“They are blind and empty.... I must tell them this.... It may not be too late.”

It All Begins Again

The story of the three generations that found no peace.

Helen R. Hull

Illustrations by David Robinson

Redbook Magazine, vol. 76, Mar. 1941, pp. 40-43, 69-74.

Mary Briscoll had intended never to live with any one of her children. The decision had been automatic, full-formed even as she had sent the telegrams telling them their father had died suddenly. That had been fifteen years ago, when she had been just past sixty; and her income (arranged cannily by Will in annuities so that no one would look hopefully for her death!) had been enough for independence and even for assistance to one or another of the children. Except for an appropriate and swiftly abandoned gesture from Vera, the children hadn’t suggested that she live with them. Hugh, the youngest, ran through wives and jobs too rapidly to offer sanctuary to anything. She might have enjoyed an occasional visit with Tom, the middle child, but his domestic life was irregular. And Tom had died, a few years after his father’s death—the neat surgery job done on his interior after Verdun being inadequate for many years of service.

After Mary’s serious illness in the late winter of 1940, Vera insisted that she must not stay alone. In the discussion, Vera let drop that if her mother would stay with them instead of going alone to some expensive summer hotel, they could open the Westchester house, Vera could take out a cook and second maid, Clement would stop his talk about selling the house, and the children would give up their ridiculous proposals for the summer—dude ranches, heaven knew what! “Why not say you need the money, instead of going on about my health?” Mary had asked. Vera’s answer had been: “When I’m so distressed about you—how would it look if you had a stroke or something all alone?—must you be carping?” Vera was like that, insistent and unsubtle in projecting upon someone else the necessity for doing what she herself wished. Mary liked showing her up; and perhaps one reason she didn’t want to live with her daughter was that she knew she’d have to hold her tongue. It was one thing to catch Vera up in an afternoon call, when Vera could take her injured feelings home and forget them in some new scheme. But under one roof—

If Mary had been stronger, she might have given Vera a check for her summer and rejected the plan. But the pneumonia germ had been vicious, and the climb back to health seemed scarcely worth the effort when the years left were of necessity so few. In a way Mary regretted her recovery; she felt rather silly about it, having been sure that she was through with life. Much like the state of mind of one who has stripped her house and packed her trunks for a long journey, only to find herself sitting on top of a locked trunk in an empty house with no place to go and no reason for going. Perhaps if she didn’t unpack—all her concern about the family, all her interest in their affairs, all her amused, sardonic contemplation of them; perhaps if she perched on a locked trunk, aloof, ready for departure—she wouldn’t have to wait too long. She had agreed to Vera’s suggestions, so compliantly that Vera asked: “You aren’t feeling worse today, are you?”

(“Maybe I am,” thought Mary, “to let you bully me.”)

Vera had gone on in her high-pitched, quick voice, with talk of her problems. Clement was impossible; he was such a grouch; surely the market was better than he thought; in war times steel and wheat always shot sky-high. She would write at once to that woman who’d worked for them three years ago. Hilda, Vera’s daughter, would have to drop her notion of getting a job for the summer; it was just an excuse to stay downtown where she could meet that boy; if he had any pride at all he would stop chasing Hilda—not a penny to his name. Mary had looked at Vera, smartly slender, well groomed, her silvery hair (she still called it prematurely gray) in soft curls under the thimble of cornflowers she perched over one eyebrow for a hat, her mobile face marked with sharp lines. She exaggerates everything, thought Mary; she uses her face too much; she has more wrinkles than I have. “Is Hilda in love with this boy? What’s his name?” Mary was fond of her granddaughter; she liked the girl’s looks, fine-skinned, small-boned, intense.

“Oh, love!” snapped Vera. “At her age? But she doesn’t tell me anything. You simply can’t imagine what modern children are like.”

“I seem to remember saying just that when you were young.”

“Things were simpler then.” Vera sighed. “And you never had to worry about money.”

“We didn’t have much to begin with,” said Mary. “I haven’t seen you starving or taking in washing.”

“It’s much worse, having to give up what you’re used to, than it is not to have it ever!” Vera’s hasty kiss buzzed against Mary’s cheek, and she whisked herself away....

