"I hate to, after I begged her to come in."
Catherine brushed hastily past him and went to the door. Miss Brown, a plump, pale, garrulous woman of middle age, a southerner, waited.
"Letty, the baby, isn't very well," explained Catherine. "Nice of you to come in so promptly. Some other night, perhaps." And presently the door could be closed upon Miss Brown's profuseness of pity.
Charles was glooming about his study.
"When you leave them all day for your job," he said, "I should think you might——"
"No, you shouldn't think!" Catherine laughed at him. "You're as bad as Spencer, little boy!"
The bell rang again.
"That's Henry!" Catherine hurried to the door, and opened it to Stella Partridge's little squirrel smile and extended hand.
"Good evening, Mrs. Hammond. I told Dr. Hammond I'd let him have this outline when it was finished."
"Won't you come in, Miss Partridge?" Catherine heard Charles coming. He lounged beside her, hands in pockets.
"No, thank you. I just brought this outline, Dr. Hammond." She handed him the envelope.
There was a moment of silence, in which Catherine felt a tugging at her will, as if Charles tried to bend her to some thought of his. She glanced at him, still sulky.
"I have it," she said. "Why don't you take Miss Partridge to your show, Charles? If she would like it. Have you seen 'Liliom,' Miss Partridge?"
"Letty is indisposed," said Charles, "thus interfering, after the fashion of children, with her parents' plans."
"Can't I stay with her?" Miss Partridge opened her dark eyes very wide.
"Mrs. Hammond is punctilious."
Catherine withdrew a step. If Charles added another word—she could hear the rest of his sentence, about her leaving them all day! But he merely added, "Would you care to go, Miss Partridge?"
"Ought you to leave Mrs. Hammond, if the baby is ill?"
"It's always a relief to be rid of a disappointed man, Miss Partridge." Catherine was thinking: how disdainful that cold, hard voice makes her words sound! "Letty isn't seriously ill, but I want the doctor to look at her. I shall be happier here."
Miss Partridge seated herself in the living room, and Catherine, after a glance at Letty, and a moment of search for the tie Charles wished, sat down opposite her. She was charming to look at, Catherine realized; a soft, fawn colored suit, exquisitely tailored over her slender, slopingshoulders; a long brown wing across the smart fawn hat, a knot of orange at her throat. She drew off her wrinkled long gloves, and revealed a heavy topaz on her little finger.
"Your work, Mrs. Hammond? You are finding it interesting?"
"Very." Catherine felt as expansive as an exposed clam.
"Mr. Hammond was saying you had some kind of educational research in hand."
"Yes." Was that Letty, crying? Charles came in, rubbing his sleeve over his hat.
"I don't need glad rags, do I, since you aren't in evening dress?"
"No gladder than those." Miss Partridge rose.
Catherine stood at the living room door, listening for the sound of the elevator. Charles came rushing back.
"You're sure you'll be all right?" That was his little flicker of contrition. "I don't like to leave you this way, but the tickets might as well be used."
"Have a good time." Catherine kissed him lightly.
"Wish it was you, going!" He was in fine fettle again, offering a small oblation before his departure.
Letty woke, complaining that she wanted a drink. Catherine sat beside her, smoothing the silky fair hair, until she slept again. Her forehead didn't feel so parched. But Catherine went to the telephone and called Henrietta. Bill answered.
"Oh, Catherine! Henry got your message. She had to stop at the hospital first. She'll be in. Is Letty really sick?"
"I hope not. But I need Henrietta's assurance."
"She'll be along."
Spencer looked up from his books.
"I think Daddy ought to stay home if you have to," he said, frowning.
"Daddy isn't any use if the children are sick," announced Marian, with dignity. "Is he, Muvver?"
"Not as a nurse," said Catherine. "But he's a great comfort to me, you know."
"How?" Spencer was still accusing.
"Just being." Catherine smiled at him. Spencer had a curious way of reaching out, thrusting fine feelers about him, investigating subtleties of relationship. He was staring at her intently, as if he pondered her last words. Then with a sigh, postponing judgment, he closed his book.
"My home work's all done, and I did it alone, because Letty is sick. Is that a comfort to you, Mother?"
"It is." Catherine was grave.
When they had gone to bed, Marian in Catherine's room, so that Letty would not disturb her, Catherine moved restlessly about the apartment. She was thinking about them, her children. What they needed. More than food and shelter, more than physical safety. They needed a safety in thefeelingaround them. A warm, clear sea, in which they could float, unaware that the sea existed. Tension, ugly monsters, frighten them, disturb them out of their own little affairs. Spencer especially, but Marian, too. Letty was such a baby, still, but she was growing; she was still turned inward. Catherine wandered to the door and listened. She was breathing too rapidly. If Henry would only come!
She sat down at the window, staring out at the dullyellow glow which held the city as a mass and dimmed the stars. You can't pretend for them, she thought. They catch the reality under the surface. But that perfect safety of feeling—who has it! She felt herself opposed to Charles, struggling with him, toward that intense calm that might hold the children free and unaware. Perhaps some women could attain that—she was abject, despairing—women who could lose their own struggling selves. But what then? The children grew up, and made their own circles, never reaching anything but this going-on. Surely somewhere, along the way, there should be something beside immolation for the future, otherwise why the future? Marian, Letty—I can't do it, she thought. Drown myself to make that quiet, white peace. I won't drown. I keep bobbing up, trying to be rescued. Something in me, shrieking. If I can rescue that shrieking something, and silence it, then surely there's more in me, more poise, more love, to wrap them—no, not wrap them, to float them in. If Charles will help!
She had a sharp vision of Charles and Stella Partridge, sitting side by side in the darkened theater, their eyes focussed on the brilliant fantasy of the stage. Charles had been delighted to go. He didn't have play enough, these last years. I wish I were beside him,—her hand reached out emptily, as if to grasp his. Good for him, seeing other people, other women. They stimulate him, even if I don't like them. She caught, like a reflection in a mirror, the tone of that short walk from the bus with Bill. Something exciting about that—an encounter with another person.
A ring of the bell; Dr. Henrietta at last.
Catherine stood behind her, as she examined Letty,drowsily fretful at the disturbance. What strong, white, competent fingers Henry had! They went into the living room.
"She's not very sick." Henrietta sank into a chair and snapped open her cigarette case. "I'm not sure—tell better to-morrow. I'll come in early. You better keep the other children away from her. It might be something contagious."
"She's had measles." Catherine was openly dismayed, as the bugbear of contagion rose. "Good land, if she has, it means they all get it, just like a row of dominoes. Henry! What shall I do?"
"Oh, get a nurse and quarantine them. You don't need to stay in. Charles doesn't."
