A Good Woman (Bromfield)/Part 2/Chapter 12
At the same moment, Philip was walking along the road that led out into the open country, talking, talking, talking to Mary Conyngham.
He had met her in a fashion the most natural, for he had gone to walk in the part of the town where Mary lived. There were odd, unsuspected ties between the people who lived on the Hill and those who lived in the Flats, and he had come to know of her return from Krylenko, his own foreman; for Krylenko had heard it from Irene Shane, who had seen Mary herself at the school that Irene kept alive in the midst of the Flats. Krylenko told him the news while they sat eating their breakfast out of tin pails and talking of Irene Shane. Once he heard it, there was no more peace for Philip: he thought about her while he worked, pulling and pushing great sheets of red-hot metal, while the thick smoke blew in at the windows of the cavernous shed. All through the morning he kept wondering what she was like, whether she had changed. He kept recalling her face, oval and dark, with good-humored blue eyes and dark hair pulled back in a knob at the back of her small head. That was the way he remembered her, and he tormented himself with doubts as to whether she had changed. She wasn't a girl any longer; she was the mother of two children, and a widow. She had been through troubles with her husband.
At lunch he scarcely spoke to Naomi and his mother, and he never uttered the name of Mary Conyngham, for something made him cautious: he could not say what it was, save that he felt he oughtn't to speak of her before the other two. He had to see Mary Conyngham; he had to talk with her, to talk about himself. He couldn't go on any longer, always shut in, always imprisoned in the impenetrable cell of his own loneliness. It was Mary Conyngham who could help him; he was certain of it.
He left Naomi at the door of the restaurant, telling her that he meant to go for a walk. He would return later to sleep. No, he didn't feel tired. He thought a walk would do him good.
And then, when he had left her, he walked toward the part of the town where Mary lived, and when he reached her street, he found that he hadn't the courage even to pass her house, for fear she might see him and wonder why he was walking about out there on the borders of the town. For an hour he walked, round and round the block encircling her house, but never passing it. It wasn't only that she might think h'm a fool, but she might be changed and hard. If she had changed as much as he himself had changed, it would only be silly and futile, the whole affair. But he couldn't go on forever thus walking round and round, because people would think him mad, as mad as his mother and Naomi believed him.
Crossing the street, he looked up, waiting for a wagon to pass, and there on the opposite side stood Mary Conyngham. She did not see him at once, perhaps (he thought) because she had not expected to see him, and so had not recognized him. She was wearing a short skirt, known as a "rainy daisy," though it was a bright, clear day. She looked pale, he thought, and much older—handsomer, too, than she had once been. All the tomboyish awkwardness had vanished. She was a woman now. For a moment he had a terrible desire to turn and run, to hide himself. It was a ridiculous thought, and it came to nothing, for as the wagon passed she saw him, and, smiling, she crossed the street to meet him. His heart was beating wildly, and the rare color came into his dark cheeks.
"Philip," she said, "I've been wondering where you were."
It gave him the oddest sensation of intimacy, as if the meeting had been planned, and he had been waiting all this time impatiently.
They shook hands, and Mary said, "I've just left your mother." And Philip blushed again, feeling awkward, and silly, like a boy in his best clothes, who didn't know what to do with his hands. He was dressed like a workman in an old suit and blue cotton shirt.
Suddenly he plunged. "I came out here on purpose I wanted to see you."
"Have you been to the house?"
"No," he hesitated. "No . . . I've just been walking round, hoping to run into you."
It was five years since they had last seen each other, and longer than that since they had really been friends. Talk didn't come easily at first. Standing there on the corner, they made conversation for a time—silly, banal conversation—when each of them wanted to talk in earnest to the other.
At last Philip said, "Are you in a hurry? Could I come home with you?"
"No, I'm not in a hurry. I've left the children with Rachel . . . Rachel is my sister-in-law. We share expenses on the house. But I don't think we better go home. Are you tired?" she asked abruptly.
"No."
"Because if you aren't, we might go for a walk. I was afraid you might be, after working all night at the Mills."
For a moment Philip looked at her sharply. "How did you know I was in the Mills?"
She laughed. "Krylenko told me. I saw him yesterday. He was helping Irene teach English to a lot of dirty and very stupid Poles."
"He's a nice fellow—Krylenko. I didn't know there were such men down there."
"Nobody knows it without going down there. Shall we walk a bit?"
They set out along Milburn Street, past the row of houses surrounded by green leaves and bright trees. It was the hill farthest from the Mills and the soot seldom drifted so far. As they drew nearer and nearer to the open fields, the queer sense of restraint began a little to melt away. They even laughed naturally as they had done years before when they had played together.
"It was a funny thing," said Philip. "I've been wanting to see you ever since I came back. That's why I came out here this afternoon—on a chance of meeting you. I came as soon as I heard you were home."
