ENCOUNTER
I
"Dr. Gilbert will be in immediately." The neat little office nurse
ushered Catherine into the living room. "She left word for tea at five."
Catherine said she would wait. The nurse bent down to touch a match to
the gas log, and tiny blue flames leaped in mechanical imitation of a
hearth fire. Catherine stood at the window, drawing off her gloves.
The buildings between the hotel and the corner of the Avenue had been
demolished since her last visit; beneath the windows gaped a huge
chasm, rocky, pitted with pools of dark water, angled with cranes and
derricks,--like a fairy tale, thought Catherine, and the old witch
froze them into immobility with her stick, her stick being a holiday.
The room was Henrietta, unimaginative, practical, disinterested.
Expensive, department store furniture, overstuffed chairs and
davenport, floor lamp, mahogany. Henrietta had ordered the furnishings,
the maid had set them in place, and there they stayed, unworn,
impersonal. A maid wheeled in the tea wagon, and Henrietta's firm heels
sounded in the hall.
"Catherine! Good for you." Henrietta clapped her shoulder as she
passed. "Afraid something might detain you." She shook off her heavy
English coat, and went briskly to pouring tea. Her close hat had
flattened her fine light hair above her temples, giving additional
plump serenity to her face.
"That's all, Susie," she told the maid. "If there are any calls for me,
take them. I am undisturbed for one hour now."
"Ah, this is great!" She stretched her feet toward the humming gas log;
shining toes, ankles slim even in the gray spats. "I suppose you have a
mission, since you take the time to come down here to-day. But whatever
it is, I am glad to see you."
Catherine sipped at the tea. The hot, clear fragrance was an auger,
releasing words.
"Shrewd guess, Henry." She smiled. "I want advice."
"Help yourself." Henrietta's teeth closed in her sandwich with relish.
"And I wanted it from you," Catherine spoke slowly, "because I want
advice that goes in my direction."
"Kind we always want. Only kind we take."
"Here it is." Catherine placed her tea cup on the wagon. "Just before
Christmas Dr. Roberts asked me to go west, to make the first-hand
study of the schools, you know. He gave me until to-morrow to decide."
Henrietta's eyes, alert, sharp, over the edge of her cup, waited. "More
money, for one thing. Reputation. Chance to show what I can do. But I
have to be gone almost a month, I think. I decided at once that it was
out of the question."
"Why?"
"That was a week ago." Catherine leaned forward. "In a fit of
sentiment. And egoism. I thought they couldn't get along without me,
of course. Then--no use to explain the particular eye-opener--I changed
my mind. I began to wonder whether this wasn't a sort of test. To see
how serious I am. About a job, I mean. Now! Advise me to go."
"Of course, no one is really indispensable." Henrietta grinned. "No
one. And what's a month?"
"It seems a long time to leave the children."
"Be good for them as well as you. Isn't Miss Kelly capable of handling
them?"
"I suppose so."
"Most families would be improved by enforced separations," declared
Henrietta. "They're too tight. Break 'em up. What does Charles say to
this?"
"He hasn't heard of it yet."
"Decide first and then tell him, eh?" Henrietta drew out her
eyeglasses, running her fingers absently along the black ribbon. "He
won't approve, at first. But it is a test. You're right. Your first
opportunity to enlarge your position. You'd be a fool not to go,
Catherine."
"That's just what I wanted to hear." Catherine's eyes were somber,
harassed. "I've thought it out, backwards and forwards. Mother's friend
wants to visit some one in New Jersey. If Mother will spend the night
at the house--but she won't approve, either."
"Get your approval out of the job, Catherine." Henrietta squinted
through her eyeglass. "You want it on every hand, don't you?"
Catherine lowered her eyelids.
"I did, once. I think I do less, now."
"That's right!"
They were silent a moment.
"That's ripping!" Henrietta broke out. "That the Bureau offered it to
you. You can't turn it down. I'll drop in occasionally on the kids, if
that will calm your anxiety."
"You really think it's not a preposterous scheme, then?"
"The only preposterousness would be in refusing it. It's ripping!"
"What is ripping?"
Catherine turned, a quick stir of pleasure at the low voice. Bill was
at the door.
"Come in and hear about it." Henrietta waved toward a chair. "Tea?"
Bill shook his head and sat down near Catherine. He sagged in his
chair, a suggestion of unkempt, wrinkled weariness in his face and
clothes.
Henrietta explained in hard, glowing phrases, that Catherine had the
opportunity of a lifetime. As Catherine listened and watched, she had
a renewal of the strange feeling which had haunted her since Christmas
morning. We are so lonely--so shut off--so absolutely isolated, she
thought. Each of us speaks only his own language. We think we reach
another human being, that he knows our tongue, and we discover that we
have fooled ourselves. Grotesquely. Charles--remote, unreachable. I
imagined that contact. Bill, and Henrietta--she is content, thinking
she communicates with Bill.
"Are you going?" Bill glanced at her under his heavy lids.
"I think I am," she said. She wished she could find his thought which
reached toward her.
"Perhaps I'll see you. I have to go to Chicago the end of the month on
that Dexter contract," he added, to Henrietta.
He left them presently, and when Catherine rose to go, Henrietta's hand
lingered, fumbling--queerly for her--over Catherine's fingers.
"I hope you and Bill make connections," she said. "He's not well. I
don't know--listless, needs a change, I guess."
Catherine stared at the anxiety, the puzzled bewilderment in
Henrietta's round blue eyes.
"I've been worrying at him to see a specialist here, and he won't.
Can't budge him, stubborn old Bill. He enjoys you, Cathy. Have dinner
or something with him."
"If we do make connections, of course I shall." Catherine felt a little
prickling of guilt, as if in some way Bill's confidence violated
complete loyalty to Henrietta. "I'm fond of Bill," she added.
"There's nothing seriously wrong with him. But--there's a gland
specialist here in town. I told Bill his cynicism would vanish like
the dew if he'd let himself be gone over." Henrietta frowned. "He said
if his philosophy was located in his liver, he preferred to keep his
illusions about it."
"Oh, you doctors! Thinking every feeling has its roots in some gland,
and that you can diagnose any unhappiness."
"Jeer all you like." Henrietta's moment of perplexity had passed.
"We're animals, Cathy, and a reasonably healthy animal is reasonably
happy."
Catherine reached for purse and gloves; as she dangled the shabby
black bag over a finger, she felt the stealthy, restless feet of her
obsession begin their pacing. Charles, and Stella Partridge. Charles,
with all his tenderness, his love----
With diabolic abruptness Henrietta said:
"Oh, by the way, I ran into that Miss Partridge last week, at the
hospital. Do you see much of her?"
Catherine flinched. The stealthy feet were running.
"What made you think of her?" she asked.
"Oh--" Henrietta hesitated. "Thinking about you and Charles. I had a
little talk with her, while we waited. She's an interesting type, I
think."
"What do you make of her? Charles seems to admire her immensely."
"So do several of the staff. She's the kind of modern woman men do
like. Unoriginal, useful, wonderful assistant. Cold as a frog--they
don't guess that. She's clever. Her line is that men are so generous
and fine, give her every opportunity to advance."
"What is she after, do you think?"
"Money. Position. But she's parasitical. Not in the old sense.
She's sidetracked all her sex into her ambition, but she uses it as
skillfully as if she wanted a lover or a husband."
"I have seen very little of her." Catherine was busy with her gloves.
She wanted to escape before those shrewd blue eyes caught a glimpse of
her caged, uneasy, obsessive fear.
"She'll get on," said Henrietta. "Wish you could stay for dinner,
Catherine. No? Let me know if I can help you out. Tell Charles I think
he should be immensely proud of you, being offered this trip, will you?
I'll run in some evening soon and tell him myself."
II
Dinner was ready when Catherine reached home. She went in to bid Letty
good night; Miss Kelly had put her to bed, a doll on each side of her
yellow head. As the small arms flew about Catherine's throat, choking
her, and she caught the sweet fragrance of the drowsy, warm skin her
lips brushed, a panic of negation seized her. Go away, for days and
days, without that soft ecstasy of touch, of assurance? She was mad to
think of it. "There, Letty, that's a lovely hug." She drew the blanket
close to the small chin.
"An' tuck in Tilda and li'l' Pet," murmured Letty. "My Muv-ver dear."
