I soon discovered the facts about the Henshawes’ present existence.
Oswald had a humble position, poorly paid, with the city traction
company. He had to be at his desk at nine o’clock every day except
Sunday. He rose at five in the morning, put on an old duck suit (it
happened to be a very smart one, with frogs and a military collar,
left over from prosperous times), went to his wife’s room and gave
her her bath, made her bed, arranged her things, and then got their
breakfast. He made the coffee on a spirit lamp, the toast on an
electric toaster. This was the only meal of the day they could have
together, and as they had it long before the ruthless Poindexters
overhead began to tramp, it was usually a cheerful occasion.
After breakfast Oswald washed the dishes. Their one luxury was a
private bath, with a large cupboard, which he called his kitchen.
Everything else done, he went back to his own room, put it in order,
and then dressed for the office. He still dressed very neatly, though
how he managed to do it with the few clothes he had, I could not
see. He was the only man staying in that shabby hotel who looked
well-groomed. As a special favour from his company he was allowed to
take two hours at noon, on account of his sick wife. He came home,
brought her her lunch from below, then hurried back to his office.
Myra made her own tea every afternoon, getting about in her
wheel-chair or with the aid of a cane. I found that one of the
kindest things I could do for her was to bring her some little
sandwiches or cakes from the Swedish bakery to vary her tinned
biscuit. She took great pains to get her tea nicely; it made her feel
less shabby to use her own silver tea things and the three glossy
English cups she had carried about with her in her trunk. I used
often to go in and join her, and we spent some of our pleasantest
hours at that time of the day, when the people overhead were usually
out. When they were in, and active, it was too painful to witness
Mrs. Henshawe’s suffering. She was acutely sensitive to sound and
light, and the Poindexters did tramp like cattle--except that their
brutal thumping hadn’t the measured dignity which the step of animals
always has. Mrs. Henshawe got great pleasure from flowers, too, and
during the late winter months my chief extravagance and my chief
pleasure was in taking them to her.
One warm Saturday afternoon, early in April, we went for a drive
along the shore. I had hired a low carriage with a kindly Negro
driver. Supported on his arm and mine, Mrs. Henshawe managed to
get downstairs. She looked much older and more ill in her black
broadcloth coat and a black taffeta hat that had once been smart. We
took with us her furs and an old steamer blanket. It was a beautiful,
soft spring day. The road, unfortunately, kept winding away from
the sea. At last we came out on a bare headland, with only one old
twisted tree upon it, and the sea beneath.
“Why, Nellie!” she exclaimed, “it’s like the cliff in _Lear_,
Gloucester’s cliff, so it is! Can’t we stay here? I believe this nice
darkey man would fix me up under the tree there and come back for us
later.”
We wrapped her in the rug, and she declared that the trunk of the old
cedar, bending away from the sea, made a comfortable back for her.
The Negro drove away, and I went for a walk up the shore because I
knew she wanted to be alone. From a distance I could see her leaning
against her tree and looking off to sea, as if she were waiting for
something. A few steamers passed below her, and the gulls dipped and
darted about the headland, the soft shine of the sun on their wings.
The afternoon light, at first wide and watery-pale, grew stronger and
yellower, and when I went back to Myra it was beating from the west
on her cliff as if thrown by a burning-glass.
She looked up at me with a soft smile--her face could still be
very lovely in a tender moment. “I’ve had such a beautiful hour,
dear; or has it been longer? Light and silence: they heal all one’s
wounds--all but one, and that is healed by dark and silence. I find I
don’t miss clever talk, the kind I always used to have about me, when
I can have silence. It’s like cold water poured over fever.”
I sat down beside her, and we watched the sun dropping lower toward
his final plunge into the Pacific. “I’d love to see this place at
dawn,” Myra said suddenly. “That is always such a forgiving time.
When that first cold, bright streak comes over the water, it’s as
if all our sins were pardoned; as if the sky leaned over the earth
and kissed it and gave it absolution. You know how the great sinners
always came home to die in some religious house, and the abbot or the
abbess went out and received them with a kiss?”
When we got home she was, of course, very tired. Oswald was waiting
for us, and he and the driver carried her upstairs. While we were
getting her into bed, the noise overhead broke out--tramp, tramp,
bang! Myra began to cry.
“Oh, I’ve come back to it, to be tormented again! I’ve two fatal
maladies, but it’s those coarse creatures I shall die of. Why didn’t
you leave me out there, Nellie, in the wind and night? You ought to
get me away from this, Oswald. If I were on my feet, and you laid
low, I wouldn’t let you be despised and trampled upon.”
“I’ll go up and see those people to-morrow, Mrs. Henshawe,” I
promised. “I’m sure I can do something.”
“Oh, don’t, Nellie!” she looked up at me in affright. “She’d turn a
deaf ear to you. You know the Bible says the wicked are deaf like the
adder. And, Nellie, she has the wrinkled, white throat of an adder,
that woman, and the hard eyes of one. Don’t go near her!”
(I went to see Mrs. Poindexter the next day, and she had just such a
throat and just such eyes. She smiled, and said that the sick woman
underneath was an old story, and she ought to have been sent to a
sanatorium long ago.)
“Never mind, Myra. I’ll get you away from it yet. I’ll manage,”
Oswald promised as he settled the pillows under her.
She smoothed his hair. “No, my poor Oswald, you’ll never stagger far
under the bulk of me. Oh, if youth but knew!” She closed her eyes and
pressed her hands over them. “It’s been the ruin of us both. We’ve
destroyed each other. I should have stayed with my uncle. It was
money I needed. We’ve thrown our lives away.”
“Come, Myra, don’t talk so before Nellie. You don’t mean it. Remember
the long time we were happy. That was reality, just as much as this.”
“We were never really happy. I am a greedy, selfish, worldly woman;
I wanted success and a place in the world. Now I’m old and ill and
a fright, but among my own kind I’d still have my circle; I’d have
courtesy from people of gentle manners, and not have my brains beaten
out by hoodlums. Go away, please, both of you, and leave me!” She
turned her face to the wall and covered her head.
We stepped into the hall, and the moment we closed the door we heard
the bolt slip behind us. She must have sprung up very quickly. Oswald
walked with me to my room. “It’s apt to be like this, when she has
enjoyed something and gone beyond her strength. There are times when
she can’t have anyone near her. It was worse before you came.”
I persuaded him to come into my room and sit down and drink a glass
of cordial.
“Sometimes she has locked me out for days together,” he said. “It
seems strange--a woman of such generous friendships. It’s as if she
had used up that part of herself. It’s a great strain on me when she
shuts herself up like that. I’m afraid she’ll harm herself in some
way.”
“But people don’t do things like that,” I said hopelessly.
He smiled and straightened his shoulders. “Ah, but she isn’t people!
She’s Molly Driscoll, and there was never anybody else like her. She
can’t endure, but she has enough desperate courage for a regiment.”
[Illustration: (A teapot, teacups and saucers, and an open book)]