"I couldn't."
"Well, wait until to-morrow. May be just indigestion. I've given her a dose for that." Dr. Henrietta stretched in her chair, crossing her ankles, slim and neat in heavy black silk above small, dull pumps. "We don't want your career busted up yet. How's it going? And where's friend husband?"
"I sent him off to the theater with Miss Partridge." Catherine grinned. "He had the tickets, and was sure' I needn't stay with Letty."
"I never yet saw a man who was worried about his child when he had something he wanted to do." Henry puffed busily. "They regard children as pleasant little amusements, but put them away if they bother."
"Charles isn't quite like that——"
"No defense necessary. I'm just offering an observation. Sorry I had to be late. I stopped to watch Lasker do a Cæsarian on a case of mine. Beautiful job. Buthow's your work? Bill said he ran into you, spoke of your looking well."
"My job is fine." Catherine saw, at a great distance, the mood in which she had come home. "Henrietta, I must go down to-morrow. There's a conference. I've been getting ready for it all the week."
"Miss Kelly will be here, won't she?"
"It's Saturday. She'll have to take Spencer and Marian—although I suppose Letty has exposed them already."
"She may have nothing at all, you know. I'll come in as early as possible. What time is this conference?"
"Ten."
"Um. I'll try to make it. I promised to stop in at the hospital. Charles can stay, can't he, if I should be detained?"
"Don't you let her have anything that will quarantine me! If I am thrown out now, I'll never get back."
"All righty." Henrietta rose, shaking down her skirt. "I won't." She ground out her cigarette in the ash tray, with a shrewd upward glance at Catherine. "You go to bed. You look too frayed. This is just a first hurdle, you know. I'll come in before nine to-morrow. But you make Charles stay, if I should be later."
VI
Catherine woke into complete alertness. Charles had come in. She heard his cautious step in the hall. Letty was sleeping easily, her breathing soft and regular again. Catherine slipped noiselessly out of the room.
"Hello!" She brushed into Charles at the door."Marian's in my bed," she whispered. "Have a good time?"
"Oh, fair." Charles yawned. "How's Letty?"
"Asleep. Tell me about it in the morning. We might wake her."
In the morning Catherine was fagged. All night the awareness of Letty had kept her at the thin edge of sleep, drawn out by the faintest stirring. The child was sitting up in bed, now, clamoring for her doll, her bwekkust, and her go-duck; her cheeks were pink, but they seemed flower-cool to Catherine's fingers.
"Let's see if you have any speckles, Letty." She peeled the night dress down; one round red spot in the shell-hollow of her knee. "Is that a speckle, Letty Hammond, or a mosquito bite!" Letty gurgled deliciously as Catherine's fingers tickled. "Let's see your throat. No, wider? Does it hurt?"
"Uh huh. Hurt Letty." Letty's arms were tight around her neck, and she bounced vigorously up and down on her pillow.
"Here, stop it." Catherine pinioned her firmly. "Where does it hurt?"
"Hurt Letty. Here." Letty sat down with a plump, and pointed at her toe.
"Well, you don't look sick, I must say. But that spot—" Catherine imprisoned her in the night dress again, and tucked her firmly under the blanket. "I'll bring Matilda, and you can put her to bed with you. Dr. Henrietta's coming to see you soon."
Marian appeared at the door.
"Daddy's asleep and I didn't know he was in hisbed." She giggled. "I most woke him up jumping on him."
"Hurry and wash, dear. And don't come in with Letty, please."
Catherine sighed a little as she hurried to thrust herself into the shafts of the morning.
Letty's frequent interruptions, and Charles's reluctance to wake; the discovery that there were no oranges; the demoniac speed of the clock—it was after eight when they sat down to breakfast. Catherine drank her coffee, and hurried off to dress.
Flora came in. Catherine heard her, with relief, offering to make fresh toast for Charles. Miss Kelly appeared. She was calmly solicitous as Catherine explained Dr. Henrietta's visit. "Of course, I couldn't go into quarantine," she said, "on account of my mother."
"I understand. If you'll just take the other children outdoors for the morning——"
They had gone. It was nine, and no Dr. Henrietta. Catherine fastened a net carefully over her coiled hair, brushed her hat, poking at the limp bow of ribbon, and then went slowly to the study, where Charles was rummaging through a drawer of his desk.
"You have no classes this morning, have you?" she began.
"No, I haven't. Do you know where I put that outline Miss Partridge left?"
"Here it is." Catherine lifted it from beneath the evening paper. "Charles, Henry is coming in. She said as early as possible. I can't wait for her. Would you mind?"
"What's she coming for? Isn't Letty all right?"
"I don't know. She has a red spot. Henry thought she might have something—scarlatina——"
"I thought they'd had 'em all, those red diseases."
"Her fever is down. I think she's not sick. But Henrietta wanted to be sure. Would you mind—waiting till she comes?"
"Stay here this morning?" Charles looked up, an abrupt frown between his eyes. "I can't, Catherine. I can't play baby tender. I've got a meeting."
"So have I." Catherine stood immobile in the doorway. "A very important one. Those men from the West are here. At ten. I am to present the work I've been doing."
"Can't Flora keep an eye on Letty till Henry comes?"
"I think one of us ought to be here."
"Good Lord, Catherine! I have to meet the committee on choice of dissertation subjects. Do you want me to telephone them that I have to stay home with the baby?"
"You couldn't stay just an hour?"
"Be reasonable, Catherine. I can't make myself ridiculous."
"No?" Catherine stared at him an instant. Then she turned and left him.
He followed her into the living room, where she stood at the window.
"Call up your mother," he suggested. "She can probably drop in."
"Why," said Catherine evenly, "does it make you more ridiculous than me? That dissertation committee meets a dozen times this fall. Letty is your child, isn't she? Don't tell me I'm her mother!"
"I expected something of this sort, when you announced that you had to have a career." Charles walked briskly in front of her, stern and determined. "We might as well fight it out now. Do you want me to take your place? You said not. Do be reasonable."
"I'm so reasonable it hurts." Catherine's laugh was brittle. "Go on, to your meeting. I'll stay, of course."
"Well, really, I'm afraid you'll have to." Charles hesitated, and then added, gruffly, "It's unfortunate it happened just this way." His gesture washed his hands of the affair.
As he strolled importantly out of the room, Catherine's hand doubled in a cold fist against her mouth. He can't see, she thought. There's no use talking.
