It was two days after the New Year had come in. Only nine o’clock, but
Cecily had almost decided to go to bed. The timidity which she had felt
often at first in being in a house alone at night had almost gone now,
and she was locking the doors and windows and turning off lights with
mechanical routine. The house was full of the fragrance of hothouse
flowers. Dick’s generosity had not taken into account the fact that
flowers last more than a day and his “middle of the table” bouquet had
overflowed into the other rooms. Cecily looked at them, wondering how
long he planned to keep this up. She knew from the accounts in the paper
that he had left town, for the papers had got wind of the new plan, and,
to Dick’s rage, played it up in one or two issues before they were
suppressed.
The flowers pleased Cecily. For once she had hardly thought of whether
they were consistent with the separation between her and her husband or
not. It had been sheer delight to have flowers. As she went down to put
some little yellow pink rose deeper in water she heard an unfamiliar
sound and straightened up suddenly. There was surely some one at the
side door fumbling with the door-knob. She looked at the clock; quarter
past nine only. It couldn’t be a burglar. Somebody drunk, perhaps.
Pushing open the door to the pantry, she whistled softly and the big
Airedale came rushing in. With him jumping beside her, she went towards
the door.
This time the person, whoever it was, decided to ring. Cecily turned on
all the lights and opened the door, prepared to threaten or command. But
at sight of her visitor she stepped back in amazement, a restraining
hand on the leaping dog.
“Why, Della! where did you drop from?”
Della, swathed in white fur, slipped inside the storm door and closed
the inner one before she answered.
“I just came over,” she said, a little breathlessly. “I wanted to see
you--you know, to talk to you.”
“I thought you were a burglar,” laughed Cecily. “I was going to let Bill
fly at your throat. Why did you try the side door and where is Walter?”
“Walter----” Della was standing in the light now and Cecily could see
that her little pink face so made for powder and smiles was streaked
with tears and still distorted with some violent emotion. “Walter’s
home, I guess. He doesn’t know I came here. I thought he wouldn’t know,
so that’s why I came to you. He thinks I’m afraid of you and wouldn’t
dare to come. But I showed him I did come here and he doesn’t know where
I am and----”
“Hush,” said Cecily, “you’re hysterical, Della. Have you been walking in
the snow in those slippers?” She looked down at the slim black satin
slippers from which caked snow was already melting. “Come upstairs to my
room and get dry. Then,” she rode over an immense impulse to refuse
sanctuary to Della, “then you can tell me all about it.”
Della followed her. But she could not be silent.
“I came to you, Cecily, and I know you don’t like me very well, and I
don’t know as I blame you, because you and I aren’t like each other at
all, and I’ve always been scared to death of you, but what could I do,
for I couldn’t go to any of the girls because they don’t know anything
about things like this--at least, I hope they don’t, although perhaps
the married ones have troubles of their own. It isn’t as if I were older
and I thought, of course, Walter would be nice and sympathetic and he
wasn’t at all, but he was so stern and cross and scolding--and I can’t
be scolded and I won’t have it.”
She ran on, plunging through incoherent phrases and sentences, with the
tears running down her foolish little cheeks. Cecily looked at her in
amazement.
“Hush,” she said again, “you’ll make yourself ill. What is it, Della?
Have you had a quarrel with Walter? Is that it?”
“That’s only a little bit of it,” sobbed Della, as the cause of her
trouble rose again to bring her horror, “only a little of it. Although I
thought he’d be nice to me! I thought he’d be nice to me; a girl gives
up a lot when she marries a man, and it’s pretty hard to have him turn
against her.”
Cecily had her upstairs now, sitting on her chaise longue, and she was
forcing quilted slippers upon her.
“If you really want to tell me, Della, you must stop being hysterical
and begin at the beginning. And you mustn’t be quite so noisy or you’ll
wake the babies in the nursery.”
Della shuddered from head to foot.
“That’s it!” she cried, her eyes distended. “Babies! Cecily, Cecily,
they say I’m going to have a baby and I won’t, I won’t! And Walter is so
cruel about it.”
