PART III
CHAPTER FORTY
"Are you sure you feel all right, mummy? You don't look as if you had slept very well."
"Nonsense, dear. I slept at least five hours straight off and you know——"
"Oh, yes, I know. Napoleon never had more than four hours and Saint Catherine or Winifred or somebody else did mighty works on ten minutes. But they're not you."
Jean laid her arm across her mother's shoulders and drew her close. "You won't be silly, will you? If you don't feel well you'll 'phone me? There's nothing very special to-day."
Martha's face, smaller and frailer than ever, glowed with love satisfied, and for a moment she closed her eyes in the old spirit of humble gratitude. But Jean, looking down, saw only the thin hair, white now, and her throat contracted.
"Jean, sometimes I feel as if all my life, this last year has been waiting for me, one whole year, just exactly as it has been. Now that I waste so much time just sitting round, I think of it a lot."
The lines along the corners of Jean's mouth deepened and she looked old and tired. But her voice had the same brusque quality with which she had always forestalled any emotional demand. If the year had been wonderful to Martha, it had not been useless, and Jean was grateful.
"Of course, if you are trying to tell me, Martha Norris, that I used to bore you to death——"
"Don't be flippant, Jean. You know perfectly well——"
"There. That sounds more natural. I guess you're all right. But don't go and overdo. Will you promise me that?"
"I never do. I'm a regular parasite."
"Well, it agrees with your disposition, so keep it up." Jean bent and kissed her. "You're really much nicer than you used to be, mummy. Pneumonia must be good for the soul."
"Got me into line at last, haven't you? But remember, even the effects of pneumonia wear off."
"Then I'll take my innings while they're going. Remember, if you go to service this afternoon you are to call a taxi. Do you hear? You are not to take any of those 'nice, quick walks' you are so addicted to. There's a wind like a knife blade to-day. Will you promise?"
"I'll use my judgment, dear."
"I leave you in peace. You are yourself. I don't believe you ever had pneumonia. Mummy, you've been faking."
Jean gave her mother another quick kiss, and went. From the street below, she looked up and waved. Martha waved back.
But when Jean was out of sight, Martha crossed to the side table where Jean had laid Mary's letter. Part of it Jean had read aloud, the first two paragraphs and on from the middle of the third page, but the part unread she had returned to twice, and when she slipped the letter back into its envelope, Martha had seen her hands tremble. Martha's own hands shook as she unfolded the pages, scrawled with the doctor's heavy black writing, vigorous and violent as Mary herself.
"Now listen, Jean, it's one chance in a million and you can have it if you want. I shall expire with envy, but I've just enough sanity left to know that I'm too old. To go to China and organize a kind of Red Cross—Associated Charities—Relief of the Poor, with trifles like directing the education of feminine China thrown in, because, years ago, little Wong Lee used our gymnasium and I treated him half way decently! He is now minister of something-or-other in New China and he throws this pearl at me. I would give twenty years of my life to do it, but I haven't twenty left, not ten even of any great use in such a big undertaking. But you! The old courage would come back. Things would be worth while again. You would——" Here a word had been scratched, but Martha bent long and close over the paper and at last she made it out. "You would forget."
After the third effort, Martha succeeded in folding the sheets and getting them into their envelope. Then she went back to the chair by the window and sat down. Dampness came about her lips and temples and she closed her eyes.
It would be a new life for Jean. Jean would forget.
Why did Jean need a new life? Had this wonderful year, so full of peace to Martha, been stagnation to Jean? Had the deep gentleness and understanding which had come to Jean been only a masque? Had it been possible only with an outlet of confidence to Mary? What was it that Jean was to forget? Back and forth through the last eighteen months Martha's memory went, gathering forgotten looks, stray phrases, quiet evenings when Jean lay on the couch reading, evenings so full of contentment to Martha, that she had thanked God for each one.
Twice the maid came to the door to clear the breakfast table and went back to the kitchen on tiptoe. The third time Martha heard her.
