Presently, when they had reached the squash pie, he asked, “What’s become of Mary Watts?” And at the same moment he felt himself blushing horribly, for in some way the memory of the imprisonment in the storeroom returned to claim him unawares, and make him feel a shameful little boy unable to look his mother in the eye. Only he understood now: he knew what lay beneath the ancient, veiled accusations....
“Oh, she’s had a sad time,” said Emma. “You know she married the superintendent of the Mills—John Conyngham—a man fifteen years older than she was, and every one thought it was a good match. But he died—three weeks ago—while you were on the ocean, leaving her with two small children. They’ve some money, but not very much. The Watts house was sold when old Watts died—to pay his debts. She’s living with Conyngham’s sister, who’s quite well off. They’re in the old Stuart house in Park Avenue. Old Stuart lost all his money hanging on to too much land, so they bought the house off him. I guess Conyngham wasn’t a very good husband—I used to see his bicycle sitting in front of Mamie Rhodes’ house. There couldn’t have been much good in that—men like Mamie Rhodes too well.”
She knew it all, the story in all its details, even to Mamie Rhodes, at whose name women in the Town were wont to bristle. No one knew anything about Mamie: it was just that she was much too young for her years, and did something to men—nobody knew just what it was—that made her very popular.
“And what was he like?” asked Philip.
“Conyngham,” said Emma, “John Conyngham? He was handsome, but I never liked his looks. I’d never trust a man that looked like that.”
What she meant was that there was something about John Conyngham that reminded her of the derelict Mr. Downes, and that the sight of him had always disturbed her in a terrifying way. She couldn’t bear to look at him.
“He died of pneumonia,” she said above the clatter of the dishes and the prosperous banging of the cash-register. “They say he caught it coming home in the rain from Mamie Rhodes’ on Thanksgiving night.”
Philip listened and the dull red still burned under the dark skin. He was aware that the two women were watching him, secretly, as they might watch a man who was a little unbalanced: they had been doing so without cessation since his return. They were a little like two purring cats watching prey all innocent of their intentions.
6
It was impossible, of course, for the three of them to continue playing the game of hide-and-seek, pretending that Philip and Naomi had not returned or that Philip was too ill to go out; it was impossible for Naomi to go about forever disguised by a thick veil. Even Emma’s eternal policy of allowing things to work themselves out appeared after a month to be productive of no result, for Philip’s “mental condition” showed no signs of improvement. He remained, rocklike, in his determination, while the two women watched, stricken with uneasy fears because the Philip whom they had once known so well that they could anticipate and control his every impulse, now seemed a creature filled with vague and mysterious moods and ideas that lay quite beyond the borders of their understanding.