Chapter II: Part I: An Idyll--From the Inside (2)

The porter dropped the bags on the platform beside them, and held out his pink palm. Then he swung up to the step, as the long train began to move. Until the train was out of sight down the curving track, Catherine knew it was useless to start her procession. A fine drizzle filled the air under the shed, and the roofs of the street below them gleamed dull and sordid.

"Spencer, will you take that bag? And Marian, this one----" Catherine pulled Letty up into her arm and with a suitcase dragging at her shoulder, piloted the children toward the stairs. "Daddy may be downstairs. Careful, Marian, on those wet steps."

There he was, at the bottom of the narrow, dark stairs. Catherine's heart gave its customary little jump--always, when she saw Charles again, even after the briefest separation.

Marian clung to his arm, Spencer let himself be hugged, Letty squealed with delight. Catherine looked at him, her eyes bright. He did look well! And he had a new suit, in all this rain!

"Here's a taxi, right here. Jump in. Where are your checks?" he bundled them in and handed the checks to the driver.

"This is a crowded street, Mother, and awful loud!" said Spencer, his nose against the glass.

"I like the big station better," said Marian, adjusting herself with interest on the little folding seat. "Why can't we get out there?"

"This is nearer home, dear."

Daddy sat next to Mother, and the taxi rattled off, spurting slimy mud.

"Hard trip, old girl?" Charles put his arm around Catherine's shoulders.

"Fair." Catherine shone at him softly. "Sort of a job, putting the family to bed on a sleeper. But it's over."

"An awful homely street," muttered Spencer, his face doleful.

"It's got lots of things in it," said Marian, wiggling down from her seat, and thrusting her face against the door. "See the folks and the stores and the street cars."

"It's dirty." Spencer turned from the window and looked darkly at Catherine. "I want to be back home," he said.

Catherine smiled at him. Poor boy! The little quiver of his nostrils was eloquent of nostalgia, of the rude necessity of adjustment.

"Our street isn't like this, Spencer," she assured him. "You will like that better."

"Turned into a country kid, have you?" Charles reached for the boy's arm. "Fine muscle! You'll have to try some handball with me this winter."

Spencer lost his forlornness at once. "In the court? Oh, gee!"

"I've got muscle too, Daddy." Marian bounced across to her father's knees. "Feel me! Can't I play ball with you?"

"Letty play!" wailed Letty.

The taxi jolted to a standstill in the traffic, and Letty was diverted by a large and black mammy descending from the street car close to the cab.

"Girls can't play," said Spencer conclusively.

"They can, too, can't they, Muvver!"

"Your mother agrees with you, Marian," said Charles. "But not on our handball courts, eh, Spencer?"

Catherine flushed at the submerged note in Charles's words.

"Don't you give my daughter an inferiority complex!" she said, lightly.

But Charles went on, the note rising to the surface.

"You won't find the house in very good shape. I wasn't expecting you so early."

The glow of the meeting was disappearing under the faint, secret friction. Catherine thought quickly, "He didn't like it--the job, or my coming down. But he isn't admitting it." Aloud she said, "Did Flora desert you?"

"Oh, no. She's there, her mouth larger than ever. I meant the finishing touches."

"We can give those."

"There's Morningside Park!" Spencer's shout was full of delight. "Rocks and trees an' everything!" The taxi had left One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street and was bumping along the side street which bordered the park. The rocks shouldered up gray and wet through brown, worn shrubbery.

"There's where we had the cave," cried Marian. "I remember it."

Up to the Drive, a few blocks south, and just around the corner the taxi halted.

"Here we are!" Out they all scrambled, to stare up at the gray front, tessellated with windows, while Charles maneuvered the luggage. Catherine felt Spencer's cold hand creep into hers; she held it firmly, knowing that he, too, had the sinking depression with which that monotonous dingy structure filled her.

But Sam, the elevator boy, came out, all white grin and shiny eyes, to greet them and carry in the bags. Letty, as of old, clasped her hands over her stomach as the elevator shot up. The key clicked in the lock and the door opened on the familiar long hall. They were home again.

"When we have breakfast," declared Catherine, "we won't feel so much like lost cats!"

Flora, her gold tooth gleaming in her dark face, was loudly and cheerfully glad to see them. Catherine scurried for towels, and left the children scrubbing their hands, while she walked back through the hall with Charles, who had said he must go to his office immediately.

They faced each other in the dim light. Catherine struggled to throw off the constraint which had settled upon her.

"That's a grand suit," she said, laying her hand on his sleeve. "You better take your rain coat."

"It's at the office. I am afraid I can't come in for luncheon. I made this engagement downtown before I knew you were coming to-day."

"That's good." Catherine smiled at him. "Leaves me more time--there are endless things to do."

He looked at her, a curious reserve in his eyes.

"You are really going to do it, take that job?"

"I wrote you----"

"When do you start?"

"Monday. That's why I'm here." She couldn't help that air of defense! "I had to have a few days to shop for the children, and get the house running."

"Hard on them, isn't it?"

"I thought a few days couldn't matter so much to them as to me."

"No." Charles turned the doorknob.

"Charles!" Catherine seized his hand. "Are you--cross?"

"Of course not." He sounded impatient. "But I have to get over to college sometime to-day."

"Have you changed your mind about my trying this?"

"No." He pursed his under lip, hesitatingly. "I didn't know you were going to jump in so immediately. But it's quite all right."

Catherine released his hand, and he pulled open the door. He stood a moment on the threshold, and then wheeled.

"I--I'm glad you're home." Catherine was in his arms, her lips quivering as he kissed her.

"There, run along!" She patted his shoulder, her eyes misty.

