The Bird's Nest Part 13

"You are none of you going to be 'under,' as you call it. When Elizabeth R. is herself again, you will all be part of her."

"Like raisins in a pudding," Betsy said.

"You might just tell me," I suggested, "why you are trying to keep me from your aunt."

"I'm not sure," Betsy said, and I think she was telling the truth. "I think it's because I know something's going to happen and I'm afraid of Aunt Morgen."

"What could be going to happen?" I asked cautiously, but Betsy only stretched and made a face at me.

"Fiddle-dee-dee," she said. "Let her walk home; I'm too lazy."

Bess, sitting in the chair, apparently perceived that she was putting on her gloves, for she rose to go. "I think," she said, as though nothing at all had happened since she bade goodbye to Betsy, "that I shall not care, Doctor, to try your game again. I am satisfied that it is no more than hypnotism, or a trick like spiritualism."

Nothing could be more calculated to infuriate me, but I said with restraint, "I am no more anxious to continue than you are, Miss R."

"Good afternoon, then," she said.

It was clear to me from her voice and actions that she knew nothing of Betsy's brief visit, and I was greatly relieved to think that, even now, Betsy could still come without Bess' knowledge. I bade her goodbye with some cheerfulness, and took up the telephone to call Miss Jones. I knew that her niece could not reach home, walking, for a good twenty minutes, and I felt that it was no longer possible for me to attempt dealing with my four Miss R.'s without Miss Jones' active and knowledgeable help. If it meant some sacrifice of dignity on my part, that was, I told myself sternly, a minor hazard of my profession, and I kept my voice extremely businesslike, asking Miss Jones only for the privilege of an appointment with her, in order to "discuss the illness of her niece," and adding that, if possible, I should like our conversation to be unattended by Miss R., and, in fact, kept secret from her, since I had medical details to communicate which were best kept, at present, from Miss R.'s hearing. Miss Jones, as icy and formal as I myself, readily agreed to grant me an audience on the following evening, but preferred not to come to my office; would I consent to attend her at home, since her niece would be hearing a concert with friends.

I should point out, I think, that Miss R. was at this time so much quieter than she had been at various previous times-Bess and Betsy having apparently established a kind of equilibrium in their warfare, and both believing that any overt hostile act might endanger the perpetrator more than the victim-that it was felt by Miss Jones, and approved by me when consulted by Elizabeth, that Miss R. might with safety be allowed into public under supervision. As I have pointed out before, no one, without using actual restraint, had much control over her actions generally, and she came and went largely as she pleased when alone. To public functions such as concerts, where she would certainly be seen by people who had known her since childhood, and her slightest abnormality remarked, she went only when accompanied by her aunt, or by trusted old friends. She did not leave her home often, except for visits to my office, and when she went out alone it was always by day, and for never longer than an hour or so; I was confident that, operating under the dangerously poised balance of power between Betsy and Bess, so delicate that neither dared jolt the other unduly, she had heretofore kept her actions under strict control, but I made a point of discovering from Betsy where Miss R.'s journeying had taken her. There was, I thought, no longer any need to fear Betsy's eloping again, with the powerful opposition she must meet from Bess in any such attempt, and when it began to be apparent that Betsy was going to need all her strength to cope with Bess, and so must give up her unkind practical jokes upon Elizabeth and Beth, there was not even any danger of her repeating her favorite prank-taking them too far away to get home, and abandoning them. She spent much time walking, and even more time, when Bess was dominant, in going from one bank to another, where she stood outside and examined the architecture of the inst.i.tution, presumably trying to decide upon the one least vulnerable to bandits; she sometimes went alone to soda shops-this usually Betsy's doing-where she indulged herself in quant.i.ties of chemically sweet concoctions; once she went to the museum and entered as a visitor, going from exhibit to exhibit, and showing the greatest interest, quite as though she had never come near the place before. She never visited any place of amus.e.m.e.nt, such as a theatre-which I believe she knew instinctively might overexcite her and shake her stability-but spent her time, largely, in mere wandering. She once rode a bus as far as the bay, and spent an afternoon looking out over the water, and, of course, mainly, there were Bess' famous shopping trips, where she went earnestly from store to store, fingering cloth and sniffing perfume, and lavishing upon herself numerous small rich indulgences.

