CHAPTER XXVI

It was two days after the New Year had come in. Only nine o’clock, but Cecily had almost decided to go to bed. The timidity which she had felt often at first in being in a house alone at night had almost gone now, and she was locking the doors and windows and turning off lights with mechanical routine. The house was full of the fragrance of hothouse flowers. Dick’s generosity had not taken into account the fact that flowers last more than a day and his “middle of the table” bouquet had overflowed into the other rooms. Cecily looked at them, wondering how long he planned to keep this up. She knew from the accounts in the paper that he had left town, for the papers had got wind of the new plan, and, to Dick’s rage, played it up in one or two issues before they were suppressed.

The flowers pleased Cecily. For once she had hardly thought of whether they were consistent with the separation between her and her husband or not. It had been sheer delight to have flowers. As she went down to put some little yellow pink rose deeper in water she heard an unfamiliar sound and straightened up suddenly. There was surely some one at the side door fumbling with the door-knob. She looked at the clock; quarter past nine only. It couldn’t be a burglar. Somebody drunk, perhaps. Pushing open the door to the pantry, she whistled softly and the big Airedale came rushing in. With him jumping beside her, she went towards the door.

This time the person, whoever it was, decided to ring. Cecily turned on all the lights and opened the door, prepared to threaten or command. But at sight of her visitor she stepped back in amazement, a restraining hand on the leaping dog.

“Why, Della! where did you drop from?”

Della, swathed in white fur, slipped inside the storm door and closed the inner one before she answered.

“I just came over,” she said, a little breathlessly. “I wanted to see you--you know, to talk to you.”

“I thought you were a burglar,” laughed Cecily. “I was going to let Bill fly at your throat. Why did you try the side door and where is Walter?”

“Walter----” Della was standing in the light now and Cecily could see that her little pink face so made for powder and smiles was streaked with tears and still distorted with some violent emotion. “Walter’s home, I guess. He doesn’t know I came here. I thought he wouldn’t know, so that’s why I came to you. He thinks I’m afraid of you and wouldn’t dare to come. But I showed him I did come here and he doesn’t know where I am and----”

“Hush,” said Cecily, “you’re hysterical, Della. Have you been walking in the snow in those slippers?” She looked down at the slim black satin slippers from which caked snow was already melting. “Come upstairs to my room and get dry. Then,” she rode over an immense impulse to refuse sanctuary to Della, “then you can tell me all about it.”

Della followed her. But she could not be silent.

“I came to you, Cecily, and I know you don’t like me very well, and I don’t know as I blame you, because you and I aren’t like each other at all, and I’ve always been scared to death of you, but what could I do, for I couldn’t go to any of the girls because they don’t know anything about things like this--at least, I hope they don’t, although perhaps the married ones have troubles of their own. It isn’t as if I were older and I thought, of course, Walter would be nice and sympathetic and he wasn’t at all, but he was so stern and cross and scolding--and I can’t be scolded and I won’t have it.”

She ran on, plunging through incoherent phrases and sentences, with the tears running down her foolish little cheeks. Cecily looked at her in amazement.

“Hush,” she said again, “you’ll make yourself ill. What is it, Della? Have you had a quarrel with Walter? Is that it?”

“That’s only a little bit of it,” sobbed Della, as the cause of her trouble rose again to bring her horror, “only a little of it. Although I thought he’d be nice to me! I thought he’d be nice to me; a girl gives up a lot when she marries a man, and it’s pretty hard to have him turn against her.”

Cecily had her upstairs now, sitting on her chaise longue, and she was forcing quilted slippers upon her.

“If you really want to tell me, Della, you must stop being hysterical and begin at the beginning. And you mustn’t be quite so noisy or you’ll wake the babies in the nursery.”

Della shuddered from head to foot.

“That’s it!” she cried, her eyes distended. “Babies! Cecily, Cecily, they say I’m going to have a baby and I won’t, I won’t! And Walter is so cruel about it.”

