"I know. I haven't thought you were careless."
"I thought I'd go crazy. He's never coasted in the street. The other boy thought of it."
"It was an accident, Miss Kelly. You mustn't blame yourself."
The entreaty faded under the flush of gratitude. Miss Kelly turned and hurried back to Letty's room, her square shoes clumping solidly.
VII
Saturday afternoon. Spencer was dressed, even to his shoes. Catherine had suggested moccasins, but Spencer held out for shoes. "Then I'll be sure, Mother, that I'm really up!" The terrifying pallor had left his face. The bandages were gone, too; just the pink, wrinkled mouth-like scar spoke audibly of the past weeks.
"You'll have to part your hair in the middle, Spencer," Dr. Henrietta had told him, "until this bald spot grows out." And Spencer had retorted, promptly, "I wouldn't be that sissy!"
Catherine moved one of her red checkers, smiled a little, wondering where he had picked up that idea, and glanced away from Spencer and checker board, out of the window. The bare trees of Morningside pricked up through gray mist; the distant roofs were vague. What a horrid day! It seemed too raw and cold for Spencer's first trip outdoors. But he really was well again. Monday he could go out. It was true, Henrietta's prophecy. She was being let down with a thud. There seemed no place where she could take hold of ordinary life again.
Spencer giggled.
"I jumped three of your men, Mother, and you never saw I could."
"Why, so you did." Catherine looked at her dismantled forces. She couldn't even keep her mind on those disks of wood. "There." She moved.
"Oh, Moth-er!" Spencer was gathering in the last of the red checkers. "You're a punk player. You're a dumb-bell!"
"What a name! Where did you find that word?"Catherine watched him; he was teasing her—that funny little quirk in his eyebrows.
"Oh, the fellers say it." Suddenly he swept the checkers into a heap. "I'm sick of checkers."
"Want to read a while?"
"I'm sick of reading. Staying in the house just wears me out, Mother."
The doorbell broke the quiet of the house, and Catherine, with a relieved, "Now we'll see what's coming!" went out to the door. Her mother, perhaps, or Margaret.
"Hello, Catherine." It was Bill, shifting a large package that he might extend his hand. She hadn't seen him since that night in Chicago. She had an impression of herself that night, confident, radiant, but vague and blurred, as if Bill showed her a faded photograph he had kept for years. "Henry said she thought I might call on Spencer," he was saying.
Catherine was grateful for the lack of inquiry. He would know that she had dropped everything in a heap, and that all the ends were tangled and confused. But knowing, he would ask her nothing, would not even indicate his knowledge.
"I've brought something for him." He jerked the arm which held the package.
"Spencer's in here." Catherine led the way to the living room. "Here's a caller for you," she announced.
"Hello, Mr. Bill!" Spencer lunged forward in his chair, but Bill set the box promptly before him.
"This table is just what we need. I thought you might help me with this radio." Bill shook himself out of his overcoat. And Catherine, with a smile at the sudden lifting of Spencer's clouds of ennui, left them.
There were things to be done. She might as well shake off her lethargy and attack them. She heard Spencer's eager voice, Bill's deliberate tones, pronouncing strange phrases—amperes, tuning up, wave lengths. The laundry. Prosaic, distasteful enough. If she began with that, she might find a shred of old habit which would start her wheels running.
She carried the bundles to her room, where she sorted the linen into piles on her bed. She had no list; she remembered Mrs. O'Lay at the door, last Monday, "The laundry boy's here, Mis' Hammond. Should I now just scramble together what I can put my hands on?" and her own indifferent answer. Five sheets. That seemed reasonable. And bath towels—that one was going. Catherine held it up to the light, poked her fingers through the shredded fabric, and tossed it to the floor. We need more of everything, she thought. Sheets—she stared at the neat white squares. If she unfolded them, probably she would find more shreds. Well, she wouldn't look! They cost so much, sheets and towels, and you had so little fun for your money. She stowed away the piles in the linen drawers. Then she opened the bundle of clothing, unironed, tight, wrinkled lumps. Mrs. O'Lay would iron them. Little undergarments, small strings of stockings. At least she didn't have to mend them; Miss Kelly was keeping them in order. She shook out a pajama coat; a jagged hole in the front whence a button had departed forcibly. She would have to mend Charles up. She chuckled; before she had gone away she had bought new socks for Charles, hiding those she had not found time to darn. He would never notice.
She was rolling a pair of socks into a neat ball, turning the ribbed cuff down to hold the ball, when she stopped. One finger flicked absently at a bit of gray lint. What was she going to do? She was sorting those clothes quite as if Mrs. O'Lay and Miss Kelly were fixtures. And she wasn't sure she had money enough to pay Miss Kelly for even one more week.
She piled away the clothing, dodging her thoughts. But when she had finished her task, she stood at the window, looking out at the court windows, and one by one her thoughts overtook her and assaulted her.
Of course I'm going back to the Bureau, the very day Spencer goes to school again. There's no new reason why I shouldn't. Isn't there? What about this feeling—that Spencer was a warning to me—a sign? That's what mother meant. Her hand lifted to her forehead, smoothed back her hair. That's not decent thinking, she went on. Absurd. Superstitious. Spencer might have been hurt even if I had been at his heels. Walter was hurt. Accidents—like a bony, threatening finger shaken at her!
"Moth-er!" Spencer's voice summoned her. Mr. Bill was going now, but he left the radio for Spencer to examine, and a book about it.
"An' he's going to see the superintendent about wires to catch things on, and we can't rig it truly until he gets a wire." Spencer clasped the book under one arm, and drew the black box nearer him along the table. "It's the most inturusting thing I ever saw, Mother." His eyes were bright with pleasure.
"I'm sorry," said Bill, "that we can't install it to-night. But perhaps to-morrow——"
Catherine went to the door with Bill.
"It was good of you to come in," she said. "He's had a dull time."
Bill had his hand on the knob.
"I've been out of town again for a week," he said. "Henry kept me posted."
Then he was going, but Catherine caught at his arm.
"Bill"—in a sharp whisper—"do you think it was my fault? Do you?"
"Catherine!" He was laughing at her, comfortingly. "What rot!"
"Is it?" She sighed.
"You're tired." His hand enclosed hers warmly for a moment. "Henry says you've been wonderful, but not wise——"
There was a clatter outside the door, a firm, "Now wait one second, Letty!" Bill pulled the door open; Letty, her pointed face framed in a red hood, Marian, pulling her tarn off her tousled dark hair, Miss Kelly behind them.
"Oh, Mr. Bill!" Marian hugged his arm, and Letty clambered onto her go-duck that she might reach his hand, with a lusty, "'Lo, Bill!"
