Part 5

Rose Wilding lay propped among the snowy pillows and took no notice whatever of them as they came in. Her rounded face and beautiful, long, capable hands were as white as were the masses of lovely white hair that flowed down past her temples. Only her great dark blue eyes showed a bit of color. They looked straight ahead, alive, and full of knowledge, but a knowledge that seemed to have nothing to do with this present business of living. Wardwell was struck this morning more than ever by the look of complete detachment and absorption in the eyes. He had never thought much of souls as apart from bodies. But with the writing man's unconscious trick of always trying to put even the vaguest, most fugitive thoughts into words, he found himself trying to word the nameless idea. Here was a soul, he thought, living quite detached and almost independent in a beautiful and almost useless body. And he saw no reason at all why this soul, so independent, so complete to itself, could not at will leave the unnecessary body and go on about its own absorbing business.

Meanwhile he was urging:

"She made me eat half of your fruit already, Mrs. Wilding, and if you don't hurry and eat the other half, why, she'll make me eat it all, just to save it."

"Yes, eat up good, darling," Augusta urged gently, with the way that was now growing upon her of petting a child. "And don't mind him. You know I wouldn't give him even a little tiny bit of your fruit."

"Oh, good morning, Mister Jimmie," said Rose Wilding, in the quick apologetic way of one who has momentarily forgotten a politeness. "I hope the book is coming on well."

She had not spoken before for weeks. Wardwell was startled completely off his guard and the sudden mention of the book caught him on the raw and brought back the hideous, shamed cowardice of the night.

Augusta, looking quickly up at him in her own surprise, saw the agony and bitterness in his face, and wondered. Jimmie was never bitter. Then she saw his face clear, and she knew that whatever it was he had fought it down.

"Fine and dandy," he lied glibly, "only"--he paused a moment with one ear turned up whimsically, as though considering how best to place the difficulty before her--"only there's a Scotchman in it and he's the contrariest man I ever had to deal with. He's Scotch and he insists on talking a great deal, which is all wrong for a Scotchman. But, what's worse, he will talk with a North of Ireland accent. You see, the two brogues are so much alike, and I can't get him to stick to his own."

Rose Wilding reached daintily for a quarter of a peach and commented helpfully:

"I mind I knew an Eyetalian once that talked with the softest Kerry brogue you ever heard. I guess they caught him young somewhere."

Wardwell shouted uproariously, and Augusta laughed out in quick surprised happiness. Never since the very first had her mother spoken so naturally and like her dear self of other days.

While Augusta turned away a moment, Wardwell was watching her mother. She was smiling with the contagion of their laughter, but she had her eye fixed calculatingly upon Augusta. When she seemed to be convinced that it was safe, that Augusta would not turn immediately to see her, she reached out hastily and snatching a banana from the tray hid it under a pillow beside her. Then she looked up furtively, to see if Wardwell had seen her.

He winked and smiled at her, as one who compounds the felony of a friend and brother. She laughed a little confused, deprecating laugh, like a child caught in some new delinquency. Augusta looked around, glancing from her mother to Wardwell, but she saw nothing. And Jimmie never told her. He understood. Rose Wilding had always had a good appetite. And she loved fruit. She had spent some time in that place on the Island, where it was said that the attendants took all of the best that was intended for the patients. Hunger, or at least the fear of hunger had taught her to do that.

When he looked again he saw that the curtain had fallen. It was as though the spirit of Rose Wilding which for a few minutes had stirred the body and the senses to life had now gone. Only the eyes remained alive, looking, looking not at Wardwell, not at the wall, but at some problem, some question of another existence.

Augusta, understanding instantly, did not try to arouse her mother again. Resignedly, she took up the tray and went silently from the room. And Wardwell followed without a word.

Not again, until the very last, did Rose Wilding open her lips to speak.

Day by day her response to the promptings of life grew less and less. With what seemed a deliberate purpose her spirit refused to know anything of what went on about her. It was as though she definitely turned her back upon life. She did not suffer. She had left all that behind and was going her own way, unmolested by the useless body.

To Wardwell the sight of the helpless, almost deserted body was sometimes uncanny. To Augusta, however, living as she did and had always done so close to the soul of her mother, these things did not greatly matter. That her mother did not speak to her, did not even look at her, was not now so hard to bear. Though she loved the big beautiful, baby-like body and petted it as she would have fondled a baby, yet she was able to realize that she must soon give it up. So that, by degrees and without consciousness of it, she dropped the mediums of the senses and found herself slipping easily and naturally over into that strange border land where her mother lived.

Wardwell was not fighting any longer. He had accepted what he thought was fate. He did not argue. He did not look farther for work.

