Skyscraper

by Faith Baldwin

  “Nor I—”

  She forgot in his arms how risky it was to look for the jobs that seemed to be, nowadays, practically nonexistent; and how she had set her heart against the sort of position in which she would not be happy, to which she had not been trained; let, for this moment at least, ambition go by the board; a job, any job, that would enable them to live, and live together.

  Two weeks went by. A Saturday came, and Jennie asked, crumpling a yellow telegraph blank in her long hand, “Lynn, you look rotten. What have you been doing to yourself?”

  “Nothing. Trying to work and look for another job at the same time.”

  “Have you asked David Dwight to help you?” Jennie wanted to know. She unfolded the telegram again. Mr. Meyer of Meyer and Carberg would be in town over Sunday, Would Jennie dine with him? Would she? She hadn’t had as good a dinner as the first one he’d given her since she was born.

  “I hadn’t thought of him. Do you suppose he would? Oh no,” said Lynn, “I don’t like to ask him.”

  “Don’t be a sap. He’ll find something for you to do,” prophesied Jennie carelessly.

  “Is that wire from the Chicago boy friend?

  “It is.” Jennie chuckled. Upon the first occasion she had gone out with Meyer to dinner, show, and supper, she had come home to tell Lynn all about it—the food, the liquor, the seats, the service, the favors. “Some spender. Married—but a widower. How’s that for a break?”

  “Jennie, you wouldn’t marry him,” Lynn had gasped.

  “Why not? Do you think I want to model the rest of my life? Not that I could. I’d end up scrubbing offices. Not me.”

  “But you wouldn’t have to marry—”

  “Meyer? Well, no, and won’t get a chance, more’s the pity, I suppose. There are other men, of course. Poor men—and I’d go on working. Or I’d end in a walk-up doing diapers. Not this baby. When I marry, if I do, there has to be money and a wad of it,” Jennie had announced.

  There was no arguing with her. Lynn saw Jennie toss the telegraph blank into the waste basket. Then she forgot it. Odd that she had not thought of David Dwight. He had said—what had he said? That he was her friend; that she could count on him. And she had believed him. She had seen him once since the night of the party, one night when he had taken her to dinner and a play. She and Tom had had words about it. Then he had gone away on business—to Washington, she remembered.

  She had told him nothing of her present preoccupation.

  If he were back now!

  She telephoned him at the penthouse that night while Jennie was dressing for her engagement. And he was in.

  “Lynn?” his vibrant voice came over the wire. “My dear, how very sweet of you to call me. I’m just back.”

  She said hesitantly, “I didn’t know—There is something about which I want to ask your advice. I thought perhaps if I could see you—next week? I could come to your office.”

  His offices were uptown, in an ivory tower, the builders of which had dedicated themselves to making America castor-oil and talcum-powder conscious.

  “But of course. Shall we say Monday? After your work is over? I’ll wait for you—and will you dine with me afterward?”

  She hung up presently. Jennie, listening poked her head in at the door between living-room and bedroom.

  “You’re going to see him.”

  “Monday.”

  “What did I tell you?” And Jennie, now attired, danced out to her duty, which was to make merry on a merchandising man’s Saturday night off.

  10

  TWO TROUBLED GIRLS

  DWIGHT WAS VERY UNDERSTANDING. HIS FACE, like an actor’s in that it lent itself readily to illusion, if without the camouflage of grease paint, was perfectly impassive as Lynn stumbled her way through her explanation. At intervals he said “I see,” and fingered an astonishingly small, round gold clock that stood upon the neat and polished vastness of his desk. It was the first time Lynn had been to his office. He was housed halfway up the great pyramidal height of the uptown business building. Save for the desk there was little of the office about his private room; it was more like a library, and into that atmosphere the desk fitted unobtrusively. There were paneled walls and built-in bookcases, but there was nothing somber about the draperies or the fine oriental carpet on the floor, nothing massively oppressive about the chairs, the occasional furniture. Frankly, a modernistic bar presided with charm over the working quarters of a man at law. Within the desk itself a humidor had been built. Lynn watched him open the department and select a cigar. There were no photographs in the room, but over the fireplace, in which green boughs had been heaped in deference to the season, there was a portrait—not of a woman, curiously enough, but of the little son whom David Dwight and his wife had lost during their first years of marriage.