What was sentimental and what was sane? Catherine, smoothing into place
the heavy coil of her hair, washing her hands, delaying her entrance to
the living room, where she heard, vaguely, the voices of Charles and
the children, struggled slowly to lift her head above the maelstrom.
It was only for a few weeks out of a lifetime. The children would
not suffer. And I want to go, she thought. Something leaped within
her, vigorous, hungry, clamorous. It's not loving them less, to need
something outside them, beyond them, something worth the temporary
price of absence. Charles loved them, and yet he could go freely,
without any of these qualms, into danger, for months.
She marched into the living room, her resolution firm. She would tell
Charles about it, after dinner. Perhaps he would be indifferent.
Perhaps--her obsession bared its teeth behind the flimsy bars--he might
be relieved, at freedom to follow other desires.
Marian, perched on the arm of her father's chair, one arm tight about
his neck, squirmed to look up at Catherine, expectant brightness in her
eyes. Spencer stood in front of them, hands in his pockets, his face
puckered intensely.
"Couldn't it be managed some way, Daddy?" he begged.
"Where's your allowance?" Charles stretched lazily, one hand enclosing
Marian's slippered feet, dancing them slowly up and down.
"It's all in hock, for three weeks." Spencer was dolorous. "For
Christmas presents, and they're all over."
"It's where?" Catherine laughed, and Spencer spun around, hope
smoothing some of his puckers.
"Hock. That's what Tom says. But he says when he needs more money he
asks his mother and she tells his father and he gets it."
"And who is Tom?" Charles stood up. Swinging Marian to her feet. "Let's
have dinner."
It was Tom Wilcox on the floor below. Spencer had spent the afternoon
there; his story came out in excited fragments. He had helped set up a
radio apparatus, and he wanted one, to rig up on his bed, like Tom's.
Then he could wake up in the night and listen to a concert, or a man
telling about the weather.
"He lent me a book about it, Mother." He poised his fork in mid-air,
and down splashed his bit of mashed potato.
"Watch what you are doing, sir," said Charles.
Spencer flushed, but hurried on, "And I know I could set one up alone,
and it's wonderful, Mother, you can listen to things thousands of miles
away, an'----"
"If Spencer has one, I want one on my bed, too," declared Marian, with
a demure, sidewise glance at her father. "Couldn't I have one, Daddy?"
"Spencer hasn't one yet." Charles teased him.
"How much do they cost?" asked Catherine, gently. Marian's glance
bothered her. The child couldn't--how could she?--feel that thicket
which had sprung up this last week, enough to range herself
deliberately with her father.
"Well, quite a lot of dollars. Four or five or mebbe six." Spencer was
doubtful. "But they last forever, Tom says, an'----"
"What would you do with it?"
Spencer caught the tantalizing undertone in his father's voice.
"Listen!" he cried, "of course, listen!"
"Careful, Spencer." Catherine's eyes steadied him; poor kid! She knew
that irritating helplessness. "I'm sure it is interesting."
Mrs. O'Lay heaved herself around the table. "That roast ain't so good
as it might be," she observed confidentially to Catherine. "Butchers is
snides, that's all."
"It was all right." Catherine ignored Charles's lifted eyebrows. The
salad did look a little messy.
"Do you think, Mother, that perhaps----"
"Can't you talk about something else for a while, Spencer?" Charles
spoke up curtly.
Catherine's fingers gripped her serving fork.
"I'll see, Spencer," she said, clearly. "Later we'll talk about it."
"If he has it, I want it," Marian insisted.
"Will you change the subject?"
Charles's outbreak wrapped a heavy silence about the children.
Catherine's spoon clicked in the bowl of salad dressing. How ghastly,
she thought. It's our dissension, using them. Spencer had ducked his
head; his nostrils dilated, his eyes moved unhappily from her face to
his father's.
"Let's see, school opens on Wednesday, doesn't it?" She sought for safe
words with which to rescue them. "You have to-morrow. Miss Kelly is
going shopping for you. A coat for Marian----"
"Is she going to select clothes for them?" asked Charles, accusingly.
"Oh, she can do that. I've given her a price limit. The only difficult
thing is shopping within that limit."
"I never had a bought coat, did I, Muvver?" Marian broke in. "Only
coats you sewed for me."
"You're getting to be such a big girl." What possessed the children,
anyway! Catherine heard Charles grunt faintly as if some huge
dissatisfaction was confirmed. "And now----"
"You have more important things to do than mere sewing for the
children."
"Yes." Catherine was flint, sending off sparks. "And I have money to
bridge the difference in price."
Silence again, murky, uncomfortable. Finally the ordeal of dinner was
done with. Charles offered, with detectable ostentation, to read to
Marian. Spencer pulled his chair around until the back cut him off in a
corner with his book on radio-practice. Catherine, after consultation
with Mrs. O'Lay, withdrew to the study, where she opened her drawer
of the desk, and spread out the array of bills. Not all of them were
in yet; this was only the second of January, and a holiday at that.
But there were enough! She set down figures, added, grimly--how few
bills it took to make a hundred dollars!--and all the time, under the
external business of reckoning, whirled a tumult of half recognized
thoughts. Unendurable, that dissension should be tangled enough to
catch the children in its meshes. Since Christmas day she had held
herself remote, ice-enclosed. She had felt Charles try to reach her,
felt his fingers slip, chilled, from her impenetrable surface, until he
chose this method. As if he brandished the tender body of a child as
his weapon, threatening to bruise it against her hard aloofness. Her
hands dropped idly on the tormenting bills, and she let herself fully
into that whirling tumult. Whatever happened, she must prevent another
hour like that at dinner. If they must be opposed, she and Charles, it
must be in themselves, not with the children as buffers or weapons.
When they had gone to bed, she would go in to Charles.
Could she say, I know you are in love with Stella Partridge? Did she
know it? If she said that, he might think that this trip, her going
away, was revenge, or jealousy. Well, wasn't it? She could hear his
voice, dramatizing the fairy story he read, so that Marian broke in
occasionally with faint "Oh's!" or delighted giggles. Why had she
decided that she must go? Defense, perhaps; not revenge. She felt
again that strong, twisted cable of her own integrity. He wanted her
submissive, docile, violating herself. He might say that she had driven
him away, had failed him. But Stella--that had begun months ago. She
could pick up threads of evidence, all down the days since summer. Then
he might deny it, being secretly bland and pleased that she revealed
herself as jealous, like a beggar at a door where she had once dwelt.
Perhaps there was little to the affair. She had a brief, strange
fancy--he had swung slightly in his orbit, so that the side toward her
was cold, dead, like the dark face of the moon--and the light, the
awareness of her--all of that was turned away, out of possibility of
any incidence, any impingement from her.
No. She would tell him only that she wanted to go away for a few weeks.
That she would arrange everything so that his life would be quite as
always. That she hoped--faint hope!--that he might find some small
pleasure in this degree of success she had achieved.
If I pretend that I have noticed nothing, she thought at last, then it
may be in the end that there was little to notice. If I can cling to my
love, it may be like that old man of the sea, changing into horrible
shapes under my hands, but changing back, if I have courage to hang on,
into its true shape.
"Time for bed-ne-go," came Charles's voice down the hall.
"Please, can I finish this chapter, Daddy?" Spencer begged.
"Better put your book mark right there, son, and run along."
He had read himself into a better humor, thought Catherine. She brushed
the bills into the drawer. Her check would be larger this month.
"Come along, chickens." She stood at the doorway; her glance at Charles
gathered him clearly--the line of lower eyelid, the angle of his chin.
Marian slid down from his knee, sighing.
"Daddy read me a lovely story, all about a fairy prince."
She bent to kiss Marian good night, with a final pat to the blankets.
"I'll dream about a fairy prince, Muvver," came the child's voice,
muffled as she snuggled out of reach of the cold wind.
Spencer's arms shot up about her throat, tugging her down where he
could whisper.
"Moth-er, do you think I could have a radio receiving set?"
Catherine smiled.
"Well--" she hesitated. "You have a birthday before long. In March.
I'll have to find out more about them. Could you wait?"
"Oh, Moth-er!" His hug was exuberant. "Moth-er darling!"
Catherine closed his door, and poised an instant in the hall, priming
her courage. "Now!" she said, under her breath.
Before she had moved, however, the doorbell clattered, smudging her
flame of determination.
Charles came briskly through the hall.
"Oh, you there?" But he went on to the door.
