Read Ebook: Rebellion by Patterson Joseph Medill Goldbeck Walter Dean Illustrator

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Ebook has 1397 lines and 50602 words, and 28 pages

ort her for the rest of her days.

So he kept away from bad women as much as he could, and from good women always.

Especially from those in the office. Their constant propinquity was a constant menace and he had known a lot of fellows to get tangled up that way, and he wouldn't--if he could help it.

But he couldn't help it after he knew Georgia. She was so useful mentally and physically, and that was what he first noticed about her. He hated slackness of any sort, especially in women, because he had trained himself to dwell on women's faults rather than on men's.

Her manners, he thought, were precisely perfect. She seemed to hit a happy medium between gushing and shyness, and to hit it in the dead center. Her teeth were white and good, and she smiled often, but not too often. She never overdid anything, and her voice was low and full. She knew what you were driving at before you half started telling her; also she could make a fresh clerk feel foolish in one minute by the clock.

She had the charm of perfect health. About her dark irises the whites of her eyes were very white, touched with the faintest bluish tinge from the arterial blood beneath. There was a natural lustre in her hair, uncommon among indoor people. Her steps took her straight to where she wanted to go. She made no false motions. When she looked for something in her desk, she opened the drawer where it was, not the one above or below. Her muscles, nerves and proportions were so balanced that it was difficult for her to fall into an ungraceful posture.

Considering these manifold excellent qualities, the most remarkable thing about her, he thought, was that she had not long before been invited to embellish the mansion and the motors of a millionaire. He wrote enthusiastically to his mother suggesting that it would be nice to invite her to Rogersville for a portion at least of her coming summer vacation, which brought a most unhappy smile to his mother's lips. But since he did not repeat his request, the invitation was not extended.

The first time that he knew he regarded her as a woman rather than as a workwoman was one afternoon when the declining sun threw its light higher and higher into the big office. A ray shone on and from her patent leather belt and into his eyes. He looked up annoyed from his work. She was sitting a few desks ahead by the window, her back toward him. Before very long the thing had fascinated him and he found himself immensely concerned with the climb of the sun up her shirt waist.

It reached her collar in a manner entirely marvelous and then precisely at the moment when he was finally to know its effect upon her hair, she lowered the shade. What luck!

The next day was cloudy. The next was Saturday and she quit at twelve, before the sun got around to her window. Monday she lowered the shade before the light got even to her shoulder. Little did she know of the repressed anguish she was so bringing to the gloomy young hustler behind her. But on Tuesday the sunlight reached her hair momentarily as she leaned back in her chair and gleamed and glittered there, a coruscation of glory for fully thirty seconds--long enough to overturn in catastrophe his thirty years and their slowly built purposes.

He resolved hereafter to deal primarily not in life insurance, but in life, which meant Georgia.

A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

During the ensuing days Mason was hopeless for work.

From the office books he found out where she lived, slyly as he supposed, but not so slyly that the information clerk didn't tell someone, who told someone who teased Georgia at the luncheon club, not thereby displeasing her. For he was a good-looking fellow and capable; furthermore, he had always kept himself to himself, so putting several noses out of joint, it was said.

He had moments of anguished self-reproach as he sat in his room in his boarding house, his chair tilted against the wall under the gas jet, his coat on his bed, his derby hat tilted back on his head.

He knew that his life had been utterly unworthy. He had drunk it to the lees, pretty near. But now he was through with all that. Hereafter, for her sake, he would conquer himself and others.

His sense of beauty was limited by inheritance and by disuse, but now he began to draw upon all the poetry in his soul--not to write to her, but to think of her.

His imagination, naturally fertile and strengthened by the practice of his profession, centered itself on the question of his first kiss from her--where, when and how should it happen? He called all great lovers from Romeo to Robert W. Chambers to his aid--it must be under the moon, the fragrance about them. And a lake, a little lake, for the moon to shine upon and magically increase its magic. He remembered the moon on the river back in Rogersville, with the other girl--the first one. What mere children they were. That was puppy love, but this was love; love such as no man ever felt before for a woman.

