It had been a horrid afternoon, Lennie Colman admitted to herself in her little bedroom, as she hurriedly removed her dress, divested herself of her heavy walking-boots, poured water from a pitcher into a bowl, and prepared to get ready for supper. There was an ache in the back of her mind; her body was exhausted. She had become prey to an unpleasant excitement. A confusion of emotions had devastated her nerves. Lennie Colman was intelligent enough always to try to be frank with herself. She tried now; wiping her wet face with a towel, she made an attempt to set her house in order. Was it, she asked herself, because Gareth had threatened to go away that she felt so mean, so unimportant? She was obliged to face the fact that he had spoken about this possibility before; they had, indeed, often discussed his chances of going to college and, while she always knew that she would miss him, there was no hurt connected with the pain of her sweet emotion. No, this could not be the cause of her feeling; she must search further. Bravely she dragged the truth from its lair in her subconsciousness: she hated the idea of Gareth meeting the Countess Nattatorrini, and the prospect of this meeting had dominated the afternoon's conversation. It was, she now quite fully realized, the paramount plan in Gareth's mind. Lennie was certain that this new association, if it developed, and she could see no reason to believe that it would not develop even supposing she withdrew her proffer to arrange an introduction, would glow with a glamour that her own relationship with Gareth had fatally lacked. The Countess could give him everything that the school-teacher had been unable to give him. She could offer him the experiences of her life in the great world; she could draw on an effulgent background for the materials of her interest. Lennie Colman faced the truth, took stock, and knew that she was jealous.
The school-teacher looked around her, dissected the elements of her environment as she had never dissected them before. She saw the room she was living in, the room she had lived in for so many years, in all its sordid commonplaceness. She saw the faded pink walls, from which in spots the paper was peeling, exposing the grey plaster. She saw the pathos of the Copley prints, the Countess Potocka and The Pot of Basil, neatly passe-partouted. She saw the ugliness, the vicious poverty, of the threadbare, ingrain carpet, the cheap, cherry, machine-carved bed, the dresser, with a hand-towel serving as a cover, on which were laid out her celluloid comb, her brush with a blue celluloid back, the blue celluloid box for hair which came out in the combing. She saw the tasselled dance-cards, pathetically few, yellowing with age, which hung from the standard which supported the mirror over her dresser. She saw the wash-stand with its cracked bowl and pitcher. She saw the black tin plate that covered the hole in the wall into which the stovepipe was inserted in winter. She turned to her bookcase and saw the row of Cambridge poets: Whittier, Tennyson, Browning, Byron, Pope, Wordsworth. There was one volume, the eighth, of a set of books called Mind. There were textbooks, a hated reminder of the treadmill she would be forced to walk until the end of her days, and a few of the classic and semi-classic authors: Henry Esmond and Diana of the Crossways side by side with a set of Shakespeare and a translation of Œdipus Rex. She reviewed, in this dismal mood, the titles of the more modern books: Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Henry James's The Spoils of Poynton, More Songs from Vagabondia by Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey, Barrie's Sentimental Tommy, William Dean Howells's The Landlord at Lion's Head, James Lane Allen's The Choir Invisible, and Robert Hichens's Flames. On her little writing-desk, on top of her papers, lay a recent copy of the Atlantic Monthly in which she had been reading a new instalment of Paul Leicester Ford's The Story of an Untold Love. Over her desk hung a china plaque which she herself had painted with grapes and roses and bees and butterflies. She recalled, with shame, how last summer she had taken lessons in china-painting in Katie Pearl's class, in a vague but futile effort to be something more than she was, and how, after three months, she had suddenly awakened to the fact that she had no talent for the arts. At that very instant the smell of turpentine had begun to nauseate her. And now Lennie Colman understood why she had never called on the Countess Nattatorrini. Several times she had been on the point of making this call; plainly the Countess had wanted her to come; there had been nothing perfunctory in her insistent invitation. Yet she had not gone. Now she understood why; it was because she hated the Countess. She was her rival, her rival with superior advantages.
All the confusion of her thinking, all the mingled feelings of the past four years had suddenly fused during this summer afternoon into an understandable emotion: she was jealous. It had required Gareth's careful casualness in mentioning the Countess, his quiet persistence in begging an introduction, to bring to Lennie some comprehension of the state of her own mind. Four years ago when Gareth had entered the High School she had known him but slightly. Very gradually a kind of sympathetic intimacy had developed between the two. Almost immediately she had become aware that here was an unusual person, the sort of person she had never before encountered in her limited environment. By her poverty and a real lack of initiative, perhaps, also by a lack of sufficient ability, she was circumscribed by the four walls of Maple Valley, invisible walls, but just as enclosing and excluding as the walls of China. Here, then, was a mere boy, a student in her classes, with a mind sufficiently mature, an appreciation sufficiently keen, a point of view sufficiently sophisticated, so that she could seriously discuss books and plays and music with him. Gareth had given Lennie Colman something she had long ago relinquished hope of finding, and which, assuredly, she could never hope to find again in this provincial community where so many people were old because the young went away as soon as possible to carve out their lives elsewhere. Every year she had watched the best ones depart a few months after they had graduated from High School.
In the past, Lennie realized, she must have meant a good deal to Gareth, too. He must have been grateful for this opportunity for sympathetic intercourse, a benevolent affiliation that no one else in Maple Valley could offer him. But now that she had probed into the hidden chambers of her soul, now that she realized and even admitted proudly to herself that she loved the boy, she could not fail to see that whatever feeling he had for her must be of an entirely different nature. To him she had only been a good friend, some one with whom he might discuss books and kindred impersonal subjects. Now, with the new horizon opened to him by college life, or by the possibility of friendly consociation with the Countess Nattatorrini, Lennie foresaw how little she herself would matter to him any more. The fact was, she summed it up, that hitherto she had been the only available fountain of interest for Gareth. Now, there were others. . . .
