"I--told him. He said----" She couldn't say it for weeping.
"Never mind. It doesn't matter."
But after a while Martha did say it:
"He said I'd got him into a dirty mess."
Emily reproached herself. She wouldn't ask, even, where he was now,
where his wife was, whether he was divorced. She wouldn't have
Martha marry that man now, if he was able to marry her a hundred
times over.
"Martha, you mustn't cry this way. You mustn't. You'll make
yourself sick."
"No, it won't; it can't. Nothing makes me sick enough. I've tried
everything."
"What? What have you tried?"
And Martha, lying cuddled against her there, recounted horrors. "At
school," she sobbed, once resentfully, "there isn't any privacy.
Those girls just come singing and laughing right into your room. I
tried things week-ends, when I was in the city."
"Alone?"
"Yes, mammie. I thought I'd killed myself once--two weeks ago. When
I tried to get up I fainted. I fell on the floor, and I thought I
was dying; and I couldn't ring for anybody--they might find out."
Emily had to hear all that--to imagine it.
She said, after a while, "I'm going to take you to a doctor
to-morrow---day after to-morrow. The best one I can find."
"I'll go to Mexico; I'll hide somewhere; I'll go to South America!"
"We could never be sure we had hidden ourselves."
"No, I know it. Oh, I've thought of everything. In books they do
it; in books no one ever finds out. There's 'The Old Maid.' We
could do it."
"We'd always be afraid. We'd never have any peace of mind again."
"You don't need to go with me. I can go."
"I'm going to see you through this. I think home would be the best
place, Martha."
"No, I won't go home! Never, mother. Oh, imagine what dad would say
to me!"
Emily had thought of that. She had decided. "That's my house!" she
had said as they came out on the train. "I'll take my child home to
it. If Bob wants to leave, he can leave."
"You don't appreciate your father. If we should go home,--this
way--to him, he would stand by us. There's no use saying he
wouldn't."
"He would stand by you, mother. I'll say that much for him. He
wouldn't leave you when you're in trouble. He's not like---- But he
would be always hating me; if he didn't scold me, he would be wanting
to. I couldn't stand that. I won't go home. I won't let you tell
him this. I'd rather----"
"Don't say that!" Emily moaned.
"We can go abroad. We could go to Sweden, or the Philippines."
"Yes, all right. Now stop crying, Martha. Try to go to sleep. I'll
make arrangements. I'll fix it all up for you."
The girl dozed at length, moaning. The clock struck, and the hours
passed, and Emily lay there, open-eyed, fleeing in vain terror from
one corner of her consciousness to the other, whacked and battered
through the soul by fact after brutal fact. She was in no condition
to think clearly. It was her habit of mind to blame herself for a
great deal that was never her fault, perhaps because all her tender
years she had had the sense of her aunt's disapproving eyes upon her.
And now she shouldered all the blame of this tragedy. This child was
what she had made her; she had spoiled her indeed. She had only
wanted her to be happy, and where was happiness now? Her child, the
work of her hands, the fruit of her body and soul, had lowered
herself to deliberate lying. Yes, and even that Emily Kenworthy
could have pardoned if the child had lied for a worthy man. She had
been found lacking the essential womanly instincts of
self-preservation--of child preservation. She hadn't known how to
make herself cherished. She had failed fundamentally. "What was it
I neglected?" Emily moaned. "What didn't I teach her? Bob always
said I spoiled her. Bob knew. I have failed. I have failed more
than she has. I thought only about her being happy. What am I going
to do for her now?"
After a long while--it was towards morning, though Emily had no
thought of time--Martha rose with a start. She began scrambling
hastily out of bed.
"I'm sick!" she murmured.
"Lie down! Wait! I'll get you something!"
"A towel! Hand me a towel!"
Emily jumped up and felt for the light. The room was bitterly cold.
She looked about for something to serve Martha's need. She searched
hastily for her dressing gown.
"Get back into bed," she commanded. "Cover up!" She sat down on the
bed beside her, shivering violently, trying to help her. For Martha
was leaning out over the side of the bed, retching, choking, trying
to stifle the sound of her misery by covering her face with the
towel. Paroxysm after paroxysm of nausea followed. Between them
Martha lay back in bed, shivering, blue-lipped, sweat on her
forehead, tears in her eyes, harrowing to behold.
"Try to lie still, Martha! Lie flat on your back!"
"Can't. Oh----" And on went the sickening sounds.
She was so blue, so frightening to look at, that Emily started to go
to the door.
"What are you doing?" Martha cried.
"I'm going to wake somebody up! I'm going to get some hot water--a
hot-water bag for you."
But the girl was in terror, and cried out:
"I never have anything, mammie. Don't! They might guess! I'll be
all right, mammie. Come into bed with me; that'll warm me up!"
So Emily made the room as decent as she could.
"Hide that, _hide_ it! I'll manage in the morning. I don't want
anybody to suspect anything!"
