A Good Woman (Bromfield)/Part 3/Chapter 22
On that night the singing at choir practice reached a peak of frenzy. While Philip sat sleeping beside the crib, Naomi was pounding her heart out on the stained celluloid keys of the tinny piano in the Infants' Classroom. She played wildly, with a kind of shameless abandon, as if she wanted to pour out her whole story of justification; and the others, taking fire from her spirit, sang as they had never sung before.
During the afternoon, the old Naomi—the stubborn, sure Naomi of Megambo—had come to life again in some mysterious fashion. She even put on the new foulard dress in a gesture of defiance to show them—Philip and his mother—that, however "funny-looking" it might be, she was proud of it. And then neither of them had seen her wearing it, Philip because she was avoiding him, and Emma because chance had not brought them together. She had gone up to Mabelle's bent upon telling her that she had come to the end of her endurance. She had meant to ask Mabelle's advice, because Mabelle was very shrewd about such matters.
And then when she found herself seated opposite Mabelle she discovered that she couldn't bring herself to say what she meant to say. She couldn't humble her pride sufficiently to tell even Mabelle how Philip treated her. She had finally gone home and then returned a second time, but it was no use. She couldn't speak of it: she was too proud. And she knew, too, that whatever happened she must protect Philip. It wasn't, she told herself, as if he were himself, as he had been at Megambo. He was sick. He really wasn't responsible. She cried when she thought how she loved him now; if he would only notice her, she would let him trample her body in the dust. Mabelle's near-sighted blue eyes noted nothing. She went on rocking and rocking, talking incessantly of clothes and food and a soothing syrup that would make little Naomi sleep better at night.
During the day she had formed a dozen wild projects. She would go back to Megambo. She would return to her father, who was seventy now, and would welcome her help. She would run off to a cousin who lived in Tennessee. She would join another cousin who was an Evangelist in Texas: she could play the piano and lead the singing for him. In any of these places she would find again the glory she had known as Naomi Potts, "youngest missionary of God"; she wouldn't any longer be a nobody, unwanted, always pushed aside and treated as of no consequence.
But always there were the twins to be considered. How could she run off and forget them? And if she did run away, Emma and perhaps even Philip would use it as a chance to rid themselves of her forever. She fancied that she saw now how Emma had used her, willing all the while to cast her off when she was no longer of any service. She told herself again and again, as if she could not bring herself to believe it, that she loved the twins—that she loved them despite her aching back and the hours she was kept awake by their crying. But she remembered that she had never been tired at Megambo: no amount of work had tired her. She hadn't wanted the twins: she'd only gone to Philip because Mabelle and Emma told her that she must and because Mabelle said that men liked children, and that going to Philip would give her a hold over him. And now . . . see what had come of it! Philip scarcely noticed her. Before she lived with him, it hadn't mattered to her, but now—now she al ways carried a weight about inside her. Her heart leaped if he took the least notice of her.
No, she saw it all clearly. She must run away. She couldn't go on, chained down like a slave. But if she ran away, she'd lose Philip for ever, and if she stayed, he might come back to her. The children belonged to both of them. They were a bond you could never break, the proof that once, for a little time, he belonged to her. She saw that he, too, was chained after a fashion. He belonged to her in a way he belonged to no other woman. In the sight of the Lord any other woman would always be a strumpet and a whore.
At last, as it was growing dark, she found herself sitting on a bench in the park before the new monument to General Sherman. It was raining and her coat was soaked and her shoes wet through. The rain ran in little trickles from her worn black hat. It was as if she had wakened suddenly from a dream. She wasn't certain how she came to be sitting on the wet bench with the heavy rain melting the snow all about her. She thought, "I must have been crazy for a time. I can't go on like this. I've got to talk to some one. I've got to . . . I've got to!" She began to cry, and then she thought, "I'll speak to the Reverend Castor to-night after choir practice. He'll help me and he's a good man. He'll never tell any one. He's always been so kind. It was silly of me to think things about him. I was silly to be afraid of him. I'll talk to him. I've got to talk to some one. He'll understand."
When the practice was finished, the Reverend Castor came out of the study to bid the members good-night. In the dim light of the hallway, as Naomi passed him, he looked at her and smiled. She saw that his hands were trembling in a way that had come over him lately, and the smile warmed her, but at the same time weakened her. There was a comfort and a kindliness in it that made her want to cry.
Once inside the study, she found that the drawer of the cabinet was jammed again, as it had been on that first night. While she tugged at it, she heard him outside the door saying good-night one by one to the choir. Putting down the music, she began again to struggle with the drawer, and then suddenly, as if the effort was the last she could make, she collapsed on the floor and began to weep.
