CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
On the following Monday Anne found a position with a fruit commission house on Front Street. The salary was not quite what she had hoped, but the surroundings were so different from the office of Lowell & Morrison that she was glad to take it.
Here there were no soft rugs, no quietly closing doors, or smoothly running elevators; no suave and courtly men. Great drays rumbled through the street outside; loud-voiced men called orders in strange, foreign tongues. For the first hours of the morning the warehouse shook with the thud of huge crates being thrown from trucks, trundled through the cool darkness of the shed and piled high to the shadow of the roof. In the afternoon the rumble of the drays loading and unloading ceased; many of the men went home; the place was quiet. Anne could hear the whistle of the boats at the wharves, and on foggy days the wail of the fog sirens very near.
On Saturday afternoon the office closed at one o'clock and Anne spent until six looking for an apartment. At dusk she found what she thought would do. It was the upper floor of an old house on the edge of Russian Hill. The house was run down and rather dismal, but the rear windows looked out on a small garden, and from Anne's floor, a little triangle of the Bay was visible.
The landlady was a childless widow, a thin, saddened woman with soft brown eyes that had almost lost the trick of brightening. But when she heard about Rogie they lit gently and she suggested a sand-pile in one corner of the garden and a crib for his morning and afternoon nap in her own bedroom. Anne's first feeling, that there it would be almost impossible to forget the past, lessened, and she closed the arrangement, grateful for the garden, the glimpse of the Bay, and Mrs. Jeffries' pleasure in Rogie.
On Sunday there was a family dinner at the flat and afterwards Anne and Rogie and Belle came to the new home. Mrs. Jeffries had put some flowers on the ugly center table and covered the gas globe with orange crêpe paper.
"Oh," Anne gasped when she saw it, "I wish she hadn't done that."
"Never mind. Let it stay up for a day or two and then it can catch fire or destroy itself somehow," Belle advised.
Anne shook her head. "It doesn't matter really—and she might be hurt."
"Now, Anne, don't start in that way. You know it won't work. If this furnishing is her taste and she begins to 'take an interest' in you and tries 'to make you comfortable' you'll only blow up in the end. Take those orange shades down and tell her in the morning that you don't want anything added to your rooms. You needn't be sharp about it, but you can be firm."
Anne smiled with a wistfulness that escaped Belle, touring the room in inspection of the ugly steel engravings hung exactly in the center of each wall. The first hour in her new home, and already she knew that there would be many nights when she would be grateful for even the terrible green glass vase that held the flowers, if it meant any one's caring for her comfort.
"Don't worry, Belle. When this wall paper gets too much for my nerves I'll go down and sit awhile in 'the parlor.' You should see that."
"Worse?"
"Three horsehair chairs with red velvet trimmings; one rocker to match. An onyx and brass stand with a pink silk drape. A floor lamp with a red shade and a white marble mantel, over a grate that has never had a fire. Oh, yes—a 'good body-Brussels' rug, and the floor-border painted cherry!"
"Heavens! Well, you'll never have to sit in it. And that back room you're going to use for a sitting-room can be made cheerful in time with just a few softening things round. Besides, there's the fireplace. I've a good mind to light a fire, Anne, just to see how it looks. I believe I'd feel better about leaving you alone with this wall paper and that what-not if I got the effect of a fire."
"I'm not afraid of the what-not—wouldn't those ghastly statuettes in the Niche fit perfectly?—but I would rather like a fire. I wonder if Mrs. Jeffries could let us have a little wood."
"I'll ask her." In a moment Belle was back and while Anne undressed Rogie, lit a fire in the back room. When Anne heard the cheerful crackle, her eyes filled with tears but she brushed them angrily away.
"Now see here," she whispered brusquely to herself, "you're not going to get weepy, every time you look at the Bay or hear a fog-whistle or light an open fire."
"Are you coming, Anne? This kindling won't last forever." Belle had not lit the gas and the kindly darkness hid the brown and red wall paper and stiff chairs.
"It's not going to be bad, Belle. It's really wonderfully still, almost as still as the mountains. When the fog-whistles don't go, there'll be hardly a sound outside."
"Nor inside either. Does that women ever laugh, do you suppose?"
"I don't know. Mary Potter never really laughed outright. I think, perhaps, Mrs. Jeffries has only forgotten how."
Belle shrugged. "Well, I hope she'll remember again soon. If she doesn't, Rogie will forget too."
"Now, Belle, can you honestly imagine Rogie a solemn baby?"