"Come back and play with us, Mr. Bill," Marian cajoled him, her head on one side.
But Bill, grinning at her, eluding Letty's grasp, stepped into the elevator and was gone.
"'S'at Marian?" Spencer was shouting. "Oh, Marian, you come see what I got." Marian darted ahead. As Catherine, with Letty's damp mittened hand in hers, came to the door of the children's room, she heard Spencer determinedly, "No, you can't touch it! It's too delicut.Mr. Bill told me it was too delicut. You keep your hands off it! It's just lent to me."
"Who said I wanted to touch your ole radium?"
"It isn't radium, Marian. Radio. And you were touching it."
"Marian, dear, come take your wraps off." Miss Kelly had stowed Letty's go-duck in the hall closet, and followed Catherine. "You musn't bother Spencer."
"He's well now, isn't he?" She lagged into the bedroom.
Catherine sat on one of the cots, watching. She had scarcely seen her two daughters since she had come back. She had known they were well, she had heard Miss Kelly often sidetracking them with, "No, your mamma is busy and you mustn't disturb her. Poor little Spencer needs her and you don't." Miss Kelly had lifted Letty into a chair and was unbuttoning the red coat when Letty set up a strident wail, and stiffened into a ramrod which slid out from under Miss Kelly's fingers.
"Want my Muvver!" she shrieked. "Not you!" She flung herself on the edge of the bed beside Catherine, with gyrations of her red-gaitered plump legs. Catherine, laughing, dragged her up beside her. Letty snuggled against her, peering up with her blandishing smile.
"All right, old lady." Catherine tugged off the tiny rubbers, stripped down the knit leggings, noticing absently the promptness with which Marian carried her own cloak and tarn to the closet and hung them away. Why, Miss Kelly had taught her to be orderly, she marveled. Then she saw Letty's expression of sidewise expectancy under long lashes. Miss Kelly was looking at her gravely.
"Letty tired." She drooped into Catherine's enclosing arm like a sleepy kitten.
"That's too bad." Miss Kelly was unruffled. "Then you can't show your mamma your own hook that you can reach."
Letty was quiet. Catherine felt the child's body stiffen a little from its kittenlike relaxation, as if her inner conflict was purely muscular, not thought at all. That's the way children must think, she speculated. With a giggle Letty slid down from the bed, hugged her arms about the pile of scarlet garments, and marched to the closet.
"I screwed a hook into the door, low down," Miss Kelly explained. "Usually Letty doesn't have to be told."
"And you don't allow her to beguile you, do you?" Catherine laughed at the self-righteousness in Letty's strut back to the bed.
"You can't," said Miss Kelly, "or they run all over you."
"What runs over you?" demanded Marian.
"Mice!" Letty's shriek was almost in Catherine's ear, as she plumped down in her mother's lap. "Mice!" and she wiggled in laughter. "Free blind mice."
"Isn't she silly!" But Marian giggled, too. "Who's that?" The hall door sounded on its hinges. "Daddy!" Her rush halted at the door. "Oh, I thought you were my Daddy!"
"Did you, now?" Mrs. O'Lay's red face hung a moment at the door, a genial full moon. "Well, I ain't. But you'd best be glad I ain't, for it's little dinner he'd be getting for you."
Marian stuck a pink triangle of tongue after her as she disappeared, clumping down the hall.
"She's awful fat, isn't she, Muvver?" She scuffled her feet slowly to the edge of the bed. "An' she has a funny smell. I don't know what she smells of, but she does."
"Ashes and floor oil," said Catherine. She hadn't noticed it, consciously. She caught Miss Kelly's surprised, disapproving glance. "We'll have to lengthen that dress, Marian," she concealed her amusement, and her free hand pulled at the edge of the chambray dress. "Can't pull it over your knees, can we?"
"I have let out the tucks in four dresses," said Miss Kelly. This was ground she knew. "But Marian is growing very fast."
Catherine's arm went around Marian's waist, and pulled her down at her side.
"Short dresses are the style, aren't they?" She hugged them both, Letty against her breast, Marian against her shoulder. Firm, warm, slim things, her daughters, growing very fast.
"What are you folks doing?" Spencer stood in the doorway, his eyes mournful. "I'm all alone."
"You've got your ole radium," declared Marian promptly, "and you're not sick any longer, even if I can see that cut, and our Muvver can stay with us now."
"Us now!" chanted Letty.
"Oh, you've sorted the laundry, Mrs. Hammond?" Miss Kelly turned from the opened drawer.
"Yes. I left a pile of clothes on a chair in Spencer's room—they need buttons."
"I thought I'd just lay out clean underwear for morning. Perhaps that shirt is with the pile." She went past Spencer, who drew aside with a touch of petulance.
"Suppose we all go into the living room." Catherine brushed Letty and Marian to their feet. "Daddy will be here soon, and we'll all have dinner together for the first time. Yes, Letty, too. It's a special occasion. Spencer's first full-dress day."
"Should I wash for dinner now, Muvver?" Marian still clung to her mother's arm. Catherine, looking down at the brown eyes, was disturbed. Marian was jealous of Spencer. She resented—oh, well, probably that was natural enough. Her legs outgrew her dresses, and her personality was growing as rapidly, shooting up, not wholly caught in civilized patterns.
"Can you keep your hands clean until dinner? Perhaps you might wait until Daddy has come. Run along, children. I want to speak to Miss Kelly a moment."
"What about, Muvver?"
"Business." Catherine was firm, and Marian's mood shifted quickly.
"Show Letty your ole radium," she said, dragging Letty after her, and Spencer pursued them in haste.
"You needn't stay for Letty's supper," said Catherine, as Miss Kelly returned. "You've been very kind to give me so many additional hours. And you certainly deserve to-morrow. It is several weeks, isn't it, since you've had Sunday?"
"That's all right, Mrs. Hammond." Miss Kelly laid the retrieved shirt on the dresser. "Of course, if you don't need me to-morrow." She looked at Catherine warily, her sandy lashes blinking, her nose still reddened from the afternoon. "You will want me next week?"
"Of course." Catherine frowned, a kind of panic whirring in her.
"I wondered. I didn't know. Something your mother said. I knew you needed some one for the children only if you were working."
"You must have misunderstood mother." The whirring deepened into fear, like wings, beating to escape the nets spread to catch her. They all expected her to abandon everything, to step back into the old harness. "Of course, I have made no plans, until Spencer was well. But next week"—she spoke out boldly, denying her own doubts—"next week I shall—" she did not finish that sentence. "At any rate, Miss Kelly, I should tell you in advance. I've just been admiring the way you are training the children. You are quite remarkable with them."
VIII
When Charles came in, Marian flew to meet him, flinging her arms about him as far as they would go, with little squeals of delight.
