"Oh!" he groaned. "Oh, I forget!"
But Martha had heard nothing of his quarrel with his mother and his passionate desire to atone as far as he could by all conventional decencies.
"Well, go on!" she commanded. "Was the man dead?"
But Johnnie had no gusto for the rest of his tale. "I was just telling Martha about what happened on the Pomona," he murmured to Emily, apologetically. "There was a woman drunk, and she locked the door of her cabin and wouldn't open it; they couldn't hear the man with her and they thought maybe she had done something to him."
"But what happened in the end?" Martha insisted.
"The captain broke in, and there was the man, reading in his bunk. He said he wasn't going to try to get her to open the door; he knew her. He'd been reading the History of Poland, with nothing but biscuit to eat. He said he was used to it. I didn't know it was so late. I got to be going."
"Don't go yet," Emily urged. "We've never really heard anything about your trip."
"I didn't mean to stay so long. I don't want to make them sore at me," he said, nervously. "They look at me so funny all the time."
He went back to them. Bob and Martha sat for a while talking, and Emily sat looking at them and thinking wistfully of what she had seen in the kitchen. How happy those children had been together in their young forgetfulness, a forgetfulness somewhat too facile, on Johnnie's part, perhaps. Yet what a fine relief it had been for him from the strain and depression of those unnatural days. Surely each of them must be thinking how snugly, how cozily they had together thrown off their burdens. If only it could have gone on! Martha would have married him now, likely, since the maternal handicap was removed—if that other thing had never happened. Johnnie, free and with an income, wouldn't be long in marrying—someone, Emily was convinced of that. But it would be a long time, a deplorably long time, before Martha would be settling down. There was no use hoping for so happy an ending to that story.
It was perhaps her kindness to Johnnie that cleansed Martha's mind, for the time, from its chilling cynicism. She was lovely that evening and gentle, and subdued. Emily lingered about with her in the guest room, and sat on her bed a long time with her, yearning over her. She had never felt so sure and mature a sort of oneness with her daughter before. Martha wouldn't let her get away. She clung to her; her trivial words were little caresses. It was an hour to be remembered, to be tasted carefully in memory, and relished indefinitely.