Cecily was no longer naïve about such things. She had heard many
conversations which had told her unwilling ear much about involuntary
motherhood. But never had she seen such horror as was Della’s. Mixed
with her recoil from the violence and the ugly mood of the girl was a
queer feeling of responsibility that was almost pride. Della had come to
her.
“You’re going to have a baby, Della? Why, you silly girl, that’s the
nicest thing that could happen to you. I’m awfully glad.”
“Don’t! I thought you’d help me! I know it’s all right for you to have
children, Cecily--you’re the domestic type--but I’m not. I won’t, I
won’t, I tell you! I won’t lose my figure and have to give up dancing
and get old and ugly and repulsive and listen to babies all the night
and die!”
Cecily sat down beside her and took hold of one clenched little hand.
“Tell me all about it, Della,” she said quietly. “When did you find out
all this?”
“Last week.”
“Did you see Dr. Norton?”
“Not him. He was horrid to me once. I wouldn’t go to see him.”
“But how do you know?”
“I saw another doctor.” She had stopped crying. “I hunted one out on
Eighth Street where no one would know me or begin to talk about it or
tell anybody.”
“Eighth Street! Why, Della, that’s no street for decent doctors!”
“Lots of doctors advertise in the windows along there,” said Della
sullenly. “Anyway, I wasn’t going to Dr. Norton.”
“And this other doctor told you what?”
Della shuddered convulsively. “He was horrible--horrible. Such an awful
place with dreadful looking women around in the waiting room. And a man
tried to flirt with me and the doctor patted me on the arm and told me
that he could tell me more about it and that he’d have to see a hundred
dollars first. And I didn’t know what to do, Cecily, so I hurried out of
there and it’s lucky I wasn’t murdered or didn’t have my gold purse
stolen.”
“What happened then?”
“I’ve been worrying till I was almost dead. Walter knew I wasn’t
myself--my skin was all dead looking! Look at me, Cecily. I’m a perfect
fright! So to-night he found me crying and he asked me what the matter
was, and I told him, and he was glad, he said. Glad! Glad that I was
going to die!”
“Nonsense, Della. Why shouldn’t he be glad?”
“He said he thought it would mature me and that we’d both be happier and
that he’d try to make it easy--as if it could be easy! I’d die; I’m the
type that always dies, leaving a baby, and the man marries again. And I
told Walter he’d marry again; no, I told him I wouldn’t have it, I
wouldn’t, and I won’t!”
“But there’s nothing to do about it.”
“There must be things. There must be. Walter said that same
thing--nothing to do. But I’ll kill myself! I’ll show you all! I’ll show
him!”
For a few minutes Cecily let her storm. She was collecting her thoughts.
The mad ignorance, the uncontrolled violence of this girl in the face of
one responsibility horrified her. And astonished her, too. She had not
dreamed Della was so ignorant.
“But, Della, dear,” she found herself pleading, “you must have known
that was one of the things that happen to people when they
marry--babies.”
Della shrugged her shoulders in angry impatience.
“Don’t be silly, Cecily. You know lots of girls don’t have them and
don’t ever intend to have them. Once in a while a girl makes a mistake.”
At her full height Cecily looked down on Della in disgust. The things
she was instinctively fighting against, for which she had endured so
much, all seemed epitomized in this hysteric figure of inconsequence
which was so helpless up against a fact of life--a fact demanding
personal sacrifice. “Incapable,” she thought, feeling strong as never
before. And then there came through her scorn that pride again that
Della had come to her, and a real anxiety for Della and the child which
might be hers.
“If this is true,” she said, “you know you ought not to be letting
yourself get wrought up. It’s bad for you and bad for the baby,” she
finished tactlessly.
A shiver went over the crouching girl.
“Don’t! Don’t!” she moaned. “I won’t have it, I tell you. I wish I’d
never seen Walter. He’s let me in for this now, just as he let me in for
marrying him after that mess at college. I wish I never had married him
in spite of all their silly talk. Anybody could have known I wasn’t a
tough girl. I didn’t stay out all night because I wanted to. I couldn’t
help it if the silly car froze up and we had to go to the nearest place
to keep from freezing ourselves. But he was so fussy that he got me all
worked up, too, and I married him. And now, after all I’ve done for him,
he was so cruel to-night. He didn’t care about my feelings. He just
wanted the horrible----”
“Hush, Della.”
