THE NARROW HOUSE
BY
EVELYN SCOTT
AUTHOR OF "PRECIPITATIONS"
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
1921
_"Love seeketh only Self to please_,
_To bind another to its delight_,
_Joys in another's loss of ease_,
_And builds a hell in heaven's despite_."
--WILLIAM BLAKE
THE NARROW HOUSE
PART I
The hot, bright street looked almost deserted. A sign swung before the
disheveled building at the corner and on a purple ground one could read
the notice, "Robinson & Son, Builders," painted in tall white letters.
Some broken plaster had been thrown from one of the windows and lay on
the dusty sidewalk in a glaring heap.
The old-fashioned house next door was as badly in need of improvements
as the one undergoing alterations. The dingy brick walls were streaked
by the drippage from the leaky tin gutter that ran along the roof. The
massive shutters, thrown back from the long windows, were rotting away.
Below the lifted panes very clean worn curtains hung slack like things
exhausted by the heat.
Some papers had been thrust in the tin letter box before the clumsy dark
green door, and as Mrs. Farley emerged from the house she stopped to
glance at them before descending to the street. One of the papers had a
Kansas City postmark and she thought it must have come for her husband
from a certain woman whom she was trying to forget. She placed the
papers clumsily back where she had found them.
As she passed down the stone stairs she stooped to toss a bright scrap
of orange peel to the gutter. She sighed as she did it, not even taking
the trouble to brush the dust from the shabby white cotton gloves she
wore. Her skirt was too long behind and as she dragged her feet across
the pavement it swept the ground after her. She glanced into the place
which was being repaired and wished that something might be done to
improve her home. At any rate now that her daughter-in-law, Winnie, had
become reconciled to her parents things would be better. Mr. and Mrs.
Price were rich. They had a carriage and an automobile. Mrs. Farley told
herself that it was because of her grandchildren that the end of the
long family quarrel brought some relief. Winnie's two babies, a girl and
a boy, would now enjoy many things which the Farleys had not been able
to provide. Mrs. Farley thought of them going to church in Mrs. Price's
fine carriage. Mrs. Farley knew that she should have taken the part of
her son, Laurence, who had been responsible for the disagreement, but
somehow it had been impossible to condemn Winnie. The poor girl was not
strong. Laurie was a harsh man. He was stubborn. He did not forgive
easily and would suffer everything rather than admit himself in the
wrong. He had been like that as a youth. And idly, as one in a boat
allows a hand to trail along the silken surface of the water, the woman
allowed her mind to drift with the surface of long past events. She had
reached the butcher shop; had almost gone by it.
"How do you do, Mrs. Farley? Nice warm weather we're having." The
butcher had a hooked nose and when he smiled it seemed to press down his
thick brown mustache that framed his even white teeth so beautifully. He
settled his apron over his stomach and gazed at her hungrily and
affectionately above the glass top of the counter as though he were
trying to hypnotize her into buying some of the coral pink sausages
which reposed beside a block of ice in the transparent case.
The meat shop was as white as death. It smelt of blood and sawdust and
its tiled interior offered a refuge from the heat without.
"I want a piece of--can you give me a nice rib roast today--? No! What
do you ask for those hens?" Mrs. Farley, as always, hesitated when she
spoke and lines as fine as hairs traced themselves on her pale, dry,
hastily powdered forehead. Her vague, rather squinting eyes traveled
undecidedly over the big pieces of meat: the shoulders, the forelegs,
the haunches, of different shades of red streaked with tallow or suet,
that swung on hooks in the shadow against the gray-white tiling of the
walls. The fowls dangled in a row a little to the fore of the meat. The
feet of the hens were a sickly bluish yellow, and the toes, cramped
together yet flaccid, still suggested the fatigue which follows agony.
The eyes bulged under thin blue-tinged lids and on the heads and necks
about the close-shut beaks bunches of reddish brown feathers had been
left as decorations. The butcher took one down and, laying it on the
counter, pinched up the plump flesh between his forefinger and thumb.
"You could never find a better fed hen than that," he told her. "Nice
firm solid meat. You see they are just in and I was so sure of getting
rid of them I did not even put them on the ice yet. They're not storage
fowls. I buy them from a young man who has a farm out near where my
sister lives at Southbridge."
Mrs. Farley, in spite of a gala occasion and the fact that Mr. and Mrs.
Price were to do her the condescension of coming to dinner at her house
the next day, had not intended to buy anything so expensive as chicken.
For all those people it would take two hens. But though she tried her
best not to allow the butcher to catch her eye, she knew he was staring
at her intently and that the white teeth were flashing almost cruelly
under the brown mustache beneath the hooked nose. It heightened a
conviction of weakness which she never failed to experience when she was
called upon to decide anything, especially in the presence of other
people, and she wished she had asked Alice to buy the meat before she
went to work. Of course Alice would spend too much but what she got was
sure to be nice and the diners were certain to praise it.
"I will take two of the hens," said Mrs. Farley, moistening the dry down
along her lips. "Be sure you give me fat ones," she went on, frowning.
While she fumbled in the pocketbook for the money she did not cease to
be aware of the pleasant confident manner of the butcher, as with deft
fingers he ran his hand into the bird and with a slight clawing sound
tore out a heap of discolored entrails so neatly that not one burst.
Then he slit the chicken's neck and extracted its crop. Mrs. Farley was
anxious to get away. She never had any peace of mind except when she was
by herself.
"I'm sure you will be pleased," declared the butcher with a slight bow,
as he took the money she handed him. Her short white hand was corded
with bluish veins and her fingers were slightly knotted and bent from
gout. They had hovered almost palpitantly over her worn black purse
while she tried to make up her mind whether to give him the exact amount
or to ask him to change the five dollars which Alice had turned over to
her that morning. At last she gave him the five dollars, and when he
counted the sum due her into her palm the dull brightness of the pieces
of money swam slightly before her eyes and she had no idea whether or
not the amount returned to her was what was owing.
The butcher bowed again, managing to appear deferential. "Where shall I
send them?" he asked, inclining his ear toward her, and in a low hurried
voice she recalled the number he had forgotten. "They must be sent right
away," she insisted, "or I can't get them ready." With a gallant
inclination of the head the butcher promised to send them at once.
She made her way through the bitter-smelling gloom and as she pushed the
screen door open a large blue fly rose stupidly and bumped against her
face.
She was obliged to go to the grocer's and to the bakery and when she
approached her home again it was already three o'clock in the afternoon.
May, Winnie's little girl, an unhealthy looking child with lustrous
wax-like skin, large, vapid, glazed, blue eyes, and thin, damp curls of
gray-blonde hair which clung to her hollow shoulders, rose from the
shadowed doorstep.
"Hello, Grandma," she called, with one hand smoothing the front of her
faded pink gingham dress, while with the other she pressed her weight
against the grimy iron balustrade.
Mrs. Farley's eyes frowned wearily but a conscientious smile came to her
lips that were twisted a little with repugnance.
"Where's Mamma, May?" she asked, not looking at the child. "Is she lying
down?" May sucked her middle finger and wagged her head from side to
side. Her smile was vacant in its timorous interest. "Do you want to
take one of my bundles?" May nodded her head up and down and accepted
the parcel. Her small arm twined around it loosely. The front door was
ajar, opening into a familiar smelling twilight, and she hopped after
her grandmother into the house.
* * * * *
As Mrs. Farley entered the darkened bedroom, Winnie, in a cheap, fancy
négligé of lilac and pink, rose from an old corduroy-covered lounge and
came forward to meet her. Winnie's small, pointed face was haggard and
smeary with tears. She gazed at her mother-in-law with a childish look
of reproach.