* * * * *

But when he had gone, she leaned against the door, brushing hot tears from her lashes. She could hear the children, their voices raised in jangling. It was going to be hard, harder than she had thought. Bill was right; she would have a double job. She might have more than that, if Charles really carried a secret antagonism to her plan. Perhaps he was only gruffy; perhaps this was only a flicker of his unadmitted dislike of anything which threatened change, anything at least which he had not originated. But she saw, clearly, what she had felt as a possibility, that she had, for a time, his attitude as further weight to carry. That he wouldn't admit his attitude made the weight heavier, if anything. As she went slowly towards the sounds of squabbling, she saw her attempt as a monstrous undertaking, like unknown darkness into which she ventured, fearing at every step some unseen danger; and heaviness pressed down physically upon her.

VII

Breakfast restored the temper of the children, and lifted part of her own heaviness. The day then stretched into long hours. The children couldn't go out into the park, as the drizzle of the morning increased to cold rain. Toward noon Dr. Henrietta telephoned, and Catherine found her voice like a wind blowing into flame her almost smothered intentions. Henrietta was sending over that evening the woman she had mentioned: Miss Kelly. She could come at once, if Catherine liked her. She would have to come by the day, as she had an invalid mother. "We'll run in soon, Catherine, Bill and I. Don't you weaken!"

Lucky Miss Kelly wouldn't want a place to sleep, thought Catherine, as she went about the business of unpacking and reordering the apartment. With New York rents where they were it was all they could do to shelter the family decently. Was it really decent, she wondered, as she laid the piles of Spencer's clothes away in the white dresser, and looked about the little court room where he slept. She went to the window. A hollow square, full of rain and damp odors; windows with drab curtains blowing out into the rain; window sills with milk bottles, paper bags--the signs of poor students, struggling to wrest education out of the jaws of hunger! And yet, when she and Charles had found this apartment, they had thought it fine. A large, wide, airy court; none of your air shafts. She glanced up where the roof lines cut angles against the sodden sky. Spencer did watch the stars there, on clear nights. She picked up the laundry bag, stuffed with soiled clothes, and left the room. Marian's room was next, a little larger. She had planned to have Letty's bed moved in there this fall, opposite Marian's. Flora was on her knees, her yellowed silk blouse dangling from her tight belt, as her arm rotated the mop over the floor.

"Had a pleasant summer, Flora?" asked Catherine, as she opened Marian's bag.

"Land, yes, Mis' Hammond." Flora whisked her cloth. "I'm gonna get married to a puhfessional man. He's been showing me tenshions all summer. He ain't committed hisself till last week."

"You are!" Catherine looked at her in dismay. "When?"

"Oh, I ain't gonna give up my work, Mis' Hammond. Not till I sees how he pans out. I tried that once, and my las' husband, he couldn't maintain me as I was accustomed to be. So I says to my intended, I'll get married to you for pleasure, but I keeps my job. He don't care."

Catherine laughed. She knew that Flora had made earlier experiments in marriage, once to the extent of going back to Porto Rico. But she had, through all her changes of name, kept her good humor, her cleverness, and her apparent devotion to Catherine.

She rose swiftly from her knees, her long string of green beads clinking against her pail of water.

"I believes in keeping men in his place," she said, with an expanding grin. "If you don't, they keeps you in yours."

Catherine, adding the pile of Marian's dirty clothes to the jammed laundry bag, laughed again.

"I suppose so," she said. "What am I going to do with all this laundry! You'd think we hadn't washed all summer, the way things pile up."

"I'll take that right home to-night, Mis' Hammond. My sister can do it for you. My gentleman friend is stopping by for me in his car."

Catherine smoothed the cretonne scarf on the dressing table, adjusted the bright curtains, moved the little wicker chair to make room for Letty's bed, and with a grimace at the glimpse of the court even through the curtains, went on to the living room. Letty was asleep in Catherine's room. Spencer and Marian had scorned her hint that a nap might be good for them, and were sitting disconsolately in chairs drawn near the windows. Here, at least, was something beside too intimate suggestion of neighboring lives, even if the rain held it to-day in somber dullness. Beneath the windows the tops of trees pricked through the mist, as if one looked down into a forest; they were only the poplars and Balm of Gilead that grew on the steep slope of Morningside, but as Spencer had said, they were _trees_. And beyond them, extending far off into the dim gray horizon, the city--flat roofs, with strange shapes of chimneys, water tanks, or elevator sheds, merged to-day into dark solidity. On clear days, there was a hint of water in the distance, and the balanced curve of a great bridge. After all, thought Catherine, there was air in the bedrooms--you couldn't expect birch trees and stars in the city--and they did have distance and sometimes the enchantment of the varying city from these windows. But it was queer--she smiled as Spencer eyed her over his book--queer that beauty, sunlight, air, should be things for which you paid money; that you had to think yourself fortunate if you could afford one window which did not open upon sordidness.

"Moth-er, do you think I'd get too wet if I just went outdoors for five minutes?" Spencer was dolorous. "My throat is all stuffed up, and I'll lose my muscle, just sitting still."

"No fun going out here," grumped Marian.

"In a little while I am going out shopping for dinner. Would you like to go?"

VIII

In raincoats and rubbers, each with a bobbing umbrella, Catherine sighing at the lost summer comfort of knickerbockers and boots, the three went out into the rain. The children sparkled as if they had escaped from jail. Spencer peered from under his umbrella at the heavy sky.

"Mebbe when the tide turns the wind'll change," he said.

"Huh!" Marian giggled. "In the city? That's only in the country."

"I guess there is wind in town, too, and tides, aren't there, Moth-er?"

"Wind, all right!" The gust at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue caught their umbrellas like chips. They ducked into the wet wind, rounded the corner, and bent against it down the avenue.

"Isn't there any tide?" insisted Spencer.

