He had scarcely set foot over the threshold before a pang of remorse assailed him. Wherever his glance fell, there was something to speak of Kathleen and her care for him. He was by no means imaginative, but he was suddenly able to imagine his young wife alone all day in this huge, cold place. He began to have some idea of what her life must be.
“By gosh!” he thought. “After all, I don’t know that I blame the poor girl for landing on me!”
And all at once the pathos of the thing overcame him—that poor little bit of a thing flying out at him like that—at him, who could have picked her up and shaken her like a kitten. He shouldn’t have teased her. After all, there was more to her than her cooking. He hadn’t fallen in love with her for that.
His impulse was to hurry downstairs and make it up; but he didn’t see how one could make up a quarrel with a woman without giving her a present. It wasn’t decent. Moreover, it would be too difficult. A present relieved a man from the necessity of making any sort of explanation, or of talking at all. You give the present, with a kiss, and it’s done.
He walked up and down the room with his hands in his pockets, haunted by the image of Kathleen angry and Kathleen gay. The more he reflected, the more mysterious and oppressive was his sense of guilt, the more contrite and tender his heart. In the end he came to a decision extraordinary in one so stiff-necked. He resolved to go downstairs and say, quite frankly, that he was sorry, and that he loved her and didn’t care whether she cooked or not.
The house seemed blacker and colder than ever as he descended the stairs. He wondered if she was crying in there, or scornfully washing the dishes. He unlocked the door, opened it, and entered.
He couldn’t see her at all. He stared about the huge kitchen, which was well lighted. There were the dishes, just as he had last seen them, but no human being. Kathleen had gone!
He couldn’t believe it at first. She couldn’t have got out by the windows, for the heavy shutters were locked on the outside. There was no possible means of egress from that room except an incredible one; and yet, as she wasn’t in the room, she must have got out that way. She must have gone down the flight of rickety wooden steps and through the cellar.
She had always been in mortal fear of the cellar, because there were rats in it. Brecky had always brought up the coal for her when she wanted some. In order to pass through it at night, she must have been in a desperate mood, he thought.
He was more disturbed than he cared to admit. Where could the girl go, alone, on[Pg 46] a night like this, with a regular hurricane blowing? There was nothing for it but to put on his cap and overcoat and go in search of her.