He felt tired when he left the house the next morning. The business of preening for the senatorial race annoyed him. The goal lured but the details to be managed were aggravating.
He started as he opened the door of his chambers. Ruth! He stood looking at her without words. She was pale and there was something curious about her. She didn't look the same.
"You look surprised," she smiled. He noticed how spiritless she was.
"But ... you don't mind my coming here, do you. I've been trying to get you."
She turned her eyes away. He had finally discovered the change, a physical one.
"Well," he exclaimed, "I hadn't heard the good news. How's Paul."
So she was married. And had kept it secret. He smiled. He remembered other scenes in the room. The doors locked. Her arms around him. All that was over now. Before her motherhood, even the memory of it seemed less certain.
"There is no good news," she was saying. "I've come to see if you can help me."
They sat down. Basine nodded. Money. Poor girl. Schroder was always an ass about things.
"He's gone away," she went on. "And ... and I'd like to locate him."
"Who?"
"Paul."
She covered her face. So he had deserted her. And she had come back to him. A momentary excitement entered his thought. But he frowned immediately. It was distasteful to think of what might have been if ...
not for this.
An amazement came into his eyes. He stared at her as she talked. She had been ruined by Schroder and he had never married her. And when she had refused medical interference he had calmly left the city. He listened blankly and could think of nothing to say.
"Oh George, you must help me."
Help her! He must help her! After she had lived with this man for months, giving herself to him! He stood up and walked down the room. It was like he used to do, pace up and down in front of her.
He wanted to talk but he found it hard. A rage was coming into his mind that obscured his words. The rage continued. Pausing in the center of the room Basine began to swear. His voice had grown high pitched.
"Damn!" he shouted at her, "and you come to me. Me! You bring your filthy sins to me! Damn his dirty soul! Yes, you're fine, you are!
Leaving me to go with that chippy-chaser. I thought ... I thought you were somebody."
He stopped, his fist in the air. She was walking away.
"Ruth," he called after her, "listen, wait a minute."
The door closed after her. Basine stood watching the door. She would open it and come back. But the door remained shut. He seated himself at his desk. Moments passed and he was surprised to wake up and hear himself mumbling. "The dirty skunk! I'll wring his neck!"
She had given herself to Schroder! Not married him.... The part he had played in her ruin forced itself with a nauseating insistency into Basine's mind. His memories seized him. He struggled, but the things he knew leaped out of hiding-places and assaulted him. She had loved him.
And he had loved her. Life had seemed marvelous with her close to him.
His career, his day, its simplest detail, had been colored with delicious excitement. But he had been afraid to reach out and take what he wanted. It would have meant success, happiness and something else--the word beauty withheld itself--it would have meant these things.
But he had feared possession. He had let her go away after kissing her and telling her that he loved her. So she had gone walking in the street and fallen into the arms of the first man she met. It was plain.
Basine writhed under triumphant accusations. A torment filled him. He must escape from the accusations He pried himself away from his thoughts and took his place on the bench. Other people's troubles again.
Disputes, wrangles, testimonies--his ears listened mechanically. Lawyers were pleading with him. Witnesses were stammering. He sat with a scowl and hunched forward in his chair. His lean face thrust itself at the courtroom.
Thoughts too intolerable for his attention whirled sickeningly in a background. Pictures of Ruth in the man's arms, of her surrender, of the intimacies of their illicit affair forced themselves upon him. He loved her. "Oh, damn him," sang itself darkly through his heart.
There was one mocking intruder that raised a vociferous head. "You might have had her. Not he. She might have been yours if you hadn't been afraid." It was this that nauseated most. Not Schroder's villainy, but his own cowardice. He had lost through cowardice.
The day dragged itself along. He had recovered in part the rage which protected him from the intolerable memories. When he left the courtroom it was with a viciousness in his step. His feet stamped down as he walked, as if they were attacking the pavements. He entered a saloon several blocks from the City Hall.
