The Day of the Funeral

The Day of the Funeral

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٭ I ٭

HIS WIFE had said: “If you don’t give her up I’ll throw myself from the roof.” He had not given her up, and his wife had thrown herself from the roof.

Nothing of this had of course come out at the inquest. Luckily Mrs. Trenham had left no letters or diary—no papers of any sort, in fact; not even a little mound of ashes on the clean hearth. She was the kind of woman who never seemed to have many material appurtenances or encumbrances. And Dr. Lanscomb, who had attended her ever since her husband had been called to his professorship at Kingsborough, testified that she had always been excessively emotional and high-strung, and never “quite right” since her only child had died. The doctor’s evidence closed the inquiry; the whole business had not lasted more than ten minutes.

Then, after another endless interval of forty-eight hours, came the funeral. Ambrose Trenham could never afterward recall what he did during those forty-eight hours. His wife’s relations lived at the other end of the continent, in California; he himself had no immediate family; and the house—suddenly become strange and unfamiliar, a house that seemed never to have been his—had been given over to benevolent neighbours, soft-stepping motherly women, and to glib, subservient men who looked like a cross between book-agents and revivalists. These men took measures, discussed technical questions in undertones with the motherly women, and presently came back with a coffin with plated handles. Some one asked Trenham what was to be engraved on the plate on the lid, and he said: “Nothing.” He understood afterward that the answer had not been what was expected; but at the time every one evidently ascribed it to his being incapacitated by grief.

Before the funeral one horrible moment stood out from the others, though all were horrible. It was when Mrs. Cossett, the wife of the professor of English Literature, came to him and said: “Do you want to see her?”

“See her—?” Trenham gasped, not understanding.

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Mrs. Cossett looked surprised, and a little shocked. “The time has come—they must close the coffin.…”

“Oh, let them close it,” was on the tip of the widower’s tongue; but he saw from Mrs. Cossett’s expression that something very different was expected of him. He got up and followed her out of the room and up the stairs…. He looked at his wife. Her face had been spared….

That too was over now, and the funeral as well. Somehow, after all, the time had worn on. At the funeral, Trenham had discovered in himself—he, the absent-minded, the unobservant—an uncanny faculty for singling out every one whom he knew in the crowded church. It was incredible; sitting in the front pew, his head bowed forward on his hands, he seemed suddenly gifted with the power of knowing who was behind him and on either side. And when the service was over, and to the sound of O Paradise he turned to walk down the nave behind the coffin, though his head was still bowed, and he was not conscious of looking to the right or the left, face after face thrust itself forward into his field of vision—and among them, yes: of a sudden, Barbara Wake’s!

The shock was terrible; Trenham had been so sure she would not come. Afterward he understood that she had had to—for the sake of appearances. “Appearances” still ruled at Kingsborough—where didn’t they, in the University world, and more especially in New England? But at the moment, and for a long time, Trenham had felt horrified, and outraged in what now seemed his holiest feelings. What right had she? How dared she? It was indecent. … In the reaction produced by the shock of seeing her, his remorse for what had happened hardened into icy hate of the woman who had been the cause of the tragedy. The sole cause—for in a flash Trenham had thrown off his own share in the disaster. “The woman tempted me—” Yes, she had! It was what his poor wronged Milly had always said: “You’re so weak; and she’s always tempting you—”

He used to laugh at the idea of Barbara Wake as a temptress; one of poor Milly’s delusions! It seemed to him, then, that he was always pursuing, the girl evading; but now he saw her as his wife had seen her, and despised her accordingly. The indecency of her coming to the funeral! To have another look at him, he supposed…. She was insatiable … it was as if she could never fill her eyes with him. But, if he could help it, they should never be laid on him again….

٭ II ٭

HIS indignation grew; it filled the remaining hours of the endless day, the empty hours after the funeral was over; it occupied and sustained him. The President of the University, an old friend, had driven him

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back to his lonely house, had wanted to get out and come in with him. But Trenham had refused, had shaken hands at the gate, and walked alone up the path to his front door. A cold lunch was waiting on the dining-room table. He left it untouched, poured out some whisky and water, carried the glass into his study, lit his pipe and sat down in his armchair to think, not of his wife, with whom the inquest seemed somehow to have settled his account, but of Barbara Wake. With her he must settle his account himself. And he had known at once how he would do it; simply by tying up all her letters, and the little photograph he always carried in his note-case (the only likeness he had of her), and sending them back without a word.

