The doctor spoke more kindly as soon as she turned to Emily to
answer: "It's hysteria. It's nothing but hysteria."
"But those symptoms--those----"
Emily was incredulous.
"I've had three cases of this this week. They distrust their
precautions and get panicky. They lose their heads."
"I never heard of such a thing in my life," Emily babbled.
"I don't suppose _you_ have!" The doctor spoke tartly. "When you
had this child, women had nerve enough to carry them through!" She
turned and looked almost scornfully at Martha.
Martha had sat down abruptly on a chair. Emily helped her into her
coat. The doctor had been explaining to Emily: the girl ought to be
put to bed early for a while, well fed, allowed no dances, no
theaters, and kept much out-of-doors. And when Martha had sat down
abruptly, after putting her coat on, she said:
"If you feel faint, you'd better get out into the air." And she
dismissed them from her presence.
Falling, being hurled down, those sensations had been bad enough--but
the shock of this crashing landing! Those two women went out of that
office, down the elevator, out on to the street so dazed that their
minds seemed blank, so "taken aback" they were, so strongly jerked
back from the edge of destruction. Martha, standing pressed close
against her mother, one arm around her, staring into her face, stood
stuttering there in the winter darkness, on the curb.
"D-d-d-do you believe it, mammie?" She began laughing and crying.
"Mammie! mammie!" she kept stuttering. "Do you believe it?"
In the taxi they found, Martha gave way to hysterics. She laughed
and she sobbed crazily. "Oh, mammie, if she could be right! Can she
be right? Am I all right? She don't know what she's talking about.
Oh, tell me, can it be true?" She was shaking Emily, trying to shake
assurance out of her. "Tell me if it can be true, mammie!"
"Why, Martha--a doctor--must know----"
"No! She doesn't understand! How could it not be? Mammie, tell me.
Oh, suppose it's true; I can live! Mammie, I can see you don't
believe her! We can go home now. You won't tell dad! Oh, I will be
good to you. Didn't they say she was a good doctor? Mammie, what
did that nurse say about her? But I did try every day to think it
wasn't true. And it was. Why was I so sick every morning? Maybe
I've only got a cancer, mammie!" Crying out a phrase like that, the
child was in such a madness of hope. "Oh, suppose she's right!"
"Martha, I feel like giving you the awfulest spanking anybody ever
got!"
"Oh _yes_! Oh, I don't mind. Mammie, imagine if it isn't true; if
I'm saved. Here, here's your rings; I don't need rings!"
When they drew up in front of the hotel, Emily forced her to be
quiet. But Martha, in their room, threw off her coat and her hat and
all restraint in a great gesture. She was lit up, she was drunk with
hope. She walked around the room babbling, her face ghastly pale and
bright, stopping to hug her mother, stretching out her arms,
stretching them above her towards the ceiling.
"Suppose it's _true_! Suppose it's all right! Suppose I'm safe! I
can _live_ now. No operation, mammie! That woman must have been
fifty! She must know what she's talking about. Didn't you think she
looked like a good doctor? She must have examined thousands of
women. I'm free; I'm safe!" She stopped and looked at herself in
the mirror. "Oh, look at me!" she cried. "_That's_ how I feel."
And Emily, who had sunk down on to the bed in her bewilderment,
watching Martha, suddenly began to cry. That superhuman strength
seemed to have abandoned her. For the girl had looked for a moment
intently at her reflection, and then turned, half crazy with joy, to
her suitcase. She had snatched out her toilet things, she was
powdering her nose, she was rubbing something on her white cheeks,
herself again. "Oh, I can _live_ now! Live! Live!" And she turned
away from the glass and ran to Emily--she had heard her
sniffling--and began consoling kisses and penitential hugs and tears.
"Let's go and get something to eat!" she said at length. She got up
and washed away signs of tears. She brushed her hair, she powdered
her nose, she got out a smarter pair of shoes. "Let's walk and
walk," she said. "I could walk all night." Out on the street there,
Emily felt Martha's strong arm impelling her along by the passion of
her relief. She walked with her head held high, she walked fiercely,
like an arrow sure of its target. When they stopped at a crossing,
her feet could not stop their triumph. Emily could feel her dancing.
She kept babbling, singing, running on. Emily said at length: "I
can't go any farther. I'm too tired." And then in a minute or two
they were turning into an opportune restaurant.
It was a large, uncarpeted room, with two rows of white-tiled tables
on either side of a central aisle. Martha walked down that aisle
ahead of her mother. Her head was held that tense way, her eyes were
shining positively black against her white face, her air was wild.
People looked and started and continued staring at her as if they had
seen a pretty young lunatic at large, or an aggressive and beautiful
girl-ghost. And Martha, not thinking of them, walked straight to the
farthest table and would have sat down facing the crowd, if Emily had
not chosen that seat for herself. Emily was conscious of the
sensation their entrance had made. She was wondering how Martha's
excited pallor had triumphed over all the color she had applied, for
certainly she had stood dabbing rouge on--before her mirror. Martha
grabbed the menu. She had been talking of turkey, of lobster. She
was hungry enough to eat anything. She ordered a large steak for
two, with mushrooms. She ordered asparagus and fried potatoes, and
bread--a plateful of brown bread. She ordered coffee. She would
order a lobster later, she told the waiter. When he had gone, she
began whispering to Emily:
"Mammie, did you get our reservations? Oh, I thought I would be
going home in a----!"
"Don't!" murmured Emily.
"Can we go and change them on our way home? Let's go on the eleven
o'clock. But no, we must go to another doctor to-morrow."
Emily tried to calm her. It was herself the child was enjoying now,
as if her years of enjoying her thoughts had been preparing her for
this climax. She looked as if she might burst into flame. She did
burst forth when dinner was being set before her. The waiter was
arranging her great feast, when she cried out, suddenly unable to
smother the joy of some thought. She cried out, with a gesture of
her hands below the table, "Oh, my God!" so that the waiter fairly
jumped. People about were watching them. They smiled unanimously.
Martha didn't seem even to know she was in a restaurant.
The next morning Martha said she hadn't slept well, but Emily had
watched her sleeping through the early morning, and when she
commented on the significance of that fact, Martha was elated again
above her weariness by happiness. She went for a walk in the morning
alone. Emily felt too exhausted to go with her. She ate more
heartily than she had been able to eat the evening before. That
great steak and those mushrooms she had not been able to give any
real attention to. She appealed to her mother every few minutes to
tell her the truth about the doctor's verdict, to comfort her about
the probable outcome of their visit to the next doctor. She walked
about excitedly.
Late that afternoon the second doctor pronounced her free.
They came back to their hotel almost without a word. In their room
they sat down; they looked at each other dazed; they each felt the
other trying to fathom the experience through which they had gone.
"How _could_ that have happened?" Martha demanded. "Do they think--I
IMAGINED that vomiting? Do they think I didn't try to believe I was
all right?"
It seemed to Emily best to pass as lightly as possible over even the
word "hysteria."
"You were worried, Martha. You were afraid."
"Well, of _course_ I was afraid! All the time I thought, suppose
anything should happen to me. I was thinking all the time about
_you_, mother! Do you think I wanted to disgrace you? That's why I
wanted to--I thought I couldn't live. Oh, when your wire came,
mammie, I just had to see you again, _once_, before---- I didn't
_want_ to come. I was afraid you might find out! But I _had_ to
come and see you again once! How did you happen to come, mammie?"
