"Naturally." Catherine was curt. "I am. But they needn't suffer, any more than they did before while Charles was in France and I worked. I can't see any loss to them."
"I hope you won't regret it." Mrs. Thomas drew her own brood into a symbolic shelter, as she flung her arm around Dorothy, who was at her knee with a picture book, clamoring unintelligibly to be read to.
"Fine for you, Hammond. A family needs several wage earners, in these postwar days."
Charles laughed, but Catherine saw the flicker of uneasiness in his face.
"But I'd hate to have to find a cook to supplant Mrs. Thomas."
"Ah, but you see, I can't cook that way." Catherine's lightness covered the glance she sped at Charles. She hadn't, then, touched his real feeling about this. Just a scratch, and she could see it.
"I don't know what's to become of us poor men"—he rose lazily—"unless we turn into housewives."
"You better take a turn at it, just to see what it's like." That was Mrs. Thomas, vigorously exalting her ability.
"It was called husbandry once, wasn't it?" Mr. Thomas smiled in enjoyment of his joke. "Must you go? It's very early. Let us drive you down."
"The walk will be just what we need——"
The evening was soft and black, with faint rustle in the autumn-crisped leaves of the trees that massed against the blue-black sky. Below them the river gleamed silver-dark. They went in silence down the hill, the gravel slipping under their heels. Then Catherine felt Charles groping for her hand, the warm pressure of his fingers.
"Rummy bunch of kids," he said. And then, "That woman can cook, but that's about all. She can't impart gentle manners." Catherine relaxed in content. He wasn't huffy. "Too bad you have to tell people like that what you're going to do. Let 'em see after you've succeeded, I say!"
"Oh!" Catherine's voice was sharp with delight. "You think I will!"
"Lord, yes. Of course. You've got the stuff."
Their clasped hands swinging like children's, they came to the foot of the hill.
BOTH ENDS OF THE CANDLE
I
Catherine clicked the telephone into place on her desk and sat for a moment with her hands folded on the piles of paper before her. Her cheeks felt uncomfortably warm. Ridiculous, that Dr. Roberts should have come to the door just as she told Charles where to find the shirts he wanted! He might have found them if he had tried. She wondered whether her voice had conveyed her embarrassment; Charles had said good-by abruptly. He was sorry not to see her, but he had to catch the one o'clock for Washington. No, he couldn't stop for luncheon with her. He might be back Sunday night. She had a vivid picture of him, plowing through drawers and closets in frantic search for things right under his nose.
Her hand reached for the telephone. She would call him for a moment, just for a good-by not so hasty. But Dr. Roberts, in the doorway, clearing his throat, said, "Can you let me have those tables now, Mrs. Hammond?" He pulled a chair to the opposite side of the desk and sat down. Charles and the messy packing of his handbag disappeared from Catherine's thoughts. She spread several sheets of figures between them, the flusteredshadow in her eyes gone, and hard clarity in its place. Dr. Roberts, head of the educational section of the Lynch Bureau of Social Welfare, was a dapper little man with a pointed beard, whose fussy, henlike manner obscured the intelligent orderliness of his mind.
"The state laws of requirements for teachers." Catherine pointed to one table. "County requirements, country schools. I made a separate table for each. Now I'll work out a comparative table."
"Excellent. Clear, graphic. May I take those?" He rose. "If you aren't working with them now?"
"No. I'm going through these catalogues now." The dusty pile was at her elbow. "If I may have those sheets this afternoon, I'll try some graphs."
When he had gone, Catherine's eyes rested briefly on the telephone. Oh, well, Charles wouldn't want the interruption anyway. He would be home again on Sunday. She opened the catalogue on top of the pile and glanced through its pages, making swift notes on the pad under her hand.
Finally she leaned back in her chair, twisting her wrist for a glimpse of her watch. Whew! Half past twelve, and she was to meet her sister Margaret for luncheon. She stood a moment at the window. Beyond the neighboring buildings the spires of the Cathedral splintered the sunlight; a flock of pigeons whirled into view, their wings flashing in the light, then darkening as they swirled and vanished—like the cadence of a verse, thought Catherine. Far beneath her lay an angle of the Avenue, with patches of shining automobile tops crawling in opposing streams.
She gave a great sigh as she turned back to the office.A long, narrow room, scarcely wider than the window, lined with shelves ceiling-high, between them the flat desk piled with her work. Her work! Almost a week of it, now, and already she had won back her old ability to draw that thin, sliding wall of steel across her personal life, to hold herself contained within this room and its contents.
She hadn't seen Margaret since her return from Maine. She was to meet her at the St. Francis Luncheon Club for Working Women. As she stepped into the sunlight of the street, the slow flowing of the emulsion of which she was suddenly another particle, she had a sharp flash of unreality. Was it she, walking there in her old blue suit, her rubber heels padding with the other sounds, her eyes refocusing on distance and color after the long morning? She loved the long, narrow channel of the Avenue, hard, kaleidoscopic; the white clouds above the line of buildings, the background of vivid window displays. She laughed softly as she recalled the early days of the week. Rainy, to begin with. She had thought, despairingly, that she couldn't swing the job. The children stood between her and the sheets of paper. She had flown out at noon to telephone Miss Kelly, to demand assurance that life in the apartment hadn't gone awry in the four hours since she had left. Queer. You seized your own bootstraps and lugged, apparently in vain, to lift yourself from your habits of life, of thought, of constant concern, and then, suddenly, you had done it, just when you most despaired. She walked with a graceful, long stride, her head high. An excellent scheme, Dr. Roberts had said. He had really entrusted her with the entire plan for this investigation. And she could do it!
Margaret was waiting at the elevator entrance, a vivid figure in the milling groups of befurbished stenographers and shoddier older women. She came toward Catherine, and their hands clung for a moment. How young she is, and invincible, thought Catherine, as they waited for the elevator to empty its load. Margaret had Catherine's slimness and erect height; her bright hair curled under the brim of her soft green hat; there was something inimitably swagger about the lines of her sage-green wool dress and loose coat, with flashes of orange in embroidery and lining. In place of the sensitive poise of Catherine's eyes and mouth, Margaret had a downright steadiness, an untroubled intensity.
"How's it feel to be a wage-earner?" She hugged Catherine's arm as they backed out of the pushing crowd into a corner of the car. "You look elegant!"
"Scarcely that." Catherine smiled at her. "Now you do! Did you design that color scheme?"
"I matched my best points, eyes and high lights of hair." Margaret grinned. Her eyes were green in the shadow. "Ever lunched here? I thought you might find it convenient. Lots of my girls come here."
They emerged at the entrance of a large room full of the clatter of dishes and tongues.
