Chapter III: Part 3

And Emily looked around, and smiled cautiously. It had been the girl's idea to make the room "amusing." That was the adjective she had continually used of her plan. And certainly she had succeeded in inciting mirth at least in the elders who beheld it. To be sure, with the blind down, the darkly gleaming floor wasn't so bad after one had got used to it. The sand-colored walls were matched by woodwork with little green lines on it. And the rosy silken oval rugs and those black day beds--hateful objects, which kept the edges of the bedding always on the floor, piled by day with cushions like shrieking parrots--all this was almost laughable. She had told Martha firmly the beds ought to be side by side between the windows. But Martha ignored the suggestion. The bookshelves had absurd little cupboards at each end, which Martha opened to show her friends, and an electric stove on a little tray which you stood, so, on this little shelf which pulled out, so. She had gathered a primitive sort of crockery bowls from New York, which were called "just too quaint," and the coffee things from the Chicago Ghetto. Emily had almost protested against this miniature kitchen. Martha never would be making fudge up there, she was sure. But then she had got to thinking of Martha's outgrown playhouse under the willow. "I used to let her have dishes and everything out there," she remembered. And she had not only stifled her objections; she had come heartily to admire this adolescent playhouse.

For there, opening off this room, was the amazing dressing room Martha had made from that large closet where formerly clothes had hung drably. People in the town used to say that, for the sake of having daylight in that closet and preserving the symmetry of the outside of the house, Emily's aunt had torn out and built over that wall seven times. Now Emily had to take visitors up to see that closet, many and insistent visitors, for all Martha's chums were bringing their mothers enviously to show them "Martha's apartment." When she heard their exclamations, she would look at her daughter with that feeling which she experienced when the child, blowing her horn, adjusting her brakes, watching the traffic "cop," drove that panting great headstrong car so calmly, without hurrying one eyelash, through the tangle of vehicles of any city that might lie in her path. For Martha quietly had taken that long narrow closet and lined it on both mirrored sides with hanging wardrobes, and a great total and variety of cunningly planned shelves, shallow and deep drawers, great and small, pulling out on patent rollers; she had packed away a beautifully lighted dressing table, with a stool that pushed back into its own "ducky nook." She had painted all the drawers a dull gold on the inside, and a creamy yellow on the outside, and made them gold knobs and handles. The purple floor and the glow of the rug, less violent than those of the larger room, left her visitors quite mad with envy and surprise.

"It's just Martha all over!" one girl sighed, and Emily had pondered that. Was Martha then to be a lover of perfect places to stow away things? There had been plenty of drawers and closets in the house before, Emily had said to herself. And when she had seen the child's delight in that huge big topmost drawer, she had let her have a great pile of old soft pieced quilts to pack away in it, just as she had given her old hats years before for the games in the willow playhouse. Was that dressing closet "just Martha all over"? Was the child going to be an architect, as she had carelessly suggested once, or an "interior decorator," possibly? Perhaps she was yet going to be brilliant, and do many things as successfully as she had done this, so that Bob would yet be proud of her. Or perhaps she was going to be a furious housewife, delighting in a family of children. And Emily grew serious thinking of that. She had every reason to distrust too great interest in housekeeping. She would see that Martha never loved furniture more than children's ease of mind, never put order of a room before its usefulness. She did hope Martha wouldn't carry these things to excess, as her heredity might urge her to. Here the child hadn't got all the rugs for this room home from the woman who was making them, and she had already begun to talk about enlarging the garage. It disfigured the whole house, as it was, she had told her father. If she might be allowed to double the size of it, making room for two cars----

Then Bob had interrupted: "I'm not going to keep two cars!"

"But _I'll_ have a car next year," she had suggested.

"You don't _need_ a car!" Bob had asserted, hotly.

"Maybe I don't," Martha had answered, softly, infuriatingly, for her lazily lifted eyes had added, defiantly, "But I'm going to have one, anyway!"

"If I could add another part to the garage and change that hideous entrance so we could hide it with some--lilacs and--things, mother, then I could change the west window of my room into a door, and have the whole roof of the garage for a veranda of my own, with an adjustable awning kind of over it, and some roses up the supports of it. And how much nicer it would be in the summer to sit there without a roof over us. We'd get all the breeze there was there, don't you think, mammie?"

"Oh, Martha, give us a rest. Let's have some peace. There's no reason why you should have a car, I tell you, anyway at your age." Thus Bob received her suggestion.

"We'll have to think it all over," Emily had replied. It would have to stop some place. Martha couldn't just be allowed to "express herself" all over the house whenever it suited her fancy. If Bob would only stop threatening to forbid her to use his car, maybe she wouldn't insist so frequently on having one of her own next year.

