IV

The servant Katherine was coming up the stairs. After all she was

not the woman with whom Jane’s father was going away. How heavy and

resolute Katherine’s footsteps were! One could be resolute and strong

when one knew nothing of what had been going on in the house. One could

walk thus, as though one were going up the stairs of an ordinary house,

in an ordinary street.

When Katherine put her foot down on one of the steps the house seemed

to shake a little. Well, one could not say the house shook. That would

be stretching things too much. What one was trying to express was just

that Katherine was not very sensitive. She was one who made a direct

frontal attack upon life. Had she been very sensitive she might have

known something of the terrible things going on in the house without

having to wait to be told.

Now Jane’s mind was playing tricks on her again. An absurd sentence

came into her mind.

“Wait until you see the whites of their eyes and then shoot.”

It was silly, altogether silly and absurd, what notions were now

racing through her head. Her father had set going in her the sometimes

relentless and often unexplainable thing, represented by the released

fancy. It was a thing that could color and beautify the facts of life

but it could also, upon occasions, run on and on regardless of the

facts of life. Jane believed she was in the house with the dead body

of her mother, who had just committed suicide, and there was something

within her that told her she should now give herself over to sadness.

She did weep but her weeping had nothing to do with her mother’s death.

It did not take that into consideration. She was not, after all, so

much sad as excited.

The weeping that had been silent was now audible all over the house.

She was making a noise like a foolish child and was ashamed of herself.

What would Katherine think of her?

“Wait until you see the whites of their eyes and then shoot.”

What an utterly silly jumble of words. Where had they come from? Why

were such meaningless silly words dancing in her brain at such a vital

moment of her life? She had got them out of some book at school, a

history book perhaps. Some general had shouted the words at his men as

they stood waiting for an advancing enemy. And what had that to do with

the fact of Katherine’s footsteps on the stairs? In a moment Katherine

would be coming into the room where she was.

She thought she knew exactly what she would do. She would get quietly

out of bed and go to the door and admit the servant. Then she would

strike a light.

She had, in fancy, a picture of herself, standing by a dressing

table at the side of the room and addressing the servant calmly and

resolutely. One had to begin a new life now. Yesterday perhaps one

was a young woman with no experience in life but now one was a mature

woman who had difficult problems to face. One had, not only the servant

Katherine, but the whole town to face. To-morrow one would be very much

in the position of a general in command of troops that had to withstand

an attack. One had to comport oneself with dignity. There would be

people who wanted to scold at her father, others who wanted to pity

herself. Perhaps she would have to handle affairs too. There would be

arrangements necessary, in connection with selling her father’s factory

and getting moneys so that she could go on and make plans for living

her life. One could not be a silly child sitting and sobbing on a bed

at such a moment.

And at the same time one could not, at such a tragic moment in life,

and when the servant came in, suddenly burst out laughing. Why was it

that the sound of Katherine’s resolute footsteps on the stairs made her

want to laugh and weep at the same time? “Soldiers advancing resolutely

across an open field toward an enemy. Wait until you see the whites of

their eyes.” Silly notions. Silly words dancing in the brain. One did

not want either to laugh or weep. One wanted to comport oneself with

dignity.

An intensive struggle was going on within Jane Webster and now it had

lost dignity and had become no more than a struggle to stop crying

loudly, not to begin laughing, and to be ready to receive the servant

Katherine with a certain dignity.

As the footsteps drew nearer the struggle intensified. Now she was

again sitting very stiffly upright in the bed and again her body was

rocking back and forth. Her fists, doubled and hard, were again beating

down upon her legs.

Like every one else in the world Jane had been spending her entire life

making dramatizations of herself in relation to life. One did that as a

child and later as a young girl in school. One’s mother died suddenly

or one found oneself violently ill and facing death. Every one gathered

about one’s death-bed and all were amazed at the quiet dignity with

which one met the situation.

Or again there was a young man who had smiled at one on the street.

Perhaps he had the audacity to think of one as merely a child. Very

well. Let the two of them be thrown together into a difficult position

and then see which one could comport himself with the greater dignity.

There was something terrible about this whole situation. After all

Jane felt she had it in her to carry life off with a kind of flourish.

