down, Harry, dear boy.” Her kindness flooded out now—enveloped him. “I know there’s something the matter. You’re white as a sheet. I’m going to get you a cool bottle of beer.”
All at once he collapsed into his chair and covered his face with his hands.
“I can’t make her happy,” he said slowly. “I’ve tried and I’ve tried. This morning we had some words about breakfast—I’d been getting my breakfast down town—and—well, just after I went to the office she left the house, went East to her mother’s with George and a suitcase full of lace underwear.”
“Harry!”
“And I don’t know—”
There was a crunch on the gravel, a car turning into the drive. Roxanne uttered a little cry.
“It’s Doctor Jewett.”
“Oh, I’ll—”
“You’ll wait, won’t you?” she interrupted abstractedly. He saw that his problem had already died on the troubled surface of her mind.
There was an embarrassing minute of vague, elided introductions and then Harry followed the party inside and watched them disappear up the stairs. He went into the library and sat down on the big sofa.
For an hour he watched the sun creep up the patterned folds of the chintz curtains. In the deep quiet a trapped wasp buzzing on the inside of the window pane assumed the proportions of a clamor. From time to time another buzzing drifted down from upstairs, resembling several more larger wasps caught on larger window-panes. He heard low footfalls, the clink of bottles, the clamor of pouring water.
What had he and Roxanne done that life should deal these crashing blows to them? Upstairs there was taking place a living inquest on the soul of his friend; he was sitting here in a quiet room listening to the plaint of a wasp, just as when he was a boy he had been compelled by a strict aunt to sit hour-long on a chair and atone for some misbehavior. But who had put him here? What ferocious aunt had leaned out of the sky to make him atone for—what?
About Kitty he felt a great hopelessness. She was too expensive—that was the irremediable difficulty. Suddenly he hated her. He wanted to throw her down and kick at her—to tell her she was a cheat and a leech—that she was dirty. Moreover, she must give him his boy.
He rose and began pacing up and down the room. Simultaneously he heard some one begin walking along the hallway upstairs in exact time with him. He found himself wondering if they would walk in time until the person reached the end of the hall.
Kitty had gone to her mother. God help her, what a mother to go to! He tried to imagine the meeting: the abused wife collapsing upon the mother’s breast. He could not. That Kitty was capable of any deep grief was unbelievable. He had gradually grown to think of her as something unapproachable and callous. She would get a divorce, of course, and eventually she would marry again. He began to consider this. Whom would she marry? He laughed bitterly, stopped; a picture flashed before him—of Kitty’s arms around some man whose face he could not see, of Kitty’s lips pressed close to other lips in what was surely: passion.
“God!” he cried aloud. “God! God! God!”
Then the pictures came thick and fast. The Kitty of this morning faded; the soiled kimono rolled up and disappeared; the pouts, and rages, and tears all were washed away. Again she was Kitty Carr—Kitty Carr with yellow hair and great baby eyes. Ah, she had loved him, she had loved him.
After a while he perceived that something was amiss with him, something that had nothing to do with Kitty or Jeff, something of a different genre. Amazingly it burst on him at last; he was hungry. Simple enough! He would go into the kitchen in a moment and ask the colored cook for a sandwich. After that he must go back to the city.
He paused at the wall, jerked at something round, and, fingering it absently, put it to his mouth and tasted it as a baby tastes a bright toy. His teeth closed on it—Ah!
She’d left that damn kimono, that dirty pink kimono. She might have had the decency to take it with her, he thought. It would hang in the house like the corpse of their sick alliance. He would try to throw it away, but he would never be able to bring himself to move it. It would be like Kitty, soft and pliable, withal impervious. You couldn’t move Kitty; you couldn’t reach Kitty. There was nothing there to reach. He understood that perfectly—he had understood it all along.
He reached to the wall for another biscuit and with an effort pulled it out, nail and all. He carefully removed the nail from the centre, wondering idly if he had eaten the nail with the first biscuit. Preposterous! He would have remembered—it was a huge nail. He felt his stomach. He must be very hungry. He considered—remembered—yesterday he had had no dinner. It was the girl’s day out and Kitty had lain in her room eating chocolate drops. She had said she felt “smothery” and couldn’t bear having him near her. He had given George a bath and put him to bed, and then lain down on the couch intending to rest a minute before getting his own dinner. There he had fallen asleep and awakened about eleven, to find that there was nothing in the icebox except a spoonful of potato salad. This he had eaten, together with some chocolate drops that he found on Kitty’s bureau. This morning he had breakfasted hurriedly down town before going to the office. But at noon, beginning to worry about Kitty, he had decided to go home and take her out to lunch. After that there had been the note on his pillow. The pile of lingerie in the closet was gone—and she had left instructions for sending her trunk.
He had never been so hungry, he thought.
At five o’clock, when the visiting nurse tiptoed downstairs, he was sitting on the sofa staring at the carpet.
“Mr. Cromwell?”
“Yes?”
“Oh, Mrs. Curtain won’t be able to see you at dinner. She’s not well She told me to tell you that the cook will fix you something and that there’s a spare bedroom.”
“She’s sick, you say?”
“She’s lying down in her room. The consultation is just over.”
“Did they—did they decide anything?”
“Yes,” said the nurse softly. “Doctor Jewett says there’s no hope. Mr. Curtain may live indefinitely, but he’ll never see again or move again or think. He’ll just breathe.”
“Just breathe?”
“Yes.”
For the first time the nurse noted that beside the writing-desk where she remembered that she had seen a line of a dozen curious round objects she had vaguely imagined to be some exotic form of decoration, there was now only one. Where the others had been, there was now a series of little nail-holes.
Harry followed her glance dazedly and then rose to his feet.
“I don’t believe I’ll stay. I believe there’s a train.”
She nodded. Harry picked up his hat.
“Good-by,” she said pleasantly.
“Good-by,” he answered, as though talking to himself and, evidently moved by some involuntary necessity, he paused on his way to the door and she saw him pluck the last object from the wall and drop it into his pocket.
Then
