The 42nd Parallel (42 page)

By the time she was back at her desk correcting the spelling in the copy that had emanated from Mr. Robbins’ office the day before she began to feel a funny tingle inside her; soon J. Ward would be coming in. She told herself it was all nonsense but every time the outer office door opened she looked up expectantly. She began to worry a little; he might have had an accident driving in from Great Neck. Then when she’d given up expecting him he’d walk hurriedly through with a quick smile all around and the groundglass door of his private office would close behind him. Janey would notice whether he wore a dark or a light suit, what color his necktie was, whether he had a fresh haircut or not. One day he had a splatter of mud on the trouserleg of his blue serge suit and she couldn’t keep her mind off it all morning trying to think of a pretext to go in and tell him about it. Rarely he’d look at her directly with a flash of blue eyes as he passed, or stop and ask her a question. Then she’d feel fine.

The work at the office was so interesting. It put her right in the midst of headlines like when she used to talk to Jerry Burnham back at Dreyfus and Carroll’s. There was the Onondaga Salt Products account and literature about bathsalts and chemicals and the employees’ baseball team and cafeteria and old age pensions, and Marigold Copper and combating subversive tendencies among the miners who were mostly foreigners who had to be educated in the principles of Americanism, and the Citrus Center Chamber of Commerce’s campaign to educate the small investors in the North in the stable building qualities of the Florida fruit industry, and the slogan to be launched, “Put an Alligator Pear on Every Breakfast Table” for the Avocado Producers Coöperative. That concern occasionally sent up a case so that everybody in the office had an alligator pear to take home, except Mr. Robbins who wouldn’t take his, but said they tasted like soap. Now the biggest account of all was Southwestern Oil campaign to counter the insidious anti-American propaganda of the British oilcompanies in Mexico and to oppose the intervention lobby of the Hearst interests in Washington.

In June Janey went to her sister Ellen’s wedding. It was funny being in Washington again. Going on the train Janey looked forward a whole lot to seeing Alice, but when she saw her they couldn’t seem to find much to talk about. She felt out of place at her mother’s. Ellen was marrying a law student at Georgetown University who had been a lodger and the house was full of college boys and young girls after the wedding. They all laughed and giggled around and Mrs. Williams and Francie seemed to enjoy it all right, but Janey was glad when it was time for her to go down to the station and take the train to New York again. When she said goodby to Alice she didn’t say anything about her coming down to New York to get an apartment.

She felt pretty miserable on the train sitting in the stuffy parlorcar looking out at towns and fields and signboards. Getting back to the office the next morning was like getting home.

It was exciting in New York. The sinking of the
Lusitania
had made everybody feel that America’s going into the war was only a question of months. There were many flags up on Fifth Avenue. Janey thought a great deal about the war. She had a letter from Joe from Scotland that he’d been torpedoed on the steamer
Marchioness
and that they’d been ten hours in an open boat in a snowstorm off Pentland Firth with the current carrying them out to sea, but that they’d landed and he was feeling fine and that the crew had gotten bonuses and that he was making big money anyway. When she’d read the letter she went in to see J. Ward with a telegram that had just come from Colorado and told him about her brother being torpedoed and he was very much interested. He talked about being patriotic and saving civilization and the historic beauties of Rheims cathedral. He said he was ready to do his duty when the time came, and that he thought America’s entering the war was only a question of months.

A very welldressed woman came often to see J. Ward. Janey looked enviously at her lovely complexion and her neat dresses, not ostentatious but very chic, and her manicured nails and her tiny feet. One day the door swung open so that she could hear her and J. Ward talking familiarly together. “But, J.W., my darling,” she was saying, “this office is a fright. It’s the way they used to have their offices in Chicago in the early eighties.” He was laughing. “Well, Eleanor, why don’t you redecorate it for me? Only the work would have to be done without interfering with business. I can’t move, not with the press of important business just now.”

Janey felt quite indignant about it. The office was lovely the way it was, quite distinctive, everybody said so. She wondered who this woman was who was putting ideas into J. Ward’s head. Next day when she had to make out a check for two hundred and fifty dollars on account to Stoddard and Hutchins, Interior Decorators, she almost spoke her mind, but after all it was hardly her business. After that Miss Stoddard seemed to be around the office all the time. The work was done at night so that every morning when Janey came in, she found something changed. It was all being done over in black and white with curtains and upholstery of a funny claret-color. Janey didn’t like it at all but Gladys said it was in the modern style and very interesting. Mr. Robbins refused to have his private cubbyhole touched and he and J. Ward almost had words about it, but in the end he had his own way and the rumor went round that J. Ward had to increase his salary to keep him from going to another agency.

