III
It was a week before Nathan located Bernice. Not because he did not know her address; he had procured it from Elinore Carver who had married a local furniture man and with whom Bernie had kept up an intermittent correspondence since leaving Paris. It was because Milly’s passing affected him grievously. Somehow it was difficult to shake off the presentiment that in ordering her from the house that Sunday night, he had unwittingly sent her to her death. Certainly she would not have left with Plumb so soon and gone to work in the munitions plant. I think he went to Bernie’s apartment on the North Shore, seeking some poor solace in a woman’s company. Anyhow, thinking to surprise her and never dreaming she would not be glad to see him, he dressed in dinner clothes one Wednesday evening and set out for the address Elinore had supplied.
The place where Bernice now resided was an exclusive apartment, with an onyx marble entrance and a negro ‘phone attendant to announce callers to rooms above.
“Yo’ is one of de guests, ah s’pose,” commented the African, and then, before the puzzled Vermonter could respond, “De guests is to go up wifout bein’ announced. Flo’ Three, ’partment Three-Fifty-Fo’.”
Nathan went up in the automatic lift.
A Japanese boy answered his ring and immediately the door was opened, from regions behind came jazzy music.
“May I see Mrs. DuMont?” asked my friend.
The Oriental grinned and held wide the door.
“You please to give me your name,” suggested the Jap. “I tell her to come out to see you.”
“What’s going on—a party?”
But the Oriental only grinned the more and shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, tell her a man from her old home town is here and would like a few moments with her. Forge! Nathan Forge!”
And in a few moments Bernie came.
Nathan was shocked, badly shocked. He had seen Bernice on the streets of Paris once, at the time of her mother’s funeral. But he had not beheld her in a “close up” or spoken with her since the day in Haskell’s pasture. He looked at the woman approaching him now and—and she was Bernice Gridley—but oh, how changed!
Nathan knew she was of an age with himself, just turning twenty-seven. She looked forty and not very successful in looking it, either. She was half a head shorter than Nathan and had to look slightly upward into his eyes. Yet she was big-boned and coarsened, and the daring gown she wore did nothing to soften the outlines of coarseness in her figure. The gown was plainly expensive, yet on Bernie it was hideous. It was dull green, to contrast with her once-gold hair. But it was cut from the bust down almost to her waist in the back and the display of nudity was disgusting and repellent, particularly so because Bernie had lost her girlhood plumpness. Her bones poked through her skin and her sawtooth spine reminded Nathan of some pictures he had once seen of starving Cubans, taken nude to show their pathetic emaciation. The woman carried a large green fan which she now held against her flat breasts in a manner that only called attention to her bizarre costume and admitted that subconsciously it shamed her.
Nathan was so stunned by the change that for a few seconds he could only stare, his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth. Bernice took it for self-consciousness and provincial awkwardness, traits she detested. They reminded her too vividly of her humble origin and “what she had risen from.”
“Well, Nathan?” she demanded sharply. “Where did you come from?”
Nathan fought for his wits.
“I’m—on my way to the Orient,” he stammered. “It’s—the first time—I was ever in Chicago—and I thought I’d stop off and look you—up!”
“The Orient! What in the world are you going to the Orient for? Aren’t you afraid you’ll get lost out there—such a long way from Vermont?”
“Of course, if you don’t care about seeing me, Bernie, I won’t impose on you,” returned Nathan stiffly.
Bernice covered her annoyance with a forced smile.
“What did you want to see me about?” she demanded.
Well, what did he want to see her about? It would be a foolish reason—the true one—to explain.
“I—I—haven’t seen you for going on sixteen years, Bernie. And I thought—I thought—well, I saw your father about a month ago.”
“Yes? How is he?” Bernice asked it perfunctorily, as she might have asked after sundry unfortunates in devastated Belgium.
“He’s—well,” gulped Nathan. He looked down at his hands, raised his eyes to Bernie’s, smiled foolishly, dropped them again in embarrassment.
Bernice made no comment on her father being well. And Nathan saw how life had hardened her. The woman was adamant. Her eyes, as she watched the man’s embarrassment, seemed to declare, “Oh, what a hick you are! Oh, what a hick!”
“Well?” she suggested irritably.
“I won’t take any of your time to-night, Bernie. But I would like to talk over old times with you before I go—on!”
“I’m having a few friends in to-night, so I can’t see you. But if you’ll come to-morrow night, I’ll try and give you a few minutes. How’s your wife? Is she with you?”
“I have no wife. She—died.”
“What business are you in now?”
“Until lately I’ve been on the road for the Thornes. They took me off and are sending me to Vladivostok on special business.”
“How’s your father and mother?”
Nathan looked up in surprise.
“Didn’t you hear? About father’s going away and all?”
“Oh, yes. Seems to me I did. He stole a lot of money and left for parts unknown, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” said Nat in a whisper. His thoughts turned to a little packet of love notes in his pocket. Could it be possible this hardened woman and himself had ever loved?—That she was the little girl by the side of the stream that picnic day—that together they had crouched beneath his coat from a shower and she had kissed him.
“Well, come back to-morrow night,” ordered Bernice. “I’ve got to get back to my guests.”
“Your husband——” began Nathan.
Bernie started.
“I have no husband,” she snapped angrily. “I divorced him three years ago.”
“Oh!” said Nathan quickly.