FLESH OF HER FLESH
Two persons had waited for Ewing. Mrs. Lowndes was one of them, sitting
forward in her chair and braced on its arms, though her head dropped now
and then in forgetfulness. The other was a big, shambling old man, a
dark man gone gray, his face needing the kindly, yellowish-brown eyes to
save it from sternness. His thickets of eyebrows were joined in a
half-humorous scowl of perplexity.
"I had to send for you, Fred. You and Herbert Sydenham are the only two
left who were close to me then, and Herbert Sydenham--well--" she
laughed a laugh of exquisitely humorous pain--"Herbert would have
forgotten me any time these twenty years for a striking color scheme, a
streak of unpaintable moonshine. It was you, Fred, or no one, and it
hurt me so! All last night I was on the rocks being ground to bits. I
knew you would say the wise thing."
The big man had risen to walk the floor, his thick shoulders heaving as
if to throw off invisible burdens, his head shaking doggedly.
"Yes, Kitty, yes--" His voice was big but low, the voice of his whole
being bent to soothe. He came to her side and reached down to take one
of the frail, blue-veined hands between his own two, huge and hairy.
They closed upon hers with a kind of awkward effectiveness.
"Of course you had to come to me, but I'm afraid all I can do is to
brace you."
"I wanted you to be with me. I couldn't have borne it alone, Fred--his
being here--Kitty's child."
"And you say he doesn't know?"
"I'm certain of it, and Eleanor Laithe doesn't know; but those are
little things when I know."
"We'll see, Kitty--we'll see. Perhaps I can help. But I suspect it's one
of those matters where you must be your own guide. You'll act as you
feel; not as I think--not even as you think."
"Ellen is going to the door," she whispered, almost fiercely, bracing
herself in the chair.
As the maid held back the curtain at the doorway, Ewing advanced
uncertainly, an embarrassed smile on his lips, the look of one who would
be agreeable if he knew how. He saw Mrs. Lowndes stiffly fixed in her
chair, her white-crowned head thrown back, and he would have taken her
hand but she diverted him from this.
"Mr. Ewing, my old friend, Dr. Birley."
Her voice was no longer halting and shallow, as it had been the moment
before when her barriers were down. Ewing swiftly confirmed his
impression of the previous day: this was a lady of immeasurable pride, a
one-time beauty who perhaps treasured the authority her charms had once
conferred upon her, wielding it with little old-fashioned graces. She
seemed to him at the moment to be an almost excessively mannered person,
interesting, but unapproachable.
He stopped on his way to her chair and shook hands with the big man, who
had come forward. This person was quite as formidable as the curious old
lady, but he was eminently kind of look.
"Sit here, Mr. Ewing." He indicated a chair.
"I asked you to come and see me--" The old lady had begun in low, even
tones, but paused, and Ewing was again struck by this seeming of
agitation which had made him remark her the day before.
"Mrs. Lowndes was interested to hear of your life in the West," said the
big man easily, "and she was good enough to ask me to meet you also. We
were both interested in knowing of you from the Bartells."
"There is so much we do not understand here in New York," put in Mrs.
Lowndes, rather vaguely, Ewing thought. He looked from one to the other.
The lady puzzled him, but the big man drew him from his embarrassment,
helping him to an ease which he could hardly have achieved with his
hostess alone.
Without knowing quite how he began he was presently talking.
Unconsciously he directed his speech to the man, who kept kind eyes on
him and led him by questions when he paused. He was aware that the woman
listened and that her eyes searched his face, but he divined, without
meeting them, that they were more curious than kind, and several times,
as she moved in her chair, he seemed to feel sharp little points of
hostility radiating toward him.
But the big man drew him more and more from the consciousness of her
presence, so that he all but forgot her. It seemed entirely natural to
him that he should be telling this friendly inquirer of his early life,
the first memories of his father and mother, and of the queer, shifting
home they had known. As he told of the death of his mother--both
listeners had seemed strangely alert for that--he was startled by a
sound from the lady--a catching of breath and a gasp of pain. He turned
quickly, but observed only a stiffly courteous gesture bidding him
continue.
