"Oh, weeks! From the first! Oh, I was so afraid they would hear, at school!"
Suddenly a memory flashed over Emily. She felt the hours she had suffered such discomfort—for the sake of this undone child. She and Bob had been living in their wretched little rooms over the drug store on Main Street. And she could see Bob standing there, in his nightshirt, a lamp in his hand, solicitous and dumfounded, because she lay sick and laughing, tears in her eyes, and singing on her lips, shaken with delight over the significance of her symptoms. She had been beside herself with happiness at the prospect of a baby. Certainly never before in her life, and seldom since, had she known such heavenly satisfaction as during those weeks. The very sensation of that dear expectancy came back to her.
And Martha, in her arms, moaned wearily.
Then Emily turned away from her, towards the wall, and, covering herself up to the eyes, began an utterly sick and bitter weeping. At every gasp some new phase of her misery came to contrast its horror with the former loveliness. The years came all tumbling down in great crushing masses upon her, and the beauty of that baby, her little parties, her sweet little coats. It was Christmas morning, she remembered, and she could see the little thing in her footed sleeping suit standing twinkling in ecstasy about a stocking from which a red-headed doll peeped out.—Dolls, what lots of dolls, to teach her motherhood—and Jim playing with her! It was for this child's sake that her mother had refrained from all the life she might have had with her dear Jim. And now—— This was the end of it all. "If I had left her—deserted her—gone with him, could she have been worse off than she is now?" Emily asked; and she went on weeping. She saw the painted room from which the child had shut herself out. She had made herself a dark house of regret now, this house-loving girl who had destroyed herself. Where should they go now? "To whom can I go for help?" Emily cried. If Jim were living, if she could go to New York and tell Jim all this, so he could help her—— There was no one living to whom she could turn. "I'll take her to Wilton," she moaned; "he'll know what to do!" Home was impossible. Could she take her lovely daughter there—this child whom she had watched them admire? That woman would find them there, that jealous, married, wild woman, who had open, unquestioned cause now for scandals and fury. She heard Martha speaking to her, imploring her, crying with her, but she paid no heed to her. The heat in the steam pipes began pounding. Daylight came into the room. Martha got up to conceal what signs she might find of her sickness. Martha showed strange skill in furtiveness now. She seemed to have acquired habits of cunning. Presently she was standing there, lying glibly to the wondering chambermaid. Her mother was ill; her mother had had news of bereavement. She must have some breakfast brought up.
Emily had been forty-three years old when she had left home last. But after Christmas Day, it was months before she thought of herself as anything but an old woman. It was not so much a day, the twenty-fifth of December, as an epoch—a desert of disappointment from which she was never likely to recover fully. She got up and dressed that morning, scarcely knowing what she did. She sat down in desperation and just looked at Martha. She rallied after a while, enough to suggest that they go out together for a walk. But Martha refused. There were lots of girls in her college who lived in New Jersey. She might meet somebody who would ask what in the world she was doing in that little hotel upon such an occasion. She lay down, and Emily covered her warmly.
She sat watching her sleep. The afternoon faded away. The darkness came, and they went to bed. There they lay. Martha slept till the evil hour of morning came, and passed distressfully.
They got up, and Emily began to put her things into her bag. As she moved about, peace came to her some way. It was as if she realized at length that she was sentenced to death and there was no escape possible. She must die quietly. Afterwards, she used to marvel over that strange consciousness that came to her, that she could go through this horror, and any other that might be coming to her, without frenzy, without any outcry. She knew that whichever hideous alternative she had to go through, as long as Martha was saved alive to her, she was able some way, quietly, to bear it. She had never experienced before such an exalted feeling of strength. Even Martha felt it. She grew quieter. She listened without a murmur to her mother's plans, because Emily's voice was smooth again.
She had decided that as soon as they got to New York she would 'phone from the station to the head nurse of a hospital to which she had once gone to see a friend. She remembered vividly the assured and adequate manner in which those nurses had moved about. She was loath to trouble them. She would say that she was a stranger in the city, without friends, suddenly in need of a gynecologist. She wanted a woman, and the very best one. Would the nurse recommend a perfectly reliable one?
There was no hitch in the plan. The nurse recommended three, for she thought it likely that some of them might be away for the holidays. Emily was able to get an appointment with the first one, but only late in the afternoon, after the other patients had been seen. She turned calmly from that 'phone, and took Martha to the Brevoort Hotel. She got a room on the third floor. She wouldn't have been afraid then of any height. It was no wonder that Martha had to exclaim, as soon as the door was shut behind the porter with their luggage:
"How could you do it, mammie?"