"I'll take you in on my card to-day. If you like it, you can get one." Margaret ushered Catherine into the tail of the line which filed slowly ahead of them. "This is one of the gracious ladies—" Margaret shot the half whisper over her shoulder, as she extended her green card. "A guest, please." Catherine looked curiously at the woman behind the small table; her nod in response to the professionally sweet smile was curt.
"The patronesses take turns presiding," explained Margaret, as she manipulated trays and silver. "That's the sweetest and worst. Notice her dimonts!"
They found a table under a rear window, where they could unload their dishes of soup and salad around the glass vase with its dusty crêpe-paper rose.
"It's really good food," said Margaret, shooting the trays across the table toward the maid. "And reasonable. It's not charity, though, and the dames that run it needn't act so loving."
Two girls saw the vacant chairs at the table, and rushed for them. One slipped her tweed coat back from shoulders amazingly conspicuous in a beaded pink georgette blouse; the other opened her handbag for a preliminary devotional exercise on her complexion.
Margaret hitched her chair closer to Catherine.
"Now tell me all about it." She tore the oiled paper from the package of crackers; her hand had the likeness to Catherine's, and the difference, which her face suggested. Fingers deft and agile, but shorter, firmer, competent rather than graceful. "Mother says you've hired a wet-nurse and abandoned your family. I didn't think you had it in you!"
"I know. You thought I was old and shelved."
"Just a tinge of mid-Victorian habit, old dear."
"You young things need to open your eyes."
"I have opened 'em. See me stare!"
Were those girls listening? The georgette one was eying Margaret. The other, her retouching finished, snapped her handbag shut and began a story about the movies last night. Catherine was hungry; good soup—why, it was fun to gather an unplanned luncheon on a tray in this way.
"Your old job?" proceeded Margaret.
"A new study—teaching conditions in some middle-western states. I am to organize the work."
Margaret's questions were direct, inclusive. She did have a clear mind. Her business training has rubbed off all the blurry sentiment she used to have, thought Catherine.
"And you can manage the family as well?"
"This woman Henrietta sent me is fine. It's a rush in the morning, baths and breakfast. Flora can't come in until eight, and I have to get away by half past eight. No dawdling."
"And the King doesn't mind?"
Catherine flushed. Margaret had dubbed Charles the King years ago, but the nickname had an irritating flavor. "He's almost enthusiastic this week," she said. "Now tell me about yourself. What's this about your leaving Mother?"
"Oh, I thought she might like to stay with George. Instead of that, she's turned me out, neck and crop, and taken on a lady friend. I'm house-hunting." Margaret laughed. "Trust Mother! You can't dispose of her."
"But I thought you were so comfortable——"
"Too soft. You don't know—" Margaret was serious. "I can't be babied all my life. All sorts of infantile traits sticking to me. You got away."
"Mother said you'd been reading a foreigner named Freud."
"Well!" Margaret was vigorously defensive. "What of it?"
Catherine dug her fork into the triangle of cake.
"I thought Freud was going out. Glands are the latest."
"I bet Charles said that." Margaret grinned impishly as she saw her thrust strike home. "Well, tell him I'm still on Freud. Anyway, I want to try this. Amy and I want to live together. When you wanted to live with Charles, you went and did it, didn't you?"
"I'm not criticizing you, Marge. Go ahead! Don't bristle so, or I'll suspect you feel guilty."
"I do." Margaret had a funny little smile which recognized herself as ludicrous. "That's just the vestige of my conflict."
"There's another influx"—Catherine looked at the moving line—"we'd better give up these seats."
"There are chairs yonder." They wound between the tables to the other end of the room, where wicker chairs and chaise longues, screens, tables, and a mirror suggested the good intentions of the patronesses of the St. Francis Club.
"You can lie down behind the screen if you're dead, or read"—Margaret flipped a magazine—"read old copies of respectable periodicals. Here." She motioned to a chaise longue. "Stretch out. I'll sit at your feet. I have a few seconds left."
"How's the job?"
"All right. I spent the morning hunting for a girl. She's been rousing my suspicions for a time. Going to have an infant soon. That's the third case in two months." Margaret clasped her hands about her knees; her short skirt slipped up to the roll of her gray silk stocking. "But I've got a woman who'll take her in.She can do housework for a month or so before she'll have to go to the lying-in home."
Catherine watched her curiously. There was something amazing about the calm, matter-of-fact attitude Margaret held.
"Do you hunt for the father?"
"Oh, the girl won't tell. Maybe she doesn't know."
"If I had your job, I'd waste away from anger and rage and hopelessness about the world."
"No use." Margaret shrugged. "Wish I could smoke here. Too pious. No." She turned her face toward her sister, her eyes and mouth dispassionate. "Patch up what can be patched, and scrap the rest. I'm sick of feelings."
Catherine was silent. Margaret, as the only woman in a responsible position in a chain of small manufacturing plants, occasionally dropped threads which suggested fabrics too dreadful to unravel.
"Time's up." Margaret rose. "Directors' meeting this afternoon, and I want to bully that bunch of stiff-necked males into accepting a few of the suggestions I've made. I have a fine scheme." She laughed. "I make a list pages long, full of things, well, not exactly preposterous. Women would see them all. But they sound preposterous. And buried somewhere I have the one thing I'm hammering on just then. Sometimes I get it, out of their dismay at the length of the list."
"Here, I may as well go along." Catherine slid out of the chair.
"Will you be home Sunday?" Margaret stopped at the corner. Catherine had a fresh impression of herinvincible quality, there in the sunlight with the passing crowds.
"Charles is in Washington. Come in and see the children."
"The King's away, eh?" Margaret waved her hand in farewell. "I'll drop in."
