II
No answer came to his letter; in fact, it was never answered and never mentioned by either of them. The cheque dropped into that bottomless pit which was their household exchequer.
A week later he decided to stroll down to the Square, and perhaps to visit Rosaleen.... It was a wonderful Spring evening, filled with that cruel promise, that hope never defined, never fulfilled, that wayward melancholy that is the spirit of every such hour. It touched Landry profoundly; the cries of the children at play sounded plaintive in his ears; he even saw a futile pathos in the street lights that glowed so blatantly against a sky not yet entirely darkened. There was a faint breeze blowing, and in the little park the swelling branches of the bare young trees swayed mildly.
He went upstairs, to find the studio door open and a party going on, the room crowded and turbulent. Lawrence recognised him at once, and welcomed him with delight.
“Just in time!” he cried. “Put your hat and stick in the back room and come in and get a drink!”
Still aloof and enchanted by the Spring night, Landry somewhat reluctantly obeyed, and pushing aside the curtain, entered that private apartment into which he had observed Rosaleen disappearing from time to time. A horrible little black hole with nothing in it but a wide bed with sagging springs that nearly touched the floor, and, all round the walls, hooks upon which hung the motley clothes of the household. Nothing else; no rug on the floor, nor a chair; evidently all the rest of their earthly possessions had gone into the big studio.
He laid his hat and stick on the ragged white counterpane, and returned to the party. The key to the situation was not in his hands; he saw none of the pathos of it; he saw merely a crowd of noisy and vulgar people who were drinking too much, making too much of a row, dancing with abandon to the music of a wretched phonograph. Rosaleen hurried about, an anxious hostess, changing records, filling glasses, talking to this one and that; now and then she danced, but perfunctorily. No one paid much attention to her. She wore the same dark red silk smock and bronze slippers she had worn on the evening of his first visit, but by the garish light of four gas jets, he could see now how worn and shabby this finery was.
But there was a great deal which he could not see. He could not see the frightful fear of solitude in Lawrence’s heart which made him welcome this riff-raff, these people who could be raked in at an hour’s notice, lured by whiskey, by the perfect freedom allowed them. None of his old friends came any more, or Rosaleen’s. They had lost their footing, and they knew it well. But Lawrence didn’t care, so long as there was noise and life about him, so long as he was not alone. And Rosaleen, in her unbounded pity for him, would have watched devils dancing there with joy if it had given him comfort.
Landry was completely out of his element. He was really miserable. The punch was not good, the floor was sticky, the girls were hectic and peculiar; he was very anxious to get away, but without offending Rosaleen. He saw her hurry into the back room and, as he was standing near the curtains, it was easy to slip in after her, unnoticed.
“Rosaleen,” he began, but stopped in surprise. “Why are you putting on your hat?”