Erma glanced at him, and at you. “Have you got a shepherdess?”
“What, haven’t you met her?” asked Dick. “I don’t know where he found her, but he brought her to a couple of dances last spring, and she darned near started a riot.” He turned to you. “You haven’t fried and eaten her?”
You explained that Lucy had remained at the farm for the rest of the summer and wouldn’t return to Cleveland for another week or so.
“I thought you told me all your secrets,” said Erma reproachfully, “and here you’ve got a beautiful shepherdess that I never even heard of.”
“It’s no secret,” you said shortly, “and I haven’t got her.”
“The hell you haven’t,” said Dick.
After dinner you wanted to leave and were busy devising a suitable excuse, when you caught a glance from Erma which said plainly that she read your intention and that you might as well discard it. Dick moved to a chair next to Erma and began telling her his errand.
The recent death of old Meynell, the lawyer, he explained, made necessary a new arrangement regarding Erma’s stock. “The stock should be represented at the next annual stockholders’ meeting,” Dick went on, “and that’s really the point. Of course, you can attend the meeting yourself if you want to, there isn’t anything technical about it, electing directors and so on. What I wondered was if you would give me a proxy and let me vote your stock along with mine. That would be simplest.”
Erma sat comfortably sipping black coffee. “If I give you my proxy you’ll vote the whole thing, won’t you?” she asked.
“Of course. I own the other half.”
“How long is a proxy good for?”
“As long as you want to make it. Usually there is no stated term. You can recall it whenever you want to, or make a new one.”
“Then I guess I’ll make a proxy, it sounds important. Only I think it would be piggish for you to vote the whole thing, so I’ll give my proxy to Bill, if he’ll promise not to elect the shepherdess a director.”
You were flustered; you felt yourself blushing.
“Really, Erma,” you protested, “you’re putting me in a false position—”
“I don’t see anything false about it,” she declared. “It seems to me very sensible. You two can run things just as you want to, and two heads are better than one. Anyway, this just happens to appeal to me.”
“You’re a damn fool,” said Dick.
But you really did mean it; she stuck to it, airily but inexorably. You walked all the way home, in the mild September night, feeling alternately humiliated and elated.
But one thing was a fact; at twenty-six, not quite twenty-six, you held the voting power for one-half the stock of a ten-million-dollar corporation. You would be on equal terms with Dick — but even your fancy balked at that. You would scarcely be on even terms with Dick, not if you had a hundred proxies.
VII
He became suddenly aware that his hand was again in his overcoat pocket, closed tightly over the butt of the revolver His hand came out and the revolver with it, and he stood there with his forearm extended, the weapon in plain sight, peering around, downstairs and up, like a villain in a melodrama. If the door of the landing had at that instant opened and one of the art students had appeared, he would probably have pulled the trigger without knowing it.
His hand returned to his pocket and then came out again, empty, and sought the railing as he mounted another step, and then stopped once more.
Oh you would, would you, he said to himself, and he felt his lips twist into a grimace that tried to be a smile. No you don’t, this time you go ahead, if it’s only to point it at her and let her know what you think she’s fit for.
You go ahead...
You said that to yourself, over and over again, that night in Cleveland when Lucy was going away. Go ahead, go ahead, you repeated, what are you waiting for?
But you did neither. You dangled on the peg of your irresolution and cried like a baby.
She had not been back long, it was towards the end of October, when one evening you were dining at Winkler’s Restaurant and she suddenly said:
“It looks as if I’m going to New York soon. Mereczynski has opened a studio there and Mr. Murray says he can get him to take me. I don’t know if I’m worth it; I’ve written Father about it.”
You felt at once that she intended to go, that she would go. You were panic-stricken; not till that moment had you been aware that underneath her simplicity and her quietness was a strength which made her immeasurably your superior. Had you misjudged also your own importance to her?
“How soon would you go?”
“I don’t know, probably a couple of weeks, as soon as Mr. Murray can make the arrangements. If I am to go at all it might as well be at once.”
“In two weeks,” you said, and then were silent. When you spoke again, it was almost desperately.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you to marry me. Of course you know that. If you go to New York that will be the end of it.” You hesitated, then finished more desperately and rapidly: “Unless you’ll promise to marry me before you go.”
But Lucy laughed! And said:
“Well, you did ask me after all.”
“I’ve wanted to since the first day I saw you,” you declared. “I took it for granted you knew. But I’ve never known what to say to you. I don’t know even now how you feel about me—”
She stopped smiling, and her voice was more serious than you had ever heard it:
“I don’t either. I never have known how we feel about each other. I like you so much, much more than I’ve ever liked anyone, but there’s something in you I don’t like, and I don’t know what it is. Though if you’d asked me last summer I’m pretty sure I’d have said yes.”
She was to take a sleeper on a Wednesday night. On the Tuesday evening you dined again at Winkler’s. After dinner you drove her home and, arriving there and observing that it was only ten o’clock, it was suggested that you stay a while. Finding the library and parlor occupied by Aunt Martha and a bridge party, Lucy said you could find refuge in her room, and ran upstairs ahead of you.
She had some snapshots, taken during your summer visit, which you had not yet seen, and you helped her dig them out of the trunk; and she sat cross-legged on the bed, propped against the pillows, while you sat beside her and took the pictures from her one by one. You hardly saw the pictures.
A picture fell from your fingers into her lap. You reached for it together, and your hand closed upon hers. She looked at you, and her eyes widened and her face became suddenly still as marble. You leaned forward and kissed her. You kept your lips on hers, put your arms tight around her.
“My love, O Lucy my love,” you gasped. “Kiss me, please kiss me.”
She was silent, but she kissed you, again and again. She held you close with strong and urgent arms. “My love, my dear love,” you whispered. Awkwardly your rough embrace tightened around her. She shivered, suddenly and violently, withdrew herself, pushed you away.
“I think you tore my dress,” she said, feeling at it.
You swung yourself around, got onto your feet, on the floor, and stood there, betrayed and ridiculous, fumbling in your pocket for your cigarette case. She too got up and without saying anything went to the dressing-table mirror and twisted herself about.
“I’m sorry if I tore it,” you said from across the room.
She came over and stood in front of you, quite close, and put her hands on your shoulders. She tried to smile and you tried to look at her troubled eyes.