"Did you suppose I was going to let you wander around New York alone?"
"Didn't you suspect anything?"
"Martha! _No!_"
"No, you couldn't believe it. Oh, I never wanted YOU to know. I'd
rather have told all the rest of the world, mother. I'll never
forgive myself for this as long as I live. You look--sick as a dog,
mammie!"
"I'm all right. You needn't worry about _me_."
"You just say that. You don't even scold me! I've learned my
lesson. You don't have to say anything! My God!" cried little
Martha Kenworthy. "What I've been through! And those filthy women
at school nosing around trying to find out what was the matter with
me!"
"Oh, Martha!"
"They _were_. They went sneaking around! They know too much, those
old hens, pretending they're so holy. I'm finished with that place!"
"Well, now--everything is all right." It seemed better to her to
take that line. "We can go wherever we want to. You need a rest.
We'll go South, if you want to."
"Yes. Let's not go home. Let's go South from here."
"Oh, well--I don't know. I'd have to get some more clothes.
You'd--we'd better go home first. And we have our tickets; it's not
much shorter from here."
"Dad might want to go with us--or drive us down."
"I think we better go by train. It's much better to go home first."
"You mean--so people can see me? So nobody can suspect anything?"
"Martha, I didn't mean any such thing. Who's going to suspect us of
anything?"
"Not you, of course. But I'll go home if you want me to. I'll do
anything you want me to, after this. You've been a brick; you've
stuck by me; you're the one that needs a rest. I don't look as
ghastly as you do, mammie."
"Well, we can do anything we want to now; we can go any place."
"I don't want to do anything. I just want to sleep a year."
So they left for home that night. And the next day, as the train
hurried West, Martha's gloom and her humility deepened mile by mile.
She sat looking steadily out of the window, and Emily realized that
it could not be the scenery that fixed the expression of her face.
When her thoughts were recalled from some unhappy distance, she
considered her mother meekly, with solicitude. Her gratitude, the
sort of indebtedness, was painful to Emily. After they had changed
at Chicago into the train for home, Emily realized, even before
Martha spoke, that she was hardening herself for an ordeal.
"Mammie," she said, "I don't want to--I mean--will you let me have
the guest room this time? I think I could sleep better in the guest
room."
Emily Kenworthy had never taken a journey of any sort whose very
climax and last ineffable thrill had not been getting back again into
her very own house. She was that sort of woman. But never before
had she felt the joy of being at home and of waking up in her own
bedroom quite so keenly as she did that morning. She opened her
closet and took down her customary morning frock. It was a brown
jersey. It had a bit of tan-colored jersey down the front of it. On
the tan-colored jersey were rows of little brown jersey buttons, and
those top two buttons were hanging loosely; those two loose and
familiar buttons were reality, surely. They proved that New York had
been only a dream. She put the verifying frock on, and went out of
her room, and in the hall the radiator was burbling out its
confirming burbles. She sat down at her own breakfast table; Bob was
there, no phantom. And the percolator lid still had to be managed.
Its awkwardness had been a family failing for months now. Bob
couldn't apparently improve it. Emily began pouring coffee, with her
hands held as that percolator must be held, and she could scarcely
believe she had been in New York. Martha's hallucination was a
nightmare, and the percolator was truth and awakening.
She could indeed have believed that morning that the days of terror
had been a delirium if, in the guest room, the pitiful stranger had
not been lying in bed. She was glad that Martha seemed willing to
stay there the first day or two, for it made her story more
impressive.
"It's this quarrel with us, Bob, that's worked on her mind till she
couldn't eat. I wish you could have heard her that first night. She
just cried and cried, because she was so sorry about last summer, and
ashamed. She says she don't know what possessed her to act
so--naughty. I had just to make her stop crying. I told her it was
morbid; but I couldn't get her to eat. I ordered everything, but she
wouldn't take anything. The doctor says it's her nerves; she's got
to have a long rest."
"But how'll you keep her from dancing, if you take her South?"
"She won't want to dance; she's too sick."
Bob seemed scarcely able to credit that, although he acknowledged
that she looked bad.
Emily went on: "She's so ashamed of the things she said to you last
summer, Bob. She wanted me to apologize; or rather I said I would,
because she gets so worked up if she begins to talk about it. She
said no girl ever had a better father than you, Bob."
"Did she say that, honestly, now, Emily?" Bob looked troubled.
"Yes, she did, sitting at a table, not eating a thing. She'd have
burst out crying if I hadn't made her stop it."
"By heck! Emily, the kid must be sick!"
"Yes, she is. The doctor said I have to take good care of her and
keep her out of doors. When you go in to see her, Bob, just pretend
nothing's happened. Don't let her get started apologizing."
"All right. Do you think--is she over that--that business with that
damned skunk?"
"Oh yes, I think so. I think she's ashamed of it all."
"Well, that's something, anyway."
It was the neighbors who began coming in at once to inquire
sympathetically about Martha, who kept Emily uneasy. Each woman's
solicitude seemed to necessitate the hurried invention of new
details, and Emily, not used to deceit, could scarcely be sure her
stories tallied. Johnnie Benton gave her a moment of difficulty. He
wouldn't be content with vagueness.
"Look here, Mrs. Kenworthy, what is the matter with her, when you get
right down to brass tacks?"
"Tut, tut, Johnnie! Do you think I haven't been right down to brass
tacks all the time?"
"Nervous breakdown, that's just a sort of excuse for anything, I
thought."
"You better think again. A nervous breakdown isn't anything to joke
about."
"But isn't she going to get up? Aren't we going to see her at all?"
"She'll be up in a day or two. But, look here, Johnnie, if she
prefers not to see you, I won't insist. I'm not going to have her
annoyed--not a bit, just now."
"I'm not planning to annoy her."
"Now don't get fussy. You know very well what I mean. She must be
humored."
The next day he sent in a great bunch of roses.
"These would go with the room, I thought," he said, meekly, to Emily.
She hesitated about taking them in to Martha. She decided to do it,
and regretted her decision, for Martha read the message with them and
tore it up angrily and began to cry.
Wilton ran in just to call, and asked about the New York doctor. He
was very tactful, very kind. Mrs. Benton came in and gave Emily a
terrible shock.
"I have half a notion to go South with you, Emily. I can't wait
forever for my sister. I was going to California with her, but she
keeps putting it off. And, anyway, I don't know but what I'd rather
go with you."
Emily would not urge her to go with them. She didn't dare even
mention such a possibility to Martha. She thanked her lucky stars
that Mrs. Benton's sister was going to be terribly angry if Mrs.
Benton went with Emily.
When the girls came in, Martha said, wearily:
"Oh, let them come up if they want to. I suppose they've got to see
me, if they want to. Hand me that vanity case, mammie, please." And
she sat up and rouged a little bit, to defy detection, as it were.
The third day she was home she got up and came downstairs for lunch
and supper. "I won't have you carrying all those things up to me,"
she said to Emily. On Friday she happened to be in the living room
when Greta came in. She received her with little cordiality, and
presently, as they sat there, Emily doing most of the talking, two
more girls came in. Emily was breathing a sigh of relief that the
afternoon had passed so smoothly, as they left. But when she turned
into the living room from seeing them out, Martha burst out:
"Oh, for the love of Heaven, let's get away, mammie! I can't _stand_
this. This house; this town. Let's go to-night, please, mammie!"
