brighter there, and in the light he saw Marcia white and still, where she sat holding her baby in her arms. They exchanged no greeting: it was apparent that her being there transcended all usage, and that they need observe none.
"Ben will go home with you," said Olive, soothingly. "Is it raining?" she asked, looking at her brother's coat. "I will get my water-proof."
She left them a moment. "I have been—been walking—walking about," Marcia panted. "It has got so dark—I'm—afraid to go home. I hate to—take you from them—the last—night."
Halleck answered nothing; he sat staring at her till Olive came back with the water-proof and an umbrella. Then, while his sister was putting the waterproof over Marcia's shoulders, he said, "Let me take the little one," and gathered it, with or without her consent, from her arms into his. The baby was sleeping; it nestled warmly against him with a luxurious quiver under the shawl that Olive threw round it. "You can carry the umbrella," he said to Marcia.
They walked fast, when they got out into the rainy dark, and it was hard to shelter Halleck as he limped rapidly on. Marcia ran forward once, to see if her baby were safely kept from the wet, and found that Halleck had its little face pressed close between his neck and cheek. "Don't be afraid," he said. "I'm looking out for it."
His voice sounded broken and strange, and neither of them spoke again till they came in sight of Marcia's door. Then she tried to stop him. She put her hand on his shoulder. "Oh, I'm afraid—afraid to go in," she pleaded.
He halted, and they stood confronted in the light of a street lamp; her face was twisted with weeping. "Why are you afraid?" he demanded, harshly.
"We had a quarrel, and I—I ran away—I said that I would never come back. I left him—"
"You must go back to him," said Halleck. "He's your husband!" He pushed on again, saying over and over, as if the words were some spell in which he found safety, "You must go back, you must go back, you must go back!"
He dragged her with him now, for she hung helpless on his arm, which she had seized, and moaned to herself. At the threshold, "I can't go in!" she broke out. "I'm afraid to go in! What will he say? What will he do? Oh, come in with me! You are good,—and then I shall not be afraid!"
"You must go in alone! No man can be your refuge from your husband! Here!" He released himself, and, kissing the warm little face of the sleeping child, he pressed it into her arms. His fingers touched hers under the shawl; he tore his hand away with a shiver.
She stood a moment looking at the closed door; then she flung it open, and, pausing as if to gather her strength, vanished into the brightness within.
He turned, and ran crookedly down the street, wavering from side to side in his lameness, and flinging up his arms to save himself from falling as he ran, with a gesture that was like a wild and hopeless appeal.
XXXIV
Marcia pushed into the room where she had left Bartley. She had no escape from her fate; she must meet it, whatever it was. The room was empty, and she began doggedly to search the house for him, up stairs and down, carrying the child with her. She would not have been afraid now to call him; but she had no voice, and she could not ask the servant anything when she looked into the kitchen. She saw the traces of the meal he had made in the dining-room, and when she went a second time to their chamber to lay the little girl down in her crib, she saw the drawers pulled open, and the things as he had tossed them about in packing his bag. She looked at the clock on the mantel—an extravagance of Bartley's, for which she had scolded him—and it was only half past eight; she had thought it must be midnight.
She sat all night in a chair beside the bed; in the morning she drowsed and dreamed that she was weeping on Bartley's shoulder, and he was joking her and trying to comfort her, as he used to do when they were first married; but it was the little girl, sitting up in her crib, and crying loudly for her breakfast. She put on the child a pretty frock that Bartley liked, and when she had dressed her own tumbled hair she went down stairs, feigning to herself that they should find him in the parlor. The servant was setting the table for breakfast, and the little one ran forward: "Baby's chair; mamma's chair; papa's chair!"
"Yes," answered Marcia, so that the servant might hear too. "Papa will soon be home."
She persuaded herself that he had gone as before for the night, and in this pretence she talked with the child at the table, and she put aside some of the breakfast to be kept warm for Bartley. "I don't know just when he may be in," she explained to the girl. The utterance of her pretence that she expected him encouraged her, and she went about her work almost cheerfully.
At dinner she said, "Mr. Hubbard must have been called away, somewhere. We must get his dinner for him when he comes: the things dry up so in the oven."
She put Flavia to bed early, and then trimmed the fire, and made the parlor cosey against Bartley's coming. She did not blame him for staying away the night before; it was a just punishment for her wickedness, and she should tell him so, and tell him that she knew he never was to blame for anything about Hannah Morrison. She enacted over and over in her mind the scene of their reconciliation. In every step on the pavement he approached the door; at last all the steps died away, and the second night passed.
Her head was light, and her brain confused with loss of sleep. When the child called her from above, and woke her out of her morning drowse, she went to the kitchen and begged the servant to give the little one its breakfast, saying that she was sick and wanted nothing herself. She did not say anything about Bartley's breakfast, and she would not think anything; the girl took the child into the kitchen with her, and kept it there all day.
Olive Halleck came during the forenoon, and Marcia told her that Bartley had been unexpectedly called away. "To New York," she added, without knowing why.
"Ben sailed from there to-day," said Olive sadly.
"Yes," assented Marcia.
"We want you to come and take tea with us this evening," Olive began.
"Oh, I can't," Marcia broke in. "I mustn't be away when Bartley gets back." The thought was something definite in the sea of uncertainty on which she was cast away; she never afterwards lost her hold of it; she confirmed herself in it by other inventions; she pretended that he had told her where he was going, and then that he had written to her. She almost believed these childish fictions as she uttered them. At the same time, in all her longing for his return, she had a sickening fear that when he came back he would keep his parting threat and drive her away: she did not know how he could do it, but this was what she feared.
She seldom left the house, which at first she kept neat and pretty, and then let fall into slatternly neglect. She ceased to care for her dress or the child's; the time came when it seemed as if she could scarcely move in the mystery that beset her life, and she yielded to a deadly lethargy which paralyzed all her faculties but the instinct of concealment.
She repelled the kindly approaches of the Hallecks, sometimes sending word to the door when they came, that she was sick and could not see them; or when she saw any of them, repeating those hopeless lies concerning Bartley's whereabouts, and her expectations of his return.
For the time she was safe against all kindly misgivings; but there were some of Bartley's creditors who grew impatient of his long absence, and refused to be satisfied with her fables.
