A Good Woman (Bromfield)/Part 2/Chapter 9
Naomi, too, had suffered in her own complaining fashion. After a life passed in a fierce activity, the empty days began to hang upon her spirits like leaden weights. As far back as she could remember her life had been a part, as the daughter and then the wife of a missionary, of a struggle against heat and disease and ignorance, her soul always warmed by the knowledge that she was doing God's work, that the pain and discomforts of the body were as nothing in comparison to the ecstasies of the soul. Save for a few wecks, she had never known life in the civilized world, and now in the midst of it there seemed to be no place for her. She tried dusting and cleaning the slate-colored house (there was no cooking to do, for they ate always at the restaurant), but there was no satisfaction in it. She came in a few days to hate it. She tried making garments to be shipped to the missions, long nightgowns with which to clothe the nakedness of savages, but her fingers were clumsy, and she found herself as indifferent a seamstress as she was a housekeeper. The tomblike silence of the house depressed her, and in these first weeks she dreaded going out, lest she should meet women who would ask after her plans. After a time she found herself seated like Aunt Mabelle for hours at a time, staring out of the windows at the passers-by.
After the scene at Uncle Elmer's there seemed for a time no solution of their troubles. She plunged into choir singing, where her loud, flat voice filled a much-needed place; and she went without Philip to talk at the Sunday Evening Service of her experiences in Africa. Emma was there and Uncle Elmer, treating the congregation to the spectacle of a brother and sister who occupied the same pew without speaking to each other. But somehow everything was changed, and different from those glorious days so short a time before when the sound of her voice had moved whole congregations to a frantic fervor. The assemblyroom now showed great gaps of empty seats, like missing teeth, along the sides and at the back. Naomi wasn't any longer a great attraction as "the youngest missionary of the Lord in darkest Africa": she was a woman now, a missionary like any other missionary. And there were, too, strange rumors circulating through the flock of the quarrel between Emma and her brother and other rumors that Naomi and Philip weren't really missionaries at all any longer, but had both deserted the cause forever. There were a hundred petty bits of gossip, all magnified and sped on their way by friends of Emma who resented the reflected glory in which she bathed herself.
No, something had gone wrong, and the whole affair seemed stale and flat, even the little reception afterward. Emma, of course, stood with the Reverend Castor and Naomi, while members of the congregation filed past. Some congratulated Naomi on her work and wished her fresh successes; one or two asked questions which interested them specially—"was it true that a nigger king had as many as eighty wives?" and, "did they actually eat each other, and if so how was the cooking done?" Emma was always there, beaming with pride, and answering questions before Naomi had time to speak. The Reverend Castor from time to time took Naomi's hand in his and patted it quite publicly, as if she were a child who had recited her first piece without forgetting a line. He kept saying, between fatherly pats, "Yes, the Lord has brought our little girl safely home once more. He has spared her for more work."
But it was a failure: it had none of the zest of those earlier meetings, none of the hysterics and the wild singing of Throw Out the Life Line and The Ninety and Nine, and other hymns that acted as powerful purges to the emotions. The occasion was dampened, too, by the curiosity of various old ladies regarding the absence of Philip; they kept asking question upon question, which Emma, with much practice, learned to parry skilfully. "He didn't feel well enough to make the effort. You see, the fever clings on—that's the worst part of it."
For she was squeezing the last drop of triumph before the débâcle; and of course she always believed in the depths of her soul that Philip would go back to Africa some day. She meant, in the end, to accomplish it as she had already accomplished the things she desired—all save the recovery of Mr. Downes.
But it was Naomi who suffered most, for behind the mild and timid exterior there lurked an ironclad egotism which demanded much of the world. It demanded more attention and enthusiasm than had been her share at the Sunday Evening Service; it demanded respect and, curiously enough, evidence of affection (it was this last rather pitiful hunger that drew her close to Aunt Mabelle). She understood well enough that Emma had no affection: what capacity for love Emma possessed was all directed toward Philip. And before many weeks had passed Naomi knew bitterly that although she lived in the same house with her husband and his mother she really occupied no more of a place in it than Essie, the poor-house slavey. But Aunt Mabelle was kind to her, and would come and sit for hours rocking and gossiping, occasions when the only interruption was the periodic cry of the pallid baby, which Mabelle stifled at once by opening the straining bombazine of her bosom and releasing the fountain of life.