The raspberries stimulated Martha to action, for she dressed as Eve and Emily sat discussing the evening. She had to go and get some flowers for her room, before her guests came, she said, departing. And Eve began spreading those day beds into order. Emily bestirred herself to help. She had a notion to move those beds into the middle of the room together. But she refrained. She had to reflect that, though Martha decorated with fury, she dusted with less zeal. In that, too, she resembled her mother. She returned presently with her hands full of lilacs for her red-copper bowls. She threw them down on the bed and when Emily suggested arranging them she said, "Wait, mother. I've 'phoned Johnnie to get me some blue ones from the high-school garden." Emily began a faint protest, knowing Mrs. Benton didn't allow anyone to gather the flowers of that young hedge of hybrid lilacs which she had given to the high school. Martha said: "Oh, I wanted one or two. Mother, we've just got to have a place in the garden for a very late lilac like that, because it makes the bouquets for this room." And Johnnie came in immediately. With half a dozen great blossoms right up the stairs he walked, and into that--no, it wasn't a bedroom, but it still seemed strange to have him making himself at home among the bedrooms. Martha scolded him for bringing so many branches, but she had to have at least two of those dark purply ones. "You can see that for yourself," she insisted to Johnnie. Emily could see it for herself. The flow of color melted and shifted about those darkest blues as Martha lowered one shade and pushed up another, grumbling because mignonette couldn't be got to bloom earlier. If she had ever thought those delphiniums would have been all crushed up that way the first dance last night, she would have saved some for her room.

Emily had told Johnnie to hand her the pile of books that lay on the floor beside Eve's bed. Eve, to judge from the literature with which she surrounded herself continually, couldn't enjoy one book unless there were ten others as good waiting at her elbow for their turn. She came out of the dressing room while Johnnie was looking over the books he had put on the shelf for Emily.

He said, "Hello! You still here?"

"You can't say anything. You're here again."

"_I_ was invited. _I_ was 'phoned for."

"But I'm leaving soon, and that's more than you're likely to do."

"I'm expecting to be kicked out any minute," he replied, looking at Emily. "Nobody appreciates me here. Is this any good?" he asked, carelessly fingering a book.

"What is it?"

He read the name out. Emily stood listening. It was the book that had shocked her so entirely years ago--the book about which she and Jim Kenworthy had quarreled so destructively.

"Haven't you read that?"

"No. I've heard of it."

"How intellectual of you! They make you read it, in most schools, that is, if you're interested in technique. You'd call it a thousand miles of sand. I haven't got any Robert Chambers," Eve went on, looking over possibilities. "You might try Michael Arlen, there. His style would be lost on you, but the subject would appeal to your heart. There's the Kreutzer Sonata. Have you read _Crime and Punishment_?"

"Can't stand Russian stuff."

"Does seem difficult, after the _Saturday Evening Post_," Eve remarked. Skirts may have clung to Johnnie, but Eve wasn't one of them. She had commented, on hearing of his masterpiece, that its music was hackneyed, the verse was rot and the theme disgusting. Martha had retorted that the theme, rather, was rot. Johnnie and Eve quarreled on till Eve departed.

"You're going to stay for lunch, Johnnie?" Emily asked.

"I won't if you don't want me to."

"How truly magnanimous!" Emily murmured. "No. You stay and talk to the girls, but don't stay for lunch. You know your mother wants you." Emily wondered then, and she wondered later, why Martha had wanted Johnnie to stay. Did she want him to hear what the Wright girls' mother was sure to say about the dressing room? Did Martha care really what Johnnie thought--Johnnie, who was always asking her to marry him?

And what _did_ he think, as he stood lazily leaning against the door into the dressing room, watching the women examine the drawers? Mrs. Wright had brought with her a friend who was planning a new house, a prosperous-looking person, and who listened thoughtfully to Martha's answers to her questions. This person was impressed. She kept looking at Martha when they were seated at length in the painted room.

"How much of this did you do yourself?" she asked. "Hadn't you seen something like it somewhere?"

Martha was sitting on a cushion at Emily's feet.

"Oh yes. I'd seen one in New York. And I just told the old Dane, the carpenter, how many drawers I wanted, and how big, and he did it all himself. I couldn't measure them, or anything like that. He had them all ready to put in when I got home. I'd like to do over all the closets in the house." She looked at her mother, against whom she was leaning.

The guests looked at Emily. She had to say something.

"But if all the closets in this house had so many drawers, we wouldn't have enough to put into them."

"I know it. Isn't that funny?" Martha turned to the other. "People are so silly. The closets are so big there's nothing to fill them with. Same way with our basement. It's a horror!" Martha spoke with such conviction that her hearers laughed. "Well, it is," she insisted to Emily. "There's a wood room and a coal room, and drying room, and storeroom with nothing but the hose and two old barrels in it. I could put all those things into one room nicely, and have three great big rooms. They could be billiard rooms, or play rooms, or nice workshops. If I had a lot of children in this house I could give them all two rooms apiece."

Emily included Johnnie in her glance. He had his eyes fixed hard on Martha--who avoided them innocently but persistently.

And that thoughtful and prosperous-looking stranger said:

"Wouldn't you like to drive over and look at my plans? Our basement is going to cost an awful lot."

Martha twinkled at the invitation.

"Oh, I just love to look at plans!" she said. "I just love to think about people's houses. I was thinking, if ever I'm a reformer, do you know what I'm going to reform? Everybody's closets!"

Wasn't she lovely, sitting there innocently, Emily thought. No wonder they admired her, all of them.

"You come and reform all my closets," the stranger said. But Mrs. Wright said: "Don't look at mine till I've had a chance to go over them. You've made me a lot of trouble, Martha. The girls won't give me a minute's peace now till I let them start doing their rooms over."

