Part 2

The wrong that he had done Rosalind--even in his thought--made him tender of her. He did not buy a crimson flower to take home to her. But a week later he called one day at his bank and in the evening he handed her a little, twisted roll of something.

She had finished her work and was sitting for a minute before she brought her sewing basket. He laid the roll in the curve of her fingers in her lap.

When she glanced down at it she took it up in short-sighted surprise and looked at the new, crisp bills--and then at him--

He nodded. “For you,” he said. “It’s a new suit--you need it.” He balanced a little on his toes, looking down at her.

Her face flushed red; it grew from neck to chin and flooded up to him. “What do you mean?” she said under her breath.

“I want you to get a good one--good stuff, good dressmaker--It’s enough, isn’t it?”

“It is more--than enough--” The red had flooded her face again--as if she would cry. But she said nothing for a minute. She was looking down at the bills.

Then she looked up. The plain face had a smile like light from somewhere far away. “May I get just what I like--?”

He nodded proudly. She was almost beautiful... perhaps--in the new gown--He pulled himself together.... She had looked down again and was fingering the bills happily.... “There is a little muff and fur--” she said.

He nodded, encouraging--“A muff and fur and a little fur cap that I wanted--so much--for Mary--and overcoats for the boys--they’re so shabby--and your hat is really not fit, you know--” She was looking up now and smiling and checking them off--He stopped her with a gesture.

“You are to spend it on yourself,” he said almost harshly.

“On myself--! Why do you say that?” She almost confronted him--as if she caught her breath--“You never have things and you always get out of spending things on yourself.” He half muttered the words.

“Oh--oh--! I shall get something for myself. You will see!”

He held out his hand. He was a good man of business. No one got far ahead of him.--“When you have bought the dress I will pay for it,” he said. “Give them to me. I cannot trust you with them.”

She looked at him--and at the bills--and they dropped from her hand into his slowly and her arms fell; her shoulders rose and trembled and the hands covered her face. She was weeping, deep, silent sobs--

He bent over her--ashamed. “You must not do that,” he said. “You needn’t feel bad. I wanted you to have it--”

She took down her hands and looked at him. “It seemed so good to have--enough--more than enough! to be extravagant!” She threw out her hands with a little wasteful gesture.

He was looking at her closely. A suspicion leaped at him. Her face was so free and the tears had made it mysterious and sweet--she was as wonderful as that other--she was--She was--He stopped with a quick jerk. “I want you to be extravagant on _yourself!_” he said. He was watching her face.

It flamed again but it did not drop before him. Only the eyes sent back a look--on guard, it seemed to him. “I do not need so much for myself,” she said quietly, “part of it will be quite enough.”

He put the bills in his pocket. “All or nothing,” he said easily.

*****

All the next day he turned it in his mind--the look in her eyes, the beauty--something deep within her, shining out.... He no longer went peacefully about his work. _Could_ it have been Rosalind, after all?... He had never seen her look like that--he had not dreamed.... But when he came home at night the look was not there; he fancied that she was more worn and a little troubled. Certainly, no one could think of her as beautiful... and why should a man want to think his wife beautiful?... It was the woman in the alcove that had done the mischief. He should never get over the woman in the alcove. She had got into his life whether or not. He could not be comfortable about Rosalind. There was something about her that he had not known or suspected before. He fell to watching her when she was not aware. He had thought he knew her so well and now she was a stranger.... But perhaps it was himself--the woman had done something to him. Rosalind was the same--but was she? He looked at her a long time one night as she lay asleep. The moonlight had come in and was on her face. He watched it--as if a breath might speak to him--it was not Rosalind’s face. Some stranger was there, out of a strange land; a great yearning came to him to waken her, to ask her whence she came, what it was that she knew--what made her face so peaceful in the moonlight--calling to him? He got up softly and closed the blind. He remembered he had heard that it was not good for people to sleep with the moon shining on them--it was only superstition, of course. But superstition had suddenly changed its bounds for him.... Were there things, perhaps, that people knew, that they guessed--true things that they could not explain and did not talk about?...

