things which Mary Conyngham had carried there from Krylenko’s room. The
sight of them touched him with emotion, as if something of Mary herself
clung to them. He wanted to see her more than he wanted anything in the
world. He stood looking out of the window while the old nigger waited,
watching him. He was sure that in some way she could wipe out the
sickening memory of that awful scene. The window gave out over the
Mills, which lay spread out, cold and desolate and silent, save for the
distant K section, where smoke had begun to drift from the chimneys. He
would paint the scene from this window, in all its dreary bleakness--in
grays and whites and cold blues, with the faintest tinge of pink. It was
like a hell in which the fires had suddenly burned to cold ashes. No, he
must see Mary. He had to see her. He couldn’t go on like this. It wasn’t
possible for any human creature to be thirsty for so long--thirsty for
peace and honesty and understanding.
He began to see himself in the mawkish light of one who suffered and was
put upon, and what had been impossible before began in the light of
self-pity to seem possible.
He had (he knew) to go back to the slate-colored house. Turning, he said
to the old nigger, “I’m coming back,” and then halting, he asked, “How’s
Mrs. Shane?”
“She ain’t no better, sir. She’s dying, and nothin’ kin save her.”
Suddenly the black face lighted up. “But Miss Lily’s come back. She came
back last night.”
“Yes?”
“You don’t know Miss Lily, mebbe.”
“No.... I’ve seen her years ago riding through the Town.”
“Then you don’t know what she’s like.... The old Missie can die now that
Miss Lily’s come home. She jus’ couldn’t die without seein’ Miss Lily.”
Philip scarcely heard him. He was thinking about his own troubles, and
Lily Shane was a creature who belonged to another world whose borders
would never touch his own. Even as a boy, looking after her as she rode
in the mulberry victoria up Park Avenue, it never occurred to him that
he would ever come nearer to her. There was something magnificent about
her that set her apart from all the others in the Town. And there was
always the wicked glamour that enveloped one who, it was whispered, had
had a child out of wedlock and then declined to marry its father.
How could Lily Shane ever touch the world of Uncle Elmer and Naomi and
Emma and Mabelle? No, she did not exist for him. She was like one of the
actresses he had followed furtively along Main Street as a boy, because
a mysterious, worldly glamour clung to those ladies who appeared in
town one night and disappeared the next into the great world. No
creature could have been more remote than these coryphées from the
slate-colored house and the prayer-meetings of the Reverend Castor.
6
It was the Reverend Castor himself who greeted Philip on the doorstep
when he reached home at last. Philip would have avoided him, but the
clergyman was coming down the path as he turned into it and so there was
no escape.
He greeted Philip with a smile, saying, “Well, it’s good to see you
about again, my boy. We had a bad time over you ... thought you weren’t
going to make the grade.”
Philip grinned. “I’m not so easy to be rid of.” He felt a sudden
refreshing sense of superiority over the preacher, strange in all his
experience. It was simply that he had no longer any awe of him as a man
of God.
The Reverend Castor coughed and answered, “Oh! My dear boy. We didn’t
want to be rid of you. That’s the last thing....” He protested nervously
and added, “I just dropped in for a moment to see how your wife was
doing ... and the twins. You ought to be proud, my boy, of two such fine
babies ... two. Most people are thankful for one.”
“I would have been, too.”
“You don’t mean you aren’t delighted with what God has sent you?”
“No ... of course not ... I was only making a joke.” It hardly seemed
honest, Philip thought, to give God the credit for the twins.
“I suppose we’ll be having Mrs. Downes back with us in the choir
soon.... Since Mrs. Timpkins has moved to Indianapolis I’ve asked your
wife to be the leader and the librarian of the music.”
“Yes ... she ought to be back soon. She seems strong again.”
There was an awkward silence, and the Reverend Castor’s kindly blue eyes
turned suddenly aside. He started to speak and then halted abruptly and
seized Philip’s hand a second time. “Well, good-by. I must be off.”
He was gone quickly, and for a moment Philip stood looking after him,
puzzled by his strange, nervous manner. He was sorry for this poor man,
whom he had always disliked. It was a sorrow he could not explain, save
that his life must be a hell with a wife like his, and all the women of
the parish on his neck. He did his duty, the Reverend Castor. He never
shirked. It was good of him to call on Naomi. She would like such
attention from the head of her church. It would bring back to her,
Philip thought, some of the old glory and importance that had waned
steadily since the night they had got down from the train, shivering,
and fearful of what lay before them.
