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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/15927-8.txt b/15927-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..092a340 --- /dev/null +++ b/15927-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,14316 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Vehement Flame, by Margaret Wade Campbell Deland + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Vehement Flame + +Author: Margaret Wade Campbell Deland + +Release Date: May 28, 2005 [EBook #15927] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VEHEMENT FLAME *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + THE VEHEMENT FLAME + + A NOVEL + + BY MARGARET DELAND + + AUTHOR OF DR. LAVENDAR'S PEOPLE, OLD CHESTER TALES, ETC. + + 1922 + + + + +TO LORIN: + +Together, so many years ago--seven, I think, or eight--you and I planned +this story. The first chapters had the help of your criticism ... then, +I had to go on alone, urged by the memory of your interest. But all the +blunders are mine, not yours; and any merits are yours, not mine. That +it has been written, in these darkened years, has been because your +happy interest still helped me. + +MARGARET +_May 12th, 1922_ + + + + +THE VEHEMENT FLAME + + + + +CHAPTER I + +_Love is as strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals +thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame._ + +_THE SONG OF SOLOMON, VIII, 6._ + + +There is nothing in the world nobler, and lovelier, and more absurd, +than a boy's lovemaking. And the joyousness of it!... + +The boy of nineteen, Maurice Curtis, who on a certain June day lay in +the blossoming grass at his wife's feet and looked up into her dark +eyes, was embodied Joy! The joy of the warm earth, of the sunshine +glinting on the slipping ripples of the river and sifting through the +cream-white blossoms of the locust which reared its sheltering branches +over their heads; the joy of mating insects and birds, of the whole +exulting, creating universe!--the unselfconscious, irresponsible, wholly +beautiful Joy of passion which is without apprehension or humor. The +eyes of the woman who sat in the grass beside this very young man, +answered his eyes with Love. But it was a more human love than his, +because there was doubt in its exultation.... + +The boy took out his watch and looked at it. + +"We have been married," he said, "exactly fifty-four minutes." + +"I can't believe it!" she said. + +"If I love you like this after fifty-four minutes of married life, how +do you suppose I shall feel after fifty-four years of it?" He flung an +arm about her waist, and hid his face against her knee. "We are married," +he said, in a smothered voice. + +She bent over and kissed his thick hair, silently. At which he sat up +and looked at her with blue, eager eyes. + +"It just came over me! Oh, Eleanor, suppose I hadn't got you? You said +'No' six times. You certainly did behave very badly," he said, showing +his white teeth in a broad grin. + +"Some people win say I behaved very badly when I said 'Yes.'" + +"Tell 'em to go to thunder! What does Mrs. Maurice Curtis (doesn't that +sound pretty fine?) care for a lot of old cats? Don't we _know_ that we +are in heaven?" He caught her hand and crushed it against his mouth. "I +wish," he said, very low, "I almost wish I could die, now, here! At your +feet. It seems as if I couldn't live, I am so--" He stopped. So--what? +Words are ridiculously inadequate things!... "Happiness" wasn't the name +of that fire in his breast, Happiness? "Why, it's God," he said to +himself; "_God._" Aloud, he said, again, "We are married!" + +She did not speak--she was a creature of alluring silences--she just put +her hand in his. Suddenly she began to sing; there was a very noble +quality in the serene sweetness of her voice: + +"O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down + Through the clear windows of the morning, ten + Thine angel eyes upon our western isle, + Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!" + +That last word rose like a flight of wings into the blue air. Her +husband looked at her; for a compelling instant his eyes dredged the +depths of hers, so that all the joyous, frightened woman in her +retreated behind a flutter of laughter. + +"'O Spring!'" he repeated; "_we_ are Spring, Nelly--you and I.... I'll +never forget the first time I heard you sing that; snowing like blazes +it was,--do you remember? But I swear I felt this hot grass then in +Mrs. Newbolt's parlor, with all those awful bric-ą-brac things around! +Yes," he said, putting his hand on a little sun-drenched bowlder jutting +from the earth beside him; "I felt this sun on my hand! And when you +came to 'O Spring!' I saw this sky--" He stopped, pulled three blades of +grass and began to braid them into a ring. "Lord!" he said, and his +voice was suddenly startled; "what a darned little thing can throw the +switches for a man! Because I didn't get by in Math. D and Ec 2, and had +to crawl out to Mercer to cram with old Bradley--I met you! Eleanor! +Isn't it wonderful? A little thing like that--just falling down in +mathematics--changed my whole life?" The wild gayety in his eyes +sobered. "I happened to come to Mercer--and, you are my wife." His +fingers, holding the little grassy ring, trembled; but the next instant +he threw himself back on the grass, and kicked up his heels in a +preposterous gesture of ecstasy. Then caught her hand, slipped the +braided ring over that plain circle of gold which had been on her finger +for fifty-four minutes, kissed it--and the palm of her hand--and said, +"You never can escape me! Eleanor, your voice played the deuce with me. +I rushed home and read every poem in my volume of Blake. Go on; give us +the rest." + +She smiled; + + ".... And let our winds +Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste +Thy morn and evening breath!..." + +"Oh--_stop_! I can't bear it," he said, huskily; and, turning on his +face, he kissed the grass, earth's "perfumed garment," snow-sprinkled +with locust blossoms.... + +But the moment of passion left him serious. "When I think of Mrs. +Newbolt," he said, "I could commit murder." In his own mind he was +saying, "I've rescued her!" + +"Auntie doesn't mean to be unkind," Eleanor explained, simply; "only, +she never understood me--Maurice! Be careful! There's a little +ant--don't step on it." + +She made him pause in his diatribe against Mrs. Newbolt and move his +heel while she pushed the ant aside with a clover blossom. Her anxious +gentleness made him laugh, but it seemed to him perfectly beautiful. +Then he went on about Mrs. Newbolt: + +"Of course she couldn't understand _you_! You might as well expect a +high-tempered cow to understand a violin solo." + +"How mad she'd be to be called a cow! Oh, Maurice, do you suppose she's +got my letter by this time? I left it on her bureau. She'll rage!" + +"Let her rage. Nothing can separate us now." + +Thus they dismissed Mrs. Newbolt, and the shock she was probably +experiencing at that very moment, while reading Eleanor's letter +announcing that, at thirty-nine, she was going to marry this very young +man. + +"No; nothing can part us," Eleanor said; "forever and ever." And again +they were silent--islanded in rippling tides of wind-blown grass, with +the warm fragrance of dropping locust blossoms infolding them, and in +their ears the endless murmur of the river. Then Eleanor said, suddenly: +"Maurice!--Mr. Houghton? What will _he_ do when he hears? He'll think an +'elopement' is dreadful." + +He chuckled. "Uncle Henry?--He isn't really my uncle, but I call him +that;--he won't rage. He'll just whistle. People of his age have to +whistle, to show they're alive. I have reason to believe," the cub said, +"that he 'whistled' when I flunked in my mid-years. Well, I felt sorry, +myself--on his account," Maurice said, with the serious and amiable +condescension of youth. "I hated to jar him. But--gosh! I'd have flunked +A B C's, for _this_. Nelly, I tell you heaven hasn't got anything on +this! As for Uncle Henry, I'll write him to-morrow that I had to get +married sort of in a hurry, because Mrs. Newbolt wanted to haul you off +to Europe. He'll understand. He's white. And he won't really mind--after +the first biff;--that will take him below the belt, I suppose, poor old +Uncle Henry! But after that, he'll adore you. He adores beauty." + +Her delight in his praise made her almost beautiful; but she protested +that he was a goose. Then she took the little grass ring from her finger +and slipped it into her pocketbook. "I'm going to keep it always," she +said. "How about Mrs. Houghton?" + +"She'll love you! She's a peach. And little Skeezics--" + +"Who is Skeezics?" + +"Edith. Their kid. Eleven years old. She paid me the compliment of +announcing, when she was seven, that she was going to marry me when she +grew up! But I believe, now, she has a crush on Sir Walter Raleigh. +She'll adore you, too." + +"I'm afraid of them all," she confessed; "they won't like--an +elopement." + +"They'll fall over themselves with joy to think I'm settled for life! +I'm afraid I've been a cussed nuisance to Uncle Henry," he said, +ruefully; "always doing fool things, you know,--I mean when I was a boy. +And he's been great, always. But I know he's been afraid I'd take a wild +flight in actresses." + +"'_Wild_' flight? What will he call--" She caught her breath. + +"He'll call it a 'wild flight in angels'!" he said. + +The word made her put a laughing and protesting hand (which he kissed) +over his lips. Then she said that she remembered Mr. Houghton: "I met +him a long time ago; when--when you were a little boy." + +"And yet here you are, 'Mrs. Maurice Curtis!' Isn't it supreme?" +he demanded. The moment was so beyond words that it made him +sophomoric--which was appropriate enough, even though his freshman year +had been halted by those examinations, which had so "jarred" his +guardian. "I'll be twenty in September," he said. Evidently the thought +of his increasing years gave him pleasure. That Eleanor's years were +also increasing did not occur to him; and no wonder, for, compared to +people like Mr. and Mrs. Houghton, Eleanor was young enough!--only +thirty-nine. It was back in the 'nineties that she had met her husband's +guardian, who, in those days, had been the owner of a cotton mill in +Mercer, but who now, instead of making money, cultivated potatoes (and +tried to paint). Eleanor knew the Houghtons when they were Mercer mill +folk, and, as she said, this charming youngster--living then in +Philadelphia--had been "a little boy"; now, here he was, her husband for +"fifty-four minutes." And she was almost forty, and he was nineteen. +That Henry Houghton, up on his mountain farm, pottering about in his +big, dusty studio, and delving among his potatoes, would whistle, was to +be expected. + +"But who cares?" Maurice said. "It isn't his funeral." + +"He'll think it's yours," she retorted, with a little laugh. She was not +much given to laughter. Her life had been singularly monotonous and, +having seen very little of the world, she had that self-distrust which +is afraid to laugh unless other people are laughing, too. She taught +singing at Fern Hill, a private school in Mercer's suburbs. She did not +care for the older pupils, but she was devoted to the very little girls. +She played wonderfully on the piano, and suffered from indigestion; her +face was at times almost beautiful; she had a round, full chin, and a +lovely red lower lip; her forehead was very white, with soft, dark hair +rippling away from it. Certainly, she had moments of beauty. She talked +very little; perhaps because she hadn't the chance to talk--living, as +she did, with an aunt who monopolized the conversation. She had no close +friends;--her shyness was so often mistaken for hauteur, that she did +not inspire friendship in women of her own age, and Mrs. Newbolt's +elderly acquaintances were merely condescending to her, and gave her +good advice; so it was a negative sort of life. Indeed, her sky terrier, +Bingo, and her laundress, Mrs. O'Brien, to whose crippled baby grandson +she was endlessly kind, knew her better than any of the people among +whom she lived. When Maurice Curtis, cramming in Mercer because Destiny +had broken his tutor's leg there, and presenting (with the bored +reluctance of a boy) a letter of introduction from his guardian to Mrs. +Newbolt--when Maurice met Mrs. Newbolt's niece, something happened. +Perhaps because he felt her starved longing for personal happiness, or +perhaps her obvious pleasure in listening, silently, to his eager talk, +touched his young vanity; whatever the reason was, the boy was +fascinated by her. He had ("cussing," as he had expressed it to himself) +accepted an invitation to dine with the "ancient dame" (again his +phrase!)--and behold the reward of merit:--the niece!--a gentle, +handsome woman, whose age never struck him, probably because her mind +was as immature as his own. Before dinner was over Eleanor's +silence--silence is very moving to youth, for who knows what it +hides?--and her deep, still eyes, lured him like a mystery. Then, after +dinner ("a darned good dinner," Maurice had conceded to himself) the +calm niece sang, and instantly he knew that it was Beauty which hid in +silence--and he was in love with her! He had dined with her on Tuesday, +called on Wednesday, proposed on Friday;--it was all quite like Solomon +Grundy! except that, although she had fallen in love with him almost as +instantly as he had fallen in love with her, she had, over and over +again, refused him. During the period of her refusals the boy's love +glowed like a furnace; it brought both power and maturity into his +fresh, ardent, sensitive face. He threw every thought to the +winds--except the thought of rescuing his princess from Mrs. Newbolt's +imprisoning bric-a-brąc. As for his "cramming" the tutor into whose +hands Mr. Houghton had committed his ward's very defective trigonometry +and economics, Mr. Bradley, held in Mercer because of an annoying +accident, said to himself that his intentions were honest, but if Curtis +didn't turn up for three days running, he would utilize the time his +pupil was paying for by writing a paper on "The Fourth Dimension." + +Maurice was in some new dimension himself! Except "old Brad," he knew +almost no one in Mercer, so he had no confidant; and because his +passion was, perforce, inarticulate, his candid forehead gathered +wrinkles of positive suffering, which made him look as old as Eleanor, +who, dazed by the first very exciting thing that had ever happened to +her,--the experience of being adored (and adored by a boy, which is a +heady thing to a woman of her age!)--Eleanor was saying to herself a +dozen times a day: "I _mustn't_ say 'yes'! Oh, what _shall_ I do?" Then +suddenly there came a day when the rush of his passion decided what she +would do.... + +Her aunt had announced that she was going to Europe. "I'm goin' to take +you," Mrs. Newbolt said. "_I_ don't know what would become of you if I +left you alone! You are about as capable as a baby. That was a great +phrase of your dear uncle Thomas's--'capable as a baby,' I'm perfectly +sure the parlor ceilin' has got to be tinted this spring. When does your +school close? We'll go the minute it closes. You can board Bingo with +Mrs. O'Brien." + +Eleanor, deeply hurt, was tempted to retort with the announcement that +she needn't be "left alone"; she might get married! But she was silent; +she never knew what to say when assailed by the older woman's tongue. +She just wrote Maurice, helplessly, that she was going abroad. + +He was panic-stricken. Going abroad? Uncle Henry's ancient dame was a +she-devil, to carry her off! Then, in the midst of his anger, he +recognized his opportunity: "The hell-cat has done me a good turn, I do +believe! I'll get her! Bless the woman! I'll pay her passage myself, if +she'll only go and never come back!" + +It was on the heels of Mrs. Newbolt's candor about Eleanor's +"capableness" that he swept her resistance away. "You've _got_ to marry +me," he told her; "that's all there is to it." He put his hand in his +pocket and pulled out a marriage license. "I'll call for you to-morrow +at ten; we'll go to the mayor's office. I've got it all fixed up. So, +you see there's no getting out of it." + +"But," she protested, dazzled by the sheer, beautiful, impertinence of +it, "Maurice, I can't--I won't--I--" + +"You _will_," he said. "To-morrow's Saturday," he added, practically, +"and there's no school, so you're free." He rose.... "Better leave a +letter for your aunt. I'll be here at five minutes to ten. Be ready!" He +paused and looked hard at her; caught her roughly in his arms, kissed +her on her mouth, and walked out of the room. + +The mere violence of it lifted her into the Great Adventure! When he +commanded, "Be ready!" she, with a gasp, said, "Yes." + +Well; they had gone to the mayor's office, and been married; then they +had got on a car and ridden through Mercer's dingy outskirts to the end +of the route in Medfield, where, beyond suburban uglinesses, there were +glimpses of green fields. + +Once as the car rushed along, screeching around curves and banging over +switches, Eleanor said, "I've come out here four times a week for four +years, to Fern Hill." + +And Maurice said: "Well, _that's_ over! No more school-teaching for +you!" + +She smiled, then sighed. "I'll miss my little people," she said. + +But except for that they were silent. When they left the car, he led the +way across a meadow to the bank of the river; there they sat down under +the locust, and he kissed her, quietly; then, for a while, still dumb +with the wonder of themselves, they watched the sky, and the sailing +white clouds, and the river--flowing--flowing; and each other. + +"Fifty-four minutes," he had said.... + +So they sat there and planned for the endless future--the "fifty-four +years." + +"When we have our golden wedding," he said, "we shall come back here, +and sit under this tree--" He paused; he would be--let's see: nineteen, +plus fifty, makes sixty-nine. He did not go farther with his mental +arithmetic, and say thirty-nine plus fifty; he was thinking only of +himself, not of her. In fifty years he would be, he told himself, an old +man. + +And what would happen in all these fifty golden years? "You know, long +before that time, perhaps it won't be--just us?" he said. + +The color leaped to her face; she nodded, finding no words in which to +expand that joyous "perhaps," which touched the quick in her. Instantly +that sum in addition which he had not essayed in his own mind, became +unimportant in hers. What difference did the twenty severing years make, +after all? Her heart rose with a bound--she had a quick vision of a +little head against her bosom! But she could not put it into words. She +only challenged, him: + +"I am not clever like you. Do you think you can love a stupid person for +fifty years?" + +"For a thousand years!--but you're not stupid." + +She looked doubtful; then went on confessing: "Auntie says I'm a dummy, +because I don't talk very much. And I'm awfully timid. And she says I'm +jealous." + +"You don't talk because you're always thinking; that's one of the most +fascinating things about you, Eleanor,--you keep me wondering what on +earth you're thinking about. It's the mystery of you that gets me! And +if you're 'timid'--well, so long as you're not afraid of me, the more +scared you are, the better I like it. A man," said Maurice, "likes to +feel that he protects his--his wife." He paused and repeated the glowing +word ... "his wife!" For a moment he could not go on with their careless +talk; then he was practical again. That word "protect" was too robust +for sentimentality. "As for being jealous, that, about me, is a joke! +And if you were, it would only mean that you loved me--so I would be +flattered. I hope you'll be jealous! Eleanor, _promise_ me you'll be +jealous?" They both laughed; then he said: "I've made up my mind to one +thing. I won't go back to college." + +"Oh, Maurice!" + +He was very matter of fact. "I'm a married man; I'm going to support my +wife!" He ran his fingers through his thick blond hair in ridiculous +pantomime of terrified responsibility. "Yes, sir! I'm out for dollars. +Well, I'm glad I haven't any near relations to get on their ear, and try +and mind my business for me. Of course," he ruminated, "Bradley will +kick like a steer, when I tell him he's bounced! But that will be on +account of money. Oh, I'll pay him, all same," he said, largely. "Yes; +I'm going to get a job." His face sobered into serious happiness. "My +allowance won't provide bones for Bingo! So it's business for me." + +She looked a little frightened. "Oh, have I made you go to work?" She +had never asked him about money; she had plunged into matrimony without +the slightest knowledge of his income. + +"I'll chuck Bradley, and I'll chuck college," he announced, "I've got +to! Of course, ultimately, I'll have plenty of money. Mr. Houghton has +dry-nursed what father left me, and he has done mighty well with it; but +I can't touch it till I'm twenty-five--worse luck! Father had theories +about a fellow being kept down to brass tacks and earning his living, +before he inherited money another man had earned--that's the way he put +it. Queer idea. So, I must get a job. Uncle Henry'll help me. You may +bet on it that Mrs. Maurice Curtis shall not wash dishes, nor yet feed +the swine, but live on strawberries, sugar, and--What's the rest of it?" + +"I have a little money of my own," she said; "six hundred a year." + +"It will pay for your hairpins," he said, and put out his hand and +touched her hair--black, and very soft and wavy "but the strawberries +I shall provide." + +"I never thought about money," she confessed. + +"Of course not! Angels don't think about money." + + * * * * * + +"So they were married"; and in the meadow, fifty-four +minutes later, the sun and wind and moving shadows, and the +river--flowing--flowing--heralded the golden years, and ended +the saying: "_lived happy ever afterward_." + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +It was three days after the young husband, lying in the grass, his cheek +on his wife's hand, had made his careless prophecy about "whistling," +that Henry Houghton, jogging along in the sunshine toward Grafton for +the morning mail, slapped a rein down on Lion's fat back, and whistled, +placidly enough.... (But that was before he reached the post office.) +His wife, whose sweet and rosy bulk took up most of the space on the +seat, listened, smiling with content. When he was placid, she was +placid; when he wasn't, which happened now and then, she was an alertly +reasonable woman, defending him from himself, and wrenching from his +hand, with ironic gayety, or rallying seriousness, the dagger of his +discontent with what he called his "failure" in life--which was what +most people called his success--a business career, chosen because the +support of several inescapable blood relations was not compatible with +his own profession of painting. All his training and hope had been +centered upon art. The fact that, after renouncing it, an admirably +managed cotton mill provided bread and butter for sickly sisters and +wasteful brothers, to say nothing of his own modest prosperity, never +made up to him for the career of a struggling and probably unsuccessful +artist--which he might have had. He ran his cotton mill, and supported +all the family undesirables until, gradually, death and marriage took +the various millstones from around his neck; then he retired, as the +saying is--although it was really setting sail again for life--to his +studio (with a farmhouse attached) in the mountains. There had been a +year of passionate work and expectation--but his pictures were dead. "I +sold my birthright for a bale of cotton," he said, briefly. + +But he still stayed on the farm, and dreamed in his studio and tried +to teach his little, inartistic Edith to draw, and mourned. As for +business, he said, "Go to the devil!"--except as he looked after Maurice +Curtis's affairs; this because the boy's father had been his friend. But +it was the consciousness of the bartered birthright and the dead +pictures in his studio which kept him from "whistling" very often. +However, on this June morning, plodding along between blossoming fields, +climbing wooded hills, and clattering through dusky covered bridges, he +was not thinking of his pictures; so, naturally enough, he whistled; a +very different whistling from that which Maurice, lying in the grass +beside his wife of fifty-four minutes, had foreseen for him--when the +mail should be distributed! Once, just from sheer content, he stopped +his: + +"Did you ever ever ever + In your life life life +See the devil devil devil + Or his wife wife wife--" + +and turned and looked at his Mary. + +"Nice day, Kit?" he said; and she said, "Lovely!" Then she brushed her +elderly rosy cheek against his shabby coat and kissed it. They had been +married for thirty years, and she had held up his hands as he placed +upon the altar of a repugnant duty, the offering of a great +renunciation. She had hoped that the birth of their last, and only +living, child, Edith, would reconcile him to the material results of the +renunciation; but he was as indifferent to money for his girl as he had +been for himself.... So there they were, now, living rather carefully, +in an old stone farmhouse on one of the green foothills of the Allegheny +Mountains. The thing that came nearest to soothing the bruises on his +mind was the possibilities he saw in Maurice. + +"The inconsequence of the scamp amounts to genius!" he used to tell his +Mary with admiring displeasure at one or another of Maurice's scrapes. +"Heaven knows what he'll do before he gets to the top of Fool Hill, and +begins to run on the State Road! Look at this mid-year performance. He +ought to be kicked for flunking. He simply dropped everything except his +music! Apparently he _can't_ study. Even spelling is a matter of private +judgment with Maurice! Oh, of course, I know I ought to have scalped +him; his father would have scalped him. But somehow the scoundrel gets +round me! I suppose its because, though he is provoking, he is never +irritating. And he's as much of a fool as I was at his age! That keeps +me fair to him. Well, he has _stuff_ in him, that boy. He's as truthful +as Edith; an appalling tribute, I know--but you like it in a cub. And +there's no flapdoodle about him; and he never cried baby in his life. +And he has imagination and music and poetry! Edith is a nice little clod +compared to him." + +The affection of these two people for Maurice could hardly have been +greater if he had been their son. "Mother loves Maurice better 'an she +loves me," Edith used to reflect; "I guess it's because he never gets +muddy the way I do, and tracks dirt into the house. He wipes his feet." + +"What do you suppose," Mrs. Houghton said, remembering this summing up +of things, "Edith told me this morning that the reason I loved Maurice +more than I loved her--" + +"What!" + +"Yes; isn't she funny?--was because he 'wiped his feet when he came into +the house.'" + +Edith's father stopped whistling, and smiled: "That child is as +practical as a shuttle; but she hasn't a mean streak in her!" he said, +with satisfaction, and began to whistle again. "Nice girl," he said, +after a while; "but the most rationalizing youngster! I hope she'll get +foolish before she falls in love. Mary, one of these days, when she +grows up, perhaps she and Maurice--?" + +"Matchmaker!" she said, horrified; then objected: "Can't she +rationalize and fall in love too? I'm rather given to reason myself, +Henry." + +"Yes, honey; you are _now_; but you were as sweet a fool as anybody when +you fell in love, thank God." She laughed, and he said, resignedly, "I +suppose you'll have an hour's shopping to do? You have only one of the +vices of your sex, Mary, you have the 'shopping mind.' However, with all +thy faults I love thee still.... We'll go to the post office first; then +I can read my letters while you are colloguing with the storekeepers." + +Mrs. Houghton, looking at her list, agreed, and when he got out for the +mail she was still checking off people and purchases; it was only when +she had added one or two more errands that she suddenly awoke to the +fact that he was very slow in coming back with the letters. "Stupid!" +she thought, "opening your mail in the post office, instead of keeping +it to read while I'm shopping!"--but even as she reproached him, he came +out and climbed into the buggy, in very evident perturbation. + +"Where do you want to go?" he said; she, asking no questions (marvelous +woman!) told him. He said "G'tap!" angrily; Lion backed, and the wheel +screeched against the curb. "Oh, _g'on_!" he said. Lion switched his +tail, caught a rein under it, and trotted off. Mr. Houghton leaned over +the dashboard, swore softly, and gave the horse a slap with the rescued +rein. But the outburst loosened the dumb distress that had settled upon +him in the post office; he gave a despairing grunt: + +"Well! Maurice has come the final cropper." + +"Smith's next, dear," she said; "What is it, Henry?" + +"He's gone on the rocks (druggist Smith, or fish Smith?)" + +"Druggist. Has Maurice been drinking?" She could not keep the anxiety +out of her voice. + +"Drinking? He could be as drunk as a lord and I wouldn't--Whoa, +Lion!... Get me some shaving soap, Kit!" he called after her, as she +went into the shop. + +When she came back with her packages and got into the buggy, she said, +quietly, "Tell me, Henry." + +"He has simply done what I put him in the way of doing when I gave him a +letter of introduction to that Mrs. Newbolt, in Mercer." + +"Newbolt? I don't remember--" + +"Yes, you do. Pop eyes. Fat. Talked every minute, and everything she +said a _nonsequitur_. I used to wonder why her husband didn't choke her. +He was on our board. Died the year we came up here. Talked to death, +probably." + +"Oh yes. I remember her. Well?" + +"I thought she might make things pleasant for Maurice while he was +cramming. He doesn't know a soul in Mercer, and Bradley's game leg +wouldn't help out with sociability. So I gave him letters to two or +three people. Mrs. Newbolt was one of them. I hated her, because she +dropped her g's; but she had good food, and I thought she'd ask him +to dinner once in a while." + +"Well?" + +"_She did._ And he's married her niece." + +"What! Without your consent! I'm shocked that Mrs. Newbolt permitted--" + +"Probably her permission wasn't asked, any more than mine." + +"You mean an elopement? How outrageous in Maurice!" Mrs. Houghton said. + +Her husband agreed. "Abominable! Mary, do you mind if I smoke?" + +"Very much; but you'll do it all the same. I suppose the girl's a mere +child?" Then she quailed. "Henry!--she's respectable, isn't she? I +couldn't bear it, if--if she was some--dreadful person." + +He sheltered a sputtering match in his curving hand and lighted a cigar; +then he said, "Oh, I suppose she's respectable enough; but she's +certainly 'dreadful.' He says she's a music teacher. Probably caught him +that way. Music would lead Maurice by the nose. Confound that boy! And +his father trusted me." His face twitched with distress. "As for being a +'mere child,'--there; read his letter." + +She took it, fumbling about for her spectacles; halfway through, she +gave an exclamation of dismay. "'A few years older'?--she must be +_twenty_ years older!" + +"Good heavens, Mary!" + +"Well, perhaps not quite twenty, but--" + +Henry Houghton groaned. "I'll tell Bradley my opinion of him as a +coach." + +"My dear, Mr. Bradley couldn't have prevented it.... Yes; I remember her +perfectly. She came to tea with Mrs. Newbolt several times. Rather a +temperamental person, I thought." + +"'Temperamental'? May the Lord have mercy on him!" he said. "Yes, it +comes back to me. Dark eyes? Looked like one of Rossetti's women?" + +"Yes. Handsome, but a little stupid. She's proved _that_ by marrying +Maurice! Oh, what a fool!" Then she tried to console him: "But one of +the happiest marriages I ever knew, was between a man of thirty and a +much older woman." + +"But not between a boy of nineteen and a much older woman! The trouble +is not her age but his youth. Why didn't she adopt him?... I bet the +aunt's cussing, too." + +"Probably. Well, we've got to think what to do," Mary Houghton said. + +"Do? What do you mean? Get a divorce for him?" + +"He's just married; he doesn't want a divorce yet," she said, simply; +and her husband laughed, in spite of his consternation. + +"Oh, lord, I wish I was asleep! I've always been afraid he'd go +high-diddle-diddling off with some shady girl;--but I swear, that would +have been better than marrying his grandmother! Mary, what I can't +understand, is the woman. He's a child, almost; and vanity at having a +woman of forty fall in love with him explains him. And, besides, Maurice +is no Eurydice; music would lead him into hell, not out of it. It's the +other fool that puzzles me." + +His wife sighed; "If her mind keeps young, it won't matter so much about +her body." + +"My dear," he said, dryly, "human critters are human critters. In ten +years it will be an impossible situation." + +But again she contradicted him: "No! Unhappiness is possible; but _not_ +inevitable!" + +"Dear Goose, may a simple man ask how it is to be avoided?" + +"By unselfishness," she said; "no marriage ever went on the rocks where +both 'human critters' were unselfish! But I hope this poor, foolish +woman's mind will keep young. If it doesn't, well, Maurice will just +have to be tactful. If he is, it may not be so _very_ bad," she said, +with determined optimism. + +"Kit, when a man has to be 'tactful' with his wife, God help him!--or +a woman with her husband," he added in a sudden tender afterthought. +"We've never been 'tactful' with each other, Mary?" She smiled, and put +her cheek against his shoulder. "'Tactfulness' between a husband and +wife," said Henry Houghton, "is confession that their marriage is a +failure. You may tell 'em so, from me." + +"You may tell them yourself!" she retorted. "What are they going to live +on?" she pondered "Can his allowance be increased?" + +"It can't. You know his father's will. He won't get his money until he's +twenty-five." + +"He'll have to go to work," she said; "which means not going back to +college, I suppose?" + +"Yes," he said, grimly; "who would support his lady-love while he was in +college? And it means giving up his music," he added. + +"If he makes as much out of his renunciation as you have out of yours," +she said, calmly, "we may bless this poor woman yet." + +"Oh, you old humbug," he told her--but he smiled. + +Then she repeated to him an old, old formula for peace; "'Consider the +stars,' Henry, and young foolishness will seem very small. Maurice's +elopement won't upset the universe." + +They were both silent for a while; then Mary Houghton said, "I'll write +the invitation to them; but you must second it when you answer his +letter." + +"Invitation? What invitation?" + +"Why, to come and stay at Green Hill until you can find something for +him to do." + +"I'll be hanged if I invite her! I'll have nothing to do with her! +Maurice can come, of course; but he can't bring--" + +His wife laughed, and he, too, gave a reluctant chuckle. "I suppose I've +got to?" he groaned. + +"_Of course_, you've got to!" she said. + +The rest of the ride back to the old stone house among its great trees, +halfway up the mountain, was silent. Mrs. Houghton was thinking what +room she would give the bride and groom--for the little room Maurice had +had in all his vacations since he became her husband's ward was not +suitable. "Edith will have to let them have her room," she thought. She +knew she could count on Edith not to make a fuss. "It's such a comfort +that Edith has sense," she ruminated aloud. + +But her husband was silent; there was no more whistling for Henry +Houghton that day. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +Edith and her fourteen-year-old neighbor, Johnny Bennett, had climbed +into the old black-heart cherry tree--(Johnny always conceded that Edith +was a good climber--"for a girl.") But when they saw Lion, tugging up +the road, Edith, who was economical with social amenities, told her +guest to go home. "I don't want you any longer," she said; "father and +mother are coming!" And with that she rushed around to the stable door, +just in time to meet the returning travelers, and ask a dozen +questions--the first: + +"_Did_ you get a letter from Maurice?" + +But when her father threw the reins down on Lion's back, and said, +briefly, "Can't you unharness him yourself, Buster?" she stuck out her +tongue, opened her eyes wide, and said nothing except, "Yes, father." +Then she proceeded, with astonishing speed, to put Lion into his stall, +run the buggy into the carriage house, and slam the stable door, after +which she tore up to her mother's room. + +"Mother! Something has bothered father!" + +"Well, yes," Mrs. Houghton said; "a little. Maurice is married." + +Edith's lips fell apart; "Maurice? _Married_? Who to? Did she wear a +veil? I don't see why father minds." + +Mrs. Houghton, standing in front of her mirror, said, dryly: "There are +things more important than veils, when it comes to getting married. In +the first place, they eloped--" + +"Oh, how lovely! I am going to elope when I get married!" + +"I hope you won't have such bad taste. Of course they ought not to have +got married that way. But the thing that bothers your father, is that +the lady Maurice has married is--is older than he." + +"How much older?" Edith demanded; "a year?" + +"I don't just know. Probably twenty years older." + +Edith was silent, rapidly adding up nineteen and twenty; then she +gasped, "_Thirty-nine_!" + +"Well, about that; and father is sorry, because Maurice can't go back to +college. He will have to go into business." + +Edith saw no cause for regret in this. "Guess he's glad not to have to +learn things! But why weren't we invited to the wedding? I always meant +to be Maurice's bridesmaid." + +Mrs. Houghton said she didn't know. Edith was silent, for a whole +minute. Then she said, soberly: + +"I suppose father's sorry 'cause she'll die so soon, she's so old? And +then Maurice will feel awfully. Poor Maurice! Well, I'll live with him, +and comfort him." + +"My dear, I'm fifty!" Mrs. Houghton said, much amused. + +"Oh, well, _you_--" Edith demurred; "that's different. You're my mother, +and you--" She paused; "I never thought of you being old, or dying, +_ever_. And yet I suppose you are rather old?" She pondered. "I suppose +some day you'll die? Mother!--promise me you won't!" she said, +quaveringly. + +"Edith, don't be a goose!" Mrs. Houghton said, laughing--but she turned +and kissed the rosy, anxious face, "Maurice's wife isn't old at all. +She's quite young. It's only that he is so much younger." + +Edith lapsed into silence. She was very quiet for the rest of that +summer morning. Just before dinner she went across the west pasture to +Doctor Bennett's house, and, hailing Johnny, told him the news. His +indifference--for he only looked at her, with his mild, nearsighted +brown eyes, and said, "Huh?"--irritated her so that she would not +confide her dismay at Maurice's approaching widowerhood, but ran home +to a sympathetic kitchen: "Katy! Maurice got eloped!" + +Katy was much more satisfactory than Johnny; she said, "God save us! +Mr. Maurice eloped? Who with, then? Well, well!" But Edith was still +abstracted. Time, as related to life, had acquired significance. At +dinner she regarded her father with troubled eyes. He, too, was old, +like Maurice's wife. He, too, as well as the bride, and her mother, +would die, sometime. And she and Maurice would have such awful +grief!... Something tightened in her throat; "Please 'scuse me," she +said, in a muffled voice; and, slipping out of her chair, made a dash +for the back door, and ran as hard as she could to her chicken house. +The little place was hot, and smelled of feathers; through the windows, +cobwebbed and dusty, the sunshine fell dimly on the hard earth floor, and +on an empty plate or two and a rusty, overturned tin pan. Here, sitting +on a convenient box, she could think things out undisturbed: Maurice, and +his lovely, dying Bride; herself, orphaned and alone; Johnny Bennett, +indifferent to all this oncoming grief! Probably Maurice was worrying +about it all the time! How long would the Bride live? Suddenly she +remembered her mother's age, and had a revulsion of hope for Maurice. +Perhaps his wife would live to be as old as mother? "Why, I hadn't +thought of that! Well, then, she will live--let's see: thirty-nine from +fifty leaves eleven--yes; the Bride will live eleven years!" Why, that +wasn't so terrible, after all. "That's as long as I have been alive!" +Obviously it would not be necessary to take care of Maurice for quite a +good while. "I guess," she reflected, "I'll have some children by that +time. And maybe I'll be married, too, for Maurice won't need me for +eleven years. But I don't know what I'd do with my husband then?" She +frowned; a husband would be bothering, if she had to go and live with +Maurice. "Oh, well, probably my husband will be so old, he'll die about +the time Maurice's wife does." She had meant to marry Johnny. "But I +won't. He's too young. He's only three years older 'an me. He might live +too long. I must get an old husband. I'll tell Johnny about it +to-morrow. I'll wear mourning," she thought; "a long veil! It's so +interesting. But not over my face--you can't see through it, and it +isn't sense not to be able to see." (The test Edith applied to conduct +was always, "Is it sense?") "Of course I shall feel badly about my +husband; but I've got to take care of Maurice.... Yes; I must get an old +one," she thought. "I must get one as old as the Bride. If they'd only +waited, the Bride could have married my husband!" + +But this line of thought was too complicated; and, besides, she had +so entirely cheered up that she practically forgot death. She began to +count how much money her mother owed her for eggs--which reminded her to +look into the nests; and when, in spite of a clucking remonstrance, she +put her hand under a feathery breast and touched the hot smoothness of a +new-laid egg, she felt perfectly happy. "I guess I'll go and get some +floating-island," she thought. "Oh, I _hope_ they haven't eaten it all +up!" + +With the egg in her hand, she rushed back to the dining room, and was +reassured by the sight of the big glass dish, still all creamy yellow +and fluffy white. + +"Edith," Mrs. Houghton said, "you won't mind letting Maurice and Eleanor +have your room, will you, dear?" + +"Is her name 'Eleanor'? I think it's a perfectly beautiful name! No, +I'd love to give her my room! Mother, she won't be as old as you are for +eleven years, and that's as long as I have been alive. So I won't worry +about Maurice just yet. Mother, may I have two helpings? When are they +coming?" + +"They haven't been asked yet," her father said, grimly. "I'm not going +to concoct a letter, Mary, for a week. Let 'em worry! Maurice, confound +him!--has never worried in his life. Everything rolls off him like water +off a duck's back. It will do him good to chew nails for a while. I wish +I was asleep!" + +"Why, father!" Edith said, aghast; "I don't believe you _want_ the +Bride!" + +"You're a very intelligent young person," her father said, scratching +a match under the table and lighting a cigar. + +"But, my dear," his wife said, "has it occurred to you that it may be +as unpleasant for the Bride to come, as for you to have her? _Henry!_ +That's the third since breakfast!" + +"Wrong for once, Mrs. Houghton. It's the fourth." + +"_I_ want the Bride," said Edith. + +Her mother laughed. "Come along, honey," she said, putting her hand on +her husband's shoulder, "and tell me what to say to her." + +"Say she's a harpy, and tell her to go to the--" + +"Henry!" + +"My dear, like Mr. F.'s aunt, 'I hate a fool.' Oh, I'll tell you what +to say: Say, 'Mr. F.'s aunt will send her a wedding present.' That's +friendly, isn't it?" + +"Better not be too literary in public," his wife cautioned him, with a +significant glance at Edith, who was all ears. + +When, laughing, they left the table, their daughter scraping her plate, +pondered thus: "I suppose Mr. F. is the Bride's father. I wonder what +present his aunt will give her? I wonder what 'F' stands for--Frost? +Fuller? Father and mother don't want the Bride to come; and mother +thinks the Bride don't want to come. So why should they ask her to come? +And why should she come? I wouldn't," Edith said; "but I hope she will, +for I love her! And oh, I _hope_ she'll bring her harp! I've never seen +a harpy. But people are funny," Edith summed it up; "inviting people and +not wanting 'em; and visiting 'em and not wanting to. It ain't sense," +said Edith. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +In spite of his declaration of indifference to the feelings of his +guardian, the married boy was rapidly acquiring that capacity for +"worry" which Mr. Houghton desired to develop in him. _What would the +mail bring him from Green Hill?_ It brought nothing for a week--a week +in which he experienced certain bad moments which encouraged "worry" to +a degree that made his face distinctly older than on that morning under +the locust tree, when he had been married for fifty-four minutes. The +first of these educating moments came on Monday, when he went to see his +tutor, to say that he was--well, he was going to stop grinding. + +"What?" said Mr. Bradley, puzzled. + +"I'm going to chuck college, sir," Maurice said, and smiled broadly, +with the rollicking certainty of sympathy that a puppy shows when +approaching an elderly mastiff. + +"Chuck college! What's the matter?" the mastiff said, putting +a protecting hand over his helpless leg, for Maurice's +restlessness--tramping about, his hands in his pockets--was a menace +to the plastered member. + +"I'm going into business," the youngster said; "I--Well; I've got +married, and--" + +"_What!_" + +"--so, of course, I've got to go to work." + +"See here, what are you talking about?" + +The uneasy color sprang into Maurice's face, he stood still, and the +grin disappeared. When he said explicitly what he was "talking about," +Mr. Bradley's angry consternation was like the unexpected snap of the +old dog; it made Eleanor's husband feel like the puppy. "I ought to have +rounded him up," Mr. Bradley was saying to himself; "Houghton will hold +me responsible!" And even while making unpleasant remarks to the +bridegroom, he was composing, in his mind, a letter to Mr. Houghton +about the helplessness incidental to a broken leg, which accounted for +his failure in "rounding up." "_I_ couldn't get on to his trail!" he was +exonerating himself. + +When Maurice retreated, looking like a schoolboy, it took him +a perceptible time to regain his sense of age and pride and +responsibility. He rushed back to the hotel--where he had plunged into +the extravagance of the "bridal suite,"--to pour out his hurt feelings +to Eleanor, and while she looked at him in one of her lovely silences he +railed at Bradley, and said the trouble with him was that he was sore +about money! "He needn't worry! I'll pay him," Maurice said, largely. +And then forgot Bradley in the rapture of kissing Eleanor's hand. "As +if we cared for his opinion!" he said. + +"We don't care!" she said, joyously. Her misgivings had vanished like +dew in the hot sun. Old Mrs. O'Brien had done her part in dissipating +them. While Maurice was bearding his tutor, Eleanor had gone across +town to her laundress's, to ask if Mrs. O'Brien would take Bingo as a +boarder--. "I can't have him at the hotel," she explained, and then +told the great news:--"I'm going to live there, because I--I'm +married,"--upon which she was kissed, and blessed, and wept over! "The +gentleman is a little younger than I am," she confessed, smiling; and +Mrs. O'Brien said: + +"An' what difference does that make? He'll only be lovin' ye hotter than +an old fellow with the life all gone out o' him!" + +Eleanor said, laughing, "Yes, that's true!" and cuddled the baby +grandson's head against her breast. + +"You'll be happy as a queen!" said Mrs. O'Brien; and "in a year from +now you'll have something better to take care of than Bingo--_he'll_ be +jealous!" + +But she hardly heeded Mrs. O'Brien and her joyful prophecy of Bingo's +approaching jealousy; having taken the dive, she had risen into the +light and air, and now she forgot the questioning depths! She was on the +crest of contented achievement. She even laughed to think that she had +ever hesitated about marrying Maurice. Absurd! As if the few years +between them were of the slightest consequence! Mrs. O'Brien was +right.... So she smoothed over Maurice's first bad moment with an +indifference as to Mr. Bradley's opinion which was most reassuring to +him. (Yet once in a while she thought of Mr. Houghton, and bit her lip.) + +The next bad moment neither she nor Maurice could dismiss so easily; it +came in the interview with her astounded aunt, whose chief concern (when +she read the letter which Eleanor had left on her pincushion) was lest +the Houghtons would think she had inveigled the boy into marrying her +niece. To prove that she had not, Mrs. Newbolt told the bride and groom +that she would have nothing more to do with Eleanor! It was when the +fifty-four minutes had lengthened into three days that they had gone, +after supper, to see her. Eleanor, supremely satisfied, with no doubts, +now about the wisdom of what she had done, was nervous only as to the +effect of her aunt's temper upon Maurice; and he, full of a bravado of +indifference which confessed the nervousness it denied, was anxious only +as to the effect of the inevitable reproaches upon Eleanor. Their five +horrid minutes of waiting in the parlor for Mrs. Newbolt's ponderous +step on the stairs, was broken by Bingo's dashing, with ear-piercing +barks, into the room: Eleanor took him on her knee, and Maurice, giving +the little black nose a kindly squeeze, looked around in pantomimic +horror of the obese upholstery, and Rogers groups on the tops of +bookcases full of expensively bound and unread classics. + +"How have you stood it?" he said to his wife; adding, under his breath, +"If she's nasty to you, I'll wring her neck!" + +She was very nasty. "I'm not a party to it," Mrs. Newbolt said; she sat, +panting, on a deeply cushioned sofa, and her wheezy voice came through +quivering double chins; her protruding pale eyes snapped with anger. "I +shall tell you exactly what I think of you, Eleanor, for, as my dear +mother used to say, if I have a virtue it is candor; I think you are a +puffect fool. As for Mr. Curtis, I no more thought of protectin' him +than I would think of protectin' a baby in a perambulator from its +nursemaid! Bingo was sick at his stomach this mornin'. You've ruined +the boy's life." Eleanor cringed, but Maurice was quite steady: + +"We will not discuss it, if you please. I will merely say that I dragged +Eleanor into it; I _made_ her marry me. She refused me repeatedly. Come, +Eleanor." + +He rose, but Mrs. Newbolt, getting heavily on to her small feet, and +talking all the time, walked over to the doorway and blocked their +retreat. "You needn't think I'll do anything for you!" she said to her +niece; "I shall write to Mr. Houghton and tell him so. I shall tell him +he isn't any more disgusted with this business than I am. And you can +take Bingo with you!" + +"I came to get him," Eleanor said, faintly. + +"Come, Eleanor," Maurice said; and Mrs. Newbolt, puffing and talking, +had to make way for them. As they went out of the door she called, +angrily: + +"Here! Stop! I want to give Bingo a chocolate drop!" + +They didn't stop. In the street on the way to Bingo's new home, Eleanor, +holding her little dog in her arms, was blind with tears, but Maurice +effervesced into extravagant ridicule. His opinion of Mrs. Newbolt, her +parlor, her ponderosity, and her missing g's, exhausted his vocabulary +of opprobrious adjectives; but Eleanor was silent, just putting up a +furtive handkerchief to wipe her eyes. It was dark, and he drew her hand +through his arm and patted it. + +"Don't worry, Star. Uncle Henry is white! She can write to him all she +wants to! I'm betting that we'll get an invitation to come right up to +Green Hill." + +She said nothing, but he knew she was trembling. As they entered Mrs. +O'Brien's alley, they paused where it was dark enough, halfway between +gaslights, for a man to put his arm around his wife's waist and kiss +her. (Bingo growled.) + +"Eleanor! I've a great mind to go back to that hell-cat, and tell her +what I think of her!" + +"No. Very likely she's right. I--I have injured you. Oh, Maurice, if I +_have_--" + +"You'd have injured me a damn sight more if you hadn't married me!" he +said. + +But for the moment her certainty that her marriage was a glorious and +perfect thing, collapsed; her voice was a broken whisper: + +"If I've spoiled your life--she says I have;--I'll ... kill myself, +Maurice." She spoke with a sort of heavy calmness, that made a small, +cold thrill run down his back; he burst into passionate protest: + +"All I am, or ever can be, will be because you love me! Darling, when +you say things like--like what you said, I feel as if you didn't love +me--" + +Of course the reproach tautened her courage; "I do! I do! But--" + +"Then never say such a wicked, cruel thing again!" + +It was when Bingo had been left with Mrs. O'Brien that, on their way +back to the hotel, Maurice, in a burst of enthusiasm, invited his third +bad moment: "I am going to have a rattling old dinner party to celebrate +your escape from the hag! How about Saturday night?" + +She protested that he was awfully extravagant; but she cheered up. After +all, what difference did it make what a person like Auntie thought! "But +who will you ask?" she said. "I suppose you don't know any men here? And +I don't, either." + +He admitted that he had only two or three acquaintances in Mercer--"but +I have a lot in Philadelphia. You shan't live on a desert island, +Nelly!" + +"Ah, but I'd like to--_with you_! I don't want anyone but you, in the +world," she said, softly. + +He thrilled at the wonder of that: she would be contented, _with +him_,--on a desert island! Oh, if he could only always be enough for +her! He vowed to himself, in sudden boyish solemnity, that he _would_ +always be enough for her. Aloud, he said he thought he could scratch up +two or three fellows. + +Then Eleanor's apprehension spoke: "What _will_ Mr. Houghton say?" + +"Oh, he's all right," Maurice said, resolutely hiding his own +apprehension. He could hide it, but he could not forget it. Even while +arranging for his dinner party, and plunging into the expense of a +private dining room, he was thinking, of his guardian; "Will he kick?" +Aloud he said, "I've asked three fellows, and you ask three girls." + +"I don't know many girls," she said, anxiously. + +"How about that girl you spoke to on the street yesterday? (If Uncle +Henry could only see her, he'd be crazy about her!)" + +"Rose Ellis? Well, yes; but she's rather young." + +"Oh, that's all right," Maurice assured her. "(I wish I hadn't told him +she is older than I am. Trouble with me is, I always plunk out the +truth!) The fellows like 'em young," he said. Then he told her who the +fellows were: "I don't know 'em very well; they're just boys; not in +college. Younger than I am, except Tom Morton. Mort's twenty, and the +brainiest man I know. And Hastings has a bag of jokes--well, not just +for ladies," said Maurice, grinning, "and you'll like Dave Brown. You +rake in three girls. We'll have a stunning spread, and then go to the +theater." He caught her in his arms and romped around the room with her, +then dropped her into a chair, and watched her wiping away tears of +helpless laughter. + +"Yes--I'll rake in the girls!" she gasped. + +She wasn't very successful in her invitations. "I asked Rose, but I +had to ask her mother, too," she said; "and one of the teachers at the +Medfield school." + +Maurice looked doubtful. Rose was all right; but the other two? "Aren't +they somewhat faded flowers?" + +"They're about my age," Eleanor teased him. As for Maurice, he thought +that it didn't really matter about the ladies, faded or not; they were +Eleanor's end of the shindy. "Spring chickens are Mort's meat," he +said... + +The three rather recent acquaintances who were Maurice's end of the +shindy, had all gaped, and then howled, when told that the dinner was +to celebrate his marriage. "I got spliced kind of in a hurry," he +explained; "so I couldn't have any bachelor blow-out; but my--my--my +wife, Mrs. Curtis, I mean--and I, thought we'd have a spree, to show +I am an old married man." + +The fellows, after the first amazement, fell on him with all kinds of +ragging: Who was she? Was she out of baby clothes? Would she come in a +perambulator? + +"Shut up!" said the bridegroom, hilariously. He went home to Eleanor +tingling with pride. "I want you to be perfectly stunning, Star! Of +course you always are; but rig up in your best duds! I'm going to make +those fellows cross-eyed with envy. I wonder if you could sing, just +once, after dinner? I want them to hear you! (Mr. Houghton will love her +voice!)" + +Eleanor--who had stopped counting the minutes of married life now, for, +this being the sixth day of bliss, the arithmetic was too much for +her--was as excited about the dinner as he was. Yet, like him, under the +excitement, was a little tremor: "They will be angry because--because we +eloped!" Any other reason for anger she would not formulate. Sometimes +her anxiety was audible: "Do you suppose Auntie has written to Mr. +Houghton?" And again: "What _will_ he say?" Maurice always replied, with +exuberant indifference, that he didn't know, and he didn't care! + +"_I_ care, if he is horrid to you!" Eleanor said "He'll probably say it +was wicked to elope?" + +Mr. Houghton continued to say nothing; and the "care" Maurice denied, +dogged all his busy interest in his dinner--for which he had made the +plans, as Eleanor, until the term ended, was obliged to go out to +Medfield to give her music lessons; besides, "planning" was not her +forte! But in the thrill of excitement about the dinner and in the +mounting adventure of being happy, she was able to forget her fear that +Mr. Houghton might be "horrid" to Maurice. If the Houghtons didn't like +an elopement, it would mean that they had no romance in them! She was +absorbed in her ardent innocent purpose of "impressing" Maurice's +friends, not from vanity, but because she wanted to please him. As she +dressed that evening, all her self-distrust vanished, and she smiled at +herself in the mirror for sheer delight, for his sake, in her dark, +shining eyes, and the red loveliness of her full lip. In this wholly new +experience of feeling, not only happy, but important,--she forgot Mrs. +Newbolt, sailing angrily for Europe that very day, and was not even +anxious about the Houghtons! After all, what difference did it make what +such people thought of elopements? "Fuddy-duddies!" she said to herself, +using Maurice's slang with an eager sense of being just as young as he +was. + +When the guests arrived and they all filed into the private and very +expensive dining room, Eleanor looked indeed quite "stunning"; her +shyness did not seem shyness, but only a sort of proud beauty of +silence, which might cover Heaven knows what deeps of passion and of +knowledge! Little Rose was glowing and simpering, and the two older +ladies were giving each other significant glances. Maurice's "fellows," +shepherded by their host, shambled speechlessly along in the background. +The instant that they saw the bride they had fallen into dumbness. Brown +said, under his breath to Hastings, "Gosh!" And Hastings gave Morton a +thrust in the ribs, which Morton's dignity refused to notice; later, +when he was at Eleanor's right, the flattery of her eagerly attentive +silence instantly won him. Maurice had so expatiated to her upon +Morton's brains, that she was really in awe of him--of which, of course, +Morton was quite aware! It was so exhilarating to his twenty years that +he gave his host a look of admiring congratulation--and Maurice's pride +rose high!--then fell; for, somehow, his dinner wouldn't "go"! He +watched the younger men turn frankly rude shoulders to the older ladies, +who did their best to be agreeable. He caught stray words: Eleanor's +efforts to talk as Rose talked--Rose's dog was "perfectly sweet," but +"simply awful"; then a dog story; "wasn't that _killing_?" And Eleanor: +she once had a cat--"perfectly frightfully cunning!" said Eleanor, +stumbling among the adverbs of adolescence. + +At Rose's story the young men roared, but Eleanor's cat awoke no +interest. Then one of the "faded flowers" spoke to Brown, who said, +vaguely, "What, ma'am?" + +The other lady was murmuring in Maurice's ear: + +"What is your college?" + +Maurice trying to get Rose's eye, so that he might talk to her and give +the boys a chance to do their duty, said, distractedly, "Princeton. Say, +Hastings! Tell Mrs. Ellis about the miner who lost his shirt--" + +Mrs. Ellis looked patient, and Hastings, dropping into agonized shyness, +said, "Oh, I can't tell stories!" + +After that, except for Morton's philosophical outpourings to the +listening Eleanor, most of the dreary occasion of eating poor food, +served by a waiter who put his thumb into things, was given up to the +stifled laughter of the girl and boys, and to conversation between the +other two guests, who were properly arch because of the occasion, but +disappointed in their dinner, and anxious to shake their heads and lift +shocked hands as soon as they could get out of their hostess's sight. + +For Maurice, the whole endless hour was a seesaw between the past and +the present, between his new dignity and his old irresponsibility. He +tried--at first with boisterous familiarity, then with ponderous +condescension--to draw his friends out. What would Eleanor think of +them--the idiots! And what would she think of him, for having such +asinine friends? He hoped Mort was showing his brains to her! He +mentally cursed Hastings because he did not produce his jokes; as for +Brown, he was a kid. "I oughtn't to have asked him! What _will_ Eleanor +think of him!" He was thankful when dessert came and the boys stopped +their fatuous murmurings to little Rose, to gorge themselves with ice +cream. He talked loudly to cover up their silence, and glanced +constantly at his watch, in the hope that it was time to pack 'em all +off to the theater! Yet, even with his acute discomfort, he had moments +of pride--for there was Eleanor sitting at the head of the table, silent +and handsome, and making old Mort crazy about her! In spite of those +asses of boys, he was very proud. He had simply made a mistake in +inviting Hastings and Brown; "Tom Morton's all right," he told himself; +"but, great Scott! how young those other two are!" + +When the evening was over (the theater part of it was a success, for the +play was good, and Maurice had nearly bankrupted himself on a box), and +he and Eleanor were alone, he drew her down on the little sofa of their +sitting room, and worshiped. "Oh, Star, how wonderful you are!" + +"Did I do everything right?" She was breathless with happiness. "I tried +so hard! But I _can't_ talk. I never know what to say." + +"You were perfect! And they were all such idiots--except Mort. Mort told +me you were very temperamental, and had a wonderful mind. I said, 'You +bet she has!' The old ladies were pills." + +"Oh, Maurice, you goose!... Maurice, what will Mr. Houghton say?" + +"Hell say, 'Bless you, my children!' Nelly, what _was_ the matter with +the dinner?" + +"Matter? Why, it was perfect! It was"--she made a dash for some of his +own words--"simply corking! Though perhaps Rose was a little too young +for it. Didn't you enjoy it?" she demanded, astonished. + +He said that if she enjoyed it, that was all he cared about! He didn't +tell her--perhaps he didn't know it himself--that his own lack of +enjoyment was due to his inarticulate consciousness that he had not +belonged anywhere at that dinner table. He was too old--and he was too +young. The ladies talked down to him, and Brown and Hastings were polite +to him. "Damn 'em, _polite_! Well," he thought, "'course, they know that +a man in my position isn't in their class. But--" After a while he found +himself thinking: "Those hags Eleanor raked in had no manners. Talked to +me about my 'exams'! I'm glad I snubbed the old one, I don't think +Rose was too young," he said, aloud. "Oh, Star, you are wonderful!" + +And she, letting her hair fall cloudlike over her shoulders, silently +held out her arms to him. Instantly his third bad moment vanished. + +But a fourth was on its way; even as he kissed that white shoulder, he +was thinking of the letter which must certainly come from Mr. Houghton +in a day or two. "What will _he_ get off?" he asked himself; "probably +old Brad and Mrs. Newbolt have fed oats to him, so he'll kick--but what +do I care? Not a hoot!" Thus encouraging himself, he encouraged Eleanor: + +"Don't worry! Uncle Henry'll write and _beg_ me to bring you up to Green +Hill." + +The fifty-four minutes of married life had stretched into eight days, +and Maurice had chewed the educating nails of worry pretty thoroughly +before that "begging" letter from Henry Houghton arrived. There was an +inclosure in it from Mrs. Houghton, and the young man, down in the dark +lobby of the hotel, with his heart in his mouth, read what both old +friends had to say--then rushed upstairs, two steps at a time, to make +his triumphant announcement to his wife: + +"What did I tell you? Uncle Henry's _white_!" He gave her a hug; then, +plugging his pipe full of tobacco, handed her the letters, and sat down +to watch the effect of them upon her; there was no more "worry" for +Maurice! But Eleanor, standing by the window silhouetted against the +yellow twilight, caught her full lower lip between her teeth as she +read: + +"Of course," Mr. Houghton wrote--(it had taken him the week he had +threatened to "concoct" his letter, which he asked his wife if he might +not sign "Mr. F.'s aunt." "I bet she doesn't know her Dickens; it won't +convey anything to her," he begged; "I'll cut out two cigars a day if +you'll let me do it?" She would not let him, so the letter was perfectly +decorous.)--"Of course it was not the proper way to treat an old friend, +and marriage is too serious a business to be entered into in this way. +Also I am sorry that there is any difference in age between you and +your wife. But that is all in the past, and Mrs. Houghton and I wish +you every happiness. We are looking forward to seeing you next +month." ... ("Exactly," he explained to his Mary, "as I look forward +to going to the dentist's. _You_ tell 'em so.") + +As Mrs. Houghton declined to "tell 'em," Eleanor, reading the friendly +words, was able to say, "I don't think he's angry?" + +"'Course not!" said Maurice. + +Then she opened the other letter. + +My dear boy,--I wish you hadn't got married in such a hurry; Edith is +dreadfully disappointed not to have had the chance "to be your +bridesmaid"! You must give us an opportunity soon to know your wife. Of +course you must both come to Green Hill as usual, for your vacation. + +"_She_ is furious," said Eleanor. "She thinks it's dreadful to have +eloped." She had turned away from him, and was looking out across the +slow current of the river at the furnaces on the opposite bank--it was +the same river, that, ten days ago, had run sparkling and lisping over +brown depths and sunny shallows past their meadow. Her face lightened +and darkened as the sheeting violet and orange flames from the great +smokestacks roared out against the sky, and fell, and rose again. The +beauty of them caught Maurice's eye, and he really did not notice what +she was saying, until he caught the words: "Mrs. Houghton's like +Auntie--she thinks I've injured you--" Before he could get on his feet +to go and take her in his arms, and deny that preposterous word, she +turned abruptly and came and sat on his knee; then, with a sort of sob, +let herself sink against his breast. "But oh, I did so want to be +happy!--and you made me do it." + +He gave her a quick squeeze, and chuckled: "You bet I made you!" he +said; he pushed her gently to her feet, and got up and walked about the +room, his hands in his pockets. "As for Mrs. Houghton, you'll love her. +She never fusses; she just says, 'Consider the stars.' I do hope you'll +like them, Eleanor," he ended, anxiously. He was still in that state of +mind where the lover hopes that his beloved will approve of his friends. +Later on, when he and she love each other more, and so are more nearly +one, he hopes that his friends will approve of his beloved, even as he +used to be anxious that they should approve of him. "I do awfully want +you to like 'em at Green Hill! We'll go the minute your school closes." + +"_Must_ we?" she said, nervously. + +"I'm afraid we've got to," he said; "you see, I must find out about ways +and means. And Edith would be furious if we didn't come," he ended, +chuckling. + +"Is she nice?" + +"Why, yes," he said; "she's just a child, of course. Only eleven. But +she and I have great times. We have a hut on the mountain; we go up for +a day, and Edith cooks things. She's a bully cook. Her beloved Johnny +Bennett tags on behind." + +"But do you like to be with a _child_?" she said, surprised. + +"Oh, she's got a lot of sense. Say, Nelly, I have an idea. While we are +at Green Hill, let's camp out up there?" + +"You don't mean stay all night?" she said, flinching. "Oh, wouldn't it +be very uncomfortable? I--I hate the dark." + +The sweet foolishness of it enchanted him (baby love feeds on pap!) +"Pitch dark," he teased, "and lions and tigers roaring around, and +snakes--" + +"Of course I'll go, if you want me to," she said, simply, but with a +real sinking of the heart. + +"Edith adores it," he said. "Speaking of Edith, I must tell you +something so funny. Last summer I was at Green Hill, and one night Mr. +and Mrs. Houghton were away, and there was a storm. Gee, I never saw +such a storm in my life! Edith has no more nerves than a tree, but even +she was scared. Well, I was scared myself." + +He had stretched himself out on the sofa, and she was kneeling beside +him, her eyes worshiping him. "_I_ would have been scared to death," she +confessed. + +"Well, _I_ was!" he said. "The tornado--it was just about that!--burst +on to us, and nearly blew the house off the hill--and such an infernal +bellowing, and hellish green lightning, you never saw! Well, I was just +thinking about Buster--her father calls her Buster; and wondering +whether she was scared, when in she rushed, in her night-gown. She made +a running jump for my bed, dived into it, grabbed me, and hugged me so I +was 'most suffocated, and screamed into my ear, 'There's a storm!'--as +if I hadn't noticed it. I said--I could hardly make myself heard in the +racket--I yelled, 'Don't you think you'd better go back to your own +room? I'll come and sit there with you.' And she yelled, 'I'm going to +stay here.' So she stayed." + +"I think she was a little old for that sort of thing," Eleanor said, +coldly. + +He gave a shout of laughter. "Eleanor! Do you mean to tell me you don't +see how awfully funny it was? The little thing hugged me with all her +might until the storm blew over. Then she said, calmly: 'It's cold. I'll +stay here. You can go and get in my bed if you want to.'" + +Eleanor gave a little shrug, then rose and went over to the window. "Oh +yes, it was funny; but I think she must be a rather pert little thing. I +don't want to go to Green Hill." + +Maurice looked worried. "I hate to urge anything you don't like, Nelly; +but I really do feel we ought to accept their invitation? And you'll +like them! Of course they're not in your class. Nobody is! I mean +they're old, and sort of commonplace. But we can go and live in the +woods most of the time, and get away from them,--except little Skeezics. +We'll take her along. You'll love having her; she's lots of fun. You +see, I've _got_ to go to Green Hill, because I must get in touch with +Uncle Henry; I've got to find out about our income!" he explained, with +a broad grin. + +"I should think Edith would bore you," she said. Her voice was so +sharply irritated that Maurice looked at her, open-mouthed; he was too +bewildered to speak. + +"Why, Eleanor," he faltered; "why are you--on your ear? Was it what I +told you about Edith? You didn't think that she wasn't _proper_?" + +"No! Of course not! It wasn't _that_." She came quickly and knelt beside +him. "Of course it wasn't _that_! It was--" She could not say what it +was; perhaps she did not quite know that her annoyance at Maurice's +delight in Edith was the inarticulate pain of recognizing that he might +have more in common with a child, eight years his junior, than he could +have with a woman twenty years his senior. Her eyes were suddenly bright +with frightened tears. In a whisper, that fear which, in these days of +complete belief in her own happiness, she had forgotten even to deny, +came back: "What really upset me was the letters. The Houghtons are +angry because I am--" she flinched, and would not utter the final word +which was the hidden reason of her annoyance at Edith; so, instead of +uttering it, she said, "because we eloped." + +As for Maurice, he rallied her, and pretended to scold her, and tasted +her tears salt upon his lips. He felt very old and protecting. + +"Nonsense!" he said. "Mrs. Houghton and Uncle Henry are old, and of +course they can't understand love. But the romance of it will touch +them!" + +And again Love cast out Fear; Eleanor, her face hidden on his shoulder, +told herself that it really didn't matter what the Houghtons thought +of ... an elopement. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +The cloud of their first difference had blown over almost before they +felt its shadow, and the sky of love was as clear as the lucid beryl of +the summer night. Yet even the passing shadow of the cloud kept both the +woman and the boy repentant and a little frightened; he, because he +thought he had offended her by some lack of delicacy; she, because she +thought she had shocked him by what he might think was harshness to a +child. Even a week afterward, as they journeyed up to Green Hill in a +dusty accommodation train, there was an uneasy memory of that +cloud--black with Maurice's dullness, and livid with the zigzag flash of +Eleanor's irritation--and then the little shower of tears! ... What had +brought the cloud? Would it ever return? ... As for those twenty +dividing years, they never thought of them! + +In the train they held each other's hands under the cover of a +newspaper; and sometimes Maurice's foot touched hers, and then they +looked at each other, and smiled--but each was wondering: his wonder +was, "What made her offended at Edith?" And hers was, "How can he like +to be with an eleven-year-old child!" Their talk, however, confessed no +wonderings! It was the happy commonplace of companionship: Mrs. Newbolt +and her departure for Europe; would Mrs. O'Brien be good to Bingo? what +Maurice's business should be. Then Maurice yawned, and said he was glad +that the commencement exercises at Fern Hill were over; and she said she +was glad, too; she had danced, she said, until she had a pain in her +side! After which he read his paper, and she looked out of the window +at the flying landscape. Suddenly she said: + +"That girl you danced with last night--you danced with her three +times!" she said, with sweet reproach--"didn't know we were +married!--she wasn't a Fern Hill girl. She told me she had been +dancing with my 'nephew.'" + +"Did she?... Eleanor, look at that elm tree, standing all alone in the +field, like--like a wineglass full of summer!" + +For a moment she didn't understand his readiness to change the +subject--then she had a flash of instinct: "I believe she said the +same thing to you!" + +"Oh, she got off some fool thing." The annoyance in his voice was like +a rapier thrust of certainty. + +"I knew it! But I don't care. Why should I care?" + +"You shouldn't. Besides, it was only funny. I was tremendously amused." + +She turned and looked out of the window. + +Maurice lifted the paper which had been such a convenient shelter for +clasping hands, and seemed to read for a while. Then he said, abruptly, +"I only thought it was funny for her to make such a mistake." + +She was silent. + +"Eleanor, don't be--that way!" + +"What 'way'? You mean"--her voice trembled--"feel hurt to have you dance +_three times_, with a girl who said an uncomplimentary thing about me?" + +"But it wasn't uncomplimentary! It was just a silly mistake anyone might +make--" He stopped abruptly, for there were tears in her eyes--and +instantly his tenderness infolded her like sunshine. But even while he +was making her talk of other things--the heat, or the landscape--he was +a little preoccupied; he was trying to explain this tiny, ridiculous, +lovely unreasonableness, by tracking it back to some failure of +sensitiveness on his own part. It occurred to him that he could do this +better if he were by himself--not sitting beside her, faintly conscious +of her tenseness. So he said, abruptly, "Star, if you don't mind, I'll +go and have a smoke." + +"All right," she said; "give me the paper; I haven't looked at the news +for days!" She was trembling a little. The mistake of a silly girl had +had, at first, no significance, it was just, as it always is to the +newly married woman, amusing to be supposed not to be married! But that +Maurice, knowing of the mistake, had not mentioned its absurdity, woke +an uneasy consciousness that he had thought it might annoy her! Why +should it annoy her?--unless the reason of the mistake was as obvious to +him as to the girl?--whom he had found attractive enough to dance with +three times! It was as if a careless hand had pushed open a closed door, +and given Maurice's wife a glimpse of a dark landscape, the very +existence of which her love had so vehemently denied. + +An hour later, however, when Maurice returned, she was serene again. +Love had closed the door--bolted it! barred it! and the gray landscape +of dividing years was forgotten. And as her face had cleared, so had +his. He had explained her annoyance by calling himself a clod! "She +hated not to be thought married--of _course_!" What a brute he was not +to have recognized the subtle loveliness of a sensitiveness like that! +He wanted to tell her so, but he could only push the newspaper toward +her and slip his hand under it to feel for hers--which he clutched and +gripped so hard that her rings cut into the flesh. She laughed, and +opened her pocketbook and showed him the little circle of grass which he +had slipped over her wedding ring after fifty-four minutes of married +life. At which his whole face radiated. It was as if, through those gay +blue eyes of his, he poured pure joy from his heart into hers. + +"Be careful," he threatened: "one minute more, and I'll kiss you right +here, before people!" + +She snapped her purse shut in pretended terror, but after that they held +hands under the newspaper, and were perfectly happy--until the moment +came of meeting the Houghtons on the platform at the junction; then +happiness gave way to embarrassment. + +Henry Houghton, obliged to throw away a half-smoked cigar, and, saying +under his breath that he wished he was asleep, was cross; but his wife +was pleasantly commonplace. She kissed the bride, and the groom, too, +and said that Edith was in a great state of excitement about them! Then +she condoled with Eleanor about the heat, and told Maurice there were +cinders on his hat. But not even her careful matter-of-courseness could +make the moment anything but awkward. In the four-mile drive to Green +Hill--during which Eleanor said she hoped old Lion wouldn't run +away;--the young husband seemed to grow younger and younger; and his +wife, in her effort to talk to Mr. Houghton, seemed to grow older and +older.... + +"If I didn't happen to know she was a fool," Henry Houghton said to his +Mary, washing his hands before going down to supper, "I should think she +was quite a nice woman--she's so good looking." + +"_Henry!_ At your time of life, are you deciding a woman's 'niceness' by +her looks?" + +"But tell her she mustn't bore him," he said, ignoring the rebuke. "Tell +her that when it comes to wives, every husband on earth is Mr. F.'s +aunt--he 'hates a fool'!" + +"Why not tell her yourself?" she said: then she sighed; "why _did_ she +do it?" + +"She did it," he instructed her, "because the flattery of a boy's +lovemaking went to her head. I have an idea that she was hungry for +happiness--so it was champagne on an empty stomach. Think of the +starvation dullness of living with that Newbolt female, who drops +her g's all over the floor! Edith likes her," he added. + +"Oh, Edith!" said Edith's mother, with a shrug; "well; if you can +explain Eleanor, perhaps you can explain Maurice?" + +"_That's_ easy; anything in petticoats will answer as a peg for a man +(we are the idealizing sex) to hang his heart on. Then, there's her +music--and her pathos. For she is pathetic, Kit?" + +But Mary Houghton shook her head: "It is Maurice who is pathetic--my +poor Maurice!..." + +When they went down to the east porch, with its great white columns, +and its broad steps leading into Mrs. Houghton's gay and fragrant +garden, they found Edith there before them--sitting on the top step, her +arms around her knees, her worshiping eyes fixed on the Bride. Edith had +nothing to say; it was enough to look at the "bridal couple," as the +kitchen had named them. When her father and mother appeared, she did +manage, in the momentary bustle of rising and offering chairs, to say +to Maurice: + +"Oh, isn't she lovely! Oh, Maurice, let's go out behind the barn after +supper and talk! Maurice, _did_ she bring her harp? I want to see her +play on it! I saw her wedding ring," she ended, in an ecstatic whisper. + +"She doesn't play on the harp; she plays on the piano. Did you twig her +hair?" Maurice whispered back; "it's like black down!" + +Edith was speechless with adoration; she wished, passionately, that +Maurice would put his coat down for the Bride to step on, like Sir +Walter Raleigh! "for she is a _Queen_!" Edith thought: then Maurice +pulled one of her pigtails and she kicked him--and after that she was +forgotten, for the grown people began to talk, and say it had been a hot +day, and that the strawberries needed rain--but Eleanor hoped there +wouldn't be a thunderstorm. + +"They _have_ to say things, I suppose," Edith reflected, patiently: "but +after supper, Maurice and I will talk." So she bore with her father and +mother, who certainly tried to be conversational. The Bride, Edith +noticed, was rather silent, and Maurice, though grown up to the extent +of being married, hadn't much to say--but once he winked at Edith and +again tried to pull her hair,--so she knew that he, also, was patient. +She was too absorbed to return the wink. She just stared at Eleanor. She +only dared to speak to her once; then, breathlessly: "I--I'm going to go +to your school, when I'm sixteen." It was as if she looked forward to a +pilgrimage to a shrine! It was impossible not to see the worship in her +face; Eleanor saw her smile made Edith almost choke with bliss. But, +like herself, the Bride had nothing to say. Eleanor just sat in sweet, +empty silence, and watched Maurice, twisting old Rover's ears, and +answering Mrs. Houghton's maternal questions about his winter +underclothing and moths; she caught that wink at Edith, and the +occasional broad grin when Mrs. Houghton scolded him for some +carelessness, and the ridiculous gesture of tearing his hair when she +said he was a scamp to have forgotten this or that. Looking at the +careless youth of him, she laughed to herself for sheer joy in the +beauty of it! + +But Edith's plan for barn conversation with Maurice fell through, +because after supper, with an air of complete self-justification, he +said to his hosts, "_Now_ you must hear Eleanor sing!" + +At which she protested, "Oh, Maurice, no!" + +The Houghtons, however, were polite; so they all went into the studio, +and, standing in the twilight, with Maurice playing her accompaniment, +she sang, very simply, and with quite poignant beauty, the song of +"Golden Numbers," with its serene refrain: + +"_O sweet, O sweet content!_" + +"Lovely, my dear," Mrs. Houghton said, and Maurice was radiant. + +"Is Mr. F. your father?" Edith said, timidly; and while Eleanor was +giving her maiden name, Edith's terrified father said, in a ferocious +aside, "Mary! Kill that child!" Late that night he told his wife she +really must do something about Edith: "Fortunately, Eleanor is as +ignorant of Dickens as of 'most everything else. I bet she never read +_Little Dorrit_. But, for God's sake, muzzle that daughter of +yours! ... Mary, you see how he was caught?--the woman's voice." + +"Don't call her 'the woman'!" + +"Well, vampire. Kit, what do you make of her?" + +"I wish I knew what to make of her! I feel sure she is really and truly +_good_. But, oh, Henry, she's so mortal dull! She hasn't a spark of +humor in her." + +"'Course not. If she had, she wouldn't have married him. But _he_ has +humor! Better warn her that a short cut to matrimonial unhappiness is +not to have the same taste in jokes! Mary, maybe, her music will hold +him?" + +"Maybe," said Mary Houghton, sighing. + +"'Consider the stars,'" he quoted, sarcastically; but she took the sting +out of his gibe by saying, very simply: + +"Yes, I try to." + +"He is good stuff," her husband said; "straight as a string! When he +came into the studio to talk things over he was as sober as if he were +fifty, and hadn't made an ass of himself. He took up the income question +in a surprisingly businesslike way; then he said that of course he knew +I didn't like it--his giving up college and flying off the handle, and +getting married without saying anything to me. 'But,' he said, +'Eleanor's aunt is an old hell-cat;--she was going to drag Eleanor +abroad, and I had to get her out of her clutches!' ... I think," Henry +Houghton interrupted himself, "that's one explanation of Maurice: +rescuing a forlorn damsel. Well, I was perfectly direct with him; I +said, 'My dear fellow, Mrs. Newbolt is not a hell-cat; and the elopement +was in bad taste. Elopements are always in bad taste. But the elopement +is the least important part of it. The difference in age is the serious +thing.' I got it out of him just what it is--almost twenty years. She +might be his mother!--he admitted that he had had to lie about himself +to get the license. I said, '_Your_ age is the dangerous thing, Maurice, +not hers; and it's up to you to keep steady!' Of course he didn't +believe me," said Mr. Houghton, sighing. "He's in love all right, poor +infant! The next thing is for me to find a job for him.... She is good +looking, Mary?" She nodded, and he said again, "A pre-Raphaelite woman; +those full red lips, and that lovely black hair growing so low on her +forehead. And a really good voice. And a charming figure. But I tell you +one thing: she's got to stop twitting on facts. Did you hear her say, +'Maurice is so ridiculously young, he doesn't remember'--? I don't know +what it was he didn't remember. Something unimportant. But she must not +put ideas about his youth into his head. He'll know it soon enough! +_You_ tell her that." + +"Thank you so much!" said Mary Houghton. "Henry, you mustn't say things +before Edith! Suppose Eleanor had known her _Little Dorrit_?" + +"She doesn't know anything; and she has nothing to say." + +"Well, it might be worse," she encouraged him. "Suppose she were +talkative?" + +He nodded: "Yes; a dull woman is bad, and a talkative woman is bad; but +a dull talkative woman is hell." + +"My _dear_! I'm glad Edith's in bed. Well, I think I like her." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +But the time arrived when Mrs. Houghton was certain that she "liked" +Maurice's wife. It would have come sooner if Eleanor's real sweetness +had not been hidden by her tiresome timidity ... a thunderstorm sent +her, blanched and panting, to sit huddled on her bed, shutters closed, +shades drawn; she schemed not to go upstairs by herself in the dark; she +was preoccupied when old Lion took them off on a slow, jogging drive, +for fear of a runaway. + +Everybody was aware of her nervousness. Until it bored him, Henry +Houghton was touched by it;--probably there is no man who is so +intelligent that the Clinging Vine makes no appeal to him. Mrs. Houghton +was impatient with it. Edith, who could not understand fear in any form, +tried, in her friendly little way, to reason Eleanor out of one panic or +another. The servants joked among themselves at the foolishness of "Mrs. +Maurice"; and the monosyllabic Johnny Bennett, when told of some of +Eleanor's scares, was bored. "Let's play Indian," said Johnny. + +It was only Maurice who found all the scares--just as he found the +silences and small jealousies--adorable! The silences meant unspeakable +depths of thought; the jealousies were a sign of love. The terrors +called for his protecting strength! One of the unfair irrationalities +of love is that it may, at first, be attracted by the defects of the +beloved, and later repelled by them. Maurice loved Eleanor for her +defects. Once, when he and Edith were helping Mrs. Houghton weed her +garden, he stopped grubbing, and sat down in the gold and bronze glitter +of coreopsis, to expatiate upon the exquisiteness of the defects. Her +wonderful mind: "She doesn't talk, because she is always thinking; her +ideas are way over _my_ head!" Her funny timidity: "She wants me to +take care of her!" Her love: "She's--it sounds absurd!--but she's +jealous, because she's so--well, fond of me, don't you know, that she +sort of objects to having people round. Did you ever hear of anything so +absurd?" + +"I certainly never did," his old friend said, dryly. + +"Well, but"--Maurice defended his wife--"it's because she cares about +me, don't you know? She--well, this is in confidence--she said once that +she'd like to live on a desert island, just with me!" + +"So would I," said Edith. Her mother laughed: + +"Tell her desert islands have to have a 'man Friday'--to say nothing of +a few 'women Thursdays'!" + +Eleanor was, Maurice said, like music heard far off, through mists and +moonlight in a dark garden, "full of--of--what are those sweet-smelling +things, that bloom only at night?" (Mary Houghton looked fatigued.) +"Well, anyway, what I mean is that she isn't like ordinary people, like +me--" + +"Or Johnny," Edith broke in, earnestly. + +"Johnny? Gosh! Why, Mrs. Houghton, things that don't touch most human +beings, affect her terribly. The dark, or thunderstorms, or--or +anything, makes her nervous. You understand?" + +Mrs. Houghton said yes, she understood, but she would leave the rest of +the weeding to her assistants ... In the studio, dropping her dusty +garden gloves on a fresh canvas lying on the table, she almost wept: + +"Henry, it is _too_ tragic! She is such a goose, and he is so silly +about her! What shall we do?" + +"I'll tell you what not to do--spoil my new canvas! If you _really_ want +my advice:--tell Eleanor that the greatest compliment any husband can +pay his wife is contained in four words: 'You never bore me'; and that +if she isn't careful Maurice will never compliment her." + +Down in the garden, no one was aware of any tragedy. "When I go to Fern +Hill," Edith said, "I'm going to tell all the girls _I know Eleanor_! +I'm 'ordinary,' too, beside her. And so is mother." + +Maurice agreed. "We are all crude, compared to her." + +Edith sighed with joy; if she had had any inclination to be contemptuous +of Eleanor's timidity, it vanished when it was pointed out to her that +it was really a sign of the Bride's infinite superiority.... So the +three Houghtons accepted--one with amused pity, and the other with +concern, and the third with admiration of such super-refinement,--the +fact that Eleanor was a coward. Yet if she had not been a coward, +something she did would not have been particularly brave, nor would it +have wrung from Mary Houghton the admission: "I _like_ her!" + +The conquering incident happened in August. The hut up in the woods +meant to Maurice and Edith and Johnny that eager grasping at hardship +with which Age has no sympathy, but which is the very essence of Youth. +Within a week of her arrival at Green Hill, Eleanor (who did not like +hardship;) had been carried off for a day of eating smoky food, cooked +on a camp fire, and watching cloud shadows drift across the valley and +up and over the hills; she had wondered, silently, why Maurice liked +this very tiring sort of thing?--and especially why he liked to have +Edith go along! "A child of her age is such a nuisance," Eleanor +thought. But he did like it, all of it!--the fatigue, and the smoke, and +the grubby food--and Edith!--he liked it so much that, just before the +time set for their departure for Mercer--and the position in a +real-estate office, which had been secured for Maurice--he said: + +"Nelly, let's camp out up in the cabin for our last week, all by +ourselves!" + +Edith's face fell, and so, for that matter, did the Bride's. Edith said, +"By yourselves? Not Johnny and me, too?" And Eleanor said, "_At night?_ +Oh, Maurice!" + +"It will be beautiful," he said; "there'll be a moon next week, and +we'll sit up there and look down into the valley, and see the treetops +lift up out of the mist--like islands from the foam of 'faerylands +forlorn'! You'll love it." + +"I'm crazy about camping," said Edith, eagerly;--and waited for an +invitation, which was not forthcoming. Instead, Maurice, talking his +plans over with her, made it quite clear that her room was better than +her company. It was Edith's first experience in being left out, and it +sobered her a little; but she swallowed the affront with her usual good +sense: + +"I guess he likes Eleanor more 'an me, so, 'course, it's nice to be by +himself with her." + +The prospect of being "by themselves" for a week was deeply moving to +Maurice. And even Eleanor, though she quaked at the idea of spiders or +thunderstorms, thought of the passion of it with a thrill. "We'll be all +alone!" she said to herself. + +The morning that they started gypsying, everything was very impatient +and delightful. The packing, the rolling up of blankets, the stowing of +cooking utensils, the consulting of food lists to make sure nothing was +being forgotten--all meant much tearing about and bossing; then came the +loading the stuff into the light wagon, which, with old Lion, Mr. +Houghton had offered to convey the campers (and a temporary Edith) up to +the top of the mountain. Edith was, of course, frankly envious, but +accepted the privilege of even a day in camp with humble gratitude. + +"Rover and Johnny and I will come up pretty often, even if it's only for +an hour, because Eleanor must not hurt her hands by washing dishes," she +said, earnestly (still fishing for an invitation). + +But Maurice only agreed, as earnestly: "No! Imagine Eleanor washing +dishes! But I don't want you to stay all night, Buster," he told her, +candidly; then he paused in his work, flung up his arms with a great +breath of joyousness. "Great Scott!" he said. "I don't see why gypsies +_ever_ die!" + +Edith felt an answering throb of ecstasy. "Oh, Maurice, I wish you and +I were gypsies!" she said. She did not in the least resent his candor +as to her presence during the week of camping; though just before they +started her feelings really were a little hurt: it happened that in +trying to help Eleanor pack, she was close enough to her to notice a +thread on her hair; instantly, she put out a friendly and officious +thumb and finger to remove it--at which Eleanor winced, and said, +"_Ouch!_" + +"I thought it was a white thread," Edith explained, abashed. + +Eleanor said, sharply, "Please don't touch my hair!" which conveyed +nothing to Edith except that the Bride--who instantly ran up to her +room--"was mad." When she came back (the "thread" having disappeared) +Edith was full of apologies. + +"Awfully sorry I mussed your hair," she said. + +She went up the mountain with them, walking on the hard grades, and +trying to placate Eleanor by keeping a hand on Lion's bridle, so that +she might feel sure he wouldn't run away. When at last, rather blown and +perspiring, they reached the camp, Eleanor got out of the wagon and said +she wanted to "help"; but Edith, still contrite about the "thread," +said: "Not I'm not going to have you hurt your lovely hands!" In the +late afternoon, having saved Eleanor's hands in every possible way, she +left them, and thinking, without the slightest rancor, of the rough +bliss she was not asked to share, went running down the mountain with +Rover at her heels. + +Eleanor, wondering at her willingness to take that long road home with +only the lumbering old dog for company, was intensely glad to have her +go. + +"Girls of that age are so uninteresting," she told Maurice; "and now +we'll be all by ourselves!" + +"Yes; Adam and Eve," he said; "and twilight; and the world spread out +like a garden! Do you see that glimmer over there to the left? That's +the beginning of the river--our river!" + +He had made her comfortable with some cushions piled against the trunk +of a tree, and lighted a fire in a ring of blackened stones; then he +brought her her supper, and ate his own on his knees beside her, +watching eagerly for ways to serve her, laughing because she cringed +when, from an overhanging bough, a spider let himself down upon her +skirt, and hurrying to bring her a fresh cup of coffee, because an +unhappy ant had scalded himself to death in her first cup. Afterward he +would not let her "hurt her hands" by washing the dishes. When this was +over, and the dusk was deepening, he went into the woods to the +"lean-to" in which Lion was quartered, to see that the old horse was +comfortable, but a minute later came crashing back through the +underbrush, laughing, but provoked. + +"That imp, Edith, didn't hitch him securely, and the old fellow has +walked home, if you please--!" + +"Lion--gone? Oh, what shall we do?" + +"Ill pull the wagon down when I want to go back for food." + +"_Pull_ it?" + +"Won't need much pulling! It will go down by itself. If I put you in it, +I'll have to rope a log on behind as a brake, or it would run over me! I +bet I give Edith a piece of my mind, when I get hold of her. But it +doesn't really matter. I think I like it better to have not even Lion. +Just you--and the stars. They are beginning to prick out," he said. He +stretched himself on the ground beside her, his hands clasped under his +head, and his happy eyes looking up into the abyss. "Sing, Star, sing!" +he said. So she sang, softly: + +"How many times do I love again? +Tell me how many beads there are + In a silver chain + Of evening rain +Unraveled from the tumbling main +And threading the eye of a yellow star-- +So many times-- + +"It looks," she broke off, "a little black in the west? And--was that +lightning?" + +"Only heat lightning. And if it should storm,--I have you here, in my +arms, alone!" He turned and caught her to him, and his mouth crushed +hers. Her eyes closed, and her passion answered his, and all that he +whispered. Yet while he kissed her, her eyes opened and she looked +furtively beyond him, toward that gathering blackness. + +They lay there together in the starlit dark, for a long time, his head +on her breast. Sometimes she thrilled at his touch or low word, and +sometimes she held his hand against her lips and kissed it--which made +him protest--but suddenly he said, "By George! Nelly, I believe we are +going to have a shower!" + +Instantly she was alert with fright, and sat up, and looked down into +the valley, where the heat lightning, which had been winking along the +line of the hills, suddenly sharpened into a flash. "_Oh!_" she said, +and held her breath until, from very far off, came a faint grumble of +thunder. "Oh, Maurice!" she said, "it is horrible to be out here--if it +thunders!" + +"We won't be. Well go into the cabin, and we'll hear the rain on the +roof, and the clash of the branches; and we'll see the lightning through +the chinks--and I'll have you! Oh, Nelly, we shall be part of the +storm!--and nothing in God's world can separate us." + +But this time she could not answer with any elemental impulse; she had +no understanding of "being part of the storm"; instead, she watched the +horizon. "Oh!" she said, flinching. "I don't like it. What shall we do? +Maurice, it _is_ going to thunder!" + +"I think I did feel a drop of rain," he said,--and held out his hand: +"Yes, Star, rain! It's begun!" He helped her to her feet, gathered up +some of the cushions, and hurried her toward the little shelter. She ran +ahead of him, her very feet reluctant, lest the possible "snake" should +curl in the darkness against her ankles; but once in the cabin, with a +candle lighted, she could not see the lightning, so she was able to +laugh at herself; when Maurice went out for the rest of the cushions, +she charged him to _hurry_! "The storm will be here in a minute!" she +called to him. And he called back: + +"I'll only be a second!" + +She stood in the doorway looking after him, and saw his figure outlined +against the glimmer of their fire, which had already felt the spatter of +the coming storm and was dying down; then, even as she looked, he seemed +to plunge forward, and fall--the thud of that fall was like a blow on +her throat! She gasped, "Maurice--" And again, "_Maurice!_ Have you hurt +yourself?" + +He did not rise. A splash of rain struck her face; the mountain darkness +was slit by a rapier of lightning, and there was a sudden violent +illumination; she saw the tree and the cushions, and Maurice on the +ground--then blackness, and a tremendous crash of thunder. + +"Maurice!" she called. "Maurice!" The branches over the roof began to +move and rustle, and there was a sudden downpour of rain; the camp fire +went out, as if an extinguisher had covered it. She stood in the doorway +for a breathless instant, then ran back into the cabin, and, catching +the candle from the table, stepped out into the blackness; instantly the +wind bore the little flame away!--then seemed to grip her, and twist her +about, and beat her back into the house. In her terror she screamed his +name; and as she did so, another flash of lightning showed her his +figure, motionless on the ground. + +"_He is dead_" she said to herself, in a whisper. "What shall I do?" +Then, suddenly, she knew what to do: she remembered that she had noticed +a lantern hanging on the wall near the door; and now something impelled +her to get it. In the stifling darkness of the shack she felt her way to +it, held its oily ring in her hand, thought, frantically, of matches, +groped along toward the mantelpiece, stumbled over a chair--and clutched +at the match box! Something made her open the isinglass slide, strike a +match, and touch the blackened wick with the sulphurous sputter of +flame,--the next moment, with the lighted lantern in her hand, she was +out in the sheeting blackness of the rain!--running!--running!--toward +that still figure by the deadened fire. Just before she reached it a +twig rolled under her foot, and she said, "A _snake_,"--but she did not +flinch. As she gained the circle of stones, a flash of lightning, with +its instant and terrific crack and bellow of thunder, showed her a +streak of blood on Maurice's face.... He had tripped and fallen, and his +head had struck one of the blackened stones. + +"He is dead," she said again, aloud. She put the lantern on the ground +and knelt beside him; she had an idea that she should place her hand on +his heart to see if he were alive. "He isn't," she told herself; but she +laid her fingers, which were shaking so that she could not unfasten his +coat, somewhere on his left side; she did not know whether there was any +pulse; she knew nothing, except that he was "dead." She said this in a +whisper, over and over. "He is dead. He is dead." The rain came down in +torrents; the trees creaked and groaned in the wind; twice there were +flashes of lightning and appalling roars of thunder. Maurice was +perfectly still. The smoky glimmer of the lantern played on the thin +streak of blood and made it look as though it was moving--trickling-- + +Then Eleanor began to think: "There ought to be a doctor...." If +she left him, to bring help, he might bleed to death before she +could get back to him. Instantly, as she said that, she knew that +she did not believe that he was dead! She knew that she had hope. +With hope, a single thought possessed her. _She must take him down +the mountain...._ But how? She could not carry him;--she had managed to +prop him up against her knee, his blond head lolling forward, awfully, +on his breast--but she knew that to carry him would be impossible. And +Lion was not there! "I couldn't have harnessed him if he were," she +thought. + +She was entirely calm, but her mind was working rapidly: The wagon +was in the lean-to! Could she get him into it? The road was +downhill.... Almost to Doctor Bennett's door.... + +Instantly she sprang to her feet and, with the pale gleam of the lantern +zigzagging across the path, she ran back to the shed; just as she +reached it, a glimmer of light fell on the soaked earth, and she looked +up with a start and saw the moon peering out between two ragged, swiftly +moving clouds; then all was black again--but the rain was lessening, and +there had been no lightning for several minutes. "He will die; I must +save him," she said, her lips stiff with horror. She lifted the shafts +of the wagon, and gave a little pull; it moved easily enough, and, +guiding it along the slight decline, she brought it to Maurice's side. +There, looking at him, she said again, rigidly: + +"He will die; I must save him." + +As Henry Houghton said afterward, "It was impossible!--so she did it." + +It took her more than an hour to do it, to pull and lift and shove the +inert figure! Afterward she used to wonder how she had done it; wonder +how she had given the final _push_, which got his sagging body up on to +the floor of the wagon! It had strained every part of her;--her shoulder +against his hips, her head in the small of his back, her hands gripping +his heavy, dangling legs. She was soaking wet; her hair had loosened, +and stray locks were plastered across her forehead. She grunted like a +toiling animal. + +It seemed as if her heart would crack with her effort, her muscles +tear; she forgot the retreating rumble of the storm, the brooding, +dripping forest stillness; she forgot even her certainty that he would +die. She entirely forgot herself. She only knew--straining, gasping, +sweating--that she must get the body--the dead body perhaps!--into the +wagon. And she did it! Just as she did it, she heard a faint groan. Her +heart stood still with terror, then beat frantically with joy. + +_He was alive!_ + +She ran back to the cabin for the cushions he had saved from the rain, +and pushed them under his head; then tied the lantern to the whip +socket; then recalled what he had said about "roping a log on behind as +a brake." "Of course!" she thought; and managed,--the splinters tearing +her hands--to fasten a fairly heavy piece of wood under the rear axle, +so that it might bump along behind the wagon as a drag. She pondered as +she did these things why she should know so certainly how they must be +done? But when they were done, she said, _"Now!"..._ and went and stood +between the shafts. + +It was after midnight when the descent began. The moon rode high among +fleecy clouds, but on either side of the road gulfs of darkness lay +under motionless foliage. Sometimes the smoky light from the swaying +lantern shone on a wet black branch, snapped by the gale and lying in +the path, and Eleanor, seeing it, wedging her heels into the mud and +sliding stones of the road, and straining backward between the shafts, +would say, "A snake.... I must save Maurice." Sometimes she would hear, +above the crunching of the wheels behind her, a faint noise in the +undergrowth: a breaking twig, a brushing sound, as of a furtive +footstep--and she would say, "A man.... I must save Maurice." + +The yellow flame of the lantern was burning white in the dawn, as, +holding back against the weight of the wagon--the palms of her bleeding +hands clenched on the shafts, her feet slipping, her ankles twisted and +wrenched--by and by, with the tears of physical suffering streaming down +her face, she reached the foot of the mountain. The, thin, cool air of +morning flowed about her in crystalline stillness; suddenly the sun +tipped the green bowl of the world, and all at once shadows fell across +the road like bars. They seemed to her, in her daze of terror and +exhaustion, insurmountable: the road was level now, but she pulled and +pulled, agonizingly, over those bars of nothingness; then one wheel sank +into a rut, and the wagon came to a dead standstill; but at the same +moment she saw ahead of her, among the trees, Doctor Bennett's dark, +sleeping house. So, dropping the shafts, she went stumbling and running, +to pound on the door, and gasp out: + +"Come--help--Maurice--come--" + + * * * * * + +"I think," she said afterward, lying like a broken thing upon her bed, +"I was able to do it, because I kept saying, 'I must save Maurice.' Of +course, to save Maurice, I wouldn't mind dying." + +"My dear, you are magnificent!" Mary Houghton said, huskily. Then she +told her husband: "Henry, I _like_ her! I never thought I would, but I +do." + +"I'll never say 'Mr. F.'s aunt' again!" he promised, with real +contrition. + +It was Eleanor's conquering moment, for everybody liked her, and +everybody said she was 'magnificent'--except Maurice, who, as he got +well, said almost nothing. + +"I can't talk about it," was all he had to say, choking. "She's given +her life for mine," he told the doctor. + +"I hope not," Doctor Bennett said, "I _hope_ not. But it will take +months, Maurice, for her to get over this. As for saving your life, my +boy, she didn't. She made things a lot more dangerous for you. She did +the wrong thing--with greatness! You'd have come to, after a while. But +don't tell her so." + +"Well, I should say not!" Maurice said, hotly. "She'll never know +_that_! And anyway, sir, I don't believe it. I believe she saved my +life." + +"Well, suit yourself," the doctor said, good-naturedly; "but I tell +you one thing: whether she saved your life or not, she did a really +wonderful thing--considering her temperament." + +Maurice frowned: "I don't think her temperament makes any difference. It +would have been wonderful for anybody." + +"Well, suit yourself," Doctor Bennett said again; "only, if Edith had +done it, say, for Johnny, who weighs nearly as much as you, I wouldn't +have called it particularly wonderful." + +"Oh, Edith," Maurice said, grinning; "no; I suppose not. I see what you +mean." And to himself he added: "Edith is like an ox, compared to Star. +Just flesh and blood. No nerves. No soul. Doctor Bennett was right. +Eleanor's temperament does make it more wonderful." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +It was after this act of revealing and unnecessary courage, that the +Houghton family entirely accepted Eleanor. There were a few days of +anxiety about her, and about Maurice, too; for, though his slight +concussion was not exactly alarming--yet, "Keep your shirt on," Doctor +Bennett cautioned him; "don't get gay. And don't talk to Mrs. Curtis." +So Maurice lay in his bed in another room, and entered, silently, into a +new understanding of love, which, as soon as he was permitted to see +Eleanor, he tried stumblingly to share with her. + +Physically, she was terribly prostrated; but spiritually, feeding on +those stumbling words, she rejoiced like a strong man to run a race! She +saw no confession in the fact that everybody was astonished at what she +had done; she was astonished herself. "I wasn't afraid!" she said, +wonderingly. + +"It was because you liked Maurice more than you were scared," Edith +said; she offered this explanation the day that Maurice had been allowed +to come across the hall, rather shakily, to adore his wife. + +His first sight of her was a great shock.... The strain of that terrible +night had blanched and withered her face; there were lines on her +forehead that never left it. + +Edith, sneaking in behind him, said under her breath: "Goodness! Don't +she look old!" + +She did. But as Maurice fell on his knees beside her, it seemed as if +she drank youth from his lips. Under his kisses her worn face bloomed +with joy. + +"It was nothing--nothing," she insisted, stroking his thick hair with +her trembling hand, and trying to silence his words of wondering +worship. + +"I was not worthy of it.... To think that you--" He hid his face on her +shoulder. + +Afterward, when he went back to his own room, she lay, smiling +tranquilly to herself; her look was the look one sees on the face of a +woman who, in that pallid hour after the supreme achievement of birth, +has looked upon her child. She was entirely happy. From the open door of +Maurice's room came, now and then, the murmur of Edith's honest little +voice, or Maurice's chuckle. They were talking about her, she knew, and +the happy color burned in her cheeks. When he came in for his second +visit, late that afternoon, she asked him, archly, what he and Edith had +been talking about so long in his room? + +"I believe you were telling her what a goose I am about thunderstorms," +she said. + +"I was not!" he declared--and her eyes shone. But when she urged-- + +"Well, what _were_ you talking about?" he couldn't remember anything but +a silly story of Edith's hens. He repeated it, and Eleanor sighed; how +could he be interested in anything so childish! + +As it happened, he was not; he had scarcely listened to Edith. The only +thing that interested Maurice now, was what Eleanor had done for him! +Thinking of it, he brooded over her, silently, his cheek against hers, +then Mrs. Houghton came in and banished him, saying that Eleanor must go +to sleep; "and you and Edith must keep quiet!" she said. + +He was so contrite that, tiptoeing to his own room, he told poor +faithful Edith her voice was too loud: "You disturb Eleanor. So dry up, +Skeezics!" + +As he grew stronger, and was able to go downstairs, Edith felt freer to +talk to him--for down on the porch, or out in the garden, her eager +young voice would not reach those languid ears. Then, suddenly, all her +chances to talk stopped: "What's the matter with Maurice?" she pondered, +crossly; "he's backed out of helping me. Why can't he go on shingling +the chicken coop?" For it was while this delightful work was under way +that it, and "talk," came to an abrupt end. + +The shingling, begun joyously by the big boy and the little girl on +Monday, promised several delightfully busy mornings.... Of course the +setting out for Mercer had been postponed; there was no possibility of +moving Eleanor for the present; so Maurice's "business career," as he +called it, with grinning pomposity, had to be delayed--Eleanor turned +white at the mere suggestion of convalascing at Green Hill without him! +Consequently Maurice, when not worshiping his wife, had nothing to do, +and Edith had seized the opportunity to make him useful.... "We'll +shingle my henhouse," she had announced. Maurice liked the scheme as +much as she did. The September air, the smell of the fresh shingles, the +sitting with one leg doubled under you, and the other outstretched on +the hot slope of the roof, the tap-tapping of the hammers, the bossing +of Edith, the trying to talk of Eleanor, and thunderstorms, while you +hold eight nails between your lips; then the pause while Edith climbs +down the ladder and runs to the kitchen for hot cookies; all these +things would be a delightful occupation for any intelligent person! + +"It'll take three mornings to do it," Edith said, importantly; and +Maurice said: + +"It will, because you keep putting the wrong end up! I wish Eleanor was +well enough to do it," he said--and then burst into self-derisive +chuckles: "Imagine Eleanor straddling that ridgepole! It would scare her +stiff!" + +It was after this talk that Maurice "backed out" on the job--but Edith +never knew why. She saw no connection between the unfinished roof, and +the fact that that same afternoon, sitting on the floor in the Bride's +room, she had, in her anxiety to be entertaining, repeated Maurice's +remark about the ridgepole. Eleanor, who had had an empty morning, +listening to the distant tapping of hammers, had drooped a weary lip. + +"I should hate it. Horrid, dirty work!" + +"Oh no! It's nice, clean work," Edith corrected her. + +"But _you_ wouldn't like it, of course," she said, with satisfaction; +"you'd be scared! You're scared of everything, Maurice says. You were +scared to death, up on the mountain." + +Eleanor was silent. + +"He thinks it's lovely for you to be scared; it's funny about Maurice," +said Edith, thoughtfully; "he doesn't like it when _I'm_ scared--not +that I ever am, now, but I used to be when I was a child." + +The color flickered on Eleanor's cheeks: "Edith, I'll rest now," she +said; her voice broke. + +Edith looked at her, open-mouthed. "Why, Eleanor!" she said; "what's the +matter? Are you mad at anything? Have you a stomachache? I'll run for +mother!" + +"There's nothing the matter. But--but I wish you'd tell Maurice to come +and speak to me." + +Edith tore downstairs, and out of the front door: "Maurice! Where are +you?"--then, catching sight of him, reading and smoking in a hammock +slung between two of the big columns on the east porch, she rushed at +him, and pulled him to his astonished feet. "Eleanor wants you! +Something's the matter, and--" + +Before she could finish, Maurice was tearing upstairs, two steps at a +time.... + +And so it was that Edith, sulkily, worked on the roof by herself. + +Yet Maurice had not entirely "backed out." ... The very next morning, +before Edith was awake, he had gone out to the henhouse, and, alone, +done more than his share of the shingling. + +"But, Maurice, why didn't you wake me?" Edith protested, when she +discovered what he had done. "I'd have gone out, too!" + +"I liked doing it by myself," Maurice evaded. + +And for five minutes Edith was sulky again. "He puts on airs, 'cause +he's married! Well, I don't care. He can shingle the whole roof by +himself if he wants to! I don't like married men, anyhow." + +The married man had, indeed, wanted to be by himself--to put the nails +in his mouth, and to sit on the cold, slippery shingles in the gray +September morning, and to tap-tap-tap--and think, and think. + +But he didn't like his thoughts very well.... + +He thought how he had rushed upstairs, terrified lest Eleanor was +fainting or had a "stomachache," or something--and found her sitting up +in bed, her cheeks red and glazed with tears, her round, full chin +quivering. He thought how he had tried to make out what she was driving +at about Edith, and the chicken coop, and the ridgepole! + +"You told Edith I was scared!" + +Maurice's bewilderment was full of stumbling questions: "Told Edith? +When? What?" + +And as she said "when" and "what," ending with, "You said I am scared!" +Maurice could only say, blankly. "But my darling, you _are_!" + +"You may think I am a fool, but to tell Edith so--" + +"But Great Scott! I didn't!" + +"I won't have you talking me over with Edith; she's a _child_! It was +just what you did when you danced three times with that girl who +said--Edith is as rude as she was!--and she's a _child_. How can you +like to be with a child?" Of course, it was all her fear of Youth,--but +Eleanor did not know that; she thought she was hurt at the boy's +neglect. Her face, wet with tears, was twitching, her voice--that lovely +voice!--was shrill in his astonished ears.... + +Maurice, on the sloping roof, in the chill September dawn, his fingers +numb on the frosty nails, stopped hammering, and leaned his chin on his +fist, and thought: "She's sick. She almost killed herself to save me; so +her nerve has all gone. That's why she talked--that way." He put a +shingle in its place, and planted a nail; "it was because she was scared +that what she did was so brave! I couldn't make her see that the more +scared she was, the braver she was. It wouldn't have been brave in that +gump, Edith, without a nerve in her body. But why is she down on Edith? +I suppose she's a nuisance to a person with a wonderful mind like +Eleanor's. Talks too much. I'll tell her to dry up when she's with +Eleanor." And again he heard that strange voice: "You like to talk to a +_child_." + +Maurice, pounding away on Edith's roof, grew hot with misery, not +because it was so terrible to have Eleanor angry with him; not even +because he had finally got mad, and answered back, and said, "Don't be +silly!" The real misery was something far deeper than this half-amused +remorse. It was that those harmless, scolding words of his held a +perfectly new idea: he had said, "Don't be silly." _Was Eleanor silly?_ + +Now, to a man whose feeling about his wife has been a sort of awe, this +question is terrifying. Maurice, in his boy's heart, had worshiped in +Eleanor, not just the god of Love, but the love of God. And was +she--_silly_? No! Of course not! He pounded violently, hit his thumb, +put it into his mouth, then proceeded, mumblingly, to bring his god back +from the lower shrine of a pitying heart, to the high alter of a +justifying mind: Eleanor was ill.... She was nervous.... She was an +exquisite being of mist and music and courage and love! So of course she +was sensitive to things ordinary people did not feel. Saying this, and +fitting the shingles into place, suddenly the warm and happy wave of +confident idealism began to flood in upon him, and immediately his mind +as well as his heart was satisfied. He reproached himself for having +been scared lest his star was just a common candle, like himself. He had +been cruel to judge her, as he might have judged her had she been +well--or a gump like Edith! For had she been well, she would not have +been "silly"! Had she been well--instead of lying there in her bed, +white and strained and trembling, all because she had saved his life, +harnessing herself to that wagon, and bringing him, in the darkness, +through a thousand terrors--nonexistent, to be sure, but none the less +real--to safety and life! Oh, how could he have even thought the word +"silly"? He was ashamed and humble; never again would he be cross to +her! "Silly? I'm the silly one! I'm an ass. I'll tell her so! I don't +suppose she'll ever forgive me. She said I 'didn't understand her'; +well, I didn't! But she'll never have cause to say it again! I +understand her now," Then, once more, he thought, frowning, "But why is +she so down on Edith?" + +That Eleanor's irritation was jealousy--not of Edith, but of Edith's +years--never occurred to him. So all he said was, "She oughtn't to be +down on Edith; _she_ has always appreciated her!" Edith had never said +that Eleanor was "silly"! But so long as it bothered Eleanor (being +nervous) to have the imp round, he'd tell her not to be a nuisance. "You +can say anything to Skeezics; she has sense. She understands." + +But all the same, Maurice shingled his part of the henhouse before +breakfast. + +Maurice did not call Eleanor "silly" again for a long time. There was +always--when she was unreasonable--the curbing memory that her +reasonableness had been shaken by that assault of darkness and fear, and +the terrible fatigue of saving his robust young life. Furthermore, +Doctor Bennett--telling Henry Houghton that Eleanor had done the worst +possible thing, "magnificently"--told Maurice she had "nervous +prostration,"--a cloaking phrase which kindly doctors often give to +perplexed husbands, so that the egotism of sickly wives may be covered +up! So Maurice, repeating to himself these useful words, saw only ill +health, not silliness, in Eleanor's occasional tears. It was a week +after the shingling of the henhouse, that, leaving her to recuperate +still further at Green Hill, he started in on his job of "office +boy"--his jocose title for his position in the real-estate office in +Mercer. Eleanor did not want to be left, and said so, wistfully. + +"I'll come up for Sundays," Maurice comforted her, tenderly. + +On these weekly visits the Houghtons were impressed by his tenderness; +he played solitaire with his wife by the hour; he read poetry to her +until she fell asleep; and he told her everything he had done and every +person he had seen, while he was away from her! But the rest of the +household didn't get much enjoyment out of Eleanor. Even the adoring +Edith had moments when admiration had to be propped up by Doctor +Bennett's phrase. As, for instance, on one of Maurice's precious +Sundays, he and she and Johnny Bennett and Rover and old Lion climbed up +to the cabin to make things shipshape before closing the place for the +winter. + +"You'll be away from me all day," Eleanor said, and her eyes filled. + +Maurice said he hated to leave her, but he had always helped Edith on +this closing-up job. + +"Oh, well; go, if you want to," Eleanor said; "but I don't see how you +can enjoy being with a perfect child, like Edith!" + +Maurice went--not very happily. But it was such a fine, tingling day of +hard work, in a joyous wind, with resulting appetites, and much yelling +at each other--"Here, drop that!" ... "Hurry up, slow poke!"--that he +was happy again before he knew it. After the work was over they had a +lazy hour before the fire, their eyes stinging with smoke which seemed +to envelop them, no matter on which side they sat; an hour in which +Rover drowsed at Maurice's feet, and Johnny, in spectacles, read _A +Boy's Adventures in the Forests of Brazil_, and Edith gabbled about +Eleanor.... + +"Oh, I wish _I_ was married," Edith said; "I'd just love to save my +husband's life!" + +Maurice said little, except to ask Johnny if he had got to such and such +a place in the _Adventures_, or to assent to Edith's ecstasies; but once +he sighed, and said Eleanor was awfully pulled down by that--that night. + +"I should think," Edith said, "you'd feel she'd just about died for you, +like people in history who died for each other." + +"I do," Maurice said, soberly. + +When they drove home in the dusk, Maurice singing, loudly; Edith, on the +front seat of the wagon, snuggling against him; Johnny standing up, +balancing himself by holding on to their shoulders, and old Rover +jogging along on the footpath,--they were all in great spirits, until a +turn in the road showed them Eleanor, sitting on a log, looking rather +white. + +"Suffering snakes!" said Maurice, breaking off in the middle of a word. +Before Lion could quite stop, he was at his wife's side. "Eleanor! How +did you get here? ... You _walked_? Oh, Star, you oughtn't to have done +such a thing!" + +"I was frightened about you. It was so late. I was afraid something had +happened. I came to look for you." + +Edith and Johnny looked on aghast; then Edith called out: "Why, Eleanor! +I wouldn't let anything happen to Maurice!" + +Maurice, kneeling beside his wife, had put his arms around her and was +soothing her with all sorts of gentlenesses: "Dear, you mustn't worry +so! Nelly, don't cry; why, darling, we were having such a good time, we +never noticed that it was getting late ..." + +"You forgot me," Eleanor said; "as long as you had Edith, you never +thought how I might worry!" She hid her face in her hands. + +Maurice came back to the wagon; "Edith," he said, in a low voice, "would +you and Johnny mind getting out and walking? I'll bring Eleanor along +later. I'm sorry, but she's--she's tired." + +Edith said in a whisper, "'Course not!" Then, without a look behind her +at the crying woman on the log, and the patient, mortified boy bending +over her, she, and the disgusted and more deliberate Johnny, ran down +the road into the twilight. Edith was utterly bewildered. With her +inarticulate consciousness of the impropriety of emotion, naked, _in +public_! was the shyness of a child in meeting a stranger--for that +crying woman was practically a stranger. She wasn't the Bride--silent +and lovely! At Johnny's gate she said, briefly, "'Night!" and went on, +running--running in the dusk. When she reached the house, and found her +father and mother on the east porch, she was breathless, which accounted +for her brevity in saying that Maurice and Eleanor were coming--and she +was just starved! In the dining room, eating a very large supper, she +listened for the wheels of the wagon and reflected: "Why was Eleanor mad +at _me_? She was mad at Maurice, too. But most at me. Why?" She took an +enormous spoonful of sliced peaches, and stared blankly ahead of her. + +Ten minutes later, hearing wheels grating on the gravel at the front +door, and Maurice's voice, subdued and apologetic, she pushed her chair +away from the table, rushed through the pantry and up the back stairs. +She didn't know why she fled. She only knew that she couldn't face +Eleanor, who would sit with Maurice while he bolted a supper for +which--though Edith didn't know it!--all appetite had gone. In her room +in the ell, Edith shut the door, and, standing with her back against it, +tried to answer her own question: + +"Why was Eleanor mad?" But she couldn't answer it. Jealousy, as an +emotion, in herself or anybody else, was absolutely unknown to her. +She had probably never even heard the word--except in the Second +Commandment, or as a laughing reproach to old Rover--so she really did +not know enough to use it now to describe Eleanor's behavior. She only +said, "Maybe it's the nervous prostration? Well, I don't like her very +much. I'm glad she won't be at Fern Hill when I go there." To be a +Bride--and yet to cry before people! "Crying before people," Edith said, +"is just like taking off all your clothes before people--I don't care +how bad her nervous prostration is; it isn't nice! But why is she mad at +me? That isn't sense." + +You can't run other people's feelings to cover, and try to find their +cause, without mental and moral development; all this analysis lessened +very visibly Edith's childishness; also, it made her rather rudely cold +to Eleanor, whose effort to reinstate herself in the glories of the +little girl's imagination only resulted in still another and entirely +new feeling in Edith's mind--contempt. + +"If she had a right to be mad at me yesterday--why isn't she mad +to-day?" Edith reasoned. + +Eleanor was quick to feel the contempt. "I don't care for Edith," she +told Maurice, who looked surprised. + +"She's only a child," he said. + +Edith seemed especially a child now to Maurice, since he had embarked on +his job at Mercer. Not only was she unimportant to him, but, in spite of +his mortification at that scene on the road, his Saturday-night returns +to his wife were blowing the fires of his love into such a glory of +devotion, that Edith was practically nonexistent! His one thought was to +take Eleanor to Mercer. He wanted her all to himself! Also, he had a +vague purpose of being on his dignity with a lot of those Mercer people: +Eleanor's aunt, just back from Europe; Brown and Hastings--cubs! But +below this was the inarticulate feeling that, away from the Houghtons, +especially away from Edith, he might forget his impulse to use--for a +second time--that dreadful word "silly." + +So, as the 20th of October approached--the day when they were to go back +to town--he felt a distinct relief in getting away from Green Hill. The +relief was general. Edith felt it, which was very unlike Edith, who had +always sniffled (in private) at Maurice's departure! And her father and +mother felt it: + +"Eleanor's mind," Henry Houghton said, "is exactly like a drum--sound +comes out of emptiness!" + +"But Maurice seems to like the sound," Mrs. Houghton reminded him; "and +she loves him." + +"She wants to monopolize him," her husband said; "I don't call that +love; I call it jealousy. It must be uncomfortable to be jealous," he +ruminated; "but the really serious thing about it is that it will bore +any man to death. Point that out to her, Mary! Tell her that jealousy +is self-love, plus the consciousness of your own inferiority to the +person of whom you are jealous. And it has the same effect on love that +water has on fire. My definition ought to be in a dictionary!" he added, +complacently. + +"What sweet jobs you do arrange for me!" she said; "and as for your +definition, I can give you a better one--and briefer: 'Jealousy is Human +Natur'! But I don't believe Eleanor's jealous, Henry; she's only +conscious, poor girl! of Maurice's youth. But there is something I _am_ +going to tell her...." + +She told her the day before the bridal couple (Edith still reveled in +the phrase!) started for Mercer. "Come out into the orchard," Mary +Houghton called upstairs to Eleanor, "and help me gather windfalls for +jelly." + +"I must pack Maurice's things," Eleanor called over the banisters, +doubtfully; "he's a perfect boy about packing; he put his boots in with +his collars." + +"Oh, come along!" said Mrs. Houghton. And Eleanor yielded, scolding +happily while she pinned her hat on before the mirror in the hall. + +In the orchard they picked up some apples, then sat down on the bleached +stubble of the mowed hillside and looked over at the dark mass of the +mountain, behind which a red sun was trampling waist deep through leaden +clouds. "How _can_ I bring it in?" Mrs. Houghton thought; "it won't do +to just throw a warning at her!" + +But she didn't have to throw it; Eleanor invited it. "I'm glad we're +going to the hotel, just at first," she said; "Auntie says I don't know +anything about keeping house, and I get worried for fear I won't make +Maurice comfortable. I tell him so all the time!" + +"I wouldn't put things into his head, Eleanor," Mrs. Houghton said +(beginning her "warning"); "I mean things that you don't want him to +feel. I remember when my first baby was coming--the little boy we +lost--" she stopped and bit her lip; the "baby" had been gone for +nearly twenty years, but he was still her little boy--"I was very +forlorn, and I couldn't do anything, or go anywhere; and Henry stayed at +home with me like a saint. Well, I told my father that I had told Henry +it was hard on him to 'sit at home with an invalid wife.' And father +said, 'If you tell him so often enough, he'll agree with you,' There's a +good deal in that, Eleanor?" + +"I suppose there is," Maurice's wife said, vaguely. + +"So, if I were you," Mrs. Houghton said, still feeling her way, "I +wouldn't give him the idea that you are any--well, older than he is. A +wife might be fifty years older than her husband, and if her _spirit_ +was young, years wouldn't make a bit of difference!" + +Eleanor took this somewhat roundabout advice very well. "The only thing +in the world I want," she said, simply, "is to make him happy." + +They went back to the house in silence. But that night Eleanor paused in +putting some last things into her trunk, and, going over to Maurice, +kissed his thick hair. "Maurice," she said, "are you happy?" + +"You bet I am!" + +"You haven't said so once to-day." + +"I haven't said I'm alive," he said, grinning. "Oh, Star, won't it be +wonderful when we can go away from the whole caboodle of 'em, and just +be by ourselves?" + +"That's what I want!" she said; "just to be alone with you. I wish we +could live on a desert island!..." + +Down in the studio, Mr. Houghton, smoking up to the fire limit a cigar +grudgingly permitted by his wife ("It's your eighth to-day," she +reproached him), Henry Houghton, listening to his Mary's account of the +talk in the orchard, told her what he thought of her: "May you be +forgiven! Your intentions are doubtless excellent, but your truthfulness +leaves something to be desired: 'Years won't make any difference'? Mary! +Mary!" + +But she defended herself: "I mean, 'years' can't kill love--the highest +love--the love that grows out of, _and then outgrows_, the senses! The +body may be just an old glove--shabby, maybe; but if the hand inside +the glove is alive, what real difference does the shabbiness make? If +Eleanor's mind doesn't get rheumatic, _and if she will forget +herself_!--they'll be all right. But if she thinks of herself--" Mary +Houghton sighed; her husband ended her sentence for her: + +"She'll upset the whole kettle of fish?" + +"What I'm afraid of," she said, with a troubled look, "is that you are +right:--she's inclined to be jealous, I saw her frown when he was +playing checkers with Edith. I wanted to tell her, but didn't dare to, +that jealousy is as amusing to people who don't feel it, as it is +undignified in people who do." + +"My darling, you are a brute," said Mr. Houghton; "I have long suspected +it, _in re_ tobacco. As for Eleanor, _I_ would never have such cruel +thoughts! _I_ belong to the gentler sex. I would merely refer her to Mr. +F.'s aunt." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +They reached Mercer in the rainy October dusk. It was cold and raw, and +a bleak wind blew up the river, which, with its shifting film of oil, +bent like a brown arm about the grimy, noisy town. The old hotel, with +its Doric columns grimed with years of smoky river fogs, was dark, and +smelled of soot; and the manners of the waiters and chambermaids would +have set Eleanor's teeth on edge, except that she was so absorbed in the +thrill of being back under the roof which had sheltered them in those +first days of bliss. + +"Do you _remember_?" she said, significantly. + +Maurice, looking after suitcases and hand bags, said, absently, +"Remember what?" She told him "what" and he said: "Yes. Where do you +want this trunk put, Eleanor?" + +She sighed; to sentimentalize and receive no response in kind, is like +sitting down on a chair which isn't there. After dinner, when she and +Maurice came up to their room, which had fusty red hangings and a +marble-topped center table standing coldly under a remote chandelier, +she sighed again, for Maurice said that, as for this hole of a hotel, +the only thing _he_ thought of, was how soon they could get out of it! +"I can get that little house I told you about, only it's rather out of +the way. Not many of your kind of people 'round!" + +She knelt down beside him, pushing his newspaper aside and pressing her +cheek against his. "_That_ doesn't make any difference!" she said; "I'm +glad not to know anybody. I just want you! I don't want people." + +"Neither do I," Maurice agreed; "I'd have to shell out my cigars to 'em +if they were men!" + +"Oh, is that your reason?" she said, laughing. + +"Say, Star, would you mind moving? I was just reading--" + +She rose, and, going over to the window, stood looking out at the +streaming rain in one of those empty silences which at first had been so +alluringly mysterious to him. She was waiting for his hand on her +shoulder, his kiss on her hair--but he was immersed in his paper. "How +can he be interested about football, _now_, when we're alone?" she +thought, wistfully. Then, to remind him of lovelier things, she began to +sing, very softly: + +"Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers? +0 sweet content! +To add to golden numbers, golden numbers, +O sweet content!--0 sweet, O sweet content--" + +He dropped his paper and listened--and it seemed as if music made itself +visible in his ardent, sensitive face! After a while he got up and went +over to the window, and kissed her gently ... + +Maurice was very happy in these first months in Mercer. The Weston +office liked him--and admired him, also, which pleased his young +vanity!--though he was jeered at for an incorrigible and alarming +truthfulness which pointed out disadvantages to possible clients, but +which--to the amazement of the office--frequently made a sale! As a +result he acquired, after a while, several small gilt hatchets, +presented by the "boys," and also the nickname of "G. Washington." He +accepted these tributes with roars of laughter, but pointed to results: +"_I get the goods!_" So, naturally, he liked his work--he liked it very +much! The joy of bargaining and his quick and perhaps dangerously frank +interest in clients as personalities, made him a most beguiling +salesman; as a result he became, in an astonishingly short time, a real +force in the office; all of which hurried him into maturity. But the +most important factor in his happiness was his adoration of Eleanor. He +was perfectly contented, evening after evening in the hotel, to play +her accompaniments (on a rented piano), read poetry aloud, and beat her +at solitaire. Also, she helped him in his practicing with a certain +sweet authority of knowledge, which kept warm in his heart the sense of +her infinite superiority. So when, later, they found a house, he entered +very gayly upon the first test of married life--house furnishing! It was +then that his real fiber showed itself. It is a risky time for all +husbands and wives, a time when it is particularly necessary to +"consider the stars"! It needs a fine sense of proportion as to the +value, relatively, of peace and personal judgment, to give up one's idea +in regard, say, to the color of the parlor rug. Maurice's likes and +dislikes were emphatic as to rugs and everything else,--but his sense of +proportion was sound, so Eleanor's taste,--and peace,--prevailed. It was +good taste, so he really had nothing to complain of, though he couldn't +for the life of him see why she picked out a _picture_ paper for a +certain room in the top of the house! "I thought I'd have it for a +smoking room," he said, ruefully; "and a lot of pink lambs and green +chickens cavorting around don't seem very suitable. Still, if you like +it, it's all right!" The memory of the night on the mountain, when +Eleanor gave all she had of strength and courage and fear and passion to +the saving of his life--made pink lambs, or anything else, "all right"! +When the house-furnishing period was over, and they settled down, the +"people" Eleanor didn't want to see, seemed to have no particular desire +to see them; so their solitude of two (and Bingo, who barked whenever +Maurice put his arms around Eleanor) was not broken in upon--which made +for domestic, even if stultifying, content. But the thing that really +kept them happy during that first rather dangerous year, was the +smallness of their income. They had very little money; even with +Eleanor's six hundred, it was nearer two thousand dollars than three, +and that, for people who had always lived in more or less luxury, was +very nearly poverty;--for which, of course, they had reason, so far as +married happiness went, to thank God! If there are no children, it is +the limited income which can be most certainly relied upon to provide +the common interest which welds husband and wife together. This more or +less uncomfortable, and always anxious, interest, generally develops in +that critical time when the heat of passion has begun to cool, and the +friction of the commonplace produces a certain warmth of its own. These +are the days when conjugal criticism, which has been smothered under the +undiscriminating admiration of first love, begins to raise its head--an +ugly head, with a mean eye, in which there is neither imagination nor +humor. When this criticism begins to creep into daily life, and the lure +of the bare shoulder and perfumed hair lessens--because they are as +assured as bread and butter!--it is then that this saving unity of +purpose in acquiring bread and butter comes to the rescue. + +It came to the rescue of Maurice and Eleanor; they had many welding +moments of anxiety on his part, and eager self-sacrifice on her part; of +adding up columns of figures, with a constantly increasing total, which +had to be subtracted from a balance which decreased so rapidly that +Eleanor felt quite sure that the bank was cheating them! Of course they +did not appreciate the value of this blessed young poverty--who of us +ever appreciates poverty while we are experiencing it? We only know its +value when we look back upon it! But they did--or at least Eleanor +did--appreciate their isolation, never realizing that no human life can +refresh another unless it may itself drink deep of human sympathies and +hopes. Maurice could take this refreshment through business contacts; +but, except for Mrs. O'Brien, and her baby grandson, Don, Eleanor's +acquaintances in Mercer had been limited to her aunt's rather narrow +circle. + +When Mrs. Newbolt got back from Europe, Maurice was introduced to this +circle at a small dinner given to the bride and groom to indicate family +forgiveness. The guests were elderly people, who talked politics and +surgical operations, and didn't know what to say to Maurice, whose +blond hair and good-humored blue eyes made him seem distressingly young. +Nor did Maurice know what to say to them. + +"I'd have gone to sleep," he told Eleanor, in exploding mirth, on their +way home, "if it hadn't been that the food was so mighty good! I kept +awake, in spite of that ancient dame who hashed up the Civil War, just +to see what the next course would be!" + +It was about this time that Maurice began to show a little longing for +companionship (outside the office) of a kind which did not remember the +Civil War. His evenings of solitaire and music were awfully nice, but-- + +"Brown and Hastings are in college," he told his wife; "and Mort's on a +job at his father's mills. I miss 'em like the devil." + +"_I_ don't want anyone but you," she said, and the tears started to her +eyes; he asked her what she was crying about, and she said, "Oh, +nothing." But of course he knew what it was, and he had to remind +himself that "she had nervous prostration"; otherwise that terrible, +hidden word "silly" would have been on his lips. + +Eleanor, too, had a hidden word; it was the word "boy." It was Mrs. +Newbolt who thrust it at her, in those first days of settling down into +the new house. She had come in, waddling ponderously on her weak ankles, +to see, she said, how the young people were getting along: "At least, +_one_ of you is young!" Mrs. Newbolt said, jocosely. She was still +puffing from a climb upstairs, to find Eleanor, dusty and disheveled, in +a little room in the top of the house. She was sitting on the floor in +front of a trunk, with Bingo fast asleep on her skirt. + +"What's this room to be?" said Mrs. Newbolt; then looked at the wall +paper, gay with prancing lambs and waddling ducks, and Noah's Ark trees. +"What! a _nursery_?" said Mrs. Newbolt; "do you mean--?" + +"No," Eleanor said, reddening; "oh no! I only thought that if--" + +"You are forehanded," said Mrs. Newbolt, and was silent for almost a +minute. The vision of Eleanor choosing a nursery paper, for little eyes +(which might never be born!) to look upon, touched her. She blinked and +swallowed, then said, crossly: "You're thinner! For heaven's sake don't +lose your figger! My dear grandmother used to say--I can see her now, +skimmin' milk pans, and then runnin' her finger round the rim and +lickin' it. She was a Dennison. I've heard her say to her daughters, I'd +rather have you lose your virtue than lose your figger'; and my dear +grandfather--your great-grandfather--wore knee breeches; he said--well, +I suppose you'd be shocked if I told you what he said? He said, 'If a +gal loses one, she--' No; I guess I won't tell you. Old maids are so +refined! _He_ wasn't an old maid, I can tell you! I brought a chocolate +drop for Bingo. Have you a cook?" + +Eleanor, gasping with the effort to keep up with the torrent, said, +"Yes; but she doesn't know how to do things." + +Mrs. Newbolt raised pudgy and protesting hands. "Get somebody who can do +things! Come here, little Bingo! Eleanor, if you don't feed that boy, +you'll lose him. I remember puffectly well hearin' my dear father say, +'If you want to catch a man's heart, set a trap in his stomach.' Bingo! +Bingo!" (The little dog, standing on his hind legs, superciliously +accepted a chocolate drop--then ran back to Eleanor.) "Maurice will be a +man one of these days, and a man can't live on love; he wants 'wittles +and drink.' When I married your uncle Thomas, my dear father said, 'Feed +him--and amuse him.' So I made up my mind on my weddin' day to have good +food and be entertainin'. And I must say I did it! I fed your dear +uncle, and I talked to him, until he died." She paused, and looked at +the paper on the wall. "I _hope_ the Lord will send you children; it +will help you hold the boy--and perhaps you'll be more efficient! You'll +have to be, or they'll die. Get a cook." Then, talking all the way +downstairs, she trundled off, in angry, honest, forgiving anxiety for +her niece's welfare. + +Eleanor, planning for the little sunny room, felt bruised by that +bludgeon word--which, as it happened, was not accurate, for Maurice, by +this time, had gained a maturity of thought and patience that put him +practically out of boyhood. When Eleanor repeated her caller's remarks +to him, she left that one word out; "Auntie implied," she said, "that +you wouldn't love me, if you didn't have fancy cooking." + +"She's a peach on cooking herself," declared Maurice; "but, as far as my +taste goes, I don't give a hoot for nightingales' tongues on toast." + +So, as fancy cooking was not a necessity to Maurice, and as he had +resigned himself to an absence of any social life, and didn't really +mind smoking in a room with a silly paper on the walls (he had been very +much touched when Eleanor told him what the paper meant to her in hope, +and unsatisfied longing), he was perfectly contented in the ugly little +house in the raw, new street. In point of fact, music and books provided +the Bread of Life to Maurice--with solitaire thrown in as a pleasant +extra!--so "wittles and drink" did not begin to be a consideration until +the first year of married life had passed. Eleanor remembered the date +when--because of something Maurice said--she began to realize that they +must be considered. It was on the anniversary of their wedding--a +cloudy, cold day; but all the same, with valiant sentimentality, they +went--Bingo at their heels--to celebrate, in the meadow of those +fifty-four minutes of married life. As they crossed the field, where the +tides of blossoming grass ebbed and flowed in chilly gusts of wind, they +reminded each other of the first time they had come there, and of every +detail of the elopement. When they sat down under the locust tree, +Eleanor opened her pocketbook and showed him the little grass ring, +lying flat and brittle in a small envelope; and he laughed, and said +when he got rich he would buy her a circle of emeralds! + +"It's confoundedly cold," he said; "b-r-r! ... Oh, I must tell you the +news: I got one in on 'em at the office this morning: Old West has been +stung on a big block on Taylor Street. Nothing doing. No tenants. I've +been working on a fellow for a month, and, by George! I've landed him! I +told him the elevator service was rotten--and one or two other pretty +little things they've been sliding over, gracefully, at the office; but +I landed him! Say, Nelly, Morton asked me to go to a stag party to-morrow +night; do you mind if I go?" + +She smiled vaguely at his truthtelling; then sighed, and said, "Why, no; +if you _want_ to. Maurice, do you remember you said we'd come back here +for our golden wedding?" + +"So I did! I'd forgotten. Gosh! maybe we'll be grandparents by that +time!" The idea seemed to him infinitely humorous, but she winced. "What +a memory you have!" he said. "You ought to be in Weston's! They'd never +catch _you_ forgetting where some idiot left the key of the coal bin." + +"I sang 'Kiss thy perfumed garments'; remember?" + +"'Course I do. Hit 'em again." + +She laughed, but ruefully; he had not spoken just that way a year ago. +She noticed, suddenly, how much older he looked than on that worshiping +day--still the blue, gay eyes, the wind-ruffled blond hair, the +hilarious laugh that displayed the very white teeth; but all the same he +looked older by more than one year: his mouth had a firmer line; his +whole clean-cut face showed responsibility and eager manhood. + +Eleanor, clasping her hands around her knees, and watching the grass +ebbing and flowing in the wind, sang, "O Spring!" and Maurice, +listening, his eyes following the brown ripple of the river lisping in +the shallows around the sandbar, and flowing--flowing--like Life, and +Time, and Love, sighed with satisfaction at the pure beauty of her +voice. "The notes are like wings," he said; "give us a sandwich. I'm +about starved." + +They spread out their luncheon, and Maurice expressed his opinion of it: +"This cake is the limit!" He threw a piece of it at the little dog. +"There, Bingo!... Eleanor, he's losing his waist line. But this cake +won't fatten him! It's sawdust." + +"Hannah _is_ a poor cook," she agreed, nervously; "but if I didn't keep +her I don't know what she would do, she's so awfully deaf! She couldn't +get another place." + +"Why don't you teach her to do things? I suppose she thinks we can live +on love," he said, chuckling. + +She bit her lip,--and thought of Mrs. Newbolt. "Because I don't know how +myself," she said. + +"Why don't you learn?" he suggested, feeding the rest of his cake to +Bingo; "Edith used to make bully cake--" + +She said, with a worried look, that she _would_ try-- + +Instantly he was patient and very gentle, and said that the cake didn't +matter at all! "But I move we try boarding." + +They were silent, watching the slipping gleam on the ripples, until +Eleanor said, "Oh, Maurice,--if we only had a child!" + +"Maybe we will some day," he said, cheerfully. Then, to tease Bingo, he +put his arms around his wife and hugged her,--which made the little dog +burst into a volley of barks! Maurice laughed, but remembered that he +was hungry and said again, "Let's board." + +Eleanor, soothing Bingo, wild-eyed and trembling with jealous love, said +no! she would try to have things better. "Perhaps I'll get as clever as +Edith," she said--and her lip hardened. + +He said he wished she would: "Edith used to make a chocolate cake I'd +sell my soul for, pretty nearly! Why didn't Hannah give us hard-boiled +eggs?" he pondered, burrowing in the luncheon basket for something more +to eat; "they don't take brains!" + +Of course he was wrong; any cooking takes brains--and nobody seemed +able, in his little household, to supply them. However, boarding was +such a terrible threat, that Eleanor, dismayed at the idea of leaving +that little room, waiting at the top of the house, with its ducks and +shepherdesses; and thinking, too, of a whole tableful of people who +would talk to Maurice! made heroic efforts to help Hannah, her mind +fumbling over recipes and ingredients, as her hands fumbled over dishes +and oven doors and dampers. She only succeeded in burning her wrist +badly, and making the deaf Hannah say she didn't want a lady messing up +her kitchen. + +By degrees, however, "living on love" became more and more +uncomfortable, and in October the fiasco of a little dinner for Henry +Houghton made Maurice say definitely that, when their lease expired, +they would board. Mr. Houghton had come to Mercer on business, bringing +Edith with him, as a sort of spree for the child; and when he got home +he summed up his experience to his Mary: + +"That daughter of yours will be the death of me! There was one moment at +dinner when only the grace of God kept me from wringing her neck. In the +first place, she commented upon the food--which was awful!--with her +usual appalling candor. But when she began on the 'harp'--" + +"Harp?" Mary Houghton looked puzzled. + +"I won't go to their house again! I detest married people who squabble +in public. Let 'em scratch each other's eyes out in private if they want +to, the way we do! But I'll be hanged if I look on. She calls him +'darling' whenever she speaks to him. She adores him,--poor fellow! I +tell you, Mary, a mind that hasn't a single thought except love must be +damned stupid to live with. I wished I was asleep a dozen times." + +Maurice, too, at his own dinner table, had "wished he was asleep." + +In the expectation of seeing Mr. Houghton, Eleanor had planned an early +and extra good dinner, after which they meant to take their guests out +on the river and float down into the country to a spot--green, still, in +the soft October days--from which they could look back at the city, with +its myriad lights pricking out in the dusk, and see the copper lantern +of the full moon lifting above the black line of the hills. Eleanor, +taught by Maurice, had learned to feel the strange loveliness of +Mercer's ugliness, and it was her idea that Mr. Houghton should feel it, +too. "Edith's too much of a child to appreciate it," she said. + +"She's not much of a child; she's almost fourteen!" + +"I think," said Eleanor, "that if she's fourteen, she's too old to be as +free and easy with men--as she is with you." + +"_Me?_ I'm just like a brother! She has no more sense of beauty than a +puppy, but she'll like the boat, provided she can row, and adore you." + +"Nonsense!" Eleanor said. "Oh, I _hope_ the dinner will be good." + +It was far from good; the deaf Hannah had scorched the soup, to which +Edith called attention, making no effort to emulate the manners of her +father, who heroically took the last drop in his plate. Maurice, anxious +that Eleanor's housekeeping should shine, thought the best way to affirm +it was to say that _this_ soup was vile, "but generally our soup is +fine!" + +"Maurice thinks Edith is a wonderful cook," Eleanor said; her voice +trembled. + +Something went wrong at dessert, and Edith said, generously, that she +"didn't mind a bit!" It was at that point that the race of God kept her +father from murdering her, for, in a real desire to be polite and cover +up the defective dessert, she became very talkative, and said, wasn't it +funny? When she was little, she thought a harpy played on a harp; "and I +thought you had a harp, because father--" + +"I'd like some more ice cream!" Mr. Houghton interrupted, passionately. + +"But there's salt in it!" said Edith, surprised. To which her father +replied, breathlessly, that he believed he'd not go out on the river; he +had a headache. ("Mary has got to do something about this child!") + +"_I'll_ go," Edith announced, cheerfully. + +"I think I'll stay at home," Eleanor said; "my head is rather inclined +to ache, too, Mr. Houghton; so we'll none of us go." + +"Me and Maurice will," Edith protested, dismayed. + +Maurice gave an anxious look at Eleanor: "It might do your head good, +Nelly?" + +"Oh, let's go by ourselves," Edith burst out; "I mean," she corrected +herself, "people like father and Eleanor never enjoy the things we do. +They like to talk." + +"I'd like to choke you!" the exasperated father thought. But he cast a +really frightened eye at Eleanor, who grew a little paler. There was +some laborious talk in the small parlor, where Eleanor's piano took up +most of the space: comments on the weather, and explanations of Bingo's +snarling. "He's jealous," Eleanor said, with amused pride, and stroking +the little faithful head that pressed so closely against her. + +At which Edith began, eagerly, "Father says--" ("What the deuce will she +say now?" poor Mr. Houghton thought)--"Father says Rover has a human +being's horridest vice--jealousy." + +"I don't think jealousy is a vice," Eleanor said, coldly. + +Mr. Houghton, giving his offspring a terrible glance, said that he must +go back to the hotel and take something for his headache; "And don't +keep that imp out too late, Maurice. You want to get home and take care +of Eleanor." + +"Oh no; he doesn't," Eleanor said, and shook hands with her embarrassed +guest, who was saying, under his breath, "_What_ taste!" + +Out in the street Maurice hurried so that Edith, tucking, unasked, +her hand through his arm, had to skip once or twice to keep up with +him.... "Maurice," she said, breathlessly, "will you let me row?" + +"O Lord--yes! I don't care." + +After that Edith did all the talking, until they reached the wharf where +Maurice kept his boat; when Edith had secured the oars and they pushed +off, he took the tiller ropes, and sat with moody eyes fixed on the +water. The mortification of the dinner was gnawing him; he was thinking +of the things he might have said to bring Eleanor to her senses! Yet he +realized that to have said anything would have added to Mr. Houghton's +embarrassment. "I'll have it out with her when I get home," he thought, +hotly. "Edith started the mess; why did she say that about Mr. Houghton +and Eleanor?" He glanced at her, and Edith, rowing hard, saw the sudden +angry look, and was so surprised that she caught a crab, almost keeled +over, laughed loudly, and said, _"Goodness!"_ which was at that time, +her most violent expletive. + +"Maurice," she demanded, "did you see that lady on the float, getting +into the boat with those two gentlemen?" + +Maurice said, absently: "There were two or three people round. I don't +know which you mean." + +"The young one. She had red cheeks. I never saw such red cheeks!" + +"Oh," said Maurice; "_that_ one? Yes. I saw her. Paint." + +"On her cheeks?" Edith said, with round, astonished eyes. "Do ladies put +paint on their cheeks?" + +Miserable as Maurice was, he did chuckle. "No, Edith; _ladies_ don't," +he said, significantly. (Such was the innocent respectability of 1903!) + +Edith looked puzzled: "You mean she isn't a lady, Maurice?" + +"Look out!" he said, jamming the tiller over; "you were on your right +oar." + +"But, Maurice," she insisted, "_why_ do you say she isn't a +lady?... Oh, Maurice! There she is now! See? In that boat?" + +"Well, for Heaven's sake don't announce it to the world!" Maurice +remonstrated. "Guess I'll take the oars, Edith. I want some exercise." + +Edith sighed, but said, "All right." She wanted to row; but she wanted +even more to get Maurice good-natured again. "He's huffy," she told +herself; "he's mad at Eleanor, and so am I; but it's no sense to take +_my_ head off!" She hated to change seats--they drew in to shore to do +it, a concession to safety on Maurice's part--for she didn't like to +turn her back on the red-cheeked lady with the two gentlemen in the +following skiff; however, she did it; after all, it was Maurice's boat, +and she was his company; so, if he "wanted to row her" (thus her little +friendly thoughts ran), "why, all right!" Still, she hated not to look +at the lady that Maurice said was not a lady. "She must be twice as old +as I am; I should think you were a lady when you were twenty-six," she +reflected. + +But because her back was turned to the "lady," she did not, for an +instant, understand the loud splash behind them, and Maurice's +exclamation, "Capsized!" The jerk of their boat, as he backed water, +made it rock violently. "Idiots!" said Maurice. "I'll pick you up!" he +yelled, and rowed hard toward the three people, now slapping about in +not very deep water. "Tried to change seats,"--he explained to Edith. +"I'm coming!" he called again. + +Edith, wildly excited and swaying back and forth, like a coxswain in a +boat race, screamed: "We're coming! You'll get drowned--you'll get +drowned!" she assured the gasping, bubbling people, who were, somehow or +other, making their muddy way toward the shore. + +"Get our skiff, will you?" one of the "gentlemen" called to Maurice, +who, seeing that there was no danger to any of the immersed merrymakers, +turned and rowed out to the slowly drifting boat. + +"Grab the painter!" he told Edith as he gained upon it; she obeyed his +orders with prompt dexterity. "You can always depend on old Skeezics," +Maurice told himself, with a friendly look at her. He had forgotten +Eleanor's behavior, and was trying to suppress his grins at the forlorn +and dripping people, who were on land now, shivering, and talking with +astonishing loudness. + +"Oh, the lady's cheeks are coming off!" Edith gasped, as they beached. + +Maurice, shoving the trailing skiff on to its owners, said: "Can I do +anything to help you?" + +"I'll catch my death," said the lady, who was crying; her trickling +tears and her sopping handkerchief removed what remnants of her "cheeks" +the sudden bath in the river had left. As the paint disappeared, one +saw how very pretty the poor draggled butterfly was--big, honey-dark +eyes, and quite exquisite features. "Oh, my soul and body!--I'll die!" +she said, sobbing with cold and shock. + +"Here," said Maurice, stripping off his coat; "put this on." + +The girl made some faint demur, and the men, who were bailing out their +half-filled skiff, said, "Oh--she can have our coats." + +"They're soaked, aren't they?" Maurice said; "and I don't need mine in +the least." + +Edith gasped; such reckless gallantry gave her an absolutely new +sensation. Her heart seemed to lurch, and then jump; she breathed hard, +and said, under her breath, "Oh, _my_!" She felt that she could never +speak to Maurice again; he was truly a grown-up gentleman! Her eyes +devoured him. + +"Do take it," she heard him say to the crying lady, who no longer +interested her; "I assure you I don't need it," he said, carelessly; and +the "lady" reached out a small, shaking hand, on which the kid glove was +soaking wet, and said, her teeth chattering, that she was awfully +obliged. + +"Get in--get in!" one of the "gentlemen" said, crossly, and as she +stepped into the now bailed-out skiff, she said to Maurice, "Where shall +I return it to?" + +"I'll come and get it," Maurice said--and she called across the strip of +water widening between the two boats: + +"I'm Miss Lily Dale--" and added her street and number. + +Maurice, in his shirt sleeves, lifted his hat; then looked at Edith and +grinned. "Did you ever see such idiots? Those men are chumps. Did you +hear the fat one jaw at the girl?" + +"Did he?" Edith said, timidly. She could hardly bear to look at Maurice, +he was so wonderful. + +But he, entirely good-natured again, was overflowing with fun. "Let's +turn around," he said, "and follow 'em! That fatty was rather +happy--did you get on to that flask?" + +Edith had no idea what he meant, but she said, breathlessly, "Yes, +Maurice." In her own mind she was seeing again that princely gesture, +that marvelous tossing of his own coat to the "lady"! "He is _exactly_ +like Sir Walter Raleigh," she said to herself. She remembered how at +Green Hill she had wanted him to spread his coat before Eleanor's +feet;--but _that_ was commonplace! Eleanor was just a married person, +"like mother." This was a wonderful drowning lady! Oh, he _was_ Sir +Walter! Her eyes were wide with an entirely new emotion--an emotion +which made her draw back sharply when once, as he rowed, his hand +touched hers. She was afraid of that careless touch. Yet oh, if he would +only give _her_ some of his clothes! Oh, why hadn't _she_ fallen into +the water! Her heart beat so that she felt she could not speak. It was +not necessary; Maurice, singing a song appropriate to the lady with the +red cheeks, was not aware of her silence. + +"I bet," he said, "that cad takes it out of the little thing! She looked +scared, didn't you think, Edith?" + +"Yes, ... _sir_" the little girl said, breathlessly. + +Maurice did not notice the new word; "Sorry not to take you down to the +Point," he said; "but I ought to keep tabs on that boat. If they capsize +again, somebody really might get hurt. She's a--a little fool, of +course; but I'd hate to have the fat brute drown her, and he looks +capable of it." + +However, trailing along in the deepening dusk behind the fat brute, who +was rowing hard against the current, they saw the dripping survivors of +the shipwreck reach the wharf safely five minutes ahead of them, and +scurry off into the darkness of the street. + +Maurice, in high spirits, had quite forgiven Eleanor. "I meant to treat +you to ice cream, Skeezics," he said, "but I can't go into the hotel. +Shirt sleeves wouldn't be admitted in the elegant circles of the Mercer +House!" + +Instantly a very youthful disappointment readjusted things for Edith; +she forgot that strange consciousness which had made her shrink from his +careless touch; she had no impulse to say "sir"; she was back again at +the point at which the red-cheeked lady had broken in upon their lives. +She said, frowning: "My! I did want some ice cream. I _wish_ you hadn't +given the lady your coat!" + +When Maurice got home, he found a repentant Eleanor bathing very red and +swollen eyes. + +"How's your head?" he said, as he came, in his shirt sleeves, into her +room; she, turning to kiss him and say it was better, stopped short. + +"Maurice! Where's your coat?" + +His explanation deepened her repentance; "Oh, Maurice,--if you've caught +cold!" + +He laughed and hugged her (at which Bingo, in his basket, barked +violently); and said, "The only thing that bothered me was that I +couldn't treat Edith to ice cream." + +Eleanor's face, passionately tender, changed sharply: "Edith is an +extremely impertinent child! Did you hear her, at dinner, talk about +jealousy?" + +He looked blank, and said, "What was 'impertinent' in that? Say, Star, +the girl in the boat was--tough; she was painted up to the nines, and of +course it all came out in the wash. And Buster said her 'cheeks came +off'! But she was pretty," Maurice ruminated, beginning to pull off his +boots. + +"I don't see how you can call a painted woman 'pretty,'" Eleanor said, +coldly. + +Maurice yawned. "She seemed to belong to the fat brute. He was so nasty +to her, I wanted to punch his head." + +"Poor girl!" Eleanor said, and her voice softened. "Perhaps I could do +something for her? She ought to make him marry her." + +Maurice chuckled. "Oh, Nelly, you _are_ innocent! No, my dear; she'll +paint some more, and then, probably, get to drinking; and meet one or +two more brutes. When she gets quite into the gutter, she'll die. The +sooner the better! I mean, the less harm she'll do." + +Eleanor's recoil of pain seemed to him as exquisite as a butterfly's +shrinking from some harsh finger. He looked at her tenderly. "Star, you +don't know the world! And I don't want you to." + +"I'd like to help her," Eleanor said, simply. + +"You?" he said; "I wouldn't have you under the same roof with one of +those creatures!" + +His sense of her purity pleased her; the harem idea is, at bottom, +pleasing to women; they may resent it with their intellect, but they all +of them like to feel they are too precious for the wind of evil +realities to blow upon. So, honestly enough, and with the childlike joy +of the woman in love, she played up to the harem instinct, shrinking a +little and asking timid questions, and making innocent eyes; and was +kissed, and assured she was a lovely goose; for Maurice played up to his +part, too, with equal honesty (and youth)--the part of the worldly-wise +protector. It was the fundamental instinct of the human male; he resents +with his intellect the idea that his woman is a fool; but the more +foolish she is (on certain lines) the more important he feels himself to +be! So they were both very contented, until Maurice happened to say +again that he was sorry to have disappointed Edith about the ice cream. + +"She's a greedy little thing," Eleanor said from her pillows; her voice +was irritated. + +"What nonsense!" Maurice said; "as for ice cream, all youngsters like +it. I know I do!" + +"I saw her hang on to your arm as you went down the street," Eleanor +said. "Mrs. Houghton ought to tell her that nice girls don't paw men!" + +"Eleanor! She's nothing but a child, and I'm her brother--" + +"You are _not_ her brother." + +"Oh, Eleanor, don't be so--" he paused; oh, that dreadful word which +must not be spoken!--"so unreasonable," he ended, wearily. He lay down +beside her in the darkness, and by and by he heard her crying, very +softly. "_Oh_, lord!" he said; and turned over and went to sleep. + +Thus do the clouds return after rain. Yet each day the sun rises +again.... + +At breakfast Eleanor, with a pitying word for the "poor thing," reminded +her husband that he must go and get his coat. + +He said, "Gosh! I'd forgotten it!" and added that he liked his eggs +softer. He would have "played up" again, and smiled at her innocence, if +he had thought of it, but he was really concerned about his eggs, +"Hannah seems to think I like brickbats," he said, good-naturedly. + +Eleanor winced; "Poor Hannah is so stupid! But she's getting deafer +every day, so I _can't_ send her away!" Added to her distress at the +scorched soup of the night before, was this new humiliation of +"brickbats;" naturally she forgot the "poor thing." + +Maurice almost forgot her himself; but as he left the office in the +afternoon he did remember the coat. At the address which the red-cheeked +lady had given him, he found her card--"Miss Lily Dale"--below a letter +box in the tiled, untidy vestibule of a yellow-brick apartment house, +where he waited, grinning at the porcelain ornateness about him, for a +little jerking elevator to take him up to the fourth floor. There, in a +small, gay, clean parlor of starched lace curtains, and lithographs, and +rows of hyacinth bulbs just started in blue and purple glasses on the +window sill, he found the red-cheeked young lady, rather white-cheeked. +Indeed, there were traces of hastily wiped-away tears on her pretty +face. + +"My friend, Mr. Batty, said I upset the boat," she said, taking the coat +out of the wardrobe and brushing it briskly with a capable little hand. + +The coat reeked with perfumery, and Maurice said, "Phew!" to himself; +but threw it over his arm, and said that Mr. Batty had only himself to +blame. "A man ought to know enough not to let a lady move about in a +rowboat!" + +"Won't you be seated?" Lily said; she lighted a cigarette, and shoved +the box over to him, across the varnished glitter of the table top. + +Maurice, introducing himself--"My name's Curtis";--and, taking in all +the details of the comfortable, vulgar little room, sat down, took a +cigarette, and said it was a warm day for October; she said she hated +heat, and he said he liked winter best.... Then he saw a bruise on her +wrist and said: "Why, you gave yourself a dreadful knock, didn't you? +Was it on the rowlock?" + +Her face dropped into sullen lines: "It wasn't the boat did it." + +Maurice, with instant discretion, dropped the subject. But he was sorry +for her; she made him think of a beaten kitten. "You must take care of +that wrist," he said, his blue eyes full of sympathy. When he went away +he told himself he had spotted the big man as a brute the minute he saw +him. The "kitten" seemed to him so pathetic that he forgot Eleanor's +exquisiteness, and told her about the bruised wrist and the reeking +coat, and how pretty the girl was. + +"I don't know anything vulgarer than perfumery!" his wife said, with a +delicate shrug. + +Maurice agreed, adding, with a grin, that he had noticed that when +ladies were short on the odor of sanctity, they were long on the odor of +musk. + +"I always keep dried rose leaves in my bureau drawers," Eleanor said; +and he had the presence of mind to say, "You are a rose yourself!" + +A husband's "presence of mind" in addressing his wife is, of course, a +confession; it means they are not one--for nobody makes pretty speeches +to oneself! However, Maurice's "rose" made no such deduction. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +It was after Mr. Houghton had swallowed the scorched soup and meditated +infanticide, that boarding became inevitable. Several times that winter +Maurice said that Hannah "was the limit; so let's board?" + +And toward spring, in spite of the cavorting lambs and waddling ducks in +the little waiting, empty room upstairs, Eleanor yielded. "We can go to +housekeeping again," she thought, "_if_--" + +So the third year of their marriage opened in a boarding house. They +moved (Bingo again banished to Mrs. O'Brien), on their wedding +anniversary, and instead of celebrating by going out to "their river," +they spent a hot, grimy day settling down in their third-floor front. + +"If people come to see us," said Maurice, ruefully, standing with his +hands in his pockets surveying their new quarters, "they'll have to sit +on the piano!" + +"Nobody'll come," Eleanor said. + +Maurice's eyes narrowed: "I believe you need 'em, Nelly? I knock up +against people at the office, and I know several fellows and girls +outside--" + +"What girls?" + +"Oh, the fellows' sisters; but you--" + +"I don't want anybody but you!" + +Maurice was silent. Two years ago, when Eleanor had said almost the same +thing: she was willing to live on a desert island, _with him_!--it had +been oil on the flames of his love; now, it puzzled him. He didn't want +to live on a desert island, with anybody! He needed more than one man +"Friday," and any women "Thursdays" who might come along were joyously +welcomed. "I am a social beggar, myself," he said; and began to whistle +and fuss about, trying to bring order out of a chaos of books and +photographs and sheet music. She sat watching him--the alert, vigorous +figure; the keen face under the shock of blond hair; the blue eyes that +crinkled so easily into laughter. Her face was thinner, and there were +rings of fatigue under her dark eyes, and that little nursery in the +house they had left, made a swelling sense of emptiness in her heart. +("If I see any awfully pretty nursery paper this winter, I'll buy it, +and have it ready,--_in case_ we should have to get another house," she +thought.) "Oh, do stop whistling," she said; "it goes through me!" + +"Poor Nelly!" he said, kindly, and stopped. + +The astonishing thing about the "boarding-house marriage," is that it +ever survives the strain of the woman's idleness and the man's +discomfort! But it does, occasionally. Even this marriage survived Miss +Ladd's boarding house, for a time. At first it went smoothly enough +because Maurice couldn't blame Eleanor's cook, and Eleanor couldn't say +that "nothing she did pleased Maurice"; so two reasons for irritability +were eliminated; but a new reason appeared: Maurice's eager interest in +everything and everybody--especially everybody!--and his endless good +nature, overflowed around the boarding-house table. Everyone liked him, +which Eleanor entirely understood; but he liked everyone,--which she +didn't understand. + +The note of this mutual liking was struck the very first night when +Maurice went down into the dingy basement dining room; he and Eleanor +made rather a sensation as they entered: Eleanor, handsome and silent, +produced the impression of cold reserve; Maurice, amiable and talkative, +gave a little shock of interest and pleasure to the fifteen or twenty +people eating indifferent food about a table covered with a not very +fresh cloth. Before the meal was over he had made himself agreeable to +an elderly woman on his left, ventured some drollery to a pretty +high-school teacher of mathematics opposite him, and given a man at the +end of the table the score. When Eleanor rose, Maurice had to rise, too, +though his dessert was not quite devoured; and as the couple left the +room there was a murmur of pleasure: + +"A real addition to our family," said Miss Ladd. + +The bond salesman said, "I wonder if he'll go to the ball game with me +on Saturday? I'll get the tickets." + +The school-teacher said, "He's awfully good looking." + +The widow's comment was only, "Nice boy." + +Upstairs in their own room, Maurice said: "What pleasant people! Nelly, +let's get some fun out of this; don't dash up here the minute you +swallow your food!" + +She wondered, silently, how he could call them "pleasant"! To her they +were all rather common, pushing persons, who wanted to talk to Maurice. +But as her one desire was to do what he liked, she really did try to +help him "get some fun out of them." Every night at dinner she smiled +laboriously when he teased the teacher, and she listened to the elderly +woman in mourning, whose clever talk was so absorbing to Maurice that +sometimes he didn't hear his wife speaking to him! Yes; Eleanor tried. +Yet, in less than a month Maurice found himself beside a boarder of his +own sex, instead of Mrs. Davis, and saw that the school-teacher was too +far down the table for jokes. When he asked why their seats had been +changed, Eleanor said she had felt a draught--which caused the widow to +smile, and write on a piece of paper an arithmetical statement: +"Selfishness + vanity - humor = jealousy." She handed it to the teacher, +who laughed and shrugged her shoulders: + +"But she's awfully in love with him," she conceded, under her breath. + +The older woman shook her head: "No, my dear; she isn't. No jealous +woman knows the meaning of love." + +But Eleanor did not see Miss Moore's contemptuous smile, or Mrs. Davis's +grave glance. One of the pitiful things about jealous people is that +they don't know how amusing--or else boring--or else irritating--they +are to an observant and entirely unsympathetic world! Eleanor had no +idea that the whole tableful of people knew she was jealous, and found +her ridiculous. She only knew that Maurice seemed to like them--which +meant that her society "wasn't enough for him "! So she tried to make it +enough for him. At dinner she talked to him so animatedly (and so +personally) that no one else could get a word in edgewise. Dinner over, +she was uneasy until she had dragged her eager-eyed young husband up to +the desert island of their third-floor front--a dingy room, with a +black-marble mantelpiece, and a worn and frowzy carpet. There were some +steel engravings, dim under their old glasses, on the wall,--Evangeline, +and Lincoln's Cabinet, and Daniel Webster in a rumpled shirt and a long +swallowtail;--all of which Eleanor's looking-glass and the mirrored +doors of a black-walnut wardrobe, reflected in multiplying dullness. + +Maurice's charming good nature in that first boarding winter never +failed. Eleanor's silences--which he had long since discovered were +merely empty, not mysterious--were at least no tax on his patience; so +he never once called her "silly." He did, occasionally, feel a faint +uneasiness lest people might think she was older than he--which was, of +course, the beginning of self-consciousness as to what he had done in +marrying her. But he loved her. He still loved her. "She isn't very +well," he used to defend her to Mrs. Newbolt; "she nearly killed +herself, saving my life. She's not been the same girl since." + +"'Girl'?" said Mrs. Newbolt; "she's exactly the same _woman_, only more +so because she's older. I hope she won't lose her figger; she's gettin' +thin. My dear grandmother--she was a Dennison; fat; I can hear her now +talkin' to her daughters: 'Girls! _Don't_ lose your figgers!' She had +red hair." + +Eleanor had not lost her figure; it was still graciously erect, and with +lovely curves of bosom and shoulders; but, somehow, she seemed +older--older even than she was! Perhaps because of her efforts to be +girlish? It was as if she wore clothes she had outgrown--clothes that +were too tight and too short. She used Maurice's slang without its +virile appropriateness; when they accepted an invitation from one of +Maurice's new acquaintances, her anxiety to be of his generation was +pathetic--or ludicrous, as one happened to look at it. These friends of +Maurice's seemed to have innumerable interests in common with him that +she knew nothing about--and jokes! How tired she got of their jokes, +which were mostly preposterous badinage, expressed with entire solemnity +and ending in yells of laughter. Yet she tried to laugh, too; though she +rarely knew what it was all about. There is nothing which divides the +generations more sharply than their ideas of humor. But Eleanor tried, +very pitifully hard, to be silly with the kind of silliness which +Maurice seemed to enjoy; but, alas! she only achieved the silliness +which he--like every husband on earth!--hated: the silliness of small +jealousies. Once she told Maurice she didn't like those dinner parties +that his friends were always asking them to,--"I think it's nicer here," +she said. + +And he said, cheerfully: "Don't go! I don't mind going alone." + +"I know you don't," she said, wistfully.... "Why can't he be satisfied +to stay at home with me?" she said once to her aunt; and Mrs. Newbolt +told her why: + +"Because you don't interest him. Eleanor! if you want to keep that boy, +urge him to go out and have a good time, _without you_!" Then she added +some poignantly true remarks: "My dear father used to say, 'Just as many +men are faithless to their wives because their wives have plain minds, +as because other women have pretty faces.' Well, I'm afraid poor dear +mother's mind was plain; that's why I always made an effort to talk to +your uncle, and be entertainin'. And I'll tell you another thing--for +if I have a virtue it's candor--if you let him see you're jealous, he'll +make it worth your while! You've got a rip in the back seam of your +waist. No man ever keeps on lovin' a jealous woman; he just pretends to, +to keep the peace." + +Of course this was as unintelligible to Eleanor as it is to all women +of her type of mind. So, instead of considering Maurice's enjoyment of +society, she committed the absurdity of urging him to enjoy what she +enjoyed--a solitude of two. To herself she explained his desire to see +other people, by saying it was because they had no children. "When we +have a child, he won't want to be with those boys and girls! Oh, why +don't we have a baby?" Her longing for children was like physical +hunger. But only Mrs. O'Brien understood it. When Eleanor went, in her +faithful way, two or three times a week, to sing to little sickly Don +(and pet the boarding and rather pining Bingo), Mrs. O'Brien, listening +to the little songs, pretty and silly, would draw a puckery hand over +her eyes: "She'd ought to have a dozen of her own! If that boy don't +treat her good, I'll iron off every button he's got!" + +When Eleanor (hoping for a baby) worried lest Maurice's hopes, too, were +disappointed, her gentleness to him was passionate and beseeching; but +sometimes, watching his attention to other people, the gentleness grew +rigid in an accusation that, because they hadn't a child, he was +"getting tired of her"! Whenever she said this foolish thing, there +would come, afterward, a rain of repentant tears. But repentance cannot +always change the result of foolish words--and the result is so often +out of proportion to the words! As Maurice had said that day in their +meadow, of Professor Bradley and the banana skin--a very little thing +"can throw the switches," in human life! + +It was the "little thing" of a lead pencil, in keeping the accounts of +their endless games of solitaire, that threw the switches now, for +Maurice Curtis.... He happened to produce a very soft pencil, which he +had borrowed, he said, "from a darned pretty woman he was showing a +house to," and had forgotten to return to her. + +Eleanor said it seemed to her bad taste to talk of a strange woman that +way: "If she's a lady she wouldn't want a man she didn't know to speak +so--so lightly of her." + +"I have yet to meet one of your sex who objects to being called pretty," +Maurice said, dryly. + +To which Eleanor replied that she preferred a hard lead pencil, +anyhow,--but _her_ wishes seemed to be of no importance! "You're tired +of me, Maurice." He said, "Oh, damn!" She said, "I won't have you swear +at me!" + +He pushed back his chair, toppled the flimsy table over, scattering all +the cards on the floor. The falling table struck her knee; she screamed; +he flung out of the room--out of the house, into the hot darkness of an +August night.... The switches were thrown.... + +Down on Tyler Street there had been another quarrel--as trivial as the +difference of opinion as to hard and soft lead pencils, and again human +lives were shifted from one track to another. It was Lily who ran out +into the darkness, and wandered through the streets; then strayed down +to the bridge that spanned the hurrying black water of that same river +which, two years before, had lisped and laughed under Maurice and +Eleanor's happy eyes. Lily, watching the current, thought angrily of +Batty--then a passing elbow jostled her and some one said, "Beg pardon!" +She turned and saw Maurice. + +"Well, I do say!" she said; and Maurice, pausing at the voice in the +dark, began a brief, "Excuse me; I stumbled--" saw who it was, and said, +"Why, Miss Lily! How are you? I haven't seen you for an age!" + +She answered with some small jocosity; then suddenly struck her little +fist on the railing. "Well, I'm just miserable; that's how I am, if you +want to know! Batty--" + +Maurice frowned. "Has that pup hurt you?" + +She nodded: "I don't know why I put up with him!" + +"Shake him!" he advised, good-naturedly. + +"I 'ain't got any other friend." She spoke with half-laughing anger; +indeed, she was so pretty and so plucky that he forgot, for a moment, +the irritation at Eleanor which had driven him out into the night, and +it came into his mind that something ought to be done for girls like +this. He remembered that Eleanor herself had said so, "Perhaps I could +do something for her?" Eleanor had said. + +"She isn't bad," he thought, looking at Lily; "she's just a fool, like +all of 'em. But there ought to be some way of fishing 'em out of the +gutter, before they get to the very bottom. Maybe Eleanor could give her +a hand up?" Then he asked her about herself: Had she friends? Where did +her family live? Could she do any work? He was rather diverted by his +own philanthropy, but it seemed to him that it would be the decent thing +to advise the girl, seriously. "I'll talk to her," he thought. "Come +on!" he said; "let's hunt up some place and have something to eat." + +"I ain't hungry," she said--then saw the careless straightforwardness of +his face, and was straightforward herself: "I guess I'd better be going +home." + +"Oh, come on," he urged her. + +She yielded, with a little rollicking chuckle; and as they walked toward +a part of town more suitable for such excursions, she confided to him +she was twenty, and she'd been "around" for a year. + +("Twenty-five, if she's a day," he thought.) + +They strolled along for several blocks before discovering, in the +purlieus of Tyler Street, a dingy "ice-cream parlor," eminently fitted +for interviews with the Lilys of the locality. At a marble-topped table, +translucent with years of ice-cream rendezvous, they waited for his +order to be filled, and she saw the amused honesty of his face and he +saw the good nature of hers; which made him think again of Eleanor's +wish to help her. + +He urged some indifferent cake upon her, and joked about how many +saucers of ice cream they could consume between them; then he became +serious: Why didn't she drop Batty? + +"Oh," she said, "if I only _could_ drop him! I hate him. He's the first +friend I've had." + +"Was he really the--the first?" Maurice said. His question was the old +human interest of playing with fire, but he supposed that it was a +desire to raise the fallen. + +"Well, except ... there was a man; I expected to marry _him_. Then +Batty, he come along." + +"I see," said Maurice. "Where's the first man?" + +"_I_ don't know. I was only sixteen." + +"Damn him!" Maurice said, sympathetically. He was so moved that he +ordered more ice cream; then it occurred to him that he ought to let her +know that he was entirely a philanthropist. "My wife and I'll help you," +he said. + +"Oh ... you're _married_? You're real young!" she commented. + +"I'm no chicken. My wife and I think exactly alike about these things. +Of course she's not a prude. She understands life, just as I do. And +she'd love to be a real friend to you. She'll put you on your feet, and +think none the worse of you. Tell me about yourself," he urged, +intimately; he felt some deep satisfaction stir within him, which he +supposed was his recognition of a moral purpose. But she drew back into +her own reserves. + +"They always ask that," she thought; and the momentary reality she had +shown hardened into the easy lying of her business: she told this or +that--the cruel father of fiction, who tried to drive her into marriage +with the rich old man; the wicked lover who destroyed trusting +innocence; the inevitable _facilis descensus_--Batty at last. And now +the ice-cream parlor in this dirty street, with the clear-eyed, +handsome, amused young man, who had forgotten his own anger in the +impulse, so frequent in the very young and very upright man, to "save" +some little creature of the gutter! As for Maurice, he said to himself, +"She's a sweet little thing; and not really bad." + +He was right there: Lily was not bad; she was as far from sin as she was +from virtue--just a little, unmoral, very amiable animal. + +As for Maurice, he continued to discuss her future of rectitude and +honor--his imagination reaching in a bound amazing heights. Why not be a +trained nurse?--and have a hospital of her own, and gather about her, as +assistants, girls who--"well, had had a tough time of it," he said, +delicately. As he talked, fatigue at the boredom of his highly moral +sentiments crept into her face. She swallowed an occasional yawn, and +murmured to most of his statements, "Is that so?" She was sleepy, and +wished he would stop talking.... + +"Guess I'll be going along," she said, good-naturedly. + +"I'll come and see you to-morrow," Maurice said, impassioned with the +idea of saving her; "then I'll tell you what my wife will do for you." + +They went out together and walked toward Lily's rooms; but somehow they +both fell silent. Lily was again afraid of Batty, and Maurice's +exhilaration had begun to ebb; there came into his mind the bleak +remembrance of the overturned table and Eleanor's sobs.... + +At the door of the apartment house where Lily lived, she said, +nervously, "I'd ask you to come in, but he--" + +"Oh, I understand; I've no desire to meet the gentleman! What time will +I come to-morrow, when he's not around?" + +She reflected, uneasily: "Well, I ain't sure--" + +Before she could finish, Batty loomed up beside them. He was plainly +drunk. "I lost my key," he said; "and I've been waiting--" + +"Good night, Miss Lily," Maurice said,--"If he's nasty to her, I'll go +back," he thought. He was only halfway down the block when he heard a +little piping scream--"O-o-o-w! O-o-o-w!" He turned, and saw her trying +to pull her hand away from Batty's twisting grip: he was at her side in +a moment: "Here! _Drop_ it!" he said, sharply--and landed an extremely +neat blow on the drunken man's jaw. Batty, rubbing his cheek, and +staring at this very unexpected assailant in profound and giggling +astonishment, slouched into the house. + +"He 'most twisted my hand off!" Lily said; "oh, ain't he the beast?" She +cringed and shook her bruised wrist, then gave Maurice an admiring look. +"My soul and body! you lit into him good!" she said; "what am I going to +do? I'm afraid to go in." + +"If I had a house of my own," Maurice said, "I'd take you home, and my +wife would look after you. But we are boarding.... Haven't you some +friend you could go to for to-night? ... To-morrow my wife will come and +see you," he declared. + +"Oh, gracious me, no!" In the midst of her anger she couldn't help +laughing. ("He's a reg'lar baby!" she thought.) "No; your wife's a busy +society lady, I'm sure. Don't bother about me. I'll just wait round till +he goes to sleep." She dabbed at her eyes with a little wet ball of a +handkerchief. + +"Here, take mine," he said. And with this larger and dryer piece of +linen, she did manage to make her face more presentable. + +"When he's asleep, I'll slip in," she said. + +"Well, let's go and sit down somewhere," Maurice suggested. She agreed, +and there was some haphazard wandering about in the darkness, then a +weary sitting on a bench in the park, marking time till Batty would +surely be asleep. + +"You sure handed one out to him," Lily said. + +Maurice chuckled at the role of knight-errant which she seemed to +discern in him, but he talked earnestly of her future, and once or +twice, soothed by his voice, she dozed--but he didn't know it. Indeed, +he told himself afterward that her silences showed how his words were +sinking in! "It only goes to prove," he thought, when at midnight he +left her at her own door, "that the _flower_ is in all of them! If you +only go about it right, you can bring their purity to the surface! She +felt all I said. Eleanor will be awfully interested in her." + +He was quite sure about Eleanor; he had entirely forgiven her; he wanted +to wake her up, and sit on the edge of her bed, and tell her of his +evening, and what a glorious thing it would be to lift one lovely young +soul from the gutter. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +But Eleanor would not "wake up." Within an hour of her foolish outbreak +she had begun to listen for his returning step. Then she went to bed and +cried and cried, "He doesn't love me," she said, over and over; and once +she said, "it is because I am--" But she didn't finish this; she just +got up and went over to the bureau and stared into the mirror; she even +lit a candle and held it close to the glass; after a while she saw what +she was looking for. "Edith tried to make him notice them, that first +summer at Green Hill," she thought. + +At eleven she went to the window and watched, her eyes straining into +the darkness. When, far down the street, a man's figure came in range, +she held her breath until it walked into and out of the circling glare +of the arc light--not Maurice! It was after twelve when she saw him +coming--and instantly she flew back to her bed. When he entered the +faintly lighted room, Eleanor was, apparently, sound asleep. + +"Star?" + +No answer. + +He leaned over, saw the droop of her lip and the puffed eyelids--and +drew back. Perhaps, if he had kissed her, the soft lead pencil might not +have acted as Destiny; she might have melted under the forlorn story he +was so eager to tell her. But her tear-stained face did not suggest a +kiss. + +In the morning Eleanor had what she called a "bilious headache," and +when Maurice skirted the subject of the "_flower_," she was too +physically miserable to be interested. When she was well again, the +opportunity--if it was an opportunity!--was lost; her interest in Lily +was not needed, because a call at the apartment house showed Maurice +that Batty was forgiven. So he forgot his desire to lift the fallen, in +more of those arid moments with Eleanor; reproaches--and +reconciliations! Tears--and fire! But fires gradually die down under +tears, no matter how one spends one's breath blowing loving words on the +wet embers! Enough tears will put out any fire. + +Lily, too, was shedding angry tears in those days, and they probably had +their effect in cooling Batty's heart; for his unpleasantness finally +culminated in his leaving her, and by October she was living in the +yellow-brick apartment house alone, and very economically--yet not so +economically that she did not buy hyacinth bulbs for the blue and purple +glasses on her sunny window sill. + +Once Maurice, remembering with vague amusement his reformatory impulse, +went to see her; but he did not talk to Eleanor about the call. By this +time there were days when he talked as little as possible to Eleanor +about anything,--not because he was secretive--he hated secrecy! "It's +next door to lying," he thought, faintly disgusted at himself,--but +because she seemed to feel hurt if he was interested in anyone except +herself. Maurice had passed the point which had seemed so terrible at +Green Hill, where he had called his wife "silly." He never called her +silly now. He merely, over and over, called himself a fool. + +"I've made an ass of myself," he used to think, sorting out his cards +for solitaire and looking furtively at the thin face, with its lines of +wistful and faded beauty. At forty-two, a happy, busy woman, with a +sound digestion, will not look faded; on the contrary, she is at her +best--as far as looks are concerned! Eleanor was not happy; her +digestion was uncertain; she did not go into society, and she had no +real occupation, except to go every day to Mrs. O'Brien's and take Bingo +for a walk. Even her practicing had been pretty much given up, for fear +of disturbing the people on the floor below her. + +"Why don't you have some plants around?" Maurice suggested; "they'd give +you something to do! I saw a lot of hyacinths growing in glasses, once; +I'll buy some bulbs for you." + +"Oh, I'm one of the people flowers won't grow for," she said. + +Mrs. Newbolt made a suggestion, too. "Pity you can't have Bingo to keep +you company. That's what comes of boarding. I knew a woman who boarded, +and she lost her teeth. Chambermaid threw 'em away. Come in and see me +any evening when Maurice is out." + +As Maurice was frequently out, the invitation was sometimes accepted, +and it was on one of these occasions that Mrs. Newbolt, spreading out +her cards on the green baize of her solitaire table with fat, beringed +hands, made her suggestion: + +"Eleanor, you've aged. I believe you're unhappy?" + +"No, I'm not! Why should I be?" + +"Well, I wouldn't blame you if you were," Mrs. Newbolt said. "'Course +you'd have brought it on yourself; I could have told you what to expect! +Your dear uncle Thomas used to say that, after a thing happened, I was +the one to tell people that they might have expected it. You see, I made +a point of bein' intelligent; of course I wasn't _too_ intelligent. A +man doesn't like that. You're gettin' gray, Eleanor. Pity you haven't +children. _He_ doesn't look very contented!--but men are men," said Mrs. +Newbolt. + +"He _ought_ to be contented," Eleanor said, passionately; "I adore him!" + +"You've got to interest him," her aunt said; "that's more important than +adorin' him! A man can buy a certain kind of adoration, but he can't +purchase interest." + +"I don't know what you're talking about," Eleanor said, trembling. + +"Well, if you don't, I'm sure I can't tell you," Mrs. Newbolt said, +despairingly; but she made one more attempt: "My dear father used to say +that the finest tribute a man could put on his wife's tombstone would +be, '_She was interestin' to live with_.' So I tell you, Eleanor, if +you want to hold that boy, _make him laugh_!" She was so much in +earnest that for a few minutes she actually stopped talking! + +Eleanor could not make Maurice laugh--she never made anybody laugh! But +for a while she did "hold him"--because he was a gallant youngster, +making the best of his bargain. That he had begun to know it was a bad +bargain did not lessen his regret for his wife's childlessness, which he +knew made her unhappy, nor his pity for her physical forlornness--which +he blamed largely on himself: "She almost died that night on the +mountain, to save my life!" + +But he had ceased to be touched by her reiterated longing for children; +he was even a little bored by it. And he was very much bored by her +reproaches, her faint tempers and their following ardors of repentant +love--bitternesses, and cloying sweetnesses! Yet, in spite of these +things, the boarding-house marriage survived the lengthening of the +fifty-four minutes of ecstasy into three years. But it might not have +survived its own third winter had it not been that Maurice's +unfaithfulness enforced his faithfulness. For by spring that squabble +about lead pencils, which had turned his careless steps toward the +bridge, had turned his life so far from Eleanor's that he had been +untrue to her. + +He had not meant to be untrue; nothing had been farther from his mind or +purpose. But there came a bitter Sunday afternoon in March ... + +Eleanor, saying he did not "understand her," cried about +something--afterward Maurice was not sure just what--perhaps it was a +question from one of the other boarders about the early 'eighties, and +she felt herself insulted; "As if I could remember!" she told Maurice; +but whatever it was, he had tried to comfort her by joking about it. +Then she had reproached him for his unkindness--to most crying wives a +joke is unkind. Then she had said that he was tired of her! At which he +took refuge in silence--and she cried out that he acknowledged it! + +"You can't deny it! You're tired of me because I'm older than you!" + +And he said, between his teeth, "If you were old enough to have any +sense, I wouldn't be tired of you." + +She gave a cry; then stood, the back of her hand against her lips, her +eyes wide with terror. + +Maurice threw down a book he had been trying to read, got up, plunged +into his overcoat, pulled his hat down over his eyes, and, without a +word, walked out of the room. A moment later the front door banged +behind him. Eleanor, alone, stood perfectly still; she had said foolish +things like that many times; she rather liked to say them! But she had +not believed them; now, her own words were a boomerang,--they seemed to +strike her in the face! _He was tired of her._ Instantly she was alert! +What must she do? She sat down, tense with thought; first of all, she +must be sweet to him; she mustn't be cross; then she must try (Mrs. +Newbolt had told her so!) to "entertain" him. "I'll read things, and +talk to him the way Mrs. Davis does!" She must sew on his buttons, and +scold poor old O'Brien.... With just this same silent determination she +had hurried to act that night on the mountain! + +But while she was sitting there in their cheerless room, planning and +planning!--Maurice was out, wandering about in the gray afternoon. It +had begun to snow, in a fitful, irritating way--little gritty pellets +that blew into his face. He had nowhere to go--four o'clock is a dead +time to drop in on people! He had nothing to do, and nothing to think +of--except the foolish, middle-aged woman, stating, in their dreary +third-floor front, an undeniable fact--he was tired of her! Walking +aimlessly about in the cold, he said to himself, dully, "Why _was_ I +such an idiot as to marry her?" He was old enough to curse himself for +his folly, but he was young enough to suffer, agonies of mortification, +and to pity himself, too; pity himself for the mere physical discomfort +of his life: the boarding-house table, with its uninteresting food; the +worn shirt cuff which was scratching his wrist; and he pitied himself +for his spiritual discomfort--when Eleanor called him "darling" at the +dinner table, or exhibited her jealousy before people! "They're sorry +for me--confound 'em!" he thought.... Yet how trivial the cuff was, or +even--yes, even the impertinence which was "sorry" for him!--how +unimportant, when compared to a ring of braided grass, and the smell of +locust blossoms, and a lovely voice, rising and falling: + +"O Spring!" + +"Oh, _damn_!" he said to himself, feeling the scrape of worn linen on +the back of his hand. Then he fell into certain moody imaginings with +which that winter he frequently and harmlessly amused himself. He used +to call these flights of fancy "fool thoughts"; but they were at least +an outlet to his smoldering irritation, "Suppose I should kick over +the traces some day?" his thoughts would run; and again, "Suppose I +should be in a theater fire, and 'disappear,' and never come back, and +she'd think I was dead," "Suppose there should be a war, and I should +enlist," ... and so forth, and so forth. "Fool thoughts," of course!--but +Maurice is not the only man upon whom a jealous woman has thrust such +thoughts, or who has found solace in the impossible! So, now, wandering +about in the cold, he amused himself by imagining various ways of +"kicking over the traces"; then, suddenly, it occurred to him that he +wanted something to eat. "By George!" he thought, "I'll get that girl, +Lily, and we'll go and have a good dinner!" + +Even in the rococo vestibule of the yellow-brick apartment house, while +he pressed the bell below Miss Lily Dale's letter box, he began to feel +a glow of comfort; and when Lily let him into her little parlor, all +clean and vulgar and warm, and fragrant with blossoming bulbs, and gave +him a greeting that was almost childlike in its laughing pleasure, his +sense of physical well-being was a sort of hitting back at Eleanor. + +"Oh," said little Lily, "my! Ain't you cold! Why, your hand's just like +ice!" + +He let her help him off with his coat, and push him into what had been +the vanished Batty's chair; then she saw that his feet were wet, and +insisted (to his horror) on unlacing his boots and making him put on a +pair of slippers. + +"But I was going to take you out to dinner," he remonstrated. + +She said: "Oh no! It's cold. I'll cook something for you, and we'll have +our dinner right by that fire." + +"Can you cook?" he said, with admiring astonishment. + +"You bet I can!" she said; "I'll give you a _good_ supper: you just +wait!" In her pretty, laughing face was very honest friendliness. "I +'ain't forgot that time you handed it out to Batty! He had a bruise on +his chin for a week!" + +"A steak!" he exclaimed, watching her preparations in the tiny closet of +a kitchen that opened into her parlor. + +She nodded: "Ain't it luck to have it in the house? A friend of mine +gave it to me this afternoon; her father's a butcher; and he's got a +dandy shop on the next block; an' Annie run in with it, an' she says" +(Lily was greasing her broiler), "'there,' she says, 'is a present for +you!'" + +Maurice insisted upon helping, and was told where to get the dishes and +what to put on the table, and that if he opened that closet he'd see the +beer. "I got just one bottle," she said, chuckling; "Batty stocked up. +When he lit out, that was all he left behind him." + +"Seen him lately?" Maurice asked. + +Lily's face changed. "I 'ain't seen--anyone, since November," she said; +"I'm a saleslady at Marston's. But I'll have to get out of this flat +when Batty's lease runs out. He took it by the year. He was going to +'settle down,' and 'have a home,'--you know the talk? So he took it for +the year. Well, he said I could stay till June. So I'm staying. There! +It's done!" She put the sizzling steak on a platter and pressed butter +and pepper and salt into it with an energetic knife and fork. "I bet," +she said, "you wouldn't get a better steak than this at the Mercer +House!" + +"I bet I wouldn't get one as good," he assured her. + +As he ate his extremely well-cooked steak, and drank a cup of extremely +well-made coffee, and reflected that the pretty, amber-eyed woman who, +after the manner of her kind, had already dropped into the friendliness +of a nickname, and who waited on him with a sweet deftness, was a +reformed character, owing, no doubt, to his own efforts, Maurice, +comfortable in mind and body, felt the intense pleasure of punishing +Eleanor by his mere presence in Lily's rooms. For, _if she could know +where he was_!... "Gosh!" said Maurice. But of course she never would +know. He wouldn't think of telling her where he had spent his evening; +which shows how far they had drifted apart since that night when he had +come home in his shirt sleeves, and been so eager to tell her how he had +given his coat to the "poor thing"! + +No; if he told Eleanor of Lily, now, there would be no sympathy for a +girl who was really trying to keep straight; no impulse to do any +"uplift" work! For that matter, Lily could do something in the way of +uplift for Eleanor! ... Look at this tidy, gay little room, and the +well-cooked steak, and the bulbs on the window sill! He strolled over +and looked at the row of purple hyacinth glasses, full now of threadlike +roots and topped with swelling buds. "You're quite a gardener," he said. + +"Well, there!" said Lily; "if I hadn't but ten cents, I'd spend five for +a flower!" + +After they had washed the dishes together she made him comfortable in +the big chair, and even put a blossoming hyacinth on the table beside +him, so he could smell it now and then. Then she sat down on a hassock +at his feet, with her back to the fire, and, flecking off the ashes of +her cigarette over her shoulder, she talked a friendly trickle of funny +stories; Maurice, smoking, too, thought how comfortable he was, and how +pleasant it was to have a girl like Lily to talk to. Once or twice he +laughed uproariously at some giggling joke. "She has lots of fun in +her," he reflected; "and she's a bully cook; and her hair is mighty +pretty.... Say, Lily, don't you want to trim my cuff? It's scratching me +to death." + +"You bet I do!" Lily said, and got her little shiny scissors and trimmed +the broken edge of a worn-out cuff that Eleanor had never noticed. + +He felt her small, warm fingers on his hand, and had a sense of comfort +that made him almost forget Eleanor. "It would serve her right if I took +Lily on," he thought. But he had not the remotest intention of taking +Lily on! He only played with the idea, because the impossible reality +would serve Eleanor right. + +It was a month or two later, on the rebound of another dreariness with +Eleanor, that the reality came, and he did "take Lily on." When he did +so, no one could have been more astonished--under his dismay and +horror--than Maurice. + +Unless it was Lily? She had been so certain that he had no ulterior +purpose, and so completely satisfied with her own way of living, that +her rather snuggling friendliness with him was as honest as a boy's. Her +surprise at her own mistake showed how genuine her intention of +straightness really was. When he came, once or twice to see her, he +called her Lily, and she called him "Curt," and they joked together like +two playfellows,--except when he was too gloomy to joke. But it was his +gloominess that made her feel sure there was nothing but friendliness in +his calls. She was not curious about him; she knew he was married, but +she never guessed that his preoccupation--during the spring Maurice was +very preoccupied with his own wretchedness and given to those cynical +fancies about "theater fires";--was due to the fact that he and his wife +didn't get along. She merely supposed that, like most of her "gentlemen +friends," "Curt" didn't talk about his wife. But, unlike the gentlemen +of her world he was, apparently, a husband whose acquaintance with her +had its limits. So they were both astonished.... + +But when Maurice discovered that such acquaintance had also its risks, +the shock was agonizing. He was overwhelmed with disgust and shame. +Once, at his desk, brooding over what had happened, his whipping +instinct of truthfulness roused a sudden, frantic impulse in him to go +home and confess to Eleanor, and ask her to forgive him. She never +would, of course! No woman would; Eleanor least of all. But oh, if he +only could tell her! As he couldn't, remorse, with no outlet of words, +smoldered on his consciousness, as some hidden and infected wound might +smolder in his flesh. Yet he knew there would be no further +unfaithfulness. He would never, he told himself, see Lily again! _That_ +was easy! He was done with all "Lilys." If he could only shed the +self-knowledge which he was unable to share with Eleanor, as easily as +he could shed Lily, how thankful he would be! If he could but forget +Lily by keeping away from her! But of course he could not forget. And +with memory, and its redeeming pain of shame, was also the stabbing +mortification of knowing that he had made a fool of himself, _again_! +First Eleanor; then--Lily. Sometimes, with this realization of his +idiocy, he would feel an almost physical nausea. It was so horrible to +him, that when, a month later, the anniversary which marked his first +folly came around again, he made an excuse of having to be away on +business. It seemed to Maurice that to go out to their field, with this +loathsome secrecy (which was, of course, an inarticulate lie) buried in +his soul, would be like carrying actual corruption in his hands! So he +went out of town on some trumped-up engagement, and Eleanor, left to +herself, took little pining Bingo for a walk. In a lonely; place in the +park, holding the dog on her knee, she looked into his passionately +loving liquid eyes and wiped her own; eyes on his silky ears.... + +Those were aging months for Maurice; and though, of course, the +poignancy of shame lessened after a while, it left its imprint on his +face, as well as on his mind. They speculated about it at the office: +"'G. Washington's' got a grouch on," one clerk said; "probably told the +truth and lost a transfer! Let's give him another hatchet." + +And the friendly people at the boarding house noticed the change in him. +He had almost nothing to say, now, at dinner--no more jokes with the +school-teacher, no more eager talks with the gray-haired woman.... + +"Has she forbidden conversation, do you suppose?" Miss Moore asked, +giggling; but the widow said, soberly, that she was afraid Mr. Curtis +was troubled about something. Mrs. Newbolt saw that there was something +wrong with him, and talked of it to Eleanor, without a pause, for an +hour. And of course Eleanor felt a difference in him; all day long, in +the loneliness of their third-floor front, under the gaze of Daniel +Webster, she brooded over it. Even while she was reading magazines and +plodding through newspaper editorials on public questions she had never +heard of, so that she could find things to talk about to him, she was +thinking of the change, and asking herself what she had done--or left +undone--to cause it? She also asked him: + +"Maurice! Something bothers you! I'm not enough for you. What _is_ the +matter?" + +He said, shortly, "Nothing." + +At which she retreated into the silence of hurt feelings. Once, she +knelt down, her face hidden on the grimy bed-spread, and prayed: "God, +_please_ give us a child--that will make him happy. And show me what to +do to please him! Show me! Oh, _show_ me! I'll do anything!" And who can +say that her prayer was not answered? For certainly an idea did spring +into her mind: those tiresome people downstairs--he liked to talk to +them;--to Miss Moore, who giggled, and tried, Eleanor thought, to seem +learned; and to the elderly woman who told stories. How could he enjoy +talking to them when he could talk to her? But he did. So, suppose she +tried to be more sociable with them? "I might invite Mrs. Davis to come +up to our room some evening--and I would sing for her? ... But not Miss +Moore; she is _too_ silly, with her jokes!" Her mind strained to find +ways to be friendly with these people he seemed to like. And +circumstances helped her.... + +That was the month of the great eclipse. For a week Miss Ladd's boarders +had talked about it, exchanging among themselves much newspaper +astronomical misinformation--which the learned Miss Moore good-naturedly +corrected. It was her suggestion that the household should make a night +of it: "Let's all go up on the roof and see the show!" So the friendly +gayety was planned--a supper in the basement dining room at half past +eleven--ginger ale! ice cream! chocolate! Then an adjournment _en masse_ +to the top of the house. Of course Miss Moore, engineering the affair, +invited the Curtises, confident of a refusal--and an acceptance;--both +of which, indeed, she secured; but, to her astonishment, it was Mr. +Curtis who declined, and his wife who accepted. + +"It's a bore," Maurice told Eleanor, listlessly. + +She looked worried: "Oh, I am so sorry! I told them at luncheon that we +would come. I thought you'd enjoy it" (Her acceptance, which had been a +real sacrifice to her, was a bomb to the other boarders. "What _has_ +happened?" they said to each other, blankly. "She'll be an awful wet +blanket," some one said, frowning; and some one else said, "She's +accepted because she won't let him out at night, alone!") + +When the heterogeneous household gathered in the dining room, and corks +popped and jokes were made, Eleanor and Maurice were there; he, watching +the other people eat and drink and saying almost nothing; she, talking +nervously and trying hard to be slangy about astronomy. Once he looked +at her with faint interest--for she was so evidently "trying"! At +midnight they all toiled up four flights of stairs from the basement to +the garret, where, with proper squeamishness on the part of the ladies, +and much gallantry of pushing and pulling on the part of the gentlemen, +and all sorts of awkwardnesses and displaying of legs, they climbed a +ladder and got out through the scuttle on to the flat roof. Then came +the calculating of minutes, and facetiousness as to other people's +watches and directions as to what one might expect to see. "It'll look +like a bite out of a cookie, when it begins," the bond salesman said; +and Miss Ladd tittered, and said what the ladies wanted to see was the +man in the moon! + +Maurice, intolerably irked, had moved across to the parapet and was +staring out over the city. Below him spread the dim expanse of roofs and +chimneys, with here and there the twinkle of light in an attic window. +Leaning on the coping and looking down, he thought of the humanity under +the dark roofs: a horizontal humanity--everybody asleep! The ugly fancy +came to him that if that sleeping layer of bodies could be stirred up, +there would be instantly a squirming mass of loathsome thoughts--maggots +of lust, and shame, and jealousy, and fear. "My God! we're a nasty lot," +he thought. + +"Look!" a voice said at his shoulder. He sighed, impatiently--and +looked. Above him soared the abyss of space, velvet black, pricked +faintly here and there by stars; and, riding high--eternal and +serene--the Moon. + +He heard Miss Moore say, "_It's beginning._" ... And the solemn curve of +the Shadow touched the great disk. No one spoke: they stood--a handful +of little human creatures, staring up into immensity; specks of +consciousness on a whirling ball that was rushing forever into the void, +and, as it rushed, its shadow, sweeping soundless through the emptiness +of Space, touched the watching Moon ... and the broad plaque, silver +gilt, lessened--lessened. To half. To a quarter. To a glistening line. +Then coppery darkness. + +No one spoke. The flow of universes seemed to sweep personality out upon +eternal tides. Yet, strangely, Maurice felt a sudden uprush of +personality! ... Little he was--oh, infinitely little; too little, of +course, to be known by the Power that could do this--spread out the +heavens, and rule the deeps of Space; and yet he felt, somehow, near to +the Power. "It's what they call God, I suppose?" he said. It flashed +into his mind that he had said almost exactly the same thing that day in +the field (when he was a fool), of the fire of joy in his breast: he had +said that Happiness was God! And some people thought this stupendous +Energy could know--_us_? Absurd! "Might as well say a man could know an +ant." Yet, just because Inconceivable Greatness was great, mightn't it +know Inconceivable Littleness? "The smaller I am--the nastier, the +meaner, the more contemptible--the greater It would have to be to know +me? To say I was too little for It to know about, would be to set a +limit to Its greatness." How foolish Reason looks, limping along behind +such an intuition--Intuition, running and leaping, and praising God! +Maurice's reason strained to follow Intuition: "If It knows about me, It +could help me, ... because It holds the stars. Why! _It_ could fix +things--with Eleanor!" Looking up into the gulf, his tiny misery +suddenly fell away. "It would just prove Its greatness, to help me!" +While he groped thus for God among the stars, the order of rushing +worlds brought light, just as it had brought darkness: first a gleam; +then a curving thread; then a silver sickle; then, magnificently! a +shield of light--and the moon's unaltered face looked down at them. +Maurice had an overwhelming impulse to drop his weakness into endless, +ageless, limitless Power; his glimmer of self-knowledge, into enormous +All-Knowledge; his secrecy into Truth. An impulse to be done with +silences. "God knows; so Eleanor shall know." The idea of telling the +truth was to Maurice--slipping and sinking into bottomless lying--like +taking hold upon the great steadinesses of the sky.... + +People began to talk; Maurice did not hear them. Miss Ladd made a joke; +Miss Moore said something about "light miles"; the old, sad, clever +woman said, "The firmament showeth his handiwork,"--and instantly, as +though her words were a signal--a voice, as silvery as the moon, broke +the midnight with a swelling note: + +"The spacious firmament on high, +With all the blue ethereal sky ..." + +A shock of attention ran through the watchers on the roof: Eleanor, +standing with her hands clasped lightly in front of her, her head thrown +back, her eyes lifted to the unplumbed deeps, was singing: + +"The moon takes up the wondrous tale +And nightly to the listening earth +Repeats the story of her birth; +Whilst all the stars that round her burn, +And all the planets in their turn--" + +A window was thrown open in a dark garret below, and some one, unseen, +listened. Down in the street, two passers-by paused, and looked up. No +one spoke. The voice soared on--and ended: + +"Forever singing as they shine...." + +Maurice came to her side and caught her hand. There was a long sigh from +the little group. For several minutes no one spoke. Miss Moore wiped her +eyes; the baseball fan said, huskily, "My mother used to sing that"; the +widow touched Eleanor's shoulder. "My--my husband loved it," she said, +and her voice broke. + +The garret window slammed down; the two people in the street vanished in +the darkness. The little party on the roof melted away; they climbed +through the scuttle, forgetting to joke, but saying to each other, in +lowered voices: "Would you have _believed_ it?" "How wonderful!" And to +Eleanor, rather humbly: "It was beautiful, Mrs. Curtis!" + +In their own room, Maurice took his wife in his arms and kissed her. "I +am going to tell her," he said to himself, calmly. The overwhelming +grandeur of the heavens had washed him clean of fear, clean even of +shame, and left him impassioned with Beauty and Law, which two are +Truth. "I will tell her," he said. + +Eleanor had sung without self-consciousness; but now, when they were +back again in their room--so stifling after those spaces between the +worlds!