Part 10

"This is a very unpleasant affair, Kenworthy," he began, smoothly. "I left Eve crying her eyes out. She wanted to come with me, but I wouldn't have it. I don't know what she's said to you, but it probably wasn't--correct--altogether. You HAVE been good to her, Mrs. Kenworthy. My girls--Eve especially--have got to depend too much on friends like you. I mean--I was worried, I was--uncomfortable because I couldn't arrange--something for her here, in this town--like what you've meant to her, but she's so hard to suit. I can't arrange anything for her--I can't buy or rent her friends. I can't make her like any sensible woman. I can't tell you how relieved I was to have her take to you so--from the first. She says now--she says people will see some--reference to you--to Martha--in this--item in the paper. I don't see that that follows. I don't see why they should. But of course I went to see the editor at once--just in case--you were--upset." He looked closely at Emily. He saw she had been crying. He looked at Martha, more shrewdly, and felt relieved that she showed no sign of concern. "I must say he was decent about it. Very reasonable, I found him. Though young Benton said there was some sort of spite work behind it."

"What's he done about it?" Bob demanded.

"He's denying it in to-morrow's paper. He's saying it was a mistake."

He could not help realizing how intently the three of them were waiting his words.

"I ought to explain--I suppose I ought to tell you--how things are with my married daughter--with Elinor--Mrs. Kenworthy. You'll understand my situation. She's a very sick woman. She suffers----" the pain in his voice told too well how she suffered. "She walks the floor for hours together at night. Eve can't understand it. She's never had a pain in her life. I know positively that for three days and nights before she went to Chicago she hadn't an hour's sleep. If you could see--the fight she--puts up--against--drugs--against things to relieve her, Mrs. Kenworthy!"

Emily had to murmur, moved by his voice, "Oh, I didn't realize she was so bad!"

"I told the paper man. I explained it to him--I didn't mention your name, even, or any women's clubs. I told him she had been--just beside herself with pain, and if she ever said any such thing, she didn't know what she was doing. Because, you understand, Mrs. Kenworthy," he cried, eagerly, "she isn't that sort of woman. She never would have published such a statement if she had intended doing anything. I told him that if she ever saw such a thing in his paper, I didn't know what she might do. It would drive her crazy. I told him he would be responsible--for a great deal--too much harm, perhaps. He understood at once. He said he was sorry. He let me word it. I'll show you."

He took a folded sheet of paper out of an inside pocket of his coat, and handed it to Emily. Bob went to her, bending over her chair, and read with her:

There is no truth whatever in the rumor that Mrs. Richard Quin contemplates divorce proceedings. The editor regrets its publication the more because Mrs. Quin is in very poor health and in no condition to bear the annoyance caused by such rumors. She and her husband left the first of the week for Rochester, where she will be under the care of the Mayos for some weeks.

"I don't know--what more you could have done," Emily murmured.

"Are you satisfied, Martha?" Mr. Fairbanks was taking the paper from Emily and handing it to the girl.

"Oh, me?" she asked, innocently, as if he had surprised her by supposing she was concerned in the matter. Emily, looking quickly across at her, marked the way her eyes were shining, and murmured, "Martha!" imploringly.

But Martha paid no heed to her. She tilted her head dangerously and, looking straight at him, drawled with utter contempt and scorn:

"I suppose you never consider _his_ happiness at all!"

Mr. Fairbanks grew redder. He fairly blinked. He stood looking at her indignantly for a moment of silence. Emily wondered if he now would break forth and give Martha a thoroughly good "dressing down."

But when he began speaking, his words were soft and suave.

"Well, I'm more or less responsible for HER happiness, Martha. I'm not for his. I pay him. He's necessary to her--she's very affectionate, really. I pay him to contribute to her happiness, just as I pay for my mother's nurses." He spoke slowly. Obviously he wanted to consider himself a fair man, always. "And I can't say," he went on, carefully, "that he always plays the game. Sometimes I think she would be happier without him. He doesn't---- Sometimes, that is, I wonder if he's worth----" He hesitated.

So Martha completed his sentence for him.

"What you pay him?" she asked, and the finish of her insolence made even Emily, harassed as she was, wonder where she had ever learned the tone. For, looking straight at him, she got up and deliberately started to leave the room. Mr. Fairbanks, it seemed, was not afraid of girls, for he put out his arm and took hold of hers, intending to detain her. She broke away angrily as he spoke her name gently, and, standing in the door into the hall, he watched her sail defiantly up the stairs.

He turned around; he looked from Emily to Bob. They, watching him sharply, saw consternation slowly gain control of his face.

"Oh!" he murmured. "He hasn't--you don't think----"

He could no longer look at Emily. He addressed his mumblings to Bob. "I didn't realize---- Eve said something, but I didn't--think it amounted to anything."

"Oh, what can we do now?" Emily moaned.

Then Bob cried, "The damned skunk!"

"Kenworthy! You must be--careful! That's why Elinor's teeth ache!" His earnestness startled them. "Elinor's teeth are all out, but they all still ache! It's nerves. They call it hysteria! They can't do anything for her. Not in Europe, even. It's because she fell in love with that first scoundrel. He broke her heart, as they say. She lived with him two years, and there was nothing left of her. They mean he broke her nerve, her temper, her character--everything! I tell you she was a magnificent girl, Kenworthy! She had more common sense than any girl I ever saw! She was a partner to me, more than a daughter. And there's nothing left of her but toothache! I wouldn't have--anything--happen to Martha!"

He was so distressed that Emily heard herself saying: "Oh, _she'll_ be all right. Martha's all right. Don't worry."

"But they take it so hard. They fall so in earnest. Look here, Mrs. Kenworthy, you don't want him around--in town, do you? You want him to clear out?"

"Oh yes!"

"Very well, then. He won't come back. I won't let him set foot in this town again. There are some limits to what I'll stand from him."

"Are you going to see him? Where is he now?" Bob asked.

"I think he's with Elinor. You never can know, exactly. But I'll see him."

"Tell him for me that if he doesn't let Martha alone, I'll kill him--married or divorced."

"I'll tell him something worse than that! You needn't worry." He spoke grimly. A smile that was surprisingly evil came over his round face. "I'd like to tell you what I did to the first man. It would comfort you. But it's a secret."

Emily shivered. She didn't like Eve's "sweet old lamb." He was a wolf, perhaps, at heart, and she was afraid of his cruelty. "He'll make that man afraid, too, if he looks at him like that!" she thought.

He left abruptly, and Emily went upstairs to Martha. What she saw in the painted room terrified her. She had to realize that the fire in Martha's heart burned passionately enough to make everything its fuel. For when she shut the door behind her, Martha raised herself up angrily from the day bed crying furiously:

"Mother! I hope you're satisfied _now_! I don't know how you could sit there with that vile man! Did you ever hear anything so--vile--vile!" She sobbed. "He talks as if Richard was a dog to amuse that dirty woman! You'd think he was a slave! Nobody takes his part! Nobody cares for him! And YOU aren't sorry for him, even! Oh, it makes me so mad!"

After a little Emily said, "I felt sorry for HER, Martha!"

"Yes, you _would_! You _know_ what a liar she is. Even Eve said she was a liar. Even Eve said she pretended to be sick so she could get money out of her father! Why do you believe them? Oh!" cried Martha, "he's a vile man! Vile! When I think of Richard having to live with those people----" When her sobs let her speak, she went on, "Mother, can't you see what a position he is in?"

"It doesn't seem a position that does any man any credit, Martha."

"All right!" cried Martha. "All right, let it go at that. I'll never speak to you about him again, never." She never did.

It was well that there was a painted room in the house, those four weeks before she went back to college. There was nothing else bright about it. Bob waited to intercept letters from "that skunk" who, Mr. Fairbanks said, was to be for some time in Rochester with his wife; but no letters seemed to come. Martha appeared not to be humiliated by the fact that she had practically declared her love for a man hopelessly, permanently married. In her secluded room she bided her time, a smile on her lips, the sweetest dream in her eyes. She was ignoring her mother not only purposefully, but unconsciously. She had greater things than a mother's anxiety to think about.