“I thought you’d help me. You’ve been married a long while. You----”
“Della, if you mean what I suppose you mean by ‘helping’ you, I wouldn’t
have the faintest idea of how to help you in that way. And of course I
wouldn’t anyway. It’s not only wicked to consider such a thing; it’s the
worst kind of wickedness. It’s dreadful, awful, criminal.”
Her words seemed to dry Della’s tears. She got up, wrapping her coat
around her.
“Well, I can kill myself,” she said, her blurred blue eyes full of
childish drama. There was something in this pure childishness that went
home to Cecily’s heart. There were only three or four years between her
age and Della’s, but she felt decades older and wiser. It came to her
suddenly that this was no figure of evil before her. It was just a
frightened little girl, uttering angry threats in the face of her
fear--ignorant of all things that might stand her in stead in a crisis,
equipped only to meet gayety and enjoyment. Cecily had the heavier
equipment and she longed to lend it, to bolster up this frail little
soul. She took her by both shoulders.
“You won’t do any such ridiculous thing. Sit down and let me tell you a
few things. Let me tell you,” she went on to Della, reluctant beside
her, “what a joy it is, what wonderful happiness it really is, in spite
of all the pain and trouble, to have a baby of your own, something
living that you really created and made strong. Why, it’s most
beautiful.”
But Della’s face was hard and drawn and sullen.
“That’s if you like that sort of thing. I don’t, that’s all. I’m not the
type,” she repeated.
The motion picture phrase struck Cecily as true. Della wasn’t the “type”
to understand what she was talking about. Della had been told that she
was the type to wear electric blue, to carry off a Marcel, to dance the
toddle. And it was true. She hadn’t got a word of what Cecily said, and
she wouldn’t. To her little mind there was no entrance for the abstract
or the philosophical. It must all be pictorial.
Cecily felt failure, and as she felt she wasn’t gaining her point, she
cast about for new weapons. She was on the offensive with her philosophy
this time, and she realized that the old weapons of defense were
useless. She could not make Della see these things by talking to her.
But there must be a way; she must find it.
“You and Walter can talk about how low I am when you see him. He feels
like you do,” said Della bitterly.
“Walter thinks you’re wonderful,” answered Cecily. “He’s crazy about
you.”
Della began to cry again. “Then why is he so cruel? Why does he want me
to go through such an awful thing?”
“He doesn’t mean to be cruel. Of course he doesn’t realize what it means
to a woman.”
That was the right note. A hint of martyrdom.
“I should say not.”
“And men are always pleased at news like that. I tell you, Della”
(Cecily was striking her stride now), “men are never as crazy about a
woman as when she is expecting her first baby. You see, they feel so
grateful and so miserable.”
“I should think they would,” moaned Della.
“Of course you can’t see it as I do, but really the nicest time of my
married life was before Dorothea came.” She faltered a little at that,
for it was hard to use those memories for Della’s sake, but she realized
that Della was listening finally.
“Dick couldn’t do enough for me.”
“Didn’t you die--staying in for months?”
“But you don’t, my dear--that’s awfully old-fashioned. That belonged to
the days (here was an inspiration) when they didn’t have the modern
point of view. And you can get the loveliest dresses. You’d be like a
picture, Della.”
It was clear that at last Della was getting a Madonna vision of herself.
She had stopped crying except for an occasional dab at her eyes and with
her eyes fixed on the other side of the room looked very young and
pathetic.
“There’s one thing,” said Cecily. “It isn’t all misery by any means.
Everybody’s so awfully interested in you and so awfully nice to you;
and you can do everything except maybe dive and dance--along towards the
end--and then of course all the----”
“But the end when you die, maybe!”
“You don’t die. You have so much anesthetic you don’t know anything
about it. Then you have a cunning little baby and you can have the
loveliest baby things. Of course Walter wouldn’t want you to have any of
the hard care of it.” Skillful Cecily, sliding over all the things that
had made her children real to her; nights of watching and caring when a
baby had a cough or a touch of croup, the routine of nursing, the
fatigue and ill health which might be eased, but which could never be
destroyed. She was fighting for Della’s baby now, and if Della saw it as
a pink and white doll in a dotted Swiss cloud, with herself as an
invalid in interesting negligees, still she was gaining her end. That it
was a great step for Cecily--this relinquishing of her own
fastidiousness in discussion, this generosity of method--she did not
realize, yet.
