PART I

LABYRINTH

[Illustration]

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS

ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA

MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

LABYRINTH

BY

HELEN R. HULL

AUTHOR OF "QUEST," ETC.

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1923

_All rights reserved_

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Copyright, 1923,

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1923.

Press of

J.J. Little & Ives Company

New York, U.S.A.

To

MABEL L. ROBINSON

LABYRINTH

In the old story of the labyrinth at Crete, the Minotaur dwelling

there devoured in his day innumerable youths and maidens. He was slain

finally by the hero Theseus. The story goes that Theseus escaped both

monster and death in the blind alleys of the labyrinth only because

Ariadne was wise enough to furnish egress by means of her slender

silken thread.

There is a modern story of a labyrinth, differing from the old tale in

that it has as yet no termination, no hero who has slain the Minotaur,

no thread to guide those who enter its confusion of passages out

to any clear safety beyond its winding darkness. This modern story

differs from the old legend in other ways. The monster lurking in

this labyrinth seems to many who hear the tale merely a phantom. His

bellowings are soft and gentle, he writhes in so sentimental a fashion

that he can scarcely be taken as a monster, and since he leaves his

victims with their bones unbroken and their flesh unscarred, who is to

say that he has devoured them? They themselves may deny their fate.

And in that lies a final likeness to the old story. Until Theseus and

Ariadne had between them destroyed the Minotaur, people had thought

him an inevitable pest, and had looked upon the destruction he wrought

as legitimate. Perhaps some of the youth were tragic about their fate,

but after all, a monster and a labyrinth possess dignity and provoke

indifference merely by their continued existence.

Ariadne alone might not have slain the monster. She might have traveled

through the passageways, her silken thread between her fingers, and

perished herself without some aid from Theseus.

Here is the modern story of the labyrinth.

CONTENTS

PART I

PAGE

An Idyll--From the Inside 3

PART II

Both Ends of the Candle 87

PART III

Blind Alleys 147

PART IV

Encounter 213

PART V

Impasse 265

PART I

AN IDYLL--FROM THE INSIDE

I

"Tell Letty, Muvver. Tell Letty."

"Again? Oh, Letty!" Catherine opened her eyes. Letty, on her stomach,

was pointing at a black ant slipping along a grass blade.

"'Nother ant. Tell Letty."

"Don't squirm off the rug, or the ant will crawl up your rompers and

take a nip." Catherine looked up through the motionless leaves of the

birch trees under which she had spread the rug. "Once there was a busy

ant," she began, "and he went out for a walk to find a grain of sand to

build his house. His brother went out for a walk, too----" Her thoughts

drifted through the story: how close the sky looks, as if the heat had

changed its shape, and it rested there just above the tree---- "The

busy ant found a grain of sand and ran back to his hill to lay it on

his house." The haze seems thicker; the forest fires must be worse, no

rain forever----

"Uh-h," Letty grunted, and held up her small brown hand, the ant a

black smear on her palm.

"Why, Letty!" Catherine pulled herself up on one elbow. "You squashed

him!"

"Bad ant. Nip Letty."

Catherine reached for Letty's fist just as a pink tongue touched it.

"Going to eat him, are you? Little anteater." She brushed the ant away

and rolled her daughter over into her arm. "You might wait until you

are nipped."

Letty chuckled and lay quietly for a minute, while Catherine looked at

her. Brown legs and arms, yellow rompers, yellow hair with sun streaks

of palest gold, blue eyes squinted in mirth, a round and sturdy chin.

Catherine closed her eyes again. Out from the woods behind them came

with the lengthening shadows the odor of sun-warmed firs and dried

needles. Quiet--release from heat--from thought.

Suddenly Letty squirmed, pounded her heels vigorously against her

mother's knee, rolled over, and began her own method of standing up.

Her process consisted of a slow elevation of her rear, until she had

made a rounded pyramid of herself. She stood thus, looking gravely

around, her hands flat on the rug, her sandaled feet wide apart.

"Hurry up, anteater," jeered Catherine. "You'll have vertigo."

But Letty took her time. Finally erect, she started off across the

meadow.

"Here, you!" Catherine sat up. "Where you going?"

"Get Daddy." Letty's voice, surprisingly deep, bounced behind her.

"Wait for me." Catherine stretched to her feet, reluctantly.

Letty would not have waited, except that she stumbled into an ant hill

hidden in the long grass, and went down plump on her stomach. So she

lay there calmly, turning her head turtle-wise to watch her mother.

* * * * *

Catherine had borne three children without adding a touch of the matron

to her slender, long body. In knickers and green smock, her smooth

brown hair dragging its heavy coil low down her slim neck, she looked

young and strong and like the birch tree under which she stood. There

was even the same suggestion of quiet which a breath might dispel, of

poise which might at a moment tremble into agitation. The suggestion

lay in her long gray eyes, with eagerness half veiled by thin lids and

dark lashes, or perhaps in the long, straight lips, too firmly closed.

A shout came up the path between the alders, and Letty scrambled to her

feet.

"Daddy!" she shrieked, and headed down the path, Catherine loping

easily after her.

There they were, Charles and the two older children, Spencer carrying a

string of flounders, Marian with the fish lines hugged under her arm,

and Charles between them, each of his hands caught in one of theirs.

They stopped as Letty pelted toward them.

"Fishy! Sweet fishy!" Letty reached for the string. Spencer drew it

sternly away, and Letty reached again, patting the flat cold flounder

on the end.

"Letty, you'll get all dirty and fish smelly." Spencer disapproved.

"Sweet fishy--" Letty's howl broke off as her father swung her up to

his shoulder.

"Fine supper we got, Mother," said Charles, grinning.

"And I caught two," cried Spencer, "and Marian caught one----"

"It was bigger'n yours," said Marian, sadly, "if it was just one."

"Well, but Marian hollered so when a fish picked at her line and so she

scared him off."

Marian peered up under her shock of dark bobbed hair, and finding a

twinkle in Catherine's eyes, giggled.

"I did holler," she said. "I like to holler, and fish haven't any ears

and couldn't hear me----"

"This being the ninth time this discussion has been carried on," said

Charles, "I move we change the subject. Anything will do----"

Spencer sighed. The procession moved up the lane, Father at the head,

with Letty making loud "Glumph! Glumphs!" as his rubber boots talked,

Spencer next, trying to space his smaller boots just in his father's

footsteps, and Marian with Catherine at the rear.

"Who's going to clean those fish?" Catherine wrinkled her nose.

"Well, we caught them. Division of labor, eh, Spencer?"

"The male has the sport, and the female the disgusting task of removing

the vitals, I suppose."

"Amelia won't," announced Marian. "She said she couldn't clean fish, it

turned her stomach."

"I wouldn't keep a maid that wouldn't clean fish." Charles dropped

Letty on the broad granite step of the farmhouse, and settled beside

her. "Who'll get me some shoes?" He hauled at his red rubber boot, and

the clam mud flew off in a shower.

Letty grabbed again at the string of fish as Spencer stood incautiously

near her.

"Take them into the sink, Spen," said Catherine. "Marian, can you find

Daddy's sneakers? You'll all need a scrub, I'll say."

She looked at them a moment. Marian, dark; irregular small features,

tanned to an olive brown; slim as witch grass. Spencer, stocky, with

fair cropped head and long gray eyes like her own. Charles--he looked

heavier, and certainly well; the sun had left a white streak under the

brim of his battered hat and behind his spectacles, but the rest of his

face was fiery.

"Cold cream for you, old man," she said. "You aren't used to our Maine

sun and sea burn."

"I think I'll be a captain," said Spencer, seriously, turning from his

opening of the door. "And fight. Like father." He gazed admiringly at

the old service hat on the step.

Catherine's mouth shut grimly and her lids drooped over her eyes.

"Plan some other career, my son. Your father didn't fight, anyway. Did

he say he did?"

"Now, Catherine, I just told them about the camp at Brest."

Catherine looked at her husband, a long, quiet glance. Then she

followed Spencer into the kitchen.

"Oh, 'Melia!" The heat from the stove rushed at her. "You built a fire

to-night!"

"Yes, I did." Amelia, a small, wiry, faded Maine woman, turned from the

table. "That oil stove's acting queer, and anyways, it don't seem as if

you could fry fish on it."

"We might eat them raw, then, instead of sweltering." Catherine pushed

her sleeves above her elbows, and reached for a knife.

"Now that's a real pretty ketch, ain't it?" Amelia nodded at Spencer,

who watched while the flounders were slipped from the cord into the

sink.

Catherine cleaned the fish. She left Amelia to fry them while she set

the table. The heat from the kitchen crept into the long, low dining

room. Then Catherine drew Letty, protesting shrilly, into the bedroom,

where she undressed and bathed her. When she had slipped the nightie

over the small yellow head, she kissed her. "Now you find Daddy, and

I'll have Amelia bring your milk out to the porch."

She called Marian, who came on a run, peeling her jumper over her head.

"Can I put on my white sailor suit to show Daddy, Muvver?" She dragged

it from the clothes-press. "Oooh! That's cold water!" She wriggled

under Catherine's swift fingers.

"There, little eel." Catherine knotted the blue tie. "Run along.

Where's Spencer?"

"He's washing hisself, I think." Marian smoothed up her blue sock with

a little preening motion, and vanished.

"Mis' Hammond!" came Amelia's thin call, and Catherine went back to the

kitchen.

Letty was in bed on the porch, her smeary white duck sitting on

the pillow beside her, her deep little voice running on in an

unintelligible story of the day.

"Supper ready, Catherine?" Father stood in the doorway of the dining

room, Marian and Spencer at his heels. "We fishermen are starved. Oh,

you aren't dressed yet."

"I'm as dressed as I shall be." Catherine pushed her hair back from a

moist forehead. "Let's eat."

"Well, we like to see you dressed up like a lady once a day, don't we?"

Charles grinned at her as he pulled up his chair.

Catherine felt her hands twitch in her lap. "Steady," she warned

herself. "He's just joking. I've been busy--I should have dressed this

afternoon----"

"Some flounder!" Charles bit into the golden brown fish. "What you been

doing all the time, Catherine, while we went provender hunting?"

"Thinking," said Catherine slowly. "That is, I thought in between

Letty's demands for more story."

"What did you think about, Mother?" Spencer's face lighted with quick

curiosity.

"Some about you, Spencer, and some about Marian and Letty, and some

about Daddy, and mostly about--me." Catherine was serving the salad.

She had deft, slim hands with long fingers, and her movements were slow

and beautifully exact.

"What about us?" asked Marian.

"I have to think some more, first." Catherine looked up at Charles. "A

lot more."

II

The house was a gray mass in the evening, with one pale yellow window

where the kitchen lamp shone. Catherine lay motionless in the wicker

lounge on the low front veranda. Amelia had gone home. Spencer and

Marian were asleep. Charles had gone to the village store for tobacco.

Down below the house the smoke and heat mist veiled the transparency of

the sea. So still was the night that Catherine heard the faint "mrrr"

of wings of a huge gray moth that flew against her cheek and then away.

"Queer," she thought. "If the house were empty, it would have many

sounds, rustles and squeaks and stirrings. But because children sleep

there, it is quiet. As if the old ghosts and spirits stood on tiptoe,

peeking at the intruders."

She stretched lazily, and relaxed again. The loudest sound in the night

was her own soft breathing. Then, faintly, the gravel in the path

slipped. Charles was coming back.

Catherine dropped her feet over the edge of the couch and clasped her

arms about her knees. When he comes, she thought, I will tell him. If I

go on thinking in the dark, I'll fly to bits.

She could see him, darker than the bushes, moving toward her. Then she

could smell his pipe.

"Hello!" she called softly, and he crossed the grass to the steps.

"Say, what a night! And what a place!" He slapped his hat beside him,

and sat down at Catherine's feet, backed against the pillar. "It's been

fierce in town to-day, I'll bet. You're lucky to be able to stay here."

He puffed, and the smoke moved in a cloud about the indistinct outline

of his face. "Wish I could!"

"When are you going?"

"To-morrow night." Charles sounded aggrieved. "I wrote you I had just

the week-end."

"I hoped you might manage a little longer----"

"Can't manage that conference on Monday without being there."

"What conference is that?" Catherine swung one knee over the other; as

she watched the face there in the dark, she could feel its expression,

although the features were so vague.

"The committee on psychological work in the schools. You remember?

Planning it all through the East. It's a big thing."

"Oh, that new committee." Catherine was apathetic.

"That woman I spoke of, Stella Partridge, is mighty keen. She's working

out an organization scheme that beats any plan I've seen. I tell you

what, old girl, it's great to see the world wake up and swing around

to asking for what you want to give it!" Charles cuffed at her foot.

"Remember that first year down here? With Spencer a baby, and buying

this old house a tremendous undertaking, and me writing a book that I

didn't dare hope would sell? Things are different now, aren't they?"

"They are different." Catherine's voice hardened subtly. "I helped with

that book, didn't I?"

"Jove! I should say you did. All that typing, and correcting, and then

the proof reading."

"And now----" Catherine hesitated.

"Well, now my work has broadened out so much, and there are the three

children. I can afford to hire the typing done now, eh what?"

"Yes."

"What's the matter with you, Catherine? You've had a kind of chip about

you somewhere ever since I came this time. I can't help it if I can't

spend all my time playing in the country with you and the children,

can I? After all, I have to see to my work, and it's increasingly

demanding."

"I haven't any chip on my shoulder, Charles?" Catherine caught her

breath. "I do want to talk to you."

"Fire ahead." Charles tapped out the ashes from his pipe and reached up

for her hand. "What's eating you?"