A word! What word indeed could equal the emphasis of that silence? Barbara Wake had all the feminine passion for going over and over things; talking them inside out; in that respect she was as bad as poor Milly had been, and nothing would humiliate and exasperate her as much as an uncommented gesture of dismissal. It was so fortifying to visualize that scene—the scene of her opening the packet alone in her room—that Trenham’s sense of weariness disappeared, his pulses began to drum excitedly, and he was torn by a pang of hunger, the first he had felt in days. Was the cold meat still on the table, he wondered? Shamefacedly he stole back to the dining-room. But the table had been cleared, of course—just today! On ordinary days the maid would leave the empty dishes for hours unremoved; it was one of poor Milly’s household grievances. How often he had said to her, impatiently: “Good Lord, what does it matter?” and she had answered: “But, Ambrose, the flies!” … And now, of all days, the fool of a maid had cleared away everything. He went back to his study, sat down again, and suddenly felt too hungry to think of anything but his hunger. Even his vengeance no longer nourished him; he felt as if nothing would replace that slice of pressed beef, with potato salad and pickles, of which his eyes had rejected the disgusted glimpse an hour or two earlier.

He fought his hunger for a while longer; then he got up and rang. Promptly, attentively, Jane, the middle-aged disapproving maid, appeared—usually one had to rip out the bell before she disturbed herself. Trenham felt sheepish at having to confess his hunger to her, as if it made him appear unfeeling, unheroic; but he could not help himself. He stammered out that he supposed he ought to eat something … and Jane, at once, was all tearful sympathy. “That’s right, sir; you must try … you must force yourself….” Yes, he said; he realized that. He would force himself. “We were saying in the kitchen, Katy and me, that you couldn’t go on any longer this way. …” He could hardly wait till she had used up her phrases and got back to the pantry…. Through the half-open dining-room door he listened avidly to her steps coming and going, to the

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clatter of china, the rattle of the knife-basket. He met her at the door when she returned to tell him that his lunch was ready … and that Katy had scrambled some eggs for him the way he liked them.

At the dining-room table, when the door had closed on her, he squared his elbows, bent his head over his plate, and emptied every dish. Had he ever before known the complex exquisiteness of a slice of pressed beef? He filled his glass again, leaned luxuriously, waited without hurry for the cheese and biscuits, the black coffee, and a slice of apple-pie apologetically added from the maids’ dinner—and then—oh, resurrection!—felt for his cigar-case, and calmly, carelessly almost, under Jane’s moist and thankful eyes, cut his Corona and lit it.

“Now he’s saved,” her devout look seemed to say.

٭ III ٭

THE letters must be returned at once. But to whom could he entrust them? Certainly not to either one of the maidservants. And there was no one else but the slow-witted man who looked after the garden and the furnace, and who would have been too much dazed by such a commission to execute it without first receiving the most elaborate and reiterated explanations, and then would probably have delivered the packet to Professor Wake, or posted it—the latter a possibility to be at all costs avoided, since Trenham’s writing might have been recognised by someone at the post-office, one of the chief centres of gossip at Kingsborough. How it complicated everything to live in a small, prying community! He had no reason to suppose that any one divined the cause of his wife’s death, yet he was aware that people had seen him more than once in out-of-the-way places, and at queer hours, with Barbara Wake; and if his wife knew, why should not others suspect? For a while, at any rate, it behoved him to avoid all appearance of wishing to communicate with the girl. Returning a packet to her on the very day of the funeral would seem particularly suspicious….

Thus, after coffee and cigar, and a nip of old Cognac, argued the normal sensible man that Trenham had become again. But if his nerves had been steadied by food his will had been strengthened by it, and instead of a weak, vacillating wish to let Barbara Wake feel the weight of his scorn he was now animated by the furious resolution to crush her with it, and at once. That packet should be returned to her before night.

He shut the study door, drew out his keys, and unlocked the cabinet in which he kept the letters. He had no need now to listen for his wife’s step, or to place himself between the cabinet and the door of the study, as he used to when he thought he heard her coming. Now, had he chosen, he

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could have spread the letters out all over the table. Jane and Katy were busy in the kitchen, and the rest of the house was his to do what he liked in. He could have sat down and read the serried pages one by one, lingeringly, gloatingly, as he had so often longed to do when the risk was too great—and now they were but so much noisome rubbish to him, to be crammed into a big envelope, and sealed up out of sight. He began to hunt for an envelope….

God! What dozens and dozens of letters there were! And all written within eighteen months. No wonder poor Milly … but what a blind reckless fool he had been! The reason of their abundance was, of course, the difficulty of meeting. … So often he and Barbara had had to write because they couldn’t contrive to see each other … but still, this bombardment of letters was monstrous, inexcusable…. He hunted for a long time for an envelope big enough to contain them; finally found one, a huge linen-lined envelope meant for college documents, and jammed the letters into it with averted head. But what, he thought suddenly, if she mistook his silence, imagined he had sent her the letters simply as a measure of prudence? No—that was hardly likely, now that all need of prudence was over; but she might affect to think so, use the idea as a pretext to write and ask what he meant, what she was to understand by his returning her letters without a word. It might give her an opening, which was probably what she was hoping for, and certainly what he was most determined she should not have.

