THE WOMAN IN THE ALCOVE
By Jennette Lee
Illustrated by A. I. Keller And Arthur E. Becher
Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York
1914
[Illustration: 0008]
[Illustration: 0009]
Copyright, 1914, by CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Published September, 1914
TO
GERALD STANLEY LEE
I
“Room after room,
I hunt the house through
We inhabit together.
Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her--
Next time, herself!--not the trouble behind her
Left in the curtain, the couch’s perfume!
As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew;
Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather.
II
“Yet the day wears
And door succeeds door;
I try the fresh fortune--
Range the wide house from the wing to the centre.
Still the same chance! She goes out as I enter.
Spend my whole day in the quest,--who cares?
But ’tis twilight, you see--with such suites to explore,
Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune.”
I
ELDRIDGE WALCOTT paused in front of the great building; he looked
up and hesitated and went in. He crossed the marble lobby and passed
through the silent, swinging doors on the opposite side and stepped into
a softly lighted café. He had never been in Merwin’s before, though he
had often heard of it, and he was curious as to what it would be like.
There was a sound of music somewhere and low voices and the tinkle of
silver and glass behind the little green curtains. He entered an alcove
at the left and sat down. The restfulness of the place soothed him, and
he sat listening to the distant music and looking out between the parted
curtains of the alcove to the room with its little tables filling the
space beyond the green-curtained alcoves on either side and the people
seated at the tables. They were laughing and eating and talking and
drinking from delicate cups or turning slender-stemmed glasses in their
fingers as they talked. Beyond the tables rose a small platform; a woman
had just mounted it and was bowing to the scattered tables. The sound of
voices ceased an instant and hands clapped faintly here and there. The
woman on the platform bowed again and looked at the accompanist,
who struck the opening bars. It was a light, trivial song with more
personality than art in the singing of it, and the audience applauded
perfunctorily, hardly breaking off its talk to acknowledge that it was
done. The woman stepped down from the platform and joined a group at a
table near by, and waiters moved among the tables, refilling cups and
glasses and taking orders.
A waiter paused by the alcove where Eldridge Walcott was sitting and
pushed back the little curtain and looked in and waited. Eldridge took
up the card on the table before him; he fingered it a little awkwardly
and laid it down: “Bring me cigars,” he said.
The waiter scribbled on a card and passed on. When he had completed the
alcoves on the left he turned and went back along the right, pausing
before each one and bending forward to listen and take the order on his
card. As he approached the third alcove he pushed back the curtain that
half concealed it at the back and bent forward. When he passed on the
curtain did not fall into place; it remained caught on the back of
the seat. From where Eldridge sat he could see the woman seated in the
alcove. She was alone, her back to him, her head a little bent as if in
thought.
He glanced at her carelessly and along the row of green curtains to the
tables beyond. It was all much as he had imagined it--a place where one
could spend time and money without too much exertion. It was the money
part of it that interested Eldridge. His client had asked him to look
into it for him as an investment, and he had decided on this informal
way of appraising it. To-morrow he was to go over the books and
accounts. The owners wanted a stiff price for the goodwill. It was
probably worth what they were asking he decided as he watched the
careless, happy crowd. People who came here were not thinking how much
they could save.... It was not the sort of place he should care to come
to often himself. Life to Eldridge was a serious, drab affair compared
with Merwin’s. He liked to think how much he could save; and when he had
saved it he liked to invest it where it would breed more.... He might
take a few shares of the capital stock himself--his client had suggested
it.
The waiter brought the cigars and Eldridge lighted one and leaned back,
smoking and enjoying the relaxed air of the place. He could understand
dimly how people liked this sort of thing and would come day after day
for music and talk and the purposelessness of it all; it was a kind of
huge, informal club with a self-elected membership.
As a prospective investor the charm of it pleased him. They ought to be
able to make a good thing of it. He fell to making little calculations;
it was part of his power as a successful man of business that he
understood detail and the value of small things.
He was not a financier, but he handled small interests well and he had
built up a comfortable fortune. From being in debt before he married,
he had advanced slowly until now his investments made a good showing.
He could probably live on the income to-morrow if he chose.... He blew a
little ring of smoke.... His investments and what they were mounting
to was a kind of epic poem to Eldridge’s slow-moving mind.... Yes--he
would take a few shares of the café stock. He looked thoughtfully at
his cigar and calculated how many, and what they would be worth.... The
music had taken the form of a young boy with a violin who stood absorbed
in his playing, a kind of quick fervor in his face and figure. The
voices had ceased and only now and then a cup clicked.
Eldridge lifted his eyes from the cigar. The woman in the alcove had
moved nearer the end of the seat and was watching the boy, her lips
parted on a half smile.
The cigar dropped from Eldridge’s fingers. He stared at the
woman--stared--and stirred vaguely.
She turned a little and Eldridge reached out his hand and drew a quick
curtain between them.
Through the slit he could still see the figure of the woman, her head
thrown a little back, her eyes following the bow of music as it rose and
fell, and the lips smiling in happy content--He drew a quick breath.
Slowly a deep flush came into his face--How dared Rosalind come here! It
was a respectable place--of course--but how dared she spend her time and
money--his money and time that belonged to her home and her children--in
a place like this?... Her hands were folded in her lap, and her eyes
followed the music.
