Chapter IX: Part IV: Encounter (2)

"Well--" Catherine smiled. "I won't be doubtful, then. I want to be enthusiastic."

And as Dr. Roberts returned to the study of the maps and time tables, she thought: he may be right, and Charles may be right. Each of them thinks from his own center. From his own desires. So do I. And I want this work to have a meaning. To be significant. To _matter_. I believe it does. I _will_ believe in it.

VII

Saturday afternoon Catherine stood in front of the long mirror in her bedroom, with Margaret squatting on her heels beside her, pinning in place a band of bright embroidery.

"Too bad there isn't time to send it back." Margaret dropped to the floor, gazing up at her sister. "But that will do, I think. It's very smart, Cathy."

"Can we pack it so that it won't crush?" Catherine brushed her fingers over the warm brown duvetyn. "I scarcely recognize myself."

"It's the way you should look all the time. Take it off and I'll put a stitch in where that pin is." Margaret scrambled to her feet. "I did want you to have that beaver coat, though."

"I've got to pay for these sometime!" Catherine slipped out of the dress. "You beguiled me into awful extravagance."

"Just because I made you buy with a near eye instead of a far eye." Margaret sewed busily. "The middle-class married eye is a far eye, Cathy. It never sees clothes as they are. It sees how they'll look three years hence, and then five years, made over. No wonder you look dubby. Can't ever get style that way." She snapped her thread, and folded the dress over tissue paper. "There, that'll ride. Taking just your steamer trunk?"

"And a bag." Catherine pulled her nasturtium silk kimono over her shoulders. "Too many stops for a large trunk. It's good of you to spend your Saturday here. I'd sent off everyone, so that I could get ready in peace. But there are endless things to see to."

"You're a handsome thing in that rag, too." Margaret rose from the half full trunk. "Wish I'd found an evening dress that color."

"That would have been nice and inconspicuous! And I may not need one. I'll stick this black one in." There was a faint glow on Catherine's cheeks; her dark hair swept in a long curve from brow to heavy coil at the nape of her smooth neck.

"Where are the children?" Margaret seized the black dress and folded it dexterously.

"At the opera--'Hansel and Gretel.' Mother took them. Miss Kelly has Letty in the park."

"Won't they love it!" Margaret whistled the gay little dance melody from the opera. "Do they mind your going?"

"Marian thinks it will be rather fun to have Gram here. Spencer wants to go with me."

"The lamb! There, those are properly packed. You be careful when you take them out. Now, shoes. No, put that blouse in your handbag."

"I declare--" Catherine laughed as Margaret moved competently through the piles. "It's like a trousseau--my second."

"That would please the King, I'm sure." Margaret held off a bronze slipper, turning it critically. "Is he as sulky as he acts, Cathy? He said, 'I don't demand external evidence to make me proud of my wife!'" She imitated the dignified resentment of his tone.

"He's frightfully busy with papers and things." Catherine bent over her traveling bag. In her throat a soft pulse beat disturbingly. To-night--she thought. Oh, I can't leave him--obdurate, silent. I must break through.

"Um." Margaret nodded. Then, suddenly, "I told Mother I thought she had no business siding with him."

Catherine faced her, alarmed.

"And she as much as said she thought you were endangering your home and future happiness. Poor mother! She can't step out of her generation, I suppose. For all she is such a brick."

"Don't put anything into her head, for goodness' sake! She's going to be here while I'm gone. She's fond of Charles."

"The only trouble with Charles," declared Margaret, her arms akimbo on her slim hips, "is that he is a man!"

"You sound like Amy."

"No, I don't. I know he can't help it. You're to blame, partly. You spoiled him rotten for years. He can't get over it in a jiffy. Has that woman got her claws in him? I suppose he's wide open to a vamp."

Catherine's color receded in the swift tautening of her body. Margaret need not trample in. "I don't know," she said, stiffly.

"Excuse me, old thing." Margaret flung her arm over Catherine's shoulders, and rubbed her warm cheek against her sister's. "Rude of me, I know. We'll change the subject."