It was thus relatively easy for Miss Jones to guarantee that her niece would be absent during our interview, and my cold tone and insistence upon my entire preoccupation with business had, I think, the effect of persuading her that she was entirely secure in both honor and reputation (oh, that I knew what Betsy had written her in my name!) in permitting me to visit her alone in the evening. Indeed, I felt as I set down the telephone that my disagreeable task was half done.

Betsy, unchastened still, made one more attempt to prevent my seeing her aunt, although I do not believe that she was aware that our appointment had already been settled. I had half-expected to see Betsy on the afternoon following my conversation with her aunt, but I reached my office late, after having been unavoidably detained by a most disagreeable session at the dentist's, and found upon my desk a note, written in a childish, unformed hand. This note was from poor Beth, and it said, "Dearest dearest Doctor, I did think you liked me in spite of everything and I didn't ever think you would really want me gone, but if you want to there isn't anything poor Beth can do. I guess there's no one in the world who likes me any more now that you have given me up. I guess I will just be lonely and sad all the time. Your own Beth."

I was grieved, and a little perplexed, at this epistle, and at a loss how to rea.s.sure the poor child until, happening to glance into the wastebasket to see if my pen had accidently fallen within, I took out several sheets of my office paper. The top one was a note of my own, left on my desk when I went out, and meant to tell Betsy that I would be a few minutes late that afternoon, because of an unavoidable appointment elsewhere. Below this, on the same sheet was scrawled, in the stylish handwriting which Bess affected, "Dear Doctor, just dropped by to say h.e.l.lo. Sorry I missed you. Elizabeth R."

On another sheet, and written with my pen instead of the pencil which the others had used, I found Betsy's characteristic blind scrawl: "i wont go i will stay you cant make me remember i can tell" and, again, "i will write what i please you cant hurt me i will tell him about what you did"

And, on still another sheet, in what seemed an attempt at imitating my own handwriting-an attempt, I must confess, which would delude no one but the sillier Miss R.'s-but the same attempt, I reflected wryly, that Miss Jones might have read-was written the following composition: "Miss R., although I have been patient with you for a long time, and put up with a good deal of your nonsense, I will not stand for your bad habits any longer. This is therefore my final and only notice that I am giving up your case, permanently and for ever. Do not come to my office again, if you please. Notify your aunt. Yrs. very truly, Victor J. Wright."

Even allowing for the execrable literary style of this masterpiece, I found it one of Betsy's more entertaining pranks, and amused myself in endeavoring to plot out what had taken place: I imagined that Bess had for some (probably financial) reason come to my office, and found my note. She had, reasonably enough considering that it was Miss Hartley's day off and the office was therefore empty, jotted down a note telling me she had called, and, of course, once Betsy got the pen between her teeth (oh dear; I am trying to learn to do without metaphors, and would have said I was getting on nicely, but see what comes up here to plague me!) she was off into a conversation with Bess, taunting and tormenting, and driving Bess closer toward that dark area where Bess felt herself in danger and was easily overcome, until, once dominant, Betsy could hold her precarious position for a while. Then, with what malicious gigglings I could only imagine, I thought that Betsy had with loving care composed the pseudo-letter from me in which I so blithely gave up Miss R.'s case. Betsy would then retreat, bring Beth forward, and lie back in delight while Beth remained long enough to read the unkind letter (which by a positive effort of silliness she might believe was actually from me) and write her plaintive answer.

I later learned that my recapitulation was largely correct, although Betsy had, in the refinement of her wickedness, first allowed Elizabeth out to read the letter of dismissal, before she summoned Beth, thus, if I may be permitted to phrase it so, killing two birds with one stone; Elizabeth had been too shocked and hurt to do anything but retreat silently, and Betsy, returning, had with great delight gathered up and thrown away all but Beth's final sad cry, and left that one for me.

It is a kind of practical joke of which I must warn the reader to beware, involving as it does the swift and almost certainly bewildering shift in ident.i.ty of the joker-although if, as in this case, successful, an alarmingly thorough kind of prank! I should call it, as a matter of fact, a completely practical practical joke, not for the general order of person, but most effective if one just happens to have four warring personalities, and one pencil.

Having been so roundly dismissed, I dined pleasantly, and then, donning a dull necktie and a forbidding medical scowl, and forgetting my overshoes, I made for Miss Jones'. My steps were labored, for I went rehearsing the sounding phrases with which I intended to bring Miss Jones to an understanding of the precarious situation of her niece; withdrawn as I tried to hold myself, I could not help an involuntary feeling that we were all "choosing sides," as the children call it, and Miss Jones was too powerful a figure in our game to remain long unsolicited.