--self-consciousness flooded in: "I suppose it was queer?" she +said. + +"It was perfect," Maurice said; he was very pale. + +"I wanted to do something that they would like, and I thought they might +like a hymn? Some of them said they did. But if you liked it, that is +all I want." + +"I loved it." His heart was pounding in his throat.... "Eleanor" (he +could hardly see that terrible path among the stars, but he stumbled +upward), "Eleanor, I'm not good enough for you." + +"Not good enough? For _me_?" She laughed at such absurdity. He was +sitting down, his elbow on his knee, his head in his hand. She came and +knelt beside him. "If you are only happy! I did it to make you happy." + +She heard him catch his breath. "How much do you love me?" he said. + +(Oh, how long it was since he had talked that way--asking the sweet, +unanswerable question of happy love!--how long since he had spoken with +so much precious foolishness!) "How _much_? Why, Maurice, I love you so +that sometimes, when I see you talking to other people--even these +tiresome people here in the house, I could just die! I want you all to +myself! I--I guess I feel about you the way Bingo feels about me," she +said, trying to joke--but there were tears in her eyes. + +"I'm not always ... what I ought to be," he said; "I am not--" (the path +was very dim)--"awfully good. I--" + +"I suppose I'm naturally jealous," she confessed; "I could die for you, +Maurice; but I couldn't share your little finger! Do you remember, on +our wedding day, you made me promise to be jealous? Well, I _am_." She +laughed--and he was dumb. There, on the roof, Truth seemed as inevitable +as Law. It did not seem inevitable now. He had lost his way among the +stars. He could not find words to begin his story. But words overflowed +on Eleanor's lips!... "Sometimes I get to thinking about myself--I _am_ +older than you, you know, a little. Not that it matters, really; but +when I see you with other people, and you seem to enjoy talking to +them--it nearly kills me! And you _do_ like to talk to them. You even +like to talk to--Edith, who is rude to me!" Her words poured out +sobbingly: "Why, _why_ am I not enough for you? You are enough for me!" + +He was silent. + +"And ... and ... and we haven't a baby," she said in a whisper, and +dropped her face on his knee. + +He tried to lift her, but his soul was sinking within him; dropping +down--down from the awful heights. Yet still he caught at Truth! "Dear, +don't! As for people, I may talk to them; I may even--even be with them, +or seem to like them, and--and do things, that--I don't love anybody but +you, Eleanor; but I--I--" + +It was a final clutch at the Hand that holds the stars. But his +entreating voice broke, for she was kissing his confession from his +lips. Those last words--"I don't love anybody but you"--folded her in +complete content! "Dear," she said, "that's all I want--that you don't +love anybody but me." She laid her wet cheek against his in silence. + +What could he do but be silent, too? What could he do but choke down the +confessing, redeeming words that were on his lips? So he did choke them +down, turning his back on the clean freedom of Truth; and the burden of +his squalid secret, which he had been ready to throw away forever, was +again packed like some corroding thing in his soul.... + +When, late in August, he and Eleanor went to Green Hill for a few days +vacation, the effect of this repression was marked. There were wrinkles +on his forehead under the thatch of his blond hair; his blue eyes were +dulled, and he was taciturn to the point of rudeness--except to Eleanor. +He was very polite to Eleanor. He never, now, amused himself by +imagining how he could disappear if he had the luck to be in a theater +fire. He knew that because he had enslaved himself to a lie, he had lost +the right even to dream freedom. So there were no more "fool thoughts" +as to how a man might "kick over the traces." There was nothing for him +to do, now (he said), but "play the game." The Houghtons were uneasily +aware of a difference in him; and Edith, fifteen now, felt that he had +changed, and had fits of shyness with him. "He's like he was that night +on the river," she told herself, "when he gave the lady his coat." She +sighed when she said this, and it occurred to her that she would be a +missionary. "I won't get married," she thought; "I'll go and nurse +lepers. He's _exactly_ like Sir Walter Raleigh." + +But of course she had moments of forgetting the lepers--moments when she +came down to the level of people like Johnny Bennett. When this +happened, she thought that, instead of going to the South Seas, she +would become a tennis star and figure in international tournaments; even +Johnny admitted that she served well--for a girl. One day she confessed +this ambition to Maurice, but he immediately beat her so badly that she +became her old childlike, grumpy self, and said Johnny was nicer for +singles; which enabled Maurice to turn her loose on John and go off +alone to climb the mountain. He had a dreary fancy for looking at the +camp, and living over again those days when he was still young--and a +fool, of course; but not so great a fool as now, with Lily living in a +little flat in Mercer. Batty's lease had expired, and she had moved into +a cheaper, but still ornate, apartment house on the other side of the +river. Well! Lily had floated into his life as meaninglessly as a mote +floats into a streak of light, and then floated out again. He hadn't +seen her since--since that time in May. + +_"Ass--ass!"_ he said to himself. "If Eleanor _knew_," he thought, +"there'd be a bust-up in two minutes." He even smiled grimly to think of +that evening of the eclipse when, shaken by the awful beauty of eternal +order, he had, for just one high moment, dreamed that he, too, could +attain the orderliness of Truth--and tell Eleanor. "Idiot!" he said, +contemptuously. Probably Maurice touched his lowest level when he said +that; for to be ashamed of an aspiration, to be contemptuous of emotion, +is to sin against the Holy Ghost. + +When Maurice reached the camp he stood for a while looking about him. +The shack had not wintered well: the door sagged on a broken hinge, and +the stovepipe had blown over and lay rusting on the roof. In the +blackened circle of stones were some charred logs, which made him think +of the camp fire on that night of Eleanor's courage and love and terror. +He even reverted to those first excuses for her: "She nearly killed +herself for me. Nervous prostration, Doctor Bennett said. I suppose a +woman never gets over that. Poor Eleanor!" he said, softening; "it +would kill her ... if she knew." He sat down and looked off across the +valley ... "What am I going to do?" he said to himself. "I can't make her +happy; I'd like to, but you can't reason with her any more than if she +was a child. Edith has ten times her sense! How absurd she is about +Edith. Lord! what would she do if she knew about Lily!" + +He reflected, playing with the mere horror of the thought, upon just how +complete the "bust-up" would be if she knew! He realized that he had +undeserved good luck with Lily; she hadn't fastened herself on him. She +was decent about that; if she'd been a different sort, he might have had +a nasty time. But Lily was a sport--he'd say that for her; she hadn't +clawed at him! And she had protested that she didn't want any money, and +wouldn't take it! And she hadn't taken it. He had made some occasional +presents, but nothing of any value. He had given her nothing, hardly +even a thought (except the thought that he was an ass), since last May. +Thinking of her now, he had another of those pangs of shame which had +stabbed him so at first, but to which of late he had grown callous. The +shame of having been the one--after all his goody-goody talk!--to pull +her off the track; still, she was straight again now. He was quite sure +of that. "You can tell when they're straight," he thought, heavily. +Perhaps, in the winter, he would send her some flowers. He thought of +the bulbs on the window sill of Lily's parlor, and tried to remember a +verse; something about--about--what was it? + +"If of thy store there be + But left two loaves, +Sell one, and with the dole + Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul." + +He laughed; _Lily_, feeding her "soul"! "Well, she has more 'soul,' with +her flower pots and her good cooking, than some women who wouldn't touch +her with a ten-foot pole! Still, _I'm_ done with her!" he thought. But +he had no purpose of "uplift"; the desire to reform Lily had evaporated. +"Queer; I don't care a hoot," he told himself, watching with lazy eyes +the smoke from his pipe drift blue between himself and the valley +drowsing in the heat. "I'd like to see the little thing do well for +herself--but really I don't give a damn." His moral listlessness, in +view of the acuteness of that first remorse, and especially of that +moment among the stars, when he had stretched out hands passionately +eager for the agonizing sacrament of confession, faintly surprised him. +How could he have been so wrought up about it? He looked off over the +valley--saw the steely sickle of the river; saw a cloud shadow touch the +shoulder of a mountain and move down across the gracious bosom of its +forests. Below him, chestnuts twinkled and shimmered in the sun, and +there were dusky stretches of hemlocks, then open pastures, vividly +green from the August rains.... "It ought to be set to music," he +thought; the violins would give the flicker of the leaves--"and the +harps would outline the river. Eleanor's voice is lovely ... she looks +fifty. How," he pondered, interested in the mechanics of it, "did she +ever get me into that wagon?" Then, again, he was sorry for her, and +said, "Poor girl!" Then he was sorry for himself. He knew that he was +tired to death of Eleanor--tired of her moods and her lovemaking. He was +not angry with her; he did not hate her;--he had injured her too much to +hate her; he was simply unutterably tired of her--what he did hate, was +this business of lugging a secret around! "I feel," he said to himself, +"like a dog that's killed a hen, and had the carcass tied around his +neck." His face twitched with disgust at his own simile. But as for +Eleanor, he had been contemptibly mean to her, and, "By God!" he +said to himself, "at least I'll play the game. I'll treat her as well as +I can. Other fools have married jealous women, and put up with them. +But, good Lord!" he thought, with honest perplexity, "can't the women +_see_ how they push you into the very thing they are afraid of, because +they bore you so infernally? If I look at a woman, Eleanor's on her +ear.... Queer," he pondered; "she's good. Look how kind she is to old +O'Brien's lame child. And she _can_ sing." He hummed to himself a lovely +Lilting line of one of Eleanor's songs. "Confound it! why did I meet +Lily? Eleanor is a million times too good for me...." + +Far off he heard a sound and, frowning, looked toward the road: yes; +somebody was coming! "Can't a man get a minute to himself?" Maurice +thought, despairingly. It was the mild-eyed and spectacled Johnny +Bennett, and behind him, Edith, panting and perspiring, and smiling +broadly. + +"Hello!" she called out, in cheerful gasps; "thought we'd come up and +walk home with you!" + +"'Lo," Maurice said. + +The boy and girl achieving the rocky knoll on which Maurice was sitting, +his hands locked about his knees, his eyes angry and ashamed, staring +over the treetops, sat down beside him. Johnny pulled out his pipe, and +Edith took off her hat and fanned herself. "Mother and Eleanor went for +a ride. I thought I'd rather come up here." + +"Um--" Maurice said. + +"Two letters for you," she said. "Eleanor told me to bring 'em up. Might +be business." + +As she handed them to him, his eye caught the address on one of them, +and a little cold tingle suddenly ran down his spine. Lily had never +written to him, but some instinct warned him that that cramped +handwriting on the narrow lavender envelope, forwarded from the office, +could only be hers. A whiff of perfumery made him sure. He had a pang of +fright. At what? He could not have said; but even before he opened the +purple envelope he knew the taste of fear in his mouth.... + +Sitting there on the mountain, looking down into the misty serenities of +the sun-drenched valley, with the smoke of Johnny Bennett's pipe in his +nostrils, and the friendly Edith beside him, he tore open the scented +envelope, and as his eyes fell on the first lines it seemed as if the +spreading world below rose up and hit him in the face: + +DEAR FRIEND CURT,--I don't know what you'll say. I hope you won't be +mad. I'm going to have a baby. _It's yours_.... + +Maurice could not see the page, a wave of nausea swamped even his +horror; he swallowed--swallowed--swallowed. Edith heard him gasp, and +looked at him, much interested. + +"What's the matter with your hands?" Edith inquired. "Johnny! Look at +his hands!" + +Maurice's fingers, smoothing out the purple sheet, were shaking so that +the paper rustled. He did not hear her. Then he read the whole thing +through to its laconic end: + +_It's yours_--honest to God. Can you help me a little? Sorry to trouble +you on your vacation. + +Your friend, + +LILY. + +"What _is_ the matter with your hands?" Edith said, very much +interested. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +When, a year after his marriage, Maurice began to awaken to Eleanor's +realities, maturity had come to him with a bound. But it was almost age +that fell upon him when Lily's realities confronted him. In the late +afternoon, as he and Edith and the silent Johnny walked down the +mountain, he was dizzy with terror of Lily! + +_She was blackmailing him._ + +But even as he said the word, he had an uprush of courage; he would get +a lawyer, and shut her up! That's what you do when anybody blackmails +you. Perfectly simple. "A lawyer will shut her up!" It was a hideous +mess, and he had no money to spend on lawyers; but it would never get +out--the newspapers couldn't get hold of it--because a lawyer would shut +her up! Though, probably, he'd have to give her some money? How much +would he have to give her? And how much would he have to pay the lawyer? +He had a crazy vision of Lily's attaching his salary. He imagined a +dialogue with his employer: "A case of blackmail, sir." "Don't worry +about it, Curtis; we'll shut her up." This brought an instant's warm +sense of safety, which as instantly vanished--and again he was walking +down the road, with Edith beside him, talking, talking... Eleanor would +have to know... No! She wouldn't! He could keep it a secret. But he'd +have to tell Mr. Houghton. Then Mrs. Houghton would know! Again a wave +of nausea swept over him, and he shuddered; then said to himself: "No: +Uncle Henry's white. He won't even tell her." + +Edith was asking him something; he said, "Yes," entirely at random--and +was at once involved in a snarl of other questions, and other random +answers. Under his breath he thought, despairingly, "Won't she ever +stop talking! ... Edith, I'll give you fifty cents if you'll keep +quiet." + +Edith was willing enough to be quiet; "But," she added, practically, +"would you mind giving me the fifty cents now, Maurice? You always tear +off to Eleanor the minute you get home, and I'm afraid you'll forget +it." + +He put his hand in his pocket and produced the half dollar. "Anything to +keep you still!" he said. + +"You don't mind if I talk to Johnny?" + +He didn't answer; at that moment he was not aware of her existence, +still less Johnny's, for a frightful thought had stabbed him: Suppose it +wasn't blackmail? _Suppose Lily had told the truth_? Suppose "it" was +his? "She can't prove it--she can't prove it!" he said, aloud. + +"Prove what? Who can't?" Edith said, interested. + +Maurice didn't hear her. Suddenly he felt too sick to follow his own +thought, and go to the bottom of things; he was afraid to touch the +bottom! He made a desperate effort to keep on the surface of his terror +by saying: "It's all Eleanor's fault. Damnation! Her idiotic jealousy +drove me out of the house that Sunday afternoon!" + +At this moment Johnny Bennett and Edith broke into shrieks of laughter. +"Say, Maurice," Johnny began-- + +"Can't you children be quiet for five minutes?" Maurice said. Johnny +whistled and, behind his spectacles, made big eyes at Edith. "What's +_he_ got on his little chest?" Johnny inquired. But Maurice was deaf to +sarcasm.... "It all goes back to Eleanor!" + +Under the chatter of the other two, it was easier to say this than to +say, "Is Lily telling the truth?" It was easier to hate Eleanor than to +think about Lily. And, hating, he said again, aloud, the single agonized +word. + +Edith stood stock-still with amazement; she could not believe her ears. +_Maurice_ had said--? As for Maurice, his head bent as if he were +walking in a high wind he strode on, leaving her in the road staring +after him. + +"Johnny!" said Edith; "did you hear?" + +"That's nothing," Johnny said; "I say it often, when mother ain't +round. At least I say the first part." + +"Oh, _Johnny_!" Edith said, dismayed. + +To Maurice, rushing on alone, the relief of hating Eleanor was lost in +the uprush of that ghastly possibility: "If it _is_ mine?" + +Something in him struggled to say: "If it _is_, why, then, I must--But +it isn't!" Maurice was, for the moment, a horribly scared boy; his +instinct was to run to cover at any cost. He forgot Edith, coming home +by herself after Johnny should turn in at his own gate; he was conscious +only of his need to be alone to think this thing out and decide what he +must do. There was no possible privacy in the house. "If I go up to our +room," he thought, frantically, "Eleanor'll burst in on me, and then +she'll get on to it that there's something the matter!" Suddenly he +remembered the chicken coop. "It's late. Edith won't be coming in." So +he skulked around behind the house and the stable, and up the gravel +path to the henhouse. Lifting the rusty latch, he stepped quietly into +the dusky, feathery shelter. "I can think the damned business out, +here," he thought. There was a scuffling "cluck" on the roosts, but when +he sat down on an overturned box, the fowls settled into stillness and, +except for an occasional sleepy squawk, the place was quiet. He drew a +long breath, and dropped his chin on his fist. "Now I'll think," he +said. Then, through the cobwebby windows, he saw in the yellowing west +the new moon, and below it the line of distant hills. An old pine tree +stretched a shaggy branch across the window, and he said to himself that +the moon and the hills and the branch were like a Japanese print. + +He took the letter out of his pocket--his very fingers shrinking as he +touched it--and straining his eyes in the gathering dusk, he read it all +through. Then he looked at the moon, which was sliding--sliding behind +the pine. Yes, that ragged branch was very Japanese. If he hadn't gone +out on the river that night with Edith, he would never have met Lily. +The thing he had said on his wedding day, in the meadow, about +"switches," flashed into his mind: "A little thing can throw the +switches." + +"Ten minutes in a rowboat," he said,--"and _this_!" One of the hens +clucked. "I'll fight," he said. "Lots of men come up against this sort +of thing, and they hand the whole rotten business over to a lawyer. I'll +fight. Or I'll move.... Perhaps that's the best way? I'll just tell +Eleanor we've got to live in New York. Damn it! she'd ask why? I'll say +I have a job there. Lily'd never be able to find me in New York." The +moon slipped out below the pine, and hung for a dim moment in the haze. +Maurice's mind went through a long and involved plan of concealing his +address from Lily when he moved to New York.... "But what would we live +on while I was finding a job?" ... Suddenly thought stopped short; he +just watched the moon, and listened to a muffled stir among the hens. +Then he took out his knife, and began to cut little notches on the +window sill. "I'll fight," he said, mechanically. + +There were running steps on the gravel path, and instantly he was on his +feet. He had the presence of mind to put his hand into a nest, so that +when Edith came in she reproached him for getting ahead of her in +collecting eggs. + +"How many have you got? Two? Griselda was on the nest when I started up +the mountain, but I thought there was another egg there?" + +"Only one," he said, thickly, and handed it to her. + +"Come on in the house," Edith commanded; "I suppose," she said, +resignedly, "Eleanor is playing on the piano!" (Edith, as her adoration +of Eleanor lessened, was frankly bored by her music.) + +"All right," Maurice said, and followed her. + +Edith asked no questions; Maurice's "word" on the road had sobered her +too much for talk. "He's mad about something," she thought; "but I never +heard Maurice say--_that_!" She didn't quite like to repeat what he had +said, though Johnny had confessed to saying "part of it." "I don't +believe he ever did," Edith thought; "he's putting on airs! But for +Maurice to say _all_ of it!--that was wrong," said Edith, gravely. + +They went out of the henhouse together in silence. Maurice was saying to +himself, "I might not be able to get a job in New York... I'll fight." +Yet certain traditional decencies, slowly emerging from the welter of +his rage and terror, made him add, "If it was mine, I'd have to give her +something... But it isn't. I'll fight." + +He was so absorbed that before he knew it he had followed Edith to the +studio, where, in the twilight. Mr. and Mrs. Houghton were sitting on +the sofa together, hand in hand, and Eleanor was at the piano singing, +softly, old songs that her hosts loved. + +"If," said Henry Houghton, listening, "heaven is any better than this, I +shall consider it needless extravagance on the part of the +Almighty,"--and he held his wife's hand against his lips. Maurice, at +the door, turned away and would have gone upstairs, but Mr. Houghton +called out: "Sit down, man! If _I_ had the luck to have a wife who could +sing, I'd keep her at it! Sit down!" Eleanor's voice, lovely and noble +and serene, went on: + +"To add to golden numbers, golden numbers! +0 sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content!" + +Maurice sat down; it was as if, after beating against crashing seas with +a cargo of shame and fear, he had turned suddenly into a still harbor: +the faintly lighted studio, the stillness of the summer evening, the +lovely voice--the peace and dignity and safety of it all gave him a +strange sense of unreality... Then, suddenly, he heard them all laughing +and telling Eleanor they were sorry for her, to have such an +unappreciative husband!--and he realized that the fatigue of terror had +made him fall asleep. Later, when he came to the supper table, he was +still dazed. He said he had a headache, and could not eat; instantly +Eleanor's anxiety was alert. She suggested hot-water bags and mustard +plasters, until Mr. Houghton said to himself: "How _does_ he stand it? +Mary must tell her not to be a mother to him--or a grandmother." + +All that hot evening, out on the porch, Maurice was silent--so silent +that, as they separated for the night, his guardian put a hand on his +shoulder, "Come into the studio," he said; "I want to show you a thing +I've been muddling over." + +Maurice followed him into the vast, shadowy, untidy room ("No females +with dusters allowed on the premises!" Henry Houghton used to say), +glanced at a half-finished canvas, said, "Fine!" and turned away. + +"Anything out of kilter? I mean, besides your headache?" + +"Well ... yes." + +("He's going to say he's hard up--the extravagant cuss!" Henry Houghton +thought, with the old provoked affection.) + +"I'm bothered about ... something," Maurice began. + +("He's squabbled with Eleanor. I wish I was asleep!") + +"Uncle Henry," Maurice said, "if you were going to see a lawyer, who +would you see?" + +"I wouldn't see him. Lawyers make their cake by cooking up other +people's troubles. Sit down. Let's talk it out." He settled himself in a +corner of the ragged old horsehair sofa which faced the empty fireplace +and motioned Maurice to a chair. "I thought it wasn't all headache; +what's the matter, boy?" + +Maurice sat down, cleared his throat, and put his hands in his pockets +so they would not betray him. "I--" he said. + +Mr. Houghton appeared absorbed in biting off the end of his cigar. + +"I--" Maurice said again. + +"Maurice," said Henry Houghton, "keep the peace. If you and Eleanor have +fallen out, don't stand on your dignity. Go upstairs and say you're +sorry, whether you are or not. Don't talk about lawyers." + +"My God!" said Maurice; "did you suppose it was _that_?" + +Mr. Houghton stopped biting the end of his cigar, and looked at him. +"Why, yes; I did. You and she are rather foolish, you know. So I +supposed--" + +Maurice dropped his face on his arms on the big dusty table, littered +with pamphlets and charcoal studies and squeezed-out paint tubes. After +a while he lifted his head: "_That's_ nothing. I wish it was that." + +The older man rose and stood with his back to the mantelpiece. They both +heard the clock ticking loudly. Then, almost in a whisper, Maurice said: + +"I've been--blackmailed." + +Mr. Houghton whistled. + +"I've had a letter from a woman. She says--" + +"Has she got anything on you?" + +"No proof; but--" + +"But you have made a fool of yourself?" + +"Yes." + +Mr. Houghton sat down again. "Go on," he said. + +Maurice reached for a maulstick lying across the table; then leaned +over, his elbows on his knees, and tried, with two trembling +forefingers, to make it stand upright on the floor. "She's common. She +can't prove it's--mine." His effort to keep the stick vertical with +those two shaking fingers was agonizing. + +"Begin at the beginning," Henry Houghton said. + +Maurice let the maulstick drop against his shoulder and sunk his head on +his hands. Suddenly he sat up: "What's the use of lying? She's _not_ bad +all through." The truth seemed to tear him as he uttered it. "That's the +worst of it," he groaned. "If she was, I'd know what to do. But probably +she's not lying... She says it's mine. Yes; I pretty well know she's not +lying." + +"We'll go on the supposition that she is. I have yet to see a white +crow. How much does she want?" + +"She's only asked me to help her, when--it's born. And of course, if it +_is_ mine, I--" + +"We won't concede the 'if.'" + +"Uncle Henry," said the haggard boy, "I'm several kinds of a fool, but +I'm not a skunk. I've got to be decent" + +"You should have thought of decency sooner." + +"I know. I know." + +"You'd better tell me the whole thing. Then we'll talk lawyers." + +So Maurice began the squalid story. Twice he stopped, choking down +excuses that laid the blame on Eleanor.... "It wouldn't have happened if +I hadn't been--been bothered." And again, "Something had thrown me off +the track; and I met Lily, and--" + +At last it was all said, and he had not skulked behind his wife. He had +told everything, except those explaining things that could not be told. + +When the story was ended there was silence. The older man, guessing the +untold things, could not trust himself to speak his pity and anger and +dismay. But in that moment of silence the comfort of confession made the +tears stand in the boy's eyes; he said, impulsively, "Uncle Henry, I +thought you'd kick me out of the house!" + +Henry Houghton blew his nose, and spoke with husky harshness. "Eleanor +has no suspicions?" (He, too, was choking down references to Eleanor +which must not be spoken.) + +"No. Do you think I ought to--to tell--?" + +"No! No! With some women you could make a clean breast... I know a +woman--her husband hadn't a secret from her; and I know _he_ was a fool +before his marriage! He made a clean breast of it, and she married him. +But she knew the soul of him, you see? She knew that this sort of rotten +foolishness was only his body. So he worshiped her. Naturally. Properly. +She meant God to him... Mighty few women like that! Candidly, I don't +think your wife is one of them. Besides, this is _after_ marriage. +That's different, Maurice. Very different. It isn't a square deal." + +Maurice made a miserable shamed sound of agreement. Then he said, +huskily, "Of course I won't lie; I'll just--not tell her." + +"The thing for us to do," said Mr. Houghton, "is to get you out of this +mess. Then you'll keep straight? Some fellows wouldn't. You will, +because--" he paused; Maurice looked at him with scared eyes--"because +if a man is sufficiently aware of having been a damned fool, he's +immune. I'll bet on you, Maurice." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +Yet Henry Houghton had moments of fearing that he would lose his bet, +for Maurice was such a very damned fool! One might have guessed as much +when he would not admit that Lily was lying. She might be blackmailing +him, he said; she might be a "crow"; but she wasn't lying. When his +guardian had talked it all out with him, and written a letter which +Maurice was to take to a lawyer ("she'll want to get rid of the child; +they always want to get rid of the child; so she may let you off easier +if you say you'll see that it is cared for; and we'll have Hayes put it +in black and white") when all these arrangements had been made, Maurice +almost dished the whole thing (so Mr. Houghton expressed it) by +saying--again as if the words burst up from some choked well of +truthfulness: + +"Uncle Henry, it isn't blackmail; and--and I've got to be half decent!" + +Down from the upper hall came a sweet, anxious voice: "Maurice, darling! +It's twelve o'clock! What _are_ you doing?" + +Mr. Houghton called back: "We're talking business, Eleanor. I'll send +him up in a quarter of an hour. Don't lose your beauty sleep, my dear. +(Mary _must_ tell her not to be such an idiot!)" Then he looked at +Maurice: "My boy, you can't be decent with a leech. You've got to leave +this to Hayes." + +"She isn't a leech. I ought to help her, I'll see her myself." + +"My dear fellow, don't be a bigger ass than you can help! You can meet +what you see fit to call your responsibilities, as a few other +conscientious fools have done before you; though," he added, heavily, +"I hope she won't suck you dry! How you are going to squeeze out the +money, _I_ don't know! I can't help you much. But you mustn't appear in +this for a single minute. Hayes will see her, and buy her off." + +Maurice shook his head, despairingly: "Uncle Henry, she's common; but +she's not vicious. She's a nice little thing. I know Lily! I'll see her. +_I'll have to!_ I'll tell her I'll--I'll help her." No wonder poor Henry +Houghton feared he would lose his bet! "I know you think I'm easy meat," +Maurice said; "but I'm not. Only," his face was anguished, "I've _got_ +to be half decent." + +It was after one o'clock when the two men went upstairs, though there +had been another summons over the banisters: "Maurice! Why don't you +come to bed?" When they parted at Maurice's door, Mr. Houghton struck +his ward on the shoulder and whispered, "You're more than half decent. +I'll bet on you!" and Maurice whispered back: + +"You're _white_, Uncle Henry!" + +He went into his room on tiptoe, but Eleanor heard him and said, +sleepily, "What on earth have you been talking about?" + +"Business," Maurice told her. + +"Who was your lavender-colored letter from?" Eleanor said, yawning; "I +forgot to ask you. It was awfully scented!" + +There was an instant's pause; Maurice's lips were dry;--then he said: + +"From a woman... About a house. (My God! I've _lied_ to her!)" he said +to himself... + +Mary Houghton, reading comfortably in bed, looked up at her old husband +over her spectacles. "I've heated some cocoa, dear," she said. "Drink it +before you undress; you are worn out. What kept you downstairs until +this hour?" + +"Business." + +Mary Houghton smiled: "Might as well tell the truth." + +"Oh, Kit, it's a horrid mess!" he groaned; "I thought that boy had got +to the top of Fool Hill when he married Eleanor! But he hadn't." + +"Can't tell me, I suppose?" + +"No. Mary, mayn't I have a cigar? I'm really awfully used up, and--" + +"Henry! You are perfectly depraved! No; you may _not_. Drink your cocoa, +honey. And consider the stars;--they shine, even above Fool Hill. And +'messes' look mighty small beside the Pleiades!" Then she turned a page +of her novel, and added, "Poor Eleanor." + +"I don't know why you say 'Poor Eleanor'!" + +"Because I know that Maurice isn't sharing his 'mess' with her." + +"You are uncanny!" Henry Houghton said, stirring his cocoa and looking +at her admiringly. + +"No; merely intelligent. Henry, don't let him have any secrets from +Eleanor! Tell him to _tell_ her. She'll forgive him." + +"She's not that kind, Mary." + +"Dear, _almost_ every woman is 'that kind'! It's deception, not +confession, that makes them--the other kind. If Maurice will confess--" + +"I haven't said there was anything to confess," he protested, in alarm. + +"Oh no; certainly not. You haven't said a word! (Well; you may have just +one of those _little_ cigars--you poor dear!) Henry, listen: If Maurice +hangs a secret round his neck it will drown him." + +"If Eleanor would make cocoa for him at one o'clock in the morning there +would be no chance for secrets. Kit, I have long known that you are the +wisest, as well as the most virtuous and most lovable of your sex, and +that I shall only get to heaven by hanging on to your petticoats; but in +this one particular I am much more intelligent than you." + +"Heaven send you a good opinion of yourself!" his wife murmured. + +But he insisted. "On certain subjects women prefer to be lied to." + +"Did any woman ever tell you so?" she inquired, dryly. + +He shrugged his shoulders, put his cup down, and came over to give her a +kiss. + +"Which is to say, 'Hold your tongue'?" his Mary inquired. + +"Oh, never!" he said, and in spite of his distress he laughed; but he +looked at her tenderly. "The Lord was good to me, Mary, when He made you +take me." + +That talk in the studio marked the moment when Maurice Curtis turned his +back on youth. It was the beginning of the retreat of an ardent and +gayly candid boy into the adult sophistications of Secrecy. The next day +when he and Eleanor returned to Mercer, he sat in the car watching with +unseeing eyes the back of her head,--her swaying hat, the softly curling +tendrils of dark hair in the nape of her neck--and he saw before him a +narrow path, leading--across quaking bogs of evasions!--toward a goal of +always menaced safety. Mr. Houghton had indicated the path in that +midnight talk, and Maurice's first step upon it would be his promise to +relieve Lily of the support of her child--"_on condition that she would +never communicate with him again_." After that, Henry Houghton said, +"the lawyer will clinch things; and nobody will ever be the wiser!" +Because Eleanor was the woman she was, he saw no way of escape for +Maurice, except through this bog of secrecy, where any careless step +might plunge him into a lie. He had not dared to point out that other +path, which his Mary thought so much safer than the sucking shakiness of +the swamp--the rough and terrible path of confession, which lies across +the firm aridities of Truth, and leads to that orderly freedom of the +stars to which Maurice had once aspired! So now the boy was going back +to Mercer to plunge into the pitfalls and limitless shades of +concealment. He did it with a hard purpose of endurance, without hope, +and also without complaint. + +"If I can just avoid out-and-out lying," he told himself, "I can take my +medicine. But if I have to lie--!" + +He knew the full bitterness of his medicine when he went to see Lily... + +He went the very next day, after office hours... There had been a +temptation to postpone the taking of the medicine, because it had been +difficult to escape from Eleanor. The well-ordered household at Green +Hill had fired her with an impulse to try housekeeping again, and she +wanted to urge the idea upon Maurice: + +"We would be so much more comfortable; and I could have little Bingo!" + +"We can't afford it," he said. (Oh, how many things he wouldn't be able +to afford, now!) + +"It wouldn't cost much more. I'll come down to the office this afternoon +and walk home with you, and tell you what I've thought out about it." + +Maurice said he had to--to go and see an apartment house at five. + +"That's no matter! I'll meet you and walk along with you." + +"I have several other places to go." + +That hurt her. "If you don't want me--" + +He was so absorbed that her words had no meaning to him. "Good-by," he +said, mechanically--and the next moment he was on his way. + +At the office his employer gave him a keen glance. "You look used up, +Curtis; got a cold?" Mr. Weston asked, kindly. + +Maurice, sick in spirit, said, "No, sir; I'm all right." + +And so the minutes of the long day ticked themselves away, each a +separate pang of disgust and shame, until five o'clock came, and he +started for Lily's. + +While he waited in the unswept vestibule of an incredibly ornate frame +apartment house for the answer to his ring, and the usual: "My goodness! +Is that you? Come on up!" he had the feeling of one who stands at a +closed door, knowing that when he opens it and enters he will look upon +a dead face. The door was Lily's, and the face was the face of his dead +youth. Carelessness was over for Maurice, and irresponsibility. And +hope, too, he thought, and enthusiasm, and ambition. All over! All dead. +All lying stiff and still on the other side of a shiny golden-oak door, +with its half window hung with a Nottingham lace curtain. When he +started up the three flights of stairs to that little flat where he was +to look upon his dead, he was calm to the point of listlessness. "My own +fault. My own fault," he said. + +She was waiting for him on the landing, her fresh cleanness in fragrant +contrast to the forlorn untidiness of the stairways. They went into her +parlor together and he began to speak at once. + +"I got your letter. No; I won't sit down. I--" + +"My soul and body! You're all in!" Lily said, startled, "Let me get you +some whisky--" + +"No, please, nothing! Lily, I'm ... awfully sorry, I--I'll do what I can. +I--" + +She put her hands over her face; he went on mechanically, with his +carefully prepared sentences, ending with: + +"There's no reason why we should meet any more. But I want you to know +that the--the--_it_, will be taken care of. My lawyer will see you about +it; I'll have it placed somewhere." + +She dropped her hands and looked at him, her little, pretty face amazed +and twitching: "Do you mean you'll take my baby?" + +"I'll see that it's provided for." + +"I ain't that kind of a girl!" They were standing, one on either side of +a highly varnished table, on which, on a little brass tray, a cigarette +stub was still smoldering. "_I_ don't want anything out of you"--Lily +paused; then said, "Mr. Curtis"--(the fact that she didn't call him +"Curt" showed her recognition of a change in their relationship)--"I'm +not on the grab. I can keep on at Marston's for quite a bit. All I want +is just if you can help me in February? But I'll never give my baby up! +My first one died." + +"Your _first_--" + +"So I'll never, never give it up!" Her shallow, honest, amber-colored +eyes overflowed with bliss. "I'll just love it!" she said. + +Maurice felt an almost physical collapse; neither he nor Henry Houghton +had reckoned on maternal love. Mr. Houghton had implied that Lily's kind +did not have maternal love. "She'll leave it on a convenient +doorstep--unless she's a white blackbird," Henry Houghton had said. +Maurice, too, had taken for granted Lily's eagerness to get rid of the +child. In his amazement now, at this revelation of an unknown Lily--a +white blackbird Lily!--he began, angrily, to argue: "It is impossible +for you to keep it! Impossible! I won't permit it--" + +"I wouldn't give it up for anything in the world! I'll take care of it. +You needn't worry for fear I'll put it onto you." + +"But I won't have you keep it! I promise you I'll look after it. You +must go away, somewhere. Anywhere!" + +"But I don't want to leave Mercer," she said, simply. + +In his despairing confusion, he sat down on the little bowlegged sofa +and looked at her; Lily, sitting beside him, put her hand on his--which +quivered at the touch. "Don't you worry! I'd never play you any mean +trick. You treated me good, and I'll never treat you mean; I 'ain't +forgot the way you handed it out to Batty! I'll never let on to anybody. +Say--I believe you're afraid I'll try a hold-up on you some day? Why, +Mr. Curtis, _I_ wouldn't do a thing like that--no, not for a million +dollars! Look here; if it will make you easy in your mind, I'll put it +down in writing; I'll say it _ain't_ yours! Will that make you easy in +your mind?" Her kind eyes were full of anxious pity for him. "I'll do +anything for you, but I won't give up my baby." + +She was trying to help him! He was so angry and so frightened that he +felt sick at his stomach; but he knew that she was trying to help him! + +"You see," she explained, "the first one died; now I'm going to have +another, and you bet I'm going to have things nice for her! I'm going to +buy a parlor organ. And I'll have her learned to play. It's going to be +a girl. Oh, won't I dress her pretty! But I'll never come down on you +about her. Now, don't you worry." + +The generosity of her! She'd "put it down in writing"! "I _told_ Uncle +Henry she was white," he thought. But in spite of her whiteness his blue +eyes were wide with horror; all those plans, of Lily in another city, +and an unacknowledged child, in still another city--for of course _it_ +could not be in Mercer any more than Lily could!--all these safe +arrangements faded into a swift vision of Lily, in this apartment, with +_it_! Lily, meeting him on the street!--a flash of imagination showed +him Lily, pushing a baby carriage! For just a moment sheer terror made +that dead Youth of his stir. + +"You can't keep it!" he said again, hoarsely; "I tell you, I won't allow +it! I'll look after it. _But I won't have it here!_ And I won't ever see +you." + +"You needn't," she said, reassuringly; "and I'll never bother you. That +ain't me!" + +He was dumb. + +"An' look," she said, cheerfully; "honest, it's better for you. What +would you do, looking after a little girl? Why, you couldn't even curl +her hair in the mornings!" Maurice shuddered. "And I'll never ask you +for a cent, if you can just make it convenient to help me in February?" + +"Of course I'll help you," he said; then, suddenly, his anger fell into +despair. "Oh, what a damned fool I was!" + +"All gentlemen are," she tried to comfort him. Her generosity made him +blush. Added to his shame because of what he had done to Eleanor, was a +new shame at his own thoughts about this little, kind, bad, honest +woman! "Look here," Lily said; "if you're strapped, never mind about +helping me. They'll take you at the Maternity free, if you _can't_ pay. +So I'll go there; and I'll say I'm married; I'll say my husband was Mr. +George Dale, and he's dead; I'll never peep your name. Now, don't you +worry! I'll keep on at Marston's for four months, anyway. Yes; I'll buy +me a ring and call myself Mrs. Dale; I guess I'll say Mrs. Robert Dale; +Robert's a classier name than George. And nobody can say anything to my +baby." + +"Of course I'll give you whatever you need for--when--when it's born," +he said. He was fumbling with his pocketbook; he had nothing more to say +about leaving Mercer. + +She took the money doubtfully. "I won't want it yet awhile," she said. + +"I'll make it more if I can," he told her; he got up, hesitated, then +put out his hand. For a single instant, just for her pluck, he was +almost fond of her. "Take care of yourself," he said, huskily; and the +next minute he was plunging down those three flights of unswept stairs +to the street. "My own fault--my own fault," he said, again; "oh, what a +cussed, cussed, cussed fool!" + +It was over, this dreadful interview! this looking at the dead face of +his Youth. Over, and he was back again just where he was when he came +in. Nothing settled. Lily--who was so much more generous than he!--would +still be in Mercer, waiting for this terrible child. His child! + +He had accomplished nothing, and he saw before him the dismaying +prospect of admitting his failure to Mr. Houghton. The only comfort in +the whole hideous business was that he wouldn't have to pull a lawyer +into it, and pay a big fee! He was frantic with worry about expense. +Well, he must strike Mr. Weston for a raise!... which he wouldn't tell +Eleanor about. A second step into the bog of Secrecy! + +When he got home, Eleanor, in the dingy third-floor front, was waiting +for him, alert and tender, and gay with purpose: "Maurice! I've counted +expenses, and I'm sure we can go to housekeeping! And I can have little +Bingo. Mrs. O'Brien says he's just pining away for me!" + +"We can't afford it," he said again, doggedly. + +"I believe," she said, "you like this horrid place, because you have +people to talk to!" + +"It's well enough," he said. He was standing with his back to her, his +clenched hands in his pockets, staring out of the window. His very +attitude, the stubbornness of his shoulders, showed his determination +not to go to housekeeping. + +"What _is_ the matter, Maurice?" she said, her voice trembling. "You are +not happy! Oh, what _can_ I do?" she said, despairingly. + +"I am as happy as I deserve to be," he said, without turning his head. + +She came and stood beside him, resting her cheek on his shoulder. "Oh," +she said, passionately, "if I only had a child! You are disappointed +because we have no--" + +His recoil was so sharp that she could not finish her sentence, but +clutched at his arm to steady herself; before she could reproach him for +his abruptness he had caught up his hat and left the room. She stood +there quivering. "He _would_ be happier and love me more, if we had a +child!" she said again. She thought of the joy with which, when they +first went to housekeeping, she had bought that foolish, pretty nursery +paper--and again the old disappointment ached under her breastbone. +Tears were just ready to overflow; but there was a knock at the door and +old Mrs. O'Brien came in with her basket of laundry; she gave her +beloved Miss Eleanor a keen look "It's worried you are, my dear? It +ain't the wash, is it?" + +Eleanor tried to laugh, but the laugh ended in a sob. "No. It's--it's +only--" Then she said something in a whisper. + +"No baby? Bless you, _he_ don't want no babies! What would a handsome +young man like him be wanting a baby for? No! And it would take your +good looks, my dear. Keep handsome, Miss Eleanor, and you needn't worry +about _babies_! And say, Miss Eleanor, never let on to him if you see +him give a look at any of his lady friends. I'm old, my dear, but I +noticed, with all my husbands--and I've had three--that if you tell'em +you see'em lookin' at other ladies, _they'll look again_!--just to spite +you. Don't notice'em, and they'll not do it. Men is children." + +Eleanor, laughing in spite of her pain, said Mr. Curtis didn't "look at +other ladies; but--but," she said, wistfully, "I hope I'll have a baby." +Then she wiped her eyes, hugged old O'Brien, and promised to "quit +worrying." But she didn't "quit," for Maurice's face did not lighten. + +Henry Houghton, too, saw the aging heaviness of the young face when, +having received the report of that interview with Lily, he came down to +Mercer to go over the whole affair and see what must be done. But there +was nothing to be done. Up in his room in the hotel he and Maurice +thrashed it all out: + +"She prefers to stay in Mercer," Maurice explained; "and she'll stay. +There's nothing I can do; absolutely nothing! But she'll play fair. I'm +not afraid of Lily." + +If Mr. Houghton wished, uneasily, that his ward was afraid of Lily, he +did not say so. He only told Maurice again that he was "betting on him." + +"You won't lose," Maurice said, laconically. + +"Perhaps," Henry Houghton said, doubtfully, "I ought to say that Mrs. +Houghton--who is the wisest woman I know, as well as the best--has an +idea that in matters of this sort, frankness is the best course. But in +your case (of which, of course, she knows nothing) I don't agree with +her." + +"It would be impossible," Maurice said, briefly. And his guardian, whose +belief in secrecy had been shaken, momentarily, by his Mary's opinion, +felt that, so long as he had quoted her, his conscience was clear. So he +only told the boy again he was _sure_ he could bet on him! And because +shame, and those bleak words "my own fault," kept the spiritual part of +Maurice alive,--(and because Lily was a white blackbird!) the bet stood. + +But he made no promises about the future. However much of a liar +Maurice was going to be, to Eleanor, he would not, he told himself, lie +to this old friend by saying he would never see Lily again. The truth +was, some inarticulate moral instinct made him know that there would +come a time when he would _have_ to see her... During all that winter, +when he sat, night after night, at Miss Ladd's dinner table, and Eleanor +fended off Miss Moore and the widow, or when, in those long evenings in +their own room they played solitaire, he was thinking of Lily, thinking +of that inner summons to what he called "decency," which would, he knew, +drive him--in three months--in two months--in one month!--to Lily's +door. By and by it was three weeks--two weeks--one week! Then came days +when he said, in terror, "I'll go to-morrow." And again: "To-morrow, I +_must_ go. Damn it! I must!" So at last, he went, lashed and driven by +that mastering "decency"! + +He had bought a box of roses, and, looping two fingers through +its strings, he walked twice around the block past the ugly apartment +house before he could make up his mind to enter. He wondered whether +Lily had died? Women do die, sometimes. "Of course I don't want anything +to happen to her; but--" Then he wondered, with a sudden pang of hope, +if anything had happened to--_It_? "They're born dead, sometimes!" +Nothing wrong in wishing that, for the Thing would be better off dead +than alive. He wished he was dead himself! ... The third time he came +to the apartment house the string of the box was cutting into his +fingers, and that made him stop, and set his teeth, and push open the +door of the vestibule. He touched the button under the name "Dale," and +called up, huskily, "Is Miss--Mrs. Dale in?" A brisk voice asked his +name. "A friend of Mrs. Dale's," he said, very low. There seemed to be +a colloquy somewhere, and then he was told to "come right along!" He +turned to the stairway, and as he walked slowly up, it came into his +mind that this was the way a man might climb the scaffold steps: +Step... Step... Step--his very feet refusing! Step... Step--and Lily's +door. The nurse, who met him on the landing, said Mrs. Dale would be +glad to see him.... + +She was in bed, very white and radiant, and with a queer, blanketed +bundle on one arm; if she was, as the nurse said, "glad to see him," she +did not show it. She was too absorbed in some gladness of her own to +feel any other kind of gladness. As Maurice handed her the box of roses, +she smiled vaguely and said. "Why, you're real kind!" Then she said, +eagerly, "He was born the day the pink hyacinth came out! Want to see +him?" Her voice thrilled with joy. Without waiting for his answer--or +even giving a look at the roses the nurse was lifting out of their waxed +papers, she raised a fold of the blanket and her eyes seemed to feed on +the little red face with its tightly shut eyes and tiny wet lips. + +Maurice looked--and his heart seemed to drop, shuddering, in his breast. +"How nasty!" he thought; but aloud he said, stammering, "Why it's--quite +a baby." + +"You may hold him," she said; there was a passionate generosity in her +voice. + +Maurice tried to cover his recoil by saying, "Oh, I might drop it." + +Lily was not looking at him; it seemed as if she was glad not to give up +the roll of blankets, even for a minute. "He's perfectly lovely. He's a +reg'lar rascal! The doctor said he was a wonderful child. I'm going to +have him christened Ernest Augustus; I want a swell name. But I'll call +him Jacky." She strained her head sidewise to kiss the red, puckered +flesh, that looked like a face, and in which suddenly a little orifice +showed itself, from which came a small, squeaking sound. Maurice, under +the shock of that sound, stood rigid; but Lily's feeble arms cuddled the +bundle against her breast; she said, "Sweety--Sweety--Sweety!" + +The young man sat there speechless.... This terrible squirming piece of +flesh--was part of himself! "I wouldn't touch it for a million dollars!" +he was thinking. He got up and said: "Good-by. I hope you--" + +Lily was not listening; she said good-by without lifting her eyes from +the child's face. + +Maurice stumbled out to the staircase, with little cold thrills running +down his back. The experience of recognizing the significance of what he +had done--the setting in motion that stupendous and eternal +_Exfoliating_, called; Life; the seeing a Thing, himself, separated from +himself! himself, going on in spite of himself!--brought a surge of +engulfing horror. This elemental shock is not unknown to men who look +for the first time at their first-born; instantly the feeling may +disappear, swallowed up in love and pride. But where, as with Maurice, +there is neither pride nor love, the shock remains. His organic dismay +was so overwhelming that he said to himself he would never see Lily +again--because he would not see It!--which was, in fact, "_he_," instead +of the girl Lily had wanted. But though his spiritual disgust for what +he called, in his own mind, "the whole hideous business," did not +lessen, he did, later, through the pressure of those heavy words, "my +own fault," go to see Lily--she had taken a little house out in +Medfield--just to put down on the table, awkwardly, an envelope with +some bills in it. He didn't inquire about It, and he got out of the +house as quickly as possible. + +Lily had no resentment at his lack of feeling for the child; the baby +was so entirely hers that she did not think of it as his, too. This +sense of possession, never menaced on Maurice's part by even a flicker +of interest in the little thing, kept them to the furtive and very +formal acquaintance of giving and receiving what money he could +spare--or, oftener, _couldn't_ spare! As a result, he thought of Jacky +only in relation to his income. Every time some personal expenditure +tempted him, he summed up the child's existence in four disgusted and +angry words, "I can't afford it." But it was for Lily's sake, not +Jacky's, that he economized! He was wretchedly aware that if it had not +been for Jacky, Lily might still be a "saleslady" at Marston's, earning +good wages. Instead, she was taking lodgers--and it was not easy to get +them!--so that she could be at home and look after the baby. + +Maurice aged ten years in that first winter of rigid and unexplainable +penuriousness, and of a secrecy which meant perilous skirtings of +downright lying; for Eleanor occasionally asked why they had so little +money to spend? He had requested a raise--and not mentioned to Eleanor +the fact that he had got it. When she complained because his salary was +so low, he told her Weston was paying him all he was worth, and he +_wouldn't_ strike for more! "So it's impossible to go to housekeeping," +he said--for of course she continued to urge housekeeping, saying that +she couldn't understand why they had to be so economical! But he +refused, patiently. To be patient, Maurice did not need, now, to remind +himself of the mountain and her faithfulness to him; he had only to +remind himself of the yellow-brick apartment house, and his +faithlessness to her. "I've got to be kind, or I'd be a skunk," he used +to think. So he was very kind. He did not burst out at her with +irritated mortification when she telephoned to the office to know if +"Mr. Curtis's headache was better";--he had suffered so much that he had +gone beyond the self-consciousness of mortification;--and he walked with +her in the park on Sunday afternoons to exercise Bingo; and on their +anniversary he sat beside her in the grass, under the locust tree, and +watched the river--their river, which had brought Lily into his +life!--and listened to the lovely voice: + +"O thou with dewy locks who lookest down!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +The next fall, however, the boarding did come to an end, and they went +to housekeeping. It was Mrs. Houghton who brought this about. Edith was +to enter Fern Hill School in the fall, and her mother had an +inspiration: "Let her board with Eleanor and Maurice! The trolley goes +right out to Medfield, and it will be very convenient for her. Also, it +will help them with expenses," Mrs. Houghton said, comfortably. + +"But why can't she live at the school?" Edith's father objected, with a +troubled look; somehow, he did not like the idea of his girl in that +pathetic household, which was at once so conscious and so unconscious of +its own instability! "Why does she have to be with Eleanor and Maurice?" +Henry Houghton said. + +"Eleanor has the refinement that a hobbledehoy like Edith needs," Mrs. +Houghton explained; "and I think the child will have better food than at +Fern Hill. School food is always horrid." + +"But won't Eleanor's dullness afflict Buster?" he said, doubtfully; +then--because at that moment Edith banged into the room to show her +shuddering mother a garter snake she had captured--he added, with +complacent subtlety, "as for food, I, personally, prefer a dinner of +herbs with an _interesting_ woman, than a stalled ox and Eleanor." + +Which caused Edith to say, "Is Eleanor uninteresting, father?" + +"Good heavens, no!" said Mr. Houghton, with an alarmed look; "_of +course_ she isn't! What put such an idea into your head?" And as Buster +and her squirming prize departed, he told his Mary that her daughter was +destroying his nervous system. "She'll repeat that to Eleanor," he +groaned. + +His wife had no sympathy for him; "You deserve anything you may get!" +she said, severely; and proceeded to write to Eleanor to make her +proposition. If they cared to take Edith, she said, they could hire a +house and stop boarding--"which is dreadful for both of your digestions; +and I will be glad if this plan appeals to you, to feel that Edith is +with anyone who has such gentle manners as you." + +Eleanor, reading the friendly words at the boarding-house breakfast +table, said quickly to herself, "I don't want her... She would +monopolize Maurice!" Then she hesitated; "He would be more comfortable +in a house of his own... But Edith? Oh, I _don't_ want her!" + +She turned to show the letter to Maurice, but he was sitting sidewise, +one arm over the back of his chair, in vociferous discussion with a +fellow boarder. "No, sir!" he was declaring; "if they revise the rules +again, they'll revise the guts out of the whole blessed game; they'll +make it all muscle and no mind." + +"But football isn't any intellectual stunt," the other boarder insisted. + +"It _is_--to a degree. The old flying wedge--" + +"Maurice!" Eleanor said again; but Maurice, impassioned about "rules," +didn't even hear her. She gave his arm a little friendly shake. +"Maurice! You are the limit, with your old football!" + +He turned, laughing, and took the letter from her hand. As he read it, +his face changed sharply. "But Fern Hill is in Medfield!" he exclaimed. + +"I suppose she could take the trolley almost to the school grounds," +Eleanor conceded, reluctantly. + +"Why can't she live out there? It's a boarding school, isn't it?" (She +might meet Lily on the car!) + +For a moment she accepted his decision with relief; then the thought of +his comfort urged her: "I know of an awfully attractive house, with a +garden. Little Bingo could hide his bones in it." + +"No," he said, sharply; "it wouldn't do. I don't want her." + +Instantly Eleanor was buoyantly ready to have Edith ... he "_didn't want +her_!" When Maurice rose from the table she went to the front door with +him, detaining him--until the pretty school-teacher was well on her way +down the street;--with tender charges to take care of himself. Then, in +the darkness of the hall, with Maurice very uneasy lest some one might +see them, she kissed him good-by. "If we could afford to keep house +without taking Edith," she said, "I'd rather not have her. (Kiss me +again--no-body's looking!) But we can't. So let's have her." + +"In two years I'll have my own money," he reminded her; "this hard +sledding is only temporary." But she looked so disappointed that he +hesitated; after all, if she wanted a house so much he ought not to +stand in the way. Poor Eleanor hadn't much fun! And, as far as he was +concerned, he would like to have Edith around. "It's only the Medfield +part of it I don't like," he told himself. Yet Lily, on Maple Street, a +mile from Fern Hill, was a needle in a haystack! (And even if Edith +should ever see her, she wouldn't know her.) ... "If you really want to +have her," he told Eleanor, "go ahead." + +So that was how it happened that Edith burst in upon Eleanor's dear +domesticity of two. Maurice, having once agreed to his wife's wish, was +rather pleased at the prospect. "It will help on money," he thought; +"another hundred a year will come in handy to Lily. And it will be sort +of nice to have Buster in the house." + +Lily had not said she must have another hundred. She did not even think +so. "_I_ can swing it!" Lily had said, sturdily. And she did; but of +course, as Maurice, to his intense discomfort, knew only too well, it +was hard to swing it. Even with what help he could give her, she +couldn't possibly have got along if she had not been astonishingly +efficient and thrifty, always looking at both sides of a cent! "I ain't +smoking any more," Lily said once; "well, 'tain't _only_ to save money; +but I don't want Jacky to be getting any funny ideas!" (this when +"Ernest Augustus" was only a few months old!) She had a tiny house on +Maple Street, with a sun-baked front yard, in which a few shrubs caught +the dust on their meager foliage; and she had a border of pansies in the +shade under the bay window;--"I _must_ have flowers!" Lily said, +apologetically;--and she had three roomers, and she had scraped the +locality for mealers. She would have made more money if she had not fed +her boarders so well. "But there!" said Lily; "if I give 'em nice food, +they'll stay!" But, all the same, Maurice knew that two or three dollars +more a week would "come in handy." His sense of irritated responsibility +about her made him long for that twenty-fifth birthday which would bring +him his own money. For, in spite of Lily's thriftiness, her expenses, as +well as her toil, kept increasing, and Maurice, cursing himself whenever +he thought that but for him she would be "on easy street" at Marston's, +had begun the inevitable borrowing. The payment of the interest on his +note was a tax on his salary; yet not so taxing as the necessity of +being constantly on guard against some careless word which might make +Eleanor ask questions about that salary. + +But Eleanor asked very few questions about anything so practical as +income. Her interest in money matters, now, in regard to Edith, was +merely that Edith was a means to an end--Maurice could have his own +home! The finding a house, under Mrs. Newbolt's candid guidance--and +Maurice's worried reminders that he couldn't "afford" more than so much +rent!--gave Eleanor the pleasantest summer she had had since that first +summer when, in the meadow, she and Maurice had watched the clouds, and +the locust blossoms, and told each other that nothing in heaven or +earth, or the waters under the earth, could part them... + +The old house they finally secured was in an unfashionable locality; +there was a tailor shop next door and an undertaker across the street, +and a clanging trolley car screeched on the curve at the end of the +block; but the dignity of the pillared doorway, and the carved window +casings, had appealed to Maurice; and also the discovery in the parlor, +behind a monstrous air-tight stove, of a bricked-up fireplace (which he +promptly tore open), all combined to make undertakers and tailors, as +neighbors, unimportant! On the rear of the house was an iron +veranda--roped with wistaria; below, inclosed in a crumbling brick wall, +was the back yard--"_Garden_, if you please!" Maurice announced--for +Bingo's bones. Clumps of Madonna lilies had bloomed here, and died, and +bloomed again, for almost a century; the yard was shaded by a silver +poplar, which would gray and whiten in the wind in hot weather, or +delicately etch itself against a wintry sky. A little path, with moss +between the bricks and always damp in the shadow of the poplar, led from +the basement door to an iron gate; through its rusty bars one could see, +a block away, the slipping gleam of the river, hurrying down from "their +meadow," to disappear under the bridge. Maurice said he would build a +seat around the poplar, "... and we'll put a table under it, and paint +it green, and have tea there in the afternoon! Skeezics will like that." + +"Edith looks healthy," said Mrs. Newbolt; "my dear father used to say he +liked healthy females. Old-fashioned word--females. Well, I'm afraid +dear father liked 'em too much. But my dear mother--she was a +Dennison--pretended not to see it. She had sense. Great thing in married +life, to have sense, and know what not to see! Pity Edith's not musical. +Have you a cook? I believe she'd have caught you, Maurice, if Eleanor +hadn't got in ahead! I brought a chocolate drop for Bingo. Here, Bingo!" + +Bingo, silky and snarly, climbed on to her steeply sloping black-satin +lap, ate the chocolate drop--keeping all the while a liquid and adoring +eye upon his mistress--then slid down and ran to curl up on Eleanor's +skirt. + +By September the moving and seat building were accomplished--the last +not entirely on Edith's account; it was part of Maurice's painstaking +desire to do something--anything!--for "poor Eleanor," as he named her +in his remorseful thought. There was never a day--indeed, there was not +often an hour!--when his own meanness to his wife (combined with disgust +at being a liar) did not ache somewhere in the back of his mind. So he +tried, in all sorts of anxious ways, to please her. He almost never saw +Lily; but the thought of her often brought Eleanor a box of candy or a +bunch of violets. Such expenditures were slightly easier for him now, +because he had had another small raise,--which this time he had told +Eleanor about. On the strength of it he said to himself that he supposed +he ought to give Lily a little something extra? So on the day when Mrs. +Houghton and Edith were to arrive in Mercer, he went out to Medfield to +tell Jacky's mother that she might count on a few dollars more each +month. The last time he had seen her, Lily had told him that Jacky "was +fussing with his teeth something fierce. I had to hire a little girl +from across the street," she said, "to take him out in the perambulator, +or else I couldn't 'tend to my cooking. It costs money to live, Mr. +Curtis," Lily had said, "and eggs are going up, awful!" She had never +gone back to the familiarity of those days when she called him "Curt." +That he, dull and preoccupied, still called her Lily gave her, somehow, +such a respectful consciousness of his superiority that she had +hesitated to speak of anything so intimate as eggs... "Yes, I must give +her something extra," Maurice thought, remembering the "cost" of living. +"Talk about paying the piper! I bet _I'm_ paying him, all right!" + +He was to meet Mrs. Houghton at seven-thirty that night, and it occurred +to him that if he told Eleanor he had some extra work to do at his desk +he could wedge this call in between office hours and the time when he +must go to the station--("and they call me 'G. Washington'!") He felt no +special cautiousness in going out to Maple Street; the few people he +knew in Mercer did not frequent this locality, and if any of them +should chance to see him--a most remote possibility!--why, was he not in +the real-estate business, and constantly looking at houses? On this +particular afternoon, jolting along in the trolley car, he grimly amused +himself with the thought of what he would do if, say, Eleanor herself +should see him turning that infernally shrill bell on Lily's door. It +was a wild flight of imagination, for Eleanor never would see him--never +could see him! Eleanor, who only went to Medfield when their wedding +anniversary came round, and she dragged him out to sit by the river and +sentimentalize! He thought of the loveliness of that past June--and the +contrasting and ironic ugliness of the present September.... Now, the +little secret house in the purlieus of Mercer's smoke and grime; then, +the river, and the rippling tides of grass and clover, and the blue +sky--and that ass, lying at the feet of a woman old enough to be his +mother! + +He laughed as he swung off the car--then frowned; for he saw that to +reach Lily's door he would have to pass a baby carriage standing just +inside the gate. He didn't glance into the carriage at the roly-poly +youngster. He never, on the rare occasions when he went to see Lily, +looked at his child if he could avoid doing so--and she never asked him +to. Once, annoyed at Jacky's shrill noisiness, he had protested, +frowning: "Can't you keep it quiet? It needs a spanking!" After that +indifferent criticism ("For _I_ don't care how she brings it up!") Lily +had not wanted him to see her baby. She could not have said just +why--perhaps it was fear lest Maurice would notice his growing +perfection--but when Jacky's father came she kept Jacky in the +background! On this September afternoon she said, as she opened the +door: + +"Why, you're a great stranger! Come right in! Wait a second till I get +Jacky. I've just nursed him and I put him out there so I could watch him +while I scrubbed the porch." She ran out to the gate, then pushed the +carriage up the path. + +"Let me help you," Maurice said, politely; adding to himself, +"Damn--damn--!" Stepping backward, he lifted the front wheels, and with +Lily's help pulled the perambulator on to the little porch and over the +threshold into the house--which always shone with immaculate neatness +and ugly comfort. He kept his eyes away from the sleeping face on the +pillow. Together they got the carriage into the hall--Lily fumbling all +the while with one hand to fasten the front of her dress and skipping a +button or two as she did so; but he had a glimpse of the heavy abundance +of her bosom, and thought to himself that, esthetically, maternity was +rather unpleasant. + +"Go on into the parlor and sit down," she said; "I'll put him in the +kitchen," She pushed the elaborate wicker perambulator, adorned with +bows of blue-satin ribbon, down a dark entry smelling of very good soup +stock. When she came back she found Maurice, his hat and stick in his +hands, standing in her tiny front room, where the sunny window was full +of geraniums and scraggly rose bushes. "I got 'em in early. And I dug up +my dahlias--I was afraid of frost. (Mercy! I must clean that window on +the outside!) Well, you _are_ a stranger!" she said, again, +good-naturedly. Then she sighed: "Mr. Curtis, Jacky seems kind o' sick. +He's been coughing, and he's hot. Would you send for a doctor, if you +was me?" + +"Why, if you're worried, yes," Maurice said, impatiently; "I was just +passing, and--No, thank you; I won't sit down. I was passing, and I +thought I'd look in and give you a--a little present. If the youngster's +upset, it will come in well," he ended, as his hand sought his waistcoat +pocket. Lily's face was instantly anxious. + +"What! Did _you_ think he looked sick, too? I was kind of worried, but +if you noticed it--" + +"I didn't in the least," he said, frowning; "I didn't look at him." + +"He 'ain't never been what you'd call sick," Lily tried to reassure +herself; "he's a reg'lar rascal!" she ended, tenderly; her eyes--those +curious amber eyes, through which sometimes a tigress looks!--looked +now at Maurice in passionate motherhood. + +Maurice, putting the money down on the table, said, "I wish I could do +more for you, Lily; but I'm dreadfully strapped." + +"Say, now, you take it right back! I can get along; I got my two +upstairs rooms rented, and I've got a new mealer. And if Jacky only +keeps well, I can manage fine. But that girl that's been wheelin' him +has measles at her house--little slut!" Lily said (the yellow eyes +glared); "she didn't let on to me about it. Wanted her two dollars a +week! If Jacky's caught 'em, I--I'll see to her!" + +"Oh, he's all right," Maurice said; he didn't like "it"--although, if it +hadn't been for "it" he would probably, long before this, have slipped +down into the mere comfort of Lily; "it" held him prisoner in +self-contempt; "it," or perhaps the larger It? the It which he had seen +first in his glorious, passionately selfish ecstasy on his wedding day; +then glimpsed in the awful orderliness of the universe,--the It that +held the stars in their courses! Perhaps the tiny, personal thing, Joy, +and the stupendous, impersonal thing, Law, and the mysterious, unseen +thing, Life, were all one? "Call it God," Maurice had said of ecstasy, +and again of order; he did not call Jacky's milky lips "God." The little +personality which he had made was not in the least God to him! On the +contrary, it was a nuisance and a terror, and a financial anxiety. He +shrank from the thought of it, and kept "decent," merely through disgust +at the child as an entity--an entity which had driven him into loathsome +evasions and secrecies which once in a while sharpened into little lies. +But he was faintly sorry, now, to see Lily look unhappy about the Thing; +and he even had a friendly impulse to comfort her: "Jacky's all right! +But I'll send a doctor in, if you want me to. I saw a doctor's shingle +out as I came around the corner." + +She said she'd be awfully obliged; and he, looking at his watch, and +realizing that Mrs. Houghton's train was due in less than an hour, +hurried off. + +The doctor's bell was not answered promptly; then the doctor detained +him by writing down the address, getting it wrong, correcting it, and +saying: "Mrs. Dale? Oh yes; you are Mr. Dale?" + +"No--not at all! Just a friend. I happened to be calling, and Mrs. Dale +asked me to stop and ask you to come in." + +Then he rushed off. On the way to town, staring out of the window of the +car, he tingled all over at Doctor Nelson's question: "You are Mr. +Dale?"... "Why the devil did I offer to get a doctor? I wish Lily would +move to the ends of the earth; or that the brat would get well; or--or +something." + +There was a little delay in reaching the station, and when he got there, +it was to find that Mrs. Houghton's train was in and she and Edith, +shifting for themselves, had presumably taken a hack to find their way +to Maurice's house. He was mortified, but annoyed, too, because it +involved giving Eleanor some sort of lying explanation for his +discourtesy. "I'll have to cook up some kind of yarn!" he thought, +disgustedly... + +When Edith and her mother had arrived, unaccompanied by Maurice, Eleanor +was sharply worried; had anything happened to him? Oh, she was afraid +something had happened to him! "Where _do_ you suppose he is?" she said, +over and over. "I'm always so afraid he's been run over!" And when +Maurice, flushed and apologetic, appeared, she was so relieved that she +was cross. What on earth had detained him? "How _did_ you miss them?" + +So Maurice immediately told half of the truth,--this being easier for +him than an out-and-out lie. He had been detained because he had to go +and see a house in Medfield. "Awfully sorry, Mrs. Houghton!" + +Eleanor said she should have thought he needn't have stayed long enough +to be late at the station! Well, he hadn't stayed long; but the--"the +tenant was afraid her baby had measles and she had asked him to go and +get a doctor, and--" + +"Of course!" Mrs. Houghton said; "don't give it a thought, Maurice. +John Bennett met us--you knew he was at the Polytechnical?--and brought +us here. But, anyhow, Edith and I were quite capable of looking out for +ourselves; weren't we, Edith?" + +Edith, almost sixteen now, long-legged, silent, and friendly, said, +"Yes, mother" and helped herself so liberally to butter that her hostess +thought to herself, _"Gracious!"_ + +However, assured that Maurice had not been run over, Eleanor was really +indifferent to Edith's appetite, for the sum Mrs. Houghton had offered +for the girl's board was generous. So, proud of the new house, and +pleased with sitting at the head of her own table, and hoping that +Maurice would like the pudding, which, with infinite fussing, she had +made with her own hands, she felt both happy and hospitable. She told +Edith to take some more butter (which she did!); and tell Johnny to come +to dinner some night, "and we'll have some music," she added, kindly. + +"Johnny doesn't like music," said Edith; "well, I don't, either. But I +guess he'll come. He likes food." + +Edith effaced herself a good deal in the few days that, her mother +stayed on in Mercer to launch her at Fern Hill; effaced herself, indeed, +so much that Maurice, full of preoccupations of his own, was hardly +aware of her presence!... He had had a scared note from Lily: + +Doctor Nelson says he's _awful_ sick, and I've got to have a nurse. I +don't like to, because I can't bear to have anybody do for him but me, +and she charges so much. Makes me tired to see her all fussed up in +white dresses--I suppose it's her laundry I'm paying for! That little +girl he caught it from ought to be sent to a Reformatory. I'm afraid my +new mealer'll go, if she thinks there's anything catching in the house. +I hate to ask you-- + +The scented, lavender-colored envelope was on Maurice's desk at the +office the morning after Mrs. Houghton and Edith arrived. When he had +read it, and torn it into minute scraps, Maurice had something else to +think of than Edith! He knew Lily wouldn't want to leave "her" baby to +go out and cash a money order, and checks were dangerous; so he must +take that trip to Medfield again. "Well," said Maurice--pulled and +jerked out to Maple Street on the leash of an ineradicable sense of +decency--"the devil is getting his money's worth out of _me_!" + +He entered No. 16 without turning the clanging bell, for the door was +ajar. Lily was in the entry, talking to the doctor, who gave Mrs. Dale's +"friend" a rather keen look. "Oh, Mr. Curtis, he's _awful_ sick!" Lily +said; she was haggard with fright. + +Maurice, swearing to himself for having arrived at that particular +moment, said, coldly, "Too bad." + +"Oh, we'll pull him through," the doctor said, with a kind look at Lily. +She caught his hand and kissed it, and burst out crying. The two men +looked at each other--one amused, the other shrinking with disgust at +his own moral squalor. Then from the floor above came a whimpering cry, +and Lily, calling passionately, "Yes, Sweety! Maw's coming!" flew +upstairs. + +"I'll look in this evening," Doctor Nelson said, and took himself off, +rubbing the back of his hand on his trousers. "I wonder if there's any +funny business there?" he reflected. But he thought no more about it +until weeks afterward, when he happened, one day, in the bank, to stand +before Maurice, waiting his turn at the teller's window. He said, +"Hello!" and Maurice said, "Hello!" and added that it was a cold day. +The fact that Maurice said not a word about that recovering little +patient in Medfield made the doctor's mind revert to the possibilities +he had recognized in Lily's entry. + +"Yet he looks too decent for that sort of thing," the doctor thought; +"well, it's a rum world." Then Maurice took his turn at the window, and +Doctor Nelson put his notes in his pocket, and the two men nodded to +each other, and said, "By," and went their separate ways. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +Edith's first winter in Mercer went pretty well; she was not fussy about +what she had to eat; "I can always stoke on bread and butter," she said, +cheerfully; and she was patient with the aging Bingo's yapping +jealousies; "The smaller a dog is, the more jealous he is!" she said, +with good-humored contempt; and she didn't mind Eleanor's +speechlessness. "_I_ talk!" Edith said. But Maurice?... "I love him next +to father and mother," Edith thought; but, all the same, she didn't know +what to make of Maurice! He had very little to say to her--which made +her feel annoyingly young, and made him seem so old and stern that +sometimes she could hardly realize that he was the Maurice of the +henhouse, and the camp, and the squabbles. Instead, he was the Maurice +of that night on the river, the "Sir Walter Raleigh" Maurice! Once in a +while she was quite shy with him. "He's awfully handsome," she thought, +and her eyes dreamed. "What a clod Johnny is, compared to him!" ... As +for Eleanor, Edith, being as unobservant as most sixteen-year-old girls, +saw only the lovely dark eyes and the beautiful brow under the ripple of +soft black hair, Eleanor's sterile silences did not trouble her, and she +never knew that the traces of tears meant a helpless consciousness that +dinner had been a failure. The fact was, she never noticed Eleanor's +looks! She merely thought Maurice's wife was old, and didn't "get much +fun out of life--she just plays on the piano!" Edith thought. Pain of +mind or body was, to Edith--as probably it ought to be to +Youth--unintelligible; so she had no sympathy. In fact, being sixteen, +she had still the hard heart of a child. + +It may have been the remembrance of Sir Walter Raleigh that made her, +one night, burst into reminiscent questions: + +"Maurice! Do you remember the time that boat upset, and that girl--all +painted, you know--flopped around in the water?" + +Maurice said, briefly, why, yes; he believed he remembered. + +"I remember that girl, too," Eleanor said; "Maurice told me about her." + +"Well, what do you suppose?" Edith said; "I saw her to-day." + +Maurice, pushing back his chair, got up and went into the little room +opening into the dining room, which they called the library. At his +desk, his pen in his hand, his jaw set, he sat listening--listening! +What in hell would she say next? What she said was harmless enough: + +"Yes, I saw her. I was walking home, and on Maple Street who should I +see going into a house but this woman! She was lugging a flower pot, and +a baby. And,--now, isn't this funny?--she sort of stumbled at the gate, +_right by me_! And I grabbed her, and kept the child from falling; and I +said--" In the library Maurice's face was white--"I said, 'Why, _I_ saw +you once--you're Miss Dale. Your boat upset,' And she said, 'You have +the advantage of me.' Of course she isn't a lady, you know." + +Eleanor smiled, and called significantly to her husband, "Edith says +your rescued friend isn't a 'lady,' Maurice!" He didn't answer, and she +added to Edith, "No; she certainly isn't a lady! Darling," she called +again; "do you suppose she's got married?" + +To which he answered, "Where did I put those sheets of blotting paper, +Eleanor?" + +"Oh yes, she's married," Edith said, scraping her plate; "she told me +her name was _Mrs_. Henry Dale. She couldn't seem to remember Maurice +giving her his coat, which I thought was rather funny in her, 'cause +Maurice is so handsome you'd think she'd remember him. And I said he was +'Mr. Curtis,' and she said she'd never heard the name. I got to talking +to her," ("I bet you did," Maurice thought, despairingly); "and she told +me that 'Jacky' had had the measles, and been awfully sick, but he was +all well now, and she'd taken him into Mercer to get him a cap." +("What's Lily mean by bringing the Thing into town!" Jacky's father was +saying through set teeth.) "She was perfectly bursting with pride about +him," Edith went on; "said he was 'a reg'lar rascal'! Isn't it queer +that I should meet her, after all these years?" + +When Eleanor went into the library to hunt for the blotting paper, she, +too, commented on the queerness of Edith's stumbling on the lady who +wasn't a lady. "How small the world is!" said Eleanor. "Why, Maurice, +here's the paper! Right before you!" + +"Oh," said Maurice, "yes; thank you." He was saying to himself, "I might +have known this kind of thing would happen!" He was consumed with +anxiety to ask Edith some questions, but of course he had to be silent. +To show even the slightest interest was impossible--and Edith +volunteered no further information, for that night Eleanor took occasion +to intimate to her that "Mrs. Dale" must not be referred to. "You can't +speak of that kind of person, you know." + +"Why not?" Edith said. + +"Well, she isn't--nice. She wasn't married. And Edith, it really isn't +good taste to tell a man, right to his face, that he's handsome! I don't +think any man likes flattery." + +"You mean because I said Maurice was handsome? I didn't say it to his +face--he was in the library. And it isn't flattery to tell the truth. He +is! As for Mrs. Dale, she _is_ married; this little Jacky was her baby! +She said so. He had the bluest eyes! I never saw such blue eyes--except +Maurice's. 'Course she's not a lady; but I don't see what right you have +to say she isn't nice." + +Eleanor, laughing, threw up despairing hands; "Edith, don't you know +_anything_?" + +"I know _everything_," Edith said, affronted; "I'm sixteen. Of course I +know what you mean; but Mrs. Dale isn't--that. And," Edith ended, on +the spur of the moment, "and I'm going to see her sometime!" The under +dog always appealed to Edith Houghton, and when Eleanor left her, +appalled by her failure to instill proprieties into her, Edith was +distinctly hot. "I'm not going to see her!" she told herself. "I +wouldn't think of such a thing. But I won't listen to Eleanor abusing +her." + +As for Eleanor, she confided her alarm to Maurice. "She mustn't go to +see that woman!" + +His instant horrified agreement was a satisfaction to her: "Of _course_ +not!" + +"She won't listen to _me_," Eleanor complained; "you'll have to tell her +she mustn't." + +"I will," he said, grimly. + +And the very next day he did. He happened (as it seemed) to start for +his office just as Edith started for school, so they walked along +together. + +"Edith," he said, the moment they were clear of his own doorway and +Eleanor's ears; "that Mrs. Dale; I'd keep away from her, if I were you." + +"Goodness!" said Edith; "did you suppose I was going to fall into her +arms? Why should I have anything to do with her?" + +"Eleanor said you said--" + +"Oh, I just said that because Eleanor was down on her, and that made me +mad. I couldn't go and see her, if I was dying to--'cause I don't know +where she lives--unless it was that house she was going into? Do you +know, Maurice?" + +"Great Scott! How should I know where she lives?" + +"'Course not," said Edith. + +But it was many days before Maurice's alarm quieted down sufficiently to +let him drift back into the furtive security of knowing that neither +Edith nor Eleanor could, by any possibility, get on Lily's track. "And, +besides, Lily's too good a sport to give anything away. Pretty neat in +her to 'forget' that coat! But she ought to be careful not to forget her +husband's name!--it seems to be Henry, now." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +A moody Maurice, who puzzled her, and a faultfinding Eleanor, whom she +was too generous to understand, drove the sixteen-year-old Edith into a +real appreciation of Johnny Bennett. With him, she was still in the +stage of unsentimental frankness that pierced ruthlessly to what she +conceived to be the realities; and because she was as unselfconscious as +a tree, she was entirely indifferent to the fact that Johnny was a boy +and she was a girl, Johnny, however, nearsighted and in enormous +shell-rimmed spectacles, and still inarticulate, was quite aware of it; +more definitely so every week,--for he saw her on Saturdays and Sundays. +"And it's the greatest possible relief to talk to you!" Edith told him. + +Johnny accepted the tribute as his due. They had been coasting, and now, +on the hilltop, were sitting on their sleds, resting. "Gosh! it's hot!" +Johnny said: he had taken off his red sweater and tied its sleeves +around his neck; "zero? You try pulling both those sleds up here, and +you'll think it's the Fourth of July," Johnny said, adjusting his +spectacles with a mittened hand. He frequently reverted to the grumpy +stage--yet now, looking at Edith, grumpiness vanished. She was +breathless from the long climb, and her white teeth showed between her +parted, panting lips: her cheeks were burning with frosty pink. Johnny +looked, and looked away, and sighed. + +"Johnny," Edith said, "why do you suppose Eleanor gives me so many +call-downs? 'Course I hate music; and once I said she was always +pounding on the piano--and she didn't seem to like it!" Edith was +genuinely puzzled. "I can't understand Eleanor," she said; "she makes me +tired." + +"I should think she'd make Maurice tired!" Johnny said, and added: +"That's the worst of getting married. I shall never marry." + +"When I was a child," Edith said, "I always said that when I grew up I +was going to marry Maurice, because he was just like Sir Walter Raleigh. +Wasn't that a joke?" + +Johnny saw nothing amusing in such foolishness; he said that Maurice was +old enough to be her father! As for himself, he felt, he said, that +marriage was a mistake. "Women hamper a man dreadfully. Still--I may +marry," Johnny conceded; "but it will be somebody very young, so I can +train her mind. I want a woman (if I decide to marry) to be just the +kind I want. Otherwise, you get hung up with Eleanors." + +Edith lifted her chin. "Well, I like that! Why shouldn't she train your +mind?" + +"Because," Johnny said, firmly, "the man's mind is the stronger." + +Edith screamed with laughter, and threw a handful of snow in his neck. +"B-r-r-r!" she said; "it's getting cold! I'll knock the spots out of you +on belly bumps!" She got on her feet, shook the snow from the edge of +her skirt, flung herself face down on her sled, and shot like a blue +comet over the icy slope. Johnny sped after her, his big sled taking +flying leaps over the kiss-me-quicks. They reached the bottom of the +hill almost together, and Johnny, looking at her standing there, +breathless and rosy, with shining eyes which were as impersonal as +stars, said to himself, with emotion: + +"She's got sense--for a girl." His heart was pounding in his broad +chest, but he couldn't think of a thing to say. He was still dumb when +she said good-by to him at Maurice's door. + +"Why don't you come to dinner next Saturday?" she said, carelessly; +"Maurice will be away all week on business; but he'll be back Saturday." + +Johnny mumbled something to the effect that he could survive, even if +Maurice wasn't back. + +"I couldn't," Edith said. "I should simply die, in this house, if it +wasn't for Maurice!" + +As, whistling, she ran upstairs, Edith thought to herself that Johnny +was a _lamb_! "But, compared to Maurice, he's awfully uninteresting." +Edith, openly and audibly, compared every male creature to Maurice, and +none of them ever measured up to him! His very moodiness had its charm; +when he sat down at the piano after dinner and scowled over some new +music, or when he lounged in his big chair and smoked, his face absorbed +to the point of sternness, Edith, loving him "next to father and +mother," watched him, and wondered what he was thinking about? Sometimes +he came out of his abstraction and teased her, and then she sparkled +into gay impertinences; sometimes he asked her what she thought of this +or that phrasing, "...though you are a barbarian, Skeezics, about +music"; sometimes he would pull a book from the shelf over his +desk and read a poem to her; and he was really interested in her +opinion,--ardently appreciative if he liked the poem; if he didn't, it +was "the limit." + +Maurice was at home that Saturday night for which Edith had thrown the +careless invitation to Johnny; and Mrs. Newbolt also dropped in to +dinner. It was not a pleasant dinner. Eleanor sat in one of her empty +silences; saw Maurice frown at an overdone leg of lamb; heard her aunt's +stream of comments on her housekeeping; listened to Edith's teasing +chatter to Johnny;--"What _can_ Maurice see in her!" She thought. +Before dinner was over, she excused herself; she had a headache, she +said. "You won't mind, Auntie, will you?" + +Mrs. Newbolt said, heartily, "_Not_ a bit! My dear mother used to--" + +Eleanor, picking up little Bingo, went with lagging step out of the +room. + +"Children," said Mrs. Newbolt, "why don't you make taffy this evening?" + +"_That's_ sense," said Edith; "let's! It's Mary's night out. Sorry poor +old Eleanor isn't up to it." + +Maurice frowned; "Look here, Edith, that isn't--respectful." + +Edith looked so blankly astonished that Mrs. Newbolt defended her: "But +Eleanor _does_ look old! And she'll lose her figger if she isn't +careful! My dear grandmother--used to say, 'Girls, I'd rather have you +lose your vir--'" + +"Don't raise Cain in the kitchen, you two," Maurice said, hastily; +"Eleanor hates noise." + +Edith, subdued by his rebuke, said she wouldn't raise Cain; and, indeed, +she and Johnny were preternaturally quiet until things had been cleared +away and the taffy could be started. When it was on the stove, there was +at least ten minutes of whispering while they watched the black molasses +shimmer into the first yellow rings. Then Johnny, in a low voice, talked +for a good while of something he called "Philosophy"--which seemed to +consist in a profound disbelief in everything. "Take religion," said +Johnny. "I'd like to discuss it with you; I think you have a very good +mind--for a woman. Religion is an illustration of what I mean. It's a +delusion. A complete delusion. I have ceased to believe in anything." + +"Oh, Johnny, how awful!" said Edith, stirring the seething sweetness; +"Johnny, be a lamb, and get me a tumbler of cold water, will you, to try +this stuff?" + +Johnny brought the water ("Oh, how young she is!" he thought), and Edith +poured a trickle of taffy into it. + +"Is it done?" Edith said, and held out the brittle string of candy; he +bit at it, and said he guessed so. Then they poured the foamy stuff into +a pan, and put it in the refrigerator. "We'll wait till it gets stiff," +said Edith. + +"I think," said Johnny, in a low voice, "your hair is handsomer than +most women's. I'm particular about a woman's hair." + +Edith, sitting on the edge of the table, displaying very pretty ankles, +put an appraising hand over the brown braids that were wound around her +head in a sort of fillet. "Are you?" she said, and began to yawn--but +stopped short, her mouth still open, for Johnny Bennett was _looking at +her_! "Let's go into the library," she said, hurriedly. + +"I like it out here," Johnny objected. + +But as he spoke Maurice lounged into the kitchen. "Stiff?" he said. + +"No; won't be for ages," Edith said--and instantly the desire to fly to +the library ceased, especially as Mrs. Newbolt came trundling in. With +Maurice astride one of the wooden chairs, his blue eyes droll and +teasing, and Mrs. Newbolt enthroned in adipose good nature close to the +stove, Edith was perfectly willing to stay in the kitchen! + +"I say!" Maurice said. "Let's pull the stuff!" + +Johnny looked cross. "What," he asked himself, "are Maurice and Mrs. +Newbolt butting in for?" Then he softened, for Maurice was teasing +Edith, and Mrs. Newbolt was tasting the candy, and the next minute all +was in delightful uproar of stickiness and excitement, and Johnny, +exploding into wild cackles of laughter, felt quite young for the next +hour. + +Eleanor, upstairs, with Bingo's little silken head on her breast, did +not feel young; she heard the noise, and smelled the boiling molasses, +and knew that Mary would be cross when she came home and found the +kitchen in a mess. "How can Maurice stand such childishness!" She lay +there with a cologne-soaked handkerchief on her forehead, and sighed +with pain. "Why _doesn't_ he stop them?" she thought. She heard his +shout of laughter, and Edith's screaming giggle, and moved her head to +find a cool place on the pillow. "She's too old to romp with him." +Suddenly she sat up, tense and listening; he was enjoying himself--and +she was suffering! "If he had a headache, I would sit with him; I +wouldn't leave him alone!" But she was sick in bed,--and he was having a +good time--_with Edith_. Her resentment was not exactly jealousy; it was +fear; the same fear she had felt when Maurice had told her how Edith +had rushed into his room the night of the great storm, _the fear of +Youth_! She moved Bingo gently, stroking him until he seemed to be +asleep; then sat up, and put her feet on the floor. The folded +handkerchief slipped from her forehead, and she pressed her hands +against her temples. "I'm going downstairs," she said to herself; "I +won't be left out!" She felt a sick qualm as she got on to her feet, and +went over to look at herself in the mirror ... her face was pale, and +her hair, wet with cologne, was pasted down in straggling locks on her +forehead; she tried to smooth it. "Oh, I look old enough to be--his +aunt," she said, hopelessly. When she opened her door she heard a little +thud behind her; it was Bingo, scrambling off the bed to follow her; as +she went downstairs, unsteadily, and clinging to the banisters, he +stepped on her skirt, so she had to stoop and pick him up. At the closed +kitchen door she paused for a moment, leaning against the wall; her head +swam. Bingo, held in one trembling arm, put out his little pink tongue +and licked her cheek. "I _won't_ be left out," she said again. Just as +her hand touched the knob there was an outburst of joyous yells, and a +_whack_! as a lump of taffy, flung by one of the roisterers, hit the +resounding panel of the door--then Mrs. Newbolt's fat chuckle, and +Johnny's voice vociferating that Edith was the limit, and +Maurice--"Edith, if you put that stuff in my hair, I'll skin you alive!" + +"Boil her in oil!" yelled Johnny. + +Eleanor turned around and crept back to the stairs; she caught at the +newel post, and stood, gasping; then, somehow, she climbed up to her +room. There, lifting Bingo into his basket, she sank on her bed, groping +blindly for the damp handkerchief to put across her forehead. "Mary will +give notice," she said. After a while, as the throbbing grew less acute, +she said, "He's their age." Bingo, crawling out of his basket, scrabbled +up on to the bed; she felt his little loving cold nose against her face. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +"What a kid Johnny Bennett is!" Maurice told Eleanor. He was detailing to +her, while he was scrubbing the stickiness of the kitchen festivities +off his hands, what had happened downstairs. "But do you know, I believe +he's soft on Edith! How old is he?" + +"He's nearly nineteen. Children, both of them." + +"Nineteen?" Maurice said, astounded. Nineteen! Johnny? "Why, _I_ was +nineteen, when--" He paused. She was silent. Suddenly Maurice felt +_pity_. He had run the gamut of many emotions in the last four +years--love, and fright, and repentance, and agonies of shame, and +sometimes anger; but he had never touched pity. It stabbed him now, and +its dagger blade was sawtoothed with remorse. He looked at his wife, +lying there with closed eyes, her pillow damp where the wet handkerchief +had slipped from her temples, and her beautiful mouth sagging with pain. +"Oh, I must be nice to her, poor thing!" he thought. Aloud he said, +"Poor Eleanor!" + +Instantly her dark eyes opened in startled joy; his tenderness lifted +her into indifference to that throbbing in her temples. "I don't mind +anything," she said, "if you love me." + +"Can't I do something for your head?" + +"Just kiss me, darling," she said. + +He kissed her, for he was sorry for her. But he was thinking of himself. +"I was Johnny Bennett's age, when ... And I _wanted_ to kiss her! My +God! I may have to keep up this kissing business for--for forty years!" +And whenever he was kissing her, he would have to think how he was +deceiving her; he would have to think of Lily. Yes; he had been a "kid," +like Johnny! How _could_ she have done it! Pity sharpened into anger: +How could she have taken advantage of a boy? Well; he had had his +fling. To be sure, he was paying for it now, not only in anxiety about +money, but in shame, and furtiveness, and the corroding consciousness of +being a liar, and in the complete shipwreck of every purpose and +ambition that a young man ought to have. "And that day, in the field, I +called it _love_!" He would have been amused at the cynical memory, if +he had not been so bitter. "Love? Rot! Still, I ought to be kinder to +her;--but I can't bear to look at her. She's an old woman." + +Eleanor put out her hot, trembling hand and groped for his. "Good night, +darling," she said; "my head's better." + +"So glad," he said. + +The next morning, as Eleanor, rather white and shaky, was dressing, she +said, "Edith doesn't seem to realize that she is too old to be so free +and easy with Johnny Bennett--and you." + +"She's getting mighty good looking," Maurice said. + +"She has too much color," Eleanor said, quickly. + +Maurice was right. During Edith's second winter in Mercer she grew +prettier all the time; poor, speechless Johnny, looking at her through +his spectacles, was quite miserable. He told some of his intimate +friends that life was a bad joke. + +"I shall never marry; just do some big work, and then get out. There is +nothing really worth while. Mere looks in a woman don't attract me," +Johnny said. + +But that Maurice found "looks" attractive, began to be obvious to +Eleanor, who, night after night, at the dinner table, watched the +smiling, shining, careless thing--Youth!--sitting there on Maurice's +right, and felt herself withering in the dividing years. As a result, +the annoyance which, when Edith was a child, she had felt at her +childishness, began to harden into irritation at her womanliness. "I +_wish I_ could get her out of the house!" she used to think, helplessly. + +She felt this irritation especially when they all went, one night, to +dine with Tom Morton, who had just married and gone to housekeeping. It +was a somewhat looked-forward-to event, although Eleanor thought Edith +too young to dine out, and also the shabbiness of Maurice's evening +clothes was on her mind. "Do get a new dress suit!" she urged; and he +gave the stereotyped answer: "Can't afford it." + +They started for the Mortons' gayly enough; but Maurice's gayety went +out like a candle in the wind when, as he followed Eleanor and Edith +into the parlor, he saw, and after a puzzled moment recognized, the +third man in the Morton dinner of six--the man who had stood in Lily's +little hall and said that the child would "pull through." ... The +spiritual squalor of that scene flashed back in sharp visualization: the +doctor; Lily, her amber eyes overflowing with tears, kissing his hand; +Jacky's fretful cry from upstairs.... Here he was! that same kindly +medical man, "getting off some guff to Mrs. Morton," Maurice told +himself, in agonized uncertainty as to what he had better do. Should he +recognize him? Or pretend not to know him? It galloped through his mind +that if he did "know" him, Eleanor would ask questions. Oh, he knew +Eleanor's questions! But if he didn't "know" him, Doctor Nelson would +know that questions might be asked. The instant's hesitation between the +two risks was decided by Doctor Nelson. He put out his hand and said, +"Oh, how are you?" So Maurice said, "Oh, how are you?" as carelessly as +anybody else. + +Eleanor, when the doctor was introduced, said, a little surprised, "You +know my husband?" + +"I think I've met Mr. Curtis somewhere," Doctor Nelson said, vaguely. + +"He knows so many people I don't," she thought, but she said nothing. No +one noticed her silence--or Maurice's, either! The doctor, and Morton, +and the handsome bride, were listening to Edith, amused, apparently, at +her crudity and ignorance. + +"Oh yes," Eleanor heard her say; "Eleanor's voice is perfectly _fine_, +father says. I'm not musical. Father says I don't know the difference +between 'Yankee Doodle' and 'Old Hundred.' Father say--" and so on. + +"She's tiresome!" Eleanor told herself. Later, as she sat at the little +dinner table, all gay with flowers and the bride's new candlesticks and +glittering bonbon dishes ("Hetty's showing off our loot," the bridegroom +said, proudly), Eleanor, looking on, and straining sometimes to be silly +like the rest of them, said to herself, bleakly, that the doctor, who +looked fifty, had been asked on her account. When he began to talk to +her it was all she could do to say, "Really?" or, "Of course!" at the +proper places; she was absorbed in watching Edith--the vivid face, the +broad smile, the voice so full of preposterous certainties! "I _look_ +old," she thought; and indeed she did--most unnecessarily! for she was +only forty-four. Her throat suddenly ached with unshed tears of longing +to be young. Yet if she had not been so bitter she would have seen that +Maurice looked almost as old as she did! And no wonder. His +consternation at the sight of Doctor Nelson had been panic! He could +hardly eat. Naturally, the preoccupation of the two Curtises threw the +burden of talk upon the others. Doctor Nelson gave himself up to his +hostess, and Morton found Edith's ardors, upon every subject under +heaven, most diverting; he teased her and baited her, and her eyes grew +more shining, and her cheeks pinker, and her gayety more contagious with +every repartee she flung back at him. Mrs. Morton struggled heroically +with Maurice's heaviness, but she told her husband afterward, that Mr. +Curtis was nearly as dull as his wife! "I _couldn't_ make him talk!" she +said. After a while she gave up trying to make him talk, and listened to +Edith's story of what happened when she was a little girl and came to +Mercer with her father: + +"A terrible shipwreck!" Edith said; "I remember it because of Maurice's +gallantry in giving the flopping girl his coat--he was a perfect Sir +Walter Raleigh! Remember, Maurice?" + +Maurice said, briefly, that he "remembered"; "if she says Dale, I'm +dished," he thought; aloud, he said that the river was growing +impossible for boating; which caused them to drop the subject of the +flopping girl, and talk about Mercer's increasing dinginess, at which +Edith said, eagerly: + +"You ought to see our mountains--no smoke there!" + +Then, of course, came tales of camping, and, most animatedly, the story +of Eleanor's wonderful rescue of Maurice. + +"She pulled that great big Maurice all the way down to Doctor Bennett's! +And we were all so proud of her!" + +Eleanor protested: "It was nothing at all." Maurice, in his own mind, +was saying, "I wish she'd left me there!" + +When the ladies left the gentlemen to their cigars, Edith was bubbling +over with anxiety to confide to Mrs. Morton the joke about the "lady's +cheeks coming off," and that gave the married women the chance to +express melancholy convictions as to the wickedness of the world, to +which Edith listened with much interest. + +"I think my painted lady lives in Medfield," she said. + +"Why, how do you know?" Eleanor exclaimed, surprised. + +"Why, don't you remember the time I saw her, with that blue-eyed baby? +She was just going into a house on Maple Street." + +It was at this moment that the gentlemen entered, so there was no +further talk of painted ladies; and, besides, Maurice was alert to catch +Eleanor's eye, and go home! "Edith is capable of saying anything!" he +was thinking, desperately. + +However, Edith said nothing alarming, and Maurice was able to get her +safely away from the powder magazine in the shape of the amiable doctor, +who, following them a few minutes later, was saying to himself: "How +scared he was! Yet he looks like a good fellow at bottom. A rum world--a +rum world!" + +The "good fellow" hurried his womenkind down the street in angry +preoccupation. As soon as he and Eleanor were alone, he said, "When does +Edith graduate?" + +"She has two years more." + +"Oh, _Lord_!" Maurice said, despairingly; "has she got to be around for +two years?" Eleanor's face lightened, but Maurice was instantly +repentant. "I ought to be ashamed of myself for saying that! Edith's +fine; and she has brains; but--" + +"She monopolized the conversation to-night," Eleanor said; "Maurice, it +is very improper for her to keep talking all the time about that horrid +woman!" + +The sharpness of his agreement made her look at him in surprise. "She +_mustn't_ talk about Mrs. Dale!" he said, angrily. + +"Dale? Is that her name?" said Eleanor. + +"I don't know. I think so; didn't Edith call her that? Well, anyway, she +mustn't keep talking about her!" + +His irritation was so marked, that Eleanor's heart warmed; but she said, +wearily, "I'll be glad myself when she graduates." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +Edith, reflecting upon her first dinner party, wished Johnny had seen +her, all dressed up. Then she pondered the possibilities of her +allowance: If she was "going out," oughtn't she to have a real evening +dress? But this daring thought faded very soon, for there didn't seem to +be any dinner parties ahead. Mrs. Newbolt's supper table was, as Maurice +said, sarcastically, the extent of the "Curtises' social whirl"--a fact +which did not trouble him in the least! He had his own social whirl. He +had made a man-circle for himself; some of the fellows in the office +were his sort, he told Edith, and it was evident that their bachelor +habits appealed to him, for he dined out frequently; and when he did, he +was careful not to tell Eleanor where he was going, because once or +twice, when he had told her, she had called up the club or house on +the telephone about midnight to inquire if "Mr. Curtis had started +home?" ... "I was worried about you, it was so late," she defended +herself against his irritated mortification. He used to report these stag +parties to Edith, telling her some of the stories he had heard; it +didn't occur to him to tell any stories to Eleanor, because, as Henry +Houghton had once said, Maurice and his wife didn't "have the same taste +in jokes." When Edith chuckled over this or that witticism (or frowned +at any opinion contrary to Maurice's opinion!) Eleanor sat in unsmiling +silence. It was about this time Maurice fell into the way of saying "we" +to Edith: "We" will have tea in the garden; "we" will put in a lot of +bulbs on each side of the brick path; "we" will go down to the square +and hear the election returns. Occasionally he remembered to say, "Why +don't you come along, Eleanor?" + +"No, thank you," she said; and sometimes, to herself, she added, "He +keeps me out." The jealous woman always says this, never realizing the +deeper truth, which is that she keeps herself out! Maurice did not +notice how, all that winter, Eleanor was keeping herself out. She was +steadily retreating into some inner solitude of her own. No one noticed +it, except Mrs. O'Brien--and perhaps fat, elderly, snarling Bingo, who +must sometimes, when his small pink tongue lapped her cheek, have tasted +tears. By another year, Eleanor's mind had so utterly diverged from +Maurice's that not even his remorse (which he had grown used to, as one +grows used to some encysted thing) could achieve for them any unity of +living. She bored him, and he hurt her; she loved him and tried to +please him; he didn't love her, but tried to be polite; he was not often +angry with her, he wasn't fond enough of her to be angry! So, forgetful +of that security of the Stars--Truth!--to which he had once aspired, he +grew dully used to the arid safety of untruth,--though sometimes he +swore softly to himself at the tiresome irony of the office nickname +which, with an occasional gilt hatchet, still persisted. He would +remember that evening of panic at the Mortons', and think, lazily, "She +can't possibly get on Lily's track!" So Lily lived in anxious +thriftiness at 16 Maple Street; and Maurice, no longer acutely afraid of +her, and only seeing her two or three times a year, was more or less +able to forget her, in his growing pleasure in Edith's presence in his +house--a pleasure quite obvious to Eleanor. + +As for Edith, she used to wonder, sometimes, why Eleanor was so "up +stage"? (that was her latest slang); but it did not trouble her much, +for she was too generous to put two and two together. "Eleanor has +nervous prostration," she used to tell herself, with good-natured excuse +for some especial coldness; and she even tried, once in a while, "to +make things pleasant for poor old Eleanor!" "I lug her in," she told +Johnny. + +"She's a dose," said Johnny. + +"Yes," Edith agreed; "she's stupid. But I'm going to pull off a picnic, +some Sunday, to cheer her up. 'Course you needn't come, if you don't +want to." + +Johnny, looking properly bored, said, briefly, "I don't mind." + +This was in mid-September. "Are you game for it, Eleanor?" Edith said +one night at dinner; "we can find some pleasant place by the river--" + +"I know a bully place," Maurice said, "in the Medfield meadows; +remember, Eleanor? We went there on our trolley wedding trip," he +informed Edith. + +Eleanor, struggling between the pleasure of Maurice's "remember," and +antagonism at sharing that sacred remembering with Edith, objected; "It +may rain." + +"Oh, come on," Edith rallied her: "be a sport! It won't kill you if it +does rain!" + +But Maurice, after his impulsive recollection of the "bully place," +remembered that the trolley car which would take them out to the river, +must pass Lily's door; "I hope it will rain," he thought, uneasily. + +However, on that serene September Sunday a week later, it didn't rain; +and Maurice fell into the spirit of Edith's plans; for, after all, even +if the car did pass Lily's ugly little house, it wouldn't mean anything +to anybody! "I'll sit with my back to that side of the street," he told +himself. "It's safe enough! And it will give Buster a good time." He +didn't realize that he rather hankered for a good time himself; to be +sure, he felt a hundred years old! But money was no longer a very keen +anxiety (he had passed his twenty-fifth birthday); and the day was +glittering with sunshine, and Edith would make coffee, and Eleanor would +sing. Yes! Edith should have a good time! + +They went clanging gayly along over the bridge, down Maple Street, and +through the suburbs of Medfield until they came to the end of the car +line, where they piled out, with all their impediments, and started for +the river and the big locust. + +"You'll sing, Nelly," Maurice said--Eleanor's face lighted with +pleasure;--"and I'll tell Edith how a girl ought to behave on her +wedding trip, and you can instruct Johnny how to elope." + +Then, with little Bingo springing joyously, but rather stiffly, ahead of +them, they tramped across the yellowing stubble of the mowed field, +talking of their coffee, and whether there would be too much wind for +their fire--and all the while Maurice was aware of Lily at No. 16; and +Eleanor was remembering her hope of a time when she and Maurice would be +coming here, and it would not be "just us"! and Johnny was thinking that +Edith was intelligent--for a woman; and Edith was telling herself that +_this_ kind of thing was some sense! + +Eleanor, sitting down under the old locust, watched the three young +people. She wondered when Maurice would tell her to sing. "The river is +a lovely accompaniment, isn't it?" she hinted. No one replied. + +"I'm going in wading after dinner," Edith announced; "what do you say, +boys? Let's take off our shoes and stockings, and walk down to the +second bridge. Eleanor can sit here and guard our things." + +"I'm with you!" Maurice said; and Johnny said he didn't mind; but +Eleanor protested. + +"You'll get your skirts wringing wet, Edith. And--I thought we were to +sit here and sing?" + +"Oh, you can sing any old time," Edith said, lifting the lid of the +coffee pot and stirring the brown froth with a convenient stick. + +"And I'm just to look on?" Eleanor said. + +"Why, wade, if you want to," her husband said; "It's safe enough to +leave Edith's things here." + +After that he was too much absorbed in shooing ants off the marmalade to +give any thought to his wife. The luncheon (except to her) was the usual +delightful discomfort of balancing coffee cups on uncertain knees, and +waving off wasps, and upsetting glasses of water. Maurice talked about +the ball game, and Edith gossiped darkly of her teachers, and Johnny +Bennett ate enormously and looked at Edith. + +Eleanor neither ate nor gossiped; but she, too, watched Edith--and +listened. Bingo, in his mistress's lap, had snarled at Johnny when he +took Eleanor's empty cup away, which led Edith to say that he was +jealous. + +"I don't call it 'jealous,'" Eleanor said, "to be fond of a person." + +"You can't _really_ be fond of anybody, and be jealous," Edith +announced; "or if you are, it is just Bingoism." + +This brought a quick protest from Eleanor, which was followed by the +inevitable discussion; Edith began it by quoting, "'Love forgets self, +and jealousy remembers self.'" + +Maurice grinned and said nothing--it was enough for him to see Eleanor +hit, _hard_! But Johnny protested: + +"If your girl monkeys round with another fellow," he said, "you have a +right to be jealous." + +"Of course," said Eleanor. + +"No, sir!" said Edith. "You have a right to be _unhappy._ If the other +fellow's nicer than you--I mean if he has something that attracts her +that you haven't, of course you'd be unhappy! (though you could get busy +and _be_ nice yourself.) Or, if he's not as nice as you, you'd be +unhappy, because you'd be so awfully disappointed in her. But there's no +jealousy about _that_ kind of thing! Jealousy is hogging all the love +for yourself. Like Bingo! And _I_ call it plain garden selfishness--and +no sense, either, because you don't gain anything by it. Do you think +you do, Maurice? ... For Heaven's sake, hand me the sandwiches!" + +Maurice didn't express his thoughts; he just roared with laughter. +Eleanor reddened; Johnny, handing the sandwiches, said that, though +Edith generally could reason pretty well--for a woman--in this +particular matter she was 'way off. + +"You are long on logic, Edith," Maurice agreed; "but short on human +nature; (she hasn't an idea how the shoe fits!)." + +"The reason I'm so up on jealousy," Edith explained, complacently, "is +because yesterday, in English Lit., our professor worked off a lot of +quotations on us. Listen to this (only I can't say just exactly the +words!): '_Though jealousy be produced by love, as ashes by fire, yet +jealousy_'--oh, what does come next? Oh yes; I know--'_yet jealousy +extinguishes love, as ashes smother flames_.'" + +"Who said that?" Maurice said. + +Edith said she'd forgotten: "But I bet it's true. I'd simply hate a +jealous person, no matter how much they loved me! Wouldn't you, Eleanor? +Wouldn't you hate Maurice if he was jealous of you? I declare I don't +see how you can be so fond of Bingo!" + +Maurice, suddenly ashamed of himself for his pleasure in seeing Eleanor +hit, was saying, inaudibly, "Good Lord! what will she say next?" To keep +her quiet, he said, good-naturedly, "Don't you want to sing, Nelly?" + +She said, very low, "No." Her throat ached with the pain of knowing that +the one little contribution she could make to the occasion was not +really wanted! + +Maurice did not urge her. He and the other two took off their shoes and +stockings; and went with squeals across the stubble, down a steep bank, +to a pebbly point of sand, round which a sunny swirl of water chattered +loudly, then went romping off into sparkling shallows. Edith's lifted +skirt, as she stepped into the current, assured her against the wetting +Eleanor had foreseen, and also showed her pretty legs--and Eleanor, on +the bank, her tensely trembling hand cuddling Bingo against her knee, +"guarded" her things! It was at this moment that her old, unrecognized +envy of Youth turned into a perfectly recognizable fear of Age. Edith +was a woman now, not a child! "And I--dislike her!" Eleanor said to +herself. She sat there alone, thinking of Edith's defects--her big +mouth, her bad manners, her loud voice; and as she thought,--watching +the waders all the while with tear-blurred eyes until a turn in the +current hid them--she felt this new dislike flowing in upon her: "He +talks to her; and forgets all about me!" ... She was deeply hurt. "He +says she has 'brains.' ... He doesn't mind it when she says she 'doesn't +care for music,' which is rude to me! And she talks about jealousy! She +knows I'm jealous. Any woman who loves her husband is jealous." + +Of course this pathetically false opinion made it impossible for her to +realize that jealousy is just a form of self-love, nor could she enlarge +upon Edith's naļve generalization and say that, if a woman suffers +because she is not the equal of the rival who gains her lover's +love--_that_ is not jealousy! It is the anguish of recognizing her own +defects, and it may be very noble. If she suffers because the rival is +her inferior, _that_ is not jealousy; it is the anguish of recognizing +defects in her lover, and it, too, is noble, for she is unhappy, not +because he has slighted her, but because he has slighted himself! +Jealousy has no such noble elements; it is the unhappiness that Bingo +knows--an ignoble agony! ... But Eleanor, like many pitiful wives, did +not know this. Sitting there on the bank of the river, without +aspiration for herself or regret for Maurice, she knew only the anguish +of being neglected. "He wouldn't have left me six years ago," she said; +"He doesn't even ask me if I want to wade! I don't; but he didn't _ask_ +me. He just went off with her!" + +Suddenly, her fingers trembling, she began to take off her shoes and +stockings. She _would_ do what Edith did! ... It was a tremor of +aspiration!--an effort to develop in herself a quality he liked in +Edith. She went, barefooted, with wincing cautiousness, and with Bingo +stepping gingerly along beside her, across the mowed grass; then, +haltingly, down the bank to the sandy edge of the river; there, while +the little dog looked up at her anxiously, she dipped a white, uncertain +foot into the water--and as she hesitated to essay the yielding mud, and +the slimy things under the stones, she heard the returning splash of +wading feet. A minute later the three youngsters appeared, Edith's +skirts now very well above the danger line of wetness, and the two men +offering eager guiding hands, which were entirely disdained! Then as, +from under the leaning trees, they rounded the bend, there came an +astonished chorus: + +_"Why, look at Eleanor!"_ + +"Your skirt's in the water," Edith warned her; "hitch it up, and 'come +on in--the water's fine!'" + +She shook her head, and turned to climb up the bank. + +"'The King of France,'" Edith quoted, satirically, "'marched _down_ a +hill, and then marched up again!'" + +Eleanor was silent. When the three began to put on their shoes and +stockings, Eleanor, putting on her own, her skirt wet and drabbled about +her ankles, heard Maurice and Johnny offering to tie Edith's +shoestrings--a task which Edith, with condescending giggles, permitted. +Both of the boys--for Maurice seemed suddenly as much of a boy as +Johnny!--went on their knees to tie, and re-tie, the brown ribbons, +Maurice with gleeful and ridiculous deference. + +"Want me to tie your shoestrings for you, Nelly?" he said over his +shoulder. + +"I am capable of tying my own, thank you," she said, so icily that the +three playfellows looked at one another and Maurice, reddening sharply, +said: + +"Give us a song, Nelly!" But she sitting with clenched hands and tensely +silent, shook her head. She was too wounded to speak. For the rest of +the poor little picnic, with its gathering up of fragments and burning +paper napkins--the conversation was labored and conscious. + +On the trolley going home, Edith was the only one who tried to talk; +Eleanor, holding Bingo in her lap, was dumb; and Johnny--hunting about +for an excuse to "get away from the whole blamed outfit!" only said +"M-m" now and then. But Maurice said nothing at all. After all, what can +a man say when his wife has made a fool of herself? + +"Even Lily would have had more sense!" he thought. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +That dismal festivity of the meadow marked the time when Maurice began +to live in his own house only from a sense of duty ... and because Edith +was there! A fact which Eleanor's aunt recognized almost as soon as +Eleanor did; so, with her usual candor, Mrs. Newbolt took occasion to +point things out to her niece. She had bidden Eleanor come to dinner, +and Eleanor had said she would--"if Maurice happened to be going out." + +"Better come when he's _not_ going out, so he can be at home and amuse +Edith!" said Mrs. Newbolt. "Eleanor, my dear father used to say that +women were puffect fools, because they never could realize that if they +left the door _open_, a cat would put on his slippers and sit by the +fire and knit; if they locked it, he'd climb up the chimney, but what +he'd feel free to prowl on the roof!" + +Eleanor preferred to "lock the door"; and certainly during that next +winter Edith's gay interest in every topic under heaven was a roof on +which Maurice prowled whenever he could! Sometimes he stayed at home in +the evening, just to talk to her! When he did, those "brains" which +Eleanor resented, made him indifferent to many badly cooked +dinners--during which Eleanor sat at the table and saw his enjoyment, +and felt that dislike of their "boarder," which had become acute the day +of the picnic, hardening into something like hatred. She wondered how he +endured the girl's chatter? Sometimes she hinted as much, but Edith +never knew she was being criticized! She was too generous to recognize +the significance of what she called (to herself) Eleanor's grouch, and +Maurice's delight in such unselfconsciousness helped to keep her +ignorant, for he held his tongue--with prodigious effort!--even when +Eleanor hit Edith over his shoulder. If he defended her, he told +himself, the fat _would_ be in the fire! So, as no one pointed out to +Edith what the grouch meant, she had not the faintest idea that Eleanor +was saying to herself, "Oh, if I could _only_ get rid of her!" And as no +one pointed out to Eleanor that the way to hold Maurice was not to get +rid of Edith, but to "open the door," that corrosive thing the girl had +called "Bingoism" kept the anger of the day in the field smoldering in +her mind. It was like a banked fire eating into her deepest +consciousness; it burned all that winter; it was still burning even when +the summer vacation came and Edith went home. Her departure was an +immense relief to Eleanor; she told Maurice she didn't want her to come +back, ever! + +"Why not?" he said, sharply; "_I_ like having her here. Besides, think +of telling Uncle Henry we didn't want Edith next winter! If you have the +nerve for that, _I_ haven't." Eleanor had not the nerve; so when, at the +end of June, Edith rushed home, it was understood that she would be with +Maurice and Eleanor during the next term.... That was the summer that +marked the seventh year of their marriage--and the fourth year of Jacky, +over in the little frame house on Maple Street. But it was the first +year of a knowledge, surprisingly delayed!--which came to Edith; namely, +that Johnny Bennett was "queer." + +It may have been this "queerness" which made her attach herself to +Eleanor, who, in August, went to Green Hill for the usual two weeks' +visit. Maurice had to go away on office business three or four times +during that fortnight, but he came up for one Sunday. He had insisted +upon Eleanor's going, because, he said, she needed the change. "Can't +you come?" she pleaded. "Do take some extra time from the office!" + +"And be docked? Can't afford it!" he said; "but I'll get one week-end in +with you," he promised her, looking forward with real satisfaction to +the solitude of his own house. So Eleanor, saying she couldn't +understand why he was so awfully economical now that he had his own +money!--came alone,--full of remorse at deserting him, and worry because +of his loneliness, and leaving a pining Bingo behind her. But, to her +silent annoyance, as soon as she arrived at Green Hill she encountered a +new and tiresome attentiveness from Edith! Edith was inescapably polite. +She did not urge upon Eleanor any of those strenuous amusements to which +she and Johnny were devoted; she merely gave up the amusements, and, as +Johnny expressed it, "stuck to Eleanor"! Eleanor couldn't understand it, +and when Maurice at last arrived, Johnny's perplexity became audible: + +"Perhaps," he told Edith, satirically, "you may be able, now, to tear +yourself away from Eleanor, and go fishing with me? You fish pretty +well--for a woman. Maurice can lug her round." + +"I will, if Maurice will go, too," Edith said. + +"What do you drag him in for?"--John paused; understanding dawned upon +him: "She doesn't want to be by herself with me!" His tanned face slowly +reddened, and those brown eyes of his behind the big spectacles grew +keen. He didn't speak for quite a long time; then he said, very low, +"I'll be here to-morrow morning at four-thirty. Be ready. I'll dig +bait." + +"All right," said Edith; after which, for the first time in her life, +she played a shabby trick on Johnny Bennett; as soon as he had gone +home, she invited Eleanor (who promptly declined), and Maurice (who as +promptly accepted), to go fishing, too! Then, having got what she +wanted, she reproached herself: "Johnny'll be mad as fury. But when he +gets to saying things to me he makes me feel funny in the back of my +neck. Besides, I want Maurice." + +The fishermen were to assemble in the grayness of the August dawn; and +Johnny was, as usual, prepared to throw a handful of gravel at Edith's +window to hurry her downstairs. But when he loomed up in the mist, who +should be on the porch, fooling with a rod, but Maurice! + +"What's he butting in for?" Johnny thought, looking so cross that +Edith, coming out with the luncheon basket, was really remorseful. +"Hullo, Johnny," she said. ("I never played it on him before," she was +thinking.) But at that moment her remorse was lost in alarm, for +standing in the doorway was Eleanor, her hair caught up in a hurried +twist, a wrapper over her shoulders, her bare feet thrust into pink +bedroom slippers. (Forty-six looks fifty-six at 4.30 A.M.) + +"Darling," Eleanor said, "I believe I'd like to go up to the cabin +to-day. Do let's do it--just you and I!" + +The three young people all spoke at once: + +Johnny said: "Good scheme! We'll excuse Maurice." + +Edith said, "Oh, Eleanor, Maurice loves fishing!" + +And Maurice said: "I sort of think I'd like to catch a sucker or two in +this pool Johnny is always cracking up. I bet he's in for a big jolt +about his trout! You come, too?" + +"I'd get so awfully tired. And I--I thought we could have a day together +up on the mountain," she ended, wistfully. + +There was a dead silence. Johnny was thinking: "Gosh! I hope she gets +him." And Edith was thinking, "I'd like to choke her!" Maurice's +thoughts could not be spoken; he merely said, "All right; if you want +to." + +"I don't believe I'll go fishing, either," Edith said. + +Eleanor, on the threshold, turned quickly: "Please don't stay at home on +my account!" + +But Maurice settled it. "I'll not go," he said, patiently; "but you +must, Edith." He threw down his rod and went into the house; Eleanor, in +her flopping pink slippers, hurried after him.... + +"I did so want to have you to myself," she said; "you don't mind not +going fishing with those children, do you?" + +He said, listlessly: "Oh no. But don't let's attempt the cabin stunt." +Then he stood at the window and watched Johnny and Edith, with fishing +rods and lunch basket, disappear down the road into the fog. He was too +bored to be irritated; he only counted the hours until he could get +back to Mercer, and the office, and the table under the silver poplar. +"I'll get hold of the Mortons, and Hannah can give us some sort of grub, +and then we'll go to a show," he thought. "I can stick it out here for +thirty-six hours more." + +He stuck it out that morning by sitting in Mr. Houghton's studio, one +leg across the arm of his chair, reading and smoking. Once Eleanor came +in and asked him if he was all right. He said, briefly, "Yes." + +But she was uneasy: "Maurice, I'll play tennis with you?" + +This at least made him chuckle. "_You?_ How long since? My dear, you +couldn't play a set to save your life!" + +After that she let him alone for a while. Early in the afternoon the +need to make up to him for what she had done grew intolerable: "Darling, +let's play solitaire?" + +"I'm going to write letters." + +She left him to his letters for an hour, then came again: "Let's walk!" + +"Well, if you want to," Maurice said, and yawned. So they trudged off. +Eleanor, walking very close to her husband, was thinking, heavily, how +far they were apart; but she did her best to amuse him by anxious +ponderings of household expenses. He, sheering off to the other side of +the road to escape her intimate and jostling shoulder, was thinking of +the expenses of another household, and making no effort whatever to +amuse her. His silence confessed an irritation which she felt but could +not understand; so by and by she fell silent, too, though the helpless +tears stood in her eyes. Then, apparently, he put his annoyance, +whatever it was, behind him. + +"Nelly," he said, "let's go down by the West Branch and meet Edith and +Johnny? They'll be coming home that way, 'laden with trout,' I suppose," +he ended, sarcastically. + +Eleanor began to say, "Oh _no_!" Then something, she didn't know what, +made her say, "Well, all right." As they turned into the wood road that +ran up toward the mountain, she said another unexpected thing: + +"Maurice, I'm tired. I'll go home; you go on by yourself, and--and meet +Johnny." She didn't know, herself, why she said it! Perhaps, it was just +an effort to make up for what she had done in the morning? + +Maurice, astonished, made some half-hearted protest; he would go back +with her? But she said no, and walked home alone. Her throat ached with +unshed tears. "He _likes_ to be with her! He doesn't want me,--and I +love him--I love him!" + + * * * * * + +The two youngsters had made a long day of it. On their way to the brook +that morning, crashing through underbrush, climbing rotting rail fences +that were hidden in docks and briers, balancing on the precarious +slipperiness of mossy rocks, the triumphant Johnny, his heart warm with +gratitude to Eleanor, had led his captive and irritated Edith. When they +broke through low-hanging boughs and found the pool, the trout +possibilities of which Johnny had so earnestly "cracked up," Edith was +distinctly grumpy. "Eleanor is a selfish thing," she said. "Gimme a +worm." + +"I think Maurice would have been cussedly selfish not to do what she +wanted," Johnny said; "my idea of marriage is that a man must do +everything his wife wants." + +"Maurice is never selfish! He's great, simply great!" Edith said. + +"Oh, he's decent enough," Johnny admitted, then he paused, frowning, for +he couldn't open his bait box; he banged it on a stone, pried his knife +under the lid, swore at it--and turned very red. Edith giggled. + +"Let me try," she said. + +"No use; the rotten thing's stuck." + +But she took it, shook it, gave an easy twist, and the maddening +lid--loosened, of course, by Johnny's exertions--came off! Edith +shrieked with joy; but Johnny, though mortified, was immensely +relieved. They sat down on a sloping rock, and talked bait, and the +grave and spectacled Johnny became his old self, scolding Edith for +talking so loudly. "Girls," he said, "are _born_ not fishermen!" Then +they waded out into the stream, and began to cast. It was broad daylight +by this time, and the woods were filling with netted sunbeams; the water +whispered and chuckled. + +"Pretty nice?" Johnny said, in a low voice; and Edith, all her +grumpiness flown, said: + +"You bet it is!" Then, as an afterthought, she called back, "But Eleanor +is the limit!" + +Johnny, forgetting his gratitude to Eleanor, said, savagely: "_Keep +quiet!_ You scared him off! Gosh! girls are awful." + +So Edith kept quiet, and he wandered up the stream, and she wandered +down the stream, and they fished, and they fished--and they never caught +a thing. + +"I had _one_ bite," Johnny said when, at about eleven, fiercely hungry, +they met on the bank where they had left their lunch basket; "but you +burst out about Eleanor, and drove him off. Girls simply _can't_ fish." + +Edith was contrite--but doubted the bite. Then they sat down on a mossy +rock, and ate stacks of sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, and watched the +water, and talked, talked, talked. At least Edith talked--mostly about +Maurice. Johnny lit his pipe, puffed once or twice, then let it go out +and sat staring into the green wall of the woods on the other side of +the brook. Then, suddenly, quietly, he began to speak.... + +"I want to say something." + +"The mosquitoes here are awful!" Edith said, nervously; "don't you think +we'd better go home?" + +"Look here, Edith; you've got to be half decent to me--unless, of +course, you've soured on me? If you have, I'll shut up." + +"Johnny, don't be an idiot! 'Course I haven't soured on you. You're the +oldest friend I've got. Older than Maurice, even." + +"Well, I guess I am an older friend than Maurice! But lately you've +treated me like a dog. You skulk round to keep from being by ourselves. +You never give me a chance to open my head to you--" + +"Johnny, that's perfectly absurd! I've had to look after Eleanor--" + +"Eleanor _nothing_! It's me you want to shake." + +"I do _not_ want to shake you! I'm just busy." + +"Edith, I care a lot about you. I don't care much for girls, as a rule. +But you're not girly. And every time I try to talk to you, you sidestep +me." + +"Now, Johnny--" + +"But I'm going to tell you, all the same." He made a clutch at the +sopping-wet hem of her skirt. "I _will_ say it! I care an awful lot +about you. I'm not a boy. I want to marry you." + +There was a dead silence; then Edith said, despairingly, "Oh, Johnny, +how perfectly horrid you are!" He gasped. "You simply spoil everything +with this sort of ... of ... of talk." + +"You mean you don't like me?" His face twitched. + +"Like you? I like you awfully! That's why I'm so mad at you. Why, I'm +_awfully_ fond of you--" + +"Edith!" + +"I mean I never had a friend like you. I've always liked you ten times +better than any silly old girl friend I ever had. I've liked you +_almost_ as much as Maurice. Of course I shall never like anybody as +much as Maurice. He comes next to father and mother. But now you go +and--and talk ... I just can't bear it," Edith said, and fumbled for her +pocket handkerchief; "I _hate_ talk." Her eyes overflowed. + +"Edith! Look here; now, _don't_! Honestly, I can stand being turned +down, but I can't stand--that. Edith, _please_! I never saw you do +that--girl stunt. I'll never bother you again, if you'll just stop +crying!" + +Edith, unable to find her handkerchief, bent over and wiped her eyes on +her dress. "I'm _not_ crying," she said, huskily; "but--" + +"I think," John Bennett said, "honestly, Edith, I think I've loved you +all my life." + +"And I have loved you," she said; "You are a lamb! Oh, Johnny, I'm +perfectly crazy about you!" + +His swiftly illuminating face made her add, hastily, "and now you go and +spoil everything!" + +"I won't spoil things, Skeezics," he said, gently; "oh, say, Edith, let +up on crying! _That_ breaks me all up." + +But Edith, having discovered her handkerchief, was mopping very flushed +cheeks and mumbling on about her own woes. "Why can't you be satisfied +just to go on the way we always have? Why can't you be satisfied to have +me like you almost as much as I like Maurice?" + +"Maurice!" the young man said, with a helpless laugh. "Oh, Edith, you +are several kinds of a goose! In the first place, Maurice is married; +and in the second place, he's old enough to be your father--" + +"He isn't old enough to be my father! And I shall _never_ like anybody +as much as Maurice, because there isn't anybody like him in the entire +world. I've always thought he was exactly like Sir Walter Raleigh. +Besides, I shall never marry _anybody_! But I mean, I don't see why it +isn't enough for you to have me awfully fond of you?" + +"Well, it isn't," Johnny said, briefly, "but don't you worry." He was +white, but his tenderness was like a new sense. Edith had never seen +_this_ Johnny. Her entirely selfish impatience turned to shyness. +"Edith," he said, very gently, "you don't understand, dear. You're +awfully young--younger than your age. I didn't take in how young you +were--talking about Maurice! I suppose it's because you know so few +girls, that you are so young. Well; I can't hang round with you any +more, as if we were ten years old. You see, I--I love you, Edith. That +makes the difference ... dear." + +"Oh," said Edith, desperately, "how perfectly _horrid_--" She looked +really distracted, poor child! (but that was the moment when her +preposterous youthfulness ceased.) She jumped to her feet so suddenly +that Johnny, who had begun, his fingers trembling, to scrape out the +bowl of his pipe, dropped his jackknife, which rolled down the steeply +sloping rock into the water. "Oh, I'm so sorry!" Edith said. + +John sighed. "Oh, that's nothing," he said, and slid over the moss and +ferns to the water's edge; there, lying flat on his stomach, his sleeve +rolled up, he thrust his bare white arm into the dark and troutless +depths of the pool, and salvaged his knife. Edith, on the bank, began +furiously to pack up. When Johnny climbed back to her she said she +wanted to go home, "_now_!" + +"All right," he said again, gently. + +So, silently, they started homeward; and never in her life had Edith +been so glad to see any human creature as she was to see Maurice on the +West Branch Road! But she let him do all the talking. To herself she was +saying, "It's all Eleanor's fault for not letting him come this morning! +I just hate her!..." + +That night her father said to her mother, rather sadly, "Mary, our +little girl has grown up. Johnny Bennett is casting sheep's eyes at +her." + +"Nonsense!" said Mary Houghton, comfortably; "she's a perfect child, and +so is he." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +Curiously enough, though Edith's mother did not recognize what was going +on between "the children," Eleanor did. When she came back to Mercer, a +week later, she overflowed about it to Maurice. "Calf love!" she summed +it up. + +"She didn't look down on that kind of love seven years ago," he thought, +cynically. But he didn't say so; no matter what his thoughts were, he +was always kind to Eleanor. Lily, over in Medfield; Lily, in the small, +secret house; Lily, with the good-looking little boy--blue-eyed, +rosy-cheeked, blond-haired!--the squalid memory of Lily, said to him, +over and over: "You are a confounded liar; so the least you can do is to +be decent to Eleanor." + +So he was kind. + +"_I_ couldn't bear myself," he used to think, "if I wasn't--but, _O_ +Lord!" + +That "_O_ Lord!" was his summing up of a growing and demoralizing sense +of the worthlessness and unreality of life. Like Solomon (and all the +rest of us, who see the universe as a mirror for ourselves!) he +appraised humanity at his valuation of himself. He didn't use Solomon's +six words, but the eight of his generation were just as exact--"_The +whole blooming outfit is a rotten lie!_ If," he reflected, "deceit isn't +on my 'Lily' line, it is on a thousand other lines." From the small +cowardices of appreciations and admirations which one did not really +feel, up through the bread-and-butter necessities of business, on into +the ridiculousness of what is called "Democracy" or "Liberty"--on, even, +into those emotional evasions of logic and reason labeled +"Religion"--all lies--all lies! he told himself. "And I," he used to +think, looking back on seven years of marriage, "I am the most +accomplished liar of the whole shootin' match!... If they get off that G. +Washington gag on me any more at the office, somebody'll get their head +punched." + +All the same, even if he did say, "_O_ Lord!" he was carefully kind to +his boring wife. + +But when Edith (suddenly grown up, it seemed to Maurice) came back for +the fall term, he said "_O_ Lord!" less frequently. The world began to +seem to him a less rotten place. "Nice to have you round again, +Skeezics!" he told her; and Eleanor, listening, went up to her room, and +sat with her fingers pressed hard on her eyes. "It's dreadful to have +her around! How _can_ I get rid of her?" she thought. Very often now the +flame of jealousy flared up; it scorched her whenever she recognized +Edith's "brains," whenever she noticed some gay fearlessness, or easy +capability; whenever she watched the girl's high-handed treatment of +Maurice: criticizing him! Telling him he was mean because he was always +saying he "couldn't afford things"! Declaring that she wished he would +stop his everlasting practicing--and apparently not caring a copper for +him! If Edith said, "Oh, Maurice, you are a perfect _idiot_!" Eleanor +would see him grin with pleasure; but when Eleanor put her arms around +him and kissed him, he sighed. To Maurice's wife these things were all +like oil on fire; but it never occurred to her to try to develop in +herself any of the qualities he seemed to find attractive in Edith. +Instead, she thought of that June day in the meadow by the river when he +said he loved her inefficiency--he loved her timidity, and, oh, how he +had loved her love! He had made her promise to be jealous! Eleanor was +not a reasoning person--probably no jealous woman is; but she did +recognize the fact that what made him love her then, made him impatient +with her now. This seemed to her irrational; and so, of course, it +was!--just as the tide is irrational, or the turning of the earth on its +axis is irrational. Nature has nothing to do with reason. So, in its +deep and beautiful and animal beginnings, Love, too, is irrational. It +has to ascend to Reason! But Eleanor did not know these things. All she +knew was that Maurice _hurt_ her, a dozen times a day. + +She was brooding over this one Sunday afternoon in late September, when, +at the open window of her bedroom, with Bingo snoozing in her lap, she +listened to Edith, down in the garden: "How about a jug of dahlias on +the table?" + +And Maurice: "Bully! Say, Edith, why couldn't we have a yellow scheme +for the grub? Orange cup, and that sort of fussy business you make out +of cheese and the yolks of eggs? And yellow cakes?" + +"Splendid! I'll mix up some perfectly stunning little sponge cakes, +'Lemon Queens.' Yellow as anything!" + +This was all to get ready for a tea under the silver poplar, which was +dropping yellow leaves down on the green table, and the mossy brick +path, and the chairs for the company. The Mortons were coming, and there +would be, Eleanor told herself, wearily, the usual shrieking over flat +jokes,--Edith's jokes, mostly. Her dislike of Edith was a burning ache +below her breastbone. "Maurice has her, so he doesn't want me," she +thought; then suddenly she got up and hurried downstairs. "I'll fix the +table!" she said, peremptorily. + +"It's all done," Edith said; "doesn't it look pretty? Oh, Eleanor, let +me put a dahlia behind your ear! You'll look like a Spanish lady!" She +put the gorgeous flower into the soft disorder of Eleanor's dark hair, +avoiding Bingo's angry objections, and said, with open admiration, +"Eleanor, you _are_ handsome! I adore dahlias!" she announced; "those +quilly ones, red on the outside and yellow inside! There are some +stunning ones on Maple Street, where I saw that Dale woman. Wonder if +she'd sell some roots?" + +The color flew into Maurice's face. "Did you get your bicycle mended?" +he said. + +Instantly Edith forgot the dahlias, and plunged into bicycle +technicalities, ending with the query, "Why don't you squeeze out some +money, and buy one of those cheap little automobiles, Maurice, you mean +old thing!" + +"Can't afford it," Maurice said. + +But Eleanor was puzzled. There had been a hurried note in Maurice's +voice when he asked Edith about her bicycle--an imperative changing of +the subject! She looked at him wonderingly. Why should he change the +subject? Was he annoyed at Edith's bad taste in referring to the +creature? But Edith's taste was always bad, and Maurice was not +generally so sensitive to it; not as sensitive as he ought to be! Or as +he had been in those old days when he had said that Eleanor was too +lovely to know the wickedness of the world, and he "didn't want her to"! +She was really perplexed; and when Edith rushed off to make the cakes, +and Maurice went indoors, she sat there in the garden, looking absently +out through the rusty bars of the iron gate at the distant glimmer of +the river, and wondered: "Why?" + +She was still wondering even when the Mortons arrived, bringing with +them--of all people!--Doctor Nelson. (_"Gosh!"_ said Maurice.) "We're +celebrating his appointment at the hospital; he's the new +superintendent!" Mrs. Morton explained. + +Eleanor said, mechanically, "So glad to see you, Doctor Nelson!" But she +was saying to herself, "_Why_ was Maurice provoked when Edith spoke of +Mrs. Dale?" When some more noisy and very young people arrived, she was +too abstracted to talk to them. She was so silent that most of them +forgot her; until Mrs. Morton, suddenly remembering her existence, tried +to be conversational: + +"I suppose Mr. Curtis told you of our wild adventure on the river in +August, when we got beached and spent the afternoon on a mud flat?" + +"No," Eleanor said, vaguely. But afterward, when the guests had gone, +she said to Maurice, "Why didn't you tell me about your adventure with +the Mortons?" + +"He told me," Edith said, complacently. + +"I forgot, I suppose," Maurice said, carelessly, and lounged off into +the house to sit down at the piano--where lie immediately "forgot" not +only the adventure on the river--but even his dismay at seeing Doctor +Nelson!--who by this time was, of course, quite certain that it was a +"rum world." + +That winter--although he was not conscious of it--Maurice's +"forgetfulness" in regard to his wife became more and more marked, so it +was a year of darkening loneliness for Eleanor. She was at last on that +"desert island"--which had once seemed so desirable to her;--she had +nothing to interest her except her music (and the quality of her voice +was changing, pathetically); furthermore, Maurice rarely asked her to +sing, so the passion had gone out of what voice she had! She didn't care +for books; she didn't know how to sew; and, except for Mrs. Newbolt, +there was no one she wanted to see. Often, in her empty evenings, while +Edith was in her own room studying, she sat by the fire and cried, and +broke her heart upon her desire for a child--"_then_ he would be happy, +and stay at home!" + +It was a dull house; so dull that Edith made up her mind to get out of +it for her next winter at Fern Hill. When she went home for the Easter +vacation, she expressed decided opinions: "Father, once, ages ago"--she +was sitting on her father's knee, and tormenting him by trying to take +his cigar away from him--"you got off something about the dinner of +herbs and Eleanor's stalled ox--" + +"Good heavens, Buster! You haven't said that before Eleanor?" + +"Ha! I got a rise out of you!" Edith said, joyfully; "I haven't +mentioned it, _yet_; but I shall make a point of doing so unless you +order two pounds of candy for me, _at once_. Well, I suppose what you +meant was that Eleanor is stupid?" + +"Mary," said Henry Houghton, "your blackmailing daughter is displaying a +glimmer of intelligence." + +"I'm only reminding you of your own remark," Edith said, "to explain +why I want to be in one of the dormitories next winter. Eleanor _is_ +stupid--though she's never fed me on stalled ox! And I think she sort of +doesn't like it because I'm not _awfully_ fond of music." + +"You are an absolute heathen about music," her father said. + +"Well, it bores me," Edith explained, cheerfully; "though I adore +Maurice's playing. Maurice is a lamb, and I adore just being in the +house with him! But she's nasty to him sometimes. And when she is, I'd +like to choke her!" + +"Edith--Edith--" her mother remonstrated. And her father reminded her +that she must _not_ lose her temper. + +"Let your other parent be a warning to you as to the horrors of an +uncontrolled temper," said Henry Houghton; "I have known your mother, in +one of her outbursts of fury, so far forget herself as to say, _'Oh, +my!'_" + +Edith grinned, but insisted, "Eleanor is dull as all get out!" + +"Consider the stars," Mrs. Houghton encouraged her. + +But Mr. Houghton said, "Mary, you've got to do something about this +girl's English! ... You miss John Bennett?" he asked Edith (Johnny was +taking a special course in an Eastern institute of technology). + +"He did well enough to fill in the chinks," Edith said, carelessly; "but +it's Maurice's being away that takes the starch out of me. He's +everlastingly tearing off on business. And when he's at home--" Edith +was suddenly grave--"of course Maurice is always 'the boy stands on the +burning deck'; but you can't help seeing that he's fed up on poor old +Eleanor! Sometimes I wonder he ever does come home! If I were in his +place, when she gets to nagging _I'd_ go right up in the air! I'd say, +well,--something. But he keeps his tongue between his teeth." + +That evening, when Henry Houghton was alone with his wife, he said what +he thought about Maurice: "He _is_ standing on the burning deck of this +pathetic marriage of his, magnificently. He never bats an eyelash! +(Your daughter's slang is vulgar.)" + +"Eleanor is the pathetic one," Mary Houghton said, sadly; "Maurice +has grown cynical--which is a sort of protection to him, I suppose. +Yes; I'm afraid Edith is right; she'd better be out at the school next +winter. It isn't well for a girl to see differences between a husband +and wife.... Henry, you shan't have another cigar! That's the third since +supper! Dear, what _is_ the trouble about Maurice?" + +"Mary, things have come to a pretty pass, when you snoop around and +count up my cigars! I _will_ smoke!" But he withdrew an empty hand from +his cigar box, and said, sighing, "I wish I could tell you about +Maurice; Kit; but I can't betray his confidence." + +"If I guessed, you wouldn't betray anything?" + +"Well, no. But--" + +"I guessed it a good while ago. Some foolishness about a woman, of +course. Or--or badness?" she ended, sadly. + +He nodded. "I wish I was asleep whenever I think of it! Mary, there +are some pretty steep grades on Fool Hill, and he's had hard +climbing.... It's ancient history now; but I can't go into it." + +"Of course not. Oh, my poor Maurice! Does Eleanor know?" + +"Heavens, no! It wouldn't do." + +"Honey, the unforgivable thing, to a woman, is not the sin, but the +deceit. And, besides, Eleanor loves him enough to forgive him. She would +die for him, I really believe!" + +"Yet the green-eyed monster looks out of her eyes if he plays checkers +with Edith! My darling," said Henry Houghton, "as I have before +remarked, your ignorance on this one subject is colossal. _Women can't +stand truth._" + +"It's a provision of nature, then, that all men are liars?" she +inquired, sweetly; "Henry, the loss of Edith's board won't trouble +Maurice much, will it?" + +"Not _as_ much, of course, now that he has all his money; but he has to +scratch gravel to make four ends meet," Henry Houghton said. + +"_Four_ ends!" she said; "oh, is it as bad as that? He has to +support--somebody?" + +He said, "Yes; so long as you have guessed. Mary, I really must have a +smoke." + +"Why _am_ I so weak-minded as to give in to you!" she sighed; then +handed him the cigar box, and scratched a match for him; he held her +wrist--the sputtering match in her fingers--lighted the cigar, blew out +the match, and kissed her hand. + +"You are a snooper and a porcupine about tobacco; but otherwise quite a +nice woman," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +When Edith's Easter vacation was over, and she went back to Mercer, she +was followed by a letter from Mrs. Houghton to Eleanor, explaining the +plan for the school dormitory the following winter. But there was +another letter, to Maurice, addressed (discreetly) to his office. It was +from Henry Houghton, and it was to the effect that if any "unexpected +expenses" came along, and Maurice felt strapped because of the cessation +of Edith's board, he must let Mr. Houghton know; then a suggestion as to +realizing on certain securities. + +"That's considerate in him," Eleanor said; "but I don't know what +'unexpected expenses' we could have?" + +It was a chilly April day. Maurice happened to be laid up home with a +sore throat; Eleanor, searching for a cook, had stopped at his office +for a lease he wanted to see, and brought back with her some mail she +found on his desk. + +"I knew this letter was from Mr. Houghton, so I opened it," she said, as +she handed it to him. His instant and very sharp annoyance surprised +her. "I wouldn't open your _business_ letters," she defended herself; +"but I didn't suppose you'd mind my seeing anything the Houghtons might +write--" + +"I don't like to have any of my mail opened!" he said, briefly, his eyes +raking Henry Houghton's letter, and discovering (of course!) nothing in +the fine, precise handwriting which was in the least betraying. ("But +suppose he _had_ said what the 'unexpected expenses' might be!") + +"We shall miss Edith's board," Eleanor said; "but, oh, I'll be so glad +to have her go!" + +Maurice was silent. "If she lives in Medfield all the time, she'll be +sure and run into Lily," he thought. "The devil's in it." He was in his +bedroom, wrapped up in a blanket, shivering and hot and headachy. The +chance of Edith's "running into Lily" would, of course, be even less if +she were at Fern Hill, than it was now when she was going back and forth +in the trolley every day; but he was so uncomfortable, physically, that +he didn't think of that; and his preoccupation made him blind to +Eleanor's hurt look. + +"I am willing to have you read all _my_ letters," she said. + +"I'm not willing to have you read mine!" he retorted. + +"Why not?" she demanded--"unless you have secrets from me." + +"Oh, Eleanor, don't be an idiot!" he said, wearily. + +"I believe you _have_ secrets!" she said--and burst out crying and ran +out of the room. + +He called her back and apologized for his irritability; but as he got +better, he forgot that he had been irritable--he had something else to +think of! He must get down to the office and write to Mr. Houghton, +asking him to address personal letters to a post-office box. And he made +things still safer by going out to Medfield to see Lily and give her the +number of the box in case she, too, had occasion to write any "personal" +letters, which, indeed, she very rarely had. "I say _that_ for her!" +Maurice told himself. He hoped--as he always did when he had to go to +Maple Street, that he would not see It--an It which had, of course, long +before this, acquired sufficient personality to its father to be +referred to as "Jacky"; a Jacky who, in his turn, had discovered +sufficient personality in Maurice to call him "Mr. Gem'man"--a +corruption of his mother's title for her very infrequent visitor, "the +gentleman." + +Jacky's "Mr. Gem'man" found the front door of the little house open, +and, looking in, saw Lily in the parlor, mounted on a ladder, hanging +wall paper. She stepped down, laughing, and moved her bucket of paste +out of his way. + +"Won't you be seated?" she said. Her rosy face was beaming with +artistic satisfaction; "Ain't this paper lovely?" she demanded; "it's +one of them children's papers that's all the rage now. I call it a +reg'lar art gallery! Look at the pants on them rabbits! It pretty near +broke me to buy it. The swells put this kind of paper in 'nurseries,' +and stick their kids off in 'em; but that ain't _me_! I put it on the +parlor! Set down, won't you?" + +Maurice sat down and, very much bored, listened while Lily chattered on, +with stories about Jacky: + +"He says to the milkman yesterday, 'I like your shirt,' he says. And +Amos--that's his name--he said, 'You can get one like it when you're +grown up like me.' And Jacky, he says--oh, just as _sad_!--I'd rather +have it now, 'cause when I grow up, maybe I'll be a lady.'" + +Maurice smiled perfunctorily. + +"Ain't he the limit?" Lily demanded, proudly; "he's a reg'lar rascal! He +stuck out his tongue at the grocer's boy, yesterday, 'cause he stepped +on my pansy bed. I wish you could 'a' seen him." + +Maurice swallowed a yawn. "He's fresh." + +"'Course," Lily said, quickly, "I gave him a smack! He's getting a good +bringing up, Mr. Curtis. I give him a cent every morning, to say his +prayers." + +Maurice didn't care a copper about Jacky's manners, or his morals, +either; but he said, carelessly, "A kid that's fresh is a bore." + +Lily frowned. When Maurice, having explained about the letter box, gave +her the usual "present" she made her usual good-natured protest--but +this time there was more earnestness in it, and even a little sharpness. +"I don't need it; I've got three more mealers--well, one of 'em can't +pay me; her husband's out of work; but she don't eat more than a canary, +poor thing! I can take care of Jacky _myself_." + +The emphasis puzzled Jacky's father for a moment. That Lily, seeing the +growing perfection of her handsome, naughty little boy, was becoming +uneasy lest Maurice might be moved to envy, never occurred to him. If it +had, he would of course have been enormously relieved; he might even +have played upon her fear of such an impossibility to induce her to move +away from Mercer! As it was, after listening to the account of the pansy +catastrophe, he got up to go, thankful that he had not had to lay eyes +on the child, whose voice he heard from the back yard. + +Lily, friendly enough in spite of that moment of resentment, went to the +front door with him. She had grown rather stout in the last year or two, +but she was always as shiningly clean as a rose, and her little lodging +house was clean, too; she was indefatigably thorough--scrubbing and +sweeping and dusting from morning to night! "It's good business," said +little Lily; "and it is just honest, too, for they pay me good!" Her +only unbusinesslike quality was a generous kindliness, which sometimes +considered the "mealers'" purses rather than her own. She had, to be +sure, small outbursts of temper, when she "smacked" Jacky, or berated +her lodgers for wasting gas; but Jacky was smothered with kisses even +before his howls ceased, and the lodgers were placated with cookies the +very next day--but that, too, was "good business"! Her "respectability" +had become a deep satisfaction to her. She occasionally referred to +herself as "a perfect lady." Her feeling about "imperfect" ladies was of +most virulent disapproval. But she had no more spirituality than a hen. +Her face was as good-humored, and common, and pretty as ever; and she +had a fund of not too refined, but always funny, stories to tell +Maurice; so he liked her, after a fashion, and she liked him, after a +fashion, too, although she was a little afraid of him; his bored +preoccupation seemed like sternness to Lily. "Grouchiness," she called +it; "probably that's why he don't take to Jacky," she thought; "well, +it's lucky he don't, for he shouldn't have him!" But as Maurice, on the +little porch, said good-by, she really wondered at his queerness in not +taking to Jacky, who, grimy and handsome, was sitting on the ground, +spooning earth into an empty lard pail. + +"Come in out o' the dirt, Sweety!" Lily called to him. + +Jacky rose reluctantly, then stood looking, open-mouthed, at his +mother's visitor. + +"Say," he remarked; "I kin swear." + +"You don't say so!" said Maurice. + +"I kin say 'dam,'" Jacky announced, gravely. + +"You are a great linguist! Who instructed you in the noble art of +profanity?" + +"Huh?" said Jacky, shyly. + +"Who taught you?" + +"Maw," said Jacky. + +Maurice roared; Lily giggled,--"My soul and body! Listen to that child! +Jacky, you naughty boy, telling wrong stories. One of these days I'm +going to give you a reg'lar spanking." Then she stamped her foot, for +Jacky had settled down again in the dust; "Do you hear me? Come right in +out of the dirt! That's one on me!" she confessed, laughing: then added, +anxiously: "Say, Mr. Curtis, I do smack him when he says bad words; +honest, I do! He's getting a _good_ bringing up, though my mealers spoil +him something awful. But I'd just shake his prayers out of him, if he +forgot 'em." + +Maurice, still laughing, said: "Well, don't become too proficient, +Jacobus. Good-by," he said again. And as he said it, Eleanor, in a +trolley car, glanced out of the window and saw him. + +"Why, there's Maurice!" she said; and motioned to the conductor to stop. +Hunting for a cook had brought her to this impossible suburb, where +Maurice, no doubt, was trying to buy or sell a house. "I'll get out and +walk home with him," she thought, eagerly. But the car would not stop +until the end of the second block, and when she hurried back Maurice had +disappeared. He had either gone off in another direction, or else +entered the house; but she could not remember which house!--those +gingerbread tenements were all so much alike that it was impossible to +be sure on which of the small porches she had seen her husband, and a +fat, common-looking woman, and a child playing in the yard. All she +could do was to wander up and down the block, looking at every front +door in the hope that he would appear; as he didn't, she finally took +the next car into town. + +"Did you sell the house this afternoon?" she asked Maurice at dinner +that night; and he, remembering how part of his afternoon had been +spent, said he hadn't any particular house on the string at the moment. + +"Then what took you to Medfield?" Eleanor asked, simply. + +"Medfield!" + +"I saw you out there this afternoon," she said; "you were talking to a +woman. I supposed she was a tenant. I got off the car to walk home with +you, but I wasn't sure of the house; they were all alike." + +"What were you doing in Medfield?" + +"Oh, Hannah has given notice; I was hunting for a cook. I heard of one +out on Bell Street." + +"Did you find her?" + +"No," Eleanor said, sighing, "it's perfectly awful!" + +"Too bad!" her husband sympathized. + +In the parlor, after dinner, while Eleanor was getting out the cards +for solitaire, Maurice, tingling with alarm and irritation, sat down +at the piano and banged out all sorts of chords and discords. "Lily'll +_have_ to move," he was saying to himself. (Bang--_Bang!_) His +Imagination raced with the possibilities of what would have happened +if Eleanor had found the house which was "like all the other houses," +and heard his "good-by" to Lily, or perhaps even caught the latest +addition to Jacky's vocabulary! "The jig would have been up," he thought. +(Bang--Crash!)... "She'll _have_ to move! Suppose Eleanor took it into +her head to hunt her up? She's capable of it!" (Crash!) + +Eleanor's absorption in the cook she could not find kept her for nearly +forty-eight hours from speculation as to what, if not office business, +took Maurice to Medfield. When she did begin to speculate she said to +herself, "He doesn't tell me things about his business!" Then she was +stabbed again by his annoyance because she had opened the letter from +Mr. Houghton; then by his secretiveness in regard to that adventure on +the river with Mrs. Morton. (He had told Edith!) Then this--then +that--and by and by a tiny heap of nothings, that implied reserves. He +wasn't confidential. She told him _everything_! She never kept a thing +from him! And he didn't even tell her why he was over in Medfield when +no real-estate matters took him there. Why should he _not_ tell her? And +when she said that, the inevitable answer came: He didn't tell her, +because he didn't want her to know! Perhaps he had friends there? No. No +friends of Maurice's could live in such a locality. Well, perhaps there +was some woman? Even as she said this, she was ashamed. She knew she +didn't believe it. Of course there wasn't any woman!... But, at any +rate, he had interests in Medfield that he did not tell her about. She +hinted this to him at breakfast the next morning. She had not meant to +speak of it; she knew she would be sorry if she did. Eleanor was +incapable of analysis, but she was, in her pitiful way, aware that +jealousy, _when articulate_, is almost always vulgar--perhaps because +the decorums of breeding (which insist that, for the sake of others, +one's own pain must be hidden) are not propped up by the reserves of +pride. At any rate, she was not often publicly bitter to Maurice. This +time, however, she was. + +"Apparently," she said, "Maurice has acquaintances on Maple Street whom +I don't know." + +"The élite," Edith remarked, facetiously; "his lovely Mrs. Dale lives +there." + +Maurice's start was perceptible. + +"Perhaps it was Mrs. Dale you went to see?" Eleanor said. + +Maurice, trained in these years of furtiveness to self-control, said, +"Does she live on Maple Street, Edith?" + +"I guess so. The time I rescued her little boy and her flower pot, ages +ago, she was going into a house on Maple Street." + +"I saw Maurice in Medfield on Thursday," said Eleanor; "and he doesn't +seem to want to say what he was doing there!" + +"I am perfectly willing to tell you what I was doing," he retorted; "I +went from our office to see the woman who rents the house." + +Eleanor's slow mind accepted this entirely true and successfully false +remark with only the wonder of wounded love. "Why didn't he say that at +first?" she thought; "why does he hide things from me?" + +Maurice, however, made sure of that "hiding." Eleanor's attack upon him +frightened him so badly that that very afternoon, after office hours +(Eleanor being safe in bed with a headache), he went to see Lily. Her +astonishment at another visit so soon was obvious; she was still further +astonished when he told her why he had come. He hated to tell her. To +speak of Eleanor offended his taste--but it had to be done. So, +stammering, he began--but broke off: + +"Send that child away!" + +"Run out in the yard, Sweety," Lily commanded. + +"Won't," said Jacky. + +"Clear out!" Maurice said, sharply, and Jacky obeyed like a shot--but +paused on the porch to turn the ferociously clanging doorbell round and +round and round. "Well," Maurice began, "I'll tell you what's +happened... Lily! Make him stop!" + +"Say, now, Jacky, stop," Lily called; but Jacky, seized apparently with +a new idea, had already stopped, and was running out on to the pavement. + +So again Maurice began his story. Lily's instant and sympathetic +understanding was very reassuring. He even caught himself, under the +comfort of her quick co-operation, ranging himself with her, and saying +_"we."_ "We've got to guard against anything happening, you know." + +"Oh, my soul and body, yes!" Lily agreed; "it would be too bad, and no +sense, either; you and me just acquaintances. 'Course I'll move, Mr. +Curtis. But, there! I hate to leave my garden--and I've just papered +this room! And I don't know where to go, either," she ended, with a +worried look. + +"How would you like to go to New York?" he said, eagerly. + +She shook her head: "I've got a lot of friends in this neighborhood. But +there's a two-family house on Ash Street--" + +"Say," said Jacky, in the hall; "I got--" + +"Oh, but you must leave Medfield!" he protested; "she"--that "she" made +him wince--"she may try to hunt you up." + +"She can't. She don't know my name." + +Maurice felt as if privacy were being pulled away from his soul, as skin +might be flayed from living flesh. "But you see," he began, huskily, +"there's a--a girl who lives with us; and she--she mentioned your name." +Then, cringing, he told her about Edith. + +Lily looked blankly puzzled; then she remembered; "Why, yes, sure +enough! It was right at the gate--oh, as much as four years ago; I +slipped, and she grabbed Jacky. Yes; it comes back to me; she told me +she seen me the time we got ducked. 'Course, I gave her the glassy eye, +and said I didn't remember the gentleman in the boat with her. And she +caught on that I lived here? Well, now, ain't the world small?" + +"Damned small," Maurice said, dryly. + +"Say," said Jacky, from the doorway, "I got a--" + +"Well, she--I mean this young lady--told my--ah, wife that you lived on +Maple Street, and--" He was stammering with angry embarrassment; Lily +gave a cluck of dismay. "Confound it!" said Maurice; "what'll we do?" + +"Now, don't you worry!" Lily said, cheerfully. "If she ever speaks to me +again, I'll say, 'Why, you have the advantage of me!'" + +Her mincing politeness made him laugh, in spite of his irritation. "I +think you'd like it in New York?" he urged. + +Lily's amber eyes were full of sympathy--but she was firm: "I wouldn't +live in New York for anything!" + +"Mr. Gem'man," said Jacky, sidling crabwise into the room to the shelter +of his mother's skirt; "I--" + +"Say, now, Sweety, be quiet! No, Mr. Curtis; I only go into real good +society, and I've always heard that New York ladies ain't what they +should be. And, besides, I want a garden for Jacky. I'll tell you what +I'll do! I'll take the top flat in that house on Ash Street. It has +three little rooms I could let. There's a widow lady's been asking me to +go in on it with her; it has a garden back of it Jacky could play +in--last summer there was a reg'lar hedge of golden glow inside the +fence! Mr. Curtis, you'd 'a' laughed! He pinched an orange off a +hand-cart yesterday, just as cute! 'Course I gave him a good slap, and +paid the man; but I had to laugh, he was so smart. And he's got going +now, on God--since I've been paying him to say his prayers. Well, I +suppose I'll have to be going to church one of these days," she said, +resignedly. "The questions he asks about God are something fierce! _I_ +don't know how to answer 'em. Crazy to know what God eats--I told him +bad boys." + +"Lily, I don't think--_Thunder and guns!_" said Maurice, leaping to his +feet and rubbing his ankle; "Lily, call him off! The little wretch put +his teeth into me!" + +Lily, horrified, slapped her son, who explained, bawling, "Well, b-b-but +he didn't let on he heard me tellin' him that I--" + +"I _felt_ you," Maurice said, laughing; "Gosh, Lily! He's cut his +eyeteeth--I'll say that for him!" He poked Jacky with the toe of his +boot, good-naturedly: "Don't howl, Jacobus. Sorry I hurt your feelings. +Lily, what I was going to say was, I don't believe that Ash Street place +is what you want?" + +"Yes, it is. The widow lady is a dressmaker, and she has three children. +We were talking about it only yesterday. Her father's feeble-minded, +poor old man! I take him in some doughnuts whenever I fry 'em. Mr. +Curtis, don't worry; I'll fix it, somehow! And until I get moved, I +won't answer the bell here. Look! I'll give you a key, and you can come +in without ringing if you want to." + +"No--_no_! I don't want a key! I wouldn't take a key for a million +dollars!" + +Lily's quick flush showed how innocent her offer had been. "I suppose +that doesn't sound very high toned--to offer a gentleman a key? But +I'll tell you! I ain't giving any door keys to my house. Jacky ain't +ever going to feel funny about his mother," she said, sharply. + +It was on the tip of Maurice's tongue to say, "Nor about his father!" +but he was silent. It was the first time his mind had articulated his +paternity, and the mere word made him dumb with disgust. Lily, however, +was her kind little self again, full of promises to "clear out," and +reassurances that "_she_" would never get on to it. + +It was then that the grimness of the situation for Maurice lightened for +a ridiculous moment. Jacky, breathing very hard, peered from behind his +mother, and stretched out to Maurice an extremely dirty, tightly +clenched fist. "I got a--a pre-present for you," he explained, panting. +Maurice, in a great hurry to get away, paused to put out his hand, in +which his son placed, very gently, a slimy, half-smoked cigar. "Found +it," Jacky said, in a stertorous whisper, "in the gutter." + +It was impossible not to laugh, and Maurice swallowed his impatience +long enough to say, "Jacobus, you overwhelm me!" Then he took his +departure, holding the gift between a reluctant thumb and finger. "Funny +little beggar," he said to himself, and pitched the stub into the gutter +from which Jacky had salvaged it; he didn't look back to see his son +hanging over the palings, watching the fate of his present with stricken +eyes... So it was that, when the day came that Eleanor did actually +begin to search for what was hidden, Maple Street was empty of +possibilities; Lily had flitted away into the secrecy of the two-family +house on Ash Street. + +It was nearly three months before the search began. Edith had gone home, +Mrs. Newbolt was at the sea-shore, and Maurice was in and out--away for +two or three days at a time on office business, and when at home absent +almost every evening with some of those youthful acquaintances who +seemed ignorant of Eleanor's existence. So there were long hours when, +except for her little old dog, she was entirely alone--alone, to brood +over Maurice's queer look when she had accused him of having an +"acquaintance on Maple Street"; and by and by she said, "I'll find out +who it is!" Yet she had moments of trying to tear from her mind the idea +of any concealment, because the mere suspicion was an insult to Maurice! +She had occasional high moments of saying, "I _won't_ think he has +secrets from me; I'll trust him." But still, because suspicion is the +diversion of an empty mind, she played with it, as one might play with a +dagger, careful only not to let it touch the quick of belief. After a +while she deluded herself into thinking that, to exonerate Maurice, she +must prove the suspicion false! It was only fair to him to do that. So +she must find the woman whom she had seen on the porch with him. If she +wasn't Mrs. Dale, that would "prove" that everything was all right, and +that Maurice's presence there only meant that he was attending to office +business; nothing to be jealous about in _that_! And if the woman _was_ +Mrs. Dale? Eleanor's throat contracted so sharply that she gasped. But +again and again she put off the search for the exonerating proof--for +she was ashamed of herself, "I'll do it to-morrow." ... "I'll do it next +week." + +It was a scorching, windy July day when she took her first defiling step +and "did it." There had been a breakfast-table discussion of a vacation +at Green Hill, the usual invitation having been received. + +"Do go," Maurice had urged. "I'll do what I did last year--hang around +here, and go to the ball games, and come up to Green Hill for Sundays." +He was acutely anxious to have her go. + +She was silent. "_Why_ does he want to be alone?" she thought; +"why--unless he goes over to Medfield?" Then, in sudden decision, she +said to herself, "I will find out why, to-day!" But she was afraid that +Maurice would, somehow, guess what she was going to do; so, to throw him +quite off the track, she told him that Donny O'Brien was sick again; "I +must go and see him this morning," she said. + +Maurice, reading the sports page of the morning paper, said, "Too bad!" +and went on reading. He had no interest in his wife's movements; the +two-family house on Ash Street was beyond her range! + +An hour later, Eleanor, giving Bingo a cooky to console him for being +left at home, started out into the blazing heat, saying to herself: +"I'll recognize her the minute I see her. Of course I _know_ she isn't +the Dale woman, but I want to _prove_ that she isn't!" + +Her plan was to ring the bell at every one of the gingerbread houses on +that block on Maple Street, and ask if Mrs. Dale lived there? If she was +not to be found, that would prove that Maurice had not gone to see her. +If she was found, why, then--well, then Eleanor would say that she had +heard that the house was in the market? If Mrs. Dale said it was not, +that would show that it wasn't "office business" which had brought +Maurice to that porch! + +On Maple Street the heat blazed up from the untidy pavement, and a harsh +wind was whirling little spirals of dust up and down the dry gutter. +Eleanor's heart was beating so smotheringly that when her first ring was +answered she could scarcely speak: "Does Mrs. Dale live here?" + +"No," said the girl who opened the door, "there ain't nobody by that +name livin' here." + +And at the next door: "Mrs. Dale? No. This is Mrs. Mahoney's house." + +It was at the sixth house, where some dusty pansies were drying up +under the little bay window, that a woman whose red, soapy hands had +just left the wash tub, said: + +"Some folks with that name lived here before I took the house. But they +moved away. She was real nice; used to give candy to the children round +here. She was a widow lady. She told me her husband's name was Joseph. +Was it her you was looking for?" + +"I don't know her husband's name," Eleanor said. + +"Her baby had measles when mine did," the woman went on; "I lived across +the street, then. But I took a fancy to the house, because she'd papered +the parlor so handsome, so I moved in the first of May, when she got +out." + +A little cold, prickling thrill ran down Eleanor's back. She had told +herself that "Maurice had a secret"; but she had not really believed +that the secret was about Mrs. Dale. She had been sure, in the bottom of +her heart, that she would be able to "prove" that the woman he had been +talking to that day was not Mrs. Dale. + +Now, she had proved--that she was. + +Eleanor swayed a little, and put her hand out to clutch at the porch +railing. The woman exclaimed: + +"Come in and sit down! I'll get you a glass of water." + +Eleanor followed her into the kitchen and sat down on a wooden chair. +She was silent, but she whitened slowly. The mistress of the house, +scared at her pallor, ran to draw a tumbler of water from the faucet in +the sink; she held it to Eleanor's lips, apologizing for her wet hands: + +"I was tryin' to get my wash out.... Where do you feel bad?" + +"It's so hot, that's all," Eleanor said, faintly: "I--I'm not +ill--thank you very much." She tried to smile, but the ruthless glare of +sunshine through the open kitchen door showed her face strained, as if +in physical suffering. + +"I'm awfully sorry I can't tell you where Mrs. Dale lives," the woman +said, sympathetically. "Was she a friend of yours?" Eleanor shook her +head. "There! I'll tell you who maybe could tell you--the doctor. He +took care of her baby. Doctor Nelson--" + +"Nelson!" + +"He's the hospital doctor now. Why don't you ask him?" + +"Thank you," said Eleanor vaguely. She rose, saying she felt better and +was much obliged. Then she went out on to the porch, and down the broken +steps to the windy scorching street. + +She was certain: Maurice had gone to Medfield to see Mrs. Dale... + +_Why?_ + +She was quite calm, so calm that she found herself thinking that she had +forgotten to get an yeast cake for Mary. "I'll get it as I go home," she +thought. But as she stood waiting for the car it occurred to her that +she had better think things out before she went home. Better not see +Maurice until she had decided just how she should tell him that there +was no use having secrets from her! That she _knew_ he was seeing Mrs. +Dale! Then he would have to tell her _why_ he was seeing her... There +could be only one reason... For a moment she was suffocated by that +"reason"! She let the returning car pass, and signaled the one going out +into the country; she would go, she told herself, to the end of the +route, and by that time she would know what to do. The car was crowded, +but a kindly faced young woman rose and offered her a seat. Eleanor +declined it, although her knees were trembling. + +"Oh, do take it!" the woman urged, pleasantly, and Eleanor could not +resist sinking into it. + +"You are very kind," she said, smiling faintly. + +The woman smiled, too, and said, "Well, I always think what I'd like +anyone to do for my mother, if _she_ couldn't get a seat in a car! I +guess you're about her age." + +Eleanor hardly heard her; she sat staring out of the window--staring at +that same landscape on which she and Maurice had gazed in the unseeing +ecstasy of their fifty-four minutes of married life! "He said we would +come back in fifty years--not by ourselves." As she said that, a thought +stabbed her! _There was a child that day, in the yard!_ + +When she saw that the car was approaching the end of the route, she +thought of the locust tree, and the blossoming grass, and the whispering +river. "I'll go there, and think," she said. + +"All out!" said the conductor; and she rose and walked, stumbling once +or twice, and with one hand outstretched, as if--in the dazzling July +day--she had to feel her way in an enveloping darkness. She went down +the country road, where the bordering weeds were white with dust, toward +that field of young love, and clover, and blue sky. + +When she reached the river, curving around the meadow, brown and shallow +in the midsummer droughts, she saw that the big locust was long past +blossoming, but some elderberry bushes, in full bloom, made the air +heavy with acrid perfume; the grass, starred by daisies, and with here +and there a clump of black-eyed Susans, was ready for mowing, and was +tugging at its anchoring roots, blowing, and bending, and rippling in +the wind, just as it had that other day!... "And I sat right here, by +the tree," she said, "and he lay there--I remember the exact place. And +he took my hand--" + +Her mind whirled like a merry-go-round: "Well, I knew he was hiding +something. I wish I had seen Doctor Nelson, and asked him where she +lives. I wonder if he's the Mortons' friend?... If I don't get that +yeast cake to Mary before lunch, she can't set the rolls.... Edith saw +her with a child five years ago. Why"--her mind stumbled still farther +back--"why, the very day Edith arrived in Mercer, Maurice had been +looking at some house in Medfield, where the tenant had a sick child. +That was why he was late in meeting Mrs. Houghton!... The child had +measles. I wish I had gone to see Doctor Nelson! Then I would have +known.... I can get some rolls at the bakery, and Mary needn't set them +for dinner. I sang 'O Spring.'" She put her hands over her face, but +there were no tears. "He kissed the earth, he was so happy. When did he +stop being happy? What made him stop?... I wonder if there are any +snakes here?--Oh, I _must_ think what to do!" Again her mind flew off at +so violent a tangent that she felt dizzy. "I didn't tell Mary what to +have for dinner.... He gave her his coat, that time when the boat +upset.... She was all painted, he said so." She picked three strands of +grass and began to braid them together: "He did that; he made the ring, +and put it over my wedding ring." Mechanically she opened her +pocketbook, and took out the little envelope, shabby now, with years of +being carried there. She lifted the flap, and looked at the crumbling +circle. Then she put it back again, carefully, and went on with her +toilsome thinking: "I'll tell him I know that he went to see the Dale +woman. ... He said we had been married fifty-four minutes. It's eight +years and one month. He thinks I'm old. Well, I am. That woman in the +car thought I was her mother's age, and _she_ must have been thirty! Why +did he stop loving me? He hates Mary's cooking. He said Edith could make +soup out of a paving stone and a blade of grass. Edith is rude to me +about music, and he doesn't mind! How vulgar girls are, nowadays. Oh--I +_hate_ her!... Mary'll give notice if I say anything about her soup." + +Suddenly through this welter of anger and despair a small, confused +thought struggled up; it was so unexpected that she actually gasped: He +hadn't quite lied to her! "There _was_ office business!" Some +real-estate transfer must have been put through, because--"Mrs. Dale had +moved"! In her relief, Eleanor burst into violent crying; he had not +_entirely_ lied! To be sure, he didn't say that the woman whom he had +gone "from the office" to see, the woman who rented the house, was Mrs. +Dale; in that, he had not been frank; he kept the name back--but that +was only a reserve! Only a harmless secrecy. There was nothing _wrong_ +in renting a house to the Dale woman! As Eleanor said this to herself, +it was as if cool water flowed over flame-licked flesh. Yes; he didn't +talk to her as he did to Edith of business matters; he didn't tell her +about real-estate transactions; but that didn't mean that the Dale woman +was anything to him! She was crying hard, now; "He just isn't frank, +that's all." She could bear _that_; it was cruel, but she could bear it! +And it was a protection to Maurice, too; it saved him from the slur of +being suspected. "Oh, I am ashamed to have suspected him!" she thought; +"how dreadful in me! But I've proved that I was wrong." When she said +that she knew, in a numb way, that after this she must not play with the +dagger of an unbelieved suspicion. She recognized that this sort of +thing may be a mental diversion--but it is dangerous. If she allowed +herself to do it again, she might really be stabbed; she might lose the +saving certainty that he had not lied to her--that he had only been "not +frank." + +Suddenly she remembered how unwilling he had been, years ago, to talk of +the creature to her! She smiled faintly at his foolishness. Perhaps he +didn't want to talk of her now? Men are so absurd about their wives! Her +heart thrilled at such precious absurdity. As for seeing that doctor--of +course she wouldn't see him! She didn't _need_ to see him. And, anyhow, +she wouldn't, for anything in the world, have him, or anybody else, +suppose that she had had even a thought that Maurice wasn't--all right! +"He just wasn't quite frank; that was all." ... Oh, she had been wicked +to suspect him! "He would never forgive me if he knew I had thought of +such a thing, He must never know it." + +In the comfort of her own remorse, and the reassurance of his half +frankness, she walked back to the station and waited, in the midday +heat, for the returning car. Her head had begun to ache, but she said to +herself that she must not disappoint little Donny. So she went, in the +blazing sun, to the old washerwoman's house, climbed three flights of +stairs, and found the boy in bed, flushed with worry for fear "Miss +Eleanor" wasn't coming. She took the little feeble body in her arms, +and sat down in the steamy kitchen by an open window, where Donny could +see, on the clothes lines that stretched like gigantic spiderwebs across +a narrow courtyard, shirts and drawers, flapping and kicking and +bellying in the high, hot wind. She talked to him, and said that if his +grandmother would hire a piano, she would give him music lessons;--and +all the while her sore mind was wondering how old the mother of that +woman in the car was? Then she sang to Donny--little merry, silly songs +that made him smile: + +"The King of France, +And forty thousand men, +Marched up a hill--" + +She stopped short; Edith had thrown "The King of France" at her, that +day of the picnic, when she had cringed away from the water and the +slimy stones, and climbed up on the bank where she had been told to +"guard the girl's shoes and stockings"! "Oh, I'll be so glad to get her +and her 'brains' out of the house!" Eleanor thought. But her voice, +lovely still, though fraying with the years--went on: + +"Marched up a hill-- +_And + then + marched + down + again_!" + +When, with a splitting headache, she toiled home through the heat, she +said to herself: "He ought to have been frank, and told me the woman was +Mrs. Dale; I wouldn't have minded, for I know such a person couldn't +have interested him. She had no figure, and she looked stupid. He +couldn't have said _she_ had 'brains'! That girl in the car was +impertinent." + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +The heat and the wind--and remorse--gave Eleanor such a prolonged +headache that Maurice, in real anxiety and without consulting her--wrote +to Mrs. Houghton that "Nelly was awfully used up by the hot weather," +and might he bring her to Green Hill now, instead of later? Her prompt +and friendly telegram, "_Come at once_," made him tell his wife that he +was going to pack her off to the mountains, _quick_! + +She began to say no, she couldn't manage it; "I--I can't leave Bingo" +(she was hunting for an excuse not to leave Maurice), "Bingo is so +miserable if I am out of his sight." + +"You can take him,--old Rover's gone to heaven. Think you can start +to-morrow?" He sat down beside her and took her hand in his warm young +paw; the pity of her made him frown--pity, and an intolerable annoyance +at himself! She, a woman twice his age, had married him, when, of +course, she ought to have told him not to be a little fool; "...wiped my +nose and sent me home!" he thought, with cynical humor. But, all the +same, she loved him. And he had played her a damned cheap trick!--which +was hidden safely away in the two-family house on Ash Street. "Hidden." +What a detestable word! It flashed into Maurice's mind that if, that +night among the stars, he had made a clean breast of it all to Eleanor, +he wouldn't now be going through this business of hiding things--and +covering them up by innumerable, squalid little falsenesses. "There +would have been a bust-up, and she might have left me. But that would +have been the end of it!" he thought; he would have been _free_ from +what he had once compared to a dead hen tied around a dog's neck--the +clinging corruption of a lie! The Truth would have made him free. Aloud, +he said, "Star,"--she caught her breath at the old lovely word--"I'll go +to Green Hill with you, and take care of you for a few days. I'm sure I +can fix it up at the office." + +The tears leaped to her eyes. "Oh, Maurice!" she said; "I haven't been +nice to you. I'm afraid I'm--rather temperamental. I--I get to fancying +things. One day last week I--had horrid thoughts about you." + +"About _me_?" he said, laughing; "well, no doubt I deserved 'em!" + +"No!" she said, passionately; "no--you didn't! I know you didn't. But +I--" With the melody of that old name in her ears, her thoughts were +too shameful to be confessed. She wouldn't tell him how she had wronged +him in her mind; she would just say: "Don't keep things from me, +darling! Be frank with me, Maurice. And--" she stopped and tried to +laugh, but her mournful eyes dredged his to find an indorsement of her +own certainties--"and tell me you don't love anybody else?" + +She held her breath for his answer: + +"You _bet_ I don't!" + +The humor of such a question almost made him laugh. In his own mind he +was saying, "Lily, and _Love_? Good Lord!" + +Eleanor, putting her hand on his, said, in a whisper, "But we have no +children. Do you mind--very much?" + +"Great Scott! no. Don't worry about _that_. That's the last thing I +think of! Now, when do you think you can start?" He spoke with wearied +but determined gentleness. + +She did not detect the weariness,--the gentleness made her so happy; he +called her "Star"! He said he didn't love anyone else! He said he didn't +mind because they had no children.... Oh, how dreadful for her to have +had those shameful fears--and out in "their meadow," too! It was +sacrilege.... Aloud, she said she could be ready by the first of the +week; "And you'll stay with me? Can't you take two weeks?" she +entreated. + +"Oh, I can't afford _that_" he said; "but I guess I can manage one...." + +Later that day, when she told Mrs. Newbolt--who had come home for a +fortnight--what Maurice had planned for her, Eleanor's happiness ebbed a +little in the realization that he would be in town all by himself, "for +a whole week! He'll go off with the Mortons, I suppose," she said, +uneasily. + +"Well," said Mrs. Newbolt, with what was, for her, astonishing brevity, +"why shouldn't he? Don't forget what my dear father said about cats: +_'Open the door!'_ Tell Maurice you _want_ him to go off with the +Mortons!" + +Of course Eleanor told him nothing of the sort. But she was obliged, at +Green Hill, to watch him "going off" with Edith. "I should think," she +said once, "that Mrs. Houghton wouldn't want her to be wandering about +with you, alone." + +"Perhaps Mrs. Houghton doesn't consider me a desperate character," he +said, dryly; "and, besides, Johnny Bennett chaperones us!" + +Sometimes not even John's presence satisfied Eleanor, and she chaperoned +her husband herself. She did it very openly one day toward the end of +Maurice's little vacation. Henry Houghton had said, "Look here; you +boys" (of course Johnny was hanging around) "must earn your salt! We've +got to get the second mowing in before night. I'll present you both with +a pitchfork." + +To which Maurice replied, "Bully!" + +"Me, too!" said Edith. + +And John said, "I'll be glad to be of any assistance, sir." + +("How their answers sum those youngsters up!" Mr. Houghton told his +Mary.) + +Eleanor, dogging Maurice to a deserted spot on the porch, said, +uneasily, "Don't do it, darling; it's too hot for you." + +But he only laughed, and started off with the other two to work all +morning in the splendid heat and dazzle of the field. "Skeezics, don't +be so strenuous!" he commanded, once; and Johnny was really nervous: + +"It's too hot for you, Buster." + +"Too hot for your grandmother!" Edith said--bare-armed, open-throated, +her creamy neck reddening with sunburn. + +Toward noon, Maurice's chaperon, toiling out across the hot stubble to +watch him, called from under an umbrella, "Edith! You'll get freckled." + +"When I begin to worry about my complexion, I'll let you know," Edith +retorted; "Maurice, your biceps are simply great!" + +"_How_ she flatters him!" Eleanor thought; "And she knows he is looking +at her." He was! Edith, lifting a forkful of hay, throwing the weight on +her right thigh and straining backward with upraised arms, her big hat +tumbling over one ear, and the sweat making her hair curl all around her +forehead, was something any man would like to look at! No man would want +to look at Eleanor--a tired, dull, jealous woman, whose eyes were +blinking from the glare and whose face sagged with elderly fatigue. She +turned silently and went away. "He likes to be with her--but he doesn't +say so. Oh, if he would only be frank!" Her eyes blurred, but she would +not let the tears come, so they fell backward into her heart--which +brimmed with them, to overflow, after a while, in bitter words. + +Edith, watching the retreating figure, never guessing those unshed +tears, said, despairingly, to herself, "I suppose I ought to go home +with her?" She dropped her pitchfork; "I'll come back after dinner, +boys," she said; "I must look after Eleanor now." + +"Quitter!" Maurice jeered; but Johnny said, "I'm glad she's gone; it's +too much for a girl." His eyes followed her as she went running over the +field to catch up with Eleanor, who, on the way back to the house, only +poke once; she told Edith that flattery was bad taste the cup +overflowed! "Men hate flattery," she said. + +"Hate it?" said Edith, "they lap it up!" + +When the two young men sat down under an oak for their noon hour, with a +bucket of buttermilk standing precariously in the grass beside them, +John said again, anxiously, "It was too hot for her; I hope she won't +have a headache." + +"She always has headaches," Maurice said, carelessly. + +"What!" said Bennett, alarmed; "she's never said a word to me about +headaches." + +"Oh, you mean Edith? I thought you meant Eleanor. Edith never had a +headache in her life! Some girl, Johnny?" + +"Has that just struck you?" said John. + +Maurice fished some grass seeds out of the buttermilk, took a deep +draught of it, and looked at his companion, lying full length on the +stubble in the shadow of the oak. It came to him with a curious shock +that Bennett was in love. No "calf love" this time! Just a young +man's love for a young woman--sound and natural, and beautiful, and +right.... "I wonder," Maurice thought, "does she know it?" + +It seemed as if Johnny, puffing at his pipe, and slapping a mosquito on +his lean brown hand, answered his thought: + +"Edith's astonishingly young. She doesn't realize that she's grown up." +There was a pause; "_Or that I have._" + +Maurice was silent; he suddenly felt old. These two--these +children!--believing in love, and in each other, were in a world of +their own; a world which knew no hidden household in the purlieus of +Mercer; no handsome, menacing, six-year-old child; no faded, jealous +woman, overflowing with wearisome caresses! In this springtime world was +Edith--vigorous, and sweet, and supremely reasonable;--and _never_ +temperamental! And this young man, loving her.... Maurice turned over on +his face in the grass; but he did not kiss the earth's "perfumed +garment"; he bit his own clenched fist. + +He was very silent for the rest of their day in the field for one +thing, they had to work at a high pitch, for then were blue-black clouds +in the west! At a little after three Edith came out again, but not to +help. + +"I had to put on my glad rags," she said, sadly, "because some people +are coming to tea. I hate 'em--I mean the rags." + +Maurice stopped long enough to turn and look at her, and say, "They're +mighty pretty!" And so, indeed, they were--a blue organdie, with white +ribbons around the waist, and a big white hat with a pink rose in a knot +of black velvet on the brim. "How's Eleanor?" he said, beginning to +skewer a bale of hay on to his pitchfork. + +"She's afraid there's going to be a thunderstorm," Edith said; "that's +why I came out here. She wants you, Maurice." + +"All right," he said, briefly; and struck his fork down in the earth. +"I've got to go, Johnny." + +To do one's duty without love is doubtless better than to fail in doing +one's duty, but it has its risks. Maurice's heartless "kindness" to his +wife was like a desert creeping across fertile earth; the eager +generosity of boyhood had long ago hardened into the gray aridity of +mere endurance. + +Edith turned and walked back with him; they were both silent until +Maurice said, "You've got Johnny's scalp all right, Skeezics." + +"Don't be silly!" she said; her annoyance made her look so mature that +he was apologetic; was she in love with the cub? He was suddenly +dismayed, though he could not have said why. "I don't like jokes like +that," Edith said. + +"I beg your pardon, Edith. I somehow forget you're grown up," he said, +and sighed. + +She laughed. "Eleanor and you have my age on your minds! Eleanor +informed me that I was too old to be rampaging round making hay with you +two boys! And she thinks I 'flatter' you," Edith said, grinning. "I +trust I'm not injuring your immortal soul, Maurice, and making you vain +of your muscle?" + +Instantly he was angry. Eleanor, daring to interfere between himself and +Edith? He was silent for the rest of the walk home; and he was still +silent when he went up to his wife's room and found her lying on her +bed, old Bingo snoozing beside her--windows closed, shades down. "Oh, +Maurice!" she said, with a gasp of relief; "I was so afraid you would +get caught in a thunderstorm!" + +"_Don't_ be so absurd!" he said. + +"I--I love you; that's why I am 'absurd,'" she said, piteously. It was +as if she held to his lips the cup of her heart, brimming with those +unshed tears,--but is there any man who would not turn away from a cup +that holds so bitter a draught? + +Maurice turned away. "This room is insufferably hot!" he said. He let a +window curtain roll up with a jerk, and flung open a window. + +She was silent. + +"I wish," he said, "that you'd let up on Edith. You're always +criticizing her. I don't like it." + + * * * * * + +That night Johnny Bennett, somehow, lured Edith out on to the porch to +say good night. The thunderstorm had come and gone, and the drenched +garden was heavy with wet fragrance. + +"Let's sit down," Johnny said; then, beseechingly, "Edith, don't you +feel a little differently about me, now?" + +"Oh, Johnny, _dear_!" + +"Just a little, Edith? You don't know what it would mean to me, just to +hope?" + +"Johnny, I am awfully fond of you, but--" + +"Well, never mind," he said, patiently, "I'll wait." + +He went down the steps, hesitated, and, while Edith was still squeezing +a little wet ball of a handkerchief against her eyes, came back. + +"Do you mind if I ask you just one question, Edith?" + +"Of course not! Only, Johnny, it just about _kills_ me to be--horrid to +you." + +"Have you really got to be horrid?" said John Bennett. + +"Johnny, I _can't_ help it!" + +"Is it because there's any other fellow, Edith? That's the question I +wanted to ask you." + +She was silent. + +"Edith, I really think I have a right to know?" + +Still she didn't speak. + +"Of course, if there _is_--" + +"There isn't!" she broke in.... "Why, Johnny, you're the best friend I +have. No; there isn't anybody else. The honest truth is, I don't believe +I'm the sort of girl that gets married. I can't imagine caring for +_anybody_ as much as I care for father and mother and Maurice. I--I'm +not sentimental, Johnny, a bit. I'm awfully fond of you; _awfully_! You +come next to Maurice. But--but not that way. That's the truth, Johnny. +I'm perfectly straight with you; you know that? And you won't throw me +over, will you? If I lost you, I declare I--I don't know what I'd do! +You won't give me up, will you?" + +John Bennett was silent for a long minute; then he said, "No, Edith; +I'll never give you up, dear." And he went away into the darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +Edith's flight to one of the schoolhouses was not the entire release +that Eleanor expected. + +"Look here, Skeezics," Maurice had announced; "you can't turn me down +this way! You've got to come to supper every Sunday night!--when I'm at +home. Isn't that so, Nelly?" + +Eleanor said, bleakly: "Why, if Edith would _like_ to, of course. But I +shouldn't think she'd care to come in to town at six, and rush out to +Medfield right after supper." + +"I don't mind," Edith said. + +"You bet she won't rush off right after supper!" Maurice said; "I won't +let her. And if she doesn't get in here by three o'clock, I'll know the +reason why!" + +So Edith came in every Sunday afternoon at three--and Eleanor never left +her alone with Maurice for a moment! She sat and watched them; saw +Edith's unconcealed affection for Maurice, saw Maurice's pleasure in +Edith, saw his entire forgetfulness of herself,--and as she sat, +silently, watching, watching, jealousy was like a fire in her breast. + +However, in spite of Eleanor, sitting on the other side of the fire, in +bitter silence, those Sunday afternoons were delightful to Edith. She +and Maurice were more serious with each other now. His feeling about her +was that she was a mighty pretty girl, who had sense, and who, as he +expressed it, "spoke his language." Her feeling about him was a frankly +expressed appreciation which Eleanor called "flattery." She had an eager +respect for his opinions, based on admiration for what she called to +herself his hard-pan goodness. "How he keeps civil to Eleanor, _I_ don't +know!" Edith used to think. Sometimes, watching his civility--his +patience, his kindness, and especially his ability to hold his tongue +under the provocation of some laconic and foolish criticism from +Eleanor--Edith felt the old thrill of the Sir Walter Raleigh moment. +Yes; there was no one on earth like Maurice! Then she thought, +contritely, of good old Johnny. "If I hadn't known Maurice, I might have +liked Johnny," she thought; "he _is_ a lamb." When she reflected upon +Eleanor, something in her generous, careless young heart hardened: +"She's not nice to Maurice!" She had no sympathy for Eleanor. Youth, +having never suffered, is brutally unsympathetic. Edith had known +nothing but love,--given and received; so of course she could not +sympathize with Eleanor! + +When the Sunday-night suppers were over, Eleanor and Maurice escorted +their guest back to Fern Hill; Edith always said, "Don't bother to go +home with me, Eleanor!" And Maurice always said, "I'll look after the +tyke, Nelly, you needn't go"; and Eleanor always said, "Oh, I don't +mind." Which was, of course, her way of "locking the door" to keep her +cat from a roof that became more alluring with every bolt and bar which +shut him from it. + +On these trolley rides through Medfield Maurice was apt to be rather +silent, and he had a nervous way of looking toward the rear platform +whenever the car stopped to take on a passenger--"although," he told +himself, "what difference would it make if Lily did get on board? She's +so fat now, Edith wouldn't know her. And as for Lily, she's white. She'd +play up, like a 'perfect lady'!" + +He was quite easy about Lily. He hadn't seen her for more than a year, +and she made no demands on him. She was living in the two-family house +on Ash Street, with the dressmaker and her three children and +feeble-minded father, in the lower flat. There was the desired back yard +for Jacky, where a thicket of golden glow lounged against the fence, and +where, tinder stretching clothes lines, a tiny garden overflowed with +color and perfume. Every day little Lily would leave her own work (which +was heavy, for she had several "mealers") and run downstairs to help +Mrs. Hayes wash and dress the imbecile old man. And she kept a pot of +hyacinths blooming on his window sill. + +Maurice (with grinding economies) sent her a quarterly money order, and +felt that he was, as he expressed it to himself, "square with the +game,"--with the Lily-and-Jacky game. He could never be square with the +game he played with Eleanor; and as for his own "game," his steadily +pursued secretiveness was a denial of his own standards which +permanently crippled his self-respect. Though, curiously enough, these +years of careful lying had made him, on every subject except those +connected with the household in Medfield, of a most scrupulous +truthfulness. Indeed, the office still called him "G. Washington." + +Jacky was six that winter--a handsome, spoiled little boy. He looked +like Maurice--the same friendly, eager, very bright blue eyes and the +same shock of blond hair. Lily's ideas of discipline were, of course, +ruining him, to which fact Maurice was entirely indifferent; his feeling +about Jacky was nothing but a sort of spiritual nausea; Jacky was not +only an economic nuisance, but he had made him a liar! He said to +himself that of course he didn't want anything to happen to the brat +("that would break Lily's heart!"), but-- + +Then in March, something did happen to him. It was on a Sunday that the +child came down with scarlet fever, and Lily, in her terror, did the one +thing that she had never done, and that Maurice, in his certainty of her +"whiteness," felt sure she never would or could do: she sent a +telegram--_to his house_! + +It had been a cold, sunny day. Just before luncheon Eleanor had been +summoned to Mrs. O'Brien's: "_Donny is kind of pining; do please come +and sing to him, Miss Eleanor_," the worried grandmother wrote, and +Eleanor hadn't the heart to refuse. "I suppose," she thought, looking at +Maurice and Edith, "they'll be glad to get rid of me!" They were +squabbling happily as to whether altruism was not merely a form of +selfishness; Edith had flung, "_Idiot!_" at Maurice; and Maurice had +retorted, "I never expect a woman to reason!" It was the kind of +squabbling which is the hall mark of friendship and humor, and it would +have been impossible between Eleanor and her husband.... She left them, +burning with impatience to get down to Mrs. O'Brien's and back again in +the shortest possible time. As soon as she was out of the house Maurice +disposed of altruism by a brief laying down of the law: + +"There's no such thing as disinterestedness. You never do anything for +anybody, except for what you get out of it for yourself.... Let's go +skating?" + +The suggestion was not the result of premeditation; Maurice, politely +opening the front door for his wife, had realized, as he stood on the +threshold and a biting wind flung a handful of powdery snow in his +face,--the sparkling coldness of the day; and he thought to himself, +"this is about the last chance for skating! There'll be a thaw next +week." So, when he came back, whistling, to the library, he said: "Are +you game for skating? It's cold as blazes!" + +And Edith said: "You bet I am! Only we'll have to go to Fern Hill for my +skates!" + +Maurice said, "All right!" and off they went, the glowing vigor and +youth of them a beauty in itself! + +So it was that when Eleanor got home, after having gently and patiently +sung to poor Donny for nearly an hour, the library was empty; but a note +on the mantelpiece said: "We've gone skating.--E. and M." "She waited +until I went out," Eleanor thought; "_then_ she suggested it to him!" +She sat down, huddling over the fire, and thinking how Maurice neglected +her; "He doesn't want me. He likes to go off with Edith, alone!" They +had probably gone to the river--"our river!"--that broad part just below +the meadow, where there was apt to be good skating. That made her +remember the September day and the picnic, when Edith had talked about +jealousy--"Bingoism," she had called it. "She tried to attract him by +being _smart_. I detest smartness!" The burning pain under her +breastbone was intolerable. She thought of the impertinent things Edith +had said that day--and the ridiculous inference that if the person of +whom you were jealous, was more attractive in any way than you were +yourself, it was unreasonable to be jealous;--"get busy, and _be_ +attractive!" Edith had said, with pert shallowness. "She doesn't know +what she's talking about!" Eleanor said; and jealousy seared her mind as +a flame might have seared her flesh. "I haven't skated since I was a +girl.... I--I believe next winter I'll take it up again." The tears +stood in her eyes. + +It was at that moment that the telegram was brought into the library. + +"Mr. Curtis isn't in," Eleanor told the maid; then she did what anyone +would do, in the absence of the person to whom the dispatch was +addressed; signed for it ... opened it ... read it. + +_Jacky's sick; please come over quick. + +L. D_. + +"There's no answer," she said. When the maid had left the room, +Maurice's wife moistened the flap of the flimsy brown envelope--it had +been caught only on one side; got up, went into the hall, laid the +dispatch on the table, came back to the library, and fainted dead away. + +No one heard her fall, so no one came to help her--except her little +dog, scrabbling stiffly out of his basket, and coming to crouch, +whining, against her shoulder. It was only a minute before her eyelids +flickered open;--closed--opened again. After a while she tried to rise, +clutching with one hand at the rung of a chair, and with the other +trying to prop herself up; but her head swam, and she sank back. She lay +still for a minute; then realized that if Maurice came in and found her +there on the floor, he would know that she had read the telegram.... So +again she tried to pull herself up; caught at the edge of his desk, +turned sick, saw everything black; tried again; then, slowly, the room +whirling about her, got into a chair and lay back, crumpled up, blindly +dizzy, and conscious of only one thing: she must get upstairs to her own +room before Edith and Maurice came home! She didn't know why she wanted +to do this; she was even a little surprised at herself, as she had been +surprised when, that night on the mountain, "to save Maurice," she had, +instinctively, done one sensible thing after another. So now she knew +that, when he came home with Edith, Maurice must be saved "a scene." He +must not discover, yet, that ... _she knew_. + +For of course now, it was knowledge, not suspicion: Maurice was summoned +to see a sick boy called Jacky; Jacky was the child of L. D.; and L. D. +was the Dale woman, who had lived in the house on Maple Street. Her +shameful suspicion had not been shameful! It had been the recognition of +a fact.... Clutching at supporting chairs, Eleanor, somehow, got out of +the library; saw that brown envelope in the hall, stopped (holding with +one hand to the table), to make sure it was sealed. Bingo, following +her, whimpered to be lifted and carried upstairs, but she didn't notice +him. She just clung to the banisters and toiled up to her room. She +pushed open her door and looked at her bed, desiring it so passionately +that it seemed to her she couldn't live to reach it--to fall into it, as +one might fall into the grave, enamored with death. Down in the hall the +little dog cried. She didn't faint again. She just lay there, without +feeling, or suffering. After a while she heard the front door open and +close; heard Edith's voice: "Hullo, Eleanor! Where are you? We've had a +bully time!" Heard Maurice: "Headache, Nelly? Too ba--" Then silence; he +must have seen the envelope--picked it up--read it.... That was why he +didn't finish that word--so hideously exact!