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:
“Anne, I have been a blind fool. Even when the girl said you had gone in his car, I couldn’t believe it until I learned that he had left town. God knows I don’t want to stand in your way. The four thousand, and what you can get on the equity in the house, will see you through until you get your divorce. Let it be desertion. I will not contest.
Brice.”
Gradually, after a day or two, she began again to think, to reason. It was all plain enough. Those words she had said when they parted, the night of the quarrel. “Anything I want him to be” and “Perhaps you will find that out sooner than you expect.” Her anger, her miserable, childish anger when she said them, the satisfaction she had had in hurting him. Her leaving the next day for Alice’s, and Alice driving her brother-in-law’s showy car. Lucille on the porch, staring after them. She could imagine that scene when Brice returned, and what Lucille must have told him.
“No, sir, she ain’t come in yet. She went off this mornin’ with Mist’ Copeland in the car.”
Something like that. And Brice’s anger at her disregard of his wishes, her apparent flaunting of his command not to be seen again with Ranney Copeland. Her not coming home. She turned hot and cold when she thought of what Brice had been through, that next day, at the office. His shame, when he had had to confess to Mr. Whitten that he had not so much in the world as two thousand dollars, the two thousand dollars that was only half of what she had drawn just the day before to put into Ranney Copeland’s hands, the two thousand dollars that would have given him that coveted and well-deserved better position, a real place in the world. Yes, her not coming home, after that next day of his. What sort of night had Brice spent? What sort of night, while she slept so dreamlessly in that soft bed of Alice’s? She recalled what Mr. Whitten had told her. On that Thursday Brice had gone back, closed up his desk, left.
Strangely enough, for a long time she could not look at Brice’s bureau. At last she was as strangely drawn to it, stood before it, touched it and drew away, before she gathered courage enough to open the drawers. A few things, only a few things had he taken. In his closet but one suit was missing, an old one. Her picture was still on the bureau, that picture she had had taken last year in the gown she had worn to the New Year’s dance. There had been another, of young Anne Warren, that she had declared absurd, with its hair arranged in that out-of-date way, that she had made him keep out of sight in the drawer. The frame was there, empty. She dropped to her knees by the bureau. He had taken that young Anne Warren, that Anne who had won his heart. Anne Denison, Anne in the ball gown, he had left behind.
Gradually, as the difficulties of the situation made themselves clear to her, she became filled with a cold anger against Brice, an anger far different from the earlier blazing fury. That he should have dared to believe that thing of her, that he should have dared to misunderstand her, and put her in this ghastly position. Oh, yes, she had said those bitter things. But she had lived with him ten years. How could he, how could he! Never in her heart had she been unfaithful, undevoted to him, any more than in her actions. Of course every woman, in those moments of desperate rebellion that the closeness of the marriage bond brings, thinks of what might happen, thinks of what she might do, thinks perhaps of leaving it all. But she had never meant it. No, never, never! Deliberately she closed her mind to what might have been going on in Brice’s mind. She would not let herself think again of what he had gone through during those days of her unexplained absence.
She did not love Ranney Copeland. But she had loved Brice, and this was what had come of it. Ranney Copeland? How much of truth was there in what she had said to Brice, that she could have Ranney Copeland whenever she wanted him? She thought of that, shrank away from the thought, grasped at it again. What else was there?
But first the world had to be faced, people had to be told, and the telling must come from herself, if the tale were to wear the guise she wished it to. There came a morning when she telephoned to make sure that Alice would be at home. An hour later she was in Alice’s upstairs sitting-room, where Mrs. Copeland was remonstrating with one of her small daughters who did not wish to go out for a walk. A patient maid was standing near holding the other child by the hand. The little girl who was consciously good eyed the one before whom Alice was kneeling with that stolid understanding of childhood, and with something of the good little girl’s self-complacency at the iniquity of the naughty one.
“But—I—am—not—going out with Nelly!” Elizabeth was saying.
“Yes, you are, darling! Come—put your arm in your coat.”
“Won’t!”
“Put your arm in, darling, for mother.”
“I won’t wear this old coat. I’m going to wear my new blue coat.”
“I’ll tell you!” Alice’s voice sounded as though she had just thought of the most wonderful thing. “I’ll tell you! You shall wear your blue coat the very next time you go out with mother.”
