Chapter VI: Part 6

Emily had to probe her ignominy that night, for the thought kept coming to her, even after what she had seen, that Martha couldn't know what she was talking about. She had to ask her--terrible things; there was no help for that. She had to realize that her daughter had lied to her directly, thoughtfully, and cunningly. This affair had begun in the summer, before Martha had promised her never to see that man again. She had promised not to see him, knowing when they were to meet next, in Chicago. "I was so sure, mammie!" she sobbed. "I knew it would be all right when you knew him! I just loved him so!" Martha had gone back to college to lie cunningly there, to get permission to spend every week-end in New York, to study dancing, which her mother was so keen to have her take up, she had averred. Well, she had been punished, punished by having to look in the terrible face of Death. Suppose that colored bell-boy hadn't been in the drug store, there---- Emily's arms tightened about her.

"Oh, what are you going to do with me now?" Well might little Martha Kenworthy ask that. There seemed no good reason why she shouldn't go on crying indefinitely, forever. But Emily, drawing her close against her in bed, tucking the covers about her, trying to get her warm, hoped doggedly to find comfort for her, to get her quiet. There were worse things than having a baby, she told her once, crooning over her.

And Martha said, "What?" And then added, "Oh, you mean being discarded!"

Discarded? Martha Kenworthy discarded?

"She is beyond me in knowledge," Emily thought. "I've never known bitterness."

She had to ask her, "Does that man know about this?"

"I--told him. He said----" She couldn't say it for weeping.

"Never mind. It doesn't matter."

But after a while Martha did say it:

"He said I'd got him into a dirty mess."

Emily reproached herself. She wouldn't ask, even, where he was now, where his wife was, whether he was divorced. She wouldn't have Martha marry that man now, if he was able to marry her a hundred times over.

"Martha, you mustn't cry this way. You mustn't. You'll make yourself sick."

"No, it won't; it can't. Nothing makes me sick enough. I've tried everything."

"What? What have you tried?"

And Martha, lying cuddled against her there, recounted horrors. "At school," she sobbed, once resentfully, "there isn't any privacy. Those girls just come singing and laughing right into your room. I tried things week-ends, when I was in the city."

"Alone?"

"Yes, mammie. I thought I'd killed myself once--two weeks ago. When I tried to get up I fainted. I fell on the floor, and I thought I was dying; and I couldn't ring for anybody--they might find out."

Emily had to hear all that--to imagine it.

She said, after a while, "I'm going to take you to a doctor to-morrow---day after to-morrow. The best one I can find."

"I'll go to Mexico; I'll hide somewhere; I'll go to South America!"

"We could never be sure we had hidden ourselves."

"No, I know it. Oh, I've thought of everything. In books they do it; in books no one ever finds out. There's 'The Old Maid.' We could do it."

"We'd always be afraid. We'd never have any peace of mind again."

"You don't need to go with me. I can go."

"I'm going to see you through this. I think home would be the best place, Martha."

"No, I won't go home! Never, mother. Oh, imagine what dad would say to me!"

Emily had thought of that. She had decided. "That's my house!" she had said as they came out on the train. "I'll take my child home to it. If Bob wants to leave, he can leave."

"You don't appreciate your father. If we should go home,--this way--to him, he would stand by us. There's no use saying he wouldn't."

"He would stand by you, mother. I'll say that much for him. He wouldn't leave you when you're in trouble. He's not like---- But he would be always hating me; if he didn't scold me, he would be wanting to. I couldn't stand that. I won't go home. I won't let you tell him this. I'd rather----"

"Don't say that!" Emily moaned.

"We can go abroad. We could go to Sweden, or the Philippines."

"Yes, all right. Now stop crying, Martha. Try to go to sleep. I'll make arrangements. I'll fix it all up for you."

The girl dozed at length, moaning. The clock struck, and the hours passed, and Emily lay there, open-eyed, fleeing in vain terror from one corner of her consciousness to the other, whacked and battered through the soul by fact after brutal fact. She was in no condition to think clearly. It was her habit of mind to blame herself for a great deal that was never her fault, perhaps because all her tender years she had had the sense of her aunt's disapproving eyes upon her. And now she shouldered all the blame of this tragedy. This child was what she had made her; she had spoiled her indeed. She had only wanted her to be happy, and where was happiness now? Her child, the work of her hands, the fruit of her body and soul, had lowered herself to deliberate lying. Yes, and even that Emily Kenworthy could have pardoned if the child had lied for a worthy man. She had been found lacking the essential womanly instincts of self-preservation--of child preservation. She hadn't known how to make herself cherished. She had failed fundamentally. "What was it I neglected?" Emily moaned. "What didn't I teach her? Bob always said I spoiled her. Bob knew. I have failed. I have failed more than she has. I thought only about her being happy. What am I going to do for her now?"

After a long while--it was towards morning, though Emily had no thought of time--Martha rose with a start. She began scrambling hastily out of bed.

"I'm sick!" she murmured.

"Lie down! Wait! I'll get you something!"

"A towel! Hand me a towel!"

Emily jumped up and felt for the light. The room was bitterly cold. She looked about for something to serve Martha's need. She searched hastily for her dressing gown.

