1
FOR some hours after sending his reply to Rose-Ann, Felix kept his mind
steeled against any realization of its consequences. He was in a
peculiar state of righteousness—like one who has struck a fatal blow and
keeps insisting that he has been struck first. To him, his letter to
Rose-Ann appeared but the reflex of her own—and she, as it were, the
author of both letters. Yes, the crime was hers!
But just what this crime was, he still managed to keep from
realizing—even when, after mailing his letter and sitting for an hour in
a kind of stupour at his desk, he rose, took a book from the shelf, and
went away to find a room. The book was “The Bab Ballads.”
He took the Illinois Central in, and a north side elevated train out
again, as though seeking to be as far as possible from the studio.
He got off, at a venture, at Wilson Avenue, and within an hour found
a small apartment of two rooms and bath, furnished “for
light-housekeeping,” situated over a coffee-and-tea store, three
flights up. It had a fairly large sitting room at the front. He
noticed a small book case filled with sets of “The Ivanhoe Novels”
and “The Complete Works of Bulwer-Lytton.” Felix told the fat
middle-aged woman from the store who showed it to him that he would
want the bookcase for books of his own, but not immediately; he
remarked that he would probably buy some of her coffee in the
morning to make his breakfast on; and assured her that he would not
set the hot cup on the bare table-top, which she said was real
mahogany and had been left her by a deceased roomer whom she had
looked after when he was sick. When she had gone, leaving him the
keys, Felix put the Bab Ballads in between the Waverly Novels and
the Complete Works of Bulwer-Lytton, and sat down in an old
plush-upholstered chair, to make himself at home.
In a few minutes there was a knock—it was the fat woman from the store,
who had brought him up a pound of her best coffee.
“Not that I want to bother you,” she said. “You needn’t be afraid I’ll
be knocking at your door and keeping watch of your comings and
goings—live and let live, is what I say. But I knew from the way you
spoke of coffee that you really liked it, and I just thought I’d bring
you some for your breakfast. A man that makes his own coffee knows what
coffee is—isn’t that so!”
He thanked her, and sat down to look out of the window. The interest of
the room itself had been exhausted; it was empty equally of memories and
of hopes; it was just so many dismal square feet of space. He had
uprooted himself from the place in which he had lived for months that
were like years, and years that were like lifetimes; he had lived in
that studio—really lived in it; he was living there now, in his
thoughts; it would take longer to uproot his mind from that place than
it had his body. And yet—he could foresee the time, incredible though it
was, when that studio life with Rose-Ann would be only a memory, a part
of his past ... like his life with his Iowa sweetheart during their
brief idyl, years ago. Yes, the time would come when all this, that was
now so warm and near, would be dim and remote; a time when it would no
longer hurt him to think about it all....
As he sat there facing the window, looking out unseeingly at the lighted
facade of the building opposite, the strains of dance music reached him,
and he saw couples float past the windows of the hall on the floor
opposite his own. He watched and listened with a kind of dull
fascination, for a long time.... He was very tired. He thought of going
to bed. But that music from across the street would never stop—it would
keep on with its silly gaiety hour after hour.
He rose at last and went out. He was going to his work-room. He could
spend several hours cleaning up there—destroying manuscripts he didn’t
want to keep, reducing the amount of things to be moved to a minimum.
Phyllis might be in her room.... He thought of her there, and the
thought comforted him. He saw her again, in his thoughts, as he had seen
her first—serene and kind and strong. It was good to think of her.
Still his mind did not quite encompass the situation. It was as though
something had happened to him—something stupendous, terrible, and almost
unbearable, like the death of a beloved friend—something not wholly to
be realized. And it had the resistlessness of some such event; he did
not conceive it as something within his power to alter or prevent—nor in
any sense as something which he had done himself. If he had thought of
himself as having done this thing, he might have thought of undoing it.
But it was a thing which had happened, like an earthquake....
In his room he gathered up fragments of manuscript—jottings of ideas,
efforts, experiments, unfinished things—and tore them up after a casual
glance. There would be little to take with him. That was good.... He had
the feeling that a new life had begun for him, a life at which he still
stared in vague bewilderment, like a creature painfully new-born into an
uncomprehended world.
2
He could hear Phyllis moving about on the other side of the partition.
He finished his work; the wastebasket was full of torn manuscript, and
his Roget’s Thesaurus and his favourite penholder lay together on the
table, ready to take to his new home. He no longer had need of a
work-room, a special refuge from the distracting intimacies of marriage.
He was free from all that. Yes—think of that—free!... He laughed out
loud.
Presently Phyllis would come and knock on his door. She had heard him
enter, she knew he was there. He wanted to see her, he wanted the
comfort of her eyes, her hands. He wanted her serenity, her kindness,
her strength. But he lacked even the energy to ask for it. He could only
sit and wait until she came to him.
He felt as though the last strength he possessed were being used up in
some terrific effort—an effort that would cease when she came. Then it
would make no difference that he had no strength left—her courage and
kindness would sustain him.
