From the Housetops

by George Barr McCutcheon

Anne's silence, her persistent aloofness, began to irritate him at last. Weeks had passed since her return to the city and she had given no sign. He had long since ceased his sly pilgrimages to the neighbourhood of Washington Square. Now as the days grew shorter and the nights infinitely longer, he was conscious, first, of a distinct feeling of resentment toward her, and later on of an acute sense of uneasiness. The long, dreary hours of darkness fed him with reflections that kept him awake most of the night, and only his iron will held his hand and nerves steady during the days between the black seasons. The theatre palled on him, books failed to hold his attention, people annoyed him. He could not concentrate his thoughts on study; his mind was forever journeying. What was she doing? Every minute of the day he was asking that question of himself. It was in the printed pages of the books he read; it was on the lips of every lecturer he listened to; it was placarded on every inch of scenery in the theatre,—always: "Where is she to-night? What is she doing?"

And then, at last, one cold, rainy night in late November he resumed his stealthy journeys to lower Fifth Avenue atop of the stage, protected by a thick ulster and hidden as well as he could be in the shelter of a rigidly grasped umbrella. Alighting in front of the Brevoort, he slunk rather than sauntered up the Avenue until he came to the cross-town street in which she lived,—in which he once had lived. It was a fair night for such an adventure as this. There were but few people abroad. The rain was falling steadily and there was a gusty wind. He had left his club at ten o'clock, and all the way down the Avenue he was alone on the upper deck of the stage. Afterwards he chuckled guiltily to himself as he recalled the odd stare with which the conductor favoured him when he jestingly inquired if there was "any room aloft."

Walking down the street toward Sixth Avenue, he peered out from beneath the umbrella as he passed his grandfather's house across the way. There were lights downstairs. A solitary taxi-cab stood in front of the house. He quickened his pace. He did not want to charge himself with spying. A feeling of shame and mortification came over him as he hurried along; his face burned. He was not acting like a man, but as a love-sick, jealous school-boy would have behaved. And yet all the way up Sixth Avenue to Fifty-ninth Street,—he walked the entire distance,—he wondered why he had not waited to see who came forth from Anne's house to enter the taxi-cab.

For a week he stubbornly resisted the desire to repeat the trip down-town. In the meantime, Simmy had developed into a most unsatisfactory informant. He suddenly revealed an astonishing streak of uncommunicativeness, totally unnatural in him and tantalising in the extreme. He rarely mentioned Anne's name and never discussed her movements. Thorpe was obliged to content himself with an occasional word from Lutie,—who was also painfully reticent,—and now and then a scrap of news in the society columns of the newspapers. Once he saw her in the theatre. She was with other people, all of whom he knew. One of them was Percy Wintermill. He began on that night to hate Wintermill. The scion of the Wintermill family sat next to Anne and there was nothing in his manner to indicate that he had resigned himself to defeat in the lists.

If Anne saw him she did not betray the fact. He waited outside for a fairer glimpse of her as she left the theatre. What he saw at close range from his carefully chosen position was not calculated to relieve his mind. She appeared to be quite happy. There was nothing in her appearance or in her manner to indicate that she suffered,—and he wanted her to suffer as he was suffering. That night he did not close his eyes.

He had said to her that he would never marry her even though she gave up the money she had received from his grandfather, and she had said—how well he remembered!—that if George was worth thirty thousand dollars to Lutie, which was her all,—he was worth two millions to her, and her all. She was paying for him now, just as Lutie had paid for George, only in Lutie's case there was the assurance that the sacrifice would bring its own consolation and reward. Anne was going ahead blindly, trusting to an uncertainty. She had his word for it that the sacrifice would bring no reward through him, and yet she persisted in the vain enterprise. She had likened herself, in a sense, to Lutie, and now he was beginning to think of himself as he had once thought of George Tresslyn!

He recalled his pitying scorn for the big, once useless boy during that long period of dog-like watchfulness over the comings and goings of the girl he loved. He had felt sorry for him and yet pleased with him. There was something admirable in the stubborn, drunken loyalty of George Tresslyn,—a loyalty that never wavered even though there was no such thing as hope ahead of him.

As time went on, Thorpe, the sound, sober, indomitable Thorpe,—began to encourage himself with the thought that he too might sink to the extremities through which George had passed,—and be as simple and as firm in his weakness as the other had been! He too might stand in dark places and watch, he too might slink behind like a thing in the night. Only in his case the conditions would be reversed. He would be fighting conviction and not hope, for he knew he had but to walk into Anne's presence and speak,—and the suspense would be over. She was waiting for him. It was he who would have to surrender, not she.

He fought desperately with himself; the longing to see her, to be near her, to test his vaunted self-control, never for an instant subsided. He fought the harder because he was always asking himself why he fought at all. Why should he not take what belonged to him? Why should he deny himself happiness when it was so much to be desired and so easy to obtain?

But always when he was nearest to the breaking point, and the rush of feeling was at flood, there crept up beside him the shadow that threatened his very existence and hers. He had taken the life of her husband. He had no right to her. Down in his heart he knew that there was no moral ground for the position he took and from which he could not extricate himself. He had committed no crime. There had been no thought of himself in that solemn hour when he delivered his best friend out of bondage. Anne had no qualms, and he knew her to be a creature of fine feelings. She had always revolted against the unlovely aspects of life, and all this despite the claim she made that love would survive the most unholy of oppressions. What was it then that he was afraid of? What was it that made him hold back while love tugged so violently, so persistently at his heart-strings?