"Get back into bed," she commanded. "Cover up!" She sat down on the bed beside her, shivering violently, trying to help her. For Martha was leaning out over the side of the bed, retching, choking, trying to stifle the sound of her misery by covering her face with the towel. Paroxysm after paroxysm of nausea followed. Between them Martha lay back in bed, shivering, blue-lipped, sweat on her forehead, tears in her eyes, harrowing to behold.

"Try to lie still, Martha! Lie flat on your back!"

"Can't. Oh----" And on went the sickening sounds.

She was so blue, so frightening to look at, that Emily started to go to the door.

"What are you doing?" Martha cried.

"I'm going to wake somebody up! I'm going to get some hot water--a hot-water bag for you."

But the girl was in terror, and cried out:

"I never have anything, mammie. Don't! They might guess! I'll be all right, mammie. Come into bed with me; that'll warm me up!"

So Emily made the room as decent as she could.

"Hide that, _hide_ it! I'll manage in the morning. I don't want anybody to suspect anything!"

Emily got into bed, sickened, and gathered the child to her. She was passionate with hate. A man, any man, who inflicted one such hour on a girl----"I could just kill that man!" she was raging. If a decent boy had given her child a box of sickening chocolates, by accident, what a fuss there would have been! How he would have had to grovel! And as she raged in her mind, she heard Martha imploring comfort.

"Oh, how long is this going to go on, mammie?"

"How long has it gone on?"

"Oh, weeks! From the first! Oh, I was so afraid they would hear, at school!"

Suddenly a memory flashed over Emily. She felt the hours she had suffered such discomfort--for the sake of this undone child. She and Bob had been living in their wretched little rooms over the drug store on Main Street. And she could see Bob standing there, in his nightshirt, a lamp in his hand, solicitous and dumfounded, because she lay sick and laughing, tears in her eyes, and singing on her lips, shaken with delight over the significance of her symptoms. She had been beside herself with happiness at the prospect of a baby. Certainly never before in her life, and seldom since, had she known such heavenly satisfaction as during those weeks. The very sensation of that dear expectancy came back to her.

And Martha, in her arms, moaned wearily.

Then Emily turned away from her, towards the wall, and, covering herself up to the eyes, began an utterly sick and bitter weeping. At every gasp some new phase of her misery came to contrast its horror with the former loveliness. The years came all tumbling down in great crushing masses upon her, and the beauty of that baby, her little parties, her sweet little coats. It was Christmas morning, she remembered, and she could see the little thing in her footed sleeping suit standing twinkling in ecstasy about a stocking from which a red-headed doll peeped out.--Dolls, what lots of dolls, to teach her motherhood--and Jim playing with her! It was for this child's sake that her mother had refrained from all the life she might have had with her dear Jim. And now---- This was the end of it all. "If I had left her--deserted her--gone with him, could she have been worse off than she is now?" Emily asked; and she went on weeping. She saw the painted room from which the child had shut herself out. She had made herself a dark house of regret now, this house-loving girl who had destroyed herself. Where should they go now? "To whom can I go for help?" Emily cried. If Jim were living, if she could go to New York and tell Jim all this, so he could help her---- There was no one living to whom she could turn. "I'll take her to Wilton," she moaned; "he'll know what to do!" Home was impossible. Could she take her lovely daughter there--this child whom she had watched them admire? That woman would find them there, that jealous, married, wild woman, who had open, unquestioned cause now for scandals and fury. She heard Martha speaking to her, imploring her, crying with her, but she paid no heed to her. The heat in the steam pipes began pounding. Daylight came into the room. Martha got up to conceal what signs she might find of her sickness. Martha showed strange skill in furtiveness now. She seemed to have acquired habits of cunning. Presently she was standing there, lying glibly to the wondering chambermaid. Her mother was ill; her mother had had news of bereavement. She must have some breakfast brought up.

Emily had been forty-three years old when she had left home last. But after Christmas Day, it was months before she thought of herself as anything but an old woman. It was not so much a day, the twenty-fifth of December, as an epoch--a desert of disappointment from which she was never likely to recover fully. She got up and dressed that morning, scarcely knowing what she did. She sat down in desperation and just looked at Martha. She rallied after a while, enough to suggest that they go out together for a walk. But Martha refused. There were lots of girls in her college who lived in New Jersey. She might meet somebody who would ask what in the world she was doing in that little hotel upon such an occasion. She lay down, and Emily covered her warmly.

She sat watching her sleep. The afternoon faded away. The darkness came, and they went to bed. There they lay. Martha slept till the evil hour of morning came, and passed distressfully.

They got up, and Emily began to put her things into her bag. As she moved about, peace came to her some way. It was as if she realized at length that she was sentenced to death and there was no escape possible. She must die quietly. Afterwards, she used to marvel over that strange consciousness that came to her, that she could go through this horror, and any other that might be coming to her, without frenzy, without any outcry. She knew that whichever hideous alternative she had to go through, as long as Martha was saved alive to her, she was able some way, quietly, to bear it. She had never experienced before such an exalted feeling of strength. Even Martha felt it. She grew quieter. She listened without a murmur to her mother's plans, because Emily's voice was smooth again.

She had decided that as soon as they got to New York she would 'phone from the station to the head nurse of a hospital to which she had once gone to see a friend. She remembered vividly the assured and adequate manner in which those nurses had moved about. She was loath to trouble them. She would say that she was a stranger in the city, without friends, suddenly in need of a gynecologist. She wanted a woman, and the very best one. Would the nurse recommend a perfectly reliable one?

