Amorelle (14 page)

“Nonsense!” George’s voice was harsh and sharp. “Spend money just for a sink! Amorelle, you’re crazy! We can’t afford trifles. You might just as well give up notions first as last. What difference does a kitchen make? A place to wash dishes! I don’t care what kind of a kitchen we have. This is plenty good enough.”

“You wouldn’t have to stay in it.” Amorelle’s gentle voice was shaking with distress. She was not used to standing up to George.

“Amorelle! I never thought you were a
selfish
woman! You surely don’t mean you want me to spend fifteen dollars more a month just for
a sink!
Why, if it came to that, we could paint this one. Come on upstairs.”

George strode back to the staircase and mounted two steps at a time. The subject was dismissed.

Amorelle did not follow at once. She stood by the little high window over the kitchen sink and struggled with tears that suddenly threatened to overwhelm her. It wasn’t that she could not put aside her desire and help save if it were necessary. But George was getting a good salary. He was able to give her conveniences and comfort, and he didn’t seem to care. It was his lack of tenderness that hurt her.

“Amorelle!” he called peremptorily. “Come on upstairs.”

She wiped her eyes and went slowly up the steep little flight.

There were two rooms and a bit of a bathroom, with a tiny square of a hall accommodating a ladder to the tin roof. It was stiflingly hot up there. The walls were unpapered and illustrated crudely with penciled sketches in caricature, jokes, and crossed-out names. The plumbing was old-fashioned with a boarded-in tin bathtub.

“We can whitewash up here,” said George. “We’ll take this front room for ours, and I’ll have the back one prepared for a den where I can take men when they come to see me on business.”

Amorelle’s troubled gaze rested on the one shallow closet with its sparse row of hooks and then traveled out the window, where across the street a heavy neighbor, with her sleeves rolled high and her straggling gray locks stuffed into a soiled pink satin boudoir cap, lolled from the opposite window, gazing up and down the street. A baby’s sudden cry rang out, followed by a resounding slap and another yell. A radio whined next door, and a blatant hand organ suddenly piped up far down the street.

George had not noticed that she was not attending to his words. But now he came back to where she stood, and suddenly, almost roughly, he caught her in his arms with an air of possession that started her.

It was the first time they had been absolutely alone together except in her aunt’s living room, where they were constantly liable to interruption, or on the street. It was as though George had just realized this and was taking advantage of it, as if a box of sweets had been left alone with him and he meant to eat them all himself, not even sharing them with her. There was something almost unholy about the fierceness of his embrace that frightened her, as if he would devour her. His kisses burned upon her lips and rained hotly upon her face. There was nothing like tender love in them. Involuntarily she struggled away from him, pushing against his chest with her slim, young hands and turning her face away. He held her tightly, almost fiercely, for a moment; but she struggled from his arms, her back against the wall, her eyes wide, her face distressed. Then he backed off and glared at her thunderously. For a blond-eyed man, he could grow exceedingly dark.

“What is the meaning of this, Amorelle? Is it possible you are going to be childish about a kitchen sink?”

Amorelle covered her face with her hands and drooped. She felt herself trembling. She could feel through her closed eyes the coldness of his glance. The silence when his voice ceased hurt her like a lashing.

When he spoke again, it was with the cold voice of a stranger.

“I guess we’d better go back. You don’t seem to be in a very pleasant mood.”

He went downstairs without waiting for her. She shivered in the heat of the room and followed slowly.

He did not speak a word all the way back to the trolley. She had a feeling that she ought in some way to explain or apologize, but she could not find the words. She did not quite understand herself. A glance into his stern face made her sure he would not accept it if she did apologize.

She was thankful that the car came along almost immediately and that it was crowded, so that she had to sit at the farther end and conversation was impossible.

He spoke no word, even when he left her at the door with just a lifting of his hat. As he turned away, she stole a glance at him, with that recurring thought of his being a stranger—a stern, offended stranger.

