Part 8

In midwinter, when the place lay like a frozen village on the shore of an inhuman sea, lights used to shine from the windows of Brecky’s immense hotel, and to flit from one floor to another. That meant Brecky and some consulting friend, muffled in sweaters and overcoats, inspecting the rows and rows of bedrooms, discussing the wall paper, the flimsy furniture, debating with breath that congealed in the frigid air, whether this or that room was going to be cool enough, shady enough, airy enough.

But however the lights might flit about the building in those winter nights, there was one that remained steady and constant as the beam from a lighthouse. It came from the kitchen window. It sprang up every evening when dusk began to close in, and it always burned until nine o’clock or so. Brecky saw it now, as he turned the corner and struggled down the street at the end of which his hotel stood.

This was the hardest stretch, in the teeth of the terrific wind blowing inshore. It was like leaving the world and plunging into chaos. He went at it, head down, his eyes fixed upon the cheerful light, an agreeable hunger rising within him. That light meant Kathleen and the excellent dinner she was sure to have ready for him.

II

Brecky stamped up the wooden steps and across the veranda, opened the front door with his latchkey, and entered the house. It was colder in there than it was outside. The place wasn’t designed for winter occupation, and there was no means for heating it. Moreover, its construction was flimsy, and a wind like that now blowing found its way in without trouble, and went moaning through the hall, rattling the doors and windows.

He passed through the dining room. It was entirely dark, but there was no fear of running into anything, for all the tables were drawn back against the walls and the chairs piled on them. He pushed open the swinging doors into the pantry, and another door, and was suddenly in a different world, warm, light, filled with delightful savors.

“Ah!” he said, with a sigh.

He slipped off his overcoat, cap, and rubbers, and went over to the stove, holding out his numb hands to its welcome heat. Then he turned and kissed his wife, absent-mindedly, almost without looking at her, in spite of the fact that she was well worth looking at.

“Did Mullins come about those sash cords?” he asked.

“No--no one came. I haven’t seen a soul all day,” she answered; but he missed the significance of her tone.

She hurried back and forth with steaming dishes, and at last informed him, rather curtly, that his dinner was ready. He sat down at once and ate with good appetite, but in silence and abstraction, because he had to think about those sash cords. At last he finished and leaned back in his chair, ready for the amenities of life.

“Well, Kathleen!” he said. “You’re one fine little wife!”

He was innocently oblivious of his wife’s state of mind. It hadn’t occurred to him that she kept on existing and thinking when he wasn’t there. His remark was a match to dry straw.

“A fine little _cook_, I guess you mean!” she said with sudden asperity. “That’s your idea of a wife!”

He laughed.

“Well!” he said. “They kind of go together, don’t they?”

“Looks like it,” she said; “only some cooks get paid.”

It was his habit to ignore remarks like that. Women, he considered, were often fanciful and “touchy.” It was better to leave them alone at such times. He lighted a big cigar, deliberately took his mind off his wife and all domestic concerns, and began to meditate on his business.

But the perverse creature continued to exist and to speak.

“I didn’t start out in life to be a cook,” she said, in an ominously calm and reasonable tone. “I’m glad enough to do it for your sake, Johnny; but I’d like you to remember that I’m not used to this kind of life.”

“Yes, yes!” he said soothingly, and continued to smoke and stare at the fire.

“You never even look at me!” she cried suddenly.

“Yes, but I do!” he protested. “Sure I do!”

He looked at her then, with a smile, and saw that she was crying.

“For the Lord’s sake, what’s the matter?” he asked, with despairing good nature. “I’ll look at you for an hour, if you like; only don’t cry, that’s a good girl!”

She put her handkerchief to her eyes, and went on crying. He swore under his breath, and, getting up, went around the table and put his arm about her.

“Come now!” he said. “You’re as pretty as a picture, and you know I love you.”

“Yes!” she said. “You want to make it up quickly and forget all about me!”

He couldn’t help laughing at the woman’s cleverness.

“Well!” he said. “If I do think such a lot about this business, who’s it for? Don’t be silly! It’s all for you.”

“It isn’t! It’s because you like it. You’d go on with it just the same if I was dead!”

He was a little in doubt what to do. Should he ignore her, and let her get over her inopportune temper alone? Or should he wheedle her?

He was really annoyed. He thought it all rather touching and feminine. They were all like that--wanted a man to spend his time making love and playing the fool; and yet, if he didn’t provide all they wanted, or thought they wanted, they’d nag him to death. He kissed her again.

“We’ll go in to the city some day next week,” he said. “We’ll take in a show, and all that. That’s what you need.”