--"_bad_." After a while he +came tiptoeing into the room. + +"Headache? Sorry. Anything I can do?" + +"No." + +He did not urge; he was too engrossed in the shock of an escaped +catastrophe; _suppose Eleanor had read that dispatch_! Good God! Was +Lily mad? He must go and see her, quick, and say--He grew so angry as he +thought of what he was going to say that he did not hear Edith's +friendly comments on "poor dear Eleanor." + +"Edith," he said, "that--that dispatch: I've got to see somebody on +business. Awfully sorry to take you out to Fern Hill before supper, but +I'm afraid I've got to rush off--" + +"'Course! But don't bother to take me home. I can go by myself." + +"No. It's all right. I have time; but I've got to go right off. I hate +to drag you away before supper--" + +"That's of no consequence!" she said, but she gave Maurice a swift look. +What was the matter with him? His forehead, under that thatch of light +hair, was so lined, and his lips were set in such a harsh line, that he +looked actually _old_! Edith sobered into real anxiety. "I wish," she +said, "that you wouldn't go out to Fern Hill; you'll have to come all +the way back to town for your appointment!" + +He said, "No: the--the appointment is on that side of the river." On the +trolley there was no more conversation than there might have been if +Eleanor had been present. At Edith's door he said, "'Night--" + +But as he turned away, she called to him, "Maurice!" Then ran down the +steps and put her hand on his arm: "Maurice, look here; is there +anything I can do? You're bothered!" + +He gave a grunt of laughter. "To be exact, Edith, I'm damned bothered. +I've been several kinds of a fool." + +"You haven't! And it wouldn't make any difference if you had. Maurice, +you're a perfect _lamb_! I won't have you call yourself names! Why"--her +eyes were passionate with tenderness, but she laughed--"I used to call +you 'Sir Walter Raleigh,' you know, because you're great, simply great! +Maurice, I bet on you every time! Do tell me what's the matter? Maybe I +can help. Father says I have lots of sense." + +Maurice shook his head. "You do have sense! I wish I had half as much. +No, Skeezics; there's nothing anybody can do. I pay as I go. But you're +the dearest girl on earth!" + +She caught at his hand, flung her arm around his shoulder, and kissed +him: "You are the dearest boy on earth!" Before he could get his breath +to reply, she flew into the house--flew upstairs--flew into her own +room, and banged the door shut. "_Maurice is unhappy!_" she said. The +tears started, and she stamped her foot. "I can't _bear_ it! Old darling +Maurice--what makes him unhappy? I could kill anybody that hurts +Maurice!" She began to take off her hat, her fingers trembling--then +stopped and frowned: "I believe Eleanor's been nasty to him? I'd like to +choke her!" Suddenly her cheeks burned; she stood still, and caught her +lower lip between her teeth; "I don't care! I'm _glad_ I did it. I--I'd +do it again! ... Darling old Maurice!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +When Jacky's father--with that honest young kiss warm upon his +cheek--reached the little "two-family" house, he saw the red sign on the +door: _Scarlet Fever_. + +"He's got it," he thought, fiercely; "but why in hell did she send for +me?--and a telegram!--to the _house_! She's mad." He was panting with +anger as he pressed the button at Lily's door; "I'll tell her I'll never +see her again, long as I live!" Furious words were on the tip of his +tongue; then she opened the door, and he was dumb. + +"Oh, Mr. Curtis--don't--don't let them take Jacky! Oh, Mr. Curtis!" She +flung herself upon him, sobbing frantically. "Don't let them--I'll kill +them if they touch Jacky! Oh, my soul and body! He'll die if they take +him--I won't let them take him--" She was shaking and stammering and +gasping. "I won't have him touched.... You got to stop them--" + +"Lily, _don't_! What's the matter?" + +"This woman downstairs 's about crazy, because she has three children. I +hope they all catch it and die and go to hell! She's shut up there with +'em in her flat. She won't put her nose outside the door! She come up +here this morning, and saw Jacky, and she said it was scarlet fever. +Seems she knew what it was, 'cause she had a boy die of it--glad he did! +And she sent--the slut!--a complaint to the Board of Health--and the +doctor, he come this afternoon, and said it was! And he said he was +going to take Jacky _to-night_!" + +Her voice made him cringe; her yellow tigress eyes blazed at him; he had +known that Lily, for all her good humor, had occasional sharp gusts of +temper, little squalls that raced over summer seas of kindliness! But +he had never seen this Lily: A ferocious, raucous Lily, madly maternal! +A Lily of the pavements.... "An' I said he wasn't going to do no such +thing! An' I said I'd stop it: I said I'd take the law to him; I said +I'd get Jacky's father: I--" + +"Good God! Lily--" + +"Oh, what do I care about _you_? I ain't goin' to kill Jacky to protect +_you_! You got to stop them taking him!" She clutched his arm and shook +it: "I never asked nothing of you, yet. I ask it now, and you'll _do_ +it, or I'll tell everybody in town that he's yours--" Her menacing voice +broke and failed, but her lips kept moving; those kind, efficient hands +of hers, clutching at him, were the claws of a mother beast. Maurice +took her arm and guided her into the little parlor, where a row of +hyacinths on the window sill made the air overpoweringly sweet; he sat +down beside her on the sofa. + +"Get steady, Lily, and tell me: I'll see what can be done. But there's +to be no _father_ business about it, you understand? I'm just a +'friend.'" + +So, stammering and breaking into sobs and even whispered screams, and +more outrageous abuse of her fellow tenant, she told him: It was scarlet +fever, and there were children in the house. The Board of Health, +"sicked on by that damned woman," said that Jacky must go to the +hospital--to the contagious ward. "And the doctor said he'd be better +off there; he said they could do for him better than me--me, his mother! +They're going to send a ambulance--I telegraphed you at four +o'clock--and here it is six! You _must_ have got it by five--why didn't +you come? Oh--my God, _Jacky_!" Her suffering was naked; shocking to +witness! It made Maurice forget his own dismay. + +"I was out," he began to explain, "and--" + +But she went on, beads of foam gathering in the corners of her mouth: "I +didn't telephone, for fear _she'd_ get on to it." He could see that she +was angry at her own consideration. "I'd ought to have sent for you +when he come down with it!" ... Where had he been all this time, +anyway!--and her nearly out of her head thinkin' this rotten woman +downstairs was sicking the Board o' Health on to her! "And look how I've +washed her father for her! I'll spit on him if--if--if anything happens +to Jacky. Yes, I tell you, and you mind what I say: If Jacky dies, I'll +kill her--my soul and body, I'll kill her anyway!" + +"Lily, get steady. I'll fix things for you. I'll go to the Board of +Health and see what can be done; just as--as a friend of yours, you +understand." + +From the next room came a wailing voice: "Maw--" + +"Yes, Sweety; in a minute--" She grasped Maurice's hand, clung to it, +kissed it. "Mr. Curtis, I'll never make trouble for you after this! Oh, +I'll go to New York, and live there, if you want me to. I'll do +_anything_, if you just make 'em leave Jacky! (Yes, darling Sweety, +maw's coming.) You'll do it? Oh, I knew you'd do it!" She ran out of the +room. + +He got up, beside himself with perplexity: but even as he tried to think +what on earth he could do, the doctor came. The ambulance would arrive, +he said, with bored cheerfulness, in twenty minutes. Lily, rushing from +Jacky's bedside, flew at him with set teeth, her trembling hands +gripping the white sleeve of his linen jacket. + +"This gentleman's a friend of mine," she said, jerking her head toward +Maurice; "he says you _shan't_ carry Jacky off!" + +The doctor's relief at having a man to talk to was obvious. And while +Maurice was trying to get in a word, there came another whimper from the +room where Jacky lay, red and blotched, talking brokenly to himself: +"Maw!" Lily ran to him, leaving the two men alone. + +"Thank Heaven!" the doctor said; "I'd about as soon argue with a hornet +as a mother. She's nearly crazy! I'll tell you the situation." He told +it, and Maurice listened, frowning. + +"What can be done?" he said; "I--I am only an acquaintance; I hardly +know Mrs. Dale; but she sent for me. She's frantic at the idea of the +boy being taken away from her." + +"He'll _have_ to be taken away! Besides, he'll have ten times better +care in the hospital than he could have here." + +"Can she go with him?" Maurice said. + +"Why, if she can afford to take a private room--" + +"Good heavens! money's no object; anything to keep her from doing some +wild thing!" + +"You a relation?" the doctor asked. + +"Not the slightest. I--knew her husband." + +"The thing for you to do," said the doctor, "is to hustle right out to a +telephone; call up the hospital. Get Doctor Nelson, if you can--" + +"Nelson!" + +"Yes; if not, get Baker; tell him I--" then followed concise directions; +"But try and get Nelson; he's the top man. They're frightfully crowded, +and if you fool with understrappers, you'll get turned down. I'd do it, +but I've got to stay here and see that she doesn't get perfectly crazy." + +Almost before the doctor finished his directions, Maurice was rushing +downstairs.... That next half hour was a nightmare. He ran up the +street, slippery with ice; saw over a drug store the blue sign of the +public telephone, and dashed in--to wait interminably outside the booth! +A girl in a silly hat was drawling into the transmitter. Once Maurice, +pacing frantically up and down, heard her flat laugh; then, to his +dismay, he saw her, through the glass of the door, instead of hanging up +the receiver, drop a coin into the slot.... + +"Damn! _Another_ five minutes!" + +He turned and struck his fist on the counter. "Why the devil don't you +have two booths here?" he demanded. + +The druggist, lounging against the soda-water fountain, smiled calmly: +"You can search _me_. Ask the company." + +"Can't you stop that woman? My business is important. For God's sake +pull her out!" + +"She's telephoning her beau, I guess. Who's going to stop a lady +telephoning her beau? Not me." + +The feather gave a last flirtatious jerk--and the booth was empty. + +Maurice, closing its double doors, and shutting himself into the tiny +box where the fetid air seemed to take him by the throat and the space +was so narrow he could hardly crowd his long legs into it, rushed into +another delay. Wrong number! ... When at last he got the right number +and the hospital, there were the usual deliberate questions; and the, +"I'll connect you with So-and-so's desk." Maurice, sitting with the +receiver to his ear, could feel the blood pounding in his temples. His +mind whirled with the possibilities of what Lily might say in his +absence: "She'll tell the doctor my name--" As his wire was connected, +first with one authority and then with another, each authority asked the +same question, "Are you one of the family?" And to each he gave the same +answer, "No; a friend; the doctor asked me to call you up." + +Finally came the voice of the "top man"--the voice which had spoken in +Lily's narrow hall six years ago, the voice which had joked with Edith +at the Mortons' dinner party, the voice which had burst into extravagant +guffaws under the silver poplar in his own garden--Doctor Nelson's +voice--curt, impersonal: "Who is this speaking?" + +Then Maurice's voice, disguised into a gruff treble, "A friend." + +"One of the family?" + +"No." + +Five minutes later Maurice, coming out of that horrible little booth, +the matter arranged at an expense which, later, would give Jacky's +father some bad moments, was cold from head to foot. When he reached +Lily's house the ambulance was waiting at the door. Upstairs, the doctor +said, "Well?" + +And Lily said: "Did you do it? If you didn't, I'll--" + +"I did," Maurice said. Then he asked if he could be of any further +service. + +"No; the orderly will get him downstairs. He's too heavy for Mrs. Dale +to carry. She's got her things all ready. You--" he said, smiling at +Maurice, "Mr.--? I didn't get your name. You look all in!" + +Maurice shook his head: "I'm all right. Mrs. Dale will you step in here? +I want to speak to you a minute." As Lily preceded him into the dining +room, he said, quickly, to the doctor, "I want to tell her not to worry +about money, you know." To Lily--when he closed the door--he was briefly +ruthless: "I'll pay for everything. But I just want to say, if he +dies--" + +She screamed out, "_No--no!_" + +"He won't," he said, angrily; "but if he does, you are to say his +father's dead. Do you understand? Say his name was--what did you call +it?--William?" + +"I don't know. My God! what difference does it make? Call it anything! +John." + +"Well, say his father was John Dale of New York, and he's dead. Promise +me!" + +She promised--"Honest to God!" her face was furrowed with fright. As +they went back to the doctor Maurice had a glimpse of Lily's bedroom, +where Jacky, rolled in a blanket, was vociferating that he would _not_ +be carried downstairs by the orderly. + +"Oh, Sweety," Lily entreated; "see, nice pretty gentleman! Let him carry +you?" + +"Won't," said Jacky. + +At which Maurice said, decidedly: "Behave yourself, Jacobus! I'll carry +you." + +Instantly Jacky stopped crying: "You throwed away the present I give +you," he said; "but," he conceded, "you may carry me." + +The doctor objected. "It isn't safe--" + +"Oh, let's get it over," Maurice said, sharply; "I shan't see any +children. It's safe enough! Anything to stop this scene!" + +The bothered doctor half consented, and Maurice lifted Jacky, very +gently; as he did so, the little fellow somehow squirmed a hand out of +the infolding blanket, and made a hot clutch for his father's ear; he +gripped it so firmly that, in spite of Maurice's wincing expostulation, +he pulled the big blond head over sidewise until it rested on his own +little head. That burning grip held Maurice prisoner all the way +downstairs; it chained him to the child until they reached the street. +There the clutch relaxed, but for one poignant moment, as Maurice lifted +Jacky into the ambulance, father and son looked into each other's eyes, +and Maurice said--the words suddenly tumbling from his lips: + +"Now, my little Jacky, you'll be good, won't you?" Then the ambulance +rolled softly away, and he stood on the curbstone and felt his heart +swelling in his throat: "Why did I say '_my_'?" As he walked home he +tried to explain the possessing word away: "Of course I'd say 'my' to +any child; it didn't mean anything! But suppose the orderly had heard +me?" Even while he thus denied the Holy Spirit within him, he was +feeling again that hot, ridiculous tug on his ear. "_I_ was the only one +who could manage him," he thought.... "Of course what I said didn't mean +anything." + +He stopped on the bridge and looked down into the water--black and +swift and smooth between floating cakes of ice. Now and then a star +glimmered on a slipping ripple; on the iron bridge farther up the +river a row of lights were strung like a necklace across the empty +darkness.... Somewhere, in the maze of streets at one end of the bridge, +was Eleanor, lying in bed with a desperate headache. Somewhere, in the +maze of streets at the other end of the bridge, was Lily, taking "his" +little Jacky to the hospital. Somewhere, on one of the hillsides beyond +Medfield, was Edith in the schoolhouse. And Eleanor was loving him and +trusting him; and Lily was "blessing him" (so she had told him) for his +goodness; and Edith was "betting on him"! ... "I wonder if anybody was +ever as rotten as I am?" Maurice pondered. + +Then he forgot his "rottenness," and smiled. "He obeyed _me_! Lily +couldn't do a thing with him; what did he mean about the 'present'? I +believe it was that old cigar! He must have seen me pitch it into the +gutter. He wanted me to carry him; wouldn't look at that orderly! What +made him grab my ear?" + +When Maurice said that, down, down, under his rage at Lily, under his +fear of exposure, under his nauseating disgust at himself--something +stirred, something fluttered. The tremor of a moral conception: + +Paternal pride. + +"_What_ a grip!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +After a tornado comes quietness; again the sun shines, and birds sing, +and many small things look up, unhurt. It was incredible to Maurice, +eating his breakfast the next morning, reading his paper, opening his +letters, and glancing at a pale Eleanor, heavy-eyed and silent, that his +world was still the same world that it had been before he had picked up +the sealed telegram on the hall table. He asked Eleanor how she felt; +told her to take care of herself; said he'd not be at home to dinner, +and went off to his office.... He was safe! Those two minutes in the +dining room of Lily's flat, while the white-jacketed orderly was trying +to persuade the protesting Jacky to let him carry him downstairs, had +removed any immediate alarm; Lily had promised not to communicate with +Jacky's father. + +So Maurice, walking to the office, told himself that everything was all +right--but "a close call!" Then he thought of Jacky, who, at his +command, had so instantly "behaved himself"; and of that grip on his +ear; and again that pang of something he did not recognize made him +swallow hard. "Poor little beggar!" he thought: "I wonder how he is? I +wonder if he'll pull through?" He hoped he would. "Tough on Lily, if +anything happens." But his anxiety--though he did not know it--was not +entirely on Lily's account. For the first time in the child's life, +Maurice was aware of Jacky as a possession. The tornado of the night +before--the anger and fear and pity--had plowed down below the surface +of his mind, and touched that subsoil of conscious responsibility for +creation, the realization that, whether through love or through +selfishness, the man who brings a child into this terrible, squalid, +glorious world, is a creator, even as God is the Creator. So Maurice, +sitting at his desk that next day, answering a client on the telephone, +or making an appointment to go and "look at a house," was really feeling +in his heart--not love, of course, but a consciousness of his own +relation to that little flushed, suffering body out in the contagious +ward of the hospital in Medfield. "Will he pull through?" Maurice asked +himself. It was six years ago that, standing at the door of a +yellow-brick apartment house, with two fingers looped through the +strings of a box of roses, Jacky's father had said, "Perhaps it will be +born dead!" How dry his lips had been that day with the hope of death! +Now, suddenly, his lips were dry with fear that the kid wouldn't pull +through--which would be "tough on Lily." His face was stern with this +new emotion of anxiety which was gradually becoming pain; he even forgot +how scared he had been at the thought that Eleanor _might_ have opened +that telegram. "I swear, I wish I hadn't hurt his feelings about that +cigar stub!" he said. Then he remembered Eleanor: "I could wring Lily's +neck!" But Eleanor hadn't opened the telegram; and Maurice hoped Jacky +would get well--because "it would be tough on Lily" if he didn't. Thus +he dismissed his wife. So long as Lily's recklessness had not done any +harm, it was easy to dismiss her--so very far had she receded into the +dull, patiently-to-be-endured, background of life! + +The Eleanor of the next few weeks, who seemed just a little more +melancholy and silent than usual, a little more devoted to old Bingo, +did not attract his attention in any way. But when Edith came in on the +following Sunday, he had his wife sufficiently on his mind to say, in a +quick aside: + +"Edith, don't give me away on being sort of upset last Sunday night, +will you?" (As he spoke, he remembered that swift kiss. "Nice little +Skeezics!" he thought.) But he finished his sentence with perfect +matter-of-factness: "it was just a--a little personal worry. I don't +want Eleanor bothered, you understand?" + +"Of course," said Edith, gravely + +And so it was that in another month or two, with reliance upon Edith's +discretion, and satisfaction in a recovering Jacky, the track of the +tornado in Maurice's mind was quite covered up with the old, ugly, +commonplace of furtive security. In the security Maurice was conscious, +in a kindly way, that poor old Eleanor looked pretty seedy; so he +brought her some flowers once in a while; not as often as he would have +liked to, for, though he had more money now, eight weeks of a private +room in a hospital "kind o' makes a dent in your income," Maurice told +himself; "but I don't begrudge it," he thought; "I'm glad the kid got +well." + +So, after that night of terror and turmoil,--when Eleanor had +fainted--Maurice's life in his own house settled again into the old +tranquil forlornness, enlivened only by those Sunday-afternoon visits +from Edith. + +And Eleanor?... There had been some dumb days, when she moved about the +house or sat opposite Maurice at table, or exercised Bingo, like an +automaton. Sometimes she sat at her window, looking down through the +bare branches of the poplar at the still, wintry garden; the painted +table, heaped with grimy snow slowly melting in the chill March +sunshine; the dead stalks of the lilies on each side of the icy bricks +of the path; the rusty bars of the iron gate, through which, now and +then, came the glimmer, a block away, of the river--"their river"! +Sometimes for an hour her mind numbly considered these things; then +would come a fierce throb of pain: "He was all the time saying he +'couldn't afford' things; that was so he could give her money, I +suppose?" Then blank listlessness again. She did not suffer very much. +She was too stunned to suffer. She merely said to herself, vaguely, +"I'll leave him." It may have been on the third day that, when she said, +"I will leave him; he has been false to me," her mind whispered back, +very faintly, like an echo, "He has been false to himself." For just a +moment she loved him enough to think that he had sinned. _Maurice has +sinned!_ When she said that, the dismay of it made her forget herself. +She said it with horror, and after a while she added a question: "_Why_ +did he do it?" Then came beating its way up through anger and wounded +pride, and suffering love, still another question: "Was it my fault that +he did it? Did he fall in love with that frightful woman because I +failed him?" Instantly her mind sheered off from this question: "I did +everything I knew how to make him happy! I would have died to make him +happy. I adored him! How could he care for that common, ignorant woman I +saw on the porch? A woman who wasn't a lady. A--a _bad_ woman!" But yet +the question repeated itself: "Why? Why?" It demanded an answer: Why did +Maurice--high-minded, pure-hearted, overflowing with a love as +beautiful, and as perfect as Youth itself--how _could_ Maurice be drawn +to such a woman? And by and by the answer struggled to her lips, tearing +her heart as it came with dreadful pain: "He did it because I didn't +make him happy." + +Just as Maurice, recognizing the responsibility of creation, had, at the +touch of his son's little hand, felt the tremor of a moral conception, +so now Eleanor, barren so long! felt the pangs of a birth of spiritual +responsibility: "I didn't make him happy, so--Oh, my poor Maurice, it +was my fault!"... But of course this divine self-forgetfulness in +self-reproach, was as feeble as any new-born thing. When it stirred, and +uttered little elemental sounds--"my fault, my fault"--she forgot the +wrong he had done her, in seeing the wrong he had done himself.... "Oh, +my Maurice--my Maurice!" But most of the time she did not hear this +frail cry of the sense of sin! She thought entirely and angrily of +herself; she said, over and over, that she was going to leave him. She +was absorbed in hideous and poignant imaginings, based on that organic +curiosity which is experienced only by the woman who meditates upon "the +other woman." When these visions overwhelmed her, she said she wouldn't +leave him--she would hold him! She wouldn't give him up to that +frightful creature, whom he--kissed.... "Oh, my God! He _kisses_ her!" +No; she wouldn't give him up; she would just accuse him; just tell him +she knew he had been false; tell him there was no use lying about it! +Then, perhaps, say she would forgive him?... Yes; if he would promise to +throw the vile woman over, she would forgive him. She did not, of +course, reflect that forgiveness is not a thing that can be promised; it +cannot be manufactured. It comes in exact proportion as we love the +sinner more and self less. + +And forgiveness is not forgetfulness! It is more love. + +Eleanor did not know this. So, except for those occasional cooling and +divine moments of blaming herself, she scorched and shriveled in the +flames of self-love. And as usual, she was speechless. There were many +of these silent hours (which were such a matter of course to Maurice +that he never noticed them!) before she gathered herself together, and +decided that she would not leave him. She would fight! How? "Oh, I +_can't_ think!" she moaned. So those first days passed--days of impotent +determinations, which whirled and alternated, and contradicted each +other. + +Once Maurice, glancing at her over his newspaper at breakfast, +thought to himself, "She hasn't said a word since she got up! Poor +Eleanor!..." Then he remembered how he had once supposed these silences +of hers were full of things too lovely and profound for words! He +frowned, and read the sporting page, and forgot her silences, and her, +too. But he did not forget Jacky. "I'll buy the kid a ball," he was +thinking.... + +So the days passed, and each day Eleanor dredged her silences, to find +words: "What shall I say to him?" for of course she must say +_something_! She must "have it out with him," as the phrase is. +Sometimes she would decide to burst into a statement of the fact: +"Somebody called 'L. D.' has a claim upon you, because she sends for you +when 'Jacky' is sick. I am certain that 'Jacky' is your child! I am +certain that 'L.D.' is Mrs. Dale. I am certain that you don't love +me...." And he would say--Then her heart would stand still: What +_would_ he say? He would say, "I stopped loving you _because you are +old_." And to that would come her own terrible assent: "I had no right +to marry him--he was only nineteen. I had no right..." (Thus did that +new-born sense of her own complicity in Maurice's sin raise its feeble +voice!) And little by little the Voice became stronger: "I didn't make +him happy _not_ because I was old, but because I was selfish...." So, in +alternating gusts of anger and fear, and outraged pride,--and +self-forgetting horror for Maurice,--her soul began to awake. Again and +again she counted the reasons why he had not been happy, beginning with +the obvious reason, his youth and her age: But that did not explain it. +"We had no children." That did not explain it! Nor, "I wasn't a good +housekeeper"; nor, "I didn't do things with him ... I didn't skate, and +walk, and joke with him"; nor, "I didn't entertain him. Auntie always +said men must be entertained. I--I am stupid." There was no explanation +in such things; neither dullness nor inefficiency was enough to drive a +man like Maurice Curtis into dishonor or faithlessness! Then came the +real explanation--which jealousy so rarely puts into words: "_I was +selfish._" At first, this bleak truthfulness was only momentary. Almost +immediately she was swept from the noble pain of knowing that Maurice +had been false to himself; swept from the sense of her own share in that +falseness, swept back to the insult to _herself_! Back to self-love. +With this was the fear that if she accused him, if she told him that she +knew he was false to her, if she made him very angry, he would leave +her, and go and live with this woman--who had given him a child ... Yet +every morning when she got up, she would say to herself, "I'll tell him +to-day." And every night when she went to bed, "To-morrow." + +Still she did not "have it out with him." Then weeks pushed in between +her and that Sunday afternoon when the resealed telegram had been put on +the hall table. And by and by it was a month, and still she could not +speak. And after a while it was June--June, and the anniversary (which +Maurice happened to forget, and to which Eleanor's suffering love would +not permit her to refer!). By that June day, that marked nine of the +golden fifty years, Eleanor had done what many another sad and injured +woman has done--dug a grave in her heart, and buried Trust and Pride in +it; and then watched the grave night and day. Sometimes, as she watched, +her thought was: "If he would tell me the truth, even now, I would +forgive him. It is his living a lie, every day, every minute, that I +can't bear!" Then she would look at Maurice--sitting at the piano, +perhaps, playing dreamily, or standing up in front of the fireplace +filling his pipe, and poking old Bingo with his foot and telling him he +was getting too fat; "You're 'losin' your figger,' Bingo!" Eleanor, +looking and listening, would say to herself, "Is he thinking of Mrs. +Dale, _now_?" And all day long, when she was alone (watching the grave), +she would think: "Where is he _now_? Is he with her? Oh, I think I will +follow him,--and _watch_.... Was he with her last night when he said he +had gone to the theater? ... Is he lying to me when he says he has to go +away on business, and is he really with her? It's the _lying_ I can't +bear! If only he would not lie to me!... Does she call him 'Maurice'? +Perhaps she called him 'darling'?" The thought of an intimacy like +_that_, was oil on the vehement flame! + +"You look dreadfully, Eleanor," Mrs. Newbolt told her once, her pale, +protruding eyes full of real anxiety. "I'd go and see a doctor, if I +were you." + +"I'm well enough," Eleanor said, listlessly. + +"At your age," said her aunt, "you never can tell _what's goin' on +inside_! Here's a piece of candy for Bingo--he's too fat. My dear father +used to say that a man's soul and his gizzard could hold a lot of +secrets. It's the same with women. So look out for your gizzard. Here, +Bingo!" + +Eleanor was silent. She had just come from Mrs. O'Brien's, where she had +given the slowly failing Donny a happy hour, and she was tired. Mrs. +Newbolt found her alone in the garden, sitting under the shimmering +silver poplar. The lilies were just coming into bloom, and on the +age-blackened iron trellis of the veranda the wistaria had flung its +purple scarves among the thin fringes of its new leaves. The green tea +table was bare: "I'd give you a cup of tea," Eleanor said, "but Maurice +is going out to dinner, so I told Mary not to keep the fire up, just for +me." + +"Maurice goin' out to dinner! Why, it's your weddin' day! Eleanor, if I +have one virtue, it's candor: Maurice oughtn't to be out to dinner so +much--and on your anniversary, too! Of course, it's just what I expected +when you married him; but that's done, and I'm not one to keep throwin' +it up at you. If you want to hold him, _now_, you've got to keep your +figger, and set a good table. Yes, and leave the door open! Edith has a +figger. She entertains him, just the way I used to entertain your dear +uncle--by talkin'. I'd have Bingo put away, if I were you; he's too old +to be comfortable. You got to make him _want_ to sit by the fire and +knit! But here you are, sittin' by yourself, lookin' like a dead fish. A +man don't like a dead fish--unless it's cooked! I used to broil shad for +your dear uncle." For an instant she had no words to express that +culinary perfection by which she had kept the deceased Mr. Newbolt's +stomach faithful to her. "Yes, you've got to be entertainin', or else +he'll go up the chimney, and out to dinner, and forget what Day it is!" + +Eleanor's sudden pallor made her stop midway in her torrent of +frankness; it was then she said, again, really alarmed: "See a doctor! +You know," she added, jocosely; "if you die, he'll marry Edith; and you +wouldn't like that!" + +"No," Eleanor said, faintly, "I wouldn't like that." + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +When a rather shaky Jacky was discharged from the hospital, Lily +notified Maurice of his recovery and added that she had moved. + +I couldn't [Lily wrote] go back to that woman who turned me out when +Jacky was sick: so I got me a little house on Maple Street--way down at +the far end from where I was before, so you needn't worry about anybody +seeing me. My rent's higher, but there's a swell church on the next +street. I meant to move, anyway, because I found out that there was a +regular huzzy living in the next house on Ash Street, painted to beat +the band! And I don't want Jacky to see that kind. I've got five +mealers. But eggs is something fierce. I am writing these few lines to +say Jacky's well, and I hope they find you in good health. It was real +nice in you to fix that up at the hospital for me. I hope you'll come +and see us one of these days. + +Your friend, + +LILY. + +P.S.--Of course I'm sorry for her poor old father. + +Reading this, Maurice said to himself that it would be decent to go and +see Lily; which meant, though he didn't know it, that he wanted to see +Jacky. He wasn't aware of anything in the remotest degree like affection +for the child; he just had this inarticulate purpose of seeing him, +which took the form of saying that it would be "decent" to inquire about +him. However, he did not yield to this formless wish until June. Then, +on that very afternoon when Mrs. Newbolt had been so shatteringly frank +to Eleanor, he walked down to the "far end of Maple Street." And as he +walked, he suddenly remembered that it was "The Day"! "Great Scott! I +forgot it!" he thought. "Funny, Eleanor didn't remind me. Maybe she's +forgotten, too?" But he frowned at the bad taste of such an errand on +such a day, and would have turned back--but at that moment he saw what +(with an eagerness of which he was not conscious!) he had been looking +for--a tow-headed boy, who, pulling a reluctant dog along by a string +tied around his neck, was following a hand organ. And Maurice forgot his +wedding anniversary! + +He freed the half-choked puppy, and told his son what he thought. But +Jacky, glaring up at the big man who interfered with his joys, told his +father what _he_ thought: + +"If I was seven years old, I'd lick the tar out of you! But I'm six, +going on seven." + +Maurice, looking down on this miniature self, was, to his astonishment, +quite diverted. "You need a licking yourself, young man! Is your mother +at home?" + +Jacky wouldn't answer. + +Maurice took a quarter out of his pocket and held it up. "Know what that +is?" + +Jacky, advancing slowly, looked at the coin, but made no response. + +"Come back to the house and find your mother, and I'll give it to you." + +Jacky, keeping at a displeased distance behind the visitor, followed him +to his own gate, then darted into the house, yelled, "Maw!" returned, +and held out his hand. + +Maurice gave him the quarter and went into the parlor, where the south +window was full of plants, and the sunshine was all a green fragrance of +rose geraniums. When a shiningly clean, smiling Lily appeared--evidently +from the kitchen, for she was carrying a plate of hot gingerbread--she +found Maurice sitting down, his hands in his pockets, his long legs +stretched out in front of him, baiting Jacky with questions, and +chuckling at the courageous impudence of the youngster. + +"He's no fool," said Maurice to himself. "This kid is a handful!" he +told Lily ... "You're a bully cook!" + +"You bet he is!" Lily said, proudly. "Have another piece? I've got to +take some over to Ash Street for that poor old man.... Oh yes; I _was_ +kind of put out at his daughter. Wouldn't you think, if anyone was +enough of a lady to wash your father, you wouldn't go to the Board of +Health about her? But there! The old gentleman's silly, so I have to +take him some gingerbread.... Say, I must tell you something funny--he's +the cutest young one! I gave him five cents for the missionary box, and +he went and bought a jew's-harp! I had to laugh, it was so cute in him. +But I declare, sometimes I don't know what I'm going to do with him, +he's that fresh!" + +"Spank him," Maurice advised. + +Lily looked annoyed; "He suits me--and he belongs to me." + +"Of course he does! You needn't think that I--" he paused; something +would not let him finish those denying words: "that _I_--want him." +Jacky, standing with stocky legs wide apart, his hands behind him, his +fearless blue eyes looking right into Maurice's, made his father's heart +quicken. Jacky was Lily's, of course, but-- + +So they looked at each other--the big, blond, handsome father and the +little son--and Jacky said, "Mr. Curtis, does God see everything?" + +"Why, yes," Maurice said, rather confused, "He does; Jacky. So," he +ended, with proper solemnity, "you must be a very good boy." + +"Why," said Jacky, "will He get one in on me if I ain't?" + +"So I'm told," said Maurice. + +"Does He see _everything_?" Jacky pressed, frowning; and Maurice said: + +"Yes, sir! Everything." + +Jacky reflected and sighed. "Well," he said, "I should think He'd laugh +when he sees your shoes." + +"Why! what's the matter with my shoes?" his discomfited father said, +looking down at his feet. "My shoes are all right!" he defended himself. + +"Big," Jacky said, shyly. + +Maurice roared, crushed a geranium leaf in his hand, and asked his son +what he was going to be when he grew up; "Theology seems to be your long +suit, Jacobus. Better go into the Church." + +Jacky shook his head. "I'm going to be a enginair. Or a robber." + +"I'd try engineering if I were you. People don't like robbers." + +"But _I'll_ be a _nice_ robber," Jacky explained, anxiously. + +"I'll bring you a train of cars some day," Maurice said. + +"Say, 'Thank you,' Jacky," Lily instructed him. + +Again Jacky shook his head. "He 'ain't gimme the cars yet." + +Maurice was immensely amused. "He wants the goods before he signs a +receipt! I'll buy some cars for him." + +"My soul and body!" said Lily, following him to the door; "that boy gets +'round everybody! Well, what do you suppose? I go to church with him! +Ain't that rich? Me! He don't like church--though he's crazy about the +music. But I take him. And I don't have to listen to what the man says. +I just plan out the food for a week. Sometimes,"--her amber eyes were +lovely with anxiously pondering love--"sometimes I don't know but what +I'll make a preacher of him? Some preachers marry money, and get real +gentlemanly. And then again I think I'd rather have him a clubman. But, +anyway, I'm savin' up every last cent to educate him!" + +"He's worth it," Maurice said, and there was pride in his voice; "yes, +we must--I mean, you must educate him." + +On his way home, stopping to buy some flowers for his wife, Maurice +found himself thinking of Jacky as a boy ... as a mighty bright boy, who +must be educated. As--_his_ boy! + +"You forgot the day," he challenged Eleanor, good-naturedly, when he +handed her the violets. + +She said, briefly, "No; I hadn't forgotten." + +The pain in her worn face made him wince.... But he was able to forget +it in thinking of the toys he had ordered for Jacky on the way home. +"I'd like to see him playing with them," he said to himself, reflecting +upon the track, and the engine, and the very expensive wonder of a tiny +snow plow. But he didn't yield to the impulse to see the boy for a +month. For one thing, he was afraid to. The recollection of that day +when Lily's doorstep had been the edge of a volcano still made him +shiver; and as Eleanor had briefly but definitely refused to take her +usual "vacation" at Green Hill without him, there was no time when he +could be sure that she would not wander out to Medfield! So it was not +until one August afternoon, when he knew that she was going to a +concert, that he went to Maple Street. But first he bought a top;--and +just as he was leaving the office, he went back and rummaged in a +pigeonhole in his desk and found a tiny gilt hatchet; "it will amuse +him," he thought, cynically. + +Lily was not at home; but Jacky was sitting on the back doorstep, +twanging his jew's-harp. He was shy at first, and tongue-tied; then +wildly excited on learning that there were "presents" in Mr. Curtis's +pocket. When the top was produced, he dropped his jew's-harp to watch it +spin on a string held between Maurice's hands; then he devoted himself +to the hatchet, and chopped his father's knee, energetically. "Pity +there's no cherry tree round," said Maurice; "Look here, Jacobus, I want +you always to tell the truth. Understand?" + +"Huh?" said Jacky. However, under the spell of his gifts he became quite +conversational; he said that one of these here automobiles drooled a lot +of oil. "An' it ran into the gutter. An' say, Mr. Curtis, I saw a +rainbow in a puddle. An' say, it was handsome." After that he got out +his locomotive and its cars. Maurice mended a broken switch for him, and +then they laid the tracks on the kitchen floor, and the big father and +the little son pushed the train under a table; that was a roundhouse, +Maurice told Jacky. ("Why don't they have a square house?" Jacky said); +and beneath the lounge--which was a tunnel, the bigger boy announced +("What is a tunnel?" said Jacky)--and over Lily's ironing board +stretched between two stools; "That's a trestle." ("What grows +trestles?" Jacky demanded.) Exercise, and a bombardment of questions, +brought the perspiration out on Maurice's forehead. He took off his +coat, and arranged the tracks so that the switches would stop derailing +trains. In the midst of it the door opened, and Jacky said, sighing, +"Maw." + +Lily came in, smiling and good-natured, and very red-faced with the +fatigue of carrying a hideous leprous-leaved begonia she had bought; but +when she saw the intimacy of the railroad, she frowned. "He'll wear out +his pants, crawling round that way," she said, sharply. "Now, you get +up, Jacky, and don't be bothering Mr. Curtis." + +"He brung me two presents. I like presents. Mr. Curtis, does God eat +stars?" + +"God doesn't eat," Maurice said, amused; "I'd say 'brought,' instead of +'brung,' if I were you." + +"Hasn't He got any mouth?" Jacky said, appalled. + +"Well, no," Maurice began (entering that path of unanswerable questions +in which all parents are ordained to walk); "You see, God--why, God, He +hasn't any mouth. He--" + +"Has He got a beak?" Jacky said, intensely interested. + +"Lily, for Heaven's sake," Maurice implored, "doesn't he _ever_ stop?" + +"Never," said Lily, resignedly, "except when he's asleep. And nobody can +answer him. But I wish he'd let up on God. I tell him whatever pops into +my head. When it comes to God, I guess one thing 's as true as another. +Anyway, nobody can prove it ain't." + +Just as Maurice was going away, his theological son detained him by a +little clutch at his coat. "I'll give you a present next time you come," +Jacky said, shyly. + +Even the hope of a present did not lure Maurice out to Maple Street very +soon. But it was self-preservation, as well as fear of discovery, which +kept him away. "If I saw much of him I might--well, get kind of fond of +the little beggar." + +The same thought may have occurred to Lily; at any rate, when, four +weeks later, Jacky's father came again; she didn't welcome him in +quite her old, sweet, hospitable way; but Jacky welcomed him!... Jacky +knew his mother as his slave; he showed her an absent-minded affection +when he wanted to get anything out of her; but he knew Mr. Curtis as +"The Man"--the man who "ordered him round," to be sure, but who +gave him presents and who,--Jacky boasted to some of his gutter +companions,--"could spit two feet farther than the p'leesman." + +"Aw, how do you know?" the other boys scoffed. + +Jacky, evading the little matter of evidence, said, haughtily, "I +_know_." + +When "The Man" declared that next fall Jacky was to go to school, +_regularly_, and not according to his own sweet will, Jacky waited until +he was alone with his mother to kick and scream and say he wouldn't. +Lily slapped him, and said, "Mr. Curtis will give you a present if +you're on time every morning!" + +She told Maurice to what she had committed him: "You see, I'm bound to +educate him, and make a gentleman of him, so he can have an automobile, +and marry a society girl. No chippy is going to get Jacky--smoking +cigarettes, and saying 'La! La!' to any man that comes along. I hate +those cheap girls. Look at the paint on 'em. I don't see how they have +the face to show themselves on the street! Well, _I_ can't make him +prompt at school; but he'll be Johnny-on-the-spot if you say so. My soul +and body, he'll do anything for you! He's saved up all his prayer money +and bought a lot of chewing gum for you." + +"Great Scott!" said Maurice, appalled at the experimental obligations +which his son's gift might involve. + +"So I told him that next winter you'd give him a box of candy every +Saturday if he was on time all the week. I ain't asking you to go to +any expense," she pleaded; "I'll buy the candy. But you promise him--" + +"I'll promise him a spanking if he's _not_ on time, once," Maurice +retorted; "for Heaven's sake, Lily, let up on spoiling him!" + +At which Lily said: "He's my boy! I guess I know how to bring him up!" + +Maurice, the next morning, looking across his breakfast table at Eleanor +and remembering this remark, said to himself: "Lily needn't worry; I +don't want him--and I couldn't have him if I did! But what _is_ going to +become of him?" + +His new, slowly awakening sense of responsibility expressed itself in +this unanswerable question, which irritated his mind as a splinter might +have irritated his flesh. He thought of it constantly--thought of it +when Eleanor sang (with a slurred note once or twice), "O sweet, O sweet +content!" Thought of it when his conscience reminded him that he must +have tea with her in the garden under the poplar on Sunday afternoons. +Thought of it when he and she went up to the Houghtons', to spend Labor +Day (she would not go without him!). Perhaps the thing that gave him +some moments of forgetfulness was a quite different irritation which he +felt when, on reaching Green Hill, he discovered that John Bennett, too, +was spending Labor Day in the mountains. Johnny had come he said, to see +his father.... "I wouldn't have known it if he hadn't mentioned it!" +said Doctor Bennett; for, Johnny practically lived at the Houghtons', +where Edith was so painstakingly kind to him that he was a good deal +discouraged; but the two families made pleasing deductions! Mary +Houghton intimated as much to Maurice. + +"What!" he said. "Are they engaged?" + +"Well, no; not _yet_." + +There was a little pause; then Maurice (this was one of the moments when +he forgot Jacky's future!) said, with great heartiness, "Old John's in +luck!" He and Mrs. Houghton were sitting on the porch in that somnolent +hour after dinner, before she went upstairs to take a nap, and Maurice +should go over to the Bennetts' for singles with Johnny; Eleanor was +resting. Out on the lawn in the breezy sun and shadow under the tulip +tree, Edith, fresh from a shampoo, was reading. Now and then she tossed +her head like a colt, to make her fluffy hair blow about in a glittering +brown nimbus. + +Maurice got up and sauntered over to her. "Coming to see me wallop +Johnny?" + +"Maybe; if my horrid old hair ever dries." + +Maurice looked at the "horrid old hair," and wished he could put out his +hand and touch it. He was faintly surprised at himself that he didn't do +it! "How mad I used to make her when I pulled her hair!" Now, he +couldn't even put a finger on it. He remembered the night of Lily's +distracted telegram, when he had taken Edith to Fern Hill, and she had +"bet on him," and had been again, just for an instant, so entirely the +"little girl" of their old frank past, that she had _kissed him_! "So, +why can't I touch her hair, now?" he pondered; "we are just like brother +and sister." But he knew he couldn't. Aloud, he said, "Don't be lazy, +Skeezics," and lounged off toward Doctor Bennett's. His face was heavy. + +At the doctor's, John, sitting on a gate post, waiting for him, yelled, +derisively: "You're late! 'Fraid of getting walloped? Where's Buster?" + +"She's forgotten all about you. Get busy!" Maurice commanded. + +They played, neither of them with much zest, and both of them with +glances toward the road. The walloping was fairly divided; but it was +Maurice who gave out first, and said he had to go home. ("Eleanor'll be +hunting for me, the first thing I know," he thought.) + +"Tell Edith I'll come over to-night," Johnny called after him. + +"I'm not carrying _billets-doux_," Maurice retorted. "I suppose," he +thought, listlessly, "it will be a short engagement." He went home by +the path through the woods, and halfway back Edith met him--the shining +hair dried, but inclined to tumble over her ears, so that her hat +slipped about on her head. She said: + +"Johnny lick you?" + +"Johnny? No! He's not up to it!" They both grinned, and Maurice sat down +on a wayside log to put a knot in a broken shoestring. Edith sat down, +too, trying to keep her hat on, and cursing (she said) the unreliability +of her hair. The shoestring mended, Maurice batted a tall fern with his +racket. + +"Eleanor's sort of forlorn, Maurice?" Edith said. "Generally is." He +slashed at the fern, and she heard him sigh. "That time she dragged me +down the mountain took it out of her." + +Edith nodded; then she said, with her straight look: "You're a perfect +lamb, Maurice! You are awfully"--she wanted to say "patient," but there +was an implication in that; so she said, lamely--"nice to Eleanor." + +"The Lord knows I ought to be!" he said, cynically. + +"Yes; she just about killed herself to save you," Edith agreed. + +"Oh, not because of that!" + +The misery in his voice startled her; she said, quickly, "How do you +mean, Maurice? I don't understand." + +"I ought to be 'nice' to her." + +"But you are! You are!" + +"I'm not." + +"Maurice, I'm awfully fond of Eleanor; you won't think I'm finding +fault, or anything? But sometimes, when she doesn't feel very well, +she--you--I mean, you really _are_ a lamb, Maurice!" + +Edith was twenty that summer--a strong, gay creature; but her old, +ridiculous, incorrigible candor (and that honest kiss in the darkness!) +made her still a child to Maurice.... Yet Johnny Bennett was going to +marry her!... Maurice rested his chin on his left fist, and batted the +fern; then he said: + +"I've been infernally mean to Eleanor. It's little enough to be 'nice,' +as you call it, now." + +She flew to his defense. "Talk sense! You never did a mean thing in your +life." + +His shrug fired her into a frankness which she regretted the next +minute. "Maurice, you are too good for Eleanor--or anybody," she ended, +hastily. + +He gave her a look of entreaty for understanding--though he knew, he +thought, that in her ignorance of life she couldn't understand even if +she had been told! Yet for the mere relief of speaking, he skirted the +ugly truth: + +"I can't be too patient with her when she's forlorn, because I--I +haven't played the game with her." + +"It's up to her to forgive that!" + +"She doesn't know it." + +"Maurice! You haven't a secret from Eleanor?" + +Her dismay was like a stab. "Edith, I can't help it! It was a long time +ago--but it would upset her to know that I'd--well, failed her in any +way." His face was so wrung that Edith could have cried; but she said +what she thought: + +"Secrets are horrid, Maurice. You've made a mistake." + +"A 'mistake'?" He almost laughed at the devilish humor of that little +word 'mistake,' as applied to his ruined life. "Well, yes, Edith; I made +a 'mistake,' all right." + +"Oh, I don't mean a 'mistake' as to this thing you say that Eleanor +wouldn't like," Edith said. "I mean not telling her." + +He shook his head; with that nagging thought of Jacky in the back of his +mind, it was impossible not to smile at her dogmatic ignorance. + +"Because," Edith explained, "secrets trip you into fibbing." + +"You bet they do! I'm quite an accomplished liar." + +Edith did not smile; she spoke with impatient earnestness: "That's +perfectly silly; you are not a liar! You couldn't lie to save your life, +and you know it." Maurice laughed. "Why, Maurice, don't you suppose I +know you, through and through? _I_ know what you are!--a 'perfec' gentil +knight.'" + +She laughed, and Maurice threw up his hands. + +"Bouquets," Edith conceded, grinning; "but I won't hand out any more, so +you needn't fish! Well, I don't know what on earth you've done, and I +don't care; and you can't tell me, of course! But one thing I do know; +it isn't fair to Eleanor not to tell her, because--" + +"My dear child--" + +"Because she wouldn't really mind, she's so awfully devoted to you. Oh, +Maurice, do tell Eleanor!" Then, even as she spoke, she was frightened; +what was this thing that he did not dare to tell Eleanor?--"or me?" +Edith thought. It couldn't be that Maurice--was not good? Edith quailed +at herself. She had a quick impulse to say, "Forgive me, Maurice, for +even thinking of such a horrid thing!" But all she said, aloud, briefly, +was, "As I see it, telling Eleanor would be playing the game." + +Maurice put his hand over her fist, clenched with conviction on her +knee. "Skeezics," he said, "you are the soundest thing the Lord ever +made! As it happens, it's a thing I can't talk about--to anybody. But +I'll never forget this, Edith. And ... dear, I'm glad you're going to be +happy; you deserve the best man on earth, and old Johnny comes mighty +darned near being the best!" + +Edith, frowning, rose abruptly. "Please don't talk that way. I hate that +sort of talk! Johnny is my friend; that's all. So, please never--" + +"I won't," Maurice said, meekly; but some swift exultation made him add +to himself, "Poor old Johnny!" His face was radiant. + +As for Edith, she hardly spoke all the way back to the house. But not +because of "poor old Johnny"! She was absorbed by that intuition--which +she did not, she told herself, believe. Yet it clamored in her mind: +Maurice had done something wrong. Something so wrong, that he couldn't +speak of it, even to her! Then it must be--? "No! _that's_ impossible!" +But with this recoil from a disgusting impossibility, came an upsurge of +something she had never felt in her life--something not unlike that +emotion she had once called Bingoism--a resentful consciousness that +Maurice had not been as completely and confidentially her friend as she +was his! + +But Edith hadn't a mean fiber in her! Instantly, on the heels of that +small pain came a greater and nobler pain: "I can't bear it if he has +done anything wrong! But if he has, it's some wicked woman's fault." As +she said that, anger at an injury done to Maurice made her almost forget +that first virginal repulsion--and made her entirely forget that +fleeting pain of knowing that she had not meant as much to him as he +meant to her! "But he _hasn't_ done anything wrong," she insisted; "he +wouldn't look at a horrid? woman!" + +"For Heaven's sake, Edith," Maurice remonstrated; "this isn't any +Marathon! Go slow. I'm not in any hurry to get home." + +"I am," Edith said, briefly. She was in a great hurry! She wanted to be +alone, and argue to herself that she had been guilty of a dreadful +disloyalty to him.... "Maurice? Why! He would be the last man in the +world to--to do _that_,--darling old Maurice! He has simply had a crush +on somebody, and likes her better than he likes Eleanor--or me; but +_that's_ nothing. Eleanor deserves it; and very likely I do, too! But +he's so frightfully honorable about Eleanor--he's a perfect crank on +honor!--that he blames himself for even that." By this time the +possibility that the unknown somebody was "horrid" had become +unthinkable; she was probably terribly attractive, and Maurice had a +crush on ... "though, of course, she can't be really nice," Edith +thought; "Maurice simply doesn't see through her. Boys are so stupid! +They don't know girls," Again there was a Bingo moment of hot dislike +for the "girl," whoever she was!--and she walked faster and faster. + +Maurice, striding along beside her, was thinking of the irony of the +"bouquet" she had thrown at him, and the innocence of that "Tell +Eleanor"! "What a child she is still! And she's not in love with +Johnny--" He didn't understand his exhilaration when he said that, but, +except when he reproached her for tearing ahead, it kept him silent... + +Supper was ready when they got home, so Edith had no chance to be +solitary, and after supper Johnny Bennett dropped in. When he took his +reluctant departure ("Confound him!" Maurice thought, impatiently, "he +has on his sitting breeches to-night!") Maurice told Edith to come into +the garden with him, and listen to the evening primroses; "They 'blossom +with a silken burst of sound'--they _do_!" he insisted, for she jeered +at the word "listen." + +"They don't!" she said, and ran down the steps, flitting ahead of him in +the dusk like a white moth. In their preoccupation, they neither of them +looked at Eleanor; sitting silently on the porch between Mr. and Mrs. +Houghton. They went, between the box hedges, to the primrose border, and +Maurice quoted: + +"Silent they stood. +Hand clasped in hand, in breathless hush around! +And saw her shyly doff her soft green hood, +And blossom--with a silken burst of sound! + +"Let's clasp hands," Maurice suggested. + +"No, thank you," said Edith. And so they watched and listened. A tightly +twisted bud loosened half a petal--then another half--and another--until +it was all a shimmering whorl of petals, each caught at one side to the +honeyed crosspiece of the pistil; then: "_There!_" said Maurice. "Did +you hear it?"--all the silken disks were loose, and the flower cup, +silver-gilt, spilled its fragrance into the stillness! + +"It was the dream of a sound," she admitted + +Her voice was a dream sound, too, he thought; a wordless tenderness for +her flooded his mind, as the perfume of the primroses flooded the night. +It seemed as if the lovely ignorance of her was itself a perfume! "'Tell +Eleanor'! She doesn't know the wickedness of the world, and I don't want +her to." He put his hand on her shoulder in the old, brotherly way--but +drew it back as if something had burned him! That recoil should have +revealed things to him, but it didn't. So far as his own consciousness +went, he was too intent on what he called "the square deal" for Eleanor, +to know what had happened to him; all he knew was that Edith, all of a +sudden, was grown up! Her childishness was gone. He mustn't even put his +hand on her shoulder! He had an uneasy moment of wondering--"Girls are +so darned knowing, nowadays!"--whether she might be suspicious as to +what that secret was, which she had advised him to "tell Eleanor"? But +that was only for a moment; "Edith's not that kind of a girl. And, +anyway, she'd never think of such a thing of me--which makes me all the +more rotten!" So he clutched at Edith's undeserved faith in him, and +said, "She'll never think of _that_." Still, she was grown up ... and he +mustn't touch her. (This was one of the times when he was not worrying +about Jacky!) + +Edith, talking animatedly of primroses, had her absorbing thoughts, too; +they were nothing but furious denial! "Maurice--horrid? Never!" Then, on +the very breath of "Never," came again the insistent reminder: "But he +could tell _me_ anything, except--" So, thinking of just one thing, and +talking of many other things, she walked up and down the primrose path +with Maurice. They neither of them wanted to go back to the three older +people: the father and mother--and wife. + +Eleanor, on the porch, strained her eyes into the dusk; now and then she +caught a glimmer of the dim whiteness of Edith's skirt, or heard +Maurice's voice. She was suffering so that by and by she said, briefly, +to her hosts--her trembling with unshed tears--"Good night," and went +upstairs, alone--an old, crying woman. Eleanor had been unreasonable +many times; but this time she was not unreasonable! That night anyone +could have seen that she was, to Maurice, as nonexistent as any other +elderly woman might have been. The Houghtons saw it, and when she went +into the house Mary Houghton said, with distress: + +"She suffers!" + +Her husband nodded, and said he wished he was asleep. "Why," he +demanded, "are women greater fools about this business than men? Poor +Maurice ventures to talk to Edith of 'shoes and ships and sealing +wax,'--and Eleanor weeps! Why are there more jealous women than men?" + +"Because," Mary Houghton said, dryly, "more men give cause for jealousy +than women." + +"_Touché! Touché!_" he conceded; then added, quickly, "But Maurice isn't +giving any cause." + +"Well, I'm not so sure," she said. + +Up in her own room, Eleanor, sitting in the dark by the open window, +stared out into the leafy silence of the night. Once, down in the +garden, Maurice laughed;--and she struck her clenched hand on her +forehead: + +"I can't bear it!" she said, gaspingly, aloud; "I can't bear it--_she +interests him_!" His pleasure in Edith's mind was a more scorching pain +to her than the thought of Lily's body.... + +Later, when Maurice and Edith came up from the garden darkness, they +found a deserted porch. "Let's talk," he said, eagerly. + +Edith shook her head. "Too sleepy," she said, and ran upstairs. He +called after her, "Quitter!" But it provoked no retort, and he would +have gone back to walk up and down alone, by the primroses, and worry +over Jacky's future, if a melancholy voice had not come from the window +of their room: "Maurice.... It's twelve o'clock." And he followed Edith +indoors.... + +Edith had been sharply anxious to be by herself. She could not sit on +the porch with Maurice, and not burst out and tell him--what? Tell him +that nothing he had done could make the slightest difference to her! "He +has probably met some awfully nice girl and likes her--a good deal. As +for there being anything wrong, I don't believe it! That would be +horrible. I'm a beast to have thought of such a thing!" She decided to +put it out of her mind, and went to her desk, saying, "I'll straighten +out my accounts." + +She began, resolutely; added up one column, and subtracted the total +from another; said: "Gosh! I'm out thirty dollars!" nibbled the end of +her pen, and reflected that she would have to work on her father's +sympathies;--then, suddenly, her pen still in her hand, she sat +motionless. + +"Even if there _was_ anything--bad, I'd forgive him. He's a lamb!" But +as she spoke, childishness fell away--she was a deeply distressed woman. +Maurice was suffering. And she knew, in spite of her assertions to the +contrary, that it wasn't because of any slight thing; any "crush" on a +girl--nice or otherwise! He was suffering because he had done wrong--and +she couldn't tear downstairs and say: "Maurice, never mind! I love you +just as much; I don't care what you've done!" Why couldn't she say that? +Why couldn't she go now, and sit on the porch steps beside him, and +say--anything? She got up and began to walk about the room; her heart +was beating smotheringly. "Why shouldn't I tell him I love him so that +I'd forgive--_anything_? He knows I've always loved him!--next to father +and mother. Why can't I tell him so, now?" Then something in her breast, +beating like wings, made her know why she couldn't tell him! + +"I love him; that's why." + +After a while she said: "There's nothing wrong in it. I have a right to +love him! He'll never know. How funny that I never knew--until to-night! +Yet I've felt this way for ever so long. I think since that time at Fern +Hill, when he was so bothered and wouldn't tell me what was the matter." +Yes; it was strange that now, when some stabbing instinct had made her +know that Maurice was not her "perfec' gentil knight," that same +instinct should make her know that she loved him!... Not with the old +love; not with the love that could overflow into words, the love that +had kissed him when he had been "bothered"! "I can never kiss him +again," she thought. She did not love him, now, "next to father and +mother--dear darlings!" And when she said that, Edith knew that the +"darlings" were of her past. "I love them next to Maurice," she thought, +smiling faintly. "Well, he will never know it! Nobody will ever know +it.... I'll just keep on loving him as long as I live." She had no doubt +about that; and she did not drop into the self-consciousness of saying, +"I am wronging Eleanor." That, to Edith, would not have been sense. She +knew that she was not "wronging" anyone. As for the unknown girl, who, +perhaps, had "wronged" Eleanor, and about whom, now, Maurice was so +ashamed and so repentant--she was of no consequence anyhow. "Of course +she is bad," Edith thought, "and the whole thing was her fault!" But it +was in the past; he had said so. "He said it was long ago. If," she +thought, "he did run crooked, why, I'm sorry for poor Eleanor; and he +ought to tell her; there's no question about _that_! It's wrong not to +tell her. And of course he couldn't tell me. That wouldn't be square to +Eleanor!... But I hate to have him so unhappy.... No; it's right for him +to be unhappy. He ought to be! It would be dreadful if he wasn't. But, +somehow, the thing itself doesn't seem to touch me. I love him. I am +going to love him all I want to! But no one will ever know it." + +By and by she knelt down and prayed, just one word: _"Maurice."_ She was +not unhappy. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + +During the next two days at Green Hill, Eleanor's dislike of Edith had +no chance to break into silent flames, for the girl was so quiet that +not even Eleanor could see anything in her behavior to Maurice to +criticize. It was Maurice who did the criticizing! + +"Edith, come down into the garden; I want to read something to you." + +"Can't. Have to write letters." + +"Edith, if you'll come into the studio I'll play you something I've +patched up." + +"I'm a heathen about music. Let's sit with Eleanor." + +"Skeezics, what's the matter with you? Why won't you come and walk? +You're getting lazy in your old age!" + +"Busy," Edith said, vaguely. + +At this point Maurice insisted, and Edith sneaked out to the back entry +and telephoned Johnny Bennett: "Come over, lazybones, and take some +exercise!" + +John came, with leaps and bounds, so to speak, and Maurice said, +grumpily: + +"What do you lug Johnny in for?" + +So, during the rest of her visit (with John Bennett as Maurice's +chaperon!) Eleanor merely ached with dislike of Edith; but, even so, she +had the small relief of not having to say to herself: "Is he seeing Mrs. +Dale, now? ... Did he go to her house yesterday?" Of course, as soon as +she went back to Mercer those silent questions began again; and her +audible question nagged Maurice whenever he was in the house: "Did you +go to the theater last night? ... Yes? _Did you go alone?_ ... Will you +be home to-night to dinner? ... No? _Where are you going?_" + +Maurice, answering with bored patience, thought, with tender amusement, +of Edith's advice, "Tell Eleanor." How little she knew! + +He did not see Edith very often that next winter, "which is just as +well," he thought. But his analysis stopped there; he did not ask +himself why it was just as well. She made flying visits to Mercer, for +shopping or luncheons, so he had glimpses of her, and whenever he saw +her he was conscious of a little wistful change in her, for she was shy +with him--_Edith_, shy!--and much gentler. When they discussed the +Eternities or the ball game, she never pounded his arm with an energetic +and dissenting fist, nor was there ever the faintest suggestion of the +sexless "rough-house" of their old jokes! As for coming to town, she +explained that she was too busy; she had taken the burden of +housekeeping from her mother, and she was doing a good deal of hard +reading preparatory to a course of technical training in domestic +science, to which she was looking forward when she could find time for +it. But whenever she did come to Mercer, she did her duty by rushing in +to see Eleanor! Eleanor's criticisms of her, when she rushed out again, +always made Maurice silently, but deeply, irritated. The criticisms +lessened in the fall, because Eleanor had the pitiful preoccupation of +watching poor Don O'Brien fade out of the world; and when he had gone +she had to push her own misery aside while his grandmother's heart broke +into the meager tears of age upon her "Miss Eleanor's" breast. But, +besides that, she did not have the opportunity to criticize Edith, for +the Houghtons went abroad. + +So the rest of that year went dully by. To Eleanor, it was a time of +spasmodic effort to regain Maurice's love; spasmodic, because when she +had visions--hideous visions! of Maurice and the "other woman,"--then, +her aspirations to regain his love, which had been born in that agony of +recognized complicity in his faithlessness, would shrivel up in the +vehement flame of jealousy. To Maurice, it was a time of endurance; of +vague thoughts of Edith, but of no mental disloyalty to his wife. Its +only brightness lay in those rare visits to Medfield, when Jacky looked +at him like a worshiping puppy, and asked forty thousand questions which +he couldn't answer! They were very careful visits, made only when +Maurice was sure Eleanor would not be going to "look for a cook." He +always balanced his brief pleasure of an hour with his little boy by an +added gentleness to his wife--perhaps a bunch of violets, bought at the +florist's on Maple Street where Lily got her flower pots or her bulbs. +He was very lonely, and increasingly bothered about Jacky. ... "Lily +will let him go plumb to hell. But I put him on the toboggan! ... I'm +responsible for his existence," he used to think. And sometimes he +repeated the words he had spoken that night when he had felt the first +stir of fatherhood, "My little Jacky." + +He would hardly have said he loved the child; love had come so +gradually, that he had not recognized it! Yet it had come. It had been +added to those other intimations of God, which also he had not +recognized. Personal Joy on his wedding day had been the first; and the +next had come when he looked up at the heights of Law among the stars, +and then there had been the terrifying vision of the awfulness of Life, +at Jacky's birth. Now, into his soul, arid with long untruth, came this +flooding in of Love--which in itself is Life, and Joy, and the +fulfilling of Law! Or, as he had said, once, carelessly, "Call it God." + +This pursuing God, this inescapable God! was making him acutely +uncomfortable now, about Jacky. Maurice felt the discomfort, but he did +not recognize it as Salvation, or know Whose mercy sent it! He merely +did what most of us do when we suffer: he gave the credit of his pain to +the devil--not to Infinite Love. "Oh," the poor fellow thought, coming +back one day from a call at the little secret house on Maple Street, +"the devil's getting his money's worth out of me; well, I won't squeal +about _that_! But he's getting his money's worth out of my boy, too. +She's ruining him!" + +He said this once when he had been rather recklessly daring in seeing +"his boy." It was Saturday afternoon, and Jacky was free from his +detested school. Maurice had given him a new sled, and then had +"fallen," as he expressed it, to the little fellow's entreaty: "Mr. +Curtis, if you'll come up to the hill, I'll show you how she'll go!" But +before they started Maurice had a disagreeable five minutes with Lily. +She had told him, tears of laughter running down her rosy cheeks, of +some performance of Jacky's. He had asked her, she said, about his paw; +"and I said his name was Mr. George Dale, and he died ten or eleven +years ago of consumption--had to tell him something, you know! An' he +says,--he's great on arithmetic,--'Poor paw!' he says, 'how many years +was that before I was born?' I declare, I was all balled up!" Then, as +she wiped her laughing eyes, she had grown suddenly angry: "I'm going to +take him away from his new Sunday school; the teacher--it was her did +the Paul Pry act, and asked him about his father;--well, I guess she +ain't much of a lady; I never see her name in the Sunday papers;--she +came down on Jacky because he told her a 'lie'; that's what she called +it, 'a lie'! Said he'd go to hell if he told lies. I said, 'I won't have +you threatening my child!' I declare I felt like saying, 'You go to hell +yourself!' but of course I don't say things that ain't refined." + +"Well, but Lily, the little beggar must tell the truth--" + +"Mr. Curtis, Jacky didn't say anything but what you or me would say a +dozen times a day. He just told her he hadn't a library book out, when +he had. Seems he forgot to bring it back, so, 'course, he just said he +hadn't any book. Well, this teacher, she put the lie onto him. It's a +vulgar word, 'lie.' And as for hell, they say society people don't +believe there is such a place any more." + +When he and his little son walked away (Jacky dragging his magnificent +sled), Maurice was nervously anxious to counteract such views. + +"Jacobus," he said, "I'm going to tell you something: Big men never say +anything that isn't so! Do you get on to that?" (In his own mind he +added, "I'm a sweet person to tell him that!") "Promise me you'll never +say anything that isn't just exactly so," said Maurice. + +"Yes, sir," said Jacky. "Say, Mr. Curtis, have you got teeth you can +take out?" When Maurice said, rather absently, that he had not, Jacky's +dismay was pathetic. "Why, maw can do _that_," he said, reproachfully. +It was the first flaw in his idol. It took several minutes to recover +from the shock of disappointment; then he said: "Lookee here!" He paused +beside a hydrant, and with his mittened hand broke off a long icicle, +held it up and turned it about so that the sun flashed on it. "Handsome, +ain't it?" he asked, timidly. + +Maurice said yes, it was "handsome";--"but suppose you say _'isn't_ it' +instead of _'ain't_ it.' 'Ain't' is not a nice word. And remember what I +told you about telling the truth." + +"Yes, sir," said Jacky, and trudged along, pulling his sled with one +hand and carrying his icicle in the other. + +After this paternal effort, Maurice stood in the snow watching the crowd +of children--red-cheeked, shrill-voiced--sliding down Winpole Hill and +yelling and snow-balling each other as they pulled their sleds up to the +top of the slope again. It was during one of these panting tugs uphill, +that Jacky saw fit to slap a fellow coaster, a little, snub-nosed girl +with a sniffling cold in her head, and all muffled up in dirty scarves. +Instantly Maurice, striding in among the children, took his son by the +arm, and said, sharply: + +"Young man, apologize! _Quick!_ Or I'll take you home!" + +Jacky gaped. "Pol'gize?" + +"Say you're sorry! Out with it. Tell the little girl you're sorry you +hit her." + +"But I ain't," Jacky explained, anxiously; "an' you said I mustn't say +what ain't so." + +"Well, tell her you won't do it again," Maurice commanded, evading, as +perplexed fathers must, moral contradictions. + +Jacky, bewildered, said to his howling playmate, "I don't like you, but +I won't hit you again, less I have to; then I'll lick the tar out of +you!" He paused, rummaged in his pocket, produced a horrid precious +little gray lump of something, and handed it to her. "Gum," he said, +briefly. + +Maurice, taking another step into paternal wisdom, was deaf to the +statute of limitation in the apology; but walking home with the little +boy, he said to himself, "She's ruining him!" and fell into such moody +silence that he didn't even notice Jacky's obedient struggles with +"isn't." Once, a week later, as a result of this experience, he tried to +make some ethical suggestions to Lily. She was displaying her latest +triumph--a rosebush, blossoming in _February_! And Maurice, duly +admiring the glowing flower, against its background of soot-speckled +snowdrift on the window sill, began upon Jacky's morals. Lily's +good-humored face hardened. + +"Mr. Curtis, you don't need to worry about Jacky! He don't steal, and he +don't swear,--much; and he's never been pinched, and he's awful +handsome; and, my God! what more do you want? I ain't going to make his +life miserable by tellin' him to talk grammar, or do the polite act!" + +"Lily, I only mean I want him to turn out well, and he won't unless he +tells the truth--" + +"He'll turn out good. You needn't worry. Anybody's got to have sense +about telling the truth; you can't just plunk everything out! I--I +believe I'll go and live in New York." + +Instantly Maurice was silenced. "She _mustn't_ take him away!" he +thought, despairingly. + +His fear that she would do so was a constant worry.... His work in the +Weston real-estate office involved occasional business trips of a few +days, and his long hours on trains were filled with this increasing +anxiety about Jacky. "If she takes him away from Mercer, and I can't +ever see him, nothing can save him! But, damn it! what can I do?" he +would say. He tried to reassure himself by counting up Lily's good +points; her present uprightness; her honest friendliness to him; her +almost insane devotion to Jacky, and her pathetic aspiration for +respectability, which was summed up in that one word of collective +emptiness,--"Society." But immediately her bad points clamored in his +mind; her ignorance and unmorality and vulgarity. "Truth is just a +matter of expediency with her. If he gets to be a liar, I'll boot him!" +Maurice would think of these bad points until he got perfectly frantic! +His sense of wanting advice was like an ache in his mind--for there was +no one who could advise him. Then, quite unexpectedly, advice came.... + +In the fall the Houghtons got back from Europe. Maurice saw them only +between trains in Mercer, for Henry Houghton was in a great hurry to get +up to Green Hill, and Edith, too, was exercised about her trunks and the +unpacking of her treasures of reminiscence. But Mrs. Houghton said: "We +shall be coming down to do some shopping before Christmas. No! We'll +_not_ inflict ourselves upon Eleanor! We'll go to the hotel; you will +both take dinner with us." + +They came, and Maurice and Eleanor dined with them, as Mrs. Houghton had +insisted that they should; but only Mrs. Houghton accepted Eleanor's +repaying hospitality. + +"Mother has virtue enough for the family," Edith said; "I'm going to +stay here with father." + +"It will be a jewel in your crown," Henry Houghton told his Mary. + +"Why not collect jewels for your crown?" she inquired. "Henry, Maurice +looks troubled. What do you suppose is the matter?" + +"He does look seedy," he agreed; "poke about and find out what's wrong. +You can do it better if your inelegant offspring isn't around, and if +I'm not there, either. He won't open his lips to me! I think it's money. +He's carrying a pretty heavy load. But he never peeps.... I wish he +wouldn't economize on cigars, though; he offered me one yesterday, and +politeness compelled me to smoke it!" + +"'Peeps'!" said Edith; "how elegant!" + +So that was how it happened that Mary Houghton went alone to dine with +Maurice and Eleanor. But she couldn't discover, in Maurice's talk or +Eleanor's silences, any hint of financial anxiety. "So," she said to +herself, "it isn't money that worries him." When he walked back with her +to the hotel after dinner, he was thinking, "She'd know what to do about +Jacky." But of course he couldn't ask her what to do! He could never ask +anybody--except, perhaps, Mr. Houghton; and what would he, an old man, +know about bringing up a little boy? He was listening, not very closely, +to Mrs. Houghton's talk of the Custom House; but when she said, "John +Bennett met us on the dock," he was suddenly attentive. + +"Has Edith--?" he began. + +She laughed ruefully. "No. Young people are not what they were in my +day. Edith is not a bit sentimental." + +Maurice was silent. When they reached the hotel, they went upstairs into +a vast, bleak parlor, and steered their way among enormous plush +armchairs to a sofa. A few electric bulbs, glaring among the glass +prisms of a remote chandelier, made a dim light--but not too dim for +Mary Houghton to see that Maurice's face was drawn and worried; +involuntarily she said: + +"You dear boy, I wish you didn't look so careworn!" + +"I'm bothered about something," he said. + +"Your uncle Henry told me to 'poke around,' and see if you were troubled +about money?" she said, smiling. + +"Oh, not especially. I'm always more or less strapped. But money isn't +worth bothering about, really." + +"If you 'consider the stars,' you will find very few things are worth +bothering about! Except, of course, wrongdoing." + +And, to his own astonishment, he found himself saying, "I'm afraid +that's where I come in!" As he spoke, he remembered that night of the +eclipse--oh, those moon-washed depths, those stupendous serenities of +Law and Beauty which, together, are Truth! How passionately he had +desired Truth. And now Mrs. Houghton was saying "Consider the stars." +"If I could only tell her!" he thought. + +"If the wrongdoing is behind you," said Mary Houghton, "let it go." + +"It won't let me go," he said, with nervous lightness. "Though it's +behind me, all right!" + +Which made her say, gently, "Maurice, perhaps I know what troubles you?" +His start made her add, quickly: "Your uncle Henry has never betrayed +your confidence; but ... I guessed, long ago, that something had gone +wrong. I don't know how wrong--" + +"Oh, Mrs. Houghton," he said, despairingly, "awfully wrong! +Awfully--awfully wrong!" He put his elbow on his knee, and rested his +chin on his clenched fist; she was silent. Then he said: "You've always +been an angel to me. I am glad you guessed. Because--I don't know what +to do." + +"About the woman?" + +"No. The boy." + +"Oh!" she said; "a _child_!" + +Her dismay was like a blow. "But you said you had 'guessed'?" + +"I guessed that there was a woman; but I didn't know--" She put her arm +over his shoulders and kissed him. "My poor Maurice!" The tears stood in +her eyes. + +"I told you it was 'awful,'" he said, simply; "yes, it is my little boy; +I'm worried to death about him. Lily--that's her name--is perfectly all +right; she means well, and adores him, and all that; but--" Then he told +her what Jacky's mother had been and what she was now; and the +illustrations he gave of Lily's ignorance of ethical standards made Mary +Houghton cringe. "She's ruining the little fellow," he said; "he's not +mean nor a coward--I'll say that for him! But he lies whenever he feels +like it, and honesty only means not getting 'pinched.' She's awfully +ambitious for him; but her idea of success is what she calls 'Society,' +Oh, it's such a relief to speak to you, Mrs. Houghton! I haven't a soul +I can talk to." + +"Maurice, can't you get him?" Her voice was shocked. + +He almost laughed. "Wild horses wouldn't drag him from Lily!" + +She was silent before the complexity of the situation--the furtive +paternity, with its bewildered sense of responsibility, in conflict with +the passion of the dam! + +"I have to be so infernally secret," Maurice said. "If it wasn't for +that, I could train him a little, because he's fond of me," he +explained--and for a moment his face relaxed into one of his old +charming smiles. "He really is an awfully fine little beggar. I swear I +believe he's musical! And he's confoundedly clever. Why, he said--" Mrs. +Houghton could have wept with the pitifulness of it! For Maurice went +on, like any proud young father, with a story of how his little boy had +said this or done that. "But he's fresh, sometimes, and he's the kind +that, if he got fresh, ought to be licked. She can't make him mind; +but"--here the poor, shamed pride shone again in his blue eyes--"he +minds _me_!" + +Mary Houghton was silent; she tried to consider the stars, but her +dismay at a child endangered, came between her and the eternal +tranquillities. "The boy must be saved," she thought, "at any cost! It +isn't a question of Maurice's happiness; it's a question of his +_obligation_." + +"This thing of having a secret hanging round your neck is hell!" Maurice +told her. "Every minute I think--'Suppose Eleanor should find out?'" + +Mrs. Houghton put her hand on his knee. "The only way to escape from the +fear of being found out, Maurice, _is to be found out_. Get rid of the +millstone. Tell Eleanor." + +"You don't know Eleanor," he said, dryly. + +"Yes, I do. She loves you so much that she would forgive you. And with +forgiveness would come helpfulness with the little boy. The child is the +important one--not you, nor Eleanor, nor the woman. Oh, Maurice, a +child is the most precious thing in the world! You _must_ save him!" + +"Don't you suppose I want to? But, good God! I'm helpless." + +"If you tell Eleanor, you won't be 'helpless.'" + +"You don't understand. She's jealous of--of everybody." + +"Telling her will prove to her she needn't be jealous of--this person. +And the chance to do something for you would mean so much to her. She +will forgive you--Eleanor can always do a big thing! Remember the +mountain? Maurice! Let her do another great thing for you. Let her help +you save your child, by making it possible for you to be open and +aboveboard, and see him all you want to--all you _ought_ to. Oh, Maurice +dear, it would have been better, of course, if you had told Eleanor at +first. You wouldn't have had to carry this awful load for all these +years. But tell her now! Give her the chance to be generous. Let her +help you to do your duty to the little boy. Maurice, his character, and +his happiness, are your job! Just as much your job as if he had been +Eleanor's child, instead of the child of this woman. Perhaps more so, +for that reason. Don't you see that? _Tell_ Eleanor, so that you can +save him!" + +The appeal was like a bugle note. Maurice--discouraged, thwarted, +hopeless--heard it, and his heart quickened. This inverted idea of +recompense--of making up to Eleanor for having secretly robbed her, by +telling her she had been robbed!--stirred some hope in him. He did not +love his wife; he was profoundly tired of her; but suppose, now, he did +throw himself upon her generosity and give her a chance to prove that +love which was a daily fatigue to him? Mere _Truth_ would, as Mrs. +Houghton said, go far toward saving Jacky. He was silent for a long +time. Then Mary Houghton said: + +"I ought to tell you, Maurice, that Henry--who is the very best man in +the world, as well as the wisest!--doesn't agree with me about this +matter of confession. He doesn't understand women! He thinks you ought +not to tell Eleanor." + +"I know. He said so. That first night, when I told him the whole hideous +business, he said so. And I thought he was right. I'm afraid I still +think so." + +"He was wrong. Maurice, save the child! Tell Eleanor." + +"That is what Edith said." + +"_Edith!_" Mary Houghton was stupefied. + +"Oh, not about this. I only mean Edith said once, 'Don't have a secret +from Eleanor.'" + +"She was right," Edith's mother said, getting her breath. + +Then they were silent again. A distant measure of ragtime floated up +from the lobby; once, as a heavy team passed down in the street, the +chandelier swayed, and little lights flickered among the faintly +clicking prisms. Mrs. Houghton looked at him--and looked away. Maurice +was thirty-one; his face was patient and melancholy; the old crinkling +laughter rarely made gay wrinkles about his eyes, yet wrinkles were +there, and his lips were cynical. Suddenly, he turned and struck his +hand on hers: + +"I'll do it," he said.... + +Late that night Henry Houghton, listening to his Mary's story of this +talk, looked almost frightened. "Mary, it's an awful risk--Eleanor will +never stand up to it!" + +"I think she will." + +"My dear, when it comes to children, you--with your stars!--get down to +the elemental straighter than I do; I know that! And I admit that it is +terrible for Maurice's child to be scrapped, as he will be if he is +brought up by this impossible person. But as for Eleanor's helping +Maurice to save him from the scrap heap, you overlook the fact that to +tell a jealous woman that she has cause for jealousy is about as safe as +to take a lighted match into a powder magazine. There'll be an +explosion." + +"Well," she said, "suppose there is?" + +"Good heavens, Mary! Do you realize what that means? She'll leave him!" + +"I don't believe she will," his wife said, "but if she does, he can at +least see all he wants of the boy. He seems to be an unusually bright +child." + +Her husband nodded. "Yes; Nature isn't shocked at illegitimacy; and God +doesn't penalize it." + +"But _you_ do," she said, quickly, "when you won't admit that Jacky is +the crux of the whole thing! It isn't poor Maurice who ought to be +considered, nor that sad, tragic old Eleanor; nor the dreadful person in +Medfield. But just that little child--_whom Maurice has brought into the +world_." + +"Do you mean," her husband said, aghast, "that if Eleanor saw fit to +divorce him, you think he should marry this 'Lily,' so that he could get +the child?" + +She did shrink at that. "Well--" she hesitated. + +He saw his advantage, and followed it: "He couldn't get complete +possession in any other way! Unless he were legally the father, the +woman could, at any minute, carry off this--what did you say his name +was?--Jacky?--to Kamchatka, if she wanted to! Or she might very well +marry somebody else; that kind do. Then Maurice wouldn't have any finger +in the pie! No; really to get control of the child, he'd have to marry +her, which, as you yourself admit, is impossible." + +"I don't admit it." + +"_Mary!_ You must be reasonable; you know it would be shocking! So why +not keep things as they are? Why run the risk of an explosion, by +confessing to Eleanor?" + +Mary Houghton pondered, silently. + +"Kit," he said, "this is a 'condition and not a theory'; the woman +was--was common, you know. Maurice doesn't owe her anything; he has paid +the piper ten times over! Any further payment, like ruining his career +by 'making an honest woman' of her,--granting an explosion and then +Eleanor's divorcing him,--would be not only wrong, but ridiculous; which +is worse! Maurice is an able fellow; I rather expect to see him go in +for politics one of these days. Imagine this 'Lily' at the head of his +table! Or even imagine her as a fireside companion!" + +"It would be terrible," she admitted--her voice trembled--"but Jacky's +life is more important than Maurice's dinner table. And fireside +happiness is less important than the meeting of an obligation! Henry, +Maurice made a bad woman Jacky's mother; he owes _her_ nothing. But do +you mean to say that you don't think he owes the child a decent father?" + +"My darling," Henry Houghton said, tenderly, "you are really a little +crazy. You are like your stars, you so 'steadfastly pursue your +shining,' that you fail to see that, in this dark world of men, there +has to be compromise. If this impossible situation should arise--which +God forbid!--if the explosion should come, and Eleanor should leave him, +of course Maurice wouldn't marry the woman! I should consider him a +candidate for an insane asylum if he thought of such a thing. He would +simply do what he could for the boy, and that would be the end of it." + +"Oh," she said, "don't you see? It would be the _beginning_ of it!--The +beginning of an evil influence in the world; a bad little boy, growing +into a bad man--and his own father permitting it! But," she ended, with +a sudden uplifted look, "the 'situation,' as you call it, won't arise; +Eleanor will prevent it! Eleanor will save Jacky." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + +Walking home that night, with Mrs. Houghton's "tell Eleanor" ringing in +his ears, Maurice imagined a "confession," and he, too, used Mr. +Houghton's words, "'there will be an explosion!' But I'll gamble on it; +I'll tell her. I promised Mrs. Houghton I would," Then, very anxiously, +he tried to decide how he should do it; "I must choose just the right +moment," he thought. + +When, three months later, the moment came, he hardly recognized it. He +had been playing squash and had given his knee a nasty wrench; the +ensuing synovitis meant an irritable fortnight of sitting at home near +the telephone, with his leg up, fussing about office work. And when he +was not fussing he would look at Eleanor and say to himself, "How can I +tell her?" Then he would think of his boy developing into a little +joyous liar--and thief! The five cents that purchased the jew's-harp, +instead of going into the missionary box, was intensely annoying to him. +"But the lying is the worst. I can stand anything but lying!" the poor +lying father thought. It was then that Eleanor caught his eye, a +half-scared, appraising, entreating eye--and stood still, looking down +at him. + +"Maurice, you want something? What is it?" + +"Oh, Nelly!" he said; "I want--" And the thing tumbled from his lips in +six words: "I want you to forgive me." + +Eleanor put her hand to her throat; then she said, "I know, Maurice." + +Silence tingled between them. Maurice said, "You _know_?" + +She nodded. He was too stunned to ask how she knew; he only said, "I've +been a hound." + +Instantly, as though some locked and bolted door had been forced, her +heart was open to him. "Maurice! I can bear it--if only you don't lie to +me!" + +"I have lied," he said; "but I can't go on lying any more! It's been +hell. Of course you'll never forgive me." + +Instantly she was on her knees beside him, and her lips trembled against +his cheek; but she was silent. She was agonizing, not for herself, but +for him; _he had suffered_. And when that thought came, Love rose like a +wave and swept jealousy away! It was impossible for her to speak. Over +in his basket old Bingo growled. + +"It was years ago," he said, very low; "I haven't--had anything to do +with her since; but--" + +She said, gasping, "Do you ... love her still?" + +"Good God! no; I never loved her." + +"Then," she said, "I don't mind." + +His arms went about her, his head dropped on her shoulder. The little +dog, unnoticed, barked angrily. For a few minutes neither of them could +speak. To him, the unexpectedness of forgiveness was an absolute shock. +Eleanor, her cheek against his hair, wept. Happy tears! Then she +whispered: + +"There is ... a child?" + +He nodded speechlessly. + +"Maurice, I will love it--" + +He was too overcome to speak. Here she was, this irritating, foolish, +faithful woman, coming, with outstretched, forgiving arms--to rescue him +from his long deceit! + +"I have known it," she said, "for nearly two years." + +"And you never spoke of it!" + +"I couldn't." + +"I want to tell you everything, Eleanor. It was--that Dale woman." + +She pressed very close to him: "I know." + +He wondered swiftly how she knew, but he did not stop to ask; his words +rushed out; it was as if the jab of a lancet had opened a hidden wound: +"I never cared a copper for her. Never! But--it happened. I was angry +about something, and,--Oh, I'm not excusing myself. There isn't any +excuse! But I met her, and somehow--Oh, Eleanor!" + +"Maurice, ... what does she call you?" + +"Call me? What do you mean?" + +"What name?" + +"Why, 'Mr. Curtis,' of course." + +"Not 'Maurice'? Oh--I'm so glad! Go on." + +"Well, I never saw her again until she wrote to me about ... this child. +Eleanor! I tried to tell you. Do you remember? One night in the boarding +house--the night of the eclipse? I thought you'd never forgive me, but I +tried to tell you ... Oh, Star, you are wonderful!" + +It was an amazing moment; he said to himself: "Mrs. Houghton was right. +Edith was right. How I have misjudged her!" He went on, Eleanor still +kneeling beside him, sometimes holding his hand to her lips, sometimes +pressing her wet cheek against his; once her graying hair fell softly +across his eyes ... "Then," he said, "then ... the baby was born." + +"Oh, _we_ had no children!" + +His arms comforted her. "I didn't care. I have never cared. I hated the +idea of children, because of ... this child." + +"Is his name Jacky?" + +"That's what she called him. I never really noticed him, until winter +before last; then I kind of--" He paused, then rushed on; it was to be +Truth henceforward between them! "I sort of--got fond of him." He +waited, holding his breath; but there was no "explosion"! She just +pressed his hand against her breast. + +"Yes, Maurice?" + +"He was sick and she sent for me--" + +"I know. That's how I knew. The telegram came, and I--Oh," she +interrupted herself, "I wasn't prying!" She was like a dog, shrinking +before an expected blow. + +The fright in her face went to his heart; what a brute he must have been +to have made her so afraid of him! + +"It was all right to open it! I'm glad you opened it. Well, he was +pretty sick, and I had to get him into the hospital; and after that I +began to get sort of--interested in him. But now I'm worried to death, +because--" Then he told why he was worried; he told her almost with +passion!... "For he's an awfully fine little chap! But she's ruining +him." It was amazing how he was able to pour himself out to her! His +anxiety about Jacky, his irritation at Lily--yet his appreciation of +Lily; he wouldn't go back on Lily! "She wasn't bad--ever. Just unmoral." + +"I understand." + +"Oh, Eleanor, to be able to talk to you, and tell you!" So he went on +telling her: he told her of his faint, shy pride in his little son; told +her a funny speech, and she laughed. Told her Jacky had seen a rainbow +in the gutter and said it was "handsome." "He really notices Beauty!" +Told her of Lily's indignation at the Sunday-school teacher, and his own +effort to make Jacky tell the truth, "I have a tremendous influence over +him. He'll do anything for me; only, I see him so seldom that I can't +counteract poor old Lily's influence. She hasn't any idea of our way of +looking at things." + +"You must counteract her! You must see him all the time." + +"Eleanor," he said, "I have never known you!" + +He tried to lift her and hold her in his arms, but she was terrified +about his knee. + +"No! Don't move! You'll hurt your knee. Maurice, can't I see him?" + +"What! Do you really want to?" he said, amazed "Eleanor, you are +wonderful!" + +That whole evening was entire bliss--as much to Maurice as to Eleanor; +to him, it was escape from the bog of secrecy in which, soiled with +self-disgust, he had walked for nearly nine years; and with the clean +sense of touching the bedrock of Truth was an upspringing hope for his +little boy, who "noticed Beauty"! He would be able to see Jacky, and +train him, and gain his affection, and make a man of him. He had a +sudden vision of companionship. "He'll be in business with me." But +that made him smile at himself. "Well, we'll go to ball games, anyway!" + +To Eleanor, the evening was a mountain peak; from the sun-smitten +heights of a forgiveness that knew itself to be Love, and forgot that it +forgave, she looked out, and saw--not that grave where Truth and Pride +were buried, but a new heaven and a new earth; Maurice's complete +devotion. And his child,--whom she could love. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + +Those next weeks were full of plans and hopes on Eleanor's part, and +gratitude on Maurice's part. But she would not let him say that he was +grateful, or that she was generous; he had told her, of course, how Mrs. +Houghton had guessed long ago what had happened, and how she had urged +him to trust his wife's nobility--but Eleanor would not let him call her +"noble"; "Don't say it! And don't be 'grateful,' I just love you," she +said; "and if you only knew what it means to me to be able to do +anything for you! It's so long since you've needed me, Maurice." + +The pathos of her sense of uselessness made his eyes sting. "I couldn't +get along without you," he told her. + +Once, on a rainy April Sunday morning, when they were talking about +Jacky (Maurice had gone to see him the day before, and was gnashing his +teeth over some cheerful obliquity on the part of Lily)--Maurice said, +emphatically: "Gosh! Nelly, I don't know what I'd do without you!" + +She, sitting on a stool at his side (and looking, poor woman! old enough +to be his mother), was radiant. + +"And you don't enjoy talking to Lily?" she said--just for the happiness +of hearing, again, his horrified protest, "I should say _not_! There's +nothing she can talk about." + +"She doesn't know about books and things? She hasn't--brains?" + +"Brains? She probably never read anything in her life! She has lots of +sense, but no intellect. She hasn't an idea beyond food and flowers--and +Jacky." + +"I wish I had her idea about food," Eleanor said, simply. + +It was her fairness toward Lily that amazed him; it made him reproach +himself for his stupidity in not having confessed to her long ago! "Why +was I such a fool, Eleanor, as not to know that you were a big woman? +Mrs. Houghton knew it. Why, even Edith knew it! She told me you'd +forgive anything." + +"_What_!" She rose abruptly and stood looking at him with suddenly angry +eyes. "Does Edith know?" she said. + +"No! Of course she doesn't know--_this_! But one day she and I were +taking a walk, and I was thinking what a devilish mess I was in.... And +I suppose Edith saw I was down by the head, and she got to talking about +you--" + +"You let her talk about me!" + +"She was saying how perfectly fine you had been about the mountain--" + +"I don't need Edith Houghton's approval of my conduct, Maurice." She was +trembling, and her face was quite pale. He rushed in deeper than ever: + +"I was only saying I felt so--badly, because I had failed to make you +happy. Of course I didn't say how! And she said, 'Don't have any secrets +from Eleanor!'" + +"So it was Edith who made you--" + +For a moment Maurice was too dismayed to speak; besides, he didn't know +what to say. What he did say was that she misunderstood him. "Good +heavens! Eleanor, you didn't think I'd tell Edith a thing like _that_? +Or that I'd tell any woman, when I didn't tell you? But Edith knew you +better than I did; she said no matter what I'd done (I just happened to +say I was a skunk), you loved me enough to forgive me. And you have +forgiven me." + +"Yes," she said, in a whisper; "I've forgiven you." + +She went over to the window, and stood perfectly silent. It was raining +steadily; the river, a block away, was hidden in the yellow fog; down in +the yard, the tables and chairs under the poplar dripped and dripped. As +for Maurice, it was as if some dark finger had stretched out and touched +a bubble.... She was the same Eleanor. + +But he did not dwell upon this revealing moment; it was enough that at +last he could stop lying, and that Eleanor would help him about Jacky! +He called her back from the window and made her sit down again beside +him, pretending not to see how her hands were trembling. Then he went on +talking about Jacky. + +"His latest achievement is an infernal mouth harmonicon." + +She said, listlessly, "I wish I could give him music lessons." + +"He's crazy about music; trails hand organs all over Medfield!" Maurice +said, with a great effort to be cheerfully casual; "but, Heaven knows, +I'd be glad if you could give him lessons in anything! Manners, for +instance. He hasn't any. Or grammar; I told him not to say 'ain't,' and, +if you please! he told his mother _she_ mustn't say it! Lily got on her +ear." + +She smiled faintly. "I wish I could see him," she said. + +She had urged this more than once, but it had not seemed practicable. "I +can't bring him here," Maurice explained; "he'd blurt out to Lily where +he'd been, and she'd get uneasy. Even as it is, I live in dread that +she'll pack up and clear out with him." + +"She _shan't_ take him away!" Eleanor said; she was eager again;--after +all, Edith, for all her impertinence in advising Maurice how to treat +his wife!--Edith could not break in upon an intimacy like this! + +Her incessant talk about Jacky (which might have bored Maurice just a +little, if it had not touched him) gave her, in some subtle, spiritual +way, a sense of approaching motherhood: _she made preparations_! She +planned little gifts for him;--Maurice had told her of Jacky's lively +interest in benefits to come; once, she thought, "I suppose he's too old +to have one of those funny papers in his room? I saw such a pretty one +to-day, little rabbits in trousers!"--For by this time she had +determined that, somehow, she would get possession of him! In these +maternal moments she feared no rivalry from Edith Houghton. Jacky would +save her from Edith! + +"Oh, Maurice! I _must_ see him," she said once. + +"I'll fix it so you can," he told her. But it was two months before he +was able to fix it; then "Forepaws" came to town, and the way was clear! +He would take Jacky, and Eleanor should go and have a seat near by, and +come up and speak to the youngster, as any admiring stranger might, and, +indeed, often did, for Jacky was a striking child--his eyes blue and +keen, his skin very clear, and his cheeks glowing with health. "If he +goes home and tells Lily a lady spoke to him," Maurice said, "she won't +think anything of it." + +"May I give him some candy?" + +"No; he has too much of it as it is; get one of those tin horns for him. +He'll raise Cain for Lily, I suppose; but we won't have to listen to +him!" (That "we" so fed Eleanor's starved soul, that she thought of +Edith Houghton with a sort of gay contempt: "_I'm_ not afraid of her!") + +The plan for seeing Jacky went through easily enough. "I'll take that +boy of yours to the circus," Maurice told Lily, carelessly, one day. + +"Why, that's awful kind in you, Mr. Curtis; but ain't you afraid +somebody'll see you luggin' a child around?" + +"Lots of men take kids to the circus--just as an excuse to go +themselves." + +So Maurice and the eight-year-old Jacky, in a new sailor suit, and a +face so clean that it shone, walked in among the gilded cages, felt the +sawdust under their feet, smelled the wild animals, heard the yelps of +the jackals, the booming roar of lions, and the screeching chatter of +the monkeys. And as Jacky dragged his father from cage to cage, a yard +or two behind them came Eleanor.... Now and then, over Jacky's head, she +caught Maurice's eye; and they both smiled. + +When a speechless Jacky was taken into the central tent to sit on a +narrow bench, and drink pink lemonade and eat peanuts, Eleanor was quite +near him. He was unconscious of her presence--unconscious of everything! +except the blare of the band, the elephants, the performing +dogs--especially the poor, strained performing dogs! He never spoke +once; his eyes were fixed on the rings; he didn't see his father +watching him, amused and proud; still less did he see the lady who had +been at his heels in the animal tent, and who now kept her mournful dark +eyes on his face. When the last horse gave the last kick and trotted out +through the exit, with its mysterious canvas walls, Jacky was in a daze +of bliss. He sat, open-mouthed, staring at the empty, trampled sawdust. + +"Come along, young man!" Maurice said; "do you want to stay here all +night?" + +"I'm going to be a circus rider," said Jacky, solemnly. + +It was then that the "lady" spoke to him--her voice broke twice: "Well, +little boy, did you like the circus?" the lady said. She was so pale +that Maurice put his hand on her arm. + +"Better sit down, Nelly," he said, kindly, under his breath. + +She shook her head. "No ... Jacky, don't you want to tell me your name?" + +"But you _know_ my name," said Jacky, with a bored look. + +Maurice gave her a warning glance, and she tried to cover her blunder: +"I heard your father--I mean this gentleman--call you 'Jacky,'" she +explained--panting, for Maurice's quick frown frightened her. "Here's a +present for you," she said. + +"_Present_!" said Jacky--and made a joyous grab at the horn, which he +immediately put to his lips; but before it could emit its ear-piercing +screech, Maurice struck it down. + +"Where are your manners? Say 'Thank you' to the lady." + +Jacky sighed, but murmured, "'Ank you." + +Eleanor, her chin trembling, said: "May I kiss him?" + +"'Course," Maurice said, huskily. + +She bent down and kissed him with trembling lips--"Ach!--you make me all +wet," Jacky said, frowning at her tears on his rosy cheek. + +Later, as Maurice pulled his reluctant son out on to the pavement, he +was so moved that he almost forgot that she was still the old Eleanor; +he didn't even listen to his little boy's passionate assertion that he +would be a flying-trapeze man. As he walked along beside his wife to put +her on the car he spoke with great tenderness: + +"I'll leave him at Lily's, and then I'll come right home, dear, and +we'll talk things over." + +When he and his son got back to Maple Street, Jacky was blowing that +infernal horn so that the whole neighborhood was aware of his ecstasy. +Lily, waiting for them at the gate, put her hands over her ears. + +"My soul and body! For the land's sake, stop! Who give you that horrid +thing?" + +"An old lady," said Jacky--and blew a shattering screech on Eleanor's +horn. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + +From the day of the circus, Jacky became, to Eleanor, not a symbol of +Maurice's unfaithfulness, but a hope for the future. The thought of his +mother was only the scar of a wound, which Maurice, in some single +slashing moment, had made in her heart. She was crippled by it, of +course. But the wound had healed so she could forget the scar--because +Maurice had never loved Lily, never found her "interesting," never +wanted to wander about with _her_, in a dark garden, and talk + +Of shoes--and ships--and sealing wax-- +And cabbages--and kings ... + +To be sure the scar ached dully once in a while; but Eleanor knew that +if she could get possession of Jacky she would be protected against +other wounds--wounds which would never heal! She said to herself that +Maurice would never think of Edith Houghton if he had Jacky! But how +should she get Jacky? + +For months she revolved countless schemes to persuade Lily to resign +him; schemes so futile that Maurice, listening to them every night when +he got home from the office, was touched, of course; but by and by he +was also a little uneasy. He had told her where Lily lived, then +regretted it, for once she walked up and down before the house on Maple +Street for an hour, hoping to see "the woman," but failing, because Lily +and Jacky happened to be in town that afternoon. + +"I have a great mind to steal him for you!" she said, telling Maurice of +her fruitless effort. + +He protested, too disturbed at her mere presence on Lily's street to +notice her attempt at a joke. "If Lily should imagine that we were +interested in Jacky, she'd run!" he explained; "it's dangerous, Nelly, +really. You mustn't go near her!" + +She promised she wouldn't; but every day of that Mercer winter of +low-hanging smoke and damp chilliness, she longed to get possession of +the child--first to make Maurice happy; then with the craving, driving, +elemental desire for maternity; and then for self-protection,--Jacky +would vanquish Edith! + +So she brooded: _a child_! + +"If I could only get him, it wouldn't be 'just us'!" ... "A boy's +clothes are not as pretty as a girl's, but a little rough suit would be +awfully attractive.... I'd give him music lessons.... We could go out to +our field in June. And he would take off his shoes and stockings and +wade!" How foolish Edith's grown-up childishness of wading looked, +compared to the scene which she visualized--a little, handsome boy, +standing in the shallow rippling water, bareheaded, probably; the +sunshine sifting down through the locust blossoms and touching that +thatch of yellow hair, and glinting into those blue eyes. "He would call +me 'Mamma'!" Then she hummed to herself, "'O Spring!' Oh, I _must_ have +him!" Her hope became such an obsession that its irrationality did not +strike her. It was so in her mind that she even spoke of it once to Mrs. +Houghton. "I know you _know_?" she said; "Maurice told me he told you." + +Mary Houghton said, hesitatingly, "I think I know what you mean." + +This was in March. Mrs. Houghton and Edith were in town for a few days' +shopping, and of course they meant to see Eleanor. "I'll go to the +dressmaker's," Edith had told her mother, "and then I'll corral Maurice, +and we'll drop in on Mrs. Newbolt, and _then_ I'll meet you at +Eleanor's. I don't hanker for a long call on Eleanor." Edith's gayly +candid face hardened. + +So it was that Mrs. Houghton had arrived ahead of her girl, and the two +older women were alone before a little smoldering fire in the library. +Eleanor had left her tea tray to go across the room and give little +helpless Bingo a lump of sugar. "He only eats what I give him," she +said; "dear old Bingo! I think he actually suffers, he's so jealous." +Then, pouring Mrs. Houghton's tea, she suddenly spoke: "I know +you--know?" When Mary Houghton said, gravely, yes, she "_knew_," Eleanor +said, "Oh, Mrs. Houghton, Maurice and I are nearer to each other than we +ever were before!" + +"That's as it should be. And as I knew it would be, too. You've done a +noble thing, Eleanor." + +"No! No! Don't say that! It was nothing. Because I--love him so. And he +never cared for that woman. She has no brains, he says. But what I want +is to get the boy for him. Oh, he must have the boy!" Then she told Mrs. +Houghton how Maurice went to see the child. "He goes once a week, though +he says she's jealous if he makes too many suggestions; so he has to be +very careful or she would get angry. But he has managed it so I have +seen him; last summer he took him to the circus, and I sat near them. +And twice he's had him in the park and I spoke to him. And on Christmas +he took him to the movies; I sat beside him. And I buttoned his coat +when he went out!" Her eyes were rapt. + +Mary Houghton, listening, said to herself, "_Now_ what will Henry +Houghton say about the 'explosion'? I shall rub it into him when I get +home!" ... "Eleanor, you are magnificent!" she said. + +"But how could I do anything else--if I loved Maurice?" Eleanor said. +"Oh, I do want him to have Jacky! We must make a man of him. It would be +wicked to let Lily ruin him! And I want to give him music lessons. He +has Maurice's blue eyes." + +It was infinitely pathetic, this woman with gray hair, telling of her +young husband's joy in his little son--who was not hers. And Eleanor's +sense of the paramount importance of the child gave Mrs. Houghton a new +and real respect for her. Aloud, she agreed heartily with the statement +that Jacky must be saved from Lily. + +"She isn't bad," Eleanor explained; "but she's just like an animal, +Maurice says. Devoted to Jacky, but no more idea of right and wrong +than--than Bingo!" She was so happy that she laughed, and looked almost +young--but at that moment the street door opened, closed, and in the +hall some one else laughed. Instantly Eleanor looked old. "It's Edith," +she said, coldly. + +It was--with Maurice in tow. "I haled him forth from his office," Edith +said; "and we went to see your aunt, Eleanor. She's a lamb!" + +"Tea?" Eleanor said, briefly. + +"Yes, indeed!" Edith said. She looked very pretty--cheeks glowing and +brown hair flying about the rounded brim of a brown fur toque. + +Maurice, keeping an eye on her, was gently kind to his wife. "Head +better, Nelly?" Then, having secured his tea, he drew Edith over to the +window and they went on with some discussion which had paused as they +entered the house. + +Eleanor, watching them, and making another cup of tea for Mrs. Houghton, +spilled the boiling water on the tray and on her own hand. + +"My dear!" said Mrs. Houghton, "you have scalded yourself!" + +And, indeed, Eleanor whitened with the pain of her smarting, puffing +fingers. But she said, her eyes fixed on Edith, "What _are_ they talking +about?" Mrs. Houghton's look of surprise made her add: "Edith seems so +interested. I just wondered...." She had caught a phrase or two: + +"I can take the spring course,--it's three months. I think our +University Domestic Science Department is just every bit as good as any +of the Eastern ones." + +"Where did you two meet each other?" Eleanor called, sharply. + +"Why, I told you," Edith said, coming over to the tea table; "I dragged +him from his desk!" + +"Come, Edith, we must go," Mrs. Houghton said, rising. + +"Why don't you stay to dinner?" Maurice urged--but Eleanor was silent. +"If you are in town next week, Skeezics, you've got to put up here. +Understand? Tell her so, Eleanor!" + +Eleanor said nothing. Mrs. Houghton said she was afraid it wouldn't be +convenient. + +Eleanor said nothing. + +"Of course you will come here!" Maurice said; he was sharply angry at +his wife. + +In the momentary and embarrassing pause, the color flew into Edith's +face, but she was elaborately indifferent. "Good-by, Eleanor; good-by, +Maurice!" + +"I'm going to escort you to the hotel," Maurice said; and, over his +shoulder to Eleanor: "I've got to rush off to St. Louis to-night, +Eleanor. That Greenleaf business. Has Mrs. O'Brien brought my things +home?"' + +"I'll see," she said, mechanically.... + +Nobody had much to say on that walk to the hotel; but when Maurice had +left them, and the two ladies were in their room, Edith faced her +mother: + +"What _is_ the matter?" + +"You mean with Eleanor? She has a headache, I suppose." + +"Mother, don't squirm! You know just as well as I do that she doesn't +want me to stay with them. Why not?" She did not wait for an answer, +which, indeed, her mother could not immediately find. "Well, Heaven +knows I'm not pining to be with her! I shall run in to-morrow morning, +and tell her that Mrs. Newbolt asked me to stay with her.... Mother, how +_could_ Maurice have fallen in love with Eleanor?" Her voice trembled; +she went over to the window and stood looking down into the street; her +hands were clenched behind her, and her soft young chin was rigid. "He +was just a boy," she said; her eyes were blurring so that the street was +a gray fog; "how _could_ Eleanor?" It seemed as if her own ardent, +innocent body felt the recoil of Maurice's youth from Eleanor's age! +She thought of that dark place in his past, which she had accepted +with pain, but always with defending excuses; she excused him again, +now, in her thoughts: "Eleanor was _impossible_! That's why somebody +else ... caught him. And it was long ago. And Eleanor's old enough to be +his mother. He never could have loved her!" Suddenly she had a fleeting, +but real, pity for Eleanor: "Poor thing!" Aloud she said, huskily, over +her shoulder, "If she had really loved him, she wouldn't have done such +a terrible thing as marry him." + +Mrs. Houghton, reading the evening paper, said, briefly, "She loves him +_now_, my dear." + +"Oh!" Edith said, passionately, "sometimes I am sorry for Eleanor--and +then the next minute I perfectly hate her!" + +"She was only forty when she married him," Mary Houghton said; "that +isn't old at all! And I have always been sorry for her." She looked up +over her spectacles at the tense young figure by the window, outlined +against the yellow sunset; saw those clenched hands, heard the impetuous +voice break on a word,--and forgot Eleanor in a more intimate anxiety: +"Of course," she said, "such a difference in age as there is between +Maurice and Eleanor is a pity. But Maurice is devoted to her, and with +reason. She has been generous when he has been unkind. I happen to know +that." + +"Maurice couldn't be unkind!" + +Her mother ignored this. "And remember another thing, Edith: It isn't +years that decide whether a marriage is a failure. One of the happiest +marriages I ever knew was between a woman of fifty and a man of thirty. +You see--" she paused, and took off her spectacles, and tapped the arm +of her chair, thoughtfully: "You see, Edith, you don't understand. You +are so appallingly young! You think Love speaks only through the senses. +My dear, Love's highest speech is in the Spirit; the language of the +senses is only it's pretty, stammering, divine baby-talk!" Edith was +silent. Her mother went on: "Yes, it isn't age that decides things. It's +selfishness or unselfishness. At present Eleanor is extraordinarily +unselfish, so I believe they may yet be very happy." + +"Oh, I hope so, of course," Edith said--and put up a furtive finger to +wipe first one cheek, and then the other.... "Poor Maurice!" she said. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + +When Maurice got back to the firelit library, he said, filling his pipe +with rather elaborate attention, and trying to speak with good-natured +carelessness, "I'm afraid Edith thought you didn't want her, Nelly." He +was sorry the next moment that he had said even as much as that: Eleanor +was breathing quickly, and her dark, sad eyes were hard with anger. + +"I don't," she said + +Maurice said, sharply, "You have never liked her!" + +"Why should I like her? She talks to you incessantly. And now, she +_looks_ at you; here--before me! Looks at you." + +"Eleanor, what on earth--" + +"Oh, I saw her, when you were talking over there by the window; I +watched her. She looked at you! I am not blind. I understand what it +means when a girl looks at a man that way. And now she's planning to be +in Mercer for three months? Well, that's simply to be near you. She'd +like to live in the same house with you, I suppose! If it wasn't for me, +she'd be in love with you--perhaps she is, anyhow? Yes, I think she is." +There was a sick silence. "And, perhaps," she said, with a gasp, "you +are in love with her?" + +He was dumb. The suddenness of the attack completely routed him--its +suddenness; but more than its suddenness was a leaping question in his +own mind. When she said, "You are in love with her?" an appalled "Am I?" +was on his lips. Instantly he knew, what he had not known, at any rate +articulately, that he was in love with Edith. His thoughts broke in +galloping confusion; his hand, holding the hot bowl of his pipe, +trembled. He tried to speak, stammered, said, with a sort of gasp, +"Don't--don't say a thing like that!" Then he got his breath, and ended, +with a composure that kept his words slow and his voice cold, "It is +terrible to say a thing like that to me." + +She flung out her hands. "What more can I do for you than I have done? +Oh, Maurice--Maurice, no woman could love you more than I do?... _Could +they_?" + +"I am grateful; I--" He tried to speak gently, but his voice had begun +to shake with angry terror; it was abominable, this thing she had said! +(But ... it was true.) "No; no woman could have done more for me than +you have, Eleanor; I am grateful." + +"Grateful? Yes. You give me gratitude." Maurice was speechless. "I +thought, perhaps, you loved me," she said. A minute later he heard her +going upstairs to her own room. + +He stood staring after her, open-mouthed. Then he said, under his +breath, "Good God!" After a while he went over to the fireplace, +and, standing with one hand on the mantelpiece, he kicked the charred +logs on the hearth together. "This room is cold. I must build the fire +up.... Yes, it's true.... The wood is too green to burn. I'll order from +another man next time.... I suppose I've been in love with her for a +good while. I wonder if it began that night Jacky was sick ... and she +kissed me? No; it must have been before that." He stooped and mended the +fire, piling the logs together with slow exactness: "What life might +have been!" He took up the bellows and urged a little flame to rise and +flicker and lap the wood, then burst to crackling blaze. After a while +he said, "Poor Nelly!" But he had himself in hand by that time, and, +though this terrifying knowledge was surging in him, he knew that his +voice would not betray him. He went upstairs to comfort her with kindly +assurances that she was wrong. ("More lies," he thought, wearily.) + +But apparently she didn't need comforting! She was smoothing her hair +before the glass, and seemed perfectly calm. He had expected tears, and +violent reproaches, which he was prepared to meet with either +good-natured ridicule or quiet falsehood, as the occasion might demand. +But nothing was demanded. She continued to brush her hair; so he found +it quite easy to come up behind her and lay a hand on her shoulder, and +say, "Nelly, dear, that wasn't a nice thing to say!" + +She did not meet his eyes in the mirror; she only said (she was +trembling), "I suppose it wasn't." + +Maurice was puzzled, but he said, casually, that he was sorry to have to +rush off that night. "I've got to take the Limited for St. Louis. Mr. +Weston wants some papers put through. I hate to leave you." + +She made no answer. + +"I shall be gone a week, maybe more; because if I don't pull the +chestnut out of the fire in St. Louis, I'll have to go to some other +places." + +She hardly heard him; she was saying to herself: "I _oughtn't_ to have +told him she was in love with him; it may make him think so, himself!" + +"Guess I'll pack my grip now," he said. + +"Maurice," she said, breathlessly, "I didn't mean--" She was so +frightened that she couldn't finish her sentence; but he said, with +kindly understanding: + +"Of course you didn't!" + +It flashed into her mind that if she left him alone, he would know that +what she had said was so meaningless that she didn't think it worth +talking about. "I--I'm going to Auntie's to dinner," she told him, on +the spur of the moment. "Do you mind?" + +"No; of course not. Wait a second, and I'll walk round with you." + +She said, unsteadily, "Oh no; you've got your packing to do--" Then she +kissed him swiftly, and hurried downstairs. + +"But Eleanor, wait!" he called; "I'll go with--" + +She had gone. He heard the front door close. He stood still in his +perplexity. What was the matter? She had got over that jealousy of +Edith in an instant; got over it, and accepted his departure without all +those wearying protestations of love and loneliness to which he was +accustomed. "Is she angry," he told himself; "or just ashamed of having +been so foolish?" Mechanically, he picked out some neckties from his +drawer, and paused.... "But she wasn't foolish. I do love Edith.... How +did she get on to it? She is so good to me about Jacky--and I love +Edith!" He went on packing his grip. "I wonder if any man ever paid as I +am paying?--I'll call her up at Mrs. Newbolt's, before I go, and say +good-by." + +No doubt he would have done so, but when he went downstairs he found +Johnny Bennett, smoking comfortably before that very cheerful little +fire. + +"I dropped in," said Johnny, "to ask for some dinner." + +"If you'll take pot luck," said Maurice; "Eleanor isn't at home, and I +don't know what the lady below stairs will work off on us." (It would be +a relief, he thought, to have somebody at table, so that he would not be +alone with his own confusion.) + +"I came," Johnny said, "to tell you I'm off." + +"Off? When? Where to? I thought your electric performances were panning +out so well--" + +"Oh, they're panning out all right," John said; "but they'll pan out +better in South America. I'm going the first of the month." + +"South America! What's the matter with Pennsylvania?" + +"Well," Johnny said; "I thought I'd light out--" + +Then they began to talk climate, and consulates, which carried them +through dinner, and went on in the library, and Maurice's surface +interest in Johnny's affairs, at least kept him from thinking of his own +dismay. + +"But I supposed," he said, and paused, "I sort of thought you--had +reasons for staying round here?" + +"There's no use hanging round," John said; "it's better to pull out +altogether. It's easier that way," he said, simply. "So I'm off for a +year. They wanted me to sign for three years, but I said, 'one.' Things +may look better for me when I get home." + +Maurice, standing with his back to the fire, his hands in his pocket, +looked down at the steady youngster--looked at the mild eyes behind +those large spectacles, looked at the clean, strong lines of the jaw and +forehead. A good fellow. A very good fellow. He wondered why Edith +wouldn't take him? ("It couldn't make any difference to me," he thought; +"and I want her to be happy.") + +"Johnny," he said, "you can say, 'Mind your business,' before I begin, +if you want to. But I don't think anybody's cutting you out? Better +'try, try again.'" + +Johnny took his pipe from his mouth, bent forward to shake the ashes out +of it, and stared into the fire. Then he said, clearing his throat once +or twice: "I've bothered her, 'trying,' I thought I'd start on a new +tack." + +"You'll get her yet!" Maurice encouraged him. He wondered, as he spoke, +how he could speak so lightly, urging old Johnny to go ahead and make +another stab at it, and, maybe, "get her"! He wondered if he was looking +at things the way the dead look at the living? He was not, he thought, +suffering, as he had suffered in those first moments when Eleanor had +flung the truth at him. "You'll get her yet," he said, vaguely. + +Johnny took out his tobacco pouch, and began to fill his pipe, poking +his thumb down into the bowl with slow precision, then holding it on a +level with his eyes and squinting at it, to make sure it was smooth; he +seemed profoundly engrossed by that pipe--but he put it in his mouth +without lighting it. + +"Well, I don't know," he said; "I haven't an awful lot of hope that I'll +ever get her. But I thought I'd try this way. Maybe, if she doesn't see +me for a year...." + +"There's nobody ahead of you, anyway," Maurice said, absently. + +"Well, I don't know," John Bennett said again. + +His voice was so harsh that Maurice's preoccupation sharpened into +uneasy attention. Johnny's hopes and fears had not really touched him. +His encouraging platitudes were only a way of smothering his own +thoughts. But that, "Well, I don't know--" woke a keenly attentive fear: +_was_ there anybody else? ("Not that that could make any difference to +me.") + +"You 'don't know'?" he said; "how do you mean? You think there _is_ +somebody?" + +Johnny Bennett was silent; he had an impulse to say "you are several +kinds of a fool, old man." But he was silent. + +"Why, Great Scott!" Maurice protested. "Buried up there in the +mountains, she hardly knows a fellow--except you!--and me," he added, +with a laugh. + +"I think," said John, huskily, "she has ... some kind of an ideal up her +sleeve. And I don't fill the bill. Imagination, you know. A--a sort of +Sir Walter Raleigh business. Remember how she was always sort of dotty +on Sir Walter Raleigh? An ideal, don't you know"; Johnny rambled on: +"Girls are that way. Only Edith's the kind that sticks to things." + +"'Try, try again,'" said Maurice, mechanically; but his blood suddenly +pounded in his ears. + +"I'm going to," Johnny said, calmly; and began to talk South America. +Indeed, he talked so long that Maurice, catching sight of the clock, +exclaimed that he would have to run! + +"Johnny, get Eleanor on the wire, will you; at Mrs. Newbolt's, and tell +her I'd have called her up, but I got delayed, and had to leg it to +catch the train? Or maybe you wouldn't mind going round there, and +walking home with her?" + +"Glad to," said Johnny. + +When Maurice, swinging on to the last platform of the last Pullman, was +able to sit down in his section, he was absorbed in Johnny Bennett's +affairs. "What did he mean by saying that? Did he mean--" Johnny's +enigmatical words rang in his ears; "I said to 'try again; nobody was +cutting him out.' And he said 'She has some kind of an ideal up her +sleeve.' ... 'A Sir Walter Raleigh business' ..." + +Johnny Bennett, walking toward Mrs. Newbolt's, was also thinking, in his +calm way, of just what he had said there by Maurice's fireside. "Of +course he doesn't see why she hasn't fallen in love with anybody else. +Any decent fellow would be stupid about that sort of thing. But it's +been that way ever since she was a child. And I've loved her ever since +then, too. All the same, I'll only sign up for a year. Then I'll make +another stab at it ..." + +When he rang Mrs. Newbolt's doorbell, and was told that Eleanor had not +been there, he was perplexed. "I must have misunderstood Maurice," he +thought. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + +Eleanor had no intention of going to Mrs. Newbolt's. "She'd talk Edith +to me!" she said to herself; "I _can't_ understand why she likes her!" +Instead of dining with her aunt, she meant to walk about the streets +until she was sure that Maurice had started for the train; then she +would go back to her own house. So she wandered down the avenue until, +tired of looking with unseeing eyes into shop windows, it occurred to +her to go into the park; there, on a bench on one of the unfrequented +paths, she sat down, hoping that no one would recognize her; it was +cold, and she shivered and looked at her watch. Only six o'clock! It +would be two hours before Maurice would leave the house for the station. +It seemed absurd to be here in the dampness of the March evening; but +she couldn't go home and get into any discussion with him; she might +burst out again about Edith!--which always made him angry. She wished +that she had not told him that Edith was in love with him. "It ought to +disgust him, but it might flatter him!" And she oughtn't to have said +that other thing; she oughtn't to have accused him of caring for Edith. +"Of course he doesn't. And it was a horrid thing to say. I was angry, +because I was jealous; but it wasn't true. I wish I hadn't said it. I'll +write to him, and ask him to forgive me." But the other thing _was_ +true: "I saw it in her eyes! She loves him. But I oughtn't to have put +the idea into his head!" + +The more she thought of what she had put into Maurice's head, the more +uneasy she became. Oh, if she only had Jacky! Then, Edith could be as +brazen as she pleased, and Maurice would never notice her! "Of course he +doesn't love her; I'm certain of _that_!" she said again and +again,--and all her schemes, wise and foolish, for getting possession +of the boy, began to crowd into her mind. + +Then an idea came to her which fairly took her breath away! A perfectly +wild idea, which she dared not stop to analyze: suppose, instead of +sitting here in the cold, she should go, now, boldly, to Lily, and ask +for Jacky? "I believe _I_ could persuade her to give him to us! She +wouldn't do it for Maurice, but she might for me!" + +She got on her feet with a spring! Her spiritual energy was like her +physical energy that night on the mountain. Again she was +lifting--lifting! This time it was the weight of a Love which might die! +She was dragging it, carrying it! her very soul straining under her +purpose of keeping it alive by the touch of a child's hand! ... Why not +go and see Lily _now_? "She'll have finished her supper by the time I +get to her house; it's at the very end of Maple Street!" If Lily +consented, Eleanor might even get back to her own house in time to see +Maurice, and tell him what she had accomplished before he started for +his train! But she would have to hurry.... + +She actually ran out of the park toward the street; then stood for an +endless five minutes, waiting for the Medfield car. "Perhaps I can make +her let me bring Jacky home with me!" she said--which showed to what +heights beyond common sense she had risen. + +At the little house on Maple Street she rang the bell, though she had a +crazy impulse to bang upon the door to hurry Lily! But she rang, and +rang again, before she heard a child's voice: "Maw. Somebody at the +door." + +"Well, go open it, can't you?" + +She heard little scuffing steps on the oilcloth in the hall; then the +door opened, and Jacky stood there. He fixed his blue, impersonal eyes +upon her, and waited. + +"Is your mother in?" Eleanor said, breathlessly. + +"Yes, ma'am," said Jacky. + +"Who is it?" Lily called to him; she was somewhere in the back of the +house, and Eleanor could hear the clatter of dishes being gathered up +from an unseen supper table. Jacky, unable to answer his mother's +question, was calmly silent. + +"My land! That child's a reg'lar dummy! Jacky, who _is_ it?" + +"_I_ do' know," Jacky called back. + +"I am Mrs. Curtis," Eleanor said; "I want to see your mother." + +"She says," Jacky called--then paused, because it occurred to him to +hang on to the door knob and swing back and forth, his heels scraping +over the oilcloth; "she says," said Jacky, "she's Mrs. Curtis." + +The noise of the dishes stopped short. In the dining room Lily stood +stock-still; "My God!" she said. Then her eyes narrowed and her jaw set; +she whipped off her apron and turned down her sleeves; she had made up +her mind: "_I'll lie it through._" + +She came out in the hall, which was scented with rose geraniums and +reeked with the smell of bacon fat, and said, with mincing politeness, +"Were you wishing to see me?" + +"Yes," Eleanor said. + +"Step right in," said Lily, opening the parlor door. "Won't you be +seated?" Then she struck a match on the sole of her shoe, lit the gas, +blew out the match, and turned to look at her visitor. She put her hand +over her mouth and gasped. Under her breath she said, "His _mother_!" + +"Mrs. Dale," Eleanor began-- + +"Well, there!" said Lily, pleasantly (but she was pale); "I guess you +have the advantage of me. What did you say your name was?" + +"My name is Curtis. Mrs. Dale, I--I know about your little boy." + +"Is that so?" Lily said, with the simper proper when speaking to +strangers. + +"I mean," Eleanor said, "I know about--" her lips were so dry she +stopped to moisten them--"about Mr. Curtis and you." + +"I ain't acquainted with your son." + +Eleanor caught her breath, but went on, "I haven't come to reproach +you." + +Lily tossed her head. "Reproach? _Me?_ Well, I must say, I don't see no +cause why you should! _I_ don't know no Mr. Curtis!" She was alertly on +guard for Maurice; "I guess you've mixed me up with some other lady." + +"Please!" Eleanor said; "I _know_. He told me--about Jacky." + +Instantly Lily's desire to defend Maurice was tempered by impatience +with him; the idea of him letting on to his mother! Then, noticing her +boy, who was silently observing the caller from the doorway, she said: + +"Jacky! Go right out of this room." + +"Won't," said Jacky. "She gimme the horn," he remarked. + +"Aw, now, sweety, go on out!" Lily entreated. + +Jacky said, calmly, "Won't." + +At which his mother got up and stamped her foot. "Clear right out of +this room, or I'll see to you! Do you hear me? Go on, now, or I'll give +you a reg'lar spanking!" + +Jacky ran. He never obeyed her when he could help it, but he always +recognized the moment when he couldn't help it. Lily closed the door, +and stood with her back against it, looking at her caller. + +"Well," she said, "if you _are_ on to it, I'm sure you ain't going to +make trouble for him with his wife." + +"I am his wife." + +"His _wife_?" They looked at each other for a speechess moment. Then the +tears sprang to Lily's eyes. "Oh, you poor soul!" she said. "Say, don't +feel bad! It's pretty near ten years ago; he was just a kid. Since +then--honest to God, I give you my word, he 'ain't hardly said 'How do +you do' to me!" + +"I know," Eleanor said; her hands were gripped hard together; "I know +that. I know he has been ... perfectly true to me--lately. I am not +saying a word about that. It's the child. I want to make a proposition +to you about the child." Her lips trembled, but she smiled; she +remembered to smile, because if she didn't look pleasant Lily might get +angry. She was a little frightened; but she gave a nervous laugh. She +spoke with gentleness, almost with sweetness. "I came to see you, Mrs. +Dale, because I hope you and I can make some arrangement about the +little boy. I want to help you by relieving you of--of his support. I +mean," said Eleanor, still smiling with her trembling lips, "I mean, I +will take him, and bring him up, so as to save you the expense." Lily's +amazed recoil made her break into entreaty; "My husband wants him, and I +do, too! I thought perhaps you'd let him go home with me to-night? I--I +promise I'll take the best of care of him!" + +Lily was too dumfounded to speak, but her thoughts raced. "For the +land's sake!" she said under her breath. She was sitting down now, but +her hands in her lap had doubled into rosy fighting fists. + +Her silence terrified Eleanor. "If you'll give him to me," she said, "I +will do anything for you--anything! If you'll just let Mr. Curtis have +him." She did not mean to, but suddenly she was crying, and began to +fumble for her handkerchief. + +"Well, if this ain't the limit!" said Lily, and jumped up and ran to +her, and put her arms around her. ("Here, take mine! It's clean.") "Say, +I'm that sorry for you, I don't know what to do!" Her own tears +overflowed. + +Eleanor, wincing away from the gush of perfumery from the little clean +handkerchief, clutched at Lily's small plump hand--"_I'll_ tell you what +to do," Eleanor said; "_Give me Jacky!_" + +Lily, kneeling beside her, cried, honestly and openly. "There!--now!" +she said, patting Eleanor's shoulder; "don't you cry! Mrs. Curtis, now +look,"--she spoke soothingly, as if to a child, with her arm around +Eleanor--"you know I _can't_ let my little boy go? Why, think how you'd +feel yourself, if you had a little boy and anybody tried to get him. +Would you give him up? 'Course you wouldn't! Why, I wouldn't let Jacky +go away from me, even for a day, not for the world! An' he ain't +anything to Mr. Curtis. Honest! That's the truth. Now, don't you cry, +dear!" + +"You can see him often; I promise you, you can see him." + +In spite of her pity, Lily's yellow eyes gleamed: "'See' my own child? +Well, I guess!" + +"I'll give you anything," Eleanor said; "I have a little money--about +six hundred dollars a year; I'll give it to you, if you'll let Mr. +Curtis have him." + +"Sell Jacky for six hundred dollars?" Lily said. "I wouldn't sell him +for six thousand dollars, or six million!" She drew away from Eleanor's +beseeching hands. "How long has Mr. Curtis thought enough of Jacky to +pay six hundred dollars for him? You can tell Mr. Curtis, from me, that +I ain't no cheap trader, to give away my child for six hundred dollars!" +She sprang up, putting her clenched fists on her fat hips, and wagging +her head. "Why," she demanded, raucously, "didn't you have a child of +your own for him, 'stead of trying to get another woman's child away +from her?" + +It was a hideous blow. Eleanor gasped with pain; and instantly Lily's +anger was gone. + +"Say! I didn't mean that! 'Course you couldn't, at your age. I oughtn't +to have said it!" + +Eleanor, dumb for a moment after that deadly question, began, faintly: +"Mr. Curtis will do so much for him, Mrs. Dale; he'll educate him, +and--" + +"I can educate him," Lily said; "you tell Mr. Curtis that; you tell him +I thank him for nothing!--_I_ can educate my child to beat the band. I +don't want any help from _him_. But--" she was on her knees again, +stroking Eleanor's shoulder--"but if he's mean to you because you +haven't had any children, I--I--I'll see to him! Well--I've always +thought, what with him fussing about 'grammar,' and 'truth,' he'd be a +hard man to live with. But if he's been mean to you he'd ought to be +ashamed of himself!" + +"Oh, he doesn't even know that I have come!" Eleanor said; "he mustn't +know it. Oh, please!" She was terrified. "Don't tell him, Mrs. Dale. +Promise me you won't! He would be angry." + +Her frightened despair was pitiful; Lily was at her wits' end. "My soul +and body!" she thought, "what am I going to do with her?" But what was +all this business? Mrs. Curtis asking for Jacky--and Mr. Curtis not +knowing it? What was all this funny business? "Now I tell you," she +said; "you and me are just two ladies who understand each other, and I'm +going to be straight with you: if Mr. Curtis is trying to get my child +away from me, he'll have a sweet time doing it! There's other places +than Medfield to live in. I have a friend in New York, a society lady; +she's always after me to come and live there. Mind! I'm not mad at +_you_, you poor woman that couldn't have a baby--it's him I'm mad at! He +knows Jacky is mine, and I'll go to New York before I'll--" + +"Oh, don't say that!" Eleanor pleaded; "my husband hasn't tried to get +Jacky; it's just I!" + +She saw, with panic, that what Maurice had said was true--Lily might +"run"! If she did, there would be no hope of getting Jacky ... and Edith +would be in Mercer.... + +"Mrs. Dale, _promise_ me you'll stay in Medfield? It was only I who was +trying to get Jacky; Mr. Curtis never thought of such a thing! I wanted +him. I'd do everything for him; I'd--I'd give him music lessons." + +"Honest," said Lily, soberly, "I believe you're crazy." + +She looked crazy--this poor, gray-haired woman of pitiful dignity and +breeding. ("I bet she's sixty!" Lily thought)--this old, childless +woman, with a "Mrs." to her name, pleading with a mother to give up her +boy, so he could have "music lessons"! "And Mr. Curtis's up against +_that_," Lily thought, and instantly her anger at Maurice ebbed. "There, +dear," she said, touching Eleanor's wet cheeks gently with that perfumed +handkerchief; "I don't believe you've had any supper. I'm going to get +you something to eat--" + +"No, please; _please_ no!" Eleanor said. She had risen. She thought, +"If she says 'dear' again, I'll--I'll die!" ... "I promise you on my +word of honor," she said, faintly, "that I won't try to take Jacky away +from you, if--" she paused; it was terrible to have a secret with this +woman; it put her in her power, but she couldn't help it--"I won't try +to get him, if you won't tell Mr. Curtis that I ... have been here? +_Please_ promise me!" + +"Don't you worry," Lily said, reassuringly; "I won't give you away to +him." + +Eleanor was moving, stumbling a little, toward the door; Lily hesitated, +then ran and caught her own coat and hat from the rack in the hall. + +"Wait!" she said, pinning her hat on at a hasty and uncertain angle; +"I'm going with you! It ain't right for you to go by yourself ... +Jacky," she called out to the kitchen, "you be a good boy! Maw'll be +home soon." + +Eleanor shook her head in wordless protest. But Lily had tucked her hand +under her arm, and was walking along beside her. "He ought to look out +for you!" Lily said; "I declare, I've a mind to tell that man what I +think of him!" On the car, while Eleanor with shaking hands was opening +her purse, Lily quickly paid both fares, saying, politely, in answer to +Eleanor's confused protest, "_That's_ all right!" There was no talk +between them. Lily was too perplexed to say anything, and Eleanor was +too frightened. So they rode, side by side, almost to Maurice's door. +There, standing on the step while Eleanor took her latch key from her +pocketbook, Lily said, cheerfully, "Now you go and get a cup of +tea--you're all wore out!" Then she hurried off to catch a Medfield car. +"I declare," said little Lily, "I don't know which is the worse off, him +or her!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + + +Eleanor, letting herself into her silent house, saw, with relief, that +the library was dark, and knew that Maurice had gone to the station and +she could be alone. She felt her way into the room, blundering against +his big chair; the fire was almost out, and without waiting to turn on +the light she thrust some kindling under a charred log and knelt down +and took up the bellows. A spark brightened, ran backward under the film +of ashes, then a flame hesitated, caught--and there was a little winking +blaze. + +"Another failure," Eleanor said. She remembered with what eager hope she +had started for Lily's house; "I was going to 'bring him home' with me! +What a fool I was! ... I always fail," she said. Once more, she had +"marched up a hill--and--then--marched--down--again"! Her sense of +failure was like a dragging weight under her breastbone! She had not +made Maurice happy; she had not given him children; she had not kept +Edith out of his life. Failure! Failure! "But he loves me; he said so, +when I told him I forgave him about Lily. Of course I oughtn't to have +married him. But I loved him ... so much. And I did want to have just a +little happiness! I never had had any." She sat there, the bellows in +her white, ineffectual hands, looking into the fire; how capable Lily's +hands were! She remembered the sturdy left hand, and that shiny band of +gold ... Then she looked at her own slender wedding ring, and that made +her think of the circle of braided grass; and the locust blossoms; and +the field--and the children who were to come there on the wedding +anniversaries! And now--Maurice's child called another woman +"mother"!... Well, she had tried to bring him back to Maurice; tried, +and failed, with hideous humiliation--for, instead of bringing Jacky +back, this "mother" had brought her back!... "_And she paid my car +fare!_" It was intolerable. "I must send her five cents, somehow!" + +She sat on the floor, leaning against Maurice's chair, until midnight; +the log burned through, broke apart, and smoldered into ashes. Once she +put her cheek down on the broad arm of the chair, then kissed it--for +his hand had rested on it!--his dear young hand--In the deepening +chilliness, watching the ashes, she ached with the sense of her last +failure; but most of the time she thought of Edith, and of what she +believed she had read in those humorous, candid eyes. "She dared, +_before me_!--to show him that she was in love with him! He doesn't care +for her--I know that. But I won't have her come here, to my own house, +and make love to him. How can I keep her from coming? Oh, if I could +only get Jacky!" + +But she couldn't get him. She had accepted that as final. The talk in +Lily's parlor proved that there was not the slightest hope of getting +Jacky. So the only thing for her to do was to keep Edith out of her +house. When, at nearly one o'clock, shivering, she went up to her room, +she was absorbed in thinking how she could do this. With any other girl +it would have been simple enough; never invite her! But not Edith. Edith +came without an invitation. Edith had, Eleanor thought, "no delicacy." +She had always been that way. She had always lacked ordinary refinement! +From the very first, she had run after Maurice. "She is capable of +_kissing_ him," Eleanor told herself; "and saying she did it because he +was like a brother!" Strangely enough, in this blaze of jealousy she had +no flicker of resentment at Lily! Lily (now that she had seen her) was +to Eleanor merely the woman to whom Jacky belonged. Looking back on +those months that followed her discovery of Lily, and contrasting the +agony she had felt then with her despair about Edith now, she was +faintly surprised at the difference in her pain. This was probably +because faithlessness of the body is not so deadly an insult to Love as +faithlessness of the mind. But Eleanor did not, of course, make any such +explanation. She just said to herself that Maurice had been a boy when +he had been untrue to her, and she herself had been, in some ways, to +blame; and he had confessed, and been forgiven. So Lily was now of no +consequence--except as she interfered with Eleanor's passionate wish to +have Jacky. So she did not hate Lily, or fear her (though she was +humiliated at that car fare!). But she did hate Edith, and fear of her +was agony.... So she would, somehow, keep her out of the house! + +Just as she was getting into bed, she wiped her eyes, then cringed at a +gust of perfumery--and realized that she had brought Lily's handkerchief +back with her! It was a last abasement: the woman's horrible +handkerchief. She burst into hysterical weeping.... The next morning, +when she came down to breakfast, her face was haggard with those +ravaging tears, and with the fatigue of hating. Even before she had her +coffee, she burned the scented scrap of machine-embroidered linen, +pressing it down between the logs in the library fireplace; but she +could not burn her hate; it burned her! + +She was so worn out that when, a little before luncheon, Edith suddenly +came breezily in, she was, at first, too confused to know what to say to +her.... It was an incredibly mild day; on the shady side of the back +yard there was still a sooty heap of melting snow, but the sky was +turquoise, soaring without a cloud and brimmed with light, so that the +shadows of the bare branches of the poplar, clear-cut like jet, +crisscrossed on the brick path; in the border, the brown fangs of the +tulips had bitten up through the wet earth, and two militant crocuses +had raised their tight-furled purple standards. Eleanor, tempted by the +sunshine, had come here, muffled up in an elderly white shawl, to sit by +the little painted table--built so long ago for Edith's pleasure! She +had put old Bingo's basket in the sun, and stroked him gently; he was +very helpless now, and ate nothing except from her hands. + +"Poor little Bingo!" Eleanor said; "dear little Bingo!" Bingo growled, +and Eleanor looked up to see why--Edith was on the iron veranda. + +"Hullo!" Edith said, gayly; "isn't it a wonderful day? I just ran in--" +She came down the twisted stairway and, unasked and smiling, sat down at +the table. "Bingo! Don't you know your friends? One would think I was a +burglar! Oh, Eleanor, the tulips are up! Do you remember when Maurice +and I planted them?" + +Eleanor's throat tightened. She made some gasping assent. + +"I came 'round," Edith said--her frank eyes looked straight into +Eleanor's eyes, dark and agonized--"I ran in, because I'm afraid you +thought, yesterday, that I wanted to quarter myself on you? And I just +wanted to say, don't give it a thought! I perfectly understand that +sometimes it's inconvenient to have company, and--" + +"It's not inconvenient to have company," Eleanor said. + +Edith stopped short. ("What a dead give-away!" she thought; "she +dislikes me!") Then she tried, generously, to cover the "give-away" up: +She said something about guests and servants: "We're having an awful +time at Green Hill--servants are the limit! When a maid stays six weeks, +we call her an old family retainer!" + +Eleanor said, "I have no difficulty with maids. That is not why I prefer +not to have ... company." + +By this time, of course, Edith's one thought was to get away, with +dignity; but dignity, when you've had your face slapped, is almost +impossible. So Edith (being Edith!) chose Truth, and didn't trouble +herself with dignity! "Eleanor," she said, "I know it's me you don't +want. I felt it last night. I'm afraid I've done something that has +offended you. Have I? Truly, Eleanor, I haven't meant to! What is it? +Let's talk it out. Eleanor, what _have_ I done?" She put her hands down +on Eleanor's, clasped rigidly on the table. + +"Please!" Eleanor said, and drew her hands away. + +"Oh," Edith said, pitifully, "you are troubled!" + +Eleanor said, with a gasp: "Not at all ... Edith, I am afraid I must ask +you to ... excuse me. I'm busy." + +Edith was too amazed to speak; she could not, indeed, think of anything +to say! This wasn't "dislike." "Why, she _hates_ me!" she thought. "Why +does she hate me? Shall I not notice it? Shall I talk about something +else?" But she could not talk of anything else; she could only speak her +swift, honest thought: "Eleanor, why do you dislike me? Maurice and I +have been friends--we have been like brother and sister--ever since I +can remember. Oh, Eleanor, I want _you_ to like me, too! Please don't +keep me away from you and Maurice!" + +Eleanor said, rapidly: "He's not your brother; and it would be difficult +to keep you away from him. You go to his office to find him." + +There was a dead silence. Edith grew very pale. At last she understood. +Eleanor was jealous ... Of her! They looked at each other, the angry +woman and the dumfounded girl. "Jealous? Of _me_?" Edith thought. "Why +_me_? Maurice only cares for me as if I was his sister! ... And I don't +do Eleanor any harm by--loving him." ... Eleanor was gasping out a +torrent of assailing words: + +"Girls are different from what they were in my day. Then, they didn't +openly run after men! Now, apparently, they do. Certainly _you_ do. You +always have. I'm not blind, Edith. I have known what was going on; when +you were living with us and I had a headache, you used to talk to him, +and try and be clever--to make him think I was dull, when it was only +that--I was too ill to talk! And you kept him down in the garden until +midnight, when he might have been sitting with me on the porch. And you +made him go skating. And now you _look_ at him! I know what that means. +A girl doesn't look that way at a man, unless--" + +There was dead silence. + +"Unless she's in love with him. But don't think that, though you are in +love with him, he cares for _you_! He does not. He cares for no one but +me. He told me so." + +Silence. + +"Can you deny that you care for my husband?" Edith opened her lips--and +closed them again. "You don't deny it," Eleanor said; "you _can't_." She +put her head down on her arms on the table; her fifty years engulfed +her. She said, in a whisper, "He doesn't love me." + +Instantly Edith's arms were around her. "Eleanor, dear! Don't--don't! He +does love you--he does! I'd perfectly hate him if he didn't! Oh, +Eleanor, poor Eleanor! Don't cry; Maurice _does_ love you. He doesn't +care a copper for me!" The tears were running down her face. She bent +and kissed Eleanor's hands, clenched on the table, and then tried to +draw the gray head against her tender young breast. + +Eleanor put out frantic hands, as if to push away some suffocating +pressure. Both of these women--Lily, with her car fare and her +handkerchief; Edith, with her impudent "advice" to Maurice not to have +secrets from his wife--pitied her! She would not be pitied by them! + +"Don't touch me!" she said, furiously; "_you love my husband_." + +Edith heard her own blood pounding in her ears. + +"Don't you?" said Eleanor; her face was furrowed with pain; "Don't you?" + +It was a moment of naked truth. "I have loved Maurice," Edith said, +steadily, "ever since I was a child. I always shall. I would like to +love you, too, Eleanor, if you would let me. But nothing--_nothing_! +shall ever break up my ... affection for Maurice." + +"You might as well call it love." + +Edith, rising, said, very low: "Well, I will call it love. I am not +ashamed. I am not wronging you. You have no need to be jealous of me, +Eleanor. He cares nothing for me." + +Eleanor struck the table with her clenched fists. "You shall never have +him!" she said. + +Edith turned, silently, and went up the veranda stairs and out of the +house. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + + +When Eleanor got her breath, after that crazy outbreak, she rushed up to +her own room, bolted the door, fell on her knees at her bedside, and +told herself in frantic gasps, that she would _fight_ Edith Houghton! +Grapple with her! Beat her away from Maurice! "I must _do_ something--do +something--" + +But what? There was only one weapon with which she could vanquish +Edith--Maurice's love for his son. _Jacky!_ She must have Jacky ... + +But how could she get him? + +She knew she couldn't get him with Lily's consent. Frantic with jealousy +as she was, she recognized that! Yet, over and over, during the week +that followed that hour in the garden with Edith, she said to herself, +"If Maurice had Jacky, Edith would be nothing to him." ... It was at +this point that one day something made her add, "_Suppose he had Lily, +too?_" Then he could have Jacky. + +"If I were dead, he could marry Lily." + +At first this was just one of those vague thoughts that blew through her +mind, as straws and dead leaves blow down a dreary street. But this +straw caught, so to speak, and more straws gathered and heaped about it. +The idea lodged, and another idea lodged with it: If, to get his child, +he married Jacky's mother, Edith would never reach him! And if, by +dying, Eleanor gave Maurice his child, he would always love her for her +gift; she would always be "wonderful." And Edith? Why, he couldn't, he +_couldn't_--if his wife died to give him Jacky--think of Edith again! +Jacky, Eleanor thought, viciously, "would slam the door in Edith's +face!" + +Perhaps, if Maurice had been at home, instead of being obliged to +prolong that western business trip, the sanity of his presence would +have swept the straws and dead leaves away and left Eleanor's mind +bleak, of course, with disappointment about Jacky and dread of +Edith--but sound. As it was, alone in her melancholy, uncomfortable +house, tiny innumerable "reasons" for considering the one way by which +Maurice could get Jacky, heaped and heaped above common sense: ten years +ago Mrs. Newbolt said that if Eleanor had not "caught" Maurice when he +was young, he would have taken Edith; that was a straw. Two years ago a +woman in the street car offered her a seat, because she looked as old as +_her_ mother. Another straw! Lily supposed she was Maurice's mother! A +straw.... Edith admitted--had impudently flung into Eleanor's face!--the +confession that she was "in love with him!"--and Edith was to be in town +for three months. Oh, what a sheaf of straws! Edith would see him +constantly. She would "look at him"! Could Maurice stand that? Wouldn't +what little love he felt for his old wife go down under the wicked +assault of those "looks"?--unless he had Jacky! Jacky would "slam the +door." + +Eleanor said things like this many times a day. Straws! Straws! And they +showed the way the wind was blowing. Sometimes, in the suffocating dust +of fear that the wind raised she even forgot her purpose of making +Maurice happy, in a violent urge to make it impossible for Edith +Houghton to triumph over her. But the other thought--the crazy, nobler +thought!--was, on the whole, dominant: "Maurice would be happy if he had +a child. I couldn't give him a child of my own, but I can give him +Jacky." Yet once in a while she balanced the advantages and +disadvantages of the one way in which Jacky could be given: _Lily_? +Could Maurice endure Lily? She thought of that parlor, of Lily's +vulgarity, of the raucous note in her voice when those flashes of anger +pierced like claws through the furry softness of her good nature; she +thought of the reek of scent on the handkerchief. Could he endure Lily? +Yet she was efficient; she would make him comfortable. "I never made +him comfortable," she thought. "And he doesn't love her; so I wouldn't +so terribly mind her being here--any more than I'd mind a housekeeper. +But I wouldn't want her to call him 'Maurice.' I think I'll put that +into my letter to him. I'll say that I will ask, as a last favor, that +he will not let her call him 'Maurice.'" + +For by this time she had added another straw to the pile of rubbish in +her mind: _she would write him a letter_. In it she would tell him that +she was going to ... die, so that he could marry Lily and have Jacky! +Then came the mental postscript, which would not, of course, be written; +she would make it possible for him to marry Lily--_and impossible for +him to marry Edith_! And by and by she got so close to her mean and +noble purpose--a gift in one dead hand and a sword in the other!--that +she began to think of ways and means. How could she die? She couldn't +buy morphine without a prescription, and she couldn't possibly get a +prescription. But there were other things that people did,--dreadful +things! She knew she couldn't do anything "dreadful." Maurice had a +revolver in his bureau drawer, upstairs--but she didn't know how to +make it "go off"; and if she had known, she couldn't do it; it would +be "dreadful." Well; a rope? No! Horrible! She had once seen a +picture ... she shuddered at the memory of that picture. _That_ was +impossible! Sometimes any way--every way!--seemed impossible. Once, +wandering aimlessly about the thawing back yard, she stood for a long +time at the iron gate, staring at the glimmer, a block away, of the +river--"our river," Maurice used to call it. But in town, "their" +river--flowing!--flowing! was filmed with oil, and washed against slimy +piles, and carried a hideous flotsam of human rubbish; once down below +the bridge she had seen a drowned cat slopping back and forth among +orange skins and straw bottle covers. The river, in town, was as +"dreadful" as those other impossible things! Back in the meadows it was +different--brown and clear where it rippled over shallows and lisped +around that strip of clean sand, and darkly smooth out in the deep +current;--the deep current? Why! _that_ was possible! Of course there +were "things" in the water that she might step on--slimy, creeping +things!--which she was so afraid of. She remembered how afraid she had +been that night on the mountain, of snakes. But the water was clean. + +She must have stood there a long time; the maids, in the basement +laundry, said afterward that they saw her, her white hands clutching the +rusty bars of the gate, looking down toward the river, for nearly an +hour. Then Bingo whined, and she went into the house to comfort him; and +as she stroked him gently, she said, "Yes, ... our river would be +possible." But she would get so wet! "My skirts would be wet ..." + +So three days went by in profound preoccupation. Her mind was a +battlefield, over which, back and forth, reeling and trampling, Love and +Jealousy--old enemies but now allies!--flung themselves against Reason, +which had no support but Fear. Each day Maurice's friendly letters +arrived; one of them--as Jealousy began to rout Reason and Love to cast +out Fear--she actually forgot to open! Mrs. Newbolt called her up on the +telephone once, and said, "Come 'round to dinner; my new cook is pretty +poor, but she's better than yours." + +Eleanor said she had a little cold. "Cold?" said Mrs. Newbolt. "My +gracious! don't come near _me_! I used to tell your dear uncle I was +more afraid of a cold than I was of Satan! He said a cold _was_ Satan; +and I said--" Eleanor hung up the receiver. + +So she was alone--and the wind blew, and the straws and leaves danced +over that battlefield of her empty mind, and she said: + +"I'll give him Jacky," and then she said, "Our river." And then she +said, "But I must hurry!" He had written that he might reach home by the +end of the week. "He might come to-night! I must do it--before he comes +home." She said that while the March dawn was gray against the windows +of her bedroom, and the house was still. She lay in bed until, at six, +she heard the creak of the attic stairs and Mary's step as she crept +down to the kitchen, the silver basket clattering faintly on her arm. +Then she rose and dressed; once she paused to look at herself in the +glass: those gray hairs! ... Edith had called his attention to them so +many years ago! It was a long time since it had been worth while to pull +them out. ... All that morning she moved about the house like one in a +dream. She was thinking what she would say in her letter to him, and +wondering, now and then, vaguely, what it would be like, _afterward_? +She ate no luncheon, though she sat down at the table. She just crumbled +up a piece of bread; then rose, and went into the library to Maurice's +desk... She sat there for a long time, making idle scratches on the +blotting paper; her elbow on the desk, her forehead in her hand, she sat +and scrawled his initials--and hers--and his. And then, after about an +hour, she wrote: + +... I want you to have Jacky. When I am dead you can get him, because +you can marry Lily. Of course I oughtn't to have married you, but-- + +Here she paused for a long time. + +I loved you. I'd rather she didn't call you Maurice. But I want you to +have Jacky; so marry her, and you will have him. I am not jealous, you +see. You won't call me jealous any more, will you? And, besides, I love +little Jacky, too. See that he has music lessons. + +Another pause... Many thoughts... Many straws and dead leaves... "Edith +will never enter the house, if Lily is here--with Jacky.... Oh--I hate +her." + +You will believe I love you, won't you, darling? I wish I hadn't married +you; I didn't mean to do you any harm. I just loved you, and I thought I +could make you happy. I know now that I didn't. Forgive me, darling, for +marrying you... + +Again a long pause.... + +I don't mind dying at all, if I can give you what you want. And I don't +mind your marrying Lily. I am sure she can make good cake--tell her to +try that chocolate cake you liked so much. I tried it twice, but it was +heavy. I forgot the baking powder. Make her call you "Mr. Curtis." Oh, +Maurice--you will believe I love you?--even if I am-- + +She put her pen down and buried her face in her arms folded on his desk; +she couldn't seem to write that word of three letters which she had +supposed summed up the tragedy, begun on that June day in the field and +ending, she told herself, on this March day, in the same place. So, by +and by, instead of writing "old," she wrote + +"a poor housekeeper." + +Then she pondered on how she should sign the letter, and after a while +she wrote: + +"STAR." + +She looked at the radiant word, and then kissed it. By and by she got +up--with difficulty, for she had sat there so long that she was stiff in +every joint--and going to her own desk, she hunted about in it for that +little envelope, which, for nearly twelve of the fifty golden years +which were to find them in "their field," had held the circle of braided +grass. When she opened it, and slid the ring out into the palm of her +hand it crumbled into dust. She debated putting it back into the +envelope and inclosing it in her letter? But a rush of tenderness for +Maurice made her say: "No! It might hurt him." So she dropped it down +behind the logs in the fireplace. "When the fire is lighted it will burn +up." Lily's scented handkerchief had turned to ashes there, too. Then +she folded the letter, slipped it into an envelope, sealed it, addressed +it, and put it in her desk. "He'll find it," she thought, "_afterward_." +Find it,--and know how much she loved him!--the words were like wine to +her. Then she looked at the clock and was startled to see that it was +five. She must hurry! He might come home and stop her!... + +She was perfectly calm; she put on her coat and hat and opened the front +door; then saw the gleam of lights on the wet pavement and felt the +March drizzle in her face; she reflected that it would be very wet in +the meadow, and went back for her rubbers. + +When the car came banging cheerfully along, she boarded it and sat so +that she would be able to see Lily's house. "She's getting his supper," +Eleanor thought; "dear little Jacky! Well, he will be having his supper +with Maurice pretty soon! I wonder how she'll get along with Mary? Mary +will call her 'Mrs. Curtis,' Mary would leave in a minute if she knew +what kind of a person 'Mrs. Curtis' was!" She smiled at that; it pleased +her. "But she mustn't call him 'Maurice,'" she thought; "I won't permit +_that_!" + +The car stopped, and all the other passengers got out. Eleanor vaguely +watched the conductor pull the trolley pole round for the return trip; +then she rose hurriedly. As she started along the road toward the meadow +she thought. "I can walk into the water; I never could jump in! But it +will be easy to wade in." That made her think of the picnic, and the +wading, and how Maurice had tied Edith's shoestrings; and with that came +a surge of triumph. "When he reads my letter, and knows how much I love +him, he'll forget her. And when she hears he has married Lily, she'll +stop making love to him by getting him to tie her shoestrings!" + +It was quite dark by this time, and chilly; she had meant to sit down +for a while, with her back against the locust tree, and think how, _at +last_, he was going to realize her love! But when she reached the bank +of the river she stooped and felt the winter-bleached grass, and found +it so wet with the small, fine rain which had begun to fall, that she +was afraid to sit down. "I'd add to my cold," she thought. So she stood +there a long time, looking at the river, leaden now in the twilight. +"How it glittered that day!" she thought. Suddenly, on a soft wind of +memory, she seemed to smell the warm fragrance of the clover, and hear +again her own voice, singing in the sunshine-- + +"Through the clear windows of the morning!" + +"I'll leave my coat on the bank," she said; "but I'll wear my hat; it +will keep my hair from getting messy. ... Oh, Maurice mustn't let her +call him 'Maurice'! I wish I'd made that clearer in my letter. Why +didn't I tell him to give her that five cents? ... I wonder how many +'minutes' we have had now? We had had fifty-four, that Day. I wish I had +calculated, and put the number in the letter. No, that might have made +him feel badly. I don't want to hurt him; I only want him to know that I +love him enough to die to make him happy. Oh--will it be cold?" + +It was then that she took, slowly, one step--and stood still. And +another--and paused. Her heart began to pound suffocatingly in her +throat, and suddenly she knew that she was afraid! She had not known it; +fear had not entered into her plans; just love--and Maurice; just +hate--and Edith! Nor had "Right" or "Wrong" occurred to her. Now, old +instincts rose up. People called this "wicked"? So, if she was going to +do it, she must do it quickly! She mustn't get to thinking or she might +be afraid to do it, because it would be "wicked." She unfastened her +coat, then fumbled with her hat, pinning it on firmly; she was saying, +aloud: "Oh--oh--oh--it's wicked. But I must. Oh--my skirts will get +wet ... 'Kiss thy perfumed garments' ... No; I'll hold them up. Oh--oh--" +And as she spoke her crazy purpose drove her forward; she held back +against it--but, like the pressure of a hand upon her shoulder, it +pushed her on down the bank--slowly--slowly--her heels digging into the +crumbling clay, her hands clutching now at a tuft of grass, now at a +drooping branch; she was drawing quick breaths of terror, and talking, +in little gasps, aloud: "He'll forget Edith. He'll have Jacky. He'll +know how much I love him...." So, over the pebbles, out on to the spit +of sand; on--on--until she reached the river's edge. She stood there for +a minute, listening to the lisping chatter of the current. Very slowly, +she stepped in, and was ankle deep in shallow water,--then stopped +short--the water soaked through her shoes, and suddenly she felt it, +like circling ice, around her ankles! Aloud, she said, "Maurice,--I give +you Jacky. But don't let Lily call you--" She stepped on, into the +stream; one step--two--three. It was still shallow. "Why doesn't it get +_deep_?" she said, angrily; another step and the water was halfway to +her knees; she felt the force of the current and swayed a little; still +another step--above her knees now! and the _rip_, tugging and pulling at +her floating skirts. It was at the next step that she slipped, +staggered, fell full length--felt the water gushing into the neck of her +dress, running down her back, flowing between her breasts; felt her +sleeves drenched against her arms; she sprang up, fell again, her head +under water, her face scraping the pebbly sharpness of the river +bed,--again got on to her feet and ran choking and coughing, stumbling +and slipping, back to the sand-spit, and the shore. There she stood, +soaking wet, gasping. Her hat was gone, her hair dripping about her +face. "_I can't_," she said. + +She climbed up the bank, catching at the grass and twigs, and feeling +her tears running hot over the icy wetness of her cheeks. When she +reached the top she picked up her coat with numb, shaking hands and, +shivering violently, put it on with a passionate desire for warmth. + +"I tried; I _tried_," she said; "but--I can't!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + + +It was after ten o'clock that night when Eleanor's icy fingers fumbled +at Mrs. Newbolt's doorbell. The ring was not heard at first, because her +aunt and Edith Houghton and Johnny Bennett were celebrating his +departure the next day for South America, by making a Welsh rabbit in a +chafing dish before the parlor fire. Mrs. Newbolt, entering into the +occasion with voluble reminiscences, was having a very good time. She +liked Youth, and she liked Welsh rabbits, and she liked an audience; and +she had all three! Then the doorbell rang. And again. + +"For Heaven's sake!" said Mrs. Newbolt; "at this time of night! Johnny, +the girls have gone to bed; you go and answer it, like a good boy." + +"Dump in some more beer, Edith," Johnny commanded, and went out into the +hall, whistling. A moment later the other two heard his startled voice, +"Why, come right in!" There was no reply, just shuffling steps; then +Eleanor, silent, without any hat, her hair plastered down her ghastly +cheeks, her face bruised and soiled with sand, stood in the doorway, the +astonished John Bennett behind her. Everybody spoke at once: + +"Eleanor! What has happened?" + +"_Eleanor!_ Where is your hat?" + +"Good gracious! Eleanor--" + +She was perfectly still. Just looking at them, during that blank moment +before everything became a confusion of jostling assistance. Edith +rushed to help her off with her coat. Johnny said, "Mrs. Newbolt, where +can I get some whisky?" Mrs. Newbolt felt the soaking skirt, and tried +to unfasten the belt so that the wet mass might fall to the floor. + +Eleanor was rigid. "Get a doctor!" Edith commanded. + +Johnny ran to the telephone. + +"No," Eleanor whispered. + +But nobody paid any attention to her. Johnny, at the telephone, was +telling Mrs. Newbolt's doctor to _hurry_! Mrs. Newbolt herself had run, +wheezing, to open the spare-room bed and get out extra blankets, and +fill hot-water bottles; then, somehow or other, she and Edith got +Eleanor upstairs, undressed her, put her into the big four-poster, and +held a tumbler of hot whisky and water to her lips. By the time Doctor +James arrived she had begun to shiver violently; but she was still +silent. The trolley ride into town, with staring passengers and a +conductor who thought she had been drinking, and tried to be jocose, had +chilled her to the bone, and the gradual dulling of thought had left +only one thing clear to her: She mustn't go home, because Maurice might +possibly be there! And if he was, then he would _know_! So she must +go--somewhere. She went first to Mrs. O'Brien's, climbing the three long +flights of stairs and feeling her way along dark entries to the old +woman's door. She stood there shuddering and knocking; a single gas jet, +wavering in the draughty entry, made her shadow lurch on the cracked +plaster of the wall; it occurred to her that she would like to put her +frozen hands around the little flame to warm them. Then she knocked +again. There was no answer, so, shaking from head to foot, she felt her +way downstairs again to the street, where the reflection of an +occasional gas lamp gleamed and flickered on the wet asphalt. "I'll go +to Auntie's," she thought. + +She had just one purpose--to get warm! But she was so dazed that she +could never remember how she reached Mrs. Newbolt's; probably she +walked, for there were no cabs in that part of town and no car line +passed Mrs. Newbolt's door. The time after she left Mrs. O'Brien's was a +blank. Even when she had swallowed the hot whisky, and began to feel +warmer, she was still mentally benumbed, and couldn't remember what she +had done. She did not notice Johnny Bennett; she saw Edith, but did +not, apparently, understand that she was staying in the house. When the +doctor came she was as silent to him as to everybody else. + +He asked no questions. "Keep her warm," he said, "and don't talk to +her." + +Mrs. Newbolt, going to the door with him, palpitating with fright, said, +"_We_ don't know a thing more about what's happened than you do! She +just appeared, drippin', wet!" + +"She has evidently fallen into some water," he said; "but I wouldn't ask +her about it, yet. Of course we don't know what the result will be, Mrs. +Newbolt. I can't help saying I'm anxious. Mr. Curtis had better be sent +for. Telegraph him in the morning." He went off, thinking to himself, +"She must have gone into the country to do it. If she'd tried the river, +here, and scrambled out, she wouldn't have been so frightfully chilled. +I wonder what's up?" + +Everybody wondered what was up, but Eleanor did not enlighten them; so +the three interrupted revelers could do nothing but think. Johnny's +thoughts, as he sat down in the parlor among the Welsh-rabbit plates, +keeping the fire up, and waiting in case he might be needed, were even +briefer than the doctor's: "Tried to commit suicide." + +Edith, standing in the upper hall, listening to Mrs. Newbolt at +Eleanor's bedside, exclaiming, and repeating her dear mother's ideas +about catching cold, and offering more hot-water bottles, had her +thoughts: "I won't go into the room--she would hate to see me! The +doctor said she had fallen into some water. Did she--do it on purpose? +Oh, _was_ it my fault?" Edith's heart pounded with terror: "Was it what +I said to her in the garden that made her do it?" + +Mrs. Newbolt, in a blue-flannel dressing gown, and in and out of the +spare room with sibilant whispers of anxiety, had, for once, more +thoughts than words; her words were only, "I've always expected it!" But +her thoughts would have filled volumes! Mrs. Newbolt had put her hair +in order for the night, and now her crimping pins made the shadow of her +head, bobbing on the ceiling, look like a gigantic spider. + +Eleanor had just one hazy thought: "I tried ... I tried--and I failed." + +Other people, however, didn't feel so sure that she had failed. She +"looks like death," Mrs. Newbolt told Edith the next morning. "We've got +to find Maurice! Edith, why do you suppose she--did it?" + +"Oh, but she _didn't_!" Edith said. "What sense would there be--" + +"Don't talk about 'sense'! Eleanor never had any. I've telegraphed your +mother to come. I wonder how Bingo is? She understands her. The ashman +has broken my new ash barrel; I don't know what this country is comin' +to!" + +Then she went upstairs to try to understand Eleanor herself. "Eleanor, +what happened?" + +"Nothing. I'm going home this afternoon." + +"Indeed you are not! You're not goin' out of this house till Maurice +comes and gets you! _What_ happened?" she demanded again. + +"I fell. Into some water." + +"How could you 'fall'? And what 'water'?" + +"I had gone out to the river--up in Medfield. To--take a walk; and +I ... slipped...." + +"Now, Eleanor, look here; if I have a virtue, it's candor, and I'll tell +you why; it saves time. That's what my dear father used to say: 'Lyin' +wastes time.' I know what you tried to do; and it was very wicked." + +"But I didn't do it!" + +"You tried to. If you and Maurice have quarreled, I'll stand by _you_." + +Eleanor covered her face with her hands--and Mrs. Newbolt burst out, +"He's treated you badly! You needn't try to deceive me,--he's been +flirtin' with some woman?" Her pale, prominent eyes snapped with anger. + +"Oh, Auntie, don't! He hasn't! Only, I--wanted to make him happier; and +so I--" She broke into furious crying. Despairing crying. + +Instantly Mrs. Newbolt was all frightened solicitude. "There! Don't cry! +Have a hot-water bag. They say there's a new kind on the market. I must +get a new pair of rubbers. Your face is awfully bruised. He's puffectly +happy! He worships the ground you walk on! Eleanor, don't cry. How's +your cold? The ashman--" + +Eleanor, gasping, said her cold was better, and repeated her +determination of going home. + +It was the doctor--dropping in, he said, to make sure Mrs. Curtis was +none the worse for her "accident"--who put a stop to that. + +"I slipped and fell," Eleanor told him; she was very hoarse. + +He said yes, he understood. "But you got badly chilled, and you had a +cold to start with. So you must lie low for two or three days. When will +Mr. Curtis be back?" + +Eleanor said she didn't know; all she knew was she didn't want him sent +for. She was "all right." + +But of course he had been sent for! "I don't know that it was really +necessary," Mrs. Newbolt told Mrs. Houghton, who appeared late in the +afternoon; "but I wasn't goin' to take the responsibility--" + +"Of course not!" Mrs. Houghton said. "Mr. Weston has telegraphed him, +too, I hope?" Then, before taking her things off, she went upstairs to +Eleanor. "Well!" she said, "I hear you had an accident? Sensible girl, +to stay in bed!" She took Eleanor's hand, and its hot tremor made her +look keenly at the haggard face on the pillow. + +"Oh," Eleanor said, with a gasp of relief, "I'm so glad you're here! +There are some things I want attended to. I owe--I mean, somebody paid +my car fare. And I _must_ send it to her! And then I want something +from my desk; but I can't have Bridget get it, and I don't want to ask +Auntie to. It's--it's a letter to Maurice. I wanted to tell him +something.... But I've changed my mind. I don't want him to see it. He +mustn't see it! Oh, Mrs. Houghton, would you get it for me? I'd be _so_ +grateful! ... And then,--oh, that five cents! I don't know how I'm going +to send it to her--" + +"Tell me who it is, and I'll get it to her; and I'll get the letter," +Mary Houghton told her; and went on with the usual sick-room +encouragement: "The doctor says you are better. But you must hurry and +get well, so as to help Maurice with the little boy!" + +Her words were like a push against some tottering barrier. + +"I tried to help him; I tried to get Jacky! I went to the woman's, but +she wouldn't give him to me! I _tried_--so hard. But she wouldn't! She +paid my car fare--" + +Mrs. Houghton bent over and kissed her: "Tell me about it, dear; perhaps +I can help." + +"There is no help! ... She won't give him up. She insisted on coming +home with me, and she paid my car fare! Then I thought, if--I were not +alive, Maurice could get him, because he could marry her ..." + +Instantly, with a thrill of horror and admiration, Mrs. Houghton +understood the "accident"! "Eleanor! What a mad, mad thought! As if you +could help Maurice by giving him a great grief! Oh, I do thank God he +has been spared anything so terrible!" + +"But," Eleanor said, excitedly, "if I were dead, it would be his duty to +marry her, wouldn't it? Jacky is his child! Oughtn't he to marry Jacky's +mother? Oh, Mrs. Houghton, I owe her five cents--" + +The older woman was trembling, but she spoke calmly: "Eleanor, dear, you +must live for Maurice, not--die for him." + +"Promise me," said Eleanor, "you won't tell him?" + +"Of course I won't!" said Mrs. Houghton, with elaborate cheerfulness. +She kissed her, and went downstairs, feeling very queer in her knees. +She paused at the parlor door to say to Mrs. Newbolt and Edith that she +was going out to do an errand for Eleanor; "I hope Maurice will get +back soon," she said. "I don't like Eleanor's looks." Then she went to +get that letter which Maurice "must not see." As she walked along the +street she was still tingling with the shock of having her own theories +brought home to her. "Thank God," Mary Houghton said, "that nothing +happened!" + +The maid who opened the door at Maurice's house was evidently excited, +but not about her mistress. "Oh, Mrs. Houghton!" she said, "we done our +best, but he wouldn't take a bite!--and I declare I don't know what +Mrs. Curtis will say. He just _wouldn't_ eat, and this morning he up and +died--and me offering him a chop!" Bridget wept with real distress. +"Mrs. Houghton, please tell her we done our best; he just smelled his +chop--and died. You see, he hasn't eat a thing, without she gave it to +him, for--oh, more 'n a month!" + +Mary Houghton went into the library, where the fire was out, and the +dust on tables and chairs bore witness to the fact that Bridget had +devoted herself to Bingo; the room was gloomy, and smelled of soot. +Little Bingo lay, stiff and chill, on the sofa; on a plate beside him +was a chop rimmed in cold grease,--poor little, loving, jealous, old +Bingo! "I hope it won't upset Mrs. Curtis," Mrs. Houghton told the maid; +then gave directions about the stark little body. She found the letter +in Eleanor's desk, and went back to Mrs. Newbolt's. "Love," she thought, +"_is_ as strong as death; stronger! Bingo--and Eleanor." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + + +Maurice, followed by telegrams that never quite overtook him, did, some +forty-eight hours later, get the news that Eleanor had "had an +accident," and was at Mrs. Newbolt's, who thought he had "better return +immediately." His business was not quite finished, but it did not need +Mr. Weston's laconic wire, "Drop Greenleaf matters and come back," to +start him on the next train for Mercer. He had been away nearly two +weeks--two terrible weeks, of facing himself; two weeks of rebellion, +and submission; of tumultuous despair and quiet acceptance. He had +looked faithfully--and very shrewdly--into the "Greenleaf matters"; he +had turned one or two sharp corners, with entirely honest cleverness, +and he was taking back to Mercer some concessions which old Weston had +slipped up on! Yes, he had done a darned good job, he told himself, +lounging in the smoking compartment of one parlor car or another, or +strolling up and down station platforms for a breath of air. And all the +while that he was on the Greenleaf job--in Pullmans, sitting in hotel +lobbies writing letters, looking through title and probate records--his +own affairs raced and raged in his thoughts; they were summed up in one +word: "Edith." He could not get away from Edith! He tripped a Greenleaf +trustee into an admission (and he thought, "so long as she never +suspects that I love her, there's no harm in going along as we always +have"). Then he conceded a point to the Greenleaf interests (and said to +himself, "her hair on her shoulders that day on the lawn was like a +nimbus around the head of a saint. How she'd hate that word 'saint'!"). +His chuckle made one of the Greenleaf heirs think that Weston's +representative was a good sort;--"pleasant fellow!" But Maurice, +looking "pleasant," was thinking: "I'd about sell my soul to kiss her +hair ... Oh, I _must_ stop this kind of thing! I swear it's worse than +the Lily and Jacky business...." Then he signed a deed, and the +Greenleaf people felt they had made a good thing of it--but Maurice's +telegram that the deed was signed, caused rejoicing in the Weston +office! "Curtis got ahead of 'em!" said Mr. Weston. While he was +writing that triumphant telegram Maurice was wondering: "Was John +Bennett a complete idiot? ... If things had been different would Edith +have ... cared?" For himself, he, personally, didn't care "a damn," +whether Weston got ahead of Greenleaf or Greenleaf beat Weston. His own +affairs engrossed him: "my job," he was telling himself, "is to see that +Eleanor doesn't suffer any more, poor girl! And Edith shall never know. +And I'll make a decent man of Jacky--not a fool, like his father." So he +wrote his victorious dispatch, and the Weston office congratulated +itself. + +Maurice had been very grateful for his fortnight of absence from +everybody, except the Greenleaf heirs; grateful for a solitude of trains +and lawyers' offices. Because, in solitude, he could, with entirely +hopeless courage, face the future. He was facing it unswervingly the day +he reached Chicago, where he was to get some final signatures; he came +into the warm lobby of the hotel, glad to escape the rampaging lake +wind, and while he was registering the hotel clerk produced the +telegrams which had been held for him. The first, from Mr. Weston, "Drop +Greenleaf," bewildered him until he read the other, "Eleanor has had an +accident." Then he ran his pen through his name, asked for a time-table, +and sent a peremptory wire to Mrs. Newbolt saying that he was on his way +home, and asking that full particulars be telegraphed to him at a +certain point on his journey. "Let me know just what happened, and how +she is," he telegraphed. "It must be serious," he thought, "to send for +me!" + +It was hardly an hour before he was on a train for another day of +travel, during which he experienced the irritation common to all of us +when we receive an alarming dispatch, devoid of details. "Economizing on +ten cents! What kind of an 'accident'? How serious is it? When was it? +Why didn't they let me know before?" and so on; all the futile, anxious, +angry questions which a man asks himself under such circumstances. But +suddenly, while he was asking these questions, another question +whispered in his mind; a question to which he would not listen, and +which he refused to answer; but again and again, over and over, it +repeated itself, coming, it seemed, on the rhythmical roll of the +wheels--the wheels which were taking him back to Eleanor! "If--if--if--" +the wheels hammered out; "_if_ anything happens to Eleanor--"? He never +finished that sentence, but the beginning of it actually frightened him. +"Am I as low as this?" he said, frantically, "speculating on the +possibility of anything happening to her?" But he was not so low as +that--he only heard the jar of the wheels: "If--if--if--if--" + +When he reached the station to which he had told Mrs. Newbolt to reply, +he rushed out of the car into the telegraph office, and clutched at the +message before the operator could put it into its flimsy brown envelope; +as he read it he said under his breath, "Thank God!" It was from Mary +Houghton: + +Accident slight. Slipped into water. All right now except bad cold. + +Maurice's hand shook as he folded the message and stuffed it into his +pocket. He had the sense of having escaped from a terror--the terror of +intolerable remorse. For if she had not been "all right," if, instead of +just "a bad cold," the dispatch had said "something had +happened"!--then, for all the rest of his life he would have had to +remember how the wheels had beaten out that terrible refrain: +"If--if--if--" + +So he said, "Thank God." + +All that day, while Maurice was hurrying back to Mercer, Eleanor lay +very still, and when Mrs. Newbolt or Mrs. Houghton came into the room +she closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. Edith did not come into +the room; so, in a hazy way, Eleanor took it for granted that she had +left the house. "I should think she would!" Eleanor thought; "she could +hardly have the face to stay in the same house with me." But she did not +think much about Edith; she was absorbed in deciding what she should say +to Maurice. Should she tell him the truth?--or some silly story of a +walk to their meadow? The two alternatives flew back and forth in her +mind like shuttlecocks. There was one thing she felt sure of: that +letter--which Mrs. Houghton had brought from her desk, which Maurice was +to have read when she had done what she set out to do, but which now she +kept clutched in her hand, or hidden under her pillow--_Maurice must not +see that letter!_ If he read it, now, while she was (she told herself) +still half sick from those drenched hours of the trolley ride and the +dark wanderings from Mrs. O'Brien's to Mrs. Newbolt's, the whole thing +would seem simply ridiculous. Some time, he must know that she loved him +enough to buy Jacky for him, by dying--or trying to die! She would tell +him, _some time_; because her purpose (even if it had failed) would +measure the heights and depths of her love as nothing else could; but he +must not know it now, because she hadn't carried it out. That first +night, when she had found herself safe and warm (oh, warm! She had +thought she never would be warm any more!)--when she had found herself +in Mrs. Newbolt's spare room in the four-poster with its chintz hangings +and its great soft pillows, she had been glad she had not carried it +out. Glad not to be dead. As she lay there, shivering slowly into +delicious comfort, and fending off Mrs. Newbolt's distracted questions, +she had had occasional moments of a sense of danger escaped; perhaps it +_would_ have been wrong to--to lie down there in the river? People call +it wicked Mrs. Newbolt, for a single suspicious instant ("She forgot it +right off," Eleanor said; "she just thought we'd quarreled!"); but Mrs. +Newbolt had said it was "wicked." "But I didn't do it!" Eleanor told +herself in a rush of gratitude. She hadn't been "wicked"! Instead, she +was in Mrs. Newbolt's spare room, looking dreamily at the old French +clock on the mantelpiece, whose tarnished gilt face glimmered between +two slender black-marble columns; sometimes she counted the tick-tock of +the slowly swinging pendulum; sometimes, toward dawn, she watched the +foggy yellow daylight peer between the red rep curtains; but counting, +and looking, and drowsing, she was glad to be alive. It was not until +the next afternoon that she began to be faintly mortified at being +alive. It was then that she had felt that she _must_ get that +letter--Maurice mustn't see it! Little by little, humiliation at her +failure to be heroic, grew acute. Maurice wouldn't know that she loved +him enough to give him Jacky; he would just know that she was silly. She +had got wet; and had a cold in her head. Snuffles--not Death. He +might--_laugh_!... It was then that she implored Mrs. Houghton to get +the letter out of her desk. + +Yet when it was given to her she held it in her hand under the +bedclothes, saying to herself that she would not destroy it, yet, +because, even though she _had_ failed, there might come a time when it +would prove to Maurice how much she loved him. She was so absorbed in +this thought that she did not grieve much for Bingo. "Poor little +Bingo," she said, vaguely, when Mrs. Houghton told her that the little +dog was dead; "he was so jealous." Now, with Maurice coming nearer every +hour, she could not think of Bingo; she was face to face with a +decision! What should she tell him about the "accident"? + +It was in the afternoon of the day that Maurice was to arrive,--he had +telegraphed that he would reach Mercer in the evening;--that she had a +sudden panic about Edith. "She was here that night and saw me. I know +she laughed at me because I hadn't any hat on! She may--suspect? If she +does, she'll tell him! What shall I do to stop her?" She couldn't think +of any way to stop her! She couldn't hold her thoughts steady enough to +reach a decision. First would come gladness of her own comfort and +safety, and the warm, warm bed; then shame, that she had faltered and +run away from a chance to do a great thing for Maurice; then terror that +Edith would make her ridiculous to Maurice. Then all these thoughts +would whirl about, run backward: First, terror of Edith! then shame! +then comfort! Suddenly the terror thought held fast with a question. +"Suppose I make her promise not to tell Maurice anything? I think she +would keep a promise...." It would be dreadful to ask the favor of +secrecy of Edith--just as she had asked the same sort of favor of +Lily--but to seem silly to Maurice would be more dreadful than to ask a +favor! She held to this purpose of humiliating self-protection, long +enough to ask Mrs. Houghton when Edith was coming down from Green Hill. + +"Why, she's here, now, in the house!" Edith's mother said. + +"_Here?_" Eleanor said, despairingly. If Edith was here, then Maurice, +when he came, would see her and she would tell him! "She would make a +funny story of it," Eleanor thought; "I know her! She would make him +laugh. I can't bear it! ... I would like to speak to Edith," she told +Mrs. Houghton, faintly. + +Edith, summoned by her mother, stood for a rigid moment outside +Eleanor's door, trying to get herself in hand. In these anxious days, +Edith's youth had been threatened by assailing waves of a remorse that +at times would have engulfed it altogether, but for that unflinching +reasonableness which made her the girl she was. "It may be," Edith had +said to herself; "it _may_ be that what I said to her in the garden made +her so angry that she tried to kill herself; but why should it have made +her angry? I didn't injure her. Besides, she dragged it out of me! I +couldn't lie. She said, 'You love him.' I _would_ not lie, and say I +didn't! But what harm did it do her?" So she reasoned; but reason did +not keep her from suffering. "Did _I_ drive her to it?" Edith said, +over and over. So when her mother told her Eleanor wanted to speak to +her, she grew a little pale. When she entered Eleanor's room her heart +was beating so hard she felt smothered, but she was perfectly matter of +fact. "Anything I can do for you, Eleanor?" she said. She stood at the +foot of the bed, holding on to the carved bed post. + +Eleanor looked at her for a silent moment, then gathered herself +together. "Edith," she said (she was very hoarse and spoke with +difficulty), "I don't want to bother Maurice about--about my accident. +So I am going to ask you, please, not to refer to it to him. Not to tell +him anything about it. _Anything._ Promise me." + +"Of course I won't!" Edith said. As she spoke she forgot herself in pity +for the scared, haggard face. ("Oh, _was_ it my fault?" she thought, +with a real pang.) And before she knew it her coldness was all gone and +she was at Eleanor's side; she sat down on the edge of the bed and +caught her hand impulsively. "Eleanor," she said, "I've been awfully +unhappy, for fear anything I said--that morning--troubled you? Of course +there was no sense in talking that way, for either of us. So please +forgive me! _Was_ it what I said, that made you--that bothered you, I +mean? I'm so unhappy," Edith said, and caught her lip between her teeth +to keep it steady; her eyes were bright with tears. "Eleanor, truly I am +_nothing_ to--to anybody. Nobody cares a copper for me! Do be kind to +me. Oh--I've been awfully unhappy; and I'm _so_ glad you're better." + +Instantly the smoldering fire broke into flame: "I'm _not_ better," +Eleanor said, "and you wouldn't be glad if I were." + +It was as if she struck her hand upon those generous young lips. Edith +sprang to her feet. "Eleanor!" + +Eleanor sat up in bed, her hands behind her, propping her up; her cheeks +were dully red, her eyes glowing. "All this talk about making me unhappy +means nothing at all. You have always made me unhappy. And as for +anybody's caring for you--they _don't_; you are quite right about that. +Quite right! And I want to tell you something else: If anything happens +to me, I _want_ Maurice to marry again. But he won't marry you." + +"Eleanor," Edith said, "you wouldn't say such a thing, or think such a +thing, if you weren't sick. I'm sorry I came in. I'll go right away, +and--" + +"No," she said; "don't go away,"--her arms had begun to tremble with +strain of supporting her, she spoke in whispered gasps: "I am going to +speak," she said; "I prefer to speak. I want you to know that if I +die--" + +"You are not going to die! You are going to get well." + +"Will you _please_ not keep interrupting? It is so hard for me to get my +breath. I want you to know that he will marry--that Dale woman. Because +it is right that he should. Because of the little boy. His little boy." + +Edith was dumb. + +"So you see, he can't marry _you_," Eleanor said, and fell back on her +pillows, her eyes half closed. + +There was a long silence, just the ticking of the Empire clock and the +faint snapping of the fire. Edith felt as if some iron hand had gripped +her throat. For a moment it was impossible for her to speak; then the +words came quietly: "Eleanor, I'm glad you told me this. You are going +to get well, and I'm glad, _glad_ that you are! But I must tell you: If +anything had happened to you, I would have moved heaven and earth to +have kept Maurice from marrying that woman. Oh, Eleanor, how can you say +you love him, and yet plan such terrible unhappiness for him?" + +She turned and ran out of the room, up another flight of stairs to her +own bedroom. There she fell down on her bed and lay tense and rigid, her +face hidden in her hands. This, then, was what Maurice had meant? She +saw again the wood path, and the tall fern breaking under Maurice's +racquet; she saw the flecks of sunshine on the moss--she heard him say +he "hadn't played the game with Eleanor." Oh, he hadn't, he hadn't! Then +she thought of the Dale woman. The accident on the river. The stumble +at the gate and of Maurice's child in Lily's arms. "Oh, poor Eleanor! +poor Eleanor! ... All the same, she is wicked, to be so cruel to him. +She is taking her revenge. Jealousy has made her wicked. But, oh, I wish +I hadn't hurt her in the garden! But how _could_ Maurice--that little, +common woman! How _could_ he?" She shook with sobs: "Poor, poor +Eleanor ..." + +Eleanor, on her big bed, lay panting with anger and fright. "_Now_ +she'll know I'm hiding something from him!" she thought; "I've put +myself in her power by having a secret with her; just as I put myself in +Lily's power by asking her not to tell Maurice I had been there. Well, +Edith is in _my_ power!--because I've made her know he'll never care for +her. And she'll keep her word; she'll not tell him about the river." + +The relief of this was so great that she could almost forget her +humiliation; she gave herself up to thinking what she herself must do +to keep Maurice in ignorance. "Auntie will be sure to say something. But +he knows how silly she is. She thought we'd quarreled, and that I had +tried ... I might tell Maurice that? And he'll make fun of her, and won't +believe anything she says! I might say that I went out to--to see our +river, and slipped and got wet, and that Auntie thought we'd quarreled, +and that I had ... had tried to ... to--And he'll say, 'What a joke!' +But maybe he'll say, 'Why did you go out to Medfield so late?' And I'll +say, 'Oh, well, I got delayed.' ... Yes, that's the thing to do." + +So, around and around, her poor, frantic thoughts raced and trampled one +another. When Mrs. Newbolt interrupted them with a tray and some supper, +Eleanor, with eyes closed, motioned her away: "My head aches. I can't +eat anything. I'm going to try and get a little sleep." + +By and by, through sheer fatigue, she did drowse, and when the wheels of +Maurice's cab grated against the curb, she was asleep. + +Edith, upstairs in her own room, heard the front door close sharply. "I +_can't_ see him!" she said; "I mustn't see him." But she wanted to see +him; she wanted to say to him: "Maurice, you can make it all up to +Eleanor! You can make her happy. _Don't_ despair about it--we'll all +help you make it up to her!" She wanted to say: " Oh,Maurice, you _will_ +conquer. I know you will!" If she could only see him and tell him these +things! "If I didn't love him, I could," she thought.... + +Maurice came hurrying into the parlor, with the anxious, "How is she?" +on his lips; and Mrs. Newbolt and Mrs. Houghton were full of +reassurances, and suggestions of food, which he negatived promptly. +"Tell me about Eleanor! What happened?" + +"She's asleep," Mrs. Newbolt said. "You must have something to eat--" +She was in such a panic of uncertainty as to what must and must not be +said to Maurice that she clutched at supper as a perfectly safe topic. +"I--I--I'll go and see about your supper," said Mrs. Newbolt, and +trundled off to hide herself in the dining room. + +Mary Houghton could not hide, but she would have been glad to! "Eleanor +is sleepy, now, Maurice," she said; "but she'll want to have just a +glimpse of you--" + +"I'll go right up!" + +"Maurice, wait one minute. If I were you, I wouldn't get Eleanor to +talking, to-night; she's a little feverish--" + +"Mrs. Houghton!" he broke in, "Eleanor's all right, isn't she?" His face +was furrowed with alarm. (If that wicked rhythm of the wheels should +begin again!) + +"Oh yes; I--I think so. She hasn't quite got over the shock yet, but--" + +"What shock? Nobody's told me yet what it was! Your dispatch only said +she'd slipped into the water. What water?" + +"We don't really know," said Mrs. Houghton; "and she mustn't be worried +with questions, the doctor says. You see, she got dripping wet, somehow, +and then had a long trolley ride--and she had a cold to start with--" + +"I'll just crawl upstairs, and see if she's awake," said Maurice. "I +won't disturb her." + +As he started softly upstairs, Mrs. Newbolt opened the dining-room door +a crack, and peered in at Mary Houghton. "Did you tell him?" she said, +in a wheezing whisper. + +Mrs. Houghton shook her head. + +"Well, I can tell you who won't tell him," said Eleanor's aunt; "me! To +tell a man that his wife--" + +"Hush-sh!" said Mrs. Houghton; "he's coming downstairs. Besides, we +don't know that she did--" + +The dining-room door closed softly on the whispered words: "Puffect +nonsense. Of course we know." + +Maurice, tiptoeing into Eleanor's room, thought she was asleep, and was +backing out again, when she opened drowsy eyes and said, faintly, +"Hullo." + +He bent over to kiss her. "Well, you're a great girl, to cut up like +this when I'm away from home!" + +She smiled, closed her eyes, and he tiptoed out of the room.... + +Back again in the parlor, he began, "Mrs. Houghton, for Heaven's sake, +tell me the whole thing!" He wasn't anxious now; as far as he could see, +Eleanor was "all right"--just sleepy. But what on earth-- + +She told him what she knew; what she suspected, she kept to herself. But +she might as well have told it all. For, as he listened, his face +darkened with understanding. + +"The river? In Medfield? But, why--?" + +"Edith says you and she had a good deal of sentiment about the river, +and--" + +"At six o'clock, on a March evening?" said Maurice. He put his hands in +his pockets and began to walk up and down. Mrs. Houghton had nothing +more to say; the room was so silent that the dining-room door opened a +furtive crack--then closed quickly! Mrs. Houghton began to talk about +Maurice's journey, and Maurice asked whether Eleanor could be taken home +the next day--at which the dining-room door opened broadly, and Mrs. +Newbolt said: + +"If you ask _me_, I'd say 'no'! If you want to know what I think, I +think she's got a temperature! And she oughtn't to stir out of this +house till it's normal." + +"Mrs. Newbolt," said Maurice, pausing in his tramping up and down the +room; "why did Eleanor go out to Medfield?" + +"Perhaps she was lookin' for a cook! I--I think I'll go to bed!" said +Mrs. Newbolt--and almost ran out of the room. + +Maurice looked down at Mrs. Houghton, and laughed, grimly: "You might as +well tell me?" + +"My dear fellow, we have nothing to tell! We don't know anything--except +that Eleanor has added to her cold, and is very nervous," She paused; +could she give him an idea of the extent of Eleanor's "nervousness," and +yet not tell him what they all felt sure of? "Why, Maurice," she said; +"just to show you how hysterical Eleanor is, she told me--" Mrs. +Houghton dropped her voice, and looked toward the dining-room door; but +Mrs. Newbolt's ponderous step made itself heard overhead. "She said--Oh, +Maurice, this is too foolish to repeat; but it just shows how Eleanor +loves you. She implied that she didn't want to get well, so that you +could--could get the little boy, by marrying his mother!" + +Maurice sat down and stared at her, open-mouthed. "_Marry?_ I, marry +Lily?" He actually gasped under the impact of a perfectly new idea; then +he said, very softly, "Good God." + +Mrs. Houghton nodded. "Her one thought," she said (praying that, without +breaking her word to Eleanor, and betraying what was so terribly +Eleanor's own affair, she might make Maurice's heart so ready for the +pathos that he would not be repelled by the folly), "her one desire is +that you should have your little boy." + +Maurice walked over to the fireplace and kicked two charred pieces of +wood together between the fire irons. In the crash of Mary Houghton's +calm words, the rhythm of the wheels was permanently silenced. + +It was about four o'clock the next morning that the change came: Eleanor +had a violent chill. + +"I thought we were out of the woods," the doctor said, frowning; "but I +guess I was too previous. There's a spot in the left lung, Mr. Curtis." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + + +When Maurice saw his wife the next morning, it was with Mrs. Houghton's +warning--emphasized by the presence of a nurse--that he must not excite +her. So he sat at her bedside and told her about his trip, and how he +had got ahead of the Greenleaf heirs, and how he rushed back to Mercer +the minute those dispatches came saying that she was ill--and he never +asked her why she was ill, or what took her out to the river in the cold +dusk of that March afternoon. She didn't try to tell him. She was very +warm and drowsy--and she held in her hand, under the bedclothes, that +letter which proved how much she loved him, and which, some time, when +she got well, she would show him. All that day the household outside her +closed door was very much upset; but Eleanor, in the big bed, was +perfectly placid. She lay mere watching the tarnished gilt pendulum +swing between the black pillars of the clock on the mantelpiece, +thinking--thinking. "You'll be all right to-morrow!" Maurice would say; +and she would smile silently and go on thinking. "When I get well," she +thought, "I will do--so and so." By and by, still with the letter +clutched in her hot hand, she began to say to herself, "_If_ I get +well." She had ceased worrying over how she was going to explain the +"accident" to Maurice; that _"if"_ left a door open into eternal +reticence. So, instead of worrying, she made plans for Jacky: "He must +see a dentist," she told Maurice. On the third day she stopped saying, +"_If_ I get well," and thought, "When I die." She said it very +tranquilly, "When I die Maurice must get him a bicycle." She thought of +this happily, for dying meant that she had not failed. She would not be +ridiculous to Maurice--she would be his wife, giving him a child--a +son! So she lay with her eyes closed, thinking of the bicycle and many +little, pleasant things; and with the old, slipping inexactness of mind +she told herself that she had not "done anything wrong"; she had _not_ +drowned herself! She had just caught a bad cold. But she would die, and +Maurice would love her for giving him Jacky. Toward evening, however, an +uneasy thought came to her: if Maurice knew that, to give him Jacky, she +had even tried to get drowned, it might distress him? She wished she +hadn't written the letter! It would hurt him to see it.... Well, but he +_needn't_ see it! She held out the crumpled envelope. "Miss Ryan," she +said to the nurse, huskily, "please burn this." + +"Yes, indeed!" said Miss Ryan.... + +There was a burst of flame in the fireplace, and the little, pitiful +letter, with its selfishness and pain and sacrifice, vanished--as Lily's +handkerchief had vanished, and the braided ring of blossoming grass--all +gone, as the sparks that fly upward. Nobody could ever know the scented +humiliation of the handkerchief, or the agony of the faded ring, or the +renouncing love which had written the poor foolish letter. Maurice +wouldn't be pained. As for her gift to him of Jacky, she would just tell +him she wanted him to marry Lily, so he could have his child.... And +Edith? Oh, he would never think of Edith! + +So she was very peaceful until, the next day, she heard Edith's voice +in the hall, then she frowned. "She's here! In the house with him! +Don't let her come in," she told Maurice; "she takes my breath." But, +somehow, she couldn't help thinking of Edith.... "That morning in the +garden she cried," Eleanor thought. It was strange to think of tears in +those clear, careless eyes. "I never supposed she _could_ cry. I've +cried a good deal. Men don't like tears." And there had been tears in +Edith's eyes when she came in and sat on the bed and said she was +"unhappy...." "She believed," Eleanor meditated, her own eyes closed, +"that it was because of _her_ that I went out to the river." She was +faintly sorry that Edith should reproach herself. "I didn't do it because +she made me angry; I did it to make Maurice happy. I almost wish she knew +that." Perhaps it was this vague regret that made her remember Edith's +assertion that she would do "anything on earth" to keep Maurice from +marrying Lily. "But that's the only way he can be sure of getting +Jacky," Eleanor argued to herself, her mind clearing into helpless +perplexity--"and it's the only way to keep him from Edith. But I wish +Lily wasn't so vulgar. Maurice won't like living with her." Suddenly she +said, "Maurice, do send the nurse out of the room. I want to tell you +something, darling." She was very hoarse. + +"Better not talk, dear," he said, anxiously. + +She smiled and shook her head. "I just want to tell you: I don't mind +not getting well, because then you'll marry Lily." + +"Eleanor! Don't--don't--" + +"And you can give little Jacky the kind of home he ought to have." + +She drowsed. Maurice sat beside her with his face buried in his hands. +When she awoke, at dusk, she lay peacefully watching the firelight +flickering on the ceiling, and, thinking--thinking. Then, into her +peace, broke again the memory of Edith's distress. "Perhaps I ought to +tell her that I went to the river for Maurice's sake? _Not_ because I +was angry at her." She thought of Edith's tears, and said, "Poor +Edith--" And when she said that a strange thing happened: pity, like a +soft breath, blew out the vehement flame. It is always so; pity and +jealousy are never together.... + +The next morning she remembered her words about Jacky--"the kind of home +he ought to have"--and again uneasiness as to the kind of "home" it +would be for Maurice rose in her mind. Her head whirled with worry. "It +won't be pleasant for him to live with her, even if she can cook. He +loves that chocolate cake; but he couldn't bear her grammar. Edith said +I was 'unkind' to him. Am I? I suppose she thought he'd be happier with +her? Would he? _She_ can make that cake, too. Yes; he would be happier +with her than with Lily;--and Jacky would call her 'Mother,"' Then she +forgot Edith. + +After a while she said: "Maurice, can't I see Jacky? Go get him! And +give Lily the car fare." + +Maurice went downstairs and called Mrs. Houghton out of the parlor; in +the hall he said: "I think Eleanor's sort of mixed up. She is talking +about 'Lily's car fare'! What do you suppose she means? Is +she--delirious? And then she says she 'wants to see Jacky.' What must I +do?" + +"Go and get him," she said. + +For a bewildered minute he hesitated. If Mrs. Newbolt should see Jacky, +she ... would _know_! And Edith ... would she suspect? Still he +went--like a man in a dream. As he got off the car, a block from Lily's +door, a glimpse of the far-off end of the route where "Eleanor's meadow" +lay, made his purpose still more dreamlike. But he was abruptly direct +with Lily: he had come, he said, to tell her that his wife wanted-- + +"My soul and body!" she broke in; "if she's sent you--" They were in the +dining room, Maurice so pale that Lily, in real alarm, had put her hand +on his arm and made him sit down. But she was angry. "Has she got on to +that again?" + +His questioning bewilderment brought her explanation. + +"She didn't tell you she'd been here? Well, I promised her I wouldn't +give her away to you, and I _wouldn't_,--but so long as she's sent you, +now, there's no harm, I guess, telling you?" So she told him. "What +possessed you to let on to her?" she ended. She was puzzled at his +folly, but she was sympathetic, too. "I suppose she ragged it out of +you?" + +Maurice had listened, silently, his elbow on his knee, his fist hard +against his mouth; he did not try to tell her why he had "let on"; he +could not say that he wanted to defend his son from such a mother; still +less could he make clear to her that Eleanor had not "ragged it out of +him," but that, to his famished passion for truth, confession had been +the Bread of Life. He looked at her once or twice as she talked; pretty, +yet; kindly, coarse, honest--and Eleanor had supposed that he would +marry her! Then, sharply, his mind pictured that scene: his wife, his +poor, frightened old Eleanor, pleading for the gift of Jacky! And +Lily--young, arrogant, kind.... The pain of it made his passion of pity +so like love that the tears stood in his eyes. "Oh, she _mustn't_ die," +he thought; "I won't let her die!" + +When Lily had finished her story he told her his, very briefly: his +wife's forgiveness of his unfaithfulness; her desire to do all she could +for Jacky: "Help me--I mean help you--to make a man of him, because she +loves me. Heaven knows I'm not worthy of it." + +Lily gulped. "She ain't young; but, my God, she's some woman!" She threw +her apron over her face and cried hard; then stopped and wiped her eyes. +"She wants to see him, does she? Well, you bet she shall see him! I'll +get him; he's playing in at Mr. Dennett's--he's all on being an +undertaker now. Mr. Dennett's a Funeral Pomps Director. But he's got to +put on his new suit." She ran out on to the porch, and Maurice could +hear the colloquy across the fence: "You come in the house, quick!" + +"Won't. We're going to in-in-inter a hen." + +"Yes, you will! You're going to put on your new suit and go and see a +lady--" + +"Lady? Not on your life." + +"It's Mr. Curtis wants you--" Then Jacky's yell, "_Mr. Curtis?