"We aren't ready."
"I am. I'm packed. I'll do your packing. Let's get out of this!"
Emily wondered when she had got her things out of her painted room.
She had never seen her open the door of it. She said: "I thought you
didn't mind seeing the girls. You could have excused yourself."
"Yes, I could, and they would have been wondering why. They make me
so sick. They just come prying about to see what they can find out!"
"That's nonsense. You oughtn't to talk that way. They came just
naturally, because you weren't well."
"Yes, and asked all those questions!"
Martha wasn't to be humored in this.
"I didn't see anything objectionable in what they asked," Emily
responded dryly.
"You didn't? Didn't you hear Greta asking where Eve was? 'What's
become of Eve this vacation?' she said, just like that."
"Well, child, why shouldn't she ask you where Eve is spending her
holiday? You've been in school with her all term. You'd be supposed
to know. You forget that Eve about lived in this house last summer."
"I forget it, do I? Oh, look here, mammie, if I finish your packing,
won't you go to-night?"
"Our reservations are for to-morrow night. You know that."
"They'll change them; and if they won't, let's stay in Chicago a
night. I'd rather stay any place in the world than here, mammie."
She was pleading now, not resentfully, but humbly.
"All right," said Emily, "if daddy agrees."
Martha turned away impatiently. In the presence of death Bob
Kenworthy had appeared a good father. But Martha, having now to face
life, already found him only an irritation. "It isn't Bob's fault
this time that she wants to get away," Emily thought.
"And, besides, you've told everybody that we're going to-morrow. And
it would be just like--Johnnie and everybody to be down to the
station to see us off--with a band."
_Chapter Seven_
They traveled directly south until they came to a town which,
stretching out along a blue-and-golden bay, had gone to sleep before
the Revolution and has never been disturbed since. They found it all
ease and dreams and laziness. The shadows of live oaks were its
swiftest motion, and the dancing of oyster schooners over its sea was
all its din. The Kenworthys arrived in the middle of a sunny
afternoon at the sort of hotel to which they had been recommended.
Although they had written they were coming, no one in authority was
in sight to receive them. A slovenly negro maid didn't know what
rooms they were to be in. Leaving their baggage on the veranda,
where the taxi driver had deposited it, they walked down through a
little garden to the snow-white sands and the golden clear water of
the bay. An old man sitting on a bench, his legs wrapped around in a
traveling rug, was sleeping, his bald head nodding, nodding,
helplessly. They walked out to the end of the little pier. They sat
down, and looked into the crystal shallows as jellyfish lapped about
softly. The sun on the water was a lullaby. Emily presently felt
her eyelids growing heavy.
"This'll be a good place to sleep, anyway," Martha said. The trouble
was, in the days that followed, that Emily could never be sure that
Martha was sleeping. Sometimes when the girl went to her room and,
closing the door, begged not to be disturbed, Emily felt sure, as she
sat listening involuntarily, that she was lying sobbing
heart-brokenly. She never caught her in the act--she avoided
that--but the curves of Martha's cheeks had the shadows and shape of
many tears.
Emily had helplessly to sit and watch her progressing into
bitterness. The first few days Martha said nothing; she watched the
sea by day; by night she sat and stared into the fire. When Emily
spoke to her, she would turn and bring herself into her mother's
presence bewilderedly. She would look about her wonderingly, like a
lost child in a strange world. Emily's remarks seemed scarcely to
reach her. Her silence was unnatural. Certainly, Emily reflected,
if she could utter the thoughts that seemed to be grinding her down,
she would feel better. She longed to have her begin talking again.
Hints came out from time to time. Sometimes Martha was not able to
refrain from groaning. The first afternoon they walked away down the
beach, they came to an old cemetery with broken gnarled cypresses in
it, and violets ready to bloom on old French graves.
Emily said, instinctively, "Let's go in." The gate stood open before
them.
But Martha cried, "NO! I've had enough of THAT!" She shuddered.
What Martha said, when she began talking, was frightful. She
resorted to speech only when her sense of outrage had become
intolerable. She burst forth with noise and fury. It happened one
evening that Emily had tarried, partly because Martha had refused so
curtly from the first to pass even the time of day with anyone in the
hotel, to be civil to an old and frail woman who sat alone at an
adjoining table. When she went into her room, she found Martha in
tears on her knees before the fire. She was always poking the fire;
often she poked it viciously. But now she seemed to have attacked it
brutally. She was tearing up papers, or something.
"What are you doing?" Emily exclaimed. And then she saw.
"Why, _don't_ do that! That's a library book!"
But Martha was in a rage. "I don't care if it is! I'll burn up
every copy I ever get my hands on!" She wouldn't let Emily rescue it.
The tears were running down her face. "Such lies!" she raved. "How
can you stand it? Dirty, filthy, rotten, vile lies! That's what's
the matter! Books like that! I could kill that man!"
There was something sobering in the mere sight of a book being torn
to bits. It was a strong book, powerfully written, and it resisted
its destruction. The pages had to be jerked out, almost one by one.
Martha kept tearing and poking, and urging the flames on.
"Martha," Emily remonstrated, "you mustn't do that! Don't make it
flame up more!" She had never seen Martha in such a rage. She stood
helplessly watching her folly.
"Didn't you read it?" Martha cried to her. There was scarcely
anything left of the book now, but the covers.
"Yes, I read part of it," Emily began, protesting.
"You believed it, I suppose?"
"Well, I--I didn't care for it all, much."
"You didn't care for it! My God! I'm never going to read a book
written by a man again as long as I live! It isn't that they're
fools only; it isn't possible for them to learn anything, even, dirty
fumbling idiots!"
"That's not very nice language, Martha."
"Language? What's language? Language isn't anything. Look at the
facts. Are _they_ nice? Look what that rotten man wrote down for
people to read!"
Emily sat down, and Martha turned around and leaned her head against
her mother's knee and wept. She kept trying to express her contempt
for the book and its author; she felt the need of curses, but her
vocabulary failed her. "That horrid, rotten person," she cried two
or three times. "That nasty brutal old pig." And Emily stroked her
hair and wondered whether to command her to keep still or to
encourage her to talk it out. "He says----" Martha sputtered at
length, crying bitterly.
"Never mind, child," Emily said quietly.
But Martha would mind. She controlled her sobs.
"He says--the filthy old rotten--idiot--that man in the book, he just
went around--you know--mother--falling in love, they call it--and
then he threw one woman away, mammie, because--he said--she didn't
enjoy it! Oh, I could _kill_ that man! _Enjoy_ it, he said, mother!
He said she was always afraid! My God! _He_ hadn't anything to
lose. He ran no risk! They just try to make out that women are like
men, mother, so that they can get them. You'd think women would tell
the truth, wouldn't you, mammie? I'd just like to see Mrs. Wharton
be an old maid and try to hide that child that way! She'd learn a
thing or two. It isn't fair, it's too cruel! They just try to make
girls believe lies like that so they won't be afraid. I was afraid,
all the time. But why wasn't I afraid enough? I must have been
crazy last summer. Honestly, mother, I must have been out of my
mind, to do that. It's women that are fools. It was my own fault.
