They joined the others, drinking at the table. Charlotte was telling a
joke. It was not a nice joke. He had not thought of her jokes
before--because Iris and Chuck and Lefty had not been listening to them.
Now, he was embarrassed. Iris asked him to dance with her. They went out
on the floor.
"Lovely little thing, that Charlotte," she said acidly.
"Isn't she!" Hugo answered with such enthusiasm that she did not speak
during the rest of the dance.
Finally the ordeal ended. Lefty and his guests embarked in an automobile
for the city.
"You know such people," Charlotte half-whispered. Hugo's cheeks still
flamed, but his heart bled for her.
"I guess they aren't much," he replied.
She answered hotly: "Don't you be like that! They're nice people.
They're fine people. That Iris even asked me to her house. Gave me a
card to see her." Charlotte could guess what Iris wanted. So could Hugo.
But Charlotte pretended to be innocent.
He kissed Charlotte good-night and walked in the streets until morning.
Hugo could see no solution. Charlotte was so trusting, so good to him.
He could not imagine how she would receive any suggestion that she go to
New York and get a job, while he returned to college, that he see her
during vacations, that he send money to her. But he knew that a hot
fire dwelt within her and that her fury would rise, her grief, and that
he would be made very miserable and ashamed. She chided him at breakfast
for his walk in the dark. She laughed and kissed him and pushed him
bodily to his work. He looked back as he walked down to the curb. She
was leaning out of the window. She waved her hand. He rounded the corner
with wretched, leaden steps. The morning, concerned with the petty
business of receipts, refurbishings, cleaning, went slowly. When he
returned for lunch it was with the decision to tell her the truth about
his life and its requirements and to let her decide.
She did not come to the door to kiss him. (She had imagined that lonely
return.) She did not answer his brave and cheerful hail. (She had let
the sound of it ring upon her ear a thousand times.) She was gone. (She
knew he would sit down and cry.) Then, stumbling, he found the two
notes. But he already understood.
The message from Valentine Mitchel was reckless, impetuous. "Dear
Hugo--Charlotte and I have fallen in love with each other and I've run
away with her. I almost wish you'd come after us and kill me. I hate
myself for betraying you. But I love her, so I cannot help it. I've
learned to see in her what you first saw in her. Good-bye, good luck."
Hugo put it down. Charlotte would be good to him. In a way, he didn't
deserve her. And when he was famous, some day, perhaps she would leave
him, too. He hesitated to read her note. "Good-bye, darling, I do not
love you any more. C."
It was ludicrous, transparent, pitiful, and heroic. Hugo saw all those
qualities. "Good-bye, darling, I do not love you any more." She had
written it under Valentine's eyes. But she was shrewd enough to placate
her new lover while she told her sad little story to her old. She would
want him to feel bad. Well, God knew, he did. Hugo looked at the room.
He sobbed. He bolted into the street, tears streaming down his cheeks;
he drew his savings from the bank--seven hundred and eighty-four dollars
and sixty-four cents; he rushed to the haunted house, flung his clothes
into a bag; he sat drearily on a subway for an hour. He paced the smooth
floor of a station. He swung aboard a train. He came to Webster, his
head high, feeling a great pride in Charlotte and in his love for her,
walking in glad strides over the familiar soil.