One thin arm went into the brown coat. “Well. When am I going out with you, mother?”
“We’ll drive down to meet daddy this afternoon. There—now kiss me, and run.”
“How wonderful you are with them, Alice,” said Anne, a little sadly, when the children had left the room. “Where do you get all that patience?”
“Oh, it isn’t patience, really. It’s a sort of trying to meet them on their own ground, the poor little darlings. You know how you feel, yourself, sometimes, about doing things you don’t want to do, and wearing things you detest.”
“Is there really anything you detest, Alice?”
“Why, yes, of course there is. I don’t think about it very much, but there must be.”
“Ah, you have everything! Just look at this room of yours, at this house.”
Alice’s face grew serious. “Nance, I wish you would let me say something to you.”
“Oh, I know what you want to say.”
“I don’t believe you do, not really. I don’t minimize the comfort of having things, Nance, just because I’ve been one of the fortunate ones that have always had them. But, honestly, Anne dear, it is not things that make one’s happiness. I’d be happy anywhere, anyhow, with George and the children. I would. And you have Brice, Nance. He’s such a dear!”
Again came that ghastly coldness about her lips that she had felt in Mr. Whitten’s office. How had Brice dared to make it so difficult for her? She had to hold hard to that anger against him, had to find something to give her courage.
“Oh, yes, Brice. That’s what I’ve come here this morning for, Alice. To tell you, before anyone else. Brice and I have separated.”
Alice stared at her for a moment, then abruptly sat down. Anne moved a step or two across the room, back again, let herself sink softly into a low, deep chair. She thought she had done it well. But why, why, why did she have to do it at all?
Alice had flushed. “Anne Denison! How can you say a thing like that? Why, Anne!”
“It is quite true. Of course we are not going to make a scandal of it. There’s a way of doing it decently. Desertion, I believe, or something like that.”
For a long minute Alice Copeland sat there without moving, looking at Anne. Then tears came to her eyes. “Nance! It can’t be too late. Let me see Brice.”
“No use, Alice. Brice has already left town. Oh, it’s quite all right, much the best thing for us both.”
“You don’t believe that! It isn’t possible that you can!”
“Oh, please, Alice dear! It’s all settled, or will be, as soon as the thing can be arranged.”
“But divorce! Anne, you can’t.”
Anne said nothing. Was it all going to be as hard as this?
“Anne! Why, you’d be like that dreadful Callum woman we were talking about at the country club that day, or like Tessie Ogden. The last time she married again the day after she got her decree.”
“And why not? It’s quite legal, I believe.”
“Legal! After those promises, and the life together? Oh, Anne!” Alice was openly sobbing now. Anne did not look at her. Presently she spoke again. “Anne, there isn’t, there couldn’t be anyone else? Brice isn’t that sort.”
“I told you we’d call it desertion.”
“But Anne, Nance darling, think of the loneliness! What would you do, what could you do?”
“What does any woman do, any woman like me? I don’t know how to earn my own living. I’m not young. I’m not old, either. I want life. Yes, I do, I want life. Well, how does any woman get it?”
They sat there a while without speaking, without looking at each other. Presently Alice went to a window and leaned out. “Don’t let them play off the sidewalk, Nelly,” she called.
When she came back her manner had changed. “You’ve told me your news, dear. I suppose I ought to tell you ours. Or has Ranney already told you?”
“Ranney?”
“His engagement is to be announced at last. I had come to believe it never would be, but they settled it while he was there. He’s played fast and loose. She’s a nice girl. Too nice for Ranney. He’s so different from George.”
The light in the room had grown strange. Anne’s lips were cold. She must keep calm, keep smiling. “Oh, you’re always too hard on Ranney, my dear,” she heard herself saying. “He’s not a bad sort. I rather like Ranney. What is the girl’s name?”
A few minutes later Alice followed her out towards the stairs. “Anne, wait a moment. Forgive me for asking. Have you money enough? Because George and I——”
“Oh, plenty of money. Plenty. Thanks just the same, dear. You give Ranney my love and tell him I’m waiting to hear all about it. I must go now. Don’t look like that, Alice. I’m all right.”
Alice kissed her. “I can’t bear to think of it,” she said, with a catch in her voice. “Let me try, let George go to him. It can’t be too late.”