There was no hitch in the plan. The nurse recommended three, for she thought it likely that some of them might be away for the holidays. Emily was able to get an appointment with the first one, but only late in the afternoon, after the other patients had been seen. She turned calmly from that 'phone, and took Martha to the Brevoort Hotel. She got a room on the third floor. She wouldn't have been afraid then of any height. It was no wonder that Martha had to exclaim, as soon as the door was shut behind the porter with their luggage:

"How could you do it, mammie?"

"Let's not talk about it," she answered.

There was an hour to wait for lunch. Only once did she have that feeling of panic. Her strength almost failed her when she picked up the morning paper defensively and saw the advertisements of "white sales." Baby clothes were illustrated there. She threw the paper hastily down. She mustn't think of such a child in her house, playing in her willow tree. She would hate that child; she wanted Martha to hate it. Yet they would have to make some sort of hateful preparations for it.

After a while they rose and went down into the restaurant, and found a place among untrapped, unmaddened men and women, who didn't look as if they felt their lives reeling through destruction. Mother and daughter said but little. If anyone near had looked at them attentively, he would have thought, probably, of two women who looked rather bored with life and in need of diversion.

When the coffee came, Martha, who had chosen to sit with her back to the room, was leaning on the table, her hand over her eyes. She had been looking in grim dejection at her mother's hands. She stirred, and said, nervously:

"Nobody would ever suspect you of anything, mother."

"Let's not talk about it," Emily almost whispered.

"I mean--I mean--I don't suppose you will have to take your gloves off, will you?"

"Where?"

"I mean--in the doctor's office." She looked around her slyly to see if she might be overheard.

"No, I don't suppose so." Emily thought best not to question her.

But Martha persisted.

"Mammie, no one could suspect you of anything! Lend me your ring--your wedding ring." Her voice died away.

Emily's voice never faltered. "All right, if you want it." She spoke as if she had been asked for a nickel for the telephone. She put her hands down under the table and tugged away at the ring. Her fingers were larger now than they had been the day Bob put the ring on, in the City Hall in Chicago, in that room where, she still remembered, the spittoons sat in rows. She hadn't taken that ring off for years. She was handing it over now, with another one--a diamond one--which Bob had given her two years ago, at Christmas time, to her deserted daughter. Bob seemed, just then, not so bad a husband, after all. Martha reached over for the rings, closed her fingers about them, and put them furtively away in her purse.

After an interminable afternoon the two of them, with their story ready, came into the doctor's waiting room--a large office which served the patients of several doctors; it was so full that people were standing. Yet as soon as the Kenworthys entered, a woman older than her mother, after one glance at Martha, rose hastily to offer her a place to sit down. The women made a place for Emily, crowding together. Emily didn't even wonder how many, like herself, were dreading a death sentence--a sentence of life. She sat there, in the unspeakable intensity of consciousness of her wound, realizing nothing of the room but the fact that Martha was sitting huddled down in the next sofa, her hat pulled down to hide her shrunken face. Her lips only could be seen, from where her mother sat, but they were not trembling. And they sat there, hour after hour, year after year; they had to sit waiting till almost every one had been called in through one or another of those doors.

The day was over, the night was on them. It was half past six when Emily finally took Martha into the room before the judge. They sat down before her in the full light. She sat behind that little desperately business-like desk, her face half hidden by the lamp-shade. She looked from one to the other of them with shrewd, cynical, prosaic eyes. Emily, as the words came out of her mouth, knew every one of them was being weighed. She was being cross-questioned. What made her think her daughter wasn't strong enough to have a child? What made Emily suppose she was a delicate young woman? The whole slender history of Martha Kenworthy's child illnesses was brought forth and examined. The doctor's very questions seemed to pronounce her a most rugged person. Emily hadn't thought to prepare any lying account of previous illnesses. She hadn't been skilled enough in deceit for that.

The woman got up and turned on pitiless lights. She made preparations; she gave Martha directions, shortly. Emily sat there. She heard her heart pounding.

Once Martha moaned, lying on that white table.

"Don't do that. Don't make that noise."

"You hurt me," Martha apologized.

"Not at all," answered the doctor. She went poking on. Her manner was not ingratiating. If she scented any tragedy before her, she had no sympathy--no one ever need to cry to that woman for help, Emily realized.

The doctor had finished. She turned away to a basin and stood washing her hands. She reached for an immaculate towel, and with it in her hands she turned about and stood looking at her patient. Martha was sitting up on that hospital-like table. The doctor went on drying her hands. Finger after finger she dried, one at a time, studying Martha mercilessly. By the time she had finished that fourth finger, Emily could stand the suspense no longer. She managed to ask with only ordinary concern:

"What do you find?"

The doctor kept her eyes steadily on Martha as she answered:

"As a matter of fact, though you get your mother to do all the talking, the truth is that you are scared out of your wits at the mere thought of a baby. Don't look at your mother; answer me yourself!"

"Yes," Martha murmured, faintly. "I didn't--I don't want----"

The doctor spoke grimly: "Well, don't worry. You're not going to have one."

She was still drying those hands.

Emily and Martha babbled together almost incoherently.

"What do you mean?"