This last was a spectacle which Naomi came to regard with a faint and squeamish distaste. She grew to have a passionate dislike for the pallid infant that lay gorged with milk in Mabelle's ample lap. Even the frank and open manner of the black women had never accustomed her to the expose in which Mabelle indulged with such an air of satisfied pride.
"I've always had plenty of milk," Mabelle would say, as she settled back comfortably. "The doctors say I've enough for any three normal children."
Naomi, indeed, had spent half her life in an effort to conceal black nudity in yards of cheap calico.
But deeper than any of these flurried emotions lay the shadowy knowledge that the pallid child was in a way a reproach to herself, and a vague symbol of all the distasteful things that lay before her, for she felt that sooner or later the tangle would end in bringing her to the state of a wife in reality, of facing even perhaps the business which Mabelle managed with such proud composure. In the midst of the wilderness at Megambo she was still safe, protected by the fantastic sense of honor that lay in Philip; but here in this complicated world of which she knew nothing, when each day she felt her security, her fame, her glory, slipping from under her feet, the thing drew constantly nearer and nearer. If she could not force Philip to return, the day would come when with all her glory and prestige faded and bedraggled, she would no longer be a missionary, but only Philip's wife.
There were moments when, on the verge of hysteria, she thought of leaving them all and going back alone to Africa; but when the moments passed, she found herself strangely weak and incapable of action. For a strange and frightening thing had begun to happen. At Megambo when Philip had always been gentle and submissive, it was herself who dominated and planned. They were comrades in the work of the Lord, and Philip rarely reached the point of being irritable. In those days he had meant no more to her than the clumsy Swanson. Save that he was tied to her by law, he might have been only another worker in the mission. And now it was changed somehow; and Philip ignored her. There were whole days when he never spoke to her at all—days and nights spent in working in the black Mills and sleeping like a dead man to recover from the profound weariness that attacked him.
This new Philip frightened her in a way she had never been frightened before. She found herself, without thinking, doing little things to please him, even to attract his notice. There were still moments when, wrapping herself in the shroud of martyrdom, she flung herself, the apotheosis of injured womanhood, before him to be trampled upon; but they were not profitable moments, for they no longer had any effect upon him; and so, slowly they came to be abandoned, since it seemed silly thus to abase herself only to find that she had no audience. It frightened her, for it seemed that she was losing slowly all control of a life which had once been so neatly and thoroughly organized. She wanted desperately to regain her ancient hold over him, and in the lonely moments when Mabelle was not there she sometimes awakened in horror to find herself sitting before the gigantic walnut mirror letting down the masses of her long, straight, reddish hair, trying it in new ways, attempting to discover in what position her face seemed prettiest. And then, filled with disgust at her own wickedness, she would fling herself on the walnut bed and burst into a passion of tears and prayer, to arise at last strangely calm and comforted. Surely God would not abandon her—Naomi Potts, who had given all her life to God. Sometimes she fancied that she, instead of Philip, was the one whose brain was weak; for no sane woman could do the things she had done.
Slowly, imperceptibly, the curious power of the Mills had begun to make itself felt. It was as if Philip, returning from the Flats at noon each day, brought with him, clinging to his very clothes, traces of the fascination which they held for him. It was not that she herself felt any of the fascination, for she regarded the Mills with a growing hatred: it was only that they fixed upon Philip himself some new and tantalizing quality. She liked to see him come home at noon, hard and unshaven, blackened by soot and sweat. Sitting in her rocking-chair by the window, the sight of him as he swung along, his head bowed a little, filled her with odd flutterings of pleasant emotion. She felt at times that strange weakness which so often attacked Emma unawares—of wanting to yield and spoil him by caresses and attention. She had strange desires to fling herself down and let him trample upon her, not in the old, dramatic sense, but in a new way, which seemed to warm her whole body.
