PART TWO THE SLATE-COLORED HOUSE (continued 3)

She waited, and Philip said nothing. He did not even move.

“Aren’t you glad, Philip? Think of it ... a little baby.”

He whispered, “Yes ... of course ... I’m glad,” and turned his face into the pillow once more.

Aunt Mabelle, excited by her news, went on, “You won’t have to wait long, because she’s already about four months along. She didn’t want to talk about it. She wasn’t even sure what was the matter, but I dragged it out of her. I thought she was looking kind of peaked.”

Then the door opened, and Emma and Naomi came in together. Naomi crossed to the bed, and, bending over Philip, said, “Here’s the water, Philip.” He stirred and she put her arm under his head while he drank. It seemed to him that all his body was alive with fire.

When he had finished, Naomi did an extraordinary thing. She flung herself down and burying her head against his thin chest, she began to sob wildly, crying out, shamelessly before Emma and Mabelle, “You mustn’t be sick, Philip. You mustn’t die ... I couldn’t live without you now. You’re all I’ve got.... No ... no ... you mustn’t die.” She clung to him with terrifying and shameless passion. “I couldn’t live without you ... I couldn’t ... I couldn’t ... I’ll never ... leave you.” Her long, pale hair came unfastened and fell about her shoulders, covering them both. “I’ll never leave you. I’ll do whatever you want.”

It was Emma who seized her by force and dragged her off him; Emma who, shaking her, said in a voice that was horrible in its hatred, “You fool! Do you want to make him worse? Do you want to kill him?”

And Naomi cried out, “He’s mine now. He’s mine! You tried to poison him against me. You can’t take him away from me any more. He belongs to me!”

It was horrible, but to Philip the scene had no reality; it came to him through the haze of his fever, as if it had been only an interlude of delirium.

When Naomi grew a little more calm, Aunt Mabelle said to her in a whisper, “I told him.”

Naomi, still sobbing, asked, “Was he glad?”

“As pleased as Punch,” said Aunt Mabelle. “It always pleases a man. It makes him feel big.”

On the bed Philip lay shivering and burning. The room appeared to swell to an enormous size and then slowly to contract again till it was no bigger than a coffin. After a time, it seemed to him that he was already dead and that the three women who moved about the room, undressing him, fussing with the window-curtain, talking and sobbing, were simply three black figures preparing him for the grave. A faint haze of peace settled slowly over him. He would be able to rest now. He would never see them again. He was free.

17

It was not, after all, the old Megambo fever, but typhoid which had been lurking for months in the filth of the Flats. Irene Shane knew of it and Mary Conyngham and one or two doctors who were decent enough to take cases for which there was little chance either of pay or glory. It was typhoid that had brought Mary and Irene to talk to the Polish woman in the doorway next to Krylenko’s boarding-house. Typhoid was a word that existed in an aura of terror; a disease which might strike any of the Hill people. So long as it happened in the Flats (and the fever lurked there winter and summer) it did not matter. But with Philip it struck at the people on the hills. The news spread quickly. There was another case and then another and another. The newspapers began to talk of it and suddenly the Town learned that there were sixty cases in the Flats and that eleven Hunkies and Dagoes were already dead.

When Emma first heard that the illness was typhoid, she snorted and said, “Of course! What could you expect? He got it working in the Flats among those Hunkies and Dagoes. They throw all their slops right into the streets. They ought to be shut off and a wall placed around them. They always have typhoid down there. Some day they’ll have a real epidemic and then people will wake up to what it means—bringing such animals into a good clean country!”

The doctors, summoned by Emma in her terror, told her that Philip’s case was doubly serious because he had already had fever twice in Megambo and because his whole body was thin and sick. He fell into a state of stupor and remained thus. He seemed to have no resistance.

For days terror racked Emma and Naomi. Each of them prayed, secretly and passionately, begging God to spare the life of the man who became suddenly the only possession in the world which they cherished. And out of their fight there was born a kind of hostility which made their earlier distrust of each other fade into oblivion. There were hours and days when they scarcely addressed each other, when it seemed that the slightest disagreement might hurl them into open warfare. Mabelle was always in the house, moving about, comforting Naomi and exasperating Emma by her sloppy ways.

Indeed, the perpetual sight of Mabelle and her squalid overfed brat in her neat house filled Emma with a distaste to be equaled only by such a calamity as the discovery of vermin in one of her beds. But she found herself suddenly delivered into Mabelle’s hands; for Mabelle was the only person who could “do anything with” Naomi. If Emma approached her, she grew tense and hysterical. And it was, of course, impossible to think of ridding herself of both: you couldn’t turn from your home the woman who was to be the mother of your grandchild.

Mabelle she hated, too, for her passionate and morbid absorption in the subjects of love and childbirth; she seemed to Emma to stand as a symbol of obscenity, who must as such have tortured her brother Elmer. She was a symbol of all that side of life which Emma had succeeded in putting out of her mind for so many years.

But there was one other person who had the power of calming Naomi. This was the Reverend Castor, who, since Naomi’s condition prevented her from appearing in the choir, came himself two or three times a week to comfort her and inquire after her husband. Except for Mabelle, he seemed to be Naomi’s only friend.

“He is,” she told Emma, “a very sympathetic man, and he reminds me of my father. He is just the same build and bald in the same way.”

The Reverend Castor had a beautiful voice, low and mellow and filled with rich inflections which Mrs. Wilbert Phipps had once spoken of as an “Æolian harp.” He could have had, people said, a great success as an Evangelist, but he was so devoted to his bedridden wife that he would not leave her, even for such a career. The church, they said, was indeed fortunate to keep him, even though it was at the price of his own misfortune. Words of condolence and courage spoken in the rich voice had a strange power of rousing the emotions. Once or twice Emma had come upon him sitting in the twilight of the parlor talking to Naomi of illness and faith, of death and fortitude, in so moving a fashion that the tears came into her eyes and a lump into her throat. And he was a good man—a saint. One felt it while talking to him. He was a man who believed, and had devoted his whole life to the care of a sick wife.

Sometimes Mabelle lingered long after the hour when she should have been in her kitchen preparing supper for Elmer. There were in the Reverend Castor’s voice intimations of things which she had never found in her own chilly husband.

As Naomi’s time drew nearer, the conversation of Mabelle grew proportionately more and more obstetrical.

They compared symptoms and Mabelle’s talk was constantly sprinkled with such remarks as, “When I was carrying Jimmy,” or, “When Ethel was under way.” She even gave it as her opinion that Naomi, from the symptoms, might be having twins.

She appeared to have a strange, demoralizing effect upon Naomi, for the girl came presently to spend all the day in a wrapper, never bothering to dress when she rose. And Emma discovered that for days at a time she did not even trouble to take off the metal bands which she used for curling her long, straight hair. The two of them sat all day long in rocking-chairs while little Jimmy, who was beginning to walk a little, crept from one piece of furniture to another. He had already ruined one corner of the Brussels carpet in the parlor.

Meanwhile, in the great walnut bed Philip lay more dead than alive. There were long periods when he recognized no one and simply lay as if made of stone, white, transparent, with a thin, pinched look about the temples. The lines seemed to have faded from his face, giving him a pathetic, boyish look. The only life lingered in the great dark eyes which in his fever were larger and more burning than ever. The doctors who came and went sometimes shook their heads and expressed belief that if the patient could be got to show any interest in the life about him there was hope. But he appeared to have no desire to recover. Even in those moments when his wife gave way and, weeping, had to be taken from the room, he only stared at her without speaking.

Failing to take into account the terrible vitality which came to him from Emma and the toughness of that father whom none of them had ever seen, they marveled that he could go on living at all. Yet week after week passed when he grew no better or worse. None of them knew, of course, about Mary Conyngham and how the thought of her sometimes came to him and filled him with a fierce desire to live. When his sick brain cleared for a little while, he knew with a strange certainty that he could not die leaving her behind, because in some way life would be left incomplete. It was a thought which troubled him, as he was troubled when he could not get a picture to come right because he was not yet a good painter.

And then one day Emma’s own doctor took her aside in the hall and said, “There’s one thing you must understand, Mrs. Downes. No matter how much your son wants to return to Africa, you mustn’t let him go. If he gets well and tries to go back, it will be the end of him. I know he’ll want to go back, but it’ll be suicide to send him where there’s fever.”

When the doctor had gone, Emma put on her hat and jacket and went for a walk. It was a thing she never did, for there were no moments in her busy life to be wasted simply in walking; but there seemed no other way to find solitude in a world filled with Naomi and Mabelle, little Jimmy and the trained nurse. She had to be alone, to think things out.