He found a sheet of note-paper, shook his fountain-pen, wrote a few words (hardly looking at the page as he did so), and thrust the note in among the letters. His hands turned clammy as he touched them; he felt cold and sick…. And the cursed flap of the envelope wouldn’t stick—those linen envelopes were always so stiff. And where the devil was the sealing-wax? He rummaged frantically among the odds and ends on his desk. A provision of sealing-wax used always to be kept in the lower left-hand drawer. He groped about in it and found only some yellowing newspaper cuttings. Milly used to be so careful about seeing that his writing-table was properly supplied; but lately—ah, his poor poor Milly! If she could only know how he was suffering and atoning already….Some string, then…. He fished some string out of another drawer. He would have to make it do instead of sealing-wax; he would have to try to tie a double knot. But his fingers, always clumsy, were twitching like a drug-fiend’s; the letters seemed to burn them through the envelope. With a shaking hand he addressed the packet, and sat there, his eyes turned from it, while he tried again to think out some safe means of having it delivered….

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٭ IV ٭

HE dined hungrily, as he had lunched; and after dinner he took his hat from its peg in the hall, and said to Jane: “I think I’ll smoke my cigar in the campus.”

That was a good idea; he saw at once that she thought it a hopeful sign, his wanting to take the air after being mewed up in the house for so long. The night was cold and moonless, and the college grounds, at that hour, would be a desert…. After all, delivering the letters himself was the safest way: openly, at the girl’s own door, without any mystery. … If Malvina, the Wakes’ old maid, should chance to open the door, he’d pull the packet out and say at once: “Oh, Malvina, I’ve found some books that Miss Barbara lent me last year, and as I’m going away—” He had gradually learned that there was nothing as safe as simplicity.

He was reassured by the fact that the night was so dark. It felt queer, unnatural somehow, to be walking abroad again like the Ambrose Trenham he used to be; he was glad there were so few people about, and that the Kingsborough suburbs were so scantily lit. He walked on, his elbow hitting now and then against the bundle, which bulged out of his pocket. Every time he felt it a sort of nausea rose in him. Professor Wake’s house stood half way down one of the quietest of Kingsborough’s outlying streets. It was withdrawn from the road under the hanging boughs of old elms; he could just catch a glint of light from one or two windows. And suddenly, as he was almost abreast of the gate, Barbara Wake came out of it.

For a moment she stood glancing about her; then she turned in the direction of the narrow lane bounding the farther side of the property. What took her there, Trenham wondered? His first impulse had been to draw back, and let her go her way; then he saw how providential the encounter was. The lane was dark, deserted—a mere passage between widely scattered houses, all asleep in their gardens. The chilly night had sent people home early; there was not a soul in sight. In another moment the packet would be in her hands, and he would have left her, just silently raising his hat.

He remembered now where she was going. The garage, built in the far corner of the garden, opened into the lane. The Wakes had no chauffeur, and Barbara, who drove the car, was sole mistress of the garage and of its keys. Trenham and she had met there sometimes; a desolate trysting-place! But what could they do, in a town like Kingsborough? At one time she had talked of setting up a studio—she dabbled in painting; but the suggestion had alarmed him (he knew the talk it would create), and he had discouraged her. Most often they took the train and

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went to Ditson, a manufacturing town an hour away, where no one knew them…. But what could she be going to the garage for at this hour?

The thought of his wife rushed into Trenham’s mind. The discovery that she had lived there beside him, knowing all, and that suddenly, when she found she could not regain his affection, life had seemed worthless, and without a moment’s hesitation she had left it … why, if he had known the quiet woman at his side had such springs of passion in her, how differently he would have regarded her, how little this girl’s insipid endearments would have mattered to him! He was a man who could not live without tenderness, without demonstrative tenderness; his own shyness and reticence had to be perpetually broken down, laughingly scattered to the winds. His wife, he now saw, had been too much like him, had secretly suffered from the same inhibitions. She had always seemed ashamed, and frightened by her feeling for him, and half-repelled, half-fascinated by his response. At times he imagined that she found him physically distasteful, and wondered how, that being the case, she could be so fiercely jealous of him. Now he understood that her cold reluctant surrender concealed a passion so violent that it humiliated her, and so incomprehensible that she had never mastered its language. She reminded him of a clumsy little girl he had once known at a dancing class he had been sent to as a boy—a little girl who had a feverish passion for dancing, but could never learn the steps. And because he too had felt the irresistible need to join in the immemorial love-dance he had ended by choosing a partner more skilled in its intricacies….