For the next few weeks Vera was so busy closing the apartment in town and opening the country house that she had little time for her mother. During those weeks Mary grew steadily stronger. She could walk about her rooms with her heart quiet in her breast instead of acting like a frightened caged squirrel. She looked, she thought, like an elderly Alice in Wonderland, with a ribbon tied around her white hair to keep it back of her ears. No, more like the White Queen, the way her body had sagged and thickened. Her face had kept its structure, the dry skin taut over the fine, high brow, the eye-sockets deep and cleanly modeled, for all the worn lids drooped over the dark eyes. She couldn’t read long, but she began to look at headlines, with an amazed anger at what was going on, as if Hitler had taken advantage of her illness to wreck the world she had known. “Oh, my,” she thought, “I’m too old to reckon with another war!” Holland, Denmark, Belgium, Calais. Yet no one seemed to pay much attention to it.

When Vera telephoned, Mary said: “What does Clem think about the war?”

“It’s simply ruined the market,” said Vera. “I don’t even mention it to him any more. I’m calling from the country, Mother. I’m not coming in again this week; if I turn my back something goes wrong. Clem says he’ll drive you out Saturday. You can get a maid to help you pack, can’t you?”

“I’m not helpless yet,” Mary had replied tartly. She didn’t like to have Vera pawing over her personal belongings, exclaiming: “At your age, Mother, some quieter color!” Will Briscoll had always liked her in bright colors, deep, dark red, yellow. As long as her public costumes were decorous enough, white in the summer, black with white in winter—But she tired quickly, so it was the chambermaid who packed for her. “I don’t want that—nor that—” Mary discarded recklessly; she might need nothing when fall came again. “You can have them. Only, they won’t fit you.”

The woman gathered up the pile of clothes, looking at Mary with bleak eyes. “There are some who can use them,” she said. “If they still live. I do not know. I have not heard.”

“Your people?” asked Mary. “Where are they?”

“Farmers in Norway. For many weeks I do not hear. It is a great blackness not to hear.”

* * *

In Mary’s mind the words sounded like a deep bell far under water. As she waited for Clem, she kept hearing them. A great blackness not to hear. If she sat very still, scarcely breathing, the sound might come more clearly, floating up and up through the waters of time.... She must have been a child—she could feel herself spraddled over the edge of a high feather bed, trying to reach the floor with her bare toes, afraid of the darkness, compelled by the sound which had wakened her—a low moaning, broken by sobbing breaths—to extricate herself from the safe warmth of her bed and brave her way across the black room to the other bed where her mother lay. “Is it another baby, Ma?” Her hand had found the heavy rope of hair, had moved up it, had touched the clammy wetness of the pillow. Just a year earlier her brother had been born, right in this very bed. He whimpered in his crib.

The moaning had ceased; her mother had said: “Go back to bed. What are you doing up?” Then she had laughed—at least, the sound was not crying. “A baby? How would I get a baby?” She had reached out in the night and pulled Mary’s head against her thin neck. “I didn’t mean to wake you up. You aren’t old enough to know.... Oh, God, if only I could hear from him! It is death not even to hear!” She had led Mary back to her own bed, had lifted her into the hollow of the feathers.

That was another war, thought Mary, and her mother wept for her husband. When he came back, he was a gaunt, bearded stranger Mary had never seen. He had been in a Southern prison; he must have been sick for a long time after he came home. They had given up the farm and moved into a village. Her father had a cobbler’s bench in the shed off the kitchen; Mary could hear the tap of a mallet driving in wooden pegs, and the dry rasp of his cough. He had done other odd jobs; she remembered clocks with their wooden wheels strewn over a table, and the hot smell of soldering. She and Tom, the next younger child, had gone to the village school, and then she’d taken Jimmy when he was so little she had to carry him part of the way, because her mother went out by the day, nursing, cooking, sewing.

“If I had died, I would have been a hero! And now look at me!” When had her father cried that out in a terrible voice? Mary could feel herself running away from the house, dragging Jimmy with her, out of reach of the voices, her mother’s sharp with flailing impatience, her father’s like white torment. They were still young—her mother had been seventeen when they married—but Mary could not see them; her effort evoked only the image of an old tintype: her father in a stiff hat standing with his hand on the shoulder of her mother, long dark ringlets over the tightly fitted basque of the young girl who stared soberly out of the faded square. “Well,” she thought, “I can’t remember how I looked when I was twenty.” Queer, as if time destroyed the image with the prototype.

She did remember that she had grown to share her mother’s irritation with that increasingly silent, useless, ailing man. She had meant to get ahead, to make something of herself, to escape poverty and ignominy. Because she was the oldest, she would pull Tom and Jimmy up with her. Well, she had helped them; it was a long time ago, and they were all dead now, all but her. Other women now were saying of their men: “It is a great blackness not to hear, it is death not even to hear.”

