The great illusion. She crept silently to the door where Letty and Marian slept. Spencer moaned softly in his sleep, and she stood for moments beside his bed. They weren't illusory, except as you tried to substitute them for everything. They were part of you, to go on when you stopped. But they were separate, individual, cut off,themselves. What had Bill said? You don't feel yourself the vehicle for your parents, do you? You wanted your children, part of you, extenuation for your own shortcomings. Wasn't it an illusion, a flimsy drapery of words over a huge, blind, instinctive drive? Bill wanted children, then, and Henrietta—crisp, efficient——
Catherine undressed hastily and crept into bed. Charles was late. Resentment, like a small sharp bone, still rankled. He's like a little boy. If I could be patient—Bill never takes things out on Henrietta. She doesn't know his feeling. Perhaps it is always that way; one person out of two is not quite happy, never an equal balance. Charles was content until I broke loose. Henrietta is content. You have to offer up a human sacrifice. She stared at the ceiling, where a broken rectangle of saffron light from some court window sprawled. If I could think about Charles, without this jangle of feelings, perhaps I could see what to do. Could you ever think straight? Did emotion always enter, refracting?
Charlessayshe doesn't mind my working, that he's glad if I like it. That's what he thinks; no, what he thinks he thinks! But underneath, he's outraged, and any tiny thing is a jerk of the thin cover over that feeling. Never till this winter has he been so—so touchy. Silly little things. Perhaps—she waited an instant—was that his key? Perhaps I notice it more, because I want approval. But he makes a personal grievance if I forget his laundry. In a way, it is personal. I forget, because I don't think of him every second. I try to remember everything. She twisted over on one side, an arm curled under her head. I haven't asked him to take any share of the house job, or the children. She shivered, as if a cold draft from that hour before dinner blew across her; Spencer, lost, because she wasn't at home. Charles, intimating that he was justified. But she was at home——
The door clicked softly open, and cautious feet moved down the hall.
Catherine smiled. Charles was like an elephant when he attempted silence.
"I'm not asleep," she said, and blinked as he flashed on the light. "You must have had a good time, to stay so late."
"It's a pity you bothered to go at all," he said briefly, as he vanished behind the closet door.
Catherine turned away from the light, her hand closing into a fist under her cheek. She wouldn't wrangle, even if he was still out of sorts. She heard him padding about in stocking feet. He snapped off the light and scuffed down the hall. She heard him whistling. He would wake the children, if he weren't more careful.
He was back again, a stocky figure against the pale square of window as he shoved it open. He was scurrying for bed.
"Charles!" Catherine's cry leaped out. "Come here!"
"Well?" He stood above her. "Brr! It's chilly."
She reached up for his hands, dragged him down beside her, her arms slipping up to his shoulders, clasping behind his neck. He resisted her; she felt stubborn hardness in his muscles.
"Charles," she begged, "what's happening to us! Don't——"
"I'm all right," he said. "I thought you were off color."
Catherine let her hands drop forlornly away.
"You've been sort of touchy." He cleared his throat. "I'm not perfect. But I hate this feeling—that you're standing off, waiting to be critical of me."
"Oh, I'm not!" Catherine sighed.
"All right, then." Charles bent down, brushed his lipsagainst her cheek, and stood up. "Go to sleep. You're tired, I guess."
Catherine lay motionless, listening to the creak of his bed, the soft pulling and adjusting of blankets. The wind was cold on her eyelids, on the tears that crept down. She was humiliated, shamed. She had dropped her pride and evoked touch—passion—only to find him—her hands flung open, to escape the lingering sensation of that obdurate, resisting column of his throat.
Unbidden, racking, a swift visual image of Stella Partridge, smooth ivory and jade. She fled away from it. Not that! She wouldn't add jealousy to her torment. But that eager, forward thrust of his head as he made his way across the room toward her, and that secret, honey-mouthed deference in the casual talk of the woman. Oh, no!
Then, rudely, as if she turned to face some monstrous shape that pursued her, she looked at the image. Perhaps, if Charles was injured, outraged, under his reasoning surface, he might turn to Stella. She wanted something of him, that woman. Perhaps it was love she wanted, although the hard metallic gleam under the softness of her eyes seemed passionless, egocentric.
"Charles," she whispered. What else she might have said, she didn't know. But Charles was asleep.
IV
The next morning, in the accustomed flurry of baths, breakfast, dressing, Catherine jeered at her nightmares of the dark. She would not be a fool, at least. The children were ecstatic about the snow, which lay in capsand mounds and blankets on the roof tops below the windows. Marian made snowballs from the window ledge, and tried, giggling, to wash her father's face. Charles was jovial, amusing himself with the rôle of good-natured father. Yes, he might go coasting with them that afternoon. He'd see if he couldn't get away from the office early. Miss Kelly could telephone him at noon.
Miss Kelly came in; Flora was belated.
"Probably the trolley cars are stuck," said Spencer, full of delight at possible catastrophes the snow might bring.
Catherine left a note for Flora, with the day's instructions, and hurried off. She had swung free of the night in a long arc of release.
The Drive had a dramatic beauty; white morning sunlight piercing the gaps made by cross streets, long blue shadows stretching from the buildings, the river gray blue under the clearing sky, the clean, soft lines of snow turned back by the plows, snow caught in the branches of trees and shrubbery, like strange fruit; gulls wheeling like winged bits of snow. By nightfall all the beauty might be trampled and turned dingy; now—Catherine sat erect, drawing long breaths.
That noon she would squeeze out a few minutes for some Christmas shopping. Saturday wasn't a good day, but if she found a doll for Marian, she could begin to dress it. She thrust her foot into the aisle and peered down at it. Those shoes wouldn't last until January. Well, she would have her third check on the twenty-third, and she had repaid Charles. Funny, how much more it cost to dress herself as working woman thanas mother and wife. Perhaps with the first of the year that increase would gain material shape. Dr. Roberts had hinted at it again.
The bus left the Drive and rattled through the city; one note everywhere, the squeak of shovels against the sidewalks, piles of grime-edged snow, files of carts heaped and dripping.
She shivered, hugging her arms close; the last few blocks were always chilly. Wonderful colors in the great shop windows, exotic, luxurious, and bevies of shop girls, stepping gingerly over dirty puddles in their cheap, high-heeled slippers.
Just a half day of work to-day. She could finish the chapter she had been writing. As she waited for the elevator, she had a sharp renewal of herself as a part of this great, downward flood. The morning ride was a symbol, a bridge across which she passed. She nodded to the elevator boy; his grin made her part of the intimate life of this huge building. You'd expect to shrink, she thought, as the elevator shot upwards—swallowed up, and instead you swell, as if you swallowed it all yourself.
