A Good Woman (Bromfield)/Part 2/Chapter 22
The inspiration came to Emma at the evening service, when she was struck again by the quality of sympathy in the voice and countenance of the Reverend Castor. He, of course, was the one with whom to discuss the problem of her marriage. He would understand, and he would be able, as well, to give her advice. Nor did he ever betray all the ladies of his congregation who came to him with their troubles. And he had been so sympathetic over Philip's long illness, showing so deep a solicitude, calling at the house three or four times a week.
Almost at once she felt happier.
At the end of the service, she waited until he had shaken hands with all the congregation, smiling and making little jests with them, as if he had not done so twice a day for fifty-two Sundays a year, ever since he had felt the call, When they had all gone, she said, "Could I take a moment of your time, Reverend Castor? I want advice over something that worries me."
It was a request he heard often enough, from one woman after another—women who asked advice upon every subject from thieving hired girls to erring husbands. There were times when he felt he could not endure listening to one more woman talk endlessly about herself. It wearied him so that he wanted to flee suddenly, leaving them all, together with the handshaking and the very church itself, behind him forever. Sometimes he had strange dreams, while he was awake, and with his eyes wide open, of fleeing to some outlandish place like those marvelous islands in the South Seas where there were none of these things. And then to calm his soul, he would tell himself cynically that even in those islands there were women.
He led her to his study, which he had been driven to establish at the back of the church, since there was no peace in the parsonage from the complaining voice above-stairs. There the two of them sat down. It occurred to Emma that he looked very white and tired, that there were new lines on his face. He couldn't be an old man. He wasn't much older than herself, yet he was beginning to look old. It was, she supposed, the life he led at home. A clergyman, of all people, needed an understanding, unselfish wife.
"And now," he was saying, "I'm always pleased to help, however I can in my humble way."
He was a good man, who never sought to evade his duty, however tired he was. He wanted, honestly, to help her.
She began to tell him, constructing an approach to the fact itself by explaining what a lonely, hard life she had had since the death of her husband in China. She touched upon the Christian way in which she had brought up her boy, and now (she said) that he was a grown man and married and would soon have a parish of his own (since he could not return to Africa) she would be left quite alone. She wanted the rest which she had earned, and the companionship for which she would no doubt hunger in her old age. These were the reasons why she had accepted the offer of Moses Slade. Yet she was troubled.
She leaned back in her chair and sighed. What did he think? Could he help her to decide?
The study was a gloomy room, lighted in the daytime by a single sooty Gothic window and at night by a single jet of gas. There was a roll-top desk, a long heavy table, a cabinet where the choir music was kept, and two or three sagging, weary leather chairs. Before he answered her, the tired eyes of the Reverend Castor rested for a time on the meager furniture as if he had lost himself in deep thought. She waited. This attitude was, however, merely professional, and wholly misleading. He was not in deep thought. He was merely thinking, "She doesn't want advice. She only wants to talk about herself. Whatever I say will make no difference. She means to marry him, no matter what happens."
But because this was his work he spoke at last, setting forth one by one all the arguments she had repeated to herself earlier in the day, concluding with the remark, "The reasons on the other side you have put very well yourself."
Emma stirred in the springless leather chair. "Then what do you advise?"
"Mrs. Downes, it is a matter that no one can decide but yourself. Pray God to help you, and do what you think is right."
He was troubled, and, in a vague way, disturbed and unhappy, because in the back of his mind the worm of envy was at work, gnawing, gnawing, gnawing—a sinful worm that gave him no peace. Moses Slade was free to marry again, and he had chosen Emma Downes. He had thought of Emma Downes for himself, in case . . . (the wicked thought returned to him again like a shadow crossing his path) . . . in case Annie's illness carried her off at last. It seemed to him that all the world was going past him, while he remained behind, chained to a complaining invalid.
Emma rose, and, after he had turned the gas out and locked the door, they went out together. It was a clear, quiet night, when for once there seemed to be no soot in the air, and the stars seemed very close. For a moment they both stood listening, and at last Emma said, "Am I right, or am I growing deaf? Do the Mills sound very far away to-night . . . sort of weak?"