She saw clearly enough that, whatever happened, there was now no chance of Philip’s going back to Africa and the knowledge filled her with a blank, inexplicable feeling of frustration. But after she had grown more calm, she began to feel more like herself and thus more able to cope with her troubles.

Philip could not go back, and he was to have a child. But if he could not go back to duty, neither, she saw, must he be allowed to return to the Flats. The one, surely, was just as dangerous as the other, and the Mills carried with them a sense of failure and disgrace. No, up to now she had been patient in the belief that he would return to his senses; but the time for patience had passed.

The old feeling of her own strength and righteousness began to return to her in great surging waves of confidence.

John McTavish! What did he know of her husband’s weakness? Or Philip’s weakness? How could he know that both of them were the sort who had to be guided? John McTavish! (She snorted at the thought.) A waster, a vulgar man, about whom gathered the riffraff of the Town. What had he ever done for the good of any one?

She had a sudden desire to see Moses Slade. Somehow she felt he’d understand her problem and approve her strong attitude. There was a man who did things. A distinguished man! A man who’d made his mark! Not a good-for-nothing like John McTavish.

The old possibility of marrying Moses Slade kept stealing back over her. Through pride and a faint sense of being a woman rejected, she tried not to think of it, but it was no good trying to put it out of her mind because it was always stealing back upon her unawares. Perhaps if she sent him a postcard, a pretty view of the new park, it would serve to remind him of her without being, properly speaking, a piece of forwardness. The temptation kept pricking her. It would be splendid to be the wife of a Congressman, and it would solve the difficulty of Philip. She could turn over the restaurant to him and Naomi.

Nearly two hours passed before she returned to the house, but in that time all life seemed to have become subdued and conquered once more. It had all been worked out. She sat down at once and wrote a perfectly impersonal message to Congressman Slade on the back of a picture postcard of the new monument to General Tecumseh Sherman that adorned dubiously the new park. On the way to the restaurant she posted it. As she left the house she heard Naomi sobbing alone in the corner of the darkened parlor, and a great wave of contempt swept over her for people who were not strong enough to manage their own lives.

On the same night the Reverend Castor led his congregation, or a fraction of it, in addressing to the Lord words of supplication and entreaty on behalf of “their brother Philip Downes, who lay at the point of death.” He begged that Philip, who had sacrificed his health, might be spared “to carry on the noble work among the black and sinful children of the great African continent.”

As he prayed, with arms extended and face upturned to heaven, the fine nose, the shapely dome of his head and imposing expanse of his chest, took on a classic, moving dignity. As the sonorous voice, trembling with emotion, rolled over the heads of his flock more than one woman felt herself slipping dimly into the grip of strange disturbing emotions.

He prayed longer than usual, painting for the Lord a moving and luxurious picture of the trials suffered by His servant; in Old Testament phrases he finished by calling the attention of God to the suffering of Naomi, who sat at home, ill herself, praying for the life of the husband she loved with such noble and selfless devotion.

When he had finished, there were tears in all eyes, and Emma, seated near the back, was sobbing in a warm mist of suffering and glory. In some way his eloquence had purified them all. It was as if each one of them had passed with Philip through the flame of suffering. They felt purged and clean and full of noble thoughts, almost ready at last to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

The sound of “Amens!” trembled in the air and before it had died away completely, Miss Swarmish, an old maid with a mustache, struck out several loud chords on the tinny piano and in her booming voice led them in singing, Throw out the Life Line! They sang with militant enthusiasm, their voices echoing in the vast, damp basement of the church. It was an oblique glorification of Philip, the renegade, who lay unconscious in the slate-colored house. It was as if they, too, were forcing him back.

When they had finished the orgy of music and the Benediction was spoken, the usual stir was silenced suddenly by Emma’s rich voice. She had risen to her feet at the back of the room and was standing with her hands clasped on the back of the chair before her.

“Brothers and sisters,” she was saying, in a voice rich with emotion, “I know that all of you feel for me in the illness of my son. I have felt for some time that I should speak to you about him” (here, overcome by feeling, she coughed and hesitated) “to make an answer to the talk that has come to my ear from time to time. I feel that to-night—to-night is the time—the occasion ordained by God. I have very little to say. You know that his health has been wrecked forever by his work among our ignorant, sinful brothers in Africa. He is lying at the point of death. Your prayers have touched me to the depths of my heart, and if it is God’s will, surely they will help towards his recovery.” (Here she hesitated once more.) “People wondered why he came back. It was because his health was ruined. People wondered why he went into the Flats to work. It was because he wanted to know the life there. He has been through a great spiritual struggle. He fell ill because he was tormented by the wish to go back to his post, to those ignorant black men who live in darkness. If he recovers ...” (her voice broke suddenly) “if he recovers ... he can never go back. The doctors have told me that it would be nothing short of suicide. He has given his health, perhaps his life, in carrying forward our great purpose of sending the light to heathen.”

She hesitated for a moment as if she meant to say more, and then sat down abruptly, too overcome for speech. For a moment there was silence, and then one by one women began to gather about her, sobbing, to offer comfort. It was a touching scene, in which Emma managed to control herself after a time. Surrounding her, they moved out of the church in a sort of phalanx. Two or three of them even followed her a little way down the street. But it was her brother, Elmer, who accompanied her home. In his stiff, cold way he proposed to let bygones be bygones.

“At a time like this,” he said, “it’s not right for a brother and sister to quarrel.” And then, after an awkward silence, “I’ve no doubt that when Philip is well again, he’ll come to his senses and behave himself.”

He stopped at the slate-colored house for Aunt Mabelle, who had come over to sit with Naomi, and before they left, all of them, even Naomi, seemed to have changed in some way, to have grown more cheerful, as if the Heavenly joy of the prayer-meeting still clung like perfume to their very garments. Things, they all felt, were beginning to work themselves out.

18

When he had closed the roll-top desk in his study and locked the door after him, the Reverend Castor turned his steps toward the parsonage, still lost in the exalted mood which, descending miraculously upon the congregation, had risen to a climax in the noble words of Mrs. Downes. There was a lump in his throat when he thought of the goodness of women like her. She’d had a hard life, bringing up her boy, feeding and clothing him, and finding time, nevertheless, to care for his soul and give herself to church work. It was women like her who helped you to keep your faith, no matter what discouragements arose.

For a moment, a suspicion of disloyalty colored his meditations and he thought, “If I had only been blessed with a wife like Emma Downes!”

But quickly he stifled the thought, for such wickedness came to him far too often, especially in the moments when he relaxed and allowed his mind to go its own way. The thing seemed always to be lying in wait, like a crouching animal stealing upon him unawares. “If only I’d had some other woman for a wife!” The thing had grown bolder and more frequent as the years piled up. He would be fifty years old in another month. It kept pressing in upon him like the pain of an aching tooth. Soon he’d be too old to care. And he would die, having missed something which other men knew. He was growing older every day, every minute, every second ... older, older, older.

In a sudden terror, he began to repeat one of the Psalms in order to clear his mind and put to rout the grinning, malicious thought. He said the Psalm over three times, and then found that God had sent him strength. Walking the dark, silent street, he told himself that there were others far worse off than he. There was poor Naomi Downes with the husband she worshipped dying hourly, day and night, in the very house with her. She, too, had courage, though she wasn’t as strong as her mother-in-law. She wasn’t perhaps as fine a character as Emma, but there was something more appealing about her, a weakness and a youth that touched your pity. It was terrible to see a young girl like that with her husband dying and a baby coming on. He remembered that he must go again to-morrow and pray with her. It was odd (he thought) how little prayer seemed to comfort her—a girl like that who was a missionary and the daughter of missionaries. He must have a talk with her and try to help her.... She seemed to be losing her great faith....

He was on the front porch of the parsonage now, turning his key in the lock, and something of the wild emotion of the prayer-meeting still clung to him. It had been a glorious success. He was still thinking of Naomi as he closed the door, and heard a whining voice from the top of the stairs.

“Is that you, Samuel?”

He waited for a moment and then answered, “Yes, my dear.”

“What kept you so late? I’ve been frightened to death. The house was full of noises and I heard some one walking about in the parlor.”

“We prayed for Philip Downes,” he said, turning out the light.

The whining voice from above-stairs took on an acid edge. “And you never thought about your poor suffering wife at home all alone. I suppose it never occurs to you to pray for me!”