Does it seem possible, mother, that women can love such--such filthy,
rotten messes as men? I couldn't have been in my right mind. So it
couldn't have been my fault, and look what happened to me! It makes
me so mad to think about it. It isn't fair! Why can't a woman just
turn over and go to sleep, too? Why should she have two lives to
risk, and a rotten, dirty man none at all? Mammie, you don't think I
was in my right mind last summer, do you? I never would have done
that if I'd had any sense. Were any of your people crazy, mammie?
Were daddy's people insane? I mean, two or three generations back?"
"No, not so far as I know; not one of them. You've got sane people
behind you. Don't cry so, child. It's going to be all right yet."
"There's no use saying things like that. I WAS crazy, mother. I
couldn't have---- It doesn't seem possible. If I hadn't been out of
my head, I never could have--loved him--a man. Didn't you ever
notice anything strange about me last summer, honestly?"
"I--I couldn't understand it, but--girls _do_ fall in love. Your
father thought, though----"
"What did he think?" she urged.
"He sometimes thought you must be----"
"Crazy! Did he say crazy?" She was eager to have that lesser
sentence passed on herself.
"He _did_ say crazy, but you know, Martha, how we say it. Not
meaning literally crazy."
"No, but I _was_ crazy. Look at the mess I got you into, mother.
What would we ever have done with that----"
"We don't need to talk about that now. Don't mention it."
"Yes, we _do_ need to talk about it. I AM a woman. I WILL think
about it. It isn't fair! It's cruel!"
And on she raved, groaning out the old old groanings. Emily sat
overwhelmed and yearning, trying from time to time to ease her hurt
with the words of her happier experience. Her arguments were less
threadbare, having been used from the first only by women who felt
themselves tenderly loved.
"It is hard luck to be a woman, if you're unlucky, Martha. But if
you're lucky, it's not women you're sorry for, but men."
"How can you say that?"
"Well, they haven't children; they can't have children; they miss
that, the realest joy. After all, children do belong to women. You
belong to me more than to your father."
"Do you think I don't see through that? I'm not a fool NOW! I do
belong to you. It's _you_ I got into a mess. Dad sits home, not
worrying. And if he did know about it, he'd blame you; he'd say you
spoiled me. It's lovely to have a child like me!"
"I don't care, Martha. Whatever has happened to you--to us--you've
been my happiness all these years. I don't care what you say, that's
a fact. This time will pass, and we'll be happy again. If you had a
child, you'd understand."
"If! Don't say 'if' to me! Haven't I had a child?"
"No, you haven't. You certainly haven't!"
"I certainly have! Look here, mother, don't you really think I go
crazy, that I've been crazy twice now? It's insane to be hysterical!
Maybe I'll go stark crazy and get put in----"
"Martha! Martha!"
They sat there till long after midnight. Emily argued that what
Martha had done was not a symptom of insanity. What, then, was it,
Martha demanded, sorely. And Emily explained the brutal fact that
nothing in life is so perplexing, so inexplicable to look back upon,
as one's own conduct. She found the girl was full of the dread of
publicity. "If he could get his wife to divorce him because of--me,
he'd tell her in a minute!" she cried once.
"Oh, surely not!" expostulated Emily. She was on the point of saying
that Mr. Fairbanks would never allow that. Then she remembered
bitterly that Mr. Fairbanks had promised to prevent--other things,
and had not been able to keep his promise.
After all these dregs and outpourings, Emily took her into her own
bed, and realized, as she thought them over, that the girl was lying
sleepless beside her. What, she wondered, wearily, was there left
for her now? She had lost faith in her lover and all mankind. She
had lost faith in herself; she had lost confidence and security from
fear. But what she hated most violently was her own self, that sweet
little bathed and powdered body which Emily had adored every day
since her birth. The flowering of her body, its natural
fruitfulness, was what she resented unto death. She was utterly
undone. She had to be made anew. It was a bitter task to take up.
"I'm too old for it," Emily thought.
Martha rose in a business-like manner the next morning, earlier than
usual. Usually from their beds they saw the schooner they had called
their own because it had castellated patches on its sail, move like a
dream of a castle through the misty distance. This morning they saw
it together from their place in the dining room.
"I'm going to ask them to put a writing table in my room this
morning," Martha announced. And when they were walking, later, she
suggested that they go down to the little stores on Main Street. She
wanted, she said, to buy some paper.
Emily was curious because of the quality and quantity of paper she
ordered.
"What are you going to do with all that?" she asked, naturally, as
they left the shop.
Then Martha made her announcement, grimly: "I'm going to write a
novel."
Emily had supposed nothing could really surprise her ever again. She
found she had been mistaken. She was thoroughly "taken aback."
Martha was suspicious of her silence. "Why shouldn't I write a
novel?" she challenged.
"Why, how can you? How can you begin? I'd as soon--why, I'd as soon
try to make a whole train!"
"I can begin. Don't you worry! It's no trick to write a novel!"
"Well----" murmured Emily, unable to agree.
"I made up my mind in the night; if nobody else will tell the truth,
I will! Girls will know a thing or two when they get through with my
novel, I'll bet!"
Emily held her peace tightly.
Martha went on defiantly: "I've got its name and everything. I'm
going to call it 'Blistered Women'--like 'Flaming Youth,' you know,
or else, 'Vomiting Love'!"
"Oh, Martha!"
"Yes, you'll say 'Oh, Martha!' all right, when you read it! They
used to sit and lecture us about Romance and Realism by the hour! It
took them hours! Idiots! Why couldn't they just say: Romance is
what men think about 'affairs,' the pigs; and Realism is what women
know. Mine's going to be a realistic novel!"
Emily looked at her and repressed her sighs. She had on that racoon
coat and that small rosy hat. She strode along with her chin up,
defying anyone to stop her.
After that morning Emily was free to do whatever she might fancy.
She might sit in the sun on the veranda and knit, or she might sit on
the end of the pier and watch the waves. She might walk oyster-shell
roads or sandy paths through turpentine groves. No plan of hers
could entice Martha away from that writing table. She rose early,
and she sat there day after day from nine till one-o'clock lunch.
When Emily ventured occasionally to go into her room, she would see
her writing away, and often her mouth was screwed up into hatred.
Her face seemed to say that if scribbling could kill, there would be
wide slaughter--not of innocents. And sometimes she would be writing
savagely, with tears running down her cheeks.
Emily might like this novel-writing--and sometimes she thought it
would do Martha good to get this resentment all out of her mind,
expressed in words--of she might disapprove--for certainly Martha was
working as she had never worked before to Emily's knowledge--which
couldn't be good for her shattered nerves. But she was helpless.
She knew if she commanded Martha to stop it, Martha would refuse.
She had a call now; she had a mission in life. Somebody had to tell
the truth. And men, of course, didn't even know what truth was, and
they wouldn't tell it if they did know. Oh, they did make her sick
at her stomach! Emily had to register her protest at times against
Martha's description of what she was writing.
"It's NOT a nice novel, I know that. I never intended it should be;
but I'll tell you right now, it's a lot nicer than things are in this
world, mammie!"