IV

HE could not bring himself to speak to Rosalind about the woman in the alcove. He wanted to speak--to do away, once for all, with the strangeness and the spell she seemed to have cast about him, to speak of her casually as that woman I saw the other day at Merwin’s; but he could not do it. It was as if he were afraid--or bashful. He had not felt like this since--not since he was in love--with Rosalind! He looked at the thought and turned it over slowly. He was not in love with the woman--certainly he was not in love with her! He would not know her again if he met her on the street.... Would he not! Suddenly he felt that he had known her always--longer than he had known Rosalind--longer than he had been alive! He found himself wondering about the world--how it was the world got into existence--what were men doing in it--and women--and his mind travelled out into space--great stars swung away mistily--what did it mean--all his world and stars?... Perhaps if he saw her again, just a few minutes, he would feel like himself again.... It was worth trying--and how he wanted--to--see her! Well, what of that? There was nothing wrong in being curious about a woman like that. If she _had_ some uncanny power over him he might as well find it out--fight it!

He was respectable--he was a married man.... And what had Rosalind to do with it? Perhaps it _was_ Rosalind. He should never quiet down till he knew. There was something in his blood. The next time he was passing Merwin’s he would go in....

He passed Merwin’s that afternoon--and went in. But she was not there. He sat a little while in the quiet of the place, looking across to the alcove where the woman had been. There was no one in it and the curtains were drawn back. Each time a stir came from the swinging doors or a dress rustled beside him he half turned and held his breath till it passed and took its place at one of the little tables or in an alcove. But the third alcove on the right remained empty. No quiet figure moved with soft grace and seated itself there... no one but Eldridge saw the figure--the gentle, bending line of the neck, the little droop of the face.... If only she would lift it or turn to him a minute.... And then the still, clear emptiness of the place swept between; the green curtains framed it, as if it were a picture, a little antechamber leading somewhere....

Eldridge shook himself and took his hat and went out. The doors swung silently behind him--he would never go in there again! He was a fool--a soft fool! Then he almost stopped in the crowd of the street.... And he knew suddenly that he would go back. He would go--again and again--he could not help himself. But he was _not_ in love--he had been in love--with Rosalind--and it was not like this.... A policeman thrust out an arm and stopped him, and he waited for the traffic to stream past.... He was not in love--only curious about the woman; it teased him not to know who she was... and why he had been so sure that she was Rosalind. If he could see her again--just a minute--long enough to make sure, he would not care if he never saw her again. He was loyal, of course, to Rosalind, more loyal than he had ever been. It seemed curious how the woman had made him see Rosalind--all the plainness of her filled with something strange and sweet--like moonlight or a quiet place.

V

THE next day he went again to Merwin’s. No use for him to say he would keep away. He knew, all through the drudging accounts in the morning, that he would go; and while he talked with clients and arranged sales and managed a real-estate deal--back in the corner of his mind, behind its green curtains, the little alcove waited.

He passed through the swinging doors and glanced quickly, and the hand holding his hat gripped it tight. The curtains of the third alcove to the right were half closed, but along the floor lay a fold of grey dress and over the end of the seat, thrown carelessly back, hung the edge of a fur-lined wrap.

