ALICE heard of the separation of David and Fidelia six weeks after it happened; and the news reached Alice in the cruel, circuitous fashion in which such information often travels to the person most concerned.
She was attending a luncheon which the Tau Gamma Alumnae in Chicago gave monthly at Field's Tea Room. This was the December meeting and twenty girls were at the table. Most of them knew each other intimately from having been members of local Tau Gamma chapters when in college but there were always girls from distant chapters who had moved to Chicago and who attended the luncheons to meet the Chicago girls. To-day there was a young married woman who recently had arrived from Minneapolis and she said to the Northwestern group in general, "You all know Fidelia Netley, of course."
"We certainly do," some one replied.
"Do you happen to know what her present move is?"
"Why, she's been married to a man named Herrick for over three years," a friend of Mice's explained. "They're living up on the north shore."
"Oh, I knew that in Minneapolis," the stranger said. "I meant, what's she doing since they separated?"
"Separated!" cried a dozen girls at once; and Mice sat stiffened with fiery blood racing in her.
"Why, didn't you know that?" the Minneapolis girl asked, pleased with the sensational effect of her news.
Every one gazed at Alice; then nearly every one was talking at once. "You mean she's not living with Dave? . . . When was it . . . why . . ."
"I don't know," the visitor had to answer to most of the questions. "I thought you would. It's queer you don't know anything about it."
"Not at all. We don't see Fidelia from one year's end to another, except by accident."
Then, through the chatter, Alice heard the Minneapolis girl coherently explain: "I just happened to call her up at her hotel a couple of weeks ago, not knowing a soul here; and the hotel told me that Mr. David Herrick was residing there but he thought Mrs. Herrick was not. I asked when she'd be back and he was most carefully vague. You know the manner when one knows more than he ought to tell. But he made it perfectly plain to me that he didn't expect her back at all."
A girl asked: "Then did you call Dave?"
"No; I never knew him. I just knew Fidelia slightly, years ago."
"That's all you know?"
It proved to be all and Alice quickly realized this and she left the table.
She wanted to be alone; she felt like singing; she felt lifted by the amazing relief at being able to think of David without having to picture him with Fidelia. No longer was Fidelia his wife; she was gone!
Alice did not let herself imagine that Fidelia had left him of her own free will and at her own choice; far less did Alice dream that Fidelia had departed to go to another man. No; Alice had to allow her first exultation to be complete, so she imagined Fidelia going away because she had found that she had come to her end with David; and Alice had to allow herself to believe that she had much to do with this.
How closely upon the heels of David's presence with her at Myra's wedding had come the departure of Fidelia! But what now was to follow the departure? Where was Fidelia gone? What was David doing in regard to her? When would Alice hear from him?
Fidelia was gone from the hotel, where David had remained; that, after all, was the total which Alice knew; and when Alice went home, she did not tell her news to her family. They might question it too much or question too much that it would result in anything happy to her; and she would let no doubt or suspicion destroy her dream to-day.
She hovered about home on following days to be sure of keeping her happiness; she feared to meet some one who might know more about Fidelia and David and who would tell her some event which would dash her dream; but when one of the Tau Gamma girls, who had been at the luncheon, called her, it was to report that beyond any doubt David and Fidelia had had trouble.
This girl had taken it upon herself to telephone David and had asked about Fidelia, saying that Tau Gamma was trying to get every alumna out for the Christmas meeting and would Fidelia be back in town then? The girl reported, "Alice, I talked to him and he doesn't expect her back by Christmas or any other time! I asked him where we might address her, and he told me in plain English that he didn't know, but mail to her bank in White Falls would probably reach her, eventually."
A few days after this, Alice accepted an invitation to a dinner-dance which was to be held at the hotel Inhere David lived and which she had never visited since Fidelia and David took up their residence there.
She knew that he was not to be in the party with her yet she prepared herself for that evening with a care to every little detail of her dress and toilet which she had not felt since the night of her last Tau Gamma dance.
David happened to stay down town for dinner that evening, as he frequently did nowadays. He dined, more or less indifferently, at cafeterias where his table companions were economical, serious or hurried people; or he occupied himself with discovering strange, foreign-like cafés where men supped alone or gathered in argumentative groups, reading to each other paragraphs from Italian or Greek or Russian newspapers or where they played dominoes while they sipped ink-black coffee from glasses. Sometimes he went with Snelgrove to watch two good welter-weights "mix it" for four rounds or so before some delectable athletic association where Irving was popular.
Of course the Vredicks and other friends at the hotel, who knew David had been "left," made it a point to include him in their various entertainments but he seldom felt like accepting. To-night he had dined alone and afterwards had gone to a picture theater, so he arrived at the hotel about eleven o'clock.
Every evening there was dancing and he had the habit of looking in at the floor of the main restaurant before going up to his lonely room. Thus he watched from the door to-night and suddenly recognized Alice among the dancers.
She was in the arms of a tall, young man and her lovely head with its beautiful, dark hair was tilted a little as she looked up at him. She was in blue and silver; her dancing dress was blue, and silver slippers with small shining buckles were on her little feet. She was as she had been at the Tau Gamma dance four years ago when he had last danced with her; and as he saw her here at the hotel for the first time in three years, and saw her in blue and silver, he knew that she had come because she had learned that Fidelia had left him.
Then she saw him, and for the instant, she lost step; she confused her partner. She nodded to David; she flushed and looked up at her partner again, smiling and begging pardon. She danced on and David did not see her look at him again.
