A Good Woman (Bromfield)/Part 1/Chapter 2
The sight of the letter, so carelessly tossed aside by Essie, filled her with a sense of disappointment: if she had only received it at the proper time, she could have read it to the ladies of the Augusta Simpson Branch. Only an hour before she had "craved the indulgence" of the ladies while she read "one of my son's interesting letters about the work they are doing in blackest Africa." The letter still crackled in her reticule, filling her with an immense pride, for' was not the career of Philip, and Philip himself, simply another evidence of her sterling character? If Essie hadn't been a slut she would have had two letters to read.
She drew her solid body up to the table and, clamping on her pince-nez (which for a moment exasperated her by becoming entangled in the white badge of her temperance) she tore open the battered letter and holding it at arm's length because of her far-sightedness, began to read.
At first glance she was disturbed by the brevity of it and by the fact that there was no enclosure from Naomi. Usually Philip wrote pages.
For a moment she simply stared at the letter, incapable of any logical thought. Her hand, which never shook, was shaking. She was for a moment, but only a moment, a broken woman. And then, slowly, she read it again to make certain that she had not read it wrongly. On reflection, she saw clearly that he was upset. The letter was hasty and disorderly in composition; the very handwriting had changed, losing its round, precise curves, here and there, in sudden jagged and passionate downstrokes. And at the end he did not write, as he always did, "We pray for you every night."
Beneath the shower of light from the wild-rose dome she tried to fathom the meaning of the letter, struggling meanwhile with a sudden sense of loneliness such as she hadn't experienced since she sat in the same spot years before reading Jason's last letter. Coming home, giving up the work of the Lord in blackest Africa! (Just after she had read aloud before all those women one of his interesting letters.) Philip, who had always placed his hopes unfalteringly in the hope of the Lord. I've made a mistake in my calling. What could he mean by that? How could one mistake a call from the Lord?
He was, she saw, in earnest. He had not even waited for a letter from her. If she couldonly have written she would have changed everything. And there was that hint, so ominous, that he would have left Naomi behind if she chose not to follow him. Something strange, something terrifying, she felt, had happened, for nothing else could explain this sudden deterioration of character. There was no hint of what had caused it, nothing (and her suspicions were bristling) unless it had to do with that Englishwoman. For a moment she felt that she was dealing with some intangible mystery and so was frightened.
After she had grown more calm, it occurred to her that this strange, inexplicable letter might have been caused by the fever that had attacked him twice, that it was a result of the wound he wrote of, or perhaps merely a passing wild idea—only Philip had never had any wild ideas, for you couldn't properly call his ecstatic devotion to God a wild emotion. Once, as a boy, he had had a sudden desire to become an artist, but she had changed him quickly and easily. No, he had always been a good boy who obeyed her. He did not have silly ideas.
During an hour shaken with doubts and fears, one terror raised its head above the others—the terror that after twenty-four years of careful training and control, twenty-four years spent in making him as perfect as his father had been imperfect, the blood of Jason Downes was coming into its own to claim the son which she had come long ago to think of only as her own.
The return of Philip seemed almost as great a calamity as the flight of his father. For the second time in her existence a life carefully and neatly arranged appeared to fall into ruin. How was she to explain this shameful change of Philip's heart to the Reverend Castor, the members of the church, the women who had listened to his letters? It was, she saw, an astonishing, scandalous thing. What missionary had ever turned back from the path shown him by God? What was Philip to do if he was not to be a missionary?
She tried to imagine the confusion and trouble the affair must be causing Naomi, who was the child of missionaries. She had never really liked Naomi, but she felt sorry for her now, as sorry as it was possible for a mother to feel for the wife of her son. But Naomi, she thought, almost at once, was quite able to look out for herself, and she must be working on Philip, even now, to turn him back to God. Suddenly she had an unaccustomed feeling of warmth for Naomi. After all, Naomi had had a great success four years ago at the tent meetings. She had converted scores of people then; certainly she could do much to turn Philip from his colossal error and sin.
Her first impulse to take the letter to Elmer died abruptly, as a similar impulse had died twenty-four years earlier. For the present she would say simply that Philip and Naomi were on their way home to rest from their hardships, from the fevers and the wound which Philip had received during a native uprising. She regretted that Philip had not written some details of the affair, because it would have made a most fascinating story. The ladies would have been so interested in it. . . .