THE END OF ANNA

I

Anna Clark committed suicide. She did it stupidly, with no striving after effects, no dramatic value. Her death seemed as unfinished as her life. At thirty-five, after ten years of an apparently happy enough marriage, early in the afternoon of a calm, clear day, she swallowed a dose of rather unpleasant poison and died before any one found out about it.

The incompleteness of Anna Clark’s death lay in her own thoughtlessness. She did not leave even one short note to tell of her reasons. There was nothing well-rounded about the affair. One expects at least a note from a suicide. It is little enough, considering the annoyance the whole thing causes. Hurriedly, hysterically written, left on the dresser to be discovered by the first horrified intruder, a note forms the final, definite thing to talk about. Anna Clark never liked to write. She proved her own incompetence, her inadequacy, her love of avoidance of duties, by neglecting note-writing now. No one ever knew why she chose to escape from a continuance of life as it had come to her.

II

Anna’s younger sister found the body. It was late afternoon. Anna must have taken the poison about one o’clock, it was proved later. Ruth, as was her wont, came by to get Anna to go for a walk or a call. Ruth, who was married to a clerk in a haberdashery—a well-appearing chap, too, who could criticize your cravats and tell you if your trousers were of a proper cut—lived in an apartment similar to Anna’s, though a trifle less expensive. Anna’s husband, a city salesman for a spice concern, was doing well and his commissions were far above what they had been at the time of his marriage, almost far enough to make him talk, ambitiously, of a permanent savings account in a year or two.

Ruth usually called for Anna about three o’clock. If it was a nice day, the two women would meet other women of their acquaintance, whom they called “the girls,” and, in groups of three or more, would go down-town, spending a pleasant hour or two looking in the shop windows on Fifth Avenue or on the less pretentious, but to them, more accommodating side streets.

Then Anna would go home, stopping in at a neighbourhood combination meat and vegetable market to purchase her supplies for the evening meal, cooking it so that it would be ready just when Fred Clark got in, which was usually about half-past six. Fred did not dress for dinner, but contented himself by washing his hands, hurriedly, as adequate preparation. Fred liked his meals on time.

Sometimes “the girls” spent the afternoons sewing at the home of one of them or calling on more distant acquaintances. They all lived in practically identical apartments, differing only as to a choice of wall paper, of fumed oak or highly polished mahogany for living rooms and of four-poster or brass beds in the sleeping chambers. Sometimes each “girl” spent the afternoon alone, but this was restricted, usually, to rainy days or days too threatening to venture out. On those days, “the girls” spent their individual afternoons doing their less nice darning and sewing, washing garments too fragile to be trusted to the laundry or making batches of fudge, according to their individual needs and desires.

Ruth had a key to her sister’s apartment, an extra key, made for Anna’s mother-in-law, who lived in Canton, Ohio, and came up each Spring for a visit. Anna had given it to Ruth a few weeks before so that Ruth might get a package in her absence. So, when her ring failed to bring response, Ruth did not need to summon the janitor in order to gain admission. She thought that perhaps her sister had gone out earlier and left a note for her on the table.

Ruth opened the door with the key, which had lain next to her own in her purse, and went in. The living room was in its usual condition, fairly neat, stiffly arranged, dusty in the corners. The mahogany “set” of three pieces, green velour upholstered, a gift from Fred two Christmases ago, the wicker chair with the broken arm, the oval centre table with its rose-coloured silk shade, which Anna had made with the help of “free instruction” given when you buy materials at one of the department stores, all stood in their accustomed places. In the bedroom, the bird’s-eye maple set looked as impudently clean as ever.

In the bathroom, Ruth found Anna. She screamed. Then she went closer and examined the body curiously, as if Anna were a stranger. Anna was fully dressed. She was wearing her new waist and her tan spats.

Ruth screamed again.

She got out into the hall.

A bill collector for an instalment furniture house was coming out of one of the other apartments and heard her. He went to find the janitor.

In less than five minutes a crowd had gathered. Two policemen were there, questioning every one, writing in small notebooks with thick fingers and stubs of pencils and giving out sullen, inaccurate information.

Ruth gave her name and Anna’s and Fred Clark’s name and business address and told about finding the body. In half an hour Fred Clark was there, questioning, being questioned, sorrowful, melancholy, yet conscious of his importance.

