Part 7

She was looking at him in surprise and wonder. She put out one hand and touched his coat with her finger-tips, unconsciously, lightly. Her chin quivered.

“Allen,” she said softly, “Allen, I didn’t mean--please--”

“Never mind,” he said slowly, in a constrained voice. “You know I didn’t mean to talk to you that way. I don’t want to appeal to your sympathy. And I don’t want to make you do anything. You know that. I meant all along to appeal to your understanding. You know that. I still mean to. And as far as understanding goes, you understand everything as well as I do. It’s all a matter of making up your mind. I don’t want to force you to do anything. I know how hard it is for you. You take your time about it. Don’t think about me. Try to think about what is the best thing to do. And just take your time about it.”

She still kept her head lowered and still her fingers touched his coat. He knew that if he had taken her in his arms then and there the decision would have been entirely of his own making, and to his own liking. But his pride rebelled at the thought of reaching a decision, above all a decision in his own favor, by such a primitive method, by a method so contrary to his idea of how an issue between a man and a woman should be met. He would have her make her decision through her own understanding and by her own will! His hands left her shoulders and he stepped a little away from her. They no longer touched each other.

She nodded her head a little, looking at the floor.

He studied her, a little puzzled. “Then, may I come back next week, say, next Monday evening?”

Again she nodded her head, without looking up.

“Will you try to make up your mind between now and then? Will you be ready to tell me what you have decided to do?” He spoke almost as he would have spoken to a child.

For a moment she still looked at the floor. Then she lifted her head. She met his kind gaze timidly.

“Yes, Allen, I will,” she replied in a low voice.

He drew a deep breath. “Good night,” he said, awkwardly holding out his hand.

“Good night, Allen.”

He was gone and she closed the door quickly behind him.

She stood by the door while the sound of his footsteps rang in the hall. She looked wistfully about the room, sunk again in silence. She puckered her brows, thinking.

She understood Allen. She knew why he had not followed up his advantage. She respected him for it. But she almost hated him for it as well.

She walked slowly back into the middle of the room. Again she leaned back against the table. The uneasy breathing of the man on the couch could be heard.

“Eddie,” she called.

Slowly he turned his face away from the wall. He opened his eyes and for a moment stared without winking down the length of his body. Then he crooked one arm, raised himself to a sitting posture, turned and pulled his feet off the couch. He sat with his body toward her. But he looked down at her feet. He put his hands down on either side of him against the couch, as if to brace himself. He moved his dry lips two or three times.

“So you let Allen go away without you,” he said.

“You were awake?”

“Most of the time.” He looked up at her. He had slept a long time and he was quite sober. The pupils of his blue eyes were like black pin-heads. He tried to control the uneasy movements of his swollen upper lip.

“I heard what you told him,” he declared in a high, assertive voice. “You’re right about me. I know it. But it’s worse than you think. I’m done. I’ll be glad when I’m dead. Not on your account either. On my own account. I’ll be glad when I’m dead, I tell you. You ought to have gone away with him. What makes you so silly?”

“Please, Eddie.”

“I mean it. I wish you’d go away and leave me. I wish to God you would.”

He stared defiantly at her, blinking his eyes.

She tried to speak. She moved her lips, searching for words. Exasperation struggled with the pity in her face.

She looked at him without trying to hide her pity. Her forehead was puckered with little dimples. She tilted her head a little to one side and half extended one hand.

“Eddie!” she cried. “Eddie, my poor boy! If you’d only let me--”

“Ah-k!” He waved his hand in front of his face, brushing away her words.

“Don’t I know what you’re about to say!” he sneered, twisting his face and making his light-colored eyes glare at her.

“Save me--eh? Want to try that again, eh? What do you want to do that for? You’ve tried that before. Now you want to try it again, eh? I know. I know. What makes you so silly? I’m done. You know I’m done. Allen’s right. Better chuck the whole thing and forget it. You’ll be glad afterward.”

He wagged his head, smirked at her and added: “And maybe you don’t know it but I’ll be damned glad of it too.”

“You mustn’t talk that way, Eddie. You mustn’t.”

“Yes I will,” he declared, pulling down his puffed upper lip. He looked around at the floor, at the furniture, at her, with an unchanging, hard stare. A silence followed. Nothing could be heard but his quick, uneasy breathing and the uneasy motions of his body on the couch. His hands moved all of the time. His yellowish face moved. His eyes rested nowhere.

She came and sat by him. She put her hand on his shoulder. She regarded him with a look of pity, watching his face. Her feeling for him trembled on her lips. Her eyes watched every movement he made, dwelt on every one of his features. Her fingers trembled.

