Chapter VI: Part III: Blind Alleys (1)

I

Margaret and Catherine were lunching together in a new tea room, a discovery of Margaret's. The Acadian, Acadia being indicated in the potted box at the windows, the imitation fir trees on the bare tables, and the Dresden shepherdess costume of the waitresses.

"It's a relief, after St. Francis every day," said Catherine. "The soup of the working girl grows monotonous."

"Hundreds of places like this." Margaret beckoned to a waitress. "Our coffee, please, and cakes." The shepherdess hurried away. "Isn't she a scream," added Margaret, "with that sharp, gamin face, and those ear muffs, above that dress! Why don't you hunt up new places to eat?"

Catherine glanced about; sleek furs draped over backs of chairs, plump, smug shoulders, careful coiffures, elaborately done faces.

"The home of the idle rich," she said. "I can't afford it. I'm not a kept woman. Fifty cents is my limit, except when I go with you."

"You draw a decent salary." Margaret pulled the collar of her heavy raccoon coat up against a snow-laden draft from the opened door. "What do you spend it for? You haven't bought a single dud. Why, you don't slip off your coat because the lining is patched. Does Charles make you give him your salary envelope?"

Catherine was silent and the shepherdess set the coffee service in front of Margaret.

"Well?" Margaret poured. "I'm curious."

"Only a rich man can afford a self-supporting wife," said Catherine lightly. "I was figuring it up last night. I've got to make at least a hundred a week."

"What for?" insisted Margaret.

"Everything. There's not a bill that isn't larger, in spite of anything that I can do. Food, laundry, clothes. You have no idea how much I was worth! As a labor device, I mean."

"Um." Margaret glinted over her mouthful of cake. "I always thought the invention of wives was a clever stunt."

"They can save money, anyway. I tried doing some of the things evenings, ironing and mending, but I can't."

"I should hope not!"

"Well, then, I have to pay for them. Charles can't. It wouldn't be fair."

"You look as if you were doing housework all night, anyway." Margaret's eyes gleamed with hostility. "Why can't the King take his share? You're as thin as a bean pole."

"Wait till you get your own husband, you! Then you can talk."

"Husband!" Margaret hooted. "Me? I'm fixed for life right now."

"They have their good points." Catherine rose, drawing on her gloves. Margaret paid the bill and tipped with the nonchalance of an unattached male.

"That's all right." Margaret thrust her hands deep into her pockets and followed her sister. She turned her nose up to sniff at the sharp wind, eddying fine snow flakes down the side street. "I know lots of women who prefer to set up an establishment with another woman. Then you go fifty-fifty on everything. Work and feeling and all the rest, and no King waiting around for his humble servant."

Catherine laughed.

"I'll try to bring up Spencer to be a help to his wife," she said.

"Oh, Spencer!" Margaret glowed. "He's a darling! Tell him I'm coming up some day to see him."

They walked swiftly down the Avenue; Catherine felt drab, almost haggard, worn down, by the side of Margaret's swinging, bright figure.

"How's your job?" she asked. "You haven't said a word about it."

"Grand." Margaret's smile had reminiscent malice. "You know, I've persuaded them to order new work benches for the main shop. I told you how devilish they were? Wrong height? Well, I cornered Hubbard last week. It was funny! I told him I'd found a terrible leak in his efficiency system. He's hipped on scientific efficiency. I tethered him and led him to a bench." She giggled. "I had him sitting there cutting tin before he knew where he was, and I kept him till he had a twinge of the awful cramp my girls have had. Result, new benches."

"You won't have half so much fun when you accomplish everything you want to, will you?"

"That's a hundred years from now, with me in the cool tombs." They stepped into the shelter of the elevator entrance to the Bureau. "I'm working now on some kind of promotion system. Of course, most of the girls are morons or straight f.m.'s, but there are a few who are better."

"What are 'f.m.'s'?"

"Feeble-mindeds. Like to do the same thing, simple thing, day after day. It takes intelligence to need something ahead." She grinned at Catherine. "They make excellent wives," she added. "Now if you didn't have brains, you'd be happy as an oyster in your little nest."

The splutter of motors protesting at the cold, the scurry of people, heads down into the wind, gray buildings pointing rigidly into a gray, low sky--Catherine caught all that as background for Margaret, fitting background. Margaret was like the city, young, hard, flashing.

"Of course, f.m.'s make rotten mothers," she was finishing. "In spite of the ease with which, as they say, they get into trouble."

"You know," Catherine's smile echoed the faint malice in her sister's as they stood aside for a puffing, red-nosed little man who bustled in for shelter--"I think you take your maternal instinct out on your job. Creating----"

"Maternal instinct! Holy snakes!" Margaret yanked her gloves out of her pockets and drew them on in scornful jerks. "You certainly have a sentimental imagination at times."

"That's why you don't need children," insisted Catherine. "Just as Henrietta Gilbert takes it out on other people's children."

"You make me sick! Drivel!" Margaret glowered, gave her soft green hat a quick poke, and stepped out of the lobby. "Good-by! You'll lose your job, maundering so!"

"Good-by. Nice lunch." Catherine laughed as she hurried for the waiting elevator.

She stood for a few minutes at the window of her office, before she settled down to the afternoon of work. There was snow enough in the air to veil the crawl of traffic far below, to blur the spires of the Cathedral. The clouds hung just above the buildings, heavy with storm. She would have to go home on the subway; no fun on the bus such an evening. Dim gold patches in distant windows--office workers needed light this afternoon. Her eyes dropped to the opposite windows. Revolving fussily before the great mirrors--how dull and white this snow-light made them--was a plump little man; the shade cut off his head, but his gestures were eloquent of concern about the fit of his shoulders.