At five Catherine was again on the Avenue, walking steadily north, an eye on the occasional buses. If she could get a seat! As the traffic halted, she saw a hint of movement at the rear of a bus ahead of her. Someone was just getting out. She rushed for it, and clambered to the top just as the jam moved stickily ahead. Just one seat, at the front. This was luck. She relaxed, lazily conscious only of small details her eyes seized upon. When the bus finally swung onto the Drive, she straightened, drawing a deep breath of the fresh wind across the river. A taste of salt in it. She liked the sweep and curving dips of the Drive; the ride gave her a breathing space, a chance to shut off the hours behind her and to take on the aspect of the other life that awaited her. I'll patch up that old fur coat, she thought, and ride all winter. Perhaps I may even afford a new one. Twenty-five a week for Miss Kelly. Another five for my luncheons and bus rides. If Flora will do the marketing, I'll have to pay her more. I ought to help with the food bills, if we feed Miss Kelly, and pay for the clothes I buy for the children, since I would otherwise be making them. Oh! This domestic mental arithmetic sandpapered away the shine of the two hundred and fifty a month which was her salary. But Charles couldn't have additional expenses this year. It wasn't fair, when he had just reached a point at which they found a tiny margin for insurance and saving. Catherine rubbed her hand across her forehead; foolish to do this reckoning in her head; it always left her with that sense of hopeless friction, like fitting a dress pattern on too small a piece of cloth—turning, twisting, trying. Charles had said, "Well, you knowmyincome. We can't manage any more outgo there. Not this year." And at that, she didn't see where she was going to get the first three twenty-five dollars for Miss Kelly. Next month, after she had her own first check—but now! She'd saved the first twenty-five on her own fall clothes. If Charles hadn't had that heavy insurance premium this month, she might have borrowed. It would be fine, some day, to reach a place where their budget was large enough to turn around in without this fear of falling over the edges. Dr. Roberts had said, "Three thousand is the best we can do for you now, but later——"
II
Sunday was a curious day. Miss Kelly, who was to have alternate Sundays off, had this one on, and had taken the children out. Catherine caught a lingering, backward glance from Spencer as they all went down the hall, a silent, wondering stare. He had said nothing about Miss Kelly, nothing about the new order of things; Catherine felt that he held a sort of baffled judgment in reserve. Letty, as always, was cheerfully intent on her own small schemes. Marian had confided last night that Miss Kelly was nice, but her stories sounded all the same, not like Muvver's. Next Sunday, thought Catherine, I'llhave them. It's absurd to feel pleased that Spencer doesn't adjust himself at once. I want him happy.
She sat at the breakfast table, too listless to bestir herself about the endless things that waited for her. The morning sun was sharp and hard on the stretch of city beneath the window, picking out slate roofs and chimneys. Alone in the empty apartment, its silence enclosed and emphasized by the constant sounds outside—the click of the elevator, the staccato of voices in the well of the court, the rumble of a car climbing the Amsterdam hill—Catherine relaxed into complete lethargy, her hands idle in her lap.
The week had been drawn too taut. Surely coming weeks would be less difficult, once she had herself and the rest of the family broken into the new harness. She wished that Charles were sitting across from her, the Sunday paper littering the floor about his feet. She would say, "One week is over." And he—what would he say? "How do you like it, old dear?" And she, "You know, I think I am making a go of it." Then if he said, "Of course! I knew you would," then she could hug his shoulder in passing, and go quite peacefully about the tasks that waited. She sighed. If I have to be bolstered at every step, I might as well stop, she thought.
She would like to sit still all day, not even thinking. Instead, she pulled herself to her feet and cleared the breakfast dishes away methodically. Then she opened the bundles of laundry, sorted the clothes and laid them away, found fresh linen for the beds, laid aside one sheet with a jagged tear to be mended later, investigated Flora's preparations for dinner, and, finally, with a basket of mending, sat down at the living room window. PerhapsFlora could see to the laundry, although Catherine always had done that; she must plan, in some way, to have Sunday reasonably free. Miss Kelly had offered to take care of the children's mending; but—Catherine's fingers pushed out at the heel of the black sock—Charles had to be sewn up!
How still and empty the house lay about her! Perhaps Charles was even then on his way home—she had a swift picture of him at the window of the train, hurling toward her.
Ridiculous to feel so tired. She stretched her arms above her head, and then reached for the darning ball. Henrietta had said, "Don't weaken. You'll find the first stages of adjustment the most difficult." True, all right. The texture of her days rose before her, a series of sharp images. Morning, an incredible packing of the two hours: breakfast, the three children to bathe and help dress, Miss Kelly arriving like clockwork to supervise the final departure for school, Catherine's hasty glimpse at her face, flushed under the brim of her hat, before she hurried out for the elevator. Then the bus ride; herself a highly conscious part of the downward flood of workers, the fluster of the morning dropping away before the steady rise of that inner self, calm, clear, deliberate. The office—deference in the manner of the stenographers—she was the only woman there with her own office, with a man-size job. Occasional prickings of her other life through that life—eggs she had forgotten to order. The ride home again, the warm cheeks and soft hands of the children, and their voices, eager to tell her a thousand things at once. Dinner, and Charles. What about Charles? Her fingers paused over the crossing threadsof the darn. He had been busy with crowds of new students and opening classes. Under that, what? She fumbled in her mist of images. She had scarcely seen him, except at dinner. Usually he had a string of stories about the day. He had gone back to the office two evenings, and to Washington on Friday. She didn't know much about his week. Had he withheld it? Had she been too engrossed?
The telephone in the study rang. Catherine hurried. Perhaps it was Charles.
"Is Dr. Hammond in?"
"This is Mrs. Hammond." That clear, metallic voice! "Dr. Hammond is out of town."
"Oh, yes. I thought he might be back. Would you give him a message for me? Miss Partridge. Please ask him to call me as soon as he comes in."
"Certainly." Catherine waited, but the only sound was the click of the telephone, terminating the call.
"Well!" Catherine sat down at the desk. Now, there's nothing to be irritated about, she told herself. Her eyes traveled over the bookshelves, low, crowded, piled with monographs and reviews. That curtness is part of her pose—manlike. But she certainly hits my negative pole!
Miss Kelly came in with the children, noisy and hungry, and the five had dinner together. Catherine tried to talk with Miss Kelly. Her round, light eyes met Catherine's solemnly, and she replied with calm politeness to Catherine's ventures.
"No, Marian, dear," she said suddenly. "One helping of chicken is enough for a little girl your age."
"Spencer had two!" Marian turned to her mother. "Why can't I?"
Catherine smiled a little wryly. She thrust under the sudden flash of resentment. Of course, Miss Kelly had them in charge. What was the matter with her to-day! She seemed to react with irritation to everything.
"Marian's stomach seemed a little upset yesterday," confided Miss Kelly.
"We'll have our salad now." Catherine dismissed the question.
But after dinner, when Letty had been led protestingly away for her nap, and Miss Kelly, armed with a volume of Andersen's "Fairy Tales," reappeared in the living room, Catherine couldn't resist the swift entreaty of Spencer's eyes.
"Miss Kelly," she said, placatingly, "if you would like to go home now, I can read to the children. I am quite free this afternoon."
Miss Kelly agreed placidly. When she had gone, Spencer stood a moment beside Catherine, his eyes intent on her face; Catherine saw a wavering tenseness in his look. He wanted to hurl himself at her, and he didn't want to. She couldn't reach out for him, if he felt too grown-up for such expression. She smiled at him, and with a huge sigh he settled into the wicker chair, one foot curled beneath him.
