And suddenly, without my realizing at just what moment, she spoke. It came to me a second or two later, and what she had said was; “I know you are going to leave me. Something tells me — you tell me. The look in your eye — every move you make — tells me.”
I didn’t answer. Meaning: “Yes, I am going to leave you. Tonight. Right now.”
And that cursed infernal thing in there went on. “Don’t ever leave me — now that you’re here — or I’ll have no one to run to.” Damn the words, and damn the music, and damn everything connected with that show! It fitted too closely into my own life. I flung myself out of the chair and went in there and snapped it off. But above us and below us it still went on. “Why do I want the thing I cannot hope for? What do I hope for, I wish I knew.” And Maxine was still looking at me. An almost invisible silver thread lay beside her nose now, where one tear too many had lost its balance and escaped the watchfulness of her lashes. “Why was I born — to love you?” At last it stopped. The people above us had gone to a movie. The people below us had turned to a prize fight at Forty-Ninth and Eighth Avenue without leaving their chairs.
The coffee in our two cups was stone-cold; the cream she had put in it had gathered around the edges, where it met the cup, in a hollow white ring, leaving the middle black — each cup looked as though it contained a satanic fried egg with a black yolk. This last supper of ours hadn’t been a success.
“Oh, I’m so frightened,” she said sepulchrally. “What are you going to do, Wade?”
Again I didn’t answer.
Again she said, “Won’t you speak — and tell me? I’d rather know — and have it over with.”
“Why go out of your way to look for trouble?”
“Oh, I know, don’t try to tell me,” she said all in a breath. “You have something up your sleeve, I get it with every heartbeat!”
“Nothing in particular,” I answered facilely. But those were the soothing tactics of last night, of all the nights before, perhaps, but not of tonight. They wouldn’t do any more; she had to know. So instantly I belied what I had just said, and told her: “Don’t put it that way; not up my sleeve. I’m not trying to hide anything from you — I’m going to say good-bye to you tonight.”
Bernice’s face had expressed fright that afternoon; hers didn’t. It looked as though a little death had gathered between her eyes. There was not the insanity of escape, of struggle there; there was the agony of muteness, of somebody gone down in quicksand with only the eyes and forehead showing.
It didn’t matter now, I supposed, whether I said anything more. I went on speaking, nevertheless. The drawing room consoling the torture chamber. “I’ve lost my job. What’s the use of going on? Things haven’t been any too sweet between us even without that, you know that as well as I do; now they’d only be ten times worse. Why drag it out any longer? Don’t you think this is the best way?”
“I’ll do anything, anything under the sun,” she said, “anything you want me to, only not to lose you! If it’s the job — I’ll get a job, I’ll keep things going for us, Wade! If it’s Bernice, if it’s that you want to see her as often as you like, why, see her, Wade, see her all the time — don’t even live with me anymore — I won’t say a word, as long as I have you here near me sometimes. Wade, I’ll forget there’s such a thing as self-respect, I’ll forget I’m a woman even. What more can I do? Wade, Wade, make it a little easier for me!”
I saw her rise an inch above her chair, as though to come to me, and matter-of-factly motioned her not to. “I don’t want you near me, Maxine. My love for you’s gotten away from me, there isn’t any in me any more.”
The pallor of her face literally shone across the table at me; it was awful to see any one suffer like that. I brushed my hand before my eyes to take the sight away. “Don’t, oh, please don’t look at me like that, it goes right through me! I can’t stand it. I’m going!”
I made two false moves to rise, and as though she were sending something hypnotic through the air toward me, couldn’t seem to get out of the chair at all. Finally I managed to kick it back from me with my heel, stand, and walk out of the room with rigid, forced steps, my head actually turned the other way so as not to see her.
I went into the bedroom, snapped on the light, picked up my valise from beside the wall, looked around me to see if I had left anything out. Meanwhile, not a sound from in there where she was. Not a breath, not a sigh. As though I were alone in the place.
The bureau clock said quarter to eight; it was usually a little slow, though, and until I ride down and everything—
I put out the light, went through the living room, valise in hand, and instead of going back to the kitchen, took the other door, to the little foyer. There I set the grip down a second, not knowing what I was going to call out to her by way of parting, and principally because I wanted to put my hat on properly, and that required two hands.
I had left it over the telephone, always my favorite rack, and as I lifted it off, the phone rang as though the hat had been holding it muffled all along. I chuckled whimsically and picked it up to answer it; it would be too nerve-racking to have to go down the stairs with that ringing behind me as though pleading with me to come back, and if I didn’t answer it myself, it might bring Maxine out into the foyer, stunned though she seemed to be. I had rather have her stay where she was until after I’d gotten out — I didn’t want to have to see that terrible look on her again; I would probably remember it for a long time after this as it was.
“Hello?” I said quietly.
An unmistakable negro drawl greeted me, so exaggerated, in fact, that it almost resembled the accent of a member of some black-face comedy team — Moran and Mack or Amos and Andy. He asked what number I was.
I was so certain there had been a mistake on the line that I told him without further ado, “You’ve got the wrong party.”
“Mistah Wade? You Mistah Wade?” came back engagingly.
“I am. Who’re you?”
“All right if I talk to you? Nobody c’n hear?”
“I’m busy. What do you want?”
“Well, look hea’, Mistah Wade, this Miss Bernice’ do’man — I got a message fo’ you.”
That was different! “You have?” I cried at once. “What is it?”
“Miss Bernice say for me to tell you she done change her mine—”
I got all cold around the ankles and the wrists.
“—and instead of going to the station from whea’ yo’ at, will you kinely stop by hea’ fo’ her and she’ go ’long with you.”
“Hasn’t she left yet?” I cried.
“Nossir, she’ busy, gettin’ ready right now.”
“Well, then let me talk to her herself a minute, will you?”
“She doan’ want to use the outside wire from the ’partment, for nobody, Mistah Wade, and she hasn’t got time to come all the way downstai’s hea’ and speak over this hea’ phoam. She jus’ now phoamed down the message to me husself, axin me to tell you.”
“All right,” I said. “Did she tell you what time she’d be ready?”
“She tole me you could leave any time beginning fum now, and she’ be waiting fo’ you when you get hea’.”