I don’t know whether I can do that or not,” replied Roberta, who, now that she had succeeded in accomplishing what she had wished, was becoming terrorized by her own daring. She began looking around nervously and feeling that every eye in the room must be upon her. “I live with Mr. and Mrs. Newton, my friend’s sister and brother-in-law, you know, and they’re very strict. It isn’t the same as if —” She was going to add “I was home,” but Clyde interrupted her.
“Oh, now please don’t say no, will you? Please don’t. I want to see you. I don’t want to cause you any trouble, that’s all. Otherwise I’d be glad to come round to your house. You know how it is.”
“Oh, no, you mustn’t do that,” cautioned Roberta. “Not yet anyhow.” She was so confused that quite unconsciously she was giving Clyde to understand that she was expecting him to come around some time later.
“Well,” smiled Clyde, who could see that she was yielding in part. “We could just walk out near the end of some street here — that street you live in, if you wish. There are no houses out there. Or there’s a little park — Mohawk — just west of Dreamland on the Mohawk Street line. It’s right on the river. You might come out there. I could meet you where the car stops. Will you do that?”
“Oh, I’d be afraid to do that I think — go so far, I mean. I never did anything like that before.” She looked so innocent and frank as she said this that Clyde was quite carried away by the sweetness of her. And to think he was making a clandestine appointment with her. “I’m almost afraid to go anywhere here alone, you know. People talk so here, they say, and some one would be sure to see me. But —”
“Yes, but what?”
“I’m afraid I’m staying too long at your desk here, don’t you think?” She actually gasped as she said it. And Clyde realizing the openness of it, although there was really nothing very unusual about it, now spoke quickly and forcefully.
“Well, then, how about the end of that street you live in? Couldn’t you come down there for just a little while to-night — a half hour or so, maybe?”
“Oh, I couldn’t make it to-night, I think — not so soon. I’ll have to see first, you know. Arrange, that is. But another day.” She was so excited and troubled by this great adventure of hers that her face, like Clyde’s at times, changed from a half smile to a half frown without her realizing that it was registering these changes.
“Well, then, how about Wednesday night at eight-thirty or nine? Couldn’t you do that? Please, now.”
Roberta considered most sweetly, nervously. Clyde was enormously fascinated by her manner at the moment, for she looked around, conscious, or so she seemed, that she was being observed and that her stay here for a first visit was very long.
“I suppose I’d better be going back to my work now,” she replied without really answering him.
“Wait a minute,” pled Clyde. “We haven’t fixed on the time for Wednesday. Aren’t you going to meet me? Make it nine or eight- thirty, or any time you want to. I’ll be there waiting for you after eight if you wish. Will you?”
“All right, then, say eight-thirty or between eight-thirty and nine, if I can. Is that all right? I’ll come if I can, you know, and if anything does happen I’ll tell you the next morning, you see.” She flushed and then looked around once more, a foolish, flustered look, then hurried back to her bench, fairly tingling from head to toe, and looking as guilty as though she had been caught red-handed in some dreadful crime. And Clyde at his desk was almost choking with excitement. The wonder of her agreeing, of his talking to her like that, of her venturing to make a date with him at all here in Lycurgus, where he was so well-known! Thrilling!
For her part, she was thinking how wonderful it would be just to walk and talk with him in the moonlight, to feel the pressure of his arm and hear his soft appealing voice.
Chapter 17
It was quite dark when Roberta stole out on Wednesday night to meet Clyde. But before that what qualms and meditations in the face of her willingness and her agreement to do so. For not only was it difficult for her to overcome her own mental scruples within, but in addition there was all the trouble in connection with the commonplace and religious and narrow atmosphere in which she found herself imbedded at the Newtons’. For since coming here she had scarcely gone anywhere without Grace Marr. Besides on this occasion — a thing she had forgotten in talking to Clyde — she had agreed to go with the Newtons and Grace to the Gideon Baptist Church, where a Wednesday prayer meeting was to be followed by a social with games, cake, tea and ice cream.
In consequence she was troubled severely as to how to manage, until it came back to her that a day or two before Mr. Liggett, in noting how rapid and efficient she was, had observed that at any time she wanted to learn one phase of the stitching operations going on in the next room, he would have her taken in hand by Mrs. Braley, who would teach her. And now that Clyde’s invitation and this church affair fell on the same night, she decided to say that she had an appointment with Mrs. Braley at her home. Only, as she also decided, she would wait until just before dinner Wednesday and then say that Mrs. Braley had invited her to come to her house. Then she could see Clyde. And by the time the Newtons and Grace returned she could be back. Oh, how it would feel to have him talk to her — say again as he did in the boat that he never had seen any one look so pretty as she did standing on the bank and looking for water lilies. Many, many thoughts — vague, dreadful, colorful, came to her — how and where they might go — be — do — from now on, if only she could arrange to be friends with him without harm to her or him. If need be, she now decided, she could resign from the factory and get a place somewhere else — a change which would absolve Clyde from any responsibility in regard to her.
There was, however, another mental as well as emotional phase in regard to all this and that related to her clothes. For since coming to Lycurgus she had learned that the more intelligent girls here dressed better than did those about Biltz and Trippetts Mills. At the same time she had been sending a fair portion of her money to her mother — sufficient to have equipped her exceptionally well, as she now realized, had she retained it. But now that Clyde was swaying her so greatly she was troubled about her looks, and on the evening after her conversation with him at the mill, she had gone through her small wardrobe, fixing upon a soft blue hat which Clyde had not yet seen, together with a checkered blue and white flannel skirt and a pair of white canvas shoes purchased the previous summer at Biltz. Her plan was to wait until the Newtons and Grace had departed for church and then swiftly dress and leave.
At eight-thirty, when night had finally fallen, she went east along Taylor to Central Avenue, then by a circuitous route made her way west again to the trysting place. And Clyde was already there. Against an old wooden fence that enclosed a five-acre cornfield, he was leaning and looking back toward the interesting little city, the lights in so many of the homes of which were aglow through the trees. The air was laden with spices — the mingled fragrance of many grasses and flowers. There was a light wind stirring in the long swords of the corn at his back — in the leaves of the trees overhead. And there were stars — the big dipper and the little dipper and the milky way — sidereal phenomena which his mother had pointed out to him long ago.
And he was thinking how different was his position here to what it had been in Kansas City. There he had been so nervous in regard to Hortense Briggs or any girl, really — afraid almost to say a word to any of them. Whereas here, and especially since he had had charge of this stamping room,
