Ladies Must Live Part 28

The next day Riatt paid his bill at the hotel and went away without leaving an address.

Few of us have driven past rows of suburban cottages, or through streets lined by city flats, without considering how easy it would be to sink one's ident.i.ty and become part of a new unknown life. Riatt certainly had often thought of such a possibility and now he put his plans into operation. He took no great precautions against discovery, for he had no notion that any one would be particularly interested in knowing his whereabouts. But he allowed those at home to suppose he was working in New York, as he suggested to those in New York that he had very naturally gone home.

As a matter of fact, he had taken a position with a new company which was constructing aeroplanes for the market, into which in past times he had put a little money. He hired a small flat in Brooklyn, on the top floor, so that he had a glimpse of the harbor from his sitting-room windows. He spent the last of his ready money in buying out the dilapidated furniture of his predecessor; and then with the a.s.sistance of the janitor's wife, who gave him his breakfast and did what she called "redding up the place," he began to live on the slim salary that his new job gave him.

Every afternoon he would take the new machines out and fly at sunset over the sandy plains of Long Island, would dine cheaply at some neighboring restaurant, and would return to his flat about ten, go to bed early and be ready for work the next morning.

The only relaxation he allowed himself was the excitement of hating Christine, to which he now devoted a great deal of time and thought. It was the only thing that gave life any interest.

What was loss of money, after all, he said to himself, for an able-bodied man? He could bear that well enough, if his life had not been poisoned, if hope hadn't been taken from him. She had spoilt him for everything else. His success, if ever he should succeed, would not bring him what most men wanted of success--a companion and a home. He had nothing to work for, and yet nothing to do except work. It was all his own fault, he said; and blamed her all the more bitterly. He was glad, he thought, that he had made it impossible for her to have a final interview with him; and in his heart he could not forgive her for not having overcome the obstacles to a meeting which he had set up in the last frenzied days in New York.

"If I were of a revengeful disposition," he said to himself, "I should ask nothing better than that she should marry Linburne"; and he concluded that he was not revengeful because he found he did not want it. He made up his mind after the most prolonged consideration that a woman such as Christine exercised the maximum influence for evil; a thoroughly wicked woman could not help inspiring distrust, but a nature like hers had enough good to attach you and yet left you nothing to depend upon.

He read the papers, awaiting the announcement of her marriage, but found no mention of her name except once, toward the end of May, a short paragraph announcing that she had gone out of town for the season.

It was soon after he had read this that he came home earlier than usual and let himself into his little flat. The day had been successful, a new device in the engine was working well and the company had had a large order from abroad. And as usual, with the prospect of success had come to him a bitter sense of the emptiness of the future. He was thinking of Christine, and when he turned the switch of the electric light, there she was. She was sitting in a large shabby armchair, drawn close to the window, so that she could look out at the river. She had taken off her hat, and her hair shown particularly golden and her eyes looked brightly blue in the sudden glare of light.

"You're dreadfully late," she said, quite as if she had charge of his comings and goings. "I've been here hours and hours and hours."

Now that he actually saw her before him, it was neither love nor hate that he felt, but an undefinable and overmastering emotion that seemed to petrify him, so that he stood there quite silent with his hand on the switch.

"Well," she went on, "aren't you surprised to see me?"

He bent his head.

"Can you guess why I have come?"

He shook his head.

She looked a little distressed at this. "Then perhaps I've made a mistake in coming."

At this he spoke for the first time. "I should say that the chances were that you had," he said, and his tone was not agreeable.

The edge of his words seemed to give her back all her confidence. "Now, how strange that you should not know why I'm here! I've come, of course, to return your pearls." He saw now, between the laces of her summer dress that she was wearing them. "In common honesty I could hardly keep them."

She put up her hands to the clasp, but it did not yield at once to her touch, and she looked up at him. "I think you'll have to undo it for me,"

she murmured, with bent head.

"I don't want them," he answered, with temper. "I never want to see them again."

"Nor me, either, perhaps?"

"Nor you either--perhaps."

She rose and approached him. "I'll keep them on one condition, Max--that you take permanent charge of both of us." Then seeing that she had produced no change in his expression, she came very close indeed.

"There's no use in looking like a stone image, Max. It won't save you."

"Save me! And what is my danger?"

"I'm your danger, my dear."

"Not any longer, Christine."

"You mean you don't love me any more?"

"Not a bit."

At this she s.h.i.+fted her ground with admirable ease.

"In that case," she said cheerfully, "we can talk the whole subject over quite dispa.s.sionately."

"Quite, if there were anything to talk over."

"Only first," she said, "aren't you going to ask me to stay to dinner?

It's very late, you know--"

"I don't dine here," he answered, "and I doubt if you would eat very much at the restaurant where I take my meals."

"Well, would you mind my going into the kitchen and making myself a cup of tea?"

He gave his consent, but evinced no intention of accompanying her. To see her like this, in his own home, where he had so often imagined her being and where she would never be again, was torture to him.

After an interval that seemed to him an eternity, she came back flushed and triumphant, carrying a tray on which were tea, toast and scrambled eggs.

"There," she said, "don't you think I've improved? Don't you think I'm rather a good housewife?"

The element of pathos in her self-satisfaction was too much for him. "I'm afraid I'm not in the mood either for comedy or for supper," he said.

Her face fell. "I thought you'd be so hungry," she observed gently. "But no matter. Sit down and we'll talk."

"I know of nothing to talk about," he returned, but he dropped reluctantly into a hard, stiff chair opposite her.

"I'll tell you what there is to talk about," said Christine. "Something that has never been mentioned in all the discussions that have been taking place. And that is my feelings."

"Your feelings," Riatt began, rather contemptuously, but she stopped him.

"No," she said, "you shan't say what you were going to. My feelings, my feelings for you. You've told me that you did _not_ love me, that you despised me, that you _did_ love me, but you've never asked how I felt to you."

"But you've made it so clear. You felt that, in default of anything else, I would do."

She leaned across the table and looked at him gravely. "Max," she said, "I love you."

He made no motion, not even one of contempt, and so she got up, and coming round the table, she knelt down beside him and put her arms tightly about him. Still he did not move, except that his hands, which had been hanging at his sides, now gripped the edges of the chair with the rigidity of iron, and he said in a voice which sounded even in his own ears like that of a total stranger:

"What folly this is, Christine!"

"Why is it folly?"

"If you had said this six weeks ago, while I still had enough money to--"