load of cakes and pies to the annual June church fair. The Minerva
Circle met at her house and Naomi was introduced to those members whom
she did not know already, and so launched in a series of sewing parties
which she attended in a kind of misery because on account of Philip she
could not answer honestly the persistent questions of her new women
“friends.” And Emma kept up as well her fervent activities as President
of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, carrying war into the enemy’s
country, trying to drive whisky from a country of mills and furnaces
where every other corner was occupied by a saloon. She even called upon
Moses Slade, Congressman of the district, and lately become a widower,
in his great boxlike house set back among the trees on Park Avenue. It
was an odd call which began with open hostility when she urged him to
wear a white ribbon and declare himself at once on the side of God and
Purity.
But Slade, being a politician, felt that Fortune had not yet sided with
God and Purity, and declined the honor with a great flow of eloquence
for which he was famed. There was much talk of his being chosen to
represent the majority of the people, and as yet the majority seemed
unfortunately (“the human race is naturally wicked and must be educated
to goodness--we must not forget that, Mrs. Downes”) still on the side of
gin.
He was a man of fifty, with a great stomach and massive feet and hands,
who had a round, flat face and a broad, flat nose, with odd little
shifty eyes. He was bald in front, but what remained of the once
luxuriant black locks was now worn, loose and free, bobbed in a style
which women came, shockingly, to adopt years afterward.
He received Emma in his study, a room with red walls, set round with
mastodon furniture in mahogany and red leather. In the beginning he was
taken aback by the vigor and power of Emma’s handsome figure.
She said to him, “The day will come, Mr. Slade, when you will have to
vote on the side of purity if you wish to survive--you and all your
fellow-members.”
And he replied, “That, Mrs. Downes, is what I am waiting for--a sign
from the people. You may tell your members that my heart is with them
but that I must not lose my head. A sign is all I’m waiting for, Mrs.
Downes--only a sign.”
Emma, feeling that she had gained at least half a victory, turned the
conversation to other things. They discussed the Republican chances at
the coming election, and the lateness of the summer, the question, as it
was called, of “smoke abatement” and, of course, the amazing growth and
prosperity of the Town. They found presently that they saw eye to eye on
every subject, for Emma was in her own way a born politician.
Congressman Slade observed that since the death of his wife (here a deep
sigh interrupted his observation) life had not been the same. To lose a
woman after thirty years! Well, it made a gap that could never be
filled, or at least, it was extremely unlikely that it would be filled.
And now his housekeeper had left, leaving him helpless.
Emma, in her turn, sighed and murmured a few words of condolence. She
knew what it was to be alone in the world. Hadn’t she been alone for
more than twenty years? Ever since Mr. Downes, going to China to make a
fortune for himself and his son, had been killed there. They hadn’t even
found his body, so that she hadn’t even the consolation of visiting his
grave. That, of course, was a great deal. Congressman Slade ought to be
thankful that he had his wife’s grave. It helped. In a way, it made the
thing definite. It was not like the torturing hope in which she had
lived for twenty years.... Yes, more than twenty years, hoping all the
while that he might not be really dead. Oh, she understood. She
sympathized.
“But as to the housekeeper, Mr. Slade, don’t let that trouble you. Come
and take your meals at the restaurant. I’d be delighted to have you. It
would be an honor to have you eat there.”
“I’ll take up your offer,” he said, slapping his knee almost jovially.
“I’ve heard how excellent it is. But, of course, I’ll pay for it. I
couldn’t think of it otherwise.”
For a moment, there appeared in the manner of Emma the faintest hint of
an ancient coquetry, long forgotten and grown a little stale. It was a
mere shadow, something that lurked in the suspicious bobbing of the
black ostrich plumes in her hat.
“Oh, don’t think of that,” she said. “It would be a pleasure--an honor.”
She rose and shook his hand. “Good-by, Mr. Slade, and thank you for
letting me waste so much of your time.”
“It was a pleasure, madam, a pleasure,” and going to the door, he bowed
her out of his widowed house.
* * * * *
When she had gone, Moses Slade returned to his study and before going
back to his work he sat for a long time lost in thought. The shadow of a
smile encircled the rather hard, virtuous lips. He smiled because he was
thinking of Emma, of her fine figure and healthy, rosy face, of the
curve of the full bosom, and the hips from which her dress flowed away
like the waters of a fountain.
