Partners (2 page)

His tone was businesslike, and the girl murmured a street address gratefully. "Third floor, back," she said.

"Is there a telephone there?"

"No," she said sadly.

"Well, who is there? Any of your family?"

"Just--my little brother--" she said in a tone of anguish.

"Oh, don't worry!" said Reuben smiling. "He'll be all right. Boys always get along all right. I'll see that he understands and doesn't worry."

"But"--a wave of almost terror passed over the girl's white face--"but he's only five years old, and there isn't a thing in the room to eat!"

"Oh, that's different!" said Reuben, suppressing an involuntary whistle. "Well, now don't you worry the least bit. I'll look after the kid. I give you my word of honor. Kids and I always get on. We'll be buddies till you get back."

"That's kind of you--" she murmured with an effort, "but I can't let you do that. You have your work. This is mine, and I must attend to it."

There was a sweet dignity about her even in her weakness that made Reuben look at her with respect.

"Well, but look here, sister, you are sick and not able to carry on just now. I'm sorry, but I guess you'll have to trust me."

"Oh, it isn't that!" said the girl desperately. "You don't understand. He's only five, and you have a big job here. You can't leave your job and look after my brother all day!"

"Well, you see, sister, I happen to be going on vacation tomorrow, a whole month, and I'll have plenty of leisure on my hands. Besides, who looks after him while you are off at work?"

"I take him to the day nursery before I come. They bring him back at five."

"That sounds easy enough, and if worse comes to worst, I guess I'm as good as a day nursery any day. Now, look here, sister, when did you have your lunch?"

"She didn't go out for lunch today," said Evelyn Howe, who was standing by. "She hardly ever does."

"I'm never hungry at noontime," said the girl on the floor apologetically.

"I thought so," uttered Reuben under his breath. "Look here, sister, that's no way to look after a little brother. A dead sister isn't much protection against the world. Now listen, this has got to stop right here, and you've got to get fit to carry on your job. Sammy," he said to the office boy across the aisle, "run down to the restaurant hot foot before that ambulance gets here, and bring me up a cup of hot tea and some toast. Or would you rather have coffee?" He turned to the sick girl, but she shook her head.

"Tea," she said breathlessly.

"All right, Sammy, tea it is, and maybe a glass of milk, and make it snappy. It's on the boss. He put me in charge."

The girl gasped and looked troubled.

"I--mustn't--lose my job!" she said desperately.

"I give you my word you won't lose your job for this," said Reuben with a restful smile. "Boys, what's the matter with bringing in that little couch from the break room?"

The girl put on a look of protest, but the two young men hurried away and presently returned with a small couch from the nearby break room. Reuben promptly lifted the girl upon it. The tray was on hand almost at once, and Reuben lifted the girl's head and held the cup of hot tea for her to drink.

A few swallows and the color began to steal slowly back to her white face. Reuben knelt there beside the couch feeding her bits of toast.

While she was eating, the hall door swung open and a doctor and nurse entered, followed by two orderlies carrying a stretcher, but the girl was lying with her face away from the door and did not see them until they were upon her.

"Oh!" she said, sitting up suddenly as she recognized what they were. "I don't need a doctor. I'm quite all right now. I--shouldn't have tried to work so long--without food."

"No, that never pays," said the doctor's grave voice. "Lie down, won't you, till I see what condition your heart is in. Nurse, get the temperature and pulse." The girl fell back on the couch with a look of despair as the doctor got out his stethoscope and made his examination. The typists in the big office ceased their copying and were quietly at some other service for the moment. It was very still in the big room, while the workers watched furtively the quiet girl who had come among them so unobtrusively, a few months before.

It was over very quickly, and the girl was transferred to the stretcher, the orderlies lifting it and carrying her from the office. Then behind the swinging doors that shut her out from them, all their tongues began to buzz.

"Well, I thought there was something strange about her, her color was so pasty," said Norah Whately. "I wonder what she's saving money for?"

