The station was just as it had always been. It looked smaller and dirtier, but she knew that it had not changed; and a sharp pain shot through her heart at the realization that, in this town, everything had gone on its placid way while so much had been happening to one of its children. There were the same grinning gamins waiting for the New York newspapers; the same negro porters from the two hotels; the same station-master "calling the train," just as he used to call it in the days when she had watched the outgoing coaches with envious longings for a sight of the strange lands toward which they were bound.
Then, as her aching feet touched the cinder of the thoroughfare, she realized her danger. She had no plan, no scheme of accounting for herself; some unreasoned impulse, partly, doubtless, the primal instinct that drives the wounded beast to its den, had overcome her fears and turned her face in the direction of the home whither she had, for so long, dreaded to return. But now she was seized with a terror of recognition by the townspeople, and so she lowered her head and walked, with the swiftness of panic, among the little knot of loafers about the station-door.
Now that she was here, what was she to say, what to do, where to turn? She moved, unable to evolve any order from the chaos of her thoughts. She could only go over and over the memory of that last day in school; the early violets, purple and fragrant, peeping through the lush grass on the lawns of Second Street; the flaming oriole in the Southwark yard; the lazy sunlight flowing through the open windows of Miss England's sleepy classroom. Mary's blue eyes were bright then, her mouth was red, her cheeks pink; lithe, strong-limbed, and firm of body, her walk had owned the easy, languid grace of a wild animal. And now, the lawns were bare; only a few persistent sparrows hopped in the gutters and along the ground; the sky was empty of sunlight, and she——
She came to a supreme pause. Habit had led her aimless feet. She was standing, in the full morning, before the two-story brick house that was her father's home.
She knew that the door remained unlocked from dawn to night; but she did not at once enter. She was afraid to go in, afraid to stand still, afraid to go away.
Then, from the next house, came decision. It was Etta's, her married sister's place, and she heard someone within it rattle at its door. Anything was better than a meeting with Etta: Mary quietly opened the door to her father's house and slipped inside.
She went down the brief, darkened hallway, past the drawn curtains of the parlor, through the twilight of the dining-room, and stopped at the open entrance to the small, crowded kitchen, where, among neatly arranged and brightly polished pots and pans, her mother was bending over the glowing stove.
Mrs. Denbigh looked up with a start. Still stooped, still hatchet-faced, but grayer and more shrunken, she stood there, her sleeves rolled from her thin forearms, her forehead wet by present labor, her mouth set hard by labors gone.
"Get out o' here!" she said.
"Mom!"