Odd, how vividly she could see her father, dying. Her mother had sent for her—she was the principal in a high school in Northern Michigan that year. Will Briscoll had driven to the station with her. He was a mining engineer who ate his meals at the boarding-house where Mary lived. “Don’t be gone long,” he had said. Tom, summoned from college, had met her. “He’s going,” he had said. “Had another hemorrhage.” She must have sat beside her father’s bed that night; she remembered the acrid odor of a kerosene lamp, the faint rale, the only sound of life in the figure propped on pillows. He had lifted papery eyelids, disclosing eyes brilliant with fever, and the line of his sunken, colorless mouth had altered into gentleness. “Why, Mother!” he had said.

“It’s me, Mary,” she had told him. But he had not heard her; he had pushed himself up, talking in a high, shrill voice, like a boy’s.

She had not heeded his words, but now they sounded again: “Don’t cry! It’s a grand new land where a man can be free, and his children after him! I’ll be coming back to visit you, driving high-stepping black horses and bringing you the grand gifts!”

* * *

The telephone jangled; it was like silver trappings on black horses. The sound scattered the images of the past, just before she might have found out what they meant. What had set her digging into those old years? She hoisted herself stiffly to her feet; the desk clerk said that Mr. Clement Lawmen was on his way up.

Then Clement was at the door, an artificial brightness in voice and manner. Well, well, how was Mother? Fine that she could spend the summer with them! Were the bags ready? He seemed to turn on his manner and retreat behind it into protective coloration: gray hair, eyebrows, eyes, suit, skin. He had been an amiable fellow who wished to please, but having failed to do so, he now wished chiefly to avoid unpleasantness. “Vera’s worn him to the bone,” thought Mary, and then forgot him in an exasperating last-minute search for purse, gloves, spectacles.

“Just stop and think,” advised Clem, blinking. “Just stop—”

“If you’d stand still,” cried Mary, “maybe I could think!” The ineptitude of age irritated her; it made a husk between herself and the small affairs with which she had to deal. The porter shook out her coat, and there lay the missing articles. “I knew I’d put them somewhere!” She gathered them triumphantly, and headed the procession toward the elevator.

She was sorry there were not more people in the lobby to witness her departure. Going away was, after all, exciting, once you surmounted the inertia of staying where you were. Clement helped her into the front seat of the elderly family car and sat beside her, clearing his throat anxiously as the starter hummed twice before the motor caught. “It’s really a good car yet,” he said. “A very good engine.” Mary thought, Clem really drove well when Vera wasn’t telling him how; and then she looked contentedly out at other cars, at the curve of ramp up to the highway, at the river wide and ruffled in the hazy sunlight. An airplane sounded overhead, and she saw its shadow over the water; she thought: “We don’t have to scurry for shelter.” After a moment Clem said: “Lord, if they’d only get it over with and let a man go about his business in a normal world!”

“That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” said Mary dryly.

Clement peered at her, his eyelids twitching. “I mean, look at us; nothing’s happened here; business ought to be good. Ought to start big production, factories running double shifts. Do they?” The car rolled on in spurts, fast, slow, fast, slow, as if Clement beat time with his foot. “No. Everyone’s scared; everyone’s waiting.”

They had reached the toll-bridge; and Clem, fumbling for a coin, let the motor die. By the time he had it started, his ears were scarlet and he had forgotten larger issues. “It’s the mixture,” he muttered.

Mary’s hat slid backward on her spun-glass hair; she moved a little from the window, and Clem smiled at her, inquiringly. “You all right?”

“Yes, I am.” She wouldn’t be like Vera, wanting windows open and then shut and then half open. “Clem, what is a normal world, anyway?”

“Why, you know! The kind I grew up in, the kind you grew up in!”

“We grew up quite a while apart.”

“You know what I mean. A world where you knew what to expect, where you could make a living for your family. Why, look at Father Briscoll—that’s what I mean, climbing straight up. He had a good life; he made a lot of money. The kind of world we’ve tried to get back to, ever since 1918. Instead of this—this headache.”

“Perhaps headaches are normal.” Mary spoke testily. “Just because you can’t make a fortune!”

“A fortune? I can’t make a cent!” The words rasped. “But I—I didn’t mean to get on that subject.”

