As Mr. Farley walked home from business he had a troubled look. When he
came into his own street he scarcely seemed aware of his whereabouts.
For several days he had been restless and ill at ease with himself. His
resentment toward Alice was blunted and dispersed by his determination
to think well of the world. He needed this charity to think well of
himself. What disturbed and depressed him most was her forcible
suggestion of incompleteness in things which he had looked upon as
finished.
He went up the steps. There was a Kansas City newspaper in the box. It
hurt him to take it out and put it in his pocket.
When he opened the front door and stepped into the empty hall, the first
look of the place pained him with its harsh familiarity; but, when he
had laid his hat down, he passed on into the living-room and seated
himself in one of the old tapestry-covered chairs, and his antagonism
and desire to exist in separateness melted in the faintly bitter sense
of inevitability which he experienced. The old house with the low
ceilings and broad stone mantelpieces and the walls hung in stained,
dark figured papers (just as he had bought it with the first savings of
his married life) represented the known, asserting him through his
identity with it.
He leaned forward, closing his eyes and pinching his lids together
between his thumbs and forefingers.
Mrs. Farley had heard him come. She could not keep away. When she
entered the room, however, she pretended to be surprised.
"I--oh, I didn't hear you! I came for a dust cloth. Winnie has gone out
in the Price's carriage to do some shopping." Mrs. Farley scattered her
words before her as a cuttlefish throws out its vaguely disguising
substance.
Mr. Farley lifted his head with a heavy, patient smile, but she would
not look at him.
"Well, well. I thought that dust cloth was here." She fumbled among the
chairs. She was very matter-of-fact and intent. She saw that he was
depressed and it made her uneasy.
Mr. Farley could see her profile: her lined, withered lips, her dry,
finely wrinkled skin which was a thin film of disguise over her melting
flesh. The expression of nervous good humor in her evasive eyes was like
a gauze scarf laid over a spectacle of horror.
The two people, afraid of their fear of each other, were like alien
creatures haltered with one chain.
"Can I help you?" Mr. Farley asked.
"No. No. Alice hasn't come home, has she?"
"As far as I know, she hasn't. Shall I send her to you when she comes?"
"No. That's all right! That's all right!"
Mrs. Farley hurried out. She went into the dining-room. A last streak of
sunshine filtered through the clouds and came over the back yard into
the room. There were some tumblers in a tray on the sideboard that
caught the specks of light that were like bubbles of fire in the
colorless glass. Each day the sun touched the same spots with the same
light. There was assurance and finality in the undeviating rays of the
tired sun. Mrs. Farley felt quiet among the chairs and tables. She saw
some lint on the ragged sun-washed carpet, and stooped to pick it off.
She craved intimacy with the still things her touch could dominate. They
enlarged her. And she was afraid of those who would speak some terrible
word of love or money to destroy their permanence.
When she went to the sideboard and opened the drawer in which the
tablecloths were kept, her furtive thoughts slipped between the linen,
and, as her hands moved over it, the cool glazed feel of the starched
fabric was a denial of change and heat.
In the living-room, Mr. Farley leaned back in his chair again, his eyes
half closed. In his low chair his gaze was on a level with the polished
top of the table, glazed silverish with the dimming light. The arms of
the imitation mahogany rocker were as bright and enigmatic as glass.
Some pictures on the wall were indecipherable beneath streaked
reflections.
An old painting of Lake Lucerne hung over the mantel shelf. The pigment
was faded and the canvas was seamed with fine, irregular cracks. When
Mr. Farley glanced upward at this picture he experienced a voluptuous
sense of futility. He stared at it a long time.
But the spell of inertia did not last. He became uneasy again. He was
afraid his wife might come back, so he walked across the hall to the
disorderly little room that was called his "study."
There were a desk, and a leather lounge with protruding springs, and, on
the walls, two or three old advertising calendars decorated with hunting
scenes or full-color pictures of setter dogs.
Mr. Farley sat down before the littered desk and began his letter, "Dear
Helen."
He wrote to her about his regard for her and their mutual sense of
responsibility toward their son, and he wanted to say something else.
But when he attempted to recall more intimate phrases it revived his
sense of sin. He felt embarrassed and gave it up.
* * * * *
It was seven o'clock in the evening. The sun had gone. The sky at the
zenith was pale, but along the horizon the foam-white clouds glowed with
pink. From the city light had receded like a tide and rows of housetops
on the length of the sky were like objects left there by a departing
sea. They were separate and waited.
As darkness gathered, it gathered first in the house fronts like an
added heaviness. Above the houses the sky floated--higher, paler. The
sky dilated and soared.
Then the shining pallor grew dim. The sky sent itself down in grayness
to the dark streets where the lamp lights floated in the dust as in
clouds of ash. The house fronts, flaked with light, disintegrated in
the general vagueness.
Horace Ridge was ready to depart. On his last night before sailing he
had sent for Alice to help him finish some work. She passed out of the
twilight into the tiled corridor of the building in which he lived. The
marble walls wavered in light. Lights, clustered above the wainscot,
stabbed her eyes. A sleepy hallboy in a tan uniform vacantly watched her
approach.
She ignored the elevators and walked up the one flight of stairs and
along the brown velvet carpet to the door she wanted. When she rang the
small bell under the brass plate she heard the tinkle in the depths of
her being, sharp, like a light moving under deep water. So keen was her
perception of his coming that she was not conscious of separate
incidents--footsteps, the sigh of the opening door. But in one act he
was there in the place where she had expected him.
He held a hand over his eyes that were guarded with a green shade.
"Miss Alice. I'm merciless these days. Must get something done while the
doing of it is in me." He smiled with his mouth, his eyes mysterious out
of sight.
"You're merciless to yourself. We all know that," Alice said.
He walked after her into the library. Without seeing him, she was aware
of the uncertainty of his tired steps. She was ashamed of her deep
consciousness of his hesitation, knowing that he tried to conceal his
half gestures from her.
He sat down rather heavily and she stood in the center of the book-lined
room, unpinning her hat.
"I would like to have taken you for a lark on my last night instead of
setting you to work. You'll be glad to forget about me." His mouth still
smiled and his big hand moved up to his eyes under the shade.
Alice did not answer. Then she said, "Are you sure you feel well enough
to work?" She had the brusque presumptuous manner which she knew he
tolerated.
"The old dog has a lot of fight in him yet. You mustn't draw too many
conclusions from appearances."
The big room with the high shelves was gloomy in candle light.
"These esthetic shadows will spoil your eyes. You'd better get that
student lamp down," he said.