And she would be pleased at being asked to lead the choir and take care
of the music. It was odd what little things brought happiness to her.
She had need of the little things, for he meant to hurt her. He was
certain now that it was the only way out. It would be easier for her to
face the truth.
He found her sitting in the parlor where the Reverend Castor had left
her. She was dressed for the first time since the twins were born, and
she had been crying. As he entered, she came over to him and, putting
her arms about his neck, pressed her head against Jim Baxter’s overcoat,
and said, “I’m ashamed, Philip ... I want to die. I couldn’t help it
yesterday. It’s the way I feel! I feel so tired.”
The whole action disturbed him horribly. She had never done such a thing
before; she had never done more than kiss him chastely. He freed himself
and, still holding her hands, said, “I understand. It’s all over now and
I understand.”
She began to cry again helplessly, pitifully. “You’ll forgive me? You’ll
forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive. I understand it.” He pushed her gently into
a chair, and sat down beside her, silently, wondering how he could bring
himself to say what he _had_ to say.
“It’s because I’m so unhappy, Philip.... I’ve been unhappy ever since we
left Megambo ... ever since that Englishwoman stopped there. I wish to
God we’d never seen her.”
“Let’s not think about her. She had nothing to do with it.”
“And it’s so awful in this dreary house. I’m nothing here, Philip....
I’m less than a hired girl. Your Ma hates me....” He tried to speak, but
she cried out passionately, “I can’t go on living here ... I can’t ... I
can’t.”
As he sat there, all his horror of scenes, of that wretched scene in the
same room the evening before, swept over him. It was like a physical
sickness rising into his throat and choking him. He was confused, too,
with a sense of impotent rage.
“And after you ran away she told Mabelle she was never to enter the
house again.... Now I haven’t any one.”
No, she hadn’t any one, but she didn’t know yet how alone she really
was.
“Naomi,” he said quietly. “Naomi ... listen to me ... try to control
yourself.”
“Yes.... Yes.... I’m trying to.” Her pale, homely face was even paler
with weeping. Her eyes were swollen beneath the transparent lashes and
her nose was red.
“Naomi ... would you like to have a house of your own?”
“Oh, Philip ... yes.”
“I don’t mean a whole house, but a place to live ... two or three rooms
where you’d be away from my mother.”
“Yes ... yes. I’d do better. I’d take care of things ... if I had a
chance in my own place. Oh, Philip--if you’d only be kind to me.”
He stroked her hand suddenly, but it was only because he pitied her. “I
try to be kind, Naomi.”
“You’ve been so hard to me ... just like a stone--ever since we left
Megambo. Oh, I knew it ... I knew even when....” She broke off suddenly,
without finishing. Philip looked away, sick with misery. He pitied her,
but he could not love her. She went on and on. “Out there I had
something to live for ... I had my work. I loved it. It was the only
life I’d ever known. It was everything. And here ... there’s nothing. I
don’t know how to live here.”
“There are the children,” he said in a quiet voice.
“Yes ... but that’s not what I mean. It’s my soul I’m thinking of. It’s
rotting away here....”
“Mine was rotting at Megambo.” She did not answer him, and he said,
“There’s church work to do, and now Reverend Castor wants you to lead
the choir.”
“But it’s not the same, and they’re all jealous of me ... all those
women ... jealous because I’m more important because I’ve been a
missionary, and jealous because Reverend Castor shows me favors. Oh, I
know. I don’t belong here, and they don’t want me here. Oh, I don’t know
what’s to become of me!”
There was a long silence, in which they sat there, dumbly trying to find
some way out of the hopeless muddle, trying to patch together something
which was now in tatters, if it had ever existed at all. Philip’s thin
jaw was set in that hard, stubborn line that made even his mother
afraid.
“Naomi,” he said presently, “I’ll get you a place to live. It won’t be
much, for I haven’t much money, but you’ll be free ... to do what you
please. Only ... only, Naomi ... I ... I....” Suddenly, his head fell
forward, and he buried his face in his hands. In a voice that was hardly
audible he said, “I don’t want to live with you any longer. It’s ...
it’s all over.”
For a long time there was no sound in the room, save the ticking of the
great onyx clock beneath the picture of Jason Downes. Naomi didn’t even
sob; but presently she said, in a voice like the voice of a deaf person,
“Philip, you mean you’re going to leave me?”
“No,” he said slowly. “No ... it’s not that exactly. I shan’t leave you.