  There were flowers in the room, very gay and fragrant. “From my place on the Island,” he had told her, when upon entering, she had exclaimed over their beauty, sparring a little for time.

  His office force, save for his personal secretary, an elderly, narrow-lipped, dour-faced woman, had all gone home by the time Lynn arrived, directly from the bank, having hurried the few intervening blocks through the hot late afternoon, wishing somehow she had not made this appointment.

  But Dwight’s reception of her had dispelled all of her formless doubts. Now she sat smiling at him faintly through the depths of an armchair, and waiting to hear him speak. If he had sustained a blow she could not know it. He said gently. “I appreciate your situation. I could of course give you letters—a lot of letters. I know so many people, I have a finger in several pies. But as our Sarah has probably told you, as you doubtless know yourself, most concerns are cutting down their staffs. I can, as it happens,” he went on, “offer you a job—a rather anomalous job—and with myself.”

  She declined hurriedly, flushing. “Please—I didn’t mean that I—why, what,” she asked in open astonishment, “what on earth could you find for me to do? I”—she thrust up her little chin—“I can keep on at the bank perfectly well,” she said.

  “Not so fast. You haven’t had, I suppose, any secretarial training?”

  “None, just typing.”

  “I thought so. That’s what I should be willing to offer you. You see, I’m writing a book.” He smiled a very little. “I suppose it’s a confession of weakness and I have no intention of publishing it now. It might be better, all around, if it were published posthumously. But I need someone whom I can trust to get my notes into shape, to do the first rough typing and eventually the revisions on this egotistical and naturally autobiographical expression of myself. I had thought of giving it to Miss Mays—my secretary—but she has enough to do as it is. Moreover, I have other things that a home secretary could do for me and which would not involve dictation as much as say, bookkeeping, tact, and the ability to use the English language on one’s own initiative. I should require you to work at the apartment, and perhaps on Long Island—not here at the office. And I would pay you what the bank now pays you, and a little more.”

  She asked, aghast, “But are you very sure—I mean, it doesn’t,” she added, with a flash of shrewdness, “seem reasonable!”

  “It isn’t unreasonable, is it?” he asked her, laughing.

  She said after a moment, “If I accept it means—”

  “Marriage?”

  She nodded her dark head unsmilingly.

  He said gravely, “I’m afraid I can’t approve any more than Sarah does of that. But if your mind is made up—” He gestured briefly and then smiled at her again. “And I deplore the fact that by marrying, you will give up something of a career. Mind, I don’t offer you that with me. There’s no future in turning amanuensis to an egotistical lawyer, you know, but perhaps it would tide you over this time of depression, and then later, when business picks up and banks begin to take on bigger stafs there would be doubtless a place for you somewhere.”

  She said brokenly, “I can’t thank you—”

&n
bsp; “Don’t try. Is it a bargain?”

  She nodded. “As far as I’m concerned. But I’d have to stay at the bank a while longer until one of the girls in my department could be trained to take my place,” she answered.

  “I understand that perfectly.” He rose. “Come, the car’s outside. Let’s forget business for a time and take a drive through the park and perhaps up to the Clairmont for dinner.”

  It was a pleasant drive, a pleasanter dinner. Dwight was his wittiest self, he talked incessantly, almost nervously, always entertainingly. It was still quite early when he left her at the door of the apartment. She thanked him, saying good night, and as she did so, he held her hand for a moment.

  “May I be very banal?”

  “You couldn’t be,” she assured him.

  “Thanks, that’s sweet of you. I wonder if Mr. Thomas knows how infernally lucky he is?” he concluded.

  Lynn drew her hand away. “I hope so,” she answered gaily. “I hope that he knows it and that he is.”