When Emily, having dismissed the visitors, turned from the hall into her living room, the sight of these familiar things almost shocked her. They stirred her, at least, to question the very room she had for years taken for granted. The glamour of that room upstairs seemed to make the rest of the house faded, some way. The living room she had always sat down in with satisfaction. Now it looked--timid--meager--insipid--unexpectant. Its walls and its woodwork were almost the color of its neutral light pongee curtains. Those were good rugs on the oak floor. They were rich, and they were mellow. Emily had bought them recklessly with a large share of the first installment of her inheritance, when she had moved back to the house when Martha was a small girl, and she had never regretted her fling. The davenport and the two chairs that went with it, those most comfortable monstrosities, had been done once in blue corduroy. Well, it was still corduroy. That was about all that could be said for it. But its blue dullness some way had seemed to match the rugs. That was a good table. No one bought a table like that in any town in Illinois. Nor was there a desk like that, which plainly had been cherished for some generations. And how infinitely superior were the pictures on the wall to most of the pictures on the walls of that town. Emily's grandfather, once the Governor of the sprawling infant state of Illinois, had brought that engraving of Mt. Vernon sentimentality to the wilderness because he remembered his mother holding her successive babies up to see the dogs and horses that surrounded the father of his country, who stood in a declamatory attitude on the very brink of the Potomac, with his women folk and youthful intimates hovering pictorially about him.

Emily used to compare that picture, chuckling, to the picture of Boston which one of her neighbors had made for herself, upon her return from a memorable visit there. Mrs. Jennings was chairman of the art committee and a busy woman, and hadn't time to "do" many pictures, she said. So she just put everything she wanted to remember into one. And Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill and the Common, Longfellow's house and Faneuil Hall, jostled one another in a staggered and staggering row all across the foreground. And there was Mrs. Johnson's parlor. Every time Emily went into it she used to say: "Well, my aunt might have been worse. She didn't paint at least, thank God!" She had left no bilious works of her brush behind her, and she deserved credit for it, considering the fashion of her day. She had left a cherished large framed photograph of the door of St. Mark's. Emily could recall exactly the tone in which she used to say "The portal of St. Mark's," for she had always added "by the sea," which mystified the child. The geography said plainly that all Venice was by the sea. Besides Italy and Mt. Vernon, there were what Emily considered two perfectly lovely large "studies" of Martha's head. A cousin who played with photography had done them when the child was seven years old. She was the cousin who had gathered the child into her arms, on one occasion and cried, "Oh, twinkle, twinkle, little star!" Martha hated them, and pleaded for their banishment, but Emily would not listen to her, not for a minute. There sat a photo of Jim on the desk, and one of his mother, and an early one of his father. And there was, of course, that first seal of a D.A.R. invulnerability, a framed sampler. Altogether, Emily had always been secure that her living room was not just a common small-town room.

But after Martha's--well, what was wrong with it, she sat wondering that morning, a bit ruefully. Some way it was tamed and tolerating. Those high-handed colors upstairs dared the world, and demanded. These young things went raging, commanding, soaring into life. "Not like me," she thought, vaguely. "I just hesitated--and submitted--and got along, some way. How puny I was, and--sort of helpless. That book--I shrank from it as if it had been some great thing. But Eve snubs it. She ignores it. They fly, these children--they just fly. But I rode just a bicycle. And this room wabbles along on a bicycle. I must speed it up. I must--get these things done over--or else I ought to get some new pictures, or something. I better ask Martha, perhaps, to freshen it up a little."

Certainly that stranger had asked Martha's advice. The memory of her respectful tone was wine to Emily. She had to speak to Bob about it. She couldn't just let him go on thinking that Martha "amounted" to nothing.

"I could see that they thought it was wonderful for a girl of her age to have planned it all," she told him. "That woman asked Martha definitely to come and see the plans for her house!"

But he said: "The dickens she did! The kid's got her head swelled enough now, without anybody asking her advice. The dame must be hard up if she's got to come to Martha for advice!"

The girls played golf that afternoon. Emily's mind, when it had intervals of leisure, dwelt upon the question of new furniture--somewhat reluctantly. After all, maybe it would be better to suffer the old faded colors than to flee to others that you know not of. Such a lot of trouble, going to the city to select things, and then, maybe, when you get them home, they don't fit in, as you had intended them to. And she even realized her reluctance. "That's the point about being young. Martha would just jump into the shopping fray. She would dive right in, without hesitation." These meditations kept Emily from giving "that man" even a thought, until almost supper time. Then, as she passed into the hall, Marion Wright, giving her arms a sturdy swing, almost struck her, and drew back, apologizing.

"Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't see you! I was just practicing that drive. I didn't want to forget it, such a classy one! Richard Quin was just teaching us, you know, Mrs. Kenworthy."

"Who's Richard Quin?" Emily asked.

"Oh, that's Eve's brother-in-law. Marion likes him. Don't you, Marion?" Martha asked.

"Well, I can't say I'm crazy about him. But still, he can play. I'm not particular who coaches me. I do prefer them not so fat."

"Fat!" murmured Martha. "He isn't fat. He's just a large man. He's well built."

"Of course they're more fun married," Marion went on, trying to shock Emily. And then she asked, suddenly curious, "Do you like him, Mrs. Kenworthy?"

"Do I like him? Goodness, no! He's greasy looking."

