There was nothing irregular in Mr. Marston’s features or?when he saw that I was going to leave him alone?in his manner. He’s a gray-haired man, a little over medium height, with a bony face that must have been handsome when he was younger. The belief that a crooked heart is betrayed by palsies, tics, and other infirmities dies hard. I felt the loss of it that morning when I searched his face for some mark. He looked solvent, rested, and moral?much more so than Chucky Ewing, who was job hunting, or Larry Spencer, whose son had polio, or any of a dozen other men on the platform waiting for the train. Then I looked at his daughter, Lydia. Lydia is one of the prettiest girls in our neighborhood. I’d ridden in on the train with her once or twice and I knew that she was doing voluntary secretarial work for the Red Cross. She had on a blue dress that morning, and her arms were bare, and she looked so fresh and pretty and sweet that I wouldn’t have embarrassed or hurt her for anything in the world. Then I looked at Mrs. Marston, and if the mark was anywhere, it was on her face, although I don’t understand why she should be afflicted for her husband’s waywardness. It was very hot, but Mrs. Marston had on a brown suit and a worn fur piece. Her face was sallow and plain, but it was wreathed, even while she watched for the morning train, in an impermeable smile. It was a face that must have seemed, long ago, cut out for violent, even malevolent, passion. But years of prayer and abstinence had expunged the inclination to violence, I thought, leaving only a few ugly lines at the mouth and the eyes and rewarding Mrs. Marston with an air of adamant and fetid sweetness. She must pray for him, I thought, while he wanders around the back yards in his bathrobe. I had wanted to know who Tom was, but now that I knew, I didn’t feel any better. The graying man and the beautiful girl and the woman, standing together, made me feel worse.
That night, I decided to stay in town and go to a cocktail party. It was in an apartment in one of the tower hotels?way, way, way up. As soon as I got there, I went out onto the terrace, looking around for someone to take to dinner. What I wanted was a pretty girl in new shoes, but it looked as if all the pretty girls had stayed at the shore. There was a gray-haired woman out there, and a woman with a floppy hat, and Grace Harris, this actress I’ve met a couple of times. Grace Harris is a beauty, a faded one, and we’ve never had much to say to one another, but that night she gave me a very cordial smile. It was cordial but it was very sad, and the first thing I thought of was that she must have learned that Rachel had left me. I smiled right back at her and went in to the bar, where I found Harry Purcell. I had some drinks and talked with him. I looked around the room a couple of times, and each time I saw Grace Harris giving me this sad, sad look. I wondered about it, and then I thought she had probably mistaken me for somebody else. A lot of those ageless beauties with violet eyes are half blind, I know, and I thought that perhaps she couldn’t see across the room. It got late, but there weren’t any claims on my time, and I went on drinking. Then Harry went to the bathroom, and I stood alone at the bar for a couple of minutes, but that was too long. Grace Harris, who was with some people at the other end of the room, came over to me. She came right up to me and put her snow-white hand on my arm. “You poor boy,” she murmured, “you poor boy.”
I’m not a boy, and I’m not poor, and I wished the hell she would get away. She has a clever face, but I felt in it, that night, the force of great sadness and great malice. “I see a rope around your neck,” she said sadly. Then she lifted her hand off my coat sleeve and went out of the room, and I guess she must have gone home, because I didn’t see her again. Harry came back, and I didn’t tell him what had happened, and I tried not to think much about it myself. I stayed at the party too long and got a late train home.
