A kind of feverish energy took possession of her. It seemed that she could no longer sit there seeing the whole structure of her life going to ruin. She would save Philip. She would die knowing that he was a bishop. She would marry Moses Slade and go to Washington and work there to save the country from chaos, from drink, from strikes. She would rise in the end, triumphant as she had always been. She had been weak: she had rested at the time when she should have worked. She needed to act. She would act, no matter what it cost her. She would save Philip and herself.
In a kind of frenzy she seized her hat and coat and left the restaurant.
It was a warm day when the snow had begun to melt and the pavement was deep with slush. She hurried, wet to the knees, fairly running all the way, so that by the time she reached Mary Conyngham’s house her face was scarlet and wet with sweat.
Mary was in, but she was upstairs with the children, and the hired girl bade her wait in the parlor. There she seated herself on a rosewood chair, upholstered in horsehair, to mop her face and set her hat straight. And slowly the room began to have a strange effect upon her. Though the room itself was warm, it was as if she had come into a cool place. The rosewood furniture was dark and cool, and the great marble slab of the heavy mahogany commode. The wax flowers and the glass dome that protected them were cool, and the crystal chandelier and the great silver-bordered mirror. The whole room (queer and old-fashioned, Emma thought indignantly) was a pool of quiet ... a genteel room, a little thread-bare, but nevertheless possessed of an elegance all its own.
It exerted the queerest effect on Emma, dampening her spirits and extinguishing the indignation that a little while before had roared in her bosom like the flames in the belly of one of the furnaces. She began suddenly to feel tired again and filled with despair.
“It’s like her to keep an older woman waiting,” she thought. “Probably she knows well enough why I’ve come.”
She began to tap the carpet with the toe of her shoe and at last she rose and began to walk about, as if she felt that only by activity could she throw off from her the softening effect of that quiet room. She halted presently before the oval portrait, framed in gilt, of Mary’s mother, a very pretty woman, with dark hair and a spirited eye ... a woman such as Mary might have been if she hadn’t married that John Conyngham and had her spirit subdued. Well (thought Emma) she seemed nevertheless to have too much spirit for her own good or the good of any one else.
She was standing thus when Mary came in, dressed in a mauve frock, and looking pale and a little nervous. Emma thought, “She knows why I’ve come. It’s on her conscience. She’s afraid of me already.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Downes,” said Mary, “but my sister-in-law has gone out, and I couldn’t come down until both children were asleep.”
It was odd, but her voice had upon Emma the same effect as the room. It seemed to sap the foundations of her assurance and strength by its very gentleness. It was strange how subdued and quiet Mary seemed, almost as if (Emma thought suspiciously) she had forgotten her early troubles and was now shamelessly and completely happy. Feeling that if she did not begin at once, she would not accomplish her plan, Emma plunged.