In February Bob began writing of their coming home. He
threatened--that was the word Martha used--to come down and see them.
Emily would have welcomed him; she was lonely and unhappy. She said
miserably to herself more than once that what she needed was some
wise and sympathetic person with whom she might talk over Martha's
plight. If Bob was neither wise nor sympathetic, he was always
solicitous and tender at heart. And Martha was often irritable and
unreasonable, and sometimes unconsciously cruel. She seemed at times
to look upon her mother as one of the wrongs life had done her. One
afternoon they were standing together at the end of the pier, looking
at the opalescent sea and the flowery clouds about the sunset.
She had begun, apropos of nothing but her constant musings, "Mother,
wasn't there something funny about Grandma Kenworthy?"
"Funny? No. What do you mean?"
"But she was terribly religious, wasn't she?"
"She was--religious, certainly."
"But wasn't she sort of fanatical?"
"No, she wasn't! Don't you remember her? She was the dearest old
thing that I ever knew--the most companionable woman."
"But somebody told me--or, anyway, I heard she used to pray, when she
was poor, and she used to believe her prayers were answered, too."
"Well, that doesn't prove she was--funny. You meant--not quite right
in her mind, didn't you?"
"Yes. And people say--it's all sort of the same thing, being too
religious--or--you know--like me, mammie."
"Martha! She was as sane as any woman! What could she do but pray?
She hadn't any health. She hadn't any money for her little boys.
All that woman went through--if she hadn't had a strong mind, she
would have gone crazy! She must have been far better balanced than
most women, let me tell you. And look here, child----"
"Well?"
"Why do you go on thinking about insanity? Don't you see you only
did what every woman does? After all, every woman who ever bore a
child submitted to the preliminaries. Didn't she, now?"
"Preliminaries! My God, mother! How you do talk! You're so high
and holy you never know what I mean! Sometimes I feel as if there
was a gulf between us--a great wide ocean!"
"Oh, Martha!"
"I do. You can't understand, mammie, you're so good. I don't know
how you could have had a child like me!"
That statement explained a good deal of Martha's conduct. She had
been acting exactly as if she had been acutely and unhappily
conscious of her separation from her mother, and Emily tried to
reason her out of it.
"We are infinitely nearer each other than we were last summer, child!"
But that was an unfortunate way of putting it. "Oh, don't say last
summer to me, _please_!" Martha cried.
A day or two later she announced, dryly: "There's no use of my
writing away at that novel. I don't know how. But I'm going to
learn how. It isn't so easy as I thought. I'm going to start in at
the University of Chicago the first of April. I'm going to study
English."
She plainly wasn't asking permission; she wasn't going to tolerate
advice; she had made up her mind. And Emily, who had been wondering
what in the world to suggest for the immediate future, was relieved.
It might be a very good thing. It would be so great a change of
life; it would supply new food for thought. She had not the vaguest
idea that the novel would ever come to completion.
She said, "Well, that's an idea. But you must come home for a few
days, child! To get your things, at least."
"No, I don't want to. You can send them to me, if I need anything.
I never want to go back to that house again as long as I live!"
"Well, if you feel that way----"
"You mean I ought to go back, so people won't talk, so they won't
suspect anything?"
"I didn't mean any such thing! People don't suspect you of anything.
Get that idea out of your head!"
"I don't see why they shouldn't!" she retorted, cynically. She was
so unhappy, so abrupt and almost brutal, that Emily forgot her good
resolutions, after she was in bed that night, and just wept. She had
to go home without her child. In spite of all that she had planned
to prevent such a climax, Martha hated that house now more
vindictively than her mother had ever hated it. It wasn't Bob,
either, that had driven her away from it; it wasn't Bob that had
alienated her from her mother; it was just luck, it was fate. There
was no appeal. "It's because I stood by her through all this that
she can't stand the sight of me now!" Emily wept. "She's left me.
She's going to a hotel in Chicago alone, to get away from me."
The day of their departure Martha was all but intolerably irritable.
Emily's patience was almost at an end. She wasn't sure but that her
daughter needed at this late date a thoroughly good spanking; but she
held her peace. It was fortunate indeed that Emily had cultivated a
good grasp on the peace of her mind, for that day she clung to it
desperately. And then it nearly got away from her, more than once.
However, as they were getting into their train at New Orleans, Martha
began, abruptly:
"Look here, mother, it does make me sore to have you act as if I
couldn't go to a hotel and take care of myself without you. Don't
you think I've learned my lesson yet? Do you think I'm as much of a
fool yet as I was last summer? What can hurt a girl alone in a hotel
but men? I'm as safe as if I was in a desert, or locked in a cell.
If all the men in Chicago were on the bridge, and I got a chance, I'd
push them into the river, filthy little rats! I'd watch them sink.
I should think you'd understand that by now. But you've been good to
me, I know that. And if it will make you any happier, I'll go to the
Y.W.C.A. and stay there till I get a flat. Does that satisfy you?"
It was so magnificent a concession that Emily blinked. "Oh yes, I
think that would be much better. I'd like that, Martha."
"All right, then. _I_ won't like it; lots of old cats there; but I
don't want you to be worrying about me. I can take care of myself, I
should hope."
_Chapter Eight_
Wherever Emily went, at home again, she was beset by loquacious
pilgrims returned from a winter in the South or in the West. At
every gathering of women, the hum and babble held to that subject.
"Well, my brothers have cleared three hundred thousand on their
Florida deals. And we're selling our house and leaving in October.
After all, as I said to John, what's the use of slaving at housework
in Illinois when you can get colored girls in Florida to do your
work?"
"Well, I'd rather freeze scrubbing floors in Illinois than have those
horrid black women slopping around my house. Do you know, Emily,
what one of them actually said to me? There were no knobs or handles
or anything on the bureau drawers in my room. Shiftless things! And
when I protested, the maid said: 'Well, you don't need no handles.
Leave a stocking hanging out, and give it a jerk and the drawer will
come open.' I wouldn't stay in that hotel a day longer. I just told
Peter I'd stood enough. That's why we went to Daytona."
"I can tell you a place where everything isn't swimming in cold
grease. They have a Northern cook. Deliver me from Southern fried
cooking."
"And I found that all the cream that was to be had was shipped in
from Kentucky. That's three or four hundred miles. Imagine a town
that has to ship in cream! They have to paint their cows, or
something, and it don't agree with them."
"Well, if you'd gone to California in the first place. We've got our
rooms reserved for next year. The view is superb. It scarcely rains
at all there."
"I never was so sick of glare in my life. I just thought, let me get
back to Illinois. That's good enough for me."
"The trouble with them is, they won't tip enough. It pays to hand
out money, on the coast, to be comfortable."
And then they would turn upon Emily, to insist gluttonously upon
details of Martha's health. She had acquired a skill in suave
evasion that surprised her continually. It had all worked out very
well, she would tell them. Martha was much better. She hadn't her
color back, but that would come. Of course, Emily had thought it
would have been better for her not to go back into college so soon;
but she was so ambitious. After she had fallen behind her classmates
in her college, she thought she would stay nearer home, in Chicago.
So lucky that they had the quarter system in the university there.
