Stella Dallas (1923, Houghton Mifflin)/Chapter 22
CHAPTER XXII
1
Stella set forth in quest of 172 North Blank Street the next afternoon. She might have written, of course. If it had been a matter of less importance she would have written. When Ed had given her this address he had meant that she should write.
"Uncle Sam will find me here," he had told her. "Drop me a line sometime when the offspring's away and you're feeling lonesome."
That was over a year ago, when she had chanced to run across Ed one afternoon in the lobby of a moving-picture theater. She hadn't seen him since. She hadn't heard from him since. He might feel entirely different about her now. A year was an awfully long time. Perhaps he wouldn't want to marry her now. Perhaps he'd never really wanted to marry her. He had always laughed when he had suggested it, and she had always laughed back, when she had refused his crazy offers. For years it had been sort of a huge joke on both sides. She guessed Ed would be surprised to be taken seriously all of a sudden. She did hope he hadn't married anybody else. Not that she could imagine such a thing. Ed wasn't a bit the marrying kind, but just hoping so hard made her think of all sorts of catastrophes. Perhaps he'd moved away from Boston entirely. Perhaps he was dead, or perhaps—what if she wasn't attractive to him any more? She was a whole year older, and a whole year after you're forty—well!
He'd find her alimony attractive, anyway, she guessed. Ed hadn't been very successful in his various business ventures. But say—look here, there wouldn't be any alimony, would there, if she married again? Hadn't there been some such clause? She had never given it much thought because she had been so dead sure she never was going to marry again. Gracious, she hadn't thought of that. Well, never mind, she could contribute something in the way of funds. She had a savings-bank account amounting to over a thousand dollars. That wasn't to be sneezed at. Last time she had seen Ed, it looked to her as if he hadn't a bank-account amounting to anything.
"I'm sort of out of luck this year," he'd told her apologetically. (The lining of his overcoat had been frayed and ragged round the cuffs. He had caught her looking at it.) "But I can still give you a good time, little girl, just the same. See?" He had opened his overcoat. She had caught a glimpse of a bottle shining. He had patted it tenderly. "More where this comes from, too," he had winked, "but say, it's awful expensive stuff now. Awful! Dearer 'n a woman! Prohibition has played the devil and all with my capital, Stella." No. Ed might not scorn her little nest-egg.
She became more and more convinced he might not as she approached the vicinity of the address on the card. She had never been down this way before. Why, it was slums—regular slums! North Blank Street was a narrow, roughly-cobbled sort of alley. There was a row of low brick houses on each side, dilapidated and out of repair. There was a dark damp look to the alley and a dark damp smell, too, that reminded Stella of underground cellar stairs. Unlike most of the other doorways in North Blank Street, 172 still had all three of its digits clinging to the battered brown paint. Stella, standing on the narrow sidewalk, reached up over the two front steps and knocked loudly just below the number. She knocked three times, then receiving no answer, turned the loose knob and walked in.
"Anybody here?" she called up the rickety stairway.
"What yer want?" A young woman of about twenty, with a mop of black bushy hair, cut short, stuck her head out of a door at the rear of the hall.
Stella told her.
"What do you want of him?" the young woman demanded eyeing Stella with interest.
"I want to see him on business."
"Ma," called the woman in a powerful voice. "Here's a lady wants to see Munn on business."
"Ma" came to have a look at Stella, too. Both mother and daughter stared at Stella with hard suspicious eyes. It didn't make Stella flush. She didn't blame them. It did look funny.
"He ain't here any more," crisply "Ma" told Stella.
"Oh, ain't he?" groaned Stella.
"No, he ain't. This is a respectable place. This ain't no dope-den."
"Do you know where he has gone?"
"Nope."
"I do, Ma. He's over at Liz Halloran's. She was tellin' me 'bout him."
Eagerly Stella turned toward the younger woman. "Say, take me there. Take me there now. I got to see him."
But she didn't see him. Not that day. Liz Halloran, a thin haggard old woman with no front teeth had told Stella, standing in her miserable black hole of a doorway (like the opening into the cavity of a decayed tooth, it was), that he wa'n't fit to be seen to-day. "He's just layin' there like dead to-day."
"How often does he get this way?" Stella inquired.
"Oh, off and on, I don't know! I don't keep track. Couldn't get no hooch. That's what done it."
"When do you think I could see him?"