When he had gone, Catherine hovered a moment at the telephone. No use calling her mother; she wouldn't be able to come up from Fiftieth Street in time to do any good. She sat down at the desk, her hands spread before her, her eyes on her wrist watch. Henrietta might still come. The minutes were thick, cold liquid, dripping, dripping. Letty's loud call summoned her, and she hunted up the dingy cotton duck, while that slow, cold drip, drip continued. Half past nine. The minutes split into seconds, heavy, cold, dripping seconds. Time could drive you mad, thought Catherine, while the seconds dripped upon her, if you waited for it long enough.
It was almost ten when she telephoned the Bureau.
Dr. Roberts' neat accents vibrated at her ear.
"I am sorry," she said, "but I cannot get away. One of the children is ill. I've been waiting for the doctor. You have the final sheets and graphs I made, haven't you? There's a list of questions and notes in the leftdrawer of my desk. I regret this. If you wish any explanation of the graphs, please call me."
He sounded abrupt, irritated, under his perfunctory regret. As Catherine hung away her hat and coat, she felt a cold, heavy weight back of her eyes, deep in her throat. Time had lodged there! I can't sit down and cry, she thought. No wonder he is angry. It's my business to be on hand. She had once, swimming at low tide, found herself in a growth of kelp, the strong wet masses tangling about her frightened struggles. Charles had dragged her out, to clear green water and safety. She laughed, and pressed her fist again against her mouth. He wouldn't drag her out of this tangle, not he!
She sat beside Letty, reading to her, when Dr. Henrietta finally came.
"Catherine! You stayed!" Her round face set in dismay. "I tried once to call you. That baby died, the one we delivered last night. I've been working there."
"I knew you'd come when you could." Catherine pushed her chair away from the bed. Henrietta pulled off her coat, pushed up her cuffs from her firm wrists, and bent over Letty.
"She's all right," she said, presently. "Just a touch of stomach upset last night. That's good."
"Ducky sick." Letty waved her limp bird at Henrietta.
"Keep him very quiet, then." Henrietta poked the duck down beside Letty, and shook herself briskly into her coat.
Catherine followed her into the hall.
"I might as well have gone down to the office." She was ironic.
"Exactly. I'm awfully sorry, Catherine, that I am so late. It's almost noon, isn't it? I thought I could keep life in that little rag." Her eyes looked hot and tired. "But I couldn't. Just keep Letty from tearing around too much to-day. She'll be sound as a whistle to-morrow again."
"Well, at least we escaped a plague." Catherine leaned against the wall, inert, dull.
"Wouldn't Charles stay?" Henrietta peered at her. "Too busy, eh? Well, Monday you'll be free as air again."
"I wonder."
"Now, Catherine, don't be so serious. A year from now you won't know you weren't there!"
"It's not just that, Henry. It's the whole thing." Catherine flung open her hands. "Am I all wrong, to try it?"
"You know what I think. Here, put on your hat and come out in the sunshine. Haven't you some marketing to do?"
"No. Flora does it. But I will go to the corner with you."
Flora could keep an eye on Letty. Catherine hurried for her wraps, and joined Henrietta at the elevator.
"You've had a horrid morning, haven't you?" she said, swinging up from her inner concentration. "The poor baby——"
"If we can pull the mother through. She's been scared for months. She doesn't know, yet."
They stood at the corner, the clatter of the street bright about them.
"I've another call at Ninetieth. I'll ride down." Henrietta signaled the car. "Buck up, Cathy. It's all part of life, anyway. Death—" She shrugged. "That's the queer thing." Her placid mask had slipped a little. "Pleasant words to leave with you, eh?" She jeered at herself. "So long!"
As Catherine recrossed the street, she hesitated, glancing back into the shade behind the iron palings of the little park. Was that Charles, just within the gate, and that slim, elegant, tan figure beside him? She turned and fled. She wouldn't see them, not now. Not until she had fought through this thicket of resentment. After all, she had known, all the time, that what fight there was to make she must make unaided. The sun was warm and golden, and there came Spencer and Marian, shouting out, "Moth-er!" as they chased ahead of Miss Kelly.
"Oh, we had a nice time." Marian danced at her side, clinging to her arm. "Miss Kelly told us a new game."
How well they looked, and Miss Kelly, trudging to catch up with them, was serene and smiling. Letty wasn't sick. It was all a part of life. She could manage it, everything, someway!
Miss Kelly, puffing and warm, was delighted with the news about Letty.
"I was trying," she said, "to figure out some way about mother, so I wouldn't have to desert you." Catherine's quick smile saw Miss Kelly as a sunlit rock, equable, sustaining.
Flora shooed the children out of the kitchen. She was engrossed in the ceremonial preparation of stuffed peppers with Spanish sauce. Catherine, preparing orangejuice for Letty, was secretly amused at the elaborate rites. Not until Flora had closed the oven door on the pan did she look up at Catherine. Then——
"Gen'man called you up, Mis' Hammond. I plumb forgot to tell you. He pestered me 'bout where you was, and I told him you was out for the air."
"Who?" Catherine poured the clear juice in to a tumbler. "Did he——" She turned quickly. "Who was it?"
"Lef' his number. I put it on the pad."
Catherine flew into the study, deaf to Letty's shrill call. It was the Bureau. Her voice, repeating the number, was imperative. She had forgotten that Dr. Roberts might call. The whir of the unanswered instrument pounded on her ear drum. After one. The Bureau was deserted. Whatwouldhe think! Why, it looked—she pushed the telephone away, dull color sweeping up to her hair. It looked as if she had lied. But it had been so late when Henrietta had come that any thought of the conference had been worn down. She would have to explain, Monday, as if she had been caught malingering.
"Hello." Charles stood at the door, uncertainty in his greeting. "What's the verdict? Pest house?"
"No." Catherine was jamming the whole dreadful morning out of sight, stamping on the cover—"Henry says it was just indigestion. She's all right."
"Did you get down to your meeting?"
Catherine shook her head.
"Now that's a shame," Charles advanced tentatively. "I hoped Henry would come in time."
Easy to say that now, thought Catherine. Then—I won't be ugly. I can't endure it.
"I felt an awful brute." Charles threw his arm over her shoulders. "But you saw how it was."
"Oh, I saw!" An ironic gleam in Catherine's eyes.
"And here Letty didn't need you, anyway. You might even have gone last night."
"I must see to her lunch." Catherine twisted out of his arm, adding with a touch of malice—"You know you had a good time."
"Oh, fair." Charles was indifferent. "Left me sort of done this morning. Miss Partridge wanted me to thank you for her pleasant evening."
"I thought I saw you at the gate just now," said Catherine.
"Yes. I just ran into her on my way home."
"Don't look at me that way!" Catherine cried out sharply.
"What way?" Charles expanded his chest, bristling.
"As if you expected to see me—suspectingyou!"
"Well, good Lord, you sounded as if you thought I'd spent the morning with Stel—Miss Partridge."