“The trouble was, you made too much too easily to begin with,” said Mary. “Put notions in Vera’s head.”

“She’s ambitious—for the children,” said Clement hastily. “You mustn’t blame her. She’s had a difficult time.”

“Pooh!” said Mary. “Pooh! If she is my own daughter, I know her. You never should have let her bully you out of your own profession. Why didn’t you go on being an architect?”

“I’d be no better off if I had. They’ve had a bad time too.”

“You might have enjoyed it.”

“You know how it was, after those years in the army. I didn’t want Vera to go on working; we wanted to settle down, raise a family.”

“You were very handsome in your uniform.” Mary chuckled. “Too bad you couldn’t go on wearing it; you might have managed Vera.”

Clement’s teeth worried at the lower lip. Like a rabbit, thought Mary; she’d like to shake some spunk into him!

“No,” he said. “You’d have to have all the bands playing, for a uniform to count. Weren’t we the idealistic young fools? Making the world safe for democracy. Sounds pretty silly now, doesn’t it? They’ll have to think up better slogans for this generation. They know all the answers. Or worse, they know there aren’t any answers.” Clement slowed for construction signs; a laborer with a flag waved him into a bumpy detour.

“Half slave and half free,” said Mary, as she jounced.

“What? I’m sorry—be out of this in a minute.”

(A slogan good enough for her father. She’d never thought of it quite that way; her father as a boy, seeking a land where a man could be free, finding a slogan.... And his children after him.)

“There.” Clement relaxed a little, having reached smooth pavement. “What was I saying? Oh, slogans. Well, this isn’t our war. Let them have it out. Look, back in the seventies, when the Prussians got to Paris, you didn’t worry about it, did you? It’s this damned radio stuff, calling off the scores as if it was a game in the Yankee Stadium. Keeps us in a state of nerves.”

Mary’s head jerked forward; she slid down in her seat, her hands folded over her wide, soft body. When Clem got started in that light, monotonous voice, quotation marks humming like bees among his words—She would have said she did not sleep, but her mind dropped a few stitches, and picked up its knitting again as the car stopped.

“Here we are,” said Clem, gently. “Feel tired?”

“He’s nice,” Mary thought, warmly. He meant well. His shoulder was a fulcrum, to pry herself out of the car; but as she stood up, her feet firmly on the grass, she brushed him away. “I can walk,” she said. “I’m just stiff.”

“Sitting so long.” Clement was anxiously animated. “Good trip—not much over an hour. Old bus comes right along. Now where’s Vera?”

Mary went slowly along the flagged walk to the front door, a gracious door with fanlights. The house, which represented Vera’s successful attempt to spend a great deal of money (in the late twenties), now looked down at the heel. The shrubbery massed against the gray stone of the first story needed clipping; the white clapboards above had rain stains from the faded shutters. But the shadow of trees lay crisp on the cropped lawn, and there was pleasant color in the garden around the small pool down the slope of the hill. Clem followed her with some of the luggage. “Ring the bell, will you, Mother? Where’s everybody?”

* * *

A plump, elderly woman opened the door. “How do you do, Mr. Lawmen—and Mrs. Briscoll. Mrs. Lawmen is out. She left word she had to go to this bridge tournament—it’s for the Red Cross. No, Mr. Lawmen, the young people are out; I couldn’t say where they are.”

“That’s a nice note,” said Clem mildly. “Walking out on us! Where’s the girl, what’s her name—Anna?”

“It’s her afternoon out, Mr. Lawmen. That is, Thursday is her afternoon; but with the plumbers and all, she couldn’t take it. We did have quite a time with the plumbers.”

“So I heard. A nice kind of welcome for you, Mother.” Clem’s eyelids twitched. “Everybody gone but the cook.”

“That’s good,” said Mary. “I don’t have to talk to anybody. Good as a hotel.” It wasn’t, really. At a hotel, as weary as she was, she’d go to bed and no one would disturb her until she rang. A long sigh for independence lost lifted her breast. Clem said: “Which room, Effie? You take those bags, will you? I’ll get the rest of the stuff.”

“Mind your step,” said Effie. “It’s Mr. William’s things from college. He said he’d be back to see to them; I wasn’t to touch them.” She started up the wide stairs, and Mary stood for a moment, hand on the mahogany rail, gathering determination for the ascent and looking over her grandson’s college deposit. Tennis-rackets in a press, a musical instrument in a black case on the carved Italian chest; skiis, boots, a radio, a pile of records, leather coat, bulging laundry bag, suitcases. Bill, home from college. Mary hadn’t seen much of her grandson since he had been a little boy. Preparatory school, summer camps, college. He’d been a funny little boy. She began to climb, her heart creaking as she lifted her weight from step to step. When she got up, she’d stay!