Alice walked briskly to a stand in the corner and took down the light.
She carried it over to his table.
"You'd better move. It shines there." It hurt her to tell him what to
do.
"I'll sit with my back to it."
Alice pushed a heap of books aside and arranged the green cord
attachment over the crowded table.
Blindness. Better after all. He can't see me, she thought bitterly.
She sat down with her writing pad in her lap.
He rubbed his forehead wearily. His shoulders sagged, big beneath his
loose coat. There was passive strength in his consciousness of defeat.
She was aware of it.
The room closed them like a coffin. Their life was their own. It did not
flow in from the street.
Beyond the window the square was sprinkled with lights. The thick-leafed
trees were clouds of darkness, but here and there separate leaves up
against the lamps glistened like wet metal.
He sighed. "I'm trying to line up my vocabulary in battle order, Miss
Alice."
"I'm ready. Go ahead."
He did not begin at once. She watched his bowed head--thick,
gray-sprinkled brown hair. There was beard on his cheek.
Suddenly she had a horror of herself creeping upon his thoughts through
his weakness. She shuddered, shifting her book.
Dark. Flesh, aware of the world, slipping away. Flesh touched by the
world without.
"As regards the international polity of the----"
She interrupted. "Say that again, Mr. Ridge." He had dictated several
sentences and she had not heard him.
"Since the----" She began to write. The wind fluttered the paper on her
knee. Her hands with big knuckles moved decisively over the sheet.
* * * * *
"I'm wearing you out?"
"Bother! You're not!"
He liked her positiveness. "A half a paragraph or so and I will have
reached the end of my tether."
"Go ahead."
When he had finished he leaned back, turning himself so that he could
look at her, and she could tell by his mouth that he was happier.
"I've taxed your patience."
"Haven't any patience," Alice said, making a wry face. She wanted to
cry.
She stood up. "I'll have this all typed by tomorrow afternoon. When does
the boat sail?"
"Ten tomorrow night."
They were silent. He still smiled, his blunt fingers tapping the arm of
his chair, but the corners of his full lips sagged with fatigue under
the stiff edges of his mustache and he was pale.
Alice got her hat down from the shelf.
"You need some one to take care of you," she said, trying to sound
angry. She was afraid her words hurt him. Her heart beat very fast.
"Young Harrison is going along to keep me from walking overboard in an
absent moment."
They were quiet again. Alice could not make up her mind to go out. The
trees in the square seemed to have crowded closer against the open
windows. The leaves looked like tin in the auras of light. She stared
into the street that had grown still.
"Well--if I don't get down to the boat I'll send somebody." She held out
her hand.
He stood up. Being so big, he looked more helpless behind his shade. He
took her hand and held it in both his.
"God bless you, Miss Alice."
She could not speak.
He saw that she was disturbed. He was kind, a big stout man, smiling.
Her throat closed.
"Take a real rest," she ordered in a short, thick, over-casual voice.
Their hands dropped apart.
"I'll probably be forced to in spite of myself."
"Well, I'm glad of it." She turned quickly and went toward the door. He
followed her and stumbled a little. She tried not to look back at him.
"This has been awfully good of you," he said after her in his slow, kind
way.
She could not bear his slow kindness. She did not answer.
"Can't I get a taxicab for you?"
"Couldn't. Feel uncomfortable with such luxuries. You go to bed and
rest."
She glanced back once. He stood, huge in his fatigue, with his drooped,
gentle mouth, in an attitude as if he did not know what to do with his
hands.
"Good-bye."
She bit her lips. "Good-bye."
The door closed. She was in the corridor stupid with light. On the
stairs she met the hallboy, who stood aside. He had a vacant gaze as if
the empty brilliance of the hall had dizzied him.
When she passed into the still street she felt as though she slipped
into an inner darkness. She was two and the self that suffered, heavy
and dark, sank through an oblivious other and out of knowledge.
I cannot bear it!
She went through the park. There were people on the benches in the
darkness. She walked quickly past them into the bare-swept circles under
the lamps.
What shall I do? Lies. I think I'm going mad.
She went on. Her heels clicked on the deserted street. Against the
window of a house she passed a lamp with a red shade glowed softly. The
new moon over the trees was like a fragment of ice.
What does it come to? Sheep. Wag. Wag tail. Mistress Mary. Far away over
the hills. The street. Dark over the hills. Dark. Darkness is one. There
are no eyes in the dark.
Horace.
Walking, she pressed her knuckles against her lips and dug her teeth
into the flesh. Sweet to feel. Softly her agony flowed through the wound
of her teeth.
When she reached home she passed quickly through the dimly lit hallway
and so up the long stairs, escaping notice.
The hinges creaked as she opened the door of her dark room. She went in
quickly and closed it and rested against the lintel, panting, her head
thrown back.
Her mind was fire and ice. She must kill this agony.
A little light floated in from the street through the open window. She
could see her bureau with its white cover and the sparkle of toilet
instruments on it. She went there and picked up a pair of scissors,
plunging the points twice into her flesh with quick stabs.
Feeling numbness and relief, she stood stupidly watching the blood, dark
and colorless, gather on her forearm.
Mary had a little lamb. I'm mad. Washed in the blood of the lamb.
She sank to her knees, then relaxed on the floor in a half sitting
posture, her head thrown back against the bed, her hat awry, one hand
holding the ache of her bleeding wrist, the glow from the street lamp
bewildering her eyes.
* * * * *
Mr. Price, gruff and solemn, tried to hasten the departure. "Well,
Winifred, you're ready?" His smoky eyes were everywhere and on no one.
He waved the hand that held his hat.
Winnie had on a new cloak and a pretty little blue straw turban....
Laurie will be angry when he sees Mother has been buying me clothes.
"Bobby--Bobby, my darling!" She hugged him to her, trying to wring from
him some assurance that she would be with him when she was gone.
Allowing himself to be kissed, he stirred an instant and was calm. He
was water, broad and profound. Winnie felt herself sinking into his
passive depths. "Oh, Bobby!"
"You hurts my arm."
She drew away from him and felt part of her still there, lost in his
passive clearness.
"You won't forget Mamma? Mamma Farley will help you write me letters.
You know how you can print--nice printing with pictures? I'm going to
bring you something beautiful. Grandma Price and I are going to bring
you something--oh, lovely!"
"Yes, my dear. We'll have something nice for a good little boy who
doesn't forget us." Mrs. Price touched his hair with taut, wistful
gestures.
Winnie's cheeks were bright.
