XIIITHE SHADOW
Whathad given him his first hint that all might not be as well at home as he imagined was the incident of the automobile. Up to that time he had not had a troubled thought about her, not one. But after—Well, it was a year and a half now and although suspicion still lingered it was becoming weaker. But it had not been obliterated even though he could not help being fond of Beryl, especially since they had Tickles to look after between them. But anyhow, in spite of all his dark thoughts and subtle efforts to put two and two together, he had not been able to make anything of it. Perhaps he was being unjust to her to go on brooding about it.... But how was it possible that so many suspicious-looking things could happen in a given time, and one never be able to get the straight of them?
The main thing that had hampered him was his work. He was connected with the Tri-State Paper Company, at the City Order desk, and as a faithful employé he was not supposed to leave during working hours without permission, and it was not always easy to get permission. It was easy to count the times he had been off—once to go to the dentist, and two or three times to go home when Beryl was ill. Yet it just happened that on that particular afternoon his superior, Mr. Baggott, had suggested that he, in the place of Naigly who always attended to such matters but was away at the time, should run out to the Detts-Scanlon store and ask Mr. Pierce just what waswrong with that last order that had been shipped. There was a mix-up somewhere, and it had been impossible to get the thing straight over the telephone.
Well, just as he was returning to the office, seated in one of those comfortable cross seats of the Davenant Avenue line and looking at the jumble of traffic out near Blakely Avenue, and just as the car was nearing the entrance to Briscoe Park he saw a tan-and-chocolate-colored automobile driven by a biggish man in a light tan overcoat and cap swing into view, cross in front of the car, and enter the park. It was all over in a flash. But just as the car swung near him who should he see sitting beside the man but Beryl, or certainly a woman who was enough like her to be her twin sister. He would have sworn it was Beryl. And what was more, and worse, she was smiling up at this man as though they were on the best of terms and had known each other a long time! Of course he had only had a glimpse, and might have been mistaken. Beryl had told him that morning that she was going to spend the afternoon with her mother. She often did that, sometimes leaving Tickles there while she did her mother’s marketing. Or, she and her mother, or she and her sister Alice, if she chanced to be there, would take the baby for a walk in the park. Of course he might have been mistaken.
But that hat with the bunch of bright green grapes on the side.... And that green-and-white striped coat.... And that peculiar way in which she always held her head when she was talking. Was it really Beryl? If it wasn’t, why should he have had such a keen conviction that it was?
Up to that time there never had been anything of a doubtful character between them—that is, nothing except that business of the Raskoffsky picture, which didn’t amount to much in itself. Anybody might become interested in a great violinist and write him for his photo, though even that couldn’t beprovedagainst Beryl. It was inscribed to Alice. But even if she had written him, that wasn’t a patch compared to this last, her driving about in a car with astrange man. Certainly that would justify him in any steps that he chose to take, even to getting a divorce.
But what had he been able to prove so far? Nothing. He had tried to find her that afternoon, first at their own house, then at her mother’s, and then at Winton & Marko’s real estate office, where Alice sometimes helped out, but he couldn’t find a trace of her. Still, did that prove anything once and for all? She might have been to the concert as she said, she and Alice. It must be dull to stay in the house all day long, anyhow, and he couldn’t blame her for doing the few things she did within their means. Often he tried to get in touch with her of a morning or afternoon, and there was no answer, seeing that she was over to her mother’s or out to market, as she said. And up to the afternoon of the automobile it had never occurred to him that there was anything queer about it. When he called up Beryl’s mother she had said that Beryl and Alice had gone to a concert and it wasn’t believable that Mrs. Dana would lie to him about anything. Maybe the two of them were doing something they shouldn’t, or maybe Alice was helping Beryl to do something she shouldn’t, without their mother knowing anything about it. Alice was like that, sly. It was quite certain that if there had been any correspondence between Beryl and that man Raskoffsky, that time he had found the picture inscribed to Alice, it had been Alice who had been the go-between. Alice had probably allowed her name and address to be used for Beryl’s pleasure—that is, if there was anything to it at all. It wasn’t likely that Beryl would have attempted anything like that without Alice’s help.
