KATHERINE died in May. She lay in her Empire bed draped with primrose silk, with her hair carefully marceled and dressed as usual. And the mortician had put a little—just a very little—rouge on her dead cheeks, so that she looked quite well and as if she were sleeping.
Naturally Henry, being Henry, saw that her departure on her long journey was attended by adequate ceremonial. Exactly the right people came, much as they had come to tea in happier times, the men in morning coats and dark ties, taking their silk hats carefully in with them for fear of damage in the hall; the women in rich dark clothes. From upstairs in her bedroom Kay could hear the rustlings and whispering, followed by the silence which meant the Bishop had taken his place on the stairs, and then strong and fullvoiced, reassuring, came his voice:
"I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."
She could not cry. An hour or so before the service her father had gone into Katherine's bedroom and closed the door. It was not, she thought, that he had deliberately shut her out, but that he had forgotten her. Somewhere across the hall were Aunt Bessie, other and more distant relatives, the close friends. She sat in a chair and looked at her hands. They were very white once more, against her black frock.
"First thing you've got to do is to get those hands healed up."
Well, they were healed up now. But she must not think of that; not now, when her mother was dead, and downstairs they were committing her soul to God and her body to the soil. The soil. She herself had fought the soil, and it had beaten her.
Later on they went, rather rapidly, to the cemetery. There was a sort of indecent haste about it; instead of the slow and mournful carriage procession of her childhood, moving with reluctance toward the outskirts of town, the long line of automobiles twisted and darted through the traffic. It was an incredibly short time until they were standing on heavy mats under a great marquee, with a rose-lined pit at their feet, and old Lucius's ugly shaft towering beside it. What was it her mother had wanted to put on the shaft? "He has followed the trail into the sunset." And they had not let her do it. Her poor mother. "Your mother's different, but she hadn't your courage. She never did get away." Well, she had got away now. Her poor mother.
"For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God"
It had been raining. They made their way back to the limousine through a thin moist covering, into which Aunt Bessie's high heels sunk and left little pits behind her. She was very smart in her black clothes; she always looked her best in black. And the best people followed decorously, also making small pits in the ground, and got into their limousines and drove rapidly home for tea and a rest before dressing for dinner.
Kay was stunned. She had known that it would come, but the dreadful finality of it, the horror of leaving that delicate, carefully nurtured body out there alone in the cold earth was horrible to her. And with this there was remorse, that she had added to the distress of the last few months, that she might even have hastened the end.
In the car she reached out and took her father's hand, but although he pressed it he released it very soon. He sat staring ahead, his silk hat just grazing the top of the car, his heavy figure lurching with the movement of the car, dry-eyed, silent, solitary. She could not reach him. She never had reached him, really. After awhile Bessie opened her vanity case and powdered her reddened nose, and then they were at home again.
The sickly odor of flowers still hung over the house, the servants and the undertaker's men were folding up the camp chairs and carrying them out, and in the hall was Herbert, correctly dressed with exactly the proper dark tie, overseeing the straightening of the house.
She had hardly seen him all winter. He looked thin, but his hair was as sleek as ever. And if he paled somewhat when he saw her he did not lose his composure.
"I've ordered tea," he said. "It will be in at once."
She went into the drawing room, and rather to her surprise he followed her.
"I need not tell you how grieved I am, Kay."
"No. I know, Herbert. The only thing"
"Yes?"
"I think I shortened her life."
"Not at all. I've been over that with the doctors. I was afraid you would think so. They say it was a purely physical condition, and—I think I ought to tell you this, Kay. I always knew that in her heart she felt you had done the right thing. At the beginning, after you had gone, I used to see her. She never actually said so, but"
"And then she found it wasn't the right thing after all!"
He looked at her gravely.
"Was it as wrong as all that, Kay?"
"I was all wrong, I think. You are being very kind to me, Herbert. I thought you would hate me."
"Never. If I really loved you, I had to put your happiness first."
"Happiness!" she said. "What is happiness anyhow, Herbert? To want something and get it? But then the moment one got it one would have to go on wanting something else! There isn't such a thing, then, is there?"
"Not all the time," he said steadily. "You can't live on a mountaintop always. But there is contentment, and now and then the bigger thing comes."
Bessie joined them for tea, but Mr. Dowling remained in his library. Kay, looking across, could see him working at his desk, and knew that he was himself addressing the handsomely engraved cards which thanked their friends for their flowers and letters of sympathy. But there was no message of condolence which received no acknowledgment.
On the day after her mother's death she had sent a brief telegram to Tom: "Mother passed away quietly yesterday." His reply did not come for almost a week. That did not surprise her. She knew what the roads must be. But the message itself, with its bitterness, was like a blow in the face: "Sorry to hear of your trouble, but there are worse things than reaching the end of the trail after a hard day."