But he would not look at her. He looked sideways at the floor.

“When he comes Monday you’ll go with him. You’d better.” His voice was high and harsh.

“No I won’t go!” She put her arms around him and began to cry. “I just couldn’t, somehow. What would become of you? How could I when I know you would be alone and nobody to take care of you! Eddie, I feel so sorry for you. I feel so sorry for you. As long as you need me I shall stay. I shall stay. I don’t know what will become of us but I shall stay. I can’t help myself.”

He stiffly put up his hands and pulled her arms away from his shoulders. She turned away from him. He, bending over, propping his elbows on his knees and his chin against his fists, stared at the floor. He blinked his eyes and puckered his forehead as if he were trying to think.

She stood half turned from him, with her head bent, staring at the floor. She was half ashamed, half pensive. The silence lasted a long time. In the silence the man made a despairing gesture and ejaculated:

“Oh, Jesus, what’s the use!”

Minutes passed. The woman stood without moving. The man’s lips writhed, his forehead scowled, his eyes stared.

“There’s no use in talking about it, is there Eddie?” The woman turned and looked at him with patient weariness. He let his hands fall and dangle between his knees. He shook his head.

“Christ, no! What’s the use in talking!”

She slowly crossed the room and began putting on her hat.

“I’m going to dinner; will you come with me?” She looked at him with a flash of wistfulness in her eyes.

He shook his head without saying anything. She put on her overcoat and came over to him, stood by his side and stroked his hair. He stared at the floor.

“I’ll be back in about an hour,” she said at last. “Good-by, Eddie.”

“Good-by.”

He listened to her footsteps in the hall until they died away. He sat thrusting his head forward. The fixed stare of his light-colored eyes defied the lines of his mouth which changed all of the time.

At last he stood erect in a crumpled sort of way and walked into the middle of the room. His wrinkled trousers clung to his calves and bagged at the knees. His coat had come unbuttoned and he held it together with one hand like a woman wearing a shawl. He frowned, sticking out his upper lip; and his forehead was broken by many little wrinkles. His forehead was greenish-yellow in the gaslight. He shivered and a whisper rang through the room:

“Jesus, it’s cold!”

He let go of his coat, felt in his pockets and brought out a sack of tobacco and some papers, rolled a cigarette, lighted it and began to smoke greedily, inhaling the smoke. He looked at the table, at the chairs, at the floor. And all the time he made grimaces, scowled and shivered. His movements were uncertain and halting, but he stared intently this way and that. He was trying to reflect. But he was dizzy and cold. His blood felt yellow.

Once he looked at the door where they had gone out. He listened a long time while the cigarette smoked in his fingers.

At last he turned away from the door, back toward the middle of the room. He happened to see her handkerchief lying at the foot of the table. He threw away the cigarette and picked up the handkerchief and stared at it. He shivered more than ever and pulled his coat together at the bottom, but forgot to button it.

With a gesture of finality he threw the handkerchief from him, on the table. With the manner of an idle or a sick man he walked to the window, drew aside the curtain and looked down at the glittering street. His mind became clearer and his thoughts began to arrange themselves in more orderly fashion.

After a long time he turned away from the window.

“Yes,” he drawled in a fretful voice, “yes it would serve me right. Christ, yes, she’d be doing the right thing.”

His forehead became smooth. His face ceased to pout and wrinkle. It became calm. The pupils of his staring eyes became a little larger. He lifted his head a little. His face had almost an eager look. One would have said that he had reached some sort of a decision.

He found some paper and envelopes in the table-drawer and took a pencil from his pocket. Craning over the table, his intent face pallid in the gaslight, his hair gleaming like disordered gilt plush, he began to write in a shaky large scrawl.

He wrote one sheet almost full; signed it; folded it crookedly; put it in an envelope and scrawled a single line across the face of the envelope. On another sheet he wrote six or seven short lines, underlining each one; signed it boldly at the bottom and put it in another envelope, which he addressed.

He stood the two envelopes against some books and looked at them as he put the pencil back in his pocket. On the first envelope was written: _For My Wife._ On the other: _For the Police._

He rolled and smoked another cigarette slowly, looking at one spot on the carpet.

At last he tossed the remnant of the cigarette on the floor as if something in him craved disorder. He walked slowly into the bedroom, thrusting his head forward and his elbows out.

