as she had last seen him: brown, fit, high of chest, flat of stomach, slim of flank.
Ballou saw her. He straightened and came toward her swiftly: ”Somebody looks mighty sweet this afternoon.”
Tessie plumped the heavy lunch box into his arms. ”When you get a line you like you stick to it, don't you?”
Down at the boathouse even Tessie, who had confessed ignorance of boats and oars, knew that Ballou was fumbling clumsily. He stooped to adjust the oars to the oarlocks. His hat was off. His hair looked very gray in the cruel spring suns.h.i.+ne. He straightened and smiled up at her.