These thoughts wandered through his mind as he stood watching Barbara Wake. Slowly he took a few steps down the lane; then he halted again. He had not yet made up his mind what to do. If she were going to the garage to get something she had forgotten (as was most probable, at that hour) she would no doubt be coming back in a few moments, and he could meet her and hand her the letters. Above all, he wanted to avoid going into the garage. To do so at that moment would have been a profanation of Milly’s memory. He would have liked to efface from his own all recollection of the furtive hours spent there; but the vision returned with intolerable acuity as the girl’s slim figure, receding from him, reached the door. How often he had stood at that corner, under those heavy trees, watching for her to appear and slip in ahead of him—so that they should not be seen entering together. The elaborate precautions with which their meetings had been surrounded—how pitiably futile they now seemed! They had not even achieved their purpose, but had only belittled his love and robbed it of its spontaneity. Real passion ought to be free, reckless, audacious, unhampered by the fear of a wife’s feelings, of the University’s regulations, the President’s friendship, the deadly risk of losing one’s job and wrecking one’s career. It seemed to him now that the

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love he had given to Barbara Wake was almost as niggardly as that which he had doled out to his wife….

He walked down the lane and saw that Barbara was going into the garage. It was so dark that he could hardly make out her movements; but as he reached the door she drew out her electric lamp (that recalled memories too), and by its flash he saw her slim gloveless hand put the key into the lock. The key turned, the door creaked, and all was darkness….

The glimpse of her hand reminded him of the first time he had dared to hold it in his and press a kiss on the palm. They had met accidentally in the train, both of them on their way home from Boston, and he had proposed that they should get off at the last station before Kingsborough, and walk back by a short cut he knew, through the woods and along the King river. It was a shining summer day, and the girl had been amused at the idea and had accepted…. He could see now every line, every curve of her hand, a quick strong young hand, with long fingers, slightly blunt at the tips, and a sensuous elastic palm. It would be queer to have to carry on life without ever again knowing the feel of that hand….

Of course he would go away; he would have to. If possible he would leave the following week. Perhaps the Faculty would let him advance his Sabbatical year. If not, they would probably let him off for the winter term, and perhaps after that he might make up his mind to resign, and look for a professorship elsewhere—in the south, or in California—as far away from that girl as possible. Meanwhile what he wanted was to get away to some hot climate, steamy, tropical, where one could lie out all night on a white beach and hear the palms chatter to the waves, and the trade-winds blow from God knew where … one of those fiery flowery islands where marriage and love were not regarded so solemnly, and a man could follow his instinct without calling down a catastrophe, or feeling himself morally degraded…. Above all, he never wanted to see again a woman who argued and worried and reproached, and dramatized things that ought to be as simple as eating and drinking….

Barbara, he had to admit, had never been frightened or worried, had never reproached him. The girl had the true sporting instinct; he never remembered her being afraid of risks, or nervous about “appearances.” Once or twice, at moments when detection seemed imminent, she had half frightened him by her cool resourcefulness. He sneered at the remembrance. “An old hand, no doubt!” But the sneer did not help him. Whose fault was it if the girl had had to master the arts of dissimulation? Whose but his? He alone (he saw in sudden terror) was responsible for what he supposed would be called her downfall. Poor child—poor Barbara! Was it possible that he, the seducer, the corrupter, had presumed to judge her? The thought was monstrous…. His resentment had already

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vanished like a puff of mist. The feeling of his responsibility, which had seemed so abhorrent, was now almost sweet to him. He was responsible—he owed her something! Thank heaven for that! For now he could raise his passion into a duty, and thus disguised and moralized, could once more—oh, could he, dared he?—admit it openly into his life. The mere possibility made him suddenly feel less cold and desolate. That the something-not-himself that made for Righteousness should take on the tender lineaments, the human warmth of love, should come to sit by his hearth in the shape of Barbara—how warm, how happy and reassured it made him! He had a swift vision of her, actually sitting there in the shabby old leather chair (he would have it recovered), her slim feet on the faded Turkey rug (he would have it replaced). It was almost a pity—he thought madly—that they would probably not be able to stay on at Kingsborough, there, in that very house where for so long he had not even dared to look at her letters…. Of course, if they did decide to, he would have it all done over for her.

٭ V ٭

THE garage door creaked and again he saw the flash of the electric lamp on her bare hand as she turned the key; then she moved toward him in the darkness.

“Barbara!”

She stopped short at his whisper. They drew closer to each other.

“You wanted to see me?” she whispered back. Her voice flowed over him like summer air.

“Can we go in there—?” he gestured.

“Into the garage? Yes—I suppose so.”

They turned and walked in silence through the obscurity. The comfort of her nearness was indescribable.

She unlocked the door again, and he followed her in. “Take care; I left the wheel-jack somewhere,” she warned him. Automatically he produced a match, and she lit the candle in an old broken-paned lantern that hung on a nail against the wall. How familiar it all was—how often he had brought out his match-box and she had lit that candle! In the little pool of yellowish light they stood and looked at each other.

“You didn’t expect me?” he stammered.

