So they left for home that night. And the next day, as the train hurried West, Martha's gloom and her humility deepened mile by mile. She sat looking steadily out of the window, and Emily realized that it could not be the scenery that fixed the expression of her face. When her thoughts were recalled from some unhappy distance, she considered her mother meekly, with solicitude. Her gratitude, the sort of indebtedness, was painful to Emily. After they had changed at Chicago into the train for home, Emily realized, even before Martha spoke, that she was hardening herself for an ordeal.
"Mammie," she said, "I don't want to—I mean—will you let me have the guest room this time? I think I could sleep better in the guest room."
Emily Kenworthy had never taken a journey of any sort whose very climax and last ineffable thrill had not been getting back again into her very own house. She was that sort of woman. But never before had she felt the joy of being at home and of waking up in her own bedroom quite so keenly as she did that morning. She opened her closet and took down her customary morning frock. It was a brown jersey. It had a bit of tan-colored jersey down the front of it. On the tan-colored jersey were rows of little brown jersey buttons, and those top two buttons were hanging loosely; those two loose and familiar buttons were reality, surely. They proved that New York had been only a dream. She put the verifying frock on, and went out of her room, and in the hall the radiator was burbling out its confirming burbles. She sat down at her own breakfast table; Bob was there, no phantom. And the percolator lid still had to be managed. Its awkwardness had been a family failing for months now. Bob couldn't apparently improve it. Emily began pouring coffee, with her hands held as that percolator must be held, and she could scarcely believe she had been in New York. Martha's hallucination was a nightmare, and the percolator was truth and awakening.
She could indeed have believed that morning that the days of terror had been a delirium if, in the guest room, the pitiful stranger had not been lying in bed. She was glad that Martha seemed willing to stay there the first day or two, for it made her story more impressive.
"It's this quarrel with us, Bob, that's worked on her mind till she couldn't eat. I wish you could have heard her that first night. She just cried and cried, because she was so sorry about last summer, and ashamed. She says she don't know what possessed her to act so—naughty. I had just to make her stop crying. I told her it was morbid; but I couldn't get her to eat. I ordered everything, but she wouldn't take anything. The doctor says it's her nerves; she's got to have a long rest."
"But how'll you keep her from dancing, if you take her South?"
"She won't want to dance; she's too sick."
Bob seemed scarcely able to credit that, although he acknowledged that she looked bad.
Emily went on: "She's so ashamed of the things she said to you last summer, Bob. She wanted me to apologize; or rather I said I would, because she gets so worked up if she begins to talk about it. She said no girl ever had a better father than you, Bob."
"Did she say that, honestly, now, Emily?" Bob looked troubled.