In the bedroom he turned up the light and without hesitation opened a little drawer in the old-fashioned bureau, taking out a revolver. He held it in both hands and cocked it. He stared into the mirror, and with something of the manner of a man who prepares to take a new kind of medicine he lifted the revolver and pointed it at his temple.

Then something in his whole mechanism seemed to stop and something else seemed to start. His body sagged and quivered at the same time. His eyes bulged. His mouth opened in such a way that his teeth glittered. A loud groan rang through the room. Quickly he laid the revolver down and walked back into the living room. He took unsteady steps and held his hands against his forehead.

“Oh, Jesus!” he cried.

He stood still a long time, pondering. It seemed to him that the silence of the room was lost in another silence.

His eye fell on a quart whiskey-bottle standing on a corner of the table. The unusual character of his awakening had made him, thus far, forget all about it.

It was nearly a third full of liquor. A little gleam came into his eye, the faintest color into his cheeks. He looked at the bottle with a sort of eagerness and went hopefully toward it.

He was thinking of the revolver on the bureau and it seemed to him that some of the whiskey would make that business easier.

He picked up the glass and the bottle and poured out a large drink, shuddered and swallowed it, making a face. He had eaten nothing all day and at once the whiskey was racing in his blood. Color flashed into his cheeks. He felt his blood becoming red again.

He took another drink and waited for the effect. After a little while he took still another. There was only a little left in the bottle.

Now his eyes were brighter and they had a misty look. The pupils were larger. He blinked his eyes and looked about. His face looked almost cheerful. He appeared to be reflecting. Indeed his thoughts raced rapidly but they began to tumble over each other. He hardly understood his thoughts. Vague emotions stirred him.

A sort of courage was mounting in his body, warming him like a new-kindled fire. But he felt mournful too.

He waited. He was about to have great thoughts. He was about to discover some magnificent solution of everything.

He stood still a long time, pondering. A little smile began to tremble on his mouth.

He poured out the last of the whiskey and shook the bottle to get the last drop. But now his head was rolling a little and his eyes were vague.

He lifted the glass. Just then his uncertain glance fell on his wife’s handkerchief. He looked long at the handkerchief, blinking. His head wobbled a little. He was trying to seize some idea that eluded him. Thoughts rose up in his mind but they fell over one another. His face wore a crippled look.

A long while he stood in thought, staring feebly at the handkerchief. But at last a faint, self-satisfied smile appeared on his trembling mouth.

Visibly swaying he turned around, his gaze wandering a little; steadied himself a little bit, and began to look uncertainly in the direction of the door. The smile flickered over his face like a blue flame. His mouth moved. His lips picked at words.

But he remembered the whiskey. He lifted the tumbler and emptied it, spilling some on his chin, half turned and with a single motion flung the glass ringing on the table.

He turned toward the door again, peering uncertainly as a man peers in the dusk. His head wagged. His voice blurred the silence:

“Di’ think I was ’sleep?”

Pleased, he laughed, rolling his head. But he stopped laughing to look toward the door, listening. His mouth got ready to talk.

“Di’--di’ y’ think I was ’sleep? Di’ y’ think I was ’sleep?” he called. No reply. Silence beyond the door. He smiled a satisfied smile. He laughed at the silence beyond the door; wagged his head; turned away; made two or three sidelong steps and brought up against the table. He flattened one hand out on the table-top and leaned against that hand. He stood there. His body swayed back and forth to a certain rhythm, like a weed in a creek. A smile flickered back and forth across his face like shadow on a shaking leaf. Sunk in drunken revery he blinked his drunken eyes, smirked and blinked. Now and again, when he leaned harder than usual, the legs of the table creaked under his weight. The hiss of the hot gas-lamp mingled with the noise of his breathing.

The little handkerchief lay on the table just under his nose. He had to see it if he looked. And when at last, tired of leaning against the table, he roused himself a little from his revery, he did see it at once. Pulling himself up as straight as he could he confronted the handkerchief with all his unsteady dignity, and with a righteous smirk, as one confronts an offender. He took the handkerchief in both his hands and turned it over and over. He stared at it as a baby stares at a new plaything. He moved his mouth all the time, breathing noisily. He blinked hard and often, looking and pondering. He seemed to be trying to recall something the handkerchief almost reminded him of, something he had forgotten.

At last he made the sort of motion a baby makes when it throws down a plaything, and threw the handkerchief on the floor. He looked pleased with himself and smirked down at the handkerchief. Satisfied, he pondered no longer. He turned with studied care, aimed himself at the bedroom door, made crooked long steps and went unsteadily in.