She combed her long, brown hair, regarding herself in the mirror. She was plain, she was forty, she was poor. It was strange that the first time it had come to her that she was really in love with Gareth, desired, even, to marry him, desired above all else to marry him, was also the day that she had become confirmed in the belief that he did not love her, that in any case he would never marry her. Another poignant objection rushed into her mind: her father. No, the Johns would never permit such a marriage, even if Gareth . . . She stopped herself, to add ruthlessly: Gareth least of all.
Swiftly she bound her hair in a knot at the back of her head. Then she drew on a blue dimity housedress. At last she was ready to join her family at the evening meal. Her mother had not yet called her to supper. Supper, therefore, could not be ready, although it was unbelievably late. As she slowly descended the stairs an odious suspicion entered her mind. Standing in the small, brown, lowceilinged sitting-room, a horror of a room, with two frightful paintings of her mother's father and mother, rocking-chairs, a couch with a knitted afghan, a table with a lamp, an album of World's Fair views, and a pressed-glass holder harbouring souvenir spoons, she had a new realization of the hopelessness of her plight. On the horse-hair couch with its stuffing sagging beneath, prone and awkward, in a position which suggested that he was an old, worn-out doll, constructed for some sinister reason by a grinning god, and now thrown aside as insufficient even for the purpose of creating more ironic mirth in a cynical world, lay her father. In this first view she understood, fully and completely, that everything was smashed: ideals, hopes, even any further attempt at living in moderate comfort. She was not strong enough to fight.
Father . . . Her tone was dull andeven. There was no rage in her voice, hardly an element of grief, not even a suggestion of reproof . . . You've been drinking again.
I'm no good, Lennie. The old man turned over, disclosing his bloodshot eyes, his matted, yellowgrey beard, his foodand drink-stained clothing. I know I'm no good, he whined.
Father, it's so hard for all of us. I work so hard for our money. . . .
I know. I don't do anything. I'm no good, no good atall. I drink up my hard-working daughter's salary, and I don't support my family. Wish I'd never been born. Ought've killed myself long ago. The old man groaned.
Father, dear! Lennie tried to soothe him.
Then, in despair, yet with a certain kind of resignation, she went on into the kitchen where she found her mother creaming dried-beef, boiling potatoes, chopping up a bowl of greens. Mrs. Colman was about sixty-five years old. She had led a hard life and her body had exacted the penalty. Her back was bent, her fingers knotted at the joints. Her face, had it attained a kind of Buddhistic calm, might have been called handsome, for her features were even, her blue eyes kind, under her soft white hair, parted in the centre and smoothed in two curves over her brow, but there were lines of care around these eyes and constant worry had sunk them low in their sockets.
Mother, Lennie began, father's been drinking again.
I know he has. Mrs. Colman was cutting bread.
Where did he get the money?
He got it charged.
I thought we'd told everybody. I thought that was settled. Lennie was breathless, indignant.
There's a new saloon on Main Street where they didn't know. There'll be ten dollars or so to pay. You know he always treats everybody.
Lennie moaned. Well, she said, I can do without a new hat this fall.
Mrs. Colman sighed. He's your father, Lennie. You must remember that. . . . Mrs. Colman wiped her perspiring face with her apron. He's had bad luck. He hasn't been able to get work for so long. It's very humiliating for a man. You must make allowances.
Lennie, who had heard these arguments before, was not listening. Presently, she began to cry. Mother, I just can't bear it, she sobbed.
Mrs. Colman made no futile effort to comfort her daughter. Removing the creamed chipped-beef from the stove, she poured the mess into a cracked, white vegetable dish. She dried the potatoes. Then she carried the chopped greens into the dining-room and put them on the table.
A moment later, seated at this table, she and Lennie tried to eat. Lennie had stopped crying, but there was no further conversation between the two. From the sitting-room drifted the sound of a running monologue, now soft, now loud, now high, now low, now whining, now groaning. Mr. Colman was enjoying a fine frenzy of self-reproachful hysteria.
I wish I'd never been born, he moaned. My daughter's 'shamed o' me an' my wife's 'shamed o' me. Haven't anything to live for. Can't get work an' have to live on what poor, dear daughter makes, my daughter 't I love with my heart's blood. I'll kill myself, that's what I'll do: I'll kill myself. Then everybody'll be better off. Then everybody'll be happy. Then nobody'll be bothered with an ol' man any more. That'll be shlution of everything. I'll kill myself. I'll take poison or hang myself or drown myself in the river or throw myself under a train. I'll kill myself. That'll make my wife an' daughter happy that are 'shamed o' me an' rightfully. What can I expect? I deserve what I get. I'm weak an' worthless an' old. I don't mean anything to any one any more.
At this point Mr. Colman broke down and sobbed for a long time. At last, quite suddenly, he fell asleep, and began to snore loudly.
Neither Lennie nor her mother had made any attempt to interrupt his monologue. They had heard all of it too often before. They knew at precisely what point he would begin to cry, at what instant he would fall asleep. Although neither of them was hungry they went on with their business of eating. But it seemed to Lennie, having helped clean the supper-dishes, and, for the hundredth time assisted in undressing her father and getting him to bed—it seemed to Lennie, now back in her own room, that there was no more hope left in life, no hint of pleasure, no faint adumbration of happiness. She was, indeed, far too despondent to cry any more, and she lay in bed, tired in body and mind, her dry eyes wide open.