Her window, looking out on the honeycombing of many windows, and down on the crawling traffic, and off across the piling roofs, had come to be a sort of watch tower. For more than two months now, she had looked out at the city. She had come to know the city's hints of changing seasons, hints more subtle, far less frank than the bold statements of growing things in the country. A different color in the air, altering the sky line; a different massing of clouds; a new angle for the sun through her window in the morning; a gradual stretching of the shadows on the roof tops. She stood there, gazing out at the terrific, impersonal whirl. If she could see the atoms, separately, each would be as fussy, as intimately concerned in some detail as little Mr. Plump opposite, pulling up his knee to twist at his trouser leg. And yet, out of that tiny squirming could grow this enormous, intricate whole.

The stenographer at the door drew her abruptly from the window.

"Oh, yes, Miss Betts. I wanted you to take these letters." She bent swiftly to her work.

* * * * *

She grimaced wryly as she was jammed and pushed through the door into the crowded local. Shoving feet, jostling bodies, wrists at the level of her eyes. Hairy wrists, chapped thin wrists, fat wrists, grubby, reaching up for straps; and the horrid odor of dirty wool, damp from the snow. A wrench, a grinding, and the terrific, clattering roar of the homeward propulsion began. She longed for the quiet isolation of the hour on top of the bus, in which she could swing into fresh adjustment. Lucky that heads were smaller than shoulders and set in the middle. The figure against her began to squirm, and her swift indignant glance found a folded newspaper worming up before her eyes. Friday, December 9. She stared at the date, its irking association just eluding her. The 9th. She set her lips in dismay as she caught her dodging thought. That reception, to-night! She had meant to buy fresh net for her dress, her one black evening dress--and Margaret's appearance had driven it out of her head. No room for her abortive shrug. Well, probably fresh net would have fooled no one.

At the sound of her key in the door, Marian rushed through the hall. Catherine, shivering a little at the sudden warmth after the windy blocks from the subway, bent to kiss her.

"Muvver!" Marian's eyes were roundly horrified. "Spencer's run away. We can't find him anywhere!" Her voice quavered. "He's lost himself!"

"What do you mean!" Catherine thrust her aside and ran through the hall. Letty was clattering busily around the edge of the living room rug on her go-duck. "Where's Miss Kelly?"

"Kelly gone. Spennie gone. Daddy gone." Chanted Letty, urging her steed more violently.

"Flora!" Catherine went toward the kitchen, to meet Flora, her mouth wide and dolorous.

"He's done eluded 'em, Mis' Hammond," she said. "They been hunting hours an' hours."

"What happened?" Catherine was cold in earnest now, a gasping cold that settled starkly about her heart.

"He ain't come home after school. Miss Kelly, she took Marian and went over there, but they wasn't no one lef' there. Chillun all gone."

"Yes, Muvver, we went over three times, Miss Kelly and me, and he wasn't there, and the janitor said no children were there."

"But he always comes straight home." Catherine's hand was at her throat, as if it could melt the constriction there. "You didn't see him, Marian?"

"No." Marian flopped her hair wildly. "Miss Kelly was waiting for me, and Letty, and we had a walk, and he wasn't here----"

"Has Mr. Hammond been in?"

"Yessum, he's been in, and out, chasing around wild like."

"He knows, then?"

"He come home sort of early," explained Flora. Catherine shrank from the dramatic intensity of Flora's words. "Came home, and foun' his child wasn't here. He's gone for the police."

The telephone rang, and Catherine hurried herself into the study.

"Yes?" Her voice was faint. "Yes? Who is it?"

"That you, Catherine?"

"Have you found him?" she cried.

"No." The wire hummed, dragging his voice off to remoteness. "Has Miss Kelly come back?"

"Where have you looked? I'll go hunt----"

"You stay there." Then, suddenly loud, "You might call up the hospitals. I've notified the police station. They are flashing the description all over town."

"Where are you now?" begged Catherine, but there was only silence, and the terminating click.

Flora was at her elbow.

"Ain't found him?" She clucked her tongue.

"You better go on home, Flora." Catherine couldn't look at her. She felt a ghoulish contamination, setting her mind afire with horrible pictures. Spencer, run down in the snowy street. Spencer--"I must stay here anyway."

Flora wavered. She wanted, Catherine knew, to see the end of this melodrama.

"Your own family will need you," she urged. "Go on."

Then, swiftly, to Marian, "Please keep Letty quiet. Mother wants to telephone."

She closed the door and pulled the telephone directory to the desk. How many hospitals there were! Hundreds--Has a little boy been brought in, injured? He is lost. Unless he were terribly hurt, he could have told you who he is. Has a little boy been brought in--yes? He's nine--no, not red hair. The wind yelled down the well outside the window. Surely he wouldn't be hurt, and not be found. Still and unmoving, in some dark street--oh, no! No! She clutched her arm against her breast, as her finger ran down the dancing column of numbers. Someone at the door. She listened, unable to stand up.

Miss Kelly came in, her face mottled with the cold, her hair in draggled wisps on her cheeks.

"I don't know where to look next," she said. "I hunted up the addresses of some of the boys he plays with, but they are all home, and haven't seen him since school, not one of them."

"When did you begin to hunt?"

"Immediately." Miss Kelly was dignified, sure of her lack of blame. "We waited here for him, just as we always do. I thought it was too cold for Marian and Letty to wait at the corner."

"He--he's always come straight home, hasn't he?" said Catherine, piteously.

"Always. That's why----" she stopped.

That's why, that's why--Catherine's mind picked up the words. That's why he must be hurt, unconscious somewhere, kidnaped--that little Italian boy who was found floating in the river--Spencer's face, white on black water--stop it! Not that!

"Can you stay to see that Letty goes to bed?" Catherine turned to her endless task. "I haven't called all the hospitals yet."

