V
For two weeks Hardy was very ill, often delirious. Then he began little by little to improve, to enter into a delightful period of rest and peace. The two women devoted their lives to him. They waited upon him with the most passionate seriousness. There was no annoying fuss, no superfluous attention, but one or the other of them was at hand every minute, and they divined his every want.
The quiet, beautiful order of the room, the odd and touching delicacy of his nurses, sank into his spirit. In spite of his weakness, in spite of the minor pains and discomforts of his malady, he was happy.
But he couldn’t help worrying. One morning, while Mme. Sensobiareff was busy about the room, he spoke to her about his anxiety.
“It isn’t right!” he said, in a feeble, plaintive tone. “Your husband is ill, too, and I’m taking up all your time and upsetting everything. He won’t—”
“It makes no difference to him,” she said. “He is not here. Only rest and be tranquil, my dear!”
“But I feel like a beast!” he protested. “To come here like this, and to let you do all this! And the expense! I haven’t a cent to repay you. You can’t imagine how it makes me feel. I’m ashamed!”
“That is foolish, my dear—very foolish. I understand how it is with you.” She paused for a moment. “I do not think there is any one on this earth who can understand better the troubles of others,” she said; “because I have felt them all—all! You must believe me!”
As she looked at him, still smiling, her pale, clear eyes grew misty.
“I have the most sorrowful heart in the world,” she said. “He is dead!”
“Your husband?” he cried, shocked.
She bowed her head.
“Three months ago. But we will not speak of that, if you please. You will see now what a blessing it is for me that I can help you.”
As he grew stronger they talked more and more together—or, rather, she talked and he listened. It was a sort of monologue made up of her own vast experience. She had seen so much, traveled so much, suffered so much. She had seen plagues, famine, battles, she had lived in alien and hostile countries, she who lived so much through her friends had seen so many of them suffer; and now, past her youth, she found herself utterly alone, poor, friendless, thousands of miles from her home.
Hardy would sit propped up in a chaise longue near the window, and, while he smoked the five cigarettes he was permitted daily, he would listen to her charming voice, talking and talking. Sometimes he grew sleepy, but he concealed it.
There was one thing that puzzled him. She never sat with him in the evening.[Pg 21] After they had had dinner, which he now took in the dining room, he was always conducted back to his own room, and Anna would come in, with her sewing, to keep him company. This was not very entertaining, for she didn’t know a dozen words of English, and he didn’t like to read and entirely ignore her.
What on earth did Mme. Sensobiareff do with herself? He heard the doorbell ring, time after time, every evening, but he heard no sounds to indicate social activity, no voices, no moving about. Who came? He couldn’t ask Anna, and he didn’t care to ask her mistress; but he thought about it a great deal, and he didn’t like it.
The time came when he was declared well, and the doctor made his last visit.
“Now I’ll have to be thinking about going away,” he said.
“Oh, no!” she protested. “I have this beautiful lodging, all paid for five months to come. You must stay here until you have found a position.”
“I can’t do that,” he said. “It wouldn’t—you see, it’s awfully kind of you, but it wouldn’t look—you see, you’re here all alone. People would talk.”
“These people, who are they? I have no friends. No one will know or care. Don’t trouble yourself, my friend!” she said, smiling. “There will be no difficulty. I am a thousand years old!”
In the end he decided that he would stay, for a time at least, as much for her sake as for his own, until he could find work and in that way be able to help her. He resolved to protect her and care for her all his life.
An amazing existence! It continued for six weeks, for even after he had found a place as copy writer for a mail order house, she insisted upon his taking his earnings to buy clothes.
“Without clothes one can do nothing,” she said. “It is always necessary to present a good appearance.”
She was truly like a mother to him. She looked after his clothes, she wanted to hear every detail of his day, and she dearly loved to give him advice, which was always sensible, but sometimes a little irritating, because it was so obvious. Never was there such a wonderful friend, so unfailingly kind, so loyal, so delicate.
And yet—would you believe it?—all his natural affection for her was poisoned by suspicion, because of those mysterious evenings. He bitterly resented being shunted off into his own room after dinner. He resented the secrecy and the mystery. He would sit there, listening to the sound of the doorbell, the front door opening and closing, and then nothing further. The room she had given him was at the back of the flat, because it was quiet there. It was very quiet.
One evening he went into the kitchen, to try to talk with Anna. Since he had been declared well, the maid no longer sat with him in the evenings, and he felt that even her silent company would be better than none.
He found her sitting by the table, her head in her hands, the picture of a despondent exile; but when he entered she looked up with a friendly, anxious smile.
“You eat?” she asked.
“No, thanks,” he said.
She shrugged her shoulders, to show her despair at not understanding, and kept on smiling.
Suddenly the swing door from the dining room was opened, and Mme. Sensobiareff came in. She looked at Hardy gravely; then, without a word, she drew herself a glass of water and went out again, leaving him astounded and distressed, a prey to the most disagreeable suspicions. What in Heaven’s name was she doing, dressed like that, in evening dress, with bare arms and neck and so elaborate a coiffure?
He went back to his own room and walked up and down in the dark, angry, terribly humiliated. After all, what did he know about her, except that she had been kind? Women of a certain sort were often kind, with a facile, lavish kindness. He felt that he comprehended the mystery now, that he knew what sort of house this was, and the thought of all that he had accepted was intolerable to him.
She had no right to force her kindness on him! It was shameful; she had degraded him. If any one should ever hear of it, that he had been supported—yes, certainly supported for weeks by this woman, out of her disgraceful earnings!
She thought him a little moody and ill-humored the next morning at breakfast; but with her unfailing generosity, she made allowances. She sat there in her crisp white wrapper, a very model of domesticity, and smiled at him over the pretty little bouquet of flowers that she always arranged on the table. She went to the[Pg 22] front door with him, and bade him good-by; and with constraint, in misery, he replied to her, and hurried off. He had decided never to return.
He fully intended to write to her, but he never did. He found it too difficult. He couldn’t reproach her, for her conduct was none of his business, and he could think of no plausible lie. He put off writing for day after day, and little by little the pain of the thing wore off and his regret and shame grew faint.
However, he wasn’t ungrateful. He tried to compute the cost of his illness and his long stay, and he made a magnificent effort to save enough to repay the disconcerting total; but it wasn’t possible. It would take many months. He had got back into newspaper work again, doing special articles, and his earnings were not imposing.
When he had scraped together a small part of his debt, he decided to take the money to her. He trusted to her tact and good sense to avoid the necessity of an awkward explanation.
He arrived at the apartment house, and was about to enter the lift when the boy stopped him.
“The madam’s gone,” he said, with a grin.
“Gone? Moved away?”
“Yes, sir—moved away.” He chuckled. “She certainly did move away. She wuz moved away. Seems she’d borrowed some money on that furniture of hers, and couldn’t pay it. One day the people came and took it away. Ah thought Ah’d never get over laughin’. There she stood, watching it go; and she didn’t have a stick left in the place!”
“Do you know where she went?” asked Hardy.
“No, sir, Ah do not. She didn’t invite me to call,” said the boy.
Hardy went away, heavy-hearted. For many, many nights she came to haunt him—that poor, friendless foreign woman, so wonderfully kind, so wise and so sad. He blamed himself bitterly for losing track of her. She hadn’t investigated his morals, she hadn’t blamed, she hadn’t judged—she had simply helped. His scruples now appeared petty and cruel. He thought that he would give anything he had if he could only see her again, in her beruffled white wrapper, sitting before the samovar and talking.
He remembered her devotion to her husband. What if she had taken a wrong way, in order to live? Who was he, whom she had so greatly benefited, to despise her?