"I hadn't thought so. Did you?"
"Of course not." Charles began, with elaborate patience. "I told you that dissertation committee—" Catherine's laugh interrupted him, and he stared at her. "I don't know what you're trying to do," he said slowly. "I'm sick of this guilty feeling that's fastened on me. Last night because I wanted you to go to the theater, this morning because I had to go to a legitimate meeting. You don't act natural any more."
Catherine went quickly back to him, her finger tips resting lightly against his shoulders.
"And so he deposited the blame where it wouldn'tbother him—on her frail shoulders!" Her eyes, mocking, brilliant in her pale face, met his sulky defiance. "Philander if you must, but don't act as if you'd stolen the jam!"
"I'm not philandering."
"No, of course he isn't." Catherine brushed her fingers across his cheek. "Not for an instant. Now come, luncheon must be ready."
"But I may!" His voice came determinedly after her, as she went into Letty's room, "if I don't have more attention paid to me at home!"
VII
Saturday, Sunday, Monday morning again. Catherine, shivering a little in the wind from the gray river, as the bus lumbered down the Drive, tried to escape the clutter of thoughts left from the week-end. She had borrowed twenty-five dollars from Charles that morning, for Miss Kelly. She had pretended not to see his eyebrows when she laid the market bills in front of him. Flora had said, when Catherine suggested more discretion in shopping: "Yes'm, I'll make a 'tempt. But charging things in a grocery store jest stimulates my cooking ideas."
Perhaps I'll have to take back the shopping. A gust caught her hat, wheeled it half around. And clothes! I've got to have some. How? I won't have a cent left out of that first check. It's like an elephant balancing on a ball, or a tight-rope walker without his umbrella, this whole business.
Last night, when her mother had come in, and Bill and Dr. Henrietta, her mother with several amusing littlestories about the friend who had come from Peoria, Illinois, to spend the winter with her—too plump to fit easily into the kitchenette—Charles, with his affectionate raillery of Mrs. Spencer—her mother was fond of Charles. But he needn't have made a jest of Saturday morning, and his refusal to give up his job to stay home with Letty. "That's what poor men are coming to, I'm afraid," her mother had told him. Henrietta had jibed openly at him, so openly that only Mrs. Spencer's gentle and fantastic mockery had smoothed his feathers. And Bill had said nothing. Catherine drew her collar closely about her throat. She had found him looking at her, and in his glance almost a challenge, a recall of that brief walk on Friday. "I hope it's straight, your road," he had said then. She shrugged more deeply into her coat. Straight! Was it a road? Or merely a blind alley? Or a tight-rope, and she had to poise herself and juggle a hundred balls as she crossed; the house, the children, the bills, Charles, always Charles, and her work. She came back to the thought of Dr. Roberts and the explanation she must offer.
Dr. Roberts, however, seemed miraculously to need no explanation. He had called to tell her that the committee was to stay over Monday, and that she could meet the two men after all. With sudden release from the tension of the past days, Catherine moved freely into this other world, and her road seemed again straight. She was quietly proud of the conservative response her suggestions met; her mind was agile, cool, untroubled. There grew up a plan for a first-hand study of several of the normal schools. Someone from the Bureau might go west. Catherine brushed aside her sudden picture ofherself, walking among the bricks and stone, the people, for which these dust-grimed catalogues stood.
As she went home that evening, little phrases from the day ran like refrains. "A masterly analysis, Mrs. Hammond. Your point of view is interesting." And Dr. Roberts, after the men had gone—"I call this a most encouraging meeting, Mrs. Hammond. Sometimes the personal equation is, well, let us say, difficult. But you have tact."
Oh, it's worth any amount of struggle, she thought. Any amount! I'll walk my tight-rope, even over Niagara. And keep my balls all flying in the air!
BLIND ALLEYS
I
Margaret and Catherine were lunching together in a new tea room, a discovery of Margaret's. The Acadian, Acadia being indicated in the potted box at the windows, the imitation fir trees on the bare tables, and the Dresden shepherdess costume of the waitresses.
"It's a relief, after St. Francis every day," said Catherine. "The soup of the working girl grows monotonous."
"Hundreds of places like this." Margaret beckoned to a waitress. "Our coffee, please, and cakes." The shepherdess hurried away. "Isn't she a scream," added Margaret, "with that sharp, gamin face, and those ear muffs, above that dress! Why don't you hunt up new places to eat?"
Catherine glanced about; sleek furs draped over backs of chairs, plump, smug shoulders, careful coiffures, elaborately done faces.
"The home of the idle rich," she said. "I can't afford it. I'm not a kept woman. Fifty cents is my limit, except when I go with you."
"You draw a decent salary." Margaret pulled the collar of her heavy raccoon coat up against a snow-laden draft from the opened door. "What do you spend it for? You haven't bought a single dud. Why, you don'tslip off your coat because the lining is patched. Does Charles make you give him your salary envelope?"
Catherine was silent and the shepherdess set the coffee service in front of Margaret.
"Well?" Margaret poured. "I'm curious."
"Only a rich man can afford a self-supporting wife," said Catherine lightly. "I was figuring it up last night. I've got to make at least a hundred a week."
"What for?" insisted Margaret.
"Everything. There's not a bill that isn't larger, in spite of anything that I can do. Food, laundry, clothes. You have no idea how much I was worth! As a labor device, I mean."
"Um." Margaret glinted over her mouthful of cake. "I always thought the invention of wives was a clever stunt."
"They can save money, anyway. I tried doing some of the things evenings, ironing and mending, but I can't."
"I should hope not!"
"Well, then, I have to pay for them. Charles can't. It wouldn't be fair."
"You look as if you were doing housework all night, anyway." Margaret's eyes gleamed with hostility. "Why can't the King take his share? You're as thin as a bean pole."
"Wait till you get your own husband, you! Then you can talk."
"Husband!" Margaret hooted. "Me? I'm fixed for life right now."
"They have their good points." Catherine rose, drawing on her gloves. Margaret paid the bill and tipped with the nonchalance of an unattached male.
"That's all right." Margaret thrust her hands deep into her pockets and followed her sister. She turned her nose up to sniff at the sharp wind, eddying fine snow flakes down the side street. "I know lots of women who prefer to set up an establishment with another woman. Then you go fifty-fifty on everything. Work and feeling and all the rest, and no King waiting around for his humble servant."
Catherine laughed.
"I'll try to bring up Spencer to be a help to his wife," she said.
"Oh, Spencer!" Margaret glowed. "He's a darling! Tell him I'm coming up some day to see him."
They walked swiftly down the Avenue; Catherine felt drab, almost haggard, worn down, by the side of Margaret's swinging, bright figure.
"How's your job?" she asked. "You haven't said a word about it."
"Grand." Margaret's smile had reminiscent malice. "You know, I've persuaded them to order new work benches for the main shop. I told you how devilish they were? Wrong height? Well, I cornered Hubbard last week. It was funny! I told him I'd found a terrible leak in his efficiency system. He's hipped on scientific efficiency. I tethered him and led him to a bench." She giggled. "I had him sitting there cutting tin before he knew where he was, and I kept him till he had a twinge of the awful cramp my girls have had. Result, new benches."
"You won't have half so much fun when you accomplish everything you want to, will you?"
"That's a hundred years from now, with me in thecool tombs." They stepped into the shelter of the elevator entrance to the Bureau. "I'm working now on some kind of promotion system. Of course, most of the girls are morons or straight f.m.'s, but there are a few who are better."
"What are 'f.m.'s'?"
"Feeble-mindeds. Like to do the same thing, simple thing, day after day. It takes intelligence to need something ahead." She grinned at Catherine. "They make excellent wives," she added. "Now if you didn't have brains, you'd be happy as an oyster in your little nest."
The splutter of motors protesting at the cold, the scurry of people, heads down into the wind, gray buildings pointing rigidly into a gray, low sky—Catherine caught all that as background for Margaret, fitting background. Margaret was like the city, young, hard, flashing.
"Of course, f.m.'s make rotten mothers," she was finishing. "In spite of the ease with which, as they say, they get into trouble."
"You know," Catherine's smile echoed the faint malice in her sister's as they stood aside for a puffing, red-nosed little man who bustled in for shelter—"I think you take your maternal instinct out on your job. Creating——"
"Maternal instinct! Holy snakes!" Margaret yanked her gloves out of her pockets and drew them on in scornful jerks. "You certainly have a sentimental imagination at times."
"That's why you don't need children," insisted Catherine. "Just as Henrietta Gilbert takes it out on other people's children."
"You make me sick! Drivel!" Margaret glowered, gave her soft green hat a quick poke, and stepped out ofthe lobby. "Good-by! You'll lose your job, maundering so!"
"Good-by. Nice lunch." Catherine laughed as she hurried for the waiting elevator.
She stood for a few minutes at the window of her office, before she settled down to the afternoon of work. There was snow enough in the air to veil the crawl of traffic far below, to blur the spires of the Cathedral. The clouds hung just above the buildings, heavy with storm. She would have to go home on the subway; no fun on the bus such an evening. Dim gold patches in distant windows—office workers needed light this afternoon. Her eyes dropped to the opposite windows. Revolving fussily before the great mirrors—how dull and white this snow-light made them—was a plump little man; the shade cut off his head, but his gestures were eloquent of concern about the fit of his shoulders.
Her window, looking out on the honeycombing of many windows, and down on the crawling traffic, and off across the piling roofs, had come to be a sort of watch tower. For more than two months now, she had looked out at the city. She had come to know the city's hints of changing seasons, hints more subtle, far less frank than the bold statements of growing things in the country. A different color in the air, altering the sky line; a different massing of clouds; a new angle for the sun through her window in the morning; a gradual stretching of the shadows on the roof tops. She stood there, gazing out at the terrific, impersonal whirl. If she could see the atoms, separately, each would be as fussy, as intimately concerned in some detail as little Mr. Plump opposite, pulling up his knee to twist at his trouser leg. And yet,out of that tiny squirming could grow this enormous, intricate whole.
The stenographer at the door drew her abruptly from the window.
"Oh, yes, Miss Betts. I wanted you to take these letters." She bent swiftly to her work.
She grimaced wryly as she was jammed and pushed through the door into the crowded local. Shoving feet, jostling bodies, wrists at the level of her eyes. Hairy wrists, chapped thin wrists, fat wrists, grubby, reaching up for straps; and the horrid odor of dirty wool, damp from the snow. A wrench, a grinding, and the terrific, clattering roar of the homeward propulsion began. She longed for the quiet isolation of the hour on top of the bus, in which she could swing into fresh adjustment. Lucky that heads were smaller than shoulders and set in the middle. The figure against her began to squirm, and her swift indignant glance found a folded newspaper worming up before her eyes. Friday, December 9. She stared at the date, its irking association just eluding her. The 9th. She set her lips in dismay as she caught her dodging thought. That reception, to-night! She had meant to buy fresh net for her dress, her one black evening dress—and Margaret's appearance had driven it out of her head. No room for her abortive shrug. Well, probably fresh net would have fooled no one.
At the sound of her key in the door, Marian rushed through the hall. Catherine, shivering a little at the sudden warmth after the windy blocks from the subway, bent to kiss her.
"Muvver!" Marian's eyes were roundly horrified."Spencer's run away. We can't find him anywhere!" Her voice quavered. "He's lost himself!"
"What do you mean!" Catherine thrust her aside and ran through the hall. Letty was clattering busily around the edge of the living room rug on her go-duck. "Where's Miss Kelly?"
"Kelly gone. Spennie gone. Daddy gone." Chanted Letty, urging her steed more violently.
"Flora!" Catherine went toward the kitchen, to meet Flora, her mouth wide and dolorous.
"He's done eluded 'em, Mis' Hammond," she said. "They been hunting hours an' hours."
"What happened?" Catherine was cold in earnest now, a gasping cold that settled starkly about her heart.
"He ain't come home after school. Miss Kelly, she took Marian and went over there, but they wasn't no one lef' there. Chillun all gone."
"Yes, Muvver, we went over three times, Miss Kelly and me, and he wasn't there, and the janitor said no children were there."
"But he always comes straight home." Catherine's hand was at her throat, as if it could melt the constriction there. "You didn't see him, Marian?"
"No." Marian flopped her hair wildly. "Miss Kelly was waiting for me, and Letty, and we had a walk, and he wasn't here——"
"Has Mr. Hammond been in?"
"Yessum, he's been in, and out, chasing around wild like."
"He knows, then?"
"He come home sort of early," explained Flora. Catherine shrank from the dramatic intensity of Flora's words."Came home, and foun' his child wasn't here. He's gone for the police."
The telephone rang, and Catherine hurried herself into the study.
"Yes?" Her voice was faint. "Yes? Who is it?"
"That you, Catherine?"
"Have you found him?" she cried.
"No." The wire hummed, dragging his voice off to remoteness. "Has Miss Kelly come back?"
"Where have you looked? I'll go hunt——"
"You stay there." Then, suddenly loud, "You might call up the hospitals. I've notified the police station. They are flashing the description all over town."
"Where are you now?" begged Catherine, but there was only silence, and the terminating click.
Flora was at her elbow.
"Ain't found him?" She clucked her tongue.
"You better go on home, Flora." Catherine couldn't look at her. She felt a ghoulish contamination, setting her mind afire with horrible pictures. Spencer, run down in the snowy street. Spencer—"I must stay here anyway."
Flora wavered. She wanted, Catherine knew, to see the end of this melodrama.
"Your own family will need you," she urged. "Go on."
Then, swiftly, to Marian, "Please keep Letty quiet. Mother wants to telephone."
She closed the door and pulled the telephone directory to the desk. How many hospitals there were! Hundreds—Has a little boy been brought in, injured? He is lost. Unless he were terribly hurt, he could have told you who he is. Has a little boy been brought in—yes?He's nine—no, not red hair. The wind yelled down the well outside the window. Surely he wouldn't be hurt, and not be found. Still and unmoving, in some dark street—oh, no! No! She clutched her arm against her breast, as her finger ran down the dancing column of numbers. Someone at the door. She listened, unable to stand up.
Miss Kelly came in, her face mottled with the cold, her hair in draggled wisps on her cheeks.
"I don't know where to look next," she said. "I hunted up the addresses of some of the boys he plays with, but they are all home, and haven't seen him since school, not one of them."
"When did you begin to hunt?"
"Immediately." Miss Kelly was dignified, sure of her lack of blame. "We waited here for him, just as we always do. I thought it was too cold for Marian and Letty to wait at the corner."
"He—he's always come straight home, hasn't he?" said Catherine, piteously.
"Always. That's why——" she stopped.
That's why, that's why—Catherine's mind picked up the words. That's why he must be hurt, unconscious somewhere, kidnaped—that little Italian boy who was found floating in the river—Spencer's face, white on black water—stop it! Not that!
"Can you stay to see that Letty goes to bed?" Catherine turned to her endless task. "I haven't called all the hospitals yet."
His gray eyes, long, with the wide space between, and the small, fine nose; fair boy's brows; mobile, eager lips. If I had been here, she thought, as she waited for thecurt official voice to answer,—Has a little boy been brought in? If I had been here—oh, if—if——
Finally she sat, staring at the ridiculous gaping mouthpiece. Where would they take him, if he were—dead. Wasn't there a morgue? The word twisted and plunged in her, a slimy thing. She would call the morgue. She heard Miss Kelly's firm voice, "No, you mustn't bother your mother, not now. Come and have your supper, Marian."
He couldn't be dead. That warm, hard, slender body—how absurd! Morbid. He was somewhere, just around the corner. Death, that's the queer thing. Who had said that? Henrietta. She would call her—and ask her.
Before she had given the number, the front door clattered, opened. Catherine pushed herself erect; she was stiff, rigid. She found herself in the hall. Charles, glowering, and in front of him, propelled by his father's hand on his shoulder, Spencer! She couldn't move, or speak.
"Well, here's the fine young man," said Charles.
Spencer wriggled under his hand. His eyes smoldered with resentment, and his mouth was sullen.
Catherine's hands yearned toward him. She mustn't frighten him, but just to touch him, to feel him!
"A great note!" Charles came down the hall, righteous anger on his face. "I called up the police and had them send out their signals."
"Where was he?" Catherine had him now; she lifted Charles's hand away and touched the boy. He was trembling—Charles had been rough!
"I was just playing," Spencer cried out, gruffly. "I didn't know you'd tell the police."
"You've been told to come straight home, haven't you? Tell your mother what you told me, sir!"
"Charles!" Catherine's flash at him was unpremeditated. "You needn't bully him!"
"Tell her!" roared Charles.
"I just said"—Spencer's words tumbled out, full of impotent fury and indistinct with tears—"I said—I said—I didn't want to come home to that old Kelly. I didn't want——"
"He said," remarked Charles coldly, "that he saw no use of coming home when his mother wasn't here."
"But where was he?" Catherine had her arm over his shoulder, in a protective gesture. "Where did you find him?"
"I heard his voice. As I came along Broadway, past that vacant lot. He was down behind the bill boards there, with some street gamins, doing the Lord knows what."
"We just built a fire, Moth-er." Spencer pressed against her. "I didn't know it was so late. We were bandits."
"Go on into your room, Spencer. You know you should come straight home."
"He ought to be punished," declared Charles, as the boy vanished in relieved haste.
"I judge you have been punishing him." Catherine stood between Charles and Spencer's closing door. "He was trembling, and almost crying, and he never cries."
"Did you want me to kiss him when I found him, after the way I've spent the afternoon?"
"You want to make him feel as bad as you have!" Catherine leaned against the wall. She was exhausted; her heart was beating in short, spasmodic jerks, as if she had run for miles.
"I suppose I was mad, clear through." Charles grinned, abashed. Then he stiffened again. "Devilish thing to do. I came home after some lecture notes, for a meeting, and I couldn't even go to the meeting."
Miss Kelly came into the hall. She had smoothed her hair into its usual neatness, and her face was roundly pink again.
"I am afraid I must go," she said. Her eyes inspected them, gravely. Catherine flushed; Miss Kelly had heard them squabbling and she was reproaching Catherine.
"I'm sorry you've been detained. I'll see that Spencer realizes how serious this is," she said.
When the door had closed on her sturdy back, Charles broke out, "If you'd been here, this wouldn't have happened. You heard what he said, didn't you?"
"Don't say that!" Catherine's exhaustion sent hot tears into her eyes.
But Charles had to unload his overcharged feelings somewhere.
"You might as well face the truth. If you care more for a paltry job than for your children—" He shrugged. "But you won't see it. I've got to have my dinner. We'll be late to that reception now. If I miss all my appointments because my wife works, I'll have a fine reputation."
Incredible! Catherine watched him clump down to the living room. He wanted to hurt her. She pressed her fingers, ice-cold, against her eyeballs. She wouldn't cry. He felt that way. Not just because he had been worriedabout Spencer. There was a heavy coil of resentment from which those words had leaped. And she had thought, for weeks now, that she had learned to balance on her tight-rope, and keep the balls smoothly in air. While under the surface, this!
"Can't we have dinner?" he called to her. "We really must hurry a little, Catherine."
She set the dinner silently on the table, avoiding the defiant glance she knew she would meet.
"Don't wait for me." She paused, a tumbler of milk in her hand. "I want to talk to Spencer."
Charles pulled out his watch and gazed at it impressively.
II
Catherine, sitting on the edge of her bed, drew on one silk stocking and gartered it. She lifted her head; when she bent over like that, faint nausea, like a green smear, rose through her body behind her eyelids. She shouldn't have eaten any dinner. Or was it just Charles, and his restrained disapproval—or Spencer. She sighed, thinking through her talk with Spencer. With insistent cunning he had offered as excuse, his dislike of Miss Kelly, his distaste for the house without Catherine. "I didn't think it was bad," he said. "I didn't do anything bad."
"Inconsiderate," suggested Catherine, looking at the stubborn head on the pillow. Safe! She couldn't scold him, and yet—"You didn't think how we would feel."
"Oh, I thought," said Spencer. "I thought you wouldn't know. And my father wasn't very con-sid-'rate." He thrust his head up indignantly. "He yanked me right away, and the fellows allsawhim."
Then Charles had called sharply, "Catherine! Are you dressing?" and she had, under pressure, resorted to a threat. She was ashamed of it. She drew on the other stocking, smoothing it regretfully. She had said, "If you won't promise to come home directly, I shall ask Miss Kelly to call for you at school."
Charles came in, bay rum and powder wafted with him, his face pink and solemn.
"Oh, I haven't put in your studs—" She made a little rush for his dresser, but he brushed her away.
"Please don't bother. You're not ready yourself."
Catherine stifled an hysterical giggle. Emotion in these costumes—Charles in barred muslin underwear, his calves bulging above his garters, and she in silk chemise—was funny! She lifted her black dress from its hanger and slipped it over her head. Well, it had dignity, of a dowdy sort, if it wasn't fresh. She stood in front of the long mirror, trying to crisp the crumpled net of the long draped sleeves. Her fingers caught; she had pumiced too hard at the ink on their tips—hollows at the base of her throat—try to drink more milk. Her skin had pale luster, against the black, but her face lacked color. "If this weren't a faculty party," she said, lightly, "I'd try rouge."
"Why doesn't that girl come?" asked Charles, his voice muffled by the elevation of his chin as he struggled with his tie. "Time, I should think."
"What girl?" Catherine turned from the mirror. "Oh—" her shoulders sagged in complete dismay.
"Miss Brown. You got her, didn't you?"
Catherine, a whirl of black net, was at the telephone. How could she have forgotten! "No, Morningside!"She waited. She had called once, that morning, and Miss Brown was out. She had meant—"Is Miss Brown in?" Charles was at the door, an image of funereal, handsome dignity. Miss Brown was not in. No, the voice had no idea when she would be in.
"Oh, say it!" Catherine's fingers pushed recklessly through her hair. "Say it, Charles!" He swung on his heel and disappeared.
Perhaps her mother—but no one answered that call, and Catherine remembered that Friday was the night for opera.
A voice in the hall, although she hadn't heard the doorbell. It was Bill.
"Going out, eh?"
"Apparently not." Charles was elaborately, fiendishly jovial. "I thought we were, but Catherine neglected to provide a chaperone for the children."
Catherine pressed her fingers against her warm cheeks. Her quick thought was: just Bill's entrance scatters this murky, ridiculous tension. This ought to be a joke, not a tragedy.
"Here, run along, you two." She lifted her head and looked at Bill, smiling at her. "I've nothing to do. Let me sit here and read."
"We can't impose on you that way—" began Charles.
"Of course we can!" Catherine tinkled, hundreds of tiny bells at all her nerve ends. "Of course! Come on, Charles."
As Charles stamped into his overshoes, Catherine ran back to the living room. Bill stood at the table, poking among the magazines.
"Thank Heaven you came just then!" she said, softly. "Oh, Bill!"
"What is this momentous occasion, anyway?"
"A faculty reception. It's not that. I'm an erring wife and mother." His glance steadied her, stopped that silly tinkling. "Spencer ran away and I forgot to send word for Miss Brown to come in, and—" That wordless quiet of his enveloped her, like a deep pool in which she relaxed, set free from the turmoil of the past hours. "If I could stay here with you!"
"Are you about ready?" Charles asked crisply.
Had Bill lifted his hand in a heartening gesture, or had she imagined it?
The elevator was slow. Charles laid a vindictive thumb on the button; below them the signal snarled.
"Sam's probably at the switchboard," said Catherine, coldly.
"He won't be, long!" Charles pressed harder.
Catherine turned away, her fingers busy with the snaps of her gloves. The tips were powdery and worn; another cleaning would finish this pair. If Charles wanted to be childish, venting spite on anything— A clatter and a creaking of cables behind the iron grill.
"If you prefer to stay with Bill, why come?"
Catherine's jerk rent the soft kid. The snap dangled by a shred. The door slammed open and they stepped into the car.
Sam was explaining to Charles. In the narrow corner mirror Catherine could see the line of Charles's cheek bone, the corner of his mouth. Poor man! He was in a humor. Well, he could stay there! She wouldn't cajole him out of it; he could wait till she did! It was alwaysshe who had to make the overture. Charles sat sulkily down in the swamp of ill feeling and wouldn't budge.
"It's stopped snowing." She lifted her face to the steel plate of sky overhead.
"Temporarily." Charles strode along with great steps. "Here, take my arm." He stopped at the corner.
"Have to keep my gloves fresh." Catherine hurried across the slippery cobblestones. As they climbed up past the dark chapel, she squirmed inside her coat. How ridiculous they were, going along in a pet, like children. Bill would laugh, if he knew. The long windows of the law library dropped their panels of light across the thin snow. When we reach the library steps, thought Catherine, I'll say, let's be good. Only—why must I always be abject, and ingratiating? Again that streak of hard, ribald mockery: let him sulk if he likes. I'm tired of being humble. Below them the wide sweep of steps, the bronze figure aproned with snow; the dignified weight of the building rising above them, the recessed lights glowing behind the columns. How many times they had walked together across these steps!
"Charles." She spoke impetuously. "Don't be cross. What's the use?"
"If you chose to project your own mood upon me—" Charles jerked his chin away from the folds of silk muffler.
"Oh, Lord!" sighed Catherine. "Don't we sound married!"
She could see the building now, with shadowy figures moving past the lighted windows. I can't be humble enough in that distance to do any good. What an evening!
It was like a nightmare, through which she moved as two people, one a cool, impersonal, outer self, given to chatter rather more than usual; the other a mocking, irreverent, twisting inner self, mewed up in confusion and injury. Empty, meaningless chatter. What fools people were, dragging themselves together in an enormous room, moving around, busy little infusoria. Charles liked it. He felt himself erect and important, with the crowding people a tangible evidence of his success, the decorum, the polished surfaces clinking out assurance that here was his group, here he was admitted, recognized. Catherine, bowing, smiling, listening to his voice, offering bright little conventional remarks, was conscious of his feeling. He's feeding on it, she thought. Growing smug. How far away from him I am—far enough to see him smug, and hate it. They had drifted away from the formal receiving line. She twisted at her glove, to hide the torn snap.