She had barely touched the glass on the table before her, he noted, or
the plate of little biscuit. She seemed to sit in a dream.... His mind
whirled. Six hours before he had said good-by to her at the breakfast
table--a plain, drab woman in shabby clothes, with steel-rimmed
spectacles that looked at him with a little line between the eyes
and reminded him that he needed to order coal for the range and a new
clothes-line.... He had ordered the coal, but he recalled suddenly that
he had forgotten the clothes-line; he had intended to see if he could
get one cheaper at a wholesale place he knew of; his memory held the
clothes-line fast in the left lobe of his brain while the grey matter of
the right lobe whirled excitedly about the woman in the alcove.
[Illustration: 0025]
She had raised a lorgnette to her eyes and was looking at the boy
violinist, a little, happy, wistful smile on her lips.... Eldridge had
not seen her smile like that for years. His left lobe abandoned the
clothes-line and recalled to him when it was he saw the little smile,
half wistful, half happy, on her face.... They were standing by the
gate, and he was saying good night; the moon had just come up, and there
was a fragrant bush beside the path that gave out the smell of spring;
the left lobe yielded up fragrance and moonlight and the little wistful
smile while his quick eye followed the lorgnette; it had dropped to
her lap, and her hands were folded on it.... Rosalind--! A gold
lorgnette--and draperies, soft, gauzy lines and folds of silk--and a hat
on her shining, lifted hair, like a vague coronet! Eldridge Walcott held
his cigar grimly between his teeth; the cigar had gone out--both lobes
had ceased to whirl.... A kind of frozen light held his face. His hand
groped for his hat. Why should he not step across the aisle and sit down
in the chair opposite her and confront her?--the green curtains would
shut them in.... Both lobes stared at the thought and held it tight--to
face Rosalind, a grey, frightened woman in her finery, behind the little
green curtains! He shook himself loose and stood up. Softly his hand
drew back the curtain, and he stepped out. They were clapping the boy
violinist, who had played to the end, and Eldridge moved toward the
swinging doors and passed out and stood in the lobby. He wiped his
forehead.... A sound of moving chairs came from behind the doors, and
he crossed the lobby quickly and plunged into the crowd. It was five
o’clock, and the streets were filled with people hurrying home. Eldridge
turned against the tide and crossed a side street and pressed east, his
feet seeming to find a way of their own. He was not thinking where he
would go--except that it must be away from her. He could not face her
yet--Who _was_ she? There was the drab woman of the morning, waiting for
him to come home with the clothesline, and there was the woman of the
alcove, splendid, gentle, with the little smile and the gold
lorgnette.... Rosalind--Fifteen years he had lived with her, and he had
known her ten years before that--there was nothing _queer_ about
Rosalind! He lifted his head a little proudly--The woman he had just
left was very beautiful! It struck him for the first time that she was
beautiful, and he half stopped.
He walked more slowly, taking it in--Rosalind was not beautiful; she
had not been beautiful--even as a girl--only pretty, with a kind of
freshness and freedom about her and something in her eyes that he
had not understood--It was the look that had drawn him--He was always
wondering about it. Sometimes he saw it in the night--as if it flitted
when he woke. He had not thought of it for years. Something in the
woman’s shoulder and the line of her head was like it. But the woman
was very _beautiful!_--Suppose it were not Rosalind after all! He gave a
quick breath, and his feet halted and went on. Then a thought surged at
him, and he walked fast--he almost ran. No--No--! It was as if he put
his hands over his ears to shut it out. Other women--but not _his_ wife!
She had children--_three_ children! He tried to think of the children
to steady himself. He pictured her putting them to bed at night, bending
above Tommie and winding a flannel bandage tight around his throat for
croup; he could see her quite plainly, the quick, efficient fingers and
firm, roughened hands drawing the bed-clothes in place and tucking them
in.... The woman’s hands had rested so quietly in her lap! Were they
rough?--She had worn gloves--he remembered now--soft gloves, like the
color in her gown.... He stared at the gloves--they were long--they came
to the elbow--yes, there was a kind of soft, lacy stuff that fell away
from them--yes, they were long gloves.... They must have cost----
He tried to think what the gloves must have cost, but he had nothing to
go by. Rosalind had never worn such gloves, nor his mother or sisters.
Only women who were very rich wore gloves like that--or women----
He faced the thought at last. He had come out where the salt air struck
him; the town and its lights had fallen behind; there was the marsh
to cross, and he was on a long beach, the wind in his face, the water
rolling up in spray and sweeping slowly back--He strode forward, his
head to the wind.... There was no one that she knew--no man.... How
should she know any one that he did not know!
