He dallied with the thought of suicide. He couldn’t endure life. In his heart he didn’t care what happened to Minnie or to his child. They would be no worse off without him. He hated to see them. When he got home at night, he would not speak to them. He couldn’t eat the coarse and ill-cooked food Minnie put before him. He couldn’t sleep. He dreamed with sick longing of old days, of big, airy rooms, gay little suppers, he remembered his chest of drawers, with piles of clean linen and silk socks, his neckties, his boots. This unhappy slattern, this pale bit of a child, what had they to do with his dreams? They were unreal, didn’t belong to him.
He lived in a ghastly solitude; he confided in no one, was in touch with no one. He believed that the human being did not live who could comprehend his anguish.
Spring came again, and he had become what he so feared, a man with broken boots and the air of having once been a gentleman. He was ashamed to ride on the train, ashamed to enter the lift in the office building, ashamed to sit at a lunch counter. He had really made up his mind to die, quickly, before he got ill and helpless, and had to be sent to a charity hospital.
He came home one evening as usual, striding down the street past all the neighbours with a scowl on his face. He went up the steps of his little house with a familiar feeling of disgust and fatigue. Minnie was nowhere about; he sat down, still with his hat on, and stared out of the window at the placid sky which the sun had so lately deserted, a clear and faintly luminous expanse, without clouds.
It occurred to him that the house was very still. No sound from the kitchen or overhead. He didn’t care, though. He didn’t stir until it was quite dark; then he got up to find a match for his wretched cigar. It was odd, after all,—no one about, no lights anywhere. His indifference was mere bravado now; he wouldn’t let himself call out....
When at last he did go upstairs he found an envelope addressed to himself on his bureau.
“My own dearest Lionel: I have gone away for just a little while, because I have a plan to help us all. Stay where you are, and I shall be able to send you some money very soon. Don’t worry; everything will soon be all right, and we shall be all together again. Take care of yourself, dearest. Your loving, loving wife, Minnie. P.S.—There is a delicious meat pie for you in the ice box.”
He read it again, and still it didn’t stir his indifference. He ate the meat pie, an unusually pretentious dish which must have cost Minnie much time and trouble; he sat on the porch for a while and at last went to bed, to fall asleep easily. Minnie and Sandra gone? Very well; they couldn’t be any worse off anywhere else.
He waked up just before dawn, with a shock of realisation. Minnie lost too! Everything gone! He began to think of what the poor little woman had suffered and endured, of her patience, her loyalty to him. He remembered her, working so anxiously, so blindly, not questioning, not complaining, trying her poor best to give him what comfort she could.
And she had had nothing. He wondered how in Heaven’s name she had lived. He thought of the long days she had spent with her poor little child, the child she so loved, and whom she had had to see hungry and ragged. Her utter loneliness, her pitiful faith in him, her hope of finding in him all of life and happiness.