From the Housetops

by George Barr McCutcheon

She was looking straight into his eyes. "Thank you, Wade," she interrupted coldly. "Your own grief would be sufficient excuse, if any were necessary. If you will send Murray to me I will tell him that you have withdrawn your notice and will stay on in O'Toole's place. It will not be necessary for him to engage another furnace-man at present."

"No, ma'am," said Wade, and then added without a trace of irony in his voice: "At any rate not until cold weather sets in."

And so it was that this man solved the greatest problem that had ever confronted him. He went down into the cellars to take orders from the man he hated, from the man who would snarl at him and curse him and humiliate him to the bitter end, and all because he knew that he could not begin life over again. He wanted to be ordered about, he wanted to be snarled at by an overbearing task-master. It simplified everything. He would never be called upon to think for himself. Thorpe or Murray, what mattered which of them was in command? It was all the same to him. His dignity passed, away with the passing of his career as a "Man," and he rejoiced in the belief that he had successfully evaded the responsibilities that threatened him up to the moment he entered the presence of the mistress of the house. He was no longer without a purpose in life. He would not have to go out and be independent.

Toward the end of the second week Templeton Thorpe's will was read by Judge Hollenback in the presence of "the family." There had been some delay on account of Braden Thorpe's absence from the city. No one knew where he had gone, nor was he ever to explain his sudden departure immediately after the funeral. He simply disappeared from his hotel, without so much as a bag or a change of linen in his possession, so far as one could know. At the end of ten days he returned as suddenly and as casually as he had gone away, but very much improved in appearance. The strange pallor had left his cheeks and his eyes had lost the heavy, tired expression.

At first he flatly refused to go down for the reading of the will. He was not a beneficiary under the new instrument and he could see no reason for his attendance. Anne alone understood. The old vow not to enter the house while she was its mistress,—that was the reason. He was now in a position to revive that vow and to order his actions accordingly.

She drooped a little at the thought of it. From time to time she caught herself wishing that she could devise some means of punishing him, only to berate herself afterward for the selfishness that inspired the thought.

Still, why shouldn't he come there now? She was the same now that she was before her marriage took place,—a year older, that was all, but no less desirable. That was the one thing she could not understand in him. She could understand his disgust, his scorn, his rage, but she could not see how it was possible for him to hold out against the qualities that had made him love her so deeply before she gave him cause to hate her.

As for the operation that had resulted in the death of her husband, Anne had but one way of looking at it. Braden had been forced to operate against his will, against his best judgment. He was to be pitied. His grandfather had failed in his attempt to corrupt the souls of others in his desire for peace, and there remained but the one cowardly alternative: the appeal to this man who loved him. In his extremity, he had put upon Braden the task of performing a miracle, knowing full well that its accomplishment was impossible, that failure was as inevitable as death itself.

The thought never entered her mind that in persuading Braden to perform this strange act of mercy her husband may have been moved by the sole desire to put the final touch to the barrier he had wrought between them. The fact that Braden was responsible for his death had no sinister meaning for her. It was the same as if he had operated upon a total stranger with a like result and with perhaps identical motives.

She kept on saying to herself that she had given up hope of ever regaining the love she had lost. She tried to remember just when she had ceased to hope. Was it before or after that last conversation took place in the library? Hope may have died, but he was alive and she was alive. Then how could love be dead?