married woman can do as she likes. It’s cheap to be jealous.”
“I wouldn’t insult you by being jealous of you. You see that, Anne, you
must see that! But I don’t like it. Anne--” his voice shook a little,
“Anne, what’s the matter with things the way they used to be?”
She laughed, but her eyes did not soften. “Warmed-up meats, and the
movies, and a thrill when somebody gave us a drive in a Ford! Oh, I’m
long past that, Brice.”
He looked at her. His pipe had gone out, and he lighted it again as
carefully as though he were going through with a ceremony, finally
flicking the match behind the gas-log. Anne stooped and took it out
again, deliberately depositing it in the ash-tray on the table. Her
eyes avoided his. Presently he crossed the room to the desk they
shared, the desk where the check-book lay, and in the left-hand
pigeonholes, Brice’s side, neatly bound together with elastic bands,
the household receipts and bills. The desk was a cheap one. The lid
stuck a little, and as he pulled it open a vase toppled over.
“Damn--!” he ejaculated.
Anne said nothing, but picked up the tulips. Then she went to the
pantry door.
“Lucille, bring a mop and the dust-pan, please,” she said. The tone put
Brice hopelessly in the wrong.
He bit his lip. He had to wait while the girl gathered the bits of
broken glass and dried the floor. Then he sat down.
Anne looked at his back. What had he gone to the desk for? She thought
quickly. That check-book. She had not filled in the stub, but the
check was gone. This was no time tonight, when he was in such a mood.
She watched him covertly, thinking quickly, planning. It was not the
first time they had quarreled, come to a place where going on seemed
impossible, where both had tacitly agreed to stop, where both had
adopted a new manner that dropped a curtain of silence behind them,
shutting out the sordidness and the threatening disaster of such a
scene as they had just been living through. She found her cue. A change
of voice, of attitude, of manner.
She went to him, passed a hand lightly over his hair. It cost her
something to do that, but the price was, after all, paid to herself in
self-satisfaction at her magnanimity.
“You’re tired. Don’t work tonight. Let’s have a game of cribbage or
something,” she said.
Brice laid his pipe on the top of the desk--it had gone out again--and
reached up for her hand. He raised his head, and his eyes were moist.
“You’re a good old girl, Nance!” he said, gruffly.
“What shall we play?” she asked. “Come along--you’re so tired!”
“In a minute. I took out new life-insurance policy today. Got to write
the check for it. They made me pay high--I’m a bit below par, it seems.
Nothing to worry about.”
New life-insurance. Then he, too, was counting on that coming increase
in salary. But--that check-book.
“How much--is the premium?” she asked. Her lips felt dry.
“Two hundred.”
Two hundred, and she had drawn down to less than that. For his sake,
all for his sake; and of course they would get it back, “turn it over,”
but--
“Brice, don’t write the check tonight.”
“It won’t take a minute.”
“Brice, I--Brice--you can’t!”
Something in her voice made him turn again. If it had only been any
other night than this, when he was overtired. “Brice, I drew some money
today.”
His face fell. “How much?” he asked, quietly.
“Four thousand.”
That incredulity in his face, that bewilderment. “What do you mean?
What’s happened?”
“Nothing has happened, my dear, except that I am determined to make you
do the right thing, the sort of thing other men do. You worked hard for
that money, Brice, and you were just keeping it idle there in the bank.
I have invested it for you, for us.”
He stood up. His face was very white. “Would you mind telling me just
what you have done?”
She laughed a little. “Why, I have told you! You would not do it
yourself, so I’ve done it for you. That’s all. We’ll make a quick
turn-over with it.”
“You have drawn out four thousand dollars?”
“Yes. And we’ll make money by it.”
He swallowed, started to speak, swallowed again. “I have taken out a
new policy----”
“But I did not know that!”
“There’s six hundred due on the house on the first of May. One hundred
and eighty-odd in bills. Anne----”
“You’ll have twelve hundred a year more, maybe fifteen.”
“Anne! It’s not true! You haven’t drawn out that money! You know I’ve
never been willing to touch it. We’ve saved it little by little. I
oughtn’t have left it there in the drawing account. Anne!”
“Oh, where’s your nerve, Brice? You’ll get it all back, and more, ever
so much more. Ranney promises that.”
“Ranney!” His face flooded with color. “That damned scoundrel! Anne,
you haven’t put that money in his hands? Good God, Anne!”
He had grasped her wrists. His face was close to hers, a new face,
furious, threatening, outraged, a terrible male face. His grasp hurt
her. She felt herself shaking, swept by an anger that was beyond any
other anger she had ever known, anger that was dismay, that was shame,
and fear, and physical pain.
“Anne, what’s this man Copeland to you, that he’s able to make you do
such a thing to me? What’s he to you?”
Oh, she wanted to hurt him, to hurt him. To strike him where it would
hurt him most.
“Just whatever I want him to be!” she said.
He dropped her wrists. The moment was eternal, a chaos in which new
worlds were forming.
“How much of that talk--at--the--at the country club--did you really
mean?”
“Perhaps you will find that out,” said Anne, “and sooner than you
expect.”
They stared at each other, new people, strange people. His face grew
crimson. A vein stood out in his forehead.
“You will take those words back,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “You
will take those words--back!”
“I will not. I mean them, every one of them. I could have Ranney
Copeland any moment I wanted him. And if I did take him, it would be no
worse than other women do all the time. I can’t go on like this. I tell
you I will not, I will not----!”
His lips were pressed together. He had become a strange man, with new
things at work, in him, things she had never seen before, things she
had not thought possible.
“You are quite right,” he said in a moment. “You shall not go on like
this!”
“What do you mean?”
“I shall see Copeland tomorrow. I’ll put an end to it. I promise you
that. The damned scoundrel.”
“Do you mean you will ask him for that money?”
He laughed shortly.
“You shall not! I tell you, Brice Denison. You’ve shamed me enough,
grubbing along in this hole of a place, making me go without things,
making me-- O-o-oh! You’re no man!”
His face grew pale. “And you think Copeland is?”
“I know he is.”
He turned away, and turned back to her. His hands were shaking, but his
face was still. “You will think better of this by tomorrow, Anne.”
She looked back at him from the doorway. “I’ll never think better of
it. Never differently, anyway. You’ll see. Oh, you’ll see!”
5
On the morning after her quarrel with Brice she was brought abruptly
out of sleep by a sense of disaster, of things shattering and falling
about her. Then she remembered.
She had left him downstairs the night before and lain awake for hours
before he came up. She had pretended to be asleep, had listened to
his quiet movements, at last to his breathing from the bed beside her
own. For a long while she lay there awake, knowing that he was awake,
too, wondering whether he was as tense with anger as she was, whether
she had hurt him enough, hurt him to a realization of his failure, his
weakness. She was not sorry she had hurt him. She could have hurt him
more, more.
At last sleep came; now, when she awoke, it was to find that he had
dressed and left the room. A glance at the clock told her that he must
also, long since, have left the house.
