At least, August reflected with a degree of comfort at breakfast,
Emmy didn't come down in the morning; she hadn't enough strength. He
addressed himself to the demolishment of a ripe Cassaba melon. It melted
in his mouth to the consistency of sugary water. His coffee cup had a
large flattened bowl, and pouring in the ropy cream with his free hand
he lifted the silver cover of a dish set before him. It held spitted
chicken livers and bacon and gave out an irresistible odor. There were,
too, potatoes chopped fine with peppers and browned; and hot delicately
sweetened buns. He emptied two full spits, renewed his coffee and
finished the potatoes.
With a butter ball at the center of a bun he casually glanced at the
day's paper. The submarines, he saw, were operating farther south. A
small passenger steamer, the _Veronica_ had been torpedoed outside the
Delaware Capes.
A step sounded in the hall, and Louise entered the dining room, clad
all in white with the exception of a closely fitting yellow hat. After
a moment Victorine, a girl small for her age, with a petulant satiated
expression, followed.
“It's a shame,” Louise observed, “that with Morice and his wife in the
cottage you have to breakfast alone. I suppose all those theatrical
people get up at noon.”
“Not quite,” Rosalie told her from the doorway.
Louise made no reply other than elevating her brows. Victorine looked at
the other with an exact mirroring of her mother's disdain.
“Good morning,” Morice said indistinctly, hooking the collar of his
uniform. “It's a bloody nuisance,” he asserted. “Why can't they copy the
English jacket?”
“It is much better looking,” Louise added.
“Well,” Rosalie proclaimed, “I'm glad to see Morice in any; even if it
means nothing more than a desk in the Quartermaster's Department.”
“That is very necessary,” August Turnbull spoke decidedly.
“Perhaps,” she agreed.
“I think it is bad taste to raise such insinuations.” Louise was severe.
“An army,” August put in, “travels on its stomach. As Louise
suggests--we must ask you not to discuss the question in your present
tone.” Morice's wife half-audibly spoke into her melon, and his face
reddened. “What did I understand you to say?” he demanded.
“Oh, 'Swat the fly!'” Rosalie answered hardily.
“Not at all!” he almost shouted. “What you said was 'Swat the Kaiser!'”
“Well, swat him!”
“It was evident, also, that you did not refer to the Emperor of
Germany--but to me.”
“You said it,” she admitted vulgarly. “If any house ever had a
Hohenzollern this has.”
“Shut up, Rosalie!” her husband commanded, perturbed; “you'll spoil
everything.”
“It might be better if she continued,” Louise Foster corrected him.
“Perhaps then we'd learn something of this--this beauty.”
“I got good money for my face anyhow,” Rosalie asserted. “And no cash
premium went with it either. As for going on, I'll go.” She turned to
August Turnbull: “I've been stalling round here for nearly a year with
Morice scared to death trying to get a piece of change out of you. Now
I'm through; I've worked hard for a season's pay, but this is slavery.
What you want is an amalgamated lady bootblack and nautch dancer. You're
a joke to a free white woman. I'm sorry for your wife. She ought to slip
you a bichloride tablet. If it was worth while I'd turn you over to the
authorities for breaking the food regulations.”
She rose, unceremoniously shoving back her chair. “For a fact, I'm tired
of watching you eat. You down as much as a company of good boys on the
march. Don't get black in the face; I'd be afraid to if I were you.”
August Turnbull's rage beat like a hammer at the base of his head. He,
too, rose, leaning forward with his napkin crumpled in a pounding fist.
“Get out of my house!” he shouted.
“That's all right enough,” she replied; “the question is--is Morice
coming with me? Is that khaki he has on or a Kate Greenaway suit?”
Morice looked from one to the other in obvious dismay. He had a pleasant
dull face and a minute spiked mustache on an irresolute mouth.
“If you stay with me,” she warned him further, “I'll have you out of
that grocery store and into a trench.”
“Pleasant for you, Morice,” Louise explained.
“Things were so comfortable, Rosalie,” he protested despairingly. “What
in the name of sense made you stir this all up? The governor won't do a
tap for us now.”