Labor Day Janey moved. She was sorry to leave the Comptons but she’d met a middleaged woman named Eliza Tingley who worked for a lawyer on the same floor as J. Ward’s office. Eliza Tingley was a Baltimorean, had passed a bar examination herself and Janey said to herself that she was a woman of the world. She and her twin brother, who was a certified accountant, had taken a floor of a house on West 23rd Street in the Chelsea district and they asked Janey to come in with them. It meant being free from the subway and Janey felt that the little walk over to Fifth Avenue every morning would do her good. The minute she’d seen Eliza Tingley in the lunchcounter downstairs she’d taken a fancy to her. Things at the Tingleys were free and easy and Janey felt at home there. Sometimes they had a drink in the evening. Eliza was a good cook and they’d take a long time over dinner and play a couple of rubbers of threehanded bridge before going to bed. Saturday night they’d almost always go to the theater. Eddy Tingley would get the seats at a cutrate agency he knew. They subscribed to
The Literary Digest
and to
The Century
and
The Ladies’ Home Journal
and Sundays they had roast chicken or duck and read the magazine section of
The New York Times.

The Tingleys had a good many friends and they liked Janey and included her in everything and she felt that she was living the way she’d like to live. It was exciting too that winter with rumors of war all the time. They had a big map of Europe hung up on the livingroom wall and marked the positions of the Allied armies with little flags. They were heart and soul for the Allies and names like Verdun or Chemin des Dames started little shivers running down their spines. Eliza wanted to travel and made Janey tell her over and over again every detail of her trip to Mexico; they began to plan a trip abroad together when the war was over and Janey began to save money for it. When Alice wrote from Washington that maybe she would pull up stakes in Washington and go down to New York, Janey wrote saying that it was so hard for a girl to get a job in New York just at present and that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea.

All that fall J. Ward’s face looked white and drawn. He got in the habit of coming into the office Sunday afternoons and Janey was only too glad to run around there after dinner to help him out. They’d talk over the events of the week in the office and J. Ward would dictate a lot of private letters to her and tell her she was a treasure and leave her there typing away happily. Janey was worried too. Although new accounts came in all the time the firm wasn’t in a very good financial condition. J. Ward had made some unfortunate plunges in the Street and was having a hard time holding things together. He was anxious to buy out the large interest still held by old Mrs. Staple and talked of notes his wife had gotten hold of and that he was afraid his wife would use unwisely. Janey could see that his wife was a disagreeable peevish woman trying to use her mother’s money as a means of keeping a hold on J. Ward. She never said anything to the Tingleys about J. Ward personally, but she talked a great deal about the business and they agreed with her that the work was so interesting. She was looking forward to this Christmas because J. Ward had hinted that he would give her a raise.

A rainy Sunday afternoon she was typing off a confidential letter to Judge Planet inclosing a pamphlet from a detective agency describing the activities of labor agitators among the Colorado miners, and J. Ward was walking up and down in front of the desk staring with bent brows at the polished toes of his shoes when there was a knock on the outer office door. “I wonder who that could be?” said J. Ward. There was something puzzled and nervous about the way he spoke. “It may be Mr. Robbins forgotten his key,” said Janey. She went to see. When she opened the door Mrs. Moorehouse brushed past her. She wore a wet slicker and carried an umbrella, her face was pale and her nostrils were twitching. Janey closed the door gently and went to her own desk and sat down. She was worried. She took up a pencil and started drawing scrolls round the edge of a piece of typewriter paper. She couldn’t help hearing what was going on in J. Ward’s private office. Mrs. Moorehouse had shot in slamming the groundglass door behind her. “Ward, I can’t stand it . . . I won’t stand it another minute,” she was screaming at the top of her voice. Janey’s heart started beating very fast. She heard J. Ward’s voice low and conciliatory, then Mrs. Moorehouse’s. “I won’t be treated like that, I tell you. I’m not a child to be treated like that . . . You’re taking advantage of my condition. My health won’t stand being treated like that.”

“Now look here, Gertrude, on my honor as a gentleman,” J. Ward was saying. “There’s nothing in it, Gertrude. You lie there in bed imagining things and you shouldn’t break in like this. I’m a very busy man. I have important transactions that demand my complete attention.”

