"Not a fly," Belle said with a pretense of serious consideration,
"no, not a fly. A little moth with gold dust all over it, one of the
shimmery kind that looks as if it were going to fall apart if you
touched it."
"And never does, but crawls right alone even after it's burnt off its
wings."
Anne realized the possible interpretation and flushed, but if Belle had
caught this meaning, she said nothing, and a few minutes later went.
As Anne closed the door behind Belle, and came back again up the stairs
alone, a little of the courage that she had sincerely felt her own
while she and Belle stood before the fire died away. Again before the
tiny heap of gray ashes, Anne forced down the tears with an effort.
Was her new-found peace to be so easily disturbed? She had been back
in the city only a little over a week, and already this going of Belle
made her feel so terribly alone. Anne went to the window and opened it
wide. Perhaps the touch of night would bring that throbbing, silent
assurance of companionship. With her elbows on the sill Anne gazed to
the triangle of twinkling lights at the base of the dark hills across
the bay. Faintly the murmur of the city came to her, but her hands
clenched and it took all her strength to keep back the tears.
She was a part of it. But such a little part.
"I won't be lonely," she whispered fiercely. "I won't. I WON'T."
But the resolution flitted away into the blackness and left Anne tense
with her own vehemence. She closed the window quickly and went into the
other room. Between the cool sheets she tried to relax, to immerse her
body in the vast, eternal unity of all-living, but she was conscious
only of the effort and after a while she gave up trying to relax and
let her thought go where it would.
It went straight to Roger. What had these months done to Roger? They
had done so much to her, it seemed impossible that Roger could be
just the same. And yet, she hoped he was. The old Roger she felt now
she understood. A new Roger might be very strange. At first the new
relationship that had to be between them would be difficult, and, with
another Roger, perhaps impossible.
No, Roger must be just the same, have the same sweeping enthusiasm, the
same impatience, the same intolerance of prejudice not his own. Until
she had gripped more firmly her own peace, she could risk no change in
Roger. At last the tightness in her muscles eased and Anne fell asleep
a little comforted in her decision to write to Roger before the end of
the week.
But the end of the week came and went and Anne had not written.
Every evening she had tried and in the morning destroyed the letter.
Some were tinged with memory, the others almost belligerent in their
indifferent brevity. The second week she did not even try but convinced
herself that the mood would descend upon her suddenly and she would
tell Roger of her return and suggest his coming to see Rogie with
exactly the right degree of friendly interest.
But the mood did not come, although Anne waited for it, in the same
bodily relaxation in which Charlotte Welles entered The Silence. By the
beginning of the fourth week after her return, this need to communicate
with Roger and the impossibility of doing it, was destroying her
peace and absorbing every waking thought. That she managed to do her
work well, was only because the old power of mechanical attention had
returned. Often Anne read through the transcriptions of her employer's
dictation and wondered at this subconscious power that permitted her to
quote correctly prices and invoices, write intelligently of fruits and
vegetables, while her whole consciousness was concerned in forming a
letter to Roger.
Once she thought she saw Roger on the street, and, although she would
have grasped eagerly this solution if it had occurred to her before,
now she turned and went rapidly in the other direction. But no sooner
had she lost the possibility--if it had been really Roger--than she
wished with her whole heart that she had faced certainty. She began
looking for him everywhere, hoping and then dreading to meet him. From
walking in places where the possibility of meeting might occur, she
swung to going and coming by circuitous ways, angry with herself for
her own indecision, touched sometimes even to anger at Roger.
Finally, at the beginning of the fifth week, in exhaustion of her
own irresolution, Anne wrote and without rereading or waiting for
morning counsel, went out and dropped the note in the letter box.
And then began a period of waiting that made the weeks preceding
seem full of calm certainty. Now Anne was so sharply conscious of two
selves within her, that, at times, she could almost visibly see them
both. One went to and from work, wrote letters, cared for her rooms,
attended to Rogie, talked quietly with Mrs. Jeffries. The other did
nothing, nothing at all, except wait. This self emerged to control at
the postman's coming in the morning; when she opened the door in the
evening and looked first to the hat-stand to see if there was a letter;
and at night when she lay in bed trying to find a reason for Roger's
silence. For Roger did not answer.
The days filled to a week, two, three.
When, a few days before Christmas, Anne came home one night to find
Mrs. Jeffries crying in the kitchen, her first reaction was almost
relief that something had happened that would call upon her for some
quality besides the petrifying patience of waiting in which she felt
her brain rapidly numbing to a living death.
"What is it? What has happened?"
In the comfort of companionship, Mrs. Jeffries looked up from the table
where she had been sitting in the dark, her head buried in her arms.
"My sister's dead. Little Lucy----"
Anne knelt and put her arm about the heaving shoulders. The older woman
clung in a renewed passion of sobs and Anne held her quietly until they
eased. At last Mrs. Jeffries looked up.
"There are three children, the youngest only five and John doesn't know
what to do."
"You'll have to go to them?"
"Yes--I must go. John and Lucy adored each other--they were like lovers
always. Poor--John--he's so lost--he doesn't seem able to grasp it. He
says----" She reached to the letter lying as she had dropped it two
hours before.
"Don't--don't, please, really, I'd rather not." Anne took the letter
from her quickly and laid it back on the table.
Mrs. Jeffries shuddered. "They loved each other so. Why did she have
to be taken? He and the children need her so. And she was so strong,
stronger than I have ever been. Nobody needs me. But Lucy--one moment
well and laughing--the next----"
In the cold darkness of the unlit kitchen Anne saw old Mary and
Timothy smiling at each other as they pictured "going out sudden into
the midst of things." She held the quivering form again until it
quieted. Mrs. Jeffries wiped her eyes at last and tried to consider
Anne.
"How will you manage? Can you get some one to look after Rogie? I may
be away some time. I may bring the children back with me. I don't know.
I feel as if everything has changed so; I'm bewildered."
"Don't think of me, I'll manage. Perhaps I can get Mrs. Horton, the
woman I used to have, to come up until we see what we're going to do.
But you mustn't think about me, or consider me at all. Promise that you
won't. I wish I could do something."
"You are doing something. You always have ever since you came. You
don't know what it's meant to have you and Rogie round though I haven't
seen much of you. I believe I was freezing up clear through--until he
came."
"I'm glad you've liked having us. It's meant a great deal to me to know
some one was looking after Rogie as you have done."
Mrs. Jeffries put the letter away and rose wearily. Without having
taken off her things, Anne went out again. In an hour she had arranged
with Mrs. Horton.