Emily shivered. She didn't like Eve's "sweet old lamb." He was a wolf, perhaps, at heart, and she was afraid of his cruelty. "He'll make that man afraid, too, if he looks at him like that!" she thought.
He left abruptly, and Emily went upstairs to Martha. What she saw in the painted room terrified her. She had to realize that the fire in Martha's heart burned passionately enough to make everything its fuel. For when she shut the door behind her, Martha raised herself up angrily from the day bed crying furiously:
"Mother! I hope you're satisfied now! I don't know how you could sit there with that vile man! Did you ever hear anything so—vile—vile!" She sobbed. "He talks as if Richard was a dog to amuse that dirty woman! You'd think he was a slave! Nobody takes his part! Nobody cares for him! And YOU aren't sorry for him, even! Oh, it makes me so mad!"
After a little Emily said, "I felt sorry for HER, Martha!"
"Yes, you would! You know what a liar she is. Even Eve said she was a liar. Even Eve said she pretended to be sick so she could get money out of her father! Why do you believe them? Oh!" cried Martha, "he's a vile man! Vile! When I think of Richard having to live with those people——" When her sobs let her speak, she went on, "Mother, can't you see what a position he is in?"
"It doesn't seem a position that does any man any credit, Martha."
"All right!" cried Martha. "All right, let it go at that. I'll never speak to you about him again, never." She never did.
It was well that there was a painted room in the house, those four weeks before she went back to college. There was nothing else bright about it. Bob waited to intercept letters from "that skunk" who, Mr. Fairbanks said, was to be for some time in Rochester with his wife; but no letters seemed to come. Martha appeared not to be humiliated by the fact that she had practically declared her love for a man hopelessly, permanently married. In her secluded room she bided her time, a smile on her lips, the sweetest dream in her eyes. She was ignoring her mother not only purposefully, but unconsciously. She had greater things than a mother's anxiety to think about.
Her coldness sickened Emily every minute of the day. She scarcely knew how to get through the hours, so burdened were they with yearning over the silly girl. Never had the garden bloomed so hilariously before in August and September. Never had it had such care before. Emily watered her dahlias sometimes till midnight, dreading a sleepless bed when she went into the house. She rose up early and watered them under stars she had seldom seen setting. Once out there, hoping, praying, she had looked up and in the very early dawn seen Martha sitting dreaming at her window. And the sight of that distant, alienated child took all the color from the dawn and heaven.
Life indeed had assumed the color of dread and heart-sickness. Johnnie had waited a few days, and then departed. Emily was glad she had seized an occasion to say to him secretly, hurriedly, "Johnnie, I'm very fond of you!" He had given her a surprised and precious look. But he had not even said he was leaving. His mother said he had gone down to have some coaching in philosophy—it was his last year in college. Eve never came to the house. Emily met her occasionally on the street, in the stores. And once she said, passionately: "Oh, I hate to run into you this way! I'm ashamed to look you in the face!" And in her own house the atmosphere was either very cold, when she and Martha were together, or very sultry, when Bob was with them, so that she lived in terror of some further deadly burst of thunder.