His gray eyes, long, with the wide space between, and the small, fine nose; fair boy's brows; mobile, eager lips. If I had been here, she thought, as she waited for the curt official voice to answer,--Has a little boy been brought in? If I had been here--oh, if--if----

* * * * *

Finally she sat, staring at the ridiculous gaping mouthpiece. Where would they take him, if he were--dead. Wasn't there a morgue? The word twisted and plunged in her, a slimy thing. She would call the morgue. She heard Miss Kelly's firm voice, "No, you mustn't bother your mother, not now. Come and have your supper, Marian."

He couldn't be dead. That warm, hard, slender body--how absurd! Morbid. He was somewhere, just around the corner. Death, that's the queer thing. Who had said that? Henrietta. She would call her--and ask her.

Before she had given the number, the front door clattered, opened. Catherine pushed herself erect; she was stiff, rigid. She found herself in the hall. Charles, glowering, and in front of him, propelled by his father's hand on his shoulder, Spencer! She couldn't move, or speak.

"Well, here's the fine young man," said Charles.

Spencer wriggled under his hand. His eyes smoldered with resentment, and his mouth was sullen.

Catherine's hands yearned toward him. She mustn't frighten him, but just to touch him, to feel him!

"A great note!" Charles came down the hall, righteous anger on his face. "I called up the police and had them send out their signals."

"Where was he?" Catherine had him now; she lifted Charles's hand away and touched the boy. He was trembling--Charles had been rough!

"I was just playing," Spencer cried out, gruffly. "I didn't know you'd tell the police."

"You've been told to come straight home, haven't you? Tell your mother what you told me, sir!"

"Charles!" Catherine's flash at him was unpremeditated. "You needn't bully him!"

"Tell her!" roared Charles.

"I just said"--Spencer's words tumbled out, full of impotent fury and indistinct with tears--"I said--I said--I didn't want to come home to that old Kelly. I didn't want----"

"He said," remarked Charles coldly, "that he saw no use of coming home when his mother wasn't here."

"But where was he?" Catherine had her arm over his shoulder, in a protective gesture. "Where did you find him?"

"I heard his voice. As I came along Broadway, past that vacant lot. He was down behind the bill boards there, with some street gamins, doing the Lord knows what."

"We just built a fire, Moth-er." Spencer pressed against her. "I didn't know it was so late. We were bandits."

"Go on into your room, Spencer. You know you should come straight home."

"He ought to be punished," declared Charles, as the boy vanished in relieved haste.

"I judge you have been punishing him." Catherine stood between Charles and Spencer's closing door. "He was trembling, and almost crying, and he never cries."

"Did you want me to kiss him when I found him, after the way I've spent the afternoon?"

"You want to make him feel as bad as you have!" Catherine leaned against the wall. She was exhausted; her heart was beating in short, spasmodic jerks, as if she had run for miles.

"I suppose I was mad, clear through." Charles grinned, abashed. Then he stiffened again. "Devilish thing to do. I came home after some lecture notes, for a meeting, and I couldn't even go to the meeting."

Miss Kelly came into the hall. She had smoothed her hair into its usual neatness, and her face was roundly pink again.

"I am afraid I must go," she said. Her eyes inspected them, gravely. Catherine flushed; Miss Kelly had heard them squabbling and she was reproaching Catherine.

"I'm sorry you've been detained. I'll see that Spencer realizes how serious this is," she said.

When the door had closed on her sturdy back, Charles broke out, "If you'd been here, this wouldn't have happened. You heard what he said, didn't you?"

"Don't say that!" Catherine's exhaustion sent hot tears into her eyes.

But Charles had to unload his overcharged feelings somewhere.

"You might as well face the truth. If you care more for a paltry job than for your children--" He shrugged. "But you won't see it. I've got to have my dinner. We'll be late to that reception now. If I miss all my appointments because my wife works, I'll have a fine reputation."

Incredible! Catherine watched him clump down to the living room. He wanted to hurt her. She pressed her fingers, ice-cold, against her eyeballs. She wouldn't cry. He felt that way. Not just because he had been worried about Spencer. There was a heavy coil of resentment from which those words had leaped. And she had thought, for weeks now, that she had learned to balance on her tight-rope, and keep the balls smoothly in air. While under the surface, this!

"Can't we have dinner?" he called to her. "We really must hurry a little, Catherine."

She set the dinner silently on the table, avoiding the defiant glance she knew she would meet.

"Don't wait for me." She paused, a tumbler of milk in her hand. "I want to talk to Spencer."

Charles pulled out his watch and gazed at it impressively.

II

Catherine, sitting on the edge of her bed, drew on one silk stocking and gartered it. She lifted her head; when she bent over like that, faint nausea, like a green smear, rose through her body behind her eyelids. She shouldn't have eaten any dinner. Or was it just Charles, and his restrained disapproval--or Spencer. She sighed, thinking through her talk with Spencer. With insistent cunning he had offered as excuse, his dislike of Miss Kelly, his distaste for the house without Catherine. "I didn't think it was bad," he said. "I didn't do anything bad."

"Inconsiderate," suggested Catherine, looking at the stubborn head on the pillow. Safe! She couldn't scold him, and yet--"You didn't think how we would feel."

"Oh, I thought," said Spencer. "I thought you wouldn't know. And my father wasn't very con-sid-'rate." He thrust his head up indignantly. "He yanked me right away, and the fellows all _saw_ him."

Then Charles had called sharply, "Catherine! Are you dressing?" and she had, under pressure, resorted to a threat. She was ashamed of it. She drew on the other stocking, smoothing it regretfully. She had said, "If you won't promise to come home directly, I shall ask Miss Kelly to call for you at school."

Charles came in, bay rum and powder wafted with him, his face pink and solemn.

"Oh, I haven't put in your studs--" She made a little rush for his dresser, but he brushed her away.

"Please don't bother. You're not ready yourself."