And if Martha didn't seem able to do the work, Emily would take her
out at once. It was easier to keep an eye on her health if she
studied in Chicago, and she was living just now at the Y.W.C.A. No
one could detect a flaw in the Kenworthy respectability. "Why should
I suppose anyone suspects us of anything?" Emily asked herself.
"I've just got that habit from Martha!"
She wanted every single passing day that spring to go and see her
daughter. And every day she had to remind herself that her daughter
was not anxious to be reminded of her folly. Her letters were short
and not frequent. And then she wrote briefly that she had taken a
room in an apartment of May Bissel's. Emily pondered that
information dejectedly. Martha must be a very lonely girl if she had
been forced back on to May Bissel for comradeship, for certainly at
home she would have scorned her.
She abased herself to seek out Mrs. Bissel, to make inquiry about the
news. Mrs. Bissel gushed and reassured her. May hadn't an apartment
alone. No, indeed! Her mother wouldn't allow that, not for a
moment. She and two other girls had a sitting room and two bedrooms
which they rented by the month in the apartment of a grammar-school
teacher. This Miss Curtis used her kitchen from six-thirty until
seven-thirty in the morning, and allowed the girls to use it for
their breakfast for an hour after seven-thirty. They had their
lunches and their dinners out. Miss Curtis kept an eye on May. Not
that May tolerated any real chaperonage, of course, but Mrs. Bissel
felt always that, if May really got sick, or anything happened to
her, Miss Curtis would be there to let her mother know. Miss Curtis
was a thoroughly dependable woman, and she came from a town in
western Iowa where Mrs. Bissel's sister lived.
And that was all the comfort Emily had. Every day she said to
herself time and again: "No, I must not go. She doesn't want to see
me; she told me so flatly." Finally--it seemed finally--though it
was only six low-spirited weeks after they had parted in Chicago,
Martha wrote and asked her mother to come and see her. The letter
was not affectionate; it was scarcely cordial. Either Martha was
ashamed of the way she was treating her mother, or she was
intolerably lonely. Emily didn't know which.
When she saw the place her daughter of the painted room was living
in, she marveled at her endurance. It was an apartment building
which had been got ready hastily and cheaply for the Columbian
Exposition. On the second floor front was a muddily tempestuous
living room which Martha shared with the two girls. She showed it to
her mother contemptuously. "Imagine sitting in a place like this.
The art student did it--the one whose place I took. When they offer
anybody a chair, they dump its contents out on to the floor. They're
simply pigs." Out of this front room a tiny front bedroom opened,
which was Martha's. It was the most comfortable room in the house.
"I bought those curtains and the bedspread; but feel them, mammie.
They've been up three weeks now, and they're grimy. That smoke comes
in from across the street." She spoke dispiritedly. Behind the
living room was a bedroom with one window which the two girls shared;
behind that, off a dark hall, another bedroom, rented to a "medic";
behind that, the dining room where Miss Curtis lived; behind that,
the kitchen. It was only at second sight that the bathroom seemed
disgusting. It was all dark, smoke discolored, meager.
Her work in the university wasn't bad, she said. She wrote a theme
every day, and it was good practice. She had to read a lot of trash
in her literature courses. "I have to read every day a novel some
silly flea or other wrote." (Males had been pigs a few months ago in
her estimation. They had shrunk to rats, and now what less could
they become than fleas? Emily wondered.) "I don't finish them. I
get too sick. They revolt me. I tabulate them. Look, mammie!" She
showed Emily a large notebook. "Here's seventeen what they call
great novelists, and only two of them know anything, really. If they
show any signs of knowing the difference between men and women, I put
them in this column. 'Brass-tackers' I call them. Funny they're
both Russian, isn't it? All the rest of the idiots are here." She
had labeled them "Preliminaries," because they think that's all there
is to it. "Oh, mammie, you must read _Crime and Punishment_.
Dostoieffsky knew. That poor little Sonia, mother! I'll lend you
this. She just covered herself up with a green shawl and shuddered
when she came in. You could just see her shudder, if you were in
that room." But in that room on Fifty-seventh Street no one saw
Emily Kenworthy shuddering. "And that!" Martha pointed scornfully to
a volume of Wells. "They make me read even _that_ sort of stuff.
You wait till people read my novel; I'll bet you they'll begin to see
through those men. Why does Wells have all his maternal women sort
of freaks, or something, and all his heroines not maternal? There's
a reason, believe me!"
"Are you still working on the novel?"
Martha turned on her indignantly. "Well, I like _that_! What did
you think I was putting up with this filthy place for?"
Emily suggested timidly at least occasional week-ends at home.
"Don't talk to me about that!" Martha pleaded.
Emily went back thoroughly discouraged. Was that any place of
healing for the child? It was no change, if Martha was to go on
working on that volume of hate. She was as hard as ever; she was
thinner and she was yellow. All the comfort Emily found was in
saying over and over to herself a line which had no connection in her
mind with anything. She thought vaguely perhaps it came from the
Bible. "What wound did ever heal but by degrees?" She tried often
to think of what followed; of another wording for it. It was that
line, which she felt she was not saying correctly, that she lived by.
And sometimes, there in her living room, she thought of Mr.
Fairbanks' unfortunate daughter. Her wound, he said, had never
healed; it had corrupted and poisoned her. "I spoiled her," Emily
would muse. "She's been taken away from me; I've got to stand
aside." And then she would say again, because she couldn't help it,
"What wound did ever heal but by degrees?"
She went on despising life. She would not desist from protesting
against it. She said, "If only Martha had quarreled with Bob, I
could go to her, sometimes. I could live with her in Chicago. I
don't suppose she will come back to this house now, if I should die.
I never thought she would hate both me and the house. I must do
something now, to keep from thinking. I better adopt a child for a
while. I ought to write and ask somebody to come and stay with me
this summer. There's that old Miss Jenson; but Bob would never stand
her. Or we might do over all the rooms downstairs. If Martha would
only come and help me. But if she would come and help me, I wouldn't
need to do it! I believe I'll try hybridizing hemorocalis. Or what
in the world will I do? If only I had had a house full of children!
If Bob would only take an hour or two off, now and then! I've got to
settle down to this. I mustn't fuss because Martha can't endure the
sight of me. It's my own fault. I spoiled her, some way. But I
never meant to! ... Thank God, it's time to clean house!"
But now, as always, she entered that festival with no high-hearted
challenge to mess and accumulation. She followed Maggie from room to
room loyally but without enthusiasm. The idea of leaving the
abandoned painted room stagnant never entered the head of the old
servant. She attacked it so furiously that Emily hadn't the heart to
say to her that all her burnishings would be futile. She shut its
door at last with the feeling of spineless hope she had when she
looked, for some justifiable reason, at the baby clothes she had
folded away. There they were, all ready at hand, in case she ever by
some good luck might need them again--not that there was much hope,
of course. She loitered along after Maggie into the next battlefield.
And then, when it was all done, when on the newly painted veranda
every summer chair had its freshest garments tied on, Emily, being
finished with dust, washed her hair one day and dried it in the sun
in the garden, remembering how Martha always protested against the
waste of time which so much long thick hair took for drying. It
seemed almost as if the spring and weather, pleased with the way the
brown hair rippled in its dampness, laid a trap to catch the little
girl who had played in that garden. For then a shower came up, after
noon, and passed over, and the sun came out with a dazzling soft
afternoon brilliance. In the blossoming apple trees orioles were
calling, and robins were hopping about in the wet petals below them.