“It isn’t! What I need is some one to talk to. You never want to listen to me. You never ask me what I’ve been doing.”

“But there’s nothing you could do,” he answered innocently, “except cooking and sewing and--”

He was really surprised at her outbreak, she was usually so cheerful and equable. He looked at her flushed and furious face, the tears still in her eyes, and an unpleasant conviction came to him that this was going to be serious--and lasting.

“You come in,” she went on, “and you sit down and eat your dinner, and the only thing you can find to say to me is to call me a _cook_!”

“I said you were a fine little cook,” he began ingratiatingly. “Nothing wrong in that, is there? Why, I’m proud of you, Kathleen! Only this afternoon I was telling Sawyer how you could cook.”

“Well, you’d just better find something else to praise me for!” she cried. “I’m something more than a cook, and the sooner you learn it the better!”

He was astounded and somewhat shocked at her violence--dismayed, too. He had an uneasy feeling that he couldn’t handle this situation adequately. So, according to his habit, he decided to go away, believing, as many other people believe, that if he weren’t in the situation, there would be no situation. But his cool deliberations were upset. Moreover, his cigar was out, and he didn’t like relighted cigars.

He got the books in which he was trying to work out a new idea of hotel bookkeeping, but he couldn’t do a thing. He couldn’t put out of his mind the image of that girl, that provoking and beloved girl, with her angry, rosy little face and her eyes full of tears.

“Women!” he thought savagely.

No denying, though, that she was a wonderful wife and companion. She had never complained before, she had never failed him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her get up and begin carrying the dishes over to the sink. He thought he would help her, and then he thought he wouldn’t. It would be weakness.

Still, it would do no harm to conciliate her. Perhaps, if he did, his working mood would return. He watched her for a few minutes longer, bending over the dish pan. Then he got up, went over to her, and, putting an arm about her, drew her close against him.

Then a devil entered into him.

“Why, you silly kid!” he said, kissing her. “You’re the best little cook!”

She turned and gave him a smart box on the ear.

He was so astounded that he couldn’t speak. He stared at her flushed and furious face, his own perfectly blank. Then, very slowly, the color began to rise in his lean cheeks.

He was a man slow to anger, a man of self-control and _sang froid_; but when his temper was aroused, it was a bad one. His wife was secretly horrified at what she had done. She hadn’t meant to do it. She knew he was only trying to be funny. She was ashamed and alarmed.

“What made you do that?” he asked slowly.

“Because I’m sick and tired of being called a cook, that’s why!” she answered valiantly.

“Well, you’d better apologize!” he said.

“Well, I won’t!” she answered promptly. “I’m glad I did it. I’m just sick and tired of--of all this--shut up here alone all day long!”

“All right!” said Brecky. “_All_ right!”

She looked at him steadily for a moment. Then she began, very deliberately, to dry her hands. He turned away and walked back to his books, but she saw that his hands were clenched, and she knew that he was filled with fury. She was elated, and she was sorry.

He began figuring, but he grasped his pencil so fiercely that it broke, and he had to get up and look for another.

He saw Kathleen standing before the little mirror she had hung up on the wall, dressed in her fur coat and engaged in pinning on her hat.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Putting on my hat,” she answered calmly.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m not going to tell you.”

He smiled.

“Well, good-by!” he said.

Taking the key out of the lock, he went out of the kitchen, slamming and locking the door behind him.

“She can stay in there and think it over!” he said to himself.

III

Brecky made an effort to be light, careless, superior. He whistled as he went upstairs to the two rooms they used on the floor above--one as a bedroom, the other as a sort of office, where Brecky “saw people.” He had plenty of material to occupy himself with here--letters and catalogues and estimates and so on. A little gas stove was burning in one corner, and the room was as neat, cheerful, and comfortable as it could be made by Kathleen’s benevolent genius.

He had scarcely set foot over the threshold before a pang of remorse assailed him. Wherever his glance fell, there was something to speak of Kathleen and her care for him. He was by no means imaginative, but he was suddenly able to imagine his young wife alone all day in this huge, cold place. He began to have some idea of what her life must be.

“By gosh!” he thought. “After all, I don’t know that I blame the poor girl for landing on me!”

And all at once the pathos of the thing overcame him--that poor little bit of a thing flying out at him like that--at him, who could have picked her up and shaken her like a kitten. He shouldn’t have teased her. After all, there was more to her than her cooking. He hadn’t fallen in love with her for that.

His impulse was to hurry downstairs and make it up; but he didn’t see how one could make up a quarrel with a woman without giving her a present. It wasn’t decent. Moreover, it would be too difficult. A present relieved a man from the necessity of making any sort of explanation, or of talking at all. You give the present, with a kiss, and it’s done.