"Oh, Charles!" Catherine's slender fingers shut inside his warm

palm. "Help me out! You ought to understand." Her laugh shivered off

abruptly. "You know I'm proud of you, just puffed up. Do you know I'm

jealous, too? Jealous as--as nettles!"

"Huh? Jealous? What about? Come down here, where I can hug you."

"No. I don't want to be loved. I want to talk. I'm not jealous about

your love. I guess you love me, when you think of it----"

"Now, Cathy, you aren't turning into a foolish woman."

"I'm turning into something awful! That's why I've got to do something.

It's your work, I'm jealous of."

"Why, my work doesn't touch my feeling about you."

"That's not what I mean. I mean I'm proud of you, every one is, and you

aren't proud of me. No one is. No one could be. I'm----"

"Why, Cathy! I am! You're a wonder with the children. And the way

you've stood back of me. What are you talking about?"

"I don't want to get emotional. I want to make you see what I've been

thinking about. All the nights this summer while I've sat here at the

end of the day. I've tried to think--my mind is coated with fat, my

thoughts creak. Charles"--her voice trembled--"can you imagine yourself

in my place, all summer, or all last year, or the year before? Planning

meals or clothes--instead of conferences? Telling stories to Letty.

Holding yourself down on the level of children, to meet them, or answer

them, or understand them, until you scarcely have a grown-up thought?

Before Letty was born, and the year after, of course I wasn't very

well. That makes a difference. But now I am. What am I going to do?

Could you stand it?"

"But, Catherine, a man----"

"If you tell me a man is different, I'll stop talking!" Catherine cried

out.

"I was going to make a scientific statement." Charles stopped, the

tolerant good nature of his voice touching Catherine like salt in a

cut finger. "To the effect," he went on, "that usually a man's ego is

stronger, and a woman's maternal instinct drowns her ego, so that she

can live in a situation which would be intolerable to a man."

"Well, then, I'm egoistic to the root." Catherine jerked her hand away

from his grasp. "At any rate, the situation is intolerable."

"Poor old girl!" Charles patted her knee. "The summer has been dull,

hasn't it?"

"It's not just that. Do you know, I was almost happier while you were

in France and I was working--than I am now!"

"Didn't care if I did get hit by a shell, eh? Didn't miss me at all?"

"I did, and you know it." Catherine was silent, her eyes straining

toward him in the darkness.

"That was part of the war excitement, wasn't it?"

"No. But something happened in me when you told me you were going. I

had been living just in you, you and the two children. I thought that

was all I ever wanted. And I thought you felt toward me the same way.

Then--you could throw it over--because you wanted something else."

"Catherine, we've had that out dozens of times. You know it was a

chance for the experience of a lifetime, psychological work in those

hospitals. And then--well, I had to get in it."

"I know. I didn't say a word, did I? But I went to work and I liked it.

Then you came back----"

"Well?" His word hung tenderly between them.

"Yes." Catherine sighed. "Like falling in love again, wasn't it? Only

deeper. And we wanted Letty." Her voice quavered again. "That's it!

I love you so much. But you don't sit down in your love--and devour

it--and let it devour you. It isn't right, Charles, help me! I"--she

laughed faintly--"I'm like your shell-shocked soldiers. You couldn't

really cure them until peace came. Then they weren't shell-shocked any

more. I'm shell-shocked too, and I can't cure myself, and I see no

armistice. I'm growing worse. I know why women have hysterics and all

sorts of silly diseases. I'll have 'em too in a day or so!"

"Funny, isn't it, when I'd like nothing better than a chance to loaf

here with the kids. But you'll get back to town soon and see people,

theaters, club----"

"And hear about the whooping cough the Thomases had--and--oh, damn!"

Catherine was crying suddenly, broken, stifled sobs.

Charles pulled her down into his arms, holding her firmly against his

chest.

"There, old girl! Stop it! What do you want?"

Catherine pushed herself away from him, her hands braced against him.

"I won't be silly." She flung her hand across her eyes. "I'm sorry. But

I've tried to figure it out, and I just drop into a great black gulf,

and drown!"

"What are you figuring on?" Charles let his fingers travel slowly along

the curve of her cheek until they shut softly about her throat.

Catherine held herself sternly away from the comfort of touch.

"I can't endure it, day after day, the same things. Petty manual jobs.

And I'm older every day. And soon the children will be grown up, and

I'll be flat on the dump heap."

"In a few more years, Cathy, I'll have more money. Now you know we

can't afford more servants, I'm sorry."

"I don't want more from you!" Catherine cried out. "I want to do

something myself!"

"You know how much you do." Charles scoffed at her, but she caught the

hint of scratched pride in his voice. "In the middle-class family the

wife is the largest economic factor."

"Charles, if I work out a scheme which puts no more burden on

you"--Catherine's breath quickened--"would you mind my going back

to work? I've figured it out. How much I'd have to earn to fill my

place----"

"You mean--take a job?"

"Yes."

Charles reached for his pipe.

"What would you do about the children?" He cleared his throat. "They

seem to need a mother."

"Well, they need a father, too, but not to be a door-mat."

"Everything I think of saying, Catherine, sounds awfully mid-Victorian."

"I know what it all is! You needn't think I don't. But I know the

answer to it all, too, so you needn't bother saying it."

"I suppose I better consider myself lucky you aren't expecting me to

stay home and take care of Letty. You aren't, are you?"

Catherine laughed. She knew Charles wanted to laugh; he was tired of

this serious talk.

"You won't mind, then?" she added, tensely. "You see, if you aren't

willing, and interested, I can't do it."

"Try it. Go ahead. I'll bet you'll get sick of it soon enough. After

all, you women forget the nuisance of being tied to appointments, rain

or shine, toothache or stomachache----"

"Ah-h"--Catherine relaxed in his arms, one hand moving up around his

neck. "It has seemed so awful, so serious, thinking it out alone. You

are an old dear!"

"All right. Have it your own way." Charles struck his match and held

it above the pipe bowl. The light showed his eyes a little amused,

a little tender, a little skeptical. It flared out, leaving dancing

triangles of orange in the darkness. Catherine shivered. Was he just

humoring her, like a child? Not really caring? But she shut her eyes

upon the mocking flecks of light and slipped off to the step below

him, her head comfortably against his arm.

She was tired, as if she had cut through ropes which had held her erect

and taut. She could feel the slight movement of muscles in the arm

under her cheek, as Charles sucked away at his pipe. The soft darkness

seemed to move up close and sweet about them, with faint rustles in the

grass at her feet. Queer that just loving couldn't be enough, when it

had such sweetness. Her thoughts drifted off in a warm, tranquil flood

of emotion; her self was gone, washed out in this nearness, this quiet.

Charles stirred, and unconsciously she waited for a sign from him out

of the perfect, enclosed moment.

He spoke.

"I want you to meet Miss Partridge when you come back to town. Great

head she's got. We're using her plan of organization in the small

towns."

Catherine sat very still. After an instant she lifted her head from his

shoulder and yawned audibly.

"I'm sleepy. The day has been so warm," she said, and rose. She kicked

against something metallic and stooped to pick up Letty's red pail and

shovel, as she passed into the house.

III

"Dark o' the moon! Dark o' the moon! Dark--Mother, see what I found!"

Spencer broke his slow chant with a squeal, and dangled above his head

the great purple starfish. Sure-footed, like a lithe brown sea animal,

he darted over the slippery golden seaweed toward Catherine, who looked

up from the shallow green pool over which she had been stooping.

"Lemme see too!" Marian's dark head rose from behind a rock and she

stumbled after her brother. Plump! she was down in the treacherous

kelp, her serious face scarcely disconcerted. Marian always slipped on

the seaweed.

"Isn't he 'normous? He's the 'normousest yet." Spencer laid the star on

the rock, bending over to straighten one of the curling arms.

"I found one almost as big," declared Marian, "only pink. And pink's a

nicer color. Isn't it, Muvver?"

"If you like it." Catherine took Spencer's sea-chilled fingers in hers

and drew them down to the under side of the ledge over the pool. "Feel

that?"

"What is it?" Spencer's gray eyes darkened with excitement.

"Lemme feel too!" Marian sat down on the seaweed and slid along to the

ledge. "Where?"

Catherine guided her fingers. How like sea things those cold little

hands felt! "What does it feel like?"

"Kinda soft and kinda hard and----Oh, it's got a mouth!" Marian

squirmed away. "Tell us, Muvver! What is it?"

"Can you guess, Spen?"

"May I look, Mother? I think it's--snail eggs."

Catherine laughed.

"Lean over and look. I'll hold you." She seized his belt, while he

craned his neck over the bit of rock.

"Purple, too!" He came back, flushed. "I know!"

"Lemme see!" Marian plunged downward, her legs waving. "It's full of

holes. What is it?"

"Sponges," said Spencer, importantly.

"Sponges is brown and bigger," cried Marian.

"These are alive and not the same kind as your bath sponge."

Catherine straightened her back and looked out over the sea. Opal,

immobile, so clear that the flat pink ledges beyond the lowest tide

mark were like blocks of pigment in the water. Something strange in

this dark of the moon tide, dragging the water away from hidden places,

uncovering secret pools. Once every summer Catherine rowed across to

the small rocky point that marked the entrance to the cove, to see what

the tide disclosed. There was a thrill about the hour when the water

seemed to hang motionless, below the denuded rocks. Spencer felt it;

Catherine had touched the sensitive vibration of his fingers as he

searched. Marian found the expedition interesting, like clam digging!

Catherine remembered the year the fog had come in as the tide swung

back, suddenly terrifyingly thick and gray about them, so that she had

wondered whether they ever would find their own mooring; she could see

the ghostly shore, with unfamiliar rocks looming darkly out of the

grayness, as she rowed slowly around the cove, trying to keep the shore

line as guide. Charles had come out to meet them; his "Hullo!" had been

a whisper first, moving through the mist and seeming to recede. Then

he had come alongside them, the fog drops thick on his worried face.

Spencer had liked that, too, although Marian had crouched on her bow

seat, shivering.

No fog to-day. The horizon line was pale and clear. She should go back

for Letty. They had left her behind them on a sandy stretch of beach,

with a pile of whitened sea-urchin shells.

"Mother!" Spencer repeated his summons. "What is dark o' the moon?"

Catherine explained vaguely as they scrambled up the rounded, slippery

rocks to the patch of coarse grass at the top of the small point. Where

was Letty? She had been visible from there. Catherine began to run,

down to the muddy flats that separated the point from the mainland.

Only a few minutes since she had last seen her head, like a bit of

bright seaweed. The water was so far out, surely---- Panic nipped at

her heels as she flew. "Letty! Let-ty!" There was the pile of shells.

"Letty!" A spasm of fear choked her breathing. Then a call, deep and

contented.

"Letty here." Around the clump of beach peas and driftwood-- The yellow

head nodded out of a mud hole left by a clam digger on the beach.

"Letty swim."

Catherine picked up her daughter.

"Letty, darling! You little imp----" The gray mud dripped from rompers

and sandals.

"Oh, she's all wet." Marian puffed up. "And dirty!"

"Now how are we going to get you home without a cold, young woman!"

Catherine stood her on the beach, and sighed. Letty, her fingers full

of the soft mud, looked up with bright, unremorseful eyes.

"My sweater's in the dory, Mother." Spencer frowned at his sister. "You

haven't any sense, Letty."

Letty's rompers served as a bath towel, and the sweater made a cocoon.

She sat beside Marian, while Catherine and Spencer rowed the old dory

across the half mile of quiet water. The children chattered about their

discoveries, and Catherine listened while her thoughts moved quickly

beneath the surface of the talk. Fear like that--it's terrific,

unreasoning, overwhelming. How would you bear it if anything happened!

You have to be all eyes, and be with them every instant. How can you

plan, thinking of anything else? And yet, things happen to children, of

any mothers----

"Dark o' the moon--pulls the ole water--away from the earth----"

Spencer chanted as he rowed. "Dark o' the moon----"

"What makes you say that all the time, Spencer?" demanded Marian.

"I like to say it. Pulls the ole water--away from the earth----"

"Not so deep, Spencer. You drag your oar. See--" Catherine pulled the

blades smoothly along, just beneath the surface.

"I know. I meant to." Spencer was intent on his oars again.

IV

The mail bag hung on the post. Catherine drew out its contents. A

letter from Charles. The paper. Her fingers gripped over an envelope.

From the Bureau, in answer to hers. A piece of fate, in that square

white thing. She thrust it into her pocket. Later, when the children

were asleep. She could think then.

Now the air was full of the children. Letty's deep squeals of mirth,

a strange noise from Spencer, meant to be whinnying, as he pranced up

the path dragging Letty's cart, protests from Marian, "You are silly, I

think!" Would Marian always be so serious? And Spencer--he was always

exhausting himself by the very exuberance of his fancy. Catherine

followed them slowly. Suddenly the sounds broke off for an instant of

surprised silence; Catherine lifted her head. The children were out

of sight around the bend, and she could not see the house yet. Other

voices, and a shriek from Letty. She hurried past the alder growth.

There was a car by the side door, and people. Marian flew toward her.

"Muvver! Mr. Bill and Dr. Henrietta! They've come to see us!"

"Good gracious! What can I feed them?" thought Catherine. Then, as she

came nearer and saw them, she thought, "I'm getting to be the meanest

kind of domestic animal."

Dr. Henrietta Gilbert, fair, plump, serene, immaculately tailored,

looked up from her seat on the step, one arm around Letty, who was

gleaming brown and sleek from the carelessly draped red sweater.

