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Book 2Five
Lucy was going slowly along the street in the centre of the town, approaching the Platte Valley Bank. She had in her handbag a draft from Chicago, for the balance she had left on deposit there. She had been carrying this draft about for more than a week, passing and repassing the bank in the hope of seeing Harry Gordon at the cashier`s window and surprising him before he could retreat to his private office. This morning she looked in once again as she went by; Milton Chase, the young cashier, was at the window. Lucy walked deliberately on to the end of the main street, and went into the Union Pacific railway station.
After lingering about the waiting-room for a while, reading the posters, she walked back to the bank. There stood Harry in the cashier`s cage. It was bound to happen some time. She went in quickly, straight to the window.
"Good morning, Harry. Can I open a very small account with you while I am at home?"
"Why, certainly! Milton," he called over his shoulder to his cashier, "a moment, please."
Milton came, and Harry stepped aside and motioned him to the window. Then he spoke directly to Milton, in his best business manner. "Miss Gayheart wants to open an account with us. Just fix her up with a pass-book. And I want you to give her your personal attention. Anything we can do to accommodate her, we`ll be glad to do, you understand." With this he left the cage.
Lucy did not know what followed, except that she came out of the bank with a pass-book and a little cheque-book in her bag. So this, too, had failed.
She had thought if she could confront Harry at the window she would have courage to ask him to see her in his private office for a moment, and she would tell him--she did not know exactly what. Perhaps she would make him understand that she had told him a falsehood in the dining-room of the Auditorium that night. And she would ask him if he couldn`t feel kindly toward her, for old times` sake, and speak kindly when they happened to meet. That was all she wanted, and it would mean a great deal to her.
And why, she wondered, as she walked home blindly, her eyes turned inward, would it mean so much? She didn`t know. Perhaps it was an illusion, like the feeling she had in Chicago that if she once got home she wouldn`t suffer so much. Perhaps it was because he was big and strong, and a little hard. He knew the world better than anyone else here, he had some imagination. He rose and fell, he was alive, he moved. He was not anchored, he was not lazy, he was not a sheep. Conceited and canny he was most days of the month; but on occasion something flashed out of him. There was a man underneath all those layers of caution; he wasn`t tame at the core. If he should put his hand on her, or look directly into her eyes and flash the old signal, she believed it would waken something and start the machinery going to carry her along.
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