He looked at the revolver a long time. Sometimes he scowled. Sometimes he smiled. After awhile he picked up the revolver in both hands; turned and swayed back into the living room. He stood in the middle of the room, his body bending to and fro, and peered at the revolver with idiotic eyes. He stuck out his lips; blinked his eyes with great deliberation, pondered over the thing he held in his hands.

Now he began to look at the door again, listening and watching more and more attentively. At last he fixed his gaze wholly upon the door. The pupils of his eyes were distended. Bending in the middle, his legs trembling, his body swayed this way and that. His lips no longer smiled, but writhed.

“Think I was ’sleep?” he called. “Di’ y’ think--steal m’ wife when I was ’sleep?”

His voice shrilled in the room. He began to hurl at the door inept anathemas against the treachery of wives and the cowardice of men. He made uncouth accusations. He delivered himself of bizarre philosophies; sometimes mumbling, sometimes shrilling his words. He twisted his shoulders, stepping about in a small space. His voice quavered, rising and falling. His head tossed as if he rode in a boat.

But the silence at last reduced him to silence.

The labor of thought again showed in his face. Something was eluding him. Yes, he had forgotten something he was going to do. He tried hard in his own way, opening and shutting his mouth, blinking and searching the floor with his aimless eyes. Sometimes mutterings fell out of his mouth.

He smiled again. Something stirred him. Now he remembered what he had forgotten. He lifted the hand that held the revolver and aimed his wavering gaze down toward it. He raised his eyebrows and blinked. He turned the gun over this way and that, staring and blinking as if he had never seen one before in all his life. His face was pulled out of shape with the labor of cogitation. He began to smirk. He looked toward the door again, opening and shutting his mouth; and at last he delivered himself:

“Di’ y’ think I was go’ shoo’ m’self? Di’ y’ think I was go’ shoo’ m’self?”

His head sank on his breast and his eyes half closed. But he heaved his head up again and opened his eyes.

“Ah, sure, sure,” he called. “Steal m’ wife an’ I shoo’ m’self. Sure! sure!”

He laughed. But the laugh crumpled up in the silence.

His eyes were witless. It looked as though his pale head had talked without his knowing it. He wagged his head and announced solemnly:

“I’ll shoo’ you.” He waited a moment, trying to keep his gaze on the door, and repeated more loudly:

“I’ll shoo’ you. I’ll shoo’ you.”

He smiled down at the revolver and patted the barrel with an aimless motion.

“We know where fin’ ’im, don’t we?” he said to the revolver.

His eyes brightened and he became a little steadier smirking at the door, he called loudly, “We know where fin’ ’im. We know where fin’ ’im.”

He turned, and like a man walking in the dark he made his way to the couch. Here he laid the revolver down. With much labor and fumbling he gathered up his overcoat. With much labor he began to put it on. Half way through the job he paused, turned, and sent a wavering look toward the door.

“Di’ y’ think I do’ know where fin’ im?” he jibed.

He got his overcoat on and put on his hat. He stood a long time with a solemn expression on his face. He blinked studiously. He had become steadier. A fixed purpose seemed to have got him under its control. With great care he buttoned the overcoat and settled his hat as straight on his head as he could. Now his eyes were no longer blurred and wavering. They glowed as with fever and a flame was mounting in his cheeks. But his mouth was a woeful thing, a wound that opened and shut, writhing.

He picked up the revolver and looked at it, smirking. With the smirk on his face he turned toward the door and began to shove the revolver down into the inside pocket of his overcoat.

“We know,” he said, wagging at the door. “We know where--”

The trigger of the revolver must have caught in some part of his clothing. The crash of the discharge tore the wavering smirk from his face. Piteously intent, he stared for a second at the door. Then he lay quickly down, as if he accepted everything.

He lay first on his face, and muzzled his face snugly between his hands. Presently he turned over quietly on his back. One hand knocked once or twice against the floor.

The look fixed on his countenance was the look of one who has at last discovered something real.

[6] Copyright, 1921, by _Broom_. Copyright, 1923, by Frederick Booth.

FOREST COVER[7]

By EDNA BRYNER

(From _The Bookman, N. Y._)

The ribbon of road wound down through the forest. A woman followed it. The road seemed to come from the town of a thousand souls but it only came through there, just as it came through forest on the other side of the town, and through another town on the other side of the forest, and through forest again on the other side of that town. The woman followed the road just that way. At some time or other she had stepped out upon it from some place through which it came and ever since she had been following it. Somewhere she would stop following it, she would make an end of it. The road itself would go on, ceaselessly, in and out of forest, through towns and again through forest.