The time went by well enough for Frankie. She was busy, and after a fashion, happy, with the children. She had long ago trained herself not to search her own heart, not to indulge her own emotions, not to think of Lionel. No more now than during all the past five years.
With the assistance of Mrs. Hansen she put the house in order, all the queer, jumbled cupboards and closets and bureau drawers. They found the most extraordinary things. They were obliged to tell Mr. Petersen that Minnie had been in debt to half a dozen tradesmen, enormous bills that she would reduce dollar by dollar. He paid them at once, without question. They found clothes of Mr. Petersen’s hidden away—no doubt to be given to Lionel. They found pawn-tickets for some of the silver spoons. Curious records of a subterranean life.... But at last they cleaned away all traces of her rule; her clothes and personal belongings were packed away, until she should send for them; she was sternly and justly effaced.
Frances had begun to recover, to become inwardly as serene as she was in appearance. When suddenly her makeshift peace was again destroyed.
They were at lunch, Frances, Mr. Petersen and Sandra, an exemplary group, almost too decorous, all consuming exactly the right sort of food for their health, served at the right moment. Then Mrs. Hansen brought in his letter, and without thinking, Frankie tore it open, and saw his writing again. She folded it again and sat through the meal; so very long before she could shut herself into her own room, and read it.
“Frankie: I can’t get into the army in any branch. I got one of the doctors to tell me, and he said I had tuberculosis and couldn’t last more than a year or two at the most. Frankie, I can’t do it. What’s the use, anyway, of waiting on like that, and dying in a charity hospital? I’m going to go now, as decently as I can. Don’t tell them, not even where I am. I want to be left in peace. But I wish you would come after it is all over. I will leave you a note. Good-bye. God bless you, dear old girl.
L.”
She hurried to him. She found him in a little basement-room like a cell, below the level of the street, with a barred window looking out on a filthy courtyard. She had steeled herself for this meeting; she was prepared for anything; she didn’t wince, didn’t falter, at the sight of his ghastly face. He stood before her in the dim light, a gaunt, stooping figure in a frayed suit; he looked really frightened at the sight of her. He had said good-bye to her forever in his own soul; he wasn’t prepared, wasn’t capable of seeing her again.
He tried to tell her something of his story; especially he insisted upon how he hadn’t “wronged” Mr. Petersen. He was very earnest about that.
“I don’t want you to think me worse than I am,” he said.
“My dear, I wouldn’t,” she assured him, gently.
He stared at her with his great hollow eyes.
“Frankie!” he cried, “You do understand, don’t you? That it was—I don’t know—a mistake of some sort. I can say it now. I always—loved you. Always. Never anyone else.”
She had a chill dread of what she felt he was about to ask her.
“If you could say—even a word?”
She got up and went to him as he sat hunched up on a trunk; she stroked his hair very gently. She wanted terribly to give him some little comfort, but she couldn’t feed him with lies, even though he were starving.
“It’s all over and done with now, Lionel,” she said. “It’s better to try and forget it.”
“But, Frankie.... If I could only know.... If you’d changed.... If you still care for me?”
“It’s no use talking of that, my dear.”
“Only tell me, before I die!” he entreated.
She looked up at him sorrowfully. And suddenly he clasped her in his arms, such a pitiful, desperate embrace! She clung to him, sobbing, strained him to her.
“Oh, I did, I did love you!” her heart cried. “When it was you. But not this ghost—this distortion of what was you!”
But she didn’t say it, didn’t say anything, she was too full of an aching and dreadful pity. Nothing on earth could save him; she saw death in his face; she knew that she was saying good-bye to him forever. He knew it, too. Ineffable moment! There were no words for it; they clung to each other, hopelessly, in an abandon of grief.
She persuaded him to go to a sanitarium she knew of; he didn’t want to, didn’t want to linger on, at her expense. But for her sake, for the sake of her anguish, he consented. He lived there nearly six months, writing to her now and then, stiff, stupid little notes. He died rather suddenly.
She never again mentioned him to a living soul; no one else knew what had happened to him. She let him die in peace, rest in peace. She went on just as usual; it was her pride to keep her pain to herself, to hide it absolutely. She never forgot him; really remained faithful to that pitiful wraith. She had duties, interests, even pleasures enough, she lived vigorously and fully. But that wound never healed. She was never again conscious of absolute content, or of real hope. She never regarded the future with eagerness. Her heart was not whole.