When the music stopped, she stood with her back turned to him while she clapped with her partner for an encore; and she danced it; but when this was done, she avoided rejoining the group of her party. Indeed, David did not know that she was with a group. He waited for a few moments after she was seated and then he approached her; and although she gave no sign that she noticed him, he saw her suddenly ask something of her partner which sent him away. So David came upon her alone and awaiting him with her clear, blue eyes looking up at him and very bright. "Good evening, David," she said quietly but her breast was heaving.
He replied and then asked, "You've heard, haven't you?"
"About what?"
"Fidelia's left me."
"What did you say?"
"Fidelia left me; didn't you know it, Alice?"
"Yes," she replied but till this moment she had not known that. These were the words she had expected him to say but not to say them as he did; for he told her Fidelia had truly left him. It was not that he had sent her away.
With this, her triumph over Fidelia should have flown; it should have left Alice empty, it had so filled her before. But it did not. How could she care in what manner Fidelia had left since actually Fidelia was gone and David was beside her with no Fidelia about?
"Sit down, David," Alice said.
"You want me to?"
"Please."
"Why? What's the use?"
"She's gone, isn't she, David? She's not coming back, is she?"
"No; she's not coming back."
"Then what's the difference to me whether she—went or you sent her away?"
At this, he realized that she must have heard that he had sent Fidelia away; she had come in her blue dress and silver slippers believing that, but finding it not true, what was the difference to her?
He asked, humbly, "When can I talk with you?"
"Whenever you want to."
"Where?"
His words aggravated in Alice another where; where was Fidelia gone? Alice asked it. "Where's she gone?"
"Fidelia? She's gone to London."
"England?"
"England."
"But why?"
"I'll tell you, Alice; she has a husband there."
"A husband!"
"That's what she has." He gasped as he said it and he looked around and asked, "Have you got to dance with that fellow now?"
"I can't. I mean, it doesn't make any difference. I'm in a party; I'm not with anybody in particular."
"Come along then." And she accompanied him, not asking where he led.
She was struggling with the tremendous thing he had told her when he said Fidelia had a husband in London. It must mean that she had had a husband before she married David; and when a girl had a husband, she was not really married to the second man at all; it must mean that David never was really her husband and he was not her husband now.
Alice sat down on a lounge and he was beside her; they had come to a corner of a parlor where was no one else.
"How did she have a husband in London, David?"
"He went there. He's in the war with the Canadian forces. She married him five years ago, a year and a half before she came to Northwestern. He's a man named Bolton she met in California."
Bolton was the name of the man of whom Myra had talked, Alice remembered; he was the man who had been at Palo Alto.
David continued, "She married him in Idaho the summer after she left Stanford. They—stayed a while in Idaho, Alice; then they had trouble and separated."
"Oh, divorced, you mean?"
"No. They just separated and then Fidelia believed he died. But he didn't."
"Then she was married all the time."
"Yes; but she believed he was dead."
"But he wasn't."
"No."
"How wasn't he, David?"
"He'd gone to Alaska and she thought—and his family thought—he'd died there; but he was just staying away."
"Then he came back and heard about you?"
"No," said David. "No; he didn't know about me at all."
"What did happen, David?"
"She heard he was alive and she left me. It happened the night I got here from home. I went home from Rock Island, Alice. I went to see my mother; I found her sick so I stayed there two more days. When I got home, Fidelia had heard from Bolton; and she wanted to go to him."
"Had heard, David? How?"
"By letter."
"You mean he'd written to look her up?"
"No; he'd written in answer to a letter of hers."
"Looking him up, David?"
"Yes; something like that."
"You knew that when we were in Rock Island, David? That's why you came to—Rock Island, because Fidelia'd written to look up her husband?"
"No," said David. "I didn't know anything about it, Alice." And then, gazing at him, she understood. She said, "You mean you never knew anything about her husband at all?"
"Not till I got back that night."
"The night she left you to go to him."
David arose and went a few steps away. He came back and gazing down at her dark hair and her sweet, upturned face and into her blue eyes, he said, "You know the truth of it now. I'm discarded goods."
"You've never been discarded by me!"
He jerked up and filled his breast with a deep, violent breath and in a moment he asked, "Shall I take you to your party?"
"I can't dance with them now."
"Would you—dance with me?"
"Dance!" she said and she quivered with remembrance of their last dance together when he was going to Fidelia and she was trying to hold him from Fidelia and when he, having her in his arms, had felt her lacking in comparison with Fidelia. "I'll dance with you, David," she said and she arose and stepped in front of him and did not look back at him as he followed her to the dancing floor.
Nor did he overtake her; he let her lead him while he watched her as she walked before him. At the edge of the floor, when she turned, he stepped to her quietly and thrust his right arm about her in the old, familiar way and her right hand, slender and smooth and gentle, slipped into his hand.
He felt his heart pounding with his stir of remembrance at this amazing moment; he felt his pulses to the tips of his fingers which clasped hers and he felt, against his pulse, the swifter, frightened racing of her heart.
They took a few steps together and turned once about the floor; then she was breathless and, gasping, she told him, "This is all, David."
"What?"
"It's all I can stand!"
He drew her to the edge of the floor and released her. "Good night, David," she whispered and she slipped from him into the women's rooms; and while he waited, she did not reappear. He learned, later, that she had left by another door and gone home; but still for an hour he remained downstairs and did not go up to the dark, empty suite which had been his and Fidelia's.