"Didn't you hear?" said Peg Howard. "She's got a young brother to support, I suppose. Poor thing! If she'd been a little less closemouthed, we might have helped her some."

But out in the hall waiting for the freight elevator, the girl on the stretcher was much excited. By a supreme effort she lifted herself to a sitting posture, then tried to stand, till the intern gently pressed her back to the cot again.

"Lady, you must lie still if you don't want to pass out on the way to the hospital."

"But--I must go--home. I cannot leave--my little----brother alone! He will not under–stand!"

Her breath was very short. She could scarcely make her words heard. Except for her excitement she would not have been able to speak above a whisper.

"Now, look here, girlie!" said the handsome young intern, holding her firmly down to her cot and speaking with command in his voice. "This gentleman here is going to look after that brother of yours, and everything is going to be all right. You've got to go to the hospital at once, see?" And he smiled amiably at her.

She gave him a frightened look, and her glance hurried around the group beside her till she found Reuben. So eagerly her eyes spoke to him that he answered her at once by stepping to her side, stooping to speak in a low tone.

"It's all right, sister," he said reassuringly. "I've got the address, number Ten-Seventeen North Fresco Street, third floor, back. Is that right? And the boy's name is Noel Guthrie? Is he there now? Not till five fifteen?"

Reuben glanced at his watch.

"Then I'll have time to go with you to the hospital and see you located first," he said thoughtfully. "Does he always come promptly?"

She shook her head. "Sometimes not till six. But he'll have no supper. I was going to get the supper on my way home. But I have to stop at the desk and get my pay envelope. Oh!" And she fell back on the cot in despair. "Oh, I must go to the desk! I haven't
any
money!"

The girls had brought her coat and hat from the cloakroom and her purse from the desk drawer before she left the office, and now she opened her purse wildly and began to feel frantically for the quarter she thought she had left to pay for Noel's day at the nursery.

"That's all right, Miss Guthrie," said Reuben. "I'll see to that. But you must have money, of course. Sammy"--turning to the office boy, who was still in evidence--"run down to Mr. Ensigner and ask for Miss Guthrie's pay envelope. Meet us at the freight elevator door right away."

Then Reuben turned back to the girl as the elevator arrived, and smiled gravely down at her.

"It's all right, Miss Guthrie. Sam will bring your envelope, and as for the boy's supper, I'll look after that. Would you feel better if I went right away to the day nursery and called for your brother?"

"No," gasped the girl, "they wouldn't give him to you. I've told them never to let anybody else have him."

"Where is this day nursery, girlie?" asked the intern. "Down on Third Street? Because we could stop and pick him up now, if that will make you feel any better. They'll give him to us if they see you."

"Oh! Will you do that?" The girl's face fairly bloomed with relief. "Oh, you are very kind. He would be terribly frightened if I didn't explain to him." There were tears of relief on her face.

"Okay, girlie, we'll do that little thing!" said the pleasant young intern, and he motioned to the orderlies to lift the stretcher. Then he turned to Reuben as they went into the elevator, and said a few words in a low tone to him, and Reuben bowed gravely.

Sam was on hand as the elevator arrived at the first floor, produced the pay envelope in good order, and Reuben handed it over to the girl quietly and helped her put it in her purse.

"Now," he said as he left her in the ambulance, "we're off for the day nursery! Don't you worry! I'll be seeing you, and I'll take good care of the kid!"

Then he slipped around and rode in the front seat with the driver. This was the first opportunity he had had since he picked up the girl in the aisle ahead of him to realize just what all this was going to mean to him.

For a month past, since ever he had been told he was to have a month's vacation, Reuben Remington had been happily looking forward to it. A respite at last from the hard grind of work!