"O Mamma Farley, I know Laurie will say some terrible thing again!" She
wrung her hands that were plump through the palm and had tapering
fingers which curved backward at the tips. "I have been lying here all
afternoon worrying about what may happen tomorrow!" As she spoke she
glanced beyond her mother-in-law's head to the heavily beveled mirror in
the old bureau, and her rapt, tragic face became even more voluptuously
tragic as it contemplated itself.
"Now, Winnie, I have talked to Laurence and he realizes perfectly well
that he can't say what he thinks to your father. He will let bygones be
bygones just like the rest of us."
"O Mamma Farley, you don't know Laurie! And he hates Papa and Mamma so
and he has no mercy on me. Sometimes I think he hates me, too!"
Mrs. Farley's mouse-gray hair hung in straight wisps below the edge of
her shiny old black velvet turban which was tilted askew. Her withered
face became harshly kind. She had more firmness when she was with Winnie
than in the presence of other people.
"You must remember, Winnie, that I have known Laurie considerably longer
than you have. Pull yourself together and rest and don't worry about
this any more. I know it will be all right."
May had followed her grandmother and now stood awkwardly and
apologetically on one foot watching the two women. When her mother
glanced at her, her face quivered a little. She looked at the floor and
rubbed the scaled toe of her slipper against the raveled blue nap of the
carpet.
"I am going to make a cake today." Mrs. Farley sighed as she turned
toward the door. "There's my usual Saturday baking, too. You'd better
keep still so you won't be feeling worse tomorrow. If I get through in
time tonight I'm going to press your yellow dress for you. I want you to
look pretty." She left the room.
Winnie was not sure that she wanted to look pretty. She was a little
ashamed of the feeling but she would have liked to create with her
parents the impression that the Farleys had not treated her well. This
was from no desire to injure the Farleys but rather from an intuition as
to what kind of story of the past years would please Mr. and Mrs. Price
most and present their daughter in the most interesting light.
May, sidling reluctantly toward the hall, still watched her mother.
Winnie's eyes, with soft, hostile possessiveness, fastened themselves on
her little girl's face. May would have preferred not to meet her
mother's eyes so straight.
"Come here, May!" Winnie sank suddenly to her knees and held out her
arms. May walked forward, seeming not able to stop herself.
"You love Mamma anyway, don't you?"
"Yes," May said. There were bubbles of saliva on her lips because she
would not take her finger away from her mouth.
"_You_ don't think I'm selfish, May?" Winnie shook May a little, then
held the child to her. A shudder ran like a live, uncontrolled thing
between them.
May was ashamed of the shudder as if it had been her fault. Winnie drew
away and stared at her daughter. Winnie's eyes were soft and wistful
with hurt, but underneath their darkness as under a cloud May saw
something she was afraid of. It was angry with itself and demanded that
she give it something. She did not know what to give it. To escape it
she wanted to cry.
Winnie wanted to make May cry but hated her for crying.
"You _must_ love me, May! I'm your mamma! You must love me!"
"I do," May said. Her eyes were black with tears, but because she wanted
to cry she could not keep her lips from smiling a little.
"As well as you love papa?"
May felt accused of something. She could not make herself speak. She was
sorry and wanted her mother to strike her.
"Then you love Papa best? Oh, May, that's cruel! You mustn't love him
best!" Winnie's excited manner was contagious. May did not know how to
explain what was the matter and suddenly burst into tears. Winnie moved
back again and watched the little girl with her arm over her face,
crying.
May's sobs lessened. Without knowing what had occurred, she felt utterly
subjugated. She wanted to love her mother, but the soft, angrily
caressing eyes would not let her. When would her mother let her stop
crying? There were no tears any more. It was hard to cry without tears.
"Poor naughty Mamma doesn't know what she's done!"
May, with her eyes shut, stole out a hand which trembled on her mother's
face.
"You do love me then? May, you must! You mustn't love Papa best!"
"I don't!"
They kissed. May saw that her mother's eyes were like things standing in
their own shadows and loving themselves. They liked being sad. They
yearned over May's face, but it was as if they did not see it and were
yearning for themselves.
"Go play with Bobby then, dear, and don't hurt poor Mamma like that."
"I won't."
May ran out and left Winnie looking into the glass beyond where the
child had been. Winnie could not understand how she could be blamed for
anything. She was so innocent, so childlike. At one time Laurence had
been able to discover no faults in her. She recalled the early months of
their marriage and remembered that in those days whenever she had reason
to think him displeased with her she made funny little pictures of
herself with her hands over her eyes and, signing them "poor Winnie,"
left them under his plate at table where he found them at the next meal.
A pang of hatred shot through her, mingled with the recollection of
caresses, involuntary on his part. She felt a need for justifying her
increasing hardness of heart and when she regarded herself sadly in the
mirror she was reassured. It was as if in the way her tousled reddish
curls shot back the light there was something that contradicted blame.
It was four o'clock. Through the window the sunshine on the row of
houses opposite paled their red bricks to the purplish tint of old rose
petals. At the end of the street where the square began bunches of raw
green foliage floated with a heavy stillness above the smutty roofs
steeped in light. Behind the bright yellow-green leaves the blue sky
melted into itself as into its own dream.
Laurence came home early on Saturdays and Winnie decided to dress. As
she opened the front of her négligé Bobby entered the room and made her
hesitate. He sweated and panted, dragging his feet and lugging with both
hands a small tin bucket filled with the dirt he had dug in the back
yard. He was very fat. He wore overalls and there was dirt smeared in
the creases of his neck under his firm chin.
"Bobby! How can you!"
"Dirt. Nice dirt," Bobby explained. Everything about him showed that he
belonged to himself. His brown eyes were passively against his mother.
Grunting laboriously, he stooped and began to empty the rich purplish
earth on the clean-swept blue carpet. Winnie's eyes flashed.
"Don't you dare do that, Bobby!" She sprang toward him, trying to be
angry.
He did not mind. He kept his fat shoulders bent to his task.
"Stop it, I say!" Only a few grains of the damp, dark soil remained in
the bright bucket. She gripped his elbow. He glanced at her, his solemn
eyes twinkling with a kind of placid malice. His grasp on the tin
handle relaxed and he sat down very flat on his plump bottom. Winnie
dropped down beside him and began to laugh. She could not have said why
but she always felt flattered by his defiance.
"Now what shall I do?" she demanded. They stared at each other.
"I'm makin' a house," Bobby said. There were still harsh lights in his
placid eyes. They made her ashamed and glad that she was his mother. Her
heart beat very fast and, escaping from an emotion which perplexed and
disturbed her, she threw her arms about him and buried her face against
his cool ear and his moist, cool cheek. "Oh, you love me! You love me! I
know you love me!" she crooned, rocking him against her. "You love me as
well as you do Papa, I know you do."
Bobby wriggled. "Don't love Papa!" he said.
"But you must! You know you must." There was a sob in Winnie's voice.
She was sick, she said to herself. That was why she wanted to be loved.
"'Don't love Papa!' You must love Papa, but love Mamma, too! Oh, Bobby,
poor Mamma!" Bobby tried to pull away again, but she had felt some one
looking at them and she would not let him go. Bobby's breath was warm on
her half bare breast.
She turned her head, guilty, and ready to cry with hatred of her guilt.
Laurence was in the doorway. She knew he had hesitated there, but when
she looked at him he walked straight forward past her with the air of
having only just arrived.
"Hello," he said. "Glad you are up."
"Look what Bobby's done." She let Bobby go.