The place was almost deserted. A few businesslike looking men were grouped before the long bar. They were laughing. Basine passed them and a voice called his name. He turned and saw a familiar face in one of the small booths against the wall. It was Levine, the newspaperman.
"Hello, Judge. Come on over and sit down."
Basine narrowed his eyes. The man was partially drunk. His drawn face, usually pale, was flushed and his sneering black eyes were bloodshot. He sat down opposite Levine with a greeting. A waiter brought drinks.
"What's up, Judge, you seem rather low," Levine laughed quietly. "The world been falling on your nose? Ha, have another. Here, waiter...."
They sat drinking, the newspaperman lost in a mysterious excitement that gathered in his voice. The excitement soothed Basine. The drinks brought a haze into his mind. He became aware that the man was talking about his sister. He was leaning forward, a black forelock over his bloodshot eye, his arm thrown out on the table, and talking in a languorous voice about Doris.
"Drowning my troubles, judge," he was saying. "It's easier to drink yourself into forgetfulness than to lie yourself into forgetfulness, eh?
And besides you grow sick of lying, eh. Nobody lies more than me, and I know, I know. But it ain't my fault--she's gone mad about him. You know him--Lindstrum, the poet. Been mad about him for years. And it gets worse ... that's all that's the matter with her. He ran away years ago and she's gotten a phobia about people. Because he's the people's poet.
Ha, she's told me about you, George. Got an idea of making this man Lindstrum sick by showing him how rotten people are. And using you. See?
But where do I come in? Nowhere ... nowhere. Just gabbing for years and I don't come in nowhere.... Get me? This damn newspaper drool has eaten into me.... She's the only one I wanted. But I don't come in, see? She's mad ... gone mad...."
Basine's thought avoided the man's words. He sat with a blissful vacuity. They drank till it grew night. Basine, as if recalling himself, walked out. The newspaperman lay across the table, his head asleep on his arm.
The night was cool. A curious impulse to let go came to Basine. He would go somewhere and find women and noise. He walked along thinking about this. When he had walked for an hour the impulse was gone. The haze was slipping from him. He recalled things Levine had said. Something about Lindstrum, the poet. His mind played with Lindstrum. He had seen him--where? Oh yes, long ago. That was before he'd become famous. Now he was a great poet. Hell with everything.... Get the senatorship and let things slide.
He walked along toward his home. Henrietta would be asleep. He sighed.
The night was cool. Everything all right in the morning. Now, everything all wrong. But in the morning--
His stride quickened. He felt half asleep and as he moved over the deserted pavement he began mumbling, "I love you, George, I love you...."
23
Doris was ill. The doctor had telephoned her mother and Mrs. Basine was sitting beside the bed holding Doris' hand. A man she remembered vaguely was standing in a corner of the room smoking. It was the poet, Lindstrum, who was once a friend of Doris. He had been there when she arrived, standing by the window and smoking while the doctor was fixing an ice pack on Doris' head.
The doctor had been unable to make a diagnosis. She had a fever but they would have to wait for more definite symptoms.
As the twilight filled the studio, Mrs. Basine grew frightened. She thought at moments Doris was dead, she lay so still. She watched the half-closed eyes anxiously. Perhaps Doris would die. And George was in Washington. She had telegraphed but he couldn't arrive till the next day. She sat wondering about her daughter. She remembered her as a child, then as a girl.
"Changes, changes," she sighed. Changes that excited one, but all they did was bring one nearer to this. She was thinking of death.
"How do you feel now, Doris?"
No answer. The burning eyes continued to stare, the hand she held remained limp and dry in her fingers. Perhaps it was nothing serious.
Merely a fever. She sat nodding her head at her thoughts. She thought of how her children had grown up and gone away. Fanny, George, Doris, Aubrey, Henrietta, Mrs. Gilchrist, Judge Smith and the grandchildren.