Mrs. Price had on a trim black traveling suit of handsome cloth and a
simple but distinguished hat, very precisely worn.
"Is Laurie upstairs, Mamma Farley?"
Mrs. Farley looked up, abstracted. She dangled in the general emotion
like a puppet suspended over a torrent, swayed but unmoved. "I think so,
dear." She tried not to see Mrs. Price, so like herself but lifted up by
social confidence.
"I'm going up to see him."
"All right, dear."
"Nine o'clock," Mr. Price said sternly, taking out his watch and looking
at it with an air of reprimand.
"Just a moment, Father."
Winnie ran up the long dingy stairs to the door of her room. It was open
and before she entered she saw Laurence standing in the confusion of
packing which she had left, and looking at a book.
When she stood beside him he glanced up carefully. His lips were drawn.
She thought he smiled at her as if she were a stranger.
"Off?"
She was breathing quickly, her eyes shining at him reproachfully through
her fluff of hair under the new hat.
The gas light to one side made his hair glossy and threw shadows in the
hollows of his cheeks.
"Aren't you going to the train, Laurie?"
"Don't you think the family will be happier if I am not there to spoil
the rapport of departure?" Smiling, he stared at her with his hard,
pained eyes. She had the feeling that he was a long way off. She felt
sorry for herself.
"Oh, Laurie, please have some pity for me! Don't be nasty tonight."
"It's pity for you that keeps me here, my dear girl."
She could not speak. Death. I may be pregnant. A sharp, small fear bit
her breast with its teeth. Because she was hurt inside she despised his
ignorance. She wanted to poison his calm with her fear, but the triumph
of injury was sweet to her. She held it close.
"You'll be glad now." She was trembling.
"Glad of what, dear girl?"
"That I'm gone."
"Winnie, please? Not tonight." He gazed straight at her. His smiling
patience was too bitter. Her pride could not forgive him. Tears of shame
and hate rose to her eyes.
"You don't love me any more. I know that."
He would not look at her. Turning over the leaves of the book, his small
hand shook. Its whiteness and delicacy irritated her.
"Oh, Laurie, I can't go away angry!" She put her hand on his sleeve. The
roughness and realness of his sleeve hurt her hand. She did not want it.
Without looking up, he reached an arm around her.
"Have you talked to the doctor, Winnie?" He could not look at her.
"Yes," she whispered, lying. When she lied she blamed him more.
"Are you sure you're all right, Winnie?" He forced out the words very
deliberately. They were like stones to his lips.
She hesitated an instant. Then she said, "Yes. Kiss me. Oh, Laurie, it's
so awful I--it's so awful I----"
He put the book down and faced her in her embrace. She thought he seemed
calm and satisfied as though the doctor had become proxy for his
conscience. Winnie's eyes, fiercely soft, stared into his and made him
feel furtive and depressed. He kissed her to keep from looking at her.
When their mouths were together his cruelty made her strong. She forgave
him. He was a dark thing close to her, smothering her with his breath.
His clothed body dissolved in her immediate recognition of his flesh,
and she had a sickish sensation as of life stirring in her. Shamelessly
kind and unmoved, he had believed this impossible thing.
She moved away from him in spite of herself and with a pang she felt how
his hand dropped away in relief that she did not want it. She would not
go away.
"You don't love me!"
"Please don't let us torture each other, Winnie. You are going away to
get well."
"Suppose I should die, Laurence."
"But you won't die." Again he drew her uncomfortably to him. His head
throbbed. He tried to give her what she wanted.
Her shuddering lips moved over his face and he drooped helplessly under
them like a beast in the rain. He tried to love her.
She hated him so that she could not bear to have him go away from her.
Death. She tried to keep that word in her. It was a child she had
conceived to which she refused birth. She wanted to carry death dead in
her.
"If anything terrible happens--if I have to be operated on!" Her words
stumbled.
"But nothing will happen. You're nervous, Winnie. You're all nervous and
sick. This stay in the country will make you over."
"And you'll be glad to see me well again?" She leaned back from him,
searching his set, kind face with her tearful eyes.
"Of course, my dear girl. Of course."
"Winnie!" Alice called.
"I'm coming!" Winnie gave him another swift little bitter kiss and
slipped from his arms. As she went out she glanced back, smiling and
pathetic. He hurt her and she wanted to remind him how pretty she was.
She was small and light with dread.
His being composed itself in darkness and peace, but his composure was
an ache, blank and broad.
* * * * *
Above the housetops huge masses of cloud, smutted like torrents of
gray-white snow, moved steadily, surf of a gigantic tide sweeping the
purplish-blue stillness of the far vacant sky. It was noonday.
Alice passed briskly up the steps and opened the dusty front door.
"Mamma?"
Mrs. Farley was in the dusk-shrouded living-room behind drawn shades.
She did not answer. When she heard Alice's heavy footsteps she shivered.
Alice came to the living-room door and looked in. Her mother squinted at
her bewilderedly, then glanced away.
"You still here, are you? I've been down and finished up the business
Mr. Ridge left me to do."
Mrs. Farley rose wearily, as if driven. Her knees were slack under her
trailing skirt. Her posture sagged. "I should have started the
children's lunch," she said.
"I'll start the children's lunch, but it is foolish for you to sit
moping here."
"Moping!" Mrs. Farley scoffed. Her throat shook. She gulped and her thin
neck showed a corded undulation along its length.
"Well, what if you did see that Papa had a telegram from Mrs. Wilson?
What of it? Is it anything new?"
Mrs. Farley's tight mouth puckered along the edges like fruit left too
long in the sun. She stared resentfully at Alice. "New?" Mrs. Farley
interrogated.
Alice took off her hat and whirled it in her hand. "I don't see why the
fact that she happens to be passing through town makes the situation
between you and Papa worse than it is all the time. You know the
relation between them. It's gone on for twelve years now. She probably
thinks her claim on him is just as good as yours."
For a moment the hard center of Mrs. Farley's vision dissolved in unshed
tears and she saw Alice far off as in a vision of the dying.
"Why don't you quit this thing if you don't like it?" Alice went on.
"You can come and live with me and leave Papa to do what he pleases."
Then Mrs. Farley's face went hard again with malice and fear, and her
brow flushed with a streak like a whiplash. Her fingers had short,
blunt, yellowish nails flecked with white. Her hands made impotent
gestures. She was like a sheep searching for a gate when she must leap
over a wall. "It's evident how little you understand your father," she
said defiantly.
