. . . Wasn’t Emma Smathers one of my girlhood friends? . . . That boy’s not this woman’s child at all. He’s Emma Smathers’ child by that first marriage.”
“Well, that’s news to me,” the younger woman answered. “That’s certainly news to me. I never knew Steve Randolph had been married more than once. I’d always thought that all that bunch were Mrs. Randolph’s children.”
“Why, of course not!” the mother cried impatiently. “She never had any of them except Lucille. All the rest of them were Emma’s children. Steve Randolph was a man of forty-five when he married her. He’d been a widower for years — poor Emma died in childbirth when Bernice was born — nobody ever thought he’d marry again and nobody ever expected this woman to have any children of her own, for she was almost as old as he was — why, yes! — hadn’t she been married before, a widow, you know, when she met him, came here after her first husband’s death from some place way out West — oh, Wyoming, or Nevada or Idaho, one of those States, you know — and had never had chick nor child, as the saying goes — till she married Steve. And that woman was every day of forty-four years old when Lucille was born.”
“Uh-huh! . . . Ah-hah! the younger woman muttered absently, in a tone of rapt and fascinated interest, as she looked distantly at the people in the other group, and reflectively stroked her large chin with a big, bony hand. “So Lucille, then, is really John’s half-sister?”
“Why, of course!” the mother cried. “I thought every one knew that. Lucille’s the only one that this woman can lay claim to. The rest of them were Emma’s.”
“— Well, that’s certainly news to me,” the younger woman said slowly as before. “It’s the first I ever heard of it. . . . And you say she was forty-four when Lucille was born?”
“Now, she was all of THAT,” the mother said. “I know. And she may have been even older.”
“Well,” the younger woman said, and now she turned to her silent husband, Barton, with a hoarse snigger, “it just goes to show that while there’s life there’s hope, doesn’t it? So cheer up, honey,” she said to him, “we may have a chance yet.” But despite her air of rough banter her clear eyes for a moment had a look of deep pain and sadness in them.
“Chance!” the mother cried strongly, with a little scornful pucker of the lips —“why, of course there is! If I was your age again I’d have a dozen — and never think a thing of it.” For a moment she was silent, pursing her reflective lips. Suddenly a faint sly smile began to flicker at the edges of her lips, and turning to the boy, she addressed him with an air of sly and bantering mystery:
“Now, boy,” she said —“there’s lots of things that you don’t know . . . you always thought you were the last — the youngest — didn’t you?”
“Well, wasn’t I?” he said.
“H’m!” she said with a little scornful smile and an air of great mystery —“There’s lots that I could tell you —”
“Oh, my God!” he groaned, turning towards his sister with an imploring face. “More mysteries! . . . The next thing I’ll find that there were five sets of triplets after I was born — Well, come on, Mama,” he cried impatiently. “Don’t hint around all day about it. . . . What’s the secret now — how many were there?”
“H’m!” she said with a little bantering, scornful, and significant smile.
“O Lord!” he groaned again —“Did she ever tell you what it was?” Again he turned imploringly to his sister.
She snickered hoarsely, a strange high-husky and derisive falsetto laugh, at the same time prodding him stiffly in the ribs with her big fingers:
“Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi,” she laughed. “More spooky business, hey? You don’t know the half of it. She’ll be telling you next you were only the fourteenth.”
“H’m!” the older woman said, with a little scornful smile of her pursed lips. “Now I could tell him more than that! The fourteenth! Pshaw!” she said contemptuously —“I could tell him —”
“O God!” he groaned miserably. “I knew it! . . . I don’t want to hear it.”
“K, k, k, k, k,” the younger woman snickered derisively, prodding him in the ribs again.
“No, sir,” the older woman went on strongly —“and that’s not all either! — Now, boy, I want to tell you something that you didn’t know,” and as she spoke she turned the strange and worn stare of her serious brown eyes on him, and levelled a half-clasped hand, fingers pointing, a gesture loose, casual, and instinctive and powerful as a man’s. —“There’s a lot I could tell you that you never heard. Long years after you were born, child — why, at the time I took you children to the Saint Louis Fair —” here her face grew stern and sad, she pursed her lips strongly and shook her head with a short convulsive movement —“oh, when I think of it — to think what I went through — oh, awful, awful, you know,” she whispered ominously.
“Now, Mama, for God’s sake, I don’t want to hear it!” he fairly shouted, beside himself with exasperation and foreboding. “God-damn it, can we have no peace — even when I go away!” he cried bitterly, and illogically. “Always these damned gloomy hints and revelations — this Pentland spooky stuff,” he yelled —“this damned I-could-if-I-wanted-to-tell-you air of mystery, horror, and damnation!” he shouted incoherently. “Who cares? What does it matter?” he cried, adding desperately, “I don’t want to hear about it — No one cares.”
“Why, child, now, I was only saying —” she began hastily and diplomatically.
“All right, all right, all right,” he muttered. “I don’t care —”
“But, as I say, now,” she resumed.
“I don’t care!” he shouted. “Peace, peace, peace, peace, peace,” he muttered in a crazy tone as he turned to his sister. “A moment’s peace for all of us before we die. A moment of peace, peace, peace.”
“Why, boy, I’ll vow,” the mother said in a vexed tone, fixing her reproving glance on him, “what on earth’s come over you? You act like a regular crazy man. I’ll vow you do.”
“A moment’s peace!” he muttered again, thrusting one hand wildly through his hair. “I beg and beseech you for a moment’s peace before we perish!”
“K, k, k, k, k,” the younger woman snickered derisively, as she poked him stiffly in the ribs —“There’s no peace for the weary. It’s like that river that goes on for ever,” she said with a faint loose curving of lewd humour around the edges of her generous big mouth —“Now you see, don’t you?” she said, looking at him with this lewd and challenging look. “You see what it’s like now, don’t you? . . . YOU’RE the lucky one! YOU got away! You’re smart enough to go way off somewhere to college — to Boston — Harvard — anywhere — but YOU’RE away from it. You get it for a short time when you come home. How do you think I stand it?” she said challengingly. “I have to hear it ALL the time. . . . Oh, ALL the time, and ALL the time, and ALL the time!” she said with a kind of weary desperation. “If they’d only leave me ALONE for five minutes some time I think I’d be able to pull myself together, but it’s this way ALL the time and ALL the time and ALL the time. You see, don’t you?”
But now, having finished, in a tone of hoarse and panting exasperation, her frenzied protest, she relapsed immediately into a state of marked, weary, and dejected resignation.
“Well, I know, I know,” she said in a weary and indifferent voice. “ . . . Forget about it . . . Talking does no good . . . Just try to make the best of it the little time you’re here. . . . I used to think something could be done about it . . . but I know different now,” she muttered, although she would have been unable to explain the logical meaning of these incoherent and disjointed phrases.
“Hah?