Dr. Roberts hadn't come in. Dropping into her work was like entering a quiet, clean place of solitude. She reread the pages she had written, the beginning of her full report, and then wrote slowly, finding pleasure in the search for a phrase which should be clear glass through which the idea, the hard, definite fact, might be visible. The jangle of the telephone bell broke into a sentence.
It was Miss Kelly. Flora hadn't shown up. What did Mrs. Hammond wish done about luncheon?
"Hasn't she sent any word?" The picture of her kitchen, empty, and confused, rose threateningly in thequiet office. "Well, you can find something for the children. I'll be home early."
If something was wrong with Flora! Catherine pushed away the image of disaster, finished her sentence, and glanced at her watch. Almost one. Lucky it was Saturday. She would have time—vaguely—to see to this. Better not stop for any shopping.
When she reached home, the children rushed to the door, accoutered in leggings and mufflers for coasting.
"Mother! Come with us. Daddy's coming!" Spencer and Marian tugged at her arms, and Letty pulled at her skirt.
"I can't, chickens." Catherine hugged them, each one. She loved the exuberance of their greeting, the sharp delight of contrast after the hours away. "Miss Kelly is all ready." She glanced at Miss Kelly's serene face. "Flora hasn't shown up? Nor sent word? I'll have to look her up. To-morrow perhaps I can go."
"I gave the children their lunch," explained Miss Kelly, "but of course I had no time to set the kitchen to rights."
She certainly hadn't. Catherine gave one dismayed look at the disorder, and decided to hunt for Flora first. She must be sick.
V
Catherine tried to pick a firm way through the slush of the sidewalk. Flora must live in this block. She peered at the numbers over dark doorways, under the sagging zigzags of fire escapes. The snow had been thrown up in a dirty barricade along the edge of the walk, and over the upset garbage and ash cans, down the short mounds, shrieked and wailed and coasted innumerablechildren. It was like a diminutive and distorted minstrel show, thought Catherine, stepping hastily out of the path of a small black baby spinning down into the slush on a battered tin tray. Snow on the East Side, and on the Drive—she had a wry picture of the beauty of the morning.
There. 91-A. She stood at the entrance, with a hesitant glance into the dim hall. Absurd to be nervous about entering. She had never seen where Flora lived, although she had heard the dirge of rising rent and lack of repairs which Flora occasionally intoned. She walked to the first door and knocked boldly.
"Who dar?" The voice bellowed through the door.
"Does Mrs. Flora Lopez live in this house?" Catherine had a notion that the dim house gave a flutter of curiosity, as if doors moved cautiously ajar. "I'm Mrs. Hammond," she added sharply to the closed door. "She works for me."
The door swung open a crack, and a fat dusky face appeared, one white eye gleaming.
"You wants Mis' Flora Lopez?"
"Do you know her? Which is her flat?"
"Sure I knows her." The round eye held her in hostile inspection. "Is you f'om the police station, too?"
"No. She works for me. Is she sick?" Queer, how that sense of listening enmity flowed down the crooked stairway. "Which is her flat?"
"She ain't sick, exac'ly. Ain't she come to wuk to-day?"
"Who zat, want Flora?" The voice came richly down the stairway.
"Which is her flat?" insisted Catherine.
The door opened wider, disclosing a ponderous figure with great soft hips and bosom, a small child in a torn red sweater clinging to her skirts and looking up with round frightened eyes.
"She lives on the top flo' rear. I donno as she's home."
Catherine climbed the stairs. There's nothing to be afraid of, she told herself stubbornly. The sweetish odor of leaking gas, the cold, damp smell of broken plaster and torn linoleum in the unheated halls choked her as she climbed. She was sure doors opened and closed as she passed. She felt herself an intruder, with profound racial antipathy, fear, stirring within her and around her. I won't go back, she thought. She tried to step boldly across the hall, but her rubbers made a muffled, sucking note. At last the top floor. She knocked at the rear door. No sound; merely the strained sense of someone listening.
"Flora!" she called sharply. "Are you there? It's Mrs. Hammond."
Silence. Feet shuffled on bare boards behind that door.
"Flora!" she called again, and the door crept slowly open.
"Why, Flora! Whatisthe matter?" Catherine gazed at her. Short hair raying like twisted wires about her face, one eye an awful purple-green lump, the wide mouth cut and swollen, the broad nostrils distended—a dumb-show, a gargoyle of miserable agony. "What has happened to you?"
Flora stepped back, pushing ajar a door.
"Come in, Mis' Hammond." Her voice had the exhausted echo of riotous weeping. "Come in and set down. I was goin' to write you a message."
Catherine followed her into the living room, immaculate, laboriously furnished. The table, purple plush arm-chairs—Flora had told her when she ordered those from the installment house; lace curtains draped on a view of tenements and dangling clothes.
"What has happened, Flora?" Catherine had lost her uneasiness. Flora had a vestige of the familiar, at least; her gray bathrobe was an old one Catherine had given her.
Flora sat down in a purple chair and began to rock back and forth, moaning. Tears ran down her cheeks, gleaming on the bruises.
At a sound behind the door Catherine turned, to find the solemn round eyes of a little boy fixed upon her. He scuttled over to Flora, burying his face on her knees.
"Is he yours?"
"Yes'm." Flora cradled one arm about him. "Yes'm. He's my baby." Her voice rose suddenly into a wail. "An' my li'l girl, where's she! They took her off to shut her up—all 'count of that"—she shook one fist in air—"that man!"
Gradually, in broken and violent bits, Catherine gathered the story. Flora had married her professional gentleman. He hadn't wanted her to keep the children. They were hers, she had worked for them always, and dressed them nice, and left them with a neighbor when she went off to work. She wanted them to grow up nice. She even put little socks on her girl, and the teacher at school said why should she dress her up that way, picking on her because she was black. She was twelve. Then Florafound out her professional gentleman had another wife down south. She let him stay, anyway, "so long as we'd been married, and he was handsome." Then she had to put him on bail to leave the little girl alone, always fooling with her. "I told her to stay with Mis' Jones till I got home." And finally—Catherine was cold with pity and horror—Flora had discovered that he hadn't let Malviny alone, that he had ruined her, and stolen the money she had saved to pay the rent, and was packing his suitcase to leave. "I started out to kill him," she said briefly, "but he knocked me down." Then the police had come.
"They said I let Malviny run the streets. She's awful pretty, Mis' Hammond, most white, she is. Her pa was pale. I was working for her, wasn't I?" Flora's gesture was wide with despair. "Providin' for her and him—" she rocked the boy against her breast. "I done the best I could. She wanted things, and he give her money. She's only twelve."
