in the long hours while he lay there, watching the pattern of warm light
on the ceiling, he became aware slowly of a whole new world born of a
strange, mystical understanding, that had come to him as he stood by the
window in the brilliant moonlight ... a world which belonged to him
alone, which none could intrude upon or destroy. He fell asleep in
peace, aware vaguely that for a time he had escaped from Naomi and Uncle
Elmer, from Mabelle--even from his own mother.
* * * * *
It was at noon on the following day that old Julia Shane fell into a
sleep from which she did not awaken. The old nigger, standing in the
snow by the stable door, told him the news. The old man wept like a
little child. “It’s the end of something, Mr. Downes,” he said. “It’s
all over now, and I expect I ain’t got much longer on this earth,
myself. It ain’t the same no longer.”
All that day Philip stayed in the room above the stable, struggling
passionately, with his stubborn jaw set like a steel trap, over paints
and canvas, trying to capture, while the mood was still on him, the
strange things he had seen in the dead park and the desert of silent
Mills beyond. But in the end, when it grew too dark to work any longer,
there was only a mass of blacks and grays, blues and whites, upon the
canvas.
At eight o’clock, he went to the Flats to sit with the twins while Naomi
went to choir practice.
11
The choir met in the room of the church which was given over on the
Sabbath to “the infant class” of the Sunday School for children under
six. It was a large, barren room, with large chromos of Biblical scenes
decorating the walls--the soldiers of Moses returning from the Promised
Land, Moses smiting the Rock, the same as an Infant being discovered in
the Bulrushes by a Princess dressed in garments as gaudy and inaccurate
as those of a music-hall Cleopatra, Noah and his family receiving the
Dove and Olive Branch. In the center of the room two dozen lilliputian
chairs sat ranged in a circle, save on the occasions of choir practice,
when a dozen adult chairs were brought in from the main Sunday School
room to accommodate members of the choir.
Naomi arrived early, and, admitting herself with the private key that
was her badge of office, turned on the gas and seated herself at the
upright piano. There was no piano in the flat by the railroads, and she
fell at once to playing, in order to recover her old careless facility.
She had no sense of music; yet music was to her only what wine is to
some temperaments: it served to unlock the doors of the restraining
prison which forever shut her in. She played relentlessly in showers of
loud, banging notes, heedless of discord and strange harmonies; and the
longer she played, the more shameless and abandoned became the character
of her playing. To-night she played from a none too sure memory _The
Ninety and Nine_ and _Throw Out the Life Line_ (her favorites) and then
_I’m a Pilgrim, I’m a Stranger_, which always made her want to cry, and
then with a strong arm and a loud pedal she swept into _Ancient of
Days_, which filled her with the strangest, emotional grandeur. There
was a splendor in it which made her feel noble and heroic: it filled her
with a sense of beauty and power. She saw herself vaguely as a barbarian
queen, like Sheba, riding on an elephant, surrounded by guards and
servitors. The image in her mind bore a strange resemblance to her
memory of a highly painted artificial blonde, clad principally in
sequins and crimson satin, whom she had once seen riding an elephant in
the circus parade--a lady advertised as “the ten-thousand-dollar
beauty.” But always when she had finished _Ancient of Days_, and the
last note had died away, she was left with a melancholy feeling of
depression and a sense of wickedness. The world about her became after
one of these musical debauches a sad and unbearable place.
To-night, alone in the bare, unattractive room, she poured into the
music all the pent-up emotions of days ... all her hatred of Emma, her
fear of the new life on which she had embarked, but, most of all, that
curious passionate half-wicked feeling she had for Philip. Beneath the
spell of _Ancient of Days_ this emotion for him seemed to become
purified and free of all restraint. She poured into the banging,
careless chords all the things which she could never bring herself to
tell him--how the sight of him standing by the crib had made her feel
suddenly ill with warm voluptuous feeling, how there were times when she
wanted to lie down before him and beat her head on the floor to show him
how she felt, how she wakened out of a sound sleep in the midst of the
night with her hands aching to touch his face and his dark hair. In the
splendor of the hymn it was as if all those things were realized. For a
time she _was_ that fantastic, barbaric queen of her imagination and
Philip was her lover, dressed like one of the soldiers in the chromo of
the return from the Promised Land, and sometimes in an overwhelming wave
of wickedness she saw him as she had seen him on the night of the drums,
standing half naked by the light of the dying fire.
