“Come and sit down, dear,” said Mrs. Ward. “I want to talk to you about your dear mother.”
Flora sank obediently on the green brocade cushions. She turned her big blue eyes silently on Mrs. Ward.
“Flora,” said Mrs. Ward very solemnly, “this is a very terrible thing. I don’t know what you’ve been thinking, but I just want to tell you that I have always felt that we should never judge others. We must keep our charity. You must remember always only the best in your mother. You must try to forget everything else. You may be very sure that everyone else will forget it too—”
A sudden noise in the hall made Jane turn suddenly to stare at the door. Mr. Furness stood there, between the green brocade portieres. His puffy face was livid and swollen and his pale blue eyes looked very, very angry. His mouth was trembling under his grey moustache. He was positively glaring at Mrs. Ward and Mrs. Lester and Jane.
“Stop talking about my wife!” he said suddenly. His angry voice rang out in the silent room. “Stop talking about her at least until you are out of this house!”
Mrs. Ward rose slowly to her feet, staring at Mr. Furness’s distorted face.
“I want to speak to my daughter,” said Mr. Furness. “I want to speak to her alone.” He advanced belligerently into the room. Mrs. Ward began to move with dignity toward the door. The black crepe veil fell at her feet. Mr. Furness pointed to it contemptuously.
“Take those trappings with you,” he said.
Mrs. Ward stooped, without a word, and picked up the veil. Two little spots of colour were flaming in her cheeks. She walked with composure from the room, however, her head held high. She never even glanced at Mr. Furness or at Flora. Flora, who was standing in terrified silence by the sofa, a little black streak in the gold-and-green splendour of the room.
Mrs. Lester rose hesitatingly, and moved unsteadily to Mr. Furness’s elbow. He glared at her in silence. He might never have seen her before. Mrs. Lester put out her hand and gently touched his arm. Her face was working strangely. Jane saw her try to speak, then shake her head, and stand staring at Mr. Furness while great tears gathered in her dark eyes and rolled, unheeded, down her fat, sagging cheeks. Mr. Furness just kept on glaring, like a crazy man. Mrs. Lester dropped his arm, after a minute, and followed Jane’s mother out into the hall. She hadn’t uttered a word. Jane scurried after them. She suddenly realized that she was crying. Jane’s mother was standing beside Mrs. Lester and Stephen Carver near the front door. Stephen looked awfully concerned. Mrs. Ward was talking very excitedly.
“I don’t blame him,” she was saying, “I don’t blame him a particle. He was like one distraught. And I don’t wonder—with all the disgrace!”
Jane suddenly realized that Stephen Carver had seen her tears. He was looking down at her very tenderly. Mrs. Lester was getting her mother to the door.
“Jane—don’t!” said Stephen. His arm was half around her. He looked very understanding.
“It’s just that Mamma—” faltered Jane, “Mamma shouldn’t talk so.”
“It is a disgrace,” said Stephen solemnly.
Jane felt terribly shocked. He didn’t understand at all, after all.
“Oh—no!” she said faintly. “It’s just—tragedy.” Stephen still stared at her, quite uncomprehending. “Never—disgrace,” said Jane. “She loved him.”
Stephen was looking at her as if he found her words quite unintelligible. Jane slipped through the front door. Her mother, on the steps, was still talking volubly to Mrs. Lester.
“I don’t think he knew what he was saying or to whom he was speaking,” she said eagerly. “But how he’ll explain it to Flora—”
Jane silently followed them down to the sidewalk. She felt strangely calmed and exalted. A finished life was a very solemn, very splendid thing. She didn’t care what her mother said, now. Death had an unassailable dignity.
“And it’s not only the disgrace,” her mother was murmuring earnestly. “The whole thing seems so terribly sordid—turning on the gas like that—in a bathroom—like any woman of the streets. Lily Furness had always so much pride.”
“I have lived and accomplished the task that Destiny gave me,” thought Jane very solemnly, “and now I shall pass beneath the earth no common shade.”
III
I
Jane sat beside Flora on the little rosewood sofa in Mrs. Furness’s bedroom. They were listing the contents of the bureau drawers. That morning they had gone through the closets. Mrs. Furness’s wardrobe was heaped in four great piles on the big rosewood bed. Dresses that Flora wished to keep for herself. Dresses that her aunt Mrs. Carver might care to wear in Boston. A few darker, soberer dresses that Flora thought might be suitable for her mother’s sister in Galena. And a very few much older, shabbier ones that Flora was planning to send to the Salvation Army. It had been a very hard morning for Flora. It had been a very hard one for Jane. Jane could remember just how Mrs. Furness had looked in nearly every gown that they had examined. She could see her dancing at Flora’s début in the violet velvet. She knew just how the black lace ruff of the little silk shoulder cape had framed her white face, while Mr. Bert Lancaster was talking to Muriel in the dining-room at the coming-out tea.
Muriel and Mr. Bert Lancaster were still in the Canadian Rockies. Muriel had written at once to Flora. Jane had seen the letter. Muriel wasn’t much of a letter writer, but you could read between the inarticulate, straggling lines that she was really awfully sorry. Muriel wrote just the way she did when she was a little girl at Miss Milgrim’s. It made both Jane and Flora think of their school compositions to read her round childlike hand.
The western sun was slanting in the bedroom windows. Their task was nearly finished. Flora was keeping all the underclothes.