Martha said with dignity: "Mother doesn't know him. She never said a word to him in her life. He's not greasy at all, if you see him close. He shaves twice a day."

"How do you know he does?" Emily demanded.

"He's not reticent, anyway," Marion said laughing.

"He just happened to mention it."

"Did you see his wife?" Emily asked them both.

"Eve told you she wasn't well. She wasn't there."

Martha looked at her mother, perplexed. Emily looked at her daughter uneasily. It was annoying of Martha to defend that man! If Emily had known he was to be on the links, she wouldn't have let Martha go to play. But now, of course the wisest would be just to let the matter drop. Martha was always so trustworthy. Certainly her good taste could be trusted.

Yet for some reason, when Johnnie Benton came that evening to take the three adorned girls to the dance, Emily was more impressed by him than ever. She felt so safe when Martha was under his care. She watched them drive away, and then went out to potter about as usual in the garden, just at dark. A neighbor came bringing her, in a strawberry box, a few rare seedling pansies, and together they made a little place protected from the heat in which they might be nursed. And then they went and sat down inside the screened veranda to escape the mosquitoes.

They were still talking there when Bob came. But he took his magazine and sat down a few chairs away, and they talked on as if no one was within hearing of their voices. And indeed no one was, for Bob habitually absented himself in the print before his eyes. He was unconscious of everything around him. Energetic, insistent demands and clamors could get only a muttered "Uh-uh!" from him. He really didn't know when the neighbor left, although he had sort of muttered at her.

So Emily sat still and alone in the darkness, and glad of the quietness. She thought over one by one the dozen men--Martha called them men, though they scarcely deserved the name--who would be dancing with the girls at the club. Emily knew every one of them; some of them she had known for years. She knew the families of most of them. Every time she thought of Martha's partner of the evening before, they seemed more acceptable to her. They were--decent. They were--secure. They had no foreign accent, and they had not pretended to know Tchekhoff. People gossiped about them, but Emily believed their relationships with bootleggers were merest flirtations. Their scrapes were ridiculous--like Johnnie's opera---but they were not vicious--often. Bob called them "nail-polishers," and "shiny Johnnies," and thought pessimistically about their chances of success in this competitive life. But Emily, musing away, liked them all that night.

Bob threw down his magazine, after a while, and returned to Emily's presence. He got up and lit a cigar, and went into the house. Emily heard him there talking to some one by 'phone about insurance. He came out and sat down on the railing in front of her.

"Let's go to bed," he said.

She looked at him. There he sat, a heavy, rather sluggish man with a growth of black beard which he conspicuously did not shave twice a day. His hair was not as thick as it had been ten years ago, but not less unruly, and his digestion was decidedly poorer. He was working hard, and making money, and usually tired. He was still more even-tempered than most men. From the time Martha went away to school till she came home for holiday he scarcely spoke an irritable word.

"I thought I'd wait till the girls come home."

"You're dead tired."

"I know it, but they'll be here soon. It's nearly twelve now."

"Let's go out and get them."

"All right. Let's."

They had done that more than once. Bob was always ready for a drive even over that road which they must take along the river. Two miles of that sinuous and uncertain byway had been the cause, like the rest of the country club, of a great wave of hard feeling in the community. Were the taxpayers going to keep it up for a few rich "sporty" families? asked the indignant, so successfully that now the handful of members had either to repair it themselves or endure its flooded ruts. The country club had not been well managed. Mrs. Benton had washed her hands of it in the beginning, prophesying its downfall. The founders had not counted the cost. The less wealthy couldn't stand the assessments and had dropped out. Those who remained had to pay more. And it was all a muddle and a burden and a quarrel--a perfect example of how Mrs. Benton did not manage things. Emily was one of those who still kept membership. She seldom used the place, but she wanted Martha to have a place to play golf. The more Martha danced there, the less she would disturb her father by dancing at home. And really, it was a very nice crowd of young people who gathered there. By night, as Bob and Emily drove in, it looked gay and lovely, lit all up, among the trees, with the dancers gliding about. By day, of course, its appearance justified the scorn which neighboring towns poured upon it. However, those towns, since last night's event, would be less boastful.

Bob stopped the car and they sat looking in. Now Martha had had on a little dress faintly pink at the neck and deeply carmine at the hem, so that, if she had been there, Emily would have seen her in a moment.

"Where _is_ the kid?" Bob grumbled. Emily looked about under the trees, and saw Johnnie Benton leave the couple with whom he was smoking and come over to them. Bob repeated his question immediately. And Johnnie said, indifferently, looking in towards the lighted floor:

"Isn't she there? I guess she's out having a petting party somewhere with that dago necker."

Emily was thoroughly annoyed by the boy's impertinence. The idea of his daring to say a thing to her of Martha.

"Who d'you mean?" Bob demanded.

"You know, that bearded guy she's falling for."

"Eve's brother-in-law?"

"Yes."

"Is she with that----" Emily nudged Bob violently.

"She generally is!" So Johnnie wasn't so indifferent, after all, to the fact as he had wanted them to believe. And then the music stopped, and the girls came nocking out to the drive like butterflies. Marion Wright called upon Johnnie to witness that there was just one more dance, and then they would all go home, and Martha, she said, had already gone, walking home.

