A Good Woman (Bromfield)/Part 3/Chapter 3
He only stopped running when he grew so weak that he could no longer make an effort. He had gone, without knowing why, in the direction of the Mills, and presently he found himself, with a savage pain just beneath his heart, sitting on the steps of McTavish's undertaking parlors. It was almost dark, and the air was cold and still; he felt it creeping about him as the heat went out of his body. He knew that if he caught cold he would die and suddenly he wanted to live, horribly. It was as if that sickening scene had in some way released him from the bondage of the two women. They seemed all at once to belong to another world in which he played no rele, a world strange and horrible and fantastic. Even the twins did not seem to be his children, but creatures born somehow of the two women and all they stood for in his tired mind. They were two squalling tomato-colored infants in whom he could take no interest—a judgment sent by fate as a punishment for his own weakness and indecision. He grew bitter for the first time and out of the bitterness there was born a new strength.
Sitting there in the softly falling snow, he resolved to go his own way. He couldn't desert Naomi and his children, but he could tell her that he was through with her once and for all. And he saw suddenly the whole sickening depth of the tangle—that it was her fault no more than his, that she had suffered as much as himself, that perhaps in the end she would suffer more, because (he knew it with a kind of disgust) she loved him with all her soul and body.
Beating his arms against his body, he rose and turned the handle of the door. McTavish was inside, alone, sitting by the stove. At the sound of the handle turning, he looked up and grinned.
"Hello, Philip," he said, and then quickly, "What the hell are you doing out without a coat or hat?"
Philip grinned, and the very grin hurt his face, as if it had been frozen by the cold. "I came out in a hurry . . . I wanted to borrow a coat and hat off you."
McTavish rose and stretched his great arms, yawning, watching Philip all the while. "Driven out?" he asked at last, with a sharp look.
"Yes," said Philip quietly. "Driven out." He knew suddenly that McTavish understood. He remembered all at once what he had said, "I knew your Ma before you were born. You can't tell me anything about her."
"Here," suddenly the undertaker was pouring whisky. "Here, drink this. I'll get you a coat."
He disappeared into that portion of the establishment where the dead were kept, and returned in a moment bearing a coat and hat. The curious, pungent odor of the place clung to him.
"Here," he said. "It's all I've got. You couldn't wear my clothes. You'd be drowned in them." He laid the coat and hat on a chair by the stove. "These ought to about fit you. They belonged to Jim Baxter, who got bumped off at the grade-crossing while comin' home drunk last week. His wife has never come for 'em. I guess he won't need a coat where he is now." He sat down and took Philip's wrist, feeling the flow of blood. "Feel better now? Your heart seems all right."
"I've always been strong as an ox."
"It ain't the same after you've had a fever."
They sat in silence for a moment and then McTavish asked, "You don't mind wearin' a dead man's clothes?"
"No," said Philip. "No." Anything was better than going back to the slate-colored house.
"When you're in my business, you get over squeamish feelings like that. Dead men and live ones are all the same, except you know the dead ones are mebbe missing a lot of fun."
"No . . . I don't mind, Mr. McTavish." Philip looked up suddenly. "There's one thing you could do for me. You could send word around to the house that I'm not coming home to-night."
A grin lighted up the big face. "Sure I will. . . . I'll take the word myself." After a pause, "Where will you go?"
"I don't know . . . somewhere." He rose and put on Jim Baxter's coat and hat. "I'm going down to the Flats now."
"Your friends have been raising hell down there."
"Yes . . . that's why I want to go down there now. . . . They'll think I'm dead."
"No . . . they won't think that. That Dago friend . . . Krylenko . . . is that his name? He's been asking for you, and Mary Watts . . . Mary Conyngham she is now, she's been asking, too . . . almost every day."
He must have seen the sudden light come into Philip's eye, for he said suddenly, turning to the window, "There's a good girl . . . a brave one, too."
"Yes," said Philip.
"She's the kind of a wife a man ought to have. There aren't many like her."
"No."
There was a long silence and McTavish said, "They can't win down there . . . everything's against 'em. It'll be over in two months and a lot of 'em never be able to get work within ten miles of a mill ever again."
Philip said nothing. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of Jim Baxter's coat.
"They tried it too soon. They weren't strong enough. They'll win some day, but the time isn't yet."
Philip looked at him sharply. "I'm on their side. I know what it's like down there. Nobody else knows, except Irene Shane and Mary Conyngham."
"Does your Ma know it?" asked McTavish, with a grin.
"She must know it. She pretends not to."
"And the Reverend Castor?"
"No . . . I suppose he doesn't."
Philip thanked him abruptly, and went out of the door. When he had gone, McTavish poked up the fire, and sat staring into it. "I'm a regular old woman in some ways," he thought, "trying to meddle in people's affairs. But it needs a whole army to cope with Em."