She heard the door open and she heard the Reverend Castor's deep, warm voice saying, "Why, Naomi, what's the matter?"
She answered him, without looking up. "It's the drawer," she said. "It's stuck again . . . and I'm . . . I'm so tired."
He went over to the cabinet and this time he was forced to struggle with it.
"It's really too heavy for you, my dear girl . . . I'll fix it myself in the morning." He replaced the music and when he attempted to close the drawer again it stuck fast. "Now it won't close at all. But I can fix it. I'm handy about such things."
His hands were trembling, and he looked white and tired. He talked with the air of a man desperately hiding pits of silence. When he turned, Naomi still sat on the floor, her body bent forward. Her worn, rain-soaked hat had fallen forward a little, and she was sobbing. He sat down in the great stuffed leather chair. It was very low, so that he was almost on a level with her.
"My poor child?" he asked, "what is it? Is it something I can help?"
"I don't know. I wanted to talk to some one. I can't go on. I can't . . . I can't."
He laid his big hand on her shoulder with a gentleness that seemed scarcely real, and, at the touch, she looked up at him, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief that had been soaked with tears hours earlier. As she looked at him, some old instinct, born of long experience with unhappy women, took possession of him. He said, "Why, you've got a new dress on, Naomi. It's very pretty. Did you make it yourself?"
For a second a look almost of happiness came into her face. "Why, yes," she said. "Mabelle helped me . . . but I made most of it myself."
His other hand touched her shoulder. "Here," he said, "lean back against my knee and tell me everything that's making you unhappy. . . ." When she hesitated, he said, "Try to think of me as your father, my child. I'm old enough to be your father . . . and I don't want to see you unhappy."
She leaned against his knee with a sudden feeling of weak collapse. It was the first time any one had been kind to her for so long, and, strangely enough, she wasn't afraid of him any longer. The old uneasiness seemed to have died away.
"Tell me, my child."
The damp handkerchief lay crushed into a tiny ball in her red, chapped hand. For a long time she didn't speak, and he waited patiently until she found words. At last she said, "I don't know how to begin. I don't know myself what's happened to me . . . I don't know. Sometimes I think I must be black with sin or going crazy . . . sometimes I can't think any more, and I don't know what I'm doing. . . . It was like that to-day . . . all day. . . . I've been going about like a crazy woman."
And then, slowly, she began, in a confused, incoherent fashion, to tell him the whole story of her misery from the very beginning at Megambo when the Englishwoman had suddenly appeared out of the forest. It all seemed to begin then, she said, and it had gone on and on ever since, growing worse and worse. She hadn't any friends—at least none save Mabelle; and the others didn't want her to see Mabelle. Besides, Mabelle didn't seem to help: whatever she advised only made matters worse.
The Reverend Castor interrupted her. "But I'm your friend, Naomi . . . I've always been your friend. You could have come to me long ago."
"But you're a preacher," she said. "And that's not the same thing."
"But I'm a man, too, Naomi . . . a human being."
And then she even told him about Emma while he interrupted her from time to time by saying, "Can it be?" and, "It hardly seems possible—a woman like Emma Downes, who has always been one of the pillars, the foundation-stones, of our church! How much goes on of which we poor blind creatures know nothing."
And Naomi said, "I know. No one will ever believe me. They'll all believe that I'm nothing and that she's a good, brave woman. I can't fight her, Reverend Castor. I can't . . . and sometimes I think she tries to poison him against me."
The trembling hand came to rest once more on her shoulder. There was a long silence, and presently he said, in a low voice, "I know, my child . . . I know. I've suffered, too . . . for fifteen years."
She had begun to sob again. "And now there are other women . . . more than one, I'm sure. I pray to God for his soul. I pray and pray to God to return him to me . . . my Philip, who was a good man and believed in God. He's changed now. I don't know him any more. To-night I don't think I love him. I've come to the end of everything."
He began to pat her shoulder, gently, as if he were comforting a child, and for a long time, they stayed thus in silence. At last he said, "I've suffered, too, Naomi . . . for years and years. . . . It began almost as soon as I was married, and it's never stopped for an hour, for a moment since. It gets worse and worse with each year." Suddenly he covered his face with his hands and groaned. "I pray to God for strength to go on living. I have need of God's help to goon at all. I, too, need some one to talk to." His hands dropped from his face, and he placed one arm about her thin, narrow shoulders. She did not draw away. Still sobbing, she let her whole weight rest against him. She was so tired, and she felt so ill. A strange, gusty and terrifying happiness took possession of the tired, nerve-racked man. Just to touch a woman thus, to have a woman kind to him, to have a woman who would trust him, was a pleasure almost too keen to be borne. For fifteen acid years he had hungered for a moment, a single moment, like this. He did not speak, conscious, it seemed, that to breathe might suddenly shatter this fragile, pathetic sense of peace.