It was thus that she saw him to-night, and, as if she meant to preserve
the wild romantic feeling, she played and sang the whole hymn over again
in her loud, flat voice. She was wildly happy, for in the end it seemed
that Philip really belonged to her, and that they were alone once more
by the lake at Megambo. They weren’t even missionaries and Swanson
wasn’t there. And he loved her.
When she had finished, the spell clung to her until the last chord, held
deliberately by the use of the loud pedal, died away, leaving her weak
and exhausted, and prey suddenly to the horrible, sickening depression.
She let her head fall forward on the piano. She wanted to cry, but she
couldn’t cry, because people would be coming in at any moment. And
suddenly she felt the touch of a hand on her shoulder and a voice
saying, “That was splendid, Mrs. Downes! That’s the sort of music that
will bring them to the Lord!”
It was the Reverend Castor. He had come in quietly, without a sound, and
had been sitting there all the while listening to her while she
desecrated the sanctity of a hymn with all her fleshly emotions. She
tried to gain control of herself, and, without looking up, mopped her
eyes and nose with her handkerchief. But it was no good: when she looked
up he saw that she had been crying. She was blushing with shame, and the
color made her seem almost pretty.
“Why, you’ve been crying!” he said.
She choked, recovered herself, and answered, “Yes ... I ... I can’t help
it.... It always makes me cry--that hymn.”
He laid a big, bony, masculine hand on her shoulder. “But you mustn’t
cry ... Mrs. Downes. You mustn’t cry.... It’s something to be joyful
over.”
She looked (he thought) so young and pitiful and unhappy. If it were
only possible to comfort her, to take her on his knee as if she were a
little child. It was no more than that, this feeling toward her. He
wanted to comfort her. But you couldn’t do that, of course, especially
if you were a preacher.
“I watched your face while you were singing,” he said. “It was a
beautiful sight ... so filled with joy and hope and exaltation ... like
the face of one who has seen a vision. It was an inspiration--even to
me, a man of God.”
She thought, “Oh, I _am_ wicked. I _am_ wicked!” And aloud, suddenly,
without knowing why, she said, “Oh, I’m so unhappy!”
“But why, Naomi?”
He had called her by her name, without thinking, and suddenly he was
frightened. He always thought of her thus, as if she had been his own
child, and now the thought had slipped into words. He saw that she had
noticed it, for she was blushing and avoided his eyes. She did not
answer his question, and suddenly he said, “You mustn’t mind that ...
that ... Mrs. Downes.... It only means ... that ... well, I always think
of you as Naomi because I think of your mother-in-law as _the_ Mrs.
Downes.”
Still looking away, she answered, “I know ... I know.... It’s all right.
You may call me that if you want, only ... only not in front of the
others. I didn’t.... I think it would make me feel less alone.”
And then the door creaked, and Mrs. Wilbert Phipps came in. The Reverend
Castor began fingering the piles of music, and Naomi began again to
pound the piano with an hysterical violence.
“Good-evening, Mrs. Phipps.”
“Good-evening, Reverend Castor.”
“I’ve been looking over the anthems for next Sunday.”
“We haven’t sung _O the Golden, Glowing Morning_ for a long while.”
“No ... but that’s an Easter hymn!”
“But we _have_ sung it before on other occasions ... it’s so moving.”
“What do you think, Mrs. Downes?”
Naomi stopped in the midst of her playing. “I think it would be fine.
It’s so full of joy.”
One by one the others arrived. Each had his favorite, some song which he
or she found moving. Naomi, troubled and unhappy, yielded to their
choice. She was not, it was plain to be seen, to be a leader save in
name alone. The eleven singers took their seats. There was a rustling of
music and Naomi plunged noisily into:
“_O the Golden, Glowing Morning!_
_Stars above and Stars adorning!_”
The voices rang out loud and clear, filling the infants’ classroom with
a wild joy that seemed almost improper in so bare and chaste a place.
They went on through a whole program of anthems and hymns, singing more
and more loudly. At last, as the clock banged out eleven, the orgy of
music came to an end, leaving them tired but happy, and filled with a
strange excitement. At the piano, Naomi turned away to collect the
sheets of music. There was a bustle of farewells and small talk and, one
by one, or in pairs, the singers drifted out. It had been a happy
evening: the happiness of these evenings in the infants’ classroom held
the choir together. In all the dreary Town of slate-colored houses, the
weekly orgy of singing provided a half-mystical joy that elsewhere did
not exist. It was, for all the pious words that were chanted, a sort of
pagan festival in which men and women found a wild, emotional abandon.