I dare not, in my capacity as writer, essay an attempt at describing either Miss Jones or the house in which she lived with her niece. My feelings with regard to Miss Jones are, I fear, too strongly tinged with prejudice to enable me to picture her with absolute accuracy, and, as for her house, I thought it an abomination. Let me only say, then, that I regard Miss Jones as a singularly unattractive woman, heavy-set and overbearing, with a loud laugh and a gaudy taste in clothes, as much unlike the prettier aspects of her niece as could be conceived, although it must be admitted that Betsy bore a strong family resemblance to her aunt. The house where they lived, in a neighborhood generally regarded as the most exclusive in our town, had, I thought, been put together by some family eccentric whose taste found its most perfect expression in the bleak, pudding-colored style so popular not too long ago among our grandparents, when taste and financial security were felt to be most surely expressed by a kind of ruthless ornamentation. I do not mean to say merely that Miss Jones' home was ugly; to my mind it was hideous. It had been freely embellished outside with many of the small details which so depress a lover of the cla.s.sic in architecture; it was heavy with wooden lace and startling turrets, and gave the impression (and here I confess I am malicious) of having been a.s.sembled by the same unartistic hand as Miss Jones.

Miss Jones was, I should think, an accurate heir of the designer of the house, for she had a.s.sumed its aesthetic education in much the same state of mind as must have fired the dream which first envisaged those turrets, and Miss Jones had at her disposal fashions more repelling than were dreamed of a hundred years ago. (And, before Madam approaches me with a fire in her eye and a swatch of turkey-red in her fingers, let me hasten to admit that I, a peace-loving man, spend my leisure hours in a room executed by a woman's taste: my late wife, whose silken dreams were luckily limited by her means; I am still however, in undisputed possession of my worn leathery old chair, sir-are you?) Where the original Mrs. Jones had hung brocade at the narrow windows of her new house, the present Miss Jones had subst.i.tuted a calico kind of thing, with great hideous "modern" designs; she had tried to compensate for the turrets outside by an equally fungoid growth within, a kind of embellishment which I have heard her describe as "art"; in the front hall, where one of my pedestrian generation would fully have expected to find, say, a marble urn, or a hatrack, or even a mirror (and I am persuaded, myself, that Mrs. Jones kept there some sort of inlaid table which held some sort of beaded and painted card tray)-in the front hall Miss Jones had settled a lifesize (I presume that it was lifesize) figure of black wood, unclad, and exhibiting much the same random unbeautiful physique as Miss Jones (and I have caught myself forcibly withdrawing my mind from the irresistible sense that it may very well have been a representation of Miss Jones; in that case it would have been only just barely lifesize, but I have no grounds whatsoever for this supposition which, as I say, I have steadfastly refused to entertain; for one thing, the statue had no hair and Miss Jones had). Beyond the hall, the stairway, once certainly handsome and sweeping, was now utterly vulgarized by a series of paintings on the wall supporting it, which I am not willing to suppose the work of Miss Jones' own hand. I used to shudder when I remembered those paintings, and think of the many Misses Jones who must have come as brides, blushing and smiling beneath their veils, decked in the pearls which I am positive good Mr. Jones hung about the necks of his daughters on their wedding days, down that staircase to pause and toss a bridal bouquet, and then I would try to picture a contemporary bride, perhaps our own Betsy, grinning like a jackanapes, turning under those unmaidenly paintings to hurl her flowers into the hall, where they would be caught, surely, by the black outstretched hand of the wooden figure below.