"She was glad to go home, wasn't she?" he said.
"I'm glad she went," announced Marian. "She bosses me."
"Good for you," said Spencer. "Mother, read us 'Treasure Island.' I'm sick of old fairies."
Margaret came in, her ring waking Letty. Catherine laughed at the unconcealed expectancy with which the children welcomed their aunt.
"You've ruined them," she said, as Marian danced up the hall, her eyes wide with anticipation for the packages Margaret carried.
"Well, they are delighted to see their old aunt, anyway!" Margaret dropped to the floor, scattering the bundles, her hands held over them in teasing delay.
"Your dress, Marg! On the floor in that?"
"Just a rag. Here, Letitia, your turn first."
Catherine went back to her chair to watch the orgy. Margaret was extravagant as water.
"It isn't really a rag, Aunt Margie, is it?" Spencer had his head on one side, deliberating. "It looks like—like pigeons."
"If I could find a gentleman of your discrimination, Spen, I'd grab him in a jiffy!"
"It is like pigeons, isn't it, Mother?" Spencer looked perplexed.
"Yes." Catherine wished Margaret wouldn't tease him. She was lovely, her gray-silver draperies floating around her slim, curving figure, the purple glinting through. It was like a pigeon's breast, that dress.
Letty had a doll, soft and round and almost as large as Letty herself.
"Company for you, when your mother's off at work."
Letty's arms were fast about it, and her deep voice intoned a constant, "Pretty doll! pretty doll!" until Marian's present appeared from its wrappings.
"You stand on it and jump, this way." Margaret was on her feet, her suède toes balancing on the crosspiece.
"Letty jump!"
"Not in here!" Catherine reached for the stick. "You idiots! You'll knock the plaster off."
"Letty jump!" Catherine bundled Letty and the doll into her lap.
"Let's see what Spencer draws."
"Spencer was a difficult proposition." Margaret smiled at him. "I thought of a rubber ball, and then I remembered he had one. So I got this." She poked the box into his hands.
"It's as good as Christmas, isn't it, Muvver?" Marian was on tiptoe, her Pogo stick clasped to her side, her head close to Spencer's as he tore off the papers.
"Thought I'd help make him practical, to please the King."
"What is it?" Spencer knelt beside the box full of pieces of steel.
"You stick them together, and make skyscrapers and bridges and water towers and elevators. The clerk said you could build a city."
"Let me help, Spencer?" Marian flung herself on the floor beside Spencer.
"Me help!" Letty squirmed down from Catherine's lap.
"You might take the things into the dining room," suggested Catherine.
Spencer gathered up the box.
"I'm much obliged, Aunt Margie," he said, and Marian and Letty echoed him as they followed into the next room.
Margaret settled herself in a chair at the window.
"I thought your nurse would be in charge." Her eyes wandered out to the distant glint of water. "Thought you'd given up the heavy domestic act."
"I sent her home." Catherine smiled. "Weak minded, wasn't it?"
Margaret nodded.
"Certainly. You look fagged. You ought to be out horseback riding or something. You know"—she turned, her face serious—"if you're going to do a real job, you have to look out. You have to relax sometime."
"I have to read the d'rections first, don't I?" came Spencer's firm tones. "You can sit still and watch."
"Now I didn't budge from my bed until noon," went on Margaret, "and then Amy had breakfast ready for me, and then I jumped in a taxi and came up here. I have to run along in a minute, high tea down in the Village. But you've been at work since early dawn, haven't you?"
"Oh, there were a few things——"
"Why don't you find a real housekeeper in Flora's place?"
"I can't afford to pay more, yet. And Flora is too good to throw out. I can manage."
"You know"—Margaret's eyes were bright with curiosity—"I should like to know what started this, your leaving your happy home, I mean. I thought you were the devoted mother till eternity."
"I am," said Catherine, calmly. Then she leaned forward. "Do you realize that the loneliest person in the world is a devoted mother? This summer, Margaret, I thought I'd really go crazy. I was so sorry for myself it was ludicrous. I'm trying to find out if I am a person, with anything to use except a pair of hands—on monotonous, silly tasks."
"Of course, the trouble is just that. You are a person.I'm glad you've waked up, Catherine. You know, there isn't a man in the world that I'd give up my job for."
"I want a man, too." Catherine's mouth was stubborn. "And my children. I want everything. Perhaps I want too much."
"Oh, children." Margaret glanced through the wide doors. "Maybe I'll want some, some day. Nice little ducks. Now I've got Amy—and love enough to keep from growing stale. I want you to meet Amy some day." She rose, adjusting the brim of her wide purple hat. "Amy's waiting now. Tell Charles I'm longing for a glimpse of him." She made a humorous little grimace. "Want to see how he likes this new arrangement."
Margaret telephoned for a taxi, and then hung over the children, offering impossible suggestions, until the hall boy announced her cab.
Marian wanted to go down to the Drive, to jump. Catherine waved good-by to Margaret, her other hand restrainingly on Marian's shoulder.
"Not Sunday afternoon, Marian. There are so many people down there, you'd jump right on their toes. You watch Spencer."
The children played in reasonable quiet. Catherine finished her darning, her mind playing with the idea of the graphs she was working on. As she rolled up the last stocking, she wondered what she used to think about, as she sat darning or sewing. Nothing, she decided. Plain nothing. I could let my hands work, and my ears listen for the children, and the rest of me just stagnate.
She delayed supper a little, hoping that Charles mightcome. She wasn't sure about the Sunday trains. Finally she gave the children their supper and put Letty to bed.
Spencer was still engrossed in the construction of a building when Bill Gilbert came in.
"Henrietta isn't here?"
"No, but do come in." Catherine led him into the living room. "Is Henry coming?"
"She had a call, and said she'd stop here on her way home."
"Charles hasn't come yet. He's been in Washington since Friday."
"Friday? I thought I saw him downtown, with Miss Partridge. He probably went later."
"He went at one."
"This couldn't have been Charles, then. It was about four. I thought their committee had been meeting. Hello, Spencer. What you doing?"
Spencer had come in, his hands full of steel girders.
"Mr. Bill, you're a nengineer, aren't you? Well, could you show me about this bridge?"
More than an hour later, when Henrietta did come, Bill was stretched full length, his feet under the dining room table, his eyes on the level of the completed bridge, a marvelous thing of spans and girders, struts and tie-beams.
"I'm too weary to stay, Cathy." Henrietta set her case on the table; her fair skin looked dusted over with fatigue. "Convulsions. One of those mothers who won't believe in diet or doctors for her child. The father sent for me. The child is alive in spite of her."
"Do sit down and rest, at least."