"You're not pregnant at all. There's not a sign of pregnancy."

And as neither of the women moved, she added:

"Get down and dress."

Emily gasped, at length: "How can this be? How----"

The doctor spoke more kindly as soon as she turned to Emily to answer: "It's hysteria. It's nothing but hysteria."

"But those symptoms--those----"

Emily was incredulous.

"I've had three cases of this this week. They distrust their precautions and get panicky. They lose their heads."

"I never heard of such a thing in my life," Emily babbled.

"I don't suppose _you_ have!" The doctor spoke tartly. "When you had this child, women had nerve enough to carry them through!" She turned and looked almost scornfully at Martha.

Martha had sat down abruptly on a chair. Emily helped her into her coat. The doctor had been explaining to Emily: the girl ought to be put to bed early for a while, well fed, allowed no dances, no theaters, and kept much out-of-doors. And when Martha had sat down abruptly, after putting her coat on, she said:

"If you feel faint, you'd better get out into the air." And she dismissed them from her presence.

Falling, being hurled down, those sensations had been bad enough--but the shock of this crashing landing! Those two women went out of that office, down the elevator, out on to the street so dazed that their minds seemed blank, so "taken aback" they were, so strongly jerked back from the edge of destruction. Martha, standing pressed close against her mother, one arm around her, staring into her face, stood stuttering there in the winter darkness, on the curb.

"D-d-d-do you believe it, mammie?" She began laughing and crying. "Mammie! mammie!" she kept stuttering. "Do you believe it?"

In the taxi they found, Martha gave way to hysterics. She laughed and she sobbed crazily. "Oh, mammie, if she could be right! Can she be right? Am I all right? She don't know what she's talking about. Oh, tell me, can it be true?" She was shaking Emily, trying to shake assurance out of her. "Tell me if it can be true, mammie!"

"Why, Martha--a doctor--must know----"

"No! She doesn't understand! How could it not be? Mammie, tell me. Oh, suppose it's true; I can live! Mammie, I can see you don't believe her! We can go home now. You won't tell dad! Oh, I will be good to you. Didn't they say she was a good doctor? Mammie, what did that nurse say about her? But I did try every day to think it wasn't true. And it was. Why was I so sick every morning? Maybe I've only got a cancer, mammie!" Crying out a phrase like that, the child was in such a madness of hope. "Oh, suppose she's right!"

"Martha, I feel like giving you the awfulest spanking anybody ever got!"

"Oh _yes_! Oh, I don't mind. Mammie, imagine if it isn't true; if I'm saved. Here, here's your rings; I don't need rings!"

When they drew up in front of the hotel, Emily forced her to be quiet. But Martha, in their room, threw off her coat and her hat and all restraint in a great gesture. She was lit up, she was drunk with hope. She walked around the room babbling, her face ghastly pale and bright, stopping to hug her mother, stretching out her arms, stretching them above her towards the ceiling.

"Suppose it's _true_! Suppose it's all right! Suppose I'm safe! I can _live_ now. No operation, mammie! That woman must have been fifty! She must know what she's talking about. Didn't you think she looked like a good doctor? She must have examined thousands of women. I'm free; I'm safe!" She stopped and looked at herself in the mirror. "Oh, look at me!" she cried. "_That's_ how I feel." And Emily, who had sunk down on to the bed in her bewilderment, watching Martha, suddenly began to cry. That superhuman strength seemed to have abandoned her. For the girl had looked for a moment intently at her reflection, and then turned, half crazy with joy, to her suitcase. She had snatched out her toilet things, she was powdering her nose, she was rubbing something on her white cheeks, herself again. "Oh, I can _live_ now! Live! Live!" And she turned away from the glass and ran to Emily--she had heard her sniffling--and began consoling kisses and penitential hugs and tears.

"Let's go and get something to eat!" she said at length. She got up and washed away signs of tears. She brushed her hair, she powdered her nose, she got out a smarter pair of shoes. "Let's walk and walk," she said. "I could walk all night." Out on the street there, Emily felt Martha's strong arm impelling her along by the passion of her relief. She walked with her head held high, she walked fiercely, like an arrow sure of its target. When they stopped at a crossing, her feet could not stop their triumph. Emily could feel her dancing. She kept babbling, singing, running on. Emily said at length: "I can't go any farther. I'm too tired." And then in a minute or two they were turning into an opportune restaurant.

It was a large, uncarpeted room, with two rows of white-tiled tables on either side of a central aisle. Martha walked down that aisle ahead of her mother. Her head was held that tense way, her eyes were shining positively black against her white face, her air was wild. People looked and started and continued staring at her as if they had seen a pretty young lunatic at large, or an aggressive and beautiful girl-ghost. And Martha, not thinking of them, walked straight to the farthest table and would have sat down facing the crowd, if Emily had not chosen that seat for herself. Emily was conscious of the sensation their entrance had made. She was wondering how Martha's excited pallor had triumphed over all the color she had applied, for certainly she had stood dabbing rouge on--before her mirror. Martha grabbed the menu. She had been talking of turkey, of lobster. She was hungry enough to eat anything. She ordered a large steak for two, with mushrooms. She ordered asparagus and fried potatoes, and bread--a plateful of brown bread. She ordered coffee. She would order a lobster later, she told the waiter. When he had gone, she began whispering to Emily:

"Mammie, did you get our reservations? Oh, I thought I would be going home in a----!"