But just the same he had never been able to prove that they had been in league, at that time or any other. If there was anything in it they were too clever to let him catch them. The day he thought he had seen her in the car he had first tried to get her by telephone and then had gone to the office, since it was on his way, to get permission to go home for a few minutes. But what had he gained by it? By the timehe got there, Beryl and her mother were already there, having just walked over from Mrs. Dana’s home, according to Beryl. And Beryl was not wearing the hat and coat he had seen in the car, and that was what he wanted to find out. But between the time he had called up her mother and the time he had managed to get home she had had time enough to return and change her clothes and go over to her mother’s if there was any reason why she should. That was what had troubled him and caused him to doubt ever since. She would have known by then that he had been trying to get her on the telephone and would have had any answer ready for him. And that may have been exactly what happened, assuming that she had been in the car and gotten home ahead of him, and presuming her mother had lied for her, which she would not do—not Mrs. Dana. For when he had walked in, a little flushed and excited, Beryl had exclaimed: “Whatever is the matter, Gil?” And then: “What a crazy thing, to come hurrying home just to ask me about this! Of course I haven’t been in any car. How ridiculous! Ask Mother. You wouldn’t expect her to fib for me, would you?” And then to clinch the matter she had added: “Alice and I left Tickles with her and went to the concert after going into the park for a while. When we returned, Alice stopped home so Mother could walk over here with me. What are you so excited about.” And for the life of him, he had not been able to say anything except that he had seen a woman going into Briscoe Park in a tan-and-chocolate car, seated beside a big man who looked like—well, he couldn’t say exactly whom he did look like. But the woman beside him certainly looked like Beryl. And she had had on a hat with green grapes on one side and a white-and-green striped sports coat, just like the one she had. Taking all that into consideration, what would any one think? But she had laughed it off, and what was he to say? He certainly couldn’t accuse Mrs. Dana of not knowing what she was talking about, or Beryl of lying, unless he was sure of what he was saying. Shewas too strong-minded and too strong-willed for that. She had only married him after a long period of begging on his part; and she wasn’t any too anxious to live with him now unless they could get along comfortably together.
Yet taken along with that Raskoffsky business of only a few months before, and the incident of the Hotel Deming of only the day before (but of which he had thought nothing until he had seen her in the car), and the incident of the letters in the ashes, which followed on the morning after he had dashed home that day, and then that business of the closed car in Bergley Place, just three nights afterwards—well, by George! when one put such things together—
It was very hard to put these things in the order of their effect on him, though it was easy to put them in their actual order as to time. The Hotel Deming incident had occurred only the day before the automobile affair and taken alone, meant nothing, just a chance encounter with her on the part of Naigly, who had chosen to speak of it. But joined afterwards with the business of the partly burned letters and after seeing her in that car or thinking he had—Well—After that, naturally his mind had gone back to that Hotel Deming business, and to the car, too. Naigly, who had been interested in Beryl before her marriage (she had been Baggott’s stenographer), came into the office about four—the day before he had seen Beryl, or thought he had, in the car, and had said to him casually: “I saw your wife just now, Stoddard.” “That so? Where?” “She was coming out of the Deming ladies’ entrance as I passed just now.” Well, taken by itself, there was nothing much in that, was there? There was an arcade of shops which made the main entrance to the Deming, and it was easy to go through that and come out of one of the other entrances. He knew Beryl had done it before, so why should he have worried about it then? Only, for some reason, when he came home that evening Beryl didn’t mention that she had been downtown that day until he askedher. “What were you doing about four to-day?” “Downtown, shopping. Why? Did you see me? I went for Mother.” “Me? No. Who do you know in the Deming?” “No one”—this without a trace of self-consciousness, which was one of the things that made him doubt whether there had been anything wrong. “Oh, yes; I remember now. I walked through to look at the hats in Anna McCarty’s window, and came out the ladies’ entrance. Why?” “Oh, nothing. Naigly said he saw you, that’s all. You’re getting to be a regular gadabout these days.” “Oh, what nonsense! Why shouldn’t I go through the Deming Arcade? I would have stopped in to see you, only I know you don’t like me to come bothering around there.”
And so he had dismissed it from his mind—until the incident of the car.
And then the matter of the letters ... and Raskoffsky ...
Beryl was crazy about music, although she couldn’t play except a little by ear. Her mother had been too poor to give her anything more than a common school education, which was about all that he had had. But she was crazy about the violin and anybody who could play it, and when any of the great violinists came to town she always managed to afford to go. Raskoffsky was a big blond Russian who played wonderfully, so she said. She and Alice had gone to hear him, and for weeks afterward they had raved about him. They had even talked of writing to him, just to see if he would answer, but he had frowned on such a proceeding because he didn’t want Beryl writing to any man. What good would it do her? A man like that wouldn’t bother about answering her letter, especially if all the women were as crazy about him as the papers said. Yet later he had found Raskoffsky’s picture in Beryl’s room, only it was inscribed to Alice.... Still, Beryl might have put Alice up to it, might even have sent her own picture under Alice’s name, just to see if he would answer. They had talked of sending a picture. Besides, if Alice had writtenand secured this picture, why wasn’t it in her rather than Beryl’s possession. He had asked about that. Yet the one flaw in that was that Alice wasn’t really good-looking enough to send her picture and she knew it. Yet Beryl had sworn that she hadn’t written. And Alice had insisted that it was she and not Beryl who had written. But there was no way of proving that she hadn’t or that Beryl had.