Mr. Petersen was becoming crushed by his disgrace. The amazing change of mistresses in his establishment had caused a tremendous scandal. He tried to go on as usual, but it was not possible. Many people shunned him, business fell off, the general atmosphere of respect in which his soul had flourished was poisoned, and unfit for his great lungs to breathe.
And, what is more, he worried very much about Frankie. The presence of this handsome young woman in his house, coincident with the disappearance of Minnie and Lionel, was a fact of ugly significance. He began very soon to see his course; he deliberated carefully, looked at it from her point of view as well as from his own, and came at last to the conclusion that it was a good plan.
He asked Frances to marry him.
“On account of the children,” he said, “You are so fond of them that I thought you would like to remain with them permanently. And it would be of the greatest benefit to them.... As for yourself, I haven’t much to offer.... I can only promise that I wouldn’t bother you, interfere with you in any sort of way. I can’t stop here. I’m—more or less—disgraced.... I’ll live wherever you like, California, if that’s best for your work. I have enough capital to start in business again”
She was not surprised by his offer; she had expected it and thought about it. To her also it seemed the best course, on account of the children. So she accepted.
They understood each other perfectly, without being obliged to drag from their souls any explanation of feelings sacred and painful. These two candid and faithful creatures knew themselves to be strong enough and simple enough for a most difficult situation. They were tacitly agreed to remain constant, he to Minnie, she to Lionel, and to assume the poor little burdens deserted by them.
Frances was not anxious to return to California; she suggested a suburb of New York, in quite another direction from Brownsville Landing, and Mr. Petersen consented. She found a charming house there, the sort of house she had dreamed long ago of having with Lionel, a dignified, cheerful place with a fine garden. She had quite a bit of money saved, and she insisted upon using some of it to equip the place.
“Please don’t be proud!” she entreated Mr. Petersen, laughing. “Do let me have my own way about all this. I’ve always longed to furnish a house.”
This touched him. The poor defrauded girl! So he left it all to her.
She had a wonderful time over it, particularly with the children’s rooms. She was wilfully extravagant there. She had a nursery for little Robert, very scientific and expensive, with a bathroom off it, glitteringly white. Then a big, bright playroom, with little white-painted chairs and tables gay with painted birds and animals, with low shelves for toys, and not a sharp corner anywhere about; and next to this, an exquisite nest for Sandra, all white willow and blue chintz.
She spent days and days in the house, with Mrs. Hansen to help her. She would come back to Brownsville Landing—a five hours’ journey—very tired, but filled with enthusiasm. Mr. Petersen went out once or twice and found it charming. He planted a garden there, fruit trees and rose bushes, and had a stable built for his beloved horse.
When at last the house was ready there was nothing else to wait for. They went, one gay, cool morning in September, to the City Hall in New York, got their license, and were married by a peevish alderman. They were both curiously devoid of emotion. It was, after all, a matter of little importance to them. They would go on as they had been going for the last months.
Nevertheless, they considered it the polite and the correct thing to celebrate in some sort of way. So they went to a hotel, where Mr. Petersen ordered an elaborate lunch. He was just a little ill-at-ease, not being a frequenter of hotels, and the lunch was too heavy, too prolonged. Frankie conscientiously ate all she could, and praised everything.
But no use denying that her heart ached! She caught a glimpse of themselves in a mirror, saw her own proud distinction so incongruously escorted by Mr. Petersen’s enormous Socialistic bulk, and how could she help thinking of how Lionel had looked under similar circumstances, how help remembering his ways of ordering lunches...?
Perhaps Mr. Petersen was rather heavy-hearted too, with memories of his other wedding—or what he had imagined at the time to be a wedding. Who knows but that for him there had been infinite romance in his dowdy Minnie?
They had planned to go back to Brownsville Landing and close up the house there, and then the next morning proceed by motor car with the children and the Hansens to the new home. For the last time they boarded the train, for the last time went flying through that familiar country along the river bank.
“I suppose,” said Mr. Petersen, in his slow way, “that we are beginning a new life. I shall do all I can to make it a happy one for you.”
She smiled at him kindly.
“We’re old friends,” she said, and then grew very serious, “Chris,” she said, “we’ve missed—oh, almost everything, haven’t we? But if we can only make up to the children for all they’ve lost, all they’ll have to miss—that’s enough for us, isn’t it?”
“That’s enough,” he repeated, “enough to fill our lives.”