“You don’t know what I’m like, but go on.”
Penrose Lockwood stood up and went to the window, but it was at his past and not at Lower New York that he gazed. “Three years ago, a little over three years ago, I met a young woman. She was in her early twenties. Handsome. Quite intelligent. Some education, and I imagine came from a typical good middle-class family, not New York. I had occasion to see her quite frequently, and while I never thought of her that way, not consciously, I suppose that seeing her as often as I did, I was attracted to her physically. She was a young woman that was like a thousand other young women who have jobs in New York, and you notice them because they’re pretty, but you never think of them again. But in this case, seeing her day after day, exchanging a few words now and then, she stopped being just one more anonymous pretty girl, and on days when I didn’t see her, I missed seeing her.”
“Propinquity.”
“Of course,” said Penrose Lockwood. “As you must have guessed, she, uh, had a job in the financial district, and one afternoon I gave her a lift uptown in a taxi, and since I was in no hurry, I stopped in for a drink at her apartment.”
“This was three years ago?”
“Almost four, as a matter of fact. Until that day, there never had been anything personal in our relationship. She was Miss So-and-so, and I was Mr. Lockwood.” He came away from the window and seated himself in the big leather revolving chair, folded his hands and looked at his shoes. “She was quite an extraordinary young woman. Although she was only twenty-three, she’d been married and divorced and had taken her maiden name again. Her husband had been a professional gambler in a city out West, but she didn’t find that out until they went on their wedding trip. Saratoga. She saw the kind of men his friends were, and he admitted that he’d lied to her. He wasn’t a bond salesman at all. He was an out-and-out professional gambler, and in less than a year she’d had all of that sort of life that she could put up with. He wouldn’t change his ways, it was too late, he said. So she left him and he agreed to a divorce. He was in his late thirties and he’d been married three or four times, and in fact he’d lied to her about that and made false statements in applying for the marriage license. So naturally he didn’t want any trouble, and he gave her the divorce readily enough. But she didn’t want to go back to her home town and her parents, and so she took a course in shorthand and typewriting and with her looks and personality, and ability as a stenographer, had no trouble getting a job in New York. She’d also had three years at one of the state universities, was far superior to the ordinary typist and was put in charge of several other stenographers.”
“You’re having a hard time getting to your part of the story, Pen,” said George Lockwood.
“I’ve never told the story before, that’s why. And I want you to understand that this wasn’t a cheap, casual affair, either on her part or on mine.”
“But it soon became an affair, I gather,” said George Lockwood.
“We don’t have to go into the details of that, do we? I’m not very proud of myself. I was forty-six years old, and with no reason to think that my life would be anything but what it was. Married to a fine woman. Good friends. Plenty of money. But whenever I was with this girl, at her apartment, I seemed to become another person.” He swung his chair so that he again faced the window. “She had a piano in her apartment, and at home I never touched the piano. But she’d buy all the latest tunes, sheet music, and I’d play and she’d sing. She had a nice voice, contralto. And I began to spend every Saturday afternoon with her. I’m not trying to pretend that it was innocent fun, George. It was not. In that respect it was an entire new experience for me. I had never associated that experience with love, and I now realize that there was very little difference between my lack of sophistication and Wilma’s. Wilma’s—indifference, if you want to call it that—was largely my fault.”
“The word love has just come into the conversation for the first time,” said George Lockwood. “You were in love with this young woman?”
“I am in love with her, and that’s the problem,” said Penrose Lockwood. “She’s going to marry someone else, and I’d do anything I could to prevent it.”
“Short of marrying her yourself.”
“Not short of marrying her myself.”
“Have you asked her to marry you?”
“I have. Last summer, when she told me that she had someone else, who wanted to marry her. She went away on her vacation and while she was away she had appendicitis.” He looked up quickly at his brother.
“It’s all right, Pen,” said George Lockwood. “I guessed it a while ago.”
“How? What did I say?”
“When you were talking about her ability, and her being in charge of other stenographers. I think I began to guess it even before that. You don’t see many other stenographers day to day, and Miss Strademyer is certainly the most attractive one in this office.”
“I’ve been alone with her once since last summer, and that was when she told me about her fiancé.”
“Did you go to bed with her then?”
“No. I wanted to, but she wouldn’t.”
“And what did she say when you asked her to marry you?”
“She said she wouldn’t. And she said she was going to resign her job here, and I’d soon forget her.”
“What did you say to that?”
“I told her to take a leave of absence, stay away as long as she wanted to, but to come back.”
“Why?”
“Because I know she was happy with me. If she wants to give marriage a try, then I have no right to oppose her. But I know she’ll want what we had, and miss it. For over three years, close to four, we had a relationship that I didn’t think was possible.”
“Do you think she was faithful to you all that time?” said George Lockwood.
“In the beginning, no. But for three years she was.”
“You have only her word for that, Pen,” said George Lockwood.
Penrose Lockwood smiled. “I haven’t even got that. I just know. That’s where inexperience counts, George. You would be full of doubts because you’ve been what they call a man of the world. But being a man of the world has cost you something. You have to doubt people because you give them so much cause to doubt you.”
“It’s true that I have less faith in women than you have,” said George Lockwood.
“Oh, you’re completely cynical, not only about women.”
“Cynical, but always hopeful. Well, you said you had a problem. What is the nature of the problem?”
“You know, I don’t know that I have a problem now. I’ve poured it all out to you, and I’m grateful to you. But this has done me a world of good because I see everything more clearly. Marian will marry her young man, and I’ll have to endure that for a while, but she’ll be back.”
“And then what? You’ll marry her?”
“Yes. She’ll have had the chance she’s entitled to and that I can’t stand in the way of.”
“Well, then you have no problem. I hope you won’t be sorry you confided in me,” said George Lockwood.
“On the contrary. It’s a great load off my mind.”
“There’s only one thing, Pen. What if she likes being married to this young man?”
“You’re just as thorough as always, and I was wondering whether you weren’t going to ask that,” said Penrose Lockwood. “I’ve thought about it. Worried about it. But now I realize that those kind of doubts are inconsistent with what I really believe. Really know.”