I’ll come and see you every day and the children--only I won’t sleep in
the house. I’m going to sleep where I work.”
In the same dead voice she asked, “You’re not going back to the Mills?”
“No, I’m not going back to the Mills ... they wouldn’t have me now. I’m
going to paint....”
“Pictures?”
“Yes ... pictures. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do and now ... now,
nothing can stop me.” There was in his voice a sudden cold rasp, as of
steel, which must have terrified her. He thought, “I’ve got to do it, if
I’m to live. I’ve got to do it.”
She said, “But you could have a good congregation. You could preach.”
“No, that’s the last thing I could do. I’m through with all that.”
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”
He raised his head, and saw that she was biting her handkerchief.
“Naomi,” he said. “Naomi,” and the sound of her name seemed to
precipitate a sudden climax. She fell on her knees and beat them with
her fists.
“You won’t do that, Philip. You can’t ... you can’t leave me for
everybody to mock at. Say that you won’t ... I was wrong in the
beginning, but now I’ll do anything. I’ll lie down and let you walk over
my body!”
“Naomi,” he said. “Please! For God’s sake!”
“Oh, don’t you see! It’s different now ... I love you. Don’t you see
that makes it different?”
“It can’t make it different, Naomi. I can’t pretend what isn’t true ...
it’s a thing a man can’t do.”
Suddenly she stopped sobbing and looked up at him, her face all white
and contorted. “You can’t say that! You can’t mean it! It isn’t true!”
“It’s true, Naomi. I can’t help myself. I wish to God I could!”
“And you didn’t love me ... even ... even then?”
He made a heroic effort. “No ... not even then.”
She flung herself on the floor, pressing her face against the carpet,
moaning and moaning. Kneeling down, he picked her up bodily and laid her
on the sofa. Bending over her--
“Naomi ... listen to me. It’s not my fault. It’s not yours. It’s all a
muddle. Nobody’s to blame.”
Then she sat up suddenly. “Yes, there is. It’s your mother who’s to
blame. She made me marry you. It all began with that. I didn’t want to
... I didn’t want to marry any one, but I wanted to have a mission of my
own. She did it. She’s to blame, and now she hates me. She thinks I’ve
stolen you from her.”
She buried her face in the cushions and lay sobbing. After a time,
Philip said, “Naomi ... listen to me. You didn’t steal me from her.”
“Who did then?” said Naomi’s muffled voice.
“I don’t know. It just happened. I suppose it’s one of the things that
happen in life. I’ve grown up now. I’ve grown up since we went to
Megambo. That’s all. I know my own mind now.”
“Oh, you’re hard, Philip ... harder than flint.” She sat up slowly.
“I’ll do anything for you. You can wipe your feet on me. I can’t let you
go now ... I can’t ... I can’t!” She began suddenly to laugh. “I’ll do
anything! I’ll prove to you I can keep house as well as your mother.
I’ll show you how I can care for the children. They’re your children,
too. I’ll learn to cook ... I’ll do anything!”
He did not answer her. He simply sat staring out of the window like an
image carven of stone. And he was saying to himself all the while, “I
can’t yield. I daren’t do it. I can’t--not now.” And all the while he
felt a kind of disgust for the nakedness of this love of Naomi’s. It was
a shameful thing. And during all their life together he had thought her
incapable of such love.
She kept moaning and saying, over and over again, “I’ve got nothing now.
I’m all alone ... I’ve got nothing now.”
He rose, and laid a hand on her shoulder. “I’m going now, Naomi. I’m not
going to the restaurant. I’ll come back this afternoon. It’ll be all
right. We’ll work it out somehow.”
She looked up at him. “You’ve changed your mind?”
“No, I don’t mean that. No, it’s better this way.”
“I’ll show you, Philip, what a good wife I can be.”
He picked up his hat, Jim Baxter’s hat, and suddenly he thought, “The
old Philip is dead--as dead as Jim Baxter. I’ve dared to do it.”
Aloud he said, “Let’s not talk any more now. I’ll be back in an hour or
two when you feel better.”
Then he went away, and outside the house, among the lilacs, he was
suddenly sick.
7
He found a tiny flat of three rooms over a drugstore halfway up the hill
from the railway station. It had been occupied by the family of a
salesman who traveled for a house which manufactured false teeth. He
had been promoted to a western territory where, with the great boom in
the silver mines, the market for gold teeth had risen enormously.