The impossible had happened—yes, the impossible. For it was unthinkable
that Rose-Ann should have destroyed their marriage. But she had.... And
now in this strange world there was only one certainty left—Phyllis’s
eyes, her arms, her understanding love. Here was reality, here firm
ground amidst a reeling chaos of fantastic madness.... Phyllis!
He could hear, as in a dream, the bubbling of coffee, could taste the
fragrance of its odour stealing through the door.... Presently, very
soon, she would come....
He heard her knock, and he thought he answered, but it seemed not, for
she knocked again, and then opened the door. He sat there limply in his
chair, glad she had come.
“Did I disturb you?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“You’re tired!” she said, and came quickly to him and put her hand on
his forehead. “I’ve made some coffee,” she said. “It will be good for
you.”
“Yes,” he said, and rose.
She led the way into her room, and pointed to the couch. “Lie down and
rest,” she said. “I’ll give you your coffee in a moment.”
She busied herself with cups and saucers, and he watched her from the
couch. She came toward him, a cup of coffee in her hand, her arm bare to
the elbow, and above it her eyes shining under a tangle of soft brown
hair.
“Here!” she said.
When he made no effort to take the cup, she set it down on the stool
beside the bed. He took her hand, and drew her toward him. She yielded
to his gesture and sat down beside him on the couch, looking at him with
a kind of startled amusement as he took her arm and pressed his cheek
against it.
“You’re very tired, aren’t you?” she said sympathetically, and touched
his shoulder with her other hand.
He clung to her arm. It was cool against his cheek. All the beauty, all
the peace, all the rest in the world seemed to be in that cool white
flesh. Was it because it was hers—or because it was a girl’s arm,
promising rest and comfort? He did not know. He only clung to it.
“Is it your work—are you having difficulties?” she asked.
He laughed. His work!
That laugh seemed to reassure her in some way. She smiled down at him,
bent over him, her hair blinded him, and then her lips brushed his.
“Dear!” she said.
He held her close to him, and their lips met—hungrily, thirstily. At
first all her body relaxed into the embrace, and it seemed to him that
the peace he needed flowed into him from her kiss, from her arms, her
body—rest, the infinite sweetness of rest.... And then she seemed to
grow frightened. She held herself away from him, she looked at him
questioningly.
But, again reassured, she bent again, and surrendered herself to the
embrace. But something in the exigence of his mood came to her even in
this surrender, and once more, suddenly and coolly, she drew herself
away.
“What _is_ the matter?” she demanded, looking at him with alien eyes.
She bent, not tenderly, and took his shoulder, as if to shake his secret
out of him.
“The matter is,” said Felix, “that my marriage has gone to hell.”
3
“What!” The exclamation came in a tone of utter incredulous astonishment
from the girl at his side, who sat there, rigid, as though frozen by
that news.
“Yes, I tell you!” he cried. “We’ve—busted up everything—for good and
all.”
And feeling himself uncontrollably about to cry, he turned his face
against the couch, and lay shaken with convulsive strangling sobs.
The girl sprang up, and looked down at him. She had never seen him cry.
She had not known that he could cry. As a matter of fact, he had not
cried very many times in his life, and he did not know how, and did it
badly.
He looked up at last, brushing his eyes with his coatsleeve. He wanted
her pity.
He saw her looking at him with haughty anger. Her whole gesture was one
of outrage. When she saw him look up, she clenched her fists, and said,
“You never told me—”
“Never told you?” His anger burst out against her, anger mixed with
self-pity. “What did you expect?”
She turned half away from him in disdain.
“Not this!” she said.
“No!” he said, sitting up. “No, you little idiot, I suppose you
didn’t.... And I didn’t either. Well—you see.”
She looked back over her shoulder with repugnance, as if she were
looking at something sick, wounded, or diseased.
“Yes,” she said doubtfully, “I see....”
She turned back to him, her hostility gone, and a mournful look in her
eyes.
“I never supposed,” she said haltingly, “that you—”
She paused, and then went on,
“—You too—”
Under her glance he straightened up, ashamed of himself. He rose. He
must, he supposed, have looked silly....
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’m sorry too—Felix,” she answered, and there was in her tone the
quality of a farewell.
There was something bracing at this moment in her scornful silence as
she let him walk out of the room.... He went to the bathroom and washed
his face; looked at himself in the mirror: was the face he saw there the
one that had been twisted in grotesque sobbing a few minutes ago? No one
would have guessed it.... He looked hard at that face, for some sign of
weakness. But it seemed to him that the weakness had been burned out of
it by the fire of a girl’s scorn. It was a face indifferent and aloof
from sorrow, with amused eyes and jauntily smiling mouth. Yes, that was
Felix Fay as he should be.
He went back to his room, tossed his Roget’s Thesaurus and his favourite
penholder into the wastebasket with the torn manuscripts, put on his
hat—and then noticed his stick in the corner.
He picked it up, hung it over his arm, turned out the gas, and went out
whistling.
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Book Six
Wilson Avenue
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