He walked up and down the room with his hands in his pockets, haunted by the image of Kathleen angry and Kathleen gay. The more he reflected, the more mysterious and oppressive was his sense of guilt, the more contrite and tender his heart. In the end he came to a decision extraordinary in one so stiff-necked. He resolved to go downstairs and say, quite frankly, that he was sorry, and that he loved her and didn’t care whether she cooked or not.

The house seemed blacker and colder than ever as he descended the stairs. He wondered if she was crying in there, or scornfully washing the dishes. He unlocked the door, opened it, and entered.

He couldn’t see her at all. He stared about the huge kitchen, which was well lighted. There were the dishes, just as he had last seen them, but no human being. Kathleen had gone!

He couldn’t believe it at first. She couldn’t have got out by the windows, for the heavy shutters were locked on the outside. There was no possible means of egress from that room except an incredible one; and yet, as she wasn’t in the room, she must have got out that way. She must have gone down the flight of rickety wooden steps and through the cellar.

She had always been in mortal fear of the cellar, because there were rats in it. Brecky had always brought up the coal for her when she wanted some. In order to pass through it at night, she must have been in a desperate mood, he thought.

He was more disturbed than he cared to admit. Where could the girl go, alone, on a night like this, with a regular hurricane blowing? There was nothing for it but to put on his cap and overcoat and go in search of her.

The wrath of a woman had in it something peculiarly alarming and mysterious for Brecky. He felt that Kathleen was capable of the most amazing deeds, that she was not bound by any of his rules or scruples. He couldn’t imagine what she would do. He was completely lost.

He opened the front door and stepped out into the tumultuous night. Fortunately there was only one direction in which to go, unless one wished to walk into the sea, and he didn’t think that even an enraged wife would do that. There was nothing suicidal about Kathleen, anyhow. She was too sane, too solid, too honestly fond of life.

He was also aware that she was well able to withstand this weather. Where he could go, sturdy as he was, she could go, too. She was vigorous and resolute.

The wind was at his back now. He went with fierce impetus along the empty streets, and he went, inevitably, to the railway station. He entered the warm little waiting room, where a white-bearded agent dozed in his ticket booth.

The man looked up and nodded at Brecky.

“Too late!” he said. “She’s gone!”

This might mean either a train or a wife.

“Ten minutes ago,” the agent went on, full of the secret triumph he always felt at the spectacle of a thwarted traveler. “You’ll have to wait two hours, and mebbe more.”

Brecky sat down near the stove and set to work to frame a question which should in no way compromise his wife. He wished to seem aware of all her doings. He couldn’t ask whether she had been at the station; but the agent assisted him.

“Your missus would ’a’ lost the nine o’clock train herself, if it hadn’t ’a’ been near half an hour late.”

“I’m glad she caught it, anyway,” replied Brecky. “It’s a case of serious illness. I told her to hurry along, and I’d follow as soon as I could.”

“Your phone out of order?” asked the agent.

“Yes,” said the quick-witted Brecky. “Did she telephone here?”

“Yep--said to meet the train when it got to the station.”

“I wonder who she got on the phone!” said Brecky. “Probably her aunt or her cousin.”

Splendid improvisation, for Kathleen hadn’t a single relative in the city, to his knowledge!

“It just happens I heard the name,” said the agent. “‘Charley,’ she says, ‘I’m coming in unexpected, and you must come and meet me!’”

“I didn’t know Charley was in New York,” said Brecky thoughtfully.

“She didn’t phone New York,” said the agent. “I just happened to hear. It was New Chelsea.”

“I see!” said Brecky.

IV

He took a cigar out of his pocket and began to smoke, and to think. His impassive face showed no trace of emotion. He was simply waiting for a train; but within he was in a panic, torn with rage, fear, and a frantic desire for action.

Who the devil was Charley? After all, what did he know of Kathleen? What did he know of women, anyway? He had left her alone for days and days, while he looked after business matters in the city. He had left her alone, partly because he wanted to go into the city, because he disliked solitude and quiet. How did he know what she thought of when he was gone? Charley!

He could scarcely endure it. His lean body trembled, like that of a nervous horse held brutally in check. He wanted to bolt. Charley!

Unfortunately, Brecky did not find it difficult to believe evil. His experience of life had been hard and definite. He had as high an opinion of Kathleen as he had ever had of a human being, but he was not trustful. He knew too much, and it was a one-sided knowledge.