At last Catherine fled down the stairs, feeling that perversion and horror and the failure of honest, respectable effort barked at her heels. Flora couldn't come back to her, not at once. She had to testify. She won't ever come back, thought Catherine. She'll be ashamed, because I know all this. She had, when Catherine had tried to offer sympathy, shrunk away, into the collapse of the structure of herself as competent, self-respecting working woman. "I done my bes'!" Her pitiful wail dogged Catherine's feet through the brittle, freezing slush of the street.
VI
Catherine, in an old house dress, waded determinedly through the mash of the disordered apartment. Dishes, sweeping, dinner—Miss Kelly had straightened the children's rooms. She was too well paid for general utility. I suppose I am inefficient, thought Catherine. Just to be caught in this mess. But what else can I do? What would a man do in my place? She pulled a chair near the kitchen table and sat down to the task of shelling lima beans, while she speculated as to Charles's procedure. He wouldn't plunge himself into the mess, at least. He would leave it, until someone else stepped in. That's one trouble with women, she decided. They have all these habits of responsibility. Now I should be off playing somewhere, after this week, and here I am!
Charles came in with the children. Miss Kelly, discreetly, had left them at the steps. She's got the right idea, thought Catherine grimly. She's not going to be roped in for something she's not paid for. Letty's cheeks were peonies, her eyes bright stars, and her leggings were soaked with melted snow.
"We had one grand time, didn't we, chicks!" Charles stamped out of his rubbers and shook off his snow-spattered coat. "Had a snow fight and Letty and I beat."
"We landed some hum-dingers right in your neck, anyways," said Spencer.
"Hum-dings in neck!" shrieked Letty. "Hum-gings in neck!"
"You all look as if you'd landed snow everywhere." Catherine shooed Marian and Spencer into their rooms in quest of dry clothing, ran back to the kitchen to lowerthe gas under the potatoes, and returned to strip Letty of her damp outer layers.
"Even my shirt is wet." Marian giggled, shaking her bloomers until bits of snow flew over the rug. "It was awful fun, Muvver. And we coasted belly-bump. Is that a nice word to say?"
"And now we are starved, like any army after a fight," came a sturdy bellow from Charles.
Bedraggled and glowing, warmly fragrant—Catherine laughed at them as she tugged the pink flannel pajamas onto Letty's animated legs.
"There!" she kissed her, gave the tousled yellow floss a swift brush, and carried her into the dining room to set her safely behind the bar of her high-chair. "Supper and then to bed you go, after this exciting day."
"What's this about the dusky Flora?" Charles came into the kitchen.
"I'll tell you about it later." Catherine spoke hastily. Tired as she was, their home-coming had given her the old sweet rush of pleasure, of safety, of possession. She wanted to keep it untouched, free of that horror and pity.
Much later, when the children were in bed, Charles strolled into the kitchen and reached for a dish towel. Catherine looked up at him as he rubbed a tumbler with slow care.
"Like old times, isn't it, eh?" He set the glass on the shelf.
Catherine swallowed her sigh.
"Me wiping dishes, and telling you about what I've been doing—" Was he deliberately wistful?
"You needn't wait for dishes, need you, to talk?" Catherine's smile blunted the slight edge in her words.
"Somehow, nowadays, there never seems any chance. Nights you have to go to sleep, and day times you aren't here."
"Last night you went to sleep."
"Oh, last night!" Charles with a wave of his towel sent last night into the limbo of things best forgotten.
"Well, tell me. What have you been doing? To-day, for instance."
"I had two interviews this morning." Charles paused. "With two different publishers' representatives. They are keen about this new book on tests. Ready to make me an offer right now, without even seeing an outline. Pretty good, eh?"
"Fine! That's proof of your standing, isn't it?"
"Partly. Partly just the current fad for anything psychological, and then the clinic behind the book is a factor."
"And you have the book—is it half done?"
"It's getting along." Charles had drawn in his lower lip and was chewing it thoughtfully. "The clinic is furnishing material. I've been wondering. Of course Miss Partridge did the organizing there, and she's done most of the tabulating of results. She suggested that we collaborate on a book. What would you think of such a scheme?"
"I'd think," cried Catherine in a flash of irritation, "that it was pure silk for Miss Partridge! That clinic was your scheme, not hers, and——"
"I haven't committed myself." Charles busied himself with a pile of dishes on the shelf, rearranging themcritically. His expansiveness contracted visibly. "You needn't be so sure I'd agree with her. I might give her a chapter to do."
"Why doesn't she write her own books?"
"She isn't that type, the type that seeks expression, I mean. She is the competent, executive type. It seems a pity for her not to assemble her results."
In silence Catherine hung away the dish-pan and scrubbed the sink. Be careful, she warned herself. Don't be cattish; this may be entirely reasonable.
"I'm sorry you don't like her." Charles was solemn. "She thinks you are an unusually sweet——"
"She does! She little knows." Catherine grasped desperately for the fraying thread of control. After all, why shouldn't they write a book together? She turned quickly, to find Charles eying her with a cautious, investigatory stare.
"You know—" she grinned at him. "I may write a book with Dr. Roberts. He was looking over my notes yesterday, and he thinks we can find a firm to publish the report, as a marketable book. Of course, the Bureau puts out a report, too."
A thin veil of blankness drew itself over the curiosity in Charles's face. Before he spoke, however, the bell in the hall sounded.
"Company to-night!" Catherine drooped. "I'm worn to a frazzle."
It was Margaret; her gay, "Hello, King Charles!" floated reassuringly to Catherine, dabbing powder hastily on her nose, brushing back her hair from her forehead.
"I brought my partner in to meet you two. Amy,this is the King, and my sister, Catherine—Amy Spurgeon."
Margaret, clear, sparkling, watching them with her humorous grin, as if she had staged a vaudeville act. Amy Spurgeon, slight, dark, her lean, high-cheekboned face sallow and taciturn over the collar of her squirrel coat, a flange of stiff hair black under the soft brim of her gray fur hat. Catherine nibbled at her in swift glances as they sat down in the living room. Margaret had talked about her. "Amy has to have a passion for something." She looked it, with the criss-crosses of fine lines at the corners of her black eyes, and the deep straight lines from nostrils past her mouth. Militant suffragist, pacifist—"She had a passion for the Hindus last winter. Now she has one for me. I can't be a cause, exactly, but she finds plenty of causes on the side." She looks like an Indian, decided Catherine, a temperamental, rather worn and fiery Indian.
Margaret and Charles were sparring; they couldn't even telephone each other without crossing points.
"If they are feeble-minded, why bother with them? You can't change them. Sentimental bosh, this coddling of idiots."
"But they work better, I tell you! Is that sentimental? They make more money for their bosses. That should appeal to your male sense of what is sensible."