"I shall now," he said, sitting down deliberately at his machine, "'proceed,' as they say aboard-ship--I wonder why does a navy man always say he 'proceeded' to the deck and 'proceeded' to the bottom of the ammunition well? He just ran out on deck, and he probably fell down the stairs in the other case, but he 'proceeded'--I shall, therefore, proceed to write jokes till I choke.

"The suffering public? Well, the public always suffers. What do I care for them, or it, or him--whichever it is. Must be him, I guess. The women only read the corn cure ads and the hair tonic miracles with which the advertising editor garnishes the funny page. Hang it! I never appreciated that fellow. I thought he was a low commercial bounder on that page. Nothing of the kind. He belongs there. His ads are just as old and reliable and well thumbed as any of the other jokes."

With a grin on his face he went to work, humming:

"Rip Van Winkle was a piker, "There are some folks sleeping yet."

And because he had put off the worry that had been harping at him he found the work coming true and easy. He forgot the book and his big dreams, half way happy if he could earn enough to prevent his being an added burden to Augusta. And because he now did not greatly care, because he left the whole business on the knees of whatever gods had cared to meddle with his affairs, the work began to pay well.

Three separate eddies of life moved quietly about their round in the house. Ann the cook had taken the reins of authority from Augusta's hands and was now ruling the boarding house with a competent and jealous care. The boarders did not like her, but they knew that she was honest and remorselessly fair and that there was no appeal from her judgments. There were no complaints and the outward business of the house went on smoothly and decorously as always. In the two rooms that were now the world of Augusta and her mother everything circled about the dim little pale flame of life in her mother which Augusta was feeding with her love. And in his own room Wardwell worked craftily on, going softly, husbanding his strength from day to day, paying it out painfully, like a miser bit by bit, at the machine, making every bit count for some work done, and jealously guarding his growing weakness from Augusta's eyes. She must know before very long, he realized. But, well, who could tell what might happen? And in the meantime there was a little work to be done each day. Each line of it would be a help to her in the end.

So the three eddies of life went quietly around, touching each other and lapping a little upon each other, but each one a world by itself. Spring came and slipped well along into May, the street cries changed, the glistening pavements began to throw the heat back up into the house, and the threat of a blistering summer came upon the air. The three little worlds in the house went on so quietly, so unobtrusively, that it seemed that they might have been forgotten, that they might go on indefinitely, that they had been left out of any scheme of change.

But the change came, swift and disturbing as though it had never been expected.

Wardwell heard the cry come up in the still night from the room below him. He had been sitting in the dark, thinking of nothing, his mind at loose ends, but he knew Augusta's cry and recognized in it the trembling, very human fear of death.

As he came to the door of Rose Wilding's room he saw Augusta half kneeling on the bed holding fast to her mother's hands. To Wardwell it seemed that Rose Wilding was making a quivering, feeble struggle to rise. But Augusta evidently knew different. She was pleading in a desperate, pitiful whisper:

"Don't go! Please, darling mamma, don't go till you've known me, just for one little minute! I wont try to keep you, darling, I know you want to go. But just look at me once, so that I can see that you know your own Augusta, please darling."

The hands that Augusta held stopped their quivering struggle and Rose Wilding lay quiet, as though listening. Then slowly, naturally, she opened her eyes with the sweet clear light of perfect reason shining gently in them. And she said in a tender, confiding whisper:

"Augusta, my own. Stay close to me. It's--it's lonely--going." With a sigh as of a tired child she closed her eyes and seemed to try to cuddle to the warmth of the young body that was close to her. Then she lay quite still.

After a little Wardwell gently lifted Augusta away. She did not resist, nor did she break out weeping as he had been almost hoping that she would do. Instead, she leaned against him, begging for full assurance:

"She _did_ know me, didn't she, Jimmie!"

"Of course, dear, of course she did."

Then Augusta went slowly over to the little cot which had been her partner in the play of the weary pitiful months and began folding it away.

Through the two days that followed Wardwell did all the necessary things with a calculated care that showed how well he had schooled himself. He saw to everything, anticipated everything, exerting himself more than he had done for weeks, yet always carefully holding himself within the limits of his strength lest a sudden breakdown should come to frighten Augusta.

It was only on the lonely ride back from the cemetery, through the sand pitted lots and broken streets of Greenpoint and across the ferry, that Jimmie began to go to pieces. He was tired, tired of the struggle to keep up, tired of the silly pretense of being a normal, cheery, good hearted fellow. Besides, Augusta did not seem to have needed him. She had not broken down. She would, he thought, have done just as well without him. And he began to pity himself inordinately.

Now he was sure that Augusta was looking at him in a thoughtful, speculative sort of way. Although he knew well enough that Augusta was not aware of his condition, yet it took only a few minutes of this bent of thought to convince him fully that she was wondering what in the world she could do with a hopelessly sick husband on her hands.

