LII
HE joy that had sung through Anthony shrunk into an intolerable pain like an icicle thrust into his heart; he swallowed convulsively a spoonful of soup, tasteless, scalding hot, and put the spoon down with a clatter. He half rose from the chair, with his arms extended, as if by that means he could ward off the terrible misfortune that had befallen him. Thomas Meredith, unaware of Anthony's drawn face, his staring gaze, continued to eat with gusto the unspeakable liquid, and the waiter uncorked the champagne with a soft explosion. The wine flowed bubbling into their glasses, and Tom held his aloft. “To your good luck,” he proclaimed, but set it down untouched at Anthony's pallor.
“What's the matter—sick? It's the beer and cocktail, it always does it.”
“It's not that,” Anthony said very distinctly.
His voice sounded to him like that of a third person. He was laboring to adjust the tumult within him to the fact of Eliza's death; he repeated half aloud the term “dead” and its whispered syllable seemed to fill the entire world, the sky, to echo ceaselessly in space. From the stringed instruments above came the refrain of a popular song; and, subconsciously, mechanically, he repeated the words aloud; when he heard his own voice he stopped as though a palm had been clapped upon his mouth.
“What is it?” Tom persisted; “don't discompose this historical banquet.” The waiter replaced the soup with fish, over which he spread a thick, yellow sauce. “Go on,” Anthony articulated, “go on—” he emptied his champagne glass at a gulp, and then a second. “Certainly a fresh quart,” his companion directed the waiter.
Eliza was dead! pneumonia. That, he told himself, was why she had not answered his letter, why, on the steps at Hydrangea House, Mrs. Dreen—hell! how could he think of such things? Eliza... dead, cold who warm had kissed him; Eliza, for whom all had been dreamed, planned, undertaken, dead; Eliza gone from him, gone out of the sun into the damned and horrible dirt. Tom, explaining him satisfactorily, devoted himself to the succession of dishes that flowed through the waiter's skillful hands, dishes that Anthony dimly recognized having ordered—surely years before. “You're drunk,” Thomas declared.
He drank inordinately: gradually a haze enveloped him, separating him from the world, from his companion, a shadowy shape performing strange antics at a distance. Sounds, voices, penetrated to his isolation, rent thinly the veil that held at its center the sharp pain dulled, expanded, into a leaden, sickening ache. He placed the yellow bank note on a silver platter that swayed before him, and in return received a crisp pile, which, with numb fingers, he crowded into a pocket. He would have fallen as he rose from his chair if Tom had not caught him, leading him stumbling but safely to the street.
“Don't start an ugly drunk,” Thomas Meredith begged. Without a word, Anthony turned and, with stiff legs, strode into the night. Eliza was dead; he had had something to give her, a surprise, but it was too late. A great piece of good fortune had overtaken him, he wanted to tell Eliza, but... he collided with a pedestrian, and continued at a tangent like a mechanical toy turned from its course. His companion swung him from under the wheels of a truck. “Wait,” he panted, “I'm no Marathon runner, it's hotter'n Egypt.”