Roger received Belle's note telling him that Anne had left town and
asking him to make some arrangement about the cottage in the same mail
that he received the legal notice of Anne's action. Both letters were
on his desk when he came back to the loft after dinner to work as he
had done every night since that sudden, quiet ending of everything
between himself and Anne.
He opened Belle's first and read it slowly, surprise changing rapidly
to anger.
Anne had gone away. Where, for how long, why, alone or with Rogie?
Belle did not say. The few lines breathed possession of Anne, pushed
him aside from all interest or concern in her movements.
Anne had left the cottage and gone away. He was to do what he liked
with the place. Evidently the past with its memory was too distasteful
to Anne. She was going to begin somewhere else. For a moment Roger felt
a touch of the old anxiety, the need to look after Anne, manage and
arrange for her; the feeling that she was too frail and fair to look
out for herself, the feeling that had amused Anne so in the days of
their engagement when, if she were a little late in meeting him, he was
always afraid that something terrible had happened.
It passed and was gone, blotted in his clear understanding of how
perfectly well Anne was able to look out for herself. That frail
fairness, that delicate sensitiveness behind which she tripped with
such deep assurance of herself, was almost a masque in the completeness
with which it hid the real Anne. Life would present no problem that
would trouble or perplex her. With the scalpel of her assurance she
would delicately remove all emotion, all passion, all hot, human
weakness, wrap it neatly in her own conceit, label it and forever after
know exactly where she had put it.
Roger drew a sheet of paper to him and began writing to Belle. At
least she had no right to withhold information of his son. But when
he had written two angry pages he read them and tore them up. Finally
in words, as blunt and straightforward as Belle, he demanded to know
Rogie's whereabouts. When this was sealed and addressed, he pushed it
aside to mail when he went out, and picked up the other letter.
He read it only this once and then it fluttered between his knees and
lay upon the floor. His chin dropped to his breast, his lips closed in
a hard line. Now that Anne had done this thing, his own surprise in not
having thought of the possibility was lost in his understanding of how
perfectly this action expressed Anne.
When two people loved, they came together in legal sanction.
When they no longer loved, they separated legally.
Anne would no more live apart without the ceremony of divorce than she
would have lived with him without the ceremony of marriage.
Anne had tidied the situation.
She had instituted her action for divorce and gone away. She had put
the little period of her standard to the past, blotted the paper and
ordered it sent to him. It was almost like sending him a receipt for
the old love, the months of bickering strain, itemized and receipted in
full.
Roger made a strange little noise, a kind of choking grunt of
amusement, anger and hurt. Across the loft Katya looked up. The
clicking of her machine stopped suddenly. Over it she gazed at Roger
with passionate longing, pain and anger and tenderness in her small
brown eyes.
Roger was in trouble. He never sat so, his head bowed, his hands
clenched like that. For days Katya had felt something in him that
eluded her; something strange had entered their relationship, the
old frankness was gone. It had gone from the night she counseled his
leaving Anne, but they had not mentioned the subject again, and since
then Katya had moved in an uncertainty of his motive that had been like
a stone wall about her. At every move she had touched it and it had
sent strange hopes and fears through her.
Now, she leaned across her machine, her lips parted. Something was
forming from these days of uncertainty, coming toward her. Katya held
her place before her machine by an effort that at last forced from
her a low cry. At the sound, Roger turned slowly toward her, his own
problem in his eyes. They looked so for a moment at each other, then
Katya's hands trembled and she rose. His muscles had answered, but his
real concern was far away. Her lips quivered.
"What is it?" she demanded angrily. "Why are you staring at me like
that?"
Her voice drew Roger's consciousness. He shook his head as if
physically throwing aside something that held him in its grip and said
with pitiful assumption of his usual cheerfulness:
"Was I staring at you unpleasantly, Katya? I beg your pardon. I didn't
mean to."
Katya came toward him. If she did not reach physical proximity, in a
moment the old camaraderie would rise and shut off this thing Katya
felt forming for the first time clearly between them. Coming to the
window ledge, the same ledge on which she had counseled his leaving
Anne, Katya lit a cigarette and said with forced calm:
"What's the matter? Can I help?"
"N-o--nothing's the matter. I----" Roger broke off.
"You're lying," Katya replied calmly. "Something has happened.
Something--very--big to you."
For a second Roger stiffened in resentment of her assurance. It was
like the first time he had ever seen her, when her certainty had
annoyed him. Then the memory of all the past months of friendship and
understanding, shamed the insincerity of denial. He picked the lawyer's
letter from the floor and handed it to her. Katya read it and without
the least change of expression returned it, but her whole squat body
trembled violently and only by drawing deeply on the cigarette could
she maintain an outward semblance of poise.
Roger sat fingering the letter. Now that he was sharing this with
Katya, emotion was rapidly chilling to intellectual speculation.
What would have happened between him and Anne if they had not done
this thing? Would they really have adjusted in time? Would they have
bickered to weariness and dropped at last from spiritual exhaustion to
any compromise that held outward peace? Would he have fallen to the
revolting relationship suggested by Katya?
Why had Katya said that? From her knowledge of him or from her own
experience? She had spoken so earnestly, as if her certainty were a
concrete thing she was thrusting into his keeping. It was no general
warning gathered from vague reflection of life or observation. Katya
knew--either herself or him to the deepest recesses.
What was the source of Katya's knowledge?
She was so wise and still and dark, like the night. Gazing at her
now, Roger felt as if he were gazing into the well of human impulse,
weakness and strength. In it lay understanding of the death of love
between himself and Anne.
"What is it?" she demanded turning suddenly from the night outside.
"I was thinking of something you said to me and wondering why you said
it."
"Yes. What was it I said?"
"You said that if I did not separate from Anne I would stay and----"
It was difficult to say even to Katya and he stumbled, annoyed at the
touch of scorn that came to Katya's eyes. It was like the first look
she had ever given him,--the nice small boy who had called a silly
meeting. "That there would be other children," he flung at her, "and
that I would then see my duty clearer to stay. Did you mean that I was
so bound in physical ties that I could not break them. Is that what you
meant?"
Katya nodded. "If you hadn't separated, what else? If you had gone
on living with her, you would have gone on 'loving.' Nothing else is
possible. And because you are an idealist and must have harmony, you
would have tied together the soul and body, because only so would you
not have been ashamed before yourself. You would have done what many
millions have done and will do till Time ends. You would have come
to deny the existence of Love. You would have talked of the death of
physical passion and the survival of something else, in the large vague
words that dead souls use, like you talked of 'adjusting.' You would
have stifled the body because you could not make it one with the soul.
Or--you would have stifled the soul. With you I do not know--which it
would have been I am not sure. But now your soul has a chance. Perhaps,
some day, you will find another woman and then----"
"Never," Roger began vehemently, and stopped.
After all, who could say? He had not meant to marry until years later
than he did. He had meant to go to many countries and do many things
alone. He had not even thought of Anne in that way, half an hour before
they stood alone among the dunes, and his need had shaped itself from
the wind and fog.
"Perhaps," Katya said slowly, "it will be never. I am not sure. Perhaps
you will never love. I do not know."
She was looking at him with faint bitterness and his interest in her
certainty hardened to impatience. "Perhaps I won't," he said shortly,
"since, according to you, so few people even know what it is. Why
should I expect to be one of the chosen few?"