III
It was the Thomases, Mrs. Thomas explaining wordily that they had spent
the day in town, luncheon, matinee, dinner, and thought they would just
drop in for a time, before the ten-thirty train home.
More than an hour to their train time. To Catherine, let down so
suddenly from her peak of resolution, the evening was garbled, like
a column in a newspaper struck off from pied type, with words and
phrases at random making sense, and all the rest unintelligible. Mrs.
Thomas was full of holiday vivacity; the plumes on her black hat
quivered in every filament. Those plumes bothered Catherine; she had
seen them before, perhaps not at that angle, or perhaps not on that
hat. No, they were generic plumes; eternal symbol of the academic wife
and her best hat, her prodigious effort at respectable attire.
Mr. Thomas wanted to talk shop, if Charles would permit him. One leg
crossed over his knee jerked absently in rhythm as he spoke. A student
of his was working on psychological tests for poetic creation, an
analysis of the poetic type of thought processes. Against their talk,
like trills and grace notes against the base chords, rippled Mrs.
Thomas in little anecdotes of Percy, of Clara, of Dorothy, of Walter.
"Walter wanted Spencer to come out for a few days this vacation. Be
so nice for him to get into the country. But Percy had a little sore
throat, and of course with children you never know what that may mean.
I told him perhaps between semesters--the children always have a few
days then."
"That's very kind of you." Catherine heard the determined phrases
Charles set forth: "The poetic mind is never intellectual. Always
purely emotional, intuitive, governed by associative processes." She
felt that her smile was a mawkish simper. "To think of adding another
child to your household."
"I'll tell Walter, then, that perhaps in February."
And presently, Mr. Thomas, blinking behind his glasses, turned his
gentle smile toward Catherine.
"We hear great things of you, Mrs. Hammond."
"Oh, yes." Mrs. Thomas nodded. Catherine felt the quick stiffening of
attention, and thought, here's what they came in for. What is it? She
flung out her hand to ward off danger, but unsuspectingly Mr. Thomas
hurled his bomb.
"Dr. Roberts tells us you've been appointed field investigator. He is
particularly enthusiastic about it. You deserve congratulations."
"But, dear Mrs. Hammond, are you really going? I said to Mr. Thomas I
couldn't believe it unless you told me yourself."
Catherine rushed pell-mell into words. She must stir up enough dust to
hide Charles's face, to keep him silent.
"It isn't really settled. Dr. Roberts asked me to go, but I haven't
agreed, as yet. Interesting, of course, fascinating." She saw,
breathlessly, the little glance of triumph Mrs. Thomas sent her husband.
"I said I didn't see how a mother could leave her family."
"Only for a short time, of course. Don't you think we all need some
kind of respite?"
"Well, I remember the doctor sent me to Atlantic City, after Dorothy's
birth." And Mrs. Thomas related with gusto her homesickness, her dire
imaginings each hour of absence. "You never know what might happen!
Even now, I can't help wondering if they are covered warmly enough,
although Mrs. Bates promised to stay till we came home."
Inconsequential, drifting bits of conversation--the minutes until
they should go were thin wires, drawing Catherine to the brink of
the whirlpool. Charles was laboriously talkative, and she heard the
rushing of his winds of grievance.
They were going!
"You'll send Spencer out, then, some day. He could come with Mr.
Thomas. For a week-end, say. Walter would be so pleased."
And then, as they stood in the hall, Mr. Thomas dropped another bomb.
"You haven't decided, I suppose, about that western position, Hammond?
Your husband was talking it over with me at luncheon one day," he added
to Catherine. "There's something gratifying in the idea of controlling
a department and the entire policy, I think."
It was Charles's turn now to hurry into words, vague, temporizing words.
Catherine returned to the living room and sat down. She had a queer
illusion that if she moved too quickly, she might break; she was
brittle, tight. Charles came back to the doorway, his chin thrust out.
Why, it was funny, ridiculous--caught out, each of them. This must be
a dream. It was too absurd for reality. She began to laugh. She didn't
wish to laugh, but she was helpless, as if some monstrous jest seized
her and shook her. Was it she, laughing, or the jest, outside her,
shaking her? She couldn't stop.
"Evidently you are amused." Charles strode past her. She wanted to deny
that, to explain that it wasn't she laughing. But she couldn't stop
that gasping ribald sound. "Catherine!" he stood above her, enormous,
magnified by the tears in her eyes. "Catherine!"
Abruptly the monstrous jest dropped her, limp, and the laughter had
burst through the thin partition into sobs. She twisted away from
him, flinging an arm up to shield her face, her body pressed against
the chair, seeking something hard, immovable, to check its convulsive
racking. She knew that Charles bent over her. She wanted to scream at
him to go away, to leave her alone, but she doubled her first against
her lips. She struggled back heavily to the narrow, tortuous path of
control. For days she had walked too near the edge for safety. She
could breathe now. If she could lie there, quiet, for a time--but
Charles was waiting. Her hands dropped to her lap, she relaxed,
emptily, and slowly she turned her face. Charles watched her; alarm,
and a sort of scorn on his face. He thought she had chosen that as a
weapon--feminine hysterics.
"Well?" His gruffness was a shield over his alarm, she knew.
"I am sorry." Her voice had the faint quiver of spent tears. "I really
didn't intend--but it suddenly looked--ridiculous."
"I don't see what's funny." Charles sat down stiffly. "In my hearing of
my wife's plans from outsiders."
Catherine drew a long breath. She was back on that narrow path, now.
"And my hearing of yours?" she asked.
"I told you about that offer several months ago." Charles was
dignified. "You seemed so little interested."
"Let's not quibble!" Catherine exclaimed. "I can't bear it. It's bad
enough--I was coming in to talk with you, when they rang. I hadn't
known"--she stared a moment; that was, after all, the dreadful
sign-post, indicating their diverging roads--"that you considered that
offer seriously."
"Exactly. But you will admit I had spoken of it?"
Ah, he wouldn't take that as parallel. His silence there was to be her
fault, too. Only his cold, dead side toward me--Catherine had again
that phantasy that he had swung in his orbit. If I go under now, it's
for all time. He must swing back to find me as I am, now. Pride poured
through her, hardening in the mold of her intention.
"I hadn't spoken of this field work," she said, clearly, "because I had
to think it out first. Dr. Roberts offered me the opportunity a week
ago. I did not suppose he took my assent for granted. Although he knows
I couldn't refuse it unless the work meant nothing to me."
"But what is it? You----"
Catherine explained. She was clear, hard, swift.
"You have evidently made up your mind to go."
She nodded.
"I can arrange things here so that the children will be cared for. And
the house will run, just as when I am in town. It's only for a month."
Charles got slowly to his feet, his mouth obdurate.
"Charles, won't you talk it over with me?"
"I have nothing to say. You seem to lay aside your obligations lightly.
But if you are content----"
"Not lightly." She shut her eyes against his face. One hand opened in
a piteous little gesture of entreaty. If he should, even now, beg her
to stay, wanting her, she would turn to water. "It has been difficult
to decide." She lifted her eyelids heavily. "You must see that it is a
distinct advance."
"A feather in your cap." Charles was sardonic. "And you must have
feathers."
At that she rose, faint color coming into her white face.
"Yes, I think I must. I'm sorry you don't like me--in feathers." Her
eyelids burned. "You would prefer, I suppose, dingy ostrich plumes that
you had bought, years ago--like Mrs. Thomas's."
"Mrs. Thomas may be a fool, but she's a good woman."
"Oh!" Catherine set her lips against the echoing surge of laughter that
rolled up. She wouldn't let go again; she wouldn't!
"I mean she finds her feathers in her husband's cap! Thomas is going
ahead in great strides. Ask any of the men in college. And why? Because
she is back of him, interested. A man has to feel there is some one
interested in what he's doing."
"And a woman doesn't?"
"You see! I say something, trying to explain my position, and at once
you twist it into a comment on yourself."
Catherine retreated a step. Her glance winged about the quiet, pleasant
room. That little table--they had found it in a Third Avenue store.
"It smells like mahogany," Charles had insisted. She could see it in
the kitchen, newspapers spread under its spindle legs, and Charles
scraping away at the old paint. Their house, built piece by piece. They
had never had money enough for more than one chair at a time. And they
had loved the building. Now--her glance included Charles, lowering,
defensive, unhappy.