The funeral was two days later. “The girls” all sent flowers and the spice firm employés sent a large wreath bought from money collected by the bookkeeper, who always did such things. Every one said Anna was well remembered and that it was a nice funeral.

After the funeral, Fred let Anna’s two sisters, Ruth and Sophie, and his brother Philip’s wife take what they wanted of the household things, and sold the rest to a second-hand dealer, where they brought little enough, and he went to live with Philip, who had a room for him, since his oldest boy had gone West on business.

Ever since she discovered the body, Ruth had tried to find out why Anna committed suicide. It was such a terrible thing to do—the worst thing you could do—just to end things—like that. How Anna must have suffered there, alone! Yet she never left a note or anything. Ruth couldn’t quite understand it. She knew that she never could do away with herself. She was prettier than Anna had been, rather plump and blonde, with little, fine lines around her mouth and light eyes, which had been very blue when she was sixteen.

After a few days, when things began to settle down a little, and Ruth had become accustomed to thinking of Anna as being dead and no longer fell asleep meditating on getting black clothes or the awfulness of finding Anna in the bathroom, she began to reason out for herself why Anna had committed suicide. And, after a while, it came to her and she didn’t blame Anna at all. In fact, she wondered why she herself didn’t do it.

Anna had committed suicide, of course, because she had been in love. Ruth knew now whom Anna had been in love with. Why hadn’t she suspected it sooner? Of course, Anna was in love with Martin, the clerk at the Good Measure Grocery and Meat Market.

It was very plain to Ruth, as she thought about it. She remembered how, when the other girls suggested buying things at grocery departments of down-town department stores, Anna always said; “Oh, let’s not do that, and carry all the bundles home on the subway.” And, if any one suggested having things sent, Anna always reminded them how long it took for deliveries—days sometimes—and down-town stores never would deliver fresh vegetables and fruits at all. “I like the little stores in my own neighbourhood,” Anna would add.

Ruth remembered that Anna had remarked, many times, on the beauty of the clerk Martin’s eyelashes. They were beautiful—long and dark and heavy, and his eyes were an odd shape. Ruth remembered how Anna often lingered with Martin, after the others had given their orders and teased him about things or pretended to scold because she had not been given full measure. And Ruth remembered, too, how Anna always got the pick of everything.

Of course Martin—Ruth never even knew if that was his first or his last name—was the social inferior of their family. No one she knew had ever worked in a grocery store. But, even so, that couldn’t keep Anna from being in love with him. Of course, there hadn’t been anything between them. Ruth knew that. She had been with her sister every day and knew Anna was absolutely moral and all that, but, no doubt, it was the hopelessness of it—loving Martin and seeing only a glimpse of him every day and maybe even knowing that he didn’t love her in return. It was quite too awful. And yet Ruth knew how Anna had felt.

For Ruth was in love too. If Anna had only confided in her, she could have confided in Anna. It just shows how little sisters really know one another.

Of course, Ruth knew that her love was far different from Anna’s, far deeper and truer and more lasting. Though, at that, hadn’t Anna’s love lasted as long as she had? But, of course, there was a difference. For Ruth was in love with no mere grocer’s clerk. She was in love with Towers Wellman, her husband’s best friend.

Towers Wellman worked at the same haberdasher’s shop as her husband even, but there the resemblance ended. For, while Dick was a nice little fellow, quite loving and attentive, he never quite understood things. His mind was wrapped up in collars and underwear sales. But Towers Wellman was a man of the world. He belonged to a bowling club and a political club and went to stag dinners. He was not married and he made jokes about matrimony.

Ruth knew three women who were hopelessly in love with him. Towers had told Ruth about the women himself. Dick would bring Towers home to dinner and Ruth would spend the whole afternoon preparing things he liked, and, in the evening, the three of them would attend a moving picture show, and, sometimes, before she knew it, when there was a dark scene, Towers would be holding her hand.

Ruth thought of Towers the last thing before she went to sleep at night, visualizing his dark, lean profile, his deep-set eyes, his black, waved hair. No wonder women, rich women, were in love with him. And yet, Ruth felt that he loved her alone. Frequently, half in fun, he had told how he had broken an important social engagement to come to dinner, but Ruth knew that the look he gave her had a double meaning, for he had come to dinner, and there wasn’t a reason in the world why some rich woman hadn’t invited him first.

