Innes turned, not his rather too bulky hips, but his head only. His eyes appealed to her as he looked backward over his shoulder. 'It doesn't matter,' he said, and his reluctance broke like a crust. 'My sister Gertrude is blind.'
Alice sat still, feeling the shock ebb out of her nerves. Innes had left her. She was quite alone. She felt submerged in this unfamiliar house, drowned without an i-dentity. Her eyes went to the fire, which at least was familiar and alive.
Alone, she should be gloating, 'Goody, goody, I'm going to marry a million dollars.' No wonder she felt strange and out of herself. Nothing to worry about. No living to make. Living's all made. Quick work, Alice.
Only last Saturday morning Alice had sat in her office with no dowry, nothing to swap in the marriage market, no money, prestige, influence, nothing to bring to her wedding but the bride. Now, on Thursday, slie'd swapped just that for a million dollars. Show him. Show Art Killeen. Two could play.
Quick work since Saturday morning when he'd come in-
to her office and sat on her desk with his leg swinging and said, 'I'm courting a North Side debutante these days, you know. I'm really working at it.' Said it in laughter, given the message kmdly, lightly, in laughter: 'Better give it up, Alice. It wUl never be.' She was ashamed to think he'd known she thought . . .
Oh nonsense! Why shouldn't she have thought they were going to be married, she and Art Killeen? They were in love. She'd been so dumb she hadn't known. No percentage in love. A silly, unprofitable thing, so often an economic or political mistake. Leading, however, in her case to a million dollars. Had it not? Would she have come from New York to Chicago if Art Killeen hadn't thought it such a fine idea that he'd got her the job with his pet, his wealthiest client?
A woman sees her husband's lawyer sometimes.
'I am looking,' Alice said to herself solemnly, 'into what the French call an abyss!' Muscles at the comers of her mouth flattened involuntarily. Well, if she could smile she must be getting better. Or was it wild hope running like a weed to spring up though she'd cut it down?
She had heard no sound, but she lifted her eyes and saw a man in the room. He was enormous. His great fat thighs strained in a pair of filthy dark trousers. A green flannel shirt, torn at the armhole, was open at his bullish neck, showing a stretch of dirty underwear. His hair was lank, black, and long enough to show below his ears. His skin was brown, and his face glistened as if it had been oiled. His eyes were a sharp black, without brown or yellow. He stood in the middle of the room, looking at her without much curiosity. She could have screamed.
Then she saw that he carried a hod of coal. She shrank back in her chair and said nothing. Soon he walked silently to the grate, knelt, and began to pour coal upon the fire. She saw the muscles of his broad shoulders working under the fat. He was not a Negro. His features were thick, but the mouth was firm, and there was a flaring line from his nostrils to the tip of his nose that was both foreign and familiar, though she couldn't name him. She couldn't tell what he was. He knelt not two feet from her, and she became gradually aware of an odor and was nearly sick. The man put forth a scent, like an animal.
In a moment he had finished with the fire. He rose and was gone as indifferently as he had come. But before he left, be poked his dirty fingers into a box of candy that lay among the many trifles on the mantel and casually took two.
Alice sat still, her heart pounding in her throat.
In a moment or two the door in the back wall opened, and Innes led forth a straw-colored lady. 'Gertrude,' he said with anxious social sweetness, a tone that poured soothing oil upon this meeting and begged them both to be kind for his sake, 'this is Alice Brennan. Alice, this is my oldest sister.''
'How do you do. Miss Whitlock,' said Alice, rising.
The woman turned her face toward the voice. She was somewhere between fifty and sixty years old. Her hair was a pile of pale straw, severely drawn back from her thin, bloodless face. The eyes were as pale as the rest of her, and even her brows and lashes made no easily discernible marks, so that the face was blank, as if eyes had been left out of it altogether. Her lips, too, were unreddened by blood or anything else. Yet there was a certain haughtiness about her tall, stiff figure and the impact of a personality.
'I am glad to make your acquaintance, Miss Brennan,' she said in a rather high voice that was however, not thin, but rich in flute tones. It held a deliberate sweetness, faintly affected. 'Innes tells me you have had trouble with the car.'
'Can you give us dinner, Gertrude?' Innes said with a combination of humility and demand. 'If not, I suppose we can . . .'
'Certainly, we shall be glad to give you dinner,' Gertrude said proudly, almost as if she were offended. 'Speak to Josephine.'
'Well I have, but I will again. . . .' Innes was awkward. This pale sister seemed to unbalance him, as if he saw himself in two lights, once as her young and somehow humbled brother, once as Innes Whitlock, the successful man, and he couldn't make the images blend.
Gertrude dismissed the domestic problem as if it didn't concern her. She moved forward to find a chair. Alice sent a questioning look to her fiance.
limes began to chuckle. 'Gertrude is pretty marvelous,' he said heartily. 'Gertrude, I can see her wondering how on earth you find your way so well.'
Alice, who had been wondering nothing of the sort, saw with surprise that the woman's thin lips smiled, almost triumphantly. 'But I know my way perfectly in this house,' she said. 'Never worry about that.' She seemed to unbend a little as if this topic were welcome. 'I have been totally bluid for many years, but I do not let my affliction prevent me from moving about this house with complete confidence.'
'Why, that's wonderful!' breathed Alice. 'I do think that's wonderful. Miss Whitlock.'
Innes beamed. Alice knew she'd caught on quickly, that this was what she ought to be saying.
'I simply resolved,' Gertrude said and Alice recognized a worn quality in the phrase, 'that I would never be a burden. Nor have I been.' The blind woman sat down in a chair near the fire. She picked up an elegant box lying close to her hand. 'Do you smoke, Miss Brennan?' she said pleasantly, holding the box quite accurately in Alice's direction.