The foolish, overweaning egotism of a sick mind in a sick body took sway over him, making him forget everything but his own morbid line of thoughts. Augusta did not need him. He was of no use to her, or to anybody. He never would, in fact, be of any use. It would be better to let it end now. He had never really been Augusta's husband. He had served her as well as he could. But that was over now. She did not need him now. He pressed his self inflicted hurt home and took a sort of miserable pleasure from the pain. She at least could be happy. Why should he drag her down the long dark path with himself. He might live on and on for a deuce of a while--people did, you know. No, he was not going to let the poor girl in for anything like that.

The heady, self-centred resolution took shape rapidly, and he began to fill it in with all sorts of reasonable and thoughtful advantages.

He would drop out now, today, while things were still in their present state. If he waited at all, Augusta would at once find out his condition and she would--he knew her--immediately break up her house and pack off with him to wherever the doctors told her to take him. And he would be unable to resist once she took hold. Then, in the inevitable end, she would have spent on him whatever money she had--he had never thought to wonder whether it was much or little, or any--her home and her way of living would be gone. He would be gone. And she would be alone, among strangers, with no way of making a living, probably broken down from nursing him--He drew the whole picture and elaborated upon it.

Yes he must drop out today, quietly, without a word, and just drift--drift on over towards oblivion. Augusta would miss him, but she would not really need him. It would be all very simple. A short time, maybe only a few days, of knocking around and he would be completely down sick. Then some hospital or other would pick him up, under any name he happened to be able to think of, and--and everything would settle itself without fuss. He particularly did not want any fuss. He was tired and he had found a way to avoid all bother.

He turned smiling cheerily to Augusta. He found her looking at him, studying him with a grave, and, somehow, a different, interest.

Augusta had found herself face to face with a problem of her own.

She had known for a long time that there was something pressing on Jimmie's mind. She knew, of course, that he was not altogether well. But, with her own wonderful health and soundness, she could not think of mere illness as the cause of his trouble. She was sure that the trouble was in his heart. He had not been the same since they had known definitely that her mother must so go.

Was that his trouble? He was, in a way, free now.

He had been kind and dear. He had done all that she had asked him--Yes, she remembered now with confusion, she had literally _asked_ him. And he had done everything that she had needed and more than he had promised.

Did he want to go now?

If he did, she must make him go. For she knew well enough, she thought, that Jimmie would never let her know that he wanted to go. He would just stay on and be kind and say nothing. But she must not let him do that.

Yet, with all her reasoning and searching, Augusta was first a woman. There was just one question, and she knew it. With the simple, terrible directness of a child she put it to herself.

Did he love her? She had never known, really. He was so kind, and so good an actor.

They were alone now, for the first time. There was now no one, nothing that they had to think of but themselves.

Fearless and direct as she was, Augusta quivered with the dread of parting, for she had come to love the very thought of Jimmie's nearness. But she knew that they were now facing the elementary facts of life. Childlike, she had not anticipated this hour. She saw now with a startling and vivid reality that, for the sake of both their lives, she must _know_, before another day, whether Jimmie loved her as a man must love a woman.

A forgotten and unbidden memory came to her in that instant, and although she did not imagine that it had any bearing upon her problem she grasped it and brought it out into the light, never thinking where the consequences might lead.

"Jimmie," she said, turning quickly, "maybe you won't remember, but one day last September I saw you in the Square talking to a lady. She had been driving along in an automobile, and she saw you and called to you. Then she drove the machine up to the curb and stopped, and you came and stood with your foot on the running board. While you talked she seemed to be pleading with you about something. Who was she?"

"Ah-ha!" said Jimmie gaily. "At last! I am now an accredited and confirmed husband. My wife has begun to delve into my dark past. I am now a married man! Listen, my dear, and I will unfold unto thee a tale:

"That lady--and she was a tall dark lady, mind you--was actually trying to pay me back borrowed money! Did you ever hear the like?"

"She'd borrowed money from _you_?" said Augusta, with thoughtless emphasis.

"Does sound like a joke, doesn't it," Jimmie admitted, with just a tinge of bitterness in his voice. Augusta had unwittingly touched the sore spot which he himself had just been prodding. "But--"

"Oh, I didn't mean that! Please forgive me, Jimmie, I didn't mean it that way at all!"

"It's all right," said Jimmie lightly. "I can explain. There had been a time when she was not as prosperous as she appeared that day. And there also had been times--short and fleeting as they were--times when I had plenty of money. Therefore." He turned his hands out before him in a sort of Latin way, as though nothing could be plainer.

Augusta sat back, saying nothing. She was sorry that she had spoken now, and about this. Jimmie, she felt, had told the literal truth. And the incident seemed to make it more difficult to lead up to the things which she must say today.

They rode to the door in silence, both subdued by the nearness of a crisis which each foresaw in a different way. As the lugubrious coach drove away they stood on the sidewalk looking after it, both half conscious that it was the last vestige of an existence with which they were now finished. When it had trundled around the nearest corner and disappeared they turned to each other and, instinctively, like two solemn, slightly frightened children, took hands and went stealing up the steps.

