Another night he seemed to be trying to fit an endless throng to shoes.
He was upon his knees, and they came up before him tirelessly out of a
void. Stella wakened and crept, trembling a little, to the door opening
into the “parlour.” Here the air was heavy with fumes. He throve best in
such an atmosphere.
She listened, enthralled in a way. Stella was coming to feel almost
impartial, like an outsider—an outsider even to herself.
Her husband’s voice drifted to her, hollow and touchingly patient; but
sometimes it sounded a little eager, too—as when he urged:
“Madam, I think you could wear an A quite as well as a B. Have you ever
tried? The foot is really narrower than you think. Let me try on one of
the newest lasts in an A, and if it doesn’t feel comfortable, we’ll try
a B instead. I think you’ll find this suede quite satisfactory, and it
goes so well with almost every gown.”
Stella was amazed. She remembered an occasion when he had spoken of her
feet with singular intelligence, and felt a tiny stir of interest in her
deadened heart—even determined that she would speak to him about it.
The next day she chanced to find him brooding over the book in which
he had long ceased recording the progress of opium culture on Hagen’s
Island. There was a far-away look in his eyes—a look of great stillness;
and she knew he was under the brief delicious spell of recent indulgence.
“Ferd,” she said, sitting down near him and trying dully to occupy her
fingers with some mending, “you talked all night about shoes—do you
remember?”
At first a vaguely startled expression came into his eyes, and she had a
sudden sense of danger—even drew back a little, instinctively. But the
expression changed to one of such utter serenity that it grew in time
to—almost an ashen radiance.
“Oh, yes,” he murmured, gazing at her musingly as she sat, her needle
busy. His body shook all over in a light yet constant way. And he
repeated, very dreamily: “Oh, yes. I remember. There were so many—all
sorts of people—and they came in a line that seemed to stretch clear
off to the end of the world.” He sighed. “Sometimes it seemed as though
I never could take care of so many. But I was all alone, and there was
nothing else to do.”
“Strange,” she said.
“What did you say, Stella?”
“I was thinking how strange it is you should have had a dream like
that....” Her voice sounded flat and monotonous to her. She realized,
even as she spoke, how little it mattered.
“Strange?” he repeated, still dreamily.
He had the look of a man who feels eternity rolling all around him.
He sat like a Buddhist figure, and the radiance in his face took on
a sublime, translucent quality. Exaltation held his soul poised and
untortured in a realm of breathlessness and peace. And he smiled,
for suddenly it seemed to him that his whole life hung together like
some perfect fabric, and that all that had entered it was somehow
essential—even beautiful and almost holy. He laughed, a soft, murmuring
laugh, terrible in its uncanny detachment, and rocked gently back and
forth. His mind grew immeasurably clear and calm. Then his lips began
moving, a flood of words fell about her—a soft, astounding, irresistible
flood. And she sat there, amazed, trembling, almost under a spell.