"It does take some stretching of the imagination. But—when I look at this wall paper and those chairs I can imagine almost anything. I can even imagine Roger losing faith in——"
"Yes? Go on, Belle, don't be silly; as if Roger's name mustn't be mentioned. I—I don't feel that way at all. Besides, even if I did, I couldn't avoid Roger—because of Rogie. He has just as much right to him as I, and as soon as I feel a little more settled, I'm going to make some regular arrangement for his seeing him, having—him—part—of the time if he wants to."
Belle looked down at the small figure gazing earnestly into the fire and her hand moved toward her sister's shoulder, then drew back without touching.
"Yes, of course, he ought to see him if he wants to," she said in her brusque, impersonal way as if she were agreeing in some physician's instruction concerning a patient.
"I wish," Anne went on, "that Roger had been seeing him right along. I really don't understand, Belle, why you didn't let him. He must think it was my wish that he shouldn't and believe that I was being deliberately mean about it. He must think I am awfully narrow and ungenerous and—and vindictive and——'
"I don't know why he should think that. Naturally he would suppose that Rogie was with you. Besides, how did a poor blunderbuss like myself know what mood you would come back in? If I had let Roger make his own arrangements for seeing him I might have set up a precedent you wouldn't have wanted to keep. Then there was moms and papa. You've grown so calm and sure in the mountains, Anne, you don't realize that the rest of us are pretty jumpy yet. Moms ranted along for days after you'd gone. I don't know but what she might have refused to let Roger look at him even if he had come. Under the circumstances I did what seemed best. You know the family channels aren't the easiest to steer in safely."
Anne smiled. "No, I know they're not. And I didn't mean to be unfair, Belle. You've all been terribly dear to me. I don't believe I ever understood any of you—or—any one—else—before I went away."
Again Belle looked at her sharply, changed her mind about speaking, and put the last piece of kindling on the fire. Together they stood silently watching it flare, then crumble, char and drop to gray ash.
When the last faint glow had died from the embers, Anne brought Belle's things from the room where Rogie was now fast asleep. But even after they were on, Belle lingered as if reluctant to go.
"If there's anything you want, you'll let me know, won't you, kiddie?"
"Yes, I'll let you know, but there won't be anything, I'm sure. The hours at the office aren't bad at all and I believe Mrs. Jeffries will take wonderful care of Rogie. It's—a little strange now—but I'll get it homied up in time. I've got a few ideas about this room already."
"You can have anything of mine out of storage that you want. Do you remember that heavy tapestry stuff I had a mania for once? It didn't go in a small modern apartment, but it would be great with these high ceilings. You'll ask me, won't you?"
"Yes, I promise. But for the present I'll just go on like this till I get the feel of the place."
"Don't go on too long or you'll get to feel like the place. I know you, Anne, better than you know yourself."
Anne laughed. "You make me feel like a fly at the end of a microscope."
"Not a fly," Belle said with a pretense of serious consideration, "no, not a fly. A little moth with gold dust all over it, one of the shimmery kind that looks as if it were going to fall apart if you touched it."
"And never does, but crawls right alone even after it's burnt off its wings."
Anne realized the possible interpretation and flushed, but if Belle had caught this meaning, she said nothing, and a few minutes later went.
As Anne closed the door behind Belle, and came back again up the stairs alone, a little of the courage that she had sincerely felt her own while she and Belle stood before the fire died away. Again before the tiny heap of gray ashes, Anne forced down the tears with an effort. Was her new-found peace to be so easily disturbed? She had been back in the city only a little over a week, and already this going of Belle made her feel so terribly alone. Anne went to the window and opened it wide. Perhaps the touch of night would bring that throbbing, silent assurance of companionship. With her elbows on the sill Anne gazed to the triangle of twinkling lights at the base of the dark hills across the bay. Faintly the murmur of the city came to her, but her hands clenched and it took all her strength to keep back the tears.
She was a part of it. But such a little part.
"I won't be lonely," she whispered fiercely. "I won't. I WON'T."
But the resolution flitted away into the blackness and left Anne tense with her own vehemence. She closed the window quickly and went into the other room. Between the cool sheets she tried to relax, to immerse her body in the vast, eternal unity of all-living, but she was conscious only of the effort and after a while she gave up trying to relax and let her thought go where it would.
It went straight to Roger. What had these months done to Roger? They had done so much to her, it seemed impossible that Roger could be just the same. And yet, she hoped he was. The old Roger she felt now she understood. A new Roger might be very strange. At first the new relationship that had to be between them would be difficult, and, with another Roger, perhaps impossible.
