Betty knit her brows. “Oh,” she murmured, “isn't that too bad. I really haven't a minute. You see—it's a matter of catching a train. I could do it Monday. Or you might call up one of the other girls. I'm awfully sorry. But it's something very important.” Her eyes avoided his. Her color rose a little. She turned away. “Of course,” she was murmuring, “I hate terribly to fail Sue at a time like this—”
She moved irresolutely toward the little hall, glanced again at her watch; and suddenly in confusion picked up her bag and hurried out.
He could hear her light step in the outer corridor; then the street door. All at sea, he started to follow. At the apartment door he paused. Her key was in the lock; she had not even thought to take it. He removed it, put it in his pocket; then wandered back into the living-room and stood over the telephone, trying to think of some one he could call in. But his rising resentment made clear thinking difficult. He sank into the armchair, crossed his long legs, clasped his hands behind his head, stared at the mantel. On it were Sue's books, in a haphazard row—a few Russian novels (in English translations), Havelock Ellis's Sex in Relation to Society, Freud on Psychanalysis and Dreams, two volumes of Schnitzler's plays, Brieux's plays with the Shaw preface, a few others.
His gaze roved from the books to the bare walls. They were bare; all Sue's pictures were pinned up on the burlap screen that hid a corner of the room—half a dozen feminist cartoons from The Masses, a futuristic impression of her own head by one of the Village artists, two or three strong rough sketches by Jacob Zanin of costumes for a playlet at the Crossroads, an English lithograph of Mrs. Pankhurst.
Henry Bates slowly, thoughtfully, filled and lighted his pipe. His brows were knit. The room, in its unfeminine bareness as well as in its pictures and books, breathed of the modern unsubmissive girl. No one had wasted a minute here on “housekeeping.” Here had lived the young woman who, more, perhaps, than any other of the recent lights of the old Village, had typified revolt. She had believed, like the Village about her, not in patriotism but in internationalism, not in the home but in the individual, not in duty and submission, but in experiment and self-expression. Already, like all the older faiths of men, this new religion had its cant, its intolerance of opposition, its orthodoxy. His pipe went out while he sat there flunking about it; the beginnings of the summer twilight softened the harsh room and dimmed the outlines of back fences and rear walls without the not overclean windows.
Finally he got up, turned on the lights, took off his coat, found Sue's trunk behind the burlap screen and dragged it to the middle of the room. He began with the coverings of the couch-bed; then went into the bedroom and folded blankets, coverlet, sheets and comforter. Sue did not own a great variety of clothing; but what was hanging in the closet he brought out, folded and packed away. He took down the few pictures and laid them flat within the upper tray of the trunk. In an hour living-room, bedroom and closet were bare. The books he piled by the door; first guessing at the original cost of each and adding the figures in his head.
Nothing remained but the bureau in the bedroom. He stood before this a long moment before he could bring himself to open the top drawer. To Peter, to Zanin, to Hy Howe, the matter would have been simple. Years back those deeply experienced young bachelors had become familiar with all manner of little feminine mysteries; but to Henry Bates these were mysteries still. The color came hotly to his mild countenance; his pulses beat faster and faster. He recalled with painful vividness, the last occasion on which Reason, normally his God, had deserted him. That was the day, not so long ago by the calendar, he had turned against all that had been his life—dropped his books in the North River, donned the costly new suit that Peter's tailor had made for him and set forth to propose marriage to Sue Wilde. And with chagrin that grew and burned his face to a hotter red he recalled that he had never succeeded in making himself clear to her. To this day she did not know that his reflective, emotionally unsophisticated heart had been torn with love of her. Why, blindly urging marriage, he had actually talked her into that foolish engagement with Peter!... What was the quality that enabled men to advance themselves—in work, in love? Whatever it might be, he felt he had it not. Peter had it. Zanin had it. Hy had it. Sue herself! Each was a person, something of a force, a positive quality in life. But he, Henry Bates, was a negative thing. For years he had sat quietly among his books, content to watch others forge past him and disappear up the narrow lanes of progress. Until now, at thirty-two, he found himself a hesitant unfruitful man without the gift of success.
“It is a gift,” he said aloud; and then sat on the springs of the stripped bed and stared at his ineffectual face in the mirror. “The trouble with me,” he continued, “is plain lack of character. Better Hy's trifling conquests; better Zanin's driving instinct to get first; better Peter's hideously ungoverned ego; than—nothing!”
His pipe usually helped. He felt for it. It was not in the right-hand coat pocket where he always carried it. Which fact startled him. Then he found it in the left-hand pocket. Not once in ten years before this bitter hour had he misplaced his pipe. “My God,” he muttered, “haven't I even got any habits!” He was unnerved. “Like Pete,” he thought, “but without even Pete's excuse.”
He lighted his pipe, puffed a moment, stood erect, drew a few deep breaths, then drove himself at the task of packing the things that were in the bureau. And a task it was! Nothing but the strong if latent will of the man held him to it. There were soft white garments the like of which his hands had never touched before. Reverently, if grimly, he laid them away in the upper trays of the trunk. In the bottom drawer were Sue's dancing costumes—Russian and Greek. Each one of these brought a vivid picture of the girl as she had appeared at the Crossroads; each was a stab at Henry Bates' heart. At the bottom, in the corner, were a pair of red leather boots, very light, with metal clicks in the heels. He took them up, stood motionless holding them. His eyes filled. He could see her again, in that difficult crouching Russian step—her costume sparkling with color, her olive skin tinted rose with the spirited exercise of it, her extraordinary green eyes dancing with the exuberant life that was in her. Then, as if by a trick shift of scene, he saw her in a bare kitchen, wearing a checked apron, kneeling by a stove. The tears brimmed over. He lifted the little red boots, stared wildly at them, kissed them over and over.