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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c76fe16 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #64634 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64634) diff --git a/old/64634-0.txt b/old/64634-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index e4f60b9..0000000 --- a/old/64634-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,11882 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Labyrinth, by Helen R. Hull - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Labyrinth - -Author: Helen R. Hull - -Release Date: February 26, 2021 [eBook #64634] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Tim Lindell, Graeme Mackreth and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was - produced from images generously made available by The Internet - Archive/American Libraries.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LABYRINTH *** - - - - -LABYRINTH - - - - -[Illustration] - - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS - ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO - - MACMILLAN & CO., Limited - LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA - MELBOURNE - - THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. - TORONTO - - - - - LABYRINTH - - - BY - HELEN R. HULL - AUTHOR OF "QUEST," ETC. - - - New York - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - 1923 - - _All rights reserved_ - - - - - PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - - - Copyright, 1923, - By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. - - Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1923. - - - Press of - J.J. Little & Ives Company - New York, U.S.A. - - - - - To - MABEL L. ROBINSON - - - - -LABYRINTH - - -In the old story of the labyrinth at Crete, the Minotaur dwelling -there devoured in his day innumerable youths and maidens. He was slain -finally by the hero Theseus. The story goes that Theseus escaped both -monster and death in the blind alleys of the labyrinth only because -Ariadne was wise enough to furnish egress by means of her slender -silken thread. - -There is a modern story of a labyrinth, differing from the old tale in -that it has as yet no termination, no hero who has slain the Minotaur, -no thread to guide those who enter its confusion of passages out -to any clear safety beyond its winding darkness. This modern story -differs from the old legend in other ways. The monster lurking in -this labyrinth seems to many who hear the tale merely a phantom. His -bellowings are soft and gentle, he writhes in so sentimental a fashion -that he can scarcely be taken as a monster, and since he leaves his -victims with their bones unbroken and their flesh unscarred, who is to -say that he has devoured them? They themselves may deny their fate. -And in that lies a final likeness to the old story. Until Theseus and -Ariadne had between them destroyed the Minotaur, people had thought -him an inevitable pest, and had looked upon the destruction he wrought -as legitimate. Perhaps some of the youth were tragic about their fate, -but after all, a monster and a labyrinth possess dignity and provoke -indifference merely by their continued existence. - -Ariadne alone might not have slain the monster. She might have traveled -through the passageways, her silken thread between her fingers, and -perished herself without some aid from Theseus. - -Here is the modern story of the labyrinth. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PART I - - PAGE - - An Idyll--From the Inside 3 - - - PART II - - Both Ends of the Candle 87 - - - PART III - - Blind Alleys 147 - - - PART IV - - Encounter 213 - - - PART V - - Impasse 265 - - - - -PART I - -AN IDYLL--FROM THE INSIDE - - -I - -"Tell Letty, Muvver. Tell Letty." - -"Again? Oh, Letty!" Catherine opened her eyes. Letty, on her stomach, -was pointing at a black ant slipping along a grass blade. - -"'Nother ant. Tell Letty." - -"Don't squirm off the rug, or the ant will crawl up your rompers and -take a nip." Catherine looked up through the motionless leaves of the -birch trees under which she had spread the rug. "Once there was a busy -ant," she began, "and he went out for a walk to find a grain of sand to -build his house. His brother went out for a walk, too----" Her thoughts -drifted through the story: how close the sky looks, as if the heat had -changed its shape, and it rested there just above the tree---- "The -busy ant found a grain of sand and ran back to his hill to lay it on -his house." The haze seems thicker; the forest fires must be worse, no -rain forever---- - -"Uh-h," Letty grunted, and held up her small brown hand, the ant a -black smear on her palm. - -"Why, Letty!" Catherine pulled herself up on one elbow. "You squashed -him!" - -"Bad ant. Nip Letty." - -Catherine reached for Letty's fist just as a pink tongue touched it. - -"Going to eat him, are you? Little anteater." She brushed the ant away -and rolled her daughter over into her arm. "You might wait until you -are nipped." - -Letty chuckled and lay quietly for a minute, while Catherine looked at -her. Brown legs and arms, yellow rompers, yellow hair with sun streaks -of palest gold, blue eyes squinted in mirth, a round and sturdy chin. - -Catherine closed her eyes again. Out from the woods behind them came -with the lengthening shadows the odor of sun-warmed firs and dried -needles. Quiet--release from heat--from thought. - -Suddenly Letty squirmed, pounded her heels vigorously against her -mother's knee, rolled over, and began her own method of standing up. -Her process consisted of a slow elevation of her rear, until she had -made a rounded pyramid of herself. She stood thus, looking gravely -around, her hands flat on the rug, her sandaled feet wide apart. - -"Hurry up, anteater," jeered Catherine. "You'll have vertigo." - -But Letty took her time. Finally erect, she started off across the -meadow. - -"Here, you!" Catherine sat up. "Where you going?" - -"Get Daddy." Letty's voice, surprisingly deep, bounced behind her. - -"Wait for me." Catherine stretched to her feet, reluctantly. - -Letty would not have waited, except that she stumbled into an ant hill -hidden in the long grass, and went down plump on her stomach. So she -lay there calmly, turning her head turtle-wise to watch her mother. - - * * * * * - -Catherine had borne three children without adding a touch of the matron -to her slender, long body. In knickers and green smock, her smooth -brown hair dragging its heavy coil low down her slim neck, she looked -young and strong and like the birch tree under which she stood. There -was even the same suggestion of quiet which a breath might dispel, of -poise which might at a moment tremble into agitation. The suggestion -lay in her long gray eyes, with eagerness half veiled by thin lids and -dark lashes, or perhaps in the long, straight lips, too firmly closed. - -A shout came up the path between the alders, and Letty scrambled to her -feet. - -"Daddy!" she shrieked, and headed down the path, Catherine loping -easily after her. - -There they were, Charles and the two older children, Spencer carrying a -string of flounders, Marian with the fish lines hugged under her arm, -and Charles between them, each of his hands caught in one of theirs. -They stopped as Letty pelted toward them. - -"Fishy! Sweet fishy!" Letty reached for the string. Spencer drew it -sternly away, and Letty reached again, patting the flat cold flounder -on the end. - -"Letty, you'll get all dirty and fish smelly." Spencer disapproved. - -"Sweet fishy--" Letty's howl broke off as her father swung her up to -his shoulder. - -"Fine supper we got, Mother," said Charles, grinning. - -"And I caught two," cried Spencer, "and Marian caught one----" - -"It was bigger'n yours," said Marian, sadly, "if it was just one." - -"Well, but Marian hollered so when a fish picked at her line and so she -scared him off." - -Marian peered up under her shock of dark bobbed hair, and finding a -twinkle in Catherine's eyes, giggled. - -"I did holler," she said. "I like to holler, and fish haven't any ears -and couldn't hear me----" - -"This being the ninth time this discussion has been carried on," said -Charles, "I move we change the subject. Anything will do----" - -Spencer sighed. The procession moved up the lane, Father at the head, -with Letty making loud "Glumph! Glumphs!" as his rubber boots talked, -Spencer next, trying to space his smaller boots just in his father's -footsteps, and Marian with Catherine at the rear. - -"Who's going to clean those fish?" Catherine wrinkled her nose. - -"Well, we caught them. Division of labor, eh, Spencer?" - -"The male has the sport, and the female the disgusting task of removing -the vitals, I suppose." - -"Amelia won't," announced Marian. "She said she couldn't clean fish, it -turned her stomach." - -"I wouldn't keep a maid that wouldn't clean fish." Charles dropped -Letty on the broad granite step of the farmhouse, and settled beside -her. "Who'll get me some shoes?" He hauled at his red rubber boot, and -the clam mud flew off in a shower. - -Letty grabbed again at the string of fish as Spencer stood incautiously -near her. - -"Take them into the sink, Spen," said Catherine. "Marian, can you find -Daddy's sneakers? You'll all need a scrub, I'll say." - -She looked at them a moment. Marian, dark; irregular small features, -tanned to an olive brown; slim as witch grass. Spencer, stocky, with -fair cropped head and long gray eyes like her own. Charles--he looked -heavier, and certainly well; the sun had left a white streak under the -brim of his battered hat and behind his spectacles, but the rest of his -face was fiery. - -"Cold cream for you, old man," she said. "You aren't used to our Maine -sun and sea burn." - -"I think I'll be a captain," said Spencer, seriously, turning from his -opening of the door. "And fight. Like father." He gazed admiringly at -the old service hat on the step. - -Catherine's mouth shut grimly and her lids drooped over her eyes. - -"Plan some other career, my son. Your father didn't fight, anyway. Did -he say he did?" - -"Now, Catherine, I just told them about the camp at Brest." - -Catherine looked at her husband, a long, quiet glance. Then she -followed Spencer into the kitchen. - -"Oh, 'Melia!" The heat from the stove rushed at her. "You built a fire -to-night!" - -"Yes, I did." Amelia, a small, wiry, faded Maine woman, turned from the -table. "That oil stove's acting queer, and anyways, it don't seem as if -you could fry fish on it." - -"We might eat them raw, then, instead of sweltering." Catherine pushed -her sleeves above her elbows, and reached for a knife. - -"Now that's a real pretty ketch, ain't it?" Amelia nodded at Spencer, -who watched while the flounders were slipped from the cord into the -sink. - -Catherine cleaned the fish. She left Amelia to fry them while she set -the table. The heat from the kitchen crept into the long, low dining -room. Then Catherine drew Letty, protesting shrilly, into the bedroom, -where she undressed and bathed her. When she had slipped the nightie -over the small yellow head, she kissed her. "Now you find Daddy, and -I'll have Amelia bring your milk out to the porch." - -She called Marian, who came on a run, peeling her jumper over her head. - -"Can I put on my white sailor suit to show Daddy, Muvver?" She dragged -it from the clothes-press. "Oooh! That's cold water!" She wriggled -under Catherine's swift fingers. - -"There, little eel." Catherine knotted the blue tie. "Run along. -Where's Spencer?" - -"He's washing hisself, I think." Marian smoothed up her blue sock with -a little preening motion, and vanished. - -"Mis' Hammond!" came Amelia's thin call, and Catherine went back to the -kitchen. - -Letty was in bed on the porch, her smeary white duck sitting on -the pillow beside her, her deep little voice running on in an -unintelligible story of the day. - -"Supper ready, Catherine?" Father stood in the doorway of the dining -room, Marian and Spencer at his heels. "We fishermen are starved. Oh, -you aren't dressed yet." - -"I'm as dressed as I shall be." Catherine pushed her hair back from a -moist forehead. "Let's eat." - -"Well, we like to see you dressed up like a lady once a day, don't we?" -Charles grinned at her as he pulled up his chair. - -Catherine felt her hands twitch in her lap. "Steady," she warned -herself. "He's just joking. I've been busy--I should have dressed this -afternoon----" - -"Some flounder!" Charles bit into the golden brown fish. "What you been -doing all the time, Catherine, while we went provender hunting?" - -"Thinking," said Catherine slowly. "That is, I thought in between -Letty's demands for more story." - -"What did you think about, Mother?" Spencer's face lighted with quick -curiosity. - -"Some about you, Spencer, and some about Marian and Letty, and some -about Daddy, and mostly about--me." Catherine was serving the salad. -She had deft, slim hands with long fingers, and her movements were slow -and beautifully exact. - -"What about us?" asked Marian. - -"I have to think some more, first." Catherine looked up at Charles. "A -lot more." - - -II - -The house was a gray mass in the evening, with one pale yellow window -where the kitchen lamp shone. Catherine lay motionless in the wicker -lounge on the low front veranda. Amelia had gone home. Spencer and -Marian were asleep. Charles had gone to the village store for tobacco. -Down below the house the smoke and heat mist veiled the transparency of -the sea. So still was the night that Catherine heard the faint "mrrr" -of wings of a huge gray moth that flew against her cheek and then away. - -"Queer," she thought. "If the house were empty, it would have many -sounds, rustles and squeaks and stirrings. But because children sleep -there, it is quiet. As if the old ghosts and spirits stood on tiptoe, -peeking at the intruders." - -She stretched lazily, and relaxed again. The loudest sound in the night -was her own soft breathing. Then, faintly, the gravel in the path -slipped. Charles was coming back. - -Catherine dropped her feet over the edge of the couch and clasped her -arms about her knees. When he comes, she thought, I will tell him. If I -go on thinking in the dark, I'll fly to bits. - -She could see him, darker than the bushes, moving toward her. Then she -could smell his pipe. - -"Hello!" she called softly, and he crossed the grass to the steps. - -"Say, what a night! And what a place!" He slapped his hat beside him, -and sat down at Catherine's feet, backed against the pillar. "It's been -fierce in town to-day, I'll bet. You're lucky to be able to stay here." -He puffed, and the smoke moved in a cloud about the indistinct outline -of his face. "Wish I could!" - -"When are you going?" - -"To-morrow night." Charles sounded aggrieved. "I wrote you I had just -the week-end." - -"I hoped you might manage a little longer----" - -"Can't manage that conference on Monday without being there." - -"What conference is that?" Catherine swung one knee over the other; as -she watched the face there in the dark, she could feel its expression, -although the features were so vague. - -"The committee on psychological work in the schools. You remember? -Planning it all through the East. It's a big thing." - -"Oh, that new committee." Catherine was apathetic. - -"That woman I spoke of, Stella Partridge, is mighty keen. She's working -out an organization scheme that beats any plan I've seen. I tell you -what, old girl, it's great to see the world wake up and swing around -to asking for what you want to give it!" Charles cuffed at her foot. -"Remember that first year down here? With Spencer a baby, and buying -this old house a tremendous undertaking, and me writing a book that I -didn't dare hope would sell? Things are different now, aren't they?" - -"They are different." Catherine's voice hardened subtly. "I helped with -that book, didn't I?" - -"Jove! I should say you did. All that typing, and correcting, and then -the proof reading." - -"And now----" Catherine hesitated. - -"Well, now my work has broadened out so much, and there are the three -children. I can afford to hire the typing done now, eh what?" - -"Yes." - -"What's the matter with you, Catherine? You've had a kind of chip about -you somewhere ever since I came this time. I can't help it if I can't -spend all my time playing in the country with you and the children, -can I? After all, I have to see to my work, and it's increasingly -demanding." - -"I haven't any chip on my shoulder, Charles?" Catherine caught her -breath. "I do want to talk to you." - -"Fire ahead." Charles tapped out the ashes from his pipe and reached up -for her hand. "What's eating you?" - -"Oh, Charles!" Catherine's slender fingers shut inside his warm -palm. "Help me out! You ought to understand." Her laugh shivered off -abruptly. "You know I'm proud of you, just puffed up. Do you know I'm -jealous, too? Jealous as--as nettles!" - -"Huh? Jealous? What about? Come down here, where I can hug you." - -"No. I don't want to be loved. I want to talk. I'm not jealous about -your love. I guess you love me, when you think of it----" - -"Now, Cathy, you aren't turning into a foolish woman." - -"I'm turning into something awful! That's why I've got to do something. -It's your work, I'm jealous of." - -"Why, my work doesn't touch my feeling about you." - -"That's not what I mean. I mean I'm proud of you, every one is, and you -aren't proud of me. No one is. No one could be. I'm----" - -"Why, Cathy! I am! You're a wonder with the children. And the way -you've stood back of me. What are you talking about?" - -"I don't want to get emotional. I want to make you see what I've been -thinking about. All the nights this summer while I've sat here at the -end of the day. I've tried to think--my mind is coated with fat, my -thoughts creak. Charles"--her voice trembled--"can you imagine yourself -in my place, all summer, or all last year, or the year before? Planning -meals or clothes--instead of conferences? Telling stories to Letty. -Holding yourself down on the level of children, to meet them, or answer -them, or understand them, until you scarcely have a grown-up thought? -Before Letty was born, and the year after, of course I wasn't very -well. That makes a difference. But now I am. What am I going to do? -Could you stand it?" - -"But, Catherine, a man----" - -"If you tell me a man is different, I'll stop talking!" Catherine cried -out. - -"I was going to make a scientific statement." Charles stopped, the -tolerant good nature of his voice touching Catherine like salt in a -cut finger. "To the effect," he went on, "that usually a man's ego is -stronger, and a woman's maternal instinct drowns her ego, so that she -can live in a situation which would be intolerable to a man." - -"Well, then, I'm egoistic to the root." Catherine jerked her hand away -from his grasp. "At any rate, the situation is intolerable." - -"Poor old girl!" Charles patted her knee. "The summer has been dull, -hasn't it?" - -"It's not just that. Do you know, I was almost happier while you were -in France and I was working--than I am now!" - -"Didn't care if I did get hit by a shell, eh? Didn't miss me at all?" - -"I did, and you know it." Catherine was silent, her eyes straining -toward him in the darkness. - -"That was part of the war excitement, wasn't it?" - -"No. But something happened in me when you told me you were going. I -had been living just in you, you and the two children. I thought that -was all I ever wanted. And I thought you felt toward me the same way. -Then--you could throw it over--because you wanted something else." - -"Catherine, we've had that out dozens of times. You know it was a -chance for the experience of a lifetime, psychological work in those -hospitals. And then--well, I had to get in it." - -"I know. I didn't say a word, did I? But I went to work and I liked it. -Then you came back----" - -"Well?" His word hung tenderly between them. - -"Yes." Catherine sighed. "Like falling in love again, wasn't it? Only -deeper. And we wanted Letty." Her voice quavered again. "That's it! -I love you so much. But you don't sit down in your love--and devour -it--and let it devour you. It isn't right, Charles, help me! I"--she -laughed faintly--"I'm like your shell-shocked soldiers. You couldn't -really cure them until peace came. Then they weren't shell-shocked any -more. I'm shell-shocked too, and I can't cure myself, and I see no -armistice. I'm growing worse. I know why women have hysterics and all -sorts of silly diseases. I'll have 'em too in a day or so!" - -"Funny, isn't it, when I'd like nothing better than a chance to loaf -here with the kids. But you'll get back to town soon and see people, -theaters, club----" - -"And hear about the whooping cough the Thomases had--and--oh, damn!" -Catherine was crying suddenly, broken, stifled sobs. - -Charles pulled her down into his arms, holding her firmly against his -chest. - -"There, old girl! Stop it! What do you want?" - -Catherine pushed herself away from him, her hands braced against him. - -"I won't be silly." She flung her hand across her eyes. "I'm sorry. But -I've tried to figure it out, and I just drop into a great black gulf, -and drown!" - -"What are you figuring on?" Charles let his fingers travel slowly along -the curve of her cheek until they shut softly about her throat. - -Catherine held herself sternly away from the comfort of touch. - -"I can't endure it, day after day, the same things. Petty manual jobs. -And I'm older every day. And soon the children will be grown up, and -I'll be flat on the dump heap." - -"In a few more years, Cathy, I'll have more money. Now you know we -can't afford more servants, I'm sorry." - -"I don't want more from you!" Catherine cried out. "I want to do -something myself!" - -"You know how much you do." Charles scoffed at her, but she caught the -hint of scratched pride in his voice. "In the middle-class family the -wife is the largest economic factor." - -"Charles, if I work out a scheme which puts no more burden on -you"--Catherine's breath quickened--"would you mind my going back -to work? I've figured it out. How much I'd have to earn to fill my -place----" - -"You mean--take a job?" - -"Yes." - -Charles reached for his pipe. - -"What would you do about the children?" He cleared his throat. "They -seem to need a mother." - -"Well, they need a father, too, but not to be a door-mat." - -"Everything I think of saying, Catherine, sounds awfully mid-Victorian." - -"I know what it all is! You needn't think I don't. But I know the -answer to it all, too, so you needn't bother saying it." - -"I suppose I better consider myself lucky you aren't expecting me to -stay home and take care of Letty. You aren't, are you?" - -Catherine laughed. She knew Charles wanted to laugh; he was tired of -this serious talk. - -"You won't mind, then?" she added, tensely. "You see, if you aren't -willing, and interested, I can't do it." - -"Try it. Go ahead. I'll bet you'll get sick of it soon enough. After -all, you women forget the nuisance of being tied to appointments, rain -or shine, toothache or stomachache----" - -"Ah-h"--Catherine relaxed in his arms, one hand moving up around his -neck. "It has seemed so awful, so serious, thinking it out alone. You -are an old dear!" - -"All right. Have it your own way." Charles struck his match and held -it above the pipe bowl. The light showed his eyes a little amused, -a little tender, a little skeptical. It flared out, leaving dancing -triangles of orange in the darkness. Catherine shivered. Was he just -humoring her, like a child? Not really caring? But she shut her eyes -upon the mocking flecks of light and slipped off to the step below -him, her head comfortably against his arm. - -She was tired, as if she had cut through ropes which had held her erect -and taut. She could feel the slight movement of muscles in the arm -under her cheek, as Charles sucked away at his pipe. The soft darkness -seemed to move up close and sweet about them, with faint rustles in the -grass at her feet. Queer that just loving couldn't be enough, when it -had such sweetness. Her thoughts drifted off in a warm, tranquil flood -of emotion; her self was gone, washed out in this nearness, this quiet. -Charles stirred, and unconsciously she waited for a sign from him out -of the perfect, enclosed moment. - -He spoke. - -"I want you to meet Miss Partridge when you come back to town. Great -head she's got. We're using her plan of organization in the small -towns." - -Catherine sat very still. After an instant she lifted her head from his -shoulder and yawned audibly. - -"I'm sleepy. The day has been so warm," she said, and rose. She kicked -against something metallic and stooped to pick up Letty's red pail and -shovel, as she passed into the house. - - -III - -"Dark o' the moon! Dark o' the moon! Dark--Mother, see what I found!" -Spencer broke his slow chant with a squeal, and dangled above his head -the great purple starfish. Sure-footed, like a lithe brown sea animal, -he darted over the slippery golden seaweed toward Catherine, who looked -up from the shallow green pool over which she had been stooping. - -"Lemme see too!" Marian's dark head rose from behind a rock and she -stumbled after her brother. Plump! she was down in the treacherous -kelp, her serious face scarcely disconcerted. Marian always slipped on -the seaweed. - -"Isn't he 'normous? He's the 'normousest yet." Spencer laid the star on -the rock, bending over to straighten one of the curling arms. - -"I found one almost as big," declared Marian, "only pink. And pink's a -nicer color. Isn't it, Muvver?" - -"If you like it." Catherine took Spencer's sea-chilled fingers in hers -and drew them down to the under side of the ledge over the pool. "Feel -that?" - -"What is it?" Spencer's gray eyes darkened with excitement. - -"Lemme feel too!" Marian sat down on the seaweed and slid along to the -ledge. "Where?" - -Catherine guided her fingers. How like sea things those cold little -hands felt! "What does it feel like?" - -"Kinda soft and kinda hard and----Oh, it's got a mouth!" Marian -squirmed away. "Tell us, Muvver! What is it?" - -"Can you guess, Spen?" - -"May I look, Mother? I think it's--snail eggs." - -Catherine laughed. - -"Lean over and look. I'll hold you." She seized his belt, while he -craned his neck over the bit of rock. - -"Purple, too!" He came back, flushed. "I know!" - -"Lemme see!" Marian plunged downward, her legs waving. "It's full of -holes. What is it?" - -"Sponges," said Spencer, importantly. - -"Sponges is brown and bigger," cried Marian. - -"These are alive and not the same kind as your bath sponge." - -Catherine straightened her back and looked out over the sea. Opal, -immobile, so clear that the flat pink ledges beyond the lowest tide -mark were like blocks of pigment in the water. Something strange in -this dark of the moon tide, dragging the water away from hidden places, -uncovering secret pools. Once every summer Catherine rowed across to -the small rocky point that marked the entrance to the cove, to see what -the tide disclosed. There was a thrill about the hour when the water -seemed to hang motionless, below the denuded rocks. Spencer felt it; -Catherine had touched the sensitive vibration of his fingers as he -searched. Marian found the expedition interesting, like clam digging! -Catherine remembered the year the fog had come in as the tide swung -back, suddenly terrifyingly thick and gray about them, so that she had -wondered whether they ever would find their own mooring; she could see -the ghostly shore, with unfamiliar rocks looming darkly out of the -grayness, as she rowed slowly around the cove, trying to keep the shore -line as guide. Charles had come out to meet them; his "Hullo!" had been -a whisper first, moving through the mist and seeming to recede. Then -he had come alongside them, the fog drops thick on his worried face. -Spencer had liked that, too, although Marian had crouched on her bow -seat, shivering. - -No fog to-day. The horizon line was pale and clear. She should go back -for Letty. They had left her behind them on a sandy stretch of beach, -with a pile of whitened sea-urchin shells. - -"Mother!" Spencer repeated his summons. "What is dark o' the moon?" - -Catherine explained vaguely as they scrambled up the rounded, slippery -rocks to the patch of coarse grass at the top of the small point. Where -was Letty? She had been visible from there. Catherine began to run, -down to the muddy flats that separated the point from the mainland. -Only a few minutes since she had last seen her head, like a bit of -bright seaweed. The water was so far out, surely---- Panic nipped at -her heels as she flew. "Letty! Let-ty!" There was the pile of shells. -"Letty!" A spasm of fear choked her breathing. Then a call, deep and -contented. - -"Letty here." Around the clump of beach peas and driftwood-- The yellow -head nodded out of a mud hole left by a clam digger on the beach. -"Letty swim." - -Catherine picked up her daughter. - -"Letty, darling! You little imp----" The gray mud dripped from rompers -and sandals. - -"Oh, she's all wet." Marian puffed up. "And dirty!" - -"Now how are we going to get you home without a cold, young woman!" -Catherine stood her on the beach, and sighed. Letty, her fingers full -of the soft mud, looked up with bright, unremorseful eyes. - -"My sweater's in the dory, Mother." Spencer frowned at his sister. "You -haven't any sense, Letty." - -Letty's rompers served as a bath towel, and the sweater made a cocoon. -She sat beside Marian, while Catherine and Spencer rowed the old dory -across the half mile of quiet water. The children chattered about their -discoveries, and Catherine listened while her thoughts moved quickly -beneath the surface of the talk. Fear like that--it's terrific, -unreasoning, overwhelming. How would you bear it if anything happened! -You have to be all eyes, and be with them every instant. How can you -plan, thinking of anything else? And yet, things happen to children, of -any mothers---- - -"Dark o' the moon--pulls the ole water--away from the earth----" -Spencer chanted as he rowed. "Dark o' the moon----" - -"What makes you say that all the time, Spencer?" demanded Marian. - -"I like to say it. Pulls the ole water--away from the earth----" - -"Not so deep, Spencer. You drag your oar. See--" Catherine pulled the -blades smoothly along, just beneath the surface. - -"I know. I meant to." Spencer was intent on his oars again. - - -IV - -The mail bag hung on the post. Catherine drew out its contents. A -letter from Charles. The paper. Her fingers gripped over an envelope. -From the Bureau, in answer to hers. A piece of fate, in that square -white thing. She thrust it into her pocket. Later, when the children -were asleep. She could think then. - -Now the air was full of the children. Letty's deep squeals of mirth, -a strange noise from Spencer, meant to be whinnying, as he pranced up -the path dragging Letty's cart, protests from Marian, "You are silly, I -think!" Would Marian always be so serious? And Spencer--he was always -exhausting himself by the very exuberance of his fancy. Catherine -followed them slowly. Suddenly the sounds broke off for an instant of -surprised silence; Catherine lifted her head. The children were out -of sight around the bend, and she could not see the house yet. Other -voices, and a shriek from Letty. She hurried past the alder growth. -There was a car by the side door, and people. Marian flew toward her. - -"Muvver! Mr. Bill and Dr. Henrietta! They've come to see us!" - -"Good gracious! What can I feed them?" thought Catherine. Then, as she -came nearer and saw them, she thought, "I'm getting to be the meanest -kind of domestic animal." - -Dr. Henrietta Gilbert, fair, plump, serene, immaculately tailored, -looked up from her seat on the step, one arm around Letty, who was -gleaming brown and sleek from the carelessly draped red sweater. -Spencer hovered at her shoulder, his face lighted with pleasure. - -"Hello, Catherine!" she held up one hand. - -William Gilbert stood behind them, his dark, tired face smiling a -little, his long, lean body sagging lazily. Catherine reached for his -hand. - -"Well, you two!" she cried. "How'd you find this place?" - -"Charles gave us minute directions." Dr. Henrietta rose neatly. "He -wouldn't come. He's too important for trips. What's happened to Letty? -She seems to be clothed for a prize fight." - -"Letty swim!" shouted Letty proudly. - -"You drove from New York?" Catherine lifted Letty into her arms, and -enveloped her in the sweater. "I didn't know you could get away." - -"Labor Day," said Bill. He was gazing at the children, his eyes half -shut behind his thick glasses. - -"If you can't put us up, Catherine, we'll hunt for a boarding house. -But we wanted to see you." - -"Of course I can. Do you think I'd let you escape, when I'm starving -for human beings?" - -"With all of these?" Bill nodded at the group. - -"They are animals, not human beings, aren't you, Marian?" Dr. Henrietta -laughed at Marian's distressed face. "Your woman in the kitchen"--she -dropped her voice mysteriously--"thought we were bandits and didn't ask -us in." - - * * * * * - -Amelia was pleased to meet them, when Catherine ushered them properly -into the house. - -"Don't that beat all!" she said, loudly, as they followed Spencer to -the guest room. "I thought they was peddlars. Drove all the ways from -New York! Don't that beat all!" She made flurried rushes about the -kitchen, pulling open the cupboard doors. "Now don't you fuss, Mis' -Hammond. If baked beans is good enough I can make out a meal, I guess. -She's a doctor, eh?" - -After a fleet half hour Catherine had Letty bathed, fed, and tucked -into her cot. She had slipped out of her knickerbockers and smock into -a soft green dress. No time to brush her hair; she adjusted a pin in -the heavy brown knot, and glanced at her reflection. Letty's voice rose -in deep inarticulate demand from the porch. Catherine stepped to the -door. Bill stood outside. - -"She wants you to say good night to Ducky Wobbles." Catherine smiled -at him; she had, at times, a lovely smile, unreserved in its warm -friendliness. She was fond of Bill; his dark silence piqued her, but -she felt that it was a silence of steady, quiet wisdom, which couldn't -break itself up into tiny words. - -"Can't I say good night to Letty instead?" - -"No! Nice Ducky!" Letty wobbled her duck at him. "Goo'ni' to my Ducky!" - -"Well, then, good night to Ducky and to his Letty." - -Letty dropped back into her pillow, content. - -"Now you go to sleep, old lady." Catherine closed the door, and stopped -for a moment to supervise Marian's preparations. - -Spencer had filled the wood basket with shining pink-white birch logs. -Catherine drew out the crane with the kettle and laid a fire on the -andirons in the huge old fireplace. Dr. Henrietta came out, dangling -her eyeglasses on a long black ribbon over her sturdy white finger. - -"This is a charming old place, Catherine. You all look well, too. A -summer in the country certainly sets the children up." - -Catherine glanced at her, as the flame crept around the logs. - -"You ought to try it, if you want to know what it does to you--" she -paused. "Moss in every cranny of your brain--" Bill was coming in. -"After supper I'll tell you!" - - * * * * * - -Supper was over. Spencer had piloted Bill and the car safely into the -barn, running back to tell Catherine, "Moth-er! Mr. Bill thinks his car -scared all the old cow ghosts in the stalls." When he and Marian were -in bed, Catherine came back to the living room, the square envelope -from the Bureau in her hand. - -"It's queer you two should come to-night," she said. "I need you to -talk to." - -Bill had settled in the old fiddle-back walnut chair, the smoke from -his pipe turning his lined face into a dim gargoyle. Dr. Henrietta was -fitting a cigarette into her long amber holder. - -"Charles hasn't been here much this summer, has he?" she asked. - -"Only occasional week-ends." Catherine sat down on the footstool on the -hearth. The light shone through the loosened brown hair about her face -and turned her throat to pale ivory. "He was here a week ago." - -"Your sister? Has she been here?" - -"No. She decided to spend her vacation in the mountains with that -friend of hers. Nobody's been here! I haven't seen anyone since last -May, except for flying shots at Charles. If I begin to spout a Mother -Goose rhyme at you, you might understand why." - -"Well, you haven't the mossy look I connect with mothers," said -Henrietta, as she smoked in quick little spurts. "Have a cigarette?" -She tossed her silver case into Catherine's lap. - -"Sworn off." Catherine ran her finger over the monogram. "Amelia would -know I was a fallen woman--haven't lighted one since--oh, since Charles -came back from France." - -"Didn't he care for those home fires?" Bill took his pipe out of his -teeth, drawled his question, and went on with his inspection of the -flames. - -Catherine laughed. - -"Tell me what you two have been doing since I saw you." - -Henrietta retrieved her case and extracted a second cigarette. - -"Same things. Babies, clinics, babies. Bill's had a bridge over in -Jersey. The _Journal's_ taken a series of articles I did on that gland -work last year. Public school on the East Side is going to let me run -sort of a laboratory clinic on malnutrition. Mother instinct down there -feeds its infants on cabbage, fried cakes, and boiled tea." - -"You're a wonder, Henry." Catherine sighed. "Putting over what you -want." - -"It's only these last few years, you know, that I've had any -recognition." - -"You're a wonder, just the same. Isn't she, Bill?" - -"Um." Bill's grunt gave complete assent. - -Catherine looked steadily at her friend. Even in the soft firelight Dr. -Henrietta Gilbert retained her smooth, competent neatness. A smoothness -like porcelain, thought Catherine. Porcelain with warmth in it, she -added hastily to herself, as if she had made an unfair accusation. -Firm, kindly lips; contented, straightforward blue eyes; plump, -ungraceful body; Dr. Henrietta had a compact, assured personality, -matter of fact, intelligent, enduring. Catherine wondered: do I give, -as she looks at me, as complete an impression of me? I feel hidden -away. Then she thought, quickly, of the grim days when Spencer lay -so piteously still except when he struggled for breath, when he had -so nearly died--pneumonia--and Henrietta had seemed to hold herself -between the child and death itself, calm, untroubled. She was a wonder! - -"You couldn't have done it, could you," she said suddenly, "if you -had had children?" Then she stopped, aghast at her heedlessness. She -had never said that when Bill was there to hear her. But Henrietta's -response was cheerful and prompt. - -"Certainly not. That's why we haven't any." - -Catherine glanced shyly toward Bill. His eyes, inscrutable as ever, did -not lift from the fire. - -"That's"--Catherine hesitated--"that's what I want to talk about." - -"What?" Henrietta was on her guard. - -"Oh, I don't mean you. I mean me?" She balanced the letter on her knee -and pointed at it. "That letter. I haven't opened it, but it's an omen." - -"Don't be mysterious," Henrietta jibed at her. - -"I want to go to work. I wrote to the Bureau, where I had that job -while Charles was in France. This is their answer." - -Bill leaned forward to tap his pipe out on the fire tongs. Catherine -felt his eyes on her face. - -"Catherine! Bully for you!" Henrietta clapped her hand on Catherine's -shoulder. "Have you told Charles? Can you manage it?" - -"I told him." Catherine drank eagerly of the bluff encouragement in -Henrietta's voice. "He calls it my 'unsatisfied trend.' But he wouldn't -object, of course." - -"I thought you didn't care much for that work. Statistics, wasn't it?" -Bill put his question quietly. - -"Part of it I didn't." Catherine admitted that reluctantly. "But a new -investigation is being started, on teaching. I am interested in that. I -taught, you know, before I married, and I think that is as important as -anything in the world." - -"Read the letter, woman!" Henrietta shook Catherine's shoulder. - -Catherine ran her finger under the flap and unfolded the square page. -As she bent near the firelight, a log rolled off the burning pile, -sending a yellow flame high into the chimney, touching into relief the -wistful, tremulous lines of her mouth. - -"They want me." Her voice was hushed, as she looked up at Henrietta. -"At once. Dr. Roberts says he had been looking for someone. He thought -I was unavailable." - -A shrill, frightened cry darted into the room, sharp as a flame. -Catherine leaped to her feet. - -"Spencer. He has nightmares." She went hastily out to the sleeping -porch. - -He was moaning in his sleep, one hand brushing frantically over his -blanket. Catherine's hand closed over his. "There, Spencer," she said, -softly, "it's all right, dear." He did not wake, but the moaning -dropped into regular, quiet breathing, and his hand relaxed warmly in -hers. She stood a moment, listening. Then she stole to the other two -beds, bending over each. Letty's breathing was so soft that her heart -stood still an instant as she listened. At the door of the porch she -clasped her hands over her breast. - -"Am I wicked?" she thought. "When I have them--to care about--" A -passion of tenderness for them shook her; she felt as if the three -of them lay at the very core of her being, and she enclosed them, -crouching above them, fiercely maternal. - -Slowly she went back to the living room. She heard Bill's low voice, -and then Henrietta's, - -"Catherine can do it. She has brains and strength----" - -Her entrance broke off the sentence. - -"I'll light a lamp," she said briefly. "This firelight's too -sentimental. I want hard common sense." - -"Here, let me." Bill flicked a match with his thumb nail, and Catherine -fitted the heavy orange globe down over the lamp. - -She seated herself in the straight chair near the desk. - -"Well," said Henrietta, "I don't see any more clearly than I did in the -dark. If you have the nerve to try this, Catherine, go ahead. I'm all -for you." - -"You think, professionally, that it won't harm the children?" - -"You can hire some woman, can't you, to take your place as slave? I -suppose you still can look at them occasionally." - -"Yes. I suppose"--Catherine twisted her fingers together--"I suppose I -am as conceited as most mothers, wondering whether they can get along -eight hours a day without me." - -"You aren't happy, are you?" Henrietta flung at her, abruptly. "You -have the blues, black as ink. You have to hang on to yourself about -trifles. You----" - -"Oh, yes, yes!" Catherine's laugh shrilled a little. "Don't go on with -my disgraceful disposition. I admit it. But don't women have to put up -with that?" - -"My Lord, no. No longer than they are willing to. Most of them find -it easier to lie down. You've got too much brains to be sentimental, -Catherine Hammond." - -"What do you think, Bill?" Catherine appealed to him suddenly. She felt -him, in his motionless silence, probing, inspecting, and never saying -what he saw. - -"It is for you to decide," he answered. - -"You know you can't get advice out of Bill! It's a wonder he ever can -serve on an engineering commission." Henrietta laughed at him, in -friendly, appreciative amusement. "He has to offer technical advice -there. He won't give any other kind." - -"You won't consider my specifications?" Catherine was a trifle piteous, -under her light tone. "Even if I need--well, it is rebuilding, isn't -it?" She wondered why his opinion seemed so necessary. She had -Henrietta's, and Henrietta was a woman. But she wanted to reach across, -to pull at those passive, restrained hands, to beg him to speak. - -"I really think that you have to decide yourself." He paused. "You -realize, probably, that it will be like handling a double job. Charles -would find it difficult to take over a new share of your present job. -Most men would." - -"I don't want him to. I couldn't bear to do the slightest thing to -interfere with him. His career is just starting--and brilliantly. It -wouldn't be right to bother him." - -"Why not?" Henrietta sat up, hostility bristling in her manner. "Why -not a fair sharing of this responsibility? He wanted the children, -didn't he? You're as bad as some of my clinic mothers. They go out to -work by the day, and they come home to work by the night. I asked one -of them why she didn't let her man help with the dishes and the wash, -and she said, 'Him? He's too tired after supper.' And she was earning -more scrubbing than the man!" - -"You wouldn't make Bill sit up with your patients, would you?" cried -Catherine, hotly, "or typewrite your articles?" - -"Of course Henrietta has only one job," said Bill. - -"Charles has expected the children to be my job." Catherine spoke -slowly. "He is in competition with other men whose wives have no other -thought. Like Mrs. Thomas, for instance. You met her?" - -"I've met scores of them. Most of them haven't brains enough to think -with," said Henrietta, crisply. "You have. That's the trouble with you. -Now think straight about this, too." - -"I am trying to." Catherine's cry hung in the pleasant room, a sharp -note of distress. - -"It is true, as Catherine sees"--Bill leaned forward--"that the average -man grows best in nurture furnished by the old pattern of wife. But you -can't generalize. This is Catherine's own problem." He rose. "I wish -you luck, you know. Good night." He went slowly across the hall, and -closed the door of the guest room. - -"You can't drag Bill into an argument," said Henrietta. "Now he's -gone." She pulled her chair around to face Catherine. "I want to see -you make a go of this. To see if it can be done. It's got to be, some -day. I wouldn't take the chance, you see." - -"But it was children I most wanted." Catherine groped among her -familiar thoughts. "I didn't know I wouldn't be contented. I'm not sure -I shouldn't be." - -"You aren't. The signs are on you, plain as day. And you've hit -straight at the roots of your trouble. I've seen it, longer than -you have, and I've just been waiting. When Charles went off for his -adventure, he left you space to see in!" - -"Are you--happy?" - -"Me? Of course. Reasonably." - -"You don't want any children?" - -"Good heavens, no! I see enough of children." - -"But you like them. You couldn't handle them as you do----" - -"I take out my well-known maternal instinct that way, if you like." - -"You're hard as nails, Henry." - -"Catherine"--Henrietta's face was grim under its fair placidity--"when -I was sixteen, I saw my mother die in childbirth. She had eight -children. Two of them are alive now. She was only thirty-three when she -died. She died on a farm in Michigan, and my father thought she picked -a poor time, because he was haying. I swore then I'd be something -besides a female animal. William knew what I wanted. It's a fair deal -to him. He knew he was getting a wife, but not a mother. That's all -there is to that. I like you. When you fell for Charles so hard, I was -afraid you were ended. Now I have hopes!" Her hand, firm and hard, shut -about Catherine's. "Only, don't handicap yourself with this clutter of -feelings." - -Something in the clutch of the firm fingers gave Catherine a quick -insight. Henrietta wasn't hard! Not porcelain. A shell, over a warm, -soft creature--a barnacle, hiding from injury as deep as that her -childhood had shown her. - -"You're a nice old thing." Catherine laid her other hand over -Henrietta's. "And"--she came back to her own maelstrom--"you think it -will be fair to the children? I ought to be more decent--better for -them--if I can get some self-respect." - -"That's talking. You write and take that job, instanter! I'll look -around for a woman for you. When can you come down?" Henrietta withdrew -her hand. - -"That's another thing." Catherine frowned. "Dr. Roberts says as soon as -possible. School doesn't open, though, for two weeks. I don't like to -drag the children back." - -"You see?" Henrietta made an impatient lunge with her foot. - -"I'll have to think that out." - -They sat in silence for a few moments. Then Henrietta rose. - -"I'm glad we blew in," she said. "But we have to start off early." - -"You've helped." Catherine stood in front of her friend, her hands -clasped loosely. "I'll hunt you up in town, when I need an injection of -common sense." - -She went through the quiet house, setting the screen in front of the -crimson ash of the fire, turning down the lamp, hanging away the red -sweater Letty had worn home, placing a row of damp little sandals on -the kitchen steps where the morning sun would dry them. She stood there -for a moment, looking off across the water. A huge crimson star hung -low in the east; she thought she caught a flicker of reflection in the -dark stretch of water. Perhaps it was only a late firefly. - -For hours she lay awake, staring out at the great birch tree, watching -the faint motion of its leaves, and the slipping through them of the -Big Dipper as it wheeled slowly down its arc. - - -V - -They all stood in the sunshine in front of the house, watching the tan -top of the Gilberts' car disappear into the alders. - -Spencer sighed ostentatiously. - -"Wisht we had a nottomobul," he said. "Mr. Bill let me help him squirt -oil and I filled a grease cup and put it back." - -"Should say you did!" scoffed Marian. "Look at your sleeve! You're -awful dirty." - -"Aw, shut up," growled Spencer. - -"Shut up! Shut up!" shrieked Letty, dancing on her toes, and pulling at -Catherine's hand. "Shut up!" - -Catherine, who had been caught in a tight knot of confused thought by -Henrietta's final mockery, "You won't come down for weeks, I know. And -here's your job, waiting for you! You can't break through!" came back -with a little start. - -Spencer was staring dolefully down the lane; Marian hovered at his -smeared elbow, ready to taunt him again if he stayed silent; Letty -pranced as if she wanted to say, "Sic 'em!" - -Catherine smiled. She knew how they felt. The arrival of the Gilberts -was a large stone dropped into the smooth evenness of their days. -Their departure--she couldn't carry on that figure, but she knew the -emptiness it left, a funny little sickish feeling, almost a fear lest -the days would stay empty. - -"Well, isn't he a dirty pig, Muvver?" - -"You hush up!" Spencer flushed as Catherine's grave eyes rested on his. - -"Amelia says she wants some peas picked. The basket is in the woodshed." - -"I picked 'em last," said Marian. - -"You never did!" Spencer's anger bubbled up. "You----" - -"And some potatoes," continued Catherine, calmly. "If you aren't too -cantankerous, Spencer might dig those, and Marian might pick the peas." - -Spencer dug his toe into the turf. - -"Letty dig!" Letty pulled at Catherine's hand, her lower lip piteously -imploring. "Letty dig, Muddie!" - -"I have some letters to write." Catherine picked up Letty and started -for the house. "I hope you two can see to the vegetables." - -With a brief glance as she opened the door, she saw Spencer with a -gruff "Aw, come along!" heading for the woodshed. - -Letty twisted and squirmed in her arms. "Dig!" she declared. - -"You can dig in your sand pile." Catherine set her down. "Where is your -red pail? You find that, while I find my pen." - - * * * * * - -She couldn't go back to town before school opened. Her pen made tiny -involved triangles at the edge of the blotter. Charles wouldn't like it -if she brought the children down so early. Still, that would give her a -few days to set the house in order, to find a woman to take her place. -What a queer thought! Henrietta had one in mind, she had said, a sort -of practical nurse and housekeeper. There were the children's clothes -to see to. When could she do that? She wouldn't have time for sewing. -She dropped her head down on the table, her hands clasped under her -forehead. I can't do it, she thought. Too many things. _Things!_ That's -it. Clothes, and laundry, and dirt in the corners. One hand groped out -for the letter from Dr. Roberts, and she lifted her head. Her mouth set -in a hard, thin line; the smears under her gray eyes made them larger, -weary with a kind of desperation. - -"I remember so well your admirable work," he had written. "I can think -of no one with whom I should prefer to entrust this new piece of work." - -If I don't do it now, I never will, she thought. Never. Perhaps I -haven't the courage, or the endurance. - -"Mis' Hammond!" came Amelia's nasal call. "D'you want a fish? Earle's -here and wants to know." - -"Yes." Catherine drew her paper near. - -"Huh? D'you want one?" - -Catherine rose abruptly and hurried into the kitchen. - -"Buy one, Amelia," she said. "Good morning, Earle." - -"Well, he's got cod and haddock and hake." Amelia was stern. - -"Haddock," said Catherine. "There's change there in my purse." - -When she came back to the porch, Letty was not in sight, nor did she -answer Catherine's call. Her red pail lay beside the sand pile. - -"Oh, damn!" thought Catherine, as she flung her pen on to the table and -started in quest of Letty. "If I don't find her, I'll regret it. Letty! -Mother wants you!" - -Incredible that those small legs could travel so fast. Catherine peeked -into the poultry yard. Last week she had found Letty there, trying to -catch an indignant rooster. But Letty seldom repeated. - -As she rounded the corner of the house, she saw the child, and her own -heart contracted terribly. Letty was lying on her stomach on a broad -stone, part of the well curb, her small yellow head out of sight, her -heels in the air. - -"Who left that cover off! If I call her, I may startle her----" - -Amelia appeared at the door, a water pail in her hand, her pale eyes -popping out in her tight face. - -"Sh-h!" Catherine laid a finger on her lips, as she stole softly toward -Letty, with knees that trembled. Her hand closed firmly over a kicking -foot, and she dragged the child suddenly back. Then she sat down on the -grass. - -Letty wriggled violently to be free. - -"Letty fish!" she waved a bit of string. "Fish!" - -"Well, don't that beat all!" Amelia stood over them. "Who left that -well cover off?" - -"You didn't?" asked Catherine wearily. - -"My land, no. I was just coming out to draw a bucket. I'll bet that -Earle done it." - -"Letty, be still!" Catherine's tone hushed the child. "I have told you -never to go near that well, haven't I?" - -Letty smiled, beguilingly. - -"Pretty Muddie. Letty fish." Her small face wrinkled into the most -ingratiating smile she possessed. - -"You are a naughty Letty." Catherine rose. "Come along and be tied up, -like a bad little dog." - -Letty's wrinkled nose smoothed instantly, and her eyes closed for a -scream. Catherine lifted her firmly into her arms, one hand over the -open mouth. - -She sat in her room, waiting for Letty's shrieks to subside. They did, -soon, and she heard her chirrup. "Get ap! Get ap!" and knew the rope -which tied her had become a horse. - -Fiercely she seized her pen and wrote. If she stopped to think again-- -Anything might happen, anyway! She stopped long enough to see clearly -that if anything happened while she, the mother, was away, she might -have a load of self-reproach heavier than she could endure. It's part -of the struggle, she thought. Someone else can play watchdog, surely. -There! She had committed herself. A note to Charles. She was glad his -conference had been so interesting. She had just accepted a position -at the Bureau, like her old job there. She might come down a few days -early. With love---- - - -VI - -The porter dropped the bags on the platform beside them, and held out -his pink palm. Then he swung up to the step, as the long train began -to move. Until the train was out of sight down the curving track, -Catherine knew it was useless to start her procession. A fine drizzle -filled the air under the shed, and the roofs of the street below them -gleamed dull and sordid. - -"Spencer, will you take that bag? And Marian, this one----" Catherine -pulled Letty up into her arm and with a suitcase dragging at her -shoulder, piloted the children toward the stairs. "Daddy may be -downstairs. Careful, Marian, on those wet steps." - -There he was, at the bottom of the narrow, dark stairs. Catherine's -heart gave its customary little jump--always, when she saw Charles -again, even after the briefest separation. - -Marian clung to his arm, Spencer let himself be hugged, Letty squealed -with delight. Catherine looked at him, her eyes bright. He did look -well! And he had a new suit, in all this rain! - -"Here's a taxi, right here. Jump in. Where are your checks?" he bundled -them in and handed the checks to the driver. - -"This is a crowded street, Mother, and awful loud!" said Spencer, his -nose against the glass. - -"I like the big station better," said Marian, adjusting herself with -interest on the little folding seat. "Why can't we get out there?" - -"This is nearer home, dear." - -Daddy sat next to Mother, and the taxi rattled off, spurting slimy mud. - -"Hard trip, old girl?" Charles put his arm around Catherine's shoulders. - -"Fair." Catherine shone at him softly. "Sort of a job, putting the -family to bed on a sleeper. But it's over." - -"An awful homely street," muttered Spencer, his face doleful. - -"It's got lots of things in it," said Marian, wiggling down from her -seat, and thrusting her face against the door. "See the folks and the -stores and the street cars." - -"It's dirty." Spencer turned from the window and looked darkly at -Catherine. "I want to be back home," he said. - -Catherine smiled at him. Poor boy! The little quiver of his nostrils -was eloquent of nostalgia, of the rude necessity of adjustment. - -"Our street isn't like this, Spencer," she assured him. "You will like -that better." - -"Turned into a country kid, have you?" Charles reached for the boy's -arm. "Fine muscle! You'll have to try some handball with me this -winter." - -Spencer lost his forlornness at once. "In the court? Oh, gee!" - -"I've got muscle too, Daddy." Marian bounced across to her father's -knees. "Feel me! Can't I play ball with you?" - -"Letty play!" wailed Letty. - -The taxi jolted to a standstill in the traffic, and Letty was diverted -by a large and black mammy descending from the street car close to the -cab. - -"Girls can't play," said Spencer conclusively. - -"They can, too, can't they, Muvver!" - -"Your mother agrees with you, Marian," said Charles. "But not on our -handball courts, eh, Spencer?" - -Catherine flushed at the submerged note in Charles's words. - -"Don't you give my daughter an inferiority complex!" she said, lightly. - -But Charles went on, the note rising to the surface. - -"You won't find the house in very good shape. I wasn't expecting you so -early." - -The glow of the meeting was disappearing under the faint, secret -friction. Catherine thought quickly, "He didn't like it--the job, or -my coming down. But he isn't admitting it." Aloud she said, "Did Flora -desert you?" - -"Oh, no. She's there, her mouth larger than ever. I meant the finishing -touches." - -"We can give those." - -"There's Morningside Park!" Spencer's shout was full of delight. -"Rocks and trees an' everything!" The taxi had left One Hundred and -Twenty-fifth Street and was bumping along the side street which -bordered the park. The rocks shouldered up gray and wet through brown, -worn shrubbery. - -"There's where we had the cave," cried Marian. "I remember it." - -Up to the Drive, a few blocks south, and just around the corner the -taxi halted. - -"Here we are!" Out they all scrambled, to stare up at the gray front, -tessellated with windows, while Charles maneuvered the luggage. -Catherine felt Spencer's cold hand creep into hers; she held it firmly, -knowing that he, too, had the sinking depression with which that -monotonous dingy structure filled her. - -But Sam, the elevator boy, came out, all white grin and shiny eyes, to -greet them and carry in the bags. Letty, as of old, clasped her hands -over her stomach as the elevator shot up. The key clicked in the lock -and the door opened on the familiar long hall. They were home again. - -"When we have breakfast," declared Catherine, "we won't feel so much -like lost cats!" - -Flora, her gold tooth gleaming in her dark face, was loudly and -cheerfully glad to see them. Catherine scurried for towels, and left -the children scrubbing their hands, while she walked back through the -hall with Charles, who had said he must go to his office immediately. - -They faced each other in the dim light. Catherine struggled to throw -off the constraint which had settled upon her. - -"That's a grand suit," she said, laying her hand on his sleeve. "You -better take your rain coat." - -"It's at the office. I am afraid I can't come in for luncheon. I made -this engagement downtown before I knew you were coming to-day." - -"That's good." Catherine smiled at him. "Leaves me more time--there are -endless things to do." - -He looked at her, a curious reserve in his eyes. - -"You are really going to do it, take that job?" - -"I wrote you----" - -"When do you start?" - -"Monday. That's why I'm here." She couldn't help that air of defense! -"I had to have a few days to shop for the children, and get the house -running." - -"Hard on them, isn't it?" - -"I thought a few days couldn't matter so much to them as to me." - -"No." Charles turned the doorknob. - -"Charles!" Catherine seized his hand. "Are you--cross?" - -"Of course not." He sounded impatient. "But I have to get over to -college sometime to-day." - -"Have you changed your mind about my trying this?" - -"No." He pursed his under lip, hesitatingly. "I didn't know you were -going to jump in so immediately. But it's quite all right." - -Catherine released his hand, and he pulled open the door. He stood a -moment on the threshold, and then wheeled. - -"I--I'm glad you're home." Catherine was in his arms, her lips -quivering as he kissed her. - -"There, run along!" She patted his shoulder, her eyes misty. - - * * * * * - -But when he had gone, she leaned against the door, brushing hot tears -from her lashes. She could hear the children, their voices raised in -jangling. It was going to be hard, harder than she had thought. Bill -was right; she would have a double job. She might have more than that, -if Charles really carried a secret antagonism to her plan. Perhaps he -was only gruffy; perhaps this was only a flicker of his unadmitted -dislike of anything which threatened change, anything at least which -he had not originated. But she saw, clearly, what she had felt as a -possibility, that she had, for a time, his attitude as further weight -to carry. That he wouldn't admit his attitude made the weight heavier, -if anything. As she went slowly towards the sounds of squabbling, she -saw her attempt as a monstrous undertaking, like unknown darkness into -which she ventured, fearing at every step some unseen danger; and -heaviness pressed down physically upon her. - - -VII - -Breakfast restored the temper of the children, and lifted part of her -own heaviness. The day then stretched into long hours. The children -couldn't go out into the park, as the drizzle of the morning increased -to cold rain. Toward noon Dr. Henrietta telephoned, and Catherine -found her voice like a wind blowing into flame her almost smothered -intentions. Henrietta was sending over that evening the woman she had -mentioned: Miss Kelly. She could come at once, if Catherine liked her. -She would have to come by the day, as she had an invalid mother. "We'll -run in soon, Catherine, Bill and I. Don't you weaken!" - -Lucky Miss Kelly wouldn't want a place to sleep, thought Catherine, as -she went about the business of unpacking and reordering the apartment. -With New York rents where they were it was all they could do to shelter -the family decently. Was it really decent, she wondered, as she laid -the piles of Spencer's clothes away in the white dresser, and looked -about the little court room where he slept. She went to the window. A -hollow square, full of rain and damp odors; windows with drab curtains -blowing out into the rain; window sills with milk bottles, paper -bags--the signs of poor students, struggling to wrest education out -of the jaws of hunger! And yet, when she and Charles had found this -apartment, they had thought it fine. A large, wide, airy court; none of -your air shafts. She glanced up where the roof lines cut angles against -the sodden sky. Spencer did watch the stars there, on clear nights. She -picked up the laundry bag, stuffed with soiled clothes, and left the -room. Marian's room was next, a little larger. She had planned to have -Letty's bed moved in there this fall, opposite Marian's. Flora was on -her knees, her yellowed silk blouse dangling from her tight belt, as -her arm rotated the mop over the floor. - -"Had a pleasant summer, Flora?" asked Catherine, as she opened Marian's -bag. - -"Land, yes, Mis' Hammond." Flora whisked her cloth. "I'm gonna get -married to a puhfessional man. He's been showing me tenshions all -summer. He ain't committed hisself till last week." - -"You are!" Catherine looked at her in dismay. "When?" - -"Oh, I ain't gonna give up my work, Mis' Hammond. Not till I sees -how he pans out. I tried that once, and my las' husband, he couldn't -maintain me as I was accustomed to be. So I says to my intended, I'll -get married to you for pleasure, but I keeps my job. He don't care." - -Catherine laughed. She knew that Flora had made earlier experiments in -marriage, once to the extent of going back to Porto Rico. But she had, -through all her changes of name, kept her good humor, her cleverness, -and her apparent devotion to Catherine. - -She rose swiftly from her knees, her long string of green beads -clinking against her pail of water. - -"I believes in keeping men in his place," she said, with an expanding -grin. "If you don't, they keeps you in yours." - -Catherine, adding the pile of Marian's dirty clothes to the jammed -laundry bag, laughed again. - -"I suppose so," she said. "What am I going to do with all this laundry! -You'd think we hadn't washed all summer, the way things pile up." - -"I'll take that right home to-night, Mis' Hammond. My sister can do it -for you. My gentleman friend is stopping by for me in his car." - -Catherine smoothed the cretonne scarf on the dressing table, adjusted -the bright curtains, moved the little wicker chair to make room for -Letty's bed, and with a grimace at the glimpse of the court even -through the curtains, went on to the living room. Letty was asleep in -Catherine's room. Spencer and Marian had scorned her hint that a nap -might be good for them, and were sitting disconsolately in chairs drawn -near the windows. Here, at least, was something beside too intimate -suggestion of neighboring lives, even if the rain held it to-day in -somber dullness. Beneath the windows the tops of trees pricked through -the mist, as if one looked down into a forest; they were only the -poplars and Balm of Gilead that grew on the steep slope of Morningside, -but as Spencer had said, they were _trees_. And beyond them, extending -far off into the dim gray horizon, the city--flat roofs, with strange -shapes of chimneys, water tanks, or elevator sheds, merged to-day -into dark solidity. On clear days, there was a hint of water in the -distance, and the balanced curve of a great bridge. After all, thought -Catherine, there was air in the bedrooms--you couldn't expect birch -trees and stars in the city--and they did have distance and sometimes -the enchantment of the varying city from these windows. But it was -queer--she smiled as Spencer eyed her over his book--queer that beauty, -sunlight, air, should be things for which you paid money; that you had -to think yourself fortunate if you could afford one window which did -not open upon sordidness. - -"Moth-er, do you think I'd get too wet if I just went outdoors for five -minutes?" Spencer was dolorous. "My throat is all stuffed up, and I'll -lose my muscle, just sitting still." - -"No fun going out here," grumped Marian. - -"In a little while I am going out shopping for dinner. Would you like -to go?" - - -VIII - -In raincoats and rubbers, each with a bobbing umbrella, Catherine -sighing at the lost summer comfort of knickerbockers and boots, the -three went out into the rain. The children sparkled as if they had -escaped from jail. Spencer peered from under his umbrella at the heavy -sky. - -"Mebbe when the tide turns the wind'll change," he said. - -"Huh!" Marian giggled. "In the city? That's only in the country." - -"I guess there is wind in town, too, and tides, aren't there, Moth-er?" - -"Wind, all right!" The gust at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue caught -their umbrellas like chips. They ducked into the wet wind, rounded the -corner, and bent against it down the avenue. - -"Isn't there any tide?" insisted Spencer. - -"Yes, of course," Catherine answered, absently. Too far such a day, she -supposed, to go down to her old market. That restaurant had changed -hands again; a man behind the large window was even then drawing -outlines for new gilt letters. The same hairdresser, the same idle -manicure girl, intent on her own fingers, the drug store. They crossed -the street, their feet wobbling over the cobblestones, slipping through -the guttered water. There they were, at the market. - -"Where's the kitty?" demanded Marian, her eyes bright in her -rose-tanned face. - -"Kitty?" Catherine weighed the oranges in her fingers, and looked about -for a clerk. - -"Why, yes, Muvver. That little gray kitty----" - -"He'd probably be grown into an old gray alley cat by this time." - -Catherine frowned a little over her list. She should have come out -earlier; everything looked wilted, picked over. Vitamins, calories, and -the budget. The old dreary business of managing decently, reasonably. -The country and a garden of your own did spoil you for these dejected -pyramids. - -"There's another thing," she thought, as she watched the clerk hunt for -a satisfying head of lettuce, stripping off brownish, slimy leaves. -"When can I market, if I am downtown at nine? Perhaps this Miss Kelly -can do it, with Letty, as I always have done." A swift picture of -Letty in her go-cart, herself with the basket hanging from the handle. -Marketing had been her most intellectual pursuit. - -Back to the meat counter, with its rows of purplish fowls, their -feathered heads languishing on their trussed wings, and the butcher, -wiping his hands on the apron spotted and taut over his paunch. - -Marian, her eyes round and black, watched him sharpen his knife, while -Spencer lingered near the door. Spencer didn't, as he said, like dead -things. Neither did Catherine, shivering as the butcher shoved aside -the quivering lump of purplish-black liver. Queer, the forms that the -demands of ordinary living took; forms you never dreamed of, when you -entered living. - -"We should have brought two baskets!" Catherine looked at the bundles. - -"Send 'em over, lady?" - -"It's so late." - -"I can carry some, Moth-er." Spencer came back from his post at the -door. - -Marian had the bag of oranges under her arm, Spencer the basket, -Catherine a huge bag of varied contents. A scramble at the door to open -the three umbrellas, and they started up the street, the wind gusty at -their heels. - -"Be careful crossing the street," warned Catherine. Marian, darting -ahead, reached the curb, slipped, and sat down plump in a puddle, the -oranges rolling off, bright spots on the wet cobblestones. Marian, -dismayed, sat still, her mouth puckered. - -Catherine pulled her to her feet with a hand abrupt, almost harsh. The -throbbing behind her temples which had begun the day before, in the -steady drive of closing the house and getting off, had increased to a -heavy drum. "Pick them up," she said. "Don't stand there like a ninny!" - -Spencer's grin faded at the tone of her voice, and her flare of weary -temper subsided as she watched them scurry after the fruit. They stowed -the oranges into pockets, and corners of the basket. - -Finally they were home again. Flora's loud "Glory, glory, halleleuia," -swept down the hall as they opened the door, and Letty's accompaniment. - -"She's found my drum!" Spencer fled to the kitchen, and a wail followed -as Letty was reft of her instrument. - -Catherine pressed her lips firmly together as she hung her dripping -coat on the rack. "Steady," she said. "They are as tired as I am." Then -she thought: that's the great trouble with being a mother. You never -get away for a chance to sulk and indulge your bad temper. - -Charles came in, with his blandest air of preoccupation. Flora had -prepared the dinner, and then gone home when her gentleman friend -called for her, to cook her own evening meal, leaving Catherine to -broil the steak and set things on the table. Since Letty had slept -so long, she was permitted to sit in her high-chair during dinner, -where she conducted an insuppressible and very little intelligible -conversation. - -"She certainly needs training," declared Charles. - -"She isn't often on hand for dinner," said Catherine, wearily. - -Spencer and Marian cleared away the table, while Catherine bathed -Letty, deafening herself to the crash which came from the kitchen. What -had Marian dropped this time? - -Then she heard them, chattering away to their father, with the -occasional interruption of Charles's deep laugh. She hung away Letty's -towels and garments, and let the water run for Marian's bath. Wasn't -that Kelly person coming in? Would she, Catherine wondered, give the -children their baths? Could she let anyone else do that? Those slender, -rounded bodies, firm, ineffably young and sweet, changing so subtly -from the soft baby curves of Letty into young strength. Oh, at every -second there waited for her some coil of sentiment, of devotion, to -hold her there, solid, unmoving, in the round of the past few years. - -She was too tired to-night to think straight. She called Marian from -the door, and was answered by a demonstrating wail. - -"Not yet, Muvver. I have to see my Daddy." - -But at last both she and Spencer were bathed and in bed. As Catherine -turned out Spencer's light, she heard the doorbell. - -"Who is it, Moth-er?" Spencer's head came up from his pillow. - -"I don't know, son. But you go to sleep." - -"Mother--" His voice was low, half ashamed. "Mother, what makes me ache -in here?" - -"Where?" Catherine hung over his bed. He drew her hand to his chest. - -"When I think about my porch--an' everything." - -"You better think about something here, Spencer." Catherine's words -were tender. "Something you like here. That will cure your ache." - -"But I can't think up anything to think about! You tell me something -nice----" - -"'F you talk to Spencer, you'd ought to talk to me, too," came Marian's -sleepy protest from the adjoining room. - -"Sh-h! You'll wake Letty." Catherine's mind moved numbly over Spencer's -city likes. "Spencer, you might think about Walter Thomas. You can see -him soon----" - -"Well." Spencer sounded very doubtful. But Charles called her, and -Catherine said good night to him and to Marian. - -It was Miss Kelly who had rung. Catherine sat down in the living room, -brushing her hair away from her face, to which weariness had given a -creamy pallor under the summer tan, and wished furiously that she was -not so tired, that she could see into this rather plump, sandy, stubby -person who sat opposite her, with calm, light blue eyes meeting her -gaze. She looked efficient, if not imaginative. Well, the children had -imagination enough, and if Henrietta thought Miss Kelly would do, -surely she would. Charles had retired into his study. Miss Kelly folded -her plump hands in her lap and looked down at her round, sensible shoes -as Catherine spoke of Dr. Gilbert's high recommendation. - -She couldn't come before Monday. She liked nursing better, but the -hours were so uncertain, and her mother needed her. Yes, she had cared -for children before. She had always, for several years, had twenty-five -dollars a week, when she lived in her own home. - -H-m, thought Catherine, that will make one large dent in my wages! But -I must have someone, and I can't fill my place for nothing. So Monday -morning, about eight. Too bad the children were in bed, but then on -Monday Miss Kelly could see them. - -When Catherine had closed the door on the last descending glimpse of -Miss Kelly's round face behind the elevator grill, she hurried back to -the study. Charles looked up from his book. - -"Did you like her, Charles? You do think she looks capable?" - -"She has an air of honest worth." Charles laid aside his book. "Did you -hire her?" - -Catherine nodded. - -"I shouldn't care to have you supplanted by that face, if I were -Letty--or Spencer--or----" - -Catherine moved around to the desk to the side of his chair, her -fingers twisting together in a nervous little gesture. - -"She looks sensible and good natured, and Henrietta says she is fine. -I've got to try someone." - -"I suppose you must." - -Catherine, balancing on the edge of the desk, looked steadily at her -husband. He was holding his thoughts away from her, out of his eyes. - -"It's mostly Letty, of course," she said. "The others will be in -school." She sighed. "She can come Monday, the day I start." - -Then they were silent. Charles rubbed his thumb along the edge of his -book, and Catherine watched him, her gray eyes heavy. - -No use talking about it to-night, when she was so tired. She pushed the -affair away. - -"Poor Spencer is homesick for Maine," she said. "He wanted to know why -he ached----" - -"He needs to get out with boys more," said Charles sharply. "He's too -notional for a boy his age." - -Catherine felt a quick flicker of heat under her eyelids. Charles had -said that before this summer. - -"I want him to be a man," he continued, "not a sentimental little fool." - -"I think you needn't worry about that." Catherine was icy. Then -suddenly she slipped forward to the arm of his chair, her head down on -his shoulder, one hand up to his cheek. "Good Lord, I'm tired! Don't -talk about anything, or I'll fight!" - -Charles pulled her down into his lap and held her close. - -"That's more like it." His mouth was close to her ear. "Sitting off and -staring at me! Silly old girl----" - -Catherine laughed, just a weak flutter of sound. - -"Call me names! But hug me, tighter!" She laughed again. Words, she -thought--you can't get a person with words. They stand between you like -a wall. - -"You'd better go to bed. You feel limp as a dead leaf." - -"Yes." She stretched comfortably. "In a minute----" - - -IX - -Catherine sat at one of the living room windows, the floor about her -chair littered with packages, the result of her shopping for the -children. She unwrapped them methodically, clipped a name from the -rolls of tape in her basket, and sewed the label in place. Spencer -Hammond; Marian Hammond; Letitia Hammond. She was thankful that none -of them had a longer name! After three gloomy days the sun shone -again, pricking out spots of red in the roofs of the distance, falling -in splotches of brilliance on the white stuff Catherine handled. The -children were playing in the dining room, where the east windows -admitted the broad shafts of sunlight. Poor kids! They had begged her -to go outdoors with them, but her mother had telephoned that she was -coming in. - -Catherine had not known she was in town. She had been visiting her son -in Wisconsin, George Spencer. Catherine had seen little of that brother -since her own departure for college; he had married and gone west, -sending back, at astonishingly frequent intervals, photographs of his -increasing family. Mrs. Spencer visited him at least once each year, -returning always with delighted accounts of the children, of George's -business, of his wife. - -Catherine folded the striped pajamas and laid them on the pile at her -right. Her thoughts drifted around her mother and the small apartment -in the Fifties where she kept house for Margaret, the youngest of the -family. Letty came in a little rush toward her. - -"Letty draw." She spread the paper on Catherine's knee. "For Gram." Her -yellow head bent over it intently. - -"What is it, Letty?" Catherine laid a finger softly on the little -hollow just at the base of Letty's neck, an adorable hollow with a -twist of pale hair above it. - -"She says it's a picture of her fishing," called Marian. "Catching -cunners. But I'm painting a good picture of our house for Grandma----" - -"Letty paint?" Letty looked up, her eyes crinkled. - -"Grandma will like a drawing just as well." Catherine picked up a set -of rompers. "Mother's going to sew your name right on the band." Letty -watched a moment and then trudged back to her corner on the dining room -floor. - -What would her mother think when Catherine told her of her plan? -Catherine's hands dropped into her lap. She wouldn't say much. She -never did. But that little crinkle of Letty's eyes was like hers! You -saw her laughing at you. Since her own marriage Catherine had wondered -about her mother, and the last few months, while she had struggled with -her moods and desires, she had found that the admiration she had always -felt had gathered a tinge of curiosity, or speculative wonder. How had -her mother attained the lively serenity, the animated poise, the quiet, -humorous tranquillity with which she bore herself? Catherine remembered -her father only as a somewhat irritable invalid; the accident which -had injured him and finally killed him had happened when she was -young, and Margaret a mere baby. And yet, somehow, her mother had -seemed to keep a whimsical invulnerability. She had sent them all to -college, however she had managed even before the cost of living gained -its ominous present-day sound. Only for the last few years, since -Margaret, the last of them, had grown into a youthfully serious welfare -worker, had Mrs. Spencer's income been adequate to the uses for it. And -yet--Astonishing adjustment, thought Catherine. As if she had found -what she most wanted in life. As if things outside herself couldn't -scratch her skin. - -There was a scramble of children to the door at the ring of the bell, -and Catherine rose, her work sliding to the floor. They loved her, -the children. Was that the answer to her curiosity? That her mother -was essentially maternal? Catherine smiled as the delighted shouts of -greeting moved down the hall toward her. No, that wasn't the answer. -They had never felt, Catherine, or George, or Margaret, that they were -the core of her life; what was? - -"Cathy, dear!" How pretty she was, thought Catherine, as she bent -to kiss her. A moment of encounter while she gazed at her; always -Catherine had to pause that moment to regather all the outward details -which during absence merged into her feeling of the person as a whole. -She hadn't remembered how dark the blue of her mother's eyes was. Or -was it only the small blue hat with the liberty scarf, and the new blue -cape? - -"How smart you look!" she said. "And a new dress, too!" - -Mrs. Spencer slipped off her cape with a little twirl. "Paris model, -reduced." She handed the cape to Spencer. - -"It's pretty, Grandma." Marian touched the blue silk. "Little beads all -over the front." - -"You certainly look well!" Mrs. Spencer settled herself in a rocker, -unpinned her veil, let Marian take her hat, and upon insistence from -Letty, allowed her to hold the silk handbag. "Now please put my things -all together, won't you?" She ran her fingers through her soft gray -hair. Catherine watched her with tender eyes. Something valiant about -those small hands, white and soft, with enlarged knuckles and fingers a -little crooked, marked by hard earlier years. - -Not until after luncheon did Catherine talk with her mother. The -children had to show her their pictures; Charles came in, and Mrs. -Spencer wanted to know about his new work; dinner had to be planned. -Finally Letty was stowed away for her nap, and Spencer and Marian, with -the promise of a walk when she woke, went off to read. - -"I'll help you with that sewing." Mrs. Spencer threaded her needle. -"You've done your shopping in a lump, haven't you? I thought you -usually made some of these things." - -"I won't have time this year." - -Catherine was half afraid to tell her. Her proposition sounded absurd, -as if she heard it through her mother's ears. But Mrs. Spencer listened -quietly. - -"That's what Charles meant, then," she said. - -"He spoke of it?" Catherine looked up. - -"He asked if I had heard how modern you had suddenly become." - -Catherine snapped her thread. She wondered why she had felt this -desperate need to make her mother approve of her scheme, and Charles, -too. Wouldn't approval come after she had carried it through, if she -could? - -"Do you think me foolish--or wicked?" - -Mrs. Spencer patted the tape into place on the blouse she held. - -"Not at all, Cathy," she said. - -"But you don't think I ought to do it?" - -"That is for you to decide. You say you have found a nurse?" - -"Yes." - -"Did Dr. Henrietta Gilbert suggest this to you?" - -Catherine's head came up at that, but her irritation scurried off into -amusement; her mother looked so guileless, stitching with busy fingers. - -"You don't see, then, that I can't help it? That I must try something? -Oh, Mother, I've thought and thought----" - -"Yes, that's just it. You think too much. You always thought, Cathy. -That's why I was relieved when you met Charles. You didn't think much -for a while, at least, and I hoped"--Mrs. Spencer was looking at her, -her head on one side, her eyes bright, her mouth turning up in a funny -little smile--"I hoped your thinking days were over. But it's in the -air so. Women seem to take pride in being restless, unhappy. We were -taught to consider that a sin." - -"Is that why you're so nice?" - -"No." Mrs. Spencer smiled. "Maybe my children were smarter than yours. -I didn't find them such bad company." - -"Oh, that's not it!" Catherine cried out. Then she laughed. "Mother, -you're outrageous. You're making fun of me, just as if----" - -"As if you wanted to be a missionary again." - -"But I was only a child then. That was amusing." - -"Yes. You didn't think so, then." Mrs. Spencer folded the blouse -neatly. "Hasn't Spencer grown tall! I see you're buying eleven-year-old -clothes for him." - -"Well"--Catherine's mouth was stubborn--"I'll just have to show you! -And Charles, too. He thinks it's a whim, I know." - -"He hasn't objected?" - -"Oh, no. Not in words. He wouldn't." - -"Poor Charles. These modern women in your own home!" Mrs. Spencer's -eyes crinkled almost shut. "Do you know why I came back early? Your -sister Margaret has a modern turn, too." - -"But she's not in town yet." - -"No. She wrote, asking if I wouldn't like to stay with George this -winter." - -"Why?" - -"I suppose she thinks a mother is a sort of nuisance. She wants to set -up housekeeping with her friend." - -"The little wretch!" - -"Not exactly. But I did want that apartment myself, as I am fond of it. -I think I'll take a roomer." - -"Mother!" Catherine stared at her. - -"She's been reading something a German wrote. What is his name? Freud. -She's been thinking, too, I am afraid." - -Catherine was silent; she recognized her instinctive protest as a -flourish of habit, of righteousness for someone else. After all---- - -"She needn't be so apologetic," said Mrs. Spencer deliberately. "If she -doesn't need me, I shall be glad to find someone nearer my own age." - -Letty's deep voice announced her awakening. Mrs. Spencer decided to -walk over to Riverside with Catherine and the children, as she could -go on downtown from there by bus. After several minutes of agitated -preparation, a frantic search for roller skates, they were in the hall, -Letty rolling noisily along on her wooden "Go-Duck," her busy legs -waving like plump antennæ. Catherine held the strap of Marian's skates -firmly; Marian was all for skating right down the hall. Then, just as -the elevator came, Catherine remembered that she hadn't paid Flora for -the week. - -Flora's gold tooth flashed as Catherine handed her the money. - -"I certainly is obliged," she said. "My frien' and I, we're going on -the Hudson River boat to-morrow, and I suspicions he's short of cash." - -"You'll be in early on Monday, Flora? Miss Kelly is coming, and she'll -need you to show her about things." - -"Sakes, yes. You can go about your business, Mis' Hammond, with a light -soul." - -Flora was delighted at this venture of Catherine's. Catherine thought, -a little grimly, as she hurried after the family, that Flora was the -only one in the house who was pleased. It's her dramatic sense, she -speculated, waiting for the elevator. I wish I had more of it myself, -and Charles, too. - -The sharp blue clarity of the air was like a sudden check rein, pulling -Catherine's head up from doubtful thoughts. As they waited at Amsterdam -Avenue for the car to rumble past, she glanced up the street; in the -foreground the few blocks of sharp descent, and then the steady climb -for miles, off to the distance where street and marginal buildings -seemed as blue as the sky. It was like a mountain, with blue-gray -shadows across the canyon of the street, and jagged cliffs of buildings -merging into solid rock up the slope. She reached for the head of -Letty's red duck. "You better walk across the street, Letty." - -"No! Ducky go!" and bumping over the cobblestones it went, propelled -vigorously, while Spencer and Marian stumbled along on their skates. - -The walk through the half block of park behind the University buildings -was smooth sailing. Catherine and her mother followed the children. -"Wait for us at the gate!" warned Catherine. - -At last they were across the Drive and safe on the lower walk of the -park. - -"Here's my old bench." Catherine sat down with her mother. "I can see -clear to those steps from here." - -Spencer was off with a whoop, his figure balancing surely as he sped. -Marian chased him, a determined erectness in her body. Letty paddled -after them, chanting loudly to her duck. - -"When school opens," Catherine sighed, "they'll have some exercise, -poor chickens. City life isn't easy for them." - -"It's no place for children." Mrs. Spencer watched a passing group, a -beruffled little girl yanking fretfully at the hand of her nurse, a -small, fat boy howling in tearless monotony. "Not even a yard." - -"We talked about a suburb last year. But Charles hates the idea of -commuting, and he is so busy with his additional work that he'd never -be home at all." - -"Won't you miss these little expeditions with your children?" - -Catherine looked hastily at her mother. But the bright blue eyes were -apparently intent on a tug steaming along the river. The tide was -running swiftly down, swirling off into the quiet water near shore bits -of refuse, boxes, sticks, which caught the sun in dazzling sham before -they drifted into ugly lack of movement. - -"They don't need me when they are playing here," said Catherine. -"Anyone would do, just to watch them." - -"I wonder," said her mother. "I see some of these nurses do outlandish -things." - -"Miss Kelly looks intelligent and kind." Again stubbornness in -Catherine's mouth, in her lowered eyelids. "And I might as well admit, -I'm reaching the place where I won't be either of those things. You'd -be ashamed of your daughter if you knew how peevish she can get!" - -"Catherine, dear"--Mrs. Spencer laid her hand softly on Catherine's--"you -know I don't mean to interfere. But are you sure you haven't just caught -the general unrest, in the air and everywhere?" - -"Where did it come from?" The children were coasting toward them, down -the little hill. "Why do I feel it?" - -"Oh, the war, no doubt." - -"The war! Blame that for my hatred of this dreadful monotony, my lack -of self-respect, my--my grubby, dingy, hopeless feeling!" - -"I can see you have your mind made up." Mrs. Spencer caught Marian as -she tumbled, laughing, against the seat. - -"I beat Spencer back!" - -"Come on and I'll beat up the hill!" Spencer wiggled to a standstill. - -A wail went up. Letty and her duck were upside down, a jumble of legs -and red wheels. Spencer clattered away to rescue her, Marian after him. - -Mrs. Spencer began with a little chuckle a story of George's two -youngest children. Catherine relaxed, content to leave her own problem. -Her mother had said all she meant to say. The sun dropped lower and -lower, until it seemed to catch on the sharp margin of the New Jersey -shore and hang there, red, for long minutes. The tide had slackened and -the water caught a metallic white luster. The park was almost deserted -now. Finally Catherine called the children. They came; she smiled at -their scarlet cheeks and clear eyes, their smudged hands and knees. - -"Home now, and dinner." - -"See the gold windows!" Spencer pointed to the massed gray buildings -above the park. - -"That's the sun," explained Marian, panting up the steps. - -They waited with Grandmother until a bus lumbered to a halt, and they -could wave her off down the Drive. - - -X - -Charles came into the hall as they entered, clattering skates and duck. - -"Hello!" He pinched Letty's cheek. "Where you been?" He moved close to -Catherine and continued, in a confidential undertone, "I thought you'd -be here. I brought Miss Partridge in. Don't you want her to stay to -dinner?" - -Catherine, with a swift glance at the disheveled group, and a swifter -consideration of food--what had she told Flora to prepare?--shrugged. - -"Of course," she said. She concealed a secret grin at the relief which -ran over Charles's nonchalance. In the old days--how long ago!--one of -her most sacred lares had been just that, that Charles should feel free -as air about bringing any one in at any time. What was home for? But -with three children, perhaps she burned less incense at that altar. She -was moving toward the door of the living room as she thought. - -"Here's my wife and family, Miss Partridge." - -"I am glad you waited for us." Catherine disengaged herself from -Letty's fingers and went to meet the woman who was rising from the -window. "I have wished to meet you." Catherine smiled as she spoke; her -smile touched her face with a subtle irradiance, charming, completely -personal. She's younger than I had supposed, Catherine was thinking, -and quite different. - -"Dr. Hammond urged me to wait." Her voice was clear and hard, like a -highly polished instrument. Her manner was as cool and detached as the -long white hand she extended. "And this is the family?" - -"Letitia, Marian, and Spencer," announced Charles. Catherine watched -them make their decorous greetings with a little flicker of pride. -Sometimes Marian had ridiculous fits of shyness and wouldn't curtsey. -"You'll have to test them, Miss Partridge," Charles went on. "See if my -paternal bias misled me in my tests. Their I.Q.'s seem satisfactory." - -"Of course they would!" Miss Partridge's smile lifted her short upper -lip from a row of even teeth so shining that they looked transparent. -"Such a handful must keep you busy, Mrs. Hammond. You've just come in -from the country, haven't you?" - -"Good Lord!" thought Catherine. "I'm to be treated like an adoring -mother." Her level glance met the dark brown eyes for an instant; she -felt a queer clatter, as if she had struck metal. Aloud she said, -"Won't you have dinner with us, Miss Partridge? I should enjoy hearing -your side of all these new schemes." - -"That's it." Charles was hearty, insistent. "Let me take your wraps." - -Elegant, slim, in soft taupe tailor-made, close-fitting velour hat. -She gets herself up well; Catherine was aware suddenly of her own -appearance in rough tweed coat and last year's hat with its bow of -ribbon rather wilted. Not so hasty, she warned herself; look out, or -you'll have a rooted dislike out of this feeling. Queer, how some women -heighten their femininity by tailored clothes. Miss Partridge, without -a demur, had stripped off her jacket and removed her hat. Her blouse of -dull gleaming silk fitted closely about her throat, her dark hair was -wound in a heavy braid about her smooth, small head; lovely skin, with -a pale luster. Catherine noted in a flash the heavy jade cuff links, -the small bar of jade that fastened the collar, the chain of dull -silver and jade which looped into the belt. She's the sort that affects -the masculine for more subtle results, was the swift conclusion, as she -ushered the children out of the room. - -It was a nuisance, having a maid who couldn't stay to serve dinner. -But in other ways Flora couldn't be touched, and they did like not -having to house her. Catherine heard the tone of that clear, hard -voice as she moved from bathroom to kitchen, lighting the gas under -the vegetables, supervising Letty's supper and bath. Is she brilliant, -or shrewd, she wondered, as she directed Spencer in his grave attempt -to lay another place at the table. She is young to have achieved her -reputation. Has she one, or has she made Charles think she has? Don't -be a cat! - -At last Letty was in bed, the children were clean, the chops were -broiled, the corn steamed on the platter, and with a last glance at the -table, Catherine went to the living room door. - -"Dinner is ready," she said. "We have a maid by the day, who goes home -at six," she explained, and then stopped. She wouldn't apologize! - -As they seated themselves, Letty's shout broke across the hall. - -"Lady kiss duck! Lady kiss Ducky goo' ni'." - -"Spencer, please tell Letty we are at dinner." - -But Letty's shout gained energy. - -"That's one of her rites," said Charles. "Miss Partridge might as well -be initiated at once. Come along!" - -Catherine laughed at Marian's distressed face. - -"Muvver, isn't Letty _awful_! A strange lady----" - -Charles and Miss Partridge were back, and Marian sank into embarrassed -silence. - -"Isn't she an amusing baby, Mrs. Hammond!" Miss Partridge unfolded her -napkin with a lazy gesture; her smile disclosed her teeth, without -touching her large dark eyes. - -"She's the most stubborn one of the family," said Charles. - -It was difficult to play a continuous part in the conversation when -you had to leave half your mind free for food and drink, thought -Catherine, as dinner moved along under her guidance. She didn't, she -discovered, know half that Charles had been doing all summer. Miss -Partridge had assisted in the summer-school work, to begin with. Time -for salad, now. Spencer helped clear the first course away, breathing -heavily as he pondered over his movements with the plates and silver. -Catherine brought in the huge green bowl, filled with crisp, curling -leaves, and Spencer followed with the plates of cheese and crackers. -As Catherine poured the dressing over the leaves and stirred them, her -hands moving with slow grace, she picked up the threads of the talk. -Miss Partridge thought a family must be illuminating; you could watch -instincts unfold. And Charles--"I tried Spencer, to see if he had that -prehistoric monkey grip, and Catherine thought I was endangering his -life. But you're so busy keeping them fed and happy that you haven't -time to experiment." - -When dinner was over, Catherine stood in the living room door. - -"If I may be excused for a few minutes," she said. - -"Is it dishes, Mrs. Hammond?" Miss Partridge turned from the window, -where Charles had been pointing out the view. "I'm not a bit domestic, -but I think I could wipe them." - -"Oh, no, thank you." Catherine smiled. "Just the children." - -They were in Spencer's room, arguing in low tones about which chair -Marian was to have. Catherine adjusted the reading lamp, suggested that -Spencer curl up on the end of his bed. "Now you may read for a whole -hour," she said. "Then Marian must bathe. If you will call me, I'll rub -your back for you." She started toward the door. "You will be quiet, -won't you," she asked, "since we have a guest?" - -"Of course, Muvver," said Marian. "Isn't she a handsome lady?" - -"No, she isn't," said Spencer, loudly. - -"Remember Letty's asleep just next door." - -Catherine stopped outside their closed door. They were quiet, dropping -at once into their stories. Good children. She brushed her hair from -her forehead with an impatient hand. "I feel like--like a nonentity!" -she raged. "Almost as if I were invisible. Not there to be even looked -at. Perhaps I am jealous, but it doesn't feel like that. She's not the -vamp type. Too smooth and egoistic. It's what Charles can do for her, -not Charles that she is after. O, well----" - -But before she had returned to the living room the bell rang. Henrietta -and Bill! - -Catherine held out her hands, one to each, and drew them into the hall. - -"You dears!" she cried. "I am glad to see you. Come in." - -She stepped back into visibility with their entrance. Henrietta had -met Miss Partridge at Bellevue one day. William bowed with his usual -courtly silence. - -"Did you like Miss Kelly?" demanded Henrietta, as she settled into the -wing chair before Miss Partridge had it again. "She came in, didn't -she?" - -"She's coming Monday." - -"Is Monday the great day?" Bill was looking at her, and Catherine -smiled swiftly at the warm, quiet friendliness of his eyes. - -"Monday!" she declared. "I telephoned Dr. Roberts this morning." - -"Isn't it fine, Miss Partridge"--Henrietta turned briskly to her--"this -move of Mrs. Hammond's." - -"I haven't heard about it." Miss Partridge's dark, smooth brows lifted. - -Did Charles look uneasy, almost guilty, as he stretched out in his -armchair and fumbled in the box of cigars? - -"You haven't?" Henrietta grinned slyly at Catherine. "Haven't you heard -that Mrs. Hammond is renouncing the quiet, domestic life for a real -job?" - -"Why not say exchanging jobs?" Charles was intent on the end of his -cigar. - -"Or annexing a second job?" That was Bill's quiet voice. - -"I am going to work at the Lynch Bureau," explained Catherine, "as -investigator." She felt a flash of delight in the astonishment which -rippled briefly over Miss Partridge's smooth face. Knocked down her -first impression, she thought maliciously. - -"Really? How interesting!" Miss Partridge smiled. "But what will your -sweet children do?" - -"They'll go to school and have an efficient nurse," said Henrietta -abruptly, "and they'll be vastly better off when they aren't having -the sole attention of an intelligent woman like their mother. And -that's that!" She dangled her glasses over her forefinger. "Did you -decide that girl was malingering, Miss Partridge? She certainly had no -physical symptoms. Just a case we ran into the other day," she added, -to Catherine. - -Charles, in answer to a query from Bill, had started a long and eager -explanation of an industrial test he had been working up. - -Catherine noticed that even as Miss Partridge answered Henrietta's -question, her eyes had turned to Charles and Bill. "Is your husband a -doctor, too?" she finished. - -"Heavens, no! Bill couldn't be anything so personal as a doctor." -Henrietta laughed. "Could he, Catherine? He's an engineer." - -And presently, maneuvering cleverly, Miss Partridge was talking -industrial tests with Charles, while Bill, puffing on his old pipe, let -his half-shut eyes rest on her face, and then move across to Catherine. -Was he smiling? - -Marian's call came just then, and Catherine rose. - -"May I come along, Catherine? I haven't seen the kids since that night -in Maine." Henrietta stopped at Spencer's door, and as Catherine draped -Marian's slim body in the huge bath towel, she heard Spencer's eager -voice and Dr. Henrietta's bluff tone. Marian, her face rosy and her -dark hair rumpled, threw herself into Henrietta's arms. "Hello, my -Doctor!" she cried. - -They had a moment in the hall, when Henrietta looked firmly into -Catherine's eyes. - -"You stop your worrying," she said. "You won't swing your job unless -you are clear of doubts. Brace up!" Her hand clasped Catherine's. "If I -can help you any way, be sure you let me know." - -"Oh, you are a brick!" Catherine's fingers were convulsive. "I do need -you!" - -The three in the living room looked up at their entrance. - -"Spencer sent you his regards, Bill. He wished me to tell you that he -thought the cows recovered from the alarm your car caused them." - -Bill removed his pipe, a slow smile on his gaunt face. - -"What cows?" demanded Charles. - -"Ghost cows, Charles. Not in your lexicon. But we felt them in that old -barn, behind those stanchions." - -When they had gone, Charles followed Catherine into the dining room, -gathered a handful of coffee cups, and walked after her into the -disorderly kitchen. - -"What'd you think of her?" he asked, casually. - -"Her being the cat?" Catherine grinned at him. She was at ease again, -confident, the sense of nonentity gone. - -"Oh, Stella Partridge, of course. Fine person, isn't she! No nonsense -about her. Mind like a man's." - -"Is it?" Catherine stacked the dishes in the sink. - -"Has the qualities which are conventionally labeled masculine. Like -that better?" - -The clatter of the garbage pail cover served for Catherine's answer. - -"Bill's a queer duck, now, isn't he?" Charles lolled against the table, -his long body making a hazardous oblique angle. "Never can make up my -mind whether it's shyness or laziness." - -"I don't think it's either of those things, if you mean his lack of -loquaciousness." - -"Loquaciousness!" Charles threw back his head in a laugh. "That's some -word to use about Bill!" - -"I suppose I might as well wash these confounded dishes to-night." -Catherine turned the faucet and the water splashed into the sink. - -"Where's your dusky maiden?" - -"To-morrow's Sunday." - -"Oh, say, it's too bad I brought a guest in to-night, eh?" Charles -waited comfortably for her assurance that it wasn't too bad. - -"We'd hate the mess in the morning," was Catherine's dry retort. - -Charles was in extraordinary humor, the purring kind, thought -Catherine, as her hands moved deftly among the dishes. And I'm not. I -feel as if I should like to yell! She bent more swiftly to her task. -Charles straightened his long angle and reached for a dish towel. -He needn't be magnanimous about wiping dishes! As he rubbed the -towel round and round a plate, he began to sing. Somewhere--rub--the -sun--rub--is shi-i-ining--rub! And Catherine had, suddenly, a flash of -a picture, smarting in her throat. The shabby little flat where they -had first lived, before Spencer was born; Charles wiping the dishes, -singing, and Catherine singing with him, ridiculous old hymns and -sentimental tunes. And always after the occasional guests had gone, the -"gossip party," as they labeled it, speculation, analysis, discussion -of the people who had gone, friendly, shrewd, amusing, ending when the -dish towel was flapped out and the dish-pan stowed under the sink with -the ritualistic but none the less thrilling, "There's no one can touch -my girl for looks or charm or brains!" and Catherine's, "I'm sorry for -everyone else--because they can't have you!" - -Charles was echoing that old custom. But he didn't realize it. And -Catherine thought, with a stabbing bitterness, "He has this feeling of -comfort, not because we are here together, but because the evening has -pleased him." - -"What do you think is Bill's secret, then?" Charles broke out. - -"He's thinking of something else, not of that; he's keeping me off his -real center," hurried Catherine's thoughts. "I won't be horrid and -cross." - -"Isn't it lack of conceit?" She reached for the heavy frying pan. "Most -of us have to talk to assert ourselves, to make folks listen to us. -Bill hasn't any ego----" - -"Oh, he's got one, all right." Charles balanced the pile of dishes -precariously near the edge of the table. "Looks more conceited just to -sit around with that cryptic expression----" - -"I don't think so!" Catherine scrubbed vigorously at the sink. "He -never looks critical." - -"Couldn't get a harsh word out of you about Bill, could I?" Charles -jested a little heavily. "He's always been that way, ever since he was -a kid." - -"Now when Miss Partridge"--Catherine resisted the impulse to say "your -Miss Partridge"--"when she is silent, she looks too superior for words." - -"Nonsense! I felt you were misjudging her. Now, she's awake, ready to -talk----" - -"About herself." - -"Meow!" Charles grinned. "Though we did talk a good deal about the -work. But, of course, that's only natural." - -"She didn't even see me until Henrietta pointed at me and yanked me out -of the pigeon-hole where she had me stuck." - -"I hope you aren't going to dislike her, Catherine." Charles was -serious. "Since I have to see her in connection with the clinic, it -might be awkward----" - -"Thank the Lord, those are done!" Catherine turned from the sink. -"Don't worry, old thing," she said, lightly. "I don't hate her. We -never have insisted on love me, love all my dogs, you know." - -"I thought you'd appreciate her." Charles was sulky. - -"She's extremely handsome." - -"She's as warm hearted as she is brilliant, too." - -"Like a frog, she is!" thought Catherine. But she reached for the -button and snapped out the light. - -"I'll hurry with my shower," she said, preceding him up the hall. "Then -you can have the tub. It's late." - -The bathroom was littered with the children's discarded clothes. Little -sluts! thought Catherine, gathering socks and shirts and bloomers. My -fault, I suppose. I can't make 'em neat! Like a nice warm tub myself, -she growled, but Charles is waiting. Someone's always waiting. - -She sat in the dark by the window in their room, while Charles splashed -and hummed. Yellow cracks edged a few of the windows of the opposite -wall, not many, as it was so late. Above the rim of the building she -could see one great blue-white star with a zigzag of pale stars after -it. Vega, she thought. Smiting its--what is it? Wonder if you could see -stars at noon from the bottom of this court? It's like a well. She drew -her dressing gown close over her throat. It feels nasturtium colored, -even in the dark, she thought, running her fingers over the heavy silk. -Her one extravagance last spring, lovely flame-orange thing. Why, she -hadn't braided her hair. Her fingers were tired. They moved idly -through the heavy softness. - -Her elbows on the window sill, she stared up at the star. Monday, she -thought. Monday I shall have something else to think about. Just as -Charles does. This dreadful mulling over words and looks, hanging on -the wave of an eyelash. That's what women do, poor fools, trying to -keep all the first glamor. Love. She heard the water gulping out of the -tub. Love needs to be back of your days, _there_, but not the thing -you feed on every second. Terrible indigestion, eating your heart out -forever. Ugh, the sill was gritty with dust. She rubbed her elbows -resentfully. That song Charles had hummed in the kitchen had sent her -back through the years. She hadn't wanted anything else in those days. -Passion, its strange, erratic light making everything else seem tinsel. -Tenderness, making all else in life seem cold. And quarrels--the still, -white silence, swift product of some unexpected moment, so that you -felt yourself imprisoned in an iceberg, from which you never could -escape--that was part of the struggle of admitting another person, your -lover, into yourself. And child-bearing. Peculiar, ecstatic, difficult; -commonplace physical preoccupation for long stretches of your life. -Catherine shrugged. Perhaps, if you weren't husky--she twisted from her -cramped position--perhaps some women never got over childbirth. It did -eat you up. Her mother would say she was thinking too much. She rose, -stretching her arms above her head, the silk slipping away from them. -Then, as she heard Charles scuffling along the hall--he did need some -new slippers--suddenly her heart opened and poured a golden flood over -her being. Why, now, this instant, she loved him, and all the earlier -passion was a thin tinkle against this sound--sunlight in the wide -branches of a tree, and cold earth deep about the roots, and liquid sap -flowing. - -Her fingers closed about the crisp curtain edge as Charles pushed open -the door. - -"You in bed?" His whisper was cautious. "Oh, no." He snapped on the -light, while Catherine gazed at him, waiting. His pink pajama coat -flopped open. - -"There isn't a damned button on the thing. Got a pin?" He shuffled -across to the dressing table. "My wife's been to the country." - -"Poor boy." Catherine rushed to the sewing table in the corner. "I'll -sew 'em on if your wife won't." Ridiculous, enchanting. She pulled -him down beside her on the bed, seized the coat, burying her knuckles -against the hard warmth of his chest. "Don't wriggle, or you'll have it -sewed to your diaphragm." - -Charles was silent. Catherine's wrist flexed slowly with the drawing of -the thread. It's like weaving a spell, she thought, with secret passes -of my hand, to melt that hard resentment he won't admit. She broke the -thread and glanced up. Charles, with a quick motion, laid his cheek -against the sweet darkness of her hair. - -"First time you've so much as seen me since you came back," he said. - -"Too bad about you!" Catherine jeered softly. - - -XI - -"It's the Thomases on the 'phone." Charles came out of the study. "They -want us to come out this afternoon to see their house." - -"Out where?" Catherine looked up from her book, while Spencer and -Marian fidgeted for the reading to continue. - -"Croton. They've moved, you know. Bought a farm." - -"Walter Thomas?" asked Spencer. "Has he got a farm?" - -"Thomas says there are trains every hour, and we can stay for -Sunday-night supper." - -"But the children----" - -"I thought your mother was coming in." - -"She may not wish to stay late." - -"Well, you'll have to decide. Thomas is waiting. It would be rather -nice to get out of town for a few hours." - -Catherine's brows drew together. - -"We're all right," said Marian. "Go on away!" - -"Yes, you are." Catherine sighed briefly. Charles had his air of "Are -you going to deprive me of a pleasant hour?" - -"You wouldn't go without me?" she asked. "Tell Mr. Thomas that if -mother wishes to stay, we'll come. We can telephone him." - -Mrs. Spencer said she would like nothing better than a chance at the -children without their interfering parents, and in the late afternoon -Catherine and Charles set forth. The cross-town car was jammed; -Catherine, from an uncomfortable seat just under the conductor's fare -box, watched the people about her with remote eyes. She hated these -humid, odorous jams. She always crawled off into a dark corner of -herself, away from the jostling and pushing of her body. Heavy, dull -faces--she lifted her head until her eyes could rest on the firm -solidity of Charles's shoulder and head. Nothing professorial about -that erect head, the edge of carefully shaved neck between collar -and clipped fair hair that showed under the soft gray hat. But even -the back of his head looked intelligent, alive. He turned suddenly, -and over the crowd their eyes met in a mysteriously moving flare -of acknowledgment. He grinned at her--he knew her hatred of such -crowds; and turned away again. Catherine shivered a little. That was -what she wanted to keep, that awareness of each other, that intimate -self-recognition. She couldn't keep it if she was worn down into -dullness and drabness and stupidity. She had, she knew, stirred Charles -out of his easy acceptance of her as an established custom, and for the -day, at least, she had submerged his resentment. As the car stopped -under the tracks she was thinking, if I can win him over to believe in -what I am, what I want, inwardly, in his feeling, not in words,--then I -can do anything! - -They sat together on the train and talked. Charles had spent one Sunday -during the summer with the Thomases; they had a tennis court and -chickens. Thomas had been promoted to Assistant Professor, but he kept -his extension classes still, as the oldest boy was entering college -this fall. - -"He was crazy about some old French verse forms that day. Couldn't talk -about anything else. Mrs. Thomas wanted to talk about the refinishing -of the walls." - -"I'll wager she did. Verse forms interest her only as a means to the -salary end." - -"But she's a fine type of woman, don't you think?" - -Catherine shrugged. - -"She's about as intellectual as a--a jellyfish. She's not a jellyfish, -though." - -"Thomas gets enough enjoyment from his own mind." - -They walked from the station through the crowded, dingy houses near -the river, climbed a long hill, and at the top found the country, soft -and lovely in the hazy September sunlight. As they climbed, the river -dropped beneath them, opal-blue and calm, the hollows of the wooded -Westchester hills gathered purple shadows, and on the slopes toward -which they climbed a branch of maple flamed at times like a shrill, -sweet note in the mellow silence. - -"It must be good for their children, living out here." Charles sniffed -at the air. "Smell that wood smoke! Bonfires, and nuts----" - -"How'd you like to climb that hill every night?" - -"Thomas has a flivver. There, you can see the house through those -poplars." - - * * * * * - -The Thomases were on the porch, rising to meet them with a flurry of -innumerable children and dogs and cats. Mrs. Thomas, small, pink, -worried, with curly gray hair and a high voice; Mr. Thomas, of -indifferent stature, with an astonishingly large head, smooth dark -hair, nearsighted eyes behind heavy glasses, and a large, gentle mouth; -the children--there were only five, after all, from Theodore, the -eldest, who was curly and pink like Mrs. Thomas, down to Dorothy, the -youngest, who already wore glasses as thick as her father's. - -"I wanted Theodore to drive down for you, but you said you wanted to -walk." Mrs. Thomas jerked the chairs into companionable nearness. -"Quite a climb up our hill." - -"Mrs. Thomas can't imagine any one liking to walk," said her husband. - -"Not a mother and wife, at least. Men don't know what being on their -feet means, do they, Mrs. Hammond?" - -Inquiries about the children, mutually. Admiration expressed for the -view, for the house, room by room, for the poultry run which Theodore -had constructed, for the tennis court, for the asparagus bed. - -"Now that the Cook's Tour is ended, what about something to eat, -Mother?" - -The dining room was small, and warm from the sunning of the afternoon; -the Thomas children chattered in high voices; Catherine sighed in -secret as she looked at the elaborate salad, the laborious tiny -sandwiches, the whipped-cream dessert in the fragile stemmed sherbet -glasses, the frosted cake. But Mrs. Thomas, the lines in her pink -cheeks a trifle more distinct, hovered in anxious delight over each -step in the progress of this evidence of her skill and labor. - -"No, Dorothy, no cake. She has to be very careful of sweets, they upset -her so easily. Do your children hanker for everything they shouldn't -have?" - -Theodore broke in with an account of the psychological tests he had -taken for college entrance; there was a suggestion of pimples on his -round, pink chin. Walter wanted to know when Spencer could come out; -Walter was Spencer's age, a chubby, choleric boy who kept rabbits and -sold them to the neighbors for stews. Clara, just older, had reached an -age of gloomy suspicion; her hair, which her mother was allowing to -grow, now that Clara was older, fell about her thin shoulders in lank -concavity. Catherine wondered whether the contention between Marian and -Spencer sounded to outsiders like the bickering which ran so strongly -here. Dorothy was a year older than Letty, but she did not talk so -plainly. And that other boy, Percy--why name him that!