Part 18

"You mustn't be such a lazy selfish pig, Greta!" she had gurgled when the room was fullest of listeners. She had talked, too, cunningly of the turkey she was roasting for Christmas dinner.

"I never had a chance to roast a turkey before," she said to mothers whose daughters were known to be indifferent to cook-stoves, "but I've always wanted to. I adore making mince pies; I'm making a lot of mincemeat, all myself, to take back with me. Yes, I'm fond of cooking. I get my own dinners with Miss Curtis, my friend in Chicago. I have more time than she does. She teaches school; but, of course, now that I'm in business, I'm busier." And she would look at the neighbors simply, quietly. She even dared to say innocently to her mother, just when the gossips might be supposed to be listening:

"Did I tell you, mammie, I met Eve the other day? She's given up New York. Her father isn't well and she's going to stay in Chicago. She's coming down for a week-end soon, if he's better."

And when the neighbors would be gone she would run and give her mother gloating hugs, which asked as plainly as her voice could have spoken, "Don't I just get it across?"

Emily had asked, afterwards: "Did you really meet Eve? When?"

And she pretended to be indignant. "Did I meet her? I like your nerve! Do you suppose I'm not telling you the truth? She is coming down to see you. She said to me, right out, as soon as I saw her, 'Are you still sore about--that?' I just said: 'About what? Where've you been all the time? Why don't you write mother oftener? She wants to see you. Come on down with me.' This was at the station, mammie, just when I was coming home the other day. If she comes down here to stay with us, what can anybody say about----?"

She held the situation in a tight grasp now. If any minute of those busy days she had suffered one pang, remembering the desperate Christmas a year ago, she had never once given a sign of it. Since the day of her first accusation of her mother she had avoided the subject of her paternity excessively. Emily, too, had been afraid of it. She had told Martha firmly that she was not going to Chicago to live with her. Martha, for fear she might make explanations, had not argued the subject very far.

"I never would be content to live in Chicago, you know that, Martha. Our roots are here; I'm too old to be transplanted. I won't leave this house."

"But you get bored to death, mammie. You want to shriek sometimes. You said you did yourself that night, at the doctor's. I hate to go away and leave you here."

"Stay here then. This is your home."

"No. I've got to _do_ something. It's all right here, when there's a party on, or something. But I couldn't stand it all the time. I'd get to scrapping with dad, you know I would."

The very mention of Bob brought up possibilities of uncomfortable remarks.

Martha hastened to continue.

"I'll come back just as often as I can. And you come and stay with me as much as you can. And in June we'll go to Europe together. Nobody can talk about that! And maybe you'll like it well enough to stay a year or two with me there; lots of people do. And that's the only place really to learn about furnishings and furniture."

Emily lay in her bed that night, ashamed and unhappy. "It's as if I had told her the most enormous and fundamental lie," she reflected. "Nothing good can ever come of this. Strange," she thought, "that I can't remember ever going into Woolworth's with Jim! She remembers something of him that I don't. How old would she have been then? The five-and-ten must have come to town--well--before Bronson came. She loved that store at first, when she was little." She grudged Martha a memory that belonged essentially to her; she thought greedily over every look of his she had ever treasured. She remembered their early love; she recalled still how his dear hands had gone longing, discreetly up inside her stiff cuffs. She remembered his kisses; she remembered how he had come back in the days of his weariness to his mother, and how they had looked across at each other, with that innocent old woman between them. She remembered how he used to sit with little Martha on his knee, in the days of his ill health and bitterness, stroking her hair and looking into her face, trying some way to get close to the mother through the child. She thought of that summer, and of Bronson, and of Jim's irrepressible crying-out to her. She stopped there. She tried always not to think of his death. "He just kissed me," she said, "and went away."

"Oh," she cried to herself, "I'm going to Chicago to-morrow and tell Martha the truth! He was too sweet, too dear. This isn't fair to him. I don't care about Bob; but I won't have her thinking such things of Jim. He was too good for such--baseness. He never forgot I was his brother's wife. He did kiss me, but he went away then. That's the point--he went away. I'll tell her that.

"And if I tell her, she'll never believe me. She thinks I'm sly and sneaking and adulterous now, and if I tell her the truth, she'll think I'm lying to her. She hasn't enough experience yet to believe the truth; she doesn't know enough to believe it. That's why she hates it all so! herself, and passion. All she knows of passion is its roots, in the dark ground; its blossom in the air, its sweet lovely blossom in the sun she hasn't seen. She doesn't know forbearance or tenderness, and that's the best part of it--for us. She wouldn't believe me if I told her what sort of man he was. I don't know what's going to become of her now; she'll never marry now. Probably that way such a lot of women don't marry; the roots of it all look so ugly, so brutal to them. If I could make Martha believe in some one like Jim now! The whole tragedy is that she can't."

