Part 12

The girl dozed at length, moaning. The clock struck, and the hours passed, and Emily lay there, open-eyed, fleeing in vain terror from one corner of her consciousness to the other, whacked and battered through the soul by fact after brutal fact. She was in no condition to think clearly. It was her habit of mind to blame herself for a great deal that was never her fault, perhaps because all her tender years she had had the sense of her aunt's disapproving eyes upon her. And now she shouldered all the blame of this tragedy. This child was what she had made her; she had spoiled her indeed. She had only wanted her to be happy, and where was happiness now? Her child, the work of her hands, the fruit of her body and soul, had lowered herself to deliberate lying. Yes, and even that Emily Kenworthy could have pardoned if the child had lied for a worthy man. She had been found lacking the essential womanly instincts of self-preservation--of child preservation. She hadn't known how to make herself cherished. She had failed fundamentally. "What was it I neglected?" Emily moaned. "What didn't I teach her? Bob always said I spoiled her. Bob knew. I have failed. I have failed more than she has. I thought only about her being happy. What am I going to do for her now?"

After a long while--it was towards morning, though Emily had no thought of time--Martha rose with a start. She began scrambling hastily out of bed.

"I'm sick!" she murmured.

"Lie down! Wait! I'll get you something!"

"A towel! Hand me a towel!"

Emily jumped up and felt for the light. The room was bitterly cold. She looked about for something to serve Martha's need. She searched hastily for her dressing gown.

"Get back into bed," she commanded. "Cover up!" She sat down on the bed beside her, shivering violently, trying to help her. For Martha was leaning out over the side of the bed, retching, choking, trying to stifle the sound of her misery by covering her face with the towel. Paroxysm after paroxysm of nausea followed. Between them Martha lay back in bed, shivering, blue-lipped, sweat on her forehead, tears in her eyes, harrowing to behold.

"Try to lie still, Martha! Lie flat on your back!"

"Can't. Oh----" And on went the sickening sounds.

She was so blue, so frightening to look at, that Emily started to go to the door.

"What are you doing?" Martha cried.

"I'm going to wake somebody up! I'm going to get some hot water--a hot-water bag for you."

But the girl was in terror, and cried out:

"I never have anything, mammie. Don't! They might guess! I'll be all right, mammie. Come into bed with me; that'll warm me up!"

So Emily made the room as decent as she could.

"Hide that, _hide_ it! I'll manage in the morning. I don't want anybody to suspect anything!"

Emily got into bed, sickened, and gathered the child to her. She was passionate with hate. A man, any man, who inflicted one such hour on a girl----"I could just kill that man!" she was raging. If a decent boy had given her child a box of sickening chocolates, by accident, what a fuss there would have been! How he would have had to grovel! And as she raged in her mind, she heard Martha imploring comfort.

"Oh, how long is this going to go on, mammie?"

"How long has it gone on?"

"Oh, weeks! From the first! Oh, I was so afraid they would hear, at school!"

Suddenly a memory flashed over Emily. She felt the hours she had suffered such discomfort--for the sake of this undone child. She and Bob had been living in their wretched little rooms over the drug store on Main Street. And she could see Bob standing there, in his nightshirt, a lamp in his hand, solicitous and dumfounded, because she lay sick and laughing, tears in her eyes, and singing on her lips, shaken with delight over the significance of her symptoms. She had been beside herself with happiness at the prospect of a baby. Certainly never before in her life, and seldom since, had she known such heavenly satisfaction as during those weeks. The very sensation of that dear expectancy came back to her.

And Martha, in her arms, moaned wearily.

Then Emily turned away from her, towards the wall, and, covering herself up to the eyes, began an utterly sick and bitter weeping. At every gasp some new phase of her misery came to contrast its horror with the former loveliness. The years came all tumbling down in great crushing masses upon her, and the beauty of that baby, her little parties, her sweet little coats. It was Christmas morning, she remembered, and she could see the little thing in her footed sleeping suit standing twinkling in ecstasy about a stocking from which a red-headed doll peeped out.--Dolls, what lots of dolls, to teach her motherhood--and Jim playing with her! It was for this child's sake that her mother had refrained from all the life she might have had with her dear Jim. And now---- This was the end of it all. "If I had left her--deserted her--gone with him, could she have been worse off than she is now?" Emily asked; and she went on weeping. She saw the painted room from which the child had shut herself out. She had made herself a dark house of regret now, this house-loving girl who had destroyed herself. Where should they go now? "To whom can I go for help?" Emily cried. If Jim were living, if she could go to New York and tell Jim all this, so he could help her---- There was no one living to whom she could turn. "I'll take her to Wilton," she moaned; "he'll know what to do!" Home was impossible. Could she take her lovely daughter there--this child whom she had watched them admire? That woman would find them there, that jealous, married, wild woman, who had open, unquestioned cause now for scandals and fury. She heard Martha speaking to her, imploring her, crying with her, but she paid no heed to her. The heat in the steam pipes began pounding. Daylight came into the room. Martha got up to conceal what signs she might find of her sickness. Martha showed strange skill in furtiveness now. She seemed to have acquired habits of cunning. Presently she was standing there, lying glibly to the wondering chambermaid. Her mother was ill; her mother had had news of bereavement. She must have some breakfast brought up.

Emily had been forty-three years old when she had left home last. But after Christmas Day, it was months before she thought of herself as anything but an old woman. It was not so much a day, the twenty-fifth of December, as an epoch--a desert of disappointment from which she was never likely to recover fully. She got up and dressed that morning, scarcely knowing what she did. She sat down in desperation and just looked at Martha. She rallied after a while, enough to suggest that they go out together for a walk. But Martha refused. There were lots of girls in her college who lived in New Jersey. She might meet somebody who would ask what in the world she was doing in that little hotel upon such an occasion. She lay down, and Emily covered her warmly.

She sat watching her sleep. The afternoon faded away. The darkness came, and they went to bed. There they lay. Martha slept till the evil hour of morning came, and passed distressfully.

They got up, and Emily began to put her things into her bag. As she moved about, peace came to her some way. It was as if she realized at length that she was sentenced to death and there was no escape possible. She must die quietly. Afterwards, she used to marvel over that strange consciousness that came to her, that she could go through this horror, and any other that might be coming to her, without frenzy, without any outcry. She knew that whichever hideous alternative she had to go through, as long as Martha was saved alive to her, she was able some way, quietly, to bear it. She had never experienced before such an exalted feeling of strength. Even Martha felt it. She grew quieter. She listened without a murmur to her mother's plans, because Emily's voice was smooth again.

She had decided that as soon as they got to New York she would 'phone from the station to the head nurse of a hospital to which she had once gone to see a friend. She remembered vividly the assured and adequate manner in which those nurses had moved about. She was loath to trouble them. She would say that she was a stranger in the city, without friends, suddenly in need of a gynecologist. She wanted a woman, and the very best one. Would the nurse recommend a perfectly reliable one?

There was no hitch in the plan. The nurse recommended three, for she thought it likely that some of them might be away for the holidays. Emily was able to get an appointment with the first one, but only late in the afternoon, after the other patients had been seen. She turned calmly from that 'phone, and took Martha to the Brevoort Hotel. She got a room on the third floor. She wouldn't have been afraid then of any height. It was no wonder that Martha had to exclaim, as soon as the door was shut behind the porter with their luggage:

"How could you do it, mammie?"

"Let's not talk about it," she answered.

There was an hour to wait for lunch. Only once did she have that feeling of panic. Her strength almost failed her when she picked up the morning paper defensively and saw the advertisements of "white sales." Baby clothes were illustrated there. She threw the paper hastily down. She mustn't think of such a child in her house, playing in her willow tree. She would hate that child; she wanted Martha to hate it. Yet they would have to make some sort of hateful preparations for it.

After a while they rose and went down into the restaurant, and found a place among untrapped, unmaddened men and women, who didn't look as if they felt their lives reeling through destruction. Mother and daughter said but little. If anyone near had looked at them attentively, he would have thought, probably, of two women who looked rather bored with life and in need of diversion.

When the coffee came, Martha, who had chosen to sit with her back to the room, was leaning on the table, her hand over her eyes. She had been looking in grim dejection at her mother's hands. She stirred, and said, nervously:

"Nobody would ever suspect you of anything, mother."

"Let's not talk about it," Emily almost whispered.

"I mean--I mean--I don't suppose you will have to take your gloves off, will you?"

"Where?"

"I mean--in the doctor's office." She looked around her slyly to see if she might be overheard.

"No, I don't suppose so." Emily thought best not to question her.

But Martha persisted.

"Mammie, no one could suspect you of anything! Lend me your ring--your wedding ring." Her voice died away.

Emily's voice never faltered. "All right, if you want it." She spoke as if she had been asked for a nickel for the telephone. She put her hands down under the table and tugged away at the ring. Her fingers were larger now than they had been the day Bob put the ring on, in the City Hall in Chicago, in that room where, she still remembered, the spittoons sat in rows. She hadn't taken that ring off for years. She was handing it over now, with another one--a diamond one--which Bob had given her two years ago, at Christmas time, to her deserted daughter. Bob seemed, just then, not so bad a husband, after all. Martha reached over for the rings, closed her fingers about them, and put them furtively away in her purse.

After an interminable afternoon the two of them, with their story ready, came into the doctor's waiting room--a large office which served the patients of several doctors; it was so full that people were standing. Yet as soon as the Kenworthys entered, a woman older than her mother, after one glance at Martha, rose hastily to offer her a place to sit down. The women made a place for Emily, crowding together. Emily didn't even wonder how many, like herself, were dreading a death sentence--a sentence of life. She sat there, in the unspeakable intensity of consciousness of her wound, realizing nothing of the room but the fact that Martha was sitting huddled down in the next sofa, her hat pulled down to hide her shrunken face. Her lips only could be seen, from where her mother sat, but they were not trembling. And they sat there, hour after hour, year after year; they had to sit waiting till almost every one had been called in through one or another of those doors.

The day was over, the night was on them. It was half past six when Emily finally took Martha into the room before the judge. They sat down before her in the full light. She sat behind that little desperately business-like desk, her face half hidden by the lamp-shade. She looked from one to the other of them with shrewd, cynical, prosaic eyes. Emily, as the words came out of her mouth, knew every one of them was being weighed. She was being cross-questioned. What made her think her daughter wasn't strong enough to have a child? What made Emily suppose she was a delicate young woman? The whole slender history of Martha Kenworthy's child illnesses was brought forth and examined. The doctor's very questions seemed to pronounce her a most rugged person. Emily hadn't thought to prepare any lying account of previous illnesses. She hadn't been skilled enough in deceit for that.

The woman got up and turned on pitiless lights. She made preparations; she gave Martha directions, shortly. Emily sat there. She heard her heart pounding.

Once Martha moaned, lying on that white table.

"Don't do that. Don't make that noise."

"You hurt me," Martha apologized.

"Not at all," answered the doctor. She went poking on. Her manner was not ingratiating. If she scented any tragedy before her, she had no sympathy--no one ever need to cry to that woman for help, Emily realized.

The doctor had finished. She turned away to a basin and stood washing her hands. She reached for an immaculate towel, and with it in her hands she turned about and stood looking at her patient. Martha was sitting up on that hospital-like table. The doctor went on drying her hands. Finger after finger she dried, one at a time, studying Martha mercilessly. By the time she had finished that fourth finger, Emily could stand the suspense no longer. She managed to ask with only ordinary concern:

"What do you find?"

The doctor kept her eyes steadily on Martha as she answered:

"As a matter of fact, though you get your mother to do all the talking, the truth is that you are scared out of your wits at the mere thought of a baby. Don't look at your mother; answer me yourself!"

"Yes," Martha murmured, faintly. "I didn't--I don't want----"

The doctor spoke grimly: "Well, don't worry. You're not going to have one."

She was still drying those hands.

Emily and Martha babbled together almost incoherently.

"What do you mean?"

"You're not pregnant at all. There's not a sign of pregnancy."

And as neither of the women moved, she added:

"Get down and dress."

Emily gasped, at length: "How can this be? How----"

The doctor spoke more kindly as soon as she turned to Emily to answer: "It's hysteria. It's nothing but hysteria."

"But those symptoms--those----"

Emily was incredulous.

"I've had three cases of this this week. They distrust their precautions and get panicky. They lose their heads."

"I never heard of such a thing in my life," Emily babbled.

"I don't suppose _you_ have!" The doctor spoke tartly. "When you had this child, women had nerve enough to carry them through!" She turned and looked almost scornfully at Martha.

Martha had sat down abruptly on a chair. Emily helped her into her coat. The doctor had been explaining to Emily: the girl ought to be put to bed early for a while, well fed, allowed no dances, no theaters, and kept much out-of-doors. And when Martha had sat down abruptly, after putting her coat on, she said:

"If you feel faint, you'd better get out into the air." And she dismissed them from her presence.

Falling, being hurled down, those sensations had been bad enough--but the shock of this crashing landing! Those two women went out of that office, down the elevator, out on to the street so dazed that their minds seemed blank, so "taken aback" they were, so strongly jerked back from the edge of destruction. Martha, standing pressed close against her mother, one arm around her, staring into her face, stood stuttering there in the winter darkness, on the curb.

"D-d-d-do you believe it, mammie?" She began laughing and crying. "Mammie! mammie!" she kept stuttering. "Do you believe it?"

In the taxi they found, Martha gave way to hysterics. She laughed and she sobbed crazily. "Oh, mammie, if she could be right! Can she be right? Am I all right? She don't know what she's talking about. Oh, tell me, can it be true?" She was shaking Emily, trying to shake assurance out of her. "Tell me if it can be true, mammie!"

"Why, Martha--a doctor--must know----"

"No! She doesn't understand! How could it not be? Mammie, tell me. Oh, suppose it's true; I can live! Mammie, I can see you don't believe her! We can go home now. You won't tell dad! Oh, I will be good to you. Didn't they say she was a good doctor? Mammie, what did that nurse say about her? But I did try every day to think it wasn't true. And it was. Why was I so sick every morning? Maybe I've only got a cancer, mammie!" Crying out a phrase like that, the child was in such a madness of hope. "Oh, suppose she's right!"

"Martha, I feel like giving you the awfulest spanking anybody ever got!"

"Oh _yes_! Oh, I don't mind. Mammie, imagine if it isn't true; if I'm saved. Here, here's your rings; I don't need rings!"

When they drew up in front of the hotel, Emily forced her to be quiet. But Martha, in their room, threw off her coat and her hat and all restraint in a great gesture. She was lit up, she was drunk with hope. She walked around the room babbling, her face ghastly pale and bright, stopping to hug her mother, stretching out her arms, stretching them above her towards the ceiling.

"Suppose it's _true_! Suppose it's all right! Suppose I'm safe! I can _live_ now. No operation, mammie! That woman must have been fifty! She must know what she's talking about. Didn't you think she looked like a good doctor? She must have examined thousands of women. I'm free; I'm safe!" She stopped and looked at herself in the mirror. "Oh, look at me!" she cried. "_That's_ how I feel." And Emily, who had sunk down on to the bed in her bewilderment, watching Martha, suddenly began to cry. That superhuman strength seemed to have abandoned her. For the girl had looked for a moment intently at her reflection, and then turned, half crazy with joy, to her suitcase. She had snatched out her toilet things, she was powdering her nose, she was rubbing something on her white cheeks, herself again. "Oh, I can _live_ now! Live! Live!" And she turned away from the glass and ran to Emily--she had heard her sniffling--and began consoling kisses and penitential hugs and tears.