--was being sent -away from the table because he had pinched Clara. - -Inevitably the talk stayed on the level of the children, in spite of -attempted detours on the part of Charles. Mr. Thomas ate with an absent -myopic eye on Dorothy and the next older boy. - -But when at length they left the dining room, he was saying to Charles, -"You recall those songs I spoke of? Thirteenth century? I've found -a girl who does beautiful translations. A graduate student. She has -an astonishing sense for the form." He had come alive, suddenly, the -blank, gentle mask of his face breaking into sharp, vivid animation. -Catherine watched him, peering at his wife, glancing back at him. She -didn't care about the old verse forms, neither did his wife; but his -wife didn't care that he could come alive like that, apart from her. -Perhaps when they are alone, thought Catherine, he has some feeling for -her that compares with this--but I doubt it! - -"He's as keen about those musty old papers as if they were worth huge -sums." Mrs. Thomas laid her hand on Catherine's arm, as they stood on -the edge of the porch, looking far down the valley. Mrs. Thomas had a -way of offering nervous little caresses. "Men are queer, aren't they?" -Her forehead puckered. - -Catherine endured the hand, light, with an insinuating effect of a -bond between them, the bond of their sex. We women understand, those -fingers tapped softly. - - * * * * * - -Later, half defiantly, in answer to a suggestion of Mrs. Thomas that -Catherine take her place on the faculty women's committee for teas, -Catherine explained that she would be much too busy. She saw in the -quick pursing of Mrs. Thomas's little mouth the contraction of her -eyelids, the rapid twists her announcement made as it entered Mrs. -Thomas's mind. Disapproval, hearty and determined; a small fear, -quickly over, lest some discredit reflect on her position; a chilly -covering of those emotions with her words, "Why, Mrs. Hammond, you've -seemed so devoted to your children!" - -"Naturally." Catherine was curt. "I am. But they needn't suffer, any -more than they did before while Charles was in France and I worked. I -can't see any loss to them." - -"I hope you won't regret it." Mrs. Thomas drew her own brood into a -symbolic shelter, as she flung her arm around Dorothy, who was at her -knee with a picture book, clamoring unintelligibly to be read to. - -"Fine for you, Hammond. A family needs several wage earners, in these -postwar days." - -Charles laughed, but Catherine saw the flicker of uneasiness in his -face. - -"But I'd hate to have to find a cook to supplant Mrs. Thomas." - -"Ah, but you see, I can't cook that way." Catherine's lightness covered -the glance she sped at Charles. She hadn't, then, touched his real -feeling about this. Just a scratch, and she could see it. - -"I don't know what's to become of us poor men"--he rose lazily--"unless -we turn into housewives." - -"You better take a turn at it, just to see what it's like." That was -Mrs. Thomas, vigorously exalting her ability. - -"It was called husbandry once, wasn't it?" Mr. Thomas smiled in -enjoyment of his joke. "Must you go? It's very early. Let us drive you -down." - -"The walk will be just what we need----" - -The evening was soft and black, with faint rustle in the autumn-crisped -leaves of the trees that massed against the blue-black sky. Below them -the river gleamed silver-dark. They went in silence down the hill, the -gravel slipping under their heels. Then Catherine felt Charles groping -for her hand, the warm pressure of his fingers. - -"Rummy bunch of kids," he said. And then, "That woman can cook, but -that's about all. She can't impart gentle manners." Catherine relaxed -in content. He wasn't huffy. "Too bad you have to tell people like that -what you're going to do. Let 'em see after you've succeeded, I say!" - -"Oh!" Catherine's voice was sharp with delight. "You think I will!" - -"Lord, yes. Of course. You've got the stuff." - -Their clasped hands swinging like children's, they came to the foot of -the hill. - - - - -PART II - -BOTH ENDS OF THE CANDLE - - -I - -Catherine clicked the telephone into place on her desk and sat for a -moment with her hands folded on the piles of paper before her. Her -cheeks felt uncomfortably warm. Ridiculous, that Dr. Roberts should -have come to the door just as she told Charles where to find the shirts -he wanted! He might have found them if he had tried. She wondered -whether her voice had conveyed her embarrassment; Charles had said -good-by abruptly. He was sorry not to see her, but he had to catch the -one o'clock for Washington. No, he couldn't stop for luncheon with her. -He might be back Sunday night. She had a vivid picture of him, plowing -through drawers and closets in frantic search for things right under -his nose. - -Her hand reached for the telephone. She would call him for a moment, -just for a good-by not so hasty. But Dr. Roberts, in the doorway, -clearing his throat, said, "Can you let me have those tables now, Mrs. -Hammond?" He pulled a chair to the opposite side of the desk and sat -down. Charles and the messy packing of his handbag disappeared from -Catherine's thoughts. She spread several sheets of figures between -them, the flustered shadow in her eyes gone, and hard clarity in its -place. Dr. Roberts, head of the educational section of the Lynch Bureau -of Social Welfare, was a dapper little man with a pointed beard, whose -fussy, henlike manner obscured the intelligent orderliness of his mind. - -"The state laws of requirements for teachers." Catherine pointed to one -table. "County requirements, country schools. I made a separate table -for each. Now I'll work out a comparative table." - -"Excellent. Clear, graphic. May I take those?" He rose. "If you aren't -working with them now?" - -"No. I'm going through these catalogues now." The dusty pile was at -her elbow. "If I may have those sheets this afternoon, I'll try some -graphs." - -When he had gone, Catherine's eyes rested briefly on the telephone. -Oh, well, Charles wouldn't want the interruption anyway. He would be -home again on Sunday. She opened the catalogue on top of the pile and -glanced through its pages, making swift notes on the pad under her hand. - -Finally she leaned back in her chair, twisting her wrist for a glimpse -of her watch. Whew! Half past twelve, and she was to meet her sister -Margaret for luncheon. She stood a moment at the window. Beyond the -neighboring buildings the spires of the Cathedral splintered the -sunlight; a flock of pigeons whirled into view, their wings flashing -in the light, then darkening as they swirled and vanished--like the -cadence of a verse, thought Catherine. Far beneath her lay an angle -of the Avenue, with patches of shining automobile tops crawling in -opposing streams. - -She gave a great sigh as she turned back to the office. A long, narrow -room, scarcely wider than the window, lined with shelves ceiling-high, -between them the flat desk piled with her work. Her work! Almost a week -of it, now, and already she had won back her old ability to draw that -thin, sliding wall of steel across her personal life, to hold herself -contained within this room and its contents. - -She hadn't seen Margaret since her return from Maine. She was to meet -her at the St. Francis Luncheon Club for Working Women. As she stepped -into the sunlight of the street, the slow flowing of the emulsion of -which she was suddenly another particle, she had a sharp flash of -unreality. Was it she, walking there in her old blue suit, her rubber -heels padding with the other sounds, her eyes refocusing on distance -and color after the long morning? She loved the long, narrow channel -of the Avenue, hard, kaleidoscopic; the white clouds above the line of -buildings, the background of vivid window displays. She laughed softly -as she recalled the early days of the week. Rainy, to begin with. -She had thought, despairingly, that she couldn't swing the job. The -children stood between her and the sheets of paper. She had flown out -at noon to telephone Miss Kelly, to demand assurance that life in the -apartment hadn't gone awry in the four hours since she had left. Queer. -You seized your own bootstraps and lugged, apparently in vain, to lift -yourself from your habits of life, of thought, of constant concern, -and then, suddenly, you had done it, just when you most despaired. -She walked with a graceful, long stride, her head high. An excellent -scheme, Dr. Roberts had said. He had really entrusted her with the -entire plan for this investigation. And she could do it! - -Margaret was waiting at the elevator entrance, a vivid figure in the -milling groups of befurbished stenographers and shoddier older women. -She came toward Catherine, and their hands clung for a moment. How -young she is, and invincible, thought Catherine, as they waited for -the elevator to empty its load. Margaret had Catherine's slimness -and erect height; her bright hair curled under the brim of her soft -green hat; there was something inimitably swagger about the lines of -her sage-green wool dress and loose coat, with flashes of orange in -embroidery and lining. In place of the sensitive poise of Catherine's -eyes and mouth, Margaret had a downright steadiness, an untroubled -intensity. - -"How's it feel to be a wage-earner?" She hugged Catherine's arm as they -backed out of the pushing crowd into a corner of the car. "You look -elegant!" - -"Scarcely that." Catherine smiled at her. "Now you do! Did you design -that color scheme?" - -"I matched my best points, eyes and high lights of hair." Margaret -grinned. Her eyes were green in the shadow. "Ever lunched here? I -thought you might find it convenient. Lots of my girls come here." - -They emerged at the entrance of a large room full of the clatter of -dishes and tongues. - -"I'll take you in on my card to-day. If you like it, you can get one." -Margaret ushered Catherine into the tail of the line which filed slowly -ahead of them. "This is one of the gracious ladies--" Margaret shot -the half whisper over her shoulder, as she extended her green card. -"A guest, please." Catherine looked curiously at the woman behind the -small table; her nod in response to the professionally sweet smile was -curt. - -"The patronesses take turns presiding," explained Margaret, as she -manipulated trays and silver. "That's the sweetest and worst. Notice -her dimonts!" - -They found a table under a rear window, where they could unload -their dishes of soup and salad around the glass vase with its dusty -crêpe-paper rose. - -"It's really good food," said Margaret, shooting the trays across the -table toward the maid. "And reasonable. It's not charity, though, and -the dames that run it needn't act so loving." - -Two girls saw the vacant chairs at the table, and rushed for them. -One slipped her tweed coat back from shoulders amazingly conspicuous -in a beaded pink georgette blouse; the other opened her handbag for a -preliminary devotional exercise on her complexion. - -Margaret hitched her chair closer to Catherine. - -"Now tell me all about it." She tore the oiled paper from the package -of crackers; her hand had the likeness to Catherine's, and the -difference, which her face suggested. Fingers deft and agile, but -shorter, firmer, competent rather than graceful. "Mother says you've -hired a wet-nurse and abandoned your family. I didn't think you had it -in you!" - -"I know. You thought I was old and shelved." - -"Just a tinge of mid-Victorian habit, old dear." - -"You young things need to open your eyes." - -"I have opened 'em. See me stare!" - -Were those girls listening? The georgette one was eying Margaret. -The other, her retouching finished, snapped her handbag shut and -began a story about the movies last night. Catherine was hungry; good -soup--why, it was fun to gather an unplanned luncheon on a tray in -this way. - -"Your old job?" proceeded Margaret. - -"A new study--teaching conditions in some middle-western states. I am -to organize the work." - -Margaret's questions were direct, inclusive. She did have a clear mind. -Her business training has rubbed off all the blurry sentiment she used -to have, thought Catherine. - -"And you can manage the family as well?" - -"This woman Henrietta sent me is fine. It's a rush in the morning, -baths and breakfast. Flora can't come in until eight, and I have to get -away by half past eight. No dawdling." - -"And the King doesn't mind?" - -Catherine flushed. Margaret had dubbed Charles the King years ago, but -the nickname had an irritating flavor. "He's almost enthusiastic this -week," she said. "Now tell me about yourself. What's this about your -leaving Mother?" - -"Oh, I thought she might like to stay with George. Instead of that, -she's turned me out, neck and crop, and taken on a lady friend. I'm -house-hunting." Margaret laughed. "Trust Mother! You can't dispose of -her." - -"But I thought you were so comfortable----" - -"Too soft. You don't know--" Margaret was serious. "I can't be babied -all my life. All sorts of infantile traits sticking to me. You got -away." - -"Mother said you'd been reading a foreigner named Freud." - -"Well!" Margaret was vigorously defensive. "What of it?" - -Catherine dug her fork into the triangle of cake. - -"I thought Freud was going out. Glands are the latest." - -"I bet Charles said that." Margaret grinned impishly as she saw her -thrust strike home. "Well, tell him I'm still on Freud. Anyway, I want -to try this. Amy and I want to live together. When you wanted to live -with Charles, you went and did it, didn't you?" - -"I'm not criticizing you, Marge. Go ahead! Don't bristle so, or I'll -suspect you feel guilty." - -"I do." Margaret had a funny little smile which recognized herself as -ludicrous. "That's just the vestige of my conflict." - -"There's another influx"--Catherine looked at the moving line--"we'd -better give up these seats." - -"There are chairs yonder." They wound between the tables to the other -end of the room, where wicker chairs and chaise longues, screens, -tables, and a mirror suggested the good intentions of the patronesses -of the St. Francis Club. - -"You can lie down behind the screen if you're dead, or read"--Margaret -flipped a magazine--"read old copies of respectable periodicals. Here." -She motioned to a chaise longue. "Stretch out. I'll sit at your feet. I -have a few seconds left." - -"How's the job?" - -"All right. I spent the morning hunting for a girl. She's been rousing -my suspicions for a time. Going to have an infant soon. That's the -third case in two months." Margaret clasped her hands about her knees; -her short skirt slipped up to the roll of her gray silk stocking. "But -I've got a woman who'll take her in. She can do housework for a month -or so before she'll have to go to the lying-in home." - -Catherine watched her curiously. There was something amazing about the -calm, matter-of-fact attitude Margaret held. - -"Do you hunt for the father?" - -"Oh, the girl won't tell. Maybe she doesn't know." - -"If I had your job, I'd waste away from anger and rage and hopelessness -about the world." - -"No use." Margaret shrugged. "Wish I could smoke here. Too pious. -No." She turned her face toward her sister, her eyes and mouth -dispassionate. "Patch up what can be patched, and scrap the rest. I'm -sick of feelings." - -Catherine was silent. Margaret, as the only woman in a responsible -position in a chain of small manufacturing plants, occasionally dropped -threads which suggested fabrics too dreadful to unravel. - -"Time's up." Margaret rose. "Directors' meeting this afternoon, and I -want to bully that bunch of stiff-necked males into accepting a few -of the suggestions I've made. I have a fine scheme." She laughed. "I -make a list pages long, full of things, well, not exactly preposterous. -Women would see them all. But they sound preposterous. And buried -somewhere I have the one thing I'm hammering on just then. Sometimes I -get it, out of their dismay at the length of the list." - -"Here, I may as well go along." Catherine slid out of the chair. - -"Will you be home Sunday?" Margaret stopped at the corner. Catherine -had a fresh impression of her invincible quality, there in the -sunlight with the passing crowds. - -"Charles is in Washington. Come in and see the children." - -"The King's away, eh?" Margaret waved her hand in farewell. "I'll drop -in." - - * * * * * - -At five Catherine was again on the Avenue, walking steadily north, an -eye on the occasional buses. If she could get a seat! As the traffic -halted, she saw a hint of movement at the rear of a bus ahead of her. -Someone was just getting out. She rushed for it, and clambered to the -top just as the jam moved stickily ahead. Just one seat, at the front. -This was luck. She relaxed, lazily conscious only of small details -her eyes seized upon. When the bus finally swung onto the Drive, she -straightened, drawing a deep breath of the fresh wind across the -river. A taste of salt in it. She liked the sweep and curving dips of -the Drive; the ride gave her a breathing space, a chance to shut off -the hours behind her and to take on the aspect of the other life that -awaited her. I'll patch up that old fur coat, she thought, and ride -all winter. Perhaps I may even afford a new one. Twenty-five a week -for Miss Kelly. Another five for my luncheons and bus rides. If Flora -will do the marketing, I'll have to pay her more. I ought to help -with the food bills, if we feed Miss Kelly, and pay for the clothes -I buy for the children, since I would otherwise be making them. Oh! -This domestic mental arithmetic sandpapered away the shine of the two -hundred and fifty a month which was her salary. But Charles couldn't -have additional expenses this year. It wasn't fair, when he had just -reached a point at which they found a tiny margin for insurance and -saving. Catherine rubbed her hand across her forehead; foolish to do -this reckoning in her head; it always left her with that sense of -hopeless friction, like fitting a dress pattern on too small a piece -of cloth--turning, twisting, trying. Charles had said, "Well, you know -_my_ income. We can't manage any more outgo there. Not this year." And -at that, she didn't see where she was going to get the first three -twenty-five dollars for Miss Kelly. Next month, after she had her own -first check--but now! She'd saved the first twenty-five on her own fall -clothes. If Charles hadn't had that heavy insurance premium this month, -she might have borrowed. It would be fine, some day, to reach a place -where their budget was large enough to turn around in without this fear -of falling over the edges. Dr. Roberts had said, "Three thousand is the -best we can do for you now, but later----" - - -II - -Sunday was a curious day. Miss Kelly, who was to have alternate Sundays -off, had this one on, and had taken the children out. Catherine caught -a lingering, backward glance from Spencer as they all went down the -hall, a silent, wondering stare. He had said nothing about Miss Kelly, -nothing about the new order of things; Catherine felt that he held a -sort of baffled judgment in reserve. Letty, as always, was cheerfully -intent on her own small schemes. Marian had confided last night that -Miss Kelly was nice, but her stories sounded all the same, not like -Muvver's. Next Sunday, thought Catherine, I'll have them. It's absurd -to feel pleased that Spencer doesn't adjust himself at once. I want him -happy. - -She sat at the breakfast table, too listless to bestir herself about -the endless things that waited for her. The morning sun was sharp and -hard on the stretch of city beneath the window, picking out slate roofs -and chimneys. Alone in the empty apartment, its silence enclosed and -emphasized by the constant sounds outside--the click of the elevator, -the staccato of voices in the well of the court, the rumble of a car -climbing the Amsterdam hill--Catherine relaxed into complete lethargy, -her hands idle in her lap. - -The week had been drawn too taut. Surely coming weeks would be less -difficult, once she had herself and the rest of the family broken into -the new harness. She wished that Charles were sitting across from her, -the Sunday paper littering the floor about his feet. She would say, -"One week is over." And he--what would he say? "How do you like it, old -dear?" And she, "You know, I think I am making a go of it." Then if he -said, "Of course! I knew you would," then she could hug his shoulder -in passing, and go quite peacefully about the tasks that waited. She -sighed. If I have to be bolstered at every step, I might as well stop, -she thought. - -She would like to sit still all day, not even thinking. Instead, she -pulled herself to her feet and cleared the breakfast dishes away -methodically. Then she opened the bundles of laundry, sorted the -clothes and laid them away, found fresh linen for the beds, laid aside -one sheet with a jagged tear to be mended later, investigated Flora's -preparations for dinner, and, finally, with a basket of mending, -sat down at the living room window. Perhaps Flora could see to the -laundry, although Catherine always had done that; she must plan, in -some way, to have Sunday reasonably free. Miss Kelly had offered to -take care of the children's mending; but--Catherine's fingers pushed -out at the heel of the black sock--Charles had to be sewn up! - -How still and empty the house lay about her! Perhaps Charles was even -then on his way home--she had a swift picture of him at the window of -the train, hurling toward her. - -Ridiculous to feel so tired. She stretched her arms above her head, and -then reached for the darning ball. Henrietta had said, "Don't weaken. -You'll find the first stages of adjustment the most difficult." True, -all right. The texture of her days rose before her, a series of sharp -images. Morning, an incredible packing of the two hours: breakfast, -the three children to bathe and help dress, Miss Kelly arriving like -clockwork to supervise the final departure for school, Catherine's -hasty glimpse at her face, flushed under the brim of her hat, before -she hurried out for the elevator. Then the bus ride; herself a highly -conscious part of the downward flood of workers, the fluster of the -morning dropping away before the steady rise of that inner self, -calm, clear, deliberate. The office--deference in the manner of the -stenographers--she was the only woman there with her own office, with -a man-size job. Occasional prickings of her other life through that -life--eggs she had forgotten to order. The ride home again, the warm -cheeks and soft hands of the children, and their voices, eager to tell -her a thousand things at once. Dinner, and Charles. What about Charles? -Her fingers paused over the crossing threads of the darn. He had been -busy with crowds of new students and opening classes. Under that, what? -She fumbled in her mist of images. She had scarcely seen him, except -at dinner. Usually he had a string of stories about the day. He had -gone back to the office two evenings, and to Washington on Friday. She -didn't know much about his week. Had he withheld it? Had she been too -engrossed? - -The telephone in the study rang. Catherine hurried. Perhaps it was -Charles. - -"Is Dr. Hammond in?" - -"This is Mrs. Hammond." That clear, metallic voice! "Dr. Hammond is out -of town." - -"Oh, yes. I thought he might be back. Would you give him a message for -me? Miss Partridge. Please ask him to call me as soon as he comes in." - -"Certainly." Catherine waited, but the only sound was the click of the -telephone, terminating the call. - -"Well!" Catherine sat down at the desk. Now, there's nothing to -be irritated about, she told herself. Her eyes traveled over the -bookshelves, low, crowded, piled with monographs and reviews. That -curtness is part of her pose--manlike. But she certainly hits my -negative pole! - -Miss Kelly came in with the children, noisy and hungry, and the five -had dinner together. Catherine tried to talk with Miss Kelly. Her -round, light eyes met Catherine's solemnly, and she replied with calm -politeness to Catherine's ventures. - -"No, Marian, dear," she said suddenly. "One helping of chicken is -enough for a little girl your age." - -"Spencer had two!" Marian turned to her mother. "Why can't I?" - -Catherine smiled a little wryly. She thrust under the sudden flash -of resentment. Of course, Miss Kelly had them in charge. What was -the matter with her to-day! She seemed to react with irritation to -everything. - -"Marian's stomach seemed a little upset yesterday," confided Miss Kelly. - -"We'll have our salad now." Catherine dismissed the question. - -But after dinner, when Letty had been led protestingly away for her -nap, and Miss Kelly, armed with a volume of Andersen's "Fairy Tales," -reappeared in the living room, Catherine couldn't resist the swift -entreaty of Spencer's eyes. - -"Miss Kelly," she said, placatingly, "if you would like to go home now, -I can read to the children. I am quite free this afternoon." - -Miss Kelly agreed placidly. When she had gone, Spencer stood a moment -beside Catherine, his eyes intent on her face; Catherine saw a wavering -tenseness in his look. He wanted to hurl himself at her, and he didn't -want to. She couldn't reach out for him, if he felt too grown-up for -such expression. She smiled at him, and with a huge sigh he settled -into the wicker chair, one foot curled beneath him. - -"She was glad to go home, wasn't she?" he said. - -"I'm glad she went," announced Marian. "She bosses me." - -"Good for you," said Spencer. "Mother, read us 'Treasure Island.' I'm -sick of old fairies." - -Margaret came in, her ring waking Letty. Catherine laughed at the -unconcealed expectancy with which the children welcomed their aunt. - -"You've ruined them," she said, as Marian danced up the hall, her eyes -wide with anticipation for the packages Margaret carried. - -"Well, they are delighted to see their old aunt, anyway!" Margaret -dropped to the floor, scattering the bundles, her hands held over them -in teasing delay. - -"Your dress, Marg! On the floor in that?" - -"Just a rag. Here, Letitia, your turn first." - -Catherine went back to her chair to watch the orgy. Margaret was -extravagant as water. - -"It isn't really a rag, Aunt Margie, is it?" Spencer had his head on -one side, deliberating. "It looks like--like pigeons." - -"If I could find a gentleman of your discrimination, Spen, I'd grab him -in a jiffy!" - -"It is like pigeons, isn't it, Mother?" Spencer looked perplexed. - -"Yes." Catherine wished Margaret wouldn't tease him. She was lovely, -her gray-silver draperies floating around her slim, curving figure, the -purple glinting through. It was like a pigeon's breast, that dress. - -Letty had a doll, soft and round and almost as large as Letty herself. - -"Company for you, when your mother's off at work." - -Letty's arms were fast about it, and her deep voice intoned a constant, -"Pretty doll! pretty doll!" until Marian's present appeared from its -wrappings. - -"You stand on it and jump, this way." Margaret was on her feet, her -suède toes balancing on the crosspiece. - -"Letty jump!" - -"Not in here!" Catherine reached for the stick. "You idiots! You'll -knock the plaster off." - -"Letty jump!" Catherine bundled Letty and the doll into her lap. - -"Let's see what Spencer draws." - -"Spencer was a difficult proposition." Margaret smiled at him. "I -thought of a rubber ball, and then I remembered he had one. So I got -this." She poked the box into his hands. - -"It's as good as Christmas, isn't it, Muvver?" Marian was on tiptoe, -her Pogo stick clasped to her side, her head close to Spencer's as he -tore off the papers. - -"Thought I'd help make him practical, to please the King." - -"What is it?" Spencer knelt beside the box full of pieces of steel. - -"You stick them together, and make skyscrapers and bridges and water -towers and elevators. The clerk said you could build a city." - -"Let me help, Spencer?" Marian flung herself on the floor beside -Spencer. - -"Me help!" Letty squirmed down from Catherine's lap. - -"You might take the things into the dining room," suggested Catherine. - -Spencer gathered up the box. - -"I'm much obliged, Aunt Margie," he said, and Marian and Letty echoed -him as they followed into the next room. - -Margaret settled herself in a chair at the window. - -"I thought your nurse would be in charge." Her eyes wandered out to -the distant glint of water. "Thought you'd given up the heavy domestic -act." - -"I sent her home." Catherine smiled. "Weak minded, wasn't it?" - -Margaret nodded. - -"Certainly. You look fagged. You ought to be out horseback riding or -something. You know"--she turned, her face serious--"if you're going to -do a real job, you have to look out. You have to relax sometime." - -"I have to read the d'rections first, don't I?" came Spencer's firm -tones. "You can sit still and watch." - -"Now I didn't budge from my bed until noon," went on Margaret, "and -then Amy had breakfast ready for me, and then I jumped in a taxi and -came up here. I have to run along in a minute, high tea down in the -Village. But you've been at work since early dawn, haven't you?" - -"Oh, there were a few things----" - -"Why don't you find a real housekeeper in Flora's place?" - -"I can't afford to pay more, yet. And Flora is too good to throw out. I -can manage." - -"You know"--Margaret's eyes were bright with curiosity--"I should like -to know what started this, your leaving your happy home, I mean. I -thought you were the devoted mother till eternity." - -"I am," said Catherine, calmly. Then she leaned forward. "Do you -realize that the loneliest person in the world is a devoted mother? -This summer, Margaret, I thought I'd really go crazy. I was so sorry -for myself it was ludicrous. I'm trying to find out if I am a person, -with anything to use except a pair of hands--on monotonous, silly -tasks." - -"Of course, the trouble is just that. You are a person. I'm glad -you've waked up, Catherine. You know, there isn't a man in the world -that I'd give up my job for." - -"I want a man, too." Catherine's mouth was stubborn. "And my children. -I want everything. Perhaps I want too much." - -"Oh, children." Margaret glanced through the wide doors. "Maybe -I'll want some, some day. Nice little ducks. Now I've got Amy--and -love enough to keep from growing stale. I want you to meet Amy some -day." She rose, adjusting the brim of her wide purple hat. "Amy's -waiting now. Tell Charles I'm longing for a glimpse of him." She -made a humorous little grimace. "Want to see how he likes this new -arrangement." - -Margaret telephoned for a taxi, and then hung over the children, -offering impossible suggestions, until the hall boy announced her cab. - -Marian wanted to go down to the Drive, to jump. Catherine waved good-by -to Margaret, her other hand restrainingly on Marian's shoulder. - -"Not Sunday afternoon, Marian. There are so many people down there, -you'd jump right on their toes. You watch Spencer." - -The children played in reasonable quiet. Catherine finished her -darning, her mind playing with the idea of the graphs she was working -on. As she rolled up the last stocking, she wondered what she used -to think about, as she sat darning or sewing. Nothing, she decided. -Plain nothing. I could let my hands work, and my ears listen for the -children, and the rest of me just stagnate. - -She delayed supper a little, hoping that Charles might come. She -wasn't sure about the Sunday trains. Finally she gave the children -their supper and put Letty to bed. - -Spencer was still engrossed in the construction of a building when Bill -Gilbert came in. - -"Henrietta isn't here?" - -"No, but do come in." Catherine led him into the living room. "Is Henry -coming?" - -"She had a call, and said she'd stop here on her way home." - -"Charles hasn't come yet. He's been in Washington since Friday." - -"Friday? I thought I saw him downtown, with Miss Partridge. He probably -went later." - -"He went at one." - -"This couldn't have been Charles, then. It was about four. I thought -their committee had been meeting. Hello, Spencer. What you doing?" - -Spencer had come in, his hands full of steel girders. - -"Mr. Bill, you're a nengineer, aren't you? Well, could you show me -about this bridge?" - -More than an hour later, when Henrietta did come, Bill was stretched -full length, his feet under the dining room table, his eyes on the -level of the completed bridge, a marvelous thing of spans and girders, -struts and tie-beams. - -"I'm too weary to stay, Cathy." Henrietta set her case on the table; -her fair skin looked dusted over with fatigue. "Convulsions. One of -those mothers who won't believe in diet or doctors for her child. The -father sent for me. The child is alive in spite of her." - -"Do sit down and rest, at least." - -"No. I'm too ugly. Do you want to come, Bill, or are you staying?" - -Bill pulled himself awkwardly to his feet, one hand reaching for his -pipe. - -"This piece of work is done," he said, smiling down at Spencer's -engrossed head. "I've had a fine evening, Catherine." - -He had. When they had gone, and Catherine was supervising the -children's preparations for bed, she still had the feeling of the -evening; she had pulled her chair into the dining room, to watch them; -Bill had looked up at her at long intervals, with a faint, queer smile -in his eyes; he had said nothing, except to offer solemn, technical -advice, simplified to meet Spencer's eagerness. - -"I'm going to be a nengineer," said Spencer sleepily, as she bent over -him. "An' build things." - -"I want to be one, too," called Marian. - -"You can't! You're only a girl." - -"Mr. Bill said I could if I wanted to. He said I could be anything." - -"So you can." Catherine tucked her in gently. "But you have to go to -sleep first." - -At eleven Catherine telephoned to the station, to ask about trains from -Washington. No express before morning. Charles wouldn't take a local; -he must have decided to take a sleeper. She set the sandwiches she had -made for him away in the ice chest. No use worrying. She had to have -some sleep, for to-morrow. Had Bill seen him, Friday afternoon? She -hated the queer way waiting held you too tight, as if you were hung up -by your thumbs. Charles might have wired her. But he knew she never -meant to worry. - -She was half conscious, all through the night, of the emptiness of -his bed, opposite hers. Once she woke, thinking she heard the door -click. She sprang up in bed to listen. Nothing but the constant, faint -cacophony of city sounds. It must be almost morning--that was the -rattle of ash cans. - - -III - -Astonishing how much less hurried the morning seemed, with no Charles -shaving in the bathroom, shouting out inquiries about his striped -shirt, his bay rum--he had a blind spot for the thing he wanted at the -moment. We need two bathrooms, thought Catherine. I've spoiled Charles. -Breakfast, too, was more leisurely; none of the last-minute scramble, -no sudden longing for crisp bacon, after the toast was made and the -eggs were boiled. There was time, actually, for a manicure. Flora -appeared promptly at eight, her Monday face lugubrious. - -"Sunday's fearful exhausting, Mis' Hammond," she said, as Catherine -finished the consultation about dinner. "It's the most exhaustin'est -day us working women has, I thinks." - -"And when Mr. Hammond comes, be sure to ask him if he wishes breakfast, -Flora. He may have had it on the train." - -"Sure, I'll ask him. You run along and quit your worry, Mis' Hammond." - -Catherine, hurrying across the Drive for the bus, was worried. She felt -almost guilty: first, because the morning rush had been so lightened; -and then, because she was going off, downtown, just as if Charles -scarcely existed. She had laid out fresh clothes for him, on his bed, -but she knew how he would rush in, full of pleasant importance from -the trip, wanting to shout bits of it to her while he splashed and -shaved and dressed, wanting her to sit down for a late cup of coffee -while he talked. If only he had come home yesterday! Well, to-night -would have to serve, although by evening there would be the film of the -day over that first sharpness of communication. - -At the door of her office she paused, her fingers on the key. She -must leave, outside the door, this faint guilt which tugged at her. -She had wasted that hour on the bus. The order and quiet within were -like a rebuke. She crossed to the window and raised the heavy sash. -The cool bright morning air rushed in with a little flutter of the -papers on the desk. Across the street and a story lower, behind great -plate-glass windows, she could see busy little men hurrying about, -lifting the white dust covers from piles of dark goods: that was an -elaborate tailoring establishment, just waking into activity. Her desk -had a fresh green blotter, a pile of neatly sharpened pencils, and her -mail--C.S. Hammond. Extraordinary, this having things set in order -without your own direction! She might call up the house, to see if -Charles had come. But surely he would telephone. - -Dr. Roberts came briskly in. She was to have a new filing cabinet, he -wanted her to meet the stenographer she was to share with him; the -President of the Bureau would be in that morning, and wished to talk -with her for a few minutes. - -President Waterbury was a large and pompous gentleman who used his -increasing deafness as a form of reproach to his subordinates. -Catherine, sitting calmly near his massive mahogany desk, nodded at -intervals in response to his grave, deliberate remarks. Her work during -the war had convinced Dr. Roberts of her ability, hem, hem, although -that had been on a social study, and this was, hem, educational. Since -Mrs. Lynch, one of the founders of the Bureau, was a woman, it was -peculiarly fitting to place a competent woman in charge of one of their -many investigations. Ah, hem. A pleasure to welcome her there. Serious -concern, this administering of responsibility. He was dismissing her -with an elegant gesture of his old white hand, its blue veins so -abruptly naked between the little tufts of hair. - -Catherine went back to her office. - -"Oh, Mrs. Hammond!" The bobbed-haired office stenographer rose, with a -shake of her abbreviated skirt. "You were wanted on the wire. Said you -were in conference with the President. Here's the number." - -"Thank you. No, I don't need you now." Catherine waited until the -door closed. She still hesitated. It must be Charles. Better to call -him outside, at noon. The telephone operator in the main office had a -furtive, watchful eye which probably matched her ear! But noon was an -hour away. - -"Charles? Hello." - -"That you, Catherine? I've been trying to get you for a solid hour!" - -"I'm sorry." Was that girl listening! "When did you get in?" - -"Early. Catherine, where have you put my lecture notes? The seminar, -you know. That class meets to-day. I can't find a damned shred of them." - -His voice seemed to stand him at her shoulder, with the funny, -distracted flush, and rumpled hair of one of his fruitless searches. - -"I haven't seen them this fall." She was moving rapidly about the -house, almost in kinæsthetic images. Where would she look? "Didn't you -file those in your office last spring? With the manuscript of your -book?" - -"Um. Perhaps. I'll look there. Good-by." - -Catherine hung the instrument slowly in place. Not a word of greeting. -But he had probably thrown his study into bedlam--and his disposition. -She smiled, faintly, and refusing to admit the little barbed regret, -turned to her work. - -At noon, in the stuffy telephone booth at the elevator entrance of the -St. Francis Club she tried to reach him. But Miss Kelly said he wasn't -coming in for luncheon, and no one answered the call for his office. - -The afternoon closed around her with steady concentration. Dr. Roberts -had said that on Friday there would be a conference: a head of a normal -college and a state commissioner of education would be on hand from the -West. She wanted this preliminary classification ready. - -As she approached the house that evening, she discovered, ironically, -that her mind was revolving schemes for propitiation. Steak and onions -for dinner, and cream pie, and tactful inquiries about the trip. - -There was no rush of children at the sound of her key. She heard -Marian's voice, and then Charles's. She hurried down the hall. Letty -sat on her father's knee, a crisscross of adhesive plaster on her -forehead, from which her hair was smoothed wetly back. - -"She would jump on my Pogo stick, Muvver," protested Marian, "and I -told her not to, and----" - -Catherine was on her knees beside the chair, and Letty's mouth began to -quiver again at a fresh spectator of her injury. - -"It isn't a bad cut," said Charles, distantly. "Fortunately I came in." - -"But where's Miss Kelly?" - -"She left at six. I supposed you had instructed her to stay here until -you came." - -"I told her to run along." Flora stopped at the doorway, her red -flowers bobbing over the brim of her hat. "I says I'd stay. An' those -chillun was all right one minute and the next they wasn't." - -"Where's Spencer?" Catherine rose. She had waited a long time for a -bus, but it was just past six. - -"In the bathroom, washing off the blood," said Charles, severely. "He -was wiping Letty's face when I came in." - -"She fell on the radiator," went on Marian, "an' I told her not to----" - -"It's all right now." Charles set Letty on her feet, and patted her -damp head. "But you surely ought to insist on that woman's filling your -place, since you aren't here." - -"I shall." Catherine's eyes sought his with a defiant entreaty. "It -isn't very serious, after all," she finished, in white quiet. As she -went into her room to leave her wraps and brush up her hair, she found -her hands trembling, and her knees. She sat down at the window for a -moment. Of course, she thought, they are my responsibility. That's -only just. But he needn't hurry so to hold me up to blame. As if they -planned it--a staged rebuke for my entrance. Spencer was at the door, -his eyes large and serious. - -"Hello, son!" Catherine shoved aside the tight bitterness, and smiled. - -"Oh, Moth-er!" He ran across to her, burying his head for a brief -instant on her shoulder. "I thought--I thought she was dead. Only she -hollered too loud." - -"I'm sorry, dear." Catherine hugged him. "But it's all right." - -"And"--Spencer's lower lip quivered--"Daddy said why didn't I watch her -if she didn't have a mother. She's got a mother, and I was just sitting -there reading." - -"Letty's all right now. Come, we must broil that steak! Aren't you -hungry?" - -Dinner was ready, all but the steak. Catherine felt that she thrust her -hands violently into a patch of nettles and yanked them away, as she -cajoled her family back into calm humor. Charles, carving the steak, -suddenly lost his air of grave reproach, and began a story about a -family with two sets of twins that he had seen on the train. With a -sigh, Catherine relaxed her grip on the nettles. She might run into -them, later! - -"We looked for you all day yesterday," she said, finally. - -"Several of the men stayed over, and I had a fine chance to talk with -them. Brown of Cornell, and Davitts." - -"Mr. Bill came in, Daddy, and showed me how to build a bridge." - -"He thought he'd seen you Friday," said Catherine idly, "but I told him -you went at one." - -"Oh, yes." Charles was casual. "I missed that train. So I went around -to the clinic." - -His voice was too casual! And the swift glance he shot at Catherine as -she rose. - - -IV - -"I've got to run over those lecture notes." Charles stretched lazily up -from the table. "They need freshening a bit." - -"You found them, then?" Catherine had Letty in her arms, soft and -sweetly heavy with drowsiness. - -"Yes. I'd forgotten about carrying them over to the office." - -"I was in the sacred sanctum of the President's office when you called." - -"Oh, that's all right. I found them in time." Charles strolled out of -the room. - -"Daddy!" Spencer followed him. "Couldn't I show you my bridges and -things? I can make anything." - -"Not to-night, Spencer. Daddy's got to work." - -Catherine's query about home work for school relieved Spencer's gloom. -While she undressed Letty, smiling at the sleepy protests, Spencer -and Marian cleared the table. When she reappeared they were trying to -fold the long cloth, one at each end, Marian arguing heatedly about -the proper method. Charles banged his study door in loud remonstrance. -Catherine showed them the creases. Then they spread their books on the -bare table. - -"You sit here with us, Mother," Spencer begged. "I can do my sums much -quicker. Marian doesn't have to do home work. She's just----" - -"I do, too, have to do home work. The teacher said so." - -"There, you shall, if you like." Catherine ruffled Spencer's hair. "Try -not to disturb Father." - -She sat there with them for an hour and more. Marian snuggled against -her, showing her the pictures in her "suppulment'ry reading." Spencer -bent over his work in a concentration directed toward the impressing of -his sister, his cheeks growing pink, his hand clutched over his pencil. -Although she sat so quietly, her outer attention given to the children, -her deeper thoughts went scurrying and creeping up to the closed study -door, away from it. He needn't have worked to-night. Don't be absurd. -If he has a lecture to-morrow--he wants to shut himself away. Slowly -her thoughts circled, like gulls above the water, concealing in their -whirls the object which drew them. - -"Muvver, does Spencer have to whisper his sums aloud?" - -"Perhaps that helps him." Catherine smiled at Spencer's indignant face. -"You may whisper your story, if you like." - -What were they swooping over, those gull-thoughts? Better to scatter -them and see. Not that he had missed the train; not even that he had -not troubled to run in for a moment that afternoon; nor that he had -chosen to see Miss Partridge. That might so easily be explained. No. -Just that queer, investigating glance, that deliberate offhand manner, -when he had told her. It set a wall between them. - -The telephone rang distantly, behind the closed door. The children -lifted their heads to listen. A rumble of Charles's voice. Then silence -again. - -When Spencer and Marian had laid away their books and gone to bed, -Catherine returned to her seat at the empty table. I want him, she -thought. But if I open his door and go in, then I become, in some way, -a propitiator. Perhaps I only imagine all this. I am tired. She drew -the pins from her hair and let the heavy coil slip over her shoulder. -Elbows on the table, fingers cool and firm against her forehead, as if -she might press order into her thoughts, she waited. - -Suddenly she rose, shaking her hair back from her face. That is -grotesque, she thought, sitting here, and hastily she went through the -hall to the study door, flinging it open. - -"Oh, hello." Charles looked up alertly from his book. He, too, had been -waiting. "Kids in bed?" - -"Aren't you through?" Catherine yawned gently, drawing her fingers -across her lips. "I'm sleepy, and lonesome." - -But under her lightness sounded a plunk, as of a stone dropping, a -confirmation of a fear, as she saw the wary alertness on Charles's face -vanish in quick relief. - -"Just through," he announced. "Come on in. It's curious, how stale -these lectures seem, after a year. Have to refurbish them entirely." He -slipped the sheets into a manila cover. "That one's ready, at least." - -Catherine sat on the corner of his desk, her fingers sliding through a -strand of her hair. - -"Did you have a good trip?" she asked. Anything, to banish this -separateness. "I haven't heard a word about it." - -"You weren't home. I was bursting with news this morning." - -"Can't you remember a little of it?" - -"I might try." Charles leaned back, his thumbs caught in his belt. -As he talked, Catherine listened for the under-tones, so much more -significant than the events. It had been a good trip. The men had -received him rather flatteringly, praised his latest monograph, shown -interest in the new psychological clinic. He had a comfortable, -well-nourished look; around his eyes, with the prominent jutting of -socket above, the lines were quite smoothed away. Catherine looked at -him, at the strong, slightly projecting chin, at the smooth hard throat -above the neat collar. - -"Davitts hinted at an opening in a middle-western college," he said, -finally. "Head of the department. I told him I was in line for -promotion here, if I got this next book done this year. He seemed to -think he had something better up his sleeve." - -"Away from New York?" - -"Ye-up." Charles was blandly indifferent. "Nothing definite, you know. -Just hints." - -"Would you even consider it?" Catherine's hands, even her hair against -her fingers, felt cold. - -"It never does any harm to let people offer you things. And I don't -know--" He was drawing idle triangles on the manila covers of his -lecture. "Sometimes a position like that means much more power, -prominence, reputation, than anything here could. Would you mind?" He -was eying her carefully. "Be better for the children." And after a -pause. "Or would you have to stay here--for your job?" - -"Have you just made this up--for a joke?" Catherine slipped to her -feet. "Are you just teasing me?" - -"Not a bit. That's what Davitts said." - -"Charles!" Her fingers doubled into a fist at the edge of the desk. -"Don't lurk around! Let's talk it out. You don't like it, my working? -You"--she stared at him--"you don't mean you'd hunt for a job -somewhere, in a little town, where I couldn't work, just to----" - -"Good Lord! Now why go off at that tangent, just because I gave you a -bit of news. Didn't I say I wanted you to have what you wanted?" - -"But you don't like it, do you?" - -"Damn it, give me time to get used to it. It's all fired queer to go -off without any one caring, and come back to a deserted house. I'll -probably get used to it, but give me time." - -"Do you want me to give it up?" - -"Are you tired of it already?" - -"Do you really care to know how I feel about it?" Catherine's voice was -low and tense. "I feel as if I'd escaped from solitary confinement. At -hard labor, too! I feel as if I could hold up my head and breathe. And -then, underneath, I feel you pulling at me, wresting me back. Oh, you -say you don't mind, but----" - -"Catherine, see here." Charles stood up and leaned toward her. "I--I -haven't meant to be a hog. But a man has a kind of knock-out, to find -he isn't enough, with his home and all. Here, let's forget it. I've had -a hard week-end, and last week was a fright. That's all." - -"It's not that you aren't enough." Catherine flung herself at that -phrase. "You know about that! Any more than I'm not enough, for you. -There's more to you than love, isn't there? Why isn't there more to me? -If you'd only see----" - -"The only thing that bothers me is the children. Now, take Letty----" - -"But I have left them with Flora many times. I've had to. And they -bump their heads when I'm home. That's not the point. It's your blaming -me." - -"All right!" Charles threw up his hands in a sweep of mocking -surrender. "I won't say a word." - -"I want you to say it, not hint it." - -"Anything you like." His hands closed on her shoulders. "Here, you -haven't kissed me since I came home." - -There were sudden wild tears under Catherine's lids, and she thought -desperately, oh, not that! Not kisses as the only way--to touch, to -reach each other! - -"Didn't even kiss me good-by. Nice kind of wife." Charles pushed her -chin up with a firm finger. "There now----" - -"You didn't give me a chance." Catherine was quiet, thrusting under -her rebellion. Suddenly, through her misted lashes, she saw just for a -flash, an echo of that wary, investigatory glance. She swung out over a -great abyss. Bill had seen him, with Miss Partridge. Nothing to that, -surely, except this feeling, which was not jealousy, but fear of what -he was defending himself against. - -"I wanted to find you, but I didn't like to come up to the Bureau," he -was saying. "So I went down to the clinic and talked over things with -Stella Partridge." The brisk, matter-of-course words drew her back -sharply from the abyss. "It took the edge off, not finding you here, -this morning." He was threading his fingers through her hair. - -"You're spoiled rotten!" Catherine could laugh at him now. He meant -that for his apology, and she would let it lift her out of fear and -hurt. - - -V - -The week settled into a steady march. Flora had taken on the marketing, -Miss Kelly had agreed never to leave the house until Catherine arrived, -Charles was amiably preoccupied with the rush of the opening semester. -It hadn't been so hard to adjust things, thought Catherine. Takes a -little planning--I was too impatient. - -Her work at the office was focussed on the Saturday conference. She -wanted her preliminary analysis in tables and graphs clear and adequate -enough to present to the men; there would be discrepancies between -the apparent system and the actual practice in the state which the -commissioner could point out. She hadn't time to complete the study of -the normal schools; they were astonishingly numerous and varied. - -"It's just hit or miss, this whole educational business," she said to -Dr. Roberts, on Friday afternoon, as they talked over the material. "No -central direction or purpose." - -"Too much imitation and tradition." Dr. Roberts had his pointed beard -between the pages of a catalogue. He lifted it toward her, his bright -blue eyes and sharp nose eager on the scent of an idea. "Too little -conscious plan. People are afraid of thought. Trial-and-error is the -working basis. But that's slow, and you have this heavy crust of -tradition." - -"I'd like to scrap it all and make a fresh beginning!" - -"There never is such a thing as a fresh beginning. You have to work -from what exists." - -Catherine pushed aside a pile of catalogues, her face alight with -scorn. - -"But why, if it's stale and wrong? Take these normal schools. Young -people, girls mostly, go there, because they have to have a diploma -to teach. What do they get? Things out of books. They learn to teach -paragraphs of geography, not to teach children. It would be ridiculous, -except that it is terrible. Perhaps it's because men run them." - -"Women"--Dr. Roberts smoothed his beard--"are popularly supposed to -submit more docilely to tradition." - -"Supposed by whom?" Catherine's hand sent a catalogue banging to the -floor. "That's been a convenient way of holding their wildness under, -I think." She felt her mind throw up swift thoughts that burst and -scattered like Roman candles. She couldn't gather the splintering -brightness. "We've had, as women, too small an orbit." - -The stenographer thrust her bobbed head into the door, to say that Dr. -Roberts was wanted on the telephone. Should she connect his party here? - -"No, I'll take him on my own 'phone." He rose, smiling. "We'll have to -thrash this out to-morrow," he said, "or some day. Don't frighten our -committee to-morrow, though, by announcing that you are wild, will you?" - - * * * * * - -Catherine, erect in her seat on the bus top, the golden October air -fresh on her cheeks, went on coruscating. It was true, that about -women. They felt that children were the most important part of life. So -they stayed with them, cared for them, held under all their own--was -it wildness?--bending it to food and clothes and order--and then? They -threw their children out into the nets laid by men, not viciously, -not deliberately, but with all that pompous weight of tradition. The -way things should be done, learned, thought. If you could scrap it -all and begin--where? With something, a kernel of intelligence, what -children are, and what you wish them to grow into, what will nourish -that growth. Charles was on that track, with his new clinic, and all -his work. - -As she climbed down from the bus and started up the hill toward -Broadway, her thoughts still sparkled, spreading out in great circles -of light about her, vague projects, shadowy schemes, beautiful -structures of clarity and sanity for the world, for the children. - -"What a stride!" - -The circles contracted swiftly, and she turned. - -"Bill! Hello." She emerged slowly, shreds of the dream still shining. -They fell into step. - -"How goes it?" His glance veered to her face. "You look as if you'd had -your salary raised." - -"Better than that." Catherine wanted to break into his dark, withdrawn -glance; she wanted, suddenly, to draw him into this glittering mood. -"Bill, it's wonderful. I feel my mind budding! It wasn't dead. Like a -seed potato--shoots in every direction, out of every wrinkle!" - -"You look it." Bill nodded. "I saw that you walked on air." - -"I've been recasting the universe." She laughed, as they waited a -moment for passing traffic. "That's better than building bridges, isn't -it?" - -"It is less confining." - -They went quickly past the subway kiosk, dodging the home-pouring -workers, past the peanut stand panting warm and odorous at the corner, -to the wide hill of steps in front of the University library. A flower -vender thrust his bunches of roses at them. - -"I want some!" Catherine dug into her purse. - -"Aren't they stale?" Bill watched her fasten the creamy, buff-pink buds -to her coat. - -"Probably. But they look fresh now." Catherine swung into step again. -Queer, how that occasional little side glance of Bill's gave assent to -her mood, dipped into it, recognized it, without a word. - -"I suppose," she said, as they rounded the corner of Amsterdam, "that -I can't stay on this level. It's too high. But I've just reached it -to-day. Assurance, and a long sight into what I can do." - -"There's always, unfortunately, another day." Bill frowned slightly. -"Another mood. But you seem to have hit a fair wind. Henrietta told me -that Miss Kelly was panning out well." - -"Yes." The view ahead, of the dipping, climbing avenue, with its -familiar shops, its familiar clatter of the cobblestones, was sharp as -a background of relief against which to-day stood out. "I know what I -feel like, Bill. If you want to know." - -"I do. Always." - -Simple words, but Catherine heard them with faint wonder. Bill was -never personal. His profile, with its long nose and lean cheeks, like a -horse, was reassuring. - -"Well, then. Did you ever watch a treadmill? Round and round, all your -effort taking you nowhere but around? That's where I've been. That's -what I've done. The same circle, day after day. And now I'm out of it, -on a long, straight road. Going somewhere!" - -"I hope it's straight." They had reached the apartment entrance, and -Bill shook his head at Catherine's suggestion that he come in. - -"No road is really straight. But as long as it goes somewhere!" - -Bill looked at her; Catherine thought he started to speak, and then -refused the words. - -"Spencer is longing for your next call," she said. - -"I'll drop in some evening. Henry's been busy." - -"Don't wait for her, then. Just come." - -At the door Miss Kelly met Catherine. - -"Letty hasn't seemed quite well," she said. "I put her to bed." - -"What's wrong?" Catherine stared at Miss Kelly's bland, pink face. "She -isn't really sick?" - -"It's hard to tell, with a child." Miss Kelly followed Catherine down -the hall. "It may be just indigestion." - -Letty, her small face flushed and scowling, wrinkled her eyes at her -mother. - -"Don't want to go to bed. Want to see my Muvver." - -"Here I am, Letty." Catherine touched her cheek, felt for her wrist. - -"She has scarcely any temperature," announced Miss Kelly. "Just a -degree. But I thought----" - -"Surely, she's better in bed. Did she have any supper?" - -"Broth." - -"Don't wait, Miss Kelly. I know you wish to go." - -"Well, since you are here." - -Catherine removed her coat and hat. The roses dropped to the floor. - -"Pretty!" Letty reached for them. - -"I'll put them in water." Catherine came back with a vase. "Do you feel -sick anywhere, chick?" - -"Letty not sick. Get up." Catherine caught the wiggling child, and -pulled the blanket into place. - -"You lie still, and mother'll be back presently. I must see to dinner -for Daddy." - -She hurried into the kitchen. Spencer and Marian were under the -dining room table, playing menagerie, and unable to answer her except -in fierce growls. Charles hadn't come in. Probably Letty wasn't really -sick. She had little flurries of indisposition; perhaps she had eaten -something. - -Charles came in, with a jovial bang of the door, and a shout, "Ship -ahoy! Who's at the helm?" - -"Don't tell him, Muvver." Marian's head butted the tablecloth aside. -"Sh!" - -"'Lo, Cath!" He swung her up to tiptoe in his exuberant hug. "Where are -the kids?" - -"Grrrr!" and "Woof!" The table cloth waggled. - -"Ah, wild animals under foot!" Charles gave an elaborate imitation of a -big game hunter, creeping toward the table, sighting along his thumbs. -"Biff, bang!" He reached under, seized a leg, and drew out Marian, -giggling and rolling. "Bagged one! Bang, bang! Got the panther!" He had -Spencer by the collar. "Teddy, the great hunter!" He straddled them, -his arms folded, while they shrieked in delight. - -A wail from the doorway, "Letty play! Shoot Letty!" - -Catherine ran past them, gathering the child into her arms. Her hand, -closing over the small feet, found them dry, hot, and the weight of the -child seemed to scorch through her blouse against her shoulder. - -"What's the matter with my baby?" Charles followed them. "Let me have -her, Catherine." - -"She's supposed to be in bed." Catherine covered her with the blanket. -"Now you stay there, young lady! Mother will come in soon." - -She touched the scarlet cheek, her fingers feather soft. Letty's -eyelids, heavy and dark, drooped, and her protest broke off. - -Catherine drew Charles into the hall. - -"Would you call up Dr. Henrietta? I think her fever is coming up." - -"Is she sick?" Charles looked aggrieved at this intrusion upon his mood. - -"I hope not." Catherine gave him a little push. "Call her up, and see -when she can come in. I'll have dinner on directly." - -The wild animals were washed and combed, and dinner served when Charles -came out of the study. - -"She's not in. Probably at dinner. I left word with the clerk. But I -say, Catherine. I got tickets for 'Liliom' to-night." He looked blankly -disappointed. "You said you wanted to see it, and I was downtown. Good -seats, too." - -"Oh, Charles!" - -"And I even called up that girl we had last year, to stay with the -children. That graduate student, you know." - -"Well." Catherine lifted her hands in a little gesture of resignation. -"If Letty's sick-- But 'Liliom'! I do want to go." - -"Maybe she'll be all right when she's asleep." - -But she wasn't. Eight o'clock came, with Charles fidgeting like a -lamprey eel on a hook, and no word from Henrietta. Letty was asleep, -her hands twitching restlessly. Catherine shook her head, as she read -the thermometer. - -"I can't go, Charles. Almost a hundred and one." - -"What ails her? Has that woman you've got been feeding her pickles?" - -The door bell rang. Charles, with a mutter of "Dr. Henry, perhaps," -rushed to the door. He came back. - -"It's Miss Brown, come to stay the evening. What shall I tell her?" - -"Tell her I can't go." Catherine was abrupt. She was disappointed and -she was fighting off a sturdily growing fear about the next day,--and -she resented Charles's air of injury. - -"I hate to, after I begged her to come in." - -Catherine brushed hastily past him and went to the door. Miss Brown, a -plump, pale, garrulous woman of middle age, a southerner, waited. - -"Letty, the baby, isn't very well," explained Catherine. "Nice of you -to come in so promptly. Some other night, perhaps." And presently the -door could be closed upon Miss Brown's profuseness of pity. - -Charles was glooming about his study. - -"When you leave them all day for your job," he said, "I should think -you might----" - -"No, you shouldn't think!" Catherine laughed at him. "You're as bad as -Spencer, little boy!" - -The bell rang again. - -"That's Henry!" Catherine hurried to the door, and opened it to Stella -Partridge's little squirrel smile and extended hand. - -"Good evening, Mrs. Hammond. I told Dr. Hammond I'd let him have this -outline when it was finished." - -"Won't you come in, Miss Partridge?" Catherine heard Charles coming. He -lounged beside her, hands in pockets. - -"No, thank you. I just brought this outline, Dr. Hammond." She handed -him the envelope. - -There was a moment of silence, in which Catherine felt a tugging at -her will, as if Charles tried to bend her to some thought of his. She -glanced at him, still sulky. - -"I have it," she said. "Why don't you take Miss Partridge to your show, -Charles? If she would like it. Have you seen 'Liliom,' Miss Partridge?" - -"Letty is indisposed," said Charles, "thus interfering, after the -fashion of children, with her parents' plans." - -"Can't I stay with her?" Miss Partridge opened her dark eyes very wide. - -"Mrs. Hammond is punctilious." - -Catherine withdrew a step. If Charles added another word--she could -hear the rest of his sentence, about her leaving them all day! But he -merely added, "Would you care to go, Miss Partridge?" - -"Ought you to leave Mrs. Hammond, if the baby is ill?" - -"It's always a relief to be rid of a disappointed man, Miss Partridge." -Catherine was thinking: how disdainful that cold, hard voice makes her -words sound! "Letty isn't seriously ill, but I want the doctor to look -at her. I shall be happier here." - -Miss Partridge seated herself in the living room, and Catherine, after -a glance at Letty, and a moment of search for the tie Charles wished, -sat down opposite her. She was charming to look at, Catherine realized; -a soft, fawn colored suit, exquisitely tailored over her slender, -sloping shoulders; a long brown wing across the smart fawn hat, a knot -of orange at her throat. She drew off her wrinkled long gloves, and -revealed a heavy topaz on her little finger. - -"Your work, Mrs. Hammond? You are finding it interesting?" - -"Very." Catherine felt as expansive as an exposed clam. - -"Mr. Hammond was saying you had some kind of educational research in -hand." - -"Yes." Was that Letty, crying? Charles came in, rubbing his sleeve over -his hat. - -"I don't need glad rags, do I, since you aren't in evening dress?" - -"No gladder than those." Miss Partridge rose. - -Catherine stood at the living room door, listening for the sound of the -elevator. Charles came rushing back. - -"You're sure you'll be all right?" That was his little flicker of -contrition. "I don't like to leave you this way, but the tickets might -as well be used." - -"Have a good time." Catherine kissed him lightly. - -"Wish it was you, going!" He was in fine fettle again, offering a small -oblation before his departure. - - * * * * * - -Letty woke, complaining that she wanted a drink. Catherine sat beside -her, smoothing the silky fair hair, until she slept again. Her forehead -didn't feel so parched. But Catherine went to the telephone and called -Henrietta. Bill answered. - -"Oh, Catherine! Henry got your message. She had to stop at the hospital -first. She'll be in. Is Letty really sick?" - -"I hope not. But I need Henrietta's assurance." - -"She'll be along." - -Spencer looked up from his books. - -"I think Daddy ought to stay home if you have to," he said, frowning. - -"Daddy isn't any use if the children are sick," announced Marian, with -dignity. "Is he, Muvver?" - -"Not as a nurse," said Catherine. "But he's a great comfort to me, you -know." - -"How?" Spencer was still accusing. - -"Just being." Catherine smiled at him. Spencer had a curious way -of reaching out, thrusting fine feelers about him, investigating -subtleties of relationship. He was staring at her intently, as if he -pondered her last words. Then with a sigh, postponing judgment, he -closed his book. - -"My home work's all done, and I did it alone, because Letty is sick. Is -that a comfort to you, Mother?" - -"It is." Catherine was grave. - -When they had gone to bed, Marian in Catherine's room, so that Letty -would not disturb her, Catherine moved restlessly about the apartment. -She was thinking about them, her children. What they needed. More than -food and shelter, more than physical safety. They needed a safety in -the _feeling_ around them. A warm, clear sea, in which they could -float, unaware that the sea existed. Tension, ugly monsters, frighten -them, disturb them out of their own little affairs. Spencer especially, -but Marian, too. Letty was such a baby, still, but she was growing; she -was still turned inward. Catherine wandered to the door and listened. -She was breathing too rapidly. If Henry would only come! - -She sat down at the window, staring out at the dull yellow glow -which held the city as a mass and dimmed the stars. You can't pretend -for them, she thought. They catch the reality under the surface. But -that perfect safety of feeling--who has it! She felt herself opposed -to Charles, struggling with him, toward that intense calm that might -hold the children free and unaware. Perhaps some women could attain -that--she was abject, despairing--women who could lose their own -struggling selves. But what then? The children grew up, and made -their own circles, never reaching anything but this going-on. Surely -somewhere, along the way, there should be something beside immolation -for the future, otherwise why the future? Marian, Letty--I can't do -it, she thought. Drown myself to make that quiet, white peace. I -won't drown. I keep bobbing up, trying to be rescued. Something in -me, shrieking. If I can rescue that shrieking something, and silence -it, then surely there's more in me, more poise, more love, to wrap -them--no, not wrap them, to float them in. If Charles will help! - -She had a sharp vision of Charles and Stella Partridge, sitting side -by side in the darkened theater, their eyes focussed on the brilliant -fantasy of the stage. Charles had been delighted to go. He didn't have -play enough, these last years. I wish I were beside him,--her hand -reached out emptily, as if to grasp his. Good for him, seeing other -people, other women. They stimulate him, even if I don't like them. She -caught, like a reflection in a mirror, the tone of that short walk from -the bus with Bill. Something exciting about that--an encounter with -another person. - -A ring of the bell; Dr. Henrietta at last. - -Catherine stood behind her, as she examined Letty, drowsily fretful at -the disturbance. What strong, white, competent fingers Henry had! They -went into the living room. - -"She's not very sick." Henrietta sank into a chair and snapped open -her cigarette case. "I'm not sure--tell better to-morrow. I'll come in -early. You better keep the other children away from her. It might be -something contagious." - -"She's had measles." Catherine was openly dismayed, as the bugbear of -contagion rose. "Good land, if she has, it means they all get it, just -like a row of dominoes. Henry! What shall I do?" - -"Oh, get a nurse and quarantine them. You don't need to stay in. -Charles doesn't." - -"I couldn't." - -"Well, wait until to-morrow. May be just indigestion. I've given her -a dose for that." Dr. Henrietta stretched in her chair, crossing her -ankles, slim and neat in heavy black silk above small, dull pumps. -"We don't want your career busted up yet. How's it going? And where's -friend husband?" - -"I sent him off to the theater with Miss Partridge." Catherine grinned. -"He had the tickets, and was sure' I needn't stay with Letty." - -"I never yet saw a man who was worried about his child when he had -something he wanted to do." Henry puffed busily. "They regard children -as pleasant little amusements, but put them away if they bother." - -"Charles isn't quite like that----" - -"No defense necessary. I'm just offering an observation. Sorry I had -to be late. I stopped to watch Lasker do a Cæsarian on a case of mine. -Beautiful job. But how's your work? Bill said he ran into you, spoke -of your looking well." - -"My job is fine." Catherine saw, at a great distance, the mood in which -she had come home. "Henrietta, I must go down to-morrow. There's a -conference. I've been getting ready for it all the week." - -"Miss Kelly will be here, won't she?" - -"It's Saturday. She'll have to take Spencer and Marian--although I -suppose Letty has exposed them already." - -"She may have nothing at all, you know. I'll come in as early as -possible. What time is this conference?" - -"Ten." - -"Um. I'll try to make it. I promised to stop in at the hospital. -Charles can stay, can't he, if I should be detained?" - -"Don't you let her have anything that will quarantine me! If I am -thrown out now, I'll never get back." - -"All righty." Henrietta rose, shaking down her skirt. "I won't." She -ground out her cigarette in the ash tray, with a shrewd upward glance -at Catherine. "You go to bed. You look too frayed. This is just a first -hurdle, you know. I'll come in before nine to-morrow. But you make -Charles stay, if I should be later." - - -VI - -Catherine woke into complete alertness. Charles had come in. She heard -his cautious step in the hall. Letty was sleeping easily, her breathing -soft and regular again. Catherine slipped noiselessly out of the room. - -"Hello!" She brushed into Charles at the door. "Marian's in my bed," -she whispered. "Have a good time?" - -"Oh, fair." Charles yawned. "How's Letty?" - -"Asleep. Tell me about it in the morning. We might wake her." - - * * * * * - -In the morning Catherine was fagged. All night the awareness of Letty -had kept her at the thin edge of sleep, drawn out by the faintest -stirring. The child was sitting up in bed, now, clamoring for her doll, -her bwekkust, and her go-duck; her cheeks were pink, but they seemed -flower-cool to Catherine's fingers. - -"Let's see if you have any speckles, Letty." She peeled the night dress -down; one round red spot in the shell-hollow of her knee. "Is that a -speckle, Letty Hammond, or a mosquito bite!" Letty gurgled deliciously -as Catherine's fingers tickled. "Let's see your throat. No, wider? Does -it hurt?" - -"Uh huh. Hurt Letty." Letty's arms were tight around her neck, and she -bounced vigorously up and down on her pillow. - -"Here, stop it." Catherine pinioned her firmly. "Where does it hurt?" - -"Hurt Letty. Here." Letty sat down with a plump, and pointed at her toe. - -"Well, you don't look sick, I must say. But that spot--" Catherine -imprisoned her in the night dress again, and tucked her firmly under -the blanket. "I'll bring Matilda, and you can put her to bed with you. -Dr. Henrietta's coming to see you soon." - -Marian appeared at the door. - -"Daddy's asleep and I didn't know he was in his bed." She giggled. "I -most woke him up jumping on him." - -"Hurry and wash, dear. And don't come in with Letty, please." - -Catherine sighed a little as she hurried to thrust herself into the -shafts of the morning. - -Letty's frequent interruptions, and Charles's reluctance to wake; -the discovery that there were no oranges; the demoniac speed of the -clock--it was after eight when they sat down to breakfast. Catherine -drank her coffee, and hurried off to dress. - -Flora came in. Catherine heard her, with relief, offering to make fresh -toast for Charles. Miss Kelly appeared. She was calmly solicitous as -Catherine explained Dr. Henrietta's visit. "Of course, I couldn't go -into quarantine," she said, "on account of my mother." - -"I understand. If you'll just take the other children outdoors for the -morning----" - -They had gone. It was nine, and no Dr. Henrietta. Catherine fastened a -net carefully over her coiled hair, brushed her hat, poking at the limp -bow of ribbon, and then went slowly to the study, where Charles was -rummaging through a drawer of his desk. - -"You have no classes this morning, have you?" she began. - -"No, I haven't. Do you know where I put that outline Miss Partridge -left?" - -"Here it is." Catherine lifted it from beneath the evening paper. -"Charles, Henry is coming in. She said as early as possible. I can't -wait for her. Would you mind?" - -"What's she coming for? Isn't Letty all right?" - -"I don't know. She has a red spot. Henry thought she might have -something--scarlatina----" - -"I thought they'd had 'em all, those red diseases." - -"Her fever is down. I think she's not sick. But Henrietta wanted to be -sure. Would you mind--waiting till she comes?" - -"Stay here this morning?" Charles looked up, an abrupt frown between -his eyes. "I can't, Catherine. I can't play baby tender. I've got a -meeting." - -"So have I." Catherine stood immobile in the doorway. "A very important -one. Those men from the West are here. At ten. I am to present the work -I've been doing." - -"Can't Flora keep an eye on Letty till Henry comes?" - -"I think one of us ought to be here." - -"Good Lord, Catherine! I have to meet the committee on choice of -dissertation subjects. Do you want me to telephone them that I have to -stay home with the baby?" - -"You couldn't stay just an hour?" - -"Be reasonable, Catherine. I can't make myself ridiculous." - -"No?" Catherine stared at him an instant. Then she turned and left him. - -He followed her into the living room, where she stood at the window. - -"Call up your mother," he suggested. "She can probably drop in." - -"Why," said Catherine evenly, "does it make you more ridiculous than -me? That dissertation committee meets a dozen times this fall. Letty is -your child, isn't she? Don't tell me I'm her mother!" - -"I expected something of this sort, when you announced that you had -to have a career." Charles walked briskly in front of her, stern and -determined. "We might as well fight it out now. Do you want me to take -your place? You said not. Do be reasonable." - -"I'm so reasonable it hurts." Catherine's laugh was brittle. "Go on, to -your meeting. I'll stay, of course." - -"Well, really, I'm afraid you'll have to." Charles hesitated, and then -added, gruffly, "It's unfortunate it happened just this way." His -gesture washed his hands of the affair. - -As he strolled importantly out of the room, Catherine's hand doubled in -a cold fist against her mouth. He can't see, she thought. There's no -use talking. - -When he had gone, Catherine hovered a moment at the telephone. No use -calling her mother; she wouldn't be able to come up from Fiftieth -Street in time to do any good. She sat down at the desk, her hands -spread before her, her eyes on her wrist watch. Henrietta might still -come. The minutes were thick, cold liquid, dripping, dripping. Letty's -loud call summoned her, and she hunted up the dingy cotton duck, while -that slow, cold drip, drip continued. Half past nine. The minutes split -into seconds, heavy, cold, dripping seconds. Time could drive you mad, -thought Catherine, while the seconds dripped upon her, if you waited -for it long enough. - -It was almost ten when she telephoned the Bureau. - -Dr. Roberts' neat accents vibrated at her ear. - -"I am sorry," she said, "but I cannot get away. One of the children is -ill. I've been waiting for the doctor. You have the final sheets and -graphs I made, haven't you? There's a list of questions and notes in -the left drawer of my desk. I regret this. If you wish any explanation -of the graphs, please call me." - -He sounded abrupt, irritated, under his perfunctory regret. As -Catherine hung away her hat and coat, she felt a cold, heavy weight -back of her eyes, deep in her throat. Time had lodged there! I can't -sit down and cry, she thought. No wonder he is angry. It's my business -to be on hand. She had once, swimming at low tide, found herself in a -growth of kelp, the strong wet masses tangling about her frightened -struggles. Charles had dragged her out, to clear green water and -safety. She laughed, and pressed her fist again against her mouth. He -wouldn't drag her out of this tangle, not he! - -She sat beside Letty, reading to her, when Dr. Henrietta finally came. - -"Catherine! You stayed!" Her round face set in dismay. "I tried once to -call you. That baby died, the one we delivered last night. I've been -working there." - -"I knew you'd come when you could." Catherine pushed her chair away -from the bed. Henrietta pulled off her coat, pushed up her cuffs from -her firm wrists, and bent over Letty. - -"She's all right," she said, presently. "Just a touch of stomach upset -last night. That's good." - -"Ducky sick." Letty waved her limp bird at Henrietta. - -"Keep him very quiet, then." Henrietta poked the duck down beside -Letty, and shook herself briskly into her coat. - -Catherine followed her into the hall. - -"I might as well have gone down to the office." She was ironic. - -"Exactly. I'm awfully sorry, Catherine, that I am so late. It's almost -noon, isn't it? I thought I could keep life in that little rag." Her -eyes looked hot and tired. "But I couldn't. Just keep Letty from -tearing around too much to-day. She'll be sound as a whistle to-morrow -again." - -"Well, at least we escaped a plague." Catherine leaned against the -wall, inert, dull. - -"Wouldn't Charles stay?" Henrietta peered at her. "Too busy, eh? Well, -Monday you'll be free as air again." - -"I wonder." - -"Now, Catherine, don't be so serious. A year from now you won't know -you weren't there!" - -"It's not just that, Henry. It's the whole thing." Catherine flung open -her hands. "Am I all wrong, to try it?" - -"You know what I think. Here, put on your hat and come out in the -sunshine. Haven't you some marketing to do?" - -"No. Flora does it. But I will go to the corner with you." - -Flora could keep an eye on Letty. Catherine hurried for her wraps, and -joined Henrietta at the elevator. - -"You've had a horrid morning, haven't you?" she said, swinging up from -her inner concentration. "The poor baby----" - -"If we can pull the mother through. She's been scared for months. She -doesn't know, yet." - -They stood at the corner, the clatter of the street bright about them. - -"I've another call at Ninetieth. I'll ride down." Henrietta signaled -the car. "Buck up, Cathy. It's all part of life, anyway. Death--" She -shrugged. "That's the queer thing." Her placid mask had slipped a -little. "Pleasant words to leave with you, eh?" She jeered at herself. -"So long!" - -As Catherine recrossed the street, she hesitated, glancing back into -the shade behind the iron palings of the little park. Was that Charles, -just within the gate, and that slim, elegant, tan figure beside him? -She turned and fled. She wouldn't see them, not now. Not until she had -fought through this thicket of resentment. After all, she had known, -all the time, that what fight there was to make she must make unaided. -The sun was warm and golden, and there came Spencer and Marian, -shouting out, "Moth-er!" as they chased ahead of Miss Kelly. - -"Oh, we had a nice time." Marian danced at her side, clinging to her -arm. "Miss Kelly told us a new game." - -How well they looked, and Miss Kelly, trudging to catch up with them, -was serene and smiling. Letty wasn't sick. It was all a part of life. -She could manage it, everything, someway! - -Miss Kelly, puffing and warm, was delighted with the news about Letty. - -"I was trying," she said, "to figure out some way about mother, so I -wouldn't have to desert you." Catherine's quick smile saw Miss Kelly as -a sunlit rock, equable, sustaining. - -Flora shooed the children out of the kitchen. She was engrossed in -the ceremonial preparation of stuffed peppers with Spanish sauce. -Catherine, preparing orange juice for Letty, was secretly amused at -the elaborate rites. Not until Flora had closed the oven door on the -pan did she look up at Catherine. Then---- - -"Gen'man called you up, Mis' Hammond. I plumb forgot to tell you. He -pestered me 'bout where you was, and I told him you was out for the -air." - -"Who?" Catherine poured the clear juice in to a tumbler. "Did he----" -She turned quickly. "Who was it?" - -"Lef' his number. I put it on the pad." - -Catherine flew into the study, deaf to Letty's shrill call. It was -the Bureau. Her voice, repeating the number, was imperative. She had -forgotten that Dr. Roberts might call. The whir of the unanswered -instrument pounded on her ear drum. After one. The Bureau was deserted. -What _would_ he think! Why, it looked--she pushed the telephone away, -dull color sweeping up to her hair. It looked as if she had lied. But -it had been so late when Henrietta had come that any thought of the -conference had been worn down. She would have to explain, Monday, as if -she had been caught malingering. - -"Hello." Charles stood at the door, uncertainty in his greeting. -"What's the verdict? Pest house?" - -"No." Catherine was jamming the whole dreadful morning out of sight, -stamping on the cover--"Henry says it was just indigestion. She's all -right." - -"Did you get down to your meeting?" - -Catherine shook her head. - -"Now that's a shame," Charles advanced tentatively. "I hoped Henry -would come in time." - -Easy to say that now, thought Catherine. Then--I won't be ugly. I can't -endure it. - -"I felt an awful brute." Charles threw his arm over her shoulders. "But -you saw how it was." - -"Oh, I saw!" An ironic gleam in Catherine's eyes. - -"And here Letty didn't need you, anyway. You might even have gone last -night." - -"I must see to her lunch." Catherine twisted out of his arm, adding -with a touch of malice--"You know you had a good time." - -"Oh, fair." Charles was indifferent. "Left me sort of done this -morning. Miss Partridge wanted me to thank you for her pleasant -evening." - -"I thought I saw you at the gate just now," said Catherine. - -"Yes. I just ran into her on my way home." - -"Don't look at me that way!" Catherine cried out sharply. - -"What way?" Charles expanded his chest, bristling. - -"As if you expected to see me--_suspecting_ you!" - -"Well, good Lord, you sounded as if you thought I'd spent the morning -with Stel--Miss Partridge." - -"I hadn't thought so. Did you?" - -"Of course not." Charles began, with elaborate patience. "I told you -that dissertation committee--" Catherine's laugh interrupted him, and -he stared at her. "I don't know what you're trying to do," he said -slowly. "I'm sick of this guilty feeling that's fastened on me. Last -night because I wanted you to go to the theater, this morning because I -had to go to a legitimate meeting. You don't act natural any more." - -Catherine went quickly back to him, her finger tips resting lightly -against his shoulders. - -"And so he deposited the blame where it wouldn't bother him--on her -frail shoulders!" Her eyes, mocking, brilliant in her pale face, met -his sulky defiance. "Philander if you must, but don't act as if you'd -stolen the jam!" - -"I'm not philandering." - -"No, of course he isn't." Catherine brushed her fingers across his -cheek. "Not for an instant. Now come, luncheon must be ready." - -"But I may!" His voice came determinedly after her, as she went into -Letty's room, "if I don't have more attention paid to me at home!" - - -VII - -Saturday, Sunday, Monday morning again. Catherine, shivering a little -in the wind from the gray river, as the bus lumbered down the Drive, -tried to escape the clutter of thoughts left from the week-end. She had -borrowed twenty-five dollars from Charles that morning, for Miss Kelly. -She had pretended not to see his eyebrows when she laid the market -bills in front of him. Flora had said, when Catherine suggested more -discretion in shopping: "Yes'm, I'll make a 'tempt. But charging things -in a grocery store jest stimulates my cooking ideas." - -Perhaps I'll have to take back the shopping. A gust caught her hat, -wheeled it half around. And clothes! I've got to have some. How? I -won't have a cent left out of that first check. It's like an elephant -balancing on a ball, or a tight-rope walker without his umbrella, this -whole business. - -Last night, when her mother had come in, and Bill and Dr. Henrietta, -her mother with several amusing little stories about the friend who -had come from Peoria, Illinois, to spend the winter with her--too plump -to fit easily into the kitchenette--Charles, with his affectionate -raillery of Mrs. Spencer--her mother was fond of Charles. But he -needn't have made a jest of Saturday morning, and his refusal to give -up his job to stay home with Letty. "That's what poor men are coming -to, I'm afraid," her mother had told him. Henrietta had jibed openly at -him, so openly that only Mrs. Spencer's gentle and fantastic mockery -had smoothed his feathers. And Bill had said nothing. Catherine drew -her collar closely about her throat. She had found him looking at her, -and in his glance almost a challenge, a recall of that brief walk -on Friday. "I hope it's straight, your road," he had said then. She -shrugged more deeply into her coat. Straight! Was it a road? Or merely -a blind alley? Or a tight-rope, and she had to poise herself and juggle -a hundred balls as she crossed; the house, the children, the bills, -Charles, always Charles, and her work. She came back to the thought of -Dr. Roberts and the explanation she must offer. - -Dr. Roberts, however, seemed miraculously to need no explanation. He -had called to tell her that the committee was to stay over Monday, and -that she could meet the two men after all. With sudden release from -the tension of the past days, Catherine moved freely into this other -world, and her road seemed again straight. She was quietly proud of the -conservative response her suggestions met; her mind was agile, cool, -untroubled. There grew up a plan for a first-hand study of several of -the normal schools. Someone from the Bureau might go west. Catherine -brushed aside her sudden picture of herself, walking among the bricks -and stone, the people, for which these dust-grimed catalogues stood. - -As she went home that evening, little phrases from the day ran like -refrains. "A masterly analysis, Mrs. Hammond. Your point of view is -interesting." And Dr. Roberts, after the men had gone--"I call this a -most encouraging meeting, Mrs. Hammond. Sometimes the personal equation -is, well, let us say, difficult. But you have tact." - -Oh, it's worth any amount of struggle, she thought. Any amount! I'll -walk my tight-rope, even over Niagara. And keep my balls all flying in -the air! - - - - -PART III - -BLIND ALLEYS - - -I - -Margaret and Catherine were lunching together in a new tea room, a -discovery of Margaret's. The Acadian, Acadia being indicated in the -potted box at the windows, the imitation fir trees on the bare tables, -and the Dresden shepherdess costume of the waitresses. - -"It's a relief, after St. Francis every day," said Catherine. "The soup -of the working girl grows monotonous." - -"Hundreds of places like this." Margaret beckoned to a waitress. "Our -coffee, please, and cakes." The shepherdess hurried away. "Isn't she a -scream," added Margaret, "with that sharp, gamin face, and those ear -muffs, above that dress! Why don't you hunt up new places to eat?" - -Catherine glanced about; sleek furs draped over backs of chairs, plump, -smug shoulders, careful coiffures, elaborately done faces. - -"The home of the idle rich," she said. "I can't afford it. I'm not a -kept woman. Fifty cents is my limit, except when I go with you." - -"You draw a decent salary." Margaret pulled the collar of her heavy -raccoon coat up against a snow-laden draft from the opened door. "What -do you spend it for? You haven't bought a single dud. Why, you don't -slip off your coat because the lining is patched. Does Charles make you -give him your salary envelope?" - -Catherine was silent and the shepherdess set the coffee service in -front of Margaret. - -"Well?" Margaret poured. "I'm curious." - -"Only a rich man can afford a self-supporting wife," said Catherine -lightly. "I was figuring it up last night. I've got to make at least a -hundred a week." - -"What for?" insisted Margaret. - -"Everything. There's not a bill that isn't larger, in spite of anything -that I can do. Food, laundry, clothes. You have no idea how much I was -worth! As a labor device, I mean." - -"Um." Margaret glinted over her mouthful of cake. "I always thought the -invention of wives was a clever stunt." - -"They can save money, anyway. I tried doing some of the things -evenings, ironing and mending, but I can't." - -"I should hope not!" - -"Well, then, I have to pay for them. Charles can't. It wouldn't be -fair." - -"You look as if you were doing housework all night, anyway." Margaret's -eyes gleamed with hostility. "Why can't the King take his share? You're -as thin as a bean pole." - -"Wait till you get your own husband, you! Then you can talk." - -"Husband!" Margaret hooted. "Me? I'm fixed for life right now." - -"They have their good points." Catherine rose, drawing on her gloves. -Margaret paid the bill and tipped with the nonchalance of an unattached -male. - -"That's all right." Margaret thrust her hands deep into her pockets and -followed her sister. She turned her nose up to sniff at the sharp wind, -eddying fine snow flakes down the side street. "I know lots of women -who prefer to set up an establishment with another woman. Then you go -fifty-fifty on everything. Work and feeling and all the rest, and no -King waiting around for his humble servant." - -Catherine laughed. - -"I'll try to bring up Spencer to be a help to his wife," she said. - -"Oh, Spencer!" Margaret glowed. "He's a darling! Tell him I'm coming up -some day to see him." - -They walked swiftly down the Avenue; Catherine felt drab, almost -haggard, worn down, by the side of Margaret's swinging, bright figure. - -"How's your job?" she asked. "You haven't said a word about it." - -"Grand." Margaret's smile had reminiscent malice. "You know, I've -persuaded them to order new work benches for the main shop. I told -you how devilish they were? Wrong height? Well, I cornered Hubbard -last week. It was funny! I told him I'd found a terrible leak in his -efficiency system. He's hipped on scientific efficiency. I tethered him -and led him to a bench." She giggled. "I had him sitting there cutting -tin before he knew where he was, and I kept him till he had a twinge of -the awful cramp my girls have had. Result, new benches." - -"You won't have half so much fun when you accomplish everything you -want to, will you?" - -"That's a hundred years from now, with me in the cool tombs." They -stepped into the shelter of the elevator entrance to the Bureau. "I'm -working now on some kind of promotion system. Of course, most of the -girls are morons or straight f.m.'s, but there are a few who are -better." - -"What are 'f.m.'s'?" - -"Feeble-mindeds. Like to do the same thing, simple thing, day after -day. It takes intelligence to need something ahead." She grinned at -Catherine. "They make excellent wives," she added. "Now if you didn't -have brains, you'd be happy as an oyster in your little nest." - -The splutter of motors protesting at the cold, the scurry of people, -heads down into the wind, gray buildings pointing rigidly into a gray, -low sky--Catherine caught all that as background for Margaret, fitting -background. Margaret was like the city, young, hard, flashing. - -"Of course, f.m.'s make rotten mothers," she was finishing. "In spite -of the ease with which, as they say, they get into trouble." - -"You know," Catherine's smile echoed the faint malice in her sister's -as they stood aside for a puffing, red-nosed little man who bustled in -for shelter--"I think you take your maternal instinct out on your job. -Creating----" - -"Maternal instinct! Holy snakes!" Margaret yanked her gloves out of -her pockets and drew them on in scornful jerks. "You certainly have a -sentimental imagination at times." - -"That's why you don't need children," insisted Catherine. "Just as -Henrietta Gilbert takes it out on other people's children." - -"You make me sick! Drivel!" Margaret glowered, gave her soft green hat -a quick poke, and stepped out of the lobby. "Good-by! You'll lose your -job, maundering so!" - -"Good-by. Nice lunch." Catherine laughed as she hurried for the waiting -elevator. - -She stood for a few minutes at the window of her office, before she -settled down to the afternoon of work. There was snow enough in the -air to veil the crawl of traffic far below, to blur the spires of -the Cathedral. The clouds hung just above the buildings, heavy with -storm. She would have to go home on the subway; no fun on the bus -such an evening. Dim gold patches in distant windows--office workers -needed light this afternoon. Her eyes dropped to the opposite windows. -Revolving fussily before the great mirrors--how dull and white this -snow-light made them--was a plump little man; the shade cut off his -head, but his gestures were eloquent of concern about the fit of his -shoulders. - -Her window, looking out on the honeycombing of many windows, and down -on the crawling traffic, and off across the piling roofs, had come to -be a sort of watch tower. For more than two months now, she had looked -out at the city. She had come to know the city's hints of changing -seasons, hints more subtle, far less frank than the bold statements of -growing things in the country. A different color in the air, altering -the sky line; a different massing of clouds; a new angle for the -sun through her window in the morning; a gradual stretching of the -shadows on the roof tops. She stood there, gazing out at the terrific, -impersonal whirl. If she could see the atoms, separately, each would be -as fussy, as intimately concerned in some detail as little Mr. Plump -opposite, pulling up his knee to twist at his trouser leg. And yet, -out of that tiny squirming could grow this enormous, intricate whole. - -The stenographer at the door drew her abruptly from the window. - -"Oh, yes, Miss Betts. I wanted you to take these letters." She bent -swiftly to her work. - - * * * * * - -She grimaced wryly as she was jammed and pushed through the door into -the crowded local. Shoving feet, jostling bodies, wrists at the level -of her eyes. Hairy wrists, chapped thin wrists, fat wrists, grubby, -reaching up for straps; and the horrid odor of dirty wool, damp from -the snow. A wrench, a grinding, and the terrific, clattering roar of -the homeward propulsion began. She longed for the quiet isolation -of the hour on top of the bus, in which she could swing into fresh -adjustment. Lucky that heads were smaller than shoulders and set in the -middle. The figure against her began to squirm, and her swift indignant -glance found a folded newspaper worming up before her eyes. Friday, -December 9. She stared at the date, its irking association just eluding -her. The 9th. She set her lips in dismay as she caught her dodging -thought. That reception, to-night! She had meant to buy fresh net for -her dress, her one black evening dress--and Margaret's appearance -had driven it out of her head. No room for her abortive shrug. Well, -probably fresh net would have fooled no one. - -At the sound of her key in the door, Marian rushed through the hall. -Catherine, shivering a little at the sudden warmth after the windy -blocks from the subway, bent to kiss her. - -"Muvver!" Marian's eyes were roundly horrified. "Spencer's run away. -We can't find him anywhere!" Her voice quavered. "He's lost himself!" - -"What do you mean!" Catherine thrust her aside and ran through the -hall. Letty was clattering busily around the edge of the living room -rug on her go-duck. "Where's Miss Kelly?" - -"Kelly gone. Spennie gone. Daddy gone." Chanted Letty, urging her steed -more violently. - -"Flora!" Catherine went toward the kitchen, to meet Flora, her mouth -wide and dolorous. - -"He's done eluded 'em, Mis' Hammond," she said. "They been hunting -hours an' hours." - -"What happened?" Catherine was cold in earnest now, a gasping cold that -settled starkly about her heart. - -"He ain't come home after school. Miss Kelly, she took Marian and went -over there, but they wasn't no one lef' there. Chillun all gone." - -"Yes, Muvver, we went over three times, Miss Kelly and me, and he -wasn't there, and the janitor said no children were there." - -"But he always comes straight home." Catherine's hand was at her -throat, as if it could melt the constriction there. "You didn't see -him, Marian?" - -"No." Marian flopped her hair wildly. "Miss Kelly was waiting for me, -and Letty, and we had a walk, and he wasn't here----" - -"Has Mr. Hammond been in?" - -"Yessum, he's been in, and out, chasing around wild like." - -"He knows, then?" - -"He come home sort of early," explained Flora. Catherine shrank from -the dramatic intensity of Flora's words. "Came home, and foun' his -child wasn't here. He's gone for the police." - -The telephone rang, and Catherine hurried herself into the study. - -"Yes?" Her voice was faint. "Yes? Who is it?" - -"That you, Catherine?" - -"Have you found him?" she cried. - -"No." The wire hummed, dragging his voice off to remoteness. "Has Miss -Kelly come back?" - -"Where have you looked? I'll go hunt----" - -"You stay there." Then, suddenly loud, "You might call up the -hospitals. I've notified the police station. They are flashing the -description all over town." - -"Where are you now?" begged Catherine, but there was only silence, and -the terminating click. - -Flora was at her elbow. - -"Ain't found him?" She clucked her tongue. - -"You better go on home, Flora." Catherine couldn't look at her. She -felt a ghoulish contamination, setting her mind afire with horrible -pictures. Spencer, run down in the snowy street. Spencer--"I must stay -here anyway." - -Flora wavered. She wanted, Catherine knew, to see the end of this -melodrama. - -"Your own family will need you," she urged. "Go on." - -Then, swiftly, to Marian, "Please keep Letty quiet. Mother wants to -telephone." - -She closed the door and pulled the telephone directory to the desk. How -many hospitals there were! Hundreds--Has a little boy been brought in, -injured? He is lost. Unless he were terribly hurt, he could have told -you who he is. Has a little boy been brought in--yes? He's nine--no, -not red hair. The wind yelled down the well outside the window. Surely -he wouldn't be hurt, and not be found. Still and unmoving, in some dark -street--oh, no! No! She clutched her arm against her breast, as her -finger ran down the dancing column of numbers. Someone at the door. She -listened, unable to stand up. - -Miss Kelly came in, her face mottled with the cold, her hair in -draggled wisps on her cheeks. - -"I don't know where to look next," she said. "I hunted up the addresses -of some of the boys he plays with, but they are all home, and haven't -seen him since school, not one of them." - -"When did you begin to hunt?" - -"Immediately." Miss Kelly was dignified, sure of her lack of blame. "We -waited here for him, just as we always do. I thought it was too cold -for Marian and Letty to wait at the corner." - -"He--he's always come straight home, hasn't he?" said Catherine, -piteously. - -"Always. That's why----" she stopped. - -That's why, that's why--Catherine's mind picked up the words. That's -why he must be hurt, unconscious somewhere, kidnaped--that little -Italian boy who was found floating in the river--Spencer's face, white -on black water--stop it! Not that! - -"Can you stay to see that Letty goes to bed?" Catherine turned to her -endless task. "I haven't called all the hospitals yet." - -His gray eyes, long, with the wide space between, and the small, fine -nose; fair boy's brows; mobile, eager lips. If I had been here, she -thought, as she waited for the curt official voice to answer,--Has a -little boy been brought in? If I had been here--oh, if--if---- - - * * * * * - -Finally she sat, staring at the ridiculous gaping mouthpiece. Where -would they take him, if he were--dead. Wasn't there a morgue? The word -twisted and plunged in her, a slimy thing. She would call the morgue. -She heard Miss Kelly's firm voice, "No, you mustn't bother your mother, -not now. Come and have your supper, Marian." - -He couldn't be dead. That warm, hard, slender body--how absurd! Morbid. -He was somewhere, just around the corner. Death, that's the queer -thing. Who had said that? Henrietta. She would call her--and ask her. - -Before she had given the number, the front door clattered, opened. -Catherine pushed herself erect; she was stiff, rigid. She found herself -in the hall. Charles, glowering, and in front of him, propelled by his -father's hand on his shoulder, Spencer! She couldn't move, or speak. - -"Well, here's the fine young man," said Charles. - -Spencer wriggled under his hand. His eyes smoldered with resentment, -and his mouth was sullen. - -Catherine's hands yearned toward him. She mustn't frighten him, but -just to touch him, to feel him! - -"A great note!" Charles came down the hall, righteous anger on his -face. "I called up the police and had them send out their signals." - -"Where was he?" Catherine had him now; she lifted Charles's hand away -and touched the boy. He was trembling--Charles had been rough! - -"I was just playing," Spencer cried out, gruffly. "I didn't know you'd -tell the police." - -"You've been told to come straight home, haven't you? Tell your mother -what you told me, sir!" - -"Charles!" Catherine's flash at him was unpremeditated. "You needn't -bully him!" - -"Tell her!" roared Charles. - -"I just said"--Spencer's words tumbled out, full of impotent fury and -indistinct with tears--"I said--I said--I didn't want to come home to -that old Kelly. I didn't want----" - -"He said," remarked Charles coldly, "that he saw no use of coming home -when his mother wasn't here." - -"But where was he?" Catherine had her arm over his shoulder, in a -protective gesture. "Where did you find him?" - -"I heard his voice. As I came along Broadway, past that vacant lot. He -was down behind the bill boards there, with some street gamins, doing -the Lord knows what." - -"We just built a fire, Moth-er." Spencer pressed against her. "I didn't -know it was so late. We were bandits." - -"Go on into your room, Spencer. You know you should come straight home." - -"He ought to be punished," declared Charles, as the boy vanished in -relieved haste. - -"I judge you have been punishing him." Catherine stood between Charles -and Spencer's closing door. "He was trembling, and almost crying, and -he never cries." - -"Did you want me to kiss him when I found him, after the way I've spent -the afternoon?" - -"You want to make him feel as bad as you have!" Catherine leaned -against the wall. She was exhausted; her heart was beating in short, -spasmodic jerks, as if she had run for miles. - -"I suppose I was mad, clear through." Charles grinned, abashed. Then he -stiffened again. "Devilish thing to do. I came home after some lecture -notes, for a meeting, and I couldn't even go to the meeting." - -Miss Kelly came into the hall. She had smoothed her hair into its usual -neatness, and her face was roundly pink again. - -"I am afraid I must go," she said. Her eyes inspected them, gravely. -Catherine flushed; Miss Kelly had heard them squabbling and she was -reproaching Catherine. - -"I'm sorry you've been detained. I'll see that Spencer realizes how -serious this is," she said. - -When the door had closed on her sturdy back, Charles broke out, "If -you'd been here, this wouldn't have happened. You heard what he said, -didn't you?" - -"Don't say that!" Catherine's exhaustion sent hot tears into her eyes. - -But Charles had to unload his overcharged feelings somewhere. - -"You might as well face the truth. If you care more for a paltry job -than for your children--" He shrugged. "But you won't see it. I've got -to have my dinner. We'll be late to that reception now. If I miss all -my appointments because my wife works, I'll have a fine reputation." - -Incredible! Catherine watched him clump down to the living room. He -wanted to hurt her. She pressed her fingers, ice-cold, against her -eyeballs. She wouldn't cry. He felt that way. Not just because he had -been worried about Spencer. There was a heavy coil of resentment from -which those words had leaped. And she had thought, for weeks now, -that she had learned to balance on her tight-rope, and keep the balls -smoothly in air. While under the surface, this! - -"Can't we have dinner?" he called to her. "We really must hurry a -little, Catherine." - -She set the dinner silently on the table, avoiding the defiant glance -she knew she would meet. - -"Don't wait for me." She paused, a tumbler of milk in her hand. "I want -to talk to Spencer." - -Charles pulled out his watch and gazed at it impressively. - - -II - -Catherine, sitting on the edge of her bed, drew on one silk stocking -and gartered it. She lifted her head; when she bent over like that, -faint nausea, like a green smear, rose through her body behind her -eyelids. She shouldn't have eaten any dinner. Or was it just Charles, -and his restrained disapproval--or Spencer. She sighed, thinking -through her talk with Spencer. With insistent cunning he had offered as -excuse, his dislike of Miss Kelly, his distaste for the house without -Catherine. "I didn't think it was bad," he said. "I didn't do anything -bad." - -"Inconsiderate," suggested Catherine, looking at the stubborn head on -the pillow. Safe! She couldn't scold him, and yet--"You didn't think -how we would feel." - -"Oh, I thought," said Spencer. "I thought you wouldn't know. And my -father wasn't very con-sid-'rate." He thrust his head up indignantly. -"He yanked me right away, and the fellows all _saw_ him." - -Then Charles had called sharply, "Catherine! Are you dressing?" and she -had, under pressure, resorted to a threat. She was ashamed of it. She -drew on the other stocking, smoothing it regretfully. She had said, "If -you won't promise to come home directly, I shall ask Miss Kelly to call -for you at school." - -Charles came in, bay rum and powder wafted with him, his face pink and -solemn. - -"Oh, I haven't put in your studs--" She made a little rush for his -dresser, but he brushed her away. - -"Please don't bother. You're not ready yourself." - -Catherine stifled an hysterical giggle. Emotion in these -costumes--Charles in barred muslin underwear, his calves bulging above -his garters, and she in silk chemise--was funny! She lifted her black -dress from its hanger and slipped it over her head. Well, it had -dignity, of a dowdy sort, if it wasn't fresh. She stood in front of -the long mirror, trying to crisp the crumpled net of the long draped -sleeves. Her fingers caught; she had pumiced too hard at the ink on -their tips--hollows at the base of her throat--try to drink more milk. -Her skin had pale luster, against the black, but her face lacked color. -"If this weren't a faculty party," she said, lightly, "I'd try rouge." - -"Why doesn't that girl come?" asked Charles, his voice muffled by the -elevation of his chin as he struggled with his tie. "Time, I should -think." - -"What girl?" Catherine turned from the mirror. "Oh--" her shoulders -sagged in complete dismay. - -"Miss Brown. You got her, didn't you?" - -Catherine, a whirl of black net, was at the telephone. How could she -have forgotten! "No, Morningside!" She waited. She had called once, -that morning, and Miss Brown was out. She had meant--"Is Miss Brown -in?" Charles was at the door, an image of funereal, handsome dignity. -Miss Brown was not in. No, the voice had no idea when she would be in. - -"Oh, say it!" Catherine's fingers pushed recklessly through her hair. -"Say it, Charles!" He swung on his heel and disappeared. - -Perhaps her mother--but no one answered that call, and Catherine -remembered that Friday was the night for opera. - -A voice in the hall, although she hadn't heard the doorbell. It was -Bill. - -"Going out, eh?" - -"Apparently not." Charles was elaborately, fiendishly jovial. "I -thought we were, but Catherine neglected to provide a chaperone for the -children." - -Catherine pressed her fingers against her warm cheeks. Her quick -thought was: just Bill's entrance scatters this murky, ridiculous -tension. This ought to be a joke, not a tragedy. - -"Here, run along, you two." She lifted her head and looked at Bill, -smiling at her. "I've nothing to do. Let me sit here and read." - -"We can't impose on you that way--" began Charles. - -"Of course we can!" Catherine tinkled, hundreds of tiny bells at all -her nerve ends. "Of course! Come on, Charles." - -As Charles stamped into his overshoes, Catherine ran back to the living -room. Bill stood at the table, poking among the magazines. - -"Thank Heaven you came just then!" she said, softly. "Oh, Bill!" - -"What is this momentous occasion, anyway?" - -"A faculty reception. It's not that. I'm an erring wife and mother." -His glance steadied her, stopped that silly tinkling. "Spencer ran -away and I forgot to send word for Miss Brown to come in, and--" That -wordless quiet of his enveloped her, like a deep pool in which she -relaxed, set free from the turmoil of the past hours. "If I could stay -here with you!" - -"Are you about ready?" Charles asked crisply. - -Had Bill lifted his hand in a heartening gesture, or had she imagined -it? - -The elevator was slow. Charles laid a vindictive thumb on the button; -below them the signal snarled. - -"Sam's probably at the switchboard," said Catherine, coldly. - -"He won't be, long!" Charles pressed harder. - -Catherine turned away, her fingers busy with the snaps of her gloves. -The tips were powdery and worn; another cleaning would finish this -pair. If Charles wanted to be childish, venting spite on anything-- A -clatter and a creaking of cables behind the iron grill. - -"If you prefer to stay with Bill, why come?" - -Catherine's jerk rent the soft kid. The snap dangled by a shred. The -door slammed open and they stepped into the car. - -Sam was explaining to Charles. In the narrow corner mirror Catherine -could see the line of Charles's cheek bone, the corner of his mouth. -Poor man! He was in a humor. Well, he could stay there! She wouldn't -cajole him out of it; he could wait till she did! It was always she -who had to make the overture. Charles sat sulkily down in the swamp of -ill feeling and wouldn't budge. - -"It's stopped snowing." She lifted her face to the steel plate of sky -overhead. - -"Temporarily." Charles strode along with great steps. "Here, take my -arm." He stopped at the corner. - -"Have to keep my gloves fresh." Catherine hurried across the slippery -cobblestones. As they climbed up past the dark chapel, she squirmed -inside her coat. How ridiculous they were, going along in a pet, like -children. Bill would laugh, if he knew. The long windows of the law -library dropped their panels of light across the thin snow. When we -reach the library steps, thought Catherine, I'll say, let's be good. -Only--why must I always be abject, and ingratiating? Again that streak -of hard, ribald mockery: let him sulk if he likes. I'm tired of being -humble. Below them the wide sweep of steps, the bronze figure aproned -with snow; the dignified weight of the building rising above them, the -recessed lights glowing behind the columns. How many times they had -walked together across these steps! - -"Charles." She spoke impetuously. "Don't be cross. What's the use?" - -"If you chose to project your own mood upon me--" Charles jerked his -chin away from the folds of silk muffler. - -"Oh, Lord!" sighed Catherine. "Don't we sound married!" - -She could see the building now, with shadowy figures moving past the -lighted windows. I can't be humble enough in that distance to do any -good. What an evening! - -It was like a nightmare, through which she moved as two