“Did you see all that junk?” Clem was at her heels. “That’s what my money goes for. If I say a word, I’m a brute. When I was his age, I knew what I wanted to do!”

“Well,” said Mary shortly, “you didn’t do it, did you?” She was sorry she had said it, Clem looked so suddenly deflated.

“At least I did something,” he said with dignity. “Effie!” He raised his voice. “Which room is it?”

“It’s here, Mr. Lawmen.” And Effie appeared at a doorway. “Right here.”

Mary looked about with the experienced eye of a traveler. “This used to be the nursery,” she said.

“Did it, Mrs. Briscoll? Mrs. Lawmen thought it would be the quietest room for you, with the young people running in and out the way they do.”

“Don’t you like it, Mother?” Clem peered at chintz curtains and silver-striped wall-paper. “If you don’t, speak up. Plenty of others.”

“It’s all right.” Mary settled into an armchair. Vera knew she liked a double bed, but probably there wasn’t one in the house. That shade of lavender in bedspread and rugs was one she despised. Vera had no doubt picked it especially for her, something appropriate to age.

“What would you like? A spot of sherry? Tea? That’s it! Effie, bring Mrs. Briscoll some tea.” Clem balanced uneasily in the doorway. “Want a paper to read?”

“No,” said Mary. “I have to unpack.”

“Well, I can’t help you with that.” Clem teetered a moment. “Take it easy. Vera ought to be home any minute.” He turned to go.

“Clem!” Mary’s voice halted him. “I needn’t have said that.”

“Oh, I know. I ought to do something—take steps—instead of grousing.” He glanced at her. “I don’t know how anything’s coming out. I wake up at night in a cold sweat. I thought if I could give them a start—the children—But what are they to start at, in a world like this? And you know, they aren’t even happy! You’ll see.” His newspapers slipped from his elbow and crackled about his feet. He stooped for them, and as he straightened, automatically read the leaders across the sheets. “Look at that! If Paris falls, that’ll fix the market all right.” On the stairs sounded Effie’s deliberate step. “Here comes your tea. Do you more good than my ranting.” His quick smile was apologetic. “You know what Vera thinks? She thinks if she ignores the war long enough, it will come to an end from chagrin. Little boys showing off, and no one looking at them.”

“Known as the ostrich technique,” said Mary. “Have some tea?”

Clem didn’t drink tea, or coffee either. He had this pain in his stomach; the doctor couldn’t find anything; he thought he’d worry less if they could find something definite, no matter what.

“Ticker-tape-worm,” said Mary. “That’s what ails you.”

“What? Oh, yes. Yes.” Clem’s lips jerked into a smile.

“Go read your market reports. Tea would do you less harm.”

Clem edged away. “I’ll be on the terrace, in case you want me.”

* * *

Mary drank her tea.... “When I was his age,” Clem had said, and Mary had jumped on him because it might have been Will Briscoll talking about Tom, their son. Only, Will bellowed when he was angry. “When I was your age,” he had roared, “I had to work my way through college. I tended furnaces for a corner of a cellar to sleep in, and I cooked my own food, what I had.” Mary had tried to defend her son: he was just a boy; Will didn’t want him working himself to death the way he had—Not skiis and radios and cars in those days; what had it been? Girls, even as early as that. Frat parties. Liquor. The same words, “When I was your age.” How we repeat ourselves, she thought! There must be an archetype for all we say; the pattern repeats itself endlessly. Tom had gone back to college on probation, his senior year; and before Christmas he had enlisted. Perhaps, after he finally came home, he had used his wounds as an excuse—Will always thought so, and Will had died before Tom, so he hadn’t known. “Such a pity they sewed me together again. A gold star would be much less annoying.” Dear God, the same thing her father had said! “If I had died, I would have been a hero.”

She wished Tom hadn’t died. She would like to talk to him. He always made her laugh. Her eyelids lifted in long folds; she felt a mild astonishment to see this unfamiliar room around her. She ought to unpack some of her dresses, instead of prowling through the past. Queer the way the past kept pushing aside the present, and dead voices sounded louder in her mind than those that spoke today. Almost as if she were searching for something, knowing neither its shape nor color. “But when I find it, I’ll know,” she thought, nodding softly; “I’ll know.”

