Chapter XXXVI

Luke stayed however, after Em’ly Armistead had gone. The red hat had been really a preliminary to departure. And when Melissa went, he walked home with her, over her protest, making the lightest of casual small-talk on the way, never dropping his smile nor his voice till Melissa said ... “Here is where I live ...” and set her foot on the lowest step of a dingy brownstone house.

“Here?--” said Luke, at that ... “what a little way?” and looked down into her eyes and questioned mutely--“Remember?”

Melissa answered in spite of herself. “That’s what you said the day you brought me back--from the Park....”

“You and Jerry Tarleton,” said Luke. “Seems a long time ago--doesn’t it?”

Melissa only nodded.

“You didn’t ask me in, then--I suppose you won’t ask me in now, either.”

“I can’t, Luke--I’ve only one room.”

“There’s still the Park.”

She shook her head, more rebellious and regretful than she showed. “It isn’t any use ... is it? You’d only--unsettle me....”

“If I _can_ unsettle you,” said Luke quickly--“that means--”

“Unsettle--not change,” Melissa told him. She smiled faintly.

“Luke--you and Em’ly Armistead make a very decorative pair.”

“Like William and Mary on a shillin’?” said Luke gravely. He added--“Am I to take that as final?”

“Then you haven’t yet?” asked Melissa. The sudden light in his eyes frightened and shamed her. However much he might linger on street-corners with the wearer of the red hat, however much she might preempt him and he, quiescent, allow it, Melissa knew in that instant that he had forgotten nothing at all. That he had changed not in the least since the night in the apartment when he had told her he loved her, and when she--because she was lonely and because his touch comforted and reassured her that there was warmth in the world, had listened and later repented.

That mistake at least she would not make twice. If she couldn’t give him the thing he wanted she could at least pay him tribute with the truth.

She said, putting her hand into his--“Luke--you don’t know what a temptation you are! I like you--I love you--but it falls short, that’s all. I don’t know why. I wish with my whole heart it didn’t. Do you suppose I shouldn’t be only too happy to love you, all the way--if I could? Do you suppose I don’t miss your friendship...?”

“That’s gone overboard for good,” said Luke grimly. “Sorry! It’s the other or nothing. I spoof others--myself I cannot spoof.”

“Then--it’s nothing,” said Melissa.

“Fair enough!” said Luke, held her hand hard for a moment and let it go lightly. “In which case ... you may be right about Em’ly and me. I’m lonesome as hell ... so is she ... wherein we’re congenial--very! She’s kind enough to care for me. I’m fond of her. She knows you had the refusal of me so to speak. She doesn’t mind. All the cards are on the table ... curious, isn’t it? Talk of this sort between a man and a woman. Even a generation ago--it couldn’t have been done. We’d have been all bogged down in any number of delicate pretenses. You could never have admitted to me that mentally I satisfy you but physically I don’t. What’s the matter? Isn’t that the answer?”

Honesty with a vengeance!

“Yes ...” said Melissa.... “I suppose it is.”

“You know it is!” said Luke. “And you’re entirely right to hold out for a man who meets both requirements. Returning to our moutons.... Em’ly couldn’t conceivably have admitted under Victorian rule, that she wanted to marry a man who wanted to marry another woman. I couldn’t--under any set of circumstances without losing my face as a gentleman have admitted to you that Em’ly wanted me to marry her ... interesting, isn’t it? Question arises ... does all this frankness stop the bleeding? Not altogether. Well ...” he made a gesture of departure.... “You won’t be asked to the wedding, Melissa!”

“I don’t want to be,” said Melissa unhappily.

“I know,” said Luke, “that’s the devil of it! I’ve almost got you. If I weren’t quite so clever and you weren’t quite so true.... I seem to feel that’s lifted from something ... but never mind! Point is--we get no forrarder by palaver ... merely another turn of the screw--and so--good-by, my dear!”

“Good-by, Luke,” said Melissa.

She watched him down the street, standing with her hand on the door-knob, fighting a weak desire to call him back to give up asking the impossible, to give up looking for something that might not exist, that might, even if it existed be utterly unattainable ... this was the second time she had said good-by to Luke, when she could have kept him--and it hurt. It still hurt.

“Don’t be a soppy little fool,” she said to herself and went in and up to her room with her mouth in a hard straight line. “No good being honest if you’re not going to be honest all the time.”

Melissa had dallied with half-truths and found them not what she wanted. At the price of devastating loneliness she was willing to hold out for the real thing, wherever and whatever it might be.

Although it was not without the range of possibility that she might be paying for something which she was never to get.

If there were anything in the world to go by ... if one had the shadow of a sign ... the shred of a talisman.

Like the picture that had been the beginning of all Melissa’s uncertainties.

She didn’t know just when it came into her head that if she could have only half an hour alone in the room with the fireplace and the windows, the room where the man in the picture had been realler than other men walking, ... she could get back her hold on herself, stabilize her faith in the ultimate outcome of things....

It was half after six by the watch on her wrist. She had had no dinner--she wanted none. She smoothed her hair, put on her hat--she had thrown it on the bed when she came in--took her gloves and her bag and went out. There was dusk in the street and the glimmer of blossoming lights. Dusk and a few faint stars in the sky.

Melissa stopped a scouting taxi and got into it.

She gave the driver the number of Roderick’s house.... Central Park West. Her heart stirred when she said the words as if she had said Avalon ... or Arcady.

She thought--“This is the completest madness! I haven’t any money for taxis.”