"Yes, of course," Catherine answered, absently. Too far such a day, she supposed, to go down to her old market. That restaurant had changed hands again; a man behind the large window was even then drawing outlines for new gilt letters. The same hairdresser, the same idle manicure girl, intent on her own fingers, the drug store. They crossed the street, their feet wobbling over the cobblestones, slipping through the guttered water. There they were, at the market.

"Where's the kitty?" demanded Marian, her eyes bright in her rose-tanned face.

"Kitty?" Catherine weighed the oranges in her fingers, and looked about for a clerk.

"Why, yes, Muvver. That little gray kitty----"

"He'd probably be grown into an old gray alley cat by this time."

Catherine frowned a little over her list. She should have come out earlier; everything looked wilted, picked over. Vitamins, calories, and the budget. The old dreary business of managing decently, reasonably. The country and a garden of your own did spoil you for these dejected pyramids.

"There's another thing," she thought, as she watched the clerk hunt for a satisfying head of lettuce, stripping off brownish, slimy leaves. "When can I market, if I am downtown at nine? Perhaps this Miss Kelly can do it, with Letty, as I always have done." A swift picture of Letty in her go-cart, herself with the basket hanging from the handle. Marketing had been her most intellectual pursuit.

Back to the meat counter, with its rows of purplish fowls, their feathered heads languishing on their trussed wings, and the butcher, wiping his hands on the apron spotted and taut over his paunch.

Marian, her eyes round and black, watched him sharpen his knife, while Spencer lingered near the door. Spencer didn't, as he said, like dead things. Neither did Catherine, shivering as the butcher shoved aside the quivering lump of purplish-black liver. Queer, the forms that the demands of ordinary living took; forms you never dreamed of, when you entered living.

"We should have brought two baskets!" Catherine looked at the bundles.

"Send 'em over, lady?"

"It's so late."

"I can carry some, Moth-er." Spencer came back from his post at the door.

Marian had the bag of oranges under her arm, Spencer the basket, Catherine a huge bag of varied contents. A scramble at the door to open the three umbrellas, and they started up the street, the wind gusty at their heels.

"Be careful crossing the street," warned Catherine. Marian, darting ahead, reached the curb, slipped, and sat down plump in a puddle, the oranges rolling off, bright spots on the wet cobblestones. Marian, dismayed, sat still, her mouth puckered.

Catherine pulled her to her feet with a hand abrupt, almost harsh. The throbbing behind her temples which had begun the day before, in the steady drive of closing the house and getting off, had increased to a heavy drum. "Pick them up," she said. "Don't stand there like a ninny!"

Spencer's grin faded at the tone of her voice, and her flare of weary temper subsided as she watched them scurry after the fruit. They stowed the oranges into pockets, and corners of the basket.

Finally they were home again. Flora's loud "Glory, glory, halleleuia," swept down the hall as they opened the door, and Letty's accompaniment.

"She's found my drum!" Spencer fled to the kitchen, and a wail followed as Letty was reft of her instrument.

Catherine pressed her lips firmly together as she hung her dripping coat on the rack. "Steady," she said. "They are as tired as I am." Then she thought: that's the great trouble with being a mother. You never get away for a chance to sulk and indulge your bad temper.

Charles came in, with his blandest air of preoccupation. Flora had prepared the dinner, and then gone home when her gentleman friend called for her, to cook her own evening meal, leaving Catherine to broil the steak and set things on the table. Since Letty had slept so long, she was permitted to sit in her high-chair during dinner, where she conducted an insuppressible and very little intelligible conversation.

"She certainly needs training," declared Charles.

"She isn't often on hand for dinner," said Catherine, wearily.

Spencer and Marian cleared away the table, while Catherine bathed Letty, deafening herself to the crash which came from the kitchen. What had Marian dropped this time?

Then she heard them, chattering away to their father, with the occasional interruption of Charles's deep laugh. She hung away Letty's towels and garments, and let the water run for Marian's bath. Wasn't that Kelly person coming in? Would she, Catherine wondered, give the children their baths? Could she let anyone else do that? Those slender, rounded bodies, firm, ineffably young and sweet, changing so subtly from the soft baby curves of Letty into young strength. Oh, at every second there waited for her some coil of sentiment, of devotion, to hold her there, solid, unmoving, in the round of the past few years.

She was too tired to-night to think straight. She called Marian from the door, and was answered by a demonstrating wail.

"Not yet, Muvver. I have to see my Daddy."

But at last both she and Spencer were bathed and in bed. As Catherine turned out Spencer's light, she heard the doorbell.

"Who is it, Moth-er?" Spencer's head came up from his pillow.

"I don't know, son. But you go to sleep."

"Mother--" His voice was low, half ashamed. "Mother, what makes me ache in here?"

"Where?" Catherine hung over his bed. He drew her hand to his chest.

"When I think about my porch--an' everything."

"You better think about something here, Spencer." Catherine's words were tender. "Something you like here. That will cure your ache."

"But I can't think up anything to think about! You tell me something nice----"

"'F you talk to Spencer, you'd ought to talk to me, too," came Marian's sleepy protest from the adjoining room.

"Sh-h! You'll wake Letty." Catherine's mind moved numbly over Spencer's city likes. "Spencer, you might think about Walter Thomas. You can see him soon----"

"Well." Spencer sounded very doubtful. But Charles called her, and Catherine said good night to him and to Marian.

It was Miss Kelly who had rung. Catherine sat down in the living room, brushing her hair away from her face, to which weariness had given a creamy pallor under the summer tan, and wished furiously that she was not so tired, that she could see into this rather plump, sandy, stubby person who sat opposite her, with calm, light blue eyes meeting her gaze. She looked efficient, if not imaginative. Well, the children had imagination enough, and if Henrietta thought Miss Kelly would do, surely she would. Charles had retired into his study. Miss Kelly folded her plump hands in her lap and looked down at her round, sensible shoes as Catherine spoke of Dr. Gilbert's high recommendation.

