Front matter (continued 5)

"Well, you poor old thing! I always knew you must feel that way, living with—in that house. But you'd never acknowledge it. How did you find this place? Quite an apartment, isn't it? I was sick of a rooming house! Have you seen the doctor?"

"Yes."

"She seemed pleased, didn't you think so? She didn't look annoyed. I was told I couldn't have company here. It isn't often——"

The doctor was there with them.

"We're going to have a spread, Martha! The maid's out. You go and get the lettuce, get two heads, get good ones; and some whipping cream; and some bronze chrysanthemums. Oh, it's no trouble, Mrs. Kenworthy! I feel just like it to-day. The time and place and the loved ones to bother. If you can't get the chrysanthemums, get some—something that color. And hurry back."

The doctor had on a white apron, and the kitchen had made her cheeks rosier. She set Emily down to rest for a little in the interesting living room. Miss Curtis came in, and was ordered to sit and talk to her. But every minute or two the doctor came in from the kitchen, and with her a flood and whirlpool of words. Emily scarcely had a chance to say a word all that evening; but the house excited her until her color was almost as bright as the doctor's.

Everything on the dining table was like the hostess. The table mats were of a strong and superior unbleached linen; the vivid dishes called aloud for admiration; the candle-light was flattering. Emily sat excitedly studying the doctor. Whoever put herself into that woman's care would never afterwards dare to call either body or soul her own. But if she was high handed, she was also high hearted. She talked almost without ceasing; and whatever little thing she talked of, she enjoyed so merrily that the three women watching her, shared her delight to some extent. And when she laughed a hearty laugh, every time Emily thought surprisedly: "What a good time I'm having! This is the best possible place for Martha!"

"Did you ever taste any sort of canned meat as good as this chicken in your life? Lobster simply isn't in it! It's fatted calf for me. My mother keeps me in it; but I never open a jar when I'm alone; I'm not that selfish, anyway. Cold pack, of course, as you know, Mrs. Kenworthy. We had a family scrap about it the last time I went home. My sister Isobel—she's an awful woman as far as she can manage to be—she said to me, 'Now look here, Isobel' (she's always trying to boss me around), 'you can just find a deadly germ in canned chicken. I'm not going to have mother worried to death canning chicken for you to guzzle any longer. She's too old, and so are you. You can just tell her you've got poisoned by it and you aren't going to eat it any longer.' 'I'll be damned if I'll find a deadly germ in it,' I told her. 'If you don't want mother doing it for me, you can do it yourself.' After all you can't just stand your relations imposing on you forever, can you? Not if you have as many as I have! I just made an announcement then and there. My fees for removing appendices are canned fat chicken, and those strawberry preserves they make in the sun so they keep the right color of red. I'm not going to eat city chickens that have been shut up in a little coop on Fifty-seventh Street. I want contented hens that have crowed in the barns I have played in. Nice sunny barn doors! Don't you love barn doors on spring days when all the hens are cackling? What do I practically keep a bed in the Presbyterian Hospital full of my fifty-two first cousins for, anyway, if I have to eat canned salmon on occasions of haste? There are limits to my patience. What are you snickering at, Martha? That's not a pun!"

With such banalities she kept them aroused, expectant. There was no constraint; no one of the three was thinking of something amusing to say; each knew very well she would have no chance to say anything amusing, however well prepared she might be. The doctor never ceased for a minute.

Finally she folded up her tongue for the night and left them together there.

"Is she always like that?" Emily murmured.

"Oh no, I don't think so. I don't know her very well. I never had a meal here before. You've made a hit with her, mammie! She sort of owns Miss Curtis. Maybe she took care of her through—THAT—or something. Anyway, Miss Curtis told her about you, and that's why she asked you to stay here. Of course, she just took me in because Miss Curtis has been fussing about me studying in the kitchen ever since she saw our house. She's made up her mind—the doctor has—that Miss Curtis has got to put those girls out, when she can, because they're so thoughtless about her, and everything, and that I'm to have those front rooms and do them over to suit myself. She bosses everybody around. I guess she thinks she's got a lot more sense than most people, and so she ought to tell them where to get off. You can see why she's got such a practice. Can't you just see her sailing into somebody's sick-room with her tail up, that way, and making them wild to get up and be strong as a horse, like she is? Miss Curtis says she's the only woman who ever got through medical school and got a practice without losing her color. She doesn't pay very much attention to me. She's busy, 'most always. Sometimes she gets to talking about some interesting case, and goes on half the night. I never get a word in edgewise. I just listen."

Emily, as she lay waiting for sleep, said to herself: "Well, if horrible things happen to us when we don't expect them, so do lovely things. If I'd searched this city over for two friends for Martha, I'd never have found any equal to these two. The doctor's just a clean gale blowing through Martha. She'll clean out her mind; she'll do for her what I never could. Why should I want to do everything in the world that's done for her? Why can't I be satisfied to see those women helping her along?"

She went back to her home more happy about Martha than she had been for months. Mrs. Benton had already gone East and it promised to be a quiet winter for club-women in general The one great event of it was to be the annual Christmas party for children. Mrs. Benton had instituted the custom the winter before, the first year of the new dance hall. She had given a splendid party that once. She left a committee behind her to try to follow her example.

They were discussing it at lunch. Emily had realized that the women across from her were talking about ways of finding good jobs for girls who had to leave high school, when Mrs. Bissel leaned across towards her and asked:

"Mrs. Kenworthy, by the way, what's this new job Martha's got? What's she planning to do?"

There were four women who might be supposed to be listening in that pause with more or less curiosity for Emily's reply.

She had heard nothing of Martha's job. She smiled. "Oh, I don't know," she replied, lightly. "I don't think it's anything very—purposeful."

"But do you approve of her leaving the university to take it up?"

Emily had heard not a hint of Martha leaving the university. She must have left in the middle of a quarter.

She said, "Not altogether." She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm afraid her heart's never really been in the university. I wish she could have gone on, in her own college, with her own class. But I do think girls of her age have to decide these things for themselves."

She left the meeting early. She had a notion to go straight to Chicago. What job could Martha possibly have got? And why? And had she left her two good friends? And did she mean deliberately to hurt her mother's feelings by having her learn this through Mrs. Bissel? "Perhaps," thought Emily, longingly, "she's taking somebody's place for a few weeks. Perhaps just at Christmas; perhaps the doctor's office girl has got ill, or something. I expect she's helping some one. And she's been too busy to write. I ought to do some Christmas shopping. I'll go up to-morrow and 'phone her, at least. I'll see for myself what's she into."

And after supper Martha called her by 'phone. The connection was poor. Some operator had to relay the unsatisfactory message. All that Emily understood was that Martha would meet her for tea the next day at the usual place.

But the next afternoon Martha led her to a new-found tea-room in an office building—a remote place, one secure corner of which the two of them had quite to themselves. Emily had to feel her way towards her daughter carefully, for she saw at once that Martha was in an evil mood. Around her eyes were the hollows and shadows of tears.

She began directly: "I got a job; I didn't write you—because I've been too blue. I've just felt like crying my eyes out every minute the last week. I just had to 'phone you. I knew I ought to tell you; I just thought I couldn't write. I'm working in a shop; it's a classy place, believe me. Interior decorators, on Mich. Boul."

"Do you like it?"

"Well, I'm not mad about it by any means. It'll do."

"You go to your lectures still at the U? You don't stay in this shop all day?"

"No. I'm done with that place. I'm going to smoke. You needn't make a fuss; everyone's used to it here."

"Perhaps this will be better than writing away on a novel," Emily was thinking. She didn't want to seem to look too inquisitively at Martha. She played about with her tea; she called Martha's attention to the couple who had entered. "Why is it," she asked, to break the silence, "that the more expensive the fur coat, the fatter the woman inside it?"

But Martha broke forth abruptly, "I've burned my novel up!"

Emily was sharply stung by the bitterness of that confession. She had always wanted that novel burned up, but she hadn't wanted Martha to be so hurt by its destruction.

"Why, Martie? What did you do that for?"

"I needn't have been so hasty! I've got most of it—in rough form. I could put it all together again; but it would be an awful lot of work."

"You worked on it nearly a year."

"Yes, I had. And if I'd known everything then I know now, I wouldn't have burned it up, you can bet! I typed it all over without a mistake, from beginning to end; it had seventy thousand words."

"Goodness!" Emily murmured, impressed.

"And I couldn't hardly sleep, I was so anxious to see what that old idiot of a prof. would think of it. I might have known, handing it in to an old rake of a man!"

Emily let her go on unreproved.

"And it was the funniest thing! I just happened to find out what he meant. You hand your work in, mammie, and then you go and have a consultation with the prof. about it. Well, I'd never had any old consultation before. And everybody says he is a horrid man; to women, especially. He don't think women can write novels, of course. He thinks it's his business to discourage them. I was scared out of my wits to go and talk to him about my novel, to tell the truth. I might have known something was wrong, for he was as nice to me as you please. He was surprised to see me when I came in. He didn't know me from Adam, before, of course. I suppose he thought I'd be foaming at the mouth, or something. He jollied me along, the oily old rake; said my work was interesting and everything; that I'd put a lot of work in on it. And then he said: 'You know sometimes we think it well—to refer these themes to other departments. The last one before you,' he said, all smooth and gentle, 'I referred to the biologist under whom the student works. And I had yours read by Doctor Parson, Doctor Edith Parson; she is more able than I am—to judge of the worth of this material,' he said. 'So I had her read it over, and I suggest you go and consult her first, and then come and talk it over with me.' All hemming and hawing, he was, the flea. So I swallowed it all. I didn't know any better. I knew they did send theses and things for grad. degrees around to a lot of profs. I asked somebody there waiting to see him, a girl from the class, who this Doctor Parson was, but she didn't know. So then, mammie, I went home. This was a week ago last Thursday. I was in Doctor Stevenson's living room that evening, and I naturally asked her if she knew who Doctor Parson was. I didn't tell her WHY I was asking, or anything. And, mammie, what do you think she said!"

Tears came flooding into Martha's eyes.

"What difference does it make what she said, child!"

"Well, it may not make any difference to YOU, but it did to ME. 'I know her,' she said, and she smiled sort of funny. So I said, 'Who is she?' And she said, 'Oh, every little while some crazy woman gets into the U, and Doctor Parson is the one that gets them into the asylum. I had to help her once, one summer. She called me in because I was near and strong.'" And suddenly Martha turned away, shuddering in uncontrollable repulsion. She covered her face with her hands, just for a second, and went on:

"I had to sit there, mammie, not saying a word to give myself away, and take it all. She said that woman—the one that went crazy—she wanted to go right out in the street without any clothes on, and everything. I thought she'd never get through talking. They had to have three policemen that night. I thought I'd just die, I was so scared. And I got away from her as soon as I could, and I got the novel and went right down to the janitor and asked him to let me put something into the furnace. So he did, and I saw it burning. I saw it all curling up burned. And then I went and stayed with Miss Curtis. She let me have a bed in her room; she was just sweet to me, mammie. I told her I was sick. She wanted me to go home; she said I needed a rest."

"Martha, you do need a rest, my dear. You've worked so steadily. Why don't you come home with me?"

"Mammie—no. I went and got a job. I had—to have something—else to think about. I couldn't go home; I couldn't bear to go back to the doctor's. I stayed with Miss Curtis for more than a week."

"And now? Where are you now?"

"Oh, I'm back at the doctor's, all right now. I'm not a bit more—out of my head than she is, anyway. It doesn't always follow that if a girl—or a woman—falls in love, as they say, that she's crazy. Look at that Doctor Stevenson. Wouldn't you say she was sane, mammie? Wouldn't you say that if anybody in the world is in her right mind, it's that woman?"

"Yes, I would certainly call her a well-balanced woman."

"Well!" cried Martha, triumphantly. "You say she's sane, and she keeps a lover—there—in that apartment—all the time!"

"Martha! You mustn't say that! Not so loud!" Emily looked around her hurriedly. "You must not say things like that—gossip, like that!"

"I'm not repeating any gossip. You needn't get so excited. I'm not telling anybody but you, and I saw it with my own eyes."

Emily said, sharply, "I don't believe you know what you're talking about."

"I know exactly what I'm talking about! She told me when I went to live with her that she had a friend that came to stay with her, and that when that friend came I had to clear out. Naturally, when a single woman says a friend is coming to stay with her, you suppose it's a woman. But it isn't. It's a man. I saw him!"

"When? How?" Emily was intent upon refuting this mistake.

"Well, he comes for Saturday and Sunday, and I had been staying all week with Miss Curtis. And, anyway, they always go to the concert Saturday night. I had to go and get some underwear out of my room. I thought they would be at the concert, so I went in."

"Well?"

"Well, she heard me opening the door with my key, and she called to me: 'Martha, is that you? Come in here!' she said to me. And I went into her living room; and there was that man. A great big, tall man, walking around with his hands in his pockets. She was sitting at her desk, pretending to be looking at an account book. 'This is my brother,' she said to me. And he never took his hands out of his pockets. He said to me, growling, 'I am not her brother!' just like that. And she said, 'Oh, all right, then, you aren't. You aren't any relation to me!' You know how she thinks she can carry anything off, that way. Of course I felt terribly embarrassed. I just got my stuff and fled. That man was staying in my bedroom. His things were there. Did you ever hear anything like that in your life, mother? The nerve of her! With all that practice, and everybody thinking she's so respectable! Nobody thinks she's crazy. I'm glad I didn't burn up the first copy of my book."

"But, Martha, look here! That doesn't prove that he's—that doesn't prove anything."

"Don't you fool yourself! I saw the man; I saw his face. You can't tell me what a man means when he looks like that. And, anyway, Miss Curtis saw me coming in. I bet she's in cahoots with her! She said, 'You haven't been at the doctor's, have you?' like that, sort of excited. I said: 'Yes, I have. I thought she would have been at the concert.' She said, 'You oughtn't to have gone there when she has company.' And she didn't know whether to go on and say any more to me, or not. But she didn't. So now I stay there, just as I always did. If I'm mad, she's mad."

"But you're just silly. I don't think either of you is the least speck insane!"

"Well, what did that oily old bird send me to that—woman for then?"

"I don't know. Maybe she was a psychologist—or a—a psychoanalyst, or something. What was in the novel? You must be reasonable, Martha. The university isn't keeping a woman just to send students to asylums. She has something else to do, surely?"

"I don't think she has; not for a minute! If you'd seen that campus, you'd think it kept a dozen specialists to weed out the nuts. And, anyway, why did that prof. act so sort of gentle to me? Why did he ask me so carefully if I was Martha Kenworthy, as if he couldn't believe I was? Anyway, I'll tell you one thing, mammie; if the doctor can keep a lover and a practice in the same apartment, I should hope I can learn interior decoration without anybody saying anything to me! Just imagine if anybody tried to make things uncomfortable for the doctor; wouldn't she tell them where to get off, though! If she can put that across, why can't I?"

"Martha, really, I don't believe this. She doesn't look like that sort of woman."

"Well, of COURSE she doesn't! That's the whole point! Look at the women that go parading around Hyde Park. None of them look it; neither do I, for that matter. I don't suppose there's one of them that's any better than I am; and they're not making any fuss about what's happened! I can be as hardboiled as any of them; I can put on holy airs with the rest of them; I'm understudying the doctor!"

"Well, my opinion is that you're both of you good women and useful women, and you don't need to put on airs!"

"But you'll never understand either of us, if you do mean well; you're too good, that's what's the matter with you. That's why I feel—so much more at home—with Miss Curtis, and the doctor, especially the doctor. Honestly, you can't imagine how blue I was. I wanted to—well, I didn't know—whatever I was going to do, but this bucked me up. Imagine, mammie! I'd like to see a doctor like Doctor Stevenson, only more so—the best surgeon in Chicago—so that people would just HAVE to have her operate to save them; and then I wish she'd just go on living with all the men she wanted to—and snap her finger at the whole bunch of them. I'm going into business. The doctor said for me not to invest a cent with the boss; she was the one that looked him up, and found he'd failed in New York. I told her I hadn't any capital of my own, and I don't give a damn what anybody suspects me of!"

Martha was wearing long thin jade earrings, and she gave her head a little jerk as she announced her intentions. She had on a green hat, of a hard color. Could it be just the shadow of that green over her eyes that made them seem ringed and bitter?

"Oh, very well. But how about Christmas? You'll have a few days off, I suppose?"

"No, I won't have any. I'm going into this business. I've got to stick at it. Look here, mammie, if you'll stay for dinner, I'll get Mrs. Blacksley from my shop to meet us some place. I didn't want to take you to the shop, for I knew her husband was to have dinner with us. He's an idiot, but she's all right. I get along with her; she's divorced one husband. If she'd consult me, I'd tell her to divorce another."

Mrs. Blacksley, Martha said, seldom spent even thirty cents on her dinner. For that reason they awaited her in the Drake Café, and planned to nourish her weariness with a thick rich dinner, and beefsteaks were the one thing you could get better in Chicago than anywhere else in the world, Martha declared, ignoring magnificently her inexperience in most other places in the world. Mrs. Blacksley joined them there.

She joined them languidly, softly. She threw off a short black fur coat, and a little black hat, carelessly, as if all the other women in the crowded room were sitting bareheaded. She stood up for a moment, regardless perhaps of the attention she was attracting. She had on a little soft black wool frock, full skirted, with the waist fitted cunningly over her delicate breast. It was a right little frock; it was a bit too devilishly right for her.

It made Emily think, even as Mrs. Blacksley chose to sit with her back to the room: "Well, if what helps Martha in her friends is a scandalous past or a compromising present, this woman is going to be very useful to her." Nothing less like those utilitarian mentors of Hyde Park could a girl have happened upon. Mrs. Blacksley was still young—but her eyes had a past. Her lips had a history; her smooth hair, drawn back so severely from those beautiful temples, so cleverly from those little ears, had a beguiling present challenge. Surely, for fifty generations, those gray eyes had been looking cynically at eager lovers. Her mouth was soft and lovely; lips like hers must have kissed only with mental reservations for centuries. She was exotic, she was alluring. She had divorced one husband, had she? She aroused a question then, immediately. How many men had wanted to be her second?

She said to Martha, later, as they were going together to her train—she spoke suddenly, struck by an interesting thought:

"Look here, isn't the doctor's name Isobel?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Well, but Martha, she said her sister's name was Isobel."

"Did she? I didn't notice."

"I did! She did say her sister's name was Isobel!"

"Well, what of it?" Martha was curious.

"Well, don't you see, there couldn't be two Isobels in one family? They must be half-sisters, or step sisters, or something. Maybe that man WAS a brother—of some kind."

Then Martha laughed. She laughed just like Mrs. Blacksley, softly, jeeringly.

"You're the limit, mammie!" She laughed again, more naturally, from sheer amusement. "You can't believe what I say, can you? You're too good for this world, mammie! The doctor'll take care of herself. Don't you worry about her!"

"You can laugh at me, if you want to; but I don't believe it. Anyway, why shouldn't a woman doctor have a man patient, if she wants one?"

"To be sure!" agreed Martha, "if she wants one," she added, in another tone. "I don't admire her taste; but I'm willing to let her have as many as she wants."

Chapter Ten

"Do a deed," they say, "and make a proverb." But why, Emily mused more than once, should Martha, having done but one deed, go on making proverbs indefinitely. Must she interpret life forever by that one bitter mistake of hers? The more Emily thought of the doctor, the more deeply she was convinced that Martha was mistaken about her lover. She would have been a magnificent mother of a family of rollicking boys. Was it likely that a hard-headed professional woman, with a practice to maintain, was going to entangle herself with awkward amorous relationships? Emily decided it was not.

It was possible, too, that Martha had misunderstood Miss Curtis. Emily longed to prove it. She wanted to go and ask Mrs. Bissel all she knew of Miss Curtis's history. If a woman as conventional as Mrs. Bissel knew anything of that discrediting sort, would she have allowed her daughter to live in her flat? Certainly not, Emily said to herself. But just suppose Martha could be right? The least possibility of such a thing made it out of the question for Emily to broach the gossipy subject to Mrs. Bissel. So she held her tongue.

Then Martha walked in one snowy morning, like a normal child, home for the holidays, happy to be home. She walked in unannounced, alone, undefended by any stranger from intimacy with her mother! She walked in and she gave Emily a hug—an old little-girl hug, the like of which she had not had, since—THAT happened. Emily's neck could scarcely believe the feeling of those arms about it. Emily's eyes had to blink. Here now was that first little old Martha, the dear one that had been away from her for so long. Martha had recovered her real self; she was looking better; she was looking—bright, again; she was looking—excited. Yes, that was the word; she was excited through and through. Could she have fallen in love? Alas! that was too much to hope for. When she went upstairs Emily stood and listened. She half expected her to walk into the painted room.

She went into the guest room, however. She wasn't quite completely a daughter yet, then.

When she came down and saw Maggie's condition, she took the preparations for dinner out of her hands. The kitchen, some way, seemed to belong to Martha. Even Maggie, who had never relinquished it to Emily for a second, seemed conscious that it had changed owners. Emily stood about, talking to her.

"What," Martha cried, "the costumes aren't made! They haven't rehearsed for a month! Why didn't you write to me, mammie? I'd have come to help you."

Had she forgotten how shortly she had refused to come home at all for Christmas? Was she offering now, really, to plunge into the affairs of this town whose very existence she seemed of late to have resented?

"I'll go and get them. Let's have a seamstress to come here, and have a bee, and get them all done. I'll bet Miss Trent would train the children, mammie. She loathes Mrs. Benton."

"You mustn't talk that way, Martie!"

"Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!" Martha derided, making faces. "That's what you mean, really. Only you don't say it. You know you don't want to fall down now—just because of what Mrs. Benton would say! I'd like to show her a thing or two myself. I bet I could get a dozen women into this, who'd work just for spite!"

"That's not a nice way to work!"

"But it cooks the hash, mammie!"

Martha chuckled toward her mother. She kept repeating it—that new gesture toward her. A perplexing sort of amused understanding of her mother kept shining out of her eyes all the time she sat at dinner, talking to her father.

As soon as she had washed the dishes she took the car and set forth twinkling to rally workers. She came back about five with two suit cases full of cut or basted costumes. These she deposited on the floor of the living room, and proceeded to examine them, talking all the time of her success. White wings she shook out, and curious red calico legs she unfolded. Emily was sitting on the sofa. And Martha was standing by the living-room table—where she had stood, exactly, when she announced, "Richard Quin is getting a divorce." She bent down and lifted up a cerise crinoline sort of wide ruche.

"Now, what do you make of this, mammie? This must be for a villain!" And she put it around her neck—it had no fastening, yet—and holding it tightly together, she danced across the room, and looked at herself absurdly in a mirror.

"Believe me, mammie, this is going to be a play!"

Her manner was so triumphant, that Emily was overcome by her impulse.

"Martha!" she exclaimed, "What HAS happened to you? What's the matter?"

The girl faced about abruptly. She stared intently at her mother. And as she looked her face changed. It lost that new expression of admiration with which she had warmed her mother's heart all day. And when she spoke her voice was almost bitter.

"Well, YOU'RE a nice one to ask me that!"

"Why am I a nice one? What have I done now?"

Martha spoke with an effort. "I suppose it doesn't matter; or you think it doesn't matter. I suppose you did what you thought best for me. I'm not judging you, but it would have made things a great deal easier for me if you could have told me the truth."

"The truth about what?"

Martha was annoyed by the question. She hesitated, but decided to go on.

"I can understand you don't want to discuss it; neither would I, but you must have meant to tell me eventually. After all, I have a right to know, mother."

Emily saw she was desperately in earnest. "What are you talking about?" she asked, puzzled.

Martha spoke slowly. "I mean—about my father—about Uncle Jim."

Emily understood then. The shock brought a cry of horror from her. "Oh, Martha!"

Martha knew pain when she heard it.

"Oh, mammie!" she cried back, running to Emily, sitting down close to her. "Mammie, don't cry! Don't think I care! I'd a million times rather have him for my father! I never loved you, really, before! I didn't pry into it. Honestly, mammie, it just came to me, like the morning; like light flashing into me, mammie!"

Emily had drawn away from her and covered her face with her hands. Martha thought she was crying. She besought her tenderly:

"Mammie, don't you mind my understanding it. Oh, if you knew how I felt about it! When I think of you living here all these years! I started to come home to you the minute I realized it. It came to me like a flash in front of Woolworth's in State Street, there. I was walking along, blue enough to die; I just wanted to die, I was so sore. And I saw that front and I remembered going into Woolworth's here, between you and Uncle Jim. I don't mind calling him that; it's a dear name for him. I remembered all of a sudden just how you looked at each other. Mammie, it just stunned me when I understood. I hadn't gone a block before I saw it all. I don't know why I didn't always understand it. Because he always was just naturally my father, wasn't he? Nobody ever had to teach me to love HIM! Dad never felt that way about me, naturally. It wasn't his fault he never had any interest in me. I knew why you stood Bronson, then! I remembered how you looked after the funeral! I was so excited I just couldn't stand up. I sat down on a bench in the public library lobby, and just sat there! Oh, I never appreciated you till now, mammie! I'm going to take care of you now. When I think of you living year in and year out in this house with dad—I'll call him that! I don't care about names! The way you've put it across right here, in this dirty gossipy little town, and nobody DARED to suspect you of anything! Not ANYTHING! Why do you look at me that way? You intended to tell me some time, surely!"

Now for the first time in her life Emily had drawn away from her child in repulsion. She had started to speak; she had started to cry out her denial. But that young, eager, relit face was close to hers. No matter how illuminating the mistake was, the poor distorted child must know the truth. But as Emily opened her lips to speak, the poor distorted child went on; she had seized Emily's hand in both her own:

"Oh, now I know what they mean, being born again. I was just born again, mammie! I know now why you never scolded me—why you stood by me; you understood. You've been through it! And everybody loves you; they just bless you! You aren't afraid they'll find it out. You just go on! I'm going on, too! My God! how I'm going on! If you can put this across, so can I! You never were afraid of dad finding it out, even, were you?"

Emily Kenworthy murmured, "No." She meant to add, "There was never anything to find out, you bad, silly girl!" but she didn't.

She could find no excuse for her conduct, as she thought it over, that night. She had simply been hypnotized by the beauty of that child's eagerness. It had been such a long time since she had seen eagerness, hopefulness, twinkling out of that little sweet face of hers, that she hadn't had courage to darken it again. Martha had just sat there, caressing her, babbling out her enjoyment of her mother's infamy, until Greta's older sister had come in. Emily had made her entrance an excuse for getting away to her room. And there she had sat dazedly, hurt, ashamed of her daughter, more ashamed of herself. How could I have hesitated a minute! I ought to have corrected her the minute she dared to suggest that to me! But what difference does it make? It's good enough for Bob! He never appreciated her! What do I care what she thinks, if it does her any good? I'm not high and holy any longer! I understand her! Hasn't she any sense of honor at all, that she's so pleased? Why should I be so shocked? Didn't I plan often enough to leave Bob and go to Jim? She only accused me of what I often wanted to do! I gave that up, and this is what I get for it! She wishes she was Jim's. She thinks I went on living with Bob! "My God!" cried Emily. "But she can't help it; she has to suspect somebody. It's her luck, after what she's done. Why should I feel so sick about this?"

And even while she sat there feeling sick at heart, Martha's voice came dancing up the stairs.

"Mammie, what are you doing? Can't you come down a minute?"

And Emily had gone down, hardening her heart. "I'm never going to tell her the truth," she was vowing. "Let her think that, if it does her any good!" And all that evening she had talked and listened to talking, like one in a dream. Whatever she said, it was of Martha's base accusation that she was conscious. "Surely," she was thinking, "if I gave Jim up once for this child, I can give up Bob and my scruples, just in her mind, for a little while." She was so preoccupied with her thoughts that she scarcely spoke during supper. Bob noticed her quietness. She had been gay at dinner. He was the more affable to Martha.

"Where's Miss Curtis now? Is she coming down for Christmas?"

"No. She's gone to Ruth—to Indiana."

"Well, she's a nice sort of a woman, for a school-teacher." Emily saw the cynical smile that came about Martha's mouth.

"You bet she is!" she replied, enthusiastically. "But you ought to see the doctor. Dad, she'd show you a thing or two."

"That's what I like about Miss Curtis. You can trust her to mind her own business. You feel safe with her."

"Don't you, though? You can trust her absolutely, couldn't you, dad? You could always be sure she'd be upright, couldn't you?"

Upright was a strange adjective. Bob looked up to see if Martha had begun spoofing him again. She looked innocent, but he changed the subject. Martha looked knowingly across at her mother. Emily wanted to spank her.

Later in the evening again she experienced the same desire. She came into the sitting room to hear Martha cajoling over the 'phone the most conventional, conservative, disapproving woman who ever eyed bobbed hair and short skirts maliciously. "But we want you so, Mrs. Mason. Everybody says there's no one who can get as much work done in one afternoon as you." And on she talked, till she hung up the 'phone triumphantly.

"Martha, why in the world did you invite her here?" Emily asked.

Martha winked at her naughtily. "I just asked her because she's so extra holy!" she answered, and she laughed. She had the upper hand of life now, that girl!

She ought to have been pitifully spanked, but now that she had got things under way, there was scarcely time to reprove her. Emily remembered the days when Bob had complained that he could never get her alone long enough to "settle her." The house was bustling and hurrying about, as Martha used to make it stir, full of her girl friends coming and going, confused by committee women of inspired importance. School children were singing their parts at the piano; angels were adjusting their feathers in the hall; the 'phone was ringing. Emily watched Martha "putting it across," each day a little more naughtily, a little more triumphantly. She apparently intended to be as highly respected in the town as her deceitful mother. It was not pleasant, to say the least, to see her sitting deferring with studied docility to the opinion of women whom Emily knew she was scorning with all her might. Never before had she been quite such a "nice girl." She was demure; she was discreet; she gave someone else credit for every good idea she put forth quietly, graciously; she made her elderly neighbors smile at her mother as if to say "What a clever child this is of yours." And, when they left, she would hug her mother, grinning, chuckling. Thick as two thieves they were, together in conspiracy.

The only thing that seemed difficult to explain about Martha was the absence of admirers who had formerly beset her father round about. Johnnie, of course, had not come home from the East, but there were numbers of young collegians who had returned for Christmas. Why, Emily wondered, did they avoid the Kenworthy house? She understood one evening when she overheard a conversation between Greta and her daughter.

"I told Hally I was coming here. I asked him to come along, but he wouldn't." A giggle. "Do you know what he said about you, Martha?"

"What?" The tone was wholly indifferent.

"He said: 'No; I'm not going there. Martie's mad. She's taken to biting.'"

Then Martha's voice, full of interest, "Did he honestly say that?" She seemed gratified.

"Yes, honest he did."

"I didn't suppose he had that much sense," Martha said, simply.

Later: "But why? Tell me the truth, Martie! Why aren't you dancing?"

"I have told you the truth. I've learned my lesson; I can't stand late hours. I don't want another breakdown like that one last winter. I tell you I go to bed regularly early. I'm in bed every night at half past ten."

A silence.

Then: "That'll do to tell! I bet if Johnnie Benton was here to dance with, your health would be all right!"

"Johnnie Benton?" Scorn and derision at such a suggestion. "Excuse me if I seem to yawn. Anyway, he's engaged to somebody down East."

"Who said so? You're making that up! I don't believe it."

"Nobody told me. It's likely, you know that. The way he goes round proposing to everybody."

"He never proposed to me."

"Oh, get out! He must have!"

Martha was rejoicing in her own hypocrisy. She was guzzling down the impression she made. People said it was too sweet of her to have thought of bringing old Miss Knight to the party tenderly in her car. For Miss Knight was a decrepit old primary teacher of Martha's infancy, who seldom went out, and she had beamed every minute of the afternoon upon the dancing children, and blessed Martha loudly for her kindness in bringing her, as Martha had counted on her doing. Martha had remembered the poor. The poor, now, were hard to find in that town. But Martha had sought out a family whose house had been burned recently, and bestirred even protesting Greta to help her to succor them.

"You mustn't be such a lazy selfish pig, Greta!" she had gurgled when the room was fullest of listeners. She had talked, too, cunningly of the turkey she was roasting for Christmas dinner.

"I never had a chance to roast a turkey before," she said to mothers whose daughters were known to be indifferent to cook-stoves, "but I've always wanted to. I adore making mince pies; I'm making a lot of mincemeat, all myself, to take back with me. Yes, I'm fond of cooking. I get my own dinners with Miss Curtis, my friend in Chicago. I have more time than she does. She teaches school; but, of course, now that I'm in business, I'm busier." And she would look at the neighbors simply, quietly. She even dared to say innocently to her mother, just when the gossips might be supposed to be listening:

"Did I tell you, mammie, I met Eve the other day? She's given up New York. Her father isn't well and she's going to stay in Chicago. She's coming down for a week-end soon, if he's better."

And when the neighbors would be gone she would run and give her mother gloating hugs, which asked as plainly as her voice could have spoken, "Don't I just get it across?"

Emily had asked, afterwards: "Did you really meet Eve? When?"

And she pretended to be indignant. "Did I meet her? I like your nerve! Do you suppose I'm not telling you the truth? She is coming down to see you. She said to me, right out, as soon as I saw her, 'Are you still sore about—that?' I just said: 'About what? Where've you been all the time? Why don't you write mother oftener? She wants to see you. Come on down with me.' This was at the station, mammie, just when I was coming home the other day. If she comes down here to stay with us, what can anybody say about——?"

She held the situation in a tight grasp now. If any minute of those busy days she had suffered one pang, remembering the desperate Christmas a year ago, she had never once given a sign of it. Since the day of her first accusation of her mother she had avoided the subject of her paternity excessively. Emily, too, had been afraid of it. She had told Martha firmly that she was not going to Chicago to live with her. Martha, for fear she might make explanations, had not argued the subject very far.

"I never would be content to live in Chicago, you know that, Martha. Our roots are here; I'm too old to be transplanted. I won't leave this house."

"But you get bored to death, mammie. You want to shriek sometimes. You said you did yourself that night, at the doctor's. I hate to go away and leave you here."

"Stay here then. This is your home."

"No. I've got to do something. It's all right here, when there's a party on, or something. But I couldn't stand it all the time. I'd get to scrapping with dad, you know I would."

The very mention of Bob brought up possibilities of uncomfortable remarks.

Martha hastened to continue.

"I'll come back just as often as I can. And you come and stay with me as much as you can. And in June we'll go to Europe together. Nobody can talk about that! And maybe you'll like it well enough to stay a year or two with me there; lots of people do. And that's the only place really to learn about furnishings and furniture."

Emily lay in her bed that night, ashamed and unhappy. "It's as if I had told her the most enormous and fundamental lie," she reflected. "Nothing good can ever come of this. Strange," she thought, "that I can't remember ever going into Woolworth's with Jim! She remembers something of him that I don't. How old would she have been then? The five-and-ten must have come to town—well—before Bronson came. She loved that store at first, when she was little." She grudged Martha a memory that belonged essentially to her; she thought greedily over every look of his she had ever treasured. She remembered their early love; she recalled still how his dear hands had gone longing, discreetly up inside her stiff cuffs. She remembered his kisses; she remembered how he had come back in the days of his weariness to his mother, and how they had looked across at each other, with that innocent old woman between them. She remembered how he used to sit with little Martha on his knee, in the days of his ill health and bitterness, stroking her hair and looking into her face, trying some way to get close to the mother through the child. She thought of that summer, and of Bronson, and of Jim's irrepressible crying-out to her. She stopped there. She tried always not to think of his death. "He just kissed me," she said, "and went away."

"Oh," she cried to herself, "I'm going to Chicago to-morrow and tell Martha the truth! He was too sweet, too dear. This isn't fair to him. I don't care about Bob; but I won't have her thinking such things of Jim. He was too good for such—baseness. He never forgot I was his brother's wife. He did kiss me, but he went away then. That's the point—he went away. I'll tell her that.

"And if I tell her, she'll never believe me. She thinks I'm sly and sneaking and adulterous now, and if I tell her the truth, she'll think I'm lying to her. She hasn't enough experience yet to believe the truth; she doesn't know enough to believe it. That's why she hates it all so! herself, and passion. All she knows of passion is its roots, in the dark ground; its blossom in the air, its sweet lovely blossom in the sun she hasn't seen. She doesn't know forbearance or tenderness, and that's the best part of it—for us. She wouldn't believe me if I told her what sort of man he was. I don't know what's going to become of her now; she'll never marry now. Probably that way such a lot of women don't marry; the roots of it all look so ugly, so brutal to them. If I could make Martha believe in some one like Jim now! The whole tragedy is that she can't."

When she fell asleep at last, she was thinking still of her lover—not, however, that he went away, but that he kissed her.

Martha hadn't been gone two weeks when that most astonishing news came. Nothing could have stunned the town more than that. The telegram came first to Emily. She heard it over the 'phone.

Mrs. Benton had died suddenly, while motoring in California.

People gathered in groups on the street to discuss it. It seemed a thing that could not be true. To be sure, when you thought it over, you realized that Mrs. Benton was but mortal; but it seemed so unlike her, just to die, to quit, to lay things down. Her body, lifeless, was to be sent home for burial.

Recovering by degrees from the shock of the news; the cruder ones began asking under their breaths what the more sentimental ones had but pondered. Had she lived to hear of the success of the Christmas party? They could not believe that she had. It didn't seem likely.

Mrs. Benton's body was to arrive on a Thursday, from the West. Johnnie arrived from the East on Tuesday morning, to find his home swept and garnished and in possession of an old and silent aunt and a young and gushing one. He came to Emily for refuge that evening. He seemed almost stupefied by the event. Emily had never thought of him as a nervous man before. He talked in a way unnaturally incoherent, and he stirred about nervously, unable to sit down. The second time she noticed his hand refrain spasmodically from a cigarette, she said:

"Smoke if you want to."

But he burst out: "No. I won't have people laughing—about THIS. I won't have them talking about her."

"But no one is going to talk about her if you smoke here with me."

"Don't you think so? Nobody would see me?"

"No. Nobody could find anything to laugh at in that."

He was already lighting a match. "I thought they looked at me funny when I went to light up," he said. Emily knew he spoke of his aunts. "I want everything done right for her. I won't have people talking about THIS. They say I have to be the chief mourner, Mrs. Kenworthy."

"Well, you are that, Johnnie; you're nearest her."

"I know it; but they made me stay in there to see the minister. He asked me what chapter I wanted read! I felt like a fool, Mrs. Kenworthy. I felt like a dirty hypocrite!"

"I wouldn't feel that way. These things have got to be done, apparently."

"Do you think 'Jesus, Lover of my Soul' is better than 'Lead, Kindly Light'? One wants one and the other wants the other, and they say I can decide! Look here, Mrs. Kenworthy, did you ever hear that mother hadn't but a year to live? Did she ever tell YOU that?"

"No, never. Why, dear?"

"Aunt Ethel said the doctor in Chicago told somebody yesterday that he told her last summer she hadn't a year to live. Didn't she tell you that?"

"No."

"She never told me; she never told anybody."

"Maybe she didn't believe it."

He seemed relieved at the thought. He said, "Maybe that's it. But she never told you where I was last summer, did she, until I was about coming home? Do you know why?"

"I didn't know why. Never mind, Johnnie!"

"Yes, she didn't know where I was; I didn't tell her! I just lit out; I never told her till I got to Hong-Kong. I knew she'd worry; I didn't care if she did. I never thought of it coming out like this, Mrs. Kenworthy! I made enough to come home on at Macao. You know, gambling, she'd call it; it was, too. I won five hundred dollars, almost—-four hundred and seventy—so then I cabled her. Oh, I don't know why I did that!"

"There's no use grieving over it now, Johnnie."

"But by the time I got her answer I had lost it all again. I came home on the money she cabled me. She met me at the depot with a new car! She never told me she wasn't well; she never told ME she hadn't long to live! I'm glad I went back to college; she wanted me to do that. I nearly didn't, I nearly lit out again. If they insist on having the coffin open in church and me looking—in front of everybody—I don't care. I'll do it; I won't have people laughing at her now!"

Then Emily remembered a certain hour. "Oh, Johnnie!" she began. And, as she understood the significance of what she recalled, she hesitated.

"She told me once, not so very long ago, that she'd written out directions for her funeral. She hated sensational funerals—and people fainting. She wanted hers very simple."

"When was this?"

Now Emily remembered too distinctly, all of a sudden.

"It was after somebody's funeral, as we were walking home from the cemetery. I don't remember—when, exactly." Why should she tell the boy it had happened when he was sailing away towards Brazil and his deserted mother had learned her fate in loneliness? "I imagine if you go down to Johnson and Larned's, they'll have her directions put away with her will."

"Oh, do you think—I ought to do that? I mean—I don't want to seem to be grabbing her will in a hurry!"

"Ask your aunts about it. I'll go over and tell them with you, if you want me to."

"Will you? Oh, do! But wait a little. Can't I have another smoke here, first? It seems—strange, over there, this way."

And as he walked around smoking, Emily thought: "Yes, and she knew all the time as we walked home together that day that she'd be there in the cemetery soon, and she never told me. She wanted me to know she had given directions for her funeral, and she let me think she had no special reason for giving them; and she didn't know where this boy was, or whether she would ever see him again, and she never said a word to me about it. And she pointed out to me Mrs. Johnson's red lilies as we passed, and said she was going to move hers into the sun!"

Martha came down for the funeral, which was delayed with absolute cruelty, Emily thought, by the aunts, until Saturday. Emily told her of Mrs. Benton's stoicism, but not of Johnnie's unconscious hardness.

And Martha sighed and said, merely, "Well, I suppose everybody has something up their sleeve, mammie!"

Johnnie came in on Friday evening, harassed and red eyed.

"You here, Martie!" he exclaimed, touched by the sight of her. "For the love of Mike, don't let anyone know I'm here. Let's go up to your sitting room! Somebody'll be coming in. I want to smoke; I got to have a smoke!"

A pitiful Johnnie made Martha kind.

"It isn't heated up," she said. "We don't heat it now, weather like this. But you can come and wash dishes with me. You can smoke there; nobody'll see you."

It was the usual thing for Martha to insist on Emily's staying in the living room when Martha was washing the evening dishes. So she remained there, and people came in, as Johnnie had foreseen they would. One hour passed, and another, and the supper dishes still apparently detained the young things. After another half-hour Emily went to the kitchen. She opened the door.

The scene was scarcely what she had expected. The room was thick with smoke; and there, huddled over the stove, sat old Maggie, who was supposed to have gone to bed hours ago, and across her old rough face her mouth stretched from ear to ear in one great beaming smile, while her eyes looked straight at the chief mourner. He sat on the kitchen table, near the prunes soaking in the bowl overnight. He still had on the blue-gingham apron some one had tied about his slender body. He was leaning forward alertly, and in his hand he held a cigarette all lit and ready to go into his mouth the moment the flow of his eager narrative ceased for an instant. His eyes were fixed upon Martha, who sat on the high kitchen stool with her feet on its upper rungs. She had on a red jersey frock; she sported a very long purple-and-black cigarette holder and she sat listening intently, her chin atilt.

"And the chief—he was a good old sport—he says to the captain, 'It's the first time I was ever ordered to get a lady out of a——'"

He saw the door opening. He saw Emily. She knew at once that she had spoiled a perfect hour. Johnnie's normal light-heartedness collapsed. Emily saw him recalling horribly the coffin and its contents, and the hushed and exaggerated reverence of those that waited about it.

"Oh!" he groaned. "Oh, I forget!"

But Martha had heard nothing of his quarrel with his mother and his passionate desire to atone as far as he could by all conventional decencies.

"Well, go on!" she commanded. "Was the man dead?"

But Johnnie had no gusto for the rest of his tale. "I was just telling Martha about what happened on the Pomona," he murmured to Emily, apologetically. "There was a woman drunk, and she locked the door of her cabin and wouldn't open it; they couldn't hear the man with her and they thought maybe she had done something to him."

"But what happened in the end?" Martha insisted.

"The captain broke in, and there was the man, reading in his bunk. He said he wasn't going to try to get her to open the door; he knew her. He'd been reading the History of Poland, with nothing but biscuit to eat. He said he was used to it. I didn't know it was so late. I got to be going."

"Don't go yet," Emily urged. "We've never really heard anything about your trip."

"I didn't mean to stay so long. I don't want to make them sore at me," he said, nervously. "They look at me so funny all the time."

He went back to them. Bob and Martha sat for a while talking, and Emily sat looking at them and thinking wistfully of what she had seen in the kitchen. How happy those children had been together in their young forgetfulness, a forgetfulness somewhat too facile, on Johnnie's part, perhaps. Yet what a fine relief it had been for him from the strain and depression of those unnatural days. Surely each of them must be thinking how snugly, how cozily they had together thrown off their burdens. If only it could have gone on! Martha would have married him now, likely, since the maternal handicap was removed—if that other thing had never happened. Johnnie, free and with an income, wouldn't be long in marrying—someone, Emily was convinced of that. But it would be a long time, a deplorably long time, before Martha would be settling down. There was no use hoping for so happy an ending to that story.

It was perhaps her kindness to Johnnie that cleansed Martha's mind, for the time, from its chilling cynicism. She was lovely that evening and gentle, and subdued. Emily lingered about with her in the guest room, and sat on her bed a long time with her, yearning over her. She had never felt so sure and mature a sort of oneness with her daughter before. Martha wouldn't let her get away. She clung to her; her trivial words were little caresses. It was an hour to be remembered, to be tasted carefully in memory, and relished indefinitely.

Emily's conscience smote her the more that night. How terrible this deception of her was! All at once there came to her a thought cuttingly vivid. People did die suddenly; no doubt about that; even an extremely living woman like Cora Benton ceased without warning. "Suppose I'd die suddenly, myself!" Emily gasped. "Suppose I should die without ever telling her the truth! She'd have this house for herself then; she might quarrel with her father; she might turn him out of it in some evil moment. She might even tell him some time what I let her think. To-morrow morning," Emily decided, "first thing, I'll tell her the truth." She lay unhappily trying to screw herself up to the necessary intensity of determination.

In the morning, however, Martha didn't come down to breakfast. Emily went up to her room. She said she was tired, and Emily saw at once she had been crying. She offered to bring her up something, but Martha refused shortly. She said she was going to get up; she wouldn't stay in bed. Not one least hint of the conciliatory mood of the evening before was left. Emily was afraid of her, afraid of the bitter things that might come slashing out of her mouth. If only she knew what she had been crying about! Was it because the companionship of the evening had seemed as pleasant as unattainable? Had she been by any chance thinking how happy she might have been with Johnnie? Or had she been mourning the lover who had destroyed himself in her mind? Emily came downstairs and set about her morning work hesitant, cautious, and perplexed.

Even as they sat side by side in the crowded church, Emily was conscious of the hardness of her mood. Mrs. Benton might reasonably have asked to have a sermon preached over her body in the great hall she had built, but she had commanded that the service should be in the small Congregational church. Emily, when she went to that church, always thought of Jim's mother—rather than Bob's—and of his father, whose heroic death was but a mildly interesting tale to Martha. The crowded service promised at first to be all that Mrs. Benton had hoped it never would be, but the minister, when he began speaking, showed more sense than Emily had ever thought him capable of. She saw Johnnie almost immediately lift his bewildered head to listen.

"Our sister," he said, "lies here silent. Her works praise her. Which one of us," he asked, "can lift a voice to contradict them? Dare we dispute with the bathing beach? Shall we try arguing with the memorial hall?" He named over her civic accomplishments, scarcely mentioning the flowers that were to bloom all over the county in the spring—they, Emily thought, might have suggested to the scoffing, or the conscience-smitten, a certain joyous derision. "There had been women more gentle than she," he said, frankly, "But the gentle women had dammed no river. There had been women more popular, but the popular had built no bridges. What she had built, she had built well. Let the town, now, if it could, reach the standard of excellence which she had set. Her example of doing things exactly right was a heritage not to be despised in these shoddy days."

But of all her works, he averred, the beach had the clearest voice and the holiest. "Wash ye! Make ye clean!" the prophets of God had been crying, through all the generations. And now the beach took up the song, inviting all the children to throw themselves into the cleanness of joy and to dive deep into the transparency of living. It was the element of cleanness that she had made precious to the children of the town. How many small boys of the town cared where their winter clothes were put away for the summer? But how many of them would there be who weren't conscious all the winter just where their bathing suits were put away waiting for the summer? The snow would scarcely be melted on the south slopes of the lawns until children began shaking out their bathing suits and counting the weeks until swimming began. The dancing feet of the young, and the music of their youth, praised this woman all the winter months. And in the summer, tanned and barefooted memorials of her would soon be running down all the shaded streets to the river. And healthy dripping tributes to her wisdom would be trudging home late to meals. When there were no longer any children to love swimming, he said suddenly, he hoped the town would build a stone memorial to its benefactress.

He sat down.

The church sighed its agreement.

The coffin, unopened, was carried away. Johnnie said afterwards that the minister had sense.

Chapter Eleven

That night Bob Kenworthy sat unsuspectingly reading a coon story in a popular weekly, in his own living room, in the light of a lamp his daughter had given him for Christmas. His wife sat at her desk near the window, pretending to write letters, and every once in a while she glanced slyly over at him to see if he was conscious of what she was doing; and sometimes she even looked suspiciously at the curtains to make sure no one was peeping in at the words she had guiltily written. She had sat there more than an hour, and she was beginning that letter in vain. A more distasteful task she had seldom decided upon. To put down in black and white a denial of the grotesque mistake she had suffered to continue in Martha's thought seemed impossible. An acknowledgment of her complicity in the misunderstanding seemed too humiliating. How could she be sure, besides, into whose hands her written words might not come? Might not that complacent husband of hers, sitting there, never imagining how thankfully he had been discarded by his child, sometime come upon the letter that must seem to him treacherous? Emily didn't intend sending the letter to Martha; that course was too perilous to consider. She intended to put it away, in case of such an emergency as this last one of Cora Benton's. It seemed, however, the right thing altogether for Cora Benton to have given directions for her funeral. The community expected her to do that. But for Emily Kenworthy to do it seemed silly melodrama.

She sat with her arm hiding the words she had written, now that she had begun for the fifth time, though there was no eye in the room to behold them. She had finished.

"My dear Child." She had got down a further sentence or two. "I couldn't collect my wits in time the other day to tell you what a mistaken idea you had of your father and me. I have never been unfaithful to him in my life." She glanced again guiltily at Bob. Poor old harmless thing! He had been certainly—good and a patient husband. And, sitting there, he did look like Jim. The elusive likeness between the two had always fascinated her; Jim's head had been like that. His face was longer, finer, more delicate. It was for Jim's sake, of course, and not Bob's she was writing this. She would not have Martha thinking Jim a common old love pirate! She took her arms from across the paper; she re-read what she had written. "I have never been unfaithful to him in my life." Then she added, impulsively, "I never had a chance to be." She studied her achievement, and covered it up with a blotter and sat thinking. Then she went at it again for a few minutes. "I am writing this to you the day of Mrs. Benton's funeral in case I haven't an opportunity to tell you personally." She was on the point of adding, "Your uncle wasn't that sort of man." But suppose Bob should sometime see those words? She might say, "The Kenworthy men are too good for that sort of thing." Yes, that might do.

Bob threw down his paper. Emily jumped.

"Some coon story!" he yawned. "Let's go to bed."

"You go on up, Bob," she said, earnestly. "I'm just coming."

When he came up from "fixing the furnace" she was rearranging her desk. In the center of it was a little compartment that could be locked but seldom was. It was full of rather useless trifles. She had found the little key to it now in a small adjoining drawer, and she had locked away a small envelope inclosed in the very center of several larger ones. It was addressed to Martha, "to be opened after my death." As she went upstairs wondering where to hide that key, she felt more like a perfect fool than she had felt in years. She looked about the room. At one side of her bureau there hung an enlarged snapshot of Martha as a four-year-old, hugging a puppy. Emily had always thought it a perfectly beautiful picture. When Bob was in the bathroom, she went cautiously over to it and tied the key to the wire by which the picture hung. "Nobody would ever find it there if I should die," she said to herself; "and besides I probably won't." But later, when she heard Bob sleeping, she got up gently and hid the key in the bottom drawer of the bureau beneath some summer underthings, for, of course, Maggie would dust that picture as soon as she was able to be about, and demand to be told what key that was.

Afterwards she would say to herself, waking in the night: "Well, suppose anyone should find that key and open the desk and see the letter. It's a very sensible thing to leave directions for your funeral. Everybody ought to do it. Still..."

And Johnnie Benton was about from time to time, reminding her of the possibility of sudden death. He wouldn't go back to school. He might have agreed, in the shock of his grief, to conform to all burial conventions out of respect for his mother. But to go back and try for a degree, he refused absolutely and confidently.

"I haven't told THEM," he said to Emily, nodding his head towards the house where his aunts still tarried. "Aunt Grace wants to keep house for me!" The tone of his voice suggested she had proposed at least to murder him. "I told them I'd go back as soon as it's settled, all the business; but I couldn't get a degree in ten years if I did go back. And goodness knows when things will be settled." The delay wasn't annoying Johnnie.

Even Emily grew uneasy about Johnnie as the weeks passed. She wondered sometimes, remembering a sort of threat, if his mother had really disinherited him. Her lawyers, whom he was always going to consult in Chicago, were saying now that Mrs. Benton had gone to California for the express purpose of investigating investments there, and presently the results would come to light. Emily didn't see clearly why Johnnie should have to drive up to Chicago three days a week to learn such meager facts. He stayed in Chicago so much that his aunts closed the house and went home. And then when he came home he stayed with the Kenworthys.

He stayed with them depressed, silent, and inactive. Emily was troubled about his laziness; but, after all, she had been his mother's stanchest friend and she owed him some sympathy and patience. She was as kind to him as possible.

But not so Martha. She came down suddenly for a week-end, the last of February. Emily told her to go into the small guest room; Johnnie's things were in the other.

"Good night!" she cried. "Is he here, too?"

Was he then so much in Martha's Chicago?

"Now look here, mammie, I don't approve of this. He's taking advantage of you. Why can't he stay at the hotel?"

"Martha, if you like the hotel so well, you'd better go down and try a meal there! It isn't a comfortable place, and you know it."

"But why doesn't he stay at the Kendalls' or at the Johnsons'? Why can't he stay with his friends?"

"Those boys aren't at home now, you know that."

"Well, he needn't try to—get a stand-in here just because his mother is dead. Why don't he live in his own house, like anybody else would?"

"I didn't know you were coming down, child. I didn't know you would object. After all, you can't live in Chicago and dictate who's to stay with me here."

"No, I suppose not. But you have enough to do without taking care of Johnnie Benton. Why doesn't he go to work?"

"He does work—sometimes. He works in the garage."

Martha turned about, flabbergasted. "You mean—dad's garage?"

"Yes."

"Well, of all the nerve! Look here, mammie, I tell you just now there's no use of dad trying to put that over on me. You can just tell him——"

"My dear child, don't be silly! Nobody's trying to put anything over on you."

"Of course, I can marry anybody I want to, as well as not! Women do it all the time and never say a word! But you needn't think I'm going to; you can get that idea out of your head right now!"

"Oh, come out of it, Martha! Nobody's trying to make you do anything you don't want to."

It would, perhaps, have been foolish to try that. For Martha seemed able to manage. Emily didn't know exactly how she had done it, but Johnnie came up presently from down-town, saw her there, greeted her quite undisturbed and casually, and announced he was going to Chicago for the week-end.

And all Martha said was, "I'll let you know next time before I come, mammie."

Emily felt encouraged about Martha in those days. About Johnnie she grew less and less certain as the spring came on.

Once she had to say to him: "Johnnie, I want to ask you something. I want you to tell me what your plans are. What are you going to do?"

He was walking about her living room gloomily, with his hands in his pockets. He stopped and looked at her. She liked him, and she saw she had hurt him deeply.

"You getting sore at me, too?" he asked.

"No," she said, "but you are going to work sometime, of course?"

"I'm working now," he said. He stopped in front of her. He stroked his hair nervously. "I'm trying to persuade Martha to marry me!" he said, bluntly.

"Oh, Johnnie!" she exclaimed.

"You mean she won't?" he asked.

"Johnnie, no! I don't think she will. I don't think Martha'll marry—young. It doesn't seem to me—that it's likely."

"You mean—that affair—last summer—the summer before last?"

If she had meant it she had not meant him to refer to it. "That affair?" How could Johnnie Benton know about it?

"Well—yes," she acknowledged, "and other things. She isn't very domestic."

"I beg to differ with you!" Johnnie spoke with some heat. "She is domestic. She loves houses. You know she loves houses and—things."

"Well, anyway, Johnnie, I think—she'd be just as apt to marry you—if you went to work; maybe more so. Not that I think——"

Johnnie lifted his head, as if to ward off her reproof. "I'm sick of this," he burst out. "People think I ought to settle down. Well, I would settle down—if Martha'd agree. I'd settle down here, or any place. It doesn't much matter what business I go into; I'll likely be a failure in any of 'em. I'll have enough to live on for us both. But if Martha won't, I'm going to pull out of this for a year or so; let them settle the estate to suit themselves. I can't be bothered with it. I'm going to sea for a year—till I get things into my own hands."

"Oh, Johnnie, what do you want to go to sea for? There's something better than that, surely?"

"Well, I'll have to earn my living—for a while, if things don't get settled up. The bank's howling about advancing me any more money. As if there wasn't plenty coming to me, some place! They won't let me sell the house, even, till the estate's settled.".

"Oh, were you thinking of that?"

"Why not, Mrs. Kenworthy? Martha—wouldn't want to live in it."

"Johnnie, I'd give that up, if I were you. I wouldn't count on that."

"That's what I won't give up. I mean I don't give a—cent—what else happens."

Emily exclaimed. "You know there's nothing I would have liked so well."

"If what?"

"If it—were—possible," she contented herself with saying. "We can't force these things, Johnnie."

"But—it was all right once, Mrs. Kenworthy."

Emily wondered.

"Look here, what's Martha living with all those suffragettes for—those school-teachers, and doctor women?"

And then he said, bitterly: "It's natural she'd prefer them to—some people. Martha's been stung once, and she's afraid. That's what's the trouble with her."

"Good heavens!" thought Emily. "This boy is too wise! What does he know? And how does he come to know it?"

After a minute she said, "Well, Johnnie, dear, I would like to see you—all happy—and settled down, but I don't know—that Martha's the woman for you; and I tell you frankly I think you ought to stop this loafing about."

"I'll ask Mr. Kenworthy for a steady job for a month, if you want me to."

"That's not good enough for you, Johnnie; you can't work in a garage. But it's better than nothing."

He stuck to the garage for three weeks, and then he threw it up and departed abruptly on the spring day that Emily noticed the first tall white iris blooming. She was rather out of patience with him. But Bob—an amazing lot of sympathy Bob had for everything masculine—he just grinned.

"He's in love, the poor devil!" he said, and winked a sort of familiar grimace across the table at Emily. It annoyed her. All he had ever said of Martha was: "Well, if she's in love, she'll have to get over it; that's all." It gave her almost satisfaction to get a letter from Martha.

"Johnnie's turned up again. I'm leaving the city for a holiday. I'll write you about it next week."

Not another word from that child for two weeks. No sign of Johnnie; he might at least have had the decency to write whether or not he had taken to the sea. And Martha, Emily planned as the days passed, was going to get a thorough dressing down when she came back. Two weeks without writing was a little too much of a good thing. Two weeks and five days now, still no word had come. Emily was in the garden. She was, in fact, exactly at the side of the house which Martha had suggested adorning with a garage. She had been digging about her "bleeding heart" and looking down towards the river, because she had seen orioles for the first time that morning and planning what she would say to Martha when she got a chance. She turned around suddenly to see what car had stopped in front of the house. It was a brand-new little blue runabout, and expensive-looking.

And then Johnnie Benton jumped out of it, and turned about to give a hand to some one—and Martha Kenworthy jumped out! All dressed up in a new suit of rose color, with a lovely bit of soft fur and a new and nifty hat. And new shoes and a new bag—glorious and smart entirely. And she had caught sight of her mother, and came half running up to her. Johnnie, too, dressed to kill—and beaming—was hurrying to her. They were looking at each other.

"You two are married!" Emily cried to them; and her heart sank in a great pity for Johnnie.

"Mammie, mammie!" Martha was crying, hugging her. They had pulled her into the hall with cries and kisses.

"Oh, Martha!" Emily murmured.

The two were babbling.

"What she's wanted all the time, and she's pretending to scold us. Look at her, Johnnie." Martha was laughing at her mother's consternation. "We wanted to surprise you. How did you know? I suppose we do look married, maybe."

"I'm glad," said Emily.

"You're not; you're crying! Didn't we surprise you? Did you get my letter? Rather smooth of me, wasn't it—'Johnnie's turned up and I'm leaving the city!' We'd only been married an hour when I wrote that, mammie!"

She shone, she twinkled, like not one star—but the whole canopy of heaven. She adored her husband with her married eyes. She stood the loveliest blossom of the season. Johnnie was explaining. Emily sat breathless looking from one to the other of them. "They're utterly married," she thought. "Martha isn't pretending. She isn't putting something across now." She couldn't believe it. But the bridal garments would have convinced her. Martha's very stockings were shining bridally. She had taken off her rosy hat; her frock matched her coat; she was powdering her nose before the hall glass; she was cavorting about, and shining. She called upon her mother to admire poor Johnnie.

"Isn't he a dear?" she chuckled. "Don't you think he's a lamb, mammie?"

"Cut that out, kiddo!" he cried, enjoying it.

"You bring the stuff in, my son. Mammie, we're going to open up the room. But Johnnie can have the little guest room—just for his things, can't he? I told you so, Johnnie. He's got to go down and break the news softly to dad. You go on, Johnnie; I want to talk to mammie. But don't you stay more than half an hour, I tell you. We're going to turn out that room, mammie. I knew it wouldn't be ready. I'll get out of my glad rags right away. Johnnie can help me. He's good at housework."

The door had finally scarcely closed behind the bridegroom when Emily cried; "Are you happy, Martie? Why did you do this?"

Side by side they placed themselves on the sofa instinctively; and Martha threw her arms about her mother ecstatically.

"Am I happy?" she repeated. "Can't you see I'm happy? Oh, mammie, I've got so much to tell you. Oh, ain't I lucky, mammie? I didn't know when I married him—I was just—mad, inside—I was hardboiled. I didn't intend to be good to Johnnie. I didn't know what else to do. I was sick of being called an old maid! I thought he could just run the risk, if he would keep on asking me. I didn't intend being nice to him, or anything. Mammie, people don't appreciate Johnnie. I didn't. Not at first, and then I found out how SWEET he was! He was just sweet to me, mammie, and I went and told him everything the other night. I could just kiss the ground that man walks on, with his dear old feet!"

Tears came springing into little Mrs. Benton's eyes.

"I told him everything about New York. I told him I'd been crazy. He said we'd be a pair of nuts, then. Fifty fifty, he said, I told him, no, mammie. A thousand to one, I told him. I tried to make him see, but he said I just thought that because I was such a good little kid! He said I was a good little kid, mammie. Those were his very words! I tell you right now, mammie, nobody's ever going to say a word about his mother to me! Because she WAS part of him, after all, and he hates it. I never knew there was anything in the world so darling as that man! You just ought to see him in his pajamas! He's too sweet! Blue and white striped they are. I'll let you see them, mammie!"

"Rare treat," thought Emily, dazedly.

"Don't you think he's a lamb, mammie? Don't you think he's too dear?"

"I always liked Johnnie."

"Oh, I don't mean that way! You just wait till you know him better! But nobody can appreciate Johnnie till she's married to him!"

"That seems too bad!"

"Oh, I don't know. It suits me!" she retorted, immediately. "Nobody wants a lot of women sitting around appreciating her husband. Mammie, it was too funny the way it happened. You know, Mrs. Blacksley and I had an awful row. She practically put me out of the shop."

"Oh?"

"Yes, she did. It was too funny, when you think about it. You see——"

She chuckled. She could enjoy any joke herself in her high mood. "She had to have some money to go on with, and she asked me straight out if there was any chance of me putting some in. And I said no, not unless she got rid of that man of hers. Mother, you can't imagine what a temper that woman's got! I thought she was going to pull my hair or slap me. I kept backing out towards the door, and she kept coming after me. She called me——" Martha giggled. "She called me an evil-minded little old maid! She said she'd like to see me groveling—groveling, it was she said—before some man. And here I am already just groveling! She said she hoped I'd have enough sense some day to appreciate a real man. It was pretty rotten of me to say that to her, because she is fond of him. She said his very cough was precious to her; she said she hoped I'd fall in love till I'd kiss somebody's false teeth when he wasn't there himself!" Martha snickered and added, "But, of course, he'd take them with him, his teeth, but I didn't think of that in time to answer her. I was afraid of her. And I was mad, I can tell you. And then, of course, Johnnie came along again. I was hardboiled and I went and married him. Because, after all, you've got to marry or be called an old maid in this world, haven't you, mammie? Let's ask her down now after a while, for a week. Mrs. Blacksley, I mean. But maybe she won't come. She's got such an awful temper."

Emily cried, the moment there was a pause—suddenly:

"Martha, I was never unfaithful to your father in my life—your father, I mean Bob Kenworthy!"

"You weren't?" She stared at her mother, taken aback. "Well, that's sort of funny."

"I ought to have told you that at once that day when you told me—what you thought! But I didn't."

Martha was looking at her thoughtfully.

"Well, that's sort of funny. I was just thinking of that this morning!" She had spoken slowly, but a thought quickened her pace again. "Mammie, you just ought to see Johnnie in the morning! He's too sweet! His hair never gets mussed up a bit, it's so short, and sort of soft in the morning. And I was just thinking this morning about what you said, or what I said to you, rather, and it would have been a raw deal for dad, after all. Because really, if a woman's got a good husband, she ought to treat him right, I think. Don't you?"

"I CERTAINLY DO!"

"I wouldn't want anybody treating Johnnie that way, I know that." And her tongue wagged happily on. Mother's vices or virtues were dismissed as slight things, in this new joy. They sat still there, Emily listening to Johnnie's praises till he came back into the room with Bob.

The paternal blessing detained them only for a minute. They hurried away to their housekeeping. A hurricane of happiness; seemed to be moving the furniture in the painted room about, judging from the noise. Bob and Emily sat side by side listening to the chortles of mirth that came down to them. Bob couldn't stop grinning.

"I always said this would happen, Emily. I always knew it would."

"Right as usual!" said Emily. If a woman has a good husband, what's the use of reminding him of all he doesn't know? she mused, happily.

She scarcely knew the painted room itself when she went up to it later. It was noon, but the curtains were pushed back as far as possible, and the blinds rolled to the top, so that the sunshine came crashing down like thunder from paradise on the roused and choral colors. The Victrola was grinding out:

Johnnie cried out, "Come in, Mrs. Kenworthy!"

Martha gurgled, jeering. "Mrs. Kenworthy! the nerve of you! Call her mother!"

They hadn't ceased dancing. Martha had a gaudy printed purple silk thing, a man's belongings, pinned about her head, turban-wise, and her arms were clasped firmly around her husband's waist. She made a gesture with her head about the room.

"It never looked better, did it, mammie? You always wanted it this way."

The beds were standing together, at length, where they had always belonged.

"I just let Johnnie arrange everything else to suit himself," she said.

THE END