Very dimly she sensed depths in the relationship of men and women of which she knew nothing.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"So you are going to marry him." Martha picked up the toast that had burned while Jean talked and threw it on the fire.
In the bright sunshine she looked old. Her flesh was pale and flaccid, like the flesh of overworked people, or of the aged who have gone without sleep. Her hair was twisted in a tight knot, but stray, gray wisps escaped. Her throat was stringy and the chin muscles sagged.
Jean tried not to look at the discolored neck and the thin, worn hands. They stood for all that her mother had missed in life. It roused something in her sharper than pity, a kind of anger. With an effort she went round the table.
"Mummy, don't look like that." Jean knelt and put her arms about the rigid figure.
Martha did not move. It had come so suddenly, before she had found strength to meet it. She had disliked Franklin Herrick on sight and even this morning, at early service, had knelt long after the close of mass and prayed that he might be taken out of Jean's life.
And now Jean was going to marry him. To take him for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death parted them. She heard herself saying the words that had bound her for life to Jean's father. She had tried to do her duty, but death had come as a great release. She had done her best and had had the sacraments of the Church and prayer to help her. Jean had nothing. She was plunging blindly into this state, the greatest personal martyrdom ordained by God. And with Franklin Herrick. Martha could see no plan, no purpose in this thing and battled to hold firm her faith.
"Mummy dear, don't. Please don't look like that, as if something terrible had happened."
"Something terrible has happened, Jean. You are going to yoke yourself for life, think of it, for all the years God may demand you live on this earth, with a man who has no higher conception of life than an animal."