Chapter THREE: I

They sat there for hours, at a tiny table, in a corner of the dimly lighted shop, crowded with miscellaneous objects, embroidered smocks, brass candlesticks, pictures, books, curios, baskets. The red curtains were drawn across the windows, the door was closed; they were undisturbed, isolated during the course of that most pathetic of human struggles--that forever unsuccessful effort of one soul to explain itself to another. With utter earnestness, sincerity, with justice and compassion for Lawrence, Rosaleen tried to give Landry the story of her marriage. She had only one motive--that this man should not think her worse than she was. She felt that if he could be brought to see _why_ she had done this and that, he would no longer blame her. She wished to make him see how inevitable it had all been.

She began with the day that Lawrence had come to her room to kill himself. She and Miss Waters had tended him with frightened assiduity all the afternoon, but in vain. His malady was beyond their reach. His malady was despair. He had been through an experience that day which had wrecked his soul. The doctor had told him that he was going blind, and that nothing could prevent it.

Terror had seized him. He had thought at once of the only person he knew who was capable of sustained and disinterested kindness, and he had fled to Rosaleen, to die in her compassionate presence. His attempt, however, wasn’t successful, whether from lack of knowledge or from reluctance even he himself never knew. He hadn’t really harmed himself at all; the blood-letting seemed in fact to make him feel better, to clear his brain. He could perfectly well have got up and walked off at any moment, but he preferred to lie with closed eyes, savouring his anguish. And permitting an exquisite sense of consolation to creep into his soul.

Rosaleen and Miss Waters worked desperately over him; they washed his face with cold water again and again. They made tea for him, and toast, and the smell of the toast revived him. He ate it, mournfully, still with his eyes closed. They bathed his forehead with Rosaleen’s cherished “Florida water.” Once Miss Waters laid her cottony-white head on his chest, to listen to his heart, but being too modest to unbutton his waistcoat, she didn’t obtain much information. However, she knew it was the thing to do, and it impressed Rosaleen.

He lay there for two days; a most embarrassing situation. Miss Waters came to stop with Rosaleen, and they slept on the floor of the studio, because Rosaleen said it might make him think he was causing trouble if they pulled the other cot out of the room where he lay. The thought of causing trouble, however, was not one of Lawrence’s worries. He would wake up in the night and groan, so horribly that Rosaleen and Miss Waters would cling to each other and weep. He asked for wines and delicacies which they could ill afford. But his selfishness made him all the more appealing to Rosaleen.

On the third day, late in the afternoon, he got up, bathed, shaved, and dressed. Rosaleen disposed him in the wing chair, and went to the corner to fetch cigarettes for him.

“What would you like for dinner?” she asked.

He said he didn’t care; anything nice....

“Won’t you take something now?” she entreated. “A nice hot cup of cocoa?”

“No; not cocoa.”

He sighed and once more closed his eyes, which frightened Rosaleen.

“What _can_ I do for you?” she asked.

“Stay near me!” he said. “Don’t leave me alone!”

“Of course I won’t!” she answered.

He stayed there in the studio for nearly three weeks, sitting about in his dressing gown, smoking and reading. One day he ordered a taxi and sent Rosaleen to the flat where he had been living, to fetch him a long list of things, including his painting materials, and when she returned, he set up his easel and began to work.

“I may have six months more, you know,” he said. “I can see almost as well as ever now. The colours aren’t quite so clear, perhaps....”

Rosaleen was delighted to see him taking an interest in something; she had for so long looked upon him as an invalid, almost unable to move, for whose recovery she was more or less responsible. She felt that this new interest in his work might serve to rouse him from that apathy which so distressed and alarmed her. She sat watching him, with affection, with admiration. He was singing to himself, in a deep, growling basso, and working just as she had seen him working in his studio downstairs.... When suddenly he flung down the brushes and fell on his knees, so heavily that the room shook.

“Oh, my God!” he cried. “I can’t bear it! I can’t live!... It’s going from me!... Oh, let me die! Let me die...!”

She had rushed across the room and was on her knees beside him.