He listened, and then said, "Yes, it's queer. They sound almost faint."
There was another silence. And Emma gave a low, groaning sound. "Maybe that's it . . . maybe they've gone out on strike."
"There'll be trouble," said the Reverend Castor. "It makes me kind of sick to think of it."
They bade each other good-night, and went their ways, the Reverend Castor hurrying along, because he was more than an hour late. He knew that when he arrived she would be out of her bed, standing at the upper window looking for him, her mind charged with the bitter reproaches she had thought out to fling at him, torturing sarcasms dealing with what had kept him so long in the study. She had an obsession that he meant to be unfaithful to her; she never ceased to hint and imply the most odious things. She was always accusing him of disgraceful things about women. . . .
As he came nearer and nearer to the parsonage, he was seized by a terrible temptation to turn away, to disappear, never to enter the doors of his home again. But a man of God, he knew, couldn't do a thing like that. And now God—even God—seemed to be deserting him. He couldn't drive these awful thoughts from his mind. He began desperately to repeat his Psalm.
Turning past the hedge, he saw that there was a light in the upper window, and against the lace curtains the silhouette of a waiting figure, peering out eagerly.
When Emma entered the house, she discovered that all the lights were on, that Philip had been forgotten, and that his nurse and Mabelle were with Naomi, who was being forced to walk up and down. Mabelle sat giving advice and saying repeatedly that she never had such trouble even with her first baby. In a little while, the doctor came, and seven hours later Mabelle's predictions were vindicated, for Naomi gave birth at last to twins, a boy and a girl. At about the same hour the last echo of the pounding at the Mills died away into silence, and the last fire in the blast-furnace died into ashes. In the room next to Naomi's, Philip opened his eyes, called for a drink of water, and for the first time in four months knew that his head was clear and that his body was not burning or shaking. It was an extraordinary thing, the nurse observed, as if his children coming into the world had called him back to life.
He came back to consciousness out of a strange country peopled with creatures that might have haunted a Gothic nightmare, creatures who seemed as confused and unreal as the fantastic world on which they moved. Sometimes his mother was present, moving about, oddly enough, against the background of the jungle at Megambo, moving about among the niggers, converting them in wholesale lots, At times she would disappear suddenly, to return almost at once, driving before her with Lady Millicent Wimbrooke's rawhide whip whole troops of natives, dressed completely, even to bonnets and shoes, like the people one saw in Main Street. And then she would feed them at the Peerless Restaurant, which seemed to have been set up intact on the borders of the gloomy forest. Once Lady Wimbrooke appeared herself with her portable-bath and rifle, and shooting about her carelessly, she drove all of them, including Emma, out of the restaurant into Main Street, which appeared miraculously to have sprung up just outside the door. Once outside, he discovered that all of them—Emma herself and the niggers, were walking stark naked in the car-tracks in the middle of the street. He, himself, seemed to be carrying a banner at the head of the parade on which was written in fiery letters, "Let God look out for himself. We will do the same." And at the corner he found Mary Conyngham waiting to keep a tryst, and neither he nor she seemed tortake any notice of the fact that he was as naked as the day he was: born.
And Naomi was there, too, always in the background, only she was not the Naomi he knew, but a large woman with a soft, powerful body, like Swanson's, above which her pale face peered out comically from beneath a sunbonnet woven of reeds. Once or twice he had mistaken her for Swanson playing a joke on him.
At other times he seemed to be back in the Mills, or in Hennessey's: saloon, where Emma entered presently and broke all the mirrors; and then all of them were suddenly squeezed out of the doors to find themselves in the jungle, which appeared to have sprung up all about them, impenetrable save for a single path in which was stuck a cast-iron guide-post, reading, "To the Mills." The air was filled with the sound of distant thunder, but he could not make out whether it was the distant sound of tom-toms, or the pounding of monstrous steel hammers. Oddly enough, it seemed quite natural, as if the trees, the jungle and the Mills belonged thus together.