Yet why all the secrecy? Neither of them had said anything more about writing Raskoffsky after that first time. And it was only because he had come across Raskoffsky’s picture in one of Beryl’s books that he had come to know anything about it at all. “To my fair little western admirer who likes my ‘Dance Macabre’ so much. The next time I play in your city you must come and see me.” But Alice wasn’t fair or good-looking. Beryl was. And it was Beryl and not Alice, who had first raved over that dance; Alice didn’t care so much for music. And wasn’t it Beryl, and not Alice, who had proposed writing him. Yet it was Alice who had received the answer. How was that? Very likely it was Beryl who had persuaded Alice to write for her, sending her own instead of Alice’s picture, and getting Alice to receive Raskoffsky’s picture for her when it came. Something in their manner the day he had found the picture indicated as much. Alice had been so quick to say: “Oh yes. I wrote him.” But Beryl had looked a little queer when she caught him looking at her, had even flushed slightly, although she had kept her indifferent manner. At that time the incident of the car hadn’t occurred. But afterwards,—after he had imagined he had seen Beryl in the car—it had occurred to him that maybe it was Raskoffsky with whom she was with that day. He was playing in Columbus, so the papers said, and he might have been passing through the city. He was a large man too, as he now recalled, by George! If only he could find a way to prove that!
Still, even so and when you come right down to it, was there anything so terrible about her writing a celebrity like that and asking for his picture, if that was all she had done.But was it? Those long-enveloped gray letters he had found in the fireplace that morning, after that day in which he had seen her in the car (or thought he had)—or at least traces of them. And the queer way she had looked at him when he brought them up in connection with that closed car in Bergley Place. She had squinted her eyes as if to think, and had then laughed rather shakily when he charged her with receiving letters from Raskoffsky, and with his having come here to see her. His finding them had been entirely by accident. He always got up early to “start things,” for Beryl was a sleepyhead, and he would start the fire in the grate and put on the water to boil in the kitchen. And this morning as he was bending over the grate to push away some scraps of burnt wood so as to start a new fire, he came across five or six letters, or the ashes of them, all close together as though they might have been tied with a ribbon or something. What was left of them looked as though they had been written on heavy stationery such as a man of means might use, the envelopes long and thick. The top one still showed the address—“Mrs. Beryl Stoddard, Care of ——” He was bending over to see the rest when a piece of wood toppled over and destroyed it. He rescued one little scrap, the half-charred corner of one page, and the writing on this seemed to be like that on Raskoffsky’s picture, or so he thought, and he read: “to see you.” Just that and nothing more, part of a sentence that ended the page and went to the next. And that page was gone, of course!
But it was funny wasn’t it, that at sight of them the thought of Raskoffsky should have come to him? And that ride in the park. Come to think of it, the man in the car had looked a little like Raskoffsky’s picture. And for all he knew, Raskoffsky might have then been in town—returned for this especial purpose,—and she might have been meeting him on the sly. Of course. At the Deming. That was it. He had never been quite able to believe her. All the circumstances at the time pointed to something of the kind,even if he had never been able to tie them together and make her confess to the truth of them.
But how he had suffered after that because of that thought! Things had seemed to go black before him. Beryl unfaithful? Beryl running around with a man like that, even if he was a great violinist? Everybody knew what kind of a man he was—all those men. The papers were always saying how crazy women were over him, and yet that he should come all the way to C—— to make trouble between him and Beryl! (If only he could prove that!) But why should she, with himself and Tickles to look after, and a life of her own which was all right—why should she be wanting to run around with a man like that, a man who would use her for a little while and then drop her. And when she had a home of her own? And her baby? And her mother and sister right here in C——? And him? And working as hard as he was and trying to make things come out right for them? That was the worst of it. That was the misery of it. And all for a little notice from a man who was so far above her or thought he was, anyhow, that he couldn’t care for her or any one long. The papers had said so at the time. But that was the whole secret. She was so crazy about people who did anything in music or painting or anything like that, that she couldn’t reason right about them. And she might have done a thing like that on that account. Personally he wouldn’t give a snap of his finger for the whole outfit. They weren’t ordinary, decent people anyhow. But making herself as common as that! And right here in C——, too, where they were both known. Oh, if only he had been able to prove that! If only he had been able to at that time!
