Root of His Evil (14 page)

Her eyes grew large and soft, and her whole face took on a dreamy, yielding look. She didn’t answer him at once, but looked away from him as though she were seeing stars somewhere in the distance, then took his hand in hers and spoke in a whisper: “I just love the pale white wines.”

They barely took time to say their goodbyes, and then were gone. I suppose he was doing it all for me, and yet I couldn’t escape a little twinge of jealousy, or whatever it was, as I watched them go down in the elevator, she looking up at him, he still smiling down at her, for I had probably come to regard him as my property, even if I was married, and I somehow hated the idea of her taking him away from me. But when I went back to the living room I forgot all about that. Grant was still sitting there, a horrible look on his face. For the first time in my life I knew I was looking into the eyes of a killer. I suddenly remembered what Mr. Hunt had told me about Grant’s jealousy, and realized why Mrs. Harris had gone out with Mr. Holden and who that look of death was meant for. I was face to face with the real spectre that haunted my marriage.

I prefer not to tell the details of the scene that followed, of what he said, which sounded like the ravings of a lunatic, or of his threats to strangle his mother and Mr. Holden to death. It was frightful and lasted until a late hour. I tried to get him to go out with me for dinner but he wouldn’t even hear me, and so I fixed something with what was in the icebox and got him to eat a little of it. But when he quieted down it was even worse, for he seemed to have decided on something, I didn’t know what. About eleven o’clock he flung out of the apartment and I at once telephoned Mr. Hunt, to warn him that there might be trouble. Mr. Hunt thanked me and hung up very quickly, and then it was my turn almost to go insane from worrying about what was going to happen. About half past twelve I got a call from Mr. Hunt saying that Grant had been to his mother’s house and that there had been a terrible fight, but that fortunately Mr. Holden had already gone home after bringing her back from dinner and that, for the moment at least, there would be no violence. Some time after that Grant came home and I managed to get him to bed, but once more there came an outbreak of those sobs which had aroused in me such a peculiar mixture of contempt and pity.

For the next two or three days he hardly seemed to know I was around, and then took to leaving the apartment, as he had while Lula was there. To make it worse, Mr. Holden did not stop taking Mrs. Harris to dinner once but kept on going around with her. But a columnist got hold of it, for of course a society woman going around with a labor leader was news, and if Grant had been insane before, he turned into a gibbering idiot now. Through a phone call that came in for him one day, when I heard a secretary at the other end say something while I was holding the line, I discovered that he had employed private detectives to trail his mother, and then I knew I had to act.

I called Mr. Holden, got him at his hotel, and pleaded with him not to see Mrs. Harris any more. He listened and laughed. “This is what I’ve been waiting for, Carrie. It makes my heart sing. So it
does
matter to you, when I start trotting around with another woman?”

“It’s not that at all. I—I didn’t mean to tell you this. I don’t
want
to tell you, and I’m only doing it so you’ll understand why I called. It’s not on my account. It’s on account of my husband.”

“What has your husband got to do with it?”

“He—he’s jealous of his mother.”

I could feel my face getting hot at the cackle of laughter he let out at the other end of the phone, and only half heard what he said about Grant’s being a mama’s boy, and other things of that kind. But then I cut in on him: “Please don’t talk like that any more. This is serious. He—he might kill you. He might kill her. He might kill you both. He’s set detectives on your trail already and I’m terrified. Haven’t you any regard for your life?”

“It’ll be nothing new for me to be shot at. In my business I meet many a fine buck who wants to kill me, and some of them have even hired private thugs to do it. But I’m still here, and I haven’t stopped a bullet yet.”

“You will if you keep this up.”

“I’ll drop Mrs. Harris like a hot cake—on one condition.”

“Name it. It’s granted.”

“That you put an end to that silly marriage and come with me to the Coast. I’ve been ordered West, and I have real work to do. We’ll take the plane tonight, do whatever has to be done about your divorce, and that will be the end of Mrs. Harris the Younger and Mrs. Harris the Elder. She’s not so elderly, by the way. She’s still quite romantic.”

“...I can’t grant that condition.”