"Don't!" murmured Emily.

"Can we go and change them on our way home? Let's go on the eleven o'clock. But no, we must go to another doctor to-morrow."

Emily tried to calm her. It was herself the child was enjoying now, as if her years of enjoying her thoughts had been preparing her for this climax. She looked as if she might burst into flame. She did burst forth when dinner was being set before her. The waiter was arranging her great feast, when she cried out, suddenly unable to smother the joy of some thought. She cried out, with a gesture of her hands below the table, "Oh, my God!" so that the waiter fairly jumped. People about were watching them. They smiled unanimously. Martha didn't seem even to know she was in a restaurant.

The next morning Martha said she hadn't slept well, but Emily had watched her sleeping through the early morning, and when she commented on the significance of that fact, Martha was elated again above her weariness by happiness. She went for a walk in the morning alone. Emily felt too exhausted to go with her. She ate more heartily than she had been able to eat the evening before. That great steak and those mushrooms she had not been able to give any real attention to. She appealed to her mother every few minutes to tell her the truth about the doctor's verdict, to comfort her about the probable outcome of their visit to the next doctor. She walked about excitedly.

Late that afternoon the second doctor pronounced her free.

They came back to their hotel almost without a word. In their room they sat down; they looked at each other dazed; they each felt the other trying to fathom the experience through which they had gone. "How _could_ that have happened?" Martha demanded. "Do they think--I IMAGINED that vomiting? Do they think I didn't try to believe I was all right?"

It seemed to Emily best to pass as lightly as possible over even the word "hysteria."

"You were worried, Martha. You were afraid."

"Well, of _course_ I was afraid! All the time I thought, suppose anything should happen to me. I was thinking all the time about _you_, mother! Do you think I wanted to disgrace you? That's why I wanted to--I thought I couldn't live. Oh, when your wire came, mammie, I just had to see you again, _once_, before---- I didn't _want_ to come. I was afraid you might find out! But I _had_ to come and see you again once! How did you happen to come, mammie?"

"Did you suppose I was going to let you wander around New York alone?"

"Didn't you suspect anything?"

"Martha! _No!_"

"No, you couldn't believe it. Oh, I never wanted YOU to know. I'd rather have told all the rest of the world, mother. I'll never forgive myself for this as long as I live. You look--sick as a dog, mammie!"

"I'm all right. You needn't worry about _me_."

"You just say that. You don't even scold me! I've learned my lesson. You don't have to say anything! My God!" cried little Martha Kenworthy. "What I've been through! And those filthy women at school nosing around trying to find out what was the matter with me!"

"Oh, Martha!"

"They _were_. They went sneaking around! They know too much, those old hens, pretending they're so holy. I'm finished with that place!"

"Well, now--everything is all right." It seemed better to her to take that line. "We can go wherever we want to. You need a rest. We'll go South, if you want to."

"Yes. Let's not go home. Let's go South from here."

"Oh, well--I don't know. I'd have to get some more clothes. You'd--we'd better go home first. And we have our tickets; it's not much shorter from here."

"Dad might want to go with us--or drive us down."

"I think we better go by train. It's much better to go home first."

"You mean--so people can see me? So nobody can suspect anything?"

"Martha, I didn't mean any such thing. Who's going to suspect us of anything?"

"Not you, of course. But I'll go home if you want me to. I'll do anything you want me to, after this. You've been a brick; you've stuck by me; you're the one that needs a rest. I don't look as ghastly as you do, mammie."

"Well, we can do anything we want to now; we can go any place."

"I don't want to do anything. I just want to sleep a year."

So they left for home that night. And the next day, as the train hurried West, Martha's gloom and her humility deepened mile by mile. She sat looking steadily out of the window, and Emily realized that it could not be the scenery that fixed the expression of her face. When her thoughts were recalled from some unhappy distance, she considered her mother meekly, with solicitude. Her gratitude, the sort of indebtedness, was painful to Emily. After they had changed at Chicago into the train for home, Emily realized, even before Martha spoke, that she was hardening herself for an ordeal.

"Mammie," she said, "I don't want to--I mean--will you let me have the guest room this time? I think I could sleep better in the guest room."

Emily Kenworthy had never taken a journey of any sort whose very climax and last ineffable thrill had not been getting back again into her very own house. She was that sort of woman. But never before had she felt the joy of being at home and of waking up in her own bedroom quite so keenly as she did that morning. She opened her closet and took down her customary morning frock. It was a brown jersey. It had a bit of tan-colored jersey down the front of it. On the tan-colored jersey were rows of little brown jersey buttons, and those top two buttons were hanging loosely; those two loose and familiar buttons were reality, surely. They proved that New York had been only a dream. She put the verifying frock on, and went out of her room, and in the hall the radiator was burbling out its confirming burbles. She sat down at her own breakfast table; Bob was there, no phantom. And the percolator lid still had to be managed. Its awkwardness had been a family failing for months now. Bob couldn't apparently improve it. Emily began pouring coffee, with her hands held as that percolator must be held, and she could scarcely believe she had been in New York. Martha's hallucination was a nightmare, and the percolator was truth and awakening.

