At twilight she drove back to the hotel. Her khaki skirt was spattered with crude oil; her pongee waist showed streaks of grime where dust had dried in perspiration. There was sand in its folds, sand in her shoes, sand in her hair. Her body seemed as lifeless as her emotions, and her brain had stopped again. She would not dream tonight.
She smiled again at the hotel clerk. Yes, thank you, business was fine! There were letters, no word of Bert. Her mother wrote puzzled and anxious inquiries. What was Helen doing in Coalinga? Was something wrong? What was her husband doing? Mrs. Updike was telling that she had seen in the paper—Helen folded the pages. There were a couple of thin envelopes from Clark & Hayward, announcements of sales, Farm 406—J. D. Hutchinson; Farms 915–917—H. D. Kennedy.
It was good to be in bed, feeling unconsciousness creeping over her like dark, cool water, lapping higher and higher.
On her third trip to the land with buyers she met Paul’s mother on the main street in Ripley. Mrs. Masters appeared competent and self-assured, walking briskly from a butcher-shop with some packages on her arm. She was bareheaded, carrying a parasol above her smooth, gray hair. Small as she was, there was something formidable in the lines of her stocky figure and in the crispness of her stiff white shirtwaist. She looked at Helen with shrewd, interested eyes, and Helen realized that her hair was untidy, that there was dust on her shoes and on her blue serge suit. It was dust from the tract where she had just made another sale. Helen supposed there was dust on her face, too, when she perceived Mrs. Masters’ eyes fixed so intently upon it.
They shook hands and spoke of the heat. Helen explained that she was selling land. She had just put one buyer on the Coalinga train and was waiting in Ripley for another man to meet her next day.
Mrs. Masters asked her to supper. A realization that meeting her might be embarrassing to Paul flickered through Helen’s mind. She made some excuse, which Mrs. Masters overruled briskly. The strain of making a sale had left Helen without energy for resistance. She found they were walking down the street together, and she tried to rouse herself, as one struggles under an anesthetic. Mrs. Masters was the first person to whom she had tried to talk of anything but land, and the effort made her realize that she had been living in something like delirium.
They came to the cottage of which Paul had written her long ago. There was the little white-picket fence, the yard with rosebushes in it, and the peach-tree. The graveled walk led to a tiny porch ornamented with wooden lace work, and through a screen door they went into the parlor. The shades were drawn to keep the afternoon sun from the flowered Brussels carpet; the room was cool and dim and rose-scented. There was a crocheted mat on the oak center-table; cushions stood stiff and plump on the sofa; in one corner on an easel was an enlarged crayon portrait of Paul as a little boy.
There was not a detail of the room that Helen would not have changed, but as she looked at it tears came unexpectedly into her eyes. Something was here that she wanted, something that she had always missed. Currents of indefinable emotion rose in her. Her heart ached, and suddenly she was shaken by a sense of irretrievable loss.
“I—I’m very tired. You must forgive me—a very hard day. If I could—lie down a minute?” She could not stop the quivering of her lips. Mrs. Masters looked at her curiously, leading her to the bedroom and folding back an immaculate white spread. Helen, hating herself for her weakness, took off her hat and lay down. She would be all right in a minute; she was sorry to make so much trouble; Mrs. Masters must not bother; she was just a little tired.
She lay still, hearing the rattling of pans and sizzling of meat from the kitchen where Mrs. Masters was getting supper. Voices went by in the street; a dog barked joyously; a shrill whistling passed, accompanied by the rattle of a stick along the picket fence. The sharp shadows of vine-leaves on the shade blurred into the twilight. Mrs. Masters was singing throatily, “Rock of Ages, cleft for me‑e‑e,” while she set the table.
It was peace and security and rest. It was all that Helen did not have. The crudely papered walls enclosed a haven warmed by innumerable homely satisfactions. How sweet to have no care but the crispness of curtains, the folding away of linen, the baking of bread! She was an alien spirit here, with her aching head and heart, her disheveled hair and dusty shoes. A tear slipped down her cheek and spread into a damp splash on the white pillow.
She rose quickly, knowing that she must be stronger than the longing that shook her. The towel lying across the water pitcher was embroidered. She had always wanted embroidered towels, and she had made dozens of them. They had been left in the apartment. She bathed her face for a long time, dashing cool water on her eyelids.
The gate clicked, and Paul came whistling up the path. She stood clutching the towel, shivering with panic. Had she been mad that she had come to his house? Oh, for anything, anything, that would erase the past hour, and let her be anywhere but here! She heard his step on the porch, the bang of the screen door, his voice. “Hello, Mother? Supper ready?” And at the same time she saw unrolling in her mind the picture of herself and Mrs. Masters on the sidewalk, heard the definite, polite excuse she might have made, saw herself going back to the hotel. She might easily have done that.