"But I am concerned," she said, "as much as ever. You should know that."
"No! You aren't. I come home from class, and you aren't here. I
come home at night, from a committee meeting, and you've gone to
sleep because you need to be fresh for your own work. This isn't
complaining. I just want you to see how you've changed. Why, take this
matter of the Buxton professorship. When I spoke of it, the one thing
it meant to you was that you might have to leave New York. That's
all you could see in it. I haven't been able to discuss it with you,
although it might seem important."
Perhaps all that was true. Catherine felt a trickle of doubt through
the solid wall of her intention. She had been tired--had she seemed
indifferent, absorbed? In a wave of heat the trickle was consumed. She
wanted to cry out, "It's not with me that difference lies. It is in
you! You wish to blame me, for your turning away--to Stella Partridge.
You think I don't know about that!"
He moved uneasily, fidgetting with the painted silk shade of the table
lamp.
"All right," she said brusquely. "We'll leave it at that. I am
self-absorbed. Selfish."
"I expected you would tire of it long before now," said Charles. "Long
hours in an office, at someone's beck and call. When you might be
perfectly free to do as you please. I swear I don't see what you get
out of it."
"You don't see, do you?" Catherine's eyes were suddenly piteous. "You
don't see at all."
"It's evident enough that you can't swing the two jobs, home and
office. You're worn out all the time. Irritable."
"Oh!" Catherine's hand pressed against her breast. Something
extraordinary in his ingenuous construction of a case against her.
"Now if you could earn more than I do, then I might stay home, give up
my work. But you don't. You barely swing the additional expenses you
incur. Sometimes I think I'll accept the Buxton offer, just to take
you--and the children--out of this city."
Catherine's heart, under her cold fingers, stood still for a long
moment and then broke into violent, irregular beating.
"You would have to be sure"--she wondered if he could hear her
words--"that I would go!"
At that she hurried out of the room. She undressed in clumsy haste,
and crawled into bed, where she shivered, unable to relax, unable to
stop the trampling of heavy thoughts through her mind. Charles came
in, and went with elaborate unconcern about the business of going to
bed. Her mind was a sling-shot, drawn tight to hurl at him innumerable
bits of sentences, clattering stones from the ruck thrown off from what
they had said. But she held them in, to rattle against her own brain.
When he had turned off the light and was at last quiet in his own bed,
the dark rose between them heavy, thick. She was aware, in a kind of
torment, of his faintest motion.
I must sleep, she thought. If I could shut off these thoughts! She
twisted one arm up under her face, her mouth pressed hard on the cold
flesh.
Quite suddenly relief came, like a warm rush of air, blowing her empty
of battering thoughts. She had a vague sense of something under the
cluttered feelings, something hard, clear, shapely, a self distinct
from love and hate and jealousy and fear. She drifted just over the
edge of consciousness. She was lost in a vast, dark labyrinth, through
which she stumbled, hands extended in search of passageways; on and on
she labored. Had she touched that wall before? Was she going in blind
circles, with no egress? She was running, desperately--sleep closed
around her.
IV
Dr. Roberts came gravely around the desk, shook Catherine's hand, and
returned to his chair.
"I must have been somewhat in doubt about your consent," he said,
"since I am so delighted. You must see Dr. Waterbury to-day."
"Just when do you think I should start?" Catherine sat erect, hard,
bright triumph in her eyes. "Of course, there are various adjustments
in my household to make."
"The end of the month. You'll have this work in shape by that time."
Dr. Roberts jumped to his feet. "I'll make that appointment with
Waterbury myself. This is a good one on Smithson! He counted on your
being merely half-hearted about the work." He went briskly out.
Catherine's fingers moved idly among the pens and pencils on the tray.
Behind her the winter sun made pale blotches on the floor. I've done
it, she thought. It's only the beginning! If I hang on, things may work
out. A flashing picture of Charles at breakfast, dignified, reticent.
Even that! She wondered a little at herself. It's because I've found
something beside feelings to live by, perhaps, and so I can endure
feelings. I can wait.
She brushed all that away, as with a quick gesture she pulled open the
drawer and lifted out the pile of notes.
Margaret telephoned. Would Catherine lunch that day with Amy and her?
At Amy's luncheon club. Catherine made a note of the address. At
quarter to one, sharp. Upstairs. We'll meet you there.
They would be interested in her news. Approvingly interested.
Discomfiting, how eagerly you ran to lap up little crumbs of approval.
Get approval out of yourself, Henrietta had told her. Childish of her
to crave it outside herself. As if, some way, she had to make up for
Charles, to throw something into the other side of the scale along with
her own conviction.
She wanted Margaret's advice about shopping, too. New clothes. She
would have to look her part.
It was one o'clock when Catherine hurried along the side street,
looking anxiously for the number Margaret had given her. The interview
with the President had delayed her; it had left her in a state of
pleasurable excitation, like the humming of many tiny insects. Across
Madison Avenue. She came to a group of old gray buildings, houses,
with excrescenses of recent date on the ground floor,--a cleaning
establishment--funny how you always saw clothes you liked in cleaners'
windows!--an interior decorator's, with heavy tapestry draped over an
amazing gilt chair. There, the entrance was just between those shops.
Didn't look much like a club. She climbed the stairs cautiously; a door
above her opened, and two women came past her, sending her expectant
glances, their voices sharp and bright against the confusion of sound
into which she climbed. She stopped at the door, keenly self-conscious,
as if the pattern of voices was complete, and her entrance might break
through the warp. The pattern broke as she looked about the room, large
and low, with separate nodules of women. Margaret's bright head shot up
from the group near the fireplace, and Margaret swung across the room
toward her, slim and erect in her green dress. Amy strolled after her;
she had removed her squirrel turban, but her dark hair still made a
stiff flange about her thin face.
"This is fine! We've saved a table--" and Catherine, following them
into the dining room, edging between the little tables, found herself
drawn into the pattern of sound.
"I'm sorry I am late." She slipped her coat over the chair. "The
President was talking to me"--she had to release some of the tiny,
humming insects--"about my trip west." She told them about that trip.
It stepped forward out of dream regions into reality as she talked, as
they put in questions, sympathetic, approving questions.
"What does the King say?" Margaret smiled at her.
"Oh, he doesn't say much." Catherine laughed. Why, she could joke about
him! She felt a hard brilliance carry her along, as if--she sent little
glances about the room, at the women near her--something homogeneous
about them--unlike the girls at the St. Francis, still more unlike the
woman who lunched at the Acadia, or at Huylers--something sufficient,
individual--"What kind of a club is this, anyway?"
"We wanted a place downtown here where we could have good food. All
the lugs are in the kitchen. Wonderful cook!" Amy leaned across the
table, her eyes afire. She could be intense over food, too, then!
"A place where one might bring a guest. City Club too crowded, too
expensive, too--too too! for independent women. There were eleven of
us, originally. We called it the "Little Leaven," you know. Now there
are several hundred. All sorts. Writers, artists, editors. That's a
birth control organizer, and the woman with her is an actress. Anybody
interesting comes to town, we haul her in to speak in the evening. Men
always have comfortable clubs. This is for us."
"Good food, certainly."
"I thought if you were interested, I'd put you up. For membership. The
dues aren't high, and now you are downtown, you might like to run in.
Always someone here to lunch with, someone of your own kind."
Catherine smiled. Part of her was amused, but part of her shone, as
if Amy's intensity, admitting her to the leaven, polished that hard
brilliance----
"I'd like it!" she declared. "Lunching has been irksome."
She watched the women again. They seemed less homogeneous, more
individual, as she looked.
"Well, I've been thinking about you." Amy was directed at her with
astonishing concentration. "Since I met you. What you need is more
backing. You feel too much alone."
Catherine felt Margaret's uneasiness, akin to her own faint shrinking
from the access of personal probing.
"You need, as I told Margaret the other night, to touch all these other
women who have stepped out of their grooves. It's wonderful, what that
does for you. It's solidarity feeling, workers go after it in their
unions, and women so much lack it. You think you are making a solitary
struggle, and you're only part of all this----" Her sudden gesture sent
her empty tumbler spinning to the edge of the table. Margaret's quick
hand caught it.
"Don't begin an oration, Amy," she said.
"It's true." Catherine was bewildered to find tears in her eyes, and a
rush of affection toward Amy--she might be fanatic, but a spark from
her overfanned fires could warm you! "Are any of these celebrities
married?" she asked, with apparent irrelevance.