* * *

Vera’s voice preceded her as she hurried along the hall. “Oh, Mother, I’m so sorry I wasn’t here when you came.” At the door she stopped. “Mother! You aren’t sick again?”

Mary cocked her head forward from the pillows. “No. I’m not. I’m just comfortable.” Vera leaned over the bed, investigatory fingers on Mary’s forehead before she kissed her cheek, the brim of the wide hat clipping Mary on the head.

“You don’t feel feverish,” said Vera.

“I’m not. You look very smart.”

“I picked it up at a sale at the city.” Vera’s fingers brushed the heavy white silk. “Good, isn’t it? But why are you in bed if—”

“Well, I’ll tell you. It was accidental.” Mary pushed the full, fine lawn sleeves of her nightgown up from her hands. “I started to unpack. I laid out my toilet-case. I thought I’d take off my dress so I could rest a little; and first thing I knew, here I was, all ready for bed.” She chuckled. “So I just went to bed.”

“I suppose the trip tired you.”

“I was thinking about something else,” said Mary.

“Heaven knows, I’m dead!” Vera drew a chair near the bed. “What an afternoon! Really, some of the women I played with! Bridge, you know. For the Red Cross. Anyone could come, just by paying, and anyone certainly did! You know, women who don’t belong to the Country Club. They wanted to see the inside of it, I suppose, and the members. Awful people!”

“What’s wrong with them?” Mary’s tone was innocent enough.

“Why, you know! Simply common. Why, at one table—” Vera stopped, at a sniff from her mother. “Of course,” she went on hastily, “we did clear quite a nice sum. And Mrs. Poole—you know, the Pooles—asked me to serve on her committee to organize a stronger chapter. We’ve got to get women knitting again, and rolling bandages—”

“It’s awful,” said Mary, “to think what common folks may wear them.”

Vera made a startled grimace and then laughed uneasily. “Now, don’t be difficult, Mother. You know perfectly well what I mean.” She got to her feet. “You’re sure you won’t come down for dinner? Peter Willowford’s coming in, quite informally. I wanted you to meet him; I thought you might help me with Hilda. She’s beginning to be reasonable, I think. He’s just enough older and more experienced. As I told Hilda, after all the advantages we’ve given her, she’s not going to be content—”

“Willowford?” asked Mary. “Is he the divorced one?”

“Just incompatibility. After all, he’d know better what he wanted the next time, wouldn’t he?” Vera stopped and listened. From the lower hall rose the sound of discussion, Clem’s voice, and another voice like Clem’s, but more impassioned. “Bill’s home. He simply must clear away that litter from the hall; it looks like an annex to a sporting-goods store.” Vera moved with determined haste from the room, pulling the door shut after her.

“Now, she did that on purpose,” thought Mary, “so I couldn’t hear.” Vera had got around Hilda and her poor little love-affair. Talked her down. “Oh, my,” thought Mary, “I can’t be bothered with them! I’m too old. All I want is a little peace.” Peace? I came not to send peace, but a sword. And a man’s foes shall be those of his own household. She couldn’t remember how the sonorous phrases continued. His terrible swift sword. Transformed now into bombers and tanks. Vera tired her with her jittery talk. After all, Hilda was old enough to decide for herself. Or was she? Certainly no one could have pried Mary away from Will Briscoll. She couldn’t remember why she had been so sure; the beginning of love was overlaid with all their years together; did a tree remember the seed from which it grew? If Will were here today, he would be troubled too. Perhaps he would know what she was searching for. He might give her the word to set in order the kaleidoscopic jumble of thoughts and recollections which had beset her all day.

She reached impatiently for a book, face down under the scarlet afghan across her knees, and looked at the corpse that sprawled on the bright jacket of the book. “The Case of the Missing Surplice.” A waste of time, when she had so little left, reading mysteries. Let’s see, she had decided the minister hadn’t committed the murder; the author was too obvious about him. She was so absorbed that a knock on the door, and Hilda’s entrance, left her not a second to hide the book.

* * *

“Hello, Grand-Mary,” said Hilda, darting toward her, the skirt of her evening frock swinging around her slim waist. “Aren’t you the lazy one?” She touched her finger-tips to her scarlet lips and brushed them over Mary’s cheek. “Promise of a kiss. Don’t want to smear you all up.” She perched on the edge of the bed, arms locked around a knee. “Look at the gore!”

