22
On that night the singing at choir practice reached a peak of frenzy. While Philip sat sleeping beside the crib, Naomi was pounding her heart out on the stained celluloid keys of the tinny piano in the Infants’ Classroom. She played wildly, with a kind of shameless abandon, as if she wanted to pour out her whole story of justification; and the others, taking fire from her spirit, sang as they had never sung before.
During the afternoon, the old Naomi—the stubborn, sure Naomi of Megambo—had come to life again in some mysterious fashion. She even put on the new foulard dress in a gesture of defiance to show them—Philip and his mother—that, however “funny-looking” it might be, she was proud of it. And then neither of them had seen her wearing it, Philip because she was avoiding him, and Emma because chance had not brought them together. She had gone up to Mabelle’s bent upon telling her that she had come to the end of her endurance. She had meant to ask Mabelle’s advice, because Mabelle was very shrewd about such matters.
And then when she found herself seated opposite Mabelle she discovered that she couldn’t bring herself to say what she meant to say. She couldn’t humble her pride sufficiently to tell even Mabelle how Philip treated her. She had finally gone home and then returned a second time, but it was no use. She couldn’t speak of it: she was too proud. And she knew, too, that whatever happened she must protect Philip. It wasn’t, she told herself, as if he were himself, as he had been at Megambo. He was sick. He really wasn’t responsible. She cried when she thought how she loved him now; if he would only notice her, she would let him trample her body in the dust. Mabelle’s near-sighted blue eyes noted nothing. She went on rocking and rocking, talking incessantly of clothes and food and a soothing syrup that would make little Naomi sleep better at night.
During the day she had formed a dozen wild projects. She would go back to Megambo. She would return to her father, who was seventy now, and would welcome her help. She would run off to a cousin who lived in Tennessee. She would join another cousin who was an Evangelist in Texas: she could play the piano and lead the singing for him. In any of these places she would find again the glory she had known as Naomi Potts, “youngest missionary of God”; she wouldn’t any longer be a nobody, unwanted, always pushed aside and treated as of no consequence.
But always there were the twins to be considered. How could she run off and forget them? And if she did run away, Emma and perhaps even Philip would use it as a chance to rid themselves of her forever. She fancied that she saw now how Emma had used her, willing all the while to cast her off when she was no longer of any service. She told herself again and again, as if she could not bring herself to believe it, that she loved the twins—that she loved them despite her aching back and the hours she was kept awake by their crying. But she remembered that she had never been tired at Megambo: no amount of work had tired her. She hadn’t wanted the twins: she’d only gone to Philip because Mabelle and Emma told her that she must and because Mabelle said that men liked children, and that going to Philip would give her a hold over him. And now ... see what had come of it! Philip scarcely noticed her. Before she lived with him, it hadn’t mattered to her, but now—now she always carried a weight about inside her. Her heart leaped if he took the least notice of her.
No, she saw it all clearly. She must run away. She couldn’t go on, chained down like a slave. But if she ran away, she’d lose Philip for ever, and if she stayed, he might come back to her. The children belonged to both of them. They were a bond you could never break, the proof that once, for a little time, he belonged to her. She saw that he, too, was chained after a fashion. He belonged to her in a way he belonged to no other woman. In the sight of the Lord any other woman would always be a strumpet and a whore.
At last, as it was growing dark, she found herself sitting on a bench in the park before the new monument to General Sherman. It was raining and her coat was soaked and her shoes wet through. The rain ran in little trickles from her worn black hat. It was as if she had wakened suddenly from a dream. She wasn’t certain how she came to be sitting on the wet bench with the heavy rain melting the snow all about her. She thought, “I must have been crazy for a time. I can’t go on like this. I’ve got to talk to some one. I’ve got to ... I’ve got to!” She began to cry, and then she thought, “I’ll speak to the Reverend Castor to-night after choir practice. He’ll help me and he’s a good man. He’ll never tell any one. He’s always been so kind. It was silly of me to think things about him. I was silly to be afraid of him. I’ll talk to him. I’ve got to talk to some one. He’ll understand.”
When the practice was finished, the Reverend Castor came out of the study to bid the members good-night. In the dim light of the hallway, as Naomi passed him, he looked at her and smiled. She saw that his hands were trembling in a way that had come over him lately, and the smile warmed her, but at the same time weakened her. There was a comfort and a kindliness in it that made her want to cry.
Once inside the study, she found that the drawer of the cabinet was jammed again, as it had been on that first night. While she tugged at it, she heard him outside the door saying good-night one by one to the choir. Putting down the music, she began again to struggle with the drawer, and then suddenly, as if the effort was the last she could make, she collapsed on the floor and began to weep.