Oh, well. I have taken a roundabout way to get me to Miss Jones' house, but I have outgrown the minor vices of my youth, and am unwilling to find them painted on people's walls today. Enough; I have brought myself with laggard steps (and without my overshoes!) from my own fireside and into Miss Jones' front hall, and am regarding the black wooden figure with misgivings while Miss Jones gallantly takes my hat and coat and throws them, with an incomparable air, roughly over the end of the bal.u.s.trade; and I, all unmanned, must needs follow her into her living room, a spot uninhabitable for human creatures. I wondered irreverently at the comparative mildness of Miss R.'s mental illness, looking at the great mounds and ma.s.ses of bright colors, the overlarge furniture (overlarge for me, overlarge for Miss R., but of course suited nicely to Miss Jones), the great splashing decorations, of which the "modern" design upon the curtains was not the least, the bizarre ornaments. I sat myself down timidly upon a chair covered over with orange peac.o.c.ks and found at my elbow a shivering creation composed entirely of wire and bright metals; as I breathed this airy creature moved and fluttered, swung half around and back, and continued pendulum, while I hesitated to breathe again, for fear I should send it lofting altogether out of sight and lose Miss Jones a precious object. I had hoped briefly that there might be some spot in it for a man to lay his pipe, but no: the ashtray was a hand, reaching out avariciously as though to s.n.a.t.c.h away my pipe-and indeed, my pouch and matches, too-in its porcelain grasp, and I thought, again in wonder, of how everything in this house seemed to have an air of seizing at a person, and I put my pipe away. It is a fine pipe, and I should hate to have it taken from me, but I had then perforce to accept a cigarette from Miss Jones and allow her to light it for me. During all this time-since she was of course not utterly insensate-she had kept up a kind of conversation, wanting to know how I did, and how I liked the weather, and did I find my chair to my taste, and would I take brandy?

When, thoroughly wound about with spider webs, I consented to a gla.s.s of brandy, she poured me a generous share in a goblet which, it pleased me to fancy, the grandfather of the patriarchal Jones had brought home in his piratical loot, and I set it upon the table next me, where it provoked my airy acquaintance into a frenzy of oscillation. Miss Jones, then, composed herself with her own brandy and the bottle with it, onto a sofa of radiant pink and green, which did not become her; "Well?" she said squarely, "what do you have to say for yourself?"

"Madam," I said (and I had upon her very step concluded upon addressing her as "Madam"; I feared that too free an address might defeat my end, and mark me as much interested in "Miss Jones" as "Miss R.'s aunt"; "Madam," therefore, I began), "I cannot imagine that you have gone for this long time in entire ignorance of your niece's deteriorating mental health." (Thinking, you see, that by an implied reproach over lack of interest I might compel her to listen to me respectfully, since surely no one could accuse me of lack of interest, or of ignorance on the subject!) She signified slightly that she conceded the first point-if I may so call it-to me, and I continued as delicately as I could manage in my formal, prepared speech: "I have been most anxious to discuss these matters with you, since it is now apparent to me that Miss R. is approaching a climax in her illness, and one of which we must take immediate advantage. I propose, if you will allow me, to lay before you the full history" (the devil; I had absolutely decided to use some such phrase as "ensure that you have been fully informed," in order to drive home the point about her lack of interest, and even hint that her niece may not have been entirely truthful with her always; but it was done now, and I continued fairly smoothly) "of the various manifestations of Miss R.'s illness during this period when she has been my patient, and to see if you will agree with me in my outline for further treatment" (should we have at Bess, all together, I was asking her, but hardly liked to phrase it so) "and to ask, naturally, for your a.s.sistance in bringing about a complete and final cure."

There, I thought; she cannot complain of a lack of polish in me; surely she has not for a long time sat patiently under such a well-turned speech, or one, I must admit in honesty (and you thought, reader, that I did not know it?) so entirely meaningless.

There was a short silence, during which Miss Jones, apparently in meditation, sipped of her brandy, and touched her necklace, and regarded the floor, and nodded slowly, and then she raised her eyes candidly to me, and began with a grave inclination, "My dear doctor, in the past few years with my niece, I have frequently thought of-and even suggested-her taking professional advice. Believe me, I should not have recommended what is for me such an extreme step (and you will forgive me, I know, for this att.i.tude, understandable in a layman) if I had not felt that a person better qualified would better understand and a.s.sist my niece than one who, like myself, has had little or no experience with the mentally ill. Except," Miss Jones continued reflectively, "with her G.o.dd.a.m.ned mother. But certainly I believe that your superior judgment must be consulted first, and I shall of course be prepared to follow through on any course of action suggested by yourself."

Score one for Miss Jones, I thought, a veritable tiger among women; I myself would have shaded the ironic inflection upon "layman," but it is of course a matter of taste; we all have our preferences and I would be the last to deny my own; now I said smilingly, "Then you will not prevent me from describing to you what gives me a good deal of understandable satisfaction-my own conduct of Miss R.'s case so far?"