"No. I'm too ugly. Do you want to come, Bill, or are you staying?"
Bill pulled himself awkwardly to his feet, one hand reaching for his pipe.
"This piece of work is done," he said, smiling down at Spencer's engrossed head. "I've had a fine evening, Catherine."
He had. When they had gone, and Catherine was supervising the children's preparations for bed, she still had the feeling of the evening; she had pulled her chair into the dining room, to watch them; Bill had looked up at her at long intervals, with a faint, queer smile in his eyes; he had said nothing, except to offer solemn, technical advice, simplified to meet Spencer's eagerness.
"I'm going to be a nengineer," said Spencer sleepily, as she bent over him. "An' build things."
"I want to be one, too," called Marian.
"You can't! You're only a girl."
"Mr. Bill said I could if I wanted to. He said I could be anything."
"So you can." Catherine tucked her in gently. "But you have to go to sleep first."
At eleven Catherine telephoned to the station, to ask about trains from Washington. No express before morning. Charles wouldn't take a local; he must have decided to take a sleeper. She set the sandwiches she had made for him away in the ice chest. No use worrying. She had to have some sleep, for to-morrow. Had Bill seen him, Friday afternoon? She hated the queer way waiting held you too tight, as if you were hung up by your thumbs. Charles might have wired her. But he knew she never meant to worry.
She was half conscious, all through the night, of the emptiness of his bed, opposite hers. Once she woke, thinking she heard the door click. She sprang up in bed to listen. Nothing but the constant, faint cacophony of city sounds. It must be almost morning—that was the rattle of ash cans.
III
Astonishing how much less hurried the morning seemed, with no Charles shaving in the bathroom, shouting out inquiries about his striped shirt, his bay rum—he had a blind spot for the thing he wanted at the moment. We need two bathrooms, thought Catherine. I've spoiled Charles. Breakfast, too, was more leisurely; none of the last-minute scramble, no sudden longing for crisp bacon, after the toast was made and the eggs were boiled. There was time, actually, for a manicure. Flora appeared promptly at eight, her Monday face lugubrious.
"Sunday's fearful exhausting, Mis' Hammond," she said, as Catherine finished the consultation about dinner. "It's the most exhaustin'est day us working women has, I thinks."
"And when Mr. Hammond comes, be sure to ask him if he wishes breakfast, Flora. He may have had it on the train."
"Sure, I'll ask him. You run along and quit your worry, Mis' Hammond."
Catherine, hurrying across the Drive for the bus, was worried. She felt almost guilty: first, because the morning rush had been so lightened; and then, because she was going off, downtown, just as if Charles scarcely existed. She had laid out fresh clothes for him, on his bed, butshe knew how he would rush in, full of pleasant importance from the trip, wanting to shout bits of it to her while he splashed and shaved and dressed, wanting her to sit down for a late cup of coffee while he talked. If only he had come home yesterday! Well, to-night would have to serve, although by evening there would be the film of the day over that first sharpness of communication.
At the door of her office she paused, her fingers on the key. She must leave, outside the door, this faint guilt which tugged at her. She had wasted that hour on the bus. The order and quiet within were like a rebuke. She crossed to the window and raised the heavy sash. The cool bright morning air rushed in with a little flutter of the papers on the desk. Across the street and a story lower, behind great plate-glass windows, she could see busy little men hurrying about, lifting the white dust covers from piles of dark goods: that was an elaborate tailoring establishment, just waking into activity. Her desk had a fresh green blotter, a pile of neatly sharpened pencils, and her mail—C.S. Hammond. Extraordinary, this having things set in order without your own direction! She might call up the house, to see if Charles had come. But surely he would telephone.
Dr. Roberts came briskly in. She was to have a new filing cabinet, he wanted her to meet the stenographer she was to share with him; the President of the Bureau would be in that morning, and wished to talk with her for a few minutes.
President Waterbury was a large and pompous gentleman who used his increasing deafness as a form of reproach to his subordinates. Catherine, sitting calmlynear his massive mahogany desk, nodded at intervals in response to his grave, deliberate remarks. Her work during the war had convinced Dr. Roberts of her ability, hem, hem, although that had been on a social study, and this was, hem, educational. Since Mrs. Lynch, one of the founders of the Bureau, was a woman, it was peculiarly fitting to place a competent woman in charge of one of their many investigations. Ah, hem. A pleasure to welcome her there. Serious concern, this administering of responsibility. He was dismissing her with an elegant gesture of his old white hand, its blue veins so abruptly naked between the little tufts of hair.
Catherine went back to her office.
"Oh, Mrs. Hammond!" The bobbed-haired office stenographer rose, with a shake of her abbreviated skirt. "You were wanted on the wire. Said you were in conference with the President. Here's the number."
"Thank you. No, I don't need you now." Catherine waited until the door closed. She still hesitated. It must be Charles. Better to call him outside, at noon. The telephone operator in the main office had a furtive, watchful eye which probably matched her ear! But noon was an hour away.
"Charles? Hello."
"That you, Catherine? I've been trying to get you for a solid hour!"
"I'm sorry." Was that girl listening! "When did you get in?"
"Early. Catherine, where have you put my lecture notes? The seminar, you know. That class meets to-day. I can't find a damned shred of them."
His voice seemed to stand him at her shoulder, withthe funny, distracted flush, and rumpled hair of one of his fruitless searches.
"I haven't seen them this fall." She was moving rapidly about the house, almost in kinæsthetic images. Where would she look? "Didn't you file those in your office last spring? With the manuscript of your book?"
"Um. Perhaps. I'll look there. Good-by."
Catherine hung the instrument slowly in place. Not a word of greeting. But he had probably thrown his study into bedlam—and his disposition. She smiled, faintly, and refusing to admit the little barbed regret, turned to her work.
At noon, in the stuffy telephone booth at the elevator entrance of the St. Francis Club she tried to reach him. But Miss Kelly said he wasn't coming in for luncheon, and no one answered the call for his office.
The afternoon closed around her with steady concentration. Dr. Roberts had said that on Friday there would be a conference: a head of a normal college and a state commissioner of education would be on hand from the West. She wanted this preliminary classification ready.
As she approached the house that evening, she discovered, ironically, that her mind was revolving schemes for propitiation. Steak and onions for dinner, and cream pie, and tactful inquiries about the trip.
There was no rush of children at the sound of her key. She heard Marian's voice, and then Charles's. She hurried down the hall. Letty sat on her father's knee, a crisscross of adhesive plaster on her forehead, from which her hair was smoothed wetly back.
"She would jump on my Pogo stick, Muvver," protested Marian, "and I told her not to, and——"
Catherine was on her knees beside the chair, and Letty's mouth began to quiver again at a fresh spectator of her injury.