Emily asked in reply, unconcernedly, if they were having a good time, and told them not to hurry, and said, "No, they wouldn't wait for an ice--the night was so hot they had thought they would drive out to cool off." But here the ice was--and she ate it hurriedly, fearing what Bob might say about Martha before them, nudging him mentally, as it were, into silence.

No sooner was the car turned towards home than Bob broke out:

"Well, I'll be damned! I won't have this, Emily."

"Funny we didn't see them, if they're walking home."

"I thought she had _some_ sense. What's he doing out here? Did you know he was coming?"

"No. I never thought of it. Of course the family belongs."

"The nerve of him! Does anyone else come uninvited?"

"Oh, Bob, we must be careful! Did you hear what Johnnie said?"

"I'll settle that girl to-night. She isn't going to be running around at midnight with any married man."

"Now, Bob, we mustn't be hasty. You must think this over. We don't want to--seem to take this--too seriously. He'll be leaving, likely, in a day or two."

"How do you know he will?"

"I _suppose_ he will. Didn't Eve say so?"

"I didn't hear her. And it's the principle of the thing. She thinks it's smart to be flirting with a married man."

"Oh, I don't think she does, Bob. He's so different--from these boys here." And then suddenly she begged: "Look, Bob! Oh, let me do the talking to her!" For walking slowly along, side by side, were the two of them, little rosy Martha and the man that seemed always bending over her. So near they were that Bob stopped the car with a jerk.

"We'll give you a lift," he said, unceremoniously. "Get in!"

Martha introduced her companion. Bob gave the shortest possible sign of being aware of his existence. He was opening the car door.

"Get in!" he said to his daughter.

"It's a glorious night for walking," Mr. Quin remarked, standing still.

"It's too late. Get in!" Bob again spoke directly to Martha.

She turned to her escort. "It is rather muddy here. Let's ride a little." And she got serenely in, and bade him follow her. The car started.

Emily turned around in her seat.

"You staying long in town, Mr. Quin? I meant to call. But Eve said your wife isn't well."

"Oh--I'm not sure yet. It's all so interesting to me. A Western town like this. It's quite surprised me." Hadn't Eve said the man was brought up in Indiana? His tone annoyed Emily so that she turned abruptly about in her seat. Martha leaned forward to her.

"He thinks it's the most ripping dance hall he ever saw, of the kind, mother." Ripping, was it? Such a distinguished word, so unlike this West, Emily was saying to herself. Where was Bob going? Why didn't he take them directly home? He had turned, and in a minute, before they knew it almost, they had stopped in front of Eve's home.

"We'll drop you here," said Bob.

The stranger looked at Martha.

She said, surprised: "No---- Oh--well----"

"It's the way we have in these Western towns," Bob remarked, shortly. The man said good night reluctantly and as meaningly as possible, with Emily's eye upon him.

In the light of the living room, Emily said: "Look at your slippers, Martha! What made you walk home in them?"

"Oh, mother, it was such moonlight. You were absolutely rude to him, mother. I never saw you act so before," Martha spoke grievedly.

"I know a snubbing when I get one. He didn't ask me to call on his wife."

"But, mother, you know she isn't well. Eve said so."

"If she isn't well I think he'd better devote himself exclusively to her. Martha, I don't like this. He ought to know better, if you don't. You'll get yourself talked about, if this keeps on."

Martha opened her eyes in unfeigned surprise.

"That's a funny way for you to talk, mother. You always say people have no right to go gossiping around about girls!"

"Well, I certainly said girls oughtn't to do silly things to start people talking."

"I get sick of this town! It's only in a little crude hole of a place like this a girl can't look at a man after he's married. He knows more in a minute than all the boys in this place know in a year. And just because he's got a wife I'm not to listen to him, I suppose!"

"You are certainly not to--to let him spend all his time with you. You went with Johnnie. Why didn't you come home with him? Did you know that he--this Quin person--was to be there, Martha?"

Martha stood there looking straight at her mother, as if she had seen in her something new and perplexing.

"What's the matter, mother? What's all the fuss about, anyway?"

"About this man. He's married. He oughtn't to be following you about when his wife's at home sick. I'm disgusted with you, Martha."

"Because he happens to be married?"

"He doesn't _happen_ to be married; he _is_ married."

"I don't follow you, mother."

Martha spoke, with her head held high, in the lazy tone she used to infuriate her father.

Emily said, gently smiling: "There's no use your trying that on me, Martha. You follow me exactly. You know exactly what I mean, and you're to remember what I say."

"You never spoke like this to me before, mother." She would try being hurt.

"I never had occasion to, thank goodness! And I'm not going to speak to you this way again, either." They both heard Bob coming in. "Now go to bed," Emily said, kissing her, "and be a good girl." Martha kissed her in return, without any sign of annoyance, and ran quickly upstairs.

"Where is she?" Bob demanded.

"She's gone to bed."

"Just like her. She crawls out of everything. Did you settle her once for all?"

"I spoke to her about it. I told her we didn't like it."

"You're too easy with her, Emily. I'm going to settle her in the morning. I'm going to lay down the law to her!"