"Indeed not," she said. "More brandy?"

I permitted her to refill my gla.s.s, and most generously, too, and then launched-having come already prepared with my notebooks-into a detailed account of Miss R.'s case, omitting only those factors which might prove distressing to Miss R.'s own aunt-an occasional off-color reference in Betsy's activities, and of course the greater part of her animadversions upon myself, and various slighting remarks upon her aunt and, naturally, all reflections upon the unfortunate dead woman who had been mother to the one, and sister to the other. As I spoke-and I spoke well, having so thoroughly rehea.r.s.ed myself, and having my notes besides-Miss Jones listened attentively, with every appearance of great fascination; she interrupted me once with a question about Betsy's early appearance-whether it was possible that Betsy had been able to express herself briefly and violently before my first awareness of her; she recounted to me the incidents of an evening spent by herself and her niece at a friend's house, which had directly influenced her in seeking medical a.s.sistance. I listened to her with patience, since of course all facts are vital, but during her interruption I was strongly afraid of losing the thread of my own narrative, and its perfect balance, and had at last to cut her off in order that I might continue. Again, she asked and insisted on a more detailed and simpler description of the dissociated personality, as described by Doctor Prince, and again I must break off and give it her. We were wasting time, I thought, since I knew the subject perfectly and she need not know any more than she did, and always present in my mind was the approaching return of Miss R., so I said at last, "Then, Miss Jones, you agree with me that an attempt must be made to force these various personalities into a.s.similation?"

"Your superior judgment . . ." she murmured. "More brandy?"

I had by his time taken so much of Miss Jones' keen potations: her flattery, her brandy, her stimulating intelligence, that I was perhaps a little heady; at any rate, I permitted her to fill my gla.s.s again, and I continued, "My dear," and then stopped, with my face no doubt as scarlet as I felt it to be, "I beg your pardon," and I stumbled. "I am afraid that I was a.s.suming, most unintentionally, the tone and manner which I employ for your niece. I do beg your pardon."

The amiable woman laughed outright. "It is not an address which I hear often," she said. "By all means feel free to honor me as your dear."

I laughed in turn, and felt most comfortable; we were beginning to understand one another better, I felt, and was moved to say in a kind of sadness, "Our generation, madam, yours and mine, was a kinder one as regards the small graceful ways of life . . ."

"I never found it so," she said. "Indeed, when I think back on my own youth-"

"But to Miss R.," I said. "I look forward to seeing her, at any rate, gay, and happy, and free of worries and pain; it is within our power, my dear Miss Jones, to set her free."

"Work together, and bring a new being into the world?" asked Miss Jones, without inflection.

"Ah . . . precisely," I said. "In a manner of speaking."

"I would be pleased," said the girl's aunt, "if she could just get around the house without falling over the furniture. First I couldn't talk to her because she used to sit there with her mouth open and her hands hanging down like paws, and then she goes wild, laughing and yelling and all cheerful and fine, and then she runs away and when I bring her back . . ." She shivered dramatically. "Look," she said finally (and I sitting speechless) "try to understand my position, if you can." She smiled at me winningly. "You know that I have no knowledge about these things, and I am afraid very little sympathy; I have always been very sound, I think, and have the ordinary person's feeling that being cr-mentally ill is a disgrace." She held up her hand as I was about to interrupt. "No," she said. "I realize perfectly how foolish I sound. But kindly do not forget that all the time Elizabeth was growing up, and having the devil's own time with adolescence and getting into all this mess without anyone even noticing-and you can thank me for that, I guess; I'm the one who cared for her, really; anyway, during all this time, I was not only trying to keep a decent home here for the child, and something she could be proud of, but I was also taking care of a brutal, unprincipled, drunken, vice-ridden beast. Her mother."

Miss Jones stopped abruptly, overcome by emotion, and for a moment I only sat helpless, avoiding looking at her as she sat with her hand over her eyes; at last she sighed deeply, and lifted her head. "Sorry," she said. "I guess confessions like this are the usual thing for you, doctor, but it hurts me to have to speak so of my own sister. Brandy, I think."

For a few minutes we sat in silence, sipping our brandy and I, for one, brooding upon the mournful revelation of the character of Miss R.'s parent; at last poor Miss Jones sighed again, and then laughed a little. "Well," she said, "I've told you our secret, and I think I feel better. I suppose I've spent so long trying to forget what my sister was like, and trying to believe it couldn't touch Elizabeth . . ." She let her voice trail off, and I could only nod sympathetically.