When he had recovered himself a little that morning after he had found the traces of the letters in the ashes he had wanted to go into the bedroom where she was still asleep and drag her out by the hair and beat her and make her confess to these things. Yes, he had. There had been all but murder in his heart that morning. He would showher. She couldn’t get away with any such raw stuff as that even if she did have her mother and sister to help her. (That sly little Alice, always putting her sister up to something and never liking him from the first, anyhow.) But then the thought had come to him that after all he might be wrong. Supposing the letters weren’t from Raskoffsky? And supposing she had told the truth when she said she hadn’t been in the car? He had nothing to go on except what he imagined, and up to then everything had been as wonderful as could be between them. Still....
Then another thought had come: if the letters weren’t from Raskoffsky who were they from? He didn’t know of anybody who would be writing her on any such paper as that. And if not Raskoffsky whom did she know? And why should she throw them in the fire, choosing a time when he wasn’t about? That was strange, especially after the automobile incident of the day before. But when he taxed her with this the night of the Bergley Place car incident—she had denied everything and said they were from Claire Haggerty, an old chum who had moved to New York just about the time they were married and who had been writing her at her mother’s because at that time he and she didn’t have a home of their own and that was the only address she could give. She had been meaning to destroy them but had been putting it off. But only the night before she had come across them in a drawer and had tossed them in the fire, and that was all there was to that.
But was that all there was to it?
For even as he had been standing there in front of the grate wondering what to do the thought had come to him that he was not going about this in the right way. He had had the thought that he should hire a detective at once and have her shadowed and then if she were doing anything, it might be possible to find it out. That would have been better. That was really the way. Yet instead of doing that he had gone on quarreling with her, had burst in on her with everything that he suspected or saw, orthought he saw, and that it was, if anything, that had given her warning each time and had allowed her to get the upper hand of him, if she had got the upper hand of him. That was it. Yet he had gone on and quarreled with her that day just the same, only, after he had thought it all over, he had decided to consult the Sol Cohn Detective Service and have her watched. But that very night, coming back from the night conference with Mr. Harris Cohn, which was the only time he could get to give it, was the night he had seen the car in Bergley Place, and Beryl near it.
Bergley Place was a cross street two doors from where they lived on Winton. And just around the corner in Bergley, was an old vacant residence with a deal of shrubbery and four overarching trees in front, which made it very dark there at night. That night as he was coming home from Mr. Harris Cohn’s—(he had told Beryl that he was going to the lodge, in order to throw her off and had come home earlier in order to see what he might see) and just as he was stepping off the Nutley Avenue car which turned into Marko Street, about half a block above where they lived whom should he see—But, no, let us put it this way. Just at that moment or a moment later as he turned toward his home an automobile that had been going the same way he was along Winton swung into Bergley Place and threw its exceptionally brilliant lights on a big closed automobile that was standing in front of the old house aforementioned. There were two vacant corner lots opposite the old house at Bergley and Winton and hence it was that he could see what was going on. Near the rear of the automobile, just as though she had stepped out of it and was about to leave, stood Beryl—or, he certainly thought it was Beryl, talking to some one in the car, just as one would before parting and returning into the house. She had on a hooded cape exactly like the one she wore at times though not often. She did not like hooded capes any more. They were out of style. Just the same so sure had he been that it was Beryl and that at last he had trapped her that he hurried on to thehouse or, rather, toward the car. But just as he neared the corner the lights of the car that had been standing there lightless flashed on for a second—then off and then sped away. Yet even with them on there had not been enough light to see whether it was Beryl, or who. Or what the number on the license plate was. It was gone and with it Beryl, presumably up the alley way and into the back door or so he had believed. So sure was he that she had gone that way that he himself had gone that way. Yet when he reached the rear door following her, as he chose to do, it was locked and the kitchen was dark. And he had to rap and pound even before she came to let him in. And when she did there she was looking as though she had not been out at all, undressed, ready for bed and wanting to know why he chose to come that way! And asking him not to make so much noise for fear of waking Tickles...!
Think of it. Not a trace of excitement. No cape with a hood on. The light up in the dining-room and a book on the table as though she might have been reading—one of those novels by that fellow Barclay. And not a sign about anywhere that she might have been out—that was the puzzling thing. And denying that she had been out or that she had seen any car, or anything. Now what would you make of that!