He was going to lay down the law to her, was he, when he had never in his life laid down his work for an hour for her sake! Emily, that placid woman, for the third time in one evening, was ruffled and resentful. Johnnie had disturbed her. "That man" had annoyed her. And now, all of a sudden, Bob, who had never done anything but stand aside and watch her manage Martha, was going to take her in hand. He had literally had no time for the girl since she was born; and now he seemed to think she ought to listen to him.

She said nothing, being wise, and he went up to bed. The Wright girls came in, presently, with Johnnie and Chris Phillips, all of them together making a little eddying whirlpool of youth in the quiet room. Emily, moved by some instinct of security for Martha, called up to her to come down. "Oh," they said, "is Martha home?" Emily replied carelessly that they had picked her up near the bridge, and instantly she happened to look at Helen Wright. She had not been thinking of the effect of her remark, but she saw Helen wink--yes, undoubtedly just wink--at Johnnie, and she saw he didn't want to be winked at on the subject. She felt a sharp mistrust of that girl--her expressive, cynical face. What did she mean? Did she know with whom Martha had chosen to walk home? She thanked goodness that Helen Wright wasn't staying long. She didn't like her.

Martha had only tarried a minute--long enough to have paid, perhaps, her tribute to the mirror, but by the time she came down the boys had left. Johnnie said it would be a change to go once before he got sent home. Martha didn't deign to notice his absence. She talked serenely to her guests.

But Emily, in her bed, remembered, sighing more than once, how that horrid Helen had sat looking at Martha, with cynical, initiated amusement. Perhaps that girl was encouraging her in her naughtiness. If Martha wasn't careful--and she probably wouldn't be--she would be getting into a horrible row with her father. That consummation Emily Kenworthy would do anything to avoid. If Bob "bawled her out" in the morning, the world underneath their feet would be splitting. Martha and that odious stranger would be on one side, and Bob would be on the other. And Emily--well, there was never a moment's doubt in her mind where she would be!

She remembered, indignant at the thought of it, that perfectly absurd situation of her friend, Mrs. Harding, whose daughter had married, to the utter rage and final alienation of her father. One day, months after that, Mrs. Harding had come creeping into the Kenworthys' house, almost a stranger then, and had begged for the loan of two hundred dollars, just begged for it, ashamed and whispering, because her daughter was ill, and without a penny, in a rooming house demanding its rent. A girl friend of hers had seen her there, and had come back to urge her mother to help her. In all her life Emily had never had to consider the state of a woman living comfortably without one cent of her own to put a finger on. "If I were you," she had exclaimed to Mrs. Harding, "I would go straight to her. I would bring her home, or take her some place and take care of her." But Mrs. Harding dared not defy her husband. He was an old man, and delicate, and it might kill him. And Emily had been on the point of saying: "I don't believe it! And if it does, he deserves it!" She had entered heartily into that conspiracy, and it had all turned out so well, and the two women had become friends. Yet Emily essentially disapproved of her "kowtowing" to her husband. There would be nothing like that in her house! If any great, deep chasm was to come splitting across the ground on which the Kenworthy family stood, Emily was going to be on the side of her daughter! Was it likely that she would give up that Jim Kenworthy--that she would have allowed her dear lover to go away to die alone--for that child's sake, and now give up the child merely for Bob Kenworthy?

"Bob," she said, emphatically.

"What's the matter?" He was sleepy.

"You aren't to 'settle' Martha in the morning! You are to leave her to me!"

"What?"

"I say you aren't to scold Martha in the morning about--that man. I've talked to her about it, and that's enough."

"She won't mind you, Emily."

"She'll mind me at least as much as she would you. And more, too. And I'm not going to have you two--quarreling and arguing about--this--person. Do you understand that, Bob? If you--speak to her about it, she'll get to thinking that she's on one side with that man, and you and I are on the other side."

"She's on his side now."

"No, Bob, she isn't. She is just--playing; she wants a little rope."

"She's got enough to hang herself now."

"You won't speak to her, will you, Bob, now?"

"Oh, well," Bob grumbled, "she's your kid, Emily. You've got to manage her. She won't listen to anything I say, anyway."

"But I mean, don't you just begin to--don't you forget and bring the subject up, at all, will you, Bob?"

"I won't say a word to her if you make her quit it. If you don't, I'll take her in hand. I won't stand for her getting talked about all over town!"

"She's not going to get talked about, Bob!"

"Oh, well. Manage her to suit yourself."

That was the most he could say. He could offer her no help. All she could ask of him was that he would refrain from interfering. But if Jim had been in Bob's place, Jim would have known what to do. Martha would have listened if Jim could have spoken to her. And Jim would have listened if Emily had gone to him in perplexity about the girl. Hadn't she and Jim sat together for hours discussing their children, enjoying them together, having them in common, almost, in spite of the barrier between them? Because Jim had always appreciated little Martha Kenworthy. That was the essential wrong Bob had done the child since birth. He had failed to appreciate her. He had never in his life understood a woman. He had never even given the proper value to his own mother. And Jim's adulterous wife he had simply cursed whenever he thought of her. It was only men that Bob could evaluate. There was no use expecting him to judge Martha fairly. But Jim had enjoyed every phase of her little girlhood, just as he had played tenderly, reverently with his mother's heroisms and weaknesses, just as he had so well understood every shade of the service Emily had unconsciously rendered him when she had loved his son. If Martha had a man like Jim about familiarly, she wouldn't be impressed as she seemed to be with the first pretentious masher that came her way. Jim would have set a standard for the child, given her a taste for masculine worth. And it all went back again to the old, old question: Why didn't I marry Jim in the first place? Why did I ever quarrel with him? Why was I brought up so that I could quarrel with him, about a book, merely a book that is this minute lying neglected on the shelf in the painted room because the girls were bored with old classics? I married Bob to get away from this house, said Emily. But Martha will never marry to get away from that, Emily vowed again.

