CHAPTER THREE
I
They sat there for hours, at a tiny table, in a corner of the dimly lighted shop, crowded with miscellaneous objects, embroidered smocks, brass candlesticks, pictures, books, curios, baskets. The red curtains were drawn across the windows, the door was closed; they were undisturbed, isolated during the course of that most pathetic of human struggles—that forever unsuccessful effort of one soul to explain itself to another. With utter earnestness, sincerity, with justice and compassion for Lawrence, Rosaleen tried to give Landry the story of her marriage. She had only one motive—that this man should not think her worse than she was. She felt that if he could be brought to see why she had done this and that, he would no longer blame her. She wished to make him see how inevitable it had all been.
She began with the day that Lawrence had come to her room to kill himself. She and Miss Waters had tended him with frightened assiduity all the afternoon, but in vain. His malady was beyond their reach. His malady was despair. He had been through an experience that day which had wrecked his soul. The doctor had told him that he was going blind, and that nothing could prevent it.
Terror had seized him. He had thought at once of the only person he knew who was capable of sustained and disinterested kindness, and he had fled to Rosaleen, to die in her compassionate presence. His attempt, however, wasn’t successful, whether from lack of knowledge or from reluctance even he himself never knew. He hadn’t really harmed himself at all; the blood-letting seemed in fact to make him feel better, to clear his brain. He could perfectly well have got up and walked off at any moment, but he preferred to lie with closed eyes, savouring his anguish. And permitting an exquisite sense of consolation to creep into his soul.
Rosaleen and Miss Waters worked desperately over him; they washed his face with cold water again and again. They made tea for him, and toast, and the smell of the toast revived him. He ate it, mournfully, still with his eyes closed. They bathed his forehead with Rosaleen’s cherished “Florida water.” Once Miss Waters laid her cottony-white head on his chest, to listen to his heart, but being too modest to unbutton his waistcoat, she didn’t obtain much information. However, she knew it was the thing to do, and it impressed Rosaleen.
He lay there for two days; a most embarrassing situation. Miss Waters came to stop with Rosaleen, and they slept on the floor of the studio, because Rosaleen said it might make him think he was causing trouble if they pulled the other cot out of the room where he lay. The thought of causing trouble, however, was not one of Lawrence’s worries. He would wake up in the night and groan, so horribly that Rosaleen and Miss Waters would cling to each other and weep. He asked for wines and delicacies which they could ill afford. But his selfishness made him all the more appealing to Rosaleen.
On the third day, late in the afternoon, he got up, bathed, shaved, and dressed. Rosaleen disposed him in the wing chair, and went to the corner to fetch cigarettes for him.
“What would you like for dinner?” she asked.
He said he didn’t care; anything nice....