There was a moment of awkwardness, which Mrs. Vernon quickly covered with talk; and now that Caroline had left, Martin yielded entirely to the warm friendliness of the little circle in the lamplit parlor. When the evening ended nearly an hour later, with Martin’s discovery that it was practically midnight, he felt that an understanding had been reached: they liked each other, they had begun a friendship. And he had learned one fact that struck him: it was Caroline who was the older daughter, by two years, though she looked five years younger. Perhaps it was her small and almost childish features, especially her little girl’s nose, that made her seem younger than Emmeline, whose strong straight nose and black thick eyebrows gave her a look of masculine energy; her shoulders were broader, her voice deeper and more resonant, than Caroline’s. It struck him too that Emmeline in some sense watched over her sister, filled in gaps left by Caroline’s silence, took upon herself the task of speaking for both of them — while Caroline, with her pale hair pulled tightly back, so that it seemed to pull painfully against the skin of her temples, Caroline, with her delicate pale face and small mouth and large brown eyes looking away, Caroline Vernon, sunk in her dream, seemed the younger sister, protected by mother and older sister from unwelcome disturbances and intrusions.
Now every evening when Martin returned to the Bellingham after late hours at his office in the Vanderlyn, or supper with his parents in the small kitchen over the cigar store, on the familiar old plates with the blue Dutch children on them, or his weekly visit to the brothel on West Twenty-fifth Street, he would glance in at the lamplit parlor off the main lounge. There the Vernon women sat night after night, sipping bright-colored liquids from thin glasses. At a smile from Mrs. Vernon or a wave from Emmeline he would enter the parlor and sink into a waiting armchair, before the dark-gleaming table with its glowing dome-shaded lamp, an ivory-colored lamp with little Nile-green sailboats and a Nile-green island on the translucent porcelain shade and, on the porcelain body, little Nile-green houses on a Nile-green hillside — an admirable lamp, a really first-rate lamp that, he assured the Vernon women, with its removable oil fount and its excellent center-draft burner, was as hopelessly antiquated in the new world of incandescent lighting as the stage coach in a world of steam trains. Had they noticed, incidentally, that the overhead lights in the lobby and dining room were all electric, even the chandeliers? For it was interesting, it was a subject that never ceased to fascinate him, how the two worlds existed together, the world of oil lamps and incandescent lights, of horsecars and steam trains, one world gradually crowding out the other. Mrs. Vernon and Emmeline encouraged him to continue such discussions, Emmeline putting in a sharp, thoughtful question whenever something wasn’t absolutely clear to her, and both continued to question him closely about his work. Martin felt pleased and soothed to recount the minor adventures of his day: the resistance of Mr. Westerhoven to everything new, along with a secret willingness to give way in the face of superior argument; the slackness of the new bellboy, who had been caught smoking a cigarette in a fourth-floor corridor; Dundee’s brilliantly meticulous mind, which foresaw every expense and left nothing to chance, but which resisted anything daring or unusual, such as Martin’s suggestion that one of the two floors of billiard tables be reserved for women. His own father, a tobacco man of the old stamp, they didn’t make them like that any more, his own father still wouldn’t hear of stocking cigarettes — could anyone believe it? And he turned to Caroline, as if he were asking whether she was able to believe it; and Caroline lowered her eyes.
Caroline Vernon’s quietness had quickly come to seem part of the nature of things, a form of reserve rather than of sullenness. Besides, she was by no means silent, but now and then spoke a few quiet words, to which Martin listened with deep attention, as if a remark such as “I prefer warm weather, but not too warm,” or “It was the Sunday we were walking in the park and there was a sudden shower” were a revelation of her innermost nature. She no longer ignored Martin, but nodded at him when he joined the group or rose to go — a small, not unfriendly nod and a brief brushing of his face with her large, half-closed eyes, which shone vividly in the lamplight and might have seemed startlingly vivid had it not been for the heavy eyelids, which gave her a languorous and almost sleepy air.
One evening when Martin returned from the Vanderlyn a little later than usual — it was getting on toward eleven, he had been studying the report of expenses provided by the head of housekeeping — he glanced in at the parlor and was surprised to see four empty armchairs about the familiar table. He hesitated, then stepped inside. At the far end of the parlor an elderly woman looked up from a book. Martin, who recognized her from the dining room, nodded and sat down. He unbuttoned his coat and removed from his vest pocket a silver-cased watch. At the touch of a pin the lid opened. It was 10:52; they had often sat until midnight. He closed the watch cover, replaced the watch in his vest pocket, and settled back. A moment later he sprang up and looked into the lobby, where a few guests sat reading newspapers. Martin glanced in at the other parlor and the small library, returned to the first parlor, and at last checked with the night clerk, who said that the Vernons had taken a late supper, gone for a walk, and returned to their rooms a little past nine. They had not come down.
Martin sat in the lamplit parlor for twenty minutes, looking at the three empty armchairs, in which he could almost see the three Vernon women: Mrs. Vernon, with her dark combs glinting in the lamplight as she laughed; Emmeline, with her sharp intelligent eyes and slightly too large mouth; Caroline, with her hair pulled back tight and her eyelids lowered. As he stared at Caroline’s chair, which showed in the dark-red gold-flowered seat a faint depression that seemed to hold her ghostly form, he saw on the red-and-gold arm of the chair a single long yellow hair. Martin rose, looked quickly about, and bent down to examine it. He saw that it was a trick of the light on the raised gold flowers of the dark-red arm. He felt such an unexpected shock of desolation that a few minutes later when he stepped from the elevator and began walking down the corridor he couldn’t remember whether he had said good night to old Jackson, the elevator man, and later that night he woke from a dream in which he bent to kiss the hand of Mrs. Vernon and saw, on the back of her long black glove, a bright yellow hair that suddenly began to wriggle away.