Spencer hovered at her shoulder, his face lighted with pleasure.

"Hello, Catherine!" she held up one hand.

William Gilbert stood behind them, his dark, tired face smiling a

little, his long, lean body sagging lazily. Catherine reached for his

hand.

"Well, you two!" she cried. "How'd you find this place?"

"Charles gave us minute directions." Dr. Henrietta rose neatly. "He

wouldn't come. He's too important for trips. What's happened to Letty?

She seems to be clothed for a prize fight."

"Letty swim!" shouted Letty proudly.

"You drove from New York?" Catherine lifted Letty into her arms, and

enveloped her in the sweater. "I didn't know you could get away."

"Labor Day," said Bill. He was gazing at the children, his eyes half

shut behind his thick glasses.

"If you can't put us up, Catherine, we'll hunt for a boarding house.

But we wanted to see you."

"Of course I can. Do you think I'd let you escape, when I'm starving

for human beings?"

"With all of these?" Bill nodded at the group.

"They are animals, not human beings, aren't you, Marian?" Dr. Henrietta

laughed at Marian's distressed face. "Your woman in the kitchen"--she

dropped her voice mysteriously--"thought we were bandits and didn't ask

us in."

* * * * *

Amelia was pleased to meet them, when Catherine ushered them properly

into the house.

"Don't that beat all!" she said, loudly, as they followed Spencer to

the guest room. "I thought they was peddlars. Drove all the ways from

New York! Don't that beat all!" She made flurried rushes about the

kitchen, pulling open the cupboard doors. "Now don't you fuss, Mis'

Hammond. If baked beans is good enough I can make out a meal, I guess.

She's a doctor, eh?"

After a fleet half hour Catherine had Letty bathed, fed, and tucked

into her cot. She had slipped out of her knickerbockers and smock into

a soft green dress. No time to brush her hair; she adjusted a pin in

the heavy brown knot, and glanced at her reflection. Letty's voice rose

in deep inarticulate demand from the porch. Catherine stepped to the

door. Bill stood outside.

"She wants you to say good night to Ducky Wobbles." Catherine smiled

at him; she had, at times, a lovely smile, unreserved in its warm

friendliness. She was fond of Bill; his dark silence piqued her, but

she felt that it was a silence of steady, quiet wisdom, which couldn't

break itself up into tiny words.

"Can't I say good night to Letty instead?"

"No! Nice Ducky!" Letty wobbled her duck at him. "Goo'ni' to my Ducky!"

"Well, then, good night to Ducky and to his Letty."

Letty dropped back into her pillow, content.

"Now you go to sleep, old lady." Catherine closed the door, and stopped

for a moment to supervise Marian's preparations.

Spencer had filled the wood basket with shining pink-white birch logs.

Catherine drew out the crane with the kettle and laid a fire on the

andirons in the huge old fireplace. Dr. Henrietta came out, dangling

her eyeglasses on a long black ribbon over her sturdy white finger.

"This is a charming old place, Catherine. You all look well, too. A

summer in the country certainly sets the children up."

Catherine glanced at her, as the flame crept around the logs.

"You ought to try it, if you want to know what it does to you--" she

paused. "Moss in every cranny of your brain--" Bill was coming in.

"After supper I'll tell you!"

* * * * *

Supper was over. Spencer had piloted Bill and the car safely into the

barn, running back to tell Catherine, "Moth-er! Mr. Bill thinks his car

scared all the old cow ghosts in the stalls." When he and Marian were

in bed, Catherine came back to the living room, the square envelope

from the Bureau in her hand.

"It's queer you two should come to-night," she said. "I need you to

talk to."

Bill had settled in the old fiddle-back walnut chair, the smoke from

his pipe turning his lined face into a dim gargoyle. Dr. Henrietta was

fitting a cigarette into her long amber holder.

"Charles hasn't been here much this summer, has he?" she asked.

"Only occasional week-ends." Catherine sat down on the footstool on the

hearth. The light shone through the loosened brown hair about her face

and turned her throat to pale ivory. "He was here a week ago."

"Your sister? Has she been here?"

"No. She decided to spend her vacation in the mountains with that

friend of hers. Nobody's been here! I haven't seen anyone since last

May, except for flying shots at Charles. If I begin to spout a Mother

Goose rhyme at you, you might understand why."

"Well, you haven't the mossy look I connect with mothers," said

Henrietta, as she smoked in quick little spurts. "Have a cigarette?"

She tossed her silver case into Catherine's lap.

"Sworn off." Catherine ran her finger over the monogram. "Amelia would

know I was a fallen woman--haven't lighted one since--oh, since Charles

came back from France."

"Didn't he care for those home fires?" Bill took his pipe out of his

teeth, drawled his question, and went on with his inspection of the

flames.

Catherine laughed.

"Tell me what you two have been doing since I saw you."

Henrietta retrieved her case and extracted a second cigarette.

"Same things. Babies, clinics, babies. Bill's had a bridge over in

Jersey. The _Journal's_ taken a series of articles I did on that gland

work last year. Public school on the East Side is going to let me run

sort of a laboratory clinic on malnutrition. Mother instinct down there

feeds its infants on cabbage, fried cakes, and boiled tea."

"You're a wonder, Henry." Catherine sighed. "Putting over what you

want."

"It's only these last few years, you know, that I've had any

recognition."

"You're a wonder, just the same. Isn't she, Bill?"

"Um." Bill's grunt gave complete assent.

Catherine looked steadily at her friend. Even in the soft firelight Dr.

Henrietta Gilbert retained her smooth, competent neatness. A smoothness

like porcelain, thought Catherine. Porcelain with warmth in it, she

added hastily to herself, as if she had made an unfair accusation.

Firm, kindly lips; contented, straightforward blue eyes; plump,

ungraceful body; Dr. Henrietta had a compact, assured personality,

matter of fact, intelligent, enduring. Catherine wondered: do I give,

as she looks at me, as complete an impression of me? I feel hidden

away. Then she thought, quickly, of the grim days when Spencer lay

so piteously still except when he struggled for breath, when he had

so nearly died--pneumonia--and Henrietta had seemed to hold herself

between the child and death itself, calm, untroubled. She was a wonder!

"You couldn't have done it, could you," she said suddenly, "if you

had had children?" Then she stopped, aghast at her heedlessness. She

had never said that when Bill was there to hear her. But Henrietta's

response was cheerful and prompt.

"Certainly not. That's why we haven't any."

Catherine glanced shyly toward Bill. His eyes, inscrutable as ever, did

not lift from the fire.

"That's"--Catherine hesitated--"that's what I want to talk about."

"What?" Henrietta was on her guard.

"Oh, I don't mean you. I mean me?" She balanced the letter on her knee

and pointed at it. "That letter. I haven't opened it, but it's an omen."

"Don't be mysterious," Henrietta jibed at her.

"I want to go to work. I wrote to the Bureau, where I had that job

while Charles was in France. This is their answer."

Bill leaned forward to tap his pipe out on the fire tongs. Catherine

felt his eyes on her face.

"Catherine! Bully for you!" Henrietta clapped her hand on Catherine's

shoulder. "Have you told Charles? Can you manage it?"

"I told him." Catherine drank eagerly of the bluff encouragement in

Henrietta's voice. "He calls it my 'unsatisfied trend.' But he wouldn't

object, of course."

"I thought you didn't care much for that work. Statistics, wasn't it?"

Bill put his question quietly.

"Part of it I didn't." Catherine admitted that reluctantly. "But a new

investigation is being started, on teaching. I am interested in that. I

taught, you know, before I married, and I think that is as important as

anything in the world."

"Read the letter, woman!" Henrietta shook Catherine's shoulder.

Catherine ran her finger under the flap and unfolded the square page.

As she bent near the firelight, a log rolled off the burning pile,

sending a yellow flame high into the chimney, touching into relief the

wistful, tremulous lines of her mouth.

"They want me." Her voice was hushed, as she looked up at Henrietta.

"At once. Dr. Roberts says he had been looking for someone. He thought

I was unavailable."

A shrill, frightened cry darted into the room, sharp as a flame.

Catherine leaped to her feet.

"Spencer. He has nightmares." She went hastily out to the sleeping

porch.

He was moaning in his sleep, one hand brushing frantically over his

blanket. Catherine's hand closed over his. "There, Spencer," she said,

softly, "it's all right, dear." He did not wake, but the moaning

dropped into regular, quiet breathing, and his hand relaxed warmly in

hers. She stood a moment, listening. Then she stole to the other two

beds, bending over each. Letty's breathing was so soft that her heart

stood still an instant as she listened. At the door of the porch she

clasped her hands over her breast.

"Am I wicked?" she thought. "When I have them--to care about--" A

passion of tenderness for them shook her; she felt as if the three

of them lay at the very core of her being, and she enclosed them,

crouching above them, fiercely maternal.

Slowly she went back to the living room. She heard Bill's low voice,

and then Henrietta's,

"Catherine can do it. She has brains and strength----"

Her entrance broke off the sentence.

"I'll light a lamp," she said briefly. "This firelight's too

sentimental. I want hard common sense."

"Here, let me." Bill flicked a match with his thumb nail, and Catherine

fitted the heavy orange globe down over the lamp.

She seated herself in the straight chair near the desk.

"Well," said Henrietta, "I don't see any more clearly than I did in the

dark. If you have the nerve to try this, Catherine, go ahead. I'm all

for you."

"You think, professionally, that it won't harm the children?"

"You can hire some woman, can't you, to take your place as slave? I

suppose you still can look at them occasionally."

"Yes. I suppose"--Catherine twisted her fingers together--"I suppose I

am as conceited as most mothers, wondering whether they can get along

eight hours a day without me."

"You aren't happy, are you?" Henrietta flung at her, abruptly. "You

have the blues, black as ink. You have to hang on to yourself about

trifles. You----"

"Oh, yes, yes!" Catherine's laugh shrilled a little. "Don't go on with

my disgraceful disposition. I admit it. But don't women have to put up

with that?"

"My Lord, no. No longer than they are willing to. Most of them find

it easier to lie down. You've got too much brains to be sentimental,

Catherine Hammond."

"What do you think, Bill?" Catherine appealed to him suddenly. She felt

him, in his motionless silence, probing, inspecting, and never saying

what he saw.

"It is for you to decide," he answered.

"You know you can't get advice out of Bill! It's a wonder he ever can

serve on an engineering commission." Henrietta laughed at him, in

friendly, appreciative amusement. "He has to offer technical advice

there. He won't give any other kind."

"You won't consider my specifications?" Catherine was a trifle piteous,

under her light tone. "Even if I need--well, it is rebuilding, isn't

it?" She wondered why his opinion seemed so necessary. She had

Henrietta's, and Henrietta was a woman. But she wanted to reach across,

to pull at those passive, restrained hands, to beg him to speak.

"I really think that you have to decide yourself." He paused. "You

realize, probably, that it will be like handling a double job. Charles

would find it difficult to take over a new share of your present job.

Most men would."

"I don't want him to. I couldn't bear to do the slightest thing to

interfere with him. His career is just starting--and brilliantly. It

wouldn't be right to bother him."

"Why not?" Henrietta sat up, hostility bristling in her manner. "Why

not a fair sharing of this responsibility? He wanted the children,

didn't he? You're as bad as some of my clinic mothers. They go out to

work by the day, and they come home to work by the night. I asked one

of them why she didn't let her man help with the dishes and the wash,

and she said, 'Him? He's too tired after supper.' And she was earning

more scrubbing than the man!"

"You wouldn't make Bill sit up with your patients, would you?" cried

Catherine, hotly, "or typewrite your articles?"

"Of course Henrietta has only one job," said Bill.

"Charles has expected the children to be my job." Catherine spoke

slowly. "He is in competition with other men whose wives have no other

thought. Like Mrs. Thomas, for instance. You met her?"

"I've met scores of them. Most of them haven't brains enough to think

with," said Henrietta, crisply. "You have. That's the trouble with you.

Now think straight about this, too."

"I am trying to." Catherine's cry hung in the pleasant room, a sharp

note of distress.

"It is true, as Catherine sees"--Bill leaned forward--"that the average

man grows best in nurture furnished by the old pattern of wife. But you

can't generalize. This is Catherine's own problem." He rose. "I wish

you luck, you know. Good night." He went slowly across the hall, and

closed the door of the guest room.

"You can't drag Bill into an argument," said Henrietta. "Now he's

gone." She pulled her chair around to face Catherine. "I want to see

you make a go of this. To see if it can be done. It's got to be, some

day. I wouldn't take the chance, you see."

"But it was children I most wanted." Catherine groped among her

familiar thoughts. "I didn't know I wouldn't be contented. I'm not sure

I shouldn't be."

"You aren't. The signs are on you, plain as day. And you've hit

straight at the roots of your trouble. I've seen it, longer than

you have, and I've just been waiting. When Charles went off for his

adventure, he left you space to see in!"

"Are you--happy?"

"Me? Of course. Reasonably."

"You don't want any children?"

"Good heavens, no! I see enough of children."

"But you like them. You couldn't handle them as you do----"

"I take out my well-known maternal instinct that way, if you like."

"You're hard as nails, Henry."

"Catherine"--Henrietta's face was grim under its fair placidity--"when

I was sixteen, I saw my mother die in childbirth. She had eight

children. Two of them are alive now. She was only thirty-three when she

died. She died on a farm in Michigan, and my father thought she picked

a poor time, because he was haying. I swore then I'd be something

besides a female animal. William knew what I wanted. It's a fair deal

to him. He knew he was getting a wife, but not a mother. That's all

there is to that. I like you. When you fell for Charles so hard, I was

afraid you were ended. Now I have hopes!" Her hand, firm and hard, shut

about Catherine's. "Only, don't handicap yourself with this clutter of

feelings."