From the very moment of Minnie’s death--indeed, even long before, during
the dragging, heavy-footed years of her invalidism--he had been
thinking, with a deep sense of guilt, of a second marriage. The guilt
had faded away by now, for Minnie had been in her grave for two summers
and he could turn his thoughts in such a direction, freely and with a
clear conscience. After all, he was a fine, vigorous man, in his prime.
People talked about fifty-five as old age--a time when a man should
begin to think of other things; but people didn’t know until they _were_
fifty-five. He had talked like that himself once a long while ago. And
now, look at him, as good a man as ever he was, and better, when it came
to brains and head. Why, with all the experience he had had....
As he sat there, talking to himself, his earnestness became so great
that his lips began to move, forming the words as if he were holding a
conversation, even arguing, with another Moses Slade, who sat just
across from him in the monstrous chair on the opposite side of the
desk. He must, he felt, convince that other Moses Slade.
He went on talking. Look at Mrs. Downes! What a fine woman! With such
noble--(yes, noble was the only word)--such noble curves and such a
fine, high color. She, too, was in her prime, a fine figure of a woman,
handsomer now than she had been as a skinny young thing of eighteen.
There was a woman who would make a wife for a man like himself. And she
had sense, too, running a business with such success. She’d be a great
help to a man in politics.
He began prodding his memory about her. He remembered the story of her
long widowhood, of Mr. Downes’ mysterious death. Yes, and he even
remembered Downes himself, a whipper-snapper, who was no good, and had a
devastating way with women. (Memories of a hot-blooded youth began to
rise and torment him.) Well, she was better off without him, a no-good
fellow like that. And what a brave fight she’d made! She was a fine
woman. She had a son, too, a son who was a missionary, and--and--Why,
come to think of it, hadn’t the son given it up and come home? That
didn’t sound so good, but you could keep the son out of the way.
The truth was that Moses Slade really wanted a skinny young thing of
twenty, but a Congressman who wrote “Honorable” before his name couldn’t
afford to make a fool of himself. He couldn’t afford to marry a silly
young thing, or ever get “mixed up” with a woman. A man of fifty-five
who kept wanting to pinch arms and hips had to be careful. If he could
only pinch, just one pinch, some one like--well, some one as plump as
Mrs. Downes, he’d feel like a boy again. He felt that youth would flow
back again into him through the very tips of the pinching fingers. It
wasn’t much--just wanting to pinch a girl. Why did people make such a
fuss about it?
He almost convinced himself that a full-blown rose like Emma Downes was
far better than a skinny young thing. There was, too, of course, the
Widow Barnes, who lived next door, still in her prime, and with a large
fortune as well.
He took up the Congressional Record, and tried to lose himself in its
mountains and valleys of bombast and boredom, but in a little while the
book lay unnoticed on his heavy thighs and he was arguing with the other
Moses Slade across the desk.
Suddenly, as if he had been roused from a deep sleep, he again found
himself talking aloud. “Well,” he thought, “something has got to be done
about this.”
11
Meanwhile Emma, walking briskly along beneath the maples of Park Avenue,
found her mind all aglitter with interesting projects. She often said
that she always felt on the crest of the wave, but to-day it was even
better than that; she felt almost girlish. Something had happened to
her, while she sat with Moses Slade, consoling him and accepting his
consolations. He had noticed her. She marked the look in his eye and
noticed the fingers that drummed impatiently the fine edge of his black
serge mourning trousers. A man behaved like that only when a woman made
him nervous and uneasy. And as she walked, there kept coming back to her
in a series of pictures all the adventures of a far distant youth,
memories of sleighrides and church suppers, of games of Truth and
Forfeits. There was a whole gallery of young men concerned in the flow
of memories--young men, tragically enough, whom she might have married.
They were middle-aged or oldish now, most of them as rich and
distinguished as Moses Slade himself. Somehow she had picked the poorest
of the lot, and so missed all the security that came of a sound husband
like Slade.
Well (she thought), she wasn’t sorry in a way, for she had been happy,
and it wasn’t too late even now to have the other thing--wealth,
security. She’d made a success of her business, and could quit it now
with the honest satisfaction of knowing it hadn’t defeated her--quit it,
or, better still, pass it on to Philip and Naomi, if he were still sure
that he wouldn’t go back to Megambo. Perhaps that was the way out--to
let him take it off her shoulders, and so bring him out of those filthy
mills where he was disgracing them all. But then (she thought), what
would she do with no work, nothing on which to center her life? It
wasn’t as if she were tired: she’d never felt as well in her life as in
this moment moving along under the slightly sooty maples. No, she
couldn’t settle down to doing nothing, sitting at home rocking like
Naomi and Mabelle. (She fairly snorted at the thought of Mabelle.) Of
course, if she married again, married some one like Moses Slade--not
Moses Slade, of course (she scarcely knew him), but some one like him.
