The Death Wish. Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
in a half-animal innocence, the sights and sounds and smells about him. They were passing the Luffs’ place now, a place he had always admired; something here, some touch of charming carelessness, entirely lacking in his own formal grounds. He liked the way the Luffs’ driveway wound through the trees.
“Who’s that?” he thought, and in a moment repeated the question to the chauffeur. “Who’s that, do you know, Linney?”
“Some relation of Mrs. Luff’s, sir,” Linney answered, and for a moment his glance left the road, looked where Delancey was looking, at a tall young girl in a striped dress and a wide-brimmed hat, sauntering across the lawn. Delancey had only the briefest glimpse of her face, a grave, beautiful mouth, dark eyes; then they turned a bend in the road, and she was gone, leaving an impression on him of strange charm. She had glanced at them with the aloof unconsciousness of a child, of a creature whose existence is complete, who needs nothing from any other living creature.
“Too bad Josephine had a row with Mrs. Luff,” he thought, and sighed again, a resigned sigh. Josephine was always having rows, always shutting doors in his friendly face. Even poor Whitestone…
“Lord knows why she’s so down on him,” he thought. “He’s always very polite to her.”
He could see Whitestone’s house now, through the trees, a beastly little house, he thought it, damp, hemmed in by those dark pines, a jerry-built little house, with a cheap tiled fireplace, built-in settles on the porch, all sorts of “arty” touches. Poor Whitestone hated it himself, but he had to live in it, just as he had to work in an advertising agency, instead of painting remarkable pictures.
“He can paint, all right,” thought Delancey. “Fellow’s a genius, I think.”
His admiration for his friend was perfectly uncritical. He had admired Whitestone and liked him ever since they had been at a preparatory school together; he admitted candidly that Whitestone was far more intelligent than he was, that it was unfair that he should have so much and Whitestone so little. He wanted very much to help Whitestone; he would have done a great deal for him, if Josephine had not been so disagreeable about it. As it was, he had been able to spare twenty or thirty dollars now and then, had paid the poor devil’s club dues, a garage bill, things like that.
“Oh, forget it!” he would say, when Whitestone tried to thank him. “Some day when you’re famous, you can paint my portrait.”
The car stopped outside the cottage, and Linney sounded the horn. This usually brought Whitestone out in a hurry, glad of the chance to ride so comfortably to the railway station instead of taking a bus. But this morning he did not come. The horn sounded again and again, with no result.
“I’ll go in and see…” said Delancey.
“Only fifteen minutes to catch the train, sir,” Linney warned him.
In his heart Delancey knew well enough that it made very little difference whether he caught that train, or any other. He had desk room in a downtown office, where he went every day to open and answer such letters as came addressed to The Washproof Button Fastener Company. An invention of his own, this was, a device for fastening buttons to any sort of material, so that they were almost undetachable. A good idea, but not very successful. Needed a few improvements, when he could get round to it. …
He went along the brick walk, mounted the steps to the narrow porch, and rang the bell.
“Can’t have gone,” he thought. “Or I’d have seen him at the bus stop.”
There was the sound of a quick, light step inside; he smiled to hear it. Rosalind, of course. It was a pleasure to think of her, the one compensation of poor Whitestone’s life.
“And a big compensation, too,” thought Delancey, somewhat ruefully.
Even the harassments of poverty, he imagined, would not be intolerable with a girl like Rosalind to share them, a gay, valiant, pretty comrade. Their devotion was the most beautiful thing…
“Hello, Shawe!” she said cheerfully. “Come in! Robert’s not going in to the office this morning. Another headache. …Come and have a cup—” Her voice broke; she swallowed, and then went on, cheerful again. “Have a cup of coffee.”
Delancey glanced at her compassionately. The poor girl was upset about something; he could see now that her eyes were reddened. Yet she was still so pretty, always so pretty and smart, even in her cotton house-dress, her blond hair waved, her hands beautifully tended; she was so slender and straight.
“Thanks, Rosalind,” he said. “So Robert’s got another of those headaches, eh? Ought to see an eye specialist, I should think.”
“I believe they’re nervous headaches,” she said, lowering her voice. “He doesn’t sleep well, you know. And he lets everything upset him.”
“Artistic temperament!” said Delancey, seriously. “Where is he? In bed?”
“No. In the dining-room. Drinking far too much coffee. But come in, Shawe!”
He followed her along the narrow hall to the little dining-room which, in spite of its low ceiling, its cheap furniture, he had always found attractive. More than ever so now, with the Spring sun shining in, the fresh blue and white cloth on the table, the willow-pattern china, the tulips in a bowl.
“By Jove!” he thought, with a sigh. “Money isn’t everything. …If Whitestone could realize…”
But Whitestone was obviously in a bad mood this morning. He sat slouched in his chair, his dark hair untidy; a lean, haggard fellow of thirty or so, with something unreasonably boyish about him, something touching.
“Hello, old man!” said Delancey. “What’s this I hear about a head—?”
“Got the car there?” Whitestone interrupted. “Run me down to the station, will you, Shawe?”
“Oh, Robert!” cried his wife. “Don’t think of going to work when you feel—”
“I want to get some Bristol board,” he said, curtly.
“But—” she began, and stopped, and Delancey saw her looking at her husband with a curious intensity.
“Worried about him,” he thought. “Poor girl. …”
Whitestone had risen and walked into the hall.
“Come on!” he cried, impatiently.
Delancey turned his head to give Rosalind a comforting smile, but the smile never happened. He saw a look on her face such as he had never seen before; he had not imagined that she could look like this. Always before he had thought of her as a girl; not now, though. Her skin had a dry, blanched look beneath the powder, her eyes were strained, the lids a little wrinkled; with surprise he realized that when she was not gay and smiling, she was not really pretty. Smart, of course, and attractive, nice figure, but not really pretty—and not young. Not like the girl he had seen strolling about the Luffs’ garden. Authentic youth there, with its irresistible and undefinable charm; just the way she had turned her head on her slender neck, the complete unconsciousness of her pose. …Queer how well he remembered that girl. …
“Shawe…” said Rosalind, standing very close to him, and speaking in the lowest possible tone. “Poor Robert. …Do remember, won’t you, that he’s not himself this morning?”
Delancey nodded in kindly reassurance, but he did not want to look at Rosalind again just then. He felt guilty, ashamed to have discerned that she was not young; he felt very sorry for her.
“For God’s sake, come on!” shouted Whitestone, in a fury.
“Temperament, eh?” said Delancey, with a smile in Rosalind’s direction, and made haste to join his friend. They went along the brick walk at a ridiculous pace; Whitestone was almost running.
“Here, now!” said Delancey, half laughing. “What’s the idea?”
“Walk a way