She could indeed have believed that morning that the days of terror had been a delirium if, in the guest room, the pitiful stranger had not been lying in bed. She was glad that Martha seemed willing to stay there the first day or two, for it made her story more impressive.

"It's this quarrel with us, Bob, that's worked on her mind till she couldn't eat. I wish you could have heard her that first night. She just cried and cried, because she was so sorry about last summer, and ashamed. She says she don't know what possessed her to act so--naughty. I had just to make her stop crying. I told her it was morbid; but I couldn't get her to eat. I ordered everything, but she wouldn't take anything. The doctor says it's her nerves; she's got to have a long rest."

"But how'll you keep her from dancing, if you take her South?"

"She won't want to dance; she's too sick."

Bob seemed scarcely able to credit that, although he acknowledged that she looked bad.

Emily went on: "She's so ashamed of the things she said to you last summer, Bob. She wanted me to apologize; or rather I said I would, because she gets so worked up if she begins to talk about it. She said no girl ever had a better father than you, Bob."

"Did she say that, honestly, now, Emily?" Bob looked troubled.

"Yes, she did, sitting at a table, not eating a thing. She'd have burst out crying if I hadn't made her stop it."

"By heck! Emily, the kid must be sick!"

"Yes, she is. The doctor said I have to take good care of her and keep her out of doors. When you go in to see her, Bob, just pretend nothing's happened. Don't let her get started apologizing."

"All right. Do you think--is she over that--that business with that damned skunk?"

"Oh yes, I think so. I think she's ashamed of it all."

"Well, that's something, anyway."

It was the neighbors who began coming in at once to inquire sympathetically about Martha, who kept Emily uneasy. Each woman's solicitude seemed to necessitate the hurried invention of new details, and Emily, not used to deceit, could scarcely be sure her stories tallied. Johnnie Benton gave her a moment of difficulty. He wouldn't be content with vagueness.

"Look here, Mrs. Kenworthy, what is the matter with her, when you get right down to brass tacks?"

"Tut, tut, Johnnie! Do you think I haven't been right down to brass tacks all the time?"

"Nervous breakdown, that's just a sort of excuse for anything, I thought."

"You better think again. A nervous breakdown isn't anything to joke about."

"But isn't she going to get up? Aren't we going to see her at all?"

"She'll be up in a day or two. But, look here, Johnnie, if she prefers not to see you, I won't insist. I'm not going to have her annoyed--not a bit, just now."

"I'm not planning to annoy her."

"Now don't get fussy. You know very well what I mean. She must be humored."

The next day he sent in a great bunch of roses.

"These would go with the room, I thought," he said, meekly, to Emily.

She hesitated about taking them in to Martha. She decided to do it, and regretted her decision, for Martha read the message with them and tore it up angrily and began to cry.

Wilton ran in just to call, and asked about the New York doctor. He was very tactful, very kind. Mrs. Benton came in and gave Emily a terrible shock.

"I have half a notion to go South with you, Emily. I can't wait forever for my sister. I was going to California with her, but she keeps putting it off. And, anyway, I don't know but what I'd rather go with you."

Emily would not urge her to go with them. She didn't dare even mention such a possibility to Martha. She thanked her lucky stars that Mrs. Benton's sister was going to be terribly angry if Mrs. Benton went with Emily.

When the girls came in, Martha said, wearily:

"Oh, let them come up if they want to. I suppose they've got to see me, if they want to. Hand me that vanity case, mammie, please." And she sat up and rouged a little bit, to defy detection, as it were.

The third day she was home she got up and came downstairs for lunch and supper. "I won't have you carrying all those things up to me," she said to Emily. On Friday she happened to be in the living room when Greta came in. She received her with little cordiality, and presently, as they sat there, Emily doing most of the talking, two more girls came in. Emily was breathing a sigh of relief that the afternoon had passed so smoothly, as they left. But when she turned into the living room from seeing them out, Martha burst out:

"Oh, for the love of Heaven, let's get away, mammie! I can't _stand_ this. This house; this town. Let's go to-night, please, mammie!"

"We aren't ready."

"I am. I'm packed. I'll do your packing. Let's get out of this!"

Emily wondered when she had got her things out of her painted room. She had never seen her open the door of it. She said: "I thought you didn't mind seeing the girls. You could have excused yourself."

"Yes, I could, and they would have been wondering why. They make me so sick. They just come prying about to see what they can find out!"

"That's nonsense. You oughtn't to talk that way. They came just naturally, because you weren't well."

"Yes, and asked all those questions!"

Martha wasn't to be humored in this.

"I didn't see anything objectionable in what they asked," Emily responded dryly.

"You didn't? Didn't you hear Greta asking where Eve was? 'What's become of Eve this vacation?' she said, just like that."

"Well, child, why shouldn't she ask you where Eve is spending her holiday? You've been in school with her all term. You'd be supposed to know. You forget that Eve about lived in this house last summer."

"I forget it, do I? Oh, look here, mammie, if I finish your packing, won't you go to-night?"

"Our reservations are for to-morrow night. You know that."

"They'll change them; and if they won't, let's stay in Chicago a night. I'd rather stay any place in the world than here, mammie." She was pleading now, not resentfully, but humbly.

"All right," said Emily, "if daddy agrees."

Martha turned away impatiently. In the presence of death Bob Kenworthy had appeared a good father. But Martha, having now to face life, already found him only an irritation. "It isn't Bob's fault this time that she wants to get away," Emily thought.