Such a thing wasn’t impossible, and with a husband of his age marriage
couldn’t be very unpleasant. She could go to Washington and do much good
for such causes as temperance and woman suffrage.
And then, abruptly, her thoughts were interrupted by the voice of some
one speaking to her.
“How do you do, Mrs. Downes?” Looking up, she saw it was Mary Watts ...
now Mary Conyngham ... looking pale and rather handsome in her widow’s
clothes.
“Why, Mary Watts, I haven’t seen you in ever so long.”
There was a certain gush in Emma’s manner that was too violent. The
cordiality of Mary Watts had, too, the note of one who disliked the
object of her politeness. (Emma thought, “She usually pretends not to
see me. She’s only stopped me because she wants to ask about Philip.”)
“I’ve been away,” said Mary; “I had the children in the South. That’s
why you haven’t seen me.”
“Yes, now that you speak of it, I do remember reading it in the paper.”
And Mary, who never possessed any subtlety, went straight to the point.
“I hear,” she said, “that Philip has come home.”
“Yes, he’s been home for some time.”
“Is it true that he’s working in the Mills ... as a day laborer?”
(“What business is it of yours?” thought Emma.)
“Yes, it’s a notion he had. I think he wants to find out what it’s like.
He thinks a missionary ought to know about such things.”
“I suppose he’ll be going back to Africa soon?”
“Oh, yes. I think he’s impatient to be back.”
“His wife’s here, too?”
“Yes, she’s here.”
“I’ve never met her. Perhaps I’d better call.”
“Yes, she’s always there. She doesn’t go out much.”
There was an awkward pause and Mary, looking away suddenly, said, “Well,
good-by, Mrs. Downes. Remember me to Philip.”
“Of course,” said Emma. “Good-by.”
Once after they had parted, Emma looked back to watch Mary. She looked
handsome (Emma thought), but sad and tired. Perhaps it was the trouble
she had had with Conyngham and Mamie Rhodes ... carrying on so. Still,
she didn’t feel sorry for Mary; you couldn’t feel sorry for a girl who
had such superior airs. She was always stuck-up--Mary Watts; and she’d
better not try any of her tricks on Philip.
Her thoughts flew back to Philip. Something had to be done about him.
He’d been home for nine months now, and people were beginning to talk;
they were even beginning to find out about the Mills. (Why, Mary Watts
knew it already.) Being so busy with the new addition to the restaurant
and the church and the Union affairs, she hadn’t done her best by him
these last few weeks; she’d been neglecting her duty in a way. It wasn’t
too late for him to go back to Megambo--why, he might still become
Bishop of East Africa. If he didn’t, it would go to that numbskull,
Swanson, as first in the field.
And instead of that, he was working like a common Dago in the Mills.
And Naomi, she wasn’t any help at all. Funny, too, when she’d always
thought Naomi could look out for herself and manage Philip. Instead, she
seemed to grow more spineless every day--almost as if she were siding
with Philip. She was getting just like Mabelle, sitting around all day
in a trance, rocking. Something had to be done.
Then, for no reason at all, unless it happened through that train of
memories fired by the behavior of Moses Slade, which led back to her
youth, she thought of Naomi’s preciously guarded virginity.
Perhaps (she thought) if they had a child, if Philip and Naomi lived
together as man and wife, they would all have a greater hold upon him. A
man with a _real_ wife and children wasn’t as free as a man like Philip,
who had no responsibilities (now that he’d become so strange), save
those imposed by the law. Perhaps he would come to love Naomi and do
things to please her. He’d come in time to want things from her. A thing
like that did give you a hold over a man: it was a precarious hold, and
you had to be very clever about it, but it was something, after all. If
there was a child, she (Emma) could take charge of it when Philip and
Naomi went back to the place God had ordained for them.
As she walked, the idea grew and grew. Why (she wondered) hadn’t it
occurred to her before, as the one chance left? Naomi would hate it, and
probably refuse at first, but she must be made to understand that it was
her duty, not only as a wife (there were plenty of passages in the Bible
to prove it), but as an agent of God. Why, it was almost another case of
Esther and Ahasuerus, or even Judith and Holofernes. Look what they had
done for God!