“Did you hear what I said? She’s not at all elderly.”

“Yes, I heard what you said.”

I must have sounded very miserable, for his tone changed, and he said: “Carrie, why aren’t you honest with me? You don’t like it when I tell you she’s romantic, and that’s the real reason you called me.”

“No, it’s not at all—”

“It is!
Are you trying to tell me that I mean less to you than that whippersnapper you’re married to? You’ve trifled with me—and with
him—
long enough. Come back to one of your kind—”

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

In spite of the harsh words he used he had spoken as though I belonged to him, and I knew I was cutting him to the quick when I still turned him down. There was a long silence at the other end of the line and when he spoke his voice was muffled and strange. “Then it’s ‘no’?”

“I’m afraid it is.”

“Then—” his voice was clear and hard this time—“I’m afraid it’s ‘no’ with me too, Carrie. I have my pride too, and the lady likes me.”

Some time during all this Lula began visiting me in the afternoons after she got off, to sympathize with me over the way I was being treated and to give me news of the strike, which, it appeared, was about to be settled. I didn’t want to see her, I didn’t want to see anybody, and yet I had reached such a state that I dreaded being alone, for all I could find to do with myself was sit and read the books on finance which Grant had accumulated in connection with his position at Harris, Hunt and Harris. I dipped into the Indian books too, but found finance more interesting, and was surprised to see how much of it I could understand, especially when I began to follow daily the financial pages of the New York
Times.
Money, in all its phases, as I have mentioned before, is continually fascinating to me.

However, although this helped pass the time, I was lonely and nervous and when Lula showed up I would sit with her just for the sake of company. I always brought her into the kitchen so if Grant came home unexpectedly I could get her out and he wouldn’t know she had been there. But he was always very late, so she would usually stay until nine or ten o’clock, of course eat her dinner with me, which I would have to prepare, and leave before he came.

One night we talked and talked and talked, and I could hear my mouth say feverish, excited things that seemed to have no meaning and then say them all over again, for I didn’t have my mind on what we were talking about at all. Then I realized that Lula didn’t either, and that she was eyeing me in a very strange way. Then I looked at my watch and it was half-past one, and I realized why I had been behaving as I had. Down deep inside of me I knew that Grant wasn’t coming home, and that was what I had been fighting off.

Lula caught my wrist and looked at my watch too, and came out with her usual remark, which was: “Well, for crying out loud.”

“I think I’m a little fast.”

“You ain’t fast. It’s late, Carrie. It’s that late I’m almost afraid to go home, but I didn’t want to leave you here, all alone in this place—well, ain’t he the louse! I declare, it’s a shame, the way he treats you—”

“He’s no louse, and how he treats me is my own affair. He had business—in Newark. He—”

“Newark? He told you that? He—”

“He’s had to take a late train!”

“Train, my eye! Don’t you get it, Carrie? He’s walked out on you. It’s the old powder he’s taken. He’s not coming home—”

I almost threw her out. When I had myself under some kind of control I went in the living room and sat by the window and waited. I saw the milk-wagon horse come up Second Avenue, saw the sun come up over the river, saw the people hurrying over toward the Lexington Avenue subway to go to work. He didn’t come.

Around nine o’clock I went in and bathed and changed my clothes. I was making myself some coffee when I heard the papers delivered outside. I hate things lying in an apartment hallway, so I went out and got them. Once more my picture was all over the front page of the tabloid that had been running the story of my life, and there was the headline:

“HARRIS DESERTS CINDY”

I knew then who had been giving them all their information about my girlhood, my life with Grant and all the rest of it, why Lula had stayed with us, why she kept coming back, even after she had been put out. I put on my hat and coat, went downstairs, had the doorman get me a cab and went over to the address she had given me. It was a rooming house. To save herself the climb of announcing me the woman gave me the room number and told me to go on up. And there, sure enough, was Lula, lying on a sofa in a negligee, smoking. A newspaper man whom I remembered from Mrs. Hunt’s cocktail party was sitting in a chair writing in a notebook. Another was at a typewriter that had been placed in one corner of the room.