"Oh--" Amy shrugged. "I think they have husbands, some of them. Hard to
tell. That woman there has just got her divorce, I know."
She had a moment with Margaret later, standing near the fireplace,
while Amy rushed off to greet a newcomer.
"She's a funny old dear, isn't she?" Margaret was nonchalant.
"I like her," said Catherine.
Margaret looked up in frank pleasure.
"I hoped you would. She's really fine, if you get her." Her eyes,
traveling across to the small figure in the fur coat, one arm raised
in emphasis, were tender. "You'd roar if you heard her comments on
Charles. She has a certain cosmic attitude toward all men, lumps them.
I'm thrilled, Cathy, at your trip. And your salary! You show some
pick-up on this job."
"Will you take me shopping for decent clothes?" Catherine regarded her
sister wistfully. "I'm going to dress the old thing up for once."
"Will I! I've always wanted to."
V
During the next weeks Catherine lunched frequently at Amy's club. "You
were quite right," she told her one day. "I needed perspective. This
place and these women make the whole business of my working seem matter
of course. As if I'd be a fool not to. That's a more comforting feeling
than my old one, that I might be only an egoistic pig."
"That's the trouble with ordinary married women," declared Amy. "They
are all shut up in separate cages, until they don't have an idea what
is happening outside."
"Marriage isn't a cage, exactly."
"You just aren't entirely out, yet."
"At least there is comfort in finding that other women want the same
thing I want, and get it."
But marriage wasn't a cage, she thought, later. She found herself not
so much imprisoned as bewildered. It's more like a labyrinth. There are
ways out, if you can find them. Out, not of marriage itself, but out of
the thing people have made of it--for women.
Catherine knew, when she approached her mother with her plan, that she
had need of perspective and assurance. But Mrs. Spencer's comment was
brief.
"I suppose," she said, "you must work this out for yourself. Yes, I can
stay nights at your house. Alethea will be away all of February."
"Then it's really a good scheme for you, too?" Catherine begged.
"I'm a little too old to sit up with a croupy child."
"Letty's too old for croup." Catherine refused to look at her mother's
implication--that her children might be sick, might need her. "Of
course, Miss Kelly and Mrs. O'Lay together can manage the household.
There won't be any burden for you. I thought you could have Spencer's
room, and he could have my bed."
She and Charles seemed to run on tangents which seldom crossed. A young
assistant in Charles's department had influenza, and in the handling
of his work, Charles came in for an evening class. Frequent committee
meetings, clinic affairs, kept him away on other evenings. Catherine
would wake, to hear his cautious blunderings in the dark. He assumed
that she slept, and she, fumbling for some noncommittal phrase of
greeting, often lay quite still, not speaking.
One mild, sunny day toward the end of January, Catherine came up from
town on top of a bus. A little windblown and stiff, she hurried across
the campus. In the dim tunnel behind the gymnasium she met Stella
Partridge.
"Mrs. Hammond!" Stella halted just where the light through glass panels
in a door made a charming picture of her pale face and close, dark
furs. "It's been so long since we have seen each other, and I wanted to
congratulate you on your--it is a promotion, isn't it? Dr. Hammond is
so proud of you."
Catherine's first thought was a flash of resentment that she had worn
her shabby coat that morning, instead of the elegance Margaret had
selected for her. How childish! she rebuked herself, as she said,
"Thank you. It isn't really a promotion. Just a different phase of the
work."
"It will be so nice for you, having the change."
She wants to detain me, to talk--Catherine found a myriad tiny buzzing
thoughts, just out of reach--to show me that she knows all about it,
from Charles.
"I am sure I shall enjoy it." She bent forward, her words suddenly out
of her volition. "What a charming hand bag!" Her finger hovered above
it; her eyes, swooping up to the cool dark eyes, were derisive.
"Yes, isn't it?" Miss Partridge's smile was tolerant, amused, just a
flicker of pointed teeth. But she thrust the bag under her arm. "I
hope you have a pleasant trip. You go soon, don't you?"
A truck came booming through the tunnel, and under cover of its din,
Catherine nodded and hurried on.
"You knew she had it," she cried out, half aloud. "You knew it!" At the
gate she stopped, pretending to adjust her hat. She had known it, but
the sight of it, the actual visible contact with it, had sent a sharp
wave of nausea through her. How could she have spoken of it! She was
aghast--the words had pounced out, she hadn't said them. There, the
nausea had passed, and with her head up to the wind which blew along
the Avenue, she could go on, across the street, and up the hill toward
home. She doesn't love him. Catherine was sure of that. She wanted to
show off--her power. That's all. She has no tenderness in her.
And as Catherine went silently past the door of the study where Charles
sat writing, not looking up, pity moved in her. Why, she thought, he
will be hurt, out of this, and I can't save him.
* * * * *
Henrietta came in that evening, and Charles emerged, ruffled and
absent-eyed, from the study. He was working on a paper he was to
deliver before a meeting of psychologists. On clinic practice, he
explained in answer to Henrietta's inquiry. "You know"--he slouched
down in his chair--"we're going to run you poor old-fashioned doctors
right out of business. Once we have these psychological methods
established, there won't be much left for you to do."
"Whooping cough a mere instinct, or is it a habit? And croup and
measles and broken legs?" Henrietta waved her eyeglasses at him. "If
you psychologists knew a little anatomy and materia medica----"
She and Charles squared off for a friendly skirmish on their pet field
of contention. Catherine, listening, watching Charles's lazy delight as
he parried phrases and thrust out in pointed words, felt a sudden wash
of tears too close to her eyes, and a constriction in her throat. He
would come out of his tent, genial, casual, for Henrietta, for anyone.
But when they were alone--silence, heavy and uncommunicative. How long
since they had laughed, at any silly thing?
"Here, help me out!" Henrietta was flushed with amusement. "He's
delivering his whole speech on my head! Oh, I mustn't forget to give
you Bill's address." She broke off, fumbling in a pocket of her suit.
"Here. Chicago office. A note there will reach him. Aren't you proud of
her, Charles?" Henrietta stuck her glasses on the bridge of her nose
and stared at Charles. "Just pouncing ahead!"
"Of course Catherine has brains." Charles had withdrawn, his foils
sheathed. "Always knew that."
"But these Bureaus and Foundations are so conservative. It's splendid
to see them forced into recognition of a woman's ability, I think."
"Their men always seem a little--ladylike." Charles was talking at
Catherine, through Henrietta. "Perhaps none of them wished to make a
tour of the west this time of year. It isn't my idea of a good time,
exactly."
"Don't let him josh you, Catherine!" Henrietta flashed out, warmly.
"Aren't they ladylike? Most of their men not creative enough to make a
real place for themselves. They crawl into that snug and safe berth----"
"I've thought the few I've met were much like academic men." Henrietta
grinned at her thrust. "Haven't you, Cathy?"
"You see," said Catherine, "Charles disapproves of the whole system,
the establishment of a bureau."
"Some one accumulates too much money and looks around for a conspicuous
benevolence. Ah, a bureau of investigation! Then some little men hurry
in, get jobs poking their noses into various things, and draw down neat
salaries out of the surplus money. Mrs. Lynch is pleased. Little men
are pleased."
"Why isn't it a good way to get rid of the money?" Henrietta spoke
cautiously, as if she suspected traps under the smooth surface.
"Oh, it gets rid of it. But it's artificial. Not a response to some
demand in society."
"Charles, are you stuck-up, or jealous?" Henrietta glanced shrewdly
from him to Catherine.
"This is not personal, I assure you." Charles slipped into his
grandiloquent, tolerant manner, as much as to add, "even if you, being
a woman, can not understand its being impersonal."
"Um. Aren't universities endowed with some of this surplus cash, too?"
"Only to some extent. There you have an actual need."
"In other words, the shoe is on the other foot, now." Henrietta laughed.
"It's true enough there's an actual need." Catherine sat forward,
eagerly. A sharp inner voice said: ridiculous to argue; he is attacking
me, not the Bureau. Trying to belittle the thing I'm in, so that
I'll have to shrink with it. But the voice was drowned in an uproar
of her refusal to shrink, her insistence upon some justification.
"Universities and colleges are a need, of course. But the very thing
I'm working on, and Dr. Roberts, too, is the great gap between the
human need and the pitiful offering on the part of the colleges. Why
won't it do some good, if we can show up that gap?"
