“He is,” Broderick agreed. “Every inch of him. But, as I said, something of a fool where a woman’s heart is concerned. He took too much for granted—let go too easily. He didn’t have anything but her word for it—and a woman’s word is nothing in matters of this sort. One can talk and talk and never get anywhere. It’s deeds that count. He didn’t give her a chance. He never saw me, never even knew my name. I wasn’t looming a big figure before him to drive him insane with impotent jealousy. But when the big upheaval came, he effaced himself as absolutely as if he had been buried. He made no effort to learn how things went.
“And then”—Broderick bowed his head for a second—“then, after he was gone, and there was nothing to do but wait patiently a little while, get a divorce quietly, and marry me, she woke up. It wasn’t me she wanted. It was Joe. She’d loved him in the beginning. When he’d made the complete renunciation, stepped out of her life for good and all, she found something lacking, a place that nobody else could fill, that she wanted him back, that her heart ached to have him back. Oh, you can’t ever tell anything about a woman. And yet, I suppose it was only natural. He’d become a part of her life. I was only an incident. I suppose so many things used to rise up and make her long for him. She’d lived with him. The nearest she’d ever been to me was to kiss me shyly once or twice.
“Anyway, once he was gone, it was all different. The money he gave her she banked and left alone. She would no more have lived on it than she would have let me support her. She used to say that she was being punished for breaking a good man’s heart for a passing whim.”
Broderick lifted his head and laughed harshly.
“Meaning Joe, of course,” he said. “It didn’t seem to occur to her that I was very deeply involved. The most she would let me do for her was to help her get a position. I happened to have a cousin in the millinery business in Utica, and Norma got work there—enough to live decently on. And when I’d tried every means to move her, and failed, I had to get out and get action or go crazy. So I went on the tramp, like Joe, a good deal. I can live anywhere, under any conditions. And there you are.
“But,” he broke out, after a little, “I didn’t let go like he did. I wrote to her. Time and again, at first. Every few months since. That’s how I know where she is, and how she still feels. She’s there yet, pegging away, waiting. She’s his wife, legally, in spirit, every way. She’s been true as steel. And her one solace is that some time he’ll come back, or she’ll find out where he is and win him back and make up somehow for these ghastly years.
“And can you see the tragedy in it?” Broderick went on. “He refuses to act. He won’t do anything. He says he has suffered till he’s numb. And I can’t make him see that she has suffered, too, is suffering yet, as he is. It’s pride. If I were in his place, I’d have no pride. I’d crawl on my hands and knees in the dust back to her if I could create for myself the longing she has for him. It isn’t worth while to be proud and aloof and miserable when all you have to do is reach out your hands for happiness. Two of us can get our feet out of this deadly coil. Why should all three be lonely and miserable? I know he doesn’t want to have it that way. It’s just a stubborn streak. He’s morbid. What has been can’t be helped. But the future, that’s a different matter.”
“You might write and tell her where he is and how he feels about it,” I suggested. “That would be a fine thing to do.”
Broderick laughed hard and mirthlessly.
“I suppose I could,” he said. “But it would be better if he made the first move. However, I know she wouldn’t hesitate. Yes, I dare say it would be eminently proper for me to be the god in the machine—to bring them together with a Heaven-bless-you-my-children—and then fade away. Well, I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that.”