Lora kept her job till the middle of October. She did not give it up then because of physical discomfort or inconvenience, for she experienced very little of either. Indeed she felt uncommonly well; her face was blooming with health, her eyes shone fresh and clear, and the feel of her muscles took on a new and sharper pleasure. For the first time she was fully aware of the sweetness of her body, and she loved all its trivial and commonplace joys: the joy of sitting down, of getting up again, of feeling her strong young legs swing, at their leisure, as she walked along the street in her own rhythm, of moving her pretty white arm, now down pressing, now up with a free swing, as she brushed her hair at night.
She quit her job because Miss Goff began to look at her. Not at her face, either, nor at her feet, but at a point midway between. Partly it was merely an annoyance, resulting from her own self-consciousness as much as from the other’s impertinence; but it was also a real danger, for Miss Goff might say something to Mr. Graham, and Mr. Graham to Mrs. Ranley, and Mrs. Ranley was an old friend of Cecelia’s mother, down home.… So on a crisp autumn morning Lora went to Mr. Graham’s private office and told him that after the following Saturday she would not return. He timidly and nervously pulled at his little grey moustache and expressed his regrets and his best wishes for a happy and successful career, offering no objection after he had learned that she intended to resume her piano lessons. Which of course she didn’t.
Cecelia knew. Around the middle of July, only a week after Pete’s departure, she had gone home for a brief summer visit; and Lora, after long consideration of all the chances and probabilities, had gone with her. On the train on the way down the need for an ally and confidant had become suddenly overwhelming. Cecelia had of course been aware for some time of the nature of her relations with Pete; it had been the cause of many strained and uncomfortable silences and two or three hot debates between them; now she learned that one of the direst of her various dire predictions had come true. She claimed to have already discovered it for herself, but Lora doubted that, for she herself had difficulty detecting any objective difference even when she was naked. At any rate, Cecelia knew it now, and for the last three hours of the trip, as the train sped through the lazy fat summer fields and the factories and houses of villages and towns, she offered a voluble mixture of sympathy, advice, compassion, suggestion, and vows of loyalty and silence. She had taken it for granted, she said, that Lora would resort to abortion; her voice was shrill and her eyes gleamed with excitement as she said abortion. But she was even more excited by the news that Lora meant to go through with it. This was where the suggestions mainly entered; she offered a dozen different plans in astonishing elaboration of detail, and was willing to help with any of them. She would not breathe a word, not a word to a living soul.
Lora pressed her hand. “If you love me, Cece.”
“I won’t, don’t you worry. I can keep my mouth shut.”
Apparently she did, for Lora detected no whisper during their two weeks’ stay. Her mother, paler and more tearful than ever, obviously saw nothing to arouse her suspicions, and her father was scarcely curious enough to ask about her progress with the piano lessons. He was more aloof than ever; it appeared to have become habitual with him to spend practically all of his evenings away from home, at the lodge perhaps, or the movies, or the library—Mrs. Winter professed to know nothing about it and he vouchsafed nothing. Only on the train on the way back to Chicago did Lora realize how little she had seen of him.
After she quit her job, in October, she was amazed at the rapidity of the flight of time. She had supposed that with nothing to do the days would hang heavy on her hands, and she was afraid of them; she didn’t at all relish the prospect of so much time to sit and think when thinking offered no solution to the questions she had to answer. Insofar as she decided anything at all, she decided that the questions would have to answer themselves. Fate, or Pete, or the will of heaven, no matter what, had put the seed of a baby in her, and in the course of time it would be ready to come out. So much for that. Cecelia’s complicated plans seemed to her ridiculous and fantastic. None of them altered in the slightest degree the essential fact that the baby was there, and would soon be here. What to do then, when it actually was here, a living breathing kicking baby out of her own insides—well, that question too would apparently have to answer itself; certainly there seemed to be no answer handy at the moment. There was indeed one practical preparation that might be made, and Lora did not overlook it. It made her feel silly, and it seemed grotesquely unreal, but she visited the infants’ wear departments of the large uptown stores and acquired a complete wardrobe. Some few garments she made herself, sewing them delicately and laboriously by hand.
Cecelia was both moved and amused. “I’ve never understood how you can do that until you know how big it’s going to be,” she declared.
“Oh, they’re all about the same size,” said Lora, as one who should know.
To her surprise the time flew by. She seemed never to have got much of anything done—a little sewing, a walk down to the park and back, a trip uptown with Cecelia, a book read—in particular one called Before the Baby Comes which Cecelia brought her one day after having lectured her for not getting advice from a doctor—and the only tasks that immediately confronted her were inconsequential, just as good for tomorrow as for today—but it was amazing how quickly each Sunday came with Monday hardly out of sight yet and the new one waiting only upon the morrow’s awakening. She had quit her job four weeks ago—no, five—no, great heavens, six! She must count up again. It would be soon now, so soon it was no longer months, only weeks, and before she knew it would be days.
The calendar computation was verified by the evidence of her body. It was no longer merely swelling, it was positively a balloon; as Cecelia said, she stuck out like a sheet on a clothesline with the wind puffing it out until you expected it to pop. Of an evening Lora would lie on the couch, reading, and all of a sudden would call out, “Quick, Cece, come!” Cecelia would bounce out of her chair and run over and put her hand flat on the balloon, her eyes gleaming expectantly, and after a moment would say in a voice trembling with excitement, “I felt it! Just as plain! My god, it’s strong!”
“Sure,” Lora would nod complacently.