"It isn't a bad cut," said Charles, distantly. "Fortunately I came in."
"But where's Miss Kelly?"
"She left at six. I supposed you had instructed her to stay here until you came."
"I told her to run along." Flora stopped at the doorway, her red flowers bobbing over the brim of her hat. "I says I'd stay. An' those chillun was all right one minute and the next they wasn't."
"Where's Spencer?" Catherine rose. She had waited a long time for a bus, but it was just past six.
"In the bathroom, washing off the blood," said Charles, severely. "He was wiping Letty's face when I came in."
"She fell on the radiator," went on Marian, "an' I told her not to——"
"It's all right now." Charles set Letty on her feet, and patted her damp head. "But you surely ought to insist on that woman's filling your place, since you aren't here."
"I shall." Catherine's eyes sought his with a defiant entreaty. "It isn't very serious, after all," she finished, in white quiet. As she went into her room to leave her wraps and brush up her hair, she found her hands trembling, and her knees. She sat down at the window for a moment. Of course, she thought, they are my responsibility. That's only just. But he needn't hurry so to hold me up to blame. As if they planned it—a staged rebuke for my entrance. Spencer was at the door, his eyes large and serious.
"Hello, son!" Catherine shoved aside the tight bitterness, and smiled.
"Oh, Moth-er!" He ran across to her, burying his head for a brief instant on her shoulder. "I thought—I thought she was dead. Only she hollered too loud."
"I'm sorry, dear." Catherine hugged him. "But it's all right."
"And"—Spencer's lower lip quivered—"Daddy said why didn't I watch her if she didn't have a mother. She's got a mother, and I was just sitting there reading."
"Letty's all right now. Come, we must broil that steak! Aren't you hungry?"
Dinner was ready, all but the steak. Catherine felt that she thrust her hands violently into a patch of nettles and yanked them away, as she cajoled her family back into calm humor. Charles, carving the steak, suddenly lost his air of grave reproach, and began a story about a family with two sets of twins that he had seen on the train. With a sigh, Catherine relaxed her grip on the nettles. She might run into them, later!
"We looked for you all day yesterday," she said, finally.
"Several of the men stayed over, and I had a fine chance to talk with them. Brown of Cornell, and Davitts."
"Mr. Bill came in, Daddy, and showed me how to build a bridge."
"He thought he'd seen you Friday," said Catherine idly, "but I told him you went at one."
"Oh, yes." Charles was casual. "I missed that train. So I went around to the clinic."
His voice was too casual! And the swift glance he shot at Catherine as she rose.
IV
"I've got to run over those lecture notes." Charles stretched lazily up from the table. "They need freshening a bit."
"You found them, then?" Catherine had Letty in her arms, soft and sweetly heavy with drowsiness.
"Yes. I'd forgotten about carrying them over to the office."
"I was in the sacred sanctum of the President's office when you called."
"Oh, that's all right. I found them in time." Charles strolled out of the room.
"Daddy!" Spencer followed him. "Couldn't I show you my bridges and things? I can make anything."
"Not to-night, Spencer. Daddy's got to work."
Catherine's query about home work for school relieved Spencer's gloom. While she undressed Letty, smiling at the sleepy protests, Spencer and Marian cleared the table. When she reappeared they were trying to fold the long cloth, one at each end, Marian arguing heatedly about the proper method. Charles banged his study door in loud remonstrance. Catherine showed them the creases. Then they spread their books on the bare table.
"You sit here with us, Mother," Spencer begged. "I can do my sums much quicker. Marian doesn't have to do home work. She's just——"
"I do, too, have to do home work. The teacher said so."
"There, you shall, if you like." Catherine ruffled Spencer's hair. "Try not to disturb Father."
She sat there with them for an hour and more. Marian snuggled against her, showing her the pictures in her "suppulment'ry reading." Spencer bent over his work in a concentration directed toward the impressing of his sister, his cheeks growing pink, his hand clutched over his pencil. Although she sat so quietly, her outer attention given to the children, her deeper thoughts went scurrying and creeping up to the closed study door, away from it. He needn't have worked to-night. Don't be absurd. If he has a lecture to-morrow—he wants to shut himself away. Slowly her thoughts circled, like gulls above the water, concealing in their whirls the object which drew them.
"Muvver, does Spencer have to whisper his sums aloud?"
"Perhaps that helps him." Catherine smiled at Spencer's indignant face. "You may whisper your story, if you like."
What were they swooping over, those gull-thoughts? Better to scatter them and see. Not that he had missed the train; not even that he had not troubled to run in for a moment that afternoon; nor that he had chosen to see Miss Partridge. That might so easily be explained. No. Just that queer, investigating glance, that deliberate offhand manner, when he had told her. It set a wall between them.
The telephone rang distantly, behind the closed door. The children lifted their heads to listen. A rumble of Charles's voice. Then silence again.
When Spencer and Marian had laid away their books and gone to bed, Catherine returned to her seat at the empty table. I want him, she thought. But if I openhis door and go in, then I become, in some way, a propitiator. Perhaps I only imagine all this. I am tired. She drew the pins from her hair and let the heavy coil slip over her shoulder. Elbows on the table, fingers cool and firm against her forehead, as if she might press order into her thoughts, she waited.
Suddenly she rose, shaking her hair back from her face. That is grotesque, she thought, sitting here, and hastily she went through the hall to the study door, flinging it open.
"Oh, hello." Charles looked up alertly from his book. He, too, had been waiting. "Kids in bed?"
"Aren't you through?" Catherine yawned gently, drawing her fingers across her lips. "I'm sleepy, and lonesome."
But under her lightness sounded a plunk, as of a stone dropping, a confirmation of a fear, as she saw the wary alertness on Charles's face vanish in quick relief.
"Just through," he announced. "Come on in. It's curious, how stale these lectures seem, after a year. Have to refurbish them entirely." He slipped the sheets into a manila cover. "That one's ready, at least."
Catherine sat on the corner of his desk, her fingers sliding through a strand of her hair.
"Did you have a good trip?" she asked. Anything, to banish this separateness. "I haven't heard a word about it."
"You weren't home. I was bursting with news this morning."
"Can't you remember a little of it?"
"I might try." Charles leaned back, his thumbs caught in his belt. As he talked, Catherine listened for the under-tones, so much more significant than the events. It had been a good trip. The men had received him rather flatteringly, praised his latest monograph, shown interest in the new psychological clinic. He had a comfortable, well-nourished look; around his eyes, with the prominent jutting of socket above, the lines were quite smoothed away. Catherine looked at him, at the strong, slightly projecting chin, at the smooth hard throat above the neat collar.
