"No, I won't."
"Will you stay with me?"
"You are my child." Martha's sobs reassured her. "Don't ever say
that--promise me not to think of--dying. Martha, promise me. I'll
take care of you, Martha, if you promise."
"How can I live?"
"How can I let you--die? Oh, how awful of you, to think of such
things. Is this why you came to New York?"
"Yes. I ought to, mammie. You don't want me--living now. Dad
won't."
Emily rose up. She was recovering from the shock--the stunning.
"I'll take care of you. Don't worry. We must go upstairs. We must
talk it over. I don't know."
She led the child towards the door. She opened it. The policeman
stood there, guarding it. He would not let them out. "I'll call the
manager," she said.
But Martha had recoiled, moaning: "Don't let that man touch me! That
man caught hold of my arm, mother!"
And the moment the manager entered, Emily spoke to him composedly.
"I'm taking this child to my room. She isn't well. I must put her
to bed."
"I'm sorry, madame; you can't take her to the ninth floor--not in
that condition."
How could he see her condition, when she was hidden behind her
mother? Emily was annoyed. She controlled her voice.
"Can we have another room at once, then, lower down?"
"No, madame; we have no empty room."
"What do you mean? Can't we have a room?"
"No, madame; we're full."
"You mean you want us to leave?"
"I'm afraid you'll have to."
Emily couldn't believe him.
"You mean you don't want us to stay here?"
"It comes to that. We've had unfortunate things--too many of
them--lately. Leave the young lady here. I'll take charge of her
while you pack your things. Or shall I have them brought down for
you?"
She went out of the door, into Martha's shame, into the lobby where
all eyes seemed to be upon her, into the elevator. The negro youth
seemed to be pointing her out, a disreputable woman being turned out
of the hotel. She got her things together; she went to Martha's
room; she sent their luggage down; she went down and paid her bill at
the desk window. Years afterwards she could feel those men looking
at her curiously. She went to the room where Martha sat a prisoner.
The manager was solicitous. He told the boy to have her things put
in a taxi at the less conspicuous entry. She took Martha out,
therefrom, down a quiet hall.
"Where to?" asked the chauffeur.
"To the Pennsylvania Station," she said.
It was almost dark, and very cold, and the taxi seemed not to move at
all through the crowds.
"What are you going to do with me now?" Martha moaned.
"I don't know," said Emily.
At the station she put Martha down where she could watch her from a
telephone booth. She daren't turn towards the mouthpiece to speak
for more than a second. Suppose Martha should disappear. She
'phoned one hotel after another. None of them had a room on the
second floor. A horror was in her mind--a girl falling, falling, to
destruction. By the time she had heard her fourth refusal she felt
faint. She went back out to the waiting room. Everyone was going
home. Everyone was loaded down with Christmas gayety. She sat
there. And Martha sat there. They had no place to go. It was
Christmas time, but there was no room for them in any inn, because of
a baby.
Some place to hide; some place to plan and think. She remembered a
country hotel on Long Island. Would it be open at this season? But
no, it was on the Sound. She was afraid of water and that desperate
girl. After a little she thought of the right place. There was a
little hotel in a small New Jersey town. Years ago she and her aunt
had gone there, quite unannounced, for a night, to visit an old
cemetery in the neighborhood. They could go there.
Jostled and pushed about in the jam of the local train, Emily got
back some of her presence of mind. She got out, with Martha, at the
station, and stood looking about. She didn't remember the place at
all. Cars were waiting for most of those who arrived. She asked a
newsboy about the hotels. He would carry her things up and show her
the way.
They turned into the quiet little main street. Yellow lights from
the shops were shining out across the snow. People were hurrying
along in one direction. The boy was talkative. It was only a little
way to the hotel. When they drew near it, he said: "Look! Look at
the Christmas tree!"
A little way farther down the street, across from the hotel, a crowd
was gathered around an old lighted-up tree just near the sidewalk, in
what seemed to be the front yard of a dwelling house.
"It's a real tree. It's not a cut-down one!" he informed them.
"They sing there."
"I always remembered what a quiet place you had here," Emily said to
the clerk. "I've always been wanting to get back." She wanted to
make their arrival--on Christmas Eve--a natural thing. Would the man
be suspicious?
But no. He took them in; they had a roof over them again, a room,
comfortless enough, but a room, and one double bed, on which Martha
had thrown herself down. They must have supper in their room
to-night. Emily had begged something, anything hot. She pulled the
curtains down and opened the bags, and started to get Martha to bed.
When the maid came with the supper tray, outside there, under the
great glimmering tree, the crowd was singing praise to God become
Baby through a woman's body; and inside Emily was looking at Martha's
little breast, and her sobbing white abdomen, and a girl's flesh
seemed to have become hell.
Emily had to probe her ignominy that night, for the thought kept
coming to her, even after what she had seen, that Martha couldn't
know what she was talking about. She had to ask her--terrible
things; there was no help for that. She had to realize that her
daughter had lied to her directly, thoughtfully, and cunningly. This
affair had begun in the summer, before Martha had promised her never
to see that man again. She had promised not to see him, knowing when
they were to meet next, in Chicago. "I was so sure, mammie!" she
sobbed. "I knew it would be all right when you knew him! I just
loved him so!" Martha had gone back to college to lie cunningly
there, to get permission to spend every week-end in New York, to
study dancing, which her mother was so keen to have her take up, she
had averred. Well, she had been punished, punished by having to look
in the terrible face of Death. Suppose that colored bell-boy hadn't
been in the drug store, there---- Emily's arms tightened about her.
"Oh, what are you going to do with me now?" Well might little Martha
Kenworthy ask that. There seemed no good reason why she shouldn't go
on crying indefinitely, forever. But Emily, drawing her close
against her in bed, tucking the covers about her, trying to get her
warm, hoped doggedly to find comfort for her, to get her quiet.
There were worse things than having a baby, she told her once,
crooning over her.
And Martha said, "What?" And then added, "Oh, you mean being
discarded!"
Discarded? Martha Kenworthy discarded?
"She is beyond me in knowledge," Emily thought. "I've never known
bitterness."