“I’m not sure I didn’t,” she returned softly, and he just caught her smile in the half-light. The divineness of it!

“I didn’t suppose I should see you. I just wandered out. …” He suddenly felt the difficulty of accounting for himself.

“My poor Ambrose!” She laid her hand on his arm. “How I’ve ached for you—”

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Yes; that was right; the tender sympathizing friend … anything else, at that moment, would have been unthinkable. He drew a breath of relief and self-satisfaction. Her pity made him feel almost heroic—had he not lost sight of his own sufferings in the thought of hers? “It’s been awful—” he muttered.

“Yes; I know.”

She sat down on the step of the old Packard, and he found a wooden stool and dragged it into the candle-ray.

“I’m glad you came,” she began, still in the same soft healing voice, “because I’m going away tomorrow early, and—”

He started to his feet, upsetting the stool with a crash. “Going away? Early tomorrow?” Why hadn’t he known of this? He felt weak and injured. Where could she be going in this sudden way? If they hadn’t happened to meet, would he have known nothing of it till she was gone? His heart grew small and cold.

She was saying quietly: “You must see—it’s better. I’m going out to the Jim Southwicks, in California. They’re always asking me. Mother and father think it’s on account of my colds … the winter climate here … they think I’m right.” She paused, but he could find nothing to say. The future had become a featureless desert. “I wanted to see you before going,” she continued, “and I didn’t exactly know … I hoped you’d come—”

“When are you coming back?” he interrupted desperately.

“Oh, I don’t know; they want me for the winter, of course. There’s a crazy plan about Hawaii and Samoa … sounds lovely, doesn’t it? And from there on … But I don’t know. …”

He felt a suffocation in his throat. If he didn’t cry out, do something at once to stop her, he would choke. “You can’t go—you can’t leave me like this!” It seemed to him that his voice had risen to a shout.

“Ambrose—” she murmured, subdued, half-warning.

“You can’t. How can you? It’s madness. You don’t understand. You say you ought to go—it’s better you should go. What do you mean—why better? Are you afraid of what people might say? Is that it? How can they say anything when they know we’re going to be married? Don’t you know we’re going to be married?” he burst out weakly, his words stumbling over each other in the effort to make her understand.

She hesitated a moment, and he stood waiting in an agony of suspense. How women loved to make men suffer! At last she said in a constrained voice: “I don’t think we ought to talk of all this yet—”

Rebuking him—she was actually rebuking him for his magnanimity! But couldn’t she see—couldn’t she understand? Or was it that she really enjoyed torturing him? “How can I help talking of it, when you tell me you’re going away tomorrow morning? Did you really mean to go without even telling me?”

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“If I hadn’t seen you I should have written,” she faltered.

“Well, now I’m here you needn’t write. All you’ve got to do is to answer me,” he retorted almost angrily. The calm way in which she dealt with the situation was enough to madden a man—actually as if she hadn’t made up her mind, good God! “What are you afraid of?” he burst out harshly.

“I’m not afraid—only I didn’t expect … I thought we’d talk of all this later … if you feel the same when I come back—if we both do.”

“If we both do!” Ah, there was the sting—the devil’s claw! What was it? Was she being super-humanly magnanimous—or proud, over-sensitive, afraid that he might be making the proposal out of pity? Poor girl—poor child! That must be it. He loved her all the more for it, bless her! Or was it (ah, now again the claw tightened), was it that she really didn’t want to commit herself, wanted to reserve her freedom for this crazy expedition, to see whether she couldn’t do better by looking about out there—she, so young, so fresh and radiant—than by binding herself in advance to an elderly professor at Kingsborough? Hawaii—Samoa—swarming with rich idle yachtsmen and young naval officers (he had an excruciating vision of a throng of Madame Butterfly tenors in immaculate white duck and gold braid)—cock-tails, fox-trot, moonlight in the tropics … he felt suddenly middle-aged, round-shouldered, shabby, with thinning graying hair…. Of course what she wanted was to look round and see what her chances were! He retrieved the fallen stool, set it up again, and sat down on it.

“I suppose you’re not sure you’ll feel the same when you get back? Is that it?” he suggested bitterly.

Again she hesitated. “I don’t think we ought to decide now—tonight. …”

His anger blazed. “Why oughtn’t we? Tell me that! I’ve decided. Why shouldn’t you?”

“You haven’t really decided either,” she returned gently.

“I haven’t—haven’t I? Now what do you mean by that?” He forced a laugh that was meant to be playful but sounded defiant. He was aware that his voice and words were getting out of hand—but what business had she to keep him on the stretch like this?

“I mean, after what you’ve been through….”

“After what I’ve been through? But don’t you see that’s the very reason? I’m at the breaking-point—I can’t bear any more.”

