The spirit of the crowd was altogether different now from what it had been a few hours earlier. All these people had recaptured their customary assurance and poise. The informality and friendliness that they had shown to one another during the excitement had vanished. It was almost as if they were now a little ashamed of the emotions which had betrayed them into injudicious cordialities and unwonted neighbourliness. Each little family group had withdrawn frigidly into its own separate entity and was filing back into its own snug cell.
In the Jacks’ entry a smell of smoke, slightly stale and acrid, still clung to the walls, but the power had been restored and the elevator was running again. Mrs. Jack noticed with casual surprise that the doorman, Henry, took them up, and she asked if Herbert had gone home. He paused just perceptibly, and then answered in a flat tone:
“Yes, Mrs. Jack.”
“You all must be simply worn out!” she said warmly, with her instant sympathy. “Hasn’t it been a thrilling evening?” she went on eagerly. “In all your life did you ever know of such excitement, such confusion, as we had to-night?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the man said, in a voice so curiously unyielding that she felt stopped and baffled by it, as she had many times before. And she thought:
“What a strange man he is! And what a difference between people! Herbert is so warm, so jolly, so human. You can talk to him. But this one—he’s so stiff and formal you can never get inside of him. And if you try to speak to him, he snubs you—puts you in your place as if he doesn’t want to have anything to do with you.”
She felt wounded, rebuffed, almost angry. She was herself a friendly person, and she liked people round her to be friendly, too—even the servants. But already her mind was worrying loosely at the curious enigma of the doorman’s personality:
“I wonder what’s wrong with him,” she thought. “He seems always so unhappy, so disgruntled, nursing some secret grievance all the time. I wonder what has done it to him. Oh, well, poor thing, I suppose the life he leads is enough to turn anyone sour—opening doors and calling cabs and helping people in and out of cars and answering questions all night long. But then, Herbert has it even worse—shut up in this stuffy elevator and riding up and down all the time where he can’t see anything and where nothing ever happens—and yet he’s always so sweet and so obliging about everything!”
And, giving partial utterance to her thoughts, she said:
“I suppose Herbert had a harder time of it to-night than any of you, getting all these people out.”
Henry made no answer whatever. He simply seemed not to have heard her. He had stopped the elevator and opened the door at their own landing, and now said in his hard, expressionless voice: “This is your floor, Mrs. Jack.”
After they got out and the car had gone down, she was so annoyed that she turned to her family and guests with flaming cheeks, and said angrily:
“Honestly, that fellow makes me tired! He’s such a grouch! And he’s getting worse every day! It’s got so now he won’t even answer when you speak to him!”
“Well, Esther, maybe he’s tired out to-night,” suggested Mr. Jack pacifically. “They’ve all been under a pretty severe strain, you know.”
“So I suppose that’s our fault?” said Mrs. Jack ironically. And then, going into the living-room and seeing again the chaos left there by Mr. Logan’s performance, she had a sudden flare of her quick and jolly wit, and with a comical shrug said: “Vell, ve should have a fire sale!”—which restored her to good humour.
Everything seemed curiously unchanged—curiously, because so much had happened since their excited departure. The place smelled close and stale, and there was still a faint tang of smoke. Mrs. Jack told Nora to open the windows. Then the three maids automatically resumed their interrupted routine and quickly tidied up the room.
Mrs. Jack excused herself for a moment and went into her own room. She took off the borrowed coat and hung it in the closet, and carefully brushed and adjusted her somewhat disordered hair.
Then she went over to the window, threw up the sash as far as it would go, and filled her lungs full of the fresh, invigorating air. She found it good. The last taint of smoke was washed clean and sweet away by the cool breath of October. And in the white light of the moon the spires and ramparts of Manhattan were glittering with cold magic. Peace fell upon her spirit. Strong comfort and assurance bathed her whole being. Life was so solid and splendid, and so good.
A tremor, faint and instant, shook her feet. She paused, startled; waited, listening…Was the old trouble with George there again to shake the deep perfection of her soul? He had been strangely quiet to-night. Why, he had hardly said two words all evening. What was the matter with him?...And what was the rumour she had heard this night? Something about stocks falling. During the height of the party she had overheard Lawrence Hirsch say something like that. She hadn’t paid any attention at the time, but now it came back. “Faint tremors in the market”—that’s what he had said. What was this talk of tremors?
—Ah, there it was a second time! What was it?