And Mary Conyngham was always there. It seemed that she was married to him, and that they had somewhere a family of children which he had never seen and could not find.
Once he witnessed a horrible sight. He saw Emma pursuing the black virgin who had long ago been eaten by the leopards. The virgin, naked, save for her ornaments of copper wire, ran to the lake, and across the water, skimming the surface like a kingfisher of ebony, and, as Emma gave chase, she sank like a stone, disappearing beneath the brassy surface without a sound.
For a long time after he returned to life, memories of the dead, nightmarish world clung to him like wisps of the haze that sometimes veiled the lake at Megambo in the wet season. He did not know how long he had been ill, and at times it seemed to him that he had died and was not living at all. His body felt light as air, but when he tried to raise it, it failed him, slipping back in a miserable weakness. And then, bit by bit, as the memories of the delirium faded into space, the hard, barren world about him began to take shape . . . the starched lace curtains at the windows, which Emma kept clean despite all the soot, the worn rocking-chair, the table at the side of the bed crowded with medicines, and, finally, the strange figure of the nurse. And then he understood that Naomi must be somewhere near at hand, and his mother. He had a vague feeling that they must have become old now, and gray, after all the years he had been ill.
It was Emma whom he saw first, and recognized. She came into the darkened room, and stood silently by the side of the bed until he, conscious that there was some one near him, opened his eyes, and said in a weak voice, "Is that you, Ma?"
Without answering him, she fell on her knees beside the bed and took his head in her hands, kissing him passionately again and again on his forehead. She wept and said over and over again, "Philip, my boy! The Lord has given me back my boy!"
There was something frightening in the wildness of her emotion. The nurse, hearing her weeping, came in to warn her that she must be calm, and Philip said weakly, "It's all right. I understand. She's always been like that."
Once it would never have occurred to him to speak thus, as if he were detached from her and stood quite apart, protecting her. Protecting Emma! Something had happened to him during that long night of four months' delirium.
When his mother had gained control of herself once more, she sat down by the side of the bed, and, taking his hand, she held it clasped passionately in hers, while she sat looking at him, without once speaking. For some reason, he could not look at her, perhaps because in the intensity of her emotion she was asking from him a response which he could not give. He was ashamed, but it was impossible to pretend. Instead of any longer seeming almost a part of her, he was detached now in a strange, definite fashion. In his weakness, it seemed to him that he was seeing her for the first time and he was ashamed and sorry for her. He knew that before long she, too, would understand that there was a difference, that in some way their relationship had been broken forever. The old Philip was dead, and the new one suddenly pitied her from a great distance, as he pitied Naomi. It was as if the weakness gave him a clairvoyance, a second sight, which illuminated all the confusion of mind that had preceded the long night.
Lying there, with his eyes closed, her passionate cry, "Philip, my boy!" burned itself into his brain. He was, he knew, unworthy of that consuming love she had for him.
After a long time he heard her asking, "Philip, are you awake?"
"Yes, Ma." But he did not open his eyes.
"I have some good news that will delight you."
What could it be? Perhaps she had arranged his return to Megambo. She would think that was good news.
"It's about Naomi. You're a father now, Philip . . . twice a father, Philip. You've two children. They were twins."
The knot of perplexity which had been tormenting his brain suddenly cleared away. Of course! That was what he couldn't remember about Naomi. She had been going to have a baby, and now she had had two. Still he did not open his eyes. It was more impossible now than ever. He did not answer her, and presently Emma asked, "You heard what I said, Philip?"
"Yes, Ma."
"You're glad, aren't you?"
He answered her weakly, "Of course . . . why, of course, I'm glad."
Again there was a long silence. He was ashamed again, because he had been forced to lie, ashamed because he wasn't proud, and happy. His mother sat there trying to raise his spirits, and each thing she said only drove them lower. In that curious clarity of mind which seemed to possess his soul, he knew with a kind of horror that he had wanted to waken alone, free, in a new country, where he would never again see Naomi, or his mother, or the lace curtains, or the familiar, worn rocking-chair. That, he saw now, was why he had wanted to die. And now he was back again, tied to them more closely than ever.