Cecily was no longer naïve about such things. She had heard many conversations which had told her unwilling ear much about involuntary motherhood. But never had she seen such horror as was Della’s. Mixed with her recoil from the violence and the ugly mood of the girl was a queer feeling of responsibility that was almost pride. Della had come to her.

“You’re going to have a baby, Della? Why, you silly girl, that’s the nicest thing that could happen to you. I’m awfully glad.”

“Don’t! I thought you’d help me! I know it’s all right for you to have children, Cecily--you’re the domestic type--but I’m not. I won’t, I won’t, I tell you! I won’t lose my figure and have to give up dancing and get old and ugly and repulsive and listen to babies all the night and die!”

Cecily sat down beside her and took hold of one clenched little hand. “Tell me all about it, Della,” she said quietly. “When did you find out all this?”

“Last week.”

“Did you see Dr. Norton?”

“Not him. He was horrid to me once. I wouldn’t go to see him.”

“But how do you know?”

“I saw another doctor.” She had stopped crying. “I hunted one out on Eighth Street where no one would know me or begin to talk about it or tell anybody.”

“Eighth Street! Why, Della, that’s no street for decent doctors!”

“Lots of doctors advertise in the windows along there,” said Della sullenly. “Anyway, I wasn’t going to Dr. Norton.”

“And this other doctor told you what?”

Della shuddered convulsively. “He was horrible--horrible. Such an awful place with dreadful looking women around in the waiting room. And a man tried to flirt with me and the doctor patted me on the arm and told me that he could tell me more about it and that he’d have to see a hundred dollars first. And I didn’t know what to do, Cecily, so I hurried out of there and it’s lucky I wasn’t murdered or didn’t have my gold purse stolen.”

“What happened then?”

“I’ve been worrying till I was almost dead. Walter knew I wasn’t myself--my skin was all dead looking! Look at me, Cecily. I’m a perfect fright! So to-night he found me crying and he asked me what the matter was, and I told him, and he was glad, he said. Glad! Glad that I was going to die!”

“Nonsense, Della. Why shouldn’t he be glad?”

“He said he thought it would mature me and that we’d both be happier and that he’d try to make it easy--as if it could be easy! I’d die; I’m the type that always dies, leaving a baby, and the man marries again. And I told Walter he’d marry again; no, I told him I wouldn’t have it, I wouldn’t, and I won’t!”

“But there’s nothing to do about it.”

“There must be things. There must be. Walter said that same thing--nothing to do. But I’ll kill myself! I’ll show you all! I’ll show him!”

For a few minutes Cecily let her storm. She was collecting her thoughts. The mad ignorance, the uncontrolled violence of this girl in the face of one responsibility horrified her. And astonished her, too. She had not dreamed Della was so ignorant.

“But, Della, dear,” she found herself pleading, “you must have known that was one of the things that happen to people when they marry--babies.”

Della shrugged her shoulders in angry impatience.

“Don’t be silly, Cecily. You know lots of girls don’t have them and don’t ever intend to have them. Once in a while a girl makes a mistake.”

At her full height Cecily looked down on Della in disgust. The things she was instinctively fighting against, for which she had endured so much, all seemed epitomized in this hysteric figure of inconsequence which was so helpless up against a fact of life--a fact demanding personal sacrifice. “Incapable,” she thought, feeling strong as never before. And then there came through her scorn that pride again that Della had come to her, and a real anxiety for Della and the child which might be hers.

“If this is true,” she said, “you know you ought not to be letting yourself get wrought up. It’s bad for you and bad for the baby,” she finished tactlessly.

A shiver went over the crouching girl.

“Don’t! Don’t!” she moaned. “I won’t have it, I tell you. I wish I’d never seen Walter. He’s let me in for this now, just as he let me in for marrying him after that mess at college. I wish I never had married him in spite of all their silly talk. Anybody could have known I wasn’t a tough girl. I didn’t stay out all night because I wanted to. I couldn’t help it if the silly car froze up and we had to go to the nearest place to keep from freezing ourselves. But he was so fussy that he got me all worked up, too, and I married him. And now, after all I’ve done for him, he was so cruel to-night. He didn’t care about my feelings. He just wanted the horrible----”

“Hush, Della.”