"What will happen? You'll write a brochure, which won't be read by any
of the people concerned. Change comes from within, slowly, like growth
of a child."
"In other words, Catherine, your job is foolishness, and you'd better
be home making pies. You are too transparent, Charles. Don't you listen
to him!" Henrietta jumped to her feet. "I must run along. Pies are
fleeting, too. If you're interested in a thing, that's all that counts."
Catherine rose, slowly. She wished Henrietta wouldn't go. Her blunt
indifference to undercurrents had a steadying effect.
"Of course," Catherine spoke hurriedly. She wanted to get to the bottom
of this before Henry went. If there was a bottom. "Your interest
depends upon your valuation of what you are doing, doesn't it?"
"Somewhat." Henrietta paused. "But you know, you can knock a hole in
the value of anything, if you try. I can shoot a doubt straight through
doctoring. Why bother to mend people! Children--they just grow up to
make blundering old folks." She looked tired, as if the flesh of her
cheeks and chin sagged. "But do I shoot it? Not me. Same with your
job, same with Charles's job. May make a dent in the old world."
When she had gone, Catherine looked in at the door of the study.
Charles presented a shoulder overintent. He knew she was there. To
speak his name was like tugging at a great weight.
"Charles." He turned. The weight increased. "You really feel this work
is just empty fiddling?"
"There doesn't seem much use in saying what I _think_"--his emphasis
pointed out the difference--"since it is taken as limited and personal."
Catherine retreated to her own room, before hasty, intemperate words
escaped her. There was a cruel enough abyss between them now; no use to
fill it with wreckage.
VI
The following morning, when Dr. Roberts came in with time tables and
maps to help complete the itinerary, Catherine responded with apathy
to the folders. She heard that doubt gnawing away, a mouse behind the
wainscoting. Finally, as Dr. Roberts opened a new map, she let the
mouse out.
"What," she asked, "exactly, do you think we are going to accomplish?
With the whole thing. Trip, book, all of it."
Dr. Roberts spread the thin map crackling on the desk, and pressed his
forefinger into Ohio. Then he lifted his head, and his eyes, shrewdly
penetrating, studied her face.
"So----" he said. "It has lost its savor."
"Do you think we can change things, by criticism, or suggestion? Won't
all these schools go on in their own way?"
Dr. Roberts sat on the edge of the table, one neat toe pushed against
the floor to balance himself, one swinging.
"I'm glad this came up now, instead of somewhere in Ohio," he said. "I
suppose we all have hours of wondering what it amounts to, all these
mahogany desks and busy people." He brought his fist down emphatically.
"But I tell you, something must come of studies like this! Institutions
have gone on long enough, nosing along with blind snouts in old ruts.
The day has come when intellect, intelligence can step in and say,
'here, that's the wrong path. You're going that way only because it is
an old path. Here's the better way.' Conscious, intelligent control.
That's the coming idea."
"But can a blind snout open its eyes?" Catherine was intent, serious.
"Can you change things? That way?"
"See what Flexner's study of medical schools did for them! Even
Smithson's few papers on sanitation have had an ordinance or two as a
result. Where does all that agitation about child labor in the South
come from, if not from investigation?"
"You see--" Catherine looked down at the pink blotch of Ohio, under the
firm, square forefinger. "I must believe in what I'm doing. I can't
just do it to earn a living."
"Naturally. I understand that."
"The work I did during the war was obviously of use. The plans for
reeducation were fairly snatched out of our hands before the ink was
dry on them."
"Yes. An immediate need like that is, as you say, obvious. Easy to
believe in. Like baking bread for hungry people."
"I carried over that belief to the Bureau as a whole, I think. Then--I
suppose from criticism that I heard--I wondered whether we fooled
ourselves."
"I think not, Mrs. Hammond. Perhaps our report won't revolutionize the
whole educational system of several states overnight. You don't expect
that. But it may affect even a single man, and that's something." He
stroked his beard, watching her a little anxiously. "There is just one
criticism which has bothered me," he added. "That concerns policy.
After all"--his wave indicated the Bureau, established, respectable,
heavily done in mahogany--"biting the hand that feeds us, you know. We
may be tied too firmly to the social forces that make this possible.
I don't know. What I offer myself for consolation is this: there's
no such thing as complete freedom. If we can clear away any of the
debris and old pitfalls in education, we may at least leave the next
generation less obstructed. We are no more limited in policy than
churches or colleges. We don't have to lick the hand that feeds us, at
any rate."
"Well--" Catherine smiled. "I won't be doubtful, then. I want to be
enthusiastic."
And as Dr. Roberts returned to the study of the maps and time tables,
she thought: he may be right, and Charles may be right. Each of them
thinks from his own center. From his own desires. So do I. And I want
this work to have a meaning. To be significant. To _matter_. I believe
it does. I _will_ believe in it.
VII
Saturday afternoon Catherine stood in front of the long mirror in her
bedroom, with Margaret squatting on her heels beside her, pinning in
place a band of bright embroidery.
"Too bad there isn't time to send it back." Margaret dropped to the
floor, gazing up at her sister. "But that will do, I think. It's very
smart, Cathy."
"Can we pack it so that it won't crush?" Catherine brushed her fingers
over the warm brown duvetyn. "I scarcely recognize myself."
"It's the way you should look all the time. Take it off and I'll put a
stitch in where that pin is." Margaret scrambled to her feet. "I did
want you to have that beaver coat, though."
"I've got to pay for these sometime!" Catherine slipped out of the
dress. "You beguiled me into awful extravagance."
"Just because I made you buy with a near eye instead of a far eye."
Margaret sewed busily. "The middle-class married eye is a far eye,
Cathy. It never sees clothes as they are. It sees how they'll look
three years hence, and then five years, made over. No wonder you look
dubby. Can't ever get style that way." She snapped her thread, and
folded the dress over tissue paper. "There, that'll ride. Taking just
your steamer trunk?"
"And a bag." Catherine pulled her nasturtium silk kimono over her
shoulders. "Too many stops for a large trunk. It's good of you to spend
your Saturday here. I'd sent off everyone, so that I could get ready in
peace. But there are endless things to see to."
"You're a handsome thing in that rag, too." Margaret rose from the half
full trunk. "Wish I'd found an evening dress that color."
"That would have been nice and inconspicuous! And I may not need one.
I'll stick this black one in." There was a faint glow on Catherine's
cheeks; her dark hair swept in a long curve from brow to heavy coil at
the nape of her smooth neck.
"Where are the children?" Margaret seized the black dress and folded it
dexterously.
"At the opera--'Hansel and Gretel.' Mother took them. Miss Kelly has
Letty in the park."
"Won't they love it!" Margaret whistled the gay little dance melody
from the opera. "Do they mind your going?"
"Marian thinks it will be rather fun to have Gram here. Spencer wants
to go with me."
"The lamb! There, those are properly packed. You be careful when you
take them out. Now, shoes. No, put that blouse in your handbag."
"I declare--" Catherine laughed as Margaret moved competently through
the piles. "It's like a trousseau--my second."
"That would please the King, I'm sure." Margaret held off a bronze
slipper, turning it critically. "Is he as sulky as he acts, Cathy? He
said, 'I don't demand external evidence to make me proud of my wife!'"
She imitated the dignified resentment of his tone.
"He's frightfully busy with papers and things." Catherine bent over
her traveling bag. In her throat a soft pulse beat disturbingly.
To-night--she thought. Oh, I can't leave him--obdurate, silent. I must
break through.
"Um." Margaret nodded. Then, suddenly, "I told Mother I thought she had
no business siding with him."
Catherine faced her, alarmed.
"And she as much as said she thought you were endangering your home and
future happiness. Poor mother! She can't step out of her generation, I
suppose. For all she is such a brick."
"Don't put anything into her head, for goodness' sake! She's going to
be here while I'm gone. She's fond of Charles."
"The only trouble with Charles," declared Margaret, her arms akimbo on
her slim hips, "is that he is a man!"
"You sound like Amy."
"No, I don't. I know he can't help it. You're to blame, partly. You
spoiled him rotten for years. He can't get over it in a jiffy. Has that
woman got her claws in him? I suppose he's wide open to a vamp."
Catherine's color receded in the swift tautening of her body. Margaret
need not trample in. "I don't know," she said, stiffly.
