Her grief was restrained. She had never, he found time to remind himself parenthetically, made a scene. She was a true lady.
She wept quietly, and slowly her head went down until she was looking over at the floor, that was all.
He brought her a glass of water, but she shook her head. She even found time to whisper “Thank you.” He held her hand a little. He dabbed at her eyes a little, with his handkerchief. There was very little else that he could do; her affliction was within, and not on the outside where he could reach it.
She even sat by him at the breakfast table, presently, though without touching anything herself, and poured a cup of coffee for him and saw that he had everything he wanted. (The wives of men, so close to ministering angels!)
And when he offered to stay home for half the day to look after her, she dissuaded him, with an ever-vigilant eye to his own best interests. “No, you go ahead to your job. You mustn’t stay out like that.” And even added, “I don’t like you to see me like this.”
Then when he was already at the door, she called after him: “Press, will you ring me from downtown as soon as you’ve got our tickets, and let me know. I’ll begin our packing meanwhile.”
He suddenly stood stock still there in the doorway, rooted to the spot. Our tickets, she had said, our packing. She expected him to go with her. As who wouldn’t at such a time? He was her husband. What husband would let his wife make such a trip alone with her grief?
But how could he go? How did he dare? Go back there, of all places? That was forbidden territory. That was the nucleus, the focus, of all he had to fear, and all he had feared, for three solid months now. That was putting his head into the lion’s mouth. To go there was almost like surrendering of his own accord.
“Press?” she was querying, from where he’d left her. “Are you still out there at the door?”
“Yes,” he said, stirring to belated departure. “I’ll call you up — later.”
He completed his exit, closed the door.
No use. He knew he wouldn’t make the trip back with her. He knew he couldn’t.
It happened in your room, he told himself. In your room she died, in your room they found her. Even though you called yourself Prince, that Prince was you. Once they hold you, the landlady will be able to identify you with Prince, a half-dozen others in that home will be able to identify you with Prince. You become one with him. You become him. Don’t go back within reach.
Keep away from New York.
He was at the railroad station by now. He was at the ticket window. He asked for it in the singular, not the plural.
“Ticket for New York.”
The man gave him a chance to correct himself, had he wished to even now.
“One?”
He didn’t. He wasn’t a free agent in this; fear was buying his ticket, not he. “Just one. What afternoon trains are there?”
“There’s a three o’clock, and then there’s the Limited at five. That’s an extra-fare train.”
“Which one gets in first?”
“The Limited, of course. It beats the other’s time by a full two hours.”
“One for the Limited, then.”
He kept his word, called her at once. Right there from the station.
He wouldn’t tell her right now, of course. That she was making the trip without him. He’d break it to her swiftly, at the last moment, that was the best way. The way a surgical dressing is wrenched off, with one swift jerk, rather than peeled off by sparing degrees.
He’d tell her they wouldn’t let him off from his job. Say that he’d had to cancel his own ticket, after having already bought it.
She came to the phone. Her voice sounded weak, but she was bearing up well. He asked her how she was, first.
“I’m all right, Press. I’ve got both the valises ready. It gave me something to do. The tickets, dear? Did you get them?”
He carefully kept all reference to number out of his answer. “I did. The Five O’clock Limited. It goes straight through with only one stop, at Philadelphia. It gets in at nine-forty-five, tomorrow night. Will that be all right?”
Yes, she assured him, the quicker the better. Then suddenly, at an unlooked-for tangent, she had asked him: “Are you at the office now? Where are you speaking from?”
For a minute he was going to lie, then (since there was no point to such a lie) luckily he told her the truth. “No, I’m still at the station.”
“Oh, good,” she said quickly. “Well, then you haven’t heard yet. I already phoned Mr. Ponds, to save time. And to save you the embarrassment of having to ask him yourself. I told him what happened, that I’d lost Mother. He was very nice. He said they’d gladly let you off. You don’t have to be back until the first of next week.”
He had to swallow repeatedly, two or three times, unable to say anything.
“Press?” she said. “Press? Are you still there?”
I waited too long to answer, just then. I shouldn’t have let that lapse creep in.
“Yes,” he said somewhat shakily.
“What happened?”
“The darned cord tangled with the button of my coat-sleeve, I couldn’t free it for a minute.” He measured the distance between the two with his eye, saw that that could have happened.
“I can take the bags to the station and wait for you there,” she suggested. “It’s nearer to you from the office than coming out here and then going back downtown again.”
He didn’t want his own bag to leave the flat, at any cost. As though there were some dangerous magnetic impulse inherent in the train; that the nearer the bag got to it, the more danger there was of its being sucked into the train, and himself with it.
“No,” he said firmly. “I’ll pick you up at the flat. Wait there for me.”
It was on his mind all morning — new york, New York, NEW YORK — it kept looming larger and larger, like a huge maw waiting to devour him. Its stylized skyscraper outline became the jagged teeth of the maw.
He couldn’t eat any lunch. He sat there at the soup-stained tablecloth, alternately drumming his fingers on it and ploughing them through his hair. (The table-waited business lunch had not yet been supplanted by the waiterless counter-served one, except in one or two of the large metropolitan centers.) The waiter would take each course away and bring the next without comment or remonstrance: the noodle soup, the beef stew, the apple pie — all for forty-five cents; probably attributing the trouble to the quality of the food and the perspicacity of this one customer over and above all the rest. Which was partially correct, anyway.
Marshall went back to where he worked and still couldn’t conquer the problem.
New York, New York, New York. The Tombs Prison, the “Bridge of Sighs.” The railroad ride up the banks of the Hudson to Ossining. The Death House at Sing Sing Prison. He saw only those things about it. It was a different New York; his own personal, private hell.
Three-forty-five came. Four. And still no solution. He couldn’t cut his time any shorter. He had to get out to the flat where she was waiting.
His boss, Ponds, came by to say good-bye to him, put hand to his back.
“Sorry about your wife’s mother, Marshall. I know how those things are; I lost my own mother-in-law summer before last, and I couldn’t have felt forse if she were my own mother.”
“But you didn’t have to attend her funeral in a city where you were wanted for murder,” flashed through Marshall’s mind.
“I can tell how you feel about it by the look on your face. Go ahead, you don’t need to finish this up; it can wait until you get back.”
Don’t be so kind, Marshall thought morosely. The time’ll be up quickly enough, as it is.