Of course it’s outrageous, Janey was saying to herself.

“You’d still be in Pittsburgh working for Bessemer Products, Ward, if it wasn’t for me and you know it . . . You may despise me but you don’t despise dad’s money . . . but I’m through, I tell you. I’m going to start divorce . . .” “But, Gertrude, you know very well there’s no other woman in my life.” “How about this woman you’re seen round with all the time . . . what’s her name . . . Stoddard? You see, I know more than you think . . . I’m not the kind of woman you think I am, Ward. You can’t make a fool of me, do you hear?”

Mrs. Moorehouse’s voice rose into a rasping shriek. Then she seemed to break down and Janey could hear her sobbing. “Now, Gertrude,” came Ward’s voice soothingly, “you’ve gotten yourself all wrought up over nothing . . . Eleanor Stoddard and I have had a few business dealings . . . She’s a bright woman and I find her stimulating . . . intellectually, you understand . . . We’ve occasionally eaten dinner together, usually with mutual friends, and that’s absolutely . . .” Then his voice sunk so low that Janey couldn’t hear what he was saying. She began to think she ought to slip out. She didn’t know what to do.

She’d half gotten to her feet when Mrs. Moorehouse’s voice soared to a hysterical shriek again. “Oh, you’re cold as a fish . . . You’re just a fish. I’d like you better if it was true, if you were having an affair with her . . . But I don’t care; I won’t be used as a tool to use dad’s money.” The door of the private office opened and Mrs. Moorehouse came out, gave Janey a bitter glare as if she suspected her relations with J. Ward too, and went out. Janey sat down at her desk again trying to look unconcerned. Inside the private office she could hear J. Ward striding up and down with a heavy step. When he called her his voice sounded weak:

“Miss Williams.”

She got up and went into the private office with her pencil and pad in one hand. J. Ward started to dictate as if nothing had happened but half way through a letter to the president of the Ansonia Carbide Corporation he suddenly said, “Oh, hell,” and gave the wastebasket a kick that sent it spinning against the wall.

“Excuse me, Miss Williams; I’m very much worried . . . Miss Williams, I’m sure I can trust you not to mention it to a soul . . . You understand, my wife is not quite herself; she’s been ill . . . the last baby . . . you know those things sometimes happen to women.”

Janey looked up at him. Tears had started into her eyes. “Oh, Mr. Moorehouse, how can you think I’d not understand? . . . Oh, it must be dreadful for you, and this is a great work and so interesting.” She couldn’t say any more. Her lips couldn’t form any words. “Miss Williams,” J. Ward was saying, “I . . . er . . . appreciate . . . er.” Then he picked up the wastepaper basket. Janey jumped up and helped him pick up the crumpled papers and trash that had scattered over the floor. His face was flushed from stooping. “Grave responsibilities . . . Irresponsible woman may do a hell of a lot of damage, you understand.” Janey nodded and nodded. “Well, where were we? Let’s finish up and get out of here.”

They set the wastebasket under the desk and started in on the letters again.

All the way home to Chelsea, picking her way through the slush and pools of water on the streets, Janey was thinking of what she’d liked to have said to J. Ward to make him understand that everybody in the office would stand by him whatever happened.

When she got in the apartment, Eliza Tingley said a man had called her up. “Sounded like a rather rough type; wouldn’t give his name; just said to say Joe had called up and that he’d call up again.” Janey felt Eliza’s eyes on her inquisitively.

“That’s my brother Joe, I guess . . . He’s a . . . he’s in the merchant marine.”

Some friends of the Tingleys came in, they had two tables of bridge and were having a very jolly evening when the telephone rang again, and it was Joe. Janey felt herself blushing as she talked to him. She couldn’t ask him up and still she wanted to see him. The others were calling to her to play her hand. He said he had just got in and that he had some presents for her and he’d been clear out to Flatbush and that the yids there had told him she lived in Chelsea now and he was in the cigar store at the corner of Eighth Avenue. The others were calling to her to play her hand. She found herself saying that she was very busy doing some work and wouldn’t he meet her at five tomorrow at the office building where she worked. She asked him again how he was and he said, “Fine,” but he sounded disappointed. When she went back to her table they all kidded her about the boyfriend and she laughed and blushed, but inside she felt mean because she hadn’t asked him to come up.