“Fran, I’m not planning to get out any shotgun, but I most certainly will not see Von Obersdorf again, any time, under any considerations. For both my sake and his, I’m afraid you’ll have to give up your idea of having your cake and eating it—of kicking me out and yet of having everyone suppose you’re a devoted and deserted wife. That’s flat. Understand?”
“Quite. Very well. And I should be glad if you’d find it possible not to yell at me any more, just this last day, so that I’ll have a little pleasanter memory of you! Please order some orange juice for me. I’ll be back by the time breakfast is here. You’ll find your blue suit freshly pressed in the closet—I had it done while you were away.”
At eleven, while Sam was packing and Fran was out buying another suitcase, into the sitting-room, into the bedroom, without knocking, came Kurt von Obersdorf, and Sam looked up to see him standing in the door, his fingers nervous on his palms.
“I know you did not want to see me. Fran telephoned me so. But you do not understand, Sam. I am not a gigolo or a Don Juan. I do love Fran; I would beg her to marry me if she were free. But if I told you how much I like and admire you, you would think I was a sentimental fool. I have kep’ telling her she does not appreciate you. If I could bring you two together—oh, don’t run off and desert her; she needs your steadiness! If I could bring you two together again, and keep you both for my ver’ dear friends, I would go away, instead—yes, I would go today!”
Sam rose from the wardrobe trunk, dusted his hands, stood gravely in his shirtsleeves:
“Suppose I just called your bluff, Von Obersdorf? Suppose I said, ‘All right, you leave Berlin today, for good, and I’ll stay.’ ”
“I would do it! I will! If in turn you promise me to be always more tender with Fran! Oh, I do not mean I can go forever, and hide myself. I am a poor man. I support partly my mother. But I can be called for business to Budapest, for three weeks. We organize now a new branch there. Shall I go?”
He looked the zealot, he said it like a crusader.
But Sam realized hastily, dismayingly, that he wanted to go; that he wanted to be free of Fran’s playacting; he realized that he was afraid to be left alone with her fury if Kurt should desert them.
“No,” he said. “And I apologize. I believe you. Here’s what we’ve got to do. Of course I have no way of knowing just how fond you are of Fran. But it certainly doesn’t look as if Fran and I could ever get together again. Don’t even know it would be a good thing, for either of us. What we have to do is to do nothing; let things take their course. I’m going. She stays. You stay. You see how you feel, and I’ll see how I feel, and if you do love the girl—as I by God have and as I suppose I still do!—don’t let any consideration for me stand in your way. I wouldn’t, I guess, if the shoe was on the other foot. Not that I’m going to say any ‘Bless you my children.’ I feel more like saying, ‘Damn you both!’ But I can’t see where you’re to blame. No. Now I’ve got to finish packing. Goodbye, Obersdorf. Don’t see me off tonight—definitely don’t want it. And I guess I ought to tell you that I’m afraid she’s right. Guess you can make the girl happier than I can.”
“But you—going alone—”
“Now hell’s big bells on a mountain! Don’t worry about me! I’m free, white, and twenty-one! Everybody’s had too much considerateness for everybody else in this business! I figure that maybe it would have been a lot clearer-cut if one of us had been out-and-out hoggish and known what he wanted and just grabbed it. No. I’ll be all right. Goodbye.”
Kurt shook the proffered hand hesitatingly. Sam turned his back. When he looked up, Kurt was gone.
If Fran knew that Kurt had called, she gave no sign. All day she was courteous, brisk, and harder than enamel.
To pack for his journey—the journey to nowhere which might last forever—it was necessary to unpack the rather large number of trunks and bags which these spoiled children of new wealth had found necessary. Their baggage had for months been their only home. To divide it was like the division of property after a funeral.
But she was efficient about it, and horribly kind.
When she came to the shawl he had bought as a surprise for her that exciting day in Seville, she looked at it slowly, stroked it, started to speak, then firmly put it away in a drawer of the bureau. But it was harder when she came to the silly shell-box.
It brought back a day on the Roman Campagna, a windy radiant day of fast walking.