Her coldness sickened Emily every minute of the day. She scarcely knew how to get through the hours, so burdened were they with yearning over the silly girl. Never had the garden bloomed so hilariously before in August and September. Never had it had such care before. Emily watered her dahlias sometimes till midnight, dreading a sleepless bed when she went into the house. She rose up early and watered them under stars she had seldom seen setting. Once out there, hoping, praying, she had looked up and in the very early dawn seen Martha sitting dreaming at her window. And the sight of that distant, alienated child took all the color from the dawn and heaven.

Life indeed had assumed the color of dread and heart-sickness. Johnnie had waited a few days, and then departed. Emily was glad she had seized an occasion to say to him secretly, hurriedly, "Johnnie, I'm very fond of you!" He had given her a surprised and precious look. But he had not even said he was leaving. His mother said he had gone down to have some coaching in philosophy--it was his last year in college. Eve never came to the house. Emily met her occasionally on the street, in the stores. And once she said, passionately: "Oh, I hate to run into you this way! I'm ashamed to look you in the face!" And in her own house the atmosphere was either very cold, when she and Martha were together, or very sultry, when Bob was with them, so that she lived in terror of some further deadly burst of thunder.

Martha announced one day that she was going to Chicago for shopping. She would naturally do that several times, getting her clothes ready for the school year.

Emily said to her: "Before you go, Martha, you must promise me one thing. You must promise me you will NOT see--at all--that man."

"You don't trust me any more?"

"No, Martha. It's your judgment. I don't trust your judgment."

"No, I suppose not. I see."

"Will you promise me that, Martha?"

"No, I don't think so. I don't think I will."

"What am I to do now?" thought Emily. "Shall I say that she can't leave this house till she promises me that?"

Martha was looking at her hostilely, steadily. "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll think it over. I'll tell you to-morrow what I'll do," she said.

On the morrow, she said, "Mother, if it will do you any good, I'll promise--what you want me to."

"Oh, Martha!" Emily cried to her, "you _must_ promise me that, absolutely! Martha, I just couldn't let you go away to school again, unless you promise me that!"

"All right, I promise you. If you can't trust my--judgment, as you say"--she spoke sarcastically--"I suppose you can--believe--what I say."

Bob's eyes dwelt resentfully upon his daughter, and loyally on his distressed wife, all those painful last days before Martha left for the East.

"I'll bet you lost twenty pounds this summer, Emily!" he said, ruefully, when they were alone at length.

"Well, thank goodness for that!" she retorted, loyal to the child. "I wish I'd lost twenty more." She knew he would count grudgingly all the ounces she suffered. Yet it was no great thing to him if Martha had lost her very heart.

_Chapter Six_

They gathered their green tomatoes, to save them from the frost. Emily and Maggie, in the delicious kitchen, made chilli sauces and the good kind of vegetarian mincemeat. The house was filled with the excellent odors of the ends of the earth. Java and Jamaica were stirred into Illinois, and sealed away in sturdy bottles which took their places chronologically in the cupboard next to the wild grape and the crab-apple jelly below the spiced peaches. The bottles had to be pushed close against one another, now, to make room for them in the crowded shelves.

But when Emily looked into the cupboard of her heart, it was bare.

She had dug the gladiolas; she had cut the last of the lavender statice, which she had sown in happier days to make glamour in the painted room, and hung it head downward to dry with the rosy strawflowers. The frosts came and turned the hard maples gaudy. The old Fiske place seemed always to lose its head completely in the fall. There grew a barberry hedge along the front walk, which Emily's father had planted when he took down the white picket fence. He had simply put those little dry-looking shoots into the ground one rainy spring morning years ago, never imagining what riot he was planting. For years now, on every brilliant Sunday afternoon, while the leaves were falling, townspeople had walked out to see that hedge, to hear its rejoicings. The knowing had taken cuttings of it, to their disappointment, for even that offspring hedge just across the road had never been able to achieve quite such giddiness. Some people said it was the soil that did it. Others maintained it was the way in which the water soaked down to the river just there. Such cherries of ripeness, such roses and purple grapes and bleeding pomegranates of hues, such plums and persimmons and exotic luminous loquats glowing together, such oranges and oracles of color, no other hedge could summon. People got joy out of it according to their moods and natures. But Emily, for once, could take no pleasure in it.

"Last year," she would say to herself, resentfully, "I enjoyed just sitting at this window mending socks. Anything made me happy last year." But now, when she sat down with her sewing, she wasn't seeing what was before her--the hedge, or anything else. The fingers of one hand would be intertwined tensely with the fingers of the other, and she would be sitting as it were, screwed up tight against herself, seeing that face bending down over Martha, that hateful, alienating face. She was seeing Martha in a gingham frock standing at that table, saying in a voice like the angel of some heavenly annunciation, "Richard Quin is getting a divorce." "I'm a fool!" she would say angrily to herself over and over, resolving not to worry. When one day some child with bitter-sweet had reminded her of a promise to Martha made early in June, she had got Bob to drive her out to where the vine grew heavily on a barbed wire fence. She and Martha had been chattering just there in July, as they drove along, and Martha had made her promise to gather some of it for the painted room. And that afternoon, after she had arranged it in the red copper bowls, she had lain down on a day bed and just cried and cried like a silly girl, so that, in spite of her precautions, Bob had eyed her at supper and laid another charge against Martha in his memory.

Martha would not come home for Thanksgiving. Emily had never suggested it to her before. They had agreed that it wasn't worth while coming so far for so few days. But this year Emily had hoped that some way, if she came, they might come to some understanding. But Martha refused to come. Her letters arrived as regularly as ever, as if she had determined that in this disagreement she was to be found in the wrong not at all. She was going to do her duty to her mother, however unsatisfactory that mother might be. She wrote regularly, therefore, such noncommittal and indifferent letters as she might have written to her father had necessity arisen. And Emily counted the weeks wearily till she would have the child with her again. Surely the separation, if nothing else, would bring her to her senses; and she tried not to worry. Martha had given her her word of honor that she would not see the man again. She had always been a truthful child; there was no gainsaying that.

Then one day, shortly before the Christmas holiday, Emily got a most disturbing letter from Eve. She wrote loyally in a very storm of perplexity. She had promised Martha faithfully that she would not write this to her mother, she began. And the more she thought about it, the more certain she was that she must write it. Martha scarcely spoke to her--she never did if she could manage not to without being noticed. Martha had said two days ago to her that she was not going home for Christmas. And everybody was saying how bad Martha looked. She was sick; she had no color; and all the girls said she was changed. And Eve had to cry about it, because she believed it was that horrid affair of last summer. Martha had never been the same since. And if she wasn't going home for Christmas, certainly some one ought to tell her mother how bad she looked. Eve begged Emily never to tell Martha she had written--to deny it up and down, if Martha guessed. But she was just sick about Martha. "After all, I'm older than she is, and I have more sense," Eve wrote. "And I can't help feeling that it's our fault. I would wish with all my heart we had never gone to Illinois--only then I wouldn't have known you."

And the next day Martha's letter had come, announcing her intention of spending the vacation in New York. Just New York, if you please, no address given, no intimation of her company. "You know what will happen if I come home," she wrote. "I'll just quarrel with father and you'll be miserable. It's better for me to stay away."

Martha had left this announcement, naturally, to the very last minute. But Eve's letter had prepared Emily. She telegraphed at once, knowing she had likely just time to reach Martha before she left college, that she was to meet her in a certain hotel in New York the next afternoon. She said nothing to Bob about Eve's letter. Eve's anxiety and Martha's impertinence between them had upset her completely. Did Martha imagine she was going to be allowed to announce her departure for unknown places and companies in this high-handed manner? What was the child thinking of? Was it possible--that she might not get the telegram? Was it possible that if she did, she wouldn't obey?

