Part 13

"You just say that. You don't even scold me! I've learned my lesson. You don't have to say anything! My God!" cried little Martha Kenworthy. "What I've been through! And those filthy women at school nosing around trying to find out what was the matter with me!"

"Oh, Martha!"

"They _were_. They went sneaking around! They know too much, those old hens, pretending they're so holy. I'm finished with that place!"

"Well, now--everything is all right." It seemed better to her to take that line. "We can go wherever we want to. You need a rest. We'll go South, if you want to."

"Yes. Let's not go home. Let's go South from here."

"Oh, well--I don't know. I'd have to get some more clothes. You'd--we'd better go home first. And we have our tickets; it's not much shorter from here."

"Dad might want to go with us--or drive us down."

"I think we better go by train. It's much better to go home first."

"You mean--so people can see me? So nobody can suspect anything?"

"Martha, I didn't mean any such thing. Who's going to suspect us of anything?"

"Not you, of course. But I'll go home if you want me to. I'll do anything you want me to, after this. You've been a brick; you've stuck by me; you're the one that needs a rest. I don't look as ghastly as you do, mammie."

"Well, we can do anything we want to now; we can go any place."

"I don't want to do anything. I just want to sleep a year."

So they left for home that night. And the next day, as the train hurried West, Martha's gloom and her humility deepened mile by mile. She sat looking steadily out of the window, and Emily realized that it could not be the scenery that fixed the expression of her face. When her thoughts were recalled from some unhappy distance, she considered her mother meekly, with solicitude. Her gratitude, the sort of indebtedness, was painful to Emily. After they had changed at Chicago into the train for home, Emily realized, even before Martha spoke, that she was hardening herself for an ordeal.

"Mammie," she said, "I don't want to--I mean--will you let me have the guest room this time? I think I could sleep better in the guest room."

Emily Kenworthy had never taken a journey of any sort whose very climax and last ineffable thrill had not been getting back again into her very own house. She was that sort of woman. But never before had she felt the joy of being at home and of waking up in her own bedroom quite so keenly as she did that morning. She opened her closet and took down her customary morning frock. It was a brown jersey. It had a bit of tan-colored jersey down the front of it. On the tan-colored jersey were rows of little brown jersey buttons, and those top two buttons were hanging loosely; those two loose and familiar buttons were reality, surely. They proved that New York had been only a dream. She put the verifying frock on, and went out of her room, and in the hall the radiator was burbling out its confirming burbles. She sat down at her own breakfast table; Bob was there, no phantom. And the percolator lid still had to be managed. Its awkwardness had been a family failing for months now. Bob couldn't apparently improve it. Emily began pouring coffee, with her hands held as that percolator must be held, and she could scarcely believe she had been in New York. Martha's hallucination was a nightmare, and the percolator was truth and awakening.

She could indeed have believed that morning that the days of terror had been a delirium if, in the guest room, the pitiful stranger had not been lying in bed. She was glad that Martha seemed willing to stay there the first day or two, for it made her story more impressive.

"It's this quarrel with us, Bob, that's worked on her mind till she couldn't eat. I wish you could have heard her that first night. She just cried and cried, because she was so sorry about last summer, and ashamed. She says she don't know what possessed her to act so--naughty. I had just to make her stop crying. I told her it was morbid; but I couldn't get her to eat. I ordered everything, but she wouldn't take anything. The doctor says it's her nerves; she's got to have a long rest."

"But how'll you keep her from dancing, if you take her South?"

"She won't want to dance; she's too sick."

Bob seemed scarcely able to credit that, although he acknowledged that she looked bad.

Emily went on: "She's so ashamed of the things she said to you last summer, Bob. She wanted me to apologize; or rather I said I would, because she gets so worked up if she begins to talk about it. She said no girl ever had a better father than you, Bob."

"Did she say that, honestly, now, Emily?" Bob looked troubled.

"Yes, she did, sitting at a table, not eating a thing. She'd have burst out crying if I hadn't made her stop it."

"By heck! Emily, the kid must be sick!"

"Yes, she is. The doctor said I have to take good care of her and keep her out of doors. When you go in to see her, Bob, just pretend nothing's happened. Don't let her get started apologizing."

"All right. Do you think--is she over that--that business with that damned skunk?"

"Oh yes, I think so. I think she's ashamed of it all."

"Well, that's something, anyway."

It was the neighbors who began coming in at once to inquire sympathetically about Martha, who kept Emily uneasy. Each woman's solicitude seemed to necessitate the hurried invention of new details, and Emily, not used to deceit, could scarcely be sure her stories tallied. Johnnie Benton gave her a moment of difficulty. He wouldn't be content with vagueness.

"Look here, Mrs. Kenworthy, what is the matter with her, when you get right down to brass tacks?"

"Tut, tut, Johnnie! Do you think I haven't been right down to brass tacks all the time?"

"Nervous breakdown, that's just a sort of excuse for anything, I thought."

"You better think again. A nervous breakdown isn't anything to joke about."

"But isn't she going to get up? Aren't we going to see her at all?"

"She'll be up in a day or two. But, look here, Johnnie, if she prefers not to see you, I won't insist. I'm not going to have her annoyed--not a bit, just now."

"I'm not planning to annoy her."

"Now don't get fussy. You know very well what I mean. She must be humored."

The next day he sent in a great bunch of roses.

"These would go with the room, I thought," he said, meekly, to Emily.

She hesitated about taking them in to Martha. She decided to do it, and regretted her decision, for Martha read the message with them and tore it up angrily and began to cry.

Wilton ran in just to call, and asked about the New York doctor. He was very tactful, very kind. Mrs. Benton came in and gave Emily a terrible shock.

"I have half a notion to go South with you, Emily. I can't wait forever for my sister. I was going to California with her, but she keeps putting it off. And, anyway, I don't know but what I'd rather go with you."

Emily would not urge her to go with them. She didn't dare even mention such a possibility to Martha. She thanked her lucky stars that Mrs. Benton's sister was going to be terribly angry if Mrs. Benton went with Emily.

When the girls came in, Martha said, wearily:

"Oh, let them come up if they want to. I suppose they've got to see me, if they want to. Hand me that vanity case, mammie, please." And she sat up and rouged a little bit, to defy detection, as it were.

The third day she was home she got up and came downstairs for lunch and supper. "I won't have you carrying all those things up to me," she said to Emily. On Friday she happened to be in the living room when Greta came in. She received her with little cordiality, and presently, as they sat there, Emily doing most of the talking, two more girls came in. Emily was breathing a sigh of relief that the afternoon had passed so smoothly, as they left. But when she turned into the living room from seeing them out, Martha burst out:

"Oh, for the love of Heaven, let's get away, mammie! I can't _stand_ this. This house; this town. Let's go to-night, please, mammie!"

"We aren't ready."

"I am. I'm packed. I'll do your packing. Let's get out of this!"

Emily wondered when she had got her things out of her painted room. She had never seen her open the door of it. She said: "I thought you didn't mind seeing the girls. You could have excused yourself."

"Yes, I could, and they would have been wondering why. They make me so sick. They just come prying about to see what they can find out!"

"That's nonsense. You oughtn't to talk that way. They came just naturally, because you weren't well."

"Yes, and asked all those questions!"

Martha wasn't to be humored in this.

"I didn't see anything objectionable in what they asked," Emily responded dryly.

"You didn't? Didn't you hear Greta asking where Eve was? 'What's become of Eve this vacation?' she said, just like that."

"Well, child, why shouldn't she ask you where Eve is spending her holiday? You've been in school with her all term. You'd be supposed to know. You forget that Eve about lived in this house last summer."

"I forget it, do I? Oh, look here, mammie, if I finish your packing, won't you go to-night?"

"Our reservations are for to-morrow night. You know that."

"They'll change them; and if they won't, let's stay in Chicago a night. I'd rather stay any place in the world than here, mammie." She was pleading now, not resentfully, but humbly.

