We all realize keenly, one time or another, the abject poverty of
language. To attempt putting some emotions into words is like trying
to play Ave Maria on a toy piano. There are heights and depths utterly
beyond the limitation of instrument and speech alike.
Marie's agonized experience in Alpine--and afterward--was of that kind.
She went there under the lure of her loneliness, her heart-hunger for
Bud. Drunk or sober, loving her still or turning away in anger, she had
to see him; had to hear him speak; had to tell him a little of what she
felt of penitence and longing, for that is what she believed she had to
do. Once she had started, she could not turn back. Come what might,
she would hunt until she found him. She had to, or go crazy, she told
herself over and over. She could not imagine any circumstance that would
turn her back from that quest.
Yet she did turn back--and with scarce a thought of Bud. She could not
imagine the thing happening that did happen, which is the way life
has of keeping us all on the anxious seat most of the time. She could
not--at least she did not--dream that Lovin Child, at once her comfort
and her strongest argument for a new chance at happiness, would in
ten minutes or so wipe out all thought of Bud and leave only a dumb,
dreadful agony that hounded her day and night.
She had reached Alpine early in the forenoon, and had gone to the one
little hotel, to rest and gather up her courage for the search which she
felt was only beginning. She had been too careful of her money to spend
any for a sleeper, foregoing even a berth in the tourist car. She could
make Lovin Child comfortable with a full seat in the day coach for
his little bed, and for herself it did not matter. She could not sleep
anyway. So she sat up all night and thought, and worried over the
future which was foolish, since the future held nothing at all that she
pictured in it.
She was tired when she reached the hotel, carrying Lovin Child and her
suit case too--porters being unheard of in small villages, and the one
hotel being too sure of its patronage to bother about getting guests
from depot to hall bedroom. A deaf old fellow with white whiskers and
poor eyesight fumbled two or three keys on a nail, chose one and led the
way down a little dark hall to a little, stuffy room with another
door opening directly on the sidewalk. Marie had not registered on her
arrival, because there was no ink in the inkwell, and the pen had only
half a point; but she was rather relieved to find that she was not
obliged to write her name down--for Bud, perhaps, to see before she had
a chance to see him.