THE BLEEDING HEART
Rose sometimes heard. Once, on a Sunday afternoon, out of a clear
blue sky she wondered if the man in the yellow ascot ever called at
Number 6 and she snubbed the thought, snubbed the peculiarly
awful possibility that he might be there at this very moment.
On Thanksgiving Day, she went to the inn outside the town for
midday dinner. The library-man was there and the moment she saw
him, dressed as usual, she knew that she had secretly expected him,
for she was not at all surprised. He was sitting at a table near the
fireplace engaged in conversation with the landlord and simultaneously
reading the menu. A bright fire burned in the hearth and
his
fresh
skin shone in the light like a leaf turned golden and it appeared
to have a leaf's smooth texture. He sat very straight in his chair and
while he waited for the soup, he closed his eyes and calmly smiled
as he listened to the landlord who was apparently telling a long
joke. He looked as
if
he might be sitting for his portrait and, indeed,
he would have been a distinguished subject for a painter who did
accurate "likenesses" of college presidents and notable physicians, for
his face had those admirable qualities of mellowness and deep, pacific
wisdom and irony and casualness. He was in no hurry. He waited
for his dinner with his eyes closed, not having to be occupied with
looking round the room at the other diners and at the Currier and
Ives prints on the walls and all the antique furniture which one might
buy if one were able. Rose's own young and impatient mind imme–
diately pranced away from him and dwelt, in quick succession, upon
the brindle cat who was balancing for no earthly reason on the
newel post; upon the lemon tree in the bay window, fed like an
animal to produce fruit of a dreadful size; two quiet brown-eyed
children who sat silent at a table with two thin old women, holding
their hands between courses in an attitude of prayer. Fleetly it struck
her that these two might be her neighbors and at that very moment,
as if she had been directed by a voice, she looked out the window at
the far driveway and saw the electric car, its square top grizzled with
frost. It must be that the children were with their aged great-aunts
for the day and she thought it must be a doubtful pleasure to them
all since the four mute mouths bore an illegible expression.
Rose did not look at her foster-father save when her eyes fell on
him by accident. Once she caught him looking at her over a piled
fork and in his surprise, he let some of the stuffing fall off. Every
979