So—Anna had been in love too! And she had felt so badly over it that she had taken poison! Maybe the affair had gone further than Ruth suspected! Yet, how could it? Wasn’t Fred home every evening and hadn’t she seen Anna every day?

Ruth almost wished that she had the courage to kill herself, or something. It was mighty hard, living with one man and loving another one. And spending the days chatting about other things, never talking about what you want to talk about or getting near the one you care for. Never daring to tell any one about things! Maybe, if she and Anna had confided in each other.... But, it was too late for that now. Anna had loved and found it hopeless, and gone out.

Ruth knew her love was hopeless, too. For, though she loved Towers and felt that he loved her, she knew that he was too little to take her away with him. She loved him none the less for his prudence, for she was rather a coward and hated scandals and things like that herself. Anna’s suicide was bad enough. The family would never quite recover from it. Oh, well, life was pretty messy after all. Here she had to keep on, day after day, and Towers was the only one she cared for. Nothing else, no one else mattered. If only Towers and she could go away some place, away from every one and be happy together! And she never could do that, she knew. After all, hadn’t Anna done the wiser thing?

III

Sophie missed her younger sister a great deal. The girls were orphans, their mother had died when Sophie was fourteen and their father three years later, and Sophie, though just a few years older, had really raised Anna.

The last year Sophie didn’t see Ruth and Anna frequently, for Sophie had four children and children take time. Sophie’s husband was a union tailor and was on strike a great deal and she couldn’t dress well or have things as nice as the two younger girls. Not that she envied them, only—well, there wasn’t much use feeling bad by trying to go with them anyhow. They had their own crowd and were younger and smarter and different. But fine girls, of course.

Sophie thought about Anna as she mended always-torn blouses and washed always-dirty dishes. Why had Anna done such a thing? After all the time she had spent raising her! It seemed as if Anna were only a little girl, instead of a woman of thirty-five. But even thirty-five is young when one has a lot to live for. Didn’t Anna have? Sophie had always thought of her two younger sisters as rather happy and fortunate. Surely, Anna had always seemed happy. And yet....

What had made Anna hate the world enough to want to get out of it? She had a nice home, nicer than Sophie would ever have. There surely were no debts. Certainly they got along well enough together, Anna and Fred.

But did they?

People thought that she and Steve got along all right too. You can keep people from finding out things like that, if you’re careful. Hadn’t she done it? For years and years? And she probably would keep on, until the kids were grown up and then—oh, how could she get along any other way? It was more than a habit.

Still, Fred didn’t drink. At least, at first, Sophie was pretty certain he didn’t. You couldn’t be too sure. People didn’t all know about Steve.

Though Steve was working, now, Sophie shuddered and walked quietly, as if he were asleep in the next room. For Steve got paid on Saturday, when he “worked steady,” and on Saturday night he came in, his pay envelope pitifully depleted, smelling horribly of cheap whisky, and cursing. She’d pray the children wouldn’t hear and she’d get him to bed.

In the morning he’d be sick and lay there saying things he shouldn’t, though usually he’d be up and able to work on Monday. It wasn’t that Steve drank more than most men. It was just that he was the sort that shouldn’t drink at all. Even the doctor said he had a delicate stomach and couldn’t stand it. But he did drink, though not so terribly often like some men.

But even when Steve didn’t drink, things weren’t so much better. He had a mean disposition, the kind that can take an innocent phrase and boomerang it into a sneer. He was never quite satisfied about things, about his home, about his children. He hated the Government and joined various political societies, getting into fights with the neighbourhood leaders and hating them in turn. Steve wouldn’t read several of the newspapers, because he “had it in for them” and their policies. He disliked Sophie’s friends and her relatives, and quarrelled because he had to spend the evening with them occasionally. He called Dick a “damned white-collared little snob” and Fred was a “sick roach who hadn’t the liver to have a will of his own.” Steve was not a pleasant person to live with.

Thinking over her life since her marriage and the life of Anna, since her marriage, as she knew it, little things came to Sophie which showed her that Fred was not all that Anna tried to picture him. She saw, now, clearly enough, that Anna had been brave, that she had tried to conceal Fred’s failings, but that, underneath, she hated him for his cruelty to her. Little things that Anna had said proved this. It could be nothing else.

