V
The fuse of the electric light in the dining room burned out, and dinner proceeded with only the illumination of the silk-hooded candles. In the subdued glow Meta Beggs was infinitely attractive. His wife's place was empty. Miss Beggs had brought apologetic word from Emmy that she felt too weak to leave her room. A greater degree of comfort possessed August Turnbull than he had experienced for months. With no one at the table but the slim woman on the left and himself a positive geniality radiated from him. He pressed her to have more champagne—he had ordered that since she preferred it to Rhine wine—urged more duckling, and ordered the butler to leave the brandy decanter before them.
She laughed—a rare occurrence—and imitated, for his intense amusement, Mrs. Frederick Rathe's extreme cutting social manner. He drank more than he intended, and when he rose his legs were insecure. He made his way toward Meta Beggs. She stood motionless, her thin lips like a thread of blood on her tense face.
“What a wife you'd make!” he muttered.
There was a discreet cough at his back, and swinging about he saw a maid in a white starched cap and high cuffs.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said; “Mrs. Turnbull wants to know would you please come up to her room.”
He swayed slightly, glowering at her with a hot face in which a vein throbbed persistently at his temple. Miss Beggs had disappeared.
“Very well,” he agreed heavily.
Mounting the stairs he fumbled for his cigar case, and entered the chamber beyond his, clipping the end from a superlative perfecto.
Emmy was in bed, propped up on a bank of embroidered pillows. A light from one side threw the shadow of her head on a wall in an animated caricature of life.
“I didn't want to disturb you, August.”
Her voice was weak and apologetic. He stood irritably beside her.
“It's hot in here.” His wife at once detected whatever assaulted his complete comfort. She fell into a silence that strained his patience to the utmost.
When at last she spoke it was in a tone of voice he had never heard from her—impersonal, with at the same time a note of fear like the flutter of a bird's wing.
“The doctor has been here two or three times lately. I didn't want to bother you, and he said——”
She broke off, and her hand raised from her side in a gesture of seeking. He held it uncomfortably, wishing that the occasion would speedily end.
“August, I've—I've got to leave you.”
He did not comprehend her meaning, and stood stupidly looking down at her spent face. “I'm going to die, August, almost any time now. I wanted to tell you first when we were quietly together; and then Louise and Bernard must know.”
His sensations were so confused, the mere shock of such an announcement had so confounded him that he was unable to penetrate the meaning of the sudden expansion of his blood. His attention strayed from the actuality of his wife to the immaterial shadow wavering on the wall. There Emmy's profile, grotesquely enlarged and sharpened, grimaced at him. August Turnbull's feelings disentangled and grew clearer, there was a conventional memory of his wife as a young woman, the infinitely sharper realization that soon he must be free, a vision of Meta Beggs as she had been at dinner that night, and intense relief from nameless strain.
He moved through the atmosphere of suspense that followed the knowledge of Emmy's condition with a feeling of being entirely apart from his family. Out of the chaos of his emotions the sense of release was most insistent. Naturally he couldn't share it with any one else, not at present. He avoided thinking directly of Meta Beggs, partly from the shreds of the superstitious dread that had once colored his attitude toward his wife and partly from the necessity to control what otherwise would sweep him into a resistless torrent. However, most of his impatience had vanished—a little while now, and in a discreet manner he could grasp all that he had believed so hopelessly removed.
Except for the occasions of Louise's informal presence he dined alone with Miss Beggs. They were largely silent, attacking their plates with complete satisfaction. On the day of her monthly payment he drew the check for a thousand dollars in place of the stipulated hundred, and gave it to her without comment. She nodded, managing to convey entire understanding and acceptance of what it forecast. Once, at the table, he called her Meta.
She deliberated a reply—he had asked her opinion about British bottled sauces—but when she answered she called him Mr. Turnbull. This, too, pleased him. She had an unerring judgment in the small affairs of deference. Dinner had been better than usual, and he realized he had eaten too much. His throat felt constricted, he had difficulty in swallowing a final gulp of coffee; the heavy odors of the dining room almost sickened him.
“We'll get out on the beach,” he said abruptly; “a little air.”
