CHAPTER XXIII
MRS. HORTON’S death came just before the time when Matthew had planned to leave for Washington. A succession of complications had hastened it. Three days before it came, Fliss knew that it was imminent and she spent those days sitting beside her mother for long periods, her face white and drawn, but her courage sustained as it always was in a crisis.
Death seemed on no great errand here in this shabby little flat, breaking no heart, effecting no terrible cleavage. Yet the solemnity of the struggle was not altered by the fact that it was only a commonplace, middle-aged woman who was fighting for the chance to keep on going to the moving pictures, gossiping, living in trivialities. Death, disregarding human gradations of importance, was choosing this soul gravely, solemnly. And Fliss, shivering a little by her mother’s bed, watched and learned, and perhaps in her quick, practical way got a firmer grip on life from this first intimacy with death.
She would have nothing to do with the funeral arrangements. Until the end she had stayed by her mother, but after it was over and her mother was gone, Ellen and Mrs. Ellis managed the details of burial. Mr. Horton remained unobtrusive. Vaguely encouraging his wife, he had also stayed beside her and she had turned to him rather than to Fliss. Later he went out and bought a box of red carnations, giving them to Ellen to arrange near his wife.
“She always liked carnations,” he said.
Fliss was very gentle to him and very anxious to make him comfortable, but it was soon clear to every one that the boarding house where Mrs. Ellis lived and where a remnant of friends of his early married life still stayed was the best solution. He obviously preferred it so and Mrs. Ellis had him under her charge. In two weeks there was nothing left of the Horton household in the flat, and Fliss, her spirits rising in their characteristic way, made her plans for Washington and prepared to close her own house. She did not see much of Matthew now, for he was absorbed in work that kept him busy night and day. Much of it she knew was with Dick, but Dick did not come to her house. They had met once or twice in Matthew’s office when she had gone in to see her husband, but that was all. Dick had been carefully casual in his manner, and Fliss flippant as usual. To see the three of them together for those few moments would never have been to guess at the clashes and attractions which were between them.
If Fliss wondered whether Matthew had seen Cecily and deliberately kept herself from inquiring, she was rewarded by his asking her one night a week before their departure, “Shall we go to see Cecily for a moment to-night?”
Knowing what he wanted and expected, she answered as he would wish.
“Can’t. I have a caller. But you go.”
He said nothing more. After dinner, though she tried to detain him in spite of her permission, he went out early. Fliss frowned a little and then prepared to receive her caller.