Jean went into the living-room. Martha's chair stood pushed back from the window, as she had left it when she had gone to get ready for service. Her glasses lay on the window-shelf. Jean sat down in the chair. In a few moments she heard Katy tiptoe out. The streets were empty, except for the wind. It moaned about the corners of the big building, shutting Jean in from the rest of the world. And beyond the wind, the black river ran swiftly to the sea.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
"I am the resurrection and the life."
Alone in the church, Jean sat upright in the first pew. The stained windows, the fine linen of the young priest's cassock, his deep-toned chant, the odor of incense, the satin-grained wood of the pews, the exquisite lace of the altar cloth, impressed themselves in a setting warm and intimate for the small gray coffin resting at the altar rail.
Jean sat dry-eyed, as if she were witnessing a rite in which the priest and Martha had a part. They belonged. She had handed Martha over to this young man, and now he and Martha and God were carrying on some ceremony. She was an outsider.
The stinging sweetness of the incense rose in a blue cloud as the priest incensed the coffin. His voice ceased. He looked inquiringly toward Jean. Alone in the apartment, just before the undertaker had come, Jean had kissed her mother for the last time. But in the depth of the waiting silence, a need to look once more on that restful little face gripped her, and she rose and went slowly to the casket, Against the white satin of the pillow, so lightly that even in death she seemed resenting this comfort, Martha was resting. It seemed to Jean that the eyes under the thin, veined lids were quietly happy and that the mouth, so oddly young now, smiled. In the beloved atmosphere of prayer and adoration, Martha had gained consciousness. Loosed from the flesh, all the emotional capacity, the power of love and devotion and joy suppressed had been freed at last by the cessation of earthly cares and prejudices to express itself and claim its own. In the interval of rest below the altar, Martha had come to life, a life in which the body had no part.
Jean touched the thin hair on the temples. "You're happy, dear, aren't you?" And, afterwards, Jean often had the feeling that the little head had moved in acknowledgment.
She went back to the pew. The cover was screwed down. The young priest preceded the coffin to the door. In stole and surplice he stood beside the open grave. "Dust to dust." The earth and dry snow powdered upon the lid. It was all as Martha would have wished—calm, beautiful, alone with Jean and God.
Jean came back to the apartment. The trees on the Palisades were hidden under a burden of white. Thick white snow muffled passing footsteps. She was alone, absolutely alone in the still, snow-muffled universe.
The next day Jean went back to the office. Jerome Stuart made no conventional reference and Jean was grateful. He suggested their getting to work on a new Child Labor law and they talked over details for an hour. When he had gone back to his own office, Jean wrote a brief note telling Mary. But even Mary was not real, She, too, was off beyond the barrier that shut Jean from the rest of the world.