Catherine stifled an hysterical giggle. Emotion in these costumes--Charles in barred muslin underwear, his calves bulging above his garters, and she in silk chemise--was funny! She lifted her black dress from its hanger and slipped it over her head. Well, it had dignity, of a dowdy sort, if it wasn't fresh. She stood in front of the long mirror, trying to crisp the crumpled net of the long draped sleeves. Her fingers caught; she had pumiced too hard at the ink on their tips--hollows at the base of her throat--try to drink more milk. Her skin had pale luster, against the black, but her face lacked color. "If this weren't a faculty party," she said, lightly, "I'd try rouge."

"Why doesn't that girl come?" asked Charles, his voice muffled by the elevation of his chin as he struggled with his tie. "Time, I should think."

"What girl?" Catherine turned from the mirror. "Oh--" her shoulders sagged in complete dismay.

"Miss Brown. You got her, didn't you?"

Catherine, a whirl of black net, was at the telephone. How could she have forgotten! "No, Morningside!" She waited. She had called once, that morning, and Miss Brown was out. She had meant--"Is Miss Brown in?" Charles was at the door, an image of funereal, handsome dignity. Miss Brown was not in. No, the voice had no idea when she would be in.

"Oh, say it!" Catherine's fingers pushed recklessly through her hair. "Say it, Charles!" He swung on his heel and disappeared.

Perhaps her mother--but no one answered that call, and Catherine remembered that Friday was the night for opera.

A voice in the hall, although she hadn't heard the doorbell. It was Bill.

"Going out, eh?"

"Apparently not." Charles was elaborately, fiendishly jovial. "I thought we were, but Catherine neglected to provide a chaperone for the children."

Catherine pressed her fingers against her warm cheeks. Her quick thought was: just Bill's entrance scatters this murky, ridiculous tension. This ought to be a joke, not a tragedy.

"Here, run along, you two." She lifted her head and looked at Bill, smiling at her. "I've nothing to do. Let me sit here and read."

"We can't impose on you that way--" began Charles.

"Of course we can!" Catherine tinkled, hundreds of tiny bells at all her nerve ends. "Of course! Come on, Charles."

As Charles stamped into his overshoes, Catherine ran back to the living room. Bill stood at the table, poking among the magazines.

"Thank Heaven you came just then!" she said, softly. "Oh, Bill!"

"What is this momentous occasion, anyway?"

"A faculty reception. It's not that. I'm an erring wife and mother." His glance steadied her, stopped that silly tinkling. "Spencer ran away and I forgot to send word for Miss Brown to come in, and--" That wordless quiet of his enveloped her, like a deep pool in which she relaxed, set free from the turmoil of the past hours. "If I could stay here with you!"

"Are you about ready?" Charles asked crisply.

Had Bill lifted his hand in a heartening gesture, or had she imagined it?

The elevator was slow. Charles laid a vindictive thumb on the button; below them the signal snarled.

"Sam's probably at the switchboard," said Catherine, coldly.

"He won't be, long!" Charles pressed harder.

Catherine turned away, her fingers busy with the snaps of her gloves. The tips were powdery and worn; another cleaning would finish this pair. If Charles wanted to be childish, venting spite on anything-- A clatter and a creaking of cables behind the iron grill.

"If you prefer to stay with Bill, why come?"

Catherine's jerk rent the soft kid. The snap dangled by a shred. The door slammed open and they stepped into the car.

Sam was explaining to Charles. In the narrow corner mirror Catherine could see the line of Charles's cheek bone, the corner of his mouth. Poor man! He was in a humor. Well, he could stay there! She wouldn't cajole him out of it; he could wait till she did! It was always she who had to make the overture. Charles sat sulkily down in the swamp of ill feeling and wouldn't budge.

"It's stopped snowing." She lifted her face to the steel plate of sky overhead.

"Temporarily." Charles strode along with great steps. "Here, take my arm." He stopped at the corner.

"Have to keep my gloves fresh." Catherine hurried across the slippery cobblestones. As they climbed up past the dark chapel, she squirmed inside her coat. How ridiculous they were, going along in a pet, like children. Bill would laugh, if he knew. The long windows of the law library dropped their panels of light across the thin snow. When we reach the library steps, thought Catherine, I'll say, let's be good. Only--why must I always be abject, and ingratiating? Again that streak of hard, ribald mockery: let him sulk if he likes. I'm tired of being humble. Below them the wide sweep of steps, the bronze figure aproned with snow; the dignified weight of the building rising above them, the recessed lights glowing behind the columns. How many times they had walked together across these steps!

"Charles." She spoke impetuously. "Don't be cross. What's the use?"

"If you chose to project your own mood upon me--" Charles jerked his chin away from the folds of silk muffler.

"Oh, Lord!" sighed Catherine. "Don't we sound married!"

She could see the building now, with shadowy figures moving past the lighted windows. I can't be humble enough in that distance to do any good. What an evening!

It was like a nightmare, through which she moved as two people, one a cool, impersonal, outer self, given to chatter rather more than usual; the other a mocking, irreverent, twisting inner self, mewed up in confusion and injury. Empty, meaningless chatter. What fools people were, dragging themselves together in an enormous room, moving around, busy little infusoria. Charles liked it. He felt himself erect and important, with the crowding people a tangible evidence of his success, the decorum, the polished surfaces clinking out assurance that here was his group, here he was admitted, recognized. Catherine, bowing, smiling, listening to his voice, offering bright little conventional remarks, was conscious of his feeling. He's feeding on it, she thought. Growing smug. How far away from him I am--far enough to see him smug, and hate it. They had drifted away from the formal receiving line. She twisted at her glove, to hide the torn snap.

