Chapter II: Part I: The Way of All Earth (2)

Nicky somehow unwound her, held her off a little in front of her. “Elizabeth,” she said, seriously, “that’s the best reason in the world for not doing a thing. Never do anything you don’t want to do. Unless you have to. This is one of the times that you have to. So--scoot!”

When the child had departed George Copeland laughed. “You know I don’t altogether go along with your philosophy, Veronica, my child,” said he. He was a tall man, heavy and dark, usually shy. It was generally supposed that he liked everyone a little, no one very much, and that in business he knew how to drive a sharp bargain. Alice adored him.

“George,” Nicky said, looking up at him, “you’re six feet of sham. It’s precisely your own philosophy.”

Alice flushed a little. “At any rate, Nicky,” said she, “we’ll admit it is yours. You certainly do only what you want to. And I must say I think they’re queer things, sometimes.”

Veronica stared for an instant, then settled back in her chair. “Ah,” said she. “I thought you and Ambrose had your heads together at dinner. I see he’s told you.”

“What is it?” asked Anne. “You’re always quarreling, you two.”

“I have not been quarreling,” Ambrose declared, setting his coffee cup on a table. “But there are things I object to. I’ll admit I said that.”

“And I think you are right, Ambrose,” said Alice. “Nicky will persist in living alone in a queer part of the city. That’s stupid, as I see it. Anne agrees with me. I don’t think any woman living alone ought to fill up her place with people off the street.”

Nicky laughed. “One person, please. But it does rather fill up the place. I have to sleep on the sofa.”

“You don’t even know the girl,” Ambrose affirmed.

“Her name seems to be Stella,” said Nicky. “She says she’s a thief. And none too straight otherwise. Also she was uncommonly hungry. So what could I do?”

“What will you do?” Brice Denison asked, smiling a little, leaning forward.

“That’s what I came out for,” said Nicky, calmly. “I’ve got to give her a chance to get away from her man, you see. And I’m broke.”

“It’s not your affair, I tell you,” said Ambrose, savagely. “Turn her out, if she hasn’t already left with everything you possess.”

“It certainly is not your affair, Ambrose,” Nicky returned. “How much is it yours, George?”

“Why do you put it up to George?” Alice asked quickly. “If it’s money you want----”

“Well, I do,” said Nicky.

“Is she married?” Alice asked again.

George Copeland said, kindly, ponderously, “Oh, come now, Alice. How much do you need, Nicky?”

Nicky grinned up at him. “It’s not one of the times you have to, you know, George!”

George’s hand went into his pocket.

An hour or two later, when the women had gone upstairs for wraps, Anne said, “Why not come back with us for the night, Nicky? You won’t have to sleep on the sofa and I think I have some clothes you might use for your--thief.”

Nicky laughed. “Thanks. I’ll come. So I won’t have to go back in the train with Ambrose.”

Alice looked troubled. “Why do you pretend to hate Ambrose?” she asked. “You don’t really, you know!”

Nicky was putting on her hat in front of a glass. “Well, no. I think I’m rather in love with him, really. Anyway, part of the time. But this business of marriage----!”

“It’s the only real happiness,” Alice said solemnly.

Veronica turned, eyebrows raised. “Are you happy, Alice? Are you, Anne? Are George and Brice happy?”

“Of course we are!” Alice cried, flushing. Anne echoed, “Of course we are!”

Nicky looked from one to the other. “Of course and of course you are! Great institution, this marriage, isn’t it? Nothing to equal it.”

The next morning Anne watched Brice and Veronica walk off towards the station together. She had gone through her closets and found a number of last year’s things for Nicky. She and Nicky’s protégée were about the same size, it seemed, and she had a pleasant sense of having been generous. They were mostly things that could have been made over for herself. There was a glow of kindliness about her. She even joked a little with Lucille, and told her about the clever sandwiches that preceded the dinner at Mrs. Copeland’s. She went upstairs and threw all the windows open to the soft breeze. Things were lovely today. It would have been a day to play in, but there were no engagements. Well, anyway, she intended to stay at home and mend. Brice had been rather pathetic that morning, searching for a shirt with all its buttons. She smiled at herself indulgently. Good old Brice. She really neglected him a little, sometimes. She loved to make pretty things; mending was stupid. But this day she would give up to Brice, make up to him a little, however secretly, for her moment’s disloyalty at the club the other day. Not that it was really disloyalty. It was nothing worse than silly, wild talk.

The door-bell sounded. In a moment Lucille came up with a florist’s box. “Mist’ Denison cert’n’y do think a heap o’ you-all,” said she. “I’m going to git me a husband.”

