Part 102

When he finally went to the 56th Street house it was on impulse. He had meant to pass it, but he found himself stopping, and half angrily made his determination. He would follow the cursed thing through now and get it over. Perhaps he had discounted it too much in advance, waited too long, hoped too much. Perhaps it was simply that that last phase was already passing. But he felt no thrill, no expectancy, as he rang the bell and was admitted to the familiar hall.

It was peopled with ghosts, for him. Upstairs, in the drawing-room that extended across the front of the house, she had told him of her engagement to Howard Lucas. Later on, coming back from Europe, he had gone back there to find Lucas installed in the house, his cigars on the table, his photographs on the piano, his books scattered about. And Lucas himself, smiling, handsome and triumphant on the hearth rug, dressed for dinner except for a brocaded dressing-gown, putting his hand familiarly on Beverly's shoulder, and calling her “old girl.”

He wandered into the small room to the right of the hall, where in other days he had waited to be taken upstairs, and stood looking out of the window. He heard some one, a caller, come down, get into his overcoat in the hall and go out, but he was not interested. He did not know that Leslie Ward had stood outside the door for a minute, had seen and recognized him, and had then slammed out.

He was quite steady as the butler preceded him up the stairs. He even noticed certain changes in the house, the door at the landing converted into an arch, leaded glass in the dining-room windows beyond it. But he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror, and saw himself a shabby contrast to the former days.

He faced her, still with that unexpected composure, and he saw her very little changed. Even the movement with which she came toward him with both hands out was familiar.

“Jud!” she said. “Oh, my dear!”

He saw that she was profoundly moved, and suddenly he was sorry for her. Sorry for the years behind them both, for the burden she had carried, for the tears in her eyes.

“Dear old Bev!” he said.

She put her head against his shoulder, and cried unrestrainedly; and he held her there, saying small, gentle, soothing things, smoothing her hair. But all the time he knew that life had been playing him another trick; he felt a great tenderness for her and profound pity, but he did not love her, or want her. He saw that after all the suffering and waiting, the death and exile, he was left at the end with nothing. Nothing at all.

When she was restored to a sort of tense composure he found to his discomfort that woman-like she intended to abase herself thoroughly and completely. She implored his forgiveness for his long exile, gazing at him humbly, and when he said in a matter-of-fact tone that he had been happy, giving him a look which showed that she thought he was lying to save her unhappiness.

“You are trying to make it easier for me. But I know, Jud.”

“I'm telling you the truth,” he said, patiently. “There's one point I didn't think necessary to tell your brother. For a good while I didn't remember anything about it. If it hadn't been for that--well, I don't know. Anyhow, don't look at me as though I willfully saved you. I didn't.”

She sat still, pondering that, and twisting a ring on her finger.

“What do you mean to do?” she asked, after a pause.

“I don't know. I'll find something.”

“You won't go back to your work?”

“I don't see how I can. I'm in hiding, in a sort of casual fashion.”

To his intense discomfiture she began to cry again. She couldn't go through with it. She would go back to Norada and tell the whole thing. She had let Fred influence her, but she saw now she couldn't do it. But for the first time he felt that in this one thing she was not sincere. Her grief and abasement had been real enough, but now he felt she was acting.

“Suppose we don't go into that now,” he said gently. “You've had about all you can stand.” He got up awkwardly. “I suppose you are playing to-night?”

She nodded, looking up at him dumbly.

“Better lie down, then, and--forget me.” He smiled down at her.

“I've never forgotten you, Jud. And now, seeing you again--I--”

Her face worked. She continued to look up at him, piteously. The appalling truth came to him then, and that part of him which had remained detached and aloof, watching, almost smiled at the irony. She cared for him. Out of her memories she had built up something to care for, something no more himself than she was the woman of his dreams; but with this difference, that she was clinging, woman-fashion, to the thing she had built, and he had watched it crumble before his eyes.

“Will you promise to go and rest?”

“Yes. If you say so.”

She was acquiescent and humble. Her eyes were soft, faithful, childlike.

“I've suffered so, Jud.”

“I know.”