For one thing she was grateful: her body no longer yearned for Pete. The first month after his departure had been misery, plain physical misery. It might be felt at any time of day, on her stool at the switchboard, at home in the evening trying to read, at the movies, where she went frequently in desperation, but it was worst at night in bed. Whether with Cecelia or alone—on those occasions when Cecelia had at bedtime not yet returned from a party or the theatre—made no difference; she would squirm and turn and toss endlessly, she simply couldn’t help it. Her loins and limbs and all the inside of her were miserable with loneliness; time and again she would get into a half sleep only to awake with a groan and a start and feel the restlessness and woe swell again throughout her body until she wanted to scream. She dreamt of him by day and night, but never did she see his face or hear his voice; never indeed did she see him properly at all, but felt him with an acute and startling vividness. She talked in her sleep, Cecelia said; during all this period Cecelia had a good deal to say. Often after Lora had tossed and turned sleeplessly for an hour or more Cecelia’s tart voice would snap in the darkness:
“Your little playmate certainly taught you bad habits. For god’s sake, can’t you be still?”
Habits, ha, little she knows about it, Lora would think, not bothering to reply. Sometimes she would crawl out of bed and go to the front room and smoke cigarettes until Cecelia had had time to go to sleep.
But all that was now, thank heaven, a memory; either her body had become reconciled to that sudden and violent deprivation, or, more likely, it was too busy with a new job which required all its resources and faculties. She thought of Pete many times a day; always at night when she wound the wristwatch, and often when she walked alone over routes they had taken together or when she saw newspaper headlines about the war, but the sharp edges of her loneliness had rubbed smooth. Sometimes on going to bed at night, after kicking off her slippers, all ready to crawl in, she would whisper to herself a line from a poem, an Indian poem translated by Byron, Pete had read to her once:
Oh my lonely, lonely, lonely pillow
But that was literature, and she knew it; within three minutes she would be sound asleep.
The Saturday before Christmas Cecelia went home for the holidays. This raised a difficult problem, how to account for Lora’s failure to go too, Cecelia offered to forego her own visit, but Lora wouldn’t hear of it; no, she said, it would look even queerer if neither of them went. She would write to her parents and tell them—well, tell them what? That she had decided to visit a friend somewhere. What friend, and where? Very well, she would merely tell them that Mr. Burchellini had said that her lessons and practice should not suffer any interruption; the present was a critical time in her development and she should not miss even a single day. But though she started the letter three times she found she could not write it. It was too barefaced a lie and involved too many details; she simply couldn’t make it sound right. In the end it was agreed that Cecelia should go on Saturday as planned, and on the evening of her arrival, without delay, should call on Mr. and Mrs. Winter and explain the situation to them; she could say that Mr. Burchellini had made his stern decision at the last minute. That would look more plausible, they agreed.
“Your father’s so goofy, if he suspects anything he might get on the first train and come up here,” Cecelia warned her.
She could take a room somewhere for the period of the holidays, but that might only make matters worse; if a letter or telegram arrived at the apartment she should be there to answer it at once. It would be better to stay.
“Promise you’ll be back sure the day after New Year’s,” Lora implored, the morning Cecelia left.
“You bet I will, I wouldn’t miss it for anything. If anything happens too soon don’t forget the doctor’s phone number is on the pad on the bureau, and send me a telegram and I’ll come at once. If you have it while I’m away I’ll never forgive you.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t if I can help it,” Lora promised. She let Cecelia go to the station alone, for Before the Baby Comes said that all rapid and violent movements should be avoided, and she didn’t want to risk the jolting of a taxicab.
The next day was Sunday, and she lay abed till late—a habit carried over from the switchboard days. The apartment seemed silent and very empty with Cecelia gone, and in spite of herself she was tormented by a vague feeling of restlessness and uneasiness. In the bath she did not as usual find a leisurely delight in letting the tepid water from the shower trickle over her smooth shoulders and arms and the round magnificent protrusion of her middle, turning into little rivulets down her legs; she was irritated by a baseless and unreasonable impulse to hurry through with it and get her clothes on. After breakfast she tried both sewing and reading, but couldn’t get settled to either one; a walk was out of the question, for outdoors the first real blizzard of the season was howling down the street and around the corners, with great gusts of snow and sleet, straight from the bleak northwest, serving notice on anyone who ventured to peek out that this was a day for those who had walls and roofs to use them and not try any funny business. Sometime after noon Lora was seated by a window surveying the turbulent scene with an idle and indifferent gaze, with a closed book in her lap, thinking that it was about time to prepare something for lunch, when the doorbell rang.
It rang objectively the way it always rang, whether for the iceman or for Stubby Mallinson or for Cecelia when she had forgotten her keys, but Lora was so startled that she jumped to her feet like a shot, letting the book fall to the floor. She stood there trembling all over. That was no iceman or Stubby Mallinson or Cecelia; she knew it.
It’s him, she said to herself. He caught the eight o’clock morning train, and that’s him. He bullied Cecelia, and she told him.
She stood without breathing. All at once the bell rang again, and she quivered as though the wire had been connected directly to her and had sent a shock throughout her body. She decided that the only thing to do was to open the door. It was useless and senseless not to; somehow, sometime, he would get in; he would get in all right if it took a year; open the door and get it over with. But she did not move, until suddenly her legs gave way under her and she sank back into the chair. She sat there gazing at the little button on the wall with which the lower door was opened, and as she did so the bell rang once more; this time it had no effect, she continued to gaze unmoving at the button. After another and longer interval the bell rang again, and this time it seemed it never would end; it clanged, insistent, loudly peremptory, until she thought she couldn’t stand it another second; finally it stopped, and the ensuing silence was more terrible than the clangor had been. Still she sat motionless for a long time, every nerve on edge against another assault, but it didn’t come. Many minutes passed; that was all, apparently, for that time.
