And this apartment was like that. It was pink. It smelled pink!
Mrs. Cromwell, attired in a wrapper of pink and black, opened the door. Her hair was yellow, heightened, Roxanne imagined, by a dash of peroxide in the rinsing water every week. Her eyes were a thin waxen blue—she was pretty and too consciously graceful. Her cordiality was strident and intimate, hostility melted so quickly to hospitality that it seemed they were both merely in the face and voice—never touching nor touched by the deep core of egotism beneath.
But to Roxanne these things were secondary; her eyes were caught and held in uncanny fascination by the wrapper. It was vilely unclean. From its lowest hem up four inches it was sheerly dirty with the blue dust of the floor; for the next three inches it was gray—then it shaded off into its natural color, which was—pink. It was dirty at the sleeves, too, and at the collar—and when the woman turned to lead the way into the parlor, Roxanne was sure that her neck was dirty.
A one-sided rattle of conversation began. Mrs. Cromwell became explicit about her likes and dislikes, her head, her stomach, her teeth, her apartment—avoiding with a sort of insolent meticulousness any inclusion of Roxanne with life, as if presuming that Roxanne, having been dealt a blow, wished life to be carefully skirted.
Roxanne smiled. That kimono! That neck!
After five minutes a little boy toddled into the parlor—a dirty little boy clad in dirty pink rompers. His face was smudgy—Roxanne wanted to take him into her lap and wipe his nose; other parts in the vicinity of his head needed attention, his tiny shoes were kicked out at the toes. Unspeakable!
“What a darling little boy!” exclaimed Roxanne, smiling radiantly. “Come here to me.”
Mrs. Cromwell looked coldly at her son.
“He will get dirty. Look at that face!” She held her head on one side and regarded it critically.
“Isn’t he a darling?” repeated Roxanne.
“Look at his rompers,” frowned Mrs. Cromwell.
“He needs a change, don’t you, George?”
George stared at her curiously. To his mind the word rompers connotated a garment extraneously smeared, as this one.
“I tried to make him look respectable this morning,” complained Mrs. Cromwell as one whose patience had been sorely tried, “and I found he didn’t have any more rompers—so rather than have him go round without any I put him back in those—and his face—”
“How many pairs has he?” Roxanne’s voice was pleasantly curious. “How many feather fans have you?” she might have asked.
“Oh,—” Mrs. Cromwell considered, wrinkling her pretty brow. “Five, I think. Plenty, I know.”
“You can get them for fifty cents a pair.”
Mrs. Cromwell’s eyes showed surprise—and the faintest superiority. The price of rompers!
“Can you really? I had no idea. He ought to have plenty, but I haven’t had a minute all week to send the laundry out.” Then, dismissing the subject as irrelevant—“I must show you some things—”
They rose and Roxanne followed her past an open bathroom door whose garment-littered floor showed indeed that the laundry hadn’t been sent out for some time, into another room that was, so to speak, the quintessence of pinkness. This was Mrs. Cromwell’s room.
Here the hostess opened a closet door and displayed before Roxanne’s eyes an amazing collection of lingerie.
There were dozens of filmy marvels of lace and silk, all clean, unruffled, seemingly not yet touched. On hangers beside them were three new evening dresses.
“I have some beautiful things,” said Mrs. Cromwell, “but not much of a chance to wear them. Harry doesn’t care about going out.” Spite crept into her voice. “He’s perfectly content to let me play nursemaid and housekeeper all day and loving wife in the evening.”
Roxanne smiled again.
“You’ve got some beautiful clothes here.”
“Yes, I have. Let me show you——”
“Beautiful,” repeated Roxanne, interrupting, “but I’ll have to run if I’m going to catch my train.”
She felt that her hands were trembling. She wanted to put them on this woman and shake her—shake her. She wanted her locked up somewhere and set to scrubbing floors.
“Beautiful,” she repeated, “and I just came in for a moment.”
“Well, I’m sorry Harry isn’t here.”
They moved toward the door.
“—and, oh,” said Roxanne with an effort—yet her voice was still gentle and her lips were smiling—“I think it’s Argile’s where you can get those rompers. Good-by.”
It was not until she had reached the station and bought her ticket to Marlowe that Roxanne realized it was the first five minutes in six months that her mind had been off Jeffrey.