At last he said in a low voice, "It was like Naomi, wasn't it . . . to have twins?"
"What do you mean?"
He hesitated a moment, and then said, "I don't know . . . I'm tired . . . I don't know."
Again a silence. Deep inside him something kept urging him to break through all this web which seemed to be closing tighter and tighter around him. The last thought he could remember before slipping into the nightmare returned to him now, and, without knowing why, he uttered it, "There won't be any more children."
"Why?" asked Emma. "What are you trying to say?"
"Because I don't mean to live with Naomi ever again. It's a wicked thing that I've done."
She began to stroke his forehead, continuing for a long time before she spoke. She was having suddenly to face things—things which she had always known, and pretended not to know. At last she said, "Why is it a wicked thing to live with your lawful wife?"
The world began to whiz dizzily about his head. Odd flashes of light passed before his closed eyes. It seemed to him that he must speak the truth, if he were ever to open them again without shame.
"Because she's not really my wife . . . she's just like any woman, any stranger . . . I never loved her at all. I can't go on . . . living like that. Can't you see how wicked it is?"
Emma was caught in her own web, by the very holy principles she upheld—that it was wrong to marry some one you did not love. It was this same thing which disturbed her peace of mind about Moses Slade.
"You loved her once, Philip, or you wouldn't have married her."
"No, I didn't know anything then, Ma." The color of pain entered his voice. "Can't you see, Ma? I wasn't alive then. I never loved her, and now it's worse than that."
The stroking of his forehead suddenly ceased. "I don't know what you're talking about, Philip. . . . We'd better not go on now. You're tired and ill. Everything will be different when you are well again."
For a second time there came to him a blinding flash of revelation. He saw that she had always been like that: she had always pushed things aside to let them work themselves out. An awful doubt dawned upon him that she was not always right, that sometimes she had made a muddle of everything. A feeling of dizziness swept over him.
"But it will break her heart, Philip," she was saying. "She worships you. . . . It will break her heart."
Through a giddy haze he managed to say, "No . . . I'm so tired. . . . Let's not talk any more." He felt the nightmare stealing back again, and presently he was for some strange reason back at Megambo, sitting under the acacia-tree, and through the hot air came the sound of voices singing, in a minor key:
To the life of lives, the beginning of all things."
He thought wildly, "I've got to get free. I must run . . . I must run."
Emma, holding his hand, felt the fever slipping back. She heard him saying, "Go down to the water, little monkey," which clearly made no sense, and suddenly she sprang up and called Miss Bull, the nurse.
"It's odd," said Miss Bull, white and frightened, "when he was so much better. Did anything happen to upset him?"
"No," said Emma. "Nothing. We barely talked at all."
The nurse sent Essie for the doctor, reproaching herself all the while for having allowed Emma to stay so long a time by the bed. But it was almost impossible to refuse when a woman like Mrs. Downes said, "Surely seeing his mother won't upset him. Why, Miss Bull, we've always been wonderful companions—my boy and I. He never had a father, you see. I was both mother and father to him." Miss Bull knew what a gallant fight she'd made, for every one in the Town knew it. A widow, left alone, to bring up her boy. You couldn't be cruel enough to stop her from seeing her own son.
When the doctor came and left again, shaking his head, Emma was frightened, but her fright disappeared once more as the fever receded again toward morning, and when at last she fell asleep, she was thinking, "He doesn't belong to her, after all. He's never belonged to her. He's still my Philip." There was in the knowledge a sense of passionate triumph and joy, which wiped out all else—her doubts about Moses Slade, her worry over Philip's future, even the sudden, cold terror that gripped her as she felt the fever stealing' back into his thin, transparent hand. He didn't belong to Naomi. Why, he almost hated her. He was still her boy. . . . And she had defeated Naomi.
In the darkness the tears dampened the pillow. God had not, after all, forsaken her.