"Well, Mrs. Hammond!" Mr. Thomas was at her elbow, his thick glasses catching the light blankly, his head enormous above the rather pinched shoulders of his dress suit. "This is a pleasure." He shook her hand nervously, oppressed by his social obligation. "A pleasure."

Mrs. Thomas bustled up, crisp in rose taffeta, a black velvet ribbon around her pinkish, wrinkled throat.

"So long since we've seen you. We were just saying we must have you out for Sunday night supper. Walter does miss Spencer so much."

"That would be fine!" declared Charles, heartily. "I haven't forgotten that cake."

"We heard such a funny thing." Were the lines in her pink cheeks dented in malice? She bobbed her curly gray head sidewise at Charles. "Someone told Mr. Thomas that your wife had left you, Mr. Hammond."

Catherine saw the ominous twitching under Charles's eyes, but Mr. Thomas put in, hastily.

"I think it was intended for a jest, you know." He turned to Catherine, his large, gentle mouth agitated, as if in distress at his wife's poor taste. "I met Dr. Roberts last week. I know him quite well, you know. He was speaking about your work, Mrs. Hammond. He was extraordinarily enthusiastic."

Catherine took that gratefully, as something in which she was at least not culpable. There was a little eddy of people around them, throwing off several to stop for casual greetings; when they had gone on, Catherine heard Mrs. Thomas's high voice. "The poor boy! I suppose the house seems empty with no mother in it." Her outer self looked across at Charles, calm enough, but her inner self had an instant of rage, a hurling, devastating instant.

"Mr. Hammond was just telling me about Spencer's running away." Mrs. Thomas had a peculiarly self-righteous air in her pursed lips and bright eyes. "How worried you must have been!"

"Oh, Mr. Hammond found him so promptly."

"But just a minute can seem a long time. I remember one day----"

"Pardon me, please." Charles moved away, restrained eagerness in the forward thrust of his head above his broad, black shoulders.

Catherine saw him edge past a group, saw a pearl-smooth shoulder above a jade-green velvet sheath. The Partridge, of course! What was she doing at a faculty reception? She had a glimpse of the squirrel smile, before she picked up the thread of Mrs. Thomas's domestic lyric.

The Thomases wanted refreshments. Catherine's throat was sticky-dry at the thought of food. She had a sharp longing for her own living room and Bill. He could ease her of these innumerable prickings. She made her way to Charles, and then stood, unnoted, at his elbow. Miss Partridge saw her, and her hand swam up in a leisurely arc. Catherine nodded pleasantly.

"I think I'll run along, Charles. You aren't to hurry." She drifted away before his hesitancy reached action.

III

Snow again in the air, wet on her cheeks. I am going home, to see Bill, in search of ballast. She hurried across the campus. The library windows were dark; two cleaning women, aprons bundled about their heads, clattered ahead of her with their pails.

As she pushed open the apartment door, she saw Bill, standing at the doorway of Marian's room, indistinct in the shadow. He moved violently away.

"Have the children been bothering you?" Catherine listened an instant at the door. Nothing but the faintest possible rhythm of breathing.

"I thought I heard Letty call." Bill retreated into the living room. "Where's Charles? The party over?"

"I ran away." Catherine slipped out of her coat. "Leaving him with Miss Partridge." She drew down her long gloves, laughing, and looked at Bill. Something curiously disturbed in his heavy-lidded glance. How tired and gaunt he looked. "What is it, Bill?"

He waited until she had settled into the wing chair.

"Nice dress, that," he said, as he sat down.

"This?" She smiled at him. Her hands lay idly along folds of the black stuff. "Are you bored, sitting here alone? The children haven't really been awake, have they?"

"No. I eavesdropped on them." Again that heavy, troubled look. "I heard them--breathe."

What in that phrase had such poignancy? What in the silence swung a light close to the dark, unruffled surface of this man, illuminating, far down in deep water, that struggling, twisting something?

He rose, brushing aside the curtain, to gaze out at the dim city.

"Better run along," he said, slowly. "You must be weary."

"Oh, no." Catherine's hand entreated him.

At that he turned slightly, to face her. She had a queer fancy that she saw his forehead gleam, his hair shine damp, as if he came swinging up, up to the surface. But he spoke calmly enough.

"I've been thinking over one of Henrietta's truisms, as I eavesdropped on your children. Wondering about it, and you."

Catherine was still; breathing might blur the glass, this glass through which she might have a clear glimpse of Bill.

"It is this." His smile, briefly sardonic, mocked at himself. "That children are the world's greatest illusion. The largest catch-penny life offers."

"Sometimes," Catherine hesitated, "I think Henry says a clever thing to fool herself."

"Isn't it more than clever? Don't you feel, when you are confronted with a black wall of futility, in yourself, that at least there are your children, three of them, and that they may jack life up to some level of significance, and that they are you?"

"Is that an illusion?"

"Isn't it? Our puny little minds, scratching at the edges of whatever it is that drives us along, pick up bits of sand." Bill laid his hand on the back of the chair, dragged it around, and dropped into it, his gaunt profile toward the window, his hands gripped on his knees. "After all, a merry-go-round doesn't go anywhere but around. Isn't that what this feeling amounts to? You don't find yourself convinced that you are the vehicle for your parents, do you? And yet"--the words lagged--"I am sure I have that illusion as strongly as any fool, that I have the need for that consolation."

"Surely"--Catherine spoke softly; she mustn't drive him back--"you, of all people, Bill, are least futile."

He turned his face toward her, a haggard little grin under his somber eyes.

"What could be more futile? Builder of bridges and buildings, which a hundred other men can make better than I. I had a maudlin way, when I was younger, of expecting that to-morrow would give me the thing I wished. To-morrow! Another catch-penny. And this, too, puerile as it sounds. For a time Henrietta needed me, while she fought to get her toes in. But she's past that now."

