CHAPTER XVI

In January Cecily found her hands extremely full.

Ellen had an unexpected call to take care of a sick relative--she did not tell Cecily that it was Mrs. Horton--on whom tragedy in the form of cancer had descended. She would not consent to an operation and Ellen’s duty was partly to take care of her, partly to reassure her, partly to keep her from answering patent medicine advertisements which “guaranteed to cure without the use of a knife.” Mr. Horton had come for Ellen, not daring to risk the telephone in his wife’s presence and at sight of the helplessness of the sagged figure at the kitchen door Ellen was bound to help. She said she would come for a month and by that time they could find a nurse. It was obvious enough that the sick woman was more important than Cecily’s household, but Ellen was none the less distressed. She left a sour-faced Swedish woman and an increasingly pert Jenny to take care of the Harrisons and went on her errand of mercy, pulled backward and forward. Cecily had tried to be as kind as possible, but she had urged Ellen to come back as soon as she could.

“After a bit no doubt they’ll get a nurse,” said Ellen. “It’s just at the start that a relation is easiest for the poor woman.”

“Can they afford a nurse?” asked Cecily.

“There’s a rich daughter.”

“Then why doesn’t she take care----”

“She couldn’t. She’s young and I suppose her husband needs her.”

Fliss had indeed offered to do everything except give personal care to her mother. Matthew was the only person to whom she could give personal service, and even for him there was not too much, but she had arranged for specialists to examine and recommend; she had tried to make her mother have a trained nurse; tried everything that money could buy. That she shrank from the sight and thought of the corruption of the body was only that she was Fliss.

Matthew had been told of the identity of Ellen as her cousin, with one slight change in the facts. It was Ellen’s proud request that the relationship be kept from the Harrisons, according to Fliss. So he was not surprised to see Ellen take up her place in the Horton household. Matthew was far more appreciative of and able to understand Fliss’s parents than she was herself. Ordinary people with cramped minds and petty satisfactions were not out of the range of his philosophy as they were with her. He did not see the Hortons often, but once in a while he and Fliss went there for an evening or Fliss invited them to her house and undoubtedly the event, mostly taken up with small gossip and cribbage playing, did not irritate him as it did his wife.

Now that Mrs. Horton had taken to her bed, or at least to her tawdry kimonos, driven by fear and indigestible patent medicines as well as by the progress of the disease, the flat she called home had become an even more unattractive place. Ellen found unwashed dishes in every corner of the cupboard, under the gas stove, in the icebox; dirty linen; everything neglected, everything uncomfortable and in the midst of it the whining, terrified women and the unquestioning, drearily patient man. She tried to cheer them up and managed at least to make them comfortable. But it was far from easy or satisfying.

Coming in the day after Ellen had taken charge, Fliss praised her extravagantly.

“I don’t see what we could have done if you hadn’t come; she wouldn’t have a nurse though I begged and begged.”

“Well, that’s natural,” said Ellen. “Nurses frighten people who aren’t used to them. I don’t know as I blame her, but she ought to do as the doctor says.”

“The doctor says that things are already pretty far advanced. He can’t be sure that even an operation----” Fliss shuddered miserably. “Oh, Ellen, why don’t they find a way to cure it?”

Ellen patted her on the shoulder. “Trust in the Lord, my dear,” was all she said.

Fliss went in from the kitchen to see her mother who looked at her with the apathetic misery that had characterized her of late.

“Feeling better, mother?”

“I’ll never be better. They as much as tell me that. I’m going to die, especially if they get their knives on me.”

“Don’t be silly, mother. You know they just want to help. Matthew got the best doctors. If you’d just let them operate.”

“That’s it! Every one after me wanting to see them cut into me. I’ve heard of those doctors before, thank you. Mrs. Todd came in to see me yesterday and she said to me: ‘Mrs. Horton, don’t you let those doctors experiment on you.’ She told me some things that were terrible. And she told me, too, about a new thing they’re getting out that has helped lots of women--just a kind of tonic that they say makes the trouble disappear in two months.”

“That’s just quack stuff. You know that. If there were any such thing the good doctors would be using it.”

Mrs. Horton laughed, the high querulous laugh of the invalid who has already become suspicious and opinionated.

“I know what I know, Flissy. All those high-toned doctors want to do is to experiment on me and get Matthew’s money. I know them. You don’t let yourself get taken in by them.”

Fliss sat still watching her mother as she lay on the couch, a sodden heap of misery that would make no constructive effort. She looked baffled. Then she rose and unpacked the luxuries which she had brought with her: choice food, invalid comforts, a black satin negligee.

“Black!” shrilled the mother. “I’m not dead yet, thank you! Take it away, Flissy. It gives me the creeps.”

Fliss went back to the kitchen.

“It’s such a comfort to think that you are here, Ellen,” she said, drawing on her gloves. “There’s not a thing I can do to please her. She’s so changed. All that she used to want was a movie and a bridge game. Now the only thing she wants is to talk over her symptoms with some old hag who recommends patent medicines and tells her not to let any one knife her. But it’s rotten for you here, I suppose.”

“It’s only temporary. I told the doctor to send a nurse and I’d try to train her in--one of those practical nurses who can do housework and is sort of companionable. I have to get back to Mrs. Harrison, of course.”

“Going back there? Why do you, Ellen? Please stick by us now.”

“I will, as long as I can, but I promised Mrs. Harrison and she really couldn’t get along without me.”

“Let her get some one else.”

“I promised her, Fliss. I’ll fix your mother up, but I’ve got to go back to my own place.”

Fliss stood up, passing her slim hands over her well-tailored hips, lifting her hand bag delicately from the crowded table. Her face was perplexed.

“I’m no good at nursing, you know,” she commented.

“No; but we must find some one who is just the right person.”

“Do. And I’ll come just as often as I possibly can.”

“I would. She’s your mother, Fliss.”

Fliss frowned a little and went out into the sunlight. There her step quickened and her face grew gradually brighter. She seemed to be tossing the misery from her at every step.

She made some calls, told her hostesses a little plaintively about her worry for her mother, and after having exposed her trouble in several charming and handsome rooms, felt it vastly easier to bear. She succeeded in making it a little more remote, somehow putting it in a better setting.

By the time she reached home she could smile without effort, and even tell Matthew, whom she found dressing for dinner, that her mother would probably improve under Ellen’s handling and consent to an operation.

“Good.”

“If Ellen only stays. She wants to go back to Cecily.”

“Wonderful what loyalty Cecily does inspire, isn’t it?” said Matthew ruminatively.

“She probably pays Ellen well.”

At Matthew’s little laugh, which seemed so perfectly comprehending of all the jealousies in Fliss’s mind, she flushed angrily. For a moment she seemed about to say something, but she did not. It was Matthew who spoke.

“Not worthy of you, Fliss.”

“I know. It was stupid and jealous, but I get so tired of the eternal virtuousness of Cecily. Those with the servant mind may like it, but it bores me to death. She’s so always right.”

“She’s always so right,” corrected Matthew, teasingly.

“Have it your own way. I’d personally sooner be a cheerful sinner than such an unsmiling saint.” She turned at the door. “And if you ask me I think poor Dick feels that way sometimes too.”