Sincethe reconciliation, the Sunday dinner at Elmer Niman’s had again been resumed, and Emma, on her way there, suffered as keenly from doubts as her suitor had done on his homeward journey. Now that the thing was accomplished, or practically so, she was uneasy. It was not, she reflected, a simple thing to alter the whole course of one’s life at her age. There would be troubles, difficulties, for Moses Slade was not, she could see, an easy man to manage. To be sure, he was less slippery than Jason had been: a Congressman could never run off and disappear. But, on theother hand, he was as rocklike and solid as his own portly figure.
She faced the thing all the way to Elmer’s house, examining it from every possible angle, except the most important of all—the angle of ambition. In the bottom of her heart, hidden and veiled by all the doubts and probings, there lay a solid determination to marry Moses Slade. The restaurant was a complete success, enlarged to a size commensurate with the possibilities of the Town. Nothing more remained to be done, and she was still a healthy, vigorous woman in the prime of life. As the wife of Moses Slade, new vistas opened before her.... There had never been any doubt about her course of action, but she succeeded in convincing herself that she was going slowly and examining every possibility of disaster.
What she found most difficult to bear was the lack of a confidante. Even though, as she admitted to herself, it was silly to think of such a thing as love between herself and Moses, she had nevertheless an overwhelming desire to share the news with some one. It was almost as strong as the feeling she had experienced twenty-seven years earlier after accepting Jason’s declaration. She could not, she felt, go in safety beyond the borders of a discreet hinting to any of her woman friends: a mere rumor soon spread among them with the ferocity of a fire in a parched forest. Naomi was the last person to tell, especially since that queer Mabelle look had come into her eyes. And her brother? No, she couldn’t tell him, though she supposed he would be pleased at her marrying so solid a man. It wasn’t clear to her why she couldn’t bring herself to tell him, save that it was connected vaguely with the memory ofhis behavior on the occasion of announcing her engagement to Jason. He might behave in the same fashion again; and on the first occasion he had only forgiven her when Jason had vindicated his opinion by disappearing. Elmer, she knew, loved to say, “I told you it would end like this.”
There remained only Philip, and he was too ill to be told; but when she thought of it, she began to doubt whether she would have told him if he had been well.
It was the first time since his return that she had had need to confide in him, and now she found herself troubled by the feeling that it wouldn’t be easy. Until now she had gone bravely on, ignoring the changes in their relations as mother and son, but now that a test had arisen, she saw that there had been a change. She saw, despite herself, that he had become in a way a stranger—her boy, who had always loved her, whom she worshipped with a maternal passion too intense to be put into words. Her boy, whose very character she had created as she had created his flesh, had become a stranger with whom she couldn’t even discuss her own plans. Once he would have believed that whatever she did was right.
As she thought of it, she walked more rapidly. Why, she asked herself, had this happened to her? Hadn’t she given all her life to him? Hadn’t she worked her fingers to the bone? Hadn’t she watched and guarded him from evil and sin, kept him pure? Had she ever thought of anything but his welfare and saving him from the pitfall of his father’s weaknesses? A lump came into her throat, and a moisture into her eyes. What had she done to deserve this?
She felt no resentment against him. It was impossible to blame him in any way. He was a good boy, who had never caused her any trouble—not trouble in the real sense, for his doubts about his calling were temporary, and perhaps natural. Since he could never go back to Africa, he would in the end settle down with some church of his own. He might even perhaps become a bishop, for certainly he was more clever than most preachers, a thousand times more clever than the Reverend Castor, and more of a gentleman, more of what a bishop ought to be. And after this illness perhaps he would see the light once more. Perhaps the Lord had sent this illness for just that reason.
No, Philip was a perfect son. She was sure that he still loved her.
She tried to hate the Mills, but that was impossible, and in the end the suspicion came to her that the change was due in some way to Naomi. It must be Naomi. She had always thought that Naomi disliked her. Why, she didn’t know. Hadn’t she done everything for Naomi? Hadn’t she treated her as if she were her own daughter?
And her only reward was spite and jealousy.
While she thought of it, it occurred to her that the change in Philip—therealchange—his slipping away from her—had begun at the time that Naomi became his wife in more than name: until that time he had always been her boy who adored her. Suddenly, she saw it all clearly; it was Naomi for whom she had done everything, who had stolen Philip from her.
Her tears were dried by the time she reached her brother’s front step, but the lump in her throat was still there, and it remained all through the lunch, so that at times she felt that she might suddenly weep,despite herself. In her sorrow, she paid little heed to her brother’s usual long speeches, or to Mabelle’s idiotic interruptions. But she was able to despise Mabelle with a contempt which made any previous emotion pale by comparison. Because Mabelle was Naomi’s friend, she, too, seemed responsible for what had happened.
After lunch, when Mabelle had gone out to the kitchen for a time, Emma took her brother aside in the grim parlor, and said, “Elmer, I have something to ask of you.”
He looked at her sharply, in a way in which he had looked at her for years on occasions when he thought she might be asking for money. It had never yet happened, but the unguarded look of alarm had never wholly died since the moment that Jason Downes left his wife penniless.
“It’s not what you think,” said Emma coldly. “It’s only about Mabelle. I want you to keep her from coming to the house so often.”
“But why, Emma?”
“You don’t know that she spends all her days there. I never go home without finding her ... and I think she’s bad for Naomi ... just now.”
“How bad for her?”
He was standing with his hands clasped behind him, watching her. For a moment she looked squarely into his eyes, hesitating, wondering whether she dared speak the truth. Then she took the plunge, for she felt suddenly that Elmer would understand. There was a bond between them not of fraternal affection (for there were times when they actually disliked each other), but a tie far stronger. He would understand what she meant to say, because he was, in spite of everything, verylike her. They were two people who had to rule those about them, two people who were always right. She knew that he understood her contempt for Mabelle as a woman and as a housekeeper; the fact that Mabelle was his wife made little difference.
“You’ll understand what I mean, Elmer. You know that Mabelle doesn’t keep house well. You know she’s ... well, lazy and untidy. And that is why she’s bad for Naomi. Naomi wasn’t meant for a wife and mother, I’m afraid. She’s a miserable failure at it. I’m trying to put character into her, to make something of her ... but I can’t, if Mabelle’s always there. She undoes all I can do.”
He unclasped his hands, and, after a moment, said, “Yes, I think I know what you mean. Besides, Mabelle ought to be at home looking after her own house a little. You’d think that she couldn’t bear the sight of it. She’s always gadding.” He turned away. “She’s coming now. I’ll speak to her, and if she still bothers you let me know.”
Mabelle came through the swinging beaded portières. “It’s too bad Naomi couldn’t come, too, for lunch. It’s a pity she feels like she does about being seen in the street. I have tried to make her sensible about it. Why, when I was carrying Ethel....”
Both of them gave her black looks, but Mabelle, seating herself at once in the rocking-chair, rattled on without noticing.
Theinspiration came to Emma at the evening service, when she was struck again by the quality of sympathy in the voice and countenance of the Reverend Castor. He, of course, was the one with whom to discuss the problem of her marriage. He would understand, and he would be able, as well, to give her advice. Nor did he ever betray all the ladies of his congregation who came to him with their troubles. And he had been so sympathetic over Philip’s long illness, showing so deep a solicitude, calling at the house three or four times a week.
Almost at once she felt happier.
At the end of the service, she waited until he had shaken hands with all the congregation, smiling and making little jests with them, as if he had not done so twice a day for fifty-two Sundays a year, ever since he had felt the call. When they had all gone, she said, “Could I take a moment of your time, Reverend Castor? I want advice over something that worries me.”
It was a request he heard often enough, from one woman after another—women who asked advice upon every subject from thieving hired girls to erring husbands. There were times when he felt he could not endure listening to one more woman talk endlessly about herself. It wearied him so that he wanted to flee suddenly, leaving them all, together with the hand-shaking and the very church itself, behind him forever. Sometimes he had strange dreams, while he was awake, and with his eyes wide open, of fleeing to some outlandish place like those marvelous islands in the South Seas where there were none of these things. And then to calm his soul, he would tell himself cynically that even in those islands there were women.
He led her to his study, which he had been drivento establish at the back of the church, since there was no peace in the parsonage from the complaining voice above-stairs. There the two of them sat down. It occurred to Emma that he looked very white and tired, that there were new lines on his face. He couldn’t be an old man. He wasn’t much older than herself, yet he was beginning to look old. It was, she supposed, the life he led at home. A clergyman, of all people, needed an understanding, unselfish wife.
“And now,” he was saying, “I’m always pleased to help, however I can in my humble way.”
He was a good man, who never sought to evade his duty, however tired he was. He wanted, honestly, to help her.
She began to tell him, constructing an approach to the fact itself by explaining what a lonely, hard life she had had since the death of her husband in China. She touched upon the Christian way in which she had brought up her boy, and now (she said) that he was a grown man and married and would soon have a parish of his own (since he could not return to Africa) she would be left quite alone. She wanted the rest which she had earned, and the companionship for which she would no doubt hunger in her old age. These were the reasons why she had accepted the offer of Moses Slade. Yet she was troubled.
She leaned back in her chair and sighed. What did he think? Could he help her to decide?
The study was a gloomy room, lighted in the day-time by a single sooty Gothic window and at night by a single jet of gas. There was a roll-top desk, a long heavy table, a cabinet where the choir music was kept, and two or three sagging, weary leather chairs. Beforehe answered her, the tired eyes of the Reverend Castor rested for a time on the meager furniture as if he had lost himself in deep thought. She waited. This attitude was, however, merely professional, and wholly misleading. He was not in deep thought. He was merely thinking, “She doesn’t want advice. She only wants to talk about herself. Whatever I say will make no difference. She means to marry him, no matter what happens.”
But because this was his work he spoke at last, setting forth one by one all the arguments she had repeated to herself earlier in the day, concluding with the remark, “The reasons on the other side you have put very well yourself.”
Emma stirred in the springless leather chair. “Then what do you advise?”
“Mrs. Downes, it is a matter that no one can decide but yourself. Pray God to help you, and do what you think is right.”
He was troubled, and, in a vague way, disturbed and unhappy, because in the back of his mind the worm of envy was at work, gnawing, gnawing, gnawing—a sinful worm that gave him no peace. Moses Slade was free to marry again, and he had chosen Emma Downes. He had thought of Emma Downes for himself, in case ... (the wicked thought returned to him again like a shadow crossing his path) ... in case Annie’s illness carried her off at last. It seemed to him that all the world was going past him, while he remained behind, chained to a complaining invalid.
Emma rose, and, after he had turned the gas out and locked the door, they went out together. It was a clear, quiet night, when for once there seemed to beno soot in the air, and the stars seemed very close. For a moment they both stood listening, and at last Emma said, “Am I right, or am I growing deaf? Do the Mills sound very far away to-night ... sort of weak?”
He listened, and then said, “Yes, it’s queer. They sound almost faint.”
There was another silence. And Emma gave a low, groaning sound. “Maybe that’s it ... maybe they’ve gone out on strike.”
“There’ll be trouble,” said the Reverend Castor. “It makes me kind of sick to think of it.”
They bade each other good-night, and went their ways, the Reverend Castor hurrying along, because he was more than an hour late. He knew that when he arrived she would be out of her bed, standing at the upper window looking for him, her mind charged with the bitter reproaches she had thought out to fling at him, torturing sarcasms dealing with what had kept him so long in the study. She had an obsession that he meant to be unfaithful to her; she never ceased to hint and imply the most odious things. She was always accusing him of disgraceful things about women....
As he came nearer and nearer to the parsonage, he was seized by a terrible temptation to turn away, to disappear, never to enter the doors of his home again. But a man of God, he knew, couldn’t do a thing like that. And now God—even God—seemed to be deserting him. He couldn’t drive these awful thoughts from his mind. He began desperately to repeat his Psalm.
Turning past the hedge, he saw that there was a light in the upper window, and against the lace curtains the silhouette of a waiting figure, peering out eagerly.
When Emma entered the house, she discovered that all the lights were on, that Philip had been forgotten, and that his nurse and Mabelle were with Naomi, who was being forced to walk up and down. Mabelle sat giving advice and saying repeatedly that she never had such trouble even with her first baby. In a little while, the doctor came, and seven hours later Mabelle’s predictions were vindicated, for Naomi gave birth at last to twins, a boy and a girl. At about the same hour the last echo of the pounding at the Mills died away into silence, and the last fire in the blast-furnace died into ashes. In the room next to Naomi’s, Philip opened his eyes, called for a drink of water, and for the first time in four months knew that his head was clear and that his body was not burning or shaking. It was an extraordinary thing, the nurse observed, as if his children coming into the world had called him back to life.
He came back to consciousness out of a strange country peopled with creatures that might have haunted a Gothic nightmare, creatures who seemed as confused and unreal as the fantastic world on which they moved. Sometimes his mother was present, moving about, oddly enough, against the background of the jungle at Megambo, moving about among the niggers, converting them in wholesale lots. At times she would disappear suddenly, to return almost at once, driving before her with Lady Millicent Wimbrooke’s rawhide whip whole troops of natives, dressed completely, even to bonnets and shoes, like the people one saw in Main Street. And then she would feed them at the PeerlessRestaurant, which seemed to have been set up intact on the borders of the gloomy forest. Once Lady Wimbrooke appeared herself with her portable-bath and rifle, and shooting about her carelessly, she drove all of them, including Emma, out of the restaurant into Main Street, which appeared miraculously to have sprung up just outside the door. Once outside, he discovered that all of them—Emma herself and the niggers, were walking stark naked in the car-tracks in the middle of the street. He, himself, seemed to be carrying a banner at the head of the parade on which was written in fiery letters, “Let God look out for himself. We will do the same.” And at the corner he found Mary Conyngham waiting to keep a tryst, and neither he nor she seemed to take any notice of the fact that he was as naked as the day he was born.
And Naomi was there, too, always in the background, only she was not the Naomi he knew, but a large woman with a soft, powerful body, like Swanson’s, above which her pale face peered out comically from beneath a sun-bonnet woven of reeds. Once or twice he had mistaken her for Swanson playing a joke on him.
At other times he seemed to be back in the Mills, or in Hennessey’s saloon, where Emma entered presently and broke all the mirrors; and then all of them were suddenly squeezed out of the doors to find themselves in the jungle, which appeared to have sprung up all about them, impenetrable save for a single path in which was stuck a cast-iron guide-post, reading, “To the Mills.” The air was filled with the sound of distant thunder, but he could not make out whether it was the distant sound of tom-toms, or the pounding of monstrous steel hammers. Oddly enough, it seemedquite natural, as if the trees, the jungle and the Mills belonged thus together.
And Mary Conyngham was always there. It seemed that she was married to him, and that they had somewhere a family of children which he had never seen and could not find.
Once he witnessed a horrible sight. He saw Emma pursuing the black virgin who had long ago been eaten by the leopards. The virgin, naked, save for her ornaments of copper wire, ran to the lake, and across the water, skimming the surface like a kingfisher of ebony, and, as Emma gave chase, she sank like a stone, disappearing beneath the brassy surface without a sound.
For a long time after he returned to life, memories of the dead, nightmarish world clung to him like wisps of the haze that sometimes veiled the lake at Megambo in the wet season. He did not know how long he had been ill, and at times it seemed to him that he had died and was not living at all. His body felt light as air, but when he tried to raise it, it failed him, slipping back in a miserable weakness. And then, bit by bit, as the memories of the delirium faded into space, the hard, barren world about him began to take shape ... the starched lace curtains at the windows, which Emma kept clean despite all the soot, the worn rocking-chair, the table at the side of the bed crowded with medicines, and, finally, the strange figure of the nurse. And then he understood that Naomi must be somewhere near at hand, and his mother. He had a vague feeling that they must have become old now, and gray, after all the years he had been ill.
It was Emma whom he saw first, and recognized. She came into the darkened room, and stood silently bythe side of the bed until he, conscious that there was some one near him, opened his eyes, and said in a weak voice, “Is that you, Ma?”
Without answering him, she fell on her knees beside the bed and took his head in her hands, kissing him passionately again and again on his forehead. She wept and said over and over again, “Philip, my boy! The Lord has given me back my boy!”
There was something frightening in the wildness of her emotion. The nurse, hearing her weeping, came in to warn her that she must be calm, and Philip said weakly, “It’s all right. I understand. She’s always been like that.”
Once it would never have occurred to him to speak thus, as if he were detached from her and stood quite apart, protecting her. Protecting Emma! Something had happened to him during that long night of four months’ delirium.
When his mother had gained control of herself once more, she sat down by the side of the bed, and, taking his hand, she held it clasped passionately in hers, while she sat looking at him, without once speaking. For some reason, he could not look at her, perhaps because in the intensity of her emotion she was asking from him a response which he could not give. He was ashamed, but it was impossible to pretend. Instead of any longer seeming almost a part of her, he was detached now in a strange, definite fashion. In his weakness, it seemed to him that he was seeing her for the first time and he was ashamed and sorry for her. He knew that before long she, too, would understand that there was a difference, that in some way their relationship had been broken forever. The old Philipwas dead, and the new one suddenly pitied her from a great distance, as he pitied Naomi. It was as if the weakness gave him a clairvoyance, a second sight, which illuminated all the confusion of mind that had preceded the long night.
Lying there, with his eyes closed, her passionate cry, “Philip, my boy!” burned itself into his brain. He was, he knew, unworthy of that consuming love she had for him.
After a long time he heard her asking, “Philip, are you awake?”
“Yes, Ma.” But he did not open his eyes.
“I have some good news that will delight you.”
What could it be? Perhaps she had arranged his return to Megambo. She would think that was good news.
“It’s about Naomi. You’re a father now, Philip ... twice a father, Philip. You’ve two children. They were twins.”
The knot of perplexity which had been tormenting his brain suddenly cleared away. Of course! That was what he couldn’t remember about Naomi. She had been going to have a baby, and now she had had two. Still he did not open his eyes. It was more impossible now than ever. He did not answer her, and presently Emma asked, “You heard what I said, Philip?”
“Yes, Ma.”
“You’re glad, aren’t you?”
He answered her weakly, “Of course ... why, of course, I’m glad.”
Again there was a long silence. He was ashamed again, because he had been forced to lie, ashamed because he wasn’t proud, and happy. His mother sat there trying to raise his spirits, and each thing she said only drove them lower. In that curious clarity of mind which seemed to possess his soul, he knew with a kind of horror that he had wanted to waken alone, free, in a new country, where he would never again see Naomi, or his mother, or the lace curtains, or the familiar, worn rocking-chair. That, he saw now, was why he had wanted to die. And now he was back again, tied to them more closely than ever.
At last he said in a low voice, “It was like Naomi, wasn’t it ... to have twins?”
“What do you mean?”
He hesitated a moment, and then said, “I don’t know ... I’m tired ... I don’t know.”
Again a silence. Deep inside him something kept urging him to break through all this web which seemed to be closing tighter and tighter around him. The last thought he could remember before slipping into the nightmare returned to him now, and, without knowing why, he uttered it, “There won’t be any more children.”
“Why?” asked Emma. “What are you trying to say?”
“Because I don’t mean to live with Naomi ever again. It’s a wicked thing that I’ve done.”
She began to stroke his forehead, continuing for a long time before she spoke. She was having suddenly to face things—things which she had always known, and pretended not to know. At last she said, “Why is it a wicked thing to live with your lawful wife?”
The world began to whiz dizzily about his head. Odd flashes of light passed before his closed eyes. Itseemed to him that he must speak the truth, if he were ever to open them again without shame.
“Because she’s not really my wife ... she’s just like any woman, any stranger ... I never loved her at all. I can’t go on ... living like that. Can’t you see how wicked it is?”
Emma was caught in her own web, by the very holy principles she upheld—that it was wrong to marry some one you did not love. It was this same thing which disturbed her peace of mind about Moses Slade.
“You loved her once, Philip, or you wouldn’t have married her.”
“No, I didn’t know anything then, Ma.” The color of pain entered his voice. “Can’t you see, Ma? I wasn’t alive then. I never loved her, and now it’s worse than that.”
The stroking of his forehead suddenly ceased. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Philip.... We’d better not go on now. You’re tired and ill. Everything will be different when you are well again.”
For a second time there came to him a blinding flash of revelation. He saw that she had always been like that: she had always pushed things aside to let them work themselves out. An awful doubt dawned upon him that she was not always right, that sometimes she had made a muddle of everything. A feeling of dizziness swept over him.
“But it will break her heart, Philip,” she was saying. “She worships you.... It will break her heart.”
Through a giddy haze he managed to say, “No ... I’m so tired.... Let’s not talk any more.” He felt the nightmare stealing back again, and presently he was for some strange reason back at Megambo, sittingunder the acacia-tree, and through the hot air came the sound of voices singing, in a minor key:
“Go down to the water, little monkey,To the life of lives, the beginning of all things.”
“Go down to the water, little monkey,To the life of lives, the beginning of all things.”
“Go down to the water, little monkey,To the life of lives, the beginning of all things.”
He thought wildly, “I’ve got to get free. I must run.... I must run.”
Emma, holding his hand, felt the fever slipping back. She heard him saying, “Go down to the water, little monkey,” which clearly made no sense, and suddenly she sprang up and called Miss Bull, the nurse.
“It’s odd,” said Miss Bull, white and frightened, “when he was so much better. Did anything happen to upset him?”
“No,” said Emma. “Nothing. We barely talked at all.”
The nurse sent Essie for the doctor, reproaching herself all the while for having allowed Emma to stay so long a time by the bed. But it was almost impossible to refuse when a woman like Mrs. Downes said, “Surely seeing his mother won’t upset him. Why, Miss Bull, we’ve always been wonderful companions—my boy and I. He never had a father, you see. I was both mother and father to him.” Miss Bull knew what a gallant fight she’d made, for every one in the Town knew it. A widow, left alone, to bring up her boy. You couldn’t be cruel enough to stop her from seeing her own son.
When the doctor came and left again, shaking his head, Emma was frightened, but her fright disappeared once more as the fever receded again toward morning, and when at last she fell asleep, she was thinking, “He doesn’t belong to her, after all. He’s never belongedto her. He’s still my Philip.” There was in the knowledge a sense of passionate triumph and joy, which wiped out all else—her doubts about Moses Slade, her worry over Philip’s future, even the sudden, cold terror that gripped her as she felt the fever stealing back into his thin, transparent hand. He didn’t belong to Naomi. Why, he almost hated her. He was still her boy.... And she had defeated Naomi.
In the darkness the tears dampened the pillow. God had not, after all, forsaken her.
Atthe back of the great Shane house there clustered a little group of buildings arranged in plantation style. There were a laundry, a kennel, an office and a stable with a double row of box-stalls. The whole was overgrown with dying vines and was connected with the big white-trimmed brick house by a sort of gallery, roofed but open on the sides. The buildings were empty now, since the old woman had taken to her canopied bed, save for the pair of fat old horses who never went out any more and now stood fat and sleek, groomed carefully each day by the old negro who acted as groom and general factotum. One daughter had given up her life to the poor and the other to the great world and no one cared any longer if the hinges rusted on the stable doors and the great wrought-iron gates sagged at the entrance to the park. Ghosts haunted the place—the ghost of the wicked old John Shane who had built the Castle, the ghosts of all the great who had stayed at the Castle in the glamorous days before the coming of the black Mills. Old Julia Shane lay dying, aloof, proud, rich and scornful. Nobody cared....
When the strike came the whole park fell into a state of siege, walled in on the one side by the Mills and on the other by the filthy houses of the steelworkers. The warfare raged just outside its borders. Sometimes in the night a shot sounded in the darkness.But neither side invaded the territory: it remained in some mysterious way neutral and sacred, as if the lingering spirit of the old woman who lay dying in the smoke-blackened house held the world at bay. The doctor came twice daily, making his way bravely through the black district of the strike; once each day, the old nigger Hennery went timorously across the Halstead Street bridge to fetch food. Irene Shane and sometimes Hattie Tolliver, a cousin who came to “take hold,” went in and out. Otherwise the place lay deserted and in solitude, waiting.
Early in December, when the first blackened snow lay among the dead trees of the park, Irene Shane and Mary Conyngham visited the stables. It was the first time Irene had gone there since she was a young girl and kept a pony called Istar. To Mary Conyngham it was a strange place never before visited. They were accompanied by the old nigger Hennery.
Above the stalls of the fat horses there was a room once occupied by a coachman, which now lay empty save for a table, two or three chairs, an iron stove and a bed. At each end of the room there was a big window partly covered by the vines that overran the whole building. It was here that the two women and the old negro came.
Irene, dressed in her shabby gray clothes, opened the door of the harness-closet, looked inside, and then regarded the room with a sweeping glance. “This ought to serve, very well,” she said.
Mary was pleased. “It’s perfect, I should think.”
“Put those newspapers in the stove, Hennery, and light them,” said Irene. “He can’t work here unless there’s some means of heat.”
The papers went up in a burst of flame. The stove worked perfectly.
The two women looked at each other. “Will you tell him, then?” asked Mary.
“Yes ... Krylenko will tell him. I don’t know him at all.”
Suddenly Mary kissed the older woman on the cheek. It was an odd, grotesque gesture, which failed of all response. It was like kissing a piece of marble to kiss a woman like Irene Shane.
“Thank you, Irene,” she said.
Irene ignored the speech, and turned to the old negro. “Clean the room out, Hennery. There’s a Mr. Downes coming here to paint now and then.”
“What? Pitchers?” asked Hennery.
“Yes, pictures. He’s to come and go as he likes. You needn’t worry about him.”
They left him raising clouds of dust with a worn stable-broom. It did not strike him that there was anything extraordinary in the arrangement. He had come to Shane’s Castle a buck nigger of eighteen, when John Shane was a bachelor. He was sixty-five now. Anything, he knew, might happen at Shane’s Castle. Life there possessed a sort of subterranean excitement.
As he swept he kept thinking that Miss Lily was already on her way home from Paris, coming to see her Mammy die. She hadn’t been home in seven years. When Miss Lily came home, everything was changed. All the excitement seemed to rise above the surface, and all life changed and became a tingling, splendiferous affair. Even the presence of death in the Castle couldn’t dampen the effect of Miss Lily.
Withthat first fall of snow the fever began to lose a little its hold upon the twice-stricken community. As it waned the new terror came to take its place—a terror that, like the fever, rose out of the black of the Flats.
Bristling barriers of ugly barbed-wire sprang up overnight and for days each train brought in criminals shipped from the slums of a dozen cities to protect the sheds and furnaces. In the beginning it was neither the strikers, nor the men who owned the Mills, but the Town itself which suffered. Business in the shops bordering the diseased area fell off; but, far worse than that, there began to occur one after another, with terrifying regularity, a whole series of crimes. Houses were broken into, a woman was attacked at twilight in the raw, new park, two fat business men were held up and beaten, and the Farmers’ and Industrial Bank, the institution of the corrupt Judge Weissman, was robbed and then quickly failed under mysterious circumstance. It was the gunmen brought in to make war on the strikers who committed the crimes, but it was the strikers who were accused. Save for Philip and Mary Conyngham, and perhaps McTavish, they had no friends on the Hills. The Shanes could not be counted, since they stood apart in an isolation of their own. A panic-stricken community began to imagine innumerable horrors. The newspapers wrote editorials predicting anarchy and dissolution. They talked of the “sacred rights of property” and used clouds of similar high-sounding phrases. Moses Slade, seeing perhaps achance to harvest new crops of votes by “standing by his community in such a crisis,” returned to head a sort of vigilance committee whose purpose was to fasten all crime upon the strikers.
By this heroic act he soon rose high in the esteem of Emma, so high indeed that it seemed to wipe out all her doubts concerning her marriage. It was an action of which she approved with all her spirit. She herself went about talking of “dirty foreigners” and the need of making laws to exclude them from a nation favored by God, until Moses took her aside and advised her not to talk in such a vein, because the very strength of the Mills depended on new hordes of cheap labor. If they throttled immigration, labor would rule. Didn’t she understand a simple thing like that?
She understood. Moses Slade seemed to her a paragon. “Why,” she told Philip, “he understands all the laws of economics.”
Philip, restless and convalescent, listened to her in silence. He even met the Honorable Moses Slade, who eyed him suspiciously as a cat and asked about his future plans.
“I haven’t any,” said Philip. “I don’t know what I mean to do,” and so put Moses Slade once more upon a bed of pins and needles concerning Emma’s qualifications as a bride.
The omnipresence of the Congressman’s name in Emma’s conversation had begun to alarm Philip. He saw presently that she meant to tell him something, and after a time he came to guess what it was. He saw that she was breaking a way through his prejudices and her own; and in that odd sense of detachment bornof the fever he faced the idea with disgust. It was not only that he disliked Mr. Slade; it seemed to him that there was something disgraceful in the idea of his mother marrying again after so many years. It was in a strange way a disloyalty to himself. Moses Slade was a new ally in the forces against him. The idea came to torment him for hours at a time, when he was not pondering what was to be done about Naomi, how he could escape from her without hurting her too deeply.
The two women, Naomi and his mother, hovered over him with the solicitude of two women for a man whom they had snatched from death. In these first days when he came downstairs to sit in the parlor there was always one of them with him. Naomi left him only long enough to nurse the twins. She was, as Mabelle observed, very fortunate, as she was able to feed them both, and there were not many women, Mabelle remarked with a personal pride, who could say the same. And under Mabelle’s guidance Naomi adopted the same methods: the moment the twins set up a wail they were fed into a state of coma. Mabelle had great pride in them, as if she had played in some way a part in their very creation. She was always in the house now, for Emma’s request and Elmer’s commands were of no avail against her instinct for human companionship. With the twins crying and little Jimmy running about, the house seemed overrun with children. And little Jimmy had turned into what Mabelle described as “a whiner.”
“I don’t know what to do about him,” she said. Her method was to cuff him over the head, thus changing the whine instantly into a deafening squall.
Naomi used her own convalescence as an excuse forclinging to the soiled flowered kimono and the green mob-cap.
It was a state of affairs which could not long endure and the climax arose on the afternoon when Emma, returning unexpectedly, found a scene which filled her with horror. In his chair by the window sat Philip, looking white and sick. Behind him on the sofa Naomi in wrapper and mob-cap fed the twins. Little Jimmy sat on the floor pulling photographs out of the album at the back of the family Bible. Draping the backs of the mahogany chairs hung white objects that were unmistakably diapers. Two of the objects were even hung to dry upon the very frame of Jason Downes’ enlarged photograph!
For a moment Emma simply stood in the doorway in a state of paralysis. At the sight of her Naomi sat up defiantly and Mabelle smiled blandly. Philip, wearily, did not even turn to witness the picture. And then, quickly, like a bird of prey, Emma swooped upon the diapers, gathering them up in a neat roll. Then she turned on Naomi.
“It’s the last time I want this to happen in my house.” She seized the family Bible from Jimmy, who began to squall, setting off the twins like matches brought too close to a fire. “I won’t have it looking like a bawdy-house,” she cried. “With you sitting here all day in a wrapper, like a chippy waiting for trade.” Words that she would have denied knowing came to her lips in a stream.
This time Naomi did not weep. She sprang up from the sofa as if to attack Emma. “Take care what you say! Take care what you say! You old hypocrite!”
Emma turned suddenly to Philip. “You hear what she called me!”
And Naomi, like an echo, cried, “You heard what filthy names she called me.”
Mabelle, terrified, rolled her cowlike eyes, and tried to stifle Jimmy’s screams. Philip did not even turn. He felt suddenly sick.
Naomi was saying, “If I hadn’t all the work to do.... If I had the right kind of husband—”
Emma interrupted. “I took care of my child and did all the work as well. I never complained or made excuses.”
“You didn’t have twins.... Sometimes my back fairly breaks. Oh, if I had the right kind of husband, I wouldn’t be in your dreary old house!”
Emma turned again, “Philip ... Philip....”
But Philip was gone. She saw him, hatless and without an overcoat, running through the snow that had begun to come down slowly and softly as a white eiderdown.
Heonly stopped running when he grew so weak that he could no longer make an effort. He had gone, without knowing why, in the direction of the Mills, and presently he found himself, with a savage pain just beneath his heart, sitting on the steps of McTavish’s undertaking parlors. It was almost dark, and the air was cold and still; he felt it creeping about him as the heat went out of his body. He knew that if he caught cold he would die and suddenly he wanted to live, horribly. It was as if that sickening scene hadin some way released him from the bondage of the two women. They seemed all at once to belong to another world in which he played no rôle, a world strange and horrible and fantastic. Even the twins did not seem to be his children, but creatures born somehow of the two women and all they stood for in his tired mind. They were two squalling tomato-colored infants in whom he could take no interest—a judgment sent by fate as a punishment for his own weakness and indecision. He grew bitter for the first time and out of the bitterness there was born a new strength.
Sitting there in the softly falling snow, he resolved to go his own way. He couldn’t desert Naomi and his children, but he could tell her that he was through with her once and for all. And he saw suddenly the whole sickening depth of the tangle—that it was her fault no more than his, that she had suffered as much as himself, that perhaps in the end she would suffer more, because (he knew it with a kind of disgust) she loved him with all her soul and body.
Beating his arms against his body, he rose and turned the handle of the door. McTavish was inside, alone, sitting by the stove. At the sound of the handle turning, he looked up and grinned.
“Hello, Philip,” he said, and then quickly, “What the hell are you doing out without a coat or hat?”
Philip grinned, and the very grin hurt his face, as if it had been frozen by the cold. “I came out in a hurry ... I wanted to borrow a coat and hat off you.”
McTavish rose and stretched his great arms, yawning, watching Philip all the while. “Driven out?” he asked at last, with a sharp look.
“Yes,” said Philip quietly. “Driven out.” He knew suddenly that McTavish understood. He remembered all at once what he had said, “I knew your Ma before you were born. You can’t tell me anything about her.”
“Here,” suddenly the undertaker was pouring whisky. “Here, drink this. I’ll get you a coat.”
He disappeared into that portion of the establishment where the dead were kept, and returned in a moment bearing a coat and hat. The curious, pungent odor of the place clung to him.
“Here,” he said. “It’s all I’ve got. You couldn’t wear my clothes. You’d be drowned in them.” He laid the coat and hat on a chair by the stove. “These ought to about fit you. They belonged to Jim Baxter, who got bumped off at the grade-crossing while comin’ home drunk last week. His wife has never come for ’em. I guess he won’t need a coat where he is now.” He sat down and took Philip’s wrist, feeling the flow of blood. “Feel better now? Your heart seems all right.”
“I’ve always been strong as an ox.”
“It ain’t the same after you’ve had a fever.”
They sat in silence for a moment and then McTavish asked, “You don’t mind wearin’ a dead man’s clothes?”
“No,” said Philip. “No.” Anything was better than going back to the slate-colored house.
“When you’re in my business, you get over squeamish feelings like that. Dead men and live ones are all the same, except you know the dead ones are mebbe missing a lot of fun.”
“No ... I don’t mind, Mr. McTavish.” Philip looked up suddenly. “There’s one thing you could do for me. You could send word around to the house that I’m not coming home to-night.”
A grin lighted up the big face. “Sure I will.... I’ll take the word myself.” After a pause, “Where will you go?”
“I don’t know ... somewhere.” He rose and put on Jim Baxter’s coat and hat. “I’m going down to the Flats now.”
“Your friends have been raising hell down there.”
“Yes ... that’s why I want to go down there now.... They’ll think I’m dead.”
“No ... they won’t think that. That Dago friend ... Krylenko ... is that his name? He’s been asking for you, and Mary Watts ... Mary Conyngham she is now, she’s been asking, too ... almost every day.”
He must have seen the sudden light come into Philip’s eye, for he said suddenly, turning to the window, “There’s a good girl ... a brave one, too.”
“Yes,” said Philip.
“She’s the kind of a wife a man ought to have. There aren’t many like her.”
“No.”
There was a long silence and McTavish said, “They can’t win down there ... everything’s against ’em. It’ll be over in two months and a lot of ’em never be able to get work within ten miles of a mill ever again.”
Philip said nothing. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of Jim Baxter’s coat.
“They tried it too soon. They weren’t strong enough. They’ll win some day, but the time isn’t yet.”
Philip looked at him sharply. “I’m on their side.I know what it’s like down there. Nobody else knows, except Irene Shane and Mary Conyngham.”
“Does your Ma know it?” asked McTavish, with a grin.
“She must know it. She pretends not to.”
“And the Reverend Castor?”
“No ... I suppose he doesn’t.”
Philip thanked him abruptly, and went out of the door. When he had gone, McTavish poked up the fire, and sat staring into it. “I’m a regular old woman in some ways,” he thought, “trying to meddle in people’s affairs. But it needs a whole army to cope with Em.”
Outside, the world of the Flats lay spread out before him no longer alive with flame and clamor, but still now and cold and dead beneath the softly falling snow. There was no glow of fire; no wheel turned. Only the locomotives shrieked and puffed backward and forward over the shining rails. The streets were alive with people: they stood in little groups in the snow. On the bridge a little knot of them surrounded a speaker unknown to him, who harangued them in three tongues, urging them not to lose faith. At Hennessey’s corner the lights cast a glow over the fallen snow—it was really white now that there was no longer any soot—and the tinny piano sent forth its showers of brassy notes into air that was no longer filled with the pounding of gigantic hammers. And the saloon was filled to the doors. Now and then a drunken Pole or Croat fell through the doors into the street. He saw what McTavish meant. They weren’t strong enough yet.They were so weak that Hennessey alone could defeat them: his banging cash register could swallow up their strength. He was a better friend of the Mill owners than all the men brought in to break the strike.
As he followed the path that lay among the garbage heaps by the side of the oily brook, it occurred to him that it was odd how strong he felt on this first sally from the house. He was strong, and suddenly so content that he forgot even the scene from which he had fled, running like a madman. It was as if he gained strength from treading the very soil of the Flats, as if it came to him from the contact of all these human creatures battling for existence. And among them he was lost, alone as he had been on those rare happy hours at Megambo when he had gone off into the jungle at the peril of his life. The snow fell all about him, silently, into the oil-muffled brook.
Crossing a vacant lot where the rubbish lay hidden beneath a carpet of snow, he came at last to the familiar doorway which he had not seen since the night six months before when he stood hidden in its shadow listening to the voice of Mary Conyngham. Feeling his way along the dark passageway, smelling of coal-gas and cabbage, he came at last to Krylenko’s door. He knocked and the familiar voice called out something in Russian.
Pushing open the door, he saw Krylenko sitting on the edge of his iron bed with his head in his hands. There was no light in the room, but only the reflection of a rubbish fire some one had built in the yard outside the house. For a moment Philip stood leaning against the door, and whenKrylenko did not raise his head, he said, “It’s me ... Philip Downes.”
When he saw Krylenko’s face, he knew that the strike was lost. Even in the reflected firelight, he seemed years older. He was thin, with deep lines on either side of his mouth.
“Oh, it’s you, Feeleep.... I thought it was the old woman.”
He rose and put a match to the gas and then peered closely into Philip’s face, with the look of a man waking from a deep sleep.
“It’s you.... Sit down.”
Philip knew the room well. It was small and square, with no furniture save a bed, two pine chairs and a washstand. Above the bed there was a shelf made by Krylenko himself to hold the dangerous books that Irene Shane and her mother had given him ... John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx and a single volume of Nietzsche.
“And how do you feel ... huh?” asked Krylenko, seating himself once more on the bed.
“All right. Look at me.”
“Kind-a skinny.”
“You, too.”
“Yeah! Look at me!” Krylenko said bitterly. “Look at me.... A bum! A failure! No job! Nothing.”
“It’s not as bad as that.”
“It will be.” He looked up. “Did yuh pass Hennessey’s place?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you see what it is ... trying to make a lot of pigs fight. All they want is to quit work and get drunk. That’s all it means to them.”
“It’s not over yet.”
“It will be ... I’m gonna fight it to the end. They’re startin’ to operate the B chain to-night ... a lot of niggers from the South that ain’t organized.” He got up and went over to the window, standing with his back to Philip. “We can make trouble for another month or two and then I’m finished, and me ... I’m out of a job for good ... down ... on the blacklist. You know what that means.”
It was an eloquent back, big, brawny and squared with defiance, despite all the tone of despair in his voice. The rumpled, yellow hair fairly bristled with vitality and battle. Philip thought, “He’s not done yet. He’s going on. He’s got something to believe in ... to fight for. For him it’s only begun. He’s got a giant to fight ... and I’m fighting only two women.”
Suddenly Krylenko turned. “Look,” he said. “Look,” pointing out of the window. “That’s what they’re up to now. They’ve bought up all the loose houses and they’re turning the strikers out in the snow ... on a night like this, God damn ’em. Look!”
Philip looked. Across the street in the falling snow lay a pitiful heap of odds and ends of some Slovak household ... pots, kettles, battered chairs, blankets, a mattress or two. A woman and four small children, none of them more than six, stood drearily watching.
“And it’s a hell of a thing to do.... A free country, hell! It belongs to a lot of crooked rich men.” Suddenly, he thrust his big fist through the pane of glass and the tinkling fragments fell into the snow in the yard. “We’re finished this time ... but we’ve only begun!” He laughed. “The windows don’t matter. They bought this house, too. A lot of niggers are movin’ in to-morrow.”
The blood was running from his cut knuckles and he bound them round silently with a red cotton handkerchief. Presently, he said, “You’re looking for your paints and pictures.... They ain’t here.... Mrs. Conyngham took ’em away.”
“Mrs. Conyngham!”
“Yeah.... She came and got ’em herself. She’s fixed up a place for you up at Shane’s Castle ... in the stable. I was to tell you and I forgot. She did it when she heard about the Mills buyin’ up this row of houses. It’s in the stable and you’re to go up there whenever you want. There’s a stove and everything.”
He spoke in agitation, as though the paints, the pictures, were nothing compared to his own troubles. A little thing, of no use! Suddenly he turned, “And you, what are you goin’ to do?”
“When?”
“Now you’re finished, too. They’ve done with you, too. You’re one of ’em. Don’t forget that.”
Yes, that was a thing he hadn’t thought of. There must be people in the Town who hated him the way they hated the Shanes, and perhaps Mary Conyngham ... as renegades, traitors. And while he waited there in the squalid room, watching Krylenko sitting with his head buried in his hands, there came to him for the first time a curious, intoxicating sense of satisfaction in being one of that odd little band—Krylenko, the saintly Irene, the dying old woman in Shane’s Castle, and Mary Conyngham. The wind had begun to rise, and with it little gusts of snow swirled in through the broken window. He thought suddenly,“We are the leaven in the lump.” He was not quite certain what he meant by that; he only knew that the lump was concerned vaguely with that mass of materialism and religion which made the character of the Town ... a religion tamed and shopworn and subdued to commercial needs, a faith worn down to the level of convenience. Groping, it seemed to him that he was beginning to emerge at last, to be born as a soul, an individual.
“I mean to paint,” he said suddenly.
“That won’t feed you ... and your children.”
“No ... I’ll manage somehow.” Nothing seemed impossible ... nothing in the world ... if he could only shake himself free. He thought, without any reason, “Krylenko is no more one of the mill workers than I am. If he were really one of them, he would be drunk now in Hennessey’s place. There is something which sets him apart.... He isn’t one of them either. He’s as unhappy as I am.”
Looking up, he asked suddenly, “And what about Giulia? Are you going to marry her?”
Without raising his hand, Krylenko answered, “No ... that’s finished now. If we’d won, it would have been all right. But now ... it’s no good ... I’ll be nothing but a tramp and bum.”
He spoke in a strange, dead voice, as if he were saying, “It’s a snowy night,” as if something had died in him.
“No ...” he repeated. “That’s all finished. But you ... you’ve got everything before you ... and that girl ... Mrs. Conyngham....” He looked up suddenly, “She has faith in you ... that’s something.” He looked at the great, nickeled watch hecarried. “I’ve gotta go now. I’ve got to see about putting up tents for all of ’em who’ve been thrown out of their houses. It’s a hell of a night to live in a tent.” Rising, he took up his black felt hat. “What are you going to do?”
Philip wakened suddenly out of a haze of thought. “Me! I want to stay here to-night.”
“Here in this room?”
“Yes.”
“All right.... Turn in there.” He pointed to the rickety iron bed. “I’ll be out most of the night, gettin’ coal and blankets. See you later.”
When he had gone, Philip felt suddenly ill again, and hopelessly weary. He lay down on the bed wrapped in Jim Baxter’s overcoat, and in a moment fell asleep.
At two, when Krylenko finally returned, there was a little drift of snow by the broken window. Going over to the bed, he stood for a time looking down at Philip, and then, with a great gentleness, he lifted him, and, drawing out the blanket, laid it over him, carefully tucking in the edge to keep out the cold. When he had finished, he lay down, keeping well over to the edge in order not to disturb Philip. It was all done with the tenderness of a strong man fostering the weak, of a great, clumsy father protecting a little boy.
Inthe morning Philip awakened to find Krylenko already gone. It was still snowing as he went out into the empty street and made his way toward the shed where there was always hot coffee for the strikers and their families. He stood there among them,drinking his coffee and feeling the old sense of satisfaction of being in a world stripped bare to those things which lay at the foundations of life. This was solid, with a rawness that bit into the soul. He took out a pencil and on a bit of newspaper began to sketch fragments of the scene about him—a Croat woman who was feeding coffee to her three small children out of a clumsy teacup, a gigantic, bearded Slovak and his wizened, tubercular wife, a baby wrapped in the ragged remains of a pair of overalls, a thin, white, shivering girl, with the face of a Madonna. They were simply sketches, reduced to the very skeletons of drawing, yet they were in a way eloquent and moving. He felt intoxicatingly sure of his hand, and he saw all at once that they were the best things he had ever done. Set down on the face of columns of printing, they caught the cold misery and the dumb bravery of these puzzled, wretched people, suffering silently in the midst of a hostile, foreign country. Looking at the sketches, he saw that by some ironic chance he had chosen to draw directly upon an editorial condemning them. He began to read. The fragment was torn, and so had no beginning. “ ...sacred rights of property must be protected against the attacks of men little better than brutes who have come, infected with poison of socialism and anarchy, to undermine the institutions of a great, free and glorious nation favored by God. These wretches must be treated as they deserve, without consideration, as beasts bent upon tearing down our most sacred institutions and destroying our God-given prosperity.”
It was signed in bold black type with the name MOSES SLADE. He was quite safe in his attack, thought Philip: foreign-born mill workers had no votes.
A hand touched Philip’s shoulder and a voice said, “Give me that.” It was Krylenko. “I can use it,” he said. “I know just where it belongs.”
He gave it to Krylenko without a word.
From the steaming coffee-shed he made his way through a street filled with people and bordered with pitiful little heaps of shabby household goods like that which he had seen from Krylenko’s window the night before. He passed Hennessey’s place and, crossing the railroad tracks, came within the area of the Mills. It was silent here. Even the trolleys had ceased to run since one car had had its windows shattered. Beyond this he came to the great iron fence that shut in the park of Shane’s Castle. At the gates he turned in, following the drive that ran between rows of dead and dying Norway spruce up to the house that crowned the hill. It was silent in the park and the falling snow half veiled the distant gables and odd Gothic windows of the big house. Among the dead trees it occurred to him that there was a peace here which did not exist elsewhere in the whole Town. It was an enchanted place where a battered old woman, whom he had seen but once or twice, lay dying.
Following the drive, he passed the wrought-iron portico and the little cast-iron Eros who held a ring in his outstretched hand and served as a hitching-post. The towering cedars that gave the place a name—Cypress Hill—which all the world had long ago forgotten, loomed black and melancholy against the sky. And, turning the corner, he came suddenly within sight of the stables.
Before the door an old negro swept away the falling snow with a worn and stubby broom. He did not hear the approach of Philip, for he was deaf and the snow muffled the sound of footsteps. It was only when Philip said “Good-morning” that he turned his head and, grinning, said, “You must be Mr. Downes.”
“Yes.”
“The room’s all ready for you.”
The old man, muttering to himself, led the way. At the top of the stairs, he said, “If I’d knowed you was a-comin’ I’d a-had a fire.”
The place was all swept and in order and in one corner stood all the things which Mary Conyngham had carried there from Krylenko’s room. The sight of them touched him with emotion, as if something of Mary herself clung to them. He wanted to see her more than he wanted anything in the world. He stood looking out of the window while the old nigger waited, watching him. He was sure that in some way she could wipe out the sickening memory of that awful scene. The window gave out over the Mills, which lay spread out, cold and desolate and silent, save for the distant K section, where smoke had begun to drift from the chimneys. He would paint the scene from this window, in all its dreary bleakness—in grays and whites and cold blues, with the faintest tinge of pink. It was like a hell in which the fires had suddenly burned to cold ashes. No, he must see Mary. He had to see her. He couldn’t go on like this. It wasn’t possible for any human creature to be thirsty for so long—thirsty for peace and honesty and understanding.
He began to see himself in the mawkish light of one who suffered and was put upon, and what had beenimpossible before began in the light of self-pity to seem possible.
He had (he knew) to go back to the slate-colored house. Turning, he said to the old nigger, “I’m coming back,” and then halting, he asked, “How’s Mrs. Shane?”
“She ain’t no better, sir. She’s dying, and nothin’ kin save her.” Suddenly the black face lighted up. “But Miss Lily’s come back. She came back last night.”
“Yes?”
“You don’t know Miss Lily, mebbe.”
“No.... I’ve seen her years ago riding through the Town.”
“Then you don’t know what she’s like.... The old Missie can die now that Miss Lily’s come home. She jus’ couldn’t die without seein’ Miss Lily.”
Philip scarcely heard him. He was thinking about his own troubles, and Lily Shane was a creature who belonged to another world whose borders would never touch his own. Even as a boy, looking after her as she rode in the mulberry victoria up Park Avenue, it never occurred to him that he would ever come nearer to her. There was something magnificent about her that set her apart from all the others in the Town. And there was always the wicked glamour that enveloped one who, it was whispered, had had a child out of wedlock and then declined to marry its father.
How could Lily Shane ever touch the world of Uncle Elmer and Naomi and Emma and Mabelle? No, she did not exist for him. She was like one of the actresses he had followed furtively along Main Street as a boy, because a mysterious, worldly glamour clung to thoseladies who appeared in town one night and disappeared the next into the great world. No creature could have been more remote than these coryphées from the slate-colored house and the prayer-meetings of the Reverend Castor.