They proceeded past the unremitting sprinklers on the strip of lawn to the wide gray sweep of sand. At that hour no one else was visible, and a new recklessness invaded his discomfort. “You see,” he told her, “that bad luck of yours isn't going to hold.”
“It seems incredible,” she murmured. She added without an appearance of the least ulterior thought: “Mrs. August Turnbull.”
“Exactly,” he asserted.
A triumphant conviction of pleasure to come surged through him like a subtle exhilarating cordial.
“I'll take no nonsensical airs from Louise or the Rathes,” he proclaimed.
“Don't let that worry you,” she answered serenely.
He saw that it need not, and looked forward appreciatively to a scene in which Meta would not come off second.
Above them the long curve of the boardwalk was empty, with, behind it, the suave ornamental roofs of the cottages. A wind quartering from the shore had smoothed the ocean into the semblance of a limitless and placid lake. Minute waves ruffled along the beach with a continuous whispering, and the vault of the west, from which the sun had just withdrawn, was filled with light the color of sauterne wine.
It was inconceivable to August Turnbull that soon Emmy would be gone out of his life. He shook his thick shoulders as if by a gesture to unburden himself of her unpleasant responsibility. He smiled slightly at the memory of how he had come to fear her. It had been the result of the strain he was under; once more the vision of mountainous bread and Emmy returned. The devil was in the woman!
“What are you smiling at?” Meta asked.
“Perhaps it was because my luck, as well, has changed,” he admitted.
She came close up to him, quivering with emotion.
“I want everything!” she cried in a vibrant hunger; “everything! Do you understand? Are you willing? I'm starved as much as that woman up in her bed. Can you give me all the gayety, all the silks and emeralds there are in the world?”
He patted her shoulder. “You'll look like a Christmas tree. When this damned war is over we will go to Europe, to Berlin and Munich. They have the finest streets and theaters and cafés in the world. There things are run by men for men. The food is the best of all—no French fripperies, but solid rare cuts. Drinking is an art——”
“What is that out in the water?” she idly demanded.
He gazed impatiently over the unscored tide and saw a dark infinitesimal blot.
“I have been watching it for a long while,” she continued. “It's coming closer, I think.”
He again took up his planning.
“We'll stay two or three years; till things get on their feet here. Turn the bakery into a company. No work, nothing but parties.”
“Do look!” she repeated. “It's coming in—a little boat. I suppose it is empty.”
The blot was now near enough for him to distinguish its outline. As Meta said, no one was visible. It was drifting. Against his wish his gaze fastened on the approaching boat. It hesitated, appeared to swing away, and then resumed the progress inshore.
“I believe it will float into that cut in the beach below,” he told her.
His attention was divided between the craft and the image of all the pleasures he would introduce to Meta—Turnbull. It was a lucky circumstance that he had plenty of money, for he realized that she would not marry a poor man. This was not only natural but commendable. Poor men were fools, too weak for success; only the strong ate white bread and had fine women, only the masterful conquered circumstance.
“Come,” she said, catching his hand; “it's almost here.”
She half pulled him over the glistening wet sand to where the deeper water thrust into the beach. Her interest was now fully communicated to him.
“We must drag it safely up,” he articulated, out of breath from her eagerness. The bow swept into the onward current, it moved more swiftly, and then sluggishly settled against the bottom. Painted on its blistering white side was a name, “Veronica,” and “Ten persons.” There was a slight movement at the rail, and a sharp unreasoning horror gripped August Turnbull.
“Something in it,” he muttered. He wanted to turn away, to run from the beach; but a stronger curiosity dragged him forward. Not conscious of stepping through shallow water he advanced.
A hunger-ravished dead face was turned to him from the bottom, a huddle of bony joints, dried hands. There were others—all dead, starved. In a red glimmer he saw the incredible travesty of a child, a lead-colored woman, shriveled and ageless from agony.
He fell back with a choking cry, “Emmy!”
There was a dull uproar in his head, and then a violent shock at the back of his brain. August Turnbull's body slid down into the tranquil ripples that ran along the boat's side.