She was never away.... But was he--sure! How did he know what went
on--all day... half past seven till seven at night? In the evenings she
mended the children’s clothes and he looked over the paper. Sometimes
they talked about things and planned how they could get along. Rosalind
was a good manager. He saw her sitting beside the lamp, in her cheap
dress, her head bent over the figures, working it out with him--and he
saw the woman in the alcove--the clothes she wore--he drew back before
it--more than the whole family spent in a year!... The gloves alone
might have bought her Sunday suit--Sunday was, after all, the only day
he knew where she was--in church with him and, in the afternoon, lying
down in her room while he took the children for a walk.... He was a good
father--he set his teeth to it defiantly, against the wind. She
could not accuse _him_ of neglect.... Suddenly a hurt feeling stirred
somewhere deep down--He did not look at it; he did not know it was
there. But the first shock had passed. He was not bewildered any
more. He could think steadily, putting point to point, building up the
“case”.... Then, suddenly, he would see her in the great spectacles,
reminding him of the clothes-line--and his “case” collapsed like a
foolish little card house.... Not Rosalind--other women, perhaps--but
not Rosalind.... He turned slowly back, the wind behind him urging him
on. He would go home--to her. Perhaps when he saw her he should know
what to think.... But perhaps she had not yet come home. If he hurried
he might get there before her and face her as she came in. He hurried
fast, he almost ran, and when he reached the streets he signalled a cab;
he had not used a cab for years; it would cost a dollar, at least--He
looked out at the half-deserted street--the crowd had thinned. He
held his watch where the light of the street arc flashed across
it--six-thirty. Half an hour before his usual time. He paid the fare
and went quickly up the steps.... The children were talking in the
dining-room. There was no other sound. He opened the door and looked in.
She was standing by the table looking at Tommie’s coat--There was a
rent in the shoulder and the face bent above it had a look of quiet
patience--The grey-drab hair was parted exactly in the middle and combed
smoothly down; the eyes behind the spectacles looked up--with the little
line between them. When she saw who it was she glanced for a moment at
the clock and then back at him--“Did you bring the clothesline?” she
asked.
He stared at her a moment--at her plain, cheap dress and homely face.
Then he turned away. “I--forgot,” he said.
II
WHEN supper was done and the children in bed she moved about the room
for a few minutes putting things to rights. Eldridge, sitting by the
table, held his newspaper in his hand and now and then he rustled it and
turned it over; his eyes did not leave the little black printed marks,
but his real eyes were not following the marks; they were watching the
woman; they tried to dart upon her in her plainness and make her speak.
There was something monstrous to him--that they should be here together,
in this room--he could have touched her with his hand as she moved past
him--yet they were a thousand miles apart. He cleared his throat; he
would force her, accuse her, make her reveal what was going on behind
the earnest-looking glasses.... He turned the paper and began another
page.... If he were another man he might spring at her--take her by the
throat--force her back--back against the wall--and _make_ her speak! She
had finished tidying the room and came over to the table, the torn coat
in her hand; she was looking down at the frayed threads in the rent, the
little line between her eyes; he did not look up or move; he could hear
her breathing--then she gave a little sigh and laid the coat on the
table.... She was leaving the room. His eyes leaped after her and came
back.
When she returned she spread the roll of pieces on the table and
selected one, slipping it in beneath the rent; he could see--without
taking his eyes from the page--he could see the anxious, faintly red
knuckles and her fingers fitting the piece in place with deft, roughened
tips. She had a kind of special skill at mending, making old things new.
When they were first married it had been one of their little jokes--how
lucky she was to have married a poor man. He had kissed her fingers one
day--he recalled it--when she had shown him the little skilful darn
in his coat; he had called it a kind of poem and he had kissed her. It
seemed almost shameless to him, behind his paper--the foolishness was
shameless--of kissing her for that....
She was sewing swiftly now with the short, still movements that came and
went like breaths; her head was bent over the coat and he could see the
parting of her hair; he dropped his eye to it for a minute and rustled
the paper and turned it vaguely. “I was in at Merwin’s this afternoon,”
he said.
The needle paused a dart--and went on rhythmically, in and out. “Did you
like it?” she asked. She had not lifted her head from her work.
He turned a casual page and read on--“Oh, so-so.” It was the sort of
absent-minded talk they often had--a kind of thinking out loud without
interest in one another.
“It is a popular place, isn’t it?”
She was smoothing the edges of the patch thoughtfully; there was a
little smile on her lip.
He folded his paper. “I’m going to bed,” he announced.
She glanced quickly at the clock and resumed her work. “I must finish
this. He hasn’t any other to wear.” The needle went in and out.
Eldridge rose and stretched himself above her. He looked down at her--at
the swift-moving hands and grey closeness of her dress. He would like to
take her in his hands and crush out of her the thoughts--make her speak
out the thoughts that followed the swift-going needle; he did not know
that he wanted this--he was only feeling over and over, in some deep,
angry place--“What the devil was she doing there? What the----”
He moved about the room a minute and ’went out. The woman by the table
sewed on. A bolt shot in the front hall and Eldridge’s feet mounted the
stairs slowly. Then the room was quiet--only the clock and the needle.
Presently the needle stopped--the woman’s hands lay folded in her lap.
The figure was motionless, the head bent--only across her face moved the
little smile.... The clock travelled round and whirred its warning note
and struck, and she only stirred a little, as if a breath escaped her,
and took up her work, looking at it blindly.
A sound came in the hall and she looked up.
He stood in the doorway, his old dressing-gown wrapped around him, his
hands gaunt, with the little hairs at the wrist uncovered by cuffs.
