He was so intensely curious that he decided to wait a while outside here to see if his mother might not come out, and then he himself would call on Esta.
He wanted so much to see her again — to know what this mystery was all about.
He waited, thinking how he had always liked Esta and how strange it was that she should be here, hiding away in this mysterious way.
After an hour, his mother came out, her basket apparently empty, for she held it lightly in her hand.
And just as before, she looked cautiously about her, her face wearing that same stolid and yet care-stamped expression which it always wore these days — a cross between an uplifting faith and a troublesome doubt.
Clyde watched her as she proceeded to walk south on Beaudry Street toward the Mission.
After she was well out of sight, he turned and entered the house.
Inside, as he had surmised, he found a collection of furnished rooms, name plates some of which bore the names of the roomers pasted upon them.
Since he knew that the southeast front room upstairs contained Esta, he proceeded there and knocked.
And true enough, a light footstep responded within, and presently, after some little delay which seemed to suggest some quick preparation within, the door opened slightly and Esta peeped out — quizzically at first, then with a little cry of astonishment and some confusion.
For, as inquiry and caution disappeared, she realized that she was looking at Clyde. At once she opened the door wide.
“Why, Clyde,” she called.
“How did you come to find me?
I was just thinking of you.”
Clyde at once put his arms around her and kissed her.
At the same time he realized, and with a slight sense of shock and dissatisfaction, that she was considerably changed. She was thinner — paler — her eyes almost sunken, and not any better dressed than when he had seen her last.
She appeared nervous and depressed.
One of the first thoughts that came to him now was where her husband was.
Why wasn’t he here?
What had become of him?
As he looked about and at her, he noticed that Esta’s look was one of confusion and uncertainty, not unmixed with a little satisfaction at seeing him.
Her mouth was partly open because of a desire to smile and to welcome him, but her eyes showed that she was contending with a problem.
“I didn’t expect you here,” she added, quickly, the moment he released her.
“You didn’t see —” Then she paused, catching herself at the brink of some information which evidently she didn’t wish to impart.
“Yes, I did, too — I saw Ma,” he replied.
“That’s how I came to know you were here.
I saw her coming out just now and I saw you up here through the window.” (He did not care to confess that he had been following and watching his mother for an hour.)
“But when did you get back?” he went on.
“It’s a wonder you wouldn’t let the rest of us know something about you.
Gee, you’re a dandy, you are — going away and staying months and never letting any one of us know anything.
You might have written me a little something, anyhow.
We always got along pretty well, didn’t we?”
His glance was quizzical, curious, imperative.
She, for her part, felt recessive and thence evasive — uncertain, quite, what to think or say or tell.
She uttered:
“I couldn’t think who it might be.
No one comes here.
But, my, how nice you look, Clyde.
You’ve got such nice clothes, now.
And you’re getting taller.
Mamma was telling me you are working at the Green–Davidson.”
She looked at him admiringly and he was properly impressed by her notice of him.
At the same time he could not get his mind off her condition.
He could not cease looking at her face, her eyes, her thin-fat body. And as he looked at her waist and her gaunt face, he came to a very keen realization that all was not well with her.
She was going to have a child.
And hence the thought recurred to him — where was her husband — or at any rate, the man she had eloped with.
Her original note, according to her mother, had said that she was going to get married.
Yet now he sensed quite clearly that she was not married.
She was deserted, left in this miserable room here alone.
He saw it, felt it, understood it.