"And, besides, you've told everybody that we're going to-morrow. And it would be just like--Johnnie and everybody to be down to the station to see us off--with a band."

_Chapter Seven_

They traveled directly south until they came to a town which, stretching out along a blue-and-golden bay, had gone to sleep before the Revolution and has never been disturbed since. They found it all ease and dreams and laziness. The shadows of live oaks were its swiftest motion, and the dancing of oyster schooners over its sea was all its din. The Kenworthys arrived in the middle of a sunny afternoon at the sort of hotel to which they had been recommended. Although they had written they were coming, no one in authority was in sight to receive them. A slovenly negro maid didn't know what rooms they were to be in. Leaving their baggage on the veranda, where the taxi driver had deposited it, they walked down through a little garden to the snow-white sands and the golden clear water of the bay. An old man sitting on a bench, his legs wrapped around in a traveling rug, was sleeping, his bald head nodding, nodding, helplessly. They walked out to the end of the little pier. They sat down, and looked into the crystal shallows as jellyfish lapped about softly. The sun on the water was a lullaby. Emily presently felt her eyelids growing heavy.

"This'll be a good place to sleep, anyway," Martha said. The trouble was, in the days that followed, that Emily could never be sure that Martha was sleeping. Sometimes when the girl went to her room and, closing the door, begged not to be disturbed, Emily felt sure, as she sat listening involuntarily, that she was lying sobbing heart-brokenly. She never caught her in the act--she avoided that--but the curves of Martha's cheeks had the shadows and shape of many tears.

Emily had helplessly to sit and watch her progressing into bitterness. The first few days Martha said nothing; she watched the sea by day; by night she sat and stared into the fire. When Emily spoke to her, she would turn and bring herself into her mother's presence bewilderedly. She would look about her wonderingly, like a lost child in a strange world. Emily's remarks seemed scarcely to reach her. Her silence was unnatural. Certainly, Emily reflected, if she could utter the thoughts that seemed to be grinding her down, she would feel better. She longed to have her begin talking again.

Hints came out from time to time. Sometimes Martha was not able to refrain from groaning. The first afternoon they walked away down the beach, they came to an old cemetery with broken gnarled cypresses in it, and violets ready to bloom on old French graves.

Emily said, instinctively, "Let's go in." The gate stood open before them.

But Martha cried, "NO! I've had enough of THAT!" She shuddered.

What Martha said, when she began talking, was frightful. She resorted to speech only when her sense of outrage had become intolerable. She burst forth with noise and fury. It happened one evening that Emily had tarried, partly because Martha had refused so curtly from the first to pass even the time of day with anyone in the hotel, to be civil to an old and frail woman who sat alone at an adjoining table. When she went into her room, she found Martha in tears on her knees before the fire. She was always poking the fire; often she poked it viciously. But now she seemed to have attacked it brutally. She was tearing up papers, or something.

"What are you doing?" Emily exclaimed. And then she saw.

"Why, _don't_ do that! That's a library book!"

But Martha was in a rage. "I don't care if it is! I'll burn up every copy I ever get my hands on!" She wouldn't let Emily rescue it. The tears were running down her face. "Such lies!" she raved. "How can you stand it? Dirty, filthy, rotten, vile lies! That's what's the matter! Books like that! I could kill that man!"

There was something sobering in the mere sight of a book being torn to bits. It was a strong book, powerfully written, and it resisted its destruction. The pages had to be jerked out, almost one by one. Martha kept tearing and poking, and urging the flames on.

"Martha," Emily remonstrated, "you mustn't do that! Don't make it flame up more!" She had never seen Martha in such a rage. She stood helplessly watching her folly.

"Didn't you read it?" Martha cried to her. There was scarcely anything left of the book now, but the covers.

"Yes, I read part of it," Emily began, protesting.

"You believed it, I suppose?"

"Well, I--I didn't care for it all, much."

"You didn't care for it! My God! I'm never going to read a book written by a man again as long as I live! It isn't that they're fools only; it isn't possible for them to learn anything, even, dirty fumbling idiots!"

"That's not very nice language, Martha."

"Language? What's language? Language isn't anything. Look at the facts. Are _they_ nice? Look what that rotten man wrote down for people to read!"

Emily sat down, and Martha turned around and leaned her head against her mother's knee and wept. She kept trying to express her contempt for the book and its author; she felt the need of curses, but her vocabulary failed her. "That horrid, rotten person," she cried two or three times. "That nasty brutal old pig." And Emily stroked her hair and wondered whether to command her to keep still or to encourage her to talk it out. "He says----" Martha sputtered at length, crying bitterly.

"Never mind, child," Emily said quietly.

But Martha would mind. She controlled her sobs.