Augusta did not miss Wardwell until evening. When he did not appear for supper, she ran up the stairs to bring him, thinking that he had perhaps fallen asleep. She had been busying herself through the afternoon, putting off the inevitable. And now she decided that it could be put off for still a little longer. She need not speak just yet.

His door stood open, but Jimmie was not there. She wondered that he should have gone out today, for she knew he was tired. But, maybe, he had just gone down to the street, and perhaps he would be coming in any minute. She lingered a little, looking around at the signs of Jimmie's ways--a pair of shoes in the middle of the floor, a coat draped perilously from the arm of a chair, a necktie festooning a doorknob, for Jimmie, while he was always wholesomely clean, was certainly not orderly. And then the loose, scrambled piles of papers all over his desk. She had often wanted to fuss among them, to straighten them out and make neat piles of them. But she had learned that this was one of the points on which Jimmie would fight. Anyone might hide his shoes away or hang up his coat or take his neckties away to press, but touch that desk and he would roar. And she had always understood and loved the little boyish jealousy with which he guarded everything he wrote until it was printed.

She went over on tiptoe, to take just a peep at what was on the typewriter.

As if he had known that she would do just this, the words flashed cruelly up at her from the middle of the white paper:

"I am going away, on urgent business--I am very tired."

Augusta sank down into the chair, covering the words with her arm, sobbing:

"Oh, Jimmie, Jimmie, did you have to hurt me this way! I wouldn't have tried to hold you. I would have let you go, and blessed you for the dear good boy you've been to me. I know you were tired. But you didn't need to hurt me!"

After a little she sat up and forced herself to look at the line of words as they stared up at her. And as she studied them she found herself listening for the sound of Jimmie's voice saying them. Then she knew why Jimmie had written the words instead of saying them to her.

_She would not have believed him._ And Jimmie had known that.

Word by word and tone by tone, she made him say it over to her mind's ear and eye, even to the little lift in his shoulder with which he would have ended--And she knew!

Jimmie did not mean that at all. He did not want to go away from her!

"Urgent business!" Love laughed up in her heart. Jimmie and urgent business!

And then the quiet, thinking Augusta came back. This was no caprice, no mere whim of Jimmie's. He had tried to make her believe that he was tired and only wanted escape. He had deliberately tried to hurt her so that she would believe. Jimmie would not have done that without a powerful reason.

And he was gone. Nothing could be more definite than that. If she had seen him packing trunks for a week his going could not have been so convincing. He had simply changed into his everyday street suit and walked out, humming:

"The Priest of the Parish, "The Clerk and his man "Went 'round the church yard "With a red hot brick in his han'."

Augusta rose and stole to the door to peer down the stairs, half frightened by the distinctness of her image of him. The impression that she had gotten, of Jimmie walking down the stairs, hands in pockets, humming that tuneless old rhyme of his, had been so vivid that for the moment she had thought it real, had believed that she was hearing and seeing Jimmie go down the stairs.

The blank unconcern of the stairway looking back at her chilled her. Jimmie was gone.

A sudden feeling of physical weakness that came over her now brought up to her one thing that she had overlooked. She remembered that she had never really found out what Dr. Gardner had said to Jimmie that night when he had gone to see him. Jimmie had baffled her with many words, both wise and foolish. And the doctor had not told her anything definite. They had both treated her as they would have answered a child. But that was different, then she had been living only for her mother.

Now the conviction came to her that the key to Jimmie's action was to be found in his talk that evening with the doctor. He had never really been the same since. So it was a quiet, determined Augusta who faced the doctor that evening.

"I told him that he was in very bad shape and that he would be worse if he didn't get out of the city at once. That was some weeks ago. But I imagine he went away laughing at me a little. He seemed to have some absurd notion that you needed him, that he was helping you by staying." Doctor Gardner wasted no words, for he did not feel that he was any longer bound by the promise of silence that he had made to Wardwell.

"I needed him every moment," said Augusta slowly; "and he stayed until he had done everything."

"Stayed? Has he gone now?"

"No no," said Augusta quickly. "I was just thinking--That was all." Suddenly it seemed to her that she must not on any account admit that Jimmie had gone away. She must find him now, tonight. She must not let it become established that he had gone at all.

"Of course, you should have let me know," she went on hurriedly. "But then, I know Jimmie. He just talked you into keeping it from me. He can talk anybody into anything if he sets his mind to it. Now I must get home right away."

She was already on her way to the door, and the doctor, although he had helpful advice ready to offer her, did not try to detain her. He saw that, just now, she wanted nothing but to get away. So he followed her resignedly to the street door, only saying:

"You know that if you need me in any way--"