“At my age, too!” Mary mimicked Vera’s reproachful voice. “How nice you look.” She’d forgotten how beautiful young bodies were! Skin with a tinge of gold, like pollen over the smooth surface, fitting so perfectly over fine bones, exquisite in their articulation; that hollow at the base of the throat, the spring of shoulder-blades like hints of wings; delicate flow of young, firm muscles down to the elbows, down to the narrow wrists. “That dress is a starched petticoat and not much else!”

“Um.” Hilda looked at her arms against the stiff whiteness. “I ought to be a darker shade of tan, to be effective. But the sun-lamp blew out all the fuses, and the man hasn’t come to fix it.”

“Even your sunlight isn’t real,” said Mary. “Synthetic sunburn.”

“Why not?” Hilda looked at her grandmother, a wary restiveness in her face. “You can turn it on and off yourself. At least, you can after the electrician comes. And what do you mean, even?”

“Figure it out,” Mary said. She could feel resistance in the girl’s body, a harder thrust of foot on the floor.

* * *

“You mean me, I suppose. Mother’s been talking, hasn’t she? Did she tell you about the wonderful Peter Willowford?” Hilda crossed the room to a window, and one hand swished the long curtain against the floor. “You know what he’s like, Grand-Mary? A ripe banana, soft and plump and just that color; and his clothes fit him elegantly, like the peel. Rich as mud. Squashy.” She jerked at the curtain. “Here I had my mind all made up—You have to be practical, don’t you? What’s unreal about that? Oh, I didn’t want to come in to see you; you always find out about things.”

“My goodness,” said Mary, “why did that get under your skin?”

Hilda turned, her slight body held rigid. “Because it’s true. It’s what he said—John.”

“John who?” asked Mary. “I never heard of any John.”

“He said I was selfish and spoiled and afraid of reality. I wish you’d tell me why, when it’s something unpleasant, like being poor, people call it real; but having money or position isn’t real at all. After all, Peter Willowford’s quite important. He’s in a bank, and everything.”

(“She’s not talking to me,” thought Mary. “She’s wrestling with herself. All I need to do is keep still.”)

“It will be years before John gets anywhere. He’s a doctor—that is, he’s an interne now. He’s perfectly unreasonable; he says if I got a job and helped support us now, he’d take care of me when I got to be an old lady. That’s not when I want things; I want them now. It’s much better, anyway, if you aren’t too crazy about a man, isn’t it? You can manage him better. Peter’s mad about me, and so he does everything I want him to. But John—” Her face had sharpened; it was like the face of a girl drowning, seen through still clear water, thought Mary. “Oh, well, I’ll get over him. I won’t go on feeling this way. Anyway, look at the people who fall in love and get married, and what happens to them? Look at Mother; she was in love, wasn’t she? I mean, she’s fond of Father, of course, but—”

“It’s much better, isn’t it, if you aren’t too crazy about a man. You can manage him better.”

“The trouble with your mother is that Clem never asked enough of her. She managed him, the way you think you’ll manage this Peter. You’re setting out to be just like her, a taker and not a giver. That’s death for a woman, dry rot. He who would save his life must first lose it. In love, above all else! Love of a man, or a country.” (A land where a man can be free, and his children after him!) “You’re afraid you’ll lose yourself, your hard little comfort-loving pinpoint of a self!”

Hilda looked at her grandmother with strangely expressionless eyes. Through the window burst the notes of a French horn.

“Peter,” said Hilda. “In his chariot. Coming for to carry me home.” She stood beside the bed, digging a finger into the soft wool of the afghan, twisting it round and round. “You and John ought to get together. You’d have a wonderful time. If that’s the way I am, why, that’s the way I am, isn’t it?”

“Not quite,” said Mary quietly. “Not quite. You’re scared, but you’re still breathing.”

“Just a mess!” Hilda drew herself erect with a shiver as something crashed against the door. “Maybe we all are in this house! That’s my darling little brother you hear! He’s another.” She moved quickly to fling open the door. Skiis tumbled in past her, and Bill on his knees frowned up and went on picking up bits of phonograph records. “What are you doing?”

“What the heck d’you open that door for, just when I leaned my skiis there? Smashing my best pieces, lugging my traps out of your way, and why? Because that louse of a Peter—”

“You make it delightful for Grand-Mary,” said Hilda sharply.