"Bill"--Catherine strained toward him, her eyes darkly brilliant--"I came home to-night, because I wanted you. Because when I am frantic and silly, you can pull me up. You have, countless times."

"That is your generous imagination." Catherine flung out her hand impatiently. "And you see, I have, instead, spewed out this sentimental maundering."

"Don't talk that way!" cried Catherine.

"No." He rose abruptly, to stand above her, so that she tipped her head back, and one hand crept up to press against the pulse beating in her throat. His glance buffeted hers, entreating something, inarticulate, baffling. Then, suddenly, the old quiet mask was on again, and the water closed over his plunge within.

"Don't ever be frantic, Catherine," he said. "Good night."

She sat motionless when he had gone. Bill, in the dark, listening to the children. Bill, at the window, sending that heavy stare out into the night. Bill, stripped of his concealment. There was a slow brewing of exultation within her. He had come out, to her!

The great illusion. She crept silently to the door where Letty and Marian slept. Spencer moaned softly in his sleep, and she stood for moments beside his bed. They weren't illusory, except as you tried to substitute them for everything. They were part of you, to go on when you stopped. But they were separate, individual, cut off, _themselves_. What had Bill said? You don't feel yourself the vehicle for your parents, do you? You wanted your children, part of you, extenuation for your own shortcomings. Wasn't it an illusion, a flimsy drapery of words over a huge, blind, instinctive drive? Bill wanted children, then, and Henrietta--crisp, efficient----

Catherine undressed hastily and crept into bed. Charles was late. Resentment, like a small sharp bone, still rankled. He's like a little boy. If I could be patient--Bill never takes things out on Henrietta. She doesn't know his feeling. Perhaps it is always that way; one person out of two is not quite happy, never an equal balance. Charles was content until I broke loose. Henrietta is content. You have to offer up a human sacrifice. She stared at the ceiling, where a broken rectangle of saffron light from some court window sprawled. If I could think about Charles, without this jangle of feelings, perhaps I could see what to do. Could you ever think straight? Did emotion always enter, refracting?

Charles _says_ he doesn't mind my working, that he's glad if I like it. That's what he thinks; no, what he thinks he thinks! But underneath, he's outraged, and any tiny thing is a jerk of the thin cover over that feeling. Never till this winter has he been so--so touchy. Silly little things. Perhaps--she waited an instant--was that his key? Perhaps I notice it more, because I want approval. But he makes a personal grievance if I forget his laundry. In a way, it is personal. I forget, because I don't think of him every second. I try to remember everything. She twisted over on one side, an arm curled under her head. I haven't asked him to take any share of the house job, or the children. She shivered, as if a cold draft from that hour before dinner blew across her; Spencer, lost, because she wasn't at home. Charles, intimating that he was justified. But she was at home----

The door clicked softly open, and cautious feet moved down the hall.

Catherine smiled. Charles was like an elephant when he attempted silence.

"I'm not asleep," she said, and blinked as he flashed on the light. "You must have had a good time, to stay so late."

"It's a pity you bothered to go at all," he said briefly, as he vanished behind the closet door.

Catherine turned away from the light, her hand closing into a fist under her cheek. She wouldn't wrangle, even if he was still out of sorts. She heard him padding about in stocking feet. He snapped off the light and scuffed down the hall. She heard him whistling. He would wake the children, if he weren't more careful.

He was back again, a stocky figure against the pale square of window as he shoved it open. He was scurrying for bed.

"Charles!" Catherine's cry leaped out. "Come here!"

"Well?" He stood above her. "Brr! It's chilly."

She reached up for his hands, dragged him down beside her, her arms slipping up to his shoulders, clasping behind his neck. He resisted her; she felt stubborn hardness in his muscles.

"Charles," she begged, "what's happening to us! Don't----"

"I'm all right," he said. "I thought you were off color."

Catherine let her hands drop forlornly away.

"You've been sort of touchy." He cleared his throat. "I'm not perfect. But I hate this feeling--that you're standing off, waiting to be critical of me."

"Oh, I'm not!" Catherine sighed.

"All right, then." Charles bent down, brushed his lips against her cheek, and stood up. "Go to sleep. You're tired, I guess."

Catherine lay motionless, listening to the creak of his bed, the soft pulling and adjusting of blankets. The wind was cold on her eyelids, on the tears that crept down. She was humiliated, shamed. She had dropped her pride and evoked touch--passion--only to find him--her hands flung open, to escape the lingering sensation of that obdurate, resisting column of his throat.

Unbidden, racking, a swift visual image of Stella Partridge, smooth ivory and jade. She fled away from it. Not that! She wouldn't add jealousy to her torment. But that eager, forward thrust of his head as he made his way across the room toward her, and that secret, honey-mouthed deference in the casual talk of the woman. Oh, no!

Then, rudely, as if she turned to face some monstrous shape that pursued her, she looked at the image. Perhaps, if Charles was injured, outraged, under his reasoning surface, he might turn to Stella. She wanted something of him, that woman. Perhaps it was love she wanted, although the hard metallic gleam under the softness of her eyes seemed passionless, egocentric.

"Charles," she whispered. What else she might have said, she didn't know. But Charles was asleep.

IV

The next morning, in the accustomed flurry of baths, breakfast, dressing, Catherine jeered at her nightmares of the dark. She would not be a fool, at least. The children were ecstatic about the snow, which lay in caps and mounds and blankets on the roof tops below the windows. Marian made snowballs from the window ledge, and tried, giggling, to wash her father's face. Charles was jovial, amusing himself with the rôle of good-natured father. Yes, he might go coasting with them that afternoon. He'd see if he couldn't get away from the office early. Miss Kelly could telephone him at noon.

Miss Kelly came in; Flora was belated.

"Probably the trolley cars are stuck," said Spencer, full of delight at possible catastrophes the snow might bring.