Fool, she thought, I should have gone to the window and looked out to make sure. It might have been almost anyone.…
Oh, no, it might not. Oh, no. She was just a plain ordinary coward. She had been too scared even to think, she told herself; still was, for that matter. Absolutely scared stiff. Brave little woman.…But what can you expect? After all it wasn’t so simple; one could hardly call it simple. Damn Cece anyway, damn her little soul—but no, that wasn’t fair, not at all fair. She would hate to have had the job of standing up to her father and going through with a straight hard lie. Poor Cece. Where was he now? Had he gone? Was he standing below in the vestibule this minute, waiting? Down there so close he could hear her if she yelled out of the window or if she opened the hall door and called down to him, just one flight. Well. He couldn’t stay there forever.
At any rate she must eat. She went to the kitchen and made some toast and fried a piece of ham. The eggs should be coddled, the chapter on diet said, so she heated a pot of water to the boiling point and then turned out the gas, put the eggs in with a spoon, and replaced the lid. She had just taken them out and got them opened and scraped into a cup, and dropped a piece of butter on top, when the telephone began to ring. It startled her a little, but her hand was perfectly steady as she picked up a spoon and stirred the butter into the steaming egg meat so it would melt quickly. The phone rang on; she took the toast from the oven and arranged everything on the tray and carried it in to the table in the front room. “Not at home,” she said aloud to the corner of the mantel where the telephone stood; and sat down to eat. She ate slowly and methodically, and finished every crumb.
If her restlessness of the morning had made sewing or reading difficult, they were now impossible. But the deuce of it was that nothing was possible. It was out of the question to attempt to fly; it was impossible to remain. She had decided to let the unanswerable questions answer themselves; they were setting about it with a vengeance. She was cornered. Cornered? By what? Her mind slipped away from that question; but back in it somewhere, not permitted to get into words, was a conviction that if her father got his hands on her he would kill her. There was no justification in history for that conviction; after all it is a considerable step from kicking a cat to assaulting murderously your only child; but that belief and dread were in her. She had not known how profound and intense a fear of her father had been buried in her heart; even now it did not come clear and full into her consciousness, but it was close, right at the door, ringing a bell of alarm and warning, just as he had brought her out of her chair, trembling to her feet, with the jangle of the bell screwed there on the wall.
When the bell on the wall finally rang again the early winter dusk had come. Inside the apartment it was so dark that the outlines of the furniture could barely be discerned, but Lora did not turn on the light. The luncheon tray still rested on the table, and she still sat in her chair beside it, waiting. All afternoon she had sat there. She had taken no measures and made no decisions, but she knew what had to be done—or rather, what had to be borne. It was a blessing, she thought, that Pete had gone beyond all hope, for if he had been within reach the temptation to fly to him would have been irresistible, and it was just as well not to know what might have come of that. Assuredly anything is preferable to death, granted that the alternative leaves it thinkable to go on living; but that’s just the trouble, it may merely remove death a bit in time and space while it renders it more painful and hideous in quality.
When the bell rang again at the end of twilight she went at once to the button and pressed it several times, then switched on the light and opened the hall door. She recognized his footsteps on the stairs. He appeared on the landing and came down the hall to where she waited at the open door and stood there looking at her, offering no greeting, his hands in the pockets of his heavy woolen ulster, which was turned up and buttoned around his throat and covered with snow.
“Hello, this is a surprise,” Lora had said as he reached the top of the stairs, and now she spoke again:
“You’d better shake your hat and coat, they’re covered.”
He took them off and shook them thoroughly, and preceded her through the door. She followed him into the front room, where he threw his hat and coat on a chair and turned to look at her; she stood almost in the center of the room, with the light from the ceiling fixture shining directly on her; impudently she stood straight in the fullest light.
“Where were you at two o’clock?” said her father.
“I was here. I’ve been here all day.”
“You didn’t answer the bell. Who was with you?”
Her heart jumped a beat. I see, that’s it, she thought, I never thought of that. She shook her head:
“No one.”
“Is anyone here now?”
“Of course not.”
She was looking straight into his eyes, and his gaze met hers. Neither wavered. But suddenly his eyes slanted off downwards, and slowly descending their focus became successively her nose, then her chin, her throat, the pass between her breasts, her abdomen, the apex of her thighs. It was a complete and deliberate violation, and she stood without moving a muscle and watched him do it, knowing only that she should not so stand and submit, she should strike him dead, at the least tear out his shameless eyes and leave the glaring empty sockets as testimony of his punishment. There was a crooked twist to his mouth, and it reminded her of the way Pete looked the day she told him about the baby. That was an insane idea, she thought; certainly there was no resemblance between her father and Pete Halliday, inside or out. Let him look, let him get his eyes full. That was what she had stood under the light for.
“Who was it?” he said.
She shook her head.
“Who is he?”
Well, she thought, what’s the use, I can settle that.
“He’s gone away. To the war. He’s been gone a long while.”
His mouth twisted up again, but he said nothing.
“Cecelia told you all about it I suppose.”
This he disregarded. He stuck his hands in his trouser pockets, took a long breath, and said calmly:
“We’re going home on the six-twenty. That’s an hour; you’ve got twenty minutes to get ready.”
“There isn’t any six-twenty.”
“There is the way we’re going.”
Lora didn’t move. “But why go home? I don’t see—”
“Good god,” he burst out, “you don’t mean to say you’re going to argue about it!” At once calm again, he added, “Your mother is at home waiting for you.”