Eldridge turned blindly toward his place. Some one was there. He had to take the alcove behind, and he could not see her from the alcove behind--not even if she should push back the curtain that shut her away--But he found himself, strangely, not caring to see her.... She was there, a little way off; it was she--no need to part the curtains and look in on her. He felt her presence through all the place. He was no longer guilty.... He was hardly curious to know her. He took up the card from the table before him and studied it blindly.... His heart seemed to lie out before him--a clear, white place.... Men and women were not so evil as he had dreamed. He was doing something that a week ago he would have condemned any one for; yet his heart, as he looked into it, was singularly clear and big--and the light shining in it puzzled him--like a charm--It was a place that he had never seen; he had dreamed of it, perhaps, as a child. He ordered something, at random, from the card and moved nearer the aisle.... No, he could not see her--only the fold of her dress and the bit of grey fur. He was glad she was warmly dressed. The weather was keener to-day. He must get Rosalind a wrap--something warm like that and lined with fur--soft and grey and deep. Everything the woman had he would like Rosalind to have--perhaps it might atone--a little--for the light in his heart. He had not felt like this for Rosalind.... But how should they have known. They were only a boy and girl--and some moonlight.... And all the time this other woman was waiting--somewhere.... No one had told him. If some one had said to him: “Wait, she is coming--you must wait!” But no one knew, no one had told him.... Did _she_ know, across there in her place, did she know--had she waited--for him? He stirred a little. Some one might be with her now; or she might be waiting for some one. But he could not go to her.... And yet--why not--?--He had only to cross the aisle--and put back the curtains--and look at her.... He shook himself and lifted his glass and drank grimly. He was a lawyer; his name was Eldridge Walcott; he lived in a brick house and he had children--three children--_That_ was the real world; this other thing was--madness.... So this was the way men felt! This was it, was it--very clean and whole--as if life were beginning for them--they had made mistakes, but they would try again; they saw something bigger and better than they had ever known--and they reached out to it. Men were not wicked, as he had thought--It was a strange world where you had to be wicked to do things--like this!... And there might be some one with her now! Under the voices and the music he fancied he could hear them talking in low tones; their voices seemed to come and go vaguely; half guessed, not constant, but quiet and happy.... Or was it his own heart that beat to her--the words it could speak?... He would not speak to her--but he would not go away.... He would wait till she moved back the curtain and stepped out.

Then he half remembered something--and looked at his watch--he had promised Rosalind to wait for the boys and take them to the dentist’s. She had said she could not go this afternoon and he had promised to wait at the office; he had not meant to come here.... He slipped back the watch and stood up and hesitated--and turned away. He might never see her now. Well, he had promised Rosalind. Somehow, the promise to Rosalind must be kept--now. The letter of the law must be kept!

*****

They were waiting for him in the hall by his office door, sitting at the top of the flight of stairs and peering down into the elevator-shaft as the elevator shot up and down. He saw them as he stepped out, and smiled at them. They were fresh, wholesome boys, and he had a sense, as he fitted the key in the lock and they stood waiting behind his bent back, that they belonged to him. He had always thought of them as Rosalind’s boys!

He threw open the door and they went in, looking about them almost shyly; they were not shy boys, but father was a big man--and they looked at the place where he worked.... Some time they would be--men and have an office....

Eldridge Walcott turned back from the desk that he had opened. He had taken out a little roll of paper and slipped it into his pocket. Their eyes followed him gravely. He looked at them standing--half in their world, half in his--and smiled to them.

“You had to wait a good while, didn’t you?” he said.

They nodded together. “Most an hour,” said Tommie.

“Well, that’s all right--Something kept me. Come on.”

When they reached home that evening he handed the little roll of paper he had taken from the desk to Rosalind. “I have doubled it,” he said.

“There will be enough for everything you want.”

For a minute she did not speak. Then she took it. “Thank you,” she said slowly.

“I want you to get a suit, you know--a good one--” He paused. “--And you need something warm--a fur-lined wrap or something--don’t you?”

She wrinkled the little line between her eyes. “It is--so late--the winter is half gone already.” Then her face cleared. “I think I’ll--wait till spring,” she said.

He could almost fancy something danced at him, mocked him behind the still face.

He turned away, the deep, hurt feeling coming close. “Get what you like,” he said. “I want you to have enough.”

The money lay in her hand, and her fingers opened on it and closed on it. Then she breathed softly, like a sigh, and went to her desk and put it away.