The grass was all young, and heavenly green, and the air had a soft
and glittering cleanness. It was an afternoon to make even the dull
feel that to forget its very quality was to have lived in vain.
Emily had played about in the garden all the afternoon. She came
into the house to get some labels stowed away in a drawer in her
desk. She sat down and began sorting them----
And into the living room, bareheaded, laden with coats and bags,
walked Miss Martha.
She came in quietly, as if it had been an ordinary coming. She was
bringing some one to her mother.
"This is Miss Curtis, mother," she explained. "We drove out. It was
such a nice day. I suppose you can put us up? Gee! It smells good
here! How long till supper? We're starved, mammie. Sit down, Miss
Curtis, I'll bring the things in myself!"
Emily saw a large and flabby-looking woman, in a nondescript
tan-colored coat and a small black hat, who might have been fifty.
She pulled off her hat and apologized for the untidiness of her
stringy hair, and good reason she had for apologizing. She had a
rather fine square face; she had kindly eyes. But the most
impressive thing about her was her utter weariness.
And Martha came in again, with more bags and parcels.
"Can't we have asparagus for supper, if I go out and cut it?" she
asked.
Miss Curtis was eager to get out into the garden. There was not a
moment to be lost. The immortal afternoon was wearing away. They
would only run up to their rooms.
"Can I have the little guest room, mammie?" Martha had asked. "I
want her to have the big one."
And presently there she was, just as if nothing had happened, coming
out of the house and down the path towards her mother and Miss
Curtis, under the willow tree, bareheaded and carrying the very old
colander and the very old knife she had used for cutting asparagus
ever since, as a little girl, she had been allowed that privilege.
"You've never eaten asparagus unless you've cut it," she was
explaining to her guest. "Ten minutes from the garden to the kettle,
that's when it's good, really."
She was better, Emily said to herself. She was subdued; she was
thoughtful of her guest. She had ceased, for the moment, to rail.
She was showing Miss Curtis all the garden. The asparagus had
already been cut once that day, for Bob was fond of it. But there
was enough just for two. And this warm rain would bring more on by
to-morrow. And she took what she had found into the house, and
returned to show her wild-flower bed.
"Look what a little cultivation does for violets here. They aren't
really modest, under mossy stones. They're only starved. They get
swanky enough when you give them a place to grow," she said. "And
look at the Dutchman's breeches! And here's my old
jack-in-the-pulpit. And look at the peonies! Gee, mammie! Mrs.
Benton will be budding all over the county before long." She made
Miss Curtis admire her willow tree, and the clear water gurgling
along beneath it.
"You're a glutton for education, Martha," Miss Curtis sighed, "to be
living with me in the city when you might be out here at home!" And
she went in to get ready for supper.
Left alone for a moment with her mother, Martha stood sniffling.
"I had forgotten it smelled so good, so clean!" she said, wistfully.
"I simply hate Chicago. It's just sickening when spring comes.
Everybody goes out of town for week-ends. All the teachers go down
to the dunes, and bring nice little mossy things back with them,
mammie. That's why I came out here. They wanted Miss Curtis to go
with them; and she wanted to, too. But she can't afford it; it costs
two or three dollars, she says. It would cost me ten!--to go away
for a week-end. She's such a good old dear, isn't she, mammie? I
tried to get her to go some place with me for the week-end. But she
wouldn't hear of me paying the bills. I did want her to get away.
And then she said I could come down and visit her school; and I did.
My God! mammie! If you could see that room of hers on a spring
afternoon. Close is no word for it. Smelling of all the dirty
little wops that have never been bathed in their lives. All wiggling
and squirming and wanting to get out of doors, of course. I tell you
I could hardly stand it for an hour. And to see her sticking shut up
in there, day after day, for six years! It made me so mad! I just
made up my mind to bring her out here for the week-ends. That
wouldn't cost her even the price of a bed. I went and bought a car,
and she hadn't an excuse left. I'm going to put her to bed after
supper. She's ready to collapse. She had a chill the other evening,
she was so done up. We had to get the doctor. If you'd seen that
room, you'd wonder why she isn't dead. Isn't she a sort of nice old
thing, mammie?"
"It is for this woman's sake she has come home," Emily was trying not
to think. "She never realizes _I'm_ lonely. I'm only her mother,
after all!"
"I'm sure she needs a change, Martha. Are you still getting her
suppers?"
"You wait till you see what a good cook I'm getting to be! There is
stuff you can get to eat for thirty cents, if you hunt round. Oh!"
exclaimed Martha Kenworthy. "There's dad home. I heard the car
stop," she sighed.
In the living room she confronted him.
"Hello, kiddo!" he cried. "You here?" He looked at Emily, and then
he grew cordial. He knew _he_ couldn't have made his wife's face
shine so. "It's pretty good to see you again!" He kissed her. "You
drove down? Did you borrow the car from the fire department? Whose
is it?"
"It's mine," said Martha.
"No!"
"Yes, it's mine."
"Huh! I'd have given you one at wholesale."
Emily knew Bob felt brutally slighted. If there was one subject on
which he might expect a daughter to ask his advice, surely it was on
the purchase of a car. Emily felt that, but Bob never uttered one
word of complaint. It was unexpected nobleness of him. She knew
why: he had been worried by her dejection and loneliness. If having
that girl at home made Emily gay again, he was determined not to
antagonize her.
So peace reigned over the asparagus at the supper table. Emily got
the candles out, because Martha loved them. And when the fragrant
dusk deepened, it was Martha who rose to light them, as usual.
"Don't they make just a sweet light here?" she asked Miss Curtis.
She sat looking at them flickering; she watched the shadows of them,
and the way they lit up the apple-blossom bouquet she had brought in.
She studied the room wistfully. "I'd forgotten the dining room was
so large," she remarked. She seemed reluctant to leave the
candle-light when supper was over. So the three women sat on; Martha
sat with her elbows on the table, dreaming towards the little flames,
as she had always done, but taking her part in the conversation
thoughtfully. Her one thought seemed to be for Miss Curtis's
enjoyment.
Miss Curtis was interested in Mrs. Benton, and Martha rehearsed the
history of the swimming park, with now and then a twinkling comment,
not spontaneous, a remark calculated to entertain her guest, who
questioned her. Emily occasionally took her eyes from Martha's face
long enough to glance at Miss Curtis. Even dusk and twilight failed
to make her interesting. She looked now only like complete fag. But
Martha was mysterious, tantalizing to maternal interest. She was
thin, still. She was hushed; but she was steady. She was safe.
Miss Curtis wasn't sitting apprehensively waiting for outbursts of
bitterness.
Martha had planned to drive Miss Curtis and her mother on Saturday
some distance down the river, and have a picnic. The day was fine
enough, but Miss Curtis found herself extremely tired from her ride
of the day before; besides, as she said, the garden itself was a
picnic for her; she would be content to stay there for months.