He was a little fat man, with enormous black mustaches, all aglow with
his promotion. “It’s the best gold tooth territory in America,” he told
Philip.
The apartment rented for thirty dollars a month. The bubbling salesman
would leave the furniture behind for two hundred and fifty dollars.
Philip could move in the day after to-morrow.
He left the place, his whole body warmed by the satisfaction of having
acted, of having done something definite. But the thing was not settled
yet, because his mother still remained to be told.
He found her in the kitchen of the restaurant, superintending the
preparation of mince-meat according to a recipe of her own which
eliminated all intoxicating liquors. Standing over the negress who did
the work, she was the essence of vigor and authority, her face crimsoned
by the heat of the place, her hair all in disorder.
“Ma,” he said to her. “I have something I want to discuss with you.”
After bidding the negress wait until she returned, she followed him
quickly, surprised and troubled by the look in his eye and the set of
his jaw. The talk took place at the table behind the screen where Moses
Slade came every day to eat.
“It’s about Naomi, Ma ... I’ve taken some rooms for her to live in. She
won’t trouble you any longer. We’ll move out on Tuesday.”
She looked at him for a moment in astonishment. “But, Philip,” she
said, “you ought to have consulted me. You mustn’t do that. We can’t
even think of it.”
“The rent is paid. I’ve bought furniture.”
“Where did you get the money?”
“I used what Grandpa left me.”
“I thought you’d pledged the interest on that to the mission.”
“I’ve taken it back. I took it back before I was sick.”
She didn’t say anything for a long while. She saw suddenly that he was
changed, more hardened even than she had feared. He didn’t even come to
her any longer for advice. He had shut her out altogether. At last she
said, “But, Philip, what will people think--when I’ve a house big enough
for you all?”
“I don’t care any longer what people think. I can’t go through any more
scenes like yesterday. Besides, a man has a right to his own house.”
“But, Philip ... my house is your house. I’ve worked all these years and
sacrificed.... Oh, you don’t know what it’s meant sometimes. I wouldn’t
even let Uncle Elmer help me--so that you’d have the house for your own.
It wasn’t for myself.... I could have got along somehow.”
He looked away from her at the mustard-pot in the center of the table.
“You know that you can’t get on with Naomi--and she hates living in your
house.”
“I can try ... we can both try. If only she’d take a little interest and
not make the place into a pigstye.”
“You know she won’t change.”
“Philip, I’ll do anything.... I’ll put up with Naomi ... I won’t say a
word, only don’t leave me now after all the years when I’m an old
woman.”
She saw the stubborn jaw set in a hard line. The sight of it stirred a
sudden, turbulent emotion: it was his father’s jaw over again,
terrifying in its identity. What had she done to deserve such treatment
from these two men to whom she had given up all her life without once a
thought of herself? She had worked for them, sacrificed....
Philip was saying, “It won’t make any difference. Even if you and Naomi
never spoke to each other. You’d be hating each other all the time.
Don’t you see? That’s what I can’t stand.”
She reached over and touched his hand. “Philip ... once you used to come
to me with everything, and now ... now you treat me like a stranger ...
me, your own mother. Why don’t you come to me? I want to share your
life, to be a part of it. It’s all I live for. You’re all I’ve got.”
He felt her trying to capture him once more. What she said was true ...
you couldn’t deny it. She had given her whole life to him. Every word
she spoke hurt him.
“I don’t know, Ma. Nothing has happened except maybe that I’m grown up
now. I’m a man. I’ve got to decide things for myself.”
It was that hard, brutal jaw which she couldn’t overcome. It had
thwarted her always. With Jason, when his jaw was set thus, it was as if
his heart had turned to stone.
“Where did you go last night?”
He told her, and the answer frightened her. In the Flats, in a Dago’s
boarding-house, her son had passed a night.
“Where did that coat come from?”
“It belonged to Jim Baxter, who was killed at the grade-crossing last
week. I borrowed it from McTavish.”
“So you’ve been seeing him.”
“Yes, he told you I wouldn’t come home, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” she said, with a sudden flash of anger. “Yes ... he told me. I
wish you wouldn’t see so much of him, Philip. He’s a wicked man.”
He made no response to this sudden, feeble sally of the old authority.
He had, she discovered with awe, that old trick of his father’s--of not
answering in an argument unless he had something to say. It was an
unfair method, because it always kept the argument upon the level of
reason, excluding all the force of the emotions.
“And I’m not coming home any more to sleep, Ma. That’s all finished.”
