Helen R. Hull

“ Henrietta grinned at her thrust. "Haven't you, Cathy?"
"You see," said Catherine, "Charles disapproves of the whole system, the establishment of a bureau."
"Some one accumulates too much money and looks around for a conspicuous benevolence. Ah, a bureau of investigation! Then some little men hurry in, get jobs poking their noses into various things, and draw down neat salaries out of the surplus money. Mrs. Lynch is pleased. Little men are pleased."
"Why isn't it a good way to get rid of the money?" Henrietta spoke cautiously, as if she suspected traps under the smooth surface. ”

“ Catherine laughed. She knew that Flora had made earlier experiments in marriage, once to the extent of going back to Porto Rico. But she had, through all her changes of name, kept her good humor, her cleverness, and her apparent devotion to Catherine.
She rose swiftly from her knees, her long string of green beads clinking against her pail of water.
"I believes in keeping men in his place," she said, with an expanding grin. "If you don't, they keeps you in yours."
Catherine, adding the pile of Marian's dirty clothes to the jammed laundry bag, laughed again. ”

“ Margaret, clear, sparkling, watching them with her humorous grin, as if she had staged a vaudeville act. Amy Spurgeon, slight, dark, her lean, high-cheekboned face sallow and taciturn over the collar of her squirrel coat, a flange of stiff hair black under the soft brim of her gray fur hat. Catherine nibbled at her in swift glances as they sat down in the living room. Margaret had talked about her. "Amy has to have a passion for something." ”

“ Catherine tried to pick a firm way through the slush of the sidewalk. Flora must live in this block. She peered at the numbers over dark doorways, under the sagging zigzags of fire escapes. The snow had been thrown up in a dirty barricade along the edge of the walk, and over the upset garbage and ash cans, down the short mounds, shrieked and wailed and coasted innumerable [Pg 176] children. It was like a diminutive and distorted minstrel show, thought Catherine, stepping hastily out of the path of a small black baby spinning down into the slush on a battered tin tray. ”

“ Catherine pulled her to her feet with a hand abrupt, almost harsh. The throbbing behind her temples which had begun the day before, in the steady drive of closing the house and getting off, had increased to a heavy drum. "Pick them up," she said. "Don't stand there like a ninny!"
Spencer's grin faded at the tone of her voice, and her flare of weary temper subsided as she watched them scurry after the fruit. They stowed the oranges into pockets, and corners of the basket. ”

“ Henrietta explained in hard, glowing phrases, that Catherine had the opportunity of a lifetime. As Catherine listened and watched, she had a renewal of the strange feeling which had haunted her since Christmas morning. We are so lonely—so shut off—so absolutely isolated, she thought. Each of us speaks only his own language. We think we reach another human being, that he knows our tongue, and we discover that we have fooled ourselves. Grotesquely. Charles—remote, unreachable. I imagined that contact. Bill, and Henrietta—she is content, thinking she communicates with Bill. ”

“ Morning, an incredible packing of the two hours: breakfast, the three children to bathe and help dress, Miss Kelly arriving like clockwork to supervise the final departure for school, Catherine's hasty glimpse at her face, flushed under the brim of her hat, before she hurried out for the elevator. Then the bus ride; herself a highly conscious part of the downward flood of workers, the fluster of the morning dropping away before the steady rise of that inner self, calm, clear, deliberate. ”

“ Catherine, smoothing into place the heavy coil of her hair, washing her hands, delaying her entrance to the living room, where she heard, vaguely, the voices of Charles and the children, struggled slowly to lift her head above the maelstrom. It was only for a few weeks out of a lifetime. The children would not suffer. And I want to go, she thought. Something leaped within her, vigorous, hungry, clamorous. It's not loving them less, to need something outside them, beyond them, something worth the temporary price of absence. ”

“ Perhaps Charles had forgotten his key. But as she hurried down the hall, she heard a shrill guffaw from Sam, and the elevator slid rapidly out of sight as she opened the door.
"Why, Flora! Come in."
Flora, hastening to drag a lugubrious expression over the wide grin Sam had evidently provoked, shook her head, the stiff purple flowers on her large hat rattling like hail.
"No'm, I ain't coming in," she said. "I came to ask a favor of you, Mis' Hammond. You well, and the children?"
"Yes, we're all well." Catherine recalled the dejected, bruised Flora she had last seen. ”