people, one a -cool, impersonal, outer self, given to chatter rather more than usual; -the other a mocking, irreverent, twisting inner self, mewed up in -confusion and injury. Empty, meaningless chatter. What fools people -were, dragging themselves together in an enormous room, moving around, -busy little infusoria. Charles liked it. He felt himself erect and -important, with the crowding people a tangible evidence of his success, -the decorum, the polished surfaces clinking out assurance that here -was his group, here he was admitted, recognized. Catherine, bowing, -smiling, listening to his voice, offering bright little conventional -remarks, was conscious of his feeling. He's feeding on it, she thought. -Growing smug. How far away from him I am--far enough to see him smug, -and hate it. They had drifted away from the formal receiving line. She -twisted at her glove, to hide the torn snap. - -"Well, Mrs. Hammond!" Mr. Thomas was at her elbow, his thick glasses -catching the light blankly, his head enormous above the rather pinched -shoulders of his dress suit. "This is a pleasure." He shook her hand -nervously, oppressed by his social obligation. "A pleasure." - -Mrs. Thomas bustled up, crisp in rose taffeta, a black velvet ribbon -around her pinkish, wrinkled throat. - -"So long since we've seen you. We were just saying we must have you out -for Sunday night supper. Walter does miss Spencer so much." - -"That would be fine!" declared Charles, heartily. "I haven't forgotten -that cake." - -"We heard such a funny thing." Were the lines in her pink cheeks -dented in malice? She bobbed her curly gray head sidewise at Charles. -"Someone told Mr. Thomas that your wife had left you, Mr. Hammond." - -Catherine saw the ominous twitching under Charles's eyes, but Mr. -Thomas put in, hastily. - -"I think it was intended for a jest, you know." He turned to Catherine, -his large, gentle mouth agitated, as if in distress at his wife's poor -taste. "I met Dr. Roberts last week. I know him quite well, you know. -He was speaking about your work, Mrs. Hammond. He was extraordinarily -enthusiastic." - -Catherine took that gratefully, as something in which she was at least -not culpable. There was a little eddy of people around them, throwing -off several to stop for casual greetings; when they had gone on, -Catherine heard Mrs. Thomas's high voice. "The poor boy! I suppose the -house seems empty with no mother in it." Her outer self looked across -at Charles, calm enough, but her inner self had an instant of rage, a -hurling, devastating instant. - -"Mr. Hammond was just telling me about Spencer's running away." Mrs. -Thomas had a peculiarly self-righteous air in her pursed lips and -bright eyes. "How worried you must have been!" - -"Oh, Mr. Hammond found him so promptly." - -"But just a minute can seem a long time. I remember one day----" - -"Pardon me, please." Charles moved away, restrained eagerness in the -forward thrust of his head above his broad, black shoulders. - -Catherine saw him edge past a group, saw a pearl-smooth shoulder above -a jade-green velvet sheath. The Partridge, of course! What was she -doing at a faculty reception? She had a glimpse of the squirrel smile, -before she picked up the thread of Mrs. Thomas's domestic lyric. - -The Thomases wanted refreshments. Catherine's throat was sticky-dry -at the thought of food. She had a sharp longing for her own living -room and Bill. He could ease her of these innumerable prickings. She -made her way to Charles, and then stood, unnoted, at his elbow. Miss -Partridge saw her, and her hand swam up in a leisurely arc. Catherine -nodded pleasantly. - -"I think I'll run along, Charles. You aren't to hurry." She drifted -away before his hesitancy reached action. - - -III - -Snow again in the air, wet on her cheeks. I am going home, to see -Bill, in search of ballast. She hurried across the campus. The library -windows were dark; two cleaning women, aprons bundled about their -heads, clattered ahead of her with their pails. - -As she pushed open the apartment door, she saw Bill, standing at the -doorway of Marian's room, indistinct in the shadow. He moved violently -away. - -"Have the children been bothering you?" Catherine listened an instant -at the door. Nothing but the faintest possible rhythm of breathing. - -"I thought I heard Letty call." Bill retreated into the living room. -"Where's Charles? The party over?" - -"I ran away." Catherine slipped out of her coat. "Leaving him with Miss -Partridge." She drew down her long gloves, laughing, and looked at -Bill. Something curiously disturbed in his heavy-lidded glance. How -tired and gaunt he looked. "What is it, Bill?" - -He waited until she had settled into the wing chair. - -"Nice dress, that," he said, as he sat down. - -"This?" She smiled at him. Her hands lay idly along folds of the black -stuff. "Are you bored, sitting here alone? The children haven't really -been awake, have they?" - -"No. I eavesdropped on them." Again that heavy, troubled look. "I heard -them--breathe." - -What in that phrase had such poignancy? What in the silence swung a -light close to the dark, unruffled surface of this man, illuminating, -far down in deep water, that struggling, twisting something? - -He rose, brushing aside the curtain, to gaze out at the dim city. - -"Better run along," he said, slowly. "You must be weary." - -"Oh, no." Catherine's hand entreated him. - -At that he turned slightly, to face her. She had a queer fancy that she -saw his forehead gleam, his hair shine damp, as if he came swinging up, -up to the surface. But he spoke calmly enough. - -"I've been thinking over one of Henrietta's truisms, as I eavesdropped -on your children. Wondering about it, and you." - -Catherine was still; breathing might blur the glass, this glass through -which she might have a clear glimpse of Bill. - -"It is this." His smile, briefly sardonic, mocked at himself. "That -children are the world's greatest illusion. The largest catch-penny -life offers." - -"Sometimes," Catherine hesitated, "I think Henry says a clever thing to -fool herself." - -"Isn't it more than clever? Don't you feel, when you are confronted -with a black wall of futility, in yourself, that at least there are -your children, three of them, and that they may jack life up to some -level of significance, and that they are you?" - -"Is that an illusion?" - -"Isn't it? Our puny little minds, scratching at the edges of whatever -it is that drives us along, pick up bits of sand." Bill laid his hand -on the back of the chair, dragged it around, and dropped into it, his -gaunt profile toward the window, his hands gripped on his knees. "After -all, a merry-go-round doesn't go anywhere but around. Isn't that what -this feeling amounts to? You don't find yourself convinced that you are -the vehicle for your parents, do you? And yet"--the words lagged--"I am -sure I have that illusion as strongly as any fool, that I have the need -for that consolation." - -"Surely"--Catherine spoke softly; she mustn't drive him back--"you, of -all people, Bill, are least futile." - -He turned his face toward her, a haggard little grin under his somber -eyes. - -"What could be more futile? Builder of bridges and buildings, which a -hundred other men can make better than I. I had a maudlin way, when -I was younger, of expecting that to-morrow would give me the thing I -wished. To-morrow! Another catch-penny. And this, too, puerile as it -sounds. For a time Henrietta needed me, while she fought to get her -toes in. But she's past that now." - -"Bill"--Catherine strained toward him, her eyes darkly brilliant--"I -came home to-night, because I wanted you. Because when I am frantic and -silly, you can pull me up. You have, countless times." - -"That is your generous imagination." Catherine flung out her hand -impatiently. "And you see, I have, instead, spewed out this sentimental -maundering." - -"Don't talk that way!" cried Catherine. - -"No." He rose abruptly, to stand above her, so that she tipped her head -back, and one hand crept up to press against the pulse beating in her -throat. His glance buffeted hers, entreating something, inarticulate, -baffling. Then, suddenly, the old quiet mask was on again, and the -water closed over his plunge within. - -"Don't ever be frantic, Catherine," he said. "Good night." - -She sat motionless when he had gone. Bill, in the dark, listening to -the children. Bill, at the window, sending that heavy stare out into -the night. Bill, stripped of his concealment. There was a slow brewing -of exultation within her. He had come out, to her! - -The great illusion. She crept silently to the door where Letty and -Marian slept. Spencer moaned softly in his sleep, and she stood for -moments beside his bed. They weren't illusory, except as you tried to -substitute them for everything. They were part of you, to go on when -you stopped. But they were separate, individual, cut off, _themselves_. -What had Bill said? You don't feel yourself the vehicle for your -parents, do you? You wanted your children, part of you, extenuation for -your own shortcomings. Wasn't it an illusion, a flimsy drapery of words -over a huge, blind, instinctive drive? Bill wanted children, then, and -Henrietta--crisp, efficient---- - -Catherine undressed hastily and crept into bed. Charles was late. -Resentment, like a small sharp bone, still rankled. He's like a little -boy. If I could be patient--Bill never takes things out on Henrietta. -She doesn't know his feeling. Perhaps it is always that way; one person -out of two is not quite happy, never an equal balance. Charles was -content until I broke loose. Henrietta is content. You have to offer up -a human sacrifice. She stared at the ceiling, where a broken rectangle -of saffron light from some court window sprawled. If I could think -about Charles, without this jangle of feelings, perhaps I could see -what to do. Could you ever think straight? Did emotion always enter, -refracting? - -Charles _says_ he doesn't mind my working, that he's glad if I like it. -That's what he thinks; no, what he thinks he thinks! But underneath, -he's outraged, and any tiny thing is a jerk of the thin cover over -that feeling. Never till this winter has he been so--so touchy. Silly -little things. Perhaps--she waited an instant--was that his key? -Perhaps I notice it more, because I want approval. But he makes a -personal grievance if I forget his laundry. In a way, it is personal. -I forget, because I don't think of him every second. I try to remember -everything. She twisted over on one side, an arm curled under her -head. I haven't asked him to take any share of the house job, or the -children. She shivered, as if a cold draft from that hour before dinner -blew across her; Spencer, lost, because she wasn't at home. Charles, -intimating that he was justified. But she was at home---- - -The door clicked softly open, and cautious feet moved down the hall. - -Catherine smiled. Charles was like an elephant when he attempted -silence. - -"I'm not asleep," she said, and blinked as he flashed on the light. -"You must have had a good time, to stay so late." - -"It's a pity you bothered to go at all," he said briefly, as he -vanished behind the closet door. - -Catherine turned away from the light, her hand closing into a fist -under her cheek. She wouldn't wrangle, even if he was still out of -sorts. She heard him padding about in stocking feet. He snapped off the -light and scuffed down the hall. She heard him whistling. He would wake -the children, if he weren't more careful. - -He was back again, a stocky figure against the pale square of window as -he shoved it open. He was scurrying for bed. - -"Charles!" Catherine's cry leaped out. "Come here!" - -"Well?" He stood above her. "Brr! It's chilly." - -She reached up for his hands, dragged him down beside her, her arms -slipping up to his shoulders, clasping behind his neck. He resisted -her; she felt stubborn hardness in his muscles. - -"Charles," she begged, "what's happening to us! Don't----" - -"I'm all right," he said. "I thought you were off color." - -Catherine let her hands drop forlornly away. - -"You've been sort of touchy." He cleared his throat. "I'm not perfect. -But I hate this feeling--that you're standing off, waiting to be -critical of me." - -"Oh, I'm not!" Catherine sighed. - -"All right, then." Charles bent down, brushed his lips against her -cheek, and stood up. "Go to sleep. You're tired, I guess." - -Catherine lay motionless, listening to the creak of his bed, the soft -pulling and adjusting of blankets. The wind was cold on her eyelids, on -the tears that crept down. She was humiliated, shamed. She had dropped -her pride and evoked touch--passion--only to find him--her hands flung -open, to escape the lingering sensation of that obdurate, resisting -column of his throat. - -Unbidden, racking, a swift visual image of Stella Partridge, smooth -ivory and jade. She fled away from it. Not that! She wouldn't add -jealousy to her torment. But that eager, forward thrust of his head -as he made his way across the room toward her, and that secret, -honey-mouthed deference in the casual talk of the woman. Oh, no! - -Then, rudely, as if she turned to face some monstrous shape that -pursued her, she looked at the image. Perhaps, if Charles was injured, -outraged, under his reasoning surface, he might turn to Stella. She -wanted something of him, that woman. Perhaps it was love she wanted, -although the hard metallic gleam under the softness of her eyes seemed -passionless, egocentric. - -"Charles," she whispered. What else she might have said, she didn't -know. But Charles was asleep. - - -IV - -The next morning, in the accustomed flurry of baths, breakfast, -dressing, Catherine jeered at her nightmares of the dark. She would -not be a fool, at least. The children were ecstatic about the snow, -which lay in caps and mounds and blankets on the roof tops below -the windows. Marian made snowballs from the window ledge, and tried, -giggling, to wash her father's face. Charles was jovial, amusing -himself with the rôle of good-natured father. Yes, he might go coasting -with them that afternoon. He'd see if he couldn't get away from the -office early. Miss Kelly could telephone him at noon. - -Miss Kelly came in; Flora was belated. - -"Probably the trolley cars are stuck," said Spencer, full of delight at -possible catastrophes the snow might bring. - -Catherine left a note for Flora, with the day's instructions, and -hurried off. She had swung free of the night in a long arc of release. - -The Drive had a dramatic beauty; white morning sunlight piercing the -gaps made by cross streets, long blue shadows stretching from the -buildings, the river gray blue under the clearing sky, the clean, soft -lines of snow turned back by the plows, snow caught in the branches of -trees and shrubbery, like strange fruit; gulls wheeling like winged -bits of snow. By nightfall all the beauty might be trampled and turned -dingy; now--Catherine sat erect, drawing long breaths. - -That noon she would squeeze out a few minutes for some Christmas -shopping. Saturday wasn't a good day, but if she found a doll for -Marian, she could begin to dress it. She thrust her foot into the aisle -and peered down at it. Those shoes wouldn't last until January. Well, -she would have her third check on the twenty-third, and she had repaid -Charles. Funny, how much more it cost to dress herself as working woman -than as mother and wife. Perhaps with the first of the year that -increase would gain material shape. Dr. Roberts had hinted at it again. - -The bus left the Drive and rattled through the city; one note -everywhere, the squeak of shovels against the sidewalks, piles of -grime-edged snow, files of carts heaped and dripping. - -She shivered, hugging her arms close; the last few blocks were always -chilly. Wonderful colors in the great shop windows, exotic, luxurious, -and bevies of shop girls, stepping gingerly over dirty puddles in their -cheap, high-heeled slippers. - -Just a half day of work to-day. She could finish the chapter she had -been writing. As she waited for the elevator, she had a sharp renewal -of herself as a part of this great, downward flood. The morning ride -was a symbol, a bridge across which she passed. She nodded to the -elevator boy; his grin made her part of the intimate life of this huge -building. You'd expect to shrink, she thought, as the elevator shot -upwards--swallowed up, and instead you swell, as if you swallowed it -all yourself. - -Dr. Roberts hadn't come in. Dropping into her work was like entering a -quiet, clean place of solitude. She reread the pages she had written, -the beginning of her full report, and then wrote slowly, finding -pleasure in the search for a phrase which should be clear glass through -which the idea, the hard, definite fact, might be visible. The jangle -of the telephone bell broke into a sentence. - -It was Miss Kelly. Flora hadn't shown up. What did Mrs. Hammond wish -done about luncheon? - -"Hasn't she sent any word?" The picture of her kitchen, empty, and -confused, rose threateningly in the quiet office. "Well, you can find -something for the children. I'll be home early." - -If something was wrong with Flora! Catherine pushed away the image of -disaster, finished her sentence, and glanced at her watch. Almost one. -Lucky it was Saturday. She would have time--vaguely--to see to this. -Better not stop for any shopping. - -When she reached home, the children rushed to the door, accoutered in -leggings and mufflers for coasting. - -"Mother! Come with us. Daddy's coming!" Spencer and Marian tugged at -her arms, and Letty pulled at her skirt. - -"I can't, chickens." Catherine hugged them, each one. She loved the -exuberance of their greeting, the sharp delight of contrast after the -hours away. "Miss Kelly is all ready." She glanced at Miss Kelly's -serene face. "Flora hasn't shown up? Nor sent word? I'll have to look -her up. To-morrow perhaps I can go." - -"I gave the children their lunch," explained Miss Kelly, "but of course -I had no time to set the kitchen to rights." - -She certainly hadn't. Catherine gave one dismayed look at the disorder, -and decided to hunt for Flora first. She must be sick. - - -V - -Catherine tried to pick a firm way through the slush of the sidewalk. -Flora must live in this block. She peered at the numbers over dark -doorways, under the sagging zigzags of fire escapes. The snow had been -thrown up in a dirty barricade along the edge of the walk, and over -the upset garbage and ash cans, down the short mounds, shrieked and -wailed and coasted innumerable children. It was like a diminutive -and distorted minstrel show, thought Catherine, stepping hastily out -of the path of a small black baby spinning down into the slush on a -battered tin tray. Snow on the East Side, and on the Drive--she had a -wry picture of the beauty of the morning. - -There. 91-A. She stood at the entrance, with a hesitant glance into the -dim hall. Absurd to be nervous about entering. She had never seen where -Flora lived, although she had heard the dirge of rising rent and lack -of repairs which Flora occasionally intoned. She walked to the first -door and knocked boldly. - -"Who dar?" The voice bellowed through the door. - -"Does Mrs. Flora Lopez live in this house?" Catherine had a notion that -the dim house gave a flutter of curiosity, as if doors moved cautiously -ajar. "I'm Mrs. Hammond," she added sharply to the closed door. "She -works for me." - -The door swung open a crack, and a fat dusky face appeared, one white -eye gleaming. - -"You wants Mis' Flora Lopez?" - -"Do you know her? Which is her flat?" - -"Sure I knows her." The round eye held her in hostile inspection. "Is -you f'om the police station, too?" - -"No. She works for me. Is she sick?" Queer, how that sense of listening -enmity flowed down the crooked stairway. "Which is her flat?" - -"She ain't sick, exac'ly. Ain't she come to wuk to-day?" - -"Who zat, want Flora?" The voice came richly down the stairway. - -"Which is her flat?" insisted Catherine. - -The door opened wider, disclosing a ponderous figure with great soft -hips and bosom, a small child in a torn red sweater clinging to her -skirts and looking up with round frightened eyes. - -"She lives on the top flo' rear. I donno as she's home." - -Catherine climbed the stairs. There's nothing to be afraid of, she told -herself stubbornly. The sweetish odor of leaking gas, the cold, damp -smell of broken plaster and torn linoleum in the unheated halls choked -her as she climbed. She was sure doors opened and closed as she passed. -She felt herself an intruder, with profound racial antipathy, fear, -stirring within her and around her. I won't go back, she thought. She -tried to step boldly across the hall, but her rubbers made a muffled, -sucking note. At last the top floor. She knocked at the rear door. No -sound; merely the strained sense of someone listening. - -"Flora!" she called sharply. "Are you there? It's Mrs. Hammond." - -Silence. Feet shuffled on bare boards behind that door. - -"Flora!" she called again, and the door crept slowly open. - -"Why, Flora! What _is_ the matter?" Catherine gazed at her. Short hair -raying like twisted wires about her face, one eye an awful purple-green -lump, the wide mouth cut and swollen, the broad nostrils distended--a -dumb-show, a gargoyle of miserable agony. "What has happened to you?" - -Flora stepped back, pushing ajar a door. - -"Come in, Mis' Hammond." Her voice had the exhausted echo of riotous -weeping. "Come in and set down. I was goin' to write you a message." - -Catherine followed her into the living room, immaculate, laboriously -furnished. The table, purple plush arm-chairs--Flora had told her when -she ordered those from the installment house; lace curtains draped on a -view of tenements and dangling clothes. - -"What has happened, Flora?" Catherine had lost her uneasiness. Flora -had a vestige of the familiar, at least; her gray bathrobe was an old -one Catherine had given her. - -Flora sat down in a purple chair and began to rock back and forth, -moaning. Tears ran down her cheeks, gleaming on the bruises. - -At a sound behind the door Catherine turned, to find the solemn round -eyes of a little boy fixed upon her. He scuttled over to Flora, burying -his face on her knees. - -"Is he yours?" - -"Yes'm." Flora cradled one arm about him. "Yes'm. He's my baby." Her -voice rose suddenly into a wail. "An' my li'l girl, where's she! They -took her off to shut her up--all 'count of that"--she shook one fist in -air--"that man!" - -Gradually, in broken and violent bits, Catherine gathered the story. -Flora had married her professional gentleman. He hadn't wanted her to -keep the children. They were hers, she had worked for them always, and -dressed them nice, and left them with a neighbor when she went off to -work. She wanted them to grow up nice. She even put little socks on -her girl, and the teacher at school said why should she dress her up -that way, picking on her because she was black. She was twelve. Then -Flora found out her professional gentleman had another wife down -south. She let him stay, anyway, "so long as we'd been married, and -he was handsome." Then she had to put him on bail to leave the little -girl alone, always fooling with her. "I told her to stay with Mis' -Jones till I got home." And finally--Catherine was cold with pity and -horror--Flora had discovered that he hadn't let Malviny alone, that he -had ruined her, and stolen the money she had saved to pay the rent, and -was packing his suitcase to leave. "I started out to kill him," she -said briefly, "but he knocked me down." Then the police had come. - -"They said I let Malviny run the streets. She's awful pretty, Mis' -Hammond, most white, she is. Her pa was pale. I was working for her, -wasn't I?" Flora's gesture was wide with despair. "Providin' for her -and him--" she rocked the boy against her breast. "I done the best I -could. She wanted things, and he give her money. She's only twelve." - -At last Catherine fled down the stairs, feeling that perversion -and horror and the failure of honest, respectable effort barked at -her heels. Flora couldn't come back to her, not at once. She had -to testify. She won't ever come back, thought Catherine. She'll be -ashamed, because I know all this. She had, when Catherine had tried -to offer sympathy, shrunk away, into the collapse of the structure of -herself as competent, self-respecting working woman. "I done my bes'!" -Her pitiful wail dogged Catherine's feet through the brittle, freezing -slush of the street. - - -VI - -Catherine, in an old house dress, waded determinedly through the mash -of the disordered apartment. Dishes, sweeping, dinner--Miss Kelly had -straightened the children's rooms. She was too well paid for general -utility. I suppose I am inefficient, thought Catherine. Just to be -caught in this mess. But what else can I do? What would a man do in -my place? She pulled a chair near the kitchen table and sat down to -the task of shelling lima beans, while she speculated as to Charles's -procedure. He wouldn't plunge himself into the mess, at least. He would -leave it, until someone else stepped in. That's one trouble with women, -she decided. They have all these habits of responsibility. Now I should -be off playing somewhere, after this week, and here I am! - -Charles came in with the children. Miss Kelly, discreetly, had left -them at the steps. She's got the right idea, thought Catherine grimly. -She's not going to be roped in for something she's not paid for. -Letty's cheeks were peonies, her eyes bright stars, and her leggings -were soaked with melted snow. - -"We had one grand time, didn't we, chicks!" Charles stamped out of his -rubbers and shook off his snow-spattered coat. "Had a snow fight and -Letty and I beat." - -"We landed some hum-dingers right in your neck, anyways," said Spencer. - -"Hum-dings in neck!" shrieked Letty. "Hum-gings in neck!" - -"You all look as if you'd landed snow everywhere." Catherine shooed -Marian and Spencer into their rooms in quest of dry clothing, ran back -to the kitchen to lower the gas under the potatoes, and returned to -strip Letty of her damp outer layers. - -"Even my shirt is wet." Marian giggled, shaking her bloomers until bits -of snow flew over the rug. "It was awful fun, Muvver. And we coasted -belly-bump. Is that a nice word to say?" - -"And now we are starved, like any army after a fight," came a sturdy -bellow from Charles. - -Bedraggled and glowing, warmly fragrant--Catherine laughed at them as -she tugged the pink flannel pajamas onto Letty's animated legs. - -"There!" she kissed her, gave the tousled yellow floss a swift brush, -and carried her into the dining room to set her safely behind the bar -of her high-chair. "Supper and then to bed you go, after this exciting -day." - -"What's this about the dusky Flora?" Charles came into the kitchen. - -"I'll tell you about it later." Catherine spoke hastily. Tired as she -was, their home-coming had given her the old sweet rush of pleasure, of -safety, of possession. She wanted to keep it untouched, free of that -horror and pity. - - * * * * * - -Much later, when the children were in bed, Charles strolled into the -kitchen and reached for a dish towel. Catherine looked up at him as he -rubbed a tumbler with slow care. - -"Like old times, isn't it, eh?" He set the glass on the shelf. - -Catherine swallowed her sigh. - -"Me wiping dishes, and telling you about what I've been doing--" Was he -deliberately wistful? - -"You needn't wait for dishes, need you, to talk?" Catherine's smile -blunted the slight edge in her words. - -"Somehow, nowadays, there never seems any chance. Nights you have to go -to sleep, and day times you aren't here." - -"Last night you went to sleep." - -"Oh, last night!" Charles with a wave of his towel sent last night into -the limbo of things best forgotten. - -"Well, tell me. What have you been doing? To-day, for instance." - -"I had two interviews this morning." Charles paused. "With two -different publishers' representatives. They are keen about this new -book on tests. Ready to make me an offer right now, without even seeing -an outline. Pretty good, eh?" - -"Fine! That's proof of your standing, isn't it?" - -"Partly. Partly just the current fad for anything psychological, and -then the clinic behind the book is a factor." - -"And you have the book--is it half done?" - -"It's getting along." Charles had drawn in his lower lip and was -chewing it thoughtfully. "The clinic is furnishing material. I've been -wondering. Of course Miss Partridge did the organizing there, and -she's done most of the tabulating of results. She suggested that we -collaborate on a book. What would you think of such a scheme?" - -"I'd think," cried Catherine in a flash of irritation, "that it was -pure silk for Miss Partridge! That clinic was your scheme, not hers, -and----" - -"I haven't committed myself." Charles busied himself with a pile of -dishes on the shelf, rearranging them critically. His expansiveness -contracted visibly. "You needn't be so sure I'd agree with her. I might -give her a chapter to do." - -"Why doesn't she write her own books?" - -"She isn't that type, the type that seeks expression, I mean. She is -the competent, executive type. It seems a pity for her not to assemble -her results." - -In silence Catherine hung away the dish-pan and scrubbed the sink. Be -careful, she warned herself. Don't be cattish; this may be entirely -reasonable. - -"I'm sorry you don't like her." Charles was solemn. "She thinks you are -an unusually sweet----" - -"She does! She little knows." Catherine grasped desperately for the -fraying thread of control. After all, why shouldn't they write a -book together? She turned quickly, to find Charles eying her with a -cautious, investigatory stare. - -"You know--" she grinned at him. "I may write a book with Dr. Roberts. -He was looking over my notes yesterday, and he thinks we can find a -firm to publish the report, as a marketable book. Of course, the Bureau -puts out a report, too." - -A thin veil of blankness drew itself over the curiosity in Charles's -face. Before he spoke, however, the bell in the hall sounded. - -"Company to-night!" Catherine drooped. "I'm worn to a frazzle." - -It was Margaret; her gay, "Hello, King Charles!" floated reassuringly -to Catherine, dabbing powder hastily on her nose, brushing back her -hair from her forehead. - -"I brought my partner in to meet you two. Amy, this is the King, and -my sister, Catherine--Amy Spurgeon." - -Margaret, clear, sparkling, watching them with her humorous grin, as -if she had staged a vaudeville act. Amy Spurgeon, slight, dark, her -lean, high-cheekboned face sallow and taciturn over the collar of her -squirrel coat, a flange of stiff hair black under the soft brim of her -gray fur hat. Catherine nibbled at her in swift glances as they sat -down in the living room. Margaret had talked about her. "Amy has to -have a passion for something." She looked it, with the criss-crosses -of fine lines at the corners of her black eyes, and the deep straight -lines from nostrils past her mouth. Militant suffragist, pacifist--"She -had a passion for the Hindus last winter. Now she has one for me. I -can't be a cause, exactly, but she finds plenty of causes on the side." -She looks like an Indian, decided Catherine, a temperamental, rather -worn and fiery Indian. - -Margaret and Charles were sparring; they couldn't even telephone each -other without crossing points. - -"If they are feeble-minded, why bother with them? You can't change -them. Sentimental bosh, this coddling of idiots." - -"But they work better, I tell you! Is that sentimental? They make more -money for their bosses. That should appeal to your male sense of what -is sensible." - -"Even if they didn't work better"--Amy's voice shot in, a deep throaty -tone, flexible with emotion--"Every human being has a right to -happiness and comfort." - -"Even human beings with brains have some difficulty cashing in on that -right," said Catherine. If Amy and Charles started in on society with -the _vox populi_ stop out, they would fight all night! Amy stared at -her with deliberate inspection. - -Presently Catherine told them about Flora. Flora had, since the -afternoon, pressed so closely to the surface of her thoughts that she -was bound to come out. - -"You shouldn't have gone into a nigger tenement alone!" said Charles. - -"Why not?" demanded Amy. "Aren't negroes people?" - -"I did feel queer, with the house oozing excitement along with smells." -Catherine smiled at Charles. "But it wasn't dangerous. Only unpleasant." - -"Poor Flora." Margaret was grave. "I didn't know she had any children." - -"I knew she was always pleased to have clothes given her." Catherine -shivered. "The socks were pitiful! A symbol of her effort." - -"Well"--Charles drew at his pipe and paused, impressively--"you can see -what happens to a family when the mother isn't at home." - -"Listen to the King!" Margaret flared indignantly. "What about the man? -Living on her, and----" - -"If she'd made him support her, he might have had more steadiness." - -"I suppose"--Amy drawled--"you go on the theory that men are so -unstable that they can't stand freedom." - -Charles had a dangerous little twitch under one eye. Catherine flung -herself into the whirl of antagonism. - -"Will you tell me, some of you, what I am to do now? Flora won't -come back. She'll be drawn into trials and all that for a while, and -then she'll hunt up a new place, where no one knows about her. And -meantime----" - -"Telephone an agency," said Amy. - -"I'll send you one of my girls." Margaret's glance at Charles devilled -him. "I have one who can work about three months before she has to go -to a lying-in hospital, and she's just weak-minded enough to make a -good domestic." - -"I can't," said Catherine, "haul in a stranger from an agency to leave -here all day." - -"Well, then," Margaret was briskly matter of fact, "there's just one -thing to do. Give up this foolish notion of a career, and step into -Flora's empty place." - -Charles made a little leap at that idea, and then sank away from it, -with a faint suggestion in his mouth of a disappointed fish watching a -baited hook yanked out of reach. - -"Or," went on Margaret gravely, "Charles can stay at home. So much of -your work could be done here anyway, Charles. One eye on the stew and -the other on some learned tome." - -"Why not?" Amy's tense question knocked the drollery out of the -picture. "Why wouldn't that be possible? After all, Mrs. Hammond, you -have spent years doing that very thing." - -"The King would burn the stew, of course." Margaret rose, sending a -light curtsey toward Charles. "Come along, Amy. If we're to walk home. -Why don't you ask Sam, if that's the elevator boy's name, if he hasn't -a lady friend out of work? That's what we do." - -When Catherine returned from the door, her eyes crinkled at the sight -of Charles sunk behind the pages of his evening paper. - -"Poor old thing!" she said. "Did they rumple his fur the wrong way?" - -He crashed the sheets down on his knee, and lifted his face, the tips -of his ears red. - -"Whatever does Margaret want to lug that thing around with her for." - -"I guess she's all right." Catherine was at the window, looking at the -pale glowing bowl of the city sky before she drew the shade. "Devoted -to Margaret." - -"Ugh! I'd like that devoted to me!" - -"Don't worry!" Catherine drew the shade, and turned laughing. "She -won't be. She seems violently anti-man." - -"Wasn't she one of the females they had to feed through the nose down -there at Washington?" - -"That's rather to her credit, isn't it?" - -"She's that fanatic type, all right. All emotion, unbalanced, no brain. -Now Margaret has some intelligence. But she's being influenced by this -woman. I can see a difference in her. To think that she chose herself -to leave your mother for that!" - -"I think few people influence Margaret." Catherine moved quietly about -the room, picking up books left by Spencer, a toy of Letty's, Marian's -doll. "She's hard headed, you know." - -"Well," said Charles with great finality, "she won't ever capture any -man while she has that female attached to her. Great mistake for a nice -girl like Margaret to tie herself up with that woman. She seems the -real paranoia type." - -"Now you've finished her," Catherine rumpled his hair gently as she -passed his chair, "tell me what on earth to do. About a maid, I mean." - -"Don't know, I'm sure." Charles frowned briefly and picked up his -paper again. "Advertise, perhaps," he added. - -Catherine's eyes, pondering on the crisp russet crown of his head, bent -intently over the paper, hardened. He didn't know, and he didn't mean -to concern himself. Her problem, not his. It wasn't his fault if she -had no time to hunt up a new maid. On the contrary, Flora's defection -was in a way her fault, a failure of judgment in choice. - -"I'm going to bed," she said. "I'm tired to death." - -"Right-o," said Charles. - -Her serge dress lay in a heap across a chair, where she had dropped -it that afternoon. Careless of her. She shook it out, regarding it -critically. She should have another dress; perhaps a fresh set of vest -and cuffs would carry this one along for a time. As she hung it away -she brushed down a coat of Charles. She held it at arm's length, her -mouth puckered. She had forgotten to leave that suit at the tailor's -that morning, as Charles had asked. - -She sat down before the mirror to brush her hair. What had he said last -night--that she deliberately neglected the little things he asked, that -she stood off, being critical. Was it true? Her hair drooped in two -long dark wings over her shoulders as she sat idle, thinking. She did -feel separate, no longer held in close bondage to the irking, petty -things, like darned socks or suits that must be cleaned, or studs in -shirt fronts, or favorite desserts. They used to be momentous, those -things. It's true! She flung her brush onto the dresser, where it -slid along, clattering against the tray. Now I do stand off, a little -disdainful, when he makes a fuss, because I'm not a faithful valet. -Well! She stood up hastily, braiding her hair with quick fingers. -What of it? If I spoiled him, all these years, then I must take the -consequences. But it's not--less love, is it? Or did he love me more as -his body servant? Are men like that? - -She heard Bill's voice, "Don't ever be frantic, Catherine." Bill wasn't -like that. She had almost forgotten Bill and last night. What a muddle -of feeling in yesterday and to-day! Bill,--and Charles. Ah, she was -critical. Charles was right. Critical of the very quality she had -always seen and loved. His--yes, his childishness. Bill had dignity, -maturity, that was it. Even in his moment of disclosure. He didn't take -it out on Henrietta. Didn't smear her even faintly with blame. - -She listened an instant as she went down the hall. Charles hadn't -moved. In the bathroom she hung away the towels and threw discarded -small stockings into the hamper. Then, with a little rush, grinning at -herself, she filled the tub. Charles could wait. - -Later, drowsily warm and relaxed, she heard Charles tiptoe into the -room. She heard his "brr!" at the chill wind through the opened window. -Still later she felt him bending cautiously above her. She heard -herself breathing slowly, evenly, until his feet scuffed across the -floor and his bed groaned softly. I can't wake up, she thought,--buried -deep under soft, warm sand--heavy--even if he--wants me. - - -VII - -Sam, the elevator boy, didn't know a single lady as was out of work. -Catherine went on down to the basement. Perhaps the janitor would know. -He called his wife. Catherine, in the door, glimpsed the rooms with -their short, high windows, full of white iron beds and innumerable -tidies. Mrs. O'Lay filled the door, her bulk flowing unrestrictedly -above and below her narrow apron strings. - -She had a mind to try the job herself. Her daughter had come home with -a baby, and could mind the telephone when Sam was off, and all. Her -double chins quivered violently at little Mr. O'Lay's protest. Right in -the same house, an' all. "If I try it, he won't be all the time leaving -the fires for me to tend, and I'll turn an honest penny myself." - -She's a fat straw to grasp at, thought Catherine. If she can get -between the stove and the sink---- - -"Sure, I been cooking all these years, and himself ain't dead yet. Nor -one of the eleven children. It'd be a fine change for me." - -They decided finally that Mrs. O'Lay should come up that afternoon to -"learn the ropes." "I'd come up right now, but himself asked in his -folks for dinner." - -What luck! Catherine hurried back to her own apartment. Her own rooms -look neat, and she is at least a pair of hands. - -The children were waiting impetuously for Catherine to take them -coasting. Marian had suggested Sunday School. Miss Kelly thought they -should go, she explained. - -"Miss Kelly may take you, then, on her Sunday," said Catherine. "I -can't, to-day. And I'm afraid the snow is almost gone." - -Spencer and Marian, their leggings already on, wiped the breakfast -dishes, while Letty dragged a battered train up and down the hall. - -"You come too, Daddy." Marian tugged at Charles's arm. - -"No. I'm going to have a nice, quiet morning with my book." He stepped -hastily out of the path of Letty's assault. - -"I've left the potatoes and roast on the shelf." Catherine looked in at -his study door. "Could you think to light the oven and stick them in, -at twelve, if we aren't back? Mother's coming in for dinner." - -"I'll remember." Marian giggled at her father's grimace, and they were -off, the four of them. - -On the slope Catherine chose as safe, the snow had been worn thin by -countless runners. Spencer and Marian had one Flyer, and Catherine -drew Letty on the small sled up and down the walk, to the loud tune of -"Gid-ap! horsey! Gid-ap!" until she was breathless and flushed. Then -she coaxed Letty into the construction of a snow house, while she sat -on the bench beside her. The river was gray under a lead sky; the steep -shores of New Jersey were mottled tawny and white. Spencer and Marian -puffed up the hill, to sit solemnly beside her, their legs dangling. -Letty, a small scarlet ball in her knit bloomers and sweater, an -aureole of yellow fluff about her round, pink face, crooned delightedly -as she patted her lumps of snow. - -"An', Muvver," went on Marian, "the little boy made his dog drag the -sled up the hill, and the doggie cried." - -"He had snow in his toes," insisted Spencer. "He didn't cry because he -had to drag the sled." - -"Yes, he did. It was a very heavy sled." - -Some one stopped at the end of the bench, and Catherine glanced up. - -"Why, Bill!" She moved along, but Marian danced up. - -"Oh, Mr. Bill! Come take a belly-bump with us, Mr. Bill. _Can_ you go -belly-bump?" - -"I think so." Bill smiled across her head at Catherine. - -"Don't let her bully you, if you don't want to." But they were off, -Bill flat on the sled, Spencer clinging to his shoulders, and Marian -sprawled on top of Spencer. Letty poked herself erect and opened her -mouth for a shriek. - -"Here, Letty!" Catherine pulled her, stiff and unbending, onto her -knee. "If you don't yell, perhaps Bill will take you down. Don't scare -him." Ridiculous and amusing, those flying legs. Like a scooting -centipede. - -"You come try it, Catherine." They had climbed up the slope to her -again. - -"Take Letty first." And then Catherine tried it, while the children -stood in a row, shrieking with delight. "Go belly-bump, Muvver!" How -Marian loved that word! But Catherine insisted on sitting up, while -Bill knelt behind her to steer. A swift, flying moment, the air shrill -in her ears, and laughing, they grated to a standstill on bare ground -at the foot of the hill. - -"If we had a real hill, now." Bill dragged the sled up, one hand firm -under Catherine's arm. "I remember a hill we used to coast down when I -was little. It seemed miles long, on the way up, at least." - -Lucky he came along, thought Catherine, contentedly. Or he might have -hated to see me, after Friday night. - -"Who is that with the children?" she asked. A figure at the crest -of the slope, coppery brown fur gleaming in the dull light. Miss -Partridge! - -"Mr. Bill!" called Marian, as the two plodded nearer. "Take Miss -Partridge down just once." - -Catherine felt, indignantly, the flush deepen in her cheeks. Why should -she mind---- - -"Good morning," she called. "Won't you try it?" - -"So sorry," came the neat, clipped accents. "I must run along to -dinner. It looks like great sport." Her cold brown eyes moved from -Catherine to Bill. A flash of small teeth. "Great sport. Good-by." A -wave of a small, gloved hand, and she was off, swinging smartly along. - -"What time is it?" Catherine avoided Bill's smile. "One! My gracious! -Come along, you children." - -Bill drew Letty up to the street. "Have to walk here. Snow's all gone," -and when Letty sat obdurately on the sled, crying "Gid-ap!" he swung -her up to his shoulder. She rode home in state, while Spencer and -Marian argued about snow in the handball court, about what the carts -did with the snow that was shoveled away; and Catherine walked rather -silently at Bill's side. - -Bill deposited Letty on the steps at the apartment entrance, where she -amused herself by bouncing' her stomach against the low railing and -gug-gugging at Spencer and Marian, who clattered down the area stairs -with their sleds. - -"I'm glad you were out for a walk this morning." Catherine wanted to -break through the thin ice of constraint--or was it better to pretend -that she did not see it? "I was afraid you might stay away from--us," -she said quickly. - -"That's very good of you." Bill spoke formally, his eyes on the -children pelting up the steps. - -"Mr. Bill, would you go coasting again?" Spencer stuck his elbow up -to ward off a snowball from Marian. "You stop that, Marian. I'm not -playing now. Would you?" He frowned at his sister. - -"I'm playing." Catherine pinioned Marian's snowy mittens in her own -hands. "An' anyway, the snow'll be gone, won't it, Muvver?" - -"It'll snow again this winter, won't it?" snorted Spencer. - -"When it does, we'll have a coast," Bill said gravely. - -For a moment he met Catherine's glance, and suddenly the ice was gone, -so suddenly that Catherine almost laughed out in delight. "Will you -come, too?" he asked. - -"Don't wait for the next snow." Catherine gave Marian a soft push -toward the door. "Run along. Take Letty's hand, please." Her smile -at Bill was grateful; having admitted her past his barriers, he was -unresentful. "Come sooner!" She extended her hand, felt the quick -pressure of his fingers. - -Like a secret pact--she wondered a little, as she went into the hall. -Words are clumsy, with Bill, as if he dwelt so far beneath ordinary -surfaces that words didn't reach him. - -"You like Mr. Bill, too, don't you, Mother?" Spencer pressed against -her confidentially as the elevator creaked up to their floor. - -"Yes, I do." - -"He's a nice man," Marian agreed. "I'd like to marry him." - -"He's got a wife, silly," objected Spencer. "And you're only a little -girl and little girls don't get married." - -"Pretty soon I can." Marian turned her back on Spencer and darted out -of the elevator door, dragging Letty briskly after her. - -Spencer's eyes were wide with disapproval, but Catherine laughed at -him, and opened the apartment door. - -Charles sat at his desk. He looked up ruefully. - -"Home again! Say, I forgot all about your potatoes." - -"Oh, well." Catherine was undisturbed. "You'll just have to wait longer -for your dinner, then." As she hurried to the kitchen she heard Marian, -"An' Mr. Bill came and coasted, and Muvver coasted with him, only not -belly-bump," and Charles, "So that's why you're so late, is it?" - - -VIII - -Mrs. Spencer came presently. Catherine rose from the oven, blowing -wryly on a burnt thumb. - -"Take Gram's coat and hat, please, Spencer." She kissed her mother's -cool pink cheek. "How well you look!" - -"What a pretty chain!" Marian touched the wrought silver and dull blue -stones. "Isn't it, Muvver?" - -"Margaret gave it to me yesterday, to match my new dress." Mrs. Spencer -crinkled her eyes shrewdly. "Propitiation. She can't get over her -surprise that I stand her absence so well." - -"I suppose that freak woman put her up to it," said Charles, from the -doorway. - -"Um." Mrs. Spencer tucked her hand under his arm. "Changes are good for -us. But Margaret must have had an ill conscience. She's overthoughtful." - -"You see"--Catherine stirred the thickening briskly--"you aren't -behaving as a Freudian mother should. You are always unexpected." - -"Freud!" Mrs. Spencer made a grotesque little grimace. "What does -he know about mothers! But I did think"--she glanced sidewise at -Charles--"that Margaret might find things less convenient." - -"She will!" Charles patted her hand. "Don't you worry, Mother Spencer. -These violent crazes for--for freedom--or people--or causes--wear -themselves out." - -Catherine lifted her head quickly, to find her mother's eyes -quizzically upon her. They meant her, too! - -"Want to see my book?" Charles steered Mrs. Spencer out of the kitchen. -"Catherine's too busy to talk." - - * * * * * - -Dinner went smoothly; the children told their grandmother about -coasting, and she asked about school, about Miss Kelly. She wanted to -take them to the Metropolitan that afternoon, to hear a lecture for -children. - -"Aren't there awful jams?" Catherine sighed. Piles of mending, her -serge dress to freshen,--she couldn't take the afternoon off, too. - -"Not too jammed for pleasure. But you needn't go." Mrs. Spencer's eyes -narrowed. "I suppose you use your Sunday for a scrap-bag of odd jobs, -like all other working women?" - -"I certainly do." Catherine was abrupt. "But you know you prefer the -children without me as mentor." - -She caught a quick exchange of glances between Charles and her mother. -They've been talking about me--she simmered with resentment--and -Charles has won her over to his side, whatever it is. - -She had proof of that later. Mrs. Spencer and the children had come -home from their sojourn, and after they had given Catherine an excited -and strange account of the habits of a tribe of Indians, Spencer and -Marian had gone to bed. - -"What did you do this afternoon?" Mrs. Spencer laid aside her magazine -as Catherine came wearily back to the living room. - -"I showed Mrs. O'Lay where to find the various tools for her new -job"--Catherine had explained Flora's absence earlier--"conducted her -initiation ceremony. And washed out a collar, and darned." - -Mrs. Spencer nodded. - -"When you might have been with your children. Are you sure, Cathy"--she -paused--"sure that you aren't losing the best of your life?" - -"But I'm not!" Catherine sat erect in her chair, her cheeks flushed. -"On the contrary, I am with the children, and love it, and they enjoy -me far more than when I was their constant bodyguard." - -"Charles was telling me about Spencer." Mrs. Spencer drew the gray silk -of her skirt into tiny folds. "It seemed pitiful." - -Catherine was silent a moment, fighting against the swift recurrence of -that frightful hour, and against a wrathful sense of injustice. - -"Children run away, often," she said. "I think Spencer just happened to -catch at that excuse--of my not being here." - -Mrs. Spencer shook her head. - -"Charles seemed to feel----" - -"He told me just how he felt." Catherine flung up her head. - -Mrs. Spencer's inspection of her daughter was reflective. - -"I don't like to interfere. You know that. But--Charles doesn't seem -happy." - -"He has no right to----" - -"He didn't say that." Mrs. Spencer was stern. "I gathered it. His work -isn't going very well. He thinks you aren't interested in it." - -Catherine turned her head quickly. Had she heard the door of his study -squeak? - -"I am. He knows it. Far more than he cares about what I do." - -"That's all." Mrs. Spencer rose, preening her skirts like a small bird. -"I won't say another word. But think it over, Cathy. There's so much -that's crooked and wrenched in the air these days. I don't want you led -astray by it. I must run along. Alethea will be expecting me." - -In the turmoil of her feelings, Catherine had a sharp sense of the -bright, valiant spirit of her mother. She didn't really like to -interfere. Charles had coerced her into this! Something wistful and -picturesque about the two elderly women, Mrs. Alethea Bragg and her -mother, moving serenely about in the great city, nibbling at music, at -theaters, at Fifth Avenue shops, taking quiet amusement out of days -free from the hectic confusion of trying to live. - -"Please don't be concerned about me, Mother." She threw her arm around -the firm, neat shoulders. "I'm honestly trying to hunt for a scheme of -things that will work for everybody. Not just me. Come in oftener. The -children adore it." - - -IX - -Miss Kelly had brought the children down for a visit to the Christmas -toy-land in some of the large stores, and at noon Catherine met them -for luncheon. Letty had shared the expedition for the first time, -and the kaleidoscopic displays had goaded her into a frenzy of noisy -delight. - -"She's just roared the whole morning, Muvver." Marian was uneasy at the -scrutiny of amused neighbors in the tea room. But Miss Kelly diverted -Letty into contemplation of an enormous baked potato. - -"I want you to come with us, Mother." Spencer felt under his chair for -his cap; he hadn't been quite sure where he should put that cap. "You -always did----" - -"You see, I have to stay in the office, except at noon," Catherine -explained. She was conscious of admiration for the deftness with -which Miss Kelly had subdued Letty, had arranged the luncheon for the -children and herself. "I don't have a vacation until Christmas day. -Tell me what you saw." - -A recital in duo. Letty had tried to hug every Santa Claus they had -seen, even the Salvation Army Santa on the corner. Extraordinary and -delectable toys. They couldn't decide what they wanted themselves. - -"It is lucky we came down early," said Miss Kelly. "The crowds began to -come before we left." - -"Did you buy your gifts?" - -"I think Spencer bought me one," cried Marian. "He made me turn my -back----" - -"You shouldn't think about that," said Spencer, earnestly. "If it's -Christmas, you shouldn't even think you've got a present." - -"You did buy me one!" Marian wriggled ecstatically in her chair. "I -know you did!" - -Catherine waited with them for a home-bound bus. Spencer pulled her -head down and whispered in her ear, "Mother, couldn't I go to the -office and wait till you come home? I don't want to go with them." - -"It's too many hours, Spencer. You wouldn't know what to do with -yourself." - -"Well, I don't know, anyway." His eyes darkened. "Staying home and no -school and----" - -"Here comes our bus." Miss Kelly marshalled them before her, maneuvered -them neatly up the steps. Catherine waved to them, watched their bus -disappear in the mélêe of cars. Then she edged through the crowd to -the windows, and walked slowly toward the office. The cold sunshine -veneered the intent faces, the displays of gauds and kickshaws. - -Being downtown makes Christmas quite different, she thought. An -enormous advertising scheme. That's it. Five more shopping days before -Christmas. Look at that window! She strolled past it, her eyes bright -with derision. Extraordinary, useless, expensive things, good for -gifts, and nothing else on earth. Christmas belonged in the country, in -the delicate mystery and secrecy with which children could invest it. -Not in these glaring windows. A saturnalia of selling, that's Christmas -in New York, she thought, darting across the street as the traffic -officer's signal released the flood of pedestrians. Something strained, -feverish, in the crowds. Probably half of them with empty purses. Like -her own. - -Dr. Roberts stood at her window, waiting for her. - -"I've been talking with President Waterbury, Mrs. Hammond, and I wished -to see you at once." He pulled reflectively at his pointed beard. -"There are various ins and outs here. I don't know that you've been -here long enough to discover them." - -Catherine wondered, with faint discomfort, whether President Waterbury -had disapproved of something she had done. - -"A deplorable jealousy, for example, between departments." He cleared -his throat. - -Catherine sat down. She had learned to wait until Dr. Roberts had sent -off preliminary sputtering fireworks before he uncovered his serious -purpose. - -"I happened to learn that Smithson, in the local social department, -was interviewing Dr. Waterbury. Had seen him twice. So I was at -once suspicious. Smithson, you've met him? Well, he's the type of -parasite this kind of organization attracts, unfortunately. We haven't -many here, but they exist. Afraid to finish up a job, because then -another may not turn up. He's nursed along his study of sanitation, I -should blush to say how long. No doubt the buildings in his original -investigation have crumbled into decay. And he hasn't published a word. -But he can't put off publication much longer, you see. And so he hit -upon this other scheme. He doesn't belong in our field." Dr. Roberts's -bright little eyes snapped, his beard waggled in a fury. "But he had -the audacity to go to Waterbury with this suggestion. He wants to -make the field study for me! He--he--" Dr. Roberts stuttered tripping -furiously over his consonants. "H-he of-ff-fered to go out west, to -gather field mat-t-terial for us. Told Waterbury that I couldn't -go, as I was in charge of things here at headquarters. He had almost -convinced the President. He's smooth. Smooth!" - -"But why on earth does he want to go?" Catherine's voice placated the -irate little man. "It certainly isn't his kind of work." - -"Not at all. Not at all. But he sets himself up for a dexterous -investigator. And Waterbury likes him. The point is this. I can't -very well go myself. But you can! I pointed out to Dr. Waterbury that -logically you were the person to go." - -"To go where, Dr. Roberts?" Catherine sat very still, but back in her -head she heard a clear little bell of excitement begin its clanging. - -"You have personality and tact. You've already met two of the chief -educators of the state. You have the work at the tips of your fingers. -Who could be better? Dr. Waterbury agreed with me. It would be an -agreeable diversion, no doubt, and of course," he added with proud -finality, "then I can obtain for you the raise in salary you deserve." - -"You mean that you would like me to make the personal inspection of all -these schools?" Catherine's hand moved vaguely toward the shelves of -catalogues. - -"Just that. It is time now to have that done. Smithson has--yes, he -has snooped around, discovering that. He wants the amusement of such a -trip, and the glory. For it is an excellent thing. For your reputation. -Your expenses are paid, too." - -"Why don't you go yourself?" - -"It's not precisely convenient. There are several meetings in January. -I am to speak at one of them." - -I can't go, thought Catherine. Ridiculous to consider it. - -"Don't decide immediately. Think it over. Let me know--why, after -Christmas. Late in January would do to start. You can no doubt arrange -matters at home. You'd like to talk it over with Dr. Hammond, of -course." - -"How long a trip would it be?" Catherine was vibrating under the -clanging of that bell. No, it wasn't a bell, it was a pulse beating -just back of her ears. - -"You can decide that yourself, practically. Perhaps a month. Depends -upon your arrangement of your route. I say, that's fine!" He rose, -slapping his hands against his pockets. "You'll think it out! It's by -far the best way to convince Waterbury you are serious, and worth a -real salary." - -Think it out! Catherine let the idea play with her. Trains, new cities, -new people, herself as dignified representative of the Bureau. But the -children! She couldn't leave them--and Charles. Her clothes weren't -up to such a position. She could buy more! Her salary would grow to -cover--anything! - - * * * * * - -When she went home in the cold winter twilight, she had coiled the -project into a tight spring, held firmly down below thought. She -couldn't go. How could she? But she had a week before she must reject -it openly. The pressure of that coiled spring was terrific. At any -instant it might tear up through thought and feeling. - -Mrs. O'Lay had been persuaded to divide her day so that she spent part -of the afternoon in her own basement, and then stayed to serve dinner -and clear up the kitchen for Catherine. Charles said he felt as if an -Irish hippopotamus hovered at his elbow at the table, but Catherine -stretched luxuriously into freedom from dinner responsibility. If -Mrs. O'Lay had a sketchy art as a cook, Catherine found dinner more -palatable than when she had flown into domestic harness at the end of -the day. - -The children were full of whispering excitement; the house was made up -of restricted zones. Marian wasn't to put her head inside Spencer's -door, and mother shouldn't look into his closet. Charles had brought -home a tree as tall as Spencer, which spread its branches drooping -and green in front of the living room windows. Miss Kelly, calmly -methodical as ever, helped the children string cranberries and popcorn -to wind through the needles. - -"Saturday we will trim it," Catherine promised them, "and Saturday -night you can each wrap your presents in red paper and label them." - -"Then you'll see them when we are in bed," protested Marian. - -"I won't take a single peek!" - -Saturday afternoon Catherine stood on a chair, hunting on the top shelf -of the hall closet for the box of tinsel and small tree lights. Surely -she had left it there on that shelf. She smiled a little, at her own -warm content. The shimmering joy of the children had thrown its glow -over her, too, and the sardonic Christmas of the streets seemed remote, -unreal. - -"Hurry up, Muvver dear!" called Marian. "Isn't it there?" - -Catherine felt the corner of a pasteboard box, tugged at it, caught it -as it slipped over the edge of the shelf, the cover whirling past her -hand. - -She stared at the contents--a handbag of soft, tooled leather, with -carved fastenings of dull gold. Guiltily she reached for the cover at -her feet. She had stumbled upon Charles's hiding place. He shouldn't -have been so extravagant. Her fingers brushed the soft brown surface -in a swift caress as she pushed on the cover, and rose to tiptoe to -replace the box. - -There, the other box was in the corner. - -"What are you after up there?" Charles spoke sharply from the door. - -Catherine, her cheeks flushing, dragged out the box of trimmings. - -"This!" she called gaily, "for our tree!" She mustn't let him guess -that she had seen that bag. She slipped one hand under his arm, -laughing to herself at his perturbed eyes. He was in Spencer's class, -with that serious fear lest his secret be unearthed before the exact -moment. "Come help trim it. You can arrange the lights." - -And as they worked, Catherine turned tentatively to that coiled spring -of her desire, and found the resilience had vanished. She did not -wish to go. She couldn't leave them. Going off to work each day was -different. She needed that. But to go away, for days and nights---- - -"Moth-er!" Spencer's horrified accents came from the other side of the -tree. "Letty's chewing the cranberry string!" - -"Here, you!" Catherine swung her up to her shoulder. How heavy she was -growing! "You fasten Spencer's star to the top branch." - - -X - -Catherine woke. What was that old crone crouched inquisitively at -the foot of her bed? She lifted her head cautiously; nothing but her -bathrobe over a chair, indistinct in the vague light. It must be very -early. She caught the steady rhythm of Charles's breathing. She curled -down again under the blankets, full of the relaxed ecstasy in which -she had slept so dreamlessly. Dearest--she flowed out toward him in a -great, windless tide. I've found him again, she thought. We're out of -the thickets. - -Dimly she heard the clatter of horses' hoofs, the clinking of milk -bottles. It is morning, then. She listened unconsciously for the shrill -"Merry Christmas!" of the children. They would wake soon. - -As she lay, waiting, effortless, relaxed, a strange phantasy drifted -over her, like morning fog in low places. She couldn't, drowsily, quite -grasp it. Charles had not known about that plan, tugging, tempting -her this last week. How could he have known when she rejected it, -completely? And yet, as if he had felt that rejection, fed upon it, -sacrificial offering to him, he had been grandly magnanimous, lavish, -taking her submission. - -Perhaps--she stirred slowly out of the mists--perhaps it was only her -own knowledge of the rejection, the sacrifice, binding her more closely -to the roots of love, sloughing off that critical, offish self. - -She was wide awake now, thinking clearly. Why had she so suddenly -decided? What, after all, had wiped out the vigor, the great drive in -that desire? She knew just what it meant, her going or her refusal to -go. Refusal marked her forever as half-hearted, as temporizing, so far -as her work went. That she had recognized from the beginning. - -Just the glimpse of that bag, the soft leather under her fingers, had -settled matters. Without a conscious thought. An extravagant, lovely -trifle, but a symbol of the old tender awareness she had so loved in -him. Ridiculous, that a thing could have the power to touch you so. -Behind it, shadowy, serried, other things--trifles, evidence that -Charles gave her sensitive perception, that he loved her, not himself -reflected in her. Just that he knew her purse was serviceable and -shabby. - -Foolish, and adorable. She sighed, happily. He would hate my going -away. He would be outraged. - -A faint sound outside the door, a scuffle of bare feet, and then a -burst into chorus, "Merry Christmas! Merry--" The door flew open, and -in they rushed, the three of them. Catherine shot upright, reaching for -her bathrobe. - -"Merry Christmas, but hurry back where it's warm." - -Marian flung her arms around Charles's sleepy head. "Merry Christmas, -my Daddy!" - -"It's only the middle of the night, isn't it?" Charles groaned. - -"It's Christmas morning, and you hurry and get up!" - -When the arduous business of dressing was over, Charles turned the -switch, and the colored lights starred the little tree. No one was to -unwrap a present until after breakfast. Too much excitement on empty -stomachs, insisted Catherine. The children dragged the table nearer the -door and ranged themselves along the side, so that they could gaze as -they ate. - -Presently the room was a gay litter of tissue paper, colored ribbons, -toys, books. Letty sat in the middle of her pile, revolving like a -yellow top among the exciting things. Spencer had waited tensely while -Catherine unwrapped a large bundle, and then turned a little pale with -delight at her surprise. Yes, he had made it himself, at school. It was -a stand for a fern. He had carved it, too. Book ends for his father. -Then he had immersed himself in his own possessions. - -Charles admired the platinum cuff links in the little purple box -with Catherine's card. Catherine grinned at him. "Nice to give you a -present," she said, "without having to ask you for the money for it." -She regretted her words; his smile seemed forced. - -"What did Daddy give you, Muvver?" Marian, hugging her doll, pressed -against Catherine's knee. - -"Well, this." Catherine held up a box of chocolates. - -"That's not all," said Charles promptly. - -"Here's another." Spencer wiggled along on his knees to hand her -another box. - -Long and thin--that wasn't the same box. Catherine unwrapped the paper, -and long black silk stockings dangled from her fingers. - -"Fine," she said. "Just what I wanted." She waited for a repetition of -"That's not all," but Charles said only, "I didn't know what you would -like." - -She glanced up quickly. He was teasing her--they had joked about useful -gifts. But he had picked up a book. The red cover blurred before -Catherine's eyes. He was pulling his chair up to the table light. - -The stockings clung to her finger tips, as if her bewilderment -electrified them. Mrs. O'Lay, lumbering through the hall to the -kitchen, stopped at the door in loud admiration of the tree. - - * * * * * - -Margaret and Mrs. Spencer were coming in for early dinner. Catherine -flung herself into a numbing round of preparations. Whatever it meant, -the day shouldn't be spoiled for the children. Whatever it meant--he -couldn't have forgotten the bag. She had seen it there. She remembered -his sharp inquiry, as she reached to the shelf. Perhaps her mother -had hidden it, or Margaret. No, he knew about it. A sickening wave of -suspicion curled through her, so that she straightened from her odorous -dish of onions, browning for the dressing. It's his gift, to some one -else. The wave subsided, leaving a line of wreckage--and certainty. - -Funny, how you catch a second wind, when you are knocked out, thought -Catherine, as the day wound along. No one even guessed. The children -were amazingly good. Even Letty went peacefully to her nap, after a few -moments of wracking indecision as to which new toy should accompany -her. Margaret left early, for a Christmas party somewhere. Catherine -and her mother stood in her room, Mrs. Spencer adjusting her veil at -the mirror. They were going out for a Christmas walk with Spencer and -Marian, leaving Mrs. O'Lay in charge. Catherine heard a cautious step -in the hall. She did not move. But she knew when the feet stopped at -the closet door; she heard the faint scrape of pasteboard on the shelf. - -"I'm going over to the office." Charles stopped at the door. "I'll -probably be home before you are." - -"Poor fellow!" Mrs. Spencer cajoled him, her hands patting her sleek -gloves into place. "Must you work even on Christmas Day?" - -"Just a few odds and ends of work." Charles looked uneasy. But he -nodded, and presently the hall door closed after him. - - - - -PART IV - -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 detain you." 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 they couldn'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 end of 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 the children. -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. -But there 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 once dwelt. -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 struck off 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 was laboriously 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 be fresh 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 barely swing 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 blind -circles, 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 strolled after 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 haul her 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 could warm 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 thrust the 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?" Henrietta waved 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 creative enough 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." Catherine sat 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 shoot it? 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 I _think_"--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, or suggestion? 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. To _matter_. I believe -it does. I _will_ believe 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, and she 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?" - -"I did think so, Mother." He gulped. "I got mixed up. If you think so, -it feels true, doesn't it?" - -"We told him it wasn't to-day. But he kept thinking so." - -Catherine remembered the dash he had made through the hall to her -bedroom, his halt at the door, his long stare at her. Poor boy! - -"You better sit down, son," she said. "Here comes dessert." - -Later, when she bade them good night, his arms tightened about her neck. - -"You said to-morrow," he whispered, "and I thought maybe it was -to-morrow. Because to-morrow is to-day, always, when it gets here." - -"We can write letters to each other," said Catherine, rubbing her cheek -softly against his hair. "Won't that be fun? We never wrote to each -other." - -"With my own name on the envelope?" - -"Yes, sir." Catherine felt him relax into pleased contemplation of -envelopes with his own name. - -"It's queer Charles doesn't come." Mrs. Spencer laid aside her magazine -as Catherine entered the living room. "Do you know what dentist he goes -to?" - -"Dr. Reeves, I think. He had to wait until the doctor came in from -dinner." - -"Oh, yes." Mrs. Spencer ruffled her fingers through the pages. "Alethea -went on Thursday," she said. "I'll be glad to move in here. It's rather -queer, staying alone." - -"I am glad you want to come." Catherine was grateful. "It relieves me -of any anxiety. Things should run smoothly." - -"Spencer was quite pitiful." Mrs. Spencer looked like an inquisitive -little bird. "He's rather hard to manage. Notional. Marian seems more -normal." - -"She is more phlegmatic than Spencer." Catherine refused to take up -that word, "pitiful," and its implications. - -"They're both sweet children. They act well-bred in public. It's a -pleasure to take them out. Even when Spencer was so distressed, he -didn't make himself conspicuous. And when I promised him you'd really -be here, he settled down again." - -Catherine again rejected the distress. She wouldn't argue with her -mother about going away. Too late, now. - -"Miss Kelly is very good with them, I think," she said. "She gives -them better training than I ever did. I suppose she sees them more -impersonally. Even Letty----" - -"I don't think anyone trains children better than their mother." Mrs. -Spencer was indignant. "You always did very well. Miss Kelly does seem -competent, of course." - -A sharp ring at the bell brought Catherine to her feet. Perhaps Charles -had forgotten his key. But as she hurried down the hall, she heard a -shrill guffaw from Sam, and the elevator slid rapidly out of sight as -she opened the door. - -"Why, Flora! Come in." - -Flora, hastening to drag a lugubrious expression over the wide grin Sam -had evidently provoked, shook her head, the stiff purple flowers on her -large hat rattling like hail. - -"No'm, I ain't coming in," she said. "I came to ask a favor of you, -Mis' Hammond. You well, and the children?" - -"Yes, we're all well." Catherine recalled the dejected, bruised -Flora she had last seen. Bruises and dejection had vanished; Flora -was resplendent in a spotted yellow polo coat, a brilliantly striped -scarf displayed over one shoulder, and--Catherine almost laughed -aloud--arctics, flapping about plump white silk-stockinged legs. But -she was uneasy; the olive-whites of her eyes shone, and her gold tooth -flashed. - -"Mis' Hammond, you knows what I done told you, about that worthless -puhfessional man." She thrust her hands deep into her pockets, trying -to swagger a little. "You recollects? I don' want to bother you, but -he's the worstest man. He's tryin' to ruin my character." - -"I thought you had him put in prison." - -"Yessum. But he's bailed out. An' the case is postponed, while he works -against me. He's provin' that I was bad, and let my li'l girl run wild. -They shut her up." Flora scrambled for a handkerchief, and rubbed -vigorously at her eyes. "My lawyer fr'en, he says if I can get proof -about my character, then that man won't stand no trial. He tole me to -get a proof from you, Mis' Hammond. You know I worked hard, don't you?" - -"What kind of proof, Flora? There, don't cry. Of course I'll help you." - -"My lawyer fr'en, he says you should write it out about me. A kinda -paper, all about how I done work for you. With your name and where you -lives on it. Then you don' have to come to court, you just writes it -down on a paper." - -"Come in, Flora, and I'll write something for you." - -"No'm, I'se going to stand right here." - -"Wait, then." - -Catherine wrote a brief, emphatic statement. She had employed Flora -Lopez for three years, and always found her reliable, competent, hard -working. What do I really know about her, she thought, her pen poised -at the end of that sentence. Character--she saw again that neat, -respectable flat, eloquent of Flora's ambition, and the little boy. She -is a self-respecting woman, who has supported herself and her children. - -"Just Flora, that former maid of mine," she told her mother. "Wants a -recommendation." - -"There you are." She handed the sheet to Flora. - -"But Mis' Hammond, my lawyer fr'en, he say you have to get a notary -seal onto it, or it ain't good in court." She stared at the writing. -"You could mebbe send it by mail to me. I moved to a new place. Folks -in that house were too nosy. I'm at----" - -"I'm going away to-morrow, for a month." Catherine hesitated. "I tell -you, we'll go find a notary to-night. There are several along the -Avenue, if it isn't too late." - -Her mother agreed, rather doubtfully, to wait until she returned, -unless Charles came in the meantime. - -"I don't think you ought to go out with that colored woman this time of -night," she insisted. - -But Catherine, hurrying into coat and hat, was off. The notary in the -tobacco shop at the corner had gone home. After a cold, slipping walk -on sleeted streets to Broadway and down, Catherine found another shop, -and a man who could put a seal to her oath. - -Flora folded the paper. She refused to put it in her pocket. - -"I got to get it safe to my lawyer fr'en," she insisted. "I is obliged -to you, Mis' Hammond." She turned her homely, dark face passionately -toward Catherine, her wide mouth moving grotesquely as she spoke. "Mos' -folks is cruel mean to you if your luck is bad! Women are the mostest -mean. Sayin' I neglects my chile--all 'count of my being a good -worker. You got somebody to work for you now?" - -"Mrs. O'Lay, the janitor's wife. You remember her? She can't cook as -you could. Mr. Hammond doesn't eat a meal without wishing you were -back." - -"I--I jus' couldn't come back, Mis' Hammond. I'se obliged to you, -but----" - -"Are you working somewhere?" - -"Washings, at home. I ain't making so much money. But my lawyer fr'en, -he ain't charging me but half rates." - -"Do you need money?" Catherine's hand moved toward her pocket book. - -"I'se too much obliged, Mis' Hammond, to need it." She looked away, and -suddenly darted out across the street, her arctics flapping, her dirty -yellow coat flopping about her awkward flight. - -Catherine went home, stepping gingerly over the glare of ice. A taxi -rattled and skidded to a stop at the door just as she reached the -apartment house, and her mother came out. - -"Here, you'll slip." Catherine seized her arm, and engineered her -passage. "Has Charles come home?" - -"Yes, poor boy. He's had an awful time. Tell the driver to go very -slowly!" Mrs. Spencer disappeared in the cab. - - -VIII - -"'At Flora, she coming back to wuk for you-all?" Sam made friendly -inquiry as he stopped the elevator at Catherine's floor. - -"No." - -"She say she got grand job for some elegant folks. Sma't worker, Flora -is." - -Poor Flora--Catherine unlocked the door quietly--lying to Sam, to save -her face some way, of course. - -If Charles is miserable--hope thrust out a new tendril, waveringly, in -a blurred picture of herself ministering to him, pretending tenderly -that nothing ever had been wrong. - -"Hello." She smiled as he turned from the window, draped in a -melancholy air of pain nobly borne. "You have had a horrid time, -haven't you?" - -"Just a jumpy tooth." He sat down, reaching for the paper. "Your mother -was worried about you. Said you went off with a darky hours ago." - -"She didn't seem worried. I met her at the door." Catherine went out to -the hall closet with her wraps. Her fingers brushed the sleeve of his -heavy coat. If I can pretend, she thought. - -"It was only Flora," she said as she returned. "She wanted a statement -from me, evidence as to her character. That man, you remember, her -puhfessional gentleman? He seems to have a scheme to save himself at -her expense. We went out to hunt up a notary." - -"You committed yourself legally to some defense of her?" - -"Yes, indeed. Poor Flora!" - -"Unwise, wasn't it? How do you know what she'll do with such a paper?" - -"It seemed little enough to do for her. They want to prove she -neglected her children." - -"Didn't she?" - -Catherine wondered; did he mean that implied comparison? At least he -wouldn't drag it out, openly, if she ignored it. - -"Have you had any dinner?" - -"Can't eat with a nerve howling like a fiend." - -"Come along, poor boy. I'll find you something." - -"Don't bother." - -"Come on, Charles." Catherine went into the kitchen. "Here's a -wonderful roast beef," she called back, and Charles came reluctantly. -"You sit there--" she pushed the chair near the shining white table. -"Coffee, or cocoa?" - -"Cocoa, if it isn't too much trouble. I'd like to sleep. Had a cup of -coffee." - -"Did the dentist keep you all this time in his torture chamber?" -Catherine moved swiftly from ice-chest to stove. If I can invoke our -midnight lunches, all down the past, she thought--I can't go away, -without trying to reach him. It is like death. - -"No," said Charles. "I haven't been there all the evening." - -Catherine stirred the foaming cocoa. Let's pretend, she wanted to cry -out; let's pretend! - -"I thought probably you would be asleep. Since you start off to-morrow." - -"I wanted to see you." Catherine poured the cocoa and set it before -him. She stood there, one hand spread delicately, the fingers pressed -against the oilcloth. "And you--didn't want to see me, did you!" She -was supplicating, provocative, leaning above him. - -"I had to stop with some manuscript, at Miss Partridge's." Charles -buttered a slice of bread deliberately, and forked a slice of pink -meat to his place. "Is there any Worcestershire?" - -"And she gave you coffee?" Catherine moved hastily away from the table, -and felt blindly along the cupboard shelf for the bottle of sauce. - -"Yes." Charles was blandly engrossed in his lunch. - -He's as much as telling me that he chose to go to her, when he wished -comfort. Catherine set the Worcestershire beside his plate. I won't -hear him. But what a burlesque, my serving him, when I can't, through -any outer humility, reach him. - -"Want more sugar?" She asked, casually. - -"No. This is fine." His upward glance was puzzled, uneasy. - -Ah, I have no pride, no decency! she cried to herself. Her heart was -beating in suffocating rhythm; her fingers lifted, undirected, aching -for the touch of that stubborn, beloved head--the prominent temples, -the hollow above the cheekbones, the old intimate brushing across his -eyes, down to cup his strong, obdurate chin. - -"Charles," she whispered, and swayed backward from his sudden violent -start, which clattered the carving knife to the floor. - -"Damn!" he clapped his hand to his jaw. "Oh, damn!" - -"What is it?" - -"That tooth. Hell, I've yanked that filling out." He was on his feet, -his face contorted under his hand. "Get me some iodine. He said iodine -would stop it." - -The tooth was treated. Charles, a little sheepishly, admitted that the -pain was less. - -"Guess I'll crawl right into bed, before it jumps again. If I can get -to sleep----" - -Catherine filled a hot-water bag and slipped it under his cheek. - -"That feels fine." He looked up at her. "Thanks." - -Catherine bent quickly and brushed her lips on his forehead. - -"Good night," she said steadily. "Go right to sleep." She lay wakeful -for a long time. - -"When I come back," she thought, at last-- She twisted restlessly. -"That tooth--I was a little mad, and it destroyed my frenzy. I ought to -be glad, and I'm not." - - * * * * * - -The hours on Sunday between breakfast and time for her train were -telescoped into a band of pressure. Directions to Mrs. O'Lay; final -arrangements for her mother; engrossing details devouring the few hours. - -The taxi was announced. Letty burst into wails because she couldn't go; -she had been discovered busily emptying her bureau drawers into an old -suitcase. Catherine, distracted, kissed her mother and hurried away, -hearing the determined shrieks until the elevator reached the ground -floor. Charles, Spencer, and Marian climbed into the taxi after her. - -"You look lovely," said Marian, over and over, stroking the soft fur at -the throat of her jacket. "You look just lovely." - -Spencer snuggled close against her, without a word. Charles, after a -businesslike inquiry into the state of her tickets, was silent. And -Catherine's one clear thought was: it is lucky that I can't escape -now--like a moving stairway, and I've stepped squarely on it. I -couldn't, to-day, furnish the energy, the motive power, to go and leave -them. - - - - -PART V - -IMPASSE - - -I - -Catherine moved slowly up the covered stairway from the Randolph Street -station, sniffing at the strange smell of Chicago. What did make it so -different from New York? Smoke, blown whirling back in the sharp east -wind over the grinding of ice along the lake shore, something more -composite than that, which, if she could but decipher, would give her -the essential difference between the cities. She snatched at her hat, -as she reached the gusty platform. There was Bill, lounging against the -paper stand! As she edged through the home-bound crowd, he saw her, -with a sharp lifting of his negligent, withdrawn look, and started -toward her. - -"Catherine!" He drew her out of the crowd, into a little corner -protected by the booth. - -"What a horrid place I made you wait!" Pleasure shimmered over -Catherine, like sun in shallow water. "Have you had to stand here long? -Oh, it is nice to see you!" The strange city, the unknown, hurrying -people, walled them about in deepened intimacy. - -"Fine." Bill smiled down at her. "You look as if you had been eating up -this west, and liked its taste." - -"I have. I do." Soft, clear brilliance in her eyes, in her smile. -"Let's go somewhere, so I can tell you about it. I want to talk and -talk." - -"There's a place just north of here. Would you like to walk? A little -place I found. Wonderful dinners. Or if you want to celebrate, we can -go to some huge hotel." - -"I don't care. Let's try your little place." - -They walked swiftly along the Avenue, the lake wind whipping against -them, Bill answering Catherine's random questions about the gaunt, dark -buildings they passed, about his work. - -"I'm chattering," she thought. "I don't care!" - -"Here we are." Bill's hand under her elbow guided her into the doorway -of a small white building. - -"Wall papers," read Catherine from the hall sign, but Bill steered her -to an opposite door. - -"Oh, I do like it." She nodded at Bill's fleet, anxious query. - -A long, irregular room, with scattered tables, dull gray enamel, -shining in the soft orange light of small lamps, and a great brick -fireplace where logs burned. - -"Sit here, where you can watch the fire without scorching." Bill chose -a table in a small alcove. "Now tell us all about it. Have you been -made president of one of these colleges? Or endowed? You look amazingly -triumphant." - -"Do I strut?" Catherine laughed softly, slipping out of her coat, -drawing off her gloves. - -"Not quite. But--you could, couldn't you?" - -"I've had a wonderful time, Bill. Incredibly wonderful!" - -"And you haven't been lonely, or homesick? How long since you left New -York?" - -"More than two weeks. I've finished Illinois. That's why I'm here -to-night. I go on to Ohio at midnight. Homesick? Should I be ashamed -not to be? The first day or so, I felt guilty. And I woke up at night, -thinking I heard Spencer cry out in his sleep, or Letty. Now I just -sleep like a baby--or a spinster." - -"Henrietta wrote me that they are all O.K. Had a note this morning." - -"She wrote me, too. Nice old thing, to drop in on them. I do miss them -of course. But----" She looked up, a wistful shadow across her eyes. -"Bill, I had forgotten how much time there really was in a day. When -you could go straight ahead, just doing the things you had planned. -Doing one job. You said I'd have two jobs, didn't you? These last weeks -I've had one. And I love it! Not forever, of course. But for this -month. I feel like a _person_. Sometimes, almost like a personage! -People have been very kind, and interested." - -She was silent as Bill turned to consult with the waitress; for a -moment her eyes lingered on his head, dark and gaunt against the -firelight, and then looked away at the groups of diners. Early yet, -Bill had said. - -"Well?" Bill watched her. "What a charming gown--like an Indian summer." - -"Margaret selected it." Catherine stretched one arm along the table, -the loose sleeve of golden brown velvet falling softly away from the -firm ivory of her wrist. "I was doubtful about the color." - -"You needn't be." - -"She bullied me into all sorts of lugs." Catherine laughed. "And -I've been glad of it." She hovered delightedly over the tray of -hors-d'œuvres. "Like a flower garden!" - -"A woman runs this place," remarked Bill with apparent irrelevance. - -"Down in a little southern Illinois town, the wife of one of the -college faculty wants to start a tea room. She told me all about it. -Her husband doesn't want her to. She says she supposes it isn't very -high brow. You know, Bill"--Catherine clasped her hands at the edge -of the table--"It's happening everywhere. Women are just busting out. -That's been what they've wanted to know about me. How I manage it. It's -pitiful, their eagerness. Even their husbands. I went out to dinner one -night, and the thing the college president wanted to know was all about -how I managed. How many people it took to fill my place, and all the -rest. I expected to be told in so many words that I ought to be home -with my children." - -"And you haven't?" - -"Indirectly, sometimes. But even the most righteous mothers crave -information. How do I manage! It's extraordinary. It may have gone to -my head. Like strong drink. I know I'm talking too much. But, Bill, -you've boiled me over, all this brew, and I have to talk!" - -"I like it." - -"You see--" Catherine glanced up doubtfully. "I can't write to Charles. -It sounds too much like crowing." She fingered her soup spoon. She -wanted to talk about Charles, too. Bill would understand. Those brief, -impersonal notes of his: he was well, he was working on his book, he -was busy with semester finals, the children were well, yours, Charles. - -"You never saw Charles's mother, did you?" asked Bill. - -"No." Catherine waited. Bill was never random in his associations. - -"He's told you about her, of course?" - -"Lots of times. She was devoted to him, wasn't she? You knew her?" - -"We lived next door for years, you know. She died just as Charles went -to college. His father had died years earlier. Just enough income -for comfort, and just Charles. I think"--he grinned a little--"that -you'll have to train Charles as long as she did, before he can fully -appreciate your career." - -"But that was years ago." - -"Yes. But--I think I can tell you this, without violation--Charles told -me once, talking of you before I had met you, that to him you were -the perfect woman, like his mother. Which meant--tender, loving, and -devoted." - -Catherine's spoon clicked against the soup plate. Her eyelids were -suddenly heavy, weighted with memories. Charles had said that to her, -years ago. A cold finger touched her heart, binding it, and she knew, -through all the brimming delight of the past days, how she had hidden -away the troubling thought of Charles. - -"I don't mean that she spoiled him grossly," Bill was saying. "She was -too New England, too much what we used to call a gentlewoman for that. -Charles was simply the center of her life; his welfare, his desires, -his future--those things set the radius of her circle. She had nothing -else, you see. Except the idea"--the corners of Bill's mouth rose in -his slow smile--"that since Charles was a man, he was a superior being. -Did women really think that, Catherine? Or was that a concession they -knew they could easily afford to make?" - -"But Charles doesn't think men are superior." Catherine's smile was -uncertain, begging for assurance. "Why, those early experiments of -his, the brochures he published, were directed against that very -superstition." - -"Yes. Intellectually he has come a long way since those early days. But -that matters so much less than we like to think." - -Catherine waited while the waitress served the next course. Bill's -words had evoked a thought clearly from the churning within her; she -held it until the waitress had gone, and then spoke, - -"You mean, exactly, that he wishes my radius to be his desires, his -welfare, his future?" - -"That's his old pattern. Bound to hang on, Catherine. Because it is so -flattering, so pleasant. Isn't it what we all wish, anyway? Someone -living within our limits?" - -"Perhaps men wish it." - -"You think women don't?" - -"Do they?" Catherine shook her head. "I don't want Charles to have -nothing but me in his life. Aren't women hardier? Since they've never -had that--it is a sort of human sacrifice, isn't it? Men are like -vines! Did you know vines wouldn't grow well, some of them, unless you -sacrifice to them? Bones and flesh. 'If you have an old hen,' said the -nursery man, when I asked him about our Actinidia in Maine, 'bury her -close to the roots. Then the vine will shoot up.' And it did!" - -"You would make over the old saying about sturdy oaks, wouldn't you?" - -"Don't make fun of me. Perhaps I can discover something which will -change the world!" She stared intently at Bill. "You--" she hesitated. -"You live without that human sacrifice, Bill. You aren't an Actinidia." - -"And so, perhaps, I know why men wish it." Bill pushed to one side his -untouched salad. "Without any question now of its fairness or justice -to women like Henrietta, or you. In the first place, it is convenient, -practically so; smooths down all the details of living. But especially, -it drops a painted screen between man and the distressing futility of -his life. A man with a family and a regular wife, old style, doesn't -often have to face his own emptiness. He feels important. He hurries -around at his work, and if doubt pricks a hole in that screen, the -picture painted there is intricate enough to hide the hole. He has -something to keep his machinery in action. If by day his little ego is -deflated, there is, to change my figure, free air at home to blow him -full again." - -"You sound as if you thought all wives were adoring and humble," said -Catherine. - -"Some of them used to be." Bill grinned at her, and lifted his hand -abruptly in a signal to the waitress. "This is supposed to be a party," -he apologized, "and not a lecture by me. Tell me more about what you've -been doing." - -Catherine's talk was fragmentary. Something--what Bill had said, or -perhaps simply his being Bill with all the old associations close -around him--had blown the froth away from the past two weeks; she had -thought that she had become almost a different Catherine, bright, -hard, full of enthusiasm and interest, absorbed in her rôle of -Bureau-representative. She saw now that her inner self still stood -with feet entangled in perplexity and doubt. - -"Bill"--she broke into her own recital--"if a man doesn't have free air -at home, does he look for it somewhere else?" - -"He may." Bill's quick upward glance was disturbed. He knew, -then, about Charles and Stella. Henrietta would have told him. -"Or"--lightly--"he runs along on a flat tire." - -Catherine was silent, her mind skipping along with the absurd figure. -Stella Partridge was, after all, too busy pumping her own ego hard -to perform that task long for any man. She might flatter him, and -cajole---- - -"Do the children write to you?" - -Catherine reached into the pocket of her coat. - -"I've been moving too fast the last few days to have letters. I expect -a lot to-morrow in Ohio." She spread the sheet on the table. "Here's -the latest. Letty made the crosses." - - "Dere Mother I will be glad when you come home again because I do not - like to sleep in Daddys and your room so well. Walter is coming to - see me for a day and maybe I am going home with him we are being good - I love You - - From your loving Son Spencer Hammond Good-by." - -"Nice kid." Bill looked up. "Let's see, he is just nine, isn't he?" - -"Going on ten." Catherine refolded the letter. She loved the little -smudge from an inky thumb in the margin. - -"What shall we do now? You have several hours left." Bill set down his -coffee cup. "Music? Theater? We can probably find seats for something." - -"I'd rather--" Catherine paused. "Is it too stormy for a walk? I never -get out of doors any more. This morning, from a window in the building -at the University, I had a glimpse of the lake. Could we go there? I'd -like to see how much like the ocean it is." - -"It's windy, of course." - -"I'd like that." A picture of herself, buffeted by winds over a stretch -of water--perhaps that would blow away the melancholy cobwebs, would -whip her again into froth. - -Bill summoned a taxi, and in silence they rode through the long -streets, south toward the park, their shoulders brushing as the machine -bumped over frozen slush. - -Bill slumped forward, his hands linked about his knees, his shoulders -an arc of weariness. The long streets seemed drawn past the windows of -the cab, on either side a sliding strip of unfamiliar shapes. It's as -if a spring had broken in him, thought Catherine, a secret spring which -had kept him running. Perhaps Henrietta was right, and he is sick. - -"It's a long way, isn't it?" She had a plaintive moment of loneliness. -Bill was the one familiar thing in the strange city, and he had -retreated almost beyond communication. "I didn't know it was so far." - -"We're almost there." Bill straightened his shoulders, and peered out -at the sliding street. "In the Fifties. I thought you'd like Jackson -Park. More space there." - -A moment later he thrust open the door. - -"Here!" he called to the driver. "We'll get out here." - - -II - -"There's your lake." Bill slipped his hand firmly under her arm, and -they bent slightly forward into the dark rushing wind. At their feet -a steady crunching, a restless churning as of china waves; beyond, a -stretch of black hidden action under a sky black and infinitely remote, -with sharp white stars. "This wind has broken up the shore ice." - -Along the sloping beach rose vague suggestions of grotesqueries; piles -thrusting tortured heads with ice-hair above the frozen surface, -driftwood caught between great blocks of dirty ice. - -"It's like Doré's Inferno." Catherine shivered. "You remember? That -frozen hell, with awful heads sticking up in the ice?" - -"Let's walk along. You're cold." Buffeted, they went along the deserted -drive, passing regularly from shadow into the burst of light under the -yellow globes that hung above them. "I like that black sky," said Bill. -"In New York we never have that." - -"No." Catherine glanced westward, through bare limbs of trees. "See, -there's the city glare, back there." She was warm again, her blood -tingling under the dark rush of the wind; the black hidden movement -of the water, the cold vasty black of the sky were exciting, like a -shouted challenge. - -"Here is shelter from the wind." Bill drew her into an angle made by -the porch of a small summer pavilion. "You can put your head out to see -the lake, without being knocked flat." - -The wind racketed in the loose boards nailed along the lake side of the -porch. Catherine leaned back, laughing, out of reach of the gusts. She -could just catch the dim outline of Bill's face, his strong, aquiline -profile. - -"Bill!" She felt suddenly that in the dark, windy night there was -nothing else human except Bill and herself; she wanted to burrow into -his silence, his withdrawal. Her fingers brushed his arm in soft demand. - -"Great, isn't it?" His voice was low and warm, walking under the rush -of the wind. "Blows the nonsense clear out of you." He moved slightly -so that his shoulder sheltered her. "Warm enough?" - -"I shouldn't like to be here alone." She couldn't see his face -distinctly--shadowy eye sockets, dark mouth. "I'd feel too little! You -keep me life-size." - -Silence, warm and comforting, like a secret place within the noise of -the wind rattling at the boards, churning up the ice cakes. - -"I can't pry into him." Catherine's feeling broke into splinters of -thought. "It wouldn't be fair. He'd hate it. Digging under to see his -roots. Something passionless and fine in this--no strife--as if he -accepted me--whole. Dear Bill." - -"Well?" He was smiling at her, she knew. "You have a train to catch, -haven't you?" - - * * * * * - -They stood together in the downtown station. Bill had collected her -luggage from the check-room, had brought a bunch of violets for her -from the little florist's counter. - -"It's Valentine's Day, you know." He watched gravely as she fastened -them against the soft beaver of her collar. "I'm starting East -to-morrow," he said. "I'll see your family before you do, won't I?" - -"You can give them my love first hand. Tell them I'm coming soon." - -"I'll tell them you are so triumphant and successful that they will be -fortunate to have you again." - -Catherine laughed softly. A local train was announced, draining off the -waiting people, leaving them almost alone in the station. - -"You know," she said, quietly, "you puff me up, Bill. Not when you say -ridiculous things like that, but all the time." Under his seeking, -hungry eyes, she flushed. "And I am grateful." - -A scurry to the platform, as the through express rolled in. Bill, -relinquishing her bags to the porter, seized her hand in a hard clasp, -and stood, bareheaded, below her on the platform shouting, "Good luck!" -as she was carried with increasing rush away. - - -III - -Catherine, braced against the shivers and jounces of the old Ford taxi, -wondered inertly what it would feel like to live in such a town, in one -of those two-story frame houses, with a corrugated iron garage in the -rear, and grayish lace curtains at the windows, with smoke-blackened -sparrows scrapping in the front yard, and drifting, curling feathers -of soot in the dingy air. I could plan a town like this with a ruler, -she thought. A straight line for the business street, a few parallel -lines, a few right-angled lines: dots for churches, one of each kind; -for moving-picture theaters; for schools; small squares for yards -and houses. Factories along the railroad, pouring up the blanket of -smoke under which the town lay. Was that the soul of the town, that -close-hanging smoke, with its drifting feathers of soot? And then, -out at the edge, where the frame houses were far apart, scattered, a -handful of college buildings, in medieval isolation. When she had said -"Hope College" to the driver, he had shrieked to a baggage master, "Hi, -Chuck! Where's Hope Collidge, d'yuh know?" - -"Out past the lunatic asylum. You know, down the car track." - -Hope College, typical of the small denominational institutions offering -a normal certificate. So Dr. Roberts had classified it. - -That must be the lunatic asylum, that group of brick buildings with -prison windows. They were well out of town, now, the cab skidding and -jerking over deep ruts. Gray, flat, interminable fields under a flat -gray sky. It's like a dream, thought Catherine, a funny, burlesque of a -dream, with me rattling along. - -"This it, lady?" The taxi shivered in all its bolts as it halted, and -the driver poked his head in at the door. There was a driveway winding -between two rows of small blotched poplar trunks, and back from the -road two square brick buildings, scrawled over with black network of -old vines. - -"I don't know." - -"Guess it must be." He slammed the door and whirred up the driveway. - -Just as Catherine climbed the steps, still moving vaguely in a dream -burlesque, a clangor of bells burst out, followed by the clamp of feet, -the sound of voices released. She opened the heavy door, and stepped -into the hall. The sense of dream vanished; this was real enough. -Opposite the door rose the central stairs of the building, twisting up -in a dimly lighted well. Up and down them climbed young people, girls, -a few boys. Shabby, gaudy, flippant, serious--Catherine watched them, -with a sharp resurgence of all her shining belief, her keen, exciting -delight in the thing she had come for. - -She marched into an office at the left of the hall. A girl sitting at a -small table, her smooth, pale-yellow head bent over a book, looked up. - -"Is this the Dean's office?" Catherine smiled at her; something like -Letty in the yellow hair, although the face was rather strained and -thin. "I'm Mrs. Hammond, from the Lynch Bureau." - -"She'll be right in." The girl rose and opened the door into the -adjoining office, as if in uncertainty. "She hasn't come down from -class yet. If you'll sit down----" - -"Yes. Do you happen to know whether there is any mail for me here?" - -"I'll see." The girl had an awkward, half-suspicious way of staring. -"Mrs. Charles Hammond?" she asked. - -Catherine sat down on a hard straight chair near the window; the girl's -eyes were inquisitive, over the edge of her book. Catherine shuffled -the envelopes hastily. Nothing from home. Strange--she had given them -this address, and for this date. A bulky envelope from Dr. Roberts, a -thin one from Henrietta. She tore open the flap of the latter, and let -the round, jerky writing leap at her. Every one was well. Henrietta -thought she might be interested in some hospital gossip. Stella -Partridge had been doing some work for Dr. Beck, the psychiatrist, and -had told several of the other doctors that she thought a medical man -should be in charge of the clinic rather than a mere Ph. Doctor. "She -says Beck has asked her to help him with a book, but I have a strong -doubt. Has Charles found her out, do you suppose?" - -Catherine folded the latter, and tried to poke with it into its -envelope the swirl of feeling it evoked. For a brisk little woman had -darted into the office and at a word from the girl was darting now at -her. - -"Mrs. Hammond? I'm Dean Snow. Come right in!" The pressure of her palm -against Catherine's was like a firmly stuffed pincushion. "Has anyone -else with a cold been in, Martha?" - -Catherine, passing ahead of the Dean into her office, caught the -friendly softening in the voice of the girl as she answered, - -"No'm, not this morning. The plumber came, and I sent him over to the -dormitory. He says that pipe is rusted and ought to come out. I told -him he'd have to see you first." - -"That's right, Martha. And you got those letters off?" - -"Yes'm." - -"Good." - -She followed Catherine, closing the door. - -"Just have a chair, Mrs. Hammond." She whisked herself into place -beside the old roll-top desk, her rotating office chair creaking as -she settled down on its springs. A little cubby-hole of an office, -with a sort of film of long use over the gray walls and painted floor, -over the crammed pigeon holes of the desk, over the huge framed -photographs--the "Acropolis," the "Porch of the Maidens," the "Sistine -Madonna," and, above the desk, a faded group photograph of gentle faces -above enormous puffed sleeves; in the corner a small hat-tree, from -which a rusty umbrella dangled. - -"You teach, Miss Snow, in addition to being Dean?" - -"Oh, yes. Latin and Greek. It's a great relief from plumbers and -colds." She had a plump, white face, with gray bangs over her forehead, -sharp blue eyes, and full pink lips held firmly together. She has -humor, thought Catherine, and common sense, but she's intolerant. "So -you're making an investigation of us, are you?" The Dean rubbed at a -streak of chalk-dust on the sleeve of her tight dress. "What do you -expect us to do after you point out our shortcomings?" - -She thinks I am dressy and interfering. Catherine held her hands -motionless against her desire to fidget. She's just the kind of -sensible woman I can't get on with. - -"The Bureau wants to make a constructive study," she said. "Not a -criticism." - -"We need just one constructive thing." Miss Snow smiled. "Money. We're -poor. Small endowment fund. The Baptists around here seem poorer each -year. Now I haven't had a secretary for five years. The students help -me out, and I deduct the hours from their tuition. If we had money -we could do much more. We get fine young people. The godless younger -generation doesn't come here. We wouldn't admit them if they wanted to -come. Our girls and boys know how to work. They are in earnest. But you -don't want to give us money, do you? No, you want to change things. -Mrs. Hammond--" She leaned forward, her plump fist coming down whack -on her knee. "I've been here almost forty years, as student, teacher, -officer. Our President, Dr. Whitmore, has been here as long as that. -Don't you think we know how to run a college?" - -Catherine hunted for phrases, gracious, illuminating, with which to -justify her mission. So many of these little colleges through the -state, such diversity of aim, changes in educational ideas---- - -"You see," she finished appealingly, "that's our idea. That there -should be a clear, definite program in the training of young teachers, -and that enough is known about educational needs now to make such a -program feasible." - -"I've watched young people go out of here for many years now, and I -know it doesn't make much difference what they've been taught. If they -have the fear of God, if they are earnest and faithful, they succeed. -If not--none of your modern folderols will save them. Give them the -mental discipline of mathematics and the classics, and they can teach -children reading and writing all right. I've seen too many fads in -education to take them seriously. First it was natural science that was -to make the world over, and we had to raise a fund for a laboratory. -Then--oh, there's no use listing them. But I ask you, Mrs. Hammond, -what's happened to Rousseau, or Froebel, or that woman a year or so -ago, that foreigner, Monty somebody, who had a new scheme? Gone. You -have to cling to the eternal verities. Fads pass." - -The building quivered under the violent clangor of bells and the sound -of hurrying feet. Miss Snow pulled open a drawer and lifted out a -shabby, yellow-edged volume. "Here's one thing that stands. Ovid." She -tucked it under her arm and rose. "I have a class now. Would you care -to visit it?" - - * * * * * - -In the late afternoon Catherine stood in the hall, bidding Miss Snow -farewell. - -"It's been interesting, and I appreciate the time you have given me, -out of your very busy day," she said. - -"I've enjoyed it." Miss Snow shook hands vigorously. "I enjoy talking. -It airs my ideas even if it doesn't change them much. I wish you could -stay to hear the Glee Club practice to-night. We're real proud of their -singing." - -"I have to take that very early train." Catherine descended the steps -and climbed into the waiting taxi--the same one which had brought her. -"The Commercial House," she said. - -The early February twilight lay over the fields, as if the smoke had -settled more closely on the earth. She leaned back, letting the day -float past her, in unselected, haphazard bits. All that zeal and honest -industry poured into medieval patterns. The very best of the old -patterns, no doubt, with that stern righteousness, that obligation in -them. Something infinitely pitiful, touching, in those young things she -had watched, awkward, serious, patient, most of them. - -"Of course, most of our girls teach only a few years, and then marry," -Miss Snow had said. She couldn't have had more finality if she had -said, "and then die!" - -Luncheon, a hurried half hour in a chilly, bare dining hall, with grace -helping the creamed codfish grow cold. The other faculty members, -serious and threadbare, like farm horses, thought Catherine, with bare -spots chafed by the harness of inadequate salary, of monotony. As -untouched by any modern thought as if centuries of time separated them. -And each year, young people turned into that hopper. - -If I can put that feeling down on paper, she thought, it should -move even this mountain of age and tradition. To-morrow, my day will -be different; the large colleges are somewhat awake. But there are -hundreds of these. - -At the desk of the hotel she asked hopefully for mail. Perhaps she had -given this address to Charles and Miss Kelly, and not the college. The -clerk poked through a pile of letters and shook his bald, red head. -Three days without a word, for Henrietta's letter had been written days -ago. After a moment of hesitation--amusing, how old habits of economy -hung on!