It was certain no other young woman of her acquaintance had ever been

put into such a position as she was now in. Already, although they, as

yet, knew nothing of what had occurred, the eyes of the whole town were

directed toward herself and she was merely sitting in the darkness on a

bed and sobbing like a child.

She began to laugh, sharply, hysterically, and then the laughter

stopped and the loud sobbing began again. The servant Katherine came

to her bedroom door but she did not knock and give Jane the chance to

arise and receive her with dignity, but came right in. She ran across

the room and knelt at the side of Jane’s bed. Her impulsive action

brought an end to Jane’s desire to be the grand lady, at least for the

night. The woman Katherine had become, by her quick impulsiveness,

sister to something that was her own real self too. There were two

women, shaken and in trouble, both deeply stirred by some inward storm,

and clutching at each other in the darkness. For a time they stayed

thus, on the bed, their arms about each other.

And so Katherine was not after all such a strong resolute person. One

need not be afraid of her. That was an infinitely comforting thought to

Jane. She also was weeping. Perhaps now, if Katherine were to jump up

and begin walking about, one would not have the fancy about her strong

resolute steps making the house shake. Had she been in Jane Webster’s

shoes perhaps she also would have been unable to get up out of bed and

speak of everything that had happened calmly and with cool dignity.

Why, Katherine also might have found herself unable to control the

desire to weep and laugh loudly at the same time. Well, she was not

such a terrible, such a strong resolute and terrible person, after all.

To the younger woman, sitting now in the darkness with her body pressed

against the more sturdy body of the older woman there came a sweet

intangible sense of being fed and refreshed out of the body of this

other woman. She even gave way to a desire to put up her hand and touch

Katherine’s cheek. The older woman had great breasts against which one

could cushion oneself. What comfort there was in her presence in the

silent house.

Jane stopped weeping and felt suddenly weary and a little cold. “Let’s

not stay here. Let’s go downstairs into my room,” Katherine said. Could

it be that she knew what had happened in that other bedroom? It was

evident she did know. Then it was true. Jane’s heart stopped beating

and her body shook with fear. She stood in the darkness beside the bed

and put her hand against the wall to keep from falling. She had been

telling herself that her mother had taken poison and had killed herself

but it was evident there was an inner part of her had not believed, had

not dared believe.

Katherine had found a coat and was putting it about Jane’s shoulders.

It was odd, this being so cold when the night was comparatively warm.

The two women went out of the room into the hallway. A gas light was

burning in the bathroom at the end of the hallway and the bathroom door

had been left open.

Jane closed her eyes and clung to Katherine. The notion that her mother

had killed herself had now become a certainty. It was so evident now

that Katherine knew about it too. Before Jane’s eyes the drama of

the suicide again played itself out in the theatre of her fancy. Her

mother was standing and facing the little cabinet fastened to the wall

of the bathroom. Her face was turned upward and the light from above

shone down on it. One hand was against the wall of the room to keep the

body from falling and the other hand held a bottle. The face turned

up to the light was white, of a pasty whiteness. It was a face that

from long association had become familiar to Jane but it was at the

same time strangely unfamiliar. The eyes were closed and there were

little reddish bags of flesh under the eyes. The lips hung loosely open

and from one corner of the mouth a reddish brown streak ran down over

the chin. Some spots of a brown liquid had fallen down over the white

nightgown.

Jane’s body was trembling violently. “How cold the house has become,

Katherine,” she said and opened her eyes. They had reached the head

of the stairs and from where they stood could look directly into the

bathroom. There was a gray bath mat on the floor and a small brown

bottle had been dropped on it. In passing out of the room the heavy

foot of the woman, who had swallowed the contents of the bottle, had

stepped on the bottle and had broken it. Perhaps her foot had been cut

but she had not minded. “If there was pain, a hurt place, that would

have been a comfort to her,” Jane thought. In her hand she still held

the stone her father had given her. How absurd that he should have

called it “the Jewel of Life.” There was a spot of yellowish green

light reflected from an edge of the broken bottle on the floor of the

bathroom. When her father had taken the little stone to the candle

in the bedroom, and had held it up to the candle-light such another

yellowish green light had flashed from it too. “If mother were still

alive she would surely make some sound of life now. She would wonder

what Katherine and I were doing tramping about the house and would

get up and come to her bedroom door to inquire about it,” she thought

drearily.