No suggestion that, now that her contract had expired, she could return to him. A perfunctory sympathy, an implied reproach, and that was all. She thought back over her letter to him last autumn; she had told him she would come back if he wanted her, but it had been a hard letter, in away. If she were writing now it would be different. How could one be hard, when life was so insecure at the best, and so short? When every time the clock ticked there was just so much less time to live, to love and to be loved? When to quarrel was to lose precious time; time, which was all one had.
She found that her mother had made a will, leaving her all her small estate. It was not much, but she had taken great happiness in doing it. It had been Bessie Osborne's suggestion.
"You know Henry as well as I do," she had said, more gently than the words would indicate. "All the Dowling men have used money as a club over their women. And Kay has her own life to live. If she wants to go back West"
"Do you think she does?"
"I don't know. But she ought to be able to if she should. She'll get all I have, of course, but I"
She had stopped abruptly. It would not do to say to this dying woman that she, Bessie Osborne, expected to live a long time yet, and to enjoy every minute of it.
"I think she ought to be free to make her own choice," she finished, rather lamely.
So Katherine, like old Lucius, had made her will, and after it was signed and witnessed, just before it was put into the heavy envelope and sealed, she added a line or two in pencil: "My darling girl: You must make your own choice, and maybe this will help. Do what you think is best. I only want you to be happy."
Kay almost broke her heart over that when she saw it.
Later on, able to think it over more calmly, she realized that one cannot devise happiness by will.
Henry had resumed his life decorously and regularly; save for the band of crêpe on his left arm he exhibited no signs of his loss. He was more detached, perhaps. He spent more hours in his library, looking ahead at nothing at all. But for any part Kay had in his life she might not have been in the house. His office, his club, his dinner, and then an early going to bed comprised his days. He went to church as usual, creaked decorously up the aisle for the plate, passed it, returned with it, stood until the offertory was finished and the morning collection elevated before the altar, returned to his seat. At the proper times he prayed.
But now and then she found his eyes on her, with a furtive sort of appeal in them. It never went further than that, and as the days went and he resumed his ordinary routine she wondered if she had been mistaken. Did he need her? Or did he care? They were not often alone; his friends dropped in, elderly men like himself, prosperous, slightly dull, their illusions lost, their enthusiasms long dead. She studied them sometimes.
Did men, like women and even life-itself, reach a climacteric, and was everything sterile after that? Was the very essence of life creation; and when that power went did all zest go with it? These men seemed to ask so little of life; good food and comfortable shelter, a busy day at the office, a few old friends. Did they ever lie awake at night and listen to the clock ticking away the time? Time, which was all they had left, and which was rapidly decreasing.
She contrasted them with the men she knew in the West, men as old as themselves, but fighting to the end; wearing out, not rusting. Perhaps success was like happiness; there was no such thing. It was only the fight for it that mattered. When you need not fight any more
It was not until three weeks after her mother's death that the question of her future course became imminent. Her father called her into the library, and as he had when she first came back, fortified himself by placing the desk between them.
"Have you decided what you intend to do now?"
"That depends on you, father. If you need me"
He waved that aside with a gesture.
"Your mother," he said, and paused. "Your mother wished you to have full freedom of choice. You have followed your agreement with me, and"
"I did not stay only for that reason."
"I understand that. But I must know your plans now; I must know where I am. I have had an offer for this house. Of course, if you stay I shall not sell."
"You don't really need me at all, do you, father?"
"You cannot take your mother's place, but of course I shall miss you."
And again she caught that half-stealthy appealing glance of his, of which he was ashamed.
"On the other hand, if you wish to go back to that fellow—have you heard from him?"
"I had a telegram when mother went away."
"You have been corresponding?"
"No. I wrote him I was staying on, but he—never answered."
That angered him. His florid color, which had been subdued lately, rose high, he ran his finger inside his collar.
"And after an affront like that you are ready to go back to him! For God's sake, where is your pride? Are you going to tell me that a daughter of mine would force herself on a man who doesn't want her?"
The scene, for it amounted to that, went on. He was angry at Tom for not wanting her, but he would have been equally furious had he done so. She could not reason; after a time she could not even talk. It seemed to her that nobody really cared, except as a matter of pride, what she did. Except Herbert. She began to think of Herbert as at least representing peace, as against the truculence of her father and Tom's stormy nature. She was not startled therefore when he was brought into the conversation. A gentleman. A kindly gentleman who could and would care for her, according to her father. A man of her own breeding and stamp. Good blood, good looks, good family. But she said the first thing that came into her head, and was instantly sorry for it.
"That's the way they describe a pedigreed bull, out West!"
He got up, moved around the desk and opened the door for her.
"I see that I have been wasting my time," he said, and she went out.
Early in June they moved out to the country house, and one day she went out onto the terrace to see Herbert coming up the drive in his car.
"Won't you come and take a ride?" he asked. "I won't even talk, if you want to be quiet."
She went. Why not? They drove a couple of miles before she spoke.
"I'm glad you came, Herbert. I was feeling rather—lonely."
"I thought you might," he said quietly. "You see, I know what loneliness means."
She was warmed by that, somewhat comforted. After all, to be loved was something. It was easier than loving; it hurt less.