"Well, Mrs. Hammond!" Mr. Thomas was at her elbow, his thick glasses catching the light blankly, his head enormous above the rather pinched shoulders of his dress suit. "This is a pleasure." He shook her hand nervously, oppressed by his social obligation. "A pleasure."
Mrs. Thomas bustled up, crisp in rose taffeta, a black velvet ribbon around her pinkish, wrinkled throat.
"So long since we've seen you. We were just saying we must have you out for Sunday night supper. Walter does miss Spencer so much."
"That would be fine!" declared Charles, heartily. "I haven't forgotten that cake."
"We heard such a funny thing." Were the lines in herpink cheeks dented in malice? She bobbed her curly gray head sidewise at Charles. "Someone told Mr. Thomas that your wife had left you, Mr. Hammond."
Catherine saw the ominous twitching under Charles's eyes, but Mr. Thomas put in, hastily.
"I think it was intended for a jest, you know." He turned to Catherine, his large, gentle mouth agitated, as if in distress at his wife's poor taste. "I met Dr. Roberts last week. I know him quite well, you know. He was speaking about your work, Mrs. Hammond. He was extraordinarily enthusiastic."
Catherine took that gratefully, as something in which she was at least not culpable. There was a little eddy of people around them, throwing off several to stop for casual greetings; when they had gone on, Catherine heard Mrs. Thomas's high voice. "The poor boy! I suppose the house seems empty with no mother in it." Her outer self looked across at Charles, calm enough, but her inner self had an instant of rage, a hurling, devastating instant.
"Mr. Hammond was just telling me about Spencer's running away." Mrs. Thomas had a peculiarly self-righteous air in her pursed lips and bright eyes. "How worried you must have been!"
"Oh, Mr. Hammond found him so promptly."
"But just a minute can seem a long time. I remember one day——"
"Pardon me, please." Charles moved away, restrained eagerness in the forward thrust of his head above his broad, black shoulders.
Catherine saw him edge past a group, saw a pearl-smooth shoulder above a jade-green velvet sheath. ThePartridge, of course! What was she doing at a faculty reception? She had a glimpse of the squirrel smile, before she picked up the thread of Mrs. Thomas's domestic lyric.
The Thomases wanted refreshments. Catherine's throat was sticky-dry at the thought of food. She had a sharp longing for her own living room and Bill. He could ease her of these innumerable prickings. She made her way to Charles, and then stood, unnoted, at his elbow. Miss Partridge saw her, and her hand swam up in a leisurely arc. Catherine nodded pleasantly.
"I think I'll run along, Charles. You aren't to hurry." She drifted away before his hesitancy reached action.
III
Snow again in the air, wet on her cheeks. I am going home, to see Bill, in search of ballast. She hurried across the campus. The library windows were dark; two cleaning women, aprons bundled about their heads, clattered ahead of her with their pails.
As she pushed open the apartment door, she saw Bill, standing at the doorway of Marian's room, indistinct in the shadow. He moved violently away.
"Have the children been bothering you?" Catherine listened an instant at the door. Nothing but the faintest possible rhythm of breathing.
"I thought I heard Letty call." Bill retreated into the living room. "Where's Charles? The party over?"
"I ran away." Catherine slipped out of her coat. "Leaving him with Miss Partridge." She drew down her long gloves, laughing, and looked at Bill. Something curiously disturbed in his heavy-lidded glance. How tired and gaunt he looked. "What is it, Bill?"
He waited until she had settled into the wing chair.
"Nice dress, that," he said, as he sat down.
"This?" She smiled at him. Her hands lay idly along folds of the black stuff. "Are you bored, sitting here alone? The children haven't really been awake, have they?"
"No. I eavesdropped on them." Again that heavy, troubled look. "I heard them—breathe."
What in that phrase had such poignancy? What in the silence swung a light close to the dark, unruffled surface of this man, illuminating, far down in deep water, that struggling, twisting something?
He rose, brushing aside the curtain, to gaze out at the dim city.
"Better run along," he said, slowly. "You must be weary."
"Oh, no." Catherine's hand entreated him.
At that he turned slightly, to face her. She had a queer fancy that she saw his forehead gleam, his hair shine damp, as if he came swinging up, up to the surface. But he spoke calmly enough.
"I've been thinking over one of Henrietta's truisms, as I eavesdropped on your children. Wondering about it, and you."
Catherine was still; breathing might blur the glass, this glass through which she might have a clear glimpse of Bill.
"It is this." His smile, briefly sardonic, mocked at himself. "That children are the world's greatest illusion. The largest catch-penny life offers."
"Sometimes," Catherine hesitated, "I think Henry says a clever thing to fool herself."
"Isn't it more than clever? Don't you feel, when you are confronted with a black wall of futility, in yourself, that at least there are your children, three of them, and that they may jack life up to some level of significance, and that they are you?"
"Is that an illusion?"
"Isn't it? Our puny little minds, scratching at the edges of whatever it is that drives us along, pick up bits of sand." Bill laid his hand on the back of the chair, dragged it around, and dropped into it, his gaunt profile toward the window, his hands gripped on his knees. "After all, a merry-go-round doesn't go anywhere but around. Isn't that what this feeling amounts to? You don't find yourself convinced that you are the vehicle for your parents, do you? And yet"—the words lagged—"I am sure I have that illusion as strongly as any fool, that I have the need for that consolation."
"Surely"—Catherine spoke softly; she mustn't drive him back—"you, of all people, Bill, are least futile."
He turned his face toward her, a haggard little grin under his somber eyes.
"What could be more futile? Builder of bridges and buildings, which a hundred other men can make better than I. I had a maudlin way, when I was younger, of expecting that to-morrow would give me the thing I wished. To-morrow! Another catch-penny. And this, too, puerile as it sounds. For a time Henrietta needed me, while she fought to get her toes in. But she's past that now."
"Bill"—Catherine strained toward him, her eyesdarkly brilliant—"I came home to-night, because I wanted you. Because when I am frantic and silly, you can pull me up. You have, countless times."
"That is your generous imagination." Catherine flung out her hand impatiently. "And you see, I have, instead, spewed out this sentimental maundering."
"Don't talk that way!" cried Catherine.
"No." He rose abruptly, to stand above her, so that she tipped her head back, and one hand crept up to press against the pulse beating in her throat. His glance buffeted hers, entreating something, inarticulate, baffling. Then, suddenly, the old quiet mask was on again, and the water closed over his plunge within.
"Don't ever be frantic, Catherine," he said. "Good night."
She sat motionless when he had gone. Bill, in the dark, listening to the children. Bill, at the window, sending that heavy stare out into the night. Bill, stripped of his concealment. There was a slow brewing of exultation within her. He had come out, to her!