Something in the clutch of the firm fingers gave Catherine a quick

insight. Henrietta wasn't hard! Not porcelain. A shell, over a warm,

soft creature--a barnacle, hiding from injury as deep as that her

childhood had shown her.

"You're a nice old thing." Catherine laid her other hand over

Henrietta's. "And"--she came back to her own maelstrom--"you think it

will be fair to the children? I ought to be more decent--better for

them--if I can get some self-respect."

"That's talking. You write and take that job, instanter! I'll look

around for a woman for you. When can you come down?" Henrietta withdrew

her hand.

"That's another thing." Catherine frowned. "Dr. Roberts says as soon as

possible. School doesn't open, though, for two weeks. I don't like to

drag the children back."

"You see?" Henrietta made an impatient lunge with her foot.

"I'll have to think that out."

They sat in silence for a few moments. Then Henrietta rose.

"I'm glad we blew in," she said. "But we have to start off early."

"You've helped." Catherine stood in front of her friend, her hands

clasped loosely. "I'll hunt you up in town, when I need an injection of

common sense."

She went through the quiet house, setting the screen in front of the

crimson ash of the fire, turning down the lamp, hanging away the red

sweater Letty had worn home, placing a row of damp little sandals on

the kitchen steps where the morning sun would dry them. She stood there

for a moment, looking off across the water. A huge crimson star hung

low in the east; she thought she caught a flicker of reflection in the

dark stretch of water. Perhaps it was only a late firefly.

For hours she lay awake, staring out at the great birch tree, watching

the faint motion of its leaves, and the slipping through them of the

Big Dipper as it wheeled slowly down its arc.

V

They all stood in the sunshine in front of the house, watching the tan

top of the Gilberts' car disappear into the alders.

Spencer sighed ostentatiously.

"Wisht we had a nottomobul," he said. "Mr. Bill let me help him squirt

oil and I filled a grease cup and put it back."

"Should say you did!" scoffed Marian. "Look at your sleeve! You're

awful dirty."

"Aw, shut up," growled Spencer.

"Shut up! Shut up!" shrieked Letty, dancing on her toes, and pulling at

Catherine's hand. "Shut up!"

Catherine, who had been caught in a tight knot of confused thought by

Henrietta's final mockery, "You won't come down for weeks, I know. And

here's your job, waiting for you! You can't break through!" came back

with a little start.

Spencer was staring dolefully down the lane; Marian hovered at his

smeared elbow, ready to taunt him again if he stayed silent; Letty

pranced as if she wanted to say, "Sic 'em!"

Catherine smiled. She knew how they felt. The arrival of the Gilberts

was a large stone dropped into the smooth evenness of their days.

Their departure--she couldn't carry on that figure, but she knew the

emptiness it left, a funny little sickish feeling, almost a fear lest

the days would stay empty.

"Well, isn't he a dirty pig, Muvver?"

"You hush up!" Spencer flushed as Catherine's grave eyes rested on his.

"Amelia says she wants some peas picked. The basket is in the woodshed."

"I picked 'em last," said Marian.

"You never did!" Spencer's anger bubbled up. "You----"

"And some potatoes," continued Catherine, calmly. "If you aren't too

cantankerous, Spencer might dig those, and Marian might pick the peas."

Spencer dug his toe into the turf.

"Letty dig!" Letty pulled at Catherine's hand, her lower lip piteously

imploring. "Letty dig, Muddie!"

"I have some letters to write." Catherine picked up Letty and started

for the house. "I hope you two can see to the vegetables."

With a brief glance as she opened the door, she saw Spencer with a

gruff "Aw, come along!" heading for the woodshed.

Letty twisted and squirmed in her arms. "Dig!" she declared.

"You can dig in your sand pile." Catherine set her down. "Where is your

red pail? You find that, while I find my pen."

* * * * *

She couldn't go back to town before school opened. Her pen made tiny

involved triangles at the edge of the blotter. Charles wouldn't like it

if she brought the children down so early. Still, that would give her a

few days to set the house in order, to find a woman to take her place.

What a queer thought! Henrietta had one in mind, she had said, a sort

of practical nurse and housekeeper. There were the children's clothes

to see to. When could she do that? She wouldn't have time for sewing.

She dropped her head down on the table, her hands clasped under her

forehead. I can't do it, she thought. Too many things. _Things!_ That's

it. Clothes, and laundry, and dirt in the corners. One hand groped out

for the letter from Dr. Roberts, and she lifted her head. Her mouth set

in a hard, thin line; the smears under her gray eyes made them larger,

weary with a kind of desperation.

"I remember so well your admirable work," he had written. "I can think

of no one with whom I should prefer to entrust this new piece of work."

If I don't do it now, I never will, she thought. Never. Perhaps I

haven't the courage, or the endurance.

"Mis' Hammond!" came Amelia's nasal call. "D'you want a fish? Earle's

here and wants to know."

"Yes." Catherine drew her paper near.

"Huh? D'you want one?"

Catherine rose abruptly and hurried into the kitchen.

"Buy one, Amelia," she said. "Good morning, Earle."

"Well, he's got cod and haddock and hake." Amelia was stern.

"Haddock," said Catherine. "There's change there in my purse."

When she came back to the porch, Letty was not in sight, nor did she

answer Catherine's call. Her red pail lay beside the sand pile.

"Oh, damn!" thought Catherine, as she flung her pen on to the table and

started in quest of Letty. "If I don't find her, I'll regret it. Letty!

Mother wants you!"

Incredible that those small legs could travel so fast. Catherine peeked

into the poultry yard. Last week she had found Letty there, trying to

catch an indignant rooster. But Letty seldom repeated.

As she rounded the corner of the house, she saw the child, and her own

heart contracted terribly. Letty was lying on her stomach on a broad

stone, part of the well curb, her small yellow head out of sight, her

heels in the air.

"Who left that cover off! If I call her, I may startle her----"

Amelia appeared at the door, a water pail in her hand, her pale eyes

popping out in her tight face.

"Sh-h!" Catherine laid a finger on her lips, as she stole softly toward

Letty, with knees that trembled. Her hand closed firmly over a kicking

foot, and she dragged the child suddenly back. Then she sat down on the

grass.

Letty wriggled violently to be free.

"Letty fish!" she waved a bit of string. "Fish!"

"Well, don't that beat all!" Amelia stood over them. "Who left that

well cover off?"

"You didn't?" asked Catherine wearily.

"My land, no. I was just coming out to draw a bucket. I'll bet that

Earle done it."

"Letty, be still!" Catherine's tone hushed the child. "I have told you

never to go near that well, haven't I?"

Letty smiled, beguilingly.

"Pretty Muddie. Letty fish." Her small face wrinkled into the most

ingratiating smile she possessed.

"You are a naughty Letty." Catherine rose. "Come along and be tied up,

like a bad little dog."

Letty's wrinkled nose smoothed instantly, and her eyes closed for a

scream. Catherine lifted her firmly into her arms, one hand over the

open mouth.

She sat in her room, waiting for Letty's shrieks to subside. They did,

soon, and she heard her chirrup. "Get ap! Get ap!" and knew the rope

which tied her had become a horse.

Fiercely she seized her pen and wrote. If she stopped to think again--

Anything might happen, anyway! She stopped long enough to see clearly

that if anything happened while she, the mother, was away, she might

have a load of self-reproach heavier than she could endure. It's part

of the struggle, she thought. Someone else can play watchdog, surely.

There! She had committed herself. A note to Charles. She was glad his

conference had been so interesting. She had just accepted a position

at the Bureau, like her old job there. She might come down a few days

early. With love----

VI

The porter dropped the bags on the platform beside them, and held out

his pink palm. Then he swung up to the step, as the long train began

to move. Until the train was out of sight down the curving track,

Catherine knew it was useless to start her procession. A fine drizzle

filled the air under the shed, and the roofs of the street below them

gleamed dull and sordid.

"Spencer, will you take that bag? And Marian, this one----" Catherine

pulled Letty up into her arm and with a suitcase dragging at her

shoulder, piloted the children toward the stairs. "Daddy may be

downstairs. Careful, Marian, on those wet steps."

There he was, at the bottom of the narrow, dark stairs. Catherine's

heart gave its customary little jump--always, when she saw Charles

again, even after the briefest separation.

Marian clung to his arm, Spencer let himself be hugged, Letty squealed

with delight. Catherine looked at him, her eyes bright. He did look

well! And he had a new suit, in all this rain!

"Here's a taxi, right here. Jump in. Where are your checks?" he bundled

them in and handed the checks to the driver.

"This is a crowded street, Mother, and awful loud!" said Spencer, his

nose against the glass.

"I like the big station better," said Marian, adjusting herself with

interest on the little folding seat. "Why can't we get out there?"

"This is nearer home, dear."

Daddy sat next to Mother, and the taxi rattled off, spurting slimy mud.

"Hard trip, old girl?" Charles put his arm around Catherine's shoulders.

"Fair." Catherine shone at him softly. "Sort of a job, putting the

family to bed on a sleeper. But it's over."

"An awful homely street," muttered Spencer, his face doleful.

"It's got lots of things in it," said Marian, wiggling down from her

seat, and thrusting her face against the door. "See the folks and the

stores and the street cars."

"It's dirty." Spencer turned from the window and looked darkly at

Catherine. "I want to be back home," he said.

Catherine smiled at him. Poor boy! The little quiver of his nostrils

was eloquent of nostalgia, of the rude necessity of adjustment.

"Our street isn't like this, Spencer," she assured him. "You will like

that better."

"Turned into a country kid, have you?" Charles reached for the boy's

arm. "Fine muscle! You'll have to try some handball with me this

winter."

Spencer lost his forlornness at once. "In the court? Oh, gee!"

"I've got muscle too, Daddy." Marian bounced across to her father's

knees. "Feel me! Can't I play ball with you?"

"Letty play!" wailed Letty.

The taxi jolted to a standstill in the traffic, and Letty was diverted

by a large and black mammy descending from the street car close to the

cab.

"Girls can't play," said Spencer conclusively.

"They can, too, can't they, Muvver!"

"Your mother agrees with you, Marian," said Charles. "But not on our

handball courts, eh, Spencer?"

Catherine flushed at the submerged note in Charles's words.

"Don't you give my daughter an inferiority complex!" she said, lightly.

But Charles went on, the note rising to the surface.

"You won't find the house in very good shape. I wasn't expecting you so

early."

The glow of the meeting was disappearing under the faint, secret

friction. Catherine thought quickly, "He didn't like it--the job, or

my coming down. But he isn't admitting it." Aloud she said, "Did Flora

desert you?"

"Oh, no. She's there, her mouth larger than ever. I meant the finishing

touches."

"We can give those."

"There's Morningside Park!" Spencer's shout was full of delight.

"Rocks and trees an' everything!" The taxi had left One Hundred and

Twenty-fifth Street and was bumping along the side street which

bordered the park. The rocks shouldered up gray and wet through brown,

worn shrubbery.

"There's where we had the cave," cried Marian. "I remember it."

Up to the Drive, a few blocks south, and just around the corner the

taxi halted.

"Here we are!" Out they all scrambled, to stare up at the gray front,

tessellated with windows, while Charles maneuvered the luggage.

Catherine felt Spencer's cold hand creep into hers; she held it firmly,

knowing that he, too, had the sinking depression with which that

monotonous dingy structure filled her.

But Sam, the elevator boy, came out, all white grin and shiny eyes, to

greet them and carry in the bags. Letty, as of old, clasped her hands

over her stomach as the elevator shot up. The key clicked in the lock

and the door opened on the familiar long hall. They were home again.

"When we have breakfast," declared Catherine, "we won't feel so much

like lost cats!"

Flora, her gold tooth gleaming in her dark face, was loudly and

cheerfully glad to see them. Catherine scurried for towels, and left

the children scrubbing their hands, while she walked back through the

hall with Charles, who had said he must go to his office immediately.

They faced each other in the dim light. Catherine struggled to throw

off the constraint which had settled upon her.

"That's a grand suit," she said, laying her hand on his sleeve. "You

better take your rain coat."

"It's at the office. I am afraid I can't come in for luncheon. I made

this engagement downtown before I knew you were coming to-day."

"That's good." Catherine smiled at him. "Leaves me more time--there are

endless things to do."

He looked at her, a curious reserve in his eyes.

"You are really going to do it, take that job?"

"I wrote you----"

"When do you start?"

"Monday. That's why I'm here." She couldn't help that air of defense!

"I had to have a few days to shop for the children, and get the house

running."

"Hard on them, isn't it?"

"I thought a few days couldn't matter so much to them as to me."

"No." Charles turned the doorknob.

"Charles!" Catherine seized his hand. "Are you--cross?"

"Of course not." He sounded impatient. "But I have to get over to

college sometime to-day."

"Have you changed your mind about my trying this?"

"No." He pursed his under lip, hesitatingly. "I didn't know you were

going to jump in so immediately. But it's quite all right."

Catherine released his hand, and he pulled open the door. He stood a

moment on the threshold, and then wheeled.

"I--I'm glad you're home." Catherine was in his arms, her lips

quivering as he kissed her.

"There, run along!" She patted his shoulder, her eyes misty.

