Margaret Wilson

“ 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. ”

“ Martha's chum, Greta, had come in then, asking her to go for a swim. Emily liked Greta, with reservations and allowances, thinking her too pretty to be judged severely. She had dazzling eyes: light-blue eyes when she wore light blue; dark-blue eyes when she wore dark blue; gray eyes when she had on a gray suit; and when she pulled that wicked little mauve hat down over her forehead, her eyes were purple as dark pansies. One had to forgive that girl for somewhat too deliberately flashing those glances into male consciousness, Emily argued. But Greta didn't—quite tell the very truth—always. ”

“ He'll think grandma's dying."
"What?" cried Bob. "What'll he do, Eve?"
"I know dad'll settle it. I know he will. She never meant to divorce him. She just wants to frighten Martha because she's got money."
"You mean—— Isn't she going to divorce him?" Bob insisted.
"No. Don't you ever think she is! Oh——" cried Eve, in bitter humiliation, as if now she was compelled to confess the worst, "Mrs. Kenworthy, she—she LOVES that pig! You Wouldn't believe it, maybe. She cries herself sick if he looks at anybody! And ever since she heard that Martha's got money she's been just wild." ”

“ 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." ”

“ What can hurt a girl alone in a hotel but men? I'm as safe as if I was in a desert, or locked in a cell. If all the men in Chicago were on the bridge, and I got a chance, I'd push them into the river, filthy little rats! I'd watch them sink. I should think you'd understand that by now. But you've been good to me, I know that. And if it will make you any happier, I'll go to the Y.W.C.A. and stay there till I get a flat. Does that satisfy you?"
It was so magnificent a concession that Emily blinked. "Oh yes, I think that would be much better. I'd like that, Martha." ”

“ 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." ”

“ The car, like everything else expensive, seemed to become the girl. She moved her hands on the large steering wheel with that surprising composure which Emily had admired from her babyhood. She always drove bareheaded. The breeze scarcely disturbed her hair, which was cut and combed almost as it had been ten years ago, when Jim Kenworthy used to sit and stroke it thoughtfully. There was never a day when Martha was at home that Emily didn't notice how distinguished the absolute straightness and fineness of that black hair seemed among shingled and marcelled heads. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Emily spoke up hastily.
"Was your sister there, Eve? I didn't see her. Where do they live?"
"No. She isn't well. They're like the rest of us. They don't live any place." She spoke reluctantly, and then, as if she felt that something more was expected of her, she added: "They have been abroad awhile. In Paris, mostly."
But Martha took up Bob's challenge. "He's so distinguished," she drawled. "Doesn't he dance divinely, Eve?"
"I don't know," Eve replied, shortly. "I don't dance with him." And then she added, abruptly, "Look here, Martha, you needn't dance with him to please me!" ”

“ For then a shower came up, after noon, and passed over, and the sun came out with a dazzling soft afternoon brilliance. In the blossoming apple trees orioles were calling, and robins were hopping about in the wet petals below them. The grass was all young, and heavenly green, and the air had a soft and glittering cleanness. It was an afternoon to make even the dull feel that to forget its very quality was to have lived in vain. Emily had played about in the garden all the afternoon. She came into the house to get some labels stowed away in a drawer in her desk. ”

“ She had gone upstairs, and presently hurried, in a comfortable mature way, to Martha's room. She opened the door, and almost blinked, for the uncompromising afternoon sun made even yet a startling welter of the purples and greens and creamy yellows before her. And then she said: "Oh! You here, Eve?" For in that whirl of gaudiness an auburn-haired, hawk-nosed, thin-faced girl sat in flesh-colored B.V.D.'s, on a black stool, with a dishpan half full of pitted cherries on the floor beside her, and in her lap a green bowl half full of moist seeds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gee, mammie! Mrs. Benton will be budding all over the county before long." She made Miss Curtis admire her willow tree, and the clear water gurgling along beneath it.
"You're a glutton for education, Martha," Miss Curtis sighed, "to be living with me in the city when you might be out here at home!" And she went in to get ready for supper.
Left alone for a moment with her mother, Martha stood sniffling.
"I had forgotten it smelled so good, so clean!" she said, wistfully. "I simply hate Chicago. It's just sickening when spring comes. Everybody goes out of town for week-ends. ”

“ And Martha chuckled.
"We've had enough of that now, Martha! You can stop that just now. You know I don't think you're the one to correct your father!"
"But if I don't, who will? You're no good at it. You're too good-natured with him, you old precious lamb. He knows you don't like his godding. Does he stop? I know he doesn't like mine. Do I stop? We've got to be logical."
Emily smiled witheringly.
"Your logic is always so unexpected. Do behave yourself. You might at least ask him to send up the car, instead of ordering him to. He doesn't keep it for your benefit, you know." ”

“ It was only men that Bob could evaluate. There was no use expecting him to judge Martha fairly. But Jim had enjoyed every phase of her little girlhood, just as he had played tenderly, reverently with his mother's heroisms and weaknesses, just as he had so well understood every shade of the service Emily had unconsciously rendered him when she had loved his son. If Martha had a man like Jim about familiarly, she wouldn't be impressed as she seemed to be with the first pretentious masher that came her way. Jim would have set a standard for the child, given her a taste for masculine worth. ”

“ But Emily, in her bed, remembered, sighing more than once, how that horrid Helen had sat looking at Martha, with cynical, initiated amusement. Perhaps that girl was encouraging her in her naughtiness. If Martha wasn't careful—and she probably wouldn't be—she would be getting into a horrible row with her father. That consummation Emily Kenworthy would do anything to avoid. If Bob "bawled her out" in the morning, the world underneath their feet would be splitting. Martha and that odious stranger would be on one side, and Bob would be on the other. ”

“ Now that afternoon when she came in on her way to the beach, Martha was indiscreet, to say the least. She said demurely enough, when Greta urged her:
"Oh, I don't know whether I'm allowed to go swimming. Am I, mammie?"
Emily had asked innocently, "Why not?"
"Well, there's sure to be some married men about, some place." And Greta had smiled, as if she understood Martha's cause for complaint.
"Don't be silly!" Emily had replied. They had gone swimming. Afterwards Emily wondered if Martha had known that man would be there, if she had taken that way of warding off subsequent reproof. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Emily sat silenced by the very vileness of life. To think of Martha's money, her great-grandfather's hard-earned money, lying there accumulating through those years of her sweet childhood, to become now a factor in this—pollution of her. Pollution, pollution, said Emily to herself.
Bob demanded, suddenly, "Has she got a lot of money?"
"Only what she squeezes out of dad. She gets a lot. I don't know how much he gives her. She just bleeds him," she cried, angrily. "Look here, Mrs. Kenworthy, YOU know dad. You know what a darling he is! ”

“ I couldn't bear to go back to the doctor's. I stayed with Miss Curtis for more than a week."
"And now? Where are you now?"
"Oh, I'm back at the doctor's, all right now. I'm not a bit more—out of my head than she is, anyway. It doesn't always follow that if a girl—or a woman—falls in love, as they say, that she's crazy. Look at that Doctor Stevenson. Wouldn't you say she was sane, mammie? Wouldn't you say that if anybody in the world is in her right mind, it's that woman?"
"Yes, I would certainly call her a well-balanced woman."
"Well!" cried Martha, triumphantly. ”

“ A little rouge isn't going to corrupt your morals. You'll come home as pure as you went! Mother! Oh, you're hopeless! When I try so hard to make you look presentable!" Wasn't that delicious, when one understood it? And wouldn't Bob have been annoyed to hear the child's impertinence? "Eve, look at her!" Martha begged, tragically. But Eve said: "Let her alone. You'd paint a lily, Martha. You'd marcel Thomas Hardy himself, if you got a chance. You look just sweet now, Mrs. Kenworthy!" ”

“ How could a town be stupid, she often wondered, having in it a world esoteric, unexplored, unimagined for the most part by adults, very jungles of young terror hiding adolescent beds of precious ore. "How do you come to know all the children in town?" women asked Emily more than once. "They can't all come to see Martha." ”

“ She thought over one by one the dozen men—Martha called them men, though they scarcely deserved the name—who would be dancing with the girls at the club. Emily knew every one of them; some of them she had known for years. She knew the families of most of them. Every time she thought of Martha's partner of the evening before, they seemed more acceptable to her. They were—decent. They were—secure. They had no foreign accent, and they had not pretended to know Tchekhoff. People gossiped about them, but Emily believed their relationships with bootleggers were merest flirtations. ”

“ But if Jim had been in Bob's place, Jim would have known what to do. Martha would have listened if Jim could have spoken to her. And Jim would have listened if Emily had gone to him in perplexity about the girl. Hadn't she and Jim sat together for hours discussing their children, enjoying them together, having them in common, almost, in spite of the barrier between them? Because Jim had always appreciated little Martha Kenworthy. That was the essential wrong Bob had done the child since birth. He had failed to appreciate her. He had never in his life understood a woman. ”

“ Emily remembered the days when Bob had complained that he could never get her alone long enough to "settle her." The house was bustling and hurrying about, as Martha used to make it stir, full of her girl friends coming and going, confused by committee women of inspired importance. School children were singing their parts at the piano; angels were adjusting their feathers in the hall; the 'phone was ringing. Emily watched Martha "putting it across," each day a little more naughtily, a little more triumphantly. ”

“ No sooner had the beach become a success beyond any expectation, than Mrs. Benton had addressed the women's club. "Our children," she said, "swim now from June to October de luxe; and from October to June they dance—how? Behind the Greek's candyshop, where those obscene pictures were found, in the old hall that has no ventilation, or the old opera house controlled by bootleggers. Why should the women not build a winter gathering-place for their children equal to the summer center?" ”