_" and a +dash up the back steps and into the dining room--then, silent, grimy +adoration! + +Maurice gave his orders. "Change your clothes, young man. I'll bring him +back, Lily, as soon as she's seen him." + +While he waited for the new suit Maurice walked up and down the little +room, round and round the table, where on a turkey-red cloth a hideous +hammered brass bowl held some lovely maidenhair ferns. The vision of +Eleanor abasing herself to Lily was unendurable. To drive it from his +mind, he went to the window and stood looking out through the fragrant +greenness of rose geraniums, into the squalid street where the offspring +of the Funeral Pomps Director were fighting over the dead hen; from the +bathroom came the sound of a sputtering gush from the hot-water faucet; +then splashes and whining protests, and maternal adjurations: "You got +to look decent! I _will_ wash behind your ears. You're the worst boy on +the street!" + +"Eleanor tried to save him," he thought; "she came here, and begged for +him!" + +Above the bathroom noises came Lily's voice, sharp with efficiency, but +shaking with pity and a quick-hearted purpose of helping: "Say, Mr. +Curtis! Could she eat some fresh doughnuts? (Jacky, if you don't stand +still I'll give you a regular spanking! I _didn't_ put soap in your +eyes!) If she can, I'll fry some for her to-morrow." + +Maurice, tramping back and forth, made no answer; he was saying to +himself, "If she'll just live, I will make her happy! Oh, she _must_ +live!" It was then that, suddenly, agonizingly, in the midst of +splashings, and Jacky's whines, and Lily's anxiety about soap and +doughnuts, Maurice Curtis prayed ... + +He did not know it was prayer; it was just a cry: "Do something--oh, +_do_ something! _Do you hear me?_ She tried so hard to save Jacky. Make +her get well!" So it was that, in his selfless cry for happiness for +Eleanor, Maurice found all those differing realizations--Joy, and Law, +and Life, and Love--and lo! they were one--a personality! God. In his +frantic words he established a relationship with _Him_--not It, any +longer! "Please, please make her get well," he begged, humbly. + +At that moment, at the door of the dining room, appeared an immaculate +Jacky in his new suit, his face shining with bliss and soap. He came and +stood beside Maurice, waiting his monarch's orders, and listening, +without comprehension, to the conversation: + +"Nothing will be said to him that will ... give anything away. She just +wants to see him. His presence in the room--" + +Jacky gave a little leap. "Did you say _presents_!" + +"--his merely being there will please her. She loves him, Lily. You see, +she's always wanted children, and--we've never had any." + +Jacky's mother said, in a muffled voice, "My land!" Then she caught +Jacky in her arms and kissed him all over his face. + +"Aw, stop," said Jacky, greatly embarrassed; to have Mr. Curtis see him +being kissed, "like a kid!" was a cruel mortification. "Aw, let up," +said Jacky. + +When he and Mr. Curtis started in to town his eyes seemed to grow bluer, +and his face more beaming, and his voice, asking endless questions, more +joyous every minute. In the car he shoved up very close to Maurice, and +tried to think of something wonderful to tell him. By and by, breathing +loudly, he achieved: "Say, Mr. Curtis, our ash sifter got broke." Then +he shoved a little closer. Just before they reached Mrs. Newbolt's house +the haggard, unhappy father gave his son orders: + +"There is a lady who wants to see you, Jacky. She's my wife. Mrs. +Curtis. You are to be very polite to her, and kiss her--" + +"Kiss a lady!" + +"Yes. You'll do what I tell you! Understand?" + +"Yes, sir," Jacky said, sniffling. + +"You are to tell her you love her; but you are not to speak unless you +are spoken to. Do you get on to that?" + +"Yes, sir. No, sir," poor Jacky said, dejectedly. + +It was Edith who, watching for Maurice from the parlor window, opened +the front door to him. She looked up into his eyes, then down into +Jacky's, who, at that moment, took the opportunity, sighing, to obey +orders; be reached up and gave a little peck at Edith's cheek. + +"I love you," he said, gloomily. "I done it," he told Maurice. "_He_ +said I got to," he explained to Edith, resignedly, as she, startled but +pleased, took his little rough hand in hers. + +Just as she did so Mrs. Newbolt, coming downstairs, saw him and stopped +short in the middle of a sentence--the relationship between the man and +the child was unmistakable. When she got her breath she said, coldly: +"There's a change, Maurice. Better go right upstairs." + +He went, hurriedly, leading his little boy by the hand. + +"Well, upon my word!" said Mrs. Newbolt, looking after the small, +climbing figure in the new suit. "I wouldn't have believed such a thing +of Maurice Curtis--oh, my poor Eleanor!" she said, and burst out crying. +"I suppose she knows? Did she want to see the child? I always said she +was a puffect angel! But I don't wonder she--she got wet ..." + +Eleanor was very close to the River now, yet she smiled when Jacky's +shrinking lips touched her cheek. + +"Take her hand," Maurice told him, softly, and the little boy, silent +and frightened, obeyed; but he kept his eyes on his father. + +Eleanor, with long pauses, said: "Dear ... Jacky. Maurice, did you give +her ... five cents? He must have ... music lessons." + +"Yes, Star," he said, brokenly. "Jacky," he said, in a whisper, "say 'I +love you.'" + +But Jacky whispered back, anxiously, "But I said it to the other one?" + +"_Say it!_" his father said. + +"I love you," said Jacky, trembling. + +Eleanor smiled, slept for a moment, then opened her eyes. "He doesn't +look ... like _her_?" + +"Not in the least," Maurice said. + +Jacky, quailing, tried to draw his hand away from those cool fingers; +but a look from his father stopped him. + +"No," Eleanor murmured; "I see ... it won't do for"--Maurice bent close +to her lips, but he could not catch the next words--"for you to marry +her." + +After that she was silent for so long that Maurice led the little boy +out of the room. As he brought him into the parlor, Henry Houghton, who +had just come in, looked at the father and son, and felt astonishment +tingle in his veins like an electric shock. He gripped Maurice's hand, +silently, and gave Jacky's ear a friendly pull. + +"Edith," Maurice Said, "I would take him home, but I mustn't leave +Eleanor. Will you get one of the maids to put him on a Medfield car--" + +"I'll take him," Edith said. + +Maurice began to say, sharply, "_No!_" then he stopped; after all, why +not? "She must know the whole business by this time. Jacky's face gives +it all away." She might as well, he thought, know Jacky's mother, as she +knew his father. + +Jacky, in a little growling voice, said, "Don't want _nobody_ to put me +on no car. I can--" + +"Be quiet, my boy," Maurice said, gently. He gave Edith Lily's address +and went back upstairs. + +Henry Houghton, watching and listening, felt his face twitch; then he +blew his nose loudly. "I'll look after him," he told Edith. "I--I'll +take him to--the person he lives with. It isn't suitable for a girl--" + +In spite of the gravity of the moment his girl laughed. "Father, you +_are_ a lamb! No; I'll take him." Then she gave Jacky a cooky, which he +ate thoughtfully. + +"We have 'em nicer at our house," he said. On the corner, waiting for +the Medfield car, Edith offered a friendly hand, which he refused to +notice. The humiliation of being taken home, "by a woman!" was scorching +his little pride. He made up his mind that if them scab Dennett boys +seen him getting out of the car with a woman, he'd lick the tar out of +them! All the way to Maple Street he sat with his face glued to the +window, never speaking a word to the "woman." When the car stopped he +pushed out ahead of her and tore down the street. Happily no Dennett +boys saw him!--but he dashed past his mother, who was standing at the +gate, and disappeared in the house. + +Lily, bareheaded in the pale April sunshine, had been watching for him +rather anxiously. In deference to the occasion she had changed her +dress; a string of green-glass beads, encircling her plump white neck, +glimmered through the starched freshness of an incredibly frank blouse, +and her white duck skirt was spotless. Her whole little fat body was as +fresh and sweet as one of her own hyacinths, and her kind face had the +unchanging, unhuman youthfulness of flesh and blood which has never been +harried by the indwelling soul. But she was frowning. She had begun to +be nervous; Jacky had been away nearly two hours! "Are they playing a +gum game on me?" Lily thought; "Are they going to try and kidnap him?" +It was then that she caught sight of Jacky, tearing toward home, his +fierce blue eyes raking the street for any of them there Dennett boys, +who must have the tar licked out of 'em! Edith was following him, in +hurrying anxiety. Instantly Lily was reassured. "One of Mrs. Curtis's +lady friends, I suppose," she thought. "Well, it's up to me to keep her +guessing on Jacky!" She was very polite and simpering when, at the gate, +Edith said that Mr. Curtis asked her to bring Jacky home. + +"Won't you come in and be seated?" Lily urged, hospitably. + +Edith said no; she was sorry; but she must go right back; "Mrs. Curtis +is very ill, I am sorry to say." + +At this moment Jacky came out to the gate; he had two cookies in his +hand. He said, shyly: "Maw's is better 'an yours. You can have"--this +with a real effort--"the _big_ one." + +Edith took the "big one," pleasantly, and said, "Yes, they are nicer +than ours, Jacky." + +But Lily was mortified. "The lady'll think you have no manners. Go on +back into the house!" + +"Won't," said Jacky, eating his cooky. + +His mother tried to cover his obstinacy with conversation: "He's crazy +about Mr. Curtis. Well, no wonder. Mr. Curtis was a great friend of my +husband's. Mr. Dale--his name was Augustus; I named Jacky after him; +Ernest Augustus. He died three years ago; no, I guess it was two--" + +"Huh?" said Jacky, interested, "You said my paw died--" + +Lily, with that desire to smack her son which every mother knows, cut +his puzzled arithmetic short. "Yes. Mr. Dale was a great clubman. In +Philadelphia. I believe that's where he and Mr. Curtis got to be chums. +But I never met _her_." + +Edith said, rigidly, "Really?" + +"Jacky's the image of Mr. Dale. He died of--of typhus fever. Mr. Curtis +was one of the pallbearers; that's how I got acquainted with him. Jacky +was six then," Lily ended, breathlessly. ("I guess _that's_ fixed her," +she thought.) + +Edith only said again, "Really?" Then added, "Good afternoon," and +hurried away. So _this_ was the woman Eleanor would make Maurice marry! +"Never!" Edith said. "Never! if _I_ can prevent it!" + +Upstairs in Mrs. Newbolt's spare room, as the twilight thickened, there +was silence, except for the terrible breathing, and the clock ticking +away the seconds; one by one they fell--like beads slipping from a +string. Maurice sat holding Eleanor's hand. The others, speaking, +sometimes, without sound, or moving, noiselessly, stood before the meek +majesty of dying. Waiting. Waiting. It was not until midnight that she +opened her eyes again and looked at Maurice, very peacefully. + +"Tell Edith it wasn't what she said, made me try ... our river ... Jacky +will call her ... Tell Edith ... to be kind to Jacky." + +She did not speak again. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + + +"I have an uneasy feeling," said Mr. Houghton, "that he is thinking of +marrying the woman, just to carry out Eleanor's wish. Poor Eleanor! +Always doing the wrong thing, with greatness." This was in September. +Maurice was to come up to Green Hill for a Sunday, and the Houghtons +were in the studio talking about the expected guest. Later Edith was to +drive over to the junction and meet him.... + +It was not only Green Hill which talked about Maurice. In the months +that followed Eleanor's death, a good many people had pondered his +affairs, because, somehow, that visit of Jacky's to Mrs. Newbolt's +house, got noised abroad, so Maurice's friends (making the inevitable +deductions) told one another exactly what he ought to do. + +Mrs. Newbolt expressed herself in great detail: "I shall never forgive +him," she said; "my poor Eleanor! _She_ forgave him, and sent for the +child. More than _I_ would do for any man! But I could have told her +what to expect. In fact, I did. I always said if she wasn't +entertainin', she'd lose him. Yes; she had a hard time--but she kept her +figger. Should Maurice marry the--boy's mother? _'Course not!_ Puffect +nonsense. You think he'll make up to Edith Houghton? She would have too +much self-respect to look at him! And if she did, her father would never +consent to it." + +The Mortons' opinion was just as definite: "I hope Maurice will marry +again; Edith's just the girl for him--_What!_" Mrs. Morton interrupted +herself, at a whisper of gossip, "he had a mistress? I don't believe a +word of it!" + +"But I'm afraid it's true," her husband told her, soberly; "there's a +boy." His wife's shocked face made him add: "I think Curtis will feel +he ought to legitimatize the youngster by marrying his mother. Maurice +is good stuff. He won't sidestep an obligation." + +"I never heard of such an awful idea!" said Mrs. Morton, dismayed. "I +hope he'll do nothing of the kind! You can't correct one mistake by +making another. Don't you agree with me?" she demanded of Doctor Nelson; +who displayed, of course, entire ignorance of Mr. Curtis's affairs. + +He only said, "Well, it's a rum world." + +Johnny Bennett, in Buenos Aires, reading a letter from his father, said: +"Poor Eleanor!" ... Then he grew a little pale under his tan, and added +something which showed his opinion--not, perhaps, of what Maurice +_ought_ to do, but of what he would do! "I might as well make it a +three-years' contract," Johnny said, bleakly, "instead of one. Of course +there 11 be no use going back home. Eleanor's death settles _my_ hash." + +Even Mrs. O'Brien, informed by kitchen leakage as to what had happened, +had something to say: "He ought to make an honest woman of the little +fellow's mother. But to think of him treating Miss Eleanor that way!" + +And now, in the studio, the Houghtons also were saying what Maurice +ought--and ought not!--to do: "I'm afraid he's thinking of marrying +her," Mr. Houghton had said; and his wife had said, quickly, "I hope +so--for the sake of his child!" + +"But, Mary," he protested, "look at it from the woman's point of view; +this 'Lily' would be wretched if she had to live Maurice's kind of +life!" + +Edith, standing with her back to her father and mother, staring down +into the ashes of the empty fireplace, said, over her shoulder, "Maurice +may marry somebody who will help him with Jacky--just as Eleanor would +have done, if she had lived." + +"My dear," her father said, quickly, "he has had enough of your sex to +last his lifetime! As a mere matter of taste, I think Maurice won't +marry anybody." + +"I don't see why, just because he--did wrong ten years ago," Edith +said, "he has got to sidestep happiness for the rest of his life! But as +for marrying that Mrs. Dale, it would be a cat-and-dog life." + +"Edith," said her father, "when you agree with me I am filled with +admiration for your intelligence! Your sex has, generally, mere +intuition--a nice, divine thing, and useful in its way. But indifferent +to logic. My sex has judgment; so when you, a female, display judgment, +I, as a parent, am gratified. 'Cat-and-dog life' is a mild way of +putting it;--a quarrelsome home is hell,--and hell is a poor place in +which to bring up a child! Mary, my darling, you can derail any train by +putting a big enough obstacle on the track; the fact that the obstacle +is pure gold, like your idealism, wouldn't prevent a domestic wreck--in +which Jacky would be the victim! But in regard to Maurice's marrying +anybody else"--he paused and looked at his daughter--"_that_ seems to me +undesirable." + +Edith's face hardened. "I don't see why," she said; then added, +abruptly, "I must go and write some letters," and went quickly out of +the room. + +They looked after her, and then at each other. + +"You see?" Mary Houghton said; "she cares for him!" + +"I couldn't face it!" her husband said; "I couldn't have Edith in such a +mess. Morally speaking, of course he has a right to marry; but he can't +have my girl! Let him marry some other man's girl--and I'll give them my +blessing. He's a dear fellow--but he can't have our Edith." + +She shook her head. "If it were not for his duty to Jacky, I would be +glad to have Edith marry him. And as for saying that she 'can't,' these +are not the days, Henry, when fathers and mothers decide whom their +girls may marry." + +While his old friends were thus talking him over, Maurice was traveling +up to the mountains. He had seen Mr. and Mrs. Houghton in Mercer several +times since Eleanor's death, but he had not been able to face the +associations and recollections of Green Hill. This was largely because, +though his friends had, with such ease, reached decisions for him, he +was himself so absorbed in indecision that he could not go back to the +careless pleasantness of old intimacies, (As for that question of the +wheels,--"if--if--if anything happens to Eleanor?"--Eleanor herself had +answered it in one word: _Lily_.) So, since her death Maurice's whole +mind was intent on Jacky. What must he do fear him? His occasional +efforts to train the child had been met, more than once, by sharp +rebuffs. Whenever he went to see Jacky, Lily was perfectly good +humored--_unless_ she felt she was being criticized; then the claws +showed through the fur! + +"You can give me money, if you want to, to send him to a swell school." +She said, once; "but I tell you, Mr. Curtis, right out, _I ain't going +to have you come in between me and Jacky by talking up things to him +that I don't care about._ All these religious frills about Truth! They +say nowadays hardly any rich people tell the truth. And talking grammar +to him! You set him against me," she, said, and her eyes filled with +angry tears. + +"I wouldn't think of setting him against you," he said; "only, I want to +do my duty to him." + +"'Duty'!" said Lily, contemptuously; "I'm not going to bring him up +old-fashioned. And this thing of telling him not to say 'ain't,' _I_ say +it, and what else would he say? There ain't any other word. He's my +child--and I'll bring him up the way I like! Wait; I'll give you some +fudge; I've just made it..." + +Maurice, now, on his way up to Green Hill, looking out of the car +window, and remembering interviews like this with his son's mother, +wondered if Edith had seen Lily the day she took Jacky home? That made +him wonder what Edith would think of the whole business? To a woman like +Edith it would be simply disgusting. "I'll just drop out of her life," +he said. He thought of the day he brought Jacky to Mrs. Newbolt's door, +and Edith had looked at him--and then at Jacky--and then at him again. +_She understood!_ Would she understand now? Probably not. "Of course old +Johnny'll get her ... But, oh, what life might have been!" + +Edith had driven over to the junction earlier than was necessary, +because she had wanted to get away from her father and mother. "They are +afraid he'll fall in love with me," she thought, hotly; "if he ever +does, nothing they can say shall separate us. Nothing! But mother'll try +to influence him to marry that dreadful creature, and father will say +things about 'honor,' so he'll feel he ought never to marry--anybody. +Oh, they are lambs," she said, setting her teeth; "but they mustn't keep +Maurice from being happy!" At the station, as she sat in the buggy +flecking her whip idly, and waiting for Maurice's train, her whole mind +was on the defensive. "He has a right to be happy. He has a right to +marry again ... but they needn't worry about _me_!" she thought. "I've +never grown up to Maurice. But whatever happens, he shan't marry that +woman!" + +When Maurice got off the train there was a blank moment when she did not +recognize him. As a careworn man came up to her with an outstretched +hand and a friendly, "This is awfully nice in you, Skeezics!" she said, +with a gasp, "_Maurice!_" He had aged so that he looked, she thought, as +old as Eleanor. But they were both laboriously casual, until the usual +remarks upon the weather, and the change in the time-table, had been +exhausted. + +It was Edith who broke into reality--Maurice had taken the reins, and +they were jogging slowly along. "Maurice," she said, "how is Jacky?" His +start was so perceptible that she said, "You don't mind my asking?" + +"I don't mind anything you could say to me, Edith. I'm grateful to you +for asking." + +"I want to help you about him," she said. + +He put out his left hand and gripped hers. Then he said: "I'm going to +do my best for the little fellow. I've botched my own life, Edith;--of +course you know that? But he shan't botch his, if I can help it!" + +"I think you can help it," Edith said. + +His heart contracted; yet it was what he had expected. The idealism of +an absolutely pure woman. "Well," he said, heavily, "of course I've got +to do what I honestly think is the light thing." + +"Are you sure," she said, "that you know what the right thing is? You +mustn't make a mistake." + +"I may be said to have made my share," he told her, dryly. + +She did not answer that; she said, passionately, "Maurice, I'd give +anything in the world if I could help you!" + +"Don't talk that way," he commanded, harshly. "I'm human! So please +don't be kind to me, Edith; I can't stand it." + +Instantly her heart pounded in her throat: "He _cares_. Oh, they can't +separate us. But they'll try to." ... The rest of the drive was rather +silent. On the porch at Green Hill the two older friends were waiting to +welcome him. ("Don't let's leave them alone," Henry Houghton had said, +with a worried look; which made his wife, in spite of her own +uneasiness, smile, "Oh, Henry, you are an innocent creature!") After +dinner Mrs. Houghton, determinedly commonplace, came to the rescue of +what threatened to be a somewhat conscious occasion, by talking books +and music. Her husband may have been "innocent," but he did his part by +shoving a cigar box toward the "boy," and saying, "How's business? We +must talk Weston's offer over," he said. + +Maurice nodded, but got up and went to the piano; "Tough on you, +Skeezics," he said once, glancing at Edith. + +"Oh, I don't mind it, _much_," she said, drolly. + +So the evening trudged along in secure stupidity. Yet it was a straining +stupidity, and there was an inaudible sigh of relief from everybody +when, at last, Mary Houghton said, "Come, good people! It's time to go +to bed." + +"Yes, turn in, Maurice," said his host; "you look tired." Then he got +on his feet, and said good night with an alacrity which showed how much +he "wished he was asleep"! But he was not permitted to sleep. Maurice, +swinging round from the piano, said, with a rather rigid face: + +"Would you mind just waiting a minute and letting me tell you something +about myself, Uncle Henry?" + +"Of course not!" Mr. Houghton said, with great assumption of +cheerfulness. He went back to the sofa--furtively achieving a cigar as +he did so--and saying to himself, "Well, at least it will give me a +chance to let him see how I feel about his ever marrying again." + +Edith was standing by the piano, one hand resting on the keyboard and +drumming occasionally in disconnected octaves. ("If it's business," she +thought, "I'll leave them alone; but if they are going to 'advise' him, +I'll stay--and fight.") + +Maurice came and sat on the edge of the big table, his hands in his +pockets, and one foot swinging nervously. "I hope you dear people don't +think I'm an ungrateful cuss, not to have come to Green Hill this +summer; but the fact is, I've been awfully up against it, trying to make +up my mind about something." + +Henry Houghton looked at the fire end of his cigar with frowning +intentness and said yes, he supposed so. "Weston's offer seems to me +fair," he said (this referred to a partnership possibility, on which +Maurice had consulted him by letter); but his remark, now, was so +obviously a running to cover that, in spite of himself, Maurice grinned. +"Weston's a very square fellow," said Henry Houghton. + +"If you are going to talk 'offers,'" said Edith, "do you want me to +clear out?" + +"It isn't business," Maurice said, quietly; "it's my ... little son. No; +don't clear out, Edith. I'd rather talk to your mother and Uncle Henry +before you." + +"All right," said Edith, and struck some soft chords; but her young +mouth was hard. + +"Of course," Maurice said, "as things are now--I mean poor Eleanor +gone--I have thought a good deal of what I ought to do for Jacky. It was +Nelly's wish that I should do the straight thing for him. There wasn't +any question, I think, of the 'straight thing' for Lily--" + +"Of course not!" Mary Houghton agreed. And her husband said, "Any such +idea would be nonsense, Maurice." + +"And I myself don't count," Maurice went on. + +Again Mrs. Houghton agreed--very gravely: "Compared to the child, dear +Maurice, you don't." + +"You _do_!" Edith said; but nobody heard her. + +"So at first," Maurice said, "I kept thinking of how Eleanor had wanted +me to have him--legally, you know; wanted it so much that she--" there +was a silence in the studio; "that she was glad to die, to make it +possible." He paused, and Mary Houghton saw his cheek twitch. "Well, I +felt that clinched it. I felt I _must_ carry out her wish, and ask Mrs. +Dale to--marry me." + +"Morbid," said Henry Houghton. + +Edith, listening, said nothing; but she was ready to spring! + +"Perhaps it was morbid," Maurice said; "but just at first it seemed that +way to me. Then I began to realize that what poor Nelly wanted, wasn't +to have me marry Lily--that was only a means to an end; she wanted Jacky +taken care of"; (Edith nodded.) "And she thought marrying his mother was +the best way to do that." (Edith shook her head.) + +"Well; I thought it all over ... I kept myself and my own feelings out +of it." Behind those laconic words lay the weeks of struggle, of which +even these good friends could have no idea! Weeks in which, while Mercer +was deciding what he ought to do, Maurice, "keeping himself out of it," +had put aside ambition and smothered taste, and thrown over, once for +all, personal happiness. As a wrestler strips from his body all +hampering things, so he had stripped from his mind every instinct which +might interfere with a straight answer to a straight question: "What +will be best for my boy?" He gave the answer now, in Henry Houghton's +studio, while Edith, over in the shadows, at the piano, looked at him. +Her face was quite pale. + +"So all I had to do," said Maurice, "was to think of Jacky's welfare. +That made it easier to decide. I find," he said, simply, "that you can +decide things pretty easily if you don't have to think of yourself. So I +said, 'If I marry Lily, though Jacky couldn't be taken away from me, +physically, spiritually'--you know what I mean, Mrs. Houghton?--'he +might be removed to--to the ends of the earth!' I might lose his +affection; and I've got to hold on to _that_, at any cost, because +that's how I can influence him." He was talking now entirely to Edith's +mother, and his voice was harsh with entreaty for understanding. He +didn't care very much whether Henry Houghton understood or not. And of +course Edith could never understand! But that this serene woman of the +stars should misjudge him was unbearable. "You see what I mean, Mrs. +Houghton, don't you? I know Lily;--and I know that if she thought I had +any _right_ to say how he must be brought up, it would mean nothing but +perfectly hideous controversies all the time! So long as she thinks she +has the upper hand, she'll be generous; she doesn't mind his being fond +of me, you know. But she'd fight tooth and nail if she thought I had any +_rights_! You see that, don't you?" + +"I see it!" Edith said. + +"Yet from a merely material point of view," said Mrs. Houghton, "in +spite of 'controversies,' legitimacy would give Jacky advantages, +which--oh, Maurice, don't you see?--_your son_ has a right to!" + +But her husband said, quickly, "Mary, living with a quarreling father +and mother is spiritual illegitimacy; and the disadvantages of that +would be worse than the material handicap of being a--a fatherless +child." + +His daughter flashed a passionately grateful look at him. + +Maurice, still speaking to Edith's mother, said: "That's the way I +looked at it, Mrs. Houghton. So it seemed to me that I could do more for +him if I didn't marry Lily." + +Mary Houghton was silent; it was very necessary to consider the stars. + +"I put myself out of it," Maurice said. "I just said, 'If it's best for +Jacky, I'll ask her to marry me,' My honest opinion was that it would be +bad for him." + +Edith struck two chords--and sat down on the piano stool, swallowing +hard. + +"You don't agree with me, I'm afraid, Mrs. Houghton?" he said, +anxiously. + +"My dear boy," she said, "I am sure you are doing what you believe to be +right. But it does not seem right to me." + +He flinched, but he was not shaken; "It isn't going to be easy, whatever +I do. I want to educate him, and see him constantly, and influence him +as much as possible. And Lily will be less jealous of me, in her own +house, than she would be in mine." + +Edith got up and came and sat on the arm of the sofa by her father. "I +can see," she said, "how much easier it would be for Maurice to do the +hard thing." + +Maurice looked at her with deep tenderness. "You _are_ a satisfying +person!" he said. + +Henry Houghton took his girl's hand, and held it in a grip that hurt +her. "Maurice is right," he said; "things are _not_ going to be easy for +him. For, though he won't marry Jacky's mother, he won't, I think, marry +anybody else." + +"Why won't he?" said Edith. + +"There is no _moral_ reason why he shouldn't," her father conceded; "it +is a question of taste; one might perhaps call it a question of +honor"--Maurice whitened, but Henry Houghton went on, calmly, "Maurice +will, of necessity, be so involved with this woman--and God knows what +annoyances she may make for him, that--it distresses me to say so--but I +can see that he will not feel like asking any woman to share such a +burden as he has to carry." + +"If he loves any woman," Edith said, "let him ask her! If she turns him +down, it stamps her for a coward!" + +"Don't you think I'm right, Maurice?" her father said. + +"Yes," Maurice said. "You are right. I've faced that." + +Edith sprang to her feet, and stood looking at her father and mother, +her eyes stern with protecting passion. "It seems to me absurd," she +said,--"like standing up so straight you fall over backward!--for +Maurice to feel he can't marry--somebody else, just because he--he did +wrong, ever so many years ago! He's sorry, now. Aren't you sorry, +Maurice?" she said. + +His eyes stung;--the simplicity of the word was like a flower tossed +into the black depths of his repentance! "Yes, dear," he said, gently; +"I'm 'sorry.' But no amount of 'sorrow' can alter consequences, Edith." + +"Oh," she said, turning to the other two, "don't you want Maurice _ever_ +to be happy?" + +"I want him to be good," said her mother. + +"I can't be happy, Edith," Maurice told her; "don't you see?" + +She looked straight in his eyes, her own eyes terror-stricken. ... They +would drive him away from her! "You _shall_ be happy," she said. + +They saw only each other, now. + +"No," Maurice said; "it's just as your father says; I have no right to +drag any girl into the kind of life I've got to live. I'll have to see +Lily a good deal, so as to keep in with her--and be able to look after +Jacky. Personal happiness is all over for me." + +She caught at his arm; "It isn't! Maurice, don't listen to them!" Then +she turned and stood in front of him, as though to put her young breast +between him and that tender, menacing parental love. "Oh, mother--oh, +father! I _do_ love you; I don't want to do anything you don't approve +of;--but Maurice comes first. If he asks me to marry him, I will." + +Under his breath Maurice said, "_Edith!_" + +"My darling," Henry Houghton said, "consider: people are bound to know +all about this. The publicity will be a very painful embarrassment--" + +Edith broke in, "As if that matters!" + +"But the serious thing," her father went on, "Is that this woman will be +a millstone around his neck--" + +"She shall be around my neck, too!" she said. There was a breathless +moment; then Truth, nobly naked, spoke: "Maurice, duty is the first +thing in the world;--not happiness. If you thought it was your duty to +marry Lily, I wouldn't say a word. You would never know that I cared. +Never! I'd just stand by, and help you. I'd live in the same house with +her, if it would help you! But--" her voice shook; "you _don't_ think +it's your duty. You know it isn't! You know that it would make things +worse for Jacky,--not better, as Eleanor wanted them to be. So why +shouldn't you be happy? Oh, it's _artificial_, to refuse to be happy!" +Before he could speak, she added, quite simply, the sudden tears bright +in her eyes, "I know you love me." + +He looked at the father and mother: "You wouldn't have me lie to her, +would you?--even to save her from herself! ... Of course I love you, +Edith,--more than anything on earth,--but I have no right--" + +"You have a right," she said. + +"I _want_ you," he said, "God knows, it would mean life to me! But--" + +"Then take me," she said. + +Mrs. Houghton came and put her arms around her girl and kissed her. +"Take her, Maurice," she said, quietly. Then she looked at her husband: +"Dear," she said, and smiled--a little mistily; "wisdom will not die +with us! The children must do what _they_ think is right ... Even if it +is wrong." She had considered the stars. + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vehement Flame +by Margaret Wade Campbell Deland + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VEHEMENT FLAME *** + +***** This file should be named 15927-8.txt or 15927-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/9/2/15927/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Vehement Flame + +Author: Margaret Wade Campbell Deland + +Release Date: May 28, 2005 [EBook #15927] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VEHEMENT FLAME *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + +<h1>THE VEHEMENT FLAME</h1> + +<h3>A NOVEL</h3> + +<h2>BY MARGARET DELAND</h2> + +<h3>AUTHOR OF DR. LAVENDAR'S PEOPLE, OLD CHESTER TALES, ETC.</h3> + +<h3>1922</h3> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p>TO LORIN:</p> + +<p>Together, so many years ago—seven, I think, or eight—you and I planned +this story. The first chapters had the help of your criticism ... then, +I had to go on alone, urged by the memory of your interest. But all the +blunders are mine, not yours; and any merits are yours, not mine. That +it has been written, in these darkened years, has been because your +happy interest still helped me.</p> + +<p>MARGARET<br /> +<i>May 12th, 1922</i></p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<p> + <a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>CHAPTER I</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>CHAPTER II</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>CHAPTER III</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>CHAPTER IV</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>CHAPTER V</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>CHAPTER VI</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>CHAPTER VII</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>CHAPTER VIII</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>CHAPTER IX</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b>CHAPTER X</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b>CHAPTER XI</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>CHAPTER XII</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b>CHAPTER XIII</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b>CHAPTER XIV</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><b>CHAPTER XV</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><b>CHAPTER XVI</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><b>CHAPTER XVII</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><b>CHAPTER XVIII</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XIX"><b>CHAPTER XIX</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XX"><b>CHAPTER XX</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXI"><b>CHAPTER XXI</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXII"><b>CHAPTER XXII</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII"><b>CHAPTER XXIII</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV"><b>CHAPTER XXIV</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXV"><b>CHAPTER XXV</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI"><b>CHAPTER XXVI</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII"><b>CHAPTER XXVII</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII"><b>CHAPTER XXVIII</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX"><b>CHAPTER XXIX</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXX"><b>CHAPTER XXX</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI"><b>CHAPTER XXXI</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII"><b>CHAPTER XXXII</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII"><b>CHAPTER XXXIII</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV"><b>CHAPTER XXXIV</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV"><b>CHAPTER XXXV</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI"><b>CHAPTER XXXVI</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVII"><b>CHAPTER XXXVII</b></a><br /> + </p> +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I" ></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3><i>Love is as strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals +thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.</i></h3> + +<h3><i>THE SONG OF SOLOMON, VIII, 6.</i></h3> + + +<p>There is nothing in the world nobler, and lovelier, and more absurd, +than a boy's lovemaking. And the joyousness of it!...</p> + +<p>The boy of nineteen, Maurice Curtis, who on a certain June day lay in +the blossoming grass at his wife's feet and looked up into her dark +eyes, was embodied Joy! The joy of the warm earth, of the sunshine +glinting on the slipping ripples of the river and sifting through the +cream-white blossoms of the locust which reared its sheltering branches +over their heads; the joy of mating insects and birds, of the whole +exulting, creating universe!—the unselfconscious, irresponsible, wholly +beautiful Joy of passion which is without apprehension or humor. The +eyes of the woman who sat in the grass beside this very young man, +answered his eyes with Love. But it was a more human love than his, +because there was doubt in its exultation....</p> + +<p>The boy took out his watch and looked at it.</p> + +<p>"We have been married," he said, "exactly fifty-four minutes."</p> + +<p>"I can't believe it!" she said.</p> + +<p>"If I love you like this after fifty-four minutes of married life, how +do you suppose I shall feel after fifty-four years of it?" He flung an +arm about her waist, and hid his face against her knee. "We are married," +he said, in a smothered voice.</p> + +<p>She bent over and kissed his thick hair, silently. At which he sat up +and looked at her with blue, eager eyes.</p> + +<p>"It just came over me! Oh, Eleanor, suppose I hadn't got you? You said +'No' six times. You certainly did behave very badly," he said, showing +his white teeth in a broad grin.</p> + +<p>"Some people win say I behaved very badly when I said 'Yes.'"</p> + +<p>"Tell 'em to go to thunder! What does Mrs. Maurice Curtis (doesn't that +sound pretty fine?) care for a lot of old cats? Don't we <i>know</i> that we +are in heaven?" He caught her hand and crushed it against his mouth. "I +wish," he said, very low, "I almost wish I could die, now, here! At your +feet. It seems as if I couldn't live, I am so—" He stopped. So—what? +Words are ridiculously inadequate things!... "Happiness" wasn't the name +of that fire in his breast, Happiness? "Why, it's God," he said to +himself; "<i>God.</i>" Aloud, he said, again, "We are married!"</p> + +<p>She did not speak—she was a creature of alluring silences—she just put +her hand in his. Suddenly she began to sing; there was a very noble +quality in the serene sweetness of her voice:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down<br /> + Through the clear windows of the morning, ten<br /> + Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,<br /> + Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!"</p></div> + +<p>That last word rose like a flight of wings into the blue air. Her +husband looked at her; for a compelling instant his eyes dredged the +depths of hers, so that all the joyous, frightened woman in her +retreated behind a flutter of laughter.</p> + +<p>"'O Spring!'" he repeated; "<i>we</i> are Spring, Nelly—you and I.... I'll +never forget the first time I heard you sing that; snowing like blazes +it was,—do you remember? But I swear I felt this hot grass then in +Mrs. Newbolt's parlor, with all those awful bric-à-brac things around! +Yes," he said, putting his hand on a little sun-drenched bowlder jutting +from the earth beside him; "I felt this sun on my hand! And when you +came to 'O Spring!' I saw this sky—" He stopped, pulled three blades of +grass and began to braid them into a ring. "Lord!" he said, and his +voice was suddenly startled; "what a darned little thing can throw the +switches for a man! Because I didn't get by in Math. D and Ec 2, and had +to crawl out to Mercer to cram with old Bradley—I met you! Eleanor! +Isn't it wonderful? A little thing like that—just falling down in +mathematics—changed my whole life?" The wild gayety in his eyes +sobered. "I happened to come to Mercer—and, you are my wife." His +fingers, holding the little grassy ring, trembled; but the next instant +he threw himself back on the grass, and kicked up his heels in a +preposterous gesture of ecstasy. Then caught her hand, slipped the +braided ring over that plain circle of gold which had been on her finger +for fifty-four minutes, kissed it—and the palm of her hand—and said, +"You never can escape me! Eleanor, your voice played the deuce with me. +I rushed home and read every poem in my volume of Blake. Go on; give us +the rest."</p> + +<p>She smiled;</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p> ".... And let our winds<br /> +Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste<br /> +Thy morn and evening breath!..."</p></div> + +<p>"Oh—<i>stop</i>! I can't bear it," he said, huskily; and, turning on his +face, he kissed the grass, earth's "perfumed garment," snow-sprinkled +with locust blossoms....</p> + +<p>But the moment of passion left him serious. "When I think of Mrs. +Newbolt," he said, "I could commit murder." In his own mind he was +saying, "I've rescued her!"</p> + +<p>"Auntie doesn't mean to be unkind," Eleanor explained, simply; "only, +she never understood me—Maurice! Be careful! There's a little +ant—don't step on it."</p> + +<p>She made him pause in his diatribe against Mrs. Newbolt and move his +heel while she pushed the ant aside with a clover blossom. Her anxious +gentleness made him laugh, but it seemed to him perfectly beautiful. +Then he went on about Mrs. Newbolt:</p> + +<p>"Of course she couldn't understand <i>you</i>! You might as well expect a +high-tempered cow to understand a violin solo."</p> + +<p>"How mad she'd be to be called a cow! Oh, Maurice, do you suppose she's +got my letter by this time? I left it on her bureau. She'll rage!"</p> + +<p>"Let her rage. Nothing can separate us now."</p> + +<p>Thus they dismissed Mrs. Newbolt, and the shock she was probably +experiencing at that very moment, while reading Eleanor's letter +announcing that, at thirty-nine, she was going to marry this very young +man.</p> + +<p>"No; nothing can part us," Eleanor said; "forever and ever." And again +they were silent—islanded in rippling tides of wind-blown grass, with +the warm fragrance of dropping locust blossoms infolding them, and in +their ears the endless murmur of the river. Then Eleanor said, suddenly: +"Maurice!—Mr. Houghton? What will <i>he</i> do when he hears? He'll think an +'elopement' is dreadful."</p> + +<p>He chuckled. "Uncle Henry?—He isn't really my uncle, but I call him +that;—he won't rage. He'll just whistle. People of his age have to +whistle, to show they're alive. I have reason to believe," the cub said, +"that he 'whistled' when I flunked in my mid-years. Well, I felt sorry, +myself—on his account," Maurice said, with the serious and amiable +condescension of youth. "I hated to jar him. But—gosh! I'd have flunked +A B C's, for <i>this</i>. Nelly, I tell you heaven hasn't got anything on +this! As for Uncle Henry, I'll write him to-morrow that I had to get +married sort of in a hurry, because Mrs. Newbolt wanted to haul you off +to Europe. He'll understand. He's white. And he won't really mind—after +the first biff;—that will take him below the belt, I suppose, poor old +Uncle Henry! But after that, he'll adore you. He adores beauty."</p> + +<p>Her delight in his praise made her almost beautiful; but she protested +that he was a goose. Then she took the little grass ring from her finger +and slipped it into her pocketbook. "I'm going to keep it always," she +said. "How about Mrs. Houghton?"</p> + +<p>"She'll love you! She's a peach. And little Skeezics—"</p> + +<p>"Who is Skeezics?"</p> + +<p>"Edith. Their kid. Eleven years old. She paid me the compliment of +announcing, when she was seven, that she was going to marry me when she +grew up! But I believe, now, she has a crush on Sir Walter Raleigh. +She'll adore you, too."</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid of them all," she confessed; "they won't like—an +elopement."</p> + +<p>"They'll fall over themselves with joy to think I'm settled for life! +I'm afraid I've been a cussed nuisance to Uncle Henry," he said, +ruefully; "always doing fool things, you know,—I mean when I was a boy. +And he's been great, always. But I know he's been afraid I'd take a wild +flight in actresses."</p> + +<p>"'<i>Wild</i>' flight? What will he call—" She caught her breath.</p> + +<p>"He'll call it a 'wild flight in angels'!" he said.</p> + +<p>The word made her put a laughing and protesting hand (which he kissed) +over his lips. Then she said that she remembered Mr. Houghton: "I met +him a long time ago; when—when you were a little boy."</p> + +<p>"And yet here you are, 'Mrs. Maurice Curtis!' Isn't it supreme?" +he demanded. The moment was so beyond words that it made him +sophomoric—which was appropriate enough, even though his freshman year +had been halted by those examinations, which had so "jarred" his +guardian. "I'll be twenty in September," he said. Evidently the thought +of his increasing years gave him pleasure. That Eleanor's years were +also increasing did not occur to him; and no wonder, for, compared to +people like Mr. and Mrs. Houghton, Eleanor was young enough!—only +thirty-nine. It was back in the 'nineties that she had met her husband's +guardian, who, in those days, had been the owner of a cotton mill in +Mercer, but who now, instead of making money, cultivated potatoes (and +tried to paint). Eleanor knew the Houghtons when they were Mercer mill +folk, and, as she said, this charming youngster—living then in +Philadelphia—had been "a little boy"; now, here he was, her husband for +"fifty-four minutes." And she was almost forty, and he was nineteen. +That Henry Houghton, up on his mountain farm, pottering about in his +big, dusty studio, and delving among his potatoes, would whistle, was to +be expected.</p> + +<p>"But who cares?" Maurice said. "It isn't his funeral."</p> + +<p>"He'll think it's yours," she retorted, with a little laugh. She was not +much given to laughter. Her life had been singularly monotonous and, +having seen very little of the world, she had that self-distrust which +is afraid to laugh unless other people are laughing, too. She taught +singing at Fern Hill, a private school in Mercer's suburbs. She did not +care for the older pupils, but she was devoted to the very little girls. +She played wonderfully on the piano, and suffered from indigestion; her +face was at times almost beautiful; she had a round, full chin, and a +lovely red lower lip; her forehead was very white, with soft, dark hair +rippling away from it. Certainly, she had moments of beauty. She talked +very little; perhaps because she hadn't the chance to talk—living, as +she did, with an aunt who monopolized the conversation. She had no close +friends;—her shyness was so often mistaken for hauteur, that she did +not inspire friendship in women of her own age, and Mrs. Newbolt's +elderly acquaintances were merely condescending to her, and gave her +good advice; so it was a negative sort of life. Indeed, her sky terrier, +Bingo, and her laundress, Mrs. O'Brien, to whose crippled baby grandson +she was endlessly kind, knew her better than any of the people among +whom she lived. When Maurice Curtis, cramming in Mercer because Destiny +had broken his tutor's leg there, and presenting (with the bored +reluctance of a boy) a letter of introduction from his guardian to Mrs. +Newbolt—when Maurice met Mrs. Newbolt's niece, something happened. +Perhaps because he felt her starved longing for personal happiness, or +perhaps her obvious pleasure in listening, silently, to his eager talk, +touched his young vanity; whatever the reason was, the boy was +fascinated by her. He had ("cussing," as he had expressed it to himself) +accepted an invitation to dine with the "ancient dame" (again his +phrase!)—and behold the reward of merit:—the niece!—a gentle, +handsome woman, whose age never struck him, probably because her mind +was as immature as his own. Before dinner was over Eleanor's +silence—silence is very moving to youth, for who knows what it +hides?—and her deep, still eyes, lured him like a mystery. Then, after +dinner ("a darned good dinner," Maurice had conceded to himself) the +calm niece sang, and instantly he knew that it was Beauty which hid in +silence—and he was in love with her! He had dined with her on Tuesday, +called on Wednesday, proposed on Friday;—it was all quite like Solomon +Grundy! except that, although she had fallen in love with him almost as +instantly as he had fallen in love with her, she had, over and over +again, refused him. During the period of her refusals the boy's love +glowed like a furnace; it brought both power and maturity into his +fresh, ardent, sensitive face. He threw every thought to the +winds—except the thought of rescuing his princess from Mrs. Newbolt's +imprisoning bric-a-bràc. As for his "cramming" the tutor into whose +hands Mr. Houghton had committed his ward's very defective trigonometry +and economics, Mr. Bradley, held in Mercer because of an annoying +accident, said to himself that his intentions were honest, but if Curtis +didn't turn up for three days running, he would utilize the time his +pupil was paying for by writing a paper on "The Fourth Dimension."</p> + +<p>Maurice was in some new dimension himself! Except "old Brad," he knew +almost no one in Mercer, so he had no confidant; and because his +passion was, perforce, inarticulate, his candid forehead gathered +wrinkles of positive suffering, which made him look as old as Eleanor, +who, dazed by the first very exciting thing that had ever happened to +her,—the experience of being adored (and adored by a boy, which is a +heady thing to a woman of her age!)—Eleanor was saying to herself a +dozen times a day: "I <i>mustn't</i> say 'yes'! Oh, what <i>shall</i> I do?" Then +suddenly there came a day when the rush of his passion decided what she +would do....</p> + +<p>Her aunt had announced that she was going to Europe. "I'm goin' to take +you," Mrs. Newbolt said. "<i>I</i> don't know what would become of you if I +left you alone! You are about as capable as a baby. That was a great +phrase of your dear uncle Thomas's—'capable as a baby,' I'm perfectly +sure the parlor ceilin' has got to be tinted this spring. When does your +school close? We'll go the minute it closes. You can board Bingo with +Mrs. O'Brien."</p> + +<p>Eleanor, deeply hurt, was tempted to retort with the announcement that +she needn't be "left alone"; she might get married! But she was silent; +she never knew what to say when assailed by the older woman's tongue. +She just wrote Maurice, helplessly, that she was going abroad.</p> + +<p>He was panic-stricken. Going abroad? Uncle Henry's ancient dame was a +she-devil, to carry her off! Then, in the midst of his anger, he +recognized his opportunity: "The hell-cat has done me a good turn, I do +believe! I'll get her! Bless the woman! I'll pay her passage myself, if +she'll only go and never come back!"</p> + +<p>It was on the heels of Mrs. Newbolt's candor about Eleanor's +"capableness" that he swept her resistance away. "You've <i>got</i> to marry +me," he told her; "that's all there is to it." He put his hand in his +pocket and pulled out a marriage license. "I'll call for you to-morrow +at ten; we'll go to the mayor's office. I've got it all fixed up. So, +you see there's no getting out of it."</p> + +<p>"But," she protested, dazzled by the sheer, beautiful, impertinence of +it, "Maurice, I can't—I won't—I—"</p> + +<p>"You <i>will</i>," he said. "To-morrow's Saturday," he added, practically, +"and there's no school, so you're free." He rose.... "Better leave a +letter for your aunt. I'll be here at five minutes to ten. Be ready!" He +paused and looked hard at her; caught her roughly in his arms, kissed +her on her mouth, and walked out of the room.</p> + +<p>The mere violence of it lifted her into the Great Adventure! When he +commanded, "Be ready!" she, with a gasp, said, "Yes."</p> + +<p>Well; they had gone to the mayor's office, and been married; then they +had got on a car and ridden through Mercer's dingy outskirts to the end +of the route in Medfield, where, beyond suburban uglinesses, there were +glimpses of green fields.</p> + +<p>Once as the car rushed along, screeching around curves and banging over +switches, Eleanor said, "I've come out here four times a week for four +years, to Fern Hill."</p> + +<p>And Maurice said: "Well, <i>that's</i> over! No more school-teaching for +you!"</p> + +<p>She smiled, then sighed. "I'll miss my little people," she said.</p> + +<p>But except for that they were silent. When they left the car, he led the +way across a meadow to the bank of the river; there they sat down under +the locust, and he kissed her, quietly; then, for a while, still dumb +with the wonder of themselves, they watched the sky, and the sailing +white clouds, and the river—flowing—flowing; and each other.</p> + +<p>"Fifty-four minutes," he had said....</p> + +<p>So they sat there and planned for the endless future—the "fifty-four +years."</p> + +<p>"When we have our golden wedding," he said, "we shall come back here, +and sit under this tree—" He paused; he would be—let's see: nineteen, +plus fifty, makes sixty-nine. He did not go farther with his mental +arithmetic, and say thirty-nine plus fifty; he was thinking only of +himself, not of her. In fifty years he would be, he told himself, an old +man.</p> + +<p>And what would happen in all these fifty golden years? "You know, long +before that time, perhaps it won't be—just us?" he said.</p> + +<p>The color leaped to her face; she nodded, finding no words in which to +expand that joyous "perhaps," which touched the quick in her. Instantly +that sum in addition which he had not essayed in his own mind, became +unimportant in hers. What difference did the twenty severing years make, +after all? Her heart rose with a bound—she had a quick vision of a +little head against her bosom! But she could not put it into words. She +only challenged, him:</p> + +<p>"I am not clever like you. Do you think you can love a stupid person for +fifty years?"</p> + +<p>"For a thousand years!—but you're not stupid."</p> + +<p>She looked doubtful; then went on confessing: "Auntie says I'm a dummy, +because I don't talk very much. And I'm awfully timid. And she says I'm +jealous."</p> + +<p>"You don't talk because you're always thinking; that's one of the most +fascinating things about you, Eleanor,—you keep me wondering what on +earth you're thinking about. It's the mystery of you that gets me! And +if you're 'timid'—well, so long as you're not afraid of me, the more +scared you are, the better I like it. A man," said Maurice, "likes to +feel that he protects his—his wife." He paused and repeated the glowing +word ... "his wife!" For a moment he could not go on with their careless +talk; then he was practical again. That word "protect" was too robust +for sentimentality. "As for being jealous, that, about me, is a joke! +And if you were, it would only mean that you loved me—so I would be +flattered. I hope you'll be jealous! Eleanor, <i>promise</i> me you'll be +jealous?" They both laughed; then he said: "I've made up my mind to one +thing. I won't go back to college."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Maurice!"</p> + +<p>He was very matter of fact. "I'm a married man; I'm going to support my +wife!" He ran his fingers through his thick blond hair in ridiculous +pantomime of terrified responsibility. "Yes, sir! I'm out for dollars. +Well, I'm glad I haven't any near relations to get on their ear, and try +and mind my business for me. Of course," he ruminated, "Bradley will +kick like a steer, when I tell him he's bounced! But that will be on +account of money. Oh, I'll pay him, all same," he said, largely. "Yes; +I'm going to get a job." His face sobered into serious happiness. "My +allowance won't provide bones for Bingo! So it's business for me."</p> + +<p>She looked a little frightened. "Oh, have I made you go to work?" She +had never asked him about money; she had plunged into matrimony without +the slightest knowledge of his income.</p> + +<p>"I'll chuck Bradley, and I'll chuck college," he announced, "I've got +to! Of course, ultimately, I'll have plenty of money. Mr. Houghton has +dry-nursed what father left me, and he has done mighty well with it; but +I can't touch it till I'm twenty-five—worse luck! Father had theories +about a fellow being kept down to brass tacks and earning his living, +before he inherited money another man had earned—that's the way he put +it. Queer idea. So, I must get a job. Uncle Henry'll help me. You may +bet on it that Mrs. Maurice Curtis shall not wash dishes, nor yet feed +the swine, but live on strawberries, sugar, and—What's the rest of it?"</p> + +<p>"I have a little money of my own," she said; "six hundred a year."</p> + +<p>"It will pay for your hairpins," he said, and put out his hand and +touched her hair—black, and very soft and wavy "but the strawberries +I shall provide."</p> + +<p>"I never thought about money," she confessed.</p> + +<p>"Of course not! Angels don't think about money."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"So they were married"; and in the meadow, fifty-four +minutes later, the sun and wind and moving shadows, and the +river—flowing—flowing—heralded the golden years, and ended +the saying: "<i>lived happy ever afterward</i>."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II" ></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + + +<p>It was three days after the young husband, lying in the grass, his cheek +on his wife's hand, had made his careless prophecy about "whistling," +that Henry Houghton, jogging along in the sunshine toward Grafton for +the morning mail, slapped a rein down on Lion's fat back, and whistled, +placidly enough.... (But that was before he reached the post office.) +His wife, whose sweet and rosy bulk took up most of the space on the +seat, listened, smiling with content. When he was placid, she was +placid; when he wasn't, which happened now and then, she was an alertly +reasonable woman, defending him from himself, and wrenching from his +hand, with ironic gayety, or rallying seriousness, the dagger of his +discontent with what he called his "failure" in life—which was what +most people called his success—a business career, chosen because the +support of several inescapable blood relations was not compatible with +his own profession of painting. All his training and hope had been +centered upon art. The fact that, after renouncing it, an admirably +managed cotton mill provided bread and butter for sickly sisters and +wasteful brothers, to say nothing of his own modest prosperity, never +made up to him for the career of a struggling and probably unsuccessful +artist—which he might have had. He ran his cotton mill, and supported +all the family undesirables until, gradually, death and marriage took +the various millstones from around his neck; then he retired, as the +saying is—although it was really setting sail again for life—to his +studio (with a farmhouse attached) in the mountains. There had been a +year of passionate work and expectation—but his pictures were dead. "I +sold my birthright for a bale of cotton," he said, briefly.</p> + +<p>But he still stayed on the farm, and dreamed in his studio and tried +to teach his little, inartistic Edith to draw, and mourned. As for +business, he said, "Go to the devil!"—except as he looked after Maurice +Curtis's affairs; this because the boy's father had been his friend. But +it was the consciousness of the bartered birthright and the dead +pictures in his studio which kept him from "whistling" very often. +However, on this June morning, plodding along between blossoming fields, +climbing wooded hills, and clattering through dusky covered bridges, he +was not thinking of his pictures; so, naturally enough, he whistled; a +very different whistling from that which Maurice, lying in the grass +beside his wife of fifty-four minutes, had foreseen for him—when the +mail should be distributed! Once, just from sheer content, he stopped +his:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Did you ever ever ever<br /> + In your life life life<br /> +See the devil devil devil<br /> + Or his wife wife wife—"</p></div> + +<p>and turned and looked at his Mary.</p> + +<p>"Nice day, Kit?" he said; and she said, "Lovely!" Then she brushed her +elderly rosy cheek against his shabby coat and kissed it. They had been +married for thirty years, and she had held up his hands as he placed +upon the altar of a repugnant duty, the offering of a great +renunciation. She had hoped that the birth of their last, and only +living, child, Edith, would reconcile him to the material results of the +renunciation; but he was as indifferent to money for his girl as he had +been for himself.... So there they were, now, living rather carefully, +in an old stone farmhouse on one of the green foothills of the Allegheny +Mountains. The thing that came nearest to soothing the bruises on his +mind was the possibilities he saw in Maurice.</p> + +<p>"The inconsequence of the scamp amounts to genius!" he used to tell his +Mary with admiring displeasure at one or another of Maurice's scrapes. +"Heaven knows what he'll do before he gets to the top of Fool Hill, and +begins to run on the State Road! Look at this mid-year performance. He +ought to be kicked for flunking. He simply dropped everything except his +music! Apparently he <i>can't</i> study. Even spelling is a matter of private +judgment with Maurice! Oh, of course, I know I ought to have scalped +him; his father would have scalped him. But somehow the scoundrel gets +round me! I suppose its because, though he is provoking, he is never +irritating. And he's as much of a fool as I was at his age! That keeps +me fair to him. Well, he has <i>stuff</i> in him, that boy. He's as truthful +as Edith; an appalling tribute, I know—but you like it in a cub. And +there's no flapdoodle about him; and he never cried baby in his life. +And he has imagination and music and poetry! Edith is a nice little clod +compared to him."</p> + +<p>The affection of these two people for Maurice could hardly have been +greater if he had been their son. "Mother loves Maurice better 'an she +loves me," Edith used to reflect; "I guess it's because he never gets +muddy the way I do, and tracks dirt into the house. He wipes his feet."</p> + +<p>"What do you suppose," Mrs. Houghton said, remembering this summing up +of things, "Edith told me this morning that the reason I loved Maurice +more than I loved her—"</p> + +<p>"What!"</p> + +<p>"Yes; isn't she funny?—was because he 'wiped his feet when he came into +the house.'"</p> + +<p>Edith's father stopped whistling, and smiled: "That child is as +practical as a shuttle; but she hasn't a mean streak in her!" he said, +with satisfaction, and began to whistle again. "Nice girl," he said, +after a while; "but the most rationalizing youngster! I hope she'll get +foolish before she falls in love. Mary, one of these days, when she +grows up, perhaps she and Maurice—?"</p> + +<p>"Matchmaker!" she said, horrified; then objected: "Can't she +rationalize and fall in love too? I'm rather given to reason myself, +Henry."</p> + +<p>"Yes, honey; you are <i>now</i>; but you were as sweet a fool as anybody when +you fell in love, thank God." She laughed, and he said, resignedly, "I +suppose you'll have an hour's shopping to do? You have only one of the +vices of your sex, Mary, you have the 'shopping mind.' However, with all +thy faults I love thee still.... We'll go to the post office first; then +I can read my letters while you are colloguing with the storekeepers."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Houghton, looking at her list, agreed, and when he got out for the +mail she was still checking off people and purchases; it was only when +she had added one or two more errands that she suddenly awoke to the +fact that he was very slow in coming back with the letters. "Stupid!" +she thought, "opening your mail in the post office, instead of keeping +it to read while I'm shopping!"—but even as she reproached him, he came +out and climbed into the buggy, in very evident perturbation.</p> + +<p>"Where do you want to go?" he said; she, asking no questions (marvelous +woman!) told him. He said "G'tap!" angrily; Lion backed, and the wheel +screeched against the curb. "Oh, <i>g'on</i>!" he said. Lion switched his +tail, caught a rein under it, and trotted off. Mr. Houghton leaned over +the dashboard, swore softly, and gave the horse a slap with the rescued +rein. But the outburst loosened the dumb distress that had settled upon +him in the post office; he gave a despairing grunt:</p> + +<p>"Well! Maurice has come the final cropper."</p> + +<p>"Smith's next, dear," she said; "What is it, Henry?"</p> + +<p>"He's gone on the rocks (druggist Smith, or fish Smith?)"</p> + +<p>"Druggist. Has Maurice been drinking?" She could not keep the anxiety +out of her voice.</p> + +<p>"Drinking? He could be as drunk as a lord and I wouldn't—Whoa, +Lion!... Get me some shaving soap, Kit!" he called after her, as she +went into the shop.</p> + +<p>When she came back with her packages and got into the buggy, she said, +quietly, "Tell me, Henry."</p> + +<p>"He has simply done what I put him in the way of doing when I gave him a +letter of introduction to that Mrs. Newbolt, in Mercer."</p> + +<p>"Newbolt? I don't remember—"</p> + +<p>"Yes, you do. Pop eyes. Fat. Talked every minute, and everything she +said a <i>nonsequitur</i>. I used to wonder why her husband didn't choke her. +He was on our board. Died the year we came up here. Talked to death, +probably."</p> + +<p>"Oh yes. I remember her. Well?"</p> + +<p>"I thought she might make things pleasant for Maurice while he was +cramming. He doesn't know a soul in Mercer, and Bradley's game leg +wouldn't help out with sociability. So I gave him letters to two or +three people. Mrs. Newbolt was one of them. I hated her, because she +dropped her g's; but she had good food, and I thought she'd ask him +to dinner once in a while."</p> + +<p>"Well?"</p> + +<p>"<i>She did.</i> And he's married her niece."</p> + +<p>"What! Without your consent! I'm shocked that Mrs. Newbolt permitted—"</p> + +<p>"Probably her permission wasn't asked, any more than mine."</p> + +<p>"You mean an elopement? How outrageous in Maurice!" Mrs. Houghton said.</p> + +<p>Her husband agreed. "Abominable! Mary, do you mind if I smoke?"</p> + +<p>"Very much; but you'll do it all the same. I suppose the girl's a mere +child?" Then she quailed. "Henry!—she's respectable, isn't she? I +couldn't bear it, if—if she was some—dreadful person."</p> + +<p>He sheltered a sputtering match in his curving hand and lighted a cigar; +then he said, "Oh, I suppose she's respectable enough; but she's +certainly 'dreadful.' He says she's a music teacher. Probably caught him +that way. Music would lead Maurice by the nose. Confound that boy! And +his father trusted me." His face twitched with distress. "As for being a +'mere child,'—there; read his letter."</p> + +<p>She took it, fumbling about for her spectacles; halfway through, she +gave an exclamation of dismay. "'A few years older'?—she must be +<i>twenty</i> years older!"</p> + +<p>"Good heavens, Mary!"</p> + +<p>"Well, perhaps not quite twenty, but—"</p> + +<p>Henry Houghton groaned. "I'll tell Bradley my opinion of him as a +coach."</p> + +<p>"My dear, Mr. Bradley couldn't have prevented it.... Yes; I remember her +perfectly. She came to tea with Mrs. Newbolt several times. Rather a +temperamental person, I thought."</p> + +<p>"'Temperamental'? May the Lord have mercy on him!" he said. "Yes, it +comes back to me. Dark eyes? Looked like one of Rossetti's women?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Handsome, but a little stupid. She's proved <i>that</i> by marrying +Maurice! Oh, what a fool!" Then she tried to console him: "But one of +the happiest marriages I ever knew, was between a man of thirty and a +much older woman."</p> + +<p>"But not between a boy of nineteen and a much older woman! The trouble +is not her age but his youth. Why didn't she adopt him?... I bet the +aunt's cussing, too."</p> + +<p>"Probably. Well, we've got to think what to do," Mary Houghton said.</p> + +<p>"Do? What do you mean? Get a divorce for him?"</p> + +<p>"He's just married; he doesn't want a divorce yet," she said, simply; +and her husband laughed, in spite of his consternation.</p> + +<p>"Oh, lord, I wish I was asleep! I've always been afraid he'd go +high-diddle-diddling off with some shady girl;—but I swear, that would +have been better than marrying his grandmother! Mary, what I can't +understand, is the woman. He's a child, almost; and vanity at having a +woman of forty fall in love with him explains him. And, besides, Maurice +is no Eurydice; music would lead him into hell, not out of it. It's the +other fool that puzzles me."</p> + +<p>His wife sighed; "If her mind keeps young, it won't matter so much about +her body."</p> + +<p>"My dear," he said, dryly, "human critters are human critters. In ten +years it will be an impossible situation."</p> + +<p>But again she contradicted him: "No! Unhappiness is possible; but <i>not</i> +inevitable!"</p> + +<p>"Dear Goose, may a simple man ask how it is to be avoided?"</p> + +<p>"By unselfishness," she said; "no marriage ever went on the rocks where +both 'human critters' were unselfish! But I hope this poor, foolish +woman's mind will keep young. If it doesn't, well, Maurice will just +have to be tactful. If he is, it may not be so <i>very</i> bad," she said, +with determined optimism.</p> + +<p>"Kit, when a man has to be 'tactful' with his wife, God help him!—or +a woman with her husband," he added in a sudden tender afterthought. +"We've never been 'tactful' with each other, Mary?" She smiled, and put +her cheek against his shoulder. "'Tactfulness' between a husband and +wife," said Henry Houghton, "is confession that their marriage is a +failure. You may tell 'em so, from me."</p> + +<p>"You may tell them yourself!" she retorted. "What are they going to live +on?" she pondered "Can his allowance be increased?"</p> + +<p>"It can't. You know his father's will. He won't get his money until he's +twenty-five."</p> + +<p>"He'll have to go to work," she said; "which means not going back to +college, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, grimly; "who would support his lady-love while he was in +college? And it means giving up his music," he added.</p> + +<p>"If he makes as much out of his renunciation as you have out of yours," +she said, calmly, "we may bless this poor woman yet."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you old humbug," he told her—but he smiled.</p> + +<p>Then she repeated to him an old, old formula for peace; "'Consider the +stars,' Henry, and young foolishness will seem very small. Maurice's +elopement won't upset the universe."</p> + +<p>They were both silent for a while; then Mary Houghton said, "I'll write +the invitation to them; but you must second it when you answer his +letter."</p> + +<p>"Invitation? What invitation?"</p> + +<p>"Why, to come and stay at Green Hill until you can find something for +him to do."</p> + +<p>"I'll be hanged if I invite her! I'll have nothing to do with her! +Maurice can come, of course; but he can't bring—"</p> + +<p>His wife laughed, and he, too, gave a reluctant chuckle. "I suppose I've +got to?" he groaned.</p> + +<p>"<i>Of course</i>, you've got to!" she said.</p> + +<p>The rest of the ride back to the old stone house among its great trees, +halfway up the mountain, was silent. Mrs. Houghton was thinking what +room she would give the bride and groom—for the little room Maurice had +had in all his vacations since he became her husband's ward was not +suitable. "Edith will have to let them have her room," she thought. She +knew she could count on Edith not to make a fuss. "It's such a comfort +that Edith has sense," she ruminated aloud.</p> + +<p>But her husband was silent; there was no more whistling for Henry +Houghton that day.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III" ></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + + +<p>Edith and her fourteen-year-old neighbor, Johnny Bennett, had climbed +into the old black-heart cherry tree—(Johnny always conceded that Edith +was a good climber—"for a girl.") But when they saw Lion, tugging up +the road, Edith, who was economical with social amenities, told her +guest to go home. "I don't want you any longer," she said; "father and +mother are coming!" And with that she rushed around to the stable door, +just in time to meet the returning travelers, and ask a dozen +questions—the first:</p> + +<p>"<i>Did</i> you get a letter from Maurice?"</p> + +<p>But when her father threw the reins down on Lion's back, and said, +briefly, "Can't you unharness him yourself, Buster?" she stuck out her +tongue, opened her eyes wide, and said nothing except, "Yes, father." +Then she proceeded, with astonishing speed, to put Lion into his stall, +run the buggy into the carriage house, and slam the stable door, after +which she tore up to her mother's room.</p> + +<p>"Mother! Something has bothered father!"</p> + +<p>"Well, yes," Mrs. Houghton said; "a little. Maurice is married."</p> + +<p>Edith's lips fell apart; "Maurice? <i>Married</i>? Who to? Did she wear a +veil? I don't see why father minds."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Houghton, standing in front of her mirror, said, dryly: "There are +things more important than veils, when it comes to getting married. In +the first place, they eloped—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, how lovely! I am going to elope when I get married!"</p> + +<p>"I hope you won't have such bad taste. Of course they ought not to have +got married that way. But the thing that bothers your father, is that +the lady Maurice has married is—is older than he."</p> + +<p>"How much older?" Edith demanded; "a year?"</p> + +<p>"I don't just know. Probably twenty years older."</p> + +<p>Edith was silent, rapidly adding up nineteen and twenty; then she +gasped, "<i>Thirty-nine</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Well, about that; and father is sorry, because Maurice can't go back to +college. He will have to go into business."</p> + +<p>Edith saw no cause for regret in this. "Guess he's glad not to have to +learn things! But why weren't we invited to the wedding? I always meant +to be Maurice's bridesmaid."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Houghton said she didn't know. Edith was silent, for a whole +minute. Then she said, soberly:</p> + +<p>"I suppose father's sorry 'cause she'll die so soon, she's so old? And +then Maurice will feel awfully. Poor Maurice! Well, I'll live with him, +and comfort him."</p> + +<p>"My dear, I'm fifty!" Mrs. Houghton said, much amused.</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, <i>you</i>—" Edith demurred; "that's different. You're my mother, +and you—" She paused; "I never thought of you being old, or dying, +<i>ever</i>. And yet I suppose you are rather old?" She pondered. "I suppose +some day you'll die? Mother!—promise me you won't!" she said, +quaveringly.</p> + +<p>"Edith, don't be a goose!" Mrs. Houghton said, laughing—but she turned +and kissed the rosy, anxious face, "Maurice's wife isn't old at all. +She's quite young. It's only that he is so much younger."</p> + +<p>Edith lapsed into silence. She was very quiet for the rest of that +summer morning. Just before dinner she went across the west pasture to +Doctor Bennett's house, and, hailing Johnny, told him the news. His +indifference—for he only looked at her, with his mild, nearsighted +brown eyes, and said, "Huh?"—irritated her so that she would not +confide her dismay at Maurice's approaching widowerhood, but ran home +to a sympathetic kitchen: "Katy! Maurice got eloped!"</p> + +<p>Katy was much more satisfactory than Johnny; she said, "God save us! +Mr. Maurice eloped? Who with, then? Well, well!" But Edith was still +abstracted. Time, as related to life, had acquired significance. At +dinner she regarded her father with troubled eyes. He, too, was old, +like Maurice's wife. He, too, as well as the bride, and her mother, +would die, sometime. And she and Maurice would have such awful +grief!... Something tightened in her throat; "Please 'scuse me," she +said, in a muffled voice; and, slipping out of her chair, made a dash +for the back door, and ran as hard as she could to her chicken house. +The little place was hot, and smelled of feathers; through the windows, +cobwebbed and dusty, the sunshine fell dimly on the hard earth floor, and +on an empty plate or two and a rusty, overturned tin pan. Here, sitting +on a convenient box, she could think things out undisturbed: Maurice, and +his lovely, dying Bride; herself, orphaned and alone; Johnny Bennett, +indifferent to all this oncoming grief! Probably Maurice was worrying +about it all the time! How long would the Bride live? Suddenly she +remembered her mother's age, and had a revulsion of hope for Maurice. +Perhaps his wife would live to be as old as mother? "Why, I hadn't +thought of that! Well, then, she will live—let's see: thirty-nine from +fifty leaves eleven—yes; the Bride will live eleven years!" Why, that +wasn't so terrible, after all. "That's as long as I have been alive!" +Obviously it would not be necessary to take care of Maurice for quite a +good while. "I guess," she reflected, "I'll have some children by that +time. And maybe I'll be married, too, for Maurice won't need me for +eleven years. But I don't know what I'd do with my husband then?" She +frowned; a husband would be bothering, if she had to go and live with +Maurice. "Oh, well, probably my husband will be so old, he'll die about +the time Maurice's wife does." She had meant to marry Johnny. "But I +won't. He's too young. He's only three years older 'an me. He might live +too long. I must get an old husband. I'll tell Johnny about it +to-morrow. I'll wear mourning," she thought; "a long veil! It's so +interesting. But not over my face—you can't see through it, and it +isn't sense not to be able to see." (The test Edith applied to conduct +was always, "Is it sense?") "Of course I shall feel badly about my +husband; but I've got to take care of Maurice.... Yes; I must get an old +one," she thought. "I must get one as old as the Bride. If they'd only +waited, the Bride could have married my husband!"</p> + +<p>But this line of thought was too complicated; and, besides, she had +so entirely cheered up that she practically forgot death. She began to +count how much money her mother owed her for eggs—which reminded her to +look into the nests; and when, in spite of a clucking remonstrance, she +put her hand under a feathery breast and touched the hot smoothness of a +new-laid egg, she felt perfectly happy. "I guess I'll go and get some +floating-island," she thought. "Oh, I <i>hope</i> they haven't eaten it all +up!"</p> + +<p>With the egg in her hand, she rushed back to the dining room, and was +reassured by the sight of the big glass dish, still all creamy yellow +and fluffy white.</p> + +<p>"Edith," Mrs. Houghton said, "you won't mind letting Maurice and Eleanor +have your room, will you, dear?"</p> + +<p>"Is her name 'Eleanor'? I think it's a perfectly beautiful name! No, +I'd love to give her my room! Mother, she won't be as old as you are for +eleven years, and that's as long as I have been alive. So I won't worry +about Maurice just yet. Mother, may I have two helpings? When are they +coming?"</p> + +<p>"They haven't been asked yet," her father said, grimly. "I'm not going +to concoct a letter, Mary, for a week. Let 'em worry! Maurice, confound +him!—has never worried in his life. Everything rolls off him like water +off a duck's back. It will do him good to chew nails for a while. I wish +I was asleep!"</p> + +<p>"Why, father!" Edith said, aghast; "I don't believe you <i>want</i> the +Bride!"</p> + +<p>"You're a very intelligent young person," her father said, scratching +a match under the table and lighting a cigar.</p> + +<p>"But, my dear," his wife said, "has it occurred to you that it may be +as unpleasant for the Bride to come, as for you to have her? <i>Henry!</i> +That's the third since breakfast!"</p> + +<p>"Wrong for once, Mrs. Houghton. It's the fourth."</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> want the Bride," said Edith.</p> + +<p>Her mother laughed. "Come along, honey," she said, putting her hand on +her husband's shoulder, "and tell me what to say to her."</p> + +<p>"Say she's a harpy, and tell her to go to the—"</p> + +<p>"Henry!"</p> + +<p>"My dear, like Mr. F.'s aunt, 'I hate a fool.' Oh, I'll tell you what +to say: Say, 'Mr. F.'s aunt will send her a wedding present.' That's +friendly, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Better not be too literary in public," his wife cautioned him, with a +significant glance at Edith, who was all ears.</p> + +<p>When, laughing, they left the table, their daughter scraping her plate, +pondered thus: "I suppose Mr. F. is the Bride's father. I wonder what +present his aunt will give her? I wonder what 'F' stands for—Frost? +Fuller? Father and mother don't want the Bride to come; and mother +thinks the Bride don't want to come. So why should they ask her to come? +And why should she come? I wouldn't," Edith said; "but I hope she will, +for I love her! And oh, I <i>hope</i> she'll bring her harp! I've never seen +a harpy. But people are funny," Edith summed it up; "inviting people and +not wanting 'em; and visiting 'em and not wanting to. It ain't sense," +said Edith.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV" ></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + + +<p>In spite of his declaration of indifference to the feelings of his +guardian, the married boy was rapidly acquiring that capacity for +"worry" which Mr. Houghton desired to develop in him. <i>What would the +mail bring him from Green Hill?</i> It brought nothing for a week—a week +in which he experienced certain bad moments which encouraged "worry" to +a degree that made his face distinctly older than on that morning under +the locust tree, when he had been married for fifty-four minutes. The +first of these educating moments came on Monday, when he went to see his +tutor, to say that he was—well, he was going to stop grinding.</p> + +<p>"What?" said Mr. Bradley, puzzled.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to chuck college, sir," Maurice said, and smiled broadly, +with the rollicking certainty of sympathy that a puppy shows when +approaching an elderly mastiff.</p> + +<p>"Chuck college! What's the matter?" the mastiff said, putting +a protecting hand over his helpless leg, for Maurice's +restlessness—tramping about, his hands in his pockets—was a menace +to the plastered member.</p> + +<p>"I'm going into business," the youngster said; "I—Well; I've got +married, and—"</p> + +<p>"<i>What!</i>"</p> + +<p>"—so, of course, I've got to go to work."</p> + +<p>"See here, what are you talking about?"</p> + +<p>The uneasy color sprang into Maurice's face, he stood still, and the +grin disappeared. When he said explicitly what he was "talking about," +Mr. Bradley's angry consternation was like the unexpected snap of the +old dog; it made Eleanor's husband feel like the puppy. "I ought to have +rounded him up," Mr. Bradley was saying to himself; "Houghton will hold +me responsible!" And even while making unpleasant remarks to the +bridegroom, he was composing, in his mind, a letter to Mr. Houghton +about the helplessness incidental to a broken leg, which accounted for +his failure in "rounding up." "<i>I</i> couldn't get on to his trail!" he was +exonerating himself.</p> + +<p>When Maurice retreated, looking like a schoolboy, it took him +a perceptible time to regain his sense of age and pride and +responsibility. He rushed back to the hotel—where he had plunged into +the extravagance of the "bridal suite,"—to pour out his hurt feelings +to Eleanor, and while she looked at him in one of her lovely silences he +railed at Bradley, and said the trouble with him was that he was sore +about money! "He needn't worry! I'll pay him," Maurice said, largely. +And then forgot Bradley in the rapture of kissing Eleanor's hand. "As +if we cared for his opinion!" he said.</p> + +<p>"We don't care!" she said, joyously. Her misgivings had vanished like +dew in the hot sun. Old Mrs. O'Brien had done her part in dissipating +them. While Maurice was bearding his tutor, Eleanor had gone across +town to her laundress's, to ask if Mrs. O'Brien would take Bingo as a +boarder—. "I can't have him at the hotel," she explained, and then +told the great news:—"I'm going to live there, because I—I'm +married,"—upon which she was kissed, and blessed, and wept over! "The +gentleman is a little younger than I am," she confessed, smiling; and +Mrs. O'Brien said:</p> + +<p>"An' what difference does that make? He'll only be lovin' ye hotter than +an old fellow with the life all gone out o' him!"</p> + +<p>Eleanor said, laughing, "Yes, that's true!" and cuddled the baby +grandson's head against her breast.</p> + +<p>"You'll be happy as a queen!" said Mrs. O'Brien; and "in a year from +now you'll have something better to take care of than Bingo—<i>he'll</i> be +jealous!"</p> + +<p>But she hardly heeded Mrs. O'Brien and her joyful prophecy of Bingo's +approaching jealousy; having taken the dive, she had risen into the +light and air, and now she forgot the questioning depths! She was on the +crest of contented achievement. She even laughed to think that she had +ever hesitated about marrying Maurice. Absurd! As if the few years +between them were of the slightest consequence! Mrs. O'Brien was +right.... So she smoothed over Maurice's first bad moment with an +indifference as to Mr. Bradley's opinion which was most reassuring to +him. (Yet once in a while she thought of Mr. Houghton, and bit her lip.)</p> + +<p>The next bad moment neither she nor Maurice could dismiss so easily; it +came in the interview with her astounded aunt, whose chief concern (when +she read the letter which Eleanor had left on her pincushion) was lest +the Houghtons would think she had inveigled the boy into marrying her +niece. To prove that she had not, Mrs. Newbolt told the bride and groom +that she would have nothing more to do with Eleanor! It was when the +fifty-four minutes had lengthened into three days that they had gone, +after supper, to see her. Eleanor, supremely satisfied, with no doubts, +now about the wisdom of what she had done, was nervous only as to the +effect of her aunt's temper upon Maurice; and he, full of a bravado of +indifference which confessed the nervousness it denied, was anxious only +as to the effect of the inevitable reproaches upon Eleanor. Their five +horrid minutes of waiting in the parlor for Mrs. Newbolt's ponderous +step on the stairs, was broken by Bingo's dashing, with ear-piercing +barks, into the room: Eleanor took him on her knee, and Maurice, giving +the little black nose a kindly squeeze, looked around in pantomimic +horror of the obese upholstery, and Rogers groups on the tops of +bookcases full of expensively bound and unread classics.</p> + +<p>"How have you stood it?" he said to his wife; adding, under his breath, +"If she's nasty to you, I'll wring her neck!"</p> + +<p>She was very nasty. "I'm not a party to it," Mrs. Newbolt said; she sat, +panting, on a deeply cushioned sofa, and her wheezy voice came through +quivering double chins; her protruding pale eyes snapped with anger. "I +shall tell you exactly what I think of you, Eleanor, for, as my dear +mother used to say, if I have a virtue it is candor; I think you are a +puffect fool. As for Mr. Curtis, I no more thought of protectin' him +than I would think of protectin' a baby in a perambulator from its +nursemaid! Bingo was sick at his stomach this mornin'. You've ruined +the boy's life." Eleanor cringed, but Maurice was quite steady:</p> + +<p>"We will not discuss it, if you please. I will merely say that I dragged +Eleanor into it; I <i>made</i> her marry me. She refused me repeatedly. Come, +Eleanor."</p> + +<p>He rose, but Mrs. Newbolt, getting heavily on to her small feet, and +talking all the time, walked over to the doorway and blocked their +retreat. "You needn't think I'll do anything for you!" she said to her +niece; "I shall write to Mr. Houghton and tell him so. I shall tell him +he isn't any more disgusted with this business than I am. And you can +take Bingo with you!"</p> + +<p>"I came to get him," Eleanor said, faintly.</p> + +<p>"Come, Eleanor," Maurice said; and Mrs. Newbolt, puffing and talking, +had to make way for them. As they went out of the door she called, +angrily:</p> + +<p>"Here! Stop! I want to give Bingo a chocolate drop!"</p> + +<p>They didn't stop. In the street on the way to Bingo's new home, Eleanor, +holding her little dog in her arms, was blind with tears, but Maurice +effervesced into extravagant ridicule. His opinion of Mrs. Newbolt, her +parlor, her ponderosity, and her missing g's, exhausted his vocabulary +of opprobrious adjectives; but Eleanor was silent, just putting up a +furtive handkerchief to wipe her eyes. It was dark, and he drew her hand +through his arm and patted it.</p> + +<p>"Don't worry, Star. Uncle Henry is white! She can write to him all she +wants to! I'm betting that we'll get an invitation to come right up to +Green Hill."</p> + +<p>She said nothing, but he knew she was trembling. As they entered Mrs. +O'Brien's alley, they paused where it was dark enough, halfway between +gaslights, for a man to put his arm around his wife's waist and kiss +her. (Bingo growled.)</p> + +<p>"Eleanor! I've a great mind to go back to that hell-cat, and tell her +what I think of her!"</p> + +<p>"No. Very likely she's right. I—I have injured you. Oh, Maurice, if I +<i>have</i>—"</p> + +<p>"You'd have injured me a damn sight more if you hadn't married me!" he +said.</p> + +<p>But for the moment her certainty that her marriage was a glorious and +perfect thing, collapsed; her voice was a broken whisper:</p> + +<p>"If I've spoiled your life—she says I have;—I'll ... kill myself, +Maurice." She spoke with a sort of heavy calmness, that made a small, +cold thrill run down his back; he burst into passionate protest:</p> + +<p>"All I am, or ever can be, will be because you love me! Darling, when +you say things like—like what you said, I feel as if you didn't love +me—"</p> + +<p>Of course the reproach tautened her courage; "I do! I do! But—"</p> + +<p>"Then never say such a wicked, cruel thing again!"</p> + +<p>It was when Bingo had been left with Mrs. O'Brien that, on their way +back to the hotel, Maurice, in a burst of enthusiasm, invited his third +bad moment: "I am going to have a rattling old dinner party to celebrate +your escape from the hag! How about Saturday night?"</p> + +<p>She protested that he was awfully extravagant; but she cheered up. After +all, what difference did it make what a person like Auntie thought! "But +who will you ask?" she said. "I suppose you don't know any men here? And +I don't, either."</p> + +<p>He admitted that he had only two or three acquaintances in Mercer—"but +I have a lot in Philadelphia. You shan't live on a desert island, +Nelly!"</p> + +<p>"Ah, but I'd like to—<i>with you</i>! I don't want anyone but you, in the +world," she said, softly.</p> + +<p>He thrilled at the wonder of that: she would be contented, <i>with +him</i>,—on a desert island! Oh, if he could only always be enough for +her! He vowed to himself, in sudden boyish solemnity, that he <i>would</i> +always be enough for her. Aloud, he said he thought he could scratch up +two or three fellows.</p> + +<p>Then Eleanor's apprehension spoke: "What <i>will</i> Mr. Houghton say?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he's all right," Maurice said, resolutely hiding his own +apprehension. He could hide it, but he could not forget it. Even while +arranging for his dinner party, and plunging into the expense of a +private dining room, he was thinking, of his guardian; "Will he kick?" +Aloud he said, "I've asked three fellows, and you ask three girls."</p> + +<p>"I don't know many girls," she said, anxiously.</p> + +<p>"How about that girl you spoke to on the street yesterday? (If Uncle +Henry could only see her, he'd be crazy about her!)"</p> + +<p>"Rose Ellis? Well, yes; but she's rather young."</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's all right," Maurice assured her. "(I wish I hadn't told him +she is older than I am. Trouble with me is, I always plunk out the +truth!) The fellows like 'em young," he said. Then he told her who the +fellows were: "I don't know 'em very well; they're just boys; not in +college. Younger than I am, except Tom Morton. Mort's twenty, and the +brainiest man I know. And Hastings has a bag of jokes—well, not just +for ladies," said Maurice, grinning, "and you'll like Dave Brown. You +rake in three girls. We'll have a stunning spread, and then go to the +theater." He caught her in his arms and romped around the room with her, +then dropped her into a chair, and watched her wiping away tears of +helpless laughter.</p> + +<p>"Yes—I'll rake in the girls!" she gasped.</p> + +<p>She wasn't very successful in her invitations. "I asked Rose, but I +had to ask her mother, too," she said; "and one of the teachers at the +Medfield school."</p> + +<p>Maurice looked doubtful. Rose was all right; but the other two? "Aren't +they somewhat faded flowers?"</p> + +<p>"They're about my age," Eleanor teased him. As for Maurice, he thought +that it didn't really matter about the ladies, faded or not; they were +Eleanor's end of the shindy. "Spring chickens are Mort's meat," he +said...</p> + +<p>The three rather recent acquaintances who were Maurice's end of the +shindy, had all gaped, and then howled, when told that the dinner was +to celebrate his marriage. "I got spliced kind of in a hurry," he +explained; "so I couldn't have any bachelor blow-out; but my—my—my +wife, Mrs. Curtis, I mean—and I, thought we'd have a spree, to show +I am an old married man."</p> + +<p>The fellows, after the first amazement, fell on him with all kinds of +ragging: Who was she? Was she out of baby clothes? Would she come in a +perambulator?</p> + +<p>"Shut up!" said the bridegroom, hilariously. He went home to Eleanor +tingling with pride. "I want you to be perfectly stunning, Star! Of +course you always are; but rig up in your best duds! I'm going to make +those fellows cross-eyed with envy. I wonder if you could sing, just +once, after dinner? I want them to hear you! (Mr. Houghton will love her +voice!)"</p> + +<p>Eleanor—who had stopped counting the minutes of married life now, for, +this being the sixth day of bliss, the arithmetic was too much for +her—was as excited about the dinner as he was. Yet, like him, under the +excitement, was a little tremor: "They will be angry because—because we +eloped!" Any other reason for anger she would not formulate. Sometimes +her anxiety was audible: "Do you suppose Auntie has written to Mr. +Houghton?" And again: "What <i>will</i> he say?" Maurice always replied, with +exuberant indifference, that he didn't know, and he didn't care!</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> care, if he is horrid to you!" Eleanor said "He'll probably say it +was wicked to elope?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Houghton continued to say nothing; and the "care" Maurice denied, +dogged all his busy interest in his dinner—for which he had made the +plans, as Eleanor, until the term ended, was obliged to go out to +Medfield to give her music lessons; besides, "planning" was not her +forte! But in the thrill of excitement about the dinner and in the +mounting adventure of being happy, she was able to forget her fear that +Mr. Houghton might be "horrid" to Maurice. If the Houghtons didn't like +an elopement, it would mean that they had no romance in them! She was +absorbed in her ardent innocent purpose of "impressing" Maurice's +friends, not from vanity, but because she wanted to please him. As she +dressed that evening, all her self-distrust vanished, and she smiled at +herself in the mirror for sheer delight, for his sake, in her dark, +shining eyes, and the red loveliness of her full lip. In this wholly new +experience of feeling, not only happy, but important,—she forgot Mrs. +Newbolt, sailing angrily for Europe that very day, and was not even +anxious about the Houghtons! After all, what difference did it make what +such people thought of elopements? "Fuddy-duddies!" she said to herself, +using Maurice's slang with an eager sense of being just as young as he +was.</p> + +<p>When the guests arrived and they all filed into the private and very +expensive dining room, Eleanor looked indeed quite "stunning"; her +shyness did not seem shyness, but only a sort of proud beauty of +silence, which might cover Heaven knows what deeps of passion and of +knowledge! Little Rose was glowing and simpering, and the two older +ladies were giving each other significant glances. Maurice's "fellows," +shepherded by their host, shambled speechlessly along in the background. +The instant that they saw the bride they had fallen into dumbness. Brown +said, under his breath to Hastings, "Gosh!" And Hastings gave Morton a +thrust in the ribs, which Morton's dignity refused to notice; later, +when he was at Eleanor's right, the flattery of her eagerly attentive +silence instantly won him. Maurice had so expatiated to her upon +Morton's brains, that she was really in awe of him—of which, of course, +Morton was quite aware! It was so exhilarating to his twenty years that +he gave his host a look of admiring congratulation—and Maurice's pride +rose high!—then fell; for, somehow, his dinner wouldn't "go"! He +watched the younger men turn frankly rude shoulders to the older ladies, +who did their best to be agreeable. He caught stray words: Eleanor's +efforts to talk as Rose talked—Rose's dog was "perfectly sweet," but +"simply awful"; then a dog story; "wasn't that <i>killing</i>?" And Eleanor: +she once had a cat—"perfectly frightfully cunning!" said Eleanor, +stumbling among the adverbs of adolescence.</p> + +<p>At Rose's story the young men roared, but Eleanor's cat awoke no +interest. Then one of the "faded flowers" spoke to Brown, who said, +vaguely, "What, ma'am?"</p> + +<p>The other lady was murmuring in Maurice's ear:</p> + +<p>"What is your college?"</p> + +<p>Maurice trying to get Rose's eye, so that he might talk to her and give +the boys a chance to do their duty, said, distractedly, "Princeton. Say, +Hastings! Tell Mrs. Ellis about the miner who lost his shirt—"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ellis looked patient, and Hastings, dropping into agonized shyness, +said, "Oh, I can't tell stories!"</p> + +<p>After that, except for Morton's philosophical outpourings to the +listening Eleanor, most of the dreary occasion of eating poor food, +served by a waiter who put his thumb into things, was given up to the +stifled laughter of the girl and boys, and to conversation between the +other two guests, who were properly arch because of the occasion, but +disappointed in their dinner, and anxious to shake their heads and lift +shocked hands as soon as they could get out of their hostess's sight.</p> + +<p>For Maurice, the whole endless hour was a seesaw between the past and +the present, between his new dignity and his old irresponsibility. He +tried—at first with boisterous familiarity, then with ponderous +condescension—to draw his friends out. What would Eleanor think of +them—the idiots! And what would she think of him, for having such +asinine friends? He hoped Mort was showing his brains to her! He +mentally cursed Hastings because he did not produce his jokes; as for +Brown, he was a kid. "I oughtn't to have asked him! What <i>will</i> Eleanor +think of him!" He was thankful when dessert came and the boys stopped +their fatuous murmurings to little Rose, to gorge themselves with ice +cream. He talked loudly to cover up their silence, and glanced +constantly at his watch, in the hope that it was time to pack 'em all +off to the theater! Yet, even with his acute discomfort, he had moments +of pride—for there was Eleanor sitting at the head of the table, silent +and handsome, and making old Mort crazy about her! In spite of those +asses of boys, he was very proud. He had simply made a mistake in +inviting Hastings and Brown; "Tom Morton's all right," he told himself; +"but, great Scott! how young those other two are!"</p> + +<p>When the evening was over (the theater part of it was a success, for the +play was good, and Maurice had nearly bankrupted himself on a box), and +he and Eleanor were alone, he drew her down on the little sofa of their +sitting room, and worshiped. "Oh, Star, how wonderful you are!"</p> + +<p>"Did I do everything right?" She was breathless with happiness. "I tried +so hard! But I <i>can't</i> talk. I never know what to say."</p> + +<p>"You were perfect! And they were all such idiots—except Mort. Mort told +me you were very temperamental, and had a wonderful mind. I said, 'You +bet she has!' The old ladies were pills."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Maurice, you goose!... Maurice, what will Mr. Houghton say?"</p> + +<p>"Hell say, 'Bless you, my children!' Nelly, what <i>was</i> the matter with +the dinner?"</p> + +<p>"Matter? Why, it was perfect! It was"—she made a dash for some of his +own words—"simply corking! Though perhaps Rose was a little too young +for it. Didn't you enjoy it?" she demanded, astonished.</p> + +<p>He said that if she enjoyed it, that was all he cared about! He didn't +tell her—perhaps he didn't know it himself—that his own lack of +enjoyment was due to his inarticulate consciousness that he had not +belonged anywhere at that dinner table. He was too old—and he was too +young. The ladies talked down to him, and Brown and Hastings were polite +to him. "Damn 'em, <i>polite</i>! Well," he thought, "'course, they know that +a man in my position isn't in their class. But—" After a while he found +himself thinking: "Those hags Eleanor raked in had no manners. Talked to +me about my 'exams'! I'm glad I snubbed the old one, I don't think +Rose was too young," he said, aloud. "Oh, Star, you are wonderful!"</p> + +<p>And she, letting her hair fall cloudlike over her shoulders, silently +held out her arms to him. Instantly his third bad moment vanished.</p> + +<p>But a fourth was on its way; even as he kissed that white shoulder, he +was thinking of the letter which must certainly come from Mr. Houghton +in a day or two. "What will <i>he</i> get off?" he asked himself; "probably +old Brad and Mrs. Newbolt have fed oats to him, so he'll kick—but what +do I care? Not a hoot!" Thus encouraging himself, he encouraged Eleanor:</p> + +<p>"Don't worry! Uncle Henry'll write and <i>beg</i> me to bring you up to Green +Hill."</p> + +<p>The fifty-four minutes of married life had stretched into eight days, +and Maurice had chewed the educating nails of worry pretty thoroughly +before that "begging" letter from Henry Houghton arrived. There was an +inclosure in it from Mrs. Houghton, and the young man, down in the dark +lobby of the hotel, with his heart in his mouth, read what both old +friends had to say—then rushed upstairs, two steps at a time, to make +his triumphant announcement to his wife:</p> + +<p>"What did I tell you? Uncle Henry's <i>white</i>!" He gave her a hug; then, +plugging his pipe full of tobacco, handed her the letters, and sat down +to watch the effect of them upon her; there was no more "worry" for +Maurice! But Eleanor, standing by the window silhouetted against the +yellow twilight, caught her full lower lip between her teeth as she +read:</p> + +<p>"Of course," Mr. Houghton wrote—(it had taken him the week he had +threatened to "concoct" his letter, which he asked his wife if he might +not sign "Mr. F.'s aunt." "I bet she doesn't know her Dickens; it won't +convey anything to her," he begged; "I'll cut out two cigars a day if +you'll let me do it?" She would not let him, so the letter was perfectly +decorous.)—"Of course it was not the proper way to treat an old friend, +and marriage is too serious a business to be entered into in this way. +Also I am sorry that there is any difference in age between you and +your wife. But that is all in the past, and Mrs. Houghton and I wish +you every happiness. We are looking forward to seeing you next +month." ... ("Exactly," he explained to his Mary, "as I look forward +to going to the dentist's. <i>You</i> tell 'em so.")</p> + +<p>As Mrs. Houghton declined to "tell 'em," Eleanor, reading the friendly +words, was able to say, "I don't think he's angry?"</p> + +<p>"'Course not!" said Maurice.</p> + +<p>Then she opened the other letter.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>My dear boy,—I wish you hadn't got married in such a hurry; Edith is +dreadfully disappointed not to have had the chance "to be your +bridesmaid"! You must give us an opportunity soon to know your wife. Of +course you must both come to Green Hill as usual, for your vacation.</p></div> + +<p>"<i>She</i> is furious," said Eleanor. "She thinks it's dreadful to have +eloped." She had turned away from him, and was looking out across the +slow current of the river at the furnaces on the opposite bank—it was +the same river, that, ten days ago, had run sparkling and lisping over +brown depths and sunny shallows past their meadow. Her face lightened +and darkened as the sheeting violet and orange flames from the great +smokestacks roared out against the sky, and fell, and rose again. The +beauty of them caught Maurice's eye, and he really did not notice what +she was saying, until he caught the words: "Mrs. Houghton's like +Auntie—she thinks I've injured you—" Before he could get on his feet +to go and take her in his arms, and deny that preposterous word, she +turned abruptly and came and sat on his knee; then, with a sort of sob, +let herself sink against his breast. "But oh, I did so want to be +happy!—and you made me do it."</p> + +<p>He gave her a quick squeeze, and chuckled: "You bet I made you!" he +said; he pushed her gently to her feet, and got up and walked about the +room, his hands in his pockets. "As for Mrs. Houghton, you'll love her. +She never fusses; she just says, 'Consider the stars.' I do hope you'll +like them, Eleanor," he ended, anxiously. He was still in that state of +mind where the lover hopes that his beloved will approve of his friends. +Later on, when he and she love each other more, and so are more nearly +one, he hopes that his friends will approve of his beloved, even as he +used to be anxious that they should approve of him. "I do awfully want +you to like 'em at Green Hill! We'll go the minute your school closes."</p> + +<p>"<i>Must</i> we?" she said, nervously.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid we've got to," he said; "you see, I must find out about ways +and means. And Edith would be furious if we didn't come," he ended, +chuckling.</p> + +<p>"Is she nice?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," he said; "she's just a child, of course. Only eleven. But +she and I have great times. We have a hut on the mountain; we go up for +a day, and Edith cooks things. She's a bully cook. Her beloved Johnny +Bennett tags on behind."</p> + +<p>"But do you like to be with a <i>child</i>?" she said, surprised.</p> + +<p>"Oh, she's got a lot of sense. Say, Nelly, I have an idea. While we are +at Green Hill, let's camp out up there?"</p> + +<p>"You don't mean stay all night?" she said, flinching. "Oh, wouldn't it +be very uncomfortable? I—I hate the dark."</p> + +<p>The sweet foolishness of it enchanted him (baby love feeds on pap!) +"Pitch dark," he teased, "and lions and tigers roaring around, and +snakes—"</p> + +<p>"Of course I'll go, if you want me to," she said, simply, but with a +real sinking of the heart.</p> + +<p>"Edith adores it," he said. "Speaking of Edith, I must tell you +something so funny. Last summer I was at Green Hill, and one night Mr. +and Mrs. Houghton were away, and there was a storm. Gee, I never saw +such a storm in my life! Edith has no more nerves than a tree, but even +she was scared. Well, I was scared myself."</p> + +<p>He had stretched himself out on the sofa, and she was kneeling beside +him, her eyes worshiping him. "<i>I</i> would have been scared to death," she +confessed.</p> + +<p>"Well, <i>I</i> was!" he said. "The tornado—it was just about that!—burst +on to us, and nearly blew the house off the hill—and such an infernal +bellowing, and hellish green lightning, you never saw! Well, I was just +thinking about Buster—her father calls her Buster; and wondering +whether she was scared, when in she rushed, in her night-gown. She made +a running jump for my bed, dived into it, grabbed me, and hugged me so I +was 'most suffocated, and screamed into my ear, 'There's a storm!'—as +if I hadn't noticed it. I said—I could hardly make myself heard in the +racket—I yelled, 'Don't you think you'd better go back to your own +room? I'll come and sit there with you.' And she yelled, 'I'm going to +stay here.' So she stayed."</p> + +<p>"I think she was a little old for that sort of thing," Eleanor said, +coldly.</p> + +<p>He gave a shout of laughter. "Eleanor! Do you mean to tell me you don't +see how awfully funny it was? The little thing hugged me with all her +might until the storm blew over. Then she said, calmly: 'It's cold. I'll +stay here. You can go and get in my bed if you want to.'"</p> + +<p>Eleanor gave a little shrug, then rose and went over to the window. "Oh +yes, it was funny; but I think she must be a rather pert little thing. I +don't want to go to Green Hill."</p> + +<p>Maurice looked worried. "I hate to urge anything you don't like, Nelly; +but I really do feel we ought to accept their invitation? And you'll +like them! Of course they're not in your class. Nobody is! I mean +they're old, and sort of commonplace. But we can go and live in the +woods most of the time, and get away from them,—except little Skeezics. +We'll take her along. You'll love having her; she's lots of fun. You +see, I've <i>got</i> to go to Green Hill, because I must get in touch with +Uncle Henry; I've got to find out about our income!" he explained, with +a broad grin.</p> + +<p>"I should think Edith would bore you," she said. Her voice was so +sharply irritated that Maurice looked at her, open-mouthed; he was too +bewildered to speak.</p> + +<p>"Why, Eleanor," he faltered; "why are you—on your ear? Was it what I +told you about Edith? You didn't think that she wasn't <i>proper</i>?"</p> + +<p>"No! Of course not! It wasn't <i>that</i>." She came quickly and knelt beside +him. "Of course it wasn't <i>that</i>! It was—" She could not say what it +was; perhaps she did not quite know that her annoyance at Maurice's +delight in Edith was the inarticulate pain of recognizing that he might +have more in common with a child, eight years his junior, than he could +have with a woman twenty years his senior. Her eyes were suddenly bright +with frightened tears. In a whisper, that fear which, in these days of +complete belief in her own happiness, she had forgotten even to deny, +came back: "What really upset me was the letters. The Houghtons are +angry because I am—" she flinched, and would not utter the final word +which was the hidden reason of her annoyance at Edith; so, instead of +uttering it, she said, "because we eloped."</p> + +<p>As for Maurice, he rallied her, and pretended to scold her, and tasted +her tears salt upon his lips. He felt very old and protecting.</p> + +<p>"Nonsense!" he said. "Mrs. Houghton and Uncle Henry are old, and of +course they can't understand love. But the romance of it will touch +them!"</p> + +<p>And again Love cast out Fear; Eleanor, her face hidden on his shoulder, +told herself that it really didn't matter what the Houghtons thought +of ... an elopement.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V" ></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + + +<p>The cloud of their first difference had blown over almost before they +felt its shadow, and the sky of love was as clear as the lucid beryl of +the summer night. Yet even the passing shadow of the cloud kept both the +woman and the boy repentant and a little frightened; he, because he +thought he had offended her by some lack of delicacy; she, because she +thought she had shocked him by what he might think was harshness to a +child. Even a week afterward, as they journeyed up to Green Hill in a +dusty accommodation train, there was an uneasy memory of that +cloud—black with Maurice's dullness, and livid with the zigzag flash of +Eleanor's irritation—and then the little shower of tears! ... What had +brought the cloud? Would it ever return? ... As for those twenty +dividing years, they never thought of them!</p> + +<p>In the train they held each other's hands under the cover of a +newspaper; and sometimes Maurice's foot touched hers, and then they +looked at each other, and smiled—but each was wondering: his wonder +was, "What made her offended at Edith?" And hers was, "How can he like +to be with an eleven-year-old child!" Their talk, however, confessed no +wonderings! It was the happy commonplace of companionship: Mrs. Newbolt +and her departure for Europe; would Mrs. O'Brien be good to Bingo? what +Maurice's business should be. Then Maurice yawned, and said he was glad +that the commencement exercises at Fern Hill were over; and she said she +was glad, too; she had danced, she said, until she had a pain in her +side! After which he read his paper, and she looked out of the window +at the flying landscape. Suddenly she said:</p> + +<p>"That girl you danced with last night—you danced with her three +times!" she said, with sweet reproach—"didn't know we were +married!—she wasn't a Fern Hill girl. She told me she had been +dancing with my 'nephew.'"</p> + +<p>"Did she?... Eleanor, look at that elm tree, standing all alone in the +field, like—like a wineglass full of summer!"</p> + +<p>For a moment she didn't understand his readiness to change the +subject—then she had a flash of instinct: "I believe she said the +same thing to you!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, she got off some fool thing." The annoyance in his voice was like +a rapier thrust of certainty.</p> + +<p>"I knew it! But I don't care. Why should I care?"</p> + +<p>"You shouldn't. Besides, it was only funny. I was tremendously amused."</p> + +<p>She turned and looked out of the window.</p> + +<p>Maurice lifted the paper which had been such a convenient shelter for +clasping hands, and seemed to read for a while. Then he said, abruptly, +"I only thought it was funny for her to make such a mistake."</p> + +<p>She was silent.</p> + +<p>"Eleanor, don't be—that way!"</p> + +<p>"What 'way'? You mean"—her voice trembled—"feel hurt to have you dance +<i>three times</i>, with a girl who said an uncomplimentary thing about me?"</p> + +<p>"But it wasn't uncomplimentary! It was just a silly mistake anyone might +make—" He stopped abruptly, for there were tears in her eyes—and +instantly his tenderness infolded her like sunshine. But even while he +was making her talk of other things—the heat, or the landscape—he was +a little preoccupied; he was trying to explain this tiny, ridiculous, +lovely unreasonableness, by tracking it back to some failure of +sensitiveness on his own part. It occurred to him that he could do this +better if he were by himself—not sitting beside her, faintly conscious +of her tenseness. So he said, abruptly, "Star, if you don't mind, I'll +go and have a smoke."</p> + +<p>"All right," she said; "give me the paper; I haven't looked at the news +for days!" She was trembling a little. The mistake of a silly girl had +had, at first, no significance, it was just, as it always is to the +newly married woman, amusing to be supposed not to be married! But that +Maurice, knowing of the mistake, had not mentioned its absurdity, woke +an uneasy consciousness that he had thought it might annoy her! Why +should it annoy her?—unless the reason of the mistake was as obvious to +him as to the girl?—whom he had found attractive enough to dance with +three times! It was as if a careless hand had pushed open a closed door, +and given Maurice's wife a glimpse of a dark landscape, the very +existence of which her love had so vehemently denied.</p> + +<p>An hour later, however, when Maurice returned, she was serene again. +Love had closed the door—bolted it! barred it! and the gray landscape +of dividing years was forgotten. And as her face had cleared, so had +his. He had explained her annoyance by calling himself a clod! "She +hated not to be thought married—of <i>course</i>!" What a brute he was not +to have recognized the subtle loveliness of a sensitiveness like that! +He wanted to tell her so, but he could only push the newspaper toward +her and slip his hand under it to feel for hers—which he clutched and +gripped so hard that her rings cut into the flesh. She laughed, and +opened her pocketbook and showed him the little circle of grass which he +had slipped over her wedding ring after fifty-four minutes of married +life. At which his whole face radiated. It was as if, through those gay +blue eyes of his, he poured pure joy from his heart into hers.</p> + +<p>"Be careful," he threatened: "one minute more, and I'll kiss you right +here, before people!"</p> + +<p>She snapped her purse shut in pretended terror, but after that they held +hands under the newspaper, and were perfectly happy—until the moment +came of meeting the Houghtons on the platform at the junction; then +happiness gave way to embarrassment.</p> + +<p>Henry Houghton, obliged to throw away a half-smoked cigar, and, saying +under his breath that he wished he was asleep, was cross; but his wife +was pleasantly commonplace. She kissed the bride, and the groom, too, +and said that Edith was in a great state of excitement about them! Then +she condoled with Eleanor about the heat, and told Maurice there were +cinders on his hat. But not even her careful matter-of-courseness could +make the moment anything but awkward. In the four-mile drive to Green +Hill—during which Eleanor said she hoped old Lion wouldn't run +away;—the young husband seemed to grow younger and younger; and his +wife, in her effort to talk to Mr. Houghton, seemed to grow older and +older....</p> + +<p>"If I didn't happen to know she was a fool," Henry Houghton said to his +Mary, washing his hands before going down to supper, "I should think she +was quite a nice woman—she's so good looking."</p> + +<p>"<i>Henry!</i> At your time of life, are you deciding a woman's 'niceness' by +her looks?"</p> + +<p>"But tell her she mustn't bore him," he said, ignoring the rebuke. "Tell +her that when it comes to wives, every husband on earth is Mr. F.'s +aunt—he 'hates a fool'!"</p> + +<p>"Why not tell her yourself?" she said: then she sighed; "why <i>did</i> she +do it?"</p> + +<p>"She did it," he instructed her, "because the flattery of a boy's +lovemaking went to her head. I have an idea that she was hungry for +happiness—so it was champagne on an empty stomach. Think of the +starvation dullness of living with that Newbolt female, who drops +her g's all over the floor! Edith likes her," he added.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Edith!" said Edith's mother, with a shrug; "well; if you can +explain Eleanor, perhaps you can explain Maurice?"</p> + +<p>"<i>That's</i> easy; anything in petticoats will answer as a peg for a man +(we are the idealizing sex) to hang his heart on. Then, there's her +music—and her pathos. For she is pathetic, Kit?"</p> + +<p>But Mary Houghton shook her head: "It is Maurice who is pathetic—my +poor Maurice!..."</p> + +<p>When they went down to the east porch, with its great white columns, +and its broad steps leading into Mrs. Houghton's gay and fragrant +garden, they found Edith there before them—sitting on the top step, her +arms around her knees, her worshiping eyes fixed on the Bride. Edith had +nothing to say; it was enough to look at the "bridal couple," as the +kitchen had named them. When her father and mother appeared, she did +manage, in the momentary bustle of rising and offering chairs, to say +to Maurice:</p> + +<p>"Oh, isn't she lovely! Oh, Maurice, let's go out behind the barn after +supper and talk! Maurice, <i>did</i> she bring her harp? I want to see her +play on it! I saw her wedding ring," she ended, in an ecstatic whisper.</p> + +<p>"She doesn't play on the harp; she plays on the piano. Did you twig her +hair?" Maurice whispered back; "it's like black down!"</p> + +<p>Edith was speechless with adoration; she wished, passionately, that +Maurice would put his coat down for the Bride to step on, like Sir +Walter Raleigh! "for she is a <i>Queen</i>!" Edith thought: then Maurice +pulled one of her pigtails and she kicked him—and after that she was +forgotten, for the grown people began to talk, and say it had been a hot +day, and that the strawberries needed rain—but Eleanor hoped there +wouldn't be a thunderstorm.</p> + +<p>"They <i>have</i> to say things, I suppose," Edith reflected, patiently: "but +after supper, Maurice and I will talk." So she bore with her father and +mother, who certainly tried to be conversational. The Bride, Edith +noticed, was rather silent, and Maurice, though grown up to the extent +of being married, hadn't much to say—but once he winked at Edith and +again tried to pull her hair,—so she knew that he, also, was patient. +She was too absorbed to return the wink. She just stared at Eleanor. She +only dared to speak to her once; then, breathlessly: "I—I'm going to go +to your school, when I'm sixteen." It was as if she looked forward to a +pilgrimage to a shrine! It was impossible not to see the worship in her +face; Eleanor saw her smile made Edith almost choke with bliss. But, +like herself, the Bride had nothing to say. Eleanor just sat in sweet, +empty silence, and watched Maurice, twisting old Rover's ears, and +answering Mrs. Houghton's maternal questions about his winter +underclothing and moths; she caught that wink at Edith, and the +occasional broad grin when Mrs. Houghton scolded him for some +carelessness, and the ridiculous gesture of tearing his hair when she +said he was a scamp to have forgotten this or that. Looking at the +careless youth of him, she laughed to herself for sheer joy in the +beauty of it!</p> + +<p>But Edith's plan for barn conversation with Maurice fell through, +because after supper, with an air of complete self-justification, he +said to his hosts, "<i>Now</i> you must hear Eleanor sing!"</p> + +<p>At which she protested, "Oh, Maurice, no!"</p> + +<p>The Houghtons, however, were polite; so they all went into the studio, +and, standing in the twilight, with Maurice playing her accompaniment, +she sang, very simply, and with quite poignant beauty, the song of +"Golden Numbers," with its serene refrain:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>O sweet, O sweet content!</i>"</p></div> + +<p>"Lovely, my dear," Mrs. Houghton said, and Maurice was radiant.</p> + +<p>"Is Mr. F. your father?" Edith said, timidly; and while Eleanor was +giving her maiden name, Edith's terrified father said, in a ferocious +aside, "Mary! Kill that child!" Late that night he told his wife she +really must do something about Edith: "Fortunately, Eleanor is as +ignorant of Dickens as of 'most everything else. I bet she never read +<i>Little Dorrit</i>. But, for God's sake, muzzle that daughter of +yours! ... Mary, you see how he was caught?—the woman's voice."</p> + +<p>"Don't call her 'the woman'!"</p> + +<p>"Well, vampire. Kit, what do you make of her?"</p> + +<p>"I wish I knew what to make of her! I feel sure she is really and truly +<i>good</i>. But, oh, Henry, she's so mortal dull! She hasn't a spark of +humor in her."</p> + +<p>"'Course not. If she had, she wouldn't have married him. But <i>he</i> has +humor! Better warn her that a short cut to matrimonial unhappiness is +not to have the same taste in jokes! Mary, maybe, her music will hold +him?"</p> + +<p>"Maybe," said Mary Houghton, sighing.</p> + +<p>"'Consider the stars,'" he quoted, sarcastically; but she took the sting +out of his gibe by saying, very simply:</p> + +<p>"Yes, I try to."</p> + +<p>"He is good stuff," her husband said; "straight as a string! When he +came into the studio to talk things over he was as sober as if he were +fifty, and hadn't made an ass of himself. He took up the income question +in a surprisingly businesslike way; then he said that of course he knew +I didn't like it—his giving up college and flying off the handle, and +getting married without saying anything to me. 'But,' he said, +'Eleanor's aunt is an old hell-cat;—she was going to drag Eleanor +abroad, and I had to get her out of her clutches!' ... I think," Henry +Houghton interrupted himself, "that's one explanation of Maurice: +rescuing a forlorn damsel. Well, I was perfectly direct with him; I +said, 'My dear fellow, Mrs. Newbolt is not a hell-cat; and the elopement +was in bad taste. Elopements are always in bad taste. But the elopement +is the least important part of it. The difference in age is the serious +thing.' I got it out of him just what it is—almost twenty years. She +might be his mother!—he admitted that he had had to lie about himself +to get the license. I said, '<i>Your</i> age is the dangerous thing, Maurice, +not hers; and it's up to you to keep steady!' Of course he didn't +believe me," said Mr. Houghton, sighing. "He's in love all right, poor +infant! The next thing is for me to find a job for him.... She is good +looking, Mary?" She nodded, and he said again, "A pre-Raphaelite woman; +those full red lips, and that lovely black hair growing so low on her +forehead. And a really good voice. And a charming figure. But I tell you +one thing: she's got to stop twitting on facts. Did you hear her say, +'Maurice is so ridiculously young, he doesn't remember'—? I don't know +what it was he didn't remember. Something unimportant. But she must not +put ideas about his youth into his head. He'll know it soon enough! +<i>You</i> tell her that."</p> + +<p>"Thank you so much!" said Mary Houghton. "Henry, you mustn't say things +before Edith! Suppose Eleanor had known her <i>Little Dorrit</i>?"</p> + +<p>"She doesn't know anything; and she has nothing to say."</p> + +<p>"Well, it might be worse," she encouraged him. "Suppose she were +talkative?"</p> + +<p>He nodded: "Yes; a dull woman is bad, and a talkative woman is bad; but +a dull talkative woman is hell."</p> + +<p>"My <i>dear</i>! I'm glad Edith's in bed. Well, I think I like her."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI" ></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + + +<p>But the time arrived when Mrs. Houghton was certain that she "liked" +Maurice's wife. It would have come sooner if Eleanor's real sweetness +had not been hidden by her tiresome timidity ... a thunderstorm sent +her, blanched and panting, to sit huddled on her bed, shutters closed, +shades drawn; she schemed not to go upstairs by herself in the dark; she +was preoccupied when old Lion took them off on a slow, jogging drive, +for fear of a runaway.</p> + +<p>Everybody was aware of her nervousness. Until it bored him, Henry +Houghton was touched by it;—probably there is no man who is so +intelligent that the Clinging Vine makes no appeal to him. Mrs. Houghton +was impatient with it. Edith, who could not understand fear in any form, +tried, in her friendly little way, to reason Eleanor out of one panic or +another. The servants joked among themselves at the foolishness of "Mrs. +Maurice"; and the monosyllabic Johnny Bennett, when told of some of +Eleanor's scares, was bored. "Let's play Indian," said Johnny.</p> + +<p>It was only Maurice who found all the scares—just as he found the +silences and small jealousies—adorable! The silences meant unspeakable +depths of thought; the jealousies were a sign of love. The terrors +called for his protecting strength! One of the unfair irrationalities +of love is that it may, at first, be attracted by the defects of the +beloved, and later repelled by them. Maurice loved Eleanor for her +defects. Once, when he and Edith were helping Mrs. Houghton weed her +garden, he stopped grubbing, and sat down in the gold and bronze glitter +of coreopsis, to expatiate upon the exquisiteness of the defects. Her +wonderful mind: "She doesn't talk, because she is always thinking; her +ideas are way over <i>my</i> head!" Her funny timidity: "She wants me to +take care of her!" Her love: "She's—it sounds absurd!—but she's +jealous, because she's so—well, fond of me, don't you know, that she +sort of objects to having people round. Did you ever hear of anything so +absurd?"</p> + +<p>"I certainly never did," his old friend said, dryly.</p> + +<p>"Well, but"—Maurice defended his wife—"it's because she cares about +me, don't you know? She—well, this is in confidence—she said once that +she'd like to live on a desert island, just with me!"</p> + +<p>"So would I," said Edith. Her mother laughed:</p> + +<p>"Tell her desert islands have to have a 'man Friday'—to say nothing of +a few 'women Thursdays'!"</p> + +<p>Eleanor was, Maurice said, like music heard far off, through mists and +moonlight in a dark garden, "full of—of—what are those sweet-smelling +things, that bloom only at night?" (Mary Houghton looked fatigued.) +"Well, anyway, what I mean is that she isn't like ordinary people, like +me—"</p> + +<p>"Or Johnny," Edith broke in, earnestly.</p> + +<p>"Johnny? Gosh! Why, Mrs. Houghton, things that don't touch most human +beings, affect her terribly. The dark, or thunderstorms, or—or +anything, makes her nervous. You understand?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Houghton said yes, she understood, but she would leave the rest of +the weeding to her assistants ... In the studio, dropping her dusty +garden gloves on a fresh canvas lying on the table, she almost wept:</p> + +<p>"Henry, it is <i>too</i> tragic! She is such a goose, and he is so silly +about her! What shall we do?"</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you what not to do—spoil my new canvas! If you <i>really</i> want +my advice:—tell Eleanor that the greatest compliment any husband can +pay his wife is contained in four words: 'You never bore me'; and that +if she isn't careful Maurice will never compliment her."</p> + +<p>Down in the garden, no one was aware of any tragedy. "When I go to Fern +Hill," Edith said, "I'm going to tell all the girls <i>I know Eleanor</i>! +I'm 'ordinary,' too, beside her. And so is mother."</p> + +<p>Maurice agreed. "We are all crude, compared to her."</p> + +<p>Edith sighed with joy; if she had had any inclination to be contemptuous +of Eleanor's timidity, it vanished when it was pointed out to her that +it was really a sign of the Bride's infinite superiority.... So the +three Houghtons accepted—one with amused pity, and the other with +concern, and the third with admiration of such super-refinement,—the +fact that Eleanor was a coward. Yet if she had not been a coward, +something she did would not have been particularly brave, nor would it +have wrung from Mary Houghton the admission: "I <i>like</i> her!"</p> + +<p>The conquering incident happened in August. The hut up in the woods +meant to Maurice and Edith and Johnny that eager grasping at hardship +with which Age has no sympathy, but which is the very essence of Youth. +Within a week of her arrival at Green Hill, Eleanor (who did not like +hardship;) had been carried off for a day of eating smoky food, cooked +on a camp fire, and watching cloud shadows drift across the valley and +up and over the hills; she had wondered, silently, why Maurice liked +this very tiring sort of thing?—and especially why he liked to have +Edith go along! "A child of her age is such a nuisance," Eleanor +thought. But he did like it, all of it!—the fatigue, and the smoke, and +the grubby food—and Edith!—he liked it so much that, just before the +time set for their departure for Mercer—and the position in a +real-estate office, which had been secured for Maurice—he said:</p> + +<p>"Nelly, let's camp out up in the cabin for our last week, all by +ourselves!"</p> + +<p>Edith's face fell, and so, for that matter, did the Bride's. Edith said, +"By yourselves? Not Johnny and me, too?" And Eleanor said, "<i>At night?</i> +Oh, Maurice!"</p> + +<p>"It will be beautiful," he said; "there'll be a moon next week, and +we'll sit up there and look down into the valley, and see the treetops +lift up out of the mist—like islands from the foam of 'faerylands +forlorn'! You'll love it."</p> + +<p>"I'm crazy about camping," said Edith, eagerly;—and waited for an +invitation, which was not forthcoming. Instead, Maurice, talking his +plans over with her, made it quite clear that her room was better than +her company. It was Edith's first experience in being left out, and it +sobered her a little; but she swallowed the affront with her usual good +sense:</p> + +<p>"I guess he likes Eleanor more 'an me, so, 'course, it's nice to be by +himself with her."</p> + +<p>The prospect of being "by themselves" for a week was deeply moving to +Maurice. And even Eleanor, though she quaked at the idea of spiders or +thunderstorms, thought of the passion of it with a thrill. "We'll be all +alone!" she said to herself.</p> + +<p>The morning that they started gypsying, everything was very impatient +and delightful. The packing, the rolling up of blankets, the stowing of +cooking utensils, the consulting of food lists to make sure nothing was +being forgotten—all meant much tearing about and bossing; then came the +loading the stuff into the light wagon, which, with old Lion, Mr. +Houghton had offered to convey the campers (and a temporary Edith) up to +the top of the mountain. Edith was, of course, frankly envious, but +accepted the privilege of even a day in camp with humble gratitude.</p> + +<p>"Rover and Johnny and I will come up pretty often, even if it's only for +an hour, because Eleanor must not hurt her hands by washing dishes," she +said, earnestly (still fishing for an invitation).</p> + +<p>But Maurice only agreed, as earnestly: "No! Imagine Eleanor washing +dishes! But I don't want you to stay all night, Buster," he told her, +candidly; then he paused in his work, flung up his arms with a great +breath of joyousness. "Great Scott!" he said. "I don't see why gypsies +<i>ever</i> die!"</p> + +<p>Edith felt an answering throb of ecstasy. "Oh, Maurice, I wish you and +I were gypsies!" she said. She did not in the least resent his candor +as to her presence during the week of camping; though just before they +started her feelings really were a little hurt: it happened that in +trying to help Eleanor pack, she was close enough to her to notice a +thread on her hair; instantly, she put out a friendly and officious +thumb and finger to remove it—at which Eleanor winced, and said, +"<i>Ouch!</i>"</p> + +<p>"I thought it was a white thread," Edith explained, abashed.</p> + +<p>Eleanor said, sharply, "Please don't touch my hair!" which conveyed +nothing to Edith except that the Bride—who instantly ran up to her +room—"was mad." When she came back (the "thread" having disappeared) +Edith was full of apologies.</p> + +<p>"Awfully sorry I mussed your hair," she said.</p> + +<p>She went up the mountain with them, walking on the hard grades, and +trying to placate Eleanor by keeping a hand on Lion's bridle, so that +she might feel sure he wouldn't run away. When at last, rather blown and +perspiring, they reached the camp, Eleanor got out of the wagon and said +she wanted to "help"; but Edith, still contrite about the "thread," +said: "Not I'm not going to have you hurt your lovely hands!" In the +late afternoon, having saved Eleanor's hands in every possible way, she +left them, and thinking, without the slightest rancor, of the rough +bliss she was not asked to share, went running down the mountain with +Rover at her heels.</p> + +<p>Eleanor, wondering at her willingness to take that long road home with +only the lumbering old dog for company, was intensely glad to have her +go.</p> + +<p>"Girls of that age are so uninteresting," she told Maurice; "and now +we'll be all by ourselves!"</p> + +<p>"Yes; Adam and Eve," he said; "and twilight; and the world spread out +like a garden! Do you see that glimmer over there to the left? That's +the beginning of the river—our river!"</p> + +<p>He had made her comfortable with some cushions piled against the trunk +of a tree, and lighted a fire in a ring of blackened stones; then he +brought her her supper, and ate his own on his knees beside her, +watching eagerly for ways to serve her, laughing because she cringed +when, from an overhanging bough, a spider let himself down upon her +skirt, and hurrying to bring her a fresh cup of coffee, because an +unhappy ant had scalded himself to death in her first cup. Afterward he +would not let her "hurt her hands" by washing the dishes. When this was +over, and the dusk was deepening, he went into the woods to the +"lean-to" in which Lion was quartered, to see that the old horse was +comfortable, but a minute later came crashing back through the +underbrush, laughing, but provoked.</p> + +<p>"That imp, Edith, didn't hitch him securely, and the old fellow has +walked home, if you please—!"</p> + +<p>"Lion—gone? Oh, what shall we do?"</p> + +<p>"Ill pull the wagon down when I want to go back for food."</p> + +<p>"<i>Pull</i> it?"</p> + +<p>"Won't need much pulling! It will go down by itself. If I put you in it, +I'll have to rope a log on behind as a brake, or it would run over me! I +bet I give Edith a piece of my mind, when I get hold of her. But it +doesn't really matter. I think I like it better to have not even Lion. +Just you—and the stars. They are beginning to prick out," he said. He +stretched himself on the ground beside her, his hands clasped under his +head, and his happy eyes looking up into the abyss. "Sing, Star, sing!" +he said. So she sang, softly:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>How many times do I love again?<br /> +Tell me how many beads there are<br /> + In a silver chain<br /> + Of evening rain<br /> +Unraveled from the tumbling main<br /> +And threading the eye of a yellow star—<br /> +So many times—</p></div> + +<p>"It looks," she broke off, "a little black in the west? And—was that +lightning?"</p> + +<p>"Only heat lightning. And if it should storm,—I have you here, in my +arms, alone!" He turned and caught her to him, and his mouth crushed +hers. Her eyes closed, and her passion answered his, and all that he +whispered. Yet while he kissed her, her eyes opened and she looked +furtively beyond him, toward that gathering blackness.</p> + +<p>They lay there together in the starlit dark, for a long time, his head +on her breast. Sometimes she thrilled at his touch or low word, and +sometimes she held his hand against her lips and kissed it—which made +him protest—but suddenly he said, "By George! Nelly, I believe we are +going to have a shower!"</p> + +<p>Instantly she was alert with fright, and sat up, and looked down into +the valley, where the heat lightning, which had been winking along the +line of the hills, suddenly sharpened into a flash. "<i>Oh!</i>" she said, +and held her breath until, from very far off, came a faint grumble of +thunder. "Oh, Maurice!" she said, "it is horrible to be out here—if it +thunders!"</p> + +<p>"We won't be. Well go into the cabin, and we'll hear the rain on the +roof, and the clash of the branches; and we'll see the lightning through +the chinks—and I'll have you! Oh, Nelly, we shall be part of the +storm!—and nothing in God's world can separate us."</p> + +<p>But this time she could not answer with any elemental impulse; she had +no understanding of "being part of the storm"; instead, she watched the +horizon. "Oh!" she said, flinching. "I don't like it. What shall we do? +Maurice, it <i>is</i> going to thunder!"</p> + +<p>"I think I did feel a drop of rain," he said,—and held out his hand: +"Yes, Star, rain! It's begun!" He helped her to her feet, gathered up +some of the cushions, and hurried her toward the little shelter. She ran +ahead of him, her very feet reluctant, lest the possible "snake" should +curl in the darkness against her ankles; but once in the cabin, with a +candle lighted, she could not see the lightning, so she was able to +laugh at herself; when Maurice went out for the rest of the cushions, +she charged him to <i>hurry</i>! "The storm will be here in a minute!" she +called to him. And he called back:</p> + +<p>"I'll only be a second!"</p> + +<p>She stood in the doorway looking after him, and saw his figure outlined +against the glimmer of their fire, which had already felt the spatter of +the coming storm and was dying down; then, even as she looked, he seemed +to plunge forward, and fall—the thud of that fall was like a blow on +her throat! She gasped, "Maurice—" And again, "<i>Maurice!</i> Have you hurt +yourself?"</p> + +<p>He did not rise. A splash of rain struck her face; the mountain darkness +was slit by a rapier of lightning, and there was a sudden violent +illumination; she saw the tree and the cushions, and Maurice on the +ground—then blackness, and a tremendous crash of thunder.</p> + +<p>"Maurice!" she called. "Maurice!" The branches over the roof began to +move and rustle, and there was a sudden downpour of rain; the camp fire +went out, as if an extinguisher had covered it. She stood in the doorway +for a breathless instant, then ran back into the cabin, and, catching +the candle from the table, stepped out into the blackness; instantly the +wind bore the little flame away!—then seemed to grip her, and twist her +about, and beat her back into the house. In her terror she screamed his +name; and as she did so, another flash of lightning showed her his +figure, motionless on the ground.</p> + +<p>"<i>He is dead</i>" she said to herself, in a whisper. "What shall I do?" +Then, suddenly, she knew what to do: she remembered that she had noticed +a lantern hanging on the wall near the door; and now something impelled +her to get it. In the stifling darkness of the shack she felt her way to +it, held its oily ring in her hand, thought, frantically, of matches, +groped along toward the mantelpiece, stumbled over a chair—and clutched +at the match box! Something made her open the isinglass slide, strike a +match, and touch the blackened wick with the sulphurous sputter of +flame,—the next moment, with the lighted lantern in her hand, she was +out in the sheeting blackness of the rain!—running!—running!—toward +that still figure by the deadened fire. Just before she reached it a +twig rolled under her foot, and she said, "A <i>snake</i>,"—but she did not +flinch. As she gained the circle of stones, a flash of lightning, with +its instant and terrific crack and bellow of thunder, showed her a +streak of blood on Maurice's face.... He had tripped and fallen, and his +head had struck one of the blackened stones.</p> + +<p>"He is dead," she said again, aloud. She put the lantern on the ground +and knelt beside him; she had an idea that she should place her hand on +his heart to see if he were alive. "He isn't," she told herself; but she +laid her fingers, which were shaking so that she could not unfasten his +coat, somewhere on his left side; she did not know whether there was any +pulse; she knew nothing, except that he was "dead." She said this in a +whisper, over and over. "He is dead. He is dead." The rain came down in +torrents; the trees creaked and groaned in the wind; twice there were +flashes of lightning and appalling roars of thunder. Maurice was +perfectly still. The smoky glimmer of the lantern played on the thin +streak of blood and made it look as though it was moving—trickling—</p> + +<p>Then Eleanor began to think: "There ought to be a doctor...." If +she left him, to bring help, he might bleed to death before she +could get back to him. Instantly, as she said that, she knew that +she did not believe that he was dead! She knew that she had hope. +With hope, a single thought possessed her. <i>She must take him down +the mountain....</i> But how? She could not carry him;—she had managed to +prop him up against her knee, his blond head lolling forward, awfully, +on his breast—but she knew that to carry him would be impossible. And +Lion was not there! "I couldn't have harnessed him if he were," she +thought.</p> + +<p>She was entirely calm, but her mind was working rapidly: The wagon +was in the lean-to! Could she get him into it? The road was +downhill.... Almost to Doctor Bennett's door....</p> + +<p>Instantly she sprang to her feet and, with the pale gleam of the lantern +zigzagging across the path, she ran back to the shed; just as she +reached it, a glimmer of light fell on the soaked earth, and she looked +up with a start and saw the moon peering out between two ragged, swiftly +moving clouds; then all was black again—but the rain was lessening, and +there had been no lightning for several minutes. "He will die; I must +save him," she said, her lips stiff with horror. She lifted the shafts +of the wagon, and gave a little pull; it moved easily enough, and, +guiding it along the slight decline, she brought it to Maurice's side. +There, looking at him, she said again, rigidly:</p> + +<p>"He will die; I must save him."</p> + +<p>As Henry Houghton said afterward, "It was impossible!—so she did it."</p> + +<p>It took her more than an hour to do it, to pull and lift and shove the +inert figure! Afterward she used to wonder how she had done it; wonder +how she had given the final <i>push</i>, which got his sagging body up on to +the floor of the wagon! It had strained every part of her;—her shoulder +against his hips, her head in the small of his back, her hands gripping +his heavy, dangling legs. She was soaking wet; her hair had loosened, +and stray locks were plastered across her forehead. She grunted like a +toiling animal.</p> + +<p>It seemed as if her heart would crack with her effort, her muscles +tear; she forgot the retreating rumble of the storm, the brooding, +dripping forest stillness; she forgot even her certainty that he would +die. She entirely forgot herself. She only knew—straining, gasping, +sweating—that she must get the body—the dead body perhaps!—into the +wagon. And she did it! Just as she did it, she heard a faint groan. Her +heart stood still with terror, then beat frantically with joy.</p> + +<p><i>He was alive!</i></p> + +<p>She ran back to the cabin for the cushions he had saved from the rain, +and pushed them under his head; then tied the lantern to the whip +socket; then recalled what he had said about "roping a log on behind as +a brake." "Of course!" she thought; and managed,—the splinters tearing +her hands—to fasten a fairly heavy piece of wood under the rear axle, +so that it might bump along behind the wagon as a drag. She pondered as +she did these things why she should know so certainly how they must be +done? But when they were done, she said, <i>"Now!"...</i> and went and stood +between the shafts.</p> + +<p>It was after midnight when the descent began. The moon rode high among +fleecy clouds, but on either side of the road gulfs of darkness lay +under motionless foliage. Sometimes the smoky light from the swaying +lantern shone on a wet black branch, snapped by the gale and lying in +the path, and Eleanor, seeing it, wedging her heels into the mud and +sliding stones of the road, and straining backward between the shafts, +would say, "A snake.... I must save Maurice." Sometimes she would hear, +above the crunching of the wheels behind her, a faint noise in the +undergrowth: a breaking twig, a brushing sound, as of a furtive +footstep—and she would say, "A man.... I must save Maurice."</p> + +<p>The yellow flame of the lantern was burning white in the dawn, as, +holding back against the weight of the wagon—the palms of her bleeding +hands clenched on the shafts, her feet slipping, her ankles twisted and +wrenched—by and by, with the tears of physical suffering streaming down +her face, she reached the foot of the mountain. The, thin, cool air of +morning flowed about her in crystalline stillness; suddenly the sun +tipped the green bowl of the world, and all at once shadows fell across +the road like bars. They seemed to her, in her daze of terror and +exhaustion, insurmountable: the road was level now, but she pulled and +pulled, agonizingly, over those bars of nothingness; then one wheel sank +into a rut, and the wagon came to a dead standstill; but at the same +moment she saw ahead of her, among the trees, Doctor Bennett's dark, +sleeping house. So, dropping the shafts, she went stumbling and running, +to pound on the door, and gasp out:</p> + +<p>"Come—help—Maurice—come—"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"I think," she said afterward, lying like a broken thing upon her bed, +"I was able to do it, because I kept saying, 'I must save Maurice.' Of +course, to save Maurice, I wouldn't mind dying."</p> + +<p>"My dear, you are magnificent!" Mary Houghton said, huskily. Then she +told her husband: "Henry, I <i>like</i> her! I never thought I would, but I +do."</p> + +<p>"I'll never say 'Mr. F.'s aunt' again!" he promised, with real +contrition.</p> + +<p>It was Eleanor's conquering moment, for everybody liked her, and +everybody said she was 'magnificent'—except Maurice, who, as he got +well, said almost nothing.</p> + +<p>"I can't talk about it," was all he had to say, choking. "She's given +her life for mine," he told the doctor.</p> + +<p>"I hope not," Doctor Bennett said, "I <i>hope</i> not. But it will take +months, Maurice, for her to get over this. As for saving your life, my +boy, she didn't. She made things a lot more dangerous for you. She did +the wrong thing—with greatness! You'd have come to, after a while. But +don't tell her so."</p> + +<p>"Well, I should say not!" Maurice said, hotly. "She'll never know +<i>that</i>! And anyway, sir, I don't believe it. I believe she saved my +life."</p> + +<p>"Well, suit yourself," the doctor said, good-naturedly; "but I tell +you one thing: whether she saved your life or not, she did a really +wonderful thing—considering her temperament."</p> + +<p>Maurice frowned: "I don't think her temperament makes any difference. It +would have been wonderful for anybody."</p> + +<p>"Well, suit yourself," Doctor Bennett said again; "only, if Edith had +done it, say, for Johnny, who weighs nearly as much as you, I wouldn't +have called it particularly wonderful."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Edith," Maurice said, grinning; "no; I suppose not. I see what you +mean." And to himself he added: "Edith is like an ox, compared to Star. +Just flesh and blood. No nerves. No soul. Doctor Bennett was right. +Eleanor's temperament does make it more wonderful."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII" ></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + + +<p>It was after this act of revealing and unnecessary courage, that the +Houghton family entirely accepted Eleanor. There were a few days of +anxiety about her, and about Maurice, too; for, though his slight +concussion was not exactly alarming—yet, "Keep your shirt on," Doctor +Bennett cautioned him; "don't get gay. And don't talk to Mrs. Curtis." +So Maurice lay in his bed in another room, and entered, silently, into a +new understanding of love, which, as soon as he was permitted to see +Eleanor, he tried stumblingly to share with her.</p> + +<p>Physically, she was terribly prostrated; but spiritually, feeding on +those stumbling words, she rejoiced like a strong man to run a race! She +saw no confession in the fact that everybody was astonished at what she +had done; she was astonished herself. "I wasn't afraid!" she said, +wonderingly.</p> + +<p>"It was because you liked Maurice more than you were scared," Edith +said; she offered this explanation the day that Maurice had been allowed +to come across the hall, rather shakily, to adore his wife.</p> + +<p>His first sight of her was a great shock.... The strain of that terrible +night had blanched and withered her face; there were lines on her +forehead that never left it.</p> + +<p>Edith, sneaking in behind him, said under her breath: "Goodness! Don't +she look old!"</p> + +<p>She did. But as Maurice fell on his knees beside her, it seemed as if +she drank youth from his lips. Under his kisses her worn face bloomed +with joy.</p> + +<p>"It was nothing—nothing," she insisted, stroking his thick hair with +her trembling hand, and trying to silence his words of wondering +worship.</p> + +<p>"I was not worthy of it.... To think that you—" He hid his face on her +shoulder.</p> + +<p>Afterward, when he went back to his own room, she lay, smiling +tranquilly to herself; her look was the look one sees on the face of a +woman who, in that pallid hour after the supreme achievement of birth, +has looked upon her child. She was entirely happy. From the open door of +Maurice's room came, now and then, the murmur of Edith's honest little +voice, or Maurice's chuckle. They were talking about her, she knew, and +the happy color burned in her cheeks. When he came in for his second +visit, late that afternoon, she asked him, archly, what he and Edith had +been talking about so long in his room?</p> + +<p>"I believe you were telling her what a goose I am about thunderstorms," +she said.</p> + +<p>"I was not!" he declared—and her eyes shone. But when she urged—</p> + +<p>"Well, what <i>were</i> you talking about?" he couldn't remember anything but +a silly story of Edith's hens. He repeated it, and Eleanor sighed; how +could he be interested in anything so childish!</p> + +<p>As it happened, he was not; he had scarcely listened to Edith. The only +thing that interested Maurice now, was what Eleanor had done for him! +Thinking of it, he brooded over her, silently, his cheek against hers, +then Mrs. Houghton came in and banished him, saying that Eleanor must go +to sleep; "and you and Edith must keep quiet!" she said.</p> + +<p>He was so contrite that, tiptoeing to his own room, he told poor +faithful Edith her voice was too loud: "You disturb Eleanor. So dry up, +Skeezics!"</p> + +<p>As he grew stronger, and was able to go downstairs, Edith felt freer to +talk to him—for down on the porch, or out in the garden, her eager +young voice would not reach those languid ears. Then, suddenly, all her +chances to talk stopped: "What's the matter with Maurice?" she pondered, +crossly; "he's backed out of helping me. Why can't he go on shingling +the chicken coop?" For it was while this delightful work was under way +that it, and "talk," came to an abrupt end.</p> + +<p>The shingling, begun joyously by the big boy and the little girl on +Monday, promised several delightfully busy mornings.... Of course the +setting out for Mercer had been postponed; there was no possibility of +moving Eleanor for the present; so Maurice's "business career," as he +called it, with grinning pomposity, had to be delayed—Eleanor turned +white at the mere suggestion of convalascing at Green Hill without him! +Consequently Maurice, when not worshiping his wife, had nothing to do, +and Edith had seized the opportunity to make him useful.... "We'll +shingle my henhouse," she had announced. Maurice liked the scheme as +much as she did. The September air, the smell of the fresh shingles, the +sitting with one leg doubled under you, and the other outstretched on +the hot slope of the roof, the tap-tapping of the hammers, the bossing +of Edith, the trying to talk of Eleanor, and thunderstorms, while you +hold eight nails between your lips; then the pause while Edith climbs +down the ladder and runs to the kitchen for hot cookies; all these +things would be a delightful occupation for any intelligent person!</p> + +<p>"It'll take three mornings to do it," Edith said, importantly; and +Maurice said:</p> + +<p>"It will, because you keep putting the wrong end up! I wish Eleanor was +well enough to do it," he said—and then burst into self-derisive +chuckles: "Imagine Eleanor straddling that ridgepole! It would scare her +stiff!"</p> + +<p>It was after this talk that Maurice "backed out" on the job—but Edith +never knew why. She saw no connection between the unfinished roof, and +the fact that that same afternoon, sitting on the floor in the Bride's +room, she had, in her anxiety to be entertaining, repeated Maurice's +remark about the ridgepole. Eleanor, who had had an empty morning, +listening to the distant tapping of hammers, had drooped a weary lip.</p> + +<p>"I should hate it. Horrid, dirty work!"</p> + +<p>"Oh no! It's nice, clean work," Edith corrected her.</p> + +<p>"But <i>you</i> wouldn't like it, of course," she said, with satisfaction; +"you'd be scared! You're scared of everything, Maurice says. You were +scared to death, up on the mountain."</p> + +<p>Eleanor was silent.</p> + +<p>"He thinks it's lovely for you to be scared; it's funny about Maurice," +said Edith, thoughtfully; "he doesn't like it when <i>I'm</i> scared—not +that I ever am, now, but I used to be when I was a child."</p> + +<p>The color flickered on Eleanor's cheeks: "Edith, I'll rest now," she +said; her voice broke.</p> + +<p>Edith looked at her, open-mouthed. "Why, Eleanor!" she said; "what's the +matter? Are you mad at anything? Have you a stomachache? I'll run for +mother!"</p> + +<p>"There's nothing the matter. But—but I wish you'd tell Maurice to come +and speak to me."</p> + +<p>Edith tore downstairs, and out of the front door: "Maurice! Where are +you?"—then, catching sight of him, reading and smoking in a hammock +slung between two of the big columns on the east porch, she rushed at +him, and pulled him to his astonished feet. "Eleanor wants you! +Something's the matter, and—"</p> + +<p>Before she could finish, Maurice was tearing upstairs, two steps at a +time....</p> + +<p>And so it was that Edith, sulkily, worked on the roof by herself.</p> + +<p>Yet Maurice had not entirely "backed out." ... The very next morning, +before Edith was awake, he had gone out to the henhouse, and, alone, +done more than his share of the shingling.</p> + +<p>"But, Maurice, why didn't you wake me?" Edith protested, when she +discovered what he had done. "I'd have gone out, too!"</p> + +<p>"I liked doing it by myself," Maurice evaded.</p> + +<p>And for five minutes Edith was sulky again. "He puts on airs, 'cause +he's married! Well, I don't care. He can shingle the whole roof by +himself if he wants to! I don't like married men, anyhow."</p> + +<p>The married man had, indeed, wanted to be by himself—to put the nails +in his mouth, and to sit on the cold, slippery shingles in the gray +September morning, and to tap-tap-tap—and think, and think.</p> + +<p>But he didn't like his thoughts very well....</p> + +<p>He thought how he had rushed upstairs, terrified lest Eleanor was +fainting or had a "stomachache," or something—and found her sitting up +in bed, her cheeks red and glazed with tears, her round, full chin +quivering. He thought how he had tried to make out what she was driving +at about Edith, and the chicken coop, and the ridgepole!</p> + +<p>"You told Edith I was scared!"</p> + +<p>Maurice's bewilderment was full of stumbling questions: "Told Edith? +When? What?"</p> + +<p>And as she said "when" and "what," ending with, "You said I am scared!" +Maurice could only say, blankly. "But my darling, you <i>are</i>!"</p> + +<p>"You may think I am a fool, but to tell Edith so—"</p> + +<p>"But Great Scott! I didn't!"</p> + +<p>"I won't have you talking me over with Edith; she's a <i>child</i>! It was +just what you did when you danced three times with that girl who +said—Edith is as rude as she was!—and she's a <i>child</i>. How can you +like to be with a child?" Of course, it was all her fear of Youth,—but +Eleanor did not know that; she thought she was hurt at the boy's +neglect. Her face, wet with tears, was twitching, her voice—that lovely +voice!—was shrill in his astonished ears....</p> + +<p>Maurice, on the sloping roof, in the chill September dawn, his fingers +numb on the frosty nails, stopped hammering, and leaned his chin on his +fist, and thought: "She's sick. She almost killed herself to save me; so +her nerve has all gone. That's why she talked—that way." He put a +shingle in its place, and planted a nail; "it was because she was scared +that what she did was so brave! I couldn't make her see that the more +scared she was, the braver she was. It wouldn't have been brave in that +gump, Edith, without a nerve in her body. But why is she down on Edith? +I suppose she's a nuisance to a person with a wonderful mind like +Eleanor's. Talks too much. I'll tell her to dry up when she's with +Eleanor." And again he heard that strange voice: "You like to talk to a +<i>child</i>."</p> + +<p>Maurice, pounding away on Edith's roof, grew hot with misery, not +because it was so terrible to have Eleanor angry with him; not even +because he had finally got mad, and answered back, and said, "Don't be +silly!" The real misery was something far deeper than this half-amused +remorse. It was that those harmless, scolding words of his held a +perfectly new idea: he had said, "Don't be silly." <i>Was Eleanor silly?</i></p> + +<p>Now, to a man whose feeling about his wife has been a sort of awe, this +question is terrifying. Maurice, in his boy's heart, had worshiped in +Eleanor, not just the god of Love, but the love of God. And was +she—<i>silly</i>? No! Of course not! He pounded violently, hit his thumb, +put it into his mouth, then proceeded, mumblingly, to bring his god back +from the lower shrine of a pitying heart, to the high alter of a +justifying mind: Eleanor was ill.... She was nervous.... She was an +exquisite being of mist and music and courage and love! So of course she +was sensitive to things ordinary people did not feel. Saying this, and +fitting the shingles into place, suddenly the warm and happy wave of +confident idealism began to flood in upon him, and immediately his mind +as well as his heart was satisfied. He reproached himself for having +been scared lest his star was just a common candle, like himself. He had +been cruel to judge her, as he might have judged her had she been +well—or a gump like Edith! For had she been well, she would not have +been "silly"! Had she been well—instead of lying there in her bed, +white and strained and trembling, all because she had saved his life, +harnessing herself to that wagon, and bringing him, in the darkness, +through a thousand terrors—nonexistent, to be sure, but none the less +real—to safety and life! Oh, how could he have even thought the word +"silly"? He was ashamed and humble; never again would he be cross to +her! "Silly? I'm the silly one! I'm an ass. I'll tell her so! I don't +suppose she'll ever forgive me. She said I 'didn't understand her'; +well, I didn't! But she'll never have cause to say it again! I +understand her now," Then, once more, he thought, frowning, "But why is +she so down on Edith?"</p> + +<p>That Eleanor's irritation was jealousy—not of Edith, but of Edith's +years—never occurred to him. So all he said was, "She oughtn't to be +down on Edith; <i>she</i> has always appreciated her!" Edith had never said +that Eleanor was "silly"! But so long as it bothered Eleanor (being +nervous) to have the imp round, he'd tell her not to be a nuisance. "You +can say anything to Skeezics; she has sense. She understands."</p> + +<p>But all the same, Maurice shingled his part of the henhouse before +breakfast.</p> + +<p>Maurice did not call Eleanor "silly" again for a long time. There was +always—when she was unreasonable—the curbing memory that her +reasonableness had been shaken by that assault of darkness and fear, and +the terrible fatigue of saving his robust young life. Furthermore, +Doctor Bennett—telling Henry Houghton that Eleanor had done the worst +possible thing, "magnificently"—told Maurice she had "nervous +prostration,"—a cloaking phrase which kindly doctors often give to +perplexed husbands, so that the egotism of sickly wives may be covered +up! So Maurice, repeating to himself these useful words, saw only ill +health, not silliness, in Eleanor's occasional tears. It was a week +after the shingling of the henhouse, that, leaving her to recuperate +still further at Green Hill, he started in on his job of "office +boy"—his jocose title for his position in the real-estate office in +Mercer. Eleanor did not want to be left, and said so, wistfully.</p> + +<p>"I'll come up for Sundays," Maurice comforted her, tenderly.</p> + +<p>On these weekly visits the Houghtons were impressed by his tenderness; +he played solitaire with his wife by the hour; he read poetry to her +until she fell asleep; and he told her everything he had done and every +person he had seen, while he was away from her! But the rest of the +household didn't get much enjoyment out of Eleanor. Even the adoring +Edith had moments when admiration had to be propped up by Doctor +Bennett's phrase. As, for instance, on one of Maurice's precious +Sundays, he and she and Johnny Bennett and Rover and old Lion climbed up +to the cabin to make things shipshape before closing the place for the +winter.</p> + +<p>"You'll be away from me all day," Eleanor said, and her eyes filled.</p> + +<p>Maurice said he hated to leave her, but he had always helped Edith on +this closing-up job.</p> + +<p>"Oh, well; go, if you want to," Eleanor said; "but I don't see how you +can enjoy being with a perfect child, like Edith!"</p> + +<p>Maurice went—not very happily. But it was such a fine, tingling day of +hard work, in a joyous wind, with resulting appetites, and much yelling +at each other—"Here, drop that!" ... "Hurry up, slow poke!"—that he +was happy again before he knew it. After the work was over they had a +lazy hour before the fire, their eyes stinging with smoke which seemed +to envelop them, no matter on which side they sat; an hour in which +Rover drowsed at Maurice's feet, and Johnny, in spectacles, read <i>A +Boy's Adventures in the Forests of Brazil</i>, and Edith gabbled about +Eleanor....</p> + +<p>"Oh, I wish <i>I</i> was married," Edith said; "I'd just love to save my +husband's life!"</p> + +<p>Maurice said little, except to ask Johnny if he had got to such and such +a place in the <i>Adventures</i>, or to assent to Edith's ecstasies; but once +he sighed, and said Eleanor was awfully pulled down by that—that night.</p> + +<p>"I should think," Edith said, "you'd feel she'd just about died for you, +like people in history who died for each other."</p> + +<p>"I do," Maurice said, soberly.</p> + +<p>When they drove home in the dusk, Maurice singing, loudly; Edith, on the +front seat of the wagon, snuggling against him; Johnny standing up, +balancing himself by holding on to their shoulders, and old Rover +jogging along on the footpath,—they were all in great spirits, until a +turn in the road showed them Eleanor, sitting on a log, looking rather +white.</p> + +<p>"Suffering snakes!" said Maurice, breaking off in the middle of a word. +Before Lion could quite stop, he was at his wife's side. "Eleanor! How +did you get here? ... You <i>walked</i>? Oh, Star, you oughtn't to have done +such a thing!"</p> + +<p>"I was frightened about you. It was so late. I was afraid something had +happened. I came to look for you."</p> + +<p>Edith and Johnny looked on aghast; then Edith called out: "Why, Eleanor! +I wouldn't let anything happen to Maurice!"</p> + +<p>Maurice, kneeling beside his wife, had put his arms around her and was +soothing her with all sorts of gentlenesses: "Dear, you mustn't worry +so! Nelly, don't cry; why, darling, we were having such a good time, we +never noticed that it was getting late ..."</p> + +<p>"You forgot me," Eleanor said; "as long as you had Edith, you never +thought how I might worry!" She hid her face in her hands.</p> + +<p>Maurice came back to the wagon; "Edith," he said, in a low voice, "would +you and Johnny mind getting out and walking? I'll bring Eleanor along +later. I'm sorry, but she's—she's tired."</p> + +<p>Edith said in a whisper, "'Course not!" Then, without a look behind her +at the crying woman on the log, and the patient, mortified boy bending +over her, she, and the disgusted and more deliberate Johnny, ran down +the road into the twilight. Edith was utterly bewildered. With her +inarticulate consciousness of the impropriety of emotion, naked, <i>in +public</i>! was the shyness of a child in meeting a stranger—for that +crying woman was practically a stranger. She wasn't the Bride—silent +and lovely! At Johnny's gate she said, briefly, "'Night!" and went on, +running—running in the dusk. When she reached the house, and found her +father and mother on the east porch, she was breathless, which accounted +for her brevity in saying that Maurice and Eleanor were coming—and she +was just starved! In the dining room, eating a very large supper, she +listened for the wheels of the wagon and reflected: "Why was Eleanor mad +at <i>me</i>? She was mad at Maurice, too. But most at me. Why?" She took an +enormous spoonful of sliced peaches, and stared blankly ahead of her.</p> + +<p>Ten minutes later, hearing wheels grating on the gravel at the front +door, and Maurice's voice, subdued and apologetic, she pushed her chair +away from the table, rushed through the pantry and up the back stairs. +She didn't know why she fled. She only knew that she couldn't face +Eleanor, who would sit with Maurice while he bolted a supper for +which—though Edith didn't know it!—all appetite had gone. In her room +in the ell, Edith shut the door, and, standing with her back against it, +tried to answer her own question:</p> + +<p>"Why was Eleanor mad?" But she couldn't answer it. Jealousy, as an +emotion, in herself or anybody else, was absolutely unknown to her. +She had probably never even heard the word—except in the Second +Commandment, or as a laughing reproach to old Rover—so she really did +not know enough to use it now to describe Eleanor's behavior. She only +said, "Maybe it's the nervous prostration? Well, I don't like her very +much. I'm glad she won't be at Fern Hill when I go there." To be a +Bride—and yet to cry before people! "Crying before people," Edith said, +"is just like taking off all your clothes before people—I don't care +how bad her nervous prostration is; it isn't nice! But why is she mad at +me? That isn't sense."</p> + +<p>You can't run other people's feelings to cover, and try to find their +cause, without mental and moral development; all this analysis lessened +very visibly Edith's childishness; also, it made her rather rudely cold +to Eleanor, whose effort to reinstate herself in the glories of the +little girl's imagination only resulted in still another and entirely +new feeling in Edith's mind—contempt.</p> + +<p>"If she had a right to be mad at me yesterday—why isn't she mad +to-day?" Edith reasoned.</p> + +<p>Eleanor was quick to feel the contempt. "I don't care for Edith," she +told Maurice, who looked surprised.</p> + +<p>"She's only a child," he said.</p> + +<p>Edith seemed especially a child now to Maurice, since he had embarked on +his job at Mercer. Not only was she unimportant to him, but, in spite of +his mortification at that scene on the road, his Saturday-night returns +to his wife were blowing the fires of his love into such a glory of +devotion, that Edith was practically nonexistent! His one thought was to +take Eleanor to Mercer. He wanted her all to himself! Also, he had a +vague purpose of being on his dignity with a lot of those Mercer people: +Eleanor's aunt, just back from Europe; Brown and Hastings—cubs! But +below this was the inarticulate feeling that, away from the Houghtons, +especially away from Edith, he might forget his impulse to use—for a +second time—that dreadful word "silly."</p> + +<p>So, as the 20th of October approached—the day when they were to go back +to town—he felt a distinct relief in getting away from Green Hill. The +relief was general. Edith felt it, which was very unlike Edith, who had +always sniffled (in private) at Maurice's departure! And her father and +mother felt it:</p> + +<p>"Eleanor's mind," Henry Houghton said, "is exactly like a drum—sound +comes out of emptiness!"</p> + +<p>"But Maurice seems to like the sound," Mrs. Houghton reminded him; "and +she loves him."</p> + +<p>"She wants to monopolize him," her husband said; "I don't call that +love; I call it jealousy. It must be uncomfortable to be jealous," he +ruminated; "but the really serious thing about it is that it will bore +any man to death. Point that out to her, Mary! Tell her that jealousy +is self-love, plus the consciousness of your own inferiority to the +person of whom you are jealous. And it has the same effect on love that +water has on fire. My definition ought to be in a dictionary!" he added, +complacently.</p> + +<p>"What sweet jobs you do arrange for me!" she said; "and as for your +definition, I can give you a better one—and briefer: 'Jealousy is Human +Natur'! But I don't believe Eleanor's jealous, Henry; she's only +conscious, poor girl! of Maurice's youth. But there is something I <i>am</i> +going to tell her...."</p> + +<p>She told her the day before the bridal couple (Edith still reveled in +the phrase!) started for Mercer. "Come out into the orchard," Mary +Houghton called upstairs to Eleanor, "and help me gather windfalls for +jelly."</p> + +<p>"I must pack Maurice's things," Eleanor called over the banisters, +doubtfully; "he's a perfect boy about packing; he put his boots in with +his collars."</p> + +<p>"Oh, come along!" said Mrs. Houghton. And Eleanor yielded, scolding +happily while she pinned her hat on before the mirror in the hall.</p> + +<p>In the orchard they picked up some apples, then sat down on the bleached +stubble of the mowed hillside and looked over at the dark mass of the +mountain, behind which a red sun was trampling waist deep through leaden +clouds. "How <i>can</i> I bring it in?" Mrs. Houghton thought; "it won't do +to just throw a warning at her!"</p> + +<p>But she didn't have to throw it; Eleanor invited it. "I'm glad we're +going to the hotel, just at first," she said; "Auntie says I don't know +anything about keeping house, and I get worried for fear I won't make +Maurice comfortable. I tell him so all the time!"</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't put things into his head, Eleanor," Mrs. Houghton said +(beginning her "warning"); "I mean things that you don't want him to +feel. I remember when my first baby was coming—the little boy we +lost—" she stopped and bit her lip; the "baby" had been gone for +nearly twenty years, but he was still her little boy—"I was very +forlorn, and I couldn't do anything, or go anywhere; and Henry stayed at +home with me like a saint. Well, I told my father that I had told Henry +it was hard on him to 'sit at home with an invalid wife.' And father +said, 'If you tell him so often enough, he'll agree with you,' There's a +good deal in that, Eleanor?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose there is," Maurice's wife said, vaguely.</p> + +<p>"So, if I were you," Mrs. Houghton said, still feeling her way, "I +wouldn't give him the idea that you are any—well, older than he is. A +wife might be fifty years older than her husband, and if her <i>spirit</i> +was young, years wouldn't make a bit of difference!"</p> + +<p>Eleanor took this somewhat roundabout advice very well. "The only thing +in the world I want," she said, simply, "is to make him happy."</p> + +<p>They went back to the house in silence. But that night Eleanor paused in +putting some last things into her trunk, and, going over to Maurice, +kissed his thick hair. "Maurice," she said, "are you happy?"</p> + +<p>"You bet I am!"</p> + +<p>"You haven't said so once to-day."</p> + +<p>"I haven't said I'm alive," he said, grinning. "Oh, Star, won't it be +wonderful when we can go away from the whole caboodle of 'em, and just +be by ourselves?"</p> + +<p>"That's what I want!" she said; "just to be alone with you. I wish we +could live on a desert island!..."</p> + +<p>Down in the studio, Mr. Houghton, smoking up to the fire limit a cigar +grudgingly permitted by his wife ("It's your eighth to-day," she +reproached him), Henry Houghton, listening to his Mary's account of the +talk in the orchard, told her what he thought of her: "May you be +forgiven! Your intentions are doubtless excellent, but your truthfulness +leaves something to be desired: 'Years won't make any difference'? Mary! +Mary!"</p> + +<p>But she defended herself: "I mean, 'years' can't kill love—the highest +love—the love that grows out of, <i>and then outgrows</i>, the senses! The +body may be just an old glove—shabby, maybe; but if the hand inside +the glove is alive, what real difference does the shabbiness make? If +Eleanor's mind doesn't get rheumatic, <i>and if she will forget +herself</i>!—they'll be all right. But if she thinks of herself—" Mary +Houghton sighed; her husband ended her sentence for her:</p> + +<p>"She'll upset the whole kettle of fish?"</p> + +<p>"What I'm afraid of," she said, with a troubled look, "is that you are +right:—she's inclined to be jealous, I saw her frown when he was +playing checkers with Edith. I wanted to tell her, but didn't dare to, +that jealousy is as amusing to people who don't feel it, as it is +undignified in people who do."</p> + +<p>"My darling, you are a brute," said Mr. Houghton; "I have long suspected +it, <i>in re</i> tobacco. As for Eleanor, <i>I</i> would never have such cruel +thoughts! <i>I</i> belong to the gentler sex. I would merely refer her to Mr. +F.'s aunt."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII" ></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + + +<p>They reached Mercer in the rainy October dusk. It was cold and raw, and +a bleak wind blew up the river, which, with its shifting film of oil, +bent like a brown arm about the grimy, noisy town. The old hotel, with +its Doric columns grimed with years of smoky river fogs, was dark, and +smelled of soot; and the manners of the waiters and chambermaids would +have set Eleanor's teeth on edge, except that she was so absorbed in the +thrill of being back under the roof which had sheltered them in those +first days of bliss.</p> + +<p>"Do you <i>remember</i>?" she said, significantly.</p> + +<p>Maurice, looking after suitcases and hand bags, said, absently, +"Remember what?" She told him "what" and he said: "Yes. Where do you +want this trunk put, Eleanor?"</p> + +<p>She sighed; to sentimentalize and receive no response in kind, is like +sitting down on a chair which isn't there. After dinner, when she and +Maurice came up to their room, which had fusty red hangings and a +marble-topped center table standing coldly under a remote chandelier, +she sighed again, for Maurice said that, as for this hole of a hotel, +the only thing <i>he</i> thought of, was how soon they could get out of it! +"I can get that little house I told you about, only it's rather out of +the way. Not many of your kind of people 'round!"</p> + +<p>She knelt down beside him, pushing his newspaper aside and pressing her +cheek against his. "<i>That</i> doesn't make any difference!" she said; "I'm +glad not to know anybody. I just want you! I don't want people."</p> + +<p>"Neither do I," Maurice agreed; "I'd have to shell out my cigars to 'em +if they were men!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, is that your reason?" she said, laughing.</p> + +<p>"Say, Star, would you mind moving? I was just reading—"</p> + +<p>She rose, and, going over to the window, stood looking out at the +streaming rain in one of those empty silences which at first had been so +alluringly mysterious to him. She was waiting for his hand on her +shoulder, his kiss on her hair—but he was immersed in his paper. "How +can he be interested about football, <i>now</i>, when we're alone?" she +thought, wistfully. Then, to remind him of lovelier things, she began to +sing, very softly:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers?<br /> +0 sweet content!<br /> +To add to golden numbers, golden numbers,<br /> +O sweet content!—0 sweet, O sweet content—"</p></div> + +<p>He dropped his paper and listened—and it seemed as if music made itself +visible in his ardent, sensitive face! After a while he got up and went +over to the window, and kissed her gently ...</p> + +<p>Maurice was very happy in these first months in Mercer. The Weston +office liked him—and admired him, also, which pleased his young +vanity!—though he was jeered at for an incorrigible and alarming +truthfulness which pointed out disadvantages to possible clients, but +which—to the amazement of the office—frequently made a sale! As a +result he acquired, after a while, several small gilt hatchets, +presented by the "boys," and also the nickname of "G. Washington." He +accepted these tributes with roars of laughter, but pointed to results: +"<i>I get the goods!</i>" So, naturally, he liked his work—he liked it very +much! The joy of bargaining and his quick and perhaps dangerously frank +interest in clients as personalities, made him a most beguiling +salesman; as a result he became, in an astonishingly short time, a real +force in the office; all of which hurried him into maturity. But the +most important factor in his happiness was his adoration of Eleanor. He +was perfectly contented, evening after evening in the hotel, to play +her accompaniments (on a rented piano), read poetry aloud, and beat her +at solitaire. Also, she helped him in his practicing with a certain +sweet authority of knowledge, which kept warm in his heart the sense of +her infinite superiority. So when, later, they found a house, he entered +very gayly upon the first test of married life—house furnishing! It was +then that his real fiber showed itself. It is a risky time for all +husbands and wives, a time when it is particularly necessary to +"consider the stars"! It needs a fine sense of proportion as to the +value, relatively, of peace and personal judgment, to give up one's idea +in regard, say, to the color of the parlor rug. Maurice's likes and +dislikes were emphatic as to rugs and everything else,—but his sense of +proportion was sound, so Eleanor's taste,—and peace,—prevailed. It was +good taste, so he really had nothing to complain of, though he couldn't +for the life of him see why she picked out a <i>picture</i> paper for a +certain room in the top of the house! "I thought I'd have it for a +smoking room," he said, ruefully; "and a lot of pink lambs and green +chickens cavorting around don't seem very suitable. Still, if you like +it, it's all right!" The memory of the night on the mountain, when +Eleanor gave all she had of strength and courage and fear and passion to +the saving of his life—made pink lambs, or anything else, "all right"! +When the house-furnishing period was over, and they settled down, the +"people" Eleanor didn't want to see, seemed to have no particular desire +to see them; so their solitude of two (and Bingo, who barked whenever +Maurice put his arms around Eleanor) was not broken in upon—which made +for domestic, even if stultifying, content. But the thing that really +kept them happy during that first rather dangerous year, was the +smallness of their income. They had very little money; even with +Eleanor's six hundred, it was nearer two thousand dollars than three, +and that, for people who had always lived in more or less luxury, was +very nearly poverty;—for which, of course, they had reason, so far as +married happiness went, to thank God! If there are no children, it is +the limited income which can be most certainly relied upon to provide +the common interest which welds husband and wife together. This more or +less uncomfortable, and always anxious, interest, generally develops in +that critical time when the heat of passion has begun to cool, and the +friction of the commonplace produces a certain warmth of its own. These +are the days when conjugal criticism, which has been smothered under the +undiscriminating admiration of first love, begins to raise its head—an +ugly head, with a mean eye, in which there is neither imagination nor +humor. When this criticism begins to creep into daily life, and the lure +of the bare shoulder and perfumed hair lessens—because they are as +assured as bread and butter!—it is then that this saving unity of +purpose in acquiring bread and butter comes to the rescue.</p> + +<p>It came to the rescue of Maurice and Eleanor; they had many welding +moments of anxiety on his part, and eager self-sacrifice on her part; of +adding up columns of figures, with a constantly increasing total, which +had to be subtracted from a balance which decreased so rapidly that +Eleanor felt quite sure that the bank was cheating them! Of course they +did not appreciate the value of this blessed young poverty—who of us +ever appreciates poverty while we are experiencing it? We only know its +value when we look back upon it! But they did—or at least Eleanor +did—appreciate their isolation, never realizing that no human life can +refresh another unless it may itself drink deep of human sympathies and +hopes. Maurice could take this refreshment through business contacts; +but, except for Mrs. O'Brien, and her baby grandson, Don, Eleanor's +acquaintances in Mercer had been limited to her aunt's rather narrow +circle.</p> + +<p>When Mrs. Newbolt got back from Europe, Maurice was introduced to this +circle at a small dinner given to the bride and groom to indicate family +forgiveness. The guests were elderly people, who talked politics and +surgical operations, and didn't know what to say to Maurice, whose +blond hair and good-humored blue eyes made him seem distressingly young. +Nor did Maurice know what to say to them.</p> + +<p>"I'd have gone to sleep," he told Eleanor, in exploding mirth, on their +way home, "if it hadn't been that the food was so mighty good! I kept +awake, in spite of that ancient dame who hashed up the Civil War, just +to see what the next course would be!"</p> + +<p>It was about this time that Maurice began to show a little longing for +companionship (outside the office) of a kind which did not remember the +Civil War. His evenings of solitaire and music were awfully nice, but—</p> + +<p>"Brown and Hastings are in college," he told his wife; "and Mort's on a +job at his father's mills. I miss 'em like the devil."</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> don't want anyone but you," she said, and the tears started to her +eyes; he asked her what she was crying about, and she said, "Oh, +nothing." But of course he knew what it was, and he had to remind +himself that "she had nervous prostration"; otherwise that terrible, +hidden word "silly" would have been on his lips.</p> + +<p>Eleanor, too, had a hidden word; it was the word "boy." It was Mrs. +Newbolt who thrust it at her, in those first days of settling down into +the new house. She had come in, waddling ponderously on her weak ankles, +to see, she said, how the young people were getting along: "At least, +<i>one</i> of you is young!" Mrs. Newbolt said, jocosely. She was still +puffing from a climb upstairs, to find Eleanor, dusty and disheveled, in +a little room in the top of the house. She was sitting on the floor in +front of a trunk, with Bingo fast asleep on her skirt.</p> + +<p>"What's this room to be?" said Mrs. Newbolt; then looked at the wall +paper, gay with prancing lambs and waddling ducks, and Noah's Ark trees. +"What! a <i>nursery</i>?" said Mrs. Newbolt; "do you mean—?"</p> + +<p>"No," Eleanor said, reddening; "oh no! I only thought that if—"</p> + +<p>"You are forehanded," said Mrs. Newbolt, and was silent for almost a +minute. The vision of Eleanor choosing a nursery paper, for little eyes +(which might never be born!) to look upon, touched her. She blinked and +swallowed, then said, crossly: "You're thinner! For heaven's sake don't +lose your figger! My dear grandmother used to say—I can see her now, +skimmin' milk pans, and then runnin' her finger round the rim and +lickin' it. She was a Dennison. I've heard her say to her daughters, I'd +rather have you lose your virtue than lose your figger'; and my dear +grandfather—your great-grandfather—wore knee breeches; he said—well, +I suppose you'd be shocked if I told you what he said? He said, 'If a +gal loses one, she—' No; I guess I won't tell you. Old maids are so +refined! <i>He</i> wasn't an old maid, I can tell you! I brought a chocolate +drop for Bingo. Have you a cook?"</p> + +<p>Eleanor, gasping with the effort to keep up with the torrent, said, +"Yes; but she doesn't know how to do things."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Newbolt raised pudgy and protesting hands. "Get somebody who can do +things! Come here, little Bingo! Eleanor, if you don't feed that boy, +you'll lose him. I remember puffectly well hearin' my dear father say, +'If you want to catch a man's heart, set a trap in his stomach.' Bingo! +Bingo!" (The little dog, standing on his hind legs, superciliously +accepted a chocolate drop—then ran back to Eleanor.) "Maurice will be a +man one of these days, and a man can't live on love; he wants 'wittles +and drink.' When I married your uncle Thomas, my dear father said, 'Feed +him—and amuse him.' So I made up my mind on my weddin' day to have good +food and be entertainin'. And I must say I did it! I fed your dear +uncle, and I talked to him, until he died." She paused, and looked at +the paper on the wall. "I <i>hope</i> the Lord will send you children; it +will help you hold the boy—and perhaps you'll be more efficient! You'll +have to be, or they'll die. Get a cook." Then, talking all the way +downstairs, she trundled off, in angry, honest, forgiving anxiety for +her niece's welfare.</p> + +<p>Eleanor, planning for the little sunny room, felt bruised by that +bludgeon word—which, as it happened, was not accurate, for Maurice, by +this time, had gained a maturity of thought and patience that put him +practically out of boyhood. When Eleanor repeated her caller's remarks +to him, she left that one word out; "Auntie implied," she said, "that +you wouldn't love me, if you didn't have fancy cooking."</p> + +<p>"She's a peach on cooking herself," declared Maurice; "but, as far as my +taste goes, I don't give a hoot for nightingales' tongues on toast."</p> + +<p>So, as fancy cooking was not a necessity to Maurice, and as he had +resigned himself to an absence of any social life, and didn't really +mind smoking in a room with a silly paper on the walls (he had been very +much touched when Eleanor told him what the paper meant to her in hope, +and unsatisfied longing), he was perfectly contented in the ugly little +house in the raw, new street. In point of fact, music and books provided +the Bread of Life to Maurice—with solitaire thrown in as a pleasant +extra!—so "wittles and drink" did not begin to be a consideration until +the first year of married life had passed. Eleanor remembered the date +when—because of something Maurice said—she began to realize that they +must be considered. It was on the anniversary of their wedding—a +cloudy, cold day; but all the same, with valiant sentimentality, they +went—Bingo at their heels—to celebrate, in the meadow of those +fifty-four minutes of married life. As they crossed the field, where the +tides of blossoming grass ebbed and flowed in chilly gusts of wind, they +reminded each other of the first time they had come there, and of every +detail of the elopement. When they sat down under the locust tree, +Eleanor opened her pocketbook and showed him the little grass ring, +lying flat and brittle in a small envelope; and he laughed, and said +when he got rich he would buy her a circle of emeralds!</p> + +<p>"It's confoundedly cold," he said; "b-r-r! ... Oh, I must tell you the +news: I got one in on 'em at the office this morning: Old West has been +stung on a big block on Taylor Street. Nothing doing. No tenants. I've +been working on a fellow for a month, and, by George! I've landed him! I +told him the elevator service was rotten—and one or two other pretty +little things they've been sliding over, gracefully, at the office; but +I landed him! Say, Nelly, Morton asked me to go to a stag party to-morrow +night; do you mind if I go?"</p> + +<p>She smiled vaguely at his truthtelling; then sighed, and said, "Why, no; +if you <i>want</i> to. Maurice, do you remember you said we'd come back here +for our golden wedding?"</p> + +<p>"So I did! I'd forgotten. Gosh! maybe we'll be grandparents by that +time!" The idea seemed to him infinitely humorous, but she winced. "What +a memory you have!" he said. "You ought to be in Weston's! They'd never +catch <i>you</i> forgetting where some idiot left the key of the coal bin."</p> + +<p>"I sang 'Kiss thy perfumed garments'; remember?"</p> + +<p>"'Course I do. Hit 'em again."</p> + +<p>She laughed, but ruefully; he had not spoken just that way a year ago. +She noticed, suddenly, how much older he looked than on that worshiping +day—still the blue, gay eyes, the wind-ruffled blond hair, the +hilarious laugh that displayed the very white teeth; but all the same he +looked older by more than one year: his mouth had a firmer line; his +whole clean-cut face showed responsibility and eager manhood.</p> + +<p>Eleanor, clasping her hands around her knees, and watching the grass +ebbing and flowing in the wind, sang, "O Spring!" and Maurice, +listening, his eyes following the brown ripple of the river lisping in +the shallows around the sandbar, and flowing—flowing—like Life, and +Time, and Love, sighed with satisfaction at the pure beauty of her +voice. "The notes are like wings," he said; "give us a sandwich. I'm +about starved."</p> + +<p>They spread out their luncheon, and Maurice expressed his opinion of it: +"This cake is the limit!" He threw a piece of it at the little dog. +"There, Bingo!... Eleanor, he's losing his waist line. But this cake +won't fatten him! It's sawdust."</p> + +<p>"Hannah <i>is</i> a poor cook," she agreed, nervously; "but if I didn't keep +her I don't know what she would do, she's so awfully deaf! She couldn't +get another place."</p> + +<p>"Why don't you teach her to do things? I suppose she thinks we can live +on love," he said, chuckling.</p> + +<p>She bit her lip,—and thought of Mrs. Newbolt. "Because I don't know how +myself," she said.</p> + +<p>"Why don't you learn?" he suggested, feeding the rest of his cake to +Bingo; "Edith used to make bully cake—"</p> + +<p>She said, with a worried look, that she <i>would</i> try—</p> + +<p>Instantly he was patient and very gentle, and said that the cake didn't +matter at all! "But I move we try boarding."</p> + +<p>They were silent, watching the slipping gleam on the ripples, until +Eleanor said, "Oh, Maurice,—if we only had a child!"</p> + +<p>"Maybe we will some day," he said, cheerfully. Then, to tease Bingo, he +put his arms around his wife and hugged her,—which made the little dog +burst into a volley of barks! Maurice laughed, but remembered that he +was hungry and said again, "Let's board."</p> + +<p>Eleanor, soothing Bingo, wild-eyed and trembling with jealous love, said +no! she would try to have things better. "Perhaps I'll get as clever as +Edith," she said—and her lip hardened.</p> + +<p>He said he wished she would: "Edith used to make a chocolate cake I'd +sell my soul for, pretty nearly! Why didn't Hannah give us hard-boiled +eggs?" he pondered, burrowing in the luncheon basket for something more +to eat; "they don't take brains!"</p> + +<p>Of course he was wrong; any cooking takes brains—and nobody seemed +able, in his little household, to supply them. However, boarding was +such a terrible threat, that Eleanor, dismayed at the idea of leaving +that little room, waiting at the top of the house, with its ducks and +shepherdesses; and thinking, too, of a whole tableful of people who +would talk to Maurice! made heroic efforts to help Hannah, her mind +fumbling over recipes and ingredients, as her hands fumbled over dishes +and oven doors and dampers. She only succeeded in burning her wrist +badly, and making the deaf Hannah say she didn't want a lady messing up +her kitchen.</p> + +<p>By degrees, however, "living on love" became more and more +uncomfortable, and in October the fiasco of a little dinner for Henry +Houghton made Maurice say definitely that, when their lease expired, +they would board. Mr. Houghton had come to Mercer on business, bringing +Edith with him, as a sort of spree for the child; and when he got home +he summed up his experience to his Mary:</p> + +<p>"That daughter of yours will be the death of me! There was one moment at +dinner when only the grace of God kept me from wringing her neck. In the +first place, she commented upon the food—which was awful!—with her +usual appalling candor. But when she began on the 'harp'—"</p> + +<p>"Harp?" Mary Houghton looked puzzled.</p> + +<p>"I won't go to their house again! I detest married people who squabble +in public. Let 'em scratch each other's eyes out in private if they want +to, the way we do! But I'll be hanged if I look on. She calls him +'darling' whenever she speaks to him. She adores him,—poor fellow! I +tell you, Mary, a mind that hasn't a single thought except love must be +damned stupid to live with. I wished I was asleep a dozen times."</p> + +<p>Maurice, too, at his own dinner table, had "wished he was asleep."</p> + +<p>In the expectation of seeing Mr. Houghton, Eleanor had planned an early +and extra good dinner, after which they meant to take their guests out +on the river and float down into the country to a spot—green, still, in +the soft October days—from which they could look back at the city, with +its myriad lights pricking out in the dusk, and see the copper lantern +of the full moon lifting above the black line of the hills. Eleanor, +taught by Maurice, had learned to feel the strange loveliness of +Mercer's ugliness, and it was her idea that Mr. Houghton should feel it, +too. "Edith's too much of a child to appreciate it," she said.</p> + +<p>"She's not much of a child; she's almost fourteen!"</p> + +<p>"I think," said Eleanor, "that if she's fourteen, she's too old to be as +free and easy with men—as she is with you."</p> + +<p>"<i>Me?</i> I'm just like a brother! She has no more sense of beauty than a +puppy, but she'll like the boat, provided she can row, and adore you."</p> + +<p>"Nonsense!" Eleanor said. "Oh, I <i>hope</i> the dinner will be good."</p> + +<p>It was far from good; the deaf Hannah had scorched the soup, to which +Edith called attention, making no effort to emulate the manners of her +father, who heroically took the last drop in his plate. Maurice, anxious +that Eleanor's housekeeping should shine, thought the best way to affirm +it was to say that <i>this</i> soup was vile, "but generally our soup is +fine!"</p> + +<p>"Maurice thinks Edith is a wonderful cook," Eleanor said; her voice +trembled.</p> + +<p>Something went wrong at dessert, and Edith said, generously, that she +"didn't mind a bit!" It was at that point that the race of God kept her +father from murdering her, for, in a real desire to be polite and cover +up the defective dessert, she became very talkative, and said, wasn't it +funny? When she was little, she thought a harpy played on a harp; "and I +thought you had a harp, because father—"</p> + +<p>"I'd like some more ice cream!" Mr. Houghton interrupted, passionately.</p> + +<p>"But there's salt in it!" said Edith, surprised. To which her father +replied, breathlessly, that he believed he'd not go out on the river; he +had a headache. ("Mary has got to do something about this child!")</p> + +<p>"<i>I'll</i> go," Edith announced, cheerfully.</p> + +<p>"I think I'll stay at home," Eleanor said; "my head is rather inclined +to ache, too, Mr. Houghton; so we'll none of us go."</p> + +<p>"Me and Maurice will," Edith protested, dismayed.</p> + +<p>Maurice gave an anxious look at Eleanor: "It might do your head good, +Nelly?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, let's go by ourselves," Edith burst out; "I mean," she corrected +herself, "people like father and Eleanor never enjoy the things we do. +They like to talk."</p> + +<p>"I'd like to choke you!" the exasperated father thought. But he cast a +really frightened eye at Eleanor, who grew a little paler. There was +some laborious talk in the small parlor, where Eleanor's piano took up +most of the space: comments on the weather, and explanations of Bingo's +snarling. "He's jealous," Eleanor said, with amused pride, and stroking +the little faithful head that pressed so closely against her.</p> + +<p>At which Edith began, eagerly, "Father says—" ("What the deuce will she +say now?" poor Mr. Houghton thought)—"Father says Rover has a human +being's horridest vice—jealousy."</p> + +<p>"I don't think jealousy is a vice," Eleanor said, coldly.</p> + +<p>Mr. Houghton, giving his offspring a terrible glance, said that he must +go back to the hotel and take something for his headache; "And don't +keep that imp out too late, Maurice. You want to get home and take care +of Eleanor."</p> + +<p>"Oh no; he doesn't," Eleanor said, and shook hands with her embarrassed +guest, who was saying, under his breath, "<i>What</i> taste!"</p> + +<p>Out in the street Maurice hurried so that Edith, tucking, unasked, +her hand through his arm, had to skip once or twice to keep up with +him.... "Maurice," she said, breathlessly, "will you let me row?"</p> + +<p>"O Lord—yes! I don't care."</p> + +<p>After that Edith did all the talking, until they reached the wharf where +Maurice kept his boat; when Edith had secured the oars and they pushed +off, he took the tiller ropes, and sat with moody eyes fixed on the +water. The mortification of the dinner was gnawing him; he was thinking +of the things he might have said to bring Eleanor to her senses! Yet he +realized that to have said anything would have added to Mr. Houghton's +embarrassment. "I'll have it out with her when I get home," he thought, +hotly. "Edith started the mess; why did she say that about Mr. Houghton +and Eleanor?" He glanced at her, and Edith, rowing hard, saw the sudden +angry look, and was so surprised that she caught a crab, almost keeled +over, laughed loudly, and said, <i>"Goodness!"</i> which was at that time, +her most violent expletive.</p> + +<p>"Maurice," she demanded, "did you see that lady on the float, getting +into the boat with those two gentlemen?"</p> + +<p>Maurice said, absently: "There were two or three people round. I don't +know which you mean."</p> + +<p>"The young one. She had red cheeks. I never saw such red cheeks!"</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Maurice; "<i>that</i> one? Yes. I saw her. Paint."</p> + +<p>"On her cheeks?" Edith said, with round, astonished eyes. "Do ladies put +paint on their cheeks?"</p> + +<p>Miserable as Maurice was, he did chuckle. "No, Edith; <i>ladies</i> don't," +he said, significantly. (Such was the innocent respectability of 1903!)</p> + +<p>Edith looked puzzled: "You mean she isn't a lady, Maurice?"</p> + +<p>"Look out!" he said, jamming the tiller over; "you were on your right +oar."</p> + +<p>"But, Maurice," she insisted, "<i>why</i> do you say she isn't a +lady?... Oh, Maurice! There she is now! See? In that boat?"</p> + +<p>"Well, for Heaven's sake don't announce it to the world!" Maurice +remonstrated. "Guess I'll take the oars, Edith. I want some exercise."</p> + +<p>Edith sighed, but said, "All right." She wanted to row; but she wanted +even more to get Maurice good-natured again. "He's huffy," she told +herself; "he's mad at Eleanor, and so am I; but it's no sense to take +<i>my</i> head off!" She hated to change seats—they drew in to shore to do +it, a concession to safety on Maurice's part—for she didn't like to +turn her back on the red-cheeked lady with the two gentlemen in the +following skiff; however, she did it; after all, it was Maurice's boat, +and she was his company; so, if he "wanted to row her" (thus her little +friendly thoughts ran), "why, all right!" Still, she hated not to look +at the lady that Maurice said was not a lady. "She must be twice as old +as I am; I should think you were a lady when you were twenty-six," she +reflected.</p> + +<p>But because her back was turned to the "lady," she did not, for an +instant, understand the loud splash behind them, and Maurice's +exclamation, "Capsized!" The jerk of their boat, as he backed water, +made it rock violently. "Idiots!" said Maurice. "I'll pick you up!" he +yelled, and rowed hard toward the three people, now slapping about in +not very deep water. "Tried to change seats,"—he explained to Edith. +"I'm coming!" he called again.</p> + +<p>Edith, wildly excited and swaying back and forth, like a coxswain in a +boat race, screamed: "We're coming! You'll get drowned—you'll get +drowned!" she assured the gasping, bubbling people, who were, somehow or +other, making their muddy way toward the shore.</p> + +<p>"Get our skiff, will you?" one of the "gentlemen" called to Maurice, +who, seeing that there was no danger to any of the immersed merrymakers, +turned and rowed out to the slowly drifting boat.</p> + +<p>"Grab the painter!" he told Edith as he gained upon it; she obeyed his +orders with prompt dexterity. "You can always depend on old Skeezics," +Maurice told himself, with a friendly look at her. He had forgotten +Eleanor's behavior, and was trying to suppress his grins at the forlorn +and dripping people, who were on land now, shivering, and talking with +astonishing loudness.</p> + +<p>"Oh, the lady's cheeks are coming off!" Edith gasped, as they beached.</p> + +<p>Maurice, shoving the trailing skiff on to its owners, said: "Can I do +anything to help you?"</p> + +<p>"I'll catch my death," said the lady, who was crying; her trickling +tears and her sopping handkerchief removed what remnants of her "cheeks" +the sudden bath in the river had left. As the paint disappeared, one +saw how very pretty the poor draggled butterfly was—big, honey-dark +eyes, and quite exquisite features. "Oh, my soul and body!—I'll die!" +she said, sobbing with cold and shock.</p> + +<p>"Here," said Maurice, stripping off his coat; "put this on."</p> + +<p>The girl made some faint demur, and the men, who were bailing out their +half-filled skiff, said, "Oh—she can have our coats."</p> + +<p>"They're soaked, aren't they?" Maurice said; "and I don't need mine in +the least."</p> + +<p>Edith gasped; such reckless gallantry gave her an absolutely new +sensation. Her heart seemed to lurch, and then jump; she breathed hard, +and said, under her breath, "Oh, <i>my</i>!" She felt that she could never +speak to Maurice again; he was truly a grown-up gentleman! Her eyes +devoured him.</p> + +<p>"Do take it," she heard him say to the crying lady, who no longer +interested her; "I assure you I don't need it," he said, carelessly; and +the "lady" reached out a small, shaking hand, on which the kid glove was +soaking wet, and said, her teeth chattering, that she was awfully +obliged.</p> + +<p>"Get in—get in!" one of the "gentlemen" said, crossly, and as she +stepped into the now bailed-out skiff, she said to Maurice, "Where shall +I return it to?"</p> + +<p>"I'll come and get it," Maurice said—and she called across the strip of +water widening between the two boats:</p> + +<p>"I'm Miss Lily Dale—" and added her street and number.</p> + +<p>Maurice, in his shirt sleeves, lifted his hat; then looked at Edith and +grinned. "Did you ever see such idiots? Those men are chumps. Did you +hear the fat one jaw at the girl?"</p> + +<p>"Did he?" Edith said, timidly. She could hardly bear to look at Maurice, +he was so wonderful.</p> + +<p>But he, entirely good-natured again, was overflowing with fun. "Let's +turn around," he said, "and follow 'em! That fatty was rather +happy—did you get on to that flask?"</p> + +<p>Edith had no idea what he meant, but she said, breathlessly, "Yes, +Maurice." In her own mind she was seeing again that princely gesture, +that marvelous tossing of his own coat to the "lady"! "He is <i>exactly</i> +like Sir Walter Raleigh," she said to herself. She remembered how at +Green Hill she had wanted him to spread his coat before Eleanor's +feet;—but <i>that</i> was commonplace! Eleanor was just a married person, +"like mother." This was a wonderful drowning lady! Oh, he <i>was</i> Sir +Walter! Her eyes were wide with an entirely new emotion—an emotion +which made her draw back sharply when once, as he rowed, his hand +touched hers. She was afraid of that careless touch. Yet oh, if he would +only give <i>her</i> some of his clothes! Oh, why hadn't <i>she</i> fallen into +the water! Her heart beat so that she felt she could not speak. It was +not necessary; Maurice, singing a song appropriate to the lady with the +red cheeks, was not aware of her silence.</p> + +<p>"I bet," he said, "that cad takes it out of the little thing! She looked +scared, didn't you think, Edith?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, ... <i>sir</i>" the little girl said, breathlessly.</p> + +<p>Maurice did not notice the new word; "Sorry not to take you down to the +Point," he said; "but I ought to keep tabs on that boat. If they capsize +again, somebody really might get hurt. She's a—a little fool, of +course; but I'd hate to have the fat brute drown her, and he looks +capable of it."</p> + +<p>However, trailing along in the deepening dusk behind the fat brute, who +was rowing hard against the current, they saw the dripping survivors of +the shipwreck reach the wharf safely five minutes ahead of them, and +scurry off into the darkness of the street.</p> + +<p>Maurice, in high spirits, had quite forgiven Eleanor. "I meant to treat +you to ice cream, Skeezics," he said, "but I can't go into the hotel. +Shirt sleeves wouldn't be admitted in the elegant circles of the Mercer +House!"</p> + +<p>Instantly a very youthful disappointment readjusted things for Edith; +she forgot that strange consciousness which had made her shrink from his +careless touch; she had no impulse to say "sir"; she was back again at +the point at which the red-cheeked lady had broken in upon their lives. +She said, frowning: "My! I did want some ice cream. I <i>wish</i> you hadn't +given the lady your coat!"</p> + +<p>When Maurice got home, he found a repentant Eleanor bathing very red and +swollen eyes.</p> + +<p>"How's your head?" he said, as he came, in his shirt sleeves, into her +room; she, turning to kiss him and say it was better, stopped short.</p> + +<p>"Maurice! Where's your coat?"</p> + +<p>His explanation deepened her repentance; "Oh, Maurice,—if you've caught +cold!"</p> + +<p>He laughed and hugged her (at which Bingo, in his basket, barked +violently); and said, "The only thing that bothered me was that I +couldn't treat Edith to ice cream."</p> + +<p>Eleanor's face, passionately tender, changed sharply: "Edith is an +extremely impertinent child! Did you hear her, at dinner, talk about +jealousy?"</p> + +<p>He looked blank, and said, "What was 'impertinent' in that? Say, Star, +the girl in the boat was—tough; she was painted up to the nines, and of +course it all came out in the wash. And Buster said her 'cheeks came +off'! But she was pretty," Maurice ruminated, beginning to pull off his +boots.</p> + +<p>"I don't see how you can call a painted woman 'pretty,'" Eleanor said, +coldly.</p> + +<p>Maurice yawned. "She seemed to belong to the fat brute. He was so nasty +to her, I wanted to punch his head."</p> + +<p>"Poor girl!" Eleanor said, and her voice softened. "Perhaps I could do +something for her? She ought to make him marry her."</p> + +<p>Maurice chuckled. "Oh, Nelly, you <i>are</i> innocent! No, my dear; she'll +paint some more, and then, probably, get to drinking; and meet one or +two more brutes. When she gets quite into the gutter, she'll die. The +sooner the better! I mean, the less harm she'll do."</p> + +<p>Eleanor's recoil of pain seemed to him as exquisite as a butterfly's +shrinking from some harsh finger. He looked at her tenderly. "Star, you +don't know the world! And I don't want you to."</p> + +<p>"I'd like to help her," Eleanor said, simply.</p> + +<p>"You?" he said; "I wouldn't have you under the same roof with one of +those creatures!"</p> + +<p>His sense of her purity pleased her; the harem idea is, at bottom, +pleasing to women; they may resent it with their intellect, but they all +of them like to feel they are too precious for the wind of evil +realities to blow upon. So, honestly enough, and with the childlike joy +of the woman in love, she played up to the harem instinct, shrinking a +little and asking timid questions, and making innocent eyes; and was +kissed, and assured she was a lovely goose; for Maurice played up to his +part, too, with equal honesty (and youth)—the part of the worldly-wise +protector. It was the fundamental instinct of the human male; he resents +with his intellect the idea that his woman is a fool; but the more +foolish she is (on certain lines) the more important he feels himself to +be! So they were both very contented, until Maurice happened to say +again that he was sorry to have disappointed Edith about the ice cream.</p> + +<p>"She's a greedy little thing," Eleanor said from her pillows; her voice +was irritated.</p> + +<p>"What nonsense!" Maurice said; "as for ice cream, all youngsters like +it. I know I do!"</p> + +<p>"I saw her hang on to your arm as you went down the street," Eleanor +said. "Mrs. Houghton ought to tell her that nice girls don't paw men!"</p> + +<p>"Eleanor! She's nothing but a child, and I'm her brother—"</p> + +<p>"You are <i>not</i> her brother."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Eleanor, don't be so—" he paused; oh, that dreadful word which +must not be spoken!—"so unreasonable," he ended, wearily. He lay down +beside her in the darkness, and by and by he heard her crying, very +softly. "<i>Oh</i>, lord!" he said; and turned over and went to sleep.</p> + +<p>Thus do the clouds return after rain. Yet each day the sun rises +again....</p> + +<p>At breakfast Eleanor, with a pitying word for the "poor thing," reminded +her husband that he must go and get his coat.</p> + +<p>He said, "Gosh! I'd forgotten it!" and added that he liked his eggs +softer. He would have "played up" again, and smiled at her innocence, if +he had thought of it, but he was really concerned about his eggs, +"Hannah seems to think I like brickbats," he said, good-naturedly.</p> + +<p>Eleanor winced; "Poor Hannah is so stupid! But she's getting deafer +every day, so I <i>can't</i> send her away!" Added to her distress at the +scorched soup of the night before, was this new humiliation of +"brickbats;" naturally she forgot the "poor thing."</p> + +<p>Maurice almost forgot her himself; but as he left the office in the +afternoon he did remember the coat. At the address which the red-cheeked +lady had given him, he found her card—"Miss Lily Dale"—below a letter +box in the tiled, untidy vestibule of a yellow-brick apartment house, +where he waited, grinning at the porcelain ornateness about him, for a +little jerking elevator to take him up to the fourth floor. There, in a +small, gay, clean parlor of starched lace curtains, and lithographs, and +rows of hyacinth bulbs just started in blue and purple glasses on the +window sill, he found the red-cheeked young lady, rather white-cheeked. +Indeed, there were traces of hastily wiped-away tears on her pretty +face.</p> + +<p>"My friend, Mr. Batty, said I upset the boat," she said, taking the coat +out of the wardrobe and brushing it briskly with a capable little hand.</p> + +<p>The coat reeked with perfumery, and Maurice said, "Phew!" to himself; +but threw it over his arm, and said that Mr. Batty had only himself to +blame. "A man ought to know enough not to let a lady move about in a +rowboat!"</p> + +<p>"Won't you be seated?" Lily said; she lighted a cigarette, and shoved +the box over to him, across the varnished glitter of the table top.</p> + +<p>Maurice, introducing himself—"My name's Curtis";—and, taking in all +the details of the comfortable, vulgar little room, sat down, took a +cigarette, and said it was a warm day for October; she said she hated +heat, and he said he liked winter best.... Then he saw a bruise on her +wrist and said: "Why, you gave yourself a dreadful knock, didn't you? +Was it on the rowlock?"</p> + +<p>Her face dropped into sullen lines: "It wasn't the boat did it."</p> + +<p>Maurice, with instant discretion, dropped the subject. But he was sorry +for her; she made him think of a beaten kitten. "You must take care of +that wrist," he said, his blue eyes full of sympathy. When he went away +he told himself he had spotted the big man as a brute the minute he saw +him. The "kitten" seemed to him so pathetic that he forgot Eleanor's +exquisiteness, and told her about the bruised wrist and the reeking +coat, and how pretty the girl was.</p> + +<p>"I don't know anything vulgarer than perfumery!" his wife said, with a +delicate shrug.</p> + +<p>Maurice agreed, adding, with a grin, that he had noticed that when +ladies were short on the odor of sanctity, they were long on the odor of +musk.</p> + +<p>"I always keep dried rose leaves in my bureau drawers," Eleanor said; +and he had the presence of mind to say, "You are a rose yourself!"</p> + +<p>A husband's "presence of mind" in addressing his wife is, of course, a +confession; it means they are not one—for nobody makes pretty speeches +to oneself! However, Maurice's "rose" made no such deduction.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX" ></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + + +<p>It was after Mr. Houghton had swallowed the scorched soup and meditated +infanticide, that boarding became inevitable. Several times that winter +Maurice said that Hannah "was the limit; so let's board?"</p> + +<p>And toward spring, in spite of the cavorting lambs and waddling ducks in +the little waiting, empty room upstairs, Eleanor yielded. "We can go to +housekeeping again," she thought, "<i>if</i>—"</p> + +<p>So the third year of their marriage opened in a boarding house. They +moved (Bingo again banished to Mrs. O'Brien), on their wedding +anniversary, and instead of celebrating by going out to "their river," +they spent a hot, grimy day settling down in their third-floor front.</p> + +<p>"If people come to see us," said Maurice, ruefully, standing with his +hands in his pockets surveying their new quarters, "they'll have to sit +on the piano!"</p> + +<p>"Nobody'll come," Eleanor said.</p> + +<p>Maurice's eyes narrowed: "I believe you need 'em, Nelly? I knock up +against people at the office, and I know several fellows and girls +outside—"</p> + +<p>"What girls?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, the fellows' sisters; but you—"</p> + +<p>"I don't want anybody but you!"</p> + +<p>Maurice was silent. Two years ago, when Eleanor had said almost the same +thing: she was willing to live on a desert island, <i>with him</i>!—it had +been oil on the flames of his love; now, it puzzled him. He didn't want +to live on a desert island, with anybody! He needed more than one man +"Friday," and any women "Thursdays" who might come along were joyously +welcomed. "I am a social beggar, myself," he said; and began to whistle +and fuss about, trying to bring order out of a chaos of books and +photographs and sheet music. She sat watching him—the alert, vigorous +figure; the keen face under the shock of blond hair; the blue eyes that +crinkled so easily into laughter. Her face was thinner, and there were +rings of fatigue under her dark eyes, and that little nursery in the +house they had left, made a swelling sense of emptiness in her heart. +("If I see any awfully pretty nursery paper this winter, I'll buy it, +and have it ready,—<i>in case</i> we should have to get another house," she +thought.) "Oh, do stop whistling," she said; "it goes through me!"