Why hadn’t Anna left Fred? Sophie felt that she would have left Steve years ago, if it hadn’t been for the kids. Anna could have left—any day. Only herself to look out for and she had been a cashier before her marriage and could have always made a living. Still, maybe she did think of that way—and decided against it. Sophie felt that there was something noble, something brave, about what Anna had done. She wished she could do it. She wished it on Saturday nights, when Steve was drinking and on many other nights when he wasn’t. There wasn’t very much use in living, most of the time.

And yet—the kids. They were sweet. They had mean tempers sometimes, especially little Steve, who could be really bad. But then, again, sometimes when they were in bed, they’d let her put her arms around them, tight, some nights, and kiss her in return, too. They were sweet, the kids, and worth a lot of hard things.

But Anna hadn’t any kids. Not a one. If the baby hadn’t died, maybe she could have stood it, too. Still, what is the use of it all? You can’t tell how kids’ll turn out, even if you spend years sewing and cooking and cleaning for them. It’s taking a chance. And the other things ... it’s best to get away from them.

Anna, without any one but Fred, and he mean to her and she trying to conceal it with smiles and jokes and changing the subject ... she had been brave. And one person can’t stand everything. And, looking ahead and seeing nothing but years of Fred and bad treatment or of working to try to make a living, maybe, after all, Anna had figured it out that her way was best. Fred had said they hadn’t quarrelled. But then, Sophie never did trust Fred too much from the first. Of course, he’d have said that. They had probably had an awful quarrel the night before, and rather than go through with it all again....

Well, Anna was dead. It must be good to simply quit and stop quarrelling and working. If she had Anna’s chance to go out, without harming any one else, without leaving any kids for maybe worse treatment ... Sophie knew, in her heart, why Anna had committed suicide, and though she shed many tears over her sister, understanding things as she did, she couldn’t blame her. Maybe Anna had picked out the right path.

IV

After his wife’s death, Fred Clark went to live with his brother Philip and Phil’s wife, Myrtle. Fred missed his wife a great deal, especially during the first few months after her death. A companionship of ten years—and as close a companionship as a married couple, living together in a city apartment, without children, are bound to have, is not easily forgotten.

But, in a few months, Fred grew accustomed to life at Phil’s house, which was not much different from his old life. It was the same social stratum. Fred enjoyed the company of his two little nephews and liked to bring small presents home to them when he came in early on Saturday afternoon. He got along quite well with Myrtle, a pleasant-faced pale woman, who was glad of the extra money that Fred paid into the housekeeping fund.

Fred’s share of the expenses, as proportioned by Phil, was much less than he had ever paid for the upkeep of his own apartment and he was able to begin saving money immediately after the funeral expenses were paid.

Often, when he was alone in his room, Fred thought of Anna and of her death.

At first he had been too startled, too numbed into silence to think that there had to be a reason for her suicide. It had seemed more like an accidental death, something that had taken Anna unawares as it had taken him. He and Anna had shared so many of their sensations that it seemed hard for Fred to believe that Anna had done this thing herself.

But, gradually, the unreality of the situation wore away and Fred came to know that Anna was really dead—and by her own hand. And, as he realized that she had killed herself, at the same time came the realization of the motive for it, the only possible motive. Anna had killed herself because she was poor! It had been under the burden of a continued poverty that must have eaten into her spirit as he had often felt it eat into his, that Anna had decided not to live any more. Anna had never said anything to Fred about it. He was surprised, now, that she never had—for he thought that she had told him everything. And yet, he had felt the same thing so often himself that he was not surprised to find that Anna had felt it and that it had been too much for her.

They had never really experienced the pangs of poverty, it is true. Fred felt that it would have been easier to bear if they had. He had always “done well,” in that he had made a living. Each month, by hurrying around to dozens of little, retail groceries, he had sold enough spices to maintain his simple household.

But each month there had been the fear that, perhaps, there wouldn’t be enough for the month to come.

Each month some household article had advanced in price and had to be purchased less frequently or not at all. If he and Anna went to the theatre—balcony seats—there could be no other luxuries that week or the week that followed. Even a guest in to dinner—and the Clarks had little company—made a difference in the household money. New shoes were to be talked over, several weeks ahead, at the dinner table. A new suit meant that they had to start saving for it a month or two in advance, and, if one made a mistake and bought the wrong suit, which happened quite often enough, the suit had to be worn just the same, throughout the season. Fred had to look neat all the time. And Anna had a certain position to uphold too. She had to prove to “the girls” and to the rest of her small world, that she was the wife of a prosperous city salesman.

