Gareth paced up and down the stuffy, narrow hallway of St. Paul's Hospital. The plaster was peeling from the white walls on which hung, each a little askew, a photograph of one of the founders, a man with a long white beard, a photograph of the Reverend Arthur Crandall, Rector of the Maple Valley Episcopal Church and President of the Board of Directors of the hospital, and a large photogravure of Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson, which Mrs. Townsend had brought back from a European tour and presented to the institution. The pungent odours of iodoform and ether married unpleasantly in Gareth's nostrils. In one of the bedrooms on the second storey his mother lay, waiting for Dr. Sinclair to perform the operation. From the moment the night before when his father had told him what was going to happen, he had known that his mother would die. Dr. Sinclair himself had been extremely dubious, but he had announced that her only hope lay in submitting to the knife. The predatory tumour must be removed, but the physician could not predict what effect the ether might have on her uncertain heart. Gareth could predict; he knew. A nurse, in her white uniform, and one of the interns came out of the office and passed, chattering and laughing, up the stairs. It was in this mood, Gareth reflected, that they were about to enter the doomed woman's chamber.
The boy had a moment of bitter realization when he felt that everything he cared about in life was passing. So far there had been only his mother. She had been the only human being capable of inspiring love in him. He reviewed her meagre life with his stupid, ununderstanding father, and he regretted so fondly, so vainly, that he had not done more himself to make her happy. Ten minutes before when he had kissed her and promised her that he would wait, she had assured him that it was he who had given her existence beauty and meaning, but he recognized in this only an attempt to comfort from a worgan on her deathbed. It was his nature only to take, never to give, but it was ironic that this quality, consistently enough, had prevented his giving in the one instance in which he would have been capable. She it was who had given freely, given everything, to him, and just now it could not occur to Gareth that this had been her only pleasure. By actepting what she had to offer he had given her all that it was in her power to appreciate.
As he paced interminably from one end of the narrow hallway to the other he became, for the first time in his life (and quite possibly the last) the prey of regret. What tortured him, what burned his consciousness, was the knowledge that now it was too late. How deeply he had loved her, and how little he had told her of his love! If only he might go under the knife in her stead!
Restless, unnerved, he entered the little parlour, with its golden-oak, machine-carved, polished furniture and woodwork, the chairs upholstered in a well-worn rep. Behind the glass door of the bookcase, three rows of medical works caught his eye. Seating himself, he attempted to count the red roses in the ingrain carpet. He could not, however, remain long in one position; almost immediately, indeed, he rose to resume his nervous march. Now, standing before the window, his nose snubbed against the glass, he observed his father and Dr. Sinclair approaching up the walk. His father seemed older, really senile, Gareth thought, for so comparatively young a man.
Gareth could hear Dr. Sinclair's boots squeak as he ascended the stairs to the upper floor. Mr. Johns entered the parlour. His hands were trembling, and there was an expression in his eyes, a haunted, hurt look, that Gareth had never seen there before. Instantly, the boy became aware that it gave him a certain satisfaction, even to some extent relieved his own pain, to be conscious of his father's suffering.
My son, the man began, it will be over in a few moments. There is a chance . . . He stammered on, searching for words. It was difficult for him to speak; a wall had grown up between father and son. Yet, above all, what Mr. Johns most desired at this hour was that his son should love him . . . Gareth, he was finally able to manage, one thing I want you to know: whether your mother . . . He stopped again, wiping his brow with his great white handkerchief. Why had his father waited until now to give him any evidence of affection? was what Gareth was thinking. How awkward he was, how stupid, how crude, how downright ugly! How Gareth hated him! . . . His father was making a new attempt to break down the old wall: I want you to know . . . There was another pause. The ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece became extremely audible. A fly buzzed across the window-pane. Gareth sat down . . . that whatever happens . . . the man got it out at last . . . you are going to college. Your mother wished it and now her wishes are sacred to me.
Thank you, father, Gareth replied coldly, byt with as little indifference as he was able to assume. How his hatred for his father intensified. His mother had to die to compel his father to make this promise. Had she lived he would never have given in. She was a martyr to her love for her son, and the cruel obstinacy of the fatuous fool she had married. How Gareth hated his father! Whether his mother lived or died he would always hate him now, hate him more than ever. Nothing could ever happen to bring them closer together, to make it possible for him to live under the same roof with this man again.