"Even if they didn't work better"—Amy's voice shot in, a deep throaty tone, flexible with emotion—"Every human being has a right to happiness and comfort."
"Even human beings with brains have some difficulty cashing in on that right," said Catherine. If Amy and Charles started in on society with thevox populistopout, they would fight all night! Amy stared at her with deliberate inspection.
Presently Catherine told them about Flora. Flora had, since the afternoon, pressed so closely to the surface of her thoughts that she was bound to come out.
"You shouldn't have gone into a nigger tenement alone!" said Charles.
"Why not?" demanded Amy. "Aren't negroes people?"
"I did feel queer, with the house oozing excitement along with smells." Catherine smiled at Charles. "But it wasn't dangerous. Only unpleasant."
"Poor Flora." Margaret was grave. "I didn't know she had any children."
"I knew she was always pleased to have clothes given her." Catherine shivered. "The socks were pitiful! A symbol of her effort."
"Well"—Charles drew at his pipe and paused, impressively—"you can see what happens to a family when the mother isn't at home."
"Listen to the King!" Margaret flared indignantly. "What about the man? Living on her, and——"
"If she'd made him support her, he might have had more steadiness."
"I suppose"—Amy drawled—"you go on the theory that men are so unstable that they can't stand freedom."
Charles had a dangerous little twitch under one eye. Catherine flung herself into the whirl of antagonism.
"Will you tell me, some of you, what I am to do now? Flora won't come back. She'll be drawn into trials and all that for a while, and then she'll hunt up a new place, where no one knows about her. And meantime——"
"Telephone an agency," said Amy.
"I'll send you one of my girls." Margaret's glance at Charles devilled him. "I have one who can work about three months before she has to go to a lying-in hospital, and she's just weak-minded enough to make a good domestic."
"I can't," said Catherine, "haul in a stranger from an agency to leave here all day."
"Well, then," Margaret was briskly matter of fact, "there's just one thing to do. Give up this foolish notion of a career, and step into Flora's empty place."
Charles made a little leap at that idea, and then sank away from it, with a faint suggestion in his mouth of a disappointed fish watching a baited hook yanked out of reach.
"Or," went on Margaret gravely, "Charles can stay at home. So much of your work could be done here anyway, Charles. One eye on the stew and the other on some learned tome."
"Why not?" Amy's tense question knocked the drollery out of the picture. "Why wouldn't that be possible? After all, Mrs. Hammond, you have spent years doing that very thing."
"The King would burn the stew, of course." Margaret rose, sending a light curtsey toward Charles. "Come along, Amy. If we're to walk home. Why don't you ask Sam, if that's the elevator boy's name, if he hasn't a lady friend out of work? That's what we do."
When Catherine returned from the door, her eyes crinkled at the sight of Charles sunk behind the pages of his evening paper.
"Poor old thing!" she said. "Did they rumple his fur the wrong way?"
He crashed the sheets down on his knee, and lifted his face, the tips of his ears red.
"Whatever does Margaret want to lug that thing around with her for."
"I guess she's all right." Catherine was at the window, looking at the pale glowing bowl of the city sky before she drew the shade. "Devoted to Margaret."
"Ugh! I'd like that devoted to me!"
"Don't worry!" Catherine drew the shade, and turned laughing. "She won't be. She seems violently anti-man."
"Wasn't she one of the females they had to feed through the nose down there at Washington?"
"That's rather to her credit, isn't it?"
"She's that fanatic type, all right. All emotion, unbalanced, no brain. Now Margaret has some intelligence. But she's being influenced by this woman. I can see a difference in her. To think that she chose herself to leave your mother for that!"
"I think few people influence Margaret." Catherine moved quietly about the room, picking up books left by Spencer, a toy of Letty's, Marian's doll. "She's hard headed, you know."
"Well," said Charles with great finality, "she won't ever capture any man while she has that female attached to her. Great mistake for a nice girl like Margaret to tie herself up with that woman. She seems the real paranoia type."
"Now you've finished her," Catherine rumpled his hair gently as she passed his chair, "tell me what on earth to do. About a maid, I mean."
"Don't know, I'm sure." Charles frowned briefly andpicked up his paper again. "Advertise, perhaps," he added.
Catherine's eyes, pondering on the crisp russet crown of his head, bent intently over the paper, hardened. He didn't know, and he didn't mean to concern himself. Her problem, not his. It wasn't his fault if she had no time to hunt up a new maid. On the contrary, Flora's defection was in a way her fault, a failure of judgment in choice.
"I'm going to bed," she said. "I'm tired to death."
"Right-o," said Charles.
Her serge dress lay in a heap across a chair, where she had dropped it that afternoon. Careless of her. She shook it out, regarding it critically. She should have another dress; perhaps a fresh set of vest and cuffs would carry this one along for a time. As she hung it away she brushed down a coat of Charles. She held it at arm's length, her mouth puckered. She had forgotten to leave that suit at the tailor's that morning, as Charles had asked.
She sat down before the mirror to brush her hair. What had he said last night—that she deliberately neglected the little things he asked, that she stood off, being critical. Was it true? Her hair drooped in two long dark wings over her shoulders as she sat idle, thinking. She did feel separate, no longer held in close bondage to the irking, petty things, like darned socks or suits that must be cleaned, or studs in shirt fronts, or favorite desserts. They used to be momentous, those things. It's true! She flung her brush onto the dresser, where it slid along, clattering against the tray. Now I do stand off, a little disdainful, when he makes a fuss, because I'mnot a faithful valet. Well! She stood up hastily, braiding her hair with quick fingers. What of it? If I spoiled him, all these years, then I must take the consequences. But it's not—less love, is it? Or did he love me more as his body servant? Are men like that?
She heard Bill's voice, "Don't ever be frantic, Catherine." Bill wasn't like that. She had almost forgotten Bill and last night. What a muddle of feeling in yesterday and to-day! Bill,—and Charles. Ah, she was critical. Charles was right. Critical of the very quality she had always seen and loved. His—yes, his childishness. Bill had dignity, maturity, that was it. Even in his moment of disclosure. He didn't take it out on Henrietta. Didn't smear her even faintly with blame.
She listened an instant as she went down the hall. Charles hadn't moved. In the bathroom she hung away the towels and threw discarded small stockings into the hamper. Then, with a little rush, grinning at herself, she filled the tub. Charles could wait.
Later, drowsily warm and relaxed, she heard Charles tiptoe into the room. She heard his "brr!" at the chill wind through the opened window. Still later she felt him bending cautiously above her. She heard herself breathing slowly, evenly, until his feet scuffed across the floor and his bed groaned softly. I can't wake up, she thought,—buried deep under soft, warm sand—heavy—even if he—wants me.