VI

THROUGH the weeks that followed Eldridge watched the things money could buy quietly taking their place in the house. Little comforts that he had not missed--had not known any one could miss--were at hand. The children looked somehow subtly different. He had a sense of expansion, softly breaking threads of habit, expectancy. Only Rosalind seemed unchanged. Yet each time he looked at her he fancied that she _had_ changed--more than all of them. He could not keep his eyes from her. Something was hidden in her--Something he did not know--that he would never know. Perhaps he should die and not know it.... Did the dead know things--everything? He seemed to remember hazily from Sunday-school--something--If he were dead, he might come close to her--as close as the little thoughts behind her eyes----

The cold grew keener, and Eldridge, shivering home from the office, remembered a pair of fur gloves in the attic. He had not worn them for years. But after supper he took a light and went to look for them.

It was cold there, in the attic, and he shivered a little, looking about the dusty place. There were boxes stacked along under the eaves and garments hanging grotesquely from the beams. He knew where Rosalind kept the gloves; he had seen them one day last summer when he was looking for window netting. It had not seemed to him then, in the hot attic, that any one could ever need gloves. He set down the lamp on a box and drew out a trunk and looked in it; they were not there. She must have changed the place of things--he would have to go down and ask her.

Then his eye sought out a box pushed far back under the eaves--he did not remember that he had ever seen that box; he glanced at it--and half turned away to pick up the lamp--and turned back. He could not have told why he felt that he must open it. He had set the light on a box a little above him, and it glimmered down on the box that he drew out and opened--and on a smooth piece of tissue-paper under the cover----A faint perfume came from beneath the paper, and he lifted it. There was a pair of long grey gloves--with the shape of a woman’s hand still softly held in the finger-tips.... He lifted them and stared and moistened his lips and ran his hand down inside the box to the bottom--soft, filmy stuff that yielded and sprang back.... He kneeled before it, half on his heels, peering down. He bent forward and lifted the things out--white things with threaded ribbon and lace--things such as Eldridge Walcott had never seen--delicate, web-like things--then a fur-lined coat and a grey dress and, at the bottom, a little linked something. He lifted it and peered at it and at the coins shining through the meshes and dropped it back.

He stood up and looked about him vaguely... after a minute he shivered a little. It was very cold in the attic. He knelt down and tried to put the things back; but his fingers shook, and the things took queer shapes and fell apart, and a soft perfume came from them that confused him. He tried to steady himself--he began at the bottom, putting each thing carefully in place... smoothing it down.

The door below creaked. A voice listened.... “You up there, Eldridge?”

He straightened himself... out of a thousand thoughts and questions. “Where are my fur gloves?” he said quietly. He took the light from its box and came over to the stairs.

Her face, lifted to him, was in the light and he could see the rays of light falling on it--and on the stillness, like a pool....

“They’re in the black trunk,” said Rosalind. Her foot moved to the stair--“I’ll get them for you.”

“No--Don’t come up,” he said. “It’s cold here. I know--I was just looking there.”

So she went back, closing the door behind her to keep out the cold.

When Eldridge came down he did not look at her. He blew out the light and put the gloves with his hat in the hall and came over with his paper and sat down.

She was standing by the fire, bending over a pair of socks that she had been washing out. She was hanging them in front of the fire, pulling out the toes. Her eyes looked at him inquiringly as her fingers went on stretching the little toes.

“Did you find them?”

“Yes.” He opened his paper slowly. She went on fussing at the socks, a little, absent smile on her face. “If it keeps on like this I must get heavier flannels for them,” she said. The look in her face was very sweet as she bent over the small socks.

He looked up--and glanced away. “Money enough--have you?”

“Oh, yes--plenty of money. I will get them to-morrow--if I can go in to town--” she said.

His mind flashed to the attic above them and to the quiet alcove with the little green curtains that shut it off. “Better dress warm if you do go,” he said carelessly. “It is pretty cold, you know.” He took up the paper and stared at it.