_Chapter Four_

Afterwards, when Emily, thinking those summer weeks over, used to ask herself again and again why she hadn't prevented their climax, she could scarcely recall how her realization of the situation had come about. She had told Martha that she didn't want Eve's brother-in-law singling her out for his attention. She had supposed that was sufficient. She had gone with Martha to take the Wrights home the next day, and all very merrily the afternoon had gone, just as afternoons usually went before that man came rumbling on the horizon. There had been no mention of him till towards supper time. Martha's chum, Greta, had come in then, asking her to go for a swim. Emily liked Greta, with reservations and allowances, thinking her too pretty to be judged severely. She had dazzling eyes: light-blue eyes when she wore light blue; dark-blue eyes when she wore dark blue; gray eyes when she had on a gray suit; and when she pulled that wicked little mauve hat down over her forehead, her eyes were purple as dark pansies. One had to forgive that girl for somewhat too deliberately flashing those glances into male consciousness, Emily argued. But Greta didn't--quite tell the very truth--always. Just lately in a crisis she had told one tale, and Martha had told another of what happened, and it had all had to come out, Martha justified, a truthful child, and Greta--well, perhaps she had learned her lesson. Emily believed so.

Now that afternoon when she came in on her way to the beach, Martha was indiscreet, to say the least. She said demurely enough, when Greta urged her:

"Oh, I don't know whether I'm allowed to go swimming. Am I, mammie?"

Emily had asked innocently, "Why not?"

"Well, there's sure to be some married men about, some place." And Greta had smiled, as if she understood Martha's cause for complaint.

"Don't be silly!" Emily had replied. They had gone swimming. Afterwards Emily wondered if Martha had known that man would be there, if she had taken that way of warding off subsequent reproof. She wondered, but she could reach no conclusion. She could never make out clearly how it had gone on. She hadn't even known for certain that Martha was seeing the man. She had thought it better to trust her.

Eve had returned the next day, and Emily had been glad, feeling that Eve would be a protection. The girls had gone together to spend the week-end at Geneva with friends. That had been planned days ago. Bob had remarked uneasily, looking up from the daily at noon on Monday:

"That bird's in Geneva, Emily!"

"Who?"

"Quin, that brother-in-law of Eve's."

"Why shouldn't he be?" Emily had asked, carelessly. And she asked herself the same question, but not so carelessly. What was more natural than that he should have gone fishing? Didn't everybody go fishing? Wasn't there a long list in the paper every Monday of all the men from the town who had gone, even though they went regularly every Saturday of the season? The editor had to have something to fill up his columns, and that list, and the list of those who went to Chicago daily to shop, could always be depended upon. Still----

Afterwards she sometimes thought that she should have said to Martha: "Did you see Mr. Quin at Geneva? Did you know he was going to be there?" She might have asked that question the following Wednesday. Perhaps that was where she had made her great mistake. She should have asked Martha directly what had happened there.

For Eve came home that day from the links alone, and announced she was going to Chicago at once to her father; that she had thought when she came to live in this town that at least she wouldn't have her sister hanging around, and her brother-in-law. She wasn't going to come back till they cleared out, she said, angrily red. Afterwards Emily knew that she ought to have asked her exactly what the quarrel had been about. She had, however, practically asked Martha later. Martha had said indifferently she supposed Eve was tired of the little town. It wasn't good enough for her, perhaps. She had spoken sarcastically. She didn't regret Eve's departure. She had gone on her way undisturbed. Perhaps she had spent more time with her friends than she usually did. At home she was quiet; but she had always been that. She had always sat excited, as it were, by her thoughts, chuckling to herself about what was in her mind. Her Uncle Jim had said of her child that it was _herself_ she seemed always to be enjoying. She had seemed to have a hidden source of delight to muse on. Johnnie was no longer about the house. When Emily commented on this fact, Martha had explained indifferently that he had an awful case on a De Kalb girl.

One afternoon Emily sat talking to an old, trustworthy friend. "When's Eve coming back? You know her sister?" Grace Phillips had asked.

Emily couldn't believe she had asked it in malice. She thought afterwards it might have been a well-meant warning. Emily had said she had not even seen the sister. She wasn't receiving callers.

"You see more of him, I suppose?"

Emily had repressed her surprise, and answered, vaguely, "No; that is, not a great deal. Eve--not when Eve isn't here."

What did Mrs. Phillips mean? Had she seen Martha with that man?

"I hear the old grandmother gets worse all the time," Mrs. Phillips had innocently continued. Emily had said she didn't know.

It was after four then; soon after that there had come a long-distance 'phone call: four friends in the next county were driving up to dance in Chicago. Would Martha go with them? They'd be along soon after seven. As Emily hung up the receiver she saw a sort of chance. She would go out to the golf course and bring Martha home to get ready for the evening, and take occasion to see exactly who was playing there, and then she would be rid of this uneasiness. She hated taking the car herself, but it was time she made sure of what was going on.

