Margery Latimer,
62 BARROW STREET
New York City.

38 King Street.

PENANCE

The river was ice, frozen in ripples and crests, touched with amber. Beyond rose the hill, blue at night, crusted with snow and on its incredible arch, the **PENANCE** close to the snow, close to the brick walls, the arched windows, green red berries hanging like drops of blood from black twigs, burning like sullen fire around and around the house. And inside was a woman in a blood red gown, her face and hands too white, under her eyes shadows like the half-moon, her hair smooth and black as a bat's wing. She walked to the window and closed her eyes until the ice spread out as far as she could see, vast and permanent, and as she stood there she heard the wind come past the island, past the length of timber, over the snow in a sharp, high sweep.

She turned suddenly and walked down the long room toward the fire which burned cone shaped, a golden bush set in a hollow. She went closer and stared into the blaze, put her palms to it and laid her cheek on her shoulder, her eyes looking back at the white fields, the stable sagging under snow. It had no door and some hay hung from a pale rafter looking warm and strange in that empty place. One day she

had run in there to read a letter. She had bid it first in her blouse
and then in hay.

She threw a cushion on the floor and sat down, waiting for the wind,
for the lonely sound it made in walls and chimney, desiring she could
follow it back past the island, up the hill to the cemetery where the
pine trees were weighed with snow, up, then, into the sky and on
Then the sound ceased, clear yet remote, and she felt a veil of air pass
her face and heard the berries in the deep bowl crackle on their stems,
turned and saw the portiers ripple slightly. She got up and her gown
hung rich and full in red folds from the tight bodice. She stood
very still, one hand at her looking down the empty road. He

Penance

The river was ice, frozen in ripples and crests, touched with
amber. Beyond rose the hill, blue at night, crusted with snow and on
its incredible arch, the house. Close to the snow, close to the brick
walls, the arched windows, grew red berries hanging like drops of blood
from black twigs, burning like sullen fire around and around the
house. And inside was a woman in a blood red gown, her face and hands
too white, under her eyes shadows like the half-moon, her hair smooth
and black as a bat's wing. She walked to the window and closed her
eyes until the ice spread out as far as she could see, vast and gone,
permanent, and as she stood there she heard the wind come past the
island, past the length of timber, over the snow in a sharp, high
sweep.

3.

"Oh, Mother," he said, pressing his head back in the pillow, "why
do I have to always be sleeping?"

She tapped her foot. "Ssssh," she said.

"Is Leonard down there?" he whispered. "Is he silly and wobbly
again?"

"No," she answered sharply. Then she leaned over him, her cold,
white hand on his hair. "Who's boy are you?" she asked.

"Bob Ravel's."

"And what's your name?"

"Robin Ravel, you silly."

"And where is Bob Ravel?"

He shook his head. "I don't know," he answered stubbornly.

"Tell me where he is!" she cried and took his face between her
hands.

"No!" he said.

"Tell me!"

"Mother," he began pettishly, "why do you always ask me that?"

"Because," she said, "because."

"But you know where he is because you told me about it that time,
Mother. You did, too. It was at Uncle Gregory's right near my
birthday," he said eagerly, half pulling himself out of bed. "It was
too, Mother."

"Yes, I know. But where is Bob Ravel now?" She shuddered as she
said the words. It seemed so cold and strange to be asking her child
where his father was, plaguing him when he scarcely remembered the man,
and yet she enjoyed his embarrassment and the way he would finally
whisper, "he's dead," very shyly and flush. She looked down at him.
"Never mind, to-night," she said. "You needn't tell me."

"Well, I liked him a lot better than Leonard or Uncle Gregory.
Leonard won't ever help me dress and I hope he never comes back here."

4.

Mother. I never want to see Leonard again."

"But Leonard's your father now."

"Only since Christmas. Why can't we get rid of him the way we did
Uncle Gregory? He was my father for a while but we ditched him."

"Divorced him," she corrected calmly.

"And Uncle Gregory was just about as silly and wobbly as Leonard is."

"I know it," she answered and drew her brows together.

"Then why can't we live alone? We'd have lots of fun, Mother. We
would! Listen, why can't we, Mother?"

"I don't know," she answered and looked down at the red points on
her hands, the narrow binding off silver that glimmered at the edge.
"You must go to sleep."

"I won't ever like Leonard again. Not after yesterday."

"You'll forget about that," she said faintly and stood up.