Alice gave a disagreeable laugh. She felt herself building her mother's
world, sound like her own upon ramparts of pain.
"Your father has always felt that he had to make atonement for what he
did--that no matter what kind of a woman Mrs. Wilson was that she----"
Mrs. Farley could not go on.
"Well, he didn't have a child by her because he preferred you."
Mrs. Farley's whole face trembled with her sense of outrage and
impotence. Her eyes, squinting a little, were those of a creature who
takes no pride in its rage. "Whatever you say, I can't forget my duty to
your father. I wish you had never heard of this! You're a coarse, cold
woman, Alice."
Alice smiled, glad her mother had hurt her. "Yes, you've told me that
before."
They faced each other, Mrs. Farley trying to speak but unable. Alice saw
how ugly her mother was and was ashamed of seeing it. Mrs. Farley turned
her head a little and there were spiked wisps of iron-gray hair clinging
on the nape of her scrawny, freckled neck.
"Let me go out!" Mrs. Farley said, stumbling suddenly toward the door in
a blind gesture of protest and escape.
"I'm not keeping you," Alice said.
"Everything would be well enough if you weren't bent on persecuting me!"
Mrs. Farley called back.
Alice was very calm. "I'm not persecuting you. If you really prefer to
go on this way, tied like a millstone about Papa's neck, it is your own
affair, I suppose; though I can't help protesting when I see it."
Mrs. Farley was gone. Alice felt a kind of hysterical relief in her
mother's exit.
* * * * *
It was a cool, delicate morning. The curtains swung in the opened
windows before the cool, darkened room. The iron rails along the area
made light black embroideries of shadow among blobs and flecks of gold
on the basement front. Even the tap of hoofs in the street sounded as
though the horses trod in hesitation.
In Mrs. Farley's dining-room light shivered against the edges of knives
and forks laid on the clean cloth, and flew off in needle-fine sparks.
Laurence had gone, but Mr. Farley and Alice had just seated themselves
at table. Mr. Farley was more abstracted and uncomfortable than usual.
"Isn't your mother well, Alice?" he asked in a low voice. "She hasn't
sat down and last night she scarcely ate anything. I hate to see her
spend so much time in the kitchen."
"She saw the telegram you dropped yesterday morning," Alice said.
Mr. Farley flushed and fine lines came between his eyes, but before he
could say what hovered on his lips, Mrs. Farley came in and he was
silent.
Mrs. Farley's arms were limp with the weight of the tray she carried.
Her fingers clutched at the edges. There was something exasperating in
her manner that suggested the senseless tremor of frightened canaries'
wings. Her hands were unsteady and some of the contents of the coffee
urn splashed on her wrist.
Alice got up. "Give me that tray." She took it firmly. "Now you sit down
and eat."
"I--I've had something to eat," Mrs. Farley said weakly, at the same
time sitting down.
Mr. Farley glanced at her but looked away quickly. He could not bear to
see her fear which was like a fear of him. He cleared his throat.
"Aren't you feeling well, Mother?"
Alice kept a rigorous gaze full of cruel pity steadily upon her mother's
face.
"Why, yes--I----" She turned to Alice. "I have so much to do, Alice, I
can't----" As she assisted herself to her feet, her flabby grip fell
from the edge of the table. She swayed a little. "I left the oven on."
"You sit down." Alice tried to push her back.
"No, no! I must turn it off." She brushed by and left Alice looking
after her.
Mr. Farley tried to be elaborately unmindful of by-play and he pretended
not to see his wife's wearily bowed head and the palsied tremor of her
thin neck.
As she went out, her shoulders rounded, her knees loose, her head thrust
forward, her feet dragging the carpet, she left vividly the impression
of her very thin neck, taut and elongated, like the neck of a goose when
it attempts flight. She held her sharp elbows at right angles to her
sides with the same rigid anticipation of haste.
"Has--has----" Mr. Farley could not bear to confess to the actuality.
"Couldn't you let her rest for a week, Alice? You don't expect to get
another position at once. As long as you are at home it seems to me that
you and I could combine to keep the house going and let her off."
"She wouldn't do it. Pottering around consoles her more than anything
else."
There was silence. Mr. Farley gulped his coffee. His face remained
flushed and there were tears of discomfort in his eyes.
"_You_ know what's the matter with Mamma, Father!" Alice's subdued voice
sounded to him almost threatening.
Mr. Farley gazed at his daughter helplessly. "Why, no--I--no----" He
looked so much like a startled baby that Alice wanted to laugh.
"She knows Mrs. Wilson is in town and----"
Mr. Farley interrupted hurriedly. "But, my dear child, I--I----" He
moved his knife and fork nervously about.
Alice felt strong. Her frankness gave her the relief which the maniac
feels in his cruelty when he touches flesh and it responds to him with
sentience. "Don't think I don't understand your situation, Father. I do.
I'm simply trying to look at it from Mamma's standpoint."
He glanced up. Their eyes met. Alice had swung back on the two rear legs
of her chair, her coarse hand on the edge of the table holding her
steady. Her eyes were self-righteously excited, her mouth harsh with
determination.
To make him feel! She longed for that sympathetic quiver. Darkness.
Behind her thoughts, two sharp strokes from the scissors let out the
clotted honey of pain, too sweet for the veins.
"Mamma doesn't really love you any more than you love her, Papa."
Mr. Farley glanced nervously toward the kitchen door. His features
suddenly relaxed in the flaccidness of self-pity. His eyes shone dimly.
"I don't think you realize the true satisfaction there is in duty well
done, Alice," he said shakily. "Things may be----This is no place to--to
discuss details--but I would not knowingly hurt your mother for anything
on earth."
Alice watched him narrowly and saw him loving himself in his tears. "I
didn't suppose you'd have the courage to go out and commit murder--if
that's what you mean," she said sharply. Her chair bumped against the
floor and she stood up.
Mr. Farley was desperate. "There is more than one kind of perfectly
genuine affection." His voice was unsteady. He drew lines and cross
lines on the table cloth with his knife.
Alice laughed and tapped her foot on the floor. He was hurt by her
laughing, but he would not look at her. He felt that he had allowed his
parental advantage to escape him and he did not know how to reassert it.
Mrs. Farley, made uneasy by the murmur of monotonously subdued voices,
was afraid to stay away any longer. She came in very intent on the plate
of biscuits she carried, pretending that she considered nothing unusual
afoot.
"The atmosphere of this moral cellar has ruined mine and Laurie's life!"
Alice said angrily, as if driven to the words by the sight of her
mother's face.
