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Page 73
`Is she still going with Larry Donovan?'
`Oh, that's on, worse than ever! I guess they're engaged. Tony talks
about him like he was president of the railroad. Everybody laughs about
it, because she was never a girl to be soft. She won't hear a word against
him. She's so sort of innocent.'
I said I didn't like Larry, and never would.
Lena's face dimpled. `Some of us could tell her things, but it wouldn't do
any good. She'd always believe him. That's Antonia's failing, you know;
if she once likes people, she won't hear anything against them.'
`I think I'd better go home and look after Antonia,' I said.
`I think you had.' Lena looked up at me in frank amusement. `It's a good
thing the Harlings are friendly with her again. Larry's afraid of them.
They ship so much grain, they have influence with the railroad people.
What are you studying?' She leaned her elbows on the table and drew my book
toward her. I caught a faint odour of violet sachet. `So that's Latin, is
it? It looks hard. You do go to the theatre sometimes, though, for I've
seen you there. Don't you just love a good play, Jim? I can't stay at
home in the evening if there's one in town. I'd be willing to work like a
slave, it seems to me, to live in a place where there are theatres.'
`Let's go to a show together sometime. You are going to let me come to see
you, aren't you?'
`Would you like to? I'd be ever so pleased. I'm never busy after six
o'clock, and I let my sewing girls go at half-past five. I board, to save
time, but sometimes I cook a chop for myself, and I'd be glad to cook one
for you. Well'--she began to put on her white gloves--'it's been awful
good to see you, Jim.'
`You needn't hurry, need you? You've hardly told me anything yet.'
`We can talk when you come to see me. I expect you don't often have lady
visitors. The old woman downstairs didn't want to let me come up very
much. I told her I was from your home town, and had promised your
grandmother to come and see you. How surprised Mrs. Burden would be!'
Lena laughed softly as she rose.
When I caught up my hat, she shook her head. `No, I don't want you to go
with me. I'm to meet some Swedes at the drugstore. You wouldn't care for
them. I wanted to see your room so I could write Tony all about it, but I
must tell her how I left you right here with your books. She's always so
afraid someone will run off with you!' Lena slipped her silk sleeves into
the jacket I held for her, smoothed it over her person, and buttoned it
slowly. I walked with her to the door. `Come and see me sometimes when
you're lonesome. But maybe you have all the friends you want. Have you?'
She turned her soft cheek to me. `Have you?' she whispered teasingly in my
ear. In a moment I watched her fade down the dusky stairway.
When I turned back to my room the place seemed much pleasanter than before.
Lena had left something warm and friendly in the lamplight. How I loved
to hear her laugh again! It was so soft and unexcited and appreciative
gave a favourable interpretation to everything. When I closed my eyes I
could hear them all laughing--the Danish laundry girls and the three
Bohemian Marys. Lena had brought them all back to me. It came over me, as
it had never done before, the relation between girls like those and the
poetry of Virgil. If there were no girls like them in the world, there
would be no poetry. I understood that clearly, for the first time. This
revelation seemed to me inestimably precious. I clung to it as if it might
suddenly vanish.
As I sat down to my book at last, my old dream about Lena coming across the
harvest-field in her short skirt seemed to me like the memory of an actual
experience. It floated before me on the page like a picture, and
underneath it stood the mournful line: 'Optima dies ... prima fugit.'
III
IN LINCOLN THE BEST part of the theatrical season came late, when the good
companies stopped off there for one-night stands, after their long runs in
New York and Chicago. That spring Lena went with me to see Joseph
Jefferson in `Rip Van Winkle,' and to a war play called `Shenandoah.' She
was inflexible about paying for her own seat; said she was in business now,
and she wouldn't have a schoolboy spending his money on her. I liked to
watch a play with Lena; everything was wonderful to her, and everything was
true. It was like going to revival meetings with someone who was always
being converted. She handed her feelings over to the actors with a kind of
fatalistic resignation. Accessories of costume and scene meant much more
to her than to me. She sat entranced through `Robin Hood' and hung upon
the lips of the contralto who sang, `Oh, Promise Me!'
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