"Daddy, hello; we're going to have a party. Letty, too. Spencer can sit up at the table."
"I should say I could," broke in Spencer, indignantly.
He looks tired—Catherine smiled at him over Letty's yellow head. Sallow, discouraged. His glance withdrew quickly from hers, stopped at Spencer.
"How's the boy? Fine?"
"Daddy!" Marian pulled at his sleeve. "I thought of something. Let me whisper it."
And Catherine, while Letty slipped from her lap in an endeavor to learn what Marian was whispering, thought: it's a breaking off place, to-night. The interim is over.
"You'd better ask mother." Charles ruffled Marian's cropped head.
"No! A secret, Daddy!"
"Well. Ask Mrs. O'Lay, then."
"Tell Letty!" She pounded on his knee.
"Here, you!" He glanced again at Catherine, and his grin was suddenly like Spencer's. "That's no way to learn a secret. You wait."
Catherine's heart began to beat quickly. He is wretched about something, she thought. Bothered. But he wants to pretend. Marian whisked back, jumping about it. "It's all right! She says sure!"
"Then you wait at the door. Don't let them guess," and he stalked off, leaving Marian solemn in her delight, stationed at the door.
"Chwismas!" shouted Letty. But Marian shooed her out of the hall when Daddy returned.
Dinner had caught the slight tingling mood of a special occasion. Charles was deliberately jolly, and the children responded in expansive delight. Excitement moved pleasantly into Catherine, too, in spite of her sober, concealed thoughts. That other dinner, ages ago, with the children responsive then to the contention between her and Charles. The friendly enclosure of the room, with Letty at her left, Charles across from her, the other two—and Mrs. O'Lay waddling in and out. Above all, Spencer, safely clear of that dark threat.
"Well, it's the first time we've had a jolly dinner party for a long time, eh, Cathy?"
Ah, that was the thing she feared, ironically, under the bright surface, that Charles was building again; not a trap, exactly, nor a prison, but a net, a snare. This wasto be proof, this scene, that they must have her, wholly. That her life dwelt only within such walls as these. That her desires, even, were held here. Her eyes were bright and troubled.
The secret came. Ice cream and chocolate sauce.
"Now it's a real party," sighed Marian, contentedly. "And I thought it up."
The telephone rang. Charles sprang to his feet, dropping his napkin as he hurried out.
"Why," asked Spencer, "does Daddy always have to hustle when the 'phone rings?"
"Because he has important business, because he's a man," said Marian, promptly.
"It might be for me." Spencer was hopeful.
"No!" Marian derided him. "Folks don't telephone little boys."
Astonishing. Catherine looked at Marian's calm profile. Where did she pick up her perfect feminine attitude? Instinct, or a parroting of some one, Miss Kelly, or her grandmother?
"Catherine!" Charles was calling. "Some one wants you."
"Now! It wasn't Daddy at all." Spencer was triumphant.
"Move along into the living room," said Catherine, rising. "Mrs. O'Lay is waiting to clear the table."
Then, as she sat down at the desk, she had a hasty, random thought. Stella Partridge hadn't called for Charles once these past weeks. Perhaps that hint of Henrietta's—Margaret's voice cut in.
"Hello! You back?" Catherine settled herself comfortably.
"Just in. Everything all right? I've been talking with Henrietta."
"Yes. Really all right. Spencer had a party to-night, his first dinner with the family."
"Could I see him to-morrow?"
"Of course. Where have you been, anyway? Mother was vague."
"Trip for the firm. To their factories in Boston and Pittsburgh. Cathy, what a shame your tour was interrupted! When do you go back?"
"You mean west again?" A little shock tingled through Catherine, quite as if, while she looked at a group of familiar thoughts, an outside hand shifted the spotlight, and at once a different color lay upon them, changing them.
"You hadn't finished the work, had you?"
"No." That was all Catherine could say.
"Well, Spencer's all right, isn't he?"
"Yes," heavily from Catherine. Silence for a moment. Then Margaret, forcefully:
"I'd like to come right out to-night. Don't be a fool, Cathy! I know just what's happened to you, old dear! Don't you let it! But Amy's waiting for me, and I'm starved."
Catherine stared at the round black mouthpiece. If she could hold that light Margaret threw over things—in which nothing looked the same. But she couldn't talk.
"I'll expect you to-morrow, then?" she asked.
"Yes. Early."
Charles was telling the children the story of the bantam hen he had owned when he was a little boy. Letty wascurled up on his knees, Marian sat on the arm of his chair, his arm about her, Spencer had drawn his chair close.
"And I used to carry her around in the pocket of my coat, with just her head sticking out, and her bright shiny eyes and her yellow bill."
"Yellow bill?" murmured Letty.
"Just how big was she, Daddy?" Marian asked.
"I'd like a hen like that," said Spencer.
"Some day maybe we can live in a decent place, where we can have hens."
"And a dog, Father?"
"No, a kitty. A little gray soft kitty." Marian looked anxiously at her father. "I'd much rather have a kitty, Daddy."
"We might have both"—and as Letty opened her mouth wide and pink for a protest—"yes, and Letty could have a kitty or a dog or a pet hen. Well, my bantam's name was Mitty. One day——"
Catherine stepped softly away from the door. She could get Letty's bath ready. And she must transfer bedclothes. Spencer was to move into his own room again, and she had forgotten to ask Mrs. O'Lay to arrange the beds.
When she went in for Letty, the story had gone on to a dog. Mr. Bill's dog. He lived next door, Charles was explaining, and he was bigger than I was. His dog was shaggy.
Letty, protesting, came, full of incoherencies about dogs and kittens and chickens.
"Muvver, to-day Letty wants li'l dog an' li'l kitty an' li'l shickey."
"Not to-day. To-day's over. Now you are a fish." And Letty swam vigorously. Catherine stood beside her cot, looking down at her, fragrant, pink, beatific. A decent place to live in—with live things around them instead of city streets. A tiny, distant alarm clanged in her mind. That was what Charles had said, when he spoke of the offer at Buxton. Was he thinking about that, still? Whatwashe thinking about!
Spencer had his bath, refusing her assistance with firm dignity. He was silent, standing at the door of his own room, a thin, pajamaed figure, looking at his own cot.
"You don't need me now at night, do you?" Catherine turned down the covers. "Here, hop in before you are chilly."
"I liked that other bed," said Spencer. "It's much softer."
"Nonsense!" Catherine laughed at him, tucked him in, kissed his cheek softly, not looking at the pink, wrinkled scar. "Same kind of springs. And you're well now."
"Will you be gone in the morning, Mother?"
His question halted her at the door.
"No, Spencer. What made you ask that?"
"I wanted to know."