"Oh, he'll be rousin' up to-morrow or the day after. He'll be real bright for a spell, too."
"I'll come day after to-morrow," said Stella.
2
An hour later, as Stella sat gazing out of the window of an electric car that was bearing her back to the apartment and Laurel, she kept saying to herself, grimly, doggedly, "I can stand it. I wasn't brought up in a pink-and-white nursery, thank God! I shan't mind it after awhile. I'm tough as tripe. Anyhow, it's better than jumping off the Harvard Bridge."
3
Ten days later, nonchalantly to Laurel, Stella remarked one morning, "I shan't be here, most likely, when you get back this afternoon, Laurel." Laurel was attending business college daily now. "I've got an invitation for luncheon and the matinee."
"An invitation? From whom, mother?"
Stella smiled. "I haven't got so many admirers. I guess you can guess."
The color flooded to Laurel's cheeks. "Mother, not Mr. Munn! You haven't accepted an invitation from Mr. Munn!"
"I'd like to know why I haven't!"
"Knowing how I feel about him—how I dislike him."
"Gracious, Lollie! Honestly, it's funny! You act as if you were the mother, and I the child."
"Mother, you haven't been seeing that creature again, have you?"
"That creature! How you talk! Why, Laurel, Ed's a real nice man."
"I don't want to discuss him, mother. I don't want to hear you stand up for him. I don't see why you're bringing him up again. I thought we'd decided we'd drop him long ago."
"You mean you decided it. I never did. Mercy, I've got to have a little independence. With you away so much every day, Laurel, and nothing for me to do, I'd be a very foolish woman indeed, to allow a notion of yours to cheat me out of a little harmless entertainment."
Thus did Stella proceed. She mustn't marry Ed immediately, out of a clear sky, on top of the discussion with Laurel following her return from New York. Laurel might smell a rat. There must be no blundering this time. Ed must be slipped onto the field of action naturally, inadvertently. Funny how things worked around. That which Ed had been years ago between herself and her husband, through carelessness and indifference, now, to-day, through diligence and effort, she must make him become again, between herself and her child—an issue, a sore point, a bone of contention. Not until then would the time be ripe to marry Ed. Steadily, unswervingly, Stella set herself to her task.
It was easier than she had supposed. Laurel's hostility to Ed was so white-hot that even a reference to him kindled a controversy. Therefore Stella referred to him frequently in a light and inconsequential vein, laughing at Laurel's opposition. Not only did she refer to Ed, but she saw him; she made engagements with him; she kept engagements with him; she stayed out with him until after one o'clock on one occasion; failed to appear for supper, or to telephone, on another. One afternoon, defiantly, she established Ed in an armchair in the living-room of the apartment, and arranged that Laurel, due home from downtown, should find him when she came in. She repeated this a week later. Oh, it was too bad. She hated to watch the slow torture her procedure was to the child. But it couldn't be avoided. Somehow she must make her marriage to Ed seem logical.
Laurel's light laughter faded, disappeared; the soft light in her eyes hardened like a disillusioned lover's. Night after night she lay, on the extreme edge of the bed, beside her mother, silent and unrelenting, and drifted into an unrefreshing sleep. She grew years older.
One afternoon in early June, after a particularly difficult morning of argument with her mother about Alfred Munn (afterwards Stella had called good-bye to Lollie out of the front window, but she wouldn't answer), she returned to the apartment to find it empty. There was a note fastened to the handle of the oven-door on the gas-stove in the kitchen. Laurel discovered it when she went out to get some supper.
I guess you won't be much surprised. I guess you've sort of seen the way the wind was blowing. Ed has wanted me to marry him for years, and as I hadn't any good reason not to now, I'll be Mrs. Alfred Munn when you read this. I would of told you all about it, but I knew how you felt about poor Ed, and it would only of meant more fuss.
Ed's got a grand job down in South America, and he's crazy to have me go down there with him. You know I never had much of a chance to travel, and it seems a big chance for me. So I'm jumping at it. We may be gone a year or two. I'll send you an address when we get one.
I've had this up my sleeve quite a long while, marrying Ed, I mean. You can't explain everything to a child. That was why I hoped you'd stay with your father. But when you didn't, of course I had to keep my promise to Ed just the same. It wouldn't of been fair if I didn't, and he wouldn't listen to anything else. He's been waiting for me all the time you've been growing up, and I won't say I haven't been waiting, too. I've tried my best to make you see Ed the way I do, these last weeks, but you just won't, so I've given up trying, and gone ahead and done what I think is right.