* * * * *

But when he had gone, she leaned against the door, brushing hot tears

from her lashes. She could hear the children, their voices raised in

jangling. It was going to be hard, harder than she had thought. Bill

was right; she would have a double job. She might have more than that,

if Charles really carried a secret antagonism to her plan. Perhaps he

was only gruffy; perhaps this was only a flicker of his unadmitted

dislike of anything which threatened change, anything at least which

he had not originated. But she saw, clearly, what she had felt as a

possibility, that she had, for a time, his attitude as further weight

to carry. That he wouldn't admit his attitude made the weight heavier,

if anything. As she went slowly towards the sounds of squabbling, she

saw her attempt as a monstrous undertaking, like unknown darkness into

which she ventured, fearing at every step some unseen danger; and

heaviness pressed down physically upon her.

VII

Breakfast restored the temper of the children, and lifted part of her

own heaviness. The day then stretched into long hours. The children

couldn't go out into the park, as the drizzle of the morning increased

to cold rain. Toward noon Dr. Henrietta telephoned, and Catherine

found her voice like a wind blowing into flame her almost smothered

intentions. Henrietta was sending over that evening the woman she had

mentioned: Miss Kelly. She could come at once, if Catherine liked her.

She would have to come by the day, as she had an invalid mother. "We'll

run in soon, Catherine, Bill and I. Don't you weaken!"

Lucky Miss Kelly wouldn't want a place to sleep, thought Catherine, as

she went about the business of unpacking and reordering the apartment.

With New York rents where they were it was all they could do to shelter

the family decently. Was it really decent, she wondered, as she laid

the piles of Spencer's clothes away in the white dresser, and looked

about the little court room where he slept. She went to the window. A

hollow square, full of rain and damp odors; windows with drab curtains

blowing out into the rain; window sills with milk bottles, paper

bags--the signs of poor students, struggling to wrest education out

of the jaws of hunger! And yet, when she and Charles had found this

apartment, they had thought it fine. A large, wide, airy court; none of

your air shafts. She glanced up where the roof lines cut angles against

the sodden sky. Spencer did watch the stars there, on clear nights. She

picked up the laundry bag, stuffed with soiled clothes, and left the

room. Marian's room was next, a little larger. She had planned to have

Letty's bed moved in there this fall, opposite Marian's. Flora was on

her knees, her yellowed silk blouse dangling from her tight belt, as

her arm rotated the mop over the floor.

"Had a pleasant summer, Flora?" asked Catherine, as she opened Marian's

bag.

"Land, yes, Mis' Hammond." Flora whisked her cloth. "I'm gonna get

married to a puhfessional man. He's been showing me tenshions all

summer. He ain't committed hisself till last week."

"You are!" Catherine looked at her in dismay. "When?"

"Oh, I ain't gonna give up my work, Mis' Hammond. Not till I sees

how he pans out. I tried that once, and my las' husband, he couldn't

maintain me as I was accustomed to be. So I says to my intended, I'll

get married to you for pleasure, but I keeps my job. He don't care."

Catherine laughed. She knew that Flora had made earlier experiments in

marriage, once to the extent of going back to Porto Rico. But she had,

through all her changes of name, kept her good humor, her cleverness,

and her apparent devotion to Catherine.

She rose swiftly from her knees, her long string of green beads

clinking against her pail of water.

"I believes in keeping men in his place," she said, with an expanding

grin. "If you don't, they keeps you in yours."

Catherine, adding the pile of Marian's dirty clothes to the jammed

laundry bag, laughed again.

"I suppose so," she said. "What am I going to do with all this laundry!

You'd think we hadn't washed all summer, the way things pile up."

"I'll take that right home to-night, Mis' Hammond. My sister can do it

for you. My gentleman friend is stopping by for me in his car."

Catherine smoothed the cretonne scarf on the dressing table, adjusted

the bright curtains, moved the little wicker chair to make room for

Letty's bed, and with a grimace at the glimpse of the court even

through the curtains, went on to the living room. Letty was asleep in

Catherine's room. Spencer and Marian had scorned her hint that a nap

might be good for them, and were sitting disconsolately in chairs drawn

near the windows. Here, at least, was something beside too intimate

suggestion of neighboring lives, even if the rain held it to-day in

somber dullness. Beneath the windows the tops of trees pricked through

the mist, as if one looked down into a forest; they were only the

poplars and Balm of Gilead that grew on the steep slope of Morningside,

but as Spencer had said, they were _trees_. And beyond them, extending

far off into the dim gray horizon, the city--flat roofs, with strange

shapes of chimneys, water tanks, or elevator sheds, merged to-day

into dark solidity. On clear days, there was a hint of water in the

distance, and the balanced curve of a great bridge. After all, thought

Catherine, there was air in the bedrooms--you couldn't expect birch

trees and stars in the city--and they did have distance and sometimes

the enchantment of the varying city from these windows. But it was

queer--she smiled as Spencer eyed her over his book--queer that beauty,

sunlight, air, should be things for which you paid money; that you had

to think yourself fortunate if you could afford one window which did

not open upon sordidness.

"Moth-er, do you think I'd get too wet if I just went outdoors for five

minutes?" Spencer was dolorous. "My throat is all stuffed up, and I'll

lose my muscle, just sitting still."

"No fun going out here," grumped Marian.

"In a little while I am going out shopping for dinner. Would you like

to go?"

VIII

In raincoats and rubbers, each with a bobbing umbrella, Catherine

sighing at the lost summer comfort of knickerbockers and boots, the

three went out into the rain. The children sparkled as if they had

escaped from jail. Spencer peered from under his umbrella at the heavy

sky.

"Mebbe when the tide turns the wind'll change," he said.

"Huh!" Marian giggled. "In the city? That's only in the country."

"I guess there is wind in town, too, and tides, aren't there, Moth-er?"

"Wind, all right!" The gust at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue caught

their umbrellas like chips. They ducked into the wet wind, rounded the

corner, and bent against it down the avenue.

"Isn't there any tide?" insisted Spencer.

"Yes, of course," Catherine answered, absently. Too far such a day, she

supposed, to go down to her old market. That restaurant had changed

hands again; a man behind the large window was even then drawing

outlines for new gilt letters. The same hairdresser, the same idle

manicure girl, intent on her own fingers, the drug store. They crossed

the street, their feet wobbling over the cobblestones, slipping through

the guttered water. There they were, at the market.

"Where's the kitty?" demanded Marian, her eyes bright in her

rose-tanned face.

"Kitty?" Catherine weighed the oranges in her fingers, and looked about

for a clerk.

"Why, yes, Muvver. That little gray kitty----"

"He'd probably be grown into an old gray alley cat by this time."

Catherine frowned a little over her list. She should have come out

earlier; everything looked wilted, picked over. Vitamins, calories, and

the budget. The old dreary business of managing decently, reasonably.

The country and a garden of your own did spoil you for these dejected

pyramids.

"There's another thing," she thought, as she watched the clerk hunt for

a satisfying head of lettuce, stripping off brownish, slimy leaves.

"When can I market, if I am downtown at nine? Perhaps this Miss Kelly

can do it, with Letty, as I always have done." A swift picture of

Letty in her go-cart, herself with the basket hanging from the handle.

Marketing had been her most intellectual pursuit.

Back to the meat counter, with its rows of purplish fowls, their

feathered heads languishing on their trussed wings, and the butcher,

wiping his hands on the apron spotted and taut over his paunch.

Marian, her eyes round and black, watched him sharpen his knife, while

Spencer lingered near the door. Spencer didn't, as he said, like dead

things. Neither did Catherine, shivering as the butcher shoved aside

the quivering lump of purplish-black liver. Queer, the forms that the

demands of ordinary living took; forms you never dreamed of, when you

entered living.

"We should have brought two baskets!" Catherine looked at the bundles.

"Send 'em over, lady?"

"It's so late."

"I can carry some, Moth-er." Spencer came back from his post at the

door.

Marian had the bag of oranges under her arm, Spencer the basket,

Catherine a huge bag of varied contents. A scramble at the door to open

the three umbrellas, and they started up the street, the wind gusty at

their heels.

"Be careful crossing the street," warned Catherine. Marian, darting

ahead, reached the curb, slipped, and sat down plump in a puddle, the

oranges rolling off, bright spots on the wet cobblestones. Marian,

dismayed, sat still, her mouth puckered.

Catherine pulled her to her feet with a hand abrupt, almost harsh. The

throbbing behind her temples which had begun the day before, in the

steady drive of closing the house and getting off, had increased to a

heavy drum. "Pick them up," she said. "Don't stand there like a ninny!"

Spencer's grin faded at the tone of her voice, and her flare of weary

temper subsided as she watched them scurry after the fruit. They stowed

the oranges into pockets, and corners of the basket.

Finally they were home again. Flora's loud "Glory, glory, halleleuia,"

swept down the hall as they opened the door, and Letty's accompaniment.

"She's found my drum!" Spencer fled to the kitchen, and a wail followed

as Letty was reft of her instrument.

Catherine pressed her lips firmly together as she hung her dripping

coat on the rack. "Steady," she said. "They are as tired as I am." Then

she thought: that's the great trouble with being a mother. You never

get away for a chance to sulk and indulge your bad temper.

Charles came in, with his blandest air of preoccupation. Flora had

prepared the dinner, and then gone home when her gentleman friend

called for her, to cook her own evening meal, leaving Catherine to

broil the steak and set things on the table. Since Letty had slept

so long, she was permitted to sit in her high-chair during dinner,

where she conducted an insuppressible and very little intelligible

conversation.

"She certainly needs training," declared Charles.

"She isn't often on hand for dinner," said Catherine, wearily.

Spencer and Marian cleared away the table, while Catherine bathed

Letty, deafening herself to the crash which came from the kitchen. What

had Marian dropped this time?

Then she heard them, chattering away to their father, with the

occasional interruption of Charles's deep laugh. She hung away Letty's

towels and garments, and let the water run for Marian's bath. Wasn't

that Kelly person coming in? Would she, Catherine wondered, give the

children their baths? Could she let anyone else do that? Those slender,

rounded bodies, firm, ineffably young and sweet, changing so subtly

from the soft baby curves of Letty into young strength. Oh, at every

second there waited for her some coil of sentiment, of devotion, to

hold her there, solid, unmoving, in the round of the past few years.

She was too tired to-night to think straight. She called Marian from

the door, and was answered by a demonstrating wail.

"Not yet, Muvver. I have to see my Daddy."

But at last both she and Spencer were bathed and in bed. As Catherine

turned out Spencer's light, she heard the doorbell.

"Who is it, Moth-er?" Spencer's head came up from his pillow.

"I don't know, son. But you go to sleep."

"Mother--" His voice was low, half ashamed. "Mother, what makes me ache

in here?"

"Where?" Catherine hung over his bed. He drew her hand to his chest.

"When I think about my porch--an' everything."

"You better think about something here, Spencer." Catherine's words

were tender. "Something you like here. That will cure your ache."

"But I can't think up anything to think about! You tell me something

nice----"

"'F you talk to Spencer, you'd ought to talk to me, too," came Marian's

sleepy protest from the adjoining room.

"Sh-h! You'll wake Letty." Catherine's mind moved numbly over Spencer's

city likes. "Spencer, you might think about Walter Thomas. You can see

him soon----"

"Well." Spencer sounded very doubtful. But Charles called her, and

Catherine said good night to him and to Marian.

It was Miss Kelly who had rung. Catherine sat down in the living room,

brushing her hair away from her face, to which weariness had given a

creamy pallor under the summer tan, and wished furiously that she was

not so tired, that she could see into this rather plump, sandy, stubby

person who sat opposite her, with calm, light blue eyes meeting her

gaze. She looked efficient, if not imaginative. Well, the children had

imagination enough, and if Henrietta thought Miss Kelly would do,

surely she would. Charles had retired into his study. Miss Kelly folded

her plump hands in her lap and looked down at her round, sensible shoes

as Catherine spoke of Dr. Gilbert's high recommendation.

She couldn't come before Monday. She liked nursing better, but the

hours were so uncertain, and her mother needed her. Yes, she had cared

for children before. She had always, for several years, had twenty-five

dollars a week, when she lived in her own home.

H-m, thought Catherine, that will make one large dent in my wages! But

I must have someone, and I can't fill my place for nothing. So Monday

morning, about eight. Too bad the children were in bed, but then on

Monday Miss Kelly could see them.

When Catherine had closed the door on the last descending glimpse of

Miss Kelly's round face behind the elevator grill, she hurried back to

the study. Charles looked up from his book.

"Did you like her, Charles? You do think she looks capable?"

"She has an air of honest worth." Charles laid aside his book. "Did you

hire her?"

Catherine nodded.

"I shouldn't care to have you supplanted by that face, if I were

Letty--or Spencer--or----"

Catherine moved around to the desk to the side of his chair, her

fingers twisting together in a nervous little gesture.

"She looks sensible and good natured, and Henrietta says she is fine.

I've got to try someone."

"I suppose you must."

Catherine, balancing on the edge of the desk, looked steadily at her

husband. He was holding his thoughts away from her, out of his eyes.

"It's mostly Letty, of course," she said. "The others will be in

school." She sighed. "She can come Monday, the day I start."

Then they were silent. Charles rubbed his thumb along the edge of his

book, and Catherine watched him, her gray eyes heavy.

No use talking about it to-night, when she was so tired. She pushed the

affair away.

"Poor Spencer is homesick for Maine," she said. "He wanted to know why

he ached----"

"He needs to get out with boys more," said Charles sharply. "He's too

notional for a boy his age."

Catherine felt a quick flicker of heat under her eyelids. Charles had

said that before this summer.

"I want him to be a man," he continued, "not a sentimental little fool."