Emily got into bed, sickened, and gathered the child to her. She was
passionate with hate. A man, any man, who inflicted one such hour on
a girl----"I could just kill that man!" she was raging. If a decent
boy had given her child a box of sickening chocolates, by accident,
what a fuss there would have been! How he would have had to grovel!
And as she raged in her mind, she heard Martha imploring comfort.
"Oh, how long is this going to go on, mammie?"
"How long has it gone on?"
"Oh, weeks! From the first! Oh, I was so afraid they would hear, at
school!"
Suddenly a memory flashed over Emily. She felt the hours she had
suffered such discomfort--for the sake of this undone child. She and
Bob had been living in their wretched little rooms over the drug
store on Main Street. And she could see Bob standing there, in his
nightshirt, a lamp in his hand, solicitous and dumfounded, because
she lay sick and laughing, tears in her eyes, and singing on her
lips, shaken with delight over the significance of her symptoms. She
had been beside herself with happiness at the prospect of a baby.
Certainly never before in her life, and seldom since, had she known
such heavenly satisfaction as during those weeks. The very sensation
of that dear expectancy came back to her.
And Martha, in her arms, moaned wearily.
Then Emily turned away from her, towards the wall, and, covering
herself up to the eyes, began an utterly sick and bitter weeping. At
every gasp some new phase of her misery came to contrast its horror
with the former loveliness. The years came all tumbling down in
great crushing masses upon her, and the beauty of that baby, her
little parties, her sweet little coats. It was Christmas morning,
she remembered, and she could see the little thing in her footed
sleeping suit standing twinkling in ecstasy about a stocking from
which a red-headed doll peeped out.--Dolls, what lots of dolls, to
teach her motherhood--and Jim playing with her! It was for this
child's sake that her mother had refrained from all the life she
might have had with her dear Jim. And now---- This was the end of
it all. "If I had left her--deserted her--gone with him, could she
have been worse off than she is now?" Emily asked; and she went on
weeping. She saw the painted room from which the child had shut
herself out. She had made herself a dark house of regret now, this
house-loving girl who had destroyed herself. Where should they go
now? "To whom can I go for help?" Emily cried. If Jim were living,
if she could go to New York and tell Jim all this, so he could help
her---- There was no one living to whom she could turn. "I'll take
her to Wilton," she moaned; "he'll know what to do!" Home was
impossible. Could she take her lovely daughter there--this child
whom she had watched them admire? That woman would find them there,
that jealous, married, wild woman, who had open, unquestioned cause
now for scandals and fury. She heard Martha speaking to her,
imploring her, crying with her, but she paid no heed to her. The
heat in the steam pipes began pounding. Daylight came into the room.
Martha got up to conceal what signs she might find of her sickness.
Martha showed strange skill in furtiveness now. She seemed to have
acquired habits of cunning. Presently she was standing there, lying
glibly to the wondering chambermaid. Her mother was ill; her mother
had had news of bereavement. She must have some breakfast brought up.
Emily had been forty-three years old when she had left home last.
But after Christmas Day, it was months before she thought of herself
as anything but an old woman. It was not so much a day, the
twenty-fifth of December, as an epoch--a desert of disappointment
from which she was never likely to recover fully. She got up and
dressed that morning, scarcely knowing what she did. She sat down in
desperation and just looked at Martha. She rallied after a while,
enough to suggest that they go out together for a walk. But Martha
refused. There were lots of girls in her college who lived in New
Jersey. She might meet somebody who would ask what in the world she
was doing in that little hotel upon such an occasion. She lay down,
and Emily covered her warmly.
She sat watching her sleep. The afternoon faded away. The darkness
came, and they went to bed. There they lay. Martha slept till the
evil hour of morning came, and passed distressfully.
They got up, and Emily began to put her things into her bag. As she
moved about, peace came to her some way. It was as if she realized
at length that she was sentenced to death and there was no escape
possible. She must die quietly. Afterwards, she used to marvel over
that strange consciousness that came to her, that she could go
through this horror, and any other that might be coming to her,
without frenzy, without any outcry. She knew that whichever hideous
alternative she had to go through, as long as Martha was saved alive
to her, she was able some way, quietly, to bear it. She had never
experienced before such an exalted feeling of strength. Even Martha
felt it. She grew quieter. She listened without a murmur to her
mother's plans, because Emily's voice was smooth again.
She had decided that as soon as they got to New York she would 'phone
from the station to the head nurse of a hospital to which she had
once gone to see a friend. She remembered vividly the assured and
adequate manner in which those nurses had moved about. She was loath
to trouble them. She would say that she was a stranger in the city,
without friends, suddenly in need of a gynecologist. She wanted a
woman, and the very best one. Would the nurse recommend a perfectly
reliable one?
There was no hitch in the plan. The nurse recommended three, for she
thought it likely that some of them might be away for the holidays.
Emily was able to get an appointment with the first one, but only
late in the afternoon, after the other patients had been seen. She
turned calmly from that 'phone, and took Martha to the Brevoort
Hotel. She got a room on the third floor. She wouldn't have been
afraid then of any height. It was no wonder that Martha had to
exclaim, as soon as the door was shut behind the porter with their
luggage:
"How could you do it, mammie?"