Anna was not extravagant. Fred knew that. He could picture her, brow-knitted, looking over small household bills, trying to find which could be reduced without radically altering a fairly comfortable manner of living. Anna cleaned her own gloves and her own thin waists. Outside of a few ice cream soda “treats” for “the girls” she spent little money foolishly.

Fred knew that Anna had always been a true wife to him. He knew that he was the only man she had ever cared about and that she had cared for him sincerely and devotedly. He knew that there could have been no other trouble. He knew only too well why Anna died.

Fred had felt like that—himself. He and Anna must have lain on the same bird’s-eye maple bed and thought the same things about living. Only, Anna had ended it and he had kept on.

He hadn’t wanted Anna to work. He didn’t believe that married women ought to have positions. A woman’s place is in the home, he always maintained, and a position for Anna, as a possible way out of their poverty, had never entered his mind.

But, how often he had wished for money, for some of the smaller, cheaper luxuries! He had often gone to sleep wondering how many years more he could keep up the strain of spice-selling, the constant hammering of it, the continued striving to make a living. Always, in the end, he felt himself beaten, saw himself, before he had reached old age, being overtaken by real poverty, finding that he was unable to sell enough spices to support himself and Anna. There was nothing else he could do as well. He knew that. Selling, selling, day after day, just for the privilege of living in a little, stuffy apartment and never enough left over to put some by. No wonder the outlook had been too much for Anna. He hadn’t known that she had felt deeply about it—or cared. And she had cared, so very much.

Now that Anna was dead, things were different. Fred wondered if Anna ever looked down from Up There and saw that her sacrifice had not been in vain. The burden of supporting two was lifted. He paid Myrtle each week, bought little things for the boys and little extras for himself that he never could have afforded before—a more expensive brand of cigarette, a new cane, some collars of an odd shape, and each week he put a little money into a savings account.

Fred felt years younger. He was preparing for old age. There was something to look ahead to. But—to have kept on the other way ... trudging always to a poorer future.... It had looked mighty black. Too black, sometimes. Fred had considered, often enough, the very thing that Anna had done. He had been insured for three thousand dollars, in her name, and he felt that her sisters would both rather look out for her—they had good homes—and she could have stayed with them and gone to work at an easy job, if necessary. It seemed such a cowardly thing to do—to step from under, and he had never quite got to it, after all. And now—he was free.

But Anna—wasn’t she free, too? Hadn’t she taken the way out, as she saw it, a way that meant no more scraping and saving, no more using up of left-overs, of planning for new bargain shoes three weeks before the soles ran through the old ones? It was sad enough, losing Anna, but when he thought it over, Fred understood perfectly. It was the simplest solution. He didn’t blame Anna at all. Compared to living on, doing without nice things, planning to keep on doing without them, and with the strain drawing tighter and tighter, Anna had certainly chosen the better way.

V

On the morning that she committed suicide, Anna Clark waked up at seven. The round nickeled clock on the bird’s-eye maple dresser awoke her as usual. She yawned and stretched her arms above her head as she did every morning. Then she nudged Fred, sleeping rather noisily with his mouth not quite tightly closed, as he always slept. Then, as she never missed doing, Anna got up and shut off the alarm, went into the bathroom, hung up the towels that Fred had thrown on the floor the night before, and took a hurried bath. She put on her “morning clothes” that hung in the disorderly, tightly-crowded closet. They differed from her “best clothes” in that the cheap lace edging of the underthings was badly worn and that, instead of a dark skirt and a georgette waist—her usual afternoon outfit—Anna wore a checked gingham dress. Anna had three morning dresses. Two were blue and white and one pink and white. The pink and white one was slightly faded. By wearing aprons over them, when she cooked, one dress looked plenty clean enough to wear mornings, and when she got dinner, for a whole week.

After she had bathed, Anna went back into the bedroom to dress and again waked Fred, who always fell asleep after the first waking. This time, Anna talked to him about what had happened to both of them the day before. She had been with Ruth to call on Mrs. Ambier, an old friend, who had just had her third baby at a neighbourhood hospital.