"I think you needn't worry about that." Catherine was icy. Then

suddenly she slipped forward to the arm of his chair, her head down on

his shoulder, one hand up to his cheek. "Good Lord, I'm tired! Don't

talk about anything, or I'll fight!"

Charles pulled her down into his lap and held her close.

"That's more like it." His mouth was close to her ear. "Sitting off and

staring at me! Silly old girl----"

Catherine laughed, just a weak flutter of sound.

"Call me names! But hug me, tighter!" She laughed again. Words, she

thought--you can't get a person with words. They stand between you like

a wall.

"You'd better go to bed. You feel limp as a dead leaf."

"Yes." She stretched comfortably. "In a minute----"

IX

Catherine sat at one of the living room windows, the floor about her

chair littered with packages, the result of her shopping for the

children. She unwrapped them methodically, clipped a name from the

rolls of tape in her basket, and sewed the label in place. Spencer

Hammond; Marian Hammond; Letitia Hammond. She was thankful that none

of them had a longer name! After three gloomy days the sun shone

again, pricking out spots of red in the roofs of the distance, falling

in splotches of brilliance on the white stuff Catherine handled. The

children were playing in the dining room, where the east windows

admitted the broad shafts of sunlight. Poor kids! They had begged her

to go outdoors with them, but her mother had telephoned that she was

coming in.

Catherine had not known she was in town. She had been visiting her son

in Wisconsin, George Spencer. Catherine had seen little of that brother

since her own departure for college; he had married and gone west,

sending back, at astonishingly frequent intervals, photographs of his

increasing family. Mrs. Spencer visited him at least once each year,

returning always with delighted accounts of the children, of George's

business, of his wife.

Catherine folded the striped pajamas and laid them on the pile at her

right. Her thoughts drifted around her mother and the small apartment

in the Fifties where she kept house for Margaret, the youngest of the

family. Letty came in a little rush toward her.

"Letty draw." She spread the paper on Catherine's knee. "For Gram." Her

yellow head bent over it intently.

"What is it, Letty?" Catherine laid a finger softly on the little

hollow just at the base of Letty's neck, an adorable hollow with a

twist of pale hair above it.

"She says it's a picture of her fishing," called Marian. "Catching

cunners. But I'm painting a good picture of our house for Grandma----"

"Letty paint?" Letty looked up, her eyes crinkled.

"Grandma will like a drawing just as well." Catherine picked up a set

of rompers. "Mother's going to sew your name right on the band." Letty

watched a moment and then trudged back to her corner on the dining room

floor.

What would her mother think when Catherine told her of her plan?

Catherine's hands dropped into her lap. She wouldn't say much. She

never did. But that little crinkle of Letty's eyes was like hers! You

saw her laughing at you. Since her own marriage Catherine had wondered

about her mother, and the last few months, while she had struggled with

her moods and desires, she had found that the admiration she had always

felt had gathered a tinge of curiosity, or speculative wonder. How had

her mother attained the lively serenity, the animated poise, the quiet,

humorous tranquillity with which she bore herself? Catherine remembered

her father only as a somewhat irritable invalid; the accident which

had injured him and finally killed him had happened when she was

young, and Margaret a mere baby. And yet, somehow, her mother had

seemed to keep a whimsical invulnerability. She had sent them all to

college, however she had managed even before the cost of living gained

its ominous present-day sound. Only for the last few years, since

Margaret, the last of them, had grown into a youthfully serious welfare

worker, had Mrs. Spencer's income been adequate to the uses for it. And

yet--Astonishing adjustment, thought Catherine. As if she had found

what she most wanted in life. As if things outside herself couldn't

scratch her skin.

There was a scramble of children to the door at the ring of the bell,

and Catherine rose, her work sliding to the floor. They loved her,

the children. Was that the answer to her curiosity? That her mother

was essentially maternal? Catherine smiled as the delighted shouts of

greeting moved down the hall toward her. No, that wasn't the answer.

They had never felt, Catherine, or George, or Margaret, that they were

the core of her life; what was?

"Cathy, dear!" How pretty she was, thought Catherine, as she bent

to kiss her. A moment of encounter while she gazed at her; always

Catherine had to pause that moment to regather all the outward details

which during absence merged into her feeling of the person as a whole.

She hadn't remembered how dark the blue of her mother's eyes was. Or

was it only the small blue hat with the liberty scarf, and the new blue

cape?

"How smart you look!" she said. "And a new dress, too!"

Mrs. Spencer slipped off her cape with a little twirl. "Paris model,

reduced." She handed the cape to Spencer.

"It's pretty, Grandma." Marian touched the blue silk. "Little beads all

over the front."

"You certainly look well!" Mrs. Spencer settled herself in a rocker,

unpinned her veil, let Marian take her hat, and upon insistence from

Letty, allowed her to hold the silk handbag. "Now please put my things

all together, won't you?" She ran her fingers through her soft gray

hair. Catherine watched her with tender eyes. Something valiant about

those small hands, white and soft, with enlarged knuckles and fingers a

little crooked, marked by hard earlier years.

Not until after luncheon did Catherine talk with her mother. The

children had to show her their pictures; Charles came in, and Mrs.

Spencer wanted to know about his new work; dinner had to be planned.

Finally Letty was stowed away for her nap, and Spencer and Marian, with

the promise of a walk when she woke, went off to read.

"I'll help you with that sewing." Mrs. Spencer threaded her needle.

"You've done your shopping in a lump, haven't you? I thought you

usually made some of these things."

"I won't have time this year."

Catherine was half afraid to tell her. Her proposition sounded absurd,

as if she heard it through her mother's ears. But Mrs. Spencer listened

quietly.

"That's what Charles meant, then," she said.

"He spoke of it?" Catherine looked up.

"He asked if I had heard how modern you had suddenly become."

Catherine snapped her thread. She wondered why she had felt this

desperate need to make her mother approve of her scheme, and Charles,

too. Wouldn't approval come after she had carried it through, if she

could?

"Do you think me foolish--or wicked?"

Mrs. Spencer patted the tape into place on the blouse she held.

"Not at all, Cathy," she said.

"But you don't think I ought to do it?"

"That is for you to decide. You say you have found a nurse?"

"Yes."

"Did Dr. Henrietta Gilbert suggest this to you?"

Catherine's head came up at that, but her irritation scurried off into

amusement; her mother looked so guileless, stitching with busy fingers.

"You don't see, then, that I can't help it? That I must try something?

Oh, Mother, I've thought and thought----"

"Yes, that's just it. You think too much. You always thought, Cathy.

That's why I was relieved when you met Charles. You didn't think much

for a while, at least, and I hoped"--Mrs. Spencer was looking at her,

her head on one side, her eyes bright, her mouth turning up in a funny

little smile--"I hoped your thinking days were over. But it's in the

air so. Women seem to take pride in being restless, unhappy. We were

taught to consider that a sin."

"Is that why you're so nice?"

"No." Mrs. Spencer smiled. "Maybe my children were smarter than yours.

I didn't find them such bad company."

"Oh, that's not it!" Catherine cried out. Then she laughed. "Mother,

you're outrageous. You're making fun of me, just as if----"

"As if you wanted to be a missionary again."

"But I was only a child then. That was amusing."

"Yes. You didn't think so, then." Mrs. Spencer folded the blouse

neatly. "Hasn't Spencer grown tall! I see you're buying eleven-year-old

clothes for him."

"Well"--Catherine's mouth was stubborn--"I'll just have to show you!

And Charles, too. He thinks it's a whim, I know."

"He hasn't objected?"

"Oh, no. Not in words. He wouldn't."

"Poor Charles. These modern women in your own home!" Mrs. Spencer's

eyes crinkled almost shut. "Do you know why I came back early? Your

sister Margaret has a modern turn, too."

"But she's not in town yet."

"No. She wrote, asking if I wouldn't like to stay with George this

winter."

"Why?"

"I suppose she thinks a mother is a sort of nuisance. She wants to set

up housekeeping with her friend."

"The little wretch!"

"Not exactly. But I did want that apartment myself, as I am fond of it.

I think I'll take a roomer."

"Mother!" Catherine stared at her.

"She's been reading something a German wrote. What is his name? Freud.

She's been thinking, too, I am afraid."

Catherine was silent; she recognized her instinctive protest as a

flourish of habit, of righteousness for someone else. After all----

"She needn't be so apologetic," said Mrs. Spencer deliberately. "If she

doesn't need me, I shall be glad to find someone nearer my own age."

Letty's deep voice announced her awakening. Mrs. Spencer decided to

walk over to Riverside with Catherine and the children, as she could

go on downtown from there by bus. After several minutes of agitated

preparation, a frantic search for roller skates, they were in the hall,

Letty rolling noisily along on her wooden "Go-Duck," her busy legs

waving like plump antennæ. Catherine held the strap of Marian's skates

firmly; Marian was all for skating right down the hall. Then, just as

the elevator came, Catherine remembered that she hadn't paid Flora for

the week.

Flora's gold tooth flashed as Catherine handed her the money.

"I certainly is obliged," she said. "My frien' and I, we're going on

the Hudson River boat to-morrow, and I suspicions he's short of cash."

"You'll be in early on Monday, Flora? Miss Kelly is coming, and she'll

need you to show her about things."

"Sakes, yes. You can go about your business, Mis' Hammond, with a light

soul."

Flora was delighted at this venture of Catherine's. Catherine thought,

a little grimly, as she hurried after the family, that Flora was the

only one in the house who was pleased. It's her dramatic sense, she

speculated, waiting for the elevator. I wish I had more of it myself,

and Charles, too.

The sharp blue clarity of the air was like a sudden check rein, pulling

Catherine's head up from doubtful thoughts. As they waited at Amsterdam

Avenue for the car to rumble past, she glanced up the street; in the

foreground the few blocks of sharp descent, and then the steady climb

for miles, off to the distance where street and marginal buildings

seemed as blue as the sky. It was like a mountain, with blue-gray

shadows across the canyon of the street, and jagged cliffs of buildings

merging into solid rock up the slope. She reached for the head of

Letty's red duck. "You better walk across the street, Letty."

"No! Ducky go!" and bumping over the cobblestones it went, propelled

vigorously, while Spencer and Marian stumbled along on their skates.

The walk through the half block of park behind the University buildings

was smooth sailing. Catherine and her mother followed the children.

"Wait for us at the gate!" warned Catherine.

At last they were across the Drive and safe on the lower walk of the

park.

"Here's my old bench." Catherine sat down with her mother. "I can see

clear to those steps from here."

Spencer was off with a whoop, his figure balancing surely as he sped.

Marian chased him, a determined erectness in her body. Letty paddled

after them, chanting loudly to her duck.

"When school opens," Catherine sighed, "they'll have some exercise,

poor chickens. City life isn't easy for them."

"It's no place for children." Mrs. Spencer watched a passing group, a

beruffled little girl yanking fretfully at the hand of her nurse, a

small, fat boy howling in tearless monotony. "Not even a yard."

"We talked about a suburb last year. But Charles hates the idea of

commuting, and he is so busy with his additional work that he'd never

be home at all."

"Won't you miss these little expeditions with your children?"

Catherine looked hastily at her mother. But the bright blue eyes were

apparently intent on a tug steaming along the river. The tide was

running swiftly down, swirling off into the quiet water near shore bits

of refuse, boxes, sticks, which caught the sun in dazzling sham before

they drifted into ugly lack of movement.

"They don't need me when they are playing here," said Catherine.

"Anyone would do, just to watch them."

"I wonder," said her mother. "I see some of these nurses do outlandish

things."

"Miss Kelly looks intelligent and kind." Again stubbornness in

Catherine's mouth, in her lowered eyelids. "And I might as well admit,

I'm reaching the place where I won't be either of those things. You'd

be ashamed of your daughter if you knew how peevish she can get!"

"Catherine, dear"--Mrs. Spencer laid her hand softly on Catherine's--"you

know I don't mean to interfere. But are you sure you haven't just caught

the general unrest, in the air and everywhere?"

"Where did it come from?" The children were coasting toward them, down

the little hill. "Why do I feel it?"

"Oh, the war, no doubt."

"The war! Blame that for my hatred of this dreadful monotony, my lack

of self-respect, my--my grubby, dingy, hopeless feeling!"

"I can see you have your mind made up." Mrs. Spencer caught Marian as

she tumbled, laughing, against the seat.

"I beat Spencer back!"

"Come on and I'll beat up the hill!" Spencer wiggled to a standstill.

A wail went up. Letty and her duck were upside down, a jumble of legs

and red wheels. Spencer clattered away to rescue her, Marian after him.

Mrs. Spencer began with a little chuckle a story of George's two

youngest children. Catherine relaxed, content to leave her own problem.

Her mother had said all she meant to say. The sun dropped lower and

lower, until it seemed to catch on the sharp margin of the New Jersey

shore and hang there, red, for long minutes. The tide had slackened and

the water caught a metallic white luster. The park was almost deserted

now. Finally Catherine called the children. They came; she smiled at

their scarlet cheeks and clear eyes, their smudged hands and knees.

"Home now, and dinner."

"See the gold windows!" Spencer pointed to the massed gray buildings

above the park.

"That's the sun," explained Marian, panting up the steps.

They waited with Grandmother until a bus lumbered to a halt, and they

could wave her off down the Drive.

X

Charles came into the hall as they entered, clattering skates and duck.

"Hello!" He pinched Letty's cheek. "Where you been?" He moved close to

Catherine and continued, in a confidential undertone, "I thought you'd

be here. I brought Miss Partridge in. Don't you want her to stay to

dinner?"