His wife stood by herself, facing the inimical Turnbull front, while
Morice wavered between.
“If you'll get along,” the former told him, “I can make a living till
you come back. We can do without any Trübner money. I'm not a lot at
German, but I guess you can understand me,” she again addressed August.
“Not that I blame you for the change, such as it is.”
“I'll have to go with her,” Morice unhappily declared.
August Turnbull's face was stiff with congestion. The figures before him
wavered in a sort of fog. He put out a hand, supporting himself on the
back of his chair.
“Get out of my house,” he repeated in a hoarse whisper.
Fortunately Morice's leave had come to an end, and Rosalie and he
withdrew in at least the semblance of a normal departure. August's rage
changed to an indignant surprise, and he established himself with a
rigid dignity on the veranda. There, happening on a cigar that burned
badly, he was reduced to a state of further self-commiseration. That is,
he dwelt on the general deterioration of the world about him. There was
no discipline; there was no respect; authority was laughed at. All this
was the result of laxness, of the sentimentality he condemned; a firmer
hand was needed everywhere.
He turned with relief to the contemplation of Meta Beggs; she was
enormously satisfactory to consider. August watched her now with the
greatest interest; he even sat in his wife's room while her companion
moved silently and gracefully about. Miss Beggs couldn't have noticed
this, for scarcely ever did her gaze meet his; she had a habit of
standing lost in thought, her slimness a little drooping, as if she
were weary or depressed. She was in his mind continually--Miss Beggs and
Emmy, his wife.
The latter had a surprising power to disturb him; lately he had even
dreamed of her starving to death in the presence of abundant food. He
began to be superstitious about it, to think of her in a ridiculous
nervous manner as an evil design on his peace and security. She seemed
unnatural with her shrunken face bowed opposite him at the table. His
feeling for her shifted subconsciously to hatred. It broke out publicly
in sardonic or angry periods under which she would shrink away,
incredibly timid, from his scorn. This quality of utter helplessness
gave the menace he divined in her its illusive air of unreality. She
seemed--she was--entirely helpless; a prematurely aged woman, of the
mildest instincts, dying of malnutrition.
Miss Beggs now merged into all his daily life, his very fiber. He
regarded her in an attitude of admirable frankness. “Still it is
extraordinary you haven't married.”
The tide was out, it was late afternoon, and they were walking over the
hard exposed sand. Whenever she came on a shell she crushed it with a
sharp heel.
“There were some,” she replied indifferently.
He nodded gravely. “It would have to be a special kind of man,” he
agreed. “An ordinary individual would be crushed by your personality.
You'd need a firm hand.”
Her face was inscrutable. “I have always had the misfortune to be too
late,” she told him.
“I wish I had known you sooner!” he exclaimed.
Her arms, in transparent sleeves, were like marble. His words
crystallized an overwhelming realization of how exactly she was
suited to him. The desire to shut her will in his hand increased a
thousandfold.
“Yes,” she said, “I would have married you. But there's no good
discussing it.” She breathed deeply with a sinking forward of her
rounded shoulders. All her vigor seemed to have left her. “I have been
worried about Mrs. Turnbull lately,” she went on. “Perhaps it's my
imagination--does she look weaker to you?”
“I haven't noticed,” he answered brusquely.
Curiously he had never thought of Emmy as dying; she appeared eternal,
without the possibility of offering him the relief of such freedom as
yet remained. Freedom for--for Meta Beggs.
“The doctor was at the cottage again Thursday,” she informed him. “I
didn't hear what he said.”
“Humbugs,” August Turnbull pronounced.
A sudden caution invaded him. It would be well not to implicate himself
too far with his wife's companion. She was a far shrewder woman than was
common; there was such a thing as blackmail. He studied her privately.
Damn it, what a pen he had been caught in! Her manner, too, changed
immediately, as though she had read his feeling.
“I shall have to go back.”
She spoke coldly. A moment before she had been close beside him, but now
she might as well have been miles away.