“Lawrence!” she cried. “Dear Lawrence! Don’t give way! Don’t take it so hard! They say that bl--that people who can’t see are very happy. You’ll find other things--all _sorts_ of other things--to interest you!”

“Be quiet!” he cried, sternly. “Don’t dare to tell me such things!”

He rose heavily to his feet and went over to the window.

“If it had come at once!” he said. “If everything had been blotted out at one stroke, I could have endured it.... But to see it coming on, to know what’s going to happen.... No!” he cried, suddenly. “I _won’t_ stand it! I won’t try!”

For weeks Rosaleen had no other thought but to try to comfort him. She was glad to use what remained of her five hundred dollars to buy him the things he wanted. His tastes were luxurious, above all, in matters of eating and drinking; he liked quail or sweetbreads for breakfast, and for dinner exotic things of which she had never heard before. And he wished a glass of good white port every day with his lunch. And what he asked for she got, if it were in any way possible.

II

She made no attempt to explain to Landry her reasons for marrying Lawrence. It had been with her purely a spiritual matter, a valiant effort at consoling him. The material aspects of the thing didn’t trouble her; she didn’t even regard it as a sacrifice. She knew that she didn’t love him as she had loved Nick Landry; she had felt for him only that kindly affection she was ready to feel for any human creature. But she believed that in marrying him she would be doing something worthy, something of use; that she would be serving God.

Lawrence didn’t know this; he honestly believed that Lawrence Iverson, even if he were blind and penniless, was a brilliant match for Rosaleen.

They were married at City Hall, with no friend present except Miss Waters, who wept all the time, and they went back to the studio, to take up their joint life there without any sort of festivity, any celebration. Lawrence had said that he could not stand it, that he was in no mood for that sort of thing; but as a matter of fact, he was ashamed of Rosaleen. He would have been proud to be her lover, but he was ashamed to be her husband. He didn’t mention that he was married to anyone; there were no announcements sent out, no notice in the paper. No one sent a present, except Miss Waters; no one came to call upon Rosaleen.

Lawrence had been just emerging from Bohemianism to the respectability of success. He had lived with order and comfort; he had been invited about, flattered, more or less “lionized.” But he was not yet really established; he had no solid footing in that upper world, that “society” he so worshipped. He had no prestige to give Rosaleen, even if he had wished to do so. As a matter of fact, he carefully concealed the fact of his marriage from all these people.

The first invitation he got after the wedding was to a tea.

“You haven’t got anything suitable to wear,” he told her. “I’ll have to go alone.”

After establishing this precedent, he found it quite easy. He never suggested her accompanying him.

He was still fairly nice to Rosaleen in those days, although he was beginning to grow exasperated with her. She insisted upon being always his servant; never his friend, his comrade. She was always constrained; she never talked freely about what interested her; instead she was forever anxious to hearten and encourage Lawrence, to “draw him out”; she pretended to be interested in what interested him. He knew that she was prepared to endure everything, to forgive everything, out of compassion, and it was intolerable. He could never reach her; he could never make any sort of impression upon her; the coarsest talk made no stain on her heart, no evil knowledge could disturb her; she was incorruptible, by reason of her divine stupidity.

His gentleness vanished; he allowed himself to be as irritable as he pleased. He could still see well enough, but he had been forbidden to use his eyes, and he was like a caged animal. He used to walk up and down the studio, groaning.

“How are we going to live?” he demanded, one day.

“I think I can get work,” said Rosaleen, promptly, “if you won’t mind being left alone part of the time?”

“Do it then! Do it!” he cried.

She tried, she tried faithfully, but her work was no longer good. She was too anxious to please. A blight had settled on her, her fancy was destroyed, her developing facility with her pencil was checked, and she had not had sufficient experience to go on without thought or effort, like a machine. She made next to nothing; and the day came, inevitably, when there was no money left. Lawrence had come home from somewhere in a taxi, and there hadn’t been enough in his pocket to pay the tariff. He had come upstairs to ask Rosaleen for three dollars.

She had handed him a five dollar bill.

“It’s all I have,” she said. “All I have to buy dinner with....”

“_What!_” he bellowed. “No more? What do you do with what you earn? Eh?”