Very well. After that crisis of last night it would not be easy to
gloss over this quarrel as they had always done before. There had never
been anything like this. He had misjudged her, set at naught everything
she had done for him. He had scoffed at her friends, behaved utterly
outrageously about Ranney Copeland. He intended to shame her further by
getting that money back. Well, he shouldn’t. Anyway, he could not do
it at once. Before she and Ranney had parted yesterday there had been
words that came back to her now.
“Anne, do you know how much I think of you? Do you, Anne?”
She had parried that. “I know we’re good friends, Ranney.”
He had put a hand over hers for an instant. “Friends! Anne, you don’t
know what you’ve been to me, these past months.”
“You too,” she had murmured.
“I’ve got to go away tomorrow. Only a few days. When I come back I am
going to tell you something.”
After she had given him the check he had looked at her intently. She
had read things in that look. “You’re not afraid, Anne?”
She had stepped away from him, laughed a little. “What could I be
afraid of--with you, Ranney?” she had asked.
Yes, she remembered that, now. Yesterday she had been afraid to think
of what meaning there might lie in his words, in his manner. Today what
stood out was that he would be away for a few days, so Brice could not
get the check back at once, not until she had further chance to bring
him to his senses.
She got up, began to dress. There were small faint marks on her arm
where Brice’s fingers had pressed, and her anger was fanned to new
vigor when she saw them. That she should have had to stand there, held
like that, hurt like that! Like any common fishwife, her husband a
brute, a brawler. To be forced to listen, to look at him. Oh yes, she
had answered him. “Whatever I want him to be!” “I am not going on!” Oh,
she had hurt Brice. She was glad she had hurt him. “I could have Ranney
Copeland any moment I wanted him.” She had watched those words sting.
How could they go on, with those words, stark, between them? She left
the table, went into the living-room. A bit of the broken vase that
Lucille had overlooked gleamed in the sunlight; she picked it up. The
petals of some of the tulips had fallen. A newspaper lay on the rug.
There were matches and burned tobacco on a tray on the table, and a
match on the floor. The desk was still open. Brice had forgotten his
pipe. The room wore a dissolute air. It was a place where passion had
broken loose and left its débris. In the cool morning light it looked
haggard. She ran up the stairs to her bedroom.
How was she to go on? If she and Brice really broke, what would she do?
What could she do? What did any woman do, unless she married again?
What else was there? Work? She had no yearnings for work. She knew
nothing about it, but all that she wanted to know. She wanted other
things. Life. That was what she wanted so, life. Hadn’t she a right to
it?
She paced up and down the room, still in its disorder of the night, the
sheets thrown back on the beds, Brice’s soiled collar on the bureau,
the dress she had tossed aside drooping over a chair. Intolerable. She
went to a window. Those houses across the street. Stupid people. Oh,
why wouldn’t Brice see, why wouldn’t he do what other men did? Why,
why? Oh, hideous, the whole thing, hideous, useless, senseless. That
child across the way on her roller-skates. Such a noise.
Then she started. Ranney Copeland’s brown car had turned the corner,
was stopping at the curb in front of her house. She drew back, a hand
to her cheek. Then he had not gone away. Perhaps Brice had seen him
already. Her face flamed, her heart quickened its beat. She laid a hand
on the curtain. Then she felt weak. Not Ranney. Not Ranney getting out
of the car, but Alice. Alice, running up the cement walk to the steps.
Hastily she looked into the mirror again. Then she went down. The bell
had rung twice. Not like Alice, that haste. Where was Lucille? She
opened the door herself.
Alice came in. Strange, how anyone as small as Alice could give such an
effect of bustling. Anne took in at a glance the clothes she had on,
and the haste with which she had donned them.
“Nance! I’m so glad you are home. I’ve come begging.”
“This room is a sight,” Anne said. “What’s the matter?”
“George is going to Boston, and I want to go with him.”
“Why on earth don’t you?”
“It’s the children. You know how I feel about leaving the children
alone with the servants. I tried to get Miss Whitney, but she’s out
on a baby case. Oh, Anne, darling, couldn’t you and Brice stay at the
house just for two or three nights? I telephoned Nicky, but she’s
getting that miserable girl off somewhere today. You wouldn’t have a
thing to do, really. But you know how I feel about the children.”
Anne’s mind jumped. She and Brice. Two or three nights. She had wanted
to get away, anywhere, just for a time until things blew over.
“Don’t be silly, Alice,” she said. “Of course we’d just love to come.”
“You couldn’t come right away, could you? You can telephone Brice from
the house. I’ll drive you over. I’ve got Ranney’s car. He’s away, and
George took ours down to have something done to it.”
“I’ll have to get a bag, and speak to Lucille.”
“But hurry, like a love, won’t you? George wants to start early. He’ll
probably be there in a fidget by the time we get back.”
Anne went upstairs, for a moment stood in her bedroom with her hands
pressed to her cheeks. Then she laughed. Oh, this time Fate had played
into her hands! Not Brice. No, not with Brice. She would go, not leave
him a word, but just go. For two nights. Only for two nights. It would
give him a chance to think. Give him time to find out, to cool off, to
come to his senses.
She pulled open a drawer, brought a suitcase from the closet. She would
not need much. Five minutes later she ran down the stairs.
“I must speak to Lucille,” she said.
But Alice Copeland was already opening the front door. “Oh, you can
telephone from the house,” she said. “You don’t mind, do you? I don’t
want to keep George waiting.”
As they turned the corner Anne looked back. Lucille was standing on the
porch, gazing after the car.
That day and the two following, in the Copelands’ house, gave Anne much
time for thinking. The rich restfulness of the house itself, the quiet
perfection of food and service, even the bed she slept on, with its
deep box spring and mysteriously soft mattress and embroidered linen,
all were as balm to her. For in such a mood as that in which Anne was
it is physical things that soothe tense nerves. She did not see much of
the children. With childhood’s prescience they understood well enough
that Aunt Nance was not one who greatly desired their presence.
She had waved farewell to Alice and the impatient George. Alice had
come back three times to kiss the children over again or to leave more
directions with their nurse.
A New York decorator had “done” Alice’s drawing-room--old Georgian
paneling, furniture whose dignity matched it, mellow things that were
restful and beautiful and costly. Things, things that she, Anne, ought
to have. Why not? Why had Alice Copeland, and the women like Alice
Copeland, a house like this? And why, oh, why, had not Anne Denison one
like it?
She drifted upstairs to Alice’s sitting-room. She knew it well, but saw
it afresh today. Here were bright printed linens. Almost unconsciously
she computed their cost by the yard. Here were soft chairs, a deep
couch with embroidered pillows, magazines and books, a telephone under
a lacy French doll. She remembered that she had not spoken to Lucille
before she left, and crossed to the telephone. But she stopped, the
receiver still on its hook. Why should she? Why, after all, should she
give Brice a clew to where she was? She smiled as the thought came.
This was the last place he would think of her being in, here, domiciled
in the Copeland house as its mistress for the time. She wanted to
punish him, wanted to worry him, to make him suffer. That was the way
to manage him, this time. Had she not tried other ways, at other times,
and had it all to go over again? She would let him have time to think,
time to realize what she was to him, time to come to his senses. She
raised the receiver, but instead of her own number she gave that of the
market where she dealt. A roast. He liked the cold-meat régime. Let him
try it. A large roast, that would last for three dinners; for the rest,
she would trust to Lucille’s ingenuity.