“I thought you’d help me. You’ve been married a long while. You----”

“Della, if you mean what I suppose you mean by ‘helping’ you, I wouldn’t have the faintest idea of how to help you in that way. And of course I wouldn’t anyway. It’s not only wicked to consider such a thing; it’s the worst kind of wickedness. It’s dreadful, awful, criminal.”

Her words seemed to dry Della’s tears. She got up, wrapping her coat around her.

“Well, I can kill myself,” she said, her blurred blue eyes full of childish drama. There was something in this pure childishness that went home to Cecily’s heart. There were only three or four years between her age and Della’s, but she felt decades older and wiser. It came to her suddenly that this was no figure of evil before her. It was just a frightened little girl, uttering angry threats in the face of her fear--ignorant of all things that might stand her in stead in a crisis, equipped only to meet gayety and enjoyment. Cecily had the heavier equipment and she longed to lend it, to bolster up this frail little soul. She took her by both shoulders.

“You won’t do any such ridiculous thing. Sit down and let me tell you a few things. Let me tell you,” she went on to Della, reluctant beside her, “what a joy it is, what wonderful happiness it really is, in spite of all the pain and trouble, to have a baby of your own, something living that you really created and made strong. Why, it’s most beautiful.”

But Della’s face was hard and drawn and sullen.

“That’s if you like that sort of thing. I don’t, that’s all. I’m not the type,” she repeated.

The motion picture phrase struck Cecily as true. Della wasn’t the “type” to understand what she was talking about. Della had been told that she was the type to wear electric blue, to carry off a Marcel, to dance the toddle. And it was true. She hadn’t got a word of what Cecily said, and she wouldn’t. To her little mind there was no entrance for the abstract or the philosophical. It must all be pictorial.

Cecily felt failure, and as she felt she wasn’t gaining her point, she cast about for new weapons. She was on the offensive with her philosophy this time, and she realized that the old weapons of defense were useless. She could not make Della see these things by talking to her. But there must be a way; she must find it.

“You and Walter can talk about how low I am when you see him. He feels like you do,” said Della bitterly.

“Walter thinks you’re wonderful,” answered Cecily. “He’s crazy about you.”

Della began to cry again. “Then why is he so cruel? Why does he want me to go through such an awful thing?”

“He doesn’t mean to be cruel. Of course he doesn’t realize what it means to a woman.”

That was the right note. A hint of martyrdom.

“I should say not.”

“And men are always pleased at news like that. I tell you, Della” (Cecily was striking her stride now), “men are never as crazy about a woman as when she is expecting her first baby. You see, they feel so grateful and so miserable.”

“I should think they would,” moaned Della.

“Of course you can’t see it as I do, but really the nicest time of my married life was before Dorothea came.” She faltered a little at that, for it was hard to use those memories for Della’s sake, but she realized that Della was listening finally.

“Dick couldn’t do enough for me.”

“Didn’t you die--staying in for months?”

“But you don’t, my dear--that’s awfully old-fashioned. That belonged to the days (here was an inspiration) when they didn’t have the modern point of view. And you can get the loveliest dresses. You’d be like a picture, Della.”

It was clear that at last Della was getting a Madonna vision of herself. She had stopped crying except for an occasional dab at her eyes and with her eyes fixed on the other side of the room looked very young and pathetic.

“There’s one thing,” said Cecily. “It isn’t all misery by any means. Everybody’s so awfully interested in you and so awfully nice to you; and you can do everything except maybe dive and dance--along towards the end--and then of course all the----”

“But the end when you die, maybe!”

“You don’t die. You have so much anesthetic you don’t know anything about it. Then you have a cunning little baby and you can have the loveliest baby things. Of course Walter wouldn’t want you to have any of the hard care of it.” Skillful Cecily, sliding over all the things that had made her children real to her; nights of watching and caring when a baby had a cough or a touch of croup, the routine of nursing, the fatigue and ill health which might be eased, but which could never be destroyed. She was fighting for Della’s baby now, and if Della saw it as a pink and white doll in a dotted Swiss cloud, with herself as an invalid in interesting negligees, still she was gaining her end. That it was a great step for Cecily--this relinquishing of her own fastidiousness in discussion, this generosity of method--she did not realize, yet.