"I didn't mean to be sniffy." Catherine softened. "I really don't know. I was shocked that you----"

"Um. What are my eyes for, little Red Riding Hood? Anyway, it's a darned skilful move of yours, this trip."

Down the hall clumped Mrs. O'Lay. Catherine hurried into her old serge dress, Margaret locked and strapped the little trunk, and Catherine closed the traveling bag. "Have to finish that to-morrow."

Miss Kelly came, with Letty. Margaret carried the child off into the dining room for her supper, while Catherine sat down with Miss Kelly for a final discussion of the weeks she would be gone. "Eve made out this mailing list--" she finished, "and bought enough postal cards to last. If you would send me one every night--" She gazed at the sandy-fringed, calm blue eyes, at the firm, homely mouth. "I'm sure they will be happy and well, with you."

"I think so, Mrs. Hammond." Not a quaver of uneasiness in her voice.

You might suppose I went off every week, thought Catherine.

Letty was in bed, Margaret had gone, and Miss Kelly, before Mrs. Spencer and the children arrived. Catherine listened to their delighted rehearsing of the story. Marian tried to hum one of the songs; Catherine couldn't recall the exact melody. And under the outer pressure ran the slow, warm flood of waiting, waiting until Charles should come in. What she could say or do she did not know. But anything, anything!

"Will I serve up the soup, Mrs. Hammond?" Mrs. O'Lay was reproachful. "It's half after six."

"Mr. Hammond should be in any minute."

The telephone shrilled into her waiting.

"That you, Catherine? I'm at the dentist's. Got a devil of a toothache. Don't wait for me. He's out at dinner, but he's coming in to see to the tooth. No, it's that upper tooth, where the filling was loose."

They dined without Charles.

"Poor fellow!" Mrs. Spencer was gently sympathetic. "There's nothing so upsetting as the toothache."

Some truth in that, thought Catherine, as she sat in Charles's chair and served. A special dinner, too. If the tooth still ached when he came home-- The intangible hope which had grown in her through the day was too fragile to withstand such disaster. Perhaps--was he at the dentist's? Was there an aching tooth? She glanced up in a flurry of guilt at a question from her mother. How despicable of her, dropping into suspicion. Spencer was watching her. He was too sensitized, too immediately aware of moods. It would be good for him, perhaps, to live without her for a time. She brushed away the under-thoughts, and held herself resolutely above the surface of their talk.

Marian wanted to play Hansel and Gretel. "But Gram is too nice to be the witch, isn't she, Muvver? And we must have a witch."

"Miss Kelly could be witch," said Spencer.

"She's too nice, too!"

"She could pretend not to be." Spencer peered at Catherine, and suddenly giggled.

"That isn't funny," protested Marian.

"When your mother was a little girl," began Mrs. Spencer, "I took her to see Uncle Tom's Cabin." The children listened, entranced, to the account of Catherine's impersonation of Little Eva. Catherine, amused, went back to Spencer's giggle. He hadn't accepted Miss Kelly, as Marian had. His laugh was a secret declaration of his withholding of himself. But he no longer protested outwardly.

"And just then, I went out of the kitchen door," said Mrs. Spencer, "and saw Catherine in the loft window of the barn. She had on one of my best white sheets, and she was leaning forward, way out of the window, and waving her arms."

"Oh, Muvver!" Marian sighed in delight.

"I said, 'What are you doing!'"

"You tell us what you said, Muvver," begged Marian, her eyes darkly shining. "Please."

"I said"--Catherine laughed--"that I was going to fly to Heaven."

"Did you think you were, Mother?" asked Spencer.

"Perhaps. I was playing Little Eva so hard that I expected the angels to pick me up, you know."

"An' then, Gram?"

"I called to the hired man. He was in the barn. And he ran upstairs up the ladder and caught your mother by the sheet. So she didn't jump out."

"Would you really of jumped, Mother?" Spencer, in his eagerness, came around to Catherine's chair.

"I don't know. I was a silly little girl, wasn't I?"

"Oh, Spencer was silly to-day," cried Marian. "He wanted to come home right in the middle of the play. He said you were going away to-day, and Gram had to take right hold of his arm."

