ENCOUNTER
I
"Dr. Gilbert will be in immediately." The neat little office nurse ushered Catherine into the living room. "She left word for tea at five."
Catherine said she would wait. The nurse bent down to touch a match to the gas log, and tiny blue flames leaped in mechanical imitation of a hearth fire. Catherine stood at the window, drawing off her gloves. The buildings between the hotel and the corner of the Avenue had been demolished since her last visit; beneath the windows gaped a huge chasm, rocky, pitted with pools of dark water, angled with cranes and derricks,—like a fairy tale, thought Catherine, and the old witch froze them into immobility with her stick, her stick being a holiday.
The room was Henrietta, unimaginative, practical, disinterested. Expensive, department store furniture, overstuffed chairs and davenport, floor lamp, mahogany. Henrietta had ordered the furnishings, the maid had set them in place, and there they stayed, unworn, impersonal. A maid wheeled in the tea wagon, and Henrietta's firm heels sounded in the hall.
"Catherine! Good for you." Henrietta clapped her shoulder as she passed. "Afraid something might detainyou." She shook off her heavy English coat, and went briskly to pouring tea. Her close hat had flattened her fine light hair above her temples, giving additional plump serenity to her face.
"That's all, Susie," she told the maid. "If there are any calls for me, take them. I am undisturbed for one hour now."
"Ah, this is great!" She stretched her feet toward the humming gas log; shining toes, ankles slim even in the gray spats. "I suppose you have a mission, since you take the time to come down here to-day. But whatever it is, I am glad to see you."
Catherine sipped at the tea. The hot, clear fragrance was an auger, releasing words.
"Shrewd guess, Henry." She smiled. "I want advice."
"Help yourself." Henrietta's teeth closed in her sandwich with relish.
"And I wanted it from you," Catherine spoke slowly, "because I want advice that goes in my direction."
"Kind we always want. Only kind we take."
"Here it is." Catherine placed her tea cup on the wagon. "Just before Christmas Dr. Roberts asked me to go west, to make the first-hand study of the schools, you know. He gave me until to-morrow to decide." Henrietta's eyes, alert, sharp, over the edge of her cup, waited. "More money, for one thing. Reputation. Chance to show what I can do. But I have to be gone almost a month, I think. I decided at once that it was out of the question."
"Why?"
"That was a week ago." Catherine leaned forward. "In a fit of sentiment. And egoism. I thought theycouldn't get along without me, of course. Then—no use to explain the particular eye-opener—I changed my mind. I began to wonder whether this wasn't a sort of test. To see how serious I am. About a job, I mean. Now! Advise me to go."
"Of course, no one is really indispensable." Henrietta grinned. "No one. And what's a month?"
"It seems a long time to leave the children."
"Be good for them as well as you. Isn't Miss Kelly capable of handling them?"
"I suppose so."
"Most families would be improved by enforced separations," declared Henrietta. "They're too tight. Break 'em up. What does Charles say to this?"
"He hasn't heard of it yet."
"Decide first and then tell him, eh?" Henrietta drew out her eyeglasses, running her fingers absently along the black ribbon. "He won't approve, at first. But it is a test. You're right. Your first opportunity to enlarge your position. You'd be a fool not to go, Catherine."
"That's just what I wanted to hear." Catherine's eyes were somber, harassed. "I've thought it out, backwards and forwards. Mother's friend wants to visit some one in New Jersey. If Mother will spend the night at the house—but she won't approve, either."
"Get your approval out of the job, Catherine." Henrietta squinted through her eyeglass. "You want it on every hand, don't you?"
Catherine lowered her eyelids.
"I did, once. I think I do less, now."
"That's right!"
They were silent a moment.
"That's ripping!" Henrietta broke out. "That the Bureau offered it to you. You can't turn it down. I'll drop in occasionally on the kids, if that will calm your anxiety."
"You really think it's not a preposterous scheme, then?"
"The only preposterousness would be in refusing it. It's ripping!"
"What is ripping?"
Catherine turned, a quick stir of pleasure at the low voice. Bill was at the door.
"Come in and hear about it." Henrietta waved toward a chair. "Tea?"
Bill shook his head and sat down near Catherine. He sagged in his chair, a suggestion of unkempt, wrinkled weariness in his face and clothes.
Henrietta explained in hard, glowing phrases, that Catherine had the opportunity of a lifetime. As Catherine listened and watched, she had a renewal of the strange feeling which had haunted her since Christmas morning. We are so lonely—so shut off—so absolutely isolated, she thought. Each of us speaks only his own language. We think we reach another human being, that he knows our tongue, and we discover that we have fooled ourselves. Grotesquely. Charles—remote, unreachable. I imagined that contact. Bill, and Henrietta—she is content, thinking she communicates with Bill.
"Are you going?" Bill glanced at her under his heavy lids.
"I think I am," she said. She wished she could find his thought which reached toward her.
"Perhaps I'll see you. I have to go to Chicago the endof the month on that Dexter contract," he added, to Henrietta.
He left them presently, and when Catherine rose to go, Henrietta's hand lingered, fumbling—queerly for her—over Catherine's fingers.
"I hope you and Bill make connections," she said. "He's not well. I don't know—listless, needs a change, I guess."
Catherine stared at the anxiety, the puzzled bewilderment in Henrietta's round blue eyes.
"I've been worrying at him to see a specialist here, and he won't. Can't budge him, stubborn old Bill. He enjoys you, Cathy. Have dinner or something with him."
"If we do make connections, of course I shall." Catherine felt a little prickling of guilt, as if in some way Bill's confidence violated complete loyalty to Henrietta. "I'm fond of Bill," she added.
"There's nothing seriously wrong with him. But—there's a gland specialist here in town. I told Bill his cynicism would vanish like the dew if he'd let himself be gone over." Henrietta frowned. "He said if his philosophy was located in his liver, he preferred to keep his illusions about it."
"Oh, you doctors! Thinking every feeling has its roots in some gland, and that you can diagnose any unhappiness."
"Jeer all you like." Henrietta's moment of perplexity had passed. "We're animals, Cathy, and a reasonably healthy animal is reasonably happy."
Catherine reached for purse and gloves; as she dangled the shabby black bag over a finger, she felt the stealthy, restless feet of her obsession begin their pacing. Charles,and Stella Partridge. Charles, with all his tenderness, his love——
With diabolic abruptness Henrietta said:
"Oh, by the way, I ran into that Miss Partridge last week, at the hospital. Do you see much of her?"
Catherine flinched. The stealthy feet were running.
"What made you think of her?" she asked.
"Oh—" Henrietta hesitated. "Thinking about you and Charles. I had a little talk with her, while we waited. She's an interesting type, I think."