VII
Sam, the elevator boy, didn't know a single lady as was out of work. Catherine went on down to the basement. Perhaps the janitor would know. He called hiswife. Catherine, in the door, glimpsed the rooms with their short, high windows, full of white iron beds and innumerable tidies. Mrs. O'Lay filled the door, her bulk flowing unrestrictedly above and below her narrow apron strings.
She had a mind to try the job herself. Her daughter had come home with a baby, and could mind the telephone when Sam was off, and all. Her double chins quivered violently at little Mr. O'Lay's protest. Right in the same house, an' all. "If I try it, he won't be all the time leaving the fires for me to tend, and I'll turn an honest penny myself."
She's a fat straw to grasp at, thought Catherine. If she can get between the stove and the sink——
"Sure, I been cooking all these years, and himself ain't dead yet. Nor one of the eleven children. It'd be a fine change for me."
They decided finally that Mrs. O'Lay should come up that afternoon to "learn the ropes." "I'd come up right now, but himself asked in his folks for dinner."
What luck! Catherine hurried back to her own apartment. Her own rooms look neat, and she is at least a pair of hands.
The children were waiting impetuously for Catherine to take them coasting. Marian had suggested Sunday School. Miss Kelly thought they should go, she explained.
"Miss Kelly may take you, then, on her Sunday," said Catherine. "I can't, to-day. And I'm afraid the snow is almost gone."
Spencer and Marian, their leggings already on, wiped the breakfast dishes, while Letty dragged a battered train up and down the hall.
"You come too, Daddy." Marian tugged at Charles's arm.
"No. I'm going to have a nice, quiet morning with my book." He stepped hastily out of the path of Letty's assault.
"I've left the potatoes and roast on the shelf." Catherine looked in at his study door. "Could you think to light the oven and stick them in, at twelve, if we aren't back? Mother's coming in for dinner."
"I'll remember." Marian giggled at her father's grimace, and they were off, the four of them.
On the slope Catherine chose as safe, the snow had been worn thin by countless runners. Spencer and Marian had one Flyer, and Catherine drew Letty on the small sled up and down the walk, to the loud tune of "Gid-ap! horsey! Gid-ap!" until she was breathless and flushed. Then she coaxed Letty into the construction of a snow house, while she sat on the bench beside her. The river was gray under a lead sky; the steep shores of New Jersey were mottled tawny and white. Spencer and Marian puffed up the hill, to sit solemnly beside her, their legs dangling. Letty, a small scarlet ball in her knit bloomers and sweater, an aureole of yellow fluff about her round, pink face, crooned delightedly as she patted her lumps of snow.
"An', Muvver," went on Marian, "the little boy made his dog drag the sled up the hill, and the doggie cried."
"He had snow in his toes," insisted Spencer. "He didn't cry because he had to drag the sled."
"Yes, he did. It was a very heavy sled."
Some one stopped at the end of the bench, and Catherine glanced up.
"Why, Bill!" She moved along, but Marian danced up.
"Oh, Mr. Bill! Come take a belly-bump with us, Mr. Bill.Canyou go belly-bump?"
"I think so." Bill smiled across her head at Catherine.
"Don't let her bully you, if you don't want to." But they were off, Bill flat on the sled, Spencer clinging to his shoulders, and Marian sprawled on top of Spencer. Letty poked herself erect and opened her mouth for a shriek.
"Here, Letty!" Catherine pulled her, stiff and unbending, onto her knee. "If you don't yell, perhaps Bill will take you down. Don't scare him." Ridiculous and amusing, those flying legs. Like a scooting centipede.
"You come try it, Catherine." They had climbed up the slope to her again.
"Take Letty first." And then Catherine tried it, while the children stood in a row, shrieking with delight. "Go belly-bump, Muvver!" How Marian loved that word! But Catherine insisted on sitting up, while Bill knelt behind her to steer. A swift, flying moment, the air shrill in her ears, and laughing, they grated to a standstill on bare ground at the foot of the hill.
"If we had a real hill, now." Bill dragged the sled up, one hand firm under Catherine's arm. "I remember a hill we used to coast down when I was little. It seemed miles long, on the way up, at least."
Lucky he came along, thought Catherine, contentedly. Or he might have hated to see me, after Friday night.
"Who is that with the children?" she asked. A figure at the crest of the slope, coppery brown fur gleaming in the dull light. Miss Partridge!
"Mr. Bill!" called Marian, as the two plodded nearer. "Take Miss Partridge down just once."
Catherine felt, indignantly, the flush deepen in her cheeks. Why should she mind——
"Good morning," she called. "Won't you try it?"
"So sorry," came the neat, clipped accents. "I must run along to dinner. It looks like great sport." Her cold brown eyes moved from Catherine to Bill. A flash of small teeth. "Great sport. Good-by." A wave of a small, gloved hand, and she was off, swinging smartly along.
"What time is it?" Catherine avoided Bill's smile. "One! My gracious! Come along, you children."
Bill drew Letty up to the street. "Have to walk here. Snow's all gone," and when Letty sat obdurately on the sled, crying "Gid-ap!" he swung her up to his shoulder. She rode home in state, while Spencer and Marian argued about snow in the handball court, about what the carts did with the snow that was shoveled away; and Catherine walked rather silently at Bill's side.
Bill deposited Letty on the steps at the apartment entrance, where she amused herself by bouncing' her stomach against the low railing and gug-gugging at Spencer and Marian, who clattered down the area stairs with their sleds.
"I'm glad you were out for a walk this morning." Catherine wanted to break through the thin ice of constraint—or was it better to pretend that she did not see it? "I was afraid you might stay away from—us," she said quickly.
"That's very good of you." Bill spoke formally, his eyes on the children pelting up the steps.
"Mr. Bill, would you go coasting again?" Spencer stuck his elbow up to ward off a snowball from Marian. "You stop that, Marian. I'm not playing now. Would you?" He frowned at his sister.
"I'm playing." Catherine pinioned Marian's snowy mittens in her own hands. "An' anyway, the snow'll be gone, won't it, Muvver?"
"It'll snow again this winter, won't it?" snorted Spencer.
"When it does, we'll have a coast," Bill said gravely.
For a moment he met Catherine's glance, and suddenly the ice was gone, so suddenly that Catherine almost laughed out in delight. "Will you come, too?" he asked.
"Don't wait for the next snow." Catherine gave Marian a soft push toward the door. "Run along. Take Letty's hand, please." Her smile at Bill was grateful; having admitted her past his barriers, he was unresentful. "Come sooner!" She extended her hand, felt the quick pressure of his fingers.
Like a secret pact—she wondered a little, as she went into the hall. Words are clumsy, with Bill, as if he dwelt so far beneath ordinary surfaces that words didn't reach him.