He was hard hit.

The lake suggested a train of thought, so he packed his bag on Saturday and went to southern Wisconsin. The resort dining room was full of noisy youths and maidens who, in his decided opinion had no proper reverence for love, though they seemed perfectly amorous whenever he suddenly came upon a pair of them as much as one hundred yards from the hotel.

He chartered a flatbottom after supper to row out alone and contemplate the moon and her, but the voices of the night and the frogs were overwhelmed by the detestable mandolins tinkling "My Wife's Gone to the Country, Hurray."

When finally he turned in he discovered there was a drummers' poker party on the other side of the pine partition, so it wasn't until nearly daylight he dozed off, to wake a couple of hours later when the dishes began to rattle.

The boat concessionaire reported pickerel in the lake and he joined the Sunday piscatorial posse. He returned with two croppies and the record of many bites, mostly on himself.

He concluded he wasn't interested in fishing anyway. It was just a device to cheat himself and make himself suppose he was having a good time. He couldn't have a good time and wouldn't if he could, until he knew her, until at least he knew her. Why he had never said ten words to her more than "Good morning" and "Good evening." He would call on her; he had her address. He would go to her apartment and ring the bell and say, "Miss Connor, I have come to call on you. Do you mind?"

But then, what if the other people in the office had intuition, too, or saw him bringing in flowers! No, decidedly that wouldn't do.

And then--just in time for him to catch the 3:40--a blinding flash of warning illumined his whole being. What if, while he was there shilly-shallying at a summer resort, some other fellow was with her in Chicago at that very moment!

"What if"--a ridiculous way to put it. Wasn't it sure in the nature of things, that at that very moment some other man was with her?

He caught the 3:40. He would call on her that very evening and if indeed he didn't declare himself bluntly in so many words--hadn't he heard of numberless women who had been won at first sight!--he would at least intimate to her strongly, unmistakably, that she was the object of his respectful consideration and attention.

There were others in the field. It was time he declared himself in, too.

It wasn't until 5:37, when the train reached Clybourn Junction, that he began to repent his precipitancy. He was going to see her again in the office to-morrow, wasn't he? Wouldn't it look queer if he went out to call on her to-night without warning? She might be wholly unprepared for callers and annoyed.

But his presumable rival bobbed up again and spoiled his supper, so after dropping his bag at home, he walked presently into the entry way of 2667 Pearl Avenue. Her name was not on the left side; perhaps she had moved. No, here on the right, floor 3, in letters of glory--"Connor." Above it, "Talbot."

Who was Talbot? Married sister, roommate or landlady from whom she sublet? He raised his thumb to the bell. He had never before experienced a moment of such acute consciousness.

Wait a second--she might not be in. He walked out and looked up at the third floor right. There was certainly a light, a bright one, and the window was open and the curtain fluttering out.

Somebody was in. It might be Talbot. In that case he wouldn't go up or leave his name either. It certainly was none of Talbot's business, whoever Talbot was.

He pressed the button under her name. "Yes?" Heavens above, it was she, Georgia, the woman herself.

"Yes, who is it!" came the voice once more.

"Stevens."

"Mr. Stevens?" with a decided tone of interrogation. Evidently she did not place him at all. Probably not, with so many other men about her. It would be absurd to suppose anything else. She didn't place him--might not even recognize him out of the office.

"Mason Stevens of the office."

"Oh, Mr. Stevens of the office. How do you do?" and she spoke with a delightful access of cordiality. "Will you come up?"

"Just for a minute, if I may. I won't keep you long."

"Wait, I'll let you in." The click-click-click sounded and he was on his way upstairs. She opened the door for him.

A quick glance. There was no other man in the room, anyway.

"Good evening," she said. "Won't you come in?"

"Why, yes," then very apologetically; "that is, if I'm not putting you out."

"No, indeed." He sat and paused. She smiled and did not help him.

"You're nicely located here, Miss Connor."

"Oh, yes, we like it."

"Near the express station?"

"Yes. I usually get a seat in the morning, but not coming back, of course."

"About three blocks, isn't it?"

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