"He says--the filthy old rotten--idiot--that man in the book, he just went around--you know--mother--falling in love, they call it--and then he threw one woman away, mammie, because--he said--she didn't enjoy it! Oh, I could _kill_ that man! _Enjoy_ it, he said, mother! He said she was always afraid! My God! _He_ hadn't anything to lose. He ran no risk! They just try to make out that women are like men, mother, so that they can get them. You'd think women would tell the truth, wouldn't you, mammie? I'd just like to see Mrs. Wharton be an old maid and try to hide that child that way! She'd learn a thing or two. It isn't fair, it's too cruel! They just try to make girls believe lies like that so they won't be afraid. I was afraid, all the time. But why wasn't I afraid enough? I must have been crazy last summer. Honestly, mother, I must have been out of my mind, to do that. It's women that are fools. It was my own fault. Does it seem possible, mother, that women can love such--such filthy, rotten messes as men? I couldn't have been in my right mind. So it couldn't have been my fault, and look what happened to me! It makes me so mad to think about it. It isn't fair! Why can't a woman just turn over and go to sleep, too? Why should she have two lives to risk, and a rotten, dirty man none at all? Mammie, you don't think I was in my right mind last summer, do you? I never would have done that if I'd had any sense. Were any of your people crazy, mammie? Were daddy's people insane? I mean, two or three generations back?"

"No, not so far as I know; not one of them. You've got sane people behind you. Don't cry so, child. It's going to be all right yet."

"There's no use saying things like that. I WAS crazy, mother. I couldn't have---- It doesn't seem possible. If I hadn't been out of my head, I never could have--loved him--a man. Didn't you ever notice anything strange about me last summer, honestly?"

"I--I couldn't understand it, but--girls _do_ fall in love. Your father thought, though----"

"What did he think?" she urged.

"He sometimes thought you must be----"

"Crazy! Did he say crazy?" She was eager to have that lesser sentence passed on herself.

"He _did_ say crazy, but you know, Martha, how we say it. Not meaning literally crazy."

"No, but I _was_ crazy. Look at the mess I got you into, mother. What would we ever have done with that----"

"We don't need to talk about that now. Don't mention it."

"Yes, we _do_ need to talk about it. I AM a woman. I WILL think about it. It isn't fair! It's cruel!"

And on she raved, groaning out the old old groanings. Emily sat overwhelmed and yearning, trying from time to time to ease her hurt with the words of her happier experience. Her arguments were less threadbare, having been used from the first only by women who felt themselves tenderly loved.

"It is hard luck to be a woman, if you're unlucky, Martha. But if you're lucky, it's not women you're sorry for, but men."

"How can you say that?"

"Well, they haven't children; they can't have children; they miss that, the realest joy. After all, children do belong to women. You belong to me more than to your father."

"Do you think I don't see through that? I'm not a fool NOW! I do belong to you. It's _you_ I got into a mess. Dad sits home, not worrying. And if he did know about it, he'd blame you; he'd say you spoiled me. It's lovely to have a child like me!"

"I don't care, Martha. Whatever has happened to you--to us--you've been my happiness all these years. I don't care what you say, that's a fact. This time will pass, and we'll be happy again. If you had a child, you'd understand."

"If! Don't say 'if' to me! Haven't I had a child?"

"No, you haven't. You certainly haven't!"

"I certainly have! Look here, mother, don't you really think I go crazy, that I've been crazy twice now? It's insane to be hysterical! Maybe I'll go stark crazy and get put in----"

"Martha! Martha!"

They sat there till long after midnight. Emily argued that what Martha had done was not a symptom of insanity. What, then, was it, Martha demanded, sorely. And Emily explained the brutal fact that nothing in life is so perplexing, so inexplicable to look back upon, as one's own conduct. She found the girl was full of the dread of publicity. "If he could get his wife to divorce him because of--me, he'd tell her in a minute!" she cried once.

"Oh, surely not!" expostulated Emily. She was on the point of saying that Mr. Fairbanks would never allow that. Then she remembered bitterly that Mr. Fairbanks had promised to prevent--other things, and had not been able to keep his promise.

After all these dregs and outpourings, Emily took her into her own bed, and realized, as she thought them over, that the girl was lying sleepless beside her. What, she wondered, wearily, was there left for her now? She had lost faith in her lover and all mankind. She had lost faith in herself; she had lost confidence and security from fear. But what she hated most violently was her own self, that sweet little bathed and powdered body which Emily had adored every day since her birth. The flowering of her body, its natural fruitfulness, was what she resented unto death. She was utterly undone. She had to be made anew. It was a bitter task to take up. "I'm too old for it," Emily thought.

Martha rose in a business-like manner the next morning, earlier than usual. Usually from their beds they saw the schooner they had called their own because it had castellated patches on its sail, move like a dream of a castle through the misty distance. This morning they saw it together from their place in the dining room.

"I'm going to ask them to put a writing table in my room this morning," Martha announced. And when they were walking, later, she suggested that they go down to the little stores on Main Street. She wanted, she said, to buy some paper.

Emily was curious because of the quality and quantity of paper she ordered.

"What are you going to do with all that?" she asked, naturally, as they left the shop.

Then Martha made her announcement, grimly: "I'm going to write a novel."

Emily had supposed nothing could really surprise her ever again. She found she had been mistaken. She was thoroughly "taken aback."

Martha was suspicious of her silence. "Why shouldn't I write a novel?" she challenged.

"Why, how can you? How can you begin? I'd as soon--why, I'd as soon try to make a whole train!"

"I can begin. Don't you worry! It's no trick to write a novel!"

"Well----" murmured Emily, unable to agree.

"I made up my mind in the night; if nobody else will tell the truth, I will! Girls will know a thing or two when they get through with my novel, I'll bet!"

Emily held her peace tightly.