"You like Mr. Bill, too, don't you, Mother?" Spencer pressed against her confidentially as the elevator creaked up to their floor.
"Yes, I do."
"He's a nice man," Marian agreed. "I'd like to marry him."
"He's got a wife, silly," objected Spencer. "And you're only a little girl and little girls don't get married."
"Pretty soon I can." Marian turned her back onSpencer and darted out of the elevator door, dragging Letty briskly after her.
Spencer's eyes were wide with disapproval, but Catherine laughed at him, and opened the apartment door.
Charles sat at his desk. He looked up ruefully.
"Home again! Say, I forgot all about your potatoes."
"Oh, well." Catherine was undisturbed. "You'll just have to wait longer for your dinner, then." As she hurried to the kitchen she heard Marian, "An' Mr. Bill came and coasted, and Muvver coasted with him, only not belly-bump," and Charles, "So that's why you're so late, is it?"
VIII
Mrs. Spencer came presently. Catherine rose from the oven, blowing wryly on a burnt thumb.
"Take Gram's coat and hat, please, Spencer." She kissed her mother's cool pink cheek. "How well you look!"
"What a pretty chain!" Marian touched the wrought silver and dull blue stones. "Isn't it, Muvver?"
"Margaret gave it to me yesterday, to match my new dress." Mrs. Spencer crinkled her eyes shrewdly. "Propitiation. She can't get over her surprise that I stand her absence so well."
"I suppose that freak woman put her up to it," said Charles, from the doorway.
"Um." Mrs. Spencer tucked her hand under his arm. "Changes are good for us. But Margaret must have had an ill conscience. She's overthoughtful."
"You see"—Catherine stirred the thickening briskly—"you aren't behaving as a Freudian mother should. You are always unexpected."
"Freud!" Mrs. Spencer made a grotesque little grimace. "What does he know about mothers! But I did think"—she glanced sidewise at Charles—"that Margaret might find things less convenient."
"She will!" Charles patted her hand. "Don't you worry, Mother Spencer. These violent crazes for—for freedom—or people—or causes—wear themselves out."
Catherine lifted her head quickly, to find her mother's eyes quizzically upon her. They meant her, too!
"Want to see my book?" Charles steered Mrs. Spencer out of the kitchen. "Catherine's too busy to talk."
Dinner went smoothly; the children told their grandmother about coasting, and she asked about school, about Miss Kelly. She wanted to take them to the Metropolitan that afternoon, to hear a lecture for children.
"Aren't there awful jams?" Catherine sighed. Piles of mending, her serge dress to freshen,—she couldn't take the afternoon off, too.
"Not too jammed for pleasure. But you needn't go." Mrs. Spencer's eyes narrowed. "I suppose you use your Sunday for a scrap-bag of odd jobs, like all other working women?"
"I certainly do." Catherine was abrupt. "But you know you prefer the children without me as mentor."
She caught a quick exchange of glances between Charles and her mother. They've been talking about me—she simmered with resentment—and Charles has won her over to his side, whatever it is.
She had proof of that later. Mrs. Spencer and thechildren had come home from their sojourn, and after they had given Catherine an excited and strange account of the habits of a tribe of Indians, Spencer and Marian had gone to bed.
"What did you do this afternoon?" Mrs. Spencer laid aside her magazine as Catherine came wearily back to the living room.
"I showed Mrs. O'Lay where to find the various tools for her new job"—Catherine had explained Flora's absence earlier—"conducted her initiation ceremony. And washed out a collar, and darned."
Mrs. Spencer nodded.
"When you might have been with your children. Are you sure, Cathy"—she paused—"sure that you aren't losing the best of your life?"
"But I'm not!" Catherine sat erect in her chair, her cheeks flushed. "On the contrary, I am with the children, and love it, and they enjoy me far more than when I was their constant bodyguard."
"Charles was telling me about Spencer." Mrs. Spencer drew the gray silk of her skirt into tiny folds. "It seemed pitiful."
Catherine was silent a moment, fighting against the swift recurrence of that frightful hour, and against a wrathful sense of injustice.
"Children run away, often," she said. "I think Spencer just happened to catch at that excuse—of my not being here."
Mrs. Spencer shook her head.
"Charles seemed to feel——"
"He told me just how he felt." Catherine flung up her head.
Mrs. Spencer's inspection of her daughter was reflective.
"I don't like to interfere. You know that. But—Charles doesn't seem happy."
"He has no right to——"
"He didn't say that." Mrs. Spencer was stern. "I gathered it. His work isn't going very well. He thinks you aren't interested in it."
Catherine turned her head quickly. Had she heard the door of his study squeak?
"I am. He knows it. Far more than he cares about what I do."
"That's all." Mrs. Spencer rose, preening her skirts like a small bird. "I won't say another word. But think it over, Cathy. There's so much that's crooked and wrenched in the air these days. I don't want you led astray by it. I must run along. Alethea will be expecting me."
In the turmoil of her feelings, Catherine had a sharp sense of the bright, valiant spirit of her mother. She didn't really like to interfere. Charles had coerced her into this! Something wistful and picturesque about the two elderly women, Mrs. Alethea Bragg and her mother, moving serenely about in the great city, nibbling at music, at theaters, at Fifth Avenue shops, taking quiet amusement out of days free from the hectic confusion of trying to live.
"Please don't be concerned about me, Mother." She threw her arm around the firm, neat shoulders. "I'm honestly trying to hunt for a scheme of things that will work for everybody. Not just me. Come in oftener. The children adore it."
IX
Miss Kelly had brought the children down for a visit to the Christmas toy-land in some of the large stores, and at noon Catherine met them for luncheon. Letty had shared the expedition for the first time, and the kaleidoscopic displays had goaded her into a frenzy of noisy delight.
"She's just roared the whole morning, Muvver." Marian was uneasy at the scrutiny of amused neighbors in the tea room. But Miss Kelly diverted Letty into contemplation of an enormous baked potato.
"I want you to come with us, Mother." Spencer felt under his chair for his cap; he hadn't been quite sure where he should put that cap. "You always did——"
"You see, I have to stay in the office, except at noon," Catherine explained. She was conscious of admiration for the deftness with which Miss Kelly had subdued Letty, had arranged the luncheon for the children and herself. "I don't have a vacation until Christmas day. Tell me what you saw."
A recital in duo. Letty had tried to hug every Santa Claus they had seen, even the Salvation Army Santa on the corner. Extraordinary and delectable toys. They couldn't decide what they wanted themselves.
"It is lucky we came down early," said Miss Kelly. "The crowds began to come before we left."
"Did you buy your gifts?"
"I think Spencer bought me one," cried Marian. "He made me turn my back——"
"You shouldn't think about that," said Spencer, earnestly. "If it's Christmas, you shouldn't even think you've got a present."
"You did buy me one!" Marian wriggled ecstatically in her chair. "I know you did!"
Catherine waited with them for a home-bound bus. Spencer pulled her head down and whispered in her ear, "Mother, couldn't I go to the office and wait till you come home? I don't want to go with them."
"It's too many hours, Spencer. You wouldn't know what to do with yourself."
"Well, I don't know, anyway." His eyes darkened. "Staying home and no school and——"
"Here comes our bus." Miss Kelly marshalled them before her, maneuvered them neatly up the steps. Catherine waved to them, watched their bus disappear in the mélêe of cars. Then she edged through the crowd to the windows, and walked slowly toward the office. The cold sunshine veneered the intent faces, the displays of gauds and kickshaws.
Being downtown makes Christmas quite different, she thought. An enormous advertising scheme. That's it. Five more shopping days before Christmas. Look at that window! She strolled past it, her eyes bright with derision. Extraordinary, useless, expensive things, good for gifts, and nothing else on earth. Christmas belonged in the country, in the delicate mystery and secrecy with which children could invest it. Not in these glaring windows. A saturnalia of selling, that's Christmas in New York, she thought, darting across the street as the traffic officer's signal released the flood of pedestrians. Something strained, feverish, in the crowds. Probably half of them with empty purses. Like her own.
Dr. Roberts stood at her window, waiting for her.
"I've been talking with President Waterbury, Mrs. Hammond, and I wished to see you at once." He pulled reflectively at his pointed beard. "There are various ins and outs here. I don't know that you've been here long enough to discover them."
Catherine wondered, with faint discomfort, whether President Waterbury had disapproved of something she had done.
"A deplorable jealousy, for example, between departments." He cleared his throat.
Catherine sat down. She had learned to wait until Dr. Roberts had sent off preliminary sputtering fireworks before he uncovered his serious purpose.
"I happened to learn that Smithson, in the local social department, was interviewing Dr. Waterbury. Had seen him twice. So I was at once suspicious. Smithson, you've met him? Well, he's the type of parasite this kind of organization attracts, unfortunately. We haven't many here, but they exist. Afraid to finish up a job, because then another may not turn up. He's nursed along his study of sanitation, I should blush to say how long. No doubt the buildings in his original investigation have crumbled into decay. And he hasn't published a word. But he can't put off publication much longer, you see. And so he hit upon this other scheme. He doesn't belong in our field." Dr. Roberts's bright little eyes snapped, his beard waggled in a fury. "But he had the audacity to go to Waterbury with this suggestion. He wants to make the field study for me! He—he—" Dr. Roberts stuttered tripping furiously over his consonants. "H-he of-ff-fered to go out west, to gather field mat-t-terialfor us. Told Waterbury that I couldn't go, as I was in charge of things here at headquarters. He had almost convinced the President. He's smooth. Smooth!"
"But why on earth does he want to go?" Catherine's voice placated the irate little man. "It certainly isn't his kind of work."
"Not at all. Not at all. But he sets himself up for a dexterous investigator. And Waterbury likes him. The point is this. I can't very well go myself. But you can! I pointed out to Dr. Waterbury that logically you were the person to go."
"To go where, Dr. Roberts?" Catherine sat very still, but back in her head she heard a clear little bell of excitement begin its clanging.
"You have personality and tact. You've already met two of the chief educators of the state. You have the work at the tips of your fingers. Who could be better? Dr. Waterbury agreed with me. It would be an agreeable diversion, no doubt, and of course," he added with proud finality, "then I can obtain for you the raise in salary you deserve."
"You mean that you would like me to make the personal inspection of all these schools?" Catherine's hand moved vaguely toward the shelves of catalogues.
"Just that. It is time now to have that done. Smithson has—yes, he has snooped around, discovering that. He wants the amusement of such a trip, and the glory. For it is an excellent thing. For your reputation. Your expenses are paid, too."
"Why don't you go yourself?"
"It's not precisely convenient. There are several meetings in January. I am to speak at one of them."
I can't go, thought Catherine. Ridiculous to consider it.
"Don't decide immediately. Think it over. Let me know—why, after Christmas. Late in January would do to start. You can no doubt arrange matters at home. You'd like to talk it over with Dr. Hammond, of course."
"How long a trip would it be?" Catherine was vibrating under the clanging of that bell. No, it wasn't a bell, it was a pulse beating just back of her ears.
"You can decide that yourself, practically. Perhaps a month. Depends upon your arrangement of your route. I say, that's fine!" He rose, slapping his hands against his pockets. "You'll think it out! It's by far the best way to convince Waterbury you are serious, and worth a real salary."
Think it out! Catherine let the idea play with her. Trains, new cities, new people, herself as dignified representative of the Bureau. But the children! She couldn't leave them—and Charles. Her clothes weren't up to such a position. She could buy more! Her salary would grow to cover—anything!
When she went home in the cold winter twilight, she had coiled the project into a tight spring, held firmly down below thought. She couldn't go. How could she? But she had a week before she must reject it openly. The pressure of that coiled spring was terrific. At any instant it might tear up through thought and feeling.
Mrs. O'Lay had been persuaded to divide her day so that she spent part of the afternoon in her own basement, and then stayed to serve dinner and clear up the kitchen for Catherine. Charles said he felt as if an Irishhippopotamus hovered at his elbow at the table, but Catherine stretched luxuriously into freedom from dinner responsibility. If Mrs. O'Lay had a sketchy art as a cook, Catherine found dinner more palatable than when she had flown into domestic harness at the end of the day.
The children were full of whispering excitement; the house was made up of restricted zones. Marian wasn't to put her head inside Spencer's door, and mother shouldn't look into his closet. Charles had brought home a tree as tall as Spencer, which spread its branches drooping and green in front of the living room windows. Miss Kelly, calmly methodical as ever, helped the children string cranberries and popcorn to wind through the needles.
"Saturday we will trim it," Catherine promised them, "and Saturday night you can each wrap your presents in red paper and label them."
"Then you'll see them when we are in bed," protested Marian.
"I won't take a single peek!"
Saturday afternoon Catherine stood on a chair, hunting on the top shelf of the hall closet for the box of tinsel and small tree lights. Surely she had left it there on that shelf. She smiled a little, at her own warm content. The shimmering joy of the children had thrown its glow over her, too, and the sardonic Christmas of the streets seemed remote, unreal.
"Hurry up, Muvver dear!" called Marian. "Isn't it there?"
Catherine felt the corner of a pasteboard box, tugged at it, caught it as it slipped over the edge of the shelf, the cover whirling past her hand.