Then it was, though, that he had burst forth in a fury of suspicion and anger and had dealt not only with this matter of the car in Bergley Place but the one in Briscoe Park, the letters in the ashes and the matter of Naigly seeing her come out of the Deming, to say nothing of her writing to Raskoffsky for his picture. For it was Raskoffsky, of course, if it was anybody. He was as positive as to that as any one could be. Who else could it have been? He had not even hesitated to insist that he knew who it was—Raskoffsky, of course—and that he had seen him and had been able to recognize him from his pictures. Yet she had denied that vehemently—even laughingly—or that he had seen any one, or that there had been a car there for her. And she didshow him a clipping a week later which said that Raskoffsky was in Italy.
But if it wasn’t Raskoffsky then who was it—if it was any one. “For goodness’ sake, Gil,” was all she would say at that or any other time, “I haven’t been out with Raskoffsky or any one and I don’t think you ought to come in here and act as you do. It seems to me you must be losing your mind. I haven’t seen or heard of any old car. Do you think I could stand here and say that I hadn’t if I had? And I don’t like the way you have of rushing in here of late every little while and accusing me of something that I haven’t done. What grounds have you for thinking that I have done anything wrong anyhow? That silly picture of Raskoffsky that Alice sent for. And that you think you saw me in an automobile. Not another thing. If you don’t stop now and let me alone I will leave you I tell you and that is all there is to it. I won’t be annoyed in this way and especially when you have nothing to go on.” It was with that type of counter-argument that she had confronted him.
Besides, at that time—the night that he thought he saw her in Bergley Place—and as if to emphasize what she was saying, Tickles in the bedroom had waked up and begun to call “Mama, Mama.” And she had gone in to him and brought him out even as she talked. And she had seemed very serious and defiant, then—very much more like her natural self and like a person who had been injured and was at bay. So he had become downright doubtful, again, and had gone back into the dining-room. And there was the light up and the book that she had been reading. And in the closet as he had seen when he had hung up his own coat was her hooded cape on the nail at the back where it always hung.
And yet how could he have been mistaken as to all of those things? Surely there must have been something to some of them. He could never quite feel, even now, that there hadn’t been. Yet outside of just that brief period inwhich all of these things had occurred there had never been a thing that he could put his hands on, nothing that he could say looked even suspicious before or since. And the detective agency had not been able to find out anything about her either—not a thing. That had been money wasted: one hundred dollars. Now how was that?
The trouble with Gil was that he was so very suspicious by nature and not very clever. He was really a clerk, with a clerk’s mind and a clerk’s point of view. He would never rise to bigger things, because he couldn’t, and yet she could not utterly dislike him either. He was always so very much in love with her, so generous—to her, at least—and he did the best he could to support her and Tickles which was something, of course. A lot of the trouble was that he was too affectionate and too clinging. He was always hanging around whenever he was not working. And with never a thought of going any place without her except to his lodge or on a business errand that he couldn’t possibly escape. And if he did go he was always in such haste to get back! Before she had ever thought of marrying him, when he was shipping clerk at the Tri-State and she was Mr. Baggott’s stenographer, she had seen that he was not very remarkable as a man. He hadn’t the air or the force of Mr. Baggott, for whom she worked then and whose assistant Gil later became. Indeed, Mr. Baggott had once said: “Gilbert is all right, energetic and faithful enough, but he lacks a large grasp of things.” And yet in spite of all that she had married him.
Why?
Well, it was hard to say. He was not bad-looking, rather handsome, in fact, and that had meant a lot to her then. He had fine, large black eyes and a pale forehead and pink cheeks, and such nice clean hands. And he always dressed so well for a young man in his position. He was so faithfuland yearning, a very dog at her heels. But she shouldn’t have married him, just the same. It was all a mistake. He was not the man for her. She knew that now. And, really, she had known it then, only she had not allowed her common sense to act. She was always too sentimental then—not practical enough as she was now. It was only after she was married and surrounded by the various problems that marriage includes that she had begun to wake up. But then it was too late.
Yes, she had married, and by the end of the first year and a half, during which the original glamour had had time to subside, she had Tickles, or Gilbert, Jr., to look after. And with him had come a new mood such as she had never dreamed of in connection with herself. Just as her interest in Gil had begun to wane a little her interest in Tickles had sprung into flame. And for all of three years now it had grown stronger rather than weaker. She fairly adored her boy and wouldn’t think of doing anything to harm him. And yet she grew so weary at times of the humdrum life they were compelled to live. Gil only made forty-five dollars a week, even now. And on that they had to clothe and feed and house the three of them. It was no easy matter. She would rather go out and work. But it was not so easy with a three-year-old baby. And besides Gil would never hear of such a thing. He was just one of those young husbands who thought the wife’s place was in the home, even when he couldn’t provide a very good home for her to live in.
