When Fay and Josie came home, more than half the supply they had left in the bakery remained. They were aghast. What had happened?
“The natural thing,” answered Diego. He was lolling on the sofa eating a banana. He held it by the stalk, peeling it all the way down, so that it tottered and seemed about to fall on him. The two women regarded him in speechless irritation as he took a large mouthful. When he had swallowed it he said:
“The folks here are getting tired of you gallivanting. They know you’re not interested in the business. And there’s that For Sale card in the window. They’re going to the Model to buy.” The Model Bakery did a second-rate trade near the railway station. He finished the banana, slid the skin across the linoleum under the sofa and turned his face to the wall.
It was a chastened pair of adventuresses who removed the stale bread and cake from the cases and stayed up half the night baking fresh. After that there were no more trips to Boston. Winter descended on them.
Diego still nursed his feeling of resentment against the others. He sat hunched by the stove in the sitting-room reading novels from the lending library, or he sat with Bond in the dim drug store listening while Bond talked. He too was a patron of the library and borrowed a book or two of travels each week. He talked about these to Diego, telling of the strange customs of foreign countries and sketching out trips he would like to make. One night he took Diego home with him to supper. It was the first time the boy had been in his house, and to him it seemed austerely beautiful, quite different from the houses of the Summer Colony, which had been his standard of the artistic and beautiful. He wondered what it would be like to have a house all to oneself and no bakery in front of it—just a nice quiet drug store on the main street where there were few customers to bother one and unlimited supplies of cigarettes and ice-cream soda. He rather envied Bond and told him so.
“Oh, don’t envy me,” said Bond. “I’m a lonely sort of fellow. I’ve no one to care about me.”
“And I don’t suppose you care about anyone,” probed Diego.
“Not many.”
“Well, you’re lucky not to have two women watching everything you do, like I have. Of course, a wife’s all right. I’m not saying anything against a’wife. I’ll probably marry myself when I’m twenty-five or thirty, but a mother and a cousin, who thinks herself superior, make a fellow feel like a little boy. It’s sort of boring.”
“Perhaps a wife would make one feel like that too.”
“Well, I wouldn’t stand any nonsense from a wife. . . . But Josie’s always watching me. Doesn’t seem able to stop watching me if I’m in the room.” He spoke with a certain complacency.
“She’s a queer girl. I certainly don’t interest her. She seldom looks in my direction.”
Diego began to laugh loudly. Then he told Bond what had happened on the day of the duck-shooting. Bond laughed too, but, when he went to bed that night, he was filled with anger at the thought of Fay, tired out after her journey, greeted by cases of unsold cakes, staying up half the night to bake fresh ones. He felt a swift anger against Diego. The thought of Fay baking for the stupid clowns of Saltport disgusted him. He must and would help her to free herself from her bondage. For two months now the idea of selling his own business had been in his head. Why should he rust for the remainder of his days in Saltport? If Fay left it would be intolerable. He knew that he could rent his house for the summer at a good rental. Suddenly he discovered that he was sick and tired, not only of the soda fountain and all that it stood for, but of drugs, prescriptions and everything that had to do with his life in Saltport. Everything and everybody but Fay Palmas. . . . He would never tire of being near her. He also sent an advertisement to a Boston paper.
There was a heavy snowfall that winter, and in February a great storm of wind and sleet came off the sea. It froze again and the sun appeared, shewing Saltport as a port of salt indeed, glittering like Sodom, cursed in whiteness and yet grown proud.
Diego glided along the back passage into the shop. It was empty, as he knew. It was the dinner hour and Fay was laying the table. Josie had run up to her room. He opened the cash register where he had seen his mother put the monthly payment of an hotel, which she supplied with bread, an hour before. It had come into his mind that morning that it was his turn to have a trip into Boston. It was against his mood of resentment to ask his mother for money. He would take it—after all, it was as much his as hers—but he would take it without being seen, and when she discovered the loss, let her say what she would—it was his turn now. She and Josie had had their fling. He never had two cents to rub together. . . .
But, just as he slid the drawer of the register into place, Fay caught him. That faint Indian strain in her made her wary of every sound. He had listened to her singing as she set the dishes out, had heard her voice break and the tune carried on in a clear sweet whistle, had thought the moment safe. But, under cover of the whistle, she had come upon him and caught his wrist and held it. She drew her lips from her fine teeth and stared into his eyes without speaking.
“Let me go!” he snarled, struggling, but she held him fast.
“You little thief!” she exclaimed fiercely.
He raised his voice and shouted:
“It’s as much mine as yours!”
“To think that I’d raise a thief!”
“I’m taking my own.”
“Then why did you sneak about it?”
He gave a roar like a young bull and pulled himself away. The money was scattered over the floor. Josie came running down the stairs to find mother and son facing each other like enemies.
An old woman, a gossip, was cautiously ascending the icy steps to the bakery. Diego threw open the door to her with a grand gesture and she entered, walking, as she had often dreamed she was doing, on a pathway of strewn banknotes. The shop bell clanged. He gave a fierce, tragic, despairing look over his shoulder at his mother, then flung himself out of the door and slithered down the glittering steps.
Josie ate dinner alone. Fay lay upstairs on her bed, weeping. Josie ate in a kind of haze and sat afterward smoking one cigarette after another, brooding on Diego. Twice she was interrupted to serve customers, but she came back, lighted another cigarette and again sank into thought. She despised Diego for what he had done. If he had boldly demanded the money of Fay she would have admired him. But, after all, he was a boy and they had treated him rather badly. His tragic expression haunted her. What was he doing now? She lived over again the time in the studio when he had kissed her, held her in his arms. She had seen each separate hair of his brows and lashes, he had been so close. She rose, stretched out the arm that he had stroked, to its fullest extent, then dropped it to her side. She looked about the untidy dining-room with hatred. Upstairs Fay began to cry loudly, like a child, but Josie sullenly collected the dishes and washed them between interruptions from customers. After a while she carried a cup of coffee to Fay, who drank it thirstily and moaned:
“He will never come back! Oh, he will never come back!”
But Josie knew quite well that Fay was not really frightened. Yet when a blue shadow of evening fell at four o’clock she had a sudden pang of fear herself. She went to the telephone and called up Purley Bond. No—he had not seen Diego. She had been cooking doughnuts. She was hot and tired as she climbed the stairs to Fay’s room. She found her sleeping in the twilight, her dark hair lying across the pillow, even hanging dramatically over the side of the bed to the floor. She woke when Josie came in.
“Has he come back?” she asked instantly.
“No. I’ve baked the doughnuts.”
Fay sat up with a wild look. “As though I wanted to hear about doughnuts! My God, it’s nearly dark! Why did you let me sleep like this?” She got up and began to coil her hair.
“You stay and mind the shop,” said Josie. “I’ll go and find him.”
“Did