Mr. Farley was bewildered and angry. Mrs. Farley slipped the plate of
biscuits to the table and sank weakly in a chair.
Mr. Farley rose. "I won't have you talk this way before your mother,
Alice." In the depths of him he was profoundly alarmed, but on the
surface he was sure of himself again.
Alice hated herself, but she stood at bay.
"I respect your mother," he said, "and you should do far more than
respect her."
"I want to respect her, but she doesn't respect herself."
Mrs. Farley wept helplessly in silence.
"I won't have you insult her, Alice."
"I'm not insulting her. I'm not the one who takes it for granted that
she is willing to go on forever and ever in this equivocal fashion. I've
done her the honor of thinking she might be glad to separate from you
and leave you free to live decently."
"I'll go away, Alice! I'll go away! My children don't love me!" Mrs.
Farley squinted her lids together and, throwing back her head, wrung her
hands abandonedly.
"Mother!" Mr. Farley laid a soothing hand on her mouse-gray hair, dry
and silky like fur.
She moved away from him, shaking her hands. Her lids relaxed smoothly
over her eyes and the tears coursed more easily through her worn lashes,
and fell upon the nose glasses dangling from the gold hook on her
breast. "You'll probably be glad I'm gone. Oh, my God, this is the
reward of my life!"
"Hush, Mother! Hush! You're talking nonsense. Nobody even dreams of you
going away. Why, it's preposterous."
"Alice says you want me to go!" she moaned.
"Alice doesn't know what she is talking about. I need you as much as you
need me."
"But Alice wants me to go. My children don't want me!" She opened eyes
that were blank with the abnormality of her passion. "You don't want
me!"
"Mother!"
She struggled to her feet and brushed past him. He began to follow her,
but halted half way to the door with an air of helpless indecision.
"I'm sorry, Papa," Alice said after a minute.
He could not answer. He put his hand to his head and walked away from
her. For a moment he stood by the window with his hands over his eyes.
At last he said, "It is cruel and useless to subject your mother to a
thing like this--not to mention that I don't deserve it, Alice."
"I know it, Papa, but I hate to have to keep looking at the thing. You
and Mamma are of no earthly use to each other, and it seems so stupid
for you to sacrifice yourself to a lie like this."
Mr. Farley hung his head and smoothed his broad brow with slow trembling
fingers. "Readjustments are expensive, Alice."
"I know they are, but you can't blame me for wanting to see things
right."
They were silent. Mr. Farley was uncomfortable. He did not know what was
expected of him. "You must try to comfort your mother," he said at last.
"She'll probably find some comfort for herself," Alice said bitterly.
"Well, I must go to the office. My first duty to her is there." Trying
not to hurry, Mr. Farley, his face averted, walked out.
His back, as he disappeared through the doorway, looked stiff and weary.
He seemed weak and humiliated like a big dog in pain.
* * * * *
At the noon hour Mrs. Farley came downstairs and shambled about the
house, forcing herself on Alice's sight but refusing to speak. As Mrs.
Farley's fingers fell into their wonted tasks the scene of the morning
became less real to her than the feel of cloth and the posture of
furniture. The habit of contentment crept back upon her. She wanted
nothing of others. What should they want of her?
Dryly she preserved her already half-mummied antagonism.
* * * * *
On the glass windows that stretched, twinkling with light, across the
broad front of the bakery and lunch room, the name was inscribed in a
half moon of raised white letters. Behind the glass were mounds of iced
cakes and piles of glossy yellow rolls resting in wooden trays.
A pink-faced German, with flat cheek bones, a stiff mustache, and narrow
good-natured eyes, stood in his undershirt and trousers draped with a
soiled apron, and laid out a new supply of cakes with alternate
chocolate and white so that they formed a geometric pattern. Behind him
on a rear wall a large clock marked six, the hands, on the stark white
dial, rigid as the limbs of the crucified.
Above him lights glowed through globes of clouded glass. Groups of wagon
drivers and workmen in gray jumpers sat at the tables and, leaning
forward with chests to the marble tops, slopped coffee from their
saucers and shoveled huge accretions of potatoes and meat into their
mouths in the attitudes of hunting animals.
Outside, in the dusk, light spread hazily about the lamps in the street.
Over the roofs stars quivered delicately like fiery flowers of pale
green on a shaken spray.
Old women crept along in the vague brightness, their backs bent, parcels
of half-wrapped bread and bits of bloody meat held preciously to their
shrunken breasts or clutched in the knots of their shawls. A policeman,
leaning against a post, twirled his club and stared smugly into the
bright vacant faces of two pearl-rouged girls in large black velvet
hats.
Mrs. Farley, very genteel in her shabbiness, shrank from the burly men
and the rough children who ran almost under her feet. But she felt
superior to them and the sight of them steadied her against life.
For years she had bought bread at the bakery. As she went in the smell
of baked bread floated against her face like a palpable assurance of
unchanging things. But the memory of the morning's scene crept over her
like a coldness which she seemed to feel in the roots of her hair. It
was pain to feel the warmth of life flowing away. Her coldness shuddered
miserably against the heat of the room.
"Some rolls, please. Fifteen cents' worth." Mrs. Farley's smile was like
the smile of the drowned, pale through water. Her voice was so modulated
that the friendly blonde woman with her childlike eyes had to lean from
behind the counter and ask again what was wanted.
Mrs. Farley waited for the rolls to be wrapped. The steam from the
shining coffee urns enveloped her.
Every day for a dozen years. The world motionless in an atmosphere which
held the gestures of the German baker and the big blonde woman with the
smiling face.
Mrs. Farley walked home slowly. The bag of bread dangled in her cramped
hand as she faced the chill wind blowing against her from the direction
of her home--chill wind of strangeness.
Mr. Farley and Alice were in the house. Alice minded the children. Mr.
Farley awaited his dinner.
To Mrs. Farley they were wild fish out of the sea caught in her glass.
They were in the house making confident motions there as fish swim at
their ease in an aquarium. They were terrible as the sea in a
looking-glass.
Mrs. Farley mounted the front steps. Alice and Mr. Farley were a pain
she would not admit. She shut them out. It should be night, and she
would remain in the night where they meant nothing.
As she walked through the hall to the kitchen she felt strong again with
the monotony of life. Beds, chairs, tables, walls rose strong about her.
She made herself still like the walls.
* * * * *
Mrs. Farley pushed the bedroom door back. She did not speak.
Alice could barely distinguish the form which agitated the darkness
with its quiet. The two women felt for each other through the gloom.