--she wrote out a telegram. - -"Night letter?" The clerk counted the words. - -"No. I want it to go the quickest possible way. I want an answer before -that morning train." - -In the bare little hotel room, she sat down under the light, her -writing pad balanced on her knee. A note to Dr. Roberts. - -"There seems no limit to the things we may accomplish," she wrote, -"when I see, at first hand, what the catalogue discrepancies really -mean, in flesh and blood and buildings." - -Suppose something was wrong, at home? She stared about at the dingy, -painted walls, with faint zigzags of cracks, and fear prickled through -the enthusiasm which enclosed her. This was the first time that letters -had failed to meet her. In two hours, or three, she should have an -answer to her message. "Please wire me at once, care Commercial House. -No word from you here." She picked up her pen again. No use to worry; -letters miscarried, and she would hear soon. - -She opened Henrietta's letter, to reread the comment on Stella -Partridge. Something behind that, she thought. That woman doesn't -make incautious remarks. Her mind fumbled with the news, as if it -were a loose bit out of an intricate mechanism; if she could fit it -into place, she could see how the whole affair ran. That was one of -Charles's lowest boiling points, that contention about medical men -and psychologists. Perhaps Partridge had been too greedy, and laid -those smooth hands of hers on something Charles particularly wanted -for himself, for his own job. Whatever it is--Catherine rose suddenly, -piling her letters and portfolio on the corner of the dresser--whatever -it is, I mean to know about it, when I go home again. I am through -fumbling along. - -Her room had grown chilly. A wind rattled at the loose sash of the -window. She looked out at the angle of street; a hardware store across -the way mirrored its enormous window light in shining pans and kettles. -The air seemed full of whirling bits of mica. She pushed the window up -and leaned out; sharp and wet on her face, the mica was snow, driven -along on the wind. - -Only an hour since she had telegraphed. She would go down to dinner. -Something insidious in the way the soft fingers of worry pried between -thoughts, pushed down deeper than thought. - -She stopped at the desk. - -"If a message comes for Mrs. Hammond, please send it in to the dining -room." - -"Guess we're going to have a blizzard, aren't we?" The clerk rubbed an -inky forefinger thoughtfully over his red baldness. "Coming along from -Chicago and the west on this wind." - -More pushing of those soft fingers: delay of trains, wires down, who -knows when I may hear! - -"It may not be a bad storm," said Catherine, and went resolutely in to -dinner. But she heard the clerk's, "You can't tell when you're going to -get trouble." - -In the dining room, a few traveling men scattered about at tables -sending glances of incurious speculation after her as she chose a seat; -a middle-aged waitress whose streaked purplish hair shrieked aloud her -effort to keep youth enough to win tips, and whose heavy, laborious -tread spoke more loudly of aching, fallen arches. Catherine started -at the twin bottles of vinegar and yellowish oil in the center of the -table. Letty's just gone to bed, she thought. Mrs. O'Lay is serving -dinner. I shouldn't care to be a traveling saleswoman. The hotel drives -my job into some remote limbo. I'll go to bed early. To-morrow, at the -University, it will be different. Such a cordial note from that history -professor's wife, asking me to stay with them. It was nice of Dr. -Roberts to write personally to them. - -Good steak, at least. Fair coffee. Finally, as the waitress set a -triangle of pie before her, she saw the clerk in the doorway, his -eyes focusing on her. He came slowly toward her. It's come, thought -Catherine. He ought not to button that alpaca coat; absurd, the way it -creases over his fat stomach. - -"They just telephoned this from the station," he said, laying a sheet -of paper beside her plate. The elaborate scrolled heading, COMMERCIAL -HOUSE, wriggled under her eyes, settled flatly away as she read the -penciled words. - - Spencer hurt coasting wired you this morning can you come - - CHARLES - -"Hope it's nothing serious, ma'am." - -Those soft fingers of worry had unsheathed their claws; they tore at -her, deep in the unheeded, rhythmic working of her body. She could not -breathe, nor see, nor speak. Spencer! - -"Nothing serious," he repeated, and suddenly her heart was clattering -against her ribs. She could lift her eyes from that paper. Why, he had -a kindly face, that bald clerk; his flat nostrils had widened a little, -in avid human sniffing at disaster, but his eyes were sympathetic. - -"It's my little boy." She could breathe now. "It says he is hurt. -Why--" she thrust back her chair in a violent motion, and wavered as -she stood up. "There was a telegram this morning. I should have known -this morning!" - -"That's too bad, Ma'am. It never came here." - -"I'll have to get a train." Catherine was hurrying out of the dining -room, the clerk at her heels. "When can I?" - -"It don't say how bad he's hurt." She felt his hand close about her -arm. "You sit down here, and I'll 'phone to the station for you." He -drew her into the enclosure behind his counter, and pushed her gently -into an old leather chair. "Little fellows stand an awful lot of -knocking around. I've got three, so I ought to know. Now, take it easy. -Where you want to go? New York City?" - -Grateful tears in Catherine's eyes made prismatic edges around his -solid figure. As she watched him thumbing a railroad folder, her panic -lifted slightly. Perhaps--oh, perhaps Spencer wasn't badly hurt. -Charles would be frightened, would want her. - -"Um. That's too bad. You just missed a good train." He turned to the -telephone. "Gimme the station. Yea-uh. That's right." - -Henrietta would be there. - -"When's the next through train east, Chuck? Huh? No, the next one." He -spit his words out of the corner of his mouth toward the receiver. "Any -word of that out of Chicago yet? Well, say, I got a lady here got to -get to New York on it. Got to, I said. You got any berths here? Well, -you could wire for one, couldn't you? What you hired for?" - -He hung up the earpiece. - -"He says there's trouble west of here. Snow. That seven o'clock just -went through, late. He's gonna let me know about the midnight." - -"I'd better go to the station." - -"What for? You stay here where it's comfortable. You go up to your room -and I'll let you know. I'm on till midnight." - -"Just go up and wait?" Catherine was piteous. - -"Yes, ma'am. I'll take care of you. Now don't you go worrying. I always -tell my wife she'd have the grass growing over all of us if worry could -do it. That's the woman of it, I suppose." - -"You're very kind." Catherine was reluctant to leave him. He was a sort -of bulwark between her and the rush of dark fear. "I ought to wire -them----" - -"Sure. Here, write it out. It stands in reason he needn't be hurt much, -and still he'd want his mother." - -Catherine's pencil wobbled in her stiff fingers. Spencer would want -her. All day he had wanted her. Hours between them---- - -"Will take first train." She looked up, her lip quivering. "I wouldn't -have time for an answer, would I?" - -"You ought not to, if that train's anywhere near on time, and if -there's a berth left on it." The clerk turned away, to fish cigars out -of his counter for a man who stood waiting, one hand plying a busy -toothpick. - -"D'yuh hear anything about the blizzard down Chicago way?" the man -asked. "Say it's put kinks in the train service." - -"You always hear worse than happens." The clerk's glance at Catherine -was anxious. But she signed her name to the message and wrote out the -address. - - -V - -The midnight express for New York, coming through three hours late, did -not stop. The clerk came up to Catherine's door to tell her. - -"They ain't an empty berth on her," he said. "Took off several coaches -to lighten her for the drifts." - -"What am I going to do?" Catherine asked. - -"There's a local in the morning. You could get something out of -Pittsburgh, if you got that far." - -The rest of the night, the next day, the next night, all were to -Catherine grotesquely unreal, as if life had been transposed to a -different key, where all familiar things were flatted into dissonance -and harsh strangeness. All night the scrape of snow-plows and shovels, -futile against the snow; the snow which seemed the wind itself turned -to dry, drifting, impenetrable barriers. The local, dragged by two -locomotives, hours late, like a moving snowdrift itself. The hours -in that train, with nothing but snow darkening the windows, hiding -the world, driving through the aisles with the opening of the doors. -Pittsburgh, late in the afternoon, and no word from Charles. She beat -helplessly against the gruff taciturnity of the ticket agent; he had -stood up all day confronting cross, belated travelers. There was a -train in an hour, making connections at Philadelphia. Night on that -train, in a crowded day coach, malodorous and noisy. She felt as if she -dragged the train herself, down through strange valleys, where blast -furnaces sent up red shrieks of flame, through dim, sleeping towns. - -Philadelphia at two, the next morning. A narrow strip of platform -across which the wind whirled. Another crowded day coach. Where were -these people going, that colored boy, asleep, his feet stuck out into -the aisle in their ragged socks, his shoes clasped under one arm--that -man and woman, slumping peacefully against each other, mouths drooping -wide? - - * * * * * - -As Catherine stepped down to the platform in the New York station, the -huge dim roofs of the train shed spun dangerously about her. A porter -loped beside her, pawing at her bag, but she walked away from him, her -eyes wide like a somnambulist. She made her way to a telephone booth, -and then, when she had lifted her hand to drop in the nickel, stopped -abruptly. If she telephoned, and something dreadful came over the wire, -buzzing into her head, it would transfix her there, unable to move, -held forever behind that close, dirty glass door. She pushed violently -against the door, freed herself, and fled out to the street. She passed -on the steps a woman crawling on her knees, one arm moving in sluggish -circles, scrubbing. After she had found a taxi and was whirring away -through the dark street, the motion of that weary arm continued before -her eyes. How dark the city was, and still, as if she had come into it -just at the turn of the tide, before the morning life moved in. "Dark -o' the moon"--she heard Spencer's voice chanting--"pulls the ole water -away from the earth." - -When she stepped out of the cab she did not even glance at the house. -She paid the driver, picked up her bag, and went into the dim, tiled -hall. She was empty, capable of precise, brisk movement. All her fear, -her pressure of anxiety, her physical weariness, were held in solution, -waiting the moment which would crystallize them. She stood at the -elevator shaft, her finger on the button. The car was beneath her, the -dust-nap of its top at her feet. The bell shrilled, but nothing else -stirred. The man is asleep, she thought, dispassionately, and without -haste she began to climb the stairs to the fifth floor. - -At the door she stopped again, staring a moment at the small card, -HAMMOND. She had no key. If she rang, she would waken everyone. But she -must, in some way, enter. She knocked, softly. Her face, turned up to -the dark painted grain of the metal door, grew imploring. - -There was her door, and she couldn't open it, couldn't know what was -behind it! Like a dreadful nightmare. She pounded with her knuckles. -Then, softly, the door opened, and Charles, his bathrobe trailing, his -eyes sleep-swollen, was blinking at her. She seemed a dream to him, too! - -"Why, Catherine--you? How'd you get here, this time of day?" He -whispered, and then he closed the door with a caution alarming in its -quietness. - -"Spencer! Tell me--" Catherine's nostrils quivered at a strange smell -in the dark hall, an odor of antiseptics, of drugs. - -"Thought you'd never come." Charles muttered. "Ghastly, your not being -here." - -"Is he here?" Catherine started to pass Charles, but he caught her, -held her a moment. Catherine felt in the pressure of his arms, in his -harsh kiss, the thwarted rage, helplessness, distress--she knew she had -those to meet, later. Now-- "Tell me, please!" she begged. "Spencer." - -"He's better." Charles released her. "Sleeping now. Mustn't disturb -him." He led the way to the living room, past closed, dark doors. "We'd -better go into the kitchen." - -Catherine stumbled into a chair. - -"He was hurt, coasting. He and Walter Thomas. Right in front of the -house. Miss Kelly was just coming out with the other children, to -take them all to the park. He and Walter--coasted around the corner, -into a truck. Hurt his head. Miss Kelly carried him in here herself." -Charles was leaning against the table, his face away from Catherine, -his mouth twisting wryly. Catherine touched his hand. "When I got -home, Henrietta was here, and another surgeon. His head--" Catherine -swung up to a sharp peak of agony--Spencer? She saw, unbearably, that -fine, sensitive, growing life of his, smeared over. "They didn't dare -move him. Unconscious. Stitches in his temple. They think now he's all -right." He grew suddenly voluble, shrill. "You can't tell about such -things at once. Have to wait. Might injure his brain. But he's been -conscious, perfectly clear-headed, normal. Got a good nurse. Just keep -him quiet, flat on his back. Children are tough-- Oh, Catherine----" - -A door was opening somewhere, an inch at a time. Catherine strained -forward, too heavy with pain to rise. She felt Charles's uneasy start, -felt the hours of anxiety behind the sharp gripping of his hand under -hers. Feet shuffled toward them. Her mother appeared at the door, her -blue eyes blinking under the frill of her lace cap, a perceptible -quaver in the old hand which held together the folds of her gray -bathrobe. - -"Thank Heaven you've come, Catherine!" She scuffed across the linoleum -and pecked softly at Catherine's cheek. "Poor little Spencer--he asked -for you." - -"Oh!" Catherine was on her feet, but Charles held her fingers -restrainingly. - -"Last night, mother means. The nurse said she'd call me the instant he -woke. He's really sleeping now. Not unconscious." - -Catherine stood between them for a moment of silence. "It stands to -reason he might not be hurt bad, and yet want his mother." Who said -that? Some one had said it to her. - -"We looked for you yesterday," said Mrs. Spencer. - -"Blizzards. I couldn't get a train." Catherine felt a bond between -them, excluding her, accusing her. Charles stared at her, his eyes -sunken, the lines about his mouth deepened; her mother--a thin, -wrinkled film seemed drawn over her face, dimming her color. "I came -the instant I could. I sat up on a local." She clasped her hands -against her breast, against the heavy, pounding ache. - -"You must be tired to pieces, poor child." Her mother patted her arm. -"Don't feel so bad, Cathy. It might have happened if you'd been right -here. And it's turning out so much better than----" - -"But I wasn't here," said Catherine, quietly. And then, "What about -Walter?" She could see that sled sweeping around the corner. "Was he -hurt?" - -"Shaken up and bruised. Spencer was steering." - -A rustle at the door, a strange face staring at her, crisp and cold -above white linen. - -"Yes?" Charles stepped forward intently. - -"The little boy is awake." - -"This is Mrs. Hammond, Miss Pert. She may go in?" - -She was a culprit, a stranger, trembling, unable to move. - -"You'd better take off your hat and coat, Mrs. Hammond. And don't -excite him. He's drowsy." - -The dim, shaded light; a little still mound under the counterpane; -under the smooth white turban of bandages, Spencer's gray eyes, moving -softly with her flight from the door to his bed. On her knees beside -him, her fingers closing about his hand. Quiet, not to excite him. How -limp and small his hand felt! - -"Hello, Moth-er!" He sighed, and his eyelids shut down again. - - -VI - -The next two weeks life was a shadow show outside that room where -Spencer lay. "He must be kept flat and motionless," the surgeon said, -with Dr. Henrietta nodding assent. "Even as he feels stronger." -Catherine was concentrated entirely upon that. Everything reduced -itself to terms of Spencer. Books that she might read to him, games -she might devise, stories she could tell--anything to keep him content -until it was safe for him to lift that bandaged, wounded head. Always -there was the terror lest some sign of injury might show itself, some -quirk in his mind, some change in personality, some flush to indicate -fever and infection. "We think he has, miraculously, escaped any bad -effects," said Henrietta, "but we can't be absolutely sure for a few -days." At night, when he slept, Catherine would leave Charles in the -house, and slip out for a quick walk in the cold March darkness. But -terrifying images pursued her--sudden blackness shutting down over that -shining, golden reality that was Spencer to her--and she would hasten -back, unassuaged of her terror until she stood again at the door of his -room. - -When her trunk came, she had rummaged through it, selecting all the -material of her work, and sending it to Dr. Roberts with a brief note. -"My son has been injured and I can do nothing more with this. If you -can send someone else to finish the work, please do so. I can not even -think of it for the present." - -There would come a day, she knew, when she could think again, a day -when she would face the lurking shadows of her guilt, would determine -what it meant. Not now. Not until Spencer was well. - -Charles was waiting, too, she knew. He was subdued, considerate, -concerned lest she overtax herself. But he seemed one of the shadows in -the outer world. - -Then Spencer lost his angelic patience, and began to fret humanly about -lying flat in bed. - -"A few more days, Spencer." Henrietta smiled at him. "Then this crack -in your head will be healed enough." - -"But I feel all right now." - -Fear, retreating, dragged away the distortion it had given, and -gradually the shadows about Catherine grew three-dimensional again. -Henrietta warned her: "You'll have a frightful slump, Catherine, unless -you let yourself down easily, after this strain." - -"I don't feel tired, not at all." - -"That's the trouble. And you are. Rest more. Spencer doesn't need you -every second now. Let Charles sleep here to-night." - -Catherine shook her head. - -"I sleep fairly well here, because I know I shall wake if Spencer -stirs. Anywhere else I should lie awake, listening." - -"But he's safe now. I'm sure of that. The only danger, after the first, -was infection. And that's past. Two more days and I'll let him up. I -don't want you down." Henrietta paused, her fingers running along the -black ribbon of her glasses. "When are you going back to work?" she -flung out. - -A subtle change in Catherine's face, like the quick drawing of shades -at all the windows of a house. - -"I don't know." She moved away from Henrietta, to glance in at Spencer. - -"Um." Henrietta shrugged. "Well, I'll be in early to-morrow." - -That was the first shadow to take real form. When _was_ she going back -to work? And behind the shades drawn against Henrietta moved a sharp -curiosity. What had Dr. Roberts done about the investigation? There -had been a note from him, tossed into a drawer. A note of sympathy. -Had he said anything about the work? But as she made a faint motion to -go in search of the note, Spencer called her. - -Another shadow to grow more real was Miss Kelly. She had managed Letty -with amazing competence, keeping her quiet and amused. She had come -earlier in the morning than usual, to dress Marian and walk with her to -school. But she was worried, shying away when she met Catherine in the -hall, and her pale blue eyes stared with some entreaty in them. The day -that Spencer first sat up, Charles carried him into the living room to -the armchair, and Catherine tucked a rug about his feet and left him -there, to look out of the window. As she went back to the bedroom, she -heard a choking, muffled sound, and there in the hall stood Miss Kelly, -her hands over her face. - -"What is it?" she asked gently, touching the woman's shoulder. Then, as -she looked at the swollen, reddened eyes, she knew. "He's quite well -again," she said. "Don't cry." - -"I--I hadn't left him a second," Miss Kelly whispered. "Just to help -Letty down the steps." - -"I know. I haven't thought you were careless." - -"I thought I'd go crazy. He's never coasted in the street. The other -boy thought of it." - -"It was an accident, Miss Kelly. You mustn't blame yourself." - -The entreaty faded under the flush of gratitude. Miss Kelly turned and -hurried back to Letty's room, her square shoes clumping solidly. - - -VII - -Saturday afternoon. Spencer was dressed, even to his shoes. Catherine -had suggested moccasins, but Spencer held out for shoes. "Then I'll be -sure, Mother, that I'm really up!" The terrifying pallor had left his -face. The bandages were gone, too; just the pink, wrinkled mouth-like -scar spoke audibly of the past weeks. - -"You'll have to part your hair in the middle, Spencer," Dr. Henrietta -had told him, "until this bald spot grows out." And Spencer had -retorted, promptly, "I wouldn't be that sissy!" - -Catherine moved one of her red checkers, smiled a little, wondering -where he had picked up that idea, and glanced away from Spencer and -checker board, out of the window. The bare trees of Morningside pricked -up through gray mist; the distant roofs were vague. What a horrid day! -It seemed too raw and cold for Spencer's first trip outdoors. But he -really was well again. Monday he could go out. It was true, Henrietta's -prophecy. She was being let down with a thud. There seemed no place -where she could take hold of ordinary life again. - -Spencer giggled. - -"I jumped three of your men, Mother, and you never saw I could." - -"Why, so you did." Catherine looked at her dismantled forces. She -couldn't even keep her mind on those disks of wood. "There." She moved. - -"Oh, Moth-er!" Spencer was gathering in the last of the red checkers. -"You're a punk player. You're a dumb-bell!" - -"What a name! Where did you find that word?" Catherine watched him; he -was teasing her--that funny little quirk in his eyebrows. - -"Oh, the fellers say it." Suddenly he swept the checkers into a heap. -"I'm sick of checkers." - -"Want to read a while?" - -"I'm sick of reading. Staying in the house just wears me out, Mother." - -The doorbell broke the quiet of the house, and Catherine, with a -relieved, "Now we'll see what's coming!" went out to the door. Her -mother, perhaps, or Margaret. - -"Hello, Catherine." It was Bill, shifting a large package that he might -extend his hand. She hadn't seen him since that night in Chicago. She -had an impression of herself that night, confident, radiant, but vague -and blurred, as if Bill showed her a faded photograph he had kept for -years. "Henry said she thought I might call on Spencer," he was saying. - -Catherine was grateful for the lack of inquiry. He would know that she -had dropped everything in a heap, and that all the ends were tangled -and confused. But knowing, he would ask her nothing, would not even -indicate his knowledge. - -"I've brought something for him." He jerked the arm which held the -package. - -"Spencer's in here." Catherine led the way to the living room. "Here's -a caller for you," she announced. - -"Hello, Mr. Bill!" Spencer lunged forward in his chair, but Bill set -the box promptly before him. - -"This table is just what we need. I thought you might help me with this -radio." Bill shook himself out of his overcoat. And Catherine, with a -smile at the sudden lifting of Spencer's clouds of ennui, left them. - -There were things to be done. She might as well shake off her lethargy -and attack them. She heard Spencer's eager voice, Bill's deliberate -tones, pronouncing strange phrases--amperes, tuning up, wave lengths. -The laundry. Prosaic, distasteful enough. If she began with that, she -might find a shred of old habit which would start her wheels running. - -She carried the bundles to her room, where she sorted the linen into -piles on her bed. She had no list; she remembered Mrs. O'Lay at the -door, last Monday, "The laundry boy's here, Mis' Hammond. Should I -now just scramble together what I can put my hands on?" and her own -indifferent answer. Five sheets. That seemed reasonable. And bath -towels--that one was going. Catherine held it up to the light, poked -her fingers through the shredded fabric, and tossed it to the floor. -We need more of everything, she thought. Sheets--she stared at the -neat white squares. If she unfolded them, probably she would find -more shreds. Well, she wouldn't look! They cost so much, sheets and -towels, and you had so little fun for your money. She stowed away the -piles in the linen drawers. Then she opened the bundle of clothing, -unironed, tight, wrinkled lumps. Mrs. O'Lay would iron them. Little -undergarments, small strings of stockings. At least she didn't have to -mend them; Miss Kelly was keeping them in order. She shook out a pajama -coat; a jagged hole in the front whence a button had departed forcibly. -She would have to mend Charles up. She chuckled; before she had gone -away she had bought new socks for Charles, hiding those she had not -found time to darn. He would never notice. - -She was rolling a pair of socks into a neat ball, turning the ribbed -cuff down to hold the ball, when she stopped. One finger flicked -absently at a bit of gray lint. What was she going to do? She was -sorting those clothes quite as if Mrs. O'Lay and Miss Kelly were -fixtures. And she wasn't sure she had money enough to pay Miss Kelly -for even one more week. - -She piled away the clothing, dodging her thoughts. But when she had -finished her task, she stood at the window, looking out at the court -windows, and one by one her thoughts overtook her and assaulted her. - -Of course I'm going back to the Bureau, the very day Spencer goes to -school again. There's no new reason why I shouldn't. Isn't there? What -about this feeling--that Spencer was a warning to me--a sign? That's -what mother meant. Her hand lifted to her forehead, smoothed back her -hair. That's not decent thinking, she went on. Absurd. Superstitious. -Spencer might have been hurt even if I had been at his heels. Walter -was hurt. Accidents--like a bony, threatening finger shaken at her! - -"Moth-er!" Spencer's voice summoned her. Mr. Bill was going now, but he -left the radio for Spencer to examine, and a book about it. - -"An' he's going to see the superintendent about wires to catch things -on, and we can't rig it truly until he gets a wire." Spencer clasped -the book under one arm, and drew the black box nearer him along the -table. "It's the most inturusting thing I ever saw, Mother." His eyes -were bright with pleasure. - -"I'm sorry," said Bill, "that we can't install it to-night. But perhaps -to-morrow----" - -Catherine went to the door with Bill. - -"It was good of you to come in," she said. "He's had a dull time." - -Bill had his hand on the knob. - -"I've been out of town again for a week," he said. "Henry kept me -posted." - -Then he was going, but Catherine caught at his arm. - -"Bill"--in a sharp whisper--"do you think it was my fault? Do you?" - -"Catherine!" He was laughing at her, comfortingly. "What rot!" - -"Is it?" She sighed. - -"You're tired." His hand enclosed hers warmly for a moment. "Henry says -you've been wonderful, but not wise----" - -There was a clatter outside the door, a firm, "Now wait one second, -Letty!" Bill pulled the door open; Letty, her pointed face framed in -a red hood, Marian, pulling her tarn off her tousled dark hair, Miss -Kelly behind them. - -"Oh, Mr. Bill!" Marian hugged his arm, and Letty clambered onto her -go-duck that she might reach his hand, with a lusty, "'Lo, Bill!" - -"Come back and play with us, Mr. Bill," Marian cajoled him, her head on -one side. - -But Bill, grinning at her, eluding Letty's grasp, stepped into the -elevator and was gone. - -"'S'at Marian?" Spencer was shouting. "Oh, Marian, you come see what -I got." Marian darted ahead. As Catherine, with Letty's damp mittened -hand in hers, came to the door of the children's room, she heard -Spencer determinedly, "No, you can't touch it! It's too delicut. Mr. -Bill told me it was too delicut. You keep your hands off it! It's just -lent to me." - -"Who said I wanted to touch your ole radium?" - -"It isn't radium, Marian. Radio. And you were touching it." - -"Marian, dear, come take your wraps off." Miss Kelly had stowed Letty's -go-duck in the hall closet, and followed Catherine. "You musn't bother -Spencer." - -"He's well now, isn't he?" She lagged into the bedroom. - -Catherine sat on one of the cots, watching. She had scarcely seen -her two daughters since she had come back. She had known they were -well, she had heard Miss Kelly often sidetracking them with, "No, -your mamma is busy and you mustn't disturb her. Poor little Spencer -needs her and you don't." Miss Kelly had lifted Letty into a chair and -was unbuttoning the red coat when Letty set up a strident wail, and -stiffened into a ramrod which slid out from under Miss Kelly's fingers. - -"Want my Muvver!" she shrieked. "Not you!" She flung herself on the -edge of the bed beside Catherine, with gyrations of her red-gaitered -plump legs. Catherine, laughing, dragged her up beside her. Letty -snuggled against her, peering up with her blandishing smile. - -"All right, old lady." Catherine tugged off the tiny rubbers, stripped -down the knit leggings, noticing absently the promptness with which -Marian carried her own cloak and tarn to the closet and hung them away. -Why, Miss Kelly had taught her to be orderly, she marveled. Then she -saw Letty's expression of sidewise expectancy under long lashes. Miss -Kelly was looking at her gravely. - -"Letty tired." She drooped into Catherine's enclosing arm like a sleepy -kitten. - -"That's too bad." Miss Kelly was unruffled. "Then you can't show your -mamma your own hook that you can reach." - -Letty was quiet. Catherine felt the child's body stiffen a little -from its kittenlike relaxation, as if her inner conflict was purely -muscular, not thought at all. That's the way children must think, she -speculated. With a giggle Letty slid down from the bed, hugged her arms -about the pile of scarlet garments, and marched to the closet. - -"I screwed a hook into the door, low down," Miss Kelly explained. -"Usually Letty doesn't have to be told." - -"And you don't allow her to beguile you, do you?" Catherine laughed at -the self-righteousness in Letty's strut back to the bed. - -"You can't," said Miss Kelly, "or they run all over you." - -"What runs over you?" demanded Marian. - -"Mice!" Letty's shriek was almost in Catherine's ear, as she plumped -down in her mother's lap. "Mice!" and she wiggled in laughter. "Free -blind mice." - -"Isn't she silly!" But Marian giggled, too. "Who's that?" The hall door -sounded on its hinges. "Daddy!" Her rush halted at the door. "Oh, I -thought you were my Daddy!" - -"Did you, now?" Mrs. O'Lay's red face hung a moment at the door, a -genial full moon. "Well, I ain't. But you'd best be glad I ain't, for -it's little dinner he'd be getting for you." - -Marian stuck a pink triangle of tongue after her as she disappeared, -clumping down the hall. - -"She's awful fat, isn't she, Muvver?" She scuffled her feet slowly to -the edge of the bed. "An' she has a funny smell. I don't know what she -smells of, but she does." - -"Ashes and floor oil," said Catherine. She hadn't noticed it, -consciously. She caught Miss Kelly's surprised, disapproving glance. -"We'll have to lengthen that dress, Marian," she concealed her -amusement, and her free hand pulled at the edge of the chambray dress. -"Can't pull it over your knees, can we?" - -"I have let out the tucks in four dresses," said Miss Kelly. This was -ground she knew. "But Marian is growing very fast." - -Catherine's arm went around Marian's waist, and pulled her down at her -side. - -"Short dresses are the style, aren't they?" She hugged them both, Letty -against her breast, Marian against her shoulder. Firm, warm, slim -things, her daughters, growing very fast. - -"What are you folks doing?" Spencer stood in the doorway, his eyes -mournful. "I'm all alone." - -"You've got your ole radium," declared Marian promptly, "and you're not -sick any longer, even if I can see that cut, and our Muvver can stay -with us now." - -"Us now!" chanted Letty. - -"Oh, you've sorted the laundry, Mrs. Hammond?" Miss Kelly turned from -the opened drawer. - -"Yes. I left a pile of clothes on a chair in Spencer's room--they need -buttons." - -"I thought I'd just lay out clean underwear for morning. Perhaps that -shirt is with the pile." She went past Spencer, who drew aside with a -touch of petulance. - -"Suppose we all go into the living room." Catherine brushed Letty and -Marian to their feet. "Daddy will be here soon, and we'll all have -dinner together for the first time. Yes, Letty, too. It's a special -occasion. Spencer's first full-dress day." - -"Should I wash for dinner now, Muvver?" Marian still clung to her -mother's arm. Catherine, looking down at the brown eyes, was disturbed. -Marian was jealous of Spencer. She resented--oh, well, probably that -was natural enough. Her legs outgrew her dresses, and her personality -was growing as rapidly, shooting up, not wholly caught in civilized -patterns. - -"Can you keep your hands clean until dinner? Perhaps you might wait -until Daddy has come. Run along, children. I want to speak to Miss -Kelly a moment." - -"What about, Muvver?" - -"Business." Catherine was firm, and Marian's mood shifted quickly. - -"Show Letty your ole radium," she said, dragging Letty after her, and -Spencer pursued them in haste. - -"You needn't stay for Letty's supper," said Catherine, as Miss Kelly -returned. "You've been very kind to give me so many additional hours. -And you certainly deserve to-morrow. It is several weeks, isn't it, -since you've had Sunday?" - -"That's all right, Mrs. Hammond." Miss Kelly laid the retrieved shirt -on the dresser. "Of course, if you don't need me to-morrow." She looked -at Catherine warily, her sandy lashes blinking, her nose still reddened -from the afternoon. "You will want me next week?" - -"Of course." Catherine frowned, a kind of panic whirring in her. - -"I wondered. I didn't know. Something your mother said. I knew you -needed some one for the children only if you were working." - -"You must have misunderstood mother." The whirring deepened into fear, -like wings, beating to escape the nets spread to catch her. They all -expected her to abandon everything, to step back into the old harness. -"Of course, I have made no plans, until Spencer was well. But next -week"--she spoke out boldly, denying her own doubts--"next week I -shall--" she did not finish that sentence. "At any rate, Miss Kelly, -I should tell you in advance. I've just been admiring the way you are -training the children. You are quite remarkable with them." - - -VIII - -When Charles came in, Marian flew to meet him, flinging her arms about -him as far as they would go, with little squeals of delight. - -"Daddy, hello; we're going to have a party. Letty, too. Spencer can sit -up at the table." - -"I should say I could," broke in Spencer, indignantly. - -He looks tired--Catherine smiled at him over Letty's yellow head. -Sallow, discouraged. His glance withdrew quickly from hers, stopped at -Spencer. - -"How's the boy? Fine?" - -"Daddy!" Marian pulled at his sleeve. "I thought of something. Let me -whisper it." - -And Catherine, while Letty slipped from her lap in an endeavor to -learn what Marian was whispering, thought: it's a breaking off place, -to-night. The interim is over. - -"You'd better ask mother." Charles ruffled Marian's cropped head. - -"No! A secret, Daddy!" - -"Well. Ask Mrs. O'Lay, then." - -"Tell Letty!" She pounded on his knee. - -"Here, you!" He glanced again at Catherine, and his grin was suddenly -like Spencer's. "That's no way to learn a secret. You wait." - -Catherine's heart began to beat quickly. He is wretched about -something, she thought. Bothered. But he wants to pretend. Marian -whisked back, jumping about it. "It's all right! She says sure!" - -"Then you wait at the door. Don't let them guess," and he stalked off, -leaving Marian solemn in her delight, stationed at the door. - -"Chwismas!" shouted Letty. But Marian shooed her out of the hall when -Daddy returned. - -Dinner had caught the slight tingling mood of a special occasion. -Charles was deliberately jolly, and the children responded in expansive -delight. Excitement moved pleasantly into Catherine, too, in spite of -her sober, concealed thoughts. That other dinner, ages ago, with the -children responsive then to the contention between her and Charles. The -friendly enclosure of the room, with Letty at her left, Charles across -from her, the other two--and Mrs. O'Lay waddling in and out. Above all, -Spencer, safely clear of that dark threat. - -"Well, it's the first time we've had a jolly dinner party for a long -time, eh, Cathy?" - -Ah, that was the thing she feared, ironically, under the bright -surface, that Charles was building again; not a trap, exactly, nor a -prison, but a net, a snare. This was to be proof, this scene, that -they must have her, wholly. That her life dwelt only within such walls -as these. That her desires, even, were held here. Her eyes were bright -and troubled. - -The secret came. Ice cream and chocolate sauce. - -"Now it's a real party," sighed Marian, contentedly. "And I thought it -up." - -The telephone rang. Charles sprang to his feet, dropping his napkin as -he hurried out. - -"Why," asked Spencer, "does Daddy always have to hustle when the 'phone -rings?" - -"Because he has important business, because he's a man," said Marian, -promptly. - -"It might be for me." Spencer was hopeful. - -"No!" Marian derided him. "Folks don't telephone little boys." - -Astonishing. Catherine looked at Marian's calm profile. Where did she -pick up her perfect feminine attitude? Instinct, or a parroting of some -one, Miss Kelly, or her grandmother? - -"Catherine!" Charles was calling. "Some one wants you." - -"Now! It wasn't Daddy at all." Spencer was triumphant. - -"Move along into the living room," said Catherine, rising. "Mrs. O'Lay -is waiting to clear the table." - -Then, as she sat down at the desk, she had a hasty, random thought. -Stella Partridge hadn't called for Charles once these past weeks. -Perhaps that hint of Henrietta's--Margaret's voice cut in. - -"Hello! You back?" Catherine settled herself comfortably. - -"Just in. Everything all right? I've been talking with Henrietta." - -"Yes. Really all right. Spencer had a party to-night, his first dinner -with the family." - -"Could I see him to-morrow?" - -"Of course. Where have you been, anyway? Mother was vague." - -"Trip for the firm. To their factories in Boston and Pittsburgh. Cathy, -what a shame your tour was interrupted! When do you go back?" - -"You mean west again?" A little shock tingled through Catherine, quite -as if, while she looked at a group of familiar thoughts, an outside -hand shifted the spotlight, and at once a different color lay upon -them, changing them. - -"You hadn't finished the work, had you?" - -"No." That was all Catherine could say. - -"Well, Spencer's all right, isn't he?" - -"Yes," heavily from Catherine. Silence for a moment. Then Margaret, -forcefully: - -"I'd like to come right out to-night. Don't be a fool, Cathy! I know -just what's happened to you, old dear! Don't you let it! But Amy's -waiting for me, and I'm starved." - -Catherine stared at the round black mouthpiece. If she could hold that -light Margaret threw over things--in which nothing looked the same. But -she couldn't talk. - -"I'll expect you to-morrow, then?" she asked. - -"Yes. Early." - - * * * * * - -Charles was telling the children the story of the bantam hen he had -owned when he was a little boy. Letty was curled up on his knees, -Marian sat on the arm of his chair, his arm about her, Spencer had -drawn his chair close. - -"And I used to carry her around in the pocket of my coat, with just her -head sticking out, and her bright shiny eyes and her yellow bill." - -"Yellow bill?" murmured Letty. - -"Just how big was she, Daddy?" Marian asked. - -"I'd like a hen like that," said Spencer. - -"Some day maybe we can live in a decent place, where we can have hens." - -"And a dog, Father?" - -"No, a kitty. A little gray soft kitty." Marian looked anxiously at her -father. "I'd much rather have a kitty, Daddy." - -"We might have both"--and as Letty opened her mouth wide and pink for -a protest--"yes, and Letty could have a kitty or a dog or a pet hen. -Well, my bantam's name was Mitty. One day----" - -Catherine stepped softly away from the door. She could get Letty's bath -ready. And she must transfer bedclothes. Spencer was to move into his -own room again, and she had forgotten to ask Mrs. O'Lay to arrange the -beds. - -When she went in for Letty, the story had gone on to a dog. Mr. Bill's -dog. He lived next door, Charles was explaining, and he was bigger than -I was. His dog was shaggy. - -Letty, protesting, came, full of incoherencies about dogs and kittens -and chickens. - -"Muvver, to-day Letty wants li'l dog an' li'l kitty an' li'l shickey." - -"Not to-day. To-day's over. Now you are a fish." And Letty swam -vigorously. Catherine stood beside her cot, looking down at her, -fragrant, pink, beatific. A decent place to live in--with live things -around them instead of city streets. A tiny, distant alarm clanged in -her mind. That was what Charles had said, when he spoke of the offer at -Buxton. Was he thinking about that, still? What _was_ he thinking about! - -Spencer had his bath, refusing her assistance with firm dignity. He was -silent, standing at the door of his own room, a thin, pajamaed figure, -looking at his own cot. - -"You don't need me now at night, do you?" Catherine turned down the -covers. "Here, hop in before you are chilly." - -"I liked that other bed," said Spencer. "It's much softer." - -"Nonsense!" Catherine laughed at him, tucked him in, kissed his cheek -softly, not looking at the pink, wrinkled scar. "Same kind of springs. -And you're well now." - -"Will you be gone in the morning, Mother?" - -His question halted her at the door. - -"No, Spencer. What made you ask that?" - -"I wanted to know." - -She snapped off the light and closed his door. - -Then Marian was bathed; scrubbing and spluttering, she repeated with -funny little imitations of Charles's phrases, the stories about Mitty -Bantam and Mr. Bill's dog. - -Catherine opened the window to let the steam out of the bathroom, while -she hung up limp towels and scrubbed out the tub and restored things -to shining order. Her sleeve slipped down on her wet wrist, and she -shoved it back impatiently. She'd like a drowsy, warm bath herself, and -sleep, dreamless, heavy. But Charles was waiting for her. The interim -was over. Pushing her hair away from her forehead with her habitual -gesture, she went into the living room. - -Charles looked up from his paper, smoke wreathing his face. - -"This has been fine," he said, warmly. "Comfortable home evening." - -Catherine sat down, brushing drops of water from her skirt. - -"Hasn't it?" he urged. - -"Well--" She was staring at her hands, blanched, wrinkled at the finger -tips, by their long soaking. "If home is the bathroom!" Under her -lowered eyelids she saw Charles watching her, guardedly. He set down -his pipe with a click. - -"If you feel that way!" - -"Horrid of me to say it, wasn't it?" Catherine relaxed, her hands -limp-wristed along the chair. - -"I suppose you are tired. Awful strain, these last weeks." - -"Perhaps I am." Catherine twisted sidewise in her chair and smiled at -him. "But you look tired, too, poor boy. What have you been doing? -I--why, I haven't seen you since I came back." - -"You certainly haven't. But I didn't mind. Spencer--well, thank God, -that's over!" - -"Yes." Catherine discovered that she was so recently out from the -distorting shadow of fear for Spencer that as yet she could not talk -about it, as if words might have black magic to recall the fear. - -"Damned lucky escape." Charles rammed tobacco into the pipe bowl with -his thumb. He was thrusting out words in bravado, without looking at -Catherine. He, too, had lived in that fear! He sucked vigorously, -drawing the match flame down into the pipe. "What are you going to do -now?" - -The muscles of wrists and fingers leaped into tight contraction, and -her hands doubled into fists against the chair. - -"I haven't thought, until to-day." Then, suddenly,--better pour out -everything. "Nothing has changed, has it, now that Spencer is well?" - -"You plan to go back to the Bureau?" - -"You mean that you think I should give it up?" Catherine stared at the -hard, jutting line of his jaw, at his eyes, feverish, sunken. "Charles, -you can't mean you blame me for Spencer's accident?" - -"No." He spoke sharply, denying himself. "It might have happened -anyway. I know that." - -"Oh!" A long, escaping sigh. "If you had blamed me--I couldn't have -endured it." And then, "It's hard, not to blame myself." - -"That's just it." Charles moved forward, eagerly. "It's frightening. I -thought you might feel, well, that you couldn't risk it. Leaving them. -I want to be fair, Catherine." - -"If you had been away, on a business trip"--Catherine was motionless -except for the slow movement of her lips--"and this had happened, I -should have sent for you. Would you have blamed yourself? Or given up -your work? Oh, yes, I know you'll say that's different. It isn't so -different. It wouldn't be, if you didn't make it so." - -"Oh, my work." He settled back into his chair. "I've got to tell you -things about that. I don't know how interested you are. You've been -engrossed." He paused, but Catherine did not speak. "It does concern -you! And it's a frightful mess." His eyes were haggard, angry, and his -shoulders sagged in the chair with a curious, weary dejection, unlike -their usual squared confidence. "I haven't told you. They didn't put me -in as head of the clinic. The committee recognized the value of my work -in organizing the clinic"--he was quoting, sneeringly--"but preferred -to install a medical psychiatrist. You know it was decided last year, -unofficially, that I was to be appointed the instant the funds were -clear." - -"What happened? Who is the head?" Pity extricated Catherine from -her own floundering. She knew, swiftly, what had happened, as she -remembered a sentence in that letter from Henrietta. - -"A Dr. Beck. What happened? The usual thing. The doctors in the town -stirred up the usual brawl. This was a medical clinic. No layman -could manage it. Any fool with a year of anatomy could do better -than a specialist. If you can cut off a leg or an appendix, you know -instinctively everything about mental disorders or feeble-mindedness or -anything else that touches psychology." - -"But you had discussed that with the committee, and they----" - -"They agreed with me last year. But they say they didn't realize -popular opinion. There was underhanded play going on before I heard -about it, and the thing was settled. I don't know just how. It's that -feeling--doctors are all wise, established powers, mystic, and we -scientists are new. If a man can cure the measles, he knows more about -paranoia than I know!" - -Catherine clasped her hands, pulses tingling in her finger tips. - -"What has happened to Miss Partridge?" she asked. - -A dull, brick-glow mounted in Charles's face--anger, or humiliation. - -"Has she been ousted, too?" insisted Catherine. - -"Dr. Beck has made her his assistant." - -"But she's not a physician." Catherine lifted one hand to her throat, -pressing it against the sharp ache there. Poor Charles, he had been -pounded. If he would only tell her! - -"No. But she's shrewd enough to see where her bread will be nicely -buttered. She makes an excellent office girl. She--" He was defiant, -aggressive. "You didn't ever like her. You'll probably be delighted to -hear that she saw which way the wind blew, and even added some puffs -of her own. Queering me. Flopping over the instant she saw her own -advantage." - -That little squirrel smile! And the faint, distinct, metallic ring -in her clear voice! Catherine saw her in the dusk of that passageway -behind the gymnasium, holding the brown leather bag. I'm soft, she -thought, to have no pleasure out of this. - -"Well?" demanded Charles. "You see where it leaves me. All this time -wasted." - -"At least you have the material for your book." Catherine was -dispassionately consoling. "And you have that almost done." - -"But I haven't. It's clinic material. I can't publish it now. It -belongs to them." - -"Charles!" - -"Exactly. She did part of the work, Miss Partridge. She wants that for -Dr. Beck. The committee wants the rest, for its clinic as at present -established." - -"That's outrageous." - -"I could put out a book from my own notes. But it wouldn't mean -anything. No authority behind it. No, I'm done with them. Done." - -"At least"--Catherine felt slowly for words--"you have your university -work. That's the main thing. That hasn't been touched." - -"Hasn't it, though?" Charles was grim. "When I've spent all this time, -on the score of a great contribution I was about to make!" - -"Does it hang up your promotion?" Catherine cried out. - -"It does. I heard that this morning, indirectly." - -Catherine pulled herself to her feet and stood beside him, hesitantly -brushing his hair, moving her finger down to the deep crease between -his eyes. - -"See here," she said, lightly. "You aren't so done for as all that. You -know it." - -He thrust his arm violently around her, drew her down to the arm of the -chair, his head pressing into her shoulder. - -"And you weren't here!" he cried. "There was no one----" - -"Poor boy." Her hand touched his head, softly, sensitive to the -crispness of his heavy hair. - -"You haven't cared what happened to me." His words came muffled. - -"Oh, haven't I?" Her fingers crept down to his cheek. "Perhaps I have." - -"Haven't shown it much." He lifted his face from her shoulder. - -In the instant before she bent to kiss him, there was a scurry of -thoughts through her mind--leaves lifted in a puff of wind: He is -contrite about Stella Partridge. He can't say that he is. He thinks -I don't know about her. No use in airing that. He is through, and -unhappy, and I love him. - -"Let's not talk any more to-night," she said. "Lots of days coming to -talk in. Spencer is well, and we are here, together." - - -IX - -A square, rimmed in solid black, of something full of distant, -colorless clarity. Not quite colorless, since an intense turquoise-blue -seemed to move far behind it, like a wave. Catherine stared. She had -come awake so suddenly that she could only see that square at first, -without knowledge of it. Then, as suddenly, she knew. It was the sky, -over the black rim of the opposite wall of the court, with window edges -for its frame. Almost morning. What a strange dream, digging, trying -to push the spade down through roots of dead grass, while someone kept -saying, "Make it larger. That won't hold her." Had Spencer called out? -Fully awake, she lifted herself on an elbow. The house was quiet. She -could see dimly between her and the window the dark mound of Charles's -head on his pillow. - -That queer dream. As she lay down again, she had it, in a swift flash -of association. The Actinidia vine! Bury an old hen at its roots, she -had told Bill. She was digging, for herself. Oh, grotesque! - -And yet, before she had slept, she had not thought of herself. She had -worked patiently, tenderly, to restore Charles. She could hear him, -humble, "You mean that, Cathy? You think this isn't a horrible failure? -I couldn't prevent it, could I? After all--" and gradually she had -drawn him clear of his forlorn dejection. - -The patch of sky grew opaque, white. Morning. - -There is no wall between us now, she thought. That is down. -Love--tenderness--strength--sweet, fiery, ecstasy--all that he wished. -Surely he would, in turn--lift her--into her whole self. - - -X - -Charles had taken the children out for a Sunday afternoon walk. They -wanted Catherine, too. - -"The air will do you good, if you _are_ tired," urged Charles. - -"But Margaret is coming in." Catherine stretched lazily in her chair. -"And I don't want to budge." - -Charles had gone, resignation in his voice as he corralled the children -out of the door. Catherine closed her eyes. She was eager to see -Margaret, and yet a little afraid. She was too like an old scrap bag -crammed with thoughts and feelings, tangled, unsorted; and Margaret -would want to shake out the bag, sweeping away the jumble of contents. - -Charles had said, that morning, "Queer, how down I felt yesterday. That -pork roast Friday night was too heavy. Tell Mrs. O'Lay, will you, to -go easy on the pork." And then, hastily, "Talking things out with you -cleared the air, too. I can see I'd had an exaggerated line on them. I -have a plan I want to talk over, some time soon." - -Charles, restored, could call his malady pork! At the same -time--Catherine rose hastily as the bell clattered. At the same time, -she thought, walking down the hall, there had been gratitude, hidden, -unspoken, and release in the feeling between them. That feeling was the -air itself, intangible, invisible, but holding all these other things -of shape or solidity. Charles was himself again, confident, assured, -almost boisterous. - -Margaret pounced at her, shook her gently, hugged her, marched her back -to the living room. - -"Fine! Everyone else is out. Now I can bully you." She dragged off -her gloves. "You look as if you needed it, too," she said. She leaned -forward abruptly and touched Catherine's hand. "Spencer! Oh, it has -been awful, I know," and surprisingly her eyes grew brilliant with -tears. "But he's honestly not hurt, is he? Henrietta swore he wasn't." - -"Honestly all right," said Catherine. - -"I wanted to come back, but Henry wired me I couldn't do a thing. So I -stuck to the job." She moved restlessly. "And Henry swears there's no -danger of any future complication. I worried about that. Spencer's not -the sort I want changed by any knock on his head." - -"No." Catherine shivered. "They all say there is absolutely no danger." - -"Well." Margaret was silent a moment. - -She had to say that, to be rid of it, thought Catherine. - -"But I know what you've been up to." Margaret's tears were gone. -"Wallowing in sentimental regrets. Listening to mother suggests that -you must surely see your duty now. And the King, too! Just when I was -so proud of you, and using you for an example of what a woman really -could do, could amount to, and everything." She laughed. "Don't be a -renegade, Cathy." - -"Pity to spoil your example, huh?" - -"Exactly. Have you seen your boss since you came back? I thought not. -Cathy, go and see him. Dress up and go down to your office. Drag -yourself out of your home, sweet home, long enough to remember how you -felt. If you'll promise that, I won't say another word. Psychological -and moral effect, that's all." - -"I don't want to see him until I make up my mind." - -"It isn't your mind you are making up. It's"--Margaret waved her -hand--"it's your sentiment tank. Oh, I know. I have a soft heart, -myself, Catherine." - -"There's another thing." Margaret had turned her upside down, as she -had feared, and she was hunting feverishly in the scattered contents -of her scrap-bag self. "Charles." Reticence obscured her. "He's been -disappointed about that clinic. He does need----" - -"Anybody," declared Margaret with quick violence, "anybody needs -somebody else loving 'em, smoothing 'em down, setting 'em up, brushing -off the dust. I know! But you can do that anyway. That just goes -on----" - -"I wonder. You're a hard-boiled spinster, Margaret. What do you know -about it?" - -"I know a little thing or two about love. You do it all the time, -through and around whatever else you are doing. Not from nine to five -exclusively." She settled back, a grimace on her lips, as the door -rattled open and Letty's piping was heard. "Didn't stay long, did he? -You promise me you'll go down to the Bureau. Quick! Or I'll fight with -the King like a----" - -"Yes, I'll go down." Catherine laughed. "I'd have to anyway." - -And Margaret, smiling at her, ran out to meet Spencer. - - -XI - -Catherine sat at the dining room table, staring down at the straggling -columns of figures on the sheet of yellow paper. Her mouth was sullen, -mutinous. Mrs. O'Lay came through the hall, her broom swishing behind -her. She had been redding up the study, and Catherine had moved her -bookkeeping into the dining room. Well, there it was. Appalling totals. -Bills and bills and bills. She ran her fingers across the ragged edges -of her checkbook stub. No hope there. Then her hand crept past the -bills to a long white envelope, bearing the Bureau inscription in one -corner. Her check in full for the month, as if she had stayed in Ohio -and finished the job. Charles's eyebrows, lifted inquiringly when Miss -Kelly had appeared that morning, seemed to arch across her name on -that envelope. She had only to take out that slip of paper, scrawl her -name and "on deposit" across the back, and she was committed. Last -night--Charles clinging to her hand--"It's wonderful, Cathy, having -things right again. Don't spoil them." And she cravenly had kept -silence. - -She looked again at the final figures in her check book. Tiny, impotent -sum. Her mind busily added to them the figures of the check. But she -couldn't take it, unless she meant to go on. Dr. Roberts intended it as -an indication of her permanence, a check for the full month, when she -had worked only half of it. Her fingers rested on the slip. The bills, -the paltry little balance, worked on her in a sort of desperate fever. - -I'd have to give up Mrs. O'Lay, too, she thought, to even things. -There'll be doctors' bills. That surgeon. Everything's overdrawn. Have -to tell Miss Kelly. - -She saw herself vividly walking that treadmill. Poor Charles; he had -expected some release, financially, from the clinic and his book. -Wonderful, having things right--don't spoil them. - -She rose quickly, bunching together the devastating bits of paper. She -had to see Dr. Roberts, at least. No use trying to think. Her mind was -a jellyfish. Perhaps if she saw him, and talked with him, something -with a backbone would rise up to rout the jellyfish. - -"I may not be in for luncheon," she told Mrs. O'Lay. "But you can -manage." - -"Sure, you look elegant." Mrs. O'Lay replaced the cover on her kettle -of soup. "An' a breath of air will do your heart good." - -It did, Catherine discovered. She had been housed too long. Clear, -bright, gusty, with bits of paper swirling along the stone wall of -the Drive, and sharp white wave edges rushing across the river. Too -cold for the top of the bus. She watched the river through the window, -and then the shops on the side streets. She was empty, except for bits -of external things touching her eyes. Straw hats in the windows, and -bright feathers; why, spring would come, soon. - -The elevator boy grinned at her widely, ducking his bullet head. - -"How'do. Ain't seen you round here for quite some time." - -That old thrill of belonging to the building--that woman in furs -stepping off at the dentist's floor was eying her curiously--the thrill -of expanding into part of this complicated, intricate, impersonal life. - -Her office again, long, narrow, caging the sunlight between its shelved -walls, and the stenographer rising in a little flurry. "I'll call Dr. -Roberts. He was expecting you, I think." - -Catherine looked out of her window. No one in the fitting room -opposite; she could see the sweep of draped fabrics. - -"Mrs. Hammond! I am delighted to see you." - -Dr. Roberts bustled toward her, his bearded face cordial, his gestures -animated, fidgety. "I wondered how soon you would be in. I should have -called you soon. Your little boy has recovered?" - -"Yes." Catherine sat down. - -"Such a pity. Poor little chap. And calling you back. I must tell -you how admirable your investigation is. We've had several letters -from people whom you met. You handled them admirably, interested them -without antagonizing them. Well, you are ready now to finish the tour?" - -"You have sent no one else?" Catherine was cold. That jellyfish in her -head was a flabby lump left by the tide. - -"No. I want you to go back." His eyes, small, keen, searched hers. - -She sighed faintly. - -"I can't do it." She was startled at the finality in her own words. "I -can't go away, Dr. Roberts. Not--again." - -He showed no surprise. - -"Your letters," he suggested. "They sounded enthusiastic." - -"It was fascinating." There was pain in the folding down of her long -eyelids. "But I can't go away. I--" she smiled briefly. "I've lost my -nerve. I can't risk what might happen." - -"The children, you mean?" - -"Yes." - -"Um. A pity. Accidents happen, anyway. But of course you have thought -of that." He drummed busily with his fingers along the desk. - -Catherine straightened her shoulders. She could think clearly now; -evidently the jellyfish had existed just for that one decision. - -"I had hoped there wouldn't be a chance for me to go away again. I -thought you might have sent someone else, and that you'd want me here -in the office. You see--the glimpse I had of the real colleges gives -enormous vitality to all these catalogues. I'd like to go on, if I -could do it right here." - -When had she thought that? Astonishing, the way ideas burst out from -some deep level, and you recognized them as authentic. - -"A pity." Dr. Roberts clasped his hands, twisting his fingers in and -out. Here's the church, and here's the steeple, thought Catherine, as -if she played the finger game for Letty. "I was afraid of it. But if -you will come back, handle the work here--I like the way you write up -the material." He clapped one palm on the desk. "Let me think it over. -I suppose I might finish the trip myself. I am free now--those meetings -have come off." - -"There's this check." Catherine took it out of her handbag. "For a -month, at the new rate." - -"I think that will be satisfactory. It's gone into the budget, your -salary, I mean. I don't think the President will suggest cutting it. -Not if I make the trip myself. Let me think it over. No, the check is -yours." - - * * * * * - -Just after twelve, by the jeweler's sidewalk clock. She could reach -home for luncheon. But she didn't want to! She turned out of the -entrance and moved along, graceful, deliberate, toward the cross street -and Amy's club. - -The housekeeper nodded to her. There were women in a group near the -fire, one or two heads turning toward her; no one there who knew her. -She sat alone at a small yellow table in a corner of the dining room. -She was earlier than her usual hour. That was why she saw none of the -women she had talked with. She did recognize several of the faces. -Bits of gossip collected about them, highly colored pieces of personal -comment, which Amy had thrown off in her intense, throaty voice. That -woman who was just seating herself, dropping her heavy, squirrel-lined -great coat over her chair, was a successful physician; makes thirty -thousand at least. Has to have a young thing adoring her--yes, there's -the present young thing, with a sleek bobbed head like a child's, -and round, serious eyes. Secretary, housekeeper, chauffeur, slave! -Catherine could hear Amy's satiric list. And the two women at the table -beyond. Catherine bent over her salad, while the women in the room -retreated to some great distance, carrying the bits of gossip like -cockleburrs stuck to their garments. It's funny, thought Catherine. I -never saw it before. But it is always how they love--how they live--not -what they think. Even when Amy talks about them. Even these women. - -Her thoughts ran on, clearly. She had wished to lunch there, because -she needed something to orient herself, to deliver her out of the -smother of her life and all its subtle, intimate pressures of love. -She wanted to see women in terms of some cold, dignified, outer -achievement. And instead, her mind clattered about them with tales of -their lovers, their husbands, their emotional bondage. - -Well, was that her fault, her own prepossession? Or Amy's? From Amy had -come these irritating recollections. Or was it that women were like -that, summed up in personal emotions? She drew on her gloves and left -the club rooms. - -She would walk up the Avenue and across Central Park. They were having -lunch at home, now, Charles, the children. Sometimes in walking her -feet seemed to tread thoughts into smoothness; or the swinging rhythm -of her body shook some inner clarity up through confused images where -she could see it, could lay hold of it. - -What was she trying to think about, anyway? Women? Herself? Herself and -Charles. And the children. - -Men had personal lives, too. But didn't they make them, or try to make -them, comfortable, assured, sustaining, so that they could leave them? -Find them when they came back? And women having had nothing else, still -centered there? She stopped in a block of traffic, looking about with -eyes strained and vague. - -Petulant, smug faces above elegant furs. Hard streaks of carmine for -lips. Faces with broad peasant foreheads, with beak noses. Faces---- - -The rush carried her across the street. Letty and Marian, her -daughters, growing up. - -If I knuckle under now, she thought, what of them? She could feel them -pressing against her, Letty's silky head under her throat, Marian's -firm, slim body against her arm. What I do can't matter very much, -directly, to them. They have to live, themselves. She was humble, -feeling their individualness, their growth as a curious progression -of miracles in which she was merely an incidental tool. Women devote -themselves to their families, so that their daughters may grow up and -devote themselves to their families, so that---- Catherine laughed. -Some one has to break through that circle, she thought. - -She entered the Park, walking more slowly along the winding path. If -she had only sons--the thought of Spencer stood up like a straight -candle flame in her murky drifting--that would be different. There was -her own mother. Catherine could see her, being wheeled along the beach -at Atlantic City, with her friend, Alethea, on a little holiday to -recover from the shock of Spencer's accident. How does she manage it, -that poise of hers, that sufficiency? - -The walk had come to a cluster of animal houses. Catherine looked about -her, and on a sudden whim went past the attendant into the monkey -house. The warm, acid, heavy odor affronted her. She didn't want to -be here. Years ago she had come in, before she married. She turned -to go, and met the melancholy flat stare of a small gray monkey. The -animal clung to the bars of the cage with one hand, the long, naked -fingers moving restlessly, and looked at Catherine, while the fingers -of the other hand dug pensively into the fur of her breast. Catherine -felt her heart pause; she had a sensation of white excitement, as if -she hung poised over an abyss of infinite knowledge, comprehension. A -second monkey swung chattering across the cage and dropped from the -bar, grabbing at the tail of the monkey that stared, and the moment -was gone. Catherine went hastily out into the clear, sweet air. I hate -them, she muttered, and hurried away across the brown, dead stretches -of park. But she could not escape the vivid recollection of that -earlier visit, years ago. She had seen then a female monkey nursing -her young, and the pathos of the close-set unwinking eyes over the -tiny furry thing had made the curve of long monkey arm a symbol of -protective mother instinct. - -They're too like us. That's why I hate them. And then, fiercely, men -have climbed out of that. Some ways. But they want to keep us monkey -women. Loving our mate and children. Nothing else. - -She came presently to a stretch of water at the other side of the -park, and stopped a moment on the shore. Blue, quiet, with long black -reflections of trees from the opposite bank. - -My mind has made itself up, she thought. Her pallor and sullenness had -given place to an intense vitality in her wide, dark eyes, in the curve -of her mouth. It isn't selfishness, nor egoism, this hankering of mine. -It's more than that. I'll tell Charles--she laughed softly, out of the -wholeness of her release from doubt--I'll tell him that I can't be a -monkey woman. He'll help me. He must help me. - - -XII - -She waited until the children were asleep and the house was quiet. -Then she knocked at the study door, behind which Charles sat, working -on a lecture. She scarcely waited for his "Come" but went in swiftly, -closing the door. - -"Most through work?" She drew a small chair near his desk. "Why, you -aren't working." His desk was orderly, bare. - -"Not just now." Charles leaned back. "I--" he hesitated. "You look -stunning in that get-up," he finished. - -"Yes?" Catherine's smile lingered. "It's not the get-up. It's me, -inside." - -"Handsome wife." Charles touched her fingers, spreading them wide -between his own fingers, crumpling them together in a sudden violent -squeeze. Then he leaned back again. "Just been thinking about you," he -said. - -"Yes? So've I." Vivacity in Catherine's voice, her gesture, a vivacity -which had true life from deep inner light, not an external manner. "I -wanted to talk to you." - -"I've been wanting to talk things over with you." Charles looked away -from her somberly. "For some time." - -"It's about next year," continued Charles slowly, and Catherine -thought, I'll leave the monkeys out, at first. "Our plans, you know." - -Something arrested Catherine at the edge of speech, something like the -damp finger of air from a cellar. - -"I should have brought it up before you went downtown," he was saying. -"You were down this morning, weren't you?" - -She nodded. - -"I didn't realize you were going. And anyway, to-day sort of brought -matters to a head." - -"Yes?" - -"Well, it's my job. I went in to see the Head, to-day." Charles faced -her, his eyes deprecating. "You gave me nerve to do that, Cathy. I'd -been knocked so confoundedly hard--but I felt better to-day. That's -you." Catherine's hands clung together in her lap. "I wanted to have -exact data on where I stood. The trouble is, this place is too big. -I mean the institution, not my own job. There are too many men eager -for a foothold. The Chief was rather fine about it--about my work, -especially. Praised it. You know. But he said I'd stepped somewhat out -of rank, going abroad. Two men are ahead of me, in line for promotion. -Can't have too many professors. Isn't room. All that guff, you know -what it is." Charles brought his fist down on the desk. "I should like -to get to a place where I can march ahead as fast as I can go. I talked -over the whole situation with him, including the Buxton offer." His -eyes were suddenly wary, inquisitive. "You remember that, of course? -And he agreed with me." - -"He advised you to leave the University?" Catherine heard her own -voice, like a thin wire. - -"He agreed that the chance for advancement, for future accomplishment, -lay there rather than here." - -"And you wish to go?" - -"I had another letter to-day from the president there. It's a -remarkable place, Cathy. Small, but endowed to the neck. A few of -those small colleges are, you know. I'd have the entire department -in my hands, with freedom to work out anything I liked. They want a -strong department. Want a good man to build it up." His wariness, his -searching of her face had dropped away in a rush of genuine enthusiasm. -His words ran on, building the picture, his work, his opportunity. -Then he switched, suddenly. "And the place is fine, too. Pretty little -town, college community. Wonderful place for the children. The other -night, as I told them about my childhood, I felt we had no right to -imprison them here. It isn't decent. Shut up in a city, when they are -just growing up. Do you think so? All this awful struggle to stretch -our income, too. That would be over. More salary, almost twice as much. -Living conditions infinitely better. Pleasant people to live near." - -"When you got your appointment at the University here, you thought it -was perfect. The institution, the city. Do you remember how you felt?" - -"It did seem so, didn't it? But you have to watch a thing work out." - -"You are sure you are judging Buxton fairly, and not in the light of -what's happened in the clinic?" - -"I've been thinking about it for months. I spoke about it in the -fall----" He stopped suddenly, and Catherine saw the phantom that he -had evoked: his own voice, harsh, "I think I'll take that Buxton offer, -just to get you out of town," and her own answer, thrown back as she -fled, "You'd have to be sure I would go!" - -"I can't decide it alone," he went on hastily. "I'm just trying to show -you how it looks to me." - -"But you have decided." Her effort to keep her voice steady flattened -all its intonations. "Decided that it is much the best thing for your -career, much the best for the children." - -"I can't drag you off unless you wish to go. I hoped you would like it, -too. It--well, it is something of an honor, you know. The way they keep -after me. There's a large appropriation for a laboratory. I'd have very -little teaching. They seem to have some idea of a creative department." - -Catherine was silent. There was something shaking and ludicrous, in the -way that courageous light of afternoon had been snuffed out. Why, she -had thought she stood at last in a clear road, where she could be sure -of direction, and here she was only at the core of the labyrinth again, -knocked blindly into an angle of blind wall. - -"Catherine!" he cried out against her silence. "If it wasn't for this -damned idea of yours, you'd care what happened to me!" - -Whirling about in the lane of her labyrinth, shutting her eyes to its -maze. "I do care, Charles. That's the trouble." - -"After all, it's not just me. It's the children and you, isn't it?" He -fiddled with the blotter, shoved it along the desk. "I think it will -be infinitely better for you, too." His chin was obdurate. "New York -is no place. Overstimulates you. At a place like Buxton, life is more -normal. There's a woman's Faculty Club," he added, triumphantly. - -Catherine laughed. - -"Teas?" she said, "or literary afternoons?" - -"They're fine women. Cathy, don't laugh. I hoped you would like it." - -"Like it?" She flung out her hands, sensitive, empty palms upwards. -"I've just been there! I know what it is like. But I know"--she was -sober again--"why, there's nothing for me to do but say yes, is there? -I can't say that Buxton offers me no opportunity, except to be a monkey -woman, can I?" - -"What?" - -"Nothing." She doubled a fist against her mouth, and stared at him. - -"You've been so sweet these last days." Charles reached for her hand, -held it between both of his. "Things were ghastly mixed up, and then -we seemed straight again, you and I. You know everything's been wrong -since you first took that damned office job. I can't stand it! Our -yapping at each other. I hoped you would want to throw it over. I do -care about your being happy. Cathy, if you believe, honestly, that it's -more important that you should stay here, I'll try to see it that way." - -Her hand was reluctant, cold, in the warm, steady pressure of his. - -"I can't believe it, alone." The labyrinth shut her in, black, -enclosing. "You'd have to believe it, yourself. And you don't." - -"It's different, considering the children, too, as well as you and me. -What you do, in an office, takes you away from me. What I do, Cathy, -that is yours, too, isn't it?" - -His fingers crept up about her wrist; beneath them her life beat in -heavy, slow rhythm. - -"It knocks the stuffing fairly out of everything, if I think you don't -care." - -"Yes. It does that for me, too." Catherine smiled at him in a flicker -of mockery. She caught a faint slackening of his fingers. Stella -Partridge! But she knew, even in the impulse to have that out, -to insist upon it as part of the winter, that it was better left -untouched. Intangible, incomplete, a kind of subtle aberration, it -would dissolve more quickly unexpressed. - -"I'd be a beast to say I wouldn't go. A perverted, selfish wife. -Wouldn't I? I can't be that. I'm too soft. Charles, I do desire for you -every chance----" - -"You're not soft. You're really fine. You----" He jumped to his feet. -"And when we get out there, you'll see. You'll like it! Lots of things -for you to do. You will be happy, Cathy. I'll make you happy." - -Catherine, leaning back in her chair, lifted her face to look up at -him. She heard in his voice the shouting down of fear; he had been -worried, then. He had not been sure. - - -XIII - -Catherine sat on the window sill, looking down at the shadows which -slanted across the tree tops of Morningside. In the distance roofs -still glittered in the afternoon sunlight. Beneath her the spring -leaves were delicate and small, keeping their own fine shape, not yet -making green masses. A little easterly breeze touched her warm cheek, -and she thought, leaning from the window, that she sniffed in it the -faint piquancy of Balm of Gilead buds. The last trunk was banging down -the hall, its thuds like muttered profanities. - -She turned back to the dismantled rooms. How queer they looked, small, -dingy, worn. Mrs. O'Lay, in the kitchen, was assuring Charles: "Sure -and you needn't worry yourself about that, Mr. Hammond. I'll clear out -every stick. Them little things I've saved for myself. I can make use -of them." - -She was cramming things into the dumbwaiter. Catherine could hear the -rustling of waste paper. - -Catherine stood up, cautiously. She was stiff, almost dizzy, as if she -had bent so long over packing boxes and trunks that her head couldn't -without penalty be held upright. Well, it was done. Incredible and -astonishing, that the disorder and confusion had come to an end. - -"All ready, dear?" Charles stood in the doorway, buttoning his coat, -patting his tie into place. "About time we got off." - -"Be sure there is nothing left." Catherine went slowly through the -rooms, listening to the walls return her footsteps emptily. - -In the kitchen Mrs. O'Lay poked among the salvage, bundles, piles, an -old black hat of Catherine's mounted rakishly on a box of breakfast -food, a dingy cotton duck of Letty's, limp from loss of stuffing. - -"I'll finish up here, Mis' Hammond." The broad red face was creased -into downward wrinkles. "Sure, an' I hate to see the end of you," she -said. "It's fine for you you got a tenant to come in right away, but -we'll miss you." - -"Taxi, Catherine!" shouted Charles. - -"Good-by, God love you!" Mrs. O'Lay waved her out of the apartment onto -the elevator. - -"Well, we certainly got things off in great style, eh?" Charles beside -her in the cab, the bags stowed at their feet, had his erect, briskly -managing air. "Everything done, and time for dinner before your train." - -Catherine was sunk in a lethargy of weariness; dimly she still sorted, -packed, gave directions. - -"You know, I forgot about the gas deposit." She emerged frantically -from her lethargy. "Five dollars!" - -"I'll see to it. Where's the receipt?" - -"Let's see--in that envelope. I'll mail it to you. It was good of -mother to take the children until train time, wasn't it?" Catherine -sighed. - -"I tell you, it was a lucky thing we got the apartment off our hands -before fall." Charles patted her knee cheerfully. "Awful job, if we'd -had to pack up at the end of the summer." - -"Awful job any time!" - -"Oh, well, a week in Maine will make you forget it all. Especially with -the rent off our chests." - -"You'll surely come in three weeks?" - -"Positively. That finishes up everything. And I'll have to get away -then if I'm to have any vacation. Say, be sure to tell old Baker he's -got to take me down to the ledges for some real fishing. I haven't -fished for two years, except for flounders." - -"And Buxton the first of August?" - -"Be hot there in August, won't it? Well, I'll have to go then. But I -can find a house for us, and sort of learn the ropes before you blow -in." - -"I wonder----" Catherine's brows met in a deep wrinkle. "I can't -remember which trunk I put the blankets in, and the linen. Hope they -aren't labeled Buxton!" - -"Oh, you got them where they belong. Don't fuss, I tell you. You let -me drop you at the Gilberts' now, and I'll go on to the station. I can -check these things, and that will give you a few minutes to rest." - -"I don't care where you drop me." Catherine laughed. "All my poor mind -does is to hunt for things in those trunks and boxes." - -"You might as well stop worrying. They're settled." - - * * * * * - -Catherine stood at the entrance to the hotel, watching the taxi jerk -its way along with the traffic. Charles's hand lay on the opened -window, a resolute, capable fist. Every one was going home. Home from -work. Shop girls in gay tweeds, already faded across the shoulders; -sallow, small men in baggy trousers, with bits of lint sticking to -them, from the lofts where they sewed--perhaps on more gay tweed -suits, or beaded silk dresses for the trade. Moist, pale faces, with a -startled, worn expression, as if the warmth of the day surprised and -exhausted the city dwellers. And in Maine--a sharp visual image of -pointed firs reflected in clear water, with a luminous twilight sky -behind dark branches. - -"Ought to be glad I'm going," she thought. "Instead of spending the -summer here, with these people. And the children--I couldn't keep them -here. Could I!" - -Henrietta's maid admitted her to the quiet, orderly living room. Dr. -Gilbert was in her office. She would be free soon. Catherine sat down -at the window, looking idly out at the great steel framework which -shadowed the room. How long ago she had looked down into pits of water -and uncouth shapes of cranes! New Year's Day. And Henry had said, -"You'd be a fool not to go." - -The methodical arrangement of the room was restful, sane, after the -hurly-burly of the last week. Distressing that confusion could so fray -the edges of yourself. She closed her eyes, relaxing into a kind of -blankness. - -She opened them presently, to find Henrietta in the doorway, staring -through her eyeglasses, her mouth firm and compassionate. - -"Hello!" Catherine moved hastily erect. "Don't turn that professional -stare on me. I won't have it." - -"Hoped you were asleep." Henrietta came in. "Bill hasn't shown up -yet. Perhaps we'd better go down to the dining room. Your train is so -beastly early. Where's Charles?" - -"Checking the trunks. He'll be in soon." - -As they waited for the elevator, Catherine turned suddenly upon -Henrietta. - -"You know, Henry, I appreciate your not telling me what you think. I -suppose you're disgusted, and you haven't said a word. Not since I told -you we were going." - -"Not disgusted." Henrietta thrust her eyeglasses between the buttons of -her jacket. "I've been rather cut up about it. But it's your affair. I -don't see that you could do anything else. Not now, at any rate." - -"Perhaps some women could. I can't." - -"Women can't alone." Henrietta sounded violent. "Not without men -helping them. Being willing to help them. So long as their own affairs -come first----" - -The door of the elevator swung open. - -"When Mr. Gilbert comes in, tell him we are at dinner. And Mr. Hammond, -too." - -"Yes, ma'am." - -Henrietta nodded to the waiter, who led them into an alcove off the -main dining room. - -"Quiet in here." Henrietta settled herself briskly. Catherine was -thinking: Henrietta manages her life so that things, mere things, never -get in her way--laundry, or food, or packing. "I wanted to see you -make a go of it," said Henrietta. "You're so darned intelligent. It's -the children, I know. If it weren't for them, you could stay here. If -you would. Probably Charles would pull you along by a heartstring even -then. Now, Bill---- But I'll let him speak for himself. He has some -news." - -"Perhaps"--Catherine did not glance up--"perhaps, Henry, I've just been -knocked flat at the end of the first round. Who knows? I may get my -wind back--in Buxton." - -"What can you do in a country town?" - -Catherine did not answer; Charles was coming toward them, buoyant, -touched with excitement, and behind him, Bill. Charles tucked the -checks into her purse. - -"I'll mail these others to the Dean," he said. "Great place we're going -to. The Dean himself has offered to see to our chattels. Going to store -them in some building on the campus until we come. Real human beings in -Buxton!" - -Catherine looked silently at Bill, as he took her hand for a brief -moment. She hadn't seen him for weeks; he had been out of town again. -His glance was grave, a little pleased. - -"Tell them your news, Bill." - -"Oh"--he shook out his napkin--"I'm off to South America next week, to -build a bridge." - -Henrietta explained. Huge engineering project, throwing a link across -mountains, a road for commerce. Difficult enough to interest even a -clam like Bill. - -Catherine listened rather vaguely; Bill was moving his knife, his salt, -his roll, to illustrate. Saves hundreds of miles in shipping, you see, -if the thing can be done. A straight line from the interior. - -"How long will it take?" - -"Can't tell exactly until I see the ground. Perhaps a year. Or longer." - -Catherine flung her glance at Henrietta, and found her watching Bill, -her blue eyes calmly reflective. Not a trace of dispute, not a faint -echo of bitterness, although Henrietta was looking less at Bill than -back into whatever secret, intimate hour of decision lay behind the -present announcement. This was what Henrietta had meant. That Bill -would go alone if he wished, not for an instant expecting Henrietta to -drop her life and follow. - -"And you're just staying here?" Charles was naïve, surprised. - -"Naturally." Henrietta grinned at him. "I can't move my practice. It's -a long time, but perhaps one of us can wriggle in a vacation." - -"Well!" Charles leaned back. "If my wife----" he broke off, -suspiciously. - -"Henrietta might reasonably object to being deserted," said Bill -quietly. "But she's good enough to see why I wish to go." - -Charles paused an instant over that, and then with a shrug came out on -clear, safe ground with a question about the work. Catherine listened. -She was tired. Her thoughts crawled obscurely, undirected, in a fog of -weariness. Charles would pull her along by a heartstring, Henrietta -said. Probably. She lacked that cold singleness which Henrietta kept. -But Bill never tried to pull Henry by a heartstring. He hid away from -her. - -"You're not eating a thing, Cathy," said Henrietta. "Too much packing, -I suppose. I hope you'll loaf for a while. Do you have the same woman -who took us for peddlars?" - -"I think so." Catherine stared out of her fog. - -"Amelia will have the house opened and ready. Catherine can loaf all -summer." Charles was hearty, assured. "It's been a hard winter, some -ways." - -The talk went on, with coffee and cheese, and Catherine drifted again -in her fog. Perhaps one person always hides away. Bill had said -something about that, once. In every combination of people, one hides. -But if you hide away, then you shouldn't sulk. Play fair. - -Dinner was over. Time to go. Henrietta, regretfully, explained that she -couldn't go to the station. A case. Bill would walk over. - -"I shall miss you, Cathy." They stood at the entrance of the hotel. -"And the children. Bill gone, too. I'll have to work like fury." - -"You must come out to Buxton when we're settled. Take a week off." -Charles glanced at his watch, edged toward the street. - -"I may." Henrietta's lips, firm and cool, touched Catherine's. -"Good-by." - -"We'd better walk fast," said Charles. "I have to get the bags out of -the parcel room." - -"Want a taxi?" Bill lifted his hand, but Catherine refused. - -"It's only three blocks. Let's walk." - -At the corner entrance of Grand Central, Charles darted ahead, with a -hasty, "Meet you at the clock. You find Mother Spencer and the kids." - -Catherine drew a long breath and looked up at Bill. - -"South America," she said. "Mountains. And you are really keen about -it?" - -"It sounds good, don't you think?" He pushed open the heavy door for -her. "Too bad we can't have dinner on some mountain peak." He smiled -down at her. "What would they give us? Hot tamales, or are those -Mexican?" - -"South America--and Buxton," said Catherine. - -"There is Spencer." Bill took her arm and swung her out of the path of -a laden porter. "And the others." - -"I hope it will be wonderful, Bill. And I'm not done for, not yet." -Catherine could see the children, Letty with round eyes and her doll -hugged under one arm, Marian jiggling on her toes with delight. - -"I hope that you----" What he would have said, Catherine did not know, -for Marian had seen them and hurled herself upon her mother with a -burst of staccato excitement. But Catherine had met, for a clear -instant, in a lifting of Bill's somber impersonality, a kind of dogged, -sympathetic challenge. - -"Oh, Mother!" Spencer had his fingers around her arm. "I began to think -you weren't coming!" - -"Margaret's here somewhere." Mrs. Spencer clung to Letty's hand. -"Buying you magazines, I think. Where is Charles?" - -"Here's the King." Margaret came up with him. "Hello, Mr. Bill." - -"The guard will have to let me through the gate," announced Charles -severely, "to settle these bags for you." - -"Oh, Cathy!" Margaret whisked to Catherine's side. "We're coming up to -see you in Maine, Amy and I. In our own car! Want us?" - -"I shall probably stop in Buxton on my way back from George's," said -Mrs. Spencer, as she pushed Letty and Marian toward the gate. "I wish -you weren't going so far"--she sighed--"but as I've said, I think it's -just the place for you all." - -Charles was impressing the guard, successfully, so that he did step -through, Spencer beside him tugging at a handbag. A flurry of good-bys, -and Catherine, with Letty and Marian clinging to her hands, followed -him upon the platform. She turned for a last glimpse. Margaret, her -bright hair flying, was waving at them; Mrs. Spencer dabbed softly -at her cheeks with her handkerchief; Bill--no, Bill had turned away. -There, he was waving, too. Marian waggled her handkerchief. 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Hull</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Labyrinth</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Helen R. Hull</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February 26, 2021 [eBook #64634]</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Tim Lindell, Graeme Mackreth and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)</div> - -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LABYRINTH ***</div> - - - - - - - -<h1>LABYRINTH</h1> - - -<p class="center" style="margin-top: 5em;"> -<img src="images/thingo.jpg" alt="thingo" /> - -</p> - - - -<p class="center" style="margin-bottom: 5em;"><small> -THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> -NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS<br /> -ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO<br /> -<br /> -MACMILLAN & CO., <span class="smcap">Limited</span><br /> -LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA<br /> -MELBOURNE<br /> -<br /> -THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span><br /> -TORONTO</small> -</p> - - - -<div class="section"> -<div class="bbox" style="margin-left:35%; margin-right:35%;"> -<p class="ph2" >LABYRINTH</p> - -<p class="ph4" style="margin-top: 5em;">BY</p> -<p class="ph3">HELEN R. HULL</p> -<p class="ph5">AUTHOR OF "QUEST," ETC.</p> - -<p class="ph5" style="margin-top: 10em;">New York</p> -<p class="ph4">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</p> -<p class="ph5">1923</p> - -<p class="ph6"><i>All rights reserved</i></p> -</div> -</div> - - -<div class="section"> -<p class="ph6" style="margin-top: 10em;">PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p> - -<p class="ph5" style="margin-top: 5em;"><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1923,</p> -<p class="ph5"><span class="smcap">By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.</p> - -<p class="ph6">Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1923.</p> - -<p class="ph6" style="margin-top: 5em;">Press of</p> -<p class="ph6">J.J. Little & Ives Company</p> -<p class="ph6">New York, U.S.A.</p> -</div> - - - - -<p class="center"> -To -MABEL L. ROBINSON -</p> - - - - -<h2><a name="LABYRINTH" id="LABYRINTH"></a>LABYRINTH</h2> - - -<p>In the old story of the labyrinth at Crete, the Minotaur dwelling -there devoured in his day innumerable youths and maidens. He was slain -finally by the hero Theseus. The story goes that Theseus escaped both -monster and death in the blind alleys of the labyrinth only because -Ariadne was wise enough to furnish egress by means of her slender -silken thread.</p> - -<p>There is a modern story of a labyrinth, differing from the old tale in -that it has as yet no termination, no hero who has slain the Minotaur, -no thread to guide those who enter its confusion of passages out -to any clear safety beyond its winding darkness. This modern story -differs from the old legend in other ways. The monster lurking in -this labyrinth seems to many who hear the tale merely a phantom. His -bellowings are soft and gentle, he writhes in so sentimental a fashion -that he can scarcely be taken as a monster, and since he leaves his -victims with their bones unbroken and their flesh unscarred, who is to -say that he has devoured them? They themselves may deny their fate. -And in that lies a final likeness to the old story. Until Theseus and -Ariadne had between them destroyed the Minotaur, people had thought -him an inevitable pest, and had looked upon the destruction he wrought -as legitimate. Perhaps some of the youth were tragic about their fate, -but after all, a monster and a labyrinth possess dignity and provoke -indifference merely by their continued existence.</p> - -<p>Ariadne alone might not have slain the monster. She might have traveled -through the passageways, her silken thread between her fingers, and -perished herself without some aid from Theseus.</p> - -<p>Here is the modern story of the labyrinth.</p> - - - - -<h2>CONTENTS</h2> - - -<table summary="toc" width="45%"> -<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#PART_I">PART I</a></td></tr> - - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">An Idyll—From the Inside</span></td> <td align="right"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#PART_II">PART II</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Both Ends of the Candle</span></td> <td align="right"><a href="#Page_87">87</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#PART_III">PART III</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Blind Alleys</span></td> <td align="right"><a href="#Page_147">147</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#PART_IV">PART IV</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Encounter</span></td> <td align="right"><a href="#Page_213">213</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#PART_V">PART V</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Impasse</span></td> <td align="right"><a href="#Page_265">265</a></td></tr> -</table> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> -<h2><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I</h2> - -<p class="center">AN IDYLL—FROM THE INSIDE</p> - - -<p class="center">I</p> - -<p>"Tell Letty, Muvver. Tell Letty."</p> - -<p>"Again? Oh, Letty!" Catherine opened her eyes. Letty, on her stomach, -was pointing at a black ant slipping along a grass blade.</p> - -<p>"'Nother ant. Tell Letty."</p> - -<p>"Don't squirm off the rug, or the ant will crawl up your rompers and -take a nip." Catherine looked up through the motionless leaves of the -birch trees under which she had spread the rug. "Once there was a busy -ant," she began, "and he went out for a walk to find a grain of sand to -build his house. His brother went out for a walk, too——" Her thoughts -drifted through the story: how close the sky looks, as if the heat had -changed its shape, and it rested there just above the tree—— "The -busy ant found a grain of sand and ran back to his hill to lay it on -his house." The haze seems thicker; the forest fires must be worse, no -rain forever——</p> - -<p>"Uh-h," Letty grunted, and held up her small brown hand, the ant a -black smear on her palm.</p> - -<p>"Why, Letty!" Catherine pulled herself up on one elbow. "You squashed -him!"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Bad ant. Nip Letty."</p> - -<p>Catherine reached for Letty's fist just as a pink tongue touched it.</p> - -<p>"Going to eat him, are you? Little anteater." She brushed the ant away -and rolled her daughter over into her arm. "You might wait until you -are nipped."</p> - -<p>Letty chuckled and lay quietly for a minute, while Catherine looked at -her. Brown legs and arms, yellow rompers, yellow hair with sun streaks -of palest gold, blue eyes squinted in mirth, a round and sturdy chin.</p> - -<p>Catherine closed her eyes again. Out from the woods behind them came -with the lengthening shadows the odor of sun-warmed firs and dried -needles. Quiet—release from heat—from thought.</p> - -<p>Suddenly Letty squirmed, pounded her heels vigorously against her -mother's knee, rolled over, and began her own method of standing up. -Her process consisted of a slow elevation of her rear, until she had -made a rounded pyramid of herself. She stood thus, looking gravely -around, her hands flat on the rug, her sandaled feet wide apart.</p> - -<p>"Hurry up, anteater," jeered Catherine. "You'll have vertigo."</p> - -<p>But Letty took her time. Finally erect, she started off across the -meadow.</p> - -<p>"Here, you!" Catherine sat up. "Where you going?"</p> - -<p>"Get Daddy." Letty's voice, surprisingly deep, bounced behind her.</p> - -<p>"Wait for me." Catherine stretched to her feet, reluctantly.</p> - -<p>Letty would not have waited, except that she stumbled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> into an ant hill -hidden in the long grass, and went down plump on her stomach. So she -lay there calmly, turning her head turtle-wise to watch her mother.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Catherine had borne three children without adding a touch of the matron -to her slender, long body. In knickers and green smock, her smooth -brown hair dragging its heavy coil low down her slim neck, she looked -young and strong and like the birch tree under which she stood. There -was even the same suggestion of quiet which a breath might dispel, of -poise which might at a moment tremble into agitation. The suggestion -lay in her long gray eyes, with eagerness half veiled by thin lids and -dark lashes, or perhaps in the long, straight lips, too firmly closed.</p> - -<p>A shout came up the path between the alders, and Letty scrambled to her -feet.</p> - -<p>"Daddy!" she shrieked, and headed down the path, Catherine loping -easily after her.</p> - -<p>There they were, Charles and the two older children, Spencer carrying a -string of flounders, Marian with the fish lines hugged under her arm, -and Charles between them, each of his hands caught in one of theirs. -They stopped as Letty pelted toward them.</p> - -<p>"Fishy! Sweet fishy!" Letty reached for the string. Spencer drew it -sternly away, and Letty reached again, patting the flat cold flounder -on the end.</p> - -<p>"Letty, you'll get all dirty and fish smelly." Spencer disapproved.</p> - -<p>"Sweet fishy—" Letty's howl broke off as her father swung her up to -his shoulder.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Fine supper we got, Mother," said Charles, grinning.</p> - -<p>"And I caught two," cried Spencer, "and Marian caught one——"</p> - -<p>"It was bigger'n yours," said Marian, sadly, "if it was just one."</p> - -<p>"Well, but Marian hollered so when a fish picked at her line and so she -scared him off."</p> - -<p>Marian peered up under her shock of dark bobbed hair, and finding a -twinkle in Catherine's eyes, giggled.</p> - -<p>"I did holler," she said. "I like to holler, and fish haven't any ears -and couldn't hear me——"</p> - -<p>"This being the ninth time this discussion has been carried on," said -Charles, "I move we change the subject. Anything will do——"</p> - -<p>Spencer sighed. The procession moved up the lane, Father at the head, -with Letty making loud "Glumph! Glumphs!" as his rubber boots talked, -Spencer next, trying to space his smaller boots just in his father's -footsteps, and Marian with Catherine at the rear.</p> - -<p>"Who's going to clean those fish?" Catherine wrinkled her nose.</p> - -<p>"Well, we caught them. Division of labor, eh, Spencer?"</p> - -<p>"The male has the sport, and the female the disgusting task of removing -the vitals, I suppose."</p> - -<p>"Amelia won't," announced Marian. "She said she couldn't clean fish, it -turned her stomach."</p> - -<p>"I wouldn't keep a maid that wouldn't clean fish." Charles dropped -Letty on the broad granite step of the farmhouse, and settled beside -her. "Who'll get me some shoes?" He hauled at his red rubber boot, and -the clam mud flew off in a shower.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p> - -<p>Letty grabbed again at the string of fish as Spencer stood incautiously -near her.</p> - -<p>"Take them into the sink, Spen," said Catherine. "Marian, can you find -Daddy's sneakers? You'll all need a scrub, I'll say."</p> - -<p>She looked at them a moment. Marian, dark; irregular small features, -tanned to an olive brown; slim as witch grass. Spencer, stocky, with -fair cropped head and long gray eyes like her own. Charles—he looked -heavier, and certainly well; the sun had left a white streak under the -brim of his battered hat and behind his spectacles, but the rest of his -face was fiery.</p> - -<p>"Cold cream for you, old man," she said. "You aren't used to our Maine -sun and sea burn."</p> - -<p>"I think I'll be a captain," said Spencer, seriously, turning from his -opening of the door. "And fight. Like father." He gazed admiringly at -the old service hat on the step.</p> - -<p>Catherine's mouth shut grimly and her lids drooped over her eyes.</p> - -<p>"Plan some other career, my son. Your father didn't fight, anyway. Did -he say he did?"</p> - -<p>"Now, Catherine, I just told them about the camp at Brest."</p> - -<p>Catherine looked at her husband, a long, quiet glance. Then she -followed Spencer into the kitchen.</p> - -<p>"Oh, 'Melia!" The heat from the stove rushed at her. "You built a fire -to-night!"</p> - -<p>"Yes, I did." Amelia, a small, wiry, faded Maine woman, turned from the -table. "That oil stove's acting queer, and anyways, it don't seem as if -you could fry fish on it."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p> - -<p>"We might eat them raw, then, instead of sweltering." Catherine pushed -her sleeves above her elbows, and reached for a knife.</p> - -<p>"Now that's a real pretty ketch, ain't it?" Amelia nodded at Spencer, -who watched while the flounders were slipped from the cord into the -sink.</p> - -<p>Catherine cleaned the fish. She left Amelia to fry them while she set -the table. The heat from the kitchen crept into the long, low dining -room. Then Catherine drew Letty, protesting shrilly, into the bedroom, -where she undressed and bathed her. When she had slipped the nightie -over the small yellow head, she kissed her. "Now you find Daddy, and -I'll have Amelia bring your milk out to the porch."</p> - -<p>She called Marian, who came on a run, peeling her jumper over her head.</p> - -<p>"Can I put on my white sailor suit to show Daddy, Muvver?" She dragged -it from the clothes-press. "Oooh! That's cold water!" She wriggled -under Catherine's swift fingers.</p> - -<p>"There, little eel." Catherine knotted the blue tie. "Run along. -Where's Spencer?"</p> - -<p>"He's washing hisself, I think." Marian smoothed up her blue sock with -a little preening motion, and vanished.</p> - -<p>"Mis' Hammond!" came Amelia's thin call, and Catherine went back to the -kitchen.</p> - -<p>Letty was in bed on the porch, her smeary white duck sitting on -the pillow beside her, her deep little voice running on in an -unintelligible story of the day.</p> - -<p>"Supper ready, Catherine?" Father stood in the doorway of the dining -room, Marian and Spencer at his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> heels. "We fishermen are starved. Oh, -you aren't dressed yet."</p> - -<p>"I'm as dressed as I shall be." Catherine pushed her hair back from a -moist forehead. "Let's eat."</p> - -<p>"Well, we like to see you dressed up like a lady once a day, don't we?" -Charles grinned at her as he pulled up his chair.</p> - -<p>Catherine felt her hands twitch in her lap. "Steady," she warned -herself. "He's just joking. I've been busy—I should have dressed this -afternoon——"</p> - -<p>"Some flounder!" Charles bit into the golden brown fish. "What you been -doing all the time, Catherine, while we went provender hunting?"</p> - -<p>"Thinking," said Catherine slowly. "That is, I thought in between -Letty's demands for more story."</p> - -<p>"What did you think about, Mother?" Spencer's face lighted with quick -curiosity.</p> - -<p>"Some about you, Spencer, and some about Marian and Letty, and some -about Daddy, and mostly about—me." Catherine was serving the salad. -She had deft, slim hands with long fingers, and her movements were slow -and beautifully exact.</p> - -<p>"What about us?" asked Marian.</p> - -<p>"I have to think some more, first." Catherine looked up at Charles. "A -lot more."</p> - - -<p class="center">II</p> - -<p>The house was a gray mass in the evening, with one pale yellow window -where the kitchen lamp shone. Catherine lay motionless in the wicker -lounge on the low front veranda. Amelia had gone home. Spencer and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> -Marian were asleep. Charles had gone to the village store for tobacco. -Down below the house the smoke and heat mist veiled the transparency of -the sea. So still was the night that Catherine heard the faint "mrrr" -of wings of a huge gray moth that flew against her cheek and then away.</p> - -<p>"Queer," she thought. "If the house were empty, it would have many -sounds, rustles and squeaks and stirrings. But because children sleep -there, it is quiet. As if the old ghosts and spirits stood on tiptoe, -peeking at the intruders."</p> - -<p>She stretched lazily, and relaxed again. The loudest sound in the night -was her own soft breathing. Then, faintly, the gravel in the path -slipped. Charles was coming back.</p> - -<p>Catherine dropped her feet over the edge of the couch and clasped her -arms about her knees. When he comes, she thought, I will tell him. If I -go on thinking in the dark, I'll fly to bits.</p> - -<p>She could see him, darker than the bushes, moving toward her. Then she -could smell his pipe.</p> - -<p>"Hello!" she called softly, and he crossed the grass to the steps.</p> - -<p>"Say, what a night! And what a place!" He slapped his hat beside him, -and sat down at Catherine's feet, backed against the pillar. "It's been -fierce in town to-day, I'll bet. You're lucky to be able to stay here." -He puffed, and the smoke moved in a cloud about the indistinct outline -of his face. "Wish I could!"</p> - -<p>"When are you going?"</p> - -<p>"To-morrow night." Charles sounded aggrieved. "I wrote you I had just -the week-end."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I hoped you might manage a little longer——"</p> - -<p>"Can't manage that conference on Monday without being there."</p> - -<p>"What conference is that?" Catherine swung one knee over the other; as -she watched the face there in the dark, she could feel its expression, -although the features were so vague.</p> - -<p>"The committee on psychological work in the schools. You remember? -Planning it all through the East. It's a big thing."</p> - -<p>"Oh, that new committee." Catherine was apathetic.</p> - -<p>"That woman I spoke of, Stella Partridge, is mighty keen. She's working -out an organization scheme that beats any plan I've seen. I tell you -what, old girl, it's great to see the world wake up and swing around -to asking for what you want to give it!" Charles cuffed at her foot. -"Remember that first year down here? With Spencer a baby, and buying -this old house a tremendous undertaking, and me writing a book that I -didn't dare hope would sell? Things are different now, aren't they?"</p> - -<p>"They are different." Catherine's voice hardened subtly. "I helped with -that book, didn't I?"</p> - -<p>"Jove! I should say you did. All that typing, and correcting, and then -the proof reading."</p> - -<p>"And now——" Catherine hesitated.</p> - -<p>"Well, now my work has broadened out so much, and there are the three -children. I can afford to hire the typing done now, eh what?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"What's the matter with you, Catherine? You've had a kind of chip about -you somewhere ever since I came<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> this time. I can't help it if I can't -spend all my time playing in the country with you and the children, -can I? After all, I have to see to my work, and it's increasingly -demanding."</p> - -<p>"I haven't any chip on my shoulder, Charles?" Catherine caught her -breath. "I do want to talk to you."</p> - -<p>"Fire ahead." Charles tapped out the ashes from his pipe and reached up -for her hand. "What's eating you?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, Charles!" Catherine's slender fingers shut inside his warm -palm. "Help me out! You ought to understand." Her laugh shivered off -abruptly. "You know I'm proud of you, just puffed up. Do you know I'm -jealous, too? Jealous as—as nettles!"</p> - -<p>"Huh? Jealous? What about? Come down here, where I can hug you."</p> - -<p>"No. I don't want to be loved. I want to talk. I'm not jealous about -your love. I guess you love me, when you think of it——"</p> - -<p>"Now, Cathy, you aren't turning into a foolish woman."</p> - -<p>"I'm turning into something awful! That's why I've got to do something. -It's your work, I'm jealous of."</p> - -<p>"Why, my work doesn't touch my feeling about you."</p> - -<p>"That's not what I mean. I mean I'm proud of you, every one is, and you -aren't proud of me. No one is. No one could be. I'm——"</p> - -<p>"Why, Cathy! I am! You're a wonder with the children. And the way -you've stood back of me. What are you talking about?"</p> - -<p>"I don't want to get emotional. I want to make you see what I've been -thinking about. All the nights this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> summer while I've sat here at the -end of the day. I've tried to think—my mind is coated with fat, my -thoughts creak. Charles"—her voice trembled—"can you imagine yourself -in my place, all summer, or all last year, or the year before? Planning -meals or clothes—instead of conferences? Telling stories to Letty. -Holding yourself down on the level of children, to meet them, or answer -them, or understand them, until you scarcely have a grown-up thought? -Before Letty was born, and the year after, of course I wasn't very -well. That makes a difference. But now I am. What am I going to do? -Could you stand it?"</p> - -<p>"But, Catherine, a man——"</p> - -<p>"If you tell me a man is different, I'll stop talking!" Catherine cried -out.</p> - -<p>"I was going to make a scientific statement." Charles stopped, the -tolerant good nature of his voice touching Catherine like salt in a -cut finger. "To the effect," he went on, "that usually a man's ego is -stronger, and a woman's maternal instinct drowns her ego, so that she -can live in a situation which would be intolerable to a man."</p> - -<p>"Well, then, I'm egoistic to the root." Catherine jerked her hand away -from his grasp. "At any rate, the situation is intolerable."</p> - -<p>"Poor old girl!" Charles patted her knee. "The summer has been dull, -hasn't it?"</p> - -<p>"It's not just that. Do you know, I was almost happier while you were -in France and I was working—than I am now!"</p> - -<p>"Didn't care if I did get hit by a shell, eh? Didn't miss me at all?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I did, and you know it." Catherine was silent, her eyes straining -toward him in the darkness.</p> - -<p>"That was part of the war excitement, wasn't it?"</p> - -<p>"No. But something happened in me when you told me you were going. I -had been living just in you, you and the two children. I thought that -was all I ever wanted. And I thought you felt toward me the same way. -Then—you could throw it over—because you wanted something else."</p> - -<p>"Catherine, we've had that out dozens of times. You know it was a -chance for the experience of a lifetime, psychological work in those -hospitals. And then—well, I had to get in it."</p> - -<p>"I know. I didn't say a word, did I? But I went to work and I liked it. -Then you came back——"</p> - -<p>"Well?" His word hung tenderly between them.</p> - -<p>"Yes." Catherine sighed. "Like falling in love again, wasn't it? Only -deeper. And we wanted Letty." Her voice quavered again. "That's it! -I love you so much. But you don't sit down in your love—and devour -it—and let it devour you. It isn't right, Charles, help me! I"—she -laughed faintly—"I'm like your shell-shocked soldiers. You couldn't -really cure them until peace came. Then they weren't shell-shocked any -more. I'm shell-shocked too, and I can't cure myself, and I see no -armistice. I'm growing worse. I know why women have hysterics and all -sorts of silly diseases. I'll have 'em too in a day or so!"</p> - -<p>"Funny, isn't it, when I'd like nothing better than a chance to loaf -here with the kids. But you'll get back to town soon and see people, -theaters, club——"</p> - -<p>"And hear about the whooping cough the Thomases<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> had—and—oh, damn!" -Catherine was crying suddenly, broken, stifled sobs.</p> - -<p>Charles pulled her down into his arms, holding her firmly against his -chest.</p> - -<p>"There, old girl! Stop it! What do you want?"</p> - -<p>Catherine pushed herself away from him, her hands braced against him.</p> - -<p>"I won't be silly." She flung her hand across her eyes. "I'm sorry. But -I've tried to figure it out, and I just drop into a great black gulf, -and drown!"</p> - -<p>"What are you figuring on?" Charles let his fingers travel slowly along -the curve of her cheek until they shut softly about her throat.</p> - -<p>Catherine held herself sternly away from the comfort of touch.</p> - -<p>"I can't endure it, day after day, the same things. Petty manual jobs. -And I'm older every day. And soon the children will be grown up, and -I'll be flat on the dump heap."</p> - -<p>"In a few more years, Cathy, I'll have more money. Now you know we -can't afford more servants, I'm sorry."</p> - -<p>"I don't want more from you!" Catherine cried out. "I want to do -something myself!"</p> - -<p>"You know how much you do." Charles scoffed at her, but she caught the -hint of scratched pride in his voice. "In the middle-class family the -wife is the largest economic factor."</p> - -<p>"Charles, if I work out a scheme which puts no more burden on -you"—Catherine's breath quickened—"would you mind my going back -to work? I've figured it out. How much I'd have to earn to fill my -place——"</p> - -<p>"You mean—take a job?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>Charles reached for his pipe.</p> - -<p>"What would you do about the children?" He cleared his throat. "They -seem to need a mother."</p> - -<p>"Well, they need a father, too, but not to be a door-mat."</p> - -<p>"Everything I think of saying, Catherine, sounds awfully mid-Victorian."</p> - -<p>"I know what it all is! You needn't think I don't. But I know the -answer to it all, too, so you needn't bother saying it."</p> - -<p>"I suppose I better consider myself lucky you aren't expecting me to -stay home and take care of Letty. You aren't, are you?"</p> - -<p>Catherine laughed. She knew Charles wanted to laugh; he was tired of -this serious talk.</p> - -<p>"You won't mind, then?" she added, tensely. "You see, if you aren't -willing, and interested, I can't do it."</p> - -<p>"Try it. Go ahead. I'll bet you'll get sick of it soon enough. After -all, you women forget the nuisance of being tied to appointments, rain -or shine, toothache or stomachache——"</p> - -<p>"Ah-h"—Catherine relaxed in his arms, one hand moving up around his -neck. "It has seemed so awful, so serious, thinking it out alone. You -are an old dear!"</p> - -<p>"All right. Have it your own way." Charles struck his match and held -it above the pipe bowl. The light showed his eyes a little amused, -a little tender, a little skeptical. It flared out, leaving dancing -triangles of orange in the darkness. Catherine shivered. Was he just -humoring her, like a child? Not really caring? But she shut her eyes -upon the mocking flecks of light<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> and slipped off to the step below -him, her head comfortably against his arm.</p> - -<p>She was tired, as if she had cut through ropes which had held her erect -and taut. She could feel the slight movement of muscles in the arm -under her cheek, as Charles sucked away at his pipe. The soft darkness -seemed to move up close and sweet about them, with faint rustles in the -grass at her feet. Queer that just loving couldn't be enough, when it -had such sweetness. Her thoughts drifted off in a warm, tranquil flood -of emotion; her self was gone, washed out in this nearness, this quiet. -Charles stirred, and unconsciously she waited for a sign from him out -of the perfect, enclosed moment.</p> - -<p>He spoke.</p> - -<p>"I want you to meet Miss Partridge when you come back to town. Great -head she's got. We're using her plan of organization in the small -towns."</p> - -<p>Catherine sat very still. After an instant she lifted her head from his -shoulder and yawned audibly.</p> - -<p>"I'm sleepy. The day has been so warm," she said, and rose. She kicked -against something metallic and stooped to pick up Letty's red pail and -shovel, as she passed into the house.</p> - - -<p class="center">III</p> - -<p>"Dark o' the moon! Dark o' the moon! Dark—Mother, see what I found!" -Spencer broke his slow chant with a squeal, and dangled above his head -the great purple starfish. Sure-footed, like a lithe brown sea animal, -he darted over the slippery golden seaweed toward Catherine, who looked -up from the shallow green pool over which she had been stooping.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Lemme see too!" Marian's dark head rose from behind a rock and she -stumbled after her brother. Plump! she was down in the treacherous -kelp, her serious face scarcely disconcerted. Marian always slipped on -the seaweed.</p> - -<p>"Isn't he 'normous? He's the 'normousest yet." Spencer laid the star on -the rock, bending over to straighten one of the curling arms.</p> - -<p>"I found one almost as big," declared Marian, "only pink. And pink's a -nicer color. Isn't it, Muvver?"</p> - -<p>"If you like it." Catherine took Spencer's sea-chilled fingers in hers -and drew them down to the under side of the ledge over the pool. "Feel -that?"</p> - -<p>"What is it?" Spencer's gray eyes darkened with excitement.</p> - -<p>"Lemme feel too!" Marian sat down on the seaweed and slid along to the -ledge. "Where?"</p> - -<p>Catherine guided her fingers. How like sea things those cold little -hands felt! "What does it feel like?"</p> - -<p>"Kinda soft and kinda hard and——Oh, it's got a mouth!" Marian -squirmed away. "Tell us, Muvver! What is it?"</p> - -<p>"Can you guess, Spen?"</p> - -<p>"May I look, Mother? I think it's—snail eggs."</p> - -<p>Catherine laughed.</p> - -<p>"Lean over and look. I'll hold you." She seized his belt, while he -craned his neck over the bit of rock.</p> - -<p>"Purple, too!" He came back, flushed. "I know!"</p> - -<p>"Lemme see!" Marian plunged downward, her legs waving. "It's full of -holes. What is it?"</p> - -<p>"Sponges," said Spencer, importantly.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Sponges is brown and bigger," cried Marian.</p> - -<p>"These are alive and not the same kind as your bath sponge."</p> - -<p>Catherine straightened her back and looked out over the sea. Opal, -immobile, so clear that the flat pink ledges beyond the lowest tide -mark were like blocks of pigment in the water. Something strange in -this dark of the moon tide, dragging the water away from hidden places, -uncovering secret pools. Once every summer Catherine rowed across to -the small rocky point that marked the entrance to the cove, to see what -the tide disclosed. There was a thrill about the hour when the water -seemed to hang motionless, below the denuded rocks. Spencer felt it; -Catherine had touched the sensitive vibration of his fingers as he -searched. Marian found the expedition interesting, like clam digging! -Catherine remembered the year the fog had come in as the tide swung -back, suddenly terrifyingly thick and gray about them, so that she had -wondered whether they ever would find their own mooring; she could see -the ghostly shore, with unfamiliar rocks looming darkly out of the -grayness, as she rowed slowly around the cove, trying to keep the shore -line as guide. Charles had come out to meet them; his "Hullo!" had been -a whisper first, moving through the mist and seeming to recede. Then -he had come alongside them, the fog drops thick on his worried face. -Spencer had liked that, too, although Marian had crouched on her bow -seat, shivering.