He stood in the darkness, waiting, unwilling to climb the stairs until her complaints had worn themselves out. The voice again: “Samuel, are you there?”

“Yes, Annie.”

“Why don’t you answer me? Isn’t it enough to have to lie here helpless and miserable?”

“I was turning out the light.”

“Well, I want the hot-water bottle. You’ll have to heat water. And make it hot, not just lukewarm. It’s worse again. It’s never been so bad.”

As he went off to the kitchen, fragments of her plaints followed him: “I should think you’d have remembered about the hot-water bottle!” And, “If you’d had such pain as mine for fifteen years....”

Yes, fifteen years!

For fifteen years it had been like this. The old wicked thought came stealing back into his mind. If only he had a wife like Emma Downes or her daughter-in-law, Naomi ... some one young like Naomi. He was growing older, older, older....

He began again to repeat the Psalm, saying it aloud while he waited by the stove for the kettle to boil.

19

In the Flats the number of deaths began to mount one by one with the passing of each day. When disease appeared in any of the black, decaying houses, it had its way, taking now a child, now a wife, now a husband, for bodies that were overworked and undernourished had small chance of life in a region where the very air stank and the only stream was simply an open sewer. Doctors came and went, sometimes too carelessly, for there was small chance of pay, and to the people on the Hill the life of a worker was worth little. The creatures of the Flats were somehow only a sort of mechanical animal which produced and produced and went on producing.

The churches went on sending missionaries and money to the most remote corners of the earth; the clergymen prayed for the safety of their own flocks, while their congregations sat frightened and resentful, believing that somehow the people in the Flats had caused the catastrophe. It could not be (they reasoned) that God would send such a calamity upon a Town so God-fearing.

Irene Shane and Mary Conyngham closed their school because there was no longer any time to teach when people were ill and dying to right and left. Mary sat night after night at the beds of the dying. She saw one of Finke’s thirteen children die and then another and another. She listened to his cursing and drunken talk of revolution, and all the while she knew bitterly enough that those of the family who remained would be happier because they would have more to eat.

The Mills went on pounding and pounding; they were building new furnaces and new sheds. There seemed no end to it. It did not matter if people in the Flats died like flies, because there were always more where they came from—hordes of men and women and children who came filled with glorified hopes to this new country.

One day Mary read in the papers that the man who owned the Mills, himself a German immigrant, had built himself a marble palace on Fifth Avenue and would now divide his time between Pittsburgh and New York. He was becoming a gentleman: he had engaged an expert, a cultivated man of taste, to fill his New York house with pictures brought from Europe. The Town Gazette printed an editorial drawing a moral from the career of the great magnate. See what could be done in this great land of God-given opportunity! A man who had begun as an immigrant. But it said nothing of the foundations on which the marble palace rested. It appeared to have arisen miraculously with the aid and sanction of God, innocent of all connection with the stinking Flats.

Mary, watching the spectacle about her, felt her heart turning to stone. If she was to be saved from bitterness, it would only be, she believed, through the touching faith of the ignorant wretches about her. She came to feel a sympathy for the cursing of a man like Finke: she herself even wanted at times to curse. She understood the sullen drunkenness of men like Sokoleff. What else was there for them to do? Something—perhaps a sense of dull misery, perhaps a terror of death—had slowly softened their resentment toward herself and Irene Shane. Once they had been looked upon as intruders come down from the Hills to poke about in filthy hallways and backyards filled with piles of rubbish and rows of privies. But it was no longer possible to doubt them. The two women, gently bred and fastidious, slept night after night at the school in the midst of the Flats. They sat up night after night by the beds of the dying.

There were times when Mary wondered why Irene Shane poured out all her strength in succoring these wretched people. She sensed deep in Irene a strange kind of unearthly mysticism which made her seem at times stubborn and irritable. It was a mysticism strangely akin to that groping hunger which had always tormented Philip. The likeness came to her suddenly one night as she sat by the bed of one of Finke’s dying children. It seemed to her a strange and inexplicable likeness in people so different. Yet it was true—they were both concerned with shadowy problems of faith and service to God which never troubled the more practical Mary. And Irene, she fancied, was prey to a sense of atonement, as if she must in some way answer to God for the wickedness of a father long dead and a sister who was, as the Town phrased it, “not all she should have been.” There was, too, that hard, bitter old woman who lay dying and never left Shane’s Castle—old Julia Shane, the queen ant of all the swarming hive.

As for herself, Mary knew well enough why she had come to work in the Flats: she had come in order to bury herself in some task so mountainous and hopeless that it would help her to forget the aching hurt made by John Conyngham’s behavior with Mamie Rhodes. It required a cure far more vigorous even than a house and two children to make her forget a thing like that.

She had been, people said, a fool to put up with such behavior. But what was she to do? There were the children and there was her own devotion to John Conyngham, a thing which he had thrown carelessly aside. It wasn’t even as if you suffered in secret: in the Town a thing like that couldn’t be kept a secret. The very newsboys knew of it. She had found a sort of salvation in working with Irene Shane. People said she was crazy, a woman with two small children, to go about working among Hunkies and Dagoes; but she took good care of her children, too, and she supplied the people in the Flats with what no amount of such mystical devotion as Irene Shane could supply: she had a sound practical head.

She was an odd girl (she thought) when you came to consider it, with a kind of curse on her. She had to have some one to whom she could give herself up completely, pouring out all the soul in a fantastic devotion. John Conyngham had tired of it, perhaps (she sometimes thought) because he was a cold, hard, sensual man who had no need for such a thing. A woman like Mamie Rhodes (she thought bitterly) suited him better. If she had been married to Philip, who needed it so pathetically....

In the long nights of vigil, she thought round and round in circles, over the same paths again and again.... And before many nights had passed she found herself coming back always to the thing she knew and tried constantly to forget ... that it had been Philip whom she loved always, since those very first days in the tree-house. It seemed to her that at twenty-eight her life, save for her children, was already at an end. She was a widow with only memories of an unhappy married life behind her and nothing to hope for in the future. Philip was married and, so Krylenko told her, about to have a child of his own. She didn’t even know whether he even thought of her. And yet, she told herself, fiercely, she did know. He had belonged to her always, and she knew it more than ever while they had sat on the bridge, during that solitary walk into the open country.

Philip was hers, and he was such a fool that he would never know it. He was always lost in mooning about things that didn’t matter. She could save him: she could set straight his muddles and moonings. He needed some one who thought less of God and more of making a good pie and keeping his socks darned.

She herself had never thought much about God save when her children were born and her husband died, and even then she had been only brushed by a consciousness of some vast and overwhelming personal force. Life, even with its pain, seemed a satisfactory affair: there was always so much to be done, and it wasn’t God that Philip needed but pies and socks and a woman who believed in him.

She knew every day whether he was better or worse and she found herself, for the first time in all her life, praying to God to spare his life. She didn’t know whether there was a God or whether He would listen to one who only petitioned when she was in need, but she prayed none the less, believing that if there was any God, He would understand why it was she turned to Him. If He did not understand, she told herself rebelliously, then He was not worthy of existing as God.

She did not go to the slate-colored house, though she did ask for news on one occasion when she met Emma in the street. She understood that Emma had resented her friendship for Philip, even when they were children, and so avoided seeming to show any great interest. But she heard, nevertheless, sometimes from Krylenko who had even gone to the door to inquire, and sometimes from the doctor, but most of the time it was McTavish who kept her informed.

McTavish was the only person whom she suspected of guessing her secret.

After she had stopped day after day at his undertaking-parlors, he looked at her sharply one day out of his humorous little blue eyes, and said, “If Philip gets better, we’ve got to help him.” Then he hesitated for a moment and added, “Those two women are very bad for him.”

He was, she understood, feeling his way. When she agreed, by not protesting, he went on, “You ought to have married him, Mary, when you had a chance.”

“I never had a chance.”

“I thought perhaps you had.... I understand. She began her dirty work too soon.”

Mary knew well enough whom he meant by “she.” It struck her that he seemed to hate Emma Downes with an extraordinary intensity.

“Still it may work out yet,” he said. “Sometimes things like that are a little better for waiting.”

She did not answer him, but spoke about the weather, and thanked him and said good-by, but she felt a sudden warmth take possession of all her body. “Still it may work out yet.” He never spoke of it again, but when she came in on her way up the hill, he always looked at her in the same eloquent fashion. It was odd, too, that the look seemed to comfort her: it made her feel less alone.

It was from Krylenko that she first heard news of the catastrophe that was coming: he told her and Irene Shane, perhaps because he had confidence in them, but more, perhaps, because he knew that in the end they were the only ones beyond the borders of the Flats to whom he might look for sympathy. The news frightened her at first because there had never been any strike in the Town and because she knew that there was certain to be violence and suffering and perhaps even death. She understood that the spirit which moved the big Ukranian was an eternal force of the temper which had made bloodshed and revolution since the beginning of time. It shone in his blue eyes—the light of fanaticism for a cause. The thing, he said, had been brewing for a long time: any one with half an intelligence could have seen it coming. And Mary knew more than most, for she knew of the hasty, secret meetings in the room over Hennessey’s saloon with men who came into the Town and out again like shadows. She watched the curious light in Krylenko’s eyes in turn kindle a light in the pale eyes of an unecstatic old maid like Irene Shane. She felt the thing spreading all about her like a fire in the thick underbrush of a forest. It seemed to increase as the plague of typhoid began to abate. In some mysterious way it even penetrated the secure world settled upon the Seven Hills.

She had, too, a trembling sense of treason toward those whom the Town would have called her own people—but her heart leaped on the day when Krylenko told her that Philip, too, was on their side. He was, the Ukranian said, a member of the new Union: they had celebrated his joining months ago at Hennessey’s saloon. It made Philip seem nearer to her, as if he belonged not at all to the two women who guarded him. Krylenko told her on the day when every one was certain that Philip was dying, and it served to soften the numb pain which seemed to blind her to all else in the world.

In the afternoon of the same day, Irene Shane said to her, “My mother is dying, and I’ve cabled to my sister, Lily, to come home.”

20

When Moses Slade was not in Washington, he always went on Sundays to the Baptist Church which stood just across the street from Emma’s house of worship. It was not that he was a religious man, for he had enough to do without thinking about God. The service bored him and during the sermon he passed the time by turning his active mind toward subjects more earthly and practical, such as the speech he was to make next week at Caledonia, or what answer he would have for the Democratic attack upon his vote against the Farmers’ Relief Bill. (How could they understand that what was good for farmers was bad for industry?) In the beginning, he had fallen into the habit of going to church because most of his votes came from churchgoing people: he went in the same spirit which led him to join sixteen fraternal organizations. But he had gone for so long now that he no longer had any doubts that he was a religious, God-fearing man. (In Washington it did not matter: he could sit at home on Sunday mornings in old clothes drinking his whisky with his feet up on a chair while he read farm papers and racing news.)

Of all the citizens of the Seven Hills, he alone appeared in the streets on Sunday mornings clad in a Prince Albert and a top-hat. Any other citizen in such a fancy-dress costume would have been an object of ridicule, but it was quite proper that he—the Honorable Moses Slade, Congressman—should be thus garbed. He carried it off beautifully; indeed, there was something grand and awe-inspiring in the spectacle of the big man with thick, flowing hair and an enormous front, standing on the steps of the First Baptist Church, speaking to fathers and mothers and patting miserable children imprisoned in stiff Sunday clothes.

On one hot September Sunday he was standing thus (having just patted the last wretched child) when the doors of the church opposite began to yield up its dead. Among the first to descend the Indiana limestone steps appeared the large, handsome figure of Emma, dressed entirely in dark clothing. Moses Slade noticed her at once, for it was impossible not to notice such a magnetic personage, and he fancied that she might go away without even knowing he was there. (He would never learn, of course, that she had hurried out almost before the last echo of Reverend Castor’s Benediction had died away, because she knew that the Baptist Church was always over a little before her own.)

In that first glance, something happened to him which afterward made him feel silly, but at the moment had no such effect. A voice appeared to say, “I can’t wait any longer,” and excusing himself, he hurried, but with an air of dignity, down the steps of his church, and, crossing the street in full view of the now mingling congregations, raised his glistening top-hat, and said, “Good-morning, Mrs. Downes.”

Emma turned with a faint air of surprise, but with only the weakest of smiles (for was she not in sorrow?) “Why, Mr. Slade, I didn’t know you were back.”

“May I walk a way with you?”

“Of course, it would be a pleasure.”

Together they went off beneath the yellowing maples, the eyes of two congregations (to Emma’s delight) fastened on them. One voice at least, that of the soured Miss Abercrombie, was raised in criticism. “There’s no fool,” she observed acidly, “like an old one.”

When they had gone a little way beyond the reach of prying eyes and ears, Moses Slade became faintly personal in his conversation.

“I appreciated your sending me that postcard,” he said.

“Well, I thought you’d like to see the new monument to General Sherman. I knew it was unveiled while you were away, and seeing that you took so much interest in it....” Her voice died away with a note of sadness. The personal touch had filled them both with a sense of constraint, and in silence he helped her across the street, seizing her elbow as if it were a pump-handle.

Safely on the opposite side, he said, “I was sorry to hear of the illness of your son. I hope he’s better by now.”

Emma sighed. “No ... he’s not much better. You see, he gave up his health in Africa working among the natives.” She sighed again. “I doubt if he’ll ever be well again. He’s such a good boy, too.”

“Yes, I always heard that.”

“Of course, he may not live. We have to face things, Mr. Slade. If God sees fit to take him, who am I to be bitter and complain? But it isn’t easy ... to have your only son....” She began to cry, and it occurred to Moses Slade that she seemed to crumple and grow softly feminine in a way he had not thought possible in a woman of such character. He had never had any children of his own. He felt that she needed comforting, but for once words seemed of no use to him—the words which always flowed from him in an easy torrent.

“You’ll forgive me, Mr. Slade, if I give way ... but it’s gone on for weeks now. Sometimes I wonder that the poor boy has any strength left.”

“I understand, Mrs. Downes,” he said, in a strange, soft voice.

“I always believe in facing things,” she repeated. “There’s no good in pretending.” She was a little better now and dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. Fortunately, no one had passed them: no one had witnessed the spectacle of Emma Downes in tears, walking with Congressman Slade.

Before the slate-colored house, they halted, and Mr. Slade asked, “Would you mind if I came in? I’d like to hear how the boy is.”

She left him in the parlor, sitting beneath the enlarged portrait of the late Mr. Downes, while she went off up the stairs to ask after Philip. Naomi and Mabelle were there talking, because Naomi no longer went out on account of her appearance, and Mabelle, who always went to sleep in church, avoided it whenever possible. Emma did not speak to them, but hurried past their door to the room where Philip lay white and still, looking thin and transparent, like a sick little boy.

Downstairs, in the darkened parlor, Moses Slade disposed his weight on the green plush, and, leaning on his stick, waited. His mind seemed to be in utter confusion, his brain all befogged. Nothing was very clear to him. He regarded the portrait of Emma’s husband, remembering slowly that he had seen Downes years ago, and held a very poor opinion of him. He had been a clever enough fellow, but he never seemed to know where he was going. Emma (he had begun already with a satisfactory feeling of warmth to think of her thus) was probably well rid of him. She had made a brave struggle of it. A fine woman! Look how she behaved about this boy! She believed in facing things. Well, that was a fine, brave quality. He, too, believed in facing things. He couldn’t let her go on alone like this. And he began to think of reason after reason why he should marry Emma Downes.

She was gone a long while, and presently he found his gaze wandering back to the portrait. The dead husband seemed to gaze at him with an air of mockery, as if he thought the whole affair was funny. Moses Slade turned in his chair a little, so that he did not look directly at the wooden portrait.

And then he fell to thinking of Philip. What was the boy like? Did he resemble his father or his mother? Had he any character? Certainly his behavior, as far as you could learn, had been queer and mysterious. He might be a liability, yes, a distinct liability, one which was always making trouble. Perhaps he (Moses Slade) ought to go a little more slowly. Of course the boy might die, and that would leave everything clear, with Emma to console. (He yearned impatiently to console her.) It was a wicked thought; but, of course, he wasn’t actually hoping that the boy would die. He was only facing things squarely, considering the problem from every point of view as a statesman should.

Again he caught the portrait smirking at him, and then the door opened, and Emma came in. She had been crying again. He stood up quickly and the old voice said, “I can’t wait any longer.” He took her hand gently with a touch which he meant to be interpreted as a sympathetic prelude to something more profound. She didn’t resist.

“Well?” he asked.

Emma sank down on the sofa. “I don’t know. They thought he’d be better to-day, and ... and, he isn’t.”

“You mustn’t cry—you mustn’t,” he said in a husky voice.

“I don’t know,” she kept repeating. “I don’t know what I’m to do. I’m so tired.”

He sat down beside her, thankful suddenly that the room was dark, for in the darkness courtship was always easier, especially after middle-age. He now took her hand in both his. There was a long silence in which she gained control of herself, and she did not withdraw her hand nor resist in any way.

“Mrs. Downes,” he said presently in a husky voice. “Emma ... Mrs. Downes ... I have something to ask you. I’m a sober, middle-aged man, and I’ve thought it over for a long time.” He cleared his throat and gave her hand a gentle pressure. “I want you to marry me.”

She had known all along that it was coming. Indeed, it was almost like being a girl once more to see Moses Slade, man-like, working his way with the grace of an elephant toward the point; but now it came with the shock of surprise. She couldn’t answer him at once for the choke in her throat. For weeks she had borne so much, known such waves of sorrow, that something of her unflagging spirit was broken. She thought, “At last, I am to have my reward for years of hard work. God is rewarding me for all my suffering.”

She began to cry again, and Moses Slade asked quickly, “You aren’t going to refuse—with all I can give you....”

“No,” she sobbed, and, leaning forward a little, as if for support, placed her free hand upon his fat knee. “No ... I’m not going to refuse ... only I can’t quite believe it.... I’ve had such a hard time. I’d begun to think that I should never have a reward.”

Suddenly he leaned over and took her awkwardly in his arms. She felt the heavy metal of his gold watch-chain pressing into her bare arm, and then she heard footsteps descending the stairs in the hallway. It was Mabelle going home at last. She was certain to open the door, because Mabelle couldn’t pass a closed door without finding out what was going on behind it.

“Wait!” said Emma, sitting up very straight. “You’d better sit on the other chair.”

Understanding what it was she meant, he rose and went back to the green plush. The steps continued, and then, miraculously, instead of halting, they went past the door and out into the street.

The spell was broken, and Moses Slade suddenly felt that he had made a fool of himself, as if he had been duped by an adventuress.

“It’s Mabelle,” said Emma, who had ceased weeping. “My brother Elmer’s wife. She has such a snoopy disposition, I thought we’d better not be found ... found ... well, you understand.” She blew her nose. “You’ve made me happy ... you don’t know what it’s like to think that I won’t have to go on any more ... alone ... old age is all right, if you’re not alone....”

“Yes, I understand that!” He was a little upset that she treated the affair as if they were an elderly pair marrying for the sake of company in adjoining rocking-chairs. That wasn’t at all the way he had looked upon it. In fact, he had been rather proud at the thought of the youthful fervor which had driven him to cross the street a little while before. By some malicious ill-fortune, Mabelle’s footsteps had cut short the declaration at the very moment when he had been ready to act in such a way as to establish the whole tone of their future relationship.

“Yes, I understand that,” he repeated, “but there’s no use talking about old age. Why, we’re young—Emma—I suppose I can call you Emma?”

She blushed. “Why, yes, of course.”

“You wouldn’t mind if I called you just Em? That was my mother’s name, and I always liked it.”

“No, don’t call me Em. It’s a name I hate—not on account of your mother, of course ... Moses.”

She couldn’t think why she objected to the name: she had been called Em all her life, but somehow it was connected with the vague far-off memory of the romantic Jason Downes. He had called her Em, and it seemed wrong to let this elderly, fleshy man use the same name. It seemed vaguely sacrilegious to put this second marriage on the same basis as the first. She had loved Jason Downes. She knew it just now more passionately than she had ever known it.

“You understand,” she said, laying one hand gently on his.

“Yes, of course, Emma.”

They were standing now, awkwardly waiting for something, and Moses Slade again suddenly took her in his arms. He pinched her arm, ever so gently—just a little pinch; and then he began at once to make a fool of himself again.

“When shall it be?” he asked. “We must fix a date.”

She hesitated for a moment. “Don’t ask me now. I’m all confused and I’ve had so much to worry me. We mustn’t be hasty and undignified—a man in your position can’t afford to be.”

“We can be married quietly ... any time. No one would know how long I’d been courting you.” Then he suddenly became romantic. “The truth is that I’ve wanted to marry you ever since that day you came to see me. So it’s been a long time, you see.”

For a moment she was silent and thoughtful. At last she said, “There’s one thing we ought to consider, Moses. I don’t know about such things, but you’ll know, being a lawyer. It’s about my first husband. You see they never found his body out there in China. They only know he disappeared and must have been killed by bandits. Now what I mean is this ... he mightn’t be dead at all. He might have lost his mind or his memory. And if he turned up....”

Moses Slade looked at her sharply. “You do want to marry me, don’t you, Em ... I mean Emma.... You’re not trying to get out of it?”

“Of course I want to marry you. I only mentioned this because I believe in facing things.”

“How long has he been gone?”

“It’s twenty-four years this January. I remember it well. It was snowing that night, just after the January thaw....”

He checked what would have been a long story by saying, “Twenty-four years ... all alone without a husband. You’re a brave little woman, Emma.” He made a clicking sound with his tongue, and looked at her fondly. “Well, that’s a long time ... long enough for him to be considered dead under law. But we’ll have him declared dead by law and then we won’t have to worry.”

Emma was staring at the floor with a curious fixed look in her eyes. At last she said, “Do you think that would be right? He might still be alive. He might come back.”

Moses Slade grew blustering, as if he were actually jealous of that shadow of the man who kept looking down at him with an air of sardonic amusement.

“It won’t make any difference if we declare him dead. Besides, he hasn’t got any right to you if he is alive.”

It wasn’t that she was simply afraid he might return; the source of her alarm went much deeper than that. She felt that she couldn’t trust herself if he did return; but of course she couldn’t explain that to Moses.

“It wasn’t quite that,” she murmured, and, conscious that the remark didn’t make sense, she asked quickly, “How long ought it to take?”

“A couple of months.”

“We could be married after that?”

“Yes, as soon as possible.”

Moses Slade took her hand again. “You’ve made me a happy man, Emma. You won’t regret it.” He picked up his hat. “I’d like to call to-night. Maybe you’d go to evening service with me?”

“No, I think we’d better not let any one know about it till it’s settled.”

“Maybe you’re right. Well, I’ll come to the restaurant to-morrow for lunch.”

He kissed her again, a bit too ardently, she felt, to be quite pleasant, and they went into the hall. At the same moment the figure of Naomi appeared, descending the stairs heavily. She was clad only in a nightgown and a loose kimono of flowered stuff. Her hair, still in curl-papers, lay concealed beneath a kind of mob-cap of bright green satin, trimmed with soiled lace. It was impossible to avoid her.

“Naomi,” said Emma, in a voice of acid, “this is Mr. Slade—Moses, my daughter-in-law, Naomi.”

Naomi said, “Pleased to meet you.” Moses Slade bowed, went through the door, and the meeting was over.

When the door closed, Emma stood for a moment with the knob in her hand. Naomi was watching her with a look of immense interest and curiosity strangely like the look that came so often into the eyes of Mabelle when curiosity about the subjects of love and childbirth became too strong for her feeble control.

“Is that Mr. Slade ... the Congressman?” asked Naomi.

“Yes, it is.” There was something in Naomi’s look that maddened her, something that was questioning, shameless, offensive, and even accusing.

“What made him come to see us?”

Emma controlled herself. She felt lately that it was all she could bear always to have Naomi in the house.

“He came to ask about Philip.”

“I didn’t know that he knew Philip.”

“He didn’t, but he’s an old friend of mine.” The lie slipped easily from her tongue.

“Philip’s better,” Naomi answered. “He opened his eyes and looked at me. I think he knew me.”

“Did he speak?”

“No, he just closed them again without saying anything.”

Emma moved away from the door as Naomi turned into the dining-room. “Naomi,” she called suddenly, “is the Reverend Castor coming this afternoon?”

“Yes ... he said he was.”

“Surely you’re going to put on some clothes before he comes?”

“I was going to fix my hair.”

“You must put on some clothes. I won’t have you going about the house all day looking like this—half dressed and untidy. You’re a sight! What will a man like Mr. Slade think—a man who is used to Washington where there’s good society.”

Naomi stared at her for a moment with an unaccustomed look of defiance in her pale eyes. (Emma thought, “Mabelle has been making her into a slattern like herself.”)

“Well, in my condition, clothes aren’t very comfortable. I think in my condition I might have some consideration.”

Emma began to breathe heavily. “That has nothing to do with it. When I was in your condition I dressed and went about my work every day. I wore corsets right up to the end.”

“Well, I’m not strong like you.... The doctor told me....”

Emma broke in upon her. “The doctor didn’t tell you to go about looking like a slattern all day! I wish you’d tell Mabelle for me that I’d like to come home just once without finding her here.”

The fierce tension could not endure. When it broke sharply, Naomi sat down and began to cry. “Now you want to take her away from me,” she sobbed. “I’ve given up everything to please you and Philip ... everything. I even gave up going back to Megambo, where the Lord meant me to be. And now I haven’t got anything left ... and you all hate me. Yes, you do. And Philip does too sometimes.... He hates me.... You wanted me to marry him, and now see what’s come of it. I’m even in this condition because you wanted me to be.” She began to cry more and more wildly. “I’ll run out into the street. I’ll kill myself. I’ll run away, and then maybe you’ll be happy. I won’t burden you any longer.”

Emma was shaking her now, violently, with all the shame and fury she felt at Moses’ encounter with this slatternly daughter-in-law, and all the contempt she felt for a creature so poor spirited.

“You’ll do no such thing, you little fool! You’ll brace up and behave like a woman with some sense!”

But it was no good. Naomi was simply having one of her seizures. She grew more hysterical, crying out, “You’d like to be rid of me ... both of you. You both hate me.... Oh, I know ... I know ... I’m nothing now ... nothing to anybody in the world! I’m just in your way.”

Emma, biting her lip, left her abruptly, closing the door behind with ferocious violence. If she had not gone at once, she felt that she would have laid hands on Naomi.

Moses Slade, bound toward his own house, walked slowly, lost once more in a disturbing cloud of doubts. With Emma out of sight, the ardent lover yielded place to the calculating politician. He suffered, he did not know why, from a feeling of having been duped. The sight of Naomi so untidy and ill-kempt troubled him. He hadn’t known about the child. The girl must be at least seven months gone, and he hadn’t known it. Of course (he thought) you couldn’t have expected Emma voluntarily to mention a subject so indelicate. Nevertheless, he felt that she should have conveyed the knowledge to him in some discreet fashion. Even if the boy did die, the situation would be just as bad, or worse. If he left a widow and a child.... He felt suddenly as if in some way Emma herself had tricked him, as if she herself were having a child, and had tricked him into marrying her to protect herself....

In a kind of anguish he regretted again that he had been so impetuous in his proposal to the widow Barnes that he had shocked her into refusal. She wasn’t so fine-looking a woman as Emma, but she was free, without encumbrances or responsibilities, without a child. Of course, Emma would never know that in the midst of his courtship he had been diverted by the prospect of Mrs. Barnes. She would never know what had been the reason for the months of silence....

21

Since the reconciliation, the Sunday dinner at Elmer Niman’s had again been resumed, and Emma, on her way there, suffered as keenly from doubts as her suitor had done on his homeward journey. Now that the thing was accomplished, or practically so, she was uneasy. It was not, she reflected, a simple thing to alter the whole course of one’s life at her age. There would be troubles, difficulties, for Moses Slade was not, she could see, an easy man to manage. To be sure, he was less slippery than Jason had been: a Congressman could never run off and disappear. But, on the other hand, he was as rocklike and solid as his own portly figure.

She faced the thing all the way to Elmer’s house, examining it from every possible angle, except the most important of all—the angle of ambition. In the bottom of her heart, hidden and veiled by all the doubts and probings, there lay a solid determination to marry Moses Slade. The restaurant was a complete success, enlarged to a size commensurate with the possibilities of the Town. Nothing more remained to be done, and she was still a healthy, vigorous woman in the prime of life. As the wife of Moses Slade, new vistas opened before her.... There had never been any doubt about her course of action, but she succeeded in convincing herself that she was going slowly and examining every possibility of disaster.

What she found most difficult to bear was the lack of a confidante. Even though, as she admitted to herself, it was silly to think of such a thing as love between herself and Moses, she had nevertheless an overwhelming desire to share the news with some one. It was almost as strong as the feeling she had experienced twenty-seven years earlier after accepting Jason’s declaration. She could not, she felt, go in safety beyond the borders of a discreet hinting to any of her woman friends: a mere rumor soon spread among them with the ferocity of a fire in a parched forest. Naomi was the last person to tell, especially since that queer Mabelle look had come into her eyes. And her brother? No, she couldn’t tell him, though she supposed he would be pleased at her marrying so solid a man. It wasn’t clear to her why she couldn’t bring herself to tell him, save that it was connected vaguely with the memory of his behavior on the occasion of announcing her engagement to Jason. He might behave in the same fashion again; and on the first occasion he had only forgiven her when Jason had vindicated his opinion by disappearing. Elmer, she knew, loved to say, “I told you it would end like this.”

There remained only Philip, and he was too ill to be told; but when she thought of it, she began to doubt whether she would have told him if he had been well.

It was the first time since his return that she had had need to confide in him, and now she found herself troubled by the feeling that it wouldn’t be easy. Until now she had gone bravely on, ignoring the changes in their relations as mother and son, but now that a test had arisen, she saw that there had been a change. She saw, despite herself, that he had become in a way a stranger—her boy, who had always loved her, whom she worshipped with a maternal passion too intense to be put into words. Her boy, whose very character she had created as she had created his flesh, had become a stranger with whom she couldn’t even discuss her own plans. Once he would have believed that whatever she did was right.

As she thought of it, she walked more rapidly. Why, she asked herself, had this happened to her? Hadn’t she given all her life to him? Hadn’t she worked her fingers to the bone? Hadn’t she watched and guarded him from evil and sin, kept him pure? Had she ever thought of anything but his welfare and saving him from the pitfall of his father’s weaknesses? A lump came into her throat, and a moisture into her eyes. What had she done to deserve this?

She felt no resentment against him. It was impossible to blame him in any way. He was a good boy, who had never caused her any trouble—not trouble in the real sense, for his doubts about his calling were temporary, and perhaps natural. Since he could never go back to Africa, he would in the end settle down with some church of his own. He might even perhaps become a bishop, for certainly he was more clever than most preachers, a thousand times more clever than the Reverend Castor, and more of a gentleman, more of what a bishop ought to be. And after this illness perhaps he would see the light once more. Perhaps the Lord had sent this illness for just that reason.

No, Philip was a perfect son. She was sure that he still loved her.

She tried to hate the Mills, but that was impossible, and in the end the suspicion came to her that the change was due in some way to Naomi. It must be Naomi. She had always thought that Naomi disliked her. Why, she didn’t know. Hadn’t she done everything for Naomi? Hadn’t she treated her as if she were her own daughter?

And her only reward was spite and jealousy.

While she thought of it, it occurred to her that the change in Philip—the real change—his slipping away from her—had begun at the time that Naomi became his wife in more than name: until that time he had always been her boy who adored her. Suddenly, she saw it all clearly; it was Naomi for whom she had done everything, who had stolen Philip from her.

Her tears were dried by the time she reached her brother’s front step, but the lump in her throat was still there, and it remained all through the lunch, so that at times she felt that she might suddenly weep, despite herself. In her sorrow, she paid little heed to her brother’s usual long speeches, or to Mabelle’s idiotic interruptions. But she was able to despise Mabelle with a contempt which made any previous emotion pale by comparison. Because Mabelle was Naomi’s friend, she, too, seemed responsible for what had happened.

After lunch, when Mabelle had gone out to the kitchen for a time, Emma took her brother aside in the grim parlor, and said, “Elmer, I have something to ask of you.”

He looked at her sharply, in a way in which he had looked at her for years on occasions when he thought she might be asking for money. It had never yet happened, but the unguarded look of alarm had never wholly died since the moment that Jason Downes left his wife penniless.

“It’s not what you think,” said Emma coldly. “It’s only about Mabelle. I want you to keep her from coming to the house so often.”

“But why, Emma?”

“You don’t know that she spends all her days there. I never go home without finding her ... and I think she’s bad for Naomi ... just now.”

“How bad for her?”

He was standing with his hands clasped behind him, watching her. For a moment she looked squarely into his eyes, hesitating, wondering whether she dared speak the truth. Then she took the plunge, for she felt suddenly that Elmer would understand. There was a bond between them not of fraternal affection (for there were times when they actually disliked each other), but a tie far stronger. He would understand what she meant to say, because he was, in spite of everything, very like her. They were two people who had to rule those about them, two people who were always right. She knew that he understood her contempt for Mabelle as a woman and as a housekeeper; the fact that Mabelle was his wife made little difference.

“You’ll understand what I mean, Elmer. You know that Mabelle doesn’t keep house well. You know she’s ... well, lazy and untidy. And that is why she’s bad for Naomi. Naomi wasn’t meant for a wife and mother, I’m afraid. She’s a miserable failure at it. I’m trying to put character into her, to make something of her ... but I can’t, if Mabelle’s always there. She undoes all I can do.”

He unclasped his hands, and, after a moment, said, “Yes, I think I know what you mean. Besides, Mabelle ought to be at home looking after her own house a little. You’d think that she couldn’t bear the sight of it. She’s always gadding.” He turned away. “She’s coming now. I’ll speak to her, and if she still bothers you let me know.”

Mabelle came through the swinging beaded portières. “It’s too bad Naomi couldn’t come, too, for lunch. It’s a pity she feels like she does about being seen in the street. I have tried to make her sensible about it. Why, when I was carrying Ethel....”

Both of them gave her black looks, but Mabelle, seating herself at once in the rocking-chair, rattled on without noticing.

22

The inspiration came to Emma at the evening service, when she was struck again by the quality of sympathy in the voice and countenance of the Reverend Castor. He, of course, was the one with whom to discuss the problem of her marriage. He would understand, and he would be able, as well, to give her advice. Nor did he ever betray all the ladies of his congregation who came to him with their troubles. And he had been so sympathetic over Philip’s long illness, showing so deep a solicitude, calling at the house three or four times a week.

Almost at once she felt happier.

At the end of the service, she waited until he had shaken hands with all the congregation, smiling and making little jests with them, as if he had not done so twice a day for fifty-two Sundays a year, ever since he had felt the call. When they had all gone, she said, “Could I take a moment of your time, Reverend Castor? I want advice over something that worries me.”

It was a request he heard often enough, from one woman after another—women who asked advice upon every subject from thieving hired girls to erring husbands. There were times when he felt he could not endure listening to one more woman talk endlessly about herself. It wearied him so that he wanted to flee suddenly, leaving them all, together with the hand-shaking and the very church itself, behind him forever. Sometimes he had strange dreams, while he was awake, and with his eyes wide open, of fleeing to some outlandish place like those marvelous islands in the South Seas where there were none of these things. And then to calm his soul, he would tell himself cynically that even in those islands there were women.

He led her to his study, which he had been driven to establish at the back of the church, since there was no peace in the parsonage from the complaining voice above-stairs. There the two of them sat down. It occurred to Emma that he looked very white and tired, that there were new lines on his face. He couldn’t be an old man. He wasn’t much older than herself, yet he was beginning to look old. It was, she supposed, the life he led at home. A clergyman, of all people, needed an understanding, unselfish wife.

“And now,” he was saying, “I’m always pleased to help, however I can in my humble way.”

He was a good man, who never sought to evade his duty, however tired he was. He wanted, honestly, to help her.

She began to tell him, constructing an approach to the fact itself by explaining what a lonely, hard life she had had since the death of her husband in China. She touched upon the Christian way in which she had brought up her boy, and now (she said) that he was a grown man and married and would soon have a parish of his own (since he could not return to Africa) she would be left quite alone. She wanted the rest which she had earned, and the companionship for which she would no doubt hunger in her old age. These were the reasons why she had accepted the offer of Moses Slade. Yet she was troubled.

She leaned back in her chair and sighed. What did he think? Could he help her to decide?

The study was a gloomy room, lighted in the day-time by a single sooty Gothic window and at night by a single jet of gas. There was a roll-top desk, a long heavy table, a cabinet where the choir music was kept, and two or three sagging, weary leather chairs. Before he answered her, the tired eyes of the Reverend Castor rested for a time on the meager furniture as if he had lost himself in deep thought. She waited. This attitude was, however, merely professional, and wholly misleading. He was not in deep thought. He was merely thinking, “She doesn’t want advice. She only wants to talk about herself. Whatever I say will make no difference. She means to marry him, no matter what happens.”

But because this was his work he spoke at last, setting forth one by one all the arguments she had repeated to herself earlier in the day, concluding with the remark, “The reasons on the other side you have put very well yourself.”

Emma stirred in the springless leather chair. “Then what do you advise?”

“Mrs. Downes, it is a matter that no one can decide but yourself. Pray God to help you, and do what you think is right.”

He was troubled, and, in a vague way, disturbed and unhappy, because in the back of his mind the worm of envy was at work, gnawing, gnawing, gnawing—a sinful worm that gave him no peace. Moses Slade was free to marry again, and he had chosen Emma Downes. He had thought of Emma Downes for himself, in case ... (the wicked thought returned to him again like a shadow crossing his path) ... in case Annie’s illness carried her off at last. It seemed to him that all the world was going past him, while he remained behind, chained to a complaining invalid.

Emma rose, and, after he had turned the gas out and locked the door, they went out together. It was a clear, quiet night, when for once there seemed to be no soot in the air, and the stars seemed very close. For a moment they both stood listening, and at last Emma said, “Am I right, or am I growing deaf? Do the Mills sound very far away to-night ... sort of weak?”

He listened, and then said, “Yes, it’s queer. They sound almost faint.”

There was another silence. And Emma gave a low, groaning sound. “Maybe that’s it ... maybe they’ve gone out on strike.”

“There’ll be trouble,” said the Reverend Castor. “It makes me kind of sick to think of it.”

They bade each other good-night, and went their ways, the Reverend Castor hurrying along, because he was more than an hour late. He knew that when he arrived she would be out of her bed, standing at the upper window looking for him, her mind charged with the bitter reproaches she had thought out to fling at him, torturing sarcasms dealing with what had kept him so long in the study. She had an obsession that he meant to be unfaithful to her; she never ceased to hint and imply the most odious things. She was always accusing him of disgraceful things about women....

As he came nearer and nearer to the parsonage, he was seized by a terrible temptation to turn away, to disappear, never to enter the doors of his home again. But a man of God, he knew, couldn’t do a thing like that. And now God—even God—seemed to be deserting him. He couldn’t drive these awful thoughts from his mind. He began desperately to repeat his Psalm.

Turning past the hedge, he saw that there was a light in the upper window, and against the lace curtains the silhouette of a waiting figure, peering out eagerly.

When Emma entered the house, she discovered that all the lights were on, that Philip had been forgotten, and that his nurse and Mabelle were with Naomi, who was being forced to walk up and down. Mabelle sat giving advice and saying repeatedly that she never had such trouble even with her first baby. In a little while, the doctor came, and seven hours later Mabelle’s predictions were vindicated, for Naomi gave birth at last to twins, a boy and a girl. At about the same hour the last echo of the pounding at the Mills died away into silence, and the last fire in the blast-furnace died into ashes. In the room next to Naomi’s, Philip opened his eyes, called for a drink of water, and for the first time in four months knew that his head was clear and that his body was not burning or shaking. It was an extraordinary thing, the nurse observed, as if his children coming into the world had called him back to life.

He came back to consciousness out of a strange country peopled with creatures that might have haunted a Gothic nightmare, creatures who seemed as confused and unreal as the fantastic world on which they moved. Sometimes his mother was present, moving about, oddly enough, against the background of the jungle at Megambo, moving about among the niggers, converting them in wholesale lots. At times she would disappear suddenly, to return almost at once, driving before her with Lady Millicent Wimbrooke’s rawhide whip whole troops of natives, dressed completely, even to bonnets and shoes, like the people one saw in Main Street. And then she would feed them at the Peerless Restaurant, which seemed to have been set up intact on the borders of the gloomy forest. Once Lady Wimbrooke appeared herself with her portable-bath and rifle, and shooting about her carelessly, she drove all of them, including Emma, out of the restaurant into Main Street, which appeared miraculously to have sprung up just outside the door. Once outside, he discovered that all of them—Emma herself and the niggers, were walking stark naked in the car-tracks in the middle of the street. He, himself, seemed to be carrying a banner at the head of the parade on which was written in fiery letters, “Let God look out for himself. We will do the same.” And at the corner he found Mary Conyngham waiting to keep a tryst, and neither he nor she seemed to take any notice of the fact that he was as naked as the day he was born.

And Naomi was there, too, always in the background, only she was not the Naomi he knew, but a large woman with a soft, powerful body, like Swanson’s, above which her pale face peered out comically from beneath a sun-bonnet woven of reeds. Once or twice he had mistaken her for Swanson playing a joke on him.

At other times he seemed to be back in the Mills, or in Hennessey’s saloon, where Emma entered presently and broke all the mirrors; and then all of them were suddenly squeezed out of the doors to find themselves in the jungle, which appeared to have sprung up all about them, impenetrable save for a single path in which was stuck a cast-iron guide-post, reading, “To the Mills.” The air was filled with the sound of distant thunder, but he could not make out whether it was the distant sound of tom-toms, or the pounding of monstrous steel hammers. Oddly enough, it seemed quite natural, as if the trees, the jungle and the Mills belonged thus together.

And Mary Conyngham was always there. It seemed that she was married to him, and that they had somewhere a family of children which he had never seen and could not find.

Once he witnessed a horrible sight. He saw Emma pursuing the black virgin who had long ago been eaten by the leopards. The virgin, naked, save for her ornaments of copper wire, ran to the lake, and across the water, skimming the surface like a kingfisher of ebony, and, as Emma gave chase, she sank like a stone, disappearing beneath the brassy surface without a sound.

For a long time after he returned to life, memories of the dead, nightmarish world clung to him like wisps of the haze that sometimes veiled the lake at Megambo in the wet season. He did not know how long he had been ill, and at times it seemed to him that he had died and was not living at all. His body felt light as air, but when he tried to raise it, it failed him, slipping back in a miserable weakness. And then, bit by bit, as the memories of the delirium faded into space, the hard, barren world about him began to take shape ... the starched lace curtains at the windows, which Emma kept clean despite all the soot, the worn rocking-chair, the table at the side of the bed crowded with medicines, and, finally, the strange figure of the nurse. And then he understood that Naomi must be somewhere near at hand, and his mother. He had a vague feeling that they must have become old now, and gray, after all the years he had been ill.

It was Emma whom he saw first, and recognized. She came into the darkened room, and stood silently by the side of the bed until he, conscious that there was some one near him, opened his eyes, and said in a weak voice, “Is that you, Ma?”

Without answering him, she fell on her knees beside the bed and took his head in her hands, kissing him passionately again and again on his forehead. She wept and said over and over again, “Philip, my boy! The Lord has given me back my boy!”

There was something frightening in the wildness of her emotion. The nurse, hearing her weeping, came in to warn her that she must be calm, and Philip said weakly, “It’s all right. I understand. She’s always been like that.”

Once it would never have occurred to him to speak thus, as if he were detached from her and stood quite apart, protecting her. Protecting Emma! Something had happened to him during that long night of four months’ delirium.

When his mother had gained control of herself once more, she sat down by the side of the bed, and, taking his hand, she held it clasped passionately in hers, while she sat looking at him, without once speaking. For some reason, he could not look at her, perhaps because in the intensity of her emotion she was asking from him a response which he could not give. He was ashamed, but it was impossible to pretend. Instead of any longer seeming almost a part of her, he was detached now in a strange, definite fashion. In his weakness, it seemed to him that he was seeing her for the first time and he was ashamed and sorry for her. He knew that before long she, too, would understand that there was a difference, that in some way their relationship had been broken forever. The old Philip was dead, and the new one suddenly pitied her from a great distance, as he pitied Naomi. It was as if the weakness gave him a clairvoyance, a second sight, which illuminated all the confusion of mind that had preceded the long night.

Lying there, with his eyes closed, her passionate cry, “Philip, my boy!” burned itself into his brain. He was, he knew, unworthy of that consuming love she had for him.

After a long time he heard her asking, “Philip, are you awake?”

“Yes, Ma.” But he did not open his eyes.

“I have some good news that will delight you.”

What could it be? Perhaps she had arranged his return to Megambo. She would think that was good news.

“It’s about Naomi. You’re a father now, Philip ... twice a father, Philip. You’ve two children. They were twins.”

The knot of perplexity which had been tormenting his brain suddenly cleared away. Of course! That was what he couldn’t remember about Naomi. She had been going to have a baby, and now she had had two. Still he did not open his eyes. It was more impossible now than ever. He did not answer her, and presently Emma asked, “You heard what I said, Philip?”

“Yes, Ma.”

“You’re glad, aren’t you?”

He answered her weakly, “Of course ... why, of course, I’m glad.”

Again there was a long silence. He was ashamed again, because he had been forced to lie, ashamed because he wasn’t proud, and happy. His mother sat there trying to raise his spirits, and each thing she said only drove them lower. In that curious clarity of mind which seemed to possess his soul, he knew with a kind of horror that he had wanted to waken alone, free, in a new country, where he would never again see Naomi, or his mother, or the lace curtains, or the familiar, worn rocking-chair. That, he saw now, was why he had wanted to die. And now he was back again, tied to them more closely than ever.

At last he said in a low voice, “It was like Naomi, wasn’t it ... to have twins?”

“What do you mean?”

He hesitated a moment, and then said, “I don’t know ... I’m tired ... I don’t know.”

Again a silence. Deep inside him something kept urging him to break through all this web which seemed to be closing tighter and tighter around him. The last thought he could remember before slipping into the nightmare returned to him now, and, without knowing why, he uttered it, “There won’t be any more children.”

“Why?” asked Emma. “What are you trying to say?”

“Because I don’t mean to live with Naomi ever again. It’s a wicked thing that I’ve done.”

She began to stroke his forehead, continuing for a long time before she spoke. She was having suddenly to face things—things which she had always known, and pretended not to know. At last she said, “Why is it a wicked thing to live with your lawful wife?”

The world began to whiz dizzily about his head. Odd flashes of light passed before his closed eyes. It seemed to him that he must speak the truth, if he were ever to open them again without shame.

“Because she’s not really my wife ... she’s just like any woman, any stranger ... I never loved her at all. I can’t go on ... living like that. Can’t you see how wicked it is?”

Emma was caught in her own web, by the very holy principles she upheld—that it was wrong to marry some one you did not love. It was this same thing which disturbed her peace of mind about Moses Slade.

“You loved her once, Philip, or you wouldn’t have married her.”

“No, I didn’t know anything then, Ma.” The color of pain entered his voice. “Can’t you see, Ma? I wasn’t alive then. I never loved her, and now it’s worse than that.”

The stroking of his forehead suddenly ceased. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Philip.... We’d better not go on now. You’re tired and ill. Everything will be different when you are well again.”

For a second time there came to him a blinding flash of revelation. He saw that she had always been like that: she had always pushed things aside to let them work themselves out. An awful doubt dawned upon him that she was not always right, that sometimes she had made a muddle of everything. A feeling of dizziness swept over him.

“But it will break her heart, Philip,” she was saying. “She worships you.... It will break her heart.”

Through a giddy haze he managed to say, “No ... I’m so tired.... Let’s not talk any more.” He felt the nightmare stealing back again, and presently he was for some strange reason back at Megambo, sitting under the acacia-tree, and through the hot air came the sound of voices singing, in a minor key:

He thought wildly, “I’ve got to get free. I must run.... I must run.”

Emma, holding his hand, felt the fever slipping back. She heard him saying, “Go down to the water, little monkey,” which clearly made no sense, and suddenly she sprang up and called Miss Bull, the nurse.

“It’s odd,” said Miss Bull, white and frightened, “when he was so much better. Did anything happen to upset him?”

“No,” said Emma. “Nothing. We barely talked at all.”

The nurse sent Essie for the doctor, reproaching herself all the while for having allowed Emma to stay so long a time by the bed. But it was almost impossible to refuse when a woman like Mrs. Downes said, “Surely seeing his mother won’t upset him. Why, Miss Bull, we’ve always been wonderful companions—my boy and I. He never had a father, you see. I was both mother and father to him.” Miss Bull knew what a gallant fight she’d made, for every one in the Town knew it. A widow, left alone, to bring up her boy. You couldn’t be cruel enough to stop her from seeing her own son.

When the doctor came and left again, shaking his head, Emma was frightened, but her fright disappeared once more as the fever receded again toward morning, and when at last she fell asleep, she was thinking, “He doesn’t belong to her, after all. He’s never belonged to her. He’s still my Philip.” There was in the knowledge a sense of passionate triumph and joy, which wiped out all else—her doubts about Moses Slade, her worry over Philip’s future, even the sudden, cold terror that gripped her as she felt the fever stealing back into his thin, transparent hand. He didn’t belong to Naomi. Why, he almost hated her. He was still her boy.... And she had defeated Naomi.

In the darkness the tears dampened the pillow. God had not, after all, forsaken her.