Della was growing calmer. Her hysteria had half spent itself and Cecily
had turned her mind away from horrors for the moment, anyway. It was
probably the first time for many days that she had been able to see
anything except blackness, and the relief showed in the relaxation of
her body. Cecily ventured a little further. She was feeling a sudden
warmth of affection for Della. The sense of her usefulness to some one
outside her own group of children and the feeling that some one had
turned to her for confidence and compassion was expanding all her
starved emotions. She put her arm around Della.
“Poor little Della.”
“Isn’t life terrible?” asked Delia mournfully.
“You want to stop worrying about everything,” answered Cecily. “You
want to just lie back and let us take care of you. We’ll all see you
through it and make it just as easy. Just let me talk to Walter and
explain things and he won’t upset you again.”
“He was so cruel.” Della relapsed again. “I didn’t tell you everything.
He said I was a coward and----”
“He was excited. You’d better spend the night here now, Della. I’m going
to tuck you up and telephone to Walter where you are.”
“Do you think he’ll come over?”
“Of course--to make sure you are all right.”
She got Della into bed finally, diverting her momentarily by pressing
upon her her most elaborate nightgown and negligee. Della cast a
fleeting, discouraged glance at herself in the glass and slid between
the covers, too worn out to resist longer.
“Of course I shan’t be able to sleep,” she said, “so if Walter comes
over, he might come up for just a moment.”
Cecily nodded and turned the light low. Then, from the safe distance of
the kitchen extension telephone, she telephoned Walter and half an hour
later let him in.
“You say she’s gone to bed?”
“Quite worn out. But she wanted to see you.”
“Is she still hysterical?”
“No; she’s calmer.”
Walter’s boyish face had grave lines of anxiety traced on it. He paced
up and down the room for a minute, then turned to Cecily.
“Tell you what was the matter with her?”
“Yes.”
He took a few more turns.
“Of course she’s very young,” he said, “but there doesn’t seem any
excuse for some of the things she said. She--I didn’t think women--even
girls--felt that way. I know it’s a sacrifice, but I thought every
woman had instincts.”
“Every woman has, but not always at this stage. Wait till the baby
comes.”
A funny, shaken smile came over Walter’s face.
“I’d do anything in the world to make it easy. But of course if she’s
going to hate it so----”
“It’s just her condition,” Cecily told him. “Lots of women are
hysterical. You’re utterly in the wrong, Walter, when you argue with
her. You want to soothe her, divert her. She’s just a child and she
hasn’t had a bit of experience.”
“She’s older than you were.”
“Della says I’m a different type, but I can remember, Walter, times when
the world frightened me to death. The only thing that helped was to feel
that Dick was going along with me.”
She stopped, and then went on again: “I don’t believe you ought to try
to make Della think of the serious things any more than she naturally
will. Be awfully considerate, fussy; spoil her--she likes that. Make
father spoil her, too. And remember, no matter how cross or queer she
may be, that ignoring all that is part of the penalty you have to pay
for having a baby of your own.”
“Della’s not your style,” said Walter for the hundredth time, “but,
really, if you would you could do a lot for her. She’s light on the
surface, but there’s more to her than you’d think. Awfully sweet and
generous. If we did have a baby and she had it to think about----”
“I know.”
“Will you help us through, Cecily? I don’t know much about such things,
and mother’s gone. Her own mother is rather dreadful. Boarding house! We
haven’t seen much of you lately, and that’s been all my fault, too. But
now it might be--you’d be an angel to sort of stand by Della.”
“Of course I will.”
“Is Della in your room?”
“Yes. Come up.”
At the door of the room with the dim light they paused and listened, but
Della was not sobbing. They entered softly. She had turned on her side
and fallen asleep like a peaceful child.
“I’d say good-night to her,” said Cecily, and went downstairs again,
closing the door after her. For a moment the warmth at her heart
persisted and then loneliness, more devastating than ever, bitterness,
jealousy of that husband and wife upstairs--together--swept her.