She hurried into the house. It was Ida’s day out, and she was expected to prepare the evening meal for the family.

The kitchen was hot and full of flies. The washer-woman had been there laundering the curtains and had left the screen door open. Amorelle was glad to get into her work dress and go to work. It seemed to quiet the wild, frightened throb of her heart. She drove the flies out and went about her duties with quick, skillful fingers—mincing parsley for the creamed potatoes, seasoning the peas that she had shelled before going out with George, arranging the salad on the plates, broiling the chops, cutting the cherry pie, making the coffee, setting the table. She did everything deliberately, trying to convince herself that nothing had happened, that everything was as it had been before she went to see that awful brick house—before George—Oh, what had been the matter with George? Or was the matter with herself?

But she must not think about it now or her trouble would show in her face. Her aunt and Louise would ask what was the matter, and she never could explain. They would not understand if she should. They would probably side with George, anyway. They approved of George thoroughly. And perhaps she had been unfair to him, but every time she thought of the way he held her in his arms in that hot little upstairs room, it made her shudder. There was something wrong somewhere, but now she must put it away. Her present business was to have dinner ready on time.

It was while they were eating the cherry pie that her uncle remarked that Amorelle looked pale.

“Better take her along on your picnic tomorrow, Louise,” he suggested, for the talk all through the meal had been about that picnic—who was going, what they were taking, and what to wear. “It seems to me she doesn’t have enough young company and outings.”

“She has George,” said Louise coldly. “Isn’t that enough for an engaged girl?”

“Why, yes,” blustered in Aunt Clara. “She was just out with George this afternoon, Mr. Dean. You’re talking about something you don’t know anything about, as you usually do!”

Amorelle flushed at the unusual notice and hastened to protest.

“I’m quite all right, Uncle Enoch,” she said with a forced smile. “I guess it’s the unusual hot weather so early that makes me look pale. But I don’t really need an outing.”

“Better take her along!” commanded the uncle in the stern tone that was used so rarely that it was generally obeyed by his family.

“Why, of course if she
wants
to go,” drawled Louise. “They’re not exactly her crowd! I
guess
there’ll be room, though I’ve invited that nephew of Dr. Garrison’s who is visiting. He’s been abroad, and they say he’s perfectly stunning! Intellectual type, I hear. I should not like it to look as if we were a big mob—but of course…” Her voice trailed off disagreeably.

“Better take her along, honey,” cooed her mother. “Amorelle can make such good coffee, and you know all young men like coffee. She really will be a help to you. You know you’re not very fond of cooking.”

“Well, perhaps that’s an idea,” admitted the lazy Louise. “All right, Amorelle, you’re elected. I guess we can stow you somewhere. And say, Amorelle, would you mind stirring up some of those little cakes you make and frosting them this evening? They’ll bake while you wash the dishes, and George can talk to you while you frost them.”

Now Amorelle had no intention whatever of going to that picnic. Moreover she was deadly tired, for she had canned cherries all the morning and then washed windows till George came for her to go and see the house. But she did not want the discussion to go on over her any longer, and she did not want Uncle Enoch to look troubled about her, so she answered with a tired smile that she would make the cakes.

She stayed in the kitchen all that evening, washing dishes and baking dozens and dozens of little cakes and then frosting them.

George did not come to talk to her while she did it. She had not expected him. She knew he would be punishing her for daring to disagree with him about the house. By this time she had grown to know about what reaction to expect of George in any given circumstance. Somehow it seemed a dreary prospect, long years of life with a George who sulked if you suggested anything he had not himself proposed.

Amorelle was quite glad that she was sure George would not come that evening. She wanted time to think things out. Somehow she
had
to get this matter straight. If the trouble was in herself—if she was being selfish—then she must realize and change, but if it was George then
something
had to be done about it. She was getting to be afraid of George and his moods, and she couldn’t marry a man she was afraid of. Also, why was it that she had been so indignant, so fairly outraged at the way he had seized her and hugged her, kissing her as if she were something to devour, not as if he loved her tenderly as he used to at first? She didn’t understand it. Once she put her head down in her hands while she was waiting for the last batch of cakes to finish baking and cried a few tears. Oh, why was life so terribly complicated? If only she had a father or a mother to guide her. If only God didn’t seem so terribly far away.