It was from choir practice that Mrs. Swithers had run off with the
county auditor, leaving behind a husband, an aged mother and three small
children.
The music was kept in a cabinet in the Reverend Castor’s study, and
before the others had all gone, Naomi hurried off to place it there. The
depression had begun to settle over her once more, leaving her a prey to
uneasiness. The drawer of the cabinet was jammed, and while she pulled
and tugged at it, she heard the singers in little groups passing the
door. She heard the dry Mrs. Wilbert Phipps say in a curious, excited
voice, “No, Hanna, you mustn’t say that here. Wait until we get out,”
and then the banging of the door. She pulled and tugged desperately at
the drawer. The door banged again, and again. Without thinking, she
counted the number of times it had closed ... ten times! They must all
have gone, and she was left alone. She knew suddenly that she must
escape before the Reverend Castor appeared. She could not stay alone
with him there in the study. She could not. She could not.... Suddenly,
in a wave of terror, she let the music slip to the floor, and turned to
escape, but at the same moment the Reverend Castor came in. He stood
for a second, looking at her with a queer, fixed expression in his
kindly gray eyes, and then he said, gently, “What is it, Naomi? Did I
frighten you?”
In her struggle with the drawer, her hat had slipped to the back of her
head and her hair had fallen into disarray. Her pale face was flushed
once more.
“No,” she said. “I just couldn’t get that awful drawer open.”
“I’ll do it for you.”
She couldn’t escape now. She couldn’t run past him out of the door. It
would be too ridiculous. Besides, she had a strange, wicked desire not
to escape. She sat down on one of the shabby leather chairs and put her
hat straight. The Reverend Castor stooped without a word and gathered up
the music, and then, with one hand, he opened the drawer easily. She saw
it happen with a chill of horror. It was as if the drawer had betrayed
her.
She rose quickly and said, “It _really_ wouldn’t open for me. It
_really_ wouldn’t.... I tried and tried.” (He would think she had
planned it all.)
But when he turned toward her, he said gently, “Yes, I know. It’s a
funny drawer. It sticks sometimes like that.” He was so calm and so ...
usual, she had suddenly, without knowing why, a queer certainty that he
understood what was happening there deep inside her, and was trying to
still her uneasiness. The knowledge made her want to cry. If only for a
second Philip would treat her thus....
He was rubbing his hands together. “Well, that _was_ what I call a real
choir practice. We’ve always needed some one like you, Naomi, to put
spirit into them. It’s the way you make the piano talk. Why, it was
like a new choir to-night.”
She looked away from him. “I tried my best. I hope they liked it.”
“It was wonderful, my child.”
There was a sudden, awkward silence, and Naomi said nervously, “Well, I
ought to be going.”
She moved toward the door, and the Reverend Castor took up his hat and
coat. “I’ll walk with you, Naomi. I want some air.”
Despite herself, she cried out in a sudden hysteria, “No, no. You
mustn’t do that.”
“But it isn’t safe down there by the railroads.”
“Oh, I’m not afraid.” She kept moving slowly toward the door.
“But I don’t mind the walk, Naomi. It’s no walk for a strong man like
me.”
“Oh, it isn’t that....” She hesitated for a moment. “I don’t mean
that.... I don’t know how to explain, only ... only you never walked
home with Mrs. Timpkins when she was leading the choir ... and ... you
see, if any one saw us....”
He looked suddenly at the floor, and a great sigh escaped him--a
heart-breaking sigh, filled with the ghosts of disillusionment, of
misery and disappointment.
“Yes ... I know,” he said gently. “I understand.”
The door closed behind her, and she was outside in the snow. She kept
hearing the sigh. It haunted her as she hurried, confused and out of
breath, down the long hill. She felt so sorry for him ... a kind, good
man like that. And all at once she began to cry silently. There was no
sound, but only tears and a lump in her throat.
12
The suspicion of Mary Conyngham, planted by Mabelle in the mind of Emma,
lay there for days, flourishing upon fertile soil until at last it took
on the sturdy form of reality and truth. In her pain at Philip’s
coldness toward her and in her anger at the spectacle of an existence
which had become as disorderly and unmanageable as her own house during
Naomi’s presence in it, the thought of Mary Conyngham seldom left her.