</p> + +<p>"Poor Nelly!" he said, kindly, and stopped.</p> + +<p>The astonishing thing about the "boarding-house marriage," is that it +ever survives the strain of the woman's idleness and the man's +discomfort! But it does, occasionally. Even this marriage survived Miss +Ladd's boarding house, for a time. At first it went smoothly enough +because Maurice couldn't blame Eleanor's cook, and Eleanor couldn't say +that "nothing she did pleased Maurice"; so two reasons for irritability +were eliminated; but a new reason appeared: Maurice's eager interest in +everything and everybody—especially everybody!—and his endless good +nature, overflowed around the boarding-house table. Everyone liked him, +which Eleanor entirely understood; but he liked everyone,—which she +didn't understand.</p> + +<p>The note of this mutual liking was struck the very first night when +Maurice went down into the dingy basement dining room; he and Eleanor +made rather a sensation as they entered: Eleanor, handsome and silent, +produced the impression of cold reserve; Maurice, amiable and talkative, +gave a little shock of interest and pleasure to the fifteen or twenty +people eating indifferent food about a table covered with a not very +fresh cloth. Before the meal was over he had made himself agreeable to +an elderly woman on his left, ventured some drollery to a pretty +high-school teacher of mathematics opposite him, and given a man at the +end of the table the score. When Eleanor rose, Maurice had to rise, too, +though his dessert was not quite devoured; and as the couple left the +room there was a murmur of pleasure:</p> + +<p>"A real addition to our family," said Miss Ladd.</p> + +<p>The bond salesman said, "I wonder if he'll go to the ball game with me +on Saturday? I'll get the tickets."</p> + +<p>The school-teacher said, "He's awfully good looking."</p> + +<p>The widow's comment was only, "Nice boy."</p> + +<p>Upstairs in their own room, Maurice said: "What pleasant people! Nelly, +let's get some fun out of this; don't dash up here the minute you +swallow your food!"</p> + +<p>She wondered, silently, how he could call them "pleasant"! To her they +were all rather common, pushing persons, who wanted to talk to Maurice. +But as her one desire was to do what he liked, she really did try to +help him "get some fun out of them." Every night at dinner she smiled +laboriously when he teased the teacher, and she listened to the elderly +woman in mourning, whose clever talk was so absorbing to Maurice that +sometimes he didn't hear his wife speaking to him! Yes; Eleanor tried. +Yet, in less than a month Maurice found himself beside a boarder of his +own sex, instead of Mrs. Davis, and saw that the school-teacher was too +far down the table for jokes. When he asked why their seats had been +changed, Eleanor said she had felt a draught—which caused the widow to +smile, and write on a piece of paper an arithmetical statement: +"Selfishness + vanity - humor = jealousy." She handed it to the teacher, +who laughed and shrugged her shoulders:</p> + +<p>"But she's awfully in love with him," she conceded, under her breath.</p> + +<p>The older woman shook her head: "No, my dear; she isn't. No jealous +woman knows the meaning of love."</p> + +<p>But Eleanor did not see Miss Moore's contemptuous smile, or Mrs. Davis's +grave glance. One of the pitiful things about jealous people is that +they don't know how amusing—or else boring—or else irritating—they +are to an observant and entirely unsympathetic world! Eleanor had no +idea that the whole tableful of people knew she was jealous, and found +her ridiculous. She only knew that Maurice seemed to like them—which +meant that her society "wasn't enough for him "! So she tried to make it +enough for him. At dinner she talked to him so animatedly (and so +personally) that no one else could get a word in edgewise. Dinner over, +she was uneasy until she had dragged her eager-eyed young husband up to +the desert island of their third-floor front—a dingy room, with a +black-marble mantelpiece, and a worn and frowzy carpet. There were some +steel engravings, dim under their old glasses, on the wall,—Evangeline, +and Lincoln's Cabinet, and Daniel Webster in a rumpled shirt and a long +swallowtail;—all of which Eleanor's looking-glass and the mirrored +doors of a black-walnut wardrobe, reflected in multiplying dullness.</p> + +<p>Maurice's charming good nature in that first boarding winter never +failed. Eleanor's silences—which he had long since discovered were +merely empty, not mysterious—were at least no tax on his patience; so +he never once called her "silly." He did, occasionally, feel a faint +uneasiness lest people might think she was older than he—which was, of +course, the beginning of self-consciousness as to what he had done in +marrying her. But he loved her. He still loved her. "She isn't very +well," he used to defend her to Mrs. Newbolt; "she nearly killed +herself, saving my life. She's not been the same girl since."</p> + +<p>"'Girl'?" said Mrs. Newbolt; "she's exactly the same <i>woman</i>, only more +so because she's older. I hope she won't lose her figger; she's gettin' +thin. My dear grandmother—she was a Dennison; fat; I can hear her now +talkin' to her daughters: 'Girls! <i>Don't</i> lose your figgers!' She had +red hair."</p> + +<p>Eleanor had not lost her figure; it was still graciously erect, and with +lovely curves of bosom and shoulders; but, somehow, she seemed +older—older even than she was! Perhaps because of her efforts to be +girlish? It was as if she wore clothes she had outgrown—clothes that +were too tight and too short. She used Maurice's slang without its +virile appropriateness; when they accepted an invitation from one of +Maurice's new acquaintances, her anxiety to be of his generation was +pathetic—or ludicrous, as one happened to look at it. These friends of +Maurice's seemed to have innumerable interests in common with him that +she knew nothing about—and jokes! How tired she got of their jokes, +which were mostly preposterous badinage, expressed with entire solemnity +and ending in yells of laughter. Yet she tried to laugh, too; though she +rarely knew what it was all about. There is nothing which divides the +generations more sharply than their ideas of humor. But Eleanor tried, +very pitifully hard, to be silly with the kind of silliness which +Maurice seemed to enjoy; but, alas! she only achieved the silliness +which he—like every husband on earth!—hated: the silliness of small +jealousies. Once she told Maurice she didn't like those dinner parties +that his friends were always asking them to,—"I think it's nicer here," +she said.</p> + +<p>And he said, cheerfully: "Don't go! I don't mind going alone."</p> + +<p>"I know you don't," she said, wistfully.... "Why can't he be satisfied +to stay at home with me?" she said once to her aunt; and Mrs. Newbolt +told her why:</p> + +<p>"Because you don't interest him. Eleanor! if you want to keep that boy, +urge him to go out and have a good time, <i>without you</i>!" Then she added +some poignantly true remarks: "My dear father used to say, 'Just as many +men are faithless to their wives because their wives have plain minds, +as because other women have pretty faces.' Well, I'm afraid poor dear +mother's mind was plain; that's why I always made an effort to talk to +your uncle, and be entertainin'. And I'll tell you another thing—for +if I have a virtue it's candor—if you let him see you're jealous, he'll +make it worth your while! You've got a rip in the back seam of your +waist. No man ever keeps on lovin' a jealous woman; he just pretends to, +to keep the peace."</p> + +<p>Of course this was as unintelligible to Eleanor as it is to all women +of her type of mind. So, instead of considering Maurice's enjoyment of +society, she committed the absurdity of urging him to enjoy what she +enjoyed—a solitude of two. To herself she explained his desire to see +other people, by saying it was because they had no children. "When we +have a child, he won't want to be with those boys and girls! Oh, why +don't we have a baby?" Her longing for children was like physical +hunger. But only Mrs. O'Brien understood it. When Eleanor went, in her +faithful way, two or three times a week, to sing to little sickly Don +(and pet the boarding and rather pining Bingo), Mrs. O'Brien, listening +to the little songs, pretty and silly, would draw a puckery hand over +her eyes: "She'd ought to have a dozen of her own! If that boy don't +treat her good, I'll iron off every button he's got!"</p> + +<p>When Eleanor (hoping for a baby) worried lest Maurice's hopes, too, were +disappointed, her gentleness to him was passionate and beseeching; but +sometimes, watching his attention to other people, the gentleness grew +rigid in an accusation that, because they hadn't a child, he was +"getting tired of her"! Whenever she said this foolish thing, there +would come, afterward, a rain of repentant tears. But repentance cannot +always change the result of foolish words—and the result is so often +out of proportion to the words! As Maurice had said that day in their +meadow, of Professor Bradley and the banana skin—a very little thing +"can throw the switches," in human life!</p> + +<p>It was the "little thing" of a lead pencil, in keeping the accounts of +their endless games of solitaire, that threw the switches now, for +Maurice Curtis.... He happened to produce a very soft pencil, which he +had borrowed, he said, "from a darned pretty woman he was showing a +house to," and had forgotten to return to her.</p> + +<p>Eleanor said it seemed to her bad taste to talk of a strange woman that +way: "If she's a lady she wouldn't want a man she didn't know to speak +so—so lightly of her."</p> + +<p>"I have yet to meet one of your sex who objects to being called pretty," +Maurice said, dryly.</p> + +<p>To which Eleanor replied that she preferred a hard lead pencil, +anyhow,—but <i>her</i> wishes seemed to be of no importance! "You're tired +of me, Maurice." He said, "Oh, damn!" She said, "I won't have you swear +at me!"</p> + +<p>He pushed back his chair, toppled the flimsy table over, scattering all +the cards on the floor. The falling table struck her knee; she screamed; +he flung out of the room—out of the house, into the hot darkness of an +August night.... The switches were thrown....</p> + +<p>Down on Tyler Street there had been another quarrel—as trivial as the +difference of opinion as to hard and soft lead pencils, and again human +lives were shifted from one track to another. It was Lily who ran out +into the darkness, and wandered through the streets; then strayed down +to the bridge that spanned the hurrying black water of that same river +which, two years before, had lisped and laughed under Maurice and +Eleanor's happy eyes. Lily, watching the current, thought angrily of +Batty—then a passing elbow jostled her and some one said, "Beg pardon!" +She turned and saw Maurice.</p> + +<p>"Well, I do say!" she said; and Maurice, pausing at the voice in the +dark, began a brief, "Excuse me; I stumbled—" saw who it was, and said, +"Why, Miss Lily! How are you? I haven't seen you for an age!"</p> + +<p>She answered with some small jocosity; then suddenly struck her little +fist on the railing. "Well, I'm just miserable; that's how I am, if you +want to know! Batty—"</p> + +<p>Maurice frowned. "Has that pup hurt you?"</p> + +<p>She nodded: "I don't know why I put up with him!"</p> + +<p>"Shake him!" he advised, good-naturedly.</p> + +<p>"I 'ain't got any other friend." She spoke with half-laughing anger; +indeed, she was so pretty and so plucky that he forgot, for a moment, +the irritation at Eleanor which had driven him out into the night, and +it came into his mind that something ought to be done for girls like +this. He remembered that Eleanor herself had said so, "Perhaps I could +do something for her?" Eleanor had said.</p> + +<p>"She isn't bad," he thought, looking at Lily; "she's just a fool, like +all of 'em. But there ought to be some way of fishing 'em out of the +gutter, before they get to the very bottom. Maybe Eleanor could give her +a hand up?" Then he asked her about herself: Had she friends? Where did +her family live? Could she do any work? He was rather diverted by his +own philanthropy, but it seemed to him that it would be the decent thing +to advise the girl, seriously. "I'll talk to her," he thought. "Come +on!" he said; "let's hunt up some place and have something to eat."</p> + +<p>"I ain't hungry," she said—then saw the careless straightforwardness of +his face, and was straightforward herself: "I guess I'd better be going +home."</p> + +<p>"Oh, come on," he urged her.</p> + +<p>She yielded, with a little rollicking chuckle; and as they walked toward +a part of town more suitable for such excursions, she confided to him +she was twenty, and she'd been "around" for a year.</p> + +<p>("Twenty-five, if she's a day," he thought.)</p> + +<p>They strolled along for several blocks before discovering, in the +purlieus of Tyler Street, a dingy "ice-cream parlor," eminently fitted +for interviews with the Lilys of the locality. At a marble-topped table, +translucent with years of ice-cream rendezvous, they waited for his +order to be filled, and she saw the amused honesty of his face and he +saw the good nature of hers; which made him think again of Eleanor's +wish to help her.</p> + +<p>He urged some indifferent cake upon her, and joked about how many +saucers of ice cream they could consume between them; then he became +serious: Why didn't she drop Batty?</p> + +<p>"Oh," she said, "if I only <i>could</i> drop him! I hate him. He's the first +friend I've had."</p> + +<p>"Was he really the—the first?" Maurice said. His question was the old +human interest of playing with fire, but he supposed that it was a +desire to raise the fallen.</p> + +<p>"Well, except ... there was a man; I expected to marry <i>him</i>. Then +Batty, he come along."</p> + +<p>"I see," said Maurice. "Where's the first man?"</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> don't know. I was only sixteen."</p> + +<p>"Damn him!" Maurice said, sympathetically. He was so moved that he +ordered more ice cream; then it occurred to him that he ought to let her +know that he was entirely a philanthropist. "My wife and I'll help you," +he said.</p> + +<p>"Oh ... you're <i>married</i>? You're real young!" she commented.</p> + +<p>"I'm no chicken. My wife and I think exactly alike about these things. +Of course she's not a prude. She understands life, just as I do. And +she'd love to be a real friend to you. She'll put you on your feet, and +think none the worse of you. Tell me about yourself," he urged, +intimately; he felt some deep satisfaction stir within him, which he +supposed was his recognition of a moral purpose. But she drew back into +her own reserves.</p> + +<p>"They always ask that," she thought; and the momentary reality she had +shown hardened into the easy lying of her business: she told this or +that—the cruel father of fiction, who tried to drive her into marriage +with the rich old man; the wicked lover who destroyed trusting +innocence; the inevitable <i>facilis descensus</i>—Batty at last. And now +the ice-cream parlor in this dirty street, with the clear-eyed, +handsome, amused young man, who had forgotten his own anger in the +impulse, so frequent in the very young and very upright man, to "save" +some little creature of the gutter! As for Maurice, he said to himself, +"She's a sweet little thing; and not really bad."</p> + +<p>He was right there: Lily was not bad; she was as far from sin as she was +from virtue—just a little, unmoral, very amiable animal.</p> + +<p>As for Maurice, he continued to discuss her future of rectitude and +honor—his imagination reaching in a bound amazing heights. Why not be a +trained nurse?—and have a hospital of her own, and gather about her, as +assistants, girls who—"well, had had a tough time of it," he said, +delicately. As he talked, fatigue at the boredom of his highly moral +sentiments crept into her face. She swallowed an occasional yawn, and +murmured to most of his statements, "Is that so?" She was sleepy, and +wished he would stop talking....</p> + +<p>"Guess I'll be going along," she said, good-naturedly.</p> + +<p>"I'll come and see you to-morrow," Maurice said, impassioned with the +idea of saving her; "then I'll tell you what my wife will do for you."</p> + +<p>They went out together and walked toward Lily's rooms; but somehow they +both fell silent. Lily was again afraid of Batty, and Maurice's +exhilaration had begun to ebb; there came into his mind the bleak +remembrance of the overturned table and Eleanor's sobs....</p> + +<p>At the door of the apartment house where Lily lived, she said, +nervously, "I'd ask you to come in, but he—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I understand; I've no desire to meet the gentleman! What time will +I come to-morrow, when he's not around?"</p> + +<p>She reflected, uneasily: "Well, I ain't sure—"</p> + +<p>Before she could finish, Batty loomed up beside them. He was plainly +drunk. "I lost my key," he said; "and I've been waiting—"</p> + +<p>"Good night, Miss Lily," Maurice said,—"If he's nasty to her, I'll go +back," he thought. He was only halfway down the block when he heard a +little piping scream—"O-o-o-w! O-o-o-w!" He turned, and saw her trying +to pull her hand away from Batty's twisting grip: he was at her side in +a moment: "Here! <i>Drop</i> it!" he said, sharply—and landed an extremely +neat blow on the drunken man's jaw. Batty, rubbing his cheek, and +staring at this very unexpected assailant in profound and giggling +astonishment, slouched into the house.</p> + +<p>"He 'most twisted my hand off!" Lily said; "oh, ain't he the beast?" She +cringed and shook her bruised wrist, then gave Maurice an admiring look. +"My soul and body! you lit into him good!" she said; "what am I going to +do? I'm afraid to go in."</p> + +<p>"If I had a house of my own," Maurice said, "I'd take you home, and my +wife would look after you. But we are boarding.... Haven't you some +friend you could go to for to-night? ... To-morrow my wife will come and +see you," he declared.</p> + +<p>"Oh, gracious me, no!" In the midst of her anger she couldn't help +laughing. ("He's a reg'lar baby!" she thought.) "No; your wife's a busy +society lady, I'm sure. Don't bother about me. I'll just wait round till +he goes to sleep." She dabbed at her eyes with a little wet ball of a +handkerchief.</p> + +<p>"Here, take mine," he said. And with this larger and dryer piece of +linen, she did manage to make her face more presentable.</p> + +<p>"When he's asleep, I'll slip in," she said.</p> + +<p>"Well, let's go and sit down somewhere," Maurice suggested. She agreed, +and there was some haphazard wandering about in the darkness, then a +weary sitting on a bench in the park, marking time till Batty would +surely be asleep.</p> + +<p>"You sure handed one out to him," Lily said.</p> + +<p>Maurice chuckled at the role of knight-errant which she seemed to +discern in him, but he talked earnestly of her future, and once or +twice, soothed by his voice, she dozed—but he didn't know it. Indeed, +he told himself afterward that her silences showed how his words were +sinking in! "It only goes to prove," he thought, when at midnight he +left her at her own door, "that the <i>flower</i> is in all of them! If you +only go about it right, you can bring their purity to the surface! She +felt all I said. Eleanor will be awfully interested in her."</p> + +<p>He was quite sure about Eleanor; he had entirely forgiven her; he wanted +to wake her up, and sit on the edge of her bed, and tell her of his +evening, and what a glorious thing it would be to lift one lovely young +soul from the gutter.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X" ></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + + +<p>But Eleanor would not "wake up." Within an hour of her foolish outbreak +she had begun to listen for his returning step. Then she went to bed and +cried and cried, "He doesn't love me," she said, over and over; and once +she said, "it is because I am—" But she didn't finish this; she just +got up and went over to the bureau and stared into the mirror; she even +lit a candle and held it close to the glass; after a while she saw what +she was looking for. "Edith tried to make him notice them, that first +summer at Green Hill," she thought.</p> + +<p>At eleven she went to the window and watched, her eyes straining into +the darkness. When, far down the street, a man's figure came in range, +she held her breath until it walked into and out of the circling glare +of the arc light—not Maurice! It was after twelve when she saw him +coming—and instantly she flew back to her bed. When he entered the +faintly lighted room, Eleanor was, apparently, sound asleep.</p> + +<p>"Star?"</p> + +<p>No answer.</p> + +<p>He leaned over, saw the droop of her lip and the puffed eyelids—and +drew back. Perhaps, if he had kissed her, the soft lead pencil might not +have acted as Destiny; she might have melted under the forlorn story he +was so eager to tell her. But her tear-stained face did not suggest a +kiss.</p> + +<p>In the morning Eleanor had what she called a "bilious headache," and +when Maurice skirted the subject of the "<i>flower</i>," she was too +physically miserable to be interested. When she was well again, the +opportunity—if it was an opportunity!—was lost; her interest in Lily +was not needed, because a call at the apartment house showed Maurice +that Batty was forgiven. So he forgot his desire to lift the fallen, in +more of those arid moments with Eleanor; reproaches—and +reconciliations! Tears—and fire! But fires gradually die down under +tears, no matter how one spends one's breath blowing loving words on the +wet embers! Enough tears will put out any fire.</p> + +<p>Lily, too, was shedding angry tears in those days, and they probably had +their effect in cooling Batty's heart; for his unpleasantness finally +culminated in his leaving her, and by October she was living in the +yellow-brick apartment house alone, and very economically—yet not so +economically that she did not buy hyacinth bulbs for the blue and purple +glasses on her sunny window sill.</p> + +<p>Once Maurice, remembering with vague amusement his reformatory impulse, +went to see her; but he did not talk to Eleanor about the call. By this +time there were days when he talked as little as possible to Eleanor +about anything,—not because he was secretive—he hated secrecy! "It's +next door to lying," he thought, faintly disgusted at himself,—but +because she seemed to feel hurt if he was interested in anyone except +herself. Maurice had passed the point which had seemed so terrible at +Green Hill, where he had called his wife "silly." He never called her +silly now. He merely, over and over, called himself a fool.</p> + +<p>"I've made an ass of myself," he used to think, sorting out his cards +for solitaire and looking furtively at the thin face, with its lines of +wistful and faded beauty. At forty-two, a happy, busy woman, with a +sound digestion, will not look faded; on the contrary, she is at her +best—as far as looks are concerned! Eleanor was not happy; her +digestion was uncertain; she did not go into society, and she had no +real occupation, except to go every day to Mrs. O'Brien's and take Bingo +for a walk. Even her practicing had been pretty much given up, for fear +of disturbing the people on the floor below her.</p> + +<p>"Why don't you have some plants around?" Maurice suggested; "they'd give +you something to do! I saw a lot of hyacinths growing in glasses, once; +I'll buy some bulbs for you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm one of the people flowers won't grow for," she said.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Newbolt made a suggestion, too. "Pity you can't have Bingo to keep +you company. That's what comes of boarding. I knew a woman who boarded, +and she lost her teeth. Chambermaid threw 'em away. Come in and see me +any evening when Maurice is out."</p> + +<p>As Maurice was frequently out, the invitation was sometimes accepted, +and it was on one of these occasions that Mrs. Newbolt, spreading out +her cards on the green baize of her solitaire table with fat, beringed +hands, made her suggestion:</p> + +<p>"Eleanor, you've aged. I believe you're unhappy?"</p> + +<p>"No, I'm not! Why should I be?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I wouldn't blame you if you were," Mrs. Newbolt said. "'Course +you'd have brought it on yourself; I could have told you what to expect! +Your dear uncle Thomas used to say that, after a thing happened, I was +the one to tell people that they might have expected it. You see, I made +a point of bein' intelligent; of course I wasn't <i>too</i> intelligent. A +man doesn't like that. You're gettin' gray, Eleanor. Pity you haven't +children. <i>He</i> doesn't look very contented!—but men are men," said Mrs. +Newbolt.</p> + +<p>"He <i>ought</i> to be contented," Eleanor said, passionately; "I adore him!"</p> + +<p>"You've got to interest him," her aunt said; "that's more important than +adorin' him! A man can buy a certain kind of adoration, but he can't +purchase interest."</p> + +<p>"I don't know what you're talking about," Eleanor said, trembling.</p> + +<p>"Well, if you don't, I'm sure I can't tell you," Mrs. Newbolt said, +despairingly; but she made one more attempt: "My dear father used to say +that the finest tribute a man could put on his wife's tombstone would +be, '<i>She was interestin' to live with</i>.' So I tell you, Eleanor, if +you want to hold that boy, <i>make him laugh</i>!" She was so much in +earnest that for a few minutes she actually stopped talking!</p> + +<p>Eleanor could not make Maurice laugh—she never made anybody laugh! But +for a while she did "hold him"—because he was a gallant youngster, +making the best of his bargain. That he had begun to know it was a bad +bargain did not lessen his regret for his wife's childlessness, which he +knew made her unhappy, nor his pity for her physical forlornness—which +he blamed largely on himself: "She almost died that night on the +mountain, to save my life!"</p> + +<p>But he had ceased to be touched by her reiterated longing for children; +he was even a little bored by it. And he was very much bored by her +reproaches, her faint tempers and their following ardors of repentant +love—bitternesses, and cloying sweetnesses! Yet, in spite of these +things, the boarding-house marriage survived the lengthening of the +fifty-four minutes of ecstasy into three years. But it might not have +survived its own third winter had it not been that Maurice's +unfaithfulness enforced his faithfulness. For by spring that squabble +about lead pencils, which had turned his careless steps toward the +bridge, had turned his life so far from Eleanor's that he had been +untrue to her.</p> + +<p>He had not meant to be untrue; nothing had been farther from his mind or +purpose. But there came a bitter Sunday afternoon in March ...</p> + +<p>Eleanor, saying he did not "understand her," cried about +something—afterward Maurice was not sure just what—perhaps it was a +question from one of the other boarders about the early 'eighties, and +she felt herself insulted; "As if I could remember!" she told Maurice; +but whatever it was, he had tried to comfort her by joking about it. +Then she had reproached him for his unkindness—to most crying wives a +joke is unkind. Then she had said that he was tired of her! At which he +took refuge in silence—and she cried out that he acknowledged it!</p> + +<p>"You can't deny it! You're tired of me because I'm older than you!"</p> + +<p>And he said, between his teeth, "If you were old enough to have any +sense, I wouldn't be tired of you."</p> + +<p>She gave a cry; then stood, the back of her hand against her lips, her +eyes wide with terror.</p> + +<p>Maurice threw down a book he had been trying to read, got up, plunged +into his overcoat, pulled his hat down over his eyes, and, without a +word, walked out of the room. A moment later the front door banged +behind him. Eleanor, alone, stood perfectly still; she had said foolish +things like that many times; she rather liked to say them! But she had +not believed them; now, her own words were a boomerang,—they seemed to +strike her in the face! <i>He was tired of her.</i> Instantly she was alert! +What must she do? She sat down, tense with thought; first of all, she +must be sweet to him; she mustn't be cross; then she must try (Mrs. +Newbolt had told her so!) to "entertain" him. "I'll read things, and +talk to him the way Mrs. Davis does!" She must sew on his buttons, and +scold poor old O'Brien.... With just this same silent determination she +had hurried to act that night on the mountain!</p> + +<p>But while she was sitting there in their cheerless room, planning and +planning!—Maurice was out, wandering about in the gray afternoon. It +had begun to snow, in a fitful, irritating way—little gritty pellets +that blew into his face. He had nowhere to go—four o'clock is a dead +time to drop in on people! He had nothing to do, and nothing to think +of—except the foolish, middle-aged woman, stating, in their dreary +third-floor front, an undeniable fact—he was tired of her! Walking +aimlessly about in the cold, he said to himself, dully, "Why <i>was</i> I +such an idiot as to marry her?" He was old enough to curse himself for +his folly, but he was young enough to suffer, agonies of mortification, +and to pity himself, too; pity himself for the mere physical discomfort +of his life: the boarding-house table, with its uninteresting food; the +worn shirt cuff which was scratching his wrist; and he pitied himself +for his spiritual discomfort—when Eleanor called him "darling" at the +dinner table, or exhibited her jealousy before people! "They're sorry +for me—confound 'em!" he thought.... Yet how trivial the cuff was, or +even—yes, even the impertinence which was "sorry" for him!—how +unimportant, when compared to a ring of braided grass, and the smell of +locust blossoms, and a lovely voice, rising and falling:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"O Spring!"</p></div> + +<p>"Oh, <i>damn</i>!" he said to himself, feeling the scrape of worn linen on +the back of his hand. Then he fell into certain moody imaginings with +which that winter he frequently and harmlessly amused himself. He used +to call these flights of fancy "fool thoughts"; but they were at least +an outlet to his smoldering irritation, "Suppose I should kick over +the traces some day?" his thoughts would run; and again, "Suppose I +should be in a theater fire, and 'disappear,' and never come back, and +she'd think I was dead," "Suppose there should be a war, and I should +enlist," ... and so forth, and so forth. "Fool thoughts," of course!—but +Maurice is not the only man upon whom a jealous woman has thrust such +thoughts, or who has found solace in the impossible! So, now, wandering +about in the cold, he amused himself by imagining various ways of +"kicking over the traces"; then, suddenly, it occurred to him that he +wanted something to eat. "By George!" he thought, "I'll get that girl, +Lily, and we'll go and have a good dinner!"</p> + +<p>Even in the rococo vestibule of the yellow-brick apartment house, while +he pressed the bell below Miss Lily Dale's letter box, he began to feel +a glow of comfort; and when Lily let him into her little parlor, all +clean and vulgar and warm, and fragrant with blossoming bulbs, and gave +him a greeting that was almost childlike in its laughing pleasure, his +sense of physical well-being was a sort of hitting back at Eleanor.</p> + +<p>"Oh," said little Lily, "my! Ain't you cold! Why, your hand's just like +ice!"</p> + +<p>He let her help him off with his coat, and push him into what had been +the vanished Batty's chair; then she saw that his feet were wet, and +insisted (to his horror) on unlacing his boots and making him put on a +pair of slippers.</p> + +<p>"But I was going to take you out to dinner," he remonstrated.</p> + +<p>She said: "Oh no! It's cold. I'll cook something for you, and we'll have +our dinner right by that fire."</p> + +<p>"Can you cook?" he said, with admiring astonishment.</p> + +<p>"You bet I can!" she said; "I'll give you a <i>good</i> supper: you just +wait!" In her pretty, laughing face was very honest friendliness. "I +'ain't forgot that time you handed it out to Batty! He had a bruise on +his chin for a week!"</p> + +<p>"A steak!" he exclaimed, watching her preparations in the tiny closet of +a kitchen that opened into her parlor.</p> + +<p>She nodded: "Ain't it luck to have it in the house? A friend of mine +gave it to me this afternoon; her father's a butcher; and he's got a +dandy shop on the next block; an' Annie run in with it, an' she says" +(Lily was greasing her broiler), "'there,' she says, 'is a present for +you!'"</p> + +<p>Maurice insisted upon helping, and was told where to get the dishes and +what to put on the table, and that if he opened that closet he'd see the +beer. "I got just one bottle," she said, chuckling; "Batty stocked up. +When he lit out, that was all he left behind him."</p> + +<p>"Seen him lately?" Maurice asked.</p> + +<p>Lily's face changed. "I 'ain't seen—anyone, since November," she said; +"I'm a saleslady at Marston's. But I'll have to get out of this flat +when Batty's lease runs out. He took it by the year. He was going to +'settle down,' and 'have a home,'—you know the talk? So he took it for +the year. Well, he said I could stay till June. So I'm staying. There! +It's done!" She put the sizzling steak on a platter and pressed butter +and pepper and salt into it with an energetic knife and fork. "I bet," +she said, "you wouldn't get a better steak than this at the Mercer +House!"</p> + +<p>"I bet I wouldn't get one as good," he assured her.</p> + +<p>As he ate his extremely well-cooked steak, and drank a cup of extremely +well-made coffee, and reflected that the pretty, amber-eyed woman who, +after the manner of her kind, had already dropped into the friendliness +of a nickname, and who waited on him with a sweet deftness, was a +reformed character, owing, no doubt, to his own efforts, Maurice, +comfortable in mind and body, felt the intense pleasure of punishing +Eleanor by his mere presence in Lily's rooms. For, <i>if she could know +where he was</i>!... "Gosh!" said Maurice. But of course she never would +know. He wouldn't think of telling her where he had spent his evening; +which shows how far they had drifted apart since that night when he had +come home in his shirt sleeves, and been so eager to tell her how he had +given his coat to the "poor thing"!</p> + +<p>No; if he told Eleanor of Lily, now, there would be no sympathy for a +girl who was really trying to keep straight; no impulse to do any +"uplift" work! For that matter, Lily could do something in the way of +uplift for Eleanor! ... Look at this tidy, gay little room, and the +well-cooked steak, and the bulbs on the window sill! He strolled over +and looked at the row of purple hyacinth glasses, full now of threadlike +roots and topped with swelling buds. "You're quite a gardener," he said.</p> + +<p>"Well, there!" said Lily; "if I hadn't but ten cents, I'd spend five for +a flower!"</p> + +<p>After they had washed the dishes together she made him comfortable in +the big chair, and even put a blossoming hyacinth on the table beside +him, so he could smell it now and then. Then she sat down on a hassock +at his feet, with her back to the fire, and, flecking off the ashes of +her cigarette over her shoulder, she talked a friendly trickle of funny +stories; Maurice, smoking, too, thought how comfortable he was, and how +pleasant it was to have a girl like Lily to talk to. Once or twice he +laughed uproariously at some giggling joke. "She has lots of fun in +her," he reflected; "and she's a bully cook; and her hair is mighty +pretty.... Say, Lily, don't you want to trim my cuff? It's scratching me +to death."</p> + +<p>"You bet I do!" Lily said, and got her little shiny scissors and trimmed +the broken edge of a worn-out cuff that Eleanor had never noticed.</p> + +<p>He felt her small, warm fingers on his hand, and had a sense of comfort +that made him almost forget Eleanor. "It would serve her right if I took +Lily on," he thought. But he had not the remotest intention of taking +Lily on! He only played with the idea, because the impossible reality +would serve Eleanor right.</p> + +<p>It was a month or two later, on the rebound of another dreariness with +Eleanor, that the reality came, and he did "take Lily on." When he did +so, no one could have been more astonished—under his dismay and +horror—than Maurice.</p> + +<p>Unless it was Lily? She had been so certain that he had no ulterior +purpose, and so completely satisfied with her own way of living, that +her rather snuggling friendliness with him was as honest as a boy's. Her +surprise at her own mistake showed how genuine her intention of +straightness really was. When he came, once or twice to see her, he +called her Lily, and she called him "Curt," and they joked together like +two playfellows,—except when he was too gloomy to joke. But it was his +gloominess that made her feel sure there was nothing but friendliness in +his calls. She was not curious about him; she knew he was married, but +she never guessed that his preoccupation—during the spring Maurice was +very preoccupied with his own wretchedness and given to those cynical +fancies about "theater fires";—was due to the fact that he and his wife +didn't get along. She merely supposed that, like most of her "gentlemen +friends," "Curt" didn't talk about his wife. But, unlike the gentlemen +of her world he was, apparently, a husband whose acquaintance with her +had its limits. So they were both astonished....</p> + +<p>But when Maurice discovered that such acquaintance had also its risks, +the shock was agonizing. He was overwhelmed with disgust and shame. +Once, at his desk, brooding over what had happened, his whipping +instinct of truthfulness roused a sudden, frantic impulse in him to go +home and confess to Eleanor, and ask her to forgive him. She never +would, of course! No woman would; Eleanor least of all. But oh, if he +only could tell her! As he couldn't, remorse, with no outlet of words, +smoldered on his consciousness, as some hidden and infected wound might +smolder in his flesh. Yet he knew there would be no further +unfaithfulness. He would never, he told himself, see Lily again! <i>That</i> +was easy! He was done with all "Lilys." If he could only shed the +self-knowledge which he was unable to share with Eleanor, as easily as +he could shed Lily, how thankful he would be! If he could but forget +Lily by keeping away from her! But of course he could not forget. And +with memory, and its redeeming pain of shame, was also the stabbing +mortification of knowing that he had made a fool of himself, <i>again</i>! +First Eleanor; then—Lily. Sometimes, with this realization of his +idiocy, he would feel an almost physical nausea. It was so horrible to +him, that when, a month later, the anniversary which marked his first +folly came around again, he made an excuse of having to be away on +business. It seemed to Maurice that to go out to their field, with this +loathsome secrecy (which was, of course, an inarticulate lie) buried in +his soul, would be like carrying actual corruption in his hands! So he +went out of town on some trumped-up engagement, and Eleanor, left to +herself, took little pining Bingo for a walk. In a lonely; place in the +park, holding the dog on her knee, she looked into his passionately +loving liquid eyes and wiped her own; eyes on his silky ears....</p> + +<p>Those were aging months for Maurice; and though, of course, the +poignancy of shame lessened after a while, it left its imprint on his +face, as well as on his mind. They speculated about it at the office: +"'G. Washington's' got a grouch on," one clerk said; "probably told the +truth and lost a transfer! Let's give him another hatchet."</p> + +<p>And the friendly people at the boarding house noticed the change in him. +He had almost nothing to say, now, at dinner—no more jokes with the +school-teacher, no more eager talks with the gray-haired woman....</p> + +<p>"Has she forbidden conversation, do you suppose?" Miss Moore asked, +giggling; but the widow said, soberly, that she was afraid Mr. Curtis +was troubled about something. Mrs. Newbolt saw that there was something +wrong with him, and talked of it to Eleanor, without a pause, for an +hour. And of course Eleanor felt a difference in him; all day long, in +the loneliness of their third-floor front, under the gaze of Daniel +Webster, she brooded over it. Even while she was reading magazines and +plodding through newspaper editorials on public questions she had never +heard of, so that she could find things to talk about to him, she was +thinking of the change, and asking herself what she had done—or left +undone—to cause it? She also asked him:</p> + +<p>"Maurice! Something bothers you! I'm not enough for you. What <i>is</i> the +matter?"</p> + +<p>He said, shortly, "Nothing."</p> + +<p>At which she retreated into the silence of hurt feelings. Once, she +knelt down, her face hidden on the grimy bed-spread, and prayed: "God, +<i>please</i> give us a child—that will make him happy. And show me what to +do to please him! Show me! Oh, <i>show</i> me! I'll do anything!" And who can +say that her prayer was not answered? For certainly an idea did spring +into her mind: those tiresome people downstairs—he liked to talk to +them;—to Miss Moore, who giggled, and tried, Eleanor thought, to seem +learned; and to the elderly woman who told stories. How could he enjoy +talking to them when he could talk to her? But he did. So, suppose she +tried to be more sociable with them? "I might invite Mrs. Davis to come +up to our room some evening—and I would sing for her? ... But not Miss +Moore; she is <i>too</i> silly, with her jokes!" Her mind strained to find +ways to be friendly with these people he seemed to like. And +circumstances helped her....</p> + +<p>That was the month of the great eclipse. For a week Miss Ladd's boarders +had talked about it, exchanging among themselves much newspaper +astronomical misinformation—which the learned Miss Moore good-naturedly +corrected. It was her suggestion that the household should make a night +of it: "Let's all go up on the roof and see the show!" So the friendly +gayety was planned—a supper in the basement dining room at half past +eleven—ginger ale! ice cream! chocolate! Then an adjournment <i>en masse</i> +to the top of the house. Of course Miss Moore, engineering the affair, +invited the Curtises, confident of a refusal—and an acceptance;—both +of which, indeed, she secured; but, to her astonishment, it was Mr. +Curtis who declined, and his wife who accepted.</p> + +<p>"It's a bore," Maurice told Eleanor, listlessly.</p> + +<p>She looked worried: "Oh, I am so sorry! I told them at luncheon that we +would come. I thought you'd enjoy it" (Her acceptance, which had been a +real sacrifice to her, was a bomb to the other boarders. "What <i>has</i> +happened?" they said to each other, blankly. "She'll be an awful wet +blanket," some one said, frowning; and some one else said, "She's +accepted because she won't let him out at night, alone!")</p> + +<p>When the heterogeneous household gathered in the dining room, and corks +popped and jokes were made, Eleanor and Maurice were there; he, watching +the other people eat and drink and saying almost nothing; she, talking +nervously and trying hard to be slangy about astronomy. Once he looked +at her with faint interest—for she was so evidently "trying"! At +midnight they all toiled up four flights of stairs from the basement to +the garret, where, with proper squeamishness on the part of the ladies, +and much gallantry of pushing and pulling on the part of the gentlemen, +and all sorts of awkwardnesses and displaying of legs, they climbed a +ladder and got out through the scuttle on to the flat roof. Then came +the calculating of minutes, and facetiousness as to other people's +watches and directions as to what one might expect to see. "It'll look +like a bite out of a cookie, when it begins," the bond salesman said; +and Miss Ladd tittered, and said what the ladies wanted to see was the +man in the moon!</p> + +<p>Maurice, intolerably irked, had moved across to the parapet and was +staring out over the city. Below him spread the dim expanse of roofs and +chimneys, with here and there the twinkle of light in an attic window. +Leaning on the coping and looking down, he thought of the humanity under +the dark roofs: a horizontal humanity—everybody asleep! The ugly fancy +came to him that if that sleeping layer of bodies could be stirred up, +there would be instantly a squirming mass of loathsome thoughts—maggots +of lust, and shame, and jealousy, and fear. "My God! we're a nasty lot," +he thought.</p> + +<p>"Look!" a voice said at his shoulder. He sighed, impatiently—and +looked. Above him soared the abyss of space, velvet black, pricked +faintly here and there by stars; and, riding high—eternal and +serene—the Moon.</p> + +<p>He heard Miss Moore say, "<i>It's beginning.</i>" ... And the solemn curve of +the Shadow touched the great disk. No one spoke: they stood—a handful +of little human creatures, staring up into immensity; specks of +consciousness on a whirling ball that was rushing forever into the void, +and, as it rushed, its shadow, sweeping soundless through the emptiness +of Space, touched the watching Moon ... and the broad plaque, silver +gilt, lessened—lessened. To half. To a quarter. To a glistening line. +Then coppery darkness.</p> + +<p>No one spoke. The flow of universes seemed to sweep personality out upon +eternal tides. Yet, strangely, Maurice felt a sudden uprush of +personality! ... Little he was—oh, infinitely little; too little, of +course, to be known by the Power that could do this—spread out the +heavens, and rule the deeps of Space; and yet he felt, somehow, near to +the Power. "It's what they call God, I suppose?" he said. It flashed +into his mind that he had said almost exactly the same thing that day in +the field (when he was a fool), of the fire of joy in his breast: he had +said that Happiness was God! And some people thought this stupendous +Energy could know—<i>us</i>? Absurd! "Might as well say a man could know an +ant." Yet, just because Inconceivable Greatness was great, mightn't it +know Inconceivable Littleness? "The smaller I am—the nastier, the +meaner, the more contemptible—the greater It would have to be to know +me? To say I was too little for It to know about, would be to set a +limit to Its greatness." How foolish Reason looks, limping along behind +such an intuition—Intuition, running and leaping, and praising God! +Maurice's reason strained to follow Intuition: "If It knows about me, It +could help me, ... because It holds the stars. Why! <i>It</i> could fix +things—with Eleanor!" Looking up into the gulf, his tiny misery +suddenly fell away. "It would just prove Its greatness, to help me!" +While he groped thus for God among the stars, the order of rushing +worlds brought light, just as it had brought darkness: first a gleam; +then a curving thread; then a silver sickle; then, magnificently! a +shield of light—and the moon's unaltered face looked down at them. +Maurice had an overwhelming impulse to drop his weakness into endless, +ageless, limitless Power; his glimmer of self-knowledge, into enormous +All-Knowledge; his secrecy into Truth. An impulse to be done with +silences. "God knows; so Eleanor shall know." The idea of telling the +truth was to Maurice—slipping and sinking into bottomless lying—like +taking hold upon the great steadinesses of the sky....</p> + +<p>People began to talk; Maurice did not hear them. Miss Ladd made a joke; +Miss Moore said something about "light miles"; the old, sad, clever +woman said, "The firmament showeth his handiwork,"—and instantly, as +though her words were a signal—a voice, as silvery as the moon, broke +the midnight with a swelling note:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The spacious firmament on high,<br /> +With all the blue ethereal sky ..."</p></div> + +<p>A shock of attention ran through the watchers on the roof: Eleanor, +standing with her hands clasped lightly in front of her, her head thrown +back, her eyes lifted to the unplumbed deeps, was singing:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The moon takes up the wondrous tale +And nightly to the listening earth +Repeats the story of her birth; +Whilst all the stars that round her burn, +And all the planets in their turn—"</p></div> + +<p>A window was thrown open in a dark garret below, and some one, unseen, +listened. Down in the street, two passers-by paused, and looked up. No +one spoke. The voice soared on—and ended:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Forever singing as they shine...."</p></div> + +<p>Maurice came to her side and caught her hand. There was a long sigh from +the little group. For several minutes no one spoke. Miss Moore wiped her +eyes; the baseball fan said, huskily, "My mother used to sing that"; the +widow touched Eleanor's shoulder. "My—my husband loved it," she said, +and her voice broke.</p> + +<p>The garret window slammed down; the two people in the street vanished in +the darkness. The little party on the roof melted away; they climbed +through the scuttle, forgetting to joke, but saying to each other, in +lowered voices: "Would you have <i>believed</i> it?" "How wonderful!" And to +Eleanor, rather humbly: "It was beautiful, Mrs. Curtis!"</p> + +<p>In their own room, Maurice took his wife in his arms and kissed her. "I +am going to tell her," he said to himself, calmly. The overwhelming +grandeur of the heavens had washed him clean of fear, clean even of +shame, and left him impassioned with Beauty and Law, which two are +Truth. "I will tell her," he said.</p> + +<p>Eleanor had sung without self-consciousness; but now, when they were +back again in their room—so stifling after those spaces between the +worlds!—self-consciousness flooded in: "I suppose it was queer?" she +said.</p> + +<p>"It was perfect," Maurice said; he was very pale.</p> + +<p>"I wanted to do something that they would like, and I thought they might +like a hymn? Some of them said they did. But if you liked it, that is +all I want."</p> + +<p>"I loved it." His heart was pounding in his throat.... "Eleanor" (he +could hardly see that terrible path among the stars, but he stumbled +upward), "Eleanor, I'm not good enough for you."</p> + +<p>"Not good enough? For <i>me</i>?" She laughed at such absurdity. He was +sitting down, his elbow on his knee, his head in his hand. She came and +knelt beside him. "If you are only happy! I did it to make you happy."</p> + +<p>She heard him catch his breath. "How much do you love me?" he said.</p> + +<p>(Oh, how long it was since he had talked that way—asking the sweet, +unanswerable question of happy love!—how long since he had spoken with +so much precious foolishness!) "How <i>much</i>? Why, Maurice, I love you so +that sometimes, when I see you talking to other people—even these +tiresome people here in the house, I could just die! I want you all to +myself! I—I guess I feel about you the way Bingo feels about me," she +said, trying to joke—but there were tears in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"I'm not always ... what I ought to be," he said; "I am not—" (the path +was very dim)—"awfully good. I—"</p> + +<p>"I suppose I'm naturally jealous," she confessed; "I could die for you, +Maurice; but I couldn't share your little finger! Do you remember, on +our wedding day, you made me promise to be jealous? Well, I <i>am</i>." She +laughed—and he was dumb. There, on the roof, Truth seemed as inevitable +as Law. It did not seem inevitable now. He had lost his way among the +stars. He could not find words to begin his story. But words overflowed +on Eleanor's lips!... "Sometimes I get to thinking about myself—I <i>am</i> +older than you, you know, a little. Not that it matters, really; but +when I see you with other people, and you seem to enjoy talking to +them—it nearly kills me! And you <i>do</i> like to talk to them. You even +like to talk to—Edith, who is rude to me!" Her words poured out +sobbingly: "Why, <i>why</i> am I not enough for you? You are enough for me!"</p> + +<p>He was silent.</p> + +<p>"And ... and ... and we haven't a baby," she said in a whisper, and +dropped her face on his knee.</p> + +<p>He tried to lift her, but his soul was sinking within him; dropping +down—down from the awful heights. Yet still he caught at Truth! "Dear, +don't! As for people, I may talk to them; I may even—even be with them, +or seem to like them, and—and do things, that—I don't love anybody but +you, Eleanor; but I—I—"</p> + +<p>It was a final clutch at the Hand that holds the stars. But his +entreating voice broke, for she was kissing his confession from his +lips. Those last words—"I don't love anybody but you"—folded her in +complete content! "Dear," she said, "that's all I want—that you don't +love anybody but me." She laid her wet cheek against his in silence.</p> + +<p>What could he do but be silent, too? What could he do but choke down the +confessing, redeeming words that were on his lips? So he did choke them +down, turning his back on the clean freedom of Truth; and the burden of +his squalid secret, which he had been ready to throw away forever, was +again packed like some corroding thing in his soul....</p> + +<p>When, late in August, he and Eleanor went to Green Hill for a few days +vacation, the effect of this repression was marked. There were wrinkles +on his forehead under the thatch of his blond hair; his blue eyes were +dulled, and he was taciturn to the point of rudeness—except to Eleanor. +He was very polite to Eleanor. He never, now, amused himself by +imagining how he could disappear if he had the luck to be in a theater +fire. He knew that because he had enslaved himself to a lie, he had lost +the right even to dream freedom. So there were no more "fool thoughts" +as to how a man might "kick over the traces." There was nothing for him +to do, now (he said), but "play the game." The Houghtons were uneasily +aware of a difference in him; and Edith, fifteen now, felt that he had +changed, and had fits of shyness with him. "He's like he was that night +on the river," she told herself, "when he gave the lady his coat." She +sighed when she said this, and it occurred to her that she would be a +missionary. "I won't get married," she thought; "I'll go and nurse +lepers. He's <i>exactly</i> like Sir Walter Raleigh."</p> + +<p>But of course she had moments of forgetting the lepers—moments when she +came down to the level of people like Johnny Bennett. When this +happened, she thought that, instead of going to the South Seas, she +would become a tennis star and figure in international tournaments; even +Johnny admitted that she served well—for a girl. One day she confessed +this ambition to Maurice, but he immediately beat her so badly that she +became her old childlike, grumpy self, and said Johnny was nicer for +singles; which enabled Maurice to turn her loose on John and go off +alone to climb the mountain. He had a dreary fancy for looking at the +camp, and living over again those days when he was still young—and a +fool, of course; but not so great a fool as now, with Lily living in a +little flat in Mercer. Batty's lease had expired, and she had moved into +a cheaper, but still ornate, apartment house on the other side of the +river. Well! Lily had floated into his life as meaninglessly as a mote +floats into a streak of light, and then floated out again. He hadn't +seen her since—since that time in May.</p> + +<p><i>"Ass—ass!"</i> he said to himself. "If Eleanor <i>knew</i>," he thought, +"there'd be a bust-up in two minutes." He even smiled grimly to think of +that evening of the eclipse when, shaken by the awful beauty of eternal +order, he had, for just one high moment, dreamed that he, too, could +attain the orderliness of Truth—and tell Eleanor. "Idiot!" he said, +contemptuously. Probably Maurice touched his lowest level when he said +that; for to be ashamed of an aspiration, to be contemptuous of emotion, +is to sin against the Holy Ghost.</p> + +<p>When Maurice reached the camp he stood for a while looking about him. +The shack had not wintered well: the door sagged on a broken hinge, and +the stovepipe had blown over and lay rusting on the roof. In the +blackened circle of stones were some charred logs, which made him think +of the camp fire on that night of Eleanor's courage and love and terror. +He even reverted to those first excuses for her: "She nearly killed +herself for me. Nervous prostration, Doctor Bennett said. I suppose a +woman never gets over that. Poor Eleanor!" he said, softening; "it +would kill her ... if she knew." He sat down and looked off across the +valley ... "What am I going to do?" he said to himself. "I can't make her +happy; I'd like to, but you can't reason with her any more than if she +was a child. Edith has ten times her sense! How absurd she is about +Edith. Lord! what would she do if she knew about Lily!"</p> + +<p>He reflected, playing with the mere horror of the thought, upon just how +complete the "bust-up" would be if she knew! He realized that he had +undeserved good luck with Lily; she hadn't fastened herself on him. She +was decent about that; if she'd been a different sort, he might have had +a nasty time. But Lily was a sport—he'd say that for her; she hadn't +clawed at him! And she had protested that she didn't want any money, and +wouldn't take it! And she hadn't taken it. He had made some occasional +presents, but nothing of any value. He had given her nothing, hardly +even a thought (except the thought that he was an ass), since last May. +Thinking of her now, he had another of those pangs of shame which had +stabbed him so at first, but to which of late he had grown callous. The +shame of having been the one—after all his goody-goody talk!—to pull +her off the track; still, she was straight again now. He was quite sure +of that. "You can tell when they're straight," he thought, heavily. +Perhaps, in the winter, he would send her some flowers. He thought of +the bulbs on the window sill of Lily's parlor, and tried to remember a +verse; something about—about—what was it?</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>If of thy store there be<br /> + But left two loaves,<br /> +Sell one, and with the dole<br /> + Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul."</p></div> + +<p>He laughed; <i>Lily</i>, feeding her "soul"! "Well, she has more 'soul,' with +her flower pots and her good cooking, than some women who wouldn't touch +her with a ten-foot pole! Still, <i>I'm</i> done with her!" he thought. But +he had no purpose of "uplift"; the desire to reform Lily had evaporated. +"Queer; I don't care a hoot," he told himself, watching with lazy eyes +the smoke from his pipe drift blue between himself and the valley +drowsing in the heat. "I'd like to see the little thing do well for +herself—but really I don't give a damn." His moral listlessness, in +view of the acuteness of that first remorse, and especially of that +moment among the stars, when he had stretched out hands passionately +eager for the agonizing sacrament of confession, faintly surprised him. +How could he have been so wrought up about it? He looked off over the +valley—saw the steely sickle of the river; saw a cloud shadow touch the +shoulder of a mountain and move down across the gracious bosom of its +forests. Below him, chestnuts twinkled and shimmered in the sun, and +there were dusky stretches of hemlocks, then open pastures, vividly +green from the August rains.... "It ought to be set to music," he +thought; the violins would give the flicker of the leaves—"and the +harps would outline the river. Eleanor's voice is lovely ... she looks +fifty. How," he pondered, interested in the mechanics of it, "did she +ever get me into that wagon?" Then, again, he was sorry for her, and +said, "Poor girl!" Then he was sorry for himself. He knew that he was +tired to death of Eleanor—tired of her moods and her lovemaking. He was +not angry with her; he did not hate her;—he had injured her too much to +hate her; he was simply unutterably tired of her—what he did hate, was +this business of lugging a secret around! "I feel," he said to himself, +"like a dog that's killed a hen, and had the carcass tied around his +neck." His face twitched with disgust at his own simile. But as for +Eleanor, he had been contemptibly mean to her, and, "By God!" he +said to himself, "at least I'll play the game. I'll treat her as well as +I can. Other fools have married jealous women, and put up with them. +But, good Lord!" he thought, with honest perplexity, "can't the women +<i>see</i> how they push you into the very thing they are afraid of, because +they bore you so infernally? If I look at a woman, Eleanor's on her +ear.... Queer," he pondered; "she's good. Look how kind she is to old +O'Brien's lame child. And she <i>can</i> sing." He hummed to himself a lovely +Lilting line of one of Eleanor's songs. "Confound it! why did I meet +Lily? Eleanor is a million times too good for me...."</p> + +<p>Far off he heard a sound and, frowning, looked toward the road: yes; +somebody was coming! "Can't a man get a minute to himself?" Maurice +thought, despairingly. It was the mild-eyed and spectacled Johnny +Bennett, and behind him, Edith, panting and perspiring, and smiling +broadly.</p> + +<p>"Hello!" she called out, in cheerful gasps; "thought we'd come up and +walk home with you!"</p> + +<p>"'Lo," Maurice said.</p> + +<p>The boy and girl achieving the rocky knoll on which Maurice was sitting, +his hands locked about his knees, his eyes angry and ashamed, staring +over the treetops, sat down beside him. Johnny pulled out his pipe, and +Edith took off her hat and fanned herself. "Mother and Eleanor went for +a ride. I thought I'd rather come up here."</p> + +<p>"Um—" Maurice said.</p> + +<p>"Two letters for you," she said. "Eleanor told me to bring 'em up. Might +be business."</p> + +<p>As she handed them to him, his eye caught the address on one of them, +and a little cold tingle suddenly ran down his spine. Lily had never +written to him, but some instinct warned him that that cramped +handwriting on the narrow lavender envelope, forwarded from the office, +could only be hers. A whiff of perfumery made him sure. He had a pang of +fright. At what? He could not have said; but even before he opened the +purple envelope he knew the taste of fear in his mouth....</p> + +<p>Sitting there on the mountain, looking down into the misty serenities of +the sun-drenched valley, with the smoke of Johnny Bennett's pipe in his +nostrils, and the friendly Edith beside him, he tore open the scented +envelope, and as his eyes fell on the first lines it seemed as if the +spreading world below rose up and hit him in the face:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR FRIEND CURT,—I don't know what you'll say. I hope you won't be +mad. I'm going to have a baby. <i>It's yours</i>....</p></div> + +<p>Maurice could not see the page, a wave of nausea swamped even his +horror; he swallowed—swallowed—swallowed. Edith heard him gasp, and +looked at him, much interested.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter with your hands?" Edith inquired. "Johnny! Look at +his hands!"</p> + +<p>Maurice's fingers, smoothing out the purple sheet, were shaking so that +the paper rustled. He did not hear her. Then he read the whole thing +through to its laconic end:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>It's yours</i>—honest to God. Can you help me a little? Sorry to trouble +you on your vacation.</p> + +<p>Your friend,</p> + +<p>LILY.</p></div> + +<p>"What <i>is</i> the matter with your hands?" Edith said, very much +interested.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI" ></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + + +<p>When, a year after his marriage, Maurice began to awaken to Eleanor's +realities, maturity had come to him with a bound. But it was almost age +that fell upon him when Lily's realities confronted him. In the late +afternoon, as he and Edith and the silent Johnny walked down the +mountain, he was dizzy with terror of Lily!</p> + +<p><i>She was blackmailing him.</i></p> + +<p>But even as he said the word, he had an uprush of courage; he would get +a lawyer, and shut her up! That's what you do when anybody blackmails +you. Perfectly simple. "A lawyer will shut her up!" It was a hideous +mess, and he had no money to spend on lawyers; but it would never get +out—the newspapers couldn't get hold of it—because a lawyer would shut +her up! Though, probably, he'd have to give her some money? How much +would he have to give her? And how much would he have to pay the lawyer? +He had a crazy vision of Lily's attaching his salary. He imagined a +dialogue with his employer: "A case of blackmail, sir." "Don't worry +about it, Curtis; we'll shut her up." This brought an instant's warm +sense of safety, which as instantly vanished—and again he was walking +down the road, with Edith beside him, talking, talking... Eleanor would +have to know... No! She wouldn't! He could keep it a secret. But he'd +have to tell Mr. Houghton. Then Mrs. Houghton would know! Again a wave +of nausea swept over him, and he shuddered; then said to himself: "No: +Uncle Henry's white. He won't even tell her."</p> + +<p>Edith was asking him something; he said, "Yes," entirely at random—and +was at once involved in a snarl of other questions, and other random +answers. Under his breath he thought, despairingly, "Won't she ever +stop talking! ... Edith, I'll give you fifty cents if you'll keep +quiet."</p> + +<p>Edith was willing enough to be quiet; "But," she added, practically, +"would you mind giving me the fifty cents now, Maurice? You always tear +off to Eleanor the minute you get home, and I'm afraid you'll forget +it."</p> + +<p>He put his hand in his pocket and produced the half dollar. "Anything to +keep you still!" he said.</p> + +<p>"You don't mind if I talk to Johnny?"</p> + +<p>He didn't answer; at that moment he was not aware of her existence, +still less Johnny's, for a frightful thought had stabbed him: Suppose it +wasn't blackmail? <i>Suppose Lily had told the truth</i>? Suppose "it" was +his? "She can't prove it—she can't prove it!" he said, aloud.</p> + +<p>"Prove what? Who can't?" Edith said, interested.</p> + +<p>Maurice didn't hear her. Suddenly he felt too sick to follow his own +thought, and go to the bottom of things; he was afraid to touch the +bottom! He made a desperate effort to keep on the surface of his terror +by saying: "It's all Eleanor's fault. Damnation! Her idiotic jealousy +drove me out of the house that Sunday afternoon!"</p> + +<p>At this moment Johnny Bennett and Edith broke into shrieks of laughter. +"Say, Maurice," Johnny began—</p> + +<p>"Can't you children be quiet for five minutes?" Maurice said. Johnny +whistled and, behind his spectacles, made big eyes at Edith. "What's +<i>he</i> got on his little chest?" Johnny inquired. But Maurice was deaf to +sarcasm.... "It all goes back to Eleanor!"</p> + +<p>Under the chatter of the other two, it was easier to say this than to +say, "Is Lily telling the truth?" It was easier to hate Eleanor than to +think about Lily. And, hating, he said again, aloud, the single agonized +word.</p> + +<p>Edith stood stock-still with amazement; she could not believe her ears. +<i>Maurice</i> had said—? As for Maurice, his head bent as if he were +walking in a high wind he strode on, leaving her in the road staring +after him.</p> + +<p>"Johnny!" said Edith; "did you hear?"</p> + +<p>"That's nothing," Johnny said; "I say it often, when mother ain't +round. At least I say the first part."</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>Johnny</i>!" Edith said, dismayed.</p> + +<p>To Maurice, rushing on alone, the relief of hating Eleanor was lost in +the uprush of that ghastly possibility: "If it <i>is</i> mine?"</p> + +<p>Something in him struggled to say: "If it <i>is</i>, why, then, I must—But +it isn't!" Maurice was, for the moment, a horribly scared boy; his +instinct was to run to cover at any cost. He forgot Edith, coming home +by herself after Johnny should turn in at his own gate; he was conscious +only of his need to be alone to think this thing out and decide what he +must do. There was no possible privacy in the house. "If I go up to our +room," he thought, frantically, "Eleanor'll burst in on me, and then +she'll get on to it that there's something the matter!" Suddenly he +remembered the chicken coop. "It's late. Edith won't be coming in." So +he skulked around behind the house and the stable, and up the gravel +path to the henhouse. Lifting the rusty latch, he stepped quietly into +the dusky, feathery shelter. "I can think the damned business out, +here," he thought. There was a scuffling "cluck" on the roosts, but when +he sat down on an overturned box, the fowls settled into stillness and, +except for an occasional sleepy squawk, the place was quiet. He drew a +long breath, and dropped his chin on his fist. "Now I'll think," he +said. Then, through the cobwebby windows, he saw in the yellowing west +the new moon, and below it the line of distant hills. An old pine tree +stretched a shaggy branch across the window, and he said to himself that +the moon and the hills and the branch were like a Japanese print.</p> + +<p>He took the letter out of his pocket—his very fingers shrinking as he +touched it—and straining his eyes in the gathering dusk, he read it all +through. Then he looked at the moon, which was sliding—sliding behind +the pine. Yes, that ragged branch was very Japanese. If he hadn't gone +out on the river that night with Edith, he would never have met Lily. +The thing he had said on his wedding day, in the meadow, about +"switches," flashed into his mind: "A little thing can throw the +switches."</p> + +<p>"Ten minutes in a rowboat," he said,—"and <i>this</i>!" One of the hens +clucked. "I'll fight," he said. "Lots of men come up against this sort +of thing, and they hand the whole rotten business over to a lawyer. I'll +fight. Or I'll move.... Perhaps that's the best way? I'll just tell +Eleanor we've got to live in New York. Damn it! she'd ask why? I'll say +I have a job there. Lily'd never be able to find me in New York." The +moon slipped out below the pine, and hung for a dim moment in the haze. +Maurice's mind went through a long and involved plan of concealing his +address from Lily when he moved to New York.... "But what would we live +on while I was finding a job?" ... Suddenly thought stopped short; he +just watched the moon, and listened to a muffled stir among the hens. +Then he took out his knife, and began to cut little notches on the +window sill. "I'll fight," he said, mechanically.</p> + +<p>There were running steps on the gravel path, and instantly he was on his +feet. He had the presence of mind to put his hand into a nest, so that +when Edith came in she reproached him for getting ahead of her in +collecting eggs.</p> + +<p>"How many have you got? Two? Griselda was on the nest when I started up +the mountain, but I thought there was another egg there?"</p> + +<p>"Only one," he said, thickly, and handed it to her.</p> + +<p>"Come on in the house," Edith commanded; "I suppose," she said, +resignedly, "Eleanor is playing on the piano!" (Edith, as her adoration +of Eleanor lessened, was frankly bored by her music.)</p> + +<p>"All right," Maurice said, and followed her.</p> + +<p>Edith asked no questions; Maurice's "word" on the road had sobered her +too much for talk. "He's mad about something," she thought; "but I never +heard Maurice say—<i>that</i>!" She didn't quite like to repeat what he had +said, though Johnny had confessed to saying "part of it." "I don't +believe he ever did," Edith thought; "he's putting on airs! But for +Maurice to say <i>all</i> of it!—that was wrong," said Edith, gravely.</p> + +<p>They went out of the henhouse together in silence. Maurice was saying to +himself, "I might not be able to get a job in New York... I'll fight." +Yet certain traditional decencies, slowly emerging from the welter of +his rage and terror, made him add, "If it was mine, I'd have to give her +something... But it isn't. I'll fight."</p> + +<p>He was so absorbed that before he knew it he had followed Edith to the +studio, where, in the twilight. Mr. and Mrs. Houghton were sitting on +the sofa together, hand in hand, and Eleanor was at the piano singing, +softly, old songs that her hosts loved.</p> + +<p>"If," said Henry Houghton, listening, "heaven is any better than this, I +shall consider it needless extravagance on the part of the +Almighty,"—and he held his wife's hand against his lips. Maurice, at +the door, turned away and would have gone upstairs, but Mr. Houghton +called out: "Sit down, man! If <i>I</i> had the luck to have a wife who could +sing, I'd keep her at it! Sit down!" Eleanor's voice, lovely and noble +and serene, went on:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"To add to golden numbers, golden numbers!<br /> +0 sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content!"</p></div> + +<p>Maurice sat down; it was as if, after beating against crashing seas with +a cargo of shame and fear, he had turned suddenly into a still harbor: +the faintly lighted studio, the stillness of the summer evening, the +lovely voice—the peace and dignity and safety of it all gave him a +strange sense of unreality... Then, suddenly, he heard them all laughing +and telling Eleanor they were sorry for her, to have such an +unappreciative husband!—and he realized that the fatigue of terror had +made him fall asleep. Later, when he came to the supper table, he was +still dazed. He said he had a headache, and could not eat; instantly +Eleanor's anxiety was alert. She suggested hot-water bags and mustard +plasters, until Mr. Houghton said to himself: "How <i>does</i> he stand it? +Mary must tell her not to be a mother to him—or a grandmother."</p> + +<p>All that hot evening, out on the porch, Maurice was silent—so silent +that, as they separated for the night, his guardian put a hand on his +shoulder, "Come into the studio," he said; "I want to show you a thing +I've been muddling over."</p> + +<p>Maurice followed him into the vast, shadowy, untidy room ("No females +with dusters allowed on the premises!" Henry Houghton used to say), +glanced at a half-finished canvas, said, "Fine!" and turned away.</p> + +<p>"Anything out of kilter? I mean, besides your headache?"</p> + +<p>"Well ... yes."</p> + +<p>("He's going to say he's hard up—the extravagant cuss!" Henry Houghton +thought, with the old provoked affection.)</p> + +<p>"I'm bothered about ... something," Maurice began.</p> + +<p>("He's squabbled with Eleanor. I wish I was asleep!")</p> + +<p>"Uncle Henry," Maurice said, "if you were going to see a lawyer, who +would you see?"</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't see him. Lawyers make their cake by cooking up other +people's troubles. Sit down. Let's talk it out." He settled himself in a +corner of the ragged old horsehair sofa which faced the empty fireplace +and motioned Maurice to a chair. "I thought it wasn't all headache; +what's the matter, boy?"</p> + +<p>Maurice sat down, cleared his throat, and put his hands in his pockets +so they would not betray him. "I—" he said.</p> + +<p>Mr. Houghton appeared absorbed in biting off the end of his cigar.</p> + +<p>"I—" Maurice said again.</p> + +<p>"Maurice," said Henry Houghton, "keep the peace. If you and Eleanor have +fallen out, don't stand on your dignity. Go upstairs and say you're +sorry, whether you are or not. Don't talk about lawyers."</p> + +<p>"My God!" said Maurice; "did you suppose it was <i>that</i>?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Houghton stopped biting the end of his cigar, and looked at him. +"Why, yes; I did. You and she are rather foolish, you know. So I +supposed—"</p> + +<p>Maurice dropped his face on his arms on the big dusty table, littered +with pamphlets and charcoal studies and squeezed-out paint tubes. After +a while he lifted his head: "<i>That's</i> nothing. I wish it was that."</p> + +<p>The older man rose and stood with his back to the mantelpiece. They both +heard the clock ticking loudly. Then, almost in a whisper, Maurice said:</p> + +<p>"I've been—blackmailed."</p> + +<p>Mr. Houghton whistled.</p> + +<p>"I've had a letter from a woman. She says—"</p> + +<p>"Has she got anything on you?"</p> + +<p>"No proof; but—"</p> + +<p>"But you have made a fool of yourself?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>Mr. Houghton sat down again. "Go on," he said.</p> + +<p>Maurice reached for a maulstick lying across the table; then leaned +over, his elbows on his knees, and tried, with two trembling +forefingers, to make it stand upright on the floor. "She's common. She +can't prove it's—mine." His effort to keep the stick vertical with +those two shaking fingers was agonizing.</p> + +<p>"Begin at the beginning," Henry Houghton said.</p> + +<p>Maurice let the maulstick drop against his shoulder and sunk his head on +his hands. Suddenly he sat up: "What's the use of lying? She's <i>not</i> bad +all through." The truth seemed to tear him as he uttered it. "That's the +worst of it," he groaned. "If she was, I'd know what to do. But probably +she's not lying... She says it's mine. Yes; I pretty well know she's not +lying."</p> + +<p>"We'll go on the supposition that she is. I have yet to see a white +crow. How much does she want?"</p> + +<p>"She's only asked me to help her, when—it's born. And of course, if it +<i>is</i> mine, I—"</p> + +<p>"We won't concede the 'if.'"</p> + +<p>"Uncle Henry," said the haggard boy, "I'm several kinds of a fool, but +I'm not a skunk. I've got to be decent"</p> + +<p>"You should have thought of decency sooner."</p> + +<p>"I know. I know."</p> + +<p>"You'd better tell me the whole thing. Then we'll talk lawyers."</p> + +<p>So Maurice began the squalid story. Twice he stopped, choking down +excuses that laid the blame on Eleanor.... "It wouldn't have happened if +I hadn't been—been bothered." And again, "Something had thrown me off +the track; and I met Lily, and—"</p> + +<p>At last it was all said, and he had not skulked behind his wife. He had +told everything, except those explaining things that could not be told.</p> + +<p>When the story was ended there was silence. The older man, guessing the +untold things, could not trust himself to speak his pity and anger and +dismay. But in that moment of silence the comfort of confession made the +tears stand in the boy's eyes; he said, impulsively, "Uncle Henry, I +thought you'd kick me out of the house!"</p> + +<p>Henry Houghton blew his nose, and spoke with husky harshness. "Eleanor +has no suspicions?" (He, too, was choking down references to Eleanor +which must not be spoken.)</p> + +<p>"No. Do you think I ought to—to tell—?"</p> + +<p>"No! No! With some women you could make a clean breast... I know a +woman—her husband hadn't a secret from her; and I know <i>he</i> was a fool +before his marriage! He made a clean breast of it, and she married him. +But she knew the soul of him, you see? She knew that this sort of rotten +foolishness was only his body. So he worshiped her. Naturally. Properly. +She meant God to him... Mighty few women like that! Candidly, I don't +think your wife is one of them. Besides, this is <i>after</i> marriage. +That's different, Maurice. Very different. It isn't a square deal."</p> + +<p>Maurice made a miserable shamed sound of agreement. Then he said, +huskily, "Of course I won't lie; I'll just—not tell her."</p> + +<p>"The thing for us to do," said Mr. Houghton, "is to get you out of this +mess. Then you'll keep straight? Some fellows wouldn't. You will, +because—" he paused; Maurice looked at him with scared eyes—"because +if a man is sufficiently aware of having been a damned fool, he's +immune. I'll bet on you, Maurice."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII" ></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> + + +<p>Yet Henry Houghton had moments of fearing that he would lose his bet, +for Maurice was such a very damned fool! One might have guessed as much +when he would not admit that Lily was lying. She might be blackmailing +him, he said; she might be a "crow"; but she wasn't lying. When his +guardian had talked it all out with him, and written a letter which +Maurice was to take to a lawyer ("she'll want to get rid of the child; +they always want to get rid of the child; so she may let you off easier +if you say you'll see that it is cared for; and we'll have Hayes put it +in black and white") when all these arrangements had been made, Maurice +almost dished the whole thing (so Mr. Houghton expressed it) by +saying—again as if the words burst up from some choked well of +truthfulness:</p> + +<p>"Uncle Henry, it isn't blackmail; and—and I've got to be half decent!"</p> + +<p>Down from the upper hall came a sweet, anxious voice: "Maurice, darling! +It's twelve o'clock! What <i>are</i> you doing?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Houghton called back: "We're talking business, Eleanor. I'll send +him up in a quarter of an hour. Don't lose your beauty sleep, my dear. +(Mary <i>must</i> tell her not to be such an idiot!)" Then he looked at +Maurice: "My boy, you can't be decent with a leech. You've got to leave +this to Hayes."</p> + +<p>"She isn't a leech. I ought to help her, I'll see her myself."</p> + +<p>"My dear fellow, don't be a bigger ass than you can help! You can meet +what you see fit to call your responsibilities, as a few other +conscientious fools have done before you; though," he added, heavily, +"I hope she won't suck you dry! How you are going to squeeze out the +money, <i>I</i> don't know! I can't help you much. But you mustn't appear in +this for a single minute. Hayes will see her, and buy her off."</p> + +<p>Maurice shook his head, despairingly: "Uncle Henry, she's common; but +she's not vicious. She's a nice little thing. I know Lily! I'll see her. +<i>I'll have to!</i> I'll tell her I'll—I'll help her." No wonder poor Henry +Houghton feared he would lose his bet! "I know you think I'm easy meat," +Maurice said; "but I'm not. Only," his face was anguished, "I've <i>got</i> +to be half decent."</p> + +<p>It was after one o'clock when the two men went upstairs, though there +had been another summons over the banisters: "Maurice! Why don't you +come to bed?" When they parted at Maurice's door, Mr. Houghton struck +his ward on the shoulder and whispered, "You're more than half decent. +I'll bet on you!" and Maurice whispered back:</p> + +<p>"You're <i>white</i>, Uncle Henry!"</p> + +<p>He went into his room on tiptoe, but Eleanor heard him and said, +sleepily, "What on earth have you been talking about?"</p> + +<p>"Business," Maurice told her.</p> + +<p>"Who was your lavender-colored letter from?" Eleanor said, yawning; "I +forgot to ask you. It was awfully scented!"</p> + +<p>There was an instant's pause; Maurice's lips were dry;—then he said:</p> + +<p>"From a woman... About a house. (My God! I've <i>lied</i> to her!)" he said +to himself...</p> + +<p>Mary Houghton, reading comfortably in bed, looked up at her old husband +over her spectacles. "I've heated some cocoa, dear," she said. "Drink it +before you undress; you are worn out. What kept you downstairs until +this hour?"</p> + +<p>"Business."</p> + +<p>Mary Houghton smiled: "Might as well tell the truth."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Kit, it's a horrid mess!" he groaned; "I thought that boy had got +to the top of Fool Hill when he married Eleanor! But he hadn't."</p> + +<p>"Can't tell me, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>"No. Mary, mayn't I have a cigar? I'm really awfully used up, and—"</p> + +<p>"Henry! You are perfectly depraved! No; you may <i>not</i>. Drink your cocoa, +honey. And consider the stars;—they shine, even above Fool Hill. And +'messes' look mighty small beside the Pleiades!" Then she turned a page +of her novel, and added, "Poor Eleanor."</p> + +<p>"I don't know why you say 'Poor Eleanor'!"</p> + +<p>"Because I know that Maurice isn't sharing his 'mess' with her."</p> + +<p>"You are uncanny!" Henry Houghton said, stirring his cocoa and looking +at her admiringly.</p> + +<p>"No; merely intelligent. Henry, don't let him have any secrets from +Eleanor! Tell him to <i>tell</i> her. She'll forgive him."</p> + +<p>"She's not that kind, Mary."</p> + +<p>"Dear, <i>almost</i> every woman is 'that kind'! It's deception, not +confession, that makes them—the other kind. If Maurice will confess—"</p> + +<p>"I haven't said there was anything to confess," he protested, in alarm.</p> + +<p>"Oh no; certainly not. You haven't said a word! (Well; you may have just +one of those <i>little</i> cigars—you poor dear!) Henry, listen: If Maurice +hangs a secret round his neck it will drown him."</p> + +<p>"If Eleanor would make cocoa for him at one o'clock in the morning there +would be no chance for secrets. Kit, I have long known that you are the +wisest, as well as the most virtuous and most lovable of your sex, and +that I shall only get to heaven by hanging on to your petticoats; but in +this one particular I am much more intelligent than you."</p> + +<p>"Heaven send you a good opinion of yourself!" his wife murmured.</p> + +<p>But he insisted. "On certain subjects women prefer to be lied to."</p> + +<p>"Did any woman ever tell you so?" she inquired, dryly.</p> + +<p>He shrugged his shoulders, put his cup down, and came over to give her a +kiss.</p> + +<p>"Which is to say, 'Hold your tongue'?" his Mary inquired.</p> + +<p>"Oh, never!" he said, and in spite of his distress he laughed; but he +looked at her tenderly. "The Lord was good to me, Mary, when He made you +take me."</p> + +<p>That talk in the studio marked the moment when Maurice Curtis turned his +back on youth. It was the beginning of the retreat of an ardent and +gayly candid boy into the adult sophistications of Secrecy. The next day +when he and Eleanor returned to Mercer, he sat in the car watching with +unseeing eyes the back of her head,—her swaying hat, the softly curling +tendrils of dark hair in the nape of her neck—and he saw before him a +narrow path, leading—across quaking bogs of evasions!—toward a goal of +always menaced safety. Mr. Houghton had indicated the path in that +midnight talk, and Maurice's first step upon it would be his promise to +relieve Lily of the support of her child—"<i>on condition that she would +never communicate with him again</i>." After that, Henry Houghton said, +"the lawyer will clinch things; and nobody will ever be the wiser!" +Because Eleanor was the woman she was, he saw no way of escape for +Maurice, except through this bog of secrecy, where any careless step +might plunge him into a lie. He had not dared to point out that other +path, which his Mary thought so much safer than the sucking shakiness of +the swamp—the rough and terrible path of confession, which lies across +the firm aridities of Truth, and leads to that orderly freedom of the +stars to which Maurice had once aspired! So now the boy was going back +to Mercer to plunge into the pitfalls and limitless shades of +concealment. He did it with a hard purpose of endurance, without hope, +and also without complaint.</p> + +<p>"If I can just avoid out-and-out lying," he told himself, "I can take my +medicine. But if I have to lie—!"</p> + +<p>He knew the full bitterness of his medicine when he went to see Lily...</p> + +<p>He went the very next day, after office hours... There had been a +temptation to postpone the taking of the medicine, because it had been +difficult to escape from Eleanor. The well-ordered household at Green +Hill had fired her with an impulse to try housekeeping again, and she +wanted to urge the idea upon Maurice:</p> + +<p>"We would be so much more comfortable; and I could have little Bingo!"</p> + +<p>"We can't afford it," he said. (Oh, how many things he wouldn't be able +to afford, now!)</p> + +<p>"It wouldn't cost much more. I'll come down to the office this afternoon +and walk home with you, and tell you what I've thought out about it."</p> + +<p>Maurice said he had to—to go and see an apartment house at five.</p> + +<p>"That's no matter! I'll meet you and walk along with you."</p> + +<p>"I have several other places to go."</p> + +<p>That hurt her. "If you don't want me—"</p> + +<p>He was so absorbed that her words had no meaning to him. "Good-by," he +said, mechanically—and the next moment he was on his way.</p> + +<p>At the office his employer gave him a keen glance. "You look used up, +Curtis; got a cold?" Mr. Weston asked, kindly.</p> + +<p>Maurice, sick in spirit, said, "No, sir; I'm all right."</p> + +<p>And so the minutes of the long day ticked themselves away, each a +separate pang of disgust and shame, until five o'clock came, and he +started for Lily's.</p> + +<p>While he waited in the unswept vestibule of an incredibly ornate frame +apartment house for the answer to his ring, and the usual: "My goodness! +Is that you? Come on up!" he had the feeling of one who stands at a +closed door, knowing that when he opens it and enters he will look upon +a dead face. The door was Lily's, and the face was the face of his dead +youth. Carelessness was over for Maurice, and irresponsibility. And +hope, too, he thought, and enthusiasm, and ambition. All over! All dead. +All lying stiff and still on the other side of a shiny golden-oak door, +with its half window hung with a Nottingham lace curtain. When he +started up the three flights of stairs to that little flat where he was +to look upon his dead, he was calm to the point of listlessness. "My own +fault. My own fault," he said.</p> + +<p>She was waiting for him on the landing, her fresh cleanness in fragrant +contrast to the forlorn untidiness of the stairways. They went into her +parlor together and he began to speak at once.</p> + +<p>"I got your letter. No; I won't sit down. I—"</p> + +<p>"My soul and body! You're all in!" Lily said, startled, "Let me get you +some whisky—"</p> + +<p>"No, please, nothing! Lily, I'm ... awfully sorry, I—I'll do what I can. +I—"</p> + +<p>She put her hands over her face; he went on mechanically, with his +carefully prepared sentences, ending with:</p> + +<p>"There's no reason why we should meet any more. But I want you to know +that the—the—<i>it</i>, will be taken care of. My lawyer will see you about +it; I'll have it placed somewhere."</p> + +<p>She dropped her hands and looked at him, her little, pretty face amazed +and twitching: "Do you mean you'll take my baby?"</p> + +<p>"I'll see that it's provided for."</p> + +<p>"I ain't that kind of a girl!" They were standing, one on either side of +a highly varnished table, on which, on a little brass tray, a cigarette +stub was still smoldering. "<i>I</i> don't want anything out of you"—Lily +paused; then said, "Mr. Curtis"—(the fact that she didn't call him +"Curt" showed her recognition of a change in their relationship)—"I'm +not on the grab. I can keep on at Marston's for quite a bit. All I want +is just if you can help me in February? But I'll never give my baby up! +My first one died."</p> + +<p>"Your <i>first</i>—"</p> + +<p>"So I'll never, never give it up!" Her shallow, honest, amber-colored +eyes overflowed with bliss. "I'll just love it!" she said.</p> + +<p>Maurice felt an almost physical collapse; neither he nor Henry Houghton +had reckoned on maternal love. Mr. Houghton had implied that Lily's kind +did not have maternal love. "She'll leave it on a convenient +doorstep—unless she's a white blackbird," Henry Houghton had said. +Maurice, too, had taken for granted Lily's eagerness to get rid of the +child. In his amazement now, at this revelation of an unknown Lily—a +white blackbird Lily!—he began, angrily, to argue: "It is impossible +for you to keep it! Impossible! I won't permit it—"</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't give it up for anything in the world! I'll take care of it. +You needn't worry for fear I'll put it onto you."</p> + +<p>"But I won't have you keep it! I promise you I'll look after it. You +must go away, somewhere. Anywhere!"</p> + +<p>"But I don't want to leave Mercer," she said, simply.</p> + +<p>In his despairing confusion, he sat down on the little bowlegged sofa +and looked at her; Lily, sitting beside him, put her hand on his—which +quivered at the touch. "Don't you worry! I'd never play you any mean +trick. You treated me good, and I'll never treat you mean; I 'ain't +forgot the way you handed it out to Batty! I'll never let on to anybody. +Say—I believe you're afraid I'll try a hold-up on you some day? Why, +Mr. Curtis, <i>I</i> wouldn't do a thing like that—no, not for a million +dollars! Look here; if it will make you easy in your mind, I'll put it +down in writing; I'll say it <i>ain't</i> yours! Will that make you easy in +your mind?" Her kind eyes were full of anxious pity for him. "I'll do +anything for you, but I won't give up my baby."</p> + +<p>She was trying to help him! He was so angry and so frightened that he +felt sick at his stomach; but he knew that she was trying to help him!</p> + +<p>"You see," she explained, "the first one died; now I'm going to have +another, and you bet I'm going to have things nice for her! I'm going to +buy a parlor organ. And I'll have her learned to play. It's going to be +a girl. Oh, won't I dress her pretty! But I'll never come down on you +about her. Now, don't you worry."</p> + +<p>The generosity of her! She'd "put it down in writing"! "I <i>told</i> Uncle +Henry she was white," he thought. But in spite of her whiteness his blue +eyes were wide with horror; all those plans, of Lily in another city, +and an unacknowledged child, in still another city—for of course <i>it</i> +could not be in Mercer any more than Lily could!—all these safe +arrangements faded into a swift vision of Lily, in this apartment, with +<i>it</i>! Lily, meeting him on the street!—a flash of imagination showed +him Lily, pushing a baby carriage! For just a moment sheer terror made +that dead Youth of his stir.</p> + +<p>"You can't keep it!" he said again, hoarsely; "I tell you, I won't allow +it! I'll look after it. <i>But I won't have it here!</i> And I won't ever see +you."</p> + +<p>"You needn't," she said, reassuringly; "and I'll never bother you. That +ain't me!"</p> + +<p>He was dumb.</p> + +<p>"An' look," she said, cheerfully; "honest, it's better for you. What +would you do, looking after a little girl? Why, you couldn't even curl +her hair in the mornings!" Maurice shuddered. "And I'll never ask you +for a cent, if you can just make it convenient to help me in February?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I'll help you," he said; then, suddenly, his anger fell into +despair. "Oh, what a damned fool I was!"</p> + +<p>"All gentlemen are," she tried to comfort him. Her generosity made him +blush. Added to his shame because of what he had done to Eleanor, was a +new shame at his own thoughts about this little, kind, bad, honest +woman! "Look here," Lily said; "if you're strapped, never mind about +helping me. They'll take you at the Maternity free, if you <i>can't</i> pay. +So I'll go there; and I'll say I'm married; I'll say my husband was Mr. +George Dale, and he's dead; I'll never peep your name. Now, don't you +worry! I'll keep on at Marston's for four months, anyway. Yes; I'll buy +me a ring and call myself Mrs. Dale; I guess I'll say Mrs. Robert Dale; +Robert's a classier name than George. And nobody can say anything to my +baby."</p> + +<p>"Of course I'll give you whatever you need for—when—when it's born," +he said. He was fumbling with his pocketbook; he had nothing more to say +about leaving Mercer.</p> + +<p>She took the money doubtfully. "I won't want it yet awhile," she said.</p> + +<p>"I'll make it more if I can," he told her; he got up, hesitated, then +put out his hand. For a single instant, just for her pluck, he was +almost fond of her. "Take care of yourself," he said, huskily; and the +next minute he was plunging down those three flights of unswept stairs +to the street. "My own fault—my own fault," he said, again; "oh, what a +cussed, cussed, cussed fool!"</p> + +<p>It was over, this dreadful interview! this looking at the dead face of +his Youth. Over, and he was back again just where he was when he came +in. Nothing settled. Lily—who was so much more generous than he!—would +still be in Mercer, waiting for this terrible child. His child!</p> + +<p>He had accomplished nothing, and he saw before him the dismaying +prospect of admitting his failure to Mr. Houghton. The only comfort in +the whole hideous business was that he wouldn't have to pull a lawyer +into it, and pay a big fee! He was frantic with worry about expense. +Well, he must strike Mr. Weston for a raise!... which he wouldn't tell +Eleanor about. A second step into the bog of Secrecy!</p> + +<p>When he got home, Eleanor, in the dingy third-floor front, was waiting +for him, alert and tender, and gay with purpose: "Maurice! I've counted +expenses, and I'm sure we can go to housekeeping! And I can have little +Bingo. Mrs. O'Brien says he's just pining away for me!"</p> + +<p>"We can't afford it," he said again, doggedly.</p> + +<p>"I believe," she said, "you like this horrid place, because you have +people to talk to!"</p> + +<p>"It's well enough," he said. He was standing with his back to her, his +clenched hands in his pockets, staring out of the window. His very +attitude, the stubbornness of his shoulders, showed his determination +not to go to housekeeping.</p> + +<p>"What <i>is</i> the matter, Maurice?" she said, her voice trembling. "You are +not happy! Oh, what <i>can</i> I do?" she said, despairingly.</p> + +<p>"I am as happy as I deserve to be," he said, without turning his head.</p> + +<p>She came and stood beside him, resting her cheek on his shoulder. "Oh," +she said, passionately, "if I only had a child! You are disappointed +because we have no—"</p> + +<p>His recoil was so sharp that she could not finish her sentence, but +clutched at his arm to steady herself; before she could reproach him for +his abruptness he had caught up his hat and left the room. She stood +there quivering. "He <i>would</i> be happier and love me more, if we had a +child!" she said again. She thought of the joy with which, when they +first went to housekeeping, she had bought that foolish, pretty nursery +paper—and again the old disappointment ached under her breastbone. +Tears were just ready to overflow; but there was a knock at the door and +old Mrs. O'Brien came in with her basket of laundry; she gave her +beloved Miss Eleanor a keen look "It's worried you are, my dear? It +ain't the wash, is it?"</p> + +<p>Eleanor tried to laugh, but the laugh ended in a sob. "No. It's—it's +only—" Then she said something in a whisper.</p> + +<p>"No baby? Bless you, <i>he</i> don't want no babies! What would a handsome +young man like him be wanting a baby for? No! And it would take your +good looks, my dear. Keep handsome, Miss Eleanor, and you needn't worry +about <i>babies</i>! And say, Miss Eleanor, never let on to him if you see +him give a look at any of his lady friends. I'm old, my dear, but I +noticed, with all my husbands—and I've had three—that if you tell'em +you see'em lookin' at other ladies, <i>they'll look again</i>!—just to spite +you. Don't notice'em, and they'll not do it. Men is children."</p> + +<p>Eleanor, laughing in spite of her pain, said Mr. Curtis didn't "look at +other ladies; but—but," she said, wistfully, "I hope I'll have a baby." +Then she wiped her eyes, hugged old O'Brien, and promised to "quit +worrying." But she didn't "quit," for Maurice's face did not lighten.</p> + +<p>Henry Houghton, too, saw the aging heaviness of the young face when, +having received the report of that interview with Lily, he came down to +Mercer to go over the whole affair and see what must be done. But there +was nothing to be done. Up in his room in the hotel he and Maurice +thrashed it all out:</p> + +<p>"She prefers to stay in Mercer," Maurice explained; "and she'll stay. +There's nothing I can do; absolutely nothing! But she'll play fair. I'm +not afraid of Lily."</p> + +<p>If Mr. Houghton wished, uneasily, that his ward was afraid of Lily, he +did not say so. He only told Maurice again that he was "betting on him."</p> + +<p>"You won't lose," Maurice said, laconically.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," Henry Houghton said, doubtfully, "I ought to say that Mrs. +Houghton—who is the wisest woman I know, as well as the best—has an +idea that in matters of this sort, frankness is the best course. But in +your case (of which, of course, she knows nothing) I don't agree with +her."</p> + +<p>"It would be impossible," Maurice said, briefly. And his guardian, whose +belief in secrecy had been shaken, momentarily, by his Mary's opinion, +felt that, so long as he had quoted her, his conscience was clear. So he +only told the boy again he was <i>sure</i> he could bet on him! And because +shame, and those bleak words "my own fault," kept the spiritual part of +Maurice alive,—(and because Lily was a white blackbird!) the bet stood.</p> + +<p>But he made no promises about the future. However much of a liar +Maurice was going to be, to Eleanor, he would not, he told himself, lie +to this old friend by saying he would never see Lily again. The truth +was, some inarticulate moral instinct made him know that there would +come a time when he would <i>have</i> to see her... During all that winter, +when he sat, night after night, at Miss Ladd's dinner table, and Eleanor +fended off Miss Moore and the widow, or when, in those long evenings in +their own room they played solitaire, he was thinking of Lily, thinking +of that inner summons to what he called "decency," which would, he knew, +drive him—in three months—in two months—in one month!—to Lily's +door. By and by it was three weeks—two weeks—one week! Then came days +when he said, in terror, "I'll go to-morrow." And again: "To-morrow, I +<i>must</i> go. Damn it! I must!" So at last, he went, lashed and driven by +that mastering "decency"!</p> + +<p>He had bought a box of roses, and, looping two fingers through +its strings, he walked twice around the block past the ugly apartment +house before he could make up his mind to enter. He wondered whether +Lily had died? Women do die, sometimes. "Of course I don't want anything +to happen to her; but—" Then he wondered, with a sudden pang of hope, +if anything had happened to—<i>It</i>? "They're born dead, sometimes!" +Nothing wrong in wishing that, for the Thing would be better off dead +than alive. He wished he was dead himself! ... The third time he came +to the apartment house the string of the box was cutting into his +fingers, and that made him stop, and set his teeth, and push open the +door of the vestibule. He touched the button under the name "Dale," and +called up, huskily, "Is Miss—Mrs. Dale in?" A brisk voice asked his +name. "A friend of Mrs. Dale's," he said, very low. There seemed to be +a colloquy somewhere, and then he was told to "come right along!" He +turned to the stairway, and as he walked slowly up, it came into his +mind that this was the way a man might climb the scaffold steps: +Step... Step... Step—his very feet refusing! Step... Step—and Lily's +door. The nurse, who met him on the landing, said Mrs. Dale would be +glad to see him....</p> + +<p>She was in bed, very white and radiant, and with a queer, blanketed +bundle on one arm; if she was, as the nurse said, "glad to see him," she +did not show it. She was too absorbed in some gladness of her own to +feel any other kind of gladness. As Maurice handed her the box of roses, +she smiled vaguely and said. "Why, you're real kind!" Then she said, +eagerly, "He was born the day the pink hyacinth came out! Want to see +him?" Her voice thrilled with joy. Without waiting for his answer—or +even giving a look at the roses the nurse was lifting out of their waxed +papers, she raised a fold of the blanket and her eyes seemed to feed on +the little red face with its tightly shut eyes and tiny wet lips.</p> + +<p>Maurice looked—and his heart seemed to drop, shuddering, in his breast. +"How nasty!" he thought; but aloud he said, stammering, "Why it's—quite +a baby."</p> + +<p>"You may hold him," she said; there was a passionate generosity in her +voice.</p> + +<p>Maurice tried to cover his recoil by saying, "Oh, I might drop it."</p> + +<p>Lily was not looking at him; it seemed as if she was glad not to give up +the roll of blankets, even for a minute. "He's perfectly lovely. He's a +reg'lar rascal! The doctor said he was a wonderful child. I'm going to +have him christened Ernest Augustus; I want a swell name. But I'll call +him Jacky." She strained her head sidewise to kiss the red, puckered +flesh, that looked like a face, and in which suddenly a little orifice +showed itself, from which came a small, squeaking sound. Maurice, under +the shock of that sound, stood rigid; but Lily's feeble arms cuddled the +bundle against her breast; she said, "Sweety—Sweety—Sweety!"</p> + +<p>The young man sat there speechless.... This terrible squirming piece of +flesh—was part of himself! "I wouldn't touch it for a million dollars!" +he was thinking. He got up and said: "Good-by. I hope you—"</p> + +<p>Lily was not listening; she said good-by without lifting her eyes from +the child's face.</p> + +<p>Maurice stumbled out to the staircase, with little cold thrills running +down his back. The experience of recognizing the significance of what he +had done—the setting in motion that stupendous and eternal +<i>Exfoliating</i>, called; Life; the seeing a Thing, himself, separated from +himself! himself, going on in spite of himself!—brought a surge of +engulfing horror. This elemental shock is not unknown to men who look +for the first time at their first-born; instantly the feeling may +disappear, swallowed up in love and pride. But where, as with Maurice, +there is neither pride nor love, the shock remains. His organic dismay +was so overwhelming that he said to himself he would never see Lily +again—because he would not see It!—which was, in fact, "<i>he</i>," instead +of the girl Lily had wanted. But though his spiritual disgust for what +he called, in his own mind, "the whole hideous business," did not +lessen, he did, later, through the pressure of those heavy words, "my +own fault," go to see Lily—she had taken a little house out in +Medfield—just to put down on the table, awkwardly, an envelope with +some bills in it. He didn't inquire about It, and he got out of the +house as quickly as possible.</p> + +<p>Lily had no resentment at his lack of feeling for the child; the baby +was so entirely hers that she did not think of it as his, too. This +sense of possession, never menaced on Maurice's part by even a flicker +of interest in the little thing, kept them to the furtive and very +formal acquaintance of giving and receiving what money he could +spare—or, oftener, <i>couldn't</i> spare! As a result, he thought of Jacky +only in relation to his income. Every time some personal expenditure +tempted him, he summed up the child's existence in four disgusted and +angry words, "I can't afford it." But it was for Lily's sake, not +Jacky's, that he economized! He was wretchedly aware that if it had not +been for Jacky, Lily might still be a "saleslady" at Marston's, earning +good wages. Instead, she was taking lodgers—and it was not easy to get +them!—so that she could be at home and look after the baby.</p> + +<p>Maurice aged ten years in that first winter of rigid and unexplainable +penuriousness, and of a secrecy which meant perilous skirtings of +downright lying; for Eleanor occasionally asked why they had so little +money to spend? He had requested a raise—and not mentioned to Eleanor +the fact that he had got it. When she complained because his salary was +so low, he told her Weston was paying him all he was worth, and he +<i>wouldn't</i> strike for more! "So it's impossible to go to housekeeping," +he said—for of course she continued to urge housekeeping, saying that +she couldn't understand why they had to be so economical! But he +refused, patiently. To be patient, Maurice did not need, now, to remind +himself of the mountain and her faithfulness to him; he had only to +remind himself of the yellow-brick apartment house, and his +faithlessness to her. "I've got to be kind, or I'd be a skunk," he used +to think. So he was very kind. He did not burst out at her with +irritated mortification when she telephoned to the office to know if +"Mr. Curtis's headache was better";—he had suffered so much that he had +gone beyond the self-consciousness of mortification;—and he walked with +her in the park on Sunday afternoons to exercise Bingo; and on their +anniversary he sat beside her in the grass, under the locust tree, and +watched the river—their river, which had brought Lily into his +life!—and listened to the lovely voice:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"O thou with dewy locks who lookest down!"</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII" ></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + + +<p>The next fall, however, the boarding did come to an end, and they went +to housekeeping. It was Mrs. Houghton who brought this about. Edith was +to enter Fern Hill School in the fall, and her mother had an +inspiration: "Let her board with Eleanor and Maurice! The trolley goes +right out to Medfield, and it will be very convenient for her. Also, it +will help them with expenses," Mrs. Houghton said, comfortably.</p> + +<p>"But why can't she live at the school?" Edith's father objected, with a +troubled look; somehow, he did not like the idea of his girl in that +pathetic household, which was at once so conscious and so unconscious of +its own instability! "Why does she have to be with Eleanor and Maurice?" +Henry Houghton said.</p> + +<p>"Eleanor has the refinement that a hobbledehoy like Edith needs," Mrs. +Houghton explained; "and I think the child will have better food than at +Fern Hill. School food is always horrid."</p> + +<p>"But won't Eleanor's dullness afflict Buster?" he said, doubtfully; +then—because at that moment Edith banged into the room to show her +shuddering mother a garter snake she had captured—he added, with +complacent subtlety, "as for food, I, personally, prefer a dinner of +herbs with an <i>interesting</i> woman, than a stalled ox and Eleanor."</p> + +<p>Which caused Edith to say, "Is Eleanor uninteresting, father?"</p> + +<p>"Good heavens, no!" said Mr. Houghton, with an alarmed look; "<i>of +course</i> she isn't! What put such an idea into your head?" And as Buster +and her squirming prize departed, he told his Mary that her daughter was +destroying his nervous system. "She'll repeat that to Eleanor," he +groaned.</p> + +<p>His wife had no sympathy for him; "You deserve anything you may get!" +she said, severely; and proceeded to write to Eleanor to make her +proposition. If they cared to take Edith, she said, they could hire a +house and stop boarding—"which is dreadful for both of your digestions; +and I will be glad if this plan appeals to you, to feel that Edith is +with anyone who has such gentle manners as you."</p> + +<p>Eleanor, reading the friendly words at the boarding-house breakfast +table, said quickly to herself, "I don't want her... She would +monopolize Maurice!" Then she hesitated; "He would be more comfortable +in a house of his own... But Edith? Oh, I <i>don't</i> want her!"</p> + +<p>She turned to show the letter to Maurice, but he was sitting sidewise, +one arm over the back of his chair, in vociferous discussion with a +fellow boarder. "No, sir!" he was declaring; "if they revise the rules +again, they'll revise the guts out of the whole blessed game; they'll +make it all muscle and no mind."</p> + +<p>"But football isn't any intellectual stunt," the other boarder insisted.</p> + +<p>"It <i>is</i>—to a degree. The old flying wedge—"</p> + +<p>"Maurice!" Eleanor said again; but Maurice, impassioned about "rules," +didn't even hear her. She gave his arm a little friendly shake. +"Maurice! You are the limit, with your old football!"</p> + +<p>He turned, laughing, and took the letter from her hand. As he read it, +his face changed sharply. "But Fern Hill is in Medfield!" he exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"I suppose she could take the trolley almost to the school grounds," +Eleanor conceded, reluctantly.</p> + +<p>"Why can't she live out there? It's a boarding school, isn't it?" (She +might meet Lily on the car!)</p> + +<p>For a moment she accepted his decision with relief; then the thought of +his comfort urged her: "I know of an awfully attractive house, with a +garden. Little Bingo could hide his bones in it."</p> + +<p>"No," he said, sharply; "it wouldn't do. I don't want her."</p> + +<p>Instantly Eleanor was buoyantly ready to have Edith ... he "<i>didn't want +her</i>!" When Maurice rose from the table she went to the front door with +him, detaining him—until the pretty school-teacher was well on her way +down the street;—with tender charges to take care of himself. Then, in +the darkness of the hall, with Maurice very uneasy lest some one might +see them, she kissed him good-by. "If we could afford to keep house +without taking Edith," she said, "I'd rather not have her. (Kiss me +again—no-body's looking!) But we can't. So let's have her."</p> + +<p>"In two years I'll have my own money," he reminded her; "this hard +sledding is only temporary." But she looked so disappointed that he +hesitated; after all, if she wanted a house so much he ought not to +stand in the way. Poor Eleanor hadn't much fun! And, as far as he was +concerned, he would like to have Edith around. "It's only the Medfield +part of it I don't like," he told himself. Yet Lily, on Maple Street, a +mile from Fern Hill, was a needle in a haystack! (And even if Edith +should ever see her, she wouldn't know her.) ... "If you really want to +have her," he told Eleanor, "go ahead."</p> + +<p>So that was how it happened that Edith burst in upon Eleanor's dear +domesticity of two. Maurice, having once agreed to his wife's wish, was +rather pleased at the prospect. "It will help on money," he thought; +"another hundred a year will come in handy to Lily. And it will be sort +of nice to have Buster in the house."</p> + +<p>Lily had not said she must have another hundred. She did not even think +so. "<i>I</i> can swing it!" Lily had said, sturdily. And she did; but of +course, as Maurice, to his intense discomfort, knew only too well, it +was hard to swing it. Even with what help he could give her, she +couldn't possibly have got along if she had not been astonishingly +efficient and thrifty, always looking at both sides of a cent! "I ain't +smoking any more," Lily said once; "well, 'tain't <i>only</i> to save money; +but I don't want Jacky to be getting any funny ideas!" (this when +"Ernest Augustus" was only a few months old!) She had a tiny house on +Maple Street, with a sun-baked front yard, in which a few shrubs caught +the dust on their meager foliage; and she had a border of pansies in the +shade under the bay window;—"I <i>must</i> have flowers!" Lily said, +apologetically;—and she had three roomers, and she had scraped the +locality for mealers. She would have made more money if she had not fed +her boarders so well. "But there!" said Lily; "if I give 'em nice food, +they'll stay!" But, all the same, Maurice knew that two or three dollars +more a week would "come in handy." His sense of irritated responsibility +about her made him long for that twenty-fifth birthday which would bring +him his own money. For, in spite of Lily's thriftiness, her expenses, as +well as her toil, kept increasing, and Maurice, cursing himself whenever +he thought that but for him she would be "on easy street" at Marston's, +had begun the inevitable borrowing. The payment of the interest on his +note was a tax on his salary; yet not so taxing as the necessity of +being constantly on guard against some careless word which might make +Eleanor ask questions about that salary.</p> + +<p>But Eleanor asked very few questions about anything so practical as +income. Her interest in money matters, now, in regard to Edith, was +merely that Edith was a means to an end—Maurice could have his own +home! The finding a house, under Mrs. Newbolt's candid guidance—and +Maurice's worried reminders that he couldn't "afford" more than so much +rent!—gave Eleanor the pleasantest summer she had had since that first +summer when, in the meadow, she and Maurice had watched the clouds, and +the locust blossoms, and told each other that nothing in heaven or +earth, or the waters under the earth, could part them...</p> + +<p>The old house they finally secured was in an unfashionable locality; +there was a tailor shop next door and an undertaker across the street, +and a clanging trolley car screeched on the curve at the end of the +block; but the dignity of the pillared doorway, and the carved window +casings, had appealed to Maurice; and also the discovery in the parlor, +behind a monstrous air-tight stove, of a bricked-up fireplace (which he +promptly tore open), all combined to make undertakers and tailors, as +neighbors, unimportant! On the rear of the house was an iron +veranda—roped with wistaria; below, inclosed in a crumbling brick wall, +was the back yard—"<i>Garden</i>, if you please!" Maurice announced—for +Bingo's bones. Clumps of Madonna lilies had bloomed here, and died, and +bloomed again, for almost a century; the yard was shaded by a silver +poplar, which would gray and whiten in the wind in hot weather, or +delicately etch itself against a wintry sky. A little path, with moss +between the bricks and always damp in the shadow of the poplar, led from +the basement door to an iron gate; through its rusty bars one could see, +a block away, the slipping gleam of the river, hurrying down from "their +meadow," to disappear under the bridge. Maurice said he would build a +seat around the poplar, "... and we'll put a table under it, and paint +it green, and have tea there in the afternoon! Skeezics will like that."</p> + +<p>"Edith looks healthy," said Mrs. Newbolt; "my dear father used to say he +liked healthy females. Old-fashioned word—females. Well, I'm afraid +dear father liked 'em too much. But my dear mother—she was a +Dennison—pretended not to see it. She had sense. Great thing in married +life, to have sense, and know what not to see! Pity Edith's not musical. +Have you a cook? I believe she'd have caught you, Maurice, if Eleanor +hadn't got in ahead! I brought a chocolate drop for Bingo. Here, Bingo!"</p> + +<p>Bingo, silky and snarly, climbed on to her steeply sloping black-satin +lap, ate the chocolate drop—keeping all the while a liquid and adoring +eye upon his mistress—then slid down and ran to curl up on Eleanor's +skirt.</p> + +<p>By September the moving and seat building were accomplished—the last +not entirely on Edith's account; it was part of Maurice's painstaking +desire to do something—anything!—for "poor Eleanor," as he named her +in his remorseful thought. There was never a day—indeed, there was not +often an hour!—when his own meanness to his wife (combined with disgust +at being a liar) did not ache somewhere in the back of his mind. So he +tried, in all sorts of anxious ways, to please her. He almost never saw +Lily; but the thought of her often brought Eleanor a box of candy or a +bunch of violets. Such expenditures were slightly easier for him now, +because he had had another small raise,—which this time he had told +Eleanor about. On the strength of it he said to himself that he supposed +he ought to give Lily a little something extra? So on the day when Mrs. +Houghton and Edith were to arrive in Mercer, he went out to Medfield to +tell Jacky's mother that she might count on a few dollars more each +month. The last time he had seen her, Lily had told him that Jacky "was +fussing with his teeth something fierce. I had to hire a little girl +from across the street," she said, "to take him out in the perambulator, +or else I couldn't 'tend to my cooking. It costs money to live, Mr. +Curtis," Lily had said, "and eggs are going up, awful!" She had never +gone back to the familiarity of those days when she called him "Curt." +That he, dull and preoccupied, still called her Lily gave her, somehow, +such a respectful consciousness of his superiority that she had +hesitated to speak of anything so intimate as eggs... "Yes, I must give +her something extra," Maurice thought, remembering the "cost" of living. +"Talk about paying the piper! I bet <i>I'm</i> paying him, all right!"</p> + +<p>He was to meet Mrs. Houghton at seven-thirty that night, and it occurred +to him that if he told Eleanor he had some extra work to do at his desk +he could wedge this call in between office hours and the time when he +must go to the station—("and they call me 'G. Washington'!") He felt no +special cautiousness in going out to Maple Street; the few people he +knew in Mercer did not frequent this locality, and if any of them +should chance to see him—a most remote possibility!—why, was he not in +the real-estate business, and constantly looking at houses? On this +particular afternoon, jolting along in the trolley car, he grimly amused +himself with the thought of what he would do if, say, Eleanor herself +should see him turning that infernally shrill bell on Lily's door. It +was a wild flight of imagination, for Eleanor never would see him—never +could see him! Eleanor, who only went to Medfield when their wedding +anniversary came round, and she dragged him out to sit by the river and +sentimentalize! He thought of the loveliness of that past June—and the +contrasting and ironic ugliness of the present September.... Now, the +little secret house in the purlieus of Mercer's smoke and grime; then, +the river, and the rippling tides of grass and clover, and the blue +sky—and that ass, lying at the feet of a woman old enough to be his +mother!</p> + +<p>He laughed as he swung off the car—then frowned; for he saw that to +reach Lily's door he would have to pass a baby carriage standing just +inside the gate. He didn't glance into the carriage at the roly-poly +youngster. He never, on the rare occasions when he went to see Lily, +looked at his child if he could avoid doing so—and she never asked him +to. Once, annoyed at Jacky's shrill noisiness, he had protested, +frowning: "Can't you keep it quiet? It needs a spanking!" After that +indifferent criticism ("For <i>I</i> don't care how she brings it up!") Lily +had not wanted him to see her baby. She could not have said just +why—perhaps it was fear lest Maurice would notice his growing +perfection—but when Jacky's father came she kept Jacky in the +background! On this September afternoon she said, as she opened the +door:</p> + +<p>"Why, you're a great stranger! Come right in! Wait a second till I get +Jacky. I've just nursed him and I put him out there so I could watch him +while I scrubbed the porch." She ran out to the gate, then pushed the +carriage up the path.</p> + +<p>"Let me help you," Maurice said, politely; adding to himself, +"Damn—damn—!" Stepping backward, he lifted the front wheels, and with +Lily's help pulled the perambulator on to the little porch and over the +threshold into the house—which always shone with immaculate neatness +and ugly comfort. He kept his eyes away from the sleeping face on the +pillow. Together they got the carriage into the hall—Lily fumbling all +the while with one hand to fasten the front of her dress and skipping a +button or two as she did so; but he had a glimpse of the heavy abundance +of her bosom, and thought to himself that, esthetically, maternity was +rather unpleasant.</p> + +<p>"Go on into the parlor and sit down," she said; "I'll put him in the +kitchen," She pushed the elaborate wicker perambulator, adorned with +bows of blue-satin ribbon, down a dark entry smelling of very good soup +stock. When she came back she found Maurice, his hat and stick in his +hands, standing in her tiny front room, where the sunny window was full +of geraniums and scraggly rose bushes. "I got 'em in early. And I dug up +my dahlias—I was afraid of frost. (Mercy! I must clean that window on +the outside!) Well, you <i>are</i> a stranger!" she said, again, +good-naturedly. Then she sighed: "Mr. Curtis, Jacky seems kind o' sick. +He's been coughing, and he's hot. Would you send for a doctor, if you +was me?"</p> + +<p>"Why, if you're worried, yes," Maurice said, impatiently; "I was just +passing, and—No, thank you; I won't sit down. I was passing, and I +thought I'd look in and give you a—a little present. If the youngster's +upset, it will come in well," he ended, as his hand sought his waistcoat +pocket. Lily's face was instantly anxious.</p> + +<p>"What! Did <i>you</i> think he looked sick, too? I was kind of worried, but +if you noticed it—"</p> + +<p>"I didn't in the least," he said, frowning; "I didn't look at him."</p> + +<p>"He 'ain't never been what you'd call sick," Lily tried to reassure +herself; "he's a reg'lar rascal!" she ended, tenderly; her eyes—those +curious amber eyes, through which sometimes a tigress looks!—looked +now at Maurice in passionate motherhood.</p> + +<p>Maurice, putting the money down on the table, said, "I wish I could do +more for you, Lily; but I'm dreadfully strapped."</p> + +<p>"Say, now, you take it right back! I can get along; I got my two +upstairs rooms rented, and I've got a new mealer. And if Jacky only +keeps well, I can manage fine. But that girl that's been wheelin' him +has measles at her house—little slut!" Lily said (the yellow eyes +glared); "she didn't let on to me about it. Wanted her two dollars a +week! If Jacky's caught 'em, I—I'll see to her!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he's all right," Maurice said; he didn't like "it"—although, if it +hadn't been for "it" he would probably, long before this, have slipped +down into the mere comfort of Lily; "it" held him prisoner in +self-contempt; "it," or perhaps the larger It? the It which he had seen +first in his glorious, passionately selfish ecstasy on his wedding day; +then glimpsed in the awful orderliness of the universe,—the It that +held the stars in their courses! Perhaps the tiny, personal thing, Joy, +and the stupendous, impersonal thing, Law, and the mysterious, unseen +thing, Life, were all one? "Call it God," Maurice had said of ecstasy, +and again of order; he did not call Jacky's milky lips "God." The little +personality which he had made was not in the least God to him! On the +contrary, it was a nuisance and a terror, and a financial anxiety. He +shrank from the thought of it, and kept "decent," merely through disgust +at the child as an entity—an entity which had driven him into loathsome +evasions and secrecies which once in a while sharpened into little lies. +But he was faintly sorry, now, to see Lily look unhappy about the Thing; +and he even had a friendly impulse to comfort her: "Jacky's all right! +But I'll send a doctor in, if you want me to. I saw a doctor's shingle +out as I came around the corner."</p> + +<p>She said she'd be awfully obliged; and he, looking at his watch, and +realizing that Mrs. Houghton's train was due in less than an hour, +hurried off.</p> + +<p>The doctor's bell was not answered promptly; then the doctor detained +him by writing down the address, getting it wrong, correcting it, and +saying: "Mrs. Dale? Oh yes; you are Mr. Dale?"</p> + +<p>"No—not at all! Just a friend. I happened to be calling, and Mrs. Dale +asked me to stop and ask you to come in."</p> + +<p>Then he rushed off. On the way to town, staring out of the window of the +car, he tingled all over at Doctor Nelson's question: "You are Mr. +Dale?"... "Why the devil did I offer to get a doctor? I wish Lily would +move to the ends of the earth; or that the brat would get well; or—or +something."</p> + +<p>There was a little delay in reaching the station, and when he got there, +it was to find that Mrs. Houghton's train was in and she and Edith, +shifting for themselves, had presumably taken a hack to find their way +to Maurice's house. He was mortified, but annoyed, too, because it +involved giving Eleanor some sort of lying explanation for his +discourtesy. "I'll have to cook up some kind of yarn!" he thought, +disgustedly...</p> + +<p>When Edith and her mother had arrived, unaccompanied by Maurice, Eleanor +was sharply worried; had anything happened to him? Oh, she was afraid +something had happened to him! "Where <i>do</i> you suppose he is?" she said, +over and over. "I'm always so afraid he's been run over!" And when +Maurice, flushed and apologetic, appeared, she was so relieved that she +was cross. What on earth had detained him? "How <i>did</i> you miss them?"</p> + +<p>So Maurice immediately told half of the truth,—this being easier for +him than an out-and-out lie. He had been detained because he had to go +and see a house in Medfield. "Awfully sorry, Mrs. Houghton!"</p> + +<p>Eleanor said she should have thought he needn't have stayed long enough +to be late at the station! Well, he hadn't stayed long; but the—"the +tenant was afraid her baby had measles and she had asked him to go and +get a doctor, and—"</p> + +<p>"Of course!" Mrs. Houghton said; "don't give it a thought, Maurice. +John Bennett met us—you knew he was at the Polytechnical?—and brought +us here. But, anyhow, Edith and I were quite capable of looking out for +ourselves; weren't we, Edith?"</p> + +<p>Edith, almost sixteen now, long-legged, silent, and friendly, said, +"Yes, mother" and helped herself so liberally to butter that her hostess +thought to herself, <i>"Gracious!"</i></p> + +<p>However, assured that Maurice had not been run over, Eleanor was really +indifferent to Edith's appetite, for the sum Mrs. Houghton had offered +for the girl's board was generous. So, proud of the new house, and +pleased with sitting at the head of her own table, and hoping that +Maurice would like the pudding, which, with infinite fussing, she had +made with her own hands, she felt both happy and hospitable. She told +Edith to take some more butter (which she did!); and tell Johnny to come +to dinner some night, "and we'll have some music," she added, kindly.</p> + +<p>"Johnny doesn't like music," said Edith; "well, I don't, either. But I +guess he'll come. He likes food."</p> + +<p>Edith effaced herself a good deal in the few days that, her mother +stayed on in Mercer to launch her at Fern Hill; effaced herself, indeed, +so much that Maurice, full of preoccupations of his own, was hardly +aware of her presence!... He had had a scared note from Lily:</p> + +<p>Doctor Nelson says he's <i>awful</i> sick, and I've got to have a nurse. I +don't like to, because I can't bear to have anybody do for him but me, +and she charges so much. Makes me tired to see her all fussed up in +white dresses—I suppose it's her laundry I'm paying for! That little +girl he caught it from ought to be sent to a Reformatory. I'm afraid my +new mealer'll go, if she thinks there's anything catching in the house. +I hate to ask you—</p> + +<p>The scented, lavender-colored envelope was on Maurice's desk at the +office the morning after Mrs. Houghton and Edith arrived. When he had +read it, and torn it into minute scraps, Maurice had something else to +think of than Edith! He knew Lily wouldn't want to leave "her" baby to +go out and cash a money order, and checks were dangerous; so he must +take that trip to Medfield again. "Well," said Maurice—pulled and +jerked out to Maple Street on the leash of an ineradicable sense of +decency—"the devil is getting his money's worth out of <i>me</i>!"</p> + +<p>He entered No. 16 without turning the clanging bell, for the door was +ajar. Lily was in the entry, talking to the doctor, who gave Mrs. Dale's +"friend" a rather keen look. "Oh, Mr. Curtis, he's <i>awful</i> sick!" Lily +said; she was haggard with fright.</p> + +<p>Maurice, swearing to himself for having arrived at that particular +moment, said, coldly, "Too bad."</p> + +<p>"Oh, we'll pull him through," the doctor said, with a kind look at Lily. +She caught his hand and kissed it, and burst out crying. The two men +looked at each other—one amused, the other shrinking with disgust at +his own moral squalor. Then from the floor above came a whimpering cry, +and Lily, calling passionately, "Yes, Sweety! Maw's coming!" flew +upstairs.</p> + +<p>"I'll look in this evening," Doctor Nelson said, and took himself off, +rubbing the back of his hand on his trousers. "I wonder if there's any +funny business there?" he reflected. But he thought no more about it +until weeks afterward, when he happened, one day, in the bank, to stand +before Maurice, waiting his turn at the teller's window. He said, +"Hello!" and Maurice said, "Hello!" and added that it was a cold day. +The fact that Maurice said not a word about that recovering little +patient in Medfield made the doctor's mind revert to the possibilities +he had recognized in Lily's entry.</p> + +<p>"Yet he looks too decent for that sort of thing," the doctor thought; +"well, it's a rum world." Then Maurice took his turn at the window, and +Doctor Nelson put his notes in his pocket, and the two men nodded to +each other, and said, "By," and went their separate ways.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV" ></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + + +<p>Edith's first winter in Mercer went pretty well; she was not fussy about +what she had to eat; "I can always stoke on bread and butter," she said, +cheerfully; and she was patient with the aging Bingo's yapping +jealousies; "The smaller a dog is, the more jealous he is!" she said, +with good-humored contempt; and she didn't mind Eleanor's +speechlessness. "<i>I</i> talk!" Edith said. But Maurice?... "I love him next +to father and mother," Edith thought; but, all the same, she didn't know +what to make of Maurice! He had very little to say to her—which made +her feel annoyingly young, and made him seem so old and stern that +sometimes she could hardly realize that he was the Maurice of the +henhouse, and the camp, and the squabbles. Instead, he was the Maurice +of that night on the river, the "Sir Walter Raleigh" Maurice! Once in a +while she was quite shy with him. "He's awfully handsome," she thought, +and her eyes dreamed. "What a clod Johnny is, compared to him!" ... As +for Eleanor, Edith, being as unobservant as most sixteen-year-old girls, +saw only the lovely dark eyes and the beautiful brow under the ripple of +soft black hair, Eleanor's sterile silences did not trouble her, and she +never knew that the traces of tears meant a helpless consciousness that +dinner had been a failure. The fact was, she never noticed Eleanor's +looks! She merely thought Maurice's wife was old, and didn't "get much +fun out of life—she just plays on the piano!" Edith thought. Pain of +mind or body was, to Edith—as probably it ought to be to +Youth—unintelligible; so she had no sympathy. In fact, being sixteen, +she had still the hard heart of a child.</p> + +<p>It may have been the remembrance of Sir Walter Raleigh that made her, +one night, burst into reminiscent questions:</p> + +<p>"Maurice! Do you remember the time that boat upset, and that girl—all +painted, you know—flopped around in the water?"</p> + +<p>Maurice said, briefly, why, yes; he believed he remembered.</p> + +<p>"I remember that girl, too," Eleanor said; "Maurice told me about her."</p> + +<p>"Well, what do you suppose?" Edith said; "I saw her to-day."</p> + +<p>Maurice, pushing back his chair, got up and went into the little room +opening into the dining room, which they called the library. At his +desk, his pen in his hand, his jaw set, he sat listening—listening! +What in hell would she say next? What she said was harmless enough:</p> + +<p>"Yes, I saw her. I was walking home, and on Maple Street who should I +see going into a house but this woman! She was lugging a flower pot, and +a baby. And,—now, isn't this funny?—she sort of stumbled at the gate, +<i>right by me</i>! And I grabbed her, and kept the child from falling; and I +said—" In the library Maurice's face was white—"I said, 'Why, <i>I</i> saw +you once—you're Miss Dale. Your boat upset,' And she said, 'You have +the advantage of me.' Of course she isn't a lady, you know."</p> + +<p>Eleanor smiled, and called significantly to her husband, "Edith says +your rescued friend isn't a 'lady,' Maurice!" He didn't answer, and she +added to Edith, "No; she certainly isn't a lady! Darling," she called +again; "do you suppose she's got married?"</p> + +<p>To which he answered, "Where did I put those sheets of blotting paper, +Eleanor?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, she's married," Edith said, scraping her plate; "she told me +her name was <i>Mrs</i>. Henry Dale. She couldn't seem to remember Maurice +giving her his coat, which I thought was rather funny in her, 'cause +Maurice is so handsome you'd think she'd remember him. And I said he was +'Mr. Curtis,' and she said she'd never heard the name. I got to talking +to her," ("I bet you did," Maurice thought, despairingly); "and she told +me that 'Jacky' had had the measles, and been awfully sick, but he was +all well now, and she'd taken him into Mercer to get him a cap." +("What's Lily mean by bringing the Thing into town!" Jacky's father was +saying through set teeth.) "She was perfectly bursting with pride about +him," Edith went on; "said he was 'a reg'lar rascal'! Isn't it queer +that I should meet her, after all these years?"</p> + +<p>When Eleanor went into the library to hunt for the blotting paper, she, +too, commented on the queerness of Edith's stumbling on the lady who +wasn't a lady. "How small the world is!" said Eleanor. "Why, Maurice, +here's the paper! Right before you!"</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Maurice, "yes; thank you." He was saying to himself, "I might +have known this kind of thing would happen!" He was consumed with +anxiety to ask Edith some questions, but of course he had to be silent. +To show even the slightest interest was impossible—and Edith +volunteered no further information, for that night Eleanor took occasion +to intimate to her that "Mrs. Dale" must not be referred to. "You can't +speak of that kind of person, you know."</p> + +<p>"Why not?" Edith said.</p> + +<p>"Well, she isn't—nice. She wasn't married. And Edith, it really isn't +good taste to tell a man, right to his face, that he's handsome! I don't +think any man likes flattery."</p> + +<p>"You mean because I said Maurice was handsome? I didn't say it to his +face—he was in the library. And it isn't flattery to tell the truth. He +is! As for Mrs. Dale, she <i>is</i> married; this little Jacky was her baby! +She said so. He had the bluest eyes! I never saw such blue eyes—except +Maurice's. 'Course she's not a lady; but I don't see what right you have +to say she isn't nice."</p> + +<p>Eleanor, laughing, threw up despairing hands; "Edith, don't you know +<i>anything</i>?"</p> + +<p>"I know <i>everything</i>," Edith said, affronted; "I'm sixteen. Of course I +know what you mean; but Mrs. Dale isn't—that. And," Edith ended, on +the spur of the moment, "and I'm going to see her sometime!" The under +dog always appealed to Edith Houghton, and when Eleanor left her, +appalled by her failure to instill proprieties into her, Edith was +distinctly hot. "I'm not going to see her!" she told herself. "I +wouldn't think of such a thing. But I won't listen to Eleanor abusing +her."</p> + +<p>As for Eleanor, she confided her alarm to Maurice. "She mustn't go to +see that woman!"</p> + +<p>His instant horrified agreement was a satisfaction to her: "Of <i>course</i> +not!"</p> + +<p>"She won't listen to <i>me</i>," Eleanor complained; "you'll have to tell her +she mustn't."</p> + +<p>"I will," he said, grimly.</p> + +<p>And the very next day he did. He happened (as it seemed) to start for +his office just as Edith started for school, so they walked along +together.</p> + +<p>"Edith," he said, the moment they were clear of his own doorway and +Eleanor's ears; "that Mrs. Dale; I'd keep away from her, if I were you."</p> + +<p>"Goodness!" said Edith; "did you suppose I was going to fall into her +arms? Why should I have anything to do with her?"</p> + +<p>"Eleanor said you said—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I just said that because Eleanor was down on her, and that made me +mad. I couldn't go and see her, if I was dying to—'cause I don't know +where she lives—unless it was that house she was going into? Do you +know, Maurice?"</p> + +<p>"Great Scott! How should I know where she lives?"</p> + +<p>"'Course not," said Edith.</p> + +<p>But it was many days before Maurice's alarm quieted down sufficiently to +let him drift back into the furtive security of knowing that neither +Edith nor Eleanor could, by any possibility, get on Lily's track. "And, +besides, Lily's too good a sport to give anything away. Pretty neat in +her to 'forget' that coat! But she ought to be careful not to forget her +husband's name!—it seems to be Henry, now."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV" ></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> + + +<p>A moody Maurice, who puzzled her, and a faultfinding Eleanor, whom she +was too generous to understand, drove the sixteen-year-old Edith into a +real appreciation of Johnny Bennett. With him, she was still in the +stage of unsentimental frankness that pierced ruthlessly to what she +conceived to be the realities; and because she was as unselfconscious as +a tree, she was entirely indifferent to the fact that Johnny was a boy +and she was a girl, Johnny, however, nearsighted and in enormous +shell-rimmed spectacles, and still inarticulate, was quite aware of it; +more definitely so every week,—for he saw her on Saturdays and Sundays. +"And it's the greatest possible relief to talk to you!" Edith told him.</p> + +<p>Johnny accepted the tribute as his due. They had been coasting, and now, +on the hilltop, were sitting on their sleds, resting. "Gosh! it's hot!" +Johnny said: he had taken off his red sweater and tied its sleeves +around his neck; "zero? You try pulling both those sleds up here, and +you'll think it's the Fourth of July," Johnny said, adjusting his +spectacles with a mittened hand. He frequently reverted to the grumpy +stage—yet now, looking at Edith, grumpiness vanished. She was +breathless from the long climb, and her white teeth showed between her +parted, panting lips: her cheeks were burning with frosty pink. Johnny +looked, and looked away, and sighed.</p> + +<p>"Johnny," Edith said, "why do you suppose Eleanor gives me so many +call-downs? 'Course I hate music; and once I said she was always +pounding on the piano—and she didn't seem to like it!" Edith was +genuinely puzzled. "I can't understand Eleanor," she said; "she makes me +tired."</p> + +<p>"I should think she'd make Maurice tired!" Johnny said, and added: +"That's the worst of getting married. I shall never marry."</p> + +<p>"When I was a child," Edith said, "I always said that when I grew up I +was going to marry Maurice, because he was just like Sir Walter Raleigh. +Wasn't that a joke?"</p> + +<p>Johnny saw nothing amusing in such foolishness; he said that Maurice was +old enough to be her father! As for himself, he felt, he said, that +marriage was a mistake. "Women hamper a man dreadfully. Still—I may +marry," Johnny conceded; "but it will be somebody very young, so I can +train her mind. I want a woman (if I decide to marry) to be just the +kind I want. Otherwise, you get hung up with Eleanors."</p> + +<p>Edith lifted her chin. "Well, I like that! Why shouldn't she train your +mind?"</p> + +<p>"Because," Johnny said, firmly, "the man's mind is the stronger."</p> + +<p>Edith screamed with laughter, and threw a handful of snow in his neck. +"B-r-r-r!" she said; "it's getting cold! I'll knock the spots out of you +on belly bumps!" She got on her feet, shook the snow from the edge of +her skirt, flung herself face down on her sled, and shot like a blue +comet over the icy slope. Johnny sped after her, his big sled taking +flying leaps over the kiss-me-quicks. They reached the bottom of the +hill almost together, and Johnny, looking at her standing there, +breathless and rosy, with shining eyes which were as impersonal as +stars, said to himself, with emotion:</p> + +<p>"She's got sense—for a girl." His heart was pounding in his broad +chest, but he couldn't think of a thing to say. He was still dumb when +she said good-by to him at Maurice's door.</p> + +<p>"Why don't you come to dinner next Saturday?" she said, carelessly; +"Maurice will be away all week on business; but he'll be back Saturday."</p> + +<p>Johnny mumbled something to the effect that he could survive, even if +Maurice wasn't back.</p> + +<p>"I couldn't," Edith said. "I should simply die, in this house, if it +wasn't for Maurice!"</p> + +<p>As, whistling, she ran upstairs, Edith thought to herself that Johnny +was a <i>lamb</i>! "But, compared to Maurice, he's awfully uninteresting." +Edith, openly and audibly, compared every male creature to Maurice, and +none of them ever measured up to him! His very moodiness had its charm; +when he sat down at the piano after dinner and scowled over some new +music, or when he lounged in his big chair and smoked, his face absorbed +to the point of sternness, Edith, loving him "next to father and +mother," watched him, and wondered what he was thinking about? Sometimes +he came out of his abstraction and teased her, and then she sparkled +into gay impertinences; sometimes he asked her what she thought of this +or that phrasing, "...though you are a barbarian, Skeezics, about +music"; sometimes he would pull a book from the shelf over his +desk and read a poem to her; and he was really interested in her +opinion,—ardently appreciative if he liked the poem; if he didn't, it +was "the limit."</p> + +<p>Maurice was at home that Saturday night for which Edith had thrown the +careless invitation to Johnny; and Mrs. Newbolt also dropped in to +dinner. It was not a pleasant dinner. Eleanor sat in one of her empty +silences; saw Maurice frown at an overdone leg of lamb; heard her aunt's +stream of comments on her housekeeping; listened to Edith's teasing +chatter to Johnny;—"What <i>can</i> Maurice see in her!" She thought. +Before dinner was over, she excused herself; she had a headache, she +said. "You won't mind, Auntie, will you?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Newbolt said, heartily, "<i>Not</i> a bit! My dear mother used to—"</p> + +<p>Eleanor, picking up little Bingo, went with lagging step out of the +room.</p> + +<p>"Children," said Mrs. Newbolt, "why don't you make taffy this evening?"</p> + +<p>"<i>That's</i> sense," said Edith; "let's! It's Mary's night out. Sorry poor +old Eleanor isn't up to it."</p> + +<p>Maurice frowned; "Look here, Edith, that isn't—respectful."</p> + +<p>Edith looked so blankly astonished that Mrs. Newbolt defended her: "But +Eleanor <i>does</i> look old! And she'll lose her figger if she isn't +careful! My dear grandmother—used to say, 'Girls, I'd rather have you +lose your vir—'"</p> + +<p>"Don't raise Cain in the kitchen, you two," Maurice said, hastily; +"Eleanor hates noise."</p> + +<p>Edith, subdued by his rebuke, said she wouldn't raise Cain; and, indeed, +she and Johnny were preternaturally quiet until things had been cleared +away and the taffy could be started. When it was on the stove, there was +at least ten minutes of whispering while they watched the black molasses +shimmer into the first yellow rings. Then Johnny, in a low voice, talked +for a good while of something he called "Philosophy"—which seemed to +consist in a profound disbelief in everything. "Take religion," said +Johnny. "I'd like to discuss it with you; I think you have a very good +mind—for a woman. Religion is an illustration of what I mean. It's a +delusion. A complete delusion. I have ceased to believe in anything."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Johnny, how awful!" said Edith, stirring the seething sweetness; +"Johnny, be a lamb, and get me a tumbler of cold water, will you, to try +this stuff?"</p> + +<p>Johnny brought the water ("Oh, how young she is!" he thought), and Edith +poured a trickle of taffy into it.</p> + +<p>"Is it done?" Edith said, and held out the brittle string of candy; he +bit at it, and said he guessed so. Then they poured the foamy stuff into +a pan, and put it in the refrigerator. "We'll wait till it gets stiff," +said Edith.</p> + +<p>"I think," said Johnny, in a low voice, "your hair is handsomer than +most women's. I'm particular about a woman's hair."</p> + +<p>Edith, sitting on the edge of the table, displaying very pretty ankles, +put an appraising hand over the brown braids that were wound around her +head in a sort of fillet. "Are you?" she said, and began to yawn—but +stopped short, her mouth still open, for Johnny Bennett was <i>looking at +her</i>! "Let's go into the library," she said, hurriedly.</p> + +<p>"I like it out here," Johnny objected.</p> + +<p>But as he spoke Maurice lounged into the kitchen. "Stiff?" he said.</p> + +<p>"No; won't be for ages," Edith said—and instantly the desire to fly to +the library ceased, especially as Mrs. Newbolt came trundling in. With +Maurice astride one of the wooden chairs, his blue eyes droll and +teasing, and Mrs. Newbolt enthroned in adipose good nature close to the +stove, Edith was perfectly willing to stay in the kitchen!</p> + +<p>"I say!" Maurice said. "Let's pull the stuff!"</p> + +<p>Johnny looked cross. "What," he asked himself, "are Maurice and Mrs. +Newbolt butting in for?" Then he softened, for Maurice was teasing +Edith, and Mrs. Newbolt was tasting the candy, and the next minute all +was in delightful uproar of stickiness and excitement, and Johnny, +exploding into wild cackles of laughter, felt quite young for the next +hour.</p> + +<p>Eleanor, upstairs, with Bingo's little silken head on her breast, did +not feel young; she heard the noise, and smelled the boiling molasses, +and knew that Mary would be cross when she came home and found the +kitchen in a mess. "How can Maurice stand such childishness!" She lay +there with a cologne-soaked handkerchief on her forehead, and sighed +with pain. "Why <i>doesn't</i> he stop them?" she thought. She heard his +shout of laughter, and Edith's screaming giggle, and moved her head to +find a cool place on the pillow. "She's too old to romp with him." +Suddenly she sat up, tense and listening; he was enjoying himself—and +she was suffering! "If he had a headache, I would sit with him; I +wouldn't leave him alone!" But she was sick in bed,—and he was having a +good time—<i>with Edith</i>. Her resentment was not exactly jealousy; it was +fear; the same fear she had felt when Maurice had told her how Edith +had rushed into his room the night of the great storm, <i>the fear of +Youth</i>! She moved Bingo gently, stroking him until he seemed to be +asleep; then sat up, and put her feet on the floor. The folded +handkerchief slipped from her forehead, and she pressed her hands +against her temples. "I'm going downstairs," she said to herself; "I +won't be left out!" She felt a sick qualm as she got on to her feet, and +went over to look at herself in the mirror ... her face was pale, and +her hair, wet with cologne, was pasted down in straggling locks on her +forehead; she tried to smooth it. "Oh, I look old enough to be—his +aunt," she said, hopelessly. When she opened her door she heard a little +thud behind her; it was Bingo, scrambling off the bed to follow her; as +she went downstairs, unsteadily, and clinging to the banisters, he +stepped on her skirt, so she had to stoop and pick him up. At the closed +kitchen door she paused for a moment, leaning against the wall; her head +swam. Bingo, held in one trembling arm, put out his little pink tongue +and licked her cheek. "I <i>won't</i> be left out," she said again. Just as +her hand touched the knob there was an outburst of joyous yells, and a +<i>whack</i>! as a lump of taffy, flung by one of the roisterers, hit the +resounding panel of the door—then Mrs. Newbolt's fat chuckle, and +Johnny's voice vociferating that Edith was the limit, and +Maurice—"Edith, if you put that stuff in my hair, I'll skin you alive!"</p> + +<p>"Boil her in oil!" yelled Johnny.</p> + +<p>Eleanor turned around and crept back to the stairs; she caught at the +newel post, and stood, gasping; then, somehow, she climbed up to her +room. There, lifting Bingo into his basket, she sank on her bed, groping +blindly for the damp handkerchief to put across her forehead. "Mary will +give notice," she said. After a while, as the throbbing grew less acute, +she said, "He's their age." Bingo, crawling out of his basket, scrabbled +up on to the bed; she felt his little loving cold nose against her face.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI" ></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> + + +<p>"What a kid Johnny Bennett is!" Maurice told Eleanor. He was detailing to +her, while he was scrubbing the stickiness of the kitchen festivities +off his hands, what had happened downstairs. "But do you know, I believe +he's soft on Edith! How old is he?"</p> + +<p>"He's nearly nineteen. Children, both of them."</p> + +<p>"Nineteen?" Maurice said, astounded. Nineteen! Johnny? "Why, <i>I</i> was +nineteen, when—" He paused. She was silent. Suddenly Maurice felt +<i>pity</i>. He had run the gamut of many emotions in the last four +years—love, and fright, and repentance, and agonies of shame, and +sometimes anger; but he had never touched pity. It stabbed him now, and +its dagger blade was sawtoothed with remorse. He looked at his wife, +lying there with closed eyes, her pillow damp where the wet handkerchief +had slipped from her temples, and her beautiful mouth sagging with pain. +"Oh, I must be nice to her, poor thing!" he thought. Aloud he said, +"Poor Eleanor!"</p> + +<p>Instantly her dark eyes opened in startled joy; his tenderness lifted +her into indifference to that throbbing in her temples. "I don't mind +anything," she said, "if you love me."</p> + +<p>"Can't I do something for your head?"</p> + +<p>"Just kiss me, darling," she said.</p> + +<p>He kissed her, for he was sorry for her. But he was thinking of himself. +"I was Johnny Bennett's age, when ... And I <i>wanted</i> to kiss her! My +God! I may have to keep up this kissing business for—for forty years!" +And whenever he was kissing her, he would have to think how he was +deceiving her; he would have to think of Lily. Yes; he had been a "kid," +like Johnny! How <i>could</i> she have done it! Pity sharpened into anger: +How could she have taken advantage of a boy? Well; he had had his +fling. To be sure, he was paying for it now, not only in anxiety about +money, but in shame, and furtiveness, and the corroding consciousness of +being a liar, and in the complete shipwreck of every purpose and +ambition that a young man ought to have. "And that day, in the field, I +called it <i>love</i>!" He would have been amused at the cynical memory, if +he had not been so bitter. "Love? Rot! Still, I ought to be kinder to +her;—but I can't bear to look at her. She's an old woman."</p> + +<p>Eleanor put out her hot, trembling hand and groped for his. "Good night, +darling," she said; "my head's better."</p> + +<p>"So glad," he said.</p> + +<p>The next morning, as Eleanor, rather white and shaky, was dressing, she +said, "Edith doesn't seem to realize that she is too old to be so free +and easy with Johnny Bennett—and you."</p> + +<p>"She's getting mighty good looking," Maurice said.</p> + +<p>"She has too much color," Eleanor said, quickly.</p> + +<p>Maurice was right. During Edith's second winter in Mercer she grew +prettier all the time; poor, speechless Johnny, looking at her through +his spectacles, was quite miserable. He told some of his intimate +friends that life was a bad joke.</p> + +<p>"I shall never marry; just do some big work, and then get out. There is +nothing really worth while. Mere looks in a woman don't attract me," +Johnny said.</p> + +<p>But that Maurice found "looks" attractive, began to be obvious to +Eleanor, who, night after night, at the dinner table, watched the +smiling, shining, careless thing—Youth!—sitting there on Maurice's +right, and felt herself withering in the dividing years. As a result, +the annoyance which, when Edith was a child, she had felt at her +childishness, began to harden into irritation at her womanliness. "I +<i>wish I</i> could get her out of the house!" she used to think, helplessly.</p> + +<p>She felt this irritation especially when they all went, one night, to +dine with Tom Morton, who had just married and gone to housekeeping. It +was a somewhat looked-forward-to event, although Eleanor thought Edith +too young to dine out, and also the shabbiness of Maurice's evening +clothes was on her mind. "Do get a new dress suit!" she urged; and he +gave the stereotyped answer: "Can't afford it."</p> + +<p>They started for the Mortons' gayly enough; but Maurice's gayety went +out like a candle in the wind when, as he followed Eleanor and Edith +into the parlor, he saw, and after a puzzled moment recognized, the +third man in the Morton dinner of six—the man who had stood in Lily's +little hall and said that the child would "pull through." ... The +spiritual squalor of that scene flashed back in sharp visualization: the +doctor; Lily, her amber eyes overflowing with tears, kissing his hand; +Jacky's fretful cry from upstairs.... Here he was! that same kindly +medical man, "getting off some guff to Mrs. Morton," Maurice told +himself, in agonized uncertainty as to what he had better do. Should he +recognize him? Or pretend not to know him? It galloped through his mind +that if he did "know" him, Eleanor would ask questions. Oh, he knew +Eleanor's questions! But if he didn't "know" him, Doctor Nelson would +know that questions might be asked. The instant's hesitation between the +two risks was decided by Doctor Nelson. He put out his hand and said, +"Oh, how are you?" So Maurice said, "Oh, how are you?" as carelessly as +anybody else.</p> + +<p>Eleanor, when the doctor was introduced, said, a little surprised, "You +know my husband?"</p> + +<p>"I think I've met Mr. Curtis somewhere," Doctor Nelson said, vaguely.</p> + +<p>"He knows so many people I don't," she thought, but she said nothing. No +one noticed her silence—or Maurice's, either! The doctor, and Morton, +and the handsome bride, were listening to Edith, amused, apparently, at +her crudity and ignorance.</p> + +<p>"Oh yes," Eleanor heard her say; "Eleanor's voice is perfectly <i>fine</i>, +father says. I'm not musical. Father says I don't know the difference +between 'Yankee Doodle' and 'Old Hundred.' Father say—" and so on.</p> + +<p>"She's tiresome!" Eleanor told herself. Later, as she sat at the little +dinner table, all gay with flowers and the bride's new candlesticks and +glittering bonbon dishes ("Hetty's showing off our loot," the bridegroom +said, proudly), Eleanor, looking on, and straining sometimes to be silly +like the rest of them, said to herself, bleakly, that the doctor, who +looked fifty, had been asked on her account. When he began to talk to +her it was all she could do to say, "Really?" or, "Of course!" at the +proper places; she was absorbed in watching Edith—the vivid face, the +broad smile, the voice so full of preposterous certainties! "I <i>look</i> +old," she thought; and indeed she did—most unnecessarily! for she was +only forty-four. Her throat suddenly ached with unshed tears of longing +to be young. Yet if she had not been so bitter she would have seen that +Maurice looked almost as old as she did! And no wonder. His +consternation at the sight of Doctor Nelson had been panic! He could +hardly eat. Naturally, the preoccupation of the two Curtises threw the +burden of talk upon the others. Doctor Nelson gave himself up to his +hostess, and Morton found Edith's ardors, upon every subject under +heaven, most diverting; he teased her and baited her, and her eyes grew +more shining, and her cheeks pinker, and her gayety more contagious with +every repartee she flung back at him. Mrs. Morton struggled heroically +with Maurice's heaviness, but she told her husband afterward, that Mr. +Curtis was nearly as dull as his wife! "I <i>couldn't</i> make him talk!" she +said. After a while she gave up trying to make him talk, and listened to +Edith's story of what happened when she was a little girl and came to +Mercer with her father:</p> + +<p>"A terrible shipwreck!" Edith said; "I remember it because of Maurice's +gallantry in giving the flopping girl his coat—he was a perfect Sir +Walter Raleigh! Remember, Maurice?"</p> + +<p>Maurice said, briefly, that he "remembered"; "if she says Dale, I'm +dished," he thought; aloud, he said that the river was growing +impossible for boating; which caused them to drop the subject of the +flopping girl, and talk about Mercer's increasing dinginess, at which +Edith said, eagerly:</p> + +<p>"You ought to see our mountains—no smoke there!"</p> + +<p>Then, of course, came tales of camping, and, most animatedly, the story +of Eleanor's wonderful rescue of Maurice.</p> + +<p>"She pulled that great big Maurice all the way down to Doctor Bennett's! +And we were all so proud of her!"</p> + +<p>Eleanor protested: "It was nothing at all." Maurice, in his own mind, +was saying, "I wish she'd left me there!"</p> + +<p>When the ladies left the gentlemen to their cigars, Edith was bubbling +over with anxiety to confide to Mrs. Morton the joke about the "lady's +cheeks coming off," and that gave the married women the chance to +express melancholy convictions as to the wickedness of the world, to +which Edith listened with much interest.</p> + +<p>"I think my painted lady lives in Medfield," she said.</p> + +<p>"Why, how do you know?" Eleanor exclaimed, surprised.</p> + +<p>"Why, don't you remember the time I saw her, with that blue-eyed baby? +She was just going into a house on Maple Street."</p> + +<p>It was at this moment that the gentlemen entered, so there was no +further talk of painted ladies; and, besides, Maurice was alert to catch +Eleanor's eye, and go home! "Edith is capable of saying anything!" he +was thinking, desperately.</p> + +<p>However, Edith said nothing alarming, and Maurice was able to get her +safely away from the powder magazine in the shape of the amiable doctor, +who, following them a few minutes later, was saying to himself: "How +scared he was! Yet he looks like a good fellow at bottom. A rum world—a +rum world!"</p> + +<p>The "good fellow" hurried his womenkind down the street in angry +preoccupation. As soon as he and Eleanor were alone, he said, "When does +Edith graduate?"</p> + +<p>"She has two years more."</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>Lord</i>!" Maurice said, despairingly; "has she got to be around for +two years?" Eleanor's face lightened, but Maurice was instantly +repentant. "I ought to be ashamed of myself for saying that! Edith's +fine; and she has brains; but—"</p> + +<p>"She monopolized the conversation to-night," Eleanor said; "Maurice, it +is very improper for her to keep talking all the time about that horrid +woman!"</p> + +<p>The sharpness of his agreement made her look at him in surprise. "She +<i>mustn't</i> talk about Mrs. Dale!" he said, angrily.</p> + +<p>"Dale? Is that her name?" said Eleanor.</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I think so; didn't Edith call her that? Well, anyway, she +mustn't keep talking about her!"</p> + +<p>His irritation was so marked, that Eleanor's heart warmed; but she said, +wearily, "I'll be glad myself when she graduates."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII" ></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> + + +<p>Edith, reflecting upon her first dinner party, wished Johnny had seen +her, all dressed up. Then she pondered the possibilities of her +allowance: If she was "going out," oughtn't she to have a real evening +dress? But this daring thought faded very soon, for there didn't seem to +be any dinner parties ahead. Mrs. Newbolt's supper table was, as Maurice +said, sarcastically, the extent of the "Curtises' social whirl"—a fact +which did not trouble him in the least! He had his own social whirl. He +had made a man-circle for himself; some of the fellows in the office +were his sort, he told Edith, and it was evident that their bachelor +habits appealed to him, for he dined out frequently; and when he did, he +was careful not to tell Eleanor where he was going, because once or +twice, when he had told her, she had called up the club or house on +the telephone about midnight to inquire if "Mr. Curtis had started +home?" ... "I was worried about you, it was so late," she defended +herself against his irritated mortification. He used to report these stag +parties to Edith, telling her some of the stories he had heard; it +didn't occur to him to tell any stories to Eleanor, because, as Henry +Houghton had once said, Maurice and his wife didn't "have the same taste +in jokes." When Edith chuckled over this or that witticism (or frowned +at any opinion contrary to Maurice's opinion!) Eleanor sat in unsmiling +silence. It was about this time Maurice fell into the way of saying "we" +to Edith: "We" will have tea in the garden; "we" will put in a lot of +bulbs on each side of the brick path; "we" will go down to the square +and hear the election returns. Occasionally he remembered to say, "Why +don't you come along, Eleanor?"</p> + +<p>"No, thank you," she said; and sometimes, to herself, she added, "He +keeps me out." The jealous woman always says this, never realizing the +deeper truth, which is that she keeps herself out! Maurice did not +notice how, all that winter, Eleanor was keeping herself out. She was +steadily retreating into some inner solitude of her own. No one noticed +it, except Mrs. O'Brien—and perhaps fat, elderly, snarling Bingo, who +must sometimes, when his small pink tongue lapped her cheek, have tasted +tears. By another year, Eleanor's mind had so utterly diverged from +Maurice's that not even his remorse (which he had grown used to, as one +grows used to some encysted thing) could achieve for them any unity of +living. She bored him, and he hurt her; she loved him and tried to +please him; he didn't love her, but tried to be polite; he was not often +angry with her, he wasn't fond enough of her to be angry! So, forgetful +of that security of the Stars—Truth!—to which he had once aspired, he +grew dully used to the arid safety of untruth,—though sometimes he +swore softly to himself at the tiresome irony of the office nickname +which, with an occasional gilt hatchet, still persisted. He would +remember that evening of panic at the Mortons', and think, lazily, "She +can't possibly get on Lily's track!" So Lily lived in anxious +thriftiness at 16 Maple Street; and Maurice, no longer acutely afraid of +her, and only seeing her two or three times a year, was more or less +able to forget her, in his growing pleasure in Edith's presence in his +house—a pleasure quite obvious to Eleanor.</p> + +<p>As for Edith, she used to wonder, sometimes, why Eleanor was so "up +stage"? (that was her latest slang); but it did not trouble her much, +for she was too generous to put two and two together. "Eleanor has +nervous prostration," she used to tell herself, with good-natured excuse +for some especial coldness; and she even tried, once in a while, "to +make things pleasant for poor old Eleanor!" "I lug her in," she told +Johnny.</p> + +<p>"She's a dose," said Johnny.</p> + +<p>"Yes," Edith agreed; "she's stupid. But I'm going to pull off a picnic, +some Sunday, to cheer her up. 'Course you needn't come, if you don't +want to."</p> + +<p>Johnny, looking properly bored, said, briefly, "I don't mind."</p> + +<p>This was in mid-September. "Are you game for it, Eleanor?" Edith said +one night at dinner; "we can find some pleasant place by the river—"</p> + +<p>"I know a bully place," Maurice said, "in the Medfield meadows; +remember, Eleanor? We went there on our trolley wedding trip," he +informed Edith.</p> + +<p>Eleanor, struggling between the pleasure of Maurice's "remember," and +antagonism at sharing that sacred remembering with Edith, objected; "It +may rain."</p> + +<p>"Oh, come on," Edith rallied her: "be a sport! It won't kill you if it +does rain!"</p> + +<p>But Maurice, after his impulsive recollection of the "bully place," +remembered that the trolley car which would take them out to the river, +must pass Lily's door; "I hope it will rain," he thought, uneasily.</p> + +<p>However, on that serene September Sunday a week later, it didn't rain; +and Maurice fell into the spirit of Edith's plans; for, after all, even +if the car did pass Lily's ugly little house, it wouldn't mean anything +to anybody! "I'll sit with my back to that side of the street," he told +himself. "It's safe enough! And it will give Buster a good time." He +didn't realize that he rather hankered for a good time himself; to be +sure, he felt a hundred years old! But money was no longer a very keen +anxiety (he had passed his twenty-fifth birthday); and the day was +glittering with sunshine, and Edith would make coffee, and Eleanor would +sing. Yes! Edith should have a good time!</p> + +<p>They went clanging gayly along over the bridge, down Maple Street, and +through the suburbs of Medfield until they came to the end of the car +line, where they piled out, with all their impediments, and started for +the river and the big locust.</p> + +<p>"You'll sing, Nelly," Maurice said—Eleanor's face lighted with +pleasure;—"and I'll tell Edith how a girl ought to behave on her +wedding trip, and you can instruct Johnny how to elope."</p> + +<p>Then, with little Bingo springing joyously, but rather stiffly, ahead of +them, they tramped across the yellowing stubble of the mowed field, +talking of their coffee, and whether there would be too much wind for +their fire—and all the while Maurice was aware of Lily at No. 16; and +Eleanor was remembering her hope of a time when she and Maurice would be +coming here, and it would not be "just us"! and Johnny was thinking that +Edith was intelligent—for a woman; and Edith was telling herself that +<i>this</i> kind of thing was some sense!</p> + +<p>Eleanor, sitting down under the old locust, watched the three young +people. She wondered when Maurice would tell her to sing. "The river is +a lovely accompaniment, isn't it?" she hinted. No one replied.</p> + +<p>"I'm going in wading after dinner," Edith announced; "what do you say, +boys? Let's take off our shoes and stockings, and walk down to the +second bridge. Eleanor can sit here and guard our things."</p> + +<p>"I'm with you!" Maurice said; and Johnny said he didn't mind; but +Eleanor protested.</p> + +<p>"You'll get your skirts wringing wet, Edith. And—I thought we were to +sit here and sing?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, you can sing any old time," Edith said, lifting the lid of the +coffee pot and stirring the brown froth with a convenient stick.</p> + +<p>"And I'm just to look on?" Eleanor said.</p> + +<p>"Why, wade, if you want to," her husband said; "It's safe enough to +leave Edith's things here."</p> + +<p>After that he was too much absorbed in shooing ants off the marmalade to +give any thought to his wife. The luncheon (except to her) was the usual +delightful discomfort of balancing coffee cups on uncertain knees, and +waving off wasps, and upsetting glasses of water. Maurice talked about +the ball game, and Edith gossiped darkly of her teachers, and Johnny +Bennett ate enormously and looked at Edith.</p> + +<p>Eleanor neither ate nor gossiped; but she, too, watched Edith—and +listened. Bingo, in his mistress's lap, had snarled at Johnny when he +took Eleanor's empty cup away, which led Edith to say that he was +jealous.</p> + +<p>"I don't call it 'jealous,'" Eleanor said, "to be fond of a person."</p> + +<p>"You can't <i>really</i> be fond of anybody, and be jealous," Edith +announced; "or if you are, it is just Bingoism."</p> + +<p>This brought a quick protest from Eleanor, which was followed by the +inevitable discussion; Edith began it by quoting, "'Love forgets self, +and jealousy remembers self.'"</p> + +<p>Maurice grinned and said nothing—it was enough for him to see Eleanor +hit, <i>hard</i>! But Johnny protested:</p> + +<p>"If your girl monkeys round with another fellow," he said, "you have a +right to be jealous."</p> + +<p>"Of course," said Eleanor.</p> + +<p>"No, sir!" said Edith. "You have a right to be <i>unhappy.</i> If the other +fellow's nicer than you—I mean if he has something that attracts her +that you haven't, of course you'd be unhappy! (though you could get busy +and <i>be</i> nice yourself.) Or, if he's not as nice as you, you'd be +unhappy, because you'd be so awfully disappointed in her. But there's no +jealousy about <i>that</i> kind of thing! Jealousy is hogging all the love +for yourself. Like Bingo! And <i>I</i> call it plain garden selfishness—and +no sense, either, because you don't gain anything by it. Do you think +you do, Maurice? ... For Heaven's sake, hand me the sandwiches!"</p> + +<p>Maurice didn't express his thoughts; he just roared with laughter. +Eleanor reddened; Johnny, handing the sandwiches, said that, though +Edith generally could reason pretty well—for a woman—in this +particular matter she was 'way off.</p> + +<p>"You are long on logic, Edith," Maurice agreed; "but short on human +nature; (she hasn't an idea how the shoe fits!)."</p> + +<p>"The reason I'm so up on jealousy," Edith explained, complacently, "is +because yesterday, in English Lit., our professor worked off a lot of +quotations on us. Listen to this (only I can't say just exactly the +words!): '<i>Though jealousy be produced by love, as ashes by fire, yet +jealousy</i>'—oh, what does come next? Oh yes; I know—'<i>yet jealousy +extinguishes love, as ashes smother flames</i>.'"</p> + +<p>"Who said that?" Maurice said.</p> + +<p>Edith said she'd forgotten: "But I bet it's true. I'd simply hate a +jealous person, no matter how much they loved me! Wouldn't you, Eleanor? +Wouldn't you hate Maurice if he was jealous of you? I declare I don't +see how you can be so fond of Bingo!"</p> + +<p>Maurice, suddenly ashamed of himself for his pleasure in seeing Eleanor +hit, was saying, inaudibly, "Good Lord! what will she say next?" To keep +her quiet, he said, good-naturedly, "Don't you want to sing, Nelly?"</p> + +<p>She said, very low, "No." Her throat ached with the pain of knowing that +the one little contribution she could make to the occasion was not +really wanted!</p> + +<p>Maurice did not urge her. He and the other two took off their shoes and +stockings; and went with squeals across the stubble, down a steep bank, +to a pebbly point of sand, round which a sunny swirl of water chattered +loudly, then went romping off into sparkling shallows. Edith's lifted +skirt, as she stepped into the current, assured her against the wetting +Eleanor had foreseen, and also showed her pretty legs—and Eleanor, on +the bank, her tensely trembling hand cuddling Bingo against her knee, +"guarded" her things! It was at this moment that her old, unrecognized +envy of Youth turned into a perfectly recognizable fear of Age. Edith +was a woman now, not a child! "And I—dislike her!" Eleanor said to +herself. She sat there alone, thinking of Edith's defects—her big +mouth, her bad manners, her loud voice; and as she thought,—watching +the waders all the while with tear-blurred eyes until a turn in the +current hid them—she felt this new dislike flowing in upon her: "He +talks to her; and forgets all about me!" ... She was deeply hurt. "He +says she has 'brains.' ... He doesn't mind it when she says she 'doesn't +care for music,' which is rude to me! And she talks about jealousy! She +knows I'm jealous. Any woman who loves her husband is jealous."</p> + +<p>Of course this pathetically false opinion made it impossible for her to +realize that jealousy is just a form of self-love, nor could she enlarge +upon Edith's naïve generalization and say that, if a woman suffers +because she is not the equal of the rival who gains her lover's +love—<i>that</i> is not jealousy! It is the anguish of recognizing her own +defects, and it may be very noble. If she suffers because the rival is +her inferior, <i>that</i> is not jealousy; it is the anguish of recognizing +defects in her lover, and it, too, is noble, for she is unhappy, not +because he has slighted her, but because he has slighted himself! +Jealousy has no such noble elements; it is the unhappiness that Bingo +knows—an ignoble agony! ... But Eleanor, like many pitiful wives, did +not know this. Sitting there on the bank of the river, without +aspiration for herself or regret for Maurice, she knew only the anguish +of being neglected. "He wouldn't have left me six years ago," she said; +"He doesn't even ask me if I want to wade! I don't; but he didn't <i>ask</i> +me. He just went off with her!"</p> + +<p>Suddenly, her fingers trembling, she began to take off her shoes and +stockings. She <i>would</i> do what Edith did! ... It was a tremor of +aspiration!—an effort to develop in herself a quality he liked in +Edith. She went, barefooted, with wincing cautiousness, and with Bingo +stepping gingerly along beside her, across the mowed grass; then, +haltingly, down the bank to the sandy edge of the river; there, while +the little dog looked up at her anxiously, she dipped a white, uncertain +foot into the water—and as she hesitated to essay the yielding mud, and +the slimy things under the stones, she heard the returning splash of +wading feet. A minute later the three youngsters appeared, Edith's +skirts now very well above the danger line of wetness, and the two men +offering eager guiding hands, which were entirely disdained! Then as, +from under the leaning trees, they rounded the bend, there came an +astonished chorus:</p> + +<p><i>"Why, look at Eleanor!"</i></p> + +<p>"Your skirt's in the water," Edith warned her; "hitch it up, and 'come +on in—the water's fine!'"</p> + +<p>She shook her head, and turned to climb up the bank.</p> + +<p>"'The King of France,'" Edith quoted, satirically, "'marched <i>down</i> a +hill, and then marched up again!'"</p> + +<p>Eleanor was silent. When the three began to put on their shoes and +stockings, Eleanor, putting on her own, her skirt wet and drabbled about +her ankles, heard Maurice and Johnny offering to tie Edith's +shoestrings—a task which Edith, with condescending giggles, permitted. +Both of the boys—for Maurice seemed suddenly as much of a boy as +Johnny!—went on their knees to tie, and re-tie, the brown ribbons, +Maurice with gleeful and ridiculous deference.</p> + +<p>"Want me to tie your shoestrings for you, Nelly?" he said over his +shoulder.</p> + +<p>"I am capable of tying my own, thank you," she said, so icily that the +three playfellows looked at one another and Maurice, reddening sharply, +said:</p> + +<p>"Give us a song, Nelly!" But she sitting with clenched hands and tensely +silent, shook her head. She was too wounded to speak. For the rest of +the poor little picnic, with its gathering up of fragments and burning +paper napkins—the conversation was labored and conscious.</p> + +<p>On the trolley going home, Edith was the only one who tried to talk; +Eleanor, holding Bingo in her lap, was dumb; and Johnny—hunting about +for an excuse to "get away from the whole blamed outfit!" only said +"M-m" now and then. But Maurice said nothing at all. After all, what can +a man say when his wife has made a fool of herself?</p> + +<p>"Even Lily would have had more sense!" he thought.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII" ></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> + + +<p>That dismal festivity of the meadow marked the time when Maurice began +to live in his own house only from a sense of duty ... and because Edith +was there! A fact which Eleanor's aunt recognized almost as soon as +Eleanor did; so, with her usual candor, Mrs. Newbolt took occasion to +point things out to her niece. She had bidden Eleanor come to dinner, +and Eleanor had said she would—"if Maurice happened to be going out."</p> + +<p>"Better come when he's <i>not</i> going out, so he can be at home and amuse +Edith!" said Mrs. Newbolt. "Eleanor, my dear father used to say that +women were puffect fools, because they never could realize that if they +left the door <i>open</i>, a cat would put on his slippers and sit by the +fire and knit; if they locked it, he'd climb up the chimney, but what +he'd feel free to prowl on the roof!"</p> + +<p>Eleanor preferred to "lock the door"; and certainly during that next +winter Edith's gay interest in every topic under heaven was a roof on +which Maurice prowled whenever he could! Sometimes he stayed at home in +the evening, just to talk to her! When he did, those "brains" which +Eleanor resented, made him indifferent to many badly cooked +dinners—during which Eleanor sat at the table and saw his enjoyment, +and felt that dislike of their "boarder," which had become acute the day +of the picnic, hardening into something like hatred. She wondered how he +endured the girl's chatter? Sometimes she hinted as much, but Edith +never knew she was being criticized! She was too generous to recognize +the significance of what she called (to herself) Eleanor's grouch, and +Maurice's delight in such unselfconsciousness helped to keep her +ignorant, for he held his tongue—with prodigious effort!—even when +Eleanor hit Edith over his shoulder. If he defended her, he told +himself, the fat <i>would</i> be in the fire! So, as no one pointed out to +Edith what the grouch meant, she had not the faintest idea that Eleanor +was saying to herself, "Oh, if I could <i>only</i> get rid of her!" And as no +one pointed out to Eleanor that the way to hold Maurice was not to get +rid of Edith, but to "open the door," that corrosive thing the girl had +called "Bingoism" kept the anger of the day in the field smoldering in +her mind. It was like a banked fire eating into her deepest +consciousness; it burned all that winter; it was still burning even when +the summer vacation came and Edith went home. Her departure was an +immense relief to Eleanor; she told Maurice she didn't want her to come +back, ever!</p> + +<p>"Why not?" he said, sharply; "<i>I</i> like having her here. Besides, think +of telling Uncle Henry we didn't want Edith next winter! If you have the +nerve for that, <i>I</i> haven't." Eleanor had not the nerve; so when, at the +end of June, Edith rushed home, it was understood that she would be with +Maurice and Eleanor during the next term.... That was the summer that +marked the seventh year of their marriage—and the fourth year of Jacky, +over in the little frame house on Maple Street. But it was the first +year of a knowledge, surprisingly delayed!—which came to Edith; namely, +that Johnny Bennett was "queer."</p> + +<p>It may have been this "queerness" which made her attach herself to +Eleanor, who, in August, went to Green Hill for the usual two weeks' +visit. Maurice had to go away on office business three or four times +during that fortnight, but he came up for one Sunday. He had insisted +upon Eleanor's going, because, he said, she needed the change. "Can't +you come?" she pleaded. "Do take some extra time from the office!"</p> + +<p>"And be docked? Can't afford it!" he said; "but I'll get one week-end in +with you," he promised her, looking forward with real satisfaction to +the solitude of his own house. So Eleanor, saying she couldn't +understand why he was so awfully economical now that he had his own +money!—came alone,—full of remorse at deserting him, and worry because +of his loneliness, and leaving a pining Bingo behind her. But, to her +silent annoyance, as soon as she arrived at Green Hill she encountered a +new and tiresome attentiveness from Edith! Edith was inescapably polite. +She did not urge upon Eleanor any of those strenuous amusements to which +she and Johnny were devoted; she merely gave up the amusements, and, as +Johnny expressed it, "stuck to Eleanor"! Eleanor couldn't understand it, +and when Maurice at last arrived, Johnny's perplexity became audible:</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," he told Edith, satirically, "you may be able, now, to tear +yourself away from Eleanor, and go fishing with me? You fish pretty +well—for a woman. Maurice can lug her round."</p> + +<p>"I will, if Maurice will go, too," Edith said.</p> + +<p>"What do you drag him in for?"—John paused; understanding dawned upon +him: "She doesn't want to be by herself with me!" His tanned face slowly +reddened, and those brown eyes of his behind the big spectacles grew +keen. He didn't speak for quite a long time; then he said, very low, +"I'll be here to-morrow morning at four-thirty. Be ready. I'll dig +bait."</p> + +<p>"All right," said Edith; after which, for the first time in her life, +she played a shabby trick on Johnny Bennett; as soon as he had gone +home, she invited Eleanor (who promptly declined), and Maurice (who as +promptly accepted), to go fishing, too! Then, having got what she +wanted, she reproached herself: "Johnny'll be mad as fury. But when he +gets to saying things to me he makes me feel funny in the back of my +neck. Besides, I want Maurice."</p> + +<p>The fishermen were to assemble in the grayness of the August dawn; and +Johnny was, as usual, prepared to throw a handful of gravel at Edith's +window to hurry her downstairs. But when he loomed up in the mist, who +should be on the porch, fooling with a rod, but Maurice!</p> + +<p>"What's he butting in for?" Johnny thought, looking so cross that +Edith, coming out with the luncheon basket, was really remorseful. +"Hullo, Johnny," she said. ("I never played it on him before," she was +thinking.) But at that moment her remorse was lost in alarm, for +standing in the doorway was Eleanor, her hair caught up in a hurried +twist, a wrapper over her shoulders, her bare feet thrust into pink +bedroom slippers. (Forty-six looks fifty-six at 4.30 A.M.)</p> + +<p>"Darling," Eleanor said, "I believe I'd like to go up to the cabin +to-day. Do let's do it—just you and I!"</p> + +<p>The three young people all spoke at once:</p> + +<p>Johnny said: "Good scheme! We'll excuse Maurice."</p> + +<p>Edith said, "Oh, Eleanor, Maurice loves fishing!"</p> + +<p>And Maurice said: "I sort of think I'd like to catch a sucker or two in +this pool Johnny is always cracking up. I bet he's in for a big jolt +about his trout! You come, too?"</p> + +<p>"I'd get so awfully tired. And I—I thought we could have a day together +up on the mountain," she ended, wistfully.</p> + +<p>There was a dead silence. Johnny was thinking: "Gosh! I hope she gets +him." And Edith was thinking, "I'd like to choke her!" Maurice's +thoughts could not be spoken; he merely said, "All right; if you want +to."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe I'll go fishing, either," Edith said.</p> + +<p>Eleanor, on the threshold, turned quickly: "Please don't stay at home on +my account!"</p> + +<p>But Maurice settled it. "I'll not go," he said, patiently; "but you +must, Edith." He threw down his rod and went into the house; Eleanor, in +her flopping pink slippers, hurried after him....</p> + +<p>"I did so want to have you to myself," she said; "you don't mind not +going fishing with those children, do you?"</p> + +<p>He said, listlessly: "Oh no. But don't let's attempt the cabin stunt." +Then he stood at the window and watched Johnny and Edith, with fishing +rods and lunch basket, disappear down the road into the fog. He was too +bored to be irritated; he only counted the hours until he could get +back to Mercer, and the office, and the table under the silver poplar. +"I'll get hold of the Mortons, and Hannah can give us some sort of grub, +and then we'll go to a show," he thought. "I can stick it out here for +thirty-six hours more."</p> + +<p>He stuck it out that morning by sitting in Mr. Houghton's studio, one +leg across the arm of his chair, reading and smoking. Once Eleanor came +in and asked him if he was all right. He said, briefly, "Yes."</p> + +<p>But she was uneasy: "Maurice, I'll play tennis with you?"</p> + +<p>This at least made him chuckle. "<i>You?</i> How long since? My dear, you +couldn't play a set to save your life!"</p> + +<p>After that she let him alone for a while. Early in the afternoon the +need to make up to him for what she had done grew intolerable: "Darling, +let's play solitaire?"</p> + +<p>"I'm going to write letters."</p> + +<p>She left him to his letters for an hour, then came again: "Let's walk!"</p> + +<p>"Well, if you want to," Maurice said, and yawned. So they trudged off. +Eleanor, walking very close to her husband, was thinking, heavily, how +far they were apart; but she did her best to amuse him by anxious +ponderings of household expenses. He, sheering off to the other side of +the road to escape her intimate and jostling shoulder, was thinking of +the expenses of another household, and making no effort whatever to +amuse her. His silence confessed an irritation which she felt but could +not understand; so by and by she fell silent, too, though the helpless +tears stood in her eyes. Then, apparently, he put his annoyance, +whatever it was, behind him.</p> + +<p>"Nelly," he said, "let's go down by the West Branch and meet Edith and +Johnny? They'll be coming home that way, 'laden with trout,' I suppose," +he ended, sarcastically.</p> + +<p>Eleanor began to say, "Oh <i>no</i>!" Then something, she didn't know what, +made her say, "Well, all right." As they turned into the wood road that +ran up toward the mountain, she said another unexpected thing:</p> + +<p>"Maurice, I'm tired. I'll go home; you go on by yourself, and—and meet +Johnny." She didn't know, herself, why she said it! Perhaps, it was just +an effort to make up for what she had done in the morning?</p> + +<p>Maurice, astonished, made some half-hearted protest; he would go back +with her? But she said no, and walked home alone. Her throat ached with +unshed tears. "He <i>likes</i> to be with her! He doesn't want me,—and I +love him—I love him!"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The two youngsters had made a long day of it. On their way to the brook +that morning, crashing through underbrush, climbing rotting rail fences +that were hidden in docks and briers, balancing on the precarious +slipperiness of mossy rocks, the triumphant Johnny, his heart warm with +gratitude to Eleanor, had led his captive and irritated Edith. When they +broke through low-hanging boughs and found the pool, the trout +possibilities of which Johnny had so earnestly "cracked up," Edith was +distinctly grumpy. "Eleanor is a selfish thing," she said. "Gimme a +worm."</p> + +<p>"I think Maurice would have been cussedly selfish not to do what she +wanted," Johnny said; "my idea of marriage is that a man must do +everything his wife wants."</p> + +<p>"Maurice is never selfish! He's great, simply great!" Edith said.</p> + +<p>"Oh, he's decent enough," Johnny admitted, then he paused, frowning, for +he couldn't open his bait box; he banged it on a stone, pried his knife +under the lid, swore at it—and turned very red. Edith giggled.</p> + +<p>"Let me try," she said.</p> + +<p>"No use; the rotten thing's stuck."</p> + +<p>But she took it, shook it, gave an easy twist, and the maddening +lid—loosened, of course, by Johnny's exertions—came off! Edith +shrieked with joy; but Johnny, though mortified, was immensely +relieved. They sat down on a sloping rock, and talked bait, and the +grave and spectacled Johnny became his old self, scolding Edith for +talking so loudly. "Girls," he said, "are <i>born</i> not fishermen!" Then +they waded out into the stream, and began to cast. It was broad daylight +by this time, and the woods were filling with netted sunbeams; the water +whispered and chuckled.</p> + +<p>"Pretty nice?" Johnny said, in a low voice; and Edith, all her +grumpiness flown, said:</p> + +<p>"You bet it is!" Then, as an afterthought, she called back, "But Eleanor +is the limit!"</p> + +<p>Johnny, forgetting his gratitude to Eleanor, said, savagely: "<i>Keep +quiet!</i> You scared him off! Gosh! girls are awful."</p> + +<p>So Edith kept quiet, and he wandered up the stream, and she wandered +down the stream, and they fished, and they fished—and they never caught +a thing.</p> + +<p>"I had <i>one</i> bite," Johnny said when, at about eleven, fiercely hungry, +they met on the bank where they had left their lunch basket; "but you +burst out about Eleanor, and drove him off. Girls simply <i>can't</i> fish."</p> + +<p>Edith was contrite—but doubted the bite. Then they sat down on a mossy +rock, and ate stacks of sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, and watched the +water, and talked, talked, talked. At least Edith talked—mostly about +Maurice. Johnny lit his pipe, puffed once or twice, then let it go out +and sat staring into the green wall of the woods on the other side of +the brook. Then, suddenly, quietly, he began to speak....</p> + +<p>"I want to say something."</p> + +<p>"The mosquitoes here are awful!" Edith said, nervously; "don't you think +we'd better go home?"</p> + +<p>"Look here, Edith; you've got to be half decent to me—unless, of +course, you've soured on me? If you have, I'll shut up."</p> + +<p>"Johnny, don't be an idiot! 'Course I haven't soured on you. You're the +oldest friend I've got. Older than Maurice, even."</p> + +<p>"Well, I guess I am an older friend than Maurice! But lately you've +treated me like a dog. You skulk round to keep from being by ourselves. +You never give me a chance to open my head to you—"</p> + +<p>"Johnny, that's perfectly absurd! I've had to look after Eleanor—"</p> + +<p>"Eleanor <i>nothing</i>! It's me you want to shake."</p> + +<p>"I do <i>not</i> want to shake you! I'm just busy."</p> + +<p>"Edith, I care a lot about you. I don't care much for girls, as a rule. +But you're not girly. And every time I try to talk to you, you sidestep +me."</p> + +<p>"Now, Johnny—"</p> + +<p>"But I'm going to tell you, all the same." He made a clutch at the +sopping-wet hem of her skirt. "I <i>will</i> say it! I care an awful lot +about you. I'm not a boy. I want to marry you."</p> + +<p>There was a dead silence; then Edith said, despairingly, "Oh, Johnny, +how perfectly horrid you are!" He gasped. "You simply spoil everything +with this sort of ... of ... of talk."</p> + +<p>"You mean you don't like me?" His face twitched.</p> + +<p>"Like you? I like you awfully! That's why I'm so mad at you. Why, I'm +<i>awfully</i> fond of you—"</p> + +<p>"Edith!"</p> + +<p>"I mean I never had a friend like you. I've always liked you ten times +better than any silly old girl friend I ever had. I've liked you +<i>almost</i> as much as Maurice. Of course I shall never like anybody as +much as Maurice. He comes next to father and mother. But now you go +and—and talk ... I just can't bear it," Edith said, and fumbled for her +pocket handkerchief; "I <i>hate</i> talk." Her eyes overflowed.</p> + +<p>"Edith! Look here; now, <i>don't</i>! Honestly, I can stand being turned +down, but I can't stand—that. Edith, <i>please</i>! I never saw you do +that—girl stunt. I'll never bother you again, if you'll just stop +crying!"</p> + +<p>Edith, unable to find her handkerchief, bent over and wiped her eyes on +her dress. "I'm <i>not</i> crying," she said, huskily; "but—"</p> + +<p>"I think," John Bennett said, "honestly, Edith, I think I've loved you +all my life."</p> + +<p>"And I have loved you," she said; "You are a lamb! Oh, Johnny, I'm +perfectly crazy about you!"</p> + +<p>His swiftly illuminating face made her add, hastily, "and now you go and +spoil everything!"</p> + +<p>"I won't spoil things, Skeezics," he said, gently; "oh, say, Edith, let +up on crying! <i>That</i> breaks me all up."</p> + +<p>But Edith, having discovered her handkerchief, was mopping very flushed +cheeks and mumbling on about her own woes. "Why can't you be satisfied +just to go on the way we always have? Why can't you be satisfied to have +me like you almost as much as I like Maurice?"</p> + +<p>"Maurice!" the young man said, with a helpless laugh. "Oh, Edith, you +are several kinds of a goose! In the first place, Maurice is married; +and in the second place, he's old enough to be your father—"</p> + +<p>"He isn't old enough to be my father! And I shall <i>never</i> like anybody +as much as Maurice, because there isn't anybody like him in the entire +world. I've always thought he was exactly like Sir Walter Raleigh. +Besides, I shall never marry <i>anybody</i>! But I mean, I don't see why it +isn't enough for you to have me awfully fond of you?"</p> + +<p>"Well, it isn't," Johnny said, briefly, "but don't you worry." He was +white, but his tenderness was like a new sense. Edith had never seen +<i>this</i> Johnny. Her entirely selfish impatience turned to shyness. +"Edith," he said, very gently, "you don't understand, dear. You're +awfully young—younger than your age. I didn't take in how young you +were—talking about Maurice! I suppose it's because you know so few +girls, that you are so young. Well; I can't hang round with you any +more, as if we were ten years old. You see, I—I love you, Edith. That +makes the difference ... dear."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Edith, desperately, "how perfectly <i>horrid</i>—" She looked +really distracted, poor child! (but that was the moment when her +preposterous youthfulness ceased.) She jumped to her feet so suddenly +that Johnny, who had begun, his fingers trembling, to scrape out the +bowl of his pipe, dropped his jackknife, which rolled down the steeply +sloping rock into the water. "Oh, I'm so sorry!" Edith said.</p> + +<p>John sighed. "Oh, that's nothing," he said, and slid over the moss and +ferns to the water's edge; there, lying flat on his stomach, his sleeve +rolled up, he thrust his bare white arm into the dark and troutless +depths of the pool, and salvaged his knife. Edith, on the bank, began +furiously to pack up. When Johnny climbed back to her she said she +wanted to go home, "<i>now</i>!"</p> + +<p>"All right," he said again, gently.</p> + +<p>So, silently, they started homeward; and never in her life had Edith +been so glad to see any human creature as she was to see Maurice on the +West Branch Road! But she let him do all the talking. To herself she was +saying, "It's all Eleanor's fault for not letting him come this morning! +I just hate her!..."</p> + +<p>That night her father said to her mother, rather sadly, "Mary, our +little girl has grown up. Johnny Bennett is casting sheep's eyes at +her."</p> + +<p>"Nonsense!" said Mary Houghton, comfortably; "she's a perfect child, and +so is he."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX" ></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2> + + +<p>Curiously enough, though Edith's mother did not recognize what was going +on between "the children," Eleanor did. When she came back to Mercer, a +week later, she overflowed about it to Maurice. "Calf love!" she summed +it up.</p> + +<p>"She didn't look down on that kind of love seven years ago," he thought, +cynically. But he didn't say so; no matter what his thoughts were, he +was always kind to Eleanor. Lily, over in Medfield; Lily, in the small, +secret house; Lily, with the good-looking little boy—blue-eyed, +rosy-cheeked, blond-haired!—the squalid memory of Lily, said to him, +over and over: "You are a confounded liar; so the least you can do is to +be decent to Eleanor."</p> + +<p>So he was kind.</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> couldn't bear myself," he used to think, "if I wasn't—but, <i>O</i> +Lord!"</p> + +<p>That "<i>O</i> Lord!" was his summing up of a growing and demoralizing sense +of the worthlessness and unreality of life. Like Solomon (and all the +rest of us, who see the universe as a mirror for ourselves!) he +appraised humanity at his valuation of himself. He didn't use Solomon's +six words, but the eight of his generation were just as exact—"<i>The +whole blooming outfit is a rotten lie!</i> If," he reflected, "deceit isn't +on my 'Lily' line, it is on a thousand other lines." From the small +cowardices of appreciations and admirations which one did not really +feel, up through the bread-and-butter necessities of business, on into +the ridiculousness of what is called "Democracy" or "Liberty"—on, even, +into those emotional evasions of logic and reason labeled +"Religion"—all lies—all lies! he told himself. "And I," he used to +think, looking back on seven years of marriage, "I am the most +accomplished liar of the whole shootin' match!... If they get off that G. +Washington gag on me any more at the office, somebody'll get their head +punched."</p> + +<p>All the same, even if he did say, "<i>O</i> Lord!" he was carefully kind to +his boring wife.</p> + +<p>But when Edith (suddenly grown up, it seemed to Maurice) came back for +the fall term, he said "<i>O</i> Lord!" less frequently. The world began to +seem to him a less rotten place. "Nice to have you round again, +Skeezics!" he told her; and Eleanor, listening, went up to her room, and +sat with her fingers pressed hard on her eyes. "It's dreadful to have +her around! How <i>can</i> I get rid of her?" she thought. Very often now the +flame of jealousy flared up; it scorched her whenever she recognized +Edith's "brains," whenever she noticed some gay fearlessness, or easy +capability; whenever she watched the girl's high-handed treatment of +Maurice: criticizing him! Telling him he was mean because he was always +saying he "couldn't afford things"! Declaring that she wished he would +stop his everlasting practicing—and apparently not caring a copper for +him! If Edith said, "Oh, Maurice, you are a perfect <i>idiot</i>!" Eleanor +would see him grin with pleasure; but when Eleanor put her arms around +him and kissed him, he sighed. To Maurice's wife these things were all +like oil on fire; but it never occurred to her to try to develop in +herself any of the qualities he seemed to find attractive in Edith. +Instead, she thought of that June day in the meadow by the river when he +said he loved her inefficiency—he loved her timidity, and, oh, how he +had loved her love! He had made her promise to be jealous! Eleanor was +not a reasoning person—probably no jealous woman is; but she did +recognize the fact that what made him love her then, made him impatient +with her now. This seemed to her irrational; and so, of course, it +was!—just as the tide is irrational, or the turning of the earth on its +axis is irrational. Nature has nothing to do with reason. So, in its +deep and beautiful and animal beginnings, Love, too, is irrational. It +has to ascend to Reason! But Eleanor did not know these things. All she +knew was that Maurice <i>hurt</i> her, a dozen times a day.</p> + +<p>She was brooding over this one Sunday afternoon in late September, when, +at the open window of her bedroom, with Bingo snoozing in her lap, she +listened to Edith, down in the garden: "How about a jug of dahlias on +the table?"</p> + +<p>And Maurice: "Bully! Say, Edith, why couldn't we have a yellow scheme +for the grub? Orange cup, and that sort of fussy business you make out +of cheese and the yolks of eggs? And yellow cakes?"</p> + +<p>"Splendid! I'll mix up some perfectly stunning little sponge cakes, +'Lemon Queens.' Yellow as anything!"</p> + +<p>This was all to get ready for a tea under the silver poplar, which was +dropping yellow leaves down on the green table, and the mossy brick +path, and the chairs for the company. The Mortons were coming, and there +would be, Eleanor told herself, wearily, the usual shrieking over flat +jokes,—Edith's jokes, mostly. Her dislike of Edith was a burning ache +below her breastbone. "Maurice has her, so he doesn't want me," she +thought; then suddenly she got up and hurried downstairs. "I'll fix the +table!" she said, peremptorily.</p> + +<p>"It's all done," Edith said; "doesn't it look pretty? Oh, Eleanor, let +me put a dahlia behind your ear! You'll look like a Spanish lady!" She +put the gorgeous flower into the soft disorder of Eleanor's dark hair, +avoiding Bingo's angry objections, and said, with open admiration, +"Eleanor, you <i>are</i> handsome! I adore dahlias!" she announced; "those +quilly ones, red on the outside and yellow inside! There are some +stunning ones on Maple Street, where I saw that Dale woman. Wonder if +she'd sell some roots?"</p> + +<p>The color flew into Maurice's face. "Did you get your bicycle mended?" +he said.</p> + +<p>Instantly Edith forgot the dahlias, and plunged into bicycle +technicalities, ending with the query, "Why don't you squeeze out some +money, and buy one of those cheap little automobiles, Maurice, you mean +old thing!"</p> + +<p>"Can't afford it," Maurice said.</p> + +<p>But Eleanor was puzzled. There had been a hurried note in Maurice's +voice when he asked Edith about her bicycle—an imperative changing of +the subject! She looked at him wonderingly. Why should he change the +subject? Was he annoyed at Edith's bad taste in referring to the +creature? But Edith's taste was always bad, and Maurice was not +generally so sensitive to it; not as sensitive as he ought to be! Or as +he had been in those old days when he had said that Eleanor was too +lovely to know the wickedness of the world, and he "didn't want her to"! +She was really perplexed; and when Edith rushed off to make the cakes, +and Maurice went indoors, she sat there in the garden, looking absently +out through the rusty bars of the iron gate at the distant glimmer of +the river, and wondered: "Why?"</p> + +<p>She was still wondering even when the Mortons arrived, bringing with +them—of all people!—Doctor Nelson. (<i>"Gosh!"</i> said Maurice.) "We're +celebrating his appointment at the hospital; he's the new +superintendent!" Mrs. Morton explained.</p> + +<p>Eleanor said, mechanically, "So glad to see you, Doctor Nelson!" But she +was saying to herself, "<i>Why</i> was Maurice provoked when Edith spoke of +Mrs. Dale?" When some more noisy and very young people arrived, she was +too abstracted to talk to them. She was so silent that most of them +forgot her; until Mrs. Morton, suddenly remembering her existence, tried +to be conversational:</p> + +<p>"I suppose Mr. Curtis told you of our wild adventure on the river in +August, when we got beached and spent the afternoon on a mud flat?"</p> + +<p>"No," Eleanor said, vaguely. But afterward, when the guests had gone, +she said to Maurice, "Why didn't you tell me about your adventure with +the Mortons?"</p> + +<p>"He told me," Edith said, complacently.</p> + +<p>"I forgot, I suppose," Maurice said, carelessly, and lounged off into +the house to sit down at the piano—where lie immediately "forgot" not +only the adventure on the river—but even his dismay at seeing Doctor +Nelson!—who by this time was, of course, quite certain that it was a +"rum world."</p> + +<p>That winter—although he was not conscious of it—Maurice's +"forgetfulness" in regard to his wife became more and more marked, so it +was a year of darkening loneliness for Eleanor. She was at last on that +"desert island"—which had once seemed so desirable to her;—she had +nothing to interest her except her music (and the quality of her voice +was changing, pathetically); furthermore, Maurice rarely asked her to +sing, so the passion had gone out of what voice she had! She didn't care +for books; she didn't know how to sew; and, except for Mrs. Newbolt, +there was no one she wanted to see. Often, in her empty evenings, while +Edith was in her own room studying, she sat by the fire and cried, and +broke her heart upon her desire for a child—"<i>then</i> he would be happy, +and stay at home!"</p> + +<p>It was a dull house; so dull that Edith made up her mind to get out of +it for her next winter at Fern Hill. When she went home for the Easter +vacation, she expressed decided opinions: "Father, once, ages ago"—she +was sitting on her father's knee, and tormenting him by trying to take +his cigar away from him—"you got off something about the dinner of +herbs and Eleanor's stalled ox—"</p> + +<p>"Good heavens, Buster! You haven't said that before Eleanor?"</p> + +<p>"Ha! I got a rise out of you!" Edith said, joyfully; "I haven't +mentioned it, <i>yet</i>; but I shall make a point of doing so unless you +order two pounds of candy for me, <i>at once</i>. Well, I suppose what you +meant was that Eleanor is stupid?"</p> + +<p>"Mary," said Henry Houghton, "your blackmailing daughter is displaying a +glimmer of intelligence."</p> + +<p>"I'm only reminding you of your own remark," Edith said, "to explain +why I want to be in one of the dormitories next winter. Eleanor <i>is</i> +stupid—though she's never fed me on stalled ox! And I think she sort of +doesn't like it because I'm not <i>awfully</i> fond of music."</p> + +<p>"You are an absolute heathen about music," her father said.</p> + +<p>"Well, it bores me," Edith explained, cheerfully; "though I adore +Maurice's playing. Maurice is a lamb, and I adore just being in the +house with him! But she's nasty to him sometimes. And when she is, I'd +like to choke her!"</p> + +<p>"Edith—Edith—" her mother remonstrated. And her father reminded her +that she must <i>not</i> lose her temper.</p> + +<p>"Let your other parent be a warning to you as to the horrors of an +uncontrolled temper," said Henry Houghton; "I have known your mother, in +one of her outbursts of fury, so far forget herself as to say, <i>'Oh, +my!'</i>"</p> + +<p>Edith grinned, but insisted, "Eleanor is dull as all get out!"</p> + +<p>"Consider the stars," Mrs. Houghton encouraged her.</p> + +<p>But Mr. Houghton said, "Mary, you've got to do something about this +girl's English! ... You miss John Bennett?" he asked Edith (Johnny was +taking a special course in an Eastern institute of technology).</p> + +<p>"He did well enough to fill in the chinks," Edith said, carelessly; "but +it's Maurice's being away that takes the starch out of me. He's +everlastingly tearing off on business. And when he's at home—" Edith +was suddenly grave—"of course Maurice is always 'the boy stands on the +burning deck'; but you can't help seeing that he's fed up on poor old +Eleanor! Sometimes I wonder he ever does come home! If I were in his +place, when she gets to nagging <i>I'd</i> go right up in the air! I'd say, +well,—something. But he keeps his tongue between his teeth."</p> + +<p>That evening, when Henry Houghton was alone with his wife, he said what +he thought about Maurice: "He <i>is</i> standing on the burning deck of this +pathetic marriage of his, magnificently. He never bats an eyelash! +(Your daughter's slang is vulgar.)"</p> + +<p>"Eleanor is the pathetic one," Mary Houghton said, sadly; "Maurice +has grown cynical—which is a sort of protection to him, I suppose. +Yes; I'm afraid Edith is right; she'd better be out at the school next +winter. It isn't well for a girl to see differences between a husband +and wife.... Henry, you shan't have another cigar! That's the third since +supper! Dear, what <i>is</i> the trouble about Maurice?"</p> + +<p>"Mary, things have come to a pretty pass, when you snoop around and +count up my cigars! I <i>will</i> smoke!" But he withdrew an empty hand from +his cigar box, and said, sighing, "I wish I could tell you about +Maurice; Kit; but I can't betray his confidence."</p> + +<p>"If I guessed, you wouldn't betray anything?"</p> + +<p>"Well, no. But—"</p> + +<p>"I guessed it a good while ago. Some foolishness about a woman, of +course. Or—or badness?" she ended, sadly.</p> + +<p>He nodded. "I wish I was asleep whenever I think of it! Mary, there +are some pretty steep grades on Fool Hill, and he's had hard +climbing.... It's ancient history now; but I can't go into it."</p> + +<p>"Of course not. Oh, my poor Maurice! Does Eleanor know?"</p> + +<p>"Heavens, no! It wouldn't do."</p> + +<p>"Honey, the unforgivable thing, to a woman, is not the sin, but the +deceit. And, besides, Eleanor loves him enough to forgive him. She would +die for him, I really believe!"</p> + +<p>"Yet the green-eyed monster looks out of her eyes if he plays checkers +with Edith! My darling," said Henry Houghton, "as I have before +remarked, your ignorance on this one subject is colossal. <i>Women can't +stand truth.</i>"</p> + +<p>"It's a provision of nature, then, that all men are liars?" she +inquired, sweetly; "Henry, the loss of Edith's board won't trouble +Maurice much, will it?"</p> + +<p>"Not <i>as</i> much, of course, now that he has all his money; but he has to +scratch gravel to make four ends meet," Henry Houghton said.</p> + +<p>"<i>Four</i> ends!" she said; "oh, is it as bad as that? He has to +support—somebody?"</p> + +<p>He said, "Yes; so long as you have guessed. Mary, I really must have a +smoke."</p> + +<p>"Why <i>am</i> I so weak-minded as to give in to you!" she sighed; then +handed him the cigar box, and scratched a match for him; he held her +wrist—the sputtering match in her fingers—lighted the cigar, blew out +the match, and kissed her hand.</p> + +<p>"You are a snooper and a porcupine about tobacco; but otherwise quite a +nice woman," he said.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX" ></a>CHAPTER XX</h2> + + +<p>When Edith's Easter vacation was over, and she went back to Mercer, she +was followed by a letter from Mrs. Houghton to Eleanor, explaining the +plan for the school dormitory the following winter. But there was +another letter, to Maurice, addressed (discreetly) to his office. It was +from Henry Houghton, and it was to the effect that if any "unexpected +expenses" came along, and Maurice felt strapped because of the cessation +of Edith's board, he must let Mr. Houghton know; then a suggestion as to +realizing on certain securities.</p> + +<p>"That's considerate in him," Eleanor said; "but I don't know what +'unexpected expenses' we could have?"</p> + +<p>It was a chilly April day. Maurice happened to be laid up home with a +sore throat; Eleanor, searching for a cook, had stopped at his office +for a lease he wanted to see, and brought back with her some mail she +found on his desk.</p> + +<p>"I knew this letter was from Mr. Houghton, so I opened it," she said, as +she handed it to him. His instant and very sharp annoyance surprised +her. "I wouldn't open your <i>business</i> letters," she defended herself; +"but I didn't suppose you'd mind my seeing anything the Houghtons might +write—"</p> + +<p>"I don't like to have any of my mail opened!" he said, briefly, his eyes +raking Henry Houghton's letter, and discovering (of course!) nothing in +the fine, precise handwriting which was in the least betraying. ("But +suppose he <i>had</i> said what the 'unexpected expenses' might be!")</p> + +<p>"We shall miss Edith's board," Eleanor said; "but, oh, I'll be so glad +to have her go!"</p> + +<p>Maurice was silent. "If she lives in Medfield all the time, she'll be +sure and run into Lily," he thought. "The devil's in it." He was in his +bedroom, wrapped up in a blanket, shivering and hot and headachy. The +chance of Edith's "running into Lily" would, of course, be even less if +she were at Fern Hill, than it was now when she was going back and forth +in the trolley every day; but he was so uncomfortable, physically, that +he didn't think of that; and his preoccupation made him blind to +Eleanor's hurt look.</p> + +<p>"I am willing to have you read all <i>my</i> letters," she said.</p> + +<p>"I'm not willing to have you read mine!" he retorted.</p> + +<p>"Why not?" she demanded—"unless you have secrets from me."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Eleanor, don't be an idiot!" he said, wearily.</p> + +<p>"I believe you <i>have</i> secrets!" she said—and burst out crying and ran +out of the room.</p> + +<p>He called her back and apologized for his irritability; but as he got +better, he forgot that he had been irritable—he had something else to +think of! He must get down to the office and write to Mr. Houghton, +asking him to address personal letters to a post-office box. And he made +things still safer by going out to Medfield to see Lily and give her the +number of the box in case she, too, had occasion to write any "personal" +letters, which, indeed, she very rarely had. "I say <i>that</i> for her!" +Maurice told himself. He hoped—as he always did when he had to go to +Maple Street, that he would not see It—an It which had, of course, long +before this, acquired sufficient personality to its father to be +referred to as "Jacky"; a Jacky who, in his turn, had discovered +sufficient personality in Maurice to call him "Mr. Gem'man"—a +corruption of his mother's title for her very infrequent visitor, "the +gentleman."</p> + +<p>Jacky's "Mr. Gem'man" found the front door of the little house open, +and, looking in, saw Lily in the parlor, mounted on a ladder, hanging +wall paper. She stepped down, laughing, and moved her bucket of paste +out of his way.</p> + +<p>"Won't you be seated?" she said. Her rosy face was beaming with +artistic satisfaction; "Ain't this paper lovely?" she demanded; "it's +one of them children's papers that's all the rage now. I call it a +reg'lar art gallery! Look at the pants on them rabbits! It pretty near +broke me to buy it. The swells put this kind of paper in 'nurseries,' +and stick their kids off in 'em; but that ain't <i>me</i>! I put it on the +parlor! Set down, won't you?"</p> + +<p>Maurice sat down and, very much bored, listened while Lily chattered on, +with stories about Jacky:</p> + +<p>"He says to the milkman yesterday, 'I like your shirt,' he says. And +Amos—that's his name—he said, 'You can get one like it when you're +grown up like me.' And Jacky, he says—oh, just as <i>sad</i>!—I'd rather +have it now, 'cause when I grow up, maybe I'll be a lady.'"</p> + +<p>Maurice smiled perfunctorily.</p> + +<p>"Ain't he the limit?" Lily demanded, proudly; "he's a reg'lar rascal! He +stuck out his tongue at the grocer's boy, yesterday, 'cause he stepped +on my pansy bed. I wish you could 'a' seen him."</p> + +<p>Maurice swallowed a yawn. "He's fresh."</p> + +<p>"'Course," Lily said, quickly, "I gave him a smack! He's getting a good +bringing up, Mr. Curtis. I give him a cent every morning, to say his +prayers."</p> + +<p>Maurice didn't care a copper about Jacky's manners, or his morals, +either; but he said, carelessly, "A kid that's fresh is a bore."</p> + +<p>Lily frowned. When Maurice, having explained about the letter box, gave +her the usual "present" she made her usual good-natured protest—but +this time there was more earnestness in it, and even a little sharpness. +"I don't need it; I've got three more mealers—well, one of 'em can't +pay me; her husband's out of work; but she don't eat more than a canary, +poor thing! I can take care of Jacky <i>myself</i>."</p> + +<p>The emphasis puzzled Jacky's father for a moment. That Lily, seeing the +growing perfection of her handsome, naughty little boy, was becoming +uneasy lest Maurice might be moved to envy, never occurred to him. If it +had, he would of course have been enormously relieved; he might even +have played upon her fear of such an impossibility to induce her to move +away from Mercer! As it was, after listening to the account of the pansy +catastrophe, he got up to go, thankful that he had not had to lay eyes +on the child, whose voice he heard from the back yard.</p> + +<p>Lily, friendly enough in spite of that moment of resentment, went to the +front door with him. She had grown rather stout in the last year or two, +but she was always as shiningly clean as a rose, and her little lodging +house was clean, too; she was indefatigably thorough—scrubbing and +sweeping and dusting from morning to night! "It's good business," said +little Lily; "and it is just honest, too, for they pay me good!" Her +only unbusinesslike quality was a generous kindliness, which sometimes +considered the "mealers'" purses rather than her own. She had, to be +sure, small outbursts of temper, when she "smacked" Jacky, or berated +her lodgers for wasting gas; but Jacky was smothered with kisses even +before his howls ceased, and the lodgers were placated with cookies the +very next day—but that, too, was "good business"! Her "respectability" +had become a deep satisfaction to her. She occasionally referred to +herself as "a perfect lady." Her feeling about "imperfect" ladies was of +most virulent disapproval. But she had no more spirituality than a hen. +Her face was as good-humored, and common, and pretty as ever; and she +had a fund of not too refined, but always funny, stories to tell +Maurice; so he liked her, after a fashion, and she liked him, after a +fashion, too, although she was a little afraid of him; his bored +preoccupation seemed like sternness to Lily. "Grouchiness," she called +it; "probably that's why he don't take to Jacky," she thought; "well, +it's lucky he don't, for he shouldn't have him!" But as Maurice, on the +little porch, said good-by, she really wondered at his queerness in not +taking to Jacky, who, grimy and handsome, was sitting on the ground, +spooning earth into an empty lard pail.</p> + +<p>"Come in out o' the dirt, Sweety!" Lily called to him.</p> + +<p>Jacky rose reluctantly, then stood looking, open-mouthed, at his +mother's visitor.</p> + +<p>"Say," he remarked; "I kin swear."</p> + +<p>"You don't say so!" said Maurice.</p> + +<p>"I kin say 'dam,'" Jacky announced, gravely.</p> + +<p>"You are a great linguist! Who instructed you in the noble art of +profanity?"</p> + +<p>"Huh?" said Jacky, shyly.</p> + +<p>"Who taught you?"</p> + +<p>"Maw," said Jacky.