Finally I shook myself together, and set down my gla.s.s with a sigh of my own. "I appreciate your distress," I said. "Why did you lock Elizabeth in her room while her mother was dying?"

"Well, G.o.ddam," she said. "You have been getting it out of the girl." She laughed, as though I had made some huge joke, and then finally she began, not, perhaps, so solemnly as before, "All right, then, but I warn you it was better the other way. I didn't want Elizabeth around when I saw her mother that morning, because I was honestly scared of the effect her mother's dangerous state-dangerous, I mean, because she was dying; not her moral state that time-might have on a girl of Elizabeth's delicacy. She had been through a severe nervous strain during early adolescence, and I thought . . ." She looked up and saw my smile, and shrugged. "Well," she said defensively, "she did have a h.e.l.l of a time when she was about fifteen."

"I am sure you did your best for her," I said obscurely.

"I'm sure I did better than that," she said. "And I find I am beginning to like you, doctor, so I have decided that I will be doing my best still if I tell you the truth, which I suppose is what you want."

"If you can bring yourself to it," I said, and she grinned, reminding me of Betsy again.

"Well," she said, looking deep into her gla.s.s, "maybe you'd better know what kind of a person my sister was." She looked up at me curiously. "You know the kind of person who walks all over other people without really meaning to, and then goes back to pick them up and apologize and steps on their heads again? She was like that, a really pretty girl, and delicate and fragile-not like me." She stopped for a minute, until I thought that she had forgotten the train of her narrative. Then, when she went on, her tone was colder, almost dispa.s.sionate. "She just seemed to do everything the wrong way. When she wanted a new dress, it always turned out to be just the only dress that would have looked nice on someone else, if she hadn't gotten it first. She contaminated everything, even when she didn't know she was doing it. Whenever she decided to go to a dance or a party or a picnic, it always turned out that her going would mean inconvenience or trouble for someone else-maybe someone had to stay home because there wasn't room for everyone on the hay wagon, or the only fellow left to take her was just getting ready to ask someone else . . . I remember once," she added with an odd smile, "there just weren't enough sandwiches to go round. Anyway, no matter what she did, even when she picked out a man to marry, she always managed to do it at the worst possible time, in the worst possible style. I didn't really hate her, you see," she said, raising her eyes to mine. "No one could."

"Was she older than you?"

"Yes." She was surprised. "But only a year or so." Silently she rose and poured more brandy into my gla.s.s, and filled her own. "When-when her husband died, she left the place where they had been living in New York and came back here to live with me, and she brought Elizabeth with her. Elizabeth was only two then, named after her mother, naturally. Who would ever think of naming a baby Morgen?" Again she was silent, thinking, and then after a minute she went on. "It was the only time in her life she couldn't get her own way, with Ernest's money. Even Ernest," she continued slowly, "wasn't completely taken in by her, and he figured just the way everyone else always did-when you have trouble with Morgen's pretty sister, get Morgen to take care of it for you. Anyway, if you had a lot of money and wanted to be reasonably sure your baby daughter would get some of it when she grew up and needed it, Elizabeth Jones would be the last person you'd think of giving it to. I think," she said, "that he tried to tell me then how much he had always cared for me, but the lawyers made him take it out."

"Then your niece is actually an heiress?"

"In about two months, when she's twenty-five. And," said her aunt darkly, "when she gets it she won't find a penny of it wasted unless you count what was spent on educating her a waste of money. In spite of what she says."

Miss Jones scowled fearsomely, and I said in haste, "Miss R. has mentioned her inheritance to me. I believe, however, that when she is herself again you will find her more just with regard to your management."

"If Ernest ever thought I wanted the money," Miss Jones said plaintively, "he would have given it directly to me."

"It certainly is a pity," I agreed, "that the question of this money has entered into Miss R.'s case; we were quite confused enough without it, and it can certainly have no bearing upon her cure, except insofar as a feeling of personal security can help to tranquilize her mind."

"She had the gall to tell me that she was going to spend whatever she liked anyway, and buy all the clothes and things she wanted no matter who paid. As if I hadn't always let her do what she pleased, for no thanks either, and given up all the dresses and picnics all the time, because Morgen was so good-humored and didn't care whether she stayed home or not; at least," said Miss Jones with satisfaction, "I outlived her."

