CHAPTER THIRTY
Roger received Belle's note telling him that Anne had left town and asking him to make some arrangement about the cottage in the same mail that he received the legal notice of Anne's action. Both letters were on his desk when he came back to the loft after dinner to work as he had done every night since that sudden, quiet ending of everything between himself and Anne.
He opened Belle's first and read it slowly, surprise changing rapidly to anger.
Anne had gone away. Where, for how long, why, alone or with Rogie? Belle did not say. The few lines breathed possession of Anne, pushed him aside from all interest or concern in her movements.
Anne had left the cottage and gone away. He was to do what he liked with the place. Evidently the past with its memory was too distasteful to Anne. She was going to begin somewhere else. For a moment Roger felt a touch of the old anxiety, the need to look after Anne, manage and arrange for her; the feeling that she was too frail and fair to look out for herself, the feeling that had amused Anne so in the days of their engagement when, if she were a little late in meeting him, he was always afraid that something terrible had happened.
It passed and was gone, blotted in his clear understanding of how perfectly well Anne was able to look out for herself. That frail fairness, that delicate sensitiveness behind which she tripped with such deep assurance of herself, was almost a masque in the completeness with which it hid the real Anne. Life would present no problem that would trouble or perplex her. With the scalpel of her assurance she would delicately remove all emotion, all passion, all hot, human weakness, wrap it neatly in her own conceit, label it and forever after know exactly where she had put it.
Roger drew a sheet of paper to him and began writing to Belle. At least she had no right to withhold information of his son. But when he had written two angry pages he read them and tore them up. Finally in words, as blunt and straightforward as Belle, he demanded to know Rogie's whereabouts. When this was sealed and addressed, he pushed it aside to mail when he went out, and picked up the other letter.
He read it only this once and then it fluttered between his knees and lay upon the floor. His chin dropped to his breast, his lips closed in a hard line. Now that Anne had done this thing, his own surprise in not having thought of the possibility was lost in his understanding of how perfectly this action expressed Anne.
When two people loved, they came together in legal sanction.
When they no longer loved, they separated legally.
Anne would no more live apart without the ceremony of divorce than she would have lived with him without the ceremony of marriage.
Anne had tidied the situation.
She had instituted her action for divorce and gone away. She had put the little period of her standard to the past, blotted the paper and ordered it sent to him. It was almost like sending him a receipt for the old love, the months of bickering strain, itemized and receipted in full.
Roger made a strange little noise, a kind of choking grunt of amusement, anger and hurt. Across the loft Katya looked up. The clicking of her machine stopped suddenly. Over it she gazed at Roger with passionate longing, pain and anger and tenderness in her small brown eyes.
Roger was in trouble. He never sat so, his head bowed, his hands clenched like that. For days Katya had felt something in him that eluded her; something strange had entered their relationship, the old frankness was gone. It had gone from the night she counseled his leaving Anne, but they had not mentioned the subject again, and since then Katya had moved in an uncertainty of his motive that had been like a stone wall about her. At every move she had touched it and it had sent strange hopes and fears through her.
Now, she leaned across her machine, her lips parted. Something was forming from these days of uncertainty, coming toward her. Katya held her place before her machine by an effort that at last forced from her a low cry. At the sound, Roger turned slowly toward her, his own problem in his eyes. They looked so for a moment at each other, then Katya's hands trembled and she rose. His muscles had answered, but his real concern was far away. Her lips quivered.
"What is it?" she demanded angrily. "Why are you staring at me like that?"
Her voice drew Roger's consciousness. He shook his head as if physically throwing aside something that held him in its grip and said with pitiful assumption of his usual cheerfulness:
"Was I staring at you unpleasantly, Katya? I beg your pardon. I didn't mean to."
Katya came toward him. If she did not reach physical proximity, in a moment the old camaraderie would rise and shut off this thing Katya felt forming for the first time clearly between them. Coming to the window ledge, the same ledge on which she had counseled his leaving Anne, Katya lit a cigarette and said with forced calm:
"What's the matter? Can I help?"
"N-o—nothing's the matter. I——" Roger broke off.
"You're lying," Katya replied calmly. "Something has happened. Something—very—big to you."