“Don’t, Alice, please, please,” Anne said. She drew away. The world went black.
8
That night she lay looking out at the stars, and thinking. Another night came back to her when she had watched the stars with Brice, while they were still in that first new, terrible strangeness of union, of unforeseen distastes, on her part of mute shrinking from contacts and bareness of mind and body which Brice took so naturally and joyously. She had thought Pelham a strange place for him to choose for their honeymoon; a place where there was nothing to do, no one to be seen, no one to show herself to. The cottage on the bank of the stream, their tiny, too-intimate room with one window, the table where they had their meals with the old sisters whose sole means of livelihood came from boarding the casual trout-fishermen and more frequent lumbermen—she would have been restive there, if it had not been for Brice’s adoring. That she had welcomed. She would yield her hand, her lips, with a gratifying feeling of conferring. At times Brice had taken her gifts hesitantly, worshipfully; at other times tempestuously. The moments of devoutness pleased her more. Even in those early days she had told herself it was that attitude, that state of mind, that she would foster in him.
On their last evening in the woods it had been Brice who had shown reluctance to leave them. Even in that hour Anne was for going on to the next thing, the new thing, the thing beyond, unafraid of whatever it might be, purposing always to sway it towards herself, to make it her own. She had never questioned that she could influence and form the new life they were going into together.
But Brice had drawn her out of the cottage that evening, and they had walked along the rutted road, the dark woods treading the hill on their left, the stream murmuring at the foot of the slope like music heard in a dream. The moon was young and pale, blending its light with the lambency of the stars. They walked through mottled shadows, Brice’s arm about her. Sometimes as they emerged into an unshadowed place where the moonlight found her hair his arm would tighten. She would let her head fall back against his shoulder, gratified at his tremor of emotion, at the sense of power it gave her.
They came to a place where the road dropped to the level of the stream, where a broad rock from which Brice had often fished protruded above a pool where trout would rise a few hours later. They stood there side by side. Before the silvery beauty gemmed in the setting of the surrounding woods Brice’s arm had dropped away. He loved the place. He had led his love and his emotion to it, and stood with his face upturned to the stars, wrapt, a votary before the altar on which he has just laid his gift. Anne felt the withdrawal of his spirit. She was more conscious of Brice than of the shimmering water, of the stars. She was a little teased, amused, impatient at his enraptured, upturned look. She wanted his return to herself.
“Dear,” she said. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
Brice looked at her. “You are,” he murmured. “You are beautiful. Our last night here.”
“Are you glad?” she laughed.
He did not answer. He did not touch her, did not move. All playfulness and all passion seemed to have left him. He was remote, a being other than the man who had held and caressed her. She became restive. She went close to him, brushed against him, raised her face in the moonlight.
Afterwards they sat on the rock until the moon dropped over the hill, and the pool lay dark beneath the shadowing trees, and the stars shone on the face of the stream, on Brice and herself. She was satisfied.
“We ought to go in,” he said. “I ought not to keep you out here in the dampness. You might get chilled.”
She smiled to herself, moved her cheek softly against his, yielded herself more to his arms. “This is so sweet,” she whispered. “And we are going away tomorrow.”
He pressed his lips to her hair, on her closed eyes, while the stars moved on.
Oh, she would always know how to manage Brice, how to bring him back to consciousness of her! What was instinctive at that early time had gradually developed into a technique that perfected itself as the need grew for holding him, controlling him. She had believed that she knew Brice’s mind and heart, all his impulses and reactions, just as she believed she managed them all for his well-being and her own. Her ultimate conception of successful marriage was that the woman must dominate, possess, and manage the man; woman’s part was to be the silent mainspring, man’s the clicking wheels.
Now and again during the years she had been aware of that same silent withdrawal of Brice’s which she had first encountered in Pelham under the stars. She believed it was only his masculine inarticulateness, or mental indolence, or contentment too absolute to be broken by speech or action. If by chance she suspected herself momentarily forgotten or disapproved of, she had always known what to do. She could make him see her again as beautiful, admirable, desirable. If it came to argument, she had always been able to make him say that she was right, or at any rate to yield to her. Only this last time had she failed; and she would not have failed even then, if Brice had not, in this inexplicable way, disappeared.