Della was growing calmer. Her hysteria had half spent itself and Cecily had turned her mind away from horrors for the moment, anyway. It was probably the first time for many days that she had been able to see anything except blackness, and the relief showed in the relaxation of her body. Cecily ventured a little further. She was feeling a sudden warmth of affection for Della. The sense of her usefulness to some one outside her own group of children and the feeling that some one had turned to her for confidence and compassion was expanding all her starved emotions. She put her arm around Della.

“Poor little Della.”

“Isn’t life terrible?” asked Delia mournfully.

“You want to stop worrying about everything,” answered Cecily. “You want to just lie back and let us take care of you. We’ll all see you through it and make it just as easy. Just let me talk to Walter and explain things and he won’t upset you again.”

“He was so cruel.” Della relapsed again. “I didn’t tell you everything. He said I was a coward and----”

“He was excited. You’d better spend the night here now, Della. I’m going to tuck you up and telephone to Walter where you are.”

“Do you think he’ll come over?”

“Of course--to make sure you are all right.”

She got Della into bed finally, diverting her momentarily by pressing upon her her most elaborate nightgown and negligee. Della cast a fleeting, discouraged glance at herself in the glass and slid between the covers, too worn out to resist longer.

“Of course I shan’t be able to sleep,” she said, “so if Walter comes over, he might come up for just a moment.”

Cecily nodded and turned the light low. Then, from the safe distance of the kitchen extension telephone, she telephoned Walter and half an hour later let him in.

“You say she’s gone to bed?”

“Quite worn out. But she wanted to see you.”

“Is she still hysterical?”

“No; she’s calmer.”

Walter’s boyish face had grave lines of anxiety traced on it. He paced up and down the room for a minute, then turned to Cecily.

“Tell you what was the matter with her?”

“Yes.”

He took a few more turns.

“Of course she’s very young,” he said, “but there doesn’t seem any excuse for some of the things she said. She--I didn’t think women--even girls--felt that way. I know it’s a sacrifice, but I thought every woman had instincts.”

“Every woman has, but not always at this stage. Wait till the baby comes.”

A funny, shaken smile came over Walter’s face.

“I’d do anything in the world to make it easy. But of course if she’s going to hate it so----”

“It’s just her condition,” Cecily told him. “Lots of women are hysterical. You’re utterly in the wrong, Walter, when you argue with her. You want to soothe her, divert her. She’s just a child and she hasn’t had a bit of experience.”

“She’s older than you were.”

“Della says I’m a different type, but I can remember, Walter, times when the world frightened me to death. The only thing that helped was to feel that Dick was going along with me.”

She stopped, and then went on again: “I don’t believe you ought to try to make Della think of the serious things any more than she naturally will. Be awfully considerate, fussy; spoil her--she likes that. Make father spoil her, too. And remember, no matter how cross or queer she may be, that ignoring all that is part of the penalty you have to pay for having a baby of your own.”

“Della’s not your style,” said Walter for the hundredth time, “but, really, if you would you could do a lot for her. She’s light on the surface, but there’s more to her than you’d think. Awfully sweet and generous. If we did have a baby and she had it to think about----”

“I know.”

“Will you help us through, Cecily? I don’t know much about such things, and mother’s gone. Her own mother is rather dreadful. Boarding house! We haven’t seen much of you lately, and that’s been all my fault, too. But now it might be--you’d be an angel to sort of stand by Della.”

“Of course I will.”

“Is Della in your room?”

“Yes. Come up.”

At the door of the room with the dim light they paused and listened, but Della was not sobbing. They entered softly. She had turned on her side and fallen asleep like a peaceful child.

“I’d say good-night to her,” said Cecily, and went downstairs again, closing the door after her. For a moment the warmth at her heart persisted and then loneliness, more devastating than ever, bitterness, jealousy of that husband and wife upstairs--together--swept her.