Still, during these last few years she had had a chance to read and think, two things which up to that time she had never seemed to have time for. Before that it had always been beaux and other girls. But most of the girls were married now and so there was an end to them. But reading and thinking had gradually taken up all of her spare time, and that had brought about such a change in her. She really wasn’t the same girl now that Gil had married at all. She was wiser. And she knew so much more about life nowthan he did. And she thought so much more, and so differently. He was still at about the place mentally that he had been when she married him, interested in making a better place for himself in the Tri-State office and in playing golf or tennis out at the country club whenever he could afford the time to go out there. And he expected her to curry favor with Dr. and Mrs. Realk, and Mr. and Mrs. Stofft, because they had a car and because Mr. Stofft and Gil liked to play cards together. But beyond that he thought of nothing, not a thing.
But during all of this time she had more and more realized that Gil would never make anything much of himself. Alice had cautioned her against him before ever they had married. He was not a business man in any true sense. He couldn’t think of a single thing at which he could make any money except in the paper business, and that required more capital than ever he would have. Everybody else they knew was prospering. And perhaps it was that realization that had thrown her back upon books and pictures and that sort of thing. People who did things in those days were so much more interesting than people who just made money, anyhow.
Yet she would never have entered upon that dangerous affair with Mr. Barclay if it hadn’t been for the awful mental doldrums she found herself in about the time Tickles was two years old and Gil was so worried as to whether he would be able to keep his place at the Tri-State any longer. He had put all the money they had been able to save into that building and loan scheme, and when that had failed they were certainly up against it for a time. There was just nothing to do with, and there was no prospect of relief. To this day she had no clothes to speak of. And there wasn’t much promise of getting them now. And she wasn’t getting any younger. Still, there was Tickles, and she was brushing up on her shorthand again. If the worst came—
But she wouldn’t have entered upon that adventure thathad come so near to ending disastrously for herself and Tickles—for certainly if Gil had ever found out he could have taken Tickles away from her—if it hadn’t been for that bookHeydaywhich Mr. Barclay wrote and which she came across just when she was feeling so out of sorts with life and Gil and everything. That had pictured her own life so keenly and truly; indeed, it seemed to set her own life before her just as it was and as though some one were telling her about herself. It was the story of a girl somewhat like herself who had dreamed her way through a rather pinched girlhood, having to work for a living from the age of fourteen. And then just as she was able to make her own way had made a foolish marriage with a man of no import in any way—a clerk, just like Gil. And he had led her through more years of meagre living, until at last, very tired of it all, she had been about to yield herself to another man who didn’t care very much about her but who had money and could do the things for her that her husband couldn’t. Then of a sudden in this story her husband chose to disappear and leave her to make her way as best she might. The one difference between that story and her own life was that there was no little Tickles to look after. And Gil would never disappear, of course. But the heroine of the story had returned to her work without compromising herself. And in the course of time had met an architect who had the good sense or the romance to fall in love with and marry her. And so the story, which was so much like hers, except for Tickles and the architect, had ended happily.
But hers—well—
But the chances she had taken at that time! The restless and yet dreamy mood in which she had been and moved and which eventually had prompted her to write Mr. Barclay, feeling very doubtful as to whether he would be interested in her and yet drawn to him because of the life he had pictured. Her thought had been that if he could take enough interest in a girl like the one in the book to describe her so truly he might be a little interested in her real life. Only herthought at first had been not to entice him; she had not believed that she could. Rather, it was more the feeling that if he would he might be of some help to her, since he had written so sympathetically of Lila, the heroine. She was faced by the problem of what to do with her life, as Lila had been, but at that she hadn’t expected him to solve it for her—merely to advise her.
But afterwards, when he had written to thank her, she feared that she might not hear from him again and had thought of that picture of herself, the one Dr. Realk had taken of her laughing so heartily, the one that everybody liked so much. She had felt that that might entice him to further correspondence with her, since his letters were so different and interesting, and she had sent it and asked him if his heroine looked anything like her, just as an excuse for sending it. Then had come that kindly letter in which he had explained his point of view and advised her, unless she were very unhappy, to do nothing until she should be able to look after herself in the great world. Life was an economic problem. As for himself, he was too much the rover to be more than a passing word to any one. His work came first. Apart from that, he said he drifted up and down the world trying to make the best of a life that tended to bore him. However if ever he came that way he would be glad to look her up and advise her as best he might, but that she must not let him compromise her in any way. It was not advisable in her very difficult position.