* * * * *

When Katherine had put Jane into her own bed, in a little room off the

kitchen, she went upstairs to make certain arrangements. There had been

no explanations. In the kitchen she had left a light burning and the

servant’s bedroom was lighted by a reflected light, shining through an

open doorway.

Katherine went to Mary Webster’s bedroom and without knocking opened

the door and went in. There had been a gas lamp lighted and the woman,

who did not want any more of life, had tried to get into bed and die

respectably between the sheets but had not been successful. The tall

slender girl, who had once refused love on a hillside, had been taken

by death before she had time to protest. Her body, half lying on the

bed, had struggled and twisted itself about and had slipped off the bed

to the floor. Katherine lifted it up and put it on the bed and went to

get a wet cloth to cleanse the disfigured and discolored face.

Then a thought came to her and she put the cloth away. For a moment she

stood in the room looking about. Her own face had become very white

and she felt ill. She put out the light and going into John Webster’s

bedroom closed the door.

The candles were still burning beside the Virgin and she took the

little framed picture and put it away, high up on a closet shelf. Then

she blew out one of the candles and carried it, with the lighted one,

downstairs and into the room where Jane lay waiting.

The servant went to a closet and getting an extra blanket wrapped it

about Jane’s shoulders. “I don’t believe I’ll undress,” she said. “I’ll

come sit on the bed with you as I am.”

* * * * *

“You have already figured it out,” she said, in a matter of fact tone,

when she had seated herself and when she had put her arm about Jane’s

shoulder. Both women were pale but Jane’s body no longer trembled.

“If mother has died at least I have not been left alone in the house

with the dead body,” she thought gratefully. Katherine did not tell her

any of the details of what she had found on the floor above. “She’s

dead,” she said, and after the two had waited in silence for a moment

she began to elaborate an idea that had come into her mind as she stood

in the presence of the dead woman, in the bedroom above. “I don’t

suppose they’ll try to connect your father with this but they may,” she

said thoughtfully. “I saw something like that happen once. A man died

and after he was dead some men tried to make him out a thief. What I

think is this--we had better sit here together until morning comes.

Then I’ll call in a doctor. We’ll say we knew nothing of what had

happened until I went to call your mother for breakfast. By that time,

you see, your father will be gone.”

The two women sat in silence close together, looking at the white wall

of the bedroom. “I suppose we had both better remember that we heard

mother moving about the house after father went away,” Jane whispered

presently. It was pleasant to be able to make herself, thus, a part of

Katherine’s plans to protect her father. Her eyes were shining now,

and there was something of feverishness in her eagerness to understand

everything clearly but she kept pressing her body close against the

body of Katherine. In the palm of her hand she still held the stone her

father had given her and now when her finger pressed down upon it even

lightly there was a comforting throb of pain from the tender hurt place

in her palm.

V

And as the two women sat on the bed, John Webster walked through the

silent deserted streets toward the railroad station with his new woman,

Natalie.

“Well, the devil,” he thought as he plodded along, “this has been a

night! If the rest of my life is as busy as these last ten hours have

been I’ll be kept on the jump.”

Natalie was walking in silence and carrying a bag. The houses along

the street were all dark. There was a strip of grass between the brick

sidewalk and the roadway and John Webster stepped over and walked upon

it. He liked the idea of his feet making no sound as he escaped out of

the town. How pleasant it would be if he and Natalie were winged things

and could fly away unobserved in the darkness.

Now Natalie was weeping. Well that was all right. She did not weep

audibly. John Webster did not, as a matter of fact, know for sure that

she was weeping. Still he did know. “At any rate,” he thought, “when

she weeps she does the job with a certain dignity.” He was himself in

a rather impersonal mood. “There’s no use thinking too much about what

I’ve done. What’s done is done. I’ve begun a new life. I couldn’t turn

back now if I chose.”

The houses along the street were dark and silent. The whole town was

dark and silent. In the houses people were sleeping, dreaming all

manner of absurd dreams, too.

