CHAPTER VIII
GERRYstood in the hall outside Alix’s room for a moment, hoping to hear a sob, a cry, anything for an excuse to go back. Instead he heard the scratch of a pen; but he was too troubled to deduce anything from that. He went slowly down the stairs and out into the street. The biting winter air braced him. He started to walk rapidly. At the end of an hour he found himself standing on a deserted pier. He took off his hat and let the wind cool his head.
“I have been a brute,†he said to himself. “I have made a woman cry—Alix!†He turned and walked slowly back to the avenue and into his club, but he still felt uneasy. A waiter brought a whisky and soda and put it at his elbow. Gerry turned on him.
“Who told you to bring that?†Then he felt ashamed of his petulance. “It’s all right, George,†he said more genially than he had spoken for many a day; “but I don’t want it. Take it away.â€
He sat for a long time, and at last came to a resolution. Alix loved roses. He would send her enough to bank her room, and he would follow them home. He went up the avenue to his florist’s, and stood outside trying to decide whether it should be one mass of blood red or a color scheme. Suddenly the plate glass caught a reflection and threw it in his face. Gerry turned. A four-wheeler was passing. He could not see the occupant, but on top was a large, familiar trunk marked with a yellow girdle. On the trunk was a familiar label. He stared at it, and the label stared back at him, and finally danced before his mazed eyes as the cab disappeared into the traffic.
Gerry stood for a long while, stunned. He saw a lady bow to him from a carriage, and afterward he remembered that he had not bowed back. Somebody ran into him. He looked back at the flowers massed in the window, remembered that he did not need them now, and drew slowly away. Two men hailed him from the other side of the street. Gerry braced himself, nodded to them, and hailed a passing hansom. From the direction Alix’s cab had taken he knew the station for which she was bound. As he arrived on the platform they were giving the last call for the Montreal express. He caught sight of Alix hurrying through the gates, and followed. As she reached the first Pullman, somebody rapped on the window of the drawing-room. Gerry saw Alan’s face pressed against the pane. He watched Alix stop, turn, and climb the steps of the car, and then he wheeled and hurried from the station.
Where could he go? Not to his club and Alan’s. His face would betray the scandal with which the club would be buzzing to-morrow. Not to his big, comfortable house. It would be too gloomy. Even in disaccord, Alix had imparted to its somber oak and deep shadows the glow ofbuoyant life. When she was there, one felt as though there were flowers in the house. Gerry was seized with a great desire to hide from his world, his mother, himself. He pictured the scare-heads in the papers. That the name of Lansing should be found in that galley! It was too much. He could not face it.
He bought a morning paper, full of shipping news, and, getting into a taxi, gave the address of his bank. On the way he studied the sailings’ column. He found what he wanted—theGunter, due to sail that afternoon for Brazil, Pernambuco the first stop.
At the bank Gerry drew out the balance of his current account. It amounted to something over two thousand dollars. He took most of it in Bank of England notes. Then he started home to pack, but before he reached the house a vision of the servants, flurried after helping their mistress off, commiserating him to one another, pitying him to his face perhaps, or, in the case of the old butler, suppressing a great emotion, was too much for him. He drove instead to a big department store, and in an hour had bought a complete outfit. He lunched at one of the quiet restaurants that divide down-town from up-town.
He had avoided buying a ticket. As theGunterwarped out, the purser came to him.
“I understand you have no ticket.â€
“No,†said Gerry, drawing a roll of bills. “How much is the passage to Pernambuco?â€
The purser fidgeted.
“This is irregular, sir,†he said.
“Is it?†said Gerry, indifferently.
“I have no ticket-forms,†said the purser, weakening.
“I don’t want a ticket,†said Gerry. “I want a good room and three square meals a day.â€
Long, quiet days on a quiet sea are a master sedative to a troubled mind. Gerry had a great deal to think through. He sat by the hour with hands loosely clasped, his eyes far out on the ocean, tracing the course of his married life, and measuring the grounds for Alix’s arraignment. Gerry was just and generous to others’ faults, but not to his own. He had forgotten the sting of Alix’s words, and, to his growing amazement, saw in himself their justification. A time-server he certainly had been.
The landfall of Pernambuco awoke him from reveries and introspection. He did not look upon this palm-strewn coast as a land of new beginnings; he sought merely a Lethean shore.
The ship crawled in from an oily sea to the long strip of harbor behind the reef. Above, the sun blazed from a bowl of unbroken blue; on land, the multicolored houses spread like a rainbow under a dark cloud of brown-tiled roofs. Beyond the trees was a line of high, stuccoed houses, each painted a different color, all weather-stained, and some with rusted balconies that threatened to topple on to the passer-by. One bore the legend, “Hôtel d’Europe.†There Gerry installed himself.