CHAPTER XXXVI
LEFT BEHIND
EMPTY!
He did not enter the tiny room. Now, all at once, it seemed a sacred place, having for so long sheltered her who was sweet and fine. And he felt instinctively that the blue-walled retreat was not for him; that he should not stretch himself out in his soiled, ragged clothes on that dainty couch-shelf where she had lain.
He stood on the threshold to look in. How beautiful it was! From to-day forward, would she truly have another any handsomer? The faint perfume of it (just recently she had acquired a fresh stock of orris root) was like a breath from some flower-filled garden—such a garden as he had read about in The Story of Aladdin. And yes, the little cell itself was like one of Aladdin's caskets from which had been taken a precious jewel.
Just now it was a casket very much in disarray, for Cis had tumbled it in wind-storm fashion as she made ready to leave, carelessly throwing down several things that she had formerly handled delicately: the paper roses, the sliver of mirror, the pretty face of a moving-picture favorite. As for that box flounced with bright crepe paper, it was ignominiously heaved to one side. And that cherished likeness of Mr. Roosevelt was hanging slightly askew.
But Johnnie did not set straight the photograph of his hero, or stoop to pick anything up. He could think of just one thing: she was gone!
And she would never come back—never, never, never, never! He began to repeat the word, as he and Cis had been wont to repeat words, trying hard to realize the whole of their meaning: "Never! never! never! never." And once more there came over him that curious lost feeling that he had suffered after Aunt Sophie was gone in the clanging ambulance. Once more, too, he grew rebellious. "Oh, why does ev'rything have t' go 'n' bust up!" he questioned brokenly, voicing again the eternal protest of youth against an unexpected, pain-dealing shift in Life's program.
That time he had run away, she had promised that she would never leave him!—had said it with many nevers. "And she ain't ever before stayed out in the evenin' like this," he told himself. No, not in all the years he had been at the Barber flat.