She couldn't come before Monday. She liked nursing better, but the hours were so uncertain, and her mother needed her. Yes, she had cared for children before. She had always, for several years, had twenty-five dollars a week, when she lived in her own home.

H-m, thought Catherine, that will make one large dent in my wages! But I must have someone, and I can't fill my place for nothing. So Monday morning, about eight. Too bad the children were in bed, but then on Monday Miss Kelly could see them.

When Catherine had closed the door on the last descending glimpse of Miss Kelly's round face behind the elevator grill, she hurried back to the study. Charles looked up from his book.

"Did you like her, Charles? You do think she looks capable?"

"She has an air of honest worth." Charles laid aside his book. "Did you hire her?"

Catherine nodded.

"I shouldn't care to have you supplanted by that face, if I were Letty--or Spencer--or----"

Catherine moved around to the desk to the side of his chair, her fingers twisting together in a nervous little gesture.

"She looks sensible and good natured, and Henrietta says she is fine. I've got to try someone."

"I suppose you must."

Catherine, balancing on the edge of the desk, looked steadily at her husband. He was holding his thoughts away from her, out of his eyes.

"It's mostly Letty, of course," she said. "The others will be in school." She sighed. "She can come Monday, the day I start."

Then they were silent. Charles rubbed his thumb along the edge of his book, and Catherine watched him, her gray eyes heavy.

No use talking about it to-night, when she was so tired. She pushed the affair away.

"Poor Spencer is homesick for Maine," she said. "He wanted to know why he ached----"

"He needs to get out with boys more," said Charles sharply. "He's too notional for a boy his age."

Catherine felt a quick flicker of heat under her eyelids. Charles had said that before this summer.

"I want him to be a man," he continued, "not a sentimental little fool."

"I think you needn't worry about that." Catherine was icy. Then suddenly she slipped forward to the arm of his chair, her head down on his shoulder, one hand up to his cheek. "Good Lord, I'm tired! Don't talk about anything, or I'll fight!"

Charles pulled her down into his lap and held her close.

"That's more like it." His mouth was close to her ear. "Sitting off and staring at me! Silly old girl----"

Catherine laughed, just a weak flutter of sound.

"Call me names! But hug me, tighter!" She laughed again. Words, she thought--you can't get a person with words. They stand between you like a wall.

"You'd better go to bed. You feel limp as a dead leaf."

"Yes." She stretched comfortably. "In a minute----"

IX

Catherine sat at one of the living room windows, the floor about her chair littered with packages, the result of her shopping for the children. She unwrapped them methodically, clipped a name from the rolls of tape in her basket, and sewed the label in place. Spencer Hammond; Marian Hammond; Letitia Hammond. She was thankful that none of them had a longer name! After three gloomy days the sun shone again, pricking out spots of red in the roofs of the distance, falling in splotches of brilliance on the white stuff Catherine handled. The children were playing in the dining room, where the east windows admitted the broad shafts of sunlight. Poor kids! They had begged her to go outdoors with them, but her mother had telephoned that she was coming in.

Catherine had not known she was in town. She had been visiting her son in Wisconsin, George Spencer. Catherine had seen little of that brother since her own departure for college; he had married and gone west, sending back, at astonishingly frequent intervals, photographs of his increasing family. Mrs. Spencer visited him at least once each year, returning always with delighted accounts of the children, of George's business, of his wife.

Catherine folded the striped pajamas and laid them on the pile at her right. Her thoughts drifted around her mother and the small apartment in the Fifties where she kept house for Margaret, the youngest of the family. Letty came in a little rush toward her.

"Letty draw." She spread the paper on Catherine's knee. "For Gram." Her yellow head bent over it intently.

"What is it, Letty?" Catherine laid a finger softly on the little hollow just at the base of Letty's neck, an adorable hollow with a twist of pale hair above it.

"She says it's a picture of her fishing," called Marian. "Catching cunners. But I'm painting a good picture of our house for Grandma----"

"Letty paint?" Letty looked up, her eyes crinkled.

"Grandma will like a drawing just as well." Catherine picked up a set of rompers. "Mother's going to sew your name right on the band." Letty watched a moment and then trudged back to her corner on the dining room floor.

What would her mother think when Catherine told her of her plan? Catherine's hands dropped into her lap. She wouldn't say much. She never did. But that little crinkle of Letty's eyes was like hers! You saw her laughing at you. Since her own marriage Catherine had wondered about her mother, and the last few months, while she had struggled with her moods and desires, she had found that the admiration she had always felt had gathered a tinge of curiosity, or speculative wonder. How had her mother attained the lively serenity, the animated poise, the quiet, humorous tranquillity with which she bore herself? Catherine remembered her father only as a somewhat irritable invalid; the accident which had injured him and finally killed him had happened when she was young, and Margaret a mere baby. And yet, somehow, her mother had seemed to keep a whimsical invulnerability. She had sent them all to college, however she had managed even before the cost of living gained its ominous present-day sound. Only for the last few years, since Margaret, the last of them, had grown into a youthfully serious welfare worker, had Mrs. Spencer's income been adequate to the uses for it. And yet--Astonishing adjustment, thought Catherine. As if she had found what she most wanted in life. As if things outside herself couldn't scratch her skin.

There was a scramble of children to the door at the ring of the bell, and Catherine rose, her work sliding to the floor. They loved her, the children. Was that the answer to her curiosity? That her mother was essentially maternal? Catherine smiled as the delighted shouts of greeting moved down the hall toward her. No, that wasn't the answer. They had never felt, Catherine, or George, or Margaret, that they were the core of her life; what was?