Paying the man, before the two moony lamps on Roderick’s doorstep, she thought again. “Completest madness ... but it’s the only thing in the world I want! ... so, why not?”

She went in and asked for Kathleen.... “She isn’t by any chance here?... I know it’s frightfully late.”

The clerk at the desk was effusively pleasant. Verbosely explanatory.

“Kathleen is taking the place of the night maid this week ... only too glad, Miss Wayne.... I’ll send for her at once.”

Kathleen appeared in no time, blue print, brown hair and fresh cheeks delightfully unaltered. Melissa had somehow expected to find her an elderly woman, lined and dimmed, grayed and stiffened ... not actually, of course--but there seemed so many years between Melissa’s leaving the apartment and this absurd and hopeless return.

“Kathleen,” said Melissa, drawing her a bit to one side and speaking very low and fast.... “I seem to have left something upstairs ... that is, there’s something I can’t find and I thought it might be ... could you take me up for a moment or so and let me look.... Mister Roderick is in Canada now--on a hunting trip, isn’t he? He told me he was going....”

Incoherent and stammering--flushed and deprecatory--horribly, to be begging favors like that, of a maid ... of a clerk ... of any one at all who could open that silk-hung door!

Kathleen answered instantly, simple as a child and kindly as a mother: “I’ll take ye up right now ... yes--he’s been gone, Mister Roderick, almost a week. There’s not a soul ... what was it ye left, Miss Wayne?”

What was it she had left? One grappled a presentable lie with difficulty--not having thought out that part of it.

“Some--letters--Kathleen--a bit of paper--nothing you’d have noticed. It isn’t of the least importance to any one but me.” (At least no lie there! There, at least, the ungarbed truth.)

“I ain’t seen a thing,” said Kathleen comfortably. She led the way to the elevator, put Melissa into it with a touch on her arm respectfully affectionate.

“Ye’re lookin’ fine, Miss Wayne.”

“I’m feeling very well, Kathleen ... thank you.”

The elevator rose with a cruel slowness. Kathleen observed that the day had been nice. Melissa murmured something in answer. Not knowing clearly what. All her soul was straining ahead of her--to that quiet dimly lighted entresol--with the mirror and the two tall chairs ... to that narrow hallway where Luke had once said--“I live in the next apartment--d’y’ see?” ... to that door ... to the turn of the key that would open it....

And after it was opened--after the flimsy pretext of looking for something never lost--what use? What could come of it all? At most, a ghostly shadow at one’s shoulder ... the flicker of a disembodied smile ... the husk of a dream-voice....

“So you came back to see if I were still here? Have you missed me as much as that?”

Had she missed him!... Had her days and her nights, under all the cover of work and quiet been anything, ever, but blind dumb straining ... wanting and groping and coming out forever at the same door wherein one went....

“Tenth!” said the elevator boy with enormous indifference and Kathleen and Melissa got out into the well-ordered silence of the corridor.

“Now ye can go right in--” began Kathleen comfortably. “Bill has been fixin’ the windows--one of ’em sticks.... I see he’s left the door open.... Bill!” This to a blue-overalled back disappearing in the direction of the service elevator.... Bill stopped--waited. Kathleen in full flight toward him flung back over a plump shoulder:

“Just go right in, Miss Wayne. I got to speak to Bill. I’ll be close after ye. There ain’t a soul there....”

Reassured of which, Melissa laid her hand upon the knob of the silk-hung door, now slightly ajar, opened it slowly and went in.

As far as the threshold. No further. There she stopped, breath failing her, eyes wide and dark, lips parted ... stopped and put her hand to her breast, the woman’s age-old gesture of defense and betrayal.

Kathleen had said.... “There ain’t a soul there--”

But there he was ... down on one knee, on the floor by the desk with the light from the golden-shaded lamp, bronze on his bent head--redly bronze--as Melissa’s footstep broke the quiet of the room he looked up....

Exactly the lifted head and the look of the lost picture ... the slightly amused aloof smile, inquiry in the eyes....

Very softly Melissa came into the room--without a word--hardly drawing breath. She did not take her gaze from his face. When he stood up, looking back at her, equally in silence, her hand went out, without her knowing it ... both hands ... and her eyes besought him not to vanish. So she had seen him in her fevered dreams--so she had dreamed him waking. If now, gone mad, she had at last materialized him--it was a lovely madness. That was all.

She thought in a far-off flash of warning.... “I’ll never know after this, what’s real and what isn’t.”

But she went toward him nevertheless.

She thought. “I haven’t been sane--all along ...” and shivered a little.

But she took the last step or so that parted them.

Then she was quite close and all at once in a flare of reckless and desperate happiness--because she hadn’t after all lost him ... because her dream had after all returned to her and she to her dream--Melissa put out her arms and lifted her face--with a sob and a broken whisper....

He muttered, “God!” she thought. She wasn’t sure. Then the world slipped and staggered under her feet.

Because his lips were warm and his arms were hard--and she knew with his lips on hers and his arms around her--that he was real.

She tried then to free herself--and then, having kissed her he would not let her go but kissed her again--the second time as if she had touched him with flame which only her touch could assuage.

There wasn’t a word between them. Faintly--for an instant--she struggled--panicky, fleeting and overborne--he only drew her closer until she lifted her face again....

A mad moment ... a moment of exquisite unbelievable madness into which Kathleen arriving suddenly flat-footedly like the emissary of all jealous gods, cast the first shattering stone.

“Ah-h!” shrilled Kathleen--stricken in the doorway. “Mister Carroll--I never knew ye was here...!”

Well--Melissa hadn’t known it either.