Yes, there was a chance of managing Philip, after all. If they fixed on
him such new responsibilities, it might bring him to his senses.
Suddenly, in the midst of these torrential thoughts, she found herself
at the very door of her own house, and, entering, she called out,
“Naomi! Naomi!” in her loud, booming voice.
From her rocking-chair by the window, Naomi rose and answered her. She
had been crying, perhaps all the afternoon, and her pale eyes were
swollen and rimmed with red.
“Naomi,” she said, flinging aside her hat and jacket, “I’ve had a new
idea about Philip. I think we’ve been wrong in our way of managing him.”
12
At the same moment, Philip was walking along the road that led out into
the open country, talking, talking, talking to Mary Conyngham.
He had met her in a fashion the most natural, for he had gone to walk in
the part of the town where Mary lived. There were odd, unsuspected ties
between the people who lived on the Hill and those who lived in the
Flats, and he had come to know of her return from Krylenko, his own
foreman; for Krylenko had heard it from Irene Shane, who had seen Mary
herself at the school that Irene kept alive in the midst of the Flats.
Krylenko told him the news while they sat eating their breakfast out of
tin pails and talking of Irene Shane. Once he heard it, there was no
more peace for Philip: he thought about her while he worked, pulling and
pushing great sheets of red-hot metal, while the thick smoke blew in at
the windows of the cavernous shed. All through the morning he kept
wondering what she was like, whether she had changed. He kept recalling
her face, oval and dark, with good-humored blue eyes and dark hair
pulled back in a knob at the back of her small head. That was the way
he remembered her, and he tormented himself with doubts as to whether
she had changed. She wasn’t a girl any longer; she was the mother of two
children, and a widow. She had been through troubles with her husband.
At lunch he scarcely spoke to Naomi and his mother, and he never uttered
the name of Mary Conyngham, for something made him cautious: he could
not say what it was, save that he felt he oughtn’t to speak of her
before the other two. He had to see Mary Conyngham; he had to talk with
her, to talk about himself. He couldn’t go on any longer, always shut
in, always imprisoned in the impenetrable cell of his own loneliness. It
was Mary Conyngham who could help him; he was certain of it.
He left Naomi at the door of the restaurant, telling her that he meant
to go for a walk. He would return later to sleep. No, he didn’t feel
tired. He thought a walk would do him good.
And then, when he had left her, he walked toward the part of the town
where Mary lived, and when he reached her street, he found that he
hadn’t the courage even to pass her house, for fear she might see him
and wonder why he was walking about out there on the borders of the
town. For an hour he walked, round and round the block encircling her
house, but never passing it. It wasn’t only that she might think him a
fool, but she might be changed and hard. If she had changed as much as
he himself had changed, it would only be silly and futile, the whole
affair. But he couldn’t go on forever thus walking round and round,
because people would think him mad, as mad as his mother and Naomi
believed him.
Crossing the street, he looked up, waiting for a wagon to pass, and
there on the opposite side stood Mary Conyngham. She did not see him at
once, perhaps (he thought) because she had not expected to see him, and
so had not recognized him. She was wearing a short skirt, known as a
“rainy daisy,” though it was a bright, clear day. She looked pale, he
thought, and much older--handsomer, too, than she had once been. All the
tomboyish awkwardness had vanished. She was a woman now. For a moment he
had a terrible desire to turn and run, to hide himself. It was a
ridiculous thought, and it came to nothing, for as the wagon passed she
saw him, and, smiling, she crossed the street to meet him. His heart was
beating wildly, and the rare color came into his dark cheeks.
“Philip,” she said, “I’ve been wondering where you were.”
It gave him the oddest sensation of intimacy, as if the meeting had been
planned, and he had been waiting all this time impatiently.
They shook hands, and Mary said, “I’ve just left your mother.” And
Philip blushed again, feeling awkward, and silly, like a boy in his best
clothes, who didn’t know what to do with his hands. He was dressed like
a workman in an old suit and blue cotton shirt.
Suddenly he plunged. “I came out here on purpose. I wanted to see you.”
“Have you been to the house?”
“No,” he hesitated. “No ... I’ve just been walking round, hoping to run
into you.”
It was five years since they had last seen each other, and longer than
that since they had really been friends. Talk didn’t come easily at
first. Standing there on the corner, they made conversation for a
time--silly, banal conversation--when each of them wanted to talk in
earnest to the other.