She snapped off the light and closed his door.
Then Marian was bathed; scrubbing and spluttering, she repeated with funny little imitations of Charles's phrases, the stories about Mitty Bantam and Mr. Bill's dog.
Catherine opened the window to let the steam out of the bathroom, while she hung up limp towels and scrubbedout the tub and restored things to shining order. Her sleeve slipped down on her wet wrist, and she shoved it back impatiently. She'd like a drowsy, warm bath herself, and sleep, dreamless, heavy. But Charles was waiting for her. The interim was over. Pushing her hair away from her forehead with her habitual gesture, she went into the living room.
Charles looked up from his paper, smoke wreathing his face.
"This has been fine," he said, warmly. "Comfortable home evening."
Catherine sat down, brushing drops of water from her skirt.
"Hasn't it?" he urged.
"Well—" She was staring at her hands, blanched, wrinkled at the finger tips, by their long soaking. "If home is the bathroom!" Under her lowered eyelids she saw Charles watching her, guardedly. He set down his pipe with a click.
"If you feel that way!"
"Horrid of me to say it, wasn't it?" Catherine relaxed, her hands limp-wristed along the chair.
"I suppose you are tired. Awful strain, these last weeks."
"Perhaps I am." Catherine twisted sidewise in her chair and smiled at him. "But you look tired, too, poor boy. What have you been doing? I—why, I haven't seen you since I came back."
"You certainly haven't. But I didn't mind. Spencer—well, thank God, that's over!"
"Yes." Catherine discovered that she was so recently out from the distorting shadow of fear for Spencer thatas yet she could not talk about it, as if words might have black magic to recall the fear.
"Damned lucky escape." Charles rammed tobacco into the pipe bowl with his thumb. He was thrusting out words in bravado, without looking at Catherine. He, too, had lived in that fear! He sucked vigorously, drawing the match flame down into the pipe. "What are you going to do now?"
The muscles of wrists and fingers leaped into tight contraction, and her hands doubled into fists against the chair.
"I haven't thought, until to-day." Then, suddenly,—better pour out everything. "Nothing has changed, has it, now that Spencer is well?"
"You plan to go back to the Bureau?"
"You mean that you think I should give it up?" Catherine stared at the hard, jutting line of his jaw, at his eyes, feverish, sunken. "Charles, you can't mean you blame me for Spencer's accident?"
"No." He spoke sharply, denying himself. "It might have happened anyway. I know that."
"Oh!" A long, escaping sigh. "If you had blamed me—I couldn't have endured it." And then, "It's hard, not to blame myself."
"That's just it." Charles moved forward, eagerly. "It's frightening. I thought you might feel, well, that you couldn't risk it. Leaving them. I want to be fair, Catherine."
"If you had been away, on a business trip"—Catherine was motionless except for the slow movement of her lips—"and this had happened, I should have sent for you. Would you have blamed yourself? Or given up yourwork? Oh, yes, I know you'll say that's different. It isn't so different. It wouldn't be, if you didn't make it so."
"Oh, my work." He settled back into his chair. "I've got to tell you things about that. I don't know how interested you are. You've been engrossed." He paused, but Catherine did not speak. "It does concern you! And it's a frightful mess." His eyes were haggard, angry, and his shoulders sagged in the chair with a curious, weary dejection, unlike their usual squared confidence. "I haven't told you. They didn't put me in as head of the clinic. The committee recognized the value of my work in organizing the clinic"—he was quoting, sneeringly—"but preferred to install a medical psychiatrist. You know it was decided last year, unofficially, that I was to be appointed the instant the funds were clear."
"What happened? Who is the head?" Pity extricated Catherine from her own floundering. She knew, swiftly, what had happened, as she remembered a sentence in that letter from Henrietta.
"A Dr. Beck. What happened? The usual thing. The doctors in the town stirred up the usual brawl. This was a medical clinic. No layman could manage it. Any fool with a year of anatomy could do better than a specialist. If you can cut off a leg or an appendix, you know instinctively everything about mental disorders or feeble-mindedness or anything else that touches psychology."
"But you had discussed that with the committee, and they——"
"They agreed with me last year. But they say theydidn't realize popular opinion. There was underhanded play going on before I heard about it, and the thing was settled. I don't know just how. It's that feeling—doctors are all wise, established powers, mystic, and we scientists are new. If a man can cure the measles, he knows more about paranoia than I know!"
Catherine clasped her hands, pulses tingling in her finger tips.
"What has happened to Miss Partridge?" she asked.
A dull, brick-glow mounted in Charles's face—anger, or humiliation.
"Has she been ousted, too?" insisted Catherine.
"Dr. Beck has made her his assistant."
"But she's not a physician." Catherine lifted one hand to her throat, pressing it against the sharp ache there. Poor Charles, he had been pounded. If he would only tell her!
"No. But she's shrewd enough to see where her bread will be nicely buttered. She makes an excellent office girl. She—" He was defiant, aggressive. "You didn't ever like her. You'll probably be delighted to hear that she saw which way the wind blew, and even added some puffs of her own. Queering me. Flopping over the instant she saw her own advantage."
That little squirrel smile! And the faint, distinct, metallic ring in her clear voice! Catherine saw her in the dusk of that passageway behind the gymnasium, holding the brown leather bag. I'm soft, she thought, to have no pleasure out of this.
"Well?" demanded Charles. "You see where it leaves me. All this time wasted."
"At least you have the material for your book." Catherine was dispassionately consoling. "And you have that almost done."
"But I haven't. It's clinic material. I can't publish it now. It belongs to them."
"Charles!"
"Exactly. She did part of the work, Miss Partridge. She wants that for Dr. Beck. The committee wants the rest, for its clinic as at present established."
"That's outrageous."
"I could put out a book from my own notes. But it wouldn't mean anything. No authority behind it. No, I'm done with them. Done."
"At least"—Catherine felt slowly for words—"you have your university work. That's the main thing. That hasn't been touched."
"Hasn't it, though?" Charles was grim. "When I've spent all this time, on the score of a great contribution I was about to make!"
"Does it hang up your promotion?" Catherine cried out.
"It does. I heard that this morning, indirectly."
Catherine pulled herself to her feet and stood beside him, hesitantly brushing his hair, moving her finger down to the deep crease between his eyes.
"See here," she said, lightly. "You aren't so done for as all that. You know it."
He thrust his arm violently around her, drew her down to the arm of the chair, his head pressing into her shoulder.
"And you weren't here!" he cried. "There was no one——"
"Poor boy." Her hand touched his head, softly, sensitive to the crispness of his heavy hair.
"You haven't cared what happened to me." His words came muffled.
"Oh, haven't I?" Her fingers crept down to his cheek. "Perhaps I have."