He was walking with his hands clasped behind him, his dark brows puckered into a fine line with the effort he was making. He didn't know how to talk to women, at least women like Mary, and, in spite of their old, old friendship, he felt shy with her. With her dead husband and her two children, she seemed so much older and wiser. Some odd, new complication had entered their relationship which made it all difficult and confused. Yet she seemed to take it calmly, almost sadly.
"Tell me," she said presently. "Philip, tell me about yourself. You don't mean to go back?" She halted and looked at him squarely.
"No, I don't mean to go back." And all at once he found himself pouring out to her the whole story. He told her how he hated it all from the beginning, how he had begun to doubt, how the doubts had tortured him; how he had prayed and prayed, only to find himself slipping deeper and deeper. He told her of the morning by the lake, of the terrible night of the drums, of the coming of the queer Englishwoman, and the fight that followed, in which his last grain of faith had gone. Suddenly, he realized that he was telling the whole story for the first time. He had never spoken of it before to any one. It was as if all the while, without knowing it, he had been saving it for Mary Conyngham.
"And so," she said, "you've come back to stay. Do you think you'll stay?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. There's nothing else to do."
"And why did you go to work in the Mills?"
"I don't know. At least, I didn't know at the beginning."
"Was it because you wanted to work among th people in the Flats?"
"No . . . no . . . I'm through with meddling in other people's lives."
There was a bitterness in his tone which Mary must have guessed had some relation to the woman she had left a little while before; only Philip had always adored his mother. Emma Downes boasted of it.
"I think I went into the Mills," he was saying, "because I had to find something solid to get hold of . . . and that was the solidest thing I could find. It's awfully solid, Mary. And it's beginning to do the trick. At first I hadn't faith in anything, least of all myself, and now I've got something new to take its place. It's a kind of faith in man—a faith in yourself. I couldn't go on always putting everything into the hands of God. It's like cheating—and people don't do it really. They only pretend they do. If they left it all to God, I suppose things would work out somehow; but they don't. They insist on meddling, too, and when a thing succeeds then God is good and he's answered their prayers, and if it fails, then it is God's Will. But all the while they're meddling themselves and making a mess of things."
"And you don't mean ever to go back to the church?"
For a moment he didn't answer. Then he said in a low voice, "No . . . I don't believe any longer—at least, not in the way of the church. And the church—well, the church is dead so far as the world is concerned. It's full of meddling old women. It might disappear to-morrow and the world would go on just the same. That's one thing about the Flats. . . . Down there you get down to brass tacks. You know how little all the hubbub really means."
"Do people know how you feel?"
"No, they just think I'm a little mad. I've never told any one any of this, Mary, until now."
She looked at him shyly. "Your blue shirt suits you better than your black clothes, Philip. I always thought you weren't made for a preacher."
He blushed. "Perhaps . . . anyway, I feel natural in the blue shirt." He halted again. "You know, Mary, it's been the queerest thing—the whole business. It's as if I never really existed before. It's like being born again—it's painful and awful."
They were quite clear of the Town now. It had sunk down behind the rolling hills. They sat down side by side presently on the stone wall of the bridge that crossed the brook. The water here was clear and clean. It turned to oil further on, after it had passed through the Flats. For a time they sat in silence, watching the sun slipping down behind the distant woods that crowned Trimble's Hill. In the far distance the valley had turned misty and blue.
Presently Mary sighed suddenly, and asked, "And your wife? What's to be done about her? She's a missionary, too, and she still believes, doesn't she?"
A shadow crossed Philip's face. "Yes, that's the trouble. It's made such an awful mess. She's always lived out there. She's never known any other life, and she doesn't know how to get on here. That's the trouble. Sometimes I think she ought to go back . . . alone, without me. She'd be happier there."
For a moment there was a silence, and Philip fancied that she began to say something, and then halted abruptly; but he couldn't be certain. It may have only been the noise of the brook. He looked at her sharply, but she rose and turned her back.
"We'd better start back," she said. "It will be getting dark."
For a long time they walked side by side in silence—an odd silence in which they seemed to be talking to each other all the while. It was Mary who actually spoke.
"But you don't mean to go on forever in the Mills? Have you thought what you want to do?"
Again he waited for a long time before answering her. It must have seemed to Mary that he was being shy and cautious with her, that despite the pouring out of his story, there was still a great deal that he had kept hidden away. He had the air of a man who was afraid of confidences.
At last he said, "I don't know whether I ought to speak of it, but I do know what I want to do. It sounds ridiculous, but what I want to do is . . . is . . . paint." He blurted it out as if it required an immense effort, as if he were confessing a sin.
"Pictures?" asked Mary. "Do you know anything about it?"