“She doesn’t look strong,” Anna said. “She ought not to have any more children.”

Fred didn’t remember whether or not Mrs. Ambier had looked strong the last time he had seen her—for several months, Mrs. Ambier had not performed her accustomed social duties—but agreed that, if she looked badly, there should be no more children.

Fred told Anna about old Klingman, one of his regular customers, and how he made him taste the pickled herring and other Klingman-prepared specialties.

“He’s quite a character,” Fred added.

While Fred shaved, Anna got breakfast. It was the usual breakfast. There was half of a large orange for each. When oranges were smaller, Fred and Anna each had a whole one, but grapefruit and large oranges were always divided. Then there was oatmeal, cooked the night before and left standing, wrapped in a towel, on the radiator all night. It’s just as good that way, Anna always told her friends, as if prepared in a fireless cooker—and a great deal less trouble. There were two soft-boiled eggs apiece—on alternate mornings the eggs were scrambled—but to-day was the day to soft-boil them.

Some mornings there was toast, but this morning the bread was soft enough to be eaten without toasting—and coffee. Before putting the eggs in water Anna went to see how far Fred had progressed with his dressing. He was putting his shirt on, which meant that Anna would have to hurry things a little—as she always did towards the end.

Breakfast was at eight-thirty. Before sitting down, Fred got the paper, which the boy had left at the door, and read it as he ate. He was not too absorbed in the news to listen to what Anna had to say nor pass morsels of the last twelve hours’ happenings to her.

After eating, Fred looked at his watch, a $2.50 Ingersoll, which kept just as good time for him as a gold one that he had had given to him when he was twenty-one, and found that he was a trifle late. He tried to be at the office at nine-thirty, starting from there on his rounds of spice-selling, after dictating a few business letters and handing in reports that he had not attended to the night before.

As usual, Fred was a trifle late. He folded his paper irregularly and thrust it into his overcoat pocket. It was early in the fall and slightly cool. He kissed Anna good-bye a bit hurriedly, as usual, but he remembered later that the kiss she gave him in response was no warmer, no colder, for that matter, than the kiss she usually gave him. It was the last time Fred saw Anna alive.

After Fred left, Anna gathered together the breakfast dishes and washed them in the sink, without a dishpan. She preferred this method because it was quicker. The water was not very warm. It scarcely ever was warm enough to wash dishes properly and she frequently spoke to the janitor about it. With the use of a cleaning powder, she got the dishes fairly clean and dried them slowly.

After putting the dishes away, Anna made the one bed. Then, with a carpet sweeper which needed oiling and squeaked badly she went over the brightly coloured rugs in the living and dining-rooms. She did the bedroom on alternate days. She dusted the furniture with an irregularly shaped piece of cloth, the tail of one of Fred’s old shirts.

A package she had ordered the day before came up the dumb-waiter. Anna opened it. It was a bargain shirtwaist and she noticed that one of the sleeves was sewed in crooked. She took it into the bedroom, glanced at the clock and saw that it was nearly ten-thirty.

Anna tried on the shirtwaist. It fitted well enough, except where the sleeve was wrong. She could wear it that afternoon and fix it—in half an hour—some other time. The collar was rather nice.

She picked up a woman’s magazine—she had subscribed to it and two more a few months before, “to help a boy through college”—and read two stories in it. The second story was quite pathetic and she wiped her eyes at the ending.

She looked over the back of the magazine at the cooking recipes and found a simple recipe for spice cakes with one egg. She found she had all the ingredients in the house and Fred and she both liked spice cakes. She went back into the kitchen, propped the magazine against the built-in cabinet, using a yellow mixing bowl, and made the cakes, following the recipe carefully, humming a little to herself as she cooked. Anna was not especially fond of cooking. She had been housekeeping for ten years.

While the little cakes were baking—she had poured the batter into muffin tins—she read some more of the magazine. When the cakes were done, she spread them on a clean towel, and, as soon as they were cool enough, bit into one. It was quite good. If the cakes had failed, those who wondered about her suicide might have found the spice cakes and considered them as a motive. But the cakes were so good Anna ate two of them. She put the others into the cake box along with a stale piece of baker’s cake, left over from three days before, gathered up the crumbs, washed the dishes her baking had soiled and went into the bedroom. It was eleven-fifteen.

