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Ididn’tsleep well that night. The memory of Mr. Masters’ set sullen face kept me wakeful. At four I got up, lit the light and tried to read Kidd’sSocial Evolution. Through the ceiling I could hear Mr. Hamilton’s subdued snoring on the floor above. It seemed like the deep and labored breathing of that submerged world whose upward struggle I was following through Mr. Kidd’s illuminating page.
After breakfast, when no sign or word had come from Lizzie, I decided to stay in till I heard from her. I dawdled through the morning and when Emma was cleaning up went out on the landing and listened. The upper floors were wrapt in quiet. I stole up a flight and a half and looked at her door—tight shut and not a sound. I went down again worried, though it was possible she had gone out and I not heard her. After lunch I opened the register and listened—complete silence. During the rest of the afternoon I sat waiting for her footfall. Dusk came and no woman had mounted the stairs. Atseven a tap came at my door and Count Delcati pushed it open.
The count brought letters from the Italian aristocracy to its New York imitation and goes to entertainments that the rest of us read of in the papers. He was arrayed for festival and looked like an up-to-date French poster, a high-shouldered black figure with slender arms slightly bowed out at the elbows. His collar was very stiff, his shirt bosom a clear expanse of thick smooth white. He wore his silk hat back from his forehead, and his youthful yet sophisticated face, with its intense black eyes and dash of dark mustache, might have been looking at me from the walls of the Salon Independent.
He removed his hat, and standing in the doorway, said:
“Have you seen her to-day?”
“No,” I answered. “Have you?”
He shook his head.
“I think she must be away. When I came home at six I went up there and knocked, but there was no answer.”
There was nothing in this to increase my uneasiness. She came and went at all hours, often taking her dinner at what she called “little joints” in thelower reaches of the city. Nevertheless my uneasiness did increase, gripped hold of me as I looked at the young man’s gravely attentive face.
“Have you seen her since the concert?” he asked.
“Yes, the day after, when you were all in here.”
“She hadn’t seen the notices?”
I shook my head.
He leaned against the door-post and gazed at his patent leather shoes. As if with reluctance he said slowly:
“I have.”
“What were they like?”
“Rotten.”
He pronounced the word with the “r” strangled yet protesting, as if he had rolled his tongue round it, torn it from its place and put it away somewhere in the recesses of his throat.
“Oh, poor girl!” I moaned.
“That’s why I went up there. She must have seen them and I wished to assure her they were lies.”
“Did they say anything very awful?”
He shrugged.
“They spoke of her beauty—one said she had a good mezzo voice. But they were not kind to her, to Mr. Berwick,very.”
I said nothing, sunk in gloom.
The count picked up his fur-lined coat from the stair rail, and shook himself into it.
“I should wait to go to her when she comes in, but thismeeserabledinner, where I sit beside young girls who know nothing and married ladies who know too much—no mystery, no allure. But I must go—perhaps you?—” He looked at me tentatively over his fur collar.
“I’ll go up as soon as she comes in,” I answered. “If there’s anything I can do for her be assured I’ll do it.”
“You are a sweet lady,” said the count and departed.
After that I sat with the door open a crack waiting and listening. The hours ticked by. I heard Mr. Hamilton’s step on the street stairs, a knock at the Westerner’s door, and as it opened to him, a joyous clamor of greeting in which Miss Bliss’ little treble piped shrilly. Hazard was painting her and she spent most of her evenings in there with them. It was a good thing, they were decent fellows and their room was properly heated.
At intervals the sounds of their mirth came from below. The rest of the house was dumb. At elevenI could stand it no more and went up. If she wasn’t there I could light up the place for her—she rarely locked her door—and have it bright and warm.
It was dimly lighted and very still on the top floor, the gas-jet tipping the burner in a small pale point of light. I knocked and got no answer, then opened the door and went in. The room was dark, the window opposite a faint blue square. In the draft made by the opening door the gas shot up as if frightened, then sunk down, sending its thin gleam over the threshold. As I moved I bumped into the table and heard a thumping of something falling on the floor. I saw afterward it was oranges. I groped for matches, lighted the gas and looked about, then gave a jump and a startled exclamation. Lizzie Harris was lying on the sofa.
“Lizzie,” I cried sharply, angry from my fright, “why didn’t you say you were there?”
She made no sound or movement and seized by a wild fear, I ran to her. At the first glance I thought she was dead. She was as white as a china plate, lying flat on her back with her eyes shut, her hands clasped over her waist. I touched one of them and knew by the warmth she was alive. I clutched it, shaking it and crying:
“Lizzie, what’s the matter? Are you ill?”
She tried to withdraw it and turned her face away. The movement was feeble, suggesting an ebbing vitality. I thought of suicide, and in a panic looked about for glasses and vials. There was nothing of the kind near her. In my lightning survey I saw a scattering of newspaper cuttings on the table among the rest of the oranges.
“Have you taken anything, medicine, poison?” I cried in my terror.
“No,” she whispered. “Go away. Let me alone.”
I was sorry for her, but I was also angry. She had given me a horrible fright. Failure and criticism were hard to bear, but there was no sense taking them this way.
“Whatisthe matter then? What’s happened to make you like this?”
“Let me alone,” she repeated, and lifting one hand, held it palm upward over her face.
That something was wrong was indisputable, but I couldn’t do anything till I knew what it was. I put my fingers on the hand over her face and felt for her pulse. I don’t know why, for I haven’t the least idea how a pulse ought to beat. As it was I couldn’t find any beat at all and dropped her hand.
“I’ll have to get a doctor, I’ll call the man in the boarding house opposite.”
“Don’t,” she said in a voice which, for the first time, showed a note of life. “If you bring a doctor here I’ll go out in the street as I am.”
She was in the blue kimono. I didn’t know whether she had strength enough to move, but if she had I knew that she would do as she said and the night was freezing.
“I won’t call the doctor if you’ll tell me what’s happened to you?”
“I’ll tell you,” she said, and raising the hand from her face caught at my skirt. I bent down for her voice was very low, hardly more than a whisper.
“Masters has left me.”
“Left you,” I echoed, bewildered. “He was here last night. I saw him.”
Her eyes held mine.
“Left me for good,” she whispered, “forever.”
Any words that I might have had ready to brace up a discouraged spirit died away.
“What—what do you mean?” I faltered.
“He and I were lovers—lived together—you must have known it. He got tired of me—sick of me—he told me so himself—those very words. He said hewas done with it all, the singing and me.” She turned her head away and looked at the wall. “I’ve been here ever since. I don’t know how long.”