XXX Katharsis
I
March came, and the layette was practically finished. Judith Trench looked up from her sewing to realize with a strange thrill that it was just a year since first she heard the name of Springdale. She and Lary would be going to the theatre, that evening. She wondered whether he had remembered, when he got the tickets. Eileen was leaving for Rye on an early afternoon train—indeed she must be well on the way, going directly from Professor Auersbach’s studio. The train must pass Pelham in a few minutes.
A year ago, Judith Ascott had gone out to Pelham with the buoyancy of a toy balloon released from its tether, to break the epoch-making news to her mother. Now the house at Pelham was in alien hands. Father was still abroad, was still complaining of floating specks in the air and a disheartening lack of appetite for breakfast. Mother was rapturous over the new house Lary was building for her. Ben was eager to get back to America, to try his hand at concrete construction. Jack thought he wanted to be a landscape architect—with brother Lary to instruct him. That would beat the Beaux Arts all hollow.
From one to another of the family, her mind flitted. Had they not accepted Lary without reservation? Was not her own life complete? She turned questioning eyes towards the door. A key in the outer lock. Had Lary come home early ... remembering? Was he ill? The living-room door opened, slowly, as if it were pushing some imponderable but deadly weight. In an instant she was on her feet.
“Eileen! What has happened?”
The girl sank into the nearest chair and buried her face from sight. After a moment she said, in a voice hollow and remote:
“There’s no use torturing you with suspense. I’m not hurt.”
“But something has happened to you—something dreadful.”
“Judith, you don’t need to go out of your way to hunt punishment, when you’ve sinned. And you don’t need to dodge it, either. A little while ago I would have thrown myself in front of a subway train, if I hadn’t been a coward. Last summer I thought I had done something heroic. But when I saw him, this afternoon—”
“Hal Marksley? Eileen!”
“Now you know the worst.” She nodded slowly. “If you’ll let me, Judith, I’ll tell you from the beginning. I guess I’m like mamma in that, too. She has to tell a thing all in one piece, or she loses the thread of it. In the first place, I had a great lesson. I was the last, before luncheon, and Professor Auersbach stopped to compliment me. It was the first time. He explained the meaning of hypsos, the sublime reach of spiritual exaltation—and he said it had come into my playing because of what I had suffered. He talked like Syd Schubert. I went out of the studio walking on air. I don’t know what I ate—or where. All I remember is that I left too large a tip, because the change came out wrong.
“I went to the Grand Central and bought a ticket. It was ever so long before train time, but I thought I’d better scout around and see how to get down to the tracks. You know, the construction people change the route every few days. The first passage I tried had been barricaded. I went half way up the stairs when I came face to face with three men. The one in the middle was Hal.”
“He recognized you?”
“Not at first—and I hurried past them and into a side aisle. It was a blind pocket, and before I could get out of it I heard him calling my name. Judith, I was all alone. Hundreds of people within hearing, and I was all alone with the man I loathe. It was like a nightmare—my feet hobbled with ropes. Before I knew it, he had me in his arms and was kissing me. I suppose I fainted. When I began to see things again, we were in that little temporary waiting-room, and my head was on his shoulder. I looked at him through a mist ... and every minute of last summer rolled over me. It was a flood from a sewer. They say you review your life when you are about to die. You don’t need any hell after that.”
When the tumultuous beating of her heart subsided a little, she went on:
“He wanted to call a taxicab and take me to a hotel. I didn’t get his meaning at first. When I did—life came back to me. I suppose the people around us thought we were a married couple, having our first public quarrel. Once he looked at me with a leer and said: ‘So you were mistaken about what you told me, the first of September—or else you took my advice’. I told him I was mistaken about a good many things, last summer. Then he said he had gone to the studio to look me up, after his sister wrote him that I was studying music in New York, and the secretary said there was no one enrolled there by the name of Trench. He chuckled and said I was a smart kid, and he had half a mind to take me with him to Rio.”
“Rio?”
“Yes. He hasn’t been at Pratt Institute at all. He flunked his entrance exams. He didn’t let his people know, but has been taking all the money they’d sent him. Has a position in a Brazilian importing house, and has been studying Portuguese all winter. They are sending him down there in an important place—and he hopes he’ll never see this ratty old country again. He even said he’d marry me, if ...”
“And there was no return of the old ardour?”
“No, Judith, only a sick disgust.”
II
They were still talking when Larimore came home, surprised and a shade annoyed when he found that Eileen was there. He had but two tickets, and he wanted to be alone with his wife.
“Don’t tell him,” the girl whispered when he left the room to dress for dinner. “He is just beginning to respect me a little. I so want his—respect.”
When dinner was over she went to her room. No, she was not ill. She only wanted to be alone. If Lary had planned an evening at the theatre, thinking that she would spend the night at Rye, there was no reason for a change in his plans. She was glad they were going out, so that she might be alone. She knew the meaning of hypsos, now that she had made the descent, within the brief space of an hour, from that height to bathos, the lowest depth of sordid physical reality. She wanted to play again the winged notes that had carried her beyond the farthest reach of her own being—to purge her soul of the earth-taint that was in her.
“You are perfectly sure you are all right?” Judith asked when she told her good-night. “You won’t brood or cry?”
“No, I am past all that. When you strike bottom—there isn’t any farther to go.”
III
After the play there was a little supper, and then the long ride in the taxicab. It was nearing two o’clock when Judith looked into Eileen’s room. The bed was empty. In swift alarm she turned, to catch a faint cry from the bathroom.
“I came in here to get some hot water—and—I couldn’t get back,” the girl groaned, striving to make light of a desperate situation.
“Oh, it was heartless of me to leave you alone, at such a time.”
“Not at all. I’ve had a wonderful evening. I took my violin ... and we worked it out together. I went to bed and slept like a rock until—oh, oh!”
“Lary!” Judith cried in fright, “telephone for a doctor. Eileen is dreadfully ill.” The tortured girl had striven to rise, but fell back convulsed on the rug.
When Larimore had carried her to her bed, he said huskily:
“Only this evening, when we were going out, I was thinking how fortunate it was to have a doctor here in the apartment. He came up in the elevator with us. He may not care to take this kind of case, but—”
“Lary, you must be mistaken. It’s not to be for almost two months. And if you were right—wouldn’t it be over by this time? She’s been suffering two hours.”
“The first one is often premature. Eileen is a highly emotional nature. And I suspected at dinner that something was wrong. As to the duration—no one can gauge that. I was with my mother for three hours before Theodora was born. My father was out of town, and mamma wouldn’t have Sylvia around. Bob had been sent for the nurse, and there was nothing to do but wait. Dr. Schubert knew my mother’s habits. He said there was no hurry.” They had reached the outer door of the apartment, his hand on the knob. “In those three hours, Judith, I was transformed from a sentimental boy to a morbid, cynical man. Syd has tried to change my viewpoint; but all his reasoning is empty. He will never be called upon to bear children.”
A few minutes later he returned with the physician, in bathrobe and slippers. It was almost morning before a nurse arrived; but one of the maids was herself a mother, and intelligent help was not wanting. After an hour Lary led his wife from the room.
“Sweetheart, you can’t help her, and you are enduring every pang she suffers. Her pain is mostly physical now. Yours is both physical and mental. You must not squander your strength. We will need it for the harder part to come. Won’t you lie down and try to sleep?”
“Sleep! when the most terribly significant thing in the world is under way? How can we grow so callous? I never realized the marvel of life until now. I must go through every heart-throb of it. I need it! I will have more pity for your mother, more toleration for my own mother, more love for you, Lary—if there is any more.”
Larimore Trench closed his eyes, bitter self-abasement surging through his being. He had never been at grips with life. Nay, rather, he had turned from it in a superior attitude of disdain. He would not touch the woman he loved. She was too holy for his coward’s hands.
IV
As the grey dawn was breaking over the snow-whitened Hudson, the nurse aroused the two who dozed in their chairs in the living-room.
“You’d better come,” she said excitedly. “Mrs. Winthrop isn’t going to hold out.”
At the door the physician waved them back. Judith caught a glimpse of Eileen’s deathlike face and she ran sobbing down the hall. A long time she stood, her husband’s cherishing arms around her. Then a petulant wail from the room at the end of the long hall told them it was over.
At noon a letter to David was posted.
“You must be prepared for the worst. Early this morning a little girl came. It weighs less than four pounds. The doctor says, considering its premature condition, the extreme youth of the mother, and the circumstances of delivery, there is not one chance in ten that it will survive. We are more concerned for the mother. I will telegraph you, only in case of extremity.”
V
Laura Ramsay had come, in response to a long-distance call, and she and Judith stood beside the nurse when, after twelve hours of earth-life, the unformed morsel of humanity gave up the struggle.
It was not until the following morning that they told Eileen her baby had died. Lary was with them. He had looked for a passionate outburst. He could not fathom her mood as she lay, quite tranquil, on her pillow, a smile gathering radiance in her deepset eyes.
“It’s the only way,” she said at length. “I’m glad it won’t have to face life—with such a handicap. It’s better for all of us.”
Lary stooped and kissed her. He wondered why women were so much stronger than men, why, in most of life’s crises, they must bear the shock.