"What do you make of her? Charles seems to admire her immensely."
"So do several of the staff. She's the kind of modern woman men do like. Unoriginal, useful, wonderful assistant. Cold as a frog—they don't guess that. She's clever. Her line is that men are so generous and fine, give her every opportunity to advance."
"What is she after, do you think?"
"Money. Position. But she's parasitical. Not in the old sense. She's sidetracked all her sex into her ambition, but she uses it as skillfully as if she wanted a lover or a husband."
"I have seen very little of her." Catherine was busy with her gloves. She wanted to escape before those shrewd blue eyes caught a glimpse of her caged, uneasy, obsessive fear.
"She'll get on," said Henrietta. "Wish you could stay for dinner, Catherine. No? Let me know if I can help you out. Tell Charles I think he should be immensely proud of you, being offered this trip, will you? I'll run in some evening soon and tell him myself."
II
Dinner was ready when Catherine reached home. She went in to bid Letty good night; Miss Kelly had put her to bed, a doll on each side of her yellow head. As the small arms flew about Catherine's throat, choking her, and she caught the sweet fragrance of the drowsy, warm skin her lips brushed, a panic of negation seized her. Go away, for days and days, without that soft ecstasy of touch, of assurance? She was mad to think of it. "There, Letty, that's a lovely hug." She drew the blanket close to the small chin.
"An' tuck in Tilda and li'l' Pet," murmured Letty. "My Muv-ver dear."
What was sentimental and what was sane? Catherine, smoothing into place the heavy coil of her hair, washing her hands, delaying her entrance to the living room, where she heard, vaguely, the voices of Charles and the children, struggled slowly to lift her head above the maelstrom. It was only for a few weeks out of a lifetime. The children would not suffer. And I want to go, she thought. Something leaped within her, vigorous, hungry, clamorous. It's not loving them less, to need something outside them, beyond them, something worth the temporary price of absence. Charles loved them, and yet he could go freely, without any of these qualms, into danger, for months.
She marched into the living room, her resolution firm. She would tell Charles about it, after dinner. Perhaps he would be indifferent. Perhaps—her obsession bared its teeth behind the flimsy bars—he might be relieved, at freedom to follow other desires.
Marian, perched on the arm of her father's chair, one arm tight about his neck, squirmed to look up at Catherine, expectant brightness in her eyes. Spencer stood in front of them, hands in his pockets, his face puckered intensely.
"Couldn't it be managed some way, Daddy?" he begged.
"Where's your allowance?" Charles stretched lazily, one hand enclosing Marian's slippered feet, dancing them slowly up and down.
"It's all in hock, for three weeks." Spencer was dolorous. "For Christmas presents, and they're all over."
"It's where?" Catherine laughed, and Spencer spun around, hope smoothing some of his puckers.
"Hock. That's what Tom says. But he says when he needs more money he asks his mother and she tells his father and he gets it."
"And who is Tom?" Charles stood up. Swinging Marian to her feet. "Let's have dinner."
It was Tom Wilcox on the floor below. Spencer had spent the afternoon there; his story came out in excited fragments. He had helped set up a radio apparatus, and he wanted one, to rig up on his bed, like Tom's. Then he could wake up in the night and listen to a concert, or a man telling about the weather.
"He lent me a book about it, Mother." He poised his fork in mid-air, and down splashed his bit of mashed potato.
"Watch what you are doing, sir," said Charles.
Spencer flushed, but hurried on, "And I know I could set one up alone, and it's wonderful, Mother, you can listen to things thousands of miles away, an'——"
"If Spencer has one, I want one on my bed, too,"declared Marian, with a demure, sidewise glance at her father. "Couldn't I have one, Daddy?"
"Spencer hasn't one yet." Charles teased him.
"How much do they cost?" asked Catherine, gently. Marian's glance bothered her. The child couldn't—how could she?—feel that thicket which had sprung up this last week, enough to range herself deliberately with her father.
"Well, quite a lot of dollars. Four or five or mebbe six." Spencer was doubtful. "But they last forever, Tom says, an'——"
"What would you do with it?"
Spencer caught the tantalizing undertone in his father's voice.
"Listen!" he cried, "of course, listen!"
"Careful, Spencer." Catherine's eyes steadied him; poor kid! She knew that irritating helplessness. "I'm sure it is interesting."
Mrs. O'Lay heaved herself around the table. "That roast ain't so good as it might be," she observed confidentially to Catherine. "Butchers is snides, that's all."
"It was all right." Catherine ignored Charles's lifted eyebrows. The salad did look a little messy.
"Do you think, Mother, that perhaps——"
"Can't you talk about something else for a while, Spencer?" Charles spoke up curtly.
Catherine's fingers gripped her serving fork.
"I'll see, Spencer," she said, clearly. "Later we'll talk about it."
"If he has it, I want it," Marian insisted.
"Will you change the subject?"
Charles's outbreak wrapped a heavy silence about thechildren. Catherine's spoon clicked in the bowl of salad dressing. How ghastly, she thought. It's our dissension, using them. Spencer had ducked his head; his nostrils dilated, his eyes moved unhappily from her face to his father's.
"Let's see, school opens on Wednesday, doesn't it?" She sought for safe words with which to rescue them. "You have to-morrow. Miss Kelly is going shopping for you. A coat for Marian——"
"Is she going to select clothes for them?" asked Charles, accusingly.
"Oh, she can do that. I've given her a price limit. The only difficult thing is shopping within that limit."
"I never had a bought coat, did I, Muvver?" Marian broke in. "Only coats you sewed for me."
"You're getting to be such a big girl." What possessed the children, anyway! Catherine heard Charles grunt faintly as if some huge dissatisfaction was confirmed. "And now——"
"You have more important things to do than mere sewing for the children."
"Yes." Catherine was flint, sending off sparks. "And I have money to bridge the difference in price."
Silence again, murky, uncomfortable. Finally the ordeal of dinner was done with. Charles offered, with detectable ostentation, to read to Marian. Spencer pulled his chair around until the back cut him off in a corner with his book on radio-practice. Catherine, after consultation with Mrs. O'Lay, withdrew to the study, where she opened her drawer of the desk, and spread out the array of bills. Not all of them were in yet; this was only the second of January, and a holiday at that. Butthere were enough! She set down figures, added, grimly—how few bills it took to make a hundred dollars!—and all the time, under the external business of reckoning, whirled a tumult of half recognized thoughts. Unendurable, that dissension should be tangled enough to catch the children in its meshes. Since Christmas day she had held herself remote, ice-enclosed. She had felt Charles try to reach her, felt his fingers slip, chilled, from her impenetrable surface, until he chose this method. As if he brandished the tender body of a child as his weapon, threatening to bruise it against her hard aloofness. Her hands dropped idly on the tormenting bills, and she let herself fully into that whirling tumult. Whatever happened, she must prevent another hour like that at dinner. If they must be opposed, she and Charles, it must be in themselves, not with the children as buffers or weapons. When they had gone to bed, she would go in to Charles.
