Shortly after that her father had died. Strange relatives had appeared with an extraordinary attitude toward her mother, as if Martha had suddenly become unable to think for herself. They had bustled about whispering, and had tried to take direction of the funeral. But their efforts fell useless before Martha's quiet determination. A step-brother of the dead man's had become rather violent in his objection to a church-service. But the long brown coffin had been carried into the church nevertheless, and the priest had intoned the mass and incensed the coffin in spicy smoke that had made Jean cough. And afterwards, she and her mother had stood at the open grave, and when the priest said, "Dust to dust," and all the relatives Jean had never before seen sniveled or sobbed openly, Martha had held her hand tightly and Jean had heard her whisper, "Father, forgive."
For a year Jean and her mother had gone early every Sunday morning to church and Jean had prayed fervently that her father be forgiven. For what, exactly, she did not know, but she remembered now that she had linked it up to the Sunday that her mother had cried and her father had not come home to supper; and that she had not felt quite honest praying for her father to be forgiven. Living, he had never said a prayer nor gone to church with them. But dead, they had him at their mercy.
What had he done? Why had they prayed so earnestly that he be forgiven? Why did these two memories alone frame her father, when she tried to think what life had been to him and to her mother? What difference would it have made in her own life if there had been other memories?
In the quiet warmth of the brush, Jean shivered. It was wrong, wicked to bring children up like that. What did it matter that she had always had enough to eat and to wear and had gone to school, when the deepest memory she had of her parents was her mother shrinking from her father's touch, and the long brown coffin in the church to which her father had never gone of his own will. It seemed to Jean that she had been cheated and deprived of something that could never now be hers.
She pushed the hair back from her eyes.
"If I ever have children——"
Jean stopped. She could feel the blood creep up from her toes, scorching her. If she had a child it would be Herrick's. It might have Herrick's changing eyes and soft, full lips and the high, thin laugh. Jean had not thought of Herrick's thin voice for months.
She jumped up. She did not want children. She wanted to do her work in the world, and to help Herrick do his. There were too many people in the world already. She thought of Dr. Mary and the problems she struggled with, of Carmen and the puny, blind baby.
As Jean came into the kitchen Martha was getting supper. She looked rested and Jean knew that she had been praying. Jean's anger of the morning was gone, and as she looked at the small figure moving quickly about, rather envied her. Had there ever been an emotional crisis in her mother's life that had not been eased by preparing food for some one?
"Mummy," she asked suddenly, "do you remember once my coming into the kitchen, when we lived in the old Webster Street house, one Sunday and finding father trying to put his arms round you and—you wouldn't let him?"