“I know; I know.” She got up and came close, laying a quiet hand on his shoulder. “I’ve suffered for you too. The shock it must have been. That’s the reason why I don’t want to say anything now that you might—”

He shook off her hand, and sprang up. “What hypocrisy!” He heard himself beginning to shout again. “I suppose what you mean is that you

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want to be free to marry out there if you see anybody you like better. Then why not admit it at once?”

“Because it’s not what I mean. I don’t want to marry any one else, Ambrose.”

Oh, the melting music of it! He lifted his hands and hid his burning eyes in them. The sound of her voice wove magic passes above his forehead. Was it possible that such bliss could come out of such anguish? He forgot the place—forgot the day—and abruptly, blindly, caught her by the arm, and flung his own about her.

“Oh, Ambrose—” he heard her, reproachful, panting. He struggled with her, feverish for her lips.

In the semiobscurity there was the sound of something crashing to the floor between them. They drew apart, and she looked at him, bewildered. “What was that?”

What was it? He knew well enough; a shiver of cold ran over him. The letters, of course—her letters! The bulging clumsily-tied envelope had dropped out of his pocket onto the floor of the garage; in the fall the string had come undone, and the mass of papers had tumbled out, scattering themselves like a pack of cards at Barbara’s feet. She picked up her electric lamp, and bending over shot its sharp ray on them.

“Why, they’re letters! Ambrose—are they my letters?” She waited; but silence lay on him like lead. “Was that what you came for?” she exclaimed.

If there was an answer to that he couldn’t find it, and stupidly, without knowing what he was doing, he bent down and began to gather up the letters.

For a while he was aware of her standing there motionless, watching him; then she too bent over, and took up the gaping linen envelope. “Miss Barbara Wake,” she read out; and suddenly she began to laugh. “Why,” she said, “there’s something left in it! A letter for me? Is that it?”

He put his hand out. “Barbara—don’t! Barbara—I implore you!”

She turned the electric ray on the sheet of paper, which detached itself from the shadows with the solidity of a graven tablet. Slowly she read out, in a cool measured voice, almost as though she were parodying his poor phrases: “‘November tenth…. You will probably feel as I do’ (no—don’t snatch! Ambrose, I forbid you!) ‘You will probably feel, as I do, that after what has happened you and I can never’—” She broke off and raised her eyes to Trenham’s. “‘After what has happened’? I don’t understand. What do you mean? What has happened, Ambrose—between you and me?”

He had retreated a few steps, and stood leaning against the side of the motor. “I didn’t say ‘between you and me.’“

“What did you say?” She turned the light once more on the fatal

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page. “‘You and I can never wish to meet again.’” Her hand sank, and she stood facing him in silence.

Feeling her gaze fixed on him, he muttered miserably: “I asked you not to read the thing.”

“But if it was meant for me why do you want me not to read it?”

“Can’t you see? It doesn’t mean anything. I was raving mad when I wrote it. …”

“But you wrote it only a few hours ago. It’s dated today. How can you have changed so in a few hours? And you say: ‘After what has happened.’ That must mean something. What does it mean? What has happened?”

He thought he would go mad indeed if she repeated the word again.

“Oh, don’t—!” he exclaimed.

“Don’t what?”

“Say it over and over—’what has happened?’ Can’t you understand that just at first—”

He broke off, and she prompted him: “Just at first—?”

“I couldn’t bear the horror alone. Like a miserable coward I let myself think you were partly responsible—I wanted to think so, you understand….”

Her face seemed to grow white and wavering in the shadows. “What do you mean? Responsible for what?”

He straightened his shoulders and said slowly: “Responsible for her death. I was too weak to carry it alone.”

“Her death?” There was a silence that seemed to make the shadowy place darker. He could hardly see her face now, she was so far off. “How could I be responsible?” she broke off, and then began again: “Are you—trying to tell me—that it wasn’t an accident?”

“No—it wasn’t an accident.”

“She—”

“Well, can’t you guess?” he stammered, panting.

“You mean—she killed herself?”

“Yes.”

“Because of us?”

He could not speak, and after a moment she hurried on: “But what makes you think so? What proof have you? Did she tell any one? Did she leave a message—a letter?”

He summoned his voice to his dry throat. “No; nothing.”

“Well, then—?”

“She’d told me beforehand; she’d warned me—”

“Warned you?”

“That if I went on seeing you … and I did go on seeing you … she

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warned me again and again. Do you understand now?” he exclaimed, twisting round on her fiercely, like an animal turning on its torturer.

There was an interval of silence—endless it seemed to him. She did not speak or move; but suddenly he heard a low sobbing sound. She was weeping, weeping like a frightened child…. Well, of all the unexpected turns of fate! A moment ago he had seemed to feel her strength flowing into his cold veins, had thought to himself: “I shall never again be alone with my horror—” and now the horror had spread from him to her, and he felt her inwardly recoiling as though she shuddered away from the contagion.