It was possible that Kathleen was merely a fool, and didn’t realize what she was doing; but this Charley wouldn’t be like that. If women were more or less a mystery to Brecky, men were not. He had a sudden and very clear picture of Kathleen, neat, rosy, pitifully self-assured, alighting from the train, to be met by Charley.

All at once he knew who Charley was--that fat, owlish fellow who used to sit so often at Kathleen’s table in the restaurant. Sands, his name was. He had money of his own, and used to bother Brecky for tips on the races. He used to sit for hours absorbed in the form sheets, trying to figure things out for himself--with the usual results. And Kathleen had turned from Brecky, the shrewd, the alert, the competent, to that fellow!

“I’ve got nearly an hour to wait, haven’t I?” he asked.

Brecky’s voice rang out sharply in the quiet little room. The agent opened his eyes, more startled than the words warranted. He fancied there was something in the other man’s tone. He stared at him, instantly wide awake.

“I guess I’ll have time to run home and get something,” Brecky went on.

“Don’t be late, though,” said the agent. “This’ll be the last train to-night.”

Brecky vanished, slamming the door behind him. He retraced his steps with dreamlike ease. He was not conscious of progressing until he found himself once more at the hotel. He was filled with emotions so violent, with such a confusion of hatred, jealousy, and pain, that he was truly overwhelmed. His inarticulate soul could find no other words for his anguish than--

“No one’s going to make a fool of _me_!”

He put his hand into his coat pocket for the key of the front door, but it wasn’t there. He was obliged to go around to the back of the house and enter through the cellar. He felt his way through the piercing cold of that black underground cavern, and ascended the shaking wooden steps to the kitchen.

The kitchen gave him a shock. It was exactly as he had left it, neat, quiet, warm, with the clock ticking, the kettle gently steaming, Kathleen’s apron across a chair. It was like the memory of a past irretrievably gone. Brecky’s heart contracted with pain. He stopped for a moment, to muster all the resolution he had.

He went upstairs into the bedroom, and from a drawer of the bureau he took what he wanted. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, saw his face strained and hard beneath his inevitable cap, and he thought he looked like a criminal in the movies. Well, why shouldn’t he?

He caught the train. He got in and settled himself comfortably in the smoking car, deserted except for two men playing pinochle.

The train ran on smoothly, stronger than the wind. Brecky could see very little from the window except the slanting rain and now and then a blurred light. The turmoil in his brain never ceased. He looked unpleasantly wide awake, staring, like a somnambulist. His gray eyes never seemed to blink, or his face to move a muscle.

And for all his grief and fury he had no other words than that pitifully inadequate refrain:

“No one’s going to make a fool of _me_!”

His cigar was out, but he did not notice it. He sat with a curiously alert air, like a pointing dog, immobile, but terribly ready. He was thinking.

He stopped the conductor as he passed through the car.

“Can you stop at New Chelsea?” he asked.

The conductor shook his head.

“It’s not an express stop,” he said. “You’ll have to go on to New York and then take a train back. You’ll have to wait till to-morrow morning, too. No more trains to-night!”

Brecky reflected. He took it for granted that if Kathleen had telephoned to the fellow at New Chelsea, that was where he lived, and where he was most likely to be found. He pulled at the conductor’s sleeve as the man was moving away.

“Do you slow down anywhere near there?”

“Not enough for--”

“Just you tell me when you’re going to slow down a bit,” said Brecky. “I’ve got to get there. You won’t be responsible.”

“I should be,” said the conductor sententiously. “Morally speaking, I should be responsible.”

Brecky knew every inch of that line. As they approached the desired destination, he got up and went out upon the platform. The pinochle players saw him standing there, in the wind and the rain. Then, suddenly, he vanished. He had climbed down the steps and jumped.

The fall stunned him, and he lay still for an instant. When he could breathe freely again, he rose, and mechanically tried to brush himself off. He was always a neat fellow.

The train had disappeared, and he was alone in the universe. He could still hear the sea, dull and menacing, and the demoniac wind still blew. He didn’t quite know where he was. His plan was to follow the tracks.

Wet to the skin, a sinister enough figure with his face nearly hidden by pulled down cap and turned up collar, he went doggedly forward toward the next station. He presented the appearance of a highwayman.

Before long he saw the feeble light of the New Chelsea station ahead of him, blurred through the rain. With a sigh of relief he mounted the wooden platform, where he was for the moment sheltered from the weather.

He tried to open the door, but it was locked. He looked in through the window, and saw the dimly lit room, quite empty, and the stove, without fire. Evidently the station master had gone for the night. This was a blow to Brecky, for he had counted upon making inquiries here.