"Cathy, dear!" How pretty she was, thought Catherine, as she bent to kiss her. A moment of encounter while she gazed at her; always Catherine had to pause that moment to regather all the outward details which during absence merged into her feeling of the person as a whole. She hadn't remembered how dark the blue of her mother's eyes was. Or was it only the small blue hat with the liberty scarf, and the new blue cape?

"How smart you look!" she said. "And a new dress, too!"

Mrs. Spencer slipped off her cape with a little twirl. "Paris model, reduced." She handed the cape to Spencer.

"It's pretty, Grandma." Marian touched the blue silk. "Little beads all over the front."

"You certainly look well!" Mrs. Spencer settled herself in a rocker, unpinned her veil, let Marian take her hat, and upon insistence from Letty, allowed her to hold the silk handbag. "Now please put my things all together, won't you?" She ran her fingers through her soft gray hair. Catherine watched her with tender eyes. Something valiant about those small hands, white and soft, with enlarged knuckles and fingers a little crooked, marked by hard earlier years.

Not until after luncheon did Catherine talk with her mother. The children had to show her their pictures; Charles came in, and Mrs. Spencer wanted to know about his new work; dinner had to be planned. Finally Letty was stowed away for her nap, and Spencer and Marian, with the promise of a walk when she woke, went off to read.

"I'll help you with that sewing." Mrs. Spencer threaded her needle. "You've done your shopping in a lump, haven't you? I thought you usually made some of these things."

"I won't have time this year."

Catherine was half afraid to tell her. Her proposition sounded absurd, as if she heard it through her mother's ears. But Mrs. Spencer listened quietly.

"That's what Charles meant, then," she said.

"He spoke of it?" Catherine looked up.

"He asked if I had heard how modern you had suddenly become."

Catherine snapped her thread. She wondered why she had felt this desperate need to make her mother approve of her scheme, and Charles, too. Wouldn't approval come after she had carried it through, if she could?

"Do you think me foolish--or wicked?"

Mrs. Spencer patted the tape into place on the blouse she held.

"Not at all, Cathy," she said.

"But you don't think I ought to do it?"

"That is for you to decide. You say you have found a nurse?"

"Yes."

"Did Dr. Henrietta Gilbert suggest this to you?"

Catherine's head came up at that, but her irritation scurried off into amusement; her mother looked so guileless, stitching with busy fingers.

"You don't see, then, that I can't help it? That I must try something? Oh, Mother, I've thought and thought----"

"Yes, that's just it. You think too much. You always thought, Cathy. That's why I was relieved when you met Charles. You didn't think much for a while, at least, and I hoped"--Mrs. Spencer was looking at her, her head on one side, her eyes bright, her mouth turning up in a funny little smile--"I hoped your thinking days were over. But it's in the air so. Women seem to take pride in being restless, unhappy. We were taught to consider that a sin."

"Is that why you're so nice?"

"No." Mrs. Spencer smiled. "Maybe my children were smarter than yours. I didn't find them such bad company."

"Oh, that's not it!" Catherine cried out. Then she laughed. "Mother, you're outrageous. You're making fun of me, just as if----"

"As if you wanted to be a missionary again."

"But I was only a child then. That was amusing."

"Yes. You didn't think so, then." Mrs. Spencer folded the blouse neatly. "Hasn't Spencer grown tall! I see you're buying eleven-year-old clothes for him."

"Well"--Catherine's mouth was stubborn--"I'll just have to show you! And Charles, too. He thinks it's a whim, I know."

"He hasn't objected?"

"Oh, no. Not in words. He wouldn't."

"Poor Charles. These modern women in your own home!" Mrs. Spencer's eyes crinkled almost shut. "Do you know why I came back early? Your sister Margaret has a modern turn, too."

"But she's not in town yet."

"No. She wrote, asking if I wouldn't like to stay with George this winter."

"Why?"

"I suppose she thinks a mother is a sort of nuisance. She wants to set up housekeeping with her friend."

"The little wretch!"

"Not exactly. But I did want that apartment myself, as I am fond of it. I think I'll take a roomer."

"Mother!" Catherine stared at her.

"She's been reading something a German wrote. What is his name? Freud. She's been thinking, too, I am afraid."

Catherine was silent; she recognized her instinctive protest as a flourish of habit, of righteousness for someone else. After all----

"She needn't be so apologetic," said Mrs. Spencer deliberately. "If she doesn't need me, I shall be glad to find someone nearer my own age."

Letty's deep voice announced her awakening. Mrs. Spencer decided to walk over to Riverside with Catherine and the children, as she could go on downtown from there by bus. After several minutes of agitated preparation, a frantic search for roller skates, they were in the hall, Letty rolling noisily along on her wooden "Go-Duck," her busy legs waving like plump antennæ. Catherine held the strap of Marian's skates firmly; Marian was all for skating right down the hall. Then, just as the elevator came, Catherine remembered that she hadn't paid Flora for the week.

Flora's gold tooth flashed as Catherine handed her the money.

"I certainly is obliged," she said. "My frien' and I, we're going on the Hudson River boat to-morrow, and I suspicions he's short of cash."

"You'll be in early on Monday, Flora? Miss Kelly is coming, and she'll need you to show her about things."

"Sakes, yes. You can go about your business, Mis' Hammond, with a light soul."

Flora was delighted at this venture of Catherine's. Catherine thought, a little grimly, as she hurried after the family, that Flora was the only one in the house who was pleased. It's her dramatic sense, she speculated, waiting for the elevator. I wish I had more of it myself, and Charles, too.