“ Catherine left a note for Flora, with the day's instructions, and hurried off. She had swung free of the night in a long arc of release.
The Drive had a dramatic beauty; white morning sunlight piercing the gaps made by cross streets, long blue shadows stretching from the buildings, the river gray blue under the clearing sky, the clean, soft lines of snow turned back by the plows, snow caught in the branches of trees and shrubbery, like strange fruit; gulls wheeling like winged bits of snow. ”

“ Catherine was a trifle piteous, under her light tone. "Even if I need—well, it is rebuilding, isn't it?" She wondered why his opinion seemed so necessary. She had Henrietta's, and Henrietta was a woman. But she wanted to reach across, to pull at those passive, restrained hands, to beg him to speak.
"I really think that you have to decide yourself." He paused. "You realize, probably, that it will be like handling a double job. Charles would find it difficult to take over a new share of your present job. Most men would." ”

“ Charles broke out.
"He's thinking of something else, not of that; he's keeping me off his real center," hurried Catherine's thoughts. "I won't be horrid and cross."
"Isn't it lack of conceit?" She reached for the heavy frying pan. "Most of us have to talk to assert ourselves, to make folks listen to us. Bill hasn't any ego——"
"Oh, he's got one, all right." Charles balanced the pile of dishes precariously near the edge of the table. "Looks more conceited just to sit around with that cryptic expression——"
"I don't think so!" Catherine scrubbed vigorously at the sink. "He never looks critical." ”

“ She stared intently at Bill. "You—" she hesitated. "You live without that human sacrifice, Bill. You aren't an Actinidia."
"And so, perhaps, I know why men wish it." Bill pushed to one side his untouched salad. "Without any question now of its fairness or justice to women like Henrietta, or you. In the first place, it is convenient, practically so; smooths down all the details of living. But especially, it drops a painted screen between man and the distressing futility of his life. A man with a family and a regular wife, old style, doesn't often have to face his own emptiness. ”

“ Roberts had his pointed beard between the pages of a catalogue. He lifted it toward her, his bright blue eyes and sharp nose eager on the scent of an idea. "Too little conscious plan. People are afraid of thought. Trial-and-error is the working basis. But that's slow, and you have this heavy crust of tradition."
"I'd like to scrap it all and make a fresh beginning!"
"There never is such a thing as a fresh beginning. You have to work from what exists."
Catherine pushed aside a pile of catalogues, her face alight with scorn. ”

“ Catherine shot upright, reaching for her bathrobe.
"Merry Christmas, but hurry back where it's warm."
Marian flung her arms around Charles's sleepy head. "Merry Christmas, my Daddy!"
"It's only the middle of the night, isn't it?" Charles groaned.
"It's Christmas morning, and you hurry and get up!"
When the arduous business of dressing was over, Charles turned the switch, and the colored lights starred the little tree. No one was to unwrap a present until after breakfast. Too much excitement on empty stomachs, insisted Catherine. ”

“ Margaret was nonchalant.
"I like her," said Catherine.
Margaret looked up in frank pleasure.
"I hoped you would. She's really fine, if you get her." Her eyes, traveling across to the small figure in the fur coat, one arm raised in emphasis, were tender. "You'd roar if you heard her comments on Charles. She has a certain cosmic attitude toward all men, lumps them. I'm thrilled, Cathy, at your trip. And your salary! You show some pick-up on this job."
"Will you take me shopping for decent clothes?" Catherine regarded her sister wistfully. "I'm going to dress the old thing up for once." ”

“ The rest of the night, the next day, the next night, all were to Catherine grotesquely unreal, as if life had been transposed to a different key, where all familiar things were flatted into dissonance and harsh strangeness. All night the scrape of snow-plows and shovels, futile against the snow; the snow which seemed the wind itself turned to dry, drifting, impenetrable barriers. The local, dragged by two locomotives, hours late, like a moving snowdrift itself. ”

“ That song Charles had hummed in the kitchen had sent her back through the years. She hadn't wanted anything else in those days. Passion, its strange, erratic light making everything else seem tinsel. Tenderness, making all else in life seem cold. And quarrels—the still, white silence, swift product of some unexpected moment, so that you felt yourself imprisoned in an iceberg, from which you never could escape—that was part of the struggle of admitting another person, your lover, into yourself. ”

“ Catherine sighed. "Like falling in love again, wasn't it? Only deeper. And we wanted Letty." Her voice quavered again. "That's it! I love you so much. But you don't sit down in your love—and devour it—and let it devour you. It isn't right, Charles, help me! I"—she laughed faintly—"I'm like your shell-shocked soldiers. You couldn't really cure them until peace came. Then they weren't shell-shocked any more. I'm shell-shocked too, and I can't cure myself, and I see no armistice. I'm growing worse. I know why women have hysterics and all sorts of silly diseases. ”

“ She hadn't seen Margaret since her return from Maine. She was to meet her at the St. Francis Luncheon Club for Working Women. As she stepped into the sunlight of the street, the slow flowing of the emulsion of which she was suddenly another particle, she had a sharp flash of unreality. Was it she, walking there in her old blue suit, her rubber heels padding with the other sounds, her eyes refocusing on distance and color after the long morning? ”

“ In the dining room, a few traveling men scattered about at tables sending glances of incurious speculation after her as she chose a seat; a middle-aged waitress whose streaked purplish hair shrieked aloud her effort to keep youth enough to win tips, and whose heavy, laborious tread spoke more loudly of aching, fallen arches. Catherine started at the twin bottles of vinegar and yellowish oil in the center of the table. Letty's just gone to bed, she thought. Mrs. O'Lay is serving dinner. I shouldn't care to be a traveling saleswoman. The hotel drives my job into some remote limbo. ”

“ Like to do the same thing, simple thing, day after day. It takes intelligence to need something ahead." She grinned at Catherine. "They make excellent wives," she added. "Now if you didn't have brains, you'd be happy as an oyster in your little nest."
The splutter of motors protesting at the cold, the scurry of people, heads down into the wind, gray buildings pointing rigidly into a gray, low sky—Catherine caught all that as background for Margaret, fitting background. Margaret was like the city, young, hard, flashing. ”

“ Marian's call came just then, and Catherine rose.
"May I come along, Catherine? I haven't seen the kids since that night in Maine." Henrietta stopped at Spencer's door, and as Catherine draped Marian's slim body in the huge bath towel, she heard Spencer's eager voice and Dr. Henrietta's bluff tone. Marian, her face rosy and her dark hair rumpled, threw herself into Henrietta's arms. "Hello, my Doctor!" she cried.
They had a moment in the hall, when Henrietta looked firmly into Catherine's eyes.
"You stop your worrying," she said. "You won't swing your job unless you are clear of doubts. ”

“ Marian, her eyes round and black, watched him sharpen his knife, while Spencer lingered near the door. Spencer didn't, as he said, like dead things. Neither did Catherine, shivering as the butcher shoved aside the quivering lump of purplish-black liver. Queer, the forms that the demands of ordinary living took; forms you never dreamed of, when you entered living. ”

“ Catherine undressed hastily and crept into bed. Charles was late. Resentment, like a small sharp bone, still rankled. He's like a little boy. If I could be patient—Bill never takes things out on Henrietta. She doesn't know his feeling. Perhaps it is always that way; one person out of two is not quite happy, never an equal balance. Charles was content until I broke loose. Henrietta is content. You have to offer up a human sacrifice. ”

“ Catherine brought in the huge green bowl, filled with crisp, curling leaves, and Spencer followed with the plates of cheese and crackers. As Catherine poured the dressing over the leaves and stirred them, her hands moving with slow grace, she picked up the threads of the talk. Miss Partridge thought a family must be illuminating; you could watch instincts unfold. And Charles—"I tried Spencer, to see if he had that prehistoric monkey grip, and Catherine thought I was endangering his life. But you're so busy keeping them fed and happy that you haven't time to experiment." ”

“ Catherine grinned at him. She was at ease again, confident, the sense of nonentity gone.
"Oh, Stella Partridge, of course. Fine person, isn't she! No nonsense about her. Mind like a man's."
"Is it?" Catherine stacked the dishes in the sink.
"Has the qualities which are conventionally labeled masculine. Like that better?"
The clatter of the garbage pail cover served for Catherine's answer.
"Bill's a queer duck, now, isn't he?" Charles lolled against the table, his long body making a hazardous oblique angle. "Never can make up my mind whether it's shyness or laziness." ”