"Let's go and get something to eat!" she said at length. She got up and washed away signs of tears. She brushed her hair, she powdered her nose, she got out a smarter pair of shoes. "Let's walk and walk," she said. "I could walk all night." Out on the street there, Emily felt Martha's strong arm impelling her along by the passion of her relief. She walked with her head held high, she walked fiercely, like an arrow sure of its target. When they stopped at a crossing, her feet could not stop their triumph. Emily could feel her dancing. She kept babbling, singing, running on. Emily said at length: "I can't go any farther. I'm too tired." And then in a minute or two they were turning into an opportune restaurant.

It was a large, uncarpeted room, with two rows of white-tiled tables on either side of a central aisle. Martha walked down that aisle ahead of her mother. Her head was held that tense way, her eyes were shining positively black against her white face, her air was wild. People looked and started and continued staring at her as if they had seen a pretty young lunatic at large, or an aggressive and beautiful girl-ghost. And Martha, not thinking of them, walked straight to the farthest table and would have sat down facing the crowd, if Emily had not chosen that seat for herself. Emily was conscious of the sensation their entrance had made. She was wondering how Martha's excited pallor had triumphed over all the color she had applied, for certainly she had stood dabbing rouge on--before her mirror. Martha grabbed the menu. She had been talking of turkey, of lobster. She was hungry enough to eat anything. She ordered a large steak for two, with mushrooms. She ordered asparagus and fried potatoes, and bread--a plateful of brown bread. She ordered coffee. She would order a lobster later, she told the waiter. When he had gone, she began whispering to Emily:

"Mammie, did you get our reservations? Oh, I thought I would be going home in a----!"

"Don't!" murmured Emily.

"Can we go and change them on our way home? Let's go on the eleven o'clock. But no, we must go to another doctor to-morrow."

Emily tried to calm her. It was herself the child was enjoying now, as if her years of enjoying her thoughts had been preparing her for this climax. She looked as if she might burst into flame. She did burst forth when dinner was being set before her. The waiter was arranging her great feast, when she cried out, suddenly unable to smother the joy of some thought. She cried out, with a gesture of her hands below the table, "Oh, my God!" so that the waiter fairly jumped. People about were watching them. They smiled unanimously. Martha didn't seem even to know she was in a restaurant.

The next morning Martha said she hadn't slept well, but Emily had watched her sleeping through the early morning, and when she commented on the significance of that fact, Martha was elated again above her weariness by happiness. She went for a walk in the morning alone. Emily felt too exhausted to go with her. She ate more heartily than she had been able to eat the evening before. That great steak and those mushrooms she had not been able to give any real attention to. She appealed to her mother every few minutes to tell her the truth about the doctor's verdict, to comfort her about the probable outcome of their visit to the next doctor. She walked about excitedly.

Late that afternoon the second doctor pronounced her free.

They came back to their hotel almost without a word. In their room they sat down; they looked at each other dazed; they each felt the other trying to fathom the experience through which they had gone. "How _could_ that have happened?" Martha demanded. "Do they think--I IMAGINED that vomiting? Do they think I didn't try to believe I was all right?"

It seemed to Emily best to pass as lightly as possible over even the word "hysteria."

"You were worried, Martha. You were afraid."

"Well, of _course_ I was afraid! All the time I thought, suppose anything should happen to me. I was thinking all the time about _you_, mother! Do you think I wanted to disgrace you? That's why I wanted to--I thought I couldn't live. Oh, when your wire came, mammie, I just had to see you again, _once_, before---- I didn't _want_ to come. I was afraid you might find out! But I _had_ to come and see you again once! How did you happen to come, mammie?"

"Did you suppose I was going to let you wander around New York alone?"

"Didn't you suspect anything?"

"Martha! _No!_"

"No, you couldn't believe it. Oh, I never wanted YOU to know. I'd rather have told all the rest of the world, mother. I'll never forgive myself for this as long as I live. You look--sick as a dog, mammie!"

"I'm all right. You needn't worry about _me_."