</p> - -<p>No fog to-day. The horizon line was pale and clear. She should go back -for Letty. They had left her behind them on a sandy stretch of beach, -with a pile of whitened sea-urchin shells.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Mother!" Spencer repeated his summons. "What is dark o' the moon?"</p> - -<p>Catherine explained vaguely as they scrambled up the rounded, slippery -rocks to the patch of coarse grass at the top of the small point. Where -was Letty? She had been visible from there. Catherine began to run, -down to the muddy flats that separated the point from the mainland. -Only a few minutes since she had last seen her head, like a bit of -bright seaweed. The water was so far out, surely—— Panic nipped at -her heels as she flew. "Letty! Let-ty!" There was the pile of shells. -"Letty!" A spasm of fear choked her breathing. Then a call, deep and -contented.</p> - -<p>"Letty here." Around the clump of beach peas and driftwood— The yellow -head nodded out of a mud hole left by a clam digger on the beach. -"Letty swim."</p> - -<p>Catherine picked up her daughter.</p> - -<p>"Letty, darling! You little imp——" The gray mud dripped from rompers -and sandals.</p> - -<p>"Oh, she's all wet." Marian puffed up. "And dirty!"</p> - -<p>"Now how are we going to get you home without a cold, young woman!" -Catherine stood her on the beach, and sighed. Letty, her fingers full -of the soft mud, looked up with bright, unremorseful eyes.</p> - -<p>"My sweater's in the dory, Mother." Spencer frowned at his sister. "You -haven't any sense, Letty."</p> - -<p>Letty's rompers served as a bath towel, and the sweater made a cocoon. -She sat beside Marian, while Catherine and Spencer rowed the old dory -across the half mile of quiet water. The children chattered about their -discoveries, and Catherine listened while her thoughts moved quickly -beneath the surface of the talk. Fear like that—<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>it's terrific, -unreasoning, overwhelming. How would you bear it if anything happened! -You have to be all eyes, and be with them every instant. How can you -plan, thinking of anything else? And yet, things happen to children, of -any mothers——</p> - -<p>"Dark o' the moon—pulls the ole water—away from the earth——" -Spencer chanted as he rowed. "Dark o' the moon——"</p> - -<p>"What makes you say that all the time, Spencer?" demanded Marian.</p> - -<p>"I like to say it. Pulls the ole water—away from the earth——"</p> - -<p>"Not so deep, Spencer. You drag your oar. See—" Catherine pulled the -blades smoothly along, just beneath the surface.</p> - -<p>"I know. I meant to." Spencer was intent on his oars again.</p> - - -<p class="center">IV</p> - -<p>The mail bag hung on the post. Catherine drew out its contents. A -letter from Charles. The paper. Her fingers gripped over an envelope. -From the Bureau, in answer to hers. A piece of fate, in that square -white thing. She thrust it into her pocket. Later, when the children -were asleep. She could think then.</p> - -<p>Now the air was full of the children. Letty's deep squeals of mirth, -a strange noise from Spencer, meant to be whinnying, as he pranced up -the path dragging Letty's cart, protests from Marian, "You are silly, I -think!" Would Marian always be so serious? And Spencer—he was always -exhausting himself by the very exuberance of his fancy. Catherine -followed them slowly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> Suddenly the sounds broke off for an instant of -surprised silence; Catherine lifted her head. The children were out -of sight around the bend, and she could not see the house yet. Other -voices, and a shriek from Letty. She hurried past the alder growth. -There was a car by the side door, and people. Marian flew toward her.</p> - -<p>"Muvver! Mr. Bill and Dr. Henrietta! They've come to see us!"</p> - -<p>"Good gracious! What can I feed them?" thought Catherine. Then, as she -came nearer and saw them, she thought, "I'm getting to be the meanest -kind of domestic animal."</p> - -<p>Dr. Henrietta Gilbert, fair, plump, serene, immaculately tailored, -looked up from her seat on the step, one arm around Letty, who was -gleaming brown and sleek from the carelessly draped red sweater. -Spencer hovered at her shoulder, his face lighted with pleasure.</p> - -<p>"Hello, Catherine!" she held up one hand.</p> - -<p>William Gilbert stood behind them, his dark, tired face smiling a -little, his long, lean body sagging lazily. Catherine reached for his -hand.</p> - -<p>"Well, you two!" she cried. "How'd you find this place?"</p> - -<p>"Charles gave us minute directions." Dr. Henrietta rose neatly. "He -wouldn't come. He's too important for trips. What's happened to Letty? -She seems to be clothed for a prize fight."</p> - -<p>"Letty swim!" shouted Letty proudly.</p> - -<p>"You drove from New York?" Catherine lifted Letty into her arms, and -enveloped her in the sweater. "I didn't know you could get away."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Labor Day," said Bill. He was gazing at the children, his eyes half -shut behind his thick glasses.</p> - -<p>"If you can't put us up, Catherine, we'll hunt for a boarding house. -But we wanted to see you."</p> - -<p>"Of course I can. Do you think I'd let you escape, when I'm starving -for human beings?"</p> - -<p>"With all of these?" Bill nodded at the group.</p> - -<p>"They are animals, not human beings, aren't you, Marian?" Dr. Henrietta -laughed at Marian's distressed face. "Your woman in the kitchen"—she -dropped her voice mysteriously—"thought we were bandits and didn't ask -us in."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Amelia was pleased to meet them, when Catherine ushered them properly -into the house.</p> - -<p>"Don't that beat all!" she said, loudly, as they followed Spencer to -the guest room. "I thought they was peddlars. Drove all the ways from -New York! Don't that beat all!" She made flurried rushes about the -kitchen, pulling open the cupboard doors. "Now don't you fuss, Mis' -Hammond. If baked beans is good enough I can make out a meal, I guess. -She's a doctor, eh?"</p> - -<p>After a fleet half hour Catherine had Letty bathed, fed, and tucked -into her cot. She had slipped out of her knickerbockers and smock into -a soft green dress. No time to brush her hair; she adjusted a pin in -the heavy brown knot, and glanced at her reflection. Letty's voice rose -in deep inarticulate demand from the porch. Catherine stepped to the -door. Bill stood outside.</p> - -<p>"She wants you to say good night to Ducky Wobbles." Catherine smiled -at him; she had, at times, a lovely smile,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> unreserved in its warm -friendliness. She was fond of Bill; his dark silence piqued her, but -she felt that it was a silence of steady, quiet wisdom, which couldn't -break itself up into tiny words.</p> - -<p>"Can't I say good night to Letty instead?"</p> - -<p>"No! Nice Ducky!" Letty wobbled her duck at him. "Goo'ni' to my Ducky!"</p> - -<p>"Well, then, good night to Ducky and to his Letty."</p> - -<p>Letty dropped back into her pillow, content.</p> - -<p>"Now you go to sleep, old lady." Catherine closed the door, and stopped -for a moment to supervise Marian's preparations.</p> - -<p>Spencer had filled the wood basket with shining pink-white birch logs. -Catherine drew out the crane with the kettle and laid a fire on the -andirons in the huge old fireplace. Dr. Henrietta came out, dangling -her eyeglasses on a long black ribbon over her sturdy white finger.</p> - -<p>"This is a charming old place, Catherine. You all look well, too. A -summer in the country certainly sets the children up."</p> - -<p>Catherine glanced at her, as the flame crept around the logs.</p> - -<p>"You ought to try it, if you want to know what it does to you—" she -paused. "Moss in every cranny of your brain—" Bill was coming in. -"After supper I'll tell you!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Supper was over. Spencer had piloted Bill and the car safely into the -barn, running back to tell Catherine, "Moth-er! Mr. Bill thinks his car -scared all the old cow ghosts in the stalls." When he and Marian were -in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> bed, Catherine came back to the living room, the square envelope -from the Bureau in her hand.</p> - -<p>"It's queer you two should come to-night," she said. "I need you to -talk to."</p> - -<p>Bill had settled in the old fiddle-back walnut chair, the smoke from -his pipe turning his lined face into a dim gargoyle. Dr. Henrietta was -fitting a cigarette into her long amber holder.</p> - -<p>"Charles hasn't been here much this summer, has he?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"Only occasional week-ends." Catherine sat down on the footstool on the -hearth. The light shone through the loosened brown hair about her face -and turned her throat to pale ivory. "He was here a week ago."</p> - -<p>"Your sister? Has she been here?"</p> - -<p>"No. She decided to spend her vacation in the mountains with that -friend of hers. Nobody's been here! I haven't seen anyone since last -May, except for flying shots at Charles. If I begin to spout a Mother -Goose rhyme at you, you might understand why."</p> - -<p>"Well, you haven't the mossy look I connect with mothers," said -Henrietta, as she smoked in quick little spurts. "Have a cigarette?" -She tossed her silver case into Catherine's lap.</p> - -<p>"Sworn off." Catherine ran her finger over the monogram. "Amelia would -know I was a fallen woman—haven't lighted one since—oh, since Charles -came back from France."</p> - -<p>"Didn't he care for those home fires?" Bill took his pipe out of his -teeth, drawled his question, and went on with his inspection of the -flames.</p> - -<p>Catherine laughed.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Tell me what you two have been doing since I saw you."</p> - -<p>Henrietta retrieved her case and extracted a second cigarette.</p> - -<p>"Same things. Babies, clinics, babies. Bill's had a bridge over in -Jersey. The <i>Journal's</i> taken a series of articles I did on that gland -work last year. Public school on the East Side is going to let me run -sort of a laboratory clinic on malnutrition. Mother instinct down there -feeds its infants on cabbage, fried cakes, and boiled tea."</p> - -<p>"You're a wonder, Henry." Catherine sighed. "Putting over what you -want."</p> - -<p>"It's only these last few years, you know, that I've had any -recognition."</p> - -<p>"You're a wonder, just the same. Isn't she, Bill?"</p> - -<p>"Um." Bill's grunt gave complete assent.</p> - -<p>Catherine looked steadily at her friend. Even in the soft firelight Dr. -Henrietta Gilbert retained her smooth, competent neatness. A smoothness -like porcelain, thought Catherine. Porcelain with warmth in it, she -added hastily to herself, as if she had made an unfair accusation. -Firm, kindly lips; contented, straightforward blue eyes; plump, -ungraceful body; Dr. Henrietta had a compact, assured personality, -matter of fact, intelligent, enduring. Catherine wondered: do I give, -as she looks at me, as complete an impression of me? I feel hidden -away. Then she thought, quickly, of the grim days when Spencer lay -so piteously still except when he struggled for breath, when he had -so nearly died—pneumonia—and Henrietta had seemed to hold herself -between the child and death itself, calm, untroubled. She was a wonder!</p> - -<p>"You couldn't have done it, could you," she said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> suddenly, "if you -had had children?" Then she stopped, aghast at her heedlessness. She -had never said that when Bill was there to hear her. But Henrietta's -response was cheerful and prompt.</p> - -<p>"Certainly not. That's why we haven't any."</p> - -<p>Catherine glanced shyly toward Bill. His eyes, inscrutable as ever, did -not lift from the fire.</p> - -<p>"That's"—Catherine hesitated—"that's what I want to talk about."</p> - -<p>"What?" Henrietta was on her guard.</p> - -<p>"Oh, I don't mean you. I mean me?" She balanced the letter on her knee -and pointed at it. "That letter. I haven't opened it, but it's an omen."</p> - -<p>"Don't be mysterious," Henrietta jibed at her.</p> - -<p>"I want to go to work. I wrote to the Bureau, where I had that job -while Charles was in France. This is their answer."</p> - -<p>Bill leaned forward to tap his pipe out on the fire tongs. Catherine -felt his eyes on her face.</p> - -<p>"Catherine! Bully for you!" Henrietta clapped her hand on Catherine's -shoulder. "Have you told Charles? Can you manage it?"</p> - -<p>"I told him." Catherine drank eagerly of the bluff encouragement in -Henrietta's voice. "He calls it my 'unsatisfied trend.' But he wouldn't -object, of course."</p> - -<p>"I thought you didn't care much for that work. Statistics, wasn't it?" -Bill put his question quietly.</p> - -<p>"Part of it I didn't." Catherine admitted that reluctantly. "But a new -investigation is being started, on teaching. I am interested in that. I -taught, you know, before I married, and I think that is as important as -anything in the world."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Read the letter, woman!" Henrietta shook Catherine's shoulder.</p> - -<p>Catherine ran her finger under the flap and unfolded the square page. -As she bent near the firelight, a log rolled off the burning pile, -sending a yellow flame high into the chimney, touching into relief the -wistful, tremulous lines of her mouth.</p> - -<p>"They want me." Her voice was hushed, as she looked up at Henrietta. -"At once. Dr. Roberts says he had been looking for someone. He thought -I was unavailable."</p> - -<p>A shrill, frightened cry darted into the room, sharp as a flame. -Catherine leaped to her feet.</p> - -<p>"Spencer. He has nightmares." She went hastily out to the sleeping -porch.</p> - -<p>He was moaning in his sleep, one hand brushing frantically over his -blanket. Catherine's hand closed over his. "There, Spencer," she said, -softly, "it's all right, dear." He did not wake, but the moaning -dropped into regular, quiet breathing, and his hand relaxed warmly in -hers. She stood a moment, listening. Then she stole to the other two -beds, bending over each. Letty's breathing was so soft that her heart -stood still an instant as she listened. At the door of the porch she -clasped her hands over her breast.</p> - -<p>"Am I wicked?" she thought. "When I have them—to care about—" A -passion of tenderness for them shook her; she felt as if the three -of them lay at the very core of her being, and she enclosed them, -crouching above them, fiercely maternal.</p> - -<p>Slowly she went back to the living room. She heard Bill's low voice, -and then Henrietta's,</p> - -<p>"Catherine can do it. She has brains and strength——"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p> - -<p>Her entrance broke off the sentence.</p> - -<p>"I'll light a lamp," she said briefly. "This firelight's too -sentimental. I want hard common sense."</p> - -<p>"Here, let me." Bill flicked a match with his thumb nail, and Catherine -fitted the heavy orange globe down over the lamp.</p> - -<p>She seated herself in the straight chair near the desk.</p> - -<p>"Well," said Henrietta, "I don't see any more clearly than I did in the -dark. If you have the nerve to try this, Catherine, go ahead. I'm all -for you."</p> - -<p>"You think, professionally, that it won't harm the children?"</p> - -<p>"You can hire some woman, can't you, to take your place as slave? I -suppose you still can look at them occasionally."</p> - -<p>"Yes. I suppose"—Catherine twisted her fingers together—"I suppose I -am as conceited as most mothers, wondering whether they can get along -eight hours a day without me."</p> - -<p>"You aren't happy, are you?" Henrietta flung at her, abruptly. "You -have the blues, black as ink. You have to hang on to yourself about -trifles. You——"</p> - -<p>"Oh, yes, yes!" Catherine's laugh shrilled a little. "Don't go on with -my disgraceful disposition. I admit it. But don't women have to put up -with that?"</p> - -<p>"My Lord, no. No longer than they are willing to. Most of them find -it easier to lie down. You've got too much brains to be sentimental, -Catherine Hammond."</p> - -<p>"What do you think, Bill?" Catherine appealed to him suddenly. She felt -him, in his motionless silence, probing, inspecting, and never saying -what he saw.</p> - -<p>"It is for you to decide," he answered.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p> - -<p>"You know you can't get advice out of Bill! It's a wonder he ever can -serve on an engineering commission." Henrietta laughed at him, in -friendly, appreciative amusement. "He has to offer technical advice -there. He won't give any other kind."</p> - -<p>"You won't consider my specifications?" Catherine was a trifle piteous, -under her light tone. "Even if I need—well, it is rebuilding, isn't -it?" She wondered why his opinion seemed so necessary. She had -Henrietta's, and Henrietta was a woman. But she wanted to reach across, -to pull at those passive, restrained hands, to beg him to speak.</p> - -<p>"I really think that you have to decide yourself." He paused. "You -realize, probably, that it will be like handling a double job. Charles -would find it difficult to take over a new share of your present job. -Most men would."</p> - -<p>"I don't want him to. I couldn't bear to do the slightest thing to -interfere with him. His career is just starting—and brilliantly. It -wouldn't be right to bother him."</p> - -<p>"Why not?" Henrietta sat up, hostility bristling in her manner. "Why -not a fair sharing of this responsibility? He wanted the children, -didn't he? You're as bad as some of my clinic mothers. They go out to -work by the day, and they come home to work by the night. I asked one -of them why she didn't let her man help with the dishes and the wash, -and she said, 'Him? He's too tired after supper.' And she was earning -more scrubbing than the man!"</p> - -<p>"You wouldn't make Bill sit up with your patients, would you?" cried -Catherine, hotly, "or typewrite your articles?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Of course Henrietta has only one job," said Bill.</p> - -<p>"Charles has expected the children to be my job." Catherine spoke -slowly. "He is in competition with other men whose wives have no other -thought. Like Mrs. Thomas, for instance. You met her?"</p> - -<p>"I've met scores of them. Most of them haven't brains enough to think -with," said Henrietta, crisply. "You have. That's the trouble with you. -Now think straight about this, too."</p> - -<p>"I am trying to." Catherine's cry hung in the pleasant room, a sharp -note of distress.</p> - -<p>"It is true, as Catherine sees"—Bill leaned forward—"that the average -man grows best in nurture furnished by the old pattern of wife. But you -can't generalize. This is Catherine's own problem." He rose. "I wish -you luck, you know. Good night." He went slowly across the hall, and -closed the door of the guest room.</p> - -<p>"You can't drag Bill into an argument," said Henrietta. "Now he's -gone." She pulled her chair around to face Catherine. "I want to see -you make a go of this. To see if it can be done. It's got to be, some -day. I wouldn't take the chance, you see."</p> - -<p>"But it was children I most wanted." Catherine groped among her -familiar thoughts. "I didn't know I wouldn't be contented. I'm not sure -I shouldn't be."</p> - -<p>"You aren't. The signs are on you, plain as day. And you've hit -straight at the roots of your trouble. I've seen it, longer than -you have, and I've just been waiting. When Charles went off for his -adventure, he left you space to see in!"</p> - -<p>"Are you—happy?"</p> - -<p>"Me? Of course. Reasonably."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p> - -<p>"You don't want any children?"</p> - -<p>"Good heavens, no! I see enough of children."</p> - -<p>"But you like them. You couldn't handle them as you do——"</p> - -<p>"I take out my well-known maternal instinct that way, if you like."</p> - -<p>"You're hard as nails, Henry."</p> - -<p>"Catherine"—Henrietta's face was grim under its fair placidity—"when -I was sixteen, I saw my mother die in childbirth. She had eight -children. Two of them are alive now. She was only thirty-three when she -died. She died on a farm in Michigan, and my father thought she picked -a poor time, because he was haying. I swore then I'd be something -besides a female animal. William knew what I wanted. It's a fair deal -to him. He knew he was getting a wife, but not a mother. That's all -there is to that. I like you. When you fell for Charles so hard, I was -afraid you were ended. Now I have hopes!" Her hand, firm and hard, shut -about Catherine's. "Only, don't handicap yourself with this clutter of -feelings."</p> - -<p>Something in the clutch of the firm fingers gave Catherine a quick -insight. Henrietta wasn't hard! Not porcelain. A shell, over a warm, -soft creature—a barnacle, hiding from injury as deep as that her -childhood had shown her.</p> - -<p>"You're a nice old thing." Catherine laid her other hand over -Henrietta's. "And"—she came back to her own maelstrom—"you think it -will be fair to the children? I ought to be more decent—better for -them—if I can get some self-respect."</p> - -<p>"That's talking. You write and take that job, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>stanter! I'll look -around for a woman for you. When can you come down?" Henrietta withdrew -her hand.</p> - -<p>"That's another thing." Catherine frowned. "Dr. Roberts says as soon as -possible. School doesn't open, though, for two weeks. I don't like to -drag the children back."</p> - -<p>"You see?" Henrietta made an impatient lunge with her foot.</p> - -<p>"I'll have to think that out."</p> - -<p>They sat in silence for a few moments. Then Henrietta rose.</p> - -<p>"I'm glad we blew in," she said. "But we have to start off early."</p> - -<p>"You've helped." Catherine stood in front of her friend, her hands -clasped loosely. "I'll hunt you up in town, when I need an injection of -common sense."</p> - -<p>She went through the quiet house, setting the screen in front of the -crimson ash of the fire, turning down the lamp, hanging away the red -sweater Letty had worn home, placing a row of damp little sandals on -the kitchen steps where the morning sun would dry them. She stood there -for a moment, looking off across the water. A huge crimson star hung -low in the east; she thought she caught a flicker of reflection in the -dark stretch of water. Perhaps it was only a late firefly.</p> - -<p>For hours she lay awake, staring out at the great birch tree, watching -the faint motion of its leaves, and the slipping through them of the -Big Dipper as it wheeled slowly down its arc.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="center">V</p> - -<p>They all stood in the sunshine in front of the house, watching the tan -top of the Gilberts' car disappear into the alders.</p> - -<p>Spencer sighed ostentatiously.</p> - -<p>"Wisht we had a nottomobul," he said. "Mr. Bill let me help him squirt -oil and I filled a grease cup and put it back."</p> - -<p>"Should say you did!" scoffed Marian. "Look at your sleeve! You're -awful dirty."</p> - -<p>"Aw, shut up," growled Spencer.</p> - -<p>"Shut up! Shut up!" shrieked Letty, dancing on her toes, and pulling at -Catherine's hand. "Shut up!"</p> - -<p>Catherine, who had been caught in a tight knot of confused thought by -Henrietta's final mockery, "You won't come down for weeks, I know. And -here's your job, waiting for you! You can't break through!" came back -with a little start.</p> - -<p>Spencer was staring dolefully down the lane; Marian hovered at his -smeared elbow, ready to taunt him again if he stayed silent; Letty -pranced as if she wanted to say, "Sic 'em!"</p> - -<p>Catherine smiled. She knew how they felt. The arrival of the Gilberts -was a large stone dropped into the smooth evenness of their days. -Their departure—she couldn't carry on that figure, but she knew the -emptiness it left, a funny little sickish feeling, almost a fear lest -the days would stay empty.</p> - -<p>"Well, isn't he a dirty pig, Muvver?"</p> - -<p>"You hush up!" Spencer flushed as Catherine's grave eyes rested on his.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Amelia says she wants some peas picked. The basket is in the woodshed."</p> - -<p>"I picked 'em last," said Marian.</p> - -<p>"You never did!" Spencer's anger bubbled up. "You——"</p> - -<p>"And some potatoes," continued Catherine, calmly. "If you aren't too -cantankerous, Spencer might dig those, and Marian might pick the peas."</p> - -<p>Spencer dug his toe into the turf.</p> - -<p>"Letty dig!" Letty pulled at Catherine's hand, her lower lip piteously -imploring. "Letty dig, Muddie!"</p> - -<p>"I have some letters to write." Catherine picked up Letty and started -for the house. "I hope you two can see to the vegetables."</p> - -<p>With a brief glance as she opened the door, she saw Spencer with a -gruff "Aw, come along!" heading for the woodshed.</p> - -<p>Letty twisted and squirmed in her arms. "Dig!" she declared.</p> - -<p>"You can dig in your sand pile." Catherine set her down. "Where is your -red pail? You find that, while I find my pen."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>She couldn't go back to town before school opened. Her pen made tiny -involved triangles at the edge of the blotter. Charles wouldn't like it -if she brought the children down so early. Still, that would give her a -few days to set the house in order, to find a woman to take her place. -What a queer thought! Henrietta had one in mind, she had said, a sort -of practical nurse and housekeeper. There were the children's clothes -to see to. When could she do that? She wouldn't have time for sewing.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> -She dropped her head down on the table, her hands clasped under her -forehead. I can't do it, she thought. Too many things. <i>Things!</i> That's -it. Clothes, and laundry, and dirt in the corners. One hand groped out -for the letter from Dr. Roberts, and she lifted her head. Her mouth set -in a hard, thin line; the smears under her gray eyes made them larger, -weary with a kind of desperation.</p> - -<p>"I remember so well your admirable work," he had written. "I can think -of no one with whom I should prefer to entrust this new piece of work."</p> - -<p>If I don't do it now, I never will, she thought. Never. Perhaps I -haven't the courage, or the endurance.</p> - -<p>"Mis' Hammond!" came Amelia's nasal call. "D'you want a fish? Earle's -here and wants to know."</p> - -<p>"Yes." Catherine drew her paper near.</p> - -<p>"Huh? D'you want one?"</p> - -<p>Catherine rose abruptly and hurried into the kitchen.</p> - -<p>"Buy one, Amelia," she said. "Good morning, Earle."</p> - -<p>"Well, he's got cod and haddock and hake." Amelia was stern.</p> - -<p>"Haddock," said Catherine. "There's change there in my purse."</p> - -<p>When she came back to the porch, Letty was not in sight, nor did she -answer Catherine's call. Her red pail lay beside the sand pile.</p> - -<p>"Oh, damn!" thought Catherine, as she flung her pen on to the table and -started in quest of Letty. "If I don't find her, I'll regret it. Letty! -Mother wants you!"</p> - -<p>Incredible that those small legs could travel so fast. Catherine peeked -into the poultry yard. Last week she had found Letty there, trying to -catch an indignant rooster. But Letty seldom repeated.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p> - -<p>As she rounded the corner of the house, she saw the child, and her own -heart contracted terribly. Letty was lying on her stomach on a broad -stone, part of the well curb, her small yellow head out of sight, her -heels in the air.</p> - -<p>"Who left that cover off! If I call her, I may startle her——"</p> - -<p>Amelia appeared at the door, a water pail in her hand, her pale eyes -popping out in her tight face.</p> - -<p>"Sh-h!" Catherine laid a finger on her lips, as she stole softly toward -Letty, with knees that trembled. Her hand closed firmly over a kicking -foot, and she dragged the child suddenly back. Then she sat down on the -grass.</p> - -<p>Letty wriggled violently to be free.</p> - -<p>"Letty fish!" she waved a bit of string. "Fish!"</p> - -<p>"Well, don't that beat all!" Amelia stood over them. "Who left that -well cover off?"</p> - -<p>"You didn't?" asked Catherine wearily.</p> - -<p>"My land, no. I was just coming out to draw a bucket. I'll bet that -Earle done it."</p> - -<p>"Letty, be still!" Catherine's tone hushed the child. "I have told you -never to go near that well, haven't I?"</p> - -<p>Letty smiled, beguilingly.</p> - -<p>"Pretty Muddie. Letty fish." Her small face wrinkled into the most -ingratiating smile she possessed.</p> - -<p>"You are a naughty Letty." Catherine rose. "Come along and be tied up, -like a bad little dog."</p> - -<p>Letty's wrinkled nose smoothed instantly, and her eyes closed for a -scream. Catherine lifted her firmly into her arms, one hand over the -open mouth.</p> - -<p>She sat in her room, waiting for Letty's shrieks to subside. They did, -soon, and she heard her chirrup.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> "Get ap! Get ap!" and knew the rope -which tied her had become a horse.</p> - -<p>Fiercely she seized her pen and wrote. If she stopped to think again— -Anything might happen, anyway! She stopped long enough to see clearly -that if anything happened while she, the mother, was away, she might -have a load of self-reproach heavier than she could endure. It's part -of the struggle, she thought. Someone else can play watchdog, surely. -There! She had committed herself. A note to Charles. She was glad his -conference had been so interesting. She had just accepted a position -at the Bureau, like her old job there. She might come down a few days -early. With love——</p> - - -<p class="center">VI</p> - -<p>The porter dropped the bags on the platform beside them, and held out -his pink palm. Then he swung up to the step, as the long train began -to move. Until the train was out of sight down the curving track, -Catherine knew it was useless to start her procession. A fine drizzle -filled the air under the shed, and the roofs of the street below them -gleamed dull and sordid.</p> - -<p>"Spencer, will you take that bag? And Marian, this one——" Catherine -pulled Letty up into her arm and with a suitcase dragging at her -shoulder, piloted the children toward the stairs. "Daddy may be -downstairs. Careful, Marian, on those wet steps."</p> - -<p>There he was, at the bottom of the narrow, dark stairs. Catherine's -heart gave its customary little jump—always, when she saw Charles -again, even after the briefest separation.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p> - -<p>Marian clung to his arm, Spencer let himself be hugged, Letty squealed -with delight. Catherine looked at him, her eyes bright. He did look -well! And he had a new suit, in all this rain!</p> - -<p>"Here's a taxi, right here. Jump in. Where are your checks?" he bundled -them in and handed the checks to the driver.</p> - -<p>"This is a crowded street, Mother, and awful loud!" said Spencer, his -nose against the glass.</p> - -<p>"I like the big station better," said Marian, adjusting herself with -interest on the little folding seat. "Why can't we get out there?"</p> - -<p>"This is nearer home, dear."</p> - -<p>Daddy sat next to Mother, and the taxi rattled off, spurting slimy mud.</p> - -<p>"Hard trip, old girl?" Charles put his arm around Catherine's shoulders.</p> - -<p>"Fair." Catherine shone at him softly. "Sort of a job, putting the -family to bed on a sleeper. But it's over."</p> - -<p>"An awful homely street," muttered Spencer, his face doleful.</p> - -<p>"It's got lots of things in it," said Marian, wiggling down from her -seat, and thrusting her face against the door. "See the folks and the -stores and the street cars."</p> - -<p>"It's dirty." Spencer turned from the window and looked darkly at -Catherine. "I want to be back home," he said.</p> - -<p>Catherine smiled at him. Poor boy! The little quiver of his nostrils -was eloquent of nostalgia, of the rude necessity of adjustment.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Our street isn't like this, Spencer," she assured him. "You will like -that better."</p> - -<p>"Turned into a country kid, have you?" Charles reached for the boy's -arm. "Fine muscle! You'll have to try some handball with me this -winter."</p> - -<p>Spencer lost his forlornness at once. "In the court? Oh, gee!"</p> - -<p>"I've got muscle too, Daddy." Marian bounced across to her father's -knees. "Feel me! Can't I play ball with you?"</p> - -<p>"Letty play!" wailed Letty.</p> - -<p>The taxi jolted to a standstill in the traffic, and Letty was diverted -by a large and black mammy descending from the street car close to the -cab.</p> - -<p>"Girls can't play," said Spencer conclusively.</p> - -<p>"They can, too, can't they, Muvver!"</p> - -<p>"Your mother agrees with you, Marian," said Charles. "But not on our -handball courts, eh, Spencer?"</p> - -<p>Catherine flushed at the submerged note in Charles's words.</p> - -<p>"Don't you give my daughter an inferiority complex!" she said, lightly.</p> - -<p>But Charles went on, the note rising to the surface.</p> - -<p>"You won't find the house in very good shape. I wasn't expecting you so -early."</p> - -<p>The glow of the meeting was disappearing under the faint, secret -friction. Catherine thought quickly, "He didn't like it—the job, or -my coming down. But he isn't admitting it." Aloud she said, "Did Flora -desert you?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, no. She's there, her mouth larger than ever. I meant the finishing -touches."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p> - -<p>"We can give those."</p> - -<p>"There's Morningside Park!" Spencer's shout was full of delight. -"Rocks and trees an' everything!" The taxi had left One Hundred and -Twenty-fifth Street and was bumping along the side street which -bordered the park. The rocks shouldered up gray and wet through brown, -worn shrubbery.</p> - -<p>"There's where we had the cave," cried Marian. "I remember it."</p> - -<p>Up to the Drive, a few blocks south, and just around the corner the -taxi halted.</p> - -<p>"Here we are!" Out they all scrambled, to stare up at the gray front, -tessellated with windows, while Charles maneuvered the luggage. -Catherine felt Spencer's cold hand creep into hers; she held it firmly, -knowing that he, too, had the sinking depression with which that -monotonous dingy structure filled her.</p> - -<p>But Sam, the elevator boy, came out, all white grin and shiny eyes, to -greet them and carry in the bags. Letty, as of old, clasped her hands -over her stomach as the elevator shot up. The key clicked in the lock -and the door opened on the familiar long hall. They were home again.</p> - -<p>"When we have breakfast," declared Catherine, "we won't feel so much -like lost cats!"</p> - -<p>Flora, her gold tooth gleaming in her dark face, was loudly and -cheerfully glad to see them. Catherine scurried for towels, and left -the children scrubbing their hands, while she walked back through the -hall with Charles, who had said he must go to his office immediately.</p> - -<p>They faced each other in the dim light. Catherine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> struggled to throw -off the constraint which had settled upon her.</p> - -<p>"That's a grand suit," she said, laying her hand on his sleeve. "You -better take your rain coat."</p> - -<p>"It's at the office. I am afraid I can't come in for luncheon. I made -this engagement downtown before I knew you were coming to-day."</p> - -<p>"That's good." Catherine smiled at him. "Leaves me more time—there are -endless things to do."</p> - -<p>He looked at her, a curious reserve in his eyes.</p> - -<p>"You are really going to do it, take that job?"</p> - -<p>"I wrote you——"</p> - -<p>"When do you start?"</p> - -<p>"Monday. That's why I'm here." She couldn't help that air of defense! -"I had to have a few days to shop for the children, and get the house -running."</p> - -<p>"Hard on them, isn't it?"</p> - -<p>"I thought a few days couldn't matter so much to them as to me."</p> - -<p>"No." Charles turned the doorknob.</p> - -<p>"Charles!" Catherine seized his hand. "Are you—cross?"</p> - -<p>"Of course not." He sounded impatient. "But I have to get over to -college sometime to-day."</p> - -<p>"Have you changed your mind about my trying this?"</p> - -<p>"No." He pursed his under lip, hesitatingly. "I didn't know you were -going to jump in so immediately. But it's quite all right."</p> - -<p>Catherine released his hand, and he pulled open the door. He stood a -moment on the threshold, and then wheeled.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I—I'm glad you're home." Catherine was in his arms, her lips -quivering as he kissed her.</p> - -<p>"There, run along!" She patted his shoulder, her eyes misty.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>But when he had gone, she leaned against the door, brushing hot tears -from her lashes. She could hear the children, their voices raised in -jangling. It was going to be hard, harder than she had thought. Bill -was right; she would have a double job. She might have more than that, -if Charles really carried a secret antagonism to her plan. Perhaps he -was only gruffy; perhaps this was only a flicker of his unadmitted -dislike of anything which threatened change, anything at least which -he had not originated. But she saw, clearly, what she had felt as a -possibility, that she had, for a time, his attitude as further weight -to carry. That he wouldn't admit his attitude made the weight heavier, -if anything. As she went slowly towards the sounds of squabbling, she -saw her attempt as a monstrous undertaking, like unknown darkness into -which she ventured, fearing at every step some unseen danger; and -heaviness pressed down physically upon her.</p> - - -<p class="center">VII</p> - -<p>Breakfast restored the temper of the children, and lifted part of her -own heaviness. The day then stretched into long hours. The children -couldn't go out into the park, as the drizzle of the morning increased -to cold rain. Toward noon Dr. Henrietta telephoned, and Catherine -found her voice like a wind blowing into flame her almost smothered -intentions. Henrietta was send<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>ing over that evening the woman she had -mentioned: Miss Kelly. She could come at once, if Catherine liked her. -She would have to come by the day, as she had an invalid mother. "We'll -run in soon, Catherine, Bill and I. Don't you weaken!"</p> - -<p>Lucky Miss Kelly wouldn't want a place to sleep, thought Catherine, as -she went about the business of unpacking and reordering the apartment. -With New York rents where they were it was all they could do to shelter -the family decently. Was it really decent, she wondered, as she laid -the piles of Spencer's clothes away in the white dresser, and looked -about the little court room where he slept. She went to the window. A -hollow square, full of rain and damp odors; windows with drab curtains -blowing out into the rain; window sills with milk bottles, paper -bags—the signs of poor students, struggling to wrest education out -of the jaws of hunger! And yet, when she and Charles had found this -apartment, they had thought it fine. A large, wide, airy court; none of -your air shafts. She glanced up where the roof lines cut angles against -the sodden sky. Spencer did watch the stars there, on clear nights. She -picked up the laundry bag, stuffed with soiled clothes, and left the -room. Marian's room was next, a little larger. She had planned to have -Letty's bed moved in there this fall, opposite Marian's. Flora was on -her knees, her yellowed silk blouse dangling from her tight belt, as -her arm rotated the mop over the floor.</p> - -<p>"Had a pleasant summer, Flora?" asked Catherine, as she opened Marian's -bag.</p> - -<p>"Land, yes, Mis' Hammond." Flora whisked her cloth. "I'm gonna get -married to a puhfessional man.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> He's been showing me tenshions all -summer. He ain't committed hisself till last week."</p> - -<p>"You are!" Catherine looked at her in dismay. "When?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, I ain't gonna give up my work, Mis' Hammond. Not till I sees -how he pans out. I tried that once, and my las' husband, he couldn't -maintain me as I was accustomed to be. So I says to my intended, I'll -get married to you for pleasure, but I keeps my job. He don't care."</p> - -<p>Catherine laughed. She knew that Flora had made earlier experiments in -marriage, once to the extent of going back to Porto Rico. But she had, -through all her changes of name, kept her good humor, her cleverness, -and her apparent devotion to Catherine.</p> - -<p>She rose swiftly from her knees, her long string of green beads -clinking against her pail of water.</p> - -<p>"I believes in keeping men in his place," she said, with an expanding -grin. "If you don't, they keeps you in yours."</p> - -<p>Catherine, adding the pile of Marian's dirty clothes to the jammed -laundry bag, laughed again.</p> - -<p>"I suppose so," she said. "What am I going to do with all this laundry! -You'd think we hadn't washed all summer, the way things pile up."</p> - -<p>"I'll take that right home to-night, Mis' Hammond. My sister can do it -for you. My gentleman friend is stopping by for me in his car."</p> - -<p>Catherine smoothed the cretonne scarf on the dressing table, adjusted -the bright curtains, moved the little wicker chair to make room for -Letty's bed, and with a grimace at the glimpse of the court even -through the curtains,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> went on to the living room. Letty was asleep in -Catherine's room. Spencer and Marian had scorned her hint that a nap -might be good for them, and were sitting disconsolately in chairs drawn -near the windows. Here, at least, was something beside too intimate -suggestion of neighboring lives, even if the rain held it to-day in -somber dullness. Beneath the windows the tops of trees pricked through -the mist, as if one looked down into a forest; they were only the -poplars and Balm of Gilead that grew on the steep slope of Morningside, -but as Spencer had said, they were <i>trees</i>. And beyond them, extending -far off into the dim gray horizon, the city—flat roofs, with strange -shapes of chimneys, water tanks, or elevator sheds, merged to-day -into dark solidity. On clear days, there was a hint of water in the -distance, and the balanced curve of a great bridge. After all, thought -Catherine, there was air in the bedrooms—you couldn't expect birch -trees and stars in the city—and they did have distance and sometimes -the enchantment of the varying city from these windows. But it was -queer—she smiled as Spencer eyed her over his book—queer that beauty, -sunlight, air, should be things for which you paid money; that you had -to think yourself fortunate if you could afford one window which did -not open upon sordidness.</p> - -<p>"Moth-er, do you think I'd get too wet if I just went outdoors for five -minutes?" Spencer was dolorous. "My throat is all stuffed up, and I'll -lose my muscle, just sitting still."</p> - -<p>"No fun going out here," grumped Marian.</p> - -<p>"In a little while I am going out shopping for dinner. Would you like -to go?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="center">VIII</p> - -<p>In raincoats and rubbers, each with a bobbing umbrella, Catherine -sighing at the lost summer comfort of knickerbockers and boots, the -three went out into the rain. The children sparkled as if they had -escaped from jail. Spencer peered from under his umbrella at the heavy -sky.</p> - -<p>"Mebbe when the tide turns the wind'll change," he said.</p> - -<p>"Huh!" Marian giggled. "In the city? That's only in the country."</p> - -<p>"I guess there is wind in town, too, and tides, aren't there, Moth-er?"</p> - -<p>"Wind, all right!" The gust at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue caught -their umbrellas like chips. They ducked into the wet wind, rounded the -corner, and bent against it down the avenue.</p> - -<p>"Isn't there any tide?" insisted Spencer.</p> - -<p>"Yes, of course," Catherine answered, absently. Too far such a day, she -supposed, to go down to her old market. That restaurant had changed -hands again; a man behind the large window was even then drawing -outlines for new gilt letters. The same hairdresser, the same idle -manicure girl, intent on her own fingers, the drug store. They crossed -the street, their feet wobbling over the cobblestones, slipping through -the guttered water. There they were, at the market.</p> - -<p>"Where's the kitty?" demanded Marian, her eyes bright in her -rose-tanned face.</p> - -<p>"Kitty?" Catherine weighed the oranges in her fingers, and looked about -for a clerk.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Why, yes, Muvver. That little gray kitty——"</p> - -<p>"He'd probably be grown into an old gray alley cat by this time."</p> - -<p>Catherine frowned a little over her list. She should have come out -earlier; everything looked wilted, picked over. Vitamins, calories, and -the budget. The old dreary business of managing decently, reasonably. -The country and a garden of your own did spoil you for these dejected -pyramids.</p> - -<p>"There's another thing," she thought, as she watched the clerk hunt for -a satisfying head of lettuce, stripping off brownish, slimy leaves. -"When can I market, if I am downtown at nine? Perhaps this Miss Kelly -can do it, with Letty, as I always have done." A swift picture of -Letty in her go-cart, herself with the basket hanging from the handle. -Marketing had been her most intellectual pursuit.</p> - -<p>Back to the meat counter, with its rows of purplish fowls, their -feathered heads languishing on their trussed wings, and the butcher, -wiping his hands on the apron spotted and taut over his paunch.</p> - -<p>Marian, her eyes round and black, watched him sharpen his knife, while -Spencer lingered near the door. Spencer didn't, as he said, like dead -things. Neither did Catherine, shivering as the butcher shoved aside -the quivering lump of purplish-black liver. Queer, the forms that the -demands of ordinary living took; forms you never dreamed of, when you -entered living.</p> - -<p>"We should have brought two baskets!" Catherine looked at the bundles.</p> - -<p>"Send 'em over, lady?"</p> - -<p>"It's so late."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I can carry some, Moth-er." Spencer came back from his post at the -door.</p> - -<p>Marian had the bag of oranges under her arm, Spencer the basket, -Catherine a huge bag of varied contents. A scramble at the door to open -the three umbrellas, and they started up the street, the wind gusty at -their heels.</p> - -<p>"Be careful crossing the street," warned Catherine. Marian, darting -ahead, reached the curb, slipped, and sat down plump in a puddle, the -oranges rolling off, bright spots on the wet cobblestones. Marian, -dismayed, sat still, her mouth puckered.</p> - -<p>Catherine pulled her to her feet with a hand abrupt, almost harsh. The -throbbing behind her temples which had begun the day before, in the -steady drive of closing the house and getting off, had increased to a -heavy drum. "Pick them up," she said. "Don't stand there like a ninny!"</p> - -<p>Spencer's grin faded at the tone of her voice, and her flare of weary -temper subsided as she watched them scurry after the fruit. They stowed -the oranges into pockets, and corners of the basket.</p> - -<p>Finally they were home again. Flora's loud "Glory, glory, halleleuia," -swept down the hall as they opened the door, and Letty's accompaniment.</p> - -<p>"She's found my drum!" Spencer fled to the kitchen, and a wail followed -as Letty was reft of her instrument.</p> - -<p>Catherine pressed her lips firmly together as she hung her dripping -coat on the rack. "Steady," she said. "They are as tired as I am." Then -she thought: that's the great trouble with being a mother. You never -get away for a chance to sulk and indulge your bad temper.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p> - -<p>Charles came in, with his blandest air of preoccupation. Flora had -prepared the dinner, and then gone home when her gentleman friend -called for her, to cook her own evening meal, leaving Catherine to -broil the steak and set things on the table. Since Letty had slept -so long, she was permitted to sit in her high-chair during dinner, -where she conducted an insuppressible and very little intelligible -conversation.</p> - -<p>"She certainly needs training," declared Charles.</p> - -<p>"She isn't often on hand for dinner," said Catherine, wearily.</p> - -<p>Spencer and Marian cleared away the table, while Catherine bathed -Letty, deafening herself to the crash which came from the kitchen. What -had Marian dropped this time?</p> - -<p>Then she heard them, chattering away to their father, with the -occasional interruption of Charles's deep laugh. She hung away Letty's -towels and garments, and let the water run for Marian's bath. Wasn't -that Kelly person coming in? Would she, Catherine wondered, give the -children their baths? Could she let anyone else do that? Those slender, -rounded bodies, firm, ineffably young and sweet, changing so subtly -from the soft baby curves of Letty into young strength. Oh, at every -second there waited for her some coil of sentiment, of devotion, to -hold her there, solid, unmoving, in the round of the past few years.</p> - -<p>She was too tired to-night to think straight. She called Marian from -the door, and was answered by a demonstrating wail.</p> - -<p>"Not yet, Muvver. I have to see my Daddy."</p> - -<p>But at last both she and Spencer were bathed and in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> bed. As Catherine -turned out Spencer's light, she heard the doorbell.</p> - -<p>"Who is it, Moth-er?" Spencer's head came up from his pillow.</p> - -<p>"I don't know, son. But you go to sleep."</p> - -<p>"Mother—" His voice was low, half ashamed. "Mother, what makes me ache -in here?"</p> - -<p>"Where?" Catherine hung over his bed. He drew her hand to his chest.</p> - -<p>"When I think about my porch—an' everything."</p> - -<p>"You better think about something here, Spencer." Catherine's words -were tender. "Something you like here. That will cure your ache."</p> - -<p>"But I can't think up anything to think about! You tell me something -nice——"</p> - -<p>"'F you talk to Spencer, you'd ought to talk to me, too," came Marian's -sleepy protest from the adjoining room.</p> - -<p>"Sh-h! You'll wake Letty." Catherine's mind moved numbly over Spencer's -city likes. "Spencer, you might think about Walter Thomas. You can see -him soon——"</p> - -<p>"Well." Spencer sounded very doubtful. But Charles called her, and -Catherine said good night to him and to Marian.</p> - -<p>It was Miss Kelly who had rung. Catherine sat down in the living room, -brushing her hair away from her face, to which weariness had given a -creamy pallor under the summer tan, and wished furiously that she was -not so tired, that she could see into this rather plump, sandy, stubby -person who sat opposite her, with calm, light blue eyes meeting her -gaze. She looked efficient, if not imaginative. Well, the children had -imagination enough,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> and if Henrietta thought Miss Kelly would do, -surely she would. Charles had retired into his study. Miss Kelly folded -her plump hands in her lap and looked down at her round, sensible shoes -as Catherine spoke of Dr. Gilbert's high recommendation.</p> - -<p>She couldn't come before Monday. She liked nursing better, but the -hours were so uncertain, and her mother needed her. Yes, she had cared -for children before. She had always, for several years, had twenty-five -dollars a week, when she lived in her own home.</p> - -<p>H-m, thought Catherine, that will make one large dent in my wages! But -I must have someone, and I can't fill my place for nothing. So Monday -morning, about eight. Too bad the children were in bed, but then on -Monday Miss Kelly could see them.</p> - -<p>When Catherine had closed the door on the last descending glimpse of -Miss Kelly's round face behind the elevator grill, she hurried back to -the study. Charles looked up from his book.</p> - -<p>"Did you like her, Charles? You do think she looks capable?"</p> - -<p>"She has an air of honest worth." Charles laid aside his book. "Did you -hire her?"</p> - -<p>Catherine nodded.</p> - -<p>"I shouldn't care to have you supplanted by that face, if I were -Letty—or Spencer—or——"</p> - -<p>Catherine moved around to the desk to the side of his chair, her -fingers twisting together in a nervous little gesture.</p> - -<p>"She looks sensible and good natured, and Henrietta says she is fine. -I've got to try someone."</p> - -<p>"I suppose you must."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p> - -<p>Catherine, balancing on the edge of the desk, looked steadily at her -husband. He was holding his thoughts away from her, out of his eyes.</p> - -<p>"It's mostly Letty, of course," she said. "The others will be in -school." She sighed. "She can come Monday, the day I start."</p> - -<p>Then they were silent. Charles rubbed his thumb along the edge of his -book, and Catherine watched him, her gray eyes heavy.</p> - -<p>No use talking about it to-night, when she was so tired. She pushed the -affair away.</p> - -<p>"Poor Spencer is homesick for Maine," she said. "He wanted to know why -he ached——"</p> - -<p>"He needs to get out with boys more," said Charles sharply. "He's too -notional for a boy his age."</p> - -<p>Catherine felt a quick flicker of heat under her eyelids. Charles had -said that before this summer.</p> - -<p>"I want him to be a man," he continued, "not a sentimental little fool."</p> - -<p>"I think you needn't worry about that." Catherine was icy. Then -suddenly she slipped forward to the arm of his chair, her head down on -his shoulder, one hand up to his cheek. "Good Lord, I'm tired! Don't -talk about anything, or I'll fight!"</p> - -<p>Charles pulled her down into his lap and held her close.</p> - -<p>"That's more like it." His mouth was close to her ear. "Sitting off and -staring at me! Silly old girl——"</p> - -<p>Catherine laughed, just a weak flutter of sound.</p> - -<p>"Call me names! But hug me, tighter!" She laughed again. Words, she -thought—you can't get a person with words. They stand between you like -a wall.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p> - -<p>"You'd better go to bed. You feel limp as a dead leaf."</p> - -<p>"Yes." She stretched comfortably. "In a minute——"</p> - - -<p class="center">IX</p> - -<p>Catherine sat at one of the living room windows, the floor about her -chair littered with packages, the result of her shopping for the -children. She unwrapped them methodically, clipped a name from the -rolls of tape in her basket, and sewed the label in place. Spencer -Hammond; Marian Hammond; Letitia Hammond. She was thankful that none -of them had a longer name! After three gloomy days the sun shone -again, pricking out spots of red in the roofs of the distance, falling -in splotches of brilliance on the white stuff Catherine handled. The -children were playing in the dining room, where the east windows -admitted the broad shafts of sunlight. Poor kids! They had begged her -to go outdoors with them, but her mother had telephoned that she was -coming in.</p> - -<p>Catherine had not known she was in town. She had been visiting her son -in Wisconsin, George Spencer. Catherine had seen little of that brother -since her own departure for college; he had married and gone west, -sending back, at astonishingly frequent intervals, photographs of his -increasing family. Mrs. Spencer visited him at least once each year, -returning always with delighted accounts of the children, of George's -business, of his wife.</p> - -<p>Catherine folded the striped pajamas and laid them on the pile at her -right. Her thoughts drifted around<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> her mother and the small apartment -in the Fifties where she kept house for Margaret, the youngest of the -family. Letty came in a little rush toward her.</p> - -<p>"Letty draw." She spread the paper on Catherine's knee. "For Gram." Her -yellow head bent over it intently.</p> - -<p>"What is it, Letty?" Catherine laid a finger softly on the little -hollow just at the base of Letty's neck, an adorable hollow with a -twist of pale hair above it.</p> - -<p>"She says it's a picture of her fishing," called Marian. "Catching -cunners. But I'm painting a good picture of our house for Grandma——"</p> - -<p>"Letty paint?" Letty looked up, her eyes crinkled.</p> - -<p>"Grandma will like a drawing just as well." Catherine picked up a set -of rompers. "Mother's going to sew your name right on the band." Letty -watched a moment and then trudged back to her corner on the dining room -floor.</p> - -<p>What would her mother think when Catherine told her of her plan? -Catherine's hands dropped into her lap. She wouldn't say much. She -never did. But that little crinkle of Letty's eyes was like hers! You -saw her laughing at you. Since her own marriage Catherine had wondered -about her mother, and the last few months, while she had struggled with -her moods and desires, she had found that the admiration she had always -felt had gathered a tinge of curiosity, or speculative wonder. How had -her mother attained the lively serenity, the animated poise, the quiet, -humorous tranquillity with which she bore herself? Catherine remembered -her father only as a somewhat irritable invalid; the accident which -had injured him and finally killed him had happened when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> she was -young, and Margaret a mere baby. And yet, somehow, her mother had -seemed to keep a whimsical invulnerability. She had sent them all to -college, however she had managed even before the cost of living gained -its ominous present-day sound. Only for the last few years, since -Margaret, the last of them, had grown into a youthfully serious welfare -worker, had Mrs. Spencer's income been adequate to the uses for it. And -yet—Astonishing adjustment, thought Catherine. As if she had found -what she most wanted in life. As if things outside herself couldn't -scratch her skin.</p> - -<p>There was a scramble of children to the door at the ring of the bell, -and Catherine rose, her work sliding to the floor. They loved her, -the children. Was that the answer to her curiosity? That her mother -was essentially maternal? Catherine smiled as the delighted shouts of -greeting moved down the hall toward her. No, that wasn't the answer. -They had never felt, Catherine, or George, or Margaret, that they were -the core of her life; what was?</p> - -<p>"Cathy, dear!" How pretty she was, thought Catherine, as she bent -to kiss her. A moment of encounter while she gazed at her; always -Catherine had to pause that moment to regather all the outward details -which during absence merged into her feeling of the person as a whole. -She hadn't remembered how dark the blue of her mother's eyes was. Or -was it only the small blue hat with the liberty scarf, and the new blue -cape?</p> - -<p>"How smart you look!" she said. "And a new dress, too!"</p> - -<p>Mrs. Spencer slipped off her cape with a little twirl. "Paris model, -reduced." She handed the cape to Spencer.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p> - -<p>"It's pretty, Grandma." Marian touched the blue silk. "Little beads all -over the front."</p> - -<p>"You certainly look well!" Mrs. Spencer settled herself in a rocker, -unpinned her veil, let Marian take her hat, and upon insistence from -Letty, allowed her to hold the silk handbag. "Now please put my things -all together, won't you?" She ran her fingers through her soft gray -hair. Catherine watched her with tender eyes. Something valiant about -those small hands, white and soft, with enlarged knuckles and fingers a -little crooked, marked by hard earlier years.</p> - -<p>Not until after luncheon did Catherine talk with her mother. The -children had to show her their pictures; Charles came in, and Mrs. -Spencer wanted to know about his new work; dinner had to be planned. -Finally Letty was stowed away for her nap, and Spencer and Marian, with -the promise of a walk when she woke, went off to read.</p> - -<p>"I'll help you with that sewing." Mrs. Spencer threaded her needle. -"You've done your shopping in a lump, haven't you? I thought you -usually made some of these things."</p> - -<p>"I won't have time this year."</p> - -<p>Catherine was half afraid to tell her. Her proposition sounded absurd, -as if she heard it through her mother's ears. But Mrs. Spencer listened -quietly.</p> - -<p>"That's what Charles meant, then," she said.</p> - -<p>"He spoke of it?" Catherine looked up.</p> - -<p>"He asked if I had heard how modern you had suddenly become."</p> - -<p>Catherine snapped her thread. She wondered why she had felt this -desperate need to make her mother<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> approve of her scheme, and Charles, -too. Wouldn't approval come after she had carried it through, if she -could?</p> - -<p>"Do you think me foolish—or wicked?"</p> - -<p>Mrs. Spencer patted the tape into place on the blouse she held.</p> - -<p>"Not at all, Cathy," she said.</p> - -<p>"But you don't think I ought to do it?"</p> - -<p>"That is for you to decide. You say you have found a nurse?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"Did Dr. Henrietta Gilbert suggest this to you?"</p> - -<p>Catherine's head came up at that, but her irritation scurried off into -amusement; her mother looked so guileless, stitching with busy fingers.</p> - -<p>"You don't see, then, that I can't help it? That I must try something? -Oh, Mother, I've thought and thought——"</p> - -<p>"Yes, that's just it. You think too much. You always thought, Cathy. -That's why I was relieved when you met Charles. You didn't think much -for a while, at least, and I hoped"—Mrs. Spencer was looking at her, -her head on one side, her eyes bright, her mouth turning up in a funny -little smile—"I hoped your thinking days were over. But it's in the -air so. Women seem to take pride in being restless, unhappy. We were -taught to consider that a sin."</p> - -<p>"Is that why you're so nice?"</p> - -<p>"No." Mrs. Spencer smiled. "Maybe my children were smarter than yours. -I didn't find them such bad company."</p> - -<p>"Oh, that's not it!" Catherine cried out. Then she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> laughed. "Mother, -you're outrageous. You're making fun of me, just as if——"</p> - -<p>"As if you wanted to be a missionary again."</p> - -<p>"But I was only a child then. That was amusing."</p> - -<p>"Yes. You didn't think so, then." Mrs. Spencer folded the blouse -neatly. "Hasn't Spencer grown tall! I see you're buying eleven-year-old -clothes for him."</p> - -<p>"Well"—Catherine's mouth was stubborn—"I'll just have to show you! -And Charles, too. He thinks it's a whim, I know."</p> - -<p>"He hasn't objected?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, no. Not in words. He wouldn't."</p> - -<p>"Poor Charles. These modern women in your own home!" Mrs. Spencer's -eyes crinkled almost shut. "Do you know why I came back early? Your -sister Margaret has a modern turn, too."</p> - -<p>"But she's not in town yet."</p> - -<p>"No. She wrote, asking if I wouldn't like to stay with George this -winter."</p> - -<p>"Why?"</p> - -<p>"I suppose she thinks a mother is a sort of nuisance. She wants to set -up housekeeping with her friend."</p> - -<p>"The little wretch!"</p> - -<p>"Not exactly. But I did want that apartment myself, as I am fond of it. -I think I'll take a roomer."</p> - -<p>"Mother!" Catherine stared at her.</p> - -<p>"She's been reading something a German wrote. What is his name? Freud. -She's been thinking, too, I am afraid."</p> - -<p>Catherine was silent; she recognized her instinctive protest as a -flourish of habit, of righteousness for someone else. After all——</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p> - -<p>"She needn't be so apologetic," said Mrs. Spencer deliberately. "If she -doesn't need me, I shall be glad to find someone nearer my own age."</p> - -<p>Letty's deep voice announced her awakening. Mrs. Spencer decided to -walk over to Riverside with Catherine and the children, as she could -go on downtown from there by bus. After several minutes of agitated -preparation, a frantic search for roller skates, they were in the hall, -Letty rolling noisily along on her wooden "Go-Duck," her busy legs -waving like plump antennæ. Catherine held the strap of Marian's skates -firmly; Marian was all for skating right down the hall. Then, just as -the elevator came, Catherine remembered that she hadn't paid Flora for -the week.</p> - -<p>Flora's gold tooth flashed as Catherine handed her the money.</p> - -<p>"I certainly is obliged," she said. "My frien' and I, we're going on -the Hudson River boat to-morrow, and I suspicions he's short of cash."</p> - -<p>"You'll be in early on Monday, Flora? Miss Kelly is coming, and she'll -need you to show her about things."</p> - -<p>"Sakes, yes. You can go about your business, Mis' Hammond, with a light -soul."</p> - -<p>Flora was delighted at this venture of Catherine's. Catherine thought, -a little grimly, as she hurried after the family, that Flora was the -only one in the house who was pleased. It's her dramatic sense, she -speculated, waiting for the elevator. I wish I had more of it myself, -and Charles, too.</p> - -<p>The sharp blue clarity of the air was like a sudden check rein, pulling -Catherine's head up from doubtful thoughts. As they waited at Amsterdam -Avenue for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> car to rumble past, she glanced up the street; in the -foreground the few blocks of sharp descent, and then the steady climb -for miles, off to the distance where street and marginal buildings -seemed as blue as the sky. It was like a mountain, with blue-gray -shadows across the canyon of the street, and jagged cliffs of buildings -merging into solid rock up the slope. She reached for the head of -Letty's red duck. "You better walk across the street, Letty."</p> - -<p>"No! Ducky go!" and bumping over the cobblestones it went, propelled -vigorously, while Spencer and Marian stumbled along on their skates.</p> - -<p>The walk through the half block of park behind the University buildings -was smooth sailing. Catherine and her mother followed the children. -"Wait for us at the gate!" warned Catherine.</p> - -<p>At last they were across the Drive and safe on the lower walk of the -park.</p> - -<p>"Here's my old bench." Catherine sat down with her mother. "I can see -clear to those steps from here."</p> - -<p>Spencer was off with a whoop, his figure balancing surely as he sped. -Marian chased him, a determined erectness in her body. Letty paddled -after them, chanting loudly to her duck.</p> - -<p>"When school opens," Catherine sighed, "they'll have some exercise, -poor chickens. City life isn't easy for them."</p> - -<p>"It's no place for children." Mrs. Spencer watched a passing group, a -beruffled little girl yanking fretfully at the hand of her nurse, a -small, fat boy howling in tearless monotony. "Not even a yard."</p> - -<p>"We talked about a suburb last year. But Charles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> hates the idea of -commuting, and he is so busy with his additional work that he'd never -be home at all."</p> - -<p>"Won't you miss these little expeditions with your children?"</p> - -<p>Catherine looked hastily at her mother. But the bright blue eyes were -apparently intent on a tug steaming along the river. The tide was -running swiftly down, swirling off into the quiet water near shore bits -of refuse, boxes, sticks, which caught the sun in dazzling sham before -they drifted into ugly lack of movement.</p> - -<p>"They don't need me when they are playing here," said Catherine. -"Anyone would do, just to watch them."</p> - -<p>"I wonder," said her mother. "I see some of these nurses do outlandish -things."</p> - -<p>"Miss Kelly looks intelligent and kind." Again stubbornness in -Catherine's mouth, in her lowered eyelids. "And I might as well admit, -I'm reaching the place where I won't be either of those things. You'd -be ashamed of your daughter if you knew how peevish she can get!"</p> - -<p>"Catherine, dear"—Mrs. Spencer laid her hand softly on -Catherine's—"you know I don't mean to interfere. But are you sure you -haven't just caught the general unrest, in the air and everywhere?"</p> - -<p>"Where did it come from?" The children were coasting toward them, down -the little hill. "Why do I feel it?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, the war, no doubt."</p> - -<p>"The war! Blame that for my hatred of this dreadful monotony, my lack -of self-respect, my—my grubby, dingy, hopeless feeling!"</p> - -<p>"I can see you have your mind made up." Mrs. Spencer caught Marian as -she tumbled, laughing, against the seat.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I beat Spencer back!"</p> - -<p>"Come on and I'll beat up the hill!" Spencer wiggled to a standstill.</p> - -<p>A wail went up. Letty and her duck were upside down, a jumble of legs -and red wheels. Spencer clattered away to rescue her, Marian after him.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Spencer began with a little chuckle a story of George's two -youngest children. Catherine relaxed, content to leave her own problem. -Her mother had said all she meant to say. The sun dropped lower and -lower, until it seemed to catch on the sharp margin of the New Jersey -shore and hang there, red, for long minutes. The tide had slackened and -the water caught a metallic white luster. The park was almost deserted -now. Finally Catherine called the children. They came; she smiled at -their scarlet cheeks and clear eyes, their smudged hands and knees.</p> - -<p>"Home now, and dinner."</p> - -<p>"See the gold windows!" Spencer pointed to the massed gray buildings -above the park.</p> - -<p>"That's the sun," explained Marian, panting up the steps.</p> - -<p>They waited with Grandmother until a bus lumbered to a halt, and they -could wave her off down the Drive.</p> - - -<p class="center">X</p> - -<p>Charles came into the hall as they entered, clattering skates and duck.</p> - -<p>"Hello!" He pinched Letty's cheek. "Where you been?" He moved close to -Catherine and continued, in a confidential undertone, "I thought you'd -be here. I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> brought Miss Partridge in. Don't you want her to stay to -dinner?"</p> - -<p>Catherine, with a swift glance at the disheveled group, and a swifter -consideration of food—what had she told Flora to prepare?—shrugged.</p> - -<p>"Of course," she said. She concealed a secret grin at the relief which -ran over Charles's nonchalance. In the old days—how long ago!—one of -her most sacred lares had been just that, that Charles should feel free -as air about bringing any one in at any time. What was home for? But -with three children, perhaps she burned less incense at that altar. She -was moving toward the door of the living room as she thought.</p> - -<p>"Here's my wife and family, Miss Partridge."</p> - -<p>"I am glad you waited for us." Catherine disengaged herself from -Letty's fingers and went to meet the woman who was rising from the -window. "I have wished to meet you." Catherine smiled as she spoke; her -smile touched her face with a subtle irradiance, charming, completely -personal. She's younger than I had supposed, Catherine was thinking, -and quite different.</p> - -<p>"Dr. Hammond urged me to wait." Her voice was clear and hard, like a -highly polished instrument. Her manner was as cool and detached as the -long white hand she extended. "And this is the family?"</p> - -<p>"Letitia, Marian, and Spencer," announced Charles. Catherine watched -them make their decorous greetings with a little flicker of pride. -Sometimes Marian had ridiculous fits of shyness and wouldn't curtsey. -"You'll have to test them, Miss Partridge," Charles went on. "See if my -paternal bias misled me in my tests. Their I.Q.'s seem satisfactory."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Of course they would!" Miss Partridge's smile lifted her short upper -lip from a row of even teeth so shining that they looked transparent. -"Such a handful must keep you busy, Mrs. Hammond. You've just come in -from the country, haven't you?"</p> - -<p>"Good Lord!" thought Catherine. "I'm to be treated like an adoring -mother." Her level glance met the dark brown eyes for an instant; she -felt a queer clatter, as if she had struck metal. Aloud she said, -"Won't you have dinner with us, Miss Partridge? I should enjoy hearing -your side of all these new schemes."</p> - -<p>"That's it." Charles was hearty, insistent. "Let me take your wraps."</p> - -<p>Elegant, slim, in soft taupe tailor-made, close-fitting velour hat. -She gets herself up well; Catherine was aware suddenly of her own -appearance in rough tweed coat and last year's hat with its bow of -ribbon rather wilted. Not so hasty, she warned herself; look out, or -you'll have a rooted dislike out of this feeling. Queer, how some women -heighten their femininity by tailored clothes. Miss Partridge, without -a demur, had stripped off her jacket and removed her hat. Her blouse of -dull gleaming silk fitted closely about her throat, her dark hair was -wound in a heavy braid about her smooth, small head; lovely skin, with -a pale luster. Catherine noted in a flash the heavy jade cuff links, -the small bar of jade that fastened the collar, the chain of dull -silver and jade which looped into the belt. She's the sort that affects -the masculine for more subtle results, was the swift conclusion, as she -ushered the children out of the room.</p> - -<p>It was a nuisance, having a maid who couldn't stay<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> to serve dinner. -But in other ways Flora couldn't be touched, and they did like not -having to house her. Catherine heard the tone of that clear, hard -voice as she moved from bathroom to kitchen, lighting the gas under -the vegetables, supervising Letty's supper and bath. Is she brilliant, -or shrewd, she wondered, as she directed Spencer in his grave attempt -to lay another place at the table. She is young to have achieved her -reputation. Has she one, or has she made Charles think she has? Don't -be a cat!</p> - -<p>At last Letty was in bed, the children were clean, the chops were -broiled, the corn steamed on the platter, and with a last glance at the -table, Catherine went to the living room door.</p> - -<p>"Dinner is ready," she said. "We have a maid by the day, who goes home -at six," she explained, and then stopped. She wouldn't apologize!</p> - -<p>As they seated themselves, Letty's shout broke across the hall.</p> - -<p>"Lady kiss duck! Lady kiss Ducky goo' ni'."</p> - -<p>"Spencer, please tell Letty we are at dinner."</p> - -<p>But Letty's shout gained energy.</p> - -<p>"That's one of her rites," said Charles. "Miss Partridge might as well -be initiated at once. Come along!"</p> - -<p>Catherine laughed at Marian's distressed face.</p> - -<p>"Muvver, isn't Letty <i>awful</i>! A strange lady——"</p> - -<p>Charles and Miss Partridge were back, and Marian sank into embarrassed -silence.</p> - -<p>"Isn't she an amusing baby, Mrs. Hammond!" Miss Partridge unfolded her -napkin with a lazy gesture; her smile disclosed her teeth, without -touching her large dark eyes.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p> - -<p>"She's the most stubborn one of the family," said Charles.</p> - -<p>It was difficult to play a continuous part in the conversation when -you had to leave half your mind free for food and drink, thought -Catherine, as dinner moved along under her guidance. She didn't, she -discovered, know half that Charles had been doing all summer. Miss -Partridge had assisted in the summer-school work, to begin with. Time -for salad, now. Spencer helped clear the first course away, breathing -heavily as he pondered over his movements with the plates and silver. -Catherine brought in the huge green bowl, filled with crisp, curling -leaves, and Spencer followed with the plates of cheese and crackers. -As Catherine poured the dressing over the leaves and stirred them, her -hands moving with slow grace, she picked up the threads of the talk. -Miss Partridge thought a family must be illuminating; you could watch -instincts unfold. And Charles—"I tried Spencer, to see if he had that -prehistoric monkey grip, and Catherine thought I was endangering his -life. But you're so busy keeping them fed and happy that you haven't -time to experiment."</p> - -<p>When dinner was over, Catherine stood in the living room door.</p> - -<p>"If I may be excused for a few minutes," she said.</p> - -<p>"Is it dishes, Mrs. Hammond?" Miss Partridge turned from the window, -where Charles had been pointing out the view. "I'm not a bit domestic, -but I think I could wipe them."</p> - -<p>"Oh, no, thank you." Catherine smiled. "Just the children."</p> - -<p>They were in Spencer's room, arguing in low tones<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> about which chair -Marian was to have. Catherine adjusted the reading lamp, suggested that -Spencer curl up on the end of his bed. "Now you may read for a whole -hour," she said. "Then Marian must bathe. If you will call me, I'll rub -your back for you." She started toward the door. "You will be quiet, -won't you," she asked, "since we have a guest?"</p> - -<p>"Of course, Muvver," said Marian. "Isn't she a handsome lady?"</p> - -<p>"No, she isn't," said Spencer, loudly.</p> - -<p>"Remember Letty's asleep just next door."</p> - -<p>Catherine stopped outside their closed door. They were quiet, dropping -at once into their stories. Good children. She brushed her hair from -her forehead with an impatient hand. "I feel like—like a nonentity!" -she raged. "Almost as if I were invisible. Not there to be even looked -at. Perhaps I am jealous, but it doesn't feel like that. She's not the -vamp type. Too smooth and egoistic. It's what Charles can do for her, -not Charles that she is after. O, well——"</p> - -<p>But before she had returned to the living room the bell rang. Henrietta -and Bill!</p> - -<p>Catherine held out her hands, one to each, and drew them into the hall.</p> - -<p>"You dears!" she cried. "I am glad to see you. Come in."</p> - -<p>She stepped back into visibility with their entrance. Henrietta had -met Miss Partridge at Bellevue one day. William bowed with his usual -courtly silence.</p> - -<p>"Did you like Miss Kelly?" demanded Henrietta, as she settled into the -wing chair before Miss Partridge had it again. "She came in, didn't -she?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p> - -<p>"She's coming Monday."</p> - -<p>"Is Monday the great day?" Bill was looking at her, and Catherine -smiled swiftly at the warm, quiet friendliness of his eyes.</p> - -<p>"Monday!" she declared. "I telephoned Dr. Roberts this morning."</p> - -<p>"Isn't it fine, Miss Partridge"—Henrietta turned briskly to her—"this -move of Mrs. Hammond's."</p> - -<p>"I haven't heard about it." Miss Partridge's dark, smooth brows lifted.</p> - -<p>Did Charles look uneasy, almost guilty, as he stretched out in his -armchair and fumbled in the box of cigars?</p> - -<p>"You haven't?" Henrietta grinned slyly at Catherine. "Haven't you heard -that Mrs. Hammond is renouncing the quiet, domestic life for a real -job?"</p> - -<p>"Why not say exchanging jobs?" Charles was intent on the end of his -cigar.</p> - -<p>"Or annexing a second job?" That was Bill's quiet voice.</p> - -<p>"I am going to work at the Lynch Bureau," explained Catherine, "as -investigator." She felt a flash of delight in the astonishment which -rippled briefly over Miss Partridge's smooth face. Knocked down her -first impression, she thought maliciously.</p> - -<p>"Really? How interesting!" Miss Partridge smiled. "But what will your -sweet children do?"</p> - -<p>"They'll go to school and have an efficient nurse," said Henrietta -abruptly, "and they'll be vastly better off when they aren't having -the sole attention of an intelligent woman like their mother. And -that's that!" She dangled her glasses over her forefinger. "Did you -decide that girl was malingering, Miss Partridge? She certainly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> had no -physical symptoms. Just a case we ran into the other day," she added, -to Catherine.</p> - -<p>Charles, in answer to a query from Bill, had started a long and eager -explanation of an industrial test he had been working up.</p> - -<p>Catherine noticed that even as Miss Partridge answered Henrietta's -question, her eyes had turned to Charles and Bill. "Is your husband a -doctor, too?" she finished.</p> - -<p>"Heavens, no! Bill couldn't be anything so personal as a doctor." -Henrietta laughed. "Could he, Catherine? He's an engineer."</p> - -<p>And presently, maneuvering cleverly, Miss Partridge was talking -industrial tests with Charles, while Bill, puffing on his old pipe, let -his half-shut eyes rest on her face, and then move across to Catherine. -Was he smiling?</p> - -<p>Marian's call came just then, and Catherine rose.</p> - -<p>"May I come along, Catherine? I haven't seen the kids since that night -in Maine." Henrietta stopped at Spencer's door, and as Catherine draped -Marian's slim body in the huge bath towel, she heard Spencer's eager -voice and Dr. Henrietta's bluff tone. Marian, her face rosy and her -dark hair rumpled, threw herself into Henrietta's arms. "Hello, my -Doctor!" she cried.</p> - -<p>They had a moment in the hall, when Henrietta looked firmly into -Catherine's eyes.</p> - -<p>"You stop your worrying," she said. "You won't swing your job unless -you are clear of doubts. Brace up!" Her hand clasped Catherine's. "If I -can help you any way, be sure you let me know."</p> - -<p>"Oh, you are a brick!" Catherine's fingers were convulsive. "I do need -you!"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p> - -<p>The three in the living room looked up at their entrance.</p> - -<p>"Spencer sent you his regards, Bill. He wished me to tell you that he -thought the cows recovered from the alarm your car caused them."</p> - -<p>Bill removed his pipe, a slow smile on his gaunt face.</p> - -<p>"What cows?" demanded Charles.</p> - -<p>"Ghost cows, Charles. Not in your lexicon. But we felt them in that old -barn, behind those stanchions."</p> - -<p>When they had gone, Charles followed Catherine into the dining room, -gathered a handful of coffee cups, and walked after her into the -disorderly kitchen.</p> - -<p>"What'd you think of her?" he asked, casually.</p> - -<p>"Her being the cat?" Catherine grinned at him. She was at ease again, -confident, the sense of nonentity gone.</p> - -<p>"Oh, Stella Partridge, of course. Fine person, isn't she! No nonsense -about her. Mind like a man's."</p> - -<p>"Is it?" Catherine stacked the dishes in the sink.</p> - -<p>"Has the qualities which are conventionally labeled masculine. Like -that better?"</p> - -<p>The clatter of the garbage pail cover served for Catherine's answer.</p> - -<p>"Bill's a queer duck, now, isn't he?" Charles lolled against the table, -his long body making a hazardous oblique angle. "Never can make up my -mind whether it's shyness or laziness."</p> - -<p>"I don't think it's either of those things, if you mean his lack of -loquaciousness."</p> - -<p>"Loquaciousness!" Charles threw back his head in a laugh. "That's some -word to use about Bill!"</p> - -<p>"I suppose I might as well wash these confounded dishes to-night." -Catherine turned the faucet and the water splashed into the sink.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Where's your dusky maiden?"</p> - -<p>"To-morrow's Sunday."</p> - -<p>"Oh, say, it's too bad I brought a guest in to-night, eh?" Charles -waited comfortably for her assurance that it wasn't too bad.</p> - -<p>"We'd hate the mess in the morning," was Catherine's dry retort.</p> - -<p>Charles was in extraordinary humor, the purring kind, thought -Catherine, as her hands moved deftly among the dishes. And I'm not. I -feel as if I should like to yell! She bent more swiftly to her task. -Charles straightened his long angle and reached for a dish towel. -He needn't be magnanimous about wiping dishes! As he rubbed the -towel round and round a plate, he began to sing. Somewhere—rub—the -sun—rub—is shi-i-ining—rub! And Catherine had, suddenly, a flash of -a picture, smarting in her throat. The shabby little flat where they -had first lived, before Spencer was born; Charles wiping the dishes, -singing, and Catherine singing with him, ridiculous old hymns and -sentimental tunes. And always after the occasional guests had gone, the -"gossip party," as they labeled it, speculation, analysis, discussion -of the people who had gone, friendly, shrewd, amusing, ending when the -dish towel was flapped out and the dish-pan stowed under the sink with -the ritualistic but none the less thrilling, "There's no one can touch -my girl for looks or charm or brains!" and Catherine's, "I'm sorry for -everyone else—because they can't have you!"</p> - -<p>Charles was echoing that old custom. But he didn't realize it. And -Catherine thought, with a stabbing bitterness, "He has this feeling of -comfort, not because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> we are here together, but because the evening has -pleased him."</p> - -<p>"What do you think is Bill's secret, then?" Charles broke out.</p> - -<p>"He's thinking of something else, not of that; he's keeping me off his -real center," hurried Catherine's thoughts. "I won't be horrid and -cross."</p> - -<p>"Isn't it lack of conceit?" She reached for the heavy frying pan. "Most -of us have to talk to assert ourselves, to make folks listen to us. -Bill hasn't any ego——"</p> - -<p>"Oh, he's got one, all right." Charles balanced the pile of dishes -precariously near the edge of the table. "Looks more conceited just to -sit around with that cryptic expression——"</p> - -<p>"I don't think so!" Catherine scrubbed vigorously at the sink. "He -never looks critical."</p> - -<p>"Couldn't get a harsh word out of you about Bill, could I?" Charles -jested a little heavily. "He's always been that way, ever since he was -a kid."</p> - -<p>"Now when Miss Partridge"—Catherine resisted the impulse to say "your -Miss Partridge"—"when she is silent, she looks too superior for words."</p> - -<p>"Nonsense! I felt you were misjudging her. Now, she's awake, ready to -talk——"</p> - -<p>"About herself."</p> - -<p>"Meow!" Charles grinned. "Though we did talk a good deal about the -work. But, of course, that's only natural."</p> - -<p>"She didn't even see me until Henrietta pointed at me and yanked me out -of the pigeon-hole where she had me stuck."</p> - -<p>"I hope you aren't going to dislike her, Catherine."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> Charles was -serious. "Since I have to see her in connection with the clinic, it -might be awkward——"</p> - -<p>"Thank the Lord, those are done!" Catherine turned from the sink. -"Don't worry, old thing," she said, lightly. "I don't hate her. We -never have insisted on love me, love all my dogs, you know."</p> - -<p>"I thought you'd appreciate her." Charles was sulky.</p> - -<p>"She's extremely handsome."</p> - -<p>"She's as warm hearted as she is brilliant, too."</p> - -<p>"Like a frog, she is!" thought Catherine. But she reached for the -button and snapped out the light.</p> - -<p>"I'll hurry with my shower," she said, preceding him up the hall. "Then -you can have the tub. It's late."</p> - -<p>The bathroom was littered with the children's discarded clothes. Little -sluts! thought Catherine, gathering socks and shirts and bloomers. My -fault, I suppose. I can't make 'em neat! Like a nice warm tub myself, -she growled, but Charles is waiting. Someone's always waiting.</p> - -<p>She sat in the dark by the window in their room, while Charles splashed -and hummed. Yellow cracks edged a few of the windows of the opposite -wall, not many, as it was so late. Above the rim of the building she -could see one great blue-white star with a zigzag of pale stars after -it. Vega, she thought. Smiting its—what is it? Wonder if you could see -stars at noon from the bottom of this court? It's like a well. She drew -her dressing gown close over her throat. It feels nasturtium colored, -even in the dark, she thought, running her fingers over the heavy silk. -Her one extravagance last spring, lovely flame-orange thing. Why, she -hadn't braided her hair.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> Her fingers were tired. They moved idly -through the heavy softness.</p> - -<p>Her elbows on the window sill, she stared up at the star. Monday, she -thought. Monday I shall have something else to think about. Just as -Charles does. This dreadful mulling over words and looks, hanging on -the wave of an eyelash. That's what women do, poor fools, trying to -keep all the first glamor. Love. She heard the water gulping out of the -tub. Love needs to be back of your days, <i>there</i>, but not the thing -you feed on every second. Terrible indigestion, eating your heart out -forever. Ugh, the sill was gritty with dust. She rubbed her elbows -resentfully. That song Charles had hummed in the kitchen had sent her -back through the years. She hadn't wanted anything else in those days. -Passion, its strange, erratic light making everything else seem tinsel. -Tenderness, making all else in life seem cold. And quarrels—the still, -white silence, swift product of some unexpected moment, so that you -felt yourself imprisoned in an iceberg, from which you never could -escape—that was part of the struggle of admitting another person, your -lover, into yourself. And child-bearing. Peculiar, ecstatic, difficult; -commonplace physical preoccupation for long stretches of your life. -Catherine shrugged. Perhaps, if you weren't husky—she twisted from her -cramped position—perhaps some women never got over childbirth. It did -eat you up. Her mother would say she was thinking too much. She rose, -stretching her arms above her head, the silk slipping away from them. -Then, as she heard Charles scuffling along the hall—he did need some -new slippers—suddenly her heart opened and poured a golden flood over -her being. Why, now,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> this instant, she loved him, and all the earlier -passion was a thin tinkle against this sound—sunlight in the wide -branches of a tree, and cold earth deep about the roots, and liquid sap -flowing.</p> - -<p>Her fingers closed about the crisp curtain edge as Charles pushed open -the door.</p> - -<p>"You in bed?" His whisper was cautious. "Oh, no." He snapped on the -light, while Catherine gazed at him, waiting. His pink pajama coat -flopped open.</p> - -<p>"There isn't a damned button on the thing. Got a pin?" He shuffled -across to the dressing table. "My wife's been to the country."</p> - -<p>"Poor boy." Catherine rushed to the sewing table in the corner. "I'll -sew 'em on if your wife won't." Ridiculous, enchanting. She pulled -him down beside her on the bed, seized the coat, burying her knuckles -against the hard warmth of his chest. "Don't wriggle, or you'll have it -sewed to your diaphragm."</p> - -<p>Charles was silent. Catherine's wrist flexed slowly with the drawing of -the thread. It's like weaving a spell, she thought, with secret passes -of my hand, to melt that hard resentment he won't admit. She broke the -thread and glanced up. Charles, with a quick motion, laid his cheek -against the sweet darkness of her hair.</p> - -<p>"First time you've so much as seen me since you came back," he said.</p> - -<p>"Too bad about you!" Catherine jeered softly.</p> - - -<p class="center">XI</p> - -<p>"It's the Thomases on the 'phone." Charles came out of the study. "They -want us to come out this afternoon to see their house."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Out where?" Catherine looked up from her book, while Spencer and -Marian fidgeted for the reading to continue.</p> - -<p>"Croton. They've moved, you know. Bought a farm."</p> - -<p>"Walter Thomas?" asked Spencer. "Has he got a farm?"</p> - -<p>"Thomas says there are trains every hour, and we can stay for -Sunday-night supper."</p> - -<p>"But the children——"</p> - -<p>"I thought your mother was coming in."</p> - -<p>"She may not wish to stay late."</p> - -<p>"Well, you'll have to decide. Thomas is waiting. It would be rather -nice to get out of town for a few hours."</p> - -<p>Catherine's brows drew together.</p> - -<p>"We're all right," said Marian. "Go on away!"</p> - -<p>"Yes, you are." Catherine sighed briefly. Charles had his air of "Are -you going to deprive me of a pleasant hour?"</p> - -<p>"You wouldn't go without me?" she asked. "Tell Mr. Thomas that if -mother wishes to stay, we'll come. We can telephone him."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Spencer said she would like nothing better than a chance at the -children without their interfering parents, and in the late afternoon -Catherine and Charles set forth. The cross-town car was jammed; -Catherine, from an uncomfortable seat just under the conductor's fare -box, watched the people about her with remote eyes. She hated these -humid, odorous jams. She always crawled off into a dark corner of -herself, away from the jostling and pushing of her body. Heavy, dull -faces—she lifted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> her head until her eyes could rest on the firm -solidity of Charles's shoulder and head. Nothing professorial about -that erect head, the edge of carefully shaved neck between collar -and clipped fair hair that showed under the soft gray hat. But even -the back of his head looked intelligent, alive. He turned suddenly, -and over the crowd their eyes met in a mysteriously moving flare -of acknowledgment. He grinned at her—he knew her hatred of such -crowds; and turned away again. Catherine shivered a little. That was -what she wanted to keep, that awareness of each other, that intimate -self-recognition. She couldn't keep it if she was worn down into -dullness and drabness and stupidity. She had, she knew, stirred Charles -out of his easy acceptance of her as an established custom, and for the -day, at least, she had submerged his resentment. As the car stopped -under the tracks she was thinking, if I can win him over to believe in -what I am, what I want, inwardly, in his feeling, not in words,—then I -can do anything!</p> - -<p>They sat together on the train and talked. Charles had spent one Sunday -during the summer with the Thomases; they had a tennis court and -chickens. Thomas had been promoted to Assistant Professor, but he kept -his extension classes still, as the oldest boy was entering college -this fall.</p> - -<p>"He was crazy about some old French verse forms that day. Couldn't talk -about anything else. Mrs. Thomas wanted to talk about the refinishing -of the walls."</p> - -<p>"I'll wager she did. Verse forms interest her only as a means to the -salary end."</p> - -<p>"But she's a fine type of woman, don't you think?"</p> - -<p>Catherine shrugged.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p> - -<p>"She's about as intellectual as a—a jellyfish. She's not a jellyfish, -though."</p> - -<p>"Thomas gets enough enjoyment from his own mind."</p> - -<p>They walked from the station through the crowded, dingy houses near -the river, climbed a long hill, and at the top found the country, soft -and lovely in the hazy September sunlight. As they climbed, the river -dropped beneath them, opal-blue and calm, the hollows of the wooded -Westchester hills gathered purple shadows, and on the slopes toward -which they climbed a branch of maple flamed at times like a shrill, -sweet note in the mellow silence.</p> - -<p>"It must be good for their children, living out here." Charles sniffed -at the air. "Smell that wood smoke! Bonfires, and nuts——"</p> - -<p>"How'd you like to climb that hill every night?"</p> - -<p>"Thomas has a flivver. There, you can see the house through those -poplars."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The Thomases were on the porch, rising to meet them with a flurry of -innumerable children and dogs and cats. Mrs. Thomas, small, pink, -worried, with curly gray hair and a high voice; Mr. Thomas, of -indifferent stature, with an astonishingly large head, smooth dark -hair, nearsighted eyes behind heavy glasses, and a large, gentle mouth; -the children—there were only five, after all, from Theodore, the -eldest, who was curly and pink like Mrs. Thomas, down to Dorothy, the -youngest, who already wore glasses as thick as her father's.</p> - -<p>"I wanted Theodore to drive down for you, but you said you wanted to -walk." Mrs. Thomas jerked the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> chairs into companionable nearness. -"Quite a climb up our hill."</p> - -<p>"Mrs. Thomas can't imagine any one liking to walk," said her husband.</p> - -<p>"Not a mother and wife, at least. Men don't know what being on their -feet means, do they, Mrs. Hammond?"</p> - -<p>Inquiries about the children, mutually. Admiration expressed for the -view, for the house, room by room, for the poultry run which Theodore -had constructed, for the tennis court, for the asparagus bed.</p> - -<p>"Now that the Cook's Tour is ended, what about something to eat, -Mother?"</p> - -<p>The dining room was small, and warm from the sunning of the afternoon; -the Thomas children chattered in high voices; Catherine sighed in -secret as she looked at the elaborate salad, the laborious tiny -sandwiches, the whipped-cream dessert in the fragile stemmed sherbet -glasses, the frosted cake. But Mrs. Thomas, the lines in her pink -cheeks a trifle more distinct, hovered in anxious delight over each -step in the progress of this evidence of her skill and labor.</p> - -<p>"No, Dorothy, no cake. She has to be very careful of sweets, they upset -her so easily. Do your children hanker for everything they shouldn't -have?"</p> - -<p>Theodore broke in with an account of the psychological tests he had -taken for college entrance; there was a suggestion of pimples on his -round, pink chin. Walter wanted to know when Spencer could come out; -Walter was Spencer's age, a chubby, choleric boy who kept rabbits and -sold them to the neighbors for stews. Clara, just older, had reached an -age of gloomy suspicion; her hair,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> which her mother was allowing to -grow, now that Clara was older, fell about her thin shoulders in lank -concavity. Catherine wondered whether the contention between Marian and -Spencer sounded to outsiders like the bickering which ran so strongly -here. Dorothy was a year older than Letty, but she did not talk so -plainly. And that other boy, Percy—why name him that!—was being sent -away from the table because he had pinched Clara.</p> - -<p>Inevitably the talk stayed on the level of the children, in spite of -attempted detours on the part of Charles. Mr. Thomas ate with an absent -myopic eye on Dorothy and the next older boy.</p> - -<p>But when at length they left the dining room, he was saying to Charles, -"You recall those songs I spoke of? Thirteenth century? I've found -a girl who does beautiful translations. A graduate student. She has -an astonishing sense for the form." He had come alive, suddenly, the -blank, gentle mask of his face breaking into sharp, vivid animation. -Catherine watched him, peering at his wife, glancing back at him. She -didn't care about the old verse forms, neither did his wife; but his -wife didn't care that he could come alive like that, apart from her. -Perhaps when they are alone, thought Catherine, he has some feeling for -her that compares with this—but I doubt it!</p> - -<p>"He's as keen about those musty old papers as if they were worth huge -sums." Mrs. Thomas laid her hand on Catherine's arm, as they stood on -the edge of the porch, looking far down the valley. Mrs. Thomas had a -way of offering nervous little caresses. "Men are queer, aren't they?" -Her forehead puckered.</p> - -<p>Catherine endured the hand, light, with an insinuating<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> effect of a -bond between them, the bond of their sex. We women understand, those -fingers tapped softly.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Later, half defiantly, in answer to a suggestion of Mrs. Thomas that -Catherine take her place on the faculty women's committee for teas, -Catherine explained that she would be much too busy. She saw in the -quick pursing of Mrs. Thomas's little mouth the contraction of her -eyelids, the rapid twists her announcement made as it entered Mrs. -Thomas's mind. Disapproval, hearty and determined; a small fear, -quickly over, lest some discredit reflect on her position; a chilly -covering of those emotions with her words, "Why, Mrs. Hammond, you've -seemed so devoted to your children!"</p> - -<p>"Naturally." Catherine was curt. "I am. But they needn't suffer, any -more than they did before while Charles was in France and I worked. I -can't see any loss to them."</p> - -<p>"I hope you won't regret it." Mrs. Thomas drew her own brood into a -symbolic shelter, as she flung her arm around Dorothy, who was at her -knee with a picture book, clamoring unintelligibly to be read to.</p> - -<p>"Fine for you, Hammond. A family needs several wage earners, in these -postwar days."</p> - -<p>Charles laughed, but Catherine saw the flicker of uneasiness in his -face.</p> - -<p>"But I'd hate to have to find a cook to supplant Mrs. Thomas."</p> - -<p>"Ah, but you see, I can't cook that way." Catherine's lightness covered -the glance she sped at Charles. She hadn't, then, touched his real -feeling about this. Just a scratch, and she could see it.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I don't know what's to become of us poor men"—he rose lazily—"unless -we turn into housewives."</p> - -<p>"You better take a turn at it, just to see what it's like." That was -Mrs. Thomas, vigorously exalting her ability.</p> - -<p>"It was called husbandry once, wasn't it?" Mr. Thomas smiled in -enjoyment of his joke. "Must you go? It's very early. Let us drive you -down."</p> - -<p>"The walk will be just what we need——"</p> - -<p>The evening was soft and black, with faint rustle in the autumn-crisped -leaves of the trees that massed against the blue-black sky. Below them -the river gleamed silver-dark. They went in silence down the hill, the -gravel slipping under their heels. Then Catherine felt Charles groping -for her hand, the warm pressure of his fingers.</p> - -<p>"Rummy bunch of kids," he said. And then, "That woman can cook, but -that's about all. She can't impart gentle manners." Catherine relaxed -in content. He wasn't huffy. "Too bad you have to tell people like that -what you're going to do. Let 'em see after you've succeeded, I say!"</p> - -<p>"Oh!" Catherine's voice was sharp with delight. "You think I will!"</p> - -<p>"Lord, yes. Of course. You've got the stuff."</p> - -<p>Their clasped hands swinging like children's, they came to the foot of -the hill.</p> - - - - - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p> -<h2><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II</h2> - -<p class="center">BOTH ENDS OF THE CANDLE</p> - - -<p class="center">I</p> - -<p>Catherine clicked the telephone into place on her desk and sat for a -moment with her hands folded on the piles of paper before her. Her -cheeks felt uncomfortably warm. Ridiculous, that Dr. Roberts should -have come to the door just as she told Charles where to find the shirts -he wanted! He might have found them if he had tried. She wondered -whether her voice had conveyed her embarrassment; Charles had said -good-by abruptly. He was sorry not to see her, but he had to catch the -one o'clock for Washington. No, he couldn't stop for luncheon with her. -He might be back Sunday night. She had a vivid picture of him, plowing -through drawers and closets in frantic search for things right under -his nose.</p> - -<p>Her hand reached for the telephone. She would call him for a moment, -just for a good-by not so hasty. But Dr. Roberts, in the doorway, -clearing his throat, said, "Can you let me have those tables now, Mrs. -Hammond?" He pulled a chair to the opposite side of the desk and sat -down. Charles and the messy packing of his handbag disappeared from -Catherine's thoughts. She spread several sheets of figures between -them, the flustered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> shadow in her eyes gone, and hard clarity in its -place. Dr. Roberts, head of the educational section of the Lynch Bureau -of Social Welfare, was a dapper little man with a pointed beard, whose -fussy, henlike manner obscured the intelligent orderliness of his mind.</p> - -<p>"The state laws of requirements for teachers." Catherine pointed to one -table. "County requirements, country schools. I made a separate table -for each. Now I'll work out a comparative table."</p> - -<p>"Excellent. Clear, graphic. May I take those?" He rose. "If you aren't -working with them now?"</p> - -<p>"No. I'm going through these catalogues now." The dusty pile was at -her elbow. "If I may have those sheets this afternoon, I'll try some -graphs."</p> - -<p>When he had gone, Catherine's eyes rested briefly on the telephone. -Oh, well, Charles wouldn't want the interruption anyway. He would be -home again on Sunday. She opened the catalogue on top of the pile and -glanced through its pages, making swift notes on the pad under her hand.</p> - -<p>Finally she leaned back in her chair, twisting her wrist for a glimpse -of her watch. Whew! Half past twelve, and she was to meet her sister -Margaret for luncheon. She stood a moment at the window. Beyond the -neighboring buildings the spires of the Cathedral splintered the -sunlight; a flock of pigeons whirled into view, their wings flashing -in the light, then darkening as they swirled and vanished—like the -cadence of a verse, thought Catherine. Far beneath her lay an angle -of the Avenue, with patches of shining automobile tops crawling in -opposing streams.</p> - -<p>She gave a great sigh as she turned back to the office.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> A long, narrow -room, scarcely wider than the window, lined with shelves ceiling-high, -between them the flat desk piled with her work. Her work! Almost a week -of it, now, and already she had won back her old ability to draw that -thin, sliding wall of steel across her personal life, to hold herself -contained within this room and its contents.</p> - -<p>She hadn't seen Margaret since her return from Maine. She was to meet -her at the St. Francis Luncheon Club for Working Women. As she stepped -into the sunlight of the street, the slow flowing of the emulsion of -which she was suddenly another particle, she had a sharp flash of -unreality. Was it she, walking there in her old blue suit, her rubber -heels padding with the other sounds, her eyes refocusing on distance -and color after the long morning? She loved the long, narrow channel -of the Avenue, hard, kaleidoscopic; the white clouds above the line of -buildings, the background of vivid window displays. She laughed softly -as she recalled the early days of the week. Rainy, to begin with. -She had thought, despairingly, that she couldn't swing the job. The -children stood between her and the sheets of paper. She had flown out -at noon to telephone Miss Kelly, to demand assurance that life in the -apartment hadn't gone awry in the four hours since she had left. Queer. -You seized your own bootstraps and lugged, apparently in vain, to lift -yourself from your habits of life, of thought, of constant concern, -and then, suddenly, you had done it, just when you most despaired. -She walked with a graceful, long stride, her head high. An excellent -scheme, Dr. Roberts had said. He had really entrusted her with the -entire plan for this investigation. And she could do it!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p> - -<p>Margaret was waiting at the elevator entrance, a vivid figure in the -milling groups of befurbished stenographers and shoddier older women. -She came toward Catherine, and their hands clung for a moment. How -young she is, and invincible, thought Catherine, as they waited for -the elevator to empty its load. Margaret had Catherine's slimness -and erect height; her bright hair curled under the brim of her soft -green hat; there was something inimitably swagger about the lines of -her sage-green wool dress and loose coat, with flashes of orange in -embroidery and lining. In place of the sensitive poise of Catherine's -eyes and mouth, Margaret had a downright steadiness, an untroubled -intensity.</p> - -<p>"How's it feel to be a wage-earner?" She hugged Catherine's arm as they -backed out of the pushing crowd into a corner of the car. "You look -elegant!"</p> - -<p>"Scarcely that." Catherine smiled at her. "Now you do! Did you design -that color scheme?"</p> - -<p>"I matched my best points, eyes and high lights of hair." Margaret -grinned. Her eyes were green in the shadow. "Ever lunched here? I -thought you might find it convenient. Lots of my girls come here."</p> - -<p>They emerged at the entrance of a large room full of the clatter of -dishes and tongues.</p> - -<p>"I'll take you in on my card to-day. If you like it, you can get one." -Margaret ushered Catherine into the tail of the line which filed slowly -ahead of them. "This is one of the gracious ladies—" Margaret shot -the half whisper over her shoulder, as she extended her green card. -"A guest, please." Catherine looked curiously at the woman behind the -small table; her nod in response to the professionally sweet smile was -curt.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p> - -<p>"The patronesses take turns presiding," explained Margaret, as she -manipulated trays and silver. "That's the sweetest and worst. Notice -her dimonts!"</p> - -<p>They found a table under a rear window, where they could unload -their dishes of soup and salad around the glass vase with its dusty -crêpe-paper rose.</p> - -<p>"It's really good food," said Margaret, shooting the trays across the -table toward the maid. "And reasonable. It's not charity, though, and -the dames that run it needn't act so loving."</p> - -<p>Two girls saw the vacant chairs at the table, and rushed for them. -One slipped her tweed coat back from shoulders amazingly conspicuous -in a beaded pink georgette blouse; the other opened her handbag for a -preliminary devotional exercise on her complexion.</p> - -<p>Margaret hitched her chair closer to Catherine.</p> - -<p>"Now tell me all about it." She tore the oiled paper from the package -of crackers; her hand had the likeness to Catherine's, and the -difference, which her face suggested. Fingers deft and agile, but -shorter, firmer, competent rather than graceful. "Mother says you've -hired a wet-nurse and abandoned your family. I didn't think you had it -in you!"</p> - -<p>"I know. You thought I was old and shelved."</p> - -<p>"Just a tinge of mid-Victorian habit, old dear."</p> - -<p>"You young things need to open your eyes."</p> - -<p>"I have opened 'em. See me stare!"</p> - -<p>Were those girls listening? The georgette one was eying Margaret. -The other, her retouching finished, snapped her handbag shut and -began a story about the movies last night. Catherine was hungry; good -soup—<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>why, it was fun to gather an unplanned luncheon on a tray in -this way.</p> - -<p>"Your old job?" proceeded Margaret.</p> - -<p>"A new study—teaching conditions in some middle-western states. I am -to organize the work."</p> - -<p>Margaret's questions were direct, inclusive. She did have a clear mind. -Her business training has rubbed off all the blurry sentiment she used -to have, thought Catherine.</p> - -<p>"And you can manage the family as well?"</p> - -<p>"This woman Henrietta sent me is fine. It's a rush in the morning, -baths and breakfast. Flora can't come in until eight, and I have to get -away by half past eight. No dawdling."</p> - -<p>"And the King doesn't mind?"</p> - -<p>Catherine flushed. Margaret had dubbed Charles the King years ago, but -the nickname had an irritating flavor. "He's almost enthusiastic this -week," she said. "Now tell me about yourself. What's this about your -leaving Mother?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, I thought she might like to stay with George. Instead of that, -she's turned me out, neck and crop, and taken on a lady friend. I'm -house-hunting." Margaret laughed. "Trust Mother! You can't dispose of -her."</p> - -<p>"But I thought you were so comfortable——"</p> - -<p>"Too soft. You don't know—" Margaret was serious. "I can't be babied -all my life. All sorts of infantile traits sticking to me. You got -away."</p> - -<p>"Mother said you'd been reading a foreigner named Freud."</p> - -<p>"Well!" Margaret was vigorously defensive. "What of it?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p> - -<p>Catherine dug her fork into the triangle of cake.</p> - -<p>"I thought Freud was going out. Glands are the latest."</p> - -<p>"I bet Charles said that." Margaret grinned impishly as she saw her -thrust strike home. "Well, tell him I'm still on Freud. Anyway, I want -to try this. Amy and I want to live together. When you wanted to live -with Charles, you went and did it, didn't you?"</p> - -<p>"I'm not criticizing you, Marge. Go ahead! Don't bristle so, or I'll -suspect you feel guilty."</p> - -<p>"I do." Margaret had a funny little smile which recognized herself as -ludicrous. "That's just the vestige of my conflict."</p> - -<p>"There's another influx"—Catherine looked at the moving line—"we'd -better give up these seats."</p> - -<p>"There are chairs yonder." They wound between the tables to the other -end of the room, where wicker chairs and chaise longues, screens, -tables, and a mirror suggested the good intentions of the patronesses -of the St. Francis Club.</p> - -<p>"You can lie down behind the screen if you're dead, or read"—Margaret -flipped a magazine—"read old copies of respectable periodicals. Here." -She motioned to a chaise longue. "Stretch out. I'll sit at your feet. I -have a few seconds left."</p> - -<p>"How's the job?"</p> - -<p>"All right. I spent the morning hunting for a girl. She's been rousing -my suspicions for a time. Going to have an infant soon. That's the -third case in two months." Margaret clasped her hands about her knees; -her short skirt slipped up to the roll of her gray silk stocking. "But -I've got a woman who'll take her in.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> She can do housework for a month -or so before she'll have to go to the lying-in home."</p> - -<p>Catherine watched her curiously. There was something amazing about the -calm, matter-of-fact attitude Margaret held.</p> - -<p>"Do you hunt for the father?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, the girl won't tell. Maybe she doesn't know."</p> - -<p>"If I had your job, I'd waste away from anger and rage and hopelessness -about the world."</p> - -<p>"No use." Margaret shrugged. "Wish I could smoke here. Too pious. -No." She turned her face toward her sister, her eyes and mouth -dispassionate. "Patch up what can be patched, and scrap the rest. I'm -sick of feelings."</p> - -<p>Catherine was silent. Margaret, as the only woman in a responsible -position in a chain of small manufacturing plants, occasionally dropped -threads which suggested fabrics too dreadful to unravel.</p> - -<p>"Time's up." Margaret rose. "Directors' meeting this afternoon, and I -want to bully that bunch of stiff-necked males into accepting a few -of the suggestions I've made. I have a fine scheme." She laughed. "I -make a list pages long, full of things, well, not exactly preposterous. -Women would see them all. But they sound preposterous. And buried -somewhere I have the one thing I'm hammering on just then. Sometimes I -get it, out of their dismay at the length of the list."</p> - -<p>"Here, I may as well go along." Catherine slid out of the chair.</p> - -<p>"Will you be home Sunday?" Margaret stopped at the corner. Catherine -had a fresh impression of her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> invincible quality, there in the -sunlight with the passing crowds.</p> - -<p>"Charles is in Washington. Come in and see the children."</p> - -<p>"The King's away, eh?" Margaret waved her hand in farewell. "I'll drop -in."