At last Philip said, “Are you in a hurry? Could I come home with you?”
“No, I’m not in a hurry. I’ve left the children with Rachel.... Rachel
is my sister-in-law. We share expenses on the house. But I don’t think
we better go home. Are you tired?” she asked abruptly.
“No.”
“Because if you aren’t, we might go for a walk. I was afraid you might
be, after working all night at the Mills.”
For a moment Philip looked at her sharply. “How did you know I was in
the Mills?”
She laughed. “Krylenko told me. I saw him yesterday. He was helping
Irene teach English to a lot of dirty and very stupid Poles.”
“He’s a nice fellow--Krylenko. I didn’t know there were such men down
there.”
“Nobody knows it without going down there. Shall we walk a bit?”
They set out along Milburn Street, past the row of houses surrounded by
green leaves and bright trees. It was the hill farthest from the Mills
and the soot seldom drifted so far. As they drew nearer and nearer to
the open fields, the queer sense of restraint began a little to melt
away. They even laughed naturally as they had done years before when
they had played together.
“It was a funny thing,” said Philip. “I’ve been wanting to see you ever
since I came back. That’s why I came out here this afternoon--on a
chance of meeting you. I came as soon as I heard you were home.”
He was walking with his hands clasped behind him, his dark brows
puckered into a fine line with the effort he was making. He didn’t know
how to talk to women, at least women like Mary, and, in spite of their
old, old friendship, he felt shy with her. With her dead husband and her
two children, she seemed so much older and wiser. Some odd, new
complication had entered their relationship which made it all difficult
and confused. Yet she seemed to take it calmly, almost sadly.
“Tell me,” she said presently. “Philip, tell me about yourself. You
don’t mean to go back?” She halted and looked at him squarely.
“No, I don’t mean to go back.” And all at once he found himself pouring
out to her the whole story. He told her how he hated it all from the
beginning, how he had begun to doubt, how the doubts had tortured him;
how he had prayed and prayed, only to find himself slipping deeper and
deeper. He told her of the morning by the lake, of the terrible night of
the drums, of the coming of the queer Englishwoman, and the fight that
followed, in which his last grain of faith had gone. Suddenly, he
realized that he was telling the whole story for the first time. He had
never spoken of it before to any one. It was as if all the while,
without knowing it, he had been saving it for Mary Conyngham.
“And so,” she said, “you’ve come back to stay. Do you think you’ll
stay?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. There’s nothing else to do.”
“And why did you go to work in the Mills?”
“I don’t know. At least, I didn’t know at the beginning.”
“Was it because you wanted to work among the people in the Flats?”
“No ... no ... I’m through with meddling in other people’s lives.”
There was a bitterness in his tone which Mary must have guessed had some
relation to the woman she had left a little while before; only Philip
had always adored his mother. Emma Downes boasted of it.
“I think I went into the Mills,” he was saying, “because I had to find
something solid to get hold of ... and that was the solidest thing I
could find. It’s awfully solid, Mary. And it’s beginning to do the
trick. At first I hadn’t faith in anything, least of all myself, and now
I’ve got something new to take its place. It’s a kind of faith in man--a
faith in yourself. I couldn’t go on always putting everything into the
hands of God. It’s like cheating--and people don’t do it really. They
only pretend they do. If they left it all to God, I suppose things would
work out somehow; but they don’t. They insist on meddling, too, and when
a thing succeeds then God is good and he’s answered their prayers, and
if it fails, then it is God’s Will. But all the while they’re meddling
themselves and making a mess of things.”
“And you don’t mean ever to go back to the church?”
For a moment he didn’t answer. Then he said in a low voice, “No ... I
don’t believe any longer--at least, not in the way of the church. And
the church--well, the church is dead so far as the world is concerned.
It’s full of meddling old women. It might disappear to-morrow and the
world would go on just the same. That’s one thing about the Flats....
Down there you get down to brass tacks. You know how little all the
hubbub really means.”
“Do people know how you feel?”
“No, they just think I’m a little mad. I’ve never told any one any of
this, Mary, until now.”
She looked at him shyly. “Your blue shirt suits you better than your
black clothes, Philip. I always thought you weren’t made for a
preacher.”
He blushed. “Perhaps ... anyway, I feel natural in the blue shirt.” He
halted again. “You know, Mary, it’s been the queerest thing--the whole
business. It’s as if I never really existed before. It’s like being born
again--it’s painful and awful.”