"But how did she die?" I asked at last, softly.

"Badly. As I knew she would-whining and saying it wasn't her fault and she was sorry and if she didn't die everything was going to be different." Miss Jones looked up at me grinning, although I think she had largely forgotten who she was talking to, and even, indeed, if she was addressing anyone at all; "She was mud clear up to the neck," Miss Jones said. "I told her I was sorry she was dying, too, and I cried for her. It was the best I could do. And of course I insisted upon Elizabeth's grieving for her too."

"Quite natural."

"Certainly. I don't know what people would have thought. Anyway, Elizabeth was sick again for a while, the way she was before, what everyone kept saying was growing pains. A kind of nervous fever, I called it, and it was good enough for my mother."

Not caring to unravel this dubious piece of medical effrontery, I said, "I suppose the actual death of her mother was most trying for your niece."

"Most trying," she agreed solemnly. "As a matter of fact, I cannot remember a time when my niece behaved better."

"It happened . . . when? In the morning, I believe you said?"

"About eleven, I think. I remember I was having a h.e.l.l of a time with Elizabeth about where her mother was that morning; there was some foolishness about a party, or something-as a matter of fact, it may have been my sister's birthday, although I'm not sure-they had so many little things together-anyway, I couldn't give the girl any new story about where her mother had been all morning and all night and all the day before. I knew she was out somewhere, that's all, but it's a h.e.l.l of a thing to have to explain to her own daughter, when she's seen enough of it already to begin to wonder a lot. And then the door opens very softly, like she hoped to get in before we noticed, and she was standing there . . ."

"Smiling," I said softly.

"Smiling, kind of fearful, and wondering, hoping she'd gotten away with it one more time. She had to hold onto the door to keep from falling. And I'd just been saying to Elizabeth . . ." She stopped, and shook her head, and took up her gla.s.s.

"And?"

"Well," said Miss Jones, "Elizabeth was very upset, naturally, when we realized that there was something wrong-really wrong, that is, this time-and I took her right upstairs and told her to lie down and I'd take care of things, and naturally I called Harold Ryan and he came over. He can tell you more about it than I can, naturally. When Elizabeth was told, it was, naturally, a great shock to her. Another nervous fever, as a matter of fact."

"Unfortunate," I said prudently. "And terribly hard on you."

"I enjoyed every minute of it," said Miss Jones. "I felt kind of sorry for Elizabeth, of course, losing her mother so suddenly, but we were both better off afterward. You can't bring up a child in an environment like that, not that I condemn my sister for her way of life, but she should have given the child to me outright. He wanted me to have her. It was like my own child."

I was suddenly seriously alarmed for fear she might begin to cry, and was hardly rea.s.sured when she chose, instead, to refill my gla.s.s and her own, moving with a steadiness which I found, even then, impressive. When she had settled down again and taken up her gla.s.s she looked at me dreamily for a moment and then, fetching a deep breath, smiled and said. "Let's not talk about it any more. It makes Morgen very unhappy. So tell me about your wife."

"My wife, madam?"

She smiled still. "Yes," she said, "tell me about your wife."

"She is dead, madam."

"I know." She looked up at me with surprise. "But what did she use to be like?"

"She was a fine woman," I said, and then, because I thought that I had perhaps shown a shade more curtness than was my wont when discussing my unfortunate wife, I went on more gently, "she was a woman of intelligence, of spirit, and of kindness. A truly great helpmeet, and a sincere loss to those she left behind."

"Ah," Miss Jones said happily. "And who did she leave behind?"

"Myself," I said. "She was a great loss to me."

"Ah," said Miss Jones. "Irremediable, I suppose?"

"Precisely, madam."

"I wonder sometimes what it would be like to suffer from the loss of a loved one. Does one tend to become reconciled?"

"Indeed, madam, I cannot tell. For my own part . . . in any case, your sister, madam. Surely. A woman among thousands . . ."

"And who gave you the idea she was among thousands?" Miss Jones laughed rudely. "I knew some of them," she said, "the thousands she was among." She laughed again. "I wouldn't be caught dead with any of them," she said.