When she fell asleep at last, she was thinking still of her lover--not, however, that he went away, but that he kissed her.

Martha hadn't been gone two weeks when that most astonishing news came. Nothing could have stunned the town more than that. The telegram came first to Emily. She heard it over the 'phone.

Mrs. Benton had died suddenly, while motoring in California.

People gathered in groups on the street to discuss it. It seemed a thing that could not be true. To be sure, when you thought it over, you realized that Mrs. Benton was but mortal; but it seemed so unlike her, just to die, to quit, to lay things down. Her body, lifeless, was to be sent home for burial.

Recovering by degrees from the shock of the news; the cruder ones began asking under their breaths what the more sentimental ones had but pondered. Had she lived to hear of the success of the Christmas party? They could not believe that she had. It didn't seem likely.

Mrs. Benton's body was to arrive on a Thursday, from the West. Johnnie arrived from the East on Tuesday morning, to find his home swept and garnished and in possession of an old and silent aunt and a young and gushing one. He came to Emily for refuge that evening. He seemed almost stupefied by the event. Emily had never thought of him as a nervous man before. He talked in a way unnaturally incoherent, and he stirred about nervously, unable to sit down. The second time she noticed his hand refrain spasmodically from a cigarette, she said:

"Smoke if you want to."

But he burst out: "No. I won't have people laughing--about THIS. I won't have them talking about her."

"But no one is going to talk about her if you smoke here with me."

"Don't you think so? Nobody would see me?"

"No. Nobody could find anything to laugh at in that."

He was already lighting a match. "I thought they looked at me funny when I went to light up," he said. Emily knew he spoke of his aunts. "I want everything done right for her. I won't have people talking about THIS. They say I have to be the chief mourner, Mrs. Kenworthy."

"Well, you are that, Johnnie; you're nearest her."

"I know it; but they made me stay in there to see the minister. He asked me what chapter I wanted read! I felt like a fool, Mrs. Kenworthy. I felt like a dirty hypocrite!"

"I wouldn't feel that way. These things have got to be done, apparently."

"Do you think 'Jesus, Lover of my Soul' is better than 'Lead, Kindly Light'? One wants one and the other wants the other, and they say I can decide! Look here, Mrs. Kenworthy, did you ever hear that mother hadn't but a year to live? Did she ever tell YOU that?"

"No, never. Why, dear?"

"Aunt Ethel said the doctor in Chicago told somebody yesterday that he told her last summer she hadn't a year to live. Didn't she tell you that?"

"No."

"She never told me; she never told anybody."

"Maybe she didn't believe it."

He seemed relieved at the thought. He said, "Maybe that's it. But she never told you where I was last summer, did she, until I was about coming home? Do you know why?"

"I didn't know why. Never mind, Johnnie!"

"Yes, she didn't know where I was; I didn't tell her! I just lit out; I never told her till I got to Hong-Kong. I knew she'd worry; I didn't care if she did. I never thought of it coming out like this, Mrs. Kenworthy! I made enough to come home on at Macao. You know, gambling, she'd call it; it was, too. I won five hundred dollars, almost---four hundred and seventy--so then I cabled her. Oh, I don't know why I did that!"

"There's no use grieving over it now, Johnnie."

"But by the time I got her answer I had lost it all again. I came home on the money she cabled me. She met me at the depot with a new car! She never told me she wasn't well; she never told ME she hadn't long to live! I'm glad I went back to college; she wanted me to do that. I nearly didn't, I nearly lit out again. If they insist on having the coffin open in church and me looking--in front of everybody--I don't care. I'll do it; I won't have people laughing at her _now_!"

Then Emily remembered a certain hour. "Oh, Johnnie!" she began. And, as she understood the significance of what she recalled, she hesitated.

"She told me once, not so very long ago, that she'd written out directions for her funeral. She hated sensational funerals--and people fainting. She wanted hers very simple."

"When was this?"

Now Emily remembered too distinctly, all of a sudden.

"It was after somebody's funeral, as we were walking home from the cemetery. I don't remember--when, exactly." Why should she tell the boy it had happened when he was sailing away towards Brazil and his deserted mother had learned her fate in loneliness? "I imagine if you go down to Johnson and Larned's, they'll have her directions put away with her will."

"Oh, do you think--I ought to do that? I mean--I don't want to seem to be grabbing her will in a hurry!"

"Ask your aunts about it. I'll go over and tell them with you, if you want me to."

"Will you? Oh, do! But wait a little. Can't I have another smoke here, first? It seems--strange, over there, this way."

