When morning began to creep into the streets, and while it was yet only a dingy mist, Tom slipped quietly into his flat and stretched his wearied length upon the couch, his anguish subdued to an aching numbness by his lone walk. He lay for a time, his eyes turned dully into the back yard, watching the dirty light grow cleaner; and presently he sank into a light sleep. After a little his eyes opened and he saw Maggie looking intently at him from their bedroom door.
For a moment the two of them maintained a silent gaze. Then she asked: "You were out all night?"
"Yes," he answered passively.
"Why?"
He hesitated. "I was walking about—thinking."
"I should think you would be thinking! After what happened to you Wednesday, and after losing your job yesterday!"
He did not correct her misinterpretation of his answer, and as he said nothing more she turned back into the bedroom, and soon emerged dressed. As she moved about preparing breakfast his eyes rested on her now and then, and in a not unnatural selfishness he dully wondered why they two were married. Her feeling for him, he knew, was of no higher sort than that attachment which dependence upon a man and the sense of being linked to him for life may engender in an unspiritual woman. There was no love between them; they had no ideas in common; she was not this, and not this, and not this. And all the things that she was not, the other was. And it was always to be Maggie that he was to see thus intimately.
He had bowed to the situation as the ancients bowed to fate—accepted it as a fact as unchangeable as death that has fallen. And yet, as he lay watching her, thinking it was to be always so,—always!—his soul was filled with agonizing rebellion; and so it was to be through many a day to come. But later, as his first pain began to settle into an aching sense of irreparable loss, his less selfish vision showed him that Maggie was no more to blame for their terrible mistake than he, and not so much; and that she, in a less painful degree, was also a pitiable victim of their error. He became consciously considerate of her. For her part, she at first marveled at this gentler manner, then slowly yielded to it.
But this is running ahead. The first days were all the harder to Tom because he had no work to share his time with his pain. He did not seek another position; as he had told Ruth, he knew it would be useless to ask for work so long as the charge of being a dynamiter rested upon him. He walked about the streets, trying to forget his pain in mixing among his old friends, with no better financial hope than to wait till the court had cleared his name. Several times he met Pig Iron Pete, who, knowing only the public cause for Tom's dejection, prescribed a few drinks as the best cure for such sorrow, and showed his faith in his remedy by offering to take the same medicine. And one evening he brought his cheerless presence to the Barrys'. "Poor fellow!" sighed Mrs. Barry after he had gone. "He takes his thumps hard."
One day as he walked about the streets he met Petersen, and with the Swede was a stocky, red-faced, red-necked man wearing a red necktie whose brilliance came to a focus in a great diamond pin. Petersen had continued to call frequently after nightly attendance had become unnecessary. Two weeks before Tom had gleaned from him by hard questioning that the monthly rent of twelve dollars was overdue, the landlord was raging, there was nothing with which to pay, and also nothing in the house to eat. The next day Tom had drawn fifteen dollars from his little bank account, and held it by him to give to Petersen when he next called. But he had not come again. Now on seeing him Tom's first feeling was of guilt that he had not carried the needed money to Petersen's home.