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diff --git a/old/42534.txt b/old/42534.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 61c3419..0000000 --- a/old/42534.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7161 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Narrow House, by Evelyn Scott - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Narrow House - -Author: Evelyn Scott - -Release Date: April 14, 2013 [EBook #42534] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NARROW HOUSE *** - - - - -Produced by Clare Graham & Marc D'Hooghe at -http://www.freeliterature.org (Images generously made -available by the Internet Archive.) - - - - - -THE NARROW HOUSE - -BY - -EVELYN SCOTT - -AUTHOR OF "PRECIPITATIONS" - - -BONI AND LIVERIGHT - -PUBLISHERS NEW YORK - -1921 - - - - - _"Love seeketh only Self to please_, - _To bind another to its delight_, - _Joys in another's loss of ease_, - _And builds a hell in heaven's despite_." - --WILLIAM BLAKE - - - - -THE NARROW HOUSE - - - - -PART I - - -The hot, bright street looked almost deserted. A sign swung before the -disheveled building at the corner and on a purple ground one could read -the notice, "Robinson & Son, Builders," painted in tall white letters. -Some broken plaster had been thrown from one of the windows and lay on -the dusty sidewalk in a glaring heap. - -The old-fashioned house next door was as badly in need of improvements -as the one undergoing alterations. The dingy brick walls were streaked -by the drippage from the leaky tin gutter that ran along the roof. The -massive shutters, thrown back from the long windows, were rotting away. -Below the lifted panes very clean worn curtains hung slack like things -exhausted by the heat. - -Some papers had been thrust in the tin letter box before the clumsy dark -green door, and as Mrs. Farley emerged from the house she stopped to -glance at them before descending to the street. One of the papers had a -Kansas City postmark and she thought it must have come for her husband -from a certain woman whom she was trying to forget. She placed the -papers clumsily back where she had found them. - -As she passed down the stone stairs she stooped to toss a bright scrap -of orange peel to the gutter. She sighed as she did it, not even taking -the trouble to brush the dust from the shabby white cotton gloves she -wore. Her skirt was too long behind and as she dragged her feet across -the pavement it swept the ground after her. She glanced into the place -which was being repaired and wished that something might be done to -improve her home. At any rate now that her daughter-in-law, Winnie, had -become reconciled to her parents things would be better. Mr. and Mrs. -Price were rich. They had a carriage and an automobile. Mrs. Farley told -herself that it was because of her grandchildren that the end of the -long family quarrel brought some relief. Winnie's two babies, a girl and -a boy, would now enjoy many things which the Farleys had not been able -to provide. Mrs. Farley thought of them going to church in Mrs. Price's -fine carriage. Mrs. Farley knew that she should have taken the part of -her son, Laurence, who had been responsible for the disagreement, but -somehow it had been impossible to condemn Winnie. The poor girl was not -strong. Laurie was a harsh man. He was stubborn. He did not forgive -easily and would suffer everything rather than admit himself in the -wrong. He had been like that as a youth. And idly, as one in a boat -allows a hand to trail along the silken surface of the water, the woman -allowed her mind to drift with the surface of long past events. She had -reached the butcher shop; had almost gone by it. - -"How do you do, Mrs. Farley? Nice warm weather we're having." The -butcher had a hooked nose and when he smiled it seemed to press down his -thick brown mustache that framed his even white teeth so beautifully. He -settled his apron over his stomach and gazed at her hungrily and -affectionately above the glass top of the counter as though he were -trying to hypnotize her into buying some of the coral pink sausages -which reposed beside a block of ice in the transparent case. - -The meat shop was as white as death. It smelt of blood and sawdust and -its tiled interior offered a refuge from the heat without. - -"I want a piece of--can you give me a nice rib roast today--? No! What -do you ask for those hens?" Mrs. Farley, as always, hesitated when she -spoke and lines as fine as hairs traced themselves on her pale, dry, -hastily powdered forehead. Her vague, rather squinting eyes traveled -undecidedly over the big pieces of meat: the shoulders, the forelegs, -the haunches, of different shades of red streaked with tallow or suet, -that swung on hooks in the shadow against the gray-white tiling of the -walls. The fowls dangled in a row a little to the fore of the meat. The -feet of the hens were a sickly bluish yellow, and the toes, cramped -together yet flaccid, still suggested the fatigue which follows agony. -The eyes bulged under thin blue-tinged lids and on the heads and necks -about the close-shut beaks bunches of reddish brown feathers had been -left as decorations. The butcher took one down and, laying it on the -counter, pinched up the plump flesh between his forefinger and thumb. - -"You could never find a better fed hen than that," he told her. "Nice -firm solid meat. You see they are just in and I was so sure of getting -rid of them I did not even put them on the ice yet. They're not storage -fowls. I buy them from a young man who has a farm out near where my -sister lives at Southbridge." - -Mrs. Farley, in spite of a gala occasion and the fact that Mr. and Mrs. -Price were to do her the condescension of coming to dinner at her house -the next day, had not intended to buy anything so expensive as chicken. -For all those people it would take two hens. But though she tried her -best not to allow the butcher to catch her eye, she knew he was staring -at her intently and that the white teeth were flashing almost cruelly -under the brown mustache beneath the hooked nose. It heightened a -conviction of weakness which she never failed to experience when she was -called upon to decide anything, especially in the presence of other -people, and she wished she had asked Alice to buy the meat before she -went to work. Of course Alice would spend too much but what she got was -sure to be nice and the diners were certain to praise it. - -"I will take two of the hens," said Mrs. Farley, moistening the dry down -along her lips. "Be sure you give me fat ones," she went on, frowning. -While she fumbled in the pocketbook for the money she did not cease to -be aware of the pleasant confident manner of the butcher, as with deft -fingers he ran his hand into the bird and with a slight clawing sound -tore out a heap of discolored entrails so neatly that not one burst. -Then he slit the chicken's neck and extracted its crop. Mrs. Farley was -anxious to get away. She never had any peace of mind except when she was -by herself. - -"I'm sure you will be pleased," declared the butcher with a slight bow, -as he took the money she handed him. Her short white hand was corded -with bluish veins and her fingers were slightly knotted and bent from -gout. They had hovered almost palpitantly over her worn black purse -while she tried to make up her mind whether to give him the exact amount -or to ask him to change the five dollars which Alice had turned over to -her that morning. At last she gave him the five dollars, and when he -counted the sum due her into her palm the dull brightness of the pieces -of money swam slightly before her eyes and she had no idea whether or -not the amount returned to her was what was owing. - -The butcher bowed again, managing to appear deferential. "Where shall I -send them?" he asked, inclining his ear toward her, and in a low hurried -voice she recalled the number he had forgotten. "They must be sent right -away," she insisted, "or I can't get them ready." With a gallant -inclination of the head the butcher promised to send them at once. - -She made her way through the bitter-smelling gloom and as she pushed the -screen door open a large blue fly rose stupidly and bumped against her -face. - -She was obliged to go to the grocer's and to the bakery and when she -approached her home again it was already three o'clock in the afternoon. -May, Winnie's little girl, an unhealthy looking child with lustrous -wax-like skin, large, vapid, glazed, blue eyes, and thin, damp curls of -gray-blonde hair which clung to her hollow shoulders, rose from the -shadowed doorstep. - -"Hello, Grandma," she called, with one hand smoothing the front of her -faded pink gingham dress, while with the other she pressed her weight -against the grimy iron balustrade. - -Mrs. Farley's eyes frowned wearily but a conscientious smile came to her -lips that were twisted a little with repugnance. - -"Where's Mamma, May?" she asked, not looking at the child. "Is she lying -down?" May sucked her middle finger and wagged her head from side to -side. Her smile was vacant in its timorous interest. "Do you want to -take one of my bundles?" May nodded her head up and down and accepted -the parcel. Her small arm twined around it loosely. The front door was -ajar, opening into a familiar smelling twilight, and she hopped after -her grandmother into the house. - - * * * * * - -As Mrs. Farley entered the darkened bedroom, Winnie, in a cheap, fancy -neglige of lilac and pink, rose from an old corduroy-covered lounge and -came forward to meet her. Winnie's small, pointed face was haggard and -smeary with tears. She gazed at her mother-in-law with a childish look -of reproach. - -"O Mamma Farley, I know Laurie will say some terrible thing again!" She -wrung her hands that were plump through the palm and had tapering -fingers which curved backward at the tips. "I have been lying here all -afternoon worrying about what may happen tomorrow!" As she spoke she -glanced beyond her mother-in-law's head to the heavily beveled mirror in -the old bureau, and her rapt, tragic face became even more voluptuously -tragic as it contemplated itself. - -"Now, Winnie, I have talked to Laurence and he realizes perfectly well -that he can't say what he thinks to your father. He will let bygones be -bygones just like the rest of us." - -"O Mamma Farley, you don't know Laurie! And he hates Papa and Mamma so -and he has no mercy on me. Sometimes I think he hates me, too!" - -Mrs. Farley's mouse-gray hair hung in straight wisps below the edge of -her shiny old black velvet turban which was tilted askew. Her withered -face became harshly kind. She had more firmness when she was with Winnie -than in the presence of other people. - -"You must remember, Winnie, that I have known Laurie considerably longer -than you have. Pull yourself together and rest and don't worry about -this any more. I know it will be all right." - -May had followed her grandmother and now stood awkwardly and -apologetically on one foot watching the two women. When her mother -glanced at her, her face quivered a little. She looked at the floor and -rubbed the scaled toe of her slipper against the raveled blue nap of the -carpet. - -"I am going to make a cake today." Mrs. Farley sighed as she turned -toward the door. "There's my usual Saturday baking, too. You'd better -keep still so you won't be feeling worse tomorrow. If I get through in -time tonight I'm going to press your yellow dress for you. I want you to -look pretty." She left the room. - -Winnie was not sure that she wanted to look pretty. She was a little -ashamed of the feeling but she would have liked to create with her -parents the impression that the Farleys had not treated her well. This -was from no desire to injure the Farleys but rather from an intuition as -to what kind of story of the past years would please Mr. and Mrs. Price -most and present their daughter in the most interesting light. - -May, sidling reluctantly toward the hall, still watched her mother. -Winnie's eyes, with soft, hostile possessiveness, fastened themselves on -her little girl's face. May would have preferred not to meet her -mother's eyes so straight. - -"Come here, May!" Winnie sank suddenly to her knees and held out her -arms. May walked forward, seeming not able to stop herself. - -"You love Mamma anyway, don't you?" - -"Yes," May said. There were bubbles of saliva on her lips because she -would not take her finger away from her mouth. - -"_You_ don't think I'm selfish, May?" Winnie shook May a little, then -held the child to her. A shudder ran like a live, uncontrolled thing -between them. - -May was ashamed of the shudder as if it had been her fault. Winnie drew -away and stared at her daughter. Winnie's eyes were soft and wistful -with hurt, but underneath their darkness as under a cloud May saw -something she was afraid of. It was angry with itself and demanded that -she give it something. She did not know what to give it. To escape it -she wanted to cry. - -Winnie wanted to make May cry but hated her for crying. - -"You _must_ love me, May! I'm your mamma! You must love me!" - -"I do," May said. Her eyes were black with tears, but because she wanted -to cry she could not keep her lips from smiling a little. - -"As well as you love papa?" - -May felt accused of something. She could not make herself speak. She was -sorry and wanted her mother to strike her. - -"Then you love Papa best? Oh, May, that's cruel! You mustn't love him -best!" Winnie's excited manner was contagious. May did not know how to -explain what was the matter and suddenly burst into tears. Winnie moved -back again and watched the little girl with her arm over her face, -crying. - -May's sobs lessened. Without knowing what had occurred, she felt utterly -subjugated. She wanted to love her mother, but the soft, angrily -caressing eyes would not let her. When would her mother let her stop -crying? There were no tears any more. It was hard to cry without tears. - -"Poor naughty Mamma doesn't know what she's done!" - -May, with her eyes shut, stole out a hand which trembled on her mother's -face. - -"You do love me then? May, you must! You mustn't love Papa best!" - -"I don't!" - -They kissed. May saw that her mother's eyes were like things standing in -their own shadows and loving themselves. They liked being sad. They -yearned over May's face, but it was as if they did not see it and were -yearning for themselves. - -"Go play with Bobby then, dear, and don't hurt poor Mamma like that." - -"I won't." - -May ran out and left Winnie looking into the glass beyond where the -child had been. Winnie could not understand how she could be blamed for -anything. She was so innocent, so childlike. At one time Laurence had -been able to discover no faults in her. She recalled the early months of -their marriage and remembered that in those days whenever she had reason -to think him displeased with her she made funny little pictures of -herself with her hands over her eyes and, signing them "poor Winnie," -left them under his plate at table where he found them at the next meal. -A pang of hatred shot through her, mingled with the recollection of -caresses, involuntary on his part. She felt a need for justifying her -increasing hardness of heart and when she regarded herself sadly in the -mirror she was reassured. It was as if in the way her tousled reddish -curls shot back the light there was something that contradicted blame. - -It was four o'clock. Through the window the sunshine on the row of -houses opposite paled their red bricks to the purplish tint of old rose -petals. At the end of the street where the square began bunches of raw -green foliage floated with a heavy stillness above the smutty roofs -steeped in light. Behind the bright yellow-green leaves the blue sky -melted into itself as into its own dream. - -Laurence came home early on Saturdays and Winnie decided to dress. As -she opened the front of her neglige Bobby entered the room and made her -hesitate. He sweated and panted, dragging his feet and lugging with both -hands a small tin bucket filled with the dirt he had dug in the back -yard. He was very fat. He wore overalls and there was dirt smeared in -the creases of his neck under his firm chin. - -"Bobby! How can you!" - -"Dirt. Nice dirt," Bobby explained. Everything about him showed that he -belonged to himself. His brown eyes were passively against his mother. -Grunting laboriously, he stooped and began to empty the rich purplish -earth on the clean-swept blue carpet. Winnie's eyes flashed. - -"Don't you dare do that, Bobby!" She sprang toward him, trying to be -angry. - -He did not mind. He kept his fat shoulders bent to his task. - -"Stop it, I say!" Only a few grains of the damp, dark soil remained in -the bright bucket. She gripped his elbow. He glanced at her, his solemn -eyes twinkling with a kind of placid malice. His grasp on the tin -handle relaxed and he sat down very flat on his plump bottom. Winnie -dropped down beside him and began to laugh. She could not have said why -but she always felt flattered by his defiance. - -"Now what shall I do?" she demanded. They stared at each other. - -"I'm makin' a house," Bobby said. There were still harsh lights in his -placid eyes. They made her ashamed and glad that she was his mother. Her -heart beat very fast and, escaping from an emotion which perplexed and -disturbed her, she threw her arms about him and buried her face against -his cool ear and his moist, cool cheek. "Oh, you love me! You love me! I -know you love me!" she crooned, rocking him against her. "You love me as -well as you do Papa, I know you do." - -Bobby wriggled. "Don't love Papa!" he said. - -"But you must! You know you must." There was a sob in Winnie's voice. -She was sick, she said to herself. That was why she wanted to be loved. - -"'Don't love Papa!' You must love Papa, but love Mamma, too! Oh, Bobby, -poor Mamma!" Bobby tried to pull away again, but she had felt some one -looking at them and she would not let him go. Bobby's breath was warm on -her half bare breast. - -She turned her head, guilty, and ready to cry with hatred of her guilt. -Laurence was in the doorway. She knew he had hesitated there, but when -she looked at him he walked straight forward past her with the air of -having only just arrived. - -"Hello," he said. "Glad you are up." - -"Look what Bobby's done." She let Bobby go. - -"Into mischief as usual, eh?" Laurence said. He walked to the wardrobe -and hung up his hat. He had a short, bulky figure, the head and -shoulders too big for the rest of him. He had thick brown hair, coarse -and very slightly sprinkled with gray. His skin was ruddy but did not -look fresh. As he walked with his swaying, awkward stride, he held his -head forward and a little to one side. His coat sagged on the hips and -was caught up toward the back seam. His hands did not appear to belong -to him. They were short, disproportionately small, and very delicate. - -"Bobby, you should be made to clean up," Winnie said. - -Laurence came over and looked at the pile of dirt. "May----" was all -Bobby said. He wanted to get away from his father. He ran out. - -"He's made a mess, all right. Can I help you up?" Laurence leaned to her -and she gave him her weak hands. She wanted him to feel them weak in -his. His mouth twitched a little as he pulled her to her feet. She hated -the furtive bitterness that was in all he did for her, yet it struck a -self-righteous fire from her. She leaned against him. She was frail and -plaintive. He seemed to stiffen against her softness. She loved herself -wistfully, her eyes lifted to his face. - -To marry her he had given up the prospect of a career in science. An -expedition to Africa with one of his old professors had been abandoned. -At that time he had finished college and was working for a scientific -degree. She was eighteen. - -Winnie felt herself still to be good, pretty, and sweet. She had a right -to something beside this distant tenderness. She knew there had been -times when simply a look, a glance, a word from her had carried him off -his feet. After these occasions there were symptoms of self-contempt on -his part. Yet he was proud of her, she was certain. Often, without his -being aware of it, she had seen him betray to others a secret vanity in -possessing her. Surely it was no disgrace to yield to her! - -She had sometimes caught him staring at her abstractedly, yet with such -unyielding curiosity that it made her shiver to remember it. She clung -to him so that he could not look at her like that now. - -"Do you feel well enough to dress for dinner?" Laurence asked. - -"Yes, Laurie--I'll feel all right if----" - -"If what?" He was always harsh when he joked. - -She twisted the button of his coat. His eyes narrowed against hers as -though he were shutting her out. His sweet, harsh lips smiled. He gave -her a kiss and moved out of her arms, going to the window. - -She was ill. The doctor had advised another operation. Without it she -could have no more children. She would die. She looked at Laurence. He -hurt her. The line of his back against her forced her into herself. It -was a pain. But when she remembered what a serious state of health she -was in most of her bitterness passed away from her. An expression of -sweetness and resignation came into her face. Her gray-green eyes shone -in tears under her reddish, disheveled hair. In her illness she felt -superior to her husband and was able to love herself more completely. - -"I heard from Mamma today again, Laurence," she began gently. - -"Yes?" Laurence had hesitated before replying. She wanted him to turn -round. He kept his gaze fixed on the street beyond the open window. A -soft current of motion stirred the bright heavy air blue with whirling -motes. She could see his hair slowly lifted. Past his head the sky was -pale with light. The sunshine floated green-white from the dim quivering -sky. - -She kept watching his shoulders in the sagging coat. "I believe you had -rather see me miserable all the rest of my life! Oh, Laurence, how can -you! I can't hurt Mamma any longer even to please you!" - -"To please me?" Laurence's voice was sharp and sarcastic, yet it did not -reproach. She hated its tolerance. - -"Of course I know I can't please you!" she said. She could not see his -face and it was almost unbearable not to know whether he was smiling or -not. She felt him going farther away from her because of her mother. It -was cruel. Now whenever he did not want to touch her he said she was -sick. She hugged her sickness but she hated him for talking about it. - -"Now, Winnie!" He was facing her. "I've tried to efface myself as much -as possible as regards your parents. If you weren't nervous and ill you -would realize that the time has passed for reproaching me." - -"Forgive me." - -"There's nothing to forgive." - -She was irritated because he would not forgive her, but she went to him -and laid her head against his coat. A tremor shot through him when she -touched him and she did not know whether she was agitating him in a -manner complimentary to herself or not. But something in her hardened. -He had no right to conceal himself. - -"Oh, Laurie!" They were still against each other. She felt him waiting -for her to lift her head. When people married they became one. She was -conscious of feeling cruel, but it seemed to her that she had nothing to -reproach herself with. "I cut myself on my manicure scissors today. You -mustn't be stern with me." He could not help thinking what a common -deceitful-looking little hand she had. He was sorry for her. - -"What a tragedy!" His lips rested on the finger an instant without -giving themselves. They quivered a little. An emotion that was -unpleasant and at the same time exhilarating swept through her and -seemed to lift her from her feet. She thought sadly and complacently of -how much she had suffered for him already. - -"Where is May?" Laurence asked suddenly. He felt that in kissing -Winnie's finger he had committed himself to some unknown almost sinister -thing. He resented the stupidity of his thought. - -"Downstairs, I suppose." When he talked of May, Winnie was glad to leave -him. She felt as if he were lying to her. - -Laurence moved toward the door, his gross body large in the darkening -room. Winnie seemed to know each detail of him as he passed into the -dark hall. It was painful to know him so distinctly. She tried in vain -to revive the blurred apperception of him which she had had in earlier -days. She wanted people to see him as she had seen him then. His rocking -walk humiliated her and when visitors were present she tried to inveigle -him into sitting in an armchair where his heavy handsome profile would -be silhouetted against the light, his awkward body at rest. - -I don't think it is right for him to show an exaggerated preference for -one child, she told herself. He doesn't love May! He exaggerates his -feeling for her out of pique. Winnie could not forgive him for being -kinder to May than she was. - -She found a match. Among the shadows the invisible sun made patches of -bronze light. In the dark the match flared like a long soft wound of -flame. The gas rushed out of the jet with a thick hiss and the flame -spread into a fan. It was a wing covered with yellow down, blue at the -quill. The wind sucked at it soundlessly. - -She walked to the window which the gas flame had already made dark. The -sky was green-blue. Bunches of black leaves on the trees in the square -cut the dim fiery horizon into twinkling segments. A telegraph pole rose -up like a finger higher than the houses and appeared to lean heavily -against the quiet beyond. Behind flecks of cloud putrescent stars shone -as through flecks of foam on an enchanted sea. - -Winnie pressed her head against the cold pane. Laurence, herself, old -age. She would never be happy. A peaceful vanity took the place of her -unrest. She realized an ethereal quality in herself which coincided -with the whiteness of her little hands. She was aware of her hands, -delicate and precious against her breast. Her breathing tightened. She -did not want to remember the ugliness of the long illness she had had -and to think of the operation which threatened her threw her into a -panic. When people talked too much to her of death she only saw -something ugly which she did not understand. She wanted to get away from -it. She felt that she should not be forced to think of death. It did not -belong to her. If people only loved her and allowed her to be herself -she gave everything. - -She turned away from the window and walked back to the mirror. - - * * * * * - -Alice was the last to reach home for dinner. She closed the front door -briskly after her. Its thud was muffled and at the same time emphasized -by the quiet of the empty street behind it. She whistled as she took off -her hat. The tramp of her feet toward the dining-room was like a man's. - -"Hello, Mamma Farley. Hello, Laurie! Glad to see you down, Winnie." She -tweaked Bobby's ear. - -"Hello, Aunt Alice!" His voice was thick. Like a small amused Buddha, he -looked at her. - -May thought Aunt Alice was not going to notice her, but Aunt Alice -patted the little girl's head. May was terrified and relieved when the -big hand brushed her hair heavily. She smiled at Aunt Alice, but Aunt -Alice did not see her. Then her face grew stupid with perplexity again -and her eyes were like two dark bright empty things; and under her -frilled apron, though she tried to hold her chest in tight, you could -see her heart beat. - -Mr. Farley, who had been upstairs, was the last to enter the -dining-room. When Alice saw him her homely rugged face lit with -peremptory condescending affection and she said, "Come and sit by me -this minute, Papa Farley. Your soup is cold. What do you mean by being -so late?" - -Mr. Farley was always embarrassed by Alice's officious regard, but he -would not permit himself to become impatient. He was a large handsome -man ten years younger than his wife. His hair was prematurely white. -There were heavy lines at the corners of his mouth and one deep fold -between his brows, but otherwise his face was smooth and fresh. His lips -were compressed continually into a smile. He veiled his disconcerted -rather empty blue eyes under defensively lowered lids. He gave a quick -glance around the brightly lit table. - -"Winnie's improving. That's good." - -"Yes. You look better," Alice observed to her sister-in-law. Winnie made -a little moue as she met the cheerful but accurate scrutiny of Alice's -eyes. Winnie felt aggrieved by this clearness of gaze. In resenting it -she pitied Alice, who had coarse sallow skin and large hands and feet. - -"Winnie has every reason to be better. Her father and mother are coming -to dinner with us." Mrs. Farley's conversation was always studiedly -general. Her voice was weak and toneless and a little harsh, but she -spoke carefully with an agreeable intonation. While she talked, her -stubby uncertain hand grasped the hilt of a long horn-handled knife and -the thin flashing blade sunk into the brown crusted beefsteak, so that -the beautiful wine-colored blood spurted from the soft pink inner flesh -and mingled with the grease that was cooling and coating the bottom of -the dish. She laid fat brown-edged pieces of pink meat on the successive -plates which she removed from a cracked white pile before her. The -boiled potatoes were overdone and burst apart when she tried to serve -them. On the thin yellow skin which hardened over their mealy insides -there were greenish-gray spots. - -"I'm glad, Winnie. We're all glad. No grievance is worth hugging like -this." Mr. Farley held his hand to his eyes but he spoke determinedly. -They all knew how hard it must be for him to accede to a meeting with -Mr. Price. Laurence, Alice, and Winnie thought of the unkind things -which Mr. Price had said about their family scandal at the time of the -break, and wondered if he would refer to it again. - -Mr. Farley liked to do hard things. If his resolution hurt him he kept -it and was not afraid of it. He was comfortable in the bare cheaply -furnished dining-room because he felt that if he had desired happiness -he might not have been there; and as he was very punctilious in his -duties toward his wife he was able to relieve the oppressive sense of -sin which he had carried with him during most of his life. - -Winnie and Alice were both watching Laurence. His face was bitterly -impassive. On a former occasion he had insulted Mr. Price. His present -resignation was full of disgust. Winnie felt that he was giving her to -her mother. - -"You're not eating, dear. I let the children stay up because you were -feeling better. I thought we would celebrate." Mrs. Farley's eyelashes -were whitish. She carried nose glasses fastened to a gold hook on the -breast of the black waist she had washed herself and ironed so badly. -She squinted when she smiled, yet her eyes did not look glad, but tired. - -"I'm trying, Mamma Farley." Winnie's sweet mouth was tremulous. She was -glad to feel it tremulous. How could Laurence give her over simply -because her heart would not let her refuse her mother any longer? - -Alice cut her beefsteak with brisk emphatic strokes. She took big bites -and chewed them with an air of exaggerated relish. She felt herself to -be the one person in the world who understood Laurence, but she knew -that he feared and resented her understanding. He had always been -saturnine and had lived his life alone. At college he paid his own way -until he won a medal which entitled him to a scholarship. After this he -devoted himself to research work in biology. Alice's imagination had -never quite encompassed his impulse in marrying Winnie and it was still -more difficult to understand why Winnie had committed herself. Even in -the days of courtship Winnie had often fled in tears from her lover. She -was ashamed of his deliberated vulgarities, though they piqued and -invited her. Alice could not comprehend it. Winnie and Laurence had -been secretly married. When the Prices commanded their daughter to leave -her husband, Laurence had withdrawn from the decision and told her to do -as she liked. She had not been able to make herself leave him. She did -not know that she wanted to. Her parents had cut her off. Ten months -later May was born. Laurence took his scientific knowledge to the -laboratory of a manufacturer of serums and began to make a living. - -"I used up most of your five dollars on some hens today, Alice." Mrs. -Farley's conscience was heavy with the sudden silence at the table. It -merged into her own inner silence and became the voice of herself from -which she was anxious to escape. - -"Good." - -"You work so hard, Mamma Farley. Don't!" Winnie, not wanting Mamma -Farley to work, felt sad and nice again and justified before Laurence. - -"I'm used to it." Mrs. Farley's mouth puckered in a prim tired smile. -The mouth was satisfied with itself, so it drew up like that. - -"Don't deprive Mamma of the joy of martyrdom, Winnie," Alice insisted, -laughing shortly. Mrs. Farley kept her withered lips smiling, but her -eyes, dull and confused with resentment, felt covertly and bitterly for -her daughter's face. Alice ate, oblivious. Mrs. Farley, with physical -irritation, felt Alice eating beefsteak and swallowing it half chewed. - -"You leave Mother alone, Alice. Expend your benevolent energies -somewhere else." Laurence, his lip twitching with repression, stared -hard and smiling into Alice's eyes. Her eyes were a sad brown, a little -dull. They were quiet eyes staring back unreproachfully as though they -understood the pain of his. Laurence had a constant unreasoning impulse -to defy Alice. - -"Thanks," Alice answered with tired sarcasm. - -"I don't need any one to look after me, Laurence," Mrs. Farley said, her -voice cheerful, her mouth wry and tight, her lids drooped. - -Mr. Farley was restless. "Your mother is right. We must give Mr. and -Mrs. Price a royal welcome tomorrow. We must put ourselves in their -place. There are two sides to everything and it takes a great deal of -determination to make the first overture. They've done that. Now it's up -to us." Mr. Farley was always afraid that the incipient quarrel between -Alice and her mother would develop plainer proportions. He did not see -the group about him clearly, but a helpless smile was on his face. In -terror of their unkindliness he showed them how noble he was. - -There was another silence. Mrs. Farley could not bear it. - -"Has Mr. Ridge decided when he will leave for Europe, Alice?" Mrs. -Farley's knife and fork in her weak hands clattered against her plate. - -Alice was silent a moment. "He won't leave before next month," she said. -She was very intent on her food. A flush went across her forehead like a -burn half under her stringy brown hair. Laurence gave her a quick -half-pleased glance of involuntary inquiry. Winnie stared at her with -soft sharpness. - -"Does the doctor think his eyes will get well?" Mr. Farley asked, too -clouded with his own concerns to be aware of the tension in Alice's -face. - -"He hopes so. It is nervous strain and overwork mostly. There was some -sort of infection, but that came as a result." - -"Then you'll have a vacation. He can't take you to Europe." - -"No," Alice said almost angrily. "I know where I can get green things -cheap, Mamma. That market on Smith Street." - -"I see where Ridge has been attacked by all his radical friends. He -seems to have most of the world down on him for that last book." Alice -would not see Laurence's sneer. - -"He's too good for all of them," she said sharply. - -Winnie pursed her mouth. It was an effort not to laugh. To see Alice -show feeling for a man like Ridge made one hysterical. - -Mr. Farley was not thinking of Alice or of Horace Ridge. Again and -again, as if in spite of himself, he allowed his gaze to rest on Winnie. -His daughter-in-law disturbed him and if he could avoid it he never -looked her in the eye. If he could keep from noticing the throats and -breasts and arms of women he was usually all right. Then if he were -obliged to see them clearly he wanted to weep with the pain of it and -when tears again blurred his vision he was relieved. Marriage had been a -failure. There had been, he felt, terrible things in his life. Sex had -invariably placed him in the wrong, so sex must be the expression of a -perverse impulse. Tainted, as he considered it, like other men, he -struggled to exalt himself into a vagueness in which particular women -did not exist. - -Winnie despised him, but she would not admit it to herself. - -"I'm so glad to see you better! So glad!" Mr. Farley repeated -irrelevantly, uncomfortable because he felt the sweetness of Winnie's -face too intimately. - -"Thank you, dear Papa Farley." Winnie laid her hand gently on his big -fist resting on the table. He withdrew his fingers, but as he did so -gave her hand an apologetic pat. Her little fingers felt to her like -iron under his big soft hand. She knew he was afraid when she touched -him. Vulgar old man, she said to herself. She despised him so that she -wanted to touch him again out of her superiority. "Dear Papa Farley!" -There was helpless moisture in his eyes which he could not keep from -her. - -"I have some work today. I'll forego dessert." Alice got up with sudden -awkwardness and pushed her chair back. She smiled at them all, not -seeing them. - -When she had gone they were pleased and yet ashamed of themselves, -knowing why she went. - -"Did you get your deal through, Father?" Laurence asked impatiently -after a moment. They were all relieved of the silence too heavy with -Alice. - - * * * * * - -The window was open and the thick dark night, coming warm and moist into -the bedroom, made Alice feel as though some one breathed into her face, -close against her, stifling her. The yellow gas flame rushed up from the -jet with a stealthy noise. The street outside was still. - -Alice sat down before her typewriter and stared at it. Suddenly her full -breasts heaved. "Oh, my God!" She buried her face. Her blouse pulled -tight across her shoulders as she stretched her arms in front of her. - -Horace Ridge was going to Europe to remain two years. He might get well. -He might die. His eyes. She felt herself lost in the darkness of his -eyes. - -Then something broke in her. I'll tell him. I'll go with him. - -She dared not see herself in the glass opposite. Once she had abandoned -herself to her desire to be beautiful. She remembered, with a horrible -sense of humiliation, the hours spent behind locked doors when she had -tried to make herself into something men would like. One day she had -done her hair a new way, and, going into the living-room, had caught -Laurence's ridiculing eyes upon her. That was before he married Winnie. -Alice realized that something had gone wild in her. She had picked a -paper knife from a table and hurled it at him and it had cut his hand. -His face had turned scarlet, then white, then scarlet again. He had gone -out as if he were glad, without speaking to her. - -After that she fixed her hair the old way and avoided the mirror. She -did not want to realize what she was. Nothing existed but work. - -When she met a pretty woman in the streets Alice had a sense of -outrage. A self-righteous flame burnt in her. Then she tried to be -patient and it grew cool. She wore heavy careless clothing. She was -generous to Winnie. Most of all it relieved Alice to buy presents for -the children. - -It was the evening before when she came home from work that Bobby met -her in the hall. Then there was jam on his unperturbed face. "You donna -bring me sumpin'," he reminded her. - -She held out a top. For an instant a cold gleam of possession lit -Bobby's still eyes in his fat face. He grasped the top and moved a -little away from her. His air was suspicious. When he was sure the top -was his the cold light died from his face. He was smooth and shut into -himself again. He was like a china baby. To get at his soul one needed -to break him. - -"You like it, eh?" Alice demanded. Her eyes were more violently hard -than his. She seemed to like him against her will. She bent down. His -lips brushed her cheek dutifully and she felt as though a mark had been -left there. She imagined it a spot like frost with five points like a -leaf. - -"Tan I go?" - -As he went away from her the spot burned her. - -Inexorably Bobby descended to the back yard. He seemed to know how -futile a thing Alice was compared to himself. - -With her face buried on the oilcloth cover of the typewriter Alice's -thoughts, all confused, ran on God, art, suggestions that had come to -her as Horace Ridge dictated his book. Then in the turmoil she could -see Horace Ridge's big figure still against the light of the window -where he worked. Alice felt herself light, clear and vacuous, absorbed -in the substantiality of this picture. - -Christ died on a cross. She felt sick as with disgust. Good to others. -Hate. Winnie. - -Alice could not bear to think of the children born of Winnie. Bobby born -of Winnie. She could not think of him. Virgin Mary. There seemed -something secret and awful in maternity--some desecration. She felt the -child helplessly intimate with the mother's body. He did not want her. -Other religions. No time to read up. Buddha. Sex. Marriage. Laurie was -an atheist. He wanted to be perverse. - -Must be something. Nice pictures. Art. Beauty. - -When she said beauty to herself her heart was hard with resentment. -Long-haired men. Rot. They did not understand. - -She cried a few moments thinking of nothing, but it was as if something -unseen grew strong with her weakness. It drank her misery and left her -dry. She got up, feverish, and stood before the glass, hating herself. -Her waist had pulled apart in front and she saw the swell of her big -firm breast. Her face was heavy and ugly with rebellion, sallow, the -eyes inflamed. - -She saw her breast. Strange shiver of curiosity about herself. Why did -it hurt her to see her breast? She covered it up. - -She looked at herself, into her hot eyes. Something cried inside her for -mercy, but she would not take her hot angry eyes from the face in the -glass. No use to beat about the bush and pretend to be highfalutin'. -Wanted what Winnie wanted. Disliked Winnie. She had a corroding -sensation in her throat as though she tasted metal. Then shame mounted -hot over her as though it were swallowing her. She resisted being -swallowed. Her skin quivered against the hot cold engulfing sense of -degradation. She was like a bird alive in a snake's body. - -Something tightened in her soul, and the emotion she had experienced the -moment before flowed away from her. Receding, it left a hardened -accretion like petrifying lava flowing down cold from a volcanic crater. - -Still she stared at herself. Homely woman. It seemed to her that her -veins crept like snakes along her arms. Life stealing upon one through -the veins. Stealthy life running red and silent in its bitterness -through the body. Where to go to? Horace Ridge. He has any woman he -wants. Famous man. Me. - -She felt slightly intoxicated by a frank acknowledgment of her -absurdity. Her horror of herself crept over her body, shameful because -of no use. - -I can't endure it! - -Her wrist pressed against her teeth and made a mark, but no blood came. -She wanted to tear away her flesh, but it seemed to resist her. It was -full of hurt where her teeth had pressed. Life sucked at her like a wild -beast. - -She turned from the mirror and hurled herself face downward sobbing on -the bed. Her body oppressed her. - -She cried a long time. The work would have to go. At last she crept off -the bed and undressed herself and put out the light, but she lay awake, -and the darkness remained electric and horrible. She closed her eyes and -tried to shut out its intimacy. - -Mamma and Papa Farley. What was wrong between them? Sex. Horror. She -tried to keep her thoughts from integrating. Child. She bit her wrist -again and turned over in bed. Too proud to hate Winnie. Other girls. -Their faces opened against hers. They were white and flowering in the -dark. Eyes open, waiting to receive men. She shivered. One must think -about these things. Winnie's maternity. Bobby seemed slimed all over -with Winnie. To wash Bobby clean--clean of Winnie! - -Alice was still awhile. She was dark inside, but the dark grew calm. She -began to go over things very clearly. What was passion? Fourteen years -old. Pain. Words written on back fences. - -I am glad to be out of it. Poor little Winnie. - -Outside, cool. Cool ache of being outside life. - -Horace Ridge's settled form, quiet against the dancing window. He turned -in his chair. Kind eyes behind glasses. He could keep people outside him -because he had all they could give him already there behind brown agate -eyes. - -Albert Price--short trousers, face like a girl's. They knew. - -She, twenty-nine years old, outside their lives. She did not want her -body. If she could only make Horace Ridge understand that she had no -body! Clothes made her virgin when she was a mother. If she could -undress herself he would know that she was a mother. Clothes made him -forty-three years old, radical critic of life and manners, ruined -health, blindness incipient. She wanted to undress him to show him how -little he was. - -Oh, dear! She cried. It hurt, but less. Oh, dear! Life was a muddle. -When one ceased to desire there was quiet, bitter and beautiful quiet. -Laurence, Winnie, Mamma and Papa, far away from her--pathetic with -distance. Horace Ridge far away from her. Her loving him cool. Nothing. -She wanted nothing. Heart in the breast coolly melted like water in a -still cup. In the bed in the darkness her still heart reflected the -shadows of hot summer pavements, brick houses with fronts beaten flat -and dull by sun, the moment before nightfall when lights burst from the -theater fronts and the streets were gay with people in pale colored -clothes. Then the heart was still, was cool--was water into which the -darkness came gratefully covering the loneliness. - - * * * * * - -Alice was sorry for herself because she had a mother like Mrs. Farley. -Poor Papa Farley. Alice loved him and despised him. She did not love her -mother. - -On Sunday when Alice went downstairs Mrs. Farley had on her gray taffeta -dress and was intent on setting the house right. She walked stooped a -little forward, her shoulders drawn together. The eyeglasses that hung -on her chest twinkled. Short straight soft hairs floated, unpinned, at -the nape of her neck. When she turned her head the withered skin made -fine swirls of wrinkles about her throat. She walked very fast about the -parlor putting the chairs in place. She took short steps so that her -haste appeared feverish. The occasion seemed to fill her with a kind of -worried happiness. - -Mr. Farley had put on his frock coat. He had no dignity in it. - -"Don't work too hard, Mother." He went into the dining-room smiling in -bland anticipation of whomever should be there. - -Alice was at table. She was ashamed of her red eyes and barely glanced -up. "What would Mamma do if we forgot for one day to object to her -working so hard?" - -Mr. Farley spread his coat-tails and sat down on the oak chair with the -imitation leather seat. Alice's remarks about her mother made him feel -guilty. - -"We should have gotten up earlier so your mother wouldn't have the -dishes to worry about." - -"I'm going to wash 'em," Alice said shortly. - -It was a hot day. The clouded sky was a colorless glare. A thick wind -stirred the ragged awnings upstairs before the bedroom windows. For a -moment the sun came out as though an eye had opened. The house fronts -were a pale bright pink. Dust made little eddies in the empty Sunday -street. The awnings lifted, then hung inert like broken wings. When a -wagon passed you could hear, above the rattle of the wheels, the -muffled thud of the horse's feet striking the soft asphalt. - -May was on the front steps. She wore a very stiffly starched white dress -and a pink sash, wilted and wrinkled by many tyings. Her hair was -brushed back very smooth and gathered away from her forehead with a -flapping bow. Pale with interest, her small face turned toward the -corner of the square as she watched for the Prices to come. - -In the parlor, Winnie stood out of sight behind the freshly laundered -curtains, and watched too. Laurence had left the house. She wondered if -he were going to avoid her parents. - -As the time passed the sun disappeared again and shadows flowed into the -street which was as gray and still as water. - -When the equipage with shining lacquered sides flashed into the empty -place May looked at it bewildered, but Winnie had seen it through the -window and recognized her parents. - -The carriage drew up before the house and the wheels scraping the curb -made a long rasping sound. The chestnut horses were fat. Their harness -twinkled. They wriggled the stumps of their clipped tails against the -cruppers that constrained them. On their breasts where the circingles -had rubbed and on their flanks and buttocks the hair was darkened and -matted with lather. - -May was afraid and proud because the beautiful horses stood before her -home. They stamped. A shiver ran along their satin bellies. Their -breasts and forelegs quivered with tension as they jerked their heads -in the check reins and pressed the street with harsh hoofs below their -rigid ankles. Watching them, May uttered a little cry of terror and -delight; but she thought some one had heard her and she clapped her hand -over her mouth. - -The footman had jumped from his place, and Mr. and Mrs. Price were -descending from the carriage. - -Indoors, Winnie felt her heart swell with a pain of pride. These were -her parents. All these years she had been robbed of this! - -"Oh, Mamma Farley! They've come! They've come! I thought I should never -see them again!" Winnie's smooth fingers clutched Mrs. Farley's stiff -nerveless palm. "What shall I do? It hasn't been my fault, has it, Mamma -Farley?" Winnie's soft relentless gaze clung to her mother-in-law's -face. - -Mrs. Farley nervously desired to evade. Winnie made her feel guilty of -the situation with which she had nothing to do. - -"Now, dear! Now, dear! We won't talk about who's to blame. Could your -mother have written the note she did if she intended to reproach you?" - -"But Papa----And Laurence hasn't come back yet! He and Papa will quarrel -again! You shouldn't have let him do this way, Mamma Farley! Oh, feel my -hands! They're so cold!" Her eyes, large and dark, shone with a languid -and deliberate excitement. She wished that Alice were in the room to see -her. Wry thoughts of Laurence. Resentment in Winnie's mind was like grit -in something that otherwise would have moved oiled. - -"What must I do, Mamma Farley? Shall I go to the door?" Winnie wrung her -hands. - -"I think you ought to meet her first. She would like to speak to you -before the rest of us come in." - -"Oh, I can't! How can Laurence leave me like this?" - -Mrs. Farley, called on again to explain Laurence, made some meaningless -gestures--clasped and unclasped her hands. Her fingers, pressed hard as -they intertwined, made her knuckles glow white. - -"Now, dear! Now, dear!" - -"You _must_ go with me! I can't bear it if Papa says anything to me -about Laurence! What shall I do?" Winnie dragged Mrs. Farley across the -brightly swept parlor carpet and into the hall. - -May had already opened the front door. Mr. and Mrs. Price stood against -the light of the street, their faces in shadow. Behind them the coachman -was turning the carriage away. The footman sat very straight with his -arms folded. The wheel spokes flashed. The polished black sides -glistened. - -Mrs. Price's flat face was very white above her elegant black dress. -There were fine lines of strain under her pale eyes staring wide through -her delicate pince-nez. The nostrils of her flat nose quivered a little. -She had a thin narrow body and broad flat hips. She was breathing -quickly. On her drawn lips there was a labored smile. - -Mr. Price removed his beaver hat and revealed the top of his broad flat -head, bald and bright, above his hard eyes which were like cloudy stones -of pale blue. His thick under lip, thrust sullenly forward, showed -under his thin yellow-gray mustache. There was no color anywhere about -his face. Only under his chin where he had not shaved clean you might -detect his beard by a colorless shining. - -There was a moment of silence and hesitation. "Winnie!" Mrs. Price's -voice shook. "Mamma!" They lay in each other's arms. - -Mrs. Price's fragile hand moved uneasily over her daughter's hair. - -Mr. Price, gruff and uncomfortable, his face unmoved, said, "Where do I -come in?" - -Winnie reached out and patted her father's arm. He took her hand. She -kissed him, not wanting to. He made her think of herself. She wanted to -relax in joyous agony. Lifting her soft strange eyes to her mother, -Winnie was double, knowing, as before a mirror, how she looked. Sweet to -have people unkind when you could forgive them! - -But behind everything the recollection of Laurie intruded harshly. - -In the background Mrs. Farley stood uneasily, and May, afraid to enjoy -the family happiness, yet unable to leave, hopped from one foot to the -other with subdued exclamations, her face alternately blank with -confusion or atremble with response. - -"Don't cry, Winnie, dear. We are all so glad, Mrs. Farley." Mrs. Price -pushed Winnie gently aside and put out a frail hand, determined, though -it shook a little. Mrs. Farley's fingers were clumsy, fumbling for Mrs. -Price. Mr. Price shook hands in a fat abrupt fashion. They passed into -the house. - -"Not too much emotion. Not too much emotion," Mr. Price grumbled. May -retreated before him wonderingly. No one had noticed her. - -Then Winnie said, "This is May, Mother." - -They all stopped. May stopped inside herself. "Dear!" Mrs. Price had -kissed her. May knew the kiss to be stale, dry, with a bitter -middle-aged smell, and was ashamed of knowing. The dry bitter kiss drank -of May's coolness. She was dumb under the caress of the sick hand. - -The parlor was clean and gloomy. - -"Sit down, sit down," Mrs. Farley said. "I--we----" She was trembling -all over. She wept because of the rightness of things. "Such a glare!" -She tottered to the shade. Her silk dress rustled. - -"There, Mrs. Farley. We're all right. An experience like this is good -for all of us. Christ has taught us to forgive our enemies and when we -do I believe we never have cause to regret it." - -Mr. Price sat down awkwardly and coughed severely into his mustache. His -furtive gaze traveled malignantly about the shabby room. - -"How-d'ye-do, Mrs. Price? Mr. Price?" Alice walked heavily in among -them. Mrs. Price turned around, disconcerted. Their hands touched. Alice -seemed to take charge of things. Mrs. Price suddenly felt weak and was -obliged to seat herself. - -Winnie was annoyed. She went up to Alice plaintively. "Oh, I'm so happy, -Alice!" She wept. - -Alice was still, like a warm rock. "We're happy to see you happy." - -As Alice remained gruff and unmoved Winnie became more humble. "You -don't look like it. Please let me be happy, Alice. I can't if--if----" - -"Nonsense," Alice said. - -Winnie smiled mistily at everybody. - -"Come sit by me. I want to see my dear little girl." Mrs. Price disliked -Alice, who remained hard and kind while Winnie cried with happiness. -"You're not well, I know. Mrs. Farley wrote me. There, there. We must -begin to take better care of you." Mrs. Price pulled Winnie to her. -Winnie's eyes, rapacious with humility, were lifted again. - -Mr. Farley came in, casting a rapid glance around the group. His smile -was patient. Fear made him tired. - -"Well, well--we're so--Mrs. Price." He stopped before her, not sure that -she would shake hands with him. She gave him her finger tips and he took -them miserably. - -"Yes, I'm sure you all enjoy seeing Winnie happy," Mrs. Price said. She -was cold and kind. Mr. Farley knew what she was thinking of--Helen out -in Kansas City. They had spoken of the old scandal in objecting to -Winnie's marriage. - -"Mr. Price?" - -"Hello, Farley. Hello." Mr. Price got up reluctantly. His hand clasp was -a condescension. - -Mr. Farley had given his hand limply. His mouth bent with acceptance. -His smile was still tolerant but a little bitter, and he did not look -up. - -"Winnie comes first, Farley. Time to disagree about other things later." - -"I hope we are through with disagreements." - -"Yes, Farley, I hope we are. Ahem." - -Mr. Price sat down again abruptly. - -"I'm so happy, Papa Farley!" - -Winnie's eyes. He shuddered, trying not to see them, fearful that he -would forget to smile. "I'm glad you are, dear." - -Winnie clapped her hands and turned once more to her mother. "Bobby! You -haven't seen Bobby! Oh, he's the dearest----He's upstairs taking a nap." - -Alice stood defiantly in the center of the gloomy room, her feet apart, -her stout hips set out. "Want me to see if he's awake?" - -"Suppose we all go out and leave Winnie alone with her parents for a few -minutes," Mrs. Farley suggested, her voice quavering slightly. She -puckered her lips and frowned, smiling about her at the group. When she -stood up her gray taffeta dress settled slowly, with a calm sound, in -folds about her. The hem lay out on the carpet. She had a scrap of -yellow lace at her neck and above it in her withered loose skin you -could see the flutter of a pulse. - -"We certainly should," Alice said. - -"Why, that's very nice. I don't----" Mrs. Price looked around, -uncertain, well-bred. - -"Yes, yes. Come, May." Mrs. Farley took May's small cold hand, moist in -her dry one. Alice went first and Mr. Farley shuffled after the others, -head bent, smiling, not sure why they were going out. - -Mrs. Price had risen with her husband and stood, sad and calm, watching -them leave. Life had wrung her, but she had grown sure in compromise. -There was dignity in her sureness. - -"Well," said Mr. Price shortly, "I don't see that husband of yours -about!" - -Winnie started tremulously. She smiled at him with a relaxed mouth. -"Papa, dear, I know----" She gulped, still smiling. - -"Yes, I know. I know. I suppose he's run away from us." - -"He'll probably be in later, won't he, dear?" Mrs. Price's transparent -smile was a thin shield guarding Winnie from her father. - -Winnie tried to speak. Then she gave way and flung her white arms about -her mother's throat. "Oh, M-mother!" - -"There, there. I know." - -"Confound him!" said Mr. Price very savagely, biting his mustache. - -"Please, Perry!" - -"Oh, that's all right. That's all right. I'm not going to lose my -temper." - -"Don't cry, Winnie. Sweet Winnie." - -"What I want to know is whether that--whether he refused to meet us or -not?" Mr. Price asked. - -"Oh, Mother--Papa--I----" - -"Don't cry, Winnie. It's all right. Your father has resolved to overlook -things and if he can bring himself to do that about what has already -happened this last little rudeness certainly won't matter." - -"But he said he--he would come." - -"He did, eh? And then went out." - -"Now, Perry--please?" Replying to his wife's pale smile, Mr. Price -coughed ambiguously. - -"You need never be afraid of your father conducting himself in anything -but a generous manner, Winnie. I wish you might have been at church last -Sunday when he presented the new organ!" - -"I know, but----" - -"That's all very well, dear." Mrs. Price's voice had a disappearing -quality. It floated and drifted from her lips and her words died away -from her like the shed petals of a flower. - -"I want--I want you and Papa to let me be happy! I--I----Sometimes I -think nobody's happy. Mamma and Papa Farley are not. I----" - -Above Winnie's bowed head Mr. and Mrs. Price exchanged glances. - -"They don't deserve to be!" Mr. Price snorted after a minute. - -Winnie glanced up. Mrs. Price's face twitched with worry. - -"Now, Perry, dear, please? Remember! We decided not to speak of that -again." She nodded toward the closed door of the hall. "I suppose by now -you have heard all about Mamma and Papa Farley, Winnie--all the things -that worried your father so, that he tried to tell you about when you -and Laurence ran away--but living here with them as you are, I think it -best for us to try to forget it. Mrs. Farley is a very long-suffering -woman and has borne her lot very patiently." - -Winnie wanted to ask more. She hid her face again. Once Laurie---- - -"Laurence never talks of it, and you know before, when Papa tried to -tell me, how it was--you wouldn't let him. What was it, Mamma?" - -"Do we need to talk about it, dear?" Mrs. Price stroked Winnie's hair. - -"It was the talk about the town. I don't see why she shouldn't hear it! -I wanted her to know it all before so that she could understand my -objection to such a match." - -"But we never understood clearly how it was ourselves, Perry. You know -when Winnie was married and you wanted to tell her I thought it was no -fit topic for a young girl. I said----" - -"Yes, I know you _said_, but if she had known all about the thing from -the start she might have made a better match for herself. At any rate, -she's old enough to hear things now." - -Winnie looked up and stood away from her mother. "Please, Papa, -Laurie----" - -"Yes, Perry, it isn't right to Winnie. We mustn't feel this way about -her husband." - -Winnie's little face was hard and a small soft fire of malice burned in -her eyes. Though she resented Laurence, she was with him against her -parents. She would have exulted in making them feel his inexorableness. -Because he was strong against them she seemed to feel herself inside his -strength, corroding it with her weakness. Mingled with her desire to -swallow her world was a vague terror of her loneliness when it should -happen. - -"Well, that's all right, Vivien. I'll say nothing about her husband, but -that father-in-law of hers----It seems to me the more she knows about -him the better!" - -"Perry, but in their house!" Mrs. Price was weary. Her smile seemed to -hurt her. Her white hands shook. - -Winnie was drawn up taut, cautious like a savage on a spoor. - -"Perhaps Father ought to tell me all of it," she said. - -"But not now! Not here! You said you knew----" - -"I did know there was some reason Mamma and Papa Farley didn't get -along. I knew there was a woman----" - -"Yes! That miserable woman he was entangled with in that filthy affair. -I don't remember whether I told you that he tried to leave Mrs. Farley -and live with her. Helen--Wilson--something--Mrs. Wilson. The husband -had him up as co-respondent. Then they discovered she was going to have -a child." Mr. Price spoke gruffly and hurriedly in a low voice and -chewed his mustache. - -Winnie trembled with excitement. Mamma and Papa Farley. Laurie. She felt -crafty and sure of herself. Why had Laurie never told her all of this? -He did not like to have her speak of it. - -"Perry, we can not! We must not! For Winnie's sake!" - -"Did Papa Farley and the woman have the child, Papa?" - -"Oh, Winnie," Mrs. Price protested, "how can you ask such things!" - -Mr. Price, hands in pockets, rose on his toes and sucked his mustache in -and out. - -"They committed every sin which the flesh has been heir to since the -fall of man, so I suppose they had a child too." - -"You don't know?" - -"I have it on very good authority that they did." - -"The child, of course, was spirited away." - -"And where did the woman go?" - -"Out West. To Kansas or Texas. Something." Still he rose on his toes. -The flavor of his mustache seemed to give him a peculiar relish. - -"Oh, Papa, how awful! I didn't know it was as bad as that." Winnie -dilated with her secret. A quick passionate resolution of triumph shot -through her. Her eyes shone tragically. - -"Winnie--my dear--you are in no state to hear things like this," Mrs. -Price said. There was a light knock at the door. "Psh!" - -Mr. Price started a little, but continued to elevate and lower himself -on his toes and stare at the ceiling. Winnie clutched her hands to her -breast. - -"Come in." Mrs. Price lifted her trembling voice. - -Alice's face in the doorway. None of them could look at her. Winnie met -the face at last. - -"Bobby's awake." - -"Isn't that nice. Now I will see the dear baby." - -"Yes, Mother. Come, Father." Winnie, with a high dreamy expression of -conscious pain, followed Alice out. - - * * * * * - -The bedroom, dark, cluttered by too great an attempt at coziness, had -grown a little shabby. The yellow shades were drawn under the lace -curtains. The blue carpet showed here and there a warp of colorless -cords. On the sofa the velvet and plush pillows were embroidered with -mottos and flowers. There were a heavy bureau, an old-fashioned bed, and -Bobby's crib. May slept in the nursery across the hall. - -Bobby, his eyes still opaque with sleep, sat upright in bed, a dreamy -look of disapprobation on his face. - -Mrs. Price could say nothing for a moment, then, "How lovely! How -lovely! What a beautiful healthy child!" - -Winnie caught him in her arms. - -Mrs. Farley moved forward, feebly shocked. "He's too heavy! Oh, you -mustn't do that, Winnie!" - -Winnie turned and gave him to her mother. Bobby's fat body was sodden -and relaxed in his grandmother's arms. Mrs. Price's resigned hands moved -over him agitatedly. "He's so beautiful!" Feeling ashamed, she knew not -why, she kissed him. "Look, Perry!" - -"Fine boy," said Mr. Price. - -Winnie danced about. "I knew you'd think so." - -Mr. Farley waited sheepishly, approving with his patience. - -"We're all proud of him," said Alice shortly. Mrs. Price glanced up with -a start. "He's a fine grandson," she declared after a minute. There was -something defiant in the way she stroked his hair, but she remained very -gentle and ladylike. - -May stood to one side, quivering. She wanted them to see her but, for -fear they might send her away, kept very quiet. When Bobby did not want -to be petted she was uncomfortable and when he liked it she was happy -too. - - * * * * * - -Laurence had come into the house and, finding the lower floor deserted, -had gone upstairs. He stood in the bedroom doorway. Winnie saw him -first. She was disconcerted for a moment. A little shiver of excitement -went through her. But she recovered herself as she gazed at him and felt -small and strong. - -"Laurie!" She made a cooing sound of pleasure. She turned to her mother. -"Oh, Mamma, I want you and Laurie to hug!" - -Mrs. Price's face was stained with faint color. She grew brittle and -tense in her uncertainty. Holding Bobby on her arm, she put her hand -out. It was as if she put her hand between herself and Laurence. "I hope -we both love Winnie enough to overlook things," she said. - -"I hope so, Mrs. Price," he agreed, coming forward, his lids drooping as -if to shut out the painful sight of them all. He smiled in shame. They -shook hands. - -"Now, Papa!" Winnie led her father forward by his coat sleeve. - -"How-d'ye-do, Farley? How-d'ye-do?" Mr. Price was bluff and reluctant. -Their hands barely touched. Laurence kept his glance on the carpet. - -"Now I am so happy!" Winnie clung to her husband's arm. Her softness -sank into him. He felt that if he lived he must harden himself against -it. When she finally freed him he drew a deep unconscious breath. Then -he forced his somber eyes full on Mrs. Price's face. "I am thankful, for -Winnie's sake, that you and Mr. Price made up your minds to this," he -said. - -"We won't reproach ourselves with the past, Mr. Farley," Mr. Price -interrupted. He would not allow his wife to be addressed in lieu of -himself. - -"I've never reproached myself, Mr. Price," Laurence answered coldly. -Still he looked away. - -"I don't doubt it, Mr. Laurence Farley! I don't doubt it!" Mr. Price's -manner was full of secret scorn. He rocked on his toes and sucked his -mustache ends again. - -"The babies are dears," Mrs. Price said. "Bobby is wonderful." - -Laurence regarded Bobby. "Sit up. Hold your head up. Don't act as though -you were half asleep." - -"Don't be cross with him, Laurie!" Winnie pouted. Laurence was torn. He -must refuse to praise Bobby as the Prices praised him. Laurence felt -that he could not protect his child against the approbation of his -enemies. May sidled up to her father. When she touched him he did not -look down at her, but put his arm about her. He held his shame of her -close in his heart like a wound that he would not let be seen. He -stroked her hair. - -"Bobby is too heavy for you, Mrs. Price," Mrs. Farley protested, coming -forward with an air of furtive protest. - -"No, no!" Mrs. Price, exaggeratedly polite, held him closer and smiled. -The smile made Mrs. Farley helpless. Mrs. Price knew it. - -Mr. Farley had been outside the group. Now he moved nearer Mrs. Price -and, leaning forward, shook Bobby's inert fist. "You like your old -grandad, eh? You like your old grandad?" - -Bobby scowled on them all and put his thumb to his mouth. - -"What did I tell you about sucking your thumb?" Laurence demanded -sternly. - -Winnie's sweet eyes, covert with knowledge, gloated on her husband's -face. "Don't be cross to him, Laurie, when everything's so nice." - -"Stop sucking your thumb." Laurence took Bobby's thumb down from his -mouth. - -"For Heaven's sake, leave him alone. You'll nag him to death. All this -ohing and ahing is enough to drive him to something worse than sucking -his thumb," Alice said shortly. - -Laurence gave her a swift contemptuous glance of anger, but controlled -himself. "That's a good boy," he said more kindly as Bobby lifted -himself straighter and stared around. - -"Oh, everything's so nice! I was so afraid it wouldn't be!" Winnie -sighed again with happiness. Laurence passed his hand over his eyes, the -delicate hand that, below the coarse sleeve of his coat, was like the -revelation of a secret. - -"You didn't think your husband was going to refuse to shake hands with -me, I hope?" Mr. Price demanded. His unsmiling joviality was terrifying. -No one could ever say exactly when he became serious and he was -perfectly aware of the tremors of uncertainty that stirred in his -hearers. He enjoyed disturbing them. - -"We are exercising mutual forbearance," Laurence put in quietly. In the -irritation of Mr. Price's presence something was slipping from -Laurence's grasp. It was only half-heartedly that he continued to hold -himself. - -"Forbearance toward me! I hope you don't think I want you to exercise -forbearance toward my religious views, young man! Has he come to his -senses since you married him, Winnie?" - -Winnie smiled feebly. Laurence looked at the floor. His lip twitched. - -Mr. Price seemed to wish to drown out the echo of his words in the ears -of those present and began to talk fiercely to Bobby. "Fine child. -Father not going to raise you up to be a prizefighter, is he? Wouldn't -surprise me. I hope your mother'll bring you up as a Godfearing man. She -mustn't leave your education regarding the next world to your father. -You'd better take him in hand, Winnie." He stared at his daughter with -his vague hard eyes. - -Laurence felt his parenthood raped. "Winnie and I have come to a perfect -understanding regarding Bobby's education," he sneered. - -Mr. Price glanced up at Laurence. "Have, eh? Ain't you an atheist? Last -time I talked with you, didn't you tell me you were an atheist?" - -"I did, Mr. Price. I'm afraid I am deficient in tact." Smiling, Laurence -lifted eyes in which the light of hate was drawn inward toward some -obscure point of agony. - -Mrs. Price set Bobby on the floor. His legs were stiff with being held -and he made a few steps away from her uncertainly like a drunkard. "The -dear child!" she murmured uneasily. Her quiet smile was over her face -like the still surface of a pool filled underneath with little -frightened fish. - -"Tact, eh?" Mr. Price was not sure what the remark meant, but, to give -himself time, permitted a knowing twinkle to creep into his eyes. He -rose on his toes. "If you'll leave off trying to set up science in the -place of God we'll overlook your lack of tact," he conceded finally. - -Laurence bit his lips. He assumed an irritating air of indulgent -amusement. It was irresistible. He dared not look at Winnie. "I've sworn -to preserve a reverential silence in regard to all of your pet -fallacies, Mr. Price." - -"My pet fallacies, eh! The years haven't taught you respect for the -opinions of your betters, then?" - -"I've never met them," Laurence said. Mr. Farley coughed. Mrs. Price had -called Bobby back and was talking to him in a low tone, very intently. -Mrs. Farley talked to Bobby too. Alice made with her tongue a clicking -sound of impatience. Laurence had moved away from May. She watched the -men in controversy. Her mouth hung stupidly open. She had a shivering -white face and her eyes were all pupil. She looked as though she had -drowned herself in the darkness of her own eyes. - -"Please, you two!" Winnie laced and unlaced her fingers. - -"You haven't? You know when you're in the wrong, do you?" - -"On the rare occasions when that happens," Laurence said with an -ostentatious affectation of good humor. - -"And you haven't found out yet that you're committing a sin when you set -yourself up in opposition to Divine Truth! You're very complaisant, -young man! Very complaisant! But I'll tell you that Natural Science is -out of date. The Darwinists and Haeckelists and the rest of the dirty -crew have to come crawling back to the Creator they denied, with their -tails between their legs." - -"You're making a dangerous admission in acknowledging such an appendage, -Mr. Price." Smiling at the floor, Laurence reached out and drew May to -him again. He defied them with his loyalty to her. - -"Am I? The devil had a tail before he ever heard of Darwin, seems to -me!" Mr. Price was still uneasy, but swelled a little with the readiness -of his retort. - -"Laurie!" Winnie patted Laurence's sleeve, her voice humble. - -The humility in her voice inferred something in him which outraged his -self-respect. "And I haven't a doubt that as in the present case the -ass had ears!" he said sharply. - -Winnie began to cry. - -"I'll go, Winnie," he told her. It was inevitable. He had been that way -before with Mr. Price. His hand fell from May's shoulder. He walked out. -In the silence the group could hear the thick beat of his feet as he -descended the carpeted stairs, and the reverberation of the front door -which he slammed as he passed into the street. - -Mr. Price's face was a dull red. He puffed out his cheeks. "That's what -it comes to!" He shrugged his shoulders unutterably and turned with a -gesture of departure and dismissal. - -"Please don't go, Father!" - -Mrs. Farley was wringing her hands. As May watched she seemed to be -weeping from her own eyes her mother's tears. - -"For Heaven's sake, don't take Laurence seriously, Mr. Price," said -Alice. - -Mr. Price lifted both hands with the palms out. "I don't! I don't! God -forbid that any one should take that foolhardy blasphemy seriously." - -Mr. Farley passed his hand over his face as though to brush away a -cloud. His eyes were uneasy, his smile one of apology. "Laurence will -regret it as soon as he is in the street." - -"Regret! Regret's not the right emotion to recall that kind of talk. I -take no account of what he said to me, but no one can go about in -contempt of the God who made him and not suffer for it." - -"I know----" Mr. Farley hesitated. His lips quivered a little. - -"Oh, I knew I couldn't be happy!" sobbed Winnie. - -Mrs. Price took her daughter in her arms. "Now, dear, your father has -made up his mind to be forbearing. He won't go back on his word." - -"No, I won't go back on my word, but I don't know whether I can ever -bring myself to the point of coming into this house again. Not when that -man's here." - -"You oughtn't to take Laurence seriously, Mr. Price," Alice repeated. "I -think we ought to forget about him and not spoil Winnie's day." - -"I can't forget about him, Alice!" Winnie lifted her head indignantly -from her mother's shoulder. Deep in her imagination Winnie, in a lace -nightdress, was putting her arms about Laurie's neck. Her veins swelled -strong and taut with confidence. She resented the injustice of being -forced to choose between Laurence and her parents. Because of other -things she could not forgive she would pardon him the day's scene, but -she would not pardon her parents yet. - -"It's all right, dear. Miss Farley don't mean that. She only wants us to -forget the things your husband said to your father and I think that is -exactly right. After he considers it I am sure he will come to the -conclusion that he acted wrongly and be sorry too." - -"I've had so much trouble," Winnie went on. - -"Come, Bobby, let us all go downstairs and play games and help Mamma to -forget her troubles." Alice jerked Bobby's hand. Leaning on her mother, -Winnie followed. Mrs. Farley, her eyes red-rimmed with unshed tears of -perplexity, shambled after, her dress rustling and disturbing her desire -for self-effacement. Mr. Farley descended the stairs with finger tips -gliding along the rail, smiling the abased smile of a blind man. May, -hesitating on each step, dragged unnoticed a long way behind. - - * * * * * - -In the early morning the cloudy air had a texture like wet wool. The sky -radiated colorless heat like a pool of warm water which one saw into -from the depths. Work had not yet begun on the corner house, but in -front of it dangled platforms suspended from pulleys. The vacant windows -smeared with paint gave the house the look of a silly face smeared with -weeping, an expression of tortured immobility. - -Alice, on her way to work, had just emerged from her front doorway. As -she descended to the street she watched ahead of her a tall, very thin -woman in a worn silk blouse and an old skirt that still smacked of an -ultra mode. The woman dragged beside her a very little boy in tight -pants and a gay shirt. The little boy, swinging by her hand, leaned -heavily away from her to pull a small red wooden wagon after him. - -When the woman turned her head Alice saw her bright blonde hair combed -in glossy and salient puffs, a cheap and unconscious defiance above her -wasted face and her breasts, sucked dry on her flat body. - -Alice walked after her. Life. Thinking of money. In the hot bed they -touched each other. Rent due. The child began to cry. - -Old maid barricaded behind ridicule. Coolness of being outside. -Loneliness like a cool wound. - -The woman went on. Taller, narrower in distance, with her long limbs and -graceful stoop she resembled a sculptured angel. Tomb. Apartment. The -woman walked before Alice into a narrow marble doorway. The stone rolled -back and the angel went into the tomb. Haggard and bitter face. A little -rouge put on carelessly. Despair. No one knows why. - - * * * * * - -Laurence had come in during the night and gone to sleep on the box couch -without disturbing Winnie. In the morning she was the first to awaken. - -It had rained before dawn. The hot sun floated outside the window in -voluptuous mists. The white curtains seemed stained with the -pinkish-brown light. They swayed and parted and between their folds the -moist air flowed heavily from the steaming street. - -Winnie could hear the staccato tap of a hammer on the house next door. -Horses' hoofs rang on the asphalt with a flat sound. - -The curtains opened like lips and made a whispering noise. Then Winnie -could see the wet bronze roof opposite shining blankly against the faint -bright sky. - -The room was crowded with the atmosphere of two people who have -quarreled. They were oppressed by their consciousness of each other. -Through the darkness of his shut lids Laurence, only feigning sleep, -tried to ascend above the close room and his almost intolerable -awareness of Winnie's presence. - -She had seen his lids flutter. Tired and sweet, she regarded him -mercilessly. She could see how tense the lines of his body were under -the couch cover he had drawn up over his feet. His lids, pressed tight -together, twitched a little. - -"Laurie!" - -With a helpless feeling, he opened his eyes. - -Winnie's heart beat combatively, triumphantly. "I've been lying here -looking at you," she said, her plaintive pout begging him to infer -everything. "Bobby's still asleep." - -Bobby lay in his little bed relaxed like a drowned child. His lips were -pale. His face damp with the heat. His shock of blonde hair fell back on -the pillow away from his head. Winnie, beside her big baby, abandoned -herself to a sense of dependence which she felt him to justify. - -"Yes? I must have slept very hard." In an effort to hide his surprise -Laurence responded quickly to her overture. He sat up, smiling -elaborately, and began rubbing his eyes. - -Winnie would not let him escape through such casualness. "Are you still -angry with me, Laurie?" She lifted herself among the pillows and rested -on one elbow. There was a terrible youngness about her soft, hungrily -uplifted face, her thin neck, the collar bones showing below her white -throat. Her eagerness was too vivid. He was conscious of her rapacious -youth. It made him tired. Youth demanding of him life and more life. -Winnie was ill, but there was no rest for them even in her pain. He felt -old and afraid of her, as though he would never be able to get up from -the couch. - -"Angry with you? Was I angry with you?" He covered his eyes. His lips, -smiling below his fingers, were deprecating. He stood up slowly and -lifted his trousers from a chair. He felt ridiculous to himself putting -them on. - -"Laurie? Please? Don't be angry with me for wanting to see Mamma!" - -He was hurt without knowing how she hurt him. - -"Please kiss me, Laurie, dear! Don't be angry! I can't bear to have you -angry with me!" Her eyes, strangely defenseless, opened softly to his. -Their softness enveloped him and drew him down against the harsh little -sparks of reserve that burnt in their depths. - -"Kiss you?" he said. He took her fingers in his and kissed them. His -lips were grudging. He still smiled. "Don't accuse me of being angry -with you, Winnie. I want you to have your mother back." - -"But I want you, too. Kiss me! _Really!_ Not like that." - -He leaned forward and his lips brushed hers. But she would not let him -go. She was so slight, pulling him down, that he could not resist her. -She pressed her mouth hard against his face. - -"Don't be angry with me." - -"I'm not angry--wasn't angry." Each word was a little shake to loosen -himself from her. - -"You won't talk to Papa that way again?" - -"I won't give myself the opportunity. I won't see him again." - -"Oh, Laurie!" - -He withdrew above her, making himself paternal. "You must be sensible -about this thing, Winnie. It's all right. I want you to see and be with -your parents. If I avoid them it will be only for your sake. You're not -well, Winnie. You're a little unreasonable." - -"I can't bear being sick! Oh, Laurie, I won't be operated on! I can't -bear it!" Her voice was passionate. She shrank, looking smaller among -the big pillows. He pushed her into the limbo of invalidism. She did not -know how to get out. His kindness was a wall between them. - -He smoothed her hair. She was crushed under his tolerant hand smoothing -away curls from her tear-wet face. "Shall I tell Mamma Farley you are -ready for your breakfast?" - -She gazed at him. Her eyes hurt him. They stabbed him through the -silence she made. "Laurie, I think we are going to be so happy and then -all at once when you talk about my being sick you seem so far away. You -do love me?" She clung to his arm. - -"Of course." - -"Then kiss me again." He kissed her. Her terrible hunger hurt and -confused him. He would rather not have seen her thin throat that -suggested a young swan's, her pointed chin, her eyes, and the reddish -hair which had slipped in confusion about her shoulders. The room, -filled with her knick-knacks, choked him--her clothes on a chair, some -soiled satin slippers, the mirror from which she seemed always to -shine, her child asleep--hers and his together. He could not explain -himself--felt that he was growing hard. He was ashamed of not loving her -enough. Ashamed of the strength it gave him to know that he was not for -her--now--that her health was keeping them apart. - -"I want us to be happier than anybody, Laurie! Your father--you never -talk to me about it! That woman out West who had a child by him! It's -so--so terrible!" She felt his resentment of her persistent reference to -it. There was something drunken in her which made her sling out words -that were not wanted. She regretted a little this waste of her hoarded -knowledge, but at the same time she was glad. He did not want to talk of -it. She felt injured because he did not want to talk to her of it. She -leaned against him. The tears ran from her blind uplifted eyes. - -"That's nonsense, Winnie. What have we to do with them? I want you to be -happy, too." He sat down beside her. She felt hopeless, as though she -had lost him. - -"Not just me, Laurie. Both of us." - -"Of course. Both of us." - -She was crushed. "You didn't know I knew all about your father, Laurie." - -"No. I never told you the details, because it didn't seem worth while." - -"You never tell me anything--not about yourself--or anything." - -"I didn't think I could tell you anything about myself you didn't know -already." - -"Don't joke! I want you to love me." - -"I do love you." - -She was tired. She buried her face in the pillows. He rose from the bed -and put on the rest of his clothes, but when he said good-by to her she -would not answer him. He outraged the essence of her sex. She was weak. -She wanted him to be weaker than she. She felt that he owed it to her. -It was a crumb from his strength, she felt, to be weak to her who had to -be weak to the whole world. She would not forgive him. - - * * * * * - -Laurence went out of the room, out of the house. A pale fiery mist rose -up from between the houses and filled the wet morning street. The houses -with lowered blinds were secret and filled with women. Girls going to -work came out of the houses like the words of women. Women going to -market passed slowly before him with their baskets. Pregnant women -walked before him in confidence. The uncolored atmosphere threw back the -sky. It was the mirror of women. Laurence felt crowded between the -bodies of women and houses. He walked quickly with his head bent. - -On the concrete pavements, washed white as bones by the storm of the -night before, were rust-colored puddles. Dark and still, they quivered -now and again, like quiet minds touched by the horror of a recollection. -The reflections of the houses lay deep in them, shattered, like dead -things. - - * * * * * - -Mrs. Farley stumbled up the dark stairway. Her knotted fingers with -their tight-stretched skin kept a tense and fearful grasp on the -scratched rim of the lacquered tray. On the clean frayed napkin she had -put one of her best plates and on it rested a bloody peach and a dull -bright knife. The peach, balanced uncertainly, rolled a little as Mrs. -Farley moved. The knife clinked. Black coffee beaded with gold turned to -saffron when it poured over into the saucer. The toast, burnt a little -along the edges, slid back and forth in the napkin which enfolded it. - -She stopped before Winnie's room. "Winnie!" Her voice sounded cracked -with fatigue. With the tip of her black slipper, which was rough and -gray with wear, she pushed the door back. The room opened bright before -her. Her smile grew hard and solicitous. - -Winnie sat up straight among the creased pillows against the dark old -headboard. Her eyes were red. She smiled, too, and was consciously -brave. - -"Good morning, Mamma Farley! See how you have worked for poor little -no-account me! Put the tray down and let me kiss you." - -"Bobby isn't awake?" Mrs. Farley asked, embarrassed by her own pleasure -as she pressed bitter and grateful lips to Winnie's firm cheek. - -"Are you glad I was happy yesterday?" - -"I hope you are happy today. You know how glad we all were." - -"I want to be happy, Mamma Farley." - -"And you will be, Winnie." Mrs. Farley set the tray shakily on the -tossed bed clothes. - -"You, too, Mamma Farley, dear. I want you to be happy, too." Winnie held -out a small inexorable hand, and Mrs. Farley, unable to behave -otherwise, took it. Winnie squeezed her mother-in-law's fingers. "I know -you haven't always been happy, Mamma, dear." Winnie's dim eyes were -lustful with pity. Mrs. Farley was frightened. Her hand trembled and she -tried to pull back and resist the invitation of sympathy. "Papa Farley -ought to love you more than anybody in the world!" Winnie asserted, -passionately tender. - -Mrs. Farley was shaken. Who's been talking to Winnie? She pressed her -lips quiveringly shut. Her eyeglasses twinkled and shuddered with her -heaving breast. Winnie felt herself strong with a love that nothing -could resist. Exultant, she gloated inwardly over the knotted hand that -trembled in her grasp. - -"Your parents--I don't know--we won't talk about old people's troubles, -Winnie." Mrs. Farley was recovering herself. Perhaps Winnie didn't mean -that. "I suppose Papa Farley loves me in his way just as you love me in -yours." - -Winnie would not let her go. "You stand up for him. You're so good to -him," she insisted with a kind of worshiping commiseration. - -"Why shouldn't I be?" Mrs. Farley dared, trying to smile while she -frowned, her evasive eyes shifting a little. - -"Because he don't deserve it! Because he did what he did. Oh, Mamma -Farley, I know you don't want me to talk about it, but I can't help it. -I love you so. You're so wonderful to me!" Winnie's eyes shone, -mercilessly sweet, into the hunted eyes of the elder woman. - -"I don't know what you mean, Winnie." - -They looked at each other. Mamma Farley could not look. She picked at -the sheet. - -"You dear! You dear!" Winnie hugged her. She was crying. - -Again they leaned apart and regarded one another. Mrs. Farley's -inflamed, withered eyelids twitched. - -"Do you think Laurence really loves me? I'm so afraid!" Winnie said -suddenly. - -"Of course, Winnie." - -"Oh, Mamma Farley, I want to be happy. I couldn't bear it if -Laurence----" She buried her face in Mamma Farley's dress. Mrs. Farley -stroked her hair. - -"We're all foolish when we're young, but God is good to us. When we grow -old we can have a little peace. But you're young enough--even for the -kind of thing you want." Her pale mouth had a shriveled look of -bitterness. "Love between men and women--the love you are thinking -about--is not much in life, Winnie." - -"But I couldn't bear not to have--not to have anybody love me." - -"Look in the mirror. They'll love you." Mrs. Farley's eyes in her wet, -wrinkled face were hard with contempt under the seared granuled lids. - -Winnie, lying back, gloated over the thin white hair, the lined flaccid -cheeks, and the eyes that glowed with weeping. Winnie swam in the -strength of love like a swimmer sure of himself in trusted waters. She -was grateful to the age and ugliness which did not claim her. - -Mrs. Farley did not want Winnie to gaze at her any more. "Look! Bobby's -awake," she said. - -Winnie was satisfied and ready to be glad of Bobby, too. - -The child sat up drunkenly. His touseled hair, matted with sweat, lay -dark on his brow. His eyelids were pale and swollen with sleep. He -rubbed them with his fists. - -"Children are the surest happiness," Mrs. Farley said. - -Winnie was oppressed. "I'm so afraid of being sick, Mamma Farley." - -"You'll soon be well, I hope." Mrs. Farley had an air of resolution and -dismissal. She went squinting to the crib. "My, what a sleepy boy!" - -Laurie. Love. Children. Winnie had a terrible sense that she was losing -some unknown thing which was precious and belonged to her but of which -she was afraid. - -"His night drawers are too small. His grandmother'll have to make him -some. There's some nice stuff at that store next to the bakery." - -They talked of shops. The atmosphere of the room seemed to lift with the -lightness and sureness of their talk. They were safe and at rest among -unchanging irrelevances. Women knew best the sureness of trifles. These -were the things which did not change--which men could not change. - - * * * * * - -Late afternoon. There was no sun. Below the blank gray sky, the long -blank street. Along the street a pair of sleek and ponderous black -horses, with thick manes and shaggy fetlocks, plodded before a loaded -dray. Their bodies rocked and swayed tensely with strain. Their huge -feet clattered and strove against the asphalt. The hands of the driver, -red, with full, knotted veins, hung loose between his knees, holding the -slack reins. His body, in a khaki shirt, was hunched forward miserably. -From his fat stupid face his eyes glanced dully under a bare thatch of -neutral tinted hair. Only the horses, purposeful and immense in their -obedience, seemed to understand. - -In the gutter a street-sweeper, mild and tired, pushed dry ocher-colored -manure into heaps. Again and again he stooped and lifted the shovel and -the manure fell into a cart. He wore ragged white gloves too large for -him. He was patient, but his gaze roamed, vague with speculation. -Servant of the horses that dirtied the street, he was less sure than -they. - -At the corner house work was over for the day. The abandoned platforms -of the painters dangled loosely on the long ropes. Through the smeared -window-panes you saw empty rooms blank as the faces of idiot women -waiting for love. - -Alice walked slowly home from work. She saw her own windows where the -awnings did not stir. Drooping, they cast their scalloped outlines -vaguely into the depths of the shadow-silvered glass. May was on the -front step. - -"Hello, May." Aunt Alice's voice, very gruff. - -May sucked her finger and ducked her head sidewise, smiling. Her finger -slipped out of her mouth with a plop. She put it back between her wet -lips. - -"Coming in?" Aunt Alice held the door back. May went after her into the -hall that was full of the smell of baking bread. Aunt Alice threw off -her hat and walked, heavy-footed, into the living-room. May trailed -after her in limp timidity. - -Winnie, in her lilac neglige, sat in an armchair. "Oh, Alice. I've been -talking to the doctor again and he's so horrid. He says I should have -been operated on right after Bobby was born and now I'm getting worse." - -Alice stood beside the chair and stared down. "Doctors like to croak." - -Winnie reached up and clutched Alice's square dark hand. Winnie's white -fingers were little claws digging into Alice's swarthy flesh. "Say I -don't have to! I can't, Alice! I can't!" - -"Well, I certainly wouldn't until I got into better shape nervously than -you are now." - -"Mother wants me to go away with her and I don't dare. I know it would -do me good but I don't dare, Alice." Winnie half sobbed. - -"Don't dare? What rot! Why shouldn't you dare?" - -"Laurie will hate me if I go off with Mother! It doesn't matter how sick -I am, he will hate me!" - -"Winnie, you're talking the most unmitigated nonsense." - -"I'm not, Alice. You don't know. He can't forgive me for wanting to be -kind to Mother." - -"I haven't noticed any signs of unforgiveness on his part. I admit he -acted like a fool on Sunday but I suppose he can't be blamed. Your -father's not the easiest person in the world to get on with, himself." - -"I know, but you don't understand. Sometimes I think Laurie hates me for -being sick. He don't love me any more! I know he don't." - -"Laurence hate you for being sick! Good God!" Then Alice added, "You -shouldn't talk this way before May, Winnie." - -Winnie had her eyes shut. She made a gesture away with her hands. "Go -out, May." - -May moved into a shadow by the door, but she did not go out. - -"I can't bear being sick. It m-m-makes me so old. Papa Farley--that time -Papa Farley--that woman. They had a child, M-m-mother told me. Oh, do -you suppose Laurence will do like that?" - -"Like what?" Alice's voice was sharp--almost threatening--with distrust. - -Winnie kept her eyes shut and wrung her hands. "I thought you knew all -about it, Alice." - -"About what?" - -"Don't act as though you couldn't forgive me! That woman out -West--and--and your father started to get a divorce and gave it up. I'm -so afraid Laurence won't love me any more!" - -Alice knew that her parents had had some trouble. It was the year she -was away at school. She had heard fragments--allusions. Now she felt -strange. She wanted to hear more but could not--not from Winnie's lips. -Alice's coarsely fine face burnt bronze with shame. Her sad eyes of -thick brown searched Winnie's evasive features distrustfully. "You -mustn't talk about this, Winnie," Alice said. "In the first place it has -nothing to do with Laurence. You know as well as I do that Laurence -cares for nobody but you and never will. I don't believe he feels hard -toward you because you want to see your mother." - -"Now you're angry with me?" - -"I'm not. I'm going upstairs to wash and brush. You cut out this morbid -nonsense, Winnie." Alice smiled a hard, kind, dismissing smile, and -turned away, walking briskly out with her firm, awkward stride. - -May edged out of the shadow and came nearer her mother. It was half dark -in the room. Winnie sniffed, oblivious to May. May came and stood very -near. She reached over and passed a hesitant hand along the arm of her -mother's chair. - -Winnie started. May drew back and stood teetering on one foot, her face -alternately dark and smiling. "Oh, May, I t-told you to go out." - -May hung her head. A sort of shiver like the shimmer of water passed -over her pale, uneasy face. She wanted to go toward her mother. Wanted -almost unendurably to go. But something in her mother held her off. May -was in torment between the two impulses which possessed her equally. - -Winnie wiped her eyes. "Come here," she said at last. May went forward, -smiling, trembling, half released. "You love me, May?" - -May could not speak. She choked with affirmation. Her face was in -Winnie's warm neck. May lost herself in the warm throat and the soft -hair. If she did not have to see her mother's eyes it was well. May had -a terror of eyes. They made her know things about herself which she -could not bear. Sharp looks splintered her consciousness. - -Winnie, overcoming a shudder, admitted the caress. "You'll always love -Mother, won't you?" - - * * * * * - -After the evening meal Mr. Farley took a newspaper into the living-room. -There he sat by the lamp with the green shade. Through the still room -the light, concentrated under the lamp shade, rushed to the carpet. On -the way it spread, glistening, over the oak table, and brightened -one-half of Mr. Farley's face. The newspaper in his hands was glassy -with light. The print looked gray. - -The rain that made the air sharp had not yet fallen and the dim curtains -against the open windows shook now and then as with sudden palpitant -breaths. - -Alice walked about the room nervously. Several times she went to the -window and glanced out. When she pulled the curtain back her father's -newspaper flapped against his hand, but he showed no impatience. - -Alice came and stood before his chair. "Come go for a walk with me!" - -"Walk?" He looked up at her. He was vaguely patient and smiling a -little. "Isn't it raining?" - -"No. Come along." Alice took his arm. He folded his paper carefully and -placed it on the table. Then, stiff and heavy in his movements, he got -up. - -Alice dragged him into the hall and he took his hat down. "You ought to -have something over your head," he said to her. - -"Rubbish! It's summer. Come on." - -Alice flung the front door wide. The wind took their breaths for a -second. He stumbled a little as he followed her down the steps and into -the empty street. Overhead the moon, a lurid yellow, scudded between -transparent black clouds. - -"It's too stormy to walk. We mustn't go far or the rain will catch us." - -"It won't yet awhile. I had to get out of that house." Alice linked her -arm in his. She could feel his discomfort in her talk as though it came -through her sleeve against him. - -"I'm sorry to hear you talk about your home like that, Alice." Mr. -Farley sounded hurt. - -"Who wouldn't! I loathe Mamma--that's all." - -Mr. Farley's arm quivered where it brushed Alice's shoulder. "You're -unjust to her. She's done the best she can for you." - -"Has she! Well, my God, she couldn't have done worse." - -"I don't think you're just to her." - -They walked on. Alice's heavy skirt beat her ankles above her stout -shoes. Mr. Farley's coat-tails flapped. Paper rustled in the gutter. - -"You make me sick about being just to Mamma," Alice said almost -tenderly. "Whom was she ever just to? What about being just to -yourself?" - -"We can't ask too much for ourselves in this life," Mr. Farley said -soberly. - -"Bosh! I wish to Heaven you had left her that time when you wanted to!" - -Mr. Farley was shocked. Alice had never spoken to him like this. His arm -quivered more than ever. Unable to reply to her for the moment, he was a -dung-beetle, rolling his astonishment over and over and making it ready -for speech. - -"I hardly know how to answer you, Alice. I don't think there ever was a -time when I could have taken any joy which came through a sacrifice of -other people's happiness. I----" He was confused by his own words. He -stopped talking suddenly: Alice could feel that his body was rigid -against hers. He could not forgive her. - -"Not even when you loved that Mrs. Wilson, eh?" She remembered the name -all at once, having heard it long ago. - -Mr. Farley stopped, still. He put his hand to his forehead. His other -arm fell away from Alice. It took him an instant to answer her. She -tapped her foot on the pavement. The wind whizzed in their ears. - -"Alice, I--you are referring to things too personal to--I ought to -resent it." - -"Resent it. I'd be glad to see you resent something." She wanted him to -strike fire against her mother's dullness. - -He could not bear her smile. - -"Your mother is a good woman----" - -"I suppose she is. God save us from good women!" - -Mr. Farley walked on slowly. He walked like an old man. It made him feel -tired when he thought that anyone questioned the nobility and excellence -of his resolution. - -"When you have had more experience of life, Alice, you will see how -easily we err, and how it's always better to accept the weight of old -burdens rather than assume new ones." - -"I'm not likely to be offered new ones." - -"What do you mean?" - -"What I say. Ugly old maid at twenty-nine. My life will go on like this -forever and ever." - -Mr. Farley was ashamed with Alice because she told the truth about -herself. It hurt him to face her ugliness and not be allowed to lie to -her. - -"That's morbid talk," he said, walking more slowly and rubbing his -forehead again. - -"Bosh! I'm not morbid. My life ends where it began--that's all. You're -the one who makes me sick. Why don't you kick out of this? Why don't you -find somebody with some self-respect who means something to you, and go -off and be happy? Some people may admire you for all this giving up your -soul and allowing it to be spit on, but I don't." Her heart was hard -against him. It relieved her to push her father from her out into life. -It helped her to make him live in her stead. - -Large round raindrops pressed their foreheads softly like rounded lips. -The rain falling through the chill air was warm. - -"I hardly think it has been any sacrifice of my self-respect for me to -do my duty toward your mother," he answered resentfully. - -They walked on quickly, a little apart. Alice was silent with -irritation. She tried to fill her soul with the calm of disgust but she -was feverish against his inertia. Mr. Farley felt himself misunderstood. - - * * * * * - -Alice had been reading in bed. It was late at night. The room was very -still. She heard Mrs. Farley's tired step on the back stair coming up -from the kitchen. - -"Mamma!" Alice called in a sharp, subdued voice. - -Mrs. Farley ambled slowly forward and leaned against the portal. She -squinted at Alice wearily. "Well?" - -"Come in." - -"I want to go to bed early. I've had so many things to do." She entered -the room uncertainly and sat on the edge of a chair. Her tired hands -twitched a little in her slack lap. Her hair was untidy. Sweat glistened -on her gray upper lip above her pale brown mouth. When she turned her -head Alice saw the thick white down on her cheek. Her glasses were on -her nose and behind them her blank eyes regarded her daughter -stealthily. "You don't seem to be well, Alice. I've noticed how fidgety -you've been getting in this heat." - -"I wish it were only the heat." Alice sat up and hugged her knees with -her big bare arms. Her nightgown was loose. It showed her heavy neck and -the swell of her large breast. Her hair had slipped down and hung in -moist dull locks about her hard intent face. "Do you think this -operation Winnie has to go through with is serious?" - -Mrs. Farley rocked herself a little. Her heel tapped the carpet -restlessly. "I don't know. How can you tell?" - -"At any rate her parents can afford to give her the best care." - -"Yes, but that's the worst of it! The worst of it. Laurence can't bear -to have her take things from them." Mrs. Farley spoke in a worn flat -voice and rocked herself again. - -"How absurd!" - -"Oh, he'll have to let them help. There's nothing else to do." - -"I suppose that's why Winnie's always in hysterics lately?" - -"Is she?" - -"My God, Mamma! Take a little interest in something." - -Tears of protest rose in Mrs. Farley's eyes. Her mouth shook. She made -an effort to rise, then sank back. "No, I take no interest in anything -but work," she said bitterly. "Keeping house for you and your -father----" - -"Why do you do it, then? My God, you could have stopped ten years ago." -Seeing her mother's eyes fill with tears, Alice's own dry eyes felt a -sudden coolness. "Whom do you do it for? Laurence and I are old enough -to look out for ourselves!" - -Mrs. Farley's shoulders drooped and shivered. She wagged her head on her -lean neck in helpless protest and reproach. Her body rocked. "I suppose -your father don't need me," she said scornfully, crudely wiping the -sweat from her face with her hand. She looked like a blind woman, -hearing Alice from a long way off. - -"Of course he doesn't need you! You ought to have found that out the -time he tried to get a divorce from you!" Alice, mysteriously urged to -cruelty, bore down upon her mother. Alice's eyes glittered inscrutably. - -Mrs. Farley could not bear them. She stood at last, tottering a little. -Her breath came quickly and raspingly. "Hush, I tell you! Hush! You've -brought this up before. There's something cruel in you makes you want to -go over and over things that are done with!" - -"I suppose you think I'm an interfering old maid?" - -"I don't know what you are." - -"And you don't want to know." Alice sounded amused. It was an unpleasant -sound. - -Mrs. Farley, gazing very deliberately at the carpet, blew her nose. -"I've never discussed my relation to your father with his children and -I'm not going to now. I've sacrificed myself for what I thought best -and it's nobody's business but my own." - -"Sacrificed!" echoed Alice contemptuously. - -"I won't listen to you and that's all there is to it. I never expected -gratitude so I'm not disappointed." Mrs. Farley, not looking back, -dragged into the hall. - -Alice lay still an instant, her expression one of relentless retrospect. -Her eyes were enigmatic but her mouth was twisted with disgust and her -nostrils were wide and tense. She reached above her head and turned out -the light. - -The curtain flapped. Staccato fingers of rain tapped on the pane. - -In the room it was dark. The narrow dark. The walls of the room drew -near. She felt herself pressed between them. - -Alice tossed from side to side. When she lay quiet finally the darkness -receded from her, touched her lids softly in passing. - -Death! Oh, my God, I want life! - -She sat up in bed holding her heavy breasts. Father! A great body -unmotivated. Alice's hot will sought for a world to impregnate. -Wish-washy mother who had given birth meaninglessly. - -Horace Ridge. She grew cool with despair--desireless. - -The hot sheets turned cool. Far away the beat of rain on the window. -Under the lifted sash the rain-wet wind swept through the room, frozen -pain, threads of frozen wonder embroidering the hot dark. Wet wind beat -the soggy awnings against the glass. A dank smell came in. - - * * * * * - -It was a cold August morning. The pale sky was filled with a dim still -light. In the dining-room the yellow shades, half lowered, strained the -gloomy radiance through them and made it a heavy orange. The tablecloth, -splattered with coffee stains like old blood, was overcast with -trembling reflections of yellow. The morning meal was over. The empty -plates were scattered about smeared with hardened egg. The half of a -muffin was mashed on the dingy carpet. - -Mr. Farley, a little away from the table, sat reading his paper. Mrs. -Farley was collecting the debris of breakfast. Her feeble hands moved -among the dishes with shaken determination. - -"Was your egg fried enough?" she asked. - -"Yes, yes. Very nice." Mr. Farley glanced up and gave his wife a -sightless smile. Troubled by what Alice had said to him, he was -uncomfortable when Mrs. Farley spoke. He began to fold his paper. - -What he was finished with, he pushed out of his mind into darkness. -Alice had dragged his memories, and now the past came up to him like a -corpse floating. Helen out West. She might come East next month. He -hoped not. His son. Place where he sent money. He paid to be allowed to -stop thinking about it. - -"I'm worried about Winnie. I thought her reconciliation with her parents -would improve her frame of mind, but now she seems more nervous and -unhappy than ever. The thought of that operation preys on her mind." - -"Well--I think she ought to go out into the country for a rest before -there's any more talk of operation." - -"She thinks Laurence will never be able to forgive her if she goes off -with her mother and father." - -"Oh, now I think that's too bad. She mustn't think things like that -about Laurence." Mr. Farley talked kindly with a sort of clerical -remoteness. His lips smiled wearily. His head was bent. He stood up. - -Mrs. Farley picked up her pile of dishes; put the dishes between herself -and life. The talk with Alice the night before had made Mrs. Farley feel -furtive. - -"Don't work too hard." Mr. Farley walked out. - -Mrs. Farley saw May outside in the hall. "Come here, May. See if you can -help me take the plates to the kitchen." - -May came in, glad to be called. Her grandmother did not look at her. She -picked up a plate with a cup on it. She walked into the kitchen, taking -careful steps, the rim of the plate, held with both hands, pressed so -tightly against her breast that it cut. The cup jiggled rhythmically, -bumping time to May's steps. May's mouth hung open. Her face was -bewildered with anxiety. Her breath came fast. With immense relief she -reached the sink and, leaning over, slipped the plate into it. - -Mrs. Farley had to talk to some one. She wanted to push the trifles -forward in her life and crowd back the darkness, filling it with bright -hard things, baubles, grocerymen, and dishes; so she asked May, "Has our -groceryman gone by here this morning? He promised to call and exchange -that condensed milk for evaporated milk." - -"No'm," May said. - -Mrs. Farley, frowning, her brows twitching, looked at May. Mrs. Farley -could not see the little girl without feeling an irritable prompting to -command her. "Go wash your face and see if your mother is awake. If she -isn't, don't rouse her. Don't let Bobby see you or he'll begin to clamor -to get out of bed." - -May ran dutifully out. - -"Don't clatter up the steps!" Mrs. Farley called sharply. - -May walked very softly up the creaking stairs. - -Mrs. Farley had the soiled clothes to count. She left the dishes to soak -and went into the dining-room again with the big bundle tied in a sheet. - -"One, two, three, four." She untied the sheet and began to count. She -could not count fast enough. She crammed her mind with numbers. It was -like trying to fill a slack sack to cover something hidden at the -bottom. - -"Shirts. Socks." - -Not darned. Must darn today. Alice's stockings. Alice is a hard, selfish -girl. - -"Tablecloths. Two--two"--murmuring--"what did I say?" - -Sacrifice. We must all make sacrifices. The home. - -"One, two." - -Her heart smoldered damply in its resignation. She squeezed love out of -her heart. - -Those awful days! Ten years older. People one did not know seemed to -seek one accusingly in the street. - -Furtively, she recalled the birth of her son, remembrance of a strength -that had somehow become weariness. Winnie. - -In the dark doorway Winnie appeared in a muslin dress. She was smiling, -a little wan. Her hair was dressed high. She looked plaintive yet -determined. - -"I won't be sick and lie around," she said. "I'm going to help you -work." - -"You're going to do nothing of the sort! You sit right down here and -I'll give you your breakfast at once. Did that child wake you up after -all?" - -"No. I was awake." - -"Well, sit down." - -"Oh, Mamma Farley, I want to fix my own egg." Winnie, protesting without -conviction, allowed herself to be pressed into a chair. - -"Where did you leave Bobby?" - -"He's still asleep." - -"Well, you had no business to get up." - -Winnie gazed up with sweet greedy eyes. "I don't dare be sick any more. -Sick people are horrid. Nobody loves them." Winnie's mouth was patient, -quivering, below her lifted eyes. - -"Yes. Nobody loves them." Mrs. Farley joked laboriously. - -"You dear!" Winnie reached out and grasped Mrs. Farley's hand. Winnie's -eyes, like brown bees, crept with their glance into the vague combative -eyes before them. Thinking of yesterday's talk, Winnie's gaze pierced -the rough-dried pongee blouse and the sagging black skirt, and saw the -small high-shouldered form beneath. Winnie's looks invited to pain as to -a bath of wine enjoyed with closed eyes. - -Mrs. Farley's eyes filled with tears. Ugly and old, before Winnie's pity -Mrs. Farley was a woman beaten back by a lover. She put forth a smile -that was like a weak and gentle hand caressing an enemy. "Bless you, -dear. You sit still while I get your breakfast." - -She walked out quickly. - - * * * * * - -When Laurence came home to dinner Winnie, still dressed in her best, was -alone in the living-room. - -"Hello! You've assumed a new role," he said from the doorway. - -She could see that finding her there made him uncomfortable. She smiled -at him with a kind of happy pain. - -He came forward. He was kind and distant. His lips brushed her hair. - -She gazed up at him. Her eyes, with crushed back lids and lifted lashes, -melted open for his. - -"I don't want to be sick, Laurie. I've got to go away with Mother. You -won't hate me for going away with her? I do need a change so!" - -He stood before her with a kind of mocking fatigue, but she saw that he -was sunk deep in himself. She wanted to drag him up. - -He shook his head. "I don't know what to say to you lately." - -She reached up and laced him with her arms. "Am I so unreasonable? Oh, -Laurie, I don't want to die." - -He seated himself helplessly on the arm of her chair. "Why think about -something so improbable as dying?" - -"But I might. I want you to care," she whispered. - -"Don't you think I care?" His voice had a grating note as he tried to be -light. - -"Of course--yes--I guess so. But it's so awful to think about." - -"Then don't think of it." - -"I can't help it." - -Death. The word had not been alive to her until this moment. Suddenly -she heard it about her, whispering like wings. She floated beyond -Laurence, beyond the room. - -With a quick intake of breath she shut out terror grown too delicious. - -"Then you will let me go away with Mother? You won't stop loving me, -Laurie?" - -"I'll shake you for talking nonsense," he said, getting up. - -She hated him for escaping her, but her mind was made up and the next -day when her mother called the morning of departure was set. - - * * * * * - -Settling her pince-nez on her flat nose before her fixed and despairing -eyes, Mrs. Price pressed Winnie's face to her flat black bosom. "I'm so -glad, dear. It was so foolish of my little girl to hold out against -having her parents do anything for her. Your father is so good, Winnie. -There is nothing I can ask for you that he isn't willing to give. You -mustn't deprive him of that pleasure." - -Winnie thought of Laurie and was stiff in her mother's embrace, yet at -that moment could not have said which of them was most irritating. - -Mrs. Price always avoided Laurence's name. - -When Mrs. Price had gone Winnie lay in her room on the couch, excited -and oppressed. She said death to herself, and the word echoed inside her -like a cry down a long hall. Then the echo was lost in the deeps of -darkness. But it continued to quiver below the surface of her life. - -Winnie thought of being sick. She was harsh with a knowledge of herself. -She would not be sick. Closing her eyes she imagined her mouth. With a -kind of horror of its own act, it pressed Laurence's. She woke up. - -The noonday sun outside was pale with rain. Winnie heard footsteps in -the still noon street. Death. The dancing word fluttered ahead of the -hurrying feet. - -Winnie moved fretfully on the couch. She saw Death as the face of an -insistent stranger thrust into her own. Stupid thing which she did not -know. She pushed it aside feebly, feeling for what had meaning to -her--Laurence, Bobby, Mrs. Price. - -All at once she realized that Laurence had come home for something and -was in the room. He rummaged at his desk. He was subdued in his -movements, trying not to rouse her. She watched him between half-closed -lids. He was familiar to her. The very crooked set of his thick neck in -his broad shoulders was food to her. Hungrily she opened her eyes wider -and lifted herself to her elbow. - -"What's the matter, Laurie?" Her whisper, sharp and sweet, pierced the -somber stillness of the room where the shades had been drawn for her to -rest. - -"Hello! I came to get a note book. Did I wake you?" He had started at -the sound of his name, but as he faced her he held himself contained in -his sharp cold smile. - -"I don't care. I've been having horrid dreams, Laurie." - -"That's a silly thing to do." - -"Don't make fun of me. Come sit by me a minute." - -"I haven't much time, dear." He came and sat on the edge of the couch. -"Don't you want the shades up? It's so gloomy." - -"I want you first. See how cold my hands are!" - -She gave him her hands. He took them as though he did not know what to -do with them. His eyes were still full of the brightness of the street -and he could not see her plainly. - -"I want you to love me. Oh, Laurie, you do love me!" She groped up his -arms, his cheek, until she had found his mouth. She covered it up with -her hand. She did not want it to speak against her. When he tried to -talk she pulled him down until his eyes pressed her breast. She drew him -deeper into the warm covers on the tumbled couch. She was cold. Her -hands said that he must warm her. Memories of pain were silver veins in -her body. Twisting herself on the couch to bring him nearer, she -wrenched her arm, sharp pang of happiness. - -"Love me!" she entreated. Her mouth clung against his. She could feel -the force of his quickening heart beats as though they were her own. The -muscles in his arm twitched under the rough-napped cloth of the sleeve -which brushed her cheek. Her nostrils dilated against his arm. The smell -of his body was bitter. She wanted to drink in the vividness of his -strong live flesh that resisted her. - -Around the dimmed squares of the yellow shades, light, entering, made -shining borders. Noises drifted in the light under the bright edges of -the yellow shades. Hammering from the house on the corner reverberated -through the room. - -"Winnie! I can't--you mustn't. You're not well enough. You mustn't -excite yourself like this!" - -She felt him passive in his resistance. Reluctantly her arms slipped -away. Her resentful eyes shone at him from the gloom with a small and -pointed light. - -He leaned away from her, patting her hair as he came gradually to his -feet. He did not want to see her because she made him feel guilty toward -himself. Then he was obliged to look. When he smiled at her he kept her -outside his eyes. He seemed relieved in spite of himself. - -"Poor little sick girl," he said as to a child. "I'm glad you're going -away with your mother. We'll give you a nice rest and have you all fixed -up." - -"You don't love me!" she said, looking at him stormily. - -"Please, Winnie. Things are hard enough." His face was drawn with the -effort of his continued smile. - -"You don't." She turned over and closed her eyes. - -"Don't be absurd." He joked uncomfortably. - -But she would not look at him. - -He walked out on tiptoe as though he thought her asleep. - -When she knew he was gone she began to cry, and, keeping her eyes -closed, moved her head from side to side and struck into the pillows -with her fist. - - * * * * * - -Laurence did not go home to dinner, but remained working at the -laboratory until after midnight. As he walked home the city streets, -washed thinly with light, were yet thronged. His mind was sharply intent -on itself. It was like the keel of a ship, parting the swarming life -before it. - -But as he drew nearer the place where Winnie was his heart strained. He -felt suffocated. There were women standing in doorways. Their shadows -wove the darkness together and drew it tight about his heart. He hated -his work but the doing of it gave him relief, for it could not enter -him. - -The glow from a street lamp fell on his own house--purple-red walls that -held Winnie. The big gilt figures on the transom above the door -glistened on the glass that gave back a blank reflection of the light. -He put in his latch key. The door, swinging away from him, seemed drawn -inward with the pull of the darkness. - -It shut ponderously behind him. He hesitated a moment, resisting some -unknown inevitability. It was very still in the dark. - -Only the stairs were half revealed by the pallor of the light that came -in high up from the street. - -He walked up softly and opened the bedroom door. He could hear a breath -like the respiration of shadow. He knew it was Bobby. - -Then somehow he realized that Winnie was awake and holding herself apart -from the dark. - -He did not speak. She did not speak. He sat down and began to take off -his shoes. - -As he laid the shoes away from him he was aware of her awareness as -though she were seeing him stoop forward in the dark. He had a sense of -his own motion as a pale line etched across a thick surface. When he -unbuckled his belt and began to draw his trousers over his feet he felt -the sharp sweep of his moving arms tearing the quiescence of the room. - -He stood up naked. His cold toes gripped the hot nap of the roughened -carpet. He pulled on his pajamas and the white cloth, as it was drawn up -his legs, was cool white fire, that burnt upward from his bare feet. - -The room seemed a final blackness into which the dark of the night -outside had flowed and gathered as in a pool. Still feeling himself -burning white in the cool cloth, Laurence walked to the side of the bed -and looked down to see if Winnie were asleep. - -Very faintly he saw the rigid line of her body, but through her -nightdress he perceived her tense, like a protest. He could not see her -eyes but he shivered with the feeling that they were very wide open and -sightless. The darkness was against her eyes, holding her rigid upon the -white sheet in the dark bed. - -"Laurie!" - -"I thought you were asleep." He did not know why he lied. - -She did not answer at once and he stood waiting. "Laurie!" - -He felt suddenly feverish in his cold clothes. - -She reached out and touched him. The feel of her hand flowed along his -hand and up the veins of his arm. He felt as though her hand had been -laid upon his heart. His heart beat quickly. He denied his heart. He was -passive. He stood apart from himself. He was unrelated to Winnie, sick -and tense in the bed. - -"Laurie!" she whispered again. She drew him down beside her. - -"You are sick, Winnie," he said. Sure of himself, he did not resist her. - -She reached up, groping to cover his mouth. It made her angry when he -told her she was sick. She did not want him to build up words between -them. She tried to draw him into herself, into the formlessness of -contact. - -"Oh, I can't sleep, Laurie! I want you to love me." - -"I do love you, Winnie. If I seem not to love you it is because you are -sick." - -"I'm not sick! I won't be sick. You don't love me!" - -"I do!" - -"Please love me! I'll die if you don't love me, Laurie!" - -He resisted her. - -She drew his hand to her and placed it like a cup over the swell of her -breast. - -He trembled. "Winnie, my darling, we mustn't----" - -"Laurie, I'll go mad!" - -"Why, Winnie? I love you, Winnie." - -But he did not love her. She seemed to him like a sickness. They were -both sick with her. - -"Kiss me again." - -He kissed her. His palm tingled with the strangeness of her breast. - -"I can't let you go 'way from me, Laurie!" - -"I don't want to." - -She held him. Suddenly she was no longer strange. His hand read the -strangeness of her with the relief of familiarity. She burned him with -wonder. - -Winnie felt him yield and was glad, but her triumph congealed in agony. -She fell away from him. She was cold. She was still. The throbbing of -her body came to her like an echo which she could scarcely hear. She had -forgotten the meaning of it. Who was this man? She was afraid. - -She waited for him to leave her. - - * * * * * - -Laurence was tired with the feeling of Winnie that flowed through his -body. She was in his veins degrading him with possession. - -If she should have a child. He would not think of it. He walked over to -the couch and climbed upon it. He would not think. Driving his thoughts -from him, as he lay down, he felt the flap of the window shade and the -respiration of Bobby rattling in his empty mind. - -He tossed. His body was hot. The sheet he pulled over him made him -shiver. Then he grew cold and longed for the heat to cover him up. He -felt naked. He wanted to lie drowned in heat, miles thick in darkness. - - * * * * * - -Winnie awoke. It was morning. The room was cool and bright. Sunshine -made the curtains glow. Patches of light shuddered delicately here and -there on the carpet. A spear of sunshine shattered itself on the -looking-glass. - -Laurence slept on the couch with one arm tossed up and his head thrown -back. His mouth was open. His face in sleep seemed stupid with pain. -Bobby slept, too, stirring and murmuring a little. Winnie found -something oppressive in the sight of people yet asleep like this in the -full blaze of the sun. - -Winnie's mind was clear and calm with the ease that came of sleep, but -in the center of her being there was a dark spot of indecipherable -vividness. - -Last night. A dark spot of terror. Laurence had been frightened by what -they had done. She wanted him to be frightened. - -Death. If she had a child she would suffer--not he. White and holy, she -felt herself a beautiful stillness in the turmoil of Laurence's -cowardice. - -She could not part with this fear. If she had a child Death was her hand -from which he could not escape. - - * * * * * - -Midnight. The street lamps shone into the bedroom, making bright shadows -of the drawn shades. The bureau, the bed, bits of furniture here and -there, darker than the darkness, reflected the light heavily. - -Laurence stood outside the door in the hall. He was trembling, afraid of -his own room. He had stayed away all day because he could not see -Winnie, because he hoped that when he reached home she would be asleep. - -It was quiet. He opened the door and stepped inside. The sudden draught -lifted the shades ponderously and let them drop again. - -Fresh, clean wind from the quiet midnight street surged into the room. -Light floated in under the lifted shades. It seemed as if the wind, cold -and shining, were washing away the darkness. - -Winnie was awake again. Laurence stood still. - -He waited a long time. He felt shaken. If I take her again she will die. - -He did not believe it. He went toward her with a nausea of relief. -"Die" was the word of a song. It was the strange music of passion that -said die. - -He waited by the bed. He wanted her to tell him to go away. He could -feel her still and looking at him. - -When he knelt by the bed and reached his arms around her he wanted her -to evade him. - -"Winnie?" She trembled when he touched her. He wanted her to speak. But -she was quiet. - -She let him kiss her mouth. - -Death. His understanding could not hold the vagueness of the strange -escaping word. He felt her thinning from his grasp. His veins swelled -with death. - -Then he became the death-giver, glad, in spite of himself, of the -drunkenness of moving with the unseen. Through the banality of sex which -oppressed him, there pushed the will of an exalted and passionate -horror. - -He took her. They were dead. - - * * * * * - -Winnie lay face downward and sobbed. There was no triumph in her now. -She felt herself as if already large with child, heavy and helpless. -Through the darkness of her closed lids she could see, as if before her, -Laurence's coarse and handsome head, his eyes turned toward her with -their strained gaze, and the odd set of his neck that kept his face -always a little to one side. She knew now how much she hated him. - - * * * * * - -Laurence, walking along the deserted streets, was relieved to find the -long vistas ending in darkness. The night rose high and expressionless -before him. Beyond the dim lights, the violet-blue horizon was a clear -quiet stretch like a lake of glass covered with flowering stars. - -His pain was choked in him, suffocated by the quiet. - -His mind was sick yet with Winnie's sickness, but the pain of her no -longer belonged to him. He wondered if she would have a child, if he had -killed her. But the agony of his conjecture related to something already -finished. She had made him love her against them both. He did not want -love like that. It could never be otherwise. They were separated from -each other by their own bodies. - - - - -PART II - - -As Mr. Farley walked home from business he had a troubled look. When he -came into his own street he scarcely seemed aware of his whereabouts. -For several days he had been restless and ill at ease with himself. His -resentment toward Alice was blunted and dispersed by his determination -to think well of the world. He needed this charity to think well of -himself. What disturbed and depressed him most was her forcible -suggestion of incompleteness in things which he had looked upon as -finished. - -He went up the steps. There was a Kansas City newspaper in the box. It -hurt him to take it out and put it in his pocket. - -When he opened the front door and stepped into the empty hall, the first -look of the place pained him with its harsh familiarity; but, when he -had laid his hat down, he passed on into the living-room and seated -himself in one of the old tapestry-covered chairs, and his antagonism -and desire to exist in separateness melted in the faintly bitter sense -of inevitability which he experienced. The old house with the low -ceilings and broad stone mantelpieces and the walls hung in stained, -dark figured papers (just as he had bought it with the first savings of -his married life) represented the known, asserting him through his -identity with it. - -He leaned forward, closing his eyes and pinching his lids together -between his thumbs and forefingers. - -Mrs. Farley had heard him come. She could not keep away. When she -entered the room, however, she pretended to be surprised. - -"I--oh, I didn't hear you! I came for a dust cloth. Winnie has gone out -in the Price's carriage to do some shopping." Mrs. Farley scattered her -words before her as a cuttlefish throws out its vaguely disguising -substance. - -Mr. Farley lifted his head with a heavy, patient smile, but she would -not look at him. - -"Well, well. I thought that dust cloth was here." She fumbled among the -chairs. She was very matter-of-fact and intent. She saw that he was -depressed and it made her uneasy. - -Mr. Farley could see her profile: her lined, withered lips, her dry, -finely wrinkled skin which was a thin film of disguise over her melting -flesh. The expression of nervous good humor in her evasive eyes was like -a gauze scarf laid over a spectacle of horror. - -The two people, afraid of their fear of each other, were like alien -creatures haltered with one chain. - -"Can I help you?" Mr. Farley asked. - -"No. No. Alice hasn't come home, has she?" - -"As far as I know, she hasn't. Shall I send her to you when she comes?" - -"No. That's all right! That's all right!" - -Mrs. Farley hurried out. She went into the dining-room. A last streak of -sunshine filtered through the clouds and came over the back yard into -the room. There were some tumblers in a tray on the sideboard that -caught the specks of light that were like bubbles of fire in the -colorless glass. Each day the sun touched the same spots with the same -light. There was assurance and finality in the undeviating rays of the -tired sun. Mrs. Farley felt quiet among the chairs and tables. She saw -some lint on the ragged sun-washed carpet, and stooped to pick it off. -She craved intimacy with the still things her touch could dominate. They -enlarged her. And she was afraid of those who would speak some terrible -word of love or money to destroy their permanence. - -When she went to the sideboard and opened the drawer in which the -tablecloths were kept, her furtive thoughts slipped between the linen, -and, as her hands moved over it, the cool glazed feel of the starched -fabric was a denial of change and heat. - -In the living-room, Mr. Farley leaned back in his chair again, his eyes -half closed. In his low chair his gaze was on a level with the polished -top of the table, glazed silverish with the dimming light. The arms of -the imitation mahogany rocker were as bright and enigmatic as glass. -Some pictures on the wall were indecipherable beneath streaked -reflections. - -An old painting of Lake Lucerne hung over the mantel shelf. The pigment -was faded and the canvas was seamed with fine, irregular cracks. When -Mr. Farley glanced upward at this picture he experienced a voluptuous -sense of futility. He stared at it a long time. - -But the spell of inertia did not last. He became uneasy again. He was -afraid his wife might come back, so he walked across the hall to the -disorderly little room that was called his "study." - -There were a desk, and a leather lounge with protruding springs, and, on -the walls, two or three old advertising calendars decorated with hunting -scenes or full-color pictures of setter dogs. - -Mr. Farley sat down before the littered desk and began his letter, "Dear -Helen." - -He wrote to her about his regard for her and their mutual sense of -responsibility toward their son, and he wanted to say something else. -But when he attempted to recall more intimate phrases it revived his -sense of sin. He felt embarrassed and gave it up. - - * * * * * - -It was seven o'clock in the evening. The sun had gone. The sky at the -zenith was pale, but along the horizon the foam-white clouds glowed with -pink. From the city light had receded like a tide and rows of housetops -on the length of the sky were like objects left there by a departing -sea. They were separate and waited. - -As darkness gathered, it gathered first in the house fronts like an -added heaviness. Above the houses the sky floated--higher, paler. The -sky dilated and soared. - -Then the shining pallor grew dim. The sky sent itself down in grayness -to the dark streets where the lamp lights floated in the dust as in -clouds of ash. The house fronts, flaked with light, disintegrated in -the general vagueness. - -Horace Ridge was ready to depart. On his last night before sailing he -had sent for Alice to help him finish some work. She passed out of the -twilight into the tiled corridor of the building in which he lived. The -marble walls wavered in light. Lights, clustered above the wainscot, -stabbed her eyes. A sleepy hallboy in a tan uniform vacantly watched her -approach. - -She ignored the elevators and walked up the one flight of stairs and -along the brown velvet carpet to the door she wanted. When she rang the -small bell under the brass plate she heard the tinkle in the depths of -her being, sharp, like a light moving under deep water. So keen was her -perception of his coming that she was not conscious of separate -incidents--footsteps, the sigh of the opening door. But in one act he -was there in the place where she had expected him. - -He held a hand over his eyes that were guarded with a green shade. - -"Miss Alice. I'm merciless these days. Must get something done while the -doing of it is in me." He smiled with his mouth, his eyes mysterious out -of sight. - -"You're merciless to yourself. We all know that," Alice said. - -He walked after her into the library. Without seeing him, she was aware -of the uncertainty of his tired steps. She was ashamed of her deep -consciousness of his hesitation, knowing that he tried to conceal his -half gestures from her. - -He sat down rather heavily and she stood in the center of the book-lined -room, unpinning her hat. - -"I would like to have taken you for a lark on my last night instead of -setting you to work. You'll be glad to forget about me." His mouth still -smiled and his big hand moved up to his eyes under the shade. - -Alice did not answer. Then she said, "Are you sure you feel well enough -to work?" She had the brusque presumptuous manner which she knew he -tolerated. - -"The old dog has a lot of fight in him yet. You mustn't draw too many -conclusions from appearances." - -The big room with the high shelves was gloomy in candle light. - -"These esthetic shadows will spoil your eyes. You'd better get that -student lamp down," he said. - -Alice walked briskly to a stand in the corner and took down the light. -She carried it over to his table. - -"You'd better move. It shines there." It hurt her to tell him what to -do. - -"I'll sit with my back to it." - -Alice pushed a heap of books aside and arranged the green cord -attachment over the crowded table. - -Blindness. Better after all. He can't see me, she thought bitterly. - -She sat down with her writing pad in her lap. - -He rubbed his forehead wearily. His shoulders sagged, big beneath his -loose coat. There was passive strength in his consciousness of defeat. -She was aware of it. - -The room closed them like a coffin. Their life was their own. It did not -flow in from the street. - -Beyond the window the square was sprinkled with lights. The thick-leafed -trees were clouds of darkness, but here and there separate leaves up -against the lamps glistened like wet metal. - -He sighed. "I'm trying to line up my vocabulary in battle order, Miss -Alice." - -"I'm ready. Go ahead." - -He did not begin at once. She watched his bowed head--thick, -gray-sprinkled brown hair. There was beard on his cheek. - -Suddenly she had a horror of herself creeping upon his thoughts through -his weakness. She shuddered, shifting her book. - -Dark. Flesh, aware of the world, slipping away. Flesh touched by the -world without. - -"As regards the international polity of the----" - -She interrupted. "Say that again, Mr. Ridge." He had dictated several -sentences and she had not heard him. - -"Since the----" She began to write. The wind fluttered the paper on her -knee. Her hands with big knuckles moved decisively over the sheet. - - * * * * * - -"I'm wearing you out?" - -"Bother! You're not!" - -He liked her positiveness. "A half a paragraph or so and I will have -reached the end of my tether." - -"Go ahead." - -When he had finished he leaned back, turning himself so that he could -look at her, and she could tell by his mouth that he was happier. - -"I've taxed your patience." - -"Haven't any patience," Alice said, making a wry face. She wanted to -cry. - -She stood up. "I'll have this all typed by tomorrow afternoon. When does -the boat sail?" - -"Ten tomorrow night." - -They were silent. He still smiled, his blunt fingers tapping the arm of -his chair, but the corners of his full lips sagged with fatigue under -the stiff edges of his mustache and he was pale. - -Alice got her hat down from the shelf. - -"You need some one to take care of you," she said, trying to sound -angry. She was afraid her words hurt him. Her heart beat very fast. - -"Young Harrison is going along to keep me from walking overboard in an -absent moment." - -They were quiet again. Alice could not make up her mind to go out. The -trees in the square seemed to have crowded closer against the open -windows. The leaves looked like tin in the auras of light. She stared -into the street that had grown still. - -"Well--if I don't get down to the boat I'll send somebody." She held out -her hand. - -He stood up. Being so big, he looked more helpless behind his shade. He -took her hand and held it in both his. - -"God bless you, Miss Alice." - -She could not speak. - -He saw that she was disturbed. He was kind, a big stout man, smiling. -Her throat closed. - -"Take a real rest," she ordered in a short, thick, over-casual voice. -Their hands dropped apart. - -"I'll probably be forced to in spite of myself." - -"Well, I'm glad of it." She turned quickly and went toward the door. He -followed her and stumbled a little. She tried not to look back at him. - -"This has been awfully good of you," he said after her in his slow, kind -way. - -She could not bear his slow kindness. She did not answer. - -"Can't I get a taxicab for you?" - -"Couldn't. Feel uncomfortable with such luxuries. You go to bed and -rest." - -She glanced back once. He stood, huge in his fatigue, with his drooped, -gentle mouth, in an attitude as if he did not know what to do with his -hands. - -"Good-bye." - -She bit her lips. "Good-bye." - -The door closed. She was in the corridor stupid with light. On the -stairs she met the hallboy, who stood aside. He had a vacant gaze as if -the empty brilliance of the hall had dizzied him. - -When she passed into the still street she felt as though she slipped -into an inner darkness. She was two and the self that suffered, heavy -and dark, sank through an oblivious other and out of knowledge. - -I cannot bear it! - -She went through the park. There were people on the benches in the -darkness. She walked quickly past them into the bare-swept circles under -the lamps. - -What shall I do? Lies. I think I'm going mad. - -She went on. Her heels clicked on the deserted street. Against the -window of a house she passed a lamp with a red shade glowed softly. The -new moon over the trees was like a fragment of ice. - -What does it come to? Sheep. Wag. Wag tail. Mistress Mary. Far away over -the hills. The street. Dark over the hills. Dark. Darkness is one. There -are no eyes in the dark. - -Horace. - -Walking, she pressed her knuckles against her lips and dug her teeth -into the flesh. Sweet to feel. Softly her agony flowed through the wound -of her teeth. - -When she reached home she passed quickly through the dimly lit hallway -and so up the long stairs, escaping notice. - -The hinges creaked as she opened the door of her dark room. She went in -quickly and closed it and rested against the lintel, panting, her head -thrown back. - -Her mind was fire and ice. She must kill this agony. - -A little light floated in from the street through the open window. She -could see her bureau with its white cover and the sparkle of toilet -instruments on it. She went there and picked up a pair of scissors, -plunging the points twice into her flesh with quick stabs. - -Feeling numbness and relief, she stood stupidly watching the blood, dark -and colorless, gather on her forearm. - -Mary had a little lamb. I'm mad. Washed in the blood of the lamb. - -She sank to her knees, then relaxed on the floor in a half sitting -posture, her head thrown back against the bed, her hat awry, one hand -holding the ache of her bleeding wrist, the glow from the street lamp -bewildering her eyes. - - * * * * * - -Mr. Price, gruff and solemn, tried to hasten the departure. "Well, -Winifred, you're ready?" His smoky eyes were everywhere and on no one. -He waved the hand that held his hat. - -Winnie had on a new cloak and a pretty little blue straw turban.... -Laurie will be angry when he sees Mother has been buying me clothes. - -"Bobby--Bobby, my darling!" She hugged him to her, trying to wring from -him some assurance that she would be with him when she was gone. - -Allowing himself to be kissed, he stirred an instant and was calm. He -was water, broad and profound. Winnie felt herself sinking into his -passive depths. "Oh, Bobby!" - -"You hurts my arm." - -She drew away from him and felt part of her still there, lost in his -passive clearness. - -"You won't forget Mamma? Mamma Farley will help you write me letters. -You know how you can print--nice printing with pictures? I'm going to -bring you something beautiful. Grandma Price and I are going to bring -you something--oh, lovely!" - -"Yes, my dear. We'll have something nice for a good little boy who -doesn't forget us." Mrs. Price touched his hair with taut, wistful -gestures. - -Winnie's cheeks were bright. - -Mrs. Price had on a trim black traveling suit of handsome cloth and a -simple but distinguished hat, very precisely worn. - -"Is Laurie upstairs, Mamma Farley?" - -Mrs. Farley looked up, abstracted. She dangled in the general emotion -like a puppet suspended over a torrent, swayed but unmoved. "I think so, -dear." She tried not to see Mrs. Price, so like herself but lifted up by -social confidence. - -"I'm going up to see him." - -"All right, dear." - -"Nine o'clock," Mr. Price said sternly, taking out his watch and looking -at it with an air of reprimand. - -"Just a moment, Father." - -Winnie ran up the long dingy stairs to the door of her room. It was open -and before she entered she saw Laurence standing in the confusion of -packing which she had left, and looking at a book. - -When she stood beside him he glanced up carefully. His lips were drawn. -She thought he smiled at her as if she were a stranger. - -"Off?" - -She was breathing quickly, her eyes shining at him reproachfully through -her fluff of hair under the new hat. - -The gas light to one side made his hair glossy and threw shadows in the -hollows of his cheeks. - -"Aren't you going to the train, Laurie?" - -"Don't you think the family will be happier if I am not there to spoil -the rapport of departure?" Smiling, he stared at her with his hard, -pained eyes. She had the feeling that he was a long way off. She felt -sorry for herself. - -"Oh, Laurie, please have some pity for me! Don't be nasty tonight." - -"It's pity for you that keeps me here, my dear girl." - -She could not speak. Death. I may be pregnant. A sharp, small fear bit -her breast with its teeth. Because she was hurt inside she despised his -ignorance. She wanted to poison his calm with her fear, but the triumph -of injury was sweet to her. She held it close. - -"You'll be glad now." She was trembling. - -"Glad of what, dear girl?" - -"That I'm gone." - -"Winnie, please? Not tonight." He gazed straight at her. His smiling -patience was too bitter. Her pride could not forgive him. Tears of shame -and hate rose to her eyes. - -"You don't love me any more. I know that." - -He would not look at her. Turning over the leaves of the book, his small -hand shook. Its whiteness and delicacy irritated her. - -"Oh, Laurie, I can't go away angry!" She put her hand on his sleeve. The -roughness and realness of his sleeve hurt her hand. She did not want it. - -Without looking up, he reached an arm around her. - -"Have you talked to the doctor, Winnie?" He could not look at her. - -"Yes," she whispered, lying. When she lied she blamed him more. - -"Are you sure you're all right, Winnie?" He forced out the words very -deliberately. They were like stones to his lips. - -She hesitated an instant. Then she said, "Yes. Kiss me. Oh, Laurie, it's -so awful I--it's so awful I----" - -He put the book down and faced her in her embrace. She thought he seemed -calm and satisfied as though the doctor had become proxy for his -conscience. Winnie's eyes, fiercely soft, stared into his and made him -feel furtive and depressed. He kissed her to keep from looking at her. - -When their mouths were together his cruelty made her strong. She forgave -him. He was a dark thing close to her, smothering her with his breath. -His clothed body dissolved in her immediate recognition of his flesh, -and she had a sickish sensation as of life stirring in her. Shamelessly -kind and unmoved, he had believed this impossible thing. - -She moved away from him in spite of herself and with a pang she felt how -his hand dropped away in relief that she did not want it. She would not -go away. - -"You don't love me!" - -"Please don't let us torture each other, Winnie. You are going away to -get well." - -"Suppose I should die, Laurence." - -"But you won't die." Again he drew her uncomfortably to him. His head -throbbed. He tried to give her what she wanted. - -Her shuddering lips moved over his face and he drooped helplessly under -them like a beast in the rain. He tried to love her. - -She hated him so that she could not bear to have him go away from her. -Death. She tried to keep that word in her. It was a child she had -conceived to which she refused birth. She wanted to carry death dead in -her. - -"If anything terrible happens--if I have to be operated on!" Her words -stumbled. - -"But nothing will happen. You're nervous, Winnie. You're all nervous and -sick. This stay in the country will make you over." - -"And you'll be glad to see me well again?" She leaned back from him, -searching his set, kind face with her tearful eyes. - -"Of course, my dear girl. Of course." - -"Winnie!" Alice called. - -"I'm coming!" Winnie gave him another swift little bitter kiss and -slipped from his arms. As she went out she glanced back, smiling and -pathetic. He hurt her and she wanted to remind him how pretty she was. -She was small and light with dread. - -His being composed itself in darkness and peace, but his composure was -an ache, blank and broad. - - * * * * * - -Above the housetops huge masses of cloud, smutted like torrents of -gray-white snow, moved steadily, surf of a gigantic tide sweeping the -purplish-blue stillness of the far vacant sky. It was noonday. - -Alice passed briskly up the steps and opened the dusty front door. - -"Mamma?" - -Mrs. Farley was in the dusk-shrouded living-room behind drawn shades. -She did not answer. When she heard Alice's heavy footsteps she shivered. - -Alice came to the living-room door and looked in. Her mother squinted at -her bewilderedly, then glanced away. - -"You still here, are you? I've been down and finished up the business -Mr. Ridge left me to do." - -Mrs. Farley rose wearily, as if driven. Her knees were slack under her -trailing skirt. Her posture sagged. "I should have started the -children's lunch," she said. - -"I'll start the children's lunch, but it is foolish for you to sit -moping here." - -"Moping!" Mrs. Farley scoffed. Her throat shook. She gulped and her thin -neck showed a corded undulation along its length. - -"Well, what if you did see that Papa had a telegram from Mrs. Wilson? -What of it? Is it anything new?" - -Mrs. Farley's tight mouth puckered along the edges like fruit left too -long in the sun. She stared resentfully at Alice. "New?" Mrs. Farley -interrogated. - -Alice took off her hat and whirled it in her hand. "I don't see why the -fact that she happens to be passing through town makes the situation -between you and Papa worse than it is all the time. You know the -relation between them. It's gone on for twelve years now. She probably -thinks her claim on him is just as good as yours." - -For a moment the hard center of Mrs. Farley's vision dissolved in unshed -tears and she saw Alice far off as in a vision of the dying. - -"Why don't you quit this thing if you don't like it?" Alice went on. -"You can come and live with me and leave Papa to do what he pleases." - -Then Mrs. Farley's face went hard again with malice and fear, and her -brow flushed with a streak like a whiplash. Her fingers had short, -blunt, yellowish nails flecked with white. Her hands made impotent -gestures. She was like a sheep searching for a gate when she must leap -over a wall. "It's evident how little you understand your father," she -said defiantly. - -Alice gave a disagreeable laugh. She felt herself building her mother's -world, sound like her own upon ramparts of pain. - -"Your father has always felt that he had to make atonement for what he -did--that no matter what kind of a woman Mrs. Wilson was that she----" -Mrs. Farley could not go on. - -"Well, he didn't have a child by her because he preferred you." - -Mrs. Farley's whole face trembled with her sense of outrage and -impotence. Her eyes, squinting a little, were those of a creature who -takes no pride in its rage. "Whatever you say, I can't forget my duty to -your father. I wish you had never heard of this! You're a coarse, cold -woman, Alice." - -Alice smiled, glad her mother had hurt her. "Yes, you've told me that -before." - -They faced each other, Mrs. Farley trying to speak but unable. Alice saw -how ugly her mother was and was ashamed of seeing it. Mrs. Farley turned -her head a little and there were spiked wisps of iron-gray hair clinging -on the nape of her scrawny, freckled neck. - -"Let me go out!" Mrs. Farley said, stumbling suddenly toward the door in -a blind gesture of protest and escape. - -"I'm not keeping you," Alice said. - -"Everything would be well enough if you weren't bent on persecuting me!" -Mrs. Farley called back. - -Alice was very calm. "I'm not persecuting you. If you really prefer to -go on this way, tied like a millstone about Papa's neck, it is your own -affair, I suppose; though I can't help protesting when I see it." - -Mrs. Farley was gone. Alice felt a kind of hysterical relief in her -mother's exit. - - * * * * * - -It was a cool, delicate morning. The curtains swung in the opened -windows before the cool, darkened room. The iron rails along the area -made light black embroideries of shadow among blobs and flecks of gold -on the basement front. Even the tap of hoofs in the street sounded as -though the horses trod in hesitation. - -In Mrs. Farley's dining-room light shivered against the edges of knives -and forks laid on the clean cloth, and flew off in needle-fine sparks. - -Laurence had gone, but Mr. Farley and Alice had just seated themselves -at table. Mr. Farley was more abstracted and uncomfortable than usual. - -"Isn't your mother well, Alice?" he asked in a low voice. "She hasn't -sat down and last night she scarcely ate anything. I hate to see her -spend so much time in the kitchen." - -"She saw the telegram you dropped yesterday morning," Alice said. - -Mr. Farley flushed and fine lines came between his eyes, but before he -could say what hovered on his lips, Mrs. Farley came in and he was -silent. - -Mrs. Farley's arms were limp with the weight of the tray she carried. -Her fingers clutched at the edges. There was something exasperating in -her manner that suggested the senseless tremor of frightened canaries' -wings. Her hands were unsteady and some of the contents of the coffee -urn splashed on her wrist. - -Alice got up. "Give me that tray." She took it firmly. "Now you sit down -and eat." - -"I--I've had something to eat," Mrs. Farley said weakly, at the same -time sitting down. - -Mr. Farley glanced at her but looked away quickly. He could not bear to -see her fear which was like a fear of him. He cleared his throat. -"Aren't you feeling well, Mother?" - -Alice kept a rigorous gaze full of cruel pity steadily upon her mother's -face. - -"Why, yes--I----" She turned to Alice. "I have so much to do, Alice, I -can't----" As she assisted herself to her feet, her flabby grip fell -from the edge of the table. She swayed a little. "I left the oven on." - -"You sit down." Alice tried to push her back. - -"No, no! I must turn it off." She brushed by and left Alice looking -after her. - -Mr. Farley tried to be elaborately unmindful of by-play and he pretended -not to see his wife's wearily bowed head and the palsied tremor of her -thin neck. - -As she went out, her shoulders rounded, her knees loose, her head thrust -forward, her feet dragging the carpet, she left vividly the impression -of her very thin neck, taut and elongated, like the neck of a goose when -it attempts flight. She held her sharp elbows at right angles to her -sides with the same rigid anticipation of haste. - -"Has--has----" Mr. Farley could not bear to confess to the actuality. -"Couldn't you let her rest for a week, Alice? You don't expect to get -another position at once. As long as you are at home it seems to me that -you and I could combine to keep the house going and let her off." - -"She wouldn't do it. Pottering around consoles her more than anything -else." - -There was silence. Mr. Farley gulped his coffee. His face remained -flushed and there were tears of discomfort in his eyes. - -"_You_ know what's the matter with Mamma, Father!" Alice's subdued voice -sounded to him almost threatening. - -Mr. Farley gazed at his daughter helplessly. "Why, no--I--no----" He -looked so much like a startled baby that Alice wanted to laugh. - -"She knows Mrs. Wilson is in town and----" - -Mr. Farley interrupted hurriedly. "But, my dear child, I--I----" He -moved his knife and fork nervously about. - -Alice felt strong. Her frankness gave her the relief which the maniac -feels in his cruelty when he touches flesh and it responds to him with -sentience. "Don't think I don't understand your situation, Father. I do. -I'm simply trying to look at it from Mamma's standpoint." - -He glanced up. Their eyes met. Alice had swung back on the two rear legs -of her chair, her coarse hand on the edge of the table holding her -steady. Her eyes were self-righteously excited, her mouth harsh with -determination. - -To make him feel! She longed for that sympathetic quiver. Darkness. -Behind her thoughts, two sharp strokes from the scissors let out the -clotted honey of pain, too sweet for the veins. - -"Mamma doesn't really love you any more than you love her, Papa." - -Mr. Farley glanced nervously toward the kitchen door. His features -suddenly relaxed in the flaccidness of self-pity. His eyes shone dimly. -"I don't think you realize the true satisfaction there is in duty well -done, Alice," he said shakily. "Things may be----This is no place to--to -discuss details--but I would not knowingly hurt your mother for anything -on earth." - -Alice watched him narrowly and saw him loving himself in his tears. "I -didn't suppose you'd have the courage to go out and commit murder--if -that's what you mean," she said sharply. Her chair bumped against the -floor and she stood up. - -Mr. Farley was desperate. "There is more than one kind of perfectly -genuine affection." His voice was unsteady. He drew lines and cross -lines on the table cloth with his knife. - -Alice laughed and tapped her foot on the floor. He was hurt by her -laughing, but he would not look at her. He felt that he had allowed his -parental advantage to escape him and he did not know how to reassert it. - -Mrs. Farley, made uneasy by the murmur of monotonously subdued voices, -was afraid to stay away any longer. She came in very intent on the plate -of biscuits she carried, pretending that she considered nothing unusual -afoot. - -"The atmosphere of this moral cellar has ruined mine and Laurie's life!" -Alice said angrily, as if driven to the words by the sight of her -mother's face. - -Mr. Farley was bewildered and angry. Mrs. Farley slipped the plate of -biscuits to the table and sank weakly in a chair. - -Mr. Farley rose. "I won't have you talk this way before your mother, -Alice." In the depths of him he was profoundly alarmed, but on the -surface he was sure of himself again. - -Alice hated herself, but she stood at bay. - -"I respect your mother," he said, "and you should do far more than -respect her." - -"I want to respect her, but she doesn't respect herself." - -Mrs. Farley wept helplessly in silence. - -"I won't have you insult her, Alice." - -"I'm not insulting her. I'm not the one who takes it for granted that -she is willing to go on forever and ever in this equivocal fashion. I've -done her the honor of thinking she might be glad to separate from you -and leave you free to live decently." - -"I'll go away, Alice! I'll go away! My children don't love me!" Mrs. -Farley squinted her lids together and, throwing back her head, wrung her -hands abandonedly. - -"Mother!" Mr. Farley laid a soothing hand on her mouse-gray hair, dry -and silky like fur. - -She moved away from him, shaking her hands. Her lids relaxed smoothly -over her eyes and the tears coursed more easily through her worn lashes, -and fell upon the nose glasses dangling from the gold hook on her -breast. "You'll probably be glad I'm gone. Oh, my God, this is the -reward of my life!" - -"Hush, Mother! Hush! You're talking nonsense. Nobody even dreams of you -going away. Why, it's preposterous." - -"Alice says you want me to go!" she moaned. - -"Alice doesn't know what she is talking about. I need you as much as you -need me." - -"But Alice wants me to go. My children don't want me!" She opened eyes -that were blank with the abnormality of her passion. "You don't want -me!" - -"Mother!" - -She struggled to her feet and brushed past him. He began to follow her, -but halted half way to the door with an air of helpless indecision. - -"I'm sorry, Papa," Alice said after a minute. - -He could not answer. He put his hand to his head and walked away from -her. For a moment he stood by the window with his hands over his eyes. -At last he said, "It is cruel and useless to subject your mother to a -thing like this--not to mention that I don't deserve it, Alice." - -"I know it, Papa, but I hate to have to keep looking at the thing. You -and Mamma are of no earthly use to each other, and it seems so stupid -for you to sacrifice yourself to a lie like this." - -Mr. Farley hung his head and smoothed his broad brow with slow trembling -fingers. "Readjustments are expensive, Alice." - -"I know they are, but you can't blame me for wanting to see things -right." - -They were silent. Mr. Farley was uncomfortable. He did not know what was -expected of him. "You must try to comfort your mother," he said at last. - -"She'll probably find some comfort for herself," Alice said bitterly. - -"Well, I must go to the office. My first duty to her is there." Trying -not to hurry, Mr. Farley, his face averted, walked out. - -His back, as he disappeared through the doorway, looked stiff and weary. -He seemed weak and humiliated like a big dog in pain. - - * * * * * - -At the noon hour Mrs. Farley came downstairs and shambled about the -house, forcing herself on Alice's sight but refusing to speak. As Mrs. -Farley's fingers fell into their wonted tasks the scene of the morning -became less real to her than the feel of cloth and the posture of -furniture. The habit of contentment crept back upon her. She wanted -nothing of others. What should they want of her? - -Dryly she preserved her already half-mummied antagonism. - - * * * * * - -On the glass windows that stretched, twinkling with light, across the -broad front of the bakery and lunch room, the name was inscribed in a -half moon of raised white letters. Behind the glass were mounds of iced -cakes and piles of glossy yellow rolls resting in wooden trays. - -A pink-faced German, with flat cheek bones, a stiff mustache, and narrow -good-natured eyes, stood in his undershirt and trousers draped with a -soiled apron, and laid out a new supply of cakes with alternate -chocolate and white so that they formed a geometric pattern. Behind him -on a rear wall a large clock marked six, the hands, on the stark white -dial, rigid as the limbs of the crucified. - -Above him lights glowed through globes of clouded glass. Groups of wagon -drivers and workmen in gray jumpers sat at the tables and, leaning -forward with chests to the marble tops, slopped coffee from their -saucers and shoveled huge accretions of potatoes and meat into their -mouths in the attitudes of hunting animals. - -Outside, in the dusk, light spread hazily about the lamps in the street. -Over the roofs stars quivered delicately like fiery flowers of pale -green on a shaken spray. - -Old women crept along in the vague brightness, their backs bent, parcels -of half-wrapped bread and bits of bloody meat held preciously to their -shrunken breasts or clutched in the knots of their shawls. A policeman, -leaning against a post, twirled his club and stared smugly into the -bright vacant faces of two pearl-rouged girls in large black velvet -hats. - -Mrs. Farley, very genteel in her shabbiness, shrank from the burly men -and the rough children who ran almost under her feet. But she felt -superior to them and the sight of them steadied her against life. - -For years she had bought bread at the bakery. As she went in the smell -of baked bread floated against her face like a palpable assurance of -unchanging things. But the memory of the morning's scene crept over her -like a coldness which she seemed to feel in the roots of her hair. It -was pain to feel the warmth of life flowing away. Her coldness shuddered -miserably against the heat of the room. - -"Some rolls, please. Fifteen cents' worth." Mrs. Farley's smile was like -the smile of the drowned, pale through water. Her voice was so modulated -that the friendly blonde woman with her childlike eyes had to lean from -behind the counter and ask again what was wanted. - -Mrs. Farley waited for the rolls to be wrapped. The steam from the -shining coffee urns enveloped her. - -Every day for a dozen years. The world motionless in an atmosphere which -held the gestures of the German baker and the big blonde woman with the -smiling face. - -Mrs. Farley walked home slowly. The bag of bread dangled in her cramped -hand as she faced the chill wind blowing against her from the direction -of her home--chill wind of strangeness. - -Mr. Farley and Alice were in the house. Alice minded the children. Mr. -Farley awaited his dinner. - -To Mrs. Farley they were wild fish out of the sea caught in her glass. -They were in the house making confident motions there as fish swim at -their ease in an aquarium. They were terrible as the sea in a -looking-glass. - -Mrs. Farley mounted the front steps. Alice and Mr. Farley were a pain -she would not admit. She shut them out. It should be night, and she -would remain in the night where they meant nothing. - -As she walked through the hall to the kitchen she felt strong again with -the monotony of life. Beds, chairs, tables, walls rose strong about her. -She made herself still like the walls. - - * * * * * - -Mrs. Farley pushed the bedroom door back. She did not speak. - -Alice could barely distinguish the form which agitated the darkness -with its quiet. The two women felt for each other through the gloom. -They were like water insects fumbling with antennae. - -"Mamma! Is that you?" Alice sat up straight in bed. - -Mrs. Farley, her heart beating unevenly, felt the harsh stiffening of -Alice's outline against the white blot of the sheet. - -Mrs. Farley tried to speak. She felt as though the darkness were binding -her lips with gray transparent folds of shadow tough as silk. "Yes." - -"What's the matter?" Alice threw the sheet back and stood up on the -floor. Half seen, she upreared enormously like a wraith. - -"Your father isn't home yet," Mrs. Farley said. - -"Well, what of it?" - -"I know where he is." Mrs. Farley's voice sounded cracked. - -"Then you ought not to worry." - -"He's with that woman." Mrs. Farley's words clacked like castanets in -trembling hands; then fell soundless. - -Alice pitied her mother and grew hard. "Well, you knew he was going to -see her." - -There was a silence. Then Mrs. Farley said, "I know I can't expect any -sympathy from you. My own child connives with her father to get rid of -me." - -"I'm sorry things are like this, Mamma, but I won't be blamed for them. -If I were you I wouldn't allow myself to be placed in this kind of a -position." - -"Oh, I know you! I know you!" Mrs. Farley's voice broke as with age and -vindictiveness. She turned and went out, stumbling over the edge of the -matting and catching the door lintel as she passed into the light. - -Alice stood quietly a moment resisting the contagion of her mother's -panic. Then, conquering stubbornness, she followed. - -Mrs. Farley was in the back of the hall leaning against the stair rail. -She was in her nightdress that fell, like hanging water, white through -the gloom. She was making a slow way toward the kitchen. - -"What are you trying to do, Mamma?" Alice called. Her body, uncorseted, -was heavy. She walked quickly after her mother. She knew what her mother -was trying to do. - -Mrs. Farley dallied a little, but she would not answer. Her hands were -hid, carrying something. - -Alice came up behind. She caught her mother quickly from the back. "Give -me that pistol, do you hear me!" - -"No, no! I won't!" The scrawny body bent forward and doubled itself -against Alice's reaching hand. - -"Give it here." Alice was quiet and sure with excitement. Her big breast -heaved under her loose nightgown. Her hair was tumbled about and her -coarse face was red with effort. - -"Let me! Then you and your father can do what you please!" - -"Rubbish. Let it go, I say." Alice's fingers were on the gun. Its -hardness and coldness reassured her of she knew not what. - -She wanted to hurt me, Alice thought. What other reason did she have for -coming to me about it? - -"Oh, oh! You hurt my wrist!" - -Alice clutched her mother's fingers and was cruel to them. The strong -fingers pressed and twisted, still stronger. "Give me that gun!" - -It dropped with a dull clatter on the bare floor. - -Mrs. Farley's power over others was her power to hurt herself. Now it -was gone. She was feeble. - -"You try to get your father to leave me. You want to see me left here -without anything and you won't let me kill myself," she hiccoughed, -beginning to cry. - -The gaslight on the wall was turned low. Alice reached for the screw and -sent the flame up so that a yellow flood swept the shadows away. - -Mrs. Farley's tear-inflamed eyes squinted at the light. She huddled -against the wall. Her gray hair, undone, clung to her bare neck above -her open nightdress. Her eyes, lifted to Alice, were opaque with misery. - -Below her nightdress her feet were bare. Her toes with bulbous joints -rested flaccid on the scrap of brown carpet at the head of the stair. -She turned away from Alice and began to fumble blindly for the rail. - -"Where are you going?" - -Mrs. Farley slid herself feebly along the rail and down the first step. -"I don't know! I don't know!" she wailed. - -"Stop acting like that, Mamma. You know you can stand up." - -"I can't! I can't! I don't care what becomes of me!" - -Alice caught her mother in a grasp of repugnance and pulled her back. -"You've got to brace up. You don't care what I think of you or what you -do to me, but you have to have a little pride and a sense of -responsibility toward Bobby and May. You can't let them see a thing like -this. Is Laurence home yet?" - -"No, he's not home. Why should I feel responsible for Bobby and May? You -think I'm not fit for them. You want to take them away from me." - -"I'm not going to pamper you by arguing with you. If I seriously thought -that you wanted to end your life I should consider that interference was -none of my business, but----" - -"And yet you expect me to live! None of your business! Oh, my God!" - -"But as you have no real intention of killing yourself you have no right -to subject me to a scene like this. I want a little peace." - -"A little peace! Oh, my God, a little peace!" Mrs. Farley shut her eyes -and let her head fall backward and forward limply as though there were -no vertebrae in her neck. - -Alice shook her. "Stop it, Mamma." - -Mrs. Farley rocked herself like a drunken woman. Finally, her eyes yet -closed, she shuddered and was still. - -"Are you calm now?" - -"Yes. I'm calm. Whatever I do makes no difference to you. Nothing I do -affects you. You're hard as nails." - -"We won't talk about that. You can affect me, but because that is just -what you want to do I'm not going to let you." - -"I want to do! She says I want to do!" - -"I have to talk you into a state of common sense." - -Still Mrs. Farley's head nodded as if with sleep and her eyes remained -shut. "Common sense. Yes, common sense," she repeated like a dream. - -"Echoing me in that stupid way won't keep me from going on." - -"Stupid? She calls it a stupid way. My God! My God! What agony!" Mrs. -Farley almost shrieked out "agony." Her knotted hands clutched her flat -breasts as if with hunger. Her voice was dully intense. Her wrinkled -lids twitched. - -Why does she twitch her face? - -Alice's lips curled almost like a snarl. "You'll find me giving away and -raving too if you don't watch out, Mamma. I can't stand too much of -this." - -Mrs. Farley opened her eyes slowly, but she kept her gaze vague against -the solid antagonism of Alice's eyes. "I'm going back to my room now. I -can't sleep, but I won't burden you any longer with the sight of me. You -can tell your father I'm not going to trouble him any more. He can start -his proceedings for divorce. I don't know what the Prices will say--what -they will think. They probably imagined just as I did that the whole -thing was over twelve years ago when I went through so much humiliation -to save your father. It took the diabolical vileness of my own daughter -to draw her father and this woman together again after we had a happy -home and were all at peace." - -"I didn't have a happy home. Papa hasn't a happy home." - -"I know I'm vile. Guilty of all manner of vileness. It was vile of me to -slave and work as I've done and take all of the responsibility off -Laurence's hands and slave for Winnie and the children." - -"I have nothing to do with Winnie and the children." - -"I don't know what charge your father can bring. Then as soon as he gets -it he can rush off and marry that thing. To judge by the way she was -going when I saw her she must be middle-aged and fat by now, but your -father won't mind so long as she's not me. Then my daughter will be -freed of me. Winnie and Laurence can get somebody else to fetch and -carry and clean up for their children. As you say, I have no right here. -I ought not to be alive. But you can tell your father how it is and -he'll find a way to get rid of me." - -Alice was still like a mountain. "That's all right, Mamma. I'll tell -Papa what you say--that you are willing for him to arrange for a -divorce. Is that all right?" - -"That's it! That's it! Let him arrange it anyway he will and don't have -too much consideration for my feelings. Let him tell the judge that I've -worn out my good looks so I don't attract him any longer." - -Alice had heard the door slam below stairs. She stared at her mother's -unconscious face and said nothing. - -Mrs. Farley, dragging her feet exaggeratedly, moved off into her -bedroom. - -Then Alice pattered quickly down the stairs and met her father in the -hall. He had heard voices and looked alarmed. - -"Is anything the matter?" he asked, seeing her face angry and elated, -and that she wore only her nightgown. - -"Yes. Come into the living-room," Alice said. - -They walked in. Mr. Farley was a long time finding the light. He felt -choked by the guilty beating of his heart. When he had made the room -bright he turned to Alice almost in fear. She looked so ugly, flushed, -with her hair in confusion, and her angry eyes. - -"I've been talking to Mamma," Alice said breathlessly. - -Mr. Farley's face was drawn. He blinked at the light, gaining time. "I -asked you not to talk to your mother," he said uncomfortably. - -"I know you did, but she talked to me and I couldn't keep my mouth shut. -She began by saying she knew where you had gone. She says she's willing -to agree to a divorce." - -Mr. Farley did not know what to say. The situation had been forced upon -him unaware and he did not know what to do with it. "This is nonsense, -Alice. Your mother knows that." He held his brow with his hand. - -"Why is it nonsense? You've given up most of your life to her, but I -don't see why you should keep on doing it!" - -Mr. Farley could not understand what was happening, nor how it was he -felt borne forward on an invisible current that flowed from Alice. He -walked up and down the room. "You mustn't start these things, Alice." - -Alice watched him contemptuously. "Don't blame me for the nightmare of -lies and hypocrisy that exists between you and Mamma." - -Mr. Farley kept rubbing his head. Then he walked stealthily to the hall -door and closed it. His eyes, as he lifted them to Alice's face, had the -blind awareness of a sheep's. He seemed to know all and to perceive -nothing. "You mustn't misunderstand me, Alice. It is true that a -satisfying companionship cannot exist between me and your mother, but -she and I have made compromises for each other that have made it -possible for us to live, and I can't think lightly of hurting her." - -They were silent. Mr. Farley shaded his eyes with an unsteady hand. - -"You did go to see Mrs. Wilson tonight, didn't you?" Alice asked after a -minute. - -"Yes. She is passing through town. I hadn't seen her for three years." - -"My God! You don't need to apologize for it!" - -They were quiet again. - -"So you don't want to accept anything from Mamma even if she is willing -to give?" - -"You don't understand, Alice. That very fact makes me even more -responsible for my own resolutions." His voice shook. - -"Look here, Papa, I always imagined you had sacrificed yourself outright -to Mamma's weakness and dependency, and now when you have a chance to -get away from her and live with somebody who is younger whom you seem to -care for, you actually seem to be dodging the issue just as though you -were contented with your situation." - -"You must remember that Mrs. Wilson must be considered--that what I -selfishly want----" He stopped. Patiently through all these years he had -strained forward like an animal pulling a loaded cart and, now the cart -was being taken from him, he was disconcerted to find himself still -straining forward pulling at nothingness. Bewildered, he tried to save -his ideal of himself. "You must remember we have never really considered -a divorce possible." - -"Well, Papa, of course I can't decide your life for you. If you don't -feel that you owe it to your son----" She turned resolutely. - -He felt her scorn. He hated her, but he could not bear to have her go. -He covered his face. - -She walked out. - -He could hear her run up the stairs, her bare feet making a soft sound. -He wanted to call her back, but he did not know what to say. It was -necessary to him to think well of himself. - - * * * * * - -Mrs. Farley went about her housework with renewed determination. She -would speak to no one but Laurence. At the table she served them all, -but if there was any general talk she did not hear it. - -Mr. Farley grew into the habit of giving her furtive looks. He forgot to -eat. He talked mostly to Bobby and May. - -The weather was quite mild, but Mrs. Farley took to wearing an old red -cashmere shawl and pulling it tight about her throat. When her husband -or her daughter sought her averted gaze she wrapped herself tighter and -shivered ostentatiously. - -Bobby was too young to note changes which did not directly affect his -interest, but May, with her shining eyes of a little stuffed goat, -ruminated in her own way on what was making her grandmother eccentric. -The little girl's pale lips parted loosely in wonder, as, ignoring her -food, she watched her grandmother's oblivious face bent over the coffee. - -Mrs. Farley was conscious of this all-absorbing gaze which had in it -neither approval nor condemnation. She felt at a disadvantage before the -child, and, when May asked for anything, found it difficult not to push -her away with expressions of violence. - -Laurence saw that something was wrong again between his parents. Alice -with her damned interference, he told himself. - -When his mother spoke to him his voice was gentle. But he could not -endure other people's pain. He kept away from her as much as possible. - -In this web of silence between her father and mother Alice felt herself -caught by threads of iron. She could not move. - -One morning when she and her mother were alone Alice said, "I told Papa -that you were willing for him to arrange a divorce." - -Mrs. Farley's face, in its deliberated vagueness, quivered like a gray -jelly, but she kept her eyes away and her body did not quicken to more -expressive life. - -"Yes. I supposed you did. I suppose by now the two of you have fixed it -up." - -"You'll have to talk sensibly about it or he can't do it." - -Mrs. Farley gave Alice one weak terrible look. - -Alice could not bear the look. To get away from it and from a desire to -do something violent she walked into the living-room. - - * * * * * - -The children were playing in the back yard when Bobby fell down and hurt -himself. May sat flat on the grass before the sandpile, but when she saw -that Bobby was hurt she struggled to her feet on her thin legs like a -weak young colt, and went to help him. - -"You're full of dirt." She squatted before him brushing his clothes, her -stiff petticoats tilted up in front, her buttocks, in small soiled -drawers, swinging close to the earth. - -Just then Aunt Alice came out of the kitchen door and stood on the step. -In the sunshine her bare hair showed a burnt brown. The wind whipped her -heavy skirts against her stout thighs. She saw Bobby crying with his -mouth open and his eyes shut, trying to squeeze the tears from between -his lids. - -"Hush that, Bobby! Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" - -Bobby cried louder. When she came down the path her undeviating approach -made him mad with passion. "Dow 'way!" he shouted. When Aunt Alice -reached him he pounded against her stomach with his fists. - -She clasped his plump wrists folded in fat and held them while he -struggled until the dirt and sweat with which they were grimed rolled up -under her fingers. At this moment she loved him more intensely because -she could hurt him. - -"Dow 'way!" he kept shouting. His hair was tumbled about his face. He -was red with passion. When he had freed himself he ran toward the house. -"I hate Aunt Alice! I hate Aunt Alice! I wants my dranma!" he called -back. - -With sudden confidence, May sidled toward her aunt. "We've been makin' -mud pies and coverin' 'em with sand like icin'," she said. - -Alice looked down. Pale. May's hair shining like a dead sun. Alice all -at once hated May's hair because it was pale and bright. "It's too -chilly to make mud pies. For Heaven's sake don't put your dirty hands on -me, May!" With a violent push Alice put the little girl aside and walked -briskly up the path. - -A few surprised tears trickled from the resigned and shining misery of -May's eyes. She watched her aunt move toward the house. - -Conscious of May's pale hair floating after her in unsubstantial -brightness, Alice rushed up the stairs to her room. She pulled down the -shades, longing for the heaviness of dark. The room in shadow was a -pool on which Alice's unhappiness, dreamy and intermittent, floated like -a swamp light. - -Outside the softness of the room, where solitude allowed her to relax, -the soul of her family surrounded her, rearing its ramparts of towers -beaten in the iron of years. - -Where will my light go to? Ugly old maid. Emancipation of women. Why did -I not tell him that I loved him? - -Darkness floated from her words. - - * * * * * - -The morning was gray. The windows along the street were fathomlessly -blank. Across the asphalt wet wheel tracks stretched glistening and -sinuous like black rubber snakes. - -Mr. Farley stepped into the street and closed the front door stealthily -behind him. Too agitated to endure breakfast with his family, he -remembered the cheap restaurant around the corner, a place lined with -grotesque mirrors and white and narrow like the corridor of a ship. - -When he went in he found the floor, covered with brick-colored linoleum, -smeared and darkened with grease, and the cloth on the table where he -seated himself was stained with pink-brown splashes of wine. The waiter -came up, a soft heavy man whose feet pressed the floor as soundlessly as -those of a panther. Mr. Farley took the list of dishes from the -waiter's hand, fat like the hand of a corpse. The waiter's sad little -eyes were set in a broad white face stubbled with bluish beard. When he -moved away he was like a ghost. His large hips swayed, woman-wise. His -soiled apron floated over a generous belly as profound as sleep. - -Flies buzzed against the walls and fell back upon the half-washed table -coverings and the cracked cruets opaque from many fillings. - -Mr. Farley stirred gray crystals of sugar into the gold-edged blackness -of his coffee, then clouded it with the pale blue-auraed milk that -brimmed the squat white pitcher. - -He tried to think things out, but he had nurtured his self-esteem on the -verity of abnegation and it was hard for him to accept as a blessing the -thing which it had given him so much comfort to do without. - -Safe in the conviction that there would be no end to his sacrifice, he -had allowed full abandon to his mystical and repressed nature. Helen -Wilson had become glorified and beyond attainment. He was in terror of -seeing her too clearly. When her neat figure, a little stout, emerged -distinctly from the chaos of his reflections, he deliberately let down a -curtain of confusion across the mirror of his consciousness. - - * * * * * - -After dinner Mr. Farley went into the living-room and seated himself in -an armchair. He had scarcely exchanged a word with any one during the -meal. He bent his head in his hands. The light from the shaded lamp -glistened obliquely along the thin parting of his hair and his baldish -scalp. - -Mrs. Farley made pretexts to come near him. In the afternoon she had -been mending a nightdress of May's and left it on top of the magazine -rack, and now she came to get it. - -She was a long time putting her sewing things together. Mr. Farley saw -her, but he did not stir. - -Alice had followed her mother into the room and halted abruptly behind -her. - -Mrs. Farley did not see Alice. Mr. Farley started a little, glanced at -his daughter, and looked away again. - -Alice, watching the two people, felt the atmosphere of the room weighted -with inertias. These people forced her back into herself, into her own -dumbness. She wanted to shatter her silence with their cries. - -"Turn around here and look at Papa, Mamma," Alice said suddenly. - -Mrs. Farley would not look. "Your father knows what I think," she said -after a minute. She glanced at Alice. - -Mrs. Farley wore her pince-nez and the irridescence of glass added -remoteness to her hostile uneasy eyes. The gold clasp drawing the flesh -together on her nose gave a twist of severity to her dry obscure face. -Her hate seemed to flow uncertainly through the crystals and flash -defiance in the gold center. The little gold clasp of the pince-nez was -like the claw of impotence buried in its own flesh. - -Alice tapped the floor with her foot. "Do you know what Mamma thinks, -Papa? I'm sure I don't." - -Mr. Farley stared under his fingers at the floor where the dim pattern -of the carpet grew more dim. "I know what you have told me." - -"I can't stand the atmosphere here. If you and she don't find some way -to talk it out you'll drive Laurence and me insane." - -Mr. Farley sighed deeply. "I'm ready and willing to discuss anything. I -have felt lately that I have become an intruder in your mother's eyes, -but I hardly know what has happened, Alice." - -Mrs. Farley glanced at the bright baldish spot in her husband's scalp. -It seemed to her the center of the unreality in which she had existed of -late, and she was as if held together by the grip of the glasses on her -nose, the one tense and sure sensation which contradicted her feeling of -dispersion. Then she looked at Alice. - -"I can't leave May and Bobby upstairs alone even to talk things over." -She pulled the red shawl about her neck and started for the door. "It -seems to me you and your father have settled my life for me, anyway," -she called back. - -Mr. Farley did not move for a moment after her exit. Then he stood up, -and, making a hopeless gesture with his hands, walked out in silence, -shaking his head. - -His thoughts were eddying in a current which sucked down his -self-esteem. He wanted to give back her happiness to his wife that it -might make him beautiful in his own eyes. He wanted the cool peace of -purchased misery. - -Alice, left alone, was hot and futile. - -I shall go out of me in dark blood. - -She walked to the window. The street was empty. Over the blue-bright -housetops, the quiet sky and the cold moon. She leaned her forehead -against the glass and looked into the street. - -She felt suddenly tired, endless, capable of giving birth to endless -selves. She was tired. She could not die. She was like a mother bearing -herself forever like endless children. - - - - -PART III - - -There was a blacksmith's forge down the road by the farmhouse where -Winnie and her mother were staying. In the morning in the silence the -first sound Winnie heard was the chiming of the hammer like a bell. - -There were maple trees against her window. The leaves were yellowing. -When the sun shone through them they were a silken veil of light. - -The days were long and bright. The farmer's wife was busy with household -tasks and Winnie and her mother spent uninterrupted hours on the long -narrow veranda when Mrs. Price embroidered, or read a novel while Winnie -listened. - -Winnie was oppressed by the silence. She had not cared at first to -believe that she would have a child, but the dark thought ran along -after her like a dog that will not be beaten off. She knew it was there -in her mind, but she would not recognize it. - -Dr. Beach came into the country to visit her. He spoke of the care she -must give to her health and he told her that if she continued to improve -over a long time she might be able to evade the operation. - -It was only when he gave her hope that despair forced her to realize -herself. She gazed at him in helpless terror. When he turned to speak -to her mother, Winnie left the room, and while he remained she did not -come back. - -After the doctor had gone Mrs. Price entered the old-fashioned farm -bedroom and found Winnie lying on her face. - -"Winnie! My darling! You are sobbing your heart out!" Mrs. Price's -black-clothed body trembled and her precise voice shook. She laid her -blue-veined hand on Winnie's wrist. - -But Winnie could not tell. She glanced up, her little face dim with -despair. - -"Winnie! Are you in pain? Shall I call the doctor again? Winnie, my -darling! Dear child, answer me! You must not act like this!" - -But Winnie buried her head in pillows and would not reply. She had wept -out all she wanted to say. She was sodden. She was still. There was -nothing left in her but silence. - -Mrs. Price, tears of anxiety in her eyes, gripped Winnie's wrists and -held them tight. They were still together. The wooden clock ticked on -the low mantel. Then Mrs. Price said, "Winnie, if you cannot manage to -tell me what is the matter I shall telegraph your father." - -Crushed against Mrs. Price's finality, Winnie struggled to free herself. -"I want to die! Oh, I want to die!" she said, and every time she said -"die," something in her shouted against the dumbness of her throat, -life, life! The shriek was against Laurence and against the living child -that had come to consume her. - -Mrs. Price shivered as with cold, but she tried to be calm. "Winnie," -speaking very low, "you _must_ use some self-control. Something terrible -has happened. You have heard something from home which you have not told -me. I am your mother. I love you better than anything in the world, and -you have no right to keep me in ignorance of anything that is troubling -you." Her lips were bluish and her upper lip was wet with sweat. The -skin on her hands was withered like white crepe and the veins swelled in -her trembling wrists. - -The clock ticked. Winnie murmured something in the pillow. Mrs. Price -waited. - -Outside the open window the evening air congealed in heaviness. It hung -cold and bitter over the moist grass. The smell of weeds floated into -the room. - -Mrs. Price looked out and saw that each stalk of golden rod in the -meadow opposite was separately still. The sky was blue stone. Only the -pine trees seemed warm against the vacuous shining of twilight. For -night was terrible, descending in brightness. It was a mirror in the -pale still sky. It was nothing. - -Slowly the darkness grew up from the earth, and, as the trees darkened, -the earth began to grow into being. - -Winnie was glad of the darkness. When the room grew dark she did not -hold the child separately in her body. It lay with her in the body of -the dark and she was freed of it. - -"Mamma!" She sat up, her body a harsh gray stroke of determination -against the white inert pillow. - -"Yes, my dear." Mrs. Price smoothed her child's brow. "Oh, I am so glad -you are quieter, Winnie." - -Out of the silence from which the sun had passed the moon suddenly -unrolled, huge and white and dry as a dead flower. A dragon-fly darting -across the window and the dry white face of the moon, so gorgeously -lifeless, was a gold thorn sinking into the quiet flesh of shadow. - -Voices sounded from the road. The lowest branches of the trees yet -trembled with light. Then the world died away in the chirping of insects -and the bleat of frogs. - -"I will light a lamp, darling." Mrs. Price went over to a table. She -could barely be seen. The match spurted suddenly into flame, and she was -plain again. - -When the lamp was lit the night outside went black and the moon, now -vast and green and strange, rushed gorgeously against the lifted window -pane. - -Lamplight sucked at the shadows but could not draw them utterly to -itself so that the corners of the big room remained vague and only here -and there some object gave out a grudging glint. - -Mrs. Price was stiff but shaken and gentle. "Now, Winnie, darling, tell -me what has made you like this." She came to the bed and looked down. - -Winnie threw back her head and, with closed eyes, plucked at the -bedclothes. "I can't tell you." - -"Are you unhappy? Has something happened between you and your husband, -my child? You must be fair to me, Winnie." - -Winnie rocked herself. "Oh, I can't tell. What would be the use? I can't -tell." - -"What am I to do, Winnie?" - -Still Winnie rocked herself. "Oh, I would rather be dead!" she said. - -"Don't say that, Winnie! We mustn't think such thoughts. Aren't we doing -everything on earth to make you live? Your father and I want to do -everything on earth to make life better and surer and sweeter for you -and your babies." - -Winnie began to throw herself about in the bed again. "Oh, I'd rather be -dead than to be sick and have another baby. I know I'm going to die." - -"Have another baby." Mrs. Price did not receive the words. They were -strange. They remained outside her. - -Then, all at once, without her being aware of the moment, their meaning -entered into her and burnt her with terror. - -"What do you mean, Winnie? This isn't possible." Mrs. Price seated -herself shakily on the bed and took Winnie's struggling hands again. -"Ba----This is nonsense, Winnie." She held Winnie's hands firmly. Her -own hands were dry and hot. - -Mrs. Price felt strange with herself. The words had changed her. She was -in a new place. - -"How long has this----" She tried to speak. Her throat was dry. She -could not go on. - -"Oh, don't ask me--six weeks--two months--I don't know!" - -"Winnie, are you sure of this?" - -"I'm sure of it." - -Mrs. Price's grip on Winnie's arms relaxed. Winnie lay still, moaning. - -Mrs. Price got up. Her eyes looked wasted with fear. She stared -helplessly at her daughter. - -"Oh, Winnie, what shall I do for you?" - -Winnie's nostrils, very wide open, quivered like those of a mare crazy -with a painful bit. "I won't! I'll die first!" she said. "I won't!" - -Laurence was around her, in her, formless like smoke. Her animosity to -him was living its separate life within her. - -She sobbed herself into numbness. She would not feel it. She wanted the -life in her to lie cold and numb. Her breasts swelled. She thought she -could feel the milk flowing through them like shame through her flesh. - -Mrs. Price walked up and down the room, clasping and unclasping her -hands. "Yes, I'll send for Dr. Beach. We must send for Dr. Beach. I -cannot understand your husband, Winnie." - -Bewildered by the catastrophe as she was, it gave her a certain feeling -of assurance to be able unreservedly to condemn Laurence again. - -She gazed at Winnie prone on the bed and felt suddenly sickened with -futility. All of Mrs. Price sickened and armed against Laurence. She -wanted to snatch the child from the taint of its father as from a -disease. - -"Why didn't you tell me this sooner, Winnie? Something might have been -done. You know how unwise this is in your state." - -Winnie stared at her mother. "I'm going to die." - -Again tears swam in Mrs. Price's eyes, but she would not unbend -herself. "No dear, you are not going to die. We will take good care of -you and you will come through this terrible thing." - -Winnie stirred wearily and impatiently. "I don't care. I'm going to -die." She was stubborn and calm now. Die was a stupid word like dust. It -settled dully upon her pain. - - * * * * * - -Mrs. Price wrote a letter to Mrs. Farley. "Winnie is evidently going to -have another baby. This is a great misfortune. I cannot understand how -Laurence allowed this to occur. In her state you may imagine!" - -It was apparent that Mrs. Price was alarmed and that in writing the -letter her hand had trembled, but it was plain too that in her veiled -reproaches she was still delicately gratifying her hatred of Laurence. - - * * * * * - -Winnie, waiting for Dr. Beach, refused to stay in bed. She got up and -put on a flowered neglige and sat by the open window. Looking down the -long wet road, she hated the hill that set itself up heavily between her -and the sky. She hated life that came to the end of itself abruptly like -the road to the horizon at the end of the hill. - -When Dr. Beach came in Winnie spoke to him resentfully, and when her -mother told him what was the matter, blushed a defiant crimson. - -It was a delicate situation to consider. All three people thought of -Laurence with condemnation, but mention of him was eschewed. When Mrs. -Price talked her voice was choked with pent opprobrium. - -Dr. Beach told Winnie to undo her dressing gown. When he examined her, -his hot hands touched her cold body here and there lightly. - -She felt her body harshen to his touch. It was at the moment when his -hand touched her that the child became hers. It was not that she wanted -the child, but that she wanted the thing the man could not touch. She -hated the day when the child would no longer be secret. - -After the doctor had touched her and made her aware of the child she -ceased in part to feel that Laurence was in the child's flesh. She would -have liked to think of herself as the only creature capable of giving -birth. - -Dr. Beach was uncomfortable. He talked vaguely. He had advised her -against having a child, but because it would have been better to avoid -this contingency there was no reason to suppose she would not pull -through all right. "Above all," he told Mrs. Price, "keep her mind off -herself. Do not allow her to become depressed." - - * * * * * - -Nearly four months had passed while Winnie remained in the country with -her mother. Autumn was at a close. - -One day Winnie felt her flesh move. This quickening was as though she -had never before known herself with child. She conjectured for the first -time all of the inevitable details of the baby's birth. There was -nothing to speculate. She felt herself caught in the grip of this -horrible sameness. - -One Sunday Mr. Price came down from town to see them. He had the air of -a victor, and Mrs. Price, who was conquering the exultance of her -resentment toward Laurence, felt guilty in understanding her husband's -secret content. - -"That man ought to be killed!" Mr. Price said to his wife. "He ought to -be strung up and tarred and feathered. Nothing is too severe to do to a -fellow like that. I suppose you'll say that for Winnie's sake we must -keep our hands off." - -Mrs. Price was agitated. "Oh, yes, we must try to keep the peace for -Winnie's sake. You must remember, Perry, this is a hard time for her." - -Mr. Price walked back and forth across the room, flapping his coat-tails -with his hands and blowing out his mustache. "I should say it was! I -should say it was!" he repeated. He had his head lowered like that of a -bull about to charge, and in the depths of his murky blue eyes glowed a -surreptitious spark of triumph. "Bad blood in that Farley family," he -said. - -Winnie came into the room reluctantly, prepared to resist her father's -bullying. Her soft eyes were hard with reserves. - -Mr. Price came up to her and gave her a dominating caress. "Well, -Winifred, how are you, my dear little girl?" - -She returned his perfunctory kiss, her moist lips cool with distaste. - -"Feeling pretty badly, dear?" - -"No, Father. I'm feeling pretty well." - -He cleared his throat. He was disappointed. - -"I ought to be going home," Winnie pouted, smiling a little, "but Mother -won't let me. I had letters from Laurie and Mamma Farley just today and -they are worried about me." - -"Worried about you! So are we worried about you! I'd like to know where -home is if it's not right here with your mother! Your own mother is -certainly the one to take care of you when you're in this state!" - -"Mamma Farley took care of me when my other two babies were born," -Winnie said stiffly. - -Mr. Price choked, and to relieve himself, went to the window and spit. - -Mrs. Price began to speak tremulously for his comfort. "Those were -circumstances we couldn't help, dear. Thank Heaven that this time, when -you are really more seriously in need of us, we are here beside you to -do everything in our power. I think Winnie ought to lie down and rest," -Mrs. Price said, shepherding her husband out of the room before his -exultance should become too crass. - - * * * * * - -Laurence came heavily into the house and hung up his hat. All day he had -felt the new child, a fiery thread through the blackness of his mind -sewing him to earth. His fear of the new child smoldered like a hot -ache in the back of his brain. - -Thirty-one years old. He could not bear to recall in detail the -incidents of his life. He had achieved nothing; so he had ceased to -believe in achievement. As a boy he had invariably thought of himself in -grandiose and ultra-masculine roles. When girls had come into his dreams -they had come in gratitude to receive some contemptuous beneficence at -his hands. He was ashamed now when he recalled the gauche sense of -superiority that had showed itself in bad manners. And yet his habit of -mind remained the same. When he ceased to give himself he would admit -equality, and he could not do that. His pride bound him to endless -obligations. Against Winnie, he obliterated gladness in himself and -denied his acquisitive spirit. She should have him all and he would be -nothing. - -The door in the hall opened behind Laurence and closed with a sharp -click of the latch. Laurence moved in the heaviness of circles, but -Alice's movements were always angular and resistant. - -"Hello, Laurie," she said coldly. They seldom talked together. - -The gas flame burnt blue in the cold hall. Alice took off her beaver -sailor hat and hung it beside Laurence's acid-stained derby. - -She looked at him. The patience she read in his coarse florid face was -like everything else in the house. The house at night was a monstrous -phlegmatic beast half drowned. Its inmates were sightless parasites. - -Alice was pugnacious. "What's the matter with you?" she joked -brusquely. "Winnie hasn't had twins, has she?" - -"Winnie's all right," Laurence said. - -"How do you regard the prospect of becoming a proud father a third time, -Laurence?" she demanded suddenly. She knew she was offensive but felt -she must wrench something from this huge mass of bitterly desponding -flesh. - -The world was muted with fleshiness and heaviness. Only in her own body -pain rang clear and sharp and chiming sweet. Her pain was her beauty -that she kept inside herself. It was her virginity. She felt that he had -no beauty of pain. - -"You are the only thing that reconciles me to it, Alice," he retorted -sourly. - -"A benighted old spinster, eh?" - -"Well, I have a pretty wife and shall soon have three lovely children. -My state has its compensatory illusions." - -"Ah, yes, I suppose it has." She did not know what more to say to him. -He walked into the living-room, ignoring her. - -It was a moment before she could make herself follow him. - -If Winnie died----How did these things happen? Laurence was almost like -a murderer. - -For a moment she envied him, then in her terrible emptiness she felt -herself more beautiful than he. - -Mad. I'm going mad. He doesn't know. - -Laurence wanted to get away from her. His expression of life was always -bitter and cheap and he knew it, but he was rather proud of the -exquisiteness which made it unendurable for him to tell the truth to -himself. He despised Alice for the brutal veracity of her introspection. -Alice carried pain of self like a banner. He felt that her arrogant -suffering showed a want of fineness. To dare to see as she did, he felt, -one must be emotionally dull. - -Winnie was false and puerile, but because he felt that the truth would -kill Winnie, she seemed to him more delicate and beautiful than Alice. - -Alice recognized that Laurence hated her because she understood him too -well. - -She could not comprehend this. She would have let herself be known even -in utter contempt. She was clouded now with the murk of herself that no -one would know. She wanted to be known to be cleansed. - - * * * * * - -Winnie was tired of the country that left her too much with herself. She -hated the empty road in the bleak days and the black tree at the end -that swayed against the damp green twilights. She was glad when Mrs. -Price agreed that it was time for them to go back to the city. - -They left the farmhouse at night. Mr. Price had sent his car out and in -it they were driven to the station, ten miles away. It was moonlight. -The pine trees along the road tossed their green hair in the wind. The -long boughs swept the ground. The trees clutched the earth with their -roots as if in a frenzy. They would not give way. - -At the deserted station one light burned over the window where the -telegraph operator worked. They sat for a long time in the dim waiting -room, until the big train, fiery and terrible, rushed out of nothing and -came to a standstill at the end of the platform. - -When they went into the long dim car hung with green curtains, every one -was asleep. - -Mrs. Price helped her daughter to undress and Winnie lay down on her -side in the lower berth with the window shade up. As she lay there and -the train began to move, the oppression of the last few weeks culminated -in her emotions, in an unreasoning panic, and she imagined that she was -already dead. - -It was foggy. The train passed through a railway yard and Winnie saw -rows of empty cars, long and low, that were like monsters with -lusterless hides and opaque eyes, submerged in mist. Hundreds of dull -eyes stared from the dimly shining windows, the pale eyes of the cars. - -Delicate bridges floated over her head as the train passed beneath them, -and the swinging arms of derricks and huge machines, lifted through the -mist, were as frail as lace. - -Lights burst against the mist like rotted stars, and there were other -lights that opened upon her suddenly, glad and unseeing as the eyes of -blind men raised in delight. - -The moon, small with distance, slimed over with fog, was green like -money lost a long time. The telegraph wires stretched across the pale -landscape tautly, like harpstrings. One after another the flat branched -poles seemed to open submissive palms to the passing train. - -Winnie wanted the morning. She wanted to get back to Mamma Farley and -her familiar commonplace. Before expanding in voluptuous rebellion, -Winnie wanted to know that the cage was sure. Somehow Mamma Farley made -her more certain of its sureness. - -In the morning they alighted in the teeming station, and Winnie, anxious -not to be seen, walked a little behind Mrs. Price. Winnie was ashamed of -herself. She felt herself cold and isolated in the vividness of the life -she contained. - -At the big gate at the end of the track, they met Laurence. "Well, -Winnie. Well, Mrs. Price." - -Winnie looked up at him with eyes shuddering in softness. She showed him -her helplessness against which he could not defend himself. When she -lifted her mouth he had to kiss her. She was ashamed of his shabby -clothes. - -Laurence tried to say something to Mrs. Price. "You look well." - -"Yes, and Winnie has gotten along very nicely with me. How is your -mother? How are the children?" She did not look at him, and while she -talked she moistened her lips that were like paper under her tongue. - -In the waiting room they met Mr. Price. He had arrived at the train a -few moments late and the confusion of the incoming crowd had carried -them past him before he knew it. - -He was gruff and short with Laurence. "How-do, * * * * * Farley?" He -turned quickly to Winnie. "Well, Winnie, you're back, are you? How is -she, Vivien? Mother and I are going to keep a tight hold on you, my -young lady. We are going to see that your health is taken care of after -this." - -"You'll let us take you and Winnie home in the carriage?" Mrs. Price -said to Laurence. - -"I have a taxicab for Winnie, Mrs. Price." He took Winnie's arm. She -protested a little. - -"It seems so absurd," Mrs. Price demurred, preserving her well-bred -poise, but plainly irritated. - -Laurence, pretending not to hear, dragged Winnie on. - -Winnie pouted and hung back. "You'll come to see me this afternoon, -Mother," she called over her shoulder. - -Mrs. Price nodded and smiled. - - * * * * * - -It was Sunday. Winnie had fallen sick, and, to escape the feeling of -tension that prevailed at home, Laurence went into the country for a -long walk. - -Winnie might die. Then what? In the sense of oppression he experienced, -the thought of Winnie's danger awoke something in him which he refused -to recognize, which was like a stealthy and terrible hope of relief. - -He walked on, immersed in himself, scarcely realizing that he moved. -Then the ardor of his imaginings subsided in the familiar contours of -being and he saw the road again, stretching before him like a shadowed -light and the pale trees standing away on either side against the dim -enormous sky. - -Laurence wondered if he had grown suddenly old. Formerly, without -articulating it, he had experienced a sense of immanence on every hand. -Now he felt dry and exhausted in his nameless understanding. Everything -remained outside him. He had lost the power of enlarging his being. From -his numbness he regarded enviously what he considered the illusions of -others, and yet his exhaustion seemed to him the sum of life and he -could not but consider with contempt all those who imagined that there -was anything further. - -Only the horror that was between Winnie and himself gave him a little -life. The hideousness of his fatherhood made his apathy glow a little -like an illumined grimace. Through sheer irrelevance it seemed to have -some meaning. He began to depend on this ugly fact of the child he did -not want. - -Yet he could not bear to be in the sickroom where Winnie was. Her -sweetly pathetic commonplace was so grotesquely familiar that he could -scarcely endure to be aware of it close to the sense of what she held. - -In these days she was keenly dramatizing herself. She glanced stealthily -sidewise at the mirror and the Madonna look came into her face. When -Bobby and May were beside her, she drew them within her thin little arms -and pressed them to her breast with an air of ecstasy and reverence. - -But she did not care to have them close to her for long, and if they -fell into some childish dispute she called, in a peevish complaining -voice, for Mamma Farley, and said that no one considered her or -remembered that she was sick. - -When Laurence reached home after his walk it was eleven o'clock. He -passed through the still house and up the stairs to the bedroom, -wondering if Winnie were asleep. When he opened the door he saw the -light shining on her where she lay on the lounge with her eyes shut. - -Her mop of reddish hair was tangled about her face, turned to one side -on the pillows. The gold edges of her lashes rested delicately on her -shadowed cheek. She heard Laurence, and stirred. - -With a nauseous sense of inevitability, he waited for her to turn upon -him her look of conscious sweetness. - -"You were gone so long, Laurie!" She blinked at him and smiled drowsily. - -"Yes," he said. "I went for a long walk." - -She made a little mouth. "I've been back such a little while, I don't -think you ought to leave me when it's Sunday, Laurie." - -"You'll like me better if you don't see too much of me." His joke was -stiff. He looked as though his false smile hurt him. - -Winnie gazed at him. Her mouth began to quiver. "I get so lonesome, -Laurie. Mamma Farley goes off with Bobby and May, and Alice is always -poked away in her room!" - -He did not answer this. "It's cold in here. Mother shouldn't have let -the fire die down." He walked over to the grate and with his fingers -laid some lumps out of the scuttle upon the hot coals. "Keep that shawl -around you, Winnie. Hadn't I better call Mother and tell her to help you -to get to bed?" - -He came back to her. She did not speak to him. Tears rolled from her -open eyes and left wet smears along her lifted face. - -"All worn out, eh?" He touched her hair uncomfortably. "I'll call -Mother. She always knows what to do for you. I don't." - -She clung to his hand. "You don't hate me because I'm like this, do you, -Laurie?" - -"Don't be foolish, Winnie, child. You're worn out or you wouldn't talk -this way." He put her gently from him. "I'm going to call Mother." - -She began to sob. "You want to go! I don't want you to touch me if you -hate me!" - -Smiling wearily, he looked at her. It was a kind of relief to him to be -unable to defend himself. "Since I make you cry, I think I'd better go, -Winnie." - -"Oh," she sobbed, "you make me cry by not wanting me! You hurt me so. -You're so cruel!" - -Still he stood helpless, not touching her. "For your own sake, you must -stop, Winnie." - -"If--if you call Mamma Farley in here now I'll--I'll kill myself!" - -"No, you won't, Winnie." His voice shook. "But if you don't want me to -call her, I won't." - -Winnie became a little calmer. Then she said, more soberly, "You neglect -and despise me." - -"I don't, Winnie." - -"You do!" She sat up quickly. Her eyes insisted on his reply. - -"Do you believe that? Does my life really indicate that to you?" - -Her little face was hard. "You do things for me," she contended, "but -it's not because you love me!" - -His smile faltered. He shrugged wearily. "It would be hopeless for me to -attempt to justify myself, Winnie, but for the sake of your health and -your baby" (he looked at her straightforwardly) "we must try to overcome -this continual bickering." - -She looked steadily with her dissolving gaze against his unpenetrated -eyes. "Oh, I wish my children didn't belong to you!" she said suddenly. - -He glanced away from her. "If I thought you and the children could do -without me I might agree to resign my parental rights," he said with a -slight sneer. - -She pressed her hands together, regarding him in silence. Finally she -said, "Oh, I know you'd be glad to!" She was crying soundlessly. - -He does not love me. - -She felt sorry for herself. She felt the slightness of her body and the -fragileness of her bones. She was new and real to herself in her -illusion of smallness that made it easier for her to relinquish her -pride. - -She turned her face from him and lay back on the pillow again. -Voluptuously, she was conscious of her weakness. With infinite and -exquisite contempt, she loved herself. - -"Laurie?" Her fingers picked the cover. She did not look at them, but -she knew them, little and thin, and remembered how small they were when -he held them in his clumsiness. "Won't you kiss me, Laurie?" - -Hating himself for his helplessness, he leaned over her and kissed her. - -She lifted her arms to him. "Oh, Laurie, when I'm sick and you feel this -way----If I should die, I couldn't bear it!" she said. - -"But you won't die, Winnie. You won't die!" He gave up, leaning his face -against her hair. Why could they never touch? - -He felt the child stir in her against him, and the child seemed so -terrible and real that he longed for some terrible realness in them with -which to understand the child. - -Winnie felt the child stirring between them, and was ashamed. It kept -her from remembering sweetly the slightness of her body and the -smallness of her pretty outstretched arms. She was ugly and inert at the -mercy of the child. - -"Love me, Laurie!" she moaned. "I can't help being like this!" She was -unfair to him, but the agony in her voice was sweet to her -self-contempt. - -"Stop, Winnie. You have no right to say things like that." He could not -speak any more. He held her close up against him. - -To herself she was small and ugly with child in a small dark room. She -kissed his hair, stiff and bitter against her mouth. She envied him the -wonder of the fear he felt for her. - -But, while there was resentment in her, it elated her to inspire this -horror of pity. Small and weak as she was, her hands were the hands of -joy and agony. She was jealous of her closeness to death, half afraid -that the doctor was wrong. She wanted to be in danger. Secretly, her -weakness fed on its new strength. - -"Dear Laurie," she said tenderly. - -He kissed her again. "I've worried until I'm not fit to be with you, -Winnie," he said. Then he got up. "I'll call Mother. You must go to -sleep." With tears in his eyes, he smiled at her. - -"Good night, Laurie, dear." Her voice was stifled in tears, but she -smiled too. - -When he went out and she was alone in the room, the recollection of his -pained face made her feel that he had taken something from her that -belonged to her, that she was incapable of holding. - - * * * * * - -After Christmas Winnie was moved into the back room over the kitchen, -because it was warmer for her so. - -There were a rag carpet here, an old-fashioned cherry bedstead, and a -chest of drawers. On the flowered wall beside the bed hung a German -print which represented a gamekeeper who had caught some children -stealing apples. It was a very old print with a cracked glass. The -children in the picture had strange oldish faces. The girls wore long -skirts and the boy had half-length pants. The gamekeeper, with -side-whiskers and red raddled cheeks, was dressed in a high hat, a short -brown waistcoat, and tight trousers. To the right of him, in the -foreground of the scene, two little dachshunds stood sedately at -attention. - -Winnie stared at the picture until she hated it. - -Sharp specks of light flecked the worn green shades that darkened the -windows. The room faced east and at four o'clock Winnie watched the sun -set over the dim purple housetops. Then it was a flat white metal disk -with a harsh rim of whiter fire. But half an hour later it was only a -pinkish welter around which floated wispy clouds that looked burning -hot, like feathers dipped in molten ore. By five o'clock everything had -disintegrated in the lilac dust of twilight. - -The doctor advised Winnie that, in order to avoid a premature -confinement, she must move about as little as possible. But she was so -bored when she was alone that she sometimes put on a fancy house gown, -powdered her nose, and went downstairs. Every one, by an exaggerated -consideration, seemed determined to make her aware of her state. As she -walked she was obliged to sway grotesquely backward to balance the -weight she carried before her. When she passed the long mirror in the -little-used parlor, and saw herself hideous and inflated, she burst into -tears. - -Her mother was often at the house, and there was nothing so sickening to -Winnie as the sweet platitudes which Mrs. Price was constantly uttering. - -"The dear little baby!" Mrs. Price would say. "What a wonderful thing it -is to be a mother!" Her flat face was alight with the sickish reflection -of a memory that was growing dim. - -Mrs. Farley, with no more animation, was less refined, and Winnie could -say things to the mother-in-law which the mother would not have listened -to. For some reason it satisfied Winnie to discuss her condition with -irrelevant vulgarity. She hated her family for dedicating her to this -sordid thing every minute of her life. There was something false in -their heightened regard of her which existed because she was sick and -weak. - -She had become accustomed to feeling the baby move in her. Its life had -become definite and independent of her. It lay in her, complete, as -though it had no right there. Yet her mother, in particular, talked as -though the child were a hope and a wonder still in dream. As though they -must keep their hearts fixed upon it and pray it into being. - -It seemed to Winnie that her life was being taken away and given to the -child. - - * * * * * - -There was almost a frenzy about Mrs. Farley's attention to work. She got -up at half past five in the morning, and in the still gray dawn when the -grass in the back yard was silver with rime she took out the ashes in a -big bucket and emptied them into the bin in the alley. The gray dust -settled on her uncovered hair, but she did not seem to know it. Stiff -locks, sticky with dirt, hung about her grimed face. Her flannel waist -was half out of the band of her draggled skirt. Her hands, crimson at -the knuckles, and grained with the filth of labor, clutched the ash can -stiffly. - -Mr. Farley knew his wife's abstraction was intended as a rebuke to him, -but he wanted to hide behind it. Her continually averted face bewildered -him, and at the same time left him grateful. - -His life had been ruined. He had sacrificed everything. And now he was -offered the opportunity to escape. - -Since Helen had left the city again, the project for their future which -had been forced into his mind appeared to him as a dream out of which he -had been allotted the impossible task of making reality. - -His wife, concentrating herself upon household things, seemed to him -strong and natural. She had ground under her feet. She had selected the -carpet she walked on. It was hers. When he passed through a room where -she was at work and she swept dust into his eyes, he did not rebel. The -grit in his eyes was the truth of her right. He had no carpet and no -house in which to make his dream. He knew that, even though he had -bought the house, it was hers, because she wanted it. In his uncertainty -he was ashamed before her because her wants were so definite and -limited. - -Sometimes, in his confusion, he passed judgment upon himself before he -knew whom it was that he judged. In a panic, he tried to find some sure -conception of himself to hold against the ebb and flow of his -irresolution. Winnie's precarious health gave him the loophole he -needed. Until the baby was born, he must hold in abeyance the -contemplation of his own affairs. He owed it to her. - -"Poor little Winnie!" he often said. "I miss her so when she is not at -meals. She should be the first thought of all of us now. We should let -our individual problems go until we can see her through her trouble." - -His wife understood that he was excusing himself for what he had not -done. In the beginning of their disagreement, when she was frightened -with the strangeness of her situation, she had waited, in a numb agony -of quiescence, for the first legal steps to be taken. Nothing had -occurred, and she still waited. But there was furtive listening in her -attitude. She listened and, in spite of herself, was glad. - - * * * * * - -The gas jet was shaded so that the glow fell only on half the bed where -the footboard made darkness like an echo on the wall. Winnie's supper, -untasted, was in a tray on a chair: tea, black with long standing, and -shriveled toast on a chipped plate. - -On the chest of drawers, glasses and medicine bottles marked themselves -in separate blackness against the blank brilliant yellow-papered wall. -In front of them was a china holder with a bent candle beside which some -one had laid the rust-pink core of an apple. - -About the big looking-glass the frame of purplish wood was rich with -satin reflections, but the glass it surrounded was gray and still and -mirrored a part of the bed and the German print as though they were a -long way off. - -The fire had burned low and the room was hot and had a close smell. - -Winnie wore a thick cotton nightdress with long sleeves. Ruffles of -coarse embroidery set stiffly away from her thin wrists. She felt -herself hot and light against the cold pillow and the cold damp linen. - -The window shades were up, and she could see the moonlight, faint -outside. The moonlight grew in the room as the fire died down. The -steady burn of the gas flame was cold, like liquid glass flowing over -the dark. - -Winnie's feet grew cold. She began to shiver. The cold crept up her legs -under her nightdress. It was like grass growing up her. - -The fire in the grate sputtered and flared out again. It grew too -bright. It stung her. - -The brightness flowed into her eyes until they were like hot pools, and -she could not see. - -When Mrs. Farley came to take the tray away, Winnie had a high fever, -and Dr. Beach had to be called in the same evening. - - * * * * * - -It was four o'clock in the afternoon. In Winnie's bedroom the window was -slightly lifted to let in the soft spring air. The room was flooded with -an apricot-colored glow. Pink dots of sunlight moved on the wall. - -The polished chest of drawers and the cherry bedstead were a deep rich -red. There were lilac shadows on the cool sheets hollowed by Winnie's -upraised knees. The picture of the gamekeeper dissolved in pale -sunshine. - -Winnie was sunk in a dream when a sudden pain widened her eyes. She sat -up astonished, for she knew what the pain meant. It was like a -challenge. The child had come to wrestle with her. - -The pain came again and she clenched her fists until the nails made -little red half-moons in her soft full palms. She had closed her eyes, -but when she opened them they shone with a new and fierce aliveness. - -Winnie spread her toes out tensely against nothing. Each time the pain -came to her she seemed to know the whole world with her hips and thighs. -Then she lay back exhausted, feeling knowledge ebb away in the tingling -peace of relief. - -When Mrs. Farley came into the room to carry away the soiled lunch tray, -Winnie was unable to speak, but the shifting determined eyes of the -older woman gave one quick glance and guessed what had come about. - -Mrs. Farley ran out and called Dr. Beach and Mrs. Price on the -telephone. Later she remembered Laurence. - -Winnie was aware of the confusion in her room. She even understood that -the physician and her mother were discussing whether or not she should -be moved to a hospital. But in the reality of suffering their voices and -faces were unreal. - -If there had been no surcease Winnie could not have borne it, but just -when she felt that she could endure least, pain went out of her like a -quenched light, and she sank faintly as if into a memory of herself. - -It had grown dark. A shaded lamp was lit. A nurse had come from the -hospital and Mrs. Price and Mrs. Farley were sent out. - -The nurse was a tall woman with a plump, sallow face and small confident -eyes. Her nose was fat with widened nostrils that were slightly -inflamed. Her peaked cap set up very high on her untidy gray hair. When -she walked her starched skirt rattled like paper. She came and stood by -the bedside and was harsh and still like the shadows on the wall. - -Dr. Beach was a stooped, middle-aged man with a bald head and -inscrutably professional eyes. In his shirt sleeves, he sat on the edge -of Winnie's bed, rattling the chain on his vest or looking at his watch -and coughing occasionally. Sometimes he spoke to the nurse in an -undertone. - -When he laid his cold hand, covered with blond hair, on Winnie's warm -flesh, she shuddered to his touch. She hated the assertive hand on her, -demanding her back out of pain. The heavy hand weighed down her glory -and she sank back, dimmed. - -The bent candle on the chest of drawers made another black bent candle -behind it. On the wall, back of the row of medicine bottles, were other -bottles that seemed never to have moved since the world began. The -pictures had each their separate stillness of shadow. The print of the -German gamekeeper floated, drowned, on the gray becalmed glass opposite. -A heavy breath bellied the shade before the window, and swung it slowly -inward. Then it relaxed heavily into its place against the sill. - -Outside the moonless night, as if choked with quiet, crowded up from the -empty street. - -When Winnie lifted her lids a little they showed only the lower rim of -the pain-flecked irises. Dr. Beach examined the purplish nails on her -cold hands and felt her pulse uneasily. - -Suddenly Winnie clutched at the nurse's hands, and, with eyes open and -unseeing, uttered shriek after shriek. - -The sick woman was lost in pain as in a wilderness. Her hands and feet -were strange. The bed was strange. In the vast bed, so far from one end -to the other, she had lost her feet. - -She knew there was blood on her. The world poured from her, molten. - -The nurse put the chloroform cap over Winnie's nose. Then her head -detached itself from her body and floated over the bed. Her head danced -like a golden thistle on a pool of blood. - -Her lightness expanded. She was vastly light. And the body in the bed in -the dark pool grew still, and small, and far off. She was pale and angry -with joy. - -But through the mist of herself, something leaped angrily upon her and -dragged her to earth. Hot claws sank into her. She sank, nerveless, in -the infinite darkness. - -She was in bed again. The vast bed stretched from side to side of the -unseen sky, and oscillated like a ship. - -Not enough chloroform. She wanted to tell them, but they were too far -away. They could not have heard. - -She saw the bright things in the doctor's bag. Then long claws of steel. - -She wanted to scream. Her tongue and lips were wool. She knew that far -away, out of the darkness which did not belong to her, something warm -and moist slipped. The child emerged from the blackness in which she was -still caught. - -The child passed from the torture which went on without it. - - * * * * * - -"Mrs. Farley, it's over. You can rest." The nurse leaned close. Winnie -felt the nurse's breath, dry and hot as a sirocco, blown on her cold ear -across the dark. - -What did it matter to the rocking dark that the child was born? Her -wrists floated. Her heart strained and gathered itself as if for its -most profound joy. - -But the great joy to which she opened, slowly transfigured itself. An -ugly and living shudder ran through her. The joy refused her. At the -instant in which she knew it entirely, she ceased to be. Her heart -stopped beating. She fell back, noiseless. - -The nurse, with the child in her lap, sat by a porcelain basin cleansing -the baby with a big sponge. - -Dr. Beach called her and she laid the baby in the new crib while she -went quickly for Mrs. Farley. - -When the nurse had returned and Dr. Beach was working, attempting to -revive Winnie, Laurence came into the room. - -He saw the excitement and helplessness of the doctor. Once Winnie's -eyelids seemed to twitch. Then Laurence leaned forward with a curious -unconscious eagerness. He asked for only one thing. He wanted to know -that Winnie was dead. Stealthily and suspiciously, he watched the -corpse, hating the small relaxed body that had tortured him with its -suffering. He wanted to know that there was no more pain. - - - - -PART IV - - -Mrs. Farley had taken the baby, with its crib, into the nursery. She was -seated in a low rocker, crying by the nursery fire, when May woke up. - -Roused from sleep by her grandmother's sobs, May saw Mrs. Farley, with -trembling lips that seemed withered by grief, lifting her head and -swaying her thin body, one knotted hand clutched to her breast as if in -unendurable pain. - -"What's the matter, Grandma Farley?" May asked when she could endure the -mystery no longer. She was like an inquisitive little animal, expecting -to be beaten, but determined to gain its end. - -Mrs. Farley pretended not to have heard. She was ashamed because she did -not know how to explain her suffering to the child. - -"Is--is anybody sick, Grandmother? Is Mamma worse?" May asked again with -piping persistence. She saw the crib and some vagueness in it curiously -agitated. "What's that?" she said excitedly. - -Mrs. Farley rose stiffly, her figure half black, and half shining, -against the firelight. Her spectacles glinted where they were fastened -on her untidy flannel waist. Her old black skirt was glossed green where -the fireshine caught in its folds. The gray down on her cheek glistened -like a mist. Separate strands of her hair were threads of metal, hot and -bright on her head. - -She turned and looked at May, a small vague figure across the room in -the white bed. May's eyes, with their dilated pupils, were quick even in -the shadow. - -Mrs. Farley fumbled her hands painfully along the folds of her skirt. -"Go to sleep! Go to sleep, child!" she said in a voice harsh with fear. - -Day was breaking. Around the dark edges of the lowered shades, livid -squares of light were widening against the wall. - -With a stealthy gesture, May sunk into the bedclothes again and pulled -the cold sheet up to her chin, but her eyes, alive in her pale little -face over the edge of the quilt, followed her grandmother's movements -covertly. - -Mrs. Farley thought she heard a sound from the crib, and went swiftly to -it. - -May, quivering with eagerness, sat up again. "What's that, Grandmother?" - -Mrs. Farley bent lower over the crib. Her voice choked. "That's your new -little brother," she said. - -May, delighted by the excitement and puzzled and interested by her -grandmother's tears, threw the covers away from her, and, clutching the -rail at the side of the bed, pulled herself to her naked knees so that -she could look. "I want to see, Grandma Farley!" she begged. "I want to -get out." She had already slipped one bare leg over the bar and was half -way to the floor. - -"Get back into bed this instant, May! You'll take cold and wake Bobby -too." Mrs. Farley lifted the baby, all wrapped in blankets, and carried -it to May's bedside. - -Without sympathy, and with the impersonal curiosity of a child, the -little girl stared at the baby's small sharp features and dull bluish, -unrecognizing eyes. She was accustomed in examining picture books to see -fat children with round faces, and she thought it did not resemble a -baby. - -"Whose is it? Is it Mamma's?" she asked. "Where did she get it? Can I -touch it?" She laid a small finger on the bundle, then drew back with a -shudder of alienation. "How can you bear to touch it, Grandma?" - -Mrs. Farley could not speak. She began to cry again. - -An involuntary half-smile of astonishment parted May's lips when she saw -the small tears gather in the dirty corners of her grandmother's eyes -and slip along the flaccid shriveled cheeks and finally fall in gray -spots of moisture on the cream-colored flannel in which the baby was -wrapped. - -Mrs. Farley felt that she should tell May something about her mother, -but did not know how to begin. "Go to sleep. You'll wake Bobby. I'll -show you the baby in the morning." - -"It's morning already," May pointed out after a minute. - -Mrs. Farley, moving away with averted face, glanced at the gray -luminousness which stole under the shade and blanched the wainscot. "No -matter if it is," she said. "It's not morning for you. Go to sleep." - -Hesitating, May clung to the bedrail; but she slipped at last into the -sheet. Soon after, in spite of her resistance, she had fallen asleep -again, and lay, breathing deeply and evenly, with her lips parted in -dreaming interest. - - * * * * * - -Laurence went out of the death chamber into the hall, where the gray -light of the cold spring morning came dimly from the street through the -transom. A milk cart stopped outside. He could hear the clatter of tins, -as it came to a halt, and the hurrying feet of the driver running down -the area steps and up again. Bottles were jostled together with a dull -clink. The man outside whistled. The horse's shoes chimed on the cold -hard street, and the milk wagon rumbled away, the noises blurring in -distance. - -There were more footsteps, dull, methodic. One man called to another. -There was a musical shiver of breaking glass, curses uttered in a hoarse -male voice, and the flat thud of running feet. - -Laurence opened the front door and looked into the street. Above the -dull housetops were stone blue clouds. The arc light burning over the -pavement opposite was like a ball of pale unraveling silk. On the -windows of the houses with their lowered blinds, the sunless day was -reflected in livid brightness. - -He could not bear the light and he turned back into the house into the -darkened parlor, where the leaves of plants on the stand in the corner -seemed to burn with a bluish fire. He could see the begonia leaves like -pink hairy flesh, and the gray fur of fern fronds. - -The long pier glass in darkness was like black silver. It was as though -he had never seen himself move formlessly forward on its surface. He was -cold. He could not stay there. - -Softly and quickly, he went out into the hall and mounted the stairs -again. He put his hand on the knob of the bedroom door and fancied that -it swung inward of itself. - -Dr. Beach had gone, but the nurse was still in the room. She had her -back turned to the door and was folding up some clothes. The gas flame -had been extinguished. The window curtains were open. Objects in the -room were plainly visible, throwing no anchorage of shadow about them. - -Laurence went toward the bed. He set his feet down carefully as if he -were afraid of being heard. - -When he reached Her, he saw She had not moved. She would never move. A -sob of agony and relief shook him from head to foot. - -The nurse coughed discreetly. Scarcely aware of it, he heard her -starched dress rustle and her shoes creak as she tiptoed out. - -He knelt down by the bed. The last hour of Winnie's suffering was yet -real and terrible to him. - -He pulled the sheet back from Her face. She had not moved. She was dead. - -Stillness revolved about him in eternal motion. - -Winnie lay in the center of quickness. She was dead. He wanted to rush -out of the circle filled with Her warmth. - -The stillness revolved again. - -She held Her pain shut in Her. He would never know it again. - -He hated to leave the room where the silence was quick. Out of the -silence his pain was waiting to grasp him. - -About Winnie the house revolved in wider and wider circles at the edge -of which Her quickness died away. - -He threw himself into the vortex of Her terrific quiet. It caught him -and twisted him and bore him to its center. - -He was dead. He would never live again. He became one with the endless -word. She was timeless in the bed in silence. - - * * * * * - -When Laurence stumbled into the hall he came upon his father. - -"Well, Son, I don't know what to say! My God, I don't know what to say." -Mr. Farley turned away, sobbing. - -Laurence was numbed to the sound of his father's words, and waited for -the echo of silence to die away. - -They walked downstairs and into the living-room. Alice was in the room -and Mr. and Mrs. Price were both there seated near a window. It was like -a holiday--Christmas or Easter--to see the family together in the early -morning in the artificial illumination. - -Laurence covered his face. Alice went over to him and patted his -shoulder. - -"You must eat some breakfast, Laurie." - -The kindness in her voice hurt him. He wanted to go away. But she took -his hand and he was too sick to rebel against her, so he let her lead -him forward through the portieres into the next room where the table was -set. - -May and Bobby had been dressed early and seated at table, for they were -going for the day to a neighbor's house. Over her brown serge dress that -was becoming too short and tight, May wore a fancy clean white apron. -The bow on her hair was of her best red ribbon, but it was already half -untied and dangled in a huge loop above one of her ears. Bobby, too, was -in a new blue woolen blouse. He was bibless and the porridge he was -eating trickled, in gluey gray-white drops of milk and half-dissolved -sugar, over his chin and down his dickey. - -He could not get it out of his head that this was a celebration, and -several times he had asked Aunt Alice where the presents were. - -May was discreet enough to attend to her food, but she ate slowly and -methodically, and was in no hurry to leave. When she saw her father led -in by Aunt Alice as if he were a blind man, it seemed a part of the -general strangeness and excitement. - -May understood that there was something wrong with her mother. Yet her -information was too meager to project anything but vague images in her -mind. At one moment the unexpectedness of it all elated her. Her eyes -shone. She shuddered with happiness, and her drawers were wet. But the -exaltation, produced by the sense of mystery, was followed by -depression. Tears gathered among her lashes and rolled down her cheeks -as she realized that her father was crying too. - -After the children had been sent away, the embalmer arrived and went -upstairs, and when the wreath was hung on the door it seemed almost as -if Winnie had died again. - -The house now stood out from other houses. What the family had wanted to -conceal like a shame was revealed to the world. Their grief no longer -belonged to themselves. When they went to a window and looked out their -differentness separated them infinitely from the people in the street. -They were crushed by their consciousness of separateness. - -The day was interminable. - -Toward evening, in the twilight, they sat in the living-room huddled in -their chairs. Relaxed by emotion, they looked drunk. Their gestures, as -they shifted their postures limply, were the gestures of debauch. With -bleered vague eyes, they peered spiritlessly at one another out of the -shadows. - -The sun had gone down and there was only a chilly whiteness in the -center of the room and in front of the windows. In the gloom, the -drunken people floated in their senseless grief like fish. They stirred -languidly, or they got up, took some aimless steps, and resumed their -places. - -No one suggested a light. They were ashamed of their exhaustion and -their dry eyes. In terror of not caring enough, they began to talk, -dwelling on harrying details in order to wring from each other the -stimulus which would draw a little moisture from their dry lids. - -Really, they were sick with fatigue. They wanted to sleep. They made -themselves tense against weariness. They did not know whether, if they -made a light, brightness would rouse them from their disgraceful torpor, -or merely reveal their plight. - -Mr. Farley, who had been in the death chamber, came downstairs, and when -he stumbled over a stool by the door of the room he lit the gas. Then -the reddish glow made jack-o'-lanterns of their swollen, inflamed faces. -They saw each other and found that they could cry again. The tears came -peacefully now, without effort. Their strength flowed from them under -their lids. Their heads floated confusedly above the bodies to which -they were secured by their attenuated necks, in which they were -conscious of the nausea and indigestion of weakness. - -The contemplation of so much misery left Mr. Farley as weak as jelly. -But in the very completeness of his mental and physical depletion he -felt relief. - -At the moment when he descended from the room where the dead woman lay -to the strange twilight inhabited by her sodden family, he gave up. He -no longer attempted to escape from his vision of himself. With a feeling -of luxury, he admitted his incapacity for change. He was brazen in his -inward confession of failure. His ideals were too high. They could never -be realized in this life. He could not go back. He had a sense of utter -humiliation and failure, yet, at the same time, was subtly grateful for -his degradation. The fumes of fatigue permitted a vague indulgence to -his self-contempt. He put Helen away from him forever. Death was a -bitterness and a peace. - - * * * * * - -Alice had set out some cold meat on the table in the dining-room, but no -one thought to eat. - -From somewhere in the cold a fly came and buzzed feebly about the frayed -meat on the big sheep bone that lay disconsolately in a congealed pool -of amber-white grease in the middle of the glossy blue dish. - -No one came into the dining-room. The teapot, covered, at first, with a -bloom of moisture, grew heavy, and drops of water collected at its base. -The young fly clung to the huge flayed bone of the dead beast. It -crawled on moist, quivering legs along the dry and fleshless parts, only -to slip back uncertainly when it clutched at the fat. - -In the empty dining-room it was as if the silence had stripped the -burned flesh from the dead bone. The gas light shone, very bright on the -stupidity of the table at which no one sat. The tablecloth was white and -lustrous from the iron. The high-backed chairs stood vacantly about the -vacant meal, the dry, highly polished tumblers, and the clean-wiped -plates. - -The coffin was on a table in the parlor. It had a movable inside which -was pushed up so that the shoulders and head of the corpse protruded -above the box. Stiffly, yet as if of themselves, the head and shoulders -of the corpse uprose from the sides of the coffin. The smooth, strange -face, like the face of a wax angel, rose up complaisantly above the -sides of the box. - -The German woman at the bakery, who was out of bed with a child ten days -old, had come to act as wet-nurse for the other new-born child. In the -nursery, opposite the death chamber, she sat pressing the infant's lips -to the stiff brown nipple on her full white breast. - -It caught the nipple weakly and hungrily, but it did not have the -strength to keep it. The brown teat, sloppy with saliva, fell from its -small strained mouth. The baby squeezed its thumbs under its wrinkled -fingers. Its hands half opened and shut. Its weak eyes did not see the -nipple it had lost, and it began to cry fretfully, without shedding any -tears. - -The stout woman had a sense of unusualness and impropriety in allowing -the dead woman's baby to take her breast, but she overcame the feeling -before she permitted it to become plain to herself. With firm fingers -she pressed the stiff nipple between the slobbering lips. The baby -scratched her delicate skin with its soft nails. Its hands clutched in -the agony of its satisfaction. It pressed and grappled with her -resilient breast, and left there faint red marks of delight and rage. - -It was happy. It sucked with fierce unseeing content. Its sightless eyes -stared angrily. Its cheeks were drawn in and relaxed unceasingly. - -When the breast slipped out again, it despaired. Its furry forehead -wrinkled above its wizened face. Its opaque eyes grew sharp and -merciless with baffled desire. Like a small blind beast fumbling the -air, it moved its head searchingly from side to side, sucking. - -It seemed impossible for the scrawny and emaciated child to satisfy -itself. The woman took the breast away and the infant was angry once -more. Its eyes drew up out of sight beneath its overhanging lids. Its -whole body writhed in protest. It was a healthy child, the woman said, -because on the second day it could scream like that. - -By and by it grew tired of its rage and went to sleep. It slept with its -lids apart, like a drunken thing, showing its bleared irises. And, -monotonously, vigorously, it drew the air in and out of its mouth. It -seemed angry and merciless even in its sleep. - - * * * * * - -On the way to the distant cemetery, Laurence rode in the carriage with -his father. Both men were under the illusion that the carriage remained -fixed while the confused faces in the streets were hurried past them -like bright leaves and driftwood torn by some hidden stream. - -When the hearse came to a halt near the new-made grave, Mrs. Price, in -the carriage behind them, had to be aroused from a stupor and assisted -to her feet. Her knees shook. She gazed wildly and incredulously about, -and when they were lowering the coffin into the hole, she exclaimed, in -a tone of reproach, "Winnie! My God, Winnie!" as if she expected the -dead woman to rise in response and give some comforting assurance. - -Laurence refused to see what was going on. He kept his eyes fixed on the -bright ground, and permitted himself to realize nothing more than that, -though the March day was fresh, the sun was warm on his back. - -But as the minister's last words were said, Laurence felt the agitation -of people turning away, and something in him refused to reconcile itself -to the irrevocable thing which had occurred. - -Recognizing no one, he walked aimlessly apart among strange graves. -Those who regarded him found in him the same fascination and repugnance -which had pervaded the body as it lay in the coffin. In some way he -seemed to belong to it. - - * * * * * - -Among the untended graves stood an unpainted kiosk, the dusty stair that -led to it yet littered with leaves of the autumn past. It was a -meaningless thing, empty, like the words on the tombstones--words of -which the earth had already hidden the meaning. - -The wind blew very high up the long hillside in the cold, still sun. It -shook the stiff, glossy blades of dry yellow grass, and disturbed the -small, sharp shadows that laced their roots. The bare trees rocked -heavily from the earth, and swung their polished branches together. - -On one grave a faded cotton flag drooped under an iron star. By another -was a wreath of tin and wax, white roses and orange blossoms, soiled -and spotted with rust, in a wooden case with a broken glass over the -top. An iron bench had sunk into the ground, and was fixed there with a -leg uplifted in an attitude of resignation. Some blue glass jars were -filled with dried crocus buds and the greenish ooze of the rotting -stems. - -Above the hard twinkling slope of grass, the sky was a cold, pure blue. -Pine trees, tall and conical, were flaming satin, dark against the flat -white burning disk of the sun. - -In a shining tree the white sun burnt innocently, like an enormous -Christmas candle. There was happiness in the strong, bitter smell of the -pine trees warmed by the sun. - -The light that floated thin between their branches was sprayed fine from -the circle of heat, like the stiff, hot hair of an angel, burning harsh -and glorious as it floated from a halo. The wind rushed up against the -trees and they stirred darkly as in a shining sleep. - -The branches swayed; crossed each other; and fell back. - -Among the graves there were obelisks, like paralytic fingers stripped -dry to the bone, pointing up. A geranium in a pot was still on a grave -like a red glass flame. Among the tombs it slept, encased in brightness. - -A fruit tree in premature bloom was shedding its blighted petals. -Heavily the tree, weighted with white, shed its ripe silence. The petals -fell, and mingled with the satin flakes of light on the trembling grass. - -The still grave posts were deep in silence. The silence was asleep. It -did not know itself. - -Silence crept waist high. Breast high. Drowned in itself. - -It was asleep. - -When the sun sank, out from the copper-blue night, from the horizon, the -dark trees rolled angrily. The remote stars flashed blue sparks like a -paler rage. But infinitely deep, from the night of the earth, the -gray-white tombstones floated up. - - * * * * * - -Laurence could not believe in death. He did not know it. But he was sick -with death, because it oppressed his unbelief. He wanted to take it into -himself and understand it. - -Yet the same breath which desired knowledge was filled with protest. He -wanted to get away from the thing which crushed him with its unknown -being--crushed him in the blankness of the still sunshine and the cold -wind above the damp, new grave. - -When he reached home after the funeral, the children had come back. May -clung about her father. Because of her fear of him, she seemed to know -him better than others knew him. For her own sake he wanted her to hate -him, to keep herself separate from his pity of her. - -He felt his pity for others in him like a rottenness. He would have torn -the sickness out of his flesh, but it was through him, decaying him. His -blood was dry. - -If he saw anything unworthy, he immediately discovered its weakness, and -sheltered it with his contempt. He could not be clean and strong and -harsh for himself. That was why he could fight for nothing that he -wished; because his enemies were inside him, and in order to destroy -them he had to tear and torture himself. If the sickness in him had been -his own, he could have cured it; but it was the sickness of his -children, of Alice, of his father and mother. - -As a young man he had never been able to carry a decision into effect, -since he could never clearly distinguish his own pains from the pains of -those he opposed. As a boy, his pride made him suffer with a sense of -misunderstood greatness. Winnie had drunk that suffering out of him. He -had drained himself dry that her agony might be rich. - -Winnie had drunk his want. He was empty. His heart was old. - -He flung his children away. He was free. But free was the name of a -thing he had lost. While Winnie lived there was a certain vividness in -his fatigue. His resentment of her had held him together. - -He analyzed the family and told himself that it was a monster which fed -on pain. It had grown stronger while Winnie had been weak and sick. It -was yet stronger now that she was dead. - -When night came he thought of Winnie, who had always been afraid to be -alone, left in the dark and the silence and the wet earth. About twelve -it began to rain. She was more still out there because of the rain. - -He saw the plump, stiff body happy in its box. The rain softened its -plumpness. The dead woman was lost in the thick night, in the -rain--always. - -The night said nothing, but in one place, far off, where the grave was, -the night became bright and horrible. He understood the night where it -came from the grave in the darkness. - -The dead woman stirred. The cold was bright in the whiteness of her -face. Here was where the dark ended in itself. - -The rain fell upon her. He could not tear her from the rain, or from his -horror of her. He was locked in his horror of her as in a perpetual -embrace. - -She was dead. She lived in him endlessly. Never could he be delivered -except into greater intimacy. Forever, he belonged to her; to her white -face with shut eyes, to its passive torture, to its movelessness against -rain. He felt already the day, cold like this, still like this, when she -would have him utterly. Almost, it seemed that he remembered something. - - * * * * * - -One evening after the children had eaten, Alice said, "I'll undress the -kiddikins. Is it time for the baby's bottle, Mamma?" - -Mrs. Farley wanted to give the baby his bottle, but there was meat -burning in the oven, so she resigned the office to Alice. "If he's still -asleep, don't wake him up." - -Alice went upstairs, carrying the bottle in one hand and holding Bobby's -fist with the other. May came behind. - -When they reached the nursery, the baby seemed so quiet that Alice set -the bottle on the mantel shelf and began to undress Bobby. - -It was summery dusk in the room. Outside the window the city melted in -hyacinth mist. The gold lights in the houses across the street were -still like a row of crocuses. Everything else seemed to be shaken in the -trembling dusk. The room quivered, unreal. - -In the half dark, May watched Aunt Alice. - -"Climb into bed, Bobby." - -"He didn't say his prayers, Aunt Alice." - -"Well, he can say his prayers tomorrow night." - -May knew that she, too, would not be allowed to say her prayers. Aunt -Alice was awful. Aunt Alice in the dark, like a tower. Prayers seemed an -incantation against an evil which Aunt Alice desired. - -"Can you undo your own dress?" - -May squirmed and bent forward. Her hand reached up to the first button. - -"Here! At that rate it will take you all night!" Out of the darkness -again, Aunt Alice's hand, heavy and hot and sure. She clutched May's -shoulder and gave it a little shake. "Wriggler!" - -The clothes slipped off. May felt her nakedness piercing the dark. - -Suddenly Aunt Alice caught her and faced her about, naked as she was. - -"What makes you act as though I were an ogress, May?" - -Aunt Alice's hands hurt. May was no longer aware that Aunt Alice existed -separate from the dark. It was shadow itself that bit into the child's -flesh. - -"I--I don't know." May giggled. Her eyes shone with arrested tears. - -"Did I ever hurt you? Suppose I had pinched you--like this! Slapped -you!" - -Aunt Alice's hand flew out of the dark and fastened itself, alive and -stinging, on May's cheek. It was a light slap, almost in play, but May -died under it. She was stupid like a mirror. She sobbed painlessly. - -"What are you crying for? Cry-baby! As if I had really hurt you!" - -May did not care any more; so she went on crying. - -"You ought to be ashamed of yourself! You'll wake the baby up." - -May cried. - -"Hush, I say!" Alice held May against her breast in a fierce, unkind, -smothering hug, so that the baby might not hear her cry. - -She uncurled May's loose fingers and laid them against her breast in the -darkness. She wanted May to be conscious of breasts burning and -unfolding of themselves. She wanted May to help her to understand her -breasts. - -May felt Aunt Alice big and soft under her palm. She did not want her. -She had no name for the feel of her beyond the consciousness of softness -which she did not like. - -She was naked and chilled. Her palm sunk upon the big bosom where Aunt -Alice pressed it, and she shuddered away from the yielding flesh. She -did not want to know why Aunt Alice was like that. Why Aunt Alice's -front swelled softly thick under her fingers. Why Aunt Alice's heart -beat with a steady and terrible hammer. - -"Here! Get away from me and put on your nightgown, you silly little -girl!" - -May was glad to be freed and pulled the gown on. Her head caught in the -fabric, but she struggled through until, finally, her face peeped -out--only a blind blur of face in the dim room. - -"Get into bed!" - -Aunt Alice sounded sharp and commanding again. May felt, more than ever, -she was unloved, but, remembering the feel of the big bosom, was glad. - -Free! - -May scampered across the cold, bare floor on her bare feet. She braced -her toes in the rail of the bed and swung herself over. Then she -snuggled down--quick! - -Alice could not shake off the sensation she had had with the little -naked girl in her arms. The child's small, thin nakedness was like a -knife. Alice wanted the child's nakedness to cut her heavy flesh into -feeling. - -She went over to the crib. In the dark, she could feel the baby staring -up, awake, making no sound. She turned to the mantel shelf for the -bottle and offered it to his lips which she could barely see. His small -hands touched her meaninglessly. He accepted the bottle. He was content. -She could hear him sucking. - -She knelt by the crib, by the baby that ignored her. She gave herself to -it. She betrayed it sweetly. - -Oh, baby! - -She wept, enjoying her shame. She wanted to put its hands in her breast, -its lips in her breast. In the dark room she wanted to tear off her -clothes to give the baby her nakedness. - -But the baby could not take her. It could not show her herself. In time -it would give the light of pain to some one, but now it was little with -small hands. - -Alice could not bear the baby any more. What did she want? - -She went out of the nursery and into her own room and closed the door. - -What did she want? - -She began to pull her clothes off. First her blouse. Her skin prickled -with chill. The darkness was thick about her. It loved her. - -Horace Ridge. - -Her clothes slipped off. She pulled off her shoes and stockings and the -floor and the slick matting knew her feet. The darkness knew her. - -Her body was white and stiff against the dark. With a sensual agony she -knew how ugly she was. - -Horace Ridge. - -She could not bear his name--his pain. - -Through the door she could hear Laurence and her father talking as they -passed through the hall. - -Take this body away from me. I do not know it. I can no longer bear the -company of this unknown thing. - -She lay down in the bed and pulled the sheets up. - -Spring. - -If Mamma Farley calls me to dinner, she said to herself, I shall be -sick. - -In the dark street a boy whistled. She heard girls laugh. Through the -window a new-leafed tree over the opposite roof moved its black foliage -against the bloom of the sky, milk-purple clouds streaked with rose. A -hard moon, thin like a shell, lay up there glowing inside itself with a -cold secret light. - -Alice felt her body harsh like the moon. - -He did not love me. - -They make me ugly, because unmeaning. - -Beauty, straight, white, tall like a temple. - -You cannot be beautiful alone.... - -I open my heart. I take the world to my heart. I am beauty. - -... But my body is dark in the temple. - - * * * * * - -"Alice!" - -Alice waited a moment, smothering. - -I shall not answer. - -"Alice!" - -Alice's lips against the crack of the closed door. "Yes, Mamma." - -"Did the baby drink his milk?" - -"Yes." - -"Dinner'll get cold." - -Alice put her clothes on, feeling as though she had been sick. - -Why do I go? - -She went downstairs and into the dining-room, feeling lost in the glow -of the orange-colored flame that sputtered above the table. There was -cream tomato soup, already served, a thick purplish-pink, curdling a -little in the sweated plates. - -"Hello, Alice." - -"Good evening, Alice." Mr. Farley was drinking his soup timidly, and -without enjoyment. Surreptitiously, his blunt fingers crumbled atoms of -a crust. He did not look at his wife, but his eyes searched the faces of -his children warily. - -"Have your beef rare, Laurence?" Mrs. Farley asked. - -"Yes," Laurence said casually. His mother always served him first. He -stretched his legs under the table. He sat heavily in his chair as if he -had fallen there. He took big gulps of soup and tilted his dish. Then he -began to wipe butter from his knife on a ragged piece of half-chewed -bread. There was a kind of satisfaction of disgust in all he did. "I -hear Ridge is dangerously ill, Alice." His eyes were hard with -curiosity, as he glanced at her, but not unsympathetic. - -"Well?" Alice gave him a combative stare. "If you're threatening to -express any satisfaction about it, please keep your mouth shut." - -"I was never down on Ridge personally. He has written some fool books, -but I am every sorry to hear that he is sick." - -"I'd better write to him and give him your sympathy." - -"No need to be sarcastic, Alice," Laurence said. - -Mr. Farley coughed. "In spite of the impracticability of his views, I'm -sure none of us wish Ridge out of the way." - -Alice frayed the edges of her slice of beef by futile jabs with her -fork, but she could not make up her mind to eat. Suddenly these people -became intolerable to her. She rose without a word, and walked out of -the room. - -They stared at her disappearing back. - -"What's the matter, Alice?" Laurence called. He got up, glancing at his -mother. "Shall I go after her?" - -Mrs. Farley had so hardened, in her determination to keep silence, that -it was difficult for her to speak of commonplace matters. "Leave her -alone," she said in a grating voice. - -Laurence shrugged and sat down again. - -"She probably feels that we are not sympathetic in regard to Mr. Ridge," -Mr. Farley said. He smiled painfully and apologetically. - -"No, I don't think we are," said Laurence comfortably. - -Mrs. Farley had shut herself up again. - -Alice went out through the kitchen and stood in the back yard. It was -foggy close to the earth. The street lamps beyond the high back wall -diffused their brightness in the thickness of the night so that the -darkness seemed atingle with a whitish blush. - -The light from the open door behind her streamed out and cut the -darkness with a wedge-shaped blade. Where it fell, the grass was -purple-blue milk, rich and thick with color. - -Alice walked to the alley gate, and fumbled with the cold latch until -she had opened it. Fog lay in the lamplit alley like a bright breath. -Up and down the street beyond, the cold roofs were heavy on the solid -houses. Their dead finality was like a threat against the vague and -living dark. - -Alice felt as though she were rushing out of herself like an unseen -storm. - -She wanted to lose her body in the dark. - -But, at the end of the alley, people were passing. And she could see the -square, turgid as a river, where lights of cabs and automobiles floated, -trembled, disappeared, and reappeared again. She was in terror of them. -She no longer wanted to be known to herself. - -She turned, and shut the gate, and ran back up the walk to the house. - -The kitchen was vacant, bare. A moth spun in zig-zag near the quivering -gas flame. On the stove, the pots and pans, crusted with food, leaned -together, half upset. There was white oilcloth on the table, and on the -floor a scrap of threadbare red carpet. Bread was making in a covered -bowl on a shelf back of the stove. The baby's clothes, which Mrs. Farley -had been ironing, hung in a corner on a line. On a chair the bread board -was laid out with a heel of bread and a large knife. - -Alice picked up the knife. She wanted to cleave her vision of herself. - -But she must cleave it surely. She was afraid. - -She dropped the knife, and, at the clatter, almost ran from the room. - -She went quickly but very softly up the creaking back stairway. Her -breath was choking and guilty. She remembered where Laurie kept his -pistol, and she passed into his room and fumbled in the bureau drawer -among his clothes. - -When she had the pistol in her hand, suddenly, she felt sure of herself. - -She did not want to do it now. Not that night. - -She was ashamed of having left the dining-room, and decided to go -downstairs once more. - -Before she went, she carried the pistol to her room and hid it. - -She felt calm. For the first time, it seemed as if her whole body was -hers, as in a love embrace. She was not afraid of understanding it. She -rested in relief, in intimacy with herself. Nothing separated her from -herself. - - * * * * * - -Alice threw a gray woolen bathrobe about her over her nightgown, and -went downstairs to get the morning paper. - -Sunlight came over the transom of the street door and blue motes floated -down a spreading ladder of light. The light and the whirling motes sank -into the soft dingy nap of the carpet as into a vortex. There was a deep -spot of radiance, putty colored, like a pool of dust, still in the -gloom. - -Alice opened the door and took the paper in. - -As she carried it upstairs, the steps creaked under her short, broad, -bare feet. - -She went into her room. The folded paper was slick and cold. It rattled -as she opened it. - -Her eyes ran over the columns and the gray print seemed to shift and -dance and come together like the broken figures in a kaleidoscope. - -Horace Ridge was dead.... She laid the paper on the bed. - -The paper seemed a strange thing. The room, the bed, the chairs, were -words. What she knew had no word. - -She felt exalted--almost happy. - -She dressed, and put on her hat, and placed Laurie's pistol in her bag. -When she shut the pistol in the bag she had a foolish feeling that she -was doing something irrelevant, but her reason told her that she had to -have it. - -When she opened the front door a second time, she knew that Mamma Farley -was up because the milk bottle had been taken in. - -The street had been washed, and smelt sweet. A child trundled a baby -carriage up and down the block. The carriage went through the wet and -left gray, glistening tracks where the concrete had already dried. Some -negro workmen in huge clumsy coats and bulging-toed shoes went by. - -Alice closed the door softly behind her. She had a vague idea that she -would go to the cemetery where Winnie was buried. She would take the -train a short distance and walk the rest of the way. - -She reached the station. It was full of stopped clocks marking the hours -of appointed departures. The stopped clocks and the stir of people in -the electric-lighted shed made one feel that the world had stopped. The -motionless agitation reminded one of the restless stillness of the dead. - -It was very dirty. An employee in a blue denim jacket pushed a trash -receiver along the platform and carelessly swept up some piles of fruit -peel and cigarette stubs, and smeared over places where people had spit. - -Alice walked through the gate and out to the track. Sunshine came -through the roof of the shed and burned the cinders like black diamonds. -The atmosphere had a palpable texture and was acrid with smoke. An -engine rushed down upon her, steaming and shining. The red cars were -covered with a yellow-gray film of dust that made them orange bright. -The windows glittered. - -Alice climbed into the long car filled with grimy, green plush seats, -and sat down by a window that was smeared along the ledge with cinders. -People came in. Girls, men. A woman with a crying baby. Their faces, -too, looked wan and orange in the bright clear morning sunlight. - -The train started. Feeling it move, Alice was terrified. It seemed to -her that already something had begun which she could not control. It was -as though the train were carrying her out of herself. - -Fields swept by. There was a marsh where the water twinkled with a -moving shudder among the still reeds. Then came an aqueduct. On a hill -were red brick houses set with shimmering glass, and above the cold -roofs the raw green of fresh leaves against the cold pure blue of the -morning sky. - -A station with a neat park about it. Another station. - -Alice rose and swayed forward down the aisle of the moving train. At the -next stop she got out. - -It was lonely. The station house was a little deserted brick building of -only one room. Alice walked along the dusty road between the wet bright -fields. It was going to rain. The sky was clotted with cloud. Through -the vapors the illumined shadows of the sun's rays were outspread, -fan-shaped, like shadowy fingers of fire. - -By itself, close to the road, was a whitewashed wooden church, and a -bush with pagan-red leaves burnt up against it in beauty and derision. -Alice felt, all at once, that she could go no further. She took out the -pistol. - -She looked all about her. She was suddenly ashamed. Feeling as though -she were playing a dangerous game, she held the pistol to her breast. -She wanted the pistol to go off but she was afraid to pull the trigger. - -She tried the cold ring of metal against her temple. - -She felt herself ridiculous. Vainly she attempted to recall Winnie in -the coffin, horrible and gone forever. - -She sat down limply on a grass bank by the roadside. The gray, -motionless foliage of the trees grew thick and cumulus against the rainy -sky. In her lax hand she held the pistol, stupid pistol which could no -longer convince her of its purpose. It lay inertly on her palm that -rested among the long gray grasses brushed flat to the earth with their -dull crystal weight of dew. - -Death. - -She kept repeating the bright word to herself. She was dead. She could -not believe in death. - -She stood up and shook her skirts and put the pistol in the bag. - -She felt stupid and sick. Her boots were all over dust and burrs clung -to her petticoats. She hardly saw what was around her. She had never -felt such heaviness in her life. - -She walked back and sat down in the dirty little waiting-room until a -train should come. Already she fretted against herself. She did not -believe in death. She could not hurt herself enough. She felt herself -grow mean and hard and withered in her unbelief. - -She went back. - - - - -PART V - - -Laurence felt cleaner and happier in his attitude toward Winnie than he -had ever been able to feel when she was alive. He did not go to the -cemetery very often, but he saw to it that there were flowers planted in -the plot, and that the place was well cared for. - -He was cold and still inside himself. His soul had been turned to iron. -And he weighed carefully in the scales of justice what had been done by -her and what by him. He refused to pity her or himself. - -But this could not last. His justice began to live and to ache with the -pain of its own decisions. Then he threw it all away. It was only when -he allowed himself to despise Winnie thoroughly that he could love her. -He would not be killed with remorse. - -His children were his greatest pain. He was so close to Bobby that his -pride in the child was only a hurt. Laurence was harsh with the child, -and before strangers did nothing but find fault. - -One day Bobby dropped his toy engine out of the living-room window, and -when it fell in the street a bad boy ran off with it. Bobby came crying -to his father, but Laurence would give no sympathy. - -"If May cried like that nobody would be surprised," Laurence said. "Why -didn't you go out and make the boy give it back?" - -"He wouldn't div it back! He wanted it!" Bobby bored his scrubby fists -into his streaming eyes. His sobs were futile and rebellious. - -"Go out and take it away from him. Next time you let some little -ragamuffin in the street run off with your toys, don't come to me about -it. May would probably let anybody, that wanted to, run off with the -dearest thing that she possessed, but that's no excuse for you." - -Bobby was so angry that for a moment he forgot to cry. He did not -understand his father's cross words, but they were not what he wanted -and he hated them. - -Unmoved in her humility, May heard herself deprecated. She accepted -contempt as the poor take dirt. Her father's tolerant disapproval lay on -her ugliness, but she could not think how she would be without it. - -And yet he never scolded her. When her grandmother was provoked with her -he only said, "Leave her alone. You can't change her." And he always -petted her. But May knew wordlessly that he was only kind to her. She -was humble. - -Something inside her died faintly. It was like a death at the end of a -sickness, a relief which she dimly felt as defeat. - -Yet she was fond of her father. She was glad he did not scold her. She -would run to meet him when he came home from work and cling delightedly -with her little claws to his strong small hands. Mostly she was unaware -of the tightening and stiffening of his wrist and of his readiness to -loose her when she let her palm slip from his. She was even oblivious -to the contrast presented by the spontaneity of his brusque affection -for Bobby. It was only now and then, as by some unnamed sixth sense, she -knew that he was not wanting her touch. Then she would draw back, -bewildered and ashamed of herself, but neither sad nor angry, and would -find herself in her stupidity weltering in that same pitch-bright shadow -which was always on her soul whether he forgot it or not. - -However, if he was willing to forgive her, if he felt contrite for what -he had shown, and held out his hand to her, her heart immediately -lifted. She was up above herself in the sure definite outlines of his -world, and she was glad. She clapped her hands and danced. There was not -a spark of jealousy or reproach in her too yielding nature. - -Laurence, half concealing it from himself, despised her subconscious -forgiveness. But, since he could do nothing to improve his relation with -her, he was very generous with candy and sweets and playthings. - -The baby could sit up now, propped against pillows. It was fat and well. -It had pallid skin and red blond hair. Its heavy cheeks hung forward and -between them was sunk its droll, loose mouth, very red and wet. Its very -blue eyes conveyed neither pleasure, surprise, nor recognition as yet, -but it showed anger, and even delight, with its hands and arms and its -body, that was long with fat bowed legs. It liked best to sit in the -bath, its weak back supported by its grandmother's hand, and strike the -clear green surface of the water with its stiff outspread palm. - -Laurence never, in his heart, admitted a relation with the baby. The -child disconcerted him. He was ashamed of his intimacy with it, and that -it took him for granted. - -When he leaned toward it, it held out its fat arms with their creased -wrists, and went to him. It sat unsteadily on his knee. The blond hair -on its head was furry and lustrous and grew down the flat length of its -skull at the back into the thick fold of its neck. As it moved its body -its head bobbled as though it were about to topple off. When Laurence -touched the baby's delicate skin he found it always damp with a cold -fragrant sweat, and if he pressed the flesh it mottled with color, like -a bruise. - -With an eager, half-directed gesture, it would reach out and clutch his -watch chain. It liked to jerk and dangle the chain. Sometimes Laurence -teased it and it fretted. - -Laurence said that the baby was stupid. - -"Of course he can't know you! He's only four months old!" Mrs. Farley -defended indignantly. - -Laurence sentimentalized his mother's devotion to the baby, but that did -not alter his own reaction. The child made no appeal to him. He gave it -back to the grandmother. He did not want it near him for long at a time. - -Occasionally when he leaned over the carriage and let its fingers stray -through his stiff, gray-sprinkled hair, he lost himself in the feeble -touch of its hands. It knew nothing. It did not care. It was almost as -if it loved him without knowing him, and somehow he wanted to be loved -like that. It relieved him of himself. - -"Eh, you little beggar!" he would exclaim, floundering with the foolish -word, and he would shake its clutching finger roughly. - -As the baby stared at him, it made a happy sound. Its soul, sweet and a -little blank, lay on the surface of its eyes, and there was something -awesome in its stupid naked little looks, among the grown people who had -forgotten how to be naked like that even with themselves. - -Laurence flushed and his eyes dimmed with emotion. The softness and -helplessness of the baby took his male self. He wanted to do something -for it. He could not even buy it a sweet. - -"Poor little thing! Poor little thing!" he murmured to himself. However, -the definiteness of his responsibility toward it was a relief to him in -the unsettled state of his life. - - * * * * * - -It was five months after Winnie's death before Laurence began frankly to -consider his freedom and what he should do with it. It came over him -suddenly and he knew that he must have been thinking of it before -without having realized it. - -It made him feel unreal and as if he did not even belong to himself any -more. - -The children had his mother and Winnie's parents, and required no -sacrifice of him. He tried to stir himself to rebel against the -children. He might go abroad and leave them and do some of the things -which had been impossible before. - -He could not do it. He did not want to enough. His disgust with himself -gave him a sort of peace. He flowed out of himself in his despair, like -a thing too full that has been relieved. His spirit was sodden. There -was nothing he wanted. Nothing he wanted to do. - -And yet he played with the idea of departing from his present life. He -talked vaguely about himself in a way that disturbed Mrs. Farley's -secretly growing peace of mind. She gave him side glances but she did -not dare to show openly that there was anything to fear. - -Laurence deliberately allowed his dress to become more and more untidy. -When he met a woman in a bus or a car he was consciously impolite. Then -all at once he saw himself inwardly and knew that women were troubling -him, that he had not actually eliminated them in his desires. - -So he went one day and found a prostitute and, as if it were to slay -something in himself, let her take him to her room. - -The experience did nothing for him. He came away feeling sore and -beaten. He resented women. He was restless. Some unadmitted thing wanted -its own in his life. - -To his father and mother he began to talk more than ever about going to -Europe. - -Mrs. Farley never rebuked him when he talked of leaving her, but her -mouth drew into a pucker and he could see that she cried. - -He never gave her any comfort when she did this, but after he left her -it was as though he had been through an illness which had taken his -strength. Her tears had drained his determination. He did not care. He -was dull. He wondered what was the matter with him. - - * * * * * - -When Laurence looked at his mother's stooped back in its dowdy cotton -dress and the wispy hair clinging to the sweated nape of her yellow -wrinkled neck, her verbal acceptance of his resolution to go abroad -maddened him. He was not certain that he wanted to go and he required -her articulate resistance to force him to it. - -Instead, she persisted in speaking to others of "Laurence's departure," -as though it were already a settled thing. - -Mr. Farley said, "I don't know! I don't know! You know what you want, -Laurence." He felt that no one but himself understood growing old. What -his wife knew of old age he did not regard as knowledge. She was old -without understanding it. He had stopped writing to Helen without ever -having made any definite proposal to her. He felt obliged to send her -checks for their boy, but if she did not acknowledge them, though it -hurt him, he was glad. He tried not to think of her. His conviction of -age was born of knowledge that was deep in his flesh, and so it was -good. It was beyond doubt. It was his. He felt, without being able to -express it, that truth was at the end of things. And that what he had -come to now was truth because there was nothing more. It was the end of -life. He felt that some day it would matter very little whether Laurence -went abroad or not. Alice's restless eccentricity troubled Mr. Farley -like a dream, but he knew that her unrest would grow weak like his own. -She would know truth as he knew it. - -When he left the living-room where he had been with Laurence and Alice, -Alice said, "Papa Farley walks as though he were a hundred." - -"Maybe he is." - -"You're very cryptic, Laurence." - -"I'm tired, Alice." - -"Well, you haven't grown tired through exerting yourself on behalf of -any one else," Alice said sharply. - -"Nor have you, I think." - -"I've done something for _your_ children." - -"I wish God had provided you with a family, Alice." - -Tears rose to Alice's dull, ravaged eyes. She stared at him helplessly. -"Good God!" she said at last. "And what are you?" - -Laurence sat very still and unmoved, smiling, his pipe between his -teeth, but his lip trembled in a sneer. "Heaven forbid that I should be -expected to know!" he said. - -Alice could not bear him near her. She went out, her heavy hips swinging -with a kind of reluctant determination under her dingy rough cloth -skirt, her broad, fleshy shoulders defiantly set. - -Laurence noted, familiarly, wondering why it hurt him, how her wet, -brown hair was half combed, tucked askew; and that her collar was off -the band of her blouse at the nape of her neck, showing a patch of -swarthy skin. - -She rushed up the stairs and he could hear her slam the door of her -room. He almost imagined he could hear her shriek as he had one time at -night. - - * * * * * - -When Laurence talked to Alice about going away, she said, "Good God! Go -anywhere! If you had had any guts you would have gone before this." - -Mrs. Farley, hearing this, was afraid of Alice's violence, yet hoarded -the consciousness of the weakness to which it confessed. Alice's face -was already debauched with some secret passion. Mrs. Farley grew hard -and strong against it. - -"You mustn't mention Mr. Ridge in Alice's presence," she told Laurence -one day. When she said it she looked strong and secret. - -They were at table. Alice had not come down to dinner. May had been -permitted the occasion to eat with her elders. In her small, dumb face, -her eyes, turned on her grandmother, were timidly alive with interest. -May's face was like a yellow pearl, melting in its coldness with the -terrified warmth of her blue-black eyes. - -She sat squirming in her chair, smoothing her dress down over her -stomach, but, when her grandmother frowned at her, she undid herself. - -"May, do you want----" Mrs. Farley leaned toward the child. - -May knew what her grandmother thought. May was in terrible fear of being -sent off to the toilet before she could tell what she had to say. "Aunt -Alice talks to herself!" she blurted out shrilly. - -Immediately she said it, the table surrounded by grown people melted -away from her, and she was in herself, half drowned, as in a lake of -pitch tingling with moonlight. - -When May came out of herself, she saw her grandmother making knowing -grimaces at Laurence, and Grandpa Farley looking ashamed and unhappy. -Then May was sorry she had told about Aunt Alice. - -"How do you know Aunt Alice talks to herself?" Laurence asked. - -May looked at her father intensely, like a little surprised doe. Each -experience to her was unique and absolute, like a forest creature's. -There was no recognition in her seeing, and because all faces were -strange to her she knew them better. - -"I--I--I heard her--lots of times--in her room and when--when we were -out walking." Her small hand continued to smooth her stiff dress over -her hollow little belly, and she felt her ring burning a cold circle -around her finger--ring that was a pain and a joy to her. - -Mr. Farley, ashamed for Alice, played with his fork. - -Mrs. Farley said, "Alice always had a terrible temper and got her -feelings hurt needlessly, but I never imagined she would develop the -crazy morbidness she has shown lately." - -Mr. Farley could not bear the talk about pain any longer. He got up. "I -think I'd send Alice her dinner," he said to no one in particular. He -added, "I have some letters to write so I won't wait until the rest of -you are finished." - -When Mr. Farley was out of hearing, Mrs. Farley said, pursing her lips, -"You know there was insanity in your father's family, Laurence." - -"Yes. You told me once. Aunt Celia." Then Laurence frowned at his mother -and nodded toward May. He hated his mother's attitude toward Alice, but, -because he loathed it, he always defended it. What his instinct warned -him against, he always refused to give up. When his mother, -hoop-shouldered, weakly resistant, looked at him with her unyielding, -self-enwrapped eyes, it was because of the very shudder which it gave -him, that he hardened himself to take it. He was kind to her as an -apology for his contempt. - -Mrs. Farley turned to May. "Fold up your napkin." - -May rolled the soft cloth in her little trembling hand. She had hoped -when she spoke that her father and grandmother would somehow relieve her -of Aunt Alice whom she carried inside her so oppressively, but now she -knew they would not. - -"Go upstairs and begin to undress yourself," Mrs. Farley said. - -"Yes'm." May slid to her tiptoes. Her belly ached with a kind of sickish -hunger. She went out into the hall to the foot of the stair, and laid -her pale hand on the cold, slick rail which caught dim reflections from -the bright open door of the dining-room. She would have to go up alone, -past Aunt Alice's door. The dark did not want her because she had told. -It was white and blind against her eyes. - -Quivering in every limb she tiptoed up the steps. - -When Laurence was alone with his mother he said, a little sharply, -"Alice is inclined to be a busybody and to make herself generally -obnoxious, Mother, but I don't believe her condition is as bad as you -seem to imagine. You must remember that all old maids don't go mad." - -Mrs. Farley kept her eyes away. "You don't see what I do. You heard May. -Alice has had this curious obsession of trying to separate me from her -father----" Mrs. Farley could not go on. She stood up and began to draw -off the tablecloth to shake the crumbs out. - -The gas jet hissed softly above them, and the white curtains before the -open windows were like white stirring shadows against the thick night -beyond. - -Laurence began to talk of some indifferent subject and Mrs. Farley dared -not bring him back to the thing of which she wished to speak. - - * * * * * - -One afternoon a fancy struck Laurence to abandon work and go out to -Winnie's grave. - -Summer was passing and it was half cold again. The sunshine was a pale -fluid trickling across the withering grass of the cemetery. The maples -were already beginning to turn and their ghostly scarlet leaves were -like pale flattened flames. He stood by the grave and heard the hissing -of the wind through the sunny grass, and the rattle of husks in the -cornfield that ran along the cemetery wall. - -The plowed fields beyond were purple plush, misted with a fire of green. -Nearer, dirty brown sheep moved over the raspberry-colored stubble. -Between Laurence and the sun was glowing foliage that seemed to burn -with a secret. - -The sight of the mound, beaten in by the autumn winds, and already -somewhat sunken, made him sick. - -When he went home he said to his mother, "I've some good news for you. -I've given up the struggle." - -Mrs. Farley did not look at him when he said this. She was startled and -afraid to answer at once. They were in the kitchen, and, smiling a -little, she stared before her into the sink, by which she stood. - -The clear stream of water, dancing with light, hung like a thread of -glass as it flowed slowly from the shiny spigot into the porcelain bowl. -The back door was ajar and the bitter-sweet smell of wet, dying grass -floated into the room. - -"What do you mean?" she asked at last. - -He had seated himself in a careless heap near the table. His eyes were -bright, and, as he gazed at her with a sharp, pained look, seemed -sightless. "Just that. I have decided there is no more escape from old -age in Europe than at Coney Island." - -Mrs. Farley was afraid of showing how relieved she was; so she asked, -"Do your father and Alice know that dinner is nearly ready?" - -Laurence rose and went out of the room to call them. With a shiver of -wonderment, she looked over her shoulder to watch his broad back and -rocking legs as he disappeared. - -Now he'll get married again, she told herself. - -Mrs. Farley did not know what was occurring, but she felt herself -growing strong again in the house. Her husband was coming back to her. -He tried to court her favor, and, without appearing conscious of it, she -showed a growing toleration for him. Winnie's death, she explained to -herself, had shocked them into their senses, and she was glad with a -weak, malicious gladness which she would not admit. To escape the -responsibility of her own emotions, she began to go to church more -frequently. Having God on her side, in her humility she felt -triumphantly cruel. - -But as if to conceal her relief from herself, she developed an even -greater passion for self-denial than she had hitherto shown. Mr. Farley -felt her shabbiness as a reproach to him, and he begged her to buy -clothes, but she was always able to think of some excuse for not doing -so. - -Tonight, when he came into the kitchen, he had a large pasteboard box -under his arm. He could not persuade her to look at it. - -Her hands were in the rushing sink-water. She would not turn round. - -"If you have bought me a dress," she said, "I don't want it! You know -how May needs school clothes and Laurence seems to take no -responsibility whatever for her appearance, and there's that leaky -ceiling in the bathroom that I have been trying to get mended for a -month. You might have seen to some of those things before you spent -money on clothes for me. Heaven knows it matters little enough to -anybody whether I am dressed up or not." And she added, "If you insist -on my having clothes you should have given me the money to buy them. I -could probably have gotten something more economical and at least been -sure that it fit." - -Mr. Farley listened to her. He had a tired, apologetic smile, almost -ashamed. He felt sorry for her and for himself. He was patient. - -"Now, Mother, I think Laurence and I can promise you that the bathroom -ceiling will be mended in a few days, and if you would only look at the -clothes you could see whether they fit or not, and if they didn't I -could exchange them." - -"It isn't as if I didn't appreciate the thought----" She stopped, -keeping him outside her--outside her vague, ungiving eyes. "I have to be -practical for the lot of you," she said. - -"Well, Mother, you can be as practical as you like about the house, but -I want to keep you looking nice." - -She was on the verge of retorting to him, but she restrained herself. - -He felt that she was about to say something which he could not answer, -and that it was time for him to leave her alone. He went out. - -The room was still but for the swish of the brush that was making the -white sink glow with cleanliness. - -In Mrs. Farley's knotted, unsteady fingers, the back of the scrubbing -brush bumped on the sides of the porcelain bowl. A fly buzzed fiercely -in the luminous dark against the windowpane, then was still, like a -spring that had fiercely unwound. - -Mrs. Farley rested an instant. The brush slid from her fingers and -clattered against a dish. She wiped her eyes with her apron. She was -tired, but with weak patience, victoriously ungiving, she held out -against life. - - -THE END - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Narrow House, by Evelyn Scott - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NARROW HOUSE *** - -***** This file should be named 42534.txt or 42534.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/5/3/42534/ - -Produced by Clare Graham & Marc D'Hooghe at -http://www.freeliterature.org (Images generously made -available by the Internet Archive.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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