"Davitts hinted at an opening in a middle-western college," he said, finally. "Head of the department. I told him I was in line for promotion here, if I got this next book done this year. He seemed to think he had something better up his sleeve."
"Away from New York?"
"Ye-up." Charles was blandly indifferent. "Nothing definite, you know. Just hints."
"Would you even consider it?" Catherine's hands, even her hair against her fingers, felt cold.
"It never does any harm to let people offer you things. And I don't know—" He was drawing idle triangles on the manila covers of his lecture. "Sometimes a position like that means much more power, prominence, reputation, than anything here could. Would you mind?" He was eying her carefully. "Be better for the children." And after a pause. "Or would you have to stay here—for your job?"
"Have you just made this up—for a joke?" Catherine slipped to her feet. "Are you just teasing me?"
"Not a bit. That's what Davitts said."
"Charles!" Her fingers doubled into a fist at the edge of the desk. "Don't lurk around! Let's talk it out. You don't like it, my working? You"—she stared at him—"you don't mean you'd hunt for a job somewhere, in a little town, where I couldn't work, just to——"
"Good Lord! Now why go off at that tangent, just because I gave you a bit of news. Didn't I say I wanted you to have what you wanted?"
"But you don't like it, do you?"
"Damn it, give me time to get used to it. It's all fired queer to go off without any one caring, and come back to a deserted house. I'll probably get used to it, but give me time."
"Do you want me to give it up?"
"Are you tired of it already?"
"Do you really care to know how I feel about it?" Catherine's voice was low and tense. "I feel as if I'd escaped from solitary confinement. At hard labor, too! I feel as if I could hold up my head and breathe. And then, underneath, I feel you pulling at me, wresting me back. Oh, you say you don't mind, but——"
"Catherine, see here." Charles stood up and leaned toward her. "I—I haven't meant to be a hog. But a man has a kind of knock-out, to find he isn't enough, with his home and all. Here, let's forget it. I've had a hard week-end, and last week was a fright. That's all."
"It's not that you aren't enough." Catherine flung herself at that phrase. "You know about that! Any more than I'm not enough, for you. There's more to you than love, isn't there? Why isn't there more to me? If you'd only see——"
"The only thing that bothers me is the children. Now, take Letty——"
"But I have left them with Flora many times. I'vehad to. And they bump their heads when I'm home. That's not the point. It's your blaming me."
"All right!" Charles threw up his hands in a sweep of mocking surrender. "I won't say a word."
"I want you to say it, not hint it."
"Anything you like." His hands closed on her shoulders. "Here, you haven't kissed me since I came home."
There were sudden wild tears under Catherine's lids, and she thought desperately, oh, not that! Not kisses as the only way—to touch, to reach each other!
"Didn't even kiss me good-by. Nice kind of wife." Charles pushed her chin up with a firm finger. "There now——"
"You didn't give me a chance." Catherine was quiet, thrusting under her rebellion. Suddenly, through her misted lashes, she saw just for a flash, an echo of that wary, investigatory glance. She swung out over a great abyss. Bill had seen him, with Miss Partridge. Nothing to that, surely, except this feeling, which was not jealousy, but fear of what he was defending himself against.
"I wanted to find you, but I didn't like to come up to the Bureau," he was saying. "So I went down to the clinic and talked over things with Stella Partridge." The brisk, matter-of-course words drew her back sharply from the abyss. "It took the edge off, not finding you here, this morning." He was threading his fingers through her hair.
"You're spoiled rotten!" Catherine could laugh at him now. He meant that for his apology, and she would let it lift her out of fear and hurt.
V
The week settled into a steady march. Flora had taken on the marketing, Miss Kelly had agreed never to leave the house until Catherine arrived, Charles was amiably preoccupied with the rush of the opening semester. It hadn't been so hard to adjust things, thought Catherine. Takes a little planning—I was too impatient.
Her work at the office was focussed on the Saturday conference. She wanted her preliminary analysis in tables and graphs clear and adequate enough to present to the men; there would be discrepancies between the apparent system and the actual practice in the state which the commissioner could point out. She hadn't time to complete the study of the normal schools; they were astonishingly numerous and varied.
"It's just hit or miss, this whole educational business," she said to Dr. Roberts, on Friday afternoon, as they talked over the material. "No central direction or purpose."
"Too much imitation and tradition." Dr. Roberts had his pointed beard between the pages of a catalogue. He lifted it toward her, his bright blue eyes and sharp nose eager on the scent of an idea. "Too little conscious plan. People are afraid of thought. Trial-and-error is the working basis. But that's slow, and you have this heavy crust of tradition."
"I'd like to scrap it all and make a fresh beginning!"
"There never is such a thing as a fresh beginning. You have to work from what exists."
Catherine pushed aside a pile of catalogues, her face alight with scorn.
"But why, if it's stale and wrong? Take these normal schools. Young people, girls mostly, go there, because they have to have a diploma to teach. What do they get? Things out of books. They learn to teach paragraphs of geography, not to teach children. It would be ridiculous, except that it is terrible. Perhaps it's because men run them."
"Women"—Dr. Roberts smoothed his beard—"are popularly supposed to submit more docilely to tradition."
"Supposed by whom?" Catherine's hand sent a catalogue banging to the floor. "That's been a convenient way of holding their wildness under, I think." She felt her mind throw up swift thoughts that burst and scattered like Roman candles. She couldn't gather the splintering brightness. "We've had, as women, too small an orbit."
The stenographer thrust her bobbed head into the door, to say that Dr. Roberts was wanted on the telephone. Should she connect his party here?
"No, I'll take him on my own 'phone." He rose, smiling. "We'll have to thrash this out to-morrow," he said, "or some day. Don't frighten our committee to-morrow, though, by announcing that you are wild, will you?"
Catherine, erect in her seat on the bus top, the golden October air fresh on her cheeks, went on coruscating. It was true, that about women. They felt that children were the most important part of life. So they stayed with them, cared for them, held under all their own—was it wildness?—bending it to food and clothes and order—and then? They threw their children out intothe nets laid by men, not viciously, not deliberately, but with all that pompous weight of tradition. The way things should be done, learned, thought. If you could scrap it all and begin—where? With something, a kernel of intelligence, what children are, and what you wish them to grow into, what will nourish that growth. Charles was on that track, with his new clinic, and all his work.
As she climbed down from the bus and started up the hill toward Broadway, her thoughts still sparkled, spreading out in great circles of light about her, vague projects, shadowy schemes, beautiful structures of clarity and sanity for the world, for the children.
"What a stride!"
The circles contracted swiftly, and she turned.