</p> + +<p>Maurice roared; Lily giggled,—"My soul and body! Listen to that child! +Jacky, you naughty boy, telling wrong stories. One of these days I'm +going to give you a reg'lar spanking." Then she stamped her foot, for +Jacky had settled down again in the dust; "Do you hear me? Come right in +out of the dirt! That's one on me!" she confessed, laughing: then added, +anxiously: "Say, Mr. Curtis, I do smack him when he says bad words; +honest, I do! He's getting a <i>good</i> bringing up, though my mealers spoil +him something awful. But I'd just shake his prayers out of him, if he +forgot 'em."</p> + +<p>Maurice, still laughing, said: "Well, don't become too proficient, +Jacobus. Good-by," he said again. And as he said it, Eleanor, in a +trolley car, glanced out of the window and saw him.</p> + +<p>"Why, there's Maurice!" she said; and motioned to the conductor to stop. +Hunting for a cook had brought her to this impossible suburb, where +Maurice, no doubt, was trying to buy or sell a house. "I'll get out and +walk home with him," she thought, eagerly. But the car would not stop +until the end of the second block, and when she hurried back Maurice had +disappeared. He had either gone off in another direction, or else +entered the house; but she could not remember which house!—those +gingerbread tenements were all so much alike that it was impossible to +be sure on which of the small porches she had seen her husband, and a +fat, common-looking woman, and a child playing in the yard. All she +could do was to wander up and down the block, looking at every front +door in the hope that he would appear; as he didn't, she finally took +the next car into town.</p> + +<p>"Did you sell the house this afternoon?" she asked Maurice at dinner +that night; and he, remembering how part of his afternoon had been +spent, said he hadn't any particular house on the string at the moment.</p> + +<p>"Then what took you to Medfield?" Eleanor asked, simply.</p> + +<p>"Medfield!"</p> + +<p>"I saw you out there this afternoon," she said; "you were talking to a +woman. I supposed she was a tenant. I got off the car to walk home with +you, but I wasn't sure of the house; they were all alike."</p> + +<p>"What were you doing in Medfield?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Hannah has given notice; I was hunting for a cook. I heard of one +out on Bell Street."</p> + +<p>"Did you find her?"</p> + +<p>"No," Eleanor said, sighing, "it's perfectly awful!"</p> + +<p>"Too bad!" her husband sympathized.</p> + +<p>In the parlor, after dinner, while Eleanor was getting out the cards +for solitaire, Maurice, tingling with alarm and irritation, sat down +at the piano and banged out all sorts of chords and discords. "Lily'll +<i>have</i> to move," he was saying to himself. (Bang—<i>Bang!</i>) His +Imagination raced with the possibilities of what would have happened +if Eleanor had found the house which was "like all the other houses," +and heard his "good-by" to Lily, or perhaps even caught the latest +addition to Jacky's vocabulary! "The jig would have been up," he thought. +(Bang—Crash!)... "She'll <i>have</i> to move! Suppose Eleanor took it into +her head to hunt her up? She's capable of it!" (Crash!)</p> + +<p>Eleanor's absorption in the cook she could not find kept her for nearly +forty-eight hours from speculation as to what, if not office business, +took Maurice to Medfield. When she did begin to speculate she said to +herself, "He doesn't tell me things about his business!" Then she was +stabbed again by his annoyance because she had opened the letter from +Mr. Houghton; then by his secretiveness in regard to that adventure on +the river with Mrs. Morton. (He had told Edith!) Then this—then +that—and by and by a tiny heap of nothings, that implied reserves. He +wasn't confidential. She told him <i>everything</i>! She never kept a thing +from him! And he didn't even tell her why he was over in Medfield when +no real-estate matters took him there. Why should he <i>not</i> tell her? And +when she said that, the inevitable answer came: He didn't tell her, +because he didn't want her to know! Perhaps he had friends there? No. No +friends of Maurice's could live in such a locality. Well, perhaps there +was some woman? Even as she said this, she was ashamed. She knew she +didn't believe it. Of course there wasn't any woman!... But, at any +rate, he had interests in Medfield that he did not tell her about. She +hinted this to him at breakfast the next morning. She had not meant to +speak of it; she knew she would be sorry if she did. Eleanor was +incapable of analysis, but she was, in her pitiful way, aware that +jealousy, <i>when articulate</i>, is almost always vulgar—perhaps because +the decorums of breeding (which insist that, for the sake of others, +one's own pain must be hidden) are not propped up by the reserves of +pride. At any rate, she was not often publicly bitter to Maurice. This +time, however, she was.</p> + +<p>"Apparently," she said, "Maurice has acquaintances on Maple Street whom +I don't know."</p> + +<p>"The élite," Edith remarked, facetiously; "his lovely Mrs. Dale lives +there."</p> + +<p>Maurice's start was perceptible.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps it was Mrs. Dale you went to see?" Eleanor said.</p> + +<p>Maurice, trained in these years of furtiveness to self-control, said, +"Does she live on Maple Street, Edith?"</p> + +<p>"I guess so. The time I rescued her little boy and her flower pot, ages +ago, she was going into a house on Maple Street."</p> + +<p>"I saw Maurice in Medfield on Thursday," said Eleanor; "and he doesn't +seem to want to say what he was doing there!"</p> + +<p>"I am perfectly willing to tell you what I was doing," he retorted; "I +went from our office to see the woman who rents the house."</p> + +<p>Eleanor's slow mind accepted this entirely true and successfully false +remark with only the wonder of wounded love. "Why didn't he say that at +first?" she thought; "why does he hide things from me?"</p> + +<p>Maurice, however, made sure of that "hiding." Eleanor's attack upon him +frightened him so badly that that very afternoon, after office hours +(Eleanor being safe in bed with a headache), he went to see Lily. Her +astonishment at another visit so soon was obvious; she was still further +astonished when he told her why he had come. He hated to tell her. To +speak of Eleanor offended his taste—but it had to be done. So, +stammering, he began—but broke off:</p> + +<p>"Send that child away!"</p> + +<p>"Run out in the yard, Sweety," Lily commanded.</p> + +<p>"Won't," said Jacky.</p> + +<p>"Clear out!" Maurice said, sharply, and Jacky obeyed like a shot—but +paused on the porch to turn the ferociously clanging doorbell round and +round and round. "Well," Maurice began, "I'll tell you what's +happened... Lily! Make him stop!"</p> + +<p>"Say, now, Jacky, stop," Lily called; but Jacky, seized apparently with +a new idea, had already stopped, and was running out on to the pavement.</p> + +<p>So again Maurice began his story. Lily's instant and sympathetic +understanding was very reassuring. He even caught himself, under the +comfort of her quick co-operation, ranging himself with her, and saying +<i>"we."</i> "We've got to guard against anything happening, you know."</p> + +<p>"Oh, my soul and body, yes!" Lily agreed; "it would be too bad, and no +sense, either; you and me just acquaintances. 'Course I'll move, Mr. +Curtis. But, there! I hate to leave my garden—and I've just papered +this room! And I don't know where to go, either," she ended, with a +worried look.</p> + +<p>"How would you like to go to New York?" he said, eagerly.</p> + +<p>She shook her head: "I've got a lot of friends in this neighborhood. But +there's a two-family house on Ash Street—"</p> + +<p>"Say," said Jacky, in the hall; "I got—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, but you must leave Medfield!" he protested; "she"—that "she" made +him wince—"she may try to hunt you up."</p> + +<p>"She can't. She don't know my name."</p> + +<p>Maurice felt as if privacy were being pulled away from his soul, as skin +might be flayed from living flesh. "But you see," he began, huskily, +"there's a—a girl who lives with us; and she—she mentioned your name." +Then, cringing, he told her about Edith.</p> + +<p>Lily looked blankly puzzled; then she remembered; "Why, yes, sure +enough! It was right at the gate—oh, as much as four years ago; I +slipped, and she grabbed Jacky. Yes; it comes back to me; she told me +she seen me the time we got ducked. 'Course, I gave her the glassy eye, +and said I didn't remember the gentleman in the boat with her. And she +caught on that I lived here? Well, now, ain't the world small?"</p> + +<p>"Damned small," Maurice said, dryly.</p> + +<p>"Say," said Jacky, from the doorway, "I got a—"</p> + +<p>"Well, she—I mean this young lady—told my—ah, wife that you lived on +Maple Street, and—" He was stammering with angry embarrassment; Lily +gave a cluck of dismay. "Confound it!" said Maurice; "what'll we do?"</p> + +<p>"Now, don't you worry!" Lily said, cheerfully. "If she ever speaks to me +again, I'll say, 'Why, you have the advantage of me!'"</p> + +<p>Her mincing politeness made him laugh, in spite of his irritation. "I +think you'd like it in New York?" he urged.</p> + +<p>Lily's amber eyes were full of sympathy—but she was firm: "I wouldn't +live in New York for anything!"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Gem'man," said Jacky, sidling crabwise into the room to the shelter +of his mother's skirt; "I—"</p> + +<p>"Say, now, Sweety, be quiet! No, Mr. Curtis; I only go into real good +society, and I've always heard that New York ladies ain't what they +should be. And, besides, I want a garden for Jacky. I'll tell you what +I'll do! I'll take the top flat in that house on Ash Street. It has +three little rooms I could let. There's a widow lady's been asking me to +go in on it with her; it has a garden back of it Jacky could play +in—last summer there was a reg'lar hedge of golden glow inside the +fence! Mr. Curtis, you'd 'a' laughed! He pinched an orange off a +hand-cart yesterday, just as cute! 'Course I gave him a good slap, and +paid the man; but I had to laugh, he was so smart. And he's got going +now, on God—since I've been paying him to say his prayers. Well, I +suppose I'll have to be going to church one of these days," she said, +resignedly. "The questions he asks about God are something fierce! <i>I</i> +don't know how to answer 'em. Crazy to know what God eats—I told him +bad boys."</p> + +<p>"Lily, I don't think—<i>Thunder and guns!</i>" said Maurice, leaping to his +feet and rubbing his ankle; "Lily, call him off! The little wretch put +his teeth into me!"</p> + +<p>Lily, horrified, slapped her son, who explained, bawling, "Well, b-b-but +he didn't let on he heard me tellin' him that I—"</p> + +<p>"I <i>felt</i> you," Maurice said, laughing; "Gosh, Lily! He's cut his +eyeteeth—I'll say that for him!" He poked Jacky with the toe of his +boot, good-naturedly: "Don't howl, Jacobus. Sorry I hurt your feelings. +Lily, what I was going to say was, I don't believe that Ash Street place +is what you want?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, it is. The widow lady is a dressmaker, and she has three children. +We were talking about it only yesterday. Her father's feeble-minded, +poor old man! I take him in some doughnuts whenever I fry 'em. Mr. +Curtis, don't worry; I'll fix it, somehow! And until I get moved, I +won't answer the bell here. Look! I'll give you a key, and you can come +in without ringing if you want to."</p> + +<p>"No—<i>no</i>! I don't want a key! I wouldn't take a key for a million +dollars!"</p> + +<p>Lily's quick flush showed how innocent her offer had been. "I suppose +that doesn't sound very high toned—to offer a gentleman a key? But +I'll tell you! I ain't giving any door keys to my house. Jacky ain't +ever going to feel funny about his mother," she said, sharply.</p> + +<p>It was on the tip of Maurice's tongue to say, "Nor about his father!" +but he was silent. It was the first time his mind had articulated his +paternity, and the mere word made him dumb with disgust. Lily, however, +was her kind little self again, full of promises to "clear out," and +reassurances that "<i>she</i>" would never get on to it.</p> + +<p>It was then that the grimness of the situation for Maurice lightened for +a ridiculous moment. Jacky, breathing very hard, peered from behind his +mother, and stretched out to Maurice an extremely dirty, tightly +clenched fist. "I got a—a pre-present for you," he explained, panting. +Maurice, in a great hurry to get away, paused to put out his hand, in +which his son placed, very gently, a slimy, half-smoked cigar. "Found +it," Jacky said, in a stertorous whisper, "in the gutter."</p> + +<p>It was impossible not to laugh, and Maurice swallowed his impatience +long enough to say, "Jacobus, you overwhelm me!" Then he took his +departure, holding the gift between a reluctant thumb and finger. "Funny +little beggar," he said to himself, and pitched the stub into the gutter +from which Jacky had salvaged it; he didn't look back to see his son +hanging over the palings, watching the fate of his present with stricken +eyes... So it was that, when the day came that Eleanor did actually +begin to search for what was hidden, Maple Street was empty of +possibilities; Lily had flitted away into the secrecy of the two-family +house on Ash Street.</p> + +<p>It was nearly three months before the search began. Edith had gone home, +Mrs. Newbolt was at the sea-shore, and Maurice was in and out—away for +two or three days at a time on office business, and when at home absent +almost every evening with some of those youthful acquaintances who +seemed ignorant of Eleanor's existence. So there were long hours when, +except for her little old dog, she was entirely alone—alone, to brood +over Maurice's queer look when she had accused him of having an +"acquaintance on Maple Street"; and by and by she said, "I'll find out +who it is!" Yet she had moments of trying to tear from her mind the idea +of any concealment, because the mere suspicion was an insult to Maurice! +She had occasional high moments of saying, "I <i>won't</i> think he has +secrets from me; I'll trust him." But still, because suspicion is the +diversion of an empty mind, she played with it, as one might play with a +dagger, careful only not to let it touch the quick of belief. After a +while she deluded herself into thinking that, to exonerate Maurice, she +must prove the suspicion false! It was only fair to him to do that. So +she must find the woman whom she had seen on the porch with him. If she +wasn't Mrs. Dale, that would "prove" that everything was all right, and +that Maurice's presence there only meant that he was attending to office +business; nothing to be jealous about in <i>that</i>! And if the woman <i>was</i> +Mrs. Dale? Eleanor's throat contracted so sharply that she gasped. But +again and again she put off the search for the exonerating proof—for +she was ashamed of herself, "I'll do it to-morrow." ... "I'll do it next +week."</p> + +<p>It was a scorching, windy July day when she took her first defiling step +and "did it." There had been a breakfast-table discussion of a vacation +at Green Hill, the usual invitation having been received.</p> + +<p>"Do go," Maurice had urged. "I'll do what I did last year—hang around +here, and go to the ball games, and come up to Green Hill for Sundays." +He was acutely anxious to have her go.</p> + +<p>She was silent. "<i>Why</i> does he want to be alone?" she thought; +"why—unless he goes over to Medfield?" Then, in sudden decision, she +said to herself, "I will find out why, to-day!" But she was afraid that +Maurice would, somehow, guess what she was going to do; so, to throw him +quite off the track, she told him that Donny O'Brien was sick again; "I +must go and see him this morning," she said.</p> + +<p>Maurice, reading the sports page of the morning paper, said, "Too bad!" +and went on reading. He had no interest in his wife's movements; the +two-family house on Ash Street was beyond her range!</p> + +<p>An hour later, Eleanor, giving Bingo a cooky to console him for being +left at home, started out into the blazing heat, saying to herself: +"I'll recognize her the minute I see her. Of course I <i>know</i> she isn't +the Dale woman, but I want to <i>prove</i> that she isn't!"</p> + +<p>Her plan was to ring the bell at every one of the gingerbread houses on +that block on Maple Street, and ask if Mrs. Dale lived there? If she was +not to be found, that would prove that Maurice had not gone to see her. +If she was found, why, then—well, then Eleanor would say that she had +heard that the house was in the market? If Mrs. Dale said it was not, +that would show that it wasn't "office business" which had brought +Maurice to that porch!</p> + +<p>On Maple Street the heat blazed up from the untidy pavement, and a harsh +wind was whirling little spirals of dust up and down the dry gutter. +Eleanor's heart was beating so smotheringly that when her first ring was +answered she could scarcely speak: "Does Mrs. Dale live here?"</p> + +<p>"No," said the girl who opened the door, "there ain't nobody by that +name livin' here."</p> + +<p>And at the next door: "Mrs. Dale? No. This is Mrs. Mahoney's house."</p> + +<p>It was at the sixth house, where some dusty pansies were drying up +under the little bay window, that a woman whose red, soapy hands had +just left the wash tub, said:</p> + +<p>"Some folks with that name lived here before I took the house. But they +moved away. She was real nice; used to give candy to the children round +here. She was a widow lady. She told me her husband's name was Joseph. +Was it her you was looking for?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know her husband's name," Eleanor said.</p> + +<p>"Her baby had measles when mine did," the woman went on; "I lived across +the street, then. But I took a fancy to the house, because she'd papered +the parlor so handsome, so I moved in the first of May, when she got +out."</p> + +<p>A little cold, prickling thrill ran down Eleanor's back. She had told +herself that "Maurice had a secret"; but she had not really believed +that the secret was about Mrs. Dale. She had been sure, in the bottom of +her heart, that she would be able to "prove" that the woman he had been +talking to that day was not Mrs. Dale.</p> + +<p>Now, she had proved—that she was.</p> + +<p>Eleanor swayed a little, and put her hand out to clutch at the porch +railing. The woman exclaimed:</p> + +<p>"Come in and sit down! I'll get you a glass of water."</p> + +<p>Eleanor followed her into the kitchen and sat down on a wooden chair. +She was silent, but she whitened slowly. The mistress of the house, +scared at her pallor, ran to draw a tumbler of water from the faucet in +the sink; she held it to Eleanor's lips, apologizing for her wet hands:</p> + +<p>"I was tryin' to get my wash out.... Where do you feel bad?"</p> + +<p>"It's so hot, that's all," Eleanor said, faintly: "I—I'm not +ill—thank you very much." She tried to smile, but the ruthless glare of +sunshine through the open kitchen door showed her face strained, as if +in physical suffering.</p> + +<p>"I'm awfully sorry I can't tell you where Mrs. Dale lives," the woman +said, sympathetically. "Was she a friend of yours?" Eleanor shook her +head. "There! I'll tell you who maybe could tell you—the doctor. He +took care of her baby. Doctor Nelson—"</p> + +<p>"Nelson!"</p> + +<p>"He's the hospital doctor now. Why don't you ask him?"</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Eleanor vaguely. She rose, saying she felt better and +was much obliged. Then she went out on to the porch, and down the broken +steps to the windy scorching street.</p> + +<p>She was certain: Maurice had gone to Medfield to see Mrs. Dale...</p> + +<p><i>Why?</i></p> + +<p>She was quite calm, so calm that she found herself thinking that she had +forgotten to get an yeast cake for Mary. "I'll get it as I go home," she +thought. But as she stood waiting for the car it occurred to her that +she had better think things out before she went home. Better not see +Maurice until she had decided just how she should tell him that there +was no use having secrets from her! That she <i>knew</i> he was seeing Mrs. +Dale! Then he would have to tell her <i>why</i> he was seeing her... There +could be only one reason... For a moment she was suffocated by that +"reason"! She let the returning car pass, and signaled the one going out +into the country; she would go, she told herself, to the end of the +route, and by that time she would know what to do. The car was crowded, +but a kindly faced young woman rose and offered her a seat. Eleanor +declined it, although her knees were trembling.</p> + +<p>"Oh, do take it!" the woman urged, pleasantly, and Eleanor could not +resist sinking into it.</p> + +<p>"You are very kind," she said, smiling faintly.</p> + +<p>The woman smiled, too, and said, "Well, I always think what I'd like +anyone to do for my mother, if <i>she</i> couldn't get a seat in a car! I +guess you're about her age."</p> + +<p>Eleanor hardly heard her; she sat staring out of the window—staring at +that same landscape on which she and Maurice had gazed in the unseeing +ecstasy of their fifty-four minutes of married life! "He said we would +come back in fifty years—not by ourselves." As she said that, a thought +stabbed her! <i>There was a child that day, in the yard!</i></p> + +<p>When she saw that the car was approaching the end of the route, she +thought of the locust tree, and the blossoming grass, and the whispering +river. "I'll go there, and think," she said.</p> + +<p>"All out!" said the conductor; and she rose and walked, stumbling once +or twice, and with one hand outstretched, as if—in the dazzling July +day—she had to feel her way in an enveloping darkness. She went down +the country road, where the bordering weeds were white with dust, toward +that field of young love, and clover, and blue sky.</p> + +<p>When she reached the river, curving around the meadow, brown and shallow +in the midsummer droughts, she saw that the big locust was long past +blossoming, but some elderberry bushes, in full bloom, made the air +heavy with acrid perfume; the grass, starred by daisies, and with here +and there a clump of black-eyed Susans, was ready for mowing, and was +tugging at its anchoring roots, blowing, and bending, and rippling in +the wind, just as it had that other day!... "And I sat right here, by +the tree," she said, "and he lay there—I remember the exact place. And +he took my hand—"</p> + +<p>Her mind whirled like a merry-go-round: "Well, I knew he was hiding +something. I wish I had seen Doctor Nelson, and asked him where she +lives. I wonder if he's the Mortons' friend?... If I don't get that +yeast cake to Mary before lunch, she can't set the rolls.... Edith saw +her with a child five years ago. Why"—her mind stumbled still farther +back—"why, the very day Edith arrived in Mercer, Maurice had been +looking at some house in Medfield, where the tenant had a sick child. +That was why he was late in meeting Mrs. Houghton!... The child had +measles. I wish I had gone to see Doctor Nelson! Then I would have +known.... I can get some rolls at the bakery, and Mary needn't set them +for dinner. I sang 'O Spring.'" She put her hands over her face, but +there were no tears. "He kissed the earth, he was so happy. When did he +stop being happy? What made him stop?... I wonder if there are any +snakes here?—Oh, I <i>must</i> think what to do!" Again her mind flew off at +so violent a tangent that she felt dizzy. "I didn't tell Mary what to +have for dinner.... He gave her his coat, that time when the boat +upset.... She was all painted, he said so." She picked three strands of +grass and began to braid them together: "He did that; he made the ring, +and put it over my wedding ring." Mechanically she opened her +pocketbook, and took out the little envelope, shabby now, with years of +being carried there. She lifted the flap, and looked at the crumbling +circle. Then she put it back again, carefully, and went on with her +toilsome thinking: "I'll tell him I know that he went to see the Dale +woman. ... He said we had been married fifty-four minutes. It's eight +years and one month. He thinks I'm old. Well, I am. That woman in the +car thought I was her mother's age, and <i>she</i> must have been thirty! Why +did he stop loving me? He hates Mary's cooking. He said Edith could make +soup out of a paving stone and a blade of grass. Edith is rude to me +about music, and he doesn't mind! How vulgar girls are, nowadays. Oh—I +<i>hate</i> her!... Mary'll give notice if I say anything about her soup."</p> + +<p>Suddenly through this welter of anger and despair a small, confused +thought struggled up; it was so unexpected that she actually gasped: He +hadn't quite lied to her! "There <i>was</i> office business!" Some +real-estate transfer must have been put through, because—"Mrs. Dale had +moved"! In her relief, Eleanor burst into violent crying; he had not +<i>entirely</i> lied! To be sure, he didn't say that the woman whom he had +gone "from the office" to see, the woman who rented the house, was Mrs. +Dale; in that, he had not been frank; he kept the name back—but that +was only a reserve! Only a harmless secrecy. There was nothing <i>wrong</i> +in renting a house to the Dale woman! As Eleanor said this to herself, +it was as if cool water flowed over flame-licked flesh. Yes; he didn't +talk to her as he did to Edith of business matters; he didn't tell her +about real-estate transactions; but that didn't mean that the Dale woman +was anything to him! She was crying hard, now; "He just isn't frank, +that's all." She could bear <i>that</i>; it was cruel, but she could bear it! +And it was a protection to Maurice, too; it saved him from the slur of +being suspected. "Oh, I am ashamed to have suspected him!" she thought; +"how dreadful in me! But I've proved that I was wrong." When she said +that she knew, in a numb way, that after this she must not play with the +dagger of an unbelieved suspicion. She recognized that this sort of +thing may be a mental diversion—but it is dangerous. If she allowed +herself to do it again, she might really be stabbed; she might lose the +saving certainty that he had not lied to her—that he had only been "not +frank."</p> + +<p>Suddenly she remembered how unwilling he had been, years ago, to talk of +the creature to her! She smiled faintly at his foolishness. Perhaps he +didn't want to talk of her now? Men are so absurd about their wives! Her +heart thrilled at such precious absurdity. As for seeing that doctor—of +course she wouldn't see him! She didn't <i>need</i> to see him. And, anyhow, +she wouldn't, for anything in the world, have him, or anybody else, +suppose that she had had even a thought that Maurice wasn't—all right! +"He just wasn't quite frank; that was all." ... Oh, she had been wicked +to suspect him! "He would never forgive me if he knew I had thought of +such a thing, He must never know it."</p> + +<p>In the comfort of her own remorse, and the reassurance of his half +frankness, she walked back to the station and waited, in the midday +heat, for the returning car. Her head had begun to ache, but she said to +herself that she must not disappoint little Donny. So she went, in the +blazing sun, to the old washerwoman's house, climbed three flights of +stairs, and found the boy in bed, flushed with worry for fear "Miss +Eleanor" wasn't coming. She took the little feeble body in her arms, +and sat down in the steamy kitchen by an open window, where Donny could +see, on the clothes lines that stretched like gigantic spiderwebs across +a narrow courtyard, shirts and drawers, flapping and kicking and +bellying in the high, hot wind. She talked to him, and said that if his +grandmother would hire a piano, she would give him music lessons;—and +all the while her sore mind was wondering how old the mother of that +woman in the car was? Then she sang to Donny—little merry, silly songs +that made him smile:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The King of France,<br /> +And forty thousand men,<br /> +Marched up a hill—"</p></div> + +<p>She stopped short; Edith had thrown "The King of France" at her, that +day of the picnic, when she had cringed away from the water and the +slimy stones, and climbed up on the bank where she had been told to +"guard the girl's shoes and stockings"! "Oh, I'll be so glad to get her +and her 'brains' out of the house!" Eleanor thought. But her voice, +lovely still, though fraying with the years—went on:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Marched up a hill—<br/> + <i>And<br /> + then<br /> + marched<br /> + down<br /> + again</i>!"</p></div> + +<p>When, with a splitting headache, she toiled home through the heat, she +said to herself: "He ought to have been frank, and told me the woman was +Mrs. Dale; I wouldn't have minded, for I know such a person couldn't +have interested him. She had no figure, and she looked stupid. He +couldn't have said <i>she</i> had 'brains'! That girl in the car was +impertinent."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI" ></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2> + + +<p>The heat and the wind—and remorse—gave Eleanor such a prolonged +headache that Maurice, in real anxiety and without consulting her—wrote +to Mrs. Houghton that "Nelly was awfully used up by the hot weather," +and might he bring her to Green Hill now, instead of later? Her prompt +and friendly telegram, "<i>Come at once</i>," made him tell his wife that he +was going to pack her off to the mountains, <i>quick</i>!</p> + +<p>She began to say no, she couldn't manage it; "I—I can't leave Bingo" +(she was hunting for an excuse not to leave Maurice), "Bingo is so +miserable if I am out of his sight."</p> + +<p>"You can take him,—old Rover's gone to heaven. Think you can start +to-morrow?" He sat down beside her and took her hand in his warm young +paw; the pity of her made him frown—pity, and an intolerable annoyance +at himself! She, a woman twice his age, had married him, when, of +course, she ought to have told him not to be a little fool; "...wiped my +nose and sent me home!" he thought, with cynical humor. But, all the +same, she loved him. And he had played her a damned cheap trick!—which +was hidden safely away in the two-family house on Ash Street. "Hidden." +What a detestable word! It flashed into Maurice's mind that if, that +night among the stars, he had made a clean breast of it all to Eleanor, +he wouldn't now be going through this business of hiding things—and +covering them up by innumerable, squalid little falsenesses. "There +would have been a bust-up, and she might have left me. But that would +have been the end of it!" he thought; he would have been <i>free</i> from +what he had once compared to a dead hen tied around a dog's neck—the +clinging corruption of a lie! The Truth would have made him free. Aloud, +he said, "Star,"—she caught her breath at the old lovely word—"I'll go +to Green Hill with you, and take care of you for a few days. I'm sure I +can fix it up at the office."</p> + +<p>The tears leaped to her eyes. "Oh, Maurice!" she said; "I haven't been +nice to you. I'm afraid I'm—rather temperamental. I—I get to fancying +things. One day last week I—had horrid thoughts about you."</p> + +<p>"About <i>me</i>?" he said, laughing; "well, no doubt I deserved 'em!"</p> + +<p>"No!" she said, passionately; "no—you didn't! I know you didn't. But +I—" With the melody of that old name in her ears, her thoughts were +too shameful to be confessed. She wouldn't tell him how she had wronged +him in her mind; she would just say: "Don't keep things from me, +darling! Be frank with me, Maurice. And—" she stopped and tried to +laugh, but her mournful eyes dredged his to find an indorsement of her +own certainties—"and tell me you don't love anybody else?"</p> + +<p>She held her breath for his answer:</p> + +<p>"You <i>bet</i> I don't!"</p> + +<p>The humor of such a question almost made him laugh. In his own mind he +was saying, "Lily, and <i>Love</i>? Good Lord!"</p> + +<p>Eleanor, putting her hand on his, said, in a whisper, "But we have no +children. Do you mind—very much?"</p> + +<p>"Great Scott! no. Don't worry about <i>that</i>. That's the last thing I +think of! Now, when do you think you can start?" He spoke with wearied +but determined gentleness.</p> + +<p>She did not detect the weariness,—the gentleness made her so happy; he +called her "Star"! He said he didn't love anyone else! He said he didn't +mind because they had no children.... Oh, how dreadful for her to have +had those shameful fears—and out in "their meadow," too! It was +sacrilege.... Aloud, she said she could be ready by the first of the +week; "And you'll stay with me? Can't you take two weeks?" she +entreated.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I can't afford <i>that</i>" he said; "but I guess I can manage one...."</p> + +<p>Later that day, when she told Mrs. Newbolt—who had come home for a +fortnight—what Maurice had planned for her, Eleanor's happiness ebbed a +little in the realization that he would be in town all by himself, "for +a whole week! He'll go off with the Mortons, I suppose," she said, +uneasily.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Mrs. Newbolt, with what was, for her, astonishing brevity, +"why shouldn't he? Don't forget what my dear father said about cats: +<i>'Open the door!'</i> Tell Maurice you <i>want</i> him to go off with the +Mortons!"</p> + +<p>Of course Eleanor told him nothing of the sort. But she was obliged, at +Green Hill, to watch him "going off" with Edith. "I should think," she +said once, "that Mrs. Houghton wouldn't want her to be wandering about +with you, alone."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps Mrs. Houghton doesn't consider me a desperate character," he +said, dryly; "and, besides, Johnny Bennett chaperones us!"</p> + +<p>Sometimes not even John's presence satisfied Eleanor, and she chaperoned +her husband herself. She did it very openly one day toward the end of +Maurice's little vacation. Henry Houghton had said, "Look here; you +boys" (of course Johnny was hanging around) "must earn your salt! We've +got to get the second mowing in before night. I'll present you both with +a pitchfork."</p> + +<p>To which Maurice replied, "Bully!"</p> + +<p>"Me, too!" said Edith.</p> + +<p>And John said, "I'll be glad to be of any assistance, sir."</p> + +<p>("How their answers sum those youngsters up!" Mr. Houghton told his +Mary.)</p> + +<p>Eleanor, dogging Maurice to a deserted spot on the porch, said, +uneasily, "Don't do it, darling; it's too hot for you."</p> + +<p>But he only laughed, and started off with the other two to work all +morning in the splendid heat and dazzle of the field. "Skeezics, don't +be so strenuous!" he commanded, once; and Johnny was really nervous:</p> + +<p>"It's too hot for you, Buster."</p> + +<p>"Too hot for your grandmother!" Edith said—bare-armed, open-throated, +her creamy neck reddening with sunburn.</p> + +<p>Toward noon, Maurice's chaperon, toiling out across the hot stubble to +watch him, called from under an umbrella, "Edith! You'll get freckled."</p> + +<p>"When I begin to worry about my complexion, I'll let you know," Edith +retorted; "Maurice, your biceps are simply great!"</p> + +<p>"<i>How</i> she flatters him!" Eleanor thought; "And she knows he is looking +at her." He was! Edith, lifting a forkful of hay, throwing the weight on +her right thigh and straining backward with upraised arms, her big hat +tumbling over one ear, and the sweat making her hair curl all around her +forehead, was something any man would like to look at! No man would want +to look at Eleanor—a tired, dull, jealous woman, whose eyes were +blinking from the glare and whose face sagged with elderly fatigue. She +turned silently and went away. "He likes to be with her—but he doesn't +say so. Oh, if he would only be frank!" Her eyes blurred, but she would +not let the tears come, so they fell backward into her heart—which +brimmed with them, to overflow, after a while, in bitter words.</p> + +<p>Edith, watching the retreating figure, never guessing those unshed +tears, said, despairingly, to herself, "I suppose I ought to go home +with her?" She dropped her pitchfork; "I'll come back after dinner, +boys," she said; "I must look after Eleanor now."</p> + +<p>"Quitter!" Maurice jeered; but Johnny said, "I'm glad she's gone; it's +too much for a girl." His eyes followed her as she went running over the +field to catch up with Eleanor, who, on the way back to the house, only +poke once; she told Edith that flattery was bad taste the cup +overflowed! "Men hate flattery," she said.</p> + +<p>"Hate it?" said Edith, "they lap it up!"</p> + +<p>When the two young men sat down under an oak for their noon hour, with a +bucket of buttermilk standing precariously in the grass beside them, +John said again, anxiously, "It was too hot for her; I hope she won't +have a headache."</p> + +<p>"She always has headaches," Maurice said, carelessly.</p> + +<p>"What!" said Bennett, alarmed; "she's never said a word to me about +headaches."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you mean Edith? I thought you meant Eleanor. Edith never had a +headache in her life! Some girl, Johnny?"</p> + +<p>"Has that just struck you?" said John.</p> + +<p>Maurice fished some grass seeds out of the buttermilk, took a deep +draught of it, and looked at his companion, lying full length on the +stubble in the shadow of the oak. It came to him with a curious shock +that Bennett was in love. No "calf love" this time! Just a young +man's love for a young woman—sound and natural, and beautiful, and +right.... "I wonder," Maurice thought, "does she know it?"</p> + +<p>It seemed as if Johnny, puffing at his pipe, and slapping a mosquito on +his lean brown hand, answered his thought:</p> + +<p>"Edith's astonishingly young. She doesn't realize that she's grown up." +There was a pause; "<i>Or that I have.</i>"</p> + +<p>Maurice was silent; he suddenly felt old. These two—these +children!—believing in love, and in each other, were in a world of +their own; a world which knew no hidden household in the purlieus of +Mercer; no handsome, menacing, six-year-old child; no faded, jealous +woman, overflowing with wearisome caresses! In this springtime world was +Edith—vigorous, and sweet, and supremely reasonable;—and <i>never</i> +temperamental! And this young man, loving her.... Maurice turned over on +his face in the grass; but he did not kiss the earth's "perfumed +garment"; he bit his own clenched fist.</p> + +<p>He was very silent for the rest of their day in the field for one +thing, they had to work at a high pitch, for then were blue-black clouds +in the west! At a little after three Edith came out again, but not to +help.</p> + +<p>"I had to put on my glad rags," she said, sadly, "because some people +are coming to tea. I hate 'em—I mean the rags."</p> + +<p>Maurice stopped long enough to turn and look at her, and say, "They're +mighty pretty!" And so, indeed, they were—a blue organdie, with white +ribbons around the waist, and a big white hat with a pink rose in a knot +of black velvet on the brim. "How's Eleanor?" he said, beginning to +skewer a bale of hay on to his pitchfork.</p> + +<p>"She's afraid there's going to be a thunderstorm," Edith said; "that's +why I came out here. She wants you, Maurice."</p> + +<p>"All right," he said, briefly; and struck his fork down in the earth. +"I've got to go, Johnny."</p> + +<p>To do one's duty without love is doubtless better than to fail in doing +one's duty, but it has its risks. Maurice's heartless "kindness" to his +wife was like a desert creeping across fertile earth; the eager +generosity of boyhood had long ago hardened into the gray aridity of +mere endurance.</p> + +<p>Edith turned and walked back with him; they were both silent until +Maurice said, "You've got Johnny's scalp all right, Skeezics."</p> + +<p>"Don't be silly!" she said; her annoyance made her look so mature that +he was apologetic; was she in love with the cub? He was suddenly +dismayed, though he could not have said why. "I don't like jokes like +that," Edith said.</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon, Edith. I somehow forget you're grown up," he said, +and sighed.</p> + +<p>She laughed. "Eleanor and you have my age on your minds! Eleanor +informed me that I was too old to be rampaging round making hay with you +two boys! And she thinks I 'flatter' you," Edith said, grinning. "I +trust I'm not injuring your immortal soul, Maurice, and making you vain +of your muscle?"</p> + +<p>Instantly he was angry. Eleanor, daring to interfere between himself and +Edith? He was silent for the rest of the walk home; and he was still +silent when he went up to his wife's room and found her lying on her +bed, old Bingo snoozing beside her—windows closed, shades down. "Oh, +Maurice!" she said, with a gasp of relief; "I was so afraid you would +get caught in a thunderstorm!"</p> + +<p>"<i>Don't</i> be so absurd!" he said.</p> + +<p>"I—I love you; that's why I am 'absurd,'" she said, piteously. It was +as if she held to his lips the cup of her heart, brimming with those +unshed tears,—but is there any man who would not turn away from a cup +that holds so bitter a draught?</p> + +<p>Maurice turned away. "This room is insufferably hot!" he said. He let a +window curtain roll up with a jerk, and flung open a window.</p> + +<p>She was silent.</p> + +<p>"I wish," he said, "that you'd let up on Edith. You're always +criticizing her. I don't like it."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>That night Johnny Bennett, somehow, lured Edith out on to the porch to +say good night. The thunderstorm had come and gone, and the drenched +garden was heavy with wet fragrance.</p> + +<p>"Let's sit down," Johnny said; then, beseechingly, "Edith, don't you +feel a little differently about me, now?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Johnny, <i>dear</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Just a little, Edith? You don't know what it would mean to me, just to +hope?"</p> + +<p>"Johnny, I am awfully fond of you, but—"</p> + +<p>"Well, never mind," he said, patiently, "I'll wait."</p> + +<p>He went down the steps, hesitated, and, while Edith was still squeezing +a little wet ball of a handkerchief against her eyes, came back.</p> + +<p>"Do you mind if I ask you just one question, Edith?"</p> + +<p>"Of course not! Only, Johnny, it just about <i>kills</i> me to be—horrid to +you."</p> + +<p>"Have you really got to be horrid?" said John Bennett.</p> + +<p>"Johnny, I <i>can't</i> help it!"</p> + +<p>"Is it because there's any other fellow, Edith? That's the question I +wanted to ask you."</p> + +<p>She was silent.</p> + +<p>"Edith, I really think I have a right to know?"</p> + +<p>Still she didn't speak.</p> + +<p>"Of course, if there <i>is</i>—"</p> + +<p>"There isn't!" she broke in.... "Why, Johnny, you're the best friend I +have. No; there isn't anybody else. The honest truth is, I don't believe +I'm the sort of girl that gets married. I can't imagine caring for +<i>anybody</i> as much as I care for father and mother and Maurice. I—I'm +not sentimental, Johnny, a bit. I'm awfully fond of you; <i>awfully</i>! You +come next to Maurice. But—but not that way. That's the truth, Johnny. +I'm perfectly straight with you; you know that? And you won't throw me +over, will you? If I lost you, I declare I—I don't know what I'd do! +You won't give me up, will you?"</p> + +<p>John Bennett was silent for a long minute; then he said, "No, Edith; +I'll never give you up, dear." And he went away into the darkness.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII" ></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2> + + +<p>Edith's flight to one of the schoolhouses was not the entire release +that Eleanor expected.</p> + +<p>"Look here, Skeezics," Maurice had announced; "you can't turn me down +this way! You've got to come to supper every Sunday night!—when I'm at +home. Isn't that so, Nelly?"</p> + +<p>Eleanor said, bleakly: "Why, if Edith would <i>like</i> to, of course. But I +shouldn't think she'd care to come in to town at six, and rush out to +Medfield right after supper."</p> + +<p>"I don't mind," Edith said.</p> + +<p>"You bet she won't rush off right after supper!" Maurice said; "I won't +let her. And if she doesn't get in here by three o'clock, I'll know the +reason why!"</p> + +<p>So Edith came in every Sunday afternoon at three—and Eleanor never left +her alone with Maurice for a moment! She sat and watched them; saw +Edith's unconcealed affection for Maurice, saw Maurice's pleasure in +Edith, saw his entire forgetfulness of herself,—and as she sat, +silently, watching, watching, jealousy was like a fire in her breast.</p> + +<p>However, in spite of Eleanor, sitting on the other side of the fire, in +bitter silence, those Sunday afternoons were delightful to Edith. She +and Maurice were more serious with each other now. His feeling about her +was that she was a mighty pretty girl, who had sense, and who, as he +expressed it, "spoke his language." Her feeling about him was a frankly +expressed appreciation which Eleanor called "flattery." She had an eager +respect for his opinions, based on admiration for what she called to +herself his hard-pan goodness. "How he keeps civil to Eleanor, <i>I</i> don't +know!" Edith used to think. Sometimes, watching his civility—his +patience, his kindness, and especially his ability to hold his tongue +under the provocation of some laconic and foolish criticism from +Eleanor—Edith felt the old thrill of the Sir Walter Raleigh moment. +Yes; there was no one on earth like Maurice! Then she thought, +contritely, of good old Johnny. "If I hadn't known Maurice, I might have +liked Johnny," she thought; "he <i>is</i> a lamb." When she reflected upon +Eleanor, something in her generous, careless young heart hardened: +"She's not nice to Maurice!" She had no sympathy for Eleanor. Youth, +having never suffered, is brutally unsympathetic. Edith had known +nothing but love,—given and received; so of course she could not +sympathize with Eleanor!</p> + +<p>When the Sunday-night suppers were over, Eleanor and Maurice escorted +their guest back to Fern Hill; Edith always said, "Don't bother to go +home with me, Eleanor!" And Maurice always said, "I'll look after the +tyke, Nelly, you needn't go"; and Eleanor always said, "Oh, I don't +mind." Which was, of course, her way of "locking the door" to keep her +cat from a roof that became more alluring with every bolt and bar which +shut him from it.</p> + +<p>On these trolley rides through Medfield Maurice was apt to be rather +silent, and he had a nervous way of looking toward the rear platform +whenever the car stopped to take on a passenger—"although," he told +himself, "what difference would it make if Lily did get on board? She's +so fat now, Edith wouldn't know her. And as for Lily, she's white. She'd +play up, like a 'perfect lady'!"</p> + +<p>He was quite easy about Lily. He hadn't seen her for more than a year, +and she made no demands on him. She was living in the two-family house +on Ash Street, with the dressmaker and her three children and +feeble-minded father, in the lower flat. There was the desired back yard +for Jacky, where a thicket of golden glow lounged against the fence, and +where, tinder stretching clothes lines, a tiny garden overflowed with +color and perfume. Every day little Lily would leave her own work (which +was heavy, for she had several "mealers") and run downstairs to help +Mrs. Hayes wash and dress the imbecile old man. And she kept a pot of +hyacinths blooming on his window sill.</p> + +<p>Maurice (with grinding economies) sent her a quarterly money order, and +felt that he was, as he expressed it to himself, "square with the +game,"—with the Lily-and-Jacky game. He could never be square with the +game he played with Eleanor; and as for his own "game," his steadily +pursued secretiveness was a denial of his own standards which +permanently crippled his self-respect. Though, curiously enough, these +years of careful lying had made him, on every subject except those +connected with the household in Medfield, of a most scrupulous +truthfulness. Indeed, the office still called him "G. Washington."</p> + +<p>Jacky was six that winter—a handsome, spoiled little boy. He looked +like Maurice—the same friendly, eager, very bright blue eyes and the +same shock of blond hair. Lily's ideas of discipline were, of course, +ruining him, to which fact Maurice was entirely indifferent; his feeling +about Jacky was nothing but a sort of spiritual nausea; Jacky was not +only an economic nuisance, but he had made him a liar! He said to +himself that of course he didn't want anything to happen to the brat +("that would break Lily's heart!"), but—</p> + +<p>Then in March, something did happen to him. It was on a Sunday that the +child came down with scarlet fever, and Lily, in her terror, did the one +thing that she had never done, and that Maurice, in his certainty of her +"whiteness," felt sure she never would or could do: she sent a +telegram—<i>to his house</i>!</p> + +<p>It had been a cold, sunny day. Just before luncheon Eleanor had been +summoned to Mrs. O'Brien's: "<i>Donny is kind of pining; do please come +and sing to him, Miss Eleanor</i>," the worried grandmother wrote, and +Eleanor hadn't the heart to refuse. "I suppose," she thought, looking at +Maurice and Edith, "they'll be glad to get rid of me!" They were +squabbling happily as to whether altruism was not merely a form of +selfishness; Edith had flung, "<i>Idiot!</i>" at Maurice; and Maurice had +retorted, "I never expect a woman to reason!" It was the kind of +squabbling which is the hall mark of friendship and humor, and it would +have been impossible between Eleanor and her husband.... She left them, +burning with impatience to get down to Mrs. O'Brien's and back again in +the shortest possible time. As soon as she was out of the house Maurice +disposed of altruism by a brief laying down of the law:</p> + +<p>"There's no such thing as disinterestedness. You never do anything for +anybody, except for what you get out of it for yourself.... Let's go +skating?"</p> + +<p>The suggestion was not the result of premeditation; Maurice, politely +opening the front door for his wife, had realized, as he stood on the +threshold and a biting wind flung a handful of powdery snow in his +face,—the sparkling coldness of the day; and he thought to himself, +"this is about the last chance for skating! There'll be a thaw next +week." So, when he came back, whistling, to the library, he said: "Are +you game for skating? It's cold as blazes!"</p> + +<p>And Edith said: "You bet I am! Only we'll have to go to Fern Hill for my +skates!"</p> + +<p>Maurice said, "All right!" and off they went, the glowing vigor and +youth of them a beauty in itself!</p> + +<p>So it was that when Eleanor got home, after having gently and patiently +sung to poor Donny for nearly an hour, the library was empty; but a note +on the mantelpiece said: "We've gone skating.—E. and M." "She waited +until I went out," Eleanor thought; "<i>then</i> she suggested it to him!" +She sat down, huddling over the fire, and thinking how Maurice neglected +her; "He doesn't want me. He likes to go off with Edith, alone!" They +had probably gone to the river—"our river!"—that broad part just below +the meadow, where there was apt to be good skating. That made her +remember the September day and the picnic, when Edith had talked about +jealousy—"Bingoism," she had called it. "She tried to attract him by +being <i>smart</i>. I detest smartness!" The burning pain under her +breastbone was intolerable. She thought of the impertinent things Edith +had said that day—and the ridiculous inference that if the person of +whom you were jealous, was more attractive in any way than you were +yourself, it was unreasonable to be jealous;—"get busy, and <i>be</i> +attractive!" Edith had said, with pert shallowness. "She doesn't know +what she's talking about!" Eleanor said; and jealousy seared her mind as +a flame might have seared her flesh. "I haven't skated since I was a +girl.... I—I believe next winter I'll take it up again." The tears +stood in her eyes.</p> + +<p>It was at that moment that the telegram was brought into the library.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Curtis isn't in," Eleanor told the maid; then she did what anyone +would do, in the absence of the person to whom the dispatch was +addressed; signed for it ... opened it ... read it.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Jacky's sick; please come over quick.</i></p> + +<p><i>L. D</i>.</p></div> + +<p>"There's no answer," she said. When the maid had left the room, +Maurice's wife moistened the flap of the flimsy brown envelope—it had +been caught only on one side; got up, went into the hall, laid the +dispatch on the table, came back to the library, and fainted dead away.</p> + +<p>No one heard her fall, so no one came to help her—except her little +dog, scrabbling stiffly out of his basket, and coming to crouch, +whining, against her shoulder. It was only a minute before her eyelids +flickered open;—closed—opened again. After a while she tried to rise, +clutching with one hand at the rung of a chair, and with the other +trying to prop herself up; but her head swam, and she sank back. She lay +still for a minute; then realized that if Maurice came in and found her +there on the floor, he would know that she had read the telegram.... So +again she tried to pull herself up; caught at the edge of his desk, +turned sick, saw everything black; tried again; then, slowly, the room +whirling about her, got into a chair and lay back, crumpled up, blindly +dizzy, and conscious of only one thing: she must get upstairs to her own +room before Edith and Maurice came home! She didn't know why she wanted +to do this; she was even a little surprised at herself, as she had been +surprised when, that night on the mountain, "to save Maurice," she had, +instinctively, done one sensible thing after another. So now she knew +that, when he came home with Edith, Maurice must be saved "a scene." He +must not discover, yet, that ... <i>she knew</i>.</p> + +<p>For of course now, it was knowledge, not suspicion: Maurice was summoned +to see a sick boy called Jacky; Jacky was the child of L. D.; and L. D. +was the Dale woman, who had lived in the house on Maple Street. Her +shameful suspicion had not been shameful! It had been the recognition of +a fact.... Clutching at supporting chairs, Eleanor, somehow, got out of +the library; saw that brown envelope in the hall, stopped (holding with +one hand to the table), to make sure it was sealed. Bingo, following +her, whimpered to be lifted and carried upstairs, but she didn't notice +him. She just clung to the banisters and toiled up to her room. She +pushed open her door and looked at her bed, desiring it so passionately +that it seemed to her she couldn't live to reach it—to fall into it, as +one might fall into the grave, enamored with death. Down in the hall the +little dog cried. She didn't faint again. She just lay there, without +feeling, or suffering. After a while she heard the front door open and +close; heard Edith's voice: "Hullo, Eleanor! Where are you? We've had a +bully time!" Heard Maurice: "Headache, Nelly? Too ba—" Then silence; he +must have seen the envelope—picked it up—read it.... That was why he +didn't finish that word—so hideously exact!—"<i>bad</i>." After a while he +came tiptoeing into the room.</p> + +<p>"Headache? Sorry. Anything I can do?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>He did not urge; he was too engrossed in the shock of an escaped +catastrophe; <i>suppose Eleanor had read that dispatch</i>! Good God! Was +Lily mad? He must go and see her, quick, and say—He grew so angry as he +thought of what he was going to say that he did not hear Edith's +friendly comments on "poor dear Eleanor."</p> + +<p>"Edith," he said, "that—that dispatch: I've got to see somebody on +business. Awfully sorry to take you out to Fern Hill before supper, but +I'm afraid I've got to rush off—"</p> + +<p>"'Course! But don't bother to take me home. I can go by myself."</p> + +<p>"No. It's all right. I have time; but I've got to go right off. I hate +to drag you away before supper—"</p> + +<p>"That's of no consequence!" she said, but she gave Maurice a swift look. +What was the matter with him? His forehead, under that thatch of light +hair, was so lined, and his lips were set in such a harsh line, that he +looked actually <i>old</i>! Edith sobered into real anxiety. "I wish," she +said, "that you wouldn't go out to Fern Hill; you'll have to come all +the way back to town for your appointment!"</p> + +<p>He said, "No: the—the appointment is on that side of the river." On the +trolley there was no more conversation than there might have been if +Eleanor had been present. At Edith's door he said, "'Night—"</p> + +<p>But as he turned away, she called to him, "Maurice!" Then ran down the +steps and put her hand on his arm: "Maurice, look here; is there +anything I can do? You're bothered!"</p> + +<p>He gave a grunt of laughter. "To be exact, Edith, I'm damned bothered. +I've been several kinds of a fool."</p> + +<p>"You haven't! And it wouldn't make any difference if you had. Maurice, +you're a perfect <i>lamb</i>! I won't have you call yourself names! Why"—her +eyes were passionate with tenderness, but she laughed—"I used to call +you 'Sir Walter Raleigh,' you know, because you're great, simply great! +Maurice, I bet on you every time! Do tell me what's the matter? Maybe I +can help. Father says I have lots of sense."</p> + +<p>Maurice shook his head. "You do have sense! I wish I had half as much. +No, Skeezics; there's nothing anybody can do. I pay as I go. But you're +the dearest girl on earth!"</p> + +<p>She caught at his hand, flung her arm around his shoulder, and kissed +him: "You are the dearest boy on earth!" Before he could get his breath +to reply, she flew into the house—flew upstairs—flew into her own +room, and banged the door shut. "<i>Maurice is unhappy!</i>" she said. The +tears started, and she stamped her foot. "I can't <i>bear</i> it! Old darling +Maurice—what makes him unhappy? I could kill anybody that hurts +Maurice!" She began to take off her hat, her fingers trembling—then +stopped and frowned: "I believe Eleanor's been nasty to him? I'd like to +choke her!" Suddenly her cheeks burned; she stood still, and caught her +lower lip between her teeth; "I don't care! I'm <i>glad</i> I did it. I—I'd +do it again! ... Darling old Maurice!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII" ></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> + + +<p>When Jacky's father—with that honest young kiss warm upon his +cheek—reached the little "two-family" house, he saw the red sign on the +door: <i>Scarlet Fever</i>.</p> + +<p>"He's got it," he thought, fiercely; "but why in hell did she send for +me?—and a telegram!—to the <i>house</i>! She's mad." He was panting with +anger as he pressed the button at Lily's door; "I'll tell her I'll never +see her again, long as I live!" Furious words were on the tip of his +tongue; then she opened the door, and he was dumb.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mr. Curtis—don't—don't let them take Jacky! Oh, Mr. Curtis!" She +flung herself upon him, sobbing frantically. "Don't let them—I'll kill +them if they touch Jacky! Oh, my soul and body! He'll die if they take +him—I won't let them take him—" She was shaking and stammering and +gasping. "I won't have him touched.... You got to stop them—"</p> + +<p>"Lily, <i>don't</i>! What's the matter?"</p> + +<p>"This woman downstairs 's about crazy, because she has three children. I +hope they all catch it and die and go to hell! She's shut up there with +'em in her flat. She won't put her nose outside the door! She come up +here this morning, and saw Jacky, and she said it was scarlet fever. +Seems she knew what it was, 'cause she had a boy die of it—glad he did! +And she sent—the slut!—a complaint to the Board of Health—and the +doctor, he come this afternoon, and said it was! And he said he was +going to take Jacky <i>to-night</i>!"</p> + +<p>Her voice made him cringe; her yellow tigress eyes blazed at him; he had +known that Lily, for all her good humor, had occasional sharp gusts of +temper, little squalls that raced over summer seas of kindliness! But +he had never seen this Lily: A ferocious, raucous Lily, madly maternal! +A Lily of the pavements.... "An' I said he wasn't going to do no such +thing! An' I said I'd stop it: I said I'd take the law to him; I said +I'd get Jacky's father: I—"</p> + +<p>"Good God! Lily—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, what do I care about <i>you</i>? I ain't goin' to kill Jacky to protect +<i>you</i>! You got to stop them taking him!" She clutched his arm and shook +it: "I never asked nothing of you, yet. I ask it now, and you'll <i>do</i> +it, or I'll tell everybody in town that he's yours—" Her menacing voice +broke and failed, but her lips kept moving; those kind, efficient hands +of hers, clutching at him, were the claws of a mother beast. Maurice +took her arm and guided her into the little parlor, where a row of +hyacinths on the window sill made the air overpoweringly sweet; he sat +down beside her on the sofa.</p> + +<p>"Get steady, Lily, and tell me: I'll see what can be done. But there's +to be no <i>father</i> business about it, you understand? I'm just a +'friend.'"</p> + +<p>So, stammering and breaking into sobs and even whispered screams, and +more outrageous abuse of her fellow tenant, she told him: It was scarlet +fever, and there were children in the house. The Board of Health, +"sicked on by that damned woman," said that Jacky must go to the +hospital—to the contagious ward. "And the doctor said he'd be better +off there; he said they could do for him better than me—me, his mother! +They're going to send a ambulance—I telegraphed you at four +o'clock—and here it is six! You <i>must</i> have got it by five—why didn't +you come? Oh—my God, <i>Jacky</i>!" Her suffering was naked; shocking to +witness! It made Maurice forget his own dismay.</p> + +<p>"I was out," he began to explain, "and—"</p> + +<p>But she went on, beads of foam gathering in the corners of her mouth: "I +didn't telephone, for fear <i>she'd</i> get on to it." He could see that she +was angry at her own consideration. "I'd ought to have sent for you +when he come down with it!" ... Where had he been all this time, +anyway!—and her nearly out of her head thinkin' this rotten woman +downstairs was sicking the Board o' Health on to her! "And look how I've +washed her father for her! I'll spit on him if—if—if anything happens +to Jacky. Yes, I tell you, and you mind what I say: If Jacky dies, I'll +kill her—my soul and body, I'll kill her anyway!"</p> + +<p>"Lily, get steady. I'll fix things for you. I'll go to the Board of +Health and see what can be done; just as—as a friend of yours, you +understand."</p> + +<p>From the next room came a wailing voice: "Maw—"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Sweety; in a minute—" She grasped Maurice's hand, clung to it, +kissed it. "Mr. Curtis, I'll never make trouble for you after this! Oh, +I'll go to New York, and live there, if you want me to. I'll do +<i>anything</i>, if you just make 'em leave Jacky! (Yes, darling Sweety, +maw's coming.) You'll do it? Oh, I knew you'd do it!" She ran out of the +room.</p> + +<p>He got up, beside himself with perplexity: but even as he tried to think +what on earth he could do, the doctor came. The ambulance would arrive, +he said, with bored cheerfulness, in twenty minutes. Lily, rushing from +Jacky's bedside, flew at him with set teeth, her trembling hands +gripping the white sleeve of his linen jacket.</p> + +<p>"This gentleman's a friend of mine," she said, jerking her head toward +Maurice; "he says you <i>shan't</i> carry Jacky off!"</p> + +<p>The doctor's relief at having a man to talk to was obvious. And while +Maurice was trying to get in a word, there came another whimper from the +room where Jacky lay, red and blotched, talking brokenly to himself: +"Maw!" Lily ran to him, leaving the two men alone.</p> + +<p>"Thank Heaven!" the doctor said; "I'd about as soon argue with a hornet +as a mother. She's nearly crazy! I'll tell you the situation." He told +it, and Maurice listened, frowning.</p> + +<p>"What can be done?" he said; "I—I am only an acquaintance; I hardly +know Mrs. Dale; but she sent for me. She's frantic at the idea of the +boy being taken away from her."</p> + +<p>"He'll <i>have</i> to be taken away! Besides, he'll have ten times better +care in the hospital than he could have here."</p> + +<p>"Can she go with him?" Maurice said.</p> + +<p>"Why, if she can afford to take a private room—"</p> + +<p>"Good heavens! money's no object; anything to keep her from doing some +wild thing!"</p> + +<p>"You a relation?" the doctor asked.</p> + +<p>"Not the slightest. I—knew her husband."</p> + +<p>"The thing for you to do," said the doctor, "is to hustle right out to a +telephone; call up the hospital. Get Doctor Nelson, if you can—"</p> + +<p>"Nelson!"</p> + +<p>"Yes; if not, get Baker; tell him I—" then followed concise directions; +"But try and get Nelson; he's the top man. They're frightfully crowded, +and if you fool with understrappers, you'll get turned down. I'd do it, +but I've got to stay here and see that she doesn't get perfectly crazy."</p> + +<p>Almost before the doctor finished his directions, Maurice was rushing +downstairs.... That next half hour was a nightmare. He ran up the +street, slippery with ice; saw over a drug store the blue sign of the +public telephone, and dashed in—to wait interminably outside the booth! +A girl in a silly hat was drawling into the transmitter. Once Maurice, +pacing frantically up and down, heard her flat laugh; then, to his +dismay, he saw her, through the glass of the door, instead of hanging up +the receiver, drop a coin into the slot....</p> + +<p>"Damn! <i>Another</i> five minutes!"</p> + +<p>He turned and struck his fist on the counter. "Why the devil don't you +have two booths here?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>The druggist, lounging against the soda-water fountain, smiled calmly: +"You can search <i>me</i>. Ask the company."</p> + +<p>"Can't you stop that woman? My business is important. For God's sake +pull her out!"</p> + +<p>"She's telephoning her beau, I guess. Who's going to stop a lady +telephoning her beau? Not me."</p> + +<p>The feather gave a last flirtatious jerk—and the booth was empty.</p> + +<p>Maurice, closing its double doors, and shutting himself into the tiny +box where the fetid air seemed to take him by the throat and the space +was so narrow he could hardly crowd his long legs into it, rushed into +another delay. Wrong number! ... When at last he got the right number +and the hospital, there were the usual deliberate questions; and the, +"I'll connect you with So-and-so's desk." Maurice, sitting with the +receiver to his ear, could feel the blood pounding in his temples. His +mind whirled with the possibilities of what Lily might say in his +absence: "She'll tell the doctor my name—" As his wire was connected, +first with one authority and then with another, each authority asked the +same question, "Are you one of the family?" And to each he gave the same +answer, "No; a friend; the doctor asked me to call you up."</p> + +<p>Finally came the voice of the "top man"—the voice which had spoken in +Lily's narrow hall six years ago, the voice which had joked with Edith +at the Mortons' dinner party, the voice which had burst into extravagant +guffaws under the silver poplar in his own garden—Doctor Nelson's +voice—curt, impersonal: "Who is this speaking?"</p> + +<p>Then Maurice's voice, disguised into a gruff treble, "A friend."</p> + +<p>"One of the family?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>Five minutes later Maurice, coming out of that horrible little booth, +the matter arranged at an expense which, later, would give Jacky's +father some bad moments, was cold from head to foot. When he reached +Lily's house the ambulance was waiting at the door. Upstairs, the doctor +said, "Well?"</p> + +<p>And Lily said: "Did you do it? If you didn't, I'll—"</p> + +<p>"I did," Maurice said. Then he asked if he could be of any further +service.</p> + +<p>"No; the orderly will get him downstairs. He's too heavy for Mrs. Dale +to carry. She's got her things all ready. You—" he said, smiling at +Maurice, "Mr.—? I didn't get your name. You look all in!"</p> + +<p>Maurice shook his head: "I'm all right. Mrs. Dale will you step in here? +I want to speak to you a minute." As Lily preceded him into the dining +room, he said, quickly, to the doctor, "I want to tell her not to worry +about money, you know." To Lily—when he closed the door—he was briefly +ruthless: "I'll pay for everything. But I just want to say, if he +dies—"</p> + +<p>She screamed out, "<i>No—no!</i>"</p> + +<p>"He won't," he said, angrily; "but if he does, you are to say his +father's dead. Do you understand? Say his name was—what did you call +it?—William?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. My God! what difference does it make? Call it anything! +John."</p> + +<p>"Well, say his father was John Dale of New York, and he's dead. Promise +me!"</p> + +<p>She promised—"Honest to God!" her face was furrowed with fright. As +they went back to the doctor Maurice had a glimpse of Lily's bedroom, +where Jacky, rolled in a blanket, was vociferating that he would <i>not</i> +be carried downstairs by the orderly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Sweety," Lily entreated; "see, nice pretty gentleman! Let him carry +you?"</p> + +<p>"Won't," said Jacky.</p> + +<p>At which Maurice said, decidedly: "Behave yourself, Jacobus! I'll carry +you."</p> + +<p>Instantly Jacky stopped crying: "You throwed away the present I give +you," he said; "but," he conceded, "you may carry me."</p> + +<p>The doctor objected. "It isn't safe—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, let's get it over," Maurice said, sharply; "I shan't see any +children. It's safe enough! Anything to stop this scene!"</p> + +<p>The bothered doctor half consented, and Maurice lifted Jacky, very +gently; as he did so, the little fellow somehow squirmed a hand out of +the infolding blanket, and made a hot clutch for his father's ear; he +gripped it so firmly that, in spite of Maurice's wincing expostulation, +he pulled the big blond head over sidewise until it rested on his own +little head. That burning grip held Maurice prisoner all the way +downstairs; it chained him to the child until they reached the street. +There the clutch relaxed, but for one poignant moment, as Maurice lifted +Jacky into the ambulance, father and son looked into each other's eyes, +and Maurice said—the words suddenly tumbling from his lips:</p> + +<p>"Now, my little Jacky, you'll be good, won't you?" Then the ambulance +rolled softly away, and he stood on the curbstone and felt his heart +swelling in his throat: "Why did I say '<i>my</i>'?" As he walked home he +tried to explain the possessing word away: "Of course I'd say 'my' to +any child; it didn't mean anything! But suppose the orderly had heard +me?" Even while he thus denied the Holy Spirit within him, he was +feeling again that hot, ridiculous tug on his ear. "<i>I</i> was the only one +who could manage him," he thought.... "Of course what I said didn't mean +anything."</p> + +<p>He stopped on the bridge and looked down into the water—black and +swift and smooth between floating cakes of ice. Now and then a star +glimmered on a slipping ripple; on the iron bridge farther up the +river a row of lights were strung like a necklace across the empty +darkness.... Somewhere, in the maze of streets at one end of the bridge, +was Eleanor, lying in bed with a desperate headache. Somewhere, in the +maze of streets at the other end of the bridge, was Lily, taking "his" +little Jacky to the hospital. Somewhere, on one of the hillsides beyond +Medfield, was Edith in the schoolhouse. And Eleanor was loving him and +trusting him; and Lily was "blessing him" (so she had told him) for his +goodness; and Edith was "betting on him"! ... "I wonder if anybody was +ever as rotten as I am?" Maurice pondered.</p> + +<p>Then he forgot his "rottenness," and smiled. "He obeyed <i>me</i>! Lily +couldn't do a thing with him; what did he mean about the 'present'? I +believe it was that old cigar! He must have seen me pitch it into the +gutter. He wanted me to carry him; wouldn't look at that orderly! What +made him grab my ear?"</p> + +<p>When Maurice said that, down, down, under his rage at Lily, under his +fear of exposure, under his nauseating disgust at himself—something +stirred, something fluttered. The tremor of a moral conception:</p> + +<p>Paternal pride.</p> + +<p>"<i>What</i> a grip!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV" ></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> + + +<p>After a tornado comes quietness; again the sun shines, and birds sing, +and many small things look up, unhurt. It was incredible to Maurice, +eating his breakfast the next morning, reading his paper, opening his +letters, and glancing at a pale Eleanor, heavy-eyed and silent, that his +world was still the same world that it had been before he had picked up +the sealed telegram on the hall table. He asked Eleanor how she felt; +told her to take care of herself; said he'd not be at home to dinner, +and went off to his office.... He was safe! Those two minutes in the +dining room of Lily's flat, while the white-jacketed orderly was trying +to persuade the protesting Jacky to let him carry him downstairs, had +removed any immediate alarm; Lily had promised not to communicate with +Jacky's father.</p> + +<p>So Maurice, walking to the office, told himself that everything was all +right—but "a close call!" Then he thought of Jacky, who, at his +command, had so instantly "behaved himself"; and of that grip on his +ear; and again that pang of something he did not recognize made him +swallow hard. "Poor little beggar!" he thought: "I wonder how he is? I +wonder if he'll pull through?" He hoped he would. "Tough on Lily, if +anything happens." But his anxiety—though he did not know it—was not +entirely on Lily's account. For the first time in the child's life, +Maurice was aware of Jacky as a possession. The tornado of the night +before—the anger and fear and pity—had plowed down below the surface +of his mind, and touched that subsoil of conscious responsibility for +creation, the realization that, whether through love or through +selfishness, the man who brings a child into this terrible, squalid, +glorious world, is a creator, even as God is the Creator. So Maurice, +sitting at his desk that next day, answering a client on the telephone, +or making an appointment to go and "look at a house," was really feeling +in his heart—not love, of course, but a consciousness of his own +relation to that little flushed, suffering body out in the contagious +ward of the hospital in Medfield. "Will he pull through?" Maurice asked +himself. It was six years ago that, standing at the door of a +yellow-brick apartment house, with two fingers looped through the +strings of a box of roses, Jacky's father had said, "Perhaps it will be +born dead!" How dry his lips had been that day with the hope of death! +Now, suddenly, his lips were dry with fear that the kid wouldn't pull +through—which would be "tough on Lily." His face was stern with this +new emotion of anxiety which was gradually becoming pain; he even forgot +how scared he had been at the thought that Eleanor <i>might</i> have opened +that telegram. "I swear, I wish I hadn't hurt his feelings about that +cigar stub!" he said. Then he remembered Eleanor: "I could wring Lily's +neck!" But Eleanor hadn't opened the telegram; and Maurice hoped Jacky +would get well—because "it would be tough on Lily" if he didn't. Thus +he dismissed his wife. So long as Lily's recklessness had not done any +harm, it was easy to dismiss her—so very far had she receded into the +dull, patiently-to-be-endured, background of life!</p> + +<p>The Eleanor of the next few weeks, who seemed just a little more +melancholy and silent than usual, a little more devoted to old Bingo, +did not attract his attention in any way. But when Edith came in on the +following Sunday, he had his wife sufficiently on his mind to say, in a +quick aside:</p> + +<p>"Edith, don't give me away on being sort of upset last Sunday night, +will you?" (As he spoke, he remembered that swift kiss. "Nice little +Skeezics!" he thought.) But he finished his sentence with perfect +matter-of-factness: "it was just a—a little personal worry. I don't +want Eleanor bothered, you understand?"</p> + +<p>"Of course," said Edith, gravely</p> + +<p>And so it was that in another month or two, with reliance upon Edith's +discretion, and satisfaction in a recovering Jacky, the track of the +tornado in Maurice's mind was quite covered up with the old, ugly, +commonplace of furtive security. In the security Maurice was conscious, +in a kindly way, that poor old Eleanor looked pretty seedy; so he +brought her some flowers once in a while; not as often as he would have +liked to, for, though he had more money now, eight weeks of a private +room in a hospital "kind o' makes a dent in your income," Maurice told +himself; "but I don't begrudge it," he thought; "I'm glad the kid got +well."</p> + +<p>So, after that night of terror and turmoil,—when Eleanor had +fainted—Maurice's life in his own house settled again into the old +tranquil forlornness, enlivened only by those Sunday-afternoon visits +from Edith.</p> + +<p>And Eleanor?... There had been some dumb days, when she moved about the +house or sat opposite Maurice at table, or exercised Bingo, like an +automaton. Sometimes she sat at her window, looking down through the +bare branches of the poplar at the still, wintry garden; the painted +table, heaped with grimy snow slowly melting in the chill March +sunshine; the dead stalks of the lilies on each side of the icy bricks +of the path; the rusty bars of the iron gate, through which, now and +then, came the glimmer, a block away, of the river—"their river"! +Sometimes for an hour her mind numbly considered these things; then +would come a fierce throb of pain: "He was all the time saying he +'couldn't afford' things; that was so he could give her money, I +suppose?" Then blank listlessness again. She did not suffer very much. +She was too stunned to suffer. She merely said to herself, vaguely, +"I'll leave him." It may have been on the third day that, when she said, +"I will leave him; he has been false to me," her mind whispered back, +very faintly, like an echo, "He has been false to himself." For just a +moment she loved him enough to think that he had sinned. <i>Maurice has +sinned!</i> When she said that, the dismay of it made her forget herself. +She said it with horror, and after a while she added a question: "<i>Why</i> +did he do it?" Then came beating its way up through anger and wounded +pride, and suffering love, still another question: "Was it my fault that +he did it? Did he fall in love with that frightful woman because I +failed him?" Instantly her mind sheered off from this question: "I did +everything I knew how to make him happy! I would have died to make him +happy. I adored him! How could he care for that common, ignorant woman I +saw on the porch? A woman who wasn't a lady. A—a <i>bad</i> woman!" But yet +the question repeated itself: "Why? Why?" It demanded an answer: Why did +Maurice—high-minded, pure-hearted, overflowing with a love as +beautiful, and as perfect as Youth itself—how <i>could</i> Maurice be drawn +to such a woman? And by and by the answer struggled to her lips, tearing +her heart as it came with dreadful pain: "He did it because I didn't +make him happy."</p> + +<p>Just as Maurice, recognizing the responsibility of creation, had, at the +touch of his son's little hand, felt the tremor of a moral conception, +so now Eleanor, barren so long! felt the pangs of a birth of spiritual +responsibility: "I didn't make him happy, so—Oh, my poor Maurice, it +was my fault!"... But of course this divine self-forgetfulness in +self-reproach, was as feeble as any new-born thing. When it stirred, and +uttered little elemental sounds—"my fault, my fault"—she forgot the +wrong he had done her, in seeing the wrong he had done himself.... "Oh, +my Maurice—my Maurice!" But most of the time she did not hear this +frail cry of the sense of sin! She thought entirely and angrily of +herself; she said, over and over, that she was going to leave him. She +was absorbed in hideous and poignant imaginings, based on that organic +curiosity which is experienced only by the woman who meditates upon "the +other woman." When these visions overwhelmed her, she said she wouldn't +leave him—she would hold him! She wouldn't give him up to that +frightful creature, whom he—kissed.... "Oh, my God! He <i>kisses</i> her!" +No; she wouldn't give him up; she would just accuse him; just tell him +she knew he had been false; tell him there was no use lying about it! +Then, perhaps, say she would forgive him?... Yes; if he would promise to +throw the vile woman over, she would forgive him. She did not, of +course, reflect that forgiveness is not a thing that can be promised; it +cannot be manufactured. It comes in exact proportion as we love the +sinner more and self less.</p> + +<p>And forgiveness is not forgetfulness! It is more love.</p> + +<p>Eleanor did not know this. So, except for those occasional cooling and +divine moments of blaming herself, she scorched and shriveled in the +flames of self-love. And as usual, she was speechless. There were many +of these silent hours (which were such a matter of course to Maurice +that he never noticed them!) before she gathered herself together, and +decided that she would not leave him. She would fight! How? "Oh, I +<i>can't</i> think!" she moaned. So those first days passed—days of impotent +determinations, which whirled and alternated, and contradicted each +other.</p> + +<p>Once Maurice, glancing at her over his newspaper at breakfast, +thought to himself, "She hasn't said a word since she got up! Poor +Eleanor!..." Then he remembered how he had once supposed these silences +of hers were full of things too lovely and profound for words! He +frowned, and read the sporting page, and forgot her silences, and her, +too. But he did not forget Jacky. "I'll buy the kid a ball," he was +thinking....</p> + +<p>So the days passed, and each day Eleanor dredged her silences, to find +words: "What shall I say to him?" for of course she must say +<i>something</i>! She must "have it out with him," as the phrase is. +Sometimes she would decide to burst into a statement of the fact: +"Somebody called 'L. D.' has a claim upon you, because she sends for you +when 'Jacky' is sick. I am certain that 'Jacky' is your child! I am +certain that 'L.D.' is Mrs. Dale. I am certain that you don't love +me...." And he would say—Then her heart would stand still: What +<i>would</i> he say? He would say, "I stopped loving you <i>because you are +old</i>." And to that would come her own terrible assent: "I had no right +to marry him—he was only nineteen. I had no right..." (Thus did that +new-born sense of her own complicity in Maurice's sin raise its feeble +voice!) And little by little the Voice became stronger: "I didn't make +him happy <i>not</i> because I was old, but because I was selfish...." So, in +alternating gusts of anger and fear, and outraged pride,—and +self-forgetting horror for Maurice,—her soul began to awake. Again and +again she counted the reasons why he had not been happy, beginning with +the obvious reason, his youth and her age: But that did not explain it. +"We had no children." That did not explain it! Nor, "I wasn't a good +housekeeper"; nor, "I didn't do things with him ... I didn't skate, and +walk, and joke with him"; nor, "I didn't entertain him. Auntie always +said men must be entertained. I—I am stupid." There was no explanation +in such things; neither dullness nor inefficiency was enough to drive a +man like Maurice Curtis into dishonor or faithlessness! Then came the +real explanation—which jealousy so rarely puts into words: "<i>I was +selfish.</i>" At first, this bleak truthfulness was only momentary. Almost +immediately she was swept from the noble pain of knowing that Maurice +had been false to himself; swept from the sense of her own share in that +falseness, swept back to the insult to <i>herself</i>! Back to self-love. +With this was the fear that if she accused him, if she told him that she +knew he was false to her, if she made him very angry, he would leave +her, and go and live with this woman—who had given him a child ... Yet +every morning when she got up, she would say to herself, "I'll tell him +to-day." And every night when she went to bed, "To-morrow."</p> + +<p>Still she did not "have it out with him." Then weeks pushed in between +her and that Sunday afternoon when the resealed telegram had been put on +the hall table. And by and by it was a month, and still she could not +speak. And after a while it was June—June, and the anniversary (which +Maurice happened to forget, and to which Eleanor's suffering love would +not permit her to refer!). By that June day, that marked nine of the +golden fifty years, Eleanor had done what many another sad and injured +woman has done—dug a grave in her heart, and buried Trust and Pride in +it; and then watched the grave night and day. Sometimes, as she watched, +her thought was: "If he would tell me the truth, even now, I would +forgive him. It is his living a lie, every day, every minute, that I +can't bear!" Then she would look at Maurice—sitting at the piano, +perhaps, playing dreamily, or standing up in front of the fireplace +filling his pipe, and poking old Bingo with his foot and telling him he +was getting too fat; "You're 'losin' your figger,' Bingo!" Eleanor, +looking and listening, would say to herself, "Is he thinking of Mrs. +Dale, <i>now</i>?" And all day long, when she was alone (watching the grave), +she would think: "Where is he <i>now</i>? Is he with her? Oh, I think I will +follow him,—and <i>watch</i>.... Was he with her last night when he said he +had gone to the theater? ... Is he lying to me when he says he has to go +away on business, and is he really with her? It's the <i>lying</i> I can't +bear! If only he would not lie to me!... Does she call him 'Maurice'? +Perhaps she called him 'darling'?" The thought of an intimacy like +<i>that</i>, was oil on the vehement flame!</p> + +<p>"You look dreadfully, Eleanor," Mrs. Newbolt told her once, her pale, +protruding eyes full of real anxiety. "I'd go and see a doctor, if I +were you."</p> + +<p>"I'm well enough," Eleanor said, listlessly.</p> + +<p>"At your age," said her aunt, "you never can tell <i>what's goin' on +inside</i>! Here's a piece of candy for Bingo—he's too fat. My dear father +used to say that a man's soul and his gizzard could hold a lot of +secrets. It's the same with women. So look out for your gizzard. Here, +Bingo!"</p> + +<p>Eleanor was silent. She had just come from Mrs. O'Brien's, where she had +given the slowly failing Donny a happy hour, and she was tired. Mrs. +Newbolt found her alone in the garden, sitting under the shimmering +silver poplar. The lilies were just coming into bloom, and on the +age-blackened iron trellis of the veranda the wistaria had flung its +purple scarves among the thin fringes of its new leaves. The green tea +table was bare: "I'd give you a cup of tea," Eleanor said, "but Maurice +is going out to dinner, so I told Mary not to keep the fire up, just for +me."</p> + +<p>"Maurice goin' out to dinner! Why, it's your weddin' day! Eleanor, if I +have one virtue, it's candor: Maurice oughtn't to be out to dinner so +much—and on your anniversary, too! Of course, it's just what I expected +when you married him; but that's done, and I'm not one to keep throwin' +it up at you. If you want to hold him, <i>now</i>, you've got to keep your +figger, and set a good table. Yes, and leave the door open! Edith has a +figger. She entertains him, just the way I used to entertain your dear +uncle—by talkin'. I'd have Bingo put away, if I were you; he's too old +to be comfortable. You got to make him <i>want</i> to sit by the fire and +knit! But here you are, sittin' by yourself, lookin' like a dead fish. A +man don't like a dead fish—unless it's cooked! I used to broil shad for +your dear uncle." For an instant she had no words to express that +culinary perfection by which she had kept the deceased Mr. Newbolt's +stomach faithful to her. "Yes, you've got to be entertainin', or else +he'll go up the chimney, and out to dinner, and forget what Day it is!"</p> + +<p>Eleanor's sudden pallor made her stop midway in her torrent of +frankness; it was then she said, again, really alarmed: "See a doctor! +You know," she added, jocosely; "if you die, he'll marry Edith; and you +wouldn't like that!"</p> + +<p>"No," Eleanor said, faintly, "I wouldn't like that."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV" ></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2> + + +<p>When a rather shaky Jacky was discharged from the hospital, Lily +notified Maurice of his recovery and added that she had moved.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I couldn't [Lily wrote] go back to that woman who turned me out when +Jacky was sick: so I got me a little house on Maple Street—way down at +the far end from where I was before, so you needn't worry about anybody +seeing me. My rent's higher, but there's a swell church on the next +street. I meant to move, anyway, because I found out that there was a +regular huzzy living in the next house on Ash Street, painted to beat +the band! And I don't want Jacky to see that kind. I've got five +mealers. But eggs is something fierce. I am writing these few lines to +say Jacky's well, and I hope they find you in good health. It was real +nice in you to fix that up at the hospital for me. I hope you'll come +and see us one of these days.</p> + +<p>Your friend,</p> + +<p>LILY.</p> + +<p>P.S.—Of course I'm sorry for her poor old father.</p></div> + +<p>Reading this, Maurice said to himself that it would be decent to go and +see Lily; which meant, though he didn't know it, that he wanted to see +Jacky. He wasn't aware of anything in the remotest degree like affection +for the child; he just had this inarticulate purpose of seeing him, +which took the form of saying that it would be "decent" to inquire about +him. However, he did not yield to this formless wish until June. Then, +on that very afternoon when Mrs. Newbolt had been so shatteringly frank +to Eleanor, he walked down to the "far end of Maple Street." And as he +walked, he suddenly remembered that it was "The Day"! "Great Scott! I +forgot it!" he thought. "Funny, Eleanor didn't remind me. Maybe she's +forgotten, too?" But he frowned at the bad taste of such an errand on +such a day, and would have turned back—but at that moment he saw what +(with an eagerness of which he was not conscious!) he had been looking +for—a tow-headed boy, who, pulling a reluctant dog along by a string +tied around his neck, was following a hand organ. And Maurice forgot his +wedding anniversary!</p> + +<p>He freed the half-choked puppy, and told his son what he thought. But +Jacky, glaring up at the big man who interfered with his joys, told his +father what <i>he</i> thought:</p> + +<p>"If I was seven years old, I'd lick the tar out of you! But I'm six, +going on seven."</p> + +<p>Maurice, looking down on this miniature self, was, to his astonishment, +quite diverted. "You need a licking yourself, young man! Is your mother +at home?"</p> + +<p>Jacky wouldn't answer.</p> + +<p>Maurice took a quarter out of his pocket and held it up. "Know what that +is?"</p> + +<p>Jacky, advancing slowly, looked at the coin, but made no response.</p> + +<p>"Come back to the house and find your mother, and I'll give it to you."</p> + +<p>Jacky, keeping at a displeased distance behind the visitor, followed him +to his own gate, then darted into the house, yelled, "Maw!" returned, +and held out his hand.</p> + +<p>Maurice gave him the quarter and went into the parlor, where the south +window was full of plants, and the sunshine was all a green fragrance of +rose geraniums. When a shiningly clean, smiling Lily appeared—evidently +from the kitchen, for she was carrying a plate of hot gingerbread—she +found Maurice sitting down, his hands in his pockets, his long legs +stretched out in front of him, baiting Jacky with questions, and +chuckling at the courageous impudence of the youngster.</p> + +<p>"He's no fool," said Maurice to himself. "This kid is a handful!" he +told Lily ... "You're a bully cook!"</p> + +<p>"You bet he is!" Lily said, proudly. "Have another piece? I've got to +take some over to Ash Street for that poor old man.... Oh yes; I <i>was</i> +kind of put out at his daughter. Wouldn't you think, if anyone was +enough of a lady to wash your father, you wouldn't go to the Board of +Health about her? But there! The old gentleman's silly, so I have to +take him some gingerbread.... Say, I must tell you something funny—he's +the cutest young one! I gave him five cents for the missionary box, and +he went and bought a jew's-harp! I had to laugh, it was so cute in him. +But I declare, sometimes I don't know what I'm going to do with him, +he's that fresh!"</p> + +<p>"Spank him," Maurice advised.</p> + +<p>Lily looked annoyed; "He suits me—and he belongs to me."</p> + +<p>"Of course he does! You needn't think that I—" he paused; something +would not let him finish those denying words: "that <i>I</i>—want him." +Jacky, standing with stocky legs wide apart, his hands behind him, his +fearless blue eyes looking right into Maurice's, made his father's heart +quicken. Jacky was Lily's, of course, but—</p> + +<p>So they looked at each other—the big, blond, handsome father and the +little son—and Jacky said, "Mr. Curtis, does God see everything?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," Maurice said, rather confused, "He does; Jacky. So," he +ended, with proper solemnity, "you must be a very good boy."</p> + +<p>"Why," said Jacky, "will He get one in on me if I ain't?"</p> + +<p>"So I'm told," said Maurice.</p> + +<p>"Does He see <i>everything</i>?" Jacky pressed, frowning; and Maurice said:</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir! Everything."</p> + +<p>Jacky reflected and sighed. "Well," he said, "I should think He'd laugh +when he sees your shoes."</p> + +<p>"Why! what's the matter with my shoes?" his discomfited father said, +looking down at his feet. "My shoes are all right!" he defended himself.</p> + +<p>"Big," Jacky said, shyly.</p> + +<p>Maurice roared, crushed a geranium leaf in his hand, and asked his son +what he was going to be when he grew up; "Theology seems to be your long +suit, Jacobus. Better go into the Church."</p> + +<p>Jacky shook his head. "I'm going to be a enginair. Or a robber."</p> + +<p>"I'd try engineering if I were you. People don't like robbers."</p> + +<p>"But <i>I'll</i> be a <i>nice</i> robber," Jacky explained, anxiously.</p> + +<p>"I'll bring you a train of cars some day," Maurice said.</p> + +<p>"Say, 'Thank you,' Jacky," Lily instructed him.</p> + +<p>Again Jacky shook his head. "He 'ain't gimme the cars yet."</p> + +<p>Maurice was immensely amused. "He wants the goods before he signs a +receipt! I'll buy some cars for him."</p> + +<p>"My soul and body!" said Lily, following him to the door; "that boy gets +'round everybody! Well, what do you suppose? I go to church with him! +Ain't that rich? Me! He don't like church—though he's crazy about the +music. But I take him. And I don't have to listen to what the man says. +I just plan out the food for a week. Sometimes,"—her amber eyes were +lovely with anxiously pondering love—"sometimes I don't know but what +I'll make a preacher of him? Some preachers marry money, and get real +gentlemanly. And then again I think I'd rather have him a clubman. But, +anyway, I'm savin' up every last cent to educate him!"</p> + +<p>"He's worth it," Maurice said, and there was pride in his voice; "yes, +we must—I mean, you must educate him."</p> + +<p>On his way home, stopping to buy some flowers for his wife, Maurice +found himself thinking of Jacky as a boy ... as a mighty bright boy, who +must be educated. As—<i>his</i> boy!</p> + +<p>"You forgot the day," he challenged Eleanor, good-naturedly, when he +handed her the violets.</p> + +<p>She said, briefly, "No; I hadn't forgotten."</p> + +<p>The pain in her worn face made him wince.... But he was able to forget +it in thinking of the toys he had ordered for Jacky on the way home. +"I'd like to see him playing with them," he said to himself, reflecting +upon the track, and the engine, and the very expensive wonder of a tiny +snow plow. But he didn't yield to the impulse to see the boy for a +month. For one thing, he was afraid to. The recollection of that day +when Lily's doorstep had been the edge of a volcano still made him +shiver; and as Eleanor had briefly but definitely refused to take her +usual "vacation" at Green Hill without him, there was no time when he +could be sure that she would not wander out to Medfield! So it was not +until one August afternoon, when he knew that she was going to a +concert, that he went to Maple Street. But first he bought a top;—and +just as he was leaving the office, he went back and rummaged in a +pigeonhole in his desk and found a tiny gilt hatchet; "it will amuse +him," he thought, cynically.</p> + +<p>Lily was not at home; but Jacky was sitting on the back doorstep, +twanging his jew's-harp. He was shy at first, and tongue-tied; then +wildly excited on learning that there were "presents" in Mr. Curtis's +pocket. When the top was produced, he dropped his jew's-harp to watch it +spin on a string held between Maurice's hands; then he devoted himself +to the hatchet, and chopped his father's knee, energetically. "Pity +there's no cherry tree round," said Maurice; "Look here, Jacobus, I want +you always to tell the truth. Understand?"</p> + +<p>"Huh?" said Jacky. However, under the spell of his gifts he became quite +conversational; he said that one of these here automobiles drooled a lot +of oil. "An' it ran into the gutter. An' say, Mr. Curtis, I saw a +rainbow in a puddle. An' say, it was handsome." After that he got out +his locomotive and its cars. Maurice mended a broken switch for him, and +then they laid the tracks on the kitchen floor, and the big father and +the little son pushed the train under a table; that was a roundhouse, +Maurice told Jacky. ("Why don't they have a square house?" Jacky said); +and beneath the lounge—which was a tunnel, the bigger boy announced +("What is a tunnel?" said Jacky)—and over Lily's ironing board +stretched between two stools; "That's a trestle." ("What grows +trestles?" Jacky demanded.) Exercise, and a bombardment of questions, +brought the perspiration out on Maurice's forehead. He took off his +coat, and arranged the tracks so that the switches would stop derailing +trains. In the midst of it the door opened, and Jacky said, sighing, +"Maw."</p> + +<p>Lily came in, smiling and good-natured, and very red-faced with the +fatigue of carrying a hideous leprous-leaved begonia she had bought; but +when she saw the intimacy of the railroad, she frowned. "He'll wear out +his pants, crawling round that way," she said, sharply. "Now, you get +up, Jacky, and don't be bothering Mr. Curtis."</p> + +<p>"He brung me two presents. I like presents. Mr. Curtis, does God eat +stars?"</p> + +<p>"God doesn't eat," Maurice said, amused; "I'd say 'brought,' instead of +'brung,' if I were you."</p> + +<p>"Hasn't He got any mouth?" Jacky said, appalled.</p> + +<p>"Well, no," Maurice began (entering that path of unanswerable questions +in which all parents are ordained to walk); "You see, God—why, God, He +hasn't any mouth. He—"</p> + +<p>"Has He got a beak?" Jacky said, intensely interested.</p> + +<p>"Lily, for Heaven's sake," Maurice implored, "doesn't he <i>ever</i> stop?"</p> + +<p>"Never," said Lily, resignedly, "except when he's asleep. And nobody can +answer him. But I wish he'd let up on God. I tell him whatever pops into +my head. When it comes to God, I guess one thing 's as true as another. +Anyway, nobody can prove it ain't."</p> + +<p>Just as Maurice was going away, his theological son detained him by a +little clutch at his coat. "I'll give you a present next time you come," +Jacky said, shyly.</p> + +<p>Even the hope of a present did not lure Maurice out to Maple Street very +soon. But it was self-preservation, as well as fear of discovery, which +kept him away. "If I saw much of him I might—well, get kind of fond of +the little beggar."</p> + +<p>The same thought may have occurred to Lily; at any rate, when, four +weeks later, Jacky's father came again; she didn't welcome him in +quite her old, sweet, hospitable way; but Jacky welcomed him!... Jacky +knew his mother as his slave; he showed her an absent-minded affection +when he wanted to get anything out of her; but he knew Mr. Curtis as +"The Man"—the man who "ordered him round," to be sure, but who +gave him presents and who,—Jacky boasted to some of his gutter +companions,—"could spit two feet farther than the p'leesman."</p> + +<p>"Aw, how do you know?" the other boys scoffed.</p> + +<p>Jacky, evading the little matter of evidence, said, haughtily, "I +<i>know</i>."</p> + +<p>When "The Man" declared that next fall Jacky was to go to school, +<i>regularly</i>, and not according to his own sweet will, Jacky waited until +he was alone with his mother to kick and scream and say he wouldn't. +Lily slapped him, and said, "Mr. Curtis will give you a present if +you're on time every morning!"</p> + +<p>She told Maurice to what she had committed him: "You see, I'm bound to +educate him, and make a gentleman of him, so he can have an automobile, +and marry a society girl. No chippy is going to get Jacky—smoking +cigarettes, and saying 'La! La!' to any man that comes along. I hate +those cheap girls. Look at the paint on 'em. I don't see how they have +the face to show themselves on the street! Well, <i>I</i> can't make him +prompt at school; but he'll be Johnny-on-the-spot if you say so. My soul +and body, he'll do anything for you! He's saved up all his prayer money +and bought a lot of chewing gum for you."</p> + +<p>"Great Scott!" said Maurice, appalled at the experimental obligations +which his son's gift might involve.</p> + +<p>"So I told him that next winter you'd give him a box of candy every +Saturday if he was on time all the week. I ain't asking you to go to +any expense," she pleaded; "I'll buy the candy. But you promise him—"</p> + +<p>"I'll promise him a spanking if he's <i>not</i> on time, once," Maurice +retorted; "for Heaven's sake, Lily, let up on spoiling him!"</p> + +<p>At which Lily said: "He's my boy! I guess I know how to bring him up!"</p> + +<p>Maurice, the next morning, looking across his breakfast table at Eleanor +and remembering this remark, said to himself: "Lily needn't worry; I +don't want him—and I couldn't have him if I did! But what <i>is</i> going to +become of him?"</p> + +<p>His new, slowly awakening sense of responsibility expressed itself in +this unanswerable question, which irritated his mind as a splinter might +have irritated his flesh. He thought of it constantly—thought of it +when Eleanor sang (with a slurred note once or twice), "O sweet, O sweet +content!" Thought of it when his conscience reminded him that he must +have tea with her in the garden under the poplar on Sunday afternoons. +Thought of it when he and she went up to the Houghtons', to spend Labor +Day (she would not go without him!). Perhaps the thing that gave him +some moments of forgetfulness was a quite different irritation which he +felt when, on reaching Green Hill, he discovered that John Bennett, too, +was spending Labor Day in the mountains. Johnny had come he said, to see +his father.... "I wouldn't have known it if he hadn't mentioned it!" +said Doctor Bennett; for, Johnny practically lived at the Houghtons', +where Edith was so painstakingly kind to him that he was a good deal +discouraged; but the two families made pleasing deductions! Mary +Houghton intimated as much to Maurice.</p> + +<p>"What!" he said. "Are they engaged?"</p> + +<p>"Well, no; not <i>yet</i>."</p> + +<p>There was a little pause; then Maurice (this was one of the moments when +he forgot Jacky's future!) said, with great heartiness, "Old John's in +luck!" He and Mrs. Houghton were sitting on the porch in that somnolent +hour after dinner, before she went upstairs to take a nap, and Maurice +should go over to the Bennetts' for singles with Johnny; Eleanor was +resting. Out on the lawn in the breezy sun and shadow under the tulip +tree, Edith, fresh from a shampoo, was reading. Now and then she tossed +her head like a colt, to make her fluffy hair blow about in a glittering +brown nimbus.</p> + +<p>Maurice got up and sauntered over to her. "Coming to see me wallop +Johnny?"</p> + +<p>"Maybe; if my horrid old hair ever dries."</p> + +<p>Maurice looked at the "horrid old hair," and wished he could put out his +hand and touch it. He was faintly surprised at himself that he didn't do +it! "How mad I used to make her when I pulled her hair!" Now, he +couldn't even put a finger on it. He remembered the night of Lily's +distracted telegram, when he had taken Edith to Fern Hill, and she had +"bet on him," and had been again, just for an instant, so entirely the +"little girl" of their old frank past, that she had <i>kissed him</i>! "So, +why can't I touch her hair, now?" he pondered; "we are just like brother +and sister." But he knew he couldn't. Aloud, he said, "Don't be lazy, +Skeezics," and lounged off toward Doctor Bennett's. His face was heavy.</p> + +<p>At the doctor's, John, sitting on a gate post, waiting for him, yelled, +derisively: "You're late! 'Fraid of getting walloped? Where's Buster?"</p> + +<p>"She's forgotten all about you. Get busy!" Maurice commanded.</p> + +<p>They played, neither of them with much zest, and both of them with +glances toward the road. The walloping was fairly divided; but it was +Maurice who gave out first, and said he had to go home. ("Eleanor'll be +hunting for me, the first thing I know," he thought.)</p> + +<p>"Tell Edith I'll come over to-night," Johnny called after him.</p> + +<p>"I'm not carrying <i>billets-doux</i>," Maurice retorted. "I suppose," he +thought, listlessly, "it will be a short engagement." He went home by +the path through the woods, and halfway back Edith met him—the shining +hair dried, but inclined to tumble over her ears, so that her hat +slipped about on her head. She said:</p> + +<p>"Johnny lick you?"</p> + +<p>"Johnny? No! He's not up to it!" They both grinned, and Maurice sat down +on a wayside log to put a knot in a broken shoestring. Edith sat down, +too, trying to keep her hat on, and cursing (she said) the unreliability +of her hair. The shoestring mended, Maurice batted a tall fern with his +racket.</p> + +<p>"Eleanor's sort of forlorn, Maurice?" Edith said. "Generally is." He +slashed at the fern, and she heard him sigh. "That time she dragged me +down the mountain took it out of her."</p> + +<p>Edith nodded; then she said, with her straight look: "You're a perfect +lamb, Maurice! You are awfully"—she wanted to say "patient," but there +was an implication in that; so she said, lamely—"nice to Eleanor."</p> + +<p>"The Lord knows I ought to be!" he said, cynically.</p> + +<p>"Yes; she just about killed herself to save you," Edith agreed.</p> + +<p>"Oh, not because of that!"</p> + +<p>The misery in his voice startled her; she said, quickly, "How do you +mean, Maurice? I don't understand."</p> + +<p>"I ought to be 'nice' to her."</p> + +<p>"But you are! You are!"</p> + +<p>"I'm not."</p> + +<p>"Maurice, I'm awfully fond of Eleanor; you won't think I'm finding +fault, or anything? But sometimes, when she doesn't feel very well, +she—you—I mean, you really <i>are</i> a lamb, Maurice!"</p> + +<p>Edith was twenty that summer—a strong, gay creature; but her old, +ridiculous, incorrigible candor (and that honest kiss in the darkness!) +made her still a child to Maurice.... Yet Johnny Bennett was going to +marry her!... Maurice rested his chin on his left fist, and batted the +fern; then he said:</p> + +<p>"I've been infernally mean to Eleanor. It's little enough to be 'nice,' +as you call it, now."</p> + +<p>She flew to his defense. "Talk sense! You never did a mean thing in your +life."</p> + +<p>His shrug fired her into a frankness which she regretted the next +minute. "Maurice, you are too good for Eleanor—or anybody," she ended, +hastily.</p> + +<p>He gave her a look of entreaty for understanding—though he knew, he +thought, that in her ignorance of life she couldn't understand even if +she had been told! Yet for the mere relief of speaking, he skirted the +ugly truth:</p> + +<p>"I can't be too patient with her when she's forlorn, because I—I +haven't played the game with her."</p> + +<p>"It's up to her to forgive that!"</p> + +<p>"She doesn't know it."</p> + +<p>"Maurice! You haven't a secret from Eleanor?"</p> + +<p>Her dismay was like a stab. "Edith, I can't help it! It was a long time +ago—but it would upset her to know that I'd—well, failed her in any +way." His face was so wrung that Edith could have cried; but she said +what she thought:</p> + +<p>"Secrets are horrid, Maurice. You've made a mistake."</p> + +<p>"A 'mistake'?" He almost laughed at the devilish humor of that little +word 'mistake,' as applied to his ruined life. "Well, yes, Edith; I made +a 'mistake,' all right."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't mean a 'mistake' as to this thing you say that Eleanor +wouldn't like," Edith said. "I mean not telling her."</p> + +<p>He shook his head; with that nagging thought of Jacky in the back of his +mind, it was impossible not to smile at her dogmatic ignorance.</p> + +<p>"Because," Edith explained, "secrets trip you into fibbing."</p> + +<p>"You bet they do! I'm quite an accomplished liar."</p> + +<p>Edith did not smile; she spoke with impatient earnestness: "That's +perfectly silly; you are not a liar! You couldn't lie to save your life, +and you know it." Maurice laughed. "Why, Maurice, don't you suppose I +know you, through and through? <i>I</i> know what you are!—a 'perfec' gentil +knight.'"</p> + +<p>She laughed, and Maurice threw up his hands.</p> + +<p>"Bouquets," Edith conceded, grinning; "but I won't hand out any more, so +you needn't fish! Well, I don't know what on earth you've done, and I +don't care; and you can't tell me, of course! But one thing I do know; +it isn't fair to Eleanor not to tell her, because—"</p> + +<p>"My dear child—"</p> + +<p>"Because she wouldn't really mind, she's so awfully devoted to you. Oh, +Maurice, do tell Eleanor!" Then, even as she spoke, she was frightened; +what was this thing that he did not dare to tell Eleanor?—"or me?" +Edith thought. It couldn't be that Maurice—was not good? Edith quailed +at herself. She had a quick impulse to say, "Forgive me, Maurice, for +even thinking of such a horrid thing!" But all she said, aloud, briefly, +was, "As I see it, telling Eleanor would be playing the game."</p> + +<p>Maurice put his hand over her fist, clenched with conviction on her +knee. "Skeezics," he said, "you are the soundest thing the Lord ever +made! As it happens, it's a thing I can't talk about—to anybody. But +I'll never forget this, Edith. And ... dear, I'm glad you're going to be +happy; you deserve the best man on earth, and old Johnny comes mighty +darned near being the best!"</p> + +<p>Edith, frowning, rose abruptly. "Please don't talk that way. I hate that +sort of talk! Johnny is my friend; that's all. So, please never—"</p> + +<p>"I won't," Maurice said, meekly; but some swift exultation made him add +to himself, "Poor old Johnny!" His face was radiant.</p> + +<p>As for Edith, she hardly spoke all the way back to the house. But not +because of "poor old Johnny"! She was absorbed by that intuition—which +she did not, she told herself, believe. Yet it clamored in her mind: +Maurice had done something wrong. Something so wrong, that he couldn't +speak of it, even to her! Then it must be—? "No! <i>that's</i> impossible!" +But with this recoil from a disgusting impossibility, came an upsurge of +something she had never felt in her life—something not unlike that +emotion she had once called Bingoism—a resentful consciousness that +Maurice had not been as completely and confidentially her friend as she +was his!</p> + +<p>But Edith hadn't a mean fiber in her! Instantly, on the heels of that +small pain came a greater and nobler pain: "I can't bear it if he has +done anything wrong! But if he has, it's some wicked woman's fault." As +she said that, anger at an injury done to Maurice made her almost forget +that first virginal repulsion—and made her entirely forget that +fleeting pain of knowing that she had not meant as much to him as he +meant to her! "But he <i>hasn't</i> done anything wrong," she insisted; "he +wouldn't look at a horrid? woman!"</p> + +<p>"For Heaven's sake, Edith," Maurice remonstrated; "this isn't any +Marathon! Go slow. I'm not in any hurry to get home."</p> + +<p>"I am," Edith said, briefly. She was in a great hurry! She wanted to be +alone, and argue to herself that she had been guilty of a dreadful +disloyalty to him.... "Maurice? Why! He would be the last man in the +world to—to do <i>that</i>,—darling old Maurice! He has simply had a crush +on somebody, and likes her better than he likes Eleanor—or me; but +<i>that's</i> nothing. Eleanor deserves it; and very likely I do, too! But +he's so frightfully honorable about Eleanor—he's a perfect crank on +honor!—that he blames himself for even that." By this time the +possibility that the unknown somebody was "horrid" had become +unthinkable; she was probably terribly attractive, and Maurice had a +crush on ... "though, of course, she can't be really nice," Edith +thought; "Maurice simply doesn't see through her. Boys are so stupid! +They don't know girls," Again there was a Bingo moment of hot dislike +for the "girl," whoever she was!—and she walked faster and faster.</p> + +<p>Maurice, striding along beside her, was thinking of the irony of the +"bouquet" she had thrown at him, and the innocence of that "Tell +Eleanor"! "What a child she is still! And she's not in love with +Johnny—" He didn't understand his exhilaration when he said that, but, +except when he reproached her for tearing ahead, it kept him silent...</p> + +<p>Supper was ready when they got home, so Edith had no chance to be +solitary, and after supper Johnny Bennett dropped in. When he took his +reluctant departure ("Confound him!" Maurice thought, impatiently, "he +has on his sitting breeches to-night!") Maurice told Edith to come into +the garden with him, and listen to the evening primroses; "They 'blossom +with a silken burst of sound'—they <i>do</i>!" he insisted, for she jeered +at the word "listen."</p> + +<p>"They don't!" she said, and ran down the steps, flitting ahead of him in +the dusk like a white moth. In their preoccupation, they neither of them +looked at Eleanor; sitting silently on the porch between Mr. and Mrs. +Houghton. They went, between the box hedges, to the primrose border, and +Maurice quoted:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Silent they stood.<br /> +Hand clasped in hand, in breathless hush around!<br /> +And saw her shyly doff her soft green hood,<br /> +And blossom—with a silken burst of sound!</p></div> + +<p>"Let's clasp hands," Maurice suggested.</p> + +<p>"No, thank you," said Edith. And so they watched and listened. A tightly +twisted bud loosened half a petal—then another half—and another—until +it was all a shimmering whorl of petals, each caught at one side to the +honeyed crosspiece of the pistil; then: "<i>There!</i>" said Maurice. "Did +you hear it?"—all the silken disks were loose, and the flower cup, +silver-gilt, spilled its fragrance into the stillness!</p> + +<p>"It was the dream of a sound," she admitted</p> + +<p>Her voice was a dream sound, too, he thought; a wordless tenderness for +her flooded his mind, as the perfume of the primroses flooded the night. +It seemed as if the lovely ignorance of her was itself a perfume! "'Tell +Eleanor'! She doesn't know the wickedness of the world, and I don't want +her to." He put his hand on her shoulder in the old, brotherly way—but +drew it back as if something had burned him! That recoil should have +revealed things to him, but it didn't. So far as his own consciousness +went, he was too intent on what he called "the square deal" for Eleanor, +to know what had happened to him; all he knew was that Edith, all of a +sudden, was grown up! Her childishness was gone. He mustn't even put his +hand on her shoulder! He had an uneasy moment of wondering—"Girls are +so darned knowing, nowadays!"—whether she might be suspicious as to +what that secret was, which she had advised him to "tell Eleanor"? But +that was only for a moment; "Edith's not that kind of a girl. And, +anyway, she'd never think of such a thing of me—which makes me all the +more rotten!" So he clutched at Edith's undeserved faith in him, and +said, "She'll never think of <i>that</i>." Still, she was grown up ... and he +mustn't touch her. (This was one of the times when he was not worrying +about Jacky!)</p> + +<p>Edith, talking animatedly of primroses, had her absorbing thoughts, too; +they were nothing but furious denial! "Maurice—horrid? Never!" Then, on +the very breath of "Never," came again the insistent reminder: "But he +could tell <i>me</i> anything, except—" So, thinking of just one thing, and +talking of many other things, she walked up and down the primrose path +with Maurice. They neither of them wanted to go back to the three older +people: the father and mother—and wife.</p> + +<p>Eleanor, on the porch, strained her eyes into the dusk; now and then she +caught a glimmer of the dim whiteness of Edith's skirt, or heard +Maurice's voice. She was suffering so that by and by she said, briefly, +to her hosts—her trembling with unshed tears—"Good night," and went +upstairs, alone—an old, crying woman. Eleanor had been unreasonable +many times; but this time she was not unreasonable! That night anyone +could have seen that she was, to Maurice, as nonexistent as any other +elderly woman might have been. The Houghtons saw it, and when she went +into the house Mary Houghton said, with distress:</p> + +<p>"She suffers!"</p> + +<p>Her husband nodded, and said he wished he was asleep. "Why," he +demanded, "are women greater fools about this business than men? Poor +Maurice ventures to talk to Edith of 'shoes and ships and sealing +wax,'—and Eleanor weeps! Why are there more jealous women than men?"</p> + +<p>"Because," Mary Houghton said, dryly, "more men give cause for jealousy +than women."</p> + +<p>"<i>Touché! Touché!</i>" he conceded; then added, quickly, "But Maurice isn't +giving any cause."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm not so sure," she said.</p> + +<p>Up in her own room, Eleanor, sitting in the dark by the open window, +stared out into the leafy silence of the night. Once, down in the +garden, Maurice laughed;—and she struck her clenched hand on her +forehead:</p> + +<p>"I can't bear it!" she said, gaspingly, aloud; "I can't bear it—<i>she +interests him</i>!" His pleasure in Edith's mind was a more scorching pain +to her than the thought of Lily's body....</p> + +<p>Later, when Maurice and Edith came up from the garden darkness, they +found a deserted porch. "Let's talk," he said, eagerly.</p> + +<p>Edith shook her head. "Too sleepy," she said, and ran upstairs. He +called after her, "Quitter!" But it provoked no retort, and he would +have gone back to walk up and down alone, by the primroses, and worry +over Jacky's future, if a melancholy voice had not come from the window +of their room: "Maurice.... It's twelve o'clock." And he followed Edith +indoors....</p> + +<p>Edith had been sharply anxious to be by herself. She could not sit on +the porch with Maurice, and not burst out and tell him—what? Tell him +that nothing he had done could make the slightest difference to her! "He +has probably met some awfully nice girl and likes her—a good deal. As +for there being anything wrong, I don't believe it! That would be +horrible. I'm a beast to have thought of such a thing!" She decided to +put it out of her mind, and went to her desk, saying, "I'll straighten +out my accounts."</p> + +<p>She began, resolutely; added up one column, and subtracted the total +from another; said: "Gosh! I'm out thirty dollars!" nibbled the end of +her pen, and reflected that she would have to work on her father's +sympathies;—then, suddenly, her pen still in her hand, she sat +motionless.</p> + +<p>"Even if there <i>was</i> anything—bad, I'd forgive him. He's a lamb!" But +as she spoke, childishness fell away—she was a deeply distressed woman. +Maurice was suffering. And she knew, in spite of her assertions to the +contrary, that it wasn't because of any slight thing; any "crush" on a +girl—nice or otherwise! He was suffering because he had done wrong—and +she couldn't tear downstairs and say: "Maurice, never mind! I love you +just as much; I don't care what you've done!" Why couldn't she say that? +Why couldn't she go now, and sit on the porch steps beside him, and +say—anything? She got up and began to walk about the room; her heart +was beating smotheringly. "Why shouldn't I tell him I love him so that +I'd forgive—<i>anything</i>? He knows I've always loved him!—next to father +and mother. Why can't I tell him so, now?" Then something in her breast, +beating like wings, made her know why she couldn't tell him!</p> + +<p>"I love him; that's why."</p> + +<p>After a while she said: "There's nothing wrong in it. I have a right to +love him! He'll never know. How funny that I never knew—until to-night! +Yet I've felt this way for ever so long. I think since that time at Fern +Hill, when he was so bothered and wouldn't tell me what was the matter." +Yes; it was strange that now, when some stabbing instinct had made her +know that Maurice was not her "perfec' gentil knight," that same +instinct should make her know that she loved him!... Not with the old +love; not with the love that could overflow into words, the love that +had kissed him when he had been "bothered"! "I can never kiss him +again," she thought. She did not love him, now, "next to father and +mother—dear darlings!" And when she said that, Edith knew that the +"darlings" were of her past. "I love them next to Maurice," she thought, +smiling faintly. "Well, he will never know it! Nobody will ever know +it.... I'll just keep on loving him as long as I live." She had no doubt +about that; and she did not drop into the self-consciousness of saying, +"I am wronging Eleanor." That, to Edith, would not have been sense. She +knew that she was not "wronging" anyone. As for the unknown girl, who, +perhaps, had "wronged" Eleanor, and about whom, now, Maurice was so +ashamed and so repentant—she was of no consequence anyhow. "Of course +she is bad," Edith thought, "and the whole thing was her fault!" But it +was in the past; he had said so. "He said it was long ago. If," she +thought, "he did run crooked, why, I'm sorry for poor Eleanor; and he +ought to tell her; there's no question about <i>that</i>! It's wrong not to +tell her. And of course he couldn't tell me. That wouldn't be square to +Eleanor!... But I hate to have him so unhappy.... No; it's right for him +to be unhappy. He ought to be! It would be dreadful if he wasn't. But, +somehow, the thing itself doesn't seem to touch me. I love him. I am +going to love him all I want to! But no one will ever know it."</p> + +<p>By and by she knelt down and prayed, just one word: <i>"Maurice."</i> She was +not unhappy.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI" ></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2> + + +<p>During the next two days at Green Hill, Eleanor's dislike of Edith had +no chance to break into silent flames, for the girl was so quiet that +not even Eleanor could see anything in her behavior to Maurice to +criticize. It was Maurice who did the criticizing!</p> + +<p>"Edith, come down into the garden; I want to read something to you."</p> + +<p>"Can't. Have to write letters."</p> + +<p>"Edith, if you'll come into the studio I'll play you something I've +patched up."</p> + +<p>"I'm a heathen about music. Let's sit with Eleanor."</p> + +<p>"Skeezics, what's the matter with you? Why won't you come and walk? +You're getting lazy in your old age!"</p> + +<p>"Busy," Edith said, vaguely.</p> + +<p>At this point Maurice insisted, and Edith sneaked out to the back entry +and telephoned Johnny Bennett: "Come over, lazybones, and take some +exercise!"</p> + +<p>John came, with leaps and bounds, so to speak, and Maurice said, +grumpily:</p> + +<p>"What do you lug Johnny in for?"</p> + +<p>So, during the rest of her visit (with John Bennett as Maurice's +chaperon!) Eleanor merely ached with dislike of Edith; but, even so, she +had the small relief of not having to say to herself: "Is he seeing Mrs. +Dale, now? ... Did he go to her house yesterday?" Of course, as soon as +she went back to Mercer those silent questions began again; and her +audible question nagged Maurice whenever he was in the house: "Did you +go to the theater last night? ... Yes? <i>Did you go alone?</i> ... Will you +be home to-night to dinner? ... No? <i>Where are you going?</i>"</p> + +<p>Maurice, answering with bored patience, thought, with tender amusement, +of Edith's advice, "Tell Eleanor." How little she knew!</p> + +<p>He did not see Edith very often that next winter, "which is just as +well," he thought. But his analysis stopped there; he did not ask +himself why it was just as well. She made flying visits to Mercer, for +shopping or luncheons, so he had glimpses of her, and whenever he saw +her he was conscious of a little wistful change in her, for she was shy +with him—<i>Edith</i>, shy!—and much gentler. When they discussed the +Eternities or the ball game, she never pounded his arm with an energetic +and dissenting fist, nor was there ever the faintest suggestion of the +sexless "rough-house" of their old jokes! As for coming to town, she +explained that she was too busy; she had taken the burden of +housekeeping from her mother, and she was doing a good deal of hard +reading preparatory to a course of technical training in domestic +science, to which she was looking forward when she could find time for +it. But whenever she did come to Mercer, she did her duty by rushing in +to see Eleanor! Eleanor's criticisms of her, when she rushed out again, +always made Maurice silently, but deeply, irritated. The criticisms +lessened in the fall, because Eleanor had the pitiful preoccupation of +watching poor Don O'Brien fade out of the world; and when he had gone +she had to push her own misery aside while his grandmother's heart broke +into the meager tears of age upon her "Miss Eleanor's" breast. But, +besides that, she did not have the opportunity to criticize Edith, for +the Houghtons went abroad.</p> + +<p>So the rest of that year went dully by. To Eleanor, it was a time of +spasmodic effort to regain Maurice's love; spasmodic, because when she +had visions—hideous visions! of Maurice and the "other woman,"—then, +her aspirations to regain his love, which had been born in that agony of +recognized complicity in his faithlessness, would shrivel up in the +vehement flame of jealousy. To Maurice, it was a time of endurance; of +vague thoughts of Edith, but of no mental disloyalty to his wife. Its +only brightness lay in those rare visits to Medfield, when Jacky looked +at him like a worshiping puppy, and asked forty thousand questions which +he couldn't answer! They were very careful visits, made only when +Maurice was sure Eleanor would not be going to "look for a cook." He +always balanced his brief pleasure of an hour with his little boy by an +added gentleness to his wife—perhaps a bunch of violets, bought at the +florist's on Maple Street where Lily got her flower pots or her bulbs. +He was very lonely, and increasingly bothered about Jacky. ... "Lily +will let him go plumb to hell. But I put him on the toboggan! ... I'm +responsible for his existence," he used to think. And sometimes he +repeated the words he had spoken that night when he had felt the first +stir of fatherhood, "My little Jacky."</p> + +<p>He would hardly have said he loved the child; love had come so +gradually, that he had not recognized it! Yet it had come. It had been +added to those other intimations of God, which also he had not +recognized. Personal Joy on his wedding day had been the first; and the +next had come when he looked up at the heights of Law among the stars, +and then there had been the terrifying vision of the awfulness of Life, +at Jacky's birth. Now, into his soul, arid with long untruth, came this +flooding in of Love—which in itself is Life, and Joy, and the +fulfilling of Law! Or, as he had said, once, carelessly, "Call it God."</p> + +<p>This pursuing God, this inescapable God! was making him acutely +uncomfortable now, about Jacky. Maurice felt the discomfort, but he did +not recognize it as Salvation, or know Whose mercy sent it! He merely +did what most of us do when we suffer: he gave the credit of his pain to +the devil—not to Infinite Love. "Oh," the poor fellow thought, coming +back one day from a call at the little secret house on Maple Street, +"the devil's getting his money's worth out of me; well, I won't squeal +about <i>that</i>! But he's getting his money's worth out of my boy, too. +She's ruining him!"</p> + +<p>He said this once when he had been rather recklessly daring in seeing +"his boy." It was Saturday afternoon, and Jacky was free from his +detested school. Maurice had given him a new sled, and then had +"fallen," as he expressed it, to the little fellow's entreaty: "Mr. +Curtis, if you'll come up to the hill, I'll show you how she'll go!" But +before they started Maurice had a disagreeable five minutes with Lily. +She had told him, tears of laughter running down her rosy cheeks, of +some performance of Jacky's. He had asked her, she said, about his paw; +"and I said his name was Mr. George Dale, and he died ten or eleven +years ago of consumption—had to tell him something, you know! An' he +says,—he's great on arithmetic,—'Poor paw!' he says, 'how many years +was that before I was born?' I declare, I was all balled up!" Then, as +she wiped her laughing eyes, she had grown suddenly angry: "I'm going to +take him away from his new Sunday school; the teacher—it was her did +the Paul Pry act, and asked him about his father;—well, I guess she +ain't much of a lady; I never see her name in the Sunday papers;—she +came down on Jacky because he told her a 'lie'; that's what she called +it, 'a lie'! Said he'd go to hell if he told lies. I said, 'I won't have +you threatening my child!' I declare I felt like saying, 'You go to hell +yourself!' but of course I don't say things that ain't refined."</p> + +<p>"Well, but Lily, the little beggar must tell the truth—"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Curtis, Jacky didn't say anything but what you or me would say a +dozen times a day. He just told her he hadn't a library book out, when +he had. Seems he forgot to bring it back, so, 'course, he just said he +hadn't any book. Well, this teacher, she put the lie onto him. It's a +vulgar word, 'lie.' And as for hell, they say society people don't +believe there is such a place any more."</p> + +<p>When he and his little son walked away (Jacky dragging his magnificent +sled), Maurice was nervously anxious to counteract such views.</p> + +<p>"Jacobus," he said, "I'm going to tell you something: Big men never say +anything that isn't so! Do you get on to that?" (In his own mind he +added, "I'm a sweet person to tell him that!") "Promise me you'll never +say anything that isn't just exactly so," said Maurice.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," said Jacky. "Say, Mr. Curtis, have you got teeth you can +take out?" When Maurice said, rather absently, that he had not, Jacky's +dismay was pathetic. "Why, maw can do <i>that</i>," he said, reproachfully. +It was the first flaw in his idol. It took several minutes to recover +from the shock of disappointment; then he said: "Lookee here!" He paused +beside a hydrant, and with his mittened hand broke off a long icicle, +held it up and turned it about so that the sun flashed on it. "Handsome, +ain't it?" he asked, timidly.</p> + +<p>Maurice said yes, it was "handsome";—"but suppose you say <i>'isn't</i> it' +instead of <i>'ain't</i> it.' 'Ain't' is not a nice word. And remember what I +told you about telling the truth."</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," said Jacky, and trudged along, pulling his sled with one +hand and carrying his icicle in the other.</p> + +<p>After this paternal effort, Maurice stood in the snow watching the crowd +of children—red-cheeked, shrill-voiced—sliding down Winpole Hill and +yelling and snow-balling each other as they pulled their sleds up to the +top of the slope again. It was during one of these panting tugs uphill, +that Jacky saw fit to slap a fellow coaster, a little, snub-nosed girl +with a sniffling cold in her head, and all muffled up in dirty scarves. +Instantly Maurice, striding in among the children, took his son by the +arm, and said, sharply:</p> + +<p>"Young man, apologize! <i>Quick!</i> Or I'll take you home!"</p> + +<p>Jacky gaped. "Pol'gize?"</p> + +<p>"Say you're sorry! Out with it. Tell the little girl you're sorry you +hit her."</p> + +<p>"But I ain't," Jacky explained, anxiously; "an' you said I mustn't say +what ain't so."</p> + +<p>"Well, tell her you won't do it again," Maurice commanded, evading, as +perplexed fathers must, moral contradictions.</p> + +<p>Jacky, bewildered, said to his howling playmate, "I don't like you, but +I won't hit you again, less I have to; then I'll lick the tar out of +you!" He paused, rummaged in his pocket, produced a horrid precious +little gray lump of something, and handed it to her. "Gum," he said, +briefly.</p> + +<p>Maurice, taking another step into paternal wisdom, was deaf to the +statute of limitation in the apology; but walking home with the little +boy, he said to himself, "She's ruining him!" and fell into such moody +silence that he didn't even notice Jacky's obedient struggles with +"isn't." Once, a week later, as a result of this experience, he tried to +make some ethical suggestions to Lily. She was displaying her latest +triumph—a rosebush, blossoming in <i>February</i>! And Maurice, duly +admiring the glowing flower, against its background of soot-speckled +snowdrift on the window sill, began upon Jacky's morals. Lily's +good-humored face hardened.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Curtis, you don't need to worry about Jacky! He don't steal, and he +don't swear,—much; and he's never been pinched, and he's awful +handsome; and, my God! what more do you want? I ain't going to make his +life miserable by tellin' him to talk grammar, or do the polite act!"</p> + +<p>"Lily, I only mean I want him to turn out well, and he won't unless he +tells the truth—"</p> + +<p>"He'll turn out good. You needn't worry. Anybody's got to have sense +about telling the truth; you can't just plunk everything out! I—I +believe I'll go and live in New York."</p> + +<p>Instantly Maurice was silenced. "She <i>mustn't</i> take him away!" he +thought, despairingly.</p> + +<p>His fear that she would do so was a constant worry.... His work in the +Weston real-estate office involved occasional business trips of a few +days, and his long hours on trains were filled with this increasing +anxiety about Jacky. "If she takes him away from Mercer, and I can't +ever see him, nothing can save him! But, damn it! what can I do?" he +would say. He tried to reassure himself by counting up Lily's good +points; her present uprightness; her honest friendliness to him; her +almost insane devotion to Jacky, and her pathetic aspiration for +respectability, which was summed up in that one word of collective +emptiness,—"Society." But immediately her bad points clamored in his +mind; her ignorance and unmorality and vulgarity. "Truth is just a +matter of expediency with her. If he gets to be a liar, I'll boot him!" +Maurice would think of these bad points until he got perfectly frantic! +His sense of wanting advice was like an ache in his mind—for there was +no one who could advise him. Then, quite unexpectedly, advice came....</p> + +<p>In the fall the Houghtons got back from Europe. Maurice saw them only +between trains in Mercer, for Henry Houghton was in a great hurry to get +up to Green Hill, and Edith, too, was exercised about her trunks and the +unpacking of her treasures of reminiscence. But Mrs. Houghton said: "We +shall be coming down to do some shopping before Christmas. No! We'll +<i>not</i> inflict ourselves upon Eleanor! We'll go to the hotel; you will +both take dinner with us."</p> + +<p>They came, and Maurice and Eleanor dined with them, as Mrs. Houghton had +insisted that they should; but only Mrs. Houghton accepted Eleanor's +repaying hospitality.</p> + +<p>"Mother has virtue enough for the family," Edith said; "I'm going to +stay here with father."</p> + +<p>"It will be a jewel in your crown," Henry Houghton told his Mary.</p> + +<p>"Why not collect jewels for your crown?" she inquired. "Henry, Maurice +looks troubled. What do you suppose is the matter?"</p> + +<p>"He does look seedy," he agreed; "poke about and find out what's wrong. +You can do it better if your inelegant offspring isn't around, and if +I'm not there, either. He won't open his lips to me! I think it's money. +He's carrying a pretty heavy load. But he never peeps.... I wish he +wouldn't economize on cigars, though; he offered me one yesterday, and +politeness compelled me to smoke it!"</p> + +<p>"'Peeps'!" said Edith; "how elegant!"</p> + +<p>So that was how it happened that Mary Houghton went alone to dine with +Maurice and Eleanor. But she couldn't discover, in Maurice's talk or +Eleanor's silences, any hint of financial anxiety. "So," she said to +herself, "it isn't money that worries him." When he walked back with her +to the hotel after dinner, he was thinking, "She'd know what to do about +Jacky." But of course he couldn't ask her what to do! He could never ask +anybody—except, perhaps, Mr. Houghton; and what would he, an old man, +know about bringing up a little boy? He was listening, not very closely, +to Mrs. Houghton's talk of the Custom House; but when she said, "John +Bennett met us on the dock," he was suddenly attentive.</p> + +<p>"Has Edith—?" he began.</p> + +<p>She laughed ruefully. "No. Young people are not what they were in my +day. Edith is not a bit sentimental."</p> + +<p>Maurice was silent. When they reached the hotel, they went upstairs into +a vast, bleak parlor, and steered their way among enormous plush +armchairs to a sofa. A few electric bulbs, glaring among the glass +prisms of a remote chandelier, made a dim light—but not too dim for +Mary Houghton to see that Maurice's face was drawn and worried; +involuntarily she said:</p> + +<p>"You dear boy, I wish you didn't look so careworn!"</p> + +<p>"I'm bothered about something," he said.</p> + +<p>"Your uncle Henry told me to 'poke around,' and see if you were troubled +about money?" she said, smiling.</p> + +<p>"Oh, not especially. I'm always more or less strapped. But money isn't +worth bothering about, really."</p> + +<p>"If you 'consider the stars,' you will find very few things are worth +bothering about! Except, of course, wrongdoing."</p> + +<p>And, to his own astonishment, he found himself saying, "I'm afraid +that's where I come in!" As he spoke, he remembered that night of the +eclipse—oh, those moon-washed depths, those stupendous serenities of +Law and Beauty which, together, are Truth! How passionately he had +desired Truth. And now Mrs. Houghton was saying "Consider the stars." +"If I could only tell her!" he thought.</p> + +<p>"If the wrongdoing is behind you," said Mary Houghton, "let it go."</p> + +<p>"It won't let me go," he said, with nervous lightness. "Though it's +behind me, all right!"</p> + +<p>Which made her say, gently, "Maurice, perhaps I know what troubles you?" +His start made her add, quickly: "Your uncle Henry has never betrayed +your confidence; but ... I guessed, long ago, that something had gone +wrong. I don't know how wrong—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mrs. Houghton," he said, despairingly, "awfully wrong! +Awfully—awfully wrong!" He put his elbow on his knee, and rested his +chin on his clenched fist; she was silent. Then he said: "You've always +been an angel to me. I am glad you guessed. Because—I don't know what +to do."</p> + +<p>"About the woman?"</p> + +<p>"No. The boy."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" she said; "a <i>child</i>!"</p> + +<p>Her dismay was like a blow. "But you said you had 'guessed'?"</p> + +<p>"I guessed that there was a woman; but I didn't know—" She put her arm +over his shoulders and kissed him. "My poor Maurice!" The tears stood in +her eyes.</p> + +<p>"I told you it was 'awful,'" he said, simply; "yes, it is my little boy; +I'm worried to death about him. Lily—that's her name—is perfectly all +right; she means well, and adores him, and all that; but—" Then he told +her what Jacky's mother had been and what she was now; and the +illustrations he gave of Lily's ignorance of ethical standards made Mary +Houghton cringe. "She's ruining the little fellow," he said; "he's not +mean nor a coward—I'll say that for him! But he lies whenever he feels +like it, and honesty only means not getting 'pinched.' She's awfully +ambitious for him; but her idea of success is what she calls 'Society,' +Oh, it's such a relief to speak to you, Mrs. Houghton! I haven't a soul +I can talk to."</p> + +<p>"Maurice, can't you get him?" Her voice was shocked.</p> + +<p>He almost laughed. "Wild horses wouldn't drag him from Lily!"</p> + +<p>She was silent before the complexity of the situation—the furtive +paternity, with its bewildered sense of responsibility, in conflict with +the passion of the dam!</p> + +<p>"I have to be so infernally secret," Maurice said. "If it wasn't for +that, I could train him a little, because he's fond of me," he +explained—and for a moment his face relaxed into one of his old +charming smiles. "He really is an awfully fine little beggar. I swear I +believe he's musical! And he's confoundedly clever. Why, he said—" Mrs. +Houghton could have wept with the pitifulness of it! For Maurice went +on, like any proud young father, with a story of how his little boy had +said this or done that. "But he's fresh, sometimes, and he's the kind +that, if he got fresh, ought to be licked. She can't make him mind; +but"—here the poor, shamed pride shone again in his blue eyes—"he +minds <i>me</i>!"</p> + +<p>Mary Houghton was silent; she tried to consider the stars, but her +dismay at a child endangered, came between her and the eternal +tranquillities. "The boy must be saved," she thought, "at any cost! It +isn't a question of Maurice's happiness; it's a question of his +<i>obligation</i>."</p> + +<p>"This thing of having a secret hanging round your neck is hell!" Maurice +told her. "Every minute I think—'Suppose Eleanor should find out?'"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Houghton put her hand on his knee. "The only way to escape from the +fear of being found out, Maurice, <i>is to be found out</i>. Get rid of the +millstone. Tell Eleanor."</p> + +<p>"You don't know Eleanor," he said, dryly.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I do. She loves you so much that she would forgive you. And with +forgiveness would come helpfulness with the little boy. The child is the +important one—not you, nor Eleanor, nor the woman. Oh, Maurice, a +child is the most precious thing in the world! You <i>must</i> save him!"</p> + +<p>"Don't you suppose I want to? But, good God! I'm helpless."</p> + +<p>"If you tell Eleanor, you won't be 'helpless.'"</p> + +<p>"You don't understand. She's jealous of—of everybody."</p> + +<p>"Telling her will prove to her she needn't be jealous of—this person. +And the chance to do something for you would mean so much to her. She +will forgive you—Eleanor can always do a big thing! Remember the +mountain? Maurice! Let her do another great thing for you. Let her help +you save your child, by making it possible for you to be open and +aboveboard, and see him all you want to—all you <i>ought</i> to. Oh, Maurice +dear, it would have been better, of course, if you had told Eleanor at +first. You wouldn't have had to carry this awful load for all these +years. But tell her now! Give her the chance to be generous. Let her +help you to do your duty to the little boy. Maurice, his character, and +his happiness, are your job! Just as much your job as if he had been +Eleanor's child, instead of the child of this woman. Perhaps more so, +for that reason. Don't you see that? <i>Tell</i> Eleanor, so that you can +save him!"</p> + +<p>The appeal was like a bugle note. Maurice—discouraged, thwarted, +hopeless—heard it, and his heart quickened. This inverted idea of +recompense—of making up to Eleanor for having secretly robbed her, by +telling her she had been robbed!—stirred some hope in him. He did not +love his wife; he was profoundly tired of her; but suppose, now, he did +throw himself upon her generosity and give her a chance to prove that +love which was a daily fatigue to him? Mere <i>Truth</i> would, as Mrs. +Houghton said, go far toward saving Jacky. He was silent for a long +time. Then Mary Houghton said:</p> + +<p>"I ought to tell you, Maurice, that Henry—who is the very best man in +the world, as well as the wisest!—doesn't agree with me about this +matter of confession. He doesn't understand women! He thinks you ought +not to tell Eleanor."</p> + +<p>"I know. He said so. That first night, when I told him the whole hideous +business, he said so. And I thought he was right. I'm afraid I still +think so."</p> + +<p>"He was wrong. Maurice, save the child! Tell Eleanor."</p> + +<p>"That is what Edith said."</p> + +<p>"<i>Edith!</i>" Mary Houghton was stupefied.</p> + +<p>"Oh, not about this. I only mean Edith said once, 'Don't have a secret +from Eleanor.'"</p> + +<p>"She was right," Edith's mother said, getting her breath.</p> + +<p>Then they were silent again. A distant measure of ragtime floated up +from the lobby; once, as a heavy team passed down in the street, the +chandelier swayed, and little lights flickered among the faintly +clicking prisms. Mrs. Houghton looked at him—and looked away. Maurice +was thirty-one; his face was patient and melancholy; the old crinkling +laughter rarely made gay wrinkles about his eyes, yet wrinkles were +there, and his lips were cynical. Suddenly, he turned and struck his +hand on hers:</p> + +<p>"I'll do it," he said....</p> + +<p>Late that night Henry Houghton, listening to his Mary's story of this +talk, looked almost frightened. "Mary, it's an awful risk—Eleanor will +never stand up to it!"</p> + +<p>"I think she will."</p> + +<p>"My dear, when it comes to children, you—with your stars!—get down to +the elemental straighter than I do; I know that! And I admit that it is +terrible for Maurice's child to be scrapped, as he will be if he is +brought up by this impossible person. But as for Eleanor's helping +Maurice to save him from the scrap heap, you overlook the fact that to +tell a jealous woman that she has cause for jealousy is about as safe as +to take a lighted match into a powder magazine. There'll be an +explosion."</p> + +<p>"Well," she said, "suppose there is?"</p> + +<p>"Good heavens, Mary! Do you realize what that means? She'll leave him!"</p> + +<p>"I don't believe she will," his wife said, "but if she does, he can at +least see all he wants of the boy. He seems to be an unusually bright +child."</p> + +<p>Her husband nodded. "Yes; Nature isn't shocked at illegitimacy; and God +doesn't penalize it."</p> + +<p>"But <i>you</i> do," she said, quickly, "when you won't admit that Jacky is +the crux of the whole thing! It isn't poor Maurice who ought to be +considered, nor that sad, tragic old Eleanor; nor the dreadful person in +Medfield. But just that little child—<i>whom Maurice has brought into the +world</i>."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean," her husband said, aghast, "that if Eleanor saw fit to +divorce him, you think he should marry this 'Lily,' so that he could get +the child?"</p> + +<p>She did shrink at that. "Well—" she hesitated.</p> + +<p>He saw his advantage, and followed it: "He couldn't get complete +possession in any other way! Unless he were legally the father, the +woman could, at any minute, carry off this—what did you say his name +was?—Jacky?—to Kamchatka, if she wanted to! Or she might very well +marry somebody else; that kind do. Then Maurice wouldn't have any finger +in the pie! No; really to get control of the child, he'd have to marry +her, which, as you yourself admit, is impossible."</p> + +<p>"I don't admit it."</p> + +<p>"<i>Mary!</i> You must be reasonable; you know it would be shocking! So why +not keep things as they are? Why run the risk of an explosion, by +confessing to Eleanor?"</p> + +<p>Mary Houghton pondered, silently.</p> + +<p>"Kit," he said, "this is a 'condition and not a theory'; the woman +was—was common, you know. Maurice doesn't owe her anything; he has paid +the piper ten times over! Any further payment, like ruining his career +by 'making an honest woman' of her,—granting an explosion and then +Eleanor's divorcing him,—would be not only wrong, but ridiculous; which +is worse! Maurice is an able fellow; I rather expect to see him go in +for politics one of these days. Imagine this 'Lily' at the head of his +table! Or even imagine her as a fireside companion!"</p> + +<p>"It would be terrible," she admitted—her voice trembled—"but Jacky's +life is more important than Maurice's dinner table. And fireside +happiness is less important than the meeting of an obligation! Henry, +Maurice made a bad woman Jacky's mother; he owes <i>her</i> nothing. But do +you mean to say that you don't think he owes the child a decent father?"</p> + +<p>"My darling," Henry Houghton said, tenderly, "you are really a little +crazy. You are like your stars, you so 'steadfastly pursue your +shining,' that you fail to see that, in this dark world of men, there +has to be compromise. If this impossible situation should arise—which +God forbid!—if the explosion should come, and Eleanor should leave him, +of course Maurice wouldn't marry the woman! I should consider him a +candidate for an insane asylum if he thought of such a thing. He would +simply do what he could for the boy, and that would be the end of it."</p> + +<p>"Oh," she said, "don't you see? It would be the <i>beginning</i> of it!—The +beginning of an evil influence in the world; a bad little boy, growing +into a bad man—and his own father permitting it! But," she ended, with +a sudden uplifted look, "the 'situation,' as you call it, won't arise; +Eleanor will prevent it! Eleanor will save Jacky."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII" ></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2> + + +<p>Walking home that night, with Mrs. Houghton's "tell Eleanor" ringing in +his ears, Maurice imagined a "confession," and he, too, used Mr. +Houghton's words, "'there will be an explosion!' But I'll gamble on it; +I'll tell her. I promised Mrs. Houghton I would," Then, very anxiously, +he tried to decide how he should do it; "I must choose just the right +moment," he thought.</p> + +<p>When, three months later, the moment came, he hardly recognized it. He +had been playing squash and had given his knee a nasty wrench; the +ensuing synovitis meant an irritable fortnight of sitting at home near +the telephone, with his leg up, fussing about office work. And when he +was not fussing he would look at Eleanor and say to himself, "How can I +tell her?" Then he would think of his boy developing into a little +joyous liar—and thief! The five cents that purchased the jew's-harp, +instead of going into the missionary box, was intensely annoying to him. +"But the lying is the worst. I can stand anything but lying!" the poor +lying father thought. It was then that Eleanor caught his eye, a +half-scared, appraising, entreating eye—and stood still, looking down +at him.</p> + +<p>"Maurice, you want something? What is it?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Nelly!" he said; "I want—" And the thing tumbled from his lips in +six words: "I want you to forgive me."</p> + +<p>Eleanor put her hand to her throat; then she said, "I know, Maurice."</p> + +<p>Silence tingled between them. Maurice said, "You <i>know</i>?"</p> + +<p>She nodded. He was too stunned to ask how she knew; he only said, "I've +been a hound."</p> + +<p>Instantly, as though some locked and bolted door had been forced, her +heart was open to him. "Maurice! I can bear it—if only you don't lie to +me!"</p> + +<p>"I have lied," he said; "but I can't go on lying any more! It's been +hell. Of course you'll never forgive me."</p> + +<p>Instantly she was on her knees beside him, and her lips trembled against +his cheek; but she was silent. She was agonizing, not for herself, but +for him; <i>he had suffered</i>. And when that thought came, Love rose like a +wave and swept jealousy away! It was impossible for her to speak. Over +in his basket old Bingo growled.</p> + +<p>"It was years ago," he said, very low; "I haven't—had anything to do +with her since; but—"</p> + +<p>She said, gasping, "Do you ... love her still?"</p> + +<p>"Good God! no; I never loved her."</p> + +<p>"Then," she said, "I don't mind."</p> + +<p>His arms went about her, his head dropped on her shoulder. The little +dog, unnoticed, barked angrily. For a few minutes neither of them could +speak. To him, the unexpectedness of forgiveness was an absolute shock. +Eleanor, her cheek against his hair, wept. Happy tears! Then she +whispered:</p> + +<p>"There is ... a child?"</p> + +<p>He nodded speechlessly.</p> + +<p>"Maurice, I will love it—"</p> + +<p>He was too overcome to speak. Here she was, this irritating, foolish, +faithful woman, coming, with outstretched, forgiving arms—to rescue him +from his long deceit!</p> + +<p>"I have known it," she said, "for nearly two years."</p> + +<p>"And you never spoke of it!"</p> + +<p>"I couldn't."</p> + +<p>"I want to tell you everything, Eleanor. It was—that Dale woman."</p> + +<p>She pressed very close to him: "I know."</p> + +<p>He wondered swiftly how she knew, but he did not stop to ask; his words +rushed out; it was as if the jab of a lancet had opened a hidden wound: +"I never cared a copper for her. Never! But—it happened. I was angry +about something, and,—Oh, I'm not excusing myself. There isn't any +excuse! But I met her, and somehow—Oh, Eleanor!"</p> + +<p>"Maurice, ... what does she call you?"</p> + +<p>"Call me? What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"What name?"</p> + +<p>"Why, 'Mr. Curtis,' of course."</p> + +<p>"Not 'Maurice'? Oh—I'm so glad! Go on."</p> + +<p>"Well, I never saw her again until she wrote to me about ... this child. +Eleanor! I tried to tell you. Do you remember? One night in the boarding +house—the night of the eclipse? I thought you'd never forgive me, but I +tried to tell you ... Oh, Star, you are wonderful!"</p> + +<p>It was an amazing moment; he said to himself: "Mrs. Houghton was right. +Edith was right. How I have misjudged her!" He went on, Eleanor still +kneeling beside him, sometimes holding his hand to her lips, sometimes +pressing her wet cheek against his; once her graying hair fell softly +across his eyes ... "Then," he said, "then ... the baby was born."</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>we</i> had no children!"</p> + +<p>His arms comforted her. "I didn't care. I have never cared. I hated the +idea of children, because of ... this child."</p> + +<p>"Is his name Jacky?"</p> + +<p>"That's what she called him. I never really noticed him, until winter +before last; then I kind of—" He paused, then rushed on; it was to be +Truth henceforward between them! "I sort of—got fond of him." He +waited, holding his breath; but there was no "explosion"! She just +pressed his hand against her breast.</p> + +<p>"Yes, Maurice?"</p> + +<p>"He was sick and she sent for me—"</p> + +<p>"I know. That's how I knew. The telegram came, and I—Oh," she +interrupted herself, "I wasn't prying!" She was like a dog, shrinking +before an expected blow.</p> + +<p>The fright in her face went to his heart; what a brute he must have been +to have made her so afraid of him!</p> + +<p>"It was all right to open it! I'm glad you opened it. Well, he was +pretty sick, and I had to get him into the hospital; and after that I +began to get sort of—interested in him. But now I'm worried to death, +because—" Then he told why he was worried; he told her almost with +passion!... "For he's an awfully fine little chap! But she's ruining +him." It was amazing how he was able to pour himself out to her! His +anxiety about Jacky, his irritation at Lily—yet his appreciation of +Lily; he wouldn't go back on Lily! "She wasn't bad—ever. Just unmoral."</p> + +<p>"I understand."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Eleanor, to be able to talk to you, and tell you!" So he went on +telling her: he told her of his faint, shy pride in his little son; told +her a funny speech, and she laughed. Told her Jacky had seen a rainbow +in the gutter and said it was "handsome." "He really notices Beauty!" +Told her of Lily's indignation at the Sunday-school teacher, and his own +effort to make Jacky tell the truth, "I have a tremendous influence over +him. He'll do anything for me; only, I see him so seldom that I can't +counteract poor old Lily's influence. She hasn't any idea of our way of +looking at things."</p> + +<p>"You must counteract her! You must see him all the time."</p> + +<p>"Eleanor," he said, "I have never known you!"</p> + +<p>He tried to lift her and hold her in his arms, but she was terrified +about his knee.</p> + +<p>"No! Don't move! You'll hurt your knee. Maurice, can't I see him?"</p> + +<p>"What! Do you really want to?" he said, amazed "Eleanor, you are +wonderful!"</p> + +<p>That whole evening was entire bliss—as much to Maurice as to Eleanor; +to him, it was escape from the bog of secrecy in which, soiled with +self-disgust, he had walked for nearly nine years; and with the clean +sense of touching the bedrock of Truth was an upspringing hope for his +little boy, who "noticed Beauty"! He would be able to see Jacky, and +train him, and gain his affection, and make a man of him. He had a +sudden vision of companionship. "He'll be in business with me." But +that made him smile at himself. "Well, we'll go to ball games, anyway!"</p> + +<p>To Eleanor, the evening was a mountain peak; from the sun-smitten +heights of a forgiveness that knew itself to be Love, and forgot that it +forgave, she looked out, and saw—not that grave where Truth and Pride +were buried, but a new heaven and a new earth; Maurice's complete +devotion. And his child,—whom she could love.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII" ></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2> + + +<p>Those next weeks were full of plans and hopes on Eleanor's part, and +gratitude on Maurice's part. But she would not let him say that he was +grateful, or that she was generous; he had told her, of course, how Mrs. +Houghton had guessed long ago what had happened, and how she had urged +him to trust his wife's nobility—but Eleanor would not let him call her +"noble"; "Don't say it! And don't be 'grateful,' I just love you," she +said; "and if you only knew what it means to me to be able to do +anything for you! It's so long since you've needed me, Maurice."</p> + +<p>The pathos of her sense of uselessness made his eyes sting. "I couldn't +get along without you," he told her.</p> + +<p>Once, on a rainy April Sunday morning, when they were talking about +Jacky (Maurice had gone to see him the day before, and was gnashing his +teeth over some cheerful obliquity on the part of Lily)—Maurice said, +emphatically: "Gosh! Nelly, I don't know what I'd do without you!"</p> + +<p>She, sitting on a stool at his side (and looking, poor woman! old enough +to be his mother), was radiant.</p> + +<p>"And you don't enjoy talking to Lily?" she said—just for the happiness +of hearing, again, his horrified protest, "I should say <i>not</i>! There's +nothing she can talk about."</p> + +<p>"She doesn't know about books and things? She hasn't—brains?"</p> + +<p>"Brains? She probably never read anything in her life! She has lots of +sense, but no intellect. She hasn't an idea beyond food and flowers—and +Jacky."</p> + +<p>"I wish I had her idea about food," Eleanor said, simply.</p> + +<p>It was her fairness toward Lily that amazed him; it made him reproach +himself for his stupidity in not having confessed to her long ago! "Why +was I such a fool, Eleanor, as not to know that you were a big woman? +Mrs. Houghton knew it. Why, even Edith knew it! She told me you'd +forgive anything."</p> + +<p>"<i>What</i>!" She rose abruptly and stood looking at him with suddenly angry +eyes. "Does Edith know?" she said.</p> + +<p>"No! Of course she doesn't know—<i>this</i>! But one day she and I were +taking a walk, and I was thinking what a devilish mess I was in.... And +I suppose Edith saw I was down by the head, and she got to talking about +you—"</p> + +<p>"You let her talk about me!"</p> + +<p>"She was saying how perfectly fine you had been about the mountain—"</p> + +<p>"I don't need Edith Houghton's approval of my conduct, Maurice." She was +trembling, and her face was quite pale. He rushed in deeper than ever:</p> + +<p>"I was only saying I felt so—badly, because I had failed to make you +happy. Of course I didn't say how! And she said, 'Don't have any secrets +from Eleanor!'"</p> + +<p>"So it was Edith who made you—"</p> + +<p>For a moment Maurice was too dismayed to speak; besides, he didn't know +what to say. What he did say was that she misunderstood him. "Good +heavens! Eleanor, you didn't think I'd tell Edith a thing like <i>that</i>? +Or that I'd tell any woman, when I didn't tell you? But Edith knew you +better than I did; she said no matter what I'd done (I just happened to +say I was a skunk), you loved me enough to forgive me. And you have +forgiven me."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, in a whisper; "I've forgiven you."</p> + +<p>She went over to the window, and stood perfectly silent. It was raining +steadily; the river, a block away, was hidden in the yellow fog; down in +the yard, the tables and chairs under the poplar dripped and dripped. As +for Maurice, it was as if some dark finger had stretched out and touched +a bubble.... She was the same Eleanor.</p> + +<p>But he did not dwell upon this revealing moment; it was enough that at +last he could stop lying, and that Eleanor would help him about Jacky! +He called her back from the window and made her sit down again beside +him, pretending not to see how her hands were trembling. Then he went on +talking about Jacky.</p> + +<p>"His latest achievement is an infernal mouth harmonicon."</p> + +<p>She said, listlessly, "I wish I could give him music lessons."</p> + +<p>"He's crazy about music; trails hand organs all over Medfield!" Maurice +said, with a great effort to be cheerfully casual; "but, Heaven knows, +I'd be glad if you could give him lessons in anything! Manners, for +instance. He hasn't any. Or grammar; I told him not to say 'ain't,' and, +if you please! he told his mother <i>she</i> mustn't say it! Lily got on her +ear."</p> + +<p>She smiled faintly. "I wish I could see him," she said.</p> + +<p>She had urged this more than once, but it had not seemed practicable. "I +can't bring him here," Maurice explained; "he'd blurt out to Lily where +he'd been, and she'd get uneasy. Even as it is, I live in dread that +she'll pack up and clear out with him."</p> + +<p>"She <i>shan't</i> take him away!" Eleanor said; she was eager again;—after +all, Edith, for all her impertinence in advising Maurice how to treat +his wife!—Edith could not break in upon an intimacy like this!</p> + +<p>Her incessant talk about Jacky (which might have bored Maurice just a +little, if it had not touched him) gave her, in some subtle, spiritual +way, a sense of approaching motherhood: <i>she made preparations</i>! She +planned little gifts for him;—Maurice had told her of Jacky's lively +interest in benefits to come; once, she thought, "I suppose he's too old +to have one of those funny papers in his room? I saw such a pretty one +to-day, little rabbits in trousers!"—For by this time she had +determined that, somehow, she would get possession of him! In these +maternal moments she feared no rivalry from Edith Houghton. Jacky would +save her from Edith!</p> + +<p>"Oh, Maurice! I <i>must</i> see him," she said once.</p> + +<p>"I'll fix it so you can," he told her. But it was two months before he +was able to fix it; then "Forepaws" came to town, and the way was clear! +He would take Jacky, and Eleanor should go and have a seat near by, and +come up and speak to the youngster, as any admiring stranger might, and, +indeed, often did, for Jacky was a striking child—his eyes blue and +keen, his skin very clear, and his cheeks glowing with health. "If he +goes home and tells Lily a lady spoke to him," Maurice said, "she won't +think anything of it."</p> + +<p>"May I give him some candy?"</p> + +<p>"No; he has too much of it as it is; get one of those tin horns for him. +He'll raise Cain for Lily, I suppose; but we won't have to listen to +him!" (That "we" so fed Eleanor's starved soul, that she thought of +Edith Houghton with a sort of gay contempt: "<i>I'm</i> not afraid of her!")</p> + +<p>The plan for seeing Jacky went through easily enough. "I'll take that +boy of yours to the circus," Maurice told Lily, carelessly, one day.</p> + +<p>"Why, that's awful kind in you, Mr. Curtis; but ain't you afraid +somebody'll see you luggin' a child around?"</p> + +<p>"Lots of men take kids to the circus—just as an excuse to go +themselves."</p> + +<p>So Maurice and the eight-year-old Jacky, in a new sailor suit, and a +face so clean that it shone, walked in among the gilded cages, felt the +sawdust under their feet, smelled the wild animals, heard the yelps of +the jackals, the booming roar of lions, and the screeching chatter of +the monkeys. And as Jacky dragged his father from cage to cage, a yard +or two behind them came Eleanor.... Now and then, over Jacky's head, she +caught Maurice's eye; and they both smiled.</p> + +<p>When a speechless Jacky was taken into the central tent to sit on a +narrow bench, and drink pink lemonade and eat peanuts, Eleanor was quite +near him. He was unconscious of her presence—unconscious of everything! +except the blare of the band, the elephants, the performing +dogs—especially the poor, strained performing dogs! He never spoke +once; his eyes were fixed on the rings; he didn't see his father +watching him, amused and proud; still less did he see the lady who had +been at his heels in the animal tent, and who now kept her mournful dark +eyes on his face. When the last horse gave the last kick and trotted out +through the exit, with its mysterious canvas walls, Jacky was in a daze +of bliss. He sat, open-mouthed, staring at the empty, trampled sawdust.</p> + +<p>"Come along, young man!" Maurice said; "do you want to stay here all +night?"</p> + +<p>"I'm going to be a circus rider," said Jacky, solemnly.</p> + +<p>It was then that the "lady" spoke to him—her voice broke twice: "Well, +little boy, did you like the circus?" the lady said. She was so pale +that Maurice put his hand on her arm.</p> + +<p>"Better sit down, Nelly," he said, kindly, under his breath.</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "No ... Jacky, don't you want to tell me your name?"</p> + +<p>"But you <i>know</i> my name," said Jacky, with a bored look.</p> + +<p>Maurice gave her a warning glance, and she tried to cover her blunder: +"I heard your father—I mean this gentleman—call you 'Jacky,'" she +explained—panting, for Maurice's quick frown frightened her. "Here's a +present for you," she said.</p> + +<p>"<i>Present</i>!" said Jacky—and made a joyous grab at the horn, which he +immediately put to his lips; but before it could emit its ear-piercing +screech, Maurice struck it down.</p> + +<p>"Where are your manners? Say 'Thank you' to the lady."</p> + +<p>Jacky sighed, but murmured, "'Ank you."</p> + +<p>Eleanor, her chin trembling, said: "May I kiss him?"</p> + +<p>"'Course," Maurice said, huskily.</p> + +<p>She bent down and kissed him with trembling lips—"Ach!—you make me all +wet," Jacky said, frowning at her tears on his rosy cheek.</p> + +<p>Later, as Maurice pulled his reluctant son out on to the pavement, he +was so moved that he almost forgot that she was still the old Eleanor; +he didn't even listen to his little boy's passionate assertion that he +would be a flying-trapeze man. As he walked along beside his wife to put +her on the car he spoke with great tenderness:</p> + +<p>"I'll leave him at Lily's, and then I'll come right home, dear, and +we'll talk things over."</p> + +<p>When he and his son got back to Maple Street, Jacky was blowing that +infernal horn so that the whole neighborhood was aware of his ecstasy. +Lily, waiting for them at the gate, put her hands over her ears.</p> + +<p>"My soul and body! For the land's sake, stop! Who give you that horrid +thing?"</p> + +<p>"An old lady," said Jacky—and blew a shattering screech on Eleanor's +horn.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX" ></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2> + + +<p>From the day of the circus, Jacky became, to Eleanor, not a symbol of +Maurice's unfaithfulness, but a hope for the future. The thought of his +mother was only the scar of a wound, which Maurice, in some single +slashing moment, had made in her heart. She was crippled by it, of +course. But the wound had healed so she could forget the scar—because +Maurice had never loved Lily, never found her "interesting," never +wanted to wander about with <i>her</i>, in a dark garden, and talk</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax— +And cabbages—and kings ...</p></div> + +<p>To be sure the scar ached dully once in a while; but Eleanor knew that +if she could get possession of Jacky she would be protected against +other wounds—wounds which would never heal! She said to herself that +Maurice would never think of Edith Houghton if he had Jacky! But how +should she get Jacky?</p> + +<p>For months she revolved countless schemes to persuade Lily to resign +him; schemes so futile that Maurice, listening to them every night when +he got home from the office, was touched, of course; but by and by he +was also a little uneasy. He had told her where Lily lived, then +regretted it, for once she walked up and down before the house on Maple +Street for an hour, hoping to see "the woman," but failing, because Lily +and Jacky happened to be in town that afternoon.</p> + +<p>"I have a great mind to steal him for you!" she said, telling Maurice of +her fruitless effort.</p> + +<p>He protested, too disturbed at her mere presence on Lily's street to +notice her attempt at a joke. "If Lily should imagine that we were +interested in Jacky, she'd run!" he explained; "it's dangerous, Nelly, +really. You mustn't go near her!"</p> + +<p>She promised she wouldn't; but every day of that Mercer winter of +low-hanging smoke and damp chilliness, she longed to get possession of +the child—first to make Maurice happy; then with the craving, driving, +elemental desire for maternity; and then for self-protection,—Jacky +would vanquish Edith!</p> + +<p>So she brooded: <i>a child</i>!</p> + +<p>"If I could only get him, it wouldn't be 'just us'!" ... "A boy's +clothes are not as pretty as a girl's, but a little rough suit would be +awfully attractive.... I'd give him music lessons.... We could go out to +our field in June. And he would take off his shoes and stockings and +wade!" How foolish Edith's grown-up childishness of wading looked, +compared to the scene which she visualized—a little, handsome boy, +standing in the shallow rippling water, bareheaded, probably; the +sunshine sifting down through the locust blossoms and touching that +thatch of yellow hair, and glinting into those blue eyes. "He would call +me 'Mamma'!" Then she hummed to herself, "'O Spring!' Oh, I <i>must</i> have +him!" Her hope became such an obsession that its irrationality did not +strike her. It was so in her mind that she even spoke of it once to Mrs. +Houghton. "I know you <i>know</i>?" she said; "Maurice told me he told you."</p> + +<p>Mary Houghton said, hesitatingly, "I think I know what you mean."</p> + +<p>This was in March. Mrs. Houghton and Edith were in town for a few days' +shopping, and of course they meant to see Eleanor. "I'll go to the +dressmaker's," Edith had told her mother, "and then I'll corral Maurice, +and we'll drop in on Mrs. Newbolt, and <i>then</i> I'll meet you at +Eleanor's. I don't hanker for a long call on Eleanor." Edith's gayly +candid face hardened.</p> + +<p>So it was that Mrs. Houghton had arrived ahead of her girl, and the two +older women were alone before a little smoldering fire in the library. +Eleanor had left her tea tray to go across the room and give little +helpless Bingo a lump of sugar. "He only eats what I give him," she +said; "dear old Bingo! I think he actually suffers, he's so jealous." +Then, pouring Mrs. Houghton's tea, she suddenly spoke: "I know +you—know?" When Mary Houghton said, gravely, yes, she "<i>knew</i>," Eleanor +said, "Oh, Mrs. Houghton, Maurice and I are nearer to each other than we +ever were before!"</p> + +<p>"That's as it should be. And as I knew it would be, too. You've done a +noble thing, Eleanor."</p> + +<p>"No! No! Don't say that! It was nothing. Because I—love him so. And he +never cared for that woman. She has no brains, he says. But what I want +is to get the boy for him. Oh, he must have the boy!" Then she told Mrs. +Houghton how Maurice went to see the child. "He goes once a week, though +he says she's jealous if he makes too many suggestions; so he has to be +very careful or she would get angry. But he has managed it so I have +seen him; last summer he took him to the circus, and I sat near them. +And twice he's had him in the park and I spoke to him. And on Christmas +he took him to the movies; I sat beside him. And I buttoned his coat +when he went out!" Her eyes were rapt.</p> + +<p>Mary Houghton, listening, said to herself, "<i>Now</i> what will Henry +Houghton say about the 'explosion'? I shall rub it into him when I get +home!" ... "Eleanor, you are magnificent!" she said.</p> + +<p>"But how could I do anything else—if I loved Maurice?" Eleanor said. +"Oh, I do want him to have Jacky! We must make a man of him. It would be +wicked to let Lily ruin him! And I want to give him music lessons. He +has Maurice's blue eyes."</p> + +<p>It was infinitely pathetic, this woman with gray hair, telling of her +young husband's joy in his little son—who was not hers. And Eleanor's +sense of the paramount importance of the child gave Mrs. Houghton a new +and real respect for her. Aloud, she agreed heartily with the statement +that Jacky must be saved from Lily.</p> + +<p>"She isn't bad," Eleanor explained; "but she's just like an animal, +Maurice says. Devoted to Jacky, but no more idea of right and wrong +than—than Bingo!" She was so happy that she laughed, and looked almost +young—but at that moment the street door opened, closed, and in the +hall some one else laughed. Instantly Eleanor looked old. "It's Edith," +she said, coldly.</p> + +<p>It was—with Maurice in tow. "I haled him forth from his office," Edith +said; "and we went to see your aunt, Eleanor. She's a lamb!"</p> + +<p>"Tea?" Eleanor said, briefly.</p> + +<p>"Yes, indeed!" Edith said. She looked very pretty—cheeks glowing and +brown hair flying about the rounded brim of a brown fur toque.</p> + +<p>Maurice, keeping an eye on her, was gently kind to his wife. "Head +better, Nelly?" Then, having secured his tea, he drew Edith over to the +window and they went on with some discussion which had paused as they +entered the house.</p> + +<p>Eleanor, watching them, and making another cup of tea for Mrs. Houghton, +spilled the boiling water on the tray and on her own hand.</p> + +<p>"My dear!" said Mrs. Houghton, "you have scalded yourself!"</p> + +<p>And, indeed, Eleanor whitened with the pain of her smarting, puffing +fingers. But she said, her eyes fixed on Edith, "What <i>are</i> they talking +about?" Mrs. Houghton's look of surprise made her add: "Edith seems so +interested. I just wondered...." She had caught a phrase or two:</p> + +<p>"I can take the spring course,—it's three months. I think our +University Domestic Science Department is just every bit as good as any +of the Eastern ones."</p> + +<p>"Where did you two meet each other?" Eleanor called, sharply.</p> + +<p>"Why, I told you," Edith said, coming over to the tea table; "I dragged +him from his desk!"</p> + +<p>"Come, Edith, we must go," Mrs. Houghton said, rising.</p> + +<p>"Why don't you stay to dinner?" Maurice urged—but Eleanor was silent. +"If you are in town next week, Skeezics, you've got to put up here. +Understand? Tell her so, Eleanor!"</p> + +<p>Eleanor said nothing. Mrs. Houghton said she was afraid it wouldn't be +convenient.</p> + +<p>Eleanor said nothing.</p> + +<p>"Of course you will come here!" Maurice said; he was sharply angry at +his wife.</p> + +<p>In the momentary and embarrassing pause, the color flew into Edith's +face, but she was elaborately indifferent. "Good-by, Eleanor; good-by, +Maurice!"</p> + +<p>"I'm going to escort you to the hotel," Maurice said; and, over his +shoulder to Eleanor: "I've got to rush off to St. Louis to-night, +Eleanor. That Greenleaf business. Has Mrs. O'Brien brought my things +home?"'</p> + +<p>"I'll see," she said, mechanically....</p> + +<p>Nobody had much to say on that walk to the hotel; but when Maurice had +left them, and the two ladies were in their room, Edith faced her +mother:</p> + +<p>"What <i>is</i> the matter?"</p> + +<p>"You mean with Eleanor? She has a headache, I suppose."</p> + +<p>"Mother, don't squirm! You know just as well as I do that she doesn't +want me to stay with them. Why not?" She did not wait for an answer, +which, indeed, her mother could not immediately find. "Well, Heaven +knows I'm not pining to be with her! I shall run in to-morrow morning, +and tell her that Mrs. Newbolt asked me to stay with her.... Mother, how +<i>could</i> Maurice have fallen in love with Eleanor?" Her voice trembled; +she went over to the window and stood looking down into the street; her +hands were clenched behind her, and her soft young chin was rigid. "He +was just a boy," she said; her eyes were blurring so that the street was +a gray fog; "how <i>could</i> Eleanor?" It seemed as if her own ardent, +innocent body felt the recoil of Maurice's youth from Eleanor's age! +She thought of that dark place in his past, which she had accepted +with pain, but always with defending excuses; she excused him again, +now, in her thoughts: "Eleanor was <i>impossible</i>! That's why somebody +else ... caught him. And it was long ago. And Eleanor's old enough to be +his mother. He never could have loved her!" Suddenly she had a fleeting, +but real, pity for Eleanor: "Poor thing!" Aloud she said, huskily, over +her shoulder, "If she had really loved him, she wouldn't have done such +a terrible thing as marry him."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Houghton, reading the evening paper, said, briefly, "She loves him +<i>now</i>, my dear."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" Edith said, passionately, "sometimes I am sorry for Eleanor—and +then the next minute I perfectly hate her!"</p> + +<p>"She was only forty when she married him," Mary Houghton said; "that +isn't old at all! And I have always been sorry for her." She looked up +over her spectacles at the tense young figure by the window, outlined +against the yellow sunset; saw those clenched hands, heard the impetuous +voice break on a word,—and forgot Eleanor in a more intimate anxiety: +"Of course," she said, "such a difference in age as there is between +Maurice and Eleanor is a pity. But Maurice is devoted to her, and with +reason. She has been generous when he has been unkind. I happen to know +that."</p> + +<p>"Maurice couldn't be unkind!"</p> + +<p>Her mother ignored this. "And remember another thing, Edith: It isn't +years that decide whether a marriage is a failure. One of the happiest +marriages I ever knew was between a woman of fifty and a man of thirty. +You see—" she paused, and took off her spectacles, and tapped the arm +of her chair, thoughtfully: "You see, Edith, you don't understand. You +are so appallingly young! You think Love speaks only through the senses. +My dear, Love's highest speech is in the Spirit; the language of the +senses is only it's pretty, stammering, divine baby-talk!" Edith was +silent. Her mother went on: "Yes, it isn't age that decides things. It's +selfishness or unselfishness. At present Eleanor is extraordinarily +unselfish, so I believe they may yet be very happy."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I hope so, of course," Edith said—and put up a furtive finger to +wipe first one cheek, and then the other.... "Poor Maurice!" she said.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX" ></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2> + + +<p>When Maurice got back to the firelit library, he said, filling his pipe +with rather elaborate attention, and trying to speak with good-natured +carelessness, "I'm afraid Edith thought you didn't want her, Nelly." He +was sorry the next moment that he had said even as much as that: Eleanor +was breathing quickly, and her dark, sad eyes were hard with anger.</p> + +<p>"I don't," she said</p> + +<p>Maurice said, sharply, "You have never liked her!"</p> + +<p>"Why should I like her? She talks to you incessantly. And now, she +<i>looks</i> at you; here—before me! Looks at you."</p> + +<p>"Eleanor, what on earth—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I saw her, when you were talking over there by the window; I +watched her. She looked at you! I am not blind. I understand what it +means when a girl looks at a man that way. And now she's planning to be +in Mercer for three months? Well, that's simply to be near you. She'd +like to live in the same house with you, I suppose! If it wasn't for me, +she'd be in love with you—perhaps she is, anyhow? Yes, I think she is." +There was a sick silence. "And, perhaps," she said, with a gasp, "you +are in love with her?"</p> + +<p>He was dumb. The suddenness of the attack completely routed him—its +suddenness; but more than its suddenness was a leaping question in his +own mind. When she said, "You are in love with her?" an appalled "Am I?" +was on his lips. Instantly he knew, what he had not known, at any rate +articulately, that he was in love with Edith. His thoughts broke in +galloping confusion; his hand, holding the hot bowl of his pipe, +trembled. He tried to speak, stammered, said, with a sort of gasp, +"Don't—don't say a thing like that!" Then he got his breath, and ended, +with a composure that kept his words slow and his voice cold, "It is +terrible to say a thing like that to me."</p> + +<p>She flung out her hands. "What more can I do for you than I have done? +Oh, Maurice—Maurice, no woman could love you more than I do?... <i>Could +they</i>?"</p> + +<p>"I am grateful; I—" He tried to speak gently, but his voice had begun +to shake with angry terror; it was abominable, this thing she had said! +(But ... it was true.) "No; no woman could have done more for me than +you have, Eleanor; I am grateful."</p> + +<p>"Grateful? Yes. You give me gratitude." Maurice was speechless. "I +thought, perhaps, you loved me," she said. A minute later he heard her +going upstairs to her own room.</p> + +<p>He stood staring after her, open-mouthed. Then he said, under his +breath, "Good God!" After a while he went over to the fireplace, +and, standing with one hand on the mantelpiece, he kicked the charred +logs on the hearth together. "This room is cold. I must build the fire +up.... Yes, it's true.... The wood is too green to burn. I'll order from +another man next time.... I suppose I've been in love with her for a +good while. I wonder if it began that night Jacky was sick ... and she +kissed me? No; it must have been before that." He stooped and mended the +fire, piling the logs together with slow exactness: "What life might +have been!" He took up the bellows and urged a little flame to rise and +flicker and lap the wood, then burst to crackling blaze. After a while +he said, "Poor Nelly!" But he had himself in hand by that time, and, +though this terrifying knowledge was surging in him, he knew that his +voice would not betray him. He went upstairs to comfort her with kindly +assurances that she was wrong. ("More lies," he thought, wearily.)</p> + +<p>But apparently she didn't need comforting! She was smoothing her hair +before the glass, and seemed perfectly calm. He had expected tears, and +violent reproaches, which he was prepared to meet with either +good-natured ridicule or quiet falsehood, as the occasion might demand. +But nothing was demanded. She continued to brush her hair; so he found +it quite easy to come up behind her and lay a hand on her shoulder, and +say, "Nelly, dear, that wasn't a nice thing to say!"</p> + +<p>She did not meet his eyes in the mirror; she only said (she was +trembling), "I suppose it wasn't."</p> + +<p>Maurice was puzzled, but he said, casually, that he was sorry to have to +rush off that night. "I've got to take the Limited for St. Louis. Mr. +Weston wants some papers put through. I hate to leave you."</p> + +<p>She made no answer.</p> + +<p>"I shall be gone a week, maybe more; because if I don't pull the +chestnut out of the fire in St. Louis, I'll have to go to some other +places."</p> + +<p>She hardly heard him; she was saying to herself: "I <i>oughtn't</i> to have +told him she was in love with him; it may make him think so, himself!"</p> + +<p>"Guess I'll pack my grip now," he said.</p> + +<p>"Maurice," she said, breathlessly, "I didn't mean—" She was so +frightened that she couldn't finish her sentence; but he said, with +kindly understanding:</p> + +<p>"Of course you didn't!"</p> + +<p>It flashed into her mind that if she left him alone, he would know that +what she had said was so meaningless that she didn't think it worth +talking about. "I—I'm going to Auntie's to dinner," she told him, on +the spur of the moment. "Do you mind?"</p> + +<p>"No; of course not. Wait a second, and I'll walk round with you."</p> + +<p>She said, unsteadily, "Oh no; you've got your packing to do—" Then she +kissed him swiftly, and hurried downstairs.</p> + +<p>"But Eleanor, wait!" he called; "I'll go with—"</p> + +<p>She had gone. He heard the front door close. He stood still in his +perplexity. What was the matter? She had got over that jealousy of +Edith in an instant; got over it, and accepted his departure without all +those wearying protestations of love and loneliness to which he was +accustomed. "Is she angry," he told himself; "or just ashamed of having +been so foolish?" Mechanically, he picked out some neckties from his +drawer, and paused.... "But she wasn't foolish. I do love Edith.... How +did she get on to it? She is so good to me about Jacky—and I love +Edith!" He went on packing his grip. "I wonder if any man ever paid as I +am paying?—I'll call her up at Mrs. Newbolt's, before I go, and say +good-by."</p> + +<p>No doubt he would have done so, but when he went downstairs he found +Johnny Bennett, smoking comfortably before that very cheerful little +fire.</p> + +<p>"I dropped in," said Johnny, "to ask for some dinner."</p> + +<p>"If you'll take pot luck," said Maurice; "Eleanor isn't at home, and I +don't know what the lady below stairs will work off on us." (It would be +a relief, he thought, to have somebody at table, so that he would not be +alone with his own confusion.)</p> + +<p>"I came," Johnny said, "to tell you I'm off."</p> + +<p>"Off? When? Where to? I thought your electric performances were panning +out so well—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, they're panning out all right," John said; "but they'll pan out +better in South America. I'm going the first of the month."</p> + +<p>"South America! What's the matter with Pennsylvania?"</p> + +<p>"Well," Johnny said; "I thought I'd light out—"</p> + +<p>Then they began to talk climate, and consulates, which carried them +through dinner, and went on in the library, and Maurice's surface +interest in Johnny's affairs, at least kept him from thinking of his own +dismay.</p> + +<p>"But I supposed," he said, and paused, "I sort of thought you—had +reasons for staying round here?"</p> + +<p>"There's no use hanging round," John said; "it's better to pull out +altogether. It's easier that way," he said, simply. "So I'm off for a +year. They wanted me to sign for three years, but I said, 'one.' Things +may look better for me when I get home."</p> + +<p>Maurice, standing with his back to the fire, his hands in his pocket, +looked down at the steady youngster—looked at the mild eyes behind +those large spectacles, looked at the clean, strong lines of the jaw and +forehead. A good fellow. A very good fellow. He wondered why Edith +wouldn't take him? ("It couldn't make any difference to me," he thought; +"and I want her to be happy.")</p> + +<p>"Johnny," he said, "you can say, 'Mind your business,' before I begin, +if you want to. But I don't think anybody's cutting you out? Better +'try, try again.'"</p> + +<p>Johnny took his pipe from his mouth, bent forward to shake the ashes out +of it, and stared into the fire. Then he said, clearing his throat once +or twice: "I've bothered her, 'trying,' I thought I'd start on a new +tack."</p> + +<p>"You'll get her yet!" Maurice encouraged him. He wondered, as he spoke, +how he could speak so lightly, urging old Johnny to go ahead and make +another stab at it, and, maybe, "get her"! He wondered if he was looking +at things the way the dead look at the living? He was not, he thought, +suffering, as he had suffered in those first moments when Eleanor had +flung the truth at him. "You'll get her yet," he said, vaguely.</p> + +<p>Johnny took out his tobacco pouch, and began to fill his pipe, poking +his thumb down into the bowl with slow precision, then holding it on a +level with his eyes and squinting at it, to make sure it was smooth; he +seemed profoundly engrossed by that pipe—but he put it in his mouth +without lighting it.</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't know," he said; "I haven't an awful lot of hope that I'll +ever get her. But I thought I'd try this way. Maybe, if she doesn't see +me for a year...."</p> + +<p>"There's nobody ahead of you, anyway," Maurice said, absently.</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't know," John Bennett said again.</p> + +<p>His voice was so harsh that Maurice's preoccupation sharpened into +uneasy attention. Johnny's hopes and fears had not really touched him. +His encouraging platitudes were only a way of smothering his own +thoughts. But that, "Well, I don't know—" woke a keenly attentive fear: +<i>was</i> there anybody else? ("Not that that could make any difference to +me.")</p> + +<p>"You 'don't know'?" he said; "how do you mean? You think there <i>is</i> +somebody?"</p> + +<p>Johnny Bennett was silent; he had an impulse to say "you are several +kinds of a fool, old man." But he was silent.</p> + +<p>"Why, Great Scott!" Maurice protested. "Buried up there in the +mountains, she hardly knows a fellow—except you!—and me," he added, +with a laugh.</p> + +<p>"I think," said John, huskily, "she has ... some kind of an ideal up her +sleeve. And I don't fill the bill. Imagination, you know. A—a sort of +Sir Walter Raleigh business. Remember how she was always sort of dotty +on Sir Walter Raleigh? An ideal, don't you know"; Johnny rambled on: +"Girls are that way. Only Edith's the kind that sticks to things."</p> + +<p>"'Try, try again,'" said Maurice, mechanically; but his blood suddenly +pounded in his ears.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to," Johnny said, calmly; and began to talk South America. +Indeed, he talked so long that Maurice, catching sight of the clock, +exclaimed that he would have to run!</p> + +<p>"Johnny, get Eleanor on the wire, will you; at Mrs. Newbolt's, and tell +her I'd have called her up, but I got delayed, and had to leg it to +catch the train? Or maybe you wouldn't mind going round there, and +walking home with her?"</p> + +<p>"Glad to," said Johnny.</p> + +<p>When Maurice, swinging on to the last platform of the last Pullman, was +able to sit down in his section, he was absorbed in Johnny Bennett's +affairs. "What did he mean by saying that? Did he mean—" Johnny's +enigmatical words rang in his ears; "I said to 'try again; nobody was +cutting him out.' And he said 'She has some kind of an ideal up her +sleeve.' ... 'A Sir Walter Raleigh business' ..."</p> + +<p>Johnny Bennett, walking toward Mrs. Newbolt's, was also thinking, in his +calm way, of just what he had said there by Maurice's fireside. "Of +course he doesn't see why she hasn't fallen in love with anybody else. +Any decent fellow would be stupid about that sort of thing. But it's +been that way ever since she was a child. And I've loved her ever since +then, too. All the same, I'll only sign up for a year. Then I'll make +another stab at it ..."</p> + +<p>When he rang Mrs. Newbolt's doorbell, and was told that Eleanor had not +been there, he was perplexed. "I must have misunderstood Maurice," he +thought.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI" ></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2> + + +<p>Eleanor had no intention of going to Mrs. Newbolt's. "She'd talk Edith +to me!" she said to herself; "I <i>can't</i> understand why she likes her!" +Instead of dining with her aunt, she meant to walk about the streets +until she was sure that Maurice had started for the train; then she +would go back to her own house. So she wandered down the avenue until, +tired of looking with unseeing eyes into shop windows, it occurred to +her to go into the park; there, on a bench on one of the unfrequented +paths, she sat down, hoping that no one would recognize her; it was +cold, and she shivered and looked at her watch. Only six o'clock! It +would be two hours before Maurice would leave the house for the station. +It seemed absurd to be here in the dampness of the March evening; but +she couldn't go home and get into any discussion with him; she might +burst out again about Edith!—which always made him angry. She wished +that she had not told him that Edith was in love with him. "It ought to +disgust him, but it might flatter him!" And she oughtn't to have said +that other thing; she oughtn't to have accused him of caring for Edith. +"Of course he doesn't. And it was a horrid thing to say. I was angry, +because I was jealous; but it wasn't true. I wish I hadn't said it. I'll +write to him, and ask him to forgive me." But the other thing <i>was</i> +true: "I saw it in her eyes! She loves him. But I oughtn't to have put +the idea into his head!"</p> + +<p>The more she thought of what she had put into Maurice's head, the more +uneasy she became. Oh, if she only had Jacky! Then, Edith could be as +brazen as she pleased, and Maurice would never notice her! "Of course he +doesn't love her; I'm certain of <i>that</i>!" she said again and +again,—and all her schemes, wise and foolish, for getting possession +of the boy, began to crowd into her mind.</p> + +<p>Then an idea came to her which fairly took her breath away! A perfectly +wild idea, which she dared not stop to analyze: suppose, instead of +sitting here in the cold, she should go, now, boldly, to Lily, and ask +for Jacky? "I believe <i>I</i> could persuade her to give him to us! She +wouldn't do it for Maurice, but she might for me!"</p> + +<p>She got on her feet with a spring! Her spiritual energy was like her +physical energy that night on the mountain. Again she was +lifting—lifting! This time it was the weight of a Love which might die! +She was dragging it, carrying it! her very soul straining under her +purpose of keeping it alive by the touch of a child's hand! ... Why not +go and see Lily <i>now</i>? "She'll have finished her supper by the time I +get to her house; it's at the very end of Maple Street!" If Lily +consented, Eleanor might even get back to her own house in time to see +Maurice, and tell him what she had accomplished before he started for +his train! But she would have to hurry....</p> + +<p>She actually ran out of the park toward the street; then stood for an +endless five minutes, waiting for the Medfield car. "Perhaps I can make +her let me bring Jacky home with me!" she said—which showed to what +heights beyond common sense she had risen.</p> + +<p>At the little house on Maple Street she rang the bell, though she had a +crazy impulse to bang upon the door to hurry Lily! But she rang, and +rang again, before she heard a child's voice: "Maw. Somebody at the +door."</p> + +<p>"Well, go open it, can't you?"</p> + +<p>She heard little scuffing steps on the oilcloth in the hall; then the +door opened, and Jacky stood there. He fixed his blue, impersonal eyes +upon her, and waited.</p> + +<p>"Is your mother in?" Eleanor said, breathlessly.</p> + +<p>"Yes, ma'am," said Jacky.</p> + +<p>"Who is it?" Lily called to him; she was somewhere in the back of the +house, and Eleanor could hear the clatter of dishes being gathered up +from an unseen supper table. Jacky, unable to answer his mother's +question, was calmly silent.</p> + +<p>"My land! That child's a reg'lar dummy! Jacky, who <i>is</i> it?"</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> do' know," Jacky called back.</p> + +<p>"I am Mrs. Curtis," Eleanor said; "I want to see your mother."</p> + +<p>"She says," Jacky called—then paused, because it occurred to him to +hang on to the door knob and swing back and forth, his heels scraping +over the oilcloth; "she says," said Jacky, "she's Mrs. Curtis."</p> + +<p>The noise of the dishes stopped short. In the dining room Lily stood +stock-still; "My God!" she said. Then her eyes narrowed and her jaw set; +she whipped off her apron and turned down her sleeves; she had made up +her mind: "<i>I'll lie it through.</i>"</p> + +<p>She came out in the hall, which was scented with rose geraniums and +reeked with the smell of bacon fat, and said, with mincing politeness, +"Were you wishing to see me?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," Eleanor said.</p> + +<p>"Step right in," said Lily, opening the parlor door. "Won't you be +seated?" Then she struck a match on the sole of her shoe, lit the gas, +blew out the match, and turned to look at her visitor. She put her hand +over her mouth and gasped. Under her breath she said, "His <i>mother</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Dale," Eleanor began—</p> + +<p>"Well, there!" said Lily, pleasantly (but she was pale); "I guess you +have the advantage of me. What did you say your name was?"</p> + +<p>"My name is Curtis. Mrs. Dale, I—I know about your little boy."</p> + +<p>"Is that so?" Lily said, with the simper proper when speaking to +strangers.</p> + +<p>"I mean," Eleanor said, "I know about—" her lips were so dry she +stopped to moisten them—"about Mr. Curtis and you."</p> + +<p>"I ain't acquainted with your son."</p> + +<p>Eleanor caught her breath, but went on, "I haven't come to reproach +you."</p> + +<p>Lily tossed her head. "Reproach? <i>Me?</i> Well, I must say, I don't see no +cause why you should! <i>I</i> don't know no Mr. Curtis!" She was alertly on +guard for Maurice; "I guess you've mixed me up with some other lady."</p> + +<p>"Please!" Eleanor said; "I <i>know</i>. He told me—about Jacky."</p> + +<p>Instantly Lily's desire to defend Maurice was tempered by impatience +with him; the idea of him letting on to his mother! Then, noticing her +boy, who was silently observing the caller from the doorway, she said:</p> + +<p>"Jacky! Go right out of this room."</p> + +<p>"Won't," said Jacky. "She gimme the horn," he remarked.</p> + +<p>"Aw, now, sweety, go on out!" Lily entreated.</p> + +<p>Jacky said, calmly, "Won't."</p> + +<p>At which his mother got up and stamped her foot. "Clear right out of +this room, or I'll see to you! Do you hear me? Go on, now, or I'll give +you a reg'lar spanking!"</p> + +<p>Jacky ran. He never obeyed her when he could help it, but he always +recognized the moment when he couldn't help it. Lily closed the door, +and stood with her back against it, looking at her caller.</p> + +<p>"Well," she said, "if you <i>are</i> on to it, I'm sure you ain't going to +make trouble for him with his wife."</p> + +<p>"I am his wife."</p> + +<p>"His <i>wife</i>?" They looked at each other for a speechess moment. Then the +tears sprang to Lily's eyes. "Oh, you poor soul!" she said. "Say, don't +feel bad! It's pretty near ten years ago; he was just a kid. Since +then—honest to God, I give you my word, he 'ain't hardly said 'How do +you do' to me!"</p> + +<p>"I know," Eleanor said; her hands were gripped hard together; "I know +that. I know he has been ... perfectly true to me—lately. I am not +saying a word about that. It's the child. I want to make a proposition +to you about the child." Her lips trembled, but she smiled; she +remembered to smile, because if she didn't look pleasant Lily might get +angry. She was a little frightened; but she gave a nervous laugh. She +spoke with gentleness, almost with sweetness. "I came to see you, Mrs. +Dale, because I hope you and I can make some arrangement about the +little boy. I want to help you by relieving you of—of his support. I +mean," said Eleanor, still smiling with her trembling lips, "I mean, I +will take him, and bring him up, so as to save you the expense." Lily's +amazed recoil made her break into entreaty; "My husband wants him, and I +do, too! I thought perhaps you'd let him go home with me to-night? I—I +promise I'll take the best of care of him!"</p> + +<p>Lily was too dumfounded to speak, but her thoughts raced. "For the +land's sake!" she said under her breath. She was sitting down now, but +her hands in her lap had doubled into rosy fighting fists.</p> + +<p>Her silence terrified Eleanor. "If you'll give him to me," she said, "I +will do anything for you—anything! If you'll just let Mr. Curtis have +him." She did not mean to, but suddenly she was crying, and began to +fumble for her handkerchief.</p> + +<p>"Well, if this ain't the limit!" said Lily, and jumped up and ran to +her, and put her arms around her. ("Here, take mine! It's clean.") "Say, +I'm that sorry for you, I don't know what to do!" Her own tears +overflowed.</p> + +<p>Eleanor, wincing away from the gush of perfumery from the little clean +handkerchief, clutched at Lily's small plump hand—"<i>I'll</i> tell you what +to do," Eleanor said; "<i>Give me Jacky!</i>"</p> + +<p>Lily, kneeling beside her, cried, honestly and openly. "There!—now!" +she said, patting Eleanor's shoulder; "don't you cry! Mrs. Curtis, now +look,"—she spoke soothingly, as if to a child, with her arm around +Eleanor—"you know I <i>can't</i> let my little boy go? Why, think how you'd +feel yourself, if you had a little boy and anybody tried to get him. +Would you give him up? 'Course you wouldn't! Why, I wouldn't let Jacky +go away from me, even for a day, not for the world! An' he ain't +anything to Mr. Curtis. Honest! That's the truth. Now, don't you cry, +dear!"</p> + +<p>"You can see him often; I promise you, you can see him."</p> + +<p>In spite of her pity, Lily's yellow eyes gleamed: "'See' my own child? +Well, I guess!"</p> + +<p>"I'll give you anything," Eleanor said; "I have a little money—about +six hundred dollars a year; I'll give it to you, if you'll let Mr. +Curtis have him."</p> + +<p>"Sell Jacky for six hundred dollars?" Lily said. "I wouldn't sell him +for six thousand dollars, or six million!" She drew away from Eleanor's +beseeching hands. "How long has Mr. Curtis thought enough of Jacky to +pay six hundred dollars for him? You can tell Mr. Curtis, from me, that +I ain't no cheap trader, to give away my child for six hundred dollars!" +She sprang up, putting her clenched fists on her fat hips, and wagging +her head. "Why," she demanded, raucously, "didn't you have a child of +your own for him, 'stead of trying to get another woman's child away +from her?"</p> + +<p>It was a hideous blow. Eleanor gasped with pain; and instantly Lily's +anger was gone.</p> + +<p>"Say! I didn't mean that! 'Course you couldn't, at your age. I oughtn't +to have said it!"</p> + +<p>Eleanor, dumb for a moment after that deadly question, began, faintly: +"Mr. Curtis will do so much for him, Mrs. Dale; he'll educate him, +and—"</p> + +<p>"I can educate him," Lily said; "you tell Mr. Curtis that; you tell him +I thank him for nothing!—<i>I</i> can educate my child to beat the band. I +don't want any help from <i>him</i>. But—" she was on her knees again, +stroking Eleanor's shoulder—"but if he's mean to you because you +haven't had any children, I—I—I'll see to him! Well—I've always +thought, what with him fussing about 'grammar,' and 'truth,' he'd be a +hard man to live with. But if he's been mean to you he'd ought to be +ashamed of himself!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he doesn't even know that I have come!" Eleanor said; "he mustn't +know it. Oh, please!" She was terrified. "Don't tell him, Mrs. Dale. +Promise me you won't! He would be angry."</p> + +<p>Her frightened despair was pitiful; Lily was at her wits' end. "My soul +and body!" she thought, "what am I going to do with her?" But what was +all this business? Mrs. Curtis asking for Jacky—and Mr. Curtis not +knowing it? What was all this funny business? "Now I tell you," she +said; "you and me are just two ladies who understand each other, and I'm +going to be straight with you: if Mr. Curtis is trying to get my child +away from me, he'll have a sweet time doing it! There's other places +than Medfield to live in. I have a friend in New York, a society lady; +she's always after me to come and live there. Mind! I'm not mad at +<i>you</i>, you poor woman that couldn't have a baby—it's him I'm mad at! He +knows Jacky is mine, and I'll go to New York before I'll—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't say that!" Eleanor pleaded; "my husband hasn't tried to get +Jacky; it's just I!"</p> + +<p>She saw, with panic, that what Maurice had said was true—Lily might +"run"! If she did, there would be no hope of getting Jacky ... and Edith +would be in Mercer....</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Dale, <i>promise</i> me you'll stay in Medfield? It was only I who was +trying to get Jacky; Mr. Curtis never thought of such a thing! I wanted +him. I'd do everything for him; I'd—I'd give him music lessons."</p> + +<p>"Honest," said Lily, soberly, "I believe you're crazy."</p> + +<p>She looked crazy—this poor, gray-haired woman of pitiful dignity and +breeding. ("I bet she's sixty!" Lily thought)—this old, childless +woman, with a "Mrs." to her name, pleading with a mother to give up her +boy, so he could have "music lessons"! "And Mr. Curtis's up against +<i>that</i>," Lily thought, and instantly her anger at Maurice ebbed. "There, +dear," she said, touching Eleanor's wet cheeks gently with that perfumed +handkerchief; "I don't believe you've had any supper. I'm going to get +you something to eat—"</p> + +<p>"No, please; <i>please</i> no!" Eleanor said. She had risen. She thought, +"If she says 'dear' again, I'll—I'll die!" ... "I promise you on my +word of honor," she said, faintly, "that I won't try to take Jacky away +from you, if—" she paused; it was terrible to have a secret with this +woman; it put her in her power, but she couldn't help it—"I won't try +to get him, if you won't tell Mr. Curtis that I ... have been here? +<i>Please</i> promise me!"</p> + +<p>"Don't you worry," Lily said, reassuringly; "I won't give you away to +him."</p> + +<p>Eleanor was moving, stumbling a little, toward the door; Lily hesitated, +then ran and caught her own coat and hat from the rack in the hall.</p> + +<p>"Wait!" she said, pinning her hat on at a hasty and uncertain angle; +"I'm going with you! It ain't right for you to go by yourself ... +Jacky," she called out to the kitchen, "you be a good boy! Maw'll be +home soon."</p> + +<p>Eleanor shook her head in wordless protest. But Lily had tucked her hand +under her arm, and was walking along beside her. "He ought to look out +for you!" Lily said; "I declare, I've a mind to tell that man what I +think of him!" On the car, while Eleanor with shaking hands was opening +her purse, Lily quickly paid both fares, saying, politely, in answer to +Eleanor's confused protest, "<i>That's</i> all right!" There was no talk +between them. Lily was too perplexed to say anything, and Eleanor was +too frightened. So they rode, side by side, almost to Maurice's door. +There, standing on the step while Eleanor took her latch key from her +pocketbook, Lily said, cheerfully, "Now you go and get a cup of +tea—you're all wore out!" Then she hurried off to catch a Medfield car. +"I declare," said little Lily, "I don't know which is the worse off, him +or her!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII" ></a>CHAPTER XXXII</h2> + + +<p>Eleanor, letting herself into her silent house, saw, with relief, that +the library was dark, and knew that Maurice had gone to the station and +she could be alone. She felt her way into the room, blundering against +his big chair; the fire was almost out, and without waiting to turn on +the light she thrust some kindling under a charred log and knelt down +and took up the bellows. A spark brightened, ran backward under the film +of ashes, then a flame hesitated, caught—and there was a little winking +blaze.</p> + +<p>"Another failure," Eleanor said. She remembered with what eager hope she +had started for Lily's house; "I was going to 'bring him home' with me! +What a fool I was! ... I always fail," she said. Once more, she had +"marched up a hill—and—then—marched—down—again"! Her sense of +failure was like a dragging weight under her breastbone! She had not +made Maurice happy; she had not given him children; she had not kept +Edith out of his life. Failure! Failure! "But he loves me; he said so, +when I told him I forgave him about Lily. Of course I oughtn't to have +married him. But I loved him ... so much. And I did want to have just a +little happiness! I never had had any." She sat there, the bellows in +her white, ineffectual hands, looking into the fire; how capable Lily's +hands were! She remembered the sturdy left hand, and that shiny band of +gold ... Then she looked at her own slender wedding ring, and that made +her think of the circle of braided grass; and the locust blossoms; and +the field—and the children who were to come there on the wedding +anniversaries! And now—Maurice's child called another woman +"mother"!... Well, she had tried to bring him back to Maurice; tried, +and failed, with hideous humiliation—for, instead of bringing Jacky +back, this "mother" had brought her back!... "<i>And she paid my car +fare!</i>" It was intolerable. "I must send her five cents, somehow!"</p> + +<p>She sat on the floor, leaning against Maurice's chair, until midnight; +the log burned through, broke apart, and smoldered into ashes. Once she +put her cheek down on the broad arm of the chair, then kissed it—for +his hand had rested on it!—his dear young hand—In the deepening +chilliness, watching the ashes, she ached with the sense of her last +failure; but most of the time she thought of Edith, and of what she +believed she had read in those humorous, candid eyes. "She dared, +<i>before me</i>!—to show him that she was in love with him! He doesn't care +for her—I know that. But I won't have her come here, to my own house, +and make love to him. How can I keep her from coming? Oh, if I could +only get Jacky!"</p> + +<p>But she couldn't get him. She had accepted that as final. The talk in +Lily's parlor proved that there was not the slightest hope of getting +Jacky. So the only thing for her to do was to keep Edith out of her +house. When, at nearly one o'clock, shivering, she went up to her room, +she was absorbed in thinking how she could do this. With any other girl +it would have been simple enough; never invite her! But not Edith. Edith +came without an invitation. Edith had, Eleanor thought, "no delicacy." +She had always been that way. She had always lacked ordinary refinement! +From the very first, she had run after Maurice. "She is capable of +<i>kissing</i> him," Eleanor told herself; "and saying she did it because he +was like a brother!" Strangely enough, in this blaze of jealousy she had +no flicker of resentment at Lily! Lily (now that she had seen her) was +to Eleanor merely the woman to whom Jacky belonged. Looking back on +those months that followed her discovery of Lily, and contrasting the +agony she had felt then with her despair about Edith now, she was +faintly surprised at the difference in her pain. This was probably +because faithlessness of the body is not so deadly an insult to Love as +faithlessness of the mind. But Eleanor did not, of course, make any such +explanation. She just said to herself that Maurice had been a boy when +he had been untrue to her, and she herself had been, in some ways, to +blame; and he had confessed, and been forgiven. So Lily was now of no +consequence—except as she interfered with Eleanor's passionate wish to +have Jacky. So she did not hate Lily, or fear her (though she was +humiliated at that car fare!). But she did hate Edith, and fear of her +was agony.... So she would, somehow, keep her out of the house!</p> + +<p>Just as she was getting into bed, she wiped her eyes, then cringed at a +gust of perfumery—and realized that she had brought Lily's handkerchief +back with her! It was a last abasement: the woman's horrible +handkerchief. She burst into hysterical weeping.... The next morning, +when she came down to breakfast, her face was haggard with those +ravaging tears, and with the fatigue of hating. Even before she had her +coffee, she burned the scented scrap of machine-embroidered linen, +pressing it down between the logs in the library fireplace; but she +could not burn her hate; it burned her!</p> + +<p>She was so worn out that when, a little before luncheon, Edith suddenly +came breezily in, she was, at first, too confused to know what to say to +her.... It was an incredibly mild day; on the shady side of the back +yard there was still a sooty heap of melting snow, but the sky was +turquoise, soaring without a cloud and brimmed with light, so that the +shadows of the bare branches of the poplar, clear-cut like jet, +crisscrossed on the brick path; in the border, the brown fangs of the +tulips had bitten up through the wet earth, and two militant crocuses +had raised their tight-furled purple standards. Eleanor, tempted by the +sunshine, had come here, muffled up in an elderly white shawl, to sit by +the little painted table—built so long ago for Edith's pleasure! She +had put old Bingo's basket in the sun, and stroked him gently; he was +very helpless now, and ate nothing except from her hands.</p> + +<p>"Poor little Bingo!" Eleanor said; "dear little Bingo!" Bingo growled, +and Eleanor looked up to see why—Edith was on the iron veranda.</p> + +<p>"Hullo!" Edith said, gayly; "isn't it a wonderful day? I just ran in—" +She came down the twisted stairway and, unasked and smiling, sat down at +the table. "Bingo! Don't you know your friends? One would think I was a +burglar! Oh, Eleanor, the tulips are up! Do you remember when Maurice +and I planted them?"</p> + +<p>Eleanor's throat tightened. She made some gasping assent.</p> + +<p>"I came 'round," Edith said—her frank eyes looked straight into +Eleanor's eyes, dark and agonized—"I ran in, because I'm afraid you +thought, yesterday, that I wanted to quarter myself on you? And I just +wanted to say, don't give it a thought! I perfectly understand that +sometimes it's inconvenient to have company, and—"</p> + +<p>"It's not inconvenient to have company," Eleanor said.</p> + +<p>Edith stopped short. ("What a dead give-away!" she thought; "she +dislikes me!") Then she tried, generously, to cover the "give-away" up: +She said something about guests and servants: "We're having an awful +time at Green Hill—servants are the limit! When a maid stays six weeks, +we call her an old family retainer!"</p> + +<p>Eleanor said, "I have no difficulty with maids. That is not why I prefer +not to have ... company."</p> + +<p>By this time, of course, Edith's one thought was to get away, with +dignity; but dignity, when you've had your face slapped, is almost +impossible. So Edith (being Edith!) chose Truth, and didn't trouble +herself with dignity! "Eleanor," she said, "I know it's me you don't +want. I felt it last night. I'm afraid I've done something that has +offended you. Have I? Truly, Eleanor, I haven't meant to! What is it? +Let's talk it out. Eleanor, what <i>have</i> I done?" She put her hands down +on Eleanor's, clasped rigidly on the table.</p> + +<p>"Please!" Eleanor said, and drew her hands away.</p> + +<p>"Oh," Edith said, pitifully, "you are troubled!"</p> + +<p>Eleanor said, with a gasp: "Not at all ... Edith, I am afraid I must ask +you to ... excuse me. I'm busy."</p> + +<p>Edith was too amazed to speak; she could not, indeed, think of anything +to say! This wasn't "dislike." "Why, she <i>hates</i> me!" she thought. "Why +does she hate me? Shall I not notice it? Shall I talk about something +else?" But she could not talk of anything else; she could only speak her +swift, honest thought: "Eleanor, why do you dislike me? Maurice and I +have been friends—we have been like brother and sister—ever since I +can remember. Oh, Eleanor, I want <i>you</i> to like me, too! Please don't +keep me away from you and Maurice!"</p> + +<p>Eleanor said, rapidly: "He's not your brother; and it would be difficult +to keep you away from him. You go to his office to find him."</p> + +<p>There was a dead silence. Edith grew very pale. At last she understood. +Eleanor was jealous ... Of her! They looked at each other, the angry +woman and the dumfounded girl. "Jealous? Of <i>me</i>?" Edith thought. "Why +<i>me</i>? Maurice only cares for me as if I was his sister! ... And I don't +do Eleanor any harm by—loving him." ... Eleanor was gasping out a +torrent of assailing words:</p> + +<p>"Girls are different from what they were in my day. Then, they didn't +openly run after men! Now, apparently, they do. Certainly <i>you</i> do. You +always have. I'm not blind, Edith. I have known what was going on; when +you were living with us and I had a headache, you used to talk to him, +and try and be clever—to make him think I was dull, when it was only +that—I was too ill to talk! And you kept him down in the garden until +midnight, when he might have been sitting with me on the porch. And you +made him go skating. And now you <i>look</i> at him! I know what that means. +A girl doesn't look that way at a man, unless—"</p> + +<p>There was dead silence.</p> + +<p>"Unless she's in love with him. But don't think that, though you are in +love with him, he cares for <i>you</i>! He does not. He cares for no one but +me. He told me so."</p> + +<p>Silence.</p> + +<p>"Can you deny that you care for my husband?" Edith opened her lips—and +closed them again. "You don't deny it," Eleanor said; "you <i>can't</i>." She +put her head down on her arms on the table; her fifty years engulfed +her. She said, in a whisper, "He doesn't love me."</p> + +<p>Instantly Edith's arms were around her. "Eleanor, dear! Don't—don't! He +does love you—he does! I'd perfectly hate him if he didn't! Oh, +Eleanor, poor Eleanor! Don't cry; Maurice <i>does</i> love you. He doesn't +care a copper for me!" The tears were running down her face. She bent +and kissed Eleanor's hands, clenched on the table, and then tried to +draw the gray head against her tender young breast.</p> + +<p>Eleanor put out frantic hands, as if to push away some suffocating +pressure. Both of these women—Lily, with her car fare and her +handkerchief; Edith, with her impudent "advice" to Maurice not to have +secrets from his wife—pitied her! She would not be pitied by them!</p> + +<p>"Don't touch me!" she said, furiously; "<i>you love my husband</i>."</p> + +<p>Edith heard her own blood pounding in her ears.</p> + +<p>"Don't you?" said Eleanor; her face was furrowed with pain; "Don't you?"</p> + +<p>It was a moment of naked truth. "I have loved Maurice," Edith said, +steadily, "ever since I was a child. I always shall. I would like to +love you, too, Eleanor, if you would let me. But nothing—<i>nothing</i>! +shall ever break up my ... affection for Maurice."</p> + +<p>"You might as well call it love."</p> + +<p>Edith, rising, said, very low: "Well, I will call it love. I am not +ashamed. I am not wronging you. You have no need to be jealous of me, +Eleanor. He cares nothing for me."</p> + +<p>Eleanor struck the table with her clenched fists. "You shall never have +him!" she said.</p> + +<p>Edith turned, silently, and went up the veranda stairs and out of the +house.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII" ></a>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2> + + +<p>When Eleanor got her breath, after that crazy outbreak, she rushed up to +her own room, bolted the door, fell on her knees at her bedside, and +told herself in frantic gasps, that she would <i>fight</i> Edith Houghton! +Grapple with her! Beat her away from Maurice! "I must <i>do</i> something—do +something—"</p> + +<p>But what? There was only one weapon with which she could vanquish +Edith—Maurice's love for his son. <i>Jacky!</i> She must have Jacky ...</p> + +<p>But how could she get him?</p> + +<p>She knew she couldn't get him with Lily's consent. Frantic with jealousy +as she was, she recognized that! Yet, over and over, during the week +that followed that hour in the garden with Edith, she said to herself, +"If Maurice had Jacky, Edith would be nothing to him." ... It was at +this point that one day something made her add, "<i>Suppose he had Lily, +too?</i>" Then he could have Jacky.</p> + +<p>"If I were dead, he could marry Lily."</p> + +<p>At first this was just one of those vague thoughts that blew through her +mind, as straws and dead leaves blow down a dreary street. But this +straw caught, so to speak, and more straws gathered and heaped about it. +The idea lodged, and another idea lodged with it: If, to get his child, +he married Jacky's mother, Edith would never reach him! And if, by +dying, Eleanor gave Maurice his child, he would always love her for her +gift; she would always be "wonderful." And Edith? Why, he couldn't, he +<i>couldn't</i>—if his wife died to give him Jacky—think of Edith again! +Jacky, Eleanor thought, viciously, "would slam the door in Edith's +face!"</p> + +<p>Perhaps, if Maurice had been at home, instead of being obliged to +prolong that western business trip, the sanity of his presence would +have swept the straws and dead leaves away and left Eleanor's mind +bleak, of course, with disappointment about Jacky and dread of +Edith—but sound. As it was, alone in her melancholy, uncomfortable +house, tiny innumerable "reasons" for considering the one way by which +Maurice could get Jacky, heaped and heaped above common sense: ten years +ago Mrs. Newbolt said that if Eleanor had not "caught" Maurice when he +was young, he would have taken Edith; that was a straw. Two years ago a +woman in the street car offered her a seat, because she looked as old as +<i>her</i> mother. Another straw! Lily supposed she was Maurice's mother! A +straw.... Edith admitted—had impudently flung into Eleanor's face!—the +confession that she was "in love with him!"—and Edith was to be in town +for three months. Oh, what a sheaf of straws! Edith would see him +constantly. She would "look at him"! Could Maurice stand that? Wouldn't +what little love he felt for his old wife go down under the wicked +assault of those "looks"?—unless he had Jacky! Jacky would "slam the +door."</p> + +<p>Eleanor said things like this many times a day. Straws! Straws! And they +showed the way the wind was blowing. Sometimes, in the suffocating dust +of fear that the wind raised she even forgot her purpose of making +Maurice happy, in a violent urge to make it impossible for Edith +Houghton to triumph over her. But the other thought—the crazy, nobler +thought!—was, on the whole, dominant: "Maurice would be happy if he had +a child. I couldn't give him a child of my own, but I can give him +Jacky." Yet once in a while she balanced the advantages and +disadvantages of the one way in which Jacky could be given: <i>Lily</i>? +Could Maurice endure Lily? She thought of that parlor, of Lily's +vulgarity, of the raucous note in her voice when those flashes of anger +pierced like claws through the furry softness of her good nature; she +thought of the reek of scent on the handkerchief. Could he endure Lily? +Yet she was efficient; she would make him comfortable. "I never made +him comfortable," she thought. "And he doesn't love her; so I wouldn't +so terribly mind her being here—any more than I'd mind a housekeeper. +But I wouldn't want her to call him 'Maurice.' I think I'll put that +into my letter to him. I'll say that I will ask, as a last favor, that +he will not let her call him 'Maurice.'"</p> + +<p>For by this time she had added another straw to the pile of rubbish in +her mind: <i>she would write him a letter</i>. In it she would tell him that +she was going to ... die, so that he could marry Lily and have Jacky! +Then came the mental postscript, which would not, of course, be written; +she would make it possible for him to marry Lily—<i>and impossible for +him to marry Edith</i>! And by and by she got so close to her mean and +noble purpose—a gift in one dead hand and a sword in the other!—that +she began to think of ways and means. How could she die? She couldn't +buy morphine without a prescription, and she couldn't possibly get a +prescription. But there were other things that people did,—dreadful +things! She knew she couldn't do anything "dreadful." Maurice had a +revolver in his bureau drawer, upstairs—but she didn't know how to +make it "go off"; and if she had known, she couldn't do it; it would +be "dreadful." Well; a rope? No! Horrible! She had once seen a +picture ... she shuddered at the memory of that picture. <i>That</i> was +impossible! Sometimes any way—every way!—seemed impossible. Once, +wandering aimlessly about the thawing back yard, she stood for a long +time at the iron gate, staring at the glimmer, a block away, of the +river—"our river," Maurice used to call it. But in town, "their" +river—flowing!—flowing! was filmed with oil, and washed against slimy +piles, and carried a hideous flotsam of human rubbish; once down below +the bridge she had seen a drowned cat slopping back and forth among +orange skins and straw bottle covers. The river, in town, was as +"dreadful" as those other impossible things! Back in the meadows it was +different—brown and clear where it rippled over shallows and lisped +around that strip of clean sand, and darkly smooth out in the deep +current;—the deep current? Why! <i>that</i> was possible! Of course there +were "things" in the water that she might step on—slimy, creeping +things!—which she was so afraid of. She remembered how afraid she had +been that night on the mountain, of snakes. But the water was clean.</p> + +<p>She must have stood there a long time; the maids, in the basement +laundry, said afterward that they saw her, her white hands clutching the +rusty bars of the gate, looking down toward the river, for nearly an +hour. Then Bingo whined, and she went into the house to comfort him; and +as she stroked him gently, she said, "Yes, ... our river would be +possible." But she would get so wet! "My skirts would be wet ..."</p> + +<p>So three days went by in profound preoccupation. Her mind was a +battlefield, over which, back and forth, reeling and trampling, Love and +Jealousy—old enemies but now allies!—flung themselves against Reason, +which had no support but Fear. Each day Maurice's friendly letters +arrived; one of them—as Jealousy began to rout Reason and Love to cast +out Fear—she actually forgot to open! Mrs. Newbolt called her up on the +telephone once, and said, "Come 'round to dinner; my new cook is pretty +poor, but she's better than yours."</p> + +<p>Eleanor said she had a little cold. "Cold?" said Mrs. Newbolt. "My +gracious! don't come near <i>me</i>! I used to tell your dear uncle I was +more afraid of a cold than I was of Satan! He said a cold <i>was</i> Satan; +and I said—" Eleanor hung up the receiver.</p> + +<p>So she was alone—and the wind blew, and the straws and leaves danced +over that battlefield of her empty mind, and she said:</p> + +<p>"I'll give him Jacky," and then she said, "Our river." And then she +said, "But I must hurry!" He had written that he might reach home by the +end of the week. "He might come to-night! I must do it—before he comes +home." She said that while the March dawn was gray against the windows +of her bedroom, and the house was still. She lay in bed until, at six, +she heard the creak of the attic stairs and Mary's step as she crept +down to the kitchen, the silver basket clattering faintly on her arm. +Then she rose and dressed; once she paused to look at herself in the +glass: those gray hairs! ... Edith had called his attention to them so +many years ago! It was a long time since it had been worth while to pull +them out. ... All that morning she moved about the house like one in a +dream. She was thinking what she would say in her letter to him, and +wondering, now and then, vaguely, what it would be like, <i>afterward</i>? +She ate no luncheon, though she sat down at the table. She just crumbled +up a piece of bread; then rose, and went into the library to Maurice's +desk... She sat there for a long time, making idle scratches on the +blotting paper; her elbow on the desk, her forehead in her hand, she sat +and scrawled his initials—and hers—and his. And then, after about an +hour, she wrote:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>... I want you to have Jacky. When I am dead you can get him, because +you can marry Lily. Of course I oughtn't to have married you, but—</p></div> + +<p>Here she paused for a long time.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I loved you. I'd rather she didn't call you Maurice. But I want you to +have Jacky; so marry her, and you will have him. I am not jealous, you +see. You won't call me jealous any more, will you? And, besides, I love +little Jacky, too. See that he has music lessons.</p></div> + +<p>Another pause... Many thoughts... Many straws and dead leaves... "Edith +will never enter the house, if Lily is here—with Jacky.... Oh—I hate +her."</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>You will believe I love you, won't you, darling? I wish I hadn't married +you; I didn't mean to do you any harm. I just loved you, and I thought I +could make you happy. I know now that I didn't. Forgive me, darling, for +marrying you...</p></div> + +<p>Again a long pause....</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I don't mind dying at all, if I can give you what you want. And I don't +mind your marrying Lily. I am sure she can make good cake—tell her to +try that chocolate cake you liked so much. I tried it twice, but it was +heavy. I forgot the baking powder. Make her call you "Mr. Curtis." Oh, +Maurice—you will believe I love you?—even if I am—</p></div> + +<p>She put her pen down and buried her face in her arms folded on his desk; +she couldn't seem to write that word of three letters which she had +supposed summed up the tragedy, begun on that June day in the field and +ending, she told herself, on this March day, in the same place. So, by +and by, instead of writing "old," she wrote</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"a poor housekeeper."</p></div> + +<p>Then she pondered on how she should sign the letter, and after a while +she wrote:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"STAR."</p></div> + +<p>She looked at the radiant word, and then kissed it. By and by she got +up—with difficulty, for she had sat there so long that she was stiff in +every joint—and going to her own desk, she hunted about in it for that +little envelope, which, for nearly twelve of the fifty golden years +which were to find them in "their field," had held the circle of braided +grass. When she opened it, and slid the ring out into the palm of her +hand it crumbled into dust. She debated putting it back into the +envelope and inclosing it in her letter? But a rush of tenderness for +Maurice made her say: "No! It might hurt him." So she dropped it down +behind the logs in the fireplace. "When the fire is lighted it will burn +up." Lily's scented handkerchief had turned to ashes there, too. Then +she folded the letter, slipped it into an envelope, sealed it, addressed +it, and put it in her desk. "He'll find it," she thought, "<i>afterward</i>." +Find it,—and know how much she loved him!—the words were like wine to +her. Then she looked at the clock and was startled to see that it was +five. She must hurry! He might come home and stop her!...</p> + +<p>She was perfectly calm; she put on her coat and hat and opened the front +door; then saw the gleam of lights on the wet pavement and felt the +March drizzle in her face; she reflected that it would be very wet in +the meadow, and went back for her rubbers.</p> + +<p>When the car came banging cheerfully along, she boarded it and sat so +that she would be able to see Lily's house. "She's getting his supper," +Eleanor thought; "dear little Jacky! Well, he will be having his supper +with Maurice pretty soon! I wonder how she'll get along with Mary? Mary +will call her 'Mrs. Curtis,' Mary would leave in a minute if she knew +what kind of a person 'Mrs. Curtis' was!" She smiled at that; it pleased +her. "But she mustn't call him 'Maurice,'" she thought; "I won't permit +<i>that</i>!"</p> + +<p>The car stopped, and all the other passengers got out. Eleanor vaguely +watched the conductor pull the trolley pole round for the return trip; +then she rose hurriedly. As she started along the road toward the meadow +she thought. "I can walk into the water; I never could jump in! But it +will be easy to wade in." That made her think of the picnic, and the +wading, and how Maurice had tied Edith's shoestrings; and with that came +a surge of triumph. "When he reads my letter, and knows how much I love +him, he'll forget her. And when she hears he has married Lily, she'll +stop making love to him by getting him to tie her shoestrings!"</p> + +<p>It was quite dark by this time, and chilly; she had meant to sit down +for a while, with her back against the locust tree, and think how, <i>at +last</i>, he was going to realize her love! But when she reached the bank +of the river she stooped and felt the winter-bleached grass, and found +it so wet with the small, fine rain which had begun to fall, that she +was afraid to sit down. "I'd add to my cold," she thought. So she stood +there a long time, looking at the river, leaden now in the twilight. +"How it glittered that day!" she thought. Suddenly, on a soft wind of +memory, she seemed to smell the warm fragrance of the clover, and hear +again her own voice, singing in the sunshine—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Through the clear windows of the morning!"</p></div> + +<p>"I'll leave my coat on the bank," she said; "but I'll wear my hat; it +will keep my hair from getting messy. ... Oh, Maurice mustn't let her +call him 'Maurice'! I wish I'd made that clearer in my letter. Why +didn't I tell him to give her that five cents? ... I wonder how many +'minutes' we have had now? We had had fifty-four, that Day. I wish I had +calculated, and put the number in the letter. No, that might have made +him feel badly. I don't want to hurt him; I only want him to know that I +love him enough to die to make him happy. Oh—will it be cold?"</p> + +<p>It was then that she took, slowly, one step—and stood still. And +another—and paused. Her heart began to pound suffocatingly in her +throat, and suddenly she knew that she was afraid! She had not known it; +fear had not entered into her plans; just love—and Maurice; just +hate—and Edith! Nor had "Right" or "Wrong" occurred to her. Now, old +instincts rose up. People called this "wicked"? So, if she was going to +do it, she must do it quickly! She mustn't get to thinking or she might +be afraid to do it, because it would be "wicked." She unfastened her +coat, then fumbled with her hat, pinning it on firmly; she was saying, +aloud: "Oh—oh—oh—it's wicked. But I must. Oh—my skirts will get +wet ... 'Kiss thy perfumed garments' ... No; I'll hold them up. Oh—oh—" +And as she spoke her crazy purpose drove her forward; she held back +against it—but, like the pressure of a hand upon her shoulder, it +pushed her on down the bank—slowly—slowly—her heels digging into the +crumbling clay, her hands clutching now at a tuft of grass, now at a +drooping branch; she was drawing quick breaths of terror, and talking, +in little gasps, aloud: "He'll forget Edith. He'll have Jacky. He'll +know how much I love him...." So, over the pebbles, out on to the spit +of sand; on—on—until she reached the river's edge. She stood there for +a minute, listening to the lisping chatter of the current. Very slowly, +she stepped in, and was ankle deep in shallow water,—then stopped +short—the water soaked through her shoes, and suddenly she felt it, +like circling ice, around her ankles! Aloud, she said, "Maurice,—I give +you Jacky. But don't let Lily call you—" She stepped on, into the +stream; one step—two—three. It was still shallow. "Why doesn't it get +<i>deep</i>?" she said, angrily; another step and the water was halfway to +her knees; she felt the force of the current and swayed a little; still +another step—above her knees now! and the <i>rip</i>, tugging and pulling at +her floating skirts. It was at the next step that she slipped, +staggered, fell full length—felt the water gushing into the neck of her +dress, running down her back, flowing between her breasts; felt her +sleeves drenched against her arms; she sprang up, fell again, her head +under water, her face scraping the pebbly sharpness of the river +bed,—again got on to her feet and ran choking and coughing, stumbling +and slipping, back to the sand-spit, and the shore. There she stood, +soaking wet, gasping. Her hat was gone, her hair dripping about her +face. "<i>I can't</i>," she said.</p> + +<p>She climbed up the bank, catching at the grass and twigs, and feeling +her tears running hot over the icy wetness of her cheeks. When she +reached the top she picked up her coat with numb, shaking hands and, +shivering violently, put it on with a passionate desire for warmth.</p> + +<p>"I tried; I <i>tried</i>," she said; "but—I can't!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV" ></a>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2> + + +<p>It was after ten o'clock that night when Eleanor's icy fingers fumbled +at Mrs. Newbolt's doorbell. The ring was not heard at first, because her +aunt and Edith Houghton and Johnny Bennett were celebrating his +departure the next day for South America, by making a Welsh rabbit in a +chafing dish before the parlor fire. Mrs. Newbolt, entering into the +occasion with voluble reminiscences, was having a very good time. She +liked Youth, and she liked Welsh rabbits, and she liked an audience; and +she had all three! Then the doorbell rang. And again.</p> + +<p>"For Heaven's sake!" said Mrs. Newbolt; "at this time of night! Johnny, +the girls have gone to bed; you go and answer it, like a good boy."</p> + +<p>"Dump in some more beer, Edith," Johnny commanded, and went out into the +hall, whistling. A moment later the other two heard his startled voice, +"Why, come right in!" There was no reply, just shuffling steps; then +Eleanor, silent, without any hat, her hair plastered down her ghastly +cheeks, her face bruised and soiled with sand, stood in the doorway, the +astonished John Bennett behind her. Everybody spoke at once:</p> + +<p>"Eleanor! What has happened?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Eleanor!</i> Where is your hat?"</p> + +<p>"Good gracious! Eleanor—"</p> + +<p>She was perfectly still. Just looking at them, during that blank moment +before everything became a confusion of jostling assistance. Edith +rushed to help her off with her coat. Johnny said, "Mrs. Newbolt, where +can I get some whisky?" Mrs. Newbolt felt the soaking skirt, and tried +to unfasten the belt so that the wet mass might fall to the floor.</p> + +<p>Eleanor was rigid. "Get a doctor!" Edith commanded.</p> + +<p>Johnny ran to the telephone.</p> + +<p>"No," Eleanor whispered.</p> + +<p>But nobody paid any attention to her. Johnny, at the telephone, was +telling Mrs. Newbolt's doctor to <i>hurry</i>! Mrs. Newbolt herself had run, +wheezing, to open the spare-room bed and get out extra blankets, and +fill hot-water bottles; then, somehow or other, she and Edith got +Eleanor upstairs, undressed her, put her into the big four-poster, and +held a tumbler of hot whisky and water to her lips. By the time Doctor +James arrived she had begun to shiver violently; but she was still +silent. The trolley ride into town, with staring passengers and a +conductor who thought she had been drinking, and tried to be jocose, had +chilled her to the bone, and the gradual dulling of thought had left +only one thing clear to her: She mustn't go home, because Maurice might +possibly be there! And if he was, then he would <i>know</i>! So she must +go—somewhere. She went first to Mrs. O'Brien's, climbing the three long +flights of stairs and feeling her way along dark entries to the old +woman's door. She stood there shuddering and knocking; a single gas jet, +wavering in the draughty entry, made her shadow lurch on the cracked +plaster of the wall; it occurred to her that she would like to put her +frozen hands around the little flame to warm them. Then she knocked +again. There was no answer, so, shaking from head to foot, she felt her +way downstairs again to the street, where the reflection of an +occasional gas lamp gleamed and flickered on the wet asphalt. "I'll go +to Auntie's," she thought.</p> + +<p>She had just one purpose—to get warm! But she was so dazed that she +could never remember how she reached Mrs. Newbolt's; probably she +walked, for there were no cabs in that part of town and no car line +passed Mrs. Newbolt's door. The time after she left Mrs. O'Brien's was a +blank. Even when she had swallowed the hot whisky, and began to feel +warmer, she was still mentally benumbed, and couldn't remember what she +had done. She did not notice Johnny Bennett; she saw Edith, but did +not, apparently, understand that she was staying in the house. When the +doctor came she was as silent to him as to everybody else.</p> + +<p>He asked no questions. "Keep her warm," he said, "and don't talk to +her."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Newbolt, going to the door with him, palpitating with fright, said, +"<i>We</i> don't know a thing more about what's happened than you do! She +just appeared, drippin', wet!"</p> + +<p>"She has evidently fallen into some water," he said; "but I wouldn't ask +her about it, yet. Of course we don't know what the result will be, Mrs. +Newbolt. I can't help saying I'm anxious. Mr. Curtis had better be sent +for. Telegraph him in the morning." He went off, thinking to himself, +"She must have gone into the country to do it. If she'd tried the river, +here, and scrambled out, she wouldn't have been so frightfully chilled. +I wonder what's up?"</p> + +<p>Everybody wondered what was up, but Eleanor did not enlighten them; so +the three interrupted revelers could do nothing but think. Johnny's +thoughts, as he sat down in the parlor among the Welsh-rabbit plates, +keeping the fire up, and waiting in case he might be needed, were even +briefer than the doctor's: "Tried to commit suicide."</p> + +<p>Edith, standing in the upper hall, listening to Mrs. Newbolt at +Eleanor's bedside, exclaiming, and repeating her dear mother's ideas +about catching cold, and offering more hot-water bottles, had her +thoughts: "I won't go into the room—she would hate to see me! The +doctor said she had fallen into some water. Did she—do it on purpose? +Oh, <i>was</i> it my fault?" Edith's heart pounded with terror: "Was it what +I said to her in the garden that made her do it?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Newbolt, in a blue-flannel dressing gown, and in and out of the +spare room with sibilant whispers of anxiety, had, for once, more +thoughts than words; her words were only, "I've always expected it!" But +her thoughts would have filled volumes! Mrs. Newbolt had put her hair +in order for the night, and now her crimping pins made the shadow of her +head, bobbing on the ceiling, look like a gigantic spider.</p> + +<p>Eleanor had just one hazy thought: "I tried ... I tried—and I failed."</p> + +<p>Other people, however, didn't feel so sure that she had failed. She +"looks like death," Mrs. Newbolt told Edith the next morning. "We've got +to find Maurice! Edith, why do you suppose she—did it?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, but she <i>didn't</i>!" Edith said. "What sense would there be—"</p> + +<p>"Don't talk about 'sense'! Eleanor never had any. I've telegraphed your +mother to come. I wonder how Bingo is? She understands her. The ashman +has broken my new ash barrel; I don't know what this country is comin' +to!"</p> + +<p>Then she went upstairs to try to understand Eleanor herself. "Eleanor, +what happened?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing. I'm going home this afternoon."</p> + +<p>"Indeed you are not! You're not goin' out of this house till Maurice +comes and gets you! <i>What</i> happened?" she demanded again.</p> + +<p>"I fell. Into some water."</p> + +<p>"How could you 'fall'? And what 'water'?"</p> + +<p>"I had gone out to the river—up in Medfield. To—take a walk; and +I ... slipped...."</p> + +<p>"Now, Eleanor, look here; if I have a virtue, it's candor, and I'll tell +you why; it saves time. That's what my dear father used to say: 'Lyin' +wastes time.' I know what you tried to do; and it was very wicked."</p> + +<p>"But I didn't do it!"</p> + +<p>"You tried to. If you and Maurice have quarreled, I'll stand by <i>you</i>."</p> + +<p>Eleanor covered her face with her hands—and Mrs. Newbolt burst out, +"He's treated you badly! You needn't try to deceive me,—he's been +flirtin' with some woman?" Her pale, prominent eyes snapped with anger.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Auntie, don't! He hasn't! Only, I—wanted to make him happier; and +so I—" She broke into furious crying. Despairing crying.</p> + +<p>Instantly Mrs. Newbolt was all frightened solicitude. "There! Don't cry! +Have a hot-water bag. They say there's a new kind on the market. I must +get a new pair of rubbers. Your face is awfully bruised. He's puffectly +happy! He worships the ground you walk on! Eleanor, don't cry. How's +your cold? The ashman—"</p> + +<p>Eleanor, gasping, said her cold was better, and repeated her +determination of going home.</p> + +<p>It was the doctor—dropping in, he said, to make sure Mrs. Curtis was +none the worse for her "accident"—who put a stop to that.</p> + +<p>"I slipped and fell," Eleanor told him; she was very hoarse.</p> + +<p>He said yes, he understood. "But you got badly chilled, and you had a +cold to start with. So you must lie low for two or three days. When will +Mr. Curtis be back?"</p> + +<p>Eleanor said she didn't know; all she knew was she didn't want him sent +for. She was "all right."</p> + +<p>But of course he had been sent for! "I don't know that it was really +necessary," Mrs. Newbolt told Mrs. Houghton, who appeared late in the +afternoon; "but I wasn't goin' to take the responsibility—"</p> + +<p>"Of course not!" Mrs. Houghton said. "Mr. Weston has telegraphed him, +too, I hope?" Then, before taking her things off, she went upstairs to +Eleanor. "Well!" she said, "I hear you had an accident? Sensible girl, +to stay in bed!" She took Eleanor's hand, and its hot tremor made her +look keenly at the haggard face on the pillow.</p> + +<p>"Oh," Eleanor said, with a gasp of relief, "I'm so glad you're here! +There are some things I want attended to. I owe—I mean, somebody paid +my car fare. And I <i>must</i> send it to her! And then I want something +from my desk; but I can't have Bridget get it, and I don't want to ask +Auntie to. It's—it's a letter to Maurice. I wanted to tell him +something.... But I've changed my mind. I don't want him to see it. He +mustn't see it! Oh, Mrs. Houghton, would you get it for me? I'd be <i>so</i> +grateful! ... And then,—oh, that five cents! I don't know how I'm going +to send it to her—"</p> + +<p>"Tell me who it is, and I'll get it to her; and I'll get the letter," +Mary Houghton told her; and went on with the usual sick-room +encouragement: "The doctor says you are better. But you must hurry and +get well, so as to help Maurice with the little boy!"</p> + +<p>Her words were like a push against some tottering barrier.</p> + +<p>"I tried to help him; I tried to get Jacky! I went to the woman's, but +she wouldn't give him to me! I <i>tried</i>—so hard. But she wouldn't! She +paid my car fare—"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Houghton bent over and kissed her: "Tell me about it, dear; perhaps +I can help."</p> + +<p>"There is no help! ... She won't give him up. She insisted on coming +home with me, and she paid my car fare! Then I thought, if—I were not +alive, Maurice could get him, because he could marry her ..."</p> + +<p>Instantly, with a thrill of horror and admiration, Mrs. Houghton +understood the "accident"! "Eleanor! What a mad, mad thought! As if you +could help Maurice by giving him a great grief! Oh, I do thank God he +has been spared anything so terrible!"</p> + +<p>"But," Eleanor said, excitedly, "if I were dead, it would be his duty to +marry her, wouldn't it? Jacky is his child! Oughtn't he to marry Jacky's +mother? Oh, Mrs. Houghton, I owe her five cents—"</p> + +<p>The older woman was trembling, but she spoke calmly: "Eleanor, dear, you +must live for Maurice, not—die for him."</p> + +<p>"Promise me," said Eleanor, "you won't tell him?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I won't!" said Mrs. Houghton, with elaborate cheerfulness. +She kissed her, and went downstairs, feeling very queer in her knees. +She paused at the parlor door to say to Mrs. Newbolt and Edith that she +was going out to do an errand for Eleanor; "I hope Maurice will get +back soon," she said. "I don't like Eleanor's looks." Then she went to +get that letter which Maurice "must not see." As she walked along the +street she was still tingling with the shock of having her own theories +brought home to her. "Thank God," Mary Houghton said, "that nothing +happened!"</p> + +<p>The maid who opened the door at Maurice's house was evidently excited, +but not about her mistress. "Oh, Mrs. Houghton!" she said, "we done our +best, but he wouldn't take a bite!—and I declare I don't know what +Mrs. Curtis will say. He just <i>wouldn't</i> eat, and this morning he up and +died—and me offering him a chop!" Bridget wept with real distress. +"Mrs. Houghton, please tell her we done our best; he just smelled his +chop—and died. You see, he hasn't eat a thing, without she gave it to +him, for—oh, more 'n a month!"</p> + +<p>Mary Houghton went into the library, where the fire was out, and the +dust on tables and chairs bore witness to the fact that Bridget had +devoted herself to Bingo; the room was gloomy, and smelled of soot. +Little Bingo lay, stiff and chill, on the sofa; on a plate beside him +was a chop rimmed in cold grease,—poor little, loving, jealous, old +Bingo! "I hope it won't upset Mrs. Curtis," Mrs. Houghton told the maid; +then gave directions about the stark little body. She found the letter +in Eleanor's desk, and went back to Mrs. Newbolt's. "Love," she thought, +"<i>is</i> as strong as death; stronger! Bingo—and Eleanor."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV" ></a>CHAPTER XXXV</h2> + + +<p>Maurice, followed by telegrams that never quite overtook him, did, some +forty-eight hours later, get the news that Eleanor had "had an +accident," and was at Mrs. Newbolt's, who thought he had "better return +immediately." His business was not quite finished, but it did not need +Mr. Weston's laconic wire, "Drop Greenleaf matters and come back," to +start him on the next train for Mercer. He had been away nearly two +weeks—two terrible weeks, of facing himself; two weeks of rebellion, +and submission; of tumultuous despair and quiet acceptance. He had +looked faithfully—and very shrewdly—into the "Greenleaf matters"; he +had turned one or two sharp corners, with entirely honest cleverness, +and he was taking back to Mercer some concessions which old Weston had +slipped up on! Yes, he had done a darned good job, he told himself, +lounging in the smoking compartment of one parlor car or another, or +strolling up and down station platforms for a breath of air. And all the +while that he was on the Greenleaf job—in Pullmans, sitting in hotel +lobbies writing letters, looking through title and probate records—his +own affairs raced and raged in his thoughts; they were summed up in one +word: "Edith." He could not get away from Edith! He tripped a Greenleaf +trustee into an admission (and he thought, "so long as she never +suspects that I love her, there's no harm in going along as we always +have"). Then he conceded a point to the Greenleaf interests (and said to +himself, "her hair on her shoulders that day on the lawn was like a +nimbus around the head of a saint. How she'd hate that word 'saint'!"). +His chuckle made one of the Greenleaf heirs think that Weston's +representative was a good sort;—"pleasant fellow!" But Maurice, +looking "pleasant," was thinking: "I'd about sell my soul to kiss her +hair ... Oh, I <i>must</i> stop this kind of thing! I swear it's worse than +the Lily and Jacky business...." Then he signed a deed, and the +Greenleaf people felt they had made a good thing of it—but Maurice's +telegram that the deed was signed, caused rejoicing in the Weston +office! "Curtis got ahead of 'em!" said Mr. Weston. While he was +writing that triumphant telegram Maurice was wondering: "Was John +Bennett a complete idiot? ... If things had been different would Edith +have ... cared?" For himself, he, personally, didn't care "a damn," +whether Weston got ahead of Greenleaf or Greenleaf beat Weston. His own +affairs engrossed him: "my job," he was telling himself, "is to see that +Eleanor doesn't suffer any more, poor girl! And Edith shall never know. +And I'll make a decent man of Jacky—not a fool, like his father." So he +wrote his victorious dispatch, and the Weston office congratulated +itself.</p> + +<p>Maurice had been very grateful for his fortnight of absence from +everybody, except the Greenleaf heirs; grateful for a solitude of trains +and lawyers' offices. Because, in solitude, he could, with entirely +hopeless courage, face the future. He was facing it unswervingly the day +he reached Chicago, where he was to get some final signatures; he came +into the warm lobby of the hotel, glad to escape the rampaging lake +wind, and while he was registering the hotel clerk produced the +telegrams which had been held for him. The first, from Mr. Weston, "Drop +Greenleaf," bewildered him until he read the other, "Eleanor has had an +accident." Then he ran his pen through his name, asked for a time-table, +and sent a peremptory wire to Mrs. Newbolt saying that he was on his way +home, and asking that full particulars be telegraphed to him at a +certain point on his journey. "Let me know just what happened, and how +she is," he telegraphed. "It must be serious," he thought, "to send for +me!"</p> + +<p>It was hardly an hour before he was on a train for another day of +travel, during which he experienced the irritation common to all of us +when we receive an alarming dispatch, devoid of details. "Economizing on +ten cents! What kind of an 'accident'? How serious is it? When was it? +Why didn't they let me know before?" and so on; all the futile, anxious, +angry questions which a man asks himself under such circumstances. But +suddenly, while he was asking these questions, another question +whispered in his mind; a question to which he would not listen, and +which he refused to answer; but again and again, over and over, it +repeated itself, coming, it seemed, on the rhythmical roll of the +wheels—the wheels which were taking him back to Eleanor! "If—if—if—" +the wheels hammered out; "<i>if</i> anything happens to Eleanor—"? He never +finished that sentence, but the beginning of it actually frightened him. +"Am I as low as this?" he said, frantically, "speculating on the +possibility of anything happening to her?" But he was not so low as +that—he only heard the jar of the wheels: "If—if—if—if—"</p> + +<p>When he reached the station to which he had told Mrs. Newbolt to reply, +he rushed out of the car into the telegraph office, and clutched at the +message before the operator could put it into its flimsy brown envelope; +as he read it he said under his breath, "Thank God!" It was from Mary +Houghton:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Accident slight. Slipped into water. All right now except bad cold.</p></div> + +<p>Maurice's hand shook as he folded the message and stuffed it into his +pocket. He had the sense of having escaped from a terror—the terror of +intolerable remorse. For if she had not been "all right," if, instead of +just "a bad cold," the dispatch had said "something had +happened"!—then, for all the rest of his life he would have had to +remember how the wheels had beaten out that terrible refrain: +"If—if—if—"</p> + +<p>So he said, "Thank God."</p> + +<p>All that day, while Maurice was hurrying back to Mercer, Eleanor lay +very still, and when Mrs. Newbolt or Mrs. Houghton came into the room +she closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. Edith did not come into +the room; so, in a hazy way, Eleanor took it for granted that she had +left the house. "I should think she would!" Eleanor thought; "she could +hardly have the face to stay in the same house with me." But she did not +think much about Edith; she was absorbed in deciding what she should say +to Maurice. Should she tell him the truth?—or some silly story of a +walk to their meadow? The two alternatives flew back and forth in her +mind like shuttlecocks. There was one thing she felt sure of: that +letter—which Mrs. Houghton had brought from her desk, which Maurice was +to have read when she had done what she set out to do, but which now she +kept clutched in her hand, or hidden under her pillow—<i>Maurice must not +see that letter!</i> If he read it, now, while she was (she told herself) +still half sick from those drenched hours of the trolley ride and the +dark wanderings from Mrs. O'Brien's to Mrs. Newbolt's, the whole thing +would seem simply ridiculous. Some time, he must know that she loved him +enough to buy Jacky for him, by dying—or trying to die! She would tell +him, <i>some time</i>; because her purpose (even if it had failed) would +measure the heights and depths of her love as nothing else could; but he +must not know it now, because she hadn't carried it out. That first +night, when she had found herself safe and warm (oh, warm! She had +thought she never would be warm any more!)—when she had found herself +in Mrs. Newbolt's spare room in the four-poster with its chintz hangings +and its great soft pillows, she had been glad she had not carried it +out. Glad not to be dead. As she lay there, shivering slowly into +delicious comfort, and fending off Mrs. Newbolt's distracted questions, +she had had occasional moments of a sense of danger escaped; perhaps it +<i>would</i> have been wrong to—to lie down there in the river? People call +it wicked Mrs. Newbolt, for a single suspicious instant ("She forgot it +right off," Eleanor said; "she just thought we'd quarreled!"); but Mrs. +Newbolt had said it was "wicked." "But I didn't do it!" Eleanor told +herself in a rush of gratitude. She hadn't been "wicked"! Instead, she +was in Mrs. Newbolt's spare room, looking dreamily at the old French +clock on the mantelpiece, whose tarnished gilt face glimmered between +two slender black-marble columns; sometimes she counted the tick-tock of +the slowly swinging pendulum; sometimes, toward dawn, she watched the +foggy yellow daylight peer between the red rep curtains; but counting, +and looking, and drowsing, she was glad to be alive. It was not until +the next afternoon that she began to be faintly mortified at being +alive. It was then that she had felt that she <i>must</i> get that +letter—Maurice mustn't see it! Little by little, humiliation at her +failure to be heroic, grew acute. Maurice wouldn't know that she loved +him enough to give him Jacky; he would just know that she was silly. She +had got wet; and had a cold in her head. Snuffles—not Death. He +might—<i>laugh</i>!... It was then that she implored Mrs. Houghton to get +the letter out of her desk.</p> + +<p>Yet when it was given to her she held it in her hand under the +bedclothes, saying to herself that she would not destroy it, yet, +because, even though she <i>had</i> failed, there might come a time when it +would prove to Maurice how much she loved him. She was so absorbed in +this thought that she did not grieve much for Bingo. "Poor little +Bingo," she said, vaguely, when Mrs. Houghton told her that the little +dog was dead; "he was so jealous." Now, with Maurice coming nearer every +hour, she could not think of Bingo; she was face to face with a +decision! What should she tell him about the "accident"?</p> + +<p>It was in the afternoon of the day that Maurice was to arrive,—he had +telegraphed that he would reach Mercer in the evening;—that she had a +sudden panic about Edith. "She was here that night and saw me. I know +she laughed at me because I hadn't any hat on! She may—suspect? If she +does, she'll tell him! What shall I do to stop her?" She couldn't think +of any way to stop her! She couldn't hold her thoughts steady enough to +reach a decision. First would come gladness of her own comfort and +safety, and the warm, warm bed; then shame, that she had faltered and +run away from a chance to do a great thing for Maurice; then terror that +Edith would make her ridiculous to Maurice. Then all these thoughts +would whirl about, run backward: First, terror of Edith! then shame! +then comfort! Suddenly the terror thought held fast with a question. +"Suppose I make her promise not to tell Maurice anything? I think she +would keep a promise...." It would be dreadful to ask the favor of +secrecy of Edith—just as she had asked the same sort of favor of +Lily—but to seem silly to Maurice would be more dreadful than to ask a +favor! She held to this purpose of humiliating self-protection, long +enough to ask Mrs. Houghton when Edith was coming down from Green Hill.</p> + +<p>"Why, she's here, now, in the house!" Edith's mother said.</p> + +<p>"<i>Here?</i>" Eleanor said, despairingly. If Edith was here, then Maurice, +when he came, would see her and she would tell him! "She would make a +funny story of it," Eleanor thought; "I know her! She would make him +laugh. I can't bear it! ... I would like to speak to Edith," she told +Mrs. Houghton, faintly.</p> + +<p>Edith, summoned by her mother, stood for a rigid moment outside +Eleanor's door, trying to get herself in hand. In these anxious days, +Edith's youth had been threatened by assailing waves of a remorse that +at times would have engulfed it altogether, but for that unflinching +reasonableness which made her the girl she was. "It may be," Edith had +said to herself; "it <i>may</i> be that what I said to her in the garden made +her so angry that she tried to kill herself; but why should it have made +her angry? I didn't injure her. Besides, she dragged it out of me! I +couldn't lie. She said, 'You love him.' I <i>would</i> not lie, and say I +didn't! But what harm did it do her?" So she reasoned; but reason did +not keep her from suffering. "Did <i>I</i> drive her to it?" Edith said, +over and over. So when her mother told her Eleanor wanted to speak to +her, she grew a little pale. When she entered Eleanor's room her heart +was beating so hard she felt smothered, but she was perfectly matter of +fact. "Anything I can do for you, Eleanor?" she said. She stood at the +foot of the bed, holding on to the carved bed post.</p> + +<p>Eleanor looked at her for a silent moment, then gathered herself +together. "Edith," she said (she was very hoarse and spoke with +difficulty), "I don't want to bother Maurice about—about my accident. +So I am going to ask you, please, not to refer to it to him. Not to tell +him anything about it. <i>Anything.</i> Promise me."</p> + +<p>"Of course I won't!" Edith said. As she spoke she forgot herself in pity +for the scared, haggard face. ("Oh, <i>was</i> it my fault?" she thought, +with a real pang.) And before she knew it her coldness was all gone and +she was at Eleanor's side; she sat down on the edge of the bed and +caught her hand impulsively. "Eleanor," she said, "I've been awfully +unhappy, for fear anything I said—that morning—troubled you? Of course +there was no sense in talking that way, for either of us. So please +forgive me! <i>Was</i> it what I said, that made you—that bothered you, I +mean? I'm so unhappy," Edith said, and caught her lip between her teeth +to keep it steady; her eyes were bright with tears. "Eleanor, truly I am +<i>nothing</i> to—to anybody. Nobody cares a copper for me! Do be kind to +me. Oh—I've been awfully unhappy; and I'm <i>so</i> glad you're better."</p> + +<p>Instantly the smoldering fire broke into flame: "I'm <i>not</i> better," +Eleanor said, "and you wouldn't be glad if I were."</p> + +<p>It was as if she struck her hand upon those generous young lips. Edith +sprang to her feet. "Eleanor!"</p> + +<p>Eleanor sat up in bed, her hands behind her, propping her up; her cheeks +were dully red, her eyes glowing. "All this talk about making me unhappy +means nothing at all. You have always made me unhappy. And as for +anybody's caring for you—they <i>don't</i>; you are quite right about that. +Quite right! And I want to tell you something else: If anything happens +to me, I <i>want</i> Maurice to marry again. But he won't marry you."</p> + +<p>"Eleanor," Edith said, "you wouldn't say such a thing, or think such a +thing, if you weren't sick. I'm sorry I came in. I'll go right away, +and—"</p> + +<p>"No," she said; "don't go away,"—her arms had begun to tremble with +strain of supporting her, she spoke in whispered gasps: "I am going to +speak," she said; "I prefer to speak. I want you to know that if I +die—"</p> + +<p>"You are not going to die! You are going to get well."</p> + +<p>"Will you <i>please</i> not keep interrupting? It is so hard for me to get my +breath. I want you to know that he will marry—that Dale woman. Because +it is right that he should. Because of the little boy. His little boy."</p> + +<p>Edith was dumb.</p> + +<p>"So you see, he can't marry <i>you</i>," Eleanor said, and fell back on her +pillows, her eyes half closed.</p> + +<p>There was a long silence, just the ticking of the Empire clock and the +faint snapping of the fire. Edith felt as if some iron hand had gripped +her throat. For a moment it was impossible for her to speak; then the +words came quietly: "Eleanor, I'm glad you told me this. You are going +to get well, and I'm glad, <i>glad</i> that you are! But I must tell you: If +anything had happened to you, I would have moved heaven and earth to +have kept Maurice from marrying that woman. Oh, Eleanor, how can you say +you love him, and yet plan such terrible unhappiness for him?"</p> + +<p>She turned and ran out of the room, up another flight of stairs to her +own bedroom. There she fell down on her bed and lay tense and rigid, her +face hidden in her hands. This, then, was what Maurice had meant? She +saw again the wood path, and the tall fern breaking under Maurice's +racquet; she saw the flecks of sunshine on the moss—she heard him say +he "hadn't played the game with Eleanor." Oh, he hadn't, he hadn't! Then +she thought of the Dale woman. The accident on the river. The stumble +at the gate and of Maurice's child in Lily's arms. "Oh, poor Eleanor! +poor Eleanor! ... All the same, she is wicked, to be so cruel to him. +She is taking her revenge. Jealousy has made her wicked. But, oh, I wish +I hadn't hurt her in the garden! But how <i>could</i> Maurice—that little, +common woman! How <i>could</i> he?" She shook with sobs: "Poor, poor +Eleanor ..."</p> + +<p>Eleanor, on her big bed, lay panting with anger and fright. "<i>Now</i> +she'll know I'm hiding something from him!" she thought; "I've put +myself in her power by having a secret with her; just as I put myself in +Lily's power by asking her not to tell Maurice I had been there. Well, +Edith is in <i>my</i> power!—because I've made her know he'll never care for +her. And she'll keep her word; she'll not tell him about the river."</p> + +<p>The relief of this was so great that she could almost forget her +humiliation; she gave herself up to thinking what she herself must do +to keep Maurice in ignorance. "Auntie will be sure to say something. But +he knows how silly she is. She thought we'd quarreled, and that I had +tried ... I might tell Maurice that? And he'll make fun of her, and won't +believe anything she says! I might say that I went out to—to see our +river, and slipped and got wet, and that Auntie thought we'd quarreled, +and that I had ... had tried to ... to—And he'll say, 'What a joke!' +But maybe he'll say, 'Why did you go out to Medfield so late?' And I'll +say, 'Oh, well, I got delayed.' ... Yes, that's the thing to do."</p> + +<p>So, around and around, her poor, frantic thoughts raced and trampled one +another. When Mrs. Newbolt interrupted them with a tray and some supper, +Eleanor, with eyes closed, motioned her away: "My head aches. I can't +eat anything. I'm going to try and get a little sleep."</p> + +<p>By and by, through sheer fatigue, she did drowse, and when the wheels of +Maurice's cab grated against the curb, she was asleep.</p> + +<p>Edith, upstairs in her own room, heard the front door close sharply. "I +<i>can't</i> see him!" she said; "I mustn't see him." But she wanted to see +him; she wanted to say to him: "Maurice, you can make it all up to +Eleanor! You can make her happy. <i>Don't</i> despair about it—we'll all +help you make it up to her!" She wanted to say: " Oh,Maurice, you <i>will</i> +conquer. I know you will!" If she could only see him and tell him these +things! "If I didn't love him, I could," she thought....</p> + +<p>Maurice came hurrying into the parlor, with the anxious, "How is she?" +on his lips; and Mrs. Newbolt and Mrs. Houghton were full of +reassurances, and suggestions of food, which he negatived promptly. +"Tell me about Eleanor! What happened?"</p> + +<p>"She's asleep," Mrs. Newbolt said. "You must have something to eat—" +She was in such a panic of uncertainty as to what must and must not be +said to Maurice that she clutched at supper as a perfectly safe topic. +"I—I—I'll go and see about your supper," said Mrs. Newbolt, and +trundled off to hide herself in the dining room.</p> + +<p>Mary Houghton could not hide, but she would have been glad to! "Eleanor +is sleepy, now, Maurice," she said; "but she'll want to have just a +glimpse of you—"</p> + +<p>"I'll go right up!"</p> + +<p>"Maurice, wait one minute. If I were you, I wouldn't get Eleanor to +talking, to-night; she's a little feverish—"</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Houghton!" he broke in, "Eleanor's all right, isn't she?" His face +was furrowed with alarm. (If that wicked rhythm of the wheels should +begin again!)</p> + +<p>"Oh yes; I—I think so. She hasn't quite got over the shock yet, but—"</p> + +<p>"What shock? Nobody's told me yet what it was! Your dispatch only said +she'd slipped into the water. What water?"</p> + +<p>"We don't really know," said Mrs. Houghton; "and she mustn't be worried +with questions, the doctor says. You see, she got dripping wet, somehow, +and then had a long trolley ride—and she had a cold to start with—"</p> + +<p>"I'll just crawl upstairs, and see if she's awake," said Maurice. "I +won't disturb her."</p> + +<p>As he started softly upstairs, Mrs. Newbolt opened the dining-room door +a crack, and peered in at Mary Houghton. "Did you tell him?" she said, +in a wheezing whisper.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Houghton shook her head.</p> + +<p>"Well, I can tell you who won't tell him," said Eleanor's aunt; "me! To +tell a man that his wife—"</p> + +<p>"Hush-sh!" said Mrs. Houghton; "he's coming downstairs. Besides, we +don't know that she did—"</p> + +<p>The dining-room door closed softly on the whispered words: "Puffect +nonsense. Of course we know."</p> + +<p>Maurice, tiptoeing into Eleanor's room, thought she was asleep, and was +backing out again, when she opened drowsy eyes and said, faintly, +"Hullo."</p> + +<p>He bent over to kiss her. "Well, you're a great girl, to cut up like +this when I'm away from home!"</p> + +<p>She smiled, closed her eyes, and he tiptoed out of the room....</p> + +<p>Back again in the parlor, he began, "Mrs. Houghton, for Heaven's sake, +tell me the whole thing!" He wasn't anxious now; as far as he could see, +Eleanor was "all right"—just sleepy. But what on earth—</p> + +<p>She told him what she knew; what she suspected, she kept to herself. But +she might as well have told it all. For, as he listened, his face +darkened with understanding.</p> + +<p>"The river? In Medfield? But, why—?"</p> + +<p>"Edith says you and she had a good deal of sentiment about the river, +and—"</p> + +<p>"At six o'clock, on a March evening?" said Maurice. He put his hands in +his pockets and began to walk up and down. Mrs. Houghton had nothing +more to say; the room was so silent that the dining-room door opened a +furtive crack—then closed quickly! Mrs. Houghton began to talk about +Maurice's journey, and Maurice asked whether Eleanor could be taken home +the next day—at which the dining-room door opened broadly, and Mrs. +Newbolt said:</p> + +<p>"If you ask <i>me</i>, I'd say 'no'! If you want to know what I think, I +think she's got a temperature! And she oughtn't to stir out of this +house till it's normal."</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Newbolt," said Maurice, pausing in his tramping up and down the +room; "why did Eleanor go out to Medfield?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps she was lookin' for a cook! I—I think I'll go to bed!" said +Mrs. Newbolt—and almost ran out of the room.</p> + +<p>Maurice looked down at Mrs. Houghton, and laughed, grimly: "You might as +well tell me?"</p> + +<p>"My dear fellow, we have nothing to tell! We don't know anything—except +that Eleanor has added to her cold, and is very nervous," She paused; +could she give him an idea of the extent of Eleanor's "nervousness," and +yet not tell him what they all felt sure of? "Why, Maurice," she said; +"just to show you how hysterical Eleanor is, she told me—" Mrs. +Houghton dropped her voice, and looked toward the dining-room door; but +Mrs. Newbolt's ponderous step made itself heard overhead. "She said—Oh, +Maurice, this is too foolish to repeat; but it just shows how Eleanor +loves you. She implied that she didn't want to get well, so that you +could—could get the little boy, by marrying his mother!"</p> + +<p>Maurice sat down and stared at her, open-mouthed. "<i>Marry?</i> I, marry +Lily?" He actually gasped under the impact of a perfectly new idea; then +he said, very softly, "Good God."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Houghton nodded. "Her one thought," she said (praying that, without +breaking her word to Eleanor, and betraying what was so terribly +Eleanor's own affair, she might make Maurice's heart so ready for the +pathos that he would not be repelled by the folly), "her one desire is +that you should have your little boy."</p> + +<p>Maurice walked over to the fireplace and kicked two charred pieces of +wood together between the fire irons. In the crash of Mary Houghton's +calm words, the rhythm of the wheels was permanently silenced.</p> + +<p>It was about four o'clock the next morning that the change came: Eleanor +had a violent chill.</p> + +<p>"I thought we were out of the woods," the doctor said, frowning; "but I +guess I was too previous. There's a spot in the left lung, Mr. Curtis."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXXVI" ></a>CHAPTER XXXVI</h2> + + +<p>When Maurice saw his wife the next morning, it was with Mrs. Houghton's +warning—emphasized by the presence of a nurse—that he must not excite +her. So he sat at her bedside and told her about his trip, and how he +had got ahead of the Greenleaf heirs, and how he rushed back to Mercer +the minute those dispatches came saying that she was ill—and he never +asked her why she was ill, or what took her out to the river in the cold +dusk of that March afternoon. She didn't try to tell him. She was very +warm and drowsy—and she held in her hand, under the bedclothes, that +letter which proved how much she loved him, and which, some time, when +she got well, she would show him. All that day the household outside her +closed door was very much upset; but Eleanor, in the big bed, was +perfectly placid. She lay mere watching the tarnished gilt pendulum +swing between the black pillars of the clock on the mantelpiece, +thinking—thinking. "You'll be all right to-morrow!" Maurice would say; +and she would smile silently and go on thinking. "When I get well," she +thought, "I will do—so and so." By and by, still with the letter +clutched in her hot hand, she began to say to herself, "<i>If</i> I get +well." She had ceased worrying over how she was going to explain the +"accident" to Maurice; that <i>"if"</i> left a door open into eternal +reticence. So, instead of worrying, she made plans for Jacky: "He must +see a dentist," she told Maurice. On the third day she stopped saying, +"<i>If</i> I get well," and thought, "When I die." She said it very +tranquilly, "When I die Maurice must get him a bicycle." She thought of +this happily, for dying meant that she had not failed. She would not be +ridiculous to Maurice—she would be his wife, giving him a child—a +son! So she lay with her eyes closed, thinking of the bicycle and many +little, pleasant things; and with the old, slipping inexactness of mind +she told herself that she had not "done anything wrong"; she had <i>not</i> +drowned herself! She had just caught a bad cold. But she would die, and +Maurice would love her for giving him Jacky. Toward evening, however, an +uneasy thought came to her: if Maurice knew that, to give him Jacky, she +had even tried to get drowned, it might distress him? She wished she +hadn't written the letter! It would hurt him to see it.... Well, but he +<i>needn't</i> see it! She held out the crumpled envelope. "Miss Ryan," she +said to the nurse, huskily, "please burn this."</p> + +<p>"Yes, indeed!" said Miss Ryan....</p> + +<p>There was a burst of flame in the fireplace, and the little, pitiful +letter, with its selfishness and pain and sacrifice, vanished—as Lily's +handkerchief had vanished, and the braided ring of blossoming grass—all +gone, as the sparks that fly upward. Nobody could ever know the scented +humiliation of the handkerchief, or the agony of the faded ring, or the +renouncing love which had written the poor foolish letter. Maurice +wouldn't be pained. As for her gift to him of Jacky, she would just tell +him she wanted him to marry Lily, so he could have his child.... And +Edith? Oh, he would never think of Edith!</p> + +<p>So she was very peaceful until, the next day, she heard Edith's voice +in the hall, then she frowned. "She's here! In the house with him! +Don't let her come in," she told Maurice; "she takes my breath." But, +somehow, she couldn't help thinking of Edith.... "That morning in the +garden she cried," Eleanor thought. It was strange to think of tears in +those clear, careless eyes. "I never supposed she <i>could</i> cry. I've +cried a good deal. Men don't like tears." And there had been tears in +Edith's eyes when she came in and sat on the bed and said she was +"unhappy...." "She believed," Eleanor meditated, her own eyes closed, +"that it was because of <i>her</i> that I went out to the river." She was +faintly sorry that Edith should reproach herself. "I didn't do it because +she made me angry; I did it to make Maurice happy. I almost wish she knew +that." Perhaps it was this vague regret that made her remember Edith's +assertion that she would do "anything on earth" to keep Maurice from +marrying Lily. "But that's the only way he can be sure of getting +Jacky," Eleanor argued to herself, her mind clearing into helpless +perplexity—"and it's the only way to keep him from Edith. But I wish +Lily wasn't so vulgar. Maurice won't like living with her." Suddenly she +said, "Maurice, do send the nurse out of the room. I want to tell you +something, darling." She was very hoarse.</p> + +<p>"Better not talk, dear," he said, anxiously.</p> + +<p>She smiled and shook her head. "I just want to tell you: I don't mind +not getting well, because then you'll marry Lily."</p> + +<p>"Eleanor! Don't—don't—"</p> + +<p>"And you can give little Jacky the kind of home he ought to have."</p> + +<p>She drowsed. Maurice sat beside her with his face buried in his hands. +When she awoke, at dusk, she lay peacefully watching the firelight +flickering on the ceiling, and, thinking—thinking. Then, into her +peace, broke again the memory of Edith's distress. "Perhaps I ought to +tell her that I went to the river for Maurice's sake? <i>Not</i> because I +was angry at her." She thought of Edith's tears, and said, "Poor +Edith—" And when she said that a strange thing happened: pity, like a +soft breath, blew out the vehement flame. It is always so; pity and +jealousy are never together....</p> + +<p>The next morning she remembered her words about Jacky—"the kind of home +he ought to have"—and again uneasiness as to the kind of "home" it +would be for Maurice rose in her mind. Her head whirled with worry. "It +won't be pleasant for him to live with her, even if she can cook. He +loves that chocolate cake; but he couldn't bear her grammar. Edith said +I was 'unkind' to him. Am I? I suppose she thought he'd be happier with +her? Would he? <i>She</i> can make that cake, too. Yes; he would be happier +with her than with Lily;—and Jacky would call her 'Mother,"' Then she +forgot Edith.</p> + +<p>After a while she said: "Maurice, can't I see Jacky? Go get him! And +give Lily the car fare."</p> + +<p>Maurice went downstairs and called Mrs. Houghton out of the parlor; in +the hall he said: "I think Eleanor's sort of mixed up. She is talking +about 'Lily's car fare'! What do you suppose she means? Is +she—delirious? And then she says she 'wants to see Jacky.' What must I +do?"</p> + +<p>"Go and get him," she said.</p> + +<p>For a bewildered minute he hesitated. If Mrs. Newbolt should see Jacky, +she ... would <i>know</i>! And Edith ... would she suspect? Still he +went—like a man in a dream. As he got off the car, a block from Lily's +door, a glimpse of the far-off end of the route where "Eleanor's meadow" +lay, made his purpose still more dreamlike. But he was abruptly direct +with Lily: he had come, he said, to tell her that his wife wanted—</p> + +<p>"My soul and body!" she broke in; "if she's sent you—" They were in the +dining room, Maurice so pale that Lily, in real alarm, had put her hand +on his arm and made him sit down. But she was angry. "Has she got on to +that again?"</p> + +<p>His questioning bewilderment brought her explanation.</p> + +<p>"She didn't tell you she'd been here? Well, I promised her I wouldn't +give her away to you, and I <i>wouldn't</i>,—but so long as she's sent you, +now, there's no harm, I guess, telling you?" So she told him. "What +possessed you to let on to her?" she ended. She was puzzled at his +folly, but she was sympathetic, too. "I suppose she ragged it out of +you?"</p> + +<p>Maurice had listened, silently, his elbow on his knee, his fist hard +against his mouth; he did not try to tell her why he had "let on"; he +could not say that he wanted to defend his son from such a mother; still +less could he make clear to her that Eleanor had not "ragged it out of +him," but that, to his famished passion for truth, confession had been +the Bread of Life. He looked at her once or twice as she talked; pretty, +yet; kindly, coarse, honest—and Eleanor had supposed that he would +marry her! Then, sharply, his mind pictured that scene: his wife, his +poor, frightened old Eleanor, pleading for the gift of Jacky! And +Lily—young, arrogant, kind.... The pain of it made his passion of pity +so like love that the tears stood in his eyes. "Oh, she <i>mustn't</i> die," +he thought; "I won't let her die!"</p> + +<p>When Lily had finished her story he told her his, very briefly: his +wife's forgiveness of his unfaithfulness; her desire to do all she could +for Jacky: "Help me—I mean help you—to make a man of him, because she +loves me. Heaven knows I'm not worthy of it."</p> + +<p>Lily gulped. "She ain't young; but, my God, she's some woman!" She threw +her apron over her face and cried hard; then stopped and wiped her eyes. +"She wants to see him, does she? Well, you bet she shall see him! I'll +get him; he's playing in at Mr. Dennett's—he's all on being an +undertaker now. Mr. Dennett's a Funeral Pomps Director. But he's got to +put on his new suit." She ran out on to the porch, and Maurice could +hear the colloquy across the fence: "You come in the house, quick!"</p> + +<p>"Won't. We're going to in-in-inter a hen."</p> + +<p>"Yes, you will! You're going to put on your new suit and go and see a +lady—"</p> + +<p>"Lady? Not on your life."</p> + +<p>"It's Mr. Curtis wants you—" Then Jacky's yell, "<i>Mr. Curtis?</i>" and a +dash up the back steps and into the dining room—then, silent, grimy +adoration!</p> + +<p>Maurice gave his orders. "Change your clothes, young man. I'll bring him +back, Lily, as soon as she's seen him."</p> + +<p>While he waited for the new suit Maurice walked up and down the little +room, round and round the table, where on a turkey-red cloth a hideous +hammered brass bowl held some lovely maidenhair ferns. The vision of +Eleanor abasing herself to Lily was unendurable. To drive it from his +mind, he went to the window and stood looking out through the fragrant +greenness of rose geraniums, into the squalid street where the offspring +of the Funeral Pomps Director were fighting over the dead hen; from the +bathroom came the sound of a sputtering gush from the hot-water faucet; +then splashes and whining protests, and maternal adjurations: "You got +to look decent! I <i>will</i> wash behind your ears. You're the worst boy on +the street!"</p> + +<p>"Eleanor tried to save him," he thought; "she came here, and begged for +him!"</p> + +<p>Above the bathroom noises came Lily's voice, sharp with efficiency, but +shaking with pity and a quick-hearted purpose of helping: "Say, Mr. +Curtis! Could she eat some fresh doughnuts? (Jacky, if you don't stand +still I'll give you a regular spanking! I <i>didn't</i> put soap in your +eyes!) If she can, I'll fry some for her to-morrow."</p> + +<p>Maurice, tramping back and forth, made no answer; he was saying to +himself, "If she'll just live, I will make her happy! Oh, she <i>must</i> +live!" It was then that, suddenly, agonizingly, in the midst of +splashings, and Jacky's whines, and Lily's anxiety about soap and +doughnuts, Maurice Curtis prayed ...</p> + +<p>He did not know it was prayer; it was just a cry: "Do something—oh, +<i>do</i> something! <i>Do you hear me?</i> She tried so hard to save Jacky. Make +her get well!" So it was that, in his selfless cry for happiness for +Eleanor, Maurice found all those differing realizations—Joy, and Law, +and Life, and Love—and lo! they were one—a personality! God. In his +frantic words he established a relationship with <i>Him</i>—not It, any +longer! "Please, please make her get well," he begged, humbly.</p> + +<p>At that moment, at the door of the dining room, appeared an immaculate +Jacky in his new suit, his face shining with bliss and soap. He came and +stood beside Maurice, waiting his monarch's orders, and listening, +without comprehension, to the conversation:</p> + +<p>"Nothing will be said to him that will ... give anything away. She just +wants to see him. His presence in the room—"</p> + +<p>Jacky gave a little leap. "Did you say <i>presents</i>!"</p> + +<p>"—his merely being there will please her. She loves him, Lily. You see, +she's always wanted children, and—we've never had any."</p> + +<p>Jacky's mother said, in a muffled voice, "My land!" Then she caught +Jacky in her arms and kissed him all over his face.</p> + +<p>"Aw, stop," said Jacky, greatly embarrassed; to have Mr. Curtis see him +being kissed, "like a kid!" was a cruel mortification. "Aw, let up," +said Jacky.</p> + +<p>When he and Mr. Curtis started in to town his eyes seemed to grow bluer, +and his face more beaming, and his voice, asking endless questions, more +joyous every minute. In the car he shoved up very close to Maurice, and +tried to think of something wonderful to tell him. By and by, breathing +loudly, he achieved: "Say, Mr. Curtis, our ash sifter got broke." Then +he shoved a little closer. Just before they reached Mrs. Newbolt's house +the haggard, unhappy father gave his son orders:</p> + +<p>"There is a lady who wants to see you, Jacky. She's my wife. Mrs. +Curtis. You are to be very polite to her, and kiss her—"</p> + +<p>"Kiss a lady!"</p> + +<p>"Yes. You'll do what I tell you! Understand?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," Jacky said, sniffling.</p> + +<p>"You are to tell her you love her; but you are not to speak unless you +are spoken to. Do you get on to that?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir. No, sir," poor Jacky said, dejectedly.</p> + +<p>It was Edith who, watching for Maurice from the parlor window, opened +the front door to him. She looked up into his eyes, then down into +Jacky's, who, at that moment, took the opportunity, sighing, to obey +orders; be reached up and gave a little peck at Edith's cheek.</p> + +<p>"I love you," he said, gloomily. "I done it," he told Maurice. "<i>He</i> +said I got to," he explained to Edith, resignedly, as she, startled but +pleased, took his little rough hand in hers.</p> + +<p>Just as she did so Mrs. Newbolt, coming downstairs, saw him and stopped +short in the middle of a sentence—the relationship between the man and +the child was unmistakable. When she got her breath she said, coldly: +"There's a change, Maurice. Better go right upstairs."</p> + +<p>He went, hurriedly, leading his little boy by the hand.</p> + +<p>"Well, upon my word!" said Mrs. Newbolt, looking after the small, +climbing figure in the new suit. "I wouldn't have believed such a thing +of Maurice Curtis—oh, my poor Eleanor!" she said, and burst out crying. +"I suppose she knows? Did she want to see the child? I always said she +was a puffect angel! But I don't wonder she—she got wet ..."</p> + +<p>Eleanor was very close to the River now, yet she smiled when Jacky's +shrinking lips touched her cheek.</p> + +<p>"Take her hand," Maurice told him, softly, and the little boy, silent +and frightened, obeyed; but he kept his eyes on his father.</p> + +<p>Eleanor, with long pauses, said: "Dear ... Jacky. Maurice, did you give +her ... five cents? He must have ... music lessons."</p> + +<p>"Yes, Star," he said, brokenly. "Jacky," he said, in a whisper, "say 'I +love you.'"</p> + +<p>But Jacky whispered back, anxiously, "But I said it to the other one?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Say it!</i>" his father said.</p> + +<p>"I love you," said Jacky, trembling.</p> + +<p>Eleanor smiled, slept for a moment, then opened her eyes. "He doesn't +look ... like <i>her</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Not in the least," Maurice said.</p> + +<p>Jacky, quailing, tried to draw his hand away from those cool fingers; +but a look from his father stopped him.</p> + +<p>"No," Eleanor murmured; "I see ... it won't do for"—Maurice bent close +to her lips, but he could not catch the next words—"for you to marry +her."</p> + +<p>After that she was silent for so long that Maurice led the little boy +out of the room. As he brought him into the parlor, Henry Houghton, who +had just come in, looked at the father and son, and felt astonishment +tingle in his veins like an electric shock. He gripped Maurice's hand, +silently, and gave Jacky's ear a friendly pull.</p> + +<p>"Edith," Maurice Said, "I would take him home, but I mustn't leave +Eleanor. Will you get one of the maids to put him on a Medfield car—"</p> + +<p>"I'll take him," Edith said.</p> + +<p>Maurice began to say, sharply, "<i>No!</i>" then he stopped; after all, why +not? "She must know the whole business by this time. Jacky's face gives +it all away." She might as well, he thought, know Jacky's mother, as she +knew his father.</p> + +<p>Jacky, in a little growling voice, said, "Don't want <i>nobody</i> to put me +on no car. I can—"</p> + +<p>"Be quiet, my boy," Maurice said, gently. He gave Edith Lily's address +and went back upstairs.</p> + +<p>Henry Houghton, watching and listening, felt his face twitch; then he +blew his nose loudly. "I'll look after him," he told Edith. "I—I'll +take him to—the person he lives with. It isn't suitable for a girl—"</p> + +<p>In spite of the gravity of the moment his girl laughed. "Father, you +<i>are</i> a lamb! No; I'll take him." Then she gave Jacky a cooky, which he +ate thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>"We have 'em nicer at our house," he said. On the corner, waiting for +the Medfield car, Edith offered a friendly hand, which he refused to +notice. The humiliation of being taken home, "by a woman!" was scorching +his little pride. He made up his mind that if them scab Dennett boys +seen him getting out of the car with a woman, he'd lick the tar out of +them! All the way to Maple Street he sat with his face glued to the +window, never speaking a word to the "woman." When the car stopped he +pushed out ahead of her and tore down the street. Happily no Dennett +boys saw him!—but he dashed past his mother, who was standing at the +gate, and disappeared in the house.</p> + +<p>Lily, bareheaded in the pale April sunshine, had been watching for him +rather anxiously. In deference to the occasion she had changed her +dress; a string of green-glass beads, encircling her plump white neck, +glimmered through the starched freshness of an incredibly frank blouse, +and her white duck skirt was spotless. Her whole little fat body was as +fresh and sweet as one of her own hyacinths, and her kind face had the +unchanging, unhuman youthfulness of flesh and blood which has never been +harried by the indwelling soul. But she was frowning. She had begun to +be nervous; Jacky had been away nearly two hours! "Are they playing a +gum game on me?" Lily thought; "Are they going to try and kidnap him?" +It was then that she caught sight of Jacky, tearing toward home, his +fierce blue eyes raking the street for any of them there Dennett boys, +who must have the tar licked out of 'em! Edith was following him, in +hurrying anxiety. Instantly Lily was reassured. "One of Mrs. Curtis's +lady friends, I suppose," she thought. "Well, it's up to me to keep her +guessing on Jacky!" She was very polite and simpering when, at the gate, +Edith said that Mr. Curtis asked her to bring Jacky home.</p> + +<p>"Won't you come in and be seated?" Lily urged, hospitably.</p> + +<p>Edith said no; she was sorry; but she must go right back; "Mrs. Curtis +is very ill, I am sorry to say."</p> + +<p>At this moment Jacky came out to the gate; he had two cookies in his +hand. He said, shyly: "Maw's is better 'an yours. You can have"—this +with a real effort—"the <i>big</i> one."</p> + +<p>Edith took the "big one," pleasantly, and said, "Yes, they are nicer +than ours, Jacky."</p> + +<p>But Lily was mortified. "The lady'll think you have no manners. Go on +back into the house!"</p> + +<p>"Won't," said Jacky, eating his cooky.</p> + +<p>His mother tried to cover his obstinacy with conversation: "He's crazy +about Mr. Curtis. Well, no wonder. Mr. Curtis was a great friend of my +husband's. Mr. Dale—his name was Augustus; I named Jacky after him; +Ernest Augustus. He died three years ago; no, I guess it was two—"</p> + +<p>"Huh?" said Jacky, interested, "You said my paw died—"</p> + +<p>Lily, with that desire to smack her son which every mother knows, cut +his puzzled arithmetic short. "Yes. Mr. Dale was a great clubman. In +Philadelphia. I believe that's where he and Mr. Curtis got to be chums. +But I never met <i>her</i>."</p> + +<p>Edith said, rigidly, "Really?"</p> + +<p>"Jacky's the image of Mr. Dale. He died of—of typhus fever. Mr. Curtis +was one of the pallbearers; that's how I got acquainted with him. Jacky +was six then," Lily ended, breathlessly. ("I guess <i>that's</i> fixed her," +she thought.)</p> + +<p>Edith only said again, "Really?" Then added, "Good afternoon," and +hurried away. So <i>this</i> was the woman Eleanor would make Maurice marry! +"Never!" Edith said. "Never! if <i>I</i> can prevent it!"</p> + +<p>Upstairs in Mrs. Newbolt's spare room, as the twilight thickened, there +was silence, except for the terrible breathing, and the clock ticking +away the seconds; one by one they fell—like beads slipping from a +string. Maurice sat holding Eleanor's hand. The others, speaking, +sometimes, without sound, or moving, noiselessly, stood before the meek +majesty of dying. Waiting. Waiting. It was not until midnight that she +opened her eyes again and looked at Maurice, very peacefully.</p> + +<p>"Tell Edith it wasn't what she said, made me try ... our river ... Jacky +will call her ... Tell Edith ... to be kind to Jacky."</p> + +<p>She did not speak again.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVII" ></a>CHAPTER XXXVII</h2> + + +<p>"I have an uneasy feeling," said Mr. Houghton, "that he is thinking of +marrying the woman, just to carry out Eleanor's wish. Poor Eleanor! +Always doing the wrong thing, with greatness." This was in September. +Maurice was to come up to Green Hill for a Sunday, and the Houghtons +were in the studio talking about the expected guest. Later Edith was to +drive over to the junction and meet him....</p> + +<p>It was not only Green Hill which talked about Maurice. In the months +that followed Eleanor's death, a good many people had pondered his +affairs, because, somehow, that visit of Jacky's to Mrs. Newbolt's +house, got noised abroad, so Maurice's friends (making the inevitable +deductions) told one another exactly what he ought to do.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Newbolt expressed herself in great detail: "I shall never forgive +him," she said; "my poor Eleanor! <i>She</i> forgave him, and sent for the +child. More than <i>I</i> would do for any man! But I could have told her +what to expect. In fact, I did. I always said if she wasn't +entertainin', she'd lose him. Yes; she had a hard time—but she kept her +figger. Should Maurice marry the—boy's mother? <i>'Course not!</i> Puffect +nonsense. You think he'll make up to Edith Houghton? She would have too +much self-respect to look at him! And if she did, her father would never +consent to it."</p> + +<p>The Mortons' opinion was just as definite: "I hope Maurice will marry +again; Edith's just the girl for him—<i>What!</i>" Mrs. Morton interrupted +herself, at a whisper of gossip, "he had a mistress? I don't believe a +word of it!"</p> + +<p>"But I'm afraid it's true," her husband told her, soberly; "there's a +boy." His wife's shocked face made him add: "I think Curtis will feel +he ought to legitimatize the youngster by marrying his mother. Maurice +is good stuff. He won't sidestep an obligation."</p> + +<p>"I never heard of such an awful idea!" said Mrs. Morton, dismayed. "I +hope he'll do nothing of the kind! You can't correct one mistake by +making another. Don't you agree with me?" she demanded of Doctor Nelson; +who displayed, of course, entire ignorance of Mr. Curtis's affairs.</p> + +<p>He only said, "Well, it's a rum world."</p> + +<p>Johnny Bennett, in Buenos Aires, reading a letter from his father, said: +"Poor Eleanor!" ... Then he grew a little pale under his tan, and added +something which showed his opinion—not, perhaps, of what Maurice +<i>ought</i> to do, but of what he would do! "I might as well make it a +three-years' contract," Johnny said, bleakly, "instead of one. Of course +there 11 be no use going back home. Eleanor's death settles <i>my</i> hash."</p> + +<p>Even Mrs. O'Brien, informed by kitchen leakage as to what had happened, +had something to say: "He ought to make an honest woman of the little +fellow's mother. But to think of him treating Miss Eleanor that way!"</p> + +<p>And now, in the studio, the Houghtons also were saying what Maurice +ought—and ought not!—to do: "I'm afraid he's thinking of marrying +her," Mr. Houghton had said; and his wife had said, quickly, "I hope +so—for the sake of his child!"</p> + +<p>"But, Mary," he protested, "look at it from the woman's point of view; +this 'Lily' would be wretched if she had to live Maurice's kind of +life!"</p> + +<p>Edith, standing with her back to her father and mother, staring down +into the ashes of the empty fireplace, said, over her shoulder, "Maurice +may marry somebody who will help him with Jacky—just as Eleanor would +have done, if she had lived."</p> + +<p>"My dear," her father said, quickly, "he has had enough of your sex to +last his lifetime! As a mere matter of taste, I think Maurice won't +marry anybody."</p> + +<p>"I don't see why, just because he—did wrong ten years ago," Edith +said, "he has got to sidestep happiness for the rest of his life! But as +for marrying that Mrs. Dale, it would be a cat-and-dog life."</p> + +<p>"Edith," said her father, "when you agree with me I am filled with +admiration for your intelligence! Your sex has, generally, mere +intuition—a nice, divine thing, and useful in its way. But indifferent +to logic. My sex has judgment; so when you, a female, display judgment, +I, as a parent, am gratified. 'Cat-and-dog life' is a mild way of +putting it;—a quarrelsome home is hell,—and hell is a poor place in +which to bring up a child! Mary, my darling, you can derail any train by +putting a big enough obstacle on the track; the fact that the obstacle +is pure gold, like your idealism, wouldn't prevent a domestic wreck—in +which Jacky would be the victim! But in regard to Maurice's marrying +anybody else"—he paused and looked at his daughter—"<i>that</i> seems to me +undesirable."</p> + +<p>Edith's face hardened. "I don't see why," she said; then added, +abruptly, "I must go and write some letters," and went quickly out of +the room.</p> + +<p>They looked after her, and then at each other.</p> + +<p>"You see?" Mary Houghton said; "she cares for him!"</p> + +<p>"I couldn't face it!" her husband said; "I couldn't have Edith in such a +mess. Morally speaking, of course he has a right to marry; but he can't +have my girl! Let him marry some other man's girl—and I'll give them my +blessing. He's a dear fellow—but he can't have our Edith."</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "If it were not for his duty to Jacky, I would be +glad to have Edith marry him. And as for saying that she 'can't,' these +are not the days, Henry, when fathers and mothers decide whom their +girls may marry."</p> + +<p>While his old friends were thus talking him over, Maurice was traveling +up to the mountains. He had seen Mr. and Mrs. Houghton in Mercer several +times since Eleanor's death, but he had not been able to face the +associations and recollections of Green Hill. This was largely because, +though his friends had, with such ease, reached decisions for him, he +was himself so absorbed in indecision that he could not go back to the +careless pleasantness of old intimacies, (As for that question of the +wheels,—"if—if—if anything happens to Eleanor?"—Eleanor herself had +answered it in one word: <i>Lily</i>.) So, since her death Maurice's whole +mind was intent on Jacky. What must he do fear him? His occasional +efforts to train the child had been met, more than once, by sharp +rebuffs. Whenever he went to see Jacky, Lily was perfectly good +humored—<i>unless</i> she felt she was being criticized; then the claws +showed through the fur!</p> + +<p>"You can give me money, if you want to, to send him to a swell school." +She said, once; "but I tell you, Mr. Curtis, right out, <i>I ain't going +to have you come in between me and Jacky by talking up things to him +that I don't care about.</i> All these religious frills about Truth! They +say nowadays hardly any rich people tell the truth. And talking grammar +to him! You set him against me," she, said, and her eyes filled with +angry tears.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't think of setting him against you," he said; "only, I want to +do my duty to him."</p> + +<p>"'Duty'!" said Lily, contemptuously; "I'm not going to bring him up +old-fashioned. And this thing of telling him not to say 'ain't,' <i>I</i> say +it, and what else would he say? There ain't any other word. He's my +child—and I'll bring him up the way I like! Wait; I'll give you some +fudge; I've just made it..."</p> + +<p>Maurice, now, on his way up to Green Hill, looking out of the car +window, and remembering interviews like this with his son's mother, +wondered if Edith had seen Lily the day she took Jacky home? That made +him wonder what Edith would think of the whole business? To a woman like +Edith it would be simply disgusting. "I'll just drop out of her life," +he said. He thought of the day he brought Jacky to Mrs. Newbolt's door, +and Edith had looked at him—and then at Jacky—and then at him again. +<i>She understood!</i> Would she understand now? Probably not. "Of course old +Johnny'll get her ... But, oh, what life might have been!"</p> + +<p>Edith had driven over to the junction earlier than was necessary, +because she had wanted to get away from her father and mother. "They are +afraid he'll fall in love with me," she thought, hotly; "if he ever +does, nothing they can say shall separate us. Nothing! But mother'll try +to influence him to marry that dreadful creature, and father will say +things about 'honor,' so he'll feel he ought never to marry—anybody. +Oh, they are lambs," she said, setting her teeth; "but they mustn't keep +Maurice from being happy!" At the station, as she sat in the buggy +flecking her whip idly, and waiting for Maurice's train, her whole mind +was on the defensive. "He has a right to be happy. He has a right to +marry again ... but they needn't worry about <i>me</i>!" she thought. "I've +never grown up to Maurice. But whatever happens, he shan't marry that +woman!"</p> + +<p>When Maurice got off the train there was a blank moment when she did not +recognize him. As a careworn man came up to her with an outstretched +hand and a friendly, "This is awfully nice in you, Skeezics!" she said, +with a gasp, "<i>Maurice!</i>" He had aged so that he looked, she thought, as +old as Eleanor. But they were both laboriously casual, until the usual +remarks upon the weather, and the change in the time-table, had been +exhausted.</p> + +<p>It was Edith who broke into reality—Maurice had taken the reins, and +they were jogging slowly along. "Maurice," she said, "how is Jacky?" His +start was so perceptible that she said, "You don't mind my asking?"</p> + +<p>"I don't mind anything you could say to me, Edith. I'm grateful to you +for asking."</p> + +<p>"I want to help you about him," she said.</p> + +<p>He put out his left hand and gripped hers. Then he said: "I'm going to +do my best for the little fellow. I've botched my own life, Edith;—of +course you know that? But he shan't botch his, if I can help it!"</p> + +<p>"I think you can help it," Edith said.</p> + +<p>His heart contracted; yet it was what he had expected. The idealism of +an absolutely pure woman. "Well," he said, heavily, "of course I've got +to do what I honestly think is the light thing."</p> + +<p>"Are you sure," she said, "that you know what the right thing is? You +mustn't make a mistake."</p> + +<p>"I may be said to have made my share," he told her, dryly.</p> + +<p>She did not answer that; she said, passionately, "Maurice, I'd give +anything in the world if I could help you!"</p> + +<p>"Don't talk that way," he commanded, harshly. "I'm human! So please +don't be kind to me, Edith; I can't stand it."</p> + +<p>Instantly her heart pounded in her throat: "He <i>cares</i>. Oh, they can't +separate us. But they'll try to." ... The rest of the drive was rather +silent. On the porch at Green Hill the two older friends were waiting to +welcome him. ("Don't let's leave them alone," Henry Houghton had said, +with a worried look; which made his wife, in spite of her own +uneasiness, smile, "Oh, Henry, you are an innocent creature!") After +dinner Mrs. Houghton, determinedly commonplace, came to the rescue of +what threatened to be a somewhat conscious occasion, by talking books +and music. Her husband may have been "innocent," but he did his part by +shoving a cigar box toward the "boy," and saying, "How's business? We +must talk Weston's offer over," he said.</p> + +<p>Maurice nodded, but got up and went to the piano; "Tough on you, +Skeezics," he said once, glancing at Edith.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't mind it, <i>much</i>," she said, drolly.</p> + +<p>So the evening trudged along in secure stupidity. Yet it was a straining +stupidity, and there was an inaudible sigh of relief from everybody +when, at last, Mary Houghton said, "Come, good people! It's time to go +to bed."</p> + +<p>"Yes, turn in, Maurice," said his host; "you look tired." Then he got +on his feet, and said good night with an alacrity which showed how much +he "wished he was asleep"! But he was not permitted to sleep. Maurice, +swinging round from the piano, said, with a rather rigid face:</p> + +<p>"Would you mind just waiting a minute and letting me tell you something +about myself, Uncle Henry?"</p> + +<p>"Of course not!" Mr. Houghton said, with great assumption of +cheerfulness. He went back to the sofa—furtively achieving a cigar as +he did so—and saying to himself, "Well, at least it will give me a +chance to let him see how I feel about his ever marrying again."</p> + +<p>Edith was standing by the piano, one hand resting on the keyboard and +drumming occasionally in disconnected octaves. ("If it's business," she +thought, "I'll leave them alone; but if they are going to 'advise' him, +I'll stay—and fight.")</p> + +<p>Maurice came and sat on the edge of the big table, his hands in his +pockets, and one foot swinging nervously. "I hope you dear people don't +think I'm an ungrateful cuss, not to have come to Green Hill this +summer; but the fact is, I've been awfully up against it, trying to make +up my mind about something."</p> + +<p>Henry Houghton looked at the fire end of his cigar with frowning +intentness and said yes, he supposed so. "Weston's offer seems to me +fair," he said (this referred to a partnership possibility, on which +Maurice had consulted him by letter); but his remark, now, was so +obviously a running to cover that, in spite of himself, Maurice grinned. +"Weston's a very square fellow," said Henry Houghton.</p> + +<p>"If you are going to talk 'offers,'" said Edith, "do you want me to +clear out?"</p> + +<p>"It isn't business," Maurice said, quietly; "it's my ... little son. No; +don't clear out, Edith. I'd rather talk to your mother and Uncle Henry +before you."</p> + +<p>"All right," said Edith, and struck some soft chords; but her young +mouth was hard.</p> + +<p>"Of course," Maurice said, "as things are now—I mean poor Eleanor +gone—I have thought a good deal of what I ought to do for Jacky. It was +Nelly's wish that I should do the straight thing for him. There wasn't +any question, I think, of the 'straight thing' for Lily—"</p> + +<p>"Of course not!" Mary Houghton agreed. And her husband said, "Any such +idea would be nonsense, Maurice."</p> + +<p>"And I myself don't count," Maurice went on.</p> + +<p>Again Mrs. Houghton agreed—very gravely: "Compared to the child, dear +Maurice, you don't."</p> + +<p>"You <i>do</i>!" Edith said; but nobody heard her.</p> + +<p>"So at first," Maurice said, "I kept thinking of how Eleanor had wanted +me to have him—legally, you know; wanted it so much that she—" there +was a silence in the studio; "that she was glad to die, to make it +possible." He paused, and Mary Houghton saw his cheek twitch. "Well, I +felt that clinched it. I felt I <i>must</i> carry out her wish, and ask Mrs. +Dale to—marry me."</p> + +<p>"Morbid," said Henry Houghton.</p> + +<p>Edith, listening, said nothing; but she was ready to spring!</p> + +<p>"Perhaps it was morbid," Maurice said; "but just at first it seemed that +way to me. Then I began to realize that what poor Nelly wanted, wasn't +to have me marry Lily—that was only a means to an end; she wanted Jacky +taken care of"; (Edith nodded.) "And she thought marrying his mother was +the best way to do that." (Edith shook her head.)</p> + +<p>"Well; I thought it all over ... I kept myself and my own feelings out +of it." Behind those laconic words lay the weeks of struggle, of which +even these good friends could have no idea! Weeks in which, while Mercer +was deciding what he ought to do, Maurice, "keeping himself out of it," +had put aside ambition and smothered taste, and thrown over, once for +all, personal happiness. As a wrestler strips from his body all +hampering things, so he had stripped from his mind every instinct which +might interfere with a straight answer to a straight question: "What +will be best for my boy?" He gave the answer now, in Henry Houghton's +studio, while Edith, over in the shadows, at the piano, looked at him. +Her face was quite pale.</p> + +<p>"So all I had to do," said Maurice, "was to think of Jacky's welfare. +That made it easier to decide. I find," he said, simply, "that you can +decide things pretty easily if you don't have to think of yourself. So I +said, 'If I marry Lily, though Jacky couldn't be taken away from me, +physically, spiritually'—you know what I mean, Mrs. Houghton?—'he +might be removed to—to the ends of the earth!' I might lose his +affection; and I've got to hold on to <i>that</i>, at any cost, because +that's how I can influence him." He was talking now entirely to Edith's +mother, and his voice was harsh with entreaty for understanding. He +didn't care very much whether Henry Houghton understood or not. And of +course Edith could never understand! But that this serene woman of the +stars should misjudge him was unbearable. "You see what I mean, Mrs. +Houghton, don't you? I know Lily;—and I know that if she thought I had +any <i>right</i> to say how he must be brought up, it would mean nothing but +perfectly hideous controversies all the time! So long as she thinks she +has the upper hand, she'll be generous; she doesn't mind his being fond +of me, you know. But she'd fight tooth and nail if she thought I had any +<i>rights</i>! You see that, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"I see it!" Edith said.</p> + +<p>"Yet from a merely material point of view," said Mrs. Houghton, "in +spite of 'controversies,' legitimacy would give Jacky advantages, +which—oh, Maurice, don't you see?—<i>your son</i> has a right to!"</p> + +<p>But her husband said, quickly, "Mary, living with a quarreling father +and mother is spiritual illegitimacy; and the disadvantages of that +would be worse than the material handicap of being a—a fatherless +child."</p> + +<p>His daughter flashed a passionately grateful look at him.</p> + +<p>Maurice, still speaking to Edith's mother, said: "That's the way I +looked at it, Mrs. Houghton. So it seemed to me that I could do more for +him if I didn't marry Lily."</p> + +<p>Mary Houghton was silent; it was very necessary to consider the stars.</p> + +<p>"I put myself out of it," Maurice said. "I just said, 'If it's best for +Jacky, I'll ask her to marry me,' My honest opinion was that it would be +bad for him."</p> + +<p>Edith struck two chords—and sat down on the piano stool, swallowing +hard.</p> + +<p>"You don't agree with me, I'm afraid, Mrs. Houghton?" he said, +anxiously.</p> + +<p>"My dear boy," she said, "I am sure you are doing what you believe to be +right. But it does not seem right to me."</p> + +<p>He flinched, but he was not shaken; "It isn't going to be easy, whatever +I do. I want to educate him, and see him constantly, and influence him +as much as possible. And Lily will be less jealous of me, in her own +house, than she would be in mine."</p> + +<p>Edith got up and came and sat on the arm of the sofa by her father. "I +can see," she said, "how much easier it would be for Maurice to do the +hard thing."</p> + +<p>Maurice looked at her with deep tenderness. "You <i>are</i> a satisfying +person!" he said.</p> + +<p>Henry Houghton took his girl's hand, and held it in a grip that hurt +her. "Maurice is right," he said; "things are <i>not</i> going to be easy for +him. For, though he won't marry Jacky's mother, he won't, I think, marry +anybody else."</p> + +<p>"Why won't he?" said Edith.</p> + +<p>"There is no <i>moral</i> reason why he shouldn't," her father conceded; "it +is a question of taste; one might perhaps call it a question of +honor"—Maurice whitened, but Henry Houghton went on, calmly, "Maurice +will, of necessity, be so involved with this woman—and God knows what +annoyances she may make for him, that—it distresses me to say so—but I +can see that he will not feel like asking any woman to share such a +burden as he has to carry."</p> + +<p>"If he loves any woman," Edith said, "let him ask her! If she turns him +down, it stamps her for a coward!"</p> + +<p>"Don't you think I'm right, Maurice?" her father said.</p> + +<p>"Yes," Maurice said. "You are right. I've faced that."</p> + +<p>Edith sprang to her feet, and stood looking at her father and mother, +her eyes stern with protecting passion. "It seems to me absurd," she +said,—"like standing up so straight you fall over backward!—for +Maurice to feel he can't marry—somebody else, just because he—he did +wrong, ever so many years ago! He's sorry, now. Aren't you sorry, +Maurice?" she said.</p> + +<p>His eyes stung;—the simplicity of the word was like a flower tossed +into the black depths of his repentance! "Yes, dear," he said, gently; +"I'm 'sorry.' But no amount of 'sorrow' can alter consequences, Edith."</p> + +<p>"Oh," she said, turning to the other two, "don't you want Maurice <i>ever</i> +to be happy?"</p> + +<p>"I want him to be good," said her mother.</p> + +<p>"I can't be happy, Edith," Maurice told her; "don't you see?"</p> + +<p>She looked straight in his eyes, her own eyes terror-stricken. ... They +would drive him away from her! "You <i>shall</i> be happy," she said.</p> + +<p>They saw only each other, now.</p> + +<p>"No," Maurice said; "it's just as your father says; I have no right to +drag any girl into the kind of life I've got to live. I'll have to see +Lily a good deal, so as to keep in with her—and be able to look after +Jacky. Personal happiness is all over for me."</p> + +<p>She caught at his arm; "It isn't! Maurice, don't listen to them!" Then +she turned and stood in front of him, as though to put her young breast +between him and that tender, menacing parental love. "Oh, mother—oh, +father! I <i>do</i> love you; I don't want to do anything you don't approve +of;—but Maurice comes first. If he asks me to marry him, I will."</p> + +<p>Under his breath Maurice said, "<i>Edith!</i>"</p> + +<p>"My darling," Henry Houghton said, "consider: people are bound to know +all about this. The publicity will be a very painful embarrassment—"</p> + +<p>Edith broke in, "As if that matters!"</p> + +<p>"But the serious thing," her father went on, "Is that this woman will be +a millstone around his neck—"</p> + +<p>"She shall be around my neck, too!" she said. There was a breathless +moment; then Truth, nobly naked, spoke: "Maurice, duty is the first +thing in the world;—not happiness. If you thought it was your duty to +marry Lily, I wouldn't say a word. You would never know that I cared. +Never! I'd just stand by, and help you. I'd live in the same house with +her, if it would help you! But—" her voice shook; "you <i>don't</i> think +it's your duty. You know it isn't! You know that it would make things +worse for Jacky,—not better, as Eleanor wanted them to be. So why +shouldn't you be happy? Oh, it's <i>artificial</i>, to refuse to be happy!" +Before he could speak, she added, quite simply, the sudden tears bright +in her eyes, "I know you love me."</p> + +<p>He looked at the father and mother: "You wouldn't have me lie to her, +would you?—even to save her from herself! ... Of course I love you, +Edith,—more than anything on earth,—but I have no right—"</p> + +<p>"You have a right," she said.</p> + +<p>"I <i>want</i> you," he said, "God knows, it would mean life to me! But—"</p> + +<p>"Then take me," she said.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Houghton came and put her arms around her girl and kissed her. +"Take her, Maurice," she said, quietly. Then she looked at her husband: +"Dear," she said, and smiled—a little mistily; "wisdom will not die +with us! The children must do what <i>they</i> think is right ... Even if it +is wrong." She had considered the stars.</p> + +<p>THE END</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vehement Flame +by Margaret Wade Campbell Deland + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VEHEMENT FLAME *** + +***** This file should be named 15927-h.htm or 15927-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/9/2/15927/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Vehement Flame + +Author: Margaret Wade Campbell Deland + +Release Date: May 28, 2005 [EBook #15927] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VEHEMENT FLAME *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + THE VEHEMENT FLAME + + A NOVEL + + BY MARGARET DELAND + + AUTHOR OF DR. LAVENDAR'S PEOPLE, OLD CHESTER TALES, ETC. + + 1922 + + + + +TO LORIN: + +Together, so many years ago--seven, I think, or eight--you and I planned +this story. The first chapters had the help of your criticism ... then, +I had to go on alone, urged by the memory of your interest. But all the +blunders are mine, not yours; and any merits are yours, not mine. That +it has been written, in these darkened years, has been because your +happy interest still helped me. + +MARGARET +_May 12th, 1922_ + + + + +THE VEHEMENT FLAME + + + + +CHAPTER I + +_Love is as strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals +thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame._ + +_THE SONG OF SOLOMON, VIII, 6._ + + +There is nothing in the world nobler, and lovelier, and more absurd, +than a boy's lovemaking. And the joyousness of it!... + +The boy of nineteen, Maurice Curtis, who on a certain June day lay in +the blossoming grass at his wife's feet and looked up into her dark +eyes, was embodied Joy! The joy of the warm earth, of the sunshine +glinting on the slipping ripples of the river and sifting through the +cream-white blossoms of the locust which reared its sheltering branches +over their heads; the joy of mating insects and birds, of the whole +exulting, creating universe!--the unselfconscious, irresponsible, wholly +beautiful Joy of passion which is without apprehension or humor. The +eyes of the woman who sat in the grass beside this very young man, +answered his eyes with Love. But it was a more human love than his, +because there was doubt in its exultation.... + +The boy took out his watch and looked at it. + +"We have been married," he said, "exactly fifty-four minutes." + +"I can't believe it!" she said. + +"If I love you like this after fifty-four minutes of married life, how +do you suppose I shall feel after fifty-four years of it?" He flung an +arm about her waist, and hid his face against her knee. "We are married," +he said, in a smothered voice. + +She bent over and kissed his thick hair, silently. At which he sat up +and looked at her with blue, eager eyes. + +"It just came over me! Oh, Eleanor, suppose I hadn't got you? You said +'No' six times. You certainly did behave very badly," he said, showing +his white teeth in a broad grin. + +"Some people win say I behaved very badly when I said 'Yes.'" + +"Tell 'em to go to thunder! What does Mrs. Maurice Curtis (doesn't that +sound pretty fine?) care for a lot of old cats? Don't we _know_ that we +are in heaven?" He caught her hand and crushed it against his mouth. "I +wish," he said, very low, "I almost wish I could die, now, here! At your +feet. It seems as if I couldn't live, I am so--" He stopped. So--what? +Words are ridiculously inadequate things!... "Happiness" wasn't the name +of that fire in his breast, Happiness? "Why, it's God," he said to +himself; "_God._" Aloud, he said, again, "We are married!" + +She did not speak--she was a creature of alluring silences--she just put +her hand in his. Suddenly she began to sing; there was a very noble +quality in the serene sweetness of her voice: + +"O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down + Through the clear windows of the morning, ten + Thine angel eyes upon our western isle, + Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!" + +That last word rose like a flight of wings into the blue air. Her +husband looked at her; for a compelling instant his eyes dredged the +depths of hers, so that all the joyous, frightened woman in her +retreated behind a flutter of laughter. + +"'O Spring!'" he repeated; "_we_ are Spring, Nelly--you and I.... I'll +never forget the first time I heard you sing that; snowing like blazes +it was,--do you remember? But I swear I felt this hot grass then in +Mrs. Newbolt's parlor, with all those awful bric-a-brac things around! +Yes," he said, putting his hand on a little sun-drenched bowlder jutting +from the earth beside him; "I felt this sun on my hand! And when you +came to 'O Spring!' I saw this sky--" He stopped, pulled three blades of +grass and began to braid them into a ring. "Lord!" he said, and his +voice was suddenly startled; "what a darned little thing can throw the +switches for a man! Because I didn't get by in Math. D and Ec 2, and had +to crawl out to Mercer to cram with old Bradley--I met you! Eleanor! +Isn't it wonderful? A little thing like that--just falling down in +mathematics--changed my whole life?" The wild gayety in his eyes +sobered. "I happened to come to Mercer--and, you are my wife." His +fingers, holding the little grassy ring, trembled; but the next instant +he threw himself back on the grass, and kicked up his heels in a +preposterous gesture of ecstasy. Then caught her hand, slipped the +braided ring over that plain circle of gold which had been on her finger +for fifty-four minutes, kissed it--and the palm of her hand--and said, +"You never can escape me! Eleanor, your voice played the deuce with me. +I rushed home and read every poem in my volume of Blake. Go on; give us +the rest." + +She smiled; + + ".... And let our winds +Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste +Thy morn and evening breath!..." + +"Oh--_stop_! I can't bear it," he said, huskily; and, turning on his +face, he kissed the grass, earth's "perfumed garment," snow-sprinkled +with locust blossoms.... + +But the moment of passion left him serious. "When I think of Mrs. +Newbolt," he said, "I could commit murder." In his own mind he was +saying, "I've rescued her!" + +"Auntie doesn't mean to be unkind," Eleanor explained, simply; "only, +she never understood me--Maurice! Be careful! There's a little +ant--don't step on it." + +She made him pause in his diatribe against Mrs. Newbolt and move his +heel while she pushed the ant aside with a clover blossom. Her anxious +gentleness made him laugh, but it seemed to him perfectly beautiful. +Then he went on about Mrs. Newbolt: + +"Of course she couldn't understand _you_! You might as well expect a +high-tempered cow to understand a violin solo." + +"How mad she'd be to be called a cow! Oh, Maurice, do you suppose she's +got my letter by this time? I left it on her bureau. She'll rage!" + +"Let her rage. Nothing can separate us now." + +Thus they dismissed Mrs. Newbolt, and the shock she was probably +experiencing at that very moment, while reading Eleanor's letter +announcing that, at thirty-nine, she was going to marry this very young +man. + +"No; nothing can part us," Eleanor said; "forever and ever." And again +they were silent--islanded in rippling tides of wind-blown grass, with +the warm fragrance of dropping locust blossoms infolding them, and in +their ears the endless murmur of the river. Then Eleanor said, suddenly: +"Maurice!--Mr. Houghton? What will _he_ do when he hears? He'll think an +'elopement' is dreadful." + +He chuckled. "Uncle Henry?--He isn't really my uncle, but I call him +that;--he won't rage. He'll just whistle. People of his age have to +whistle, to show they're alive. I have reason to believe," the cub said, +"that he 'whistled' when I flunked in my mid-years. Well, I felt sorry, +myself--on his account," Maurice said, with the serious and amiable +condescension of youth. "I hated to jar him. But--gosh! I'd have flunked +A B C's, for _this_. Nelly, I tell you heaven hasn't got anything on +this! As for Uncle Henry, I'll write him to-morrow that I had to get +married sort of in a hurry, because Mrs. Newbolt wanted to haul you off +to Europe. He'll understand. He's white. And he won't really mind--after +the first biff;--that will take him below the belt, I suppose, poor old +Uncle Henry! But after that, he'll adore you. He adores beauty." + +Her delight in his praise made her almost beautiful; but she protested +that he was a goose. Then she took the little grass ring from her finger +and slipped it into her pocketbook. "I'm going to keep it always," she +said. "How about Mrs. Houghton?" + +"She'll love you! She's a peach. And little Skeezics--" + +"Who is Skeezics?" + +"Edith. Their kid. Eleven years old. She paid me the compliment of +announcing, when she was seven, that she was going to marry me when she +grew up! But I believe, now, she has a crush on Sir Walter Raleigh. +She'll adore you, too." + +"I'm afraid of them all," she confessed; "they won't like--an +elopement." + +"They'll fall over themselves with joy to think I'm settled for life! +I'm afraid I've been a cussed nuisance to Uncle Henry," he said, +ruefully; "always doing fool things, you know,--I mean when I was a boy. +And he's been great, always. But I know he's been afraid I'd take a wild +flight in actresses." + +"'_Wild_' flight? What will he call--" She caught her breath. + +"He'll call it a 'wild flight in angels'!" he said. + +The word made her put a laughing and protesting hand (which he kissed) +over his lips. Then she said that she remembered Mr. Houghton: "I met +him a long time ago; when--when you were a little boy." + +"And yet here you are, 'Mrs. Maurice Curtis!' Isn't it supreme?" +he demanded. The moment was so beyond words that it made him +sophomoric--which was appropriate enough, even though his freshman year +had been halted by those examinations, which had so "jarred" his +guardian. "I'll be twenty in September," he said. Evidently the thought +of his increasing years gave him pleasure. That Eleanor's years were +also increasing did not occur to him; and no wonder, for, compared to +people like Mr. and Mrs. Houghton, Eleanor was young enough!--only +thirty-nine. It was back in the 'nineties that she had met her husband's +guardian, who, in those days, had been the owner of a cotton mill in +Mercer, but who now, instead of making money, cultivated potatoes (and +tried to paint). Eleanor knew the Houghtons when they were Mercer mill +folk, and, as she said, this charming youngster--living then in +Philadelphia--had been "a little boy"; now, here he was, her husband for +"fifty-four minutes." And she was almost forty, and he was nineteen. +That Henry Houghton, up on his mountain farm, pottering about in his +big, dusty studio, and delving among his potatoes, would whistle, was to +be expected. + +"But who cares?" Maurice said. "It isn't his funeral." + +"He'll think it's yours," she retorted, with a little laugh. She was not +much given to laughter. Her life had been singularly monotonous and, +having seen very little of the world, she had that self-distrust which +is afraid to laugh unless other people are laughing, too. She taught +singing at Fern Hill, a private school in Mercer's suburbs. She did not +care for the older pupils, but she was devoted to the very little girls. +She played wonderfully on the piano, and suffered from indigestion; her +face was at times almost beautiful; she had a round, full chin, and a +lovely red lower lip; her forehead was very white, with soft, dark hair +rippling away from it. Certainly, she had moments of beauty. She talked +very little; perhaps because she hadn't the chance to talk--living, as +she did, with an aunt who monopolized the conversation. She had no close +friends;--her shyness was so often mistaken for hauteur, that she did +not inspire friendship in women of her own age, and Mrs. Newbolt's +elderly acquaintances were merely condescending to her, and gave her +good advice; so it was a negative sort of life. Indeed, her sky terrier, +Bingo, and her laundress, Mrs. O'Brien, to whose crippled baby grandson +she was endlessly kind, knew her better than any of the people among +whom she lived. When Maurice Curtis, cramming in Mercer because Destiny +had broken his tutor's leg there, and presenting (with the bored +reluctance of a boy) a letter of introduction from his guardian to Mrs. +Newbolt--when Maurice met Mrs. Newbolt's niece, something happened. +Perhaps because he felt her starved longing for personal happiness, or +perhaps her obvious pleasure in listening, silently, to his eager talk, +touched his young vanity; whatever the reason was, the boy was +fascinated by her. He had ("cussing," as he had expressed it to himself) +accepted an invitation to dine with the "ancient dame" (again his +phrase!)--and behold the reward of merit:--the niece!--a gentle, +handsome woman, whose age never struck him, probably because her mind +was as immature as his own. Before dinner was over Eleanor's +silence--silence is very moving to youth, for who knows what it +hides?--and her deep, still eyes, lured him like a mystery. Then, after +dinner ("a darned good dinner," Maurice had conceded to himself) the +calm niece sang, and instantly he knew that it was Beauty which hid in +silence--and he was in love with her! He had dined with her on Tuesday, +called on Wednesday, proposed on Friday;--it was all quite like Solomon +Grundy! except that, although she had fallen in love with him almost as +instantly as he had fallen in love with her, she had, over and over +again, refused him. During the period of her refusals the boy's love +glowed like a furnace; it brought both power and maturity into his +fresh, ardent, sensitive face. He threw every thought to the +winds--except the thought of rescuing his princess from Mrs. Newbolt's +imprisoning bric-a-brac. As for his "cramming" the tutor into whose +hands Mr. Houghton had committed his ward's very defective trigonometry +and economics, Mr. Bradley, held in Mercer because of an annoying +accident, said to himself that his intentions were honest, but if Curtis +didn't turn up for three days running, he would utilize the time his +pupil was paying for by writing a paper on "The Fourth Dimension." + +Maurice was in some new dimension himself! Except "old Brad," he knew +almost no one in Mercer, so he had no confidant; and because his +passion was, perforce, inarticulate, his candid forehead gathered +wrinkles of positive suffering, which made him look as old as Eleanor, +who, dazed by the first very exciting thing that had ever happened to +her,--the experience of being adored (and adored by a boy, which is a +heady thing to a woman of her age!)--Eleanor was saying to herself a +dozen times a day: "I _mustn't_ say 'yes'! Oh, what _shall_ I do?" Then +suddenly there came a day when the rush of his passion decided what she +would do.... + +Her aunt had announced that she was going to Europe. "I'm goin' to take +you," Mrs. Newbolt said. "_I_ don't know what would become of you if I +left you alone! You are about as capable as a baby. That was a great +phrase of your dear uncle Thomas's--'capable as a baby,' I'm perfectly +sure the parlor ceilin' has got to be tinted this spring. When does your +school close? We'll go the minute it closes. You can board Bingo with +Mrs. O'Brien." + +Eleanor, deeply hurt, was tempted to retort with the announcement that +she needn't be "left alone"; she might get married! But she was silent; +she never knew what to say when assailed by the older woman's tongue. +She just wrote Maurice, helplessly, that she was going abroad. + +He was panic-stricken. Going abroad? Uncle Henry's ancient dame was a +she-devil, to carry her off! Then, in the midst of his anger, he +recognized his opportunity: "The hell-cat has done me a good turn, I do +believe! I'll get her! Bless the woman! I'll pay her passage myself, if +she'll only go and never come back!" + +It was on the heels of Mrs. Newbolt's candor about Eleanor's +"capableness" that he swept her resistance away. "You've _got_ to marry +me," he told her; "that's all there is to it." He put his hand in his +pocket and pulled out a marriage license. "I'll call for you to-morrow +at ten; we'll go to the mayor's office. I've got it all fixed up. So, +you see there's no getting out of it." + +"But," she protested, dazzled by the sheer, beautiful, impertinence of +it, "Maurice, I can't--I won't--I--" + +"You _will_," he said. "To-morrow's Saturday," he added, practically, +"and there's no school, so you're free." He rose.... "Better leave a +letter for your aunt. I'll be here at five minutes to ten. Be ready!" He +paused and looked hard at her; caught her roughly in his arms, kissed +her on her mouth, and walked out of the room. + +The mere violence of it lifted her into the Great Adventure! When he +commanded, "Be ready!" she, with a gasp, said, "Yes." + +Well; they had gone to the mayor's office, and been married; then they +had got on a car and ridden through Mercer's dingy outskirts to the end +of the route in Medfield, where, beyond suburban uglinesses, there were +glimpses of green fields. + +Once as the car rushed along, screeching around curves and banging over +switches, Eleanor said, "I've come out here four times a week for four +years, to Fern Hill." + +And Maurice said: "Well, _that's_ over! No more school-teaching for +you!" + +She smiled, then sighed. "I'll miss my little people," she said. + +But except for that they were silent. When they left the car, he led the +way across a meadow to the bank of the river; there they sat down under +the locust, and he kissed her, quietly; then, for a while, still dumb +with the wonder of themselves, they watched the sky, and the sailing +white clouds, and the river--flowing--flowing; and each other. + +"Fifty-four minutes," he had said.... + +So they sat there and planned for the endless future--the "fifty-four +years." + +"When we have our golden wedding," he said, "we shall come back here, +and sit under this tree--" He paused; he would be--let's see: nineteen, +plus fifty, makes sixty-nine. He did not go farther with his mental +arithmetic, and say thirty-nine plus fifty; he was thinking only of +himself, not of her. In fifty years he would be, he told himself, an old +man. + +And what would happen in all these fifty golden years? "You know, long +before that time, perhaps it won't be--just us?" he said. + +The color leaped to her face; she nodded, finding no words in which to +expand that joyous "perhaps," which touched the quick in her. Instantly +that sum in addition which he had not essayed in his own mind, became +unimportant in hers. What difference did the twenty severing years make, +after all? Her heart rose with a bound--she had a quick vision of a +little head against her bosom! But she could not put it into words. She +only challenged, him: + +"I am not clever like you. Do you think you can love a stupid person for +fifty years?" + +"For a thousand years!--but you're not stupid." + +She looked doubtful; then went on confessing: "Auntie says I'm a dummy, +because I don't talk very much. And I'm awfully timid. And she says I'm +jealous." + +"You don't talk because you're always thinking; that's one of the most +fascinating things about you, Eleanor,--you keep me wondering what on +earth you're thinking about. It's the mystery of you that gets me! And +if you're 'timid'--well, so long as you're not afraid of me, the more +scared you are, the better I like it. A man," said Maurice, "likes to +feel that he protects his--his wife." He paused and repeated the glowing +word ... "his wife!" For a moment he could not go on with their careless +talk; then he was practical again. That word "protect" was too robust +for sentimentality. "As for being jealous, that, about me, is a joke! +And if you were, it would only mean that you loved me--so I would be +flattered. I hope you'll be jealous! Eleanor, _promise_ me you'll be +jealous?" They both laughed; then he said: "I've made up my mind to one +thing. I won't go back to college." + +"Oh, Maurice!" + +He was very matter of fact. "I'm a married man; I'm going to support my +wife!" He ran his fingers through his thick blond hair in ridiculous +pantomime of terrified responsibility. "Yes, sir! I'm out for dollars. +Well, I'm glad I haven't any near relations to get on their ear, and try +and mind my business for me. Of course," he ruminated, "Bradley will +kick like a steer, when I tell him he's bounced! But that will be on +account of money. Oh, I'll pay him, all same," he said, largely. "Yes; +I'm going to get a job." His face sobered into serious happiness. "My +allowance won't provide bones for Bingo! So it's business for me." + +She looked a little frightened. "Oh, have I made you go to work?" She +had never asked him about money; she had plunged into matrimony without +the slightest knowledge of his income. + +"I'll chuck Bradley, and I'll chuck college," he announced, "I've got +to! Of course, ultimately, I'll have plenty of money. Mr. Houghton has +dry-nursed what father left me, and he has done mighty well with it; but +I can't touch it till I'm twenty-five--worse luck! Father had theories +about a fellow being kept down to brass tacks and earning his living, +before he inherited money another man had earned--that's the way he put +it. Queer idea. So, I must get a job. Uncle Henry'll help me. You may +bet on it that Mrs. Maurice Curtis shall not wash dishes, nor yet feed +the swine, but live on strawberries, sugar, and--What's the rest of it?" + +"I have a little money of my own," she said; "six hundred a year." + +"It will pay for your hairpins," he said, and put out his hand and +touched her hair--black, and very soft and wavy "but the strawberries +I shall provide." + +"I never thought about money," she confessed. + +"Of course not! Angels don't think about money." + + * * * * * + +"So they were married"; and in the meadow, fifty-four +minutes later, the sun and wind and moving shadows, and the +river--flowing--flowing--heralded the golden years, and ended +the saying: "_lived happy ever afterward_." + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +It was three days after the young husband, lying in the grass, his cheek +on his wife's hand, had made his careless prophecy about "whistling," +that Henry Houghton, jogging along in the sunshine toward Grafton for +the morning mail, slapped a rein down on Lion's fat back, and whistled, +placidly enough.... (But that was before he reached the post office.) +His wife, whose sweet and rosy bulk took up most of the space on the +seat, listened, smiling with content. When he was placid, she was +placid; when he wasn't, which happened now and then, she was an alertly +reasonable woman, defending him from himself, and wrenching from his +hand, with ironic gayety, or rallying seriousness, the dagger of his +discontent with what he called his "failure" in life--which was what +most people called his success--a business career, chosen because the +support of several inescapable blood relations was not compatible with +his own profession of painting. All his training and hope had been +centered upon art. The fact that, after renouncing it, an admirably +managed cotton mill provided bread and butter for sickly sisters and +wasteful brothers, to say nothing of his own modest prosperity, never +made up to him for the career of a struggling and probably unsuccessful +artist--which he might have had. He ran his cotton mill, and supported +all the family undesirables until, gradually, death and marriage took +the various millstones from around his neck; then he retired, as the +saying is--although it was really setting sail again for life--to his +studio (with a farmhouse attached) in the mountains. There had been a +year of passionate work and expectation--but his pictures were dead. "I +sold my birthright for a bale of cotton," he said, briefly. + +But he still stayed on the farm, and dreamed in his studio and tried +to teach his little, inartistic Edith to draw, and mourned. As for +business, he said, "Go to the devil!"--except as he looked after Maurice +Curtis's affairs; this because the boy's father had been his friend. But +it was the consciousness of the bartered birthright and the dead +pictures in his studio which kept him from "whistling" very often. +However, on this June morning, plodding along between blossoming fields, +climbing wooded hills, and clattering through dusky covered bridges, he +was not thinking of his pictures; so, naturally enough, he whistled; a +very different whistling from that which Maurice, lying in the grass +beside his wife of fifty-four minutes, had foreseen for him--when the +mail should be distributed! Once, just from sheer content, he stopped +his: + +"Did you ever ever ever + In your life life life +See the devil devil devil + Or his wife wife wife--" + +and turned and looked at his Mary. + +"Nice day, Kit?" he said; and she said, "Lovely!" Then she brushed her +elderly rosy cheek against his shabby coat and kissed it. They had been +married for thirty years, and she had held up his hands as he placed +upon the altar of a repugnant duty, the offering of a great +renunciation. She had hoped that the birth of their last, and only +living, child, Edith, would reconcile him to the material results of the +renunciation; but he was as indifferent to money for his girl as he had +been for himself.... So there they were, now, living rather carefully, +in an old stone farmhouse on one of the green foothills of the Allegheny +Mountains. The thing that came nearest to soothing the bruises on his +mind was the possibilities he saw in Maurice. + +"The inconsequence of the scamp amounts to genius!" he used to tell his +Mary with admiring displeasure at one or another of Maurice's scrapes. +"Heaven knows what he'll do before he gets to the top of Fool Hill, and +begins to run on the State Road! Look at this mid-year performance. He +ought to be kicked for flunking. He simply dropped everything except his +music! Apparently he _can't_ study. Even spelling is a matter of private +judgment with Maurice! Oh, of course, I know I ought to have scalped +him; his father would have scalped him. But somehow the scoundrel gets +round me! I suppose its because, though he is provoking, he is never +irritating. And he's as much of a fool as I was at his age! That keeps +me fair to him. Well, he has _stuff_ in him, that boy. He's as truthful +as Edith; an appalling tribute, I know--but you like it in a cub. And +there's no flapdoodle about him; and he never cried baby in his life. +And he has imagination and music and poetry! Edith is a nice little clod +compared to him." + +The affection of these two people for Maurice could hardly have been +greater if he had been their son. "Mother loves Maurice better 'an she +loves me," Edith used to reflect; "I guess it's because he never gets +muddy the way I do, and tracks dirt into the house. He wipes his feet." + +"What do you suppose," Mrs. Houghton said, remembering this summing up +of things, "Edith told me this morning that the reason I loved Maurice +more than I loved her--" + +"What!" + +"Yes; isn't she funny?--was because he 'wiped his feet when he came into +the house.'" + +Edith's father stopped whistling, and smiled: "That child is as +practical as a shuttle; but she hasn't a mean streak in her!" he said, +with satisfaction, and began to whistle again. "Nice girl," he said, +after a while; "but the most rationalizing youngster! I hope she'll get +foolish before she falls in love. Mary, one of these days, when she +grows up, perhaps she and Maurice--?" + +"Matchmaker!" she said, horrified; then objected: "Can't she +rationalize and fall in love too? I'm rather given to reason myself, +Henry." + +"Yes, honey; you are _now_; but you were as sweet a fool as anybody when +you fell in love, thank God." She laughed, and he said, resignedly, "I +suppose you'll have an hour's shopping to do? You have only one of the +vices of your sex, Mary, you have the 'shopping mind.' However, with all +thy faults I love thee still.... We'll go to the post office first; then +I can read my letters while you are colloguing with the storekeepers." + +Mrs. Houghton, looking at her list, agreed, and when he got out for the +mail she was still checking off people and purchases; it was only when +she had added one or two more errands that she suddenly awoke to the +fact that he was very slow in coming back with the letters. "Stupid!" +she thought, "opening your mail in the post office, instead of keeping +it to read while I'm shopping!"--but even as she reproached him, he came +out and climbed into the buggy, in very evident perturbation. + +"Where do you want to go?" he said; she, asking no questions (marvelous +woman!) told him. He said "G'tap!" angrily; Lion backed, and the wheel +screeched against the curb. "Oh, _g'on_!" he said. Lion switched his +tail, caught a rein under it, and trotted off. Mr. Houghton leaned over +the dashboard, swore softly, and gave the horse a slap with the rescued +rein. But the outburst loosened the dumb distress that had settled upon +him in the post office; he gave a despairing grunt: + +"Well! Maurice has come the final cropper." + +"Smith's next, dear," she said; "What is it, Henry?" + +"He's gone on the rocks (druggist Smith, or fish Smith?)" + +"Druggist. Has Maurice been drinking?" She could not keep the anxiety +out of her voice. + +"Drinking? He could be as drunk as a lord and I wouldn't--Whoa, +Lion!... Get me some shaving soap, Kit!" he called after her, as she +went into the shop. + +When she came back with her packages and got into the buggy, she said, +quietly, "Tell me, Henry." + +"He has simply done what I put him in the way of doing when I gave him a +letter of introduction to that Mrs. Newbolt, in Mercer." + +"Newbolt? I don't remember--" + +"Yes, you do. Pop eyes. Fat. Talked every minute, and everything she +said a _nonsequitur_. I used to wonder why her husband didn't choke her. +He was on our board. Died the year we came up here. Talked to death, +probably." + +"Oh yes. I remember her. Well?" + +"I thought she might make things pleasant for Maurice while he was +cramming. He doesn't know a soul in Mercer, and Bradley's game leg +wouldn't help out with sociability. So I gave him letters to two or +three people. Mrs. Newbolt was one of them. I hated her, because she +dropped her g's; but she had good food, and I thought she'd ask him +to dinner once in a while." + +"Well?" + +"_She did._ And he's married her niece." + +"What! Without your consent! I'm shocked that Mrs. Newbolt permitted--" + +"Probably her permission wasn't asked, any more than mine." + +"You mean an elopement? How outrageous in Maurice!" Mrs. Houghton said. + +Her husband agreed. "Abominable! Mary, do you mind if I smoke?" + +"Very much; but you'll do it all the same. I suppose the girl's a mere +child?" Then she quailed. "Henry!--she's respectable, isn't she? I +couldn't bear it, if--if she was some--dreadful person." + +He sheltered a sputtering match in his curving hand and lighted a cigar; +then he said, "Oh, I suppose she's respectable enough; but she's +certainly 'dreadful.' He says she's a music teacher. Probably caught him +that way. Music would lead Maurice by the nose. Confound that boy! And +his father trusted me." His face twitched with distress. "As for being a +'mere child,'--there; read his letter." + +She took it, fumbling about for her spectacles; halfway through, she +gave an exclamation of dismay. "'A few years older'?--she must be +_twenty_ years older!" + +"Good heavens, Mary!" + +"Well, perhaps not quite twenty, but--" + +Henry Houghton groaned. "I'll tell Bradley my opinion of him as a +coach." + +"My dear, Mr. Bradley couldn't have prevented it.... Yes; I remember her +perfectly. She came to tea with Mrs. Newbolt several times. Rather a +temperamental person, I thought." + +"'Temperamental'? May the Lord have mercy on him!" he said. "Yes, it +comes back to me. Dark eyes? Looked like one of Rossetti's women?" + +"Yes. Handsome, but a little stupid. She's proved _that_ by marrying +Maurice! Oh, what a fool!" Then she tried to console him: "But one of +the happiest marriages I ever knew, was between a man of thirty and a +much older woman." + +"But not between a boy of nineteen and a much older woman! The trouble +is not her age but his youth. Why didn't she adopt him?... I bet the +aunt's cussing, too." + +"Probably. Well, we've got to think what to do," Mary Houghton said. + +"Do? What do you mean? Get a divorce for him?" + +"He's just married; he doesn't want a divorce yet," she said, simply; +and her husband laughed, in spite of his consternation. + +"Oh, lord, I wish I was asleep! I've always been afraid he'd go +high-diddle-diddling off with some shady girl;--but I swear, that would +have been better than marrying his grandmother! Mary, what I can't +understand, is the woman. He's a child, almost; and vanity at having a +woman of forty fall in love with him explains him. And, besides, Maurice +is no Eurydice; music would lead him into hell, not out of it. It's the +other fool that puzzles me." + +His wife sighed; "If her mind keeps young, it won't matter so much about +her body." + +"My dear," he said, dryly, "human critters are human critters. In ten +years it will be an impossible situation." + +But again she contradicted him: "No! Unhappiness is possible; but _not_ +inevitable!" + +"Dear Goose, may a simple man ask how it is to be avoided?" + +"By unselfishness," she said; "no marriage ever went on the rocks where +both 'human critters' were unselfish! But I hope this poor, foolish +woman's mind will keep young. If it doesn't, well, Maurice will just +have to be tactful. If he is, it may not be so _very_ bad," she said, +with determined optimism. + +"Kit, when a man has to be 'tactful' with his wife, God help him!--or +a woman with her husband," he added in a sudden tender afterthought. +"We've never been 'tactful' with each other, Mary?" She smiled, and put +her cheek against his shoulder. "'Tactfulness' between a husband and +wife," said Henry Houghton, "is confession that their marriage is a +failure. You may tell 'em so, from me." + +"You may tell them yourself!" she retorted. "What are they going to live +on?" she pondered "Can his allowance be increased?" + +"It can't. You know his father's will. He won't get his money until he's +twenty-five." + +"He'll have to go to work," she said; "which means not going back to +college, I suppose?" + +"Yes," he said, grimly; "who would support his lady-love while he was in +college? And it means giving up his music," he added. + +"If he makes as much out of his renunciation as you have out of yours," +she said, calmly, "we may bless this poor woman yet." + +"Oh, you old humbug," he told her--but he smiled. + +Then she repeated to him an old, old formula for peace; "'Consider the +stars,' Henry, and young foolishness will seem very small. Maurice's +elopement won't upset the universe." + +They were both silent for a while; then Mary Houghton said, "I'll write +the invitation to them; but you must second it when you answer his +letter." + +"Invitation? What invitation?" + +"Why, to come and stay at Green Hill until you can find something for +him to do." + +"I'll be hanged if I invite her! I'll have nothing to do with her! +Maurice can come, of course; but he can't bring--" + +His wife laughed, and he, too, gave a reluctant chuckle. "I suppose I've +got to?" he groaned. + +"_Of course_, you've got to!" she said. + +The rest of the ride back to the old stone house among its great trees, +halfway up the mountain, was silent. Mrs. Houghton was thinking what +room she would give the bride and groom--for the little room Maurice had +had in all his vacations since he became her husband's ward was not +suitable. "Edith will have to let them have her room," she thought. She +knew she could count on Edith not to make a fuss. "It's such a comfort +that Edith has sense," she ruminated aloud. + +But her husband was silent; there was no more whistling for Henry +Houghton that day. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +Edith and her fourteen-year-old neighbor, Johnny Bennett, had climbed +into the old black-heart cherry tree--(Johnny always conceded that Edith +was a good climber--"for a girl.") But when they saw Lion, tugging up +the road, Edith, who was economical with social amenities, told her +guest to go home. "I don't want you any longer," she said; "father and +mother are coming!" And with that she rushed around to the stable door, +just in time to meet the returning travelers, and ask a dozen +questions--the first: + +"_Did_ you get a letter from Maurice?" + +But when her father threw the reins down on Lion's back, and said, +briefly, "Can't you unharness him yourself, Buster?" she stuck out her +tongue, opened her eyes wide, and said nothing except, "Yes, father." +Then she proceeded, with astonishing speed, to put Lion into his stall, +run the buggy into the carriage house, and slam the stable door, after +which she tore up to her mother's room. + +"Mother! Something has bothered father!" + +"Well, yes," Mrs. Houghton said; "a little. Maurice is married." + +Edith's lips fell apart; "Maurice? _Married_? Who to? Did she wear a +veil? I don't see why father minds." + +Mrs. Houghton, standing in front of her mirror, said, dryly: "There are +things more important than veils, when it comes to getting married. In +the first place, they eloped--" + +"Oh, how lovely! I am going to elope when I get married!" + +"I hope you won't have such bad taste. Of course they ought not to have +got married that way. But the thing that bothers your father, is that +the lady Maurice has married is--is older than he." + +"How much older?" Edith demanded; "a year?" + +"I don't just know. Probably twenty years older." + +Edith was silent, rapidly adding up nineteen and twenty; then she +gasped, "_Thirty-nine_!" + +"Well, about that; and father is sorry, because Maurice can't go back to +college. He will have to go into business." + +Edith saw no cause for regret in this. "Guess he's glad not to have to +learn things! But why weren't we invited to the wedding? I always meant +to be Maurice's bridesmaid." + +Mrs. Houghton said she didn't know. Edith was silent, for a whole +minute. Then she said, soberly: + +"I suppose father's sorry 'cause she'll die so soon, she's so old? And +then Maurice will feel awfully. Poor Maurice! Well, I'll live with him, +and comfort him." + +"My dear, I'm fifty!" Mrs. Houghton said, much amused. + +"Oh, well, _you_--" Edith demurred; "that's different. You're my mother, +and you--" She paused; "I never thought of you being old, or dying, +_ever_. And yet I suppose you are rather old?" She pondered. "I suppose +some day you'll die? Mother!--promise me you won't!" she said, +quaveringly. + +"Edith, don't be a goose!" Mrs. Houghton said, laughing--but she turned +and kissed the rosy, anxious face, "Maurice's wife isn't old at all. +She's quite young. It's only that he is so much younger." + +Edith lapsed into silence. She was very quiet for the rest of that +summer morning. Just before dinner she went across the west pasture to +Doctor Bennett's house, and, hailing Johnny, told him the news. His +indifference--for he only looked at her, with his mild, nearsighted +brown eyes, and said, "Huh?"--irritated her so that she would not +confide her dismay at Maurice's approaching widowerhood, but ran home +to a sympathetic kitchen: "Katy! Maurice got eloped!" + +Katy was much more satisfactory than Johnny; she said, "God save us! +Mr. Maurice eloped? Who with, then? Well, well!" But Edith was still +abstracted. Time, as related to life, had acquired significance. At +dinner she regarded her father with troubled eyes. He, too, was old, +like Maurice's wife. He, too, as well as the bride, and her mother, +would die, sometime. And she and Maurice would have such awful +grief!... Something tightened in her throat; "Please 'scuse me," she +said, in a muffled voice; and, slipping out of her chair, made a dash +for the back door, and ran as hard as she could to her chicken house. +The little place was hot, and smelled of feathers; through the windows, +cobwebbed and dusty, the sunshine fell dimly on the hard earth floor, and +on an empty plate or two and a rusty, overturned tin pan. Here, sitting +on a convenient box, she could think things out undisturbed: Maurice, and +his lovely, dying Bride; herself, orphaned and alone; Johnny Bennett, +indifferent to all this oncoming grief! Probably Maurice was worrying +about it all the time! How long would the Bride live? Suddenly she +remembered her mother's age, and had a revulsion of hope for Maurice. +Perhaps his wife would live to be as old as mother? "Why, I hadn't +thought of that! Well, then, she will live--let's see: thirty-nine from +fifty leaves eleven--yes; the Bride will live eleven years!" Why, that +wasn't so terrible, after all. "That's as long as I have been alive!" +Obviously it would not be necessary to take care of Maurice for quite a +good while. "I guess," she reflected, "I'll have some children by that +time. And maybe I'll be married, too, for Maurice won't need me for +eleven years. But I don't know what I'd do with my husband then?" She +frowned; a husband would be bothering, if she had to go and live with +Maurice. "Oh, well, probably my husband will be so old, he'll die about +the time Maurice's wife does." She had meant to marry Johnny. "But I +won't. He's too young. He's only three years older 'an me. He might live +too long. I must get an old husband. I'll tell Johnny about it +to-morrow. I'll wear mourning," she thought; "a long veil! It's so +interesting. But not over my face--you can't see through it, and it +isn't sense not to be able to see." (The test Edith applied to conduct +was always, "Is it sense?") "Of course I shall feel badly about my +husband; but I've got to take care of Maurice.... Yes; I must get an old +one," she thought. "I must get one as old as the Bride. If they'd only +waited, the Bride could have married my husband!" + +But this line of thought was too complicated; and, besides, she had +so entirely cheered up that she practically forgot death. She began to +count how much money her mother owed her for eggs--which reminded her to +look into the nests; and when, in spite of a clucking remonstrance, she +put her hand under a feathery breast and touched the hot smoothness of a +new-laid egg, she felt perfectly happy. "I guess I'll go and get some +floating-island," she thought. "Oh, I _hope_ they haven't eaten it all +up!" + +With the egg in her hand, she rushed back to the dining room, and was +reassured by the sight of the big glass dish, still all creamy yellow +and fluffy white. + +"Edith," Mrs. Houghton said, "you won't mind letting Maurice and Eleanor +have your room, will you, dear?" + +"Is her name 'Eleanor'? I think it's a perfectly beautiful name! No, +I'd love to give her my room! Mother, she won't be as old as you are for +eleven years, and that's as long as I have been alive. So I won't worry +about Maurice just yet. Mother, may I have two helpings? When are they +coming?" + +"They haven't been asked yet," her father said, grimly. "I'm not going +to concoct a letter, Mary, for a week. Let 'em worry! Maurice, confound +him!--has never worried in his life. Everything rolls off him like water +off a duck's back. It will do him good to chew nails for a while. I wish +I was asleep!" + +"Why, father!" Edith said, aghast; "I don't believe you _want_ the +Bride!" + +"You're a very intelligent young person," her father said, scratching +a match under the table and lighting a cigar. + +"But, my dear," his wife said, "has it occurred to you that it may be +as unpleasant for the Bride to come, as for you to have her? _Henry!_ +That's the third since breakfast!" + +"Wrong for once, Mrs. Houghton. It's the fourth." + +"_I_ want the Bride," said Edith. + +Her mother laughed. "Come along, honey," she said, putting her hand on +her husband's shoulder, "and tell me what to say to her." + +"Say she's a harpy, and tell her to go to the--" + +"Henry!" + +"My dear, like Mr. F.'s aunt, 'I hate a fool.' Oh, I'll tell you what +to say: Say, 'Mr. F.'s aunt will send her a wedding present.' That's +friendly, isn't it?" + +"Better not be too literary in public," his wife cautioned him, with a +significant glance at Edith, who was all ears. + +When, laughing, they left the table, their daughter scraping her plate, +pondered thus: "I suppose Mr. F. is the Bride's father. I wonder what +present his aunt will give her? I wonder what 'F' stands for--Frost? +Fuller? Father and mother don't want the Bride to come; and mother +thinks the Bride don't want to come. So why should they ask her to come? +And why should she come? I wouldn't," Edith said; "but I hope she will, +for I love her! And oh, I _hope_ she'll bring her harp! I've never seen +a harpy. But people are funny," Edith summed it up; "inviting people and +not wanting 'em; and visiting 'em and not wanting to. It ain't sense," +said Edith. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +In spite of his declaration of indifference to the feelings of his +guardian, the married boy was rapidly acquiring that capacity for +"worry" which Mr. Houghton desired to develop in him. _What would the +mail bring him from Green Hill?_ It brought nothing for a week--a week +in which he experienced certain bad moments which encouraged "worry" to +a degree that made his face distinctly older than on that morning under +the locust tree, when he had been married for fifty-four minutes. The +first of these educating moments came on Monday, when he went to see his +tutor, to say that he was--well, he was going to stop grinding. + +"What?" said Mr. Bradley, puzzled. + +"I'm going to chuck college, sir," Maurice said, and smiled broadly, +with the rollicking certainty of sympathy that a puppy shows when +approaching an elderly mastiff. + +"Chuck college! What's the matter?" the mastiff said, putting +a protecting hand over his helpless leg, for Maurice's +restlessness--tramping about, his hands in his pockets--was a menace +to the plastered member. + +"I'm going into business," the youngster said; "I--Well; I've got +married, and--" + +"_What!_" + +"--so, of course, I've got to go to work." + +"See here, what are you talking about?" + +The uneasy color sprang into Maurice's face, he stood still, and the +grin disappeared. When he said explicitly what he was "talking about," +Mr. Bradley's angry consternation was like the unexpected snap of the +old dog; it made Eleanor's husband feel like the puppy. "I ought to have +rounded him up," Mr. Bradley was saying to himself; "Houghton will hold +me responsible!" And even while making unpleasant remarks to the +bridegroom, he was composing, in his mind, a letter to Mr. Houghton +about the helplessness incidental to a broken leg, which accounted for +his failure in "rounding up." "_I_ couldn't get on to his trail!" he was +exonerating himself. + +When Maurice retreated, looking like a schoolboy, it took him +a perceptible time to regain his sense of age and pride and +responsibility. He rushed back to the hotel--where he had plunged into +the extravagance of the "bridal suite,"--to pour out his hurt feelings +to Eleanor, and while she looked at him in one of her lovely silences he +railed at Bradley, and said the trouble with him was that he was sore +about money! "He needn't worry! I'll pay him," Maurice said, largely. +And then forgot Bradley in the rapture of kissing Eleanor's hand. "As +if we cared for his opinion!" he said. + +"We don't care!" she said, joyously. Her misgivings had vanished like +dew in the hot sun. Old Mrs. O'Brien had done her part in dissipating +them. While Maurice was bearding his tutor, Eleanor had gone across +town to her laundress's, to ask if Mrs. O'Brien would take Bingo as a +boarder--. "I can't have him at the hotel," she explained, and then +told the great news:--"I'm going to live there, because I--I'm +married,"--upon which she was kissed, and blessed, and wept over! "The +gentleman is a little younger than I am," she confessed, smiling; and +Mrs. O'Brien said: + +"An' what difference does that make? He'll only be lovin' ye hotter than +an old fellow with the life all gone out o' him!" + +Eleanor said, laughing, "Yes, that's true!" and cuddled the baby +grandson's head against her breast. + +"You'll be happy as a queen!" said Mrs. O'Brien; and "in a year from +now you'll have something better to take care of than Bingo--_he'll_ be +jealous!" + +But she hardly heeded Mrs. O'Brien and her joyful prophecy of Bingo's +approaching jealousy; having taken the dive, she had risen into the +light and air, and now she forgot the questioning depths! She was on the +crest of contented achievement. She even laughed to think that she had +ever hesitated about marrying Maurice. Absurd! As if the few years +between them were of the slightest consequence! Mrs. O'Brien was +right.... So she smoothed over Maurice's first bad moment with an +indifference as to Mr. Bradley's opinion which was most reassuring to +him. (Yet once in a while she thought of Mr. Houghton, and bit her lip.) + +The next bad moment neither she nor Maurice could dismiss so easily; it +came in the interview with her astounded aunt, whose chief concern (when +she read the letter which Eleanor had left on her pincushion) was lest +the Houghtons would think she had inveigled the boy into marrying her +niece. To prove that she had not, Mrs. Newbolt told the bride and groom +that she would have nothing more to do with Eleanor! It was when the +fifty-four minutes had lengthened into three days that they had gone, +after supper, to see her. Eleanor, supremely satisfied, with no doubts, +now about the wisdom of what she had done, was nervous only as to the +effect of her aunt's temper upon Maurice; and he, full of a bravado of +indifference which confessed the nervousness it denied, was anxious only +as to the effect of the inevitable reproaches upon Eleanor. Their five +horrid minutes of waiting in the parlor for Mrs. Newbolt's ponderous +step on the stairs, was broken by Bingo's dashing, with ear-piercing +barks, into the room: Eleanor took him on her knee, and Maurice, giving +the little black nose a kindly squeeze, looked around in pantomimic +horror of the obese upholstery, and Rogers groups on the tops of +bookcases full of expensively bound and unread classics. + +"How have you stood it?" he said to his wife; adding, under his breath, +"If she's nasty to you, I'll wring her neck!" + +She was very nasty. "I'm not a party to it," Mrs. Newbolt said; she sat, +panting, on a deeply cushioned sofa, and her wheezy voice came through +quivering double chins; her protruding pale eyes snapped with anger. "I +shall tell you exactly what I think of you, Eleanor, for, as my dear +mother used to say, if I have a virtue it is candor; I think you are a +puffect fool. As for Mr. Curtis, I no more thought of protectin' him +than I would think of protectin' a baby in a perambulator from its +nursemaid! Bingo was sick at his stomach this mornin'. You've ruined +the boy's life." Eleanor cringed, but Maurice was quite steady: + +"We will not discuss it, if you please. I will merely say that I dragged +Eleanor into it; I _made_ her marry me. She refused me repeatedly. Come, +Eleanor." + +He rose, but Mrs. Newbolt, getting heavily on to her small feet, and +talking all the time, walked over to the doorway and blocked their +retreat. "You needn't think I'll do anything for you!" she said to her +niece; "I shall write to Mr. Houghton and tell him so. I shall tell him +he isn't any more disgusted with this business than I am. And you can +take Bingo with you!" + +"I came to get him," Eleanor said, faintly. + +"Come, Eleanor," Maurice said; and Mrs. Newbolt, puffing and talking, +had to make way for them. As they went out of the door she called, +angrily: + +"Here! Stop! I want to give Bingo a chocolate drop!" + +They didn't stop. In the street on the way to Bingo's new home, Eleanor, +holding her little dog in her arms, was blind with tears, but Maurice +effervesced into extravagant ridicule. His opinion of Mrs. Newbolt, her +parlor, her ponderosity, and her missing g's, exhausted his vocabulary +of opprobrious adjectives; but Eleanor was silent, just putting up a +furtive handkerchief to wipe her eyes. It was dark, and he drew her hand +through his arm and patted it. + +"Don't worry, Star. Uncle Henry is white! She can write to him all she +wants to! I'm betting that we'll get an invitation to come right up to +Green Hill." + +She said nothing, but he knew she was trembling. As they entered Mrs. +O'Brien's alley, they paused where it was dark enough, halfway between +gaslights, for a man to put his arm around his wife's waist and kiss +her. (Bingo growled.) + +"Eleanor! I've a great mind to go back to that hell-cat, and tell her +what I think of her!" + +"No. Very likely she's right. I--I have injured you. Oh, Maurice, if I +_have_--" + +"You'd have injured me a damn sight more if you hadn't married me!" he +said. + +But for the moment her certainty that her marriage was a glorious and +perfect thing, collapsed; her voice was a broken whisper: + +"If I've spoiled your life--she says I have;--I'll ... kill myself, +Maurice." She spoke with a sort of heavy calmness, that made a small, +cold thrill run down his back; he burst into passionate protest: + +"All I am, or ever can be, will be because you love me! Darling, when +you say things like--like what you said, I feel as if you didn't love +me--" + +Of course the reproach tautened her courage; "I do! I do! But--" + +"Then never say such a wicked, cruel thing again!" + +It was when Bingo had been left with Mrs. O'Brien that, on their way +back to the hotel, Maurice, in a burst of enthusiasm, invited his third +bad moment: "I am going to have a rattling old dinner party to celebrate +your escape from the hag! How about Saturday night?" + +She protested that he was awfully extravagant; but she cheered up. After +all, what difference did it make what a person like Auntie thought! "But +who will you ask?" she said. "I suppose you don't know any men here? And +I don't, either." + +He admitted that he had only two or three acquaintances in Mercer--"but +I have a lot in Philadelphia. You shan't live on a desert island, +Nelly!" + +"Ah, but I'd like to--_with you_! I don't want anyone but you, in the +world," she said, softly. + +He thrilled at the wonder of that: she would be contented, _with +him_,--on a desert island! Oh, if he could only always be enough for +her! He vowed to himself, in sudden boyish solemnity, that he _would_ +always be enough for her. Aloud, he said he thought he could scratch up +two or three fellows. + +Then Eleanor's apprehension spoke: "What _will_ Mr. Houghton say?" + +"Oh, he's all right," Maurice said, resolutely hiding his own +apprehension. He could hide it, but he could not forget it. Even while +arranging for his dinner party, and plunging into the expense of a +private dining room, he was thinking, of his guardian; "Will he kick?" +Aloud he said, "I've asked three fellows, and you ask three girls." + +"I don't know many girls," she said, anxiously. + +"How about that girl you spoke to on the street yesterday? (If Uncle +Henry could only see her, he'd be crazy about her!)" + +"Rose Ellis? Well, yes; but she's rather young." + +"Oh, that's all right," Maurice assured her. "(I wish I hadn't told him +she is older than I am. Trouble with me is, I always plunk out the +truth!) The fellows like 'em young," he said. Then he told her who the +fellows were: "I don't know 'em very well; they're just boys; not in +college. Younger than I am, except Tom Morton. Mort's twenty, and the +brainiest man I know. And Hastings has a bag of jokes--well, not just +for ladies," said Maurice, grinning, "and you'll like Dave Brown. You +rake in three girls. We'll have a stunning spread, and then go to the +theater." He caught her in his arms and romped around the room with her, +then dropped her into a chair, and watched her wiping away tears of +helpless laughter. + +"Yes--I'll rake in the girls!" she gasped. + +She wasn't very successful in her invitations. "I asked Rose, but I +had to ask her mother, too," she said; "and one of the teachers at the +Medfield school." + +Maurice looked doubtful. Rose was all right; but the other two? "Aren't +they somewhat faded flowers?" + +"They're about my age," Eleanor teased him. As for Maurice, he thought +that it didn't really matter about the ladies, faded or not; they were +Eleanor's end of the shindy. "Spring chickens are Mort's meat," he +said... + +The three rather recent acquaintances who were Maurice's end of the +shindy, had all gaped, and then howled, when told that the dinner was +to celebrate his marriage. "I got spliced kind of in a hurry," he +explained; "so I couldn't have any bachelor blow-out; but my--my--my +wife, Mrs. Curtis, I mean--and I, thought we'd have a spree, to show +I am an old married man." + +The fellows, after the first amazement, fell on him with all kinds of +ragging: Who was she? Was she out of baby clothes? Would she come in a +perambulator? + +"Shut up!" said the bridegroom, hilariously. He went home to Eleanor +tingling with pride. "I want you to be perfectly stunning, Star! Of +course you always are; but rig up in your best duds! I'm going to make +those fellows cross-eyed with envy. I wonder if you could sing, just +once, after dinner? I want them to hear you! (Mr. Houghton will love her +voice!)" + +Eleanor--who had stopped counting the minutes of married life now, for, +this being the sixth day of bliss, the arithmetic was too much for +her--was as excited about the dinner as he was. Yet, like him, under the +excitement, was a little tremor: "They will be angry because--because we +eloped!" Any other reason for anger she would not formulate. Sometimes +her anxiety was audible: "Do you suppose Auntie has written to Mr. +Houghton?" And again: "What _will_ he say?" Maurice always replied, with +exuberant indifference, that he didn't know, and he didn't care! + +"_I_ care, if he is horrid to you!" Eleanor said "He'll probably say it +was wicked to elope?" + +Mr. Houghton continued to say nothing; and the "care" Maurice denied, +dogged all his busy interest in his dinner--for which he had made the +plans, as Eleanor, until the term ended, was obliged to go out to +Medfield to give her music lessons; besides, "planning" was not her +forte! But in the thrill of excitement about the dinner and in the +mounting adventure of being happy, she was able to forget her fear that +Mr. Houghton might be "horrid" to Maurice. If the Houghtons didn't like +an elopement, it would mean that they had no romance in them! She was +absorbed in her ardent innocent purpose of "impressing" Maurice's +friends, not from vanity, but because she wanted to please him. As she +dressed that evening, all her self-distrust vanished, and she smiled at +herself in the mirror for sheer delight, for his sake, in her dark, +shining eyes, and the red loveliness of her full lip. In this wholly new +experience of feeling, not only happy, but important,--she forgot Mrs. +Newbolt, sailing angrily for Europe that very day, and was not even +anxious about the Houghtons! After all, what difference did it make what +such people thought of elopements? "Fuddy-duddies!" she said to herself, +using Maurice's slang with an eager sense of being just as young as he +was. + +When the guests arrived and they all filed into the private and very +expensive dining room, Eleanor looked indeed quite "stunning"; her +shyness did not seem shyness, but only a sort of proud beauty of +silence, which might cover Heaven knows what deeps of passion and of +knowledge! Little Rose was glowing and simpering, and the two older +ladies were giving each other significant glances. Maurice's "fellows," +shepherded by their host, shambled speechlessly along in the background. +The instant that they saw the bride they had fallen into dumbness. Brown +said, under his breath to Hastings, "Gosh!" And Hastings gave Morton a +thrust in the ribs, which Morton's dignity refused to notice; later, +when he was at Eleanor's right, the flattery of her eagerly attentive +silence instantly won him. Maurice had so expatiated to her upon +Morton's brains, that she was really in awe of him--of which, of course, +Morton was quite aware! It was so exhilarating to his twenty years that +he gave his host a look of admiring congratulation--and Maurice's pride +rose high!--then fell; for, somehow, his dinner wouldn't "go"! He +watched the younger men turn frankly rude shoulders to the older ladies, +who did their best to be agreeable. He caught stray words: Eleanor's +efforts to talk as Rose talked--Rose's dog was "perfectly sweet," but +"simply awful"; then a dog story; "wasn't that _killing_?" And Eleanor: +she once had a cat--"perfectly frightfully cunning!" said Eleanor, +stumbling among the adverbs of adolescence. + +At Rose's story the young men roared, but Eleanor's cat awoke no +interest. Then one of the "faded flowers" spoke to Brown, who said, +vaguely, "What, ma'am?" + +The other lady was murmuring in Maurice's ear: + +"What is your college?" + +Maurice trying to get Rose's eye, so that he might talk to her and give +the boys a chance to do their duty, said, distractedly, "Princeton. Say, +Hastings! Tell Mrs. Ellis about the miner who lost his shirt--" + +Mrs. Ellis looked patient, and Hastings, dropping into agonized shyness, +said, "Oh, I can't tell stories!" + +After that, except for Morton's philosophical outpourings to the +listening Eleanor, most of the dreary occasion of eating poor food, +served by a waiter who put his thumb into things, was given up to the +stifled laughter of the girl and boys, and to conversation between the +other two guests, who were properly arch because of the occasion, but +disappointed in their dinner, and anxious to shake their heads and lift +shocked hands as soon as they could get out of their hostess's sight. + +For Maurice, the whole endless hour was a seesaw between the past and +the present, between his new dignity and his old irresponsibility. He +tried--at first with boisterous familiarity, then with ponderous +condescension--to draw his friends out. What would Eleanor think of +them--the idiots! And what would she think of him, for having such +asinine friends? He hoped Mort was showing his brains to her! He +mentally cursed Hastings because he did not produce his jokes; as for +Brown, he was a kid. "I oughtn't to have asked him! What _will_ Eleanor +think of him!" He was thankful when dessert came and the boys stopped +their fatuous murmurings to little Rose, to gorge themselves with ice +cream. He talked loudly to cover up their silence, and glanced +constantly at his watch, in the hope that it was time to pack 'em all +off to the theater! Yet, even with his acute discomfort, he had moments +of pride--for there was Eleanor sitting at the head of the table, silent +and handsome, and making old Mort crazy about her! In spite of those +asses of boys, he was very proud. He had simply made a mistake in +inviting Hastings and Brown; "Tom Morton's all right," he told himself; +"but, great Scott! how young those other two are!" + +When the evening was over (the theater part of it was a success, for the +play was good, and Maurice had nearly bankrupted himself on a box), and +he and Eleanor were alone, he drew her down on the little sofa of their +sitting room, and worshiped. "Oh, Star, how wonderful you are!" + +"Did I do everything right?" She was breathless with happiness. "I tried +so hard! But I _can't_ talk. I never know what to say." + +"You were perfect! And they were all such idiots--except Mort. Mort told +me you were very temperamental, and had a wonderful mind. I said, 'You +bet she has!' The old ladies were pills." + +"Oh, Maurice, you goose!... Maurice, what will Mr. Houghton say?" + +"Hell say, 'Bless you, my children!' Nelly, what _was_ the matter with +the dinner?" + +"Matter? Why, it was perfect! It was"--she made a dash for some of his +own words--"simply corking! Though perhaps Rose was a little too young +for it. Didn't you enjoy it?" she demanded, astonished. + +He said that if she enjoyed it, that was all he cared about! He didn't +tell her--perhaps he didn't know it himself--that his own lack of +enjoyment was due to his inarticulate consciousness that he had not +belonged anywhere at that dinner table. He was too old--and he was too +young. The ladies talked down to him, and Brown and Hastings were polite +to him. "Damn 'em, _polite_! Well," he thought, "'course, they know that +a man in my position isn't in their class. But--" After a while he found +himself thinking: "Those hags Eleanor raked in had no manners. Talked to +me about my 'exams'! I'm glad I snubbed the old one, I don't think +Rose was too young," he said, aloud. "Oh, Star, you are wonderful!" + +And she, letting her hair fall cloudlike over her shoulders, silently +held out her arms to him. Instantly his third bad moment vanished. + +But a fourth was on its way; even as he kissed that white shoulder, he +was thinking of the letter which must certainly come from Mr. Houghton +in a day or two. "What will _he_ get off?" he asked himself; "probably +old Brad and Mrs. Newbolt have fed oats to him, so he'll kick--but what +do I care? Not a hoot!" Thus encouraging himself, he encouraged Eleanor: + +"Don't worry! Uncle Henry'll write and _beg_ me to bring you up to Green +Hill." + +The fifty-four minutes of married life had stretched into eight days, +and Maurice had chewed the educating nails of worry pretty thoroughly +before that "begging" letter from Henry Houghton arrived. There was an +inclosure in it from Mrs. Houghton, and the young man, down in the dark +lobby of the hotel, with his heart in his mouth, read what both old +friends had to say--then rushed upstairs, two steps at a time, to make +his triumphant announcement to his wife: + +"What did I tell you? Uncle Henry's _white_!" He gave her a hug; then, +plugging his pipe full of tobacco, handed her the letters, and sat down +to watch the effect of them upon her; there was no more "worry" for +Maurice! But Eleanor, standing by the window silhouetted against the +yellow twilight, caught her full lower lip between her teeth as she +read: + +"Of course," Mr. Houghton wrote--(it had taken him the week he had +threatened to "concoct" his letter, which he asked his wife if he might +not sign "Mr. F.'s aunt." "I bet she doesn't know her Dickens; it won't +convey anything to her," he begged; "I'll cut out two cigars a day if +you'll let me do it?" She would not let him, so the letter was perfectly +decorous.)--"Of course it was not the proper way to treat an old friend, +and marriage is too serious a business to be entered into in this way. +Also I am sorry that there is any difference in age between you and +your wife. But that is all in the past, and Mrs. Houghton and I wish +you every happiness. We are looking forward to seeing you next +month." ... ("Exactly," he explained to his Mary, "as I look forward +to going to the dentist's. _You_ tell 'em so.") + +As Mrs. Houghton declined to "tell 'em," Eleanor, reading the friendly +words, was able to say, "I don't think he's angry?" + +"'Course not!" said Maurice. + +Then she opened the other letter. + +My dear boy,--I wish you hadn't got married in such a hurry; Edith is +dreadfully disappointed not to have had the chance "to be your +bridesmaid"! You must give us an opportunity soon to know your wife. Of +course you must both come to Green Hill as usual, for your vacation. + +"_She_ is furious," said Eleanor. "She thinks it's dreadful to have +eloped." She had turned away from him, and was looking out across the +slow current of the river at the furnaces on the opposite bank--it was +the same river, that, ten days ago, had run sparkling and lisping over +brown depths and sunny shallows past their meadow. Her face lightened +and darkened as the sheeting violet and orange flames from the great +smokestacks roared out against the sky, and fell, and rose again. The +beauty of them caught Maurice's eye, and he really did not notice what +she was saying, until he caught the words: "Mrs. Houghton's like +Auntie--she thinks I've injured you--" Before he could get on his feet +to go and take her in his arms, and deny that preposterous word, she +turned abruptly and came and sat on his knee; then, with a sort of sob, +let herself sink against his breast. "But oh, I did so want to be +happy!--and you made me do it." + +He gave her a quick squeeze, and chuckled: "You bet I made you!" he +said; he pushed her gently to her feet, and got up and walked about the +room, his hands in his pockets. "As for Mrs. Houghton, you'll love her. +She never fusses; she just says, 'Consider the stars.' I do hope you'll +like them, Eleanor," he ended, anxiously. He was still in that state of +mind where the lover hopes that his beloved will approve of his friends. +Later on, when he and she love each other more, and so are more nearly +one, he hopes that his friends will approve of his beloved, even as he +used to be anxious that they should approve of him. "I do awfully want +you to like 'em at Green Hill! We'll go the minute your school closes." + +"_Must_ we?" she said, nervously. + +"I'm afraid we've got to," he said; "you see, I must find out about ways +and means. And Edith would be furious if we didn't come," he ended, +chuckling. + +"Is she nice?" + +"Why, yes," he said; "she's just a child, of course. Only eleven. But +she and I have great times. We have a hut on the mountain; we go up for +a day, and Edith cooks things. She's a bully cook. Her beloved Johnny +Bennett tags on behind." + +"But do you like to be with a _child_?" she said, surprised. + +"Oh, she's got a lot of sense. Say, Nelly, I have an idea. While we are +at Green Hill, let's camp out up there?" + +"You don't mean stay all night?" she said, flinching. "Oh, wouldn't it +be very uncomfortable? I--I hate the dark." + +The sweet foolishness of it enchanted him (baby love feeds on pap!) +"Pitch dark," he teased, "and lions and tigers roaring around, and +snakes--" + +"Of course I'll go, if you want me to," she said, simply, but with a +real sinking of the heart. + +"Edith adores it," he said. "Speaking of Edith, I must tell you +something so funny. Last summer I was at Green Hill, and one night Mr. +and Mrs. Houghton were away, and there was a storm. Gee, I never saw +such a storm in my life! Edith has no more nerves than a tree, but even +she was scared. Well, I was scared myself." + +He had stretched himself out on the sofa, and she was kneeling beside +him, her eyes worshiping him. "_I_ would have been scared to death," she +confessed. + +"Well, _I_ was!" he said. "The tornado--it was just about that!--burst +on to us, and nearly blew the house off the hill--and such an infernal +bellowing, and hellish green lightning, you never saw! Well, I was just +thinking about Buster--her father calls her Buster; and wondering +whether she was scared, when in she rushed, in her night-gown. She made +a running jump for my bed, dived into it, grabbed me, and hugged me so I +was 'most suffocated, and screamed into my ear, 'There's a storm!'--as +if I hadn't noticed it. I said--I could hardly make myself heard in the +racket--I yelled, 'Don't you think you'd better go back to your own +room? I'll come and sit there with you.' And she yelled, 'I'm going to +stay here.' So she stayed." + +"I think she was a little old for that sort of thing," Eleanor said, +coldly. + +He gave a shout of laughter. "Eleanor! Do you mean to tell me you don't +see how awfully funny it was? The little thing hugged me with all her +might until the storm blew over. Then she said, calmly: 'It's cold. I'll +stay here. You can go and get in my bed if you want to.'" + +Eleanor gave a little shrug, then rose and went over to the window. "Oh +yes, it was funny; but I think she must be a rather pert little thing. I +don't want to go to Green Hill." + +Maurice looked worried. "I hate to urge anything you don't like, Nelly; +but I really do feel we ought to accept their invitation? And you'll +like them! Of course they're not in your class. Nobody is! I mean +they're old, and sort of commonplace. But we can go and live in the +woods most of the time, and get away from them,--except little Skeezics. +We'll take her along. You'll love having her; she's lots of fun. You +see, I've _got_ to go to Green Hill, because I must get in touch with +Uncle Henry; I've got to find out about our income!" he explained, with +a broad grin. + +"I should think Edith would bore you," she said. Her voice was so +sharply irritated that Maurice looked at her, open-mouthed; he was too +bewildered to speak. + +"Why, Eleanor," he faltered; "why are you--on your ear? Was it what I +told you about Edith? You didn't think that she wasn't _proper_?" + +"No! Of course not! It wasn't _that_." She came quickly and knelt beside +him. "Of course it wasn't _that_! It was--" She could not say what it +was; perhaps she did not quite know that her annoyance at Maurice's +delight in Edith was the inarticulate pain of recognizing that he might +have more in common with a child, eight years his junior, than he could +have with a woman twenty years his senior. Her eyes were suddenly bright +with frightened tears. In a whisper, that fear which, in these days of +complete belief in her own happiness, she had forgotten even to deny, +came back: "What really upset me was the letters. The Houghtons are +angry because I am--" she flinched, and would not utter the final word +which was the hidden reason of her annoyance at Edith; so, instead of +uttering it, she said, "because we eloped." + +As for Maurice, he rallied her, and pretended to scold her, and tasted +her tears salt upon his lips. He felt very old and protecting. + +"Nonsense!" he said. "Mrs. Houghton and Uncle Henry are old, and of +course they can't understand love. But the romance of it will touch +them!" + +And again Love cast out Fear; Eleanor, her face hidden on his shoulder, +told herself that it really didn't matter what the Houghtons thought +of ... an elopement. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +The cloud of their first difference had blown over almost before they +felt its shadow, and the sky of love was as clear as the lucid beryl of +the summer night. Yet even the passing shadow of the cloud kept both the +woman and the boy repentant and a little frightened; he, because he +thought he had offended her by some lack of delicacy; she, because she +thought she had shocked him by what he might think was harshness to a +child. Even a week afterward, as they journeyed up to Green Hill in a +dusty accommodation train, there was an uneasy memory of that +cloud--black with Maurice's dullness, and livid with the zigzag flash of +Eleanor's irritation--and then the little shower of tears! ... What had +brought the cloud? Would it ever return? ... As for those twenty +dividing years, they never thought of them! + +In the train they held each other's hands under the cover of a +newspaper; and sometimes Maurice's foot touched hers, and then they +looked at each other, and smiled--but each was wondering: his wonder +was, "What made her offended at Edith?" And hers was, "How can he like +to be with an eleven-year-old child!" Their talk, however, confessed no +wonderings! It was the happy commonplace of companionship: Mrs. Newbolt +and her departure for Europe; would Mrs. O'Brien be good to Bingo? what +Maurice's business should be. Then Maurice yawned, and said he was glad +that the commencement exercises at Fern Hill were over; and she said she +was glad, too; she had danced, she said, until she had a pain in her +side! After which he read his paper, and she looked out of the window +at the flying landscape. Suddenly she said: + +"That girl you danced with last night--you danced with her three +times!" she said, with sweet reproach--"didn't know we were +married!--she wasn't a Fern Hill girl. She told me she had been +dancing with my 'nephew.'" + +"Did she?... Eleanor, look at that elm tree, standing all alone in the +field, like--like a wineglass full of summer!" + +For a moment she didn't understand his readiness to change the +subject--then she had a flash of instinct: "I believe she said the +same thing to you!" + +"Oh, she got off some fool thing." The annoyance in his voice was like +a rapier thrust of certainty. + +"I knew it! But I don't care. Why should I care?" + +"You shouldn't. Besides, it was only funny. I was tremendously amused." + +She turned and looked out of the window. + +Maurice lifted the paper which had been such a convenient shelter for +clasping hands, and seemed to read for a while. Then he said, abruptly, +"I only thought it was funny for her to make such a mistake." + +She was silent. + +"Eleanor, don't be--that way!" + +"What 'way'? You mean"--her voice trembled--"feel hurt to have you dance +_three times_, with a girl who said an uncomplimentary thing about me?" + +"But it wasn't uncomplimentary! It was just a silly mistake anyone might +make--" He stopped abruptly, for there were tears in her eyes--and +instantly his tenderness infolded her like sunshine. But even while he +was making her talk of other things--the heat, or the landscape--he was +a little preoccupied; he was trying to explain this tiny, ridiculous, +lovely unreasonableness, by tracking it back to some failure of +sensitiveness on his own part. It occurred to him that he could do this +better if he were by himself--not sitting beside her, faintly conscious +of her tenseness. So he said, abruptly, "Star, if you don't mind, I'll +go and have a smoke." + +"All right," she said; "give me the paper; I haven't looked at the news +for days!" She was trembling a little. The mistake of a silly girl had +had, at first, no significance, it was just, as it always is to the +newly married woman, amusing to be supposed not to be married! But that +Maurice, knowing of the mistake, had not mentioned its absurdity, woke +an uneasy consciousness that he had thought it might annoy her! Why +should it annoy her?--unless the reason of the mistake was as obvious to +him as to the girl?--whom he had found attractive enough to dance with +three times! It was as if a careless hand had pushed open a closed door, +and given Maurice's wife a glimpse of a dark landscape, the very +existence of which her love had so vehemently denied. + +An hour later, however, when Maurice returned, she was serene again. +Love had closed the door--bolted it! barred it! and the gray landscape +of dividing years was forgotten. And as her face had cleared, so had +his. He had explained her annoyance by calling himself a clod! "She +hated not to be thought married--of _course_!" What a brute he was not +to have recognized the subtle loveliness of a sensitiveness like that! +He wanted to tell her so, but he could only push the newspaper toward +her and slip his hand under it to feel for hers--which he clutched and +gripped so hard that her rings cut into the flesh. She laughed, and +opened her pocketbook and showed him the little circle of grass which he +had slipped over her wedding ring after fifty-four minutes of married +life. At which his whole face radiated. It was as if, through those gay +blue eyes of his, he poured pure joy from his heart into hers. + +"Be careful," he threatened: "one minute more, and I'll kiss you right +here, before people!" + +She snapped her purse shut in pretended terror, but after that they held +hands under the newspaper, and were perfectly happy--until the moment +came of meeting the Houghtons on the platform at the junction; then +happiness gave way to embarrassment. + +Henry Houghton, obliged to throw away a half-smoked cigar, and, saying +under his breath that he wished he was asleep, was cross; but his wife +was pleasantly commonplace. She kissed the bride, and the groom, too, +and said that Edith was in a great state of excitement about them! Then +she condoled with Eleanor about the heat, and told Maurice there were +cinders on his hat. But not even her careful matter-of-courseness could +make the moment anything but awkward. In the four-mile drive to Green +Hill--during which Eleanor said she hoped old Lion wouldn't run +away;--the young husband seemed to grow younger and younger; and his +wife, in her effort to talk to Mr. Houghton, seemed to grow older and +older.... + +"If I didn't happen to know she was a fool," Henry Houghton said to his +Mary, washing his hands before going down to supper, "I should think she +was quite a nice woman--she's so good looking." + +"_Henry!_ At your time of life, are you deciding a woman's 'niceness' by +her looks?" + +"But tell her she mustn't bore him," he said, ignoring the rebuke. "Tell +her that when it comes to wives, every husband on earth is Mr. F.'s +aunt--he 'hates a fool'!" + +"Why not tell her yourself?" she said: then she sighed; "why _did_ she +do it?" + +"She did it," he instructed her, "because the flattery of a boy's +lovemaking went to her head. I have an idea that she was hungry for +happiness--so it was champagne on an empty stomach. Think of the +starvation dullness of living with that Newbolt female, who drops +her g's all over the floor! Edith likes her," he added. + +"Oh, Edith!" said Edith's mother, with a shrug; "well; if you can +explain Eleanor, perhaps you can explain Maurice?" + +"_That's_ easy; anything in petticoats will answer as a peg for a man +(we are the idealizing sex) to hang his heart on. Then, there's her +music--and her pathos. For she is pathetic, Kit?" + +But Mary Houghton shook her head: "It is Maurice who is pathetic--my +poor Maurice!..." + +When they went down to the east porch, with its great white columns, +and its broad steps leading into Mrs. Houghton's gay and fragrant +garden, they found Edith there before them--sitting on the top step, her +arms around her knees, her worshiping eyes fixed on the Bride. Edith had +nothing to say; it was enough to look at the "bridal couple," as the +kitchen had named them. When her father and mother appeared, she did +manage, in the momentary bustle of rising and offering chairs, to say +to Maurice: + +"Oh, isn't she lovely! Oh, Maurice, let's go out behind the barn after +supper and talk! Maurice, _did_ she bring her harp? I want to see her +play on it! I saw her wedding ring," she ended, in an ecstatic whisper. + +"She doesn't play on the harp; she plays on the piano. Did you twig her +hair?" Maurice whispered back; "it's like black down!" + +Edith was speechless with adoration; she wished, passionately, that +Maurice would put his coat down for the Bride to step on, like Sir +Walter Raleigh! "for she is a _Queen_!" Edith thought: then Maurice +pulled one of her pigtails and she kicked him--and after that she was +forgotten, for the grown people began to talk, and say it had been a hot +day, and that the strawberries needed rain--but Eleanor hoped there +wouldn't be a thunderstorm. + +"They _have_ to say things, I suppose," Edith reflected, patiently: "but +after supper, Maurice and I will talk." So she bore with her father and +mother, who certainly tried to be conversational. The Bride, Edith +noticed, was rather silent, and Maurice, though grown up to the extent +of being married, hadn't much to say--but once he winked at Edith and +again tried to pull her hair,--so she knew that he, also, was patient. +She was too absorbed to return the wink. She just stared at Eleanor. She +only dared to speak to her once; then, breathlessly: "I--I'm going to go +to your school, when I'm sixteen." It was as if she looked forward to a +pilgrimage to a shrine! It was impossible not to see the worship in her +face; Eleanor saw her smile made Edith almost choke with bliss. But, +like herself, the Bride had nothing to say. Eleanor just sat in sweet, +empty silence, and watched Maurice, twisting old Rover's ears, and +answering Mrs. Houghton's maternal questions about his winter +underclothing and moths; she caught that wink at Edith, and the +occasional broad grin when Mrs. Houghton scolded him for some +carelessness, and the ridiculous gesture of tearing his hair when she +said he was a scamp to have forgotten this or that. Looking at the +careless youth of him, she laughed to herself for sheer joy in the +beauty of it! + +But Edith's plan for barn conversation with Maurice fell through, +because after supper, with an air of complete self-justification, he +said to his hosts, "_Now_ you must hear Eleanor sing!" + +At which she protested, "Oh, Maurice, no!" + +The Houghtons, however, were polite; so they all went into the studio, +and, standing in the twilight, with Maurice playing her accompaniment, +she sang, very simply, and with quite poignant beauty, the song of +"Golden Numbers," with its serene refrain: + +"_O sweet, O sweet content!_" + +"Lovely, my dear," Mrs. Houghton said, and Maurice was radiant. + +"Is Mr. F. your father?" Edith said, timidly; and while Eleanor was +giving her maiden name, Edith's terrified father said, in a ferocious +aside, "Mary! Kill that child!" Late that night he told his wife she +really must do something about Edith: "Fortunately, Eleanor is as +ignorant of Dickens as of 'most everything else. I bet she never read +_Little Dorrit_. But, for God's sake, muzzle that daughter of +yours! ... Mary, you see how he was caught?--the woman's voice." + +"Don't call her 'the woman'!" + +"Well, vampire. Kit, what do you make of her?" + +"I wish I knew what to make of her! I feel sure she is really and truly +_good_. But, oh, Henry, she's so mortal dull! She hasn't a spark of +humor in her." + +"'Course not. If she had, she wouldn't have married him. But _he_ has +humor! Better warn her that a short cut to matrimonial unhappiness is +not to have the same taste in jokes! Mary, maybe, her music will hold +him?" + +"Maybe," said Mary Houghton, sighing. + +"'Consider the stars,'" he quoted, sarcastically; but she took the sting +out of his gibe by saying, very simply: + +"Yes, I try to." + +"He is good stuff," her husband said; "straight as a string! When he +came into the studio to talk things over he was as sober as if he were +fifty, and hadn't made an ass of himself. He took up the income question +in a surprisingly businesslike way; then he said that of course he knew +I didn't like it--his giving up college and flying off the handle, and +getting married without saying anything to me. 'But,' he said, +'Eleanor's aunt is an old hell-cat;--she was going to drag Eleanor +abroad, and I had to get her out of her clutches!' ... I think," Henry +Houghton interrupted himself, "that's one explanation of Maurice: +rescuing a forlorn damsel. Well, I was perfectly direct with him; I +said, 'My dear fellow, Mrs. Newbolt is not a hell-cat; and the elopement +was in bad taste. Elopements are always in bad taste. But the elopement +is the least important part of it. The difference in age is the serious +thing.' I got it out of him just what it is--almost twenty years. She +might be his mother!--he admitted that he had had to lie about himself +to get the license. I said, '_Your_ age is the dangerous thing, Maurice, +not hers; and it's up to you to keep steady!' Of course he didn't +believe me," said Mr. Houghton, sighing. "He's in love all right, poor +infant! The next thing is for me to find a job for him.... She is good +looking, Mary?" She nodded, and he said again, "A pre-Raphaelite woman; +those full red lips, and that lovely black hair growing so low on her +forehead. And a really good voice. And a charming figure. But I tell you +one thing: she's got to stop twitting on facts. Did you hear her say, +'Maurice is so ridiculously young, he doesn't remember'--? I don't know +what it was he didn't remember. Something unimportant. But she must not +put ideas about his youth into his head. He'll know it soon enough! +_You_ tell her that." + +"Thank you so much!" said Mary Houghton. "Henry, you mustn't say things +before Edith! Suppose Eleanor had known her _Little Dorrit_?" + +"She doesn't know anything; and she has nothing to say." + +"Well, it might be worse," she encouraged him. "Suppose she were +talkative?" + +He nodded: "Yes; a dull woman is bad, and a talkative woman is bad; but +a dull talkative woman is hell." + +"My _dear_! I'm glad Edith's in bed. Well, I think I like her." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +But the time arrived when Mrs. Houghton was certain that she "liked" +Maurice's wife. It would have come sooner if Eleanor's real sweetness +had not been hidden by her tiresome timidity ... a thunderstorm sent +her, blanched and panting, to sit huddled on her bed, shutters closed, +shades drawn; she schemed not to go upstairs by herself in the dark; she +was preoccupied when old Lion took them off on a slow, jogging drive, +for fear of a runaway. + +Everybody was aware of her nervousness. Until it bored him, Henry +Houghton was touched by it;--probably there is no man who is so +intelligent that the Clinging Vine makes no appeal to him. Mrs. Houghton +was impatient with it. Edith, who could not understand fear in any form, +tried, in her friendly little way, to reason Eleanor out of one panic or +another. The servants joked among themselves at the foolishness of "Mrs. +Maurice"; and the monosyllabic Johnny Bennett, when told of some of +Eleanor's scares, was bored. "Let's play Indian," said Johnny. + +It was only Maurice who found all the scares--just as he found the +silences and small jealousies--adorable! The silences meant unspeakable +depths of thought; the jealousies were a sign of love. The terrors +called for his protecting strength! One of the unfair irrationalities +of love is that it may, at first, be attracted by the defects of the +beloved, and later repelled by them. Maurice loved Eleanor for her +defects. Once, when he and Edith were helping Mrs. Houghton weed her +garden, he stopped grubbing, and sat down in the gold and bronze glitter +of coreopsis, to expatiate upon the exquisiteness of the defects. Her +wonderful mind: "She doesn't talk, because she is always thinking; her +ideas are way over _my_ head!" Her funny timidity: "She wants me to +take care of her!" Her love: "She's--it sounds absurd!--but she's +jealous, because she's so--well, fond of me, don't you know, that she +sort of objects to having people round. Did you ever hear of anything so +absurd?" + +"I certainly never did," his old friend said, dryly. + +"Well, but"--Maurice defended his wife--"it's because she cares about +me, don't you know? She--well, this is in confidence--she said once that +she'd like to live on a desert island, just with me!" + +"So would I," said Edith. Her mother laughed: + +"Tell her desert islands have to have a 'man Friday'--to say nothing of +a few 'women Thursdays'!" + +Eleanor was, Maurice said, like music heard far off, through mists and +moonlight in a dark garden, "full of--of--what are those sweet-smelling +things, that bloom only at night?" (Mary Houghton looked fatigued.) +"Well, anyway, what I mean is that she isn't like ordinary people, like +me--" + +"Or Johnny," Edith broke in, earnestly. + +"Johnny? Gosh! Why, Mrs. Houghton, things that don't touch most human +beings, affect her terribly. The dark, or thunderstorms, or--or +anything, makes her nervous. You understand?" + +Mrs. Houghton said yes, she understood, but she would leave the rest of +the weeding to her assistants ... In the studio, dropping her dusty +garden gloves on a fresh canvas lying on the table, she almost wept: + +"Henry, it is _too_ tragic! She is such a goose, and he is so silly +about her! What shall we do?" + +"I'll tell you what not to do--spoil my new canvas! If you _really_ want +my advice:--tell Eleanor that the greatest compliment any husband can +pay his wife is contained in four words: 'You never bore me'; and that +if she isn't careful Maurice will never compliment her." + +Down in the garden, no one was aware of any tragedy. "When I go to Fern +Hill," Edith said, "I'm going to tell all the girls _I know Eleanor_! +I'm 'ordinary,' too, beside her. And so is mother." + +Maurice agreed. "We are all crude, compared to her." + +Edith sighed with joy; if she had had any inclination to be contemptuous +of Eleanor's timidity, it vanished when it was pointed out to her that +it was really a sign of the Bride's infinite superiority.... So the +three Houghtons accepted--one with amused pity, and the other with +concern, and the third with admiration of such super-refinement,--the +fact that Eleanor was a coward. Yet if she had not been a coward, +something she did would not have been particularly brave, nor would it +have wrung from Mary Houghton the admission: "I _like_ her!" + +The conquering incident happened in August. The hut up in the woods +meant to Maurice and Edith and Johnny that eager grasping at hardship +with which Age has no sympathy, but which is the very essence of Youth. +Within a week of her arrival at Green Hill, Eleanor (who did not like +hardship;) had been carried off for a day of eating smoky food, cooked +on a camp fire, and watching cloud shadows drift across the valley and +up and over the hills; she had wondered, silently, why Maurice liked +this very tiring sort of thing?--and especially why he liked to have +Edith go along! "A child of her age is such a nuisance," Eleanor +thought. But he did like it, all of it!--the fatigue, and the smoke, and +the grubby food--and Edith!--he liked it so much that, just before the +time set for their departure for Mercer--and the position in a +real-estate office, which had been secured for Maurice--he said: + +"Nelly, let's camp out up in the cabin for our last week, all by +ourselves!" + +Edith's face fell, and so, for that matter, did the Bride's. Edith said, +"By yourselves? Not Johnny and me, too?" And Eleanor said, "_At night?_ +Oh, Maurice!" + +"It will be beautiful," he said; "there'll be a moon next week, and +we'll sit up there and look down into the valley, and see the treetops +lift up out of the mist--like islands from the foam of 'faerylands +forlorn'! You'll love it." + +"I'm crazy about camping," said Edith, eagerly;--and waited for an +invitation, which was not forthcoming. Instead, Maurice, talking his +plans over with her, made it quite clear that her room was better than +her company. It was Edith's first experience in being left out, and it +sobered her a little; but she swallowed the affront with her usual good +sense: + +"I guess he likes Eleanor more 'an me, so, 'course, it's nice to be by +himself with her." + +The prospect of being "by themselves" for a week was deeply moving to +Maurice. And even Eleanor, though she quaked at the idea of spiders or +thunderstorms, thought of the passion of it with a thrill. "We'll be all +alone!" she said to herself. + +The morning that they started gypsying, everything was very impatient +and delightful. The packing, the rolling up of blankets, the stowing of +cooking utensils, the consulting of food lists to make sure nothing was +being forgotten--all meant much tearing about and bossing; then came the +loading the stuff into the light wagon, which, with old Lion, Mr. +Houghton had offered to convey the campers (and a temporary Edith) up to +the top of the mountain. Edith was, of course, frankly envious, but +accepted the privilege of even a day in camp with humble gratitude. + +"Rover and Johnny and I will come up pretty often, even if it's only for +an hour, because Eleanor must not hurt her hands by washing dishes," she +said, earnestly (still fishing for an invitation). + +But Maurice only agreed, as earnestly: "No! Imagine Eleanor washing +dishes! But I don't want you to stay all night, Buster," he told her, +candidly; then he paused in his work, flung up his arms with a great +breath of joyousness. "Great Scott!" he said. "I don't see why gypsies +_ever_ die!" + +Edith felt an answering throb of ecstasy. "Oh, Maurice, I wish you and +I were gypsies!" she said. She did not in the least resent his candor +as to her presence during the week of camping; though just before they +started her feelings really were a little hurt: it happened that in +trying to help Eleanor pack, she was close enough to her to notice a +thread on her hair; instantly, she put out a friendly and officious +thumb and finger to remove it--at which Eleanor winced, and said, +"_Ouch!_" + +"I thought it was a white thread," Edith explained, abashed. + +Eleanor said, sharply, "Please don't touch my hair!" which conveyed +nothing to Edith except that the Bride--who instantly ran up to her +room--"was mad." When she came back (the "thread" having disappeared) +Edith was full of apologies. + +"Awfully sorry I mussed your hair," she said. + +She went up the mountain with them, walking on the hard grades, and +trying to placate Eleanor by keeping a hand on Lion's bridle, so that +she might feel sure he wouldn't run away. When at last, rather blown and +perspiring, they reached the camp, Eleanor got out of the wagon and said +she wanted to "help"; but Edith, still contrite about the "thread," +said: "Not I'm not going to have you hurt your lovely hands!" In the +late afternoon, having saved Eleanor's hands in every possible way, she +left them, and thinking, without the slightest rancor, of the rough +bliss she was not asked to share, went running down the mountain with +Rover at her heels. + +Eleanor, wondering at her willingness to take that long road home with +only the lumbering old dog for company, was intensely glad to have her +go. + +"Girls of that age are so uninteresting," she told Maurice; "and now +we'll be all by ourselves!" + +"Yes; Adam and Eve," he said; "and twilight; and the world spread out +like a garden! Do you see that glimmer over there to the left? That's +the beginning of the river--our river!" + +He had made her comfortable with some cushions piled against the trunk +of a tree, and lighted a fire in a ring of blackened stones; then he +brought her her supper, and ate his own on his knees beside her, +watching eagerly for ways to serve her, laughing because she cringed +when, from an overhanging bough, a spider let himself down upon her +skirt, and hurrying to bring her a fresh cup of coffee, because an +unhappy ant had scalded himself to death in her first cup. Afterward he +would not let her "hurt her hands" by washing the dishes. When this was +over, and the dusk was deepening, he went into the woods to the +"lean-to" in which Lion was quartered, to see that the old horse was +comfortable, but a minute later came crashing back through the +underbrush, laughing, but provoked. + +"That imp, Edith, didn't hitch him securely, and the old fellow has +walked home, if you please--!" + +"Lion--gone? Oh, what shall we do?" + +"Ill pull the wagon down when I want to go back for food." + +"_Pull_ it?" + +"Won't need much pulling! It will go down by itself. If I put you in it, +I'll have to rope a log on behind as a brake, or it would run over me! I +bet I give Edith a piece of my mind, when I get hold of her. But it +doesn't really matter. I think I like it better to have not even Lion. +Just you--and the stars. They are beginning to prick out," he said. He +stretched himself on the ground beside her, his hands clasped under his +head, and his happy eyes looking up into the abyss. "Sing, Star, sing!" +he said. So she sang, softly: + +"How many times do I love again? +Tell me how many beads there are + In a silver chain + Of evening rain +Unraveled from the tumbling main +And threading the eye of a yellow star-- +So many times-- + +"It looks," she broke off, "a little black in the west? And--was that +lightning?" + +"Only heat lightning. And if it should storm,--I have you here, in my +arms, alone!" He turned and caught her to him, and his mouth crushed +hers. Her eyes closed, and her passion answered his, and all that he +whispered. Yet while he kissed her, her eyes opened and she looked +furtively beyond him, toward that gathering blackness. + +They lay there together in the starlit dark, for a long time, his head +on her breast. Sometimes she thrilled at his touch or low word, and +sometimes she held his hand against her lips and kissed it--which made +him protest--but suddenly he said, "By George! Nelly, I believe we are +going to have a shower!" + +Instantly she was alert with fright, and sat up, and looked down into +the valley, where the heat lightning, which had been winking along the +line of the hills, suddenly sharpened into a flash. "_Oh!_" she said, +and held her breath until, from very far off, came a faint grumble of +thunder. "Oh, Maurice!" she said, "it is horrible to be out here--if it +thunders!" + +"We won't be. Well go into the cabin, and we'll hear the rain on the +roof, and the clash of the branches; and we'll see the lightning through +the chinks--and I'll have you! Oh, Nelly, we shall be part of the +storm!--and nothing in God's world can separate us." + +But this time she could not answer with any elemental impulse; she had +no understanding of "being part of the storm"; instead, she watched the +horizon. "Oh!" she said, flinching. "I don't like it. What shall we do? +Maurice, it _is_ going to thunder!" + +"I think I did feel a drop of rain," he said,--and held out his hand: +"Yes, Star, rain! It's begun!" He helped her to her feet, gathered up +some of the cushions, and hurried her toward the little shelter. She ran +ahead of him, her very feet reluctant, lest the possible "snake" should +curl in the darkness against her ankles; but once in the cabin, with a +candle lighted, she could not see the lightning, so she was able to +laugh at herself; when Maurice went out for the rest of the cushions, +she charged him to _hurry_! "The storm will be here in a minute!" she +called to him. And he called back: + +"I'll only be a second!" + +She stood in the doorway looking after him, and saw his figure outlined +against the glimmer of their fire, which had already felt the spatter of +the coming storm and was dying down; then, even as she looked, he seemed +to plunge forward, and fall--the thud of that fall was like a blow on +her throat! She gasped, "Maurice--" And again, "_Maurice!_ Have you hurt +yourself?" + +He did not rise. A splash of rain struck her face; the mountain darkness +was slit by a rapier of lightning, and there was a sudden violent +illumination; she saw the tree and the cushions, and Maurice on the +ground--then blackness, and a tremendous crash of thunder. + +"Maurice!" she called. "Maurice!" The branches over the roof began to +move and rustle, and there was a sudden downpour of rain; the camp fire +went out, as if an extinguisher had covered it. She stood in the doorway +for a breathless instant, then ran back into the cabin, and, catching +the candle from the table, stepped out into the blackness; instantly the +wind bore the little flame away!--then seemed to grip her, and twist her +about, and beat her back into the house. In her terror she screamed his +name; and as she did so, another flash of lightning showed her his +figure, motionless on the ground. + +"_He is dead_" she said to herself, in a whisper. "What shall I do?" +Then, suddenly, she knew what to do: she remembered that she had noticed +a lantern hanging on the wall near the door; and now something impelled +her to get it. In the stifling darkness of the shack she felt her way to +it, held its oily ring in her hand, thought, frantically, of matches, +groped along toward the mantelpiece, stumbled over a chair--and clutched +at the match box! Something made her open the isinglass slide, strike a +match, and touch the blackened wick with the sulphurous sputter of +flame,--the next moment, with the lighted lantern in her hand, she was +out in the sheeting blackness of the rain!--running!--running!--toward +that still figure by the deadened fire. Just before she reached it a +twig rolled under her foot, and she said, "A _snake_,"--but she did not +flinch. As she gained the circle of stones, a flash of lightning, with +its instant and terrific crack and bellow of thunder, showed her a +streak of blood on Maurice's face.... He had tripped and fallen, and his +head had struck one of the blackened stones. + +"He is dead," she said again, aloud. She put the lantern on the ground +and knelt beside him; she had an idea that she should place her hand on +his heart to see if he were alive. "He isn't," she told herself; but she +laid her fingers, which were shaking so that she could not unfasten his +coat, somewhere on his left side; she did not know whether there was any +pulse; she knew nothing, except that he was "dead." She said this in a +whisper, over and over. "He is dead. He is dead." The rain came down in +torrents; the trees creaked and groaned in the wind; twice there were +flashes of lightning and appalling roars of thunder. Maurice was +perfectly still. The smoky glimmer of the lantern played on the thin +streak of blood and made it look as though it was moving--trickling-- + +Then Eleanor began to think: "There ought to be a doctor...." If +she left him, to bring help, he might bleed to death before she +could get back to him. Instantly, as she said that, she knew that +she did not believe that he was dead! She knew that she had hope. +With hope, a single thought possessed her. _She must take him down +the mountain...._ But how? She could not carry him;--she had managed to +prop him up against her knee, his blond head lolling forward, awfully, +on his breast--but she knew that to carry him would be impossible. And +Lion was not there! "I couldn't have harnessed him if he were," she +thought. + +She was entirely calm, but her mind was working rapidly: The wagon +was in the lean-to! Could she get him into it? The road was +downhill.... Almost to Doctor Bennett's door.... + +Instantly she sprang to her feet and, with the pale gleam of the lantern +zigzagging across the path, she ran back to the shed; just as she +reached it, a glimmer of light fell on the soaked earth, and she looked +up with a start and saw the moon peering out between two ragged, swiftly +moving clouds; then all was black again--but the rain was lessening, and +there had been no lightning for several minutes. "He will die; I must +save him," she said, her lips stiff with horror. She lifted the shafts +of the wagon, and gave a little pull; it moved easily enough, and, +guiding it along the slight decline, she brought it to Maurice's side. +There, looking at him, she said again, rigidly: + +"He will die; I must save him." + +As Henry Houghton said afterward, "It was impossible!--so she did it." + +It took her more than an hour to do it, to pull and lift and shove the +inert figure! Afterward she used to wonder how she had done it; wonder +how she had given the final _push_, which got his sagging body up on to +the floor of the wagon! It had strained every part of her;--her shoulder +against his hips, her head in the small of his back, her hands gripping +his heavy, dangling legs. She was soaking wet; her hair had loosened, +and stray locks were plastered across her forehead. She grunted like a +toiling animal. + +It seemed as if her heart would crack with her effort, her muscles +tear; she forgot the retreating rumble of the storm, the brooding, +dripping forest stillness; she forgot even her certainty that he would +die. She entirely forgot herself. She only knew--straining, gasping, +sweating--that she must get the body--the dead body perhaps!--into the +wagon. And she did it! Just as she did it, she heard a faint groan. Her +heart stood still with terror, then beat frantically with joy. + +_He was alive!_ + +She ran back to the cabin for the cushions he had saved from the rain, +and pushed them under his head; then tied the lantern to the whip +socket; then recalled what he had said about "roping a log on behind as +a brake." "Of course!" she thought; and managed,--the splinters tearing +her hands--to fasten a fairly heavy piece of wood under the rear axle, +so that it might bump along behind the wagon as a drag. She pondered as +she did these things why she should know so certainly how they must be +done? But when they were done, she said, _"Now!"..._ and went and stood +between the shafts. + +It was after midnight when the descent began. The moon rode high among +fleecy clouds, but on either side of the road gulfs of darkness lay +under motionless foliage. Sometimes the smoky light from the swaying +lantern shone on a wet black branch, snapped by the gale and lying in +the path, and Eleanor, seeing it, wedging her heels into the mud and +sliding stones of the road, and straining backward between the shafts, +would say, "A snake.... I must save Maurice." Sometimes she would hear, +above the crunching of the wheels behind her, a faint noise in the +undergrowth: a breaking twig, a brushing sound, as of a furtive +footstep--and she would say, "A man.... I must save Maurice." + +The yellow flame of the lantern was burning white in the dawn, as, +holding back against the weight of the wagon--the palms of her bleeding +hands clenched on the shafts, her feet slipping, her ankles twisted and +wrenched--by and by, with the tears of physical suffering streaming down +her face, she reached the foot of the mountain. The, thin, cool air of +morning flowed about her in crystalline stillness; suddenly the sun +tipped the green bowl of the world, and all at once shadows fell across +the road like bars. They seemed to her, in her daze of terror and +exhaustion, insurmountable: the road was level now, but she pulled and +pulled, agonizingly, over those bars of nothingness; then one wheel sank +into a rut, and the wagon came to a dead standstill; but at the same +moment she saw ahead of her, among the trees, Doctor Bennett's dark, +sleeping house. So, dropping the shafts, she went stumbling and running, +to pound on the door, and gasp out: + +"Come--help--Maurice--come--" + + * * * * * + +"I think," she said afterward, lying like a broken thing upon her bed, +"I was able to do it, because I kept saying, 'I must save Maurice.' Of +course, to save Maurice, I wouldn't mind dying." + +"My dear, you are magnificent!" Mary Houghton said, huskily. Then she +told her husband: "Henry, I _like_ her! I never thought I would, but I +do." + +"I'll never say 'Mr. F.'s aunt' again!" he promised, with real +contrition. + +It was Eleanor's conquering moment, for everybody liked her, and +everybody said she was 'magnificent'--except Maurice, who, as he got +well, said almost nothing. + +"I can't talk about it," was all he had to say, choking. "She's given +her life for mine," he told the doctor. + +"I hope not," Doctor Bennett said, "I _hope_ not. But it will take +months, Maurice, for her to get over this. As for saving your life, my +boy, she didn't. She made things a lot more dangerous for you. She did +the wrong thing--with greatness! You'd have come to, after a while. But +don't tell her so." + +"Well, I should say not!" Maurice said, hotly. "She'll never know +_that_! And anyway, sir, I don't believe it. I believe she saved my +life." + +"Well, suit yourself," the doctor said, good-naturedly; "but I tell +you one thing: whether she saved your life or not, she did a really +wonderful thing--considering her temperament." + +Maurice frowned: "I don't think her temperament makes any difference. It +would have been wonderful for anybody." + +"Well, suit yourself," Doctor Bennett said again; "only, if Edith had +done it, say, for Johnny, who weighs nearly as much as you, I wouldn't +have called it particularly wonderful." + +"Oh, Edith," Maurice said, grinning; "no; I suppose not. I see what you +mean." And to himself he added: "Edith is like an ox, compared to Star. +Just flesh and blood. No nerves. No soul. Doctor Bennett was right. +Eleanor's temperament does make it more wonderful." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +It was after this act of revealing and unnecessary courage, that the +Houghton family entirely accepted Eleanor. There were a few days of +anxiety about her, and about Maurice, too; for, though his slight +concussion was not exactly alarming--yet, "Keep your shirt on," Doctor +Bennett cautioned him; "don't get gay. And don't talk to Mrs. Curtis." +So Maurice lay in his bed in another room, and entered, silently, into a +new understanding of love, which, as soon as he was permitted to see +Eleanor, he tried stumblingly to share with her. + +Physically, she was terribly prostrated; but spiritually, feeding on +those stumbling words, she rejoiced like a strong man to run a race! She +saw no confession in the fact that everybody was astonished at what she +had done; she was astonished herself. "I wasn't afraid!" she said, +wonderingly. + +"It was because you liked Maurice more than you were scared," Edith +said; she offered this explanation the day that Maurice had been allowed +to come across the hall, rather shakily, to adore his wife. + +His first sight of her was a great shock.... The strain of that terrible +night had blanched and withered her face; there were lines on her +forehead that never left it. + +Edith, sneaking in behind him, said under her breath: "Goodness! Don't +she look old!" + +She did. But as Maurice fell on his knees beside her, it seemed as if +she drank youth from his lips. Under his kisses her worn face bloomed +with joy. + +"It was nothing--nothing," she insisted, stroking his thick hair with +her trembling hand, and trying to silence his words of wondering +worship. + +"I was not worthy of it.... To think that you--" He hid his face on her +shoulder. + +Afterward, when he went back to his own room, she lay, smiling +tranquilly to herself; her look was the look one sees on the face of a +woman who, in that pallid hour after the supreme achievement of birth, +has looked upon her child. She was entirely happy. From the open door of +Maurice's room came, now and then, the murmur of Edith's honest little +voice, or Maurice's chuckle. They were talking about her, she knew, and +the happy color burned in her cheeks. When he came in for his second +visit, late that afternoon, she asked him, archly, what he and Edith had +been talking about so long in his room? + +"I believe you were telling her what a goose I am about thunderstorms," +she said. + +"I was not!" he declared--and her eyes shone. But when she urged-- + +"Well, what _were_ you talking about?" he couldn't remember anything but +a silly story of Edith's hens. He repeated it, and Eleanor sighed; how +could he be interested in anything so childish! + +As it happened, he was not; he had scarcely listened to Edith. The only +thing that interested Maurice now, was what Eleanor had done for him! +Thinking of it, he brooded over her, silently, his cheek against hers, +then Mrs. Houghton came in and banished him, saying that Eleanor must go +to sleep; "and you and Edith must keep quiet!" she said. + +He was so contrite that, tiptoeing to his own room, he told poor +faithful Edith her voice was too loud: "You disturb Eleanor. So dry up, +Skeezics!" + +As he grew stronger, and was able to go downstairs, Edith felt freer to +talk to him--for down on the porch, or out in the garden, her eager +young voice would not reach those languid ears. Then, suddenly, all her +chances to talk stopped: "What's the matter with Maurice?" she pondered, +crossly; "he's backed out of helping me. Why can't he go on shingling +the chicken coop?" For it was while this delightful work was under way +that it, and "talk," came to an abrupt end. + +The shingling, begun joyously by the big boy and the little girl on +Monday, promised several delightfully busy mornings.... Of course the +setting out for Mercer had been postponed; there was no possibility of +moving Eleanor for the present; so Maurice's "business career," as he +called it, with grinning pomposity, had to be delayed--Eleanor turned +white at the mere suggestion of convalascing at Green Hill without him! +Consequently Maurice, when not worshiping his wife, had nothing to do, +and Edith had seized the opportunity to make him useful.... "We'll +shingle my henhouse," she had announced. Maurice liked the scheme as +much as she did. The September air, the smell of the fresh shingles, the +sitting with one leg doubled under you, and the other outstretched on +the hot slope of the roof, the tap-tapping of the hammers, the bossing +of Edith, the trying to talk of Eleanor, and thunderstorms, while you +hold eight nails between your lips; then the pause while Edith climbs +down the ladder and runs to the kitchen for hot cookies; all these +things would be a delightful occupation for any intelligent person! + +"It'll take three mornings to do it," Edith said, importantly; and +Maurice said: + +"It will, because you keep putting the wrong end up! I wish Eleanor was +well enough to do it," he said--and then burst into self-derisive +chuckles: "Imagine Eleanor straddling that ridgepole! It would scare her +stiff!" + +It was after this talk that Maurice "backed out" on the job--but Edith +never knew why. She saw no connection between the unfinished roof, and +the fact that that same afternoon, sitting on the floor in the Bride's +room, she had, in her anxiety to be entertaining, repeated Maurice's +remark about the ridgepole. Eleanor, who had had an empty morning, +listening to the distant tapping of hammers, had drooped a weary lip. + +"I should hate it. Horrid, dirty work!" + +"Oh no! It's nice, clean work," Edith corrected her. + +"But _you_ wouldn't like it, of course," she said, with satisfaction; +"you'd be scared! You're scared of everything, Maurice says. You were +scared to death, up on the mountain." + +Eleanor was silent. + +"He thinks it's lovely for you to be scared; it's funny about Maurice," +said Edith, thoughtfully; "he doesn't like it when _I'm_ scared--not +that I ever am, now, but I used to be when I was a child." + +The color flickered on Eleanor's cheeks: "Edith, I'll rest now," she +said; her voice broke. + +Edith looked at her, open-mouthed. "Why, Eleanor!" she said; "what's the +matter? Are you mad at anything? Have you a stomachache? I'll run for +mother!" + +"There's nothing the matter. But--but I wish you'd tell Maurice to come +and speak to me." + +Edith tore downstairs, and out of the front door: "Maurice! Where are +you?"--then, catching sight of him, reading and smoking in a hammock +slung between two of the big columns on the east porch, she rushed at +him, and pulled him to his astonished feet. "Eleanor wants you! +Something's the matter, and--" + +Before she could finish, Maurice was tearing upstairs, two steps at a +time.... + +And so it was that Edith, sulkily, worked on the roof by herself. + +Yet Maurice had not entirely "backed out." ... The very next morning, +before Edith was awake, he had gone out to the henhouse, and, alone, +done more than his share of the shingling. + +"But, Maurice, why didn't you wake me?" Edith protested, when she +discovered what he had done. "I'd have gone out, too!" + +"I liked doing it by myself," Maurice evaded. + +And for five minutes Edith was sulky again. "He puts on airs, 'cause +he's married! Well, I don't care. He can shingle the whole roof by +himself if he wants to! I don't like married men, anyhow." + +The married man had, indeed, wanted to be by himself--to put the nails +in his mouth, and to sit on the cold, slippery shingles in the gray +September morning, and to tap-tap-tap--and think, and think. + +But he didn't like his thoughts very well.... + +He thought how he had rushed upstairs, terrified lest Eleanor was +fainting or had a "stomachache," or something--and found her sitting up +in bed, her cheeks red and glazed with tears, her round, full chin +quivering. He thought how he had tried to make out what she was driving +at about Edith, and the chicken coop, and the ridgepole! + +"You told Edith I was scared!" + +Maurice's bewilderment was full of stumbling questions: "Told Edith? +When? What?" + +And as she said "when" and "what," ending with, "You said I am scared!" +Maurice could only say, blankly. "But my darling, you _are_!" + +"You may think I am a fool, but to tell Edith so--" + +"But Great Scott! I didn't!" + +"I won't have you talking me over with Edith; she's a _child_! It was +just what you did when you danced three times with that girl who +said--Edith is as rude as she was!--and she's a _child_. How can you +like to be with a child?" Of course, it was all her fear of Youth,--but +Eleanor did not know that; she thought she was hurt at the boy's +neglect. Her face, wet with tears, was twitching, her voice--that lovely +voice!--was shrill in his astonished ears.... + +Maurice, on the sloping roof, in the chill September dawn, his fingers +numb on the frosty nails, stopped hammering, and leaned his chin on his +fist, and thought: "She's sick. She almost killed herself to save me; so +her nerve has all gone. That's why she talked--that way." He put a +shingle in its place, and planted a nail; "it was because she was scared +that what she did was so brave! I couldn't make her see that the more +scared she was, the braver she was. It wouldn't have been brave in that +gump, Edith, without a nerve in her body. But why is she down on Edith? +I suppose she's a nuisance to a person with a wonderful mind like +Eleanor's. Talks too much. I'll tell her to dry up when she's with +Eleanor." And again he heard that strange voice: "You like to talk to a +_child_." + +Maurice, pounding away on Edith's roof, grew hot with misery, not +because it was so terrible to have Eleanor angry with him; not even +because he had finally got mad, and answered back, and said, "Don't be +silly!" The real misery was something far deeper than this half-amused +remorse. It was that those harmless, scolding words of his held a +perfectly new idea: he had said, "Don't be silly." _Was Eleanor silly?