For a second Roger stiffened in resentment of her assurance. It was like the first time he had ever seen her, when her certainty had annoyed him. Then the memory of all the past months of friendship and understanding, shamed the insincerity of denial. He picked the lawyer's letter from the floor and handed it to her. Katya read it and without the least change of expression returned it, but her whole squat body trembled violently and only by drawing deeply on the cigarette could she maintain an outward semblance of poise.
Roger sat fingering the letter. Now that he was sharing this with Katya, emotion was rapidly chilling to intellectual speculation. What would have happened between him and Anne if they had not done this thing? Would they really have adjusted in time? Would they have bickered to weariness and dropped at last from spiritual exhaustion to any compromise that held outward peace? Would he have fallen to the revolting relationship suggested by Katya?
Why had Katya said that? From her knowledge of him or from her own experience? She had spoken so earnestly, as if her certainty were a concrete thing she was thrusting into his keeping. It was no general warning gathered from vague reflection of life or observation. Katya knew—either herself or him to the deepest recesses.
What was the source of Katya's knowledge?
She was so wise and still and dark, like the night. Gazing at her now, Roger felt as if he were gazing into the well of human impulse, weakness and strength. In it lay understanding of the death of love between himself and Anne.
"What is it?" she demanded turning suddenly from the night outside.
"I was thinking of something you said to me and wondering why you said it."
"Yes. What was it I said?"
"You said that if I did not separate from Anne I would stay and——" It was difficult to say even to Katya and he stumbled, annoyed at the touch of scorn that came to Katya's eyes. It was like the first look she had ever given him,—the nice small boy who had called a silly meeting. "That there would be other children," he flung at her, "and that I would then see my duty clearer to stay. Did you mean that I was so bound in physical ties that I could not break them. Is that what you meant?"
Katya nodded. "If you hadn't separated, what else? If you had gone on living with her, you would have gone on 'loving.' Nothing else is possible. And because you are an idealist and must have harmony, you would have tied together the soul and body, because only so would you not have been ashamed before yourself. You would have done what many millions have done and will do till Time ends. You would have come to deny the existence of Love. You would have talked of the death of physical passion and the survival of something else, in the large vague words that dead souls use, like you talked of 'adjusting.' You would have stifled the body because you could not make it one with the soul. Or—you would have stifled the soul. With you I do not know—which it would have been I am not sure. But now your soul has a chance. Perhaps, some day, you will find another woman and then——"
"Never," Roger began vehemently, and stopped.
After all, who could say? He had not meant to marry until years later than he did. He had meant to go to many countries and do many things alone. He had not even thought of Anne in that way, half an hour before they stood alone among the dunes, and his need had shaped itself from the wind and fog.
"Perhaps," Katya said slowly, "it will be never. I am not sure. Perhaps you will never love. I do not know."
She was looking at him with faint bitterness and his interest in her certainty hardened to impatience. "Perhaps I won't," he said shortly, "since, according to you, so few people even know what it is. Why should I expect to be one of the chosen few?"
Katya looked away. "I don't know—perhaps because you need it?"
"Need what?" This was almost as tenuous as some of Anne's involved reactions. First Katya wanted him to be free for his soul, then she wanted this same soul meshed and tangled in an absorbing passion. Roger looked at her impatiently now, turned from him, again gazing out across the roofs. Then his impatience vanished as suddenly as it had come.
Katya looked tired to-night. Her eyes were red-rimmed as if she had not slept. Her thick lips held the cigarette uncertainly. Swarthy, squat and blunt, Katya's body conveyed a feeling of unsureness, as if she were trembling just beneath the surface. He had no right to intrude on her sympathy, but it was so easy to monopolize Katya's understanding. He laid his hand on her knee and started to feel the vibration of her body. She must be holding it in check by her supreme will.
"Never mind, Katya, let's not probe too deeply to-night."
But he knew that Katya did not hear. She was reading in places hidden from him, the answer to his own question.
"You need to love," she said slowly, as if she were translating from a foreign tongue, "because there is a chance that you are worth it. If you love you may be truly great. If you never love—you will go no higher than now—and—it will be all wasted," she ended in a whisper.
Roger felt that Katya was actually drawing a curtain back before him, a thick, black curtain that hid strange things he did not wish to see.
