She went upstairs to the room that had been her mother's, and took off her
hat. She wanted to be alone, to realize what had happened to her. She did
not belong to herself any more. It gave her an odd, lost feeling. She was
going to be married--not very soon, but ultimately. A year ago her half
promise to Joe had gratified her sense of romance. She was loved, and she
had thrilled to it.
But this was different. Marriage, that had been but a vision then, loomed
large, almost menacing. She had learned the law of compensation: that for
every joy one pays in suffering. Women who married went down into the
valley of death for their children. One must love and be loved very
tenderly to pay for that. The scale must balance.
And there were other things. Women grew old, and age was not always
lovely. This very maternity--was it not fatal to beauty? Visions of
child-bearing women in the hospitals, with sagging breasts and relaxed
bodies, came to her. That was a part of the price.
Harriet was stirring, across the hall. Sidney could hear her moving about
with flat, inelastic steps.
That was the alternative. One married, happily or not as the case might
be, and took the risk. Or one stayed single, like Harriet, growing a
little hard, exchanging slimness for leanness and austerity of figure,
flat-chested, thin-voiced. One blossomed and withered, then, or one
shriveled up without having flowered. All at once it seemed very terrible
to her. She felt as if she had been caught in an inexorable hand that had
closed about her.
Harriet found her a little later, face down on her mother's bed, crying as
if her heart would break. She scolded her roundly.
"You've been overworking," she said. "You've been getting thinner. Your
measurements for that suit showed it. I have never approved of this
hospital training, and after last January--"
She could hardly credit her senses when Sidney, still swollen with weeping,
told her of her engagement.
"But I don't understand. If you care for him and he has asked you to marry
him, why on earth are you crying your eyes out?"
"I do care. I don't know why I cried. It just came over me, all at once,
that I--It was just foolishness. I am very happy, Aunt Harriet."
Harriet thought she understood. The girl needed her mother, and she,
Harriet, was a hard, middle-aged woman and a poor substitute. She patted
Sidney's moist hand.
"I guess I understand," she said. "I'll attend to your wedding things,
Sidney. We'll show this street that even Christine Lorenz can be outdone."
And, as an afterthought: "I hope Max Wilson will settle down now. He's
been none too steady."