At luncheon she spoke to the maid. “If anyone calls or telephones, you
need not say that I am staying here while Mrs. Copeland is away. It
will not be necessary. You may just make a note of the calls, and we
will give them to Mrs. Copeland when she gets back.”
Three quiet days, two nights of soft sleep. On Friday Alice returned.
“What a darling you’ve been, Nance! The children look splendid,” she
said, as though she had left them for a month and dreaded to find them
small shadows of themselves.
Anne laughed; she was in the mood to laugh easily, well pleased with
herself. “But it’s been heavenly,” she said.
“I hope Brice didn’t mind. I do hope they made him comfortable.”
Brice. She had not thought of it, but Alice, of course, would discover
that Brice had not been there. “To tell you the truth, dear,” she said,
“I didn’t bring Brice. He’s such an old stay-at-home.”
Alice’s face fell. “Oh, my dear, then I shouldn’t have begged you to
come.”
“Nonsense. Brice was probably glad to get rid of me.”
Anne laughed as she said it, but Alice’s face was still serious. “Of
course you don’t mean that,” she said. “But just the same, I feel
conscience-stricken. You know I’m a perfect goose about leaving the
children, but I’d rather leave them than be separated from George, even
for a day or two. Silly, isn’t it?”
It was mid-afternoon when she drove home. From the car she noticed that
the front window shades were all at different heights. But aside from
that the whole house, even the street itself, struck her as though she
had been away from it for a year. The same, all too precisely the same,
with nothing changed. Yet the details stood out in new aspects, and
aspects not beautiful. In the haste of her departure she had forgotten
her key. A disheveled Lucille, capless, untidy, opened the door for her
and stared.
Anne turned and waved to Alice. “Good-by! I’ve had a wonderful time,”
she called out. The car slowly gathered speed and went on down the
narrow street.
“Well, Lucille! You have not changed for the afternoon, have you?” she
said, but still smiling a little. She was not going to be severe. They
all let themselves go, unless you were right there to stand over them.
“My land! I thought you-all wasn’t coming back any more,” said the
girl. Anne had started up the stairs. Lucille was following with the
suitcase.
“I have been away with Mrs. Copeland,” said Anne. “Did you and Mr.
Denison get along all right? Did the roast come?”
“Yes’m, it come. Mist’ Denison ain’t been home las’ night.”
Anne stood still for an instant, went on into her room. She thought
quickly. Must carry it off. “Oh, that’s true. I forgot he had to go
away. Well, we must have an extra good dinner for him tonight.”
Again she ordered by telephone. Tomorrow, really, she would begin to go
to the store. Then, alone at last in her own room, she put her things
to rights, slept for an hour, dressed herself in her prettiest. She was
not going to plan the coming interview with Brice. Oh, he would be glad
enough to see her. Time would have done its work. They had both been
rather foolish. After dinner there would be a little pretty penitence
on her part, embraces on his.
She waited dinner an hour. Brice did not come. She thought of
telephoning the office, realized that everyone would have gone home.
At last she ate alone. The dinner was good, and her appetite was good.
How childish Brice was. Once or twice she smiled as she visualized his
coming in, the quiet, cautious opening of the door, his fumbling in the
hall, her placid self there under the lamp, quite as though nothing
unpleasant or unusual had ever passed between them, quite as though
there had been no absence. “Hello, dear! Late, aren’t you?” Yes, she
smiled. She could afford to wait. She knew how to manage Brice.
Nine, ten o’clock came, and Brice did not come. Until long past twelve
she sat there, a slowly returning anger mounting within her. So he had
not got over it yet. He was playing her own game. Lucille had said that
he had not come home at all, the night before. Oh, if that was what he
was going to do, all right! All right!
Yet she lay far into the night, sleepless, angry, restless, thinking.
It was despicable, his turning the tables like this. But she would not
worry. He needn’t think she would worry.
In the morning she was aware of Lucille’s curious eyes. Before noon she
telephoned to the office of Whitten & Company. No, Mr. Denison was not
there. Would the person who answered be so kind as to leave a message
on his desk, asking him to call up his house when he came in? Then she
dressed for the street. On the way to the door she stepped into the
kitchen, and said, quite casually:
“By the way, Lucille, when Mr. Denison calls up, just say that Mrs.
Denison wants to have dinner a little early this evening, will you?” He
would know, from that.
That afternoon she spent at the country club, went there and back in
Mrs. Ogden’s car. Gayer than usual, she followed the other women around
the links. She must take some lessons in golf. You weren’t in it,
really, unless you played.
“No’m. Ain’t anybody telephoned,” said Lucille, on her return. Then she
remembered--Saturday! The office closed early. He would not have gotten
her message.
Again she sat at dinner alone, sat there, not eating. No appetite. But
of course, that tea at the club. No other reason.
Sunday. No Brice. The long day alone. Again she lay awake.
On the morrow her anger began to be mixed with sheer fright. This was
not like Brice. Never would Brice go as far as this, just to frighten
her, just to get even. Something had happened. By mid-afternoon she
realized that she could not, again, sit alone at that table, wait
alone in that room for him. She must know. Yet something of pride,
pride waiting to turn again into anger, made her want, as it were,
to cover her tracks. Foolish--oh, she knew it was foolish. Nothing
could, could have happened. Later she would laugh at her panic. And it
might get into the papers. House telephone numbers could be traced.
She went out to a drugstore, one where she was not known. She had to
gather her courage before she could drop a coin into the telephone. The
police-station. No accident reported. The hospitals. Nothing. No use
calling up places in town.
She leaned against the wall of the booth for a moment before she came
out of its fetid air. Brice. Brice. What was it? What was it?
6
Yet it was not until the following day that she found courage enough to
do what she knew must be done. Go to him. That was it. He had always
hated to have her go to the office, yet she had been there five or six
times, knew some of the men there. The meeting would be none the easier
with others around. She would have to make it casual. She could. Just
walk in a little hurriedly. “Sorry to interrupt, my dear, but I wanted
to tell you----” and so on. That. Just to see him. Just to show him
that she was willing to take things up where they used to be. She knew
she could count upon Brice to do the same thing.
Half an hour on the train. The ferry. The short walk. Those doors,
where Brice went in every day, and the elevator. The outer office. A
smiling nod to the man there. One of the partitioned rooms beyond,
that Brice shared with two or three other men. She put her hand on
the door. How her heart was beating! A tap; then she turned the knob,
went in. Brice’s desk by the window, so oddly free from papers. The men
there looked up. Mr. Farren pushed back his chair, came towards her
smiling, hand out.
“Mighty glad to see you, Mrs. Denison. Hope Denison’s all right?”
Still she smiled. But how stiff her face felt! Must not let them see,
must not let them guess. She must think quickly, speak naturally. Not
ask them, not ask Farren. No, she must not do that. To think quickly.
That was it. To think of the best thing to do, and to smile just enough.
