In January Cecily found her hands extremely full.
Ellen had an unexpected call to take care of a sick relative--she did
not tell Cecily that it was Mrs. Horton--on whom tragedy in the form of
cancer had descended. She would not consent to an operation and Ellen’s
duty was partly to take care of her, partly to reassure her, partly to
keep her from answering patent medicine advertisements which “guaranteed
to cure without the use of a knife.” Mr. Horton had come for Ellen, not
daring to risk the telephone in his wife’s presence and at sight of the
helplessness of the sagged figure at the kitchen door Ellen was bound to
help. She said she would come for a month and by that time they could
find a nurse. It was obvious enough that the sick woman was more
important than Cecily’s household, but Ellen was none the less
distressed. She left a sour-faced Swedish woman and an increasingly pert
Jenny to take care of the Harrisons and went on her errand of mercy,
pulled backward and forward. Cecily had tried to be as kind as possible,
but she had urged Ellen to come back as soon as she could.
“After a bit no doubt they’ll get a nurse,” said Ellen. “It’s just at
the start that a relation is easiest for the poor woman.”
“Can they afford a nurse?” asked Cecily.
“There’s a rich daughter.”
“Then why doesn’t she take care----”
“She couldn’t. She’s young and I suppose her husband needs her.”
Fliss had indeed offered to do everything except give personal care to
her mother. Matthew was the only person to whom she could give personal
service, and even for him there was not too much, but she had arranged
for specialists to examine and recommend; she had tried to make her
mother have a trained nurse; tried everything that money could buy. That
she shrank from the sight and thought of the corruption of the body was
only that she was Fliss.
Matthew had been told of the identity of Ellen as her cousin, with one
slight change in the facts. It was Ellen’s proud request that the
relationship be kept from the Harrisons, according to Fliss. So he was
not surprised to see Ellen take up her place in the Horton household.
Matthew was far more appreciative of and able to understand Fliss’s
parents than she was herself. Ordinary people with cramped minds and
petty satisfactions were not out of the range of his philosophy as they
were with her. He did not see the Hortons often, but once in a while he
and Fliss went there for an evening or Fliss invited them to her house
and undoubtedly the event, mostly taken up with small gossip and
cribbage playing, did not irritate him as it did his wife.
Now that Mrs. Horton had taken to her bed, or at least to her tawdry
kimonos, driven by fear and indigestible patent medicines as well as by
the progress of the disease, the flat she called home had become an even
more unattractive place. Ellen found unwashed dishes in every corner of
the cupboard, under the gas stove, in the icebox; dirty linen;
everything neglected, everything uncomfortable and in the midst of it
the whining, terrified women and the unquestioning, drearily patient
man. She tried to cheer them up and managed at least to make them
comfortable. But it was far from easy or satisfying.
Coming in the day after Ellen had taken charge, Fliss praised her
extravagantly.
“I don’t see what we could have done if you hadn’t come; she wouldn’t
have a nurse though I begged and begged.”
“Well, that’s natural,” said Ellen. “Nurses frighten people who aren’t
used to them. I don’t know as I blame her, but she ought to do as the
doctor says.”
“The doctor says that things are already pretty far advanced. He can’t
be sure that even an operation----” Fliss shuddered miserably. “Oh,
Ellen, why don’t they find a way to cure it?”
Ellen patted her on the shoulder. “Trust in the Lord, my dear,” was all
she said.
Fliss went in from the kitchen to see her mother who looked at her with
the apathetic misery that had characterized her of late.
“Feeling better, mother?”
“I’ll never be better. They as much as tell me that. I’m going to die,
especially if they get their knives on me.”
“Don’t be silly, mother. You know they just want to help. Matthew got
the best doctors. If you’d just let them operate.”
“That’s it! Every one after me wanting to see them cut into me. I’ve
heard of those doctors before, thank you. Mrs. Todd came in to see me
yesterday and she said to me: ‘Mrs. Horton, don’t you let those doctors
experiment on you.’ She told me some things that were terrible. And she
told me, too, about a new thing they’re getting out that has helped lots
of women--just a kind of tonic that they say makes the trouble disappear
in two months.”
“That’s just quack stuff. You know that. If there were any such thing
the good doctors would be using it.”
Mrs. Horton laughed, the high querulous laugh of the invalid who has
already become suspicious and opinionated.
“I know what I know, Flissy. All those high-toned doctors want to do is
to experiment on me and get Matthew’s money. I know them. You don’t let
yourself get taken in by them.”
Fliss sat still watching her mother as she lay on the couch, a sodden
heap of misery that would make no constructive effort. She looked
baffled. Then she rose and unpacked the luxuries which she had brought
with her: choice food, invalid comforts, a black satin negligee.
“Black!” shrilled the mother. “I’m not dead yet, thank you! Take it
away, Flissy. It gives me the creeps.”
Fliss went back to the kitchen.
“It’s such a comfort to think that you are here, Ellen,” she said,
drawing on her gloves. “There’s not a thing I can do to please her.
She’s so changed. All that she used to want was a movie and a bridge
game. Now the only thing she wants is to talk over her symptoms with
some old hag who recommends patent medicines and tells her not to let
any one knife her. But it’s rotten for you here, I suppose.”
“It’s only temporary. I told the doctor to send a nurse and I’d try to
train her in--one of those practical nurses who can do housework and is
sort of companionable. I have to get back to Mrs. Harrison, of course.”
“Going back there? Why do you, Ellen? Please stick by us now.”
“I will, as long as I can, but I promised Mrs. Harrison and she really
couldn’t get along without me.”
“Let her get some one else.”
“I promised her, Fliss. I’ll fix your mother up, but I’ve got to go back
to my own place.”
Fliss stood up, passing her slim hands over her well-tailored hips,
lifting her hand bag delicately from the crowded table. Her face was
perplexed.
“I’m no good at nursing, you know,” she commented.
“No; but we must find some one who is just the right person.”
“Do. And I’ll come just as often as I possibly can.”
“I would. She’s your mother, Fliss.”
Fliss frowned a little and went out into the sunlight. There her step
quickened and her face grew gradually brighter. She seemed to be tossing
the misery from her at every step.
She made some calls, told her hostesses a little plaintively about her
worry for her mother, and after having exposed her trouble in several
charming and handsome rooms, felt it vastly easier to bear. She
succeeded in making it a little more remote, somehow putting it in a
better setting.
By the time she reached home she could smile without effort, and even
tell Matthew, whom she found dressing for dinner, that her mother would
probably improve under Ellen’s handling and consent to an operation.
“Good.”
“If Ellen only stays. She wants to go back to Cecily.”
“Wonderful what loyalty Cecily does inspire, isn’t it?” said Matthew
ruminatively.
“She probably pays Ellen well.”
At Matthew’s little laugh, which seemed so perfectly comprehending of
all the jealousies in Fliss’s mind, she flushed angrily. For a moment
she seemed about to say something, but she did not. It was Matthew who
spoke.
“Not worthy of you, Fliss.”
“I know. It was stupid and jealous, but I get so tired of the eternal
virtuousness of Cecily. Those with the servant mind may like it, but it
bores me to death. She’s so always right.”
“She’s always so right,” corrected Matthew, teasingly.
“Have it your own way. I’d personally sooner be a cheerful sinner than
such an unsmiling saint.” She turned at the door. “And if you ask me I
think poor Dick feels that way sometimes too.”