Emily had chosen that hotel hastily. She usually stayed with cousins in New York. But at Christmas time they might be having a house full. Besides, she couldn't endure the thought that Martha might be indifferent to her before them.

So she moved about the room she had taken in the hotel. She arranged the things she had unpacked, and rearranged them. She looked at the time, and she looked out of the window to the crowded street very far below. Martha was already a little bit late. Suppose she never came at all! Suppose she hadn't come by dinner time, by bed time! Emily couldn't sit still.

And then she heard some one; she opened the door; Martha was there, in her racoon coat, in a rosy little hat of many colors, pulled down over a sallow face; Martha was in her arms, and crying; in a second Martha, coat and all, was lying on the bed, her face in her mother's lap, repenting with bitter tears.

"Oh, I've been so horrid to you, mammie! I've been so horrid to you! I'm so sorry!" She was hugging her, clinging to her, imploring her pardon.

So Emily cried, too, for surprise and relief, and comforted her, and urged her to stop crying. This was better than anything she had dared to hope for. But she had known all the time Martha would come to herself. The child hadn't meant anything, really. She had always been such a good girl. Emily in a second could have forgotten every minute that had not been satisfactory. This was well worth having come to New York for.

Martha wasn't succeeding in regaining her composure. Emily attempted to take her coat off, but thought it better not to bother her. She just lay and cried. And she had never been a crying child. Emily had seen to that. All these tears, all this passion of repentance, showed what a loving little heart she had. "How I have wronged the child!" Emily mused, wiping her eyes. "I thought she might not come at all!" And she caressed her, and waited patiently. "Don't cry any more now, Martha," she said. "We'll forget all about it."

"Oh, I wish I'd been a good girl!" And having said that, she wept on.

She cried too long.

Emily said, presently: "Your feet are making a mark on the bedspread. Get up. Take off your coat."

"I'm cold, mammie." She sat up, fumbled about, and kicked off her low shoes, and lay down again, trying to cuddle her feet up under her coat.

"Cold?" The room had been so hot a moment ago that Emily had the windows both opened. She got up and went and shut them.

"Where's your baggage?" she asked in a matter-of-fact way, to stop the tears.

"I had it taken to my room."

"Your room?"

"I took a room for myself. I didn't know you would have two beds in here."

Emily was on the point of saying, "You might at least have inquired." But Martha went on:

"I'm so tired, mammie, I just had to have a room for myself. I could sleep a week straight off."

"Well," said Emily, doubtfully. She turned on the light. Martha hadn't even taken her little hat off. It was crushed down over an ear. Her nose was red. She looked like a wreck. She didn't like her mother's scrutiny.

"Turn off that light," she pleaded.

Emily turned it off.

"Get up and wash your face," she said.

But Martha cried, "Oh, mammie, honestly, I never meant--to hurt you!" and threw herself down, sobbing, her face buried in her hands.

Emily remembered Eve's letter, and grew more pitiful. "I never would have thought this would prey on her mind so much," she thought. "How am I going to make Bob understand this? I wish he could hear her now." It was very bad for her to cry so deeply, however.

"Where is your room, Martha? I want to see it. Brace up."

"I'll show it to you--after a while." She still was sobbing aloud. She seemed hysterical.

"Martha," said Emily, with some sternness, "stop that; stop crying. Get up. You must get ready for dinner."

Martha sat up, huddled together on the edge of the bed. She spoke very humbly.

"I don't want any supper, mammie. Honestly, I don't feel like eating. I'm tired. I want to go to my room. I'd rather go to bed."

Emily stood looking at her wiping her eyes. Poor Lamb! Poor tender-hearted child! She did look wretched. Perhaps she ought to be humored--just for this once.

"All right. We'll have our supper up here. We'll have a regular spread."

"Honestly, I don't want anything to eat."

"Well, you've got to eat something. That's all there is to it."

"All right, mammie."