“Quite all right, thank you. I wonder--I thought--do you suppose I
could see Mr. Whitten for a moment?”
She was thankful that idea came to her. Thankful she managed to speak
the words, any words. Thankful that her voice sounded enough like her
own not to give her away to these men, Brice’s associates for how many
years?
An odd little look came and went in Farren’s eyes. Why was he so brisk,
so exceedingly cheery? Why was he embarrassed?
“Oh, I’m quite sure you can, Mrs. Denison. Just a moment. I’ll see.”
Then the room of the head of the firm. Twice before she had met him,
once here in the office, once at his house when Mrs. Whitten had asked
her and Brice to dine. He received her kindly enough.
“Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Denison? What can I do for you?”
She sat down, and he turned in his swivel chair to face her, leaning
back with his elbows on its arms, the tips of his fingers together. She
knew that Farren had closed the door behind him, that a young woman
left a desk in a corner and followed him out. Suddenly the courage that
had carried her on was not there. It was Brice, Brice she wanted.
“Mr. Whitten,” she said, “I have come to ask about my husband.”
“Ah. Yes. Of course. I am sorry, Mrs. Denison, we are all sorry, that
things have turned out so.”
“He is not here.”
The old man took up a paper-knife that was on his desk. “Well, of
course, Mrs. Denison, he has told you that. But we are sorry. I may say
that we are very sorry indeed.”
What did he mean? She could only look at him.
“There was really no necessity for his leaving so abruptly. In fact,
we are disappointed that he felt he must do so. Disappointed in him.
These things--ah--happen. No good taking them that way. I am sure that
Denison can find a place more--ah--more fitted to his--ah--hum. We gave
him a month, you know, to look about in.”
Mr. Whitten paused. He had the air of having said all there was to say.
She clasped her hands together in her lap to still their trembling,
leaned a little towards him.
“Mr. Whitten,” she said, “will you please tell me just what has
happened? Mr. Denison--my husband--has--has told me very little.”
His eyes sought the window, came back to her, rested on his hand that
fidgeted with the paper cutter. “Well, my dear lady, there is so very
little to tell. These things happen. There was the question, of course,
of filling the place that will be vacant on the first of the month. Our
Mr. Grant is retiring.”
“Yes, I know.”
“The promotion really lay between your husband and Mr. Farren. It is
the policy of our firm to give the more responsible positions to men
who have, so to speak, an interest in the firm. A small thing, but a
guarantee of their feeling the responsibility as their own. On the
whole, our choice was for your husband. A few days ago, on Thursday, I
think, we put the matter before him, suggested his taking up a small
block of the company’s stock. We set the amount as low as two thousand
dollars.”
Anne felt her lips grow cold.
“It was a shock, Mrs. Denison; I may say that it was a real shock,
when your husband confessed that he had no savings whatever. We had
not--ah--thought him that sort of man. We--hum--expressed ourselves
accordingly. I feel we were quite within our rights in doing so. Mr.
Denison has received a fair salary here, a very fair salary, and we
expect our men to--ah--to live a little better than within their means.
Our firm is a conservative one. Therefore, we expressed ourselves
accordingly. Mr. Denison seemed somewhat nervous. Somewhat wrought up,
if I may say so. Not like himself. He--ah--he stated that he regretted
the firm’s lack of confidence in him, though I think we had not gone
quite so far as to imply that, and suggested that we might care to
fill his place here. On the whole, Mrs. Denison, that seemed the best
thing to do, since he took it that way, and considering our sincere
disappointment. But we gave him, of course we gave him a month in which
to look about. We were exceedingly sorry when he came in the next day
and informed us that he had decided to leave at once. Exceedingly
sorry.”
She was not trembling now. It seemed to her that she had not life
enough to tremble, that she was still, still, with life dead within
her, a heaviness that weighted her whole body. Yet she stood up.
“Thank you, Mr. Whitten,” she said. “You have told me what I wished to
know.”
He held open the door for her. She knew that she was shaking hands with
him, knew that his eyes, really kindly eyes, were upon her own.
“I am sorry, Mrs. Denison. Great mistake, great mistake for young
people to live up to their means, beyond them. Great mistake to be
hasty.”
That outer office, the elevator, the street. On Thursday. That was the
day after she went to Alice’s. Thursday. Brice had not gone home. At
a street crossing a bell clanged, and she drew back, feeling her lips
grow cold. An ambulance. Someone must know. There must be someone.
Ambrose. But he’d take Brice’s side. If Brice really, really had gone.
There was Nicky.
She walked on and on. What time did Nicky get home? No matter. She
could wait. Or fill in the time with walking. Then, at last, Nicky’s
door.
“Child!” Nicky cried. “What has happened to you? You look like a ghost!”
“I’ve been--shopping,” said Anne. “I thought, perhaps--tea----”
“You drop down on that sofa,” said Nicky. “I can do better than tea.
You need it.”
“I’d rather have tea.”
She was conscious of Nicky’s eyes furtively on her, but she talked,
talked of anything. Were the clothes right for that girl? Yes, Alice
had been away. With George. So silly about George. No, the shops had
been stupid. She hadn’t bought anything. It tired one so, shopping.
What had Nicky been doing? Had she seen Ambrose?
“Saw him last night,” Nicky told her, sipping her tea.
“Did he--did he say anything about Brice?”
“No. What should he say?”
“Nothing. Only I thought----”
“Look here, Anne, what’s the matter with you? What’s wrong with Brice?”
“Nothing. How absurd you are, Nick.”
Veronica put down her teacup, stood before Anne with her hands loosely
clasped behind her back. “Anne, you’re going to play the devil with
Brice, one of these days,” she said. “You haven’t by any chance done it
already, have you?”
“Just because I asked whether Ambrose had said anything about him? You
do go rather far, Nicky, even for you!”
“Oh, all right!” said Nicky, with a shrug. “Going? I’ll be out again
soon.”
Lucille at the door, tousled, her apron soiled. No matter. Just to
get up to her room. That horrible feeling of having been tramping the
streets with her soul bare, for anyone to see, to look into. Like that
dream that comes to everyone of walking abroad without clothing. Now,
quivering, wanting to get away from the light. But there was something
she must think of. Oh, yes. Must not let the girl see things were
wrong. Back-door gossip.
“Lucille, I’ve had dinner,” she called down the stairs.
By morning she was braced by that blessing of womankind, the
instinctive demand of preserving appearances at any cost. One must
wait. Hold hard and wait. Above all, not think. No, not think. Shut the
mind to those thoughts. Shut them out. Wait.
Yet, as though it were indeed a house of death, she shrank away
from the door when the postman rang. It was nothing, a bill, an
advertisement of a millinery opening. It was after ten o’clock when a
messenger-boy dropped his wheel at the curb and came running up to the
door. Lucille brought her the little book to be signed, with its grimy
sheet scribbled over with names. Not until the girl had vanished into
the back of the house again did she really look at the letter in her
hand. Then her knees trembled, from disappointment or relief. It was
only from Ranney Copeland, his business address in the corner. So he
was back. In a moment she ran a finger under the flap of the envelope.
