A Little Tea, a Little Chat
Page 52
But this intellectual pastime would only come to them at the change of season, toward Christmas-time or New Year, when the world began to stir. Most times they sat by the window, Grant handed the comics to the blondine, and they went to bed about nine o’clock.
All the evening one of the lamps would have been shining on the old-fashioned yellow leather hatbox standing on the marble mantelpiece. At night Grant, who still, as always, slept alone, put it beside him, removing a pillow for the purpose, and locked the door. The window had iron bars on it.
A fine-looking Negro woman, strong, young and severe, now came to do the household chores for Mrs. Downs; they called her Marsha. One day, when Grant came home and found Mrs. Downs out, Marsha told him that an old man came to ask for him and asked a lot of questions about him, spent half an hour at the door, “I didn’t ask him in, not knowing who he was. He asked who you were and how old you were and what you did, in business; and I said, Mr. Grant, that I didn’t know at all. He didn’t give a name, or he said something but I couldn’t understand the way he said it. Something like Gilbert.”
“Like Gilbert!” screamed Grant.
“I don’t know, Mr. Grant, he had a funny accent.”
“Was it like a Southern accent?” said Grant.
“I don’t know.” She became surly. Grant who knew that he had once earned her dislike by saying he had lived in the South, looked dubiously at her but did not dare to press her. Yet he knew that with her ear, she must have known the origin of the man. After a moment, he said, gently, “It wasn’t Hilbertson?”
“I don’t know.”
He felt faint, but he had suffered much from his heart for several years. He liked the strong, handsome woman, and did not want to alienate her. He had made one faux-pas by saying he had business in New Orleans and had once known a lovely woman there. Since that moment, Marsha had had no more confidence in him. He was disturbed and could do nothing till the blonde came home. By her sharp, suspicious discussion, she soothed away his fears. Still, at present, he suffered too much. For several years he had been under the tyranny of this heart anguish. He did not suppose the old man was Hilbertson, but still he would wake at night and hear his heart beating. He had peculiar dreams. He would wake up to hear his heart beating fiercely. He suffered. Sometimes in the daytime, when he was out, and he managed to make an appointment with some woman, not too young, not too old, he would feel the sun shine on him again. He always went with working women because they needed more, they expected less, and, in his parlance, “sued him less.”
One day, while he was out, and the blonde was at home, a man came to the door and asked for Grant. He was a very tall, strong, but bent, old man, with blue eyes and big hands. He looked the blonde over for a while, smiled, and asked her if she would come and have some tea and a little chat with him, one day soon, in some place quite near, say the Pandulfo, and what day would she be free, Sunday? The blonde invited the man in. He said, to begin with, that he was a very old friend of Grant’s, a friend from way back, and he had been looking for a long time to renew relations with his old partner; but he had not been able to, his wife had been sick for a long time. Now, his poor dear wife was no more; and he was free to come up North and look up old acquaintances. The blonde said she led a quiet life here and Grant was not the man that he had known, no doubt. He stayed in all day Saturday and Sunday reading the papers, even the comics, not at all like him, never went to a cabaret, hardly ever went out to dinner; and one of the reasons was that he was getting foolish—he took everywhere with him his old yellow hatbox. It made them conspicuous and he wouldn’t even check it.
The old man had said, “What is in the yellow hatbox? Love-letters, I suppose?”
“Oh, no. He only carries things worth money in that.”
The old man, who was well dressed and had that imposing air of a man who had once had great charm and not wasted it with prostitutes, a man who still carried in him his passion, smiled charmingly at the blonde, “Then perhaps on Sunday, when he is at home, you can slip out for an hour or two. To the Pandulfo—or you name the place? I would rather you named the place.”
The blonde was attracted to this splendid old man; and on the Sunday morning, she dressed carefully, putting on her newest and most strange red hat, and went out, leaving Grant alone. He was sitting in his shirt-sleeves before the long windows, as usual, and paid no attention to her.
When she had been gone about fifteen minutes, the doorbell rang and Grant answered it. He was at ease. He had his spectacles on and was still in his shirt-sleeves, with his shirt open at the neck showing his strong hairy chest. He had rested. He looked fresh and his eyes were gay and clear. He still had the Sunday supplement in his hand when he opened the door.
At the door was a strong, bent old man with large eyes, intense as jewels.
“Hilbertson,” said Grant.
“Not a bad memory. You remember what I said?”
“It’s a great mistake, it was all a mistake,” said Grant. The Sunday supplement fell from his hand, he stepped back without thinking. He became pale with fright.
“You’re quite an old man now,” said Hilbertson.
“You are old too,” said Grant, but he gasped: he could hardly get the words out. He watched Hilbertson, whose hand was in his pocket. Suddenly, Grant fainted. Hilbertson looked a while and closed the door.
When Mrs. Downs came home, about an hour later, she put her key in the door, opened it and gave a short cry when she saw Grant lying in the hall, in his shirt-sleeves, with the paper near him and his horn-rimmed spectacles fallen off, without being broken. She went up to him, listened to his heart and then sat on her haunches beside him, thinking, her brilliant eyes large and gleaming. What should she do? She had only $15 in her purse, the rent coming for next Saturday, her luggage, a few things she could at once take from Grant’s apartment—some bottle returns. That was the total. Suppose she took the hatbox? That would be a bright idea. But she had few friends but her mother. Alexis had gone away, and at present his friendship was rather dangerous than otherwise. She was friendly with the police and yet did not want too many inquiries. At her age, when with her hard struggles and the unkindness of men she sometimes looked like a faded working-class forty, she must be careful. She did not want to go back to some Peacock Alley or other and wait, wait—Grant had been close to her. She got up and looked for some time at the hatbox lurking on Grant’s other unused pillow in the double bed he always occupied. After thinking a long while, without touching anything, she rang up the police.
THE END
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