They were like water insects fumbling with antennæ.
"Mamma! Is that you?" Alice sat up straight in bed.
Mrs. Farley, her heart beating unevenly, felt the harsh stiffening of
Alice's outline against the white blot of the sheet.
Mrs. Farley tried to speak. She felt as though the darkness were binding
her lips with gray transparent folds of shadow tough as silk. "Yes."
"What's the matter?" Alice threw the sheet back and stood up on the
floor. Half seen, she upreared enormously like a wraith.
"Your father isn't home yet," Mrs. Farley said.
"Well, what of it?"
"I know where he is." Mrs. Farley's voice sounded cracked.
"Then you ought not to worry."
"He's with that woman." Mrs. Farley's words clacked like castanets in
trembling hands; then fell soundless.
Alice pitied her mother and grew hard. "Well, you knew he was going to
see her."
There was a silence. Then Mrs. Farley said, "I know I can't expect any
sympathy from you. My own child connives with her father to get rid of
me."
"I'm sorry things are like this, Mamma, but I won't be blamed for them.
If I were you I wouldn't allow myself to be placed in this kind of a
position."
"Oh, I know you! I know you!" Mrs. Farley's voice broke as with age and
vindictiveness. She turned and went out, stumbling over the edge of the
matting and catching the door lintel as she passed into the light.
Alice stood quietly a moment resisting the contagion of her mother's
panic. Then, conquering stubbornness, she followed.
Mrs. Farley was in the back of the hall leaning against the stair rail.
She was in her nightdress that fell, like hanging water, white through
the gloom. She was making a slow way toward the kitchen.
"What are you trying to do, Mamma?" Alice called. Her body, uncorseted,
was heavy. She walked quickly after her mother. She knew what her mother
was trying to do.
Mrs. Farley dallied a little, but she would not answer. Her hands were
hid, carrying something.
Alice came up behind. She caught her mother quickly from the back. "Give
me that pistol, do you hear me!"
"No, no! I won't!" The scrawny body bent forward and doubled itself
against Alice's reaching hand.
"Give it here." Alice was quiet and sure with excitement. Her big breast
heaved under her loose nightgown. Her hair was tumbled about and her
coarse face was red with effort.
"Let me! Then you and your father can do what you please!"
"Rubbish. Let it go, I say." Alice's fingers were on the gun. Its
hardness and coldness reassured her of she knew not what.
She wanted to hurt me, Alice thought. What other reason did she have for
coming to me about it?
"Oh, oh! You hurt my wrist!"
Alice clutched her mother's fingers and was cruel to them. The strong
fingers pressed and twisted, still stronger. "Give me that gun!"
It dropped with a dull clatter on the bare floor.
Mrs. Farley's power over others was her power to hurt herself. Now it
was gone. She was feeble.
"You try to get your father to leave me. You want to see me left here
without anything and you won't let me kill myself," she hiccoughed,
beginning to cry.
The gaslight on the wall was turned low. Alice reached for the screw and
sent the flame up so that a yellow flood swept the shadows away.
Mrs. Farley's tear-inflamed eyes squinted at the light. She huddled
against the wall. Her gray hair, undone, clung to her bare neck above
her open nightdress. Her eyes, lifted to Alice, were opaque with misery.
Below her nightdress her feet were bare. Her toes with bulbous joints
rested flaccid on the scrap of brown carpet at the head of the stair.
She turned away from Alice and began to fumble blindly for the rail.
"Where are you going?"
Mrs. Farley slid herself feebly along the rail and down the first step.
"I don't know! I don't know!" she wailed.
"Stop acting like that, Mamma. You know you can stand up."
"I can't! I can't! I don't care what becomes of me!"
Alice caught her mother in a grasp of repugnance and pulled her back.
"You've got to brace up. You don't care what I think of you or what you
do to me, but you have to have a little pride and a sense of
responsibility toward Bobby and May. You can't let them see a thing like
this. Is Laurence home yet?"
"No, he's not home. Why should I feel responsible for Bobby and May? You
think I'm not fit for them. You want to take them away from me."
"I'm not going to pamper you by arguing with you. If I seriously thought
that you wanted to end your life I should consider that interference was
none of my business, but----"
"And yet you expect me to live! None of your business! Oh, my God!"
"But as you have no real intention of killing yourself you have no right
to subject me to a scene like this. I want a little peace."
"A little peace! Oh, my God, a little peace!" Mrs. Farley shut her eyes
and let her head fall backward and forward limply as though there were
no vertebræ in her neck.
Alice shook her. "Stop it, Mamma."
Mrs. Farley rocked herself like a drunken woman. Finally, her eyes yet
closed, she shuddered and was still.
"Are you calm now?"
"Yes. I'm calm. Whatever I do makes no difference to you. Nothing I do
affects you. You're hard as nails."
"We won't talk about that. You can affect me, but because that is just
what you want to do I'm not going to let you."
"I want to do! She says I want to do!"
"I have to talk you into a state of common sense."
Still Mrs. Farley's head nodded as if with sleep and her eyes remained
shut. "Common sense. Yes, common sense," she repeated like a dream.
"Echoing me in that stupid way won't keep me from going on."
"Stupid? She calls it a stupid way. My God! My God! What agony!" Mrs.
Farley almost shrieked out "agony." Her knotted hands clutched her flat
breasts as if with hunger. Her voice was dully intense. Her wrinkled
lids twitched.
Why does she twitch her face?
Alice's lips curled almost like a snarl. "You'll find me giving away and
raving too if you don't watch out, Mamma. I can't stand too much of
this."
Mrs. Farley opened her eyes slowly, but she kept her gaze vague against
the solid antagonism of Alice's eyes. "I'm going back to my room now. I
can't sleep, but I won't burden you any longer with the sight of me. You
can tell your father I'm not going to trouble him any more. He can start
his proceedings for divorce. I don't know what the Prices will say--what
they will think. They probably imagined just as I did that the whole
thing was over twelve years ago when I went through so much humiliation
to save your father. It took the diabolical vileness of my own daughter
to draw her father and this woman together again after we had a happy
home and were all at peace."
"I didn't have a happy home. Papa hasn't a happy home."
"I know I'm vile. Guilty of all manner of vileness. It was vile of me to
slave and work as I've done and take all of the responsibility off
Laurence's hands and slave for Winnie and the children."
"I have nothing to do with Winnie and the children."