Naomi had closed her eyes, as if she had fallen asleep from her long exhaustion; but she wasn't sleeping, for presently her pale lips moved a little, and she said in a whisper, "There's nothing for me to do but run away or kill myself . . . and then I'll be out of the way."
He did not tell her at once, without hesitation, that she was contemplating a great sin. He merely kept silent, and, after a time, he murmured, "My poor, poor child . . . my tired child," and then fell once more into silence. They must have remained thus for nearly an hour. Naomi even appeared to fall asleep, and then, starting suddenly, she cried out. His arm ached, but he did not move. He was, it seemed, past such a small discomfort as an aching arm. And he was struggling, struggling passionately, with a terrible temptation, conscious all the while that each minute added to the bitterness of the reproaches that awaited him on opening the parsonage door. It was long after eleven o'clock, and he should have returned ages ago. He thought, "I can't go home now. I can never go home again. I can never open that door again. I would rather die here now. One more time might drive me mad . . . I mightn't know what I was doing . . . I might. . . ."
The free hand again closed over his eyes, as if to shut out the horrible thing that had occurred to him. Naomi had opened her eyes and was looking up at him. For a second he thought, "Has she seen what was in them?"
Her lips moved again. "I don't care what happens to me any longer."
Suddenly, without knowing what he was doing, he bent down and took her in his arms, "Naomi . . . Naomi . . . do you mean that? Answer me, do you mean that?"
She closed her eyes wearily. "I don't care what happens to me."
He held her more tightly, the odd, gusty pleasure sweeping over him in terrifying waves. "Naomi . . . will you . . . will you go away . . . now . . . at once, and with me?"
"You can do with me what you want, if you'll only be kind to me."
"We've a right to be happy. We've suffered enough." She did not answer him, and he said, "God will understand. He's merciful. We've had our hell here on earth, Naomi . . . Naomi . . . listen to me! Will you go now . . . at once?" A curious, half-mad excitement colored his voice. "I've got money. I've been putting it aside for a long time, because I've thought for a long time I might want to go away . . . I've been saving it, a dime and a quarter here and there where I could squeeze it. I've got more than two hundred dollars. I thought that sometime I'd have to run away. But I meant to go away alone . . . I never knew . . . I never knew." He began abruptly to cry, the tears pouring down the lined, tired face. "We'll go somewhere far away . . . to South America, or the South Sea Islands, where nobody will know us. And we'll be free there, and happy. We've a right to a little happiness. Oh, Naomi, we'll be happy."
She appeared not to have heard him. She lay in a kind of stupor, until, raising her body gently, he stood up and lifted her easily into the big leather chair, where she lay watching him, her eyes half-closed, her mouth set in a straight, hard line, touched with bitterness.
The Reverend Castor moved quickly, with a strange vigor and decision. The trembling had gone suddenly from his hands. His whole body grew taut and less weary, as if he had become suddenly young. He had the air of a man possessed, as if every fibey, every muscle, every cell, were crying out, "It's not too late! It's not too late! There is still time to live!" He approached the desk, and, unlocking the drawer, began taking out money—a thin roll of bills, and then an endless number of coins that tinkled and clattered as they slid into his pockets. There must have been pounds of metal in dimes and nickels and quarters. He filled his vest pocket with cheap cigars from a box on the desk, and then, turning, went over to Naomi, and, raising her from the chair, smoothed her hair and put her hat straight, with his own hands. Then he kissed her chastely on the brow, and she, leaning against him, murmured, "Take me wherever you like. I'm so tired."
For a moment they stood thus, and presently he began to repeat in his low, rich, moving voice, The Song of Songs.
"For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. . . ."
The words had upon her a strange effect of exaltation, the same that had come over her when she sat by the piano, carried away by her emotions. She wasn't Naomi any longer. Naomi seemed to have died. She was a gaudy Queen, and Solomon in all his glory was her lover. She seemed enveloped by light out of which the rich, vibrant voice was saying, "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether."
A little while after, as the clock on the firehouse struck midnight, the door of the study closed, and two figures hurried away into the pouring rain. They were a tired, middle-aged preacher and a bedraggled woman, in a queer, homemade dress of figured foulard, and a soaked coat and hat; but there was a light in their eyes which seemed to illumine the darkness and turn aside the rain.