“Oh, how dreadful, how dreadful—” She began to cry again, like a child swept by a fresh gust of misery as the last subsides.

“Why dreadful?” he burst out, unnerved by the continuance of her soft unremitting sobs. “You must have known she didn’t like it—didn’t you?”

Through her lament a whisper issued: “I never dreamed she knew. …”

“You mean to say you thought we’d deceived her? All those months? In a one-horse place where everybody is on the watch to see what everybody else is doing? Likely, isn’t it? My God—”

“I never dreamed … I never dreamed …” she reiterated.

His exasperation broke out again. “Well, now you begin to see what I’ve suffered—”

“Suffered? You suffered?” She uttered a low sound of derision. “I see what she must have suffered—what we both of us must have made her suffer.”

“Ah, at least you say ‘both of us’!”

She made no answer, and through her silence he felt again that she was inwardly shrinking, averting herself from him. What! His accomplice deserting him? She acknowledged that she was his accomplice—she said “both of us”—and yet she was drawing back from him, flying from him, leaving him alone! Ah, no—she shouldn’t escape as easily as that, she shouldn’t leave him; he couldn’t face that sense of being alone again. “Barbara!” he cried out, as if the actual distance between them had already doubled.

She still remained silent, and he hurried on, almost cringingly:

“Don’t think I blame you, child—don’t think …”

“Oh, what does it matter, when I blame myself?” she wailed out, her face in her hands.

“Blame yourself? What folly! When you say you didn’t know—”

“Of course I didn’t know! How can you imagine—? But this dreadful thing has happened; and you knew it might happen … you knew it all along … all the while it was in the back of your mind … the days when

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we used to meet here … and the days when we went to Ditson … oh, that horrible room at Ditson! All that time she was sitting at home alone, knowing everything, and hating me as if I’d been her murderess. …”

“Good God, Barbara! Don’t you suppose I blame myself?”

“But if you blamed yourself how could you go on, how could you let me think she didn’t care?”

“I didn’t suppose she did,” he muttered sullenly.

“But you say she told you—she warned you! Over and over again she warned you.”

“Well, I didn’t want to believe her—and so I didn’t. When a man’s infatuated … Don’t you see it’s hard enough to bear without all this? Haven’t you any pity for me, Barbara?”

“Pity?” she repeated slowly. “The only pity I feel is for her—for what she must have gone through, day after day, week after week, sitting there all alone and knowing … imagining exactly what you were saying to me … the way you kissed me … and watching the clock, and counting the hours … and then having you come back, and explain, and pretend—I suppose you did pretend? … and all the while secretly knowing you were lying, and yet longing to believe you … and having warned you, and seeing that her warnings made no difference … that you didn’t care if she died or not … that you were doing all you could to kill her … that you were probably counting the days till she was dead!” Her passionate apostrophe broke down in a sob, and again she stood weeping like an inconsolable child.

Trenham was struck silent. It was true. He had never been really able to enter into poor Milly’s imaginings, the matter of her lonely musings; and here was this girl to whom, in a flash, that solitary mind lay bare. Yes; that must have been the way Milly felt—he knew it now—and the way poor Barbara herself would feel if he ever betrayed her. Ah, but he was never going to betray her—the thought was monstrous! Never for a moment would he cease to love her. This catastrophe had bound them together as a happy wooing could never have done. It was her love for him, her fear for their future, that was shaking her to the soul, giving her this unnatural power to enter into Milly’s mind. If only he could find words to reassure her, now, at once. But he could not think of any.

“Barbara—Barbara,” he kept on repeating, as if her name were a sort of incantation.

“Oh, think of it—those lonely endless hours! I wonder if you ever did think of them before? When you used to go home after one of our meetings, did you remember each time what she’d told you, and begin to wonder, as you got near the house, if she’d done it that day!”

“Barbara—”

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“Perhaps you did—perhaps you were even vexed with her for being so slow about it. Were you?”

“Oh, Barbara—Barbara …”

“And when the day came at last, were you surprised? Had you got so impatient waiting that you’d begun to believe she’d never do it? Were there days when you went almost mad at having to wait so long for your freedom? It was the way I used to feel when I was rushing for the train to Ditson, and father would call me at the last minute to write letters for him, or mother to replace her on some charity committee; there were days when I could have killed them, almost, for interfering with me, making me miss one of our precious hours together. Killed them, I say! Don’t you suppose I know how murderers feel? How you feel—for you’re a murderer, you know! And now you come here, when the earth’s hardly covered her, and try to kiss me, and ask me to marry you—and think, I suppose, that by doing so you’re covering up her memory more securely, you’re pounding down the earth on her a little harder. …”

She broke off, as if her own words terrified her, and hid her eyes from the vision they called up.