"No, I won't. I hate Leonard and he hit me once because I couldn't
get my shoe on. And then he hit me because I cried and he told me I
was a baby. I wish we could get away from him, Mother. He's a bad
fellow. Madie said so. She heard it down in the kitchen yesterday."

"I told you not to tell any one about that."

"I didn't tell, Mother."

"Tell me exactly what you said!"

"I said, 'That noise was when Leonard knocked Mother down on the
floor..!'"

"Oh, Robin! What did I tell you?"

"I told her not to tell. But she knew all about it anyway and she
said Leonard would be in better business if he'd do a little work
instead of...."

"Never mind, never _mind_!" she cried. "And go right to sleep!"

"Mother!" he cried as she turned off the light.

"I'm cross with you," she answered from the head of the stairs and

5.

went down, her hands in the thick, warm folds at her sides, her head
back so that the coil of hair in her neck touched the silver lace
collar that rose like an open fan. She wondered, in dismay, why she
should torture the child, why it had always pleased her to assume a
grievance with any man, no matter what his age might be. She felt that
coldness come over her as she remembered her ancient delight in
quarrels, those rages when she had paced the floor and Bob Ravel had
pled and finally won her by getting on his knees. But he, too, had been
playing, she remembered somberly. And then before Robin was born,
those dreadful months when they moved to New York and Cricket Gregory
became her best friend.

She went to the window and shaded her eyes but she saw only white
stretches that swept down to the river, lights from a black shore, and
in the distance a bridge. She heard no sound, saw no marks in the snow,
but as she looked closer she saw the stark tree at the gate, and as she
watched, saw it rich and dark with leaves, with the moon on it, heavy
with yellowed tassels and sweet, too sweet. She saw the great, warm
night, the strange road, and before her the eyes of Bob Ravel,
softening as they looked at her, his shoulders bending, curving, his
hands moving closer. She was stiff with disgust at the memory of her
delicious swooning, her long sigh that was for the thick, sweet odor,
the man's adoration, the anticipation of their flight. She had repeated
that word flight to herself during the two days on the train, during
the weeks when her mother, that town, the old house, were not even like
a dream, when all those things had completely vanished and she was
bright and complete and happy in his arms, his wife, "the only woman he
could ever love," she remembered bitterly.

And then in the chasm that followed their union, in that long, monotonous dream when she had watched herself in tears, in rage and resentment, when she had realized that she could never reach her mother

6.

again, that they were cut apart, and that her mother was gone, her
image empty and dry. Even the little girl who used to skip around the
house with garlands of flowers on her arm and smooth stones in her
pocket, even she was gone, and then she realized that her world was
dim, less intense, deeper, so deep it was hard to reach, so hidden
she ached and cried but she could never draw up her words or under-
stand. She remembered how she had sat, dumbly, her hands on her
swollen womb, thinking of nothing, appalled at her dullness. Cricket
Gregory had appeared. She could see her bright hair, the bitter mouth,
the eyes, the smart suit. But the incredible slimness of her had
made her turn to the window for an instant with, "Thank God, I needn't
always be worrying about my husband's love. It's never been any one
but me." Then Cricket's sharp laugh, a sound that was like a cat
spitting, and the truth in her ears even though she put her hands over
her head to shut it out, laughing shrilly. "Your husband belongs to
me!"

She went back to the fire and warmed her hands, moved up a chair
and sat down. Then suddenly she went to the window and drew the shade,
drew all the shades, even the high ones in the dark hall, until she
was closed in where no one could see her. She laid more wood on the
fire and then, in weakness, covered her face for a second but she could
feel only loathing for the girl who had wept all that night, waiting
in her chair like a fool for her husband to come home. And the shrill
accusations, the screams, when he looked dark and his brows drew
together.

"You believe Cricket Gregory before your own husband?"

"Yes!"

"Then you don't trust me? I suppose you think I've lied to you from
the first?"

"Yes! Yes! I saw the whole thing the instant I met Cricket

7.

Gregory. I knew something was between you. You've done nothing but drag me down and make me wretched."

But he had known how desperate she was to be told that it was all a lie, a monstrous, crazy joke, she reflected. It was she who had made him add to the lie, assume the grieved, tortured look of the wrongly accused, the martyr, until, in an agony of emotion she had thrown herself at his feet, kissing his knees, begging his pardon, pleading with him to trust her again, to love her as he had in the beginning there under the tree. He had looked *so* like an angel as she gazed up at him from the floor, his face distrait, the eyes soft with pity, his hands in her hair. She could hear him whisper, as he drew her up to him, "Promise to trust me!" And then in sudden anguish, "You must!"