  Dwight watched her enter the clumsy door, stood there a moment, bareheaded on the pavement, climbed back into his car and gave an address; not that of his apartment. As the car slid away through the night, he pondered on himself, ironically amazed.

  Now what exactly had he done? Offered to take the girl on for work which was practically nonexistent. He’d have to make an attempt to get the scattered notes of some of his big cases together. Of course, he’d planned to do a startling book at some future date—very future. In addition he was committing himself to a new obligation, an expenditure which he couldn’t afford. He was up to his ears in debt.

  Yet his cursed vanity had been unable to permit him to let Lynn down. Moreover he had offered Lynn Harding a situation in order that she might be in a position to marry that awkward young cub, Shepard, who was not yet dry behind the ears! Of all the sublime idiocies! Had he not offered her the job, she probably would have postponed the marriage indefinitely and almost anything might happen during that time. Married, she was lost to him. Yet, was she, working with him, not in the allegedly impersonal surroundings of an office, but in his home? Married, once the first glamor had passed, she was, according to his own curious code, perfectly legitimate quarry.

  He wondered if Shepard would make any objection, but dismissed him from his mind as negligible. Any man in his right senses would object, but a young man in love, and ardently desiring marriage, is not in his rightsenses. Yet one person there was of whom in his heart David Dwight was a little afraid. And that was Sarah Dennet. Well, he could manage Sarah, couldn’t he; hadn’t he proved that?

  Lynn, running upstairs, burst into her apartment and was utterly astonished to find Tom sitting there glumly and alone, crushing cigarettes into an ash tray. At least from the appearance of the ash tray that was what he had been doing for some time past.

  “Tom—how did you get in? Where’s Jennie? I thought you were going to be busy this evening,” she exclaimed, staring at him.

  “Jennie let me in; she went out directly afterward. I did have a date—but Rawlson came down from UBC just before closing to tell me it was all off. I’d looked for you, but you’d gone,” he accused her.

  “I know; I left a little early. Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry. Have you have any dinner?”

  “With Rawlson,” he answered.

  “Oh!”

  Lynn was silent. She didn’t like Rawlson, who was one of the salesmen that came to her desk daily for the little blue cards. He was a slim, smooth, rather nervous young man, who, it was rumored, had “inherited money” and “didn’t really have to work.” Latterly, he and Tom had struck up some sort of friendship.

  “And where have you been?” he shot out at her.

  She didn’t tell him about the engagement with Dwight. If nothing came out of it what would have been the use? Now that something had come out of it all the laughter and excitement and satisfaction had gone. Tom’s dejection was like something tangible in the room; it smothered and oppressed.

  “I had an appointment with David Dwight; afterward he took me to the Clairmont for dinner,” she told him, and to her own bewilderment was unable to keep from her voice a note of pure defiance.

  “Is—that—so—?” Tom asked, spacing out his words. “Isn’t that lovely?”

  “What’s so wrong about it?” she wanted to know.

  Tom glared at her.

  “Everything. I won’t have you going out with him,” he responded unamiably. “Damnit, you’re engaged to be married to me. I don’t get any pleasure going out with other girls—and I don’t go out with them, what’s more! And I wouldn’t get a kick of smirking at a dinner table at a woman twice my age!”

  “Tom!”

  “Well, I wouldn’t,” he said doggedly. “I don’t want to be with anyone but you. I can’t trot you around in a limousine and throw penthouse parties and take you to expensive restaurants and send you gardenias and all the rest of it. But you knew that, right from the beginning. I won’t have you going around with Dwight,” he said again. “He’s a damned-sight too interested in you.”

  “He’s not!” Even as she said it she had misgivings. Absurd, couldn’t a man be decent to a girl, offer her friendship, without premising a personal motive? “And I’m not interested in him.”

  “Then why do you make dates with him?”

  “Well, if you must know,” she flung at him, “I went up there to see if he could help me find a job. So that I could work; so we could get married. I think—I think you have a rotten mind!” She ended childishly.