Something dropped to the floor, but her eyes were on what Ranney had
scrawled.
“Dear Nance,--Just back, and find this addressed to you in my care.
When your fortune is made, you’ll be getting dozens of these. I
thought it might amuse you to taste the first sample. See you soon.
Yours,
RANNEY.”
That was all. Some business circular, then. How sick she felt.
She stooped to the letter that had dropped, turned it over. The
handwriting was Brice’s.
7
What becomes of the hours when life stands still? Anne Denison thought
of that, afterward, and wondered. At the time, during that day and the
next, there was no thought for Anne, but only feeling. Her world had
burst, like an electric bulb, and there was no light. Nothing was real.
The very furniture in her house took on strange shapes, grotesque. The
sunlight dazzled her. The dark made her want to cry out and beat it
away. She was aware of Lucille’s anxious hovering at times, knew that
food was set before her which she had not ordered and which she did not
eat. Now and again she read Brice’s letter, then hid it away, locked it
away, only to take it out again and read:
“Anne, I have been a blind fool. Even when the girl said you had gone
in his car, I couldn’t believe it until I learned that he had left
town. God knows I don’t want to stand in your way. The four thousand,
and what you can get on the equity in the house, will see you through
until you get your divorce. Let it be desertion. I will not contest.
BRICE.”
Gradually, after a day or two, she began again to think, to reason.
It was all plain enough. Those words she had said when they parted,
the night of the quarrel. “Anything I want him to be” and “Perhaps you
will find that out sooner than you expect.” Her anger, her miserable,
childish anger when she said them, the satisfaction she had had in
hurting him. Her leaving the next day for Alice’s, and Alice driving
her brother-in-law’s showy car. Lucille on the porch, staring after
them. She could imagine that scene when Brice returned, and what
Lucille must have told him.
“No, sir, she ain’t come in yet. She went off this mornin’ with Mist’
Copeland in the car.”
Something like that. And Brice’s anger at her disregard of his wishes,
her apparent flaunting of his command not to be seen again with Ranney
Copeland. Her not coming home. She turned hot and cold when she thought
of what Brice had been through, that next day, at the office. His
shame, when he had had to confess to Mr. Whitten that he had not so
much in the world as two thousand dollars, the two thousand dollars
that was only half of what she had drawn just the day before to put
into Ranney Copeland’s hands, the two thousand dollars that would
have given him that coveted and well-deserved better position, a real
place in the world. Yes, her not coming home, after that next day of
his. What sort of night had Brice spent? What sort of night, while she
slept so dreamlessly in that soft bed of Alice’s? She recalled what Mr.
Whitten had told her. On that Thursday Brice had gone back, closed up
his desk, left.
Strangely enough, for a long time she could not look at Brice’s bureau.
At last she was as strangely drawn to it, stood before it, touched it
and drew away, before she gathered courage enough to open the drawers.
A few things, only a few things had he taken. In his closet but one
suit was missing, an old one. Her picture was still on the bureau, that
picture she had had taken last year in the gown she had worn to the New
Year’s dance. There had been another, of young Anne Warren, that she
had declared absurd, with its hair arranged in that out-of-date way,
that she had made him keep out of sight in the drawer. The frame was
there, empty. She dropped to her knees by the bureau. He had taken
that young Anne Warren, that Anne who had won his heart. Anne Denison,
Anne in the ball gown, he had left behind.
Gradually, as the difficulties of the situation made themselves clear
to her, she became filled with a cold anger against Brice, an anger far
different from the earlier blazing fury. That he should have dared to
believe that thing of her, that he should have dared to misunderstand
her, and put her in this ghastly position. Oh, yes, she had said those
bitter things. But she had lived with him ten years. How could he, how
could he! Never in her heart had she been unfaithful, undevoted to him,
any more than in her actions. Of course every woman, in those moments
of desperate rebellion that the closeness of the marriage bond brings,
thinks of what might happen, thinks of what she might do, thinks
perhaps of leaving it all. But she had never meant it. No, never,
never! Deliberately she closed her mind to what might have been going
on in Brice’s mind. She would not let herself think again of what he
had gone through during those days of her unexplained absence.
She did not love Ranney Copeland. But she had loved Brice, and this
was what had come of it. Ranney Copeland? How much of truth was there
in what she had said to Brice, that she could have Ranney Copeland
whenever she wanted him? She thought of that, shrank away from the
thought, grasped at it again. What else was there?
But first the world had to be faced, people had to be told, and the
telling must come from herself, if the tale were to wear the guise she
wished it to. There came a morning when she telephoned to make sure
that Alice would be at home. An hour later she was in Alice’s upstairs
sitting-room, where Mrs. Copeland was remonstrating with one of her
small daughters who did not wish to go out for a walk. A patient maid
was standing near holding the other child by the hand. The little girl
who was consciously good eyed the one before whom Alice was kneeling
with that stolid understanding of childhood, and with something of the
good little girl’s self-complacency at the iniquity of the naughty one.
“But--I--am--not--going out with Nelly!” Elizabeth was saying.
“Yes, you are, darling! Come--put your arm in your coat.”
“Won’t!”
“Put your arm in, darling, for mother.”
“I won’t wear this old coat. I’m going to wear my new blue coat.”
“I’ll tell you!” Alice’s voice sounded as though she had just thought
of the most wonderful thing. “I’ll tell you! You shall wear your blue
coat the very next time you go out with mother.”
One thin arm went into the brown coat. “Well. When am I going out with
you, mother?”
“We’ll drive down to meet daddy this afternoon. There--now kiss me, and
run.”
“How wonderful you are with them, Alice,” said Anne, a little sadly,
when the children had left the room. “Where do you get all that
patience?”
“Oh, it isn’t patience, really. It’s a sort of trying to meet them on
their own ground, the poor little darlings. You know how you feel,
yourself, sometimes, about doing things you don’t want to do, and
wearing things you detest.”
“Is there really anything you detest, Alice?”
“Why, yes, of course there is. I don’t think about it very much, but
there must be.”
“Ah, you have everything! Just look at this room of yours, at this
house.”
Alice’s face grew serious. “Nance, I wish you would let me say
something to you.”
“Oh, I know what you want to say.”
“I don’t believe you do, not really. I don’t minimize the comfort of
having things, Nance, just because I’ve been one of the fortunate ones
that have always had them. But, honestly, Anne dear, it is not things
that make one’s happiness. I’d be happy anywhere, anyhow, with George
and the children. I would. And you have Brice, Nance. He’s such a dear!”
Again came that ghastly coldness about her lips that she had felt in
Mr. Whitten’s office. How had Brice dared to make it so difficult
for her? She had to hold hard to that anger against him, had to find
something to give her courage.
“Oh, yes, Brice. That’s what I’ve come here this morning for, Alice. To
tell you, before anyone else. Brice and I have separated.”
Alice stared at her for a moment, then abruptly sat down. Anne moved a
step or two across the room, back again, let herself sink softly into
a low, deep chair. She thought she had done it well. But why, why, why
did she have to do it at all?
Alice had flushed. “Anne Denison! How can you say a thing like that?