But there was the bare, ugly fact. He had disappeared. He had done the utterly unforeseen, and now she was lying in Alice’s house, her body filled with the dull ache of fever, looking again at the passage of the stars. Tonight the pool was not a peaceful depth above which she rested in Brice’s arms and drew him to thought of her. It was not peaceful. It was an enveloping blackness, hideously silent, that surged about her and buffeted her about like a leaf in the wind, helpless, rebellious, longing to rest, longing to find again some firmness of thought that eluded, that spun dizzily and mockingly through her brain. She was alone. There was no Brice. It was as though, after ten years, he had abruptly thrown her arms from his neck and sent her into that whirling night of bewilderment where nothing was as she had known it, nothing was real.
Yet after all something was real. What Alice had told her, and the smiling nurse confirmed. Motherhood. Terrible. A leering joke of Fate, as unexpected, as cruel, as bewildering as Brice’s behavior. For hours she was benumbed at the knowledge. She felt about it as one feels towards death. It could not be true, there must be some mistake. Yet as in the case of death, all the while she admitted the inevitableness of it: as death comes surely to all, so had this thing come inescapably to her. She would still have to know, tomorrow, that it was real. For many tomorrows she would have to bear the burden of it, and alone. In time, she would have to suffer. Alone. There would be a child, and Brice not there to—to suffer for it. She thought of that, savagely. Oh, Brice should have suffered for this, as she would have to suffer! It wasn’t fair, wasn’t fair. Even if Brice had been there, it would not have been fair. After ten years, motherhood. She had never wanted children. She knew why other women wanted them, some women. They were hostages to a sort of happiness, to complacency, to stability, to the holding of their husbands. Oh, yes, to some women, doubtless, something to love and care for, something on which to gratify that sentimentality that she had always scorned. She had not needed children. She knew how to arrange her life without that bother, that clutter, as she knew how to hold Brice. A cry escaped her.
The nurse came, bent above her.
“No, no! I don’t want anything, thank you,” she said.
That was for the moment true. She would have welcomed oblivion, anything, anything, that would let her escape her shattered world. She had believed so unquestioningly that she understood Brice, knew his every thought, how to manage him, how to hold him. And now he had gone. He had deserted her, left her with this. A child. His child. For she did not think of it as hers. It was Brice who had loved children, wanted one of his own, though she had believed she had convinced him of the inadvisability of having them. How could they have gotten along with all the added expense of children? But now—! There was no permanency left. All her plans, all her ideas, were whirling about her; only those stars were serene.
Sometimes she lay burning with anger which always resolved into bitterness against Brice. He should be found, would be, must be. And then—oh, yes!—then she would know what to do. There would be no more of those silent withdrawals of his, no more of his futile rebellions against her will. She had been too soft, too gentle. She had underestimated his desire and need of pleasing her. Now there would be the child, a mighty weapon. And she would use it. As other women used it. Brice must be found.
It was Nicky who precipitated the affair of the search for him. The nurse was gone at last, leaving Anne still languid in body after the fever and shock, but well enough to go down to Alice’s sitting-room in the afternoons. She knew that Alice watched her, sensed Alice’s vague disappointment and was scornfully amused, however secretly. Doubtless Alice expected a softening in her, a rosy tenderness of anticipation, as if any sudden incident could make a person other than she had always been. For with returning strength Anne was becoming herself again, calm, measuring, coolly determined. She was only awaiting the apt moment for speaking of Brice to Alice and George.
Nicky came in grinning impishly at Anne lying on Alice’s couch, lithe and graceful, well enough aware that the gracefulness would pass, making the most of the moment, one arm above her head, the other hand between the pages of a magazine she had not been reading.
“So the blow has fallen!” Nicky remarked.
“Nicky, don’t!” cried Alice. “It’s so sweet.”
“Yes, isn’t it? Like all the rest of the bonds of matrimony. How does Brice take it? Solemnly, I suppose.”
“Do sit down, Nick,” said Anne, and added, “Brice doesn’t know the joy in store for him.”
Nicky sat down, and Alice, her eyes on her sewing, said in a tone which was meant to carry a warning that the subject was not to be pressed upon, “Brice is away, Nicky dear. What have you been doing lately?”
Veronica recognized the tone, and laughed aloud. “What’s up?” she asked, looking from Alice to Anne.