“I don’t earn very much, Lawrence. And I use it to pay for things----”

He went down and paid the chauffeur. Then he re-entered the room and went over to the table where she was working. He snatched up the card she had been painting--three fat robins on a telephone wire, with nine gold bells underneath bearing the letters of MERRY XMAS.

“Painting?” he said. “_This is painting_, eh? Good God!... _This_ going on in the room with _me_!... Rosaleen, you are no longer an artist. It’s too blasphemous!”

He picked up her four cherished camel’s hair brushes and snapped them into bits; then he tore up her cards and took up all the debris he had made, together with her paint box and her blocks of paper, and threw it all out of the window.

“Finished!” he said. “Go back to your pots and pans, wench, and leave such matters to your betters!”

III

It had seemed to her sometimes that he was not a human being at all. She was not able to tell what was buffoonery and what was real. If there were anything real in him.... It filled her with despair; she wondered if she had really done him any good. And when she doubted that, there was no foundation left for her life. If it hadn’t helped him, then all her misery was in vain, the terrible years which stretched before her would be filled with a pain quite useless, quite barren.

Her health began to fail. The irregular life, the fantastic meals Lawrence insisted upon, the noisy parties which kept her up night after night until almost dawn, the unceasing anxiety and unhappiness were too much for her. She did her very best; she was kind, patient, and loyal; she struggled to stifle her dreadful regrets, her disillusionment, she clung desperately to the one belief that kept her from absolute despair, the belief that she was indispensable, that Lawrence needed her and could not do without her.

He had singularly few friends. He knew almost every artist of reputation, but casually. He had been engrossed in his desire to enter society, and he hadn’t troubled much with his colleagues. His chief object in “entering society” had been to find a rich wife; and although he knew that any such thing would now have been impossible, still he blamed Rosaleen in his heart.

At last he had started this infernal “borrowing.” And Rosaleen had consented. It outraged her pride, her self-respect, her dignity; but it didn’t seem _wicked_ to her. She thought that perhaps it was her duty to sacrifice this pride and self-respect for the sake of her husband. One man after the other....

Landry interrupted her.

“Didn’t they ever make love to you?” he asked, brutally. “Didn’t they expect anything in return? Or were they all fools--like me?”

“I hardly _know_!” she said, wearily. “I never bothered.... I only had to get money....”

“Which you knew you couldn’t repay. That didn’t bother you either, did it?”

“Yes, it did! But I always hoped and hoped that some day I could, in some way. Mr. Landry, what was I to _do_?”

“There are women who’d rather die than be dishonourable.”

Her pale face flushed again.

“I wouldn’t have done it for myself,” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought of such a thing.... But I _couldn’t_ let Lawrence want!”

Landry stood up.

“Listen to me, Rosaleen!” he said. “There’s just one hope for you. Either you leave this demoralising, degrading atmosphere at once--or----”

“Or what?” she asked, with interest.

“Or else I’m done with you.”

She shook her head sadly.

“No,” she said. “It’s no use talking like that. I shouldn’t dream of leaving him, ever. I only wanted you to understand. I couldn’t bear for you not to. But I see that you don’t. Do you, Mr. Landry?”

“I don’t know!” he said, miserably.

They were silent for a very long time. The ceiling shook from the dancing feet in the studio overhead, but no sound reached them. They were completely isolated in there, behind the drawn red curtains. At last Rosaleen looked up.

“_Anyway_,” she said. “I think the best thing is--not to see each other any more.”

She waited.

“Don’t _you_?” she asked.

He regarded her, the unhappy wife, the victim of so many peoples’ selfishness, and it suddenly occurred to him that after all, she wasn’t much more than a young girl. Only twenty-four.... The thought startled him. She was so young, so friendless, and yet so strong. She hadn’t gone under, she was not destroyed. What did that wretched “borrowing” amount to anyway? How had he dared reproach her with it?... He felt as if he could never take his eyes from that worn face, with its beautiful honesty and benevolence. After all, there must be some force in her forlorn youth that was greater than intellect, more irresistible than beauty, something indestructible, beyond his comprehension....

He turned away, dazzled by his vision.

“Yes,” he said. “It _is_ best!”