IV
A week later Harry appeared at Marlowe, arrived unexpectedly at five o’clock, and coming up the walk sank into a porch chair in a state of exhaustion. Roxanne herself had had a busy day and was worn out. The doctors were coming at five-thirty, bringing a celebrated nerve specialist from New York. She was excited and thoroughly depressed, but Harry’s eyes made her sit down beside him.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, Roxanne,” he denied. “I came to see how Jeff was doing. Don’t you bother about me.”
“Harry,” insisted Roxanne, “there’s something the matter.”
“Nothing,” he repeated. “How’s Jeff?”
Anxiety darkened her face.
“He’s a little worse, Harry. Doctor Jewett has come on from New York. They thought he could tell me something definite. He’s going to try and find whether this paralysis has anything to do with the original blood clot.”
Harry rose.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said jerkily. “I didn’t know you expected a consultation. I wouldn’t have come. I thought I’d just rock on your porch for an hour—”
“Sit down,” she commanded.
Harry hesitated.
“Sit down, Harry, dear boy.” Her kindness flooded out now—enveloped him. “I know there’s something the matter. You’re white as a sheet. I’m going to get you a cool bottle of beer.”
All at once he collapsed into his chair and covered his face with his hands.
“I can’t make her happy,” he said slowly. “I’ve tried and I’ve tried. This morning we had some words about breakfast—I’d been getting my breakfast down town—and—well, just after I went to the office she left the house, went East to her mother’s with George and a suitcase full of lace underwear.”
“Harry!”
“And I don’t know—”
There was a crunch on the gravel, a car turning into the drive. Roxanne uttered a little cry.
“It’s Doctor Jewett.”
“Oh, I’ll—”
“You’ll wait, won’t you?” she interrupted abstractedly. He saw that his problem had already died on the troubled surface of her mind.
There was an embarrassing minute of vague, elided introductions and then Harry followed the party inside and watched them disappear up the stairs. He went into the library and sat down on the big sofa.
For an hour he watched the sun creep up the patterned folds of the chintz curtains. In the deep quiet a trapped wasp buzzing on the inside of the window pane assumed the proportions of a clamor. From time to time another buzzing drifted down from up-stairs, resembling several more larger wasps caught on larger window-panes. He heard low footfalls, the clink of bottles, the clamor of pouring water.
What had he and Roxanne done that life should deal these crashing blows to them? Up-stairs there was taking place a living inquest on the soul of his friend; he was sitting here in a quiet room listening to the plaint of a wasp, just as when he was a boy he had been compelled by a strict aunt to sit hour-long on a chair and atone for some misbehavior. But who had put him here? What ferocious aunt had leaned out of the sky to make him atone for—what?
About Kitty he felt a great hopelessness. She was too expensive—that was the irremediable difficulty. Suddenly he hated her. He wanted to throw her down and kick at her—to tell her she was a cheat and a leech—that she was dirty. Moreover, she must give him his boy.
He rose and began pacing up and down the room. Simultaneously he heard some one begin walking along the hallway up-stairs in exact time with him. He found himself wondering if they would walk in time until the person reached the end of the hall.
Kitty had gone to her mother. God help her, what a mother to go to! He tried to imagine the meeting: the abused wife collapsing upon the mother’s breast. He could not. That Kitty was capable of any deep grief was unbelievable. He had gradually grown to think of her as something unapproachable and callous. She would get a divorce, of course, and eventually she would marry again. He began to consider this. Whom would she marry? He laughed bitterly, stopped; a picture flashed before him—of Kitty’s arms around some man whose face he could not see, of Kitty’s lips pressed close to other lips in what was surely passion.
“God!” he cried aloud. “God! God! God!”
Then the pictures came thick and fast. The Kitty of this morning faded; the soiled kimono rolled up and disappeared; the pouts, and rages, and tears all were washed away. Again she was Kitty Carr—Kitty Carr with yellow hair and great baby eyes. Ah, she had loved him, she had loved him.
After a while he perceived that something was amiss with him, something that had nothing to do with Kitty or Jeff, something of a different genre. Amazingly it burst on him at last; he was hungry. Simple enough! He would go into the kitchen in a moment and ask the colored cook for a sandwich. After that he must go back to the city.
He paused at the wall,