"Haven't shown it much." He lifted his face from her shoulder.
In the instant before she bent to kiss him, there was a scurry of thoughts through her mind—leaves lifted in a puff of wind: He is contrite about Stella Partridge. He can't say that he is. He thinks I don't know about her. No use in airing that. He is through, and unhappy, and I love him.
"Let's not talk any more to-night," she said. "Lots of days coming to talk in. Spencer is well, and we are here, together."
IX
A square, rimmed in solid black, of something full of distant, colorless clarity. Not quite colorless, since an intense turquoise-blue seemed to move far behind it, like a wave. Catherine stared. She had come awake so suddenly that she could only see that square at first, without knowledge of it. Then, as suddenly, she knew. It was the sky, over the black rim of the opposite wall of the court, with window edges for its frame. Almost morning. What a strange dream, digging, trying to push the spade down through roots of dead grass, while someone kept saying, "Make it larger. That won't hold her." Had Spencer called out? Fully awake, she lifted herself on an elbow. The house was quiet. She could see dimlybetween her and the window the dark mound of Charles's head on his pillow.
That queer dream. As she lay down again, she had it, in a swift flash of association. The Actinidia vine! Bury an old hen at its roots, she had told Bill. She was digging, for herself. Oh, grotesque!
And yet, before she had slept, she had not thought of herself. She had worked patiently, tenderly, to restore Charles. She could hear him, humble, "You mean that, Cathy? You think this isn't a horrible failure? I couldn't prevent it, could I? After all—" and gradually she had drawn him clear of his forlorn dejection.
The patch of sky grew opaque, white. Morning.
There is no wall between us now, she thought. That is down. Love—tenderness—strength—sweet, fiery, ecstasy—all that he wished. Surely he would, in turn—lift her—into her whole self.
X
Charles had taken the children out for a Sunday afternoon walk. They wanted Catherine, too.
"The air will do you good, if youaretired," urged Charles.
"But Margaret is coming in." Catherine stretched lazily in her chair. "And I don't want to budge."
Charles had gone, resignation in his voice as he corralled the children out of the door. Catherine closed her eyes. She was eager to see Margaret, and yet a little afraid. She was too like an old scrap bag crammed with thoughts and feelings, tangled, unsorted; and Margaretwould want to shake out the bag, sweeping away the jumble of contents.
Charles had said, that morning, "Queer, how down I felt yesterday. That pork roast Friday night was too heavy. Tell Mrs. O'Lay, will you, to go easy on the pork." And then, hastily, "Talking things out with you cleared the air, too. I can see I'd had an exaggerated line on them. I have a plan I want to talk over, some time soon."
Charles, restored, could call his malady pork! At the same time—Catherine rose hastily as the bell clattered. At the same time, she thought, walking down the hall, there had been gratitude, hidden, unspoken, and release in the feeling between them. That feeling was the air itself, intangible, invisible, but holding all these other things of shape or solidity. Charles was himself again, confident, assured, almost boisterous.
Margaret pounced at her, shook her gently, hugged her, marched her back to the living room.
"Fine! Everyone else is out. Now I can bully you." She dragged off her gloves. "You look as if you needed it, too," she said. She leaned forward abruptly and touched Catherine's hand. "Spencer! Oh, it has been awful, I know," and surprisingly her eyes grew brilliant with tears. "But he's honestly not hurt, is he? Henrietta swore he wasn't."
"Honestly all right," said Catherine.
"I wanted to come back, but Henry wired me I couldn't do a thing. So I stuck to the job." She moved restlessly. "And Henry swears there's no danger of any future complication. I worried about that. Spencer's not the sort I want changed by any knock on his head."
"No." Catherine shivered. "They all say there is absolutely no danger."
"Well." Margaret was silent a moment.
She had to say that, to be rid of it, thought Catherine.
"But I know what you've been up to." Margaret's tears were gone. "Wallowing in sentimental regrets. Listening to mother suggests that you must surely see your duty now. And the King, too! Just when I was so proud of you, and using you for an example of what a woman really could do, could amount to, and everything." She laughed. "Don't be a renegade, Cathy."
"Pity to spoil your example, huh?"
"Exactly. Have you seen your boss since you came back? I thought not. Cathy, go and see him. Dress up and go down to your office. Drag yourself out of your home, sweet home, long enough to remember how you felt. If you'll promise that, I won't say another word. Psychological and moral effect, that's all."
"I don't want to see him until I make up my mind."
"It isn't your mind you are making up. It's"—Margaret waved her hand—"it's your sentiment tank. Oh, I know. I have a soft heart, myself, Catherine."
"There's another thing." Margaret had turned her upside down, as she had feared, and she was hunting feverishly in the scattered contents of her scrap-bag self. "Charles." Reticence obscured her. "He's been disappointed about that clinic. He does need——"
"Anybody," declared Margaret with quick violence, "anybody needs somebody else loving 'em, smoothing 'em down, setting 'em up, brushing off the dust. I know! But you can do that anyway. That just goes on——"
"I wonder. You're a hard-boiled spinster, Margaret. What do you know about it?"
"I know a little thing or two about love. You do it all the time, through and around whatever else you are doing. Not from nine to five exclusively." She settled back, a grimace on her lips, as the door rattled open and Letty's piping was heard. "Didn't stay long, did he? You promise me you'll go down to the Bureau. Quick! Or I'll fight with the King like a——"
"Yes, I'll go down." Catherine laughed. "I'd have to anyway."
And Margaret, smiling at her, ran out to meet Spencer.
XI
Catherine sat at the dining room table, staring down at the straggling columns of figures on the sheet of yellow paper. Her mouth was sullen, mutinous. Mrs. O'Lay came through the hall, her broom swishing behind her. She had been redding up the study, and Catherine had moved her bookkeeping into the dining room. Well, there it was. Appalling totals. Bills and bills and bills. She ran her fingers across the ragged edges of her checkbook stub. No hope there. Then her hand crept past the bills to a long white envelope, bearing the Bureau inscription in one corner. Her check in full for the month, as if she had stayed in Ohio and finished the job. Charles's eyebrows, lifted inquiringly when Miss Kelly had appeared that morning, seemed to arch across her name on that envelope. She had only to take out that slip of paper, scrawl her name and "on deposit" across theback, and she was committed. Last night—Charles clinging to her hand—"It's wonderful, Cathy, having things right again. Don't spoil them." And she cravenly had kept silence.
She looked again at the final figures in her check book. Tiny, impotent sum. Her mind busily added to them the figures of the check. But she couldn't take it, unless she meant to go on. Dr. Roberts intended it as an indication of her permanence, a check for the full month, when she had worked only half of it. Her fingers rested on the slip. The bills, the paltry little balance, worked on her in a sort of desperate fever.