Anne laughed. When the girl had left the room she opened the box. Tulips, this time, and Ranney Copeland’s card among them. She arranged the flowers about the house, smiling a little. Then she went back to her sewing. She sewed on some buttons, and reached for a basket piled high with stockings. Mending was stupid work. The curtains blew inward. Everyone would be out on Main Street. She had not telephoned the order for dinner. It would please Brice if she went to the store herself. There was no darning-cotton, after all. There never was, when you wanted it. She laughed a little at the eternal elusiveness of things like darning-cotton, put the basket aside, got into her trimmest street things.

She had barely turned the corner when a low, brown car swung up to the curb and stopped just in front of her.

“Now don’t tell me you were trying to dodge me,” said Ranney Copeland’s gay voice.

Anne laughed. “I had forgotten you,” she said, giving him a teasing look.

Ranney’s composure was not shaken at that. He had stepped to the sidewalk beside her. “I believe you were coming to meet me,” said he, laughing with her. “Let me give you a lift, won’t you?”

It was not in Anne to resist stepping into that car; but when Copeland, at the next corner, turned away from the main street where the shops were, she protested. “Oh, I mustn’t, Ranney. I’ve an errand--really.”

“So have I,” he declared, cheerfully. “I’ve got to show you something I came across the other day. Won’t take a minute.”

Yet the minute prolonged itself into an hour. The car spun out of the town, climbed a hill or two with no lessening of speed, sped away to the open country. Good company, was Ranney. After all there was all day for the mending. It had waited so long that it could very well wait a while longer.

It was past noon when at last the car stopped before a little gray roadhouse, once the place where a tollkeeper lived, the old tollgate now standing upright at one side of the road like a gaunt arm held high in surrender before the exigencies of modern life. Inside, in the tiny dining-room, beside a window that looked into budding apple trees, a table was prepared for two. At her look Ranney laughed.

“You didn’t think I was going to let you stay in that house of yours on a day like this, did you?” he asked.

She flushed. “It is the house that I live in,” she said. But her attempt at dignity made no impression upon him.

“Oh, come now! You hate it, and I thought you’d like this! They give you chicken and waffles. Not bad.”

Her lip quivered a little as she sat down. This was it. This was the power she wanted, the power these people had with their magic of money. To be able to get away from the little rooms of life, to ignore distance, to speak a word over the telephone and find things prepared for you, things, any kind of things.

Only a minute or two, and some of those things were there on the table before them. When the waitress had left the room, Copeland leaned across towards Anne.

“I didn’t mean to be brutal, you know. Honestly, I wanted to give you a good time. Anne----?”

“I know, Ranney,” she said, a little wearily. “You’re a good friend.”

“That’s what I want to be,” said he. Presently he added, “Anne, I wonder if you know what you’ve meant to me, these past months.”

“I don’t know, Ranney. Sometimes I’m numb. Sometimes I don’t know anything, don’t feel anything.” Why was it that, with him, a sense of utter helplessness against her fate, against the web she was caught in, seemed always to close her in? Twelve hundred, fifteen hundred more added to Brice’s salary. What, after all, would that little bit give them? How far would she ever be able to get away from that eternal grubbiness?

“It’s been a good deal, Anne. I wish I could tell you.”

“No. Don’t.”

“But I wish I could. I want to. You’ve been good, letting me see so much of you.”

For the first time she thought of that. A good deal. Yes, it had been that to herself, too. It had seemed natural enough, yet it was, it had been, a good deal. Her eyes widened. She gave him a startled look. “Too much, perhaps, Ranney. Perhaps I had better----”

“Oh, come now, Nance! Don’t begin to play the prude, just because the old hens are cackling. You’re too good a sport for that. Don’t you listen to Alice.”

He was leaning towards her again.

“Look here, Anne! Just how much did you really mean of what you said yesterday?”

“Not one word,” she declared.

“I thought that. But why not? Why not, after all? Why not make a break for it? A woman like you can get anything she wants.”

Her thought flew to Brice. Abruptly it was as though his good old red head, his bowed shoulders, were there before her instead of young Copeland’s sleek one and his shoulders so carefully tailored.

“But I have everything I want,” she said, her lips trembling a little.

He laughed. “I said you were a good sport. But I do want to do something for you, Anne. I wish you’d make your husband give me that money to invest for him. There’s a good thing I know of, right now. You’d have a mighty nice turn-over in only a month or two.”