Could she say, I know you are in love with Stella Partridge? Did she know it? If she said that, he might think that this trip, her going away, was revenge, or jealousy. Well, wasn't it? She could hear his voice, dramatizing the fairy story he read, so that Marian broke in occasionally with faint "Oh's!" or delighted giggles. Why had she decided that she must go? Defense, perhaps; not revenge. She felt again that strong, twisted cable of her own integrity. He wanted her submissive, docile, violating herself. He might say that she had driven him away, had failed him. But Stella—that had begun months ago. She could pick up threads of evidence, all down the days since summer. Then he might deny it, being secretly bland and pleased that she revealed herself as jealous, like a beggar at a door where she had oncedwelt. Perhaps there was little to the affair. She had a brief, strange fancy—he had swung slightly in his orbit, so that the side toward her was cold, dead, like the dark face of the moon—and the light, the awareness of her—all of that was turned away, out of possibility of any incidence, any impingement from her.
No. She would tell him only that she wanted to go away for a few weeks. That she would arrange everything so that his life would be quite as always. That she hoped—faint hope!—that he might find some small pleasure in this degree of success she had achieved.
If I pretend that I have noticed nothing, she thought at last, then it may be in the end that there was little to notice. If I can cling to my love, it may be like that old man of the sea, changing into horrible shapes under my hands, but changing back, if I have courage to hang on, into its true shape.
"Time for bed-ne-go," came Charles's voice down the hall.
"Please, can I finish this chapter, Daddy?" Spencer begged.
"Better put your book mark right there, son, and run along."
He had read himself into a better humor, thought Catherine. She brushed the bills into the drawer. Her check would be larger this month.
"Come along, chickens." She stood at the doorway; her glance at Charles gathered him clearly—the line of lower eyelid, the angle of his chin. Marian slid down from his knee, sighing.
"Daddy read me a lovely story, all about a fairy prince."
She bent to kiss Marian good night, with a final pat to the blankets.
"I'll dream about a fairy prince, Muvver," came the child's voice, muffled as she snuggled out of reach of the cold wind.
Spencer's arms shot up about her throat, tugging her down where he could whisper.
"Moth-er, do you think I could have a radio receiving set?"
Catherine smiled.
"Well—" she hesitated. "You have a birthday before long. In March. I'll have to find out more about them. Could you wait?"
"Oh, Moth-er!" His hug was exuberant. "Moth-er darling!"
Catherine closed his door, and poised an instant in the hall, priming her courage. "Now!" she said, under her breath.
Before she had moved, however, the doorbell clattered, smudging her flame of determination.
Charles came briskly through the hall.
"Oh, you there?" But he went on to the door.
III
It was the Thomases, Mrs. Thomas explaining wordily that they had spent the day in town, luncheon, matinee, dinner, and thought they would just drop in for a time, before the ten-thirty train home.
More than an hour to their train time. To Catherine, let down so suddenly from her peak of resolution, the evening was garbled, like a column in a newspaper struckoff from pied type, with words and phrases at random making sense, and all the rest unintelligible. Mrs. Thomas was full of holiday vivacity; the plumes on her black hat quivered in every filament. Those plumes bothered Catherine; she had seen them before, perhaps not at that angle, or perhaps not on that hat. No, they were generic plumes; eternal symbol of the academic wife and her best hat, her prodigious effort at respectable attire.
Mr. Thomas wanted to talk shop, if Charles would permit him. One leg crossed over his knee jerked absently in rhythm as he spoke. A student of his was working on psychological tests for poetic creation, an analysis of the poetic type of thought processes. Against their talk, like trills and grace notes against the base chords, rippled Mrs. Thomas in little anecdotes of Percy, of Clara, of Dorothy, of Walter.
"Walter wanted Spencer to come out for a few days this vacation. Be so nice for him to get into the country. But Percy had a little sore throat, and of course with children you never know what that may mean. I told him perhaps between semesters—the children always have a few days then."
"That's very kind of you." Catherine heard the determined phrases Charles set forth: "The poetic mind is never intellectual. Always purely emotional, intuitive, governed by associative processes." She felt that her smile was a mawkish simper. "To think of adding another child to your household."
"I'll tell Walter, then, that perhaps in February."
And presently, Mr. Thomas, blinking behind his glasses, turned his gentle smile toward Catherine.
"We hear great things of you, Mrs. Hammond."
"Oh, yes." Mrs. Thomas nodded. Catherine felt the quick stiffening of attention, and thought, here's what they came in for. What is it? She flung out her hand to ward off danger, but unsuspectingly Mr. Thomas hurled his bomb.
"Dr. Roberts tells us you've been appointed field investigator. He is particularly enthusiastic about it. You deserve congratulations."
"But, dear Mrs. Hammond, are you really going? I said to Mr. Thomas I couldn't believe it unless you told me yourself."
Catherine rushed pell-mell into words. She must stir up enough dust to hide Charles's face, to keep him silent.
"It isn't really settled. Dr. Roberts asked me to go, but I haven't agreed, as yet. Interesting, of course, fascinating." She saw, breathlessly, the little glance of triumph Mrs. Thomas sent her husband.
"I said I didn't see how a mother could leave her family."
"Only for a short time, of course. Don't you think we all need some kind of respite?"
"Well, I remember the doctor sent me to Atlantic City, after Dorothy's birth." And Mrs. Thomas related with gusto her homesickness, her dire imaginings each hour of absence. "You never know what might happen! Even now, I can't help wondering if they are covered warmly enough, although Mrs. Bates promised to stay till we came home."
Inconsequential, drifting bits of conversation—the minutes until they should go were thin wires, drawing Catherine to the brink of the whirlpool. Charles waslaboriously talkative, and she heard the rushing of his winds of grievance.
They were going!
"You'll send Spencer out, then, some day. He could come with Mr. Thomas. For a week-end, say. Walter would be so pleased."
And then, as they stood in the hall, Mr. Thomas dropped another bomb.
"You haven't decided, I suppose, about that western position, Hammond? Your husband was talking it over with me at luncheon one day," he added to Catherine. "There's something gratifying in the idea of controlling a department and the entire policy, I think."
It was Charles's turn now to hurry into words, vague, temporizing words.
Catherine returned to the living room and sat down. She had a queer illusion that if she moved too quickly, she might break; she was brittle, tight. Charles came back to the doorway, his chin thrust out. Why, it was funny, ridiculous—caught out, each of them. This must be a dream. It was too absurd for reality. She began to laugh. She didn't wish to laugh, but she was helpless, as if some monstrous jest seized her and shook her. Was it she, laughing, or the jest, outside her, shaking her? She couldn't stop.
"Evidently you are amused." Charles strode past her. She wanted to deny that, to explain that it wasn't she laughing. But she couldn't stop that gasping ribald sound. "Catherine!" he stood above her, enormous, magnified by the tears in her eyes. "Catherine!"
Abruptly the monstrous jest dropped her, limp, and the laughter had burst through the thin partition into sobs.She twisted away from him, flinging an arm up to shield her face, her body pressed against the chair, seeking something hard, immovable, to check its convulsive racking. She knew that Charles bent over her. She wanted to scream at him to go away, to leave her alone, but she doubled her first against her lips. She struggled back heavily to the narrow, tortuous path of control. For days she had walked too near the edge for safety. She could breathe now. If she could lie there, quiet, for a time—but Charles was waiting. Her hands dropped to her lap, she relaxed, emptily, and slowly she turned her face. Charles watched her; alarm, and a sort of scorn on his face. He thought she had chosen that as a weapon—feminine hysterics.
"Well?" His gruffness was a shield over his alarm, she knew.
"I am sorry." Her voice had the faint quiver of spent tears. "I really didn't intend—but it suddenly looked—ridiculous."
"I don't see what's funny." Charles sat down stiffly. "In my hearing of my wife's plans from outsiders."
Catherine drew a long breath. She was back on that narrow path, now.
"And my hearing of yours?" she asked.
"I told you about that offer several months ago." Charles was dignified. "You seemed so little interested."
"Let's not quibble!" Catherine exclaimed. "I can't bear it. It's bad enough—I was coming in to talk with you, when they rang. I hadn't known"—she stared a moment; that was, after all, the dreadful sign-post, indicating their diverging roads—"that you considered that offer seriously."
"Exactly. But you will admit I had spoken of it?"
Ah, he wouldn't take that as parallel. His silence there was to be her fault, too. Only his cold, dead side toward me—Catherine had again that phantasy that he had swung in his orbit. If I go under now, it's for all time. He must swing back to find me as I am, now. Pride poured through her, hardening in the mold of her intention.
"I hadn't spoken of this field work," she said, clearly, "because I had to think it out first. Dr. Roberts offered me the opportunity a week ago. I did not suppose he took my assent for granted. Although he knows I couldn't refuse it unless the work meant nothing to me."
"But what is it? You——"
Catherine explained. She was clear, hard, swift.
"You have evidently made up your mind to go."
She nodded.
"I can arrange things here so that the children will be cared for. And the house will run, just as when I am in town. It's only for a month."
Charles got slowly to his feet, his mouth obdurate.
"Charles, won't you talk it over with me?"
"I have nothing to say. You seem to lay aside your obligations lightly. But if you are content——"
"Not lightly." She shut her eyes against his face. One hand opened in a piteous little gesture of entreaty. If he should, even now, beg her to stay, wanting her, she would turn to water. "It has been difficult to decide." She lifted her eyelids heavily. "You must see that it is a distinct advance."
"A feather in your cap." Charles was sardonic. "And you must have feathers."
At that she rose, faint color coming into her white face.
"Yes, I think I must. I'm sorry you don't like me—in feathers." Her eyelids burned. "You would prefer, I suppose, dingy ostrich plumes that you had bought, years ago—like Mrs. Thomas's."
"Mrs. Thomas may be a fool, but she's a good woman."
"Oh!" Catherine set her lips against the echoing surge of laughter that rolled up. She wouldn't let go again; she wouldn't!
"I mean she finds her feathers in her husband's cap! Thomas is going ahead in great strides. Ask any of the men in college. And why? Because she is back of him, interested. A man has to feel there is some one interested in what he's doing."
"And a woman doesn't?"
"You see! I say something, trying to explain my position, and at once you twist it into a comment on yourself."
Catherine retreated a step. Her glance winged about the quiet, pleasant room. That little table—they had found it in a Third Avenue store. "It smells like mahogany," Charles had insisted. She could see it in the kitchen, newspapers spread under its spindle legs, and Charles scraping away at the old paint. Their house, built piece by piece. They had never had money enough for more than one chair at a time. And they had loved the building. Now—her glance included Charles, lowering, defensive, unhappy.
"But I am concerned," she said, "as much as ever. You should know that."
"No! You aren't. I come home from class, and you aren't here. I come home at night, from a committee meeting, and you've gone to sleep because you need to befresh for your own work. This isn't complaining. I just want you to see how you've changed. Why, take this matter of the Buxton professorship. When I spoke of it, the one thing it meant to you was that you might have to leave New York. That's all you could see in it. I haven't been able to discuss it with you, although it might seem important."
Perhaps all that was true. Catherine felt a trickle of doubt through the solid wall of her intention. She had been tired—had she seemed indifferent, absorbed? In a wave of heat the trickle was consumed. She wanted to cry out, "It's not with me that difference lies. It is in you! You wish to blame me, for your turning away—to Stella Partridge. You think I don't know about that!"
He moved uneasily, fidgetting with the painted silk shade of the table lamp.
"All right," she said brusquely. "We'll leave it at that. I am self-absorbed. Selfish."
"I expected you would tire of it long before now," said Charles. "Long hours in an office, at someone's beck and call. When you might be perfectly free to do as you please. I swear I don't see what you get out of it."
"You don't see, do you?" Catherine's eyes were suddenly piteous. "You don't see at all."
"It's evident enough that you can't swing the two jobs, home and office. You're worn out all the time. Irritable."
"Oh!" Catherine's hand pressed against her breast. Something extraordinary in his ingenuous construction of a case against her.
"Now if you could earn more than I do, then I might stay home, give up my work. But you don't. You barelyswing the additional expenses you incur. Sometimes I think I'll accept the Buxton offer, just to take you—and the children—out of this city."
Catherine's heart, under her cold fingers, stood still for a long moment and then broke into violent, irregular beating.
"You would have to be sure"—she wondered if he could hear her words—"that I would go!"
At that she hurried out of the room. She undressed in clumsy haste, and crawled into bed, where she shivered, unable to relax, unable to stop the trampling of heavy thoughts through her mind. Charles came in, and went with elaborate unconcern about the business of going to bed. Her mind was a sling-shot, drawn tight to hurl at him innumerable bits of sentences, clattering stones from the ruck thrown off from what they had said. But she held them in, to rattle against her own brain. When he had turned off the light and was at last quiet in his own bed, the dark rose between them heavy, thick. She was aware, in a kind of torment, of his faintest motion.
I must sleep, she thought. If I could shut off these thoughts! She twisted one arm up under her face, her mouth pressed hard on the cold flesh.
Quite suddenly relief came, like a warm rush of air, blowing her empty of battering thoughts. She had a vague sense of something under the cluttered feelings, something hard, clear, shapely, a self distinct from love and hate and jealousy and fear. She drifted just over the edge of consciousness. She was lost in a vast, dark labyrinth, through which she stumbled, hands extended in search of passageways; on and on she labored. Had she touched that wall before? Was she going in blindcircles, with no egress? She was running, desperately—sleep closed around her.
IV
Dr. Roberts came gravely around the desk, shook Catherine's hand, and returned to his chair.
"I must have been somewhat in doubt about your consent," he said, "since I am so delighted. You must see Dr. Waterbury to-day."
"Just when do you think I should start?" Catherine sat erect, hard, bright triumph in her eyes. "Of course, there are various adjustments in my household to make."
"The end of the month. You'll have this work in shape by that time." Dr. Roberts jumped to his feet. "I'll make that appointment with Waterbury myself. This is a good one on Smithson! He counted on your being merely half-hearted about the work." He went briskly out.
Catherine's fingers moved idly among the pens and pencils on the tray. Behind her the winter sun made pale blotches on the floor. I've done it, she thought. It's only the beginning! If I hang on, things may work out. A flashing picture of Charles at breakfast, dignified, reticent. Even that! She wondered a little at herself. It's because I've found something beside feelings to live by, perhaps, and so I can endure feelings. I can wait.
She brushed all that away, as with a quick gesture she pulled open the drawer and lifted out the pile of notes.
Margaret telephoned. Would Catherine lunch that day with Amy and her? At Amy's luncheon club. Catherine made a note of the address. At quarter to one, sharp. Upstairs. We'll meet you there.
They would be interested in her news. Approvingly interested. Discomfiting, how eagerly you ran to lap up little crumbs of approval. Get approval out of yourself, Henrietta had told her. Childish of her to crave it outside herself. As if, some way, she had to make up for Charles, to throw something into the other side of the scale along with her own conviction.
She wanted Margaret's advice about shopping, too. New clothes. She would have to look her part.
It was one o'clock when Catherine hurried along the side street, looking anxiously for the number Margaret had given her. The interview with the President had delayed her; it had left her in a state of pleasurable excitation, like the humming of many tiny insects. Across Madison Avenue. She came to a group of old gray buildings, houses, with excrescenses of recent date on the ground floor,—a cleaning establishment—funny how you always saw clothes you liked in cleaners' windows!—an interior decorator's, with heavy tapestry draped over an amazing gilt chair. There, the entrance was just between those shops. Didn't look much like a club. She climbed the stairs cautiously; a door above her opened, and two women came past her, sending her expectant glances, their voices sharp and bright against the confusion of sound into which she climbed. She stopped at the door, keenly self-conscious, as if the pattern of voices was complete, and her entrance might break through the warp. The pattern broke as she looked about the room, large and low, with separate nodules of women. Margaret's bright head shot up from the group near the fireplace, and Margaret swung across the room toward her, slim and erect in her green dress. Amy strolledafter her; she had removed her squirrel turban, but her dark hair still made a stiff flange about her thin face.
"This is fine! We've saved a table—" and Catherine, following them into the dining room, edging between the little tables, found herself drawn into the pattern of sound.
"I'm sorry I am late." She slipped her coat over the chair. "The President was talking to me"—she had to release some of the tiny, humming insects—"about my trip west." She told them about that trip. It stepped forward out of dream regions into reality as she talked, as they put in questions, sympathetic, approving questions.
"What does the King say?" Margaret smiled at her.
"Oh, he doesn't say much." Catherine laughed. Why, she could joke about him! She felt a hard brilliance carry her along, as if—she sent little glances about the room, at the women near her—something homogeneous about them—unlike the girls at the St. Francis, still more unlike the woman who lunched at the Acadia, or at Huylers—something sufficient, individual—"What kind of a club is this, anyway?"
"We wanted a place downtown here where we could have good food. All the lugs are in the kitchen. Wonderful cook!" Amy leaned across the table, her eyes afire. She could be intense over food, too, then! "A place where one might bring a guest. City Club too crowded, too expensive, too—too too! for independent women. There were eleven of us, originally. We called it the "Little Leaven," you know. Now there are several hundred. All sorts. Writers, artists, editors. That's a birth control organizer, and the woman with her is an actress. Anybody interesting comes to town, we haulher in to speak in the evening. Men always have comfortable clubs. This is for us."
"Good food, certainly."
"I thought if you were interested, I'd put you up. For membership. The dues aren't high, and now you are downtown, you might like to run in. Always someone here to lunch with, someone of your own kind."
Catherine smiled. Part of her was amused, but part of her shone, as if Amy's intensity, admitting her to the leaven, polished that hard brilliance——
"I'd like it!" she declared. "Lunching has been irksome."
She watched the women again. They seemed less homogeneous, more individual, as she looked.
"Well, I've been thinking about you." Amy was directed at her with astonishing concentration. "Since I met you. What you need is more backing. You feel too much alone."
Catherine felt Margaret's uneasiness, akin to her own faint shrinking from the access of personal probing.
"You need, as I told Margaret the other night, to touch all these other women who have stepped out of their grooves. It's wonderful, what that does for you. It's solidarity feeling, workers go after it in their unions, and women so much lack it. You think you are making a solitary struggle, and you're only part of all this——" Her sudden gesture sent her empty tumbler spinning to the edge of the table. Margaret's quick hand caught it.
"Don't begin an oration, Amy," she said.
"It's true." Catherine was bewildered to find tears in her eyes, and a rush of affection toward Amy—she might be fanatic, but a spark from her overfanned fires couldwarm you! "Are any of these celebrities married?" she asked, with apparent irrelevance.
"Oh—" Amy shrugged. "I think they have husbands, some of them. Hard to tell. That woman there has just got her divorce, I know."
She had a moment with Margaret later, standing near the fireplace, while Amy rushed off to greet a newcomer.
"She's a funny old dear, isn't she?" Margaret was nonchalant.
"I like her," said Catherine.
Margaret looked up in frank pleasure.
"I hoped you would. She's really fine, if you get her." Her eyes, traveling across to the small figure in the fur coat, one arm raised in emphasis, were tender. "You'd roar if you heard her comments on Charles. She has a certain cosmic attitude toward all men, lumps them. I'm thrilled, Cathy, at your trip. And your salary! You show some pick-up on this job."
"Will you take me shopping for decent clothes?" Catherine regarded her sister wistfully. "I'm going to dress the old thing up for once."
"Will I! I've always wanted to."
V
During the next weeks Catherine lunched frequently at Amy's club. "You were quite right," she told her one day. "I needed perspective. This place and these women make the whole business of my working seem matter of course. As if I'd be a fool not to. That's a more comforting feeling than my old one, that I might be only an egoistic pig."
"That's the trouble with ordinary married women," declared Amy. "They are all shut up in separate cages, until they don't have an idea what is happening outside."
"Marriage isn't a cage, exactly."
"You just aren't entirely out, yet."
"At least there is comfort in finding that other women want the same thing I want, and get it."
But marriage wasn't a cage, she thought, later. She found herself not so much imprisoned as bewildered. It's more like a labyrinth. There are ways out, if you can find them. Out, not of marriage itself, but out of the thing people have made of it—for women.
Catherine knew, when she approached her mother with her plan, that she had need of perspective and assurance. But Mrs. Spencer's comment was brief.
"I suppose," she said, "you must work this out for yourself. Yes, I can stay nights at your house. Alethea will be away all of February."
"Then it's really a good scheme for you, too?" Catherine begged.
"I'm a little too old to sit up with a croupy child."
"Letty's too old for croup." Catherine refused to look at her mother's implication—that her children might be sick, might need her. "Of course, Miss Kelly and Mrs. O'Lay together can manage the household. There won't be any burden for you. I thought you could have Spencer's room, and he could have my bed."
She and Charles seemed to run on tangents which seldom crossed. A young assistant in Charles's department had influenza, and in the handling of his work, Charles came in for an evening class. Frequent committee meetings, clinic affairs, kept him away on other evenings. Catherine would wake, to hear his cautious blunderings in the dark. He assumed that she slept, and she, fumbling for some noncommittal phrase of greeting, often lay quite still, not speaking.
One mild, sunny day toward the end of January, Catherine came up from town on top of a bus. A little windblown and stiff, she hurried across the campus. In the dim tunnel behind the gymnasium she met Stella Partridge.
"Mrs. Hammond!" Stella halted just where the light through glass panels in a door made a charming picture of her pale face and close, dark furs. "It's been so long since we have seen each other, and I wanted to congratulate you on your—it is a promotion, isn't it? Dr. Hammond is so proud of you."
Catherine's first thought was a flash of resentment that she had worn her shabby coat that morning, instead of the elegance Margaret had selected for her. How childish! she rebuked herself, as she said,
"Thank you. It isn't really a promotion. Just a different phase of the work."
"It will be so nice for you, having the change."
She wants to detain me, to talk—Catherine found a myriad tiny buzzing thoughts, just out of reach—to show me that she knows all about it, from Charles.
"I am sure I shall enjoy it." She bent forward, her words suddenly out of her volition. "What a charming hand bag!" Her finger hovered above it; her eyes, swooping up to the cool dark eyes, were derisive.
"Yes, isn't it?" Miss Partridge's smile was tolerant, amused, just a flicker of pointed teeth. But she thrustthe bag under her arm. "I hope you have a pleasant trip. You go soon, don't you?"
A truck came booming through the tunnel, and under cover of its din, Catherine nodded and hurried on.
"You knew she had it," she cried out, half aloud. "You knew it!" At the gate she stopped, pretending to adjust her hat. She had known it, but the sight of it, the actual visible contact with it, had sent a sharp wave of nausea through her. How could she have spoken of it! She was aghast—the words had pounced out, she hadn't said them. There, the nausea had passed, and with her head up to the wind which blew along the Avenue, she could go on, across the street, and up the hill toward home. She doesn't love him. Catherine was sure of that. She wanted to show off—her power. That's all. She has no tenderness in her.
And as Catherine went silently past the door of the study where Charles sat writing, not looking up, pity moved in her. Why, she thought, he will be hurt, out of this, and I can't save him.
Henrietta came in that evening, and Charles emerged, ruffled and absent-eyed, from the study. He was working on a paper he was to deliver before a meeting of psychologists. On clinic practice, he explained in answer to Henrietta's inquiry. "You know"—he slouched down in his chair—"we're going to run you poor old-fashioned doctors right out of business. Once we have these psychological methods established, there won't be much left for you to do."
"Whooping cough a mere instinct, or is it a habit? And croup and measles and broken legs?" Henriettawaved her eyeglasses at him. "If you psychologists knew a little anatomy and materia medica——"
She and Charles squared off for a friendly skirmish on their pet field of contention. Catherine, listening, watching Charles's lazy delight as he parried phrases and thrust out in pointed words, felt a sudden wash of tears too close to her eyes, and a constriction in her throat. He would come out of his tent, genial, casual, for Henrietta, for anyone. But when they were alone—silence, heavy and uncommunicative. How long since they had laughed, at any silly thing?
"Here, help me out!" Henrietta was flushed with amusement. "He's delivering his whole speech on my head! Oh, I mustn't forget to give you Bill's address." She broke off, fumbling in a pocket of her suit. "Here. Chicago office. A note there will reach him. Aren't you proud of her, Charles?" Henrietta stuck her glasses on the bridge of her nose and stared at Charles. "Just pouncing ahead!"
"Of course Catherine has brains." Charles had withdrawn, his foils sheathed. "Always knew that."
"But these Bureaus and Foundations are so conservative. It's splendid to see them forced into recognition of a woman's ability, I think."
"Their men always seem a little—ladylike." Charles was talking at Catherine, through Henrietta. "Perhaps none of them wished to make a tour of the west this time of year. It isn't my idea of a good time, exactly."
"Don't let him josh you, Catherine!" Henrietta flashed out, warmly.
"Aren't they ladylike? Most of their men not creativeenough to make a real place for themselves. They crawl into that snug and safe berth——"
"I've thought the few I've met were much like academic men." Henrietta grinned at her thrust. "Haven't you, Cathy?"
"You see," said Catherine, "Charles disapproves of the whole system, the establishment of a bureau."
"Some one accumulates too much money and looks around for a conspicuous benevolence. Ah, a bureau of investigation! Then some little men hurry in, get jobs poking their noses into various things, and draw down neat salaries out of the surplus money. Mrs. Lynch is pleased. Little men are pleased."
"Why isn't it a good way to get rid of the money?" Henrietta spoke cautiously, as if she suspected traps under the smooth surface.
"Oh, it gets rid of it. But it's artificial. Not a response to some demand in society."
"Charles, are you stuck-up, or jealous?" Henrietta glanced shrewdly from him to Catherine.
"This is not personal, I assure you." Charles slipped into his grandiloquent, tolerant manner, as much as to add, "even if you, being a woman, can not understand its being impersonal."
"Um. Aren't universities endowed with some of this surplus cash, too?"
"Only to some extent. There you have an actual need."
"In other words, the shoe is on the other foot, now." Henrietta laughed.
"It's true enough there's an actual need." Catherinesat forward, eagerly. A sharp inner voice said: ridiculous to argue; he is attacking me, not the Bureau. Trying to belittle the thing I'm in, so that I'll have to shrink with it. But the voice was drowned in an uproar of her refusal to shrink, her insistence upon some justification. "Universities and colleges are a need, of course. But the very thing I'm working on, and Dr. Roberts, too, is the great gap between the human need and the pitiful offering on the part of the colleges. Why won't it do some good, if we can show up that gap?"
"What will happen? You'll write a brochure, which won't be read by any of the people concerned. Change comes from within, slowly, like growth of a child."
"In other words, Catherine, your job is foolishness, and you'd better be home making pies. You are too transparent, Charles. Don't you listen to him!" Henrietta jumped to her feet. "I must run along. Pies are fleeting, too. If you're interested in a thing, that's all that counts."
Catherine rose, slowly. She wished Henrietta wouldn't go. Her blunt indifference to undercurrents had a steadying effect.
"Of course," Catherine spoke hurriedly. She wanted to get to the bottom of this before Henry went. If there was a bottom. "Your interest depends upon your valuation of what you are doing, doesn't it?"
"Somewhat." Henrietta paused. "But you know, you can knock a hole in the value of anything, if you try. I can shoot a doubt straight through doctoring. Why bother to mend people! Children—they just grow up to make blundering old folks." She looked tired, as if the flesh of her cheeks and chin sagged. "But do I shootit? Not me. Same with your job, same with Charles's job. May make a dent in the old world."
When she had gone, Catherine looked in at the door of the study. Charles presented a shoulder overintent. He knew she was there. To speak his name was like tugging at a great weight.
"Charles." He turned. The weight increased. "You really feel this work is just empty fiddling?"
"There doesn't seem much use in saying what Ithink"—his emphasis pointed out the difference—"since it is taken as limited and personal."
Catherine retreated to her own room, before hasty, intemperate words escaped her. There was a cruel enough abyss between them now; no use to fill it with wreckage.
VI
The following morning, when Dr. Roberts came in with time tables and maps to help complete the itinerary, Catherine responded with apathy to the folders. She heard that doubt gnawing away, a mouse behind the wainscoting. Finally, as Dr. Roberts opened a new map, she let the mouse out.
"What," she asked, "exactly, do you think we are going to accomplish? With the whole thing. Trip, book, all of it."
Dr. Roberts spread the thin map crackling on the desk, and pressed his forefinger into Ohio. Then he lifted his head, and his eyes, shrewdly penetrating, studied her face.
"So——" he said. "It has lost its savor."
"Do you think we can change things, by criticism, orsuggestion? Won't all these schools go on in their own way?"
Dr. Roberts sat on the edge of the table, one neat toe pushed against the floor to balance himself, one swinging.
"I'm glad this came up now, instead of somewhere in Ohio," he said. "I suppose we all have hours of wondering what it amounts to, all these mahogany desks and busy people." He brought his fist down emphatically. "But I tell you, something must come of studies like this! Institutions have gone on long enough, nosing along with blind snouts in old ruts. The day has come when intellect, intelligence can step in and say, 'here, that's the wrong path. You're going that way only because it is an old path. Here's the better way.' Conscious, intelligent control. That's the coming idea."
"But can a blind snout open its eyes?" Catherine was intent, serious. "Can you change things? That way?"
"See what Flexner's study of medical schools did for them! Even Smithson's few papers on sanitation have had an ordinance or two as a result. Where does all that agitation about child labor in the South come from, if not from investigation?"
"You see—" Catherine looked down at the pink blotch of Ohio, under the firm, square forefinger. "I must believe in what I'm doing. I can't just do it to earn a living."
"Naturally. I understand that."
"The work I did during the war was obviously of use. The plans for reeducation were fairly snatched out of our hands before the ink was dry on them."
"Yes. An immediate need like that is, as you say,obvious. Easy to believe in. Like baking bread for hungry people."
"I carried over that belief to the Bureau as a whole, I think. Then—I suppose from criticism that I heard—I wondered whether we fooled ourselves."
"I think not, Mrs. Hammond. Perhaps our report won't revolutionize the whole educational system of several states overnight. You don't expect that. But it may affect even a single man, and that's something." He stroked his beard, watching her a little anxiously. "There is just one criticism which has bothered me," he added. "That concerns policy. After all"—his wave indicated the Bureau, established, respectable, heavily done in mahogany—"biting the hand that feeds us, you know. We may be tied too firmly to the social forces that make this possible. I don't know. What I offer myself for consolation is this: there's no such thing as complete freedom. If we can clear away any of the debris and old pitfalls in education, we may at least leave the next generation less obstructed. We are no more limited in policy than churches or colleges. We don't have to lick the hand that feeds us, at any rate."
"Well—" Catherine smiled. "I won't be doubtful, then. I want to be enthusiastic."
And as Dr. Roberts returned to the study of the maps and time tables, she thought: he may be right, and Charles may be right. Each of them thinks from his own center. From his own desires. So do I. And I want this work to have a meaning. To be significant. Tomatter. I believe it does. Iwillbelieve in it.
VII
Saturday afternoon Catherine stood in front of the long mirror in her bedroom, with Margaret squatting on her heels beside her, pinning in place a band of bright embroidery.
"Too bad there isn't time to send it back." Margaret dropped to the floor, gazing up at her sister. "But that will do, I think. It's very smart, Cathy."
"Can we pack it so that it won't crush?" Catherine brushed her fingers over the warm brown duvetyn. "I scarcely recognize myself."
"It's the way you should look all the time. Take it off and I'll put a stitch in where that pin is." Margaret scrambled to her feet. "I did want you to have that beaver coat, though."
"I've got to pay for these sometime!" Catherine slipped out of the dress. "You beguiled me into awful extravagance."
"Just because I made you buy with a near eye instead of a far eye." Margaret sewed busily. "The middle-class married eye is a far eye, Cathy. It never sees clothes as they are. It sees how they'll look three years hence, and then five years, made over. No wonder you look dubby. Can't ever get style that way." She snapped her thread, and folded the dress over tissue paper. "There, that'll ride. Taking just your steamer trunk?"