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>At five Catherine was again on the Avenue, walking steadily north, an -eye on the occasional buses. If she could get a seat! As the traffic -halted, she saw a hint of movement at the rear of a bus ahead of her. -Someone was just getting out. She rushed for it, and clambered to the -top just as the jam moved stickily ahead. Just one seat, at the front. -This was luck. She relaxed, lazily conscious only of small details -her eyes seized upon. When the bus finally swung onto the Drive, she -straightened, drawing a deep breath of the fresh wind across the -river. A taste of salt in it. She liked the sweep and curving dips of -the Drive; the ride gave her a breathing space, a chance to shut off -the hours behind her and to take on the aspect of the other life that -awaited her. I'll patch up that old fur coat, she thought, and ride -all winter. Perhaps I may even afford a new one. Twenty-five a week -for Miss Kelly. Another five for my luncheons and bus rides. If Flora -will do the marketing, I'll have to pay her more. I ought to help -with the food bills, if we feed Miss Kelly, and pay for the clothes -I buy for the children, since I would otherwise be making them. Oh! -This domestic mental arithmetic sandpapered away the shine of the two -hundred and fifty a month which was her salary. But Charles couldn't -have addi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>tional expenses this year. It wasn't fair, when he had just -reached a point at which they found a tiny margin for insurance and -saving. Catherine rubbed her hand across her forehead; foolish to do -this reckoning in her head; it always left her with that sense of -hopeless friction, like fitting a dress pattern on too small a piece -of cloth—turning, twisting, trying. Charles had said, "Well, you know -<i>my</i> income. We can't manage any more outgo there. Not this year." And -at that, she didn't see where she was going to get the first three -twenty-five dollars for Miss Kelly. Next month, after she had her own -first check—but now! She'd saved the first twenty-five on her own fall -clothes. If Charles hadn't had that heavy insurance premium this month, -she might have borrowed. It would be fine, some day, to reach a place -where their budget was large enough to turn around in without this fear -of falling over the edges. Dr. Roberts had said, "Three thousand is the -best we can do for you now, but later——"</p> - - -<p class="center">II</p> - -<p>Sunday was a curious day. Miss Kelly, who was to have alternate Sundays -off, had this one on, and had taken the children out. Catherine caught -a lingering, backward glance from Spencer as they all went down the -hall, a silent, wondering stare. He had said nothing about Miss Kelly, -nothing about the new order of things; Catherine felt that he held a -sort of baffled judgment in reserve. Letty, as always, was cheerfully -intent on her own small schemes. Marian had confided last night that -Miss Kelly was nice, but her stories sounded all the same, not like -Muvver's. Next Sunday, thought Catherine, I'll<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> have them. It's absurd -to feel pleased that Spencer doesn't adjust himself at once. I want him -happy.</p> - -<p>She sat at the breakfast table, too listless to bestir herself about -the endless things that waited for her. The morning sun was sharp and -hard on the stretch of city beneath the window, picking out slate roofs -and chimneys. Alone in the empty apartment, its silence enclosed and -emphasized by the constant sounds outside—the click of the elevator, -the staccato of voices in the well of the court, the rumble of a car -climbing the Amsterdam hill—Catherine relaxed into complete lethargy, -her hands idle in her lap.</p> - -<p>The week had been drawn too taut. Surely coming weeks would be less -difficult, once she had herself and the rest of the family broken into -the new harness. She wished that Charles were sitting across from her, -the Sunday paper littering the floor about his feet. She would say, -"One week is over." And he—what would he say? "How do you like it, old -dear?" And she, "You know, I think I am making a go of it." Then if he -said, "Of course! I knew you would," then she could hug his shoulder -in passing, and go quite peacefully about the tasks that waited. She -sighed. If I have to be bolstered at every step, I might as well stop, -she thought.</p> - -<p>She would like to sit still all day, not even thinking. Instead, she -pulled herself to her feet and cleared the breakfast dishes away -methodically. Then she opened the bundles of laundry, sorted the -clothes and laid them away, found fresh linen for the beds, laid aside -one sheet with a jagged tear to be mended later, investigated Flora's -preparations for dinner, and, finally, with a basket of mending, -sat down at the living room window. Perhaps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> Flora could see to the -laundry, although Catherine always had done that; she must plan, in -some way, to have Sunday reasonably free. Miss Kelly had offered to -take care of the children's mending; but—Catherine's fingers pushed -out at the heel of the black sock—Charles had to be sewn up!</p> - -<p>How still and empty the house lay about her! Perhaps Charles was even -then on his way home—she had a swift picture of him at the window of -the train, hurling toward her.</p> - -<p>Ridiculous to feel so tired. She stretched her arms above her head, and -then reached for the darning ball. Henrietta had said, "Don't weaken. -You'll find the first stages of adjustment the most difficult." True, -all right. The texture of her days rose before her, a series of sharp -images. Morning, an incredible packing of the two hours: breakfast, -the three children to bathe and help dress, Miss Kelly arriving like -clockwork to supervise the final departure for school, Catherine's -hasty glimpse at her face, flushed under the brim of her hat, before -she hurried out for the elevator. Then the bus ride; herself a highly -conscious part of the downward flood of workers, the fluster of the -morning dropping away before the steady rise of that inner self, -calm, clear, deliberate. The office—deference in the manner of the -stenographers—she was the only woman there with her own office, with -a man-size job. Occasional prickings of her other life through that -life—eggs she had forgotten to order. The ride home again, the warm -cheeks and soft hands of the children, and their voices, eager to tell -her a thousand things at once. Dinner, and Charles. What about Charles? -Her fingers paused over the crossing threads<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> of the darn. He had been -busy with crowds of new students and opening classes. Under that, what? -She fumbled in her mist of images. She had scarcely seen him, except -at dinner. Usually he had a string of stories about the day. He had -gone back to the office two evenings, and to Washington on Friday. She -didn't know much about his week. Had he withheld it? Had she been too -engrossed?</p> - -<p>The telephone in the study rang. Catherine hurried. Perhaps it was -Charles.</p> - -<p>"Is Dr. Hammond in?"</p> - -<p>"This is Mrs. Hammond." That clear, metallic voice! "Dr. Hammond is out -of town."</p> - -<p>"Oh, yes. I thought he might be back. Would you give him a message for -me? Miss Partridge. Please ask him to call me as soon as he comes in."</p> - -<p>"Certainly." Catherine waited, but the only sound was the click of the -telephone, terminating the call.</p> - -<p>"Well!" Catherine sat down at the desk. Now, there's nothing to -be irritated about, she told herself. Her eyes traveled over the -bookshelves, low, crowded, piled with monographs and reviews. That -curtness is part of her pose—manlike. But she certainly hits my -negative pole!</p> - -<p>Miss Kelly came in with the children, noisy and hungry, and the five -had dinner together. Catherine tried to talk with Miss Kelly. Her -round, light eyes met Catherine's solemnly, and she replied with calm -politeness to Catherine's ventures.</p> - -<p>"No, Marian, dear," she said suddenly. "One helping of chicken is -enough for a little girl your age."</p> - -<p>"Spencer had two!" Marian turned to her mother. "Why can't I?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p> - -<p>Catherine smiled a little wryly. She thrust under the sudden flash -of resentment. Of course, Miss Kelly had them in charge. What was -the matter with her to-day! She seemed to react with irritation to -everything.</p> - -<p>"Marian's stomach seemed a little upset yesterday," confided Miss Kelly.</p> - -<p>"We'll have our salad now." Catherine dismissed the question.</p> - -<p>But after dinner, when Letty had been led protestingly away for her -nap, and Miss Kelly, armed with a volume of Andersen's "Fairy Tales," -reappeared in the living room, Catherine couldn't resist the swift -entreaty of Spencer's eyes.</p> - -<p>"Miss Kelly," she said, placatingly, "if you would like to go home now, -I can read to the children. I am quite free this afternoon."</p> - -<p>Miss Kelly agreed placidly. When she had gone, Spencer stood a moment -beside Catherine, his eyes intent on her face; Catherine saw a wavering -tenseness in his look. He wanted to hurl himself at her, and he didn't -want to. She couldn't reach out for him, if he felt too grown-up for -such expression. She smiled at him, and with a huge sigh he settled -into the wicker chair, one foot curled beneath him.</p> - -<p>"She was glad to go home, wasn't she?" he said.</p> - -<p>"I'm glad she went," announced Marian. "She bosses me."</p> - -<p>"Good for you," said Spencer. "Mother, read us 'Treasure Island.' I'm -sick of old fairies."</p> - -<p>Margaret came in, her ring waking Letty. Catherine laughed at the -unconcealed expectancy with which the children welcomed their aunt.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p> - -<p>"You've ruined them," she said, as Marian danced up the hall, her eyes -wide with anticipation for the packages Margaret carried.</p> - -<p>"Well, they are delighted to see their old aunt, anyway!" Margaret -dropped to the floor, scattering the bundles, her hands held over them -in teasing delay.</p> - -<p>"Your dress, Marg! On the floor in that?"</p> - -<p>"Just a rag. Here, Letitia, your turn first."</p> - -<p>Catherine went back to her chair to watch the orgy. Margaret was -extravagant as water.</p> - -<p>"It isn't really a rag, Aunt Margie, is it?" Spencer had his head on -one side, deliberating. "It looks like—like pigeons."</p> - -<p>"If I could find a gentleman of your discrimination, Spen, I'd grab him -in a jiffy!"</p> - -<p>"It is like pigeons, isn't it, Mother?" Spencer looked perplexed.</p> - -<p>"Yes." Catherine wished Margaret wouldn't tease him. She was lovely, -her gray-silver draperies floating around her slim, curving figure, the -purple glinting through. It was like a pigeon's breast, that dress.</p> - -<p>Letty had a doll, soft and round and almost as large as Letty herself.</p> - -<p>"Company for you, when your mother's off at work."</p> - -<p>Letty's arms were fast about it, and her deep voice intoned a constant, -"Pretty doll! pretty doll!" until Marian's present appeared from its -wrappings.</p> - -<p>"You stand on it and jump, this way." Margaret was on her feet, her -suède toes balancing on the crosspiece.</p> - -<p>"Letty jump!"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Not in here!" Catherine reached for the stick. "You idiots! You'll -knock the plaster off."</p> - -<p>"Letty jump!" Catherine bundled Letty and the doll into her lap.</p> - -<p>"Let's see what Spencer draws."</p> - -<p>"Spencer was a difficult proposition." Margaret smiled at him. "I -thought of a rubber ball, and then I remembered he had one. So I got -this." She poked the box into his hands.</p> - -<p>"It's as good as Christmas, isn't it, Muvver?" Marian was on tiptoe, -her Pogo stick clasped to her side, her head close to Spencer's as he -tore off the papers.</p> - -<p>"Thought I'd help make him practical, to please the King."</p> - -<p>"What is it?" Spencer knelt beside the box full of pieces of steel.</p> - -<p>"You stick them together, and make skyscrapers and bridges and water -towers and elevators. The clerk said you could build a city."</p> - -<p>"Let me help, Spencer?" Marian flung herself on the floor beside -Spencer.</p> - -<p>"Me help!" Letty squirmed down from Catherine's lap.</p> - -<p>"You might take the things into the dining room," suggested Catherine.</p> - -<p>Spencer gathered up the box.</p> - -<p>"I'm much obliged, Aunt Margie," he said, and Marian and Letty echoed -him as they followed into the next room.</p> - -<p>Margaret settled herself in a chair at the window.</p> - -<p>"I thought your nurse would be in charge." Her eyes wandered out to -the distant glint of water. "Thought you'd given up the heavy domestic -act."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I sent her home." Catherine smiled. "Weak minded, wasn't it?"</p> - -<p>Margaret nodded.</p> - -<p>"Certainly. You look fagged. You ought to be out horseback riding or -something. You know"—she turned, her face serious—"if you're going to -do a real job, you have to look out. You have to relax sometime."</p> - -<p>"I have to read the d'rections first, don't I?" came Spencer's firm -tones. "You can sit still and watch."</p> - -<p>"Now I didn't budge from my bed until noon," went on Margaret, "and -then Amy had breakfast ready for me, and then I jumped in a taxi and -came up here. I have to run along in a minute, high tea down in the -Village. But you've been at work since early dawn, haven't you?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, there were a few things——"</p> - -<p>"Why don't you find a real housekeeper in Flora's place?"</p> - -<p>"I can't afford to pay more, yet. And Flora is too good to throw out. I -can manage."</p> - -<p>"You know"—Margaret's eyes were bright with curiosity—"I should like -to know what started this, your leaving your happy home, I mean. I -thought you were the devoted mother till eternity."</p> - -<p>"I am," said Catherine, calmly. Then she leaned forward. "Do you -realize that the loneliest person in the world is a devoted mother? -This summer, Margaret, I thought I'd really go crazy. I was so sorry -for myself it was ludicrous. I'm trying to find out if I am a person, -with anything to use except a pair of hands—on monotonous, silly -tasks."</p> - -<p>"Of course, the trouble is just that. You are a person.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> I'm glad -you've waked up, Catherine. You know, there isn't a man in the world -that I'd give up my job for."</p> - -<p>"I want a man, too." Catherine's mouth was stubborn. "And my children. -I want everything. Perhaps I want too much."</p> - -<p>"Oh, children." Margaret glanced through the wide doors. "Maybe -I'll want some, some day. Nice little ducks. Now I've got Amy—and -love enough to keep from growing stale. I want you to meet Amy some -day." She rose, adjusting the brim of her wide purple hat. "Amy's -waiting now. Tell Charles I'm longing for a glimpse of him." She -made a humorous little grimace. "Want to see how he likes this new -arrangement."</p> - -<p>Margaret telephoned for a taxi, and then hung over the children, -offering impossible suggestions, until the hall boy announced her cab.</p> - -<p>Marian wanted to go down to the Drive, to jump. Catherine waved good-by -to Margaret, her other hand restrainingly on Marian's shoulder.</p> - -<p>"Not Sunday afternoon, Marian. There are so many people down there, -you'd jump right on their toes. You watch Spencer."</p> - -<p>The children played in reasonable quiet. Catherine finished her -darning, her mind playing with the idea of the graphs she was working -on. As she rolled up the last stocking, she wondered what she used -to think about, as she sat darning or sewing. Nothing, she decided. -Plain nothing. I could let my hands work, and my ears listen for the -children, and the rest of me just stagnate.</p> - -<p>She delayed supper a little, hoping that Charles might<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> come. She -wasn't sure about the Sunday trains. Finally she gave the children -their supper and put Letty to bed.</p> - -<p>Spencer was still engrossed in the construction of a building when Bill -Gilbert came in.</p> - -<p>"Henrietta isn't here?"</p> - -<p>"No, but do come in." Catherine led him into the living room. "Is Henry -coming?"</p> - -<p>"She had a call, and said she'd stop here on her way home."</p> - -<p>"Charles hasn't come yet. He's been in Washington since Friday."</p> - -<p>"Friday? I thought I saw him downtown, with Miss Partridge. He probably -went later."</p> - -<p>"He went at one."</p> - -<p>"This couldn't have been Charles, then. It was about four. I thought -their committee had been meeting. Hello, Spencer. What you doing?"</p> - -<p>Spencer had come in, his hands full of steel girders.</p> - -<p>"Mr. Bill, you're a nengineer, aren't you? Well, could you show me -about this bridge?"</p> - -<p>More than an hour later, when Henrietta did come, Bill was stretched -full length, his feet under the dining room table, his eyes on the -level of the completed bridge, a marvelous thing of spans and girders, -struts and tie-beams.</p> - -<p>"I'm too weary to stay, Cathy." Henrietta set her case on the table; -her fair skin looked dusted over with fatigue. "Convulsions. One of -those mothers who won't believe in diet or doctors for her child. The -father sent for me. The child is alive in spite of her."</p> - -<p>"Do sit down and rest, at least."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p> - -<p>"No. I'm too ugly. Do you want to come, Bill, or are you staying?"</p> - -<p>Bill pulled himself awkwardly to his feet, one hand reaching for his -pipe.</p> - -<p>"This piece of work is done," he said, smiling down at Spencer's -engrossed head. "I've had a fine evening, Catherine."</p> - -<p>He had. When they had gone, and Catherine was supervising the -children's preparations for bed, she still had the feeling of the -evening; she had pulled her chair into the dining room, to watch them; -Bill had looked up at her at long intervals, with a faint, queer smile -in his eyes; he had said nothing, except to offer solemn, technical -advice, simplified to meet Spencer's eagerness.</p> - -<p>"I'm going to be a nengineer," said Spencer sleepily, as she bent over -him. "An' build things."</p> - -<p>"I want to be one, too," called Marian.</p> - -<p>"You can't! You're only a girl."</p> - -<p>"Mr. Bill said I could if I wanted to. He said I could be anything."</p> - -<p>"So you can." Catherine tucked her in gently. "But you have to go to -sleep first."</p> - -<p>At eleven Catherine telephoned to the station, to ask about trains from -Washington. No express before morning. Charles wouldn't take a local; -he must have decided to take a sleeper. She set the sandwiches she had -made for him away in the ice chest. No use worrying. She had to have -some sleep, for to-morrow. Had Bill seen him, Friday afternoon? She -hated the queer way waiting held you too tight, as if you were hung up -by your thumbs. Charles might have wired her. But he knew she never -meant to worry.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p> - -<p>She was half conscious, all through the night, of the emptiness of -his bed, opposite hers. Once she woke, thinking she heard the door -click. She sprang up in bed to listen. Nothing but the constant, faint -cacophony of city sounds. It must be almost morning—that was the -rattle of ash cans.</p> - - -<p class="center">III</p> - -<p>Astonishing how much less hurried the morning seemed, with no Charles -shaving in the bathroom, shouting out inquiries about his striped -shirt, his bay rum—he had a blind spot for the thing he wanted at the -moment. We need two bathrooms, thought Catherine. I've spoiled Charles. -Breakfast, too, was more leisurely; none of the last-minute scramble, -no sudden longing for crisp bacon, after the toast was made and the -eggs were boiled. There was time, actually, for a manicure. Flora -appeared promptly at eight, her Monday face lugubrious.</p> - -<p>"Sunday's fearful exhausting, Mis' Hammond," she said, as Catherine -finished the consultation about dinner. "It's the most exhaustin'est -day us working women has, I thinks."</p> - -<p>"And when Mr. Hammond comes, be sure to ask him if he wishes breakfast, -Flora. He may have had it on the train."</p> - -<p>"Sure, I'll ask him. You run along and quit your worry, Mis' Hammond."</p> - -<p>Catherine, hurrying across the Drive for the bus, was worried. She felt -almost guilty: first, because the morning rush had been so lightened; -and then, because she was going off, downtown, just as if Charles -scarcely existed. She had laid out fresh clothes for him, on his bed, -but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> she knew how he would rush in, full of pleasant importance from -the trip, wanting to shout bits of it to her while he splashed and -shaved and dressed, wanting her to sit down for a late cup of coffee -while he talked. If only he had come home yesterday! Well, to-night -would have to serve, although by evening there would be the film of the -day over that first sharpness of communication.</p> - -<p>At the door of her office she paused, her fingers on the key. She -must leave, outside the door, this faint guilt which tugged at her. -She had wasted that hour on the bus. The order and quiet within were -like a rebuke. She crossed to the window and raised the heavy sash. -The cool bright morning air rushed in with a little flutter of the -papers on the desk. Across the street and a story lower, behind great -plate-glass windows, she could see busy little men hurrying about, -lifting the white dust covers from piles of dark goods: that was an -elaborate tailoring establishment, just waking into activity. Her desk -had a fresh green blotter, a pile of neatly sharpened pencils, and her -mail—C.S. Hammond. Extraordinary, this having things set in order -without your own direction! She might call up the house, to see if -Charles had come. But surely he would telephone.</p> - -<p>Dr. Roberts came briskly in. She was to have a new filing cabinet, he -wanted her to meet the stenographer she was to share with him; the -President of the Bureau would be in that morning, and wished to talk -with her for a few minutes.</p> - -<p>President Waterbury was a large and pompous gentleman who used his -increasing deafness as a form of reproach to his subordinates. -Catherine, sitting calmly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> near his massive mahogany desk, nodded at -intervals in response to his grave, deliberate remarks. Her work during -the war had convinced Dr. Roberts of her ability, hem, hem, although -that had been on a social study, and this was, hem, educational. Since -Mrs. Lynch, one of the founders of the Bureau, was a woman, it was -peculiarly fitting to place a competent woman in charge of one of their -many investigations. Ah, hem. A pleasure to welcome her there. Serious -concern, this administering of responsibility. He was dismissing her -with an elegant gesture of his old white hand, its blue veins so -abruptly naked between the little tufts of hair.</p> - -<p>Catherine went back to her office.</p> - -<p>"Oh, Mrs. Hammond!" The bobbed-haired office stenographer rose, with a -shake of her abbreviated skirt. "You were wanted on the wire. Said you -were in conference with the President. Here's the number."</p> - -<p>"Thank you. No, I don't need you now." Catherine waited until the -door closed. She still hesitated. It must be Charles. Better to call -him outside, at noon. The telephone operator in the main office had a -furtive, watchful eye which probably matched her ear! But noon was an -hour away.</p> - -<p>"Charles? Hello."</p> - -<p>"That you, Catherine? I've been trying to get you for a solid hour!"</p> - -<p>"I'm sorry." Was that girl listening! "When did you get in?"</p> - -<p>"Early. Catherine, where have you put my lecture notes? The seminar, -you know. That class meets to-day. I can't find a damned shred of them."</p> - -<p>His voice seemed to stand him at her shoulder, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> the funny, -distracted flush, and rumpled hair of one of his fruitless searches.</p> - -<p>"I haven't seen them this fall." She was moving rapidly about the -house, almost in kinæsthetic images. Where would she look? "Didn't you -file those in your office last spring? With the manuscript of your -book?"</p> - -<p>"Um. Perhaps. I'll look there. Good-by."</p> - -<p>Catherine hung the instrument slowly in place. Not a word of greeting. -But he had probably thrown his study into bedlam—and his disposition. -She smiled, faintly, and refusing to admit the little barbed regret, -turned to her work.</p> - -<p>At noon, in the stuffy telephone booth at the elevator entrance of the -St. Francis Club she tried to reach him. But Miss Kelly said he wasn't -coming in for luncheon, and no one answered the call for his office.</p> - -<p>The afternoon closed around her with steady concentration. Dr. Roberts -had said that on Friday there would be a conference: a head of a normal -college and a state commissioner of education would be on hand from the -West. She wanted this preliminary classification ready.</p> - -<p>As she approached the house that evening, she discovered, ironically, -that her mind was revolving schemes for propitiation. Steak and onions -for dinner, and cream pie, and tactful inquiries about the trip.</p> - -<p>There was no rush of children at the sound of her key. She heard -Marian's voice, and then Charles's. She hurried down the hall. Letty -sat on her father's knee, a crisscross of adhesive plaster on her -forehead, from which her hair was smoothed wetly back.</p> - -<p>"She would jump on my Pogo stick, Muvver," protested Marian, "and I -told her not to, and——"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p> - -<p>Catherine was on her knees beside the chair, and Letty's mouth began to -quiver again at a fresh spectator of her injury.</p> - -<p>"It isn't a bad cut," said Charles, distantly. "Fortunately I came in."</p> - -<p>"But where's Miss Kelly?"</p> - -<p>"She left at six. I supposed you had instructed her to stay here until -you came."</p> - -<p>"I told her to run along." Flora stopped at the doorway, her red -flowers bobbing over the brim of her hat. "I says I'd stay. An' those -chillun was all right one minute and the next they wasn't."</p> - -<p>"Where's Spencer?" Catherine rose. She had waited a long time for a -bus, but it was just past six.</p> - -<p>"In the bathroom, washing off the blood," said Charles, severely. "He -was wiping Letty's face when I came in."</p> - -<p>"She fell on the radiator," went on Marian, "an' I told her not to——"</p> - -<p>"It's all right now." Charles set Letty on her feet, and patted her -damp head. "But you surely ought to insist on that woman's filling your -place, since you aren't here."</p> - -<p>"I shall." Catherine's eyes sought his with a defiant entreaty. "It -isn't very serious, after all," she finished, in white quiet. As she -went into her room to leave her wraps and brush up her hair, she found -her hands trembling, and her knees. She sat down at the window for a -moment. Of course, she thought, they are my responsibility. That's -only just. But he needn't hurry so to hold me up to blame. As if they -planned it—a staged rebuke for my entrance. Spencer was at the door, -his eyes large and serious.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Hello, son!" Catherine shoved aside the tight bitterness, and smiled.</p> - -<p>"Oh, Moth-er!" He ran across to her, burying his head for a brief -instant on her shoulder. "I thought—I thought she was dead. Only she -hollered too loud."</p> - -<p>"I'm sorry, dear." Catherine hugged him. "But it's all right."</p> - -<p>"And"—Spencer's lower lip quivered—"Daddy said why didn't I watch her -if she didn't have a mother. She's got a mother, and I was just sitting -there reading."</p> - -<p>"Letty's all right now. Come, we must broil that steak! Aren't you -hungry?"</p> - -<p>Dinner was ready, all but the steak. Catherine felt that she thrust her -hands violently into a patch of nettles and yanked them away, as she -cajoled her family back into calm humor. Charles, carving the steak, -suddenly lost his air of grave reproach, and began a story about a -family with two sets of twins that he had seen on the train. With a -sigh, Catherine relaxed her grip on the nettles. She might run into -them, later!</p> - -<p>"We looked for you all day yesterday," she said, finally.</p> - -<p>"Several of the men stayed over, and I had a fine chance to talk with -them. Brown of Cornell, and Davitts."</p> - -<p>"Mr. Bill came in, Daddy, and showed me how to build a bridge."</p> - -<p>"He thought he'd seen you Friday," said Catherine idly, "but I told him -you went at one."</p> - -<p>"Oh, yes." Charles was casual. "I missed that train. So I went around -to the clinic."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></p> - -<p>His voice was too casual! And the swift glance he shot at Catherine as -she rose.</p> - - -<p class="center">IV</p> - -<p>"I've got to run over those lecture notes." Charles stretched lazily up -from the table. "They need freshening a bit."</p> - -<p>"You found them, then?" Catherine had Letty in her arms, soft and -sweetly heavy with drowsiness.</p> - -<p>"Yes. I'd forgotten about carrying them over to the office."</p> - -<p>"I was in the sacred sanctum of the President's office when you called."</p> - -<p>"Oh, that's all right. I found them in time." Charles strolled out of -the room.</p> - -<p>"Daddy!" Spencer followed him. "Couldn't I show you my bridges and -things? I can make anything."</p> - -<p>"Not to-night, Spencer. Daddy's got to work."</p> - -<p>Catherine's query about home work for school relieved Spencer's gloom. -While she undressed Letty, smiling at the sleepy protests, Spencer -and Marian cleared the table. When she reappeared they were trying to -fold the long cloth, one at each end, Marian arguing heatedly about -the proper method. Charles banged his study door in loud remonstrance. -Catherine showed them the creases. Then they spread their books on the -bare table.</p> - -<p>"You sit here with us, Mother," Spencer begged. "I can do my sums much -quicker. Marian doesn't have to do home work. She's just——"</p> - -<p>"I do, too, have to do home work. The teacher said so."</p> - -<p>"There, you shall, if you like." Catherine ruffled Spencer's hair. "Try -not to disturb Father."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p> - -<p>She sat there with them for an hour and more. Marian snuggled against -her, showing her the pictures in her "suppulment'ry reading." Spencer -bent over his work in a concentration directed toward the impressing of -his sister, his cheeks growing pink, his hand clutched over his pencil. -Although she sat so quietly, her outer attention given to the children, -her deeper thoughts went scurrying and creeping up to the closed study -door, away from it. He needn't have worked to-night. Don't be absurd. -If he has a lecture to-morrow—he wants to shut himself away. Slowly -her thoughts circled, like gulls above the water, concealing in their -whirls the object which drew them.</p> - -<p>"Muvver, does Spencer have to whisper his sums aloud?"</p> - -<p>"Perhaps that helps him." Catherine smiled at Spencer's indignant face. -"You may whisper your story, if you like."</p> - -<p>What were they swooping over, those gull-thoughts? Better to scatter -them and see. Not that he had missed the train; not even that he had -not troubled to run in for a moment that afternoon; nor that he had -chosen to see Miss Partridge. That might so easily be explained. No. -Just that queer, investigating glance, that deliberate offhand manner, -when he had told her. It set a wall between them.</p> - -<p>The telephone rang distantly, behind the closed door. The children -lifted their heads to listen. A rumble of Charles's voice. Then silence -again.</p> - -<p>When Spencer and Marian had laid away their books and gone to bed, -Catherine returned to her seat at the empty table. I want him, she -thought. But if I open<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> his door and go in, then I become, in some way, -a propitiator. Perhaps I only imagine all this. I am tired. She drew -the pins from her hair and let the heavy coil slip over her shoulder. -Elbows on the table, fingers cool and firm against her forehead, as if -she might press order into her thoughts, she waited.</p> - -<p>Suddenly she rose, shaking her hair back from her face. That is -grotesque, she thought, sitting here, and hastily she went through the -hall to the study door, flinging it open.</p> - -<p>"Oh, hello." Charles looked up alertly from his book. He, too, had been -waiting. "Kids in bed?"</p> - -<p>"Aren't you through?" Catherine yawned gently, drawing her fingers -across her lips. "I'm sleepy, and lonesome."</p> - -<p>But under her lightness sounded a plunk, as of a stone dropping, a -confirmation of a fear, as she saw the wary alertness on Charles's face -vanish in quick relief.</p> - -<p>"Just through," he announced. "Come on in. It's curious, how stale -these lectures seem, after a year. Have to refurbish them entirely." He -slipped the sheets into a manila cover. "That one's ready, at least."</p> - -<p>Catherine sat on the corner of his desk, her fingers sliding through a -strand of her hair.</p> - -<p>"Did you have a good trip?" she asked. Anything, to banish this -separateness. "I haven't heard a word about it."</p> - -<p>"You weren't home. I was bursting with news this morning."</p> - -<p>"Can't you remember a little of it?"</p> - -<p>"I might try." Charles leaned back, his thumbs caught in his belt. -As he talked, Catherine listened for the under-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>tones, so much more -significant than the events. It had been a good trip. The men had -received him rather flatteringly, praised his latest monograph, shown -interest in the new psychological clinic. He had a comfortable, -well-nourished look; around his eyes, with the prominent jutting of -socket above, the lines were quite smoothed away. Catherine looked at -him, at the strong, slightly projecting chin, at the smooth hard throat -above the neat collar.</p> - -<p>"Davitts hinted at an opening in a middle-western college," he said, -finally. "Head of the department. I told him I was in line for -promotion here, if I got this next book done this year. He seemed to -think he had something better up his sleeve."</p> - -<p>"Away from New York?"</p> - -<p>"Ye-up." Charles was blandly indifferent. "Nothing definite, you know. -Just hints."</p> - -<p>"Would you even consider it?" Catherine's hands, even her hair against -her fingers, felt cold.</p> - -<p>"It never does any harm to let people offer you things. And I don't -know—" He was drawing idle triangles on the manila covers of his -lecture. "Sometimes a position like that means much more power, -prominence, reputation, than anything here could. Would you mind?" He -was eying her carefully. "Be better for the children." And after a -pause. "Or would you have to stay here—for your job?"</p> - -<p>"Have you just made this up—for a joke?" Catherine slipped to her -feet. "Are you just teasing me?"</p> - -<p>"Not a bit. That's what Davitts said."</p> - -<p>"Charles!" Her fingers doubled into a fist at the edge of the desk. -"Don't lurk around! Let's talk it out. You don't like it, my working? -You"—she stared at him—<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>"you don't mean you'd hunt for a job -somewhere, in a little town, where I couldn't work, just to——"</p> - -<p>"Good Lord! Now why go off at that tangent, just because I gave you a -bit of news. Didn't I say I wanted you to have what you wanted?"</p> - -<p>"But you don't like it, do you?"</p> - -<p>"Damn it, give me time to get used to it. It's all fired queer to go -off without any one caring, and come back to a deserted house. I'll -probably get used to it, but give me time."</p> - -<p>"Do you want me to give it up?"</p> - -<p>"Are you tired of it already?"</p> - -<p>"Do you really care to know how I feel about it?" Catherine's voice was -low and tense. "I feel as if I'd escaped from solitary confinement. At -hard labor, too! I feel as if I could hold up my head and breathe. And -then, underneath, I feel you pulling at me, wresting me back. Oh, you -say you don't mind, but——"</p> - -<p>"Catherine, see here." Charles stood up and leaned toward her. "I—I -haven't meant to be a hog. But a man has a kind of knock-out, to find -he isn't enough, with his home and all. Here, let's forget it. I've had -a hard week-end, and last week was a fright. That's all."</p> - -<p>"It's not that you aren't enough." Catherine flung herself at that -phrase. "You know about that! Any more than I'm not enough, for you. -There's more to you than love, isn't there? Why isn't there more to me? -If you'd only see——"</p> - -<p>"The only thing that bothers me is the children. Now, take Letty——"</p> - -<p>"But I have left them with Flora many times. I've<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> had to. And they -bump their heads when I'm home. That's not the point. It's your blaming -me."</p> - -<p>"All right!" Charles threw up his hands in a sweep of mocking -surrender. "I won't say a word."</p> - -<p>"I want you to say it, not hint it."</p> - -<p>"Anything you like." His hands closed on her shoulders. "Here, you -haven't kissed me since I came home."</p> - -<p>There were sudden wild tears under Catherine's lids, and she thought -desperately, oh, not that! Not kisses as the only way—to touch, to -reach each other!</p> - -<p>"Didn't even kiss me good-by. Nice kind of wife." Charles pushed her -chin up with a firm finger. "There now——"</p> - -<p>"You didn't give me a chance." Catherine was quiet, thrusting under -her rebellion. Suddenly, through her misted lashes, she saw just for a -flash, an echo of that wary, investigatory glance. She swung out over a -great abyss. Bill had seen him, with Miss Partridge. Nothing to that, -surely, except this feeling, which was not jealousy, but fear of what -he was defending himself against.</p> - -<p>"I wanted to find you, but I didn't like to come up to the Bureau," he -was saying. "So I went down to the clinic and talked over things with -Stella Partridge." The brisk, matter-of-course words drew her back -sharply from the abyss. "It took the edge off, not finding you here, -this morning." He was threading his fingers through her hair.</p> - -<p>"You're spoiled rotten!" Catherine could laugh at him now. He meant -that for his apology, and she would let it lift her out of fear and -hurt.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="center">V</p> - -<p>The week settled into a steady march. Flora had taken on the marketing, -Miss Kelly had agreed never to leave the house until Catherine arrived, -Charles was amiably preoccupied with the rush of the opening semester. -It hadn't been so hard to adjust things, thought Catherine. Takes a -little planning—I was too impatient.</p> - -<p>Her work at the office was focussed on the Saturday conference. She -wanted her preliminary analysis in tables and graphs clear and adequate -enough to present to the men; there would be discrepancies between -the apparent system and the actual practice in the state which the -commissioner could point out. She hadn't time to complete the study of -the normal schools; they were astonishingly numerous and varied.</p> - -<p>"It's just hit or miss, this whole educational business," she said to -Dr. Roberts, on Friday afternoon, as they talked over the material. "No -central direction or purpose."</p> - -<p>"Too much imitation and tradition." Dr. Roberts had his pointed beard -between the pages of a catalogue. He lifted it toward her, his bright -blue eyes and sharp nose eager on the scent of an idea. "Too little -conscious plan. People are afraid of thought. Trial-and-error is the -working basis. But that's slow, and you have this heavy crust of -tradition."</p> - -<p>"I'd like to scrap it all and make a fresh beginning!"</p> - -<p>"There never is such a thing as a fresh beginning. You have to work -from what exists."</p> - -<p>Catherine pushed aside a pile of catalogues, her face alight with -scorn.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p> - -<p>"But why, if it's stale and wrong? Take these normal schools. Young -people, girls mostly, go there, because they have to have a diploma -to teach. What do they get? Things out of books. They learn to teach -paragraphs of geography, not to teach children. It would be ridiculous, -except that it is terrible. Perhaps it's because men run them."</p> - -<p>"Women"—Dr. Roberts smoothed his beard—"are popularly supposed to -submit more docilely to tradition."</p> - -<p>"Supposed by whom?" Catherine's hand sent a catalogue banging to the -floor. "That's been a convenient way of holding their wildness under, -I think." She felt her mind throw up swift thoughts that burst and -scattered like Roman candles. She couldn't gather the splintering -brightness. "We've had, as women, too small an orbit."</p> - -<p>The stenographer thrust her bobbed head into the door, to say that Dr. -Roberts was wanted on the telephone. Should she connect his party here?</p> - -<p>"No, I'll take him on my own 'phone." He rose, smiling. "We'll have to -thrash this out to-morrow," he said, "or some day. Don't frighten our -committee to-morrow, though, by announcing that you are wild, will you?"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Catherine, erect in her seat on the bus top, the golden October air -fresh on her cheeks, went on coruscating. It was true, that about -women. They felt that children were the most important part of life. So -they stayed with them, cared for them, held under all their own—was -it wildness?—bending it to food and clothes and order—and then? They -threw their children out into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> the nets laid by men, not viciously, -not deliberately, but with all that pompous weight of tradition. The -way things should be done, learned, thought. If you could scrap it -all and begin—where? With something, a kernel of intelligence, what -children are, and what you wish them to grow into, what will nourish -that growth. Charles was on that track, with his new clinic, and all -his work.</p> - -<p>As she climbed down from the bus and started up the hill toward -Broadway, her thoughts still sparkled, spreading out in great circles -of light about her, vague projects, shadowy schemes, beautiful -structures of clarity and sanity for the world, for the children.</p> - -<p>"What a stride!"</p> - -<p>The circles contracted swiftly, and she turned.</p> - -<p>"Bill! Hello." She emerged slowly, shreds of the dream still shining. -They fell into step.</p> - -<p>"How goes it?" His glance veered to her face. "You look as if you'd had -your salary raised."</p> - -<p>"Better than that." Catherine wanted to break into his dark, withdrawn -glance; she wanted, suddenly, to draw him into this glittering mood. -"Bill, it's wonderful. I feel my mind budding! It wasn't dead. Like a -seed potato—shoots in every direction, out of every wrinkle!"</p> - -<p>"You look it." Bill nodded. "I saw that you walked on air."</p> - -<p>"I've been recasting the universe." She laughed, as they waited a -moment for passing traffic. "That's better than building bridges, isn't -it?"</p> - -<p>"It is less confining."</p> - -<p>They went quickly past the subway kiosk, dodging the home-pouring -workers, past the peanut stand panting warm and odorous at the corner, -to the wide hill of steps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> in front of the University library. A flower -vender thrust his bunches of roses at them.</p> - -<p>"I want some!" Catherine dug into her purse.</p> - -<p>"Aren't they stale?" Bill watched her fasten the creamy, buff-pink buds -to her coat.</p> - -<p>"Probably. But they look fresh now." Catherine swung into step again. -Queer, how that occasional little side glance of Bill's gave assent to -her mood, dipped into it, recognized it, without a word.</p> - -<p>"I suppose," she said, as they rounded the corner of Amsterdam, "that -I can't stay on this level. It's too high. But I've just reached it -to-day. Assurance, and a long sight into what I can do."</p> - -<p>"There's always, unfortunately, another day." Bill frowned slightly. -"Another mood. But you seem to have hit a fair wind. Henrietta told me -that Miss Kelly was panning out well."</p> - -<p>"Yes." The view ahead, of the dipping, climbing avenue, with its -familiar shops, its familiar clatter of the cobblestones, was sharp as -a background of relief against which to-day stood out. "I know what I -feel like, Bill. If you want to know."</p> - -<p>"I do. Always."</p> - -<p>Simple words, but Catherine heard them with faint wonder. Bill was -never personal. His profile, with its long nose and lean cheeks, like a -horse, was reassuring.</p> - -<p>"Well, then. Did you ever watch a treadmill? Round and round, all your -effort taking you nowhere but around? That's where I've been. That's -what I've done. The same circle, day after day. And now I'm out of it, -on a long, straight road. Going somewhere!"</p> - -<p>"I hope it's straight." They had reached the apartment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> entrance, and -Bill shook his head at Catherine's suggestion that he come in.</p> - -<p>"No road is really straight. But as long as it goes somewhere!"</p> - -<p>Bill looked at her; Catherine thought he started to speak, and then -refused the words.</p> - -<p>"Spencer is longing for your next call," she said.</p> - -<p>"I'll drop in some evening. Henry's been busy."</p> - -<p>"Don't wait for her, then. Just come."</p> - -<p>At the door Miss Kelly met Catherine.</p> - -<p>"Letty hasn't seemed quite well," she said. "I put her to bed."</p> - -<p>"What's wrong?" Catherine stared at Miss Kelly's bland, pink face. "She -isn't really sick?"</p> - -<p>"It's hard to tell, with a child." Miss Kelly followed Catherine down -the hall. "It may be just indigestion."</p> - -<p>Letty, her small face flushed and scowling, wrinkled her eyes at her -mother.</p> - -<p>"Don't want to go to bed. Want to see my Muvver."</p> - -<p>"Here I am, Letty." Catherine touched her cheek, felt for her wrist.</p> - -<p>"She has scarcely any temperature," announced Miss Kelly. "Just a -degree. But I thought——"</p> - -<p>"Surely, she's better in bed. Did she have any supper?"</p> - -<p>"Broth."</p> - -<p>"Don't wait, Miss Kelly. I know you wish to go."</p> - -<p>"Well, since you are here."</p> - -<p>Catherine removed her coat and hat. The roses dropped to the floor.</p> - -<p>"Pretty!" Letty reached for them.</p> - -<p>"I'll put them in water." Catherine came back with a vase. "Do you feel -sick anywhere, chick?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Letty not sick. Get up." Catherine caught the wiggling child, and -pulled the blanket into place.</p> - -<p>"You lie still, and mother'll be back presently. I must see to dinner -for Daddy."</p> - -<p>She hurried into the kitchen. Spencer and Marian were under the -dining room table, playing menagerie, and unable to answer her except -in fierce growls. Charles hadn't come in. Probably Letty wasn't really -sick. She had little flurries of indisposition; perhaps she had eaten -something.</p> - -<p>Charles came in, with a jovial bang of the door, and a shout, "Ship -ahoy! Who's at the helm?"</p> - -<p>"Don't tell him, Muvver." Marian's head butted the tablecloth aside. -"Sh!"</p> - -<p>"'Lo, Cath!" He swung her up to tiptoe in his exuberant hug. "Where are -the kids?"</p> - -<p>"Grrrr!" and "Woof!" The table cloth waggled.</p> - -<p>"Ah, wild animals under foot!" Charles gave an elaborate imitation of a -big game hunter, creeping toward the table, sighting along his thumbs. -"Biff, bang!" He reached under, seized a leg, and drew out Marian, -giggling and rolling. "Bagged one! Bang, bang! Got the panther!" He had -Spencer by the collar. "Teddy, the great hunter!" He straddled them, -his arms folded, while they shrieked in delight.</p> - -<p>A wail from the doorway, "Letty play! Shoot Letty!"</p> - -<p>Catherine ran past them, gathering the child into her arms. Her hand, -closing over the small feet, found them dry, hot, and the weight of the -child seemed to scorch through her blouse against her shoulder.</p> - -<p>"What's the matter with my baby?" Charles followed them. "Let me have -her, Catherine."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p> - -<p>"She's supposed to be in bed." Catherine covered her with the blanket. -"Now you stay there, young lady! Mother will come in soon."</p> - -<p>She touched the scarlet cheek, her fingers feather soft. Letty's -eyelids, heavy and dark, drooped, and her protest broke off.</p> - -<p>Catherine drew Charles into the hall.</p> - -<p>"Would you call up Dr. Henrietta? I think her fever is coming up."</p> - -<p>"Is she sick?" Charles looked aggrieved at this intrusion upon his mood.</p> - -<p>"I hope not." Catherine gave him a little push. "Call her up, and see -when she can come in. I'll have dinner on directly."</p> - -<p>The wild animals were washed and combed, and dinner served when Charles -came out of the study.</p> - -<p>"She's not in. Probably at dinner. I left word with the clerk. But I -say, Catherine. I got tickets for 'Liliom' to-night." He looked blankly -disappointed. "You said you wanted to see it, and I was downtown. Good -seats, too."</p> - -<p>"Oh, Charles!"</p> - -<p>"And I even called up that girl we had last year, to stay with the -children. That graduate student, you know."</p> - -<p>"Well." Catherine lifted her hands in a little gesture of resignation. -"If Letty's sick— But 'Liliom'! I do want to go."</p> - -<p>"Maybe she'll be all right when she's asleep."</p> - -<p>But she wasn't. Eight o'clock came, with Charles fidgeting like a -lamprey eel on a hook, and no word from Henrietta. Letty was asleep, -her hands twitching rest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>lessly. Catherine shook her head, as she read -the thermometer.</p> - -<p>"I can't go, Charles. Almost a hundred and one."</p> - -<p>"What ails her? Has that woman you've got been feeding her pickles?"</p> - -<p>The door bell rang. Charles, with a mutter of "Dr. Henry, perhaps," -rushed to the door. He came back.</p> - -<p>"It's Miss Brown, come to stay the evening. What shall I tell her?"</p> - -<p>"Tell her I can't go." Catherine was abrupt. She was disappointed and -she was fighting off a sturdily growing fear about the next day,—and -she resented Charles's air of injury.</p> - -<p>"I hate to, after I begged her to come in."</p> - -<p>Catherine brushed hastily past him and went to the door. Miss Brown, a -plump, pale, garrulous woman of middle age, a southerner, waited.</p> - -<p>"Letty, the baby, isn't very well," explained Catherine. "Nice of you -to come in so promptly. Some other night, perhaps." And presently the -door could be closed upon Miss Brown's profuseness of pity.</p> - -<p>Charles was glooming about his study.</p> - -<p>"When you leave them all day for your job," he said, "I should think -you might——"</p> - -<p>"No, you shouldn't think!" Catherine laughed at him. "You're as bad as -Spencer, little boy!"</p> - -<p>The bell rang again.</p> - -<p>"That's Henry!" Catherine hurried to the door, and opened it to Stella -Partridge's little squirrel smile and extended hand.</p> - -<p>"Good evening, Mrs. Hammond. I told Dr. Hammond I'd let him have this -outline when it was finished."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Won't you come in, Miss Partridge?" Catherine heard Charles coming. He -lounged beside her, hands in pockets.</p> - -<p>"No, thank you. I just brought this outline, Dr. Hammond." She handed -him the envelope.</p> - -<p>There was a moment of silence, in which Catherine felt a tugging at -her will, as if Charles tried to bend her to some thought of his. She -glanced at him, still sulky.</p> - -<p>"I have it," she said. "Why don't you take Miss Partridge to your show, -Charles? If she would like it. Have you seen 'Liliom,' Miss Partridge?"</p> - -<p>"Letty is indisposed," said Charles, "thus interfering, after the -fashion of children, with her parents' plans."</p> - -<p>"Can't I stay with her?" Miss Partridge opened her dark eyes very wide.</p> - -<p>"Mrs. Hammond is punctilious."</p> - -<p>Catherine withdrew a step. If Charles added another word—she could -hear the rest of his sentence, about her leaving them all day! But he -merely added, "Would you care to go, Miss Partridge?"</p> - -<p>"Ought you to leave Mrs. Hammond, if the baby is ill?"</p> - -<p>"It's always a relief to be rid of a disappointed man, Miss Partridge." -Catherine was thinking: how disdainful that cold, hard voice makes her -words sound! "Letty isn't seriously ill, but I want the doctor to look -at her. I shall be happier here."</p> - -<p>Miss Partridge seated herself in the living room, and Catherine, after -a glance at Letty, and a moment of search for the tie Charles wished, -sat down opposite her. She was charming to look at, Catherine realized; -a soft, fawn colored suit, exquisitely tailored over her slender, -sloping<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> shoulders; a long brown wing across the smart fawn hat, a knot -of orange at her throat. She drew off her wrinkled long gloves, and -revealed a heavy topaz on her little finger.</p> - -<p>"Your work, Mrs. Hammond? You are finding it interesting?"</p> - -<p>"Very." Catherine felt as expansive as an exposed clam.</p> - -<p>"Mr. Hammond was saying you had some kind of educational research in -hand."</p> - -<p>"Yes." Was that Letty, crying? Charles came in, rubbing his sleeve over -his hat.</p> - -<p>"I don't need glad rags, do I, since you aren't in evening dress?"</p> - -<p>"No gladder than those." Miss Partridge rose.</p> - -<p>Catherine stood at the living room door, listening for the sound of the -elevator. Charles came rushing back.</p> - -<p>"You're sure you'll be all right?" That was his little flicker of -contrition. "I don't like to leave you this way, but the tickets might -as well be used."</p> - -<p>"Have a good time." Catherine kissed him lightly.</p> - -<p>"Wish it was you, going!" He was in fine fettle again, offering a small -oblation before his departure.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Letty woke, complaining that she wanted a drink. Catherine sat beside -her, smoothing the silky fair hair, until she slept again. Her forehead -didn't feel so parched. But Catherine went to the telephone and called -Henrietta. Bill answered.</p> - -<p>"Oh, Catherine! Henry got your message. She had to stop at the hospital -first. She'll be in. Is Letty really sick?"</p> - -<p>"I hope not. But I need Henrietta's assurance."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p> - -<p>"She'll be along."</p> - -<p>Spencer looked up from his books.</p> - -<p>"I think Daddy ought to stay home if you have to," he said, frowning.</p> - -<p>"Daddy isn't any use if the children are sick," announced Marian, with -dignity. "Is he, Muvver?"</p> - -<p>"Not as a nurse," said Catherine. "But he's a great comfort to me, you -know."</p> - -<p>"How?" Spencer was still accusing.</p> - -<p>"Just being." Catherine smiled at him. Spencer had a curious way -of reaching out, thrusting fine feelers about him, investigating -subtleties of relationship. He was staring at her intently, as if he -pondered her last words. Then with a sigh, postponing judgment, he -closed his book.</p> - -<p>"My home work's all done, and I did it alone, because Letty is sick. Is -that a comfort to you, Mother?"</p> - -<p>"It is." Catherine was grave.</p> - -<p>When they had gone to bed, Marian in Catherine's room, so that Letty -would not disturb her, Catherine moved restlessly about the apartment. -She was thinking about them, her children. What they needed. More than -food and shelter, more than physical safety. They needed a safety in -the <i>feeling</i> around them. A warm, clear sea, in which they could -float, unaware that the sea existed. Tension, ugly monsters, frighten -them, disturb them out of their own little affairs. Spencer especially, -but Marian, too. Letty was such a baby, still, but she was growing; she -was still turned inward. Catherine wandered to the door and listened. -She was breathing too rapidly. If Henry would only come!</p> - -<p>She sat down at the window, staring out at the dull<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> yellow glow -which held the city as a mass and dimmed the stars. You can't pretend -for them, she thought. They catch the reality under the surface. But -that perfect safety of feeling—who has it! She felt herself opposed -to Charles, struggling with him, toward that intense calm that might -hold the children free and unaware. Perhaps some women could attain -that—she was abject, despairing—women who could lose their own -struggling selves. But what then? The children grew up, and made -their own circles, never reaching anything but this going-on. Surely -somewhere, along the way, there should be something beside immolation -for the future, otherwise why the future? Marian, Letty—I can't do -it, she thought. Drown myself to make that quiet, white peace. I -won't drown. I keep bobbing up, trying to be rescued. Something in -me, shrieking. If I can rescue that shrieking something, and silence -it, then surely there's more in me, more poise, more love, to wrap -them—no, not wrap them, to float them in. If Charles will help!</p> - -<p>She had a sharp vision of Charles and Stella Partridge, sitting side -by side in the darkened theater, their eyes focussed on the brilliant -fantasy of the stage. Charles had been delighted to go. He didn't have -play enough, these last years. I wish I were beside him,—her hand -reached out emptily, as if to grasp his. Good for him, seeing other -people, other women. They stimulate him, even if I don't like them. She -caught, like a reflection in a mirror, the tone of that short walk from -the bus with Bill. Something exciting about that—an encounter with -another person.</p> - -<p>A ring of the bell; Dr. Henrietta at last.</p> - -<p>Catherine stood behind her, as she examined Letty,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> drowsily fretful at -the disturbance. What strong, white, competent fingers Henry had! They -went into the living room.</p> - -<p>"She's not very sick." Henrietta sank into a chair and snapped open -her cigarette case. "I'm not sure—tell better to-morrow. I'll come in -early. You better keep the other children away from her. It might be -something contagious."</p> - -<p>"She's had measles." Catherine was openly dismayed, as the bugbear of -contagion rose. "Good land, if she has, it means they all get it, just -like a row of dominoes. Henry! What shall I do?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, get a nurse and quarantine them. You don't need to stay in. -Charles doesn't."</p> - -<p>"I couldn't."</p> - -<p>"Well, wait until to-morrow. May be just indigestion. I've given her -a dose for that." Dr. Henrietta stretched in her chair, crossing her -ankles, slim and neat in heavy black silk above small, dull pumps. -"We don't want your career busted up yet. How's it going? And where's -friend husband?"</p> - -<p>"I sent him off to the theater with Miss Partridge." Catherine grinned. -"He had the tickets, and was sure' I needn't stay with Letty."</p> - -<p>"I never yet saw a man who was worried about his child when he had -something he wanted to do." Henry puffed busily. "They regard children -as pleasant little amusements, but put them away if they bother."</p> - -<p>"Charles isn't quite like that——"</p> - -<p>"No defense necessary. I'm just offering an observation. Sorry I had -to be late. I stopped to watch Lasker do a Cæsarian on a case of mine. -Beautiful job. But<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> how's your work? Bill said he ran into you, spoke -of your looking well."</p> - -<p>"My job is fine." Catherine saw, at a great distance, the mood in which -she had come home. "Henrietta, I must go down to-morrow. There's a -conference. I've been getting ready for it all the week."</p> - -<p>"Miss Kelly will be here, won't she?"</p> - -<p>"It's Saturday. She'll have to take Spencer and Marian—although I -suppose Letty has exposed them already."</p> - -<p>"She may have nothing at all, you know. I'll come in as early as -possible. What time is this conference?"</p> - -<p>"Ten."</p> - -<p>"Um. I'll try to make it. I promised to stop in at the hospital. -Charles can stay, can't he, if I should be detained?"</p> - -<p>"Don't you let her have anything that will quarantine me! If I am -thrown out now, I'll never get back."</p> - -<p>"All righty." Henrietta rose, shaking down her skirt. "I won't." She -ground out her cigarette in the ash tray, with a shrewd upward glance -at Catherine. "You go to bed. You look too frayed. This is just a first -hurdle, you know. I'll come in before nine to-morrow. But you make -Charles stay, if I should be later."</p> - - -<p class="center">VI</p> - -<p>Catherine woke into complete alertness. Charles had come in. She heard -his cautious step in the hall. Letty was sleeping easily, her breathing -soft and regular again. Catherine slipped noiselessly out of the room.</p> - -<p>"Hello!" She brushed into Charles at the door.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> "Marian's in my bed," -she whispered. "Have a good time?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, fair." Charles yawned. "How's Letty?"</p> - -<p>"Asleep. Tell me about it in the morning. We might wake her."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In the morning Catherine was fagged. All night the awareness of Letty -had kept her at the thin edge of sleep, drawn out by the faintest -stirring. The child was sitting up in bed, now, clamoring for her doll, -her bwekkust, and her go-duck; her cheeks were pink, but they seemed -flower-cool to Catherine's fingers.</p> - -<p>"Let's see if you have any speckles, Letty." She peeled the night dress -down; one round red spot in the shell-hollow of her knee. "Is that a -speckle, Letty Hammond, or a mosquito bite!" Letty gurgled deliciously -as Catherine's fingers tickled. "Let's see your throat. No, wider? Does -it hurt?"</p> - -<p>"Uh huh. Hurt Letty." Letty's arms were tight around her neck, and she -bounced vigorously up and down on her pillow.</p> - -<p>"Here, stop it." Catherine pinioned her firmly. "Where does it hurt?"</p> - -<p>"Hurt Letty. Here." Letty sat down with a plump, and pointed at her toe.</p> - -<p>"Well, you don't look sick, I must say. But that spot—" Catherine -imprisoned her in the night dress again, and tucked her firmly under -the blanket. "I'll bring Matilda, and you can put her to bed with you. -Dr. Henrietta's coming to see you soon."</p> - -<p>Marian appeared at the door.</p> - -<p>"Daddy's asleep and I didn't know he was in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> bed." She giggled. "I -most woke him up jumping on him."</p> - -<p>"Hurry and wash, dear. And don't come in with Letty, please."</p> - -<p>Catherine sighed a little as she hurried to thrust herself into the -shafts of the morning.</p> - -<p>Letty's frequent interruptions, and Charles's reluctance to wake; -the discovery that there were no oranges; the demoniac speed of the -clock—it was after eight when they sat down to breakfast. Catherine -drank her coffee, and hurried off to dress.</p> - -<p>Flora came in. Catherine heard her, with relief, offering to make fresh -toast for Charles. Miss Kelly appeared. She was calmly solicitous as -Catherine explained Dr. Henrietta's visit. "Of course, I couldn't go -into quarantine," she said, "on account of my mother."</p> - -<p>"I understand. If you'll just take the other children outdoors for the -morning——"</p> - -<p>They had gone. It was nine, and no Dr. Henrietta. Catherine fastened a -net carefully over her coiled hair, brushed her hat, poking at the limp -bow of ribbon, and then went slowly to the study, where Charles was -rummaging through a drawer of his desk.</p> - -<p>"You have no classes this morning, have you?" she began.</p> - -<p>"No, I haven't. Do you know where I put that outline Miss Partridge -left?"</p> - -<p>"Here it is." Catherine lifted it from beneath the evening paper. -"Charles, Henry is coming in. She said as early as possible. I can't -wait for her. Would you mind?"</p> - -<p>"What's she coming for? Isn't Letty all right?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I don't know. She has a red spot. Henry thought she might have -something—scarlatina——"</p> - -<p>"I thought they'd had 'em all, those red diseases."</p> - -<p>"Her fever is down. I think she's not sick. But Henrietta wanted to be -sure. Would you mind—waiting till she comes?"</p> - -<p>"Stay here this morning?" Charles looked up, an abrupt frown between -his eyes. "I can't, Catherine. I can't play baby tender. I've got a -meeting."</p> - -<p>"So have I." Catherine stood immobile in the doorway. "A very important -one. Those men from the West are here. At ten. I am to present the work -I've been doing."</p> - -<p>"Can't Flora keep an eye on Letty till Henry comes?"</p> - -<p>"I think one of us ought to be here."</p> - -<p>"Good Lord, Catherine! I have to meet the committee on choice of -dissertation subjects. Do you want me to telephone them that I have to -stay home with the baby?"</p> - -<p>"You couldn't stay just an hour?"</p> - -<p>"Be reasonable, Catherine. I can't make myself ridiculous."</p> - -<p>"No?" Catherine stared at him an instant. Then she turned and left him.</p> - -<p>He followed her into the living room, where she stood at the window.</p> - -<p>"Call up your mother," he suggested. "She can probably drop in."</p> - -<p>"Why," said Catherine evenly, "does it make you more ridiculous than -me? That dissertation committee meets a dozen times this fall. Letty is -your child, isn't she? Don't tell me I'm her mother!"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I expected something of this sort, when you announced that you had -to have a career." Charles walked briskly in front of her, stern and -determined. "We might as well fight it out now. Do you want me to take -your place? You said not. Do be reasonable."</p> - -<p>"I'm so reasonable it hurts." Catherine's laugh was brittle. "Go on, to -your meeting. I'll stay, of course."</p> - -<p>"Well, really, I'm afraid you'll have to." Charles hesitated, and then -added, gruffly, "It's unfortunate it happened just this way." His -gesture washed his hands of the affair.</p> - -<p>As he strolled importantly out of the room, Catherine's hand doubled in -a cold fist against her mouth. He can't see, she thought. There's no -use talking.</p> - -<p>When he had gone, Catherine hovered a moment at the telephone. No use -calling her mother; she wouldn't be able to come up from Fiftieth -Street in time to do any good. She sat down at the desk, her hands -spread before her, her eyes on her wrist watch. Henrietta might still -come. The minutes were thick, cold liquid, dripping, dripping. Letty's -loud call summoned her, and she hunted up the dingy cotton duck, while -that slow, cold drip, drip continued. Half past nine. The minutes split -into seconds, heavy, cold, dripping seconds. Time could drive you mad, -thought Catherine, while the seconds dripped upon her, if you waited -for it long enough.</p> - -<p>It was almost ten when she telephoned the Bureau.</p> - -<p>Dr. Roberts' neat accents vibrated at her ear.</p> - -<p>"I am sorry," she said, "but I cannot get away. One of the children is -ill. I've been waiting for the doctor. You have the final sheets and -graphs I made, haven't you? There's a list of questions and notes in -the left<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> drawer of my desk. I regret this. If you wish any explanation -of the graphs, please call me."</p> - -<p>He sounded abrupt, irritated, under his perfunctory regret. As -Catherine hung away her hat and coat, she felt a cold, heavy weight -back of her eyes, deep in her throat. Time had lodged there! I can't -sit down and cry, she thought. No wonder he is angry. It's my business -to be on hand. She had once, swimming at low tide, found herself in a -growth of kelp, the strong wet masses tangling about her frightened -struggles. Charles had dragged her out, to clear green water and -safety. She laughed, and pressed her fist again against her mouth. He -wouldn't drag her out of this tangle, not he!</p> - -<p>She sat beside Letty, reading to her, when Dr. Henrietta finally came.</p> - -<p>"Catherine! You stayed!" Her round face set in dismay. "I tried once to -call you. That baby died, the one we delivered last night. I've been -working there."</p> - -<p>"I knew you'd come when you could." Catherine pushed her chair away -from the bed. Henrietta pulled off her coat, pushed up her cuffs from -her firm wrists, and bent over Letty.</p> - -<p>"She's all right," she said, presently. "Just a touch of stomach upset -last night. That's good."</p> - -<p>"Ducky sick." Letty waved her limp bird at Henrietta.</p> - -<p>"Keep him very quiet, then." Henrietta poked the duck down beside -Letty, and shook herself briskly into her coat.</p> - -<p>Catherine followed her into the hall.</p> - -<p>"I might as well have gone down to the office." She was ironic.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Exactly. I'm awfully sorry, Catherine, that I am so late. It's almost -noon, isn't it? I thought I could keep life in that little rag." Her -eyes looked hot and tired. "But I couldn't. Just keep Letty from -tearing around too much to-day. She'll be sound as a whistle to-morrow -again."</p> - -<p>"Well, at least we escaped a plague." Catherine leaned against the -wall, inert, dull.</p> - -<p>"Wouldn't Charles stay?" Henrietta peered at her. "Too busy, eh? Well, -Monday you'll be free as air again."</p> - -<p>"I wonder."</p> - -<p>"Now, Catherine, don't be so serious. A year from now you won't know -you weren't there!"</p> - -<p>"It's not just that, Henry. It's the whole thing." Catherine flung open -her hands. "Am I all wrong, to try it?"</p> - -<p>"You know what I think. Here, put on your hat and come out in the -sunshine. Haven't you some marketing to do?"</p> - -<p>"No. Flora does it. But I will go to the corner with you."</p> - -<p>Flora could keep an eye on Letty. Catherine hurried for her wraps, and -joined Henrietta at the elevator.</p> - -<p>"You've had a horrid morning, haven't you?" she said, swinging up from -her inner concentration. "The poor baby——"</p> - -<p>"If we can pull the mother through. She's been scared for months. She -doesn't know, yet."</p> - -<p>They stood at the corner, the clatter of the street bright about them.</p> - -<p>"I've another call at Ninetieth. I'll ride down." Hen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>rietta signaled -the car. "Buck up, Cathy. It's all part of life, anyway. Death—" She -shrugged. "That's the queer thing." Her placid mask had slipped a -little. "Pleasant words to leave with you, eh?" She jeered at herself. -"So long!"</p> - -<p>As Catherine recrossed the street, she hesitated, glancing back into -the shade behind the iron palings of the little park. Was that Charles, -just within the gate, and that slim, elegant, tan figure beside him? -She turned and fled. She wouldn't see them, not now. Not until she had -fought through this thicket of resentment. After all, she had known, -all the time, that what fight there was to make she must make unaided. -The sun was warm and golden, and there came Spencer and Marian, -shouting out, "Moth-er!" as they chased ahead of Miss Kelly.</p> - -<p>"Oh, we had a nice time." Marian danced at her side, clinging to her -arm. "Miss Kelly told us a new game."</p> - -<p>How well they looked, and Miss Kelly, trudging to catch up with them, -was serene and smiling. Letty wasn't sick. It was all a part of life. -She could manage it, everything, someway!</p> - -<p>Miss Kelly, puffing and warm, was delighted with the news about Letty.</p> - -<p>"I was trying," she said, "to figure out some way about mother, so I -wouldn't have to desert you." Catherine's quick smile saw Miss Kelly as -a sunlit rock, equable, sustaining.</p> - -<p>Flora shooed the children out of the kitchen. She was engrossed in -the ceremonial preparation of stuffed peppers with Spanish sauce. -Catherine, preparing orange<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> juice for Letty, was secretly amused at -the elaborate rites. Not until Flora had closed the oven door on the -pan did she look up at Catherine. Then——</p> - -<p>"Gen'man called you up, Mis' Hammond. I plumb forgot to tell you. He -pestered me 'bout where you was, and I told him you was out for the -air."</p> - -<p>"Who?" Catherine poured the clear juice in to a tumbler. "Did he——" -She turned quickly. "Who was it?"</p> - -<p>"Lef' his number. I put it on the pad."</p> - -<p>Catherine flew into the study, deaf to Letty's shrill call. It was -the Bureau. Her voice, repeating the number, was imperative. She had -forgotten that Dr. Roberts might call. The whir of the unanswered -instrument pounded on her ear drum. After one. The Bureau was deserted. -What <i>would</i> he think! Why, it looked—she pushed the telephone away, -dull color sweeping up to her hair. It looked as if she had lied. But -it had been so late when Henrietta had come that any thought of the -conference had been worn down. She would have to explain, Monday, as if -she had been caught malingering.</p> - -<p>"Hello." Charles stood at the door, uncertainty in his greeting. -"What's the verdict? Pest house?"</p> - -<p>"No." Catherine was jamming the whole dreadful morning out of sight, -stamping on the cover—"Henry says it was just indigestion. She's all -right."</p> - -<p>"Did you get down to your meeting?"</p> - -<p>Catherine shook her head.</p> - -<p>"Now that's a shame," Charles advanced tentatively. "I hoped Henry -would come in time."</p> - -<p>Easy to say that now, thought Catherine. Then—I won't be ugly. I can't -endure it.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I felt an awful brute." Charles threw his arm over her shoulders. "But -you saw how it was."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I saw!" An ironic gleam in Catherine's eyes.</p> - -<p>"And here Letty didn't need you, anyway. You might even have gone last -night."</p> - -<p>"I must see to her lunch." Catherine twisted out of his arm, adding -with a touch of malice—"You know you had a good time."</p> - -<p>"Oh, fair." Charles was indifferent. "Left me sort of done this -morning. Miss Partridge wanted me to thank you for her pleasant -evening."</p> - -<p>"I thought I saw you at the gate just now," said Catherine.</p> - -<p>"Yes. I just ran into her on my way home."</p> - -<p>"Don't look at me that way!" Catherine cried out sharply.</p> - -<p>"What way?" Charles expanded his chest, bristling.</p> - -<p>"As if you expected to see me—<i>suspecting</i> you!"</p> - -<p>"Well, good Lord, you sounded as if you thought I'd spent the morning -with Stel—Miss Partridge."</p> - -<p>"I hadn't thought so. Did you?"</p> - -<p>"Of course not." Charles began, with elaborate patience. "I told you -that dissertation committee—" Catherine's laugh interrupted him, and -he stared at her. "I don't know what you're trying to do," he said -slowly. "I'm sick of this guilty feeling that's fastened on me. Last -night because I wanted you to go to the theater, this morning because I -had to go to a legitimate meeting. You don't act natural any more."</p> - -<p>Catherine went quickly back to him, her finger tips resting lightly -against his shoulders.</p> - -<p>"And so he deposited the blame where it wouldn't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> bother him—on her -frail shoulders!" Her eyes, mocking, brilliant in her pale face, met -his sulky defiance. "Philander if you must, but don't act as if you'd -stolen the jam!"</p> - -<p>"I'm not philandering."</p> - -<p>"No, of course he isn't." Catherine brushed her fingers across his -cheek. "Not for an instant. Now come, luncheon must be ready."</p> - -<p>"But I may!" His voice came determinedly after her, as she went into -Letty's room, "if I don't have more attention paid to me at home!"</p> - - -<p>VII</p> - -<p>Saturday, Sunday, Monday morning again. Catherine, shivering a little -in the wind from the gray river, as the bus lumbered down the Drive, -tried to escape the clutter of thoughts left from the week-end. She had -borrowed twenty-five dollars from Charles that morning, for Miss Kelly. -She had pretended not to see his eyebrows when she laid the market -bills in front of him. Flora had said, when Catherine suggested more -discretion in shopping: "Yes'm, I'll make a 'tempt. But charging things -in a grocery store jest stimulates my cooking ideas."</p> - -<p>Perhaps I'll have to take back the shopping. A gust caught her hat, -wheeled it half around. And clothes! I've got to have some. How? I -won't have a cent left out of that first check. It's like an elephant -balancing on a ball, or a tight-rope walker without his umbrella, this -whole business.</p> - -<p>Last night, when her mother had come in, and Bill and Dr. Henrietta, -her mother with several amusing little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> stories about the friend who -had come from Peoria, Illinois, to spend the winter with her—too plump -to fit easily into the kitchenette—Charles, with his affectionate -raillery of Mrs. Spencer—her mother was fond of Charles. But he -needn't have made a jest of Saturday morning, and his refusal to give -up his job to stay home with Letty. "That's what poor men are coming -to, I'm afraid," her mother had told him. Henrietta had jibed openly at -him, so openly that only Mrs. Spencer's gentle and fantastic mockery -had smoothed his feathers. And Bill had said nothing. Catherine drew -her collar closely about her throat. She had found him looking at her, -and in his glance almost a challenge, a recall of that brief walk -on Friday. "I hope it's straight, your road," he had said then. She -shrugged more deeply into her coat. Straight! Was it a road? Or merely -a blind alley? Or a tight-rope, and she had to poise herself and juggle -a hundred balls as she crossed; the house, the children, the bills, -Charles, always Charles, and her work. She came back to the thought of -Dr. Roberts and the explanation she must offer.</p> - -<p>Dr. Roberts, however, seemed miraculously to need no explanation. He -had called to tell her that the committee was to stay over Monday, and -that she could meet the two men after all. With sudden release from -the tension of the past days, Catherine moved freely into this other -world, and her road seemed again straight. She was quietly proud of the -conservative response her suggestions met; her mind was agile, cool, -untroubled. There grew up a plan for a first-hand study of several of -the normal schools. Someone from the Bureau might go west. Catherine -brushed aside her sudden picture of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> herself, walking among the bricks -and stone, the people, for which these dust-grimed catalogues stood.</p> - -<p>As she went home that evening, little phrases from the day ran like -refrains. "A masterly analysis, Mrs. Hammond. Your point of view is -interesting." And Dr. Roberts, after the men had gone—"I call this a -most encouraging meeting, Mrs. Hammond. Sometimes the personal equation -is, well, let us say, difficult. But you have tact."</p> - -<p>Oh, it's worth any amount of struggle, she thought. Any amount! I'll -walk my tight-rope, even over Niagara. And keep my balls all flying in -the air!</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h2><a name="PART_III" id="PART_III"></a>PART III</h2> - -<p class="center">BLIND ALLEYS</p> - - -<p class="center">I</p> - -<p>Margaret and Catherine were lunching together in a new tea room, a -discovery of Margaret's. The Acadian, Acadia being indicated in the -potted box at the windows, the imitation fir trees on the bare tables, -and the Dresden shepherdess costume of the waitresses.</p> - -<p>"It's a relief, after St. Francis every day," said Catherine. "The soup -of the working girl grows monotonous."</p> - -<p>"Hundreds of places like this." Margaret beckoned to a waitress. "Our -coffee, please, and cakes." The shepherdess hurried away. "Isn't she a -scream," added Margaret, "with that sharp, gamin face, and those ear -muffs, above that dress! Why don't you hunt up new places to eat?"</p> - -<p>Catherine glanced about; sleek furs draped over backs of chairs, plump, -smug shoulders, careful coiffures, elaborately done faces.</p> - -<p>"The home of the idle rich," she said. "I can't afford it. I'm not a -kept woman. Fifty cents is my limit, except when I go with you."</p> - -<p>"You draw a decent salary." Margaret pulled the collar of her heavy -raccoon coat up against a snow-laden draft from the opened door. "What -do you spend it for? You haven't bought a single dud. Why, you don't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> -slip off your coat because the lining is patched. Does Charles make you -give him your salary envelope?"</p> - -<p>Catherine was silent and the shepherdess set the coffee service in -front of Margaret.</p> - -<p>"Well?" Margaret poured. "I'm curious."</p> - -<p>"Only a rich man can afford a self-supporting wife," said Catherine -lightly. "I was figuring it up last night. I've got to make at least a -hundred a week."</p> - -<p>"What for?" insisted Margaret.</p> - -<p>"Everything. There's not a bill that isn't larger, in spite of anything -that I can do. Food, laundry, clothes. You have no idea how much I was -worth! As a labor device, I mean."</p> - -<p>"Um." Margaret glinted over her mouthful of cake. "I always thought the -invention of wives was a clever stunt."</p> - -<p>"They can save money, anyway. I tried doing some of the things -evenings, ironing and mending, but I can't."</p> - -<p>"I should hope not!"</p> - -<p>"Well, then, I have to pay for them. Charles can't. It wouldn't be -fair."</p> - -<p>"You look as if you were doing housework all night, anyway." Margaret's -eyes gleamed with hostility. "Why can't the King take his share? You're -as thin as a bean pole."</p> - -<p>"Wait till you get your own husband, you! Then you can talk."</p> - -<p>"Husband!" Margaret hooted. "Me? I'm fixed for life right now."</p> - -<p>"They have their good points." Catherine rose, drawing on her gloves. -Margaret paid the bill and tipped with the nonchalance of an unattached -male.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p> - -<p>"That's all right." Margaret thrust her hands deep into her pockets and -followed her sister. She turned her nose up to sniff at the sharp wind, -eddying fine snow flakes down the side street. "I know lots of women -who prefer to set up an establishment with another woman. Then you go -fifty-fifty on everything. Work and feeling and all the rest, and no -King waiting around for his humble servant."</p> - -<p>Catherine laughed.</p> - -<p>"I'll try to bring up Spencer to be a help to his wife," she said.</p> - -<p>"Oh, Spencer!" Margaret glowed. "He's a darling! Tell him I'm coming up -some day to see him."</p> - -<p>They walked swiftly down the Avenue; Catherine felt drab, almost -haggard, worn down, by the side of Margaret's swinging, bright figure.</p> - -<p>"How's your job?" she asked. "You haven't said a word about it."</p> - -<p>"Grand." Margaret's smile had reminiscent malice. "You know, I've -persuaded them to order new work benches for the main shop. I told -you how devilish they were? Wrong height? Well, I cornered Hubbard -last week. It was funny! I told him I'd found a terrible leak in his -efficiency system. He's hipped on scientific efficiency. I tethered him -and led him to a bench." She giggled. "I had him sitting there cutting -tin before he knew where he was, and I kept him till he had a twinge of -the awful cramp my girls have had. Result, new benches."</p> - -<p>"You won't have half so much fun when you accomplish everything you -want to, will you?"</p> - -<p>"That's a hundred years from now, with me in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> cool tombs." They -stepped into the shelter of the elevator entrance to the Bureau. "I'm -working now on some kind of promotion system. Of course, most of the -girls are morons or straight f.m.'s, but there are a few who are -better."</p> - -<p>"What are 'f.m.'s'?"</p> - -<p>"Feeble-mindeds. Like to do the same thing, simple thing, day after -day. It takes intelligence to need something ahead." She grinned at -Catherine. "They make excellent wives," she added. "Now if you didn't -have brains, you'd be happy as an oyster in your little nest."</p> - -<p>The splutter of motors protesting at the cold, the scurry of people, -heads down into the wind, gray buildings pointing rigidly into a gray, -low sky—Catherine caught all that as background for Margaret, fitting -background. Margaret was like the city, young, hard, flashing.</p> - -<p>"Of course, f.m.'s make rotten mothers," she was finishing. "In spite -of the ease with which, as they say, they get into trouble."</p> - -<p>"You know," Catherine's smile echoed the faint malice in her sister's -as they stood aside for a puffing, red-nosed little man who bustled in -for shelter—"I think you take your maternal instinct out on your job. -Creating——"</p> - -<p>"Maternal instinct! Holy snakes!" Margaret yanked her gloves out of -her pockets and drew them on in scornful jerks. "You certainly have a -sentimental imagination at times."</p> - -<p>"That's why you don't need children," insisted Catherine. "Just as -Henrietta Gilbert takes it out on other people's children."</p> - -<p>"You make me sick! Drivel!" Margaret glowered, gave her soft green hat -a quick poke, and stepped out of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> the lobby. "Good-by! You'll lose your -job, maundering so!"</p> - -<p>"Good-by. Nice lunch." Catherine laughed as she hurried for the waiting -elevator.</p> - -<p>She stood for a few minutes at the window of her office, before she -settled down to the afternoon of work. There was snow enough in the -air to veil the crawl of traffic far below, to blur the spires of -the Cathedral. The clouds hung just above the buildings, heavy with -storm. She would have to go home on the subway; no fun on the bus -such an evening. Dim gold patches in distant windows—office workers -needed light this afternoon. Her eyes dropped to the opposite windows. -Revolving fussily before the great mirrors—how dull and white this -snow-light made them—was a plump little man; the shade cut off his -head, but his gestures were eloquent of concern about the fit of his -shoulders.</p> - -<p>Her window, looking out on the honeycombing of many windows, and down -on the crawling traffic, and off across the piling roofs, had come to -be a sort of watch tower. For more than two months now, she had looked -out at the city. She had come to know the city's hints of changing -seasons, hints more subtle, far less frank than the bold statements of -growing things in the country. A different color in the air, altering -the sky line; a different massing of clouds; a new angle for the -sun through her window in the morning; a gradual stretching of the -shadows on the roof tops. She stood there, gazing out at the terrific, -impersonal whirl. If she could see the atoms, separately, each would be -as fussy, as intimately concerned in some detail as little Mr. Plump -opposite, pulling up his knee to twist at his trouser leg. And yet,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> -out of that tiny squirming could grow this enormous, intricate whole.</p> - -<p>The stenographer at the door drew her abruptly from the window.</p> - -<p>"Oh, yes, Miss Betts. I wanted you to take these letters." She bent -swiftly to her work.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>She grimaced wryly as she was jammed and pushed through the door into -the crowded local. Shoving feet, jostling bodies, wrists at the level -of her eyes. Hairy wrists, chapped thin wrists, fat wrists, grubby, -reaching up for straps; and the horrid odor of dirty wool, damp from -the snow. A wrench, a grinding, and the terrific, clattering roar of -the homeward propulsion began. She longed for the quiet isolation -of the hour on top of the bus, in which she could swing into fresh -adjustment. Lucky that heads were smaller than shoulders and set in the -middle. The figure against her began to squirm, and her swift indignant -glance found a folded newspaper worming up before her eyes. Friday, -December 9. She stared at the date, its irking association just eluding -her. The 9th. She set her lips in dismay as she caught her dodging -thought. That reception, to-night! She had meant to buy fresh net for -her dress, her one black evening dress—and Margaret's appearance -had driven it out of her head. No room for her abortive shrug. Well, -probably fresh net would have fooled no one.</p> - -<p>At the sound of her key in the door, Marian rushed through the hall. -Catherine, shivering a little at the sudden warmth after the windy -blocks from the subway, bent to kiss her.</p> - -<p>"Muvver!" Marian's eyes were roundly horrified.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> "Spencer's run away. -We can't find him anywhere!" Her voice quavered. "He's lost himself!"</p> - -<p>"What do you mean!" Catherine thrust her aside and ran through the -hall. Letty was clattering busily around the edge of the living room -rug on her go-duck. "Where's Miss Kelly?"</p> - -<p>"Kelly gone. Spennie gone. Daddy gone." Chanted Letty, urging her steed -more violently.</p> - -<p>"Flora!" Catherine went toward the kitchen, to meet Flora, her mouth -wide and dolorous.</p> - -<p>"He's done eluded 'em, Mis' Hammond," she said. "They been hunting -hours an' hours."</p> - -<p>"What happened?" Catherine was cold in earnest now, a gasping cold that -settled starkly about her heart.</p> - -<p>"He ain't come home after school. Miss Kelly, she took Marian and went -over there, but they wasn't no one lef' there. Chillun all gone."</p> - -<p>"Yes, Muvver, we went over three times, Miss Kelly and me, and he -wasn't there, and the janitor said no children were there."</p> - -<p>"But he always comes straight home." Catherine's hand was at her -throat, as if it could melt the constriction there. "You didn't see -him, Marian?"</p> - -<p>"No." Marian flopped her hair wildly. "Miss Kelly was waiting for me, -and Letty, and we had a walk, and he wasn't here——"</p> - -<p>"Has Mr. Hammond been in?"</p> - -<p>"Yessum, he's been in, and out, chasing around wild like."</p> - -<p>"He knows, then?"</p> - -<p>"He come home sort of early," explained Flora. Catherine shrank from -the dramatic intensity of Flora's words.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> "Came home, and foun' his -child wasn't here. He's gone for the police."</p> - -<p>The telephone rang, and Catherine hurried herself into the study.</p> - -<p>"Yes?" Her voice was faint. "Yes? Who is it?"</p> - -<p>"That you, Catherine?"</p> - -<p>"Have you found him?" she cried.</p> - -<p>"No." The wire hummed, dragging his voice off to remoteness. "Has Miss -Kelly come back?"</p> - -<p>"Where have you looked? I'll go hunt——"</p> - -<p>"You stay there." Then, suddenly loud, "You might call up the -hospitals. I've notified the police station. They are flashing the -description all over town."</p> - -<p>"Where are you now?" begged Catherine, but there was only silence, and -the terminating click.</p> - -<p>Flora was at her elbow.</p> - -<p>"Ain't found him?" She clucked her tongue.</p> - -<p>"You better go on home, Flora." Catherine couldn't look at her. She -felt a ghoulish contamination, setting her mind afire with horrible -pictures. Spencer, run down in the snowy street. Spencer—"I must stay -here anyway."</p> - -<p>Flora wavered. She wanted, Catherine knew, to see the end of this -melodrama.</p> - -<p>"Your own family will need you," she urged. "Go on."</p> - -<p>Then, swiftly, to Marian, "Please keep Letty quiet. Mother wants to -telephone."</p> - -<p>She closed the door and pulled the telephone directory to the desk. How -many hospitals there were! Hundreds—Has a little boy been brought in, -injured? He is lost. Unless he were terribly hurt, he could have told -you who he is. Has a little boy been brought in—yes?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> He's nine—no, -not red hair. The wind yelled down the well outside the window. Surely -he wouldn't be hurt, and not be found. Still and unmoving, in some dark -street—oh, no! No! She clutched her arm against her breast, as her -finger ran down the dancing column of numbers. Someone at the door. She -listened, unable to stand up.</p> - -<p>Miss Kelly came in, her face mottled with the cold, her hair in -draggled wisps on her cheeks.</p> - -<p>"I don't know where to look next," she said. "I hunted up the addresses -of some of the boys he plays with, but they are all home, and haven't -seen him since school, not one of them."</p> - -<p>"When did you begin to hunt?"</p> - -<p>"Immediately." Miss Kelly was dignified, sure of her lack of blame. "We -waited here for him, just as we always do. I thought it was too cold -for Marian and Letty to wait at the corner."</p> - -<p>"He—he's always come straight home, hasn't he?" said Catherine, -piteously.</p> - -<p>"Always. That's why——" she stopped.</p> - -<p>That's why, that's why—Catherine's mind picked up the words. That's -why he must be hurt, unconscious somewhere, kidnaped—that little -Italian boy who was found floating in the river—Spencer's face, white -on black water—stop it! Not that!</p> - -<p>"Can you stay to see that Letty goes to bed?" Catherine turned to her -endless task. "I haven't called all the hospitals yet."</p> - -<p>His gray eyes, long, with the wide space between, and the small, fine -nose; fair boy's brows; mobile, eager lips. If I had been here, she -thought, as she waited for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> curt official voice to answer,—Has a -little boy been brought in? If I had been here—oh, if—if——</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Finally she sat, staring at the ridiculous gaping mouthpiece. Where -would they take him, if he were—dead. Wasn't there a morgue? The word -twisted and plunged in her, a slimy thing. She would call the morgue. -She heard Miss Kelly's firm voice, "No, you mustn't bother your mother, -not now. Come and have your supper, Marian."</p> - -<p>He couldn't be dead. That warm, hard, slender body—how absurd! Morbid. -He was somewhere, just around the corner. Death, that's the queer -thing. Who had said that? Henrietta. She would call her—and ask her.</p> - -<p>Before she had given the number, the front door clattered, opened. -Catherine pushed herself erect; she was stiff, rigid. She found herself -in the hall. Charles, glowering, and in front of him, propelled by his -father's hand on his shoulder, Spencer! She couldn't move, or speak.</p> - -<p>"Well, here's the fine young man," said Charles.</p> - -<p>Spencer wriggled under his hand. His eyes smoldered with resentment, -and his mouth was sullen.</p> - -<p>Catherine's hands yearned toward him. She mustn't frighten him, but -just to touch him, to feel him!</p> - -<p>"A great note!" Charles came down the hall, righteous anger on his -face. "I called up the police and had them send out their signals."</p> - -<p>"Where was he?" Catherine had him now; she lifted Charles's hand away -and touched the boy. He was trembling—Charles had been rough!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I was just playing," Spencer cried out, gruffly. "I didn't know you'd -tell the police."</p> - -<p>"You've been told to come straight home, haven't you? Tell your mother -what you told me, sir!"</p> - -<p>"Charles!" Catherine's flash at him was unpremeditated. "You needn't -bully him!"</p> - -<p>"Tell her!" roared Charles.</p> - -<p>"I just said"—Spencer's words tumbled out, full of impotent fury and -indistinct with tears—"I said—I said—I didn't want to come home to -that old Kelly. I didn't want——"</p> - -<p>"He said," remarked Charles coldly, "that he saw no use of coming home -when his mother wasn't here."</p> - -<p>"But where was he?" Catherine had her arm over his shoulder, in a -protective gesture. "Where did you find him?"</p> - -<p>"I heard his voice. As I came along Broadway, past that vacant lot. He -was down behind the bill boards there, with some street gamins, doing -the Lord knows what."</p> - -<p>"We just built a fire, Moth-er." Spencer pressed against her. "I didn't -know it was so late. We were bandits."</p> - -<p>"Go on into your room, Spencer. You know you should come straight home."</p> - -<p>"He ought to be punished," declared Charles, as the boy vanished in -relieved haste.</p> - -<p>"I judge you have been punishing him." Catherine stood between Charles -and Spencer's closing door. "He was trembling, and almost crying, and -he never cries."</p> - -<p>"Did you want me to kiss him when I found him, after the way I've spent -the afternoon?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p> - -<p>"You want to make him feel as bad as you have!" Catherine leaned -against the wall. She was exhausted; her heart was beating in short, -spasmodic jerks, as if she had run for miles.</p> - -<p>"I suppose I was mad, clear through." Charles grinned, abashed. Then he -stiffened again. "Devilish thing to do. I came home after some lecture -notes, for a meeting, and I couldn't even go to the meeting."</p> - -<p>Miss Kelly came into the hall. She had smoothed her hair into its usual -neatness, and her face was roundly pink again.</p> - -<p>"I am afraid I must go," she said. Her eyes inspected them, gravely. -Catherine flushed; Miss Kelly had heard them squabbling and she was -reproaching Catherine.</p> - -<p>"I'm sorry you've been detained. I'll see that Spencer realizes how -serious this is," she said.</p> - -<p>When the door had closed on her sturdy back, Charles broke out, "If -you'd been here, this wouldn't have happened. You heard what he said, -didn't you?"</p> - -<p>"Don't say that!" Catherine's exhaustion sent hot tears into her eyes.</p> - -<p>But Charles had to unload his overcharged feelings somewhere.</p> - -<p>"You might as well face the truth. If you care more for a paltry job -than for your children—" He shrugged. "But you won't see it. I've got -to have my dinner. We'll be late to that reception now. If I miss all -my appointments because my wife works, I'll have a fine reputation."</p> - -<p>Incredible! Catherine watched him clump down to the living room. He -wanted to hurt her. She pressed her fingers, ice-cold, against her -eyeballs. She wouldn't cry. He felt that way. Not just because he had -been worried<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> about Spencer. There was a heavy coil of resentment from -which those words had leaped. And she had thought, for weeks now, -that she had learned to balance on her tight-rope, and keep the balls -smoothly in air. While under the surface, this!</p> - -<p>"Can't we have dinner?" he called to her. "We really must hurry a -little, Catherine."</p> - -<p>She set the dinner silently on the table, avoiding the defiant glance -she knew she would meet.</p> - -<p>"Don't wait for me." She paused, a tumbler of milk in her hand. "I want -to talk to Spencer."</p> - -<p>Charles pulled out his watch and gazed at it impressively.</p> - - -<p class="center">II</p> - -<p>Catherine, sitting on the edge of her bed, drew on one silk stocking -and gartered it. She lifted her head; when she bent over like that, -faint nausea, like a green smear, rose through her body behind her -eyelids. She shouldn't have eaten any dinner. Or was it just Charles, -and his restrained disapproval—or Spencer. She sighed, thinking -through her talk with Spencer. With insistent cunning he had offered as -excuse, his dislike of Miss Kelly, his distaste for the house without -Catherine. "I didn't think it was bad," he said. "I didn't do anything -bad."</p> - -<p>"Inconsiderate," suggested Catherine, looking at the stubborn head on -the pillow. Safe! She couldn't scold him, and yet—"You didn't think -how we would feel."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I thought," said Spencer. "I thought you wouldn't know. And my -father wasn't very con-sid-'rate." He thrust his head up indignantly. -"He yanked me right away, and the fellows all <i>saw</i> him."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p> - -<p>Then Charles had called sharply, "Catherine! Are you dressing?" and she -had, under pressure, resorted to a threat. She was ashamed of it. She -drew on the other stocking, smoothing it regretfully. She had said, "If -you won't promise to come home directly, I shall ask Miss Kelly to call -for you at school."</p> - -<p>Charles came in, bay rum and powder wafted with him, his face pink and -solemn.</p> - -<p>"Oh, I haven't put in your studs—" She made a little rush for his -dresser, but he brushed her away.</p> - -<p>"Please don't bother. You're not ready yourself."</p> - -<p>Catherine stifled an hysterical giggle. Emotion in these -costumes—Charles in barred muslin underwear, his calves bulging above -his garters, and she in silk chemise—was funny! She lifted her black -dress from its hanger and slipped it over her head. Well, it had -dignity, of a dowdy sort, if it wasn't fresh. She stood in front of -the long mirror, trying to crisp the crumpled net of the long draped -sleeves. Her fingers caught; she had pumiced too hard at the ink on -their tips—hollows at the base of her throat—try to drink more milk. -Her skin had pale luster, against the black, but her face lacked color. -"If this weren't a faculty party," she said, lightly, "I'd try rouge."</p> - -<p>"Why doesn't that girl come?" asked Charles, his voice muffled by the -elevation of his chin as he struggled with his tie. "Time, I should -think."</p> - -<p>"What girl?" Catherine turned from the mirror. "Oh—" her shoulders -sagged in complete dismay.</p> - -<p>"Miss Brown. You got her, didn't you?"</p> - -<p>Catherine, a whirl of black net, was at the telephone. How could she -have forgotten! "No, Morningside!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> She waited. She had called once, -that morning, and Miss Brown was out. She had meant—"Is Miss Brown -in?" Charles was at the door, an image of funereal, handsome dignity. -Miss Brown was not in. No, the voice had no idea when she would be in.</p> - -<p>"Oh, say it!" Catherine's fingers pushed recklessly through her hair. -"Say it, Charles!" He swung on his heel and disappeared.</p> - -<p>Perhaps her mother—but no one answered that call, and Catherine -remembered that Friday was the night for opera.</p> - -<p>A voice in the hall, although she hadn't heard the doorbell. It was -Bill.</p> - -<p>"Going out, eh?"</p> - -<p>"Apparently not." Charles was elaborately, fiendishly jovial. "I -thought we were, but Catherine neglected to provide a chaperone for the -children."</p> - -<p>Catherine pressed her fingers against her warm cheeks. Her quick -thought was: just Bill's entrance scatters this murky, ridiculous -tension. This ought to be a joke, not a tragedy.</p> - -<p>"Here, run along, you two." She lifted her head and looked at Bill, -smiling at her. "I've nothing to do. Let me sit here and read."</p> - -<p>"We can't impose on you that way—" began Charles.</p> - -<p>"Of course we can!" Catherine tinkled, hundreds of tiny bells at all -her nerve ends. "Of course! Come on, Charles."</p> - -<p>As Charles stamped into his overshoes, Catherine ran back to the living -room. Bill stood at the table, poking among the magazines.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Thank Heaven you came just then!" she said, softly. "Oh, Bill!"</p> - -<p>"What is this momentous occasion, anyway?"</p> - -<p>"A faculty reception. It's not that. I'm an erring wife and mother." -His glance steadied her, stopped that silly tinkling. "Spencer ran -away and I forgot to send word for Miss Brown to come in, and—" That -wordless quiet of his enveloped her, like a deep pool in which she -relaxed, set free from the turmoil of the past hours. "If I could stay -here with you!"</p> - -<p>"Are you about ready?" Charles asked crisply.</p> - -<p>Had Bill lifted his hand in a heartening gesture, or had she imagined -it?</p> - -<p>The elevator was slow. Charles laid a vindictive thumb on the button; -below them the signal snarled.</p> - -<p>"Sam's probably at the switchboard," said Catherine, coldly.</p> - -<p>"He won't be, long!" Charles pressed harder.</p> - -<p>Catherine turned away, her fingers busy with the snaps of her gloves. -The tips were powdery and worn; another cleaning would finish this -pair. If Charles wanted to be childish, venting spite on anything— A -clatter and a creaking of cables behind the iron grill.</p> - -<p>"If you prefer to stay with Bill, why come?"</p> - -<p>Catherine's jerk rent the soft kid. The snap dangled by a shred. The -door slammed open and they stepped into the car.</p> - -<p>Sam was explaining to Charles. In the narrow corner mirror Catherine -could see the line of Charles's cheek bone, the corner of his mouth. -Poor man! He was in a humor. Well, he could stay there! She wouldn't -cajole him out of it; he could wait till she did! It was always<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> she -who had to make the overture. Charles sat sulkily down in the swamp of -ill feeling and wouldn't budge.</p> - -<p>"It's stopped snowing." She lifted her face to the steel plate of sky -overhead.</p> - -<p>"Temporarily." Charles strode along with great steps. "Here, take my -arm." He stopped at the corner.</p> - -<p>"Have to keep my gloves fresh." Catherine hurried across the slippery -cobblestones. As they climbed up past the dark chapel, she squirmed -inside her coat. How ridiculous they were, going along in a pet, like -children. Bill would laugh, if he knew. The long windows of the law -library dropped their panels of light across the thin snow. When we -reach the library steps, thought Catherine, I'll say, let's be good. -Only—why must I always be abject, and ingratiating? Again that streak -of hard, ribald mockery: let him sulk if he likes. I'm tired of being -humble. Below them the wide sweep of steps, the bronze figure aproned -with snow; the dignified weight of the building rising above them, the -recessed lights glowing behind the columns. How many times they had -walked together across these steps!</p> - -<p>"Charles." She spoke impetuously. "Don't be cross. What's the use?"</p> - -<p>"If you chose to project your own mood upon me—" Charles jerked his -chin away from the folds of silk muffler.</p> - -<p>"Oh, Lord!" sighed Catherine. "Don't we sound married!"</p> - -<p>She could see the building now, with shadowy figures moving past the -lighted windows. I can't be humble enough in that distance to do any -good. What an evening!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p> - -<p>It was like a nightmare, through which she moved as two people, one a -cool, impersonal, outer self, given to chatter rather more than usual; -the other a mocking, irreverent, twisting inner self, mewed up in -confusion and injury. Empty, meaningless chatter. What fools people -were, dragging themselves together in an enormous room, moving around, -busy little infusoria. Charles liked it. He felt himself erect and -important, with the crowding people a tangible evidence of his success, -the decorum, the polished surfaces clinking out assurance that here -was his group, here he was admitted, recognized. Catherine, bowing, -smiling, listening to his voice, offering bright little conventional -remarks, was conscious of his feeling. He's feeding on it, she thought. -Growing smug. How far away from him I am—far enough to see him smug, -and hate it. They had drifted away from the formal receiving line. She -twisted at her glove, to hide the torn snap.</p> - -<p>"Well, Mrs. Hammond!" Mr. Thomas was at her elbow, his thick glasses -catching the light blankly, his head enormous above the rather pinched -shoulders of his dress suit. "This is a pleasure." He shook her hand -nervously, oppressed by his social obligation. "A pleasure."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Thomas bustled up, crisp in rose taffeta, a black velvet ribbon -around her pinkish, wrinkled throat.</p> - -<p>"So long since we've seen you. We were just saying we must have you out -for Sunday night supper. Walter does miss Spencer so much."</p> - -<p>"That would be fine!" declared Charles, heartily. "I haven't forgotten -that cake."</p> - -<p>"We heard such a funny thing." Were the lines in her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> pink cheeks -dented in malice? She bobbed her curly gray head sidewise at Charles. -"Someone told Mr. Thomas that your wife had left you, Mr. Hammond."</p> - -<p>Catherine saw the ominous twitching under Charles's eyes, but Mr. -Thomas put in, hastily.</p> - -<p>"I think it was intended for a jest, you know." He turned to Catherine, -his large, gentle mouth agitated, as if in distress at his wife's poor -taste. "I met Dr. Roberts last week. I know him quite well, you know. -He was speaking about your work, Mrs. Hammond. He was extraordinarily -enthusiastic."</p> - -<p>Catherine took that gratefully, as something in which she was at least -not culpable. There was a little eddy of people around them, throwing -off several to stop for casual greetings; when they had gone on, -Catherine heard Mrs. Thomas's high voice. "The poor boy! I suppose the -house seems empty with no mother in it." Her outer self looked across -at Charles, calm enough, but her inner self had an instant of rage, a -hurling, devastating instant.</p> - -<p>"Mr. Hammond was just telling me about Spencer's running away." Mrs. -Thomas had a peculiarly self-righteous air in her pursed lips and -bright eyes. "How worried you must have been!"</p> - -<p>"Oh, Mr. Hammond found him so promptly."</p> - -<p>"But just a minute can seem a long time. I remember one day——"</p> - -<p>"Pardon me, please." Charles moved away, restrained eagerness in the -forward thrust of his head above his broad, black shoulders.</p> - -<p>Catherine saw him edge past a group, saw a pearl-smooth shoulder above -a jade-green velvet sheath. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> Partridge, of course! What was she -doing at a faculty reception? She had a glimpse of the squirrel smile, -before she picked up the thread of Mrs. Thomas's domestic lyric.</p> - -<p>The Thomases wanted refreshments. Catherine's throat was sticky-dry -at the thought of food. She had a sharp longing for her own living -room and Bill. He could ease her of these innumerable prickings. She -made her way to Charles, and then stood, unnoted, at his elbow. Miss -Partridge saw her, and her hand swam up in a leisurely arc. Catherine -nodded pleasantly.</p> - -<p>"I think I'll run along, Charles. You aren't to hurry." She drifted -away before his hesitancy reached action.</p> - - -<p class="center">III</p> - -<p>Snow again in the air, wet on her cheeks. I am going home, to see -Bill, in search of ballast. She hurried across the campus. The library -windows were dark; two cleaning women, aprons bundled about their -heads, clattered ahead of her with their pails.</p> - -<p>As she pushed open the apartment door, she saw Bill, standing at the -doorway of Marian's room, indistinct in the shadow. He moved violently -away.</p> - -<p>"Have the children been bothering you?" Catherine listened an instant -at the door. Nothing but the faintest possible rhythm of breathing.</p> - -<p>"I thought I heard Letty call." Bill retreated into the living room. -"Where's Charles? The party over?"</p> - -<p>"I ran away." Catherine slipped out of her coat. "Leaving him with Miss -Partridge." She drew down her long gloves, laughing, and looked at -Bill. Some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>thing curiously disturbed in his heavy-lidded glance. How -tired and gaunt he looked. "What is it, Bill?"</p> - -<p>He waited until she had settled into the wing chair.</p> - -<p>"Nice dress, that," he said, as he sat down.</p> - -<p>"This?" She smiled at him. Her hands lay idly along folds of the black -stuff. "Are you bored, sitting here alone? The children haven't really -been awake, have they?"</p> - -<p>"No. I eavesdropped on them." Again that heavy, troubled look. "I heard -them—breathe."</p> - -<p>What in that phrase had such poignancy? What in the silence swung a -light close to the dark, unruffled surface of this man, illuminating, -far down in deep water, that struggling, twisting something?</p> - -<p>He rose, brushing aside the curtain, to gaze out at the dim city.</p> - -<p>"Better run along," he said, slowly. "You must be weary."</p> - -<p>"Oh, no." Catherine's hand entreated him.</p> - -<p>At that he turned slightly, to face her. She had a queer fancy that she -saw his forehead gleam, his hair shine damp, as if he came swinging up, -up to the surface. But he spoke calmly enough.</p> - -<p>"I've been thinking over one of Henrietta's truisms, as I eavesdropped -on your children. Wondering about it, and you."</p> - -<p>Catherine was still; breathing might blur the glass, this glass through -which she might have a clear glimpse of Bill.</p> - -<p>"It is this." His smile, briefly sardonic, mocked at himself. "That -children are the world's greatest illusion. The largest catch-penny -life offers."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Sometimes," Catherine hesitated, "I think Henry says a clever thing to -fool herself."</p> - -<p>"Isn't it more than clever? Don't you feel, when you are confronted -with a black wall of futility, in yourself, that at least there are -your children, three of them, and that they may jack life up to some -level of significance, and that they are you?"</p> - -<p>"Is that an illusion?"</p> - -<p>"Isn't it? Our puny little minds, scratching at the edges of whatever -it is that drives us along, pick up bits of sand." Bill laid his hand -on the back of the chair, dragged it around, and dropped into it, his -gaunt profile toward the window, his hands gripped on his knees. "After -all, a merry-go-round doesn't go anywhere but around. Isn't that what -this feeling amounts to? You don't find yourself convinced that you are -the vehicle for your parents, do you? And yet"—the words lagged—"I am -sure I have that illusion as strongly as any fool, that I have the need -for that consolation."</p> - -<p>"Surely"—Catherine spoke softly; she mustn't drive him back—"you, of -all people, Bill, are least futile."</p> - -<p>He turned his face toward her, a haggard little grin under his somber -eyes.</p> - -<p>"What could be more futile? Builder of bridges and buildings, which a -hundred other men can make better than I. I had a maudlin way, when -I was younger, of expecting that to-morrow would give me the thing I -wished. To-morrow! Another catch-penny. And this, too, puerile as it -sounds. For a time Henrietta needed me, while she fought to get her -toes in. But she's past that now."</p> - -<p>"Bill"—Catherine strained toward him, her eyes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> darkly brilliant—"I -came home to-night, because I wanted you. Because when I am frantic and -silly, you can pull me up. You have, countless times."</p> - -<p>"That is your generous imagination." Catherine flung out her hand -impatiently. "And you see, I have, instead, spewed out this sentimental -maundering."</p> - -<p>"Don't talk that way!" cried Catherine.</p> - -<p>"No." He rose abruptly, to stand above her, so that she tipped her head -back, and one hand crept up to press against the pulse beating in her -throat. His glance buffeted hers, entreating something, inarticulate, -baffling. Then, suddenly, the old quiet mask was on again, and the -water closed over his plunge within.</p> - -<p>"Don't ever be frantic, Catherine," he said. "Good night."</p> - -<p>She sat motionless when he had gone. Bill, in the dark, listening to -the children. Bill, at the window, sending that heavy stare out into -the night. Bill, stripped of his concealment. There was a slow brewing -of exultation within her. He had come out, to her!</p> - -<p>The great illusion. She crept silently to the door where Letty and -Marian slept. Spencer moaned softly in his sleep, and she stood for -moments beside his bed. They weren't illusory, except as you tried to -substitute them for everything. They were part of you, to go on when -you stopped. But they were separate, individual, cut off, <i>themselves</i>. -What had Bill said? You don't feel yourself the vehicle for your -parents, do you? You wanted your children, part of you, extenuation for -your own shortcomings. Wasn't it an illusion, a flimsy drapery of words -over a huge, blind, instinctive drive? Bill wanted children, then, and -Henrietta—crisp, efficient——</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p> - -<p>Catherine undressed hastily and crept into bed. Charles was late. -Resentment, like a small sharp bone, still rankled. He's like a little -boy. If I could be patient—Bill never takes things out on Henrietta. -She doesn't know his feeling. Perhaps it is always that way; one person -out of two is not quite happy, never an equal balance. Charles was -content until I broke loose. Henrietta is content. You have to offer up -a human sacrifice. She stared at the ceiling, where a broken rectangle -of saffron light from some court window sprawled. If I could think -about Charles, without this jangle of feelings, perhaps I could see -what to do. Could you ever think straight? Did emotion always enter, -refracting?</p> - -<p>Charles <i>says</i> he doesn't mind my working, that he's glad if I like it. -That's what he thinks; no, what he thinks he thinks! But underneath, -he's outraged, and any tiny thing is a jerk of the thin cover over -that feeling. Never till this winter has he been so—so touchy. Silly -little things. Perhaps—she waited an instant—was that his key? -Perhaps I notice it more, because I want approval. But he makes a -personal grievance if I forget his laundry. In a way, it is personal. -I forget, because I don't think of him every second. I try to remember -everything. She twisted over on one side, an arm curled under her -head. I haven't asked him to take any share of the house job, or the -children. She shivered, as if a cold draft from that hour before dinner -blew across her; Spencer, lost, because she wasn't at home. Charles, -intimating that he was justified. But she was at home——</p> - -<p>The door clicked softly open, and cautious feet moved down the hall.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p> - -<p>Catherine smiled. Charles was like an elephant when he attempted -silence.</p> - -<p>"I'm not asleep," she said, and blinked as he flashed on the light. -"You must have had a good time, to stay so late."</p> - -<p>"It's a pity you bothered to go at all," he said briefly, as he -vanished behind the closet door.</p> - -<p>Catherine turned away from the light, her hand closing into a fist -under her cheek. She wouldn't wrangle, even if he was still out of -sorts. She heard him padding about in stocking feet. He snapped off the -light and scuffed down the hall. She heard him whistling. He would wake -the children, if he weren't more careful.</p> - -<p>He was back again, a stocky figure against the pale square of window as -he shoved it open. He was scurrying for bed.</p> - -<p>"Charles!" Catherine's cry leaped out. "Come here!"</p> - -<p>"Well?" He stood above her. "Brr! It's chilly."</p> - -<p>She reached up for his hands, dragged him down beside her, her arms -slipping up to his shoulders, clasping behind his neck. He resisted -her; she felt stubborn hardness in his muscles.</p> - -<p>"Charles," she begged, "what's happening to us! Don't——"</p> - -<p>"I'm all right," he said. "I thought you were off color."</p> - -<p>Catherine let her hands drop forlornly away.</p> - -<p>"You've been sort of touchy." He cleared his throat. "I'm not perfect. -But I hate this feeling—that you're standing off, waiting to be -critical of me."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I'm not!" Catherine sighed.</p> - -<p>"All right, then." Charles bent down, brushed his lips<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> against her -cheek, and stood up. "Go to sleep. You're tired, I guess."</p> - -<p>Catherine lay motionless, listening to the creak of his bed, the soft -pulling and adjusting of blankets. The wind was cold on her eyelids, on -the tears that crept down. She was humiliated, shamed. She had dropped -her pride and evoked touch—passion—only to find him—her hands flung -open, to escape the lingering sensation of that obdurate, resisting -column of his throat.</p> - -<p>Unbidden, racking, a swift visual image of Stella Partridge, smooth -ivory and jade. She fled away from it. Not that! She wouldn't add -jealousy to her torment. But that eager, forward thrust of his head -as he made his way across the room toward her, and that secret, -honey-mouthed deference in the casual talk of the woman. Oh, no!</p> - -<p>Then, rudely, as if she turned to face some monstrous shape that -pursued her, she looked at the image. Perhaps, if Charles was injured, -outraged, under his reasoning surface, he might turn to Stella. She -wanted something of him, that woman. Perhaps it was love she wanted, -although the hard metallic gleam under the softness of her eyes seemed -passionless, egocentric.</p> - -<p>"Charles," she whispered. What else she might have said, she didn't -know. But Charles was asleep.</p> - - -<p class="center">IV</p> - -<p>The next morning, in the accustomed flurry of baths, breakfast, -dressing, Catherine jeered at her nightmares of the dark. She would -not be a fool, at least. The children were ecstatic about the snow, -which lay in caps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> and mounds and blankets on the roof tops below -the windows. Marian made snowballs from the window ledge, and tried, -giggling, to wash her father's face. Charles was jovial, amusing -himself with the rôle of good-natured father. Yes, he might go coasting -with them that afternoon. He'd see if he couldn't get away from the -office early. Miss Kelly could telephone him at noon.</p> - -<p>Miss Kelly came in; Flora was belated.</p> - -<p>"Probably the trolley cars are stuck," said Spencer, full of delight at -possible catastrophes the snow might bring.</p> - -<p>Catherine left a note for Flora, with the day's instructions, and -hurried off. She had swung free of the night in a long arc of release.</p> - -<p>The Drive had a dramatic beauty; white morning sunlight piercing the -gaps made by cross streets, long blue shadows stretching from the -buildings, the river gray blue under the clearing sky, the clean, soft -lines of snow turned back by the plows, snow caught in the branches of -trees and shrubbery, like strange fruit; gulls wheeling like winged -bits of snow. By nightfall all the beauty might be trampled and turned -dingy; now—Catherine sat erect, drawing long breaths.</p> - -<p>That noon she would squeeze out a few minutes for some Christmas -shopping. Saturday wasn't a good day, but if she found a doll for -Marian, she could begin to dress it. She thrust her foot into the aisle -and peered down at it. Those shoes wouldn't last until January. Well, -she would have her third check on the twenty-third, and she had repaid -Charles. Funny, how much more it cost to dress herself as working woman -than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> as mother and wife. Perhaps with the first of the year that -increase would gain material shape. Dr. Roberts had hinted at it again.</p> - -<p>The bus left the Drive and rattled through the city; one note -everywhere, the squeak of shovels against the sidewalks, piles of -grime-edged snow, files of carts heaped and dripping.</p> - -<p>She shivered, hugging her arms close; the last few blocks were always -chilly. Wonderful colors in the great shop windows, exotic, luxurious, -and bevies of shop girls, stepping gingerly over dirty puddles in their -cheap, high-heeled slippers.</p> - -<p>Just a half day of work to-day. She could finish the chapter she had -been writing. As she waited for the elevator, she had a sharp renewal -of herself as a part of this great, downward flood. The morning ride -was a symbol, a bridge across which she passed. She nodded to the -elevator boy; his grin made her part of the intimate life of this huge -building. You'd expect to shrink, she thought, as the elevator shot -upwards—swallowed up, and instead you swell, as if you swallowed it -all yourself.</p> - -<p>Dr. Roberts hadn't come in. Dropping into her work was like entering a -quiet, clean place of solitude. She reread the pages she had written, -the beginning of her full report, and then wrote slowly, finding -pleasure in the search for a phrase which should be clear glass through -which the idea, the hard, definite fact, might be visible. The jangle -of the telephone bell broke into a sentence.</p> - -<p>It was Miss Kelly. Flora hadn't shown up. What did Mrs. Hammond wish -done about luncheon?</p> - -<p>"Hasn't she sent any word?" The picture of her kitchen, empty, and -confused, rose threateningly in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> quiet office. "Well, you can find -something for the children. I'll be home early."</p> - -<p>If something was wrong with Flora! Catherine pushed away the image of -disaster, finished her sentence, and glanced at her watch. Almost one. -Lucky it was Saturday. She would have time—vaguely—to see to this. -Better not stop for any shopping.</p> - -<p>When she reached home, the children rushed to the door, accoutered in -leggings and mufflers for coasting.</p> - -<p>"Mother! Come with us. Daddy's coming!" Spencer and Marian tugged at -her arms, and Letty pulled at her skirt.</p> - -<p>"I can't, chickens." Catherine hugged them, each one. She loved the -exuberance of their greeting, the sharp delight of contrast after the -hours away. "Miss Kelly is all ready." She glanced at Miss Kelly's -serene face. "Flora hasn't shown up? Nor sent word? I'll have to look -her up. To-morrow perhaps I can go."</p> - -<p>"I gave the children their lunch," explained Miss Kelly, "but of course -I had no time to set the kitchen to rights."</p> - -<p>She certainly hadn't. Catherine gave one dismayed look at the disorder, -and decided to hunt for Flora first. She must be sick.</p> - - -<p class="center">V</p> - -<p>Catherine tried to pick a firm way through the slush of the sidewalk. -Flora must live in this block. She peered at the numbers over dark -doorways, under the sagging zigzags of fire escapes. The snow had been -thrown up in a dirty barricade along the edge of the walk, and over -the upset garbage and ash cans, down the short mounds, shrieked and -wailed and coasted innumerable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> children. It was like a diminutive -and distorted minstrel show, thought Catherine, stepping hastily out -of the path of a small black baby spinning down into the slush on a -battered tin tray. Snow on the East Side, and on the Drive—she had a -wry picture of the beauty of the morning.</p> - -<p>There. 91-A. She stood at the entrance, with a hesitant glance into the -dim hall. Absurd to be nervous about entering. She had never seen where -Flora lived, although she had heard the dirge of rising rent and lack -of repairs which Flora occasionally intoned. She walked to the first -door and knocked boldly.</p> - -<p>"Who dar?" The voice bellowed through the door.</p> - -<p>"Does Mrs. Flora Lopez live in this house?" Catherine had a notion that -the dim house gave a flutter of curiosity, as if doors moved cautiously -ajar. "I'm Mrs. Hammond," she added sharply to the closed door. "She -works for me."</p> - -<p>The door swung open a crack, and a fat dusky face appeared, one white -eye gleaming.</p> - -<p>"You wants Mis' Flora Lopez?"</p> - -<p>"Do you know her? Which is her flat?"</p> - -<p>"Sure I knows her." The round eye held her in hostile inspection. "Is -you f'om the police station, too?"</p> - -<p>"No. She works for me. Is she sick?" Queer, how that sense of listening -enmity flowed down the crooked stairway. "Which is her flat?"</p> - -<p>"She ain't sick, exac'ly. Ain't she come to wuk to-day?"</p> - -<p>"Who zat, want Flora?" The voice came richly down the stairway.</p> - -<p>"Which is her flat?" insisted Catherine.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p> - -<p>The door opened wider, disclosing a ponderous figure with great soft -hips and bosom, a small child in a torn red sweater clinging to her -skirts and looking up with round frightened eyes.</p> - -<p>"She lives on the top flo' rear. I donno as she's home."</p> - -<p>Catherine climbed the stairs. There's nothing to be afraid of, she told -herself stubbornly. The sweetish odor of leaking gas, the cold, damp -smell of broken plaster and torn linoleum in the unheated halls choked -her as she climbed. She was sure doors opened and closed as she passed. -She felt herself an intruder, with profound racial antipathy, fear, -stirring within her and around her. I won't go back, she thought. She -tried to step boldly across the hall, but her rubbers made a muffled, -sucking note. At last the top floor. She knocked at the rear door. No -sound; merely the strained sense of someone listening.</p> - -<p>"Flora!" she called sharply. "Are you there? It's Mrs. Hammond."</p> - -<p>Silence. Feet shuffled on bare boards behind that door.</p> - -<p>"Flora!" she called again, and the door crept slowly open.</p> - -<p>"Why, Flora! What <i>is</i> the matter?" Catherine gazed at her. Short hair -raying like twisted wires about her face, one eye an awful purple-green -lump, the wide mouth cut and swollen, the broad nostrils distended—a -dumb-show, a gargoyle of miserable agony. "What has happened to you?"</p> - -<p>Flora stepped back, pushing ajar a door.</p> - -<p>"Come in, Mis' Hammond." Her voice had the ex<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>hausted echo of riotous -weeping. "Come in and set down. I was goin' to write you a message."</p> - -<p>Catherine followed her into the living room, immaculate, laboriously -furnished. The table, purple plush arm-chairs—Flora had told her when -she ordered those from the installment house; lace curtains draped on a -view of tenements and dangling clothes.</p> - -<p>"What has happened, Flora?" Catherine had lost her uneasiness. Flora -had a vestige of the familiar, at least; her gray bathrobe was an old -one Catherine had given her.</p> - -<p>Flora sat down in a purple chair and began to rock back and forth, -moaning. Tears ran down her cheeks, gleaming on the bruises.</p> - -<p>At a sound behind the door Catherine turned, to find the solemn round -eyes of a little boy fixed upon her. He scuttled over to Flora, burying -his face on her knees.</p> - -<p>"Is he yours?"</p> - -<p>"Yes'm." Flora cradled one arm about him. "Yes'm. He's my baby." Her -voice rose suddenly into a wail. "An' my li'l girl, where's she! They -took her off to shut her up—all 'count of that"—she shook one fist in -air—"that man!"</p> - -<p>Gradually, in broken and violent bits, Catherine gathered the story. -Flora had married her professional gentleman. He hadn't wanted her to -keep the children. They were hers, she had worked for them always, and -dressed them nice, and left them with a neighbor when she went off to -work. She wanted them to grow up nice. She even put little socks on -her girl, and the teacher at school said why should she dress her up -that way, picking on her because she was black. She was twelve. Then -Flora<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> found out her professional gentleman had another wife down -south. She let him stay, anyway, "so long as we'd been married, and -he was handsome." Then she had to put him on bail to leave the little -girl alone, always fooling with her. "I told her to stay with Mis' -Jones till I got home." And finally—Catherine was cold with pity and -horror—Flora had discovered that he hadn't let Malviny alone, that he -had ruined her, and stolen the money she had saved to pay the rent, and -was packing his suitcase to leave. "I started out to kill him," she -said briefly, "but he knocked me down." Then the police had come.</p> - -<p>"They said I let Malviny run the streets. She's awful pretty, Mis' -Hammond, most white, she is. Her pa was pale. I was working for her, -wasn't I?" Flora's gesture was wide with despair. "Providin' for her -and him—" she rocked the boy against her breast. "I done the best I -could. She wanted things, and he give her money. She's only twelve."</p> - -<p>At last Catherine fled down the stairs, feeling that perversion -and horror and the failure of honest, respectable effort barked at -her heels. Flora couldn't come back to her, not at once. She had -to testify. She won't ever come back, thought Catherine. She'll be -ashamed, because I know all this. She had, when Catherine had tried -to offer sympathy, shrunk away, into the collapse of the structure of -herself as competent, self-respecting working woman. "I done my bes'!" -Her pitiful wail dogged Catherine's feet through the brittle, freezing -slush of the street.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="center">VI</p> - -<p>Catherine, in an old house dress, waded determinedly through the mash -of the disordered apartment. Dishes, sweeping, dinner—Miss Kelly had -straightened the children's rooms. She was too well paid for general -utility. I suppose I am inefficient, thought Catherine. Just to be -caught in this mess. But what else can I do? What would a man do in -my place? She pulled a chair near the kitchen table and sat down to -the task of shelling lima beans, while she speculated as to Charles's -procedure. He wouldn't plunge himself into the mess, at least. He would -leave it, until someone else stepped in. That's one trouble with women, -she decided. They have all these habits of responsibility. Now I should -be off playing somewhere, after this week, and here I am!</p> - -<p>Charles came in with the children. Miss Kelly, discreetly, had left -them at the steps. She's got the right idea, thought Catherine grimly. -She's not going to be roped in for something she's not paid for. -Letty's cheeks were peonies, her eyes bright stars, and her leggings -were soaked with melted snow.</p> - -<p>"We had one grand time, didn't we, chicks!" Charles stamped out of his -rubbers and shook off his snow-spattered coat. "Had a snow fight and -Letty and I beat."</p> - -<p>"We landed some hum-dingers right in your neck, anyways," said Spencer.</p> - -<p>"Hum-dings in neck!" shrieked Letty. "Hum-gings in neck!"</p> - -<p>"You all look as if you'd landed snow everywhere." Catherine shooed -Marian and Spencer into their rooms in quest of dry clothing, ran back -to the kitchen to lower<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> the gas under the potatoes, and returned to -strip Letty of her damp outer layers.</p> - -<p>"Even my shirt is wet." Marian giggled, shaking her bloomers until bits -of snow flew over the rug. "It was awful fun, Muvver. And we coasted -belly-bump. Is that a nice word to say?"</p> - -<p>"And now we are starved, like any army after a fight," came a sturdy -bellow from Charles.</p> - -<p>Bedraggled and glowing, warmly fragrant—Catherine laughed at them as -she tugged the pink flannel pajamas onto Letty's animated legs.</p> - -<p>"There!" she kissed her, gave the tousled yellow floss a swift brush, -and carried her into the dining room to set her safely behind the bar -of her high-chair. "Supper and then to bed you go, after this exciting -day."</p> - -<p>"What's this about the dusky Flora?" Charles came into the kitchen.</p> - -<p>"I'll tell you about it later." Catherine spoke hastily. Tired as she -was, their home-coming had given her the old sweet rush of pleasure, of -safety, of possession. She wanted to keep it untouched, free of that -horror and pity.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Much later, when the children were in bed, Charles strolled into the -kitchen and reached for a dish towel. Catherine looked up at him as he -rubbed a tumbler with slow care.</p> - -<p>"Like old times, isn't it, eh?" He set the glass on the shelf.</p> - -<p>Catherine swallowed her sigh.</p> - -<p>"Me wiping dishes, and telling you about what I've been doing—" Was he -deliberately wistful?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p> - -<p>"You needn't wait for dishes, need you, to talk?" Catherine's smile -blunted the slight edge in her words.</p> - -<p>"Somehow, nowadays, there never seems any chance. Nights you have to go -to sleep, and day times you aren't here."</p> - -<p>"Last night you went to sleep."</p> - -<p>"Oh, last night!" Charles with a wave of his towel sent last night into -the limbo of things best forgotten.</p> - -<p>"Well, tell me. What have you been doing? To-day, for instance."</p> - -<p>"I had two interviews this morning." Charles paused. "With two -different publishers' representatives. They are keen about this new -book on tests. Ready to make me an offer right now, without even seeing -an outline. Pretty good, eh?"</p> - -<p>"Fine! That's proof of your standing, isn't it?"</p> - -<p>"Partly. Partly just the current fad for anything psychological, and -then the clinic behind the book is a factor."</p> - -<p>"And you have the book—is it half done?"</p> - -<p>"It's getting along." Charles had drawn in his lower lip and was -chewing it thoughtfully. "The clinic is furnishing material. I've been -wondering. Of course Miss Partridge did the organizing there, and -she's done most of the tabulating of results. She suggested that we -collaborate on a book. What would you think of such a scheme?"</p> - -<p>"I'd think," cried Catherine in a flash of irritation, "that it was -pure silk for Miss Partridge! That clinic was your scheme, not hers, -and——"</p> - -<p>"I haven't committed myself." Charles busied himself with a pile of -dishes on the shelf, rearranging them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> critically. His expansiveness -contracted visibly. "You needn't be so sure I'd agree with her. I might -give her a chapter to do."</p> - -<p>"Why doesn't she write her own books?"</p> - -<p>"She isn't that type, the type that seeks expression, I mean. She is -the competent, executive type. It seems a pity for her not to assemble -her results."</p> - -<p>In silence Catherine hung away the dish-pan and scrubbed the sink. Be -careful, she warned herself. Don't be cattish; this may be entirely -reasonable.</p> - -<p>"I'm sorry you don't like her." Charles was solemn. "She thinks you are -an unusually sweet——"</p> - -<p>"She does! She little knows." Catherine grasped desperately for the -fraying thread of control. After all, why shouldn't they write a -book together? She turned quickly, to find Charles eying her with a -cautious, investigatory stare.</p> - -<p>"You know—" she grinned at him. "I may write a book with Dr. Roberts. -He was looking over my notes yesterday, and he thinks we can find a -firm to publish the report, as a marketable book. Of course, the Bureau -puts out a report, too."</p> - -<p>A thin veil of blankness drew itself over the curiosity in Charles's -face. Before he spoke, however, the bell in the hall sounded.</p> - -<p>"Company to-night!" Catherine drooped. "I'm worn to a frazzle."</p> - -<p>It was Margaret; her gay, "Hello, King Charles!" floated reassuringly -to Catherine, dabbing powder hastily on her nose, brushing back her -hair from her forehead.</p> - -<p>"I brought my partner in to meet you two. Amy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> this is the King, and -my sister, Catherine—Amy Spurgeon."</p> - -<p>Margaret, clear, sparkling, watching them with her humorous grin, as -if she had staged a vaudeville act. Amy Spurgeon, slight, dark, her -lean, high-cheekboned face sallow and taciturn over the collar of her -squirrel coat, a flange of stiff hair black under the soft brim of her -gray fur hat. Catherine nibbled at her in swift glances as they sat -down in the living room. Margaret had talked about her. "Amy has to -have a passion for something." She looked it, with the criss-crosses -of fine lines at the corners of her black eyes, and the deep straight -lines from nostrils past her mouth. Militant suffragist, pacifist—"She -had a passion for the Hindus last winter. Now she has one for me. I -can't be a cause, exactly, but she finds plenty of causes on the side." -She looks like an Indian, decided Catherine, a temperamental, rather -worn and fiery Indian.</p> - -<p>Margaret and Charles were sparring; they couldn't even telephone each -other without crossing points.</p> - -<p>"If they are feeble-minded, why bother with them? You can't change -them. Sentimental bosh, this coddling of idiots."</p> - -<p>"But they work better, I tell you! Is that sentimental? They make more -money for their bosses. That should appeal to your male sense of what -is sensible."</p> - -<p>"Even if they didn't work better"—Amy's voice shot in, a deep throaty -tone, flexible with emotion—"Every human being has a right to -happiness and comfort."</p> - -<p>"Even human beings with brains have some difficulty cashing in on that -right," said Catherine. If Amy and Charles started in on society with -the <i>vox populi</i> stop<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> out, they would fight all night! Amy stared at -her with deliberate inspection.</p> - -<p>Presently Catherine told them about Flora. Flora had, since the -afternoon, pressed so closely to the surface of her thoughts that she -was bound to come out.</p> - -<p>"You shouldn't have gone into a nigger tenement alone!" said Charles.</p> - -<p>"Why not?" demanded Amy. "Aren't negroes people?"</p> - -<p>"I did feel queer, with the house oozing excitement along with smells." -Catherine smiled at Charles. "But it wasn't dangerous. Only unpleasant."</p> - -<p>"Poor Flora." Margaret was grave. "I didn't know she had any children."</p> - -<p>"I knew she was always pleased to have clothes given her." Catherine -shivered. "The socks were pitiful! A symbol of her effort."</p> - -<p>"Well"—Charles drew at his pipe and paused, impressively—"you can see -what happens to a family when the mother isn't at home."</p> - -<p>"Listen to the King!" Margaret flared indignantly. "What about the man? -Living on her, and——"</p> - -<p>"If she'd made him support her, he might have had more steadiness."</p> - -<p>"I suppose"—Amy drawled—"you go on the theory that men are so -unstable that they can't stand freedom."</p> - -<p>Charles had a dangerous little twitch under one eye. Catherine flung -herself into the whirl of antagonism.</p> - -<p>"Will you tell me, some of you, what I am to do now? Flora won't -come back. She'll be drawn into trials and all that for a while, and -then she'll hunt up a new place, where no one knows about her. And -meantime——"</p> - -<p>"Telephone an agency," said Amy.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I'll send you one of my girls." Margaret's glance at Charles devilled -him. "I have one who can work about three months before she has to go -to a lying-in hospital, and she's just weak-minded enough to make a -good domestic."</p> - -<p>"I can't," said Catherine, "haul in a stranger from an agency to leave -here all day."</p> - -<p>"Well, then," Margaret was briskly matter of fact, "there's just one -thing to do. Give up this foolish notion of a career, and step into -Flora's empty place."</p> - -<p>Charles made a little leap at that idea, and then sank away from it, -with a faint suggestion in his mouth of a disappointed fish watching a -baited hook yanked out of reach.</p> - -<p>"Or," went on Margaret gravely, "Charles can stay at home. So much of -your work could be done here anyway, Charles. One eye on the stew and -the other on some learned tome."</p> - -<p>"Why not?" Amy's tense question knocked the drollery out of the -picture. "Why wouldn't that be possible? After all, Mrs. Hammond, you -have spent years doing that very thing."</p> - -<p>"The King would burn the stew, of course." Margaret rose, sending a -light curtsey toward Charles. "Come along, Amy. If we're to walk home. -Why don't you ask Sam, if that's the elevator boy's name, if he hasn't -a lady friend out of work? That's what we do."</p> - -<p>When Catherine returned from the door, her eyes crinkled at the sight -of Charles sunk behind the pages of his evening paper.</p> - -<p>"Poor old thing!" she said. "Did they rumple his fur the wrong way?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p> - -<p>He crashed the sheets down on his knee, and lifted his face, the tips -of his ears red.</p> - -<p>"Whatever does Margaret want to lug that thing around with her for."</p> - -<p>"I guess she's all right." Catherine was at the window, looking at the -pale glowing bowl of the city sky before she drew the shade. "Devoted -to Margaret."</p> - -<p>"Ugh! I'd like that devoted to me!"</p> - -<p>"Don't worry!" Catherine drew the shade, and turned laughing. "She -won't be. She seems violently anti-man."</p> - -<p>"Wasn't she one of the females they had to feed through the nose down -there at Washington?"</p> - -<p>"That's rather to her credit, isn't it?"</p> - -<p>"She's that fanatic type, all right. All emotion, unbalanced, no brain. -Now Margaret has some intelligence. But she's being influenced by this -woman. I can see a difference in her. To think that she chose herself -to leave your mother for that!"</p> - -<p>"I think few people influence Margaret." Catherine moved quietly about -the room, picking up books left by Spencer, a toy of Letty's, Marian's -doll. "She's hard headed, you know."</p> - -<p>"Well," said Charles with great finality, "she won't ever capture any -man while she has that female attached to her. Great mistake for a nice -girl like Margaret to tie herself up with that woman. She seems the -real paranoia type."</p> - -<p>"Now you've finished her," Catherine rumpled his hair gently as she -passed his chair, "tell me what on earth to do. About a maid, I mean."</p> - -<p>"Don't know, I'm sure." Charles frowned briefly and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> picked up his -paper again. "Advertise, perhaps," he added.</p> - -<p>Catherine's eyes, pondering on the crisp russet crown of his head, bent -intently over the paper, hardened. He didn't know, and he didn't mean -to concern himself. Her problem, not his. It wasn't his fault if she -had no time to hunt up a new maid. On the contrary, Flora's defection -was in a way her fault, a failure of judgment in choice.</p> - -<p>"I'm going to bed," she said. "I'm tired to death."</p> - -<p>"Right-o," said Charles.</p> - -<p>Her serge dress lay in a heap across a chair, where she had dropped -it that afternoon. Careless of her. She shook it out, regarding it -critically. She should have another dress; perhaps a fresh set of vest -and cuffs would carry this one along for a time. As she hung it away -she brushed down a coat of Charles. She held it at arm's length, her -mouth puckered. She had forgotten to leave that suit at the tailor's -that morning, as Charles had asked.</p> - -<p>She sat down before the mirror to brush her hair. What had he said last -night—that she deliberately neglected the little things he asked, that -she stood off, being critical. Was it true? Her hair drooped in two -long dark wings over her shoulders as she sat idle, thinking. She did -feel separate, no longer held in close bondage to the irking, petty -things, like darned socks or suits that must be cleaned, or studs in -shirt fronts, or favorite desserts. They used to be momentous, those -things. It's true! She flung her brush onto the dresser, where it -slid along, clattering against the tray. Now I do stand off, a little -disdainful, when he makes a fuss, because I'm<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> not a faithful valet. -Well! She stood up hastily, braiding her hair with quick fingers. -What of it? If I spoiled him, all these years, then I must take the -consequences. But it's not—less love, is it? Or did he love me more as -his body servant? Are men like that?</p> - -<p>She heard Bill's voice, "Don't ever be frantic, Catherine." Bill wasn't -like that. She had almost forgotten Bill and last night. What a muddle -of feeling in yesterday and to-day! Bill,—and Charles. Ah, she was -critical. Charles was right. Critical of the very quality she had -always seen and loved. His—yes, his childishness. Bill had dignity, -maturity, that was it. Even in his moment of disclosure. He didn't take -it out on Henrietta. Didn't smear her even faintly with blame.</p> - -<p>She listened an instant as she went down the hall. Charles hadn't -moved. In the bathroom she hung away the towels and threw discarded -small stockings into the hamper. Then, with a little rush, grinning at -herself, she filled the tub. Charles could wait.</p> - -<p>Later, drowsily warm and relaxed, she heard Charles tiptoe into the -room. She heard his "brr!" at the chill wind through the opened window. -Still later she felt him bending cautiously above her. She heard -herself breathing slowly, evenly, until his feet scuffed across the -floor and his bed groaned softly. I can't wake up, she thought,—buried -deep under soft, warm sand—heavy—even if he—wants me.</p> - - -<p class="center">VII</p> - -<p>Sam, the elevator boy, didn't know a single lady as was out of work. -Catherine went on down to the basement. Perhaps the janitor would know. -He called his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> wife. Catherine, in the door, glimpsed the rooms with -their short, high windows, full of white iron beds and innumerable -tidies. Mrs. O'Lay filled the door, her bulk flowing unrestrictedly -above and below her narrow apron strings.</p> - -<p>She had a mind to try the job herself. Her daughter had come home with -a baby, and could mind the telephone when Sam was off, and all. Her -double chins quivered violently at little Mr. O'Lay's protest. Right in -the same house, an' all. "If I try it, he won't be all the time leaving -the fires for me to tend, and I'll turn an honest penny myself."</p> - -<p>She's a fat straw to grasp at, thought Catherine. If she can get -between the stove and the sink——</p> - -<p>"Sure, I been cooking all these years, and himself ain't dead yet. Nor -one of the eleven children. It'd be a fine change for me."</p> - -<p>They decided finally that Mrs. O'Lay should come up that afternoon to -"learn the ropes." "I'd come up right now, but himself asked in his -folks for dinner."</p> - -<p>What luck! Catherine hurried back to her own apartment. Her own rooms -look neat, and she is at least a pair of hands.</p> - -<p>The children were waiting impetuously for Catherine to take them -coasting. Marian had suggested Sunday School. Miss Kelly thought they -should go, she explained.</p> - -<p>"Miss Kelly may take you, then, on her Sunday," said Catherine. "I -can't, to-day. And I'm afraid the snow is almost gone."</p> - -<p>Spencer and Marian, their leggings already on, wiped the breakfast -dishes, while Letty dragged a battered train up and down the hall.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p> - -<p>"You come too, Daddy." Marian tugged at Charles's arm.</p> - -<p>"No. I'm going to have a nice, quiet morning with my book." He stepped -hastily out of the path of Letty's assault.</p> - -<p>"I've left the potatoes and roast on the shelf." Catherine looked in at -his study door. "Could you think to light the oven and stick them in, -at twelve, if we aren't back? Mother's coming in for dinner."</p> - -<p>"I'll remember." Marian giggled at her father's grimace, and they were -off, the four of them.</p> - -<p>On the slope Catherine chose as safe, the snow had been worn thin by -countless runners. Spencer and Marian had one Flyer, and Catherine -drew Letty on the small sled up and down the walk, to the loud tune of -"Gid-ap! horsey! Gid-ap!" until she was breathless and flushed. Then -she coaxed Letty into the construction of a snow house, while she sat -on the bench beside her. The river was gray under a lead sky; the steep -shores of New Jersey were mottled tawny and white. Spencer and Marian -puffed up the hill, to sit solemnly beside her, their legs dangling. -Letty, a small scarlet ball in her knit bloomers and sweater, an -aureole of yellow fluff about her round, pink face, crooned delightedly -as she patted her lumps of snow.</p> - -<p>"An', Muvver," went on Marian, "the little boy made his dog drag the -sled up the hill, and the doggie cried."</p> - -<p>"He had snow in his toes," insisted Spencer. "He didn't cry because he -had to drag the sled."</p> - -<p>"Yes, he did. It was a very heavy sled."</p> - -<p>Some one stopped at the end of the bench, and Catherine glanced up.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Why, Bill!" She moved along, but Marian danced up.</p> - -<p>"Oh, Mr. Bill! Come take a belly-bump with us, Mr. Bill. <i>Can</i> you go -belly-bump?"</p> - -<p>"I think so." Bill smiled across her head at Catherine.</p> - -<p>"Don't let her bully you, if you don't want to." But they were off, -Bill flat on the sled, Spencer clinging to his shoulders, and Marian -sprawled on top of Spencer. Letty poked herself erect and opened her -mouth for a shriek.</p> - -<p>"Here, Letty!" Catherine pulled her, stiff and unbending, onto her -knee. "If you don't yell, perhaps Bill will take you down. Don't scare -him." Ridiculous and amusing, those flying legs. Like a scooting -centipede.</p> - -<p>"You come try it, Catherine." They had climbed up the slope to her -again.</p> - -<p>"Take Letty first." And then Catherine tried it, while the children -stood in a row, shrieking with delight. "Go belly-bump, Muvver!" How -Marian loved that word! But Catherine insisted on sitting up, while -Bill knelt behind her to steer. A swift, flying moment, the air shrill -in her ears, and laughing, they grated to a standstill on bare ground -at the foot of the hill.</p> - -<p>"If we had a real hill, now." Bill dragged the sled up, one hand firm -under Catherine's arm. "I remember a hill we used to coast down when I -was little. It seemed miles long, on the way up, at least."</p> - -<p>Lucky he came along, thought Catherine, contentedly. Or he might have -hated to see me, after Friday night.</p> - -<p>"Who is that with the children?" she asked. A figure at the crest -of the slope, coppery brown fur gleaming in the dull light. Miss -Partridge!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Mr. Bill!" called Marian, as the two plodded nearer. "Take Miss -Partridge down just once."</p> - -<p>Catherine felt, indignantly, the flush deepen in her cheeks. Why should -she mind——</p> - -<p>"Good morning," she called. "Won't you try it?"</p> - -<p>"So sorry," came the neat, clipped accents. "I must run along to -dinner. It looks like great sport." Her cold brown eyes moved from -Catherine to Bill. A flash of small teeth. "Great sport. Good-by." A -wave of a small, gloved hand, and she was off, swinging smartly along.</p> - -<p>"What time is it?" Catherine avoided Bill's smile. "One! My gracious! -Come along, you children."</p> - -<p>Bill drew Letty up to the street. "Have to walk here. Snow's all gone," -and when Letty sat obdurately on the sled, crying "Gid-ap!" he swung -her up to his shoulder. She rode home in state, while Spencer and -Marian argued about snow in the handball court, about what the carts -did with the snow that was shoveled away; and Catherine walked rather -silently at Bill's side.</p> - -<p>Bill deposited Letty on the steps at the apartment entrance, where she -amused herself by bouncing' her stomach against the low railing and -gug-gugging at Spencer and Marian, who clattered down the area stairs -with their sleds.</p> - -<p>"I'm glad you were out for a walk this morning." Catherine wanted to -break through the thin ice of constraint—or was it better to pretend -that she did not see it? "I was afraid you might stay away from—us," -she said quickly.</p> - -<p>"That's very good of you." Bill spoke formally, his eyes on the -children pelting up the steps.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Mr. Bill, would you go coasting again?" Spencer stuck his elbow up -to ward off a snowball from Marian. "You stop that, Marian. I'm not -playing now. Would you?" He frowned at his sister.</p> - -<p>"I'm playing." Catherine pinioned Marian's snowy mittens in her own -hands. "An' anyway, the snow'll be gone, won't it, Muvver?"</p> - -<p>"It'll snow again this winter, won't it?" snorted Spencer.</p> - -<p>"When it does, we'll have a coast," Bill said gravely.</p> - -<p>For a moment he met Catherine's glance, and suddenly the ice was gone, -so suddenly that Catherine almost laughed out in delight. "Will you -come, too?" he asked.</p> - -<p>"Don't wait for the next snow." Catherine gave Marian a soft push -toward the door. "Run along. Take Letty's hand, please." Her smile -at Bill was grateful; having admitted her past his barriers, he was -unresentful. "Come sooner!" She extended her hand, felt the quick -pressure of his fingers.</p> - -<p>Like a secret pact—she wondered a little, as she went into the hall. -Words are clumsy, with Bill, as if he dwelt so far beneath ordinary -surfaces that words didn't reach him.</p> - -<p>"You like Mr. Bill, too, don't you, Mother?" Spencer pressed against -her confidentially as the elevator creaked up to their floor.</p> - -<p>"Yes, I do."</p> - -<p>"He's a nice man," Marian agreed. "I'd like to marry him."</p> - -<p>"He's got a wife, silly," objected Spencer. "And you're only a little -girl and little girls don't get married."</p> - -<p>"Pretty soon I can." Marian turned her back on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> Spencer and darted out -of the elevator door, dragging Letty briskly after her.</p> - -<p>Spencer's eyes were wide with disapproval, but Catherine laughed at -him, and opened the apartment door.</p> - -<p>Charles sat at his desk. He looked up ruefully.</p> - -<p>"Home again! Say, I forgot all about your potatoes."</p> - -<p>"Oh, well." Catherine was undisturbed. "You'll just have to wait longer -for your dinner, then." As she hurried to the kitchen she heard Marian, -"An' Mr. Bill came and coasted, and Muvver coasted with him, only not -belly-bump," and Charles, "So that's why you're so late, is it?"</p> - - -<p class="center">VIII</p> - -<p>Mrs. Spencer came presently. Catherine rose from the oven, blowing -wryly on a burnt thumb.</p> - -<p>"Take Gram's coat and hat, please, Spencer." She kissed her mother's -cool pink cheek. "How well you look!"</p> - -<p>"What a pretty chain!" Marian touched the wrought silver and dull blue -stones. "Isn't it, Muvver?"</p> - -<p>"Margaret gave it to me yesterday, to match my new dress." Mrs. Spencer -crinkled her eyes shrewdly. "Propitiation. She can't get over her -surprise that I stand her absence so well."</p> - -<p>"I suppose that freak woman put her up to it," said Charles, from the -doorway.</p> - -<p>"Um." Mrs. Spencer tucked her hand under his arm. "Changes are good for -us. But Margaret must have had an ill conscience. She's overthoughtful."</p> - -<p>"You see"—Catherine stirred the thickening briskly—<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>"you aren't -behaving as a Freudian mother should. You are always unexpected."</p> - -<p>"Freud!" Mrs. Spencer made a grotesque little grimace. "What does -he know about mothers! But I did think"—she glanced sidewise at -Charles—"that Margaret might find things less convenient."</p> - -<p>"She will!" Charles patted her hand. "Don't you worry, Mother Spencer. -These violent crazes for—for freedom—or people—or causes—wear -themselves out."</p> - -<p>Catherine lifted her head quickly, to find her mother's eyes -quizzically upon her. They meant her, too!</p> - -<p>"Want to see my book?" Charles steered Mrs. Spencer out of the kitchen. -"Catherine's too busy to talk."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Dinner went smoothly; the children told their grandmother about -coasting, and she asked about school, about Miss Kelly. She wanted to -take them to the Metropolitan that afternoon, to hear a lecture for -children.</p> - -<p>"Aren't there awful jams?" Catherine sighed. Piles of mending, her -serge dress to freshen,—she couldn't take the afternoon off, too.</p> - -<p>"Not too jammed for pleasure. But you needn't go." Mrs. Spencer's eyes -narrowed. "I suppose you use your Sunday for a scrap-bag of odd jobs, -like all other working women?"</p> - -<p>"I certainly do." Catherine was abrupt. "But you know you prefer the -children without me as mentor."</p> - -<p>She caught a quick exchange of glances between Charles and her mother. -They've been talking about me—she simmered with resentment—and -Charles has won her over to his side, whatever it is.</p> - -<p>She had proof of that later. Mrs. Spencer and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> children had come -home from their sojourn, and after they had given Catherine an excited -and strange account of the habits of a tribe of Indians, Spencer and -Marian had gone to bed.</p> - -<p>"What did you do this afternoon?" Mrs. Spencer laid aside her magazine -as Catherine came wearily back to the living room.</p> - -<p>"I showed Mrs. O'Lay where to find the various tools for her new -job"—Catherine had explained Flora's absence earlier—"conducted her -initiation ceremony. And washed out a collar, and darned."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Spencer nodded.</p> - -<p>"When you might have been with your children. Are you sure, Cathy"—she -paused—"sure that you aren't losing the best of your life?"</p> - -<p>"But I'm not!" Catherine sat erect in her chair, her cheeks flushed. -"On the contrary, I am with the children, and love it, and they enjoy -me far more than when I was their constant bodyguard."</p> - -<p>"Charles was telling me about Spencer." Mrs. Spencer drew the gray silk -of her skirt into tiny folds. "It seemed pitiful."</p> - -<p>Catherine was silent a moment, fighting against the swift recurrence of -that frightful hour, and against a wrathful sense of injustice.</p> - -<p>"Children run away, often," she said. "I think Spencer just happened to -catch at that excuse—of my not being here."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Spencer shook her head.</p> - -<p>"Charles seemed to feel——"</p> - -<p>"He told me just how he felt." Catherine flung up her head.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p> - -<p>Mrs. Spencer's inspection of her daughter was reflective.</p> - -<p>"I don't like to interfere. You know that. But—Charles doesn't seem -happy."</p> - -<p>"He has no right to——"</p> - -<p>"He didn't say that." Mrs. Spencer was stern. "I gathered it. His work -isn't going very well. He thinks you aren't interested in it."</p> - -<p>Catherine turned her head quickly. Had she heard the door of his study -squeak?</p> - -<p>"I am. He knows it. Far more than he cares about what I do."</p> - -<p>"That's all." Mrs. Spencer rose, preening her skirts like a small bird. -"I won't say another word. But think it over, Cathy. There's so much -that's crooked and wrenched in the air these days. I don't want you led -astray by it. I must run along. Alethea will be expecting me."</p> - -<p>In the turmoil of her feelings, Catherine had a sharp sense of the -bright, valiant spirit of her mother. She didn't really like to -interfere. Charles had coerced her into this! Something wistful and -picturesque about the two elderly women, Mrs. Alethea Bragg and her -mother, moving serenely about in the great city, nibbling at music, at -theaters, at Fifth Avenue shops, taking quiet amusement out of days -free from the hectic confusion of trying to live.</p> - -<p>"Please don't be concerned about me, Mother." She threw her arm around -the firm, neat shoulders. "I'm honestly trying to hunt for a scheme of -things that will work for everybody. Not just me. Come in oftener. The -children adore it."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="center">IX</p> - -<p>Miss Kelly had brought the children down for a visit to the Christmas -toy-land in some of the large stores, and at noon Catherine met them -for luncheon. Letty had shared the expedition for the first time, -and the kaleidoscopic displays had goaded her into a frenzy of noisy -delight.</p> - -<p>"She's just roared the whole morning, Muvver." Marian was uneasy at the -scrutiny of amused neighbors in the tea room. But Miss Kelly diverted -Letty into contemplation of an enormous baked potato.</p> - -<p>"I want you to come with us, Mother." Spencer felt under his chair for -his cap; he hadn't been quite sure where he should put that cap. "You -always did——"</p> - -<p>"You see, I have to stay in the office, except at noon," Catherine -explained. She was conscious of admiration for the deftness with -which Miss Kelly had subdued Letty, had arranged the luncheon for the -children and herself. "I don't have a vacation until Christmas day. -Tell me what you saw."</p> - -<p>A recital in duo. Letty had tried to hug every Santa Claus they had -seen, even the Salvation Army Santa on the corner. Extraordinary and -delectable toys. They couldn't decide what they wanted themselves.</p> - -<p>"It is lucky we came down early," said Miss Kelly. "The crowds began to -come before we left."</p> - -<p>"Did you buy your gifts?"</p> - -<p>"I think Spencer bought me one," cried Marian. "He made me turn my -back——"</p> - -<p>"You shouldn't think about that," said Spencer, ear<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>nestly. "If it's -Christmas, you shouldn't even think you've got a present."</p> - -<p>"You did buy me one!" Marian wriggled ecstatically in her chair. "I -know you did!"</p> - -<p>Catherine waited with them for a home-bound bus. Spencer pulled her -head down and whispered in her ear, "Mother, couldn't I go to the -office and wait till you come home? I don't want to go with them."</p> - -<p>"It's too many hours, Spencer. You wouldn't know what to do with -yourself."</p> - -<p>"Well, I don't know, anyway." His eyes darkened. "Staying home and no -school and——"</p> - -<p>"Here comes our bus." Miss Kelly marshalled them before her, maneuvered -them neatly up the steps. Catherine waved to them, watched their bus -disappear in the mélêe of cars. Then she edged through the crowd to -the windows, and walked slowly toward the office. The cold sunshine -veneered the intent faces, the displays of gauds and kickshaws.</p> - -<p>Being downtown makes Christmas quite different, she thought. An -enormous advertising scheme. That's it. Five more shopping days before -Christmas. Look at that window! She strolled past it, her eyes bright -with derision. Extraordinary, useless, expensive things, good for -gifts, and nothing else on earth. Christmas belonged in the country, in -the delicate mystery and secrecy with which children could invest it. -Not in these glaring windows. A saturnalia of selling, that's Christmas -in New York, she thought, darting across the street as the traffic -officer's signal released the flood of pedestrians. Something strained, -feverish, in the crowds. Probably half of them with empty purses. Like -her own.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p> - -<p>Dr. Roberts stood at her window, waiting for her.</p> - -<p>"I've been talking with President Waterbury, Mrs. Hammond, and I wished -to see you at once." He pulled reflectively at his pointed beard. -"There are various ins and outs here. I don't know that you've been -here long enough to discover them."</p> - -<p>Catherine wondered, with faint discomfort, whether President Waterbury -had disapproved of something she had done.</p> - -<p>"A deplorable jealousy, for example, between departments." He cleared -his throat.</p> - -<p>Catherine sat down. She had learned to wait until Dr. Roberts had sent -off preliminary sputtering fireworks before he uncovered his serious -purpose.</p> - -<p>"I happened to learn that Smithson, in the local social department, -was interviewing Dr. Waterbury. Had seen him twice. So I was at -once suspicious. Smithson, you've met him? Well, he's the type of -parasite this kind of organization attracts, unfortunately. We haven't -many here, but they exist. Afraid to finish up a job, because then -another may not turn up. He's nursed along his study of sanitation, I -should blush to say how long. No doubt the buildings in his original -investigation have crumbled into decay. And he hasn't published a word. -But he can't put off publication much longer, you see. And so he hit -upon this other scheme. He doesn't belong in our field." Dr. Roberts's -bright little eyes snapped, his beard waggled in a fury. "But he had -the audacity to go to Waterbury with this suggestion. He wants to -make the field study for me! He—he—" Dr. Roberts stuttered tripping -furiously over his consonants. "H-he of-ff-fered to go out west, to -gather field mat-t-terial<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> for us. Told Waterbury that I couldn't -go, as I was in charge of things here at headquarters. He had almost -convinced the President. He's smooth. Smooth!"</p> - -<p>"But why on earth does he want to go?" Catherine's voice placated the -irate little man. "It certainly isn't his kind of work."</p> - -<p>"Not at all. Not at all. But he sets himself up for a dexterous -investigator. And Waterbury likes him. The point is this. I can't -very well go myself. But you can! I pointed out to Dr. Waterbury that -logically you were the person to go."</p> - -<p>"To go where, Dr. Roberts?" Catherine sat very still, but back in her -head she heard a clear little bell of excitement begin its clanging.</p> - -<p>"You have personality and tact. You've already met two of the chief -educators of the state. You have the work at the tips of your fingers. -Who could be better? Dr. Waterbury agreed with me. It would be an -agreeable diversion, no doubt, and of course," he added with proud -finality, "then I can obtain for you the raise in salary you deserve."</p> - -<p>"You mean that you would like me to make the personal inspection of all -these schools?" Catherine's hand moved vaguely toward the shelves of -catalogues.</p> - -<p>"Just that. It is time now to have that done. Smithson has—yes, he -has snooped around, discovering that. He wants the amusement of such a -trip, and the glory. For it is an excellent thing. For your reputation. -Your expenses are paid, too."</p> - -<p>"Why don't you go yourself?"</p> - -<p>"It's not precisely convenient. There are several meetings in January. -I am to speak at one of them."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p> - -<p>I can't go, thought Catherine. Ridiculous to consider it.</p> - -<p>"Don't decide immediately. Think it over. Let me know—why, after -Christmas. Late in January would do to start. You can no doubt arrange -matters at home. You'd like to talk it over with Dr. Hammond, of -course."</p> - -<p>"How long a trip would it be?" Catherine was vibrating under the -clanging of that bell. No, it wasn't a bell, it was a pulse beating -just back of her ears.</p> - -<p>"You can decide that yourself, practically. Perhaps a month. Depends -upon your arrangement of your route. I say, that's fine!" He rose, -slapping his hands against his pockets. "You'll think it out! It's by -far the best way to convince Waterbury you are serious, and worth a -real salary."</p> - -<p>Think it out! Catherine let the idea play with her. Trains, new cities, -new people, herself as dignified representative of the Bureau. But the -children! She couldn't leave them—and Charles. Her clothes weren't -up to such a position. She could buy more! Her salary would grow to -cover—anything!</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>When she went home in the cold winter twilight, she had coiled the -project into a tight spring, held firmly down below thought. She -couldn't go. How could she? But she had a week before she must reject -it openly. The pressure of that coiled spring was terrific. At any -instant it might tear up through thought and feeling.</p> - -<p>Mrs. O'Lay had been persuaded to divide her day so that she spent part -of the afternoon in her own basement, and then stayed to serve dinner -and clear up the kitchen for Catherine. Charles said he felt as if an -Irish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> hippopotamus hovered at his elbow at the table, but Catherine -stretched luxuriously into freedom from dinner responsibility. If -Mrs. O'Lay had a sketchy art as a cook, Catherine found dinner more -palatable than when she had flown into domestic harness at the end of -the day.</p> - -<p>The children were full of whispering excitement; the house was made up -of restricted zones. Marian wasn't to put her head inside Spencer's -door, and mother shouldn't look into his closet. Charles had brought -home a tree as tall as Spencer, which spread its branches drooping -and green in front of the living room windows. Miss Kelly, calmly -methodical as ever, helped the children string cranberries and popcorn -to wind through the needles.</p> - -<p>"Saturday we will trim it," Catherine promised them, "and Saturday -night you can each wrap your presents in red paper and label them."</p> - -<p>"Then you'll see them when we are in bed," protested Marian.</p> - -<p>"I won't take a single peek!"</p> - -<p>Saturday afternoon Catherine stood on a chair, hunting on the top shelf -of the hall closet for the box of tinsel and small tree lights. Surely -she had left it there on that shelf. She smiled a little, at her own -warm content. The shimmering joy of the children had thrown its glow -over her, too, and the sardonic Christmas of the streets seemed remote, -unreal.</p> - -<p>"Hurry up, Muvver dear!" called Marian. "Isn't it there?"</p> - -<p>Catherine felt the corner of a pasteboard box, tugged at it, caught it -as it slipped over the edge of the shelf, the cover whirling past her -hand.</p> - -<p>She stared at the contents—a handbag of soft, tooled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> leather, with -carved fastenings of dull gold. Guiltily she reached for the cover at -her feet. She had stumbled upon Charles's hiding place. He shouldn't -have been so extravagant. Her fingers brushed the soft brown surface -in a swift caress as she pushed on the cover, and rose to tiptoe to -replace the box.</p> - -<p>There, the other box was in the corner.</p> - -<p>"What are you after up there?" Charles spoke sharply from the door.</p> - -<p>Catherine, her cheeks flushing, dragged out the box of trimmings.</p> - -<p>"This!" she called gaily, "for our tree!" She mustn't let him guess -that she had seen that bag. She slipped one hand under his arm, -laughing to herself at his perturbed eyes. He was in Spencer's class, -with that serious fear lest his secret be unearthed before the exact -moment. "Come help trim it. You can arrange the lights."</p> - -<p>And as they worked, Catherine turned tentatively to that coiled spring -of her desire, and found the resilience had vanished. She did not -wish to go. She couldn't leave them. Going off to work each day was -different. She needed that. But to go away, for days and nights——</p> - -<p>"Moth-er!" Spencer's horrified accents came from the other side of the -tree. "Letty's chewing the cranberry string!"</p> - -<p>"Here, you!" Catherine swung her up to her shoulder. How heavy she was -growing! "You fasten Spencer's star to the top branch."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="center">X</p> - -<p>Catherine woke. What was that old crone crouched inquisitively at -the foot of her bed? She lifted her head cautiously; nothing but her -bathrobe over a chair, indistinct in the vague light. It must be very -early. She caught the steady rhythm of Charles's breathing. She curled -down again under the blankets, full of the relaxed ecstasy in which -she had slept so dreamlessly. Dearest—she flowed out toward him in a -great, windless tide. I've found him again, she thought. We're out of -the thickets.</p> - -<p>Dimly she heard the clatter of horses' hoofs, the clinking of milk -bottles. It is morning, then. She listened unconsciously for the shrill -"Merry Christmas!" of the children. They would wake soon.</p> - -<p>As she lay, waiting, effortless, relaxed, a strange phantasy drifted -over her, like morning fog in low places. She couldn't, drowsily, quite -grasp it. Charles had not known about that plan, tugging, tempting -her this last week. How could he have known when she rejected it, -completely? And yet, as if he had felt that rejection, fed upon it, -sacrificial offering to him, he had been grandly magnanimous, lavish, -taking her submission.</p> - -<p>Perhaps—she stirred slowly out of the mists—perhaps it was only her -own knowledge of the rejection, the sacrifice, binding her more closely -to the roots of love, sloughing off that critical, offish self.</p> - -<p>She was wide awake now, thinking clearly. Why had she so suddenly -decided? What, after all, had wiped out the vigor, the great drive in -that desire? She knew just what it meant, her going or her refusal to -go. Refusal marked her forever as half-hearted, as temporizing, so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> far -as her work went. That she had recognized from the beginning.</p> - -<p>Just the glimpse of that bag, the soft leather under her fingers, had -settled matters. Without a conscious thought. An extravagant, lovely -trifle, but a symbol of the old tender awareness she had so loved in -him. Ridiculous, that a thing could have the power to touch you so. -Behind it, shadowy, serried, other things—trifles, evidence that -Charles gave her sensitive perception, that he loved her, not himself -reflected in her. Just that he knew her purse was serviceable and -shabby.</p> - -<p>Foolish, and adorable. She sighed, happily. He would hate my going -away. He would be outraged.</p> - -<p>A faint sound outside the door, a scuffle of bare feet, and then a -burst into chorus, "Merry Christmas! Merry—" The door flew open, and -in they rushed, the three of them. Catherine shot upright, reaching for -her bathrobe.</p> - -<p>"Merry Christmas, but hurry back where it's warm."</p> - -<p>Marian flung her arms around Charles's sleepy head. "Merry Christmas, -my Daddy!"</p> - -<p>"It's only the middle of the night, isn't it?" Charles groaned.</p> - -<p>"It's Christmas morning, and you hurry and get up!"</p> - -<p>When the arduous business of dressing was over, Charles turned the -switch, and the colored lights starred the little tree. No one was to -unwrap a present until after breakfast. Too much excitement on empty -stomachs, insisted Catherine. The children dragged the table nearer the -door and ranged themselves along the side, so that they could gaze as -they ate.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p> - -<p>Presently the room was a gay litter of tissue paper, colored ribbons, -toys, books. Letty sat in the middle of her pile, revolving like a -yellow top among the exciting things. Spencer had waited tensely while -Catherine unwrapped a large bundle, and then turned a little pale with -delight at her surprise. Yes, he had made it himself, at school. It was -a stand for a fern. He had carved it, too. Book ends for his father. -Then he had immersed himself in his own possessions.</p> - -<p>Charles admired the platinum cuff links in the little purple box -with Catherine's card. Catherine grinned at him. "Nice to give you a -present," she said, "without having to ask you for the money for it." -She regretted her words; his smile seemed forced.</p> - -<p>"What did Daddy give you, Muvver?" Marian, hugging her doll, pressed -against Catherine's knee.</p> - -<p>"Well, this." Catherine held up a box of chocolates.</p> - -<p>"That's not all," said Charles promptly.</p> - -<p>"Here's another." Spencer wiggled along on his knees to hand her -another box.</p> - -<p>Long and thin—that wasn't the same box. Catherine unwrapped the paper, -and long black silk stockings dangled from her fingers.</p> - -<p>"Fine," she said. "Just what I wanted." She waited for a repetition of -"That's not all," but Charles said only, "I didn't know what you would -like."</p> - -<p>She glanced up quickly. He was teasing her—they had joked about useful -gifts. But he had picked up a book. The red cover blurred before -Catherine's eyes. He was pulling his chair up to the table light.</p> - -<p>The stockings clung to her finger tips, as if her bewilderment -electrified them. Mrs. O'Lay, lumbering<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> through the hall to the -kitchen, stopped at the door in loud admiration of the tree.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Margaret and Mrs. Spencer were coming in for early dinner. Catherine -flung herself into a numbing round of preparations. Whatever it meant, -the day shouldn't be spoiled for the children. Whatever it meant—he -couldn't have forgotten the bag. She had seen it there. She remembered -his sharp inquiry, as she reached to the shelf. Perhaps her mother -had hidden it, or Margaret. No, he knew about it. A sickening wave of -suspicion curled through her, so that she straightened from her odorous -dish of onions, browning for the dressing. It's his gift, to some one -else. The wave subsided, leaving a line of wreckage—and certainty.</p> - -<p>Funny, how you catch a second wind, when you are knocked out, thought -Catherine, as the day wound along. No one even guessed. The children -were amazingly good. Even Letty went peacefully to her nap, after a few -moments of wracking indecision as to which new toy should accompany -her. Margaret left early, for a Christmas party somewhere. Catherine -and her mother stood in her room, Mrs. Spencer adjusting her veil at -the mirror. They were going out for a Christmas walk with Spencer and -Marian, leaving Mrs. O'Lay in charge. Catherine heard a cautious step -in the hall. She did not move. But she knew when the feet stopped at -the closet door; she heard the faint scrape of pasteboard on the shelf.</p> - -<p>"I'm going over to the office." Charles stopped at the door. "I'll -probably be home before you are."</p> - -<p>"Poor fellow!" Mrs. Spencer cajoled him, her hands<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> patting her sleek -gloves into place. "Must you work even on Christmas Day?"</p> - -<p>"Just a few odds and ends of work." Charles looked uneasy. But he -nodded, and presently the hall door closed after him.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h2><a name="PART_IV" id="PART_IV"></a>PART IV</h2> - -<p class="center">ENCOUNTER</p> - - -<p class="center">I</p> - -<p>"Dr. Gilbert will be in immediately." The neat little office nurse -ushered Catherine into the living room. "She left word for tea at five."</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>"Catherine! Good for you." Henrietta clapped her shoulder as she -passed. "Afraid something might detain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> you." 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.</p> - -<p>"That's all, Susie," she told the maid. "If there are any calls for me, -take them. I am undisturbed for one hour now."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>Catherine sipped at the tea. The hot, clear fragrance was an auger, -releasing words.</p> - -<p>"Shrewd guess, Henry." She smiled. "I want advice."</p> - -<p>"Help yourself." Henrietta's teeth closed in her sandwich with relish.</p> - -<p>"And I wanted it from you," Catherine spoke slowly, "because I want -advice that goes in my direction."</p> - -<p>"Kind we always want. Only kind we take."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"Why?"</p> - -<p>"That was a week ago." Catherine leaned forward. "In a fit of -sentiment. And egoism. I thought they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> couldn'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."</p> - -<p>"Of course, no one is really indispensable." Henrietta grinned. "No -one. And what's a month?"</p> - -<p>"It seems a long time to leave the children."</p> - -<p>"Be good for them as well as you. Isn't Miss Kelly capable of handling -them?"</p> - -<p>"I suppose so."</p> - -<p>"Most families would be improved by enforced separations," declared -Henrietta. "They're too tight. Break 'em up. What does Charles say to -this?"</p> - -<p>"He hasn't heard of it yet."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"Get your approval out of the job, Catherine." Henrietta squinted -through her eyeglass. "You want it on every hand, don't you?"</p> - -<p>Catherine lowered her eyelids.</p> - -<p>"I did, once. I think I do less, now."</p> - -<p>"That's right!"</p> - -<p>They were silent a moment.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"You really think it's not a preposterous scheme, then?"</p> - -<p>"The only preposterousness would be in refusing it. It's ripping!"</p> - -<p>"What is ripping?"</p> - -<p>Catherine turned, a quick stir of pleasure at the low voice. Bill was -at the door.</p> - -<p>"Come in and hear about it." Henrietta waved toward a chair. "Tea?"</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>"Are you going?" Bill glanced at her under his heavy lids.</p> - -<p>"I think I am," she said. She wished she could find his thought which -reached toward her.</p> - -<p>"Perhaps I'll see you. I have to go to Chicago the end<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> of the month on -that Dexter contract," he added, to Henrietta.</p> - -<p>He left them presently, and when Catherine rose to go, Henrietta's hand -lingered, fumbling—queerly for her—over Catherine's fingers.</p> - -<p>"I hope you and Bill make connections," she said. "He's not well. I -don't know—listless, needs a change, I guess."</p> - -<p>Catherine stared at the anxiety, the puzzled bewilderment in -Henrietta's round blue eyes.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"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.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"Oh, you doctors! Thinking every feeling has its roots in some gland, -and that you can diagnose any unhappiness."</p> - -<p>"Jeer all you like." Henrietta's moment of perplexity had passed. -"We're animals, Cathy, and a reasonably healthy animal is reasonably -happy."</p> - -<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> and Stella Partridge. Charles, -with all his tenderness, his love——</p> - -<p>With diabolic abruptness Henrietta said:</p> - -<p>"Oh, by the way, I ran into that Miss Partridge last week, at the -hospital. Do you see much of her?"</p> - -<p>Catherine flinched. The stealthy feet were running.</p> - -<p>"What made you think of her?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"What do you make of her? Charles seems to admire her immensely."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"What is she after, do you think?"</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"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.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="center">II</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>"An' tuck in Tilda and li'l' Pet," murmured Letty. "My Muv-ver dear."</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>"Couldn't it be managed some way, Daddy?" he begged.</p> - -<p>"Where's your allowance?" Charles stretched lazily, one hand enclosing -Marian's slippered feet, dancing them slowly up and down.</p> - -<p>"It's all in hock, for three weeks." Spencer was dolorous. "For -Christmas presents, and they're all over."</p> - -<p>"It's where?" Catherine laughed, and Spencer spun around, hope -smoothing some of his puckers.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"And who is Tom?" Charles stood up. Swinging Marian to her feet. "Let's -have dinner."</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>"He lent me a book about it, Mother." He poised his fork in mid-air, -and down splashed his bit of mashed potato.</p> - -<p>"Watch what you are doing, sir," said Charles.</p> - -<p>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'——"</p> - -<p>"If Spencer has one, I want one on my bed, too," <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>declared Marian, with -a demure, sidewise glance at her father. "Couldn't I have one, Daddy?"</p> - -<p>"Spencer hasn't one yet." Charles teased him.</p> - -<p>"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.</p> - -<p>"Well, quite a lot of dollars. Four or five or mebbe six." Spencer was -doubtful. "But they last forever, Tom says, an'——"</p> - -<p>"What would you do with it?"</p> - -<p>Spencer caught the tantalizing undertone in his father's voice.</p> - -<p>"Listen!" he cried, "of course, listen!"</p> - -<p>"Careful, Spencer." Catherine's eyes steadied him; poor kid! She knew -that irritating helplessness. "I'm sure it is interesting."</p> - -<p>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."</p> - -<p>"It was all right." Catherine ignored Charles's lifted eyebrows. The -salad did look a little messy.</p> - -<p>"Do you think, Mother, that perhaps——"</p> - -<p>"Can't you talk about something else for a while, Spencer?" Charles -spoke up curtly.</p> - -<p>Catherine's fingers gripped her serving fork.</p> - -<p>"I'll see, Spencer," she said, clearly. "Later we'll talk about it."</p> - -<p>"If he has it, I want it," Marian insisted.</p> - -<p>"Will you change the subject?"</p> - -<p>Charles's outbreak wrapped a heavy silence about the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> children. -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.</p> - -<p>"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——"</p> - -<p>"Is she going to select clothes for them?" asked Charles, accusingly.</p> - -<p>"Oh, she can do that. I've given her a price limit. The only difficult -thing is shopping within that limit."</p> - -<p>"I never had a bought coat, did I, Muvver?" Marian broke in. "Only -coats you sewed for me."</p> - -<p>"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——"</p> - -<p>"You have more important things to do than mere sewing for the -children."</p> - -<p>"Yes." Catherine was flint, sending off sparks. "And I have money to -bridge the difference in price."</p> - -<p>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. -But<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> there 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.</p> - -<p>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 once<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> dwelt. -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>"Time for bed-ne-go," came Charles's voice down the hall.</p> - -<p>"Please, can I finish this chapter, Daddy?" Spencer begged.</p> - -<p>"Better put your book mark right there, son, and run along."</p> - -<p>He had read himself into a better humor, thought Catherine. She brushed -the bills into the drawer. Her check would be larger this month.</p> - -<p>"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.</p> - -<p>"Daddy read me a lovely story, all about a fairy prince."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p> - -<p>She bent to kiss Marian good night, with a final pat to the blankets.</p> - -<p>"I'll dream about a fairy prince, Muvver," came the child's voice, -muffled as she snuggled out of reach of the cold wind.</p> - -<p>Spencer's arms shot up about her throat, tugging her down where he -could whisper.</p> - -<p>"Moth-er, do you think I could have a radio receiving set?"</p> - -<p>Catherine smiled.</p> - -<p>"Well—" she hesitated. "You have a birthday before long. In March. -I'll have to find out more about them. Could you wait?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, Moth-er!" His hug was exuberant. "Moth-er darling!"</p> - -<p>Catherine closed his door, and poised an instant in the hall, priming -her courage. "Now!" she said, under her breath.</p> - -<p>Before she had moved, however, the doorbell clattered, smudging her -flame of determination.</p> - -<p>Charles came briskly through the hall.</p> - -<p>"Oh, you there?" But he went on to the door.</p> - - -<p class="center">III</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 struck<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> off 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"I'll tell Walter, then, that perhaps in February."</p> - -<p>And presently, Mr. Thomas, blinking behind his glasses, turned his -gentle smile toward Catherine.</p> - -<p>"We hear great things of you, Mrs. Hammond."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p> - -<p>"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.</p> - -<p>"Dr. Roberts tells us you've been appointed field investigator. He is -particularly enthusiastic about it. You deserve congratulations."</p> - -<p>"But, dear Mrs. Hammond, are you really going? I said to Mr. Thomas I -couldn't believe it unless you told me yourself."</p> - -<p>Catherine rushed pell-mell into words. She must stir up enough dust to -hide Charles's face, to keep him silent.</p> - -<p>"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.</p> - -<p>"I said I didn't see how a mother could leave her family."</p> - -<p>"Only for a short time, of course. Don't you think we all need some -kind of respite?"</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>Inconsequential, drifting bits of conversation—the minutes until -they should go were thin wires, drawing Catherine to the brink of -the whirlpool. Charles was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> laboriously talkative, and she heard the -rushing of his winds of grievance.</p> - -<p>They were going!</p> - -<p>"You'll send Spencer out, then, some day. He could come with Mr. -Thomas. For a week-end, say. Walter would be so pleased."</p> - -<p>And then, as they stood in the hall, Mr. Thomas dropped another bomb.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>It was Charles's turn now to hurry into words, vague, temporizing words.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>"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!"</p> - -<p>Abruptly the monstrous jest dropped her, limp, and the laughter had -burst through the thin partition into sobs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> 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.</p> - -<p>"Well?" His gruffness was a shield over his alarm, she knew.</p> - -<p>"I am sorry." Her voice had the faint quiver of spent tears. "I really -didn't intend—but it suddenly looked—ridiculous."</p> - -<p>"I don't see what's funny." Charles sat down stiffly. "In my hearing of -my wife's plans from outsiders."</p> - -<p>Catherine drew a long breath. She was back on that narrow path, now.</p> - -<p>"And my hearing of yours?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"I told you about that offer several months ago." Charles was -dignified. "You seemed so little interested."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Exactly. But you will admit I had spoken of it?"</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"But what is it? You——"</p> - -<p>Catherine explained. She was clear, hard, swift.</p> - -<p>"You have evidently made up your mind to go."</p> - -<p>She nodded.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>Charles got slowly to his feet, his mouth obdurate.</p> - -<p>"Charles, won't you talk it over with me?"</p> - -<p>"I have nothing to say. You seem to lay aside your obligations lightly. -But if you are content——"</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"A feather in your cap." Charles was sardonic. "And you must have -feathers."</p> - -<p>At that she rose, faint color coming into her white face.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"Mrs. Thomas may be a fool, but she's a good woman."</p> - -<p>"Oh!" Catherine set her lips against the echoing surge of laughter that -rolled up. She wouldn't let go again; she wouldn't!</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"And a woman doesn't?"</p> - -<p>"You see! I say something, trying to explain my position, and at once -you twist it into a comment on yourself."</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>"But I am concerned," she said, "as much as ever. You should know that."</p> - -<p>"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 be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> fresh 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."</p> - -<p>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!"</p> - -<p>He moved uneasily, fidgetting with the painted silk shade of the table -lamp.</p> - -<p>"All right," she said brusquely. "We'll leave it at that. I am -self-absorbed. Selfish."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"You don't see, do you?" Catherine's eyes were suddenly piteous. "You -don't see at all."</p> - -<p>"It's evident enough that you can't swing the two jobs, home and -office. You're worn out all the time. Irritable."</p> - -<p>"Oh!" Catherine's hand pressed against her breast. Something -extraordinary in his ingenuous construction of a case against her.</p> - -<p>"Now if you could earn more than I do, then I might stay home, give up -my work. But you don't. You barely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> swing 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."</p> - -<p>Catherine's heart, under her cold fingers, stood still for a long -moment and then broke into violent, irregular beating.</p> - -<p>"You would have to be sure"—she wondered if he could hear her -words—"that I would go!"</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 blind<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> -circles, with no egress? She was running, desperately—sleep closed -around her.</p> - - -<p class="center">IV</p> - -<p>Dr. Roberts came gravely around the desk, shook Catherine's hand, and -returned to his chair.</p> - -<p>"I must have been somewhat in doubt about your consent," he said, -"since I am so delighted. You must see Dr. Waterbury to-day."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>She brushed all that away, as with a quick gesture she pulled open the -drawer and lifted out the pile of notes.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>She wanted Margaret's advice about shopping, too. New clothes. She -would have to look her part.</p> - -<p>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 strolled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> after her; -she had removed her squirrel turban, but her dark hair still made a -stiff flange about her thin face.</p> - -<p>"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.</p> - -<p>"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.</p> - -<p>"What does the King say?" Margaret smiled at her.</p> - -<p>"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?"</p> - -<p>"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 haul<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> her in to speak in the evening. Men -always have comfortable clubs. This is for us."</p> - -<p>"Good food, certainly."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>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——</p> - -<p>"I'd like it!" she declared. "Lunching has been irksome."</p> - -<p>She watched the women again. They seemed less homogeneous, more -individual, as she looked.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>Catherine felt Margaret's uneasiness, akin to her own faint shrinking -from the access of personal probing.</p> - -<p>"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.</p> - -<p>"Don't begin an oration, Amy," she said.</p> - -<p>"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 could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> warm you! "Are any of these celebrities -married?" she asked, with apparent irrelevance.</p> - -<p>"Oh—" Amy shrugged. "I think they have husbands, some of them. Hard to -tell. That woman there has just got her divorce, I know."</p> - -<p>She had a moment with Margaret later, standing near the fireplace, -while Amy rushed off to greet a newcomer.</p> - -<p>"She's a funny old dear, isn't she?" Margaret was nonchalant.</p> - -<p>"I like her," said Catherine.</p> - -<p>Margaret looked up in frank pleasure.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"Will you take me shopping for decent clothes?" Catherine regarded her -sister wistfully. "I'm going to dress the old thing up for once."</p> - -<p>"Will I! I've always wanted to."</p> - - -<p class="center">V</p> - -<p>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."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"Marriage isn't a cage, exactly."</p> - -<p>"You just aren't entirely out, yet."</p> - -<p>"At least there is comfort in finding that other women want the same -thing I want, and get it."</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"Then it's really a good scheme for you, too?" Catherine begged.</p> - -<p>"I'm a little too old to sit up with a croupy child."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>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 -meet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>ings, 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>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,</p> - -<p>"Thank you. It isn't really a promotion. Just a different phase of the -work."</p> - -<p>"It will be so nice for you, having the change."</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>"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.</p> - -<p>"Yes, isn't it?" Miss Partridge's smile was tolerant, amused, just a -flicker of pointed teeth. But she thrust<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> the bag under her arm. "I -hope you have a pleasant trip. You go soon, don't you?"</p> - -<p>A truck came booming through the tunnel, and under cover of its din, -Catherine nodded and hurried on.</p> - -<p>"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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>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."</p> - -<p>"Whooping cough a mere instinct, or is it a habit? And croup and -measles and broken legs?" Henrietta<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> waved her eyeglasses at him. "If -you psychologists knew a little anatomy and materia medica——"</p> - -<p>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?</p> - -<p>"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!"</p> - -<p>"Of course Catherine has brains." Charles had withdrawn, his foils -sheathed. "Always knew that."</p> - -<p>"But these Bureaus and Foundations are so conservative. It's splendid -to see them forced into recognition of a woman's ability, I think."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"Don't let him josh you, Catherine!" Henrietta flashed out, warmly.</p> - -<p>"Aren't they ladylike? Most of their men not creative<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> enough to make a -real place for themselves. They crawl into that snug and safe berth——"</p> - -<p>"I've thought the few I've met were much like academic men." Henrietta -grinned at her thrust. "Haven't you, Cathy?"</p> - -<p>"You see," said Catherine, "Charles disapproves of the whole system, -the establishment of a bureau."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"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.</p> - -<p>"Oh, it gets rid of it. But it's artificial. Not a response to some -demand in society."</p> - -<p>"Charles, are you stuck-up, or jealous?" Henrietta glanced shrewdly -from him to Catherine.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"Um. Aren't universities endowed with some of this surplus cash, too?"</p> - -<p>"Only to some extent. There you have an actual need."</p> - -<p>"In other words, the shoe is on the other foot, now." Henrietta laughed.</p> - -<p>"It's true enough there's an actual need." Catherine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> sat 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?"</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>Catherine rose, slowly. She wished Henrietta wouldn't go. Her blunt -indifference to undercurrents had a steadying effect.</p> - -<p>"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?"</p> - -<p>"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 shoot<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> it? Not me. Same with your -job, same with Charles's job. May make a dent in the old world."</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>"Charles." He turned. The weight increased. "You really feel this work -is just empty fiddling?"</p> - -<p>"There doesn't seem much use in saying what I <i>think</i>"—his emphasis -pointed out the difference—"since it is taken as limited and personal."</p> - -<p>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.</p> - - -<p class="center">VI</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>"What," she asked, "exactly, do you think we are going to accomplish? -With the whole thing. Trip, book, all of it."</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>"So——" he said. "It has lost its savor."</p> - -<p>"Do you think we can change things, by criticism, or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> suggestion? Won't -all these schools go on in their own way?"</p> - -<p>Dr. Roberts sat on the edge of the table, one neat toe pushed against -the floor to balance himself, one swinging.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"But can a blind snout open its eyes?" Catherine was intent, serious. -"Can you change things? That way?"</p> - -<p>"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?"</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"Naturally. I understand that."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"Yes. An immediate need like that is, as you say,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> obvious. Easy to -believe in. Like baking bread for hungry people."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"Well—" Catherine smiled. "I won't be doubtful, then. I want to be -enthusiastic."</p> - -<p>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. To <i>matter</i>. I believe -it does. I <i>will</i> believe in it.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="center">VII</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"Can we pack it so that it won't crush?" Catherine brushed her fingers -over the warm brown duvetyn. "I scarcely recognize myself."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"I've got to pay for these sometime!" Catherine slipped out of the -dress. "You beguiled me into awful extravagance."</p> - -<p>"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?"</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"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.</p> - -<p>"Where are the children?" Margaret seized the black dress and folded it -dexterously.</p> - -<p>"At the opera—'Hansel and Gretel.' Mother took them. Miss Kelly has -Letty in the park."</p> - -<p>"Won't they love it!" Margaret whistled the gay little dance melody -from the opera. "Do they mind your going?"</p> - -<p>"Marian thinks it will be rather fun to have Gram here. Spencer wants -to go with me."</p> - -<p>"The lamb! There, those are properly packed. You be careful when you -take them out. Now, shoes. No, put that blouse in your handbag."</p> - -<p>"I declare—" Catherine laughed as Margaret moved competently through -the piles. "It's like a trousseau—my second."</p> - -<p>"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.</p> - -<p>"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.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Um." Margaret nodded. Then, suddenly, "I told Mother I thought she had -no business siding with him."</p> - -<p>Catherine faced her, alarmed.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"The only trouble with Charles," declared Margaret, her arms akimbo on -her slim hips, "is that he is a man!"</p> - -<p>"You sound like Amy."</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>Catherine's color receded in the swift tautening of her body. Margaret -need not trample in. "I don't know," she said, stiffly.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"I didn't mean to be sniffy." Catherine softened. "I really don't know. -I was shocked that you——"</p> - -<p>"Um. What are my eyes for, little Red Riding Hood? Anyway, it's a -darned skilful move of yours, this trip."</p> - -<p>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."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p> - -<p>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."</p> - -<p>"I think so, Mrs. Hammond." Not a quaver of uneasiness in her voice.</p> - -<p>You might suppose I went off every week, thought Catherine.</p> - -<p>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!</p> - -<p>"Will I serve up the soup, Mrs. Hammond?" Mrs. O'Lay was reproachful. -"It's half after six."</p> - -<p>"Mr. Hammond should be in any minute."</p> - -<p>The telephone shrilled into her waiting.</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>They dined without Charles.</p> - -<p>"Poor fellow!" Mrs. Spencer was gently sympathetic. "There's nothing so -upsetting as the toothache."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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."</p> - -<p>"Miss Kelly could be witch," said Spencer.</p> - -<p>"She's too nice, too!"</p> - -<p>"She could pretend not to be." Spencer peered at Catherine, and -suddenly giggled.</p> - -<p>"That isn't funny," protested Marian.</p> - -<p>"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.</p> - -<p>"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, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> she was leaning forward, way out of the window, -and waving her arms."</p> - -<p>"Oh, Muvver!" Marian sighed in delight.</p> - -<p>"I said, 'What are you doing!'"</p> - -<p>"You tell us what you said, Muvver," begged Marian, her eyes darkly -shining. "Please."</p> - -<p>"I said"—Catherine laughed—"that I was going to fly to Heaven."</p> - -<p>"Did you think you were, Mother?" asked Spencer.</p> - -<p>"Perhaps. I was playing Little Eva so hard that I expected the angels -to pick me up, you know."</p> - -<p>"An' then, Gram?"</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>"Would you really of jumped, Mother?" Spencer, in his eagerness, came -around to Catherine's chair.</p> - -<p>"I don't know. I was a silly little girl, wasn't I?"</p> - -<p>"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."</p> - -<p>A wave of color rushed up to Spencer's hair, and his nostrils trembled.</p> - -<p>"Wasn't that silly?"</p> - -<p>"I did think so, Mother." He gulped. "I got mixed up. If you think so, -it feels true, doesn't it?"</p> - -<p>"We told him it wasn't to-day. But he kept thinking so."</p> - -<p>Catherine remembered the dash he had made through the hall to her -bedroom, his halt at the door, his long stare at her. Poor boy!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p> - -<p>"You better sit down, son," she said. "Here comes dessert."</p> - -<p>Later, when she bade them good night, his arms tightened about her neck.</p> - -<p>"You said to-morrow," he whispered, "and I thought maybe it was -to-morrow. Because to-morrow is to-day, always, when it gets here."</p> - -<p>"We can write letters to each other," said Catherine, rubbing her cheek -softly against his hair. "Won't that be fun? We never wrote to each -other."</p> - -<p>"With my own name on the envelope?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir." Catherine felt him relax into pleased contemplation of -envelopes with his own name.</p> - -<p>"It's queer Charles doesn't come." Mrs. Spencer laid aside her magazine -as Catherine entered the living room. "Do you know what dentist he goes -to?"</p> - -<p>"Dr. Reeves, I think. He had to wait until the doctor came in from -dinner."</p> - -<p>"Oh, yes." Mrs. Spencer ruffled her fingers through the pages. "Alethea -went on Thursday," she said. "I'll be glad to move in here. It's rather -queer, staying alone."</p> - -<p>"I am glad you want to come." Catherine was grateful. "It relieves me -of any anxiety. Things should run smoothly."</p> - -<p>"Spencer was quite pitiful." Mrs. Spencer looked like an inquisitive -little bird. "He's rather hard to manage. Notional. Marian seems more -normal."</p> - -<p>"She is more phlegmatic than Spencer." Catherine refused to take up -that word, "pitiful," and its implications.</p> - -<p>"They're both sweet children. They act well-bred in public. It's a -pleasure to take them out. Even when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> Spencer was so distressed, he -didn't make himself conspicuous. And when I promised him you'd really -be here, he settled down again."</p> - -<p>Catherine again rejected the distress. She wouldn't argue with her -mother about going away. Too late, now.</p> - -<p>"Miss Kelly is very good with them, I think," she said. "She gives -them better training than I ever did. I suppose she sees them more -impersonally. Even Letty——"</p> - -<p>"I don't think anyone trains children better than their mother." Mrs. -Spencer was indignant. "You always did very well. Miss Kelly does seem -competent, of course."</p> - -<p>A sharp ring at the bell brought Catherine to her feet. Perhaps Charles -had forgotten his key. But as she hurried down the hall, she heard a -shrill guffaw from Sam, and the elevator slid rapidly out of sight as -she opened the door.</p> - -<p>"Why, Flora! Come in."</p> - -<p>Flora, hastening to drag a lugubrious expression over the wide grin Sam -had evidently provoked, shook her head, the stiff purple flowers on her -large hat rattling like hail.</p> - -<p>"No'm, I ain't coming in," she said. "I came to ask a favor of you, -Mis' Hammond. You well, and the children?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, we're all well." Catherine recalled the dejected, bruised -Flora she had last seen. Bruises and dejection had vanished; Flora -was resplendent in a spotted yellow polo coat, a brilliantly striped -scarf displayed over one shoulder, and—Catherine almost laughed -aloud—arctics,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> flapping about plump white silk-stockinged legs. But -she was uneasy; the olive-whites of her eyes shone, and her gold tooth -flashed.</p> - -<p>"Mis' Hammond, you knows what I done told you, about that worthless -puhfessional man." She thrust her hands deep into her pockets, trying -to swagger a little. "You recollects? I don' want to bother you, but -he's the worstest man. He's tryin' to ruin my character."</p> - -<p>"I thought you had him put in prison."</p> - -<p>"Yessum. But he's bailed out. An' the case is postponed, while he works -against me. He's provin' that I was bad, and let my li'l girl run wild. -They shut her up." Flora scrambled for a handkerchief, and rubbed -vigorously at her eyes. "My lawyer fr'en, he says if I can get proof -about my character, then that man won't stand no trial. He tole me to -get a proof from you, Mis' Hammond. You know I worked hard, don't you?"</p> - -<p>"What kind of proof, Flora? There, don't cry. Of course I'll help you."</p> - -<p>"My lawyer fr'en, he says you should write it out about me. A kinda -paper, all about how I done work for you. With your name and where you -lives on it. Then you don' have to come to court, you just writes it -down on a paper."</p> - -<p>"Come in, Flora, and I'll write something for you."</p> - -<p>"No'm, I'se going to stand right here."</p> - -<p>"Wait, then."</p> - -<p>Catherine wrote a brief, emphatic statement. She had employed Flora -Lopez for three years, and always found her reliable, competent, hard -working. What do I really know about her, she thought, her pen poised -at the end of that sentence. Character—she saw again that neat,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> -respectable flat, eloquent of Flora's ambition, and the little boy. She -is a self-respecting woman, who has supported herself and her children.</p> - -<p>"Just Flora, that former maid of mine," she told her mother. "Wants a -recommendation."</p> - -<p>"There you are." She handed the sheet to Flora.</p> - -<p>"But Mis' Hammond, my lawyer fr'en, he say you have to get a notary -seal onto it, or it ain't good in court." She stared at the writing. -"You could mebbe send it by mail to me. I moved to a new place. Folks -in that house were too nosy. I'm at——"</p> - -<p>"I'm going away to-morrow, for a month." Catherine hesitated. "I tell -you, we'll go find a notary to-night. There are several along the -Avenue, if it isn't too late."</p> - -<p>Her mother agreed, rather doubtfully, to wait until she returned, -unless Charles came in the meantime.</p> - -<p>"I don't think you ought to go out with that colored woman this time of -night," she insisted.</p> - -<p>But Catherine, hurrying into coat and hat, was off. The notary in the -tobacco shop at the corner had gone home. After a cold, slipping walk -on sleeted streets to Broadway and down, Catherine found another shop, -and a man who could put a seal to her oath.</p> - -<p>Flora folded the paper. She refused to put it in her pocket.</p> - -<p>"I got to get it safe to my lawyer fr'en," she insisted. "I is obliged -to you, Mis' Hammond." She turned her homely, dark face passionately -toward Catherine, her wide mouth moving grotesquely as she spoke. "Mos' -folks is cruel mean to you if your luck is bad! Women are the mostest -mean. Sayin' I neglects my chile—all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> 'count of my being a good -worker. You got somebody to work for you now?"</p> - -<p>"Mrs. O'Lay, the janitor's wife. You remember her? She can't cook as -you could. Mr. Hammond doesn't eat a meal without wishing you were -back."</p> - -<p>"I—I jus' couldn't come back, Mis' Hammond. I'se obliged to you, -but——"</p> - -<p>"Are you working somewhere?"</p> - -<p>"Washings, at home. I ain't making so much money. But my lawyer fr'en, -he ain't charging me but half rates."</p> - -<p>"Do you need money?" Catherine's hand moved toward her pocket book.</p> - -<p>"I'se too much obliged, Mis' Hammond, to need it." She looked away, and -suddenly darted out across the street, her arctics flapping, her dirty -yellow coat flopping about her awkward flight.</p> - -<p>Catherine went home, stepping gingerly over the glare of ice. A taxi -rattled and skidded to a stop at the door just as she reached the -apartment house, and her mother came out.</p> - -<p>"Here, you'll slip." Catherine seized her arm, and engineered her -passage. "Has Charles come home?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, poor boy. He's had an awful time. Tell the driver to go very -slowly!" Mrs. Spencer disappeared in the cab.</p> - - -<p class="center">VIII</p> - -<p>"'At Flora, she coming back to wuk for you-all?" Sam made friendly -inquiry as he stopped the elevator at Catherine's floor.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p> - -<p>"No."</p> - -<p>"She say she got grand job for some elegant folks. Sma't worker, Flora -is."</p> - -<p>Poor Flora—Catherine unlocked the door quietly—lying to Sam, to save -her face some way, of course.</p> - -<p>If Charles is miserable—hope thrust out a new tendril, waveringly, in -a blurred picture of herself ministering to him, pretending tenderly -that nothing ever had been wrong.</p> - -<p>"Hello." She smiled as he turned from the window, draped in a -melancholy air of pain nobly borne. "You have had a horrid time, -haven't you?"</p> - -<p>"Just a jumpy tooth." He sat down, reaching for the paper. "Your mother -was worried about you. Said you went off with a darky hours ago."</p> - -<p>"She didn't seem worried. I met her at the door." Catherine went out to -the hall closet with her wraps. Her fingers brushed the sleeve of his -heavy coat. If I can pretend, she thought.</p> - -<p>"It was only Flora," she said as she returned. "She wanted a statement -from me, evidence as to her character. That man, you remember, her -puhfessional gentleman? He seems to have a scheme to save himself at -her expense. We went out to hunt up a notary."</p> - -<p>"You committed yourself legally to some defense of her?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, indeed. Poor Flora!"</p> - -<p>"Unwise, wasn't it? How do you know what she'll do with such a paper?"</p> - -<p>"It seemed little enough to do for her. They want to prove she -neglected her children."</p> - -<p>"Didn't she?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p> - -<p>Catherine wondered; did he mean that implied comparison? At least he -wouldn't drag it out, openly, if she ignored it.</p> - -<p>"Have you had any dinner?"</p> - -<p>"Can't eat with a nerve howling like a fiend."</p> - -<p>"Come along, poor boy. I'll find you something."</p> - -<p>"Don't bother."</p> - -<p>"Come on, Charles." Catherine went into the kitchen. "Here's a -wonderful roast beef," she called back, and Charles came reluctantly. -"You sit there—" she pushed the chair near the shining white table. -"Coffee, or cocoa?"</p> - -<p>"Cocoa, if it isn't too much trouble. I'd like to sleep. Had a cup of -coffee."</p> - -<p>"Did the dentist keep you all this time in his torture chamber?" -Catherine moved swiftly from ice-chest to stove. If I can invoke our -midnight lunches, all down the past, she thought—I can't go away, -without trying to reach him. It is like death.</p> - -<p>"No," said Charles. "I haven't been there all the evening."</p> - -<p>Catherine stirred the foaming cocoa. Let's pretend, she wanted to cry -out; let's pretend!</p> - -<p>"I thought probably you would be asleep. Since you start off to-morrow."</p> - -<p>"I wanted to see you." Catherine poured the cocoa and set it before -him. She stood there, one hand spread delicately, the fingers pressed -against the oilcloth. "And you—didn't want to see me, did you!" She -was supplicating, provocative, leaning above him.</p> - -<p>"I had to stop with some manuscript, at Miss Partridge's." Charles -buttered a slice of bread deliberately,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> and forked a slice of pink -meat to his place. "Is there any Worcestershire?"</p> - -<p>"And she gave you coffee?" Catherine moved hastily away from the table, -and felt blindly along the cupboard shelf for the bottle of sauce.</p> - -<p>"Yes." Charles was blandly engrossed in his lunch.</p> - -<p>He's as much as telling me that he chose to go to her, when he wished -comfort. Catherine set the Worcestershire beside his plate. I won't -hear him. But what a burlesque, my serving him, when I can't, through -any outer humility, reach him.</p> - -<p>"Want more sugar?" She asked, casually.</p> - -<p>"No. This is fine." His upward glance was puzzled, uneasy.</p> - -<p>Ah, I have no pride, no decency! she cried to herself. Her heart was -beating in suffocating rhythm; her fingers lifted, undirected, aching -for the touch of that stubborn, beloved head—the prominent temples, -the hollow above the cheekbones, the old intimate brushing across his -eyes, down to cup his strong, obdurate chin.</p> - -<p>"Charles," she whispered, and swayed backward from his sudden violent -start, which clattered the carving knife to the floor.</p> - -<p>"Damn!" he clapped his hand to his jaw. "Oh, damn!"</p> - -<p>"What is it?"</p> - -<p>"That tooth. Hell, I've yanked that filling out." He was on his feet, -his face contorted under his hand. "Get me some iodine. He said iodine -would stop it."</p> - -<p>The tooth was treated. Charles, a little sheepishly, admitted that the -pain was less.</p> - -<p>"Guess I'll crawl right into bed, before it jumps again. If I can get -to sleep——"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p> - -<p>Catherine filled a hot-water bag and slipped it under his cheek.</p> - -<p>"That feels fine." He looked up at her. "Thanks."</p> - -<p>Catherine bent quickly and brushed her lips on his forehead.</p> - -<p>"Good night," she said steadily. "Go right to sleep." She lay wakeful -for a long time.</p> - -<p>"When I come back," she thought, at last— She twisted restlessly. -"That tooth—I was a little mad, and it destroyed my frenzy. I ought to -be glad, and I'm not."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The hours on Sunday between breakfast and time for her train were -telescoped into a band of pressure. Directions to Mrs. O'Lay; final -arrangements for her mother; engrossing details devouring the few hours.</p> - -<p>The taxi was announced. Letty burst into wails because she couldn't go; -she had been discovered busily emptying her bureau drawers into an old -suitcase. Catherine, distracted, kissed her mother and hurried away, -hearing the determined shrieks until the elevator reached the ground -floor. Charles, Spencer, and Marian climbed into the taxi after her.</p> - -<p>"You look lovely," said Marian, over and over, stroking the soft fur at -the throat of her jacket. "You look just lovely."</p> - -<p>Spencer snuggled close against her, without a word. Charles, after a -businesslike inquiry into the state of her tickets, was silent. And -Catherine's one clear thought was: it is lucky that I can't escape -now—like a moving stairway, and I've stepped squarely on it. I -couldn't, to-day, furnish the energy, the motive power, to go and leave -them.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h2><a name="PART_V" id="PART_V"></a>PART V</h2> - -<p class="center">IMPASSE</p> - - -<p class="center">I</p> - -<p>Catherine moved slowly up the covered stairway from the Randolph Street -station, sniffing at the strange smell of Chicago. What did make it so -different from New York? Smoke, blown whirling back in the sharp east -wind over the grinding of ice along the lake shore, something more -composite than that, which, if she could but decipher, would give her -the essential difference between the cities. She snatched at her hat, -as she reached the gusty platform. There was Bill, lounging against the -paper stand! As she edged through the home-bound crowd, he saw her, -with a sharp lifting of his negligent, withdrawn look, and started -toward her.</p> - -<p>"Catherine!" He drew her out of the crowd, into a little corner -protected by the booth.</p> - -<p>"What a horrid place I made you wait!" Pleasure shimmered over -Catherine, like sun in shallow water. "Have you had to stand here long? -Oh, it is nice to see you!" The strange city, the unknown, hurrying -people, walled them about in deepened intimacy.</p> - -<p>"Fine." Bill smiled down at her. "You look as if you had been eating up -this west, and liked its taste."</p> - -<p>"I have. I do." Soft, clear brilliance in her eyes,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> in her smile. -"Let's go somewhere, so I can tell you about it. I want to talk and -talk."</p> - -<p>"There's a place just north of here. Would you like to walk? A little -place I found. Wonderful dinners. Or if you want to celebrate, we can -go to some huge hotel."</p> - -<p>"I don't care. Let's try your little place."</p> - -<p>They walked swiftly along the Avenue, the lake wind whipping against -them, Bill answering Catherine's random questions about the gaunt, dark -buildings they passed, about his work.</p> - -<p>"I'm chattering," she thought. "I don't care!"</p> - -<p>"Here we are." Bill's hand under her elbow guided her into the doorway -of a small white building.</p> - -<p>"Wall papers," read Catherine from the hall sign, but Bill steered her -to an opposite door.</p> - -<p>"Oh, I do like it." She nodded at Bill's fleet, anxious query.</p> - -<p>A long, irregular room, with scattered tables, dull gray enamel, -shining in the soft orange light of small lamps, and a great brick -fireplace where logs burned.</p> - -<p>"Sit here, where you can watch the fire without scorching." Bill chose -a table in a small alcove. "Now tell us all about it. Have you been -made president of one of these colleges? Or endowed? You look amazingly -triumphant."</p> - -<p>"Do I strut?" Catherine laughed softly, slipping out of her coat, -drawing off her gloves.</p> - -<p>"Not quite. But—you could, couldn't you?"</p> - -<p>"I've had a wonderful time, Bill. Incredibly wonderful!"</p> - -<p>"And you haven't been lonely, or homesick? How long since you left New -York?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p> - -<p>"More than two weeks. I've finished Illinois. That's why I'm here -to-night. I go on to Ohio at midnight. Homesick? Should I be ashamed -not to be? The first day or so, I felt guilty. And I woke up at night, -thinking I heard Spencer cry out in his sleep, or Letty. Now I just -sleep like a baby—or a spinster."</p> - -<p>"Henrietta wrote me that they are all O.K. Had a note this morning."</p> - -<p>"She wrote me, too. Nice old thing, to drop in on them. I do miss them -of course. But——" She looked up, a wistful shadow across her eyes. -"Bill, I had forgotten how much time there really was in a day. When -you could go straight ahead, just doing the things you had planned. -Doing one job. You said I'd have two jobs, didn't you? These last weeks -I've had one. And I love it! Not forever, of course. But for this -month. I feel like a <i>person</i>. Sometimes, almost like a personage! -People have been very kind, and interested."</p> - -<p>She was silent as Bill turned to consult with the waitress; for a -moment her eyes lingered on his head, dark and gaunt against the -firelight, and then looked away at the groups of diners. Early yet, -Bill had said.</p> - -<p>"Well?" Bill watched her. "What a charming gown—like an Indian summer."</p> - -<p>"Margaret selected it." Catherine stretched one arm along the table, -the loose sleeve of golden brown velvet falling softly away from the -firm ivory of her wrist. "I was doubtful about the color."</p> - -<p>"You needn't be."</p> - -<p>"She bullied me into all sorts of lugs." Catherine laughed. "And -I've been glad of it." She hovered de<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>lightedly over the tray of -hors-d'œuvres. "Like a flower garden!"</p> - -<p>"A woman runs this place," remarked Bill with apparent irrelevance.</p> - -<p>"Down in a little southern Illinois town, the wife of one of the -college faculty wants to start a tea room. She told me all about it. -Her husband doesn't want her to. She says she supposes it isn't very -high brow. You know, Bill"—Catherine clasped her hands at the edge -of the table—"It's happening everywhere. Women are just busting out. -That's been what they've wanted to know about me. How I manage it. It's -pitiful, their eagerness. Even their husbands. I went out to dinner one -night, and the thing the college president wanted to know was all about -how I managed. How many people it took to fill my place, and all the -rest. I expected to be told in so many words that I ought to be home -with my children."</p> - -<p>"And you haven't?"</p> - -<p>"Indirectly, sometimes. But even the most righteous mothers crave -information. How do I manage! It's extraordinary. It may have gone to -my head. Like strong drink. I know I'm talking too much. But, Bill, -you've boiled me over, all this brew, and I have to talk!"</p> - -<p>"I like it."</p> - -<p>"You see—" Catherine glanced up doubtfully. "I can't write to Charles. -It sounds too much like crowing." She fingered her soup spoon. She -wanted to talk about Charles, too. Bill would understand. Those brief, -impersonal notes of his: he was well, he was working on his book, he -was busy with semester finals, the children were well, yours, Charles.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p> - -<p>"You never saw Charles's mother, did you?" asked Bill.</p> - -<p>"No." Catherine waited. Bill was never random in his associations.</p> - -<p>"He's told you about her, of course?"</p> - -<p>"Lots of times. She was devoted to him, wasn't she? You knew her?"</p> - -<p>"We lived next door for years, you know. She died just as Charles went -to college. His father had died years earlier. Just enough income -for comfort, and just Charles. I think"—he grinned a little—"that -you'll have to train Charles as long as she did, before he can fully -appreciate your career."</p> - -<p>"But that was years ago."</p> - -<p>"Yes. But—I think I can tell you this, without violation—Charles told -me once, talking of you before I had met you, that to him you were -the perfect woman, like his mother. Which meant—tender, loving, and -devoted."</p> - -<p>Catherine's spoon clicked against the soup plate. Her eyelids were -suddenly heavy, weighted with memories. Charles had said that to her, -years ago. A cold finger touched her heart, binding it, and she knew, -through all the brimming delight of the past days, how she had hidden -away the troubling thought of Charles.</p> - -<p>"I don't mean that she spoiled him grossly," Bill was saying. "She was -too New England, too much what we used to call a gentlewoman for that. -Charles was simply the center of her life; his welfare, his desires, -his future—those things set the radius of her circle. She had nothing -else, you see. Except the idea"—the corners of Bill's mouth rose in -his slow smile—"that since Charles was a man, he was a superior being. -Did women<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> really think that, Catherine? Or was that a concession they -knew they could easily afford to make?"</p> - -<p>"But Charles doesn't think men are superior." Catherine's smile was -uncertain, begging for assurance. "Why, those early experiments of -his, the brochures he published, were directed against that very -superstition."</p> - -<p>"Yes. Intellectually he has come a long way since those early days. But -that matters so much less than we like to think."</p> - -<p>Catherine waited while the waitress served the next course. Bill's -words had evoked a thought clearly from the churning within her; she -held it until the waitress had gone, and then spoke,</p> - -<p>"You mean, exactly, that he wishes my radius to be his desires, his -welfare, his future?"</p> - -<p>"That's his old pattern. Bound to hang on, Catherine. Because it is so -flattering, so pleasant. Isn't it what we all wish, anyway? Someone -living within our limits?"</p> - -<p>"Perhaps men wish it."</p> - -<p>"You think women don't?"</p> - -<p>"Do they?" Catherine shook her head. "I don't want Charles to have -nothing but me in his life. Aren't women hardier? Since they've never -had that—it is a sort of human sacrifice, isn't it? Men are like -vines! Did you know vines wouldn't grow well, some of them, unless you -sacrifice to them? Bones and flesh. 'If you have an old hen,' said the -nursery man, when I asked him about our Actinidia in Maine, 'bury her -close to the roots. Then the vine will shoot up.' And it did!"</p> - -<p>"You would make over the old saying about sturdy oaks, wouldn't you?"</p> - -<p>"Don't make fun of me. Perhaps I can discover<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> something which will -change the world!" She stared intently at Bill. "You—" she hesitated. -"You live without that human sacrifice, Bill. You aren't an Actinidia."</p> - -<p>"And so, perhaps, I know why men wish it." Bill pushed to one side his -untouched salad. "Without any question now of its fairness or justice -to women like Henrietta, or you. In the first place, it is convenient, -practically so; smooths down all the details of living. But especially, -it drops a painted screen between man and the distressing futility of -his life. A man with a family and a regular wife, old style, doesn't -often have to face his own emptiness. He feels important. He hurries -around at his work, and if doubt pricks a hole in that screen, the -picture painted there is intricate enough to hide the hole. He has -something to keep his machinery in action. If by day his little ego is -deflated, there is, to change my figure, free air at home to blow him -full again."</p> - -<p>"You sound as if you thought all wives were adoring and humble," said -Catherine.