Martha had come downstairs that morning dressed for the day, as soon
as Bob had left the house, and had proceeded to the kitchen, where
she had got a tray daintily ready for her guest; and she had carried
it up to her as if she had always been in the habit of preparing
early breakfast for people. Then she had carried an easy chair and
cushions and rugs out almost to the river; and in the sun she had
prepared a sleeping-place for their morning, where they could all
three watch the orioles in the apple trees, and Martha could lie
about on the grass, now and then exerting herself to dig up a
dandelion. In the afternoon Miss Curtis, with a book, slept there,
while Martha, putting in the later "glads" with her mother, watched
the untidy head nodding towards rest with obvious satisfaction. When
she woke, after a few minutes, she recalled her duty.
"Really, I ought to 'phone Mrs. Bissel that I'm here," she told
Martha.
But Martha said: "We should worry. You can call her up--next
week--or the next time we're down."
Emily heard that with satisfaction. She had known all the day that
Martha avoided even the front garden, where the neighbors would the
more surely learn of her return. It was lucky, the way everyone
happened to be too busy to "run in" that Saturday or Sunday.
When the unworthy red car drove away on Sunday afternoon, both its
passengers declared it had been a most successful week-end. Emily
understood why Martha could say that truthfully. She had wanted Miss
Curtis to enjoy it, and Miss Curtis had enjoyed it, and that was
enough justification for it. It had been, in a way, a triumph for
the house. Martha had said she never wanted to see it again as long
as she lived, and she had seen it, not unhappily. She had even
acknowledged its dearness, she had stayed in the house with her
father, and she must have seen that when they both tried to, they
could get along without disagreement. She had promised, moreover,
chuckling over her success, to bring Miss Curtis back just as soon as
possible. Miss Curtis had asked her to, cunningly. For Emily had
taken Miss Curtis aside, and begged her, some way, to get Martha out
again soon for a week-end. Martha needed the change so much, Emily
had pleaded. Miss Curtis had agreed to that.
"And she won't leave that work of hers for a day, as you know, unless
she thinks she's doing you a great favor," Emily had insisted.
Miss Curtis was eager to do Mrs. Kenworthy whatever favor she could.
"Only get Martha to bring you down; bring her home some way!" Emily
had pleaded, not adding, "That's more than I can do!"
So for four week-ends the unequal pair arrived. Martha brought all
sorts of treats out for her guest, thick steaks and expensive
chocolates. "I'm not going to have you doing it all, mammie!" she
had answered to Emily's protests. She was always in the kitchen now,
helping Maggie. Emily understood that the kitchen was the part of
the house least tainted by memories. She was still rising to take
breakfast up to Miss Curtis. Emily scarcely ever got her to stay
late in bed, although she was herself distressingly thin and yellow.
From Sunday till Friday Emily spent every free moment thinking over
all that her daughter had said, all the expressions of her face; all
the gestures of her significant little hands. It had been
impossible, of course, for Martha to avoid her old friends
altogether. She received them patiently, gravely. "That poor old
thing's got to have these days in the country," her manner seemed to
her mother to say, "so I just have to put up with these silly,
giggling girls for her sake." She felt separated from them by a
great distance; she got on better with people of Miss Curtis's age,
even with Mrs. Benton. That neighbor was showing Martha unusual
attention. Emily couldn't help wondering if Mrs. Benton was coming
to wish Martha would marry her boy. Why should she have made a point
of showing Martha's guest such kindness? She had a little lunch in
her honor. Emily marveled to see how Martha seemed to belong to that
tableful of women in their forties. Mrs. Benton wanted Miss Curtis
to come out for the annual opening of the beach. She suggested that
Martha take a class of little girls who wanted to learn dancing
during the summer.
At that suggestion Martha announced flatly that she wasn't going to
be home for the summer. She had decided to go on studying during the
summer quarter. "I lost such a lot of time last winter, when I
wasn't well, that I've got to make it up," she announced, seriously,
looking straight and frankly at Mrs. Benton.
This zeal for education led Cora Benton to say later to Emily, "You
ought to be thankful Martha wants to study all summer." And she gave
such a sigh that Emily said, quietly:
"What's the news from Johnnie? When's he to be home?"
"He's flunked. He isn't going to get his degree. He's not coming
home!"
"Oh, Cora, that's too bad!"
"Oh, I was prepared for it. Charles Fenton got a traveling
scholarship. I wish you'd spread the news, Emily. I don't enjoy
announcing it, especially."
"Oh, well, Cora."
"I knew you'd say that."
"What else can I say?" retorted Emily.
"I know it. There isn't anything to be said; but people will find
enough to talk about, you know that."
"Has he got a job?"
"Yes; that is--a sort of a job." Her voice forbade even friendly
inquiry.
Martha said, when Emily told her of it, "I bet he's gone into the
movies."
Emily was annoyed by her cynical comment.
"Why should you think Johnnie's gone into the movies!"
"Well, it would be just like him; and he's got such lovely ears.
People who can move their ears the way he can never have nice ones,
really. Or else he's playing baseball, or rubbing them down, or
something."
Later Emily ventured timidly to protest against Martha's plan for the
summer. Although in Miss Curtis's quieting presence Martha never
railed, still, when she was with her mother alone, there came forth
at times spurtings of molten resentment and red-hot bitterness
against the nature of things in general, and her nature in
particular, so that Emily was never sure what the effect of her words
might be. On this occasion Martha turned upon her quickly, in a
manner which cried, "Get thee behind me, Satan!"
"I suppose you want me to give up my novel altogether! It's not so
easy as I thought. I've started to do it all over. I didn't even
know what form was, when I began. It's all out of proportion! And
you want me just to loaf. If I don't tell the truth about things,
who's going to, I'd like to know? Do you think I'm going to let all
these idiots that call themselves realists just go on spoofing girls,
and never say a word to them? I'm going to have it all done by
Christmas, and send it to some publisher."
One day the second week of July she called Emily up from Chicago by
'phone. Could she bring Miss Curtis and a little niece down for a
week or two? Could she, indeed! When Emily told Bob about that
'phone message, he looked at her. She thought it pitiful that he
should say with exaggerated eagerness:
"Good! That's fine, Emily."
Emily thought at first sight that Saturday morning, that the child
was quite as commonplace as her aunt. She was inclined to be fat;
she was shy; she had a featureless little soft face, and blue eyes,
and brown bobbed hair and a husky voice; but by noon Emily loved her.
Her disposition evoked admiration. She had a way of going suddenly
to her aunt and kissing her heartily, that was very spontaneous and
endearing. Without warning, as they all sat at the dinner table, she
rose from her place and went and threw her fat arms about Miss
Curtis's neck and gave her a resounding kiss, as though it was the
only thing to do, and then quietly went back to her chair. Bob was
amused by her lack of self-consciousness; and, during dessert, he
acquired quite suddenly an admiration that was all but awe for Miss
Curtis.
She had happened to say that she had never, as a matter of fact, been
so well at the end of a school year.
"But of course I was never so well taken care of in my life." She
was speaking towards Emily. "Never in my life, before, Mrs.
Kenworthy, have I happened to--be living--so that anybody brought my
breakfast to me in bed. That's never happened to me before." It
wasn't a complaint; it was merely a fact, stated impersonally.
Emily knew perfectly what she meant, but she had to ask the question
to enlighten Bob.
"Your colored girl comes early, then, now?" she asked.
"Not the colored girl; this little white girl," she said, indicating
Martha affectionately. "This girl simply bosses me about I don't
dare to get up and get my breakfast, in my own house."