Catherine left a note for Flora, with the day's instructions, and hurried off. She had swung free of the night in a long arc of release.

The Drive had a dramatic beauty; white morning sunlight piercing the gaps made by cross streets, long blue shadows stretching from the buildings, the river gray blue under the clearing sky, the clean, soft lines of snow turned back by the plows, snow caught in the branches of trees and shrubbery, like strange fruit; gulls wheeling like winged bits of snow. By nightfall all the beauty might be trampled and turned dingy; now--Catherine sat erect, drawing long breaths.

That noon she would squeeze out a few minutes for some Christmas shopping. Saturday wasn't a good day, but if she found a doll for Marian, she could begin to dress it. She thrust her foot into the aisle and peered down at it. Those shoes wouldn't last until January. Well, she would have her third check on the twenty-third, and she had repaid Charles. Funny, how much more it cost to dress herself as working woman than as mother and wife. Perhaps with the first of the year that increase would gain material shape. Dr. Roberts had hinted at it again.

The bus left the Drive and rattled through the city; one note everywhere, the squeak of shovels against the sidewalks, piles of grime-edged snow, files of carts heaped and dripping.

She shivered, hugging her arms close; the last few blocks were always chilly. Wonderful colors in the great shop windows, exotic, luxurious, and bevies of shop girls, stepping gingerly over dirty puddles in their cheap, high-heeled slippers.

Just a half day of work to-day. She could finish the chapter she had been writing. As she waited for the elevator, she had a sharp renewal of herself as a part of this great, downward flood. The morning ride was a symbol, a bridge across which she passed. She nodded to the elevator boy; his grin made her part of the intimate life of this huge building. You'd expect to shrink, she thought, as the elevator shot upwards--swallowed up, and instead you swell, as if you swallowed it all yourself.

Dr. Roberts hadn't come in. Dropping into her work was like entering a quiet, clean place of solitude. She reread the pages she had written, the beginning of her full report, and then wrote slowly, finding pleasure in the search for a phrase which should be clear glass through which the idea, the hard, definite fact, might be visible. The jangle of the telephone bell broke into a sentence.

It was Miss Kelly. Flora hadn't shown up. What did Mrs. Hammond wish done about luncheon?

"Hasn't she sent any word?" The picture of her kitchen, empty, and confused, rose threateningly in the quiet office. "Well, you can find something for the children. I'll be home early."

If something was wrong with Flora! Catherine pushed away the image of disaster, finished her sentence, and glanced at her watch. Almost one. Lucky it was Saturday. She would have time--vaguely--to see to this. Better not stop for any shopping.

When she reached home, the children rushed to the door, accoutered in leggings and mufflers for coasting.

"Mother! Come with us. Daddy's coming!" Spencer and Marian tugged at her arms, and Letty pulled at her skirt.

"I can't, chickens." Catherine hugged them, each one. She loved the exuberance of their greeting, the sharp delight of contrast after the hours away. "Miss Kelly is all ready." She glanced at Miss Kelly's serene face. "Flora hasn't shown up? Nor sent word? I'll have to look her up. To-morrow perhaps I can go."

"I gave the children their lunch," explained Miss Kelly, "but of course I had no time to set the kitchen to rights."

She certainly hadn't. Catherine gave one dismayed look at the disorder, and decided to hunt for Flora first. She must be sick.

V

Catherine tried to pick a firm way through the slush of the sidewalk. Flora must live in this block. She peered at the numbers over dark doorways, under the sagging zigzags of fire escapes. The snow had been thrown up in a dirty barricade along the edge of the walk, and over the upset garbage and ash cans, down the short mounds, shrieked and wailed and coasted innumerable children. It was like a diminutive and distorted minstrel show, thought Catherine, stepping hastily out of the path of a small black baby spinning down into the slush on a battered tin tray. Snow on the East Side, and on the Drive--she had a wry picture of the beauty of the morning.

There. 91-A. She stood at the entrance, with a hesitant glance into the dim hall. Absurd to be nervous about entering. She had never seen where Flora lived, although she had heard the dirge of rising rent and lack of repairs which Flora occasionally intoned. She walked to the first door and knocked boldly.

"Who dar?" The voice bellowed through the door.

"Does Mrs. Flora Lopez live in this house?" Catherine had a notion that the dim house gave a flutter of curiosity, as if doors moved cautiously ajar. "I'm Mrs. Hammond," she added sharply to the closed door. "She works for me."

The door swung open a crack, and a fat dusky face appeared, one white eye gleaming.

"You wants Mis' Flora Lopez?"

"Do you know her? Which is her flat?"

"Sure I knows her." The round eye held her in hostile inspection. "Is you f'om the police station, too?"

"No. She works for me. Is she sick?" Queer, how that sense of listening enmity flowed down the crooked stairway. "Which is her flat?"

"She ain't sick, exac'ly. Ain't she come to wuk to-day?"

"Who zat, want Flora?" The voice came richly down the stairway.

"Which is her flat?" insisted Catherine.

The door opened wider, disclosing a ponderous figure with great soft hips and bosom, a small child in a torn red sweater clinging to her skirts and looking up with round frightened eyes.

"She lives on the top flo' rear. I donno as she's home."

Catherine climbed the stairs. There's nothing to be afraid of, she told herself stubbornly. The sweetish odor of leaking gas, the cold, damp smell of broken plaster and torn linoleum in the unheated halls choked her as she climbed. She was sure doors opened and closed as she passed. She felt herself an intruder, with profound racial antipathy, fear, stirring within her and around her. I won't go back, she thought. She tried to step boldly across the hall, but her rubbers made a muffled, sucking note. At last the top floor. She knocked at the rear door. No sound; merely the strained sense of someone listening.

"Flora!" she called sharply. "Are you there? It's Mrs. Hammond."

Silence. Feet shuffled on bare boards behind that door.