VII

SO it was--Rosalind! He sat in his office and stared at the blotter on his desk.... It was a green blotter-----For years after Eldridge Walcott could not see a green blotter without a little, sudden sense of upheaval; he would walk into a plain commercial office--suddenly the walls hovered, the furniture moved subtly--even the floor grew a little unsteady before he could come with a jerk to a green blotter on the roller-top desk--and face it squarely. The blotter on his own desk was exchanged for a crimson one--the next day. He would have liked to change everything in the room. The very furniture seemed to mock him--to question....

So it was--Rosalind! Rosalind--was like that--! His heart gave a quick beat--like a boy’s--and stood still.... Rosalind was like that--for--somebody else.... He stared at the blotter and drew a pad absently toward him.

The office boy stuck his head in the door and drew it back. He shook it at a short, heavy man with a thinnish, black-grey beard who was hovering near. “He told me not to disturb him--not for anybody,” the boy said importantly.

The man took a card from his pocket and wrote on it. “Take him that.” The boy glanced at the name and at the thin, blackish beard. There was a large wart on the man’s chin where the beard did not grow. The boy’s eyes rested on it--and looked away to the card. “I ’ll--ask him--” he said.

The man nodded. “Take him that first.”

The boy went in.

The man walked to the window and looked down; the thick flesh at the back of his neck overlapped a little on the collar of his well-cut coat and the heavy shoulders seemed to shrug themselves under the smooth fit.

The boy’s eyes surveyed the back respectfully. “You’re to come in,” he says.

The man turned and went in and Eldridge Walcott looked up. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“That’s all right.” The man sat down a little heavily--as if he were tired. “That’s all right. I waited because I wanted to see you. I want some one to do--a piece of work--for me--”

“Yes?”

“I don’t care to have my regular man on it--”

“You have Clarkson, don’t you?”

“Yes--I have Clarkson.” The man waited. “Clarkson’s all right--for business,” he said. “I want a different sort--for this.”

He felt in the pocket of his coat and drew out a letter, and then another, and held them, looking down at them absently, turning them over in his hand.

“It’s a divorce--” he said. He went on turning the letters in his hand but not looking at them. “I’ve waited as long as I could,” he added after a minute. “It’s no use--” He laid the letters on the desk. “It took a detective--and money--to get ’em. I reckon they’ll do the business,” he said.

Eldridge reached out his hand for them. The man’s errand startled him a little. He had been going over divorce on the green blotter when the boy came in. He opened the letters slowly. A little faint perfume drifted up--and between him and the words came a sense of the blackish-grey beard and the wart in among it. He had stared at it, fascinated, while the man talked.... He could imagine what it might mean to a woman, day after day. He focussed his attention on the letter--and read it and took up the other and laid it down....

“Yes--Those are sufficient,” he said almost curtly. He took up his pen. “Your middle initial is J?”

“Gordon J.,” said the man.

Eldridge traced the name. “And your wife?”

The man stared at him.

“Her full name--” said Eldridge.

“Her name is Cordelia Rose--Barstow,” said the man.

Eldridge wrote it efficiently. “Do you name any one as co-respondent?”

“I name--his name is--” The man gulped and his puffy face was grim. “John E. Tower is his name,” he said slowly.

Eldridge filled in the paper before him and laid a blotter across it. “That is sufficient. I will file the application to-morrow. There will be no trouble. She will not contest it--?”

The man swallowed a little. “No--She wants--to be free--” He ended the words defiantly, but with a kind of shame.

Eldridge made no reply. He was seeing a quiet figure, with bent head, smiling at something--something that shut him out. He looked across to the man.

The man’s eyes met his. “That’s all you need--is it?” He seemed a little disappointed. “No more to it than this?”

“That’s all,” said Eldridge.

But the man did not get up. “I don’t know how it happened,” he said. “You see, I never guessed--not till two weeks--ten days ago or so.”

“I see--”

“I’d always trusted Cordelia--I hadn’t ever thought as she could do anything like that--not _my_ wife!”

“One doesn’t usually expect it of one’s--own wife.” Eldridge laughed a little, but it was not unkindly, and the man seemed to draw toward him.