"Bill! Hello." She emerged slowly, shreds of the dream still shining. They fell into step.
"How goes it?" His glance veered to her face. "You look as if you'd had your salary raised."
"Better than that." Catherine wanted to break into his dark, withdrawn glance; she wanted, suddenly, to draw him into this glittering mood. "Bill, it's wonderful. I feel my mind budding! It wasn't dead. Like a seed potato—shoots in every direction, out of every wrinkle!"
"You look it." Bill nodded. "I saw that you walked on air."
"I've been recasting the universe." She laughed, as they waited a moment for passing traffic. "That's better than building bridges, isn't it?"
"It is less confining."
They went quickly past the subway kiosk, dodging the home-pouring workers, past the peanut stand panting warm and odorous at the corner, to the wide hill of stepsin front of the University library. A flower vender thrust his bunches of roses at them.
"I want some!" Catherine dug into her purse.
"Aren't they stale?" Bill watched her fasten the creamy, buff-pink buds to her coat.
"Probably. But they look fresh now." Catherine swung into step again. Queer, how that occasional little side glance of Bill's gave assent to her mood, dipped into it, recognized it, without a word.
"I suppose," she said, as they rounded the corner of Amsterdam, "that I can't stay on this level. It's too high. But I've just reached it to-day. Assurance, and a long sight into what I can do."
"There's always, unfortunately, another day." Bill frowned slightly. "Another mood. But you seem to have hit a fair wind. Henrietta told me that Miss Kelly was panning out well."
"Yes." The view ahead, of the dipping, climbing avenue, with its familiar shops, its familiar clatter of the cobblestones, was sharp as a background of relief against which to-day stood out. "I know what I feel like, Bill. If you want to know."
"I do. Always."
Simple words, but Catherine heard them with faint wonder. Bill was never personal. His profile, with its long nose and lean cheeks, like a horse, was reassuring.
"Well, then. Did you ever watch a treadmill? Round and round, all your effort taking you nowhere but around? That's where I've been. That's what I've done. The same circle, day after day. And now I'm out of it, on a long, straight road. Going somewhere!"
"I hope it's straight." They had reached the apartmententrance, and Bill shook his head at Catherine's suggestion that he come in.
"No road is really straight. But as long as it goes somewhere!"
Bill looked at her; Catherine thought he started to speak, and then refused the words.
"Spencer is longing for your next call," she said.
"I'll drop in some evening. Henry's been busy."
"Don't wait for her, then. Just come."
At the door Miss Kelly met Catherine.
"Letty hasn't seemed quite well," she said. "I put her to bed."
"What's wrong?" Catherine stared at Miss Kelly's bland, pink face. "She isn't really sick?"
"It's hard to tell, with a child." Miss Kelly followed Catherine down the hall. "It may be just indigestion."
Letty, her small face flushed and scowling, wrinkled her eyes at her mother.
"Don't want to go to bed. Want to see my Muvver."
"Here I am, Letty." Catherine touched her cheek, felt for her wrist.
"She has scarcely any temperature," announced Miss Kelly. "Just a degree. But I thought——"
"Surely, she's better in bed. Did she have any supper?"
"Broth."
"Don't wait, Miss Kelly. I know you wish to go."
"Well, since you are here."
Catherine removed her coat and hat. The roses dropped to the floor.
"Pretty!" Letty reached for them.
"I'll put them in water." Catherine came back with a vase. "Do you feel sick anywhere, chick?"
"Letty not sick. Get up." Catherine caught the wiggling child, and pulled the blanket into place.
"You lie still, and mother'll be back presently. I must see to dinner for Daddy."
She hurried into the kitchen. Spencer and Marian were under the dining room table, playing menagerie, and unable to answer her except in fierce growls. Charles hadn't come in. Probably Letty wasn't really sick. She had little flurries of indisposition; perhaps she had eaten something.
Charles came in, with a jovial bang of the door, and a shout, "Ship ahoy! Who's at the helm?"
"Don't tell him, Muvver." Marian's head butted the tablecloth aside. "Sh!"
"'Lo, Cath!" He swung her up to tiptoe in his exuberant hug. "Where are the kids?"
"Grrrr!" and "Woof!" The table cloth waggled.
"Ah, wild animals under foot!" Charles gave an elaborate imitation of a big game hunter, creeping toward the table, sighting along his thumbs. "Biff, bang!" He reached under, seized a leg, and drew out Marian, giggling and rolling. "Bagged one! Bang, bang! Got the panther!" He had Spencer by the collar. "Teddy, the great hunter!" He straddled them, his arms folded, while they shrieked in delight.
A wail from the doorway, "Letty play! Shoot Letty!"
Catherine ran past them, gathering the child into her arms. Her hand, closing over the small feet, found them dry, hot, and the weight of the child seemed to scorch through her blouse against her shoulder.
"What's the matter with my baby?" Charles followed them. "Let me have her, Catherine."
"She's supposed to be in bed." Catherine covered her with the blanket. "Now you stay there, young lady! Mother will come in soon."
She touched the scarlet cheek, her fingers feather soft. Letty's eyelids, heavy and dark, drooped, and her protest broke off.
Catherine drew Charles into the hall.
"Would you call up Dr. Henrietta? I think her fever is coming up."
"Is she sick?" Charles looked aggrieved at this intrusion upon his mood.
"I hope not." Catherine gave him a little push. "Call her up, and see when she can come in. I'll have dinner on directly."
The wild animals were washed and combed, and dinner served when Charles came out of the study.
"She's not in. Probably at dinner. I left word with the clerk. But I say, Catherine. I got tickets for 'Liliom' to-night." He looked blankly disappointed. "You said you wanted to see it, and I was downtown. Good seats, too."
"Oh, Charles!"
"And I even called up that girl we had last year, to stay with the children. That graduate student, you know."
"Well." Catherine lifted her hands in a little gesture of resignation. "If Letty's sick— But 'Liliom'! I do want to go."
"Maybe she'll be all right when she's asleep."
But she wasn't. Eight o'clock came, with Charles fidgeting like a lamprey eel on a hook, and no word from Henrietta. Letty was asleep, her hands twitching restlessly. Catherine shook her head, as she read the thermometer.
"I can't go, Charles. Almost a hundred and one."
"What ails her? Has that woman you've got been feeding her pickles?"
The door bell rang. Charles, with a mutter of "Dr. Henry, perhaps," rushed to the door. He came back.
"It's Miss Brown, come to stay the evening. What shall I tell her?"
"Tell her I can't go." Catherine was abrupt. She was disappointed and she was fighting off a sturdily growing fear about the next day,—and she resented Charles's air of injury.