The telephone rang just as she finished her work and was about to go up to bed. Her aunt called to her to answer it, and to her surprise it was George. He spoke in such a jaunty tone of condescending forgiveness that it stirred a faint resentment in her heart.

“That you, Amorelle? I couldn’t get down tonight. Jim Price wanted me to take a little spin with him in the park. He was trying out a new car. Say, Amorelle, we’ll have to give up our trip to the country tomorrow. I’ve got a lot of extra work and I can’t possibly get away. Besides, I’ve had to let my secretary go to her grandmother’s funeral, so I thought you might come down and take her place. It was a lucky thing you took that business course. I’d have to hire a temporary stenographer today. And say, how about asking your aunt to let you off early in the morning, say around half past seven or quarter to eight? I’d like to get started in the office before the rest of the force comes. And I’ll need you all day. We can get a snack at the pie shop downstairs, or you might bring some sandwiches. How about it? The records from the whole district have come in, and we’ve just got word they have to be turned in tomorrow. I doubt if we get through before late in the evening. It’s all up to me, see, and I had to take the responsibility of letting that stenog off. But I knew I could count on you. We’d sort of saved that day for a run to the lake anyway, you know.”

Something seemed to rise up in Amorelle’s heart—or soul or temper or something—and snap. Was this then the love that was to protect her through life? Iron sinks, working after hours, continually giving up things?

For several weeks George had been planning to take her on a trip to the lake and had set apart his day, saying he felt sure he could get off, and now he had not only failed to get away himself but was planning for her to spend the day and evening slaving in a hot office!

Ordinarily Amorelle would have excused the whole thing, knowing that a man cannot always control the actions of his office and sure that sometime soon he would plan to make it up to her, but now she was not so sure. Would he? He seemed of late to be thinking more about himself than what they should do together. Here he had been riding all the evening in a luxurious automobile in the cool park, and she knew well enough Jim Price would have been glad enough to have taken her along, if he had suggested it. But he was punishing her for daring to suggest that that ugly little brick house in that sordid neighborhood was not good enough for their home. And now she was not even to have her long-promised trip in a trolley car! And he did not even suggest that it would come later. He was not sorry a bit. He was making her a convenience.

It was not like Amorelle’s gentle nature to be bitter, and ordinarily she would have hastened to assure George that she was at his service most willingly. But somehow the heat and her weariness and, most of all, her disappointment in George, whom she had been doing her best for weeks to put on a pedestal, had gotten her nerve. The ugly brick house and iron sink but, most of all, the task that her man had set for her tomorrow loomed before her impossibly.

But what would he say if she declined? Was she ready to bear his gloom and grouch? Was she ready to break with him finally?

George was headstrong and overbearing. He would stand no trifling. She hesitated with the receiver in her hand, and she heard him impatiently tapping the desk at the other end of the line.

“Well?” he said sharply.

What would she say? Oh, had she no backbone at all? Some-time there must be an adjustment of things or there would be disaster.

Then suddenly she remembered the picnic for which she had been toiling all the evening without the slightest intention of going. It held no attraction for her, for she well knew Louise would manage it so that she would have no part in anything; but why not go for once? It would serve as an excuse, and at least she would have the day in the woods to think this thing out and try to understand herself. Impulsively she decided.

Her voice sounded cool and even as she answered him.

“I can’t come, George. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m going away for the whole day with Louise. She needs me. I’m not sure we’ll be back till very late in the evening.”

Astonishment, incredulity, indignation were undisguised in George’s voice.

“You’re going away with
Louise?
What right has she to ask you to give up the only day in the week you have for recreation? Besides, Amorelle, I
need
you.”