Well he had expected he would run into some kind of a row at Natalie’s

house but nothing of the sort had happened. The old mother had been

quite wonderful. John Webster half regretted he had never known her

personally. There was something about the terrible old woman that was

like himself. He smiled as he walked along on the strip of grass. “It

may well be that in the end I will turn out an old reprobate, a regular

old heller,” he thought almost gaily. His mind played with the idea. He

had surely made a good start. Here he was, a man well past the middle

age, and it was past midnight, almost morning, and he was walking in

deserted streets with a woman with whom he was going away to live what

was called an illegitimate life. “I started late but I’m proving a

merry little upsetter of things now that I’ve started,” he told himself.

It was really too bad that Natalie did not step off the brick sidewalk

and walk on the grass. After all it was better, when one was setting

out on new adventures, that one go swiftly and stealthily. There must

be innumerable growling lions of respectability sleeping in the houses

along the streets. “They’re pure sweet people, such as I was when I

used to go home from the washing machine factory and sleep beside my

wife in the days when we were newly married and had come back here to

live in this town,” he thought sardonically. He imagined innumerable

people, men and women, creeping into beds at night and sometimes

talking as he and his wife had so often talked. They had always been

covering something up, busily talking, covering something up. “We made

a big smoke of talk about purity and sweetness of living, didn’t we

though, eh?” he whispered to himself.

Well the people in the houses were asleep and he did not wish to awaken

them. It was too bad Natalie was weeping. One couldn’t disturb her in

her grief. That wouldn’t be fair. He wished he might speak to her and

ask her to get off the sidewalk and walk silently on the grass along

the roadway or at the edge of the lawns.

His mind turned back to the few moments at Natalie’s house. The devil!

He had expected a row there and nothing of the sort had happened. When

he got to the house, Natalie was waiting for him. She was sitting by

a window in a dark room, downstairs in the Swartz cottage, and her

bag was packed and sitting beside her. She came to the front door and

opened it before he had time to knock.

And there she was all ready to set out. She came out carrying her bag

and didn’t say anything. As a matter of fact she had not said anything

to him yet. She had just come out of the house and had walked beside

him to where they had to pass through a gate to reach the street and

then her mother and sister had come out and had stood on a little porch

to watch them go.

How bully the old mother had been. She had even laughed at them. “Well,

you two have got the gall. You tramp off as cool as two cucumbers, now

don’t you?” she had shouted. Then she had laughed again. “Do you know

there’s going to be a hell of a row about this all over town in the

morning?” she asked. Natalie hadn’t answered her. “Well, good luck to

you, you husky whore, trotting off with your damned reprobate,” her

mother had shouted, still laughing.

The two people had turned a corner and had passed out of sight of the

Swartz house. No doubt there must be other people awake in other houses

along the little street, and no doubt they had been listening and

wondering. On two or three occasions some of the neighbors had wanted

to have Natalie’s mother arrested because of her foul language but they

had been dissuaded by others, out of consideration for the daughters.

Was Natalie weeping now because she was leaving the old mother or was

it because of the school-teacher sister whom John Webster had never

known?

He felt very like laughing at himself. As a matter of fact he knew

little of Natalie or what she might be thinking or feeling at such

a time. Had he only taken up with her because she was a kind of

instrument that would help him escape from his wife and from a life

he had come to detest? Was he but using her? Had he at bottom any real

feeling in regard to her, any understanding of her?

He wondered.

One made a mighty big fuss, fixed up a room with candles and a picture

of the Virgin, paraded oneself naked before women, got oneself little

glass candle sticks with bronze-colored Christs on the Cross on them.

One made a great fuss, pretended one was upsetting the whole world, in

order to do something that a man of real courage would have gone at in

a direct simple way. Another man might have done everything he had done

with a laugh and a gesture.

What was all this business he was up to anyway?

He was going away, he was deliberately walking out of his native town,

walking out of a town in which he had been a respectable citizen for

years, all his life in fact. He was going out of the town with a woman,

younger than himself, who had taken his fancy.

The whole thing was a matter that could be easily enough understood, by

anyone, by any man one might happen to meet in the street. At any rate

every one would be quite sure he understood. There would be eyebrows

raised, shoulder shrugging. Men would stand together in little groups

and talk and women would run from house to house talking, talking.

O, the merry little shoulder shruggers! O, the merry little talkers!

Where did a man come out in all this? What, in the end, did he think of

himself?

There was Natalie, walking along, in the half darkness. She breathed.