"Excuse me, old thing." Margaret flung her arm over Catherine's
shoulders, and rubbed her warm cheek against her sister's. "Rude of me,
I know. We'll change the subject."
"I didn't mean to be sniffy." Catherine softened. "I really don't know.
I was shocked that you----"
"Um. What are my eyes for, little Red Riding Hood? Anyway, it's a
darned skilful move of yours, this trip."
Down the hall clumped Mrs. O'Lay. Catherine hurried into her old serge
dress, Margaret locked and strapped the little trunk, and Catherine
closed the traveling bag. "Have to finish that to-morrow."
Miss Kelly came, with Letty. Margaret carried the child off into the
dining room for her supper, while Catherine sat down with Miss Kelly
for a final discussion of the weeks she would be gone. "Eve made out
this mailing list--" she finished, "and bought enough postal cards
to last. If you would send me one every night--" She gazed at the
sandy-fringed, calm blue eyes, at the firm, homely mouth. "I'm sure
they will be happy and well, with you."
"I think so, Mrs. Hammond." Not a quaver of uneasiness in her voice.
You might suppose I went off every week, thought Catherine.
Letty was in bed, Margaret had gone, and Miss Kelly, before Mrs.
Spencer and the children arrived. Catherine listened to their
delighted rehearsing of the story. Marian tried to hum one of the
songs; Catherine couldn't recall the exact melody. And under the
outer pressure ran the slow, warm flood of waiting, waiting until
Charles should come in. What she could say or do she did not know. But
anything, anything!
"Will I serve up the soup, Mrs. Hammond?" Mrs. O'Lay was reproachful.
"It's half after six."
"Mr. Hammond should be in any minute."
The telephone shrilled into her waiting.
"That you, Catherine? I'm at the dentist's. Got a devil of a toothache.
Don't wait for me. He's out at dinner, but he's coming in to see to the
tooth. No, it's that upper tooth, where the filling was loose."
They dined without Charles.
"Poor fellow!" Mrs. Spencer was gently sympathetic. "There's nothing so
upsetting as the toothache."
Some truth in that, thought Catherine, as she sat in Charles's chair
and served. A special dinner, too. If the tooth still ached when he
came home-- The intangible hope which had grown in her through the day
was too fragile to withstand such disaster. Perhaps--was he at the
dentist's? Was there an aching tooth? She glanced up in a flurry of
guilt at a question from her mother. How despicable of her, dropping
into suspicion. Spencer was watching her. He was too sensitized, too
immediately aware of moods. It would be good for him, perhaps, to live
without her for a time. She brushed away the under-thoughts, and held
herself resolutely above the surface of their talk.
Marian wanted to play Hansel and Gretel. "But Gram is too nice to be
the witch, isn't she, Muvver? And we must have a witch."
"Miss Kelly could be witch," said Spencer.
"She's too nice, too!"
"She could pretend not to be." Spencer peered at Catherine, and
suddenly giggled.
"That isn't funny," protested Marian.
"When your mother was a little girl," began Mrs. Spencer, "I took her
to see Uncle Tom's Cabin." The children listened, entranced, to the
account of Catherine's impersonation of Little Eva. Catherine, amused,
went back to Spencer's giggle. He hadn't accepted Miss Kelly, as Marian
had. His laugh was a secret declaration of his withholding of himself.
But he no longer protested outwardly.
"And just then, I went out of the kitchen door," said Mrs. Spencer,
"and saw Catherine in the loft window of the barn. She had on one of my
best white sheets, and she was leaning forward, way out of the window,
and waving her arms."
"Oh, Muvver!" Marian sighed in delight.
"I said, 'What are you doing!'"
"You tell us what you said, Muvver," begged Marian, her eyes darkly
shining. "Please."
"I said"--Catherine laughed--"that I was going to fly to Heaven."
"Did you think you were, Mother?" asked Spencer.
"Perhaps. I was playing Little Eva so hard that I expected the angels
to pick me up, you know."
"An' then, Gram?"
"I called to the hired man. He was in the barn. And he ran upstairs up
the ladder and caught your mother by the sheet. So she didn't jump out."
"Would you really of jumped, Mother?" Spencer, in his eagerness, came
around to Catherine's chair.
"I don't know. I was a silly little girl, wasn't I?"
"Oh, Spencer was silly to-day," cried Marian. "He wanted to come home
right in the middle of the play. He said you were going away to-day,
and Gram had to take right hold of his arm."
A wave of color rushed up to Spencer's hair, and his nostrils trembled.
"Wasn't that silly?"
"I did think so, Mother." He gulped. "I got mixed up. If you think so,
it feels true, doesn't it?"
"We told him it wasn't to-day. But he kept thinking so."
Catherine remembered the dash he had made through the hall to her
bedroom, his halt at the door, his long stare at her. Poor boy!
"You better sit down, son," she said. "Here comes dessert."
Later, when she bade them good night, his arms tightened about her neck.
"You said to-morrow," he whispered, "and I thought maybe it was
to-morrow. Because to-morrow is to-day, always, when it gets here."
"We can write letters to each other," said Catherine, rubbing her cheek
softly against his hair. "Won't that be fun? We never wrote to each
other."
"With my own name on the envelope?"
"Yes, sir." Catherine felt him relax into pleased contemplation of
envelopes with his own name.
"It's queer Charles doesn't come." Mrs. Spencer laid aside her magazine
as Catherine entered the living room. "Do you know what dentist he goes
to?"
"Dr. Reeves, I think. He had to wait until the doctor came in from
dinner."
"Oh, yes." Mrs. Spencer ruffled her fingers through the pages. "Alethea
went on Thursday," she said. "I'll be glad to move in here. It's rather
queer, staying alone."
"I am glad you want to come." Catherine was grateful. "It relieves me
of any anxiety. Things should run smoothly."
"Spencer was quite pitiful." Mrs. Spencer looked like an inquisitive
little bird. "He's rather hard to manage. Notional. Marian seems more
normal."
"She is more phlegmatic than Spencer." Catherine refused to take up
that word, "pitiful," and its implications.
"They're both sweet children. They act well-bred in public. It's a
pleasure to take them out. Even when Spencer was so distressed, he
didn't make himself conspicuous. And when I promised him you'd really
be here, he settled down again."
Catherine again rejected the distress. She wouldn't argue with her
mother about going away. Too late, now.
"Miss Kelly is very good with them, I think," she said. "She gives
them better training than I ever did. I suppose she sees them more
impersonally. Even Letty----"
"I don't think anyone trains children better than their mother." Mrs.
Spencer was indignant. "You always did very well. Miss Kelly does seem
competent, of course."
A sharp ring at the bell brought Catherine to her feet. Perhaps Charles
had forgotten his key. But as she hurried down the hall, she heard a
shrill guffaw from Sam, and the elevator slid rapidly out of sight as
she opened the door.
"Why, Flora! Come in."
Flora, hastening to drag a lugubrious expression over the wide grin Sam
had evidently provoked, shook her head, the stiff purple flowers on her
large hat rattling like hail.
"No'm, I ain't coming in," she said. "I came to ask a favor of you,
Mis' Hammond. You well, and the children?"
"Yes, we're all well." Catherine recalled the dejected, bruised
Flora she had last seen. Bruises and dejection had vanished; Flora
was resplendent in a spotted yellow polo coat, a brilliantly striped
scarf displayed over one shoulder, and--Catherine almost laughed
aloud--arctics, flapping about plump white silk-stockinged legs. But
she was uneasy; the olive-whites of her eyes shone, and her gold tooth
flashed.
"Mis' Hammond, you knows what I done told you, about that worthless
puhfessional man." She thrust her hands deep into her pockets, trying
to swagger a little. "You recollects? I don' want to bother you, but
he's the worstest man. He's tryin' to ruin my character."
"I thought you had him put in prison."
"Yessum. But he's bailed out. An' the case is postponed, while he works
against me. He's provin' that I was bad, and let my li'l girl run wild.
They shut her up." Flora scrambled for a handkerchief, and rubbed
vigorously at her eyes. "My lawyer fr'en, he says if I can get proof
about my character, then that man won't stand no trial. He tole me to
get a proof from you, Mis' Hammond. You know I worked hard, don't you?"
"What kind of proof, Flora? There, don't cry. Of course I'll help you."