"Into mischief as usual, eh?" Laurence said. He walked to the wardrobe
and hung up his hat. He had a short, bulky figure, the head and
shoulders too big for the rest of him. He had thick brown hair, coarse
and very slightly sprinkled with gray. His skin was ruddy but did not
look fresh. As he walked with his swaying, awkward stride, he held his
head forward and a little to one side. His coat sagged on the hips and
was caught up toward the back seam. His hands did not appear to belong
to him. They were short, disproportionately small, and very delicate.
"Bobby, you should be made to clean up," Winnie said.
Laurence came over and looked at the pile of dirt. "May----" was all
Bobby said. He wanted to get away from his father. He ran out.
"He's made a mess, all right. Can I help you up?" Laurence leaned to her
and she gave him her weak hands. She wanted him to feel them weak in
his. His mouth twitched a little as he pulled her to her feet. She hated
the furtive bitterness that was in all he did for her, yet it struck a
self-righteous fire from her. She leaned against him. She was frail and
plaintive. He seemed to stiffen against her softness. She loved herself
wistfully, her eyes lifted to his face.
To marry her he had given up the prospect of a career in science. An
expedition to Africa with one of his old professors had been abandoned.
At that time he had finished college and was working for a scientific
degree. She was eighteen.
Winnie felt herself still to be good, pretty, and sweet. She had a right
to something beside this distant tenderness. She knew there had been
times when simply a look, a glance, a word from her had carried him off
his feet. After these occasions there were symptoms of self-contempt on
his part. Yet he was proud of her, she was certain. Often, without his
being aware of it, she had seen him betray to others a secret vanity in
possessing her. Surely it was no disgrace to yield to her!
She had sometimes caught him staring at her abstractedly, yet with such
unyielding curiosity that it made her shiver to remember it. She clung
to him so that he could not look at her like that now.
"Do you feel well enough to dress for dinner?" Laurence asked.
"Yes, Laurie--I'll feel all right if----"
"If what?" He was always harsh when he joked.
She twisted the button of his coat. His eyes narrowed against hers as
though he were shutting her out. His sweet, harsh lips smiled. He gave
her a kiss and moved out of her arms, going to the window.
She was ill. The doctor had advised another operation. Without it she
could have no more children. She would die. She looked at Laurence. He
hurt her. The line of his back against her forced her into herself. It
was a pain. But when she remembered what a serious state of health she
was in most of her bitterness passed away from her. An expression of
sweetness and resignation came into her face. Her gray-green eyes shone
in tears under her reddish, disheveled hair. In her illness she felt
superior to her husband and was able to love herself more completely.
"I heard from Mamma today again, Laurence," she began gently.
"Yes?" Laurence had hesitated before replying. She wanted him to turn
round. He kept his gaze fixed on the street beyond the open window. A
soft current of motion stirred the bright heavy air blue with whirling
motes. She could see his hair slowly lifted. Past his head the sky was
pale with light. The sunshine floated green-white from the dim quivering
sky.
She kept watching his shoulders in the sagging coat. "I believe you had
rather see me miserable all the rest of my life! Oh, Laurence, how can
you! I can't hurt Mamma any longer even to please you!"
"To please me?" Laurence's voice was sharp and sarcastic, yet it did not
reproach. She hated its tolerance.
"Of course I know I can't please you!" she said. She could not see his
face and it was almost unbearable not to know whether he was smiling or
not. She felt him going farther away from her because of her mother. It
was cruel. Now whenever he did not want to touch her he said she was
sick. She hugged her sickness but she hated him for talking about it.
"Now, Winnie!" He was facing her. "I've tried to efface myself as much
as possible as regards your parents. If you weren't nervous and ill you
would realize that the time has passed for reproaching me."
"Forgive me."
"There's nothing to forgive."
She was irritated because he would not forgive her, but she went to him
and laid her head against his coat. A tremor shot through him when she
touched him and she did not know whether she was agitating him in a
manner complimentary to herself or not. But something in her hardened.
He had no right to conceal himself.
"Oh, Laurie!" They were still against each other. She felt him waiting
for her to lift her head. When people married they became one. She was
conscious of feeling cruel, but it seemed to her that she had nothing to
reproach herself with. "I cut myself on my manicure scissors today. You
mustn't be stern with me." He could not help thinking what a common
deceitful-looking little hand she had. He was sorry for her.
"What a tragedy!" His lips rested on the finger an instant without
giving themselves. They quivered a little. An emotion that was
unpleasant and at the same time exhilarating swept through her and
seemed to lift her from her feet. She thought sadly and complacently of
how much she had suffered for him already.
"Where is May?" Laurence asked suddenly. He felt that in kissing
Winnie's finger he had committed himself to some unknown almost sinister
thing. He resented the stupidity of his thought.
"Downstairs, I suppose." When he talked of May, Winnie was glad to leave
him. She felt as if he were lying to her.
Laurence moved toward the door, his gross body large in the darkening
room. Winnie seemed to know each detail of him as he passed into the
dark hall. It was painful to know him so distinctly. She tried in vain
to revive the blurred apperception of him which she had had in earlier
days. She wanted people to see him as she had seen him then. His rocking
walk humiliated her and when visitors were present she tried to inveigle
him into sitting in an armchair where his heavy handsome profile would
be silhouetted against the light, his awkward body at rest.
I don't think it is right for him to show an exaggerated preference for
one child, she told herself. He doesn't love May! He exaggerates his
feeling for her out of pique. Winnie could not forgive him for being
kinder to May than she was.
She found a match. Among the shadows the invisible sun made patches of
bronze light. In the dark the match flared like a long soft wound of
flame. The gas rushed out of the jet with a thick hiss and the flame
spread into a fan. It was a wing covered with yellow down, blue at the
quill. The wind sucked at it soundlessly.
She walked to the window which the gas flame had already made dark. The
sky was green-blue. Bunches of black leaves on the trees in the square
cut the dim fiery horizon into twinkling segments. A telegraph pole rose
up like a finger higher than the houses and appeared to lean heavily
against the quiet beyond. Behind flecks of cloud putrescent stars shone
as through flecks of foam on an enchanted sea.
Winnie pressed her head against the cold pane. Laurence, herself, old
age. She would never be happy. A peaceful vanity took the place of her
unrest. She realized an ethereal quality in herself which coincided
with the whiteness of her little hands. She was aware of her hands,
delicate and precious against her breast. Her breathing tightened. She
did not want to remember the ugliness of the long illness she had had
and to think of the operation which threatened her threw her into a
panic. When people talked too much to her of death she only saw
something ugly which she did not understand. She wanted to get away from
it. She felt that she should not be forced to think of death. It did not
belong to her. If people only loved her and allowed her to be herself
she gave everything.
She turned away from the window and walked back to the mirror.
* * * * *
Alice was the last to reach home for dinner. She closed the front door
briskly after her. Its thud was muffled and at the same time emphasized
by the quiet of the empty street behind it. She whistled as she took off
her hat. The tramp of her feet toward the dining-room was like a man's.
"Hello, Mamma Farley. Hello, Laurie! Glad to see you down, Winnie." She
tweaked Bobby's ear.
"Hello, Aunt Alice!" His voice was thick. Like a small amused Buddha, he
looked at her.
May thought Aunt Alice was not going to notice her, but Aunt Alice
patted the little girl's head. May was terrified and relieved when the
big hand brushed her hair heavily. She smiled at Aunt Alice, but Aunt
Alice did not see her. Then her face grew stupid with perplexity again
and her eyes were like two dark bright empty things; and under her
frilled apron, though she tried to hold her chest in tight, you could
see her heart beat.
Mr. Farley, who had been upstairs, was the last to enter the
dining-room. When Alice saw him her homely rugged face lit with
peremptory condescending affection and she said, "Come and sit by me
this minute, Papa Farley. Your soup is cold. What do you mean by being
so late?"
Mr. Farley was always embarrassed by Alice's officious regard, but he
would not permit himself to become impatient. He was a large handsome
man ten years younger than his wife. His hair was prematurely white.
There were heavy lines at the corners of his mouth and one deep fold
between his brows, but otherwise his face was smooth and fresh. His lips
were compressed continually into a smile. He veiled his disconcerted
rather empty blue eyes under defensively lowered lids. He gave a quick
glance around the brightly lit table.
"Winnie's improving. That's good."
"Yes. You look better," Alice observed to her sister-in-law. Winnie made
a little moue as she met the cheerful but accurate scrutiny of Alice's
eyes. Winnie felt aggrieved by this clearness of gaze. In resenting it
she pitied Alice, who had coarse sallow skin and large hands and feet.
"Winnie has every reason to be better. Her father and mother are coming
to dinner with us." Mrs. Farley's conversation was always studiedly
general. Her voice was weak and toneless and a little harsh, but she
spoke carefully with an agreeable intonation. While she talked, her
stubby uncertain hand grasped the hilt of a long horn-handled knife and
the thin flashing blade sunk into the brown crusted beefsteak, so that
the beautiful wine-colored blood spurted from the soft pink inner flesh
and mingled with the grease that was cooling and coating the bottom of
the dish. She laid fat brown-edged pieces of pink meat on the successive
plates which she removed from a cracked white pile before her. The
boiled potatoes were overdone and burst apart when she tried to serve
them. On the thin yellow skin which hardened over their mealy insides
there were greenish-gray spots.
"I'm glad, Winnie. We're all glad. No grievance is worth hugging like
this." Mr. Farley held his hand to his eyes but he spoke determinedly.
They all knew how hard it must be for him to accede to a meeting with
Mr. Price. Laurence, Alice, and Winnie thought of the unkind things
which Mr. Price had said about their family scandal at the time of the
break, and wondered if he would refer to it again.
Mr. Farley liked to do hard things. If his resolution hurt him he kept
it and was not afraid of it. He was comfortable in the bare cheaply
furnished dining-room because he felt that if he had desired happiness
he might not have been there; and as he was very punctilious in his
duties toward his wife he was able to relieve the oppressive sense of
sin which he had carried with him during most of his life.
Winnie and Alice were both watching Laurence. His face was bitterly
impassive. On a former occasion he had insulted Mr. Price. His present
resignation was full of disgust. Winnie felt that he was giving her to
her mother.
"You're not eating, dear. I let the children stay up because you were
feeling better. I thought we would celebrate." Mrs. Farley's eyelashes
were whitish. She carried nose glasses fastened to a gold hook on the
breast of the black waist she had washed herself and ironed so badly.
She squinted when she smiled, yet her eyes did not look glad, but tired.
"I'm trying, Mamma Farley." Winnie's sweet mouth was tremulous. She was
glad to feel it tremulous. How could Laurence give her over simply
because her heart would not let her refuse her mother any longer?
Alice cut her beefsteak with brisk emphatic strokes. She took big bites
and chewed them with an air of exaggerated relish. She felt herself to
be the one person in the world who understood Laurence, but she knew
that he feared and resented her understanding. He had always been
saturnine and had lived his life alone. At college he paid his own way
until he won a medal which entitled him to a scholarship. After this he
devoted himself to research work in biology. Alice's imagination had
never quite encompassed his impulse in marrying Winnie and it was still
more difficult to understand why Winnie had committed herself. Even in
the days of courtship Winnie had often fled in tears from her lover. She
was ashamed of his deliberated vulgarities, though they piqued and
invited her. Alice could not comprehend it. Winnie and Laurence had
been secretly married. When the Prices commanded their daughter to leave
her husband, Laurence had withdrawn from the decision and told her to do
as she liked. She had not been able to make herself leave him. She did
not know that she wanted to. Her parents had cut her off. Ten months
later May was born. Laurence took his scientific knowledge to the
laboratory of a manufacturer of serums and began to make a living.
"I used up most of your five dollars on some hens today, Alice." Mrs.
Farley's conscience was heavy with the sudden silence at the table. It
merged into her own inner silence and became the voice of herself from
which she was anxious to escape.
"Good."
"You work so hard, Mamma Farley. Don't!" Winnie, not wanting Mamma
Farley to work, felt sad and nice again and justified before Laurence.
"I'm used to it." Mrs. Farley's mouth puckered in a prim tired smile.
The mouth was satisfied with itself, so it drew up like that.
"Don't deprive Mamma of the joy of martyrdom, Winnie," Alice insisted,
laughing shortly. Mrs. Farley kept her withered lips smiling, but her
eyes, dull and confused with resentment, felt covertly and bitterly for
her daughter's face. Alice ate, oblivious. Mrs. Farley, with physical
irritation, felt Alice eating beefsteak and swallowing it half chewed.
"You leave Mother alone, Alice. Expend your benevolent energies
somewhere else." Laurence, his lip twitching with repression, stared
hard and smiling into Alice's eyes. Her eyes were a sad brown, a little
dull. They were quiet eyes staring back unreproachfully as though they
understood the pain of his. Laurence had a constant unreasoning impulse
to defy Alice.
"Thanks," Alice answered with tired sarcasm.
"I don't need any one to look after me, Laurence," Mrs. Farley said, her
voice cheerful, her mouth wry and tight, her lids drooped.
Mr. Farley was restless. "Your mother is right. We must give Mr. and
Mrs. Price a royal welcome tomorrow. We must put ourselves in their
place. There are two sides to everything and it takes a great deal of
determination to make the first overture. They've done that. Now it's up
to us." Mr. Farley was always afraid that the incipient quarrel between
Alice and her mother would develop plainer proportions. He did not see
the group about him clearly, but a helpless smile was on his face. In
terror of their unkindliness he showed them how noble he was.
There was another silence. Mrs. Farley could not bear it.
"Has Mr. Ridge decided when he will leave for Europe, Alice?" Mrs.
Farley's knife and fork in her weak hands clattered against her plate.
Alice was silent a moment. "He won't leave before next month," she said.
She was very intent on her food. A flush went across her forehead like a
burn half under her stringy brown hair. Laurence gave her a quick
half-pleased glance of involuntary inquiry. Winnie stared at her with
soft sharpness.
"Does the doctor think his eyes will get well?" Mr. Farley asked, too
clouded with his own concerns to be aware of the tension in Alice's
face.
"He hopes so. It is nervous strain and overwork mostly. There was some
sort of infection, but that came as a result."
"Then you'll have a vacation. He can't take you to Europe."
"No," Alice said almost angrily. "I know where I can get green things
cheap, Mamma. That market on Smith Street."
"I see where Ridge has been attacked by all his radical friends. He
seems to have most of the world down on him for that last book." Alice
would not see Laurence's sneer.
"He's too good for all of them," she said sharply.
Winnie pursed her mouth. It was an effort not to laugh. To see Alice
show feeling for a man like Ridge made one hysterical.
Mr. Farley was not thinking of Alice or of Horace Ridge. Again and
again, as if in spite of himself, he allowed his gaze to rest on Winnie.