* * *

“Gee, I didn’t know you were in this room!” Bill brushed Hilda aside and strolled in, dropping the broken disks on a chair. His face was surprisingly young, looking down from his tall, loose body; his grin was ingenuous and ingratiating. “Hi, Gramma, what’d they put you to bed for? I was just going to stow my gear in here. Changing things around like this! How are you, Gramma?”

“She was all right,” said Hilda, “till you knocked down her door.”

“Say, beat it, woman! Your boyfriend’s champing around below!”

“You can’t come to dinner looking like that!” And Hilda disappeared.

“The fuss they make about this droop Willowford!” said Bill. “I thought Christmas-time Hilda’d ditched him. You can’t tell about women, can you? Of course he’s lined with money. But Hilda’s a good kid—I dunno—Well, we all could use a little. Money, I mean.”

“Sit down,” said Mary. “You’re up so high I can’t see your face.” He was restless, in a hurry to be off. He had to speak to her, but he really didn’t see her; she was just an old woman, labeled Grand-Mary. There might be traces in his face of the child who had liked her, in the shape of the head, the long dark lashes over the blue eyes; but his affection now was nothing but a recollected form.

“Well, I can’t stay, see? I got a lot of things to do.” He drew a chair near her and folded himself down upon it, hands dangling. “You—you staying long?”

“I don’t know.”

“I just noticed you hadn’t unpacked.”

“I just came this afternoon.” What was he leading up to, meeting her eyes with quick, speculative glances?

“You haven’t got a radio, have you? How about me setting mine up in here? I could get along without it.”

“I don’t want it.” Mary smiled. “What is it you want, Bill?”

“Gee, I was just thinking it’s lucky for me you’re here. You’d understand if a fellow asked a favor, wouldn’t you?” He dropped his voice into husky confidence. “Here I come home, no kick at all. Do I get any credit? Dad lands on me the minute he sees me. Why, half the fellows flunked the same courses I did! But while he’s sore like that is no time to be trying to collect a bill, now, is it? This guy says he won’t wait any longer; tonight’s the dead-line. I wouldn’t speak of it, only it’s an emergency, see? I was driving this other fellow’s father’s car—” Bill rolled his eyes toward the door, his furrowed forehead flushed; even the parting of his crisp brown hair was scarlet.

“Whose father’s car?” Vera frowned at the clasp of a bracelet she was fastening. “What car?”

“I was just telling Grand-Mary a little story.” Bill scrambled to his feet. “See you later, gotta rush now.”

“You might hurry,” Vera called after him. “Your father’s cross enough already.” She vibrated a moment in the doorway. “Was he asking you for money? You mustn’t give him any. He’s so cute, the way he tries to get around you.” She sighed. “Clem’s furious at him; I told him he was just a boy. The trouble is just that Clem is upset. You’d think Paris was his home town, the way he’s taking it. Of course it’s the market that worries him. He got it on the radio.”

“Got what?” asked Mary. “The way you jump around!”

“I said very plainly that they were evacuating Paris.” Vera spoke with dignity. “I don’t jump, although I might, the way everything piles up. I don’t know where Hilda’s gone. I heard her on the telephone, but I can’t find her. If she’s going to be difficult again about Peter! Goodness, I envy you! I’ll have Anna bring up a tray; do you eat a heavy dinner at night?”

“Yes, I do,” said Mary with emphasis. “I’m hungry.”

Vera sighed, slid her bracelets up her thin arms with a nervous gesture, and went quickly away, trailing gray chiffon.

* * *

Mary settled into the pillows, her eyes closed. Her heart seemed to have slipped down so that it was beating in her stomach, each thud loud and disturbing. The trip had tired her; the family had tired her; she was glad the twilight was deep enough now so that her eyelids could shut her into darkness. Her heartbeats seemed very far apart, and in between them was silence and darkness, and all the recollections, the impressions, the images of the long day rolling at last together into the meaning she had sought.

“A land where a man can be free, and his children after him,” she thought. “Free? We have thought the world was run for us, that we could go on turning always in these narrow, petty, selfish cells. We are losing them again, peace, freedom. We had them only as a promise. My father, my sons, and now these children. They have lost them, having no dream to hold them safe, to strive to keep them. They are blind and empty, passionless—I must tell them this. Perhaps Hilda heard me; it may not be too late.” She thought: “It all begins again, the old struggle.” She could not lift her eyelids; her heart climbed up into her throat; it floated away like a bright and burning word. When you have the word, it is too late to speak. It all begins again.