Part 11 (1/2)

By degrees she grew calmer. Her brain cooled as her fevered old body lost the heat of anger. Lil had looked kind of sick. Perhaps ... and how worried Hugo had looked....

Feeling suddenly impelled she got up from the bench and started toward home. Her walk, which had seemed interminable, had really lasted scarcely more than half an hour. She had sat in the park scarcely fifteen minutes. Altogether her flight had been, perhaps, an hour in duration.

She had her latchkey in her pocket. She opened the door softly. The place was in darkness. Voices from the front bedroom, and the sound of someone sobbing, as though spent. Old lady Mandle's face hardened again.

The door of the front bedroom was closed. Plotting against her! She crouched there in the hall, listening. Lil's voice, hoa.r.s.e with sobs.

”I've tried and tried. But she hates me. Nothing I do suits her. If it wasn't for the baby coming sometimes I think I'd--”

”You're just nervous and excited, Lil. It'll come out all right. She's an old lady--”

”I know it. I know it. I've said that a million times in the last year and a half. But that doesn't excuse everything, does it? Is that any reason why she should spoil our lives? It isn't fair. It isn't fair!”

”s.h.!.+ Don't cry like that, dear. Don't! You'll only make yourself sick.”

Her sobs again, racking, choking, and the gentle murmur of his soothing endearments. Then, unexpectedly, a little, high-pitched laugh through the tears.

”No, I'm not hysterical. I--it just struck me funny. I was just wondering if I might be like that. When I grow old, and my son marries, maybe I'll think everything his wife does is wrong. I suppose if we love them too much we really harm them. I suppose--”

”Oh, it's going to be a son, is it?”

”Yes.”

Another silence. Then: ”Come, dear. Bathe your poor eyes. You're all worn out from crying. Why, sweetheart, I don't believe I ever saw you cry before.”

”I know it. I feel better now. I wish crying could make it all right.

I'm sorry. She's so old, dear. That's the trouble. They live in the past and they expect us to live in the past with them. You were a good son to her, Hughie. That's why you make such a wonderful husband. Too good, maybe. You've spoiled us both, and now we both want all of you.”

Hugo was silent a moment. He was not a quick-thinking man. ”A husband belongs to his wife,” he said then, simply. ”He's his mother's son by accident of birth. But he's his wife's husband by choice, and deliberately.”

But she laughed again at that. ”It isn't as easy as that, sweetheart. If it was there'd be no jokes in the funny papers. My poor boy! And just now, too, when you're so worried about business.”

”Business'll be all right, Lil. Trade'll open up next winter. It's got to. We've kept going on the j.a.panese and English stuff. But if the French and Austrian factories start running we'll have a whirlwind year.

If it hadn't been for you this last year I don't know how I'd have stood the strain. No importing, and the business just keeping its head above water. But you were right, honey. We've weathered the worst of it now.”

”I'm glad you didn't tell Mother about it. She'd have worried herself sick. If she had known we both put every cent we had into the business--”

”We'll get it back ten times over. You'll see.”

The sound of footsteps. ”I wonder where she went. She oughtn't to be out alone. I'm kind of worried about her, Hugo. Don't you think you'd better--”

Ma Mandle opened the front door and then slammed it, ostentatiously, as though she had just come in.

”That you, Ma?” called Hugo.

He turned on the hall light. She stood there, blinking, a bent, pathetic little figure. Her eyes were averted. ”Are you all right, Ma? We began to worry about you.”

”I'm all right. I'm going to bed.”

He made a clumsy, masculine pretence at heartiness. ”Lil and I are going over to the drug store for a soda, it's so hot. Come on along, Ma.”