"All right, Katy, you can clear away now."
At twelve o'clock Jean telephoned, as the habit had grown since Martha's illness in the early winter. Martha assured her that she felt all right and would go and take her nap "as ordered."
"Be sure you do. And I'll be home early. It's Katy's afternoon out, isn't it?"
"Yes. I think I'll tell her she can have the evening, too, because she wants to go over to Montclair to see her cousin."
"But don't you do a thing for supper. I'll stop in at a delicatessen."
Martha went back to her room and lay down. The effort of answering had exhausted her, so that now she shook as with a chill, and her heart thudded sickeningly. When Katy came to call her to lunch, Martha did not want any. She heard Katy eat a hurried meal in the kitchen, clear the dining-room and go. After a while the perfect stillness of the house rested Martha a little, and she got up and went into the kitchen. Usually, she enjoyed these afternoons when Katy was gone and she was free to putter about and make little delicacies, for which Jean always scolded her, and ate with tremendous relish. But to-day, Martha had to rest often as she made the chocolate cake that was Jean's favorite, and she did not ice it at all.
In her private office, Jean made her third effort to write to Mary. In the outer room two typewriters clicked and from across the hall, through the open transom, she heard Jerome Stuart, of the Men's City Club, dictating.
"I will take the matter up with Mrs. Herrick of the Women's Civic League, as it seems to me both organizations working together can accomplish better results."
Mrs. Herrick of the Women's Civic League. That meant herself and the eighteen busy, empty months since Gregory's letter.
Jean's hands dropped to the keys and she sat looking down into the street. The wind had swept it almost clean of people and the few who had to be out, beat along, muffled in clothes, like unthinking bundles propelled against their wills.
"If only mummy could stand it. But she couldn't, and she would be so utterly miserable."
Across the hall, Jerome Stuart was talking again:
"It seems to me that this is a matter for women rather than men. I will refer the matter to Jean Herrick of the Women's Civic League, and can assure you of prompt action."
Jean ripped out the paper and closed the machine.
"Nothing in the world is worth making mummy miserable for, and, besides, Mary would see through me in a minute, if I wrote in this mood. She'd know that I'd rather go to China than do anything else in the wide world. Never to see these streets again, nor the river, nor the people. To go where there are no memories unless I call them up. But mummy——"
Jerome Stuart was crossing the hall now, coming to consult with Mrs. Herrick of the Civic League. This tall, quiet man, with his unshakeable faith in humanity, would look at her with his deep gray eyes, eyes too gentle unless one had seen them flash against injustice, and, in a few moments, she would find herself starting some new piece of work. Jerome Stuart had done this often in the six months he had headed the Men's City Club, and Jean had been glad. But to-day she wanted no burden of another's enthusiasm forced upon her. She wanted nothing except to get away by herself. She heard the secretary tell Jerome Stuart that she was busy and she heard him go back again to his own office and close the door.
A little before five Jean left. The wind had reached a point of cold fury that made it almost impossible to breathe.
"I do hope she hasn't gone to service, even in a taxi." The possibility worried Jean all the way home. "I wish Lent came in the summer." As she let herself into the apartment she called gayly:
"Hello!"
There was no answer.
"Oh, mummy, itissilly. If God's everywhere, why can't you talk to Him here?"
It was half past five now, and, at the latest, Martha would be in by six. Jean put the kettle on the gas and the cold chicken and ham into the ice-box. The chocolate cake stood on the lowest shelf of the pantry.
"It's no good. I can never change her. I might just as well let her go peacefully on."
She turned the gas low under the kettle and went into her own room to take off her things. The connecting door to Martha's was ajar, and the wind, whistling down the light-well, rushed at Jean, striking like a hand.
"Whew!" She threw her things on the bed and hurried to close the window.