She remembered the photograph they had taken a few months later, she and Bob and Robin, sitting near the fire in their living room, her face turned toward her husband's, smiling, complacent in its mask of trust and adoration, her arms plump and secure. She narrowed her eyes as she remembered the smile she had made for him, the gay talk when he came into the room in the evening, his face masked and set for hers, his eyes with their trick of softness beaming on her kindly as he praised some detail of her gown. And beneath it her fear of discovering them, Bob and Cricket, of finding them in some revolting situation from which she could never escape. And she had found them and she had buried the image in deep, black water, somewhere inside her, far and distant, silent like death. She felt the curious dizziness come over her the sharp, intolerable anguish which had no meaning that made her put her hands to her breast for an instant, mutely.

The wind came then, closer, closer, over the snow, around the house, shaking the trees, the bushes, creaking the hinges of shutters and doors, moving away down the river in its big, lonely sound.

8.

And her husband had confessed, he had abased himself before her,
swearing that she was the only woman in the world, that Cricket was
an incident, a perversity, the downward pull that he could not resist.
"I have to go both ways," he said in anguish, "up and down. I don't
expect you to understand. I have to destroy myself and then save
myself. No," he corrected, "you must save me."

Then she had sought a way to wound Cricket Gregory. She had
plotted shrewdly, always watching for a vulnerable place in the woman.
They were friends again, their arms twined, and their voices more
gentle, more tender than ever before. "You are so beautiful, Greta."
And, "Oh, Cricket, look at yourself! You're lovely and you know it."
She could hear that tone, feel the quiver of affection that had gone
throug her, the deep loathing. And then, by chance, she had
discovered Cricket's dependence upon her husband, Gregory, her need
of him which she tried to hide with flippant words and slights. It
was as if she had turned to Bob in despair of ever reaching the man.

She tried to recall Gregory and remembered only the back of his
neck, his cane, and the drawn look about his mouth and eyes, as if he
were expecting to be wounded. His brisk walk and deep, secure voice
had never entirely concealed this acute shrinking. She opened a book
and glanced at the page intently, as if to break her mood, but she knew
what was coming, she could feel the long, tortured picture of that day
rise in her, the minute at the telephone when she heard that Bob
Ravel had been killed in a motor accident, her laughter as she went
through the rooms announcing to her guests that her husband was dead
and their stiff, horrified faces lifted to hers. She saw herself that
evening dancing with Gregory, radiant, like a girl, and later sitting
on the edge of her bed, a glass of poison in her hand.

Perhaps that was some one stumbling up the steps, Leonard,
probably, cold and gruff. She hurried to the door and opened it but

9.

only the unbroken white all around, the arcs and coils of frozen water,
and beyond the lights, the deep black. As the wind came she shut the
door, pressing her face on the dark, panelled wood, one white hand on
the latch, the other high above her. Disgust for that girl on the edge
of her bed stung her and fear, then nausea, as the illness seemed to
return in its deathly pain. She walked up and down the hall, her eyes
lowered as if other eyes were upon her in the dark, faces that she
would recognize, bodies that she would know. Then they were far off,
dim, almost as irrelevant and grey as a dream; Cricket pleading with her,
begging absurdly for Gregory, weeping then in desperation, her fists
in her eyes; Gregory the day they were married, his large uncertain
gaze on her, the peculiar smile, and then weeks of cocktails in the
living room before dinner, Scotch at dinner and late at night in
his study with the bottle before him, his eyes fixed brightly on the
wall.

She went up to her room and turned on the light, shivering with
cold, tense as she took down her hair and laid the pins in a china tray
that had a poppy painted on it. Leonard would come back, he would
forget about their quarrel, she decided, and slipped on an old red satin
robe, richly quilted. She lay down on the couch and lighted a
cigarette, one white arm behind her massed hair, and looked about the
room, staring at the dim corners, the dark wooden rafters, the full
curtains that touched the floor. She thought of the way she had
tortured Gregory about his drinking, masking her desire for power and
revenge under a sweet, hurt voice, falling into a rage suddenly and
pacing the floor, staring at him as if he were a stranger when he
tried to justify himself. And all the time Gregory had known her
contempt for him and for the lies she forced out of him while he
posed as a reformed man and did all his drinking at the club. She
remembered the set expression he had finally manufactured for her,

10.

the assumed alertness in the eye, the honest, searching stare as he announced that he had touched nothing in weeks and was feeling much better for it, brighter, somehow.