Ed and I will be back and close up the apartment, sometime before we sail. I guess we all three can fit in somehow. I expect you to be nice to him though, now he's your sort of father.
When you're out, leave the key under the mat, same as usual. Ed and I may be back anytime.
P.S. It was too bad you wouldn't turn round this morning and wave good-bye.
4
Stephen and Helen, returning late from town the next evening to their summer home on Long Island (they had just moved down), were surprised upon entering the hall to hear a sound in the living-room—a chair suddenly shoved back, soft swift foot-steps. They stepped to the door of the room.
It was Laurel! She still wore her hat. Her suitcase still stood by the chair where she had been sitting.
"Why, Laurel! Why, my dear!" exclaimed Stephen, exclaimed Helen, both hastening toward her.
They met her in the middle of the room. They kissed her—both of them. She returned neither caress.
"What is it, Laurel?"
She was very white. Her eyes had a startled, frightened expression.
"I've come back," she said quietly. "I'll stay now, if you want me—if you'll take me." She made no gesture, her expression did not change. There was fixed calmness about her as hard as adamant.
"What has happened, Laurel?"
"I've been put out. I've no other place to go but here. If you don't want me—if—"
"You know we want you!" exclaimed Helen. "Dear child! Come. Sit down. You're tired. You've had a long journey. Why, you haven't even taken off your hat."
Laurel remarked, not moving, making no sign of response, "Mother has married," and after a pause, "Mother has married." It was like the wailing of a tolling bell.
Stephen said, "Oh!"
Helen said, "I shall take off your hat myself." And quickly, deftly, she removed the small toque and laid it aside on a table, Laurel standing listless and indifferent beneath her administrating hands. "There! That's better. Why, you must have been waiting a long time," lightly she went on. "You ought to have telephoned when you reached New York."
"She's married Alfred Munn, father," said Laurel to Stephen, and after a pause again, "She's married Alfred Munn," as if the tolling bell had changed its note.
Helen touched Laurel gently on her shoulder. "Come upstairs to your room now," she said. "We'll talk about it in the morning. I'm going to give you some food and put you to bed now."
"Father, you knew him. You couldn't stand him either. I understand now. I see. Of course you couldn't live with her. I couldn't live with her myself."
"Don't take it so hard, Lollie," said Stephen.
"Don't call me Lollie!"
"Don't suffer so, dear."
"I'm not suffering. I'm not suffering at all."
"Will you bring up Laurel's suitcase, Stephen?" asked Helen. "Come, Laurel." She slipped a steadying arm through Laurel's. "You must go to bed now."
5
They mounted together to the lavender-tinted room, which Helen had told Stella last summer would be Laurel's. ("She'll be sleeping in that, I suppose," Stella had remarked, from the threshold of the room, as she had gazed upon the bed, fresh and crisp with muslin valance and canopy. "I'll be thinking of her in that," and she had wiped her eyes.) Helen recalled the scene, the voice, the tears, as now she set about preparing with her own hands the waiting bed for that absent woman's child.
Behind her Laurel was standing, here, as downstairs, impassive and indifferent, just where Helen had left her when she withdrew her arm that had guided her hither.
"Come. We'll undress now."
"Mother has married a man I hate." Laurel took up the interrupted motif again. "She's married a man she knew I hated. She has chosen him instead of me. She has married Ed Munn. He's awful. He's horrible. An animal is clean beside him. And she likes him. My mother! She's fond of him. She's been waiting for years to marry him."
"Oh, no, Laurel."
"Yes, she has. I know. Read that. Read that."
She drew her mother's letter from the front of her dress, and passed it to Helen.
"Do you want me to?"
Laurel nodded.
Helen sat down on the foot of the bed and opened the folded sheets. The letter had been written by Stella in pencil, carelessly, in haste apparently. It was read by Helen slowly, painstakingly, as if it had been written in blood. She read it twice. Afterwards she looked up at Laurel.
Laurel gave a little shrug. "You see."
"Yes, I think I see," said Helen slowly.
