Ladies In The Parlor Read Online Free PDF Page B

first caller rang the bell.
    Leora’s mind was full that day. How different people were. It occurred again and again to her, as she went about her duties.
    She had heard Dr. Farway refer to Dr. Haley as a big man. She had wondered at the time what he meant. She still wondered.
    Brusque as the wind, he would snap orders to his patients, and scold little children. He never sent bills to the poor. She had often seen him take half the amount offered by a working man. Many times she had heard him say to a poor woman, “What’s it worth to you—pay it when you get rich.”
    Patients who had certain ailments he would send to Dr. Farway. “He’s better than I am on such things—but don’t tell him I said so—or that I sent you.” When one patient had gone, Leora heard the doctor say, “I can’t do it all—and Farway is better,” he sighed, “and younger.”
    “But, Doctor,” put in Leora, “why can’t he cure his own wife?”
    “Maybe he doesn’t want to,” snapped Dr. Haley.
    When Leora returned home that evening, her mother was packing her husband’s lunch.
    “Mother, I’ve arranged for Dr. Haley to examine you tomorrow.”
    The tired woman promised to see the doctor.
    There was a bustle in the house as she made ready to go. For the first time in weeks she looked in the mirror, and drew back, with her hands before her eyes. She knew what the doctor would say. Mechanically she bade the children good-bye and went to the street-car. The words of Leora kept drumming in her ears. They had not made her bitter, just more tired. Words no longer bothered her. Of late, her runaway son had obsessed her. He might have written to her, she thought, as the wheels of the street-car clicked over the uneven rails.
    Leora did not want another baby around the house. It was a squalling brat to her. In spite of all her years with Blair, his taunts about her getting in the family way always stung Leora’s mother. No matter what happened, she could not destroy the baby. She recalled her first baby, born dead. The memory of what that child might have been still haunted her in the night. Being gone, it now lived in her fancy. The reality of her living children helped her not at all in imagining what the unformed might have been.
    It would soon be three months. In fear she held the secret from the rest of the family and then, in fear, she had told her sister-in-law. She shuddered again at the thought of not having the baby. That would be murder.
    She left the car as it stopped, and waited for one returning home.
    The children, in the absence of their mother, were playing somewhere else. Except for Piebald, the large black and white cat, the house was deserted. She stared at the picture of a movie actress in tights which Leora had placed near the living-room door. The thumbtack was loose in one corner. She fastened it again. Then her gaze wandered, unseeing, about the room.
    The cat walked across the table in the kitchen. She tried to make it get on the floor; then dropped her hand in weariness and stumbled up stairs.
    The cat followed her.
    She walked in and out of the pine-boarded rooms. A pain gripped her body. She doubled and clenched her teeth, then stumbled forward once again. To stop her teeth from clattering together, she bit her lower lip. Tears dropped out of her eyes. She sat on the bed where Leora and Sally slept; then bit her lower lip again to drive the sobs back in her throat. With her feet still on the floor, she twisted her body and buried her face in Leora’s pillow.
    The cat jumped on the bed.
    Mrs. Blair sat erect and drove the sobs back in her throat.
    She stroked the cat’s head as it tried to get into her lap.
    She then rose and stumbled to the bathroom.
    Several of the children returned home an hour later and shouted, “Mother.”
    There was no answer. Anxious for play, they rushed out of the house again.
    Sally returned in a short while, and called, “Mother, are you home?”
    The echo of her words