His daughter-in-law disturbed him and if he could avoid it he never
looked her in the eye. If he could keep from noticing the throats and
breasts and arms of women he was usually all right. Then if he were
obliged to see them clearly he wanted to weep with the pain of it and
when tears again blurred his vision he was relieved. Marriage had been a
failure. There had been, he felt, terrible things in his life. Sex had
invariably placed him in the wrong, so sex must be the expression of a
perverse impulse. Tainted, as he considered it, like other men, he
struggled to exalt himself into a vagueness in which particular women
did not exist.
Winnie despised him, but she would not admit it to herself.
"I'm so glad to see you better! So glad!" Mr. Farley repeated
irrelevantly, uncomfortable because he felt the sweetness of Winnie's
face too intimately.
"Thank you, dear Papa Farley." Winnie laid her hand gently on his big
fist resting on the table. He withdrew his fingers, but as he did so
gave her hand an apologetic pat. Her little fingers felt to her like
iron under his big soft hand. She knew he was afraid when she touched
him. Vulgar old man, she said to herself. She despised him so that she
wanted to touch him again out of her superiority. "Dear Papa Farley!"
There was helpless moisture in his eyes which he could not keep from
her.
"I have some work today. I'll forego dessert." Alice got up with sudden
awkwardness and pushed her chair back. She smiled at them all, not
seeing them.
When she had gone they were pleased and yet ashamed of themselves,
knowing why she went.
"Did you get your deal through, Father?" Laurence asked impatiently
after a moment. They were all relieved of the silence too heavy with
Alice.
* * * * *
The window was open and the thick dark night, coming warm and moist into
the bedroom, made Alice feel as though some one breathed into her face,
close against her, stifling her. The yellow gas flame rushed up from the
jet with a stealthy noise. The street outside was still.
Alice sat down before her typewriter and stared at it. Suddenly her full
breasts heaved. "Oh, my God!" She buried her face. Her blouse pulled
tight across her shoulders as she stretched her arms in front of her.
Horace Ridge was going to Europe to remain two years. He might get well.
He might die. His eyes. She felt herself lost in the darkness of his
eyes.
Then something broke in her. I'll tell him. I'll go with him.
She dared not see herself in the glass opposite. Once she had abandoned
herself to her desire to be beautiful. She remembered, with a horrible
sense of humiliation, the hours spent behind locked doors when she had
tried to make herself into something men would like. One day she had
done her hair a new way, and, going into the living-room, had caught
Laurence's ridiculing eyes upon her. That was before he married Winnie.
Alice realized that something had gone wild in her. She had picked a
paper knife from a table and hurled it at him and it had cut his hand.
His face had turned scarlet, then white, then scarlet again. He had gone
out as if he were glad, without speaking to her.
After that she fixed her hair the old way and avoided the mirror. She
did not want to realize what she was. Nothing existed but work.
When she met a pretty woman in the streets Alice had a sense of
outrage. A self-righteous flame burnt in her. Then she tried to be
patient and it grew cool. She wore heavy careless clothing. She was
generous to Winnie. Most of all it relieved Alice to buy presents for
the children.
It was the evening before when she came home from work that Bobby met
her in the hall. Then there was jam on his unperturbed face. "You donna
bring me sumpin'," he reminded her.
She held out a top. For an instant a cold gleam of possession lit
Bobby's still eyes in his fat face. He grasped the top and moved a
little away from her. His air was suspicious. When he was sure the top
was his the cold light died from his face. He was smooth and shut into
himself again. He was like a china baby. To get at his soul one needed
to break him.
"You like it, eh?" Alice demanded. Her eyes were more violently hard
than his. She seemed to like him against her will. She bent down. His
lips brushed her cheek dutifully and she felt as though a mark had been
left there. She imagined it a spot like frost with five points like a
leaf.
"Tan I go?"
As he went away from her the spot burned her.
Inexorably Bobby descended to the back yard. He seemed to know how
futile a thing Alice was compared to himself.
With her face buried on the oilcloth cover of the typewriter Alice's
thoughts, all confused, ran on God, art, suggestions that had come to
her as Horace Ridge dictated his book. Then in the turmoil she could
see Horace Ridge's big figure still against the light of the window
where he worked. Alice felt herself light, clear and vacuous, absorbed
in the substantiality of this picture.
Christ died on a cross. She felt sick as with disgust. Good to others.
Hate. Winnie.
Alice could not bear to think of the children born of Winnie. Bobby born
of Winnie. She could not think of him. Virgin Mary. There seemed
something secret and awful in maternity--some desecration. She felt the
child helplessly intimate with the mother's body. He did not want her.
Other religions. No time to read up. Buddha. Sex. Marriage. Laurie was
an atheist. He wanted to be perverse.
Must be something. Nice pictures. Art. Beauty.
When she said beauty to herself her heart was hard with resentment.
Long-haired men. Rot. They did not understand.
She cried a few moments thinking of nothing, but it was as if something
unseen grew strong with her weakness. It drank her misery and left her
dry. She got up, feverish, and stood before the glass, hating herself.
Her waist had pulled apart in front and she saw the swell of her big
firm breast. Her face was heavy and ugly with rebellion, sallow, the
eyes inflamed.
She saw her breast. Strange shiver of curiosity about herself. Why did
it hurt her to see her breast? She covered it up.
She looked at herself, into her hot eyes. Something cried inside her for
mercy, but she would not take her hot angry eyes from the face in the
glass. No use to beat about the bush and pretend to be highfalutin'.
Wanted what Winnie wanted. Disliked Winnie. She had a corroding
sensation in her throat as though she tasted metal. Then shame mounted
hot over her as though it were swallowing her. She resisted being
swallowed. Her skin quivered against the hot cold engulfing sense of
degradation. She was like a bird alive in a snake's body.
Something tightened in her soul, and the emotion she had experienced the
moment before flowed away from her. Receding, it left a hardened
accretion like petrifying lava flowing down cold from a volcanic crater.
Still she stared at herself. Homely woman. It seemed to her that her
veins crept like snakes along her arms. Life stealing upon one through
the veins. Stealthy life running red and silent in its bitterness
through the body. Where to go to? Horace Ridge. He has any woman he
wants. Famous man. Me.
She felt slightly intoxicated by a frank acknowledgment of her
absurdity. Her horror of herself crept over her body, shameful because
of no use.
I can't endure it!
Her wrist pressed against her teeth and made a mark, but no blood came.
She wanted to tear away her flesh, but it seemed to resist her. It was
full of hurt where her teeth had pressed. Life sucked at her like a wild
beast.
She turned from the mirror and hurled herself face downward sobbing on
the bed. Her body oppressed her.
She cried a long time. The work would have to go. At last she crept off
the bed and undressed herself and put out the light, but she lay awake,
and the darkness remained electric and horrible. She closed her eyes and
tried to shut out its intimacy.
Mamma and Papa Farley. What was wrong between them? Sex. Horror. She
tried to keep her thoughts from integrating. Child. She bit her wrist
again and turned over in bed. Too proud to hate Winnie. Other girls.
Their faces opened against hers. They were white and flowering in the
dark. Eyes open, waiting to receive men. She shivered. One must think
about these things. Winnie's maternity. Bobby seemed slimed all over
with Winnie. To wash Bobby clean--clean of Winnie!
Alice was still awhile. She was dark inside, but the dark grew calm. She
began to go over things very clearly. What was passion? Fourteen years
old. Pain. Words written on back fences.
I am glad to be out of it. Poor little Winnie.
Outside, cool. Cool ache of being outside life.
Horace Ridge's settled form, quiet against the dancing window. He turned
in his chair. Kind eyes behind glasses. He could keep people outside him
because he had all they could give him already there behind brown agate
eyes.
Albert Price--short trousers, face like a girl's. They knew.