It burned her mind as she sat behind the cash-register, while she lay in
bed at night alone in the house she had meant always to be Philip’s
house. It gave her no peace. What right, she asked herself, had Mary
Conyngham to steal her boy? Bit by bit, she built up the story from that
one shred of gossip dropped by Mabelle.
She saw now that the name of Mary Conyngham explained everything. Mary
had never gone to church, and perhaps hadn’t any faith in God, and so
she had aggravated Philip’s strange behavior. It was probably Mary or
the thought of her, that put into Philip’s head that fantastic idea of
going to work in the Mills, in a place which had nearly cost him his
life. She must have seen him almost every day. Why, she was even
friendly with the Polacks and Dagoes. Who could say what things she
hadn’t been guilty of down there in the Flats, where no decent person
ever went? There was probably truth in the story that Irene Shane slept
with that big Russian--what was his name--who had had the boldness to
come to the very door when Philip was ill. No, all sorts of orgies
might go on in the Flats and no one would ever know. It was awful,
degrading of Philip, to have mixed himself up with such people.
And presently she began to suspect that Mary lay at the source of
Philip’s behavior toward Naomi. A man didn’t give up living with his
wife so easily unless there was another woman. A man didn’t do such
things. Men were different from women. “Why,” she thought, “I’ve lived
all these years without a man, and never once dreamed of re-marrying. I
gave up my life to my son.”
It was Jason’s fault too (she thought). It was Jason’s bad blood in
Philip. The boy wouldn’t have behaved like that if it hadn’t been for
his father before him. That was where the weakness lay.
And now Mary probably came to see him at that room over the stables at
night, and even in the daytime, because there was nothing to stop her
coming and going. No one in the Flats would care, especially now, in the
midst of the strike, and the Shanes wouldn’t even take notice of such a
thing. Shane’s Castle had always been a sort of bawdy-house, and with
the old woman dead the last trace of respectability had vanished....
She remembered, too, that Mary hadn’t been happy with her husband. Being
married to a man like that who ran after women like Mamie Rhodes did
something to a woman. Why, she herself could remember times when Jason’s
behavior made her, out of revenge, want to be unfaithful to him; and if
it could happen to her (Emma) why, what would be the effect on a godless
woman like Mary Conyngham?
For a time she considered boldly the plan of going to Philip himself and
forcing him to give up Mary Conyngham. Surely she could discuss a thing
like that with her own son, to whom she had been both father and mother.
There must be, no matter how deeply it lay buried, still a foundation of
that sound and moral character which she had labored so long to create.
“If only,” she thought, “I could make him feel again as he once felt. If
only I could get through to the _real_ Philip, my Philip, my little
boy.” But he was hard, as hard as flint.
Twice she planned to go alone to the stable of Shane’s Castle, and once
she got as far as the bridge before she lost courage and turned back.
Always a shadow rose up between her and her resolution--the shadow of
that day when, hidden by a screen in the corner of the restaurant, she
had pled with him passionately, only to find herself beating her head
against a wall of flint, to hear him saying, “You mustn’t talk like
that. It’s not fair”; to see the thin jaw set in a hard line. No, she
saw that it was impossible to talk to him. He was so strange and unruly
that he might turn his back on her forever. The thought of it filled her
with terror, and for two nights she lay awake, weeping in a debauch of
self-pity.
But one thing was changed. In all the trouble with Philip, her doubts
over marrying Moses Slade seemed to have faded away. At times when she
felt tired and worn she knelt in her cold bedroom and thanked God for
sending him to her. They could be married in two more months, and then
... then she would have some one to comfort her. She couldn’t go to him
with her troubles now, lest the weight of them should frighten him. No,
she saw that she must bear all her suffering alone until God saw fit to
lift the cross from her shoulders.
One afternoon when Moses Slade had left, still breathing fire and
thunder against Krylenko, she sat for a long time alone behind the
screen, in the restaurant, looking out of the window. Her eyes saw
nothing that passed, for she was seeing far beyond such things as
shop-fronts and trolley-cars. She was thinking, “What has come over me
lately? I haven’t any character any more. I’m not like Moses, who goes
on fighting like an old war horse. I’ve let things slide. I haven’t
faced things as I should. I’ve humored Philip, and see what’s come of
it. When I kept hold on the reins everything went well, and now Philip’s
ruining himself and going straight to the Devil. I should never have
allowed Naomi to leave the house. She’s wax in his hands, with all her
softness--she can never manage him and he needs to be managed just as
his father did. If I’d treated his father the way Naomi treats Philip
... God knows what would have happened.”