The sharp blue clarity of the air was like a sudden check rein, pulling Catherine's head up from doubtful thoughts. As they waited at Amsterdam Avenue for the car to rumble past, she glanced up the street; in the foreground the few blocks of sharp descent, and then the steady climb for miles, off to the distance where street and marginal buildings seemed as blue as the sky. It was like a mountain, with blue-gray shadows across the canyon of the street, and jagged cliffs of buildings merging into solid rock up the slope. She reached for the head of Letty's red duck. "You better walk across the street, Letty."

"No! Ducky go!" and bumping over the cobblestones it went, propelled vigorously, while Spencer and Marian stumbled along on their skates.

The walk through the half block of park behind the University buildings was smooth sailing. Catherine and her mother followed the children. "Wait for us at the gate!" warned Catherine.

At last they were across the Drive and safe on the lower walk of the park.

"Here's my old bench." Catherine sat down with her mother. "I can see clear to those steps from here."

Spencer was off with a whoop, his figure balancing surely as he sped. Marian chased him, a determined erectness in her body. Letty paddled after them, chanting loudly to her duck.

"When school opens," Catherine sighed, "they'll have some exercise, poor chickens. City life isn't easy for them."

"It's no place for children." Mrs. Spencer watched a passing group, a beruffled little girl yanking fretfully at the hand of her nurse, a small, fat boy howling in tearless monotony. "Not even a yard."

"We talked about a suburb last year. But Charles hates the idea of commuting, and he is so busy with his additional work that he'd never be home at all."

"Won't you miss these little expeditions with your children?"

Catherine looked hastily at her mother. But the bright blue eyes were apparently intent on a tug steaming along the river. The tide was running swiftly down, swirling off into the quiet water near shore bits of refuse, boxes, sticks, which caught the sun in dazzling sham before they drifted into ugly lack of movement.

"They don't need me when they are playing here," said Catherine. "Anyone would do, just to watch them."

"I wonder," said her mother. "I see some of these nurses do outlandish things."

"Miss Kelly looks intelligent and kind." Again stubbornness in Catherine's mouth, in her lowered eyelids. "And I might as well admit, I'm reaching the place where I won't be either of those things. You'd be ashamed of your daughter if you knew how peevish she can get!"

"Catherine, dear"--Mrs. Spencer laid her hand softly on Catherine's--"you know I don't mean to interfere. But are you sure you haven't just caught the general unrest, in the air and everywhere?"

"Where did it come from?" The children were coasting toward them, down the little hill. "Why do I feel it?"

"Oh, the war, no doubt."

"The war! Blame that for my hatred of this dreadful monotony, my lack of self-respect, my--my grubby, dingy, hopeless feeling!"

"I can see you have your mind made up." Mrs. Spencer caught Marian as she tumbled, laughing, against the seat.

"I beat Spencer back!"

"Come on and I'll beat up the hill!" Spencer wiggled to a standstill.

A wail went up. Letty and her duck were upside down, a jumble of legs and red wheels. Spencer clattered away to rescue her, Marian after him.

Mrs. Spencer began with a little chuckle a story of George's two youngest children. Catherine relaxed, content to leave her own problem. Her mother had said all she meant to say. The sun dropped lower and lower, until it seemed to catch on the sharp margin of the New Jersey shore and hang there, red, for long minutes. The tide had slackened and the water caught a metallic white luster. The park was almost deserted now. Finally Catherine called the children. They came; she smiled at their scarlet cheeks and clear eyes, their smudged hands and knees.

"Home now, and dinner."

"See the gold windows!" Spencer pointed to the massed gray buildings above the park.

"That's the sun," explained Marian, panting up the steps.

They waited with Grandmother until a bus lumbered to a halt, and they could wave her off down the Drive.

X

Charles came into the hall as they entered, clattering skates and duck.

"Hello!" He pinched Letty's cheek. "Where you been?" He moved close to Catherine and continued, in a confidential undertone, "I thought you'd be here. I brought Miss Partridge in. Don't you want her to stay to dinner?"

Catherine, with a swift glance at the disheveled group, and a swifter consideration of food--what had she told Flora to prepare?--shrugged.

"Of course," she said. She concealed a secret grin at the relief which ran over Charles's nonchalance. In the old days--how long ago!--one of her most sacred lares had been just that, that Charles should feel free as air about bringing any one in at any time. What was home for? But with three children, perhaps she burned less incense at that altar. She was moving toward the door of the living room as she thought.

"Here's my wife and family, Miss Partridge."

"I am glad you waited for us." Catherine disengaged herself from Letty's fingers and went to meet the woman who was rising from the window. "I have wished to meet you." Catherine smiled as she spoke; her smile touched her face with a subtle irradiance, charming, completely personal. She's younger than I had supposed, Catherine was thinking, and quite different.

"Dr. Hammond urged me to wait." Her voice was clear and hard, like a highly polished instrument. Her manner was as cool and detached as the long white hand she extended. "And this is the family?"

"Letitia, Marian, and Spencer," announced Charles. Catherine watched them make their decorous greetings with a little flicker of pride. Sometimes Marian had ridiculous fits of shyness and wouldn't curtsey. "You'll have to test them, Miss Partridge," Charles went on. "See if my paternal bias misled me in my tests. Their I.Q.'s seem satisfactory."

"Of course they would!" Miss Partridge's smile lifted her short upper lip from a row of even teeth so shining that they looked transparent. "Such a handful must keep you busy, Mrs. Hammond. You've just come in from the country, haven't you?"

"Good Lord!" thought Catherine. "I'm to be treated like an adoring mother." Her level glance met the dark brown eyes for an instant; she felt a queer clatter, as if she had struck metal. Aloud she said, "Won't you have dinner with us, Miss Partridge? I should enjoy hearing your side of all these new schemes."

"That's it." Charles was hearty, insistent. "Let me take your wraps."