"Flora!" she called again, and the door crept slowly open.

"Why, Flora! What _is_ the matter?" Catherine gazed at her. Short hair raying like twisted wires about her face, one eye an awful purple-green lump, the wide mouth cut and swollen, the broad nostrils distended--a dumb-show, a gargoyle of miserable agony. "What has happened to you?"

Flora stepped back, pushing ajar a door.

"Come in, Mis' Hammond." Her voice had the exhausted echo of riotous weeping. "Come in and set down. I was goin' to write you a message."

Catherine followed her into the living room, immaculate, laboriously furnished. The table, purple plush arm-chairs--Flora had told her when she ordered those from the installment house; lace curtains draped on a view of tenements and dangling clothes.

"What has happened, Flora?" Catherine had lost her uneasiness. Flora had a vestige of the familiar, at least; her gray bathrobe was an old one Catherine had given her.

Flora sat down in a purple chair and began to rock back and forth, moaning. Tears ran down her cheeks, gleaming on the bruises.

At a sound behind the door Catherine turned, to find the solemn round eyes of a little boy fixed upon her. He scuttled over to Flora, burying his face on her knees.

"Is he yours?"

"Yes'm." Flora cradled one arm about him. "Yes'm. He's my baby." Her voice rose suddenly into a wail. "An' my li'l girl, where's she! They took her off to shut her up--all 'count of that"--she shook one fist in air--"that man!"

Gradually, in broken and violent bits, Catherine gathered the story. Flora had married her professional gentleman. He hadn't wanted her to keep the children. They were hers, she had worked for them always, and dressed them nice, and left them with a neighbor when she went off to work. She wanted them to grow up nice. She even put little socks on her girl, and the teacher at school said why should she dress her up that way, picking on her because she was black. She was twelve. Then Flora found out her professional gentleman had another wife down south. She let him stay, anyway, "so long as we'd been married, and he was handsome." Then she had to put him on bail to leave the little girl alone, always fooling with her. "I told her to stay with Mis' Jones till I got home." And finally--Catherine was cold with pity and horror--Flora had discovered that he hadn't let Malviny alone, that he had ruined her, and stolen the money she had saved to pay the rent, and was packing his suitcase to leave. "I started out to kill him," she said briefly, "but he knocked me down." Then the police had come.

"They said I let Malviny run the streets. She's awful pretty, Mis' Hammond, most white, she is. Her pa was pale. I was working for her, wasn't I?" Flora's gesture was wide with despair. "Providin' for her and him--" she rocked the boy against her breast. "I done the best I could. She wanted things, and he give her money. She's only twelve."

At last Catherine fled down the stairs, feeling that perversion and horror and the failure of honest, respectable effort barked at her heels. Flora couldn't come back to her, not at once. She had to testify. She won't ever come back, thought Catherine. She'll be ashamed, because I know all this. She had, when Catherine had tried to offer sympathy, shrunk away, into the collapse of the structure of herself as competent, self-respecting working woman. "I done my bes'!" Her pitiful wail dogged Catherine's feet through the brittle, freezing slush of the street.

VI

Catherine, in an old house dress, waded determinedly through the mash of the disordered apartment. Dishes, sweeping, dinner--Miss Kelly had straightened the children's rooms. She was too well paid for general utility. I suppose I am inefficient, thought Catherine. Just to be caught in this mess. But what else can I do? What would a man do in my place? She pulled a chair near the kitchen table and sat down to the task of shelling lima beans, while she speculated as to Charles's procedure. He wouldn't plunge himself into the mess, at least. He would leave it, until someone else stepped in. That's one trouble with women, she decided. They have all these habits of responsibility. Now I should be off playing somewhere, after this week, and here I am!

Charles came in with the children. Miss Kelly, discreetly, had left them at the steps. She's got the right idea, thought Catherine grimly. She's not going to be roped in for something she's not paid for. Letty's cheeks were peonies, her eyes bright stars, and her leggings were soaked with melted snow.

"We had one grand time, didn't we, chicks!" Charles stamped out of his rubbers and shook off his snow-spattered coat. "Had a snow fight and Letty and I beat."

"We landed some hum-dingers right in your neck, anyways," said Spencer.

"Hum-dings in neck!" shrieked Letty. "Hum-gings in neck!"

"You all look as if you'd landed snow everywhere." Catherine shooed Marian and Spencer into their rooms in quest of dry clothing, ran back to the kitchen to lower the gas under the potatoes, and returned to strip Letty of her damp outer layers.

"Even my shirt is wet." Marian giggled, shaking her bloomers until bits of snow flew over the rug. "It was awful fun, Muvver. And we coasted belly-bump. Is that a nice word to say?"

"And now we are starved, like any army after a fight," came a sturdy bellow from Charles.

Bedraggled and glowing, warmly fragrant--Catherine laughed at them as she tugged the pink flannel pajamas onto Letty's animated legs.

"There!" she kissed her, gave the tousled yellow floss a swift brush, and carried her into the dining room to set her safely behind the bar of her high-chair. "Supper and then to bed you go, after this exciting day."

"What's this about the dusky Flora?" Charles came into the kitchen.

"I'll tell you about it later." Catherine spoke hastily. Tired as she was, their home-coming had given her the old sweet rush of pleasure, of safety, of possession. She wanted to keep it untouched, free of that horror and pity.

* * * * *

Much later, when the children were in bed, Charles strolled into the kitchen and reached for a dish towel. Catherine looked up at him as he rubbed a tumbler with slow care.

"Like old times, isn't it, eh?" He set the glass on the shelf.

Catherine swallowed her sigh.

"Me wiping dishes, and telling you about what I've been doing--" Was he deliberately wistful?

"You needn't wait for dishes, need you, to talk?" Catherine's smile blunted the slight edge in her words.