He stopped in confusion, feeling that a strange quiet had come upon the
room. The questions from the big man had ceased, and the woman drooped
in her chair until he could no longer distinguish her outline through
the deepening dusk. Nor was there any sound when his own voice ceased.
Neither figure stirred. He was oppressed by the awkwardness of it.
"I should have pulled up," he said, with an uneasy laugh. "I forgot I
wasn't on a lone road."
There was still no sign from the woman, shrunk far into her chair, but
the doctor rose at his speech with a half-muttered, "We're obliged to
you." Ewing rose at the same time, with an impulse to break some strain
that he felt himself sharing. The doctor reached out in the dusk and
turned on an electric light that hung above the table, looking quickly
at Mrs. Lowndes as he did so, for there had come from her a murmur of
protest at the light. Ewing also looked at her from where he stood on
the hearth rug. The lighting of the room had intensified some electrical
current that pulsed from each to each. The woman returned Ewing's gaze
with the absorption of one moved beyond all arts of convention. Her eyes
glistened, ominous of tears, and her small, lean chin trembled as her
lips parted. Ewing turned from her distress, appealing by look to the
big man, who watched them both, but his gaze was at once drawn back to
the woman. She rose from her chair with weak effort and faced him with
something like wild impulse rather than intention, a look, a waiting
poise, that shook him with fear of the unknown.
Slowly she brought her hands to a wringing clasp at her breast. Her
eyes were frankly wet now as she leaned and peered at him, holding him
immovable. Twice her lips parted with dry little gasps, her hands
working as if to ring the words from her choked throat.
"My boy!" It was so low that without the look of her lips as they shaped
the words he could not have been sure.
"My boy--oh, my boy!" This time they were sharper though no louder, and
Ewing's nerves tingled an alarm that ran to the roots of his hair. She
came a half step toward him, and he felt that he was drawing her,
divined that in another moment she would be throwing herself upon him in
surrender to some emotional torrent that raged within her. He was
powerless under this sudden, strange assault. Dumbly he watched her,
closer now by another step, the clasped hands, fighting blindly toward
him, with little retreats to her breast, her dry lips again shaping the
words, "My boy--my boy!"
And then, even as his own arms were half extended with an instinctive
saving movement--for the woman seemed about to totter--the stillness was
broken by quick steps along the hall, the rattle of curtain rings along
a rod, and the voice of the maid:
"Mr. Teevan, ma'am!"
There had been an instinctive wrenching asunder of the three at the
first sound of steps. Yet traces of the stress under which they had
labored were still evident to Randall Teevan as he entered. Mrs. Lowndes
had turned to search among the magazines on the table--not before the
little man had swept her with a comprehending eye flash.
Ewing, pleasantly delivered from a situation that had grown irksome, a
situation rising from what he considered the too-ready sympathy of an
emotional old woman, allowed his relief full play in the heartiness of
his response to Teevan's greeting. The doctor had squared his shoulders
to another pacing of the room.
Teevan, missing no item of the drama he had interrupted, chose for
himself the role of blind unconsciousness. So well did he enact this
that Mrs. Lowndes was convinced, and the belief aided her to recover a
proper equanimity. The doctor surveyed the new actor with a skeptic
keenness not so readily to be overcome.
One glance at Ewing's perturbed but mystified face assured Teevan that
the climax of exposure had not been reached. He bustled amiably about
the room, kissing the hand of Mrs. Lowndes, shaking the hand of the
doctor, straightening a picture on the wall, and, at last, lighting a
cigarette as he faced the room from his favorite post on the hearth rug.