Elegant, slim, in soft taupe tailor-made, close-fitting velour hat. She gets herself up well; Catherine was aware suddenly of her own appearance in rough tweed coat and last year's hat with its bow of ribbon rather wilted. Not so hasty, she warned herself; look out, or you'll have a rooted dislike out of this feeling. Queer, how some women heighten their femininity by tailored clothes. Miss Partridge, without a demur, had stripped off her jacket and removed her hat. Her blouse of dull gleaming silk fitted closely about her throat, her dark hair was wound in a heavy braid about her smooth, small head; lovely skin, with a pale luster. Catherine noted in a flash the heavy jade cuff links, the small bar of jade that fastened the collar, the chain of dull silver and jade which looped into the belt. She's the sort that affects the masculine for more subtle results, was the swift conclusion, as she ushered the children out of the room.

It was a nuisance, having a maid who couldn't stay to serve dinner. But in other ways Flora couldn't be touched, and they did like not having to house her. Catherine heard the tone of that clear, hard voice as she moved from bathroom to kitchen, lighting the gas under the vegetables, supervising Letty's supper and bath. Is she brilliant, or shrewd, she wondered, as she directed Spencer in his grave attempt to lay another place at the table. She is young to have achieved her reputation. Has she one, or has she made Charles think she has? Don't be a cat!

At last Letty was in bed, the children were clean, the chops were broiled, the corn steamed on the platter, and with a last glance at the table, Catherine went to the living room door.

"Dinner is ready," she said. "We have a maid by the day, who goes home at six," she explained, and then stopped. She wouldn't apologize!

As they seated themselves, Letty's shout broke across the hall.

"Lady kiss duck! Lady kiss Ducky goo' ni'."

"Spencer, please tell Letty we are at dinner."

But Letty's shout gained energy.

"That's one of her rites," said Charles. "Miss Partridge might as well be initiated at once. Come along!"

Catherine laughed at Marian's distressed face.

"Muvver, isn't Letty _awful_! A strange lady----"

Charles and Miss Partridge were back, and Marian sank into embarrassed silence.

"Isn't she an amusing baby, Mrs. Hammond!" Miss Partridge unfolded her napkin with a lazy gesture; her smile disclosed her teeth, without touching her large dark eyes.

"She's the most stubborn one of the family," said Charles.

It was difficult to play a continuous part in the conversation when you had to leave half your mind free for food and drink, thought Catherine, as dinner moved along under her guidance. She didn't, she discovered, know half that Charles had been doing all summer. Miss Partridge had assisted in the summer-school work, to begin with. Time for salad, now. Spencer helped clear the first course away, breathing heavily as he pondered over his movements with the plates and silver. Catherine brought in the huge green bowl, filled with crisp, curling leaves, and Spencer followed with the plates of cheese and crackers. As Catherine poured the dressing over the leaves and stirred them, her hands moving with slow grace, she picked up the threads of the talk. Miss Partridge thought a family must be illuminating; you could watch instincts unfold. And Charles--"I tried Spencer, to see if he had that prehistoric monkey grip, and Catherine thought I was endangering his life. But you're so busy keeping them fed and happy that you haven't time to experiment."

When dinner was over, Catherine stood in the living room door.

"If I may be excused for a few minutes," she said.

"Is it dishes, Mrs. Hammond?" Miss Partridge turned from the window, where Charles had been pointing out the view. "I'm not a bit domestic, but I think I could wipe them."

"Oh, no, thank you." Catherine smiled. "Just the children."

They were in Spencer's room, arguing in low tones about which chair Marian was to have. Catherine adjusted the reading lamp, suggested that Spencer curl up on the end of his bed. "Now you may read for a whole hour," she said. "Then Marian must bathe. If you will call me, I'll rub your back for you." She started toward the door. "You will be quiet, won't you," she asked, "since we have a guest?"

"Of course, Muvver," said Marian. "Isn't she a handsome lady?"

"No, she isn't," said Spencer, loudly.

"Remember Letty's asleep just next door."

Catherine stopped outside their closed door. They were quiet, dropping at once into their stories. Good children. She brushed her hair from her forehead with an impatient hand. "I feel like--like a nonentity!" she raged. "Almost as if I were invisible. Not there to be even looked at. Perhaps I am jealous, but it doesn't feel like that. She's not the vamp type. Too smooth and egoistic. It's what Charles can do for her, not Charles that she is after. O, well----"

But before she had returned to the living room the bell rang. Henrietta and Bill!

Catherine held out her hands, one to each, and drew them into the hall.

"You dears!" she cried. "I am glad to see you. Come in."

She stepped back into visibility with their entrance. Henrietta had met Miss Partridge at Bellevue one day. William bowed with his usual courtly silence.

"Did you like Miss Kelly?" demanded Henrietta, as she settled into the wing chair before Miss Partridge had it again. "She came in, didn't she?"

"She's coming Monday."

"Is Monday the great day?" Bill was looking at her, and Catherine smiled swiftly at the warm, quiet friendliness of his eyes.

"Monday!" she declared. "I telephoned Dr. Roberts this morning."

"Isn't it fine, Miss Partridge"--Henrietta turned briskly to her--"this move of Mrs. Hammond's."

"I haven't heard about it." Miss Partridge's dark, smooth brows lifted.

Did Charles look uneasy, almost guilty, as he stretched out in his armchair and fumbled in the box of cigars?

"You haven't?" Henrietta grinned slyly at Catherine. "Haven't you heard that Mrs. Hammond is renouncing the quiet, domestic life for a real job?"

"Why not say exchanging jobs?" Charles was intent on the end of his cigar.

"Or annexing a second job?" That was Bill's quiet voice.

"I am going to work at the Lynch Bureau," explained Catherine, "as investigator." She felt a flash of delight in the astonishment which rippled briefly over Miss Partridge's smooth face. Knocked down her first impression, she thought maliciously.