"I don't know what charge your father can bring. Then as soon as he gets
it he can rush off and marry that thing. To judge by the way she was
going when I saw her she must be middle-aged and fat by now, but your
father won't mind so long as she's not me. Then my daughter will be
freed of me. Winnie and Laurence can get somebody else to fetch and
carry and clean up for their children. As you say, I have no right here.
I ought not to be alive. But you can tell your father how it is and
he'll find a way to get rid of me."
Alice was still like a mountain. "That's all right, Mamma. I'll tell
Papa what you say--that you are willing for him to arrange for a
divorce. Is that all right?"
"That's it! That's it! Let him arrange it anyway he will and don't have
too much consideration for my feelings. Let him tell the judge that I've
worn out my good looks so I don't attract him any longer."
Alice had heard the door slam below stairs. She stared at her mother's
unconscious face and said nothing.
Mrs. Farley, dragging her feet exaggeratedly, moved off into her
bedroom.
Then Alice pattered quickly down the stairs and met her father in the
hall. He had heard voices and looked alarmed.
"Is anything the matter?" he asked, seeing her face angry and elated,
and that she wore only her nightgown.
"Yes. Come into the living-room," Alice said.
They walked in. Mr. Farley was a long time finding the light. He felt
choked by the guilty beating of his heart. When he had made the room
bright he turned to Alice almost in fear. She looked so ugly, flushed,
with her hair in confusion, and her angry eyes.
"I've been talking to Mamma," Alice said breathlessly.
Mr. Farley's face was drawn. He blinked at the light, gaining time. "I
asked you not to talk to your mother," he said uncomfortably.
"I know you did, but she talked to me and I couldn't keep my mouth shut.
She began by saying she knew where you had gone. She says she's willing
to agree to a divorce."
Mr. Farley did not know what to say. The situation had been forced upon
him unaware and he did not know what to do with it. "This is nonsense,
Alice. Your mother knows that." He held his brow with his hand.
"Why is it nonsense? You've given up most of your life to her, but I
don't see why you should keep on doing it!"
Mr. Farley could not understand what was happening, nor how it was he
felt borne forward on an invisible current that flowed from Alice. He
walked up and down the room. "You mustn't start these things, Alice."
Alice watched him contemptuously. "Don't blame me for the nightmare of
lies and hypocrisy that exists between you and Mamma."
Mr. Farley kept rubbing his head. Then he walked stealthily to the hall
door and closed it. His eyes, as he lifted them to Alice's face, had the
blind awareness of a sheep's. He seemed to know all and to perceive
nothing. "You mustn't misunderstand me, Alice. It is true that a
satisfying companionship cannot exist between me and your mother, but
she and I have made compromises for each other that have made it
possible for us to live, and I can't think lightly of hurting her."
They were silent. Mr. Farley shaded his eyes with an unsteady hand.
"You did go to see Mrs. Wilson tonight, didn't you?" Alice asked after a
minute.
"Yes. She is passing through town. I hadn't seen her for three years."
"My God! You don't need to apologize for it!"
They were quiet again.
"So you don't want to accept anything from Mamma even if she is willing
to give?"
"You don't understand, Alice. That very fact makes me even more
responsible for my own resolutions." His voice shook.
"Look here, Papa, I always imagined you had sacrificed yourself outright
to Mamma's weakness and dependency, and now when you have a chance to
get away from her and live with somebody who is younger whom you seem to
care for, you actually seem to be dodging the issue just as though you
were contented with your situation."
"You must remember that Mrs. Wilson must be considered--that what I
selfishly want----" He stopped. Patiently through all these years he had
strained forward like an animal pulling a loaded cart and, now the cart
was being taken from him, he was disconcerted to find himself still
straining forward pulling at nothingness. Bewildered, he tried to save
his ideal of himself. "You must remember we have never really considered
a divorce possible."
"Well, Papa, of course I can't decide your life for you. If you don't
feel that you owe it to your son----" She turned resolutely.
He felt her scorn. He hated her, but he could not bear to have her go.
He covered his face.
She walked out.
He could hear her run up the stairs, her bare feet making a soft sound.
He wanted to call her back, but he did not know what to say. It was
necessary to him to think well of himself.
* * * * *
Mrs. Farley went about her housework with renewed determination. She
would speak to no one but Laurence. At the table she served them all,
but if there was any general talk she did not hear it.
Mr. Farley grew into the habit of giving her furtive looks. He forgot to
eat. He talked mostly to Bobby and May.
The weather was quite mild, but Mrs. Farley took to wearing an old red
cashmere shawl and pulling it tight about her throat. When her husband
or her daughter sought her averted gaze she wrapped herself tighter and
shivered ostentatiously.
Bobby was too young to note changes which did not directly affect his
interest, but May, with her shining eyes of a little stuffed goat,
ruminated in her own way on what was making her grandmother eccentric.
The little girl's pale lips parted loosely in wonder, as, ignoring her
food, she watched her grandmother's oblivious face bent over the coffee.
Mrs. Farley was conscious of this all-absorbing gaze which had in it
neither approval nor condemnation. She felt at a disadvantage before the
child, and, when May asked for anything, found it difficult not to push
her away with expressions of violence.
Laurence saw that something was wrong again between his parents. Alice
with her damned interference, he told himself.
When his mother spoke to him his voice was gentle. But he could not
endure other people's pain. He kept away from her as much as possible.
In this web of silence between her father and mother Alice felt herself
caught by threads of iron. She could not move.
One morning when she and her mother were alone Alice said, "I told Papa
that you were willing for him to arrange a divorce."
Mrs. Farley's face, in its deliberated vagueness, quivered like a gray
jelly, but she kept her eyes away and her body did not quicken to more
expressive life.
"Yes. I supposed you did. I suppose by now the two of you have fixed it
up."
"You'll have to talk sensibly about it or he can't do it."
Mrs. Farley gave Alice one weak terrible look.
Alice could not bear the look. To get away from it and from a desire to
do something violent she walked into the living-room.
* * * * *
The children were playing in the back yard when Bobby fell down and hurt
himself. May sat flat on the grass before the sandpile, but when she saw
that Bobby was hurt she struggled to her feet on her thin legs like a
weak young colt, and went to help him.
"You're full of dirt." She squatted before him brushing his clothes, her
stiff petticoats tilted up in front, her buttocks, in small soiled
drawers, swinging close to the earth.
Just then Aunt Alice came out of the kitchen door and stood on the step.
In the sunshine her bare hair showed a burnt brown. The wind whipped her
heavy skirts against her stout thighs. She saw Bobby crying with his
mouth open and his eyes shut, trying to squeeze the tears from between
his lids.
