Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/569

Rh now took off and put on the bureau, shivering and shaking in his wet clothes, his lips drawn in against his teeth. His hands, deep blue with cold, rested on the bureau; they showed plainly as his face his mental distraction. They trembled like a drunkard's; the nails were bitten and the flesh around them. Naturally serene, well balanced by temperament, the wreck now complete was all the more disastrous. He opened a drawer in his bureau and took out his revolver. At this last moment Edith came to his mind, and coupled with her, as always of late, Delevan.

"I shall have to wait. If I kill myself whilst he is in the house, there will be some further scandal. I'll listen for him to go." He therefore unlocked the door and set it ajar, and close to it sat down on his bed to wait.

The water oozed from his soaking boots; the edges of his trousers were crusted with frozen mud and slush. He was starved. He had been starved to death before this last tragedy. He was only half alive. His bowed head was like an old man's, gray about the temples, the hair on the top thinning. At this hour the house was comparatively still. The high stairway clock chimed out the quarter before seven, a handful of small mellow sounds shaken throughout the quiet. Following this he heard the sharp closing of the front door. He rose and closed the door But before the exit of Delevan, Mrs. Callender had already started up-stairs. Her hands were on the knob of her husband's door—she opened it and came in. At the sight before her eyes she gave a cry of horror and rushed forward.

"Amory—Amory! Oh, my God!"

As if she knew he could not carry out his terrible purpose with a living body against him, she threw herself on him, her arms around him.

"Amory, speak to me! You are mad! What are you thinking of—what are you doing? Put it up—don't let me see it hide it—hide it!"

He unloosened her clinging arms, and staring at her, said, hoarsely :

"Why did you stop me? I waited for Delevan to go—it was all I could do. You have no right to take this escape from me, Edith."

She saw his dreadful state. He looked as though he had been drowned—the marks of rain, and dirt even, were on his face; he wore his overcoat—it was heavy with ice and water; the steam rose from the nap. He stared at her, still reproaching her with his salvation.

"My God," he said in short broken tones, "have I got to go on?"

She thought he was mad. "Come," she said gently, "you are ill, very ill. Let me help you out of these clothes—they are dripping wet—oh, where have you been! I told them to let me know the moment you came home!"

The shock had frightened all the blood from her body; her lips were ghastly as his.

"How you shake with cold, Amory! Where is your flask?"

But she did not lessen her hold of his arm. The sight of her nervous terror reached the manhood in him. Through his dull grief, even, he pitied her. Slowly—there was actual reluctance in his movement—he put the pistol back in the drawer. She found his flask among his dressing things and poured out some whiskey, making him drink it, holding it to his lips, her eyes always fastened on his face, fascinated with its brooding whiteness, its shadow, its nearness to death. The gravity of his mental state kept her calm. She must not weep, nor faint, although her limbs almost bent under her. She must support him now—lead him back to life again if she could. She locked the door—no one should come in upon them. At last they were alone with each other in the most intimate and dreadful scene of their married lives.

Suddenly Callender laid hold of her with a ferocity, virile and possessive, that nearly made her cry out.

"Wait you don't know, perhaps—what has happened. I can't keep the pace, Edith. There was a crisis to-day in the Street—I have gone under."

She showed no shock at the news.

"I have debts, too, heavy ones. It will take years to clear them—if I ever can. I am ruined—ruined." He repeated it, to impress upon this quiet woman, whose sole god had been money, the dreadful fact of their position. He relaxed his hold, but she did not fall back from