I'd have to give up Mrs. O'Lay, too, she thought, to even things. There'll be doctors' bills. That surgeon. Everything's overdrawn. Have to tell Miss Kelly.
She saw herself vividly walking that treadmill. Poor Charles; he had expected some release, financially, from the clinic and his book. Wonderful, having things right—don't spoil them.
She rose quickly, bunching together the devastating bits of paper. She had to see Dr. Roberts, at least. No use trying to think. Her mind was a jellyfish. Perhaps if she saw him, and talked with him, something with a backbone would rise up to rout the jellyfish.
"I may not be in for luncheon," she told Mrs. O'Lay. "But you can manage."
"Sure, you look elegant." Mrs. O'Lay replaced the cover on her kettle of soup. "An' a breath of air will do your heart good."
It did, Catherine discovered. She had been housed too long. Clear, bright, gusty, with bits of paper swirlingalong the stone wall of the Drive, and sharp white wave edges rushing across the river. Too cold for the top of the bus. She watched the river through the window, and then the shops on the side streets. She was empty, except for bits of external things touching her eyes. Straw hats in the windows, and bright feathers; why, spring would come, soon.
The elevator boy grinned at her widely, ducking his bullet head.
"How'do. Ain't seen you round here for quite some time."
That old thrill of belonging to the building—that woman in furs stepping off at the dentist's floor was eying her curiously—the thrill of expanding into part of this complicated, intricate, impersonal life.
Her office again, long, narrow, caging the sunlight between its shelved walls, and the stenographer rising in a little flurry. "I'll call Dr. Roberts. He was expecting you, I think."
Catherine looked out of her window. No one in the fitting room opposite; she could see the sweep of draped fabrics.
"Mrs. Hammond! I am delighted to see you."
Dr. Roberts bustled toward her, his bearded face cordial, his gestures animated, fidgety. "I wondered how soon you would be in. I should have called you soon. Your little boy has recovered?"
"Yes." Catherine sat down.
"Such a pity. Poor little chap. And calling you back. I must tell you how admirable your investigation is. We've had several letters from people whom you met. You handled them admirably, interested them withoutantagonizing them. Well, you are ready now to finish the tour?"
"You have sent no one else?" Catherine was cold. That jellyfish in her head was a flabby lump left by the tide.
"No. I want you to go back." His eyes, small, keen, searched hers.
She sighed faintly.
"I can't do it." She was startled at the finality in her own words. "I can't go away, Dr. Roberts. Not—again."
He showed no surprise.
"Your letters," he suggested. "They sounded enthusiastic."
"It was fascinating." There was pain in the folding down of her long eyelids. "But I can't go away. I—" she smiled briefly. "I've lost my nerve. I can't risk what might happen."
"The children, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Um. A pity. Accidents happen, anyway. But of course you have thought of that." He drummed busily with his fingers along the desk.
Catherine straightened her shoulders. She could think clearly now; evidently the jellyfish had existed just for that one decision.
"I had hoped there wouldn't be a chance for me to go away again. I thought you might have sent someone else, and that you'd want me here in the office. You see—the glimpse I had of the real colleges gives enormous vitality to all these catalogues. I'd like to go on, if I could do it right here."
When had she thought that? Astonishing, the wayideas burst out from some deep level, and you recognized them as authentic.
"A pity." Dr. Roberts clasped his hands, twisting his fingers in and out. Here's the church, and here's the steeple, thought Catherine, as if she played the finger game for Letty. "I was afraid of it. But if you will come back, handle the work here—I like the way you write up the material." He clapped one palm on the desk. "Let me think it over. I suppose I might finish the trip myself. I am free now—those meetings have come off."
"There's this check." Catherine took it out of her handbag. "For a month, at the new rate."
"I think that will be satisfactory. It's gone into the budget, your salary, I mean. I don't think the President will suggest cutting it. Not if I make the trip myself. Let me think it over. No, the check is yours."
Just after twelve, by the jeweler's sidewalk clock. She could reach home for luncheon. But she didn't want to! She turned out of the entrance and moved along, graceful, deliberate, toward the cross street and Amy's club.
The housekeeper nodded to her. There were women in a group near the fire, one or two heads turning toward her; no one there who knew her. She sat alone at a small yellow table in a corner of the dining room. She was earlier than her usual hour. That was why she saw none of the women she had talked with. She did recognize several of the faces. Bits of gossip collected about them, highly colored pieces of personal comment, which Amy had thrown off in her intense, throaty voice. That womanwho was just seating herself, dropping her heavy, squirrel-lined great coat over her chair, was a successful physician; makes thirty thousand at least. Has to have a young thing adoring her—yes, there's the present young thing, with a sleek bobbed head like a child's, and round, serious eyes. Secretary, housekeeper, chauffeur, slave! Catherine could hear Amy's satiric list. And the two women at the table beyond. Catherine bent over her salad, while the women in the room retreated to some great distance, carrying the bits of gossip like cockleburrs stuck to their garments. It's funny, thought Catherine. I never saw it before. But it is always how they love—how they live—not what they think. Even when Amy talks about them. Even these women.
Her thoughts ran on, clearly. She had wished to lunch there, because she needed something to orient herself, to deliver her out of the smother of her life and all its subtle, intimate pressures of love. She wanted to see women in terms of some cold, dignified, outer achievement. And instead, her mind clattered about them with tales of their lovers, their husbands, their emotional bondage.
Well, was that her fault, her own prepossession? Or Amy's? From Amy had come these irritating recollections. Or was it that women were like that, summed up in personal emotions? She drew on her gloves and left the club rooms.
She would walk up the Avenue and across Central Park. They were having lunch at home, now, Charles, the children. Sometimes in walking her feet seemed to tread thoughts into smoothness; or the swinging rhythm of her body shook some inner clarity up through confused images where she could see it, could lay hold of it.
What was she trying to think about, anyway? Women? Herself? Herself and Charles. And the children.
Men had personal lives, too. But didn't they make them, or try to make them, comfortable, assured, sustaining, so that they could leave them? Find them when they came back? And women having had nothing else, still centered there? She stopped in a block of traffic, looking about with eyes strained and vague.
Petulant, smug faces above elegant furs. Hard streaks of carmine for lips. Faces with broad peasant foreheads, with beak noses. Faces——
The rush carried her across the street. Letty and Marian, her daughters, growing up.
If I knuckle under now, she thought, what of them? She could feel them pressing against her, Letty's silky head under her throat, Marian's firm, slim body against her arm. What I do can't matter very much, directly, to them. They have to live, themselves. She was humble, feeling their individualness, their growth as a curious progression of miracles in which she was merely an incidental tool. Women devote themselves to their families, so that their daughters may grow up and devote themselves to their families, so that—— Catherine laughed. Some one has to break through that circle, she thought.