She was a woman with a body, with arms, legs. She had a trunk to her

body and perched upon her neck was a head within which there was a

brain. She thought thoughts. She had dreams.

Natalie was walking along a street in the darkness. Her footsteps were

ringing out sharp and clear as she stepped along, on the sidewalk.

What did he know of Natalie?

It might well be that, when he and Natalie really knew each other, when

they had together faced the problem of living together--Well, it might

be that it wouldn’t work at all.

John Webster was walking along the street, in the darkness, on the

strip of grass, that in Middle Western towns is between the sidewalk

and the roadway. He stumbled and came near falling. What was the matter

with him? Was he growing tired again?

Did doubts come because he was growing tired? It might well be that

everything that had happened to him, during the night, had happened

because he was caught up and carried along by a kind of temporary

insanity.

What would happen when the insanity had passed, when he became again a

sane, a well, a normal man?

Hito, tito, what was the use thinking of turning back when it was too

late to turn back? If, in the end, he and Natalie found they could not

live together there was still life.

Life was life. One might still find a way to live a life.

* * * * *

John Webster began to grow courageous again. He looked toward the dark

houses along the street and smiled. He became like a child, playing a

game with his fellows of the Wisconsin town. In the game he was some

kind of public character, who because of some brave deed was receiving

the applause of the people who lived in the houses. He imagined himself

as riding through the street in a carriage. The people were sticking

their heads out of the windows of the houses and shouting, and he was

turning his head from side to side, bowing and smiling.

As Natalie was not looking he enjoyed himself for a moment, playing the

game. As he walked along he kept turning his head from side to side and

bowing. There was a rather absurd smile on his lips.

The old Harry!

“Chinaberries grow on a chinaberry tree!”

All the same it would be better if Natalie did not make such a racket

with her feet walking on stone and brick sidewalks.

One might be found out. It might be that, quite suddenly, without any

warning, all the people, now sleeping so peacefully in the dark houses

along the street, would sit up in their beds and begin to laugh. That

would be terrible and it would be just the sort of thing John Webster

would himself do, were he a respectable man in bed with a lawfully

wedded wife, and saw some other man doing some such fool thing as he

was now doing.

It was annoying. The night was warm but John Webster felt somewhat

cold. He shivered. It was no doubt due to the fact that he was tired.

Perhaps thinking of the respectable married people lying in beds in the

houses, between which he and Natalie were passing, had made him shiver.

One could be very cold, being a respectable married man and lying in

bed with a respectable wife. A thought that had been coming and going

in his mind for two weeks now came again: “Perhaps I am insane and have

infected Natalie, and for that matter my daughter Jane too, with my

insanity.”

There was no use crying over spilled milk. “What’s the use thinking

about the matter now?”

“Diddle de di do!”

“Chinaberries grow on a chinaberry tree!”

He and Natalie had come out of the section of town where working people

lived and were now passing before houses in which lived merchants,

small manufacturers, such men as John Webster had himself been,

lawyers, doctors, and such fellows too. Now they were passing the house

in which his own banker lived. “The stingy cuss. He has plenty of

money. Why doesn’t he build himself a larger and finer house?”

To the east, dimly seen through trees and above tree tops, there was a

light place coming into the sky.

Now they had come to a place where there were several vacant lots. Some

one had given the lots to the town and there was a movement on foot

to raise money with which to build a public library. A man had come to

John Webster to ask him to contribute to a fund for the purpose. That

was but a few days ago.

He had enjoyed the situation immensely. Now he felt like giggling over

the remembrance of it.

He had been seated, and as he thought, looking very dignified, at his

desk in the factory office when the man came in and told him of the

plan. A desire to make an ironic gesture had taken possession of him.

“I am making rather elaborate plans about that fund and my contributing

to it but do not want to say what I am planning to do at this

particular moment,” he had announced. What a falsehood! The matter

had not interested him in the least. He had simply enjoyed the man’s

surprise at his unexpected interest and was having a good time making a

swaggering gesture.

The man who came to see him had once served with him on a committee of

the Chamber of Commerce, a committee appointed to make an effort to

bring new industries into the town.

“I didn’t know you were specially interested in literary matters,” the

man had said.

A troop of derisive thoughts had popped into John Webster’s head.