Mr. Johns was struggling with himself in a vain attempt to give some further sign of his affection for his son. His agony was pitifully apparent, offered in itself the basis for an immediate reconciliation, would have, if Gareth had rushed into his arms at this juncture, opened the way for a complete understanding in the future. Gareth knew this quite well, but the knowledge served only to make him harder, more aloof than ever. For a stronger emotion controlled him: the consciousness that the more his father suffered, the more content he himself would be. He wanted his father to suffer; he wanted him to suffer as much as they had suffered—his mother and he—through him. So Gareth made no move, said not a word, and his father did not immediately speak again. The clock ticked on, while Gareth returned to his position by the window. The trees were bright green in the sunlight of the morning. Birds hopped from branch to branch. Life everywhere, and yet his mother had to die. The tears coursed slowly down his cheeks. Behind him he heard his father moaning. Suddenly he was aware that some one else had entered the room. Sensing what this fact portended he did not turn about. He heard the nurse's voice. Softly she uttered his father's name, and then stopped.
Dead. His father was speaking and his inflection was not interrogative.
Gareth turned at last. Disregarding his father's presence, he looked at the nurse.
May I see my mother? he asked.
The next two days and nights seemed to Gareth the most horrible he had ever passed. Alone with his grief in the house with his father's grief, for which he had no respect, no sympathy, the strain became well-nigh unendurable. His grandmother and grandfather arrived from Keokuk. To these elderly people death was merely one of the expected incidentals of existence; they spoke of their daughter, recalling many episodes in her past, as casually as if she were sitting in the next room. Neighbours came in. The undertaker and his assistants, all dressed in black, blotted the rooms. There was a procession of boys with boxes of flowers.
On the afternoon of the day his mother died, Gareth had received a note from the Countess.
You must know, dear Gareth, it read, that any sorrow of yours is doubly mine, but now I can only shake your hand in silent sympathy. I feel helpless to do more. If you are like me, I cannot help thinking you would rather be alone for a while, but the moment you want to see me, come. I am always waiting.
Gareth pressed this note to his lips fervently, while his face hardened into complete decision.
Lennie Colman, of course, came to see him, and he found her tearful sympathy, her attempts at consolation, very hard to put up with. She took advantage of this opportunity to express her feeling for him in a way that seemed to him almost indecent. With her, too, he was through. She had done what she could, meant well, but now her attentions only sickened him. It was not that he was entirely lacking in gratitude; rather he was aware that he had given Lennie quite as much pleasure as she had ever given him, and that any future giving must come from him alone, for he had no further desire for anything that she could offer. Besides, he reflected, what she had done she had done for her own sake, not his.
After the ladies had arranged the flowers in vases, they retired late in the afternoon, leaving Gareth alone to pass an hour in the parlour near the oak box which contained all that was left of his mother. How peaceful she looked, exactly as he remembered her that day when she had lain asleep on her bed, only now her arms were folded across her breast. He tried to realize what had happened, but one emotion, one thought, persisted: he never wanted to see his father again.
Two days after the death of his mother, Gareth, with his father, his grandmother and grandfather, and a few close friends of the family, accompanied the body to Davenport, for Mrs. Johns had expressed a wish to be cremated. The journey down, the pretence and hypocrisy of the mourning guests, the cold, bare, stone crematory chapel were a new horror to the sensitive, imaginative boy. It did not well seem to him that he could bear much more of this; at the time he was not quite fully aware that he was purging his soul of a capacity for suffering of whatever nature.
Just before the slab, on which, in her white dress, she lay, was shunted into the furnace, Gareth placed a bouquet of marigolds under the fingers of her right hand. Then he turned his head. . . .
Returning on the train, he occupied the broad seat with his father. He was silent for an hour before he said, Father I want something.
What is it my boy?
Will you let me dispose of mother's ashes?
I think that would please her, Gareth.
When the cannikin containing his mother's remains arrived, Gareth left the house, bearing the urn tenderly beneath his coat. He walked through the streets of the town, on out through the unpaved roads where the Bohemians lived in their little cottages, past the fine, old residences, with their cast-iron deer and dogs and fountains, and finally, through the cemetery, where, a month ago, he had been with the Countess. As he slowly paced along the gravel walk, he recalled what she had said, that death always brought her closer to life, and he knew now that this was true for him also. For the first time he took a fierce, bitter joy in living. He went on through the little gate at the rear of the burialground, coming out once more on the crest of the hill, spattered with black-eyed Susans. The scene was a flood of brilliant colour, for now patches of wild purple asters, golden-rod, milk-weed, and thistle mingled with the black and orange flowers. Far down below the silver thread of the river wound in and out between the green and blue hills. In the early morning it was very silent.
Unwrapping the urn, Gareth removed the cover, and, reversing the receptacle, scattered the ashes among the flowers at his feet. He stood for a moment, dazed, before a blur obscured from his vision the loveliness of the scene. Then he flung himself face downward in the deep grass among the flowers, sobbing.
Mother! he cried. My mother!