She washed and started to change into her “afternoon clothes,” choosing the new waist that Ruth found her in. The ’phone rang just before she finished dressing. It was Marie Cluens, one of “the girls,” asking her to come over in the afternoon. Marie was expecting a few other callers. Anna said that Ruth was coming for her and if Ruth had made no other plans she’d be glad to go.

She was all dressed, and looking at herself in the bird’s-eye maple dresser mirror. She approved of her looks, for, at thirty-five, it was quite all right to have a few wrinkles and a sprinkling of grey hair. Most women of thirty-five looked older.

Then Anna remembered that she had neglected to put on her spats. She had bought some tan ones, a few weeks before, while shopping with Ruth, who had bought grey. Spats are awkward things to button, after one is dressed, when one hasn’t a maid, and Anna had taken on a few extra pounds recently. She finally managed to button them. Then, suddenly, button-hook still in her hand, after she had finished buttoning her spats, Anna sat upright on the bird’s-eye maple chair and thought, for the first time in months, about herself.

Here she was—buttoning spats! She hated to button them. What a bore, what a terrible bore it was, to button them! And, to-night, she would have to unbutton them, and to-morrow afternoon, she would have to take the spots out of them, if there were any spots, and button them again.

And it wasn’t only spats. Of course she didn’t have to wear spats. It was the other things. Anna thought of all of the other pieces of clothes she wore, her vest, copied after its more expensive Italian silk sisters, her “Teddy-bears,” the delicate and modest name “the girls” had taken to calling their combinations, then corsets, stockings, camisole, skirt—every garment requiring buttoning or fastening or tying or pinning. Each one had to be pulled in place or puffed or tied. And, in the evening, each one had to be taken off again.

Anna thought of how, each morning, she had to go through the same process of bathing and putting on a number of things. Then, she had to get breakfast and wash the dishes. Then she had to clean and do some washing, usually those same underneaths, and then dress again. And then go out and then come home and cook dinner—and eat it—and then wash more dishes and then spend an evening at something tiresome—and then undress again. Life stretched out before Anna—a void of little things—punctuated only by dressing and undressing.

The worst of it was, after she was dressed, there was nothing to do. There is some object in dressing if one has an appointment, a little secret meeting, a half hour’s flirtation, a dinner, the meeting of new people, adventure, anything. Then, indeed, may one dress without heeding the buttons. But Anna knew that there were no surprises in her day—that there never could be—that nothing could come that would be pleasurable enough to make up for the thousand unbuttonings.

Sitting there, button-hook held in her right hand, Anna went over her life as it drifted back to her. First, years of school, slow, stupid years, of little quarrels with playmates, little misunderstandings with her teachers, lessons at night at a round table, with Sophie and Ruth; occasionally very dull parties on Friday evenings. Then, the death of her parents. Then, school days were over and the dull years stretched into long days of working and long evenings with “the boys” and “the girls.” “The boys” were the masculine set, who, attracted by “the girls,” took them to possible social diversions. Fred had been one of “the boys.” Three years of a dull monotone of a courtship and she and Fred were married and the years had gone on—and she had dressed each morning for a day of colourless calm and undressed in the evening to get rest for another.

All things had come to Anna, and yet nothing had come. School, courtship, marriage, and then, after two years, a baby, a sickly, crying boy baby, who had taken all of her time from useless things to the doing of little, constantly repeated things for him. And then, after a year of the baby, he had died and she and Fred had decided that they did not want another. Mourning, then, calm, placid. And then two years of absolute blankness.

Then, Anna had had an admirer. It had seemed the one experience that her grey life had missed, the one thing that might have had some significance. Her admirer had been the family dentist, a ruddy young fellow, getting bald too young. In the unpicturesque pose of being open-mouthed in a dentist chair she had fallen in love with him and he had seemingly reciprocated her affection.

Anna’s passion had been brief, shallow. There had been a number of pseudo-appointments, which had been given over to love-making.

Then the dentist, his first name was Harvey, had called during the mornings, when Anna knew “the girls” weren’t likely to come in. Harvey had stayed for lunch, and, as that was the one meal of the day which Anna did not usually have to prepare, she rebelled at having to cook it for her lover, who had a large appetite. After only the smallest glimmer of pleasurable excitement, Harvey had dimmed into the monotony of her regular life, his visits, the lunches with him, the fear of being discovered with her lover gradually blotched into the background.