A wave of color rushed up to Spencer's hair, and his nostrils trembled.

"Wasn't that silly?"

"I did think so, Mother." He gulped. "I got mixed up. If you think so, it feels true, doesn't it?"

"We told him it wasn't to-day. But he kept thinking so."

Catherine remembered the dash he had made through the hall to her bedroom, his halt at the door, his long stare at her. Poor boy!

"You better sit down, son," she said. "Here comes dessert."

Later, when she bade them good night, his arms tightened about her neck.

"You said to-morrow," he whispered, "and I thought maybe it was to-morrow. Because to-morrow is to-day, always, when it gets here."

"We can write letters to each other," said Catherine, rubbing her cheek softly against his hair. "Won't that be fun? We never wrote to each other."

"With my own name on the envelope?"

"Yes, sir." Catherine felt him relax into pleased contemplation of envelopes with his own name.

"It's queer Charles doesn't come." Mrs. Spencer laid aside her magazine as Catherine entered the living room. "Do you know what dentist he goes to?"

"Dr. Reeves, I think. He had to wait until the doctor came in from dinner."

"Oh, yes." Mrs. Spencer ruffled her fingers through the pages. "Alethea went on Thursday," she said. "I'll be glad to move in here. It's rather queer, staying alone."

"I am glad you want to come." Catherine was grateful. "It relieves me of any anxiety. Things should run smoothly."

"Spencer was quite pitiful." Mrs. Spencer looked like an inquisitive little bird. "He's rather hard to manage. Notional. Marian seems more normal."

"She is more phlegmatic than Spencer." Catherine refused to take up that word, "pitiful," and its implications.

"They're both sweet children. They act well-bred in public. It's a pleasure to take them out. Even when Spencer was so distressed, he didn't make himself conspicuous. And when I promised him you'd really be here, he settled down again."

Catherine again rejected the distress. She wouldn't argue with her mother about going away. Too late, now.

"Miss Kelly is very good with them, I think," she said. "She gives them better training than I ever did. I suppose she sees them more impersonally. Even Letty----"

"I don't think anyone trains children better than their mother." Mrs. Spencer was indignant. "You always did very well. Miss Kelly does seem competent, of course."

A sharp ring at the bell brought Catherine to her feet. Perhaps Charles had forgotten his key. But as she hurried down the hall, she heard a shrill guffaw from Sam, and the elevator slid rapidly out of sight as she opened the door.

"Why, Flora! Come in."

Flora, hastening to drag a lugubrious expression over the wide grin Sam had evidently provoked, shook her head, the stiff purple flowers on her large hat rattling like hail.

"No'm, I ain't coming in," she said. "I came to ask a favor of you, Mis' Hammond. You well, and the children?"

"Yes, we're all well." Catherine recalled the dejected, bruised Flora she had last seen. Bruises and dejection had vanished; Flora was resplendent in a spotted yellow polo coat, a brilliantly striped scarf displayed over one shoulder, and--Catherine almost laughed aloud--arctics, flapping about plump white silk-stockinged legs. But she was uneasy; the olive-whites of her eyes shone, and her gold tooth flashed.

"Mis' Hammond, you knows what I done told you, about that worthless puhfessional man." She thrust her hands deep into her pockets, trying to swagger a little. "You recollects? I don' want to bother you, but he's the worstest man. He's tryin' to ruin my character."

"I thought you had him put in prison."

"Yessum. But he's bailed out. An' the case is postponed, while he works against me. He's provin' that I was bad, and let my li'l girl run wild. They shut her up." Flora scrambled for a handkerchief, and rubbed vigorously at her eyes. "My lawyer fr'en, he says if I can get proof about my character, then that man won't stand no trial. He tole me to get a proof from you, Mis' Hammond. You know I worked hard, don't you?"

"What kind of proof, Flora? There, don't cry. Of course I'll help you."

"My lawyer fr'en, he says you should write it out about me. A kinda paper, all about how I done work for you. With your name and where you lives on it. Then you don' have to come to court, you just writes it down on a paper."