Sitting in the rocker by the bed, one shoe on, the other by her side, her hands quiet in her lap, her head back, tilted a little as if listening, and with a terrible smile on the open lips, sat Martha. Jean swayed on the threshold, and then moved slowly and heavily toward the chair. The curtain blew in and the end flapped against Martha's shoulder. Jean put it aside. Without a sound she dropped beside the chair and her arms closed about her mother. The little figure lurched sideways and the cold cheek lay against her own. As cold and still as the dead, Jean knelt.
The mechanism of her brain had stopped, back there ages ago, on the threshold. Her will, her power to feel, had dropped into an abyss of nothingness. Jean knelt, knowing that her mother was dead, that she had died in the act of getting ready for service, that she must have died about three hours ago, while she was trying to write to Mary, that there were many things to do and she would have to begin doing them. But she could neither move nor think of what they were.
All her life came to this point and stopped. Tiny incidents, forgotten to consciousness, rose from the mass of memories piled upon them. They had neither relation nor sequence, but tumbled chaotically in the void. Martha making a dress for her doll; Martha on graduation day; Herrick and their Sunday dinners with Martha; Tom and Elsie; the months with Gregory in which Martha had no part and the night she had come home to find Martha mending and had been glad. The two terrible weeks she had passed alone by the sea, after Gregory's letter. The return—Mary gone West and Martha happy again in the solitude with Jean. And the long months since, when her mother was the realest thing in the world and Jean had felt the narrow binding bands of Martha's love and been a little comforted.
Now the band had snapped and she was alone.
Across the light-well, a woman put a child to bed. It knelt and said its prayers, just as she had used to do, and afterwards the woman tucked it up, opened the window and turned off the light. The elevator clanked from floor to floor. Children scampered across the apartment above. Dishes rattled in the kitchens. Men were coming home to dinner. The great building was vibrant with the sounds that mark the definite closing of a day. That small period of finite time, man's working day, was ended. But here, there was no light, no sound in the still rooms. The small, intimate ending of the hours was lost, engulfed in this tremendous ending of all things.
A sputtering noise broke on Jean's consciousness. It had been going on a long while. She laid the little head gently against the chair back and rose. A strange odor filled the apartment. She went out into the kitchen. The water had completely boiled away and the solder had melted from the kettle. Jean turned off the gas and went back.
There were so many things to do, and now she would have to begin doing them. Death, the most silent, private thing in the world, necessitated many outward offices, the presence of strangers, an official routine. Jean lifted her mother's body and laid it on the bed. She closed the parted lips and bound them. Then she began to undress her. Never, in her whole life, had Jean done such service for Martha, and now it seemed as if, from some vast distance, her mother was watching, embarrassed and reluctant, so that Jean felt awkward and ashamed. One by one she took off the garments, noticing with detached numbness the beautiful mending in Martha's stockings, the neat tying of the corset laces. Jean had never seen her mother undressed, and the youthful quality of the skin astonished her. She felt inhuman, perverted, to notice this, but the feeling ran only on the surface of her brain, as if she had taken an anæsthetic, strong enough to deaden sensation, but not strong enough to kill consciousness. Suddenly she recalled Herrick passing his fingers over the smooth satin of the painted canvas and she covered the little body hastily in a white night dress, as if shielding it from stranger eyes.
How small and still she looked like that, and, at the same time, so terrible! A little while before and she had been Martha, her mother, narrow in her beliefs, jealous in her love, full of obstinate faith and human weakness. Now she was part of the universe, of the terrible law of life and death. What tremendous finality to be centered in that small body! And how young she looked! Only the white hair seemed to have marked the years. A few short hours before and Jean had felt her throat tighten at the frail body and the thin white hair. And now, in a moment, Martha had outlived time, defied human laws. Age was a cloak imposed by Time and removed by Death. At some distant spot, Martha, young and happy, was talking to her God.