And as he walked around smoking, Emily thought: "Yes, and she knew all the time as we walked home together that day that she'd be there in the cemetery soon, and she never told me. She wanted me to know she had given directions for her funeral, and she let me think she had no special reason for giving them; and she didn't know where this boy was, or whether she would ever see him again, and she never said a word to me about it. And she pointed out to me Mrs. Johnson's red lilies as we passed, and said she was going to move hers into the sun!"

Martha came down for the funeral, which was delayed with absolute cruelty, Emily thought, by the aunts, until Saturday. Emily told her of Mrs. Benton's stoicism, but not of Johnnie's unconscious hardness.

And Martha sighed and said, merely, "Well, I suppose everybody has something up their sleeve, mammie!"

Johnnie came in on Friday evening, harassed and red eyed.

"You here, Martie!" he exclaimed, touched by the sight of her. "For the love of Mike, don't let anyone know I'm here. Let's go up to your sitting room! Somebody'll be coming in. I want to smoke; I got to have a smoke!"

A pitiful Johnnie made Martha kind.

"It isn't heated up," she said. "We don't heat it now, weather like this. But you can come and wash dishes with me. You can smoke there; nobody'll see you."

It was the usual thing for Martha to insist on Emily's staying in the living room when Martha was washing the evening dishes. So she remained there, and people came in, as Johnnie had foreseen they would. One hour passed, and another, and the supper dishes still apparently detained the young things. After another half-hour Emily went to the kitchen. She opened the door.

The scene was scarcely what she had expected. The room was thick with smoke; and there, huddled over the stove, sat old Maggie, who was supposed to have gone to bed hours ago, and across her old rough face her mouth stretched from ear to ear in one great beaming smile, while her eyes looked straight at the chief mourner. He sat on the kitchen table, near the prunes soaking in the bowl overnight. He still had on the blue-gingham apron some one had tied about his slender body. He was leaning forward alertly, and in his hand he held a cigarette all lit and ready to go into his mouth the moment the flow of his eager narrative ceased for an instant. His eyes were fixed upon Martha, who sat on the high kitchen stool with her feet on its upper rungs. She had on a red jersey frock; she sported a very long purple-and-black cigarette holder and she sat listening intently, her chin atilt.

"And the chief--he was a good old sport--he says to the captain, 'It's the first time I was ever ordered to get a lady out of a----'"

He saw the door opening. He saw Emily. She knew at once that she had spoiled a perfect hour. Johnnie's normal light-heartedness collapsed. Emily saw him recalling horribly the coffin and its contents, and the hushed and exaggerated reverence of those that waited about it.

"Oh!" he groaned. "Oh, I forget!"

But Martha had heard nothing of his quarrel with his mother and his passionate desire to atone as far as he could by all conventional decencies.

"Well, go on!" she commanded. "Was the man dead?"

But Johnnie had no gusto for the rest of his tale. "I was just telling Martha about what happened on the _Pomona_," he murmured to Emily, apologetically. "There was a woman drunk, and she locked the door of her cabin and wouldn't open it; they couldn't hear the man with her and they thought maybe she had done something to him."

"But what happened in the end?" Martha insisted.

"The captain broke in, and there was the man, reading in his bunk. He said he wasn't going to try to get her to open the door; he knew her. He'd been reading the History of Poland, with nothing but biscuit to eat. He said he was used to it. I didn't know it was so late. I got to be going."

"Don't go yet," Emily urged. "We've never really heard anything about your trip."

"I didn't mean to stay so long. I don't want to make them sore at me," he said, nervously. "They look at me so funny all the time."

He went back to them. Bob and Martha sat for a while talking, and Emily sat looking at them and thinking wistfully of what she had seen in the kitchen. How happy those children had been together in their young forgetfulness, a forgetfulness somewhat too facile, on Johnnie's part, perhaps. Yet what a fine relief it had been for him from the strain and depression of those unnatural days. Surely each of them must be thinking how snugly, how cozily they had together thrown off their burdens. If only it could have gone on! Martha would have married him now, likely, since the maternal handicap was removed--if that other thing had never happened. Johnnie, free and with an income, wouldn't be long in marrying--someone, Emily was convinced of that. But it would be a long time, a deplorably long time, before Martha would be settling down. There was no use hoping for so happy an ending to that story.

It was perhaps her kindness to Johnnie that cleansed Martha's mind, for the time, from its chilling cynicism. She was lovely that evening and gentle, and subdued. Emily lingered about with her in the guest room, and sat on her bed a long time with her, yearning over her. She had never felt so sure and mature a sort of oneness with her daughter before. Martha wouldn't let her get away. She clung to her; her trivial words were little caresses. It was an hour to be remembered, to be tasted carefully in memory, and relished indefinitely.