So she drove out, inch by inch around by the dusty detour, over the well-known ruts. She turned the car anxiously through the gates, which always looked so narrow when she was driving that to miss their post seemed almost miraculous. She chose her place of stopping very carefully, a large place easy to turn around in, in case Martha wasn't there and she had to go back by herself.

She shut off the engine, congratulating herself the more upon the neatness of her achievement because some other woman had stopped her car--but not her engine--wrong way about, at some distance, so that she sat almost facing Emily. A stranger she was. With a swanky little scarlet hat on, and rouged; waiting for some one, looking intently towards the path through the trees by which the players came up to the shack of a clubhouse.

And then it occurred to Emily that that woman must be Eve's sister, because that must be the car that Eve drove. She looked, naturally, with renewed interest. The face was in some ways like Eve's. But it was no wonder Eve didn't like her. She was a discontented woman, ill-natured, with hollows about her eyes, like Eve, but more accentuated; altogether hard faced. She was probably waiting for her husband.

"Shall I go and speak to her, or shall I not?" Emily wondered. The woman hadn't once looked in her direction. Either she was intent upon the path and had not heard anyone coming, or purposely avoided chances of being intruded upon.

Emily had not been sitting there undecided one minute when the woman leaned suddenly forward, shifting her position to get a better view of something. Emily's eyes turned, naturally, to see what she was so eagerly looking at. There were four people walking towards them at a little distance, two in front, young Mr. and Mrs. Williams, two behind, little Martha Kenworthy and that man. Martha had on a pleated white skirt and a belted overblouse of pale yellow crêpe de Chine, with a square neck, and she was walking along, slight and young, bareheaded, of course, with her face all flushed pink, looking up, all smiling and interested, to that man, who seemed, as always, to be leaning down over her. They came walking towards her. They were talking about something so amusing, so intimately interesting, that they paid no attention to the two cars. Emily sitting there, sickening, saw Mrs. Williams call Martha's attention to her mother. She saw the absorbed two turn from their topic and look towards her.

She had looked again quickly at the woman. She knew what she had been waiting for. She saw the discontented face flush angrily, as Eve's did sometimes; and then, just as that man drew near, when he had seen his wife sitting there, she started her car and drove hastily away.

Martha was coming up to her mother. Mrs. Williams was with her. The men had stopped to talk together about something, a few steps away. Had the Williamses seen that woman? Would they know who she was?

"Hello, mother!" Martha said, quite naturally. And Emily, she hoped undismayed, explained to her and Mrs. Williams why she had come. "I thought I'd better come and get you, so you'd have time enough to get ready," she said.

Martha jumped in, taking her place at the wheel. She had come out with Greta, whom Emily saw at some distance, coming towards her. She asked Mrs. Williams to tell her she had gone home. They whirled away.

"Martha!" Emily said, sternly, "I came out here to get you. And this is what I find. Do you know who was in that car?"

"What car?"

"That one ahead, that just drove out." Martha looked down the road.

"Eve?" she asked.

"Her sister. She came out here to see if her husband was with you," Emily's voice trembled with dismay.

"Why, mother!" Martha was indignant. "What makes you say such a thing?"

"I saw her expression. She was waiting to catch him with you. Do the Williamses know her? Oh, I wonder if they saw that--if they understood? Mr. Jenkinson was sitting on the porch there. Martha, this is the end of that. I didn't like you being with that man before; but, now I've seen her, I simply won't have it. She's jealous. Why, Martha, a girl might get into an awful mess, this way! That woman--driving away in that way. Quarreling in public--that way!"

"She quarrels with everybody, Eve says," Martha commented, indifferently.

"Well, she's not going to have any excuse for quarreling with us. You hear what I say, Martha? You're not to play golf, or swim or ride or walk or dance or even smile at that man in public, any place, where anybody can see you."

"It'll look sort of funny, mother, when he's everywhere I am."

"I don't care how it looks. It'll look a lot better than having his wife watching him flirting with you."

Martha raised her head proudly.

"I don't know why you should say a thing like that to me! I was NOT flirting, I was just talking to him, mammie! This seems so--unworthy of you."

"Very well, then. You aren't to talk to him any more. You've got to obey me! You've got to do exactly what I say in this, Martha!"

"I don't know why you get so worked up over this! You never talk so about anybody else!"

"You never look that way at any other man!"

"No. I never find anyone so interesting!"

"It's disgusting. You ought to be spanked!"

"I'm not a child!"

"You certainly are!"

"I'm twenty in April."

"Can she know how that threat--yes, sheer threat of independence--hurts me?" Emily wondered.

"Oh, Martha, you mustn't be--you _mustn't_! It isn't fair. That woman is unhappy! She's haggard! She's sick, and she sees him playing about with you!"

"Am I so dangerous? Can't she even let him talk to a child?"

"I'm not going to argue with you. I've simply laid down the law, for once. You're not to be seen even talking with that man again. Do you understand that?"

"Yes."

"Didn't you understand it before?"

"I never thought you'd act this way about it."

"I never thought for a minute you'd go on, after what I said to you."

"Do you want me to tell him I'm not allowed to speak to him?"