I went over to Lula and without waiting for her to say, “Well, for crying out loud,” I slapped her face. She jumped up, her eyes blazing, and I slapped her again, and that time I knocked her down. I went over to the typewriter, pulled out the sheet that was in the machine, scooped up all the other sheets I could see and tore them up. I went over to the man with the notebook, and he backed into a corner and tried to shove it into his pocket. I picked up a chair, drove straight at his head with it and he went down. I grabbed the notebook and tore that up. It must have taken me a minute to tear all the pages into little pieces, but I made a thorough job of it and all during that time the three of them, two on the floor and one behind the typewriter, merely blinked at me. Not a word was spoken.

On the floor Lula’s cigarette was beginning to burn a hole in the carpet. I went over, stepped on it, turned on my heel and walked out.

I
GOT INTO ANOTHER CAB,
went down to Mr. Holden’s hotel and walked up to the desk. “Mrs. Harris calling on Mr. Holden.”

“Yes, Mrs. Harris. Mr. Holden left word you were to come right up.”

I was so wrought up from loss of sleep and what had happened with Lula that I was in the elevator before it occurred to me how surprising that was, that he was expecting me and had left word for me to come up. Then it occurred to me that it might be the other Mrs. Harris, Grant’s mother, that he was expecting, and I had a panicky impulse to have the elevator take me down again and run away without seeing him at all. However, it was me he was expecting, for I was no sooner in his apartment before he put his arms around me and drew me very close, and he was so sincere about it that it was impossible to resent it. Indeed, I didn’t want to resent it, for it felt so good to be loved, regardless of what I was, that I put my arms around him too, and when he kissed me I kissed back, and held him close and felt very deeply moved. So, when he told me how he had called me up as soon as he read the paper, and had then been waiting for me to come, it was all the harder for me to state my business, for it wasn’t what he thought it was at all.

I took from my handbag the bank book showing the deposit I had made as treasurer of the union, as well as the small account book which gave the names of the members, and all other records insofar as I had anything to do with them. I then made out a check payable to him covering the whole amount and laid it all down in front of him. “There. I think you’ll find that everything balances, and you can endorse the check over to whoever is elected to take over my duties.”

“Well, Well, well. I never saw such a grim face in my life or such neat columns of figures. What is this, Carrie?”

“I’m quitting as treasurer of the union.”

“Tut, tut.”

“I can’t go on with it.”

“I wasn’t asking you to go on with it, and I’ve little interest today in the treasurer of the union. It’s a sweet red-haired girl I have my mind on, but—let’s get it over with. What’s come up between you and the union? They settled the strike, by the way.”

“Nothing’s come up between me and the union, but I think I’m going into business and I have to square up all accounts.”

“You’ve walked out on Grant, Lula and the union. All right, besides business, now what?”

“...I don’t know.”

“I do. You take off your hat and stay here.”

He was so simple and honest, and it seemed so fine, after all the turmoil and mean schemes I had faced, that I ached to take off my hat, as he said, and let him take charge of me from then on. But I knew the pain inside of me wouldn’t stop if I did. Yet now I knew he was a part of my life, something he had not really been before, and that I had to be honest with him. I got up, put my arms around him, pulled his head down and kissed him. “I want to say something.”

“I’m listening to you, Carrie.”

“I think you’re swell.”

“Go on.”

“I think you mean more to me than I ever realized you did. I think in a little while I’ll be able to think about you in the way you want me to, and then perhaps I’ll mean still more to you.”

“If that’s possible.”

“It’s possible...But now—I’ve got to face the thing out. You’re wrong if you think I married Grant for money, position or anything else except the one reason you would respect. I—loved him—and you have to let me get through this in my own way.”

“Then I’m not to see you?”

“I
want
to see you. You’ll have to let me see you—because I haven’t anybody else. But—oh, I’m all mixed up.”

“We’ll talk about the weather, is that it?”

“Yes. And I’m afraid we’ll talk about Grant too, and I’ll be a terrible nuisance, and—”

“I’ve a fine idea. We won’t talk at all. Would you like that?”