"Really? How interesting!" Miss Partridge smiled. "But what will your sweet children do?"

"They'll go to school and have an efficient nurse," said Henrietta abruptly, "and they'll be vastly better off when they aren't having the sole attention of an intelligent woman like their mother. And that's that!" She dangled her glasses over her forefinger. "Did you decide that girl was malingering, Miss Partridge? She certainly had no physical symptoms. Just a case we ran into the other day," she added, to Catherine.

Charles, in answer to a query from Bill, had started a long and eager explanation of an industrial test he had been working up.

Catherine noticed that even as Miss Partridge answered Henrietta's question, her eyes had turned to Charles and Bill. "Is your husband a doctor, too?" she finished.

"Heavens, no! Bill couldn't be anything so personal as a doctor." Henrietta laughed. "Could he, Catherine? He's an engineer."

And presently, maneuvering cleverly, Miss Partridge was talking industrial tests with Charles, while Bill, puffing on his old pipe, let his half-shut eyes rest on her face, and then move across to Catherine. Was he smiling?

Marian's call came just then, and Catherine rose.

"May I come along, Catherine? I haven't seen the kids since that night in Maine." Henrietta stopped at Spencer's door, and as Catherine draped Marian's slim body in the huge bath towel, she heard Spencer's eager voice and Dr. Henrietta's bluff tone. Marian, her face rosy and her dark hair rumpled, threw herself into Henrietta's arms. "Hello, my Doctor!" she cried.

They had a moment in the hall, when Henrietta looked firmly into Catherine's eyes.

"You stop your worrying," she said. "You won't swing your job unless you are clear of doubts. Brace up!" Her hand clasped Catherine's. "If I can help you any way, be sure you let me know."

"Oh, you are a brick!" Catherine's fingers were convulsive. "I do need you!"

The three in the living room looked up at their entrance.

"Spencer sent you his regards, Bill. He wished me to tell you that he thought the cows recovered from the alarm your car caused them."

Bill removed his pipe, a slow smile on his gaunt face.

"What cows?" demanded Charles.

"Ghost cows, Charles. Not in your lexicon. But we felt them in that old barn, behind those stanchions."

When they had gone, Charles followed Catherine into the dining room, gathered a handful of coffee cups, and walked after her into the disorderly kitchen.

"What'd you think of her?" he asked, casually.

"Her being the cat?" Catherine grinned at him. She was at ease again, confident, the sense of nonentity gone.

"Oh, Stella Partridge, of course. Fine person, isn't she! No nonsense about her. Mind like a man's."

"Is it?" Catherine stacked the dishes in the sink.

"Has the qualities which are conventionally labeled masculine. Like that better?"

The clatter of the garbage pail cover served for Catherine's answer.

"Bill's a queer duck, now, isn't he?" Charles lolled against the table, his long body making a hazardous oblique angle. "Never can make up my mind whether it's shyness or laziness."

"I don't think it's either of those things, if you mean his lack of loquaciousness."

"Loquaciousness!" Charles threw back his head in a laugh. "That's some word to use about Bill!"

"I suppose I might as well wash these confounded dishes to-night." Catherine turned the faucet and the water splashed into the sink.

"Where's your dusky maiden?"

"To-morrow's Sunday."

"Oh, say, it's too bad I brought a guest in to-night, eh?" Charles waited comfortably for her assurance that it wasn't too bad.

"We'd hate the mess in the morning," was Catherine's dry retort.

Charles was in extraordinary humor, the purring kind, thought Catherine, as her hands moved deftly among the dishes. And I'm not. I feel as if I should like to yell! She bent more swiftly to her task. Charles straightened his long angle and reached for a dish towel. He needn't be magnanimous about wiping dishes! As he rubbed the towel round and round a plate, he began to sing. Somewhere--rub--the sun--rub--is shi-i-ining--rub! And Catherine had, suddenly, a flash of a picture, smarting in her throat. The shabby little flat where they had first lived, before Spencer was born; Charles wiping the dishes, singing, and Catherine singing with him, ridiculous old hymns and sentimental tunes. And always after the occasional guests had gone, the "gossip party," as they labeled it, speculation, analysis, discussion of the people who had gone, friendly, shrewd, amusing, ending when the dish towel was flapped out and the dish-pan stowed under the sink with the ritualistic but none the less thrilling, "There's no one can touch my girl for looks or charm or brains!" and Catherine's, "I'm sorry for everyone else--because they can't have you!"

Charles was echoing that old custom. But he didn't realize it. And Catherine thought, with a stabbing bitterness, "He has this feeling of comfort, not because we are here together, but because the evening has pleased him."

"What do you think is Bill's secret, then?" Charles broke out.

"He's thinking of something else, not of that; he's keeping me off his real center," hurried Catherine's thoughts. "I won't be horrid and cross."

"Isn't it lack of conceit?" She reached for the heavy frying pan. "Most of us have to talk to assert ourselves, to make folks listen to us. Bill hasn't any ego----"

"Oh, he's got one, all right." Charles balanced the pile of dishes precariously near the edge of the table. "Looks more conceited just to sit around with that cryptic expression----"

"I don't think so!" Catherine scrubbed vigorously at the sink. "He never looks critical."

"Couldn't get a harsh word out of you about Bill, could I?" Charles jested a little heavily. "He's always been that way, ever since he was a kid."

"Now when Miss Partridge"--Catherine resisted the impulse to say "your Miss Partridge"--"when she is silent, she looks too superior for words."

"Nonsense! I felt you were misjudging her. Now, she's awake, ready to talk----"

"About herself."

"Meow!" Charles grinned. "Though we did talk a good deal about the work. But, of course, that's only natural."

"She didn't even see me until Henrietta pointed at me and yanked me out of the pigeon-hole where she had me stuck."