Catherine, with a swift glance at the disheveled group, and a swifter

consideration of food--what had she told Flora to prepare?--shrugged.

"Of course," she said. She concealed a secret grin at the relief which

ran over Charles's nonchalance. In the old days--how long ago!--one of

her most sacred lares had been just that, that Charles should feel free

as air about bringing any one in at any time. What was home for? But

with three children, perhaps she burned less incense at that altar. She

was moving toward the door of the living room as she thought.

"Here's my wife and family, Miss Partridge."

"I am glad you waited for us." Catherine disengaged herself from

Letty's fingers and went to meet the woman who was rising from the

window. "I have wished to meet you." Catherine smiled as she spoke; her

smile touched her face with a subtle irradiance, charming, completely

personal. She's younger than I had supposed, Catherine was thinking,

and quite different.

"Dr. Hammond urged me to wait." Her voice was clear and hard, like a

highly polished instrument. Her manner was as cool and detached as the

long white hand she extended. "And this is the family?"

"Letitia, Marian, and Spencer," announced Charles. Catherine watched

them make their decorous greetings with a little flicker of pride.

Sometimes Marian had ridiculous fits of shyness and wouldn't curtsey.

"You'll have to test them, Miss Partridge," Charles went on. "See if my

paternal bias misled me in my tests. Their I.Q.'s seem satisfactory."

"Of course they would!" Miss Partridge's smile lifted her short upper

lip from a row of even teeth so shining that they looked transparent.

"Such a handful must keep you busy, Mrs. Hammond. You've just come in

from the country, haven't you?"

"Good Lord!" thought Catherine. "I'm to be treated like an adoring

mother." Her level glance met the dark brown eyes for an instant; she

felt a queer clatter, as if she had struck metal. Aloud she said,

"Won't you have dinner with us, Miss Partridge? I should enjoy hearing

your side of all these new schemes."

"That's it." Charles was hearty, insistent. "Let me take your wraps."

Elegant, slim, in soft taupe tailor-made, close-fitting velour hat.

She gets herself up well; Catherine was aware suddenly of her own

appearance in rough tweed coat and last year's hat with its bow of

ribbon rather wilted. Not so hasty, she warned herself; look out, or

you'll have a rooted dislike out of this feeling. Queer, how some women

heighten their femininity by tailored clothes. Miss Partridge, without

a demur, had stripped off her jacket and removed her hat. Her blouse of

dull gleaming silk fitted closely about her throat, her dark hair was

wound in a heavy braid about her smooth, small head; lovely skin, with

a pale luster. Catherine noted in a flash the heavy jade cuff links,

the small bar of jade that fastened the collar, the chain of dull

silver and jade which looped into the belt. She's the sort that affects

the masculine for more subtle results, was the swift conclusion, as she

ushered the children out of the room.

It was a nuisance, having a maid who couldn't stay to serve dinner.

But in other ways Flora couldn't be touched, and they did like not

having to house her. Catherine heard the tone of that clear, hard

voice as she moved from bathroom to kitchen, lighting the gas under

the vegetables, supervising Letty's supper and bath. Is she brilliant,

or shrewd, she wondered, as she directed Spencer in his grave attempt

to lay another place at the table. She is young to have achieved her

reputation. Has she one, or has she made Charles think she has? Don't

be a cat!

At last Letty was in bed, the children were clean, the chops were

broiled, the corn steamed on the platter, and with a last glance at the

table, Catherine went to the living room door.

"Dinner is ready," she said. "We have a maid by the day, who goes home

at six," she explained, and then stopped. She wouldn't apologize!

As they seated themselves, Letty's shout broke across the hall.

"Lady kiss duck! Lady kiss Ducky goo' ni'."

"Spencer, please tell Letty we are at dinner."

But Letty's shout gained energy.

"That's one of her rites," said Charles. "Miss Partridge might as well

be initiated at once. Come along!"

Catherine laughed at Marian's distressed face.

"Muvver, isn't Letty _awful_! A strange lady----"

Charles and Miss Partridge were back, and Marian sank into embarrassed

silence.

"Isn't she an amusing baby, Mrs. Hammond!" Miss Partridge unfolded her

napkin with a lazy gesture; her smile disclosed her teeth, without

touching her large dark eyes.

"She's the most stubborn one of the family," said Charles.

It was difficult to play a continuous part in the conversation when

you had to leave half your mind free for food and drink, thought

Catherine, as dinner moved along under her guidance. She didn't, she

discovered, know half that Charles had been doing all summer. Miss

Partridge had assisted in the summer-school work, to begin with. Time

for salad, now. Spencer helped clear the first course away, breathing

heavily as he pondered over his movements with the plates and silver.

Catherine brought in the huge green bowl, filled with crisp, curling

leaves, and Spencer followed with the plates of cheese and crackers.

As Catherine poured the dressing over the leaves and stirred them, her

hands moving with slow grace, she picked up the threads of the talk.

Miss Partridge thought a family must be illuminating; you could watch

instincts unfold. And Charles--"I tried Spencer, to see if he had that

prehistoric monkey grip, and Catherine thought I was endangering his

life. But you're so busy keeping them fed and happy that you haven't

time to experiment."

When dinner was over, Catherine stood in the living room door.

"If I may be excused for a few minutes," she said.

"Is it dishes, Mrs. Hammond?" Miss Partridge turned from the window,

where Charles had been pointing out the view. "I'm not a bit domestic,

but I think I could wipe them."

"Oh, no, thank you." Catherine smiled. "Just the children."

They were in Spencer's room, arguing in low tones about which chair

Marian was to have. Catherine adjusted the reading lamp, suggested that

Spencer curl up on the end of his bed. "Now you may read for a whole

hour," she said. "Then Marian must bathe. If you will call me, I'll rub

your back for you." She started toward the door. "You will be quiet,

won't you," she asked, "since we have a guest?"

"Of course, Muvver," said Marian. "Isn't she a handsome lady?"

"No, she isn't," said Spencer, loudly.

"Remember Letty's asleep just next door."

Catherine stopped outside their closed door. They were quiet, dropping

at once into their stories. Good children. She brushed her hair from

her forehead with an impatient hand. "I feel like--like a nonentity!"

she raged. "Almost as if I were invisible. Not there to be even looked

at. Perhaps I am jealous, but it doesn't feel like that. She's not the

vamp type. Too smooth and egoistic. It's what Charles can do for her,

not Charles that she is after. O, well----"

But before she had returned to the living room the bell rang. Henrietta

and Bill!

Catherine held out her hands, one to each, and drew them into the hall.

"You dears!" she cried. "I am glad to see you. Come in."

She stepped back into visibility with their entrance. Henrietta had

met Miss Partridge at Bellevue one day. William bowed with his usual

courtly silence.

"Did you like Miss Kelly?" demanded Henrietta, as she settled into the

wing chair before Miss Partridge had it again. "She came in, didn't

she?"

"She's coming Monday."

"Is Monday the great day?" Bill was looking at her, and Catherine

smiled swiftly at the warm, quiet friendliness of his eyes.

"Monday!" she declared. "I telephoned Dr. Roberts this morning."

"Isn't it fine, Miss Partridge"--Henrietta turned briskly to her--"this

move of Mrs. Hammond's."

"I haven't heard about it." Miss Partridge's dark, smooth brows lifted.

Did Charles look uneasy, almost guilty, as he stretched out in his

armchair and fumbled in the box of cigars?

"You haven't?" Henrietta grinned slyly at Catherine. "Haven't you heard

that Mrs. Hammond is renouncing the quiet, domestic life for a real

job?"

"Why not say exchanging jobs?" Charles was intent on the end of his

cigar.

"Or annexing a second job?" That was Bill's quiet voice.

"I am going to work at the Lynch Bureau," explained Catherine, "as

investigator." She felt a flash of delight in the astonishment which

rippled briefly over Miss Partridge's smooth face. Knocked down her

first impression, she thought maliciously.

"Really? How interesting!" Miss Partridge smiled. "But what will your

sweet children do?"

"They'll go to school and have an efficient nurse," said Henrietta

abruptly, "and they'll be vastly better off when they aren't having

the sole attention of an intelligent woman like their mother. And

that's that!" She dangled her glasses over her forefinger. "Did you

decide that girl was malingering, Miss Partridge? She certainly had no

physical symptoms. Just a case we ran into the other day," she added,

to Catherine.

Charles, in answer to a query from Bill, had started a long and eager

explanation of an industrial test he had been working up.

Catherine noticed that even as Miss Partridge answered Henrietta's

question, her eyes had turned to Charles and Bill. "Is your husband a

doctor, too?" she finished.

"Heavens, no! Bill couldn't be anything so personal as a doctor."

Henrietta laughed. "Could he, Catherine? He's an engineer."

And presently, maneuvering cleverly, Miss Partridge was talking

industrial tests with Charles, while Bill, puffing on his old pipe, let

his half-shut eyes rest on her face, and then move across to Catherine.

Was he smiling?

Marian's call came just then, and Catherine rose.

"May I come along, Catherine? I haven't seen the kids since that night

in Maine." Henrietta stopped at Spencer's door, and as Catherine draped

Marian's slim body in the huge bath towel, she heard Spencer's eager

voice and Dr. Henrietta's bluff tone. Marian, her face rosy and her

dark hair rumpled, threw herself into Henrietta's arms. "Hello, my

Doctor!" she cried.

They had a moment in the hall, when Henrietta looked firmly into

Catherine's eyes.

"You stop your worrying," she said. "You won't swing your job unless

you are clear of doubts. Brace up!" Her hand clasped Catherine's. "If I

can help you any way, be sure you let me know."

"Oh, you are a brick!" Catherine's fingers were convulsive. "I do need

you!"

The three in the living room looked up at their entrance.

"Spencer sent you his regards, Bill. He wished me to tell you that he

thought the cows recovered from the alarm your car caused them."

Bill removed his pipe, a slow smile on his gaunt face.

"What cows?" demanded Charles.

"Ghost cows, Charles. Not in your lexicon. But we felt them in that old

barn, behind those stanchions."

When they had gone, Charles followed Catherine into the dining room,

gathered a handful of coffee cups, and walked after her into the

disorderly kitchen.

"What'd you think of her?" he asked, casually.

"Her being the cat?" Catherine grinned at him. She was at ease again,

confident, the sense of nonentity gone.

"Oh, Stella Partridge, of course. Fine person, isn't she! No nonsense

about her. Mind like a man's."

"Is it?" Catherine stacked the dishes in the sink.

"Has the qualities which are conventionally labeled masculine. Like

that better?"

The clatter of the garbage pail cover served for Catherine's answer.

"Bill's a queer duck, now, isn't he?" Charles lolled against the table,

his long body making a hazardous oblique angle. "Never can make up my

mind whether it's shyness or laziness."

"I don't think it's either of those things, if you mean his lack of

loquaciousness."

"Loquaciousness!" Charles threw back his head in a laugh. "That's some

word to use about Bill!"

"I suppose I might as well wash these confounded dishes to-night."

Catherine turned the faucet and the water splashed into the sink.

"Where's your dusky maiden?"

"To-morrow's Sunday."

"Oh, say, it's too bad I brought a guest in to-night, eh?" Charles

waited comfortably for her assurance that it wasn't too bad.

"We'd hate the mess in the morning," was Catherine's dry retort.

Charles was in extraordinary humor, the purring kind, thought

Catherine, as her hands moved deftly among the dishes. And I'm not. I

feel as if I should like to yell! She bent more swiftly to her task.

Charles straightened his long angle and reached for a dish towel.

He needn't be magnanimous about wiping dishes! As he rubbed the

towel round and round a plate, he began to sing. Somewhere--rub--the

sun--rub--is shi-i-ining--rub! And Catherine had, suddenly, a flash of

a picture, smarting in her throat. The shabby little flat where they

had first lived, before Spencer was born; Charles wiping the dishes,

singing, and Catherine singing with him, ridiculous old hymns and

sentimental tunes. And always after the occasional guests had gone, the

"gossip party," as they labeled it, speculation, analysis, discussion

of the people who had gone, friendly, shrewd, amusing, ending when the

dish towel was flapped out and the dish-pan stowed under the sink with

the ritualistic but none the less thrilling, "There's no one can touch

my girl for looks or charm or brains!" and Catherine's, "I'm sorry for

everyone else--because they can't have you!"

Charles was echoing that old custom. But he didn't realize it. And

Catherine thought, with a stabbing bitterness, "He has this feeling of

comfort, not because we are here together, but because the evening has

pleased him."

"What do you think is Bill's secret, then?" Charles broke out.

"He's thinking of something else, not of that; he's keeping me off his

real center," hurried Catherine's thoughts. "I won't be horrid and

cross."

"Isn't it lack of conceit?" She reached for the heavy frying pan. "Most

of us have to talk to assert ourselves, to make folks listen to us.

Bill hasn't any ego----"

"Oh, he's got one, all right." Charles balanced the pile of dishes

precariously near the edge of the table. "Looks more conceited just to

sit around with that cryptic expression----"

"I don't think so!" Catherine scrubbed vigorously at the sink. "He

never looks critical."

"Couldn't get a harsh word out of you about Bill, could I?" Charles

jested a little heavily. "He's always been that way, ever since he was

a kid."

"Now when Miss Partridge"--Catherine resisted the impulse to say "your

Miss Partridge"--"when she is silent, she looks too superior for words."

"Nonsense! I felt you were misjudging her. Now, she's awake, ready to

talk----"

"About herself."

"Meow!" Charles grinned. "Though we did talk a good deal about the

work. But, of course, that's only natural."