She looked at him, smiling absently. There was something almost
beautiful in her face as she lifted it to him--“When are you coming to
bed?” he asked harshly.
“Why, right now, Eldridge--I must have been dreaming.” She gathered up
the work from her lap. “I hope I haven’t kept you awake.”
He stood looking at her a minute. Then he wheeled about without
response. His feet beneath the bath gown moved awkwardly. But the
spine in the bath gown had a cold, dignified, offended look--a kind of
grotesque stateliness--as it disappeared through the doorway.
The woman looked after it, the little, gathering smile still on her
face. Then she turned toward the lamp and put it out, and the radiant
smile close to the lamp became a part of the dark.
III
BY morning it had become a dream.
Eldridge was late and he hurried from the house and hurried all the
morning to catch up. By luncheon time he was in another world. He
took plenty of time for his luncheon; it was one of the things he
had learned--to eat his luncheon slowly and take time to digest it.
Sometimes he read the paper, sometimes he dropped into a moving-picture
show for a few minutes afterward. But to-day he did neither. He sat
in the restaurant--it was a crowded restaurant, all America coming and
going--and he watched it idly. He had a rested, comfortable feeling,
as if he had escaped some calamity. It seemed foolish now, as he looked
back--a kind of fever in the blood that had twisted the commonest things
into queer shape. He looked back over it dispassionately--it was the
woman in Merwin’s who had started it, of course; there _was_ something
about her--something like Rosalind--curiously like her--it was like
what Rosalind _might_ have been, more than what she was--a kind of
spirited-up Rosalind! He smiled grimly.
He called for his check; and while he waited he saw her again, the
figure of the woman--not in the restaurant--but in a kind of vision--in
the alcove behind the curtain, her head a little bent, her hands folded
quietly in her lap... who _was_ she--? His heart gave a sudden twist and
stopped--He had never felt like this about--any one--had he? He looked
down at a red check, with its stamped black figures, and fumbled in his
pocket--and brought out a coin and laid it beside the check and stared
at it.... The check and the coin slipped away and he stared at the
marble top. Suppose he saw her--again... some time.... Two coins
reappeared on the table and he picked them up. Then he put back one and
felt for his hat and went out.... The traffic shrieked at him and people
jostled him with their elbows and hurried him, and he jostled back and
woke up and shook off the queerness and went about his work.... He was
forty-one years old and his property was all well invested. It had never
occurred to him that he could be different from himself.... He read
in the paper of people who did things--did things different from
themselves, suddenly--people who squandered fortunes in a day, or
murdered and ran away from business--and their wives--people who
committed suicide. Vicariously, he knew all about how queer men could
be... and his chief experience with it all, with this world that his
newspaper rolled before him every day, was a kind of wonder that people
would do such things and a knowledge, deeper than faith or conviction,
that Eldridge Walcott would never do any of them. He explained such
men--if he explained them at all--by saying that they must have a screw
loose somewhere. Perhaps he thought of men, vaguely, as put together
with works inside, carefully adjusted and screwed in place, warranted,
with good usage, to run so long; certainly it had not occurred to him
that a man could change much after he was forty years old.
He went back to business refreshed, more refreshed than his luncheon
often left him. He thought of Rosalind, now and then, with a kind of
thankfulness--Rosalind waiting for him at night with the children, life
moving on in the same comfortable way. He had even a moment’s flash
of thankfulness to the unknown woman that she had made him see how
comfortable he was, how much he had to be thankful for in his quiet
life. It was a profitable afternoon--the best stroke of business in
six months; and he flattered himself that he handled it well. He felt
unusually alive, alert. On the way home he passed a florist’s and
half stopped, looking down at a beautiful plant that flamed on a bench
outside the door; he did not know what it was; they were all “plants” to
him, except roses--he knew a rose--this was not a rose; he looked at it
a moment and hurried on.... She would think it strange if he brought her
anything like a plant.
The idea grew with him the next day and the next. Why should he not give
her something? She deserved it. There seemed always some good reason
why her clothes were the last to be bought and the plainest and
shabbiest--and a woman’s clothes could always be made over.... Suppose
she had a new suit--something that was really good--Suppose he got it
for her--would she be in the least like that--other--one--? He had long
ago abandoned the idea that there was a real resemblance between
them. He knew now that he must have been overwrought, excited in some
mysterious way--the woman herself seemed to have excited him.
The wrong that he had done Rosalind--even in his thought--made him
tender of her. He did not buy a crimson flower to take home to her. But
a week later he called one day at his bank and in the evening he handed
her a little, twisted roll of something.
She had finished her work and was sitting for a minute before she
brought her sewing basket. He laid the roll in the curve of her fingers
in her lap.
When she glanced down at it she took it up in short-sighted surprise and
looked at the new, crisp bills--and then at him--
He nodded. “For you,” he said. “It’s a new suit--you need it.” He
balanced a little on his toes, looking down at her.
Her face flushed red; it grew from neck to chin and flooded up to him.
“What do you mean?” she said under her breath.
“I want you to get a good one--good stuff, good dressmaker--It’s enough,
isn’t it?”
“It is more--than enough--” The red had flooded her face again--as if
she would cry. But she said nothing for a minute. She was looking down
at the bills.