</p> - -<p>"Some of them used to be." Bill grinned at her, and lifted his hand -abruptly in a signal to the waitress. "This is supposed to be a party," -he apologized, "and not a lecture by me. Tell me more about what you've -been doing."</p> - -<p>Catherine's talk was fragmentary. Something—what Bill had said, or -perhaps simply his being Bill with all the old associations close -around him—had blown the froth away from the past two weeks; she had -thought that she had become almost a different Catherine, bright, -hard, full of enthusiasm and interest, absorbed in her rôle of -Bureau-representative. She saw now that her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> inner self still stood -with feet entangled in perplexity and doubt.</p> - -<p>"Bill"—she broke into her own recital—"if a man doesn't have free air -at home, does he look for it somewhere else?"</p> - -<p>"He may." Bill's quick upward glance was disturbed. He knew, -then, about Charles and Stella. Henrietta would have told him. -"Or"—lightly—"he runs along on a flat tire."</p> - -<p>Catherine was silent, her mind skipping along with the absurd figure. -Stella Partridge was, after all, too busy pumping her own ego hard -to perform that task long for any man. She might flatter him, and -cajole——</p> - -<p>"Do the children write to you?"</p> - -<p>Catherine reached into the pocket of her coat.</p> - -<p>"I've been moving too fast the last few days to have letters. I expect -a lot to-morrow in Ohio." She spread the sheet on the table. "Here's -the latest. Letty made the crosses."</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>"Dere Mother I will be glad when you come home again because I do not -like to sleep in Daddys and your room so well. Walter is coming to -see me for a day and maybe I am going home with him we are being good -I love You</p> - -<p>From your loving Son Spencer Hammond Good-by."</p></blockquote> - -<p>"Nice kid." Bill looked up. "Let's see, he is just nine, isn't he?"</p> - -<p>"Going on ten." Catherine refolded the letter. She loved the little -smudge from an inky thumb in the margin.</p> - -<p>"What shall we do now? You have several hours left." Bill set down his -coffee cup. "Music? Theater? We can probably find seats for something."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I'd rather—" Catherine paused. "Is it too stormy for a walk? I never -get out of doors any more. This morning, from a window in the building -at the University, I had a glimpse of the lake. Could we go there? I'd -like to see how much like the ocean it is."</p> - -<p>"It's windy, of course."</p> - -<p>"I'd like that." A picture of herself, buffeted by winds over a stretch -of water—perhaps that would blow away the melancholy cobwebs, would -whip her again into froth.</p> - -<p>Bill summoned a taxi, and in silence they rode through the long -streets, south toward the park, their shoulders brushing as the machine -bumped over frozen slush.</p> - -<p>Bill slumped forward, his hands linked about his knees, his shoulders -an arc of weariness. The long streets seemed drawn past the windows of -the cab, on either side a sliding strip of unfamiliar shapes. It's as -if a spring had broken in him, thought Catherine, a secret spring which -had kept him running. Perhaps Henrietta was right, and he is sick.</p> - -<p>"It's a long way, isn't it?" She had a plaintive moment of loneliness. -Bill was the one familiar thing in the strange city, and he had -retreated almost beyond communication. "I didn't know it was so far."</p> - -<p>"We're almost there." Bill straightened his shoulders, and peered out -at the sliding street. "In the Fifties. I thought you'd like Jackson -Park. More space there."</p> - -<p>A moment later he thrust open the door.</p> - -<p>"Here!" he called to the driver. "We'll get out here."</p> - - -<p class="center">II</p> - -<p>"There's your lake." Bill slipped his hand firmly under her arm, and -they bent slightly forward into the dark<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> rushing wind. At their feet -a steady crunching, a restless churning as of china waves; beyond, a -stretch of black hidden action under a sky black and infinitely remote, -with sharp white stars. "This wind has broken up the shore ice."</p> - -<p>Along the sloping beach rose vague suggestions of grotesqueries; piles -thrusting tortured heads with ice-hair above the frozen surface, -driftwood caught between great blocks of dirty ice.</p> - -<p>"It's like Doré's Inferno." Catherine shivered. "You remember? That -frozen hell, with awful heads sticking up in the ice?"</p> - -<p>"Let's walk along. You're cold." Buffeted, they went along the deserted -drive, passing regularly from shadow into the burst of light under the -yellow globes that hung above them. "I like that black sky," said Bill. -"In New York we never have that."</p> - -<p>"No." Catherine glanced westward, through bare limbs of trees. "See, -there's the city glare, back there." She was warm again, her blood -tingling under the dark rush of the wind; the black hidden movement -of the water, the cold vasty black of the sky were exciting, like a -shouted challenge.</p> - -<p>"Here is shelter from the wind." Bill drew her into an angle made by -the porch of a small summer pavilion. "You can put your head out to see -the lake, without being knocked flat."</p> - -<p>The wind racketed in the loose boards nailed along the lake side of the -porch. Catherine leaned back, laughing, out of reach of the gusts. She -could just catch the dim outline of Bill's face, his strong, aquiline -profile.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Bill!" She felt suddenly that in the dark, windy night there was -nothing else human except Bill and herself; she wanted to burrow into -his silence, his withdrawal. Her fingers brushed his arm in soft demand.</p> - -<p>"Great, isn't it?" His voice was low and warm, walking under the rush -of the wind. "Blows the nonsense clear out of you." He moved slightly -so that his shoulder sheltered her. "Warm enough?"</p> - -<p>"I shouldn't like to be here alone." She couldn't see his face -distinctly—shadowy eye sockets, dark mouth. "I'd feel too little! You -keep me life-size."</p> - -<p>Silence, warm and comforting, like a secret place within the noise of -the wind rattling at the boards, churning up the ice cakes.</p> - -<p>"I can't pry into him." Catherine's feeling broke into splinters of -thought. "It wouldn't be fair. He'd hate it. Digging under to see his -roots. Something passionless and fine in this—no strife—as if he -accepted me—whole. Dear Bill."</p> - -<p>"Well?" He was smiling at her, she knew. "You have a train to catch, -haven't you?"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>They stood together in the downtown station. Bill had collected her -luggage from the check-room, had brought a bunch of violets for her -from the little florist's counter.</p> - -<p>"It's Valentine's Day, you know." He watched gravely as she fastened -them against the soft beaver of her collar. "I'm starting East -to-morrow," he said. "I'll see your family before you do, won't I?"</p> - -<p>"You can give them my love first hand. Tell them I'm coming soon."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I'll tell them you are so triumphant and successful that they will be -fortunate to have you again."</p> - -<p>Catherine laughed softly. A local train was announced, draining off the -waiting people, leaving them almost alone in the station.</p> - -<p>"You know," she said, quietly, "you puff me up, Bill. Not when you say -ridiculous things like that, but all the time." Under his seeking, -hungry eyes, she flushed. "And I am grateful."</p> - -<p>A scurry to the platform, as the through express rolled in. Bill, -relinquishing her bags to the porter, seized her hand in a hard clasp, -and stood, bareheaded, below her on the platform shouting, "Good luck!" -as she was carried with increasing rush away.</p> - - -<p class="center">III</p> - -<p>Catherine, braced against the shivers and jounces of the old Ford taxi, -wondered inertly what it would feel like to live in such a town, in one -of those two-story frame houses, with a corrugated iron garage in the -rear, and grayish lace curtains at the windows, with smoke-blackened -sparrows scrapping in the front yard, and drifting, curling feathers -of soot in the dingy air. I could plan a town like this with a ruler, -she thought. A straight line for the business street, a few parallel -lines, a few right-angled lines: dots for churches, one of each kind; -for moving-picture theaters; for schools; small squares for yards -and houses. Factories along the railroad, pouring up the blanket of -smoke under which the town lay. Was that the soul of the town, that -close-hanging smoke, with its drifting feathers of soot? And<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> then, -out at the edge, where the frame houses were far apart, scattered, a -handful of college buildings, in medieval isolation. When she had said -"Hope College" to the driver, he had shrieked to a baggage master, "Hi, -Chuck! Where's Hope Collidge, d'yuh know?"</p> - -<p>"Out past the lunatic asylum. You know, down the car track."</p> - -<p>Hope College, typical of the small denominational institutions offering -a normal certificate. So Dr. Roberts had classified it.</p> - -<p>That must be the lunatic asylum, that group of brick buildings with -prison windows. They were well out of town, now, the cab skidding and -jerking over deep ruts. Gray, flat, interminable fields under a flat -gray sky. It's like a dream, thought Catherine, a funny, burlesque of a -dream, with me rattling along.</p> - -<p>"This it, lady?" The taxi shivered in all its bolts as it halted, and -the driver poked his head in at the door. There was a driveway winding -between two rows of small blotched poplar trunks, and back from the -road two square brick buildings, scrawled over with black network of -old vines.</p> - -<p>"I don't know."</p> - -<p>"Guess it must be." He slammed the door and whirred up the driveway.</p> - -<p>Just as Catherine climbed the steps, still moving vaguely in a dream -burlesque, a clangor of bells burst out, followed by the clamp of feet, -the sound of voices released. She opened the heavy door, and stepped -into the hall. The sense of dream vanished; this was real enough. -Opposite the door rose the central stairs of the building, twisting up -in a dimly lighted well. Up and down them climbed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> young people, girls, -a few boys. Shabby, gaudy, flippant, serious—Catherine watched them, -with a sharp resurgence of all her shining belief, her keen, exciting -delight in the thing she had come for.</p> - -<p>She marched into an office at the left of the hall. A girl sitting at a -small table, her smooth, pale-yellow head bent over a book, looked up.</p> - -<p>"Is this the Dean's office?" Catherine smiled at her; something like -Letty in the yellow hair, although the face was rather strained and -thin. "I'm Mrs. Hammond, from the Lynch Bureau."</p> - -<p>"She'll be right in." The girl rose and opened the door into the -adjoining office, as if in uncertainty. "She hasn't come down from -class yet. If you'll sit down——"</p> - -<p>"Yes. Do you happen to know whether there is any mail for me here?"</p> - -<p>"I'll see." The girl had an awkward, half-suspicious way of staring. -"Mrs. Charles Hammond?" she asked.</p> - -<p>Catherine sat down on a hard straight chair near the window; the girl's -eyes were inquisitive, over the edge of her book. Catherine shuffled -the envelopes hastily. Nothing from home. Strange—she had given them -this address, and for this date. A bulky envelope from Dr. Roberts, a -thin one from Henrietta. She tore open the flap of the latter, and let -the round, jerky writing leap at her. Every one was well. Henrietta -thought she might be interested in some hospital gossip. Stella -Partridge had been doing some work for Dr. Beck, the psychiatrist, and -had told several of the other doctors that she thought a medical man -should be in charge of the clinic rather than a mere Ph. Doctor. "She -says Beck has asked her to help him with a book, but I have a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> strong -doubt. Has Charles found her out, do you suppose?"</p> - -<p>Catherine folded the latter, and tried to poke with it into its -envelope the swirl of feeling it evoked. For a brisk little woman had -darted into the office and at a word from the girl was darting now at -her.</p> - -<p>"Mrs. Hammond? I'm Dean Snow. Come right in!" The pressure of her palm -against Catherine's was like a firmly stuffed pincushion. "Has anyone -else with a cold been in, Martha?"</p> - -<p>Catherine, passing ahead of the Dean into her office, caught the -friendly softening in the voice of the girl as she answered,</p> - -<p>"No'm, not this morning. The plumber came, and I sent him over to the -dormitory. He says that pipe is rusted and ought to come out. I told -him he'd have to see you first."</p> - -<p>"That's right, Martha. And you got those letters off?"</p> - -<p>"Yes'm."</p> - -<p>"Good."</p> - -<p>She followed Catherine, closing the door.</p> - -<p>"Just have a chair, Mrs. Hammond." She whisked herself into place -beside the old roll-top desk, her rotating office chair creaking as -she settled down on its springs. A little cubby-hole of an office, -with a sort of film of long use over the gray walls and painted floor, -over the crammed pigeon holes of the desk, over the huge framed -photographs—the "Acropolis," the "Porch of the Maidens," the "Sistine -Madonna," and, above the desk, a faded group photograph of gentle faces -above enormous puffed sleeves; in the corner a small hat-tree, from -which a rusty umbrella dangled.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p> - -<p>"You teach, Miss Snow, in addition to being Dean?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, yes. Latin and Greek. It's a great relief from plumbers and -colds." She had a plump, white face, with gray bangs over her forehead, -sharp blue eyes, and full pink lips held firmly together. She has -humor, thought Catherine, and common sense, but she's intolerant. "So -you're making an investigation of us, are you?" The Dean rubbed at a -streak of chalk-dust on the sleeve of her tight dress. "What do you -expect us to do after you point out our shortcomings?"</p> - -<p>She thinks I am dressy and interfering. Catherine held her hands -motionless against her desire to fidget. She's just the kind of -sensible woman I can't get on with.</p> - -<p>"The Bureau wants to make a constructive study," she said. "Not a -criticism."</p> - -<p>"We need just one constructive thing." Miss Snow smiled. "Money. We're -poor. Small endowment fund. The Baptists around here seem poorer each -year. Now I haven't had a secretary for five years. The students help -me out, and I deduct the hours from their tuition. If we had money -we could do much more. We get fine young people. The godless younger -generation doesn't come here. We wouldn't admit them if they wanted to -come. Our girls and boys know how to work. They are in earnest. But you -don't want to give us money, do you? No, you want to change things. -Mrs. Hammond—" She leaned forward, her plump fist coming down whack -on her knee. "I've been here almost forty years, as student, teacher, -officer. Our President, Dr. Whitmore, has been here as long as that. -Don't you think we know how to run a college?"</p> - -<p>Catherine hunted for phrases, gracious, illuminating,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> with which to -justify her mission. So many of these little colleges through the -state, such diversity of aim, changes in educational ideas——</p> - -<p>"You see," she finished appealingly, "that's our idea. That there -should be a clear, definite program in the training of young teachers, -and that enough is known about educational needs now to make such a -program feasible."</p> - -<p>"I've watched young people go out of here for many years now, and I -know it doesn't make much difference what they've been taught. If they -have the fear of God, if they are earnest and faithful, they succeed. -If not—none of your modern folderols will save them. Give them the -mental discipline of mathematics and the classics, and they can teach -children reading and writing all right. I've seen too many fads in -education to take them seriously. First it was natural science that was -to make the world over, and we had to raise a fund for a laboratory. -Then—oh, there's no use listing them. But I ask you, Mrs. Hammond, -what's happened to Rousseau, or Froebel, or that woman a year or so -ago, that foreigner, Monty somebody, who had a new scheme? Gone. You -have to cling to the eternal verities. Fads pass."</p> - -<p>The building quivered under the violent clangor of bells and the sound -of hurrying feet. Miss Snow pulled open a drawer and lifted out a -shabby, yellow-edged volume. "Here's one thing that stands. Ovid." She -tucked it under her arm and rose. "I have a class now. Would you care -to visit it?"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In the late afternoon Catherine stood in the hall, bidding Miss Snow -farewell.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p> - -<p>"It's been interesting, and I appreciate the time you have given me, -out of your very busy day," she said.</p> - -<p>"I've enjoyed it." Miss Snow shook hands vigorously. "I enjoy talking. -It airs my ideas even if it doesn't change them much. I wish you could -stay to hear the Glee Club practice to-night. We're real proud of their -singing."</p> - -<p>"I have to take that very early train." Catherine descended the steps -and climbed into the waiting taxi—the same one which had brought her. -"The Commercial House," she said.</p> - -<p>The early February twilight lay over the fields, as if the smoke had -settled more closely on the earth. She leaned back, letting the day -float past her, in unselected, haphazard bits. All that zeal and honest -industry poured into medieval patterns. The very best of the old -patterns, no doubt, with that stern righteousness, that obligation in -them. Something infinitely pitiful, touching, in those young things she -had watched, awkward, serious, patient, most of them.</p> - -<p>"Of course, most of our girls teach only a few years, and then marry," -Miss Snow had said. She couldn't have had more finality if she had -said, "and then die!"</p> - -<p>Luncheon, a hurried half hour in a chilly, bare dining hall, with grace -helping the creamed codfish grow cold. The other faculty members, -serious and threadbare, like farm horses, thought Catherine, with bare -spots chafed by the harness of inadequate salary, of monotony. As -untouched by any modern thought as if centuries of time separated them. -And each year, young people turned into that hopper.</p> - -<p>If I can put that feeling down on paper, she thought,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> it should -move even this mountain of age and tradition. To-morrow, my day will -be different; the large colleges are somewhat awake. But there are -hundreds of these.</p> - -<p>At the desk of the hotel she asked hopefully for mail. Perhaps she had -given this address to Charles and Miss Kelly, and not the college. The -clerk poked through a pile of letters and shook his bald, red head. -Three days without a word, for Henrietta's letter had been written days -ago. After a moment of hesitation—amusing, how old habits of economy -hung on!—she wrote out a telegram.</p> - -<p>"Night letter?" The clerk counted the words.</p> - -<p>"No. I want it to go the quickest possible way. I want an answer before -that morning train."</p> - -<p>In the bare little hotel room, she sat down under the light, her -writing pad balanced on her knee. A note to Dr. Roberts.</p> - -<p>"There seems no limit to the things we may accomplish," she wrote, -"when I see, at first hand, what the catalogue discrepancies really -mean, in flesh and blood and buildings."</p> - -<p>Suppose something was wrong, at home? She stared about at the dingy, -painted walls, with faint zigzags of cracks, and fear prickled through -the enthusiasm which enclosed her. This was the first time that letters -had failed to meet her. In two hours, or three, she should have an -answer to her message. "Please wire me at once, care Commercial House. -No word from you here." She picked up her pen again. No use to worry; -letters miscarried, and she would hear soon.</p> - -<p>She opened Henrietta's letter, to reread the comment on Stella -Partridge. Something behind that, she thought.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> That woman doesn't -make incautious remarks. Her mind fumbled with the news, as if it -were a loose bit out of an intricate mechanism; if she could fit it -into place, she could see how the whole affair ran. That was one of -Charles's lowest boiling points, that contention about medical men -and psychologists. Perhaps Partridge had been too greedy, and laid -those smooth hands of hers on something Charles particularly wanted -for himself, for his own job. Whatever it is—Catherine rose suddenly, -piling her letters and portfolio on the corner of the dresser—whatever -it is, I mean to know about it, when I go home again. I am through -fumbling along.</p> - -<p>Her room had grown chilly. A wind rattled at the loose sash of the -window. She looked out at the angle of street; a hardware store across -the way mirrored its enormous window light in shining pans and kettles. -The air seemed full of whirling bits of mica. She pushed the window up -and leaned out; sharp and wet on her face, the mica was snow, driven -along on the wind.</p> - -<p>Only an hour since she had telegraphed. She would go down to dinner. -Something insidious in the way the soft fingers of worry pried between -thoughts, pushed down deeper than thought.</p> - -<p>She stopped at the desk.</p> - -<p>"If a message comes for Mrs. Hammond, please send it in to the dining -room."</p> - -<p>"Guess we're going to have a blizzard, aren't we?" The clerk rubbed an -inky forefinger thoughtfully over his red baldness. "Coming along from -Chicago and the west on this wind."</p> - -<p>More pushing of those soft fingers: delay of trains, wires down, who -knows when I may hear!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p> - -<p>"It may not be a bad storm," said Catherine, and went resolutely in to -dinner. But she heard the clerk's, "You can't tell when you're going to -get trouble."</p> - -<p>In the dining room, a few traveling men scattered about at tables -sending glances of incurious speculation after her as she chose a seat; -a middle-aged waitress whose streaked purplish hair shrieked aloud her -effort to keep youth enough to win tips, and whose heavy, laborious -tread spoke more loudly of aching, fallen arches. Catherine started -at the twin bottles of vinegar and yellowish oil in the center of the -table. Letty's just gone to bed, she thought. Mrs. O'Lay is serving -dinner. I shouldn't care to be a traveling saleswoman. The hotel drives -my job into some remote limbo. I'll go to bed early. To-morrow, at the -University, it will be different. Such a cordial note from that history -professor's wife, asking me to stay with them. It was nice of Dr. -Roberts to write personally to them.</p> - -<p>Good steak, at least. Fair coffee. Finally, as the waitress set a -triangle of pie before her, she saw the clerk in the doorway, his -eyes focusing on her. He came slowly toward her. It's come, thought -Catherine. He ought not to button that alpaca coat; absurd, the way it -creases over his fat stomach.</p> - -<p>"They just telephoned this from the station," he said, laying a -sheet of paper beside her plate. The elaborate scrolled heading, -<span class="smcap">Commercial House</span>, wriggled under her eyes, settled flatly away -as she read the penciled words.</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>Spencer hurt coasting wired you this morning can you come</p> - -<p> -<span class="smcap">Charles</span><br /> -</p></blockquote> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Hope it's nothing serious, ma'am."</p> - -<p>Those soft fingers of worry had unsheathed their claws; they tore at -her, deep in the unheeded, rhythmic working of her body. She could not -breathe, nor see, nor speak. Spencer!</p> - -<p>"Nothing serious," he repeated, and suddenly her heart was clattering -against her ribs. She could lift her eyes from that paper. Why, he had -a kindly face, that bald clerk; his flat nostrils had widened a little, -in avid human sniffing at disaster, but his eyes were sympathetic.</p> - -<p>"It's my little boy." She could breathe now. "It says he is hurt. -Why—" she thrust back her chair in a violent motion, and wavered as -she stood up. "There was a telegram this morning. I should have known -this morning!"</p> - -<p>"That's too bad, Ma'am. It never came here."</p> - -<p>"I'll have to get a train." Catherine was hurrying out of the dining -room, the clerk at her heels. "When can I?"</p> - -<p>"It don't say how bad he's hurt." She felt his hand close about her -arm. "You sit down here, and I'll 'phone to the station for you." He -drew her into the enclosure behind his counter, and pushed her gently -into an old leather chair. "Little fellows stand an awful lot of -knocking around. I've got three, so I ought to know. Now, take it easy. -Where you want to go? New York City?"</p> - -<p>Grateful tears in Catherine's eyes made prismatic edges around his -solid figure. As she watched him thumbing a railroad folder, her panic -lifted slightly. Perhaps—oh, perhaps Spencer wasn't badly hurt. -Charles would be frightened, would want her.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Um. That's too bad. You just missed a good train." He turned to the -telephone. "Gimme the station. Yea-uh. That's right."</p> - -<p>Henrietta would be there.</p> - -<p>"When's the next through train east, Chuck? Huh? No, the next one." He -spit his words out of the corner of his mouth toward the receiver. "Any -word of that out of Chicago yet? Well, say, I got a lady here got to -get to New York on it. Got to, I said. You got any berths here? Well, -you could wire for one, couldn't you? What you hired for?"</p> - -<p>He hung up the earpiece.</p> - -<p>"He says there's trouble west of here. Snow. That seven o'clock just -went through, late. He's gonna let me know about the midnight."</p> - -<p>"I'd better go to the station."</p> - -<p>"What for? You stay here where it's comfortable. You go up to your room -and I'll let you know. I'm on till midnight."</p> - -<p>"Just go up and wait?" Catherine was piteous.</p> - -<p>"Yes, ma'am. I'll take care of you. Now don't you go worrying. I always -tell my wife she'd have the grass growing over all of us if worry could -do it. That's the woman of it, I suppose."</p> - -<p>"You're very kind." Catherine was reluctant to leave him. He was a sort -of bulwark between her and the rush of dark fear. "I ought to wire -them——"</p> - -<p>"Sure. Here, write it out. It stands in reason he needn't be hurt much, -and still he'd want his mother."</p> - -<p>Catherine's pencil wobbled in her stiff fingers. Spencer would want -her. All day he had wanted her. Hours between them——</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Will take first train." She looked up, her lip quivering. "I wouldn't -have time for an answer, would I?"</p> - -<p>"You ought not to, if that train's anywhere near on time, and if -there's a berth left on it." The clerk turned away, to fish cigars out -of his counter for a man who stood waiting, one hand plying a busy -toothpick.</p> - -<p>"D'yuh hear anything about the blizzard down Chicago way?" the man -asked. "Say it's put kinks in the train service."</p> - -<p>"You always hear worse than happens." The clerk's glance at Catherine -was anxious. But she signed her name to the message and wrote out the -address.</p> - - -<p class="center">V</p> - -<p>The midnight express for New York, coming through three hours late, did -not stop. The clerk came up to Catherine's door to tell her.</p> - -<p>"They ain't an empty berth on her," he said. "Took off several coaches -to lighten her for the drifts."</p> - -<p>"What am I going to do?" Catherine asked.</p> - -<p>"There's a local in the morning. You could get something out of -Pittsburgh, if you got that far."</p> - -<p>The rest of the night, the next day, the next night, all were to -Catherine grotesquely unreal, as if life had been transposed to a -different key, where all familiar things were flatted into dissonance -and harsh strangeness. All night the scrape of snow-plows and shovels, -futile against the snow; the snow which seemed the wind itself turned -to dry, drifting, impenetrable barriers. The local, dragged by two -locomotives, hours late, like a moving snowdrift itself. The hours -in that train, with nothing but snow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> darkening the windows, hiding -the world, driving through the aisles with the opening of the doors. -Pittsburgh, late in the afternoon, and no word from Charles. She beat -helplessly against the gruff taciturnity of the ticket agent; he had -stood up all day confronting cross, belated travelers. There was a -train in an hour, making connections at Philadelphia. Night on that -train, in a crowded day coach, malodorous and noisy. She felt as if she -dragged the train herself, down through strange valleys, where blast -furnaces sent up red shrieks of flame, through dim, sleeping towns.</p> - -<p>Philadelphia at two, the next morning. A narrow strip of platform -across which the wind whirled. Another crowded day coach. Where were -these people going, that colored boy, asleep, his feet stuck out into -the aisle in their ragged socks, his shoes clasped under one arm—that -man and woman, slumping peacefully against each other, mouths drooping -wide?</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>As Catherine stepped down to the platform in the New York station, the -huge dim roofs of the train shed spun dangerously about her. A porter -loped beside her, pawing at her bag, but she walked away from him, her -eyes wide like a somnambulist. She made her way to a telephone booth, -and then, when she had lifted her hand to drop in the nickel, stopped -abruptly. If she telephoned, and something dreadful came over the wire, -buzzing into her head, it would transfix her there, unable to move, -held forever behind that close, dirty glass door. She pushed violently -against the door, freed herself, and fled out to the street. She passed -on the steps a woman crawling on her knees, one arm moving in sluggish -circles, scrub<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>bing. After she had found a taxi and was whirring away -through the dark street, the motion of that weary arm continued before -her eyes. How dark the city was, and still, as if she had come into it -just at the turn of the tide, before the morning life moved in. "Dark -o' the moon"—she heard Spencer's voice chanting—"pulls the ole water -away from the earth."</p> - -<p>When she stepped out of the cab she did not even glance at the house. -She paid the driver, picked up her bag, and went into the dim, tiled -hall. She was empty, capable of precise, brisk movement. All her fear, -her pressure of anxiety, her physical weariness, were held in solution, -waiting the moment which would crystallize them. She stood at the -elevator shaft, her finger on the button. The car was beneath her, the -dust-nap of its top at her feet. The bell shrilled, but nothing else -stirred. The man is asleep, she thought, dispassionately, and without -haste she began to climb the stairs to the fifth floor.</p> - -<p>At the door she stopped again, staring a moment at the small card, -<span class="smcap">Hammond</span>. She had no key. If she rang, she would waken -everyone. But she must, in some way, enter. She knocked, softly. Her -face, turned up to the dark painted grain of the metal door, grew -imploring.</p> - -<p>There was her door, and she couldn't open it, couldn't know what was -behind it! Like a dreadful nightmare. She pounded with her knuckles. -Then, softly, the door opened, and Charles, his bathrobe trailing, his -eyes sleep-swollen, was blinking at her. She seemed a dream to him, too!</p> - -<p>"Why, Catherine—you? How'd you get here, this time<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> of day?" He -whispered, and then he closed the door with a caution alarming in its -quietness.</p> - -<p>"Spencer! Tell me—" Catherine's nostrils quivered at a strange smell -in the dark hall, an odor of antiseptics, of drugs.</p> - -<p>"Thought you'd never come." Charles muttered. "Ghastly, your not being -here."</p> - -<p>"Is he here?" Catherine started to pass Charles, but he caught her, -held her a moment. Catherine felt in the pressure of his arms, in his -harsh kiss, the thwarted rage, helplessness, distress—she knew she had -those to meet, later. Now— "Tell me, please!" she begged. "Spencer."</p> - -<p>"He's better." Charles released her. "Sleeping now. Mustn't disturb -him." He led the way to the living room, past closed, dark doors. "We'd -better go into the kitchen."</p> - -<p>Catherine stumbled into a chair.</p> - -<p>"He was hurt, coasting. He and Walter Thomas. Right in front of the -house. Miss Kelly was just coming out with the other children, to -take them all to the park. He and Walter—coasted around the corner, -into a truck. Hurt his head. Miss Kelly carried him in here herself." -Charles was leaning against the table, his face away from Catherine, -his mouth twisting wryly. Catherine touched his hand. "When I got -home, Henrietta was here, and another surgeon. His head—" Catherine -swung up to a sharp peak of agony—Spencer? She saw, unbearably, that -fine, sensitive, growing life of his, smeared over. "They didn't dare -move him. Unconscious. Stitches in his temple. They think now he's all -right." He grew suddenly voluble, shrill. "You can't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> tell about such -things at once. Have to wait. Might injure his brain. But he's been -conscious, perfectly clear-headed, normal. Got a good nurse. Just keep -him quiet, flat on his back. Children are tough— Oh, Catherine——"</p> - -<p>A door was opening somewhere, an inch at a time. Catherine strained -forward, too heavy with pain to rise. She felt Charles's uneasy start, -felt the hours of anxiety behind the sharp gripping of his hand under -hers. Feet shuffled toward them. Her mother appeared at the door, her -blue eyes blinking under the frill of her lace cap, a perceptible -quaver in the old hand which held together the folds of her gray -bathrobe.</p> - -<p>"Thank Heaven you've come, Catherine!" She scuffed across the linoleum -and pecked softly at Catherine's cheek. "Poor little Spencer—he asked -for you."</p> - -<p>"Oh!" Catherine was on her feet, but Charles held her fingers -restrainingly.</p> - -<p>"Last night, mother means. The nurse said she'd call me the instant he -woke. He's really sleeping now. Not unconscious."</p> - -<p>Catherine stood between them for a moment of silence. "It stands to -reason he might not be hurt bad, and yet want his mother." Who said -that? Some one had said it to her.</p> - -<p>"We looked for you yesterday," said Mrs. Spencer.</p> - -<p>"Blizzards. I couldn't get a train." Catherine felt a bond between -them, excluding her, accusing her. Charles stared at her, his eyes -sunken, the lines about his mouth deepened; her mother—a thin, -wrinkled film seemed drawn over her face, dimming her color. "I came -the instant I could. I sat up on a local." She clasped her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> hands -against her breast, against the heavy, pounding ache.</p> - -<p>"You must be tired to pieces, poor child." Her mother patted her arm. -"Don't feel so bad, Cathy. It might have happened if you'd been right -here. And it's turning out so much better than——"</p> - -<p>"But I wasn't here," said Catherine, quietly. And then, "What about -Walter?" She could see that sled sweeping around the corner. "Was he -hurt?"</p> - -<p>"Shaken up and bruised. Spencer was steering."</p> - -<p>A rustle at the door, a strange face staring at her, crisp and cold -above white linen.</p> - -<p>"Yes?" Charles stepped forward intently.</p> - -<p>"The little boy is awake."</p> - -<p>"This is Mrs. Hammond, Miss Pert. She may go in?"</p> - -<p>She was a culprit, a stranger, trembling, unable to move.</p> - -<p>"You'd better take off your hat and coat, Mrs. Hammond. And don't -excite him. He's drowsy."</p> - -<p>The dim, shaded light; a little still mound under the counterpane; -under the smooth white turban of bandages, Spencer's gray eyes, moving -softly with her flight from the door to his bed. On her knees beside -him, her fingers closing about his hand. Quiet, not to excite him. How -limp and small his hand felt!</p> - -<p>"Hello, Moth-er!" He sighed, and his eyelids shut down again.</p> - - -<p class="center">VI</p> - -<p>The next two weeks life was a shadow show outside that room where -Spencer lay. "He must be kept flat and motionless," the surgeon said, -with Dr. Henrietta nodding<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> assent. "Even as he feels stronger." -Catherine was concentrated entirely upon that. Everything reduced -itself to terms of Spencer. Books that she might read to him, games -she might devise, stories she could tell—anything to keep him content -until it was safe for him to lift that bandaged, wounded head. Always -there was the terror lest some sign of injury might show itself, some -quirk in his mind, some change in personality, some flush to indicate -fever and infection. "We think he has, miraculously, escaped any bad -effects," said Henrietta, "but we can't be absolutely sure for a few -days." At night, when he slept, Catherine would leave Charles in the -house, and slip out for a quick walk in the cold March darkness. But -terrifying images pursued her—sudden blackness shutting down over that -shining, golden reality that was Spencer to her—and she would hasten -back, unassuaged of her terror until she stood again at the door of his -room.</p> - -<p>When her trunk came, she had rummaged through it, selecting all the -material of her work, and sending it to Dr. Roberts with a brief note. -"My son has been injured and I can do nothing more with this. If you -can send someone else to finish the work, please do so. I can not even -think of it for the present."</p> - -<p>There would come a day, she knew, when she could think again, a day -when she would face the lurking shadows of her guilt, would determine -what it meant. Not now. Not until Spencer was well.</p> - -<p>Charles was waiting, too, she knew. He was subdued, considerate, -concerned lest she overtax herself. But he seemed one of the shadows in -the outer world.</p> - -<p>Then Spencer lost his angelic patience, and began to fret humanly about -lying flat in bed.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p> - -<p>"A few more days, Spencer." Henrietta smiled at him. "Then this crack -in your head will be healed enough."</p> - -<p>"But I feel all right now."</p> - -<p>Fear, retreating, dragged away the distortion it had given, and -gradually the shadows about Catherine grew three-dimensional again. -Henrietta warned her: "You'll have a frightful slump, Catherine, unless -you let yourself down easily, after this strain."</p> - -<p>"I don't feel tired, not at all."</p> - -<p>"That's the trouble. And you are. Rest more. Spencer doesn't need you -every second now. Let Charles sleep here to-night."</p> - -<p>Catherine shook her head.</p> - -<p>"I sleep fairly well here, because I know I shall wake if Spencer -stirs. Anywhere else I should lie awake, listening."</p> - -<p>"But he's safe now. I'm sure of that. The only danger, after the first, -was infection. And that's past. Two more days and I'll let him up. I -don't want you down." Henrietta paused, her fingers running along the -black ribbon of her glasses. "When are you going back to work?" she -flung out.</p> - -<p>A subtle change in Catherine's face, like the quick drawing of shades -at all the windows of a house.</p> - -<p>"I don't know." She moved away from Henrietta, to glance in at Spencer.</p> - -<p>"Um." Henrietta shrugged. "Well, I'll be in early to-morrow."</p> - -<p>That was the first shadow to take real form. When <i>was</i> she going back -to work? And behind the shades drawn against Henrietta moved a sharp -curiosity. What had Dr. Roberts done about the investigation? There -had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> been a note from him, tossed into a drawer. A note of sympathy. -Had he said anything about the work? But as she made a faint motion to -go in search of the note, Spencer called her.</p> - -<p>Another shadow to grow more real was Miss Kelly. She had managed Letty -with amazing competence, keeping her quiet and amused. She had come -earlier in the morning than usual, to dress Marian and walk with her to -school. But she was worried, shying away when she met Catherine in the -hall, and her pale blue eyes stared with some entreaty in them. The day -that Spencer first sat up, Charles carried him into the living room to -the armchair, and Catherine tucked a rug about his feet and left him -there, to look out of the window. As she went back to the bedroom, she -heard a choking, muffled sound, and there in the hall stood Miss Kelly, -her hands over her face.</p> - -<p>"What is it?" she asked gently, touching the woman's shoulder. Then, as -she looked at the swollen, reddened eyes, she knew. "He's quite well -again," she said. "Don't cry."</p> - -<p>"I—I hadn't left him a second," Miss Kelly whispered. "Just to help -Letty down the steps."</p> - -<p>"I know. I haven't thought you were careless."</p> - -<p>"I thought I'd go crazy. He's never coasted in the street. The other -boy thought of it."</p> - -<p>"It was an accident, Miss Kelly. You mustn't blame yourself."</p> - -<p>The entreaty faded under the flush of gratitude. Miss Kelly turned and -hurried back to Letty's room, her square shoes clumping solidly.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p> - - -<p class="center">VII</p> - -<p>Saturday afternoon. Spencer was dressed, even to his shoes. Catherine -had suggested moccasins, but Spencer held out for shoes. "Then I'll be -sure, Mother, that I'm really up!" The terrifying pallor had left his -face. The bandages were gone, too; just the pink, wrinkled mouth-like -scar spoke audibly of the past weeks.</p> - -<p>"You'll have to part your hair in the middle, Spencer," Dr. Henrietta -had told him, "until this bald spot grows out." And Spencer had -retorted, promptly, "I wouldn't be that sissy!"</p> - -<p>Catherine moved one of her red checkers, smiled a little, wondering -where he had picked up that idea, and glanced away from Spencer and -checker board, out of the window. The bare trees of Morningside pricked -up through gray mist; the distant roofs were vague. What a horrid day! -It seemed too raw and cold for Spencer's first trip outdoors. But he -really was well again. Monday he could go out. It was true, Henrietta's -prophecy. She was being let down with a thud. There seemed no place -where she could take hold of ordinary life again.</p> - -<p>Spencer giggled.</p> - -<p>"I jumped three of your men, Mother, and you never saw I could."</p> - -<p>"Why, so you did." Catherine looked at her dismantled forces. She -couldn't even keep her mind on those disks of wood. "There." She moved.</p> - -<p>"Oh, Moth-er!" Spencer was gathering in the last of the red checkers. -"You're a punk player. You're a dumb-bell!"</p> - -<p>"What a name! Where did you find that word?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> Catherine watched him; he -was teasing her—that funny little quirk in his eyebrows.</p> - -<p>"Oh, the fellers say it." Suddenly he swept the checkers into a heap. -"I'm sick of checkers."</p> - -<p>"Want to read a while?"</p> - -<p>"I'm sick of reading. Staying in the house just wears me out, Mother."</p> - -<p>The doorbell broke the quiet of the house, and Catherine, with a -relieved, "Now we'll see what's coming!" went out to the door. Her -mother, perhaps, or Margaret.</p> - -<p>"Hello, Catherine." It was Bill, shifting a large package that he might -extend his hand. She hadn't seen him since that night in Chicago. She -had an impression of herself that night, confident, radiant, but vague -and blurred, as if Bill showed her a faded photograph he had kept for -years. "Henry said she thought I might call on Spencer," he was saying.</p> - -<p>Catherine was grateful for the lack of inquiry. He would know that she -had dropped everything in a heap, and that all the ends were tangled -and confused. But knowing, he would ask her nothing, would not even -indicate his knowledge.</p> - -<p>"I've brought something for him." He jerked the arm which held the -package.</p> - -<p>"Spencer's in here." Catherine led the way to the living room. "Here's -a caller for you," she announced.</p> - -<p>"Hello, Mr. Bill!" Spencer lunged forward in his chair, but Bill set -the box promptly before him.</p> - -<p>"This table is just what we need. I thought you might help me with this -radio." Bill shook himself out of his overcoat. And Catherine, with a -smile at the sudden lifting of Spencer's clouds of ennui, left them.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p> - -<p>There were things to be done. She might as well shake off her lethargy -and attack them. She heard Spencer's eager voice, Bill's deliberate -tones, pronouncing strange phrases—amperes, tuning up, wave lengths. -The laundry. Prosaic, distasteful enough. If she began with that, she -might find a shred of old habit which would start her wheels running.</p> - -<p>She carried the bundles to her room, where she sorted the linen into -piles on her bed. She had no list; she remembered Mrs. O'Lay at the -door, last Monday, "The laundry boy's here, Mis' Hammond. Should I -now just scramble together what I can put my hands on?" and her own -indifferent answer. Five sheets. That seemed reasonable. And bath -towels—that one was going. Catherine held it up to the light, poked -her fingers through the shredded fabric, and tossed it to the floor. -We need more of everything, she thought. Sheets—she stared at the -neat white squares. If she unfolded them, probably she would find -more shreds. Well, she wouldn't look! They cost so much, sheets and -towels, and you had so little fun for your money. She stowed away the -piles in the linen drawers. Then she opened the bundle of clothing, -unironed, tight, wrinkled lumps. Mrs. O'Lay would iron them. Little -undergarments, small strings of stockings. At least she didn't have to -mend them; Miss Kelly was keeping them in order. She shook out a pajama -coat; a jagged hole in the front whence a button had departed forcibly. -She would have to mend Charles up. She chuckled; before she had gone -away she had bought new socks for Charles, hiding those she had not -found time to darn. He would never notice.</p> - -<p>She was rolling a pair of socks into a neat ball, turn<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>ing the ribbed -cuff down to hold the ball, when she stopped. One finger flicked -absently at a bit of gray lint. What was she going to do? She was -sorting those clothes quite as if Mrs. O'Lay and Miss Kelly were -fixtures. And she wasn't sure she had money enough to pay Miss Kelly -for even one more week.</p> - -<p>She piled away the clothing, dodging her thoughts. But when she had -finished her task, she stood at the window, looking out at the court -windows, and one by one her thoughts overtook her and assaulted her.</p> - -<p>Of course I'm going back to the Bureau, the very day Spencer goes to -school again. There's no new reason why I shouldn't. Isn't there? What -about this feeling—that Spencer was a warning to me—a sign? That's -what mother meant. Her hand lifted to her forehead, smoothed back her -hair. That's not decent thinking, she went on. Absurd. Superstitious. -Spencer might have been hurt even if I had been at his heels. Walter -was hurt. Accidents—like a bony, threatening finger shaken at her!</p> - -<p>"Moth-er!" Spencer's voice summoned her. Mr. Bill was going now, but he -left the radio for Spencer to examine, and a book about it.</p> - -<p>"An' he's going to see the superintendent about wires to catch things -on, and we can't rig it truly until he gets a wire." Spencer clasped -the book under one arm, and drew the black box nearer him along the -table. "It's the most inturusting thing I ever saw, Mother." His eyes -were bright with pleasure.</p> - -<p>"I'm sorry," said Bill, "that we can't install it to-night. But perhaps -to-morrow——"</p> - -<p>Catherine went to the door with Bill.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p> - -<p>"It was good of you to come in," she said. "He's had a dull time."</p> - -<p>Bill had his hand on the knob.</p> - -<p>"I've been out of town again for a week," he said. "Henry kept me -posted."</p> - -<p>Then he was going, but Catherine caught at his arm.</p> - -<p>"Bill"—in a sharp whisper—"do you think it was my fault? Do you?"</p> - -<p>"Catherine!" He was laughing at her, comfortingly. "What rot!"</p> - -<p>"Is it?" She sighed.</p> - -<p>"You're tired." His hand enclosed hers warmly for a moment. "Henry says -you've been wonderful, but not wise——"</p> - -<p>There was a clatter outside the door, a firm, "Now wait one second, -Letty!" Bill pulled the door open; Letty, her pointed face framed in -a red hood, Marian, pulling her tarn off her tousled dark hair, Miss -Kelly behind them.</p> - -<p>"Oh, Mr. Bill!" Marian hugged his arm, and Letty clambered onto her -go-duck that she might reach his hand, with a lusty, "'Lo, Bill!"</p> - -<p>"Come back and play with us, Mr. Bill," Marian cajoled him, her head on -one side.</p> - -<p>But Bill, grinning at her, eluding Letty's grasp, stepped into the -elevator and was gone.</p> - -<p>"'S'at Marian?" Spencer was shouting. "Oh, Marian, you come see what -I got." Marian darted ahead. As Catherine, with Letty's damp mittened -hand in hers, came to the door of the children's room, she heard -Spencer determinedly, "No, you can't touch it! It's too delicut.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> Mr. -Bill told me it was too delicut. You keep your hands off it! It's just -lent to me."</p> - -<p>"Who said I wanted to touch your ole radium?"</p> - -<p>"It isn't radium, Marian. Radio. And you were touching it."</p> - -<p>"Marian, dear, come take your wraps off." Miss Kelly had stowed Letty's -go-duck in the hall closet, and followed Catherine. "You musn't bother -Spencer."</p> - -<p>"He's well now, isn't he?" She lagged into the bedroom.</p> - -<p>Catherine sat on one of the cots, watching. She had scarcely seen -her two daughters since she had come back. She had known they were -well, she had heard Miss Kelly often sidetracking them with, "No, -your mamma is busy and you mustn't disturb her. Poor little Spencer -needs her and you don't." Miss Kelly had lifted Letty into a chair and -was unbuttoning the red coat when Letty set up a strident wail, and -stiffened into a ramrod which slid out from under Miss Kelly's fingers.</p> - -<p>"Want my Muvver!" she shrieked. "Not you!" She flung herself on the -edge of the bed beside Catherine, with gyrations of her red-gaitered -plump legs. Catherine, laughing, dragged her up beside her. Letty -snuggled against her, peering up with her blandishing smile.</p> - -<p>"All right, old lady." Catherine tugged off the tiny rubbers, stripped -down the knit leggings, noticing absently the promptness with which -Marian carried her own cloak and tarn to the closet and hung them away. -Why, Miss Kelly had taught her to be orderly, she marveled. Then she -saw Letty's expression of sidewise expectancy under long lashes. Miss -Kelly was looking at her gravely.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Letty tired." She drooped into Catherine's enclosing arm like a sleepy -kitten.</p> - -<p>"That's too bad." Miss Kelly was unruffled. "Then you can't show your -mamma your own hook that you can reach."</p> - -<p>Letty was quiet. Catherine felt the child's body stiffen a little -from its kittenlike relaxation, as if her inner conflict was purely -muscular, not thought at all. That's the way children must think, she -speculated. With a giggle Letty slid down from the bed, hugged her arms -about the pile of scarlet garments, and marched to the closet.</p> - -<p>"I screwed a hook into the door, low down," Miss Kelly explained. -"Usually Letty doesn't have to be told."</p> - -<p>"And you don't allow her to beguile you, do you?" Catherine laughed at -the self-righteousness in Letty's strut back to the bed.</p> - -<p>"You can't," said Miss Kelly, "or they run all over you."</p> - -<p>"What runs over you?" demanded Marian.</p> - -<p>"Mice!" Letty's shriek was almost in Catherine's ear, as she plumped -down in her mother's lap. "Mice!" and she wiggled in laughter. "Free -blind mice."</p> - -<p>"Isn't she silly!" But Marian giggled, too. "Who's that?" The hall door -sounded on its hinges. "Daddy!" Her rush halted at the door. "Oh, I -thought you were my Daddy!"</p> - -<p>"Did you, now?" Mrs. O'Lay's red face hung a moment at the door, a -genial full moon. "Well, I ain't. But you'd best be glad I ain't, for -it's little dinner he'd be getting for you."</p> - -<p>Marian stuck a pink triangle of tongue after her as she disappeared, -clumping down the hall.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p> - -<p>"She's awful fat, isn't she, Muvver?" She scuffled her feet slowly to -the edge of the bed. "An' she has a funny smell. I don't know what she -smells of, but she does."</p> - -<p>"Ashes and floor oil," said Catherine. She hadn't noticed it, -consciously. She caught Miss Kelly's surprised, disapproving glance. -"We'll have to lengthen that dress, Marian," she concealed her -amusement, and her free hand pulled at the edge of the chambray dress. -"Can't pull it over your knees, can we?"</p> - -<p>"I have let out the tucks in four dresses," said Miss Kelly. This was -ground she knew. "But Marian is growing very fast."</p> - -<p>Catherine's arm went around Marian's waist, and pulled her down at her -side.</p> - -<p>"Short dresses are the style, aren't they?" She hugged them both, Letty -against her breast, Marian against her shoulder. Firm, warm, slim -things, her daughters, growing very fast.</p> - -<p>"What are you folks doing?" Spencer stood in the doorway, his eyes -mournful. "I'm all alone."</p> - -<p>"You've got your ole radium," declared Marian promptly, "and you're not -sick any longer, even if I can see that cut, and our Muvver can stay -with us now."</p> - -<p>"Us now!" chanted Letty.</p> - -<p>"Oh, you've sorted the laundry, Mrs. Hammond?" Miss Kelly turned from -the opened drawer.</p> - -<p>"Yes. I left a pile of clothes on a chair in Spencer's room—they need -buttons."</p> - -<p>"I thought I'd just lay out clean underwear for morning. Perhaps that -shirt is with the pile." She went past Spencer, who drew aside with a -touch of petulance.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Suppose we all go into the living room." Catherine brushed Letty and -Marian to their feet. "Daddy will be here soon, and we'll all have -dinner together for the first time. Yes, Letty, too. It's a special -occasion. Spencer's first full-dress day."</p> - -<p>"Should I wash for dinner now, Muvver?" Marian still clung to her -mother's arm. Catherine, looking down at the brown eyes, was disturbed. -Marian was jealous of Spencer. She resented—oh, well, probably that -was natural enough. Her legs outgrew her dresses, and her personality -was growing as rapidly, shooting up, not wholly caught in civilized -patterns.</p> - -<p>"Can you keep your hands clean until dinner? Perhaps you might wait -until Daddy has come. Run along, children. I want to speak to Miss -Kelly a moment."</p> - -<p>"What about, Muvver?"</p> - -<p>"Business." Catherine was firm, and Marian's mood shifted quickly.</p> - -<p>"Show Letty your ole radium," she said, dragging Letty after her, and -Spencer pursued them in haste.</p> - -<p>"You needn't stay for Letty's supper," said Catherine, as Miss Kelly -returned. "You've been very kind to give me so many additional hours. -And you certainly deserve to-morrow. It is several weeks, isn't it, -since you've had Sunday?"</p> - -<p>"That's all right, Mrs. Hammond." Miss Kelly laid the retrieved shirt -on the dresser. "Of course, if you don't need me to-morrow." She looked -at Catherine warily, her sandy lashes blinking, her nose still reddened -from the afternoon. "You will want me next week?"</p> - -<p>"Of course." Catherine frowned, a kind of panic whirring in her.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I wondered. I didn't know. Something your mother said. I knew you -needed some one for the children only if you were working."</p> - -<p>"You must have misunderstood mother." The whirring deepened into fear, -like wings, beating to escape the nets spread to catch her. They all -expected her to abandon everything, to step back into the old harness. -"Of course, I have made no plans, until Spencer was well. But next -week"—she spoke out boldly, denying her own doubts—"next week I -shall—" she did not finish that sentence. "At any rate, Miss Kelly, -I should tell you in advance. I've just been admiring the way you are -training the children. You are quite remarkable with them."</p> - - -<p class="center">VIII</p> - -<p>When Charles came in, Marian flew to meet him, flinging her arms about -him as far as they would go, with little squeals of delight.</p> - -<p>"Daddy, hello; we're going to have a party. Letty, too. Spencer can sit -up at the table."</p> - -<p>"I should say I could," broke in Spencer, indignantly.</p> - -<p>He looks tired—Catherine smiled at him over Letty's yellow head. -Sallow, discouraged. His glance withdrew quickly from hers, stopped at -Spencer.</p> - -<p>"How's the boy? Fine?"</p> - -<p>"Daddy!" Marian pulled at his sleeve. "I thought of something. Let me -whisper it."</p> - -<p>And Catherine, while Letty slipped from her lap in an endeavor to -learn what Marian was whispering, thought: it's a breaking off place, -to-night. The interim is over.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p> - -<p>"You'd better ask mother." Charles ruffled Marian's cropped head.</p> - -<p>"No! A secret, Daddy!"</p> - -<p>"Well. Ask Mrs. O'Lay, then."</p> - -<p>"Tell Letty!" She pounded on his knee.</p> - -<p>"Here, you!" He glanced again at Catherine, and his grin was suddenly -like Spencer's. "That's no way to learn a secret. You wait."</p> - -<p>Catherine's heart began to beat quickly. He is wretched about -something, she thought. Bothered. But he wants to pretend. Marian -whisked back, jumping about it. "It's all right! She says sure!"</p> - -<p>"Then you wait at the door. Don't let them guess," and he stalked off, -leaving Marian solemn in her delight, stationed at the door.</p> - -<p>"Chwismas!" shouted Letty. But Marian shooed her out of the hall when -Daddy returned.</p> - -<p>Dinner had caught the slight tingling mood of a special occasion. -Charles was deliberately jolly, and the children responded in expansive -delight. Excitement moved pleasantly into Catherine, too, in spite of -her sober, concealed thoughts. That other dinner, ages ago, with the -children responsive then to the contention between her and Charles. The -friendly enclosure of the room, with Letty at her left, Charles across -from her, the other two—and Mrs. O'Lay waddling in and out. Above all, -Spencer, safely clear of that dark threat.</p> - -<p>"Well, it's the first time we've had a jolly dinner party for a long -time, eh, Cathy?"</p> - -<p>Ah, that was the thing she feared, ironically, under the bright -surface, that Charles was building again; not a trap, exactly, nor a -prison, but a net, a snare. This was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> to be proof, this scene, that -they must have her, wholly. That her life dwelt only within such walls -as these. That her desires, even, were held here. Her eyes were bright -and troubled.</p> - -<p>The secret came. Ice cream and chocolate sauce.</p> - -<p>"Now it's a real party," sighed Marian, contentedly. "And I thought it -up."</p> - -<p>The telephone rang. Charles sprang to his feet, dropping his napkin as -he hurried out.</p> - -<p>"Why," asked Spencer, "does Daddy always have to hustle when the 'phone -rings?"</p> - -<p>"Because he has important business, because he's a man," said Marian, -promptly.</p> - -<p>"It might be for me." Spencer was hopeful.</p> - -<p>"No!" Marian derided him. "Folks don't telephone little boys."</p> - -<p>Astonishing. Catherine looked at Marian's calm profile. Where did she -pick up her perfect feminine attitude? Instinct, or a parroting of some -one, Miss Kelly, or her grandmother?</p> - -<p>"Catherine!" Charles was calling. "Some one wants you."</p> - -<p>"Now! It wasn't Daddy at all." Spencer was triumphant.</p> - -<p>"Move along into the living room," said Catherine, rising. "Mrs. O'Lay -is waiting to clear the table."</p> - -<p>Then, as she sat down at the desk, she had a hasty, random thought. -Stella Partridge hadn't called for Charles once these past weeks. -Perhaps that hint of Henrietta's—Margaret's voice cut in.</p> - -<p>"Hello! You back?" Catherine settled herself comfortably.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Just in. Everything all right? I've been talking with Henrietta."</p> - -<p>"Yes. Really all right. Spencer had a party to-night, his first dinner -with the family."</p> - -<p>"Could I see him to-morrow?"</p> - -<p>"Of course. Where have you been, anyway? Mother was vague."</p> - -<p>"Trip for the firm. To their factories in Boston and Pittsburgh. Cathy, -what a shame your tour was interrupted! When do you go back?"</p> - -<p>"You mean west again?" A little shock tingled through Catherine, quite -as if, while she looked at a group of familiar thoughts, an outside -hand shifted the spotlight, and at once a different color lay upon -them, changing them.</p> - -<p>"You hadn't finished the work, had you?"</p> - -<p>"No." That was all Catherine could say.</p> - -<p>"Well, Spencer's all right, isn't he?"</p> - -<p>"Yes," heavily from Catherine. Silence for a moment. Then Margaret, -forcefully:</p> - -<p>"I'd like to come right out to-night. Don't be a fool, Cathy! I know -just what's happened to you, old dear! Don't you let it! But Amy's -waiting for me, and I'm starved."</p> - -<p>Catherine stared at the round black mouthpiece. If she could hold that -light Margaret threw over things—in which nothing looked the same. But -she couldn't talk.</p> - -<p>"I'll expect you to-morrow, then?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"Yes. Early."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Charles was telling the children the story of the bantam hen he had -owned when he was a little boy. Letty was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> curled up on his knees, -Marian sat on the arm of his chair, his arm about her, Spencer had -drawn his chair close.</p> - -<p>"And I used to carry her around in the pocket of my coat, with just her -head sticking out, and her bright shiny eyes and her yellow bill."</p> - -<p>"Yellow bill?" murmured Letty.</p> - -<p>"Just how big was she, Daddy?" Marian asked.</p> - -<p>"I'd like a hen like that," said Spencer.</p> - -<p>"Some day maybe we can live in a decent place, where we can have hens."</p> - -<p>"And a dog, Father?"</p> - -<p>"No, a kitty. A little gray soft kitty." Marian looked anxiously at her -father. "I'd much rather have a kitty, Daddy."</p> - -<p>"We might have both"—and as Letty opened her mouth wide and pink for -a protest—"yes, and Letty could have a kitty or a dog or a pet hen. -Well, my bantam's name was Mitty. One day——"</p> - -<p>Catherine stepped softly away from the door. She could get Letty's bath -ready. And she must transfer bedclothes. Spencer was to move into his -own room again, and she had forgotten to ask Mrs. O'Lay to arrange the -beds.</p> - -<p>When she went in for Letty, the story had gone on to a dog. Mr. Bill's -dog. He lived next door, Charles was explaining, and he was bigger than -I was. His dog was shaggy.</p> - -<p>Letty, protesting, came, full of incoherencies about dogs and kittens -and chickens.</p> - -<p>"Muvver, to-day Letty wants li'l dog an' li'l kitty an' li'l shickey."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Not to-day. To-day's over. Now you are a fish." And Letty swam -vigorously. Catherine stood beside her cot, looking down at her, -fragrant, pink, beatific. A decent place to live in—with live things -around them instead of city streets. A tiny, distant alarm clanged in -her mind. That was what Charles had said, when he spoke of the offer at -Buxton. Was he thinking about that, still? What <i>was</i> he thinking about!</p> - -<p>Spencer had his bath, refusing her assistance with firm dignity. He was -silent, standing at the door of his own room, a thin, pajamaed figure, -looking at his own cot.</p> - -<p>"You don't need me now at night, do you?" Catherine turned down the -covers. "Here, hop in before you are chilly."</p> - -<p>"I liked that other bed," said Spencer. "It's much softer."</p> - -<p>"Nonsense!" Catherine laughed at him, tucked him in, kissed his cheek -softly, not looking at the pink, wrinkled scar. "Same kind of springs. -And you're well now."</p> - -<p>"Will you be gone in the morning, Mother?"</p> - -<p>His question halted her at the door.</p> - -<p>"No, Spencer. What made you ask that?"</p> - -<p>"I wanted to know."</p> - -<p>She snapped off the light and closed his door.</p> - -<p>Then Marian was bathed; scrubbing and spluttering, she repeated with -funny little imitations of Charles's phrases, the stories about Mitty -Bantam and Mr. Bill's dog.</p> - -<p>Catherine opened the window to let the steam out of the bathroom, while -she hung up limp towels and scrubbed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> out the tub and restored things -to shining order. Her sleeve slipped down on her wet wrist, and she -shoved it back impatiently. She'd like a drowsy, warm bath herself, and -sleep, dreamless, heavy. But Charles was waiting for her. The interim -was over. Pushing her hair away from her forehead with her habitual -gesture, she went into the living room.</p> - -<p>Charles looked up from his paper, smoke wreathing his face.</p> - -<p>"This has been fine," he said, warmly. "Comfortable home evening."</p> - -<p>Catherine sat down, brushing drops of water from her skirt.</p> - -<p>"Hasn't it?" he urged.</p> - -<p>"Well—" She was staring at her hands, blanched, wrinkled at the finger -tips, by their long soaking. "If home is the bathroom!" Under her -lowered eyelids she saw Charles watching her, guardedly. He set down -his pipe with a click.</p> - -<p>"If you feel that way!"</p> - -<p>"Horrid of me to say it, wasn't it?" Catherine relaxed, her hands -limp-wristed along the chair.</p> - -<p>"I suppose you are tired. Awful strain, these last weeks."</p> - -<p>"Perhaps I am." Catherine twisted sidewise in her chair and smiled at -him. "But you look tired, too, poor boy. What have you been doing? -I—why, I haven't seen you since I came back."</p> - -<p>"You certainly haven't. But I didn't mind. Spencer—well, thank God, -that's over!"</p> - -<p>"Yes." Catherine discovered that she was so recently out from the -distorting shadow of fear for Spencer that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> as yet she could not talk -about it, as if words might have black magic to recall the fear.</p> - -<p>"Damned lucky escape." Charles rammed tobacco into the pipe bowl with -his thumb. He was thrusting out words in bravado, without looking at -Catherine. He, too, had lived in that fear! He sucked vigorously, -drawing the match flame down into the pipe. "What are you going to do -now?"</p> - -<p>The muscles of wrists and fingers leaped into tight contraction, and -her hands doubled into fists against the chair.</p> - -<p>"I haven't thought, until to-day." Then, suddenly,—better pour out -everything. "Nothing has changed, has it, now that Spencer is well?"</p> - -<p>"You plan to go back to the Bureau?"</p> - -<p>"You mean that you think I should give it up?" Catherine stared at the -hard, jutting line of his jaw, at his eyes, feverish, sunken. "Charles, -you can't mean you blame me for Spencer's accident?"</p> - -<p>"No." He spoke sharply, denying himself. "It might have happened -anyway. I know that."</p> - -<p>"Oh!" A long, escaping sigh. "If you had blamed me—I couldn't have -endured it." And then, "It's hard, not to blame myself."</p> - -<p>"That's just it." Charles moved forward, eagerly. "It's frightening. I -thought you might feel, well, that you couldn't risk it. Leaving them. -I want to be fair, Catherine."</p> - -<p>"If you had been away, on a business trip"—Catherine was motionless -except for the slow movement of her lips—"and this had happened, I -should have sent for you. Would you have blamed yourself? Or given up -your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> work? Oh, yes, I know you'll say that's different. It isn't so -different. It wouldn't be, if you didn't make it so."</p> - -<p>"Oh, my work." He settled back into his chair. "I've got to tell you -things about that. I don't know how interested you are. You've been -engrossed." He paused, but Catherine did not speak. "It does concern -you! And it's a frightful mess." His eyes were haggard, angry, and his -shoulders sagged in the chair with a curious, weary dejection, unlike -their usual squared confidence. "I haven't told you. They didn't put me -in as head of the clinic. The committee recognized the value of my work -in organizing the clinic"—he was quoting, sneeringly—"but preferred -to install a medical psychiatrist. You know it was decided last year, -unofficially, that I was to be appointed the instant the funds were -clear."</p> - -<p>"What happened? Who is the head?" Pity extricated Catherine from -her own floundering. She knew, swiftly, what had happened, as she -remembered a sentence in that letter from Henrietta.</p> - -<p>"A Dr. Beck. What happened? The usual thing. The doctors in the town -stirred up the usual brawl. This was a medical clinic. No layman -could manage it. Any fool with a year of anatomy could do better -than a specialist. If you can cut off a leg or an appendix, you know -instinctively everything about mental disorders or feeble-mindedness or -anything else that touches psychology."</p> - -<p>"But you had discussed that with the committee, and they——"</p> - -<p>"They agreed with me last year. But they say they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> didn't realize -popular opinion. There was underhanded play going on before I heard -about it, and the thing was settled. I don't know just how. It's that -feeling—doctors are all wise, established powers, mystic, and we -scientists are new. If a man can cure the measles, he knows more about -paranoia than I know!"</p> - -<p>Catherine clasped her hands, pulses tingling in her finger tips.</p> - -<p>"What has happened to Miss Partridge?" she asked.</p> - -<p>A dull, brick-glow mounted in Charles's face—anger, or humiliation.</p> - -<p>"Has she been ousted, too?" insisted Catherine.</p> - -<p>"Dr. Beck has made her his assistant."</p> - -<p>"But she's not a physician." Catherine lifted one hand to her throat, -pressing it against the sharp ache there. Poor Charles, he had been -pounded. If he would only tell her!</p> - -<p>"No. But she's shrewd enough to see where her bread will be nicely -buttered. She makes an excellent office girl. She—" He was defiant, -aggressive. "You didn't ever like her. You'll probably be delighted to -hear that she saw which way the wind blew, and even added some puffs -of her own. Queering me. Flopping over the instant she saw her own -advantage."</p> - -<p>That little squirrel smile! And the faint, distinct, metallic ring -in her clear voice! Catherine saw her in the dusk of that passageway -behind the gymnasium, holding the brown leather bag. I'm soft, she -thought, to have no pleasure out of this.</p> - -<p>"Well?" demanded Charles. "You see where it leaves me. All this time -wasted."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p> - -<p>"At least you have the material for your book." Catherine was -dispassionately consoling. "And you have that almost done."</p> - -<p>"But I haven't. It's clinic material. I can't publish it now. It -belongs to them."</p> - -<p>"Charles!"</p> - -<p>"Exactly. She did part of the work, Miss Partridge. She wants that for -Dr. Beck. The committee wants the rest, for its clinic as at present -established."</p> - -<p>"That's outrageous."</p> - -<p>"I could put out a book from my own notes. But it wouldn't mean -anything. No authority behind it. No, I'm done with them. Done."</p> - -<p>"At least"—Catherine felt slowly for words—"you have your university -work. That's the main thing. That hasn't been touched."</p> - -<p>"Hasn't it, though?" Charles was grim. "When I've spent all this time, -on the score of a great contribution I was about to make!"</p> - -<p>"Does it hang up your promotion?" Catherine cried out.</p> - -<p>"It does. I heard that this morning, indirectly."</p> - -<p>Catherine pulled herself to her feet and stood beside him, hesitantly -brushing his hair, moving her finger down to the deep crease between -his eyes.</p> - -<p>"See here," she said, lightly. "You aren't so done for as all that. You -know it."</p> - -<p>He thrust his arm violently around her, drew her down to the arm of the -chair, his head pressing into her shoulder.</p> - -<p>"And you weren't here!" he cried. "There was no one——"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Poor boy." Her hand touched his head, softly, sensitive to the -crispness of his heavy hair.</p> - -<p>"You haven't cared what happened to me." His words came muffled.</p> - -<p>"Oh, haven't I?" Her fingers crept down to his cheek. "Perhaps I have."</p> - -<p>"Haven't shown it much." He lifted his face from her shoulder.</p> - -<p>In the instant before she bent to kiss him, there was a scurry of -thoughts through her mind—leaves lifted in a puff of wind: He is -contrite about Stella Partridge. He can't say that he is. He thinks -I don't know about her. No use in airing that. He is through, and -unhappy, and I love him.</p> - -<p>"Let's not talk any more to-night," she said. "Lots of days coming to -talk in. Spencer is well, and we are here, together."</p> - - -<p class="center">IX</p> - -<p>A square, rimmed in solid black, of something full of distant, -colorless clarity. Not quite colorless, since an intense turquoise-blue -seemed to move far behind it, like a wave. Catherine stared. She had -come awake so suddenly that she could only see that square at first, -without knowledge of it. Then, as suddenly, she knew. It was the sky, -over the black rim of the opposite wall of the court, with window edges -for its frame. Almost morning. What a strange dream, digging, trying -to push the spade down through roots of dead grass, while someone kept -saying, "Make it larger. That won't hold her." Had Spencer called out? -Fully awake, she lifted herself on an elbow. The house was quiet. She -could see dimly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> between her and the window the dark mound of Charles's -head on his pillow.</p> - -<p>That queer dream. As she lay down again, she had it, in a swift flash -of association. The Actinidia vine! Bury an old hen at its roots, she -had told Bill. She was digging, for herself. Oh, grotesque!</p> - -<p>And yet, before she had slept, she had not thought of herself. She had -worked patiently, tenderly, to restore Charles. She could hear him, -humble, "You mean that, Cathy? You think this isn't a horrible failure? -I couldn't prevent it, could I? After all—" and gradually she had -drawn him clear of his forlorn dejection.</p> - -<p>The patch of sky grew opaque, white. Morning.</p> - -<p>There is no wall between us now, she thought. That is down. -Love—tenderness—strength—sweet, fiery, ecstasy—all that he wished. -Surely he would, in turn—lift her—into her whole self.</p> - - -<p class="center">X</p> - -<p>Charles had taken the children out for a Sunday afternoon walk. They -wanted Catherine, too.</p> - -<p>"The air will do you good, if you <i>are</i> tired," urged Charles.</p> - -<p>"But Margaret is coming in." Catherine stretched lazily in her chair. -"And I don't want to budge."</p> - -<p>Charles had gone, resignation in his voice as he corralled the children -out of the door. Catherine closed her eyes. She was eager to see -Margaret, and yet a little afraid. She was too like an old scrap bag -crammed with thoughts and feelings, tangled, unsorted; and Margaret<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> -would want to shake out the bag, sweeping away the jumble of contents.</p> - -<p>Charles had said, that morning, "Queer, how down I felt yesterday. That -pork roast Friday night was too heavy. Tell Mrs. O'Lay, will you, to -go easy on the pork." And then, hastily, "Talking things out with you -cleared the air, too. I can see I'd had an exaggerated line on them. I -have a plan I want to talk over, some time soon."</p> - -<p>Charles, restored, could call his malady pork! At the same -time—Catherine rose hastily as the bell clattered. At the same time, -she thought, walking down the hall, there had been gratitude, hidden, -unspoken, and release in the feeling between them. That feeling was the -air itself, intangible, invisible, but holding all these other things -of shape or solidity. Charles was himself again, confident, assured, -almost boisterous.</p> - -<p>Margaret pounced at her, shook her gently, hugged her, marched her back -to the living room.</p> - -<p>"Fine! Everyone else is out. Now I can bully you." She dragged off -her gloves. "You look as if you needed it, too," she said. She leaned -forward abruptly and touched Catherine's hand. "Spencer! Oh, it has -been awful, I know," and surprisingly her eyes grew brilliant with -tears. "But he's honestly not hurt, is he? Henrietta swore he wasn't."</p> - -<p>"Honestly all right," said Catherine.</p> - -<p>"I wanted to come back, but Henry wired me I couldn't do a thing. So I -stuck to the job." She moved restlessly. "And Henry swears there's no -danger of any future complication. I worried about that. Spencer's not -the sort I want changed by any knock on his head."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p> - -<p>"No." Catherine shivered. "They all say there is absolutely no danger."</p> - -<p>"Well." Margaret was silent a moment.</p> - -<p>She had to say that, to be rid of it, thought Catherine.</p> - -<p>"But I know what you've been up to." Margaret's tears were gone. -"Wallowing in sentimental regrets. Listening to mother suggests that -you must surely see your duty now. And the King, too! Just when I was -so proud of you, and using you for an example of what a woman really -could do, could amount to, and everything." She laughed. "Don't be a -renegade, Cathy."</p> - -<p>"Pity to spoil your example, huh?"</p> - -<p>"Exactly. Have you seen your boss since you came back? I thought not. -Cathy, go and see him. Dress up and go down to your office. Drag -yourself out of your home, sweet home, long enough to remember how you -felt. If you'll promise that, I won't say another word. Psychological -and moral effect, that's all."</p> - -<p>"I don't want to see him until I make up my mind."</p> - -<p>"It isn't your mind you are making up. It's"—Margaret waved her -hand—"it's your sentiment tank. Oh, I know. I have a soft heart, -myself, Catherine."</p> - -<p>"There's another thing." Margaret had turned her upside down, as she -had feared, and she was hunting feverishly in the scattered contents -of her scrap-bag self. "Charles." Reticence obscured her. "He's been -disappointed about that clinic. He does need——"</p> - -<p>"Anybody," declared Margaret with quick violence, "anybody needs -somebody else loving 'em, smoothing 'em down, setting 'em up, brushing -off the dust. I know! But you can do that anyway. That just goes -on——"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I wonder. You're a hard-boiled spinster, Margaret. What do you know -about it?"</p> - -<p>"I know a little thing or two about love. You do it all the time, -through and around whatever else you are doing. Not from nine to five -exclusively." She settled back, a grimace on her lips, as the door -rattled open and Letty's piping was heard. "Didn't stay long, did he? -You promise me you'll go down to the Bureau. Quick! Or I'll fight with -the King like a——"</p> - -<p>"Yes, I'll go down." Catherine laughed. "I'd have to anyway."</p> - -<p>And Margaret, smiling at her, ran out to meet Spencer.</p> - - -<p class="center">XI</p> - -<p>Catherine sat at the dining room table, staring down at the straggling -columns of figures on the sheet of yellow paper. Her mouth was sullen, -mutinous. Mrs. O'Lay came through the hall, her broom swishing behind -her. She had been redding up the study, and Catherine had moved her -bookkeeping into the dining room. Well, there it was. Appalling totals. -Bills and bills and bills. She ran her fingers across the ragged edges -of her checkbook stub. No hope there. Then her hand crept past the -bills to a long white envelope, bearing the Bureau inscription in one -corner. Her check in full for the month, as if she had stayed in Ohio -and finished the job. Charles's eyebrows, lifted inquiringly when Miss -Kelly had appeared that morning, seemed to arch across her name on -that envelope. She had only to take out that slip of paper, scrawl her -name and "on deposit" across the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> back, and she was committed. Last -night—Charles clinging to her hand—"It's wonderful, Cathy, having -things right again. Don't spoil them." And she cravenly had kept -silence.</p> - -<p>She looked again at the final figures in her check book. Tiny, impotent -sum. Her mind busily added to them the figures of the check. But she -couldn't take it, unless she meant to go on. Dr. Roberts intended it as -an indication of her permanence, a check for the full month, when she -had worked only half of it. Her fingers rested on the slip. The bills, -the paltry little balance, worked on her in a sort of desperate fever.</p> - -<p>I'd have to give up Mrs. O'Lay, too, she thought, to even things. -There'll be doctors' bills. That surgeon. Everything's overdrawn. Have -to tell Miss Kelly.</p> - -<p>She saw herself vividly walking that treadmill. Poor Charles; he had -expected some release, financially, from the clinic and his book. -Wonderful, having things right—don't spoil them.</p> - -<p>She rose quickly, bunching together the devastating bits of paper. She -had to see Dr. Roberts, at least. No use trying to think. Her mind was -a jellyfish. Perhaps if she saw him, and talked with him, something -with a backbone would rise up to rout the jellyfish.</p> - -<p>"I may not be in for luncheon," she told Mrs. O'Lay. "But you can -manage."</p> - -<p>"Sure, you look elegant." Mrs. O'Lay replaced the cover on her kettle -of soup. "An' a breath of air will do your heart good."</p> - -<p>It did, Catherine discovered. She had been housed too long. Clear, -bright, gusty, with bits of paper swirling<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> along the stone wall of -the Drive, and sharp white wave edges rushing across the river. Too -cold for the top of the bus. She watched the river through the window, -and then the shops on the side streets. She was empty, except for bits -of external things touching her eyes. Straw hats in the windows, and -bright feathers; why, spring would come, soon.</p> - -<p>The elevator boy grinned at her widely, ducking his bullet head.</p> - -<p>"How'do. Ain't seen you round here for quite some time."</p> - -<p>That old thrill of belonging to the building—that woman in furs -stepping off at the dentist's floor was eying her curiously—the thrill -of expanding into part of this complicated, intricate, impersonal life.</p> - -<p>Her office again, long, narrow, caging the sunlight between its shelved -walls, and the stenographer rising in a little flurry. "I'll call Dr. -Roberts. He was expecting you, I think."</p> - -<p>Catherine looked out of her window. No one in the fitting room -opposite; she could see the sweep of draped fabrics.</p> - -<p>"Mrs. Hammond! I am delighted to see you."</p> - -<p>Dr. Roberts bustled toward her, his bearded face cordial, his gestures -animated, fidgety. "I wondered how soon you would be in. I should have -called you soon. Your little boy has recovered?"</p> - -<p>"Yes." Catherine sat down.</p> - -<p>"Such a pity. Poor little chap. And calling you back. I must tell -you how admirable your investigation is. We've had several letters -from people whom you met. You handled them admirably, interested them -without<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> antagonizing them. Well, you are ready now to finish the tour?"</p> - -<p>"You have sent no one else?" Catherine was cold. That jellyfish in her -head was a flabby lump left by the tide.</p> - -<p>"No. I want you to go back." His eyes, small, keen, searched hers.</p> - -<p>She sighed faintly.</p> - -<p>"I can't do it." She was startled at the finality in her own words. "I -can't go away, Dr. Roberts. Not—again."</p> - -<p>He showed no surprise.</p> - -<p>"Your letters," he suggested. "They sounded enthusiastic."</p> - -<p>"It was fascinating." There was pain in the folding down of her long -eyelids. "But I can't go away. I—" she smiled briefly. "I've lost my -nerve. I can't risk what might happen."</p> - -<p>"The children, you mean?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"Um. A pity. Accidents happen, anyway. But of course you have thought -of that." He drummed busily with his fingers along the desk.</p> - -<p>Catherine straightened her shoulders. She could think clearly now; -evidently the jellyfish had existed just for that one decision.</p> - -<p>"I had hoped there wouldn't be a chance for me to go away again. I -thought you might have sent someone else, and that you'd want me here -in the office. You see—the glimpse I had of the real colleges gives -enormous vitality to all these catalogues. I'd like to go on, if I -could do it right here."</p> - -<p>When had she thought that? Astonishing, the way<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> ideas burst out from -some deep level, and you recognized them as authentic.</p> - -<p>"A pity." Dr. Roberts clasped his hands, twisting his fingers in and -out. Here's the church, and here's the steeple, thought Catherine, as -if she played the finger game for Letty. "I was afraid of it. But if -you will come back, handle the work here—I like the way you write up -the material." He clapped one palm on the desk. "Let me think it over. -I suppose I might finish the trip myself. I am free now—those meetings -have come off."</p> - -<p>"There's this check." Catherine took it out of her handbag. "For a -month, at the new rate."</p> - -<p>"I think that will be satisfactory. It's gone into the budget, your -salary, I mean. I don't think the President will suggest cutting it. -Not if I make the trip myself. Let me think it over. No, the check is -yours."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Just after twelve, by the jeweler's sidewalk clock. She could reach -home for luncheon. But she didn't want to! She turned out of the -entrance and moved along, graceful, deliberate, toward the cross street -and Amy's club.</p> - -<p>The housekeeper nodded to her. There were women in a group near the -fire, one or two heads turning toward her; no one there who knew her. -She sat alone at a small yellow table in a corner of the dining room. -She was earlier than her usual hour. That was why she saw none of the -women she had talked with. She did recognize several of the faces. -Bits of gossip collected about them, highly colored pieces of personal -comment, which Amy had thrown off in her intense, throaty voice. That -woman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> who was just seating herself, dropping her heavy, squirrel-lined -great coat over her chair, was a successful physician; makes thirty -thousand at least. Has to have a young thing adoring her—yes, there's -the present young thing, with a sleek bobbed head like a child's, -and round, serious eyes. Secretary, housekeeper, chauffeur, slave! -Catherine could hear Amy's satiric list. And the two women at the table -beyond. Catherine bent over her salad, while the women in the room -retreated to some great distance, carrying the bits of gossip like -cockleburrs stuck to their garments. It's funny, thought Catherine. I -never saw it before. But it is always how they love—how they live—not -what they think. Even when Amy talks about them. Even these women.</p> - -<p>Her thoughts ran on, clearly. She had wished to lunch there, because -she needed something to orient herself, to deliver her out of the -smother of her life and all its subtle, intimate pressures of love. -She wanted to see women in terms of some cold, dignified, outer -achievement. And instead, her mind clattered about them with tales of -their lovers, their husbands, their emotional bondage.</p> - -<p>Well, was that her fault, her own prepossession? Or Amy's? From Amy had -come these irritating recollections. Or was it that women were like -that, summed up in personal emotions? She drew on her gloves and left -the club rooms.</p> - -<p>She would walk up the Avenue and across Central Park. They were having -lunch at home, now, Charles, the children. Sometimes in walking her -feet seemed to tread thoughts into smoothness; or the swinging rhythm -of her body shook some inner clarity up through confused images where -she could see it, could lay hold of it.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p> - -<p>What was she trying to think about, anyway? Women? Herself? Herself and -Charles. And the children.</p> - -<p>Men had personal lives, too. But didn't they make them, or try to make -them, comfortable, assured, sustaining, so that they could leave them? -Find them when they came back? And women having had nothing else, still -centered there? She stopped in a block of traffic, looking about with -eyes strained and vague.</p> - -<p>Petulant, smug faces above elegant furs. Hard streaks of carmine for -lips. Faces with broad peasant foreheads, with beak noses. Faces——</p> - -<p>The rush carried her across the street. Letty and Marian, her -daughters, growing up.</p> - -<p>If I knuckle under now, she thought, what of them? She could feel them -pressing against her, Letty's silky head under her throat, Marian's -firm, slim body against her arm. What I do can't matter very much, -directly, to them. They have to live, themselves. She was humble, -feeling their individualness, their growth as a curious progression -of miracles in which she was merely an incidental tool. Women devote -themselves to their families, so that their daughters may grow up and -devote themselves to their families, so that—— Catherine laughed. -Some one has to break through that circle, she thought.</p> - -<p>She entered the Park, walking more slowly along the winding path. If -she had only sons—the thought of Spencer stood up like a straight -candle flame in her murky drifting—that would be different. There was -her own mother. Catherine could see her, being wheeled along the beach -at Atlantic City, with her friend, Alethea, on a little holiday to -recover from the shock of Spencer's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> accident. How does she manage it, -that poise of hers, that sufficiency?</p> - -<p>The walk had come to a cluster of animal houses. Catherine looked about -her, and on a sudden whim went past the attendant into the monkey -house. The warm, acid, heavy odor affronted her. She didn't want to -be here. Years ago she had come in, before she married. She turned -to go, and met the melancholy flat stare of a small gray monkey. The -animal clung to the bars of the cage with one hand, the long, naked -fingers moving restlessly, and looked at Catherine, while the fingers -of the other hand dug pensively into the fur of her breast. Catherine -felt her heart pause; she had a sensation of white excitement, as if -she hung poised over an abyss of infinite knowledge, comprehension. A -second monkey swung chattering across the cage and dropped from the -bar, grabbing at the tail of the monkey that stared, and the moment -was gone. Catherine went hastily out into the clear, sweet air. I hate -them, she muttered, and hurried away across the brown, dead stretches -of park. But she could not escape the vivid recollection of that -earlier visit, years ago. She had seen then a female monkey nursing -her young, and the pathos of the close-set unwinking eyes over the -tiny furry thing had made the curve of long monkey arm a symbol of -protective mother instinct.</p> - -<p>They're too like us. That's why I hate them. And then, fiercely, men -have climbed out of that. Some ways. But they want to keep us monkey -women. Loving our mate and children. Nothing else.</p> - -<p>She came presently to a stretch of water at the other side of the -park, and stopped a moment on the shore.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> Blue, quiet, with long black -reflections of trees from the opposite bank.</p> - -<p>My mind has made itself up, she thought. Her pallor and sullenness had -given place to an intense vitality in her wide, dark eyes, in the curve -of her mouth. It isn't selfishness, nor egoism, this hankering of mine. -It's more than that. I'll tell Charles—she laughed softly, out of the -wholeness of her release from doubt—I'll tell him that I can't be a -monkey woman. He'll help me. He must help me.</p> - - -<p class="center">XII</p> - -<p>She waited until the children were asleep and the house was quiet. -Then she knocked at the study door, behind which Charles sat, working -on a lecture. She scarcely waited for his "Come" but went in swiftly, -closing the door.</p> - -<p>"Most through work?" She drew a small chair near his desk. "Why, you -aren't working." His desk was orderly, bare.</p> - -<p>"Not just now." Charles leaned back. "I—" he hesitated. "You look -stunning in that get-up," he finished.</p> - -<p>"Yes?" Catherine's smile lingered. "It's not the get-up. It's me, -inside."</p> - -<p>"Handsome wife." Charles touched her fingers, spreading them wide -between his own fingers, crumpling them together in a sudden violent -squeeze. Then he leaned back again. "Just been thinking about you," he -said.</p> - -<p>"Yes? So've I." Vivacity in Catherine's voice, her gesture, a vivacity -which had true life from deep inner light, not an external manner. "I -wanted to talk to you."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I've been wanting to talk things over with you." Charles looked away -from her somberly. "For some time."</p> - -<p>"It's about next year," continued Charles slowly, and Catherine -thought, I'll leave the monkeys out, at first. "Our plans, you know."</p> - -<p>Something arrested Catherine at the edge of speech, something like the -damp finger of air from a cellar.</p> - -<p>"I should have brought it up before you went downtown," he was saying. -"You were down this morning, weren't you?"</p> - -<p>She nodded.</p> - -<p>"I didn't realize you were going. And anyway, to-day sort of brought -matters to a head."</p> - -<p>"Yes?"</p> - -<p>"Well, it's my job. I went in to see the Head, to-day." Charles faced -her, his eyes deprecating. "You gave me nerve to do that, Cathy. I'd -been knocked so confoundedly hard—but I felt better to-day. That's -you." Catherine's hands clung together in her lap. "I wanted to have -exact data on where I stood. The trouble is, this place is too big. -I mean the institution, not my own job. There are too many men eager -for a foothold. The Chief was rather fine about it—about my work, -especially. Praised it. You know. But he said I'd stepped somewhat out -of rank, going abroad. Two men are ahead of me, in line for promotion. -Can't have too many professors. Isn't room. All that guff, you know -what it is." Charles brought his fist down on the desk. "I should like -to get to a place where I can march ahead as fast as I can go. I talked -over the whole situation with him, including the Buxton offer." His -eyes were suddenly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> wary, inquisitive. "You remember that, of course? -And he agreed with me."</p> - -<p>"He advised you to leave the University?" Catherine heard her own -voice, like a thin wire.</p> - -<p>"He agreed that the chance for advancement, for future accomplishment, -lay there rather than here."</p> - -<p>"And you wish to go?"</p> - -<p>"I had another letter to-day from the president there. It's a -remarkable place, Cathy. Small, but endowed to the neck. A few of -those small colleges are, you know. I'd have the entire department -in my hands, with freedom to work out anything I liked. They want a -strong department. Want a good man to build it up." His wariness, his -searching of her face had dropped away in a rush of genuine enthusiasm. -His words ran on, building the picture, his work, his opportunity. -Then he switched, suddenly. "And the place is fine, too. Pretty little -town, college community. Wonderful place for the children. The other -night, as I told them about my childhood, I felt we had no right to -imprison them here. It isn't decent. Shut up in a city, when they are -just growing up. Do you think so? All this awful struggle to stretch -our income, too. That would be over. More salary, almost twice as much. -Living conditions infinitely better. Pleasant people to live near."</p> - -<p>"When you got your appointment at the University here, you thought it -was perfect. The institution, the city. Do you remember how you felt?"</p> - -<p>"It did seem so, didn't it? But you have to watch a thing work out."</p> - -<p>"You are sure you are judging Buxton fairly, and not in the light of -what's happened in the clinic?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I've been thinking about it for months. I spoke about it in the -fall——" He stopped suddenly, and Catherine saw the phantom that he -had evoked: his own voice, harsh, "I think I'll take that Buxton offer, -just to get you out of town," and her own answer, thrown back as she -fled, "You'd have to be sure I would go!"</p> - -<p>"I can't decide it alone," he went on hastily. "I'm just trying to show -you how it looks to me."</p> - -<p>"But you have decided." Her effort to keep her voice steady flattened -all its intonations. "Decided that it is much the best thing for your -career, much the best for the children."</p> - -<p>"I can't drag you off unless you wish to go. I hoped you would like it, -too. It—well, it is something of an honor, you know. The way they keep -after me. There's a large appropriation for a laboratory. I'd have very -little teaching. They seem to have some idea of a creative department."</p> - -<p>Catherine was silent. There was something shaking and ludicrous, in the -way that courageous light of afternoon had been snuffed out. Why, she -had thought she stood at last in a clear road, where she could be sure -of direction, and here she was only at the core of the labyrinth again, -knocked blindly into an angle of blind wall.</p> - -<p>"Catherine!" he cried out against her silence. "If it wasn't for this -damned idea of yours, you'd care what happened to me!"</p> - -<p>Whirling about in the lane of her labyrinth, shutting her eyes to its -maze. "I do care, Charles. That's the trouble."</p> - -<p>"After all, it's not just me. It's the children and you, isn't it?" He -fiddled with the blotter, shoved it along<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> the desk. "I think it will -be infinitely better for you, too." His chin was obdurate. "New York -is no place. Overstimulates you. At a place like Buxton, life is more -normal. There's a woman's Faculty Club," he added, triumphantly.</p> - -<p>Catherine laughed.</p> - -<p>"Teas?" she said, "or literary afternoons?"</p> - -<p>"They're fine women. Cathy, don't laugh. I hoped you would like it."</p> - -<p>"Like it?" She flung out her hands, sensitive, empty palms upwards. -"I've just been there! I know what it is like. But I know"—she was -sober again—"why, there's nothing for me to do but say yes, is there? -I can't say that Buxton offers me no opportunity, except to be a monkey -woman, can I?"</p> - -<p>"What?"</p> - -<p>"Nothing." She doubled a fist against her mouth, and stared at him.</p> - -<p>"You've been so sweet these last days." Charles reached for her hand, -held it between both of his. "Things were ghastly mixed up, and then -we seemed straight again, you and I. You know everything's been wrong -since you first took that damned office job. I can't stand it! Our -yapping at each other. I hoped you would want to throw it over. I do -care about your being happy. Cathy, if you believe, honestly, that it's -more important that you should stay here, I'll try to see it that way."</p> - -<p>Her hand was reluctant, cold, in the warm, steady pressure of his.</p> - -<p>"I can't believe it, alone." The labyrinth shut her in, black, -enclosing. "You'd have to believe it, yourself. And you don't."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p> - -<p>"It's different, considering the children, too, as well as you and me. -What you do, in an office, takes you away from me. What I do, Cathy, -that is yours, too, isn't it?"</p> - -<p>His fingers crept up about her wrist; beneath them her life beat in -heavy, slow rhythm.</p> - -<p>"It knocks the stuffing fairly out of everything, if I think you don't -care."</p> - -<p>"Yes. It does that for me, too." Catherine smiled at him in a flicker -of mockery. She caught a faint slackening of his fingers. Stella -Partridge! But she knew, even in the impulse to have that out, -to insist upon it as part of the winter, that it was better left -untouched. Intangible, incomplete, a kind of subtle aberration, it -would dissolve more quickly unexpressed.</p> - -<p>"I'd be a beast to say I wouldn't go. A perverted, selfish wife. -Wouldn't I? I can't be that. I'm too soft. Charles, I do desire for you -every chance——"</p> - -<p>"You're not soft. You're really fine. You——" He jumped to his feet. -"And when we get out there, you'll see. You'll like it! Lots of things -for you to do. You will be happy, Cathy. I'll make you happy."</p> - -<p>Catherine, leaning back in her chair, lifted her face to look up at -him. She heard in his voice the shouting down of fear; he had been -worried, then. He had not been sure.</p> - - -<p class="center">XIII</p> - -<p>Catherine sat on the window sill, looking down at the shadows which -slanted across the tree tops of Morningside. In the distance roofs -still glittered in the afternoon sunlight. Beneath her the spring -leaves were delicate and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> small, keeping their own fine shape, not yet -making green masses. A little easterly breeze touched her warm cheek, -and she thought, leaning from the window, that she sniffed in it the -faint piquancy of Balm of Gilead buds. The last trunk was banging down -the hall, its thuds like muttered profanities.</p> - -<p>She turned back to the dismantled rooms. How queer they looked, small, -dingy, worn. Mrs. O'Lay, in the kitchen, was assuring Charles: "Sure -and you needn't worry yourself about that, Mr. Hammond. I'll clear out -every stick. Them little things I've saved for myself. I can make use -of them."</p> - -<p>She was cramming things into the dumbwaiter. Catherine could hear the -rustling of waste paper.</p> - -<p>Catherine stood up, cautiously. She was stiff, almost dizzy, as if she -had bent so long over packing boxes and trunks that her head couldn't -without penalty be held upright. Well, it was done. Incredible and -astonishing, that the disorder and confusion had come to an end.</p> - -<p>"All ready, dear?" Charles stood in the doorway, buttoning his coat, -patting his tie into place. "About time we got off."</p> - -<p>"Be sure there is nothing left." Catherine went slowly through the -rooms, listening to the walls return her footsteps emptily.</p> - -<p>In the kitchen Mrs. O'Lay poked among the salvage, bundles, piles, an -old black hat of Catherine's mounted rakishly on a box of breakfast -food, a dingy cotton duck of Letty's, limp from loss of stuffing.</p> - -<p>"I'll finish up here, Mis' Hammond." The broad red face was creased -into downward wrinkles. "Sure, an' I hate to see the end of you," she -said. "It's fine for you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> you got a tenant to come in right away, but -we'll miss you."</p> - -<p>"Taxi, Catherine!" shouted Charles.</p> - -<p>"Good-by, God love you!" Mrs. O'Lay waved her out of the apartment onto -the elevator.</p> - -<p>"Well, we certainly got things off in great style, eh?" Charles beside -her in the cab, the bags stowed at their feet, had his erect, briskly -managing air. "Everything done, and time for dinner before your train."</p> - -<p>Catherine was sunk in a lethargy of weariness; dimly she still sorted, -packed, gave directions.</p> - -<p>"You know, I forgot about the gas deposit." She emerged frantically -from her lethargy. "Five dollars!"</p> - -<p>"I'll see to it. Where's the receipt?"</p> - -<p>"Let's see—in that envelope. I'll mail it to you. It was good of -mother to take the children until train time, wasn't it?" Catherine -sighed.</p> - -<p>"I tell you, it was a lucky thing we got the apartment off our hands -before fall." Charles patted her knee cheerfully. "Awful job, if we'd -had to pack up at the end of the summer."</p> - -<p>"Awful job any time!"</p> - -<p>"Oh, well, a week in Maine will make you forget it all. -Especially with the rent off our chests."</p> - -<p>"You'll surely come in three weeks?"</p> - -<p>"Positively. That finishes up everything. And I'll have to get away -then if I'm to have any vacation. Say, be sure to tell old Baker he's -got to take me down to the ledges for some real fishing. I haven't -fished for two years, except for flounders."</p> - -<p>"And Buxton the first of August?"</p> - -<p>"Be hot there in August, won't it? Well, I'll have to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> go then. But I -can find a house for us, and sort of learn the ropes before you blow -in."</p> - -<p>"I wonder——" Catherine's brows met in a deep wrinkle. "I can't -remember which trunk I put the blankets in, and the linen. Hope they -aren't labeled Buxton!"</p> - -<p>"Oh, you got them where they belong. Don't fuss, I tell you. You let -me drop you at the Gilberts' now, and I'll go on to the station. I can -check these things, and that will give you a few minutes to rest."</p> - -<p>"I don't care where you drop me." Catherine laughed. "All my poor mind -does is to hunt for things in those trunks and boxes."</p> - -<p>"You might as well stop worrying. They're settled."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Catherine stood at the entrance to the hotel, watching the taxi jerk -its way along with the traffic. Charles's hand lay on the opened -window, a resolute, capable fist. Every one was going home. Home from -work. Shop girls in gay tweeds, already faded across the shoulders; -sallow, small men in baggy trousers, with bits of lint sticking to -them, from the lofts where they sewed—perhaps on more gay tweed -suits, or beaded silk dresses for the trade. Moist, pale faces, with a -startled, worn expression, as if the warmth of the day surprised and -exhausted the city dwellers. And in Maine—a sharp visual image of -pointed firs reflected in clear water, with a luminous twilight sky -behind dark branches.</p> - -<p>"Ought to be glad I'm going," she thought. "Instead of spending the -summer here, with these people. And the children—I couldn't keep them -here. Could I!"</p> - -<p>Henrietta's maid admitted her to the quiet, orderly liv<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span>ing room. Dr. -Gilbert was in her office. She would be free soon. Catherine sat down -at the window, looking idly out at the great steel framework which -shadowed the room. How long ago she had looked down into pits of water -and uncouth shapes of cranes! New Year's Day. And Henry had said, -"You'd be a fool not to go."</p> - -<p>The methodical arrangement of the room was restful, sane, after the -hurly-burly of the last week. Distressing that confusion could so fray -the edges of yourself. She closed her eyes, relaxing into a kind of -blankness.</p> - -<p>She opened them presently, to find Henrietta in the doorway, staring -through her eyeglasses, her mouth firm and compassionate.</p> - -<p>"Hello!" Catherine moved hastily erect. "Don't turn that professional -stare on me. I won't have it."</p> - -<p>"Hoped you were asleep." Henrietta came in. "Bill hasn't shown up -yet. Perhaps we'd better go down to the dining room. Your train is so -beastly early. Where's Charles?"</p> - -<p>"Checking the trunks. He'll be in soon."</p> - -<p>As they waited for the elevator, Catherine turned suddenly upon -Henrietta.</p> - -<p>"You know, Henry, I appreciate your not telling me what you think. I -suppose you're disgusted, and you haven't said a word. Not since I told -you we were going."</p> - -<p>"Not disgusted." Henrietta thrust her eyeglasses between the buttons of -her jacket. "I've been rather cut up about it. But it's your affair. I -don't see that you could do anything else. Not now, at any rate."</p> - -<p>"Perhaps some women could. I can't."</p> - -<p>"Women can't alone." Henrietta sounded violent.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> "Not without men -helping them. Being willing to help them. So long as their own affairs -come first——"</p> - -<p>The door of the elevator swung open.</p> - -<p>"When Mr. Gilbert comes in, tell him we are at dinner. And Mr. Hammond, -too."</p> - -<p>"Yes, ma'am."</p> - -<p>Henrietta nodded to the waiter, who led them into an alcove off the -main dining room.</p> - -<p>"Quiet in here." Henrietta settled herself briskly. Catherine was -thinking: Henrietta manages her life so that things, mere things, never -get in her way—laundry, or food, or packing. "I wanted to see you -make a go of it," said Henrietta. "You're so darned intelligent. It's -the children, I know. If it weren't for them, you could stay here. If -you would. Probably Charles would pull you along by a heartstring even -then. Now, Bill—— But I'll let him speak for himself. He has some -news."</p> - -<p>"Perhaps"—Catherine did not glance up—"perhaps, Henry, I've just been -knocked flat at the end of the first round. Who knows? I may get my -wind back—in Buxton."</p> - -<p>"What can you do in a country town?"</p> - -<p>Catherine did not answer; Charles was coming toward them, buoyant, -touched with excitement, and behind him, Bill. Charles tucked the -checks into her purse.</p> - -<p>"I'll mail these others to the Dean," he said. "Great place we're going -to. The Dean himself has offered to see to our chattels. Going to store -them in some building on the campus until we come. Real human beings in -Buxton!"</p> - -<p>Catherine looked silently at Bill, as he took her hand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> for a brief -moment. She hadn't seen him for weeks; he had been out of town again. -His glance was grave, a little pleased.</p> - -<p>"Tell them your news, Bill."</p> - -<p>"Oh"—he shook out his napkin—"I'm off to South America next week, to -build a bridge."</p> - -<p>Henrietta explained. Huge engineering project, throwing a link across -mountains, a road for commerce. Difficult enough to interest even a -clam like Bill.</p> - -<p>Catherine listened rather vaguely; Bill was moving his knife, his salt, -his roll, to illustrate. Saves hundreds of miles in shipping, you see, -if the thing can be done. A straight line from the interior.</p> - -<p>"How long will it take?"</p> - -<p>"Can't tell exactly until I see the ground. Perhaps a year. Or longer."</p> - -<p>Catherine flung her glance at Henrietta, and found her watching Bill, -her blue eyes calmly reflective. Not a trace of dispute, not a faint -echo of bitterness, although Henrietta was looking less at Bill than -back into whatever secret, intimate hour of decision lay behind the -present announcement. This was what Henrietta had meant. That Bill -would go alone if he wished, not for an instant expecting Henrietta to -drop her life and follow.</p> - -<p>"And you're just staying here?" Charles was naïve, surprised.</p> - -<p>"Naturally." Henrietta grinned at him. "I can't move my practice. It's -a long time, but perhaps one of us can wriggle in a vacation."</p> - -<p>"Well!" Charles leaned back. "If my wife——" he broke off, -suspiciously.</p> - -<p>"Henrietta might reasonably object to being deserted,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> said Bill -quietly. "But she's good enough to see why I wish to go."</p> - -<p>Charles paused an instant over that, and then with a shrug came out on -clear, safe ground with a question about the work. Catherine listened. -She was tired. Her thoughts crawled obscurely, undirected, in a fog of -weariness. Charles would pull her along by a heartstring, Henrietta -said. Probably. She lacked that cold singleness which Henrietta kept. -But Bill never tried to pull Henry by a heartstring. He hid away from -her.</p> - -<p>"You're not eating a thing, Cathy," said Henrietta. "Too much packing, -I suppose. I hope you'll loaf for a while. Do you have the same woman -who took us for peddlars?"</p> - -<p>"I think so." Catherine stared out of her fog.</p> - -<p>"Amelia will have the house opened and ready. Catherine can loaf all -summer." Charles was hearty, assured. "It's been a hard winter, some -ways."</p> - -<p>The talk went on, with coffee and cheese, and Catherine drifted again -in her fog. Perhaps one person always hides away. Bill had said -something about that, once. In every combination of people, one hides. -But if you hide away, then you shouldn't sulk. Play fair.</p> - -<p>Dinner was over. Time to go. Henrietta, regretfully, explained that she -couldn't go to the station. A case. Bill would walk over.</p> - -<p>"I shall miss you, Cathy." They stood at the entrance of the hotel. -"And the children. Bill gone, too. I'll have to work like fury."</p> - -<p>"You must come out to Buxton when we're settled. Take a week off." -Charles glanced at his watch, edged toward the street.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I may." Henrietta's lips, firm and cool, touched Catherine's. -"Good-by."</p> - -<p>"We'd better walk fast," said Charles. "I have to get the bags out of -the parcel room."</p> - -<p>"Want a taxi?" Bill lifted his hand, but Catherine refused.</p> - -<p>"It's only three blocks. Let's walk."</p> - -<p>At the corner entrance of Grand Central, Charles darted ahead, with a -hasty, "Meet you at the clock. You find Mother Spencer and the kids."</p> - -<p>Catherine drew a long breath and looked up at Bill.</p> - -<p>"South America," she said. "Mountains. And you are really keen about -it?"</p> - -<p>"It sounds good, don't you think?" He pushed open the heavy door for -her. "Too bad we can't have dinner on some mountain peak." He smiled -down at her. "What would they give us? Hot tamales, or are those -Mexican?"</p> - -<p>"South America—and Buxton," said Catherine.</p> - -<p>"There is Spencer." Bill took her arm and swung her out of the path of -a laden porter. "And the others."</p> - -<p>"I hope it will be wonderful, Bill. And I'm not done for, not yet." -Catherine could see the children, Letty with round eyes and her doll -hugged under one arm, Marian jiggling on her toes with delight.</p> - -<p>"I hope that you——" What he would have said, Catherine did not know, -for Marian had seen them and hurled herself upon her mother with a -burst of staccato excitement. But Catherine had met, for a clear -instant, in a lifting of Bill's somber impersonality, a kind of dogged, -sympathetic challenge.</p> - -<p>"Oh, Mother!" Spencer had his fingers around her arm. "I began to think -you weren't coming!"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Margaret's here somewhere." Mrs. Spencer clung to Letty's hand. -"Buying you magazines, I think. Where is Charles?"</p> - -<p>"Here's the King." Margaret came up with him. "Hello, Mr. Bill."</p> - -<p>"The guard will have to let me through the gate," announced Charles -severely, "to settle these bags for you."</p> - -<p>"Oh, Cathy!" Margaret whisked to Catherine's side. "We're coming up to -see you in Maine, Amy and I. In our own car! Want us?"</p> - -<p>"I shall probably stop in Buxton on my way back from George's," said -Mrs. Spencer, as she pushed Letty and Marian toward the gate. "I wish -you weren't going so far"—she sighed—"but as I've said, I think it's -just the place for you all."</p> - -<p>Charles was impressing the guard, successfully, so that he did step -through, Spencer beside him tugging at a handbag. A flurry of good-bys, -and Catherine, with Letty and Marian clinging to her hands, followed -him upon the platform. She turned for a last glimpse. Margaret, her -bright hair flying, was waving at them; Mrs. Spencer dabbed softly -at her cheeks with her handkerchief; Bill—no, Bill had turned away. -There, he was waving, too. Marian waggled her handkerchief. Charles -called behind her, "Come along, Cathy, your coach is halfway down the -track."</p> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LABYRINTH ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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