She was alone in the world. There was no one now to consider. No need to pretend. No one in the whole writhing mass of humanity belonged to her nor she to any one.
The desperate emptiness of Gregory's going rose in a gaunt specter from the grave where she had tried to heap it to stillness by the small duties of loving and caring for Martha; trying to make up, out of her own realization of loneliness and pain, some of the empty years of her mother's life. Now the need was over. She would never again have to take a book and pretend to read in order not to worry the patient figure sewing under the lamp. She would never again have to take the image of happy hours and lift it from her brain, that it might not claim the moments that were Martha's. There was no need to do anything, anything at all. She was alone, free in a terrible freedom, alone in an infinity of emptiness.
The front door opened and Jean heard Katy come down the hall into the kitchen. She got up and went out and told her. Katy began to cry, and although Jean knew that Katy had been fond of Martha, there was something so officially appropriate in these instant tears, that Jean frowned. Katy choked her sob into a sniff.
"If you would make some strong black coffee, Katy, I should like it." Then she went into the hall and telephoned to the doctor who had attended Martha during the pneumonia of the earlier winter. He lived nearby and came in a few moments. He pronounced it death from heart disease and told Jean that her mother's heart, weak for years, had never recovered from the strain of pneumonia.
"Did she have anything special to worry her? Any shock to-day? Still, there was no reason that it should have terminated so soon."
"Not that I know of."
"No special shock to-day?"
"No. We live very quietly and there would be nothing without my knowing it."
"Um. Sometimes these things take sudden and unexpected turns. There is not always a definite explanation." He stopped as if something more personal and sympathetic was expected of him. Taller than he, Jean looked down coldly. He was used to women crying or going into hysterics, and although he was always scornful of such procedure, years of habit in meeting these emergencies had given him a tactful gentleness of which he was vain. But now there was going to be no need for restoratives or sedatives and so he took his hat.
"If there is anything that I can do to make it easier, please feel——"