"Come in, Flora, and I'll write something for you."

"No'm, I'se going to stand right here."

"Wait, then."

Catherine wrote a brief, emphatic statement. She had employed Flora Lopez for three years, and always found her reliable, competent, hard working. What do I really know about her, she thought, her pen poised at the end of that sentence. Character--she saw again that neat, respectable flat, eloquent of Flora's ambition, and the little boy. She is a self-respecting woman, who has supported herself and her children.

"Just Flora, that former maid of mine," she told her mother. "Wants a recommendation."

"There you are." She handed the sheet to Flora.

"But Mis' Hammond, my lawyer fr'en, he say you have to get a notary seal onto it, or it ain't good in court." She stared at the writing. "You could mebbe send it by mail to me. I moved to a new place. Folks in that house were too nosy. I'm at----"

"I'm going away to-morrow, for a month." Catherine hesitated. "I tell you, we'll go find a notary to-night. There are several along the Avenue, if it isn't too late."

Her mother agreed, rather doubtfully, to wait until she returned, unless Charles came in the meantime.

"I don't think you ought to go out with that colored woman this time of night," she insisted.

But Catherine, hurrying into coat and hat, was off. The notary in the tobacco shop at the corner had gone home. After a cold, slipping walk on sleeted streets to Broadway and down, Catherine found another shop, and a man who could put a seal to her oath.

Flora folded the paper. She refused to put it in her pocket.

"I got to get it safe to my lawyer fr'en," she insisted. "I is obliged to you, Mis' Hammond." She turned her homely, dark face passionately toward Catherine, her wide mouth moving grotesquely as she spoke. "Mos' folks is cruel mean to you if your luck is bad! Women are the mostest mean. Sayin' I neglects my chile--all 'count of my being a good worker. You got somebody to work for you now?"

"Mrs. O'Lay, the janitor's wife. You remember her? She can't cook as you could. Mr. Hammond doesn't eat a meal without wishing you were back."

"I--I jus' couldn't come back, Mis' Hammond. I'se obliged to you, but----"

"Are you working somewhere?"

"Washings, at home. I ain't making so much money. But my lawyer fr'en, he ain't charging me but half rates."

"Do you need money?" Catherine's hand moved toward her pocket book.

"I'se too much obliged, Mis' Hammond, to need it." She looked away, and suddenly darted out across the street, her arctics flapping, her dirty yellow coat flopping about her awkward flight.

Catherine went home, stepping gingerly over the glare of ice. A taxi rattled and skidded to a stop at the door just as she reached the apartment house, and her mother came out.

"Here, you'll slip." Catherine seized her arm, and engineered her passage. "Has Charles come home?"

"Yes, poor boy. He's had an awful time. Tell the driver to go very slowly!" Mrs. Spencer disappeared in the cab.

VIII

"'At Flora, she coming back to wuk for you-all?" Sam made friendly inquiry as he stopped the elevator at Catherine's floor.

"No."

"She say she got grand job for some elegant folks. Sma't worker, Flora is."

Poor Flora--Catherine unlocked the door quietly--lying to Sam, to save her face some way, of course.

If Charles is miserable--hope thrust out a new tendril, waveringly, in a blurred picture of herself ministering to him, pretending tenderly that nothing ever had been wrong.

"Hello." She smiled as he turned from the window, draped in a melancholy air of pain nobly borne. "You have had a horrid time, haven't you?"

"Just a jumpy tooth." He sat down, reaching for the paper. "Your mother was worried about you. Said you went off with a darky hours ago."

"She didn't seem worried. I met her at the door." Catherine went out to the hall closet with her wraps. Her fingers brushed the sleeve of his heavy coat. If I can pretend, she thought.

"It was only Flora," she said as she returned. "She wanted a statement from me, evidence as to her character. That man, you remember, her puhfessional gentleman? He seems to have a scheme to save himself at her expense. We went out to hunt up a notary."

"You committed yourself legally to some defense of her?"

"Yes, indeed. Poor Flora!"

"Unwise, wasn't it? How do you know what she'll do with such a paper?"