"I thought it was for me she gave father the divorce, so I could come and be with you. And it made me glad. It made me proud. But I was mistaken. It was for him. It was to marry him, that creature. He's her kind, down underneath. She is his kind. She chose him. Father's right. The others are right. I'm the one who's been wrong about her all this time. Oh, Mrs. Morrison, she's killed my respect for her, and she knew she would—we have been quarreling about that man for weeks—she knew she would! But she didn't care. She didn't care." Thus pitilessly Laurel sunk her sharp young teeth into the hand that hurt.
Helen murmured, "Greater love hath no woman than this."
Laurel didn't hear her. "I'm very unhappy, Mrs. Morrison," she stated dully.
Helen replied, "You are very tired. You need sleep. Does it fasten behind?"
Very tenderly, as if she were handling a precious body from which life had departed, Helen unfastened Laurel's dress. She slipped it off her shoulders. It fell to the floor. Bare-armed, bare-shouldered, a shiver ran through Laurel—like a breeze rippling a docile sail. Helen put both arms about her shelteringly.
"Oh, Mrs. Morrison! Mrs. Morrison!" Laurel cried out at the touch, and suddenly the storm broke, the long withheld flood burst, the boat tossed, the sail strained and pulled. But Helen's hand was firm and steady on the tiller. She held Laurel close.
"That's right. Cry. You'll feel better. Cry. Cry."
Later in the morning, she would show Laurel the rainbow.
6
When Helen went downstairs half an hour later she found Stephen in the big room waiting for her. He had been smoking ever since she left him—the ash-tray bore witness to that—and walking up and down the room. The two Sheraton armchairs had been carelessly shoved out of their usual places to clear a straight path from the fireplace to the window. As Helen entered the room she replaced one of the chairs, apparently unaware of Stephen's agitation.
"Well?" said Stephen at sight of her.
Helen looked up at him and smiled.
"She's asleep," she said, and started to replace the other chair.
"Poor child. Poor child!" Stephen broke out in a tone that was almost a groan. "It's torture to me to think my own child should have to bear the burden of my mistake like this."
Immediately Helen crossed the room to Stephen. He was standing by the fireplace staring down upon the unlighted logs.
"Why, Stephen," she said gently, reassuringly, "she'll be better in the morning. It's hard to see her suffer, I know, but it's mostly from shock. In a day or two she'll see clearer."
"See clearer!" Stephen exclaimed bitterly. "Why, Helen, don't you know who the man is whom Stella has married?" he inquired.
"Yes, I know."
"Well!" he shrugged. "Don't you see it justifies our suspicions? For Laurel's sake I hoped they might never be justified. I didn't want the evidence which Morley Smith brought to my attention several years ago forced before me for consideration again. For Laurel's sake I've hoped there was that spark of controlling decency in her mother that wouldn't accept intimate relations with a man like Munn, even though she could endure his society. That hope has gone. This act of hers has destroyed it."
Helen gazed at Stephen and shook her head slowly, wonderingly. "You, too?" she murmured.
He didn't hear her.
"To think," he went on, still bitterly, still despairingly—"to think she chose, of her free will, existence with a man like Munn after Laurel had given up everything to be with her! To think she was willing to allow her child's wonderful love for her, her child's wonderful loyalty to her, to become shame and scorn! To think of it!"
"Yes, to think of it!" repeated Helen, softly, starry-eyed.
"What do you mean?" demanded Stephen, looking at her sharply. Why did she speak like that?
Helen replied slowly, distinctly, looking at Stephen. "Laurel is here. She is here to stay. Who has accomplished it?"
He didn't answer her—just looked at her a moment, then shook his head, and gazed down again into the dead logs in the fireplace.
Helen placed her hand very lightly on one of his folded arms.
"She has always been judged just by appearances," she said in a low earnest tone, "valued just by impressions. Some people go through life with nobody seeing the good in them because of the blurred, unbeautiful reflection they give back. 'Now we see through a glass, darkly.' I think it means in a mirror indistinctly—a dim, dull, imperfect mirror. It seems as if everybody saw Stella 'through a glass, darkly,' Stephen, even her own child to-night."
She withdrew her hand. Stephen replied, still staring into the lifeless fireplace, "I lived with her. I knew her."
"Oh, but, Stephen—"
"My dear, my dear," he interrupted tenderly, fondly. How strange that Helen should be the one to try to show him the good in Stella! "You see with the eyes of an angel."
"No, I don't," said Helen prosaically. "Simply with the eyes of a mother, Stephen."