She leaned back, and he let her think it out. The morning’s revulsion of feeling was not entirely banished by the hour with Ranney. She was still feeling Brice, in that subconsciousness where a woman’s thought of her husband is ever present, as the dear old blunderer who must be protected and cared for. Her mood was still but little different from what it had been when she had wanted to mend his stockings and sew on his buttons. Old Brice--to do something for him--somehow to protect him from those queer ideas of his, from his inhibitions. That money. If only he would! Ease for them both. Yes, for Brice as well as for herself. Oh, she knew how he thought about it. He called it gambling. As if everybody didn’t do it. He said they must have something on hand, something always available, in case anything happened. As if men could not always borrow. He loathed credit accounts, he made himself an object of gloom over every bill. As though credit were not to be used! Besides, she could be careful. She would be.

“Ranney,” she said, her face suddenly a little pale, “I will do it. We have a common account at the bank. I will give you the money to invest for us. And be very grateful.”

4

Even more than before she was full of the feeling of wanting to do something for Brice. As she stepped out of the tub she remembered that she had not ordered dinner. She got into a bathrobe and called down to Lucille.

“No’m, they ain’t any meat,” the girl told her. “I thought maybe you-all was going out to dinner again, or else you forgot.”

Anne’s good humor held. “You ought to have reminded me, Lucille,” she said gently. “But never mind. You just put on your hat and run over to Main Street, won’t you? Get a steak, a good thick one. You’ll have to hurry.”

“Yes’m, I’ll go. It’s plenty o’ time yet.”

Anne heard the pleased note in the girl’s voice. Ordinarily, of course, it would be wretched discipline to let her go out except on her regular days. But this time was exceptional. It was too late for delivery by the market-man. She went back to her dressing. Fresh things, everything fresh, the prettiest she had, and an old dress he was fond of. She would make herself beautiful.

She was all the gentle wife when he returned, all grace, all fragrance. Her consciousness was pervaded by the feeling of having done something for him, even though he was unaware of it, of having protected him against himself in the matter of the investment through Ranney. She felt motherly towards him, and wifely, too. She would be very sweet to him, yielding, caressing. She felt that she was quite up to being gay and soothing, as well. As soon as he came in she knew that there would have to be soothing. He was a little late, and more than a little frowning. She went at once to the kitchen to have dinner put on the table. She talked about light things, little things. He was unresponsive. When the steak had been served he looked at the hovering maid and frowned again.

“You may wait in the kitchen, Lucille,” he said. As the door to the pantry swung to Anne looked at him with raised eyebrows.

“Something has gone wrong. I can see that,” she said, gently. “But you can’t talk here. She’ll be listening just the same, you know.”

Brice ignored that. “Look here, Anne,” said he. “Mrs. Ogden was on the train tonight. Damned chatterer. She told me she saw you driving with Copeland this morning. It’s the second time I’ve had that sort of thing flung at me within the week. I won’t have it.”

Anne looked at him, her eyebrows slightly raised. Two little red spots appeared in her cheeks. She pressed her lips together, touched her foot to the bell under the table.

“Potatoes, Lucille,” she said, quietly. “And remain in the room, please.”

The rest of the meal passed in silence. In silence they passed into the living-room. Brice went for his pipe, was about to speak when the dusky face under the white cap appeared between the curtains.

“You-all want any coffee?”

“No!” snapped Brice; and Anne took a seat by the table under the lamplight.

The pipe under way, Brice, from the hearth-rug, turned to her. “You heard what I said. I won’t have it.”

Anne’s tongue touched her lips. She was finding her rôle of maternal patience difficult, yet something still remained of that warm protective feeling. Brice’s furies were soon over.

“I don’t like that man, anyway. I don’t like his confounded impertinence in trying to get you to give him that money to invest. When I have any investments to make I can do it myself. He’s an idler, a philanderer. I don’t want you seen with him.”

“You are speaking of a very good friend of mine, Brice.”

“Well, he’s not! None of them are. Another thing that Ogden woman told me. That speech of yours at the country club, all that rot about divorce. If that’s the sort of thing you’ve got to spout to keep up with them----!”

“You needn’t be vulgar!”

“I’m not as vulgar as they are. Hang it all, Anne, I don’t like these new friends of yours. They’re not our sort. I don’t like them.”

“What do you mean by our sort?”

“We’re not in their class. Not financially or any other way. And don’t want to be. That’s what I mean.”

She was angry enough now. “Have we got to go over this every night?” she demanded, standing and facing him. “I tell you, Brice, I am getting tired of it.”

“And God knows I am!”

“There was no harm in my driving with Ranney. In this year of grace a 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: