Itwas the Reverend Castor himself who greeted Philip on the doorstep when he reached home at last. Philip would have avoided him, but the clergyman was coming down the path as he turned into it and so there was no escape.
He greeted Philip with a smile, saying, “Well, it’s good to see you about again, my boy. We had a bad time over you ... thought you weren’t going to make the grade.”
Philip grinned. “I’m not so easy to be rid of.” He felt a sudden refreshing sense of superiority over the preacher, strange in all his experience. It was simply that he had no longer any awe of him as a man of God.
The Reverend Castor coughed and answered, “Oh! My dear boy. We didn’t want to be rid of you. That’s the last thing....” He protested nervously and added, “I just dropped in for a moment to see how your wife was doing ... and the twins. You ought to be proud, my boy, of two such fine babies ... two. Most people are thankful for one.”
“I would have been, too.”
“You don’t mean you aren’t delighted with what God has sent you?”
“No ... of course not ... I was only making a joke.” It hardly seemed honest, Philip thought, to give God the credit for the twins.
“I suppose we’ll be having Mrs. Downes back with us in the choir soon.... Since Mrs. Timpkins has moved to Indianapolis I’ve asked your wife to be the leader and the librarian of the music.”
“Yes ... she ought to be back soon. She seems strong again.”
There was an awkward silence, and the Reverend Castor’s kindly blue eyes turned suddenly aside. He started to speak and then halted abruptly and seized Philip’s hand a second time. “Well, good-by. I must be off.”
He was gone quickly, and for a moment Philip stood looking after him, puzzled by his strange, nervous manner. He was sorry for this poor man, whom he had always disliked. It was a sorrow he could not explain, save that his life must be a hell with a wife like his, and all the women of the parish on his neck. He did his duty, the Reverend Castor. He never shirked. It was good of him to call on Naomi. She would like such attention from the head of her church. It would bring back to her, Philip thought, some of the old glory and importance that had waned steadily since the night they had got down from the train, shivering, and fearful of what lay before them.
And she would be pleased at being asked to lead the choir and take care of the music. It was odd what little things brought happiness to her. She had need of the little things, for he meant to hurt her. He was certain now that it was the only way out. It would be easier for her to face the truth.
He found her sitting in the parlor where theReverend Castor had left her. She was dressed for the first time since the twins were born, and she had been crying. As he entered, she came over to him and, putting her arms about his neck, pressed her head against Jim Baxter’s overcoat, and said, “I’m ashamed, Philip ... I want to die. I couldn’t help it yesterday. It’s the way I feel! I feel so tired.”
The whole action disturbed him horribly. She had never done such a thing before; she had never done more than kiss him chastely. He freed himself and, still holding her hands, said, “I understand. It’s all over now and I understand.”
She began to cry again helplessly, pitifully. “You’ll forgive me? You’ll forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive. I understand it.” He pushed her gently into a chair, and sat down beside her, silently, wondering how he could bring himself to say what hehadto say.
“It’s because I’m so unhappy, Philip.... I’ve been unhappy ever since we left Megambo ... ever since that Englishwoman stopped there. I wish to God we’d never seen her.”
“Let’s not think about her. She had nothing to do with it.”
“And it’s so awful in this dreary house. I’m nothing here, Philip.... I’m less than a hired girl. Your Ma hates me....” He tried to speak, but she cried out passionately, “I can’t go on living here ... I can’t ... I can’t.”
As he sat there, all his horror of scenes, of that wretched scene in the same room the evening before, swept over him. It was like a physical sickness risinginto his throat and choking him. He was confused, too, with a sense of impotent rage.
“And after you ran away she told Mabelle she was never to enter the house again.... Now I haven’t any one.”
No, she hadn’t any one, but she didn’t know yet how alone she really was.
“Naomi,” he said quietly. “Naomi ... listen to me ... try to control yourself.”
“Yes.... Yes.... I’m trying to.” Her pale, homely face was even paler with weeping. Her eyes were swollen beneath the transparent lashes and her nose was red.
“Naomi ... would you like to have a house of your own?”
“Oh, Philip ... yes.”
“I don’t mean a whole house, but a place to live ... two or three rooms where you’d be away from my mother.”
“Yes ... yes. I’d do better. I’d take care of things ... if I had a chance in my own place. Oh, Philip—if you’d only be kind to me.”
He stroked her hand suddenly, but it was only because he pitied her. “I try to be kind, Naomi.”
“You’ve been so hard to me ... just like a stone—ever since we left Megambo. Oh, I knew it ... I knew even when....” She broke off suddenly, without finishing. Philip looked away, sick with misery. He pitied her, but he could not love her. She went on and on. “Out there I had something to live for ... I had my work. I loved it. It was the only life I’d ever known. It was everything. And here ... there’s nothing. I don’t know how to live here.”
“There are the children,” he said in a quiet voice.
“Yes ... but that’s not what I mean. It’s my soul I’m thinking of. It’s rotting away here....”
“Mine was rotting at Megambo.” She did not answer him, and he said, “There’s church work to do, and now Reverend Castor wants you to lead the choir.”
“But it’s not the same, and they’re all jealous of me ... all those women ... jealous because I’m more important because I’ve been a missionary, and jealous because Reverend Castor shows me favors. Oh, I know. I don’t belong here, and they don’t want me here. Oh, I don’t know what’s to become of me!”
There was a long silence, in which they sat there, dumbly trying to find some way out of the hopeless muddle, trying to patch together something which was now in tatters, if it had ever existed at all. Philip’s thin jaw was set in that hard, stubborn line that made even his mother afraid.
“Naomi,” he said presently, “I’ll get you a place to live. It won’t be much, for I haven’t much money, but you’ll be free ... to do what you please. Only ... only, Naomi ... I ... I....” Suddenly, his head fell forward, and he buried his face in his hands. In a voice that was hardly audible he said, “I don’t want to live with you any longer. It’s ... it’s all over.”
For a long time there was no sound in the room, save the ticking of the great onyx clock beneath the picture of Jason Downes. Naomi didn’t even sob; but presently she said, in a voice like the voice of a deaf person, “Philip, you mean you’re going to leave me?”
“No,” he said slowly. “No ... it’s not that exactly. I shan’t leave you. I’ll come and see youevery day and the children—only I won’t sleep in the house. I’m going to sleep where I work.”
In the same dead voice she asked, “You’re not going back to the Mills?”
“No, I’m not going back to the Mills ... they wouldn’t have me now. I’m going to paint....”
“Pictures?”
“Yes ... pictures. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do and now ... now, nothing can stop me.” There was in his voice a sudden cold rasp, as of steel, which must have terrified her. He thought, “I’ve got to do it, if I’m to live. I’ve got to do it.”
She said, “But you could have a good congregation. You could preach.”
“No, that’s the last thing I could do. I’m through with all that.”
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”
He raised his head, and saw that she was biting her handkerchief. “Naomi,” he said. “Naomi,” and the sound of her name seemed to precipitate a sudden climax. She fell on her knees and beat them with her fists.
“You won’t do that, Philip. You can’t ... you can’t leave me for everybody to mock at. Say that you won’t ... I was wrong in the beginning, but now I’ll do anything. I’ll lie down and let you walk over my body!”
“Naomi,” he said. “Please! For God’s sake!”
“Oh, don’t you see! It’s different now ... I love you. Don’t you see that makes it different?”
“It can’t make it different, Naomi. I can’t pretend what isn’t true ... it’s a thing a man can’t do.”
Suddenly she stopped sobbing and looked up at him,her face all white and contorted. “You can’t say that! You can’t mean it! It isn’t true!”
“It’s true, Naomi. I can’t help myself. I wish to God I could!”
“And you didn’t love me ... even ... even then?”
He made a heroic effort. “No ... not even then.”
She flung herself on the floor, pressing her face against the carpet, moaning and moaning. Kneeling down, he picked her up bodily and laid her on the sofa. Bending over her—
“Naomi ... listen to me. It’s not my fault. It’s not yours. It’s all a muddle. Nobody’s to blame.”
Then she sat up suddenly. “Yes, there is. It’s your mother who’s to blame. She made me marry you. It all began with that. I didn’t want to ... I didn’t want to marry any one, but I wanted to have a mission of my own. She did it. She’s to blame, and now she hates me. She thinks I’ve stolen you from her.”
She buried her face in the cushions and lay sobbing. After a time, Philip said, “Naomi ... listen to me. You didn’t steal me from her.”
“Who did then?” said Naomi’s muffled voice.
“I don’t know. It just happened. I suppose it’s one of the things that happen in life. I’ve grown up now. I’ve grown up since we went to Megambo. That’s all. I know my own mind now.”
“Oh, you’re hard, Philip ... harder than flint.” She sat up slowly. “I’ll do anything for you. You can wipe your feet on me. I can’t let you go now ... I can’t ... I can’t!” She began suddenly to laugh. “I’ll do anything! I’ll prove to you I can keep house as well as your mother. I’ll show you how I can carefor the children. They’re your children, too. I’ll learn to cook ... I’ll do anything!”
He did not answer her. He simply sat staring out of the window like an image carven of stone. And he was saying to himself all the while, “I can’t yield. I daren’t do it. I can’t—not now.” And all the while he felt a kind of disgust for the nakedness of this love of Naomi’s. It was a shameful thing. And during all their life together he had thought her incapable of such love.
She kept moaning and saying, over and over again, “I’ve got nothing now. I’m all alone ... I’ve got nothing now.”
He rose, and laid a hand on her shoulder. “I’m going now, Naomi. I’m not going to the restaurant. I’ll come back this afternoon. It’ll be all right. We’ll work it out somehow.”
She looked up at him. “You’ve changed your mind?”
“No, I don’t mean that. No, it’s better this way.”
“I’ll show you, Philip, what a good wife I can be.”
He picked up his hat, Jim Baxter’s hat, and suddenly he thought, “The old Philip is dead—as dead as Jim Baxter. I’ve dared to do it.”
Aloud he said, “Let’s not talk any more now. I’ll be back in an hour or two when you feel better.”
Then he went away, and outside the house, among the lilacs, he was suddenly sick.
Hefound a tiny flat of three rooms over a drugstore halfway up the hill from the railway station. It had been occupied by the family of a salesman who traveledfor a house which manufactured false teeth. He had been promoted to a western territory where, with the great boom in the silver mines, the market for gold teeth had risen enormously.
He was a little fat man, with enormous black mustaches, all aglow with his promotion. “It’s the best gold tooth territory in America,” he told Philip.
The apartment rented for thirty dollars a month. The bubbling salesman would leave the furniture behind for two hundred and fifty dollars. Philip could move in the day after to-morrow.
He left the place, his whole body warmed by the satisfaction of having acted, of having done something definite. But the thing was not settled yet, because his mother still remained to be told.
He found her in the kitchen of the restaurant, superintending the preparation of mince-meat according to a recipe of her own which eliminated all intoxicating liquors. Standing over the negress who did the work, she was the essence of vigor and authority, her face crimsoned by the heat of the place, her hair all in disorder.
“Ma,” he said to her. “I have something I want to discuss with you.”
After bidding the negress wait until she returned, she followed him quickly, surprised and troubled by the look in his eye and the set of his jaw. The talk took place at the table behind the screen where Moses Slade came every day to eat.
“It’s about Naomi, Ma ... I’ve taken some rooms for her to live in. She won’t trouble you any longer. We’ll move out on Tuesday.”
She looked at him for a moment in astonishment.“But, Philip,” she said, “you ought to have consulted me. You mustn’t do that. We can’t even think of it.”
“The rent is paid. I’ve bought furniture.”
“Where did you get the money?”
“I used what Grandpa left me.”
“I thought you’d pledged the interest on that to the mission.”
“I’ve taken it back. I took it back before I was sick.”
She didn’t say anything for a long while. She saw suddenly that he was changed, more hardened even than she had feared. He didn’t even come to her any longer for advice. He had shut her out altogether. At last she said, “But, Philip, what will people think—when I’ve a house big enough for you all?”
“I don’t care any longer what people think. I can’t go through any more scenes like yesterday. Besides, a man has a right to his own house.”
“But, Philip ... my house is your house. I’ve worked all these years and sacrificed.... Oh, you don’t know what it’s meant sometimes. I wouldn’t even let Uncle Elmer help me—so that you’d have the house for your own. It wasn’t for myself.... I could have got along somehow.”
He looked away from her at the mustard-pot in the center of the table. “You know that you can’t get on with Naomi—and she hates living in your house.”
“I can try ... we can both try. If only she’d take a little interest and not make the place into a pigstye.”
“You know she won’t change.”
“Philip, I’ll do anything.... I’ll put up with Naomi ... I won’t say a word, only don’t leave me now after all the years when I’m an old woman.”
She saw the stubborn jaw set in a hard line. The sight of it stirred a sudden, turbulent emotion: it was his father’s jaw over again, terrifying in its identity. What had she done to deserve such treatment from these two men to whom she had given up all her life without once a thought of herself? She had worked for them, sacrificed....
Philip was saying, “It won’t make any difference. Even if you and Naomi never spoke to each other. You’d be hating each other all the time. Don’t you see? That’s what I can’t stand.”
She reached over and touched his hand. “Philip ... once you used to come to me with everything, and now ... now you treat me like a stranger ... me, your own mother. Why don’t you come to me? I want to share your life, to be a part of it. It’s all I live for. You’re all I’ve got.”
He felt her trying to capture him once more. What she said was true ... you couldn’t deny it. She had given her whole life to him. Every word she spoke hurt him.
“I don’t know, Ma. Nothing has happened except maybe that I’m grown up now. I’m a man. I’ve got to decide things for myself.”
It was that hard, brutal jaw which she couldn’t overcome. It had thwarted her always. With Jason, when his jaw was set thus, it was as if his heart had turned to stone.
“Where did you go last night?”
He told her, and the answer frightened her. In theFlats, in a Dago’s boarding-house, her son had passed a night.
“Where did that coat come from?”
“It belonged to Jim Baxter, who was killed at the grade-crossing last week. I borrowed it from McTavish.”
“So you’ve been seeing him.”
“Yes, he told you I wouldn’t come home, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” she said, with a sudden flash of anger. “Yes ... he told me. I wish you wouldn’t see so much of him, Philip. He’s a wicked man.”
He made no response to this sudden, feeble sally of the old authority. He had, she discovered with awe, that old trick of his father’s—of not answering in an argument unless he had something to say. It was an unfair method, because it always kept the argument upon the level of reason, excluding all the force of the emotions.
“And I’m not coming home any more to sleep, Ma. That’s all finished.”
He must have seen the look of fear in her eyes. It was that look he had seen there whenever, for a moment, she seemed to lose control of that solid world she had built up.
“But, Philip ... it’s your house ... your own home. You’ve never had any other.” He said nothing, and she asked, “Where are you going to sleep?”
Slowly, and then carefully, so that it would hurt her as little as possible, he told her about the stable at Shane’s Castle, and his plan of painting. She listened, half believing that she could not be in her right mind, that what she heard was only part of a nightmare. She keptinterrupting him, saying, “But, Philip, you never told me ... I didn’t know,” and when he had finished, she said abruptly, “That wasn’t the plan I had for you, Philip; I’ve been talking with Reverend Castor and he thinks we could arrange to get you a good congregation.”
“No ... that’s all finished. It’s no use even talking of it.”
She went on, ignoring him. “And if that didn’t please you, I thought ... well, you could take the restaurant because, well ...” she looked away from him, “you see, I’m thinking of getting married.”
She saw his face grow red with anger. “Not to that humbug, Moses Slade!”
“Yes, Philip. But it’s wrong of you to call him a humbug. He’s a distinguished man, a good man, who stands for the best in the community.”
“He’s a hypocrite and a humbug!”
An uncontrollable rage took possession of him. It was impossible that he was to have Moses Slade, the humbug who had written that editorial about the strike, for a stepfather. No, it was outlandish, too impossible, that a good woman like his mother should be taken in by that lecherous old rip.
“Philip,” she was saying. “You don’t understand. I’ve been alone always ... except for you—ever since your father died. It would be a good marriage, a distinguished marriage, and I wouldn’t be alone in my old age.”
“You couldn’t marry him. You couldn’t marry a fat old man like that.”
He fancied that he saw her wince. “It isn’t a question of love, Philip, at our age. It’s companionship.I’m very fond of him, and he’s been thoughtful—so thoughtful all the time you were sick.”
“It’s disgusting!”
It was odd, what had happened—that he found himself for the first time in his life taking a high hand with his mother. It was an intoxicating sensation.
“If I give him up, I’ll be giving up a great opportunity for good. As a Congressman’s wife, there’s no end to the things I could accomplish....” She began to cry. “But I’ll give him up ... I’ll give him up if you won’t turn your back on your poor mother. I’d do anything for you, Philip. You’re all I’ve got, and I hoped for so much—to see you one of the great men of the church, a Christian leader, fighting on the side of God.”
“It’s no good, Ma. I won’t go back to that.”
One of the waitresses appeared suddenly from behind the screen. “Mrs. Downes ...” she began.
“Go away! Go away! I’ll talk to you later.”
The girl disappeared.
“And that isn’t all, Ma. I’m not going to live with Naomi any more. I’m through with that. I meant what I said when I was sick.”
“Philip—listen to me, Philip!”
“No ... I’ll come to see her and the children. But I’m through.”
“What will people think? What will they say?”
“You can tell them I’ve got a night job.... Nobody’ll know, except Aunt Mabelle, where Naomi is going to live. Nobody will see me come or go. It’s in Front Street.”
“Front Street! Why, that’s on the edge of the Flats! You can’t do that!”
He looked at her for a long time in despairing silence. “My God, Ma! Can’t you see? Can’t you understand? From now on, I’m going to stand on my own. I’m going to work things out. I’ve got to get out of this mess.... I’vegotto.”
He rose abruptly, and put on his hat.
“Philip,” she asked, drying her eyes, “where are you going now?”
“I’m going to buy blankets for myself.”
“Philip, listen to me. For God’s sake, listen! Don’t ruin everything. I’ve a right to something. I’m your mother. Doesn’t that mean anything?”
He turned for a moment hesitating, and then quickly said, “Ma, don’t talk like that, it isn’t fair.”
Without another word, he put on his hat and hurried out of the restaurant.
Once outside, the cold air cleared his head, and he was thankful that he had been hard as a stone. Again he was sorry for Emma in a vague, inexplicable fashion; she could never understand what it was that made him hard. She couldn’t see why he had to behave thus.
“I wish to God,” he thought bitterly, “that I’d had a mother who wasn’t a fine woman. Life would have been so much easier. And I can’t hurt her ... I can’t. I love her.”
And suddenly he saw that in all their talk together nothing had really been settled. Nothing had been changed or decided.
Hewent that night to sleep in the room above the stable, and on the following Tuesday Naomi and thetwins moved into the three rooms above the drugstore in Front Street. Emma stayed home from the restaurant all day, going and coming to and from the newly established household. She did and thought of everything, so that Naomi in the end gave up, and, sitting on the imitation-tapestry davenport, simply watched her mother-in-law arrange the new household. Mabelle was there, too, with little Jimmy, in the way most of the time, or making suggestions which Emma ignored. She was a creature whose feelings were not easily hurt and all Emma’s bitter remarks seemed to have left no trace. When they had left Naomi with the three rooms in order, she even walked home with Emma, dragging the tired and whining Jimmy behind her.
As she hurried through the darkness after Emma’s tall, robust form, she panted, “Well, things might go better now. I always think young people ought to start out in a house of their own.”
“Yes,” said Emma, certain from the remark that Naomi hadn’t told Mabelle the whole truth.
“It’s funny what a change has come over Philip. He’s much nicer than he used to be.”
“What on earth do you mean by that, Mabelle?”
Here Jimmy set up a yell—“I don’t wanna walk! I wanna be carried!”
“All right, dear, only you mustn’t cry. Little men don’t cry.”
“Well, I do. I’m tired. I don’t wanna walk!”
“All right, dear.” She bent down and picked up the child. He continued to whine, but at least their progress was not retarded.
“If he were my child, Mabelle,” said Emma,“I’d just leave him sitting on the curb till he got good and ready to walk. I never had any trouble with Philip. He’s always beenobedientand respectful.”
“But Jimmy’s delicate, and I’d rather carry him than have him whine.”
“He’s whining in any case,” said Emma, acidly.
Mabelle was puffing now beneath her burden and the long steps of Emma. But she managed to say, “What I mean about Philip is ... that he’s more masterful now. He’s a man. He’s the kind of a man that women have a right to be afraid of.”
Emma snorted. “Don’t talk such rot, Mabelle. If you’d read less trash.”
“It’s funny about him taking up with the Shanes.”
Naomihadtold her, then, about the stable. And Mabelle was a sieve: whatever you told her poured right on through. “He hasn’t taken up with the Shanes. He’s simply using their stable to work in. That’s not the same thing. Why, he barely knows them—except that half-crazy old maid, Irene. And he doesn’t know the others at all.”
“Then it must be that Mary Conyngham. She’s friends with them.”
“Mary Conyngham!” repeated Emma. “Mary Conyngham! Why, he hasn’t seen her in years!” But the shock of the name turned her suddenly thoughtful, so that she walked at a slower pace, mercifully for Mabelle.
“Well, hemighthave seen her,” persisted Mabelle. “She’s mixed up with Irene Shane’s school for the Dagoes and Hunkies. They all belong to the same crowd ... all thinking they can make something out of a lot of bums.” For a moment she was so completelywinded that she could not speak. When she recovered her breath, she said, “I remembered the other night that they’d been sweet on each other once.”
Still Emma walked furiously in silence, and presently Mabelle said, “Of course, I didn’t say anything about her to Naomi. She might be upset just now.”
“No,” said Emma, “and don’t say anything to her about it or to any one else. It’s nonsense.”
“Well, I didn’t know. I was just interested in Philip, and Naomi, and in his queer behavior, and I always find that when a man goes off his head like that, there’s a woman about somewhere.”
“I forbid you, Mabelle, to speak of it to any one.” She halted and took Mabelle by the shoulder. “You understand? That’s the way silly talk gets started.”
Mabelle was silent as they resumed their way, but presently she said, “That Lily Shane ... she’s come home to see the old woman die.”
“They’re a bad lot, all of ’em,” said Emma, “and I guess she’s the Jezebel of the lot.”
“I hate to see a good boy like Philip getting mixed up with people like that.”
“He’s not getting mixed up, I tell you.”
“What am I to tell people about him, Em, if they ask me?”
“Tell them that he’s going to be an artist. You might say, too, that he has a fine talent, and later he’s going to New York to study.”
She had thought it all out. There was only one method—“to take the bull by the horns.” If Philip wasn’t one day to be a bishop, he might be a great artist and paint great religious pictures like the manwho did the Sistine Madonna or the Flight into Egypt.
The voice of Jimmy interrupted her thoughts. “Aren’t we nearly home? I’m hungry!”
“Yes, dearie. That’s your house right there.... See the one with the red light in the window?”
“I don’t like Aunt Em. I wish she’d go away.”
“Shh! Jimmy! Shh! He’s tired, Em, that’s all—the poor little thing.”
They reached the house with the red light in the window, and bade each other good-night.
“Remember what I said,” was Emma’s final word.
After she left the gate, only one thought occupied the mind of Emma, the thought that it was Mary Conyngham who had stolen Philip from them both—from herself and Naomi. “Mary Conyngham, of course,” she told herself. “What a fool I’ve been not to think of her before! Itwouldbe like her and her superior ways. The Watts always thought nobody good enough for ’em but the Shanes—that bawdy old woman and her two daughters—one a lunatic and the other a harlot. Yes, Mary Conyngham could carry on to her heart’s content there in the Flats, and no one would know of it. The Shanes would only help her. Shane’s Castle had been like a bawdy-house in the days when old John Shane was still living.”
She was in a savage humor, born partly of her irritation at Naomi’s helplessness, and partly of disgust at Mabelle’s feeble-minded chatter; and now she had found an object on which to pin it. It was Mary Conyngham who lay at the root of everything: it explained why Mary had stopped her that day to ask about Philip.
“Mabelle,” she thought, “is a dangerous woman, going about and saying things like that when sheknowsnothing.”
Mabelle was a constructive gossip. Having nothing to keep her occupied, she sat about all day thinking up things, putting two and two together, pinning odd pieces of stories together to construct a whole, but shedidhave (thought Emma) an uncanny way of scenting out scandal; her only fault was that she sometimes told the story before in fact it had happened. She came upon a scrap, the merest suspicion of some dubious story, and presently after days of morbid brooding it reappeared, trimmed and garnished to perfection, with such an air of reality about it that if it wasn’t true, it might easily have been.
It was the uncanny faculty of Mabelle’s that really troubled Emma. Her suspicion of Mary Conyngham frightened her even while it gave her satisfaction. It occurred to her that Philip was now quite beyond control, as his father had sometimes been. Anything might happen. She dared not think of it. For a moment she felt the quick shadow of foreboding, of some tragedy that lay ahead, beyond the power of anything to prevent.
She shook it off quickly, thinking, “That is nonsense. I can still bring Philip to his senses.”
Inside the house, she prepared her own supper, and spent an hour in clearing up her own house, putting from sight every trace of Naomi.
At nine o’clock Moses Slade came to call. He was in a furious temper. He brought with him a labor periodical, calledThe Beacon.
“It was marked,” he said, “and sent to me through the mail.”
Opening it, he showed her the desecration of his most admired editorial. It was a fragment of the local newspaper, stained and torn, which read, “ ...sacred rights of property must be protected against the attacks of men little better than brutes, etc., etc.,” and signed in large black letters MOSES SLADE. On the face of the printing some irreverent hand had made a series of drawings in pencil—a Croat woman feeding her three small children with coffee out of a clumsy tin cup, a gigantic, bearded Slovak and his wizened, tubercular wife, a baby wrapped in the remains of a ragged pair of overalls, a thin, shivering girl with the face of a Madonna. The whole had been photographed and reproduced.
Underneath them was a line which read, “These are the brutes of the Honorable Moses Slade who have endangered our most sacred institutions and destroyed our God-given prosperity.” And beside it was a caricature of Slade himself, gross, overdressed, with flowing locks and a leering expression, beneath which was written: “Puzzle—find the beast on these two pages.”
He banged the table with his hamlike fist. “By God, I’ll find out who did it, and make him pay for his impudence! I’m not a force in this Town for nothing!”
Emma turned faintly pale, but she only said, “It’s shameful, I think, Moses, but what can you expect from such people? They have no respect for our institutions ... our excellent Congressmen.”
But she knew well enough who had made the drawing.
Inthe flat in Front Street, Philip put the last chair in place, washed his face and hands at the sink in the kitchen, and went in to look at the sleeping twins. They lay side by side, fat, rosy, healthy children, such as women like Naomi or Mabelle were certain to bear. He was alone in the room, and, after a time, he bent down and touched the fine, soft dark hair that covered their small, round heads. They were like him, and so, he supposed, like his father, with eyes that one day would be the same clear blue. It struck him suddenly that there was something ruthless in the operation of Nature which took no account of all the structure of habits and laws of man. It took no account of the fact that he had never loved Naomi, or that neither of them had really wanted these children. Nature had wanted children, and it did not matter how they were created, so long as the act of creation occurred. All man’s ideas of love, of lawful wedlock, of sentimentality, had nothing to do with it. And it was impossible to imagine stronger, healthier children.
He fell to stroking the soft head of the little girl, and, slowly, in her sleep, she stirred and, groping with a fat, pink hand, found one of his fingers, and clutched it tightly. Something in the touch of the soft, plump hand melted him suddenly. She was so soft, so helpless, reaching out trustfully. And for the first time he felt a sudden quick pride and delight. These werehischildren; he knew that he loved them, despite everything, Naomi and his mother and all the trouble he had been through. They werehisto care for andprotect and set on their way in life. That was a wonderful thing. When he thought of it, he was frightened; and yet (he reflected) he would perhaps understand far better than most fathers how to help them. He had learned, he thought, bitterly, by his own blundering.
The little girl still clung tightly to his finger, and presently he found himself smiling, without knowing it. He was, oddly enough, suddenly happy, and conscious that no matter what fate befell him, it was good to be alive. He wasn’t sorry any longer that he had helped to bring into existence these two fat, funny little morsels of life. He almost laughed, and then, bending down, he kissed first one and then the other on the tops of their round, dark little heads. They were his: he was a father. And it had happened without his wanting it, almost without his understanding how it had happened.
He was still bending over them when the door opened and, with a sense of falling spirits, he heard Naomi come in. Ever since that horrible day in his mother’s parlor, she had made an effort to dress completely and neatly, but somehow it was impossible for her to accomplish it entirely. Little wisps of sandy hair fell down over the back of her high tight collar. Her white petticoat, showing itself an inch or two below her skirts, dragged on the floor. There was a smudge of the dust left behind by the dental salesman’s wife on one side of her face. She might set herself in order a dozen times a day, but always, in some mysterious way, she was in disarray. At Megambo, it hadn’t made any difference: in a place like that such things were lost in the whole cataclysm of disorder. But herein a civilized place, it was different. It was as if Naomi could not cope with the problems of decent living.
At the sound of the opening door, Philip straightened up quickly, as if ashamed to be found thus, caressing his children. But Naomi had seen him, and smiled—an odd, twisted, pitiful smile, which was like a knife turned in his flesh, for behind it lay a whole regiment of ghosts, of implications. It was as if he saw suddenly what happiness there might be in life, if he himself had been different, if Naomi had been a different woman, if he had only been able to love her. He couldn’t change: he saw again how ruthless a thing Nature could be. Some one had meddled with her plans, and so the misery resulted. It was not that he thought these things: the whole impression happened far more quickly than any process of thought. It was a sudden, pitiful flash of illumination. What hurt him most was the faint hint of bitterness in her smile, a hint almost of mockery, a shadow which had crossed her pale, freckled face without her knowing it. But until now, he hadn’t thought her capable of suffering in that way.
It frightened him by making him feel weak and yielding.
Perhaps if she had been a more clever woman, she could in that moment have changed the whole course of his life. Long afterward when he thought of the scene (and it always remained one of his clearest memories of her) he saw that itcouldhave been done. But then he saw that if she had been a more clever woman he might have loved her in the beginning.
She came over and stood by his side. “What are we to call them, Philip? We’ve never even spoken of it.” She said it in a flat voice, as if they had been puppies or kittens, and not children—hischildren—at all.
“I don’t know.”
“I’ve been thinking about the girl. Your mother would like to call her Emma, but I’d like it if you’d call her Naomi.”
He knew before she had finished what she had meant to say, and he knew, too, that he hated both names. To go on for the rest of his life, even as an old man, calling his child “Emma” or “Naomi”....
“She’s your child, too, Naomi. You have a choice in the matter.”
“I wanted you to be pleased.” There was a humbleness in her voice which made him feel ill.
“And the boy—have you thought of him?”
“I want to call him Philip, of course.”
(No, he couldn’t do that: it was like wishing them bad luck.)
“No, I hate the name of Philip. You can call the girl Naomi. You bore her, and you’ve more of a right to name her than Ma has. But—no, we won’t call the boy Philip. We’ll think of something else.”
“I’d like to have her called Naomi ... and then you’d think of me sometimes, Philip.”
He looked at her sharply. “But I do think of you. Why should you say that?”
“Oh, I don’t know ... just in case anything happened to me. That’s why I’d like to call him Philip.”
“No ... no ... any other name.”
He took up his hat. “What are you going to do with the twins on Sundays and choir practice nights?”
“I don’t know. I’d thought of asking Mabelle to stay with them ... but she lives such a long way off. Maybe I’d just better give it up.”
“No, you mustn’t do that. I’ll come and stay with them. I’d like to.”
“You don’t mind my leading the choir, Philip?”
“No, of course not.”
“Because I want you to be pleased. I want it to be a new start now, here in this new house.”
He didn’t answer, and after an awkward pause, she said, “I wouldn’t go at all, but I think Reverend Castor needs me. He’s got so many worries. Yesterday when I was talking to him, he began all at once to cry ... not out loud, but the tears just came into his eyes. His wife’s an awful woman. He’s been telling me about her. And now that Mrs. Timpkins has moved away, there’s no one to take the choir who knows anything about music.”
“Of course, go by all means.”
He was glad for two reasons, because he knew she liked the importance of leading the choir, and because he would have these evenings alone with the children—hischildren—who had been born in reality as he stood looking down at them a moment before.
“Good-night, Naomi,” he said abruptly.
“Philip....”
“Yes.”
“Philip, you won’t stay?”
“No, Naomi.... It wouldn’t look right.”
There was a pause.
“Sometimes you’re like your mother, Philip.”
He went out and in his agitation found himself halfway down the flimsy pine stairway before he remembered his overcoat. When he returned and opened thedoor of the little flat, he heard the sound of sobbing, a horrible choked sound, coming from the bedroom. She had not made a scene. She had not wept until he was gone, for she was trying to please him.
Itwas a clear night, and very cold, when the moonlight painted the snow and the black houses of the Flats with a luminous blue light. As he walked, the hard-packed snow creaked and whined beneath his heels. The stars, for all their brilliance, seemed infinitely remote. As he walked, a little cloud of frozen breath trailed behind him.
By the railroad-tracks and in the narrow streets that bordered them, the Flats were empty. The houses stood silent and black. The fires, the little piles of household goods, were gone now, and with them the miserable, shivering women and children. At Hennessey’s corner there was the usual blaze of light, the jagged clamor of the mechanical piano, and the sound of drunken voices behind the swinging-doors. The lights, the sounds, hurt him in an inexplicable fashion, filling him with an acute and painful sense of loneliness.
It was an emotion which changed, as he entered the park, to one of vague fear. Inside the rusted gates the park lay frozen and solitary in the brilliant moonlight. The deep shadows were blue along the drive, black where the outline of a dead tree fell across the snow. The bits of statuary—the Venus of Cnidos, the Apollo Belvedere, the cast-iron Cupid—all had little caps and collars of frozen snow. The windows of the big house lay shuttered and dark, save for a room inthe corner where little bars of yellow light filtered out. It was perhaps the room where Lily Shane sat waiting for her mother to die.
As he turned the corner on the stable side, there came to him all at once a feeling that he was not alone in the park. There were other creatures there, too, not human perhaps, but the ghosts of all the men and women who had been there in the gaudy days of the Castle when the trees were still alive, and the garden neatly kept, and the stable filled with horses. There had always been a mystery about the place, and for him, who had never seen the place while it was alive, it was a mystery enveloped in a romantic glamour. He understood suddenly how people are able to invest a place with the character of their own existence. It was the wicked old John Shane, dead so long that he had become a legend, and his dying widow, who owned this silent frozen park filled with dead trees.... It would still be theirs and theirs alone long after they had turned to dust, until at last the house was pulled down and the park buried beneath clamorous steel sheds and roaring furnaces. And even then ... as long as there remained alive one person who remembered them, the place would be known as Shane’s Hill, where once the Castle stood. It was an odd sort of immortality....
He saw, too, that the slate-colored house was like his mother: she had stamped it forever as her own, and that the huts at Megambo were oddly like Naomi, who had been so happy in them. And he saw suddenly why he had hated both places and how in a way they explained both his mother and Naomi, and the power they both possessed of making him wretched.This cold park and the silent house, peopled by creatures that were dead, seemed a dark and sinister place, yet it had, too, a sense of splendor, of barren grandeur, that for more than half a century had dominated the Town. It existed still in the very midst of the clamorous Mills.
The stable was silent, save for the sound of the fat horses tramping in their stalls, and in his room overhead the stove still burned, filling the room with warmth. It was a plain enough room, empty save for the iron cot where he slept, a table, two chairs and his painting materials. Yet for him a pleasant place. He had for the first time in all his life a sense of coming home. It was his; and it suited him with its barren emptiness. It was like the cell of a monk, bare and cold, and free of everything which might distract from a contemplation of the great mystery.
He did not trouble to light the kerosene lamp. The cold moonlight flooded in through the window, casting in black filigrees on the bare floor the shadow of the drooping vines that fell across the panes. Against the walls and ceiling the flames in the belly of the stove cast another pattern, different, outlined of warm and glowing light.
For a long time he stood there, his hands clasped behind him, looking out of the window, seized once more by the enchantment of the beauty with which the night invested all the expanse of the Flats. Far off, under the shadow of one of the seven hills, the flames of the furnaces in the Jupiter plant raised an arc of glowing light. He saw in his imagination all the spectacle that existed there—the bodies of the black men, the dancing shadows cast by the glaring lights, the angry hiss andbubble of boiling white-hot metal. He could smell the curious, pungent odor of burning coke. He saw the movement, the unearthly splendor, the immense energy that filled the whole scene.
Just beneath the hill, the sheds and furnaces lay in black shadows. There were fires there, built by the Mill guards, that burned like the red eyes of giants asleep in the velvety darkness. There was the sudden wild screech of an express locomotive, and a long serpent-like monster, lighted from within like a firefly, rushed through the darkness.
He was glad suddenly to be alone, for the solitude brought him a strange peace like the peace that had come to him at times when he went alone at dawn along the borders of the lake at Megambo. It was the peace of complete aloofness, of detachment from all that troubled him—a mysterious exaltation like death perhaps, in which no one could share. No, not even Mary Conyngham.... Mary Conyngham.... He found himself repeating the name idly in his brain. Now, in this moment of solitude, even Mary Conyngham did not trouble him. It was as if he were free suddenly of his body and existed only as a spirit.
Presently, he put his hand across his eyes, pressing them with a kind of anguish. He knew that he believed again; he knew that he had always believed. He had never lost his faith. It was only that until now he had followed a bogus God. It was only that he didn’t believe in that harsh, commonplace, ugly God of Naomi and Emma and the Reverend Castor. It was a different sort of God—One who was concerned with a kind of beauty andsplendor which they did not know ... the beauty of all that scene outspread below him, of that savage energy which cast a distant glow against the sky; it was the beauty of those two children, his children, called into existence because He willed it, the sinister beauty of the park and of people like old John Shane and his widow who lived on even after they were dead and dying, the beauty even of that coffee-shed filled with shivering women and children, and the fires in the street. He was the God, too, of those black women pouring the water of the burning lake over the belly of an obscene idol—a God concerned with the whole glowing tragic spectacle of living.
Presently his hands dropped to his side once more, and, looking out of the window, he saw that the park was no longer empty. There was some one there—a woman—walking up and down in the moonlight. She was wrapped in furs and she was no ghost, for in the cold air, the moonlight and the frost of her breath made a little halo about her uncovered head. She was walking round and round the ruined dead English garden, which must have had its own ghosts of larkspurs and foxgloves and lavender and mint and primulas—all the ghosts of flowers long dead, killed by the soot of the Mills.
And then all at once, he divined who the woman must be. She was Lily Shane, walking in the moonlight.
She turned at last, and, going carelessly through the deep snow, returned to the big, darkened house.
Philip lay down on the iron cot, and toward morning he fell asleep. But in the long hours while he lay there, watching the pattern of warm light on the ceiling, he became aware slowly of a whole new world born of a strange, mystical understanding, that had come to him as he stood by thewindow in the brilliant moonlight ... a world which belonged to him alone, which none could intrude upon or destroy. He fell asleep in peace, aware vaguely that for a time he had escaped from Naomi and Uncle Elmer, from Mabelle—even from his own mother.
It was at noon on the following day that old Julia Shane fell into a sleep from which she did not awaken. The old nigger, standing in the snow by the stable door, told him the news. The old man wept like a little child. “It’s the end of something, Mr. Downes,” he said. “It’s all over now, and I expect I ain’t got much longer on this earth, myself. It ain’t the same no longer.”
All that day Philip stayed in the room above the stable, struggling passionately, with his stubborn jaw set like a steel trap, over paints and canvas, trying to capture, while the mood was still on him, the strange things he had seen in the dead park and the desert of silent Mills beyond. But in the end, when it grew too dark to work any longer, there was only a mass of blacks and grays, blues and whites, upon the canvas.
At eight o’clock, he went to the Flats to sit with the twins while Naomi went to choir practice.
Thechoir met in the room of the church which was given over on the Sabbath to “the infant class” of the Sunday School for children under six. It was a large, barren room, with large chromos of Biblical scenes decorating the walls—the soldiers of Moses returning from the Promised Land, Moses smiting the Rock, thesame as an Infant being discovered in the Bulrushes by a Princess dressed in garments as gaudy and inaccurate as those of a music-hall Cleopatra, Noah and his family receiving the Dove and Olive Branch. In the center of the room two dozen lilliputian chairs sat ranged in a circle, save on the occasions of choir practice, when a dozen adult chairs were brought in from the main Sunday School room to accommodate members of the choir.
Naomi arrived early, and, admitting herself with the private key that was her badge of office, turned on the gas and seated herself at the upright piano. There was no piano in the flat by the railroads, and she fell at once to playing, in order to recover her old careless facility. She had no sense of music; yet music was to her only what wine is to some temperaments: it served to unlock the doors of the restraining prison which forever shut her in. She played relentlessly in showers of loud, banging notes, heedless of discord and strange harmonies; and the longer she played, the more shameless and abandoned became the character of her playing. To-night she played from a none too sure memoryThe Ninety and NineandThrow Out the Life Line(her favorites) and thenI’m a Pilgrim, I’m a Stranger, which always made her want to cry, and then with a strong arm and a loud pedal she swept intoAncient of Days, which filled her with the strangest, emotional grandeur. There was a splendor in it which made her feel noble and heroic: it filled her with a sense of beauty and power. She saw herself vaguely as a barbarian queen, like Sheba, riding on an elephant, surrounded by guards and servitors. The image in her mind bore a strange resemblance to her memoryof a highly painted artificial blonde, clad principally in sequins and crimson satin, whom she had once seen riding an elephant in the circus parade—a lady advertised as “the ten-thousand-dollar beauty.” But always when she had finishedAncient of Days, and the last note had died away, she was left with a melancholy feeling of depression and a sense of wickedness. The world about her became after one of these musical debauches a sad and unbearable place.
To-night, alone in the bare, unattractive room, she poured into the music all the pent-up emotions of days ... all her hatred of Emma, her fear of the new life on which she had embarked, but, most of all, that curious passionate half-wicked feeling she had for Philip. Beneath the spell ofAncient of Daysthis emotion for him seemed to become purified and free of all restraint. She poured into the banging, careless chords all the things which she could never bring herself to tell him—how the sight of him standing by the crib had made her feel suddenly ill with warm voluptuous feeling, how there were times when she wanted to lie down before him and beat her head on the floor to show him how she felt, how she wakened out of a sound sleep in the midst of the night with her hands aching to touch his face and his dark hair. In the splendor of the hymn it was as if all those things were realized. For a time shewasthat fantastic, barbaric queen of her imagination and Philip was her lover, dressed like one of the soldiers in the chromo of the return from the Promised Land, and sometimes in an overwhelming wave of wickedness she saw him as she had seen him on the night of the drums, standing half naked by the light of the dying fire.
It was thus that she saw him to-night, and, as if she meant to preserve the wild romantic feeling, she played and sang the whole hymn over again in her loud, flat voice. She was wildly happy, for in the end it seemed that Philip really belonged to her, and that they were alone once more by the lake at Megambo. They weren’t even missionaries and Swanson wasn’t there. And he loved her.
When she had finished, the spell clung to her until the last chord, held deliberately by the use of the loud pedal, died away, leaving her weak and exhausted, and prey suddenly to the horrible, sickening depression. She let her head fall forward on the piano. She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t cry, because people would be coming in at any moment. And suddenly she felt the touch of a hand on her shoulder and a voice saying, “That was splendid, Mrs. Downes! That’s the sort of music that will bring them to the Lord!”
It was the Reverend Castor. He had come in quietly, without a sound, and had been sitting there all the while listening to her while she desecrated the sanctity of a hymn with all her fleshly emotions. She tried to gain control of herself, and, without looking up, mopped her eyes and nose with her handkerchief. But it was no good: when she looked up he saw that she had been crying. She was blushing with shame, and the color made her seem almost pretty.
“Why, you’ve been crying!” he said.
She choked, recovered herself, and answered, “Yes ... I ... I can’t help it.... It always makes me cry—that hymn.”
He laid a big, bony, masculine hand on her shoulder.“But you mustn’t cry ... Mrs. Downes. You mustn’t cry.... It’s something to be joyful over.”
She looked (he thought) so young and pitiful and unhappy. If it were only possible to comfort her, to take her on his knee as if she were a little child. It was no more than that, this feeling toward her. He wanted to comfort her. But you couldn’t do that, of course, especially if you were a preacher.
“I watched your face while you were singing,” he said. “It was a beautiful sight ... so filled with joy and hope and exaltation ... like the face of one who has seen a vision. It was an inspiration—even to me, a man of God.”
She thought, “Oh, Iamwicked. Iamwicked!” And aloud, suddenly, without knowing why, she said, “Oh, I’m so unhappy!”
“But why, Naomi?”
He had called her by her name, without thinking, and suddenly he was frightened. He always thought of her thus, as if she had been his own child, and now the thought had slipped into words. He saw that she had noticed it, for she was blushing and avoided his eyes. She did not answer his question, and suddenly he said, “You mustn’t mind that ... that ... Mrs. Downes.... It only means ... that ... well, I always think of you as Naomi because I think of your mother-in-law astheMrs. Downes.”
Still looking away, she answered, “I know ... I know.... It’s all right. You may call me that if you want, only ... only not in front of the others. I didn’t.... I think it would make me feel less alone.”
And then the door creaked, and Mrs. Wilbert Phipps came in. The Reverend Castor began fingering the pilesof music, and Naomi began again to pound the piano with an hysterical violence.
“Good-evening, Mrs. Phipps.”
“Good-evening, Reverend Castor.”
“I’ve been looking over the anthems for next Sunday.”
“We haven’t sungO the Golden, Glowing Morningfor a long while.”
“No ... but that’s an Easter hymn!”
“But wehavesung it before on other occasions ... it’s so moving.”
“What do you think, Mrs. Downes?”
Naomi stopped in the midst of her playing. “I think it would be fine. It’s so full of joy.”
One by one the others arrived. Each had his favorite, some song which he or she found moving. Naomi, troubled and unhappy, yielded to their choice. She was not, it was plain to be seen, to be a leader save in name alone. The eleven singers took their seats. There was a rustling of music and Naomi plunged noisily into: