"'Tis the lack of horse litterMakes poverty bitter.
"It just all does rhyme. And I had a hero like me, refusing to drive a truck, and eloping with a farmer's daughter in a manure spreader. And every farmer in the chorus was leading a calf or a pig with him as he danced. I told them not to have those kids as animals. And when the audience began to applaud, one of the little fiends rose up on his hind legs and began to dance. And then they all did, of course. The people nearly went into spasms, they laughed so. Oh, boy! It was a hot show! I was popular for a while. The skirts just clung to me at the dance afterwards. And everybody was wondering what else might be in me. And I was going to strike mother for a new car the minute I got home. Now, oh, Lordie, what a life I lead!"
And Emily, standing as usual, between mother and son, had maintained to Mrs. Benton that Johnnie might have been deplorably thoughtless, but he certainly hadn't been deliberately malicious. How could he suppose that that man French could get hold of it? It was simply brutal, as Emily realized, for that horrid person to entitle his derision "Scholastic Honors." It was rubbing salt into the deep wound of Cora Benton's soul. For Johnnie most conspicuously lacked not only scholastic honors, but even mediocre class attainments of common town children. He had been pulled and shoved along from one grade to another by the skin of his teeth. He had always been the most careless boy in every class. Mrs. Benton was right when she said it was because of his health. When he was nine he had had infantile paralysis, and, recovering, had been sent South. Mrs. Benton, a passionate mother, had thrown down her Red Cross work and taken him to a Southern town in which a cousin of hers was living. And that choice had changed, she averred, the course of the boy's life.
For the White Sox had been wintering there. And the weary little boy, too uninterested in life to turn his thin hand over, was carried out into the sun and coaxed into watching them. Some of them noticed the pale child and spoke to him. Presently Johnnie was no longer a pitiful invalid; he had become an active humble little mortal peeping up at the great gods who strode about this Parnassus upon which he had been thrown. Like an eager disciple he watched their ways. He knew what blessed street cars they took and at what hours. He knew the hallowed spot they had their hair cut. Lying in his bed at night, he could identify their manager's car by the sound. In his dreams he was steadying his arm to send a terrible curve. His nightmares were missed bases. Books and reading were forbidden him. But at the end of that year he knew the names and the positions of practically all the players in the League.
It took a woman like his mother to get him into the schoolhouse the next year. But even she could not induce his mind to consider text-books. By the time he was sixteen he was in a class with thirteen-year-old boys, and he looked small and delicate among them. And then he began growing. His heart was weak. He got pneumonia. The doctor said he would never be well unless he was taken out of school again and let "run wild." The year Bronson came to his Aunt Emily, Mrs. Benton spent part of the winter in New Mexico and moved from there because she couldn't endure the sight of her son playing ball with lazy Mexicans whom he had inspired to the game. She went to a vineyard in California, and there she had to see him rally enough young Japs for his nine. She left him that summer on a ranch in Arizona, safe from a baseball atmosphere, she supposed. He found a camp of Boy Scouts by riding not too many score of miles, and played with them till he came back in the autumn, less inclined to sit at a desk than ever before, and much stronger physically. And if people said truly that only Mrs. Benton's incorrigible determination had kept that boy alive to grow into a strong man, they might also have said the same force finally got him into college. And all he had ever done there, as she remarked bitterly to Emily, who condoned his accidental operatic career, was to short-stop for the second nine, and make his mother ridiculous in that disgusting "opera."
And now, Johnnie, having put in a good word for himself, having diplomatically repeated every complimentary remark he had heard all the evening about the extraordinary superiority of the floor, intended going back to his play. Mrs. Benton kept him standing there, however. Emily wondered if she had determined to have the whole town see mother and son chatting pleasantly together. For the whole town, like Emily Kenworthy, often wondered, too curiously, exactly what the relationship between the two was. Mrs. Benton kept her own counsel like the proverbially close-lipped male. People could only imagine what she thought of Johnnie's dancing every evening at the country club from which she had withdrawn in rage. The elders were known to have welcomed her withdrawal like a gift from heaven. The young fry, it was commonly said, couldn't have a single dance without Johnnie, who danced "divinely." (Martha Kenworthy had said once, holding a long-legged columbine swaying in her hand, that it looked exactly like Johnnie Benton.) He was hail-fellow-well-met to most of his mother's sworn enemies. Emily sometimes thought I that must require determination almost equal to his mother's. He just simply was a "nice boy," the town said. He had a good disposition, and Bob Kenworthy was not the only one who, saying that, added, "And the Lord knows he needed it!"
"Whoever could have believed it?" Emily was saying. "Where have they all come from?" they were thinking together. You could count the faces you knew. The youth of the town had been pushed aside by the youth of the whole state, apparently. In a way, the very success was failure, for the committee had enlarged their plans time after time to provide against this indecent modern crowding. And now people were simply wriggling about like fishing worms thick in a can. Suddenly:
"EMILY!" exclaimed Cora Benton. "WHAT'S MARTHA DOING?" Sharply she had spoken, commandingly.
"Martha?" exclaimed Emily, shocked. "Where? I don't see her." She had scarcely seen her all evening.
"Over there. Look!" She pointed with her eye to the farther side of the crowd, where it was overflowing to the veranda.
Johnnie said—he spoke shortly, "She's dancing!"
"Well! Well! Maybe she is." Mrs. Benton was condoning already her tone of reproof.
But Emily had at first sight thought it appropriate, because—well, what in the world WAS Martha doing? Emily had fairly started with annoyance when she saw her. To her first glance it was disgusting. And then, as she looked, chagrined, perplexed,—well—it wasn't disgusting. Really, perhaps, the position in which Martha and her partner were obviously worming their way about was not one which, after long deliberations on the subject, the committee had thought best to forbid on the floor. It was that man—his face—the way he was bending down, being tall, to look at her. It was, most of all, Emily realized in a flash, angrily, the way Martha was holding her sweet little face, entranced, up to him. What in the world were those two talking about?
"Who is that man?" Emily asked Johnnie. She was too annoyed to observe how keenly Johnnie was watching the sight.
"I don't know. Never saw him before."
"There's nothing we can take exception to in THAT!" Mrs. Benton seemed almost to regret the fact.
Johnnie looked at her indignantly and ineffectively.
Emily resented the suggestion sharply. The very idea that anyone might take exception to her daughter, that the committee might disapprove of her child's attitude, hurt her deeply. For Martha Kenworthy was distinctly a nice girl. Everybody had always known that she was a very superior, quiet, well-behaved, dear child. Mothers consulted her mother about their naughty children. And now Cora Benton—but just the same, it did look as if Martha in that little flesh-colored frock, was almost cuddling up against—that—somebody—whom Emily at first shocked sight heartily disliked.
"Go and tell her I want to see her." Emily spoke to Johnnie and regretted it. Mrs. Benton let no one know when she corrected her son. But Emily Kenworthy's intention of reproving her daughter was revealed to the world.
"I wouldn't say anything to her. Look, there's a couple—lots of them are dancing that way. It does leave something to be desired," Cora Benton counseled.
"I hadn't thought of saying anything about that to her," Emily said, carelessly. She was surprised at the sharpness of her resentment. After all, hadn't she often told even Cora Benton how to manage her child!
It seemed a long time before Johnnie came back, more or less dutifully. She suspected him of having had several dances in the meantime.
"I can't find her," he reported. "It's like a needle in a haystack. The river is as crowded as the floor. Pete McGill says this is the largest crowd that was ever in this town. He says there are five hundred more cars than there were on Armistice Day. I'll keep my eye open for her. They're not allowing any more cars across the bridge. Would I do—for what you wanted her for?"
"It doesn't matter," said Emily. "It wasn't anything, really, thank you."
But it was something, when presently she saw Martha again, dancing that same way, with that same man, listening with her face tilted up to him exactly as before. It made Emily think of the time Martha had sat absorbed before some story that Jim Kenworthy wove fantastically for her. That man—he must be an old friend. Emily racked her memory. Some girl's older brother, would it be, or some household where Martha had stayed? She tried to fit him in, and as she watched the two, she saw Martha suddenly sort of double down with amusement, shrugging her shoulders, chuckling, while the man, encouraged, peered more boldly into her face.
"I'll put an end to that!" Emily said. And she hurried down and sought out a place from which she might catch Martha's eye. It was difficult to catch an eye so intent upon its interest. She waited persistently till she had got her attention, and signified to her that she wanted to speak to her at once.
Martha came to her presently—alone—on to the platform, flushed, shining, unashamed.
"Oh, mother!" she ejaculated. She sighed with unspeakable satisfaction. "What a night! Could you have believed it!"
But Emily said, "Martha, who was that awful man you were dancing with?"
Her tone surprised Martha.
"Oh," she said, "that was Sandy. You know Sandy Powers. I had to dance with him. He was in my high school——"
"I don't meanhim! I know Sandy! I mean that dark person you had this last dance with!"
Martha gave a giggle of amusement.
"Don't you know whothatwas?" she demanded. She seemed to think it a great joke. "Why, mother, that's Eve's brother-in-law!"
"I didn't know her brother-in-law was here. When did he come?"
"He just came to-day. I thought, of course, she would have introduced him. Oh, mother, he's an interesting man. He's been everywhere. I'll bring him over to you."
"I don't like him!"
Emily ruffled was so rare a sight that Martha seemed to enjoy it.
"Well, you will when you've seen him. You don't know him," she assured her mother, critically, and adjusted a little lock of hair.
"Is his wife here?"
"I don't know. I don't suppose so."
"Well," grumbled Emily, "don't be dancing with him all evening. Where's Johnnie?"
"I haven't danced with him all evening! We've had two dances." Martha was really surprised.
Emily felt she had been foolish. "Oh, all right," she said, lightly. "I thought I didn't know——"
Martha studied her.
"I promised him another. Oh, he dances divinely! You're tired out, mother. Have you been working every minute? Why don't you go home?"
"No. I'm staying till the end to-night. I'm not going home." She might have added, "I'm not going to leave you."
But the evening had wilted for her. The hours dragged on. Bob came to her at one. Even Bob was full of congratulations. "You ought to be satisfied, old girl," he said. "I heard Wilkinson say that you ought to have credit for the whole thing. He said really if it hadn't been for you——"
"Where's Martha? Have you seen her?"
"I saw her a while ago, up at the house. She had a new Johnnie in tow."
"Who? A large dark man?"
And Bob, struck with an idea, said, "Well, if he's Eve's brother-in-law, he must be a married man."
"He certainly must!"
Bob turned and looked at her.
"He wasn't acting particularly married."
"What do you mean?"
"Where's his wife?"
"I don't know. I don't even know whether she's here or not. I told Martha not to dance with him again!"
"She's minding as she usually does!" Bob commented.
"Why didn't you stay at the house?"
"They didn't seem to want me. Let's go home, Emily. Cut out the rest of it."
"No. I'm staying to-night until the end. We all are."
They were home again, finally, towards morning, sinking down deeply into the living-room cushions, spreading themselves out, breathing out great sighs of contentment. Emily, on the sofa, was adjusting hairpins in the coils of her brown hair. Eve sat beside her, resting in the position she had fallen into, her legs stretched out, her skirts up to her knees, her thin arms extended limply, with dark little frail-looking shadows beneath her eyes. Martha had paused to adjust her color before the hall mirror, and then seated herself, fresh as a morning flower, erect in an easy chair, her hands crossed in her lap, her shoulders tilted slightly, light from the hall on the smoothness of her black hair, dreaming, slight, detached. When her father, who had insisted on going to the kitchen to make lemonade, called out to Emily to know where the sugar had been put, Martha, realizing, as it were, the group, joined them without excitement.
"Sit still, Eve. Don't go and get it for him. It's sitting just where it has sat ever since I was born, and he can't help seeing it. Well, anyway, you ought to be content, mother. It's really your hall, and everyone knows it. Where'd Mrs. Benton been, everybody wants to know, if it hadn't been for you? Johnnie's just like her. He makes me tired. He went about saying he'd got all that crowd there by his old posters. I told him it would have been a lot nicer party if he hadn't got so many to come."
Bob came in just then, Martha's prophecy having been fulfilled about the sugar. He heard Eve's remark: "I think the Legion was by far the most interesting man there. I offered to dance with him. He takes himself seriously, of course."
Bob was feeling facetious.
"You needn't set your heart on that man, Eve. What he wants is a wife that'll do the midnight milking. Yes, midnight! Didn't you even know the farmers around here milk four times a day? To get more milk, of course. Twice at twelve, and twice at six. That's the kind he is. And say, Martha, can't you get a single man to lead around? Eve's sister will be pulling your hair the next thing you know."
Emily spoke up hastily.
"Was your sister there, Eve? I didn't see her. Where do they live?"
"No. She isn't well. They're like the rest of us. They don't live any place." She spoke reluctantly, and then, as if she felt that something more was expected of her, she added: "They have been abroad awhile. In Paris, mostly."
But Martha took up Bob's challenge. "He's so distinguished," she drawled. "Doesn't he dance divinely, Eve?"
"I don't know," Eve replied, shortly. "I don't dance with him." And then she added, abruptly, "Look here, Martha, you needn't dance with him to please me!"
"Don't worry about that. I dance with him to please myself. You ought to hear him talk, mother. He's got the loveliest foreign accent, hasn't he?"
"Hasn't he! And he was brought up in Indiana!" Eve murmured.
"He's been everywhere. I'm going abroad myself next summer. He knew Tchekhoff. He was telling me about him."
Eve sat up. Her eyes narrowed shrewdly. "That's a new one to me," she commented. "I don't believe it." The silence became awkward. She broke it abruptly. "He's a four-flusher, Martha. Take it from me. From the ground up. If he ever saw a Russian in Paris, he'd have known Tolstoy himself, and been bosom friend with Dostoieffsky. He's a journalist, to put it mildly."
It was painful, this way Eve had of saying nasty things about her relations, as if it were a noble duty. She had spoken so doggedly that her face was flushed an unbecoming dark red. Martha grew pinker. The silence grew longer. Emily said, carelessly, rising:
"What pests these in-laws are! Let's go to bed. You've ripped your hem, Martha. Did you know it? You're both to sleep till noon."
"Don't you worry about that!" Bob jeered.
But Eve replied: "I've got to be home for lunch. Dad's going to be home."
If Emily didn't sleep at once, it wasn't because from the painted room came those stifled whispers and gigglings which so often annoyed Bob after dances. The girls seemed to have gone to sleep at once. But Emily kept thinking about Martha, and Mrs. Benton's sharp voice. The man, of course, would be leaving town at once. What would a journalist from Paris, a friend of Tchekhoff find to amuse him in a little Illinois city? And supposing he chose to stay all the summer, Martha could be trusted. She had such common sense. And such good taste, always. "It's just silly of me to worry about Martha," Emily thought, not once only but many times, till she was thoroughly tired of her foolish, wide-awake mind. "Thank goodness it's over!" she said to herself again and again. "Thank goodness that chapter's ended!"
A long interesting chapter had indeed ended that evening, more suddenly than Emily realized.
The next day at first seemed like any other morning of the year, for Emily didn't get up as early as she had intended. There still was heavy dew lying on the thick greenness of the lawn when she sat down on the veranda to finish pitting the cherries. Afterwards she pattered about in the kitchen, tending the ruby mixture in the kettle till her cheeks were rosy red. And then she had filled the Mason jars, and screwed on the lids, and tested their inverted security, one by one, and put them in rows on the shelf to cool, interrupted from time to time by friends at the 'phone who must count over one by one the evening's triumphs. She was busy thinking that she really must take those fresh sash curtains up to the bathroom—it was scandalous, the condition of those hanging there—when the boy brought the raspberries she had ordered—far the best ones she had seen all the season. The girls, she thought, would love them for their breakfast. She prepared two saucerfuls, and got the pitcher of cream ready on the tray, and went up towards their room. Of course that was the way, Bob said, she spoiled Martha, always waiting on her, carrying something delicious up to her in the middle of the morning, when the girl ought to have been up and doing all the housework herself. Bob couldn't understand what a child Martha was, how unfit yet for responsibility. Wait till she had a house of her own. Just think of that painted room of hers, for instance. That showed what the child could do when she wanted to.
Emily opened the painted door quietly. On a day bed at one end of the room Eve was lying on her back reading, in sea-green figured silk pajamas which must have cost a good deal, one knee crossed over the other. Books were piled on the floor beside her, nearly as high as her low pillow.
She turned her head, and caught sight of the tray, and gave a shriek of delight. She called to Martha, who lay asleep on her bed-like device at the other end of the room, curled up like a child, not even a sheet over her. And Martha, sitting up in flesh-colored voile pajamas on the edge of the bed, stretching, yawning, pink and sweet, began:
"Oh, you rare lamb, mother! Isn't she a gem, Eve? No wonder dad says she spoils me! Where did you get them?" Eve had put a low table at Martha's side, and seated herself on the other side of it. But Emily maturely sought out the chair that was kept in the room as a concession to her dislike of floor cushions. She sat watching them gobble daintily, chattering away. Martha, who had made herself comfortable against a pile of cushions, her knees drawn up, and the saucer balancing on them, began wiggling her toes. She hadn't outgrown that infant habit yet, Emily enjoyed noticing. How she had watched this child's awakening with an impulse of delight every day, almost from her first week, till this morning, when she woke even yet delicately rosy and vividly red-lipped. Poor old Bob never got any fun out of it. Martha had disturbed him by waking too early, for years, and now she annoyed him by sleeping too late. But Emily wouldn't stop to sigh long over that, not these few summer mornings when she could enjoy it, now that the child was grown, and away months together. And just then Martha almost unconsciously bestirred herself and with the saucer in one hand and the spoon in the other, almost without ceasing to feed herself, went and pulled down a blind to shut the glare of the sunshine away from that rug of hers that tended to look too violently cerise. The girl, it seemed, couldn't sit up in bed eating berries for breakfast without thinking how the room might look if she should change it just a little.
It sobered Emily to see the ancestry driving her defenseless daughter hither and thither like a slave. Would it not be ironical, now, if this girl "turned out" like that aunt whom Emily's childhood had so futilely resented! It seemed to Emily that never in her young days had that house been free a week from the sound of hammers or the smell of paint. She had wondered, sometimes, in her maturity, whether she turned instinctively away from the thought of "improving" her house because she had so continually in her childhood revolted against her aunt, or whether it was simply laziness that made her tolerate any closet shelf, however inconvenient, rather than bestir herself to alter it. Since she had inherited the house, it had had peace. She had merely kept it in repair, and tolerated the electric devices with which Bob filled it. But now, looking at Martha, she saw again all her aunt's zeal for change overflowing again.
She had not suspected the child of any such constructive inclinations until one day of the last Christmas vacation. They had been talking carelessly together, when suddenly she had heard:
"Do you know what I'm going to do the first thing, mammie, as soon as I get my money?"
That was a question naturally never far from Emily's mind then, because in fifteen months Martha would be twenty, and, according to the terms of her great-aunt's will, she would then receive the first monthly installment of an income of nearly four thousand dollars. Emily had hated that will when she first heard its terms, because it had been drawn up, she understood, so as to keep the least control of the money away from Bob Kenworthy. Exactly what grounds her aunt had had for these suspicions, Emily never knew. She could have discovered only by asking her husband, and it was the very essence of her character that she would not ask him. The very vagueness of that suspicion had been a wound that years of Bob's respectability and kindness had healed. He had not complained about the will at first—Emily had wondered why he had not. Did he not dare? But now that the child had grown up, without much regard for him, he thought it outrageous that that old woman should have made her independent of him. Emily herself, who loved ease with all her heart, who was no manager, in the local sense of the term, had tried faithfully to prepare her daughter to use her money wisely—if not wisely, exactly, at least not too foolishly at first. So when Martha brought up the subject, her mother had asked her once, curiously:
"What will be the first thing you do with it?"
"I'll chuck all that junk out of my bedroom and do it all over."
Emily had been shocked, but she had to smile presently; for wasn't that the very thing she had done first herself, when she had returned to the house after her aunt's death? To be sure, she had later brought down from the attic the old pieces she had especially hated in her childhood. But she remembered with what joy she had stored them away, how she had taken off shutters, and thrown away faded carpets, and gloried in rugs. But Martha's was rather unreasonable, for her bedroom Emily had furnished only six years ago, and most daintily. She had given Martha some of the best things in the house; a dear little chest of drawers that had been before in the spare room, and two little old tables, and gone to great pains to get a bed to suit them. And Martha now had called it "junk"!
"What sort of furniture would you get?"
"Oh mother—it doesn't matter." Martha was apologetic. "You wouldn't let me, anyway."
"How do you know I wouldn't?" Emily had retorted. "I don't know that I'm so tyrannical!"
"I never said you were any such thing. But you know, mother, you'd just sort of persuade me to get what you liked."
"Why Martha! Maybe I would let you get what you wanted!"
Martha went on with the subject hesitatingly. She spoke wistfully, but without hope.
"I'd throw all that junk out and paint it all over. I'd do the floor a nice dull bluey purple—
"A purple floor?"
"Yes. And the woodwork I'd do all creamy yellow, like good fresh butter, or a sort of sea green."
"But, Martha, that floor'soak!"
"Oak takes paint."
"Mine doesn't."
"But I'm just saying what Iwoulddo if it was mine. I knew you wouldn't let me. I'd get a little pine chest made, to paint just like my little old one. Oh, wouldn't I love to do it, though! The girls have such lovely rooms, mother. You ought to see Grace Richmond's. It's all vermilion and blue. But she's an orphan, of course." Martha sighed.
"Oh, Martha!" Emily had exclaimed, "what a lot you have to look forward to! You'll be an orphan some day, and you can paint the whole house purple!"
"Now, mammie, that's just plain nasty of you. You egged me on to say what I would do, and now you make fun of me!" But Martha, mollified, had gone on to tell of the staggering sights she had seen in other girls' homes, reeling colors, threatening emerald ceilings, and cubistic ornamentations.
And Emily had pondered the matter, Martha's sigh rankling. "Her room is all vermilion and blue. But she's an orphan, of course." Did her child, in spite of her mother's long determination to the contrary, feel hampered, thwarted of joy by parental preferences? Was she getting eager to get out of the home, away some place to freedom, as her mother had run once? After all, that floor wasn't so very valuable, and the paper needed renewing. Martha wouldn't be at home months together now, to get tired of her gaudiness. It wouldn't cost such a lot, and no one would have to see it. The door into the outer hall could be kept shut.
A day or two later she had said:
"Do you know what I'm going to give you for your birthday?"
Martha guessed extravagantly:
"A car, mammie? A little runabout to take back to school?"
"Not much! I'm going to let you do your bedroom over to suit yourself."
And Martha had looked blank for a moment, and then murmured:
"Oh no! It wouldn't do, mother. We couldn't. We'd—mother—we'dquarrel, as sure as you live. I'd get started, and I'd want my own way, and you wouldn't approve."
"But I say Iwillapprove. After all, it'syourroom.Idon't have to live in it. You can have it blue and vermilion, if you want to!"
And Martha had sat there for a moment without saying a word, her eyes beginning to twinkle, her dimples all chuckling, just shining and beaming, all her pleasure intensified by her quietness. Then she had hugged Emily after that and had run up to her room straight away. And up and down she ran, hunting for scissors, for yardsticks, measuring, planning, 'phoning to carpenters, twinkling, utterly happy. It had been Emily's sense of her utter happiness that had enabled her to stifle her impulses to interfere.
Once things had got rather serious. The child wouldn't have a bed in the room. She wanted to turn it into a sitting room. And when Emily had pointed out that she didn't need a sitting room, Martha had hugged her and, warningly, "I told you we'd quarrel, mother!" Emily had given way, and Martha had gone on, working like a beaver. She had dyed, and she had shopped in Chicago; she had "jollied" painters whole mornings, and gone back to school in the end, leaving her mother sewing balls of silken high-brow carpet rags. Her very letters had been full of instructions about the room. And during her spring vacation the whole house seemed to be an orgy of renewal, so that Martha hadn't been far wrong when she said that her mother only endured her nowadays through gritted teeth. She had said it from her "studio" in the attic, where she was painting tables, for there alone could she be found that holiday. She had planned so well that in that fortnight she had almost completed her purposes, and she had hated leaving it to go back to college. And to that room she had flown home again, not eager, as she generally was, to go away for the summer. Not once had she mentioned the Rockies or Canada, or even Europe. And her heart was so absorbed in it that now, on awakening to raspberries and cream, she had to go and adjust that blind and study the way the light fell on the cerise—practically—rug.
And Emily looked around, and smiled cautiously. It had been the girl's idea to make the room "amusing." That was the adjective she had continually used of her plan. And certainly she had succeeded in inciting mirth at least in the elders who beheld it. To be sure, with the blind down, the darkly gleaming floor wasn't so bad after one had got used to it. The sand-colored walls were matched by woodwork with little green lines on it. And the rosy silken oval rugs and those black day beds—hateful objects, which kept the edges of the bedding always on the floor, piled by day with cushions like shrieking parrots—all this was almost laughable. She had told Martha firmly the beds ought to be side by side between the windows. But Martha ignored the suggestion. The bookshelves had absurd little cupboards at each end, which Martha opened to show her friends, and an electric stove on a little tray which you stood, so, on this little shelf which pulled out, so. She had gathered a primitive sort of crockery bowls from New York, which were called "just too quaint," and the coffee things from the Chicago Ghetto. Emily had almost protested against this miniature kitchen. Martha never would be making fudge up there, she was sure. But then she had got to thinking of Martha's outgrown playhouse under the willow. "I used to let her have dishes and everything out there," she remembered. And she had not only stifled her objections; she had come heartily to admire this adolescent playhouse.
For there, opening off this room, was the amazing dressing room Martha had made from that large closet where formerly clothes had hung drably. People in the town used to say that, for the sake of having daylight in that closet and preserving the symmetry of the outside of the house, Emily's aunt had torn out and built over that wall seven times. Now Emily had to take visitors up to see that closet, many and insistent visitors, for all Martha's chums were bringing their mothers enviously to show them "Martha's apartment." When she heard their exclamations, she would look at her daughter with that feeling which she experienced when the child, blowing her horn, adjusting her brakes, watching the traffic "cop," drove that panting great headstrong car so calmly, without hurrying one eyelash, through the tangle of vehicles of any city that might lie in her path. For Martha quietly had taken that long narrow closet and lined it on both mirrored sides with hanging wardrobes, and a great total and variety of cunningly planned shelves, shallow and deep drawers, great and small, pulling out on patent rollers; she had packed away a beautifully lighted dressing table, with a stool that pushed back into its own "ducky nook." She had painted all the drawers a dull gold on the inside, and a creamy yellow on the outside, and made them gold knobs and handles. The purple floor and the glow of the rug, less violent than those of the larger room, left her visitors quite mad with envy and surprise.
"It's just Martha all over!" one girl sighed, and Emily had pondered that. Was Martha then to be a lover of perfect places to stow away things? There had been plenty of drawers and closets in the house before, Emily had said to herself. And when she had seen the child's delight in that huge big topmost drawer, she had let her have a great pile of old soft pieced quilts to pack away in it, just as she had given her old hats years before for the games in the willow playhouse. Was that dressing closet "just Martha all over"? Was the child going to be an architect, as she had carelessly suggested once, or an "interior decorator," possibly? Perhaps she was yet going to be brilliant, and do many things as successfully as she had done this, so that Bob would yet be proud of her. Or perhaps she was going to be a furious housewife, delighting in a family of children. And Emily grew serious thinking of that. She had every reason to distrust too great interest in housekeeping. She would see that Martha never loved furniture more than children's ease of mind, never put order of a room before its usefulness. She did hope Martha wouldn't carry these things to excess, as her heredity might urge her to. Here the child hadn't got all the rugs for this room home from the woman who was making them, and she had already begun to talk about enlarging the garage. It disfigured the whole house, as it was, she had told her father. If she might be allowed to double the size of it, making room for two cars——
Then Bob had interrupted: "I'm not going to keep two cars!"
"ButI'llhave a car next year," she had suggested.
"You don'tneeda car!" Bob had asserted, hotly.
"Maybe I don't," Martha had answered, softly, infuriatingly, for her lazily lifted eyes had added, defiantly, "But I'm going to have one, anyway!"
"If I could add another part to the garage and change that hideous entrance so we could hide it with some—lilacs and—things, mother, then I could change the west window of my room into a door, and have the whole roof of the garage for a veranda of my own, with an adjustable awning kind of over it, and some roses up the supports of it. And how much nicer it would be in the summer to sit there without a roof over us. We'd get all the breeze there was there, don't you think, mammie?"
"Oh, Martha, give us a rest. Let's have some peace. There's no reason why you should have a car, I tell you, anyway at your age." Thus Bob received her suggestion.
"We'll have to think it all over," Emily had replied. It would have to stop some place. Martha couldn't just be allowed to "express herself" all over the house whenever it suited her fancy. If Bob would only stop threatening to forbid her to use his car, maybe she wouldn't insist so frequently on having one of her own next year.
The raspberries stimulated Martha to action, for she dressed as Eve and Emily sat discussing the evening. She had to go and get some flowers for her room, before her guests came, she said, departing. And Eve began spreading those day beds into order. Emily bestirred herself to help. She had a notion to move those beds into the middle of the room together. But she refrained. She had to reflect that, though Martha decorated with fury, she dusted with less zeal. In that, too, she resembled her mother. She returned presently with her hands full of lilacs for her red-copper bowls. She threw them down on the bed and when Emily suggested arranging them she said, "Wait, mother. I've 'phoned Johnnie to get me some blue ones from the high-school garden." Emily began a faint protest, knowing Mrs. Benton didn't allow anyone to gather the flowers of that young hedge of hybrid lilacs which she had given to the high school. Martha said: "Oh, I wanted one or two. Mother, we've just got to have a place in the garden for a very late lilac like that, because it makes the bouquets for this room." And Johnnie came in immediately. With half a dozen great blossoms right up the stairs he walked, and into that—no, it wasn't a bedroom, but it still seemed strange to have him making himself at home among the bedrooms. Martha scolded him for bringing so many branches, but she had to have at least two of those dark purply ones. "You can see that for yourself," she insisted to Johnnie. Emily could see it for herself. The flow of color melted and shifted about those darkest blues as Martha lowered one shade and pushed up another, grumbling because mignonette couldn't be got to bloom earlier. If she had ever thought those delphiniums would have been all crushed up that way the first dance last night, she would have saved some for her room.
Emily had told Johnnie to hand her the pile of books that lay on the floor beside Eve's bed. Eve, to judge from the literature with which she surrounded herself continually, couldn't enjoy one book unless there were ten others as good waiting at her elbow for their turn. She came out of the dressing room while Johnnie was looking over the books he had put on the shelf for Emily.
He said, "Hello! You still here?"
"You can't say anything. You're here again."
"Iwas invited.Iwas 'phoned for."
"But I'm leaving soon, and that's more than you're likely to do."
"I'm expecting to be kicked out any minute," he replied, looking at Emily. "Nobody appreciates me here. Is this any good?" he asked, carelessly fingering a book.
"What is it?"
He read the name out. Emily stood listening. It was the book that had shocked her so entirely years ago—the book about which she and Jim Kenworthy had quarreled so destructively.
"Haven't you read that?"
"No. I've heard of it."
"How intellectual of you! They make you read it, in most schools, that is, if you're interested in technique. You'd call it a thousand miles of sand. I haven't got any Robert Chambers," Eve went on, looking over possibilities. "You might try Michael Arlen, there. His style would be lost on you, but the subject would appeal to your heart. There's the Kreutzer Sonata. Have you readCrime and Punishment?"
"Can't stand Russian stuff."
"Does seem difficult, after theSaturday Evening Post," Eve remarked. Skirts may have clung to Johnnie, but Eve wasn't one of them. She had commented, on hearing of his masterpiece, that its music was hackneyed, the verse was rot and the theme disgusting. Martha had retorted that the theme, rather, was rot. Johnnie and Eve quarreled on till Eve departed.
"You're going to stay for lunch, Johnnie?" Emily asked.
"I won't if you don't want me to."
"How truly magnanimous!" Emily murmured. "No. You stay and talk to the girls, but don't stay for lunch. You know your mother wants you." Emily wondered then, and she wondered later, why Martha had wanted Johnnie to stay. Did she want him to hear what the Wright girls' mother was sure to say about the dressing room? Did Martha care really what Johnnie thought—Johnnie, who was always asking her to marry him?
And whatdidhe think, as he stood lazily leaning against the door into the dressing room, watching the women examine the drawers? Mrs. Wright had brought with her a friend who was planning a new house, a prosperous-looking person, and who listened thoughtfully to Martha's answers to her questions. This person was impressed. She kept looking at Martha when they were seated at length in the painted room.
"How much of this did you do yourself?" she asked. "Hadn't you seen something like it somewhere?"
Martha was sitting on a cushion at Emily's feet.
"Oh yes. I'd seen one in New York. And I just told the old Dane, the carpenter, how many drawers I wanted, and how big, and he did it all himself. I couldn't measure them, or anything like that. He had them all ready to put in when I got home. I'd like to do over all the closets in the house." She looked at her mother, against whom she was leaning.
The guests looked at Emily. She had to say something.
"But if all the closets in this house had so many drawers, we wouldn't have enough to put into them."
"I know it. Isn't that funny?" Martha turned to the other. "People are so silly. The closets are so big there's nothing to fill them with. Same way with our basement. It's a horror!" Martha spoke with such conviction that her hearers laughed. "Well, it is," she insisted to Emily. "There's a wood room and a coal room, and drying room, and storeroom with nothing but the hose and two old barrels in it. I could put all those things into one room nicely, and have three great big rooms. They could be billiard rooms, or play rooms, or nice workshops. If I had a lot of children in this house I could give them all two rooms apiece."
Emily included Johnnie in her glance. He had his eyes fixed hard on Martha—who avoided them innocently but persistently.
And that thoughtful and prosperous-looking stranger said:
"Wouldn't you like to drive over and look at my plans? Our basement is going to cost an awful lot."
Martha twinkled at the invitation.
"Oh, I just love to look at plans!" she said. "I just love to think about people's houses. I was thinking, if ever I'm a reformer, do you know what I'm going to reform? Everybody's closets!"
Wasn't she lovely, sitting there innocently, Emily thought. No wonder they admired her, all of them.
"You come and reform all my closets," the stranger said. But Mrs. Wright said: "Don't look at mine till I've had a chance to go over them. You've made me a lot of trouble, Martha. The girls won't give me a minute's peace now till I let them start doing their rooms over."
When Emily, having dismissed the visitors, turned from the hall into her living room, the sight of these familiar things almost shocked her. They stirred her, at least, to question the very room she had for years taken for granted. The glamour of that room upstairs seemed to make the rest of the house faded, some way. The living room she had always sat down in with satisfaction. Now it looked—timid—meager—insipid—unexpectant. Its walls and its woodwork were almost the color of its neutral light pongee curtains. Those were good rugs on the oak floor. They were rich, and they were mellow. Emily had bought them recklessly with a large share of the first installment of her inheritance, when she had moved back to the house when Martha was a small girl, and she had never regretted her fling. The davenport and the two chairs that went with it, those most comfortable monstrosities, had been done once in blue corduroy. Well, it was still corduroy. That was about all that could be said for it. But its blue dullness some way had seemed to match the rugs. That was a good table. No one bought a table like that in any town in Illinois. Nor was there a desk like that, which plainly had been cherished for some generations. And how infinitely superior were the pictures on the wall to most of the pictures on the walls of that town. Emily's grandfather, once the Governor of the sprawling infant state of Illinois, had brought that engraving of Mt. Vernon sentimentality to the wilderness because he remembered his mother holding her successive babies up to see the dogs and horses that surrounded the father of his country, who stood in a declamatory attitude on the very brink of the Potomac, with his women folk and youthful intimates hovering pictorially about him.
Emily used to compare that picture, chuckling, to the picture of Boston which one of her neighbors had made for herself, upon her return from a memorable visit there. Mrs. Jennings was chairman of the art committee and a busy woman, and hadn't time to "do" many pictures, she said. So she just put everything she wanted to remember into one. And Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill and the Common, Longfellow's house and Faneuil Hall, jostled one another in a staggered and staggering row all across the foreground. And there was Mrs. Johnson's parlor. Every time Emily went into it she used to say: "Well, my aunt might have been worse. She didn't paint at least, thank God!" She had left no bilious works of her brush behind her, and she deserved credit for it, considering the fashion of her day. She had left a cherished large framed photograph of the door of St. Mark's. Emily could recall exactly the tone in which she used to say "The portal of St. Mark's," for she had always added "by the sea," which mystified the child. The geography said plainly that all Venice was by the sea. Besides Italy and Mt. Vernon, there were what Emily considered two perfectly lovely large "studies" of Martha's head. A cousin who played with photography had done them when the child was seven years old. She was the cousin who had gathered the child into her arms, on one occasion and cried, "Oh, twinkle, twinkle, little star!" Martha hated them, and pleaded for their banishment, but Emily would not listen to her, not for a minute. There sat a photo of Jim on the desk, and one of his mother, and an early one of his father. And there was, of course, that first seal of a D.A.R. invulnerability, a framed sampler. Altogether, Emily had always been secure that her living room was not just a common small-town room.
But after Martha's—well, what was wrong with it, she sat wondering that morning, a bit ruefully. Some way it was tamed and tolerating. Those high-handed colors upstairs dared the world, and demanded. These young things went raging, commanding, soaring into life. "Not like me," she thought, vaguely. "I just hesitated—and submitted—and got along, some way. How puny I was, and—sort of helpless. That book—I shrank from it as if it had been some great thing. But Eve snubs it. She ignores it. They fly, these children—they just fly. But I rode just a bicycle. And this room wabbles along on a bicycle. I must speed it up. I must—get these things done over—or else I ought to get some new pictures, or something. I better ask Martha, perhaps, to freshen it up a little."
Certainly that stranger had asked Martha's advice. The memory of her respectful tone was wine to Emily. She had to speak to Bob about it. She couldn't just let him go on thinking that Martha "amounted" to nothing.
"I could see that they thought it was wonderful for a girl of her age to have planned it all," she told him. "That woman asked Martha definitely to come and see the plans for her house!"
But he said: "The dickens she did! The kid's got her head swelled enough now, without anybody asking her advice. The dame must be hard up if she's got to come to Martha for advice!"
The girls played golf that afternoon. Emily's mind, when it had intervals of leisure, dwelt upon the question of new furniture—somewhat reluctantly. After all, maybe it would be better to suffer the old faded colors than to flee to others that you know not of. Such a lot of trouble, going to the city to select things, and then, maybe, when you get them home, they don't fit in, as you had intended them to. And she even realized her reluctance. "That's the point about being young. Martha would just jump into the shopping fray. She would dive right in, without hesitation." These meditations kept Emily from giving "that man" even a thought, until almost supper time. Then, as she passed into the hall, Marion Wright, giving her arms a sturdy swing, almost struck her, and drew back, apologizing.
"Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't see you! I was just practicing that drive. I didn't want to forget it, such a classy one! Richard Quin was just teaching us, you know, Mrs. Kenworthy."
"Who's Richard Quin?" Emily asked.
"Oh, that's Eve's brother-in-law. Marion likes him. Don't you, Marion?" Martha asked.
"Well, I can't say I'm crazy about him. But still, he can play. I'm not particular who coaches me. I do prefer them not so fat."
"Fat!" murmured Martha. "He isn't fat. He's just a large man. He's well built."
"Of course they're more fun married," Marion went on, trying to shock Emily. And then she asked, suddenly curious, "Do you like him, Mrs. Kenworthy?"
"Do I like him? Goodness, no! He's greasy looking."
Martha said with dignity: "Mother doesn't know him. She never said a word to him in her life. He's not greasy at all, if you see him close. He shaves twice a day."
"How do you know he does?" Emily demanded.
"He's not reticent, anyway," Marion said laughing.
"He just happened to mention it."
"Did you see his wife?" Emily asked them both.
"Eve told you she wasn't well. She wasn't there."
Martha looked at her mother, perplexed. Emily looked at her daughter uneasily. It was annoying of Martha to defend that man! If Emily had known he was to be on the links, she wouldn't have let Martha go to play. But now, of course the wisest would be just to let the matter drop. Martha was always so trustworthy. Certainly her good taste could be trusted.
Yet for some reason, when Johnnie Benton came that evening to take the three adorned girls to the dance, Emily was more impressed by him than ever. She felt so safe when Martha was under his care. She watched them drive away, and then went out to potter about as usual in the garden, just at dark. A neighbor came bringing her, in a strawberry box, a few rare seedling pansies, and together they made a little place protected from the heat in which they might be nursed. And then they went and sat down inside the screened veranda to escape the mosquitoes.
They were still talking there when Bob came. But he took his magazine and sat down a few chairs away, and they talked on as if no one was within hearing of their voices. And indeed no one was, for Bob habitually absented himself in the print before his eyes. He was unconscious of everything around him. Energetic, insistent demands and clamors could get only a muttered "Uh-uh!" from him. He really didn't know when the neighbor left, although he had sort of muttered at her.
So Emily sat still and alone in the darkness, and glad of the quietness. She thought over one by one the dozen men—Martha called them men, though they scarcely deserved the name—who would be dancing with the girls at the club. Emily knew every one of them; some of them she had known for years. She knew the families of most of them. Every time she thought of Martha's partner of the evening before, they seemed more acceptable to her. They were—decent. They were—secure. They had no foreign accent, and they had not pretended to know Tchekhoff. People gossiped about them, but Emily believed their relationships with bootleggers were merest flirtations. Their scrapes were ridiculous—like Johnnie's opera—-but they were not vicious—often. Bob called them "nail-polishers," and "shiny Johnnies," and thought pessimistically about their chances of success in this competitive life. But Emily, musing away, liked them all that night.
Bob threw down his magazine, after a while, and returned to Emily's presence. He got up and lit a cigar, and went into the house. Emily heard him there talking to some one by 'phone about insurance. He came out and sat down on the railing in front of her.
"Let's go to bed," he said.
She looked at him. There he sat, a heavy, rather sluggish man with a growth of black beard which he conspicuously did not shave twice a day. His hair was not as thick as it had been ten years ago, but not less unruly, and his digestion was decidedly poorer. He was working hard, and making money, and usually tired. He was still more even-tempered than most men. From the time Martha went away to school till she came home for holiday he scarcely spoke an irritable word.
"I thought I'd wait till the girls come home."
"You're dead tired."
"I know it, but they'll be here soon. It's nearly twelve now."
"Let's go out and get them."
"All right. Let's."
They had done that more than once. Bob was always ready for a drive even over that road which they must take along the river. Two miles of that sinuous and uncertain byway had been the cause, like the rest of the country club, of a great wave of hard feeling in the community. Were the taxpayers going to keep it up for a few rich "sporty" families? asked the indignant, so successfully that now the handful of members had either to repair it themselves or endure its flooded ruts. The country club had not been well managed. Mrs. Benton had washed her hands of it in the beginning, prophesying its downfall. The founders had not counted the cost. The less wealthy couldn't stand the assessments and had dropped out. Those who remained had to pay more. And it was all a muddle and a burden and a quarrel—a perfect example of how Mrs. Benton did not manage things. Emily was one of those who still kept membership. She seldom used the place, but she wanted Martha to have a place to play golf. The more Martha danced there, the less she would disturb her father by dancing at home. And really, it was a very nice crowd of young people who gathered there. By night, as Bob and Emily drove in, it looked gay and lovely, lit all up, among the trees, with the dancers gliding about. By day, of course, its appearance justified the scorn which neighboring towns poured upon it. However, those towns, since last night's event, would be less boastful.
Bob stopped the car and they sat looking in. Now Martha had had on a little dress faintly pink at the neck and deeply carmine at the hem, so that, if she had been there, Emily would have seen her in a moment.
"Whereisthe kid?" Bob grumbled. Emily looked about under the trees, and saw Johnnie Benton leave the couple with whom he was smoking and come over to them. Bob repeated his question immediately. And Johnnie said, indifferently, looking in towards the lighted floor:
"Isn't she there? I guess she's out having a petting party somewhere with that dago necker."
Emily was thoroughly annoyed by the boy's impertinence. The idea of his daring to say a thing to her of Martha.
"Who d'you mean?" Bob demanded.
"You know, that bearded guy she's falling for."
"Eve's brother-in-law?"
"Yes."
"Is she with that——" Emily nudged Bob violently.
"She generally is!" So Johnnie wasn't so indifferent, after all, to the fact as he had wanted them to believe. And then the music stopped, and the girls came nocking out to the drive like butterflies. Marion Wright called upon Johnnie to witness that there was just one more dance, and then they would all go home, and Martha, she said, had already gone, walking home.
Emily asked in reply, unconcernedly, if they were having a good time, and told them not to hurry, and said, "No, they wouldn't wait for an ice—the night was so hot they had thought they would drive out to cool off." But here the ice was—and she ate it hurriedly, fearing what Bob might say about Martha before them, nudging him mentally, as it were, into silence.
No sooner was the car turned towards home than Bob broke out:
"Well, I'll be damned! I won't have this, Emily."
"Funny we didn't see them, if they're walking home."
"I thought she hadsomesense. What's he doing out here? Did you know he was coming?"
"No. I never thought of it. Of course the family belongs."
"The nerve of him! Does anyone else come uninvited?"
"Oh, Bob, we must be careful! Did you hear what Johnnie said?"
"I'll settle that girl to-night. She isn't going to be running around at midnight with any married man."
"Now, Bob, we mustn't be hasty. You must think this over. We don't want to—seem to take this—too seriously. He'll be leaving, likely, in a day or two."
"How do you know he will?"
"Isupposehe will. Didn't Eve say so?"
"I didn't hear her. And it's the principle of the thing. She thinks it's smart to be flirting with a married man."
"Oh, I don't think she does, Bob. He's so different—from these boys here." And then suddenly she begged: "Look, Bob! Oh, let me do the talking to her!" For walking slowly along, side by side, were the two of them, little rosy Martha and the man that seemed always bending over her. So near they were that Bob stopped the car with a jerk.
"We'll give you a lift," he said, unceremoniously. "Get in!"
Martha introduced her companion. Bob gave the shortest possible sign of being aware of his existence. He was opening the car door.
"Get in!" he said to his daughter.
"It's a glorious night for walking," Mr. Quin remarked, standing still.
"It's too late. Get in!" Bob again spoke directly to Martha.
She turned to her escort. "It is rather muddy here. Let's ride a little." And she got serenely in, and bade him follow her. The car started.
Emily turned around in her seat.
"You staying long in town, Mr. Quin? I meant to call. But Eve said your wife isn't well."
"Oh—I'm not sure yet. It's all so interesting to me. A Western town like this. It's quite surprised me." Hadn't Eve said the man was brought up in Indiana? His tone annoyed Emily so that she turned abruptly about in her seat. Martha leaned forward to her.
"He thinks it's the most ripping dance hall he ever saw, of the kind, mother." Ripping, was it? Such a distinguished word, so unlike this West, Emily was saying to herself. Where was Bob going? Why didn't he take them directly home? He had turned, and in a minute, before they knew it almost, they had stopped in front of Eve's home.
"We'll drop you here," said Bob.
The stranger looked at Martha.
She said, surprised: "No—— Oh—well——"
"It's the way we have in these Western towns," Bob remarked, shortly. The man said good night reluctantly and as meaningly as possible, with Emily's eye upon him.
In the light of the living room, Emily said: "Look at your slippers, Martha! What made you walk home in them?"
"Oh, mother, it was such moonlight. You were absolutely rude to him, mother. I never saw you act so before," Martha spoke grievedly.
"I know a snubbing when I get one. He didn't ask me to call on his wife."
"But, mother, you know she isn't well. Eve said so."
"If she isn't well I think he'd better devote himself exclusively to her. Martha, I don't like this. He ought to know better, if you don't. You'll get yourself talked about, if this keeps on."
Martha opened her eyes in unfeigned surprise.
"That's a funny way for you to talk, mother. You always say people have no right to go gossiping around about girls!"
"Well, I certainly said girls oughtn't to do silly things to start people talking."
"I get sick of this town! It's only in a little crude hole of a place like this a girl can't look at a man after he's married. He knows more in a minute than all the boys in this place know in a year. And just because he's got a wife I'm not to listen to him, I suppose!"
"You are certainly not to—to let him spend all his time with you. You went with Johnnie. Why didn't you come home with him? Did you know that he—this Quin person—was to be there, Martha?"
Martha stood there looking straight at her mother, as if she had seen in her something new and perplexing.
"What's the matter, mother? What's all the fuss about, anyway?"
"About this man. He's married. He oughtn't to be following you about when his wife's at home sick. I'm disgusted with you, Martha."
"Because he happens to be married?"
"He doesn'thappento be married; heismarried."
"I don't follow you, mother."
Martha spoke, with her head held high, in the lazy tone she used to infuriate her father.
Emily said, gently smiling: "There's no use your trying that on me, Martha. You follow me exactly. You know exactly what I mean, and you're to remember what I say."
"You never spoke like this to me before, mother." She would try being hurt.
"I never had occasion to, thank goodness! And I'm not going to speak to you this way again, either." They both heard Bob coming in. "Now go to bed," Emily said, kissing her, "and be a good girl." Martha kissed her in return, without any sign of annoyance, and ran quickly upstairs.
"Where is she?" Bob demanded.
"She's gone to bed."
"Just like her. She crawls out of everything. Did you settle her once for all?"
"I spoke to her about it. I told her we didn't like it."
"You're too easy with her, Emily. I'm going to settle her in the morning. I'm going to lay down the law to her!"
He was going to lay down the law to her, was he, when he had never in his life laid down his work for an hour for her sake! Emily, that placid woman, for the third time in one evening, was ruffled and resentful. Johnnie had disturbed her. "That man" had annoyed her. And now, all of a sudden, Bob, who had never done anything but stand aside and watch her manage Martha, was going to take her in hand. He had literally had no time for the girl since she was born; and now he seemed to think she ought to listen to him.
She said nothing, being wise, and he went up to bed. The Wright girls came in, presently, with Johnnie and Chris Phillips, all of them together making a little eddying whirlpool of youth in the quiet room. Emily, moved by some instinct of security for Martha, called up to her to come down. "Oh," they said, "is Martha home?" Emily replied carelessly that they had picked her up near the bridge, and instantly she happened to look at Helen Wright. She had not been thinking of the effect of her remark, but she saw Helen wink—yes, undoubtedly just wink—at Johnnie, and she saw he didn't want to be winked at on the subject. She felt a sharp mistrust of that girl—her expressive, cynical face. What did she mean? Did she know with whom Martha had chosen to walk home? She thanked goodness that Helen Wright wasn't staying long. She didn't like her.
Martha had only tarried a minute—long enough to have paid, perhaps, her tribute to the mirror, but by the time she came down the boys had left. Johnnie said it would be a change to go once before he got sent home. Martha didn't deign to notice his absence. She talked serenely to her guests.
But Emily, in her bed, remembered, sighing more than once, how that horrid Helen had sat looking at Martha, with cynical, initiated amusement. Perhaps that girl was encouraging her in her naughtiness. If Martha wasn't careful—and she probably wouldn't be—she would be getting into a horrible row with her father. That consummation Emily Kenworthy would do anything to avoid. If Bob "bawled her out" in the morning, the world underneath their feet would be splitting. Martha and that odious stranger would be on one side, and Bob would be on the other. And Emily—well, there was never a moment's doubt in her mind where she would be!
She remembered, indignant at the thought of it, that perfectly absurd situation of her friend, Mrs. Harding, whose daughter had married, to the utter rage and final alienation of her father. One day, months after that, Mrs. Harding had come creeping into the Kenworthys' house, almost a stranger then, and had begged for the loan of two hundred dollars, just begged for it, ashamed and whispering, because her daughter was ill, and without a penny, in a rooming house demanding its rent. A girl friend of hers had seen her there, and had come back to urge her mother to help her. In all her life Emily had never had to consider the state of a woman living comfortably without one cent of her own to put a finger on. "If I were you," she had exclaimed to Mrs. Harding, "I would go straight to her. I would bring her home, or take her some place and take care of her." But Mrs. Harding dared not defy her husband. He was an old man, and delicate, and it might kill him. And Emily had been on the point of saying: "I don't believe it! And if it does, he deserves it!" She had entered heartily into that conspiracy, and it had all turned out so well, and the two women had become friends. Yet Emily essentially disapproved of her "kowtowing" to her husband. There would be nothing like that in her house! If any great, deep chasm was to come splitting across the ground on which the Kenworthy family stood, Emily was going to be on the side of her daughter! Was it likely that she would give up that Jim Kenworthy—that she would have allowed her dear lover to go away to die alone—for that child's sake, and now give up the child merely for Bob Kenworthy?
"Bob," she said, emphatically.
"What's the matter?" He was sleepy.
"You aren't to 'settle' Martha in the morning! You are to leave her to me!"
"What?"
"I say you aren't to scold Martha in the morning about—that man. I've talked to her about it, and that's enough."
"She won't mind you, Emily."
"She'll mind me at least as much as she would you. And more, too. And I'm not going to have you two—quarreling and arguing about—this—person. Do you understand that, Bob? If you—speak to her about it, she'll get to thinking that she's on one side with that man, and you and I are on the other side."
"She's on his side now."
"No, Bob, she isn't. She is just—playing; she wants a little rope."
"She's got enough to hang herself now."
"You won't speak to her, will you, Bob, now?"
"Oh, well," Bob grumbled, "she's your kid, Emily. You've got to manage her. She won't listen to anything I say, anyway."
"But I mean, don't you just begin to—don't you forget and bring the subject up, at all, will you, Bob?"
"I won't say a word to her if you make her quit it. If you don't, I'll take her in hand. I won't stand for her getting talked about all over town!"
"She's not going to get talked about, Bob!"
"Oh, well. Manage her to suit yourself."
That was the most he could say. He could offer her no help. All she could ask of him was that he would refrain from interfering. But if Jim had been in Bob's place, Jim would have known what to do. Martha would have listened if Jim could have spoken to her. And Jim would have listened if Emily had gone to him in perplexity about the girl. Hadn't she and Jim sat together for hours discussing their children, enjoying them together, having them in common, almost, in spite of the barrier between them? Because Jim had always appreciated little Martha Kenworthy. That was the essential wrong Bob had done the child since birth. He had failed to appreciate her. He had never in his life understood a woman. He had never even given the proper value to his own mother. And Jim's adulterous wife he had simply cursed whenever he thought of her. It was only men that Bob could evaluate. There was no use expecting him to judge Martha fairly. But Jim had enjoyed every phase of her little girlhood, just as he had played tenderly, reverently with his mother's heroisms and weaknesses, just as he had so well understood every shade of the service Emily had unconsciously rendered him when she had loved his son. If Martha had a man like Jim about familiarly, she wouldn't be impressed as she seemed to be with the first pretentious masher that came her way. Jim would have set a standard for the child, given her a taste for masculine worth. And it all went back again to the old, old question: Why didn't I marry Jim in the first place? Why did I ever quarrel with him? Why was I brought up so that I could quarrel with him, about a book, merely a book that is this minute lying neglected on the shelf in the painted room because the girls were bored with old classics? I married Bob to get away from this house, said Emily. But Martha will never marry to get away from that, Emily vowed again.