She stared at the contents—a handbag of soft, tooledleather, with carved fastenings of dull gold. Guiltily she reached for the cover at her feet. She had stumbled upon Charles's hiding place. He shouldn't have been so extravagant. Her fingers brushed the soft brown surface in a swift caress as she pushed on the cover, and rose to tiptoe to replace the box.
There, the other box was in the corner.
"What are you after up there?" Charles spoke sharply from the door.
Catherine, her cheeks flushing, dragged out the box of trimmings.
"This!" she called gaily, "for our tree!" She mustn't let him guess that she had seen that bag. She slipped one hand under his arm, laughing to herself at his perturbed eyes. He was in Spencer's class, with that serious fear lest his secret be unearthed before the exact moment. "Come help trim it. You can arrange the lights."
And as they worked, Catherine turned tentatively to that coiled spring of her desire, and found the resilience had vanished. She did not wish to go. She couldn't leave them. Going off to work each day was different. She needed that. But to go away, for days and nights——
"Moth-er!" Spencer's horrified accents came from the other side of the tree. "Letty's chewing the cranberry string!"
"Here, you!" Catherine swung her up to her shoulder. How heavy she was growing! "You fasten Spencer's star to the top branch."
X
Catherine woke. What was that old crone crouched inquisitively at the foot of her bed? She lifted her head cautiously; nothing but her bathrobe over a chair, indistinct in the vague light. It must be very early. She caught the steady rhythm of Charles's breathing. She curled down again under the blankets, full of the relaxed ecstasy in which she had slept so dreamlessly. Dearest—she flowed out toward him in a great, windless tide. I've found him again, she thought. We're out of the thickets.
Dimly she heard the clatter of horses' hoofs, the clinking of milk bottles. It is morning, then. She listened unconsciously for the shrill "Merry Christmas!" of the children. They would wake soon.
As she lay, waiting, effortless, relaxed, a strange phantasy drifted over her, like morning fog in low places. She couldn't, drowsily, quite grasp it. Charles had not known about that plan, tugging, tempting her this last week. How could he have known when she rejected it, completely? And yet, as if he had felt that rejection, fed upon it, sacrificial offering to him, he had been grandly magnanimous, lavish, taking her submission.
Perhaps—she stirred slowly out of the mists—perhaps it was only her own knowledge of the rejection, the sacrifice, binding her more closely to the roots of love, sloughing off that critical, offish self.
She was wide awake now, thinking clearly. Why had she so suddenly decided? What, after all, had wiped out the vigor, the great drive in that desire? She knew just what it meant, her going or her refusal to go. Refusal marked her forever as half-hearted, as temporizing, sofar as her work went. That she had recognized from the beginning.
Just the glimpse of that bag, the soft leather under her fingers, had settled matters. Without a conscious thought. An extravagant, lovely trifle, but a symbol of the old tender awareness she had so loved in him. Ridiculous, that a thing could have the power to touch you so. Behind it, shadowy, serried, other things—trifles, evidence that Charles gave her sensitive perception, that he loved her, not himself reflected in her. Just that he knew her purse was serviceable and shabby.
Foolish, and adorable. She sighed, happily. He would hate my going away. He would be outraged.
A faint sound outside the door, a scuffle of bare feet, and then a burst into chorus, "Merry Christmas! Merry—" The door flew open, and in they rushed, the three of them. Catherine shot upright, reaching for her bathrobe.
"Merry Christmas, but hurry back where it's warm."
Marian flung her arms around Charles's sleepy head. "Merry Christmas, my Daddy!"
"It's only the middle of the night, isn't it?" Charles groaned.
"It's Christmas morning, and you hurry and get up!"
When the arduous business of dressing was over, Charles turned the switch, and the colored lights starred the little tree. No one was to unwrap a present until after breakfast. Too much excitement on empty stomachs, insisted Catherine. The children dragged the table nearer the door and ranged themselves along the side, so that they could gaze as they ate.
Presently the room was a gay litter of tissue paper, colored ribbons, toys, books. Letty sat in the middle of her pile, revolving like a yellow top among the exciting things. Spencer had waited tensely while Catherine unwrapped a large bundle, and then turned a little pale with delight at her surprise. Yes, he had made it himself, at school. It was a stand for a fern. He had carved it, too. Book ends for his father. Then he had immersed himself in his own possessions.
Charles admired the platinum cuff links in the little purple box with Catherine's card. Catherine grinned at him. "Nice to give you a present," she said, "without having to ask you for the money for it." She regretted her words; his smile seemed forced.
"What did Daddy give you, Muvver?" Marian, hugging her doll, pressed against Catherine's knee.
"Well, this." Catherine held up a box of chocolates.
"That's not all," said Charles promptly.
"Here's another." Spencer wiggled along on his knees to hand her another box.
Long and thin—that wasn't the same box. Catherine unwrapped the paper, and long black silk stockings dangled from her fingers.
"Fine," she said. "Just what I wanted." She waited for a repetition of "That's not all," but Charles said only, "I didn't know what you would like."
She glanced up quickly. He was teasing her—they had joked about useful gifts. But he had picked up a book. The red cover blurred before Catherine's eyes. He was pulling his chair up to the table light.
The stockings clung to her finger tips, as if her bewilderment electrified them. Mrs. O'Lay, lumberingthrough the hall to the kitchen, stopped at the door in loud admiration of the tree.
Margaret and Mrs. Spencer were coming in for early dinner. Catherine flung herself into a numbing round of preparations. Whatever it meant, the day shouldn't be spoiled for the children. Whatever it meant—he couldn't have forgotten the bag. She had seen it there. She remembered his sharp inquiry, as she reached to the shelf. Perhaps her mother had hidden it, or Margaret. No, he knew about it. A sickening wave of suspicion curled through her, so that she straightened from her odorous dish of onions, browning for the dressing. It's his gift, to some one else. The wave subsided, leaving a line of wreckage—and certainty.
Funny, how you catch a second wind, when you are knocked out, thought Catherine, as the day wound along. No one even guessed. The children were amazingly good. Even Letty went peacefully to her nap, after a few moments of wracking indecision as to which new toy should accompany her. Margaret left early, for a Christmas party somewhere. Catherine and her mother stood in her room, Mrs. Spencer adjusting her veil at the mirror. They were going out for a Christmas walk with Spencer and Marian, leaving Mrs. O'Lay in charge. Catherine heard a cautious step in the hall. She did not move. But she knew when the feet stopped at the closet door; she heard the faint scrape of pasteboard on the shelf.
"I'm going over to the office." Charles stopped at the door. "I'll probably be home before you are."
"Poor fellow!" Mrs. Spencer cajoled him, her handspatting her sleek gloves into place. "Must you work even on Christmas Day?"
"Just a few odds and ends of work." Charles looked uneasy. But he nodded, and presently the hall door closed after him.