She, twenty-nine years old, outside their lives. She did not want her
body. If she could only make Horace Ridge understand that she had no
body! Clothes made her virgin when she was a mother. If she could
undress herself he would know that she was a mother. Clothes made him
forty-three years old, radical critic of life and manners, ruined
health, blindness incipient. She wanted to undress him to show him how
little he was.
Oh, dear! She cried. It hurt, but less. Oh, dear! Life was a muddle.
When one ceased to desire there was quiet, bitter and beautiful quiet.
Laurence, Winnie, Mamma and Papa, far away from her--pathetic with
distance. Horace Ridge far away from her. Her loving him cool. Nothing.
She wanted nothing. Heart in the breast coolly melted like water in a
still cup. In the bed in the darkness her still heart reflected the
shadows of hot summer pavements, brick houses with fronts beaten flat
and dull by sun, the moment before nightfall when lights burst from the
theater fronts and the streets were gay with people in pale colored
clothes. Then the heart was still, was cool--was water into which the
darkness came gratefully covering the loneliness.
* * * * *
Alice was sorry for herself because she had a mother like Mrs. Farley.
Poor Papa Farley. Alice loved him and despised him. She did not love her
mother.
On Sunday when Alice went downstairs Mrs. Farley had on her gray taffeta
dress and was intent on setting the house right. She walked stooped a
little forward, her shoulders drawn together. The eyeglasses that hung
on her chest twinkled. Short straight soft hairs floated, unpinned, at
the nape of her neck. When she turned her head the withered skin made
fine swirls of wrinkles about her throat. She walked very fast about the
parlor putting the chairs in place. She took short steps so that her
haste appeared feverish. The occasion seemed to fill her with a kind of
worried happiness.
Mr. Farley had put on his frock coat. He had no dignity in it.
"Don't work too hard, Mother." He went into the dining-room smiling in
bland anticipation of whomever should be there.
Alice was at table. She was ashamed of her red eyes and barely glanced
up. "What would Mamma do if we forgot for one day to object to her
working so hard?"
Mr. Farley spread his coat-tails and sat down on the oak chair with the
imitation leather seat. Alice's remarks about her mother made him feel
guilty.
"We should have gotten up earlier so your mother wouldn't have the
dishes to worry about."
"I'm going to wash 'em," Alice said shortly.
It was a hot day. The clouded sky was a colorless glare. A thick wind
stirred the ragged awnings upstairs before the bedroom windows. For a
moment the sun came out as though an eye had opened. The house fronts
were a pale bright pink. Dust made little eddies in the empty Sunday
street. The awnings lifted, then hung inert like broken wings. When a
wagon passed you could hear, above the rattle of the wheels, the
muffled thud of the horse's feet striking the soft asphalt.
May was on the front steps. She wore a very stiffly starched white dress
and a pink sash, wilted and wrinkled by many tyings. Her hair was
brushed back very smooth and gathered away from her forehead with a
flapping bow. Pale with interest, her small face turned toward the
corner of the square as she watched for the Prices to come.
In the parlor, Winnie stood out of sight behind the freshly laundered
curtains, and watched too. Laurence had left the house. She wondered if
he were going to avoid her parents.
As the time passed the sun disappeared again and shadows flowed into the
street which was as gray and still as water.
When the equipage with shining lacquered sides flashed into the empty
place May looked at it bewildered, but Winnie had seen it through the
window and recognized her parents.
The carriage drew up before the house and the wheels scraping the curb
made a long rasping sound. The chestnut horses were fat. Their harness
twinkled. They wriggled the stumps of their clipped tails against the
cruppers that constrained them. On their breasts where the circingles
had rubbed and on their flanks and buttocks the hair was darkened and
matted with lather.
May was afraid and proud because the beautiful horses stood before her
home. They stamped. A shiver ran along their satin bellies. Their
breasts and forelegs quivered with tension as they jerked their heads
in the check reins and pressed the street with harsh hoofs below their
rigid ankles. Watching them, May uttered a little cry of terror and
delight; but she thought some one had heard her and she clapped her hand
over her mouth.
The footman had jumped from his place, and Mr. and Mrs. Price were
descending from the carriage.
Indoors, Winnie felt her heart swell with a pain of pride. These were
her parents. All these years she had been robbed of this!
"Oh, Mamma Farley! They've come! They've come! I thought I should never
see them again!" Winnie's smooth fingers clutched Mrs. Farley's stiff
nerveless palm. "What shall I do? It hasn't been my fault, has it, Mamma
Farley?" Winnie's soft relentless gaze clung to her mother-in-law's
face.
Mrs. Farley nervously desired to evade. Winnie made her feel guilty of
the situation with which she had nothing to do.
"Now, dear! Now, dear! We won't talk about who's to blame. Could your
mother have written the note she did if she intended to reproach you?"
"But Papa----And Laurence hasn't come back yet! He and Papa will quarrel
again! You shouldn't have let him do this way, Mamma Farley! Oh, feel my
hands! They're so cold!" Her eyes, large and dark, shone with a languid
and deliberate excitement. She wished that Alice were in the room to see
her. Wry thoughts of Laurence. Resentment in Winnie's mind was like grit
in something that otherwise would have moved oiled.
"What must I do, Mamma Farley? Shall I go to the door?" Winnie wrung her
hands.
"I think you ought to meet her first. She would like to speak to you
before the rest of us come in."
"Oh, I can't! How can Laurence leave me like this?"
Mrs. Farley, called on again to explain Laurence, made some meaningless
gestures--clasped and unclasped her hands. Her fingers, pressed hard as
they intertwined, made her knuckles glow white.
"Now, dear! Now, dear!"
"You _must_ go with me! I can't bear it if Papa says anything to me
about Laurence! What shall I do?" Winnie dragged Mrs. Farley across the
brightly swept parlor carpet and into the hall.
May had already opened the front door. Mr. and Mrs. Price stood against
the light of the street, their faces in shadow. Behind them the coachman
was turning the carriage away. The footman sat very straight with his
arms folded. The wheel spokes flashed. The polished black sides
glistened.
Mrs. Price's flat face was very white above her elegant black dress.
There were fine lines of strain under her pale eyes staring wide through
her delicate pince-nez. The nostrils of her flat nose quivered a little.
She had a thin narrow body and broad flat hips. She was breathing
quickly. On her drawn lips there was a labored smile.
Mr. Price removed his beaver hat and revealed the top of his broad flat
head, bald and bright, above his hard eyes which were like cloudy stones
of pale blue. His thick under lip, thrust sullenly forward, showed
under his thin yellow-gray mustache. There was no color anywhere about
his face. Only under his chin where he had not shaved clean you might
detect his beard by a colorless shining.
There was a moment of silence and hesitation. "Winnie!" Mrs. Price's
voice shook. "Mamma!" They lay in each other's arms.
Mrs. Price's fragile hand moved uneasily over her daughter's hair.
Mr. Price, gruff and uncomfortable, his face unmoved, said, "Where do I
come in?"
Winnie reached out and patted her father's arm. He took her hand. She
kissed him, not wanting to. He made her think of herself. She wanted to
relax in joyous agony. Lifting her soft strange eyes to her mother,
Winnie was double, knowing, as before a mirror, how she looked. Sweet to
have people unkind when you could forgive them!
But behind everything the recollection of Laurie intruded harshly.
In the background Mrs. Farley stood uneasily, and May, afraid to enjoy
the family happiness, yet unable to leave, hopped from one foot to the
other with subdued exclamations, her face alternately blank with
confusion or atremble with response.
"Don't cry, Winnie, dear. We are all so glad, Mrs. Farley." Mrs. Price
pushed Winnie gently aside and put out a frail hand, determined, though
it shook a little. Mrs. Farley's fingers were clumsy, fumbling for Mrs.
Price. Mr. Price shook hands in a fat abrupt fashion. They passed into
the house.
"Not too much emotion. Not too much emotion," Mr. Price grumbled. May
retreated before him wonderingly. No one had noticed her.
Then Winnie said, "This is May, Mother."
They all stopped. May stopped inside herself. "Dear!" Mrs. Price had
kissed her. May knew the kiss to be stale, dry, with a bitter
middle-aged smell, and was ashamed of knowing. The dry bitter kiss drank
of May's coolness. She was dumb under the caress of the sick hand.
The parlor was clean and gloomy.
"Sit down, sit down," Mrs. Farley said. "I--we----" She was trembling
all over. She wept because of the rightness of things. "Such a glare!"
She tottered to the shade. Her silk dress rustled.
"There, Mrs. Farley. We're all right. An experience like this is good
for all of us. Christ has taught us to forgive our enemies and when we
do I believe we never have cause to regret it."
Mr. Price sat down awkwardly and coughed severely into his mustache. His
furtive gaze traveled malignantly about the shabby room.
"How-d'ye-do, Mrs. Price? Mr. Price?" Alice walked heavily in among
them. Mrs. Price turned around, disconcerted. Their hands touched. Alice
seemed to take charge of things. Mrs. Price suddenly felt weak and was
obliged to seat herself.
Winnie was annoyed. She went up to Alice plaintively. "Oh, I'm so happy,
Alice!" She wept.
Alice was still, like a warm rock. "We're happy to see you happy."
As Alice remained gruff and unmoved Winnie became more humble. "You
don't look like it. Please let me be happy, Alice. I can't if--if----"
"Nonsense," Alice said.
Winnie smiled mistily at everybody.
"Come sit by me. I want to see my dear little girl." Mrs. Price disliked
Alice, who remained hard and kind while Winnie cried with happiness.
"You're not well, I know. Mrs. Farley wrote me. There, there. We must
begin to take better care of you." Mrs. Price pulled Winnie to her.
Winnie's eyes, rapacious with humility, were lifted again.
Mr. Farley came in, casting a rapid glance around the group. His smile
was patient. Fear made him tired.
"Well, well--we're so--Mrs. Price." He stopped before her, not sure that
she would shake hands with him. She gave him her finger tips and he took
them miserably.
"Yes, I'm sure you all enjoy seeing Winnie happy," Mrs. Price said. She
was cold and kind. Mr. Farley knew what she was thinking of--Helen out
in Kansas City. They had spoken of the old scandal in objecting to
Winnie's marriage.
"Mr. Price?"
"Hello, Farley. Hello." Mr. Price got up reluctantly. His hand clasp was
a condescension.
Mr. Farley had given his hand limply. His mouth bent with acceptance.
His smile was still tolerant but a little bitter, and he did not look
up.
"Winnie comes first, Farley. Time to disagree about other things later."
"I hope we are through with disagreements."
"Yes, Farley, I hope we are. Ahem."
Mr. Price sat down again abruptly.
"I'm so happy, Papa Farley!"
Winnie's eyes. He shuddered, trying not to see them, fearful that he
would forget to smile. "I'm glad you are, dear."
Winnie clapped her hands and turned once more to her mother. "Bobby! You
haven't seen Bobby! Oh, he's the dearest----He's upstairs taking a nap."
Alice stood defiantly in the center of the gloomy room, her feet apart,
her stout hips set out. "Want me to see if he's awake?"
"Suppose we all go out and leave Winnie alone with her parents for a few
minutes," Mrs. Farley suggested, her voice quavering slightly. She
puckered her lips and frowned, smiling about her at the group. When she
stood up her gray taffeta dress settled slowly, with a calm sound, in
folds about her. The hem lay out on the carpet. She had a scrap of
yellow lace at her neck and above it in her withered loose skin you
could see the flutter of a pulse.
"We certainly should," Alice said.
"Why, that's very nice. I don't----" Mrs. Price looked around,
uncertain, well-bred.
"Yes, yes. Come, May." Mrs. Farley took May's small cold hand, moist in
her dry one. Alice went first and Mr. Farley shuffled after the others,
head bent, smiling, not sure why they were going out.
Mrs. Price had risen with her husband and stood, sad and calm, watching
them leave. Life had wrung her, but she had grown sure in compromise.
There was dignity in her sureness.
"Well," said Mr. Price shortly, "I don't see that husband of yours
about!"
Winnie started tremulously. She smiled at him with a relaxed mouth.
"Papa, dear, I know----" She gulped, still smiling.
"Yes, I know. I know. I suppose he's run away from us."
"He'll probably be in later, won't he, dear?" Mrs. Price's transparent
smile was a thin shield guarding Winnie from her father.
Winnie tried to speak. Then she gave way and flung her white arms about
her mother's throat. "Oh, M-mother!"
"There, there. I know."
"Confound him!" said Mr. Price very savagely, biting his mustache.
"Please, Perry!"
"Oh, that's all right. That's all right. I'm not going to lose my
temper."
"Don't cry, Winnie. Sweet Winnie."
"What I want to know is whether that--whether he refused to meet us or
not?" Mr. Price asked.
"Oh, Mother--Papa--I----"
"Don't cry, Winnie. It's all right. Your father has resolved to overlook
things and if he can bring himself to do that about what has already
happened this last little rudeness certainly won't matter."
"But he said he--he would come."
"He did, eh? And then went out."
"Now, Perry--please?" Replying to his wife's pale smile, Mr. Price
coughed ambiguously.
"You need never be afraid of your father conducting himself in anything
but a generous manner, Winnie. I wish you might have been at church last
Sunday when he presented the new organ!"
"I know, but----"
"That's all very well, dear." Mrs. Price's voice had a disappearing
quality. It floated and drifted from her lips and her words died away
from her like the shed petals of a flower.
"I want--I want you and Papa to let me be happy! I--I----Sometimes I
think nobody's happy. Mamma and Papa Farley are not. I----"
Above Winnie's bowed head Mr. and Mrs. Price exchanged glances.
"They don't deserve to be!" Mr. Price snorted after a minute.
Winnie glanced up. Mrs. Price's face twitched with worry.
"Now, Perry, dear, please? Remember! We decided not to speak of that
again." She nodded toward the closed door of the hall. "I suppose by now
you have heard all about Mamma and Papa Farley, Winnie--all the things
that worried your father so, that he tried to tell you about when you
and Laurence ran away--but living here with them as you are, I think it
best for us to try to forget it. Mrs. Farley is a very long-suffering
woman and has borne her lot very patiently."
Winnie wanted to ask more. She hid her face again. Once Laurie----
"Laurence never talks of it, and you know before, when Papa tried to
tell me, how it was--you wouldn't let him. What was it, Mamma?"
"Do we need to talk about it, dear?" Mrs. Price stroked Winnie's hair.
"It was the talk about the town. I don't see why she shouldn't hear it!
I wanted her to know it all before so that she could understand my
objection to such a match."
"But we never understood clearly how it was ourselves, Perry. You know
when Winnie was married and you wanted to tell her I thought it was no
fit topic for a young girl. I said----"
"Yes, I know you _said_, but if she had known all about the thing from
the start she might have made a better match for herself. At any rate,
she's old enough to hear things now."
Winnie looked up and stood away from her mother. "Please, Papa,
Laurie----"
"Yes, Perry, it isn't right to Winnie. We mustn't feel this way about
her husband."
Winnie's little face was hard and a small soft fire of malice burned in
her eyes. Though she resented Laurence, she was with him against her
parents. She would have exulted in making them feel his inexorableness.
Because he was strong against them she seemed to feel herself inside his
strength, corroding it with her weakness. Mingled with her desire to
swallow her world was a vague terror of her loneliness when it should
happen.
"Well, that's all right, Vivien. I'll say nothing about her husband, but
that father-in-law of hers----It seems to me the more she knows about
him the better!"
"Perry, but in their house!" Mrs. Price was weary. Her smile seemed to
hurt her. Her white hands shook.
Winnie was drawn up taut, cautious like a savage on a spoor.
"Perhaps Father ought to tell me all of it," she said.
"But not now! Not here! You said you knew----"
"I did know there was some reason Mamma and Papa Farley didn't get
along. I knew there was a woman----"
"Yes! That miserable woman he was entangled with in that filthy affair.
I don't remember whether I told you that he tried to leave Mrs. Farley
and live with her. Helen--Wilson--something--Mrs. Wilson. The husband
had him up as co-respondent. Then they discovered she was going to have
a child." Mr. Price spoke gruffly and hurriedly in a low voice and
chewed his mustache.
Winnie trembled with excitement. Mamma and Papa Farley. Laurie. She felt
crafty and sure of herself. Why had Laurie never told her all of this?
He did not like to have her speak of it.
"Perry, we can not! We must not! For Winnie's sake!"
"Did Papa Farley and the woman have the child, Papa?"
"Oh, Winnie," Mrs. Price protested, "how can you ask such things!"
Mr. Price, hands in pockets, rose on his toes and sucked his mustache in
and out.
"They committed every sin which the flesh has been heir to since the
fall of man, so I suppose they had a child too."
"You don't know?"
"I have it on very good authority that they did."
"The child, of course, was spirited away."
"And where did the woman go?"
"Out West. To Kansas or Texas. Something." Still he rose on his toes.
The flavor of his mustache seemed to give him a peculiar relish.
"Oh, Papa, how awful! I didn't know it was as bad as that." Winnie
dilated with her secret. A quick passionate resolution of triumph shot
through her. Her eyes shone tragically.
"Winnie--my dear--you are in no state to hear things like this," Mrs.
Price said. There was a light knock at the door. "Psh!"
Mr. Price started a little, but continued to elevate and lower himself
on his toes and stare at the ceiling. Winnie clutched her hands to her
breast.
"Come in." Mrs. Price lifted her trembling voice.
Alice's face in the doorway. None of them could look at her. Winnie met
the face at last.
"Bobby's awake."
"Isn't that nice. Now I will see the dear baby."
"Yes, Mother. Come, Father." Winnie, with a high dreamy expression of
conscious pain, followed Alice out.
* * * * *
The bedroom, dark, cluttered by too great an attempt at coziness, had
grown a little shabby. The yellow shades were drawn under the lace
curtains. The blue carpet showed here and there a warp of colorless
cords. On the sofa the velvet and plush pillows were embroidered with
mottos and flowers. There were a heavy bureau, an old-fashioned bed, and
Bobby's crib. May slept in the nursery across the hall.
Bobby, his eyes still opaque with sleep, sat upright in bed, a dreamy
look of disapprobation on his face.
Mrs. Price could say nothing for a moment, then, "How lovely! How
lovely! What a beautiful healthy child!"
Winnie caught him in her arms.
Mrs. Farley moved forward, feebly shocked. "He's too heavy! Oh, you
mustn't do that, Winnie!"
Winnie turned and gave him to her mother. Bobby's fat body was sodden
and relaxed in his grandmother's arms. Mrs. Price's resigned hands moved
over him agitatedly. "He's so beautiful!" Feeling ashamed, she knew not
why, she kissed him. "Look, Perry!"
"Fine boy," said Mr. Price.
Winnie danced about. "I knew you'd think so."
Mr. Farley waited sheepishly, approving with his patience.
"We're all proud of him," said Alice shortly. Mrs. Price glanced up with
a start. "He's a fine grandson," she declared after a minute. There was
something defiant in the way she stroked his hair, but she remained very
gentle and ladylike.
May stood to one side, quivering. She wanted them to see her but, for
fear they might send her away, kept very quiet. When Bobby did not want
to be petted she was uncomfortable and when he liked it she was happy
too.
* * * * *
Laurence had come into the house and, finding the lower floor deserted,
had gone upstairs. He stood in the bedroom doorway. Winnie saw him
first. She was disconcerted for a moment. A little shiver of excitement
went through her. But she recovered herself as she gazed at him and felt
small and strong.
"Laurie!" She made a cooing sound of pleasure. She turned to her mother.
"Oh, Mamma, I want you and Laurie to hug!"
Mrs. Price's face was stained with faint color. She grew brittle and
tense in her uncertainty. Holding Bobby on her arm, she put her hand
out. It was as if she put her hand between herself and Laurence. "I hope
we both love Winnie enough to overlook things," she said.
"I hope so, Mrs. Price," he agreed, coming forward, his lids drooping as
if to shut out the painful sight of them all. He smiled in shame. They
shook hands.
"Now, Papa!" Winnie led her father forward by his coat sleeve.
"How-d'ye-do, Farley? How-d'ye-do?" Mr. Price was bluff and reluctant.
Their hands barely touched. Laurence kept his glance on the carpet.
"Now I am so happy!" Winnie clung to her husband's arm. Her softness
sank into him. He felt that if he lived he must harden himself against
it. When she finally freed him he drew a deep unconscious breath. Then
he forced his somber eyes full on Mrs. Price's face. "I am thankful, for
Winnie's sake, that you and Mr. Price made up your minds to this," he
said.
"We won't reproach ourselves with the past, Mr. Farley," Mr. Price
interrupted. He would not allow his wife to be addressed in lieu of
himself.
"I've never reproached myself, Mr. Price," Laurence answered coldly.
Still he looked away.
"I don't doubt it, Mr. Laurence Farley! I don't doubt it!" Mr. Price's
manner was full of secret scorn. He rocked on his toes and sucked his
mustache ends again.
"The babies are dears," Mrs. Price said. "Bobby is wonderful."
Laurence regarded Bobby. "Sit up. Hold your head up. Don't act as though
you were half asleep."
"Don't be cross with him, Laurie!" Winnie pouted. Laurence was torn. He
must refuse to praise Bobby as the Prices praised him. Laurence felt
that he could not protect his child against the approbation of his
enemies. May sidled up to her father. When she touched him he did not
look down at her, but put his arm about her. He held his shame of her
close in his heart like a wound that he would not let be seen. He
stroked her hair.
"Bobby is too heavy for you, Mrs. Price," Mrs. Farley protested, coming
forward with an air of furtive protest.
"No, no!" Mrs. Price, exaggeratedly polite, held him closer and smiled.
The smile made Mrs. Farley helpless. Mrs. Price knew it.
Mr. Farley had been outside the group. Now he moved nearer Mrs. Price
and, leaning forward, shook Bobby's inert fist. "You like your old
grandad, eh? You like your old grandad?"
Bobby scowled on them all and put his thumb to his mouth.
"What did I tell you about sucking your thumb?" Laurence demanded
sternly.
Winnie's sweet eyes, covert with knowledge, gloated on her husband's
face. "Don't be cross to him, Laurie, when everything's so nice."
"Stop sucking your thumb." Laurence took Bobby's thumb down from his
mouth.
"For Heaven's sake, leave him alone. You'll nag him to death. All this
ohing and ahing is enough to drive him to something worse than sucking
his thumb," Alice said shortly.