V
The fuse of the electric light in the dining room burned out, and dinner
proceeded with only the illumination of the silk-hooded candles. In the
subdued glow Meta Beggs was infinitely attractive. His wife's place was
empty. Miss Beggs had brought apologetic word from Emmy that she felt
too weak to leave her room. A greater degree of comfort possessed August
Turnbull than he had experienced for months. With no one at the table
but the slim woman on the left and himself a positive geniality radiated
from him. He pressed her to have more champagne--he had ordered that
since she preferred it to Rhine wine--urged more duckling, and ordered
the butler to leave the brandy decanter before them.
She laughed--a rare occurrence--and imitated, for his intense amusement,
Mrs. Frederick Rathe's extreme cutting social manner. He drank more than
he intended, and when he rose his legs were insecure. He made his way
toward Meta Beggs. She stood motionless, her thin lips like a thread of
blood on her tense face.
“What a wife you'd make!” he muttered.
There was a discreet cough at his back, and swinging about he saw a maid
in a white starched cap and high cuffs.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said; “Mrs. Turnbull wants to know would you
please come up to her room.”
He swayed slightly, glowering at her with a hot face in which a vein
throbbed persistently at his temple. Miss Beggs had disappeared.
“Very well,” he agreed heavily.
Mounting the stairs he fumbled for his cigar case, and entered the
chamber beyond his, clipping the end from a superlative perfecto.
Emmy was in bed, propped up on a bank of embroidered pillows. A light
from one side threw the shadow of her head on a wall in an animated
caricature of life.
“I didn't want to disturb you, August.”
Her voice was weak and apologetic. He stood irritably beside her.
“It's hot in here.” His wife at once detected whatever assaulted his
complete comfort. She fell into a silence that strained his patience to
the utmost.
When at last she spoke it was in a tone of voice he had never heard from
her--impersonal, with at the same time a note of fear like the flutter
of a bird's wing.
“The doctor has been here two or three times lately. I didn't want to
bother you, and he said----”
She broke off, and her hand raised from her side in a gesture of
seeking. He held it uncomfortably, wishing that the occasion would
speedily end.
“August, I've--I've got to leave you.”
He did not comprehend her meaning, and stood stupidly looking down at
her spent face. “I'm going to die, August, almost any time now. I wanted
to tell you first when we were quietly together; and then Louise and
Bernard must know.”
His sensations were so confused, the mere shock of such an announcement
had so confounded him that he was unable to penetrate the meaning of the
sudden expansion of his blood. His attention strayed from the actuality
of his wife to the immaterial shadow wavering on the wall. There Emmy's
profile, grotesquely enlarged and sharpened, grimaced at him. August
Turnbull's feelings disentangled and grew clearer, there was a
conventional memory of his wife as a young woman, the infinitely sharper
realization that soon he must be free, a vision of Meta Beggs as she had
been at dinner that night, and intense relief from nameless strain.
He moved through the atmosphere of suspense that followed the knowledge
of Emmy's condition with a feeling of being entirely apart from his
family. Out of the chaos of his emotions the sense of release was most
insistent. Naturally he couldn't share it with any one else, not at
present. He avoided thinking directly of Meta Beggs, partly from the
shreds of the superstitious dread that had once colored his attitude
toward his wife and partly from the necessity to control what otherwise
would sweep him into a resistless torrent. However, most of his
impatience had vanished--a little while now, and in a discreet manner he
could grasp all that he had believed so hopelessly removed.
Except for the occasions of Louise's informal presence he dined alone
with Miss Beggs. They were largely silent, attacking their plates with
complete satisfaction. On the day of her monthly payment he drew the
check for a thousand dollars in place of the stipulated hundred, and
gave it to her without comment. She nodded, managing to convey entire
understanding and acceptance of what it forecast. Once, at the table, he
called her Meta.
She deliberated a reply--he had asked her opinion about British bottled
sauces--but when she answered she called him Mr. Turnbull. This, too,
pleased him. She had an unerring judgment in the small affairs of
deference. Dinner had been better than usual, and he realized he had
eaten too much. His throat felt constricted, he had difficulty in
swallowing a final gulp of coffee; the heavy odors of the dining room
almost sickened him.
“We'll get out on the beach,” he said abruptly; “a little air.”