Even then she had not been able to give him up, so interested had she been by all he had written. And besides, he had eventually come to U—— only a hundred and fifty miles away, and had written from there to know if he might come over to see her. She couldn’t do other than invite him, although she had known at the time that it was a dangerous thing to do. There was no solution, and it had only caused trouble—and how much trouble! And yet in the face of her mood then, anything had been welcome as a relief. She had been feeling that unless something happened to breakthe monotony she would do something desperate. And then something did happen. He had come, and there was nothing but trouble, and very much trouble, until he had gone again.
You would have thought there was some secret unseen force attending her and Gil at that time and leading him to wherever she was at just the time she didn’t want him to be there. Take for example, that matter of Gil finding Mr. Barclay’s letters in the fire after she had taken such care to throw them on the live coals behind some burning wood. He had evidently been able to make out a part of the address, anyhow, for he had said they were addressed to her in care of somebody he couldn’t make out. And yet he was all wrong, as to the writer, of course. He had the crazy notion, based on his having found that picture of Raskoffsky inscribed to Alice, some months before, that they must be from him, just because he thought she had used Alice to write and ask Raskoffsky for his picture—which she had. But that was before she had ever read any of Mr. Barclay’s books. Yet if it hadn’t been for Gil’s crazy notion that it was Raskoffsky she was interested in she wouldn’t have had the courage to face it out the way she had, the danger of losing Tickles, which had come to her the moment Gil had proved so suspicious and watchful, frightening her so. Those three terrible days! And imagine him finding those bits of letters in the ashes and making something out of them! The uncanniness of it all.
And then that time he saw her speeding through the gate into Briscoe Park. They couldn’t have been more than a second passing there, anyhow, and yet he had been able to pick her out! Worse, Mr. Barclay hadn’t even intended coming back that way; they had just made the mistake of turning down Ridgely instead of Warren. Yet, of course, Gil had to be there, of all places, when as a rule he was never out of the office at any time. Fortunately for her she was on her way home, so there was no chance of his getting there ahead of her as, plainly, he planned afterwards.Still, if it hadn’t been for her mother whom everybody believed, and who actually believed that she and Alice had been to the concert, she would never have had the courage to face him. She hadn’t expected him home in the first place, but when he did come and she realized that unless she faced him out then and there in front of her mother who believed in her, thatsheas well as he would know, there was but one thing to do—brave it. Fortunately her mother hadn’t seen her in that coat and hat which Gil insisted that she had on. For before going she and Alice had taken Tickles over to her mother’s and then she had returned and changed her dress. And before Gil had arrived Alice had gone on home and told her mother to bring over the baby, which was the thing that had so confused Gil really. For he didn’t know about the change and neither did her mother. And her mother did not believe that there had been any, which made her think that Gil was a little crazy, talking that way. And her mother didn’t know to this day—she was so unsuspecting.
And then that terrible night on which he thought he had seen her in Bergley Place and came in to catch her. Would she ever forget that? Or that evening, two days before, when he had come home and said that Naigly had seen her coming out of the Deming. She could tell by his manner that time that he thought nothing of that then—he was so used to her going downtown in the daytime anyhow. But that Naigly should have seen her just then when of all times she would rather he would not have!
To be sure it had been a risky thing—going there to meet Mr. Barclay in that way, only from another point of view it had not seemed so. Every one went through the Deming Arcade for one reason or another and that made any one’s being seen there rather meaningless. And in the great crowd that was always there it was the commonest thing for any one to meet any one else and stop and talk for a moment anyhow. That was all she was there for that day—to see Mr. Barclay on his arrival and make an appointment forthe next day. She had done it because she knew she couldn’t stay long and she knew Gil wouldn’t be out at that time and that if any one else saw her she could say that it was almost any one they knew casually between them. Gil was like that, rather easy at times. But to think that Naigly should have been passing the Deming just as she was coming out—alone, fortunately—and should have run and told Gil. That was like him. It was pure malice. He had never liked her since she had turned him down for Gil. And he would like to make trouble for her if he could, that was all. That was the way people did who were disappointed in love.
