Chapter Nine I
Thoughts of home had flitted intermittently through Janet’s mind during the afternoon’s ride. But her faculty for living securely in the present had been strong enough to send the omens flying as fast as they came. A domestic crisis now confronted her, however, and she knew it could not be evaded. As she crossed the threshold, there was a sudden bristling of her nerves, a parching and aching of her throat, and a sense of utter misery.
From Laura, the maid, she learned that her mother had been ill all day, and had kept to her bed. As this was Mrs. Barr’s invariable practice when any member of the family displeased her, Janet was not surprised. She crept quietly upstairs to her room at the top of the house. On the second floor she passed her sister’s room. Through the open door Janet could look into a mirror which reflected an image of Emily, dressing for the evening. She called to her sister with an assumed cheeriness. Emily answered stiffly and without stirring an inch.
Janet, catching the unfriendly glance from the mirror, continued on her way, hot indignation kindling her blood. She could invent excuses for her mother’s hostility, unreasonable as she considered it, but Emily’s censorious manner was altogether intolerable.
In her own room she changed her costume to a simple black skirt and a plain white blouse. Claude and Kips Bay receded to another world while she nerved herself for the coming ordeal.
In about half an hour, the maid came up with a message that Mr. Barr wished to see Janet in the back parlor. She promptly went downstairs and discovered her father pacing the floor in agitation. It was hard to believe that this tall, imposing man was a moral weakling or that his eagle’s bearing concealed a pigeon’s heart.
“Jenny,” he said, on the thinnest fringe of reproach, “thank Heaven you’re back!”
The mere sight of his favorite daughter cooled his phantom anger. All he wanted now was to see his wife placated at any price. For he, poor man, always became the scapegoat, no matter who the criminal was.
“How could you give us such a fright, Jenny?” he continued, referring to her absence.
“Really, father, I can’t send you hourly bulletins of my whereabouts, can I? It’s not my fault that I’ve outgrown childhood. It’s a law of nature.”
“You don’t consider your mother,” he said, plaintively. “You know how it upsets her to be disobeyed.”
“I’m sorry, father. But mother will have to get reconciled to the facts of biology. When the young of animals grow up, instinct makes them follow their own bent, even at the cost of disobliging their parents.”
Janet felt rather proud and a little surprised at hearing herself talk in this bold, scientific style. She wished she could repeat it to her mother, but secretly doubted her ability.
“That may be,” said Mr. Barr, on whom her biological views were completely thrown away. “But remember that she has been sick all day, sick with worry over your escapade!”
“Nonsense,” replied Janet, unmoved. “My escapade had nothing to do with it. Her bad temper has made her ill. It always does, and nobody knows better than she how useful the weapon is. When everything else fails, she gets sick with rage, and takes to her bed until she gets her own way to the last dot. We cringe and cower before her sham illnesses—”
“Janet! You mustn’t speak of your mother like that. She is ill. She lay awake the whole night and didn’t touch a morsel of food all day.”
“No doubt she enjoyed tormenting herself and blaming the result on me. But I don’t believe that my absence was really a source of worry to anyone.”
“Janet, I stayed up until three o’clock for you. And that was after leaving the bank late and stopping at the Montague Library to get the books you wanted.”
“Of course, you did, you foolish old dear,” said Janet, in an access of remorse.
She put her arms affectionately round his neck. It was not easy to get over her childhood idolatry of him.
“Kindness is a bad habit of yours, papa,” she said. “You take to good deeds as some men take to gambling or to drink.”
He smiled and patted her cheek tenderly. Her remark was not far from the truth. His morbid (and never wholly gratified) passion for approval made him intemperately anxious to please, and caused his good nature to be freely exploited by unscrupulous people, who repaid him with nothing but their contempt.
“That’s like my own little Jenny. Now go up to Emily’s room and make your peace with mother.”
“Is that in my power?” said Janet, flaring up again and disengaging her arms from him.
Mr. Barr was torn between fear of his wife and affection for his daughter.
“Simply keep quiet and don’t answer her back when she speaks to you,” he urged pacifically. “After all, she’s your mother, she has a right to criticize you.”
“I refuse to acknowledge the right.”
“Now, don’t be obstinate, girlie. She can’t help lecturing people. It’s a habit she acquired in her missionary society. Doesn’t she lecture me? If I submit, surely you can.”
“I’m neither a heathen nor a husband.”
“There now,” he said, pleading with her. “Don’t spoil everything by standing on your pride. What will you gain by defying her? Nothing! Then why do so? I tell you, Jenny, your mother may be a little hasty, but she’s a very clever, strong-minded woman. In the long run, she is always in the right.”
“How can you cringe to her even when her back is turned,” cried Janet, revolted. “You know the truth as well as I do. She has terrorized all of us as cruelly as ever her Puritan ancestors terrorized Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson.”
“Now, that shows how unfair you are,” said Mr. Barr, eagerly, in a vibrant voice, as rich as Janet’s own. “Only two nights ago, your mother was reading to me from John Fiske’s colonial history. She came across this very case you mention, the case of Anne Hutchinson. And I distinctly recall that she condemned the persecution severely.”
Disdaining to reply, Janet walked away from his side. In that moment, she hated him. It was incredible that he could be such a willing, subservient dupe.
She looked hostilely at his magnificent exterior. He had also inherited a lively wit and considerable mental dexterity. Had he possessed any force of character he might have been a great financier or statesman instead of a petty manager of a small branch bank. And Mrs. Barr’s temper might have been kept within bounds, and the Barrs might have enjoyed a happy home, instead of becoming a phantom replica of a bigoted Boston family in the high and palmy days of Cotton Mather.
He misinterpreted her silence.
“You need merely say that you are sorry,” he urged, “and that you’ll never stay out again without her approval. That will patch up everything.”
“Father,” she cried, exploding. “I can’t say that. Because I simply don’t mean it. From now on, I’m going to have my own way about some things, even if I have to leave the family. Mother may grind you to the very dust. Marriage seems to give her that right, and you seem to enjoy the process. But she shan’t do so to me.”
“Good Lord, what will happen next?” exclaimed the unhappy man, appalled at the collapse of his plan of conciliation. “The house has been like a funeral all day. Would to Heaven I were the corpse.”
But his daughter did not hear this pathetic wish, for she was already on her way upstairs.
II
In Emily’s bedroom above the parlor, Mrs. Barr was reclining in an invalid’s chair. Illness had not softened the rigidity of that too, too solid flesh. She was pale, but her pallor merely accentuated the iron lines of her face.
Emily, more matronly than ever, hovered about her mother in unctuous solicitude, while Laura, the maid, busied herself setting chairs and knick-knacks wrong, in order to set them right again. Mrs. Barr disliked to have anyone about her unoccupied.
When Janet entered, her mother greeted her coldly, and then dismissed Laura with studied sweetness. She was actually much kinder to her domestics than to members of the family. Servants were hard to get and harder to keep.
“I’m sorry you have been ill,” said the impenitent, politely.
“Sit down, my child. I’m getting better now, thanks in part to Doctor Hervey.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“That it was to be expected under the circumstances,” interposed Emily. “He thought it better for mother not to go to the missionary society tonight.”
This was ominous news. Janet recollected that her mother had not missed a missionary meeting in two years.
The pause was filled with a battery of silent criticism. Usually Janet dispersed these terrible silences with a torrent of impromptu apologies. Today, however, she held her peace. Though every muscle in her body was taut, she felt care-free.
Yes, at this supreme inquisitorial moment, she felt surprisingly care-free. Except that, in response to Emily’s allusion to missionaries, an old jingle ricochetted weirdly through her mind. It ran:
Oh, to be a cassowary,
On the plains of Timbuctoo,
Chewing up a missionary—
Skin and bone, and hymn book, too.
Outwardly, she was as impassive as a Chinese joss.
“Well, Janet?” said Mrs. Barr, outfought with one of her own weapons.
“Yes, mother?” replied Janet, demurely interrogative. She folded her hands innocently in her lap, and looked with a show of impersonal interest at Emily’s new pumps.
“Have you nothing to tell me?”
“Not unless you wish to learn about the ball I went to yesterday. Are you interested in that?”
Emily gave a scornful laugh.
“I’m not interested in the ball,” said Mrs. Barr, “and no one knows it better than you. What I am interested in is your attending the ball against my express wishes.”
“Mother, in the twentieth century—”
“Are the ways of God less valid in the twentieth century than in the tenth?”
In disputes with her children, Mrs. Barr always invoked God first. This failing, she took stronger measures.
“Why do you always make poor God responsible for your severity, mother,” said Janet. “It is not His way you want me to follow, but your own. Indeed, whenever you accuse me of disobeying the will of God, it is because I have really disobeyed your will, which you identify with God’s. I wonder whether He likes it?”
“I don’t propose to discuss the Deity with you. You have studied your Bible so little that you are apparently unable to give any opinion on the subject which is not blasphemous.”
“As far as I know, the Bible does not prohibit dancing,” said Janet, shifting the defensive attack so as to bring matters to a head.
“The Bible does say, however, that a child must obey its parents. I don’t wish to be harsh, Janet. I believe that you have no just ground for accusing me of severity. I say now, as I have said before, that if you must dance, you may go to the affairs that are given at the church.”
“Thank you!” cried Janet, ironically. “But I don’t like a Sunday School atmosphere or a Sunday School man.”
“I thought as much!” said Mrs. Barr, her eyes like points of steel. “You prefer to associate with unprincipled men who, having no religion, lead lives of pleasure and dance the lascivious dances of the time.