Leonard might be plunging through the snow now in the clear cold, his cheeks between his shoulders, his hands deep in his pockets. His head would be down and the black cap would make him grotesque there in the night with the white all around, with the river beyond and the little town. He would be all alone there in the drifts near the tree where she and Bob Ravel had stood, near the porch, then, where all the members of her family had been carried in polished caskets down to the hearse that always stopped under that same tree, all bleak now and had bony. But the way she/waited that night for Bob Ravel, her hands on her swollen womb, her eyes on the street! How she had wanted to punish him for hurting her, and she had tried and then again with Cricket and Gregory. But no pleasure had come to her, only deeper anguish. But the night Gregory saw her with her new friend, Leonard Farley, she had felt joy as she watched the torture fall from his eyes to his mouth and she had known his misery as he gauntly measured himself with the man in that instant there at the corner, much as she had measured herself with Cricket. And then those jaunty steps going off past the cigar store, crossing the street, lagging, then, a little. But she could never make any of them feel what had been done to her, fresh from this house, these fields, that tree all rich and dark in the moon.

She would never want to go back to the little girl who had stood at that same mirror and looked in, smiling, turning to the side, making angel faces, angel smiles, putting slim white arms over her head, tying ribbons on her hair, imagining in an agony of delight, the warm, rich life far off where the wind came from. She closed her eyes to

11.

shut out the face, the vague eyes in their large anticipation, even the
sound of slippers on the stairs and following, the soft pad of her cat,
his tail proud and high, like a feather. Somewhere in her mother's
room was a motto she had once made, bending intently over cardboard,
writing in crayon: Do To Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto You.
If Leonard knew she had even remembered such a childish thing...
Then she knew that he must come back, that she could never make
alone the life they had planned, the fine, clear outline of themselves
freed from hate, from jealousy, revenge, safe for all time from the
inner, branching root that was growing, taking their lives, leaving
them crippled and hideous. Their lives would be new, he had promised,
cleansed of the past, and in the first weeks everything had been as he
said. Bob Ravel, Gregory, Cricket, had been less than dreams, more
indistinct, as far off, and as unreal as the future.

"Greta, we're going to forget our pasts. You mustn't ever tell
me and I won't tell you. We were dead then. Now we're alive. We're
not going to feed on what's done, are we?"

That strange, intense look in his eyes as he lifted her face to him,
his, the stern, cruel mouth and arched nose, his eyes glittering now,
closer, her body meeting his as his arms enclosed her, making her
too shy new, washed clean. She had turned away from him, to say that
she wanted to sing, feeling that it would be insignificant to tell him
that a thick, black crust had broken in her and that she was outside,
in the light.

But gradually he grew strange, withdrawn, so isolated that she
shut herself in her room and looked back at the bright, high place
where they had been, and then, without his speaking or reminding her
the events of her life began to unwind and that deep, mute anguish
came to the surface. She felt that she must tell him that she was

12.

free from Bob Ravel, from Cricket and Gregory. The day before, at
breakfast, she had called Leonard "Bob" by mistake. He had thrown back
his head and stared at her, his cheeks slowly flushing, his neck
growing red and full above his collar, and then he rose and threw his
napkin down on the table.

"Leonard!" she had cried, half rising, going toward him*after a
moment*of horror.

"Don't come near me!" His lips had drawn tightly and haggard and
yet he had laughed, as if he were secretly humouring his rage.

"Let me tell you, Leonard, and then we'll be free of it for always."

"You're trying to involve me, aren't you. You want me to carry
your wrongs and even the details of your past. Besides that you
want to kill me a thousand times by making mistakes with my name, or
describing innocently Mr. so and so... Don't look so innocent! You
haven't any right to innocence. Don't you suppose I've seen your
past a million times in my head?"

"Leonard, I'm free. You've freed me!"

"Free! That doesn't mean anything."

"But none of them mean anything now."

"Yes, that's your fine memory. It's easy for you to forget and I'll
be the next, won't I. You'll..."

"Leonard, Oh, my God, don't!"

But her only thought as his hand struck her mouth was the cook and
then Robin had run in as Leonard was standing close to her, his hands
raised, and when he saw the boy his words had come out with anguished
wrenching and grinding. "The boy belongs to you ... house...car...
money. Everything around here is yours. What do you want from me,
that's what I want to know, and you tell me..." As she had fallen, her
cold hand on the blow, Robin had screamed in his high, frail voice,
"Oooo, that hurt me!" and she had heard the sound

13.

of his feet, running down stairs, and had irrelevantly compared that tapping to the days when her cat had followed her, his tail proud and high like a feather.

