The days passed. Roger did not mention Merle. He was often at the
office now in the evening and Anne knew he and Tom were working harder
than ever. Some Hindoo revolutionists had been arrested and an almost
hopeless fight to free them was under way. Picturesque men with sad,
dark eyes came to the cottage to talk to Roger, and Roger made quick
trips to adjoining towns to see strange men in secret places.
One day, about a month after Anne had met Merle, Roger came home
earlier than he had come for some time, and very gay. He had succeeded
in getting an appeal for the Hindoo revolutionists and that was more
than any one had expected.
"Tom's like a small boy. I never saw him so excited."
"And Merle, I suppose, is flitting all over the place, trying to talk
Hindustani?"
"No. Merle isn't 'round these days. I haven't seen her for weeks. She's
been dodging work for some time, coming and going when she liked. Come
to think of it, I don't believe she's been there at all for ages. Katya
was saying something about getting another stenographer. Merle's bad
enough, but she was better than nothing."
"Katya'd better go ahead and get one then, because Merle won't come
back. She's gone away with another man."
The amazement in Roger's eyes struck at Anne's control. Merle was
right. She had flitted among them and flitted away. Concerned with the
affairs of distant India, Roger did not even know it. And he had liked
Merle with her gay slang, her flippant comment.
"Do you suppose that Tom O'Connell has happened to notice she's gone?
Perhaps you'd better not tell him. He may never find it out at all."
"So--that--was it," Roger said slowly, putting together the pieces of
a puzzle that had caught his attention the day after Tom's return from
the South. "Poor Tom--poor old Tom. But it had to come. Merle had gone
as far as she could--and Tom couldn't stay behind."
"Certainly not," Anne said quietly, "an Indian woman in Burmah might
have died."
"What? What about an Indian woman?"
But Anne did not answer. She was afraid she might cry, and after a
brief pause Roger went back to the thing that had puzzled him.
"I saw Tom, the day after he came back, sitting all bowed over his
desk. It was late in the evening and the others had gone. He was
expecting me, but he never moved when I came in and I thought he was
ill. I went over to him and he looked up. I never saw a man so torn.
His face was ash-gray and those lines he always has down the sides of
his mouth were deep like scars. And his eyes, they were like a hurt
dog's, so dumb and crushed and puzzled. He didn't even try to cheer up,
just said: 'I won't be doing any work to-night; I don't feel well.' I
said something about getting him a drink, but he shook his head and I
went. I was rather afraid--he was going to cry."
"It wouldn't have hurt him if he had," Anne said in a hard whisper.
"He's killed Merle's soul, and if she goes to the dogs it will be his
fault."
"Killed Merle's soul? She never had one, at least not much of a one."
"No. There are no individual souls, I suppose; just one great, big
world soul--though what it's made of if it isn't individual souls, I
don't know."
Roger moved impatiently, but when he spoke it was with weary acceptance:
"You never liked Tom. You never understood him, the real man, or tried
to."
"No? I understand what he claims to be, but not what he is."
"What is he?"
"A monomaniac." The word slipped from Anne and frightened her.
"I don't know what you mean, Anne."
"He's gone mad on social injustice, just as mad as any capitalist has
on accumulating money. He's lost all sense of individual values. He's a
machine, a machine for fighting for his own theory."
Roger's lips set. It brought the squareness of his chin into terrible
relief. "Roger's the same stuff, floating around in the clouds with
those blue eyes and that square chin." Anne's body began to quiver, but
she kept her eyes steady.
"Let's not talk about it. We don't agree."
"Evidently not. There don't seem to be many things we do agree about
any more."
Anne tried to speak gayly. Otherwise the tears would come. But she
sounded like Hilda Mitchell, pecking at a tragedy with her silly giggle.
"Not many," Roger said shortly. "I've got to go back to the office and
I may be late. Don't wait up for me."
He kissed Anne as usual, and as usual she went as far as the door with
him. But long after his step had died she stood looking out over the
city's lights, lonelier than she had ever been in all her life.
She remembered coming home with Roger once, very late, on just such a
night. They had sat hand in hand, far in the prow of the almost empty
ferry, and Anne's head had rested on his shoulder. She was tired after
a happy day, one of the old picnics they had found time to take. She
had been glad of the lights coming nearer and they had traced the
row up their own hill. The twinkling lights had beckoned them to the
warm, human comfort of others. Now they burned on indifferent to her,
lighting the way for hurrying crowds, the creeping, inimical confusion
of the world. The twinkling lights lit the ways of men and men were
cruel.
Anne went in and sat down before the fire, without turning on the lamp.
It was so still she could hear her own thoughts moving about her.
Gradually, from the rustling crowd, one emerged:
"I've been through it. You wait and see."