The mechanical movement of lifting and undressing her mother stirred Jean's consciousness, and she realized now that the window was still open and the freezing wind blowing in. She reached for the comforter at the foot of the bed and drew it up. This covering the small body was one of the useless, sentimental things people did with their dead. But she had no power over her actions. Years of association with the flesh had created habits that fulfilled themselves mechanically. A lifetime with the shell of the body had given it an existence of its own, and although the closed eyes and bound lips proved Martha beyond the need, the very flesh and shape had created demands of their own.
Jean covered the body snugly and stood looking down. With this, her work was done. Never again would she do anything for her mother.
Jean shivered and then something beat its way through the numbness of the last hours and she dropped to her knees. With her face on the small, still breast she sobbed, dry, tearing sobs that ripped the last eighteen months to shreds and buried her beneath them.
She was alone in the world. There was no one now to consider. No need to pretend. No one in the whole writhing mass of humanity belonged to her nor she to any one.
The desperate emptiness of Gregory's going rose in a gaunt specter from the grave where she had tried to heap it to stillness by the small duties of loving and caring for Martha; trying to make up, out of her own realization of loneliness and pain, some of the empty years of her mother's life. Now the need was over. She would never again have to take a book and pretend to read in order not to worry the patient figure sewing under the lamp. She would never again have to take the image of happy hours and lift it from her brain, that it might not claim the moments that were Martha's. There was no need to do anything, anything at all. She was alone, free in a terrible freedom, alone in an infinity of emptiness.
The front door opened and Jean heard Katy come down the hall into the kitchen. She got up and went out and told her. Katy began to cry, and although Jean knew that Katy had been fond of Martha, there was something so officially appropriate in these instant tears, that Jean frowned. Katy choked her sob into a sniff.
"If you would make some strong black coffee, Katy, I should like it." Then she went into the hall and telephoned to the doctor who had attended Martha during the pneumonia of the earlier winter. He lived nearby and came in a few moments. He pronounced it death from heart disease and told Jean that her mother's heart, weak for years, had never recovered from the strain of pneumonia.
"Did she have anything special to worry her? Any shock to-day? Still, there was no reason that it should have terminated so soon."
"Not that I know of."
"No special shock to-day?"
"No. We live very quietly and there would be nothing without my knowing it."
"Um. Sometimes these things take sudden and unexpected turns. There is not always a definite explanation." He stopped as if something more personal and sympathetic was expected of him. Taller than he, Jean looked down coldly. He was used to women crying or going into hysterics, and although he was always scornful of such procedure, years of habit in meeting these emergencies had given him a tactful gentleness of which he was vain. But now there was going to be no need for restoratives or sedatives and so he took his hat.
"If there is anything that I can do to make it easier, please feel——"
"Thank you. There is nothing."
When the doctor had gone, Jean drank the black coffee that Katy brought.
"Could I be seein' her, Mis' Herrick?"
Jean did not want Katy to see her. But she could not refuse, for the feeling persisted that Martha was no longer her mother, her own special human property. She was part of the law of life and death, day and night, the seasons. She had entered the cosmos. Personal preference was washed under in this tide of law.
Jean heard Katy go into the room and drop to her knees. There was a moment of sobbing and then a mumbled prayer. In a few moments the girl came out. Jean heard her muffled sobbing in the kitchen.
"If you would rather go home to-night you may, Katy."
"And leave you?"
"Certainly. I do not mind. There is nothing to be afraid of," she added more gently.
"I know." Katy took advantage of the gentleness to sob openly. "The dead can't hurt us—God rest their souls—and such a gentle sweet lady—but it does give me the creeps—it always done——"
"Then, Katy, I would rather you went. In fact I would rather be alone. You can come early. Be here by seven-thirty."
Jean went into the living-room. Martha's chair stood pushed back from the window, as she had left it when she had gone to get ready for service. Her glasses lay on the window-shelf. Jean sat down in the chair. In a few moments she heard Katy tiptoe out. The streets were empty, except for the wind. It moaned about the corners of the big building, shutting Jean in from the rest of the world. And beyond the wind, the black river ran swiftly to the sea.