"I know," said Janet, "but you've got to." And she put some of the cold meat, left over from Sunday's dinner, on Hannah's plate. Hannah took up a fork, and laid it down again. Suddenly she said:--"You saw Lise?"
"Yes," said Janet.
"Where is she?"
"In a house--in Boston."
"One of--those houses?"
"I--I don't know," said Janet. "I think so."
"You went there?"
"Mr. Tiernan went with me."
"She wouldn't come home?"
"Not--not just now, mother."
"You left her there, in that place? You didn't make her come home?"
The sudden vehemence of this question, the shrill note of reproach in Hannah's voice that revealed, even more than the terrible inertia from which she had emerged, the extent of her suffering, for the instant left Janet utterly dismayed. "Oh mother!" she exclaimed. "I tried--I--I couldn't."
Hannah pushed back her chair.
"I'll go to her, I'll make her come. She's disgraced us, but I'll make her. Where is she? Where is the house?"
Janet, terrified, seized her mother's arm. Then she said:--"Lise isn't there any more--she's gone away."
"Away and you let her go away? You let your sister go away and be a--a woman of the town? You never loved her--you never had any pity for her."
Tears sprang into Janet's eyes--tears of pity mingled with anger. The situation had grown intolerable! Yet how could she tell Hannah where Lise was!
"You haven't any right to say that, mother!" she cried. "I did my best.
She wouldn't come. I--I can't tell you where she's gone, but she promised to write, to send me her address."
"Lise" Hannah's cry seemed like the uncomprehending whimper of a stricken child, and then a hidden cadence made itself felt, a cadence revealing to Janet with an eloquence never before achieved the mystery of mother love, and by some magic of tone was evoked a new image of Lise--of Lise as she must be to Hannah. No waywardness, no degradation or disgrace could efface it. The infant whom Hannah had clutched to her breast, the woman, her sister, whom Janet had seen that day were one--immutably one. This, then, was what it meant to be a mother! All the years of deadening hope had not availed to kill the craving--even in this withered body it was still alive and quick. The agony of that revelation was scarcely to be borne. And it seemed that Lise, even in the place where she was, must have heard that cry and heeded it. And yet--the revelation of Lise's whereabouts, of Lise's contemplated act Janet had nearly been goaded into making, died on her lips. She could not tell Hannah! And Lise's child must not come into a world like this. Even now the conviction remained, fierce, exultant, final. But if Janet had spoken now Hannah would not have heard her. Under the storm she had begun to rock, weeping convulsively.... But gradually her weeping ceased. And to Janet, helplessly watching, this process of congealment was more terrible even than the release that only an unmitigated violence of grief had been able to produce. In silence Hannah resumed her shrunken duties, and when these were finished sat awhile, before going to bed, her hands lying listless in her lap. She seemed to have lived for centuries, to have exhausted the gamut of suffering which, save for that one wild outburst, had been the fruit of commonplace, passive, sordid tragedy that knows no touch of fire....