Trenham stood without moving. He had gathered up the letters, and they lay in a neat pile on the floor between himself and her, because there seemed no other place to put them. He said to himself (reflecting how many million men must have said the same thing at such moments): “After this she’ll calm down, and by tomorrow she’ll be telling me how sorry she is….” But the reflection did not seem to help him. She might forget—but he would not. He had forgotten too easily before; he had an idea that his future would be burdened with long arrears of remembrance. Just as the girl described Milly, so he would see her in the years to come. He would have to pay the interest on his oblivion; and it would not help much to have Barbara pay it with him. The job was probably one that would have to be accomplished alone. At last words shaped themselves without his knowing it. “I’d better go,” he said.

Unconsciously he had expected an answer; an appeal; a protest, perhaps. But none came. He moved away a few steps in the direction of the door. As he did so he heard Barbara break into a laugh, and the sound, so unnatural in that place, and at that moment, brought him abruptly to a halt.

“Yes—?” he said, half turning, as though she had called him.

“And I sent a wreath—I sent her a wreath! It’s on her grave now—it hasn’t even had time to fade!”

“Oh—” he gasped, as if she had struck him across the face. They stood forlornly confronting each other. Her last words seemed to have created an icy void between them. Within himself a voice whispered:

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“She can’t find anything worse than that.” But he saw by the faint twitch of her lips that she was groping, groping—

“And the worst of it is,” she broke out, “that if I didn’t go away, and we were to drag on here together, after a time I might even drift into forgiving you.”

Yes; she was right; that was certainly the worst of it. Human imagination could not go beyond that, he thought. He moved away again stiffly.

“Well, you are going away, aren’t you?” he said.

“Yes; I’m going.”

He walked back slowly through the dark deserted streets. His brain, reeling with the shock of the encounter, gradually cleared, and looked about on the new world within itself. At first the inside of his head was like a deserted house out of which all the furniture has been moved, down to the last familiar encumbrances. It was empty, absolutely empty. But gradually a small speck of consciousness appeared in the dreary void, like a mouse scurrying across bare floors. He stopped on a street corner to say to himself: “But after all nothing is changed—absolutely nothing. I went there to tell her that we should probably never want to see each other again; and she agreed with me. She agreed with me—that’s all.”

It was a relief, almost, to have even that little thought stirring about in the resonant void of his brain. He walked on more quickly, reflecting, as he reached his own corner: “In a minute it’s going to rain.” He smiled a little at his unconscious precaution in hurrying home to escape the rain. “Jane will begin to fret—she’ll be sure to notice that I didn’t take my umbrella.” And his cold heart felt a faint warmth at the thought that some one in the huge hostile world would really care whether he had taken his umbrella or not. “But probably she’s in bed and asleep,” he mused, despondently.

On his door-step he paused and began to grope for his latch-key. He felt impatiently in one pocket after another—but the key was not to be found. He had an idea that he had left it lying on his study table when he came in after—after what? Why, that very morning, after the funeral! He had flung the key down among his papers—and Jane would never notice that it was there. She would never think of looking; she had been bidden often enough on no account to meddle with the things on his desk. And besides she would take for granted that he had the key in his pocket. And here he stood, in the middle of the night, locked out of his own house—

A sudden exasperation possessed him. He was aware that he must have lost all sense of proportion, all perspective, for he felt as baffled and as angry as when Barbara’s furious words had beaten down on him. Yes;

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it made him just as unhappy to find himself locked out of his house—he could have sat down on the door-step and cried. And here was the rain beginning….

He put his hand to the bell; but did the front door bell ring in the far-off attic where the maids were lodged? And was there the least chance of the faint tinkle from the pantry mounting two flights, and penetrating to their sleep-muffled ears? Utterly improbable, he knew. And if he couldn’t make them hear he would have to spend the night at a hotel—the night of his wife’s funeral! And the next morning all Kingsborough would know of it, from the President of the University to the boy who delivered the milk….

But his hand had hardly touched the bell when he felt a vibration of life in the house. First there was a faint flash of light through the transom above the front door; then, scarcely distinguishable from the noises of the night, a step sounded far off: it grew louder on the hall floor, and after an interval that seemed endless the door was flung open by a Jane still irreproachably capped and aproned.

“Why, Jane—I didn’t think you’d be awake! I forgot my key. …”

“I know, sir. I found it. I was waiting.” She took his wet coat from him. “Dear, dear! And you hadn’t your umbrella.”

He stepped into his own hall, and heard her close and bar the door behind him. He liked to listen to that familiar slipping of the bolts and clink of the chain. He liked to think that she minded about his not having his umbrella. It was his own house, after all—and this friendly hand was shutting him safely into it. The dreadful sense of loneliness melted a little at the old reassuring touch of habit.

“Thank you, Jane; sorry I kept you up,” he muttered, nodding to her as he went upstairs.

-END-