"My lawyer fr'en, he says you should write it out about me. A kinda
paper, all about how I done work for you. With your name and where you
lives on it. Then you don' have to come to court, you just writes it
down on a paper."
"Come in, Flora, and I'll write something for you."
"No'm, I'se going to stand right here."
"Wait, then."
Catherine wrote a brief, emphatic statement. She had employed Flora
Lopez for three years, and always found her reliable, competent, hard
working. What do I really know about her, she thought, her pen poised
at the end of that sentence. Character--she saw again that neat,
respectable flat, eloquent of Flora's ambition, and the little boy. She
is a self-respecting woman, who has supported herself and her children.
"Just Flora, that former maid of mine," she told her mother. "Wants a
recommendation."
"There you are." She handed the sheet to Flora.
"But Mis' Hammond, my lawyer fr'en, he say you have to get a notary
seal onto it, or it ain't good in court." She stared at the writing.
"You could mebbe send it by mail to me. I moved to a new place. Folks
in that house were too nosy. I'm at----"
"I'm going away to-morrow, for a month." Catherine hesitated. "I tell
you, we'll go find a notary to-night. There are several along the
Avenue, if it isn't too late."
Her mother agreed, rather doubtfully, to wait until she returned,
unless Charles came in the meantime.
"I don't think you ought to go out with that colored woman this time of
night," she insisted.
But Catherine, hurrying into coat and hat, was off. The notary in the
tobacco shop at the corner had gone home. After a cold, slipping walk
on sleeted streets to Broadway and down, Catherine found another shop,
and a man who could put a seal to her oath.
Flora folded the paper. She refused to put it in her pocket.
"I got to get it safe to my lawyer fr'en," she insisted. "I is obliged
to you, Mis' Hammond." She turned her homely, dark face passionately
toward Catherine, her wide mouth moving grotesquely as she spoke. "Mos'
folks is cruel mean to you if your luck is bad! Women are the mostest
mean. Sayin' I neglects my chile--all 'count of my being a good
worker. You got somebody to work for you now?"
"Mrs. O'Lay, the janitor's wife. You remember her? She can't cook as
you could. Mr. Hammond doesn't eat a meal without wishing you were
back."
"I--I jus' couldn't come back, Mis' Hammond. I'se obliged to you,
but----"
"Are you working somewhere?"
"Washings, at home. I ain't making so much money. But my lawyer fr'en,
he ain't charging me but half rates."
"Do you need money?" Catherine's hand moved toward her pocket book.
"I'se too much obliged, Mis' Hammond, to need it." She looked away, and
suddenly darted out across the street, her arctics flapping, her dirty
yellow coat flopping about her awkward flight.
Catherine went home, stepping gingerly over the glare of ice. A taxi
rattled and skidded to a stop at the door just as she reached the
apartment house, and her mother came out.
"Here, you'll slip." Catherine seized her arm, and engineered her
passage. "Has Charles come home?"
"Yes, poor boy. He's had an awful time. Tell the driver to go very
slowly!" Mrs. Spencer disappeared in the cab.
VIII
"'At Flora, she coming back to wuk for you-all?" Sam made friendly
inquiry as he stopped the elevator at Catherine's floor.
"No."
"She say she got grand job for some elegant folks. Sma't worker, Flora
is."
Poor Flora--Catherine unlocked the door quietly--lying to Sam, to save
her face some way, of course.
If Charles is miserable--hope thrust out a new tendril, waveringly, in
a blurred picture of herself ministering to him, pretending tenderly
that nothing ever had been wrong.
"Hello." She smiled as he turned from the window, draped in a
melancholy air of pain nobly borne. "You have had a horrid time,
haven't you?"
"Just a jumpy tooth." He sat down, reaching for the paper. "Your mother
was worried about you. Said you went off with a darky hours ago."
"She didn't seem worried. I met her at the door." Catherine went out to
the hall closet with her wraps. Her fingers brushed the sleeve of his
heavy coat. If I can pretend, she thought.
"It was only Flora," she said as she returned. "She wanted a statement
from me, evidence as to her character. That man, you remember, her
puhfessional gentleman? He seems to have a scheme to save himself at
her expense. We went out to hunt up a notary."
"You committed yourself legally to some defense of her?"
"Yes, indeed. Poor Flora!"
"Unwise, wasn't it? How do you know what she'll do with such a paper?"
"It seemed little enough to do for her. They want to prove she
neglected her children."
"Didn't she?"
Catherine wondered; did he mean that implied comparison? At least he
wouldn't drag it out, openly, if she ignored it.
"Have you had any dinner?"
"Can't eat with a nerve howling like a fiend."
"Come along, poor boy. I'll find you something."
"Don't bother."
"Come on, Charles." Catherine went into the kitchen. "Here's a
wonderful roast beef," she called back, and Charles came reluctantly.
"You sit there--" she pushed the chair near the shining white table.
"Coffee, or cocoa?"
"Cocoa, if it isn't too much trouble. I'd like to sleep. Had a cup of
coffee."
"Did the dentist keep you all this time in his torture chamber?"
Catherine moved swiftly from ice-chest to stove. If I can invoke our
midnight lunches, all down the past, she thought--I can't go away,
without trying to reach him. It is like death.
"No," said Charles. "I haven't been there all the evening."
Catherine stirred the foaming cocoa. Let's pretend, she wanted to cry
out; let's pretend!
"I thought probably you would be asleep. Since you start off to-morrow."
"I wanted to see you." Catherine poured the cocoa and set it before
him. She stood there, one hand spread delicately, the fingers pressed
against the oilcloth. "And you--didn't want to see me, did you!" She
was supplicating, provocative, leaning above him.
"I had to stop with some manuscript, at Miss Partridge's." Charles
buttered a slice of bread deliberately, and forked a slice of pink
meat to his place. "Is there any Worcestershire?"
"And she gave you coffee?" Catherine moved hastily away from the table,
and felt blindly along the cupboard shelf for the bottle of sauce.
"Yes." Charles was blandly engrossed in his lunch.
He's as much as telling me that he chose to go to her, when he wished
comfort. Catherine set the Worcestershire beside his plate. I won't
hear him. But what a burlesque, my serving him, when I can't, through
any outer humility, reach him.
"Want more sugar?" She asked, casually.
"No. This is fine." His upward glance was puzzled, uneasy.
Ah, I have no pride, no decency! she cried to herself. Her heart was
beating in suffocating rhythm; her fingers lifted, undirected, aching
for the touch of that stubborn, beloved head--the prominent temples,
the hollow above the cheekbones, the old intimate brushing across his
eyes, down to cup his strong, obdurate chin.
"Charles," she whispered, and swayed backward from his sudden violent
start, which clattered the carving knife to the floor.
"Damn!" he clapped his hand to his jaw. "Oh, damn!"
"What is it?"
"That tooth. Hell, I've yanked that filling out." He was on his feet,
his face contorted under his hand. "Get me some iodine. He said iodine
would stop it."
The tooth was treated. Charles, a little sheepishly, admitted that the
pain was less.
"Guess I'll crawl right into bed, before it jumps again. If I can get
to sleep----"
Catherine filled a hot-water bag and slipped it under his cheek.
"That feels fine." He looked up at her. "Thanks."
Catherine bent quickly and brushed her lips on his forehead.
"Good night," she said steadily. "Go right to sleep." She lay wakeful
for a long time.
"When I come back," she thought, at last-- She twisted restlessly.
"That tooth--I was a little mad, and it destroyed my frenzy. I ought to
be glad, and I'm not."
* * * * *
The hours on Sunday between breakfast and time for her train were
telescoped into a band of pressure. Directions to Mrs. O'Lay; final
arrangements for her mother; engrossing details devouring the few hours.
The taxi was announced. Letty burst into wails because she couldn't go;
she had been discovered busily emptying her bureau drawers into an old
suitcase. Catherine, distracted, kissed her mother and hurried away,
hearing the determined shrieks until the elevator reached the ground
floor. Charles, Spencer, and Marian climbed into the taxi after her.
"You look lovely," said Marian, over and over, stroking the soft fur at
the throat of her jacket. "You look just lovely."
Spencer snuggled close against her, without a word. Charles, after a
businesslike inquiry into the state of her tickets, was silent. And
Catherine's one clear thought was: it is lucky that I can't escape
now--like a moving stairway, and I've stepped squarely on it. I
couldn't, to-day, furnish the energy, the motive power, to go and leave
them.