She lost herself again in her obscure musings, and I, sitting back in my chair, touched briefly by the aerial creature at my elbow, pipeless and overfull of bad brandy, endeavored to clarify my mind and decide whether I might with politeness take my departure. It did not seem that Miss Jones had any further information she was prepared to give me, but from what I already knew I was able, I thought, to define my next attack upon Miss R. Carefully, my eye fixed almost unseeing upon a painting which may have been black polka dots on a red background, or a red field filled with black holes-and my eyes, without my mind's attention, focusing in and out, from holes to polka dots and back again-I set up my little mental figures: Elizabeth, relaxing into stupor, situated between a foul-living mother and a foul-tongued aunt; Bess, grieving for a mother only three weeks dead; Betsy, not grieving for a mother she had never believed she had; could I bring these three, together, face to face with their mother, let them see her clear, if I dared?

I know myself, surely, and not at any time with more accuracy than at that moment; I am a man easily weakened, and by nothing more surely than the temptation to yield. I could not afford the picture of Miss R.'s stalwart knight, the road behind him strewn with dragonish corpses, bringing his princess safely home and then, full within the citadel, turning her over once more to the wicked enchanter who had first put her into jeopardy; if I had time, I thought, it might almost be safer to bring Bess cautiously along the narrow path of days and years into the present. But there was not time- "And then, by the great G.o.d, I told her so," remarked Miss Jones, turning violently at me, and seeming to think that she had been speaking aloud all this time, "and I will not hear any voice that says I did wrong."

"My dear madam, I-"

"I have never admitted to doing wrong, not in my whole rotten misbegotten sodden flodden amberG.o.dden life, not wrong, not evil, not trespa.s.s against, no, nor adultery neither."

"Surely you do not accuse me of-"

"And now I will be heard." And with a great shout Miss Jones arose, towering in that great room, and lifting a voice almost great enough to shatter her fragile ornaments, some of them so dangerously close to my person, "and when I choose to be heard, the lowest legions of h.e.l.l may turn in vain to silence me and when I choose to speak not all the winds of earth can drown my voice for I speak truly and well and raise not your hand to me, sirrah, for I might strike you down as a reptile or a craven bellyful wanderer upon my green earth if you so much as whimper; I charge you, sirrah, look not on me."

"Indeed, madam. . . ." I was dismayed, and hoped, somehow, for some auspicious catastrophe; one of her feet to smash through the floor, perhaps, or a flailing arm to crash down a wall; "Indeed . . ."

"Now listen, rascal, and be alarmed, for I shall not be tampered with nor restrained; when I speak, you will tremble and be afraid."

Good heavens, I thought, trembling in verity; might I with any optimism antic.i.p.ate an apoplexy? After the quant.i.ties of brandy she had taken, if she continued thus . . .

"And now I tell you that having let your devils loose upon me you look to see me fall, and your horrid revenge accomplished, and filthy and crawling you hope to spit and gulp at my blood and snarl over my flesh and scratch and claw at one another to catch your teeth in my bones and I will not have it, for I alone and in myself will defy you and your legions, and defy me if you will! For I challenge you and I dare you here on this spot and I challenge you-do you dare to touch me? Will you defile me in the manner of my death? Am I to be done by children and by changelings, by yappings and by mutterings, by blood-drinkers and by bone-suckers, am I to die underfoot? Indeed, am I your little creature, to suffer whimpering under your hands and submit with tears to your hardness and take joy in my lowness? Surely when you question me you mistake; surely there are those who bow lovingly to your words and your sharp looks and your little touchings and will talk and talk and talk and I charge you here, sir, look well before you come to me! For I have done it, and I say I have, and I tell you here in my own voice that I have-"

"Goodnight, Miss Jones," I said, offended at last-as who would not be, since she had in so many words announced that she despised my questions?-and making ready to leave her.

"You are not half a man, clown, and not worth my presence!"

"Madam," I told her civilly enough, "if you were half a woman you would have had your sister's husband." I thought this a final shot, and would have fled hard upon it, but she shouted after me, "I had her child-will you deny it? I stole my sister's child-"

"Morgen dear." It was a voice cool, and dispa.s.sionate, and I turned, thinking to find a stranger (and in confession I will say here that I, too, had touched too heavily upon the Jones brandy, for I could not at once determine who stood in the doorway, fresh from outdoors, and icy).

"Doctor Wright will have a very bad opinion of our family," she said, coming forward into the silence which was, after that peroration, overwhelming.

"Not at all," I said, caught off balance.