Why, Anne!”
“It is quite true. Of course we are not going to make a scandal of it.
There’s a way of doing it decently. Desertion, I believe, or something
like that.”
For a long minute Alice Copeland sat there without moving, looking at
Anne. Then tears came to her eyes. “Nance! It can’t be too late. Let me
see Brice.”
“No use, Alice. Brice has already left town. Oh, it’s quite all right,
much the best thing for us both.”
“You don’t believe that! It isn’t possible that you can!”
“Oh, please, Alice dear! It’s all settled, or will be, as soon as the
thing can be arranged.”
“But divorce! Anne, you can’t.”
Anne said nothing. Was it all going to be as hard as this?
“Anne! Why, you’d be like that dreadful Callum woman we were talking
about at the country club that day, or like Tessie Ogden. The last time
she married again the day after she got her decree.”
“And why not? It’s quite legal, I believe.”
“Legal! After those promises, and the life together? Oh, Anne!” Alice
was openly sobbing now. Anne did not look at her. Presently she spoke
again. “Anne, there isn’t, there couldn’t be anyone else? Brice isn’t
that sort.”
“I told you we’d call it desertion.”
“But Anne, Nance darling, think of the loneliness! What would you do,
what could you do?”
“What does any woman do, any woman like me? I don’t know how to earn my
own living. I’m not young. I’m not old, either. I want life. Yes, I do,
I want life. Well, how does any woman get it?”
They sat there a while without speaking, without looking at each other.
Presently Alice went to a window and leaned out. “Don’t let them play
off the sidewalk, Nelly,” she called.
When she came back her manner had changed. “You’ve told me your news,
dear. I suppose I ought to tell you ours. Or has Ranney already told
you?”
“Ranney?”
“His engagement is to be announced at last. I had come to believe it
never would be, but they settled it while he was there. He’s played
fast and loose. She’s a nice girl. Too nice for Ranney. He’s so
different from George.”
The light in the room had grown strange. Anne’s lips were cold. She
must keep calm, keep smiling. “Oh, you’re always too hard on Ranney, my
dear,” she heard herself saying. “He’s not a bad sort. I rather like
Ranney. What is the girl’s name?”
A few minutes later Alice followed her out towards the stairs. “Anne,
wait a moment. Forgive me for asking. Have you money enough? Because
George and I----”
“Oh, plenty of money. Plenty. Thanks just the same, dear. You give
Ranney my love and tell him I’m waiting to hear all about it. I must go
now. Don’t look like that, Alice. I’m all right.”
Alice kissed her. “I can’t bear to think of it,” she said, with a catch
in her voice. “Let me try, let George go to him. It can’t be too late.”
“Don’t, Alice, please, please,” Anne said. She drew away. The world
went black.
8
That night she lay looking out at the stars, and thinking. Another
night came back to her when she had watched the stars with Brice, while
they were still in that first new, terrible strangeness of union, of
unforeseen distastes, on her part of mute shrinking from contacts and
bareness of mind and body which Brice took so naturally and joyously.
She had thought Pelham a strange place for him to choose for their
honeymoon; a place where there was nothing to do, no one to be seen, no
one to show herself to. The cottage on the bank of the stream, their
tiny, too-intimate room with one window, the table where they had their
meals with the old sisters whose sole means of livelihood came from
boarding the casual trout-fishermen and more frequent lumbermen--she
would have been restive there, if it had not been for Brice’s adoring.
That she had welcomed. She would yield her hand, her lips, with a
gratifying feeling of conferring. At times Brice had taken her gifts
hesitantly, worshipfully; at other times tempestuously. The moments
of devoutness pleased her more. Even in those early days she had told
herself it was that attitude, that state of mind, that she would foster
in him.
On their last evening in the woods it had been Brice who had shown
reluctance to leave them. Even in that hour Anne was for going on to
the next thing, the new thing, the thing beyond, unafraid of whatever
it might be, purposing always to sway it towards herself, to make it
her own. She had never questioned that she could influence and form the
new life they were going into together.
But Brice had drawn her out of the cottage that evening, and they had
walked along the rutted road, the dark woods treading the hill on their
left, the stream murmuring at the foot of the slope like music heard
in a dream. The moon was young and pale, blending its light with the
lambency of the stars. They walked through mottled shadows, Brice’s arm
about her. Sometimes as they emerged into an unshadowed place where the
moonlight found her hair his arm would tighten. She would let her head
fall back against his shoulder, gratified at his tremor of emotion, at
the sense of power it gave her.
They came to a place where the road dropped to the level of the stream,
where a broad rock from which Brice had often fished protruded above
a pool where trout would rise a few hours later. They stood there
side by side. Before the silvery beauty gemmed in the setting of the
surrounding woods Brice’s arm had dropped away. He loved the place.
He had led his love and his emotion to it, and stood with his face
upturned to the stars, wrapt, a votary before the altar on which he has
just laid his gift. Anne felt the withdrawal of his spirit. She was
more conscious of Brice than of the shimmering water, of the stars.
She was a little teased, amused, impatient at his enraptured, upturned
look. She wanted his return to herself.
“Dear,” she said. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
Brice looked at her. “You are,” he murmured. “You are beautiful. Our
last night here.”
“Are you glad?” she laughed.
He did not answer. He did not touch her, did not move. All playfulness
and all passion seemed to have left him. He was remote, a being other
than the man who had held and caressed her. She became restive.
She went close to him, brushed against him, raised her face in the
moonlight.
Afterwards they sat on the rock until the moon dropped over the hill,
and the pool lay dark beneath the shadowing trees, and the stars shone
on the face of the stream, on Brice and herself. She was satisfied.
“We ought to go in,” he said. “I ought not to keep you out here in the
dampness. You might get chilled.”
She smiled to herself, moved her cheek softly against his, yielded
herself more to his arms. “This is so sweet,” she whispered. “And we
are going away tomorrow.”
He pressed his lips to her hair, on her closed eyes, while the stars
moved on.
Oh, she would always know how to manage Brice, how to bring him back
to consciousness of her! What was instinctive at that early time had
gradually developed into a technique that perfected itself as the
need grew for holding him, controlling him. She had believed that she
knew Brice’s mind and heart, all his impulses and reactions, just as
she believed she managed them all for his well-being and her own. Her
ultimate conception of successful marriage was that the woman must
dominate, possess, and manage the man; woman’s part was to be the
silent mainspring, man’s the clicking wheels.
Now and again during the years she had been aware of that same silent
withdrawal of Brice’s which she had first encountered in Pelham under
the stars. She believed it was only his masculine inarticulateness, or
mental indolence, or contentment too absolute to be broken by speech
or action. If by chance she suspected herself momentarily forgotten or
disapproved of, she had always known what to do. She could make him see
her again as beautiful, admirable, desirable. If it came to argument,
she had always been able to make him say that she was right, or at any
rate to yield to her. Only this last time had she failed; and she would
not have failed even then, if Brice had not, in this inexplicable way,
disappeared.