This new Philip, hard and thin, returning from the Mills with his flannel shirt open upon his bare chest, disgusted and fascinated her. And then when the knob turned and the door opened, all the little speeches she had planned, all the little friendly gestures, seemed to wither and die before his polite coldness.
He would say, "I'll wash up and we can go right away to eat," or "Tell Essie to bring some hot water."
There was nothing more than that. Sometimes it seemed to her that he treated her as a servant whom he scarcely knew.
It came, at length, to the point when she spoke of it, timidly and with hot blushes, to Aunt Mabelle. She said she wanted to be kind to Philip, she wanted to be friendly with him, but somehow she couldn't. He was so changed and cold and hard. If she could only get him back to Africa everything would be all right: they had been happy there, at least she had been, and as for Philip, he didn't seem any happier now that he was doing what he wanted to do. He never seemed happy anywhere, not since the day they had arrived at Megambo.
Mabelle, rocking little Jimmy, listened with the passionate interest of a woman who found such a conversation fascinating. She led Naomi deeper and deeper into the mire and at last, when she had considered all the facts, she said, "Well, Naomi, it's my opinion that you ought to have a child. Philip would like a baby. He's that kind. I know them when I see them. Now, my Elmer hates children. They get in his way and I think they make him feel foolish and awkward, God alone knows why. But Philip's different. He ought to have a lot of children. He'd love 'em, and it would be a tie between you."
Naomi raised the old difficulty. "But if we go back to Africa—we can't take a little baby there."
"Well, you'd have to work that out, of course. Em would take care of it. She'd find time somehow. She can do anything she sets her mind to." Naomi, it seemed, wouldn't meet her eye and Aunt Mabelle pushed on, with the tact and grace of a walrus. "Did you ever see a doctor to find out why you hadn't had one? A doctor can help sometimes."
Naomi was suddenly pale and shaking. Without looking at Mabelle she said in a low voice, "I don't have to see the doctor to find out why."
Mabelle's rocking-chair paused in its monotonous bobbing. "You don't mean to say you've been doing sinful things to prevent it—you, Naomi Downes, a missionary!"
Naomi, wringing her hands, said, "No, I don't know what you mean. I haven't been doing sinful things. . . . I . . . we couldn't have had a baby . . . we've—we've never lived together."
The rocking-chair still remained quiescent, a posed symbol of Mabelle's shocked astonishment. "Well, I don't know what you mean. But it seems sinful to me if a man and wife don't live together. What does the Bible say? Take unto yourself a wife and multiply. Look at all the begats."
Naomi burst out, "We meant to . . . some day. Only we couldn't out there in Africa."
"Well, you ought to have taken a chance." Mabelle seemed outraged and angry for the first time in all Naomi's friendship with her, and it was only after a long time that the rocking-chair began once more its unending motion. The baby, startled by a sudden cessation of the soothing motion, set up a cry and Mabelle, loosening ten of the twenty-one buttons that held together her straining basque, quieted it at once.
"What do you expect?" asked Mabelle rhetorically. "What do you expect? A man isn't going on courting forever for nothing—especially after he's married to a woman. He'll get tired after a while. Philip's a man like any other man. He's not going on forever like this. He isn't that kind. Any woman can tell in a glance—and he's the kind that can wrap a woman around his thumb." Then, being a woman whose whole philosophy was based upon her own experience," she said, "Why, even my Elmer wouldn't stand it, like as not. He's not much at things like that and he's always ashamed of himself afterwards. I guess it was a kind of duty with him—still he's a man." And turning back again to the subject at hand, she asked, "Did you ever know about Philip's father? Why, that man was like a rabbit. You'd better look out or you'll lose him altogether."
It was the longest single speech Mabelle had made in years, and after it she sat rocking herself for a long time in profound meditation. Naomi cried a little and dried her eyes, and the baby fell back into a state of coma. The chair creaked and creaked. At last Mabelle got up heavily, deposited the sleeping child on the sofa, and put on her jacket and hat.
"Take my advice, Naomi," she said. "It can't go on like this. If you don't want to lose him, you'll do what I say. I'm a good judge of men and Philip is worth keeping. He's better than his Ma, Pa, Uncle Elmer, or any of 'em. I wish I was married to such a man."