He must have seen the look of fear in her eyes. It was that look he had
seen there whenever, for a moment, she seemed to lose control of that
solid world she had built up.
“But, Philip ... it’s your house ... your own home. You’ve never had any
other.” He said nothing, and she asked, “Where are you going to sleep?”
Slowly, and then carefully, so that it would hurt her as little as
possible, he told her about the stable at Shane’s Castle, and his plan
of painting. She listened, half believing that she could not be in her
right mind, that what she heard was only part of a nightmare. She kept
interrupting him, saying, “But, Philip, you never told me ... I didn’t
know,” and when he had finished, she said abruptly, “That wasn’t the
plan I had for you, Philip; I’ve been talking with Reverend Castor and
he thinks we could arrange to get you a good congregation.”
“No ... that’s all finished. It’s no use even talking of it.”
She went on, ignoring him. “And if that didn’t please you, I thought ...
well, you could take the restaurant because, well ...” she looked away
from him, “you see, I’m thinking of getting married.”
She saw his face grow red with anger. “Not to that humbug, Moses Slade!”
“Yes, Philip. But it’s wrong of you to call him a humbug. He’s a
distinguished man, a good man, who stands for the best in the
community.”
“He’s a hypocrite and a humbug!”
An uncontrollable rage took possession of him. It was impossible that he
was to have Moses Slade, the humbug who had written that editorial about
the strike, for a stepfather. No, it was outlandish, too impossible,
that a good woman like his mother should be taken in by that lecherous
old rip.
“Philip,” she was saying. “You don’t understand. I’ve been alone always
... except for you--ever since your father died. It would be a good
marriage, a distinguished marriage, and I wouldn’t be alone in my old
age.”
“You couldn’t marry him. You couldn’t marry a fat old man like that.”
He fancied that he saw her wince. “It isn’t a question of love, Philip,
at our age. It’s companionship. I’m very fond of him, and he’s been
thoughtful--so thoughtful all the time you were sick.”
“It’s disgusting!”
It was odd, what had happened--that he found himself for the first time
in his life taking a high hand with his mother. It was an intoxicating
sensation.
“If I give him up, I’ll be giving up a great opportunity for good. As a
Congressman’s wife, there’s no end to the things I could accomplish....”
She began to cry. “But I’ll give him up ... I’ll give him up if you
won’t turn your back on your poor mother. I’d do anything for you,
Philip. You’re all I’ve got, and I hoped for so much--to see you one of
the great men of the church, a Christian leader, fighting on the side of
God.”
“It’s no good, Ma. I won’t go back to that.”
One of the waitresses appeared suddenly from behind the screen. “Mrs.
Downes ...” she began.
“Go away! Go away! I’ll talk to you later.”
The girl disappeared.
“And that isn’t all, Ma. I’m not going to live with Naomi any more. I’m
through with that. I meant what I said when I was sick.”
“Philip--listen to me, Philip!”
“No ... I’ll come to see her and the children. But I’m through.”
“What will people think? What will they say?”
“You can tell them I’ve got a night job.... Nobody’ll know, except Aunt
Mabelle, where Naomi is going to live. Nobody will see me come or go.
It’s in Front Street.”
“Front Street! Why, that’s on the edge of the Flats! You can’t do
that!”
He looked at her for a long time in despairing silence. “My God, Ma!
Can’t you see? Can’t you understand? From now on, I’m going to stand on
my own. I’m going to work things out. I’ve got to get out of this
mess.... I’ve _got_ to.”
He rose abruptly, and put on his hat.
“Philip,” she asked, drying her eyes, “where are you going now?”
“I’m going to buy blankets for myself.”
“Philip, listen to me. For God’s sake, listen! Don’t ruin everything.
I’ve a right to something. I’m your mother. Doesn’t that mean anything?”
He turned for a moment hesitating, and then quickly said, “Ma, don’t
talk like that, it isn’t fair.”
Without another word, he put on his hat and hurried out of the
restaurant.
Once outside, the cold air cleared his head, and he was thankful that he
had been hard as a stone. Again he was sorry for Emma in a vague,
inexplicable fashion; she could never understand what it was that made
him hard. She couldn’t see why he had to behave thus.
“I wish to God,” he thought bitterly, “that I’d had a mother who wasn’t
a fine woman. Life would have been so much easier. And I can’t hurt her
... I can’t. I love her.”
And suddenly he saw that in all their talk together nothing had really
been settled. Nothing had been changed or decided.
8