"I ran in for a moment to see how my lady prospered," with a graceful
wave of the expiring match toward Mrs. Lowndes, "and all is well. I find
her holding court to youth and age, to wit and wisdom, all of which she
combines graciously in her own person. She is looking weary, perhaps,
but rejoiced. Gentlemen, you have served her well. Doubtless our young
friend here, Mr.--Ah, yes, Mr. Ewing--has talked enchantingly. I've had
an art evening with him myself." He bestowed a glance of benevolent
approval on Ewing, who smiled in return.
"By the way, my lady, I've sent you a brace of birds that lived their
little span of woods life between last spring and yesterday. Ah, but
they came to a fluent richness of body, brown and plump and tender as
first love, and tanged with autumn spices--so blessed be the piece that
brought them low. Doctor, you'd dissect them for their nerve centers or
the intricacies of their bone structure, but I find them admirable in
all aspects. They rejoice my scientific soul even as they lure my carnal
man. Isn't it Duceps, the falconer, friend of old Izaak, who speaks of
birds that both feed and refresh man--'feed him with their choice
bodies, and refresh him with their heavenly voices'? There was a normal
person, now--not one-sided."
The atmosphere cleared of its cloud wrack as his speech flowed, marked
by pointings of the small, crisp mustache and gracious little pauses of
appeal to each of the listeners in turn.
From edible songsters he progressed to the cooking of these, and thence
to speech on the art of cooking at large. There were pessimists, it
seemed, to bemoan the day when a _maitre d'hotel_ would die rather than
outlive the dishonor of his master's table, as when Vatel stabbed
himself because the fish for one of Conde's dinners failed to arrive on
time--proving, as Savarin observed, that the fanaticism of honor could
exist in the kitchen as well as in the camp. But in the opinion of the
speaker these were pinchbeck heroics. Vatel would have been the truer
Frenchman, certainly the better _chef_, if, instead of wreaking a messy
violence on himself in his master's kitchen, he had contrived an
_entree_ to replace the missing fish. And we should remember, too, that
the French, good cooks as they are, have but elaborated an art for the
germinal principals of which they are indebted to Italian genius. Italy
first saw the revival of cookery as she first saw the revival of
learning. The land of Savarin lay in darkness until light was brought by
those incomparable artists in the train of Catharine de Medicis. One
might recall how Montaigne was captivated in the land of Horace by the
weighty manner of the _chef_ of Cardinal Caraffa in discoursing upon the
occultisms of his art. The Italians even then held the thing hardly
second to theology.
The little man here permitted a pause in which he discarded his
cigarette and readjusted the carnation in his lapel, with a sniff at its
spiciness. Then he turned graciously to Ewing.
"But I must be off--time races so in this little nook! If you're
stepping on, Mr.--Ah, yes--Ewing, to be sure--if you're leaving, I shall
be glad to join you as far as the avenue. My dutiful love, lady, and to
you, doctor, that virtue which superstition ascribes to your pellets.
The word 'health' could never have been coined by the healthy, could it?
I dislike to use the word baldly."
Ewing rose, glad of the exit thus provided. It was kind of people to
concern themselves about his affairs, but he wished they could be less
peculiar. He bowed to Mrs. Lowndes and shook hands with the doctor. He,
at least, was understandable.
When they had gone the old lady faced her friend with a calmness that
surprised him.
"Fred, what sorry, what terrible things can make us young again! I feel
now as I felt that other night--just at this hour so many years
ago--when I knew she'd gone--knew she'd gone."
"He's Kitty's boy." The big man fronted her as if for a feat of
persuasion.
"Don't, Fred! I've just weathered that point. I was weak, but
Randall--Randall saved me. He's dreadful, Fred, unnatural,
impossible--oh, terribly impossible!" She faced him dauntlessly, her
cheeks glowing with faint spots of color.
"I liked him, Kitty. He seems----"
"You're a physician, accustomed to monstrosities. He's something we
don't speak of, my friend. And see--you _must_ see--what he would suffer
if he knew."