"All right," said Emily, "if daddy agrees."

Martha turned away impatiently. In the presence of death Bob Kenworthy had appeared a good father. But Martha, having now to face life, already found him only an irritation. "It isn't Bob's fault this time that she wants to get away," Emily thought.

"And, besides, you've told everybody that we're going to-morrow. And it would be just like--Johnnie and everybody to be down to the station to see us off--with a band."

_Chapter Seven_

They traveled directly south until they came to a town which, stretching out along a blue-and-golden bay, had gone to sleep before the Revolution and has never been disturbed since. They found it all ease and dreams and laziness. The shadows of live oaks were its swiftest motion, and the dancing of oyster schooners over its sea was all its din. The Kenworthys arrived in the middle of a sunny afternoon at the sort of hotel to which they had been recommended. Although they had written they were coming, no one in authority was in sight to receive them. A slovenly negro maid didn't know what rooms they were to be in. Leaving their baggage on the veranda, where the taxi driver had deposited it, they walked down through a little garden to the snow-white sands and the golden clear water of the bay. An old man sitting on a bench, his legs wrapped around in a traveling rug, was sleeping, his bald head nodding, nodding, helplessly. They walked out to the end of the little pier. They sat down, and looked into the crystal shallows as jellyfish lapped about softly. The sun on the water was a lullaby. Emily presently felt her eyelids growing heavy.

"This'll be a good place to sleep, anyway," Martha said. The trouble was, in the days that followed, that Emily could never be sure that Martha was sleeping. Sometimes when the girl went to her room and, closing the door, begged not to be disturbed, Emily felt sure, as she sat listening involuntarily, that she was lying sobbing heart-brokenly. She never caught her in the act--she avoided that--but the curves of Martha's cheeks had the shadows and shape of many tears.

Emily had helplessly to sit and watch her progressing into bitterness. The first few days Martha said nothing; she watched the sea by day; by night she sat and stared into the fire. When Emily spoke to her, she would turn and bring herself into her mother's presence bewilderedly. She would look about her wonderingly, like a lost child in a strange world. Emily's remarks seemed scarcely to reach her. Her silence was unnatural. Certainly, Emily reflected, if she could utter the thoughts that seemed to be grinding her down, she would feel better. She longed to have her begin talking again.

Hints came out from time to time. Sometimes Martha was not able to refrain from groaning. The first afternoon they walked away down the beach, they came to an old cemetery with broken gnarled cypresses in it, and violets ready to bloom on old French graves.

Emily said, instinctively, "Let's go in." The gate stood open before them.

But Martha cried, "NO! I've had enough of THAT!" She shuddered.

What Martha said, when she began talking, was frightful. She resorted to speech only when her sense of outrage had become intolerable. She burst forth with noise and fury. It happened one evening that Emily had tarried, partly because Martha had refused so curtly from the first to pass even the time of day with anyone in the hotel, to be civil to an old and frail woman who sat alone at an adjoining table. When she went into her room, she found Martha in tears on her knees before the fire. She was always poking the fire; often she poked it viciously. But now she seemed to have attacked it brutally. She was tearing up papers, or something.

"What are you doing?" Emily exclaimed. And then she saw.

"Why, _don't_ do that! That's a library book!"

But Martha was in a rage. "I don't care if it is! I'll burn up every copy I ever get my hands on!" She wouldn't let Emily rescue it. The tears were running down her face. "Such lies!" she raved. "How can you stand it? Dirty, filthy, rotten, vile lies! That's what's the matter! Books like that! I could kill that man!"

There was something sobering in the mere sight of a book being torn to bits. It was a strong book, powerfully written, and it resisted its destruction. The pages had to be jerked out, almost one by one. Martha kept tearing and poking, and urging the flames on.

"Martha," Emily remonstrated, "you mustn't do that! Don't make it flame up more!" She had never seen Martha in such a rage. She stood helplessly watching her folly.

"Didn't you read it?" Martha cried to her. There was scarcely anything left of the book now, but the covers.

"Yes, I read part of it," Emily began, protesting.

"You believed it, I suppose?"

"Well, I--I didn't care for it all, much."

"You didn't care for it! My God! I'm never going to read a book written by a man again as long as I live! It isn't that they're fools only; it isn't possible for them to learn anything, even, dirty fumbling idiots!"

"That's not very nice language, Martha."

"Language? What's language? Language isn't anything. Look at the facts. Are _they_ nice? Look what that rotten man wrote down for people to read!"

Emily sat down, and Martha turned around and leaned her head against her mother's knee and wept. She kept trying to express her contempt for the book and its author; she felt the need of curses, but her vocabulary failed her. "That horrid, rotten person," she cried two or three times. "That nasty brutal old pig." And Emily stroked her hair and wondered whether to command her to keep still or to encourage her to talk it out. "He says----" Martha sputtered at length, crying bitterly.

"Never mind, child," Emily said quietly.

But Martha would mind. She controlled her sobs.

"He says--the filthy old rotten--idiot--that man in the book, he just went around--you know--mother--falling in love, they call it--and then he threw one woman away, mammie, because--he said--she didn't enjoy it! Oh, I could _kill_ that man! _Enjoy_ it, he said, mother! He said she was always afraid! My God! _He_ hadn't anything to lose. He ran no risk! They just try to make out that women are like men, mother, so that they can get them. You'd think women would tell the truth, wouldn't you, mammie? I'd just like to see Mrs. Wharton be an old maid and try to hide that child that way! She'd learn a thing or two. It isn't fair, it's too cruel! They just try to make girls believe lies like that so they won't be afraid. I was afraid, all the time. But why wasn't I afraid enough? I must have been crazy last summer. Honestly, mother, I must have been out of my mind, to do that. It's women that are fools. It was my own fault. Does it seem possible, mother, that women can love such--such filthy, rotten messes as men? I couldn't have been in my right mind. So it couldn't have been my fault, and look what happened to me! It makes me so mad to think about it. It isn't fair! Why can't a woman just turn over and go to sleep, too? Why should she have two lives to risk, and a rotten, dirty man none at all? Mammie, you don't think I was in my right mind last summer, do you? I never would have done that if I'd had any sense. Were any of your people crazy, mammie? Were daddy's people insane? I mean, two or three generations back?"

"No, not so far as I know; not one of them. You've got sane people behind you. Don't cry so, child. It's going to be all right yet."

"There's no use saying things like that. I WAS crazy, mother. I couldn't have---- It doesn't seem possible. If I hadn't been out of my head, I never could have--loved him--a man. Didn't you ever notice anything strange about me last summer, honestly?"

"I--I couldn't understand it, but--girls _do_ fall in love. Your father thought, though----"

"What did he think?" she urged.

"He sometimes thought you must be----"

"Crazy! Did he say crazy?" She was eager to have that lesser sentence passed on herself.

"He _did_ say crazy, but you know, Martha, how we say it. Not meaning literally crazy."

"No, but I _was_ crazy. Look at the mess I got you into, mother. What would we ever have done with that----"

"We don't need to talk about that now. Don't mention it."

"Yes, we _do_ need to talk about it. I AM a woman. I WILL think about it. It isn't fair! It's cruel!"

And on she raved, groaning out the old old groanings. Emily sat overwhelmed and yearning, trying from time to time to ease her hurt with the words of her happier experience. Her arguments were less threadbare, having been used from the first only by women who felt themselves tenderly loved.

"It is hard luck to be a woman, if you're unlucky, Martha. But if you're lucky, it's not women you're sorry for, but men."

"How can you say that?"

"Well, they haven't children; they can't have children; they miss that, the realest joy. After all, children do belong to women. You belong to me more than to your father."

"Do you think I don't see through that? I'm not a fool NOW! I do belong to you. It's _you_ I got into a mess. Dad sits home, not worrying. And if he did know about it, he'd blame you; he'd say you spoiled me. It's lovely to have a child like me!"