"She didn't even see me until Henrietta pointed at me and yanked me out

of the pigeon-hole where she had me stuck."

"I hope you aren't going to dislike her, Catherine." Charles was

serious. "Since I have to see her in connection with the clinic, it

might be awkward----"

"Thank the Lord, those are done!" Catherine turned from the sink.

"Don't worry, old thing," she said, lightly. "I don't hate her. We

never have insisted on love me, love all my dogs, you know."

"I thought you'd appreciate her." Charles was sulky.

"She's extremely handsome."

"She's as warm hearted as she is brilliant, too."

"Like a frog, she is!" thought Catherine. But she reached for the

button and snapped out the light.

"I'll hurry with my shower," she said, preceding him up the hall. "Then

you can have the tub. It's late."

The bathroom was littered with the children's discarded clothes. Little

sluts! thought Catherine, gathering socks and shirts and bloomers. My

fault, I suppose. I can't make 'em neat! Like a nice warm tub myself,

she growled, but Charles is waiting. Someone's always waiting.

She sat in the dark by the window in their room, while Charles splashed

and hummed. Yellow cracks edged a few of the windows of the opposite

wall, not many, as it was so late. Above the rim of the building she

could see one great blue-white star with a zigzag of pale stars after

it. Vega, she thought. Smiting its--what is it? Wonder if you could see

stars at noon from the bottom of this court? It's like a well. She drew

her dressing gown close over her throat. It feels nasturtium colored,

even in the dark, she thought, running her fingers over the heavy silk.

Her one extravagance last spring, lovely flame-orange thing. Why, she

hadn't braided her hair. Her fingers were tired. They moved idly

through the heavy softness.

Her elbows on the window sill, she stared up at the star. Monday, she

thought. Monday I shall have something else to think about. Just as

Charles does. This dreadful mulling over words and looks, hanging on

the wave of an eyelash. That's what women do, poor fools, trying to

keep all the first glamor. Love. She heard the water gulping out of the

tub. Love needs to be back of your days, _there_, but not the thing

you feed on every second. Terrible indigestion, eating your heart out

forever. Ugh, the sill was gritty with dust. She rubbed her elbows

resentfully. That song Charles had hummed in the kitchen had sent her

back through the years. She hadn't wanted anything else in those days.

Passion, its strange, erratic light making everything else seem tinsel.

Tenderness, making all else in life seem cold. And quarrels--the still,

white silence, swift product of some unexpected moment, so that you

felt yourself imprisoned in an iceberg, from which you never could

escape--that was part of the struggle of admitting another person, your

lover, into yourself. And child-bearing. Peculiar, ecstatic, difficult;

commonplace physical preoccupation for long stretches of your life.

Catherine shrugged. Perhaps, if you weren't husky--she twisted from her

cramped position--perhaps some women never got over childbirth. It did

eat you up. Her mother would say she was thinking too much. She rose,

stretching her arms above her head, the silk slipping away from them.

Then, as she heard Charles scuffling along the hall--he did need some

new slippers--suddenly her heart opened and poured a golden flood over

her being. Why, now, this instant, she loved him, and all the earlier

passion was a thin tinkle against this sound--sunlight in the wide

branches of a tree, and cold earth deep about the roots, and liquid sap

flowing.

Her fingers closed about the crisp curtain edge as Charles pushed open

the door.

"You in bed?" His whisper was cautious. "Oh, no." He snapped on the

light, while Catherine gazed at him, waiting. His pink pajama coat

flopped open.

"There isn't a damned button on the thing. Got a pin?" He shuffled

across to the dressing table. "My wife's been to the country."

"Poor boy." Catherine rushed to the sewing table in the corner. "I'll

sew 'em on if your wife won't." Ridiculous, enchanting. She pulled

him down beside her on the bed, seized the coat, burying her knuckles

against the hard warmth of his chest. "Don't wriggle, or you'll have it

sewed to your diaphragm."

Charles was silent. Catherine's wrist flexed slowly with the drawing of

the thread. It's like weaving a spell, she thought, with secret passes

of my hand, to melt that hard resentment he won't admit. She broke the

thread and glanced up. Charles, with a quick motion, laid his cheek

against the sweet darkness of her hair.

"First time you've so much as seen me since you came back," he said.

"Too bad about you!" Catherine jeered softly.

XI

"It's the Thomases on the 'phone." Charles came out of the study. "They

want us to come out this afternoon to see their house."

"Out where?" Catherine looked up from her book, while Spencer and

Marian fidgeted for the reading to continue.

"Croton. They've moved, you know. Bought a farm."

"Walter Thomas?" asked Spencer. "Has he got a farm?"

"Thomas says there are trains every hour, and we can stay for

Sunday-night supper."

"But the children----"

"I thought your mother was coming in."

"She may not wish to stay late."

"Well, you'll have to decide. Thomas is waiting. It would be rather

nice to get out of town for a few hours."

Catherine's brows drew together.

"We're all right," said Marian. "Go on away!"

"Yes, you are." Catherine sighed briefly. Charles had his air of "Are

you going to deprive me of a pleasant hour?"

"You wouldn't go without me?" she asked. "Tell Mr. Thomas that if

mother wishes to stay, we'll come. We can telephone him."

Mrs. Spencer said she would like nothing better than a chance at the

children without their interfering parents, and in the late afternoon

Catherine and Charles set forth. The cross-town car was jammed;

Catherine, from an uncomfortable seat just under the conductor's fare

box, watched the people about her with remote eyes. She hated these

humid, odorous jams. She always crawled off into a dark corner of

herself, away from the jostling and pushing of her body. Heavy, dull

faces--she lifted her head until her eyes could rest on the firm

solidity of Charles's shoulder and head. Nothing professorial about

that erect head, the edge of carefully shaved neck between collar

and clipped fair hair that showed under the soft gray hat. But even

the back of his head looked intelligent, alive. He turned suddenly,

and over the crowd their eyes met in a mysteriously moving flare

of acknowledgment. He grinned at her--he knew her hatred of such

crowds; and turned away again. Catherine shivered a little. That was

what she wanted to keep, that awareness of each other, that intimate

self-recognition. She couldn't keep it if she was worn down into

dullness and drabness and stupidity. She had, she knew, stirred Charles

out of his easy acceptance of her as an established custom, and for the

day, at least, she had submerged his resentment. As the car stopped

under the tracks she was thinking, if I can win him over to believe in

what I am, what I want, inwardly, in his feeling, not in words,--then I

can do anything!

They sat together on the train and talked. Charles had spent one Sunday

during the summer with the Thomases; they had a tennis court and

chickens. Thomas had been promoted to Assistant Professor, but he kept

his extension classes still, as the oldest boy was entering college

this fall.

"He was crazy about some old French verse forms that day. Couldn't talk

about anything else. Mrs. Thomas wanted to talk about the refinishing

of the walls."

"I'll wager she did. Verse forms interest her only as a means to the

salary end."

"But she's a fine type of woman, don't you think?"

Catherine shrugged.

"She's about as intellectual as a--a jellyfish. She's not a jellyfish,

though."

"Thomas gets enough enjoyment from his own mind."

They walked from the station through the crowded, dingy houses near

the river, climbed a long hill, and at the top found the country, soft

and lovely in the hazy September sunlight. As they climbed, the river

dropped beneath them, opal-blue and calm, the hollows of the wooded

Westchester hills gathered purple shadows, and on the slopes toward

which they climbed a branch of maple flamed at times like a shrill,

sweet note in the mellow silence.

"It must be good for their children, living out here." Charles sniffed

at the air. "Smell that wood smoke! Bonfires, and nuts----"

"How'd you like to climb that hill every night?"

"Thomas has a flivver. There, you can see the house through those

poplars."

* * * * *

The Thomases were on the porch, rising to meet them with a flurry of

innumerable children and dogs and cats. Mrs. Thomas, small, pink,

worried, with curly gray hair and a high voice; Mr. Thomas, of

indifferent stature, with an astonishingly large head, smooth dark

hair, nearsighted eyes behind heavy glasses, and a large, gentle mouth;

the children--there were only five, after all, from Theodore, the

eldest, who was curly and pink like Mrs. Thomas, down to Dorothy, the

youngest, who already wore glasses as thick as her father's.

"I wanted Theodore to drive down for you, but you said you wanted to

walk." Mrs. Thomas jerked the chairs into companionable nearness.

"Quite a climb up our hill."

"Mrs. Thomas can't imagine any one liking to walk," said her husband.

"Not a mother and wife, at least. Men don't know what being on their

feet means, do they, Mrs. Hammond?"

Inquiries about the children, mutually. Admiration expressed for the

view, for the house, room by room, for the poultry run which Theodore

had constructed, for the tennis court, for the asparagus bed.

"Now that the Cook's Tour is ended, what about something to eat,

Mother?"

The dining room was small, and warm from the sunning of the afternoon;

the Thomas children chattered in high voices; Catherine sighed in

secret as she looked at the elaborate salad, the laborious tiny

sandwiches, the whipped-cream dessert in the fragile stemmed sherbet

glasses, the frosted cake. But Mrs. Thomas, the lines in her pink

cheeks a trifle more distinct, hovered in anxious delight over each

step in the progress of this evidence of her skill and labor.

"No, Dorothy, no cake. She has to be very careful of sweets, they upset

her so easily. Do your children hanker for everything they shouldn't

have?"

Theodore broke in with an account of the psychological tests he had

taken for college entrance; there was a suggestion of pimples on his

round, pink chin. Walter wanted to know when Spencer could come out;

Walter was Spencer's age, a chubby, choleric boy who kept rabbits and

sold them to the neighbors for stews. Clara, just older, had reached an

age of gloomy suspicion; her hair, which her mother was allowing to

grow, now that Clara was older, fell about her thin shoulders in lank

concavity. Catherine wondered whether the contention between Marian and

Spencer sounded to outsiders like the bickering which ran so strongly

here. Dorothy was a year older than Letty, but she did not talk so

plainly. And that other boy, Percy--why name him that!--was being sent

away from the table because he had pinched Clara.

Inevitably the talk stayed on the level of the children, in spite of

attempted detours on the part of Charles. Mr. Thomas ate with an absent

myopic eye on Dorothy and the next older boy.

But when at length they left the dining room, he was saying to Charles,

"You recall those songs I spoke of? Thirteenth century? I've found

a girl who does beautiful translations. A graduate student. She has

an astonishing sense for the form." He had come alive, suddenly, the

blank, gentle mask of his face breaking into sharp, vivid animation.

Catherine watched him, peering at his wife, glancing back at him. She

didn't care about the old verse forms, neither did his wife; but his

wife didn't care that he could come alive like that, apart from her.

Perhaps when they are alone, thought Catherine, he has some feeling for

her that compares with this--but I doubt it!

"He's as keen about those musty old papers as if they were worth huge

sums." Mrs. Thomas laid her hand on Catherine's arm, as they stood on

the edge of the porch, looking far down the valley. Mrs. Thomas had a

way of offering nervous little caresses. "Men are queer, aren't they?"

Her forehead puckered.

Catherine endured the hand, light, with an insinuating effect of a

bond between them, the bond of their sex. We women understand, those

fingers tapped softly.

* * * * *

Later, half defiantly, in answer to a suggestion of Mrs. Thomas that

Catherine take her place on the faculty women's committee for teas,

Catherine explained that she would be much too busy. She saw in the

quick pursing of Mrs. Thomas's little mouth the contraction of her

eyelids, the rapid twists her announcement made as it entered Mrs.

Thomas's mind. Disapproval, hearty and determined; a small fear,

quickly over, lest some discredit reflect on her position; a chilly

covering of those emotions with her words, "Why, Mrs. Hammond, you've

seemed so devoted to your children!"

"Naturally." Catherine was curt. "I am. But they needn't suffer, any

more than they did before while Charles was in France and I worked. I

can't see any loss to them."

"I hope you won't regret it." Mrs. Thomas drew her own brood into a

symbolic shelter, as she flung her arm around Dorothy, who was at her

knee with a picture book, clamoring unintelligibly to be read to.

"Fine for you, Hammond. A family needs several wage earners, in these

postwar days."

Charles laughed, but Catherine saw the flicker of uneasiness in his

face.

"But I'd hate to have to find a cook to supplant Mrs. Thomas."

"Ah, but you see, I can't cook that way." Catherine's lightness covered

the glance she sped at Charles. She hadn't, then, touched his real

feeling about this. Just a scratch, and she could see it.

"I don't know what's to become of us poor men"--he rose lazily--"unless

we turn into housewives."

"You better take a turn at it, just to see what it's like." That was

Mrs. Thomas, vigorously exalting her ability.

"It was called husbandry once, wasn't it?" Mr. Thomas smiled in

enjoyment of his joke. "Must you go? It's very early. Let us drive you

down."

"The walk will be just what we need----"

The evening was soft and black, with faint rustle in the autumn-crisped

leaves of the trees that massed against the blue-black sky. Below them

the river gleamed silver-dark. They went in silence down the hill, the

gravel slipping under their heels. Then Catherine felt Charles groping

for her hand, the warm pressure of his fingers.

"Rummy bunch of kids," he said. And then, "That woman can cook, but

that's about all. She can't impart gentle manners." Catherine relaxed

in content. He wasn't huffy. "Too bad you have to tell people like that

what you're going to do. Let 'em see after you've succeeded, I say!"

"Oh!" Catherine's voice was sharp with delight. "You think I will!"

"Lord, yes. Of course. You've got the stuff."

Their clasped hands swinging like children's, they came to the foot of

the hill.