CHAPTER TWENTY
The days passed. Roger did not mention Merle. He was often at the office now in the evening and Anne knew he and Tom were working harder than ever. Some Hindoo revolutionists had been arrested and an almost hopeless fight to free them was under way. Picturesque men with sad, dark eyes came to the cottage to talk to Roger, and Roger made quick trips to adjoining towns to see strange men in secret places.
One day, about a month after Anne had met Merle, Roger came home earlier than he had come for some time, and very gay. He had succeeded in getting an appeal for the Hindoo revolutionists and that was more than any one had expected.
"Tom's like a small boy. I never saw him so excited."
"And Merle, I suppose, is flitting all over the place, trying to talk Hindustani?"
"No. Merle isn't 'round these days. I haven't seen her for weeks. She's been dodging work for some time, coming and going when she liked. Come to think of it, I don't believe she's been there at all for ages. Katya was saying something about getting another stenographer. Merle's bad enough, but she was better than nothing."
"Katya'd better go ahead and get one then, because Merle won't come back. She's gone away with another man."
The amazement in Roger's eyes struck at Anne's control. Merle was right. She had flitted among them and flitted away. Concerned with the affairs of distant India, Roger did not even know it. And he had liked Merle with her gay slang, her flippant comment.
"Do you suppose that Tom O'Connell has happened to notice she's gone? Perhaps you'd better not tell him. He may never find it out at all."
"So—that—was it," Roger said slowly, putting together the pieces of a puzzle that had caught his attention the day after Tom's return from the South. "Poor Tom—poor old Tom. But it had to come. Merle had gone as far as she could—and Tom couldn't stay behind."
"Certainly not," Anne said quietly, "an Indian woman in Burmah might have died."
"What? What about an Indian woman?"
But Anne did not answer. She was afraid she might cry, and after a brief pause Roger went back to the thing that had puzzled him.
"I saw Tom, the day after he came back, sitting all bowed over his desk. It was late in the evening and the others had gone. He was expecting me, but he never moved when I came in and I thought he was ill. I went over to him and he looked up. I never saw a man so torn. His face was ash-gray and those lines he always has down the sides of his mouth were deep like scars. And his eyes, they were like a hurt dog's, so dumb and crushed and puzzled. He didn't even try to cheer up, just said: 'I won't be doing any work to-night; I don't feel well.' I said something about getting him a drink, but he shook his head and I went. I was rather afraid—he was going to cry."
"It wouldn't have hurt him if he had," Anne said in a hard whisper. "He's killed Merle's soul, and if she goes to the dogs it will be his fault."
"Killed Merle's soul? She never had one, at least not much of a one."
"No. There are no individual souls, I suppose; just one great, big world soul—though what it's made of if it isn't individual souls, I don't know."
Roger moved impatiently, but when he spoke it was with weary acceptance:
"You never liked Tom. You never understood him, the real man, or tried to."
"No? I understand what he claims to be, but not what he is."
"What is he?"
"A monomaniac." The word slipped from Anne and frightened her.
"I don't know what you mean, Anne."
"He's gone mad on social injustice, just as mad as any capitalist has on accumulating money. He's lost all sense of individual values. He's a machine, a machine for fighting for his own theory."
Roger's lips set. It brought the squareness of his chin into terrible relief. "Roger's the same stuff, floating around in the clouds with those blue eyes and that square chin." Anne's body began to quiver, but she kept her eyes steady.
"Let's not talk about it. We don't agree."
"Evidently not. There don't seem to be many things we do agree about any more."
Anne tried to speak gayly. Otherwise the tears would come. But she sounded like Hilda Mitchell, pecking at a tragedy with her silly giggle.
"Not many," Roger said shortly. "I've got to go back to the office and I may be late. Don't wait up for me."
He kissed Anne as usual, and as usual she went as far as the door with him. But long after his step had died she stood looking out over the city's lights, lonelier than she had ever been in all her life.
She remembered coming home with Roger once, very late, on just such a night. They had sat hand in hand, far in the prow of the almost empty ferry, and Anne's head had rested on his shoulder. She was tired after a happy day, one of the old picnics they had found time to take. She had been glad of the lights coming nearer and they had traced the row up their own hill. The twinkling lights had beckoned them to the warm, human comfort of others. Now they burned on indifferent to her, lighting the way for hurrying crowds, the creeping, inimical confusion of the world. The twinkling lights lit the ways of men and men were cruel.
Anne went in and sat down before the fire, without turning on the lamp. It was so still she could hear her own thoughts moving about her. Gradually, from the rustling crowd, one emerged:
"I've been through it. You wait and see."
She was not like Merle. Roger was not like Black Tom. And yet——
It was after twelve when Roger came.
"Why, Anne!"
Anne lifted her face. Her lips trembled.
Roger came quickly to her in real concern. "You haven't been sitting here alone worrying, have you? I didn't mean to be harsh."
Anne clung to him. "Roger," she whispered, "I don't want to grow apart."
"Neither do I." Roger stroked her hair, the old tenderness moving him. "And since neither of us do," he said after a moment, with a smile, "I guess we won't."
Anne answered his smile weakly. "Roger, I don't believe it is right just to sit up here keeping the 'house like a jewel-box' and looking after Rogie. I'm going to work."
"What?" Roger had never very clearly heard when Anne looked like that, and she had not looked like that for a long time.
"I—am—going—to work," Anne repeated with exaggerated distinctness, and laughed.
"Oh, you are, are you? Who said you could?"
"Myself. And you—in a minute."
"Oh, I will? That depends. I won't have you drudging in some office."
"No? How about that extra stenographer Katya's looking for?"
"Anne!"
"Don't you think I could do it? I don't believe I've lost much speed. I——"
But Roger's kiss silenced her and Anne did not try to finish. At last he loosed her.
"Do you really want to do this, sweetheart?"
Anne turned her eyes away. "Yes, Rogie's old enough to leave now and I believe Mrs. Horton would be glad of the place. I would get a salary, I suppose—enough to pay her."
Roger grinned. "You would—most of the time, anyhow. How much would she do it for, do you think?"
"How much would I get?"
"Eighteen or so."
"That would be plenty—more than she would ask. I'll talk it over with her to-morrow. You would really like it?"
"Anne! There's nothing in the world I would like so much. Why I—I—thought lots of times of asking you just that thing."
Remembering his reason for not doing it, Roger, too, looked into the fire, his arms still close about Anne.
But Anne did not press for the reason of his silence. Against the long evening alone with Merle's words singing in her ears—"Wait and see. It'll get him yet"—his hold was strong and full of comfort.
Suddenly Anne gripped him close and kissed him, as she had kissed on the Bluff, her lips seeking fiercely, through his, the thing beyond them both.