I remember that I took a bath and put on pajamas and lay down. As soon as I shut my eyes, I saw this rope. It had a hangman’s noose at the end of it, but I’d known all along what Grace Harris had been talking about; she’d had a premonition that I would hang myself. The rope seemed to come down slowly into my consciousness. I opened my eyes and thought about the work I had to do in the morning, but when I shut my eyes again, there was a momentary blankness into which the rope?as if it had been pushed off a beam?fell, and swung through space. I opened my eyes and thought some more about the office, but when I shut them, there was the rope, still swinging. Whenever I closed my eyes that night and tried to go to sleep, it felt as though sleep had taken on the anguish of blindness. And with the visible world gone, there was nothing to keep the arbitrary rope from occupying the dark. I got out of bed and went downstairs and opened the Lin Yutang. I had only been reading for a few minutes when I heard Mr. Marston in the flower garden. I thought I knew, at last, what he was waiting to see. This frightened me. I turned off the light and stood up. It was dark outside the window and I couldn’t see him. I wondered if there was any rope in the house. Then I remembered the painter on my son’s dinghy in the cellar. I went into the cellar. The dory was on sawhorses, and there was a long painter on it, long enough for a man to hang himself by. I went upstairs to the kitchen and got a knife and hacked the painter off the boat. Then I got some newspapers and put them into the furnace and opened the drafts and burned up the rope. Then I went upstairs and got into bed. I felt saved.
I don’t know how long it had been since I had had a good night’s rest. But I felt queer in the morning, and although I could see from the window that it was a bright day, I didn’t feel up to it. The sky and the light and everything else seemed dim and remote, as if I saw it all from a great distance. The thought of seeing the Marston family again revolted me, so I skipped the eight-ten and took a later train. The image of the rope was still at the back of my mind, and I saw it once or twice on the trip. I got through the morning, but when I left the office at noon, I told my secretary that I wouldn’t be back. I had a lunch date with Nathan Shea, at the University Club, and I went there early and drank a Martini at the bar. I stood beside an old gentleman who was describing to a friend the regularity of his habits, and I had a strong impulse to crown him with a bowl of popcorn, but I drank my drink and stared at the bartender’s wristwatch, which was hanging on a long-necked bottle of white crcme de menthe. When Shea came in, I had two more drinks with him. Anesthetized by gin, I got through the lunch.
We said goodbye on Park Avenue. There my Martinis forsook me and I saw the rope again. It was about two o’clock on a sunny afternoon but it seemed dark to me. I went to the Corn Exchange Bank and cashed a check for five hundred dollars. Then I went to Brooks Brothers and bought some neckties and a box of cigars and went upstairs to look at suits. There were only a few customers in the store, and among them I noticed this girl or young woman who seemed to be alone. I guess she was looking over the stock for her husband. She had fair hair and the kind of white skin that looks like thin paper. It was a very hot day but she looked cool, as if she had been able to preserve, through the train ride in from Rye or Greenwich, the freshness of her bath. Her arms and her legs were beautiful, but the look on her face was sensible, humorous, even housewifely, and this sensible air seemed to accentuate the beauty of her arms and legs. She walked over and rang for the elevator. I walked over and stood beside her. We rode down together, and I followed her out of the store onto Madison Avenue. The sidewalk was crowded, and I walked beside her. She looked at me once, and she knew that I was following her, but I felt sure she was the kind of woman who would not readily call for help. She waited at the corner for the light to change. I waited beside her. It was all I could do to keep from saying to her, very, very softly, “Madame, will you please let me put my hand around your ankle? That’s all I want to do, madame. It will save my life.” She didn’t look around again, but I could see that she was frightened. She crossed the street and I stayed at her side, and all the time a voice inside my head was pleading, “Please let me put my hand around your ankle. It will save my life. I just want to put my hand around your ankle. I’ll be very happy to pay you.” I took out my wallet and pulled out some bills. Then I heard someone behind me calling my name. I recognized the hearty voice of an advertising salesman who is in and out of our office. I put the wallet back in my pocket, crossed the street, and tried to lose myself in the crowd.
I walked over to Park Avenue, and then to Lexington, and went into a movie theatre. A stale, cold wind blew down on me from the ventilating machine, like the air in those Pullmans I had listened to coming down the river in the morning from Chicago and the Far West. The lobby was empty, and I felt as if I had stepped into a