She began automatically to stack the dishes on the table before her, as
if she had gone back to the days when the restaurant had been only a
lunch-room and she had herself waited on her customers.
“I must take hold,” she told herself. “There’s only one thing to do ...
only one thing.... I must go and see Mary Conyngham. I must talk to her
face to face and have it out. He’s my son. I bore him. I gave him life,
and I have a right to save him.”
A kind of feverish energy took possession of her. It seemed that she
could no longer sit there seeing the whole structure of her life going
to ruin. She would save Philip. She would die knowing that he was a
bishop. She would marry Moses Slade and go to Washington and work there
to save the country from chaos, from drink, from strikes. She would rise
in the end, triumphant as she had always been. She had been weak: she
had rested at the time when she should have worked. She needed to act.
She _would_ act, no matter what it cost her. She _would_ save Philip and
herself.
In a kind of frenzy she seized her hat and coat and left the restaurant.
It was a warm day when the snow had begun to melt and the pavement was
deep with slush. She hurried, wet to the knees, fairly running all the
way, so that by the time she reached Mary Conyngham’s house her face was
scarlet and wet with sweat.
Mary was in, but she was upstairs with the children, and the hired girl
bade her wait in the parlor. There she seated herself on a rosewood
chair, upholstered in horsehair, to mop her face and set her hat
straight. And slowly the room began to have a strange effect upon her.
Though the room itself was warm, it was as if she had come into a cool
place. The rosewood furniture was dark and cool, and the great marble
slab of the heavy mahogany commode. The wax flowers and the glass dome
that protected them were cool, and the crystal chandelier and the great
silver-bordered mirror. The whole room (queer and old-fashioned, Emma
thought indignantly) was a pool of quiet ... a genteel room, a little
thread-bare, but nevertheless possessed of an elegance all its own.
It exerted the queerest effect on Emma, dampening her spirits and
extinguishing the indignation that a little while before had roared in
her bosom like the flames in the belly of one of the furnaces. She
began suddenly to feel tired again and filled with despair.
“It’s like her to keep an older woman waiting,” she thought. “Probably
she knows well enough why I’ve come.”
She began to tap the carpet with the toe of her shoe and at last she
rose and began to walk about, as if she felt that only by activity could
she throw off from her the softening effect of that quiet room. She
halted presently before the oval portrait, framed in gilt, of Mary’s
mother, a very pretty woman, with dark hair and a spirited eye ... a
woman such as Mary might have been if she hadn’t married that John
Conyngham and had her spirit subdued. Well (thought Emma) she seemed
nevertheless to have too much spirit for her own good or the good of any
one else.
She was standing thus when Mary came in, dressed in a mauve frock, and
looking pale and a little nervous. Emma thought, “She knows why I’ve
come. It’s on her conscience. She’s afraid of me already.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Downes,” said Mary, “but my sister-in-law has gone out,
and I couldn’t come down until both children were asleep.”
It was odd, but her voice had upon Emma the same effect as the room. It
seemed to sap the foundations of her assurance and strength by its very
gentleness. It was strange how subdued and quiet Mary seemed, almost as
if (Emma thought suspiciously) she had forgotten her early troubles and
was now shamelessly and completely happy. Feeling that if she did not
begin at once, she would not accomplish her plan, Emma plunged.
“It’s about Philip I’ve come to see you,” she said. “I knew that you
were interested in him.”
Mary admitted the interest shamelessly.
“I don’t know what’s happened to him. He’s so changed ... not at all the
boy he used to be.”
“Yes, he’s very different.... I think maybe he’s happier now.”
“Oh, he’s not happy. No one could be happy in his state of mind. Why,
he’s even abandoned God.... Something, some one has gotten hold of him.”
The shadow of a frown crossed Mary’s smooth brow. She had the air of
waiting ... waiting.... She said, “Perhaps I’ve chosen the wrong word. I
mean that he seems on a more solid foundation.”
“Do you call what he’s doing solid?”
“If it’s what he wants to do.”
“He doesn’t know his own mind.”
“I mean he’s more like the real Philip. I think he _is_ the real Philip
now.”
Emma’s fingers began to strum the arm of her chair nervously. “I don’t
know what you’re talking about, but if you mean that the old Philip
wasn’t real, why, I think you’re saying a crazy thing. It’s this new one
who’s queer. Do you mean to insinuate that I, his own mother ... the one
who bore him ... who gave him life, doesn’t know who the real Philip
is?”