Her arms were around her mother’s shoulders when her father’s voice sounded, dry and hostile:
“I told you not to keep the lights on.”
This struck Lora as outrageously petty and unreasonable, and the remembered tone made her furious. She turned and flung at him:
“Oh, shut up. Just once shut up.”
In a vague gesture, presumably comforting, the palm of Mrs. Winter’s hand was rubbing up and down the sleeve of her daughter’s dress.
“I pulled the shades down tight,” she said.
Mr. Winter paid no attention to Lora’s outburst. “That would help a lot,” he said sarcastically. “From now on do what I tell you, understand that. Come on to bed. I’ve got to be out at eight.” His voice rose a little, thin and strained. “Lora, you go to bed and stay there. Understand that. Stay there.”
On his way to the hall he pressed the wall switch, and mother and daughter, following him, guided themselves by the dancing firelight.
The following afternoon Lora found that she was a prisoner. She was not under any circumstances to go downstairs, she was not to show herself at the window, and the door of her room was to be kept always closed; she was to open it to go down the hall to the bathroom only with circumspection after making sure there was no one about. Her meals would be brought up to her. These rules were imparted to her by her mother, who repeated them as if she were reciting a lesson. To Lora, strengthened and refreshed by ten hours’ sleep and a good meal, the arrangement seemed fantastic. She argued with her mother about it. Sooner or later people would know; things like that were always found out. Martha, the maid, would learn, and of course would talk. Cecelia already knew, and apparently had already talked. But this Mrs. Winter denied. Under a storm of questions and demands Cecelia had stuck to her story and refused to admit anything. His intuition, or maybe the devil, had sent him to Chicago. Cecelia could be trusted. Martha too. Martha loved Lora too well to give her away; she would be as tight as a clam.
Mrs. Winter sat in a rocker beside the bed and went on for an hour; Lora could not remember when her mother had talked as much in a month as she did that afternoon. She seemed more excited than distressed at her daughter’s predicament; she insisted on knowing all the details, the man’s name, the occasion, what he looked like.
“You’re lucky he went away,” she said, her eyes, usually so dull and red, shining as Lora had never seen them before. “Yes you are, you’re lucky. I know what I’m talking about — whatever else he might have done it would be worse than going away.” She sighed, a trembling miniature sigh, as if that was all she could risk without danger of dissolution. “I know I’ve never been a good mother. I’ve never been a good anything. I never have been since my wedding day. That night he looked at me with a look in his eyes I’ve never forgot, and if I’d known then what it meant I’d have gone straight and jumped in the river. There was a lovely river right by the house. You wouldn’t remember it, we left that place when you were still a baby.”
Her eyes glittered.
“There’s a lot you don’t know. I was three months gone on my wedding day; that’s why he married me, I told him he had to. And then after you came he pretended to believe you weren’t his daughter. He never believed that at all, but he claimed to. How do I know he never believed it? Lots of ways. One thing, he stopped kissing you when you began to fill out. I used to watch every day, I used to notice how funny he acted, and sure enough one day it was too much for him. That night in bed I laughed at him and told him I guessed he might as well give up; it was plain he knew where you came from. In bed was always the only time I could talk to him, it’s still that way, I’m not afraid then, I say anything I want to and that’s when I get even with him. Lying down that way is the time to deal with a man. Often it was too much for him, he couldn’t stand it, he’d get up and walk up and down, raving in his quiet voice so you and Martha couldn’t hear him — he always had a horror of you hearing us — and sometimes he’d go off downstairs no matter what time of night it was and I’d go to sleep. But he has never once admitted that he knows he’s your father. I could never drive him to that, but he knows it all right. He even used to claim he knew who it was — made it up to torment me. At first I didn’t have any sense about it. I would beg him with tears in my eyes to believe me. Oh, I didn’t know him then. You were just a tiny baby, and with you right there in the room watching us I would get on my knees to him and beg him.”
Lora, astonished and fascinated, lay and listened to this recital of her origin and early history. Her mother talked on and on in a ceaseless flood, protesting, accusing, justifying, revealing the details of the homely and vulgar tragedy that had ended by her grasping the occasion of her daughter’s pregnancy for sharing the tortures she had kept concealed for twenty years. Lora understood that, and she understood too why her sympathy for her mother had always been smothered within her, never emerging into expression, never truly finding itself in her heart. She could not have explained it, but she felt that she understood it. As her mother’s story went on Lora heard less and less of it; her mind was filling with the clear and strong conviction that she was going to have all she could do to manage her own affairs so as to avoid disaster; these people were dangerous; whatever prudence and good will were found to lift her out of her difficulty she would have to furnish herself or discover elsewhere, not here.
Except money. That was the real point: money. She felt this all the more strongly on account of an unpleasant discovery she had made a few hours earlier. Undressing the night before, cold and sleepy and exhausted, she had placed her roll of twenties carelessly on top of the bureau, and on arising shortly after noon and going to get her hairbrush had noticed that the roll was no longer there. She looked in all the drawers, on the floor, in her bag and suitcase, everywhere; it was gone. Later she asked her mother, who said she knew nothing of it. Martha was out of the question. Had her father come in her room before he left that morning? Her mother didn’t know. It was quite possible. It was certain.
Her father knew that too, that the real point was money. He would. Of course the twenties were rightfully his, but that only made it worse. She was in a tight place. He had locked her door more effectually than he could have done with any key.
Her mother’s mouth, once opened, seemed likely never again to close. Towards twilight that first afternoon she went to her neglected household duties downstairs, but the next day she resumed; obviously she was cleaning out a pool that had lain stagnant for two decades. For three weeks, daily, she poured into her daughter’s ears all her accumulation of venom and despair. In the end Lora heard nothing; it became just a meaningless disagreeable noise whose only significance consisted in its interruption to her own thoughts. Her mother demanded a judgment in terms, but Lora could not furnish it; not bothering to evade, she merely shook her head and was silent. She had a feeling that not only was a judgment impossible, but also that neither her father nor her mother desired one. Her mother sought an ally, that was all; and no thank you, she had her own battle to win and could not afford to identify it with a cause already lost before she was born.