"Let's not talk about it," she answered.
There was an hour to wait for lunch. Only once did she have that
feeling of panic. Her strength almost failed her when she picked up
the morning paper defensively and saw the advertisements of "white
sales." Baby clothes were illustrated there. She threw the paper
hastily down. She mustn't think of such a child in her house,
playing in her willow tree. She would hate that child; she wanted
Martha to hate it. Yet they would have to make some sort of hateful
preparations for it.
After a while they rose and went down into the restaurant, and found
a place among untrapped, unmaddened men and women, who didn't look as
if they felt their lives reeling through destruction. Mother and
daughter said but little. If anyone near had looked at them
attentively, he would have thought, probably, of two women who looked
rather bored with life and in need of diversion.
When the coffee came, Martha, who had chosen to sit with her back to
the room, was leaning on the table, her hand over her eyes. She had
been looking in grim dejection at her mother's hands. She stirred,
and said, nervously:
"Nobody would ever suspect you of anything, mother."
"Let's not talk about it," Emily almost whispered.
"I mean--I mean--I don't suppose you will have to take your gloves
off, will you?"
"Where?"
"I mean--in the doctor's office." She looked around her slyly to see
if she might be overheard.
"No, I don't suppose so." Emily thought best not to question her.
But Martha persisted.
"Mammie, no one could suspect you of anything! Lend me your
ring--your wedding ring." Her voice died away.
Emily's voice never faltered. "All right, if you want it." She
spoke as if she had been asked for a nickel for the telephone. She
put her hands down under the table and tugged away at the ring. Her
fingers were larger now than they had been the day Bob put the ring
on, in the City Hall in Chicago, in that room where, she still
remembered, the spittoons sat in rows. She hadn't taken that ring
off for years. She was handing it over now, with another one--a
diamond one--which Bob had given her two years ago, at Christmas
time, to her deserted daughter. Bob seemed, just then, not so bad a
husband, after all. Martha reached over for the rings, closed her
fingers about them, and put them furtively away in her purse.
After an interminable afternoon the two of them, with their story
ready, came into the doctor's waiting room--a large office which
served the patients of several doctors; it was so full that people
were standing. Yet as soon as the Kenworthys entered, a woman older
than her mother, after one glance at Martha, rose hastily to offer
her a place to sit down. The women made a place for Emily, crowding
together. Emily didn't even wonder how many, like herself, were
dreading a death sentence--a sentence of life. She sat there, in the
unspeakable intensity of consciousness of her wound, realizing
nothing of the room but the fact that Martha was sitting huddled down
in the next sofa, her hat pulled down to hide her shrunken face. Her
lips only could be seen, from where her mother sat, but they were not
trembling. And they sat there, hour after hour, year after year;
they had to sit waiting till almost every one had been called in
through one or another of those doors.
The day was over, the night was on them. It was half past six when
Emily finally took Martha into the room before the judge. They sat
down before her in the full light. She sat behind that little
desperately business-like desk, her face half hidden by the
lamp-shade. She looked from one to the other of them with shrewd,
cynical, prosaic eyes. Emily, as the words came out of her mouth,
knew every one of them was being weighed. She was being
cross-questioned. What made her think her daughter wasn't strong
enough to have a child? What made Emily suppose she was a delicate
young woman? The whole slender history of Martha Kenworthy's child
illnesses was brought forth and examined. The doctor's very
questions seemed to pronounce her a most rugged person. Emily hadn't
thought to prepare any lying account of previous illnesses. She
hadn't been skilled enough in deceit for that.
The woman got up and turned on pitiless lights. She made
preparations; she gave Martha directions, shortly. Emily sat there.
She heard her heart pounding.
Once Martha moaned, lying on that white table.
"Don't do that. Don't make that noise."
"You hurt me," Martha apologized.
"Not at all," answered the doctor. She went poking on. Her manner
was not ingratiating. If she scented any tragedy before her, she had
no sympathy--no one ever need to cry to that woman for help, Emily
realized.
The doctor had finished. She turned away to a basin and stood
washing her hands. She reached for an immaculate towel, and with it
in her hands she turned about and stood looking at her patient.
Martha was sitting up on that hospital-like table. The doctor went
on drying her hands. Finger after finger she dried, one at a time,
studying Martha mercilessly. By the time she had finished that
fourth finger, Emily could stand the suspense no longer. She managed
to ask with only ordinary concern:
"What do you find?"
The doctor kept her eyes steadily on Martha as she answered:
"As a matter of fact, though you get your mother to do all the
talking, the truth is that you are scared out of your wits at the
mere thought of a baby. Don't look at your mother; answer me
yourself!"
"Yes," Martha murmured, faintly. "I didn't--I don't want----"
The doctor spoke grimly: "Well, don't worry. You're not going to
have one."
She was still drying those hands.
Emily and Martha babbled together almost incoherently.
"What do you mean?"
"You're not pregnant at all. There's not a sign of pregnancy."
And as neither of the women moved, she added:
"Get down and dress."