But there was the bare, ugly fact. He had disappeared. He had done the
utterly unforeseen, and now she was lying in Alice’s house, her body
filled with the dull ache of fever, looking again at the passage of the
stars. Tonight the pool was not a peaceful depth above which she rested
in Brice’s arms and drew him to thought of her. It was not peaceful. It
was an enveloping blackness, hideously silent, that surged about her
and buffeted her about like a leaf in the wind, helpless, rebellious,
longing to rest, longing to find again some firmness of thought that
eluded, that spun dizzily and mockingly through her brain. She was
alone. There was no Brice. It was as though, after ten years, he had
abruptly thrown her arms from his neck and sent her into that whirling
night of bewilderment where nothing was as she had known it, nothing
was real.
Yet after all something was real. What Alice had told her, and the
smiling nurse confirmed. Motherhood. Terrible. A leering joke of Fate,
as unexpected, as cruel, as bewildering as Brice’s behavior. For hours
she was benumbed at the knowledge. She felt about it as one feels
towards death. It could not be true, there must be some mistake. Yet as
in the case of death, all the while she admitted the inevitableness of
it: as death comes surely to all, so had this thing come inescapably to
her. She would still have to know, tomorrow, that it was real. For many
tomorrows she would have to bear the burden of it, and alone. In time,
she would have to suffer. Alone. There would be a child, and Brice not
there to--to suffer for it. She thought of that, savagely. Oh, Brice
should have suffered for this, as she would have to suffer! It wasn’t
fair, wasn’t fair. Even if Brice had been there, it would not have been
fair. After ten years, motherhood. She had never wanted children. She
knew why other women wanted them, some women. They were hostages to
a sort of happiness, to complacency, to stability, to the holding of
their husbands. Oh, yes, to some women, doubtless, something to love
and care for, something on which to gratify that sentimentality that
she had always scorned. She had not needed children. She knew how to
arrange her life without that bother, that clutter, as she knew how to
hold Brice. A cry escaped her.
The nurse came, bent above her.
“No, no! I don’t want anything, thank you,” she said.
That was for the moment true. She would have welcomed oblivion,
anything, anything, that would let her escape her shattered world.
She had believed so unquestioningly that she understood Brice, knew
his every thought, how to manage him, how to hold him. And now he had
gone. He had deserted her, left her with this. A child. His child. For
she did not think of it as hers. It was Brice who had loved children,
wanted one of his own, though she had believed she had convinced him
of the inadvisability of having them. How could they have gotten
along with all the added expense of children? But now--! There was no
permanency left. All her plans, all her ideas, were whirling about
her; only those stars were serene.
Sometimes she lay burning with anger which always resolved into
bitterness against Brice. He should be found, would be, must be.
And then--oh, yes!--then she would know what to do. There would be
no more of those silent withdrawals of his, no more of his futile
rebellions against her will. She had been too soft, too gentle. She had
underestimated his desire and need of pleasing her. Now there would be
the child, a mighty weapon. And she would use it. As other women used
it. Brice must be found.
It was Nicky who precipitated the affair of the search for him. The
nurse was gone at last, leaving Anne still languid in body after the
fever and shock, but well enough to go down to Alice’s sitting-room in
the afternoons. She knew that Alice watched her, sensed Alice’s vague
disappointment and was scornfully amused, however secretly. Doubtless
Alice expected a softening in her, a rosy tenderness of anticipation,
as if any sudden incident could make a person other than she had always
been. For with returning strength Anne was becoming herself again,
calm, measuring, coolly determined. She was only awaiting the apt
moment for speaking of Brice to Alice and George.
Nicky came in grinning impishly at Anne lying on Alice’s couch, lithe
and graceful, well enough aware that the gracefulness would pass,
making the most of the moment, one arm above her head, the other hand
between the pages of a magazine she had not been reading.
“So the blow has fallen!” Nicky remarked.
“Nicky, don’t!” cried Alice. “It’s so sweet.”
“Yes, isn’t it? Like all the rest of the bonds of matrimony. How does
Brice take it? Solemnly, I suppose.”
“Do sit down, Nick,” said Anne, and added, “Brice doesn’t know the joy
in store for him.”
Nicky sat down, and Alice, her eyes on her sewing, said in a tone which
was meant to carry a warning that the subject was not to be pressed
upon, “Brice is away, Nicky dear. What have you been doing lately?”
Veronica recognized the tone, and laughed aloud. “What’s up?” she
asked, looking from Alice to Anne.
Anne, too, looked at Alice, who had flushed a little. “Isn’t she a
cherub? Alice--I do love you. The plain truth is, Nicky, that old Brice
has gone off. Thinks he’s left me.”
“Oh, Anne dear!” from Alice, beseechingly.
“I knew there was something queer,” Nicky exclaimed.
Anne stirred; the arm over her head came down. “Why?”
“Because Ambrose----”
Anne laughed, sat up. “Ambrose! Of course! Alice--why didn’t we think
of that? Of course, Ambrose knows where he is.”
“Oh, as to what Ambrose knows, or thinks he does,” Nicky exclaimed.
“I’ll leave that to you two! All he would tell me was that old Brice
was sick or something. He said Brice wrote him a letter last week, from
Albany or somewhere, and asked him to be good to you, Anne. To stand by
you or something.”
“From Albany! But that couldn’t have been all,” Alice cried. “He must
have said more than that!” Anne’s eyes narrowed a little; she was
thinking intently.
“All Ambrose told me. But he’s worried about it. Tried to call up your
house, Anne. And went down to Whitten’s.”
Anne nodded. “Yes. I went there, too. Before I came to see Alice.”
Nicky chattered a moment or two of other things, looked at her
wrist-watch and said she must fly. Alice went out of the room with her.
When she came back, she sat down by Anne.
“Darling, I think Nicky came to say that. What did she mean?”
“I’ve wanted to tell you, Alice. It--isn’t easy.”
“I do think you had better. George could help, I am sure, if we knew.
What was that about Whitten’s?”
“It goes back to the time I came here to look after the children. We
had quarreled, and I did not leave word for Brice where I had gone.
He--thought things.”
“Oh! But he couldn’t! Not that, Anne!”
“Apparently he did, though. He left me a note. I told you he had
settled things. He thought he had. By telling me I might divorce him.
He even left Whitten’s. Gave up his job. What he told Ambrose only
goes to prove how determined he was.”
“Oh! But now----”
“Yes. That’s just it. Now there is--this. Brice will have to know this.”
“I knew George could help! He will find Brice, dear. And then--oh,
you’re going to be happy, so happy, so happy, Nance! You and Brice--and
what’s coming!”
Anne smiled, content for the time to leave it there. She was still
weighted with that unaccustomed lassitude, and she knew George would
act. Gradually she was able to be about the house again, and at last,
one evening, George brought Ambrose with him for dinner. Anne sensed a
crisis, and was gay throughout the meal. Afterwards she faced the two
men.
“What is it?” she asked. “Out with it, George. What makes you and
Ambrose so solemn? You have heard from Brice?”
“You know I always said you’d play the devil sooner or later, Anne,”
Ambrose remarked. “Looks like you’d done it now.”
“Is that what you came here to say?” Anne flashed at him.