So it was Leonard who, promising to burn away her past, had made it more important than the present, he who had given her a fevered loathing for all her actions, when before they had staid in her dumbly, rising sometimes in hate or in a desperate need to return, to live it again just as it had been. That day she had waited at the window, the party, the telephone, the evening when she had felt so free, so radiant in Gregory's arm, dancing, and then the edge of her bed, a glass of poison in her hands. She drew her robe closer, glanced down at the frayed sleeve, and felt her blood ripple hot, then cold, as she remembered the day Bob Ravel had taken her to New York and helped her select that robe, this robe, she reflected, and looked closer, this robe that Gregory had admired, too, and other men whom she must not remember, those faces which must not come, those voices... One day, she had sat down in the meadow in deep green, her cheeks against the cool grass, her empty, vague head bound with a ribbon and her feet stretched out before her, a little mud on her stocking. Once she had embroidered a turkey on a handkerchief for her mother. One day she had sat at the window, her hands on her swollen womb... That was Leonard's step now, he had opened the door and was coming up the stairs, slowly, but not softly so he might not waken Robin. Why need he be cruel to Robin? Why did he return at all? Let him stay away and never come back! She looked up into his face. "Hello, Greta!"

"Your feet are snowy," she reminded him.

"I know," he said sharply. "Greta," then he paused and swung around, his back to her. "I understand what you've been through..."

14.

"How can you possibly understand? What do you know about the
treachery of a man who swears you are the only woman in the world and
you wait for him, all out of shape..."

"My God, are you back at it again? I'm not referring to your
past! I've told you I don't want to know about your disgusting
intrigues... God damn it, your innocence is beyond endurance. What
right have you to it? Don't look at me that way! I know I'm like
all the rest of them. Mine is as good as another in your eyes."

"What difference does it make to me whose arms I'm in? When I'm
lonely? Aren't you all alike? Don't you all lie and cheat and
play false even before your called upon to do it?"

Now it seemed to her that she was slipping back so fast that she
could never stop herself, that she had, indeed, not desire to stop
but to fall down deep, as far as she could go, into the treacherous
river that made her cruel and dull. But she said nothing.

"Your past is so important to you that you think of nothing else.
I've watched you from the beginning... What are you going to do
about it? Do you hear me, Greta! I'm your victim."

She saw him throw himself down in the chair and catch hold of his
head. As she stood there like a stone, waiting for that deadly flow
of words that would pierce him, tear his flesh, she saw a look as
distrait as Bob Ravel's come over his face. She had knelt to Bob, she
had kissed his knees, begged him to forgive her for misunderstanding
him, and now as she watched the softening, the despair, a tear
groan rolled out of her and she shut her eyes, her hand grasping the
chair.

"I'm not thinking of myself," he said savagely. "It's you.
You've got to forget your past, do you hear? It's for your own good,
not mine. I tell you it's not for my good! Are you listening?" But

15.

when she made no response she heard him beat his fists on the table,
and then his head, crying, "Don't I know that the rot starts in us,
not outside. I tell you we're rotting from the inside, like
vegetables. God....How can I forget those men of yours? Yes, play
the Virgin now, you make a fine one. Do you know that you've turned
me into the rottenest cad that ever lived?"

That peculiar emptiness came over her, the dizziness, and she said
slowly, "Leonard, my past didn't mean anything before and now I'm
all surrounded. Everything I look at reminds me and everything I put
on or say. I'm all enclosed. I can't ever escape now."

"Haven't I said that? You've never wanted to. It's female to
want nothing but sex and to be grounded absolutely in background.
What difference does it make to you.... God, what difference does it
make to you - me or some one else."

Then as her rage rose again she saw the swollen, flushed look in
his face, the mute eyes, as if he were as helpless as she, caught
in dark, twisted branches. But she dreaded the softening, the
sullen struggle, the generous pardons. And now that high, bright
place was gone, as dim to her as the little girl in meadow grass, as
faint as the tree below her window that was once dark and rich with
the moon, heavy with odor, sweet, too sweet. And running though her,
over her, was the muddy water, a washing away pain and
joy, drowning all that had been in its darkness. She went forward and
laid her hand on the man's head, crowding back reproaches, and then as
she remembered that once Bob Ravel had stood with his hands in her hair
she went quickly to the window and looked out.