“O, you would be surprised,” he had assured the man. At the moment he

had felt as he fancied a terrier might feel as it worried a rat.

“I think American literary men have done wonders to uplift the people,”

he had said, very solemnly. “Why, do you realize that it is our writers

who have kept us constantly reminded of the moral code and of the

virtues? Such men as you and I, who own factories and who are in a

way responsible for the happiness and welfare of the people of the

community, cannot be too grateful to our American literary men. I’ll

tell you what, they are really such strong, red-blooded fellows, always

standing up for the right.”

John Webster laughed at the thought of his talk with the man from the

Chamber of Commerce and at the remembrance of the confused look in the

man’s eyes as he went away.

Now, as he and Natalie walked along, the intersecting streets led away

to the east. There was no doubt a new day was coming. He stopped to

light a match and look at his watch. They would be just in comfortable

time for the train. Soon now they would be coming into the business

section of town where they would both have to make a clattering noise

as they walked on stone pavements, but then it would not matter. People

did not sleep in the business sections of towns.

He wished it were possible for him to speak to Natalie, to ask her to

walk on the grass and not to awaken the people sleeping in the houses.

“Well, I’m going to do it,” he thought. It was odd how much courage it

took now just to speak to her. Neither of them had spoken since they

had set out together on this adventure. He stopped and stood for a

moment and Natalie, realizing that he was no longer walking beside her,

also stopped.

“What is it? What’s the matter, John?” she asked. It was the first time

she had addressed him by that name. It made everything easier, her

having done that.

Still his throat was a little tight. It couldn’t be that he also wanted

to weep. What nonsense.

There was no need accepting defeat with Natalie until defeat came.

There were two sides to this matter of his passing judgment on what

he had done. To be sure there was a chance, a possibility, that he

had made all this row, upset all his past life, made a mess of things

for his wife and daughter, and for Natalie too, to no purpose, merely

because he had wanted to escape the boredom of his past existence.

He stood on the strip of grass at the edge of a lawn before a silent

respectable house, some one’s home. He was trying to see Natalie

clearly, trying to see himself clearly. What kind of a figure was he

cutting? The light was not very clear. Natalie was but a dark mass

before him. His own thoughts were but a dark mass before him.

“Am I just a lustful man wanting a new woman?” he asked himself.

Suppose that were true. What did it mean?

“I am myself. I am trying to be myself,” he told himself stoutly.

One should try to live outside oneself too, to live in others. Had

he tried to live in Natalie? He had gone within Natalie. Had he gone

within her because there was something within her he had wanted and

needed, something he loved?

There was something within Natalie that had set fire to something

within himself. It was that ability in her to set him afire he had

wanted, still wanted.

She had done that for him, was still doing it for him. When he could no

longer respond to her he could perhaps find other loves. She could do

that too.

He laughed softly. There was a kind of gladness in him now. He had made

of himself, and of Natalie too, what is called disreputable characters.

Back into his fancy came a troop of figures, all in their own ways

disreputable characters. There was the white-haired old man he had once

seen walking with a certain air of being proud and glad of the road,

an actress he had seen coming out at the stage entrance of a theatre,

a sailor who had thrown his bag aboard a ship and had walked off along

a street with a certain air of being proud and glad of the life within

himself.

There were such fellows in the world.

The fanciful picture in John Webster’s mind changed. There was a

certain man going into a room. He had closed the door. A row of candles

stood on a mantle above a fireplace. The fellow was playing some kind

of game with himself. Well, every one played some kind of game with

himself. The fellow in the picture of his fancy had taken a silver

crown out of a box. He had put it on his head. “I crown myself with the

crown of life,” he said.

Was it a silly performance? If it was, what did that matter?

He took a step toward Natalie and then stopped again. “Come woman, walk

on the grass. Don’t make such a row as we go along,” he said aloud.

Now he was walking with a certain swagger toward Natalie who stood in

silence at the edge of the sidewalk waiting for him. He went and stood

before her and looked into her face. It was true she had been weeping.

Even in the faint light there were graces of tears to be seen on her

cheeks. “I only had a silly notion. I didn’t want to disturb anyone as

we went away,” he said, laughing softly again. He put his hand on her

arm and drew her toward him and they went on again, both now stepping

softly and gingerly on the grass between the sidewalk and the roadway.

* * * * *