Anne, too, looked at Alice, who had flushed a little. “Isn’t she a cherub? Alice—I do love you. The plain truth is, Nicky, that old Brice has gone off. Thinks he’s left me.”
“Oh, Anne dear!” from Alice, beseechingly.
“I knew there was something queer,” Nicky exclaimed.
Anne stirred; the arm over her head came down. “Why?”
“Because Ambrose——”
Anne laughed, sat up. “Ambrose! Of course! Alice—why didn’t we think of that? Of course, Ambrose knows where he is.”
“Oh, as to what Ambrose knows, or thinks he does,” Nicky exclaimed. “I’ll leave that to you two! All he would tell me was that old Brice was sick or something. He said Brice wrote him a letter last week, from Albany or somewhere, and asked him to be good to you, Anne. To stand by you or something.”
“From Albany! But that couldn’t have been all,” Alice cried. “He must have said more than that!” Anne’s eyes narrowed a little; she was thinking intently.
“All Ambrose told me. But he’s worried about it. Tried to call up your house, Anne. And went down to Whitten’s.”
Anne nodded. “Yes. I went there, too. Before I came to see Alice.”
Nicky chattered a moment or two of other things, looked at her wrist-watch and said she must fly. Alice went out of the room with her. When she came back, she sat down by Anne.
“Darling, I think Nicky came to say that. What did she mean?”
“I’ve wanted to tell you, Alice. It—isn’t easy.”
“I do think you had better. George could help, I am sure, if we knew. What was that about Whitten’s?”
“It goes back to the time I came here to look after the children. We had quarreled, and I did not leave word for Brice where I had gone. He—thought things.”
“Oh! But he couldn’t! Not that, Anne!”
“Apparently he did, though. He left me a note. I told you he had settled things. He thought he had. By telling me I might divorce him. He even left Whitten’s. Gave up his job. What he told Ambrose only goes to prove how determined he was.”
“Oh! But now——”
“Yes. That’s just it. Now there is—this. Brice will have to know this.”
“I knew George could help! He will find Brice, dear. And then—oh, you’re going to be happy, so happy, so happy, Nance! You and Brice—and what’s coming!”
Anne smiled, content for the time to leave it there. She was still weighted with that unaccustomed lassitude, and she knew George would act. Gradually she was able to be about the house again, and at last, one evening, George brought Ambrose with him for dinner. Anne sensed a crisis, and was gay throughout the meal. Afterwards she faced the two men.
“What is it?” she asked. “Out with it, George. What makes you and Ambrose so solemn? You have heard from Brice?”
“You know I always said you’d play the devil sooner or later, Anne,” Ambrose remarked. “Looks like you’d done it now.”
“Is that what you came here to say?” Anne flashed at him.
“No. I came to say I have been up to Albany myself. Brice stopped there overnight. Had only a suitcase with him. From there he apparently jumped off.”
“What do you mean, jumped off? If you think Brice is the sort of man who would——”
“I think I know Brice better than you ever did,” Ambrose said, savagely. “God—I hate to see his life ripped up like this.”
Alice protested, “Ambrose!”
“Well, damn it, I do! It’s my opinion Brice stood things as long as he could, and got out. I don’t blame him. But I do hate to see it.”
“You are implying that it is my fault,” Anne said. “I have never done anything, anything, that would justify Brice’s leaving me.”
“Please, please don’t quarrel,” Alice said.
“I have no intention of quarreling with anybody,” said Anne. “I never quarrel. I am very much obliged to Ambrose for going to Albany. I should think you would all understand that I want Brice to come back.”
“I know what cost him his job with Whitten,” said Ambrose.
Anne’s head went up. “I did that for the best,” she said. “If Brice had waited for me to explain it to him, he would have seen that. When he comes back, he will agree with me.” Suddenly she looked at George, threw out her hands in a gesture of appeal. “George, you’ll find him, won’t you? Oh, don’t you see? I want him to come back!”
Ambrose turned away impatiently, but George said, “Of course you do, Anne. We all do. And as for finding him, why, a man can’t absolutely disappear.”
“Oh, George,” Alice interjected, “I don’t know. There was that poor girl who started across the park with a book and box of candy. She was never heard from.”
“Nonsense, Allie! We’ll have Brice home again in a day or two. In a week, at latest. Don’t lose your nerve, Anne.”