"Well, let's hope that whatever ought not to be wasted, won't be," he said with forced lightness.
"You—will—be afraid," Katya whispered and leaned so close that involuntarily Roger stepped back. At his motion, she laughed in scorn.
"Yes, that is what you will do when you see it coming. You will step back. You will run away. You will be afraid of love."
"Oh, no, I won't. Why should I be afraid?" With an uncertain smile Roger tried to turn the tide creeping from the pit that Katya had opened.
"Because it hurts." Katya shuddered so violently that Roger saw the heavy muscles of her shoulders and neck quiver. "It hurts more than any pain in all the world. It burns out everything in the world, in you, but itself. It takes your brain and your body and makes white ashes of them. It takes you, the individual, and melts you into the world. It is the volcano through which the highest force of spirit finds expression. There are not many volcanoes in the world or the earth would melt in flames. There are not many who can love or the race too would melt away. Through all the ages a few mountains above the level, flat earth. A few who can love, only a few. That is love. Would you run away?"
In spite of her body trembling as with cold, little beads of moisture stood on Katya's face. It was too fierce, too elemental, too naked. Roger looked away. A choking noise from Katya drew his eyes again. She was gazing at him now with anguish and hatred in her eyes. Roger stepped back. The blood flamed into his brain, then rushed away, leaving him cold and sick at the stark nakedness of Katya's revelation.
"Don't," he whispered, "don't."
Slowly the spark in Katya's eyes faded. She gazed at him blankly with the dead eyes of a statue. Then, with a quick shudder she came back to life.
"Never mind," she said in her husky whisper. "It isn't your fault."
"I—I never—dreamed—it isn't possible—you can't——"
"Oh, keep quiet. What does it matter? I don't mind your knowing. I didn't choose to love you. I don't respect you a great deal or admire you in many ways. You're so young, so undeveloped, like a baby. Stop staring like a frightened child. It doesn't matter, I tell you. It doesn't matter."
And, in spite of himself, Roger felt that it did not really matter so very much. Katya, the Russian Jewess, with her squat body, her strange foreign past, was a being of another world, as she stood there talking of volcanoes and white ashes and souls that melted in their own fire.
If she had been of his own race, his own age—but no woman of his age and race would have said those things, would have thought them, would have felt them. Disgust rose against his will, disgust seated deep in the past of his people, disgust of flagrant confession like this.
Katya smiled, a twisted smile of pity for the feeling in him. His lips moved to deny it, but against the penetration of Katya's knowledge, the falsehood died.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly, and knew that it sounded like Anne regretting the pain and sorrow of the world.
"You needn't be. I'm not. Can't you stop staring and trying to pretend?"
"Yes," Roger snapped, angry now with her and with himself, "when you stop pretending too. You talk of melting fire and volcanoes and yet you say it doesn't matter. It must matter. It——"
"It doesn't matter—as you mean. You understand nothing at all. Will you please go away?"
Roger's head dropped and he turned from her.
Her whisper followed. "Please forget. You can if you try because it really doesn't matter—to you." The last words were so low and Roger already so far across the loft that he did not hear them. He went without looking back.
But as he walked slowly home, he knew that something within himself had gone forever. Never again would he be absolutely certain of any human being. Katya, the indefatigable worker, the passionless comrade, the clear thinker; Katya the unconfused, had tangled life and the threads that bound one to another beyond his power of ever straightening. Never again would he be able to say of any human being "I am sure of this. I am positive of that."
It was a warm night but Roger was cold and lit a fire. Before it he sat till dawn, moving only to reach for wood in the basket on the hearth.
Was Katya right? Would he run from love if it ever came to him, devastating burning passion in a body other than Katya's? Before such a love as this his love for Anne was the flickering of a tiny flame, as small, as pale as Anne's feeling for a world beyond the narrow limits of her own individual safety.
And Anne?
Again Roger lived that first hour on the Bluff, his own surprise and tenderness at Anne's kiss. The night on the lake when her lips had clung as hotly as his own.
What was he himself?
What was Anne?
To-night, in this whirlwind that was Katya, he felt strangely near to Anne. When at last he groped in the wood basket and found it empty, he rose and went to bed. The east was lighting. The bed was wide and chill, as if the little ghost of Anne were there beside him.