  “Look here, Lynn.” He rose and walked over to where she was standing, her small, shallow hat perched on the back of her head, her clear dark skin flushed with anger. “Look here, I didn’t mean that. But it hurts me like the devil to see you so friendly with Dwight—and moreover, I don’t think you should be, aside from me. He hasn’t the best reputation in the world. He couldn’t be any woman’s friend,” said Tom.

  “Well, he can be! He’s mine!” she cried. “He’s offered me a job as his secretary.”

  “What!” Tom stood perfectly still, head lowered and thrust forward, his hair wildly disordered and his very blue eyes hot with suspicion. “Secretary! That’s a good one!” He laughed, without merriment. “That’s swell! He got along without a secretary all these years, I suppose, and has just decided to take one with no secretarial experience, is that it?”

  Lynn said, paler now, “You needn’t waste the heavy sarcasm on me, Tom. Of course he has a secretary—several of them, for all I know. This is different.”

  “I’ll bet it is,” Tom agreed darkly.

  “It’s to type notes for a book he is doing, and other personal work,” Lynn said, infuriated.

  “Can’t he get that done in the office?”

  “He doesn’t want it done in the office. He wants it done at home.”

  “That’s practical of him,” Tom said admiringly. “What are your working hours to be—ten p.m. to six a.m.?”

  Suddenly she was transformed into a small and flaming harridan. Years of training in social repression dropped from her; she was a child of the backyard, fighting with the neighbor’s brat, sick with disappointment, beside herself in anger.

  “You shut up, Tom Shepard! How dare you say such a thing to me?” she raged. “You get out of here! I never want to see you again!”

  Anger broke her voice and sent her whole body trembling. It had, however, a wholesome effect on Tom. Anger such as hers argued a pristine innocence—or at least, to him. He advanced upon her and took her in his arms. She fought him like a cat, left the marks of her nails on his astonished face. He dropped her quickly.

  “You little devil—” was his natural response.

  He nursed the scratch, applying a rather grimy handkerchief. Lynn cast herself on the couch, reaction setting in. Sobs shook her. Standing there, handkerchief to his face, he heard her say, through the storm:

  “Just because I was afraid—of losing my job—if we got marr
ied—and he was decent enough to give me one—so that we could be—”

  But Tom’s inclination towards reconciliation had passed. He said coolly, “You needn’t accept Dwight’s offer to marry me. Because if you do, I won’t marry you, see?”

  She sat up on the couch. “Tom, do you mean that?”

  “I mean it. I didn’t want you to work after we got married. Then I gave in. You know why; or if you don’t you’re a damned sight dumber than I thought you were,” said her lover baldly. “You know why right enough. But if you think I’m going to marry you on Dwight’s charity you have another guess coming. Not me. It would be bad enough to work in the bank, but I’d be there, at least. But to have you working for him—in his house—under his eyes—within reach of his hand—You may think I’m crazy, perhaps I am—crazy about you, anyway—but I’m not as crazy as that. Or too crazy. I don’t care what you think!”

  He put the handkerchief in his pocket.

  She said, all the anger gone, “Oh, Tom, I’m so unhappy.”

  That reached him. He went over and dropped to his knees beside her, and put his arms around her.

  “I’m sorry I said what I did, honey,” he told her. “You know I didn’t mean it. I was sore, that’s all.”

  She touched the scratch with her fingers, put her lips to it gently.

  “I’m sorry too.” She laughed shakily. “I didn’t know I had such a temper. Why, if my own mother had seen me, she’d have spanked me and put me to bed—”

  “I could do that,” he told her confidently.

  “No, don’t—but Tom, what shall we do? Oh,” she told him hopelessly, “I didn’t see any other way out. I was so happy, planning; and then Sarah knocked that house of cards to smithereens. And so I figured if I could get another job—and you agreed with me. And I then thought of Dwight—no, Jennie thought of him—”

  “She would,” commented Tom grimly.

  “And I went there; and he was so nice, so awfully nice; and I thought, it’s the solution. I’m sure it is—

  “But it wasn’t,” she added, after a minute.