For a long instant she hung on the edge of final and desperate rebellion. This sudden and unexpected proposal bewildered her. Why home; what could be his idea in that? Certainly it sounded harmless enough, but she was suspicious of it. Indeed, now that she saw his face, his unreal composure, his eyes that were hiding behind a film she could not penetrate, she realized that anything he proposed or did would be suspicious, and she wished with all her heart that she had had the courage to act on her impulse of yesterday, after Cecelia’s departure, to pack up and go—lose herself a thousand miles away. Then suddenly all that seemed tommyrot, mere weak hysteria; after all, what else would a father do but take his daughter home, that was natural enough. She remembered her room there, large and airy and comfortable, with windows on the south and east so that the morning sun always came in to greet her, with two big easy chairs and the shelves of books on either side of the fireplace, where she could have a blaze whenever she wanted it, the winter wind whistling around the corner and through the trees, or, in summer, the breeze rustling their leafy branches so close to the open window that they seemed about to come in and dance around the room; and the wide soft bed, all her own, so wide it didn’t matter which direction she lay there was plenty of room, and so soft—oh, that was the bed, for any purpose whatever.…
She let her father take her home. He sat on a chair waiting while she packed a suitcase and a bag. After ten minutes had passed he kept looking at his watch and calling to her to hurry, so that she forgot several items which she thought of afterwards on the train; but two things she did not forget: the miniature wardrobe she had assembled during the preceding two months and the contents of the handkerchief drawer. Since Pete’s departure it had again grown to respectable proportions, but it was all in twenties, so she could stuff it into her stocking just above the knee. She made sure it was safe; that was her only insurance against fate.
They went to a railroad station she did not know. At first sight it seemed unfamiliar, and she gazed around at the row of ticket windows and the arrangement of benches in the waiting room to make sure. Immediately she was seized with panic; she stopped dead and refused to move a step. Her father yelled to the porter, who halted to wait for them, and then turned to her and explained. This train did not go home, but was on another line which stopped at Overton. At Overton they would hire a car to drive them home, forty miles over a state road. Did Lora want to arrive at their home station and descend from the train with everyone there from taxi drivers to the ticket agent recognizing her and looking at her? He explained this patiently, and she was touched by the evidence of his thoughtfulness and ingenuity. It seemed a bit over-subtle even for him, but of course he was right; she would have hated that. She walked beside him down the long platform, and they had barely found their seats in the parlor car when the train jerked forward and rolled slowly out of the shed.
They got to Overton after midnight, an hour late on account of the snowstorm. But their real tussle with the storm then began, during the forty-mile drive northwest, directly in the teeth of the blizzard. They had difficulty finding anyone who would undertake it, and finally persuaded a man who owned a little garage on the edge of town and whose only available vehicle was an open touring-car. He put up curtains, but the wind tore them open before they had gone a mile; and a few miles further on they got stuck in a drift. That was what he had put in the shovels for. Ten minutes’ furious work by the two men, while Lora sat huddled in robes and blankets on the rear seat, got them underway again. Four times more the performance was repeated before they got through, and in between these episodes they shoved the wheels stubbornly forward in low or second gear, with a wind of hurricane force, cruelly cold, blinding and stinging them with the icy particles of sleet and snow it drove before it. Once the driver had to fight his way through the drifts to a farmhouse and bring the farmer with a team of horses to pull them back on the road, or at least where the road was supposed to be. This was mad, Lora thought. Plain crazy. They should have stayed at a hotel in Overton. But the driver, a wiry little man with a strong foreign accent and bushy eyebrows which now were shelves of frozen snow, evidently didn’t mind it at all; he would laugh in gay excitement and shout encouragements to the car as it plunged and struggled forward. Lora was certain her feet were frozen.
As they turned into the driveway of their home her father looked at his watch by the dashboard light and announced that it was four o’clock. He paid off the driver, repeating his advice against attempting a return trip until the day came. He wouldn’t, the driver said; he knew a place to go where he could get just what he needed, inside and out. Then Lora wriggled out of her nest of blankets and robes, and her father picked her up in his arms and carried her through the drifts that had piled up to the very door. As they went in a blast of wind and snow whirled in too. The living room was warm, all the lights were on, and logs were blazing in the fireplace; and Mrs. Winter was there, arising from a chair in front of the fire as they entered. More slight and fragile than ever, her eyes red with weeping, a brown shawl around her shoulders, she came a step or two toward them, then stood still, swaying a little it seemed with the dancing light of the fire behind her. Lora knew she had to put her arms around her and kiss her, and she didn’t want to. She was filled that instant with a deep and overwhelming regret that she had let herself be brought home. Home indeed. This her mother! This weak ineffectual ghost—when what she needed was strength against her own weakness. That man would destroy them both yet—her mother was gone already beyond all hope of salvage; and here was she herself back again, and though she was by no means beyond hope she felt herself quivering with a distrust and revulsion that went clear to the center of her bones. Drowsy with cold and exhaustion, the warmth of the room was arousing her blood, awakening her momentarily into a curious trance of excitement and terror; everything was unreal and threatening and dangerous. She should not have come, she should never have let him bring her here.
Her arms were around her mother’s shoulders when her father’s voice sounded, dry and hostile:
“I told you not to keep the lights on.”
This struck Lora as outrageously petty and unreasonable, and the remembered tone made her furious. She turned and flung at him:
“Oh, shut up. Just once shut up.”
In a vague gesture, presumably comforting, the palm of Mrs. Winter’s hand was rubbing up and down the sleeve of her daughter’s dress.
“I pulled the shades down tight,” she said.
Mr. Winter paid no attention to Lora’s outburst. “That would help a lot,” he said sarcastically. “From now on do what I tell you, understand that. Come on to bed. I’ve got to be out at eight.” His voice rose a little, thin and strained. “Lora, you go to bed and stay there. Understand that. Stay there.”
On his way to the hall he pressed the wall switch, and mother and daughter, following him, guided themselves by the dancing firelight.
The following afternoon Lora found that she was a prisoner. She was not under any circumstances to go downstairs, she was not to show herself at the window, and the door of her room was to be kept always closed; she was to open it to go down the hall to the bathroom only with circumspection after making sure there was no one about. Her meals would be brought up to her. These rules were imparted to her by her mother, who repeated them as if she were reciting a lesson. To Lora, strengthened and refreshed by ten hours’ sleep and a good meal, the arrangement seemed fantastic. She argued with her mother about it. Sooner or later people would know; things like that were always found out. Martha, the maid, would learn, and of course would talk. Cecelia already knew, and apparently had already talked. But this Mrs. Winter denied. Under a storm of questions and demands Cecelia had stuck to her story and refused to admit anything. His intuition, or maybe the devil, had sent him to Chicago. Cecelia could be trusted. Martha too. Martha loved Lora too well to give her away; she would be as tight as a clam.
Mrs. Winter sat in a rocker beside the bed and went on for an hour; Lora could not remember when her mother had talked as much in a month as she did that afternoon. She seemed more excited than distressed at her daughter’s predicament; she insisted on knowing all the details, the man’s name, the occasion, what he looked like.
“You’re lucky he went away,” she said, her eyes, usually so dull and red, shining as Lora had never seen them before. “Yes you are, you’re lucky. I know what I’m talking about—whatever else he might have done it would be worse than going away.” She sighed, a trembling miniature sigh, as if that was all she could risk without danger of dissolution. “I know I’ve never been a good mother. I’ve never been a good anything. I never have been since my wedding day. That night he looked at me with a look in his eyes I’ve never forgot, and if I’d known then what it meant I’d have gone straight and jumped in the river. There was a lovely river right by the house. You wouldn’t remember it, we left that place when you were still a baby.”
Her eyes glittered.
“There’s a lot you don’t know. I was three months gone on my wedding day; that’s why he married me, I told him he had to. And then after you came he pretended to believe you weren’t his daughter. He never believed that at all, but he claimed to. How do I know he never believed it? Lots of ways. One thing, he stopped kissing you when you began to fill out. I used to watch every day, I used to notice how funny he acted, and sure enough one day it was too much for him. That night in bed I laughed at him and told him I guessed he might as well give up; it was plain he knew where you came from. In bed was always the only time I could talk to him, it’s still that way, I’m not afraid then, I say anything I want to and that’s when I get even with him. Lying down that way is the time to deal with a man. Often it was too much for him, he couldn’t stand it, he’d get up and walk up and down, raving in his quiet voice so you and Martha couldn’t hear him—he always had a horror of you hearing us—and sometimes he’d go off downstairs no matter what time of night it was and I’d go to sleep. But he has never once admitted that he knows he’s your father. I could never drive him to that, but he knows it all right. He even used to claim he knew who it was—made it up to torment me. At first I didn’t have any sense about it. I would beg him with tears in my eyes to believe me. Oh, I didn’t know him then. You were just a tiny baby, and with you right there in the room watching us I would get on my knees to him and beg him.”
Lora, astonished and fascinated, lay and listened to this recital of her origin and early history. Her mother talked on and on in a ceaseless flood, protesting, accusing, justifying, revealing the details of the homely and vulgar tragedy that had ended by her grasping the occasion of her daughter’s pregnancy for sharing the tortures she had kept concealed for twenty years. Lora understood that, and she understood too why her sympathy for her mother had always been smothered within her, never emerging into expression, never truly finding itself in her heart. She could not have explained it, but she felt that she understood it. As her mother’s story went on Lora heard less and less of it; her mind was filling with the clear and strong conviction that she was going to have all she could do to manage her own affairs so as to avoid disaster; these people were dangerous; whatever prudence and good will were found to lift her out of her difficulty she would have to furnish herself or discover elsewhere, not here.
Except money. That was the real point: money. She felt this all the more strongly on account of an unpleasant discovery she had made a few hours earlier. Undressing the night before, cold and sleepy and exhausted, she had placed her roll of twenties carelessly on top of the bureau, and on arising shortly after noon and going to get her hairbrush had noticed that the roll was no longer there. She looked in all the drawers, on the floor, in her bag and suitcase, everywhere; it was gone. Later she asked her mother, who said she knew nothing of it. Martha was out of the question. Had her father come in her room before he left that morning? Her mother didn’t know. It was quite possible. It was certain.
Her father knew that too, that the real point was money. He would. Of course the twenties were rightfully his, but that only made it worse. She was in a tight place. He had locked her door more effectually than he could have done with any key.
Her mother’s mouth, once opened, seemed likely never again to close. Towards twilight that first afternoon she went to her neglected household duties downstairs, but the next day she resumed; obviously she was cleaning out a pool that had lain stagnant for two decades. For three weeks, daily, she poured into her daughter’s ears all her accumulation of venom and despair. In the end Lora heard nothing; it became just a meaningless disagreeable noise whose only significance consisted in its interruption to her own thoughts. Her mother demanded a judgment in terms, but Lora could not furnish it; not bothering to evade, she merely shook her head and was silent. She had a feeling that not only was a judgment impossible, but also that neither her father nor her mother desired one. Her mother sought an ally, that was all; and no thank you, she had her own battle to win and could not afford to identify it with a cause already lost before she was born.
For three weeks she kept to her room. After the first day or two Martha brought up her meals. Martha didn’t say much, refusing to answer the simplest questions; she had instructions not to talk, she said; plainly she was frightened and apprehensive. But good heavens, Lora protested, there was no reason why she shouldn’t talk to her, it was too ridiculous, she wasn’t a mysterious captive in a dungeon. Martha merely sighed and shook her head. In the morning Mrs. Winter would come in for a brief visit, and always soon after lunch she would appear again, establish herself in the rocker near the window, and knit and talk until long after the early winter dusk had compelled them to draw the shades and turn on the light. It appeared that Mrs. Ivers, who had come from Toronto not so long ago, had persuaded a group of ladies to knit socks for Canadian soldiers, and it amused Lora to consider that the very pair now growing so rapidly in her mother’s deft fingers might be destined for Pete Halliday’s feet. She doubted though if they were big enough; Pete had enormous feet.
She hated being confined to her room. Besides, Before the Baby Comes said that gentle but regular exercise should be continued right up to the last. Uneasily she submitted. She didn’t like it. If secrecy was what he wanted why drag her down here from Chicago? It was idiotic to think it could really be kept a secret. For her part she was willing to let the whole town know it, and take the consequences. She wasn’t going to stay here anyway; she had gone once and she would go again, just as soon as she could manage it. How, was another question, to be answered when the time came. For the present there was nothing for it but to let her father have his way, even to acquiescence in his elaborate and melodramatic precautions.
She was beginning to feel that her father might have been able to find something to say for himself. As for her mother, let who could unravel that tangle; but for her part what had she to complain of? After all, here she was, well cared for, warmed, sheltered, clothed, fed—which Pete said was all that life consisted of. And love, he had added, with his mouth twisted. Assuredly she had never been loved by anyone, except possibly Cecelia; or if to love meant what she had felt for Pete, with the remnants of it still closing her eyes and accelerating her breath now and then like the fragrance from an empty scent bottle, she knew what to expect from that quarter. Nothing. That was done.
She was grateful to her father. In contrast to the sudden and prolonged volubility of her mother, he said nothing. Each evening he appeared in the room for a few minutes after dinner, inquired if she wanted anything, made sure that the shades were tight against the windows, remarked on the weather or the book she was reading, and departed. One evening he told her that Cecelia had returned to Chicago, and that before she left he had informed her of Lora’s whereabouts and received again her promise of secrecy. It was thoughtful of him, Lora considered, to relieve her mind about Cece.
But mostly during those three weeks her mind was not on Cece or the memory of Pete or her father and mother. Even the farcical captivity and its restrictions and regulations were of no importance compared with her own intimate physical problem and its delightful and terrifying promise. There were so many different ways to think about it! The bodily pain and danger, the thought of which sometimes frightened her terribly and at others merely filled her with a calm assurance and fortitude; the speculation as to whether it would be a boy or a girl—she couldn’t definitely decide which she wanted; the picture of herself afterwards, after the first two or three days were over, lying in the wide soft bed with her own baby in her arms; the dressing and feeding and washing, which took all one’s time, positively every minute of the day; all these contemplations and images and a hundred others busied and thrilled her endlessly. She tried hard to realize—not just to say it, but actually to realize it—that a live baby with arms and legs and eyes and ears was really inside of her; it was enormously difficult no matter how she concentrated on it. Not that it was possible to doubt it either; it kicked and stirred and shivered too hard and too often for any doubt; sometimes it seemed as if it actually intended to turn a complete somersault, and she would hold her breath until it quieted down again. Once it went two whole days without a sign of life, and fear crept into her heart; then all at once, just after she had gone to bed, it kicked so hard she laughed aloud and scolded it for trying to make a break before the time came.
One thing worried her. She decided to ask her mother about it, but somehow the question didn’t come out, though the intention carried over for several days. When her father came in the following evening she waited till he had finished his customary tour of the windows and then as he stopped in front of her chair asked him abruptly:
“What doctor are you going to have?”
His eyes dropped.
“I’ve attended to it,” he said.
“Not Doctor Graves?”
“You don’t like him?”
“No.”
“All right. There are plenty of doctors.”
He turned as if to go. Lora said hurriedly to his back:
“A book I read says there should be an examination beforehand.”
He turned at the door, frowning.
“You’ll have to leave those things to me. You can safely suppose that I know what I’m doing.”
He was gone.
It was three days later, in the middle of the afternoon, that the first pain came. Lora had both read and heard descriptions of it, and had resolved to force herself to take it calmly. But at the first onset her determination was swept aside in an irresistible wave of terror. She stayed in her chair though, grasping its arms and holding her lips tight against the impulse to cry out; then when it was over she went shakily to the head of the stairs and called her mother, who came running and told her to undress and get into bed. Then Mrs. Winter went out again, and downstairs. Lora opened the door a crack and heard her at the telephone, but it was too far away to get what she said. Before she was ready in her nightgown her mother returned, a little flurried and excited, but with a new air of competent command.
“There’s no hurry,” she said. “Don’t be frightened. It may be an hour or more before another one comes.”
“Did you phone the doctor?”
“I phoned, yes. Don’t wear that gown, you’ll ruin it. Here, wait, I’ll get you one.”
“What doctor?”
“You can ask him. He’s coming.”
“Which one?”
“Your father, I mean.”
It proved to be many times worse than any picture her imagination had drawn. As the book had said was customary, the pains were at first infrequent, only five or six of them in the first two hours, but after that the intervals were shorter, until finally it became, as it seemed to her, an unbroken and intolerable agony. Her father, who had arrived shortly after her mother had telephoned, had said at first that there was no hurry about the doctor; somewhat later, as she lay gasping trying to arouse her strength for the next one, she overheard talk between them which confirmed her suspicion that no doctor had been summoned. A wave of fear and fury swept over her; she sat up in bed and started to shout at them, not knowing what she was saying; they both ran over and pushed her back onto the pillow; she felt another convulsion gathering itself together down in the center of her, and braced herself and held her breath to meet it. She would deal with them after it passed. But then she was so exhausted that everything seemed hopeless and futile; she looked at them and thought of things to say, tried to invent a formula for imposing her will on them, but it floated off out of her grasp, no words would come. It wasn’t important enough; nothing was important but to get rid of the terrible and inexorable pressure that was tearing her body in two and ripping her bones open. She saw her mother’s face leaning over her.
“I had…no idea…” she said. “How much longer do you suppose.…”
“It will be all right,” her mother said. “You’re having a hard time. Do you know it’s nearly midnight? Try not to groan so loud.”
Every now and then she was aware that her mother was fooling with her down there, putting something in apparently, or taking something out, she didn’t know which. It appeared to help; she believed that it helped until the next time came, and then it seemed worse than ever. Once they got her onto her knees, with her head forward and down and her legs spread apart; her mother argued with her insistently that that was the natural way, quicker and better than lying on her back. At first it did seem so, but then all at once it felt as if her legs were being grasped, one on either side, and torn violently asunder; seized with panic she flopped onto her back and wouldn’t let them touch her. It was plain by that time that it wasn’t going to come out at all; this was a part of their scheme; she was done for.
Even then the end was still far off. When it came her mind was numb. She was aware of everything, but the thread of her consciousness was so frayed and attenuated that her awareness was like a vague and feeble dream. She knew that something unprecedented was happening, something that had never happened before; she felt her mother’s hands, quick and strong; and all at once she realized that the terrible expectancy, the desperate gathering of forces from muscles and veins and nerves and bones from which all force had disappeared never to return, was gone. The world had come to an end at last. She wanted to open her eyes, but could not. She heard footsteps—that would be her father—and a door open and close. Her mother was still doing something with her. What for? It was all over.…
She opened her eyes. “It came,” she said.
“Yes. Lie quiet. You’re not through yet.”
“It came. Where is it?”
“Getting fixed. Lie quiet.”
“Fixed?”
“Of course. Fixed and washed.”
She closed her eyes. It was not long before other pains came, but they didn’t amount to much. She helped them indifferently, not caring and scarcely feeling them. After a long time she opened her eyes again. Her mother was kneeling on the floor, busy with what seemed to be a pile of newspapers. Her father was not in the room.
“Where is it?” she said.
Her mother looked up. “It’s all right. Go to sleep. You must go to sleep.”
I will not, Lora thought, and then knew nothing more.
When she awoke the shades were up and the pale January sunshine was streaming in at the east windows. She looked idly about. The room had been tidied up. It looked remarkably tidy, in fact; even the chair on which she laid her things when she undressed at night was empty; there were no books or magazines on the little table beside her bed. Most curious of all, and she decided that was why she felt so queer and stuffy, the windows were not open—only a crack of a few inches in the one next to the bureau—and the room was quite warm and there was an odd smell in the air. Her head felt dizzy.
Suddenly she threw the covers back and sat up straight and looked sharply around. She got out of bed and for an instant stood there beside it, swaying a little on her feet, then made for the door and down the hall to the head of the stairs.
“Mother!” she called, and repeated it at once more loudly, “Mother!”
Her mother appeared at the foot of the stairs, and started up towards her. She came quickly, and grasped Lora’s arm.
“Get back in bed,” she said. “You’re crazy, don’t you know you’re sick?” She led her down the hall and into the bedroom. “Come on, back in bed this second. I’ll bring your breakfast. I was only gone a minute or two, and of course you had to wake up while I was away. No, wait, I’ll change the sheets while you’re out. Here, put this around you and sit here. I’ll shut the window.”
Lora took the shawl and stood with it in her hand. “Where is it?” she said.
“Where’s what? It’s all right. Don’t bother me with questions, wait till I get your bed fixed and bring your breakfast.” She was a miniature cyclone, dragging off the old sheets, flapping out the clean ones, running from one side of the bed to the other. “I haven’t had a minute’s sleep, not a minute. Neither has he. And Martha got here late—she was at her sister’s last night—and I had everything to do myself—it’s past ten o’clock and she’s just started on the breakfast dishes—”
Lora took her by the arm and turned her around.
“Where is it?”
Her mother became perfectly still in her grasp as an animal will, feeling itself caught. She made no reply.
“What have you done with it?”
Her mother’s eyes met hers, and she stepped back from them.
“It’s dead. You’ve got to know. It’s dead.”
Lora stared at her. She stared back, and added:
“It was born dead.”
Lora took two steps to the bed and sat down on its edge. “No,” she said. “No, it wasn’t.”
“It was born dead,” her mother repeated. “That’s why you had such a hard time. It was terrible. I ought to know, I took it myself.”
Lora continued to stare at her. Finally she said, “That’s a lie. It wasn’t dead. I heard it. I knew you were no good. Oh, god, I’ve known all my life you were no good.” Her fists were clenched tight, separately, in her lap.
“It’s not the first time a baby was born dead,” said her mother. “I know it’s terrible. It’s hard. Look here, you say I’m no good. I’ve told you, haven’t I? I’m not as big a coward as he is. I’ve stood up to you and told you. He went early, so he wouldn’t be here when you woke up, I know. He went as soon as it was daylight, leaving me to tell you. I know I’m no good, but look at him.” A laugh rattled out of her. “You’re none too lucky in your mother, but your father, your own father—”
“Where is it?” Lora demanded.
“What? It’s dead I tell you.”
“Yes, I mean where is it.” She unclenched her hands and stood up, steadying herself by the bedpost. “I want to see it.”
“It’s gone.”
“It can’t be. I want to see it. Listen, Mother, please, can’t you see I’ve got to see it?”
At that her mother flopped on her knees by the bed and began to cry. Her thin shoulders rose and fell, her head rolled back and forth on her folded arms, and she sobbed as Lora had never heard her before. Lora stood a moment, then sat down on the bed again. After a while words began to come in the interstices of her mother’s sobs, with her head still buried in her arms. Of course Lora wanted to see her baby, she said. Of course she did. She couldn’t. It was really gone. He had taken it. He had taken it right away and gone out of the house with it and stayed a long while; he had stayed two hours or more. When he came back he wouldn’t say anything except that he had attended to it. Then he ate breakfast, a big breakfast, four eggs she had never known him to eat before, and pretty soon, after daylight came, he went again, leaving her, Lora’s mother, to tell her. Lora was suffering of course, but so was she; she had suffered for twenty years and there would never be an end of it.
Lora reached down and gripped her mother’s shoulders and pulled her up to look at her.
“Was it dead?” she demanded.
Her mother nodded. “It’s dead.”
“Was it dead when he took it?”
That question was never answered. Not then or ever. Mrs. Winter got to her feet and stumbled out of the room, sobbing afresh, and down the stairs. Lora sat on the edge of the bed staring at the open door. She got up and pushed the door shut, then returned and sat down again. She felt cold and faint and the objects in the room were staggering crazily in front of her eyes. She fell back onto the bed and pulled the covers up, turned over on her face and lay there without moving.
When Martha came in with her breakfast tray half an hour later she refused to move or make any reply to the maid’s greeting, until, frightened, Martha approached and touched her shoulder; then she turned her head a little.
“Let me alone, I’m all right.”
“You’ve got to eat, Miss Lora. You ought to eat while it’s hot.”
“All right. Let me alone.”
At the sound of the door closing behind Martha she suddenly turned over and sat up. The dizziness was all gone. It was all quite clear; it would be the simplest thing in the world. Her father’s loaded revolver was of course in the drawer of the desk in his bedroom, where it had been kept as long as she could remember; as a child she had often opened the drawer a crack and shudderingly peeked at it, not daring to touch it. To get it now, unseen, would be easy, with Martha and her mother both downstairs. Then under her pillow. In the evening he would come to her room as usual, right after dinner. Maybe he wouldn’t. Tomorrow evening then, or the next, or the next; he would come; she could wait. The revolver held six bullets, and all it needed was to pull the trigger. She would wait till he was quite close, the closer the better, even so she could touch him with it. Then she would get back into bed and lie there peacefully, and when people came she wouldn’t bother to say a word. She would never say anything to anybody again. If Pete came she wouldn’t speak to him even; she’d just twist up her mouth the way he did and he would hump up his shoulders and peer at her and she would know it was all right.
At the same time, without words, her mind was making its practical decisions. To carry them out she needed all the strength she could muster; the fragrance of the coffee floating over from the tray started that. She could see the little clock on the bureau but wasn’t sure it had been wound, so she got out of bed and went to get her wristwatch which she had wound herself when she undressed the afternoon before. Not twenty-four hours ago; that was hard to believe. Somewhat less in fact, for the watch said twenty past twelve. She had a full hour; the afternoon train was at one-thirty. She put on her dressing-gown and carried the tray to the bed, and efficiently and deliberately went through the fruit and toast and eggs and coffee to the last drop and crumb. All the time she felt herself tremulous inside, but her hands were perfectly steady; the swallowing was difficult and required some determination. Then she put the tray back on the table and went to the head of the stairs and called her mother, and at once heard her pattering footsteps.
Mrs. Winter entered the room hesitantly, stopping just inside the door, and looking at Lora and the empty tray tried to smile. Lora gazed at her in contemptuous astonishment. It was incredible, but there was no doubt about it; pathetically and idiotically she was trying to disarm her daughter with a smile.
“How much money have you got?” Lora said.
The attempted smile disappeared for faint amazement.
“Why—I don’t know—”
“I need all I can get. I’m going away. I have to leave in half an hour, to take the one-thirty train. Have you got as much as a hundred dollars?”
Her mother’s mouth opened, and closed again. Opened by Lora’s words, and closed by the look on Lora’s face.
“You can’t go like this,” she said. “It will kill you.”
“Please,” Lora said. “Listen, if you ever did anything.…Go and see how much money you’ve got. In that jar in the attic, I know.”
Her mother looked startled. “How did you know—”
“I know lots of things. Hurry up.”
“Child, you can’t go—”
Lora interrupted her, suddenly blazing:
“Can’t you see it’s silly to talk?”
Her mother turned and went without a word, and Lora took off her dressing-gown and nightgown and started to dress. She wouldn’t stop to pack a bag; she wanted nothing from there; she would like to leave that house naked if it could be done. Anyway, she didn’t want to be encumbered with a bag—and she might never need one. She hated everything in that room; she loathed the smell of it. God, what an unspeakable and unforgivable fool—but she shook her head and set her teeth together against that useless indulgence. Later would do for that.
Her mother came in panting a little, her eyes gleaming. She had a little over a hundred dollars, and she had got twenty more from Martha. Lora took it, a large roll of ones and fives and tens, and stuffed it into her purse. That was it. Money. Then she sent her mother down to phone for a taxicab.
When she got downstairs, steadying herself by the rail on one side and her mother on the other, Martha was there, crying as though her heart would break. She threw her arms around Lora and implored her not to go; she would die, she was sure to die. Mrs. Winter, her thin little body erect and only her glittering eyes betraying her excitement, said nothing. Once more upstairs she had tried to protest; now she was silent, but kissed her daughter on the cheek and buttoned her coat collar for her.
“Don’t come out, I’ll get to the taxi all right,” Lora said.
But they both went with her through the snow-covered yard, down the walk to the curb, and stood there gazing after her till the cab turned the corner two blocks away. She saw them through the cab window, but somewhat dimly, for she was beginning to feel cold and faint again. She kept saying to herself, if once I get on the train I’m all right.
It was not so bad. The ticket-seller recognized her and was obviously surprised. Perhaps others did; she looked at no one. In a few minutes the train arrived and she went to the platform and got on, pulling herself up by clinging to the iron railings. There was an empty seat not far from the door and she sank into the corner of it and let her head go back. Her feet were terribly cold, there was an aching hurt inside of her, and her head was whirling madly, but as the train jerked forward she turned a little to look out of the window.