A good woman

by Louis Bromfield

It was Aunt Mabelle who led Naomi into the routine of matrimony as a tried and experienced working elephant leads another, freshly captured, into the routine of piling teak logs and pushing carts. She made it all seem the most natural thing in the world.

But it was only after a week of hiding and of sudden outbursts of tears that Naomi returned to Philip—a new and uncomplaining Naomi curiously broken and acquiescent. Aunt Mabelle noticed the difference with the little round blue eyes that seemed too stupid and sleepy to notice anything; she saw that something very odd had happened to Naomi: nothing that was very odd in her (Mabelle’s) experience in such cases, but odd only because it had happened to Naomi. It was as if she had found suddenly some reason for existence in a world where before she had no place, as if she enjoyed this newly discovered marital relationship.

Emma, too, noticed the difference—that Naomi began to take an interest in her appearance, and even went so far as to buy some ribbons and bits of lace which she sewed awkwardly on her somber woolen dresses. Her anemic cheeks at moments even showed the shadow of color. She went almost briskly to her choir rehearsals and made a feeble attempt at resuming her manufacture of calico mother-hubbards.

It was, thought Emma, working itself out. She was not one to discuss such things, and yet she knew that Naomi had followed her advice. Why, Naomi was almost like a bride. She was certain in the end to gain a hold over Philip, for he was not the sort whose eye wandered: he never looked at another woman. He wasn’t like his father. Emma told herself these things twenty times a day. (And she knew things which she would never admit knowing.) If things went well, he was certain to come round in the end, for there was nothing like a wife and family to bring a man to his senses. When he was older and perhaps Bishop of East Africa, and the youngest bishop of the church, he would thank his mother for all her strength of will. He would look back and understand then how right she had been at the time when, for a moment, his foot had strayed from the path. Then God would bring her her just reward.

There was one thing she did not understand—the intoxication of Philip. At first she succumbed to righteous fury, filled with a wild desire to punish him by shutting him in the storeroom as she had done when he was a little boy. All the night after she had helped him up the stairs, she lay awake, pondering what she should do. The thing had frightened her in a fashion she did not understand: it was an event which seemed to thrust upward out of the shadowy depths of heritage, imperiling all her carefully made plans. It gave her for the first time a sense of awe for her son, because it opened vistas of behavior of which she did not believe him, a boy so carefully brought up, capable. It was this fear which led her into paths of caution, and prevented her from pouring out a torrent of reproach. When a week passed and then another without any repetition of the disgraceful episode, she settled back into her old sense of confident security. Philip was her boy, after all. She could trust him. And fortunately no one had seen him drunk; no one knew.

But it troubled her that he never spoke of it. His silence hurt her. Always he had told her everything, shared all his secrets and plans with her, and now he shut her out of everything. He was polite and kind to herself and to Naomi, but he never told them anything.

Still, he seemed to be less restless now, even if he was more silent. He was beginning, she thought, to soften a little. In the end, when it was all settled and he had returned to the arms of the Lord, she could perhaps sell her restaurant business and give herself over completely to missionary work and her clubs.

It wasn’t that she had given up the idea of matrimony; it was only that she had laid it aside for the moment, since Moses Slade had said nothing in the least definite. He had been encouraging, and very friendly; he had taken her at her word and come to have his meals at the restaurant. On the occasion of his third visit, she said, “Perhaps you’d rather eat in my corner? A man like you, who is so prominent, is always stared at so.”

So he had come to take his meals in the corner behind the screen, arriving after one, so that he never interfered with the family lunch of Philip, Naomi and herself. Sometimes she sat with him while he ate great plates of meat and potatoes and huge slices of pies. He was a vigorous man and an enormous eater. They talked usually of politics, and she thought more than once, “Of course, some people might think such a marriage undignified, but it wouldn’t matter, because of all the influence I’d have. As the wife of a Congressman in Washington, I’d be a power for good.”