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.”