She entered the Park, walking more slowly along the winding path. If she had only sons—the thought of Spencer stood up like a straight candle flame in her murky drifting—that would be different. There was her own mother. Catherine could see her, being wheeled along the beach at Atlantic City, with her friend, Alethea, on a little holiday to recover from the shock of Spencer'saccident. How does she manage it, that poise of hers, that sufficiency?
The walk had come to a cluster of animal houses. Catherine looked about her, and on a sudden whim went past the attendant into the monkey house. The warm, acid, heavy odor affronted her. She didn't want to be here. Years ago she had come in, before she married. She turned to go, and met the melancholy flat stare of a small gray monkey. The animal clung to the bars of the cage with one hand, the long, naked fingers moving restlessly, and looked at Catherine, while the fingers of the other hand dug pensively into the fur of her breast. Catherine felt her heart pause; she had a sensation of white excitement, as if she hung poised over an abyss of infinite knowledge, comprehension. A second monkey swung chattering across the cage and dropped from the bar, grabbing at the tail of the monkey that stared, and the moment was gone. Catherine went hastily out into the clear, sweet air. I hate them, she muttered, and hurried away across the brown, dead stretches of park. But she could not escape the vivid recollection of that earlier visit, years ago. She had seen then a female monkey nursing her young, and the pathos of the close-set unwinking eyes over the tiny furry thing had made the curve of long monkey arm a symbol of protective mother instinct.
They're too like us. That's why I hate them. And then, fiercely, men have climbed out of that. Some ways. But they want to keep us monkey women. Loving our mate and children. Nothing else.
She came presently to a stretch of water at the other side of the park, and stopped a moment on the shore.Blue, quiet, with long black reflections of trees from the opposite bank.
My mind has made itself up, she thought. Her pallor and sullenness had given place to an intense vitality in her wide, dark eyes, in the curve of her mouth. It isn't selfishness, nor egoism, this hankering of mine. It's more than that. I'll tell Charles—she laughed softly, out of the wholeness of her release from doubt—I'll tell him that I can't be a monkey woman. He'll help me. He must help me.
XII
She waited until the children were asleep and the house was quiet. Then she knocked at the study door, behind which Charles sat, working on a lecture. She scarcely waited for his "Come" but went in swiftly, closing the door.
"Most through work?" She drew a small chair near his desk. "Why, you aren't working." His desk was orderly, bare.
"Not just now." Charles leaned back. "I—" he hesitated. "You look stunning in that get-up," he finished.
"Yes?" Catherine's smile lingered. "It's not the get-up. It's me, inside."
"Handsome wife." Charles touched her fingers, spreading them wide between his own fingers, crumpling them together in a sudden violent squeeze. Then he leaned back again. "Just been thinking about you," he said.
"Yes? So've I." Vivacity in Catherine's voice, her gesture, a vivacity which had true life from deep inner light, not an external manner. "I wanted to talk to you."
"I've been wanting to talk things over with you." Charles looked away from her somberly. "For some time."
"It's about next year," continued Charles slowly, and Catherine thought, I'll leave the monkeys out, at first. "Our plans, you know."
Something arrested Catherine at the edge of speech, something like the damp finger of air from a cellar.
"I should have brought it up before you went downtown," he was saying. "You were down this morning, weren't you?"
She nodded.
"I didn't realize you were going. And anyway, to-day sort of brought matters to a head."
"Yes?"
"Well, it's my job. I went in to see the Head, to-day." Charles faced her, his eyes deprecating. "You gave me nerve to do that, Cathy. I'd been knocked so confoundedly hard—but I felt better to-day. That's you." Catherine's hands clung together in her lap. "I wanted to have exact data on where I stood. The trouble is, this place is too big. I mean the institution, not my own job. There are too many men eager for a foothold. The Chief was rather fine about it—about my work, especially. Praised it. You know. But he said I'd stepped somewhat out of rank, going abroad. Two men are ahead of me, in line for promotion. Can't have too many professors. Isn't room. All that guff, you know what it is." Charles brought his fist down on the desk. "I should like to get to a place where I can march ahead as fast as I can go. I talked over the whole situation with him, including the Buxton offer." His eyes were suddenlywary, inquisitive. "You remember that, of course? And he agreed with me."
"He advised you to leave the University?" Catherine heard her own voice, like a thin wire.
"He agreed that the chance for advancement, for future accomplishment, lay there rather than here."
"And you wish to go?"
"I had another letter to-day from the president there. It's a remarkable place, Cathy. Small, but endowed to the neck. A few of those small colleges are, you know. I'd have the entire department in my hands, with freedom to work out anything I liked. They want a strong department. Want a good man to build it up." His wariness, his searching of her face had dropped away in a rush of genuine enthusiasm. His words ran on, building the picture, his work, his opportunity. Then he switched, suddenly. "And the place is fine, too. Pretty little town, college community. Wonderful place for the children. The other night, as I told them about my childhood, I felt we had no right to imprison them here. It isn't decent. Shut up in a city, when they are just growing up. Do you think so? All this awful struggle to stretch our income, too. That would be over. More salary, almost twice as much. Living conditions infinitely better. Pleasant people to live near."
"When you got your appointment at the University here, you thought it was perfect. The institution, the city. Do you remember how you felt?"
"It did seem so, didn't it? But you have to watch a thing work out."
"You are sure you are judging Buxton fairly, and not in the light of what's happened in the clinic?"
"I've been thinking about it for months. I spoke about it in the fall——" He stopped suddenly, and Catherine saw the phantom that he had evoked: his own voice, harsh, "I think I'll take that Buxton offer, just to get you out of town," and her own answer, thrown back as she fled, "You'd have to be sure I would go!"
"I can't decide it alone," he went on hastily. "I'm just trying to show you how it looks to me."
"But you have decided." Her effort to keep her voice steady flattened all its intonations. "Decided that it is much the best thing for your career, much the best for the children."
"I can't drag you off unless you wish to go. I hoped you would like it, too. It—well, it is something of an honor, you know. The way they keep after me. There's a large appropriation for a laboratory. I'd have very little teaching. They seem to have some idea of a creative department."
Catherine was silent. There was something shaking and ludicrous, in the way that courageous light of afternoon had been snuffed out. Why, she had thought she stood at last in a clear road, where she could be sure of direction, and here she was only at the core of the labyrinth again, knocked blindly into an angle of blind wall.
"Catherine!" he cried out against her silence. "If it wasn't for this damned idea of yours, you'd care what happened to me!"
