On Monday, February 16, 1885, at the breakfast table, he made the following announcement to the persons there assembled: “To-morrow I am going out of town. I am going down into the country on Long Island, to do a little winter landscape painting. I shall be gone perhaps a week, perhaps a fortnight.”
No opposition was offered. Such questions as were asked, he had anticipated, and so answered with consummate glibness. Next morning a carriage drew up before the door. Elias, with his trunk and his traps, got into it, and was driven off. As the carriage turned the corner, he could see Tillie lingering on the stoop, looking after him. His conscience smote him gently for an instant; and he renewed his vow never to do any thing that could bring sorrow upon his wife. “Poor, little, light-hearted thing,” he soliloquized. “It is easy to satisfy her—'pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.'” And then he dismissed her from his mind. It is probable that, so long as he lived, he never once thought of her again.
“I don't know why it is,” the light-hearted and easily satisfied Tillie, as she re-entered the house, confessed to her mother, “but I feel just as blue as if he had gone away forever, instead of only for a fortnight. I feel just perfectly wretched. I've been feeling bad enough for ever and ever so long; but this is just the last straw. I don't believe he cares for me the least bit in the world.” And she buried her face in her mother's bosom, and had a good, long cry.
Elias's carriage drove neither to a railway-station, nor to a steamboat-pier. It drove to a lofty, red-brick apartment-house (for bachelors), in West Forty-second Street, “The Reginald,” where Elias had hired a furnished suite of rooms by the month. The falsehood involved by his plan had consisted in saying that he was going to the country. He had no idea of quitting the city. Just so long as Christine Redwood remained in New York, New York would be the only habitable spot on earth to Elias Bacharach.
The clerk of the apartment-house conducted Elias to his quarters, and left him there.
Elias locked his door behind the clerk. Then, suddenly, he flung himself full length upon the floor, and gave vent to a great sigh of relief. At last he was alone, all alone, and free. At last he had got clear of the disguise, which, like a strait-waistcoat, he had been compelled to wear for upwards of a year. I don't know how long he continued to lie there upon the floor! I don't know how many times he sobbed out her name: “Christine! Christine! Christine!”
Finally, however, he rose to his feet, brushed off and smoothed down his clothing, and descended to the office of the establishment, where he had some business to transact with the proprietor. Afterward, he meant to go for a walk, and feast his eyes for a while upon the house in which she dwelt. He knew this house very well. It was in Forty-eighth Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. Many and many a time, during the past few months, he had gone there, after nightfall, and watched the lights glow in the windows, and wondered which of the lights was hers. By day, he never approached nearer than the nearest corner. He did not wish to be seen by her. He conjectured that the sight of him might distress her. Now, he meant, after finishing his business with the proprietor, to go and stand on that corner for awhile, and enjoy the luxury of staring at the chocolate-colored façade of her dwelling-house.
He found the proprietor engaged in conversation with a gentleman. He took a position, therefore, at a respectful distance, and waited till their colloquy should end. He paid no heed to the gentleman's appearance; but afterward he recalled him vaguely as tall, fair-complexioned, rather athletic-looking, and presumably in the neighborhood of thirty years of age. Pretty soon the gentleman put on his hat, and left the room.
“Did you notice that party I was talking with?” the proprietor inquired of Elias.
“Not especially,” Elias replied. “Why?”