Not that he didn't like the work. He did. Even when his mother died and dashed all his bright hopes of making a happy home for her, he had been glad and thankful for that hard work and had plunged himself into it with all his soul that he might forget that she was gone. It had helped him to concentrate on something besides himself and his own loneliness. And especially since he had begun to succeed in what he was trying to do. Since the men who were immediately over him had commended him, at first charily and at last unqualifiedly, and he had been recommended for a promotion, he had reveled in his job, reaching out ever higher, more ambitiously. Not that there was any special reason to rise any more now that his mother was gone and there was no immediate friend or relative to care. It was just that he wanted to do the thing he had set out to do; he wanted to justify his promises to his mother.

But as the days had hurried on, bringing him only more and more duties with no letup in view, he had grown weary. He had sometimes tried to think ahead and see what it was all about.

Undoubtedly he could make friends, and perhaps now was the time he needed them. He had supposed they would come when there was time for them, and he had been willing to wait. He had gotten in the habit of hoarding his strength, because he had felt that was his only capital, and what leisure he had he had filled with reading and study, because there were courses that he had not had opportunity to study deeply in college and he felt his lack in them now. He had never been in the habit of playing since his high school days. There had always been something important to do, although in the back of his mind there had always been an indefinable longing for it; he was always promising himself that the day would come when good times would be his again, just as they had been when he was a child and had a father and mother to think for him and provide needful amusement.

But now suddenly he was up against a vacation, and that ought to mean a good time. He was breathless with the thought of it, wondering what he was going to do with it.

Should he take up the time in travel? He had saved his salary, such part of it as had not been needed for his exceedingly modest expenses, with a view to a pleasant interval when the time should come. Should he travel and see some of the country's notable sights? Great buildings and bridges, and feats of engineering? He had enough for a limited amount of that without making himself penniless. And, of course, such sightseeing as that would be along the lines of his business and would be valuable to his work. But somehow he shrank from a vacation that had a business reason. He wanted something entirely different. He sensed that he was getting into a rut and needed to get out and meet people, to develop along new lines. In fact, Mr. Rand had told him that one day when he had been asking him questions about his ambitions and plans. He hadn't thought much of it at the time. It had seemed to him always that Mr. Rand was a very worldly man and his advice was to be taken with care along such lines. His standards and ideals would be so different from the ideals and standards of Reuben's father and mother that he regarded them with question. Reuben hadn't got so far yet from his family traditions that he wanted to give them up entirely. Perhaps all the more because he missed his family and his native surroundings. So he had not swallowed Mr. Rand's suggestion whole, and here he was, up against a real vacation at last, and with no place to go.

Oh, of course there were places. There were mountains and shores, and attractive cruises, and resorts for amusement, but none of them so far had quite clinched with Reuben.

Just recently something had happened, quite new and bewildering. Anise Glinden, the peppy, smart daughter of Mr. Glinden, the head of the firm, had come to his office, bursting in upon his quiet, busy hours most unexpectedly. He hadn't known her very well before. She had been away to college, with summers abroad, and had just recently appeared on the scene, a full-fledged college graduate, with a coming-out party soon and society waiting breathlessly to receive her and absorb her. She wore the latest thing in garments, and her face was illuminated brilliantly, her hair a shining helmet, her voice breezy, nonchalant, impudent. He hadn't considered her at all as being in the world where he lived and moved and was expecting to continue on as such for some years to come.

But she had breezed into his office and addressed him with all the familiarity of one who had a right to give him orders.

"Oh, Reuben!" she had said without waiting for him to greet her. "Dad says you're having a vacation next week. Beginning when?"

Reuben looked up with a smile and something of sunny anticipation in his eyes and answered laconically: "Tomorrow!"

"Grand!" said Anise. "That just suits my plans!" Her face was joyously radiant.

Reuben watched her in astonishment.

"Your plans?" he questioned with quick amazement. What did that mean? Was she planning to wrest his job away for someone else? Was she going to try to put one of her sophisticated friends in his place? The amusement went out of his glance, and a look of gravity lurked in his eyes.

"Yes," said Anise. "I hope you hadn't any ironclad plans of your own, because if you do, you have to change them, see? What were you planning to do? Where were you going?"