They proceeded past the unremitting sprinklers on the strip of lawn to
the wide gray sweep of sand. At that hour no one else was visible, and
a new recklessness invaded his discomfort. “You see,” he told her, “that
bad luck of yours isn't going to hold.”
“It seems incredible,” she murmured. She added without an appearance of
the least ulterior thought: “Mrs. August Turnbull.”
“Exactly,” he asserted.
A triumphant conviction of pleasure to come surged through him like a
subtle exhilarating cordial.
“I'll take no nonsensical airs from Louise or the Rathes,” he
proclaimed.
“Don't let that worry you,” she answered serenely.
He saw that it need not, and looked forward appreciatively to a scene in
which Meta would not come off second.
Above them the long curve of the boardwalk was empty, with, behind it,
the suave ornamental roofs of the cottages. A wind quartering from
the shore had smoothed the ocean into the semblance of a limitless and
placid lake. Minute waves ruffled along the beach with a continuous
whispering, and the vault of the west, from which the sun had just
withdrawn, was filled with light the color of sauterne wine.
It was inconceivable to August Turnbull that soon Emmy would be gone out
of his life. He shook his thick shoulders as if by a gesture to unburden
himself of her unpleasant responsibility. He smiled slightly at the
memory of how he had come to fear her. It had been the result of the
strain he was under; once more the vision of mountainous bread and Emmy
returned. The devil was in the woman!
“What are you smiling at?” Meta asked.
“Perhaps it was because my luck, as well, has changed,” he admitted.
She came close up to him, quivering with emotion.
“I want everything!” she cried in a vibrant hunger; “everything! Do you
understand? Are you willing? I'm starved as much as that woman up in her
bed. Can you give me all the gayety, all the silks and emeralds there
are in the world?”
He patted her shoulder. “You'll look like a Christmas tree. When this
damned war is over we will go to Europe, to Berlin and Munich. They have
the finest streets and theaters and cafés in the world. There things are
run by men for men. The food is the best of all--no French fripperies,
but solid rare cuts. Drinking is an art----”
“What is that out in the water?” she idly demanded.
He gazed impatiently over the unscored tide and saw a dark infinitesimal
blot.
“I have been watching it for a long while,” she continued. “It's coming
closer, I think.”
He again took up his planning.
“We'll stay two or three years; till things get on their feet here. Turn
the bakery into a company. No work, nothing but parties.”
“Do look!” she repeated. “It's coming in--a little boat. I suppose it is
empty.”
The blot was now near enough for him to distinguish its outline. As Meta
said, no one was visible. It was drifting. Against his wish his gaze
fastened on the approaching boat. It hesitated, appeared to swing away,
and then resumed the progress inshore.
“I believe it will float into that cut in the beach below,” he told her.
His attention was divided between the craft and the image of all
the pleasures he would introduce to Meta--Turnbull. It was a lucky
circumstance that he had plenty of money, for he realized that she would
not marry a poor man. This was not only natural but commendable. Poor
men were fools, too weak for success; only the strong ate white bread
and had fine women, only the masterful conquered circumstance.
“Come,” she said, catching his hand; “it's almost here.”
She half pulled him over the glistening wet sand to where the deeper
water thrust into the beach. Her interest was now fully communicated to
him.
“We must drag it safely up,” he articulated, out of breath from her
eagerness. The bow swept into the onward current, it moved more
swiftly, and then sluggishly settled against the bottom. Painted on its
blistering white side was a name, “_Veronica_,” and “Ten persons.”
There was a slight movement at the rail, and a sharp unreasoning horror
gripped August Turnbull.
“Something in it,” he muttered. He wanted to turn away, to run from the
beach; but a stronger curiosity dragged him forward. Not conscious of
stepping through shallow water he advanced.
A hunger-ravished dead face was turned to him from the bottom, a huddle
of bony joints, dried hands. There were others--all dead, starved. In
a red glimmer he saw the incredible travesty of a child, a lead-colored
woman, shriveled and ageless from agony.
He fell back with a choking cry, “Emmy!”
There was a dull uproar in his head, and then a violent shock at the
back of his brain. August Turnbull's body slid down into the tranquil
ripples that ran along the boat's side.