Then she looked up. The plain face had a smile like light from somewhere
far away. “May I get just what I like--?”
He nodded proudly. She was almost beautiful... perhaps--in the new
gown--He pulled himself together.... She had looked down again and was
fingering the bills happily.... “There is a little muff and fur--” she
said.
He nodded, encouraging--“A muff and fur and a little fur cap that
I wanted--so much--for Mary--and overcoats for the boys--they’re so
shabby--and your hat is really not fit, you know--” She was looking up
now and smiling and checking them off--He stopped her with a gesture.
“You are to spend it on yourself,” he said almost harshly.
“On myself--! Why do you say that?” She almost confronted him--as if
she caught her breath--“You never have things and you always get out of
spending things on yourself.” He half muttered the words.
“Oh--oh--! I shall get something for myself. You will see!”
He held out his hand. He was a good man of business. No one got far
ahead of him.--“When you have bought the dress I will pay for it,” he
said. “Give them to me. I cannot trust you with them.”
She looked at him--and at the bills--and they dropped from her hand into
his slowly and her arms fell; her shoulders rose and trembled and the
hands covered her face. She was weeping, deep, silent sobs--
[Illustration: 0057]
He bent over her--ashamed. “You must not do that,” he said. “You needn’t
feel bad. I wanted you to have it--”
She took down her hands and looked at him. “It seemed so good to
have--enough--more than enough! to be extravagant!” She threw out her
hands with a little wasteful gesture.
He was looking at her closely. A suspicion leaped at him. Her face
was so free and the tears had made it mysterious and sweet--she was as
wonderful as that other--she was--She was--He stopped with a quick jerk.
“I want you to be extravagant on _yourself!_” he said. He was watching
her face.
It flamed again but it did not drop before him. Only the eyes sent back
a look--on guard, it seemed to him. “I do not need so much for myself,”
she said quietly, “part of it will be quite enough.”
He put the bills in his pocket. “All or nothing,” he said easily.
*****
All the next day he turned it in his mind--the look in her eyes, the
beauty--something deep within her, shining out.... He no longer went
peacefully about his work. _Could_ it have been Rosalind, after all?...
He had never seen her look like that--he had not dreamed.... But when he
came home at night the look was not there; he fancied that she was more
worn and a little troubled. Certainly, no one could think of her as
beautiful... and why should a man want to think his wife beautiful?...
It was the woman in the alcove that had done the mischief. He should
never get over the woman in the alcove. She had got into his life
whether or not. He could not be comfortable about Rosalind. There was
something about her that he had not known or suspected before. He fell
to watching her when she was not aware. He had thought he knew her so
well and now she was a stranger.... But perhaps it was himself--the
woman had done something to him. Rosalind was the same--but was she? He
looked at her a long time one night as she lay asleep. The moonlight had
come in and was on her face. He watched it--as if a breath might speak
to him--it was not Rosalind’s face. Some stranger was there, out of
a strange land; a great yearning came to him to waken her, to ask
her whence she came, what it was that she knew--what made her face so
peaceful in the moonlight--calling to him? He got up softly and closed
the blind. He remembered he had heard that it was not good for people
to sleep with the moon shining on them--it was only superstition, of
course. But superstition had suddenly changed its bounds for him....
Were there things, perhaps, that people knew, that they guessed--true
things that they could not explain and did not talk about?...
IV
HE could not bring himself to speak to Rosalind about the woman in
the alcove. He wanted to speak--to do away, once for all, with the
strangeness and the spell she seemed to have cast about him, to speak of
her casually as that woman I saw the other day at Merwin’s; but he could
not do it. It was as if he were afraid--or bashful. He had not felt like
this since--not since he was in love--with Rosalind! He looked at
the thought and turned it over slowly. He was not in love with the
woman--certainly he was not in love with her! He would not know her
again if he met her on the street.... Would he not! Suddenly he felt
that he had known her always--longer than he had known Rosalind--longer
than he had been alive! He found himself wondering about the world--how
it was the world got into existence--what were men doing in it--and
women--and his mind travelled out into space--great stars swung away
mistily--what did it mean--all his world and stars?... Perhaps if he saw
her again, just a few minutes, he would feel like himself again.... It
was worth trying--and how he wanted--to--see her! Well, what of that?
There was nothing wrong in being curious about a woman like that. If she
_had_ some uncanny power over him he might as well find it out--fight
it!
He was respectable--he was a married man.... And what had Rosalind to do
with it? Perhaps it _was_ Rosalind. He should never quiet down till he
knew. There was something in his blood. The next time he was passing
Merwin’s he would go in....
He passed Merwin’s that afternoon--and went in. But she was not there.
He sat a little while in the quiet of the place, looking across to the
alcove where the woman had been. There was no one in it and the curtains
were drawn back. Each time a stir came from the swinging doors or a
dress rustled beside him he half turned and held his breath till it
passed and took its place at one of the little tables or in an alcove.
But the third alcove on the right remained empty. No quiet figure moved
with soft grace and seated itself there... no one but Eldridge saw the
figure--the gentle, bending line of the neck, the little droop of the
face.... If only she would lift it or turn to him a minute.... And
then the still, clear emptiness of the place swept between; the green
curtains framed it, as if it were a picture, a little antechamber
leading somewhere....
Eldridge shook himself and took his hat and went out. The doors swung
silently behind him--he would never go in there again! He was a fool--a
soft fool! Then he almost stopped in the crowd of the street.... And he
knew suddenly that he would go back. He would go--again and again--he
could not help himself. But he was _not_ in love--he had been in
love--with Rosalind--and it was not like this.... A policeman thrust out
an arm and stopped him, and he waited for the traffic to stream past....
He was not in love--only curious about the woman; it teased him not to
know who she was... and why he had been so sure that she was Rosalind.
If he could see her again--just a minute--long enough to make sure, he
would not care if he never saw her again. He was loyal, of course, to
Rosalind, more loyal than he had ever been. It seemed curious how the
woman had made him see Rosalind--all the plainness of her filled with
something strange and sweet--like moonlight or a quiet place.
V
THE next day he went again to Merwin’s. No use for him to say he would
keep away. He knew, all through the drudging accounts in the morning,
that he would go; and while he talked with clients and arranged sales
and managed a real-estate deal--back in the corner of his mind, behind
its green curtains, the little alcove waited.
He passed through the swinging doors and glanced quickly, and the hand
holding his hat gripped it tight. The curtains of the third alcove to
the right were half closed, but along the floor lay a fold of grey dress
and over the end of the seat, thrown carelessly back, hung the edge of a
fur-lined wrap.
Eldridge turned blindly toward his place. Some one was there. He had
to take the alcove behind, and he could not see her from the alcove
behind--not even if she should push back the curtain that shut her
away--But he found himself, strangely, not caring to see her.... She was
there, a little way off; it was she--no need to part the curtains and
look in on her. He felt her presence through all the place. He was no
longer guilty.... He was hardly curious to know her. He took up the card
from the table before him and studied it blindly.... His heart seemed to
lie out before him--a clear, white place.... Men and women were not so
evil as he had dreamed. He was doing something that a week ago he would
have condemned any one for; yet his heart, as he looked into it, was
singularly clear and big--and the light shining in it puzzled him--like
a charm--It was a place that he had never seen; he had dreamed of it,
perhaps, as a child. He ordered something, at random, from the card and
moved nearer the aisle.... No, he could not see her--only the fold of
her dress and the bit of grey fur. He was glad she was warmly dressed.
The weather was keener to-day. He must get Rosalind a wrap--something
warm like that and lined with fur--soft and grey and deep. Everything
the woman had he would like Rosalind to have--perhaps it might atone--a
little--for the light in his heart. He had not felt like this for
Rosalind.... But how should they have known. They were only a boy and
girl--and some moonlight.... And all the time this other woman was
waiting--somewhere.... No one had told him. If some one had said to him:
“Wait, she is coming--you must wait!” But no one knew, no one had told
him.... Did _she_ know, across there in her place, did she know--had she
waited--for him? He stirred a little. Some one might be with her now;
or she might be waiting for some one. But he could not go to her....
And yet--why not--?--He had only to cross the aisle--and put back the
curtains--and look at her.... He shook himself and lifted his glass and
drank grimly. He was a lawyer; his name was Eldridge Walcott; he lived
in a brick house and he had children--three children--_That_ was the
real world; this other thing was--madness.... So this was the way
men felt! This was it, was it--very clean and whole--as if life were
beginning for them--they had made mistakes, but they would try again;
they saw something bigger and better than they had ever known--and they
reached out to it. Men were not wicked, as he had thought--It was a
strange world where you had to be wicked to do things--like this!... And
there might be some one with her now! Under the voices and the music he
fancied he could hear them talking in low tones; their voices seemed to
come and go vaguely; half guessed, not constant, but quiet and happy....
Or was it his own heart that beat to her--the words it could speak?...
He would not speak to her--but he would not go away.... He would wait
till she moved back the curtain and stepped out.
Then he half remembered something--and looked at his watch--he had
promised Rosalind to wait for the boys and take them to the dentist’s.
She had said she could not go this afternoon and he had promised to wait
at the office; he had not meant to come here.... He slipped back the
watch and stood up and hesitated--and turned away. He might never
see her now. Well, he had promised Rosalind. Somehow, the promise to
Rosalind must be kept--now. The letter of the law must be kept!
*****
They were waiting for him in the hall by his office door, sitting at the
top of the flight of stairs and peering down into the elevator-shaft as
the elevator shot up and down. He saw them as he stepped out, and smiled
at them. They were fresh, wholesome boys, and he had a sense, as he
fitted the key in the lock and they stood waiting behind his bent back,
that they belonged to him. He had always thought of them as Rosalind’s
boys!
He threw open the door and they went in, looking about them almost
shyly; they were not shy boys, but father was a big man--and they looked
at the place where he worked.... Some time they would be--men and have
an office....
Eldridge Walcott turned back from the desk that he had opened. He had
taken out a little roll of paper and slipped it into his pocket. Their
eyes followed him gravely. He looked at them standing--half in their
world, half in his--and smiled to them.
“You had to wait a good while, didn’t you?” he said.
They nodded together. “Most an hour,” said Tommie.
“Well, that’s all right--Something kept me. Come on.”
When they reached home that evening he handed the little roll of paper
he had taken from the desk to Rosalind. “I have doubled it,” he said.
“There will be enough for everything you want.”
For a minute she did not speak. Then she took it. “Thank you,” she said
slowly.
“I want you to get a suit, you know--a good one--” He paused. “--And you
need something warm--a fur-lined wrap or something--don’t you?”
She wrinkled the little line between her eyes. “It is--so late--the
winter is half gone already.” Then her face cleared. “I think
I’ll--wait till spring,” she said.
He could almost fancy something danced at him, mocked him behind the
still face.
He turned away, the deep, hurt feeling coming close. “Get what you
like,” he said. “I want you to have enough.”
The money lay in her hand, and her fingers opened on it and closed on
it. Then she breathed softly, like a sigh, and went to her desk and put
it away.
VI
THROUGH the weeks that followed Eldridge watched the things money could
buy quietly taking their place in the house. Little comforts that he had
not missed--had not known any one could miss--were at hand. The children
looked somehow subtly different. He had a sense of expansion, softly
breaking threads of habit, expectancy. Only Rosalind seemed unchanged.
Yet each time he looked at her he fancied that she _had_ changed--more
than all of them. He could not keep his eyes from her. Something was
hidden in her--Something he did not know--that he would never
know. Perhaps he should die and not know it.... Did the dead
know things--everything? He seemed to remember hazily from
Sunday-school--something--If he were dead, he might come close to
her--as close as the little thoughts behind her eyes----
The cold grew keener, and Eldridge, shivering home from the office,
remembered a pair of fur gloves in the attic. He had not worn them for
years. But after supper he took a light and went to look for them.
It was cold there, in the attic, and he shivered a little, looking about
the dusty place. There were boxes stacked along under the eaves and
garments hanging grotesquely from the beams. He knew where Rosalind kept
the gloves; he had seen them one day last summer when he was looking for
window netting. It had not seemed to him then, in the hot attic, that
any one could ever need gloves. He set down the lamp on a box and drew
out a trunk and looked in it; they were not there. She must have changed
the place of things--he would have to go down and ask her.
Then his eye sought out a box pushed far back under the eaves--he did
not remember that he had ever seen that box; he glanced at it--and half
turned away to pick up the lamp--and turned back. He could not have told
why he felt that he must open it. He had set the light on a box a
little above him, and it glimmered down on the box that he drew out and
opened--and on a smooth piece of tissue-paper under the cover----A faint
perfume came from beneath the paper, and he lifted it. There was a pair
of long grey gloves--with the shape of a woman’s hand still softly held
in the finger-tips.... He lifted them and stared and moistened his lips
and ran his hand down inside the box to the bottom--soft, filmy stuff
that yielded and sprang back.... He kneeled before it, half on his
heels, peering down. He bent forward and lifted the things out--white
things with threaded ribbon and lace--things such as Eldridge Walcott
had never seen--delicate, web-like things--then a fur-lined coat and a
grey dress and, at the bottom, a little linked something. He lifted it
and peered at it and at the coins shining through the meshes and dropped
it back.
He stood up and looked about him vaguely... after a minute he shivered
a little. It was very cold in the attic. He knelt down and tried to put
the things back; but his fingers shook, and the things took queer shapes
and fell apart, and a soft perfume came from them that confused him.
He tried to steady himself--he began at the bottom, putting each thing
carefully in place... smoothing it down.
The door below creaked. A voice listened.... “You up there, Eldridge?”
He straightened himself... out of a thousand thoughts and questions.
“Where are my fur gloves?” he said quietly. He took the light from its
box and came over to the stairs.
Her face, lifted to him, was in the light and he could see the rays of
light falling on it--and on the stillness, like a pool....
“They’re in the black trunk,” said Rosalind. Her foot moved to the
stair--“I’ll get them for you.”
“No--Don’t come up,” he said. “It’s cold here. I know--I was just
looking there.”
So she went back, closing the door behind her to keep out the cold.
When Eldridge came down he did not look at her. He blew out the light
and put the gloves with his hat in the hall and came over with his paper
and sat down.
She was standing by the fire, bending over a pair of socks that she had
been washing out. She was hanging them in front of the fire, pulling
out the toes. Her eyes looked at him inquiringly as her fingers went on
stretching the little toes.
“Did you find them?”
“Yes.” He opened his paper slowly. She went on fussing at the socks, a
little, absent smile on her face. “If it keeps on like this I must get
heavier flannels for them,” she said. The look in her face was very
sweet as she bent over the small socks.
He looked up--and glanced away. “Money enough--have you?”
“Oh, yes--plenty of money. I will get them to-morrow--if I can go in to
town--” she said.
His mind flashed to the attic above them and to the quiet alcove with
the little green curtains that shut it off. “Better dress warm if you do
go,” he said carelessly. “It is pretty cold, you know.” He took up the
paper and stared at it.
VII
SO it was--Rosalind! He sat in his office and stared at the blotter on
his desk.... It was a green blotter-----For years after Eldridge
Walcott could not see a green blotter without a little, sudden sense
of upheaval; he would walk into a plain commercial office--suddenly the
walls hovered, the furniture moved subtly--even the floor grew a little
unsteady before he could come with a jerk to a green blotter on the
roller-top desk--and face it squarely. The blotter on his own desk was
exchanged for a crimson one--the next day. He would have liked to
change everything in the room. The very furniture seemed to mock him--to
question....
So it was--Rosalind! Rosalind--was like that--! His heart gave a
quick beat--like a boy’s--and stood still.... Rosalind was like
that--for--somebody else.... He stared at the blotter and drew a pad
absently toward him.
The office boy stuck his head in the door and drew it back. He shook it
at a short, heavy man with a thinnish, black-grey beard who was hovering
near. “He told me not to disturb him--not for anybody,” the boy said
importantly.
The man took a card from his pocket and wrote on it. “Take him that.”
The boy glanced at the name and at the thin, blackish beard. There was
a large wart on the man’s chin where the beard did not grow. The boy’s
eyes rested on it--and looked away to the card. “I ’ll--ask him--” he
said.
The man nodded. “Take him that first.”
The boy went in.
The man walked to the window and looked down; the thick flesh at the
back of his neck overlapped a little on the collar of his well-cut coat
and the heavy shoulders seemed to shrug themselves under the smooth fit.
The boy’s eyes surveyed the back respectfully. “You’re to come in,” he
says.
The man turned and went in and Eldridge Walcott looked up. “I’m sorry to
have kept you waiting.”
“That’s all right.” The man sat down a little heavily--as if he were
tired. “That’s all right. I waited because I wanted to see you. I want
some one to do--a piece of work--for me--”
“Yes?”
“I don’t care to have my regular man on it--”
“You have Clarkson, don’t you?”
“Yes--I have Clarkson.” The man waited. “Clarkson’s all right--for
business,” he said. “I want a different sort--for this.”
He felt in the pocket of his coat and drew out a letter, and then
another, and held them, looking down at them absently, turning them over
in his hand.
“It’s a divorce--” he said. He went on turning the letters in his hand
but not looking at them. “I’ve waited as long as I could,” he added
after a minute. “It’s no use--” He laid the letters on the desk.
“It took a detective--and money--to get ’em. I reckon they’ll do the
business,” he said.
Eldridge reached out his hand for them. The man’s errand startled him a
little. He had been going over divorce on the green blotter when the boy
came in. He opened the letters slowly. A little faint perfume drifted
up--and between him and the words came a sense of the blackish-grey
beard and the wart in among it. He had stared at it, fascinated, while
the man talked.... He could imagine what it might mean to a woman, day
after day. He focussed his attention on the letter--and read it and took
up the other and laid it down....
“Yes--Those are sufficient,” he said almost curtly. He took up his pen.
“Your middle initial is J?”
“Gordon J.,” said the man.
Eldridge traced the name. “And your wife?”
The man stared at him.
“Her full name--” said Eldridge.
“Her name is Cordelia Rose--Barstow,” said the man.
Eldridge wrote it efficiently. “Do you name any one as co-respondent?”
“I name--his name is--” The man gulped and his puffy face was grim.
“John E. Tower is his name,” he said slowly.
Eldridge filled in the paper before him and laid a blotter across it.
“That is sufficient. I will file the application to-morrow. There will
be no trouble. She will not contest it--?”
The man swallowed a little. “No--She wants--to be free--” He ended the
words defiantly, but with a kind of shame.
Eldridge made no reply. He was seeing a quiet figure, with bent head,
smiling at something--something that shut him out. He looked across to
the man.
The man’s eyes met his. “That’s all you need--is it?” He seemed a little
disappointed. “No more to it than this?”
“That’s all,” said Eldridge.
But the man did not get up. “I don’t know how it happened,” he said.
“You see, I never guessed--not till two weeks--ten days ago or so.”
“I see--”
“I’d always trusted Cordelia--I hadn’t ever thought as she could do
anything like that--not _my_ wife!”
“One doesn’t usually expect it of one’s--own wife.” Eldridge laughed a
little, but it was not unkindly, and the man seemed to draw toward him.
“I’ve never mentioned it--except to that detective, and I didn’t tell
him--any more than I had to--He didn’t seem to need much telling--”
he said dryly. “He seemed to sense just about what had been going
on--without telling.”
“Yes--?” Eldridge was looking thoughtfully into the greyish-black beard
with the round lump in it.
“He’s got the facts. It took him just two weeks--to get ’em.” His hand
motioned toward the letters, but there was something in the face--a kind
of puffy appeal.
Eldridge nodded. “They know what to do,” he said quietly.
“I hadn’t even mistrusted,” said the man. His eyes were looking at
something that Eldridge could not see--something that seemed to
come from a faint perfume in the room.... “I can see it plain enough
now--looking back.... You don’t mind my telling you--a little--about
it.” Eldridge shook his head. The man seemed a kind of lumbering boy,
yet he was a shrewd, keen man in business.
“It might help--you know--” he said. “I thought you’d ask me,
probably--I’d kind of planned to tell you, I guess.” He laughed a little
awkwardly.
“Go ahead,” said Eldridge.