“No. I came to say I have been up to Albany myself. Brice stopped there
overnight. Had only a suitcase with him. From there he apparently
jumped off.”
“What do you mean, jumped off? If you think Brice is the sort of man
who would----”
“I think I know Brice better than you ever did,” Ambrose said,
savagely. “God--I hate to see his life ripped up like this.”
Alice protested, “Ambrose!”
“Well, damn it, I do! It’s my opinion Brice stood things as long as he
could, and got out. I don’t blame him. But I do hate to see it.”
“You are implying that it is my fault,” Anne said. “I have never done
anything, anything, that would justify Brice’s leaving me.”
“Please, please don’t quarrel,” Alice said.
“I have no intention of quarreling with anybody,” said Anne. “I never
quarrel. I am very much obliged to Ambrose for going to Albany. I
should think you would all understand that I want Brice to come back.”
“I know what cost him his job with Whitten,” said Ambrose.
Anne’s head went up. “I did that for the best,” she said. “If Brice
had waited for me to explain it to him, he would have seen that. When
he comes back, he will agree with me.” Suddenly she looked at George,
threw out her hands in a gesture of appeal. “George, you’ll find him,
won’t you? Oh, don’t you see? I want him to come back!”
Ambrose turned away impatiently, but George said, “Of course you do,
Anne. We all do. And as for finding him, why, a man can’t absolutely
disappear.”
“Oh, George,” Alice interjected, “I don’t know. There was that poor
girl who started across the park with a book and box of candy. She was
never heard from.”
“Nonsense, Allie! We’ll have Brice home again in a day or two. In a
week, at latest. Don’t lose your nerve, Anne.”
“I’m not going to lose my nerve. I know what Alice is thinking. But it
isn’t true. Brice is not dead.”
“You’re right, in that,” said Ambrose. “He’s no coward.”
“I think we should take every possibility into consideration,” ventured
George. “Not that I----”
“What you are thinking about is not a possibility,” Anne affirmed.
“I’ve told Alice that he sent me a letter, too.”
George nodded, but Ambrose looked at Anne, frowning. “Let me tell you,
Anne, that you will not help us find Brice by keeping anything back,”
said he.
“I’m not keeping anything back. I said I had told Alice. I’m willing to
tell you. He wrote to me. I got the letter several days after he was
gone, but he had posted it in New York. He told me to divorce him. For
desertion. He said he would not contest.”
Ambrose bit his lip, walked restlessly about the room. After a
moment Copeland said, “I feel that you ought to know, Anne, what the
detectives said. They believe there is only one way of finding Brice.
To advertise, to make the thing public.”
Anne paled. Her hand went to her mouth. “Not that!” she gasped. “I
couldn’t stand that!”
Ambrose wheeled towards them. “No. Anne’s right. Not that!” said he.
“Brice never in his life made a move without thinking it through first.
He has gone. Therefore, he wanted to go. Neither Anne nor you nor I
have the right to force him back against his will. Oh, I know what
you’re thinking of, Alice! But if Brice wanted to cut out his old life,
he knew what he was doing. I say, let the thing drop. Take Brice’s
decision. You’ve no right to do anything else.”
“You’re not considering Anne, nor the child that’s coming, Ambrose,”
George said, mildly. “We’ll find Brice. There’s no question of that.
But of course if Anne doesn’t wish it, there shall be no publicity.”
“I couldn’t stand it, George,” said Anne, and Alice added, “Of course
not. It’s not to be thought of.”
A week passed, two weeks, and still there was no word of Brice.
Something kept Anne from asking, but her nervousness grew, and she
watched Alice and George, unfailingly kind, and to her awakening
sensitiveness increasingly anxious. Her strength had returned, but
not her old vigor. She was beginning to feel it impossible to accept
Alice’s hospitality much longer, yet the idea of returning to that
empty house was curiously repugnant. It was not the old repugnance
towards its smallness and cheapness. It would remind her so of those
last days there when Brice’s staying away had for the first time given
her a doubt of her own power and rightness. She did not want to live
through days like those again, nor nights like those. The memory of
them gave her an actual quivering of the flesh. She knew that Alice
watched her, and turned her face away when Alice’s eyes would meet her
own. One morning she grasped her courage and said:
“Why not tell me, Alice?”
Alice’s eyes filled with tears. “Darling, it’s so dreadful,” she said.
“We haven’t heard a word. George has had two detectives. They haven’t
a trace of him, after Albany. George is a director of the bank. He has
found out that Brice took almost no money with him. It’s so dreadful!”
Anne’s mood alternated between anger and panic. What should she do,
what could she do, if Brice were not found? How did he dare to remain
away? How did he dare, after those years together, to doubt her to the
point of behaving so unprecedentedly?
It was not until an afternoon when Tessie Ogden came in, unannounced,
that the pride was born which was to become a force more impelling than
anger or panic. Until that day she had succeeded in eluding all of
Alice’s guests; but Tessie came into the upstairs sitting-room without
warning.
“Oh, you poor, poor darling!” was Mrs. Ogden’s greeting. Anne had to
endure the embrace that followed, listen to words that her own coolness
had no power of stemming.
“Men, these men! I’ve had my experience, my dear! You can’t tell me
anything about it. It’s just the way my first husband treated me.
Simply went off with another woman, my dear. So what was I to do?”
“What on earth are you talking about, Tessie? Why the confidence?”
“Don’t pretend with me, Nance darling. I know all about it. I
sympathize. How I sympathize!”
“I don’t understand. There is nothing for you to know, except that I
have been rather ill, while my husband is away on business.”
Mrs. Ogden laughed, touched Anne’s hand playfully. “Your Lucille works
for me, now. Needs training, of course, but--! It’s really touching,
her devotion to you, her indignation at the way you were treated!”
“Why get your news from a servant, Tessie? What is it worth, from such
a source?”
Tessie leaned back in her chair, lighted a cigarette, smiled languidly.
The next afternoon, when Alice was out, Anne left the house and walked
to the terraced side-street that she had not seen for weeks. A faint
nostalgia gripped at her throat, not for Brice, not for the house nor
the things in it, but for the security that had slipped away from her.
She had even more distaste than before for the street and the house,
but at least it had represented an established place in the world,
however small, however undesirable. She could never live there again,
yet she was seeking it out in an unformulated desire to snatch at some
of that lost security. The little girl who used to run to meet Brice
called to her, swirled up on roller skates. The laundryman’s wagon was
at the curb beyond. The grass on her own plot was long, bits of paper
and string caught in it. On the porch a yellowed newspaper had blown
into a corner. A folded circular was stuck between the knob and the
door. She took out her latch-key. How close the hall was!
There was an oblong of white on the rug, where it had dropped through
the letter-slot. She grew dizzy, grasped at the door for support.
Brice.... Why had they not known he would write?
She picked up the letter without turning it over. She could not yet
look at his writing. She went blindly into the living-room. The window
shades were at uneven heights. Not his chair. The sofa. Her hat was so
heavy.
Then she turned the letter in her hand. It was not from Brice. Miss
Willy’s handwriting.