Whirling about in the lane of her labyrinth, shutting her eyes to its maze. "I do care, Charles. That's the trouble."
"After all, it's not just me. It's the children and you, isn't it?" He fiddled with the blotter, shoved it alongthe desk. "I think it will be infinitely better for you, too." His chin was obdurate. "New York is no place. Overstimulates you. At a place like Buxton, life is more normal. There's a woman's Faculty Club," he added, triumphantly.
Catherine laughed.
"Teas?" she said, "or literary afternoons?"
"They're fine women. Cathy, don't laugh. I hoped you would like it."
"Like it?" She flung out her hands, sensitive, empty palms upwards. "I've just been there! I know what it is like. But I know"—she was sober again—"why, there's nothing for me to do but say yes, is there? I can't say that Buxton offers me no opportunity, except to be a monkey woman, can I?"
"What?"
"Nothing." She doubled a fist against her mouth, and stared at him.
"You've been so sweet these last days." Charles reached for her hand, held it between both of his. "Things were ghastly mixed up, and then we seemed straight again, you and I. You know everything's been wrong since you first took that damned office job. I can't stand it! Our yapping at each other. I hoped you would want to throw it over. I do care about your being happy. Cathy, if you believe, honestly, that it's more important that you should stay here, I'll try to see it that way."
Her hand was reluctant, cold, in the warm, steady pressure of his.
"I can't believe it, alone." The labyrinth shut her in, black, enclosing. "You'd have to believe it, yourself. And you don't."
"It's different, considering the children, too, as well as you and me. What you do, in an office, takes you away from me. What I do, Cathy, that is yours, too, isn't it?"
His fingers crept up about her wrist; beneath them her life beat in heavy, slow rhythm.
"It knocks the stuffing fairly out of everything, if I think you don't care."
"Yes. It does that for me, too." Catherine smiled at him in a flicker of mockery. She caught a faint slackening of his fingers. Stella Partridge! But she knew, even in the impulse to have that out, to insist upon it as part of the winter, that it was better left untouched. Intangible, incomplete, a kind of subtle aberration, it would dissolve more quickly unexpressed.
"I'd be a beast to say I wouldn't go. A perverted, selfish wife. Wouldn't I? I can't be that. I'm too soft. Charles, I do desire for you every chance——"
"You're not soft. You're really fine. You——" He jumped to his feet. "And when we get out there, you'll see. You'll like it! Lots of things for you to do. You will be happy, Cathy. I'll make you happy."
Catherine, leaning back in her chair, lifted her face to look up at him. She heard in his voice the shouting down of fear; he had been worried, then. He had not been sure.
XIII
Catherine sat on the window sill, looking down at the shadows which slanted across the tree tops of Morningside. In the distance roofs still glittered in the afternoon sunlight. Beneath her the spring leaves were delicate andsmall, keeping their own fine shape, not yet making green masses. A little easterly breeze touched her warm cheek, and she thought, leaning from the window, that she sniffed in it the faint piquancy of Balm of Gilead buds. The last trunk was banging down the hall, its thuds like muttered profanities.
She turned back to the dismantled rooms. How queer they looked, small, dingy, worn. Mrs. O'Lay, in the kitchen, was assuring Charles: "Sure and you needn't worry yourself about that, Mr. Hammond. I'll clear out every stick. Them little things I've saved for myself. I can make use of them."
She was cramming things into the dumbwaiter. Catherine could hear the rustling of waste paper.
Catherine stood up, cautiously. She was stiff, almost dizzy, as if she had bent so long over packing boxes and trunks that her head couldn't without penalty be held upright. Well, it was done. Incredible and astonishing, that the disorder and confusion had come to an end.
"All ready, dear?" Charles stood in the doorway, buttoning his coat, patting his tie into place. "About time we got off."
"Be sure there is nothing left." Catherine went slowly through the rooms, listening to the walls return her footsteps emptily.
In the kitchen Mrs. O'Lay poked among the salvage, bundles, piles, an old black hat of Catherine's mounted rakishly on a box of breakfast food, a dingy cotton duck of Letty's, limp from loss of stuffing.
"I'll finish up here, Mis' Hammond." The broad red face was creased into downward wrinkles. "Sure, an' I hate to see the end of you," she said. "It's fine for youyou got a tenant to come in right away, but we'll miss you."
"Taxi, Catherine!" shouted Charles.
"Good-by, God love you!" Mrs. O'Lay waved her out of the apartment onto the elevator.
"Well, we certainly got things off in great style, eh?" Charles beside her in the cab, the bags stowed at their feet, had his erect, briskly managing air. "Everything done, and time for dinner before your train."
Catherine was sunk in a lethargy of weariness; dimly she still sorted, packed, gave directions.
"You know, I forgot about the gas deposit." She emerged frantically from her lethargy. "Five dollars!"
"I'll see to it. Where's the receipt?"
"Let's see—in that envelope. I'll mail it to you. It was good of mother to take the children until train time, wasn't it?" Catherine sighed.
"I tell you, it was a lucky thing we got the apartment off our hands before fall." Charles patted her knee cheerfully. "Awful job, if we'd had to pack up at the end of the summer."
"Awful job any time!"
"Oh, well, a week in Maine will make you forget it all. Especially with the rent off our chests."
"You'll surely come in three weeks?"
"Positively. That finishes up everything. And I'll have to get away then if I'm to have any vacation. Say, be sure to tell old Baker he's got to take me down to the ledges for some real fishing. I haven't fished for two years, except for flounders."
"And Buxton the first of August?"
"Be hot there in August, won't it? Well, I'll have togo then. But I can find a house for us, and sort of learn the ropes before you blow in."
"I wonder——" Catherine's brows met in a deep wrinkle. "I can't remember which trunk I put the blankets in, and the linen. Hope they aren't labeled Buxton!"
"Oh, you got them where they belong. Don't fuss, I tell you. You let me drop you at the Gilberts' now, and I'll go on to the station. I can check these things, and that will give you a few minutes to rest."
"I don't care where you drop me." Catherine laughed. "All my poor mind does is to hunt for things in those trunks and boxes."
"You might as well stop worrying. They're settled."
Catherine stood at the entrance to the hotel, watching the taxi jerk its way along with the traffic. Charles's hand lay on the opened window, a resolute, capable fist. Every one was going home. Home from work. Shop girls in gay tweeds, already faded across the shoulders; sallow, small men in baggy trousers, with bits of lint sticking to them, from the lofts where they sewed—perhaps on more gay tweed suits, or beaded silk dresses for the trade. Moist, pale faces, with a startled, worn expression, as if the warmth of the day surprised and exhausted the city dwellers. And in Maine—a sharp visual image of pointed firs reflected in clear water, with a luminous twilight sky behind dark branches.