"No . . . not very much. I've always wanted to, in away. A long time ago, when I was a boy, I used to spend all my time drawing things." His voice fell a little. "But as I grew older, it seemed foolish . . . and the other thing came up . . . and I did that instead. You see, I've been drawing a bit lately. I've been drawing in the Flats—the engines and cranes and chimneys. They always . . . well, they fascinated me as far back as I can remember." When she did not answer," he said, "You remember . . . I used to draw when I was a kid . . ."
For a time she considered this sudden, fantastic outburst, and presently she said, "Yes, I remember. I still have the picture you made of Willie, the pony . . . and the tree-house. . . ." And then after another pause. "Have you thought about a teacher?"
"No . . . but . . . don't think I'm conceited, Mary . . . I don't want a teacher. I want to work it out for myself. I've got an idea."
She asked him if she might see some of the drawings.
"I haven't shown them to any one," he said. "I don't want to yet . . . because they aren't good enough. When I do a good one . . . the kind I know is right and what I meant it to be, I'll give it to you."
His secret, he realized suddenly, was out—the secret he had meant to tell no one, because he was in a strange way ashamed of it. It seemed so silly for any one in the Town to think of painting.
The odd, practical streak in Mary asserted itself. "Have you got paints? You can't get them here in the Town."
"No . . . I haven't needed them. But I'll want them soon. I want to begin soon."
"I'm going to Cleveland on Monday," she said. "I'll get them there . . . everything you need. You'd never find them here."
And then, since he had let escape his secret, he told her again of the morning by the lake at Megambo, and the sudden, fierce desire to put down what he saw in the procession of black women carrying water to the young plantations. He tried to tell her how in a way it had given him a queer sense of religious ecstasy.
It was almost dark now, and the fragrance of the garden on the outskirts of the Town filled the air.
Mary smiled suddenly. "You know," she said, "I don't think you really hated Africa at all. It wasn't Africa you hated. You loved it. And I don't think you mean to stay here all your life. Some day you'll be going back."
He left her in the shadows as the older of her children, a tow-headed girl of three, came down the path to meet her, calling out her name.
On returning to the slate-colored house, he opened the door to find Naomi awaiting him.
"Supper is ready," she said. "I sent Essie to the restaurant for it, so you wouldn't have to walk up there."
He thanked her, and she answered, "I thought you'd be tired after walking so long."
"Thank you. I did take a long walk. I wanted to get into the open country."
While they ate, sitting opposite each other, beneath the glow of the dome painted with wild-roses, he noticed that she was changed. She seemed nervous and uneasy: she kept pressing him to eat more. She was flushed and even smiled at him once or twice. He tried to answer the smile, but his face seemed made of lead. The effort gave him pain.
Suddenly he thought, "My God! She is trying to be nice to me!" And he was frightened without knowing why. It was almost as if, for a moment, the earth had opened and he saw beneath his feet a chasm, vague and horrible, and sinister.
He thought, "What can have changed her?" For lately there had grown up between them a slow and insinuating enmity that was altogether new. There were moments when he had wanted to turn away and not see her at all.
She poured more coffee for him, and he became aware suddenly that his nerves, were on edge, that he was seeing everything with a terrible clarity—the little freckles on the back of her hand, the place where the cup was chipped, the very figures and tiny discolorations of the ornate wallpaper.
"Your mother won't be home till late," she said. "She's gone to report her talk with Mr. Slade to the ladies of the Union."
He wondered why she had told him something which he already knew. But he was kind to her, and tried not to seem different, in any way, from what he had always been. He was sorry for Naomi more than ever since her life had become such an empty, colorless thing.
At last he was finished, and thanking her again, he left her helping Essie to clear away the table, and went upstairs with a strange feeling that she had stayed behind to help only because she didn't want to be alone with him.
Undressing, he lay for a long time in the darkness, unable to sleep because of the acuteness which seemed to attack all his senses. He heard every small noise in the street—the cries of the children playing in the glare of the arc-lights, the barking of dogs, the distant tinkle of a piano. Slowly, because he was very tired, the sounds grew more and more distant, and he fell asleep.
He slept profoundly, as a man drowned in the long exhaustion of the Mills. He was awakened by something touching him gently at first, as if it were part of a dream. It touched him again and then again, and slowly he drifted back to consciousness. Being a man of nerves, he awakened quickly, all at once. There was no slow drowsiness and clinging mists of slumber.
He opened his eyes, but the room was in complete blackness, and he saw nothing. It must have been late, for even the sounds of the street had died away, to leave only the long pounding of the Mills that was like the silence. Somewhere, close at hand, there was a sound of breathing. For a second he thought, "I have died in my sleep."
Then the thing touched him again. It was a bit of metal, cold and rigid, not longer than a finger. And in a sudden flash he knew what it was—a metal haircurler. The thing brushed his forehead. He knew then, quickly. It was Naomi come to him to be his wife. She was bending over him. The darkness hid her face. She made no sound. It was unreal, like something out of a dream.