"And a bag." Catherine pulled her nasturtium silk kimono over her shoulders. "Too many stops for a large trunk. It's good of you to spend your Saturday here. I'd sent off everyone, so that I could get ready in peace. But there are endless things to see to."
"You're a handsome thing in that rag, too." Margaret rose from the half full trunk. "Wish I'd found an evening dress that color."
"That would have been nice and inconspicuous! And I may not need one. I'll stick this black one in." There was a faint glow on Catherine's cheeks; her dark hair swept in a long curve from brow to heavy coil at the nape of her smooth neck.
"Where are the children?" Margaret seized the black dress and folded it dexterously.
"At the opera—'Hansel and Gretel.' Mother took them. Miss Kelly has Letty in the park."
"Won't they love it!" Margaret whistled the gay little dance melody from the opera. "Do they mind your going?"
"Marian thinks it will be rather fun to have Gram here. Spencer wants to go with me."
"The lamb! There, those are properly packed. You be careful when you take them out. Now, shoes. No, put that blouse in your handbag."
"I declare—" Catherine laughed as Margaret moved competently through the piles. "It's like a trousseau—my second."
"That would please the King, I'm sure." Margaret held off a bronze slipper, turning it critically. "Is he as sulky as he acts, Cathy? He said, 'I don't demand external evidence to make me proud of my wife!'" She imitated the dignified resentment of his tone.
"He's frightfully busy with papers and things." Catherine bent over her traveling bag. In her throat a soft pulse beat disturbingly. To-night—she thought. Oh, I can't leave him—obdurate, silent. I must break through.
"Um." Margaret nodded. Then, suddenly, "I told Mother I thought she had no business siding with him."
Catherine faced her, alarmed.
"And she as much as said she thought you were endangering your home and future happiness. Poor mother! She can't step out of her generation, I suppose. For all she is such a brick."
"Don't put anything into her head, for goodness' sake! She's going to be here while I'm gone. She's fond of Charles."
"The only trouble with Charles," declared Margaret, her arms akimbo on her slim hips, "is that he is a man!"
"You sound like Amy."
"No, I don't. I know he can't help it. You're to blame, partly. You spoiled him rotten for years. He can't get over it in a jiffy. Has that woman got her claws in him? I suppose he's wide open to a vamp."
Catherine's color receded in the swift tautening of her body. Margaret need not trample in. "I don't know," she said, stiffly.
"Excuse me, old thing." Margaret flung her arm over Catherine's shoulders, and rubbed her warm cheek against her sister's. "Rude of me, I know. We'll change the subject."
"I didn't mean to be sniffy." Catherine softened. "I really don't know. I was shocked that you——"
"Um. What are my eyes for, little Red Riding Hood? Anyway, it's a darned skilful move of yours, this trip."
Down the hall clumped Mrs. O'Lay. Catherine hurried into her old serge dress, Margaret locked and strapped the little trunk, and Catherine closed the traveling bag. "Have to finish that to-morrow."
Miss Kelly came, with Letty. Margaret carried the child off into the dining room for her supper, while Catherine sat down with Miss Kelly for a final discussion of the weeks she would be gone. "Eve made out this mailing list—" she finished, "and bought enough postal cards to last. If you would send me one every night—" She gazed at the sandy-fringed, calm blue eyes, at the firm, homely mouth. "I'm sure they will be happy and well, with you."
"I think so, Mrs. Hammond." Not a quaver of uneasiness in her voice.
You might suppose I went off every week, thought Catherine.
Letty was in bed, Margaret had gone, and Miss Kelly, before Mrs. Spencer and the children arrived. Catherine listened to their delighted rehearsing of the story. Marian tried to hum one of the songs; Catherine couldn't recall the exact melody. And under the outer pressure ran the slow, warm flood of waiting, waiting until Charles should come in. What she could say or do she did not know. But anything, anything!
"Will I serve up the soup, Mrs. Hammond?" Mrs. O'Lay was reproachful. "It's half after six."
"Mr. Hammond should be in any minute."
The telephone shrilled into her waiting.
"That you, Catherine? I'm at the dentist's. Got a devil of a toothache. Don't wait for me. He's out at dinner, but he's coming in to see to the tooth. No, it's that upper tooth, where the filling was loose."
They dined without Charles.
"Poor fellow!" Mrs. Spencer was gently sympathetic. "There's nothing so upsetting as the toothache."
Some truth in that, thought Catherine, as she sat in Charles's chair and served. A special dinner, too. If the tooth still ached when he came home— The intangible hope which had grown in her through the day was too fragile to withstand such disaster. Perhaps—was he at the dentist's? Was there an aching tooth? She glanced up in a flurry of guilt at a question from her mother. How despicable of her, dropping into suspicion. Spencer was watching her. He was too sensitized, too immediately aware of moods. It would be good for him, perhaps, to live without her for a time. She brushed away the under-thoughts, and held herself resolutely above the surface of their talk.
Marian wanted to play Hansel and Gretel. "But Gram is too nice to be the witch, isn't she, Muvver? And we must have a witch."
"Miss Kelly could be witch," said Spencer.
"She's too nice, too!"
"She could pretend not to be." Spencer peered at Catherine, and suddenly giggled.
"That isn't funny," protested Marian.
"When your mother was a little girl," began Mrs. Spencer, "I took her to see Uncle Tom's Cabin." The children listened, entranced, to the account of Catherine's impersonation of Little Eva. Catherine, amused, went back to Spencer's giggle. He hadn't accepted Miss Kelly, as Marian had. His laugh was a secret declaration of his withholding of himself. But he no longer protested outwardly.
"And just then, I went out of the kitchen door," said Mrs. Spencer, "and saw Catherine in the loft window of the barn. She had on one of my best white sheets, andshe was leaning forward, way out of the window, and waving her arms."
"Oh, Muvver!" Marian sighed in delight.
"I said, 'What are you doing!'"
"You tell us what you said, Muvver," begged Marian, her eyes darkly shining. "Please."
"I said"—Catherine laughed—"that I was going to fly to Heaven."
"Did you think you were, Mother?" asked Spencer.
"Perhaps. I was playing Little Eva so hard that I expected the angels to pick me up, you know."
"An' then, Gram?"
"I called to the hired man. He was in the barn. And he ran upstairs up the ladder and caught your mother by the sheet. So she didn't jump out."
"Would you really of jumped, Mother?" Spencer, in his eagerness, came around to Catherine's chair.
"I don't know. I was a silly little girl, wasn't I?"
"Oh, Spencer was silly to-day," cried Marian. "He wanted to come home right in the middle of the play. He said you were going away to-day, and Gram had to take right hold of his arm."
A wave of color rushed up to Spencer's hair, and his nostrils trembled.
"Wasn't that silly?"