He passed through the dining room to the inner doorway, where he brushed
by Mrs. Caley. Her face was as harsh and twisted as an old root. He
proceeded directly to the bed.
"Lettice," he said; "Lettice."
Then he saw the appalling futility of addressing that familiar name to the
strange head on the pillow.
Lettice had gone: she had been destroyed as utterly as though a sinister
and ruthless magic had blasted every infinitesimal quality that had been
hers. A countenance the color of glazed white paper seemed to hold pools
of ink in the hollows of its eyes. The drawn mouth was the color of stale
milk. Nothing remained to summon either pity or sorrow. The only possible
emotion in the face of that revolting human disaster was an incredulous
and shocked surprise. It struck like a terrible jest, a terrible, icy
reminder, into the forgetful warmth of living; it mocked at the supposed
majesty of suffering, tore aside the assumed dignity, the domination, of
men; it tampered ferociously with the beauty, the pride, the innocent and
gracious pretensions, of youth, of women.
Gordon Makimmon was conscious of an overwhelming desire to flee from the
white grimace on the bed that had been Lettice's and his. He drew back, in
a momentary, abject, shameful cowardice; then he forced himself to
return.... The fleering lips quivered, there was a slight stir under the
counterpane. A little sound gathered, shaped into words barely audible in
the stillness of the room broken only by Gordon's breathing:
"It's ... too much. Not any more ... hurting. Oh! I can't--"
He found a chair, and sat down by her side. The palms of his hands were
wet, and he wiped them upon his knees. His fear of the supine figure grew,
destroying the arrogance of his manhood, his sentient reason. He was
afraid of what it intimated, threatened, for himself, and of its
unsupportable mockery. He felt as an animal might feel cornered by a
hugely grim and playful cruelty.
The westering sun fell through a window on the disordered huddle of
Lettice's hastily discarded clothes streaming from a chair to the
floor--her stockings, her chemise threaded with a narrow blue ribband. His
thoughts turned to the little white garments she had fashioned in vain.
It had been wonderfully comfortable in the evening in the sitting room
with Lettice sewing. He recalled the time when he had first played the
phonograph in order to hear the dog "sing." Lettice had cried out,
imploring him to stop; well--he had stopped, hadn't he? The delayed
realization of her patience of misery rankled like a barb. The wandering
thoughts returned to the long fabrication he had told her of the loss of
his money in Stenton, of the fictitious agent of hardware. He had snared
the girl in a net of such lies; scornful of Lettice's innocence, her
"stupid" trust, he had brought her to this ruinous pass. It hadn't been
necessary.
The window was open, and a breath of early summer drifted in--a breath of
palpable sweetness. Mrs. Caley entered and bent over the bed, an angular,
black silhouette against the white. She left without a word.
If Lettice died he, Gordon Makimmon, would have killed her, he had killed
more ... he recognized that clearly. The knowledge spread through him like
a virus, thinning his blood, attacking his brain, his nerves. He lifted a
shaking hand to wipe his brow; and, for a brief space, his arm remained in
air; it looked as though he were gazing beneath a shielding palm at a far
prospect. The arm dropped suddenly to his side, the fingers struck dully
against the chair. He heard again the muffled beat of horse's hoofs on
the road above; the sun moved slowly over the narrow, gay strips of rag
carpet on the floor: life went on elsewhere.
His fear changed to loathing, to absolute, sick repulsion from all the
facts of his existence. With the passing minutes the lines deepened on his
haggard countenance, his expression perceptibly aged. The stubble of beard
that had grown since the day before grizzled his lean jaw; the confident
line of his shoulders, of his back, was bowed.
He looked up with a start to find the doctor once more in the room. He
rose. "Doc," he asked in a strained whisper, "Doc, will it be all right?"
He wet his lips. "Will she live?"
"You needn't whisper," the other told him; "she doesn't know ... now.
'Will she live?' I can only tell you that she wanted to die a thousand
times."
Gordon turned away, looking out through the window. It gave upon the slope
planted with corn; the vivid, green shoots everywhere pushed through the
chocolate-colored soil; chickens were vigorously scratching in a corner.
The shadow of the west range reached down and enfolded the Makimmon
dwelling; the sky burned in a sulphur-yellow flame. When he turned the
doctor had vanished, the room had grown dusky. He resumed his seat.
"I didn't do right," he acknowledged to the travesty on the bed; "there
was a good bit I didn't get the hang of. It seems like I hadn't learned
anything at all from being alive. I'm going to fix it up," he proceeded,
painfully earnest. "I'm--" He broke off suddenly at the stabbing memory of
the doctor's words, "She wanted to die a thousand times." He thought, I've
killed her a thousand times already. The fear plucked at his throat. He
rose and walked unsteadily to the door and out upon the porch.
The evening drew its gauze over the valley, the shrill, tenuous chorus of
insects had begun for the night, the gold caps were dissolving from the
eastern peaks. He saw Simeon Caley at the stable door; Sim avoided him,
moving behind a corner of the shed. His pending sense of blood-guiltiness
deepened. The impulse returned to flee, to vanish in the engulfing wild of
the mountains. But he realized vaguely that that from which he longed to
escape lay within him, he would carry it--the memories woven inexplicably
of past and present, dominated by this last, unforgettable specter on the
bed--into the woods, the high, lonely clearings, the still valleys. It was
not remorse now, it was not simple fear, but the old oppression, increased
a thousand-fold.
He sat in the low rocking chair that had held his mother and Clare, and,
only yesterday, Lettice, and its rockers made their familiar tracking
sound over the uneven boards of the porch. At this hour there was usually
a stir and smell of cooking from the kitchen; but now the kitchen window
was blank and still. Darkness gathered slowly about him; it obscured the
black and white check, the red thread, of his suit; it flowed in about him
and reduced him to the common greyness of the porch, the sod, the stream.
It changed him from a man with a puzzled, seamed visage into a man with no
especial, perceptible features, and then into a shadow, an inconsequential
blur less important than the supports for the wooden covering above.