"Hush that, Bobby! Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
Bobby cried louder. When she came down the path her undeviating approach
made him mad with passion. "Dow 'way!" he shouted. When Aunt Alice
reached him he pounded against her stomach with his fists.
She clasped his plump wrists folded in fat and held them while he
struggled until the dirt and sweat with which they were grimed rolled up
under her fingers. At this moment she loved him more intensely because
she could hurt him.
"Dow 'way!" he kept shouting. His hair was tumbled about his face. He
was red with passion. When he had freed himself he ran toward the house.
"I hate Aunt Alice! I hate Aunt Alice! I wants my dranma!" he called
back.
With sudden confidence, May sidled toward her aunt. "We've been makin'
mud pies and coverin' 'em with sand like icin'," she said.
Alice looked down. Pale. May's hair shining like a dead sun. Alice all
at once hated May's hair because it was pale and bright. "It's too
chilly to make mud pies. For Heaven's sake don't put your dirty hands on
me, May!" With a violent push Alice put the little girl aside and walked
briskly up the path.
A few surprised tears trickled from the resigned and shining misery of
May's eyes. She watched her aunt move toward the house.
Conscious of May's pale hair floating after her in unsubstantial
brightness, Alice rushed up the stairs to her room. She pulled down the
shades, longing for the heaviness of dark. The room in shadow was a
pool on which Alice's unhappiness, dreamy and intermittent, floated like
a swamp light.
Outside the softness of the room, where solitude allowed her to relax,
the soul of her family surrounded her, rearing its ramparts of towers
beaten in the iron of years.
Where will my light go to? Ugly old maid. Emancipation of women. Why did
I not tell him that I loved him?
Darkness floated from her words.
* * * * *
The morning was gray. The windows along the street were fathomlessly
blank. Across the asphalt wet wheel tracks stretched glistening and
sinuous like black rubber snakes.
Mr. Farley stepped into the street and closed the front door stealthily
behind him. Too agitated to endure breakfast with his family, he
remembered the cheap restaurant around the corner, a place lined with
grotesque mirrors and white and narrow like the corridor of a ship.
When he went in he found the floor, covered with brick-colored linoleum,
smeared and darkened with grease, and the cloth on the table where he
seated himself was stained with pink-brown splashes of wine. The waiter
came up, a soft heavy man whose feet pressed the floor as soundlessly as
those of a panther. Mr. Farley took the list of dishes from the
waiter's hand, fat like the hand of a corpse. The waiter's sad little
eyes were set in a broad white face stubbled with bluish beard. When he
moved away he was like a ghost. His large hips swayed, woman-wise. His
soiled apron floated over a generous belly as profound as sleep.
Flies buzzed against the walls and fell back upon the half-washed table
coverings and the cracked cruets opaque from many fillings.
Mr. Farley stirred gray crystals of sugar into the gold-edged blackness
of his coffee, then clouded it with the pale blue-auraed milk that
brimmed the squat white pitcher.
He tried to think things out, but he had nurtured his self-esteem on the
verity of abnegation and it was hard for him to accept as a blessing the
thing which it had given him so much comfort to do without.
Safe in the conviction that there would be no end to his sacrifice, he
had allowed full abandon to his mystical and repressed nature. Helen
Wilson had become glorified and beyond attainment. He was in terror of
seeing her too clearly. When her neat figure, a little stout, emerged
distinctly from the chaos of his reflections, he deliberately let down a
curtain of confusion across the mirror of his consciousness.
* * * * *
After dinner Mr. Farley went into the living-room and seated himself in
an armchair. He had scarcely exchanged a word with any one during the
meal. He bent his head in his hands. The light from the shaded lamp
glistened obliquely along the thin parting of his hair and his baldish
scalp.
Mrs. Farley made pretexts to come near him. In the afternoon she had
been mending a nightdress of May's and left it on top of the magazine
rack, and now she came to get it.
She was a long time putting her sewing things together. Mr. Farley saw
her, but he did not stir.
Alice had followed her mother into the room and halted abruptly behind
her.
Mrs. Farley did not see Alice. Mr. Farley started a little, glanced at
his daughter, and looked away again.
Alice, watching the two people, felt the atmosphere of the room weighted
with inertias. These people forced her back into herself, into her own
dumbness. She wanted to shatter her silence with their cries.
"Turn around here and look at Papa, Mamma," Alice said suddenly.
Mrs. Farley would not look. "Your father knows what I think," she said
after a minute. She glanced at Alice.
Mrs. Farley wore her pince-nez and the irridescence of glass added
remoteness to her hostile uneasy eyes. The gold clasp drawing the flesh
together on her nose gave a twist of severity to her dry obscure face.
Her hate seemed to flow uncertainly through the crystals and flash
defiance in the gold center. The little gold clasp of the pince-nez was
like the claw of impotence buried in its own flesh.
Alice tapped the floor with her foot. "Do you know what Mamma thinks,
Papa? I'm sure I don't."
Mr. Farley stared under his fingers at the floor where the dim pattern
of the carpet grew more dim. "I know what you have told me."
"I can't stand the atmosphere here. If you and she don't find some way
to talk it out you'll drive Laurence and me insane."
Mr. Farley sighed deeply. "I'm ready and willing to discuss anything. I
have felt lately that I have become an intruder in your mother's eyes,
but I hardly know what has happened, Alice."
Mrs. Farley glanced at the bright baldish spot in her husband's scalp.
It seemed to her the center of the unreality in which she had existed of
late, and she was as if held together by the grip of the glasses on her
nose, the one tense and sure sensation which contradicted her feeling of
dispersion. Then she looked at Alice.
"I can't leave May and Bobby upstairs alone even to talk things over."
She pulled the red shawl about her neck and started for the door. "It
seems to me you and your father have settled my life for me, anyway,"
she called back.
Mr. Farley did not move for a moment after her exit. Then he stood up,
and, making a hopeless gesture with his hands, walked out in silence,
shaking his head.
His thoughts were eddying in a current which sucked down his
self-esteem. He wanted to give back her happiness to his wife that it
might make him beautiful in his own eyes. He wanted the cool peace of
purchased misery.
Alice, left alone, was hot and futile.
I shall go out of me in dark blood.
She walked to the window. The street was empty. Over the blue-bright
housetops, the quiet sky and the cold moon. She leaned her forehead
against the glass and looked into the street.
She felt suddenly tired, endless, capable of giving birth to endless
selves. She was tired. She could not die. She was like a mother bearing
herself forever like endless children.