“Mother, I don’t dance anything but thoroughly ancient and respectable dances. I’ve never had a chance to learn the modern steps. I dance very rarely, anyhow.”
“Emily never dances,” said her mother, cuttingly.
“No, she is rather heavy and men are so lazy nowadays, and so tender about their toes.”
Some demon had made Janet spring up and stop reflectively in front of Emily. The latter’s podgy bulk became a size larger by contrast with Janet’s mobile slenderness.
“Oblige me by not arguing,” said Mrs. Barr, coming to her elder daughter’s rescue. “I tell you I won’t tolerate anyone in my house that openly flouts her mother, spends whole nights with a woman of evil reputation, and deliberately wastes the Lord’s time.”
In her agitation she rose halfway from her chair. But rage and lack of food had so weakened her that she sank back limply. Emily, looking unutterable things at Janet, implored her mother to be calm in tones that invited her to be just the contrary.
Mrs. Barr hardly needed this spur. She sincerely believed that she was fighting the evil one for the possession of Janet’s soul. Revived by this conviction she bravely returned to her task.
“See the condition to which you’ve brought me,” she said, the angry tears welling up in her eyes. “What with watching and waiting and praying for you all night, and fretting about your safety—”
She instinctively followed a religious appeal with a sentimental one. But her speech had so much anger mixed with the pathos, that it left Janet cold.
“I hope you won’t get upset about me again, mother,” she said, unemotionally. “I’m quite old enough to take care of myself—”
“You’d better go to your room, Janet!” exclaimed Emily, “before you kill mother with your cruel selfishness.”
“I’m not aware that I’m under orders to you, Emily, or that you’ve the right to play the Pharisee because you’re content to lead a stagnant, hole-in-the-corner life. If you wanted anything you’d disobey mother fast enough. Only you happen to have no wants. And you make a virtue of your necessity. I have plenty of wants. And you persuade mother that my necessity is a vice.”
“Be as theatrical as possible, Janet!” said Emily. “Why don’t you add that I poisoned mother’s mind against you?”
“You didn’t have to carry coals to Newcastle, Emily. You merely had to fan the flame in your own sweet, sisterly way.”
Mrs. Barr checked them both with an autocratic wave of her hand.
“You need not abuse Emily, or me either,” she decreed, black-browed. “There is absolutely nothing more to be said. Either you respect my wishes about your comings and goings, or you leave my house.”
“Mother, do you really propose to put me out for refusing to submit to an arbitrary wish?”
“I should think I had fallen far short of my duty, if I did not guard my children against sensual folly—”
“By showing them the door?”
“If you leave your home, it will be by your own choice and not by your mother’s command,” said Mrs. Barr, emphatically. “This is your home. It will remain yours so long as you keep Christian precepts. But a mother must hold the family hearth inviolate against evil doing. I cannot condone a wicked waste of the Lord’s time simply because you describe the practice as a wish to be free. If you don’t value a good home, you are certainly quite free to choose another.”
“Why must I adopt the habits that suit your tastes and Emily’s, but that are hateful to mine?”
“My child, you are flesh of my flesh—”
“All the laws and all the prophets can’t justify the narrow, friendless, joyless, medieval life that you wish me to lead,” cried Janet, in a passion of insurgency. “When you were young you led no such life yourself. Aunt Mary, your own sister, told me that you were the flightiest girl in the family. Your girlhood was a perpetual round of balls, theatres, parties and flirtations. Do I ask for a life of pleasure like that? No. I simply want to choose my own friends, trust to my own instincts, and follow my own bent.”
This reference to her mother’s youth was not a happy one. Mrs. Barr looked back on her younger days as a period of godless frivolity for which she had largely atoned by enduring with a contrite heart the double affliction of a weak husband and a wilful daughter. Her duty, as she saw it, was to keep Emily and Janet out of the primrose paths which she herself had trodden with such levity and with such disastrous results. Accordingly, Janet’s presumptuous allusion merely stirred her fanaticism to its iciest depths.
“You either obey me or go,” she said, with pitiless brevity.
“Oh, very well,” said Janet, affecting a blitheness she was far from feeling, “I’ll go.”
Without another word, Mrs. Barr, weak as she was, rose and walked with a firm step to her own room. Emily, not altogether pleased with this climax, followed her immediately, giving a flabby imitation of her mother’s really magnificent exit.
Janet stood nonplussed for a few seconds. Then she went upstairs to the inward refrain of:
“Chewing up a missionary
Skin and bones and hymn book, too.”
Her inveterate evenness of spirit amounted almost to a failing; but now, for the first time, she became conscious of latent impulses of a vindictive and murderous kind.
Back in her own room, she hastily packed a suit-case with her most necessary belongings.