"I don't care, Martha. Whatever has happened to you--to us--you've been my happiness all these years. I don't care what you say, that's a fact. This time will pass, and we'll be happy again. If you had a child, you'd understand."

"If! Don't say 'if' to me! Haven't I had a child?"

"No, you haven't. You certainly haven't!"

"I certainly have! Look here, mother, don't you really think I go crazy, that I've been crazy twice now? It's insane to be hysterical! Maybe I'll go stark crazy and get put in----"

"Martha! Martha!"

They sat there till long after midnight. Emily argued that what Martha had done was not a symptom of insanity. What, then, was it, Martha demanded, sorely. And Emily explained the brutal fact that nothing in life is so perplexing, so inexplicable to look back upon, as one's own conduct. She found the girl was full of the dread of publicity. "If he could get his wife to divorce him because of--me, he'd tell her in a minute!" she cried once.

"Oh, surely not!" expostulated Emily. She was on the point of saying that Mr. Fairbanks would never allow that. Then she remembered bitterly that Mr. Fairbanks had promised to prevent--other things, and had not been able to keep his promise.

After all these dregs and outpourings, Emily took her into her own bed, and realized, as she thought them over, that the girl was lying sleepless beside her. What, she wondered, wearily, was there left for her now? She had lost faith in her lover and all mankind. She had lost faith in herself; she had lost confidence and security from fear. But what she hated most violently was her own self, that sweet little bathed and powdered body which Emily had adored every day since her birth. The flowering of her body, its natural fruitfulness, was what she resented unto death. She was utterly undone. She had to be made anew. It was a bitter task to take up. "I'm too old for it," Emily thought.

Martha rose in a business-like manner the next morning, earlier than usual. Usually from their beds they saw the schooner they had called their own because it had castellated patches on its sail, move like a dream of a castle through the misty distance. This morning they saw it together from their place in the dining room.

"I'm going to ask them to put a writing table in my room this morning," Martha announced. And when they were walking, later, she suggested that they go down to the little stores on Main Street. She wanted, she said, to buy some paper.

Emily was curious because of the quality and quantity of paper she ordered.

"What are you going to do with all that?" she asked, naturally, as they left the shop.

Then Martha made her announcement, grimly: "I'm going to write a novel."

Emily had supposed nothing could really surprise her ever again. She found she had been mistaken. She was thoroughly "taken aback."

Martha was suspicious of her silence. "Why shouldn't I write a novel?" she challenged.

"Why, how can you? How can you begin? I'd as soon--why, I'd as soon try to make a whole train!"

"I can begin. Don't you worry! It's no trick to write a novel!"

"Well----" murmured Emily, unable to agree.

"I made up my mind in the night; if nobody else will tell the truth, I will! Girls will know a thing or two when they get through with my novel, I'll bet!"

Emily held her peace tightly.

Martha went on defiantly: "I've got its name and everything. I'm going to call it 'Blistered Women'--like 'Flaming Youth,' you know, or else, 'Vomiting Love'!"

"Oh, Martha!"

"Yes, you'll say 'Oh, Martha!' all right, when you read it! They used to sit and lecture us about Romance and Realism by the hour! It took them hours! Idiots! Why couldn't they just say: Romance is what men think about 'affairs,' the pigs; and Realism is what women know. Mine's going to be a realistic novel!"

Emily looked at her and repressed her sighs. She had on that racoon coat and that small rosy hat. She strode along with her chin up, defying anyone to stop her.

After that morning Emily was free to do whatever she might fancy. She might sit in the sun on the veranda and knit, or she might sit on the end of the pier and watch the waves. She might walk oyster-shell roads or sandy paths through turpentine groves. No plan of hers could entice Martha away from that writing table. She rose early, and she sat there day after day from nine till one-o'clock lunch. When Emily ventured occasionally to go into her room, she would see her writing away, and often her mouth was screwed up into hatred. Her face seemed to say that if scribbling could kill, there would be wide slaughter--not of innocents. And sometimes she would be writing savagely, with tears running down her cheeks.