And, as unexcitedly as he had drifted in, Harvey, perhaps finding Anna as monotonous as she found him, perhaps because a prettier patient appeared, drifted out.

Anna did not grieve for him. Occasionally she shuddered at the thought of what might have happened if Fred or Ruth had discovered the affair, but even the shudders grew to lack distinction.

After Harvey, Anna had had no more lovers. Now, thinking about it, Anna found that she had not talked, seriously, to a man alone, for over three years. There was no one she was interested in, no one she knew or cared to know whom being alone with was worth the effort of planning for it. She knew so few men. There was a stupid grocer’s clerk with long lashes, a drug clerk who simpered at her and a friend of Fred’s, who held her hand when he told her good-night—and they all lacked sex interest.

Anna knew that Ruth was having a silly affair with a friend of Dick’s, but it didn’t bother her. It didn’t interest her enough to make her wish that Ruth would get confidential about it. She had had her affair. She knew what a bore affairs were.

Anna had hoped, when she was younger, that she might have a real lover, a great passion, but, as the years passed, and she saw her youth slipping away, saw that her social position was not one to attract men and that she had no special gift of attraction, anyhow, she almost forgot about it.

She thought of Fred, pleasantly. Fred was good, awfully good and awfully, awfully tiresome. There hadn’t been a surprise in anything that Fred had done in five years. Anna knew that he never could do anything but calm, expected things. Fred had always been kind to her. How different from Sophie’s husband, who was such a terror. Poor Sophie! She tried so hard, always, to conceal things. Well, there was nothing she could do to help her, so she had never spoken to Sophie about it, let her believe that no one knew what a brute Steve was. Anna knew she wouldn’t have stood him a week.

Anna thought of other things, of money. She knew Fred worried quite a lot about it. She would have liked to have money, too, of course, but, as long as Fred made a good living, and she felt that he always would do that, the question of finances did not greatly concern her. She would have liked to have been rich, but, after all, they were poor people and she had been brought up modestly.

She still sat, button-hook in hand. And she looked at the button-hook—and at her spats—and thought of the thousands of other buttons that would have to be attended to, on thousands of succeeding days. What was the use of it all, anyhow? Why keep on? Why bother? She really wasn’t interested in living, in anything. Why, there was a way out, a way that meant no buttons at all!

Anna felt, suddenly, that she couldn’t stand it another day. The years that stretched out—the years of getting old, monotonously, of hundreds of calls on and from “the girls,” thousands of moving pictures with Fred, thousands of dishes, thousands of—buttons. She couldn’t stand it! Anything else!

She threw the button-hook on the floor. It hit the mahogany door, which she rubbed down so carefully, every week, so it would retain its shine. And Anna smiled. She could get out of polishing that door! It had never occurred to her before. It had never entered her mind that she washed the dishes and talked to Fred and buttoned and unbuttoned because she wanted to—because she chose that way. There was another way, after all, a way that might hold something else or nothing else at the end, but that, at least, would end, for always, the things that kept on, unbearable, now.

She went into the bathroom. From the top shelf of the medicine chest she took a large blue bottle. On the label it was marked “Poison” in large, black letters. It was an excellent germicide.

Anna tasted it. It rather burnt her lips a little and was decidedly unpleasant. But—after all—it would taste unpleasant for only a few minutes. And then it would all be over—everything would be over.

It seemed a miracle that things could be ended thus, slightly. One drink and dirty dishes, bedmaking, dresssheitel and undressing would cease to be. Fred would cease to be—for her. There would be no need of trying to appear interested when he was talking to her, of trying to say things that would interest him. No dinners to plan or cook. Nothing to have to waste time over! No time that needed wasting! And she had never thought of it before! Anna looked at her tan spats. They were buttoned—and would stay that way—until some other hands than hers unbuttoned them. If it hadn’t been for the spats, now, for that last straw of additional buttons....

Anna poured the poison into a glass—she never liked to drink things out of a bottle—and tasted it again. Then she remembered what she was doing, and smiled. It seemed unbelievable that there could be such an easy solution. She drank the glassful.

Ruth, coming in, later in the afternoon, with the extra key, found her.

THE END