But the worst and the most curious thing of all was that last evening in Bergley Place, the last time she ever saw Mr. Barclay anywhere. Thatwasodd. She had known by then, of course, that Gil was suspicious and might be watching her and she hadn’t intended to give him any further excuse for complaint. But that was his lodge night and he had never missed a meeting since they had been married—not one. Besides she had only intended to stay out about an hour and always within range of the house so that if Gil got off the car or any one else came she would know of it. She had not even turned out the light in the dining-room, intending to say if Gil came back unexpectedly or any one else called, that she had just run around the corner in the next block to see Mrs. Stofft. And in order that that statement might not be questioned, she had gone over there for just a little while before Mr. Barclay was due to arrive with his car. She had even asked Mr. Barclay to wait in the shadow of the old Dalrymple house in Bergley Place, under the trees, in order that the car might not be seen. So few people went up that street, anyhow. And it was always so dark in there. Besides it was near to raining which made it seem safer still. And yet he had seen her. And just as she was about to leave. And when she had concluded that everything had turned out so well.
But how could she have foreseen that a big car with such powerful lights as that would have turned in there justthen. Or that Gil would step off the car and look up that way? Or that he would be coming home an hour earlier when he never did—not from lodge meeting. And besides she hadn’t intended to go out that evening at all until Mr. Barclay called up and said he must leave the next day, for a few days anyhow, and wanted to see her before he went. She had thought that if they stayed somewhere in the neighborhood in a closed car, as he suggested, it would be all right. But, no. That big car had to turn in there just when it did, and Gil had to be getting off the car and looking up Bergley Place just when it did, and she had to be standing there saying good-bye, just as the lights flashed on that spot. Some people might be lucky, but certainly she was not one of them. The only thing that had saved her was the fact that she had been able to get in the house ahead of Gil, hang up her cape and go in to her room and undress and see if Tickles was still asleep. And yet when he did burst in she had felt that she could not face him—he was so desperate and angry. And yet, good luck, it had ended in his doubting whether he had really seen her or not, though even to this day he would never admit that he doubted.
But the real reason why she hadn’t seen Mr. Barclay since (and that in the face of the fact that he had been here in the city once since, and that, as he wrote, he had taken such a fancy to her and wanted to see her and help her in any way she chose), was not that she was afraid of Gil or that she liked him more than she did Mr. Barclay (they were too different in all their thoughts and ways for that) or that she would have to give up her life here and do something else, if Gil really should have found out (she wouldn’t have minded that at all)—but because only the day before Mr. Barclay’s last letter she had found out that under the law Gil would have the power to take Tickles away from her and not let her see him any more if he caught her in any wrongdoing. That was the thing that had frightened her more than anything else could have and had decided her, then and there, that whatever it was shewas thinking she might want to do, it could never repay her for the pain and agony that the loss of Tickles would bring her. She had not really stopped to think of that before. Besides on the night of that quarrel with Gil, that night he thought he saw her in Bergley Place and he had sworn that if ever he could prove anything he would take Tickles away from her, or, that he would kill her and Tickles and himself and Raskoffsky (Raskoffsky!), it was then really that she had realized that she couldn’t do without Tickles—no, not for a time even. Her dream of a happier life would be nothing without him—she knew that. And so it was that she had fought there as she had to make Gil believe he was mistaken, even in the face of the fact that he actually knew he had seen her. It was the danger of the loss of Tickles that had given her the courage and humor and calmness, the thought of what the loss of him would mean, the feeling that life would be colorless and blank unless she could take him with her wherever she went, whenever that might be, if ever it was.
And so when Gil had burst in as he did she had taken up Tickles and faced him, after Gil’s loud talk had waked him. And Tickles had put his arms about her neck and called “Mama! Mama!” even while she was wondering how she was ever to get out of that scrape. And then because he had fallen asleep again, lying close to her neck, even while Gil was quarreling, she had told herself then that if she came through that quarrel safely she would never do anything more to jeopardize her claim to Tickles, come what might. And with that resolution she had been able to talk to Gil so convincingly and defiantly that he had finally begun to doubt his own senses, as she could see. And so it was that she had managed to face him out and to win completely.
And then the very next day she had called up Mr. Barclay and told him that she couldn’t go on with that affair, and why—that Tickles meant too much to her, that she would have to wait and see how her life would work out.And he had been so nice about it then and had sympathized with her and had told her that, all things considered, he believed she was acting wisely and for her own happiness. And so she had been. Only since he had written her and she had had to say no to him again. And now he had gone for good. And she admired him so much. And she had never heard from him since, for she had asked him not to write to her unless she first wrote to him.
But with how much regret she had done that! And how commonplace and humdrum this world looked at times now, even with the possession of Tickles. Those few wonderful days.... And that dream that had mounted so high. Yet she had Tickles. And in the novel the husband had gone away and the architect had appeared.