Emily's conscience smote her the more that night. How terrible this deception of her was! All at once there came to her a thought cuttingly vivid. People did die suddenly; no doubt about that; even an extremely living woman like Cora Benton ceased without warning. "Suppose I'd die suddenly, myself!" Emily gasped. "Suppose I should die without ever telling her the truth! She'd have this house for herself then; she might quarrel with her father; she might turn him out of it in some evil moment. She might even tell him some time what I let her think. To-morrow morning," Emily decided, "first thing, I'll tell her the truth." She lay unhappily trying to screw herself up to the necessary intensity of determination.

In the morning, however, Martha didn't come down to breakfast. Emily went up to her room. She said she was tired, and Emily saw at once she had been crying. She offered to bring her up something, but Martha refused shortly. She said she was going to get up; she wouldn't stay in bed. Not one least hint of the conciliatory mood of the evening before was left. Emily was afraid of her, afraid of the bitter things that might come slashing out of her mouth. If only she knew what she had been crying about! Was it because the companionship of the evening had seemed as pleasant as unattainable? Had she been by any chance thinking how happy she might have been with Johnnie? Or had she been mourning the lover who had destroyed himself in her mind? Emily came downstairs and set about her morning work hesitant, cautious, and perplexed.

Even as they sat side by side in the crowded church, Emily was conscious of the hardness of her mood. Mrs. Benton might reasonably have asked to have a sermon preached over her body in the great hall she had built, but she had commanded that the service should be in the small Congregational church. Emily, when she went to that church, always thought of Jim's mother--rather than Bob's--and of his father, whose heroic death was but a mildly interesting tale to Martha. The crowded service promised at first to be all that Mrs. Benton had hoped it never would be, but the minister, when he began speaking, showed more sense than Emily had ever thought him capable of. She saw Johnnie almost immediately lift his bewildered head to listen.

"Our sister," he said, "lies here silent. Her works praise her. Which one of us," he asked, "can lift a voice to contradict them? Dare we dispute with the bathing beach? Shall we try arguing with the memorial hall?" He named over her civic accomplishments, scarcely mentioning the flowers that were to bloom all over the county in the spring--they, Emily thought, might have suggested to the scoffing, or the conscience-smitten, a certain joyous derision. "There had been women more gentle than she," he said, frankly, "But the gentle women had dammed no river. There had been women more popular, but the popular had built no bridges. What she had built, she had built well. Let the town, now, if it could, reach the standard of excellence which she had set. Her example of doing things exactly right was a heritage not to be despised in these shoddy days."

But of all her works, he averred, the beach had the clearest voice and the holiest. "Wash ye! Make ye clean!" the prophets of God had been crying, through all the generations. And now the beach took up the song, inviting all the children to throw themselves into the cleanness of joy and to dive deep into the transparency of living. It was the element of cleanness that she had made precious to the children of the town. How many small boys of the town cared where their winter clothes were put away for the summer? But how many of them would there be who weren't conscious all the winter just where their bathing suits were put away waiting for the summer? The snow would scarcely be melted on the south slopes of the lawns until children began shaking out their bathing suits and counting the weeks until swimming began. The dancing feet of the young, and the music of their youth, praised this woman all the winter months. And in the summer, tanned and barefooted memorials of her would soon be running down all the shaded streets to the river. And healthy dripping tributes to her wisdom would be trudging home late to meals. When there were no longer any children to love swimming, he said suddenly, he hoped the town would build a stone memorial to its benefactress.

He sat down.

The church sighed its agreement.

The coffin, unopened, was carried away. Johnnie said afterwards that the minister had sense.

_Chapter Eleven_

That night Bob Kenworthy sat unsuspectingly reading a coon story in a popular weekly, in his own living room, in the light of a lamp his daughter had given him for Christmas. His wife sat at her desk near the window, pretending to write letters, and every once in a while she glanced slyly over at him to see if he was conscious of what she was doing; and sometimes she even looked suspiciously at the curtains to make sure no one was peeping in at the words she had guiltily written. She had sat there more than an hour, and she was beginning that letter in vain. A more distasteful task she had seldom decided upon. To put down in black and white a denial of the grotesque mistake she had suffered to continue in Martha's thought seemed impossible. An acknowledgment of her complicity in the misunderstanding seemed too humiliating. How could she be sure, besides, into whose hands her written words might not come? Might not that complacent husband of hers, sitting there, never imagining how thankfully he had been discarded by his child, sometime come upon the letter that must seem to him treacherous? Emily didn't intend sending the letter to Martha; that course was too perilous to consider. She intended to put it away, in case of such an emergency as this last one of Cora Benton's. It seemed, however, the right thing altogether for Cora Benton to have given directions for her funeral. The community expected her to do that. But for Emily Kenworthy to do it seemed silly melodrama.

She sat with her arm hiding the words she had written, now that she had begun for the fifth time, though there was no eye in the room to behold them. She had finished.