No, Roger must be just the same, have the same sweeping enthusiasm, the same impatience, the same intolerance of prejudice not his own. Until she had gripped more firmly her own peace, she could risk no change in Roger. At last the tightness in her muscles eased and Anne fell asleep a little comforted in her decision to write to Roger before the end of the week.
But the end of the week came and went and Anne had not written. Every evening she had tried and in the morning destroyed the letter. Some were tinged with memory, the others almost belligerent in their indifferent brevity. The second week she did not even try but convinced herself that the mood would descend upon her suddenly and she would tell Roger of her return and suggest his coming to see Rogie with exactly the right degree of friendly interest.
But the mood did not come, although Anne waited for it, in the same bodily relaxation in which Charlotte Welles entered The Silence. By the beginning of the fourth week after her return, this need to communicate with Roger and the impossibility of doing it, was destroying her peace and absorbing every waking thought. That she managed to do her work well, was only because the old power of mechanical attention had returned. Often Anne read through the transcriptions of her employer's dictation and wondered at this subconscious power that permitted her to quote correctly prices and invoices, write intelligently of fruits and vegetables, while her whole consciousness was concerned in forming a letter to Roger.
Once she thought she saw Roger on the street, and, although she would have grasped eagerly this solution if it had occurred to her before, now she turned and went rapidly in the other direction. But no sooner had she lost the possibility—if it had been really Roger—than she wished with her whole heart that she had faced certainty. She began looking for him everywhere, hoping and then dreading to meet him. From walking in places where the possibility of meeting might occur, she swung to going and coming by circuitous ways, angry with herself for her own indecision, touched sometimes even to anger at Roger.
Finally, at the beginning of the fifth week, in exhaustion of her own irresolution, Anne wrote and without rereading or waiting for morning counsel, went out and dropped the note in the letter box. And then began a period of waiting that made the weeks preceding seem full of calm certainty. Now Anne was so sharply conscious of two selves within her, that, at times, she could almost visibly see them both. One went to and from work, wrote letters, cared for her rooms, attended to Rogie, talked quietly with Mrs. Jeffries. The other did nothing, nothing at all, except wait. This self emerged to control at the postman's coming in the morning; when she opened the door in the evening and looked first to the hat-stand to see if there was a letter; and at night when she lay in bed trying to find a reason for Roger's silence. For Roger did not answer.
The days filled to a week, two, three.
When, a few days before Christmas, Anne came home one night to find Mrs. Jeffries crying in the kitchen, her first reaction was almost relief that something had happened that would call upon her for some quality besides the petrifying patience of waiting in which she felt her brain rapidly numbing to a living death.
"What is it? What has happened?"
In the comfort of companionship, Mrs. Jeffries looked up from the table where she had been sitting in the dark, her head buried in her arms.
"My sister's dead. Little Lucy——"
Anne knelt and put her arm about the heaving shoulders. The older woman clung in a renewed passion of sobs and Anne held her quietly until they eased. At last Mrs. Jeffries looked up.
"There are three children, the youngest only five and John doesn't know what to do."
"You'll have to go to them?"
"Yes—I must go. John and Lucy adored each other—they were like lovers always. Poor—John—he's so lost—he doesn't seem able to grasp it. He says——" She reached to the letter lying as she had dropped it two hours before.
"Don't—don't, please, really, I'd rather not." Anne took the letter from her quickly and laid it back on the table.
Mrs. Jeffries shuddered. "They loved each other so. Why did she have to be taken? He and the children need her so. And she was so strong, stronger than I have ever been. Nobody needs me. But Lucy—one moment well and laughing—the next——"
In the cold darkness of the unlit kitchen Anne saw old Mary and Timothy smiling at each other as they pictured "going out sudden into the midst of things." She held the quivering form again until it quieted. Mrs. Jeffries wiped her eyes at last and tried to consider Anne.
"How will you manage? Can you get some one to look after Rogie? I may be away some time. I may bring the children back with me. I don't know. I feel as if everything has changed so; I'm bewildered."
"Don't think of me, I'll manage. Perhaps I can get Mrs. Horton, the woman I used to have, to come up until we see what we're going to do. But you mustn't think about me, or consider me at all. Promise that you won't. I wish I could do something."
"You are doing something. You always have ever since you came. You don't know what it's meant to have you and Rogie round though I haven't seen much of you. I believe I was freezing up clear through—until he came."
"I'm glad you've liked having us. It's meant a great deal to me to know some one was looking after Rogie as you have done."
Mrs. Jeffries put the letter away and rose wearily. Without having taken off her things, Anne went out again. In an hour she had arranged with Mrs. Horton.