"It seemed little enough to do for her. They want to prove she neglected her children."

"Didn't she?"

Catherine wondered; did he mean that implied comparison? At least he wouldn't drag it out, openly, if she ignored it.

"Have you had any dinner?"

"Can't eat with a nerve howling like a fiend."

"Come along, poor boy. I'll find you something."

"Don't bother."

"Come on, Charles." Catherine went into the kitchen. "Here's a wonderful roast beef," she called back, and Charles came reluctantly. "You sit there--" she pushed the chair near the shining white table. "Coffee, or cocoa?"

"Cocoa, if it isn't too much trouble. I'd like to sleep. Had a cup of coffee."

"Did the dentist keep you all this time in his torture chamber?" Catherine moved swiftly from ice-chest to stove. If I can invoke our midnight lunches, all down the past, she thought--I can't go away, without trying to reach him. It is like death.

"No," said Charles. "I haven't been there all the evening."

Catherine stirred the foaming cocoa. Let's pretend, she wanted to cry out; let's pretend!

"I thought probably you would be asleep. Since you start off to-morrow."

"I wanted to see you." Catherine poured the cocoa and set it before him. She stood there, one hand spread delicately, the fingers pressed against the oilcloth. "And you--didn't want to see me, did you!" She was supplicating, provocative, leaning above him.

"I had to stop with some manuscript, at Miss Partridge's." Charles buttered a slice of bread deliberately, and forked a slice of pink meat to his place. "Is there any Worcestershire?"

"And she gave you coffee?" Catherine moved hastily away from the table, and felt blindly along the cupboard shelf for the bottle of sauce.

"Yes." Charles was blandly engrossed in his lunch.

He's as much as telling me that he chose to go to her, when he wished comfort. Catherine set the Worcestershire beside his plate. I won't hear him. But what a burlesque, my serving him, when I can't, through any outer humility, reach him.

"Want more sugar?" She asked, casually.

"No. This is fine." His upward glance was puzzled, uneasy.

Ah, I have no pride, no decency! she cried to herself. Her heart was beating in suffocating rhythm; her fingers lifted, undirected, aching for the touch of that stubborn, beloved head--the prominent temples, the hollow above the cheekbones, the old intimate brushing across his eyes, down to cup his strong, obdurate chin.

"Charles," she whispered, and swayed backward from his sudden violent start, which clattered the carving knife to the floor.

"Damn!" he clapped his hand to his jaw. "Oh, damn!"

"What is it?"

"That tooth. Hell, I've yanked that filling out." He was on his feet, his face contorted under his hand. "Get me some iodine. He said iodine would stop it."

The tooth was treated. Charles, a little sheepishly, admitted that the pain was less.

"Guess I'll crawl right into bed, before it jumps again. If I can get to sleep----"

Catherine filled a hot-water bag and slipped it under his cheek.

"That feels fine." He looked up at her. "Thanks."

Catherine bent quickly and brushed her lips on his forehead.

"Good night," she said steadily. "Go right to sleep." She lay wakeful for a long time.

"When I come back," she thought, at last-- She twisted restlessly. "That tooth--I was a little mad, and it destroyed my frenzy. I ought to be glad, and I'm not."

* * * * *

The hours on Sunday between breakfast and time for her train were telescoped into a band of pressure. Directions to Mrs. O'Lay; final arrangements for her mother; engrossing details devouring the few hours.

The taxi was announced. Letty burst into wails because she couldn't go; she had been discovered busily emptying her bureau drawers into an old suitcase. Catherine, distracted, kissed her mother and hurried away, hearing the determined shrieks until the elevator reached the ground floor. Charles, Spencer, and Marian climbed into the taxi after her.

"You look lovely," said Marian, over and over, stroking the soft fur at the throat of her jacket. "You look just lovely."

Spencer snuggled close against her, without a word. Charles, after a businesslike inquiry into the state of her tickets, was silent. And Catherine's one clear thought was: it is lucky that I can't escape now--like a moving stairway, and I've stepped squarely on it. I couldn't, to-day, furnish the energy, the motive power, to go and leave them.