_ + +Now, to a man whose feeling about his wife has been a sort of awe, this +question is terrifying. Maurice, in his boy's heart, had worshiped in +Eleanor, not just the god of Love, but the love of God. And was +she--_silly_? No! Of course not! He pounded violently, hit his thumb, +put it into his mouth, then proceeded, mumblingly, to bring his god back +from the lower shrine of a pitying heart, to the high alter of a +justifying mind: Eleanor was ill.... She was nervous.... She was an +exquisite being of mist and music and courage and love! So of course she +was sensitive to things ordinary people did not feel. Saying this, and +fitting the shingles into place, suddenly the warm and happy wave of +confident idealism began to flood in upon him, and immediately his mind +as well as his heart was satisfied. He reproached himself for having +been scared lest his star was just a common candle, like himself. He had +been cruel to judge her, as he might have judged her had she been +well--or a gump like Edith! For had she been well, she would not have +been "silly"! Had she been well--instead of lying there in her bed, +white and strained and trembling, all because she had saved his life, +harnessing herself to that wagon, and bringing him, in the darkness, +through a thousand terrors--nonexistent, to be sure, but none the less +real--to safety and life! Oh, how could he have even thought the word +"silly"? He was ashamed and humble; never again would he be cross to +her! "Silly? I'm the silly one! I'm an ass. I'll tell her so! I don't +suppose she'll ever forgive me. She said I 'didn't understand her'; +well, I didn't! But she'll never have cause to say it again! I +understand her now," Then, once more, he thought, frowning, "But why is +she so down on Edith?" + +That Eleanor's irritation was jealousy--not of Edith, but of Edith's +years--never occurred to him. So all he said was, "She oughtn't to be +down on Edith; _she_ has always appreciated her!" Edith had never said +that Eleanor was "silly"! But so long as it bothered Eleanor (being +nervous) to have the imp round, he'd tell her not to be a nuisance. "You +can say anything to Skeezics; she has sense. She understands." + +But all the same, Maurice shingled his part of the henhouse before +breakfast. + +Maurice did not call Eleanor "silly" again for a long time. There was +always--when she was unreasonable--the curbing memory that her +reasonableness had been shaken by that assault of darkness and fear, and +the terrible fatigue of saving his robust young life. Furthermore, +Doctor Bennett--telling Henry Houghton that Eleanor had done the worst +possible thing, "magnificently"--told Maurice she had "nervous +prostration,"--a cloaking phrase which kindly doctors often give to +perplexed husbands, so that the egotism of sickly wives may be covered +up! So Maurice, repeating to himself these useful words, saw only ill +health, not silliness, in Eleanor's occasional tears. It was a week +after the shingling of the henhouse, that, leaving her to recuperate +still further at Green Hill, he started in on his job of "office +boy"--his jocose title for his position in the real-estate office in +Mercer. Eleanor did not want to be left, and said so, wistfully. + +"I'll come up for Sundays," Maurice comforted her, tenderly. + +On these weekly visits the Houghtons were impressed by his tenderness; +he played solitaire with his wife by the hour; he read poetry to her +until she fell asleep; and he told her everything he had done and every +person he had seen, while he was away from her! But the rest of the +household didn't get much enjoyment out of Eleanor. Even the adoring +Edith had moments when admiration had to be propped up by Doctor +Bennett's phrase. As, for instance, on one of Maurice's precious +Sundays, he and she and Johnny Bennett and Rover and old Lion climbed up +to the cabin to make things shipshape before closing the place for the +winter. + +"You'll be away from me all day," Eleanor said, and her eyes filled. + +Maurice said he hated to leave her, but he had always helped Edith on +this closing-up job. + +"Oh, well; go, if you want to," Eleanor said; "but I don't see how you +can enjoy being with a perfect child, like Edith!" + +Maurice went--not very happily. But it was such a fine, tingling day of +hard work, in a joyous wind, with resulting appetites, and much yelling +at each other--"Here, drop that!" ... "Hurry up, slow poke!"--that he +was happy again before he knew it. After the work was over they had a +lazy hour before the fire, their eyes stinging with smoke which seemed +to envelop them, no matter on which side they sat; an hour in which +Rover drowsed at Maurice's feet, and Johnny, in spectacles, read _A +Boy's Adventures in the Forests of Brazil_, and Edith gabbled about +Eleanor.... + +"Oh, I wish _I_ was married," Edith said; "I'd just love to save my +husband's life!" + +Maurice said little, except to ask Johnny if he had got to such and such +a place in the _Adventures_, or to assent to Edith's ecstasies; but once +he sighed, and said Eleanor was awfully pulled down by that--that night. + +"I should think," Edith said, "you'd feel she'd just about died for you, +like people in history who died for each other." + +"I do," Maurice said, soberly. + +When they drove home in the dusk, Maurice singing, loudly; Edith, on the +front seat of the wagon, snuggling against him; Johnny standing up, +balancing himself by holding on to their shoulders, and old Rover +jogging along on the footpath,--they were all in great spirits, until a +turn in the road showed them Eleanor, sitting on a log, looking rather +white. + +"Suffering snakes!" said Maurice, breaking off in the middle of a word. +Before Lion could quite stop, he was at his wife's side. "Eleanor! How +did you get here? ... You _walked_? Oh, Star, you oughtn't to have done +such a thing!" + +"I was frightened about you. It was so late. I was afraid something had +happened. I came to look for you." + +Edith and Johnny looked on aghast; then Edith called out: "Why, Eleanor! +I wouldn't let anything happen to Maurice!" + +Maurice, kneeling beside his wife, had put his arms around her and was +soothing her with all sorts of gentlenesses: "Dear, you mustn't worry +so! Nelly, don't cry; why, darling, we were having such a good time, we +never noticed that it was getting late ..." + +"You forgot me," Eleanor said; "as long as you had Edith, you never +thought how I might worry!" She hid her face in her hands. + +Maurice came back to the wagon; "Edith," he said, in a low voice, "would +you and Johnny mind getting out and walking? I'll bring Eleanor along +later. I'm sorry, but she's--she's tired." + +Edith said in a whisper, "'Course not!" Then, without a look behind her +at the crying woman on the log, and the patient, mortified boy bending +over her, she, and the disgusted and more deliberate Johnny, ran down +the road into the twilight. Edith was utterly bewildered. With her +inarticulate consciousness of the impropriety of emotion, naked, _in +public_! was the shyness of a child in meeting a stranger--for that +crying woman was practically a stranger. She wasn't the Bride--silent +and lovely! At Johnny's gate she said, briefly, "'Night!" and went on, +running--running in the dusk. When she reached the house, and found her +father and mother on the east porch, she was breathless, which accounted +for her brevity in saying that Maurice and Eleanor were coming--and she +was just starved! In the dining room, eating a very large supper, she +listened for the wheels of the wagon and reflected: "Why was Eleanor mad +at _me_? She was mad at Maurice, too. But most at me. Why?" She took an +enormous spoonful of sliced peaches, and stared blankly ahead of her. + +Ten minutes later, hearing wheels grating on the gravel at the front +door, and Maurice's voice, subdued and apologetic, she pushed her chair +away from the table, rushed through the pantry and up the back stairs. +She didn't know why she fled. She only knew that she couldn't face +Eleanor, who would sit with Maurice while he bolted a supper for +which--though Edith didn't know it!--all appetite had gone. In her room +in the ell, Edith shut the door, and, standing with her back against it, +tried to answer her own question: + +"Why was Eleanor mad?" But she couldn't answer it. Jealousy, as an +emotion, in herself or anybody else, was absolutely unknown to her. +She had probably never even heard the word--except in the Second +Commandment, or as a laughing reproach to old Rover--so she really did +not know enough to use it now to describe Eleanor's behavior. She only +said, "Maybe it's the nervous prostration? Well, I don't like her very +much. I'm glad she won't be at Fern Hill when I go there." To be a +Bride--and yet to cry before people! "Crying before people," Edith said, +"is just like taking off all your clothes before people--I don't care +how bad her nervous prostration is; it isn't nice! But why is she mad at +me? That isn't sense." + +You can't run other people's feelings to cover, and try to find their +cause, without mental and moral development; all this analysis lessened +very visibly Edith's childishness; also, it made her rather rudely cold +to Eleanor, whose effort to reinstate herself in the glories of the +little girl's imagination only resulted in still another and entirely +new feeling in Edith's mind--contempt. + +"If she had a right to be mad at me yesterday--why isn't she mad +to-day?" Edith reasoned. + +Eleanor was quick to feel the contempt. "I don't care for Edith," she +told Maurice, who looked surprised. + +"She's only a child," he said. + +Edith seemed especially a child now to Maurice, since he had embarked on +his job at Mercer. Not only was she unimportant to him, but, in spite of +his mortification at that scene on the road, his Saturday-night returns +to his wife were blowing the fires of his love into such a glory of +devotion, that Edith was practically nonexistent! His one thought was to +take Eleanor to Mercer. He wanted her all to himself! Also, he had a +vague purpose of being on his dignity with a lot of those Mercer people: +Eleanor's aunt, just back from Europe; Brown and Hastings--cubs! But +below this was the inarticulate feeling that, away from the Houghtons, +especially away from Edith, he might forget his impulse to use--for a +second time--that dreadful word "silly." + +So, as the 20th of October approached--the day when they were to go back +to town--he felt a distinct relief in getting away from Green Hill. The +relief was general. Edith felt it, which was very unlike Edith, who had +always sniffled (in private) at Maurice's departure! And her father and +mother felt it: + +"Eleanor's mind," Henry Houghton said, "is exactly like a drum--sound +comes out of emptiness!" + +"But Maurice seems to like the sound," Mrs. Houghton reminded him; "and +she loves him." + +"She wants to monopolize him," her husband said; "I don't call that +love; I call it jealousy. It must be uncomfortable to be jealous," he +ruminated; "but the really serious thing about it is that it will bore +any man to death. Point that out to her, Mary! Tell her that jealousy +is self-love, plus the consciousness of your own inferiority to the +person of whom you are jealous. And it has the same effect on love that +water has on fire. My definition ought to be in a dictionary!" he added, +complacently. + +"What sweet jobs you do arrange for me!" she said; "and as for your +definition, I can give you a better one--and briefer: 'Jealousy is Human +Natur'! But I don't believe Eleanor's jealous, Henry; she's only +conscious, poor girl! of Maurice's youth. But there is something I _am_ +going to tell her...." + +She told her the day before the bridal couple (Edith still reveled in +the phrase!) started for Mercer. "Come out into the orchard," Mary +Houghton called upstairs to Eleanor, "and help me gather windfalls for +jelly." + +"I must pack Maurice's things," Eleanor called over the banisters, +doubtfully; "he's a perfect boy about packing; he put his boots in with +his collars." + +"Oh, come along!" said Mrs. Houghton. And Eleanor yielded, scolding +happily while she pinned her hat on before the mirror in the hall. + +In the orchard they picked up some apples, then sat down on the bleached +stubble of the mowed hillside and looked over at the dark mass of the +mountain, behind which a red sun was trampling waist deep through leaden +clouds. "How _can_ I bring it in?" Mrs. Houghton thought; "it won't do +to just throw a warning at her!" + +But she didn't have to throw it; Eleanor invited it. "I'm glad we're +going to the hotel, just at first," she said; "Auntie says I don't know +anything about keeping house, and I get worried for fear I won't make +Maurice comfortable. I tell him so all the time!" + +"I wouldn't put things into his head, Eleanor," Mrs. Houghton said +(beginning her "warning"); "I mean things that you don't want him to +feel. I remember when my first baby was coming--the little boy we +lost--" she stopped and bit her lip; the "baby" had been gone for +nearly twenty years, but he was still her little boy--"I was very +forlorn, and I couldn't do anything, or go anywhere; and Henry stayed at +home with me like a saint. Well, I told my father that I had told Henry +it was hard on him to 'sit at home with an invalid wife.' And father +said, 'If you tell him so often enough, he'll agree with you,' There's a +good deal in that, Eleanor?" + +"I suppose there is," Maurice's wife said, vaguely. + +"So, if I were you," Mrs. Houghton said, still feeling her way, "I +wouldn't give him the idea that you are any--well, older than he is. A +wife might be fifty years older than her husband, and if her _spirit_ +was young, years wouldn't make a bit of difference!" + +Eleanor took this somewhat roundabout advice very well. "The only thing +in the world I want," she said, simply, "is to make him happy." + +They went back to the house in silence. But that night Eleanor paused in +putting some last things into her trunk, and, going over to Maurice, +kissed his thick hair. "Maurice," she said, "are you happy?" + +"You bet I am!" + +"You haven't said so once to-day." + +"I haven't said I'm alive," he said, grinning. "Oh, Star, won't it be +wonderful when we can go away from the whole caboodle of 'em, and just +be by ourselves?" + +"That's what I want!" she said; "just to be alone with you. I wish we +could live on a desert island!..." + +Down in the studio, Mr. Houghton, smoking up to the fire limit a cigar +grudgingly permitted by his wife ("It's your eighth to-day," she +reproached him), Henry Houghton, listening to his Mary's account of the +talk in the orchard, told her what he thought of her: "May you be +forgiven! Your intentions are doubtless excellent, but your truthfulness +leaves something to be desired: 'Years won't make any difference'? Mary! +Mary!" + +But she defended herself: "I mean, 'years' can't kill love--the highest +love--the love that grows out of, _and then outgrows_, the senses! The +body may be just an old glove--shabby, maybe; but if the hand inside +the glove is alive, what real difference does the shabbiness make? If +Eleanor's mind doesn't get rheumatic, _and if she will forget +herself_!--they'll be all right. But if she thinks of herself--" Mary +Houghton sighed; her husband ended her sentence for her: + +"She'll upset the whole kettle of fish?" + +"What I'm afraid of," she said, with a troubled look, "is that you are +right:--she's inclined to be jealous, I saw her frown when he was +playing checkers with Edith. I wanted to tell her, but didn't dare to, +that jealousy is as amusing to people who don't feel it, as it is +undignified in people who do." + +"My darling, you are a brute," said Mr. Houghton; "I have long suspected +it, _in re_ tobacco. As for Eleanor, _I_ would never have such cruel +thoughts! _I_ belong to the gentler sex. I would merely refer her to Mr. +F.'s aunt." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +They reached Mercer in the rainy October dusk. It was cold and raw, and +a bleak wind blew up the river, which, with its shifting film of oil, +bent like a brown arm about the grimy, noisy town. The old hotel, with +its Doric columns grimed with years of smoky river fogs, was dark, and +smelled of soot; and the manners of the waiters and chambermaids would +have set Eleanor's teeth on edge, except that she was so absorbed in the +thrill of being back under the roof which had sheltered them in those +first days of bliss. + +"Do you _remember_?" she said, significantly. + +Maurice, looking after suitcases and hand bags, said, absently, +"Remember what?" She told him "what" and he said: "Yes. Where do you +want this trunk put, Eleanor?" + +She sighed; to sentimentalize and receive no response in kind, is like +sitting down on a chair which isn't there. After dinner, when she and +Maurice came up to their room, which had fusty red hangings and a +marble-topped center table standing coldly under a remote chandelier, +she sighed again, for Maurice said that, as for this hole of a hotel, +the only thing _he_ thought of, was how soon they could get out of it! +"I can get that little house I told you about, only it's rather out of +the way. Not many of your kind of people 'round!" + +She knelt down beside him, pushing his newspaper aside and pressing her +cheek against his. "_That_ doesn't make any difference!" she said; "I'm +glad not to know anybody. I just want you! I don't want people." + +"Neither do I," Maurice agreed; "I'd have to shell out my cigars to 'em +if they were men!" + +"Oh, is that your reason?" she said, laughing. + +"Say, Star, would you mind moving? I was just reading--" + +She rose, and, going over to the window, stood looking out at the +streaming rain in one of those empty silences which at first had been so +alluringly mysterious to him. She was waiting for his hand on her +shoulder, his kiss on her hair--but he was immersed in his paper. "How +can he be interested about football, _now_, when we're alone?" she +thought, wistfully. Then, to remind him of lovelier things, she began to +sing, very softly: + +"Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers? +0 sweet content! +To add to golden numbers, golden numbers, +O sweet content!--0 sweet, O sweet content--" + +He dropped his paper and listened--and it seemed as if music made itself +visible in his ardent, sensitive face! After a while he got up and went +over to the window, and kissed her gently ... + +Maurice was very happy in these first months in Mercer. The Weston +office liked him--and admired him, also, which pleased his young +vanity!--though he was jeered at for an incorrigible and alarming +truthfulness which pointed out disadvantages to possible clients, but +which--to the amazement of the office--frequently made a sale! As a +result he acquired, after a while, several small gilt hatchets, +presented by the "boys," and also the nickname of "G. Washington." He +accepted these tributes with roars of laughter, but pointed to results: +"_I get the goods!_" So, naturally, he liked his work--he liked it very +much! The joy of bargaining and his quick and perhaps dangerously frank +interest in clients as personalities, made him a most beguiling +salesman; as a result he became, in an astonishingly short time, a real +force in the office; all of which hurried him into maturity. But the +most important factor in his happiness was his adoration of Eleanor. He +was perfectly contented, evening after evening in the hotel, to play +her accompaniments (on a rented piano), read poetry aloud, and beat her +at solitaire. Also, she helped him in his practicing with a certain +sweet authority of knowledge, which kept warm in his heart the sense of +her infinite superiority. So when, later, they found a house, he entered +very gayly upon the first test of married life--house furnishing! It was +then that his real fiber showed itself. It is a risky time for all +husbands and wives, a time when it is particularly necessary to +"consider the stars"! It needs a fine sense of proportion as to the +value, relatively, of peace and personal judgment, to give up one's idea +in regard, say, to the color of the parlor rug. Maurice's likes and +dislikes were emphatic as to rugs and everything else,--but his sense of +proportion was sound, so Eleanor's taste,--and peace,--prevailed. It was +good taste, so he really had nothing to complain of, though he couldn't +for the life of him see why she picked out a _picture_ paper for a +certain room in the top of the house! "I thought I'd have it for a +smoking room," he said, ruefully; "and a lot of pink lambs and green +chickens cavorting around don't seem very suitable. Still, if you like +it, it's all right!" The memory of the night on the mountain, when +Eleanor gave all she had of strength and courage and fear and passion to +the saving of his life--made pink lambs, or anything else, "all right"! +When the house-furnishing period was over, and they settled down, the +"people" Eleanor didn't want to see, seemed to have no particular desire +to see them; so their solitude of two (and Bingo, who barked whenever +Maurice put his arms around Eleanor) was not broken in upon--which made +for domestic, even if stultifying, content. But the thing that really +kept them happy during that first rather dangerous year, was the +smallness of their income. They had very little money; even with +Eleanor's six hundred, it was nearer two thousand dollars than three, +and that, for people who had always lived in more or less luxury, was +very nearly poverty;--for which, of course, they had reason, so far as +married happiness went, to thank God! If there are no children, it is +the limited income which can be most certainly relied upon to provide +the common interest which welds husband and wife together. This more or +less uncomfortable, and always anxious, interest, generally develops in +that critical time when the heat of passion has begun to cool, and the +friction of the commonplace produces a certain warmth of its own. These +are the days when conjugal criticism, which has been smothered under the +undiscriminating admiration of first love, begins to raise its head--an +ugly head, with a mean eye, in which there is neither imagination nor +humor. When this criticism begins to creep into daily life, and the lure +of the bare shoulder and perfumed hair lessens--because they are as +assured as bread and butter!--it is then that this saving unity of +purpose in acquiring bread and butter comes to the rescue. + +It came to the rescue of Maurice and Eleanor; they had many welding +moments of anxiety on his part, and eager self-sacrifice on her part; of +adding up columns of figures, with a constantly increasing total, which +had to be subtracted from a balance which decreased so rapidly that +Eleanor felt quite sure that the bank was cheating them! Of course they +did not appreciate the value of this blessed young poverty--who of us +ever appreciates poverty while we are experiencing it? We only know its +value when we look back upon it! But they did--or at least Eleanor +did--appreciate their isolation, never realizing that no human life can +refresh another unless it may itself drink deep of human sympathies and +hopes. Maurice could take this refreshment through business contacts; +but, except for Mrs. O'Brien, and her baby grandson, Don, Eleanor's +acquaintances in Mercer had been limited to her aunt's rather narrow +circle. + +When Mrs. Newbolt got back from Europe, Maurice was introduced to this +circle at a small dinner given to the bride and groom to indicate family +forgiveness. The guests were elderly people, who talked politics and +surgical operations, and didn't know what to say to Maurice, whose +blond hair and good-humored blue eyes made him seem distressingly young. +Nor did Maurice know what to say to them. + +"I'd have gone to sleep," he told Eleanor, in exploding mirth, on their +way home, "if it hadn't been that the food was so mighty good! I kept +awake, in spite of that ancient dame who hashed up the Civil War, just +to see what the next course would be!" + +It was about this time that Maurice began to show a little longing for +companionship (outside the office) of a kind which did not remember the +Civil War. His evenings of solitaire and music were awfully nice, but-- + +"Brown and Hastings are in college," he told his wife; "and Mort's on a +job at his father's mills. I miss 'em like the devil." + +"_I_ don't want anyone but you," she said, and the tears started to her +eyes; he asked her what she was crying about, and she said, "Oh, +nothing." But of course he knew what it was, and he had to remind +himself that "she had nervous prostration"; otherwise that terrible, +hidden word "silly" would have been on his lips. + +Eleanor, too, had a hidden word; it was the word "boy." It was Mrs. +Newbolt who thrust it at her, in those first days of settling down into +the new house. She had come in, waddling ponderously on her weak ankles, +to see, she said, how the young people were getting along: "At least, +_one_ of you is young!" Mrs. Newbolt said, jocosely. She was still +puffing from a climb upstairs, to find Eleanor, dusty and disheveled, in +a little room in the top of the house. She was sitting on the floor in +front of a trunk, with Bingo fast asleep on her skirt. + +"What's this room to be?" said Mrs. Newbolt; then looked at the wall +paper, gay with prancing lambs and waddling ducks, and Noah's Ark trees. +"What! a _nursery_?" said Mrs. Newbolt; "do you mean--?" + +"No," Eleanor said, reddening; "oh no! I only thought that if--" + +"You are forehanded," said Mrs. Newbolt, and was silent for almost a +minute. The vision of Eleanor choosing a nursery paper, for little eyes +(which might never be born!) to look upon, touched her. She blinked and +swallowed, then said, crossly: "You're thinner! For heaven's sake don't +lose your figger! My dear grandmother used to say--I can see her now, +skimmin' milk pans, and then runnin' her finger round the rim and +lickin' it. She was a Dennison. I've heard her say to her daughters, I'd +rather have you lose your virtue than lose your figger'; and my dear +grandfather--your great-grandfather--wore knee breeches; he said--well, +I suppose you'd be shocked if I told you what he said? He said, 'If a +gal loses one, she--' No; I guess I won't tell you. Old maids are so +refined! _He_ wasn't an old maid, I can tell you! I brought a chocolate +drop for Bingo. Have you a cook?" + +Eleanor, gasping with the effort to keep up with the torrent, said, +"Yes; but she doesn't know how to do things." + +Mrs. Newbolt raised pudgy and protesting hands. "Get somebody who can do +things! Come here, little Bingo! Eleanor, if you don't feed that boy, +you'll lose him. I remember puffectly well hearin' my dear father say, +'If you want to catch a man's heart, set a trap in his stomach.' Bingo! +Bingo!" (The little dog, standing on his hind legs, superciliously +accepted a chocolate drop--then ran back to Eleanor.) "Maurice will be a +man one of these days, and a man can't live on love; he wants 'wittles +and drink.' When I married your uncle Thomas, my dear father said, 'Feed +him--and amuse him.' So I made up my mind on my weddin' day to have good +food and be entertainin'. And I must say I did it! I fed your dear +uncle, and I talked to him, until he died." She paused, and looked at +the paper on the wall. "I _hope_ the Lord will send you children; it +will help you hold the boy--and perhaps you'll be more efficient! You'll +have to be, or they'll die. Get a cook." Then, talking all the way +downstairs, she trundled off, in angry, honest, forgiving anxiety for +her niece's welfare. + +Eleanor, planning for the little sunny room, felt bruised by that +bludgeon word--which, as it happened, was not accurate, for Maurice, by +this time, had gained a maturity of thought and patience that put him +practically out of boyhood. When Eleanor repeated her caller's remarks +to him, she left that one word out; "Auntie implied," she said, "that +you wouldn't love me, if you didn't have fancy cooking." + +"She's a peach on cooking herself," declared Maurice; "but, as far as my +taste goes, I don't give a hoot for nightingales' tongues on toast." + +So, as fancy cooking was not a necessity to Maurice, and as he had +resigned himself to an absence of any social life, and didn't really +mind smoking in a room with a silly paper on the walls (he had been very +much touched when Eleanor told him what the paper meant to her in hope, +and unsatisfied longing), he was perfectly contented in the ugly little +house in the raw, new street. In point of fact, music and books provided +the Bread of Life to Maurice--with solitaire thrown in as a pleasant +extra!--so "wittles and drink" did not begin to be a consideration until +the first year of married life had passed. Eleanor remembered the date +when--because of something Maurice said--she began to realize that they +must be considered. It was on the anniversary of their wedding--a +cloudy, cold day; but all the same, with valiant sentimentality, they +went--Bingo at their heels--to celebrate, in the meadow of those +fifty-four minutes of married life. As they crossed the field, where the +tides of blossoming grass ebbed and flowed in chilly gusts of wind, they +reminded each other of the first time they had come there, and of every +detail of the elopement. When they sat down under the locust tree, +Eleanor opened her pocketbook and showed him the little grass ring, +lying flat and brittle in a small envelope; and he laughed, and said +when he got rich he would buy her a circle of emeralds! + +"It's confoundedly cold," he said; "b-r-r! ... Oh, I must tell you the +news: I got one in on 'em at the office this morning: Old West has been +stung on a big block on Taylor Street. Nothing doing. No tenants. I've +been working on a fellow for a month, and, by George! I've landed him! I +told him the elevator service was rotten--and one or two other pretty +little things they've been sliding over, gracefully, at the office; but +I landed him! Say, Nelly, Morton asked me to go to a stag party to-morrow +night; do you mind if I go?" + +She smiled vaguely at his truthtelling; then sighed, and said, "Why, no; +if you _want_ to. Maurice, do you remember you said we'd come back here +for our golden wedding?" + +"So I did! I'd forgotten. Gosh! maybe we'll be grandparents by that +time!" The idea seemed to him infinitely humorous, but she winced. "What +a memory you have!" he said. "You ought to be in Weston's! They'd never +catch _you_ forgetting where some idiot left the key of the coal bin." + +"I sang 'Kiss thy perfumed garments'; remember?" + +"'Course I do. Hit 'em again." + +She laughed, but ruefully; he had not spoken just that way a year ago. +She noticed, suddenly, how much older he looked than on that worshiping +day--still the blue, gay eyes, the wind-ruffled blond hair, the +hilarious laugh that displayed the very white teeth; but all the same he +looked older by more than one year: his mouth had a firmer line; his +whole clean-cut face showed responsibility and eager manhood. + +Eleanor, clasping her hands around her knees, and watching the grass +ebbing and flowing in the wind, sang, "O Spring!" and Maurice, +listening, his eyes following the brown ripple of the river lisping in +the shallows around the sandbar, and flowing--flowing--like Life, and +Time, and Love, sighed with satisfaction at the pure beauty of her +voice. "The notes are like wings," he said; "give us a sandwich. I'm +about starved." + +They spread out their luncheon, and Maurice expressed his opinion of it: +"This cake is the limit!" He threw a piece of it at the little dog. +"There, Bingo!... Eleanor, he's losing his waist line. But this cake +won't fatten him! It's sawdust." + +"Hannah _is_ a poor cook," she agreed, nervously; "but if I didn't keep +her I don't know what she would do, she's so awfully deaf! She couldn't +get another place." + +"Why don't you teach her to do things? I suppose she thinks we can live +on love," he said, chuckling. + +She bit her lip,--and thought of Mrs. Newbolt. "Because I don't know how +myself," she said. + +"Why don't you learn?" he suggested, feeding the rest of his cake to +Bingo; "Edith used to make bully cake--" + +She said, with a worried look, that she _would_ try-- + +Instantly he was patient and very gentle, and said that the cake didn't +matter at all! "But I move we try boarding." + +They were silent, watching the slipping gleam on the ripples, until +Eleanor said, "Oh, Maurice,--if we only had a child!" + +"Maybe we will some day," he said, cheerfully. Then, to tease Bingo, he +put his arms around his wife and hugged her,--which made the little dog +burst into a volley of barks! Maurice laughed, but remembered that he +was hungry and said again, "Let's board." + +Eleanor, soothing Bingo, wild-eyed and trembling with jealous love, said +no! she would try to have things better. "Perhaps I'll get as clever as +Edith," she said--and her lip hardened. + +He said he wished she would: "Edith used to make a chocolate cake I'd +sell my soul for, pretty nearly! Why didn't Hannah give us hard-boiled +eggs?" he pondered, burrowing in the luncheon basket for something more +to eat; "they don't take brains!" + +Of course he was wrong; any cooking takes brains--and nobody seemed +able, in his little household, to supply them. However, boarding was +such a terrible threat, that Eleanor, dismayed at the idea of leaving +that little room, waiting at the top of the house, with its ducks and +shepherdesses; and thinking, too, of a whole tableful of people who +would talk to Maurice! made heroic efforts to help Hannah, her mind +fumbling over recipes and ingredients, as her hands fumbled over dishes +and oven doors and dampers. She only succeeded in burning her wrist +badly, and making the deaf Hannah say she didn't want a lady messing up +her kitchen. + +By degrees, however, "living on love" became more and more +uncomfortable, and in October the fiasco of a little dinner for Henry +Houghton made Maurice say definitely that, when their lease expired, +they would board. Mr. Houghton had come to Mercer on business, bringing +Edith with him, as a sort of spree for the child; and when he got home +he summed up his experience to his Mary: + +"That daughter of yours will be the death of me! There was one moment at +dinner when only the grace of God kept me from wringing her neck. In the +first place, she commented upon the food--which was awful!--with her +usual appalling candor. But when she began on the 'harp'--" + +"Harp?" Mary Houghton looked puzzled. + +"I won't go to their house again! I detest married people who squabble +in public. Let 'em scratch each other's eyes out in private if they want +to, the way we do! But I'll be hanged if I look on. She calls him +'darling' whenever she speaks to him. She adores him,--poor fellow! I +tell you, Mary, a mind that hasn't a single thought except love must be +damned stupid to live with. I wished I was asleep a dozen times." + +Maurice, too, at his own dinner table, had "wished he was asleep." + +In the expectation of seeing Mr. Houghton, Eleanor had planned an early +and extra good dinner, after which they meant to take their guests out +on the river and float down into the country to a spot--green, still, in +the soft October days--from which they could look back at the city, with +its myriad lights pricking out in the dusk, and see the copper lantern +of the full moon lifting above the black line of the hills. Eleanor, +taught by Maurice, had learned to feel the strange loveliness of +Mercer's ugliness, and it was her idea that Mr. Houghton should feel it, +too. "Edith's too much of a child to appreciate it," she said. + +"She's not much of a child; she's almost fourteen!" + +"I think," said Eleanor, "that if she's fourteen, she's too old to be as +free and easy with men--as she is with you." + +"_Me?_ I'm just like a brother! She has no more sense of beauty than a +puppy, but she'll like the boat, provided she can row, and adore you." + +"Nonsense!" Eleanor said. "Oh, I _hope_ the dinner will be good." + +It was far from good; the deaf Hannah had scorched the soup, to which +Edith called attention, making no effort to emulate the manners of her +father, who heroically took the last drop in his plate. Maurice, anxious +that Eleanor's housekeeping should shine, thought the best way to affirm +it was to say that _this_ soup was vile, "but generally our soup is +fine!" + +"Maurice thinks Edith is a wonderful cook," Eleanor said; her voice +trembled. + +Something went wrong at dessert, and Edith said, generously, that she +"didn't mind a bit!" It was at that point that the race of God kept her +father from murdering her, for, in a real desire to be polite and cover +up the defective dessert, she became very talkative, and said, wasn't it +funny? When she was little, she thought a harpy played on a harp; "and I +thought you had a harp, because father--" + +"I'd like some more ice cream!" Mr. Houghton interrupted, passionately. + +"But there's salt in it!" said Edith, surprised. To which her father +replied, breathlessly, that he believed he'd not go out on the river; he +had a headache. ("Mary has got to do something about this child!") + +"_I'll_ go," Edith announced, cheerfully. + +"I think I'll stay at home," Eleanor said; "my head is rather inclined +to ache, too, Mr. Houghton; so we'll none of us go." + +"Me and Maurice will," Edith protested, dismayed. + +Maurice gave an anxious look at Eleanor: "It might do your head good, +Nelly?" + +"Oh, let's go by ourselves," Edith burst out; "I mean," she corrected +herself, "people like father and Eleanor never enjoy the things we do. +They like to talk." + +"I'd like to choke you!" the exasperated father thought. But he cast a +really frightened eye at Eleanor, who grew a little paler. There was +some laborious talk in the small parlor, where Eleanor's piano took up +most of the space: comments on the weather, and explanations of Bingo's +snarling. "He's jealous," Eleanor said, with amused pride, and stroking +the little faithful head that pressed so closely against her. + +At which Edith began, eagerly, "Father says--" ("What the deuce will she +say now?" poor Mr. Houghton thought)--"Father says Rover has a human +being's horridest vice--jealousy." + +"I don't think jealousy is a vice," Eleanor said, coldly. + +Mr. Houghton, giving his offspring a terrible glance, said that he must +go back to the hotel and take something for his headache; "And don't +keep that imp out too late, Maurice. You want to get home and take care +of Eleanor." + +"Oh no; he doesn't," Eleanor said, and shook hands with her embarrassed +guest, who was saying, under his breath, "_What_ taste!" + +Out in the street Maurice hurried so that Edith, tucking, unasked, +her hand through his arm, had to skip once or twice to keep up with +him.... "Maurice," she said, breathlessly, "will you let me row?" + +"O Lord--yes! I don't care." + +After that Edith did all the talking, until they reached the wharf where +Maurice kept his boat; when Edith had secured the oars and they pushed +off, he took the tiller ropes, and sat with moody eyes fixed on the +water. The mortification of the dinner was gnawing him; he was thinking +of the things he might have said to bring Eleanor to her senses! Yet he +realized that to have said anything would have added to Mr. Houghton's +embarrassment. "I'll have it out with her when I get home," he thought, +hotly. "Edith started the mess; why did she say that about Mr. Houghton +and Eleanor?" He glanced at her, and Edith, rowing hard, saw the sudden +angry look, and was so surprised that she caught a crab, almost keeled +over, laughed loudly, and said, _"Goodness!"_ which was at that time, +her most violent expletive. + +"Maurice," she demanded, "did you see that lady on the float, getting +into the boat with those two gentlemen?" + +Maurice said, absently: "There were two or three people round. I don't +know which you mean." + +"The young one. She had red cheeks. I never saw such red cheeks!" + +"Oh," said Maurice; "_that_ one? Yes. I saw her. Paint." + +"On her cheeks?" Edith said, with round, astonished eyes. "Do ladies put +paint on their cheeks?" + +Miserable as Maurice was, he did chuckle. "No, Edith; _ladies_ don't," +he said, significantly. (Such was the innocent respectability of 1903!) + +Edith looked puzzled: "You mean she isn't a lady, Maurice?" + +"Look out!" he said, jamming the tiller over; "you were on your right +oar." + +"But, Maurice," she insisted, "_why_ do you say she isn't a +lady?... Oh, Maurice! There she is now! See? In that boat?" + +"Well, for Heaven's sake don't announce it to the world!" Maurice +remonstrated. "Guess I'll take the oars, Edith. I want some exercise." + +Edith sighed, but said, "All right." She wanted to row; but she wanted +even more to get Maurice good-natured again. "He's huffy," she told +herself; "he's mad at Eleanor, and so am I; but it's no sense to take +_my_ head off!" She hated to change seats--they drew in to shore to do +it, a concession to safety on Maurice's part--for she didn't like to +turn her back on the red-cheeked lady with the two gentlemen in the +following skiff; however, she did it; after all, it was Maurice's boat, +and she was his company; so, if he "wanted to row her" (thus her little +friendly thoughts ran), "why, all right!" Still, she hated not to look +at the lady that Maurice said was not a lady. "She must be twice as old +as I am; I should think you were a lady when you were twenty-six," she +reflected. + +But because her back was turned to the "lady," she did not, for an +instant, understand the loud splash behind them, and Maurice's +exclamation, "Capsized!" The jerk of their boat, as he backed water, +made it rock violently. "Idiots!" said Maurice. "I'll pick you up!" he +yelled, and rowed hard toward the three people, now slapping about in +not very deep water. "Tried to change seats,"--he explained to Edith. +"I'm coming!" he called again. + +Edith, wildly excited and swaying back and forth, like a coxswain in a +boat race, screamed: "We're coming! You'll get drowned--you'll get +drowned!" she assured the gasping, bubbling people, who were, somehow or +other, making their muddy way toward the shore. + +"Get our skiff, will you?" one of the "gentlemen" called to Maurice, +who, seeing that there was no danger to any of the immersed merrymakers, +turned and rowed out to the slowly drifting boat. + +"Grab the painter!" he told Edith as he gained upon it; she obeyed his +orders with prompt dexterity. "You can always depend on old Skeezics," +Maurice told himself, with a friendly look at her. He had forgotten +Eleanor's behavior, and was trying to suppress his grins at the forlorn +and dripping people, who were on land now, shivering, and talking with +astonishing loudness. + +"Oh, the lady's cheeks are coming off!" Edith gasped, as they beached. + +Maurice, shoving the trailing skiff on to its owners, said: "Can I do +anything to help you?" + +"I'll catch my death," said the lady, who was crying; her trickling +tears and her sopping handkerchief removed what remnants of her "cheeks" +the sudden bath in the river had left. As the paint disappeared, one +saw how very pretty the poor draggled butterfly was--big, honey-dark +eyes, and quite exquisite features. "Oh, my soul and body!--I'll die!" +she said, sobbing with cold and shock. + +"Here," said Maurice, stripping off his coat; "put this on." + +The girl made some faint demur, and the men, who were bailing out their +half-filled skiff, said, "Oh--she can have our coats." + +"They're soaked, aren't they?" Maurice said; "and I don't need mine in +the least." + +Edith gasped; such reckless gallantry gave her an absolutely new +sensation. Her heart seemed to lurch, and then jump; she breathed hard, +and said, under her breath, "Oh, _my_!" She felt that she could never +speak to Maurice again; he was truly a grown-up gentleman! Her eyes +devoured him. + +"Do take it," she heard him say to the crying lady, who no longer +interested her; "I assure you I don't need it," he said, carelessly; and +the "lady" reached out a small, shaking hand, on which the kid glove was +soaking wet, and said, her teeth chattering, that she was awfully +obliged. + +"Get in--get in!" one of the "gentlemen" said, crossly, and as she +stepped into the now bailed-out skiff, she said to Maurice, "Where shall +I return it to?" + +"I'll come and get it," Maurice said--and she called across the strip of +water widening between the two boats: + +"I'm Miss Lily Dale--" and added her street and number. + +Maurice, in his shirt sleeves, lifted his hat; then looked at Edith and +grinned. "Did you ever see such idiots? Those men are chumps. Did you +hear the fat one jaw at the girl?" + +"Did he?" Edith said, timidly. She could hardly bear to look at Maurice, +he was so wonderful. + +But he, entirely good-natured again, was overflowing with fun. "Let's +turn around," he said, "and follow 'em! That fatty was rather +happy--did you get on to that flask?" + +Edith had no idea what he meant, but she said, breathlessly, "Yes, +Maurice." In her own mind she was seeing again that princely gesture, +that marvelous tossing of his own coat to the "lady"! "He is _exactly_ +like Sir Walter Raleigh," she said to herself. She remembered how at +Green Hill she had wanted him to spread his coat before Eleanor's +feet;--but _that_ was commonplace! Eleanor was just a married person, +"like mother." This was a wonderful drowning lady! Oh, he _was_ Sir +Walter! Her eyes were wide with an entirely new emotion--an emotion +which made her draw back sharply when once, as he rowed, his hand +touched hers. She was afraid of that careless touch. Yet oh, if he would +only give _her_ some of his clothes! Oh, why hadn't _she_ fallen into +the water! Her heart beat so that she felt she could not speak. It was +not necessary; Maurice, singing a song appropriate to the lady with the +red cheeks, was not aware of her silence. + +"I bet," he said, "that cad takes it out of the little thing! She looked +scared, didn't you think, Edith?" + +"Yes, ... _sir_" the little girl said, breathlessly. + +Maurice did not notice the new word; "Sorry not to take you down to the +Point," he said; "but I ought to keep tabs on that boat. If they capsize +again, somebody really might get hurt. She's a--a little fool, of +course; but I'd hate to have the fat brute drown her, and he looks +capable of it." + +However, trailing along in the deepening dusk behind the fat brute, who +was rowing hard against the current, they saw the dripping survivors of +the shipwreck reach the wharf safely five minutes ahead of them, and +scurry off into the darkness of the street. + +Maurice, in high spirits, had quite forgiven Eleanor. "I meant to treat +you to ice cream, Skeezics," he said, "but I can't go into the hotel. +Shirt sleeves wouldn't be admitted in the elegant circles of the Mercer +House!" + +Instantly a very youthful disappointment readjusted things for Edith; +she forgot that strange consciousness which had made her shrink from his +careless touch; she had no impulse to say "sir"; she was back again at +the point at which the red-cheeked lady had broken in upon their lives. +She said, frowning: "My! I did want some ice cream. I _wish_ you hadn't +given the lady your coat!" + +When Maurice got home, he found a repentant Eleanor bathing very red and +swollen eyes. + +"How's your head?" he said, as he came, in his shirt sleeves, into her +room; she, turning to kiss him and say it was better, stopped short. + +"Maurice! Where's your coat?" + +His explanation deepened her repentance; "Oh, Maurice,--if you've caught +cold!" + +He laughed and hugged her (at which Bingo, in his basket, barked +violently); and said, "The only thing that bothered me was that I +couldn't treat Edith to ice cream." + +Eleanor's face, passionately tender, changed sharply: "Edith is an +extremely impertinent child! Did you hear her, at dinner, talk about +jealousy?" + +He looked blank, and said, "What was 'impertinent' in that? Say, Star, +the girl in the boat was--tough; she was painted up to the nines, and of +course it all came out in the wash. And Buster said her 'cheeks came +off'! But she was pretty," Maurice ruminated, beginning to pull off his +boots. + +"I don't see how you can call a painted woman 'pretty,'" Eleanor said, +coldly. + +Maurice yawned. "She seemed to belong to the fat brute. He was so nasty +to her, I wanted to punch his head." + +"Poor girl!" Eleanor said, and her voice softened. "Perhaps I could do +something for her? She ought to make him marry her." + +Maurice chuckled. "Oh, Nelly, you _are_ innocent! No, my dear; she'll +paint some more, and then, probably, get to drinking; and meet one or +two more brutes. When she gets quite into the gutter, she'll die. The +sooner the better! I mean, the less harm she'll do." + +Eleanor's recoil of pain seemed to him as exquisite as a butterfly's +shrinking from some harsh finger. He looked at her tenderly. "Star, you +don't know the world! And I don't want you to." + +"I'd like to help her," Eleanor said, simply. + +"You?" he said; "I wouldn't have you under the same roof with one of +those creatures!" + +His sense of her purity pleased her; the harem idea is, at bottom, +pleasing to women; they may resent it with their intellect, but they all +of them like to feel they are too precious for the wind of evil +realities to blow upon. So, honestly enough, and with the childlike joy +of the woman in love, she played up to the harem instinct, shrinking a +little and asking timid questions, and making innocent eyes; and was +kissed, and assured she was a lovely goose; for Maurice played up to his +part, too, with equal honesty (and youth)--the part of the worldly-wise +protector. It was the fundamental instinct of the human male; he resents +with his intellect the idea that his woman is a fool; but the more +foolish she is (on certain lines) the more important he feels himself to +be! So they were both very contented, until Maurice happened to say +again that he was sorry to have disappointed Edith about the ice cream. + +"She's a greedy little thing," Eleanor said from her pillows; her voice +was irritated. + +"What nonsense!" Maurice said; "as for ice cream, all youngsters like +it. I know I do!" + +"I saw her hang on to your arm as you went down the street," Eleanor +said. "Mrs. Houghton ought to tell her that nice girls don't paw men!" + +"Eleanor! She's nothing but a child, and I'm her brother--" + +"You are _not_ her brother." + +"Oh, Eleanor, don't be so--" he paused; oh, that dreadful word which +must not be spoken!--"so unreasonable," he ended, wearily. He lay down +beside her in the darkness, and by and by he heard her crying, very +softly. "_Oh_, lord!" he said; and turned over and went to sleep. + +Thus do the clouds return after rain. Yet each day the sun rises +again.... + +At breakfast Eleanor, with a pitying word for the "poor thing," reminded +her husband that he must go and get his coat. + +He said, "Gosh! I'd forgotten it!" and added that he liked his eggs +softer. He would have "played up" again, and smiled at her innocence, if +he had thought of it, but he was really concerned about his eggs, +"Hannah seems to think I like brickbats," he said, good-naturedly. + +Eleanor winced; "Poor Hannah is so stupid! But she's getting deafer +every day, so I _can't_ send her away!" Added to her distress at the +scorched soup of the night before, was this new humiliation of +"brickbats;" naturally she forgot the "poor thing." + +Maurice almost forgot her himself; but as he left the office in the +afternoon he did remember the coat. At the address which the red-cheeked +lady had given him, he found her card--"Miss Lily Dale"--below a letter +box in the tiled, untidy vestibule of a yellow-brick apartment house, +where he waited, grinning at the porcelain ornateness about him, for a +little jerking elevator to take him up to the fourth floor. There, in a +small, gay, clean parlor of starched lace curtains, and lithographs, and +rows of hyacinth bulbs just started in blue and purple glasses on the +window sill, he found the red-cheeked young lady, rather white-cheeked. +Indeed, there were traces of hastily wiped-away tears on her pretty +face. + +"My friend, Mr. Batty, said I upset the boat," she said, taking the coat +out of the wardrobe and brushing it briskly with a capable little hand. + +The coat reeked with perfumery, and Maurice said, "Phew!" to himself; +but threw it over his arm, and said that Mr. Batty had only himself to +blame. "A man ought to know enough not to let a lady move about in a +rowboat!" + +"Won't you be seated?" Lily said; she lighted a cigarette, and shoved +the box over to him, across the varnished glitter of the table top. + +Maurice, introducing himself--"My name's Curtis";--and, taking in all +the details of the comfortable, vulgar little room, sat down, took a +cigarette, and said it was a warm day for October; she said she hated +heat, and he said he liked winter best.... Then he saw a bruise on her +wrist and said: "Why, you gave yourself a dreadful knock, didn't you? +Was it on the rowlock?" + +Her face dropped into sullen lines: "It wasn't the boat did it." + +Maurice, with instant discretion, dropped the subject. But he was sorry +for her; she made him think of a beaten kitten. "You must take care of +that wrist," he said, his blue eyes full of sympathy. When he went away +he told himself he had spotted the big man as a brute the minute he saw +him. The "kitten" seemed to him so pathetic that he forgot Eleanor's +exquisiteness, and told her about the bruised wrist and the reeking +coat, and how pretty the girl was. + +"I don't know anything vulgarer than perfumery!" his wife said, with a +delicate shrug. + +Maurice agreed, adding, with a grin, that he had noticed that when +ladies were short on the odor of sanctity, they were long on the odor of +musk. + +"I always keep dried rose leaves in my bureau drawers," Eleanor said; +and he had the presence of mind to say, "You are a rose yourself!" + +A husband's "presence of mind" in addressing his wife is, of course, a +confession; it means they are not one--for nobody makes pretty speeches +to oneself! However, Maurice's "rose" made no such deduction. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +It was after Mr. Houghton had swallowed the scorched soup and meditated +infanticide, that boarding became inevitable. Several times that winter +Maurice said that Hannah "was the limit; so let's board?" + +And toward spring, in spite of the cavorting lambs and waddling ducks in +the little waiting, empty room upstairs, Eleanor yielded. "We can go to +housekeeping again," she thought, "_if_--" + +So the third year of their marriage opened in a boarding house. They +moved (Bingo again banished to Mrs. O'Brien), on their wedding +anniversary, and instead of celebrating by going out to "their river," +they spent a hot, grimy day settling down in their third-floor front. + +"If people come to see us," said Maurice, ruefully, standing with his +hands in his pockets surveying their new quarters, "they'll have to sit +on the piano!" + +"Nobody'll come," Eleanor said. + +Maurice's eyes narrowed: "I believe you need 'em, Nelly? I knock up +against people at the office, and I know several fellows and girls +outside--" + +"What girls?" + +"Oh, the fellows' sisters; but you--" + +"I don't want anybody but you!" + +Maurice was silent. Two years ago, when Eleanor had said almost the same +thing: she was willing to live on a desert island, _with him_!--it had +been oil on the flames of his love; now, it puzzled him. He didn't want +to live on a desert island, with anybody! He needed more than one man +"Friday," and any women "Thursdays" who might come along were joyously +welcomed. "I am a social beggar, myself," he said; and began to whistle +and fuss about, trying to bring order out of a chaos of books and +photographs and sheet music. She sat watching him--the alert, vigorous +figure; the keen face under the shock of blond hair; the blue eyes that +crinkled so easily into laughter. Her face was thinner, and there were +rings of fatigue under her dark eyes, and that little nursery in the +house they had left, made a swelling sense of emptiness in her heart. +("If I see any awfully pretty nursery paper this winter, I'll buy it, +and have it ready,--_in case_ we should have to get another house," she +thought.) "Oh, do stop whistling," she said; "it goes through me!" + +"Poor Nelly!" he said, kindly, and stopped. + +The astonishing thing about the "boarding-house marriage," is that it +ever survives the strain of the woman's idleness and the man's +discomfort! But it does, occasionally. Even this marriage survived Miss +Ladd's boarding house, for a time. At first it went smoothly enough +because Maurice couldn't blame Eleanor's cook, and Eleanor couldn't say +that "nothing she did pleased Maurice"; so two reasons for irritability +were eliminated; but a new reason appeared: Maurice's eager interest in +everything and everybody--especially everybody!--and his endless good +nature, overflowed around the boarding-house table. Everyone liked him, +which Eleanor entirely understood; but he liked everyone,--which she +didn't understand. + +The note of this mutual liking was struck the very first night when +Maurice went down into the dingy basement dining room; he and Eleanor +made rather a sensation as they entered: Eleanor, handsome and silent, +produced the impression of cold reserve; Maurice, amiable and talkative, +gave a little shock of interest and pleasure to the fifteen or twenty +people eating indifferent food about a table covered with a not very +fresh cloth. Before the meal was over he had made himself agreeable to +an elderly woman on his left, ventured some drollery to a pretty +high-school teacher of mathematics opposite him, and given a man at the +end of the table the score. When Eleanor rose, Maurice had to rise, too, +though his dessert was not quite devoured; and as the couple left the +room there was a murmur of pleasure: + +"A real addition to our family," said Miss Ladd. + +The bond salesman said, "I wonder if he'll go to the ball game with me +on Saturday? I'll get the tickets." + +The school-teacher said, "He's awfully good looking." + +The widow's comment was only, "Nice boy." + +Upstairs in their own room, Maurice said: "What pleasant people! Nelly, +let's get some fun out of this; don't dash up here the minute you +swallow your food!" + +She wondered, silently, how he could call them "pleasant"! To her they +were all rather common, pushing persons, who wanted to talk to Maurice. +But as her one desire was to do what he liked, she really did try to +help him "get some fun out of them." Every night at dinner she smiled +laboriously when he teased the teacher, and she listened to the elderly +woman in mourning, whose clever talk was so absorbing to Maurice that +sometimes he didn't hear his wife speaking to him! Yes; Eleanor tried. +Yet, in less than a month Maurice found himself beside a boarder of his +own sex, instead of Mrs. Davis, and saw that the school-teacher was too +far down the table for jokes. When he asked why their seats had been +changed, Eleanor said she had felt a draught--which caused the widow to +smile, and write on a piece of paper an arithmetical statement: +"Selfishness + vanity - humor = jealousy." She handed it to the teacher, +who laughed and shrugged her shoulders: + +"But she's awfully in love with him," she conceded, under her breath. + +The older woman shook her head: "No, my dear; she isn't. No jealous +woman knows the meaning of love." + +But Eleanor did not see Miss Moore's contemptuous smile, or Mrs. Davis's +grave glance. One of the pitiful things about jealous people is that +they don't know how amusing--or else boring--or else irritating--they +are to an observant and entirely unsympathetic world! Eleanor had no +idea that the whole tableful of people knew she was jealous, and found +her ridiculous. She only knew that Maurice seemed to like them--which +meant that her society "wasn't enough for him "! So she tried to make it +enough for him. At dinner she talked to him so animatedly (and so +personally) that no one else could get a word in edgewise. Dinner over, +she was uneasy until she had dragged her eager-eyed young husband up to +the desert island of their third-floor front--a dingy room, with a +black-marble mantelpiece, and a worn and frowzy carpet. There were some +steel engravings, dim under their old glasses, on the wall,--Evangeline, +and Lincoln's Cabinet, and Daniel Webster in a rumpled shirt and a long +swallowtail;--all of which Eleanor's looking-glass and the mirrored +doors of a black-walnut wardrobe, reflected in multiplying dullness. + +Maurice's charming good nature in that first boarding winter never +failed. Eleanor's silences--which he had long since discovered were +merely empty, not mysterious--were at least no tax on his patience; so +he never once called her "silly." He did, occasionally, feel a faint +uneasiness lest people might think she was older than he--which was, of +course, the beginning of self-consciousness as to what he had done in +marrying her. But he loved her. He still loved her. "She isn't very +well," he used to defend her to Mrs. Newbolt; "she nearly killed +herself, saving my life. She's not been the same girl since." + +"'Girl'?" said Mrs. Newbolt; "she's exactly the same _woman_, only more +so because she's older. I hope she won't lose her figger; she's gettin' +thin. My dear grandmother--she was a Dennison; fat; I can hear her now +talkin' to her daughters: 'Girls! _Don't_ lose your figgers!' She had +red hair." + +Eleanor had not lost her figure; it was still graciously erect, and with +lovely curves of bosom and shoulders; but, somehow, she seemed +older--older even than she was! Perhaps because of her efforts to be +girlish? It was as if she wore clothes she had outgrown--clothes that +were too tight and too short. She used Maurice's slang without its +virile appropriateness; when they accepted an invitation from one of +Maurice's new acquaintances, her anxiety to be of his generation was +pathetic--or ludicrous, as one happened to look at it. These friends of +Maurice's seemed to have innumerable interests in common with him that +she knew nothing about--and jokes! How tired she got of their jokes, +which were mostly preposterous badinage, expressed with entire solemnity +and ending in yells of laughter. Yet she tried to laugh, too; though she +rarely knew what it was all about. There is nothing which divides the +generations more sharply than their ideas of humor. But Eleanor tried, +very pitifully hard, to be silly with the kind of silliness which +Maurice seemed to enjoy; but, alas! she only achieved the silliness +which he--like every husband on earth!--hated: the silliness of small +jealousies. Once she told Maurice she didn't like those dinner parties +that his friends were always asking them to,--"I think it's nicer here," +she said. + +And he said, cheerfully: "Don't go! I don't mind going alone." + +"I know you don't," she said, wistfully.... "Why can't he be satisfied +to stay at home with me?" she said once to her aunt; and Mrs. Newbolt +told her why: + +"Because you don't interest him. Eleanor! if you want to keep that boy, +urge him to go out and have a good time, _without you_!" Then she added +some poignantly true remarks: "My dear father used to say, 'Just as many +men are faithless to their wives because their wives have plain minds, +as because other women have pretty faces.' Well, I'm afraid poor dear +mother's mind was plain; that's why I always made an effort to talk to +your uncle, and be entertainin'. And I'll tell you another thing--for +if I have a virtue it's candor--if you let him see you're jealous, he'll +make it worth your while! You've got a rip in the back seam of your +waist. No man ever keeps on lovin' a jealous woman; he just pretends to, +to keep the peace." + +Of course this was as unintelligible to Eleanor as it is to all women +of her type of mind. So, instead of considering Maurice's enjoyment of +society, she committed the absurdity of urging him to enjoy what she +enjoyed--a solitude of two. To herself she explained his desire to see +other people, by saying it was because they had no children. "When we +have a child, he won't want to be with those boys and girls! Oh, why +don't we have a baby?" Her longing for children was like physical +hunger. But only Mrs. O'Brien understood it. When Eleanor went, in her +faithful way, two or three times a week, to sing to little sickly Don +(and pet the boarding and rather pining Bingo), Mrs. O'Brien, listening +to the little songs, pretty and silly, would draw a puckery hand over +her eyes: "She'd ought to have a dozen of her own! If that boy don't +treat her good, I'll iron off every button he's got!" + +When Eleanor (hoping for a baby) worried lest Maurice's hopes, too, were +disappointed, her gentleness to him was passionate and beseeching; but +sometimes, watching his attention to other people, the gentleness grew +rigid in an accusation that, because they hadn't a child, he was +"getting tired of her"! Whenever she said this foolish thing, there +would come, afterward, a rain of repentant tears. But repentance cannot +always change the result of foolish words--and the result is so often +out of proportion to the words! As Maurice had said that day in their +meadow, of Professor Bradley and the banana skin--a very little thing +"can throw the switches," in human life! + +It was the "little thing" of a lead pencil, in keeping the accounts of +their endless games of solitaire, that threw the switches now, for +Maurice Curtis.... He happened to produce a very soft pencil, which he +had borrowed, he said, "from a darned pretty woman he was showing a +house to," and had forgotten to return to her. + +Eleanor said it seemed to her bad taste to talk of a strange woman that +way: "If she's a lady she wouldn't want a man she didn't know to speak +so--so lightly of her." + +"I have yet to meet one of your sex who objects to being called pretty," +Maurice said, dryly. + +To which Eleanor replied that she preferred a hard lead pencil, +anyhow,--but _her_ wishes seemed to be of no importance! "You're tired +of me, Maurice." He said, "Oh, damn!" She said, "I won't have you swear +at me!" + +He pushed back his chair, toppled the flimsy table over, scattering all +the cards on the floor. The falling table struck her knee; she screamed; +he flung out of the room--out of the house, into the hot darkness of an +August night.... The switches were thrown.... + +Down on Tyler Street there had been another quarrel--as trivial as the +difference of opinion as to hard and soft lead pencils, and again human +lives were shifted from one track to another. It was Lily who ran out +into the darkness, and wandered through the streets; then strayed down +to the bridge that spanned the hurrying black water of that same river +which, two years before, had lisped and laughed under Maurice and +Eleanor's happy eyes. Lily, watching the current, thought angrily of +Batty--then a passing elbow jostled her and some one said, "Beg pardon!" +She turned and saw Maurice. + +"Well, I do say!" she said; and Maurice, pausing at the voice in the +dark, began a brief, "Excuse me; I stumbled--" saw who it was, and said, +"Why, Miss Lily! How are you? I haven't seen you for an age!" + +She answered with some small jocosity; then suddenly struck her little +fist on the railing. "Well, I'm just miserable; that's how I am, if you +want to know! Batty--" + +Maurice frowned. "Has that pup hurt you?" + +She nodded: "I don't know why I put up with him!" + +"Shake him!" he advised, good-naturedly. + +"I 'ain't got any other friend." She spoke with half-laughing anger; +indeed, she was so pretty and so plucky that he forgot, for a moment, +the irritation at Eleanor which had driven him out into the night, and +it came into his mind that something ought to be done for girls like +this. He remembered that Eleanor herself had said so, "Perhaps I could +do something for her?" Eleanor had said. + +"She isn't bad," he thought, looking at Lily; "she's just a fool, like +all of 'em. But there ought to be some way of fishing 'em out of the +gutter, before they get to the very bottom. Maybe Eleanor could give her +a hand up?" Then he asked her about herself: Had she friends? Where did +her family live? Could she do any work? He was rather diverted by his +own philanthropy, but it seemed to him that it would be the decent thing +to advise the girl, seriously. "I'll talk to her," he thought. "Come +on!" he said; "let's hunt up some place and have something to eat." + +"I ain't hungry," she said--then saw the careless straightforwardness of +his face, and was straightforward herself: "I guess I'd better be going +home." + +"Oh, come on," he urged her. + +She yielded, with a little rollicking chuckle; and as they walked toward +a part of town more suitable for such excursions, she confided to him +she was twenty, and she'd been "around" for a year. + +("Twenty-five, if she's a day," he thought.) + +They strolled along for several blocks before discovering, in the +purlieus of Tyler Street, a dingy "ice-cream parlor," eminently fitted +for interviews with the Lilys of the locality. At a marble-topped table, +translucent with years of ice-cream rendezvous, they waited for his +order to be filled, and she saw the amused honesty of his face and he +saw the good nature of hers; which made him think again of Eleanor's +wish to help her. + +He urged some indifferent cake upon her, and joked about how many +saucers of ice cream they could consume between them; then he became +serious: Why didn't she drop Batty? + +"Oh," she said, "if I only _could_ drop him! I hate him. He's the first +friend I've had." + +"Was he really the--the first?" Maurice said. His question was the old +human interest of playing with fire, but he supposed that it was a +desire to raise the fallen. + +"Well, except ... there was a man; I expected to marry _him_. Then +Batty, he come along." + +"I see," said Maurice. "Where's the first man?" + +"_I_ don't know. I was only sixteen." + +"Damn him!" Maurice said, sympathetically. He was so moved that he +ordered more ice cream; then it occurred to him that he ought to let her +know that he was entirely a philanthropist. "My wife and I'll help you," +he said. + +"Oh ... you're _married_? You're real young!" she commented. + +"I'm no chicken. My wife and I think exactly alike about these things. +Of course she's not a prude. She understands life, just as I do. And +she'd love to be a real friend to you. She'll put you on your feet, and +think none the worse of you. Tell me about yourself," he urged, +intimately; he felt some deep satisfaction stir within him, which he +supposed was his recognition of a moral purpose. But she drew back into +her own reserves. + +"They always ask that," she thought; and the momentary reality she had +shown hardened into the easy lying of her business: she told this or +that--the cruel father of fiction, who tried to drive her into marriage +with the rich old man; the wicked lover who destroyed trusting +innocence; the inevitable _facilis descensus_--Batty at last. And now +the ice-cream parlor in this dirty street, with the clear-eyed, +handsome, amused young man, who had forgotten his own anger in the +impulse, so frequent in the very young and very upright man, to "save" +some little creature of the gutter! As for Maurice, he said to himself, +"She's a sweet little thing; and not really bad." + +He was right there: Lily was not bad; she was as far from sin as she was +from virtue--just a little, unmoral, very amiable animal. + +As for Maurice, he continued to discuss her future of rectitude and +honor--his imagination reaching in a bound amazing heights. Why not be a +trained nurse?--and have a hospital of her own, and gather about her, as +assistants, girls who--"well, had had a tough time of it," he said, +delicately. As he talked, fatigue at the boredom of his highly moral +sentiments crept into her face. She swallowed an occasional yawn, and +murmured to most of his statements, "Is that so?" She was sleepy, and +wished he would stop talking.... + +"Guess I'll be going along," she said, good-naturedly. + +"I'll come and see you to-morrow," Maurice said, impassioned with the +idea of saving her; "then I'll tell you what my wife will do for you." + +They went out together and walked toward Lily's rooms; but somehow they +both fell silent. Lily was again afraid of Batty, and Maurice's +exhilaration had begun to ebb; there came into his mind the bleak +remembrance of the overturned table and Eleanor's sobs.... + +At the door of the apartment house where Lily lived, she said, +nervously, "I'd ask you to come in, but he--" + +"Oh, I understand; I've no desire to meet the gentleman! What time will +I come to-morrow, when he's not around?" + +She reflected, uneasily: "Well, I ain't sure--" + +Before she could finish, Batty loomed up beside them. He was plainly +drunk. "I lost my key," he said; "and I've been waiting--" + +"Good night, Miss Lily," Maurice said,--"If he's nasty to her, I'll go +back," he thought. He was only halfway down the block when he heard a +little piping scream--"O-o-o-w! O-o-o-w!" He turned, and saw her trying +to pull her hand away from Batty's twisting grip: he was at her side in +a moment: "Here! _Drop_ it!" he said, sharply--and landed an extremely +neat blow on the drunken man's jaw. Batty, rubbing his cheek, and +staring at this very unexpected assailant in profound and giggling +astonishment, slouched into the house. + +"He 'most twisted my hand off!" Lily said; "oh, ain't he the beast?" She +cringed and shook her bruised wrist, then gave Maurice an admiring look. +"My soul and body! you lit into him good!" she said; "what am I going to +do? I'm afraid to go in." + +"If I had a house of my own," Maurice said, "I'd take you home, and my +wife would look after you. But we are boarding.... Haven't you some +friend you could go to for to-night? ... To-morrow my wife will come and +see you," he declared. + +"Oh, gracious me, no!" In the midst of her anger she couldn't help +laughing. ("He's a reg'lar baby!" she thought.) "No; your wife's a busy +society lady, I'm sure. Don't bother about me. I'll just wait round till +he goes to sleep." She dabbed at her eyes with a little wet ball of a +handkerchief. + +"Here, take mine," he said. And with this larger and dryer piece of +linen, she did manage to make her face more presentable. + +"When he's asleep, I'll slip in," she said. + +"Well, let's go and sit down somewhere," Maurice suggested. She agreed, +and there was some haphazard wandering about in the darkness, then a +weary sitting on a bench in the park, marking time till Batty would +surely be asleep. + +"You sure handed one out to him," Lily said. + +Maurice chuckled at the role of knight-errant which she seemed to +discern in him, but he talked earnestly of her future, and once or +twice, soothed by his voice, she dozed--but he didn't know it. Indeed, +he told himself afterward that her silences showed how his words were +sinking in! "It only goes to prove," he thought, when at midnight he +left her at her own door, "that the _flower_ is in all of them! If you +only go about it right, you can bring their purity to the surface! She +felt all I said. Eleanor will be awfully interested in her." + +He was quite sure about Eleanor; he had entirely forgiven her; he wanted +to wake her up, and sit on the edge of her bed, and tell her of his +evening, and what a glorious thing it would be to lift one lovely young +soul from the gutter. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +But Eleanor would not "wake up." Within an hour of her foolish outbreak +she had begun to listen for his returning step. Then she went to bed and +cried and cried, "He doesn't love me," she said, over and over; and once +she said, "it is because I am--" But she didn't finish this; she just +got up and went over to the bureau and stared into the mirror; she even +lit a candle and held it close to the glass; after a while she saw what +she was looking for. "Edith tried to make him notice them, that first +summer at Green Hill," she thought. + +At eleven she went to the window and watched, her eyes straining into +the darkness. When, far down the street, a man's figure came in range, +she held her breath until it walked into and out of the circling glare +of the arc light--not Maurice! It was after twelve when she saw him +coming--and instantly she flew back to her bed. When he entered the +faintly lighted room, Eleanor was, apparently, sound asleep. + +"Star?" + +No answer. + +He leaned over, saw the droop of her lip and the puffed eyelids--and +drew back. Perhaps, if he had kissed her, the soft lead pencil might not +have acted as Destiny; she might have melted under the forlorn story he +was so eager to tell her. But her tear-stained face did not suggest a +kiss. + +In the morning Eleanor had what she called a "bilious headache," and +when Maurice skirted the subject of the "_flower_," she was too +physically miserable to be interested. When she was well again, the +opportunity--if it was an opportunity!--was lost; her interest in Lily +was not needed, because a call at the apartment house showed Maurice +that Batty was forgiven. So he forgot his desire to lift the fallen, in +more of those arid moments with Eleanor; reproaches--and +reconciliations! Tears--and fire! But fires gradually die down under +tears, no matter how one spends one's breath blowing loving words on the +wet embers! Enough tears will put out any fire. + +Lily, too, was shedding angry tears in those days, and they probably had +their effect in cooling Batty's heart; for his unpleasantness finally +culminated in his leaving her, and by October she was living in the +yellow-brick apartment house alone, and very economically--yet not so +economically that she did not buy hyacinth bulbs for the blue and purple +glasses on her sunny window sill. + +Once Maurice, remembering with vague amusement his reformatory impulse, +went to see her; but he did not talk to Eleanor about the call. By this +time there were days when he talked as little as possible to Eleanor +about anything,--not because he was secretive--he hated secrecy! "It's +next door to lying," he thought, faintly disgusted at himself,--but +because she seemed to feel hurt if he was interested in anyone except +herself. Maurice had passed the point which had seemed so terrible at +Green Hill, where he had called his wife "silly." He never called her +silly now. He merely, over and over, called himself a fool. + +"I've made an ass of myself," he used to think, sorting out his cards +for solitaire and looking furtively at the thin face, with its lines of +wistful and faded beauty. At forty-two, a happy, busy woman, with a +sound digestion, will not look faded; on the contrary, she is at her +best--as far as looks are concerned! Eleanor was not happy; her +digestion was uncertain; she did not go into society, and she had no +real occupation, except to go every day to Mrs. O'Brien's and take Bingo +for a walk. Even her practicing had been pretty much given up, for fear +of disturbing the people on the floor below her. + +"Why don't you have some plants around?" Maurice suggested; "they'd give +you something to do! I saw a lot of hyacinths growing in glasses, once; +I'll buy some bulbs for you." + +"Oh, I'm one of the people flowers won't grow for," she said. + +Mrs. Newbolt made a suggestion, too. "Pity you can't have Bingo to keep +you company. That's what comes of boarding. I knew a woman who boarded, +and she lost her teeth. Chambermaid threw 'em away. Come in and see me +any evening when Maurice is out." + +As Maurice was frequently out, the invitation was sometimes accepted, +and it was on one of these occasions that Mrs. Newbolt, spreading out +her cards on the green baize of her solitaire table with fat, beringed +hands, made her suggestion: + +"Eleanor, you've aged. I believe you're unhappy?" + +"No, I'm not! Why should I be?" + +"Well, I wouldn't blame you if you were," Mrs. Newbolt said. "'Course +you'd have brought it on yourself; I could have told you what to expect! +Your dear uncle Thomas used to say that, after a thing happened, I was +the one to tell people that they might have expected it. You see, I made +a point of bein' intelligent; of course I wasn't _too_ intelligent. A +man doesn't like that. You're gettin' gray, Eleanor. Pity you haven't +children. _He_ doesn't look very contented!--but men are men," said Mrs. +Newbolt. + +"He _ought_ to be contented," Eleanor said, passionately; "I adore him!" + +"You've got to interest him," her aunt said; "that's more important than +adorin' him! A man can buy a certain kind of adoration, but he can't +purchase interest." + +"I don't know what you're talking about," Eleanor said, trembling. + +"Well, if you don't, I'm sure I can't tell you," Mrs. Newbolt said, +despairingly; but she made one more attempt: "My dear father used to say +that the finest tribute a man could put on his wife's tombstone would +be, '_She was interestin' to live with_.' So I tell you, Eleanor, if +you want to hold that boy, _make him laugh_!" She was so much in +earnest that for a few minutes she actually stopped talking! + +Eleanor could not make Maurice laugh--she never made anybody laugh! But +for a while she did "hold him"--because he was a gallant youngster, +making the best of his bargain. That he had begun to know it was a bad +bargain did not lessen his regret for his wife's childlessness, which he +knew made her unhappy, nor his pity for her physical forlornness--which +he blamed largely on himself: "She almost died that night on the +mountain, to save my life!" + +But he had ceased to be touched by her reiterated longing for children; +he was even a little bored by it. And he was very much bored by her +reproaches, her faint tempers and their following ardors of repentant +love--bitternesses, and cloying sweetnesses! Yet, in spite of these +things, the boarding-house marriage survived the lengthening of the +fifty-four minutes of ecstasy into three years. But it might not have +survived its own third winter had it not been that Maurice's +unfaithfulness enforced his faithfulness. For by spring that squabble +about lead pencils, which had turned his careless steps toward the +bridge, had turned his life so far from Eleanor's that he had been +untrue to her. + +He had not meant to be untrue; nothing had been farther from his mind or +purpose. But there came a bitter Sunday afternoon in March ... + +Eleanor, saying he did not "understand her," cried about +something--afterward Maurice was not sure just what--perhaps it was a +question from one of the other boarders about the early 'eighties, and +she felt herself insulted; "As if I could remember!" she told Maurice; +but whatever it was, he had tried to comfort her by joking about it. +Then she had reproached him for his unkindness--to most crying wives a +joke is unkind. Then she had said that he was tired of her! At which he +took refuge in silence--and she cried out that he acknowledged it! + +"You can't deny it! You're tired of me because I'm older than you!" + +And he said, between his teeth, "If you were old enough to have any +sense, I wouldn't be tired of you." + +She gave a cry; then stood, the back of her hand against her lips, her +eyes wide with terror. + +Maurice threw down a book he had been trying to read, got up, plunged +into his overcoat, pulled his hat down over his eyes, and, without a +word, walked out of the room. A moment later the front door banged +behind him. Eleanor, alone, stood perfectly still; she had said foolish +things like that many times; she rather liked to say them! But she had +not believed them; now, her own words were a boomerang,--they seemed to +strike her in the face! _He was tired of her._ Instantly she was alert! +What must she do? She sat down, tense with thought; first of all, she +must be sweet to him; she mustn't be cross; then she must try (Mrs. +Newbolt had told her so!) to "entertain" him. "I'll read things, and +talk to him the way Mrs. Davis does!" She must sew on his buttons, and +scold poor old O'Brien.... With just this same silent determination she +had hurried to act that night on the mountain! + +But while she was sitting there in their cheerless room, planning and +planning!--Maurice was out, wandering about in the gray afternoon. It +had begun to snow, in a fitful, irritating way--little gritty pellets +that blew into his face. He had nowhere to go--four o'clock is a dead +time to drop in on people! He had nothing to do, and nothing to think +of--except the foolish, middle-aged woman, stating, in their dreary +third-floor front, an undeniable fact--he was tired of her! Walking +aimlessly about in the cold, he said to himself, dully, "Why _was_ I +such an idiot as to marry her?" He was old enough to curse himself for +his folly, but he was young enough to suffer, agonies of mortification, +and to pity himself, too; pity himself for the mere physical discomfort +of his life: the boarding-house table, with its uninteresting food; the +worn shirt cuff which was scratching his wrist; and he pitied himself +for his spiritual discomfort--when Eleanor called him "darling" at the +dinner table, or exhibited her jealousy before people! "They're sorry +for me--confound 'em!" he thought.... Yet how trivial the cuff was, or +even--yes, even the impertinence which was "sorry" for him!--how +unimportant, when compared to a ring of braided grass, and the smell of +locust blossoms, and a lovely voice, rising and falling: + +"O Spring!" + +"Oh, _damn_!" he said to himself, feeling the scrape of worn linen on +the back of his hand. Then he fell into certain moody imaginings with +which that winter he frequently and harmlessly amused himself. He used +to call these flights of fancy "fool thoughts"; but they were at least +an outlet to his smoldering irritation, "Suppose I should kick over +the traces some day?" his thoughts would run; and again, "Suppose I +should be in a theater fire, and 'disappear,' and never come back, and +she'd think I was dead," "Suppose there should be a war, and I should +enlist," ... and so forth, and so forth. "Fool thoughts," of course!--but +Maurice is not the only man upon whom a jealous woman has thrust such +thoughts, or who has found solace in the impossible! So, now, wandering +about in the cold, he amused himself by imagining various ways of +"kicking over the traces"; then, suddenly, it occurred to him that he +wanted something to eat. "By George!" he thought, "I'll get that girl, +Lily, and we'll go and have a good dinner!" + +Even in the rococo vestibule of the yellow-brick apartment house, while +he pressed the bell below Miss Lily Dale's letter box, he began to feel +a glow of comfort; and when Lily let him into her little parlor, all +clean and vulgar and warm, and fragrant with blossoming bulbs, and gave +him a greeting that was almost childlike in its laughing pleasure, his +sense of physical well-being was a sort of hitting back at Eleanor. + +"Oh," said little Lily, "my! Ain't you cold! Why, your hand's just like +ice!" + +He let her help him off with his coat, and push him into what had been +the vanished Batty's chair; then she saw that his feet were wet, and +insisted (to his horror) on unlacing his boots and making him put on a +pair of slippers. + +"But I was going to take you out to dinner," he remonstrated. + +She said: "Oh no! It's cold. I'll cook something for you, and we'll have +our dinner right by that fire." + +"Can you cook?" he said, with admiring astonishment. + +"You bet I can!" she said; "I'll give you a _good_ supper: you just +wait!" In her pretty, laughing face was very honest friendliness. "I +'ain't forgot that time you handed it out to Batty! He had a bruise on +his chin for a week!" + +"A steak!" he exclaimed, watching her preparations in the tiny closet of +a kitchen that opened into her parlor. + +She nodded: "Ain't it luck to have it in the house? A friend of mine +gave it to me this afternoon; her father's a butcher; and he's got a +dandy shop on the next block; an' Annie run in with it, an' she says" +(Lily was greasing her broiler), "'there,' she says, 'is a present for +you!'" + +Maurice insisted upon helping, and was told where to get the dishes and +what to put on the table, and that if he opened that closet he'd see the +beer. "I got just one bottle," she said, chuckling; "Batty stocked up. +When he lit out, that was all he left behind him." + +"Seen him lately?" Maurice asked. + +Lily's face changed. "I 'ain't seen--anyone, since November," she said; +"I'm a saleslady at Marston's. But I'll have to get out of this flat +when Batty's lease runs out. He took it by the year. He was going to +'settle down,' and 'have a home,'--you know the talk? So he took it for +the year. Well, he said I could stay till June. So I'm staying. There! +It's done!" She put the sizzling steak on a platter and pressed butter +and pepper and salt into it with an energetic knife and fork. "I bet," +she said, "you wouldn't get a better steak than this at the Mercer +House!" + +"I bet I wouldn't get one as good," he assured her. + +As he ate his extremely well-cooked steak, and drank a cup of extremely +well-made coffee, and reflected that the pretty, amber-eyed woman who, +after the manner of her kind, had already dropped into the friendliness +of a nickname, and who waited on him with a sweet deftness, was a +reformed character, owing, no doubt, to his own efforts, Maurice, +comfortable in mind and body, felt the intense pleasure of punishing +Eleanor by his mere presence in Lily's rooms. For, _if she could know +where he was_!... "Gosh!" said Maurice. But of course she never would +know. He wouldn't think of telling her where he had spent his evening; +which shows how far they had drifted apart since that night when he had +come home in his shirt sleeves, and been so eager to tell her how he had +given his coat to the "poor thing"! + +No; if he told Eleanor of Lily, now, there would be no sympathy for a +girl who was really trying to keep straight; no impulse to do any +"uplift" work! For that matter, Lily could do something in the way of +uplift for Eleanor! ... Look at this tidy, gay little room, and the +well-cooked steak, and the bulbs on the window sill! He strolled over +and looked at the row of purple hyacinth glasses, full now of threadlike +roots and topped with swelling buds. "You're quite a gardener," he said. + +"Well, there!" said Lily; "if I hadn't but ten cents, I'd spend five for +a flower!" + +After they had washed the dishes together she made him comfortable in +the big chair, and even put a blossoming hyacinth on the table beside +him, so he could smell it now and then. Then she sat down on a hassock +at his feet, with her back to the fire, and, flecking off the ashes of +her cigarette over her shoulder, she talked a friendly trickle of funny +stories; Maurice, smoking, too, thought how comfortable he was, and how +pleasant it was to have a girl like Lily to talk to. Once or twice he +laughed uproariously at some giggling joke. "She has lots of fun in +her," he reflected; "and she's a bully cook; and her hair is mighty +pretty.... Say, Lily, don't you want to trim my cuff? It's scratching me +to death." + +"You bet I do!" Lily said, and got her little shiny scissors and trimmed +the broken edge of a worn-out cuff that Eleanor had never noticed. + +He felt her small, warm fingers on his hand, and had a sense of comfort +that made him almost forget Eleanor. "It would serve her right if I took +Lily on," he thought. But he had not the remotest intention of taking +Lily on! He only played with the idea, because the impossible reality +would serve Eleanor right. + +It was a month or two later, on the rebound of another dreariness with +Eleanor, that the reality came, and he did "take Lily on." When he did +so, no one could have been more astonished--under his dismay and +horror--than Maurice. + +Unless it was Lily? She had been so certain that he had no ulterior +purpose, and so completely satisfied with her own way of living, that +her rather snuggling friendliness with him was as honest as a boy's. Her +surprise at her own mistake showed how genuine her intention of +straightness really was. When he came, once or twice to see her, he +called her Lily, and she called him "Curt," and they joked together like +two playfellows,--except when he was too gloomy to joke. But it was his +gloominess that made her feel sure there was nothing but friendliness in +his calls. She was not curious about him; she knew he was married, but +she never guessed that his preoccupation--during the spring Maurice was +very preoccupied with his own wretchedness and given to those cynical +fancies about "theater fires";--was due to the fact that he and his wife +didn't get along. She merely supposed that, like most of her "gentlemen +friends," "Curt" didn't talk about his wife. But, unlike the gentlemen +of her world he was, apparently, a husband whose acquaintance with her +had its limits. So they were both astonished.... + +But when Maurice discovered that such acquaintance had also its risks, +the shock was agonizing. He was overwhelmed with disgust and shame. +Once, at his desk, brooding over what had happened, his whipping +instinct of truthfulness roused a sudden, frantic impulse in him to go +home and confess to Eleanor, and ask her to forgive him. She never +would, of course! No woman would; Eleanor least of all. But oh, if he +only could tell her! As he couldn't, remorse, with no outlet of words, +smoldered on his consciousness, as some hidden and infected wound might +smolder in his flesh. Yet he knew there would be no further +unfaithfulness. He would never, he told himself, see Lily again! _That_ +was easy! He was done with all "Lilys." If he could only shed the +self-knowledge which he was unable to share with Eleanor, as easily as +he could shed Lily, how thankful he would be! If he could but forget +Lily by keeping away from her! But of course he could not forget. And +with memory, and its redeeming pain of shame, was also the stabbing +mortification of knowing that he had made a fool of himself, _again_! +First Eleanor; then--Lily. Sometimes, with this realization of his +idiocy, he would feel an almost physical nausea. It was so horrible to +him, that when, a month later, the anniversary which marked his first +folly came around again, he made an excuse of having to be away on +business. It seemed to Maurice that to go out to their field, with this +loathsome secrecy (which was, of course, an inarticulate lie) buried in +his soul, would be like carrying actual corruption in his hands! So he +went out of town on some trumped-up engagement, and Eleanor, left to +herself, took little pining Bingo for a walk. In a lonely; place in the +park, holding the dog on her knee, she looked into his passionately +loving liquid eyes and wiped her own; eyes on his silky ears.... + +Those were aging months for Maurice; and though, of course, the +poignancy of shame lessened after a while, it left its imprint on his +face, as well as on his mind. They speculated about it at the office: +"'G. Washington's' got a grouch on," one clerk said; "probably told the +truth and lost a transfer! Let's give him another hatchet." + +And the friendly people at the boarding house noticed the change in him. +He had almost nothing to say, now, at dinner--no more jokes with the +school-teacher, no more eager talks with the gray-haired woman.... + +"Has she forbidden conversation, do you suppose?" Miss Moore asked, +giggling; but the widow said, soberly, that she was afraid Mr. Curtis +was troubled about something. Mrs. Newbolt saw that there was something +wrong with him, and talked of it to Eleanor, without a pause, for an +hour. And of course Eleanor felt a difference in him; all day long, in +the loneliness of their third-floor front, under the gaze of Daniel +Webster, she brooded over it. Even while she was reading magazines and +plodding through newspaper editorials on public questions she had never +heard of, so that she could find things to talk about to him, she was +thinking of the change, and asking herself what she had done--or left +undone--to cause it? She also asked him: + +"Maurice! Something bothers you! I'm not enough for you. What _is_ the +matter?" + +He said, shortly, "Nothing." + +At which she retreated into the silence of hurt feelings. Once, she +knelt down, her face hidden on the grimy bed-spread, and prayed: "God, +_please_ give us a child--that will make him happy. And show me what to +do to please him! Show me! Oh, _show_ me! I'll do anything!" And who can +say that her prayer was not answered? For certainly an idea did spring +into her mind: those tiresome people downstairs--he liked to talk to +them;--to Miss Moore, who giggled, and tried, Eleanor thought, to seem +learned; and to the elderly woman who told stories. How could he enjoy +talking to them when he could talk to her? But he did. So, suppose she +tried to be more sociable with them? "I might invite Mrs. Davis to come +up to our room some evening--and I would sing for her? ... But not Miss +Moore; she is _too_ silly, with her jokes!" Her mind strained to find +ways to be friendly with these people he seemed to like. And +circumstances helped her.... + +That was the month of the great eclipse. For a week Miss Ladd's boarders +had talked about it, exchanging among themselves much newspaper +astronomical misinformation--which the learned Miss Moore good-naturedly +corrected. It was her suggestion that the household should make a night +of it: "Let's all go up on the roof and see the show!" So the friendly +gayety was planned--a supper in the basement dining room at half past +eleven--ginger ale! ice cream! chocolate! Then an adjournment _en masse_ +to the top of the house. Of course Miss Moore, engineering the affair, +invited the Curtises, confident of a refusal--and an acceptance;--both +of which, indeed, she secured; but, to her astonishment, it was Mr. +Curtis who declined, and his wife who accepted. + +"It's a bore," Maurice told Eleanor, listlessly. + +She looked worried: "Oh, I am so sorry! I told them at luncheon that we +would come. I thought you'd enjoy it" (Her acceptance, which had been a +real sacrifice to her, was a bomb to the other boarders. "What _has_ +happened?" they said to each other, blankly. "She'll be an awful wet +blanket," some one said, frowning; and some one else said, "She's +accepted because she won't let him out at night, alone!") + +When the heterogeneous household gathered in the dining room, and corks +popped and jokes were made, Eleanor and Maurice were there; he, watching +the other people eat and drink and saying almost nothing; she, talking +nervously and trying hard to be slangy about astronomy. Once he looked +at her with faint interest--for she was so evidently "trying"! At +midnight they all toiled up four flights of stairs from the basement to +the garret, where, with proper squeamishness on the part of the ladies, +and much gallantry of pushing and pulling on the part of the gentlemen, +and all sorts of awkwardnesses and displaying of legs, they climbed a +ladder and got out through the scuttle on to the flat roof. Then came +the calculating of minutes, and facetiousness as to other people's +watches and directions as to what one might expect to see. "It'll look +like a bite out of a cookie, when it begins," the bond salesman said; +and Miss Ladd tittered, and said what the ladies wanted to see was the +man in the moon! + +Maurice, intolerably irked, had moved across to the parapet and was +staring out over the city. Below him spread the dim expanse of roofs and +chimneys, with here and there the twinkle of light in an attic window. +Leaning on the coping and looking down, he thought of the humanity under +the dark roofs: a horizontal humanity--everybody asleep! The ugly fancy +came to him that if that sleeping layer of bodies could be stirred up, +there would be instantly a squirming mass of loathsome thoughts--maggots +of lust, and shame, and jealousy, and fear. "My God! we're a nasty lot," +he thought. + +"Look!" a voice said at his shoulder. He sighed, impatiently--and +looked. Above him soared the abyss of space, velvet black, pricked +faintly here and there by stars; and, riding high--eternal and +serene--the Moon. + +He heard Miss Moore say, "_It's beginning._" ... And the solemn curve of +the Shadow touched the great disk. No one spoke: they stood--a handful +of little human creatures, staring up into immensity; specks of +consciousness on a whirling ball that was rushing forever into the void, +and, as it rushed, its shadow, sweeping soundless through the emptiness +of Space, touched the watching Moon ... and the broad plaque, silver +gilt, lessened--lessened. To half. To a quarter. To a glistening line. +Then coppery darkness. + +No one spoke. The flow of universes seemed to sweep personality out upon +eternal tides. Yet, strangely, Maurice felt a sudden uprush of +personality! ... Little he was--oh, infinitely little; too little, of +course, to be known by the Power that could do this--spread out the +heavens, and rule the deeps of Space; and yet he felt, somehow, near to +the Power. "It's what they call God, I suppose?" he said. It flashed +into his mind that he had said almost exactly the same thing that day in +the field (when he was a fool), of the fire of joy in his breast: he had +said that Happiness was God! And some people thought this stupendous +Energy could know--_us_? Absurd! "Might as well say a man could know an +ant." Yet, just because Inconceivable Greatness was great, mightn't it +know Inconceivable Littleness? "The smaller I am--the nastier, the +meaner, the more contemptible--the greater It would have to be to know +me? To say I was too little for It to know about, would be to set a +limit to Its greatness." How foolish Reason looks, limping along behind +such an intuition--Intuition, running and leaping, and praising God! +Maurice's reason strained to follow Intuition: "If It knows about me, It +could help me, ... because It holds the stars. Why! _It_ could fix +things--with Eleanor!" Looking up into the gulf, his tiny misery +suddenly fell away. "It would just prove Its greatness, to help me!" +While he groped thus for God among the stars, the order of rushing +worlds brought light, just as it had brought darkness: first a gleam; +then a curving thread; then a silver sickle; then, magnificently! a +shield of light--and the moon's unaltered face looked down at them. +Maurice had an overwhelming impulse to drop his weakness into endless, +ageless, limitless Power; his glimmer of self-knowledge, into enormous +All-Knowledge; his secrecy into Truth. An impulse to be done with +silences. "God knows; so Eleanor shall know." The idea of telling the +truth was to Maurice--slipping and sinking into bottomless lying--like +taking hold upon the great steadinesses of the sky.... + +People began to talk; Maurice did not hear them. Miss Ladd made a joke; +Miss Moore said something about "light miles"; the old, sad, clever +woman said, "The firmament showeth his handiwork,"--and instantly, as +though her words were a signal--a voice, as silvery as the moon, broke +the midnight with a swelling note: + +"The spacious firmament on high, +With all the blue ethereal sky ..." + +A shock of attention ran through the watchers on the roof: Eleanor, +standing with her hands clasped lightly in front of her, her head thrown +back, her eyes lifted to the unplumbed deeps, was singing: + +"The moon takes up the wondrous tale +And nightly to the listening earth +Repeats the story of her birth; +Whilst all the stars that round her burn, +And all the planets in their turn--" + +A window was thrown open in a dark garret below, and some one, unseen, +listened. Down in the street, two passers-by paused, and looked up. No +one spoke. The voice soared on--and ended: + +"Forever singing as they shine...." + +Maurice came to her side and caught her hand. There was a long sigh from +the little group. For several minutes no one spoke. Miss Moore wiped her +eyes; the baseball fan said, huskily, "My mother used to sing that"; the +widow touched Eleanor's shoulder. "My--my husband loved it," she said, +and her voice broke. + +The garret window slammed down; the two people in the street vanished in +the darkness. The little party on the roof melted away; they climbed +through the scuttle, forgetting to joke, but saying to each other, in +lowered voices: "Would you have _believed_ it?" "How wonderful!" And to +Eleanor, rather humbly: "It was beautiful, Mrs. Curtis!" + +In their own room, Maurice took his wife in his arms and kissed her. "I +am going to tell her," he said to himself, calmly. The overwhelming +grandeur of the heavens had washed him clean of fear, clean even of +shame, and left him impassioned with Beauty and Law, which two are +Truth. "I will tell her," he said. + +Eleanor had sung without self-consciousness; but now, when they were +back again in their room--so stifling after those spaces between the +worlds!--self-consciousness flooded in: "I suppose it was queer?" she +said. + +"It was perfect," Maurice said; he was very pale. + +"I wanted to do something that they would like, and I thought they might +like a hymn? Some of them said they did. But if you liked it, that is +all I want." + +"I loved it." His heart was pounding in his throat.... "Eleanor" (he +could hardly see that terrible path among the stars, but he stumbled +upward), "Eleanor, I'm not good enough for you." + +"Not good enough? For _me_?" She laughed at such absurdity. He was +sitting down, his elbow on his knee, his head in his hand. She came and +knelt beside him. "If you are only happy! I did it to make you happy." + +She heard him catch his breath. "How much do you love me?" he said. + +(Oh, how long it was since he had talked that way--asking the sweet, +unanswerable question of happy love!--how long since he had spoken with +so much precious foolishness!) "How _much_? Why, Maurice, I love you so +that sometimes, when I see you talking to other people--even these +tiresome people here in the house, I could just die! I want you all to +myself! I--I guess I feel about you the way Bingo feels about me," she +said, trying to joke--but there were tears in her eyes. + +"I'm not always ... what I ought to be," he said; "I am not--" (the path +was very dim)--"awfully good. I--" + +"I suppose I'm naturally jealous," she confessed; "I could die for you, +Maurice; but I couldn't share your little finger! Do you remember, on +our wedding day, you made me promise to be jealous? Well, I _am_." She +laughed--and he was dumb. There, on the roof, Truth seemed as inevitable +as Law. It did not seem inevitable now. He had lost his way among the +stars. He could not find words to begin his story. But words overflowed +on Eleanor's lips!... "Sometimes I get to thinking about myself--I _am_ +older than you, you know, a little. Not that it matters, really; but +when I see you with other people, and you seem to enjoy talking to +them--it nearly kills me! And you _do_ like to talk to them. You even +like to talk to--Edith, who is rude to me!" Her words poured out +sobbingly: "Why, _why_ am I not enough for you? You are enough for me!" + +He was silent. + +"And ... and ... and we haven't a baby," she said in a whisper, and +dropped her face on his knee. + +He tried to lift her, but his soul was sinking within him; dropping +down--down from the awful heights. Yet still he caught at Truth! "Dear, +don't! As for people, I may talk to them; I may even--even be with them, +or seem to like them, and--and do things, that--I don't love anybody but +you, Eleanor; but I--I--" + +It was a final clutch at the Hand that holds the stars. But his +entreating voice broke, for she was kissing his confession from his +lips. Those last words--"I don't love anybody but you"--folded her in +complete content! "Dear," she said, "that's all I want--that you don't +love anybody but me." She laid her wet cheek against his in silence. + +What could he do but be silent, too? What could he do but choke down the +confessing, redeeming words that were on his lips? So he did choke them +down, turning his back on the clean freedom of Truth; and the burden of +his squalid secret, which he had been ready to throw away forever, was +again packed like some corroding thing in his soul.... + +When, late in August, he and Eleanor went to Green Hill for a few days +vacation, the effect of this repression was marked. There were wrinkles +on his forehead under the thatch of his blond hair; his blue eyes were +dulled, and he was taciturn to the point of rudeness--except to Eleanor. +He was very polite to Eleanor. He never, now, amused himself by +imagining how he could disappear if he had the luck to be in a theater +fire. He knew that because he had enslaved himself to a lie, he had lost +the right even to dream freedom. So there were no more "fool thoughts" +as to how a man might "kick over the traces." There was nothing for him +to do, now (he said), but "play the game." The Houghtons were uneasily +aware of a difference in him; and Edith, fifteen now, felt that he had +changed, and had fits of shyness with him. "He's like he was that night +on the river," she told herself, "when he gave the lady his coat." She +sighed when she said this, and it occurred to her that she would be a +missionary. "I won't get married," she thought; "I'll go and nurse +lepers. He's _exactly_ like Sir Walter Raleigh." + +But of course she had moments of forgetting the lepers--moments when she +came down to the level of people like Johnny Bennett. When this +happened, she thought that, instead of going to the South Seas, she +would become a tennis star and figure in international tournaments; even +Johnny admitted that she served well--for a girl. One day she confessed +this ambition to Maurice, but he immediately beat her so badly that she +became her old childlike, grumpy self, and said Johnny was nicer for +singles; which enabled Maurice to turn her loose on John and go off +alone to climb the mountain. He had a dreary fancy for looking at the +camp, and living over again those days when he was still young--and a +fool, of course; but not so great a fool as now, with Lily living in a +little flat in Mercer. Batty's lease had expired, and she had moved into +a cheaper, but still ornate, apartment house on the other side of the +river. Well! Lily had floated into his life as meaninglessly as a mote +floats into a streak of light, and then floated out again. He hadn't +seen her since--since that time in May. + +_"Ass--ass!"_ he said to himself. "If Eleanor _knew_," he thought, +"there'd be a bust-up in two minutes." He even smiled grimly to think of +that evening of the eclipse when, shaken by the awful beauty of eternal +order, he had, for just one high moment, dreamed that he, too, could +attain the orderliness of Truth--and tell Eleanor. "Idiot!" he said, +contemptuously. Probably Maurice touched his lowest level when he said +that; for to be ashamed of an aspiration, to be contemptuous of emotion, +is to sin against the Holy Ghost. + +When Maurice reached the camp he stood for a while looking about him. +The shack had not wintered well: the door sagged on a broken hinge, and +the stovepipe had blown over and lay rusting on the roof. In the +blackened circle of stones were some charred logs, which made him think +of the camp fire on that night of Eleanor's courage and love and terror. +He even reverted to those first excuses for her: "She nearly killed +herself for me. Nervous prostration, Doctor Bennett said. I suppose a +woman never gets over that. Poor Eleanor!" he said, softening; "it +would kill her ... if she knew." He sat down and looked off across the +valley ... "What am I going to do?" he said to himself. "I can't make her +happy; I'd like to, but you can't reason with her any more than if she +was a child. Edith has ten times her sense! How absurd she is about +Edith. Lord! what would she do if she knew about Lily!" + +He reflected, playing with the mere horror of the thought, upon just how +complete the "bust-up" would be if she knew! He realized that he had +undeserved good luck with Lily; she hadn't fastened herself on him. She +was decent about that; if she'd been a different sort, he might have had +a nasty time. But Lily was a sport--he'd say that for her; she hadn't +clawed at him! And she had protested that she didn't want any money, and +wouldn't take it! And she hadn't taken it. He had made some occasional +presents, but nothing of any value. He had given her nothing, hardly +even a thought (except the thought that he was an ass), since last May. +Thinking of her now, he had another of those pangs of shame which had +stabbed him so at first, but to which of late he had grown callous. The +shame of having been the one--after all his goody-goody talk!--to pull +her off the track; still, she was straight again now. He was quite sure +of that. "You can tell when they're straight," he thought, heavily. +Perhaps, in the winter, he would send her some flowers. He thought of +the bulbs on the window sill of Lily's parlor, and tried to remember a +verse; something about--about--what was it? + +"If of thy store there be + But left two loaves, +Sell one, and with the dole + Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul." + +He laughed; _Lily_, feeding her "soul"! "Well, she has more 'soul,' with +her flower pots and her good cooking, than some women who wouldn't touch +her with a ten-foot pole! Still, _I'm_ done with her!" he thought. But +he had no purpose of "uplift"; the desire to reform Lily had evaporated. +"Queer; I don't care a hoot," he told himself, watching with lazy eyes +the smoke from his pipe drift blue between himself and the valley +drowsing in the heat. "I'd like to see the little thing do well for +herself--but really I don't give a damn." His moral listlessness, in +view of the acuteness of that first remorse, and especially of that +moment among the stars, when he had stretched out hands passionately +eager for the agonizing sacrament of confession, faintly surprised him. +How could he have been so wrought up about it? He looked off over the +valley--saw the steely sickle of the river; saw a cloud shadow touch the +shoulder of a mountain and move down across the gracious bosom of its +forests. Below him, chestnuts twinkled and shimmered in the sun, and +there were dusky stretches of hemlocks, then open pastures, vividly +green from the August rains.... "It ought to be set to music," he +thought; the violins would give the flicker of the leaves--"and the +harps would outline the river. Eleanor's voice is lovely ... she looks +fifty. How," he pondered, interested in the mechanics of it, "did she +ever get me into that wagon?" Then, again, he was sorry for her, and +said, "Poor girl!" Then he was sorry for himself. He knew that he was +tired to death of Eleanor--tired of her moods and her lovemaking. He was +not angry with her; he did not hate her;--he had injured her too much to +hate her; he was simply unutterably tired of her--what he did hate, was +this business of lugging a secret around! "I feel," he said to himself, +"like a dog that's killed a hen, and had the carcass tied around his +neck." His face twitched with disgust at his own simile. But as for +Eleanor, he had been contemptibly mean to her, and, "By God!" he +said to himself, "at least I'll play the game. I'll treat her as well as +I can. Other fools have married jealous women, and put up with them. +But, good Lord!" he thought, with honest perplexity, "can't the women +_see_ how they push you into the very thing they are afraid of, because +they bore you so infernally? If I look at a woman, Eleanor's on her +ear.... Queer," he pondered; "she's good. Look how kind she is to old +O'Brien's lame child. And she _can_ sing." He hummed to himself a lovely +Lilting line of one of Eleanor's songs. "Confound it! why did I meet +Lily? Eleanor is a million times too good for me...." + +Far off he heard a sound and, frowning, looked toward the road: yes; +somebody was coming! "Can't a man get a minute to himself?" Maurice +thought, despairingly. It was the mild-eyed and spectacled Johnny +Bennett, and behind him, Edith, panting and perspiring, and smiling +broadly. + +"Hello!" she called out, in cheerful gasps; "thought we'd come up and +walk home with you!" + +"'Lo," Maurice said. + +The boy and girl achieving the rocky knoll on which Maurice was sitting, +his hands locked about his knees, his eyes angry and ashamed, staring +over the treetops, sat down beside him. Johnny pulled out his pipe, and +Edith took off her hat and fanned herself. "Mother and Eleanor went for +a ride. I thought I'd rather come up here." + +"Um--" Maurice said. + +"Two letters for you," she said. "Eleanor told me to bring 'em up. Might +be business." + +As she handed them to him, his eye caught the address on one of them, +and a little cold tingle suddenly ran down his spine. Lily had never +written to him, but some instinct warned him that that cramped +handwriting on the narrow lavender envelope, forwarded from the office, +could only be hers. A whiff of perfumery made him sure. He had a pang of +fright. At what? He could not have said; but even before he opened the +purple envelope he knew the taste of fear in his mouth.... + +Sitting there on the mountain, looking down into the misty serenities of +the sun-drenched valley, with the smoke of Johnny Bennett's pipe in his +nostrils, and the friendly Edith beside him, he tore open the scented +envelope, and as his eyes fell on the first lines it seemed as if the +spreading world below rose up and hit him in the face: + +DEAR FRIEND CURT,--I don't know what you'll say. I hope you won't be +mad. I'm going to have a baby. _It's yours_.... + +Maurice could not see the page, a wave of nausea swamped even his +horror; he swallowed--swallowed--swallowed. Edith heard him gasp, and +looked at him, much interested. + +"What's the matter with your hands?" Edith inquired. "Johnny! Look at +his hands!" + +Maurice's fingers, smoothing out the purple sheet, were shaking so that +the paper rustled. He did not hear her. Then he read the whole thing +through to its laconic end: + +_It's yours_--honest to God. Can you help me a little? Sorry to trouble +you on your vacation. + +Your friend, + +LILY. + +"What _is_ the matter with your hands?" Edith said, very much +interested. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +When, a year after his marriage, Maurice began to awaken to Eleanor's +realities, maturity had come to him with a bound. But it was almost age +that fell upon him when Lily's realities confronted him. In the late +afternoon, as he and Edith and the silent Johnny walked down the +mountain, he was dizzy with terror of Lily! + +_She was blackmailing him._ + +But even as he said the word, he had an uprush of courage; he would get +a lawyer, and shut her up! That's what you do when anybody blackmails +you. Perfectly simple. "A lawyer will shut her up!" It was a hideous +mess, and he had no money to spend on lawyers; but it would never get +out--the newspapers couldn't get hold of it--because a lawyer would shut +her up! Though, probably, he'd have to give her some money? How much +would he have to give her? And how much would he have to pay the lawyer? +He had a crazy vision of Lily's attaching his salary. He imagined a +dialogue with his employer: "A case of blackmail, sir." "Don't worry +about it, Curtis; we'll shut her up." This brought an instant's warm +sense of safety, which as instantly vanished--and again he was walking +down the road, with Edith beside him, talking, talking... Eleanor would +have to know... No! She wouldn't! He could keep it a secret. But he'd +have to tell Mr. Houghton. Then Mrs. Houghton would know! Again a wave +of nausea swept over him, and he shuddered; then said to himself: "No: +Uncle Henry's white. He won't even tell her." + +Edith was asking him something; he said, "Yes," entirely at random--and +was at once involved in a snarl of other questions, and other random +answers. Under his breath he thought, despairingly, "Won't she ever +stop talking! ... Edith, I'll give you fifty cents if you'll keep +quiet." + +Edith was willing enough to be quiet; "But," she added, practically, +"would you mind giving me the fifty cents now, Maurice? You always tear +off to Eleanor the minute you get home, and I'm afraid you'll forget +it." + +He put his hand in his pocket and produced the half dollar. "Anything to +keep you still!" he said. + +"You don't mind if I talk to Johnny?" + +He didn't answer; at that moment he was not aware of her existence, +still less Johnny's, for a frightful thought had stabbed him: Suppose it +wasn't blackmail? _Suppose Lily had told the truth_? Suppose "it" was +his? "She can't prove it--she can't prove it!" he said, aloud. + +"Prove what? Who can't?" Edith said, interested. + +Maurice didn't hear her. Suddenly he felt too sick to follow his own +thought, and go to the bottom of things; he was afraid to touch the +bottom! He made a desperate effort to keep on the surface of his terror +by saying: "It's all Eleanor's fault. Damnation! Her idiotic jealousy +drove me out of the house that Sunday afternoon!" + +At this moment Johnny Bennett and Edith broke into shrieks of laughter. +"Say, Maurice," Johnny began-- + +"Can't you children be quiet for five minutes?" Maurice said. Johnny +whistled and, behind his spectacles, made big eyes at Edith. "What's +_he_ got on his little chest?" Johnny inquired. But Maurice was deaf to +sarcasm.... "It all goes back to Eleanor!" + +Under the chatter of the other two, it was easier to say this than to +say, "Is Lily telling the truth?" It was easier to hate Eleanor than to +think about Lily. And, hating, he said again, aloud, the single agonized +word. + +Edith stood stock-still with amazement; she could not believe her ears. +_Maurice_ had said--? As for Maurice, his head bent as if he were +walking in a high wind he strode on, leaving her in the road staring +after him. + +"Johnny!" said Edith; "did you hear?" + +"That's nothing," Johnny said; "I say it often, when mother ain't +round. At least I say the first part." + +"Oh, _Johnny_!" Edith said, dismayed. + +To Maurice, rushing on alone, the relief of hating Eleanor was lost in +the uprush of that ghastly possibility: "If it _is_ mine?" + +Something in him struggled to say: "If it _is_, why, then, I must--But +it isn't!" Maurice was, for the moment, a horribly scared boy; his +instinct was to run to cover at any cost. He forgot Edith, coming home +by herself after Johnny should turn in at his own gate; he was conscious +only of his need to be alone to think this thing out and decide what he +must do. There was no possible privacy in the house. "If I go up to our +room," he thought, frantically, "Eleanor'll burst in on me, and then +she'll get on to it that there's something the matter!" Suddenly he +remembered the chicken coop. "It's late. Edith won't be coming in." So +he skulked around behind the house and the stable, and up the gravel +path to the henhouse. Lifting the rusty latch, he stepped quietly into +the dusky, feathery shelter. "I can think the damned business out, +here," he thought. There was a scuffling "cluck" on the roosts, but when +he sat down on an overturned box, the fowls settled into stillness and, +except for an occasional sleepy squawk, the place was quiet. He drew a +long breath, and dropped his chin on his fist. "Now I'll think," he +said. Then, through the cobwebby windows, he saw in the yellowing west +the new moon, and below it the line of distant hills. An old pine tree +stretched a shaggy branch across the window, and he said to himself that +the moon and the hills and the branch were like a Japanese print. + +He took the letter out of his pocket--his very fingers shrinking as he +touched it--and straining his eyes in the gathering dusk, he read it all +through. Then he looked at the moon, which was sliding--sliding behind +the pine. Yes, that ragged branch was very Japanese. If he hadn't gone +out on the river that night with Edith, he would never have met Lily. +The thing he had said on his wedding day, in the meadow, about +"switches," flashed into his mind: "A little thing can throw the +switches." + +"Ten minutes in a rowboat," he said,--"and _this_!" One of the hens +clucked. "I'll fight," he said. "Lots of men come up against this sort +of thing, and they hand the whole rotten business over to a lawyer. I'll +fight. Or I'll move.... Perhaps that's the best way? I'll just tell +Eleanor we've got to live in New York. Damn it! she'd ask why? I'll say +I have a job there. Lily'd never be able to find me in New York." The +moon slipped out below the pine, and hung for a dim moment in the haze. +Maurice's mind went through a long and involved plan of concealing his +address from Lily when he moved to New York.... "But what would we live +on while I was finding a job?" ... Suddenly thought stopped short; he +just watched the moon, and listened to a muffled stir among the hens. +Then he took out his knife, and began to cut little notches on the +window sill. "I'll fight," he said, mechanically. + +There were running steps on the gravel path, and instantly he was on his +feet. He had the presence of mind to put his hand into a nest, so that +when Edith came in she reproached him for getting ahead of her in +collecting eggs. + +"How many have you got? Two? Griselda was on the nest when I started up +the mountain, but I thought there was another egg there?" + +"Only one," he said, thickly, and handed it to her. + +"Come on in the house," Edith commanded; "I suppose," she said, +resignedly, "Eleanor is playing on the piano!" (Edith, as her adoration +of Eleanor lessened, was frankly bored by her music.) + +"All right," Maurice said, and followed her. + +Edith asked no questions; Maurice's "word" on the road had sobered her +too much for talk. "He's mad about something," she thought; "but I never +heard Maurice say--_that_!" She didn't quite like to repeat what he had +said, though Johnny had confessed to saying "part of it." "I don't +believe he ever did," Edith thought; "he's putting on airs! But for +Maurice to say _all_ of it!--that was wrong," said Edith, gravely. + +They went out of the henhouse together in silence. Maurice was saying to +himself, "I might not be able to get a job in New York... I'll fight." +Yet certain traditional decencies, slowly emerging from the welter of +his rage and terror, made him add, "If it was mine, I'd have to give her +something... But it isn't. I'll fight." + +He was so absorbed that before he knew it he had followed Edith to the +studio, where, in the twilight. Mr. and Mrs. Houghton were sitting on +the sofa together, hand in hand, and Eleanor was at the piano singing, +softly, old songs that her hosts loved. + +"If," said Henry Houghton, listening, "heaven is any better than this, I +shall consider it needless extravagance on the part of the +Almighty,"--and he held his wife's hand against his lips. Maurice, at +the door, turned away and would have gone upstairs, but Mr. Houghton +called out: "Sit down, man! If _I_ had the luck to have a wife who could +sing, I'd keep her at it! Sit down!" Eleanor's voice, lovely and noble +and serene, went on: + +"To add to golden numbers, golden numbers! +0 sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content!" + +Maurice sat down; it was as if, after beating against crashing seas with +a cargo of shame and fear, he had turned suddenly into a still harbor: +the faintly lighted studio, the stillness of the summer evening, the +lovely voice--the peace and dignity and safety of it all gave him a +strange sense of unreality... Then, suddenly, he heard them all laughing +and telling Eleanor they were sorry for her, to have such an +unappreciative husband!--and he realized that the fatigue of terror had +made him fall asleep. Later, when he came to the supper table, he was +still dazed. He said he had a headache, and could not eat; instantly +Eleanor's anxiety was alert. She suggested hot-water bags and mustard +plasters, until Mr. Houghton said to himself: "How _does_ he stand it? +Mary must tell her not to be a mother to him--or a grandmother." + +All that hot evening, out on the porch, Maurice was silent--so silent +that, as they separated for the night, his guardian put a hand on his +shoulder, "Come into the studio," he said; "I want to show you a thing +I've been muddling over." + +Maurice followed him into the vast, shadowy, untidy room ("No females +with dusters allowed on the premises!" Henry Houghton used to say), +glanced at a half-finished canvas, said, "Fine!" and turned away. + +"Anything out of kilter? I mean, besides your headache?" + +"Well ... yes." + +("He's going to say he's hard up--the extravagant cuss!" Henry Houghton +thought, with the old provoked affection.) + +"I'm bothered about ... something," Maurice began. + +("He's squabbled with Eleanor. I wish I was asleep!") + +"Uncle Henry," Maurice said, "if you were going to see a lawyer, who +would you see?" + +"I wouldn't see him. Lawyers make their cake by cooking up other +people's troubles. Sit down. Let's talk it out." He settled himself in a +corner of the ragged old horsehair sofa which faced the empty fireplace +and motioned Maurice to a chair. "I thought it wasn't all headache; +what's the matter, boy?" + +Maurice sat down, cleared his throat, and put his hands in his pockets +so they would not betray him. "I--" he said. + +Mr. Houghton appeared absorbed in biting off the end of his cigar. + +"I--" Maurice said again. + +"Maurice," said Henry Houghton, "keep the peace. If you and Eleanor have +fallen out, don't stand on your dignity. Go upstairs and say you're +sorry, whether you are or not. Don't talk about lawyers." + +"My God!" said Maurice; "did you suppose it was _that_?" + +Mr. Houghton stopped biting the end of his cigar, and looked at him. +"Why, yes; I did. You and she are rather foolish, you know. So I +supposed--" + +Maurice dropped his face on his arms on the big dusty table, littered +with pamphlets and charcoal studies and squeezed-out paint tubes. After +a while he lifted his head: "_That's_ nothing. I wish it was that." + +The older man rose and stood with his back to the mantelpiece. They both +heard the clock ticking loudly. Then, almost in a whisper, Maurice said: + +"I've been--blackmailed." + +Mr. Houghton whistled. + +"I've had a letter from a woman. She says--" + +"Has she got anything on you?" + +"No proof; but--" + +"But you have made a fool of yourself?" + +"Yes." + +Mr. Houghton sat down again. "Go on," he said. + +Maurice reached for a maulstick lying across the table; then leaned +over, his elbows on his knees, and tried, with two trembling +forefingers, to make it stand upright on the floor. "She's common. She +can't prove it's--mine." His effort to keep the stick vertical with +those two shaking fingers was agonizing. + +"Begin at the beginning," Henry Houghton said. + +Maurice let the maulstick drop against his shoulder and sunk his head on +his hands. Suddenly he sat up: "What's the use of lying? She's _not_ bad +all through." The truth seemed to tear him as he uttered it. "That's the +worst of it," he groaned. "If she was, I'd know what to do. But probably +she's not lying... She says it's mine. Yes; I pretty well know she's not +lying." + +"We'll go on the supposition that she is. I have yet to see a white +crow. How much does she want?" + +"She's only asked me to help her, when--it's born. And of course, if it +_is_ mine, I--" + +"We won't concede the 'if.'" + +"Uncle Henry," said the haggard boy, "I'm several kinds of a fool, but +I'm not a skunk. I've got to be decent" + +"You should have thought of decency sooner." + +"I know. I know." + +"You'd better tell me the whole thing. Then we'll talk lawyers." + +So Maurice began the squalid story. Twice he stopped, choking down +excuses that laid the blame on Eleanor.... "It wouldn't have happened if +I hadn't been--been bothered." And again, "Something had thrown me off +the track; and I met Lily, and--" + +At last it was all said, and he had not skulked behind his wife. He had +told everything, except those explaining things that could not be told. + +When the story was ended there was silence. The older man, guessing the +untold things, could not trust himself to speak his pity and anger and +dismay. But in that moment of silence the comfort of confession made the +tears stand in the boy's eyes; he said, impulsively, "Uncle Henry, I +thought you'd kick me out of the house!" + +Henry Houghton blew his nose, and spoke with husky harshness. "Eleanor +has no suspicions?" (He, too, was choking down references to Eleanor +which must not be spoken.) + +"No. Do you think I ought to--to tell--?" + +"No! No! With some women you could make a clean breast... I know a +woman--her husband hadn't a secret from her; and I know _he_ was a fool +before his marriage! He made a clean breast of it, and she married him. +But she knew the soul of him, you see? She knew that this sort of rotten +foolishness was only his body. So he worshiped her. Naturally. Properly. +She meant God to him... Mighty few women like that! Candidly, I don't +think your wife is one of them. Besides, this is _after_ marriage. +That's different, Maurice. Very different. It isn't a square deal." + +Maurice made a miserable shamed sound of agreement. Then he said, +huskily, "Of course I won't lie; I'll just--not tell her." + +"The thing for us to do," said Mr. Houghton, "is to get you out of this +mess. Then you'll keep straight? Some fellows wouldn't. You will, +because--" he paused; Maurice looked at him with scared eyes--"because +if a man is sufficiently aware of having been a damned fool, he's +immune. I'll bet on you, Maurice." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +Yet Henry Houghton had moments of fearing that he would lose his bet, +for Maurice was such a very damned fool! One might have guessed as much +when he would not admit that Lily was lying. She might be blackmailing +him, he said; she might be a "crow"; but she wasn't lying. When his +guardian had talked it all out with him, and written a letter which +Maurice was to take to a lawyer ("she'll want to get rid of the child; +they always want to get rid of the child; so she may let you off easier +if you say you'll see that it is cared for; and we'll have Hayes put it +in black and white") when all these arrangements had been made, Maurice +almost dished the whole thing (so Mr. Houghton expressed it) by +saying--again as if the words burst up from some choked well of +truthfulness: + +"Uncle Henry, it isn't blackmail; and--and I've got to be half decent!" + +Down from the upper hall came a sweet, anxious voice: "Maurice, darling! +It's twelve o'clock! What _are_ you doing?" + +Mr. Houghton called back: "We're talking business, Eleanor. I'll send +him up in a quarter of an hour. Don't lose your beauty sleep, my dear. +(Mary _must_ tell her not to be such an idiot!)" Then he looked at +Maurice: "My boy, you can't be decent with a leech. You've got to leave +this to Hayes." + +"She isn't a leech. I ought to help her, I'll see her myself." + +"My dear fellow, don't be a bigger ass than you can help! You can meet +what you see fit to call your responsibilities, as a few other +conscientious fools have done before you; though," he added, heavily, +"I hope she won't suck you dry! How you are going to squeeze out the +money, _I_ don't know! I can't help you much. But you mustn't appear in +this for a single minute. Hayes will see her, and buy her off." + +Maurice shook his head, despairingly: "Uncle Henry, she's common; but +she's not vicious. She's a nice little thing. I know Lily! I'll see her. +_I'll have to!_ I'll tell her I'll--I'll help her." No wonder poor Henry +Houghton feared he would lose his bet! "I know you think I'm easy meat," +Maurice said; "but I'm not. Only," his face was anguished, "I've _got_ +to be half decent." + +It was after one o'clock when the two men went upstairs, though there +had been another summons over the banisters: "Maurice! Why don't you +come to bed?" When they parted at Maurice's door, Mr. Houghton struck +his ward on the shoulder and whispered, "You're more than half decent. +I'll bet on you!" and Maurice whispered back: + +"You're _white_, Uncle Henry!" + +He went into his room on tiptoe, but Eleanor heard him and said, +sleepily, "What on earth have you been talking about?" + +"Business," Maurice told her. + +"Who was your lavender-colored letter from?" Eleanor said, yawning; "I +forgot to ask you. It was awfully scented!" + +There was an instant's pause; Maurice's lips were dry;--then he said: + +"From a woman... About a house. (My God! I've _lied_ to her!)" he said +to himself... + +Mary Houghton, reading comfortably in bed, looked up at her old husband +over her spectacles. "I've heated some cocoa, dear," she said. "Drink it +before you undress; you are worn out. What kept you downstairs until +this hour?" + +"Business." + +Mary Houghton smiled: "Might as well tell the truth." + +"Oh, Kit, it's a horrid mess!" he groaned; "I thought that boy had got +to the top of Fool Hill when he married Eleanor! But he hadn't." + +"Can't tell me, I suppose?" + +"No. Mary, mayn't I have a cigar? I'm really awfully used up, and--" + +"Henry! You are perfectly depraved! No; you may _not_. Drink your cocoa, +honey. And consider the stars;--they shine, even above Fool Hill. And +'messes' look mighty small beside the Pleiades!" Then she turned a page +of her novel, and added, "Poor Eleanor." + +"I don't know why you say 'Poor Eleanor'!" + +"Because I know that Maurice isn't sharing his 'mess' with her." + +"You are uncanny!" Henry Houghton said, stirring his cocoa and looking +at her admiringly. + +"No; merely intelligent. Henry, don't let him have any secrets from +Eleanor! Tell him to _tell_ her. She'll forgive him." + +"She's not that kind, Mary." + +"Dear, _almost_ every woman is 'that kind'! It's deception, not +confession, that makes them--the other kind. If Maurice will confess--" + +"I haven't said there was anything to confess," he protested, in alarm. + +"Oh no; certainly not. You haven't said a word! (Well; you may have just +one of those _little_ cigars--you poor dear!) Henry, listen: If Maurice +hangs a secret round his neck it will drown him." + +"If Eleanor would make cocoa for him at one o'clock in the morning there +would be no chance for secrets. Kit, I have long known that you are the +wisest, as well as the most virtuous and most lovable of your sex, and +that I shall only get to heaven by hanging on to your petticoats; but in +this one particular I am much more intelligent than you." + +"Heaven send you a good opinion of yourself!" his wife murmured. + +But he insisted. "On certain subjects women prefer to be lied to." + +"Did any woman ever tell you so?" she inquired, dryly. + +He shrugged his shoulders, put his cup down, and came over to give her a +kiss. + +"Which is to say, 'Hold your tongue'?" his Mary inquired. + +"Oh, never!" he said, and in spite of his distress he laughed; but he +looked at her tenderly. "The Lord was good to me, Mary, when He made you +take me." + +That talk in the studio marked the moment when Maurice Curtis turned his +back on youth. It was the beginning of the retreat of an ardent and +gayly candid boy into the adult sophistications of Secrecy. The next day +when he and Eleanor returned to Mercer, he sat in the car watching with +unseeing eyes the back of her head,--her swaying hat, the softly curling +tendrils of dark hair in the nape of her neck--and he saw before him a +narrow path, leading--across quaking bogs of evasions!--toward a goal of +always menaced safety. Mr. Houghton had indicated the path in that +midnight talk, and Maurice's first step upon it would be his promise to +relieve Lily of the support of her child--"_on condition that she would +never communicate with him again_." After that, Henry Houghton said, +"the lawyer will clinch things; and nobody will ever be the wiser!" +Because Eleanor was the woman she was, he saw no way of escape for +Maurice, except through this bog of secrecy, where any careless step +might plunge him into a lie. He had not dared to point out that other +path, which his Mary thought so much safer than the sucking shakiness of +the swamp--the rough and terrible path of confession, which lies across +the firm aridities of Truth, and leads to that orderly freedom of the +stars to which Maurice had once aspired! So now the boy was going back +to Mercer to plunge into the pitfalls and limitless shades of +concealment. He did it with a hard purpose of endurance, without hope, +and also without complaint. + +"If I can just avoid out-and-out lying," he told himself, "I can take my +medicine. But if I have to lie--!" + +He knew the full bitterness of his medicine when he went to see Lily... + +He went the very next day, after office hours... There had been a +temptation to postpone the taking of the medicine, because it had been +difficult to escape from Eleanor. The well-ordered household at Green +Hill had fired her with an impulse to try housekeeping again, and she +wanted to urge the idea upon Maurice: + +"We would be so much more comfortable; and I could have little Bingo!" + +"We can't afford it," he said. (Oh, how many things he wouldn't be able +to afford, now!) + +"It wouldn't cost much more. I'll come down to the office this afternoon +and walk home with you, and tell you what I've thought out about it." + +Maurice said he had to--to go and see an apartment house at five. + +"That's no matter! I'll meet you and walk along with you." + +"I have several other places to go." + +That hurt her. "If you don't want me--" + +He was so absorbed that her words had no meaning to him. "Good-by," he +said, mechanically--and the next moment he was on his way. + +At the office his employer gave him a keen glance. "You look used up, +Curtis; got a cold?" Mr. Weston asked, kindly. + +Maurice, sick in spirit, said, "No, sir; I'm all right." + +And so the minutes of the long day ticked themselves away, each a +separate pang of disgust and shame, until five o'clock came, and he +started for Lily's. + +While he waited in the unswept vestibule of an incredibly ornate frame +apartment house for the answer to his ring, and the usual: "My goodness! +Is that you? Come on up!" he had the feeling of one who stands at a +closed door, knowing that when he opens it and enters he will look upon +a dead face. The door was Lily's, and the face was the face of his dead +youth. Carelessness was over for Maurice, and irresponsibility. And +hope, too, he thought, and enthusiasm, and ambition. All over! All dead. +All lying stiff and still on the other side of a shiny golden-oak door, +with its half window hung with a Nottingham lace curtain. When he +started up the three flights of stairs to that little flat where he was +to look upon his dead, he was calm to the point of listlessness. "My own +fault. My own fault," he said. + +She was waiting for him on the landing, her fresh cleanness in fragrant +contrast to the forlorn untidiness of the stairways. They went into her +parlor together and he began to speak at once. + +"I got your letter. No; I won't sit down. I--" + +"My soul and body! You're all in!" Lily said, startled, "Let me get you +some whisky--" + +"No, please, nothing! Lily, I'm ... awfully sorry, I--I'll do what I can. +I--" + +She put her hands over her face; he went on mechanically, with his +carefully prepared sentences, ending with: + +"There's no reason why we should meet any more. But I want you to know +that the--the--_it_, will be taken care of. My lawyer will see you about +it; I'll have it placed somewhere." + +She dropped her hands and looked at him, her little, pretty face amazed +and twitching: "Do you mean you'll take my baby?" + +"I'll see that it's provided for." + +"I ain't that kind of a girl!" They were standing, one on either side of +a highly varnished table, on which, on a little brass tray, a cigarette +stub was still smoldering. "_I_ don't want anything out of you"--Lily +paused; then said, "Mr. Curtis"--(the fact that she didn't call him +"Curt" showed her recognition of a change in their relationship)--"I'm +not on the grab. I can keep on at Marston's for quite a bit. All I want +is just if you can help me in February? But I'll never give my baby up! +My first one died." + +"Your _first_--" + +"So I'll never, never give it up!" Her shallow, honest, amber-colored +eyes overflowed with bliss. "I'll just love it!" she said. + +Maurice felt an almost physical collapse; neither he nor Henry Houghton +had reckoned on maternal love. Mr. Houghton had implied that Lily's kind +did not have maternal love. "She'll leave it on a convenient +doorstep--unless she's a white blackbird," Henry Houghton had said. +Maurice, too, had taken for granted Lily's eagerness to get rid of the +child. In his amazement now, at this revelation of an unknown Lily--a +white blackbird Lily!--he began, angrily, to argue: "It is impossible +for you to keep it! Impossible! I won't permit it--" + +"I wouldn't give it up for anything in the world! I'll take care of it. +You needn't worry for fear I'll put it onto you." + +"But I won't have you keep it! I promise you I'll look after it. You +must go away, somewhere. Anywhere!" + +"But I don't want to leave Mercer," she said, simply. + +In his despairing confusion, he sat down on the little bowlegged sofa +and looked at her; Lily, sitting beside him, put her hand on his--which +quivered at the touch. "Don't you worry! I'd never play you any mean +trick. You treated me good, and I'll never treat you mean; I 'ain't +forgot the way you handed it out to Batty! I'll never let on to anybody. +Say--I believe you're afraid I'll try a hold-up on you some day? Why, +Mr. Curtis, _I_ wouldn't do a thing like that--no, not for a million +dollars! Look here; if it will make you easy in your mind, I'll put it +down in writing; I'll say it _ain't_ yours! Will that make you easy in +your mind?" Her kind eyes were full of anxious pity for him. "I'll do +anything for you, but I won't give up my baby." + +She was trying to help him! He was so angry and so frightened that he +felt sick at his stomach; but he knew that she was trying to help him! + +"You see," she explained, "the first one died; now I'm going to have +another, and you bet I'm going to have things nice for her! I'm going to +buy a parlor organ. And I'll have her learned to play. It's going to be +a girl. Oh, won't I dress her pretty! But I'll never come down on you +about her. Now, don't you worry." + +The generosity of her! She'd "put it down in writing"! "I _told_ Uncle +Henry she was white," he thought. But in spite of her whiteness his blue +eyes were wide with horror; all those plans, of Lily in another city, +and an unacknowledged child, in still another city--for of course _it_ +could not be in Mercer any more than Lily could!--all these safe +arrangements faded into a swift vision of Lily, in this apartment, with +_it_! Lily, meeting him on the street!--a flash of imagination showed +him Lily, pushing a baby carriage! For just a moment sheer terror made +that dead Youth of his stir. + +"You can't keep it!" he said again, hoarsely; "I tell you, I won't allow +it! I'll look after it. _But I won't have it here!_ And I won't ever see +you." + +"You needn't," she said, reassuringly; "and I'll never bother you. That +ain't me!" + +He was dumb. + +"An' look," she said, cheerfully; "honest, it's better for you. What +would you do, looking after a little girl? Why, you couldn't even curl +her hair in the mornings!" Maurice shuddered. "And I'll never ask you +for a cent, if you can just make it convenient to help me in February?" + +"Of course I'll help you," he said; then, suddenly, his anger fell into +despair. "Oh, what a damned fool I was!" + +"All gentlemen are," she tried to comfort him. Her generosity made him +blush. Added to his shame because of what he had done to Eleanor, was a +new shame at his own thoughts about this little, kind, bad, honest +woman! "Look here," Lily said; "if you're strapped, never mind about +helping me. They'll take you at the Maternity free, if you _can't_ pay. +So I'll go there; and I'll say I'm married; I'll say my husband was Mr. +George Dale, and he's dead; I'll never peep your name. Now, don't you +worry! I'll keep on at Marston's for four months, anyway. Yes; I'll buy +me a ring and call myself Mrs. Dale; I guess I'll say Mrs. Robert Dale; +Robert's a classier name than George. And nobody can say anything to my +baby." + +"Of course I'll give you whatever you need for--when--when it's born," +he said. He was fumbling with his pocketbook; he had nothing more to say +about leaving Mercer. + +She took the money doubtfully. "I won't want it yet awhile," she said. + +"I'll make it more if I can," he told her; he got up, hesitated, then +put out his hand. For a single instant, just for her pluck, he was +almost fond of her. "Take care of yourself," he said, huskily; and the +next minute he was plunging down those three flights of unswept stairs +to the street. "My own fault--my own fault," he said, again; "oh, what a +cussed, cussed, cussed fool!" + +It was over, this dreadful interview! this looking at the dead face of +his Youth. Over, and he was back again just where he was when he came +in. Nothing settled. Lily--who was so much more generous than he!--would +still be in Mercer, waiting for this terrible child. His child! + +He had accomplished nothing, and he saw before him the dismaying +prospect of admitting his failure to Mr. Houghton. The only comfort in +the whole hideous business was that he wouldn't have to pull a lawyer +into it, and pay a big fee! He was frantic with worry about expense. +Well, he must strike Mr. Weston for a raise!... which he wouldn't tell +Eleanor about. A second step into the bog of Secrecy! + +When he got home, Eleanor, in the dingy third-floor front, was waiting +for him, alert and tender, and gay with purpose: "Maurice! I've counted +expenses, and I'm sure we can go to housekeeping! And I can have little +Bingo. Mrs. O'Brien says he's just pining away for me!" + +"We can't afford it," he said again, doggedly. + +"I believe," she said, "you like this horrid place, because you have +people to talk to!" + +"It's well enough," he said. He was standing with his back to her, his +clenched hands in his pockets, staring out of the window. His very +attitude, the stubbornness of his shoulders, showed his determination +not to go to housekeeping. + +"What _is_ the matter, Maurice?" she said, her voice trembling. "You are +not happy! Oh, what _can_ I do?" she said, despairingly. + +"I am as happy as I deserve to be," he said, without turning his head. + +She came and stood beside him, resting her cheek on his shoulder. "Oh," +she said, passionately, "if I only had a child! You are disappointed +because we have no--" + +His recoil was so sharp that she could not finish her sentence, but +clutched at his arm to steady herself; before she could reproach him for +his abruptness he had caught up his hat and left the room. She stood +there quivering. "He _would_ be happier and love me more, if we had a +child!" she said again. She thought of the joy with which, when they +first went to housekeeping, she had bought that foolish, pretty nursery +paper--and again the old disappointment ached under her breastbone. +Tears were just ready to overflow; but there was a knock at the door and +old Mrs. O'Brien came in with her basket of laundry; she gave her +beloved Miss Eleanor a keen look "It's worried you are, my dear? It +ain't the wash, is it?" + +Eleanor tried to laugh, but the laugh ended in a sob. "No. It's--it's +only--" Then she said something in a whisper. + +"No baby? Bless you, _he_ don't want no babies! What would a handsome +young man like him be wanting a baby for? No! And it would take your +good looks, my dear. Keep handsome, Miss Eleanor, and you needn't worry +about _babies_! And say, Miss Eleanor, never let on to him if you see +him give a look at any of his lady friends. I'm old, my dear, but I +noticed, with all my husbands--and I've had three--that if you tell'em +you see'em lookin' at other ladies, _they'll look again_!--just to spite +you. Don't notice'em, and they'll not do it. Men is children." + +Eleanor, laughing in spite of her pain, said Mr. Curtis didn't "look at +other ladies; but--but," she said, wistfully, "I hope I'll have a baby." +Then she wiped her eyes, hugged old O'Brien, and promised to "quit +worrying." But she didn't "quit," for Maurice's face did not lighten. + +Henry Houghton, too, saw the aging heaviness of the young face when, +having received the report of that interview with Lily, he came down to +Mercer to go over the whole affair and see what must be done. But there +was nothing to be done. Up in his room in the hotel he and Maurice +thrashed it all out: + +"She prefers to stay in Mercer," Maurice explained; "and she'll stay. +There's nothing I can do; absolutely nothing! But she'll play fair. I'm +not afraid of Lily." + +If Mr. Houghton wished, uneasily, that his ward was afraid of Lily, he +did not say so. He only told Maurice again that he was "betting on him." + +"You won't lose," Maurice said, laconically. + +"Perhaps," Henry Houghton said, doubtfully, "I ought to say that Mrs. +Houghton--who is the wisest woman I know, as well as the best--has an +idea that in matters of this sort, frankness is the best course. But in +your case (of which, of course, she knows nothing) I don't agree with +her." + +"It would be impossible," Maurice said, briefly. And his guardian, whose +belief in secrecy had been shaken, momentarily, by his Mary's opinion, +felt that, so long as he had quoted her, his conscience was clear. So he +only told the boy again he was _sure_ he could bet on him! And because +shame, and those bleak words "my own fault," kept the spiritual part of +Maurice alive,--(and because Lily was a white blackbird!) the bet stood. + +But he made no promises about the future. However much of a liar +Maurice was going to be, to Eleanor, he would not, he told himself, lie +to this old friend by saying he would never see Lily again. The truth +was, some inarticulate moral instinct made him know that there would +come a time when he would _have_ to see her... During all that winter, +when he sat, night after night, at Miss Ladd's dinner table, and Eleanor +fended off Miss Moore and the widow, or when, in those long evenings in +their own room they played solitaire, he was thinking of Lily, thinking +of that inner summons to what he called "decency," which would, he knew, +drive him--in three months--in two months--in one month!--to Lily's +door. By and by it was three weeks--two weeks--one week! Then came days +when he said, in terror, "I'll go to-morrow." And again: "To-morrow, I +_must_ go. Damn it! I must!" So at last, he went, lashed and driven by +that mastering "decency"! + +He had bought a box of roses, and, looping two fingers through +its strings, he walked twice around the block past the ugly apartment +house before he could make up his mind to enter. He wondered whether +Lily had died? Women do die, sometimes. "Of course I don't want anything +to happen to her; but--" Then he wondered, with a sudden pang of hope, +if anything had happened to--_It_? "They're born dead, sometimes!" +Nothing wrong in wishing that, for the Thing would be better off dead +than alive. He wished he was dead himself! ... The third time he came +to the apartment house the string of the box was cutting into his +fingers, and that made him stop, and set his teeth, and push open the +door of the vestibule. He touched the button under the name "Dale," and +called up, huskily, "Is Miss--Mrs. Dale in?" A brisk voice asked his +name. "A friend of Mrs. Dale's," he said, very low. There seemed to be +a colloquy somewhere, and then he was told to "come right along!" He +turned to the stairway, and as he walked slowly up, it came into his +mind that this was the way a man might climb the scaffold steps: +Step... Step... Step--his very feet refusing! Step... Step--and Lily's +door. The nurse, who met him on the landing, said Mrs. Dale would be +glad to see him.... + +She was in bed, very white and radiant, and with a queer, blanketed +bundle on one arm; if she was, as the nurse said, "glad to see him," she +did not show it. She was too absorbed in some gladness of her own to +feel any other kind of gladness. As Maurice handed her the box of roses, +she smiled vaguely and said. "Why, you're real kind!" Then she said, +eagerly, "He was born the day the pink hyacinth came out! Want to see +him?" Her voice thrilled with joy. Without waiting for his answer--or +even giving a look at the roses the nurse was lifting out of their waxed +papers, she raised a fold of the blanket and her eyes seemed to feed on +the little red face with its tightly shut eyes and tiny wet lips. + +Maurice looked--and his heart seemed to drop, shuddering, in his breast. +"How nasty!" he thought; but aloud he said, stammering, "Why it's--quite +a baby." + +"You may hold him," she said; there was a passionate generosity in her +voice. + +Maurice tried to cover his recoil by saying, "Oh, I might drop it." + +Lily was not looking at him; it seemed as if she was glad not to give up +the roll of blankets, even for a minute. "He's perfectly lovely. He's a +reg'lar rascal! The doctor said he was a wonderful child. I'm going to +have him christened Ernest Augustus; I want a swell name. But I'll call +him Jacky." She strained her head sidewise to kiss the red, puckered +flesh, that looked like a face, and in which suddenly a little orifice +showed itself, from which came a small, squeaking sound. Maurice, under +the shock of that sound, stood rigid; but Lily's feeble arms cuddled the +bundle against her breast; she said, "Sweety--Sweety--Sweety!" + +The young man sat there speechless.... This terrible squirming piece of +flesh--was part of himself! "I wouldn't touch it for a million dollars!" +he was thinking. He got up and said: "Good-by. I hope you--" + +Lily was not listening; she said good-by without lifting her eyes from +the child's face. + +Maurice stumbled out to the staircase, with little cold thrills running +down his back. The experience of recognizing the significance of what he +had done--the setting in motion that stupendous and eternal +_Exfoliating_, called; Life; the seeing a Thing, himself, separated from +himself! himself, going on in spite of himself!--brought a surge of +engulfing horror. This elemental shock is not unknown to men who look +for the first time at their first-born; instantly the feeling may +disappear, swallowed up in love and pride. But where, as with Maurice, +there is neither pride nor love, the shock remains. His organic dismay +was so overwhelming that he said to himself he would never see Lily +again--because he would not see It!--which was, in fact, "_he_," instead +of the girl Lily had wanted. But though his spiritual disgust for what +he called, in his own mind, "the whole hideous business," did not +lessen, he did, later, through the pressure of those heavy words, "my +own fault," go to see Lily--she had taken a little house out in +Medfield--just to put down on the table, awkwardly, an envelope with +some bills in it. He didn't inquire about It, and he got out of the +house as quickly as possible. + +Lily had no resentment at his lack of feeling for the child; the baby +was so entirely hers that she did not think of it as his, too. This +sense of possession, never menaced on Maurice's part by even a flicker +of interest in the little thing, kept them to the furtive and very +formal acquaintance of giving and receiving what money he could +spare--or, oftener, _couldn't_ spare! As a result, he thought of Jacky +only in relation to his income. Every time some personal expenditure +tempted him, he summed up the child's existence in four disgusted and +angry words, "I can't afford it." But it was for Lily's sake, not +Jacky's, that he economized! He was wretchedly aware that if it had not +been for Jacky, Lily might still be a "saleslady" at Marston's, earning +good wages. Instead, she was taking lodgers--and it was not easy to get +them!--so that she could be at home and look after the baby. + +Maurice aged ten years in that first winter of rigid and unexplainable +penuriousness, and of a secrecy which meant perilous skirtings of +downright lying; for Eleanor occasionally asked why they had so little +money to spend? He had requested a raise--and not mentioned to Eleanor +the fact that he had got it. When she complained because his salary was +so low, he told her Weston was paying him all he was worth, and he +_wouldn't_ strike for more! "So it's impossible to go to housekeeping," +he said--for of course she continued to urge housekeeping, saying that +she couldn't understand why they had to be so economical! But he +refused, patiently. To be patient, Maurice did not need, now, to remind +himself of the mountain and her faithfulness to him; he had only to +remind himself of the yellow-brick apartment house, and his +faithlessness to her. "I've got to be kind, or I'd be a skunk," he used +to think. So he was very kind. He did not burst out at her with +irritated mortification when she telephoned to the office to know if +"Mr. Curtis's headache was better";--he had suffered so much that he had +gone beyond the self-consciousness of mortification;--and he walked with +her in the park on Sunday afternoons to exercise Bingo; and on their +anniversary he sat beside her in the grass, under the locust tree, and +watched the river--their river, which had brought Lily into his +life!--and listened to the lovely voice: + +"O thou with dewy locks who lookest down!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +The next fall, however, the boarding did come to an end, and they went +to housekeeping. It was Mrs. Houghton who brought this about. Edith was +to enter Fern Hill School in the fall, and her mother had an +inspiration: "Let her board with Eleanor and Maurice! The trolley goes +right out to Medfield, and it will be very convenient for her. Also, it +will help them with expenses," Mrs. Houghton said, comfortably. + +"But why can't she live at the school?" Edith's father objected, with a +troubled look; somehow, he did not like the idea of his girl in that +pathetic household, which was at once so conscious and so unconscious of +its own instability! "Why does she have to be with Eleanor and Maurice?" +Henry Houghton said. + +"Eleanor has the refinement that a hobbledehoy like Edith needs," Mrs. +Houghton explained; "and I think the child will have better food than at +Fern Hill. School food is always horrid." + +"But won't Eleanor's dullness afflict Buster?" he said, doubtfully; +then--because at that moment Edith banged into the room to show her +shuddering mother a garter snake she had captured--he added, with +complacent subtlety, "as for food, I, personally, prefer a dinner of +herbs with an _interesting_ woman, than a stalled ox and Eleanor." + +Which caused Edith to say, "Is Eleanor uninteresting, father?" + +"Good heavens, no!" said Mr. Houghton, with an alarmed look; "_of +course_ she isn't! What put such an idea into your head?" And as Buster +and her squirming prize departed, he told his Mary that her daughter was +destroying his nervous system. "She'll repeat that to Eleanor," he +groaned. + +His wife had no sympathy for him; "You deserve anything you may get!" +she said, severely; and proceeded to write to Eleanor to make her +proposition. If they cared to take Edith, she said, they could hire a +house and stop boarding--"which is dreadful for both of your digestions; +and I will be glad if this plan appeals to you, to feel that Edith is +with anyone who has such gentle manners as you." + +Eleanor, reading the friendly words at the boarding-house breakfast +table, said quickly to herself, "I don't want her... She would +monopolize Maurice!" Then she hesitated; "He would be more comfortable +in a house of his own... But Edith? Oh, I _don't_ want her!" + +She turned to show the letter to Maurice, but he was sitting sidewise, +one arm over the back of his chair, in vociferous discussion with a +fellow boarder. "No, sir!" he was declaring; "if they revise the rules +again, they'll revise the guts out of the whole blessed game; they'll +make it all muscle and no mind." + +"But football isn't any intellectual stunt," the other boarder insisted. + +"It _is_--to a degree. The old flying wedge--" + +"Maurice!" Eleanor said again; but Maurice, impassioned about "rules," +didn't even hear her. She gave his arm a little friendly shake. +"Maurice! You are the limit, with your old football!" + +He turned, laughing, and took the letter from her hand. As he read it, +his face changed sharply. "But Fern Hill is in Medfield!" he exclaimed. + +"I suppose she could take the trolley almost to the school grounds," +Eleanor conceded, reluctantly. + +"Why can't she live out there? It's a boarding school, isn't it?" (She +might meet Lily on the car!) + +For a moment she accepted his decision with relief; then the thought of +his comfort urged her: "I know of an awfully attractive house, with a +garden. Little Bingo could hide his bones in it." + +"No," he said, sharply; "it wouldn't do. I don't want her." + +Instantly Eleanor was buoyantly ready to have Edith ... he "_didn't want +her_!" When Maurice rose from the table she went to the front door with +him, detaining him--until the pretty school-teacher was well on her way +down the street;--with tender charges to take care of himself. Then, in +the darkness of the hall, with Maurice very uneasy lest some one might +see them, she kissed him good-by. "If we could afford to keep house +without taking Edith," she said, "I'd rather not have her. (Kiss me +again--no-body's looking!) But we can't. So let's have her." + +"In two years I'll have my own money," he reminded her; "this hard +sledding is only temporary." But she looked so disappointed that he +hesitated; after all, if she wanted a house so much he ought not to +stand in the way. Poor Eleanor hadn't much fun! And, as far as he was +concerned, he would like to have Edith around. "It's only the Medfield +part of it I don't like," he told himself. Yet Lily, on Maple Street, a +mile from Fern Hill, was a needle in a haystack! (And even if Edith +should ever see her, she wouldn't know her.) ... "If you really want to +have her," he told Eleanor, "go ahead." + +So that was how it happened that Edith burst in upon Eleanor's dear +domesticity of two. Maurice, having once agreed to his wife's wish, was +rather pleased at the prospect. "It will help on money," he thought; +"another hundred a year will come in handy to Lily. And it will be sort +of nice to have Buster in the house." + +Lily had not said she must have another hundred. She did not even think +so. "_I_ can swing it!" Lily had said, sturdily. And she did; but of +course, as Maurice, to his intense discomfort, knew only too well, it +was hard to swing it. Even with what help he could give her, she +couldn't possibly have got along if she had not been astonishingly +efficient and thrifty, always looking at both sides of a cent! "I ain't +smoking any more," Lily said once; "well, 'tain't _only_ to save money; +but I don't want Jacky to be getting any funny ideas!" (this when +"Ernest Augustus" was only a few months old!) She had a tiny house on +Maple Street, with a sun-baked front yard, in which a few shrubs caught +the dust on their meager foliage; and she had a border of pansies in the +shade under the bay window;--"I _must_ have flowers!" Lily said, +apologetically;--and she had three roomers, and she had scraped the +locality for mealers. She would have made more money if she had not fed +her boarders so well. "But there!" said Lily; "if I give 'em nice food, +they'll stay!" But, all the same, Maurice knew that two or three dollars +more a week would "come in handy." His sense of irritated responsibility +about her made him long for that twenty-fifth birthday which would bring +him his own money. For, in spite of Lily's thriftiness, her expenses, as +well as her toil, kept increasing, and Maurice, cursing himself whenever +he thought that but for him she would be "on easy street" at Marston's, +had begun the inevitable borrowing. The payment of the interest on his +note was a tax on his salary; yet not so taxing as the necessity of +being constantly on guard against some careless word which might make +Eleanor ask questions about that salary. + +But Eleanor asked very few questions about anything so practical as +income. Her interest in money matters, now, in regard to Edith, was +merely that Edith was a means to an end--Maurice could have his own +home! The finding a house, under Mrs. Newbolt's candid guidance--and +Maurice's worried reminders that he couldn't "afford" more than so much +rent!--gave Eleanor the pleasantest summer she had had since that first +summer when, in the meadow, she and Maurice had watched the clouds, and +the locust blossoms, and told each other that nothing in heaven or +earth, or the waters under the earth, could part them... + +The old house they finally secured was in an unfashionable locality; +there was a tailor shop next door and an undertaker across the street, +and a clanging trolley car screeched on the curve at the end of the +block; but the dignity of the pillared doorway, and the carved window +casings, had appealed to Maurice; and also the discovery in the parlor, +behind a monstrous air-tight stove, of a bricked-up fireplace (which he +promptly tore open), all combined to make undertakers and tailors, as +neighbors, unimportant! On the rear of the house was an iron +veranda--roped with wistaria; below, inclosed in a crumbling brick wall, +was the back yard--"_Garden_, if you please!" Maurice announced--for +Bingo's bones. Clumps of Madonna lilies had bloomed here, and died, and +bloomed again, for almost a century; the yard was shaded by a silver +poplar, which would gray and whiten in the wind in hot weather, or +delicately etch itself against a wintry sky. A little path, with moss +between the bricks and always damp in the shadow of the poplar, led from +the basement door to an iron gate; through its rusty bars one could see, +a block away, the slipping gleam of the river, hurrying down from "their +meadow," to disappear under the bridge. Maurice said he would build a +seat around the poplar, "... and we'll put a table under it, and paint +it green, and have tea there in the afternoon! Skeezics will like that." + +"Edith looks healthy," said Mrs. Newbolt; "my dear father used to say he +liked healthy females. Old-fashioned word--females. Well, I'm afraid +dear father liked 'em too much. But my dear mother--she was a +Dennison--pretended not to see it. She had sense. Great thing in married +life, to have sense, and know what not to see! Pity Edith's not musical. +Have you a cook? I believe she'd have caught you, Maurice, if Eleanor +hadn't got in ahead! I brought a chocolate drop for Bingo. Here, Bingo!" + +Bingo, silky and snarly, climbed on to her steeply sloping black-satin +lap, ate the chocolate drop--keeping all the while a liquid and adoring +eye upon his mistress--then slid down and ran to curl up on Eleanor's +skirt. + +By September the moving and seat building were accomplished--the last +not entirely on Edith's account; it was part of Maurice's painstaking +desire to do something--anything!--for "poor Eleanor," as he named her +in his remorseful thought. There was never a day--indeed, there was not +often an hour!--when his own meanness to his wife (combined with disgust +at being a liar) did not ache somewhere in the back of his mind. So he +tried, in all sorts of anxious ways, to please her. He almost never saw +Lily; but the thought of her often brought Eleanor a box of candy or a +bunch of violets. Such expenditures were slightly easier for him now, +because he had had another small raise,--which this time he had told +Eleanor about. On the strength of it he said to himself that he supposed +he ought to give Lily a little something extra? So on the day when Mrs. +Houghton and Edith were to arrive in Mercer, he went out to Medfield to +tell Jacky's mother that she might count on a few dollars more each +month. The last time he had seen her, Lily had told him that Jacky "was +fussing with his teeth something fierce. I had to hire a little girl +from across the street," she said, "to take him out in the perambulator, +or else I couldn't 'tend to my cooking. It costs money to live, Mr. +Curtis," Lily had said, "and eggs are going up, awful!" She had never +gone back to the familiarity of those days when she called him "Curt." +That he, dull and preoccupied, still called her Lily gave her, somehow, +such a respectful consciousness of his superiority that she had +hesitated to speak of anything so intimate as eggs... "Yes, I must give +her something extra," Maurice thought, remembering the "cost" of living. +"Talk about paying the piper! I bet _I'm_ paying him, all right!" + +He was to meet Mrs. Houghton at seven-thirty that night, and it occurred +to him that if he told Eleanor he had some extra work to do at his desk +he could wedge this call in between office hours and the time when he +must go to the station--("and they call me 'G. Washington'!") He felt no +special cautiousness in going out to Maple Street; the few people he +knew in Mercer did not frequent this locality, and if any of them +should chance to see him--a most remote possibility!--why, was he not in +the real-estate business, and constantly looking at houses? On this +particular afternoon, jolting along in the trolley car, he grimly amused +himself with the thought of what he would do if, say, Eleanor herself +should see him turning that infernally shrill bell on Lily's door. It +was a wild flight of imagination, for Eleanor never would see him--never +could see him! Eleanor, who only went to Medfield when their wedding +anniversary came round, and she dragged him out to sit by the river and +sentimentalize! He thought of the loveliness of that past June--and the +contrasting and ironic ugliness of the present September.... Now, the +little secret house in the purlieus of Mercer's smoke and grime; then, +the river, and the rippling tides of grass and clover, and the blue +sky--and that ass, lying at the feet of a woman old enough to be his +mother! + +He laughed as he swung off the car--then frowned; for he saw that to +reach Lily's door he would have to pass a baby carriage standing just +inside the gate. He didn't glance into the carriage at the roly-poly +youngster. He never, on the rare occasions when he went to see Lily, +looked at his child if he could avoid doing so--and she never asked him +to. Once, annoyed at Jacky's shrill noisiness, he had protested, +frowning: "Can't you keep it quiet? It needs a spanking!" After that +indifferent criticism ("For _I_ don't care how she brings it up!") Lily +had not wanted him to see her baby. She could not have said just +why--perhaps it was fear lest Maurice would notice his growing +perfection--but when Jacky's father came she kept Jacky in the +background! On this September afternoon she said, as she opened the +door: + +"Why, you're a great stranger! Come right in! Wait a second till I get +Jacky. I've just nursed him and I put him out there so I could watch him +while I scrubbed the porch." She ran out to the gate, then pushed the +carriage up the path. + +"Let me help you," Maurice said, politely; adding to himself, +"Damn--damn--!" Stepping backward, he lifted the front wheels, and with +Lily's help pulled the perambulator on to the little porch and over the +threshold into the house--which always shone with immaculate neatness +and ugly comfort. He kept his eyes away from the sleeping face on the +pillow. Together they got the carriage into the hall--Lily fumbling all +the while with one hand to fasten the front of her dress and skipping a +button or two as she did so; but he had a glimpse of the heavy abundance +of her bosom, and thought to himself that, esthetically, maternity was +rather unpleasant. + +"Go on into the parlor and sit down," she said; "I'll put him in the +kitchen," She pushed the elaborate wicker perambulator, adorned with +bows of blue-satin ribbon, down a dark entry smelling of very good soup +stock. When she came back she found Maurice, his hat and stick in his +hands, standing in her tiny front room, where the sunny window was full +of geraniums and scraggly rose bushes. "I got 'em in early. And I dug up +my dahlias--I was afraid of frost. (Mercy! I must clean that window on +the outside!) Well, you _are_ a stranger!" she said, again, +good-naturedly. Then she sighed: "Mr. Curtis, Jacky seems kind o' sick. +He's been coughing, and he's hot. Would you send for a doctor, if you +was me?" + +"Why, if you're worried, yes," Maurice said, impatiently; "I was just +passing, and--No, thank you; I won't sit down. I was passing, and I +thought I'd look in and give you a--a little present. If the youngster's +upset, it will come in well," he ended, as his hand sought his waistcoat +pocket. Lily's face was instantly anxious. + +"What! Did _you_ think he looked sick, too? I was kind of worried, but +if you noticed it--" + +"I didn't in the least," he said, frowning; "I didn't look at him." + +"He 'ain't never been what you'd call sick," Lily tried to reassure +herself; "he's a reg'lar rascal!" she ended, tenderly; her eyes--those +curious amber eyes, through which sometimes a tigress looks!--looked +now at Maurice in passionate motherhood. + +Maurice, putting the money down on the table, said, "I wish I could do +more for you, Lily; but I'm dreadfully strapped." + +"Say, now, you take it right back! I can get along; I got my two +upstairs rooms rented, and I've got a new mealer. And if Jacky only +keeps well, I can manage fine. But that girl that's been wheelin' him +has measles at her house--little slut!" Lily said (the yellow eyes +glared); "she didn't let on to me about it. Wanted her two dollars a +week! If Jacky's caught 'em, I--I'll see to her!" + +"Oh, he's all right," Maurice said; he didn't like "it"--although, if it +hadn't been for "it" he would probably, long before this, have slipped +down into the mere comfort of Lily; "it" held him prisoner in +self-contempt; "it," or perhaps the larger It? the It which he had seen +first in his glorious, passionately selfish ecstasy on his wedding day; +then glimpsed in the awful orderliness of the universe,--the It that +held the stars in their courses! Perhaps the tiny, personal thing, Joy, +and the stupendous, impersonal thing, Law, and the mysterious, unseen +thing, Life, were all one? "Call it God," Maurice had said of ecstasy, +and again of order; he did not call Jacky's milky lips "God." The little +personality which he had made was not in the least God to him! On the +contrary, it was a nuisance and a terror, and a financial anxiety. He +shrank from the thought of it, and kept "decent," merely through disgust +at the child as an entity--an entity which had driven him into loathsome +evasions and secrecies which once in a while sharpened into little lies. +But he was faintly sorry, now, to see Lily look unhappy about the Thing; +and he even had a friendly impulse to comfort her: "Jacky's all right! +But I'll send a doctor in, if you want me to. I saw a doctor's shingle +out as I came around the corner." + +She said she'd be awfully obliged; and he, looking at his watch, and +realizing that Mrs. Houghton's train was due in less than an hour, +hurried off. + +The doctor's bell was not answered promptly; then the doctor detained +him by writing down the address, getting it wrong, correcting it, and +saying: "Mrs. Dale? Oh yes; you are Mr. Dale?" + +"No--not at all! Just a friend. I happened to be calling, and Mrs. Dale +asked me to stop and ask you to come in." + +Then he rushed off. On the way to town, staring out of the window of the +car, he tingled all over at Doctor Nelson's question: "You are Mr. +Dale?"... "Why the devil did I offer to get a doctor? I wish Lily would +move to the ends of the earth; or that the brat would get well; or--or +something." + +There was a little delay in reaching the station, and when he got there, +it was to find that Mrs. Houghton's train was in and she and Edith, +shifting for themselves, had presumably taken a hack to find their way +to Maurice's house. He was mortified, but annoyed, too, because it +involved giving Eleanor some sort of lying explanation for his +discourtesy. "I'll have to cook up some kind of yarn!" he thought, +disgustedly... + +When Edith and her mother had arrived, unaccompanied by Maurice, Eleanor +was sharply worried; had anything happened to him? Oh, she was afraid +something had happened to him! "Where _do_ you suppose he is?" she said, +over and over. "I'm always so afraid he's been run over!" And when +Maurice, flushed and apologetic, appeared, she was so relieved that she +was cross. What on earth had detained him? "How _did_ you miss them?" + +So Maurice immediately told half of the truth,--this being easier for +him than an out-and-out lie. He had been detained because he had to go +and see a house in Medfield. "Awfully sorry, Mrs. Houghton!" + +Eleanor said she should have thought he needn't have stayed long enough +to be late at the station! Well, he hadn't stayed long; but the--"the +tenant was afraid her baby had measles and she had asked him to go and +get a doctor, and--" + +"Of course!" Mrs. Houghton said; "don't give it a thought, Maurice. +John Bennett met us--you knew he was at the Polytechnical?--and brought +us here. But, anyhow, Edith and I were quite capable of looking out for +ourselves; weren't we, Edith?" + +Edith, almost sixteen now, long-legged, silent, and friendly, said, +"Yes, mother" and helped herself so liberally to butter that her hostess +thought to herself, _"Gracious!"_ + +However, assured that Maurice had not been run over, Eleanor was really +indifferent to Edith's appetite, for the sum Mrs. Houghton had offered +for the girl's board was generous. So, proud of the new house, and +pleased with sitting at the head of her own table, and hoping that +Maurice would like the pudding, which, with infinite fussing, she had +made with her own hands, she felt both happy and hospitable. She told +Edith to take some more butter (which she did!); and tell Johnny to come +to dinner some night, "and we'll have some music," she added, kindly. + +"Johnny doesn't like music," said Edith; "well, I don't, either. But I +guess he'll come. He likes food." + +Edith effaced herself a good deal in the few days that, her mother +stayed on in Mercer to launch her at Fern Hill; effaced herself, indeed, +so much that Maurice, full of preoccupations of his own, was hardly +aware of her presence!... He had had a scared note from Lily: + +Doctor Nelson says he's _awful_ sick, and I've got to have a nurse. I +don't like to, because I can't bear to have anybody do for him but me, +and she charges so much. Makes me tired to see her all fussed up in +white dresses--I suppose it's her laundry I'm paying for! That little +girl he caught it from ought to be sent to a Reformatory. I'm afraid my +new mealer'll go, if she thinks there's anything catching in the house. +I hate to ask you-- + +The scented, lavender-colored envelope was on Maurice's desk at the +office the morning after Mrs. Houghton and Edith arrived. When he had +read it, and torn it into minute scraps, Maurice had something else to +think of than Edith! He knew Lily wouldn't want to leave "her" baby to +go out and cash a money order, and checks were dangerous; so he must +take that trip to Medfield again. "Well," said Maurice--pulled and +jerked out to Maple Street on the leash of an ineradicable sense of +decency--"the devil is getting his money's worth out of _me_!" + +He entered No. 16 without turning the clanging bell, for the door was +ajar. Lily was in the entry, talking to the doctor, who gave Mrs. Dale's +"friend" a rather keen look. "Oh, Mr. Curtis, he's _awful_ sick!" Lily +said; she was haggard with fright. + +Maurice, swearing to himself for having arrived at that particular +moment, said, coldly, "Too bad." + +"Oh, we'll pull him through," the doctor said, with a kind look at Lily. +She caught his hand and kissed it, and burst out crying. The two men +looked at each other--one amused, the other shrinking with disgust at +his own moral squalor. Then from the floor above came a whimpering cry, +and Lily, calling passionately, "Yes, Sweety! Maw's coming!" flew +upstairs. + +"I'll look in this evening," Doctor Nelson said, and took himself off, +rubbing the back of his hand on his trousers. "I wonder if there's any +funny business there?" he reflected. But he thought no more about it +until weeks afterward, when he happened, one day, in the bank, to stand +before Maurice, waiting his turn at the teller's window. He said, +"Hello!" and Maurice said, "Hello!" and added that it was a cold day. +The fact that Maurice said not a word about that recovering little +patient in Medfield made the doctor's mind revert to the possibilities +he had recognized in Lily's entry. + +"Yet he looks too decent for that sort of thing," the doctor thought; +"well, it's a rum world." Then Maurice took his turn at the window, and +Doctor Nelson put his notes in his pocket, and the two men nodded to +each other, and said, "By," and went their separate ways. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +Edith's first winter in Mercer went pretty well; she was not fussy about +what she had to eat; "I can always stoke on bread and butter," she said, +cheerfully; and she was patient with the aging Bingo's yapping +jealousies; "The smaller a dog is, the more jealous he is!" she said, +with good-humored contempt; and she didn't mind Eleanor's +speechlessness. "_I_ talk!" Edith said. But Maurice?... "I love him next +to father and mother," Edith thought; but, all the same, she didn't know +what to make of Maurice! He had very little to say to her--which made +her feel annoyingly young, and made him seem so old and stern that +sometimes she could hardly realize that he was the Maurice of the +henhouse, and the camp, and the squabbles. Instead, he was the Maurice +of that night on the river, the "Sir Walter Raleigh" Maurice! Once in a +while she was quite shy with him. "He's awfully handsome," she thought, +and her eyes dreamed. "What a clod Johnny is, compared to him!" ... As +for Eleanor, Edith, being as unobservant as most sixteen-year-old girls, +saw only the lovely dark eyes and the beautiful brow under the ripple of +soft black hair, Eleanor's sterile silences did not trouble her, and she +never knew that the traces of tears meant a helpless consciousness that +dinner had been a failure. The fact was, she never noticed Eleanor's +looks! She merely thought Maurice's wife was old, and didn't "get much +fun out of life--she just plays on the piano!" Edith thought. Pain of +mind or body was, to Edith--as probably it ought to be to +Youth--unintelligible; so she had no sympathy. In fact, being sixteen, +she had still the hard heart of a child. + +It may have been the remembrance of Sir Walter Raleigh that made her, +one night, burst into reminiscent questions: + +"Maurice! Do you remember the time that boat upset, and that girl--all +painted, you know--flopped around in the water?" + +Maurice said, briefly, why, yes; he believed he remembered. + +"I remember that girl, too," Eleanor said; "Maurice told me about her." + +"Well, what do you suppose?" Edith said; "I saw her to-day." + +Maurice, pushing back his chair, got up and went into the little room +opening into the dining room, which they called the library. At his +desk, his pen in his hand, his jaw set, he sat listening--listening! +What in hell would she say next? What she said was harmless enough: + +"Yes, I saw her. I was walking home, and on Maple Street who should I +see going into a house but this woman! She was lugging a flower pot, and +a baby. And,--now, isn't this funny?--she sort of stumbled at the gate, +_right by me_! And I grabbed her, and kept the child from falling; and I +said--" In the library Maurice's face was white--"I said, 'Why, _I_ saw +you once--you're Miss Dale. Your boat upset,' And she said, 'You have +the advantage of me.' Of course she isn't a lady, you know." + +Eleanor smiled, and called significantly to her husband, "Edith says +your rescued friend isn't a 'lady,' Maurice!" He didn't answer, and she +added to Edith, "No; she certainly isn't a lady! Darling," she called +again; "do you suppose she's got married?" + +To which he answered, "Where did I put those sheets of blotting paper, +Eleanor?" + +"Oh yes, she's married," Edith said, scraping her plate; "she told me +her name was _Mrs_. Henry Dale. She couldn't seem to remember Maurice +giving her his coat, which I thought was rather funny in her, 'cause +Maurice is so handsome you'd think she'd remember him. And I said he was +'Mr. Curtis,' and she said she'd never heard the name. I got to talking +to her," ("I bet you did," Maurice thought, despairingly); "and she told +me that 'Jacky' had had the measles, and been awfully sick, but he was +all well now, and she'd taken him into Mercer to get him a cap." +("What's Lily mean by bringing the Thing into town!" Jacky's father was +saying through set teeth.) "She was perfectly bursting with pride about +him," Edith went on; "said he was 'a reg'lar rascal'! Isn't it queer +that I should meet her, after all these years?" + +When Eleanor went into the library to hunt for the blotting paper, she, +too, commented on the queerness of Edith's stumbling on the lady who +wasn't a lady. "How small the world is!" said Eleanor. "Why, Maurice, +here's the paper! Right before you!" + +"Oh," said Maurice, "yes; thank you." He was saying to himself, "I might +have known this kind of thing would happen!" He was consumed with +anxiety to ask Edith some questions, but of course he had to be silent. +To show even the slightest interest was impossible--and Edith +volunteered no further information, for that night Eleanor took occasion +to intimate to her that "Mrs. Dale" must not be referred to. "You can't +speak of that kind of person, you know." + +"Why not?" Edith said. + +"Well, she isn't--nice. She wasn't married. And Edith, it really isn't +good taste to tell a man, right to his face, that he's handsome! I don't +think any man likes flattery." + +"You mean because I said Maurice was handsome? I didn't say it to his +face--he was in the library. And it isn't flattery to tell the truth. He +is! As for Mrs. Dale, she _is_ married; this little Jacky was her baby! +She said so. He had the bluest eyes! I never saw such blue eyes--except +Maurice's. 'Course she's not a lady; but I don't see what right you have +to say she isn't nice." + +Eleanor, laughing, threw up despairing hands; "Edith, don't you know +_anything_?" + +"I know _everything_," Edith said, affronted; "I'm sixteen. Of course I +know what you mean; but Mrs. Dale isn't--that. And," Edith ended, on +the spur of the moment, "and I'm going to see her sometime!" The under +dog always appealed to Edith Houghton, and when Eleanor left her, +appalled by her failure to instill proprieties into her, Edith was +distinctly hot. "I'm not going to see her!" she told herself. "I +wouldn't think of such a thing. But I won't listen to Eleanor abusing +her." + +As for Eleanor, she confided her alarm to Maurice. "She mustn't go to +see that woman!" + +His instant horrified agreement was a satisfaction to her: "Of _course_ +not!" + +"She won't listen to _me_," Eleanor complained; "you'll have to tell her +she mustn't." + +"I will," he said, grimly. + +And the very next day he did. He happened (as it seemed) to start for +his office just as Edith started for school, so they walked along +together. + +"Edith," he said, the moment they were clear of his own doorway and +Eleanor's ears; "that Mrs. Dale; I'd keep away from her, if I were you." + +"Goodness!" said Edith; "did you suppose I was going to fall into her +arms? Why should I have anything to do with her?" + +"Eleanor said you said--" + +"Oh, I just said that because Eleanor was down on her, and that made me +mad. I couldn't go and see her, if I was dying to--'cause I don't know +where she lives--unless it was that house she was going into? Do you +know, Maurice?" + +"Great Scott! How should I know where she lives?" + +"'Course not," said Edith. + +But it was many days before Maurice's alarm quieted down sufficiently to +let him drift back into the furtive security of knowing that neither +Edith nor Eleanor could, by any possibility, get on Lily's track. "And, +besides, Lily's too good a sport to give anything away. Pretty neat in +her to 'forget' that coat! But she ought to be careful not to forget her +husband's name!--it seems to be Henry, now." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +A moody Maurice, who puzzled her, and a faultfinding Eleanor, whom she +was too generous to understand, drove the sixteen-year-old Edith into a +real appreciation of Johnny Bennett. With him, she was still in the +stage of unsentimental frankness that pierced ruthlessly to what she +conceived to be the realities; and because she was as unselfconscious as +a tree, she was entirely indifferent to the fact that Johnny was a boy +and she was a girl, Johnny, however, nearsighted and in enormous +shell-rimmed spectacles, and still inarticulate, was quite aware of it; +more definitely so every week,--for he saw her on Saturdays and Sundays. +"And it's the greatest possible relief to talk to you!" Edith told him. + +Johnny accepted the tribute as his due. They had been coasting, and now, +on the hilltop, were sitting on their sleds, resting. "Gosh! it's hot!" +Johnny said: he had taken off his red sweater and tied its sleeves +around his neck; "zero? You try pulling both those sleds up here, and +you'll think it's the Fourth of July," Johnny said, adjusting his +spectacles with a mittened hand. He frequently reverted to the grumpy +stage--yet now, looking at Edith, grumpiness vanished. She was +breathless from the long climb, and her white teeth showed between her +parted, panting lips: her cheeks were burning with frosty pink. Johnny +looked, and looked away, and sighed. + +"Johnny," Edith said, "why do you suppose Eleanor gives me so many +call-downs? 'Course I hate music; and once I said she was always +pounding on the piano--and she didn't seem to like it!" Edith was +genuinely puzzled. "I can't understand Eleanor," she said; "she makes me +tired." + +"I should think she'd make Maurice tired!" Johnny said, and added: +"That's the worst of getting married. I shall never marry." + +"When I was a child," Edith said, "I always said that when I grew up I +was going to marry Maurice, because he was just like Sir Walter Raleigh. +Wasn't that a joke?" + +Johnny saw nothing amusing in such foolishness; he said that Maurice was +old enough to be her father! As for himself, he felt, he said, that +marriage was a mistake. "Women hamper a man dreadfully. Still--I may +marry," Johnny conceded; "but it will be somebody very young, so I can +train her mind. I want a woman (if I decide to marry) to be just the +kind I want. Otherwise, you get hung up with Eleanors." + +Edith lifted her chin. "Well, I like that! Why shouldn't she train your +mind?" + +"Because," Johnny said, firmly, "the man's mind is the stronger." + +Edith screamed with laughter, and threw a handful of snow in his neck. +"B-r-r-r!" she said; "it's getting cold! I'll knock the spots out of you +on belly bumps!" She got on her feet, shook the snow from the edge of +her skirt, flung herself face down on her sled, and shot like a blue +comet over the icy slope. Johnny sped after her, his big sled taking +flying leaps over the kiss-me-quicks. They reached the bottom of the +hill almost together, and Johnny, looking at her standing there, +breathless and rosy, with shining eyes which were as impersonal as +stars, said to himself, with emotion: + +"She's got sense--for a girl." His heart was pounding in his broad +chest, but he couldn't think of a thing to say. He was still dumb when +she said good-by to him at Maurice's door. + +"Why don't you come to dinner next Saturday?" she said, carelessly; +"Maurice will be away all week on business; but he'll be back Saturday." + +Johnny mumbled something to the effect that he could survive, even if +Maurice wasn't back. + +"I couldn't," Edith said. "I should simply die, in this house, if it +wasn't for Maurice!" + +As, whistling, she ran upstairs, Edith thought to herself that Johnny +was a _lamb_! "But, compared to Maurice, he's awfully uninteresting." +Edith, openly and audibly, compared every male creature to Maurice, and +none of them ever measured up to him! His very moodiness had its charm; +when he sat down at the piano after dinner and scowled over some new +music, or when he lounged in his big chair and smoked, his face absorbed +to the point of sternness, Edith, loving him "next to father and +mother," watched him, and wondered what he was thinking about? Sometimes +he came out of his abstraction and teased her, and then she sparkled +into gay impertinences; sometimes he asked her what she thought of this +or that phrasing, "...though you are a barbarian, Skeezics, about +music"; sometimes he would pull a book from the shelf over his +desk and read a poem to her; and he was really interested in her +opinion,--ardently appreciative if he liked the poem; if he didn't, it +was "the limit." + +Maurice was at home that Saturday night for which Edith had thrown the +careless invitation to Johnny; and Mrs. Newbolt also dropped in to +dinner. It was not a pleasant dinner. Eleanor sat in one of her empty +silences; saw Maurice frown at an overdone leg of lamb; heard her aunt's +stream of comments on her housekeeping; listened to Edith's teasing +chatter to Johnny;--"What _can_ Maurice see in her!" She thought. +Before dinner was over, she excused herself; she had a headache, she +said. "You won't mind, Auntie, will you?" + +Mrs. Newbolt said, heartily, "_Not_ a bit! My dear mother used to--" + +Eleanor, picking up little Bingo, went with lagging step out of the +room. + +"Children," said Mrs. Newbolt, "why don't you make taffy this evening?" + +"_That's_ sense," said Edith; "let's! It's Mary's night out. Sorry poor +old Eleanor isn't up to it." + +Maurice frowned; "Look here, Edith, that isn't--respectful." + +Edith looked so blankly astonished that Mrs. Newbolt defended her: "But +Eleanor _does_ look old! And she'll lose her figger if she isn't +careful! My dear grandmother--used to say, 'Girls, I'd rather have you +lose your vir--'" + +"Don't raise Cain in the kitchen, you two," Maurice said, hastily; +"Eleanor hates noise." + +Edith, subdued by his rebuke, said she wouldn't raise Cain; and, indeed, +she and Johnny were preternaturally quiet until things had been cleared +away and the taffy could be started. When it was on the stove, there was +at least ten minutes of whispering while they watched the black molasses +shimmer into the first yellow rings. Then Johnny, in a low voice, talked +for a good while of something he called "Philosophy"--which seemed to +consist in a profound disbelief in everything. "Take religion," said +Johnny. "I'd like to discuss it with you; I think you have a very good +mind--for a woman. Religion is an illustration of what I mean. It's a +delusion. A complete delusion. I have ceased to believe in anything." + +"Oh, Johnny, how awful!" said Edith, stirring the seething sweetness; +"Johnny, be a lamb, and get me a tumbler of cold water, will you, to try +this stuff?" + +Johnny brought the water ("Oh, how young she is!" he thought), and Edith +poured a trickle of taffy into it. + +"Is it done?" Edith said, and held out the brittle string of candy; he +bit at it, and said he guessed so. Then they poured the foamy stuff into +a pan, and put it in the refrigerator. "We'll wait till it gets stiff," +said Edith. + +"I think," said Johnny, in a low voice, "your hair is handsomer than +most women's. I'm particular about a woman's hair." + +Edith, sitting on the edge of the table, displaying very pretty ankles, +put an appraising hand over the brown braids that were wound around her +head in a sort of fillet. "Are you?" she said, and began to yawn--but +stopped short, her mouth still open, for Johnny Bennett was _looking at +her_! "Let's go into the library," she said, hurriedly. + +"I like it out here," Johnny objected. + +But as he spoke Maurice lounged into the kitchen. "Stiff?" he said. + +"No; won't be for ages," Edith said--and instantly the desire to fly to +the library ceased, especially as Mrs. Newbolt came trundling in. With +Maurice astride one of the wooden chairs, his blue eyes droll and +teasing, and Mrs. Newbolt enthroned in adipose good nature close to the +stove, Edith was perfectly willing to stay in the kitchen! + +"I say!" Maurice said. "Let's pull the stuff!" + +Johnny looked cross. "What," he asked himself, "are Maurice and Mrs. +Newbolt butting in for?" Then he softened, for Maurice was teasing +Edith, and Mrs. Newbolt was tasting the candy, and the next minute all +was in delightful uproar of stickiness and excitement, and Johnny, +exploding into wild cackles of laughter, felt quite young for the next +hour. + +Eleanor, upstairs, with Bingo's little silken head on her breast, did +not feel young; she heard the noise, and smelled the boiling molasses, +and knew that Mary would be cross when she came home and found the +kitchen in a mess. "How can Maurice stand such childishness!" She lay +there with a cologne-soaked handkerchief on her forehead, and sighed +with pain. "Why _doesn't_ he stop them?" she thought. She heard his +shout of laughter, and Edith's screaming giggle, and moved her head to +find a cool place on the pillow. "She's too old to romp with him." +Suddenly she sat up, tense and listening; he was enjoying himself--and +she was suffering! "If he had a headache, I would sit with him; I +wouldn't leave him alone!" But she was sick in bed,--and he was having a +good time--_with Edith_. Her resentment was not exactly jealousy; it was +fear; the same fear she had felt when Maurice had told her how Edith +had rushed into his room the night of the great storm, _the fear of +Youth_! She moved Bingo gently, stroking him until he seemed to be +asleep; then sat up, and put her feet on the floor. The folded +handkerchief slipped from her forehead, and she pressed her hands +against her temples. "I'm going downstairs," she said to herself; "I +won't be left out!" She felt a sick qualm as she got on to her feet, and +went over to look at herself in the mirror ... her face was pale, and +her hair, wet with cologne, was pasted down in straggling locks on her +forehead; she tried to smooth it. "Oh, I look old enough to be--his +aunt," she said, hopelessly. When she opened her door she heard a little +thud behind her; it was Bingo, scrambling off the bed to follow her; as +she went downstairs, unsteadily, and clinging to the banisters, he +stepped on her skirt, so she had to stoop and pick him up. At the closed +kitchen door she paused for a moment, leaning against the wall; her head +swam. Bingo, held in one trembling arm, put out his little pink tongue +and licked her cheek. "I _won't_ be left out," she said again. Just as +her hand touched the knob there was an outburst of joyous yells, and a +_whack_! as a lump of taffy, flung by one of the roisterers, hit the +resounding panel of the door--then Mrs. Newbolt's fat chuckle, and +Johnny's voice vociferating that Edith was the limit, and +Maurice--"Edith, if you put that stuff in my hair, I'll skin you alive!" + +"Boil her in oil!" yelled Johnny. + +Eleanor turned around and crept back to the stairs; she caught at the +newel post, and stood, gasping; then, somehow, she climbed up to her +room. There, lifting Bingo into his basket, she sank on her bed, groping +blindly for the damp handkerchief to put across her forehead. "Mary will +give notice," she said. After a while, as the throbbing grew less acute, +she said, "He's their age." Bingo, crawling out of his basket, scrabbled +up on to the bed; she felt his little loving cold nose against her face. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +"What a kid Johnny Bennett is!" Maurice told Eleanor. He was detailing to +her, while he was scrubbing the stickiness of the kitchen festivities +off his hands, what had happened downstairs. "But do you know, I believe +he's soft on Edith! How old is he?" + +"He's nearly nineteen. Children, both of them." + +"Nineteen?" Maurice said, astounded. Nineteen! Johnny? "Why, _I_ was +nineteen, when--" He paused. She was silent. Suddenly Maurice felt +_pity_. He had run the gamut of many emotions in the last four +years--love, and fright, and repentance, and agonies of shame, and +sometimes anger; but he had never touched pity. It stabbed him now, and +its dagger blade was sawtoothed with remorse. He looked at his wife, +lying there with closed eyes, her pillow damp where the wet handkerchief +had slipped from her temples, and her beautiful mouth sagging with pain. +"Oh, I must be nice to her, poor thing!" he thought. Aloud he said, +"Poor Eleanor!" + +Instantly her dark eyes opened in startled joy; his tenderness lifted +her into indifference to that throbbing in her temples. "I don't mind +anything," she said, "if you love me." + +"Can't I do something for your head?" + +"Just kiss me, darling," she said. + +He kissed her, for he was sorry for her. But he was thinking of himself. +"I was Johnny Bennett's age, when ... And I _wanted_ to kiss her! My +God! I may have to keep up this kissing business for--for forty years!" +And whenever he was kissing her, he would have to think how he was +deceiving her; he would have to think of Lily. Yes; he had been a "kid," +like Johnny! How _could_ she have done it! Pity sharpened into anger: +How could she have taken advantage of a boy? Well; he had had his +fling. To be sure, he was paying for it now, not only in anxiety about +money, but in shame, and furtiveness, and the corroding consciousness of +being a liar, and in the complete shipwreck of every purpose and +ambition that a young man ought to have. "And that day, in the field, I +called it _love_!" He would have been amused at the cynical memory, if +he had not been so bitter. "Love? Rot! Still, I ought to be kinder to +her;--but I can't bear to look at her. She's an old woman." + +Eleanor put out her hot, trembling hand and groped for his. "Good night, +darling," she said; "my head's better." + +"So glad," he said. + +The next morning, as Eleanor, rather white and shaky, was dressing, she +said, "Edith doesn't seem to realize that she is too old to be so free +and easy with Johnny Bennett--and you." + +"She's getting mighty good looking," Maurice said. + +"She has too much color," Eleanor said, quickly. + +Maurice was right. During Edith's second winter in Mercer she grew +prettier all the time; poor, speechless Johnny, looking at her through +his spectacles, was quite miserable. He told some of his intimate +friends that life was a bad joke. + +"I shall never marry; just do some big work, and then get out. There is +nothing really worth while. Mere looks in a woman don't attract me," +Johnny said. + +But that Maurice found "looks" attractive, began to be obvious to +Eleanor, who, night after night, at the dinner table, watched the +smiling, shining, careless thing--Youth!--sitting there on Maurice's +right, and felt herself withering in the dividing years. As a result, +the annoyance which, when Edith was a child, she had felt at her +childishness, began to harden into irritation at her womanliness. "I +_wish I_ could get her out of the house!" she used to think, helplessly. + +She felt this irritation especially when they all went, one night, to +dine with Tom Morton, who had just married and gone to housekeeping. It +was a somewhat looked-forward-to event, although Eleanor thought Edith +too young to dine out, and also the shabbiness of Maurice's evening +clothes was on her mind. "Do get a new dress suit!" she urged; and he +gave the stereotyped answer: "Can't afford it." + +They started for the Mortons' gayly enough; but Maurice's gayety went +out like a candle in the wind when, as he followed Eleanor and Edith +into the parlor, he saw, and after a puzzled moment recognized, the +third man in the Morton dinner of six--the man who had stood in Lily's +little hall and said that the child would "pull through." ... The +spiritual squalor of that scene flashed back in sharp visualization: the +doctor; Lily, her amber eyes overflowing with tears, kissing his hand; +Jacky's fretful cry from upstairs.... Here he was! that same kindly +medical man, "getting off some guff to Mrs. Morton," Maurice told +himself, in agonized uncertainty as to what he had better do. Should he +recognize him? Or pretend not to know him? It galloped through his mind +that if he did "know" him, Eleanor would ask questions. Oh, he knew +Eleanor's questions! But if he didn't "know" him, Doctor Nelson would +know that questions might be asked. The instant's hesitation between the +two risks was decided by Doctor Nelson. He put out his hand and said, +"Oh, how are you?" So Maurice said, "Oh, how are you?" as carelessly as +anybody else. + +Eleanor, when the doctor was introduced, said, a little surprised, "You +know my husband?" + +"I think I've met Mr. Curtis somewhere," Doctor Nelson said, vaguely. + +"He knows so many people I don't," she thought, but she said nothing. No +one noticed her silence--or Maurice's, either! The doctor, and Morton, +and the handsome bride, were listening to Edith, amused, apparently, at +her crudity and ignorance. + +"Oh yes," Eleanor heard her say; "Eleanor's voice is perfectly _fine_, +father says. I'm not musical. Father says I don't know the difference +between 'Yankee Doodle' and 'Old Hundred.' Father say--" and so on. + +"She's tiresome!" Eleanor told herself. Later, as she sat at the little +dinner table, all gay with flowers and the bride's new candlesticks and +glittering bonbon dishes ("Hetty's showing off our loot," the bridegroom +said, proudly), Eleanor, looking on, and straining sometimes to be silly +like the rest of them, said to herself, bleakly, that the doctor, who +looked fifty, had been asked on her account. When he began to talk to +her it was all she could do to say, "Really?" or, "Of course!" at the +proper places; she was absorbed in watching Edith--the vivid face, the +broad smile, the voice so full of preposterous certainties! "I _look_ +old," she thought; and indeed she did--most unnecessarily! for she was +only forty-four. Her throat suddenly ached with unshed tears of longing +to be young. Yet if she had not been so bitter she would have seen that +Maurice looked almost as old as she did! And no wonder. His +consternation at the sight of Doctor Nelson had been panic! He could +hardly eat. Naturally, the preoccupation of the two Curtises threw the +burden of talk upon the others. Doctor Nelson gave himself up to his +hostess, and Morton found Edith's ardors, upon every subject under +heaven, most diverting; he teased her and baited her, and her eyes grew +more shining, and her cheeks pinker, and her gayety more contagious with +every repartee she flung back at him. Mrs. Morton struggled heroically +with Maurice's heaviness, but she told her husband afterward, that Mr. +Curtis was nearly as dull as his wife! "I _couldn't_ make him talk!" she +said. After a while she gave up trying to make him talk, and listened to +Edith's story of what happened when she was a little girl and came to +Mercer with her father: + +"A terrible shipwreck!" Edith said; "I remember it because of Maurice's +gallantry in giving the flopping girl his coat--he was a perfect Sir +Walter Raleigh! Remember, Maurice?" + +Maurice said, briefly, that he "remembered"; "if she says Dale, I'm +dished," he thought; aloud, he said that the river was growing +impossible for boating; which caused them to drop the subject of the +flopping girl, and talk about Mercer's increasing dinginess, at which +Edith said, eagerly: + +"You ought to see our mountains--no smoke there!" + +Then, of course, came tales of camping, and, most animatedly, the story +of Eleanor's wonderful rescue of Maurice. + +"She pulled that great big Maurice all the way down to Doctor Bennett's! +And we were all so proud of her!" + +Eleanor protested: "It was nothing at all." Maurice, in his own mind, +was saying, "I wish she'd left me there!" + +When the ladies left the gentlemen to their cigars, Edith was bubbling +over with anxiety to confide to Mrs. Morton the joke about the "lady's +cheeks coming off," and that gave the married women the chance to +express melancholy convictions as to the wickedness of the world, to +which Edith listened with much interest. + +"I think my painted lady lives in Medfield," she said. + +"Why, how do you know?" Eleanor exclaimed, surprised. + +"Why, don't you remember the time I saw her, with that blue-eyed baby? +She was just going into a house on Maple Street." + +It was at this moment that the gentlemen entered, so there was no +further talk of painted ladies; and, besides, Maurice was alert to catch +Eleanor's eye, and go home! "Edith is capable of saying anything!" he +was thinking, desperately. + +However, Edith said nothing alarming, and Maurice was able to get her +safely away from the powder magazine in the shape of the amiable doctor, +who, following them a few minutes later, was saying to himself: "How +scared he was! Yet he looks like a good fellow at bottom. A rum world--a +rum world!" + +The "good fellow" hurried his womenkind down the street in angry +preoccupation. As soon as he and Eleanor were alone, he said, "When does +Edith graduate?" + +"She has two years more." + +"Oh, _Lord_!" Maurice said, despairingly; "has she got to be around for +two years?" Eleanor's face lightened, but Maurice was instantly +repentant. "I ought to be ashamed of myself for saying that! Edith's +fine; and she has brains; but--" + +"She monopolized the conversation to-night," Eleanor said; "Maurice, it +is very improper for her to keep talking all the time about that horrid +woman!" + +The sharpness of his agreement made her look at him in surprise. "She +_mustn't_ talk about Mrs. Dale!" he said, angrily. + +"Dale? Is that her name?" said Eleanor. + +"I don't know. I think so; didn't Edith call her that? Well, anyway, she +mustn't keep talking about her!" + +His irritation was so marked, that Eleanor's heart warmed; but she said, +wearily, "I'll be glad myself when she graduates." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +Edith, reflecting upon her first dinner party, wished Johnny had seen +her, all dressed up. Then she pondered the possibilities of her +allowance: If she was "going out," oughtn't she to have a real evening +dress? But this daring thought faded very soon, for there didn't seem to +be any dinner parties ahead. Mrs. Newbolt's supper table was, as Maurice +said, sarcastically, the extent of the "Curtises' social whirl"--a fact +which did not trouble him in the least! He had his own social whirl. He +had made a man-circle for himself; some of the fellows in the office +were his sort, he told Edith, and it was evident that their bachelor +habits appealed to him, for he dined out frequently; and when he did, he +was careful not to tell Eleanor where he was going, because once or +twice, when he had told her, she had called up the club or house on +the telephone about midnight to inquire if "Mr. Curtis had started +home?" ... "I was worried about you, it was so late," she defended +herself against his irritated mortification. He used to report these stag +parties to Edith, telling her some of the stories he had heard; it +didn't occur to him to tell any stories to Eleanor, because, as Henry +Houghton had once said, Maurice and his wife didn't "have the same taste +in jokes." When Edith chuckled over this or that witticism (or frowned +at any opinion contrary to Maurice's opinion!) Eleanor sat in unsmiling +silence. It was about this time Maurice fell into the way of saying "we" +to Edith: "We" will have tea in the garden; "we" will put in a lot of +bulbs on each side of the brick path; "we" will go down to the square +and hear the election returns. Occasionally he remembered to say, "Why +don't you come along, Eleanor?" + +"No, thank you," she said; and sometimes, to herself, she added, "He +keeps me out." The jealous woman always says this, never realizing the +deeper truth, which is that she keeps herself out! Maurice did not +notice how, all that winter, Eleanor was keeping herself out. She was +steadily retreating into some inner solitude of her own. No one noticed +it, except Mrs. O'Brien--and perhaps fat, elderly, snarling Bingo, who +must sometimes, when his small pink tongue lapped her cheek, have tasted +tears. By another year, Eleanor's mind had so utterly diverged from +Maurice's that not even his remorse (which he had grown used to, as one +grows used to some encysted thing) could achieve for them any unity of +living. She bored him, and he hurt her; she loved him and tried to +please him; he didn't love her, but tried to be polite; he was not often +angry with her, he wasn't fond enough of her to be angry! So, forgetful +of that security of the Stars--Truth!--to which he had once aspired, he +grew dully used to the arid safety of untruth,--though sometimes he +swore softly to himself at the tiresome irony of the office nickname +which, with an occasional gilt hatchet, still persisted. He would +remember that evening of panic at the Mortons', and think, lazily, "She +can't possibly get on Lily's track!" So Lily lived in anxious +thriftiness at 16 Maple Street; and Maurice, no longer acutely afraid of +her, and only seeing her two or three times a year, was more or less +able to forget her, in his growing pleasure in Edith's presence in his +house--a pleasure quite obvious to Eleanor. + +As for Edith, she used to wonder, sometimes, why Eleanor was so "up +stage"? (that was her latest slang); but it did not trouble her much, +for she was too generous to put two and two together. "Eleanor has +nervous prostration," she used to tell herself, with good-natured excuse +for some especial coldness; and she even tried, once in a while, "to +make things pleasant for poor old Eleanor!" "I lug her in," she told +Johnny. + +"She's a dose," said Johnny. + +"Yes," Edith agreed; "she's stupid. But I'm going to pull off a picnic, +some Sunday, to cheer her up. 'Course you needn't come, if you don't +want to." + +Johnny, looking properly bored, said, briefly, "I don't mind." + +This was in mid-September. "Are you game for it, Eleanor?" Edith said +one night at dinner; "we can find some pleasant place by the river--" + +"I know a bully place," Maurice said, "in the Medfield meadows; +remember, Eleanor? We went there on our trolley wedding trip," he +informed Edith. + +Eleanor, struggling between the pleasure of Maurice's "remember," and +antagonism at sharing that sacred remembering with Edith, objected; "It +may rain." + +"Oh, come on," Edith rallied her: "be a sport! It won't kill you if it +does rain!" + +But Maurice, after his impulsive recollection of the "bully place," +remembered that the trolley car which would take them out to the river, +must pass Lily's door; "I hope it will rain," he thought, uneasily. + +However, on that serene September Sunday a week later, it didn't rain; +and Maurice fell into the spirit of Edith's plans; for, after all, even +if the car did pass Lily's ugly little house, it wouldn't mean anything +to anybody! "I'll sit with my back to that side of the street," he told +himself. "It's safe enough! And it will give Buster a good time." He +didn't realize that he rather hankered for a good time himself; to be +sure, he felt a hundred years old! But money was no longer a very keen +anxiety (he had passed his twenty-fifth birthday); and the day was +glittering with sunshine, and Edith would make coffee, and Eleanor would +sing. Yes! Edith should have a good time! + +They went clanging gayly along over the bridge, down Maple Street, and +through the suburbs of Medfield until they came to the end of the car +line, where they piled out, with all their impediments, and started for +the river and the big locust. + +"You'll sing, Nelly," Maurice said--Eleanor's face lighted with +pleasure;--"and I'll tell Edith how a girl ought to behave on her +wedding trip, and you can instruct Johnny how to elope." + +Then, with little Bingo springing joyously, but rather stiffly, ahead of +them, they tramped across the yellowing stubble of the mowed field, +talking of their coffee, and whether there would be too much wind for +their fire--and all the while Maurice was aware of Lily at No. 16; and +Eleanor was remembering her hope of a time when she and Maurice would be +coming here, and it would not be "just us"! and Johnny was thinking that +Edith was intelligent--for a woman; and Edith was telling herself that +_this_ kind of thing was some sense! + +Eleanor, sitting down under the old locust, watched the three young +people. She wondered when Maurice would tell her to sing. "The river is +a lovely accompaniment, isn't it?" she hinted. No one replied. + +"I'm going in wading after dinner," Edith announced; "what do you say, +boys? Let's take off our shoes and stockings, and walk down to the +second bridge. Eleanor can sit here and guard our things." + +"I'm with you!" Maurice said; and Johnny said he didn't mind; but +Eleanor protested. + +"You'll get your skirts wringing wet, Edith. And--I thought we were to +sit here and sing?" + +"Oh, you can sing any old time," Edith said, lifting the lid of the +coffee pot and stirring the brown froth with a convenient stick. + +"And I'm just to look on?" Eleanor said. + +"Why, wade, if you want to," her husband said; "It's safe enough to +leave Edith's things here." + +After that he was too much absorbed in shooing ants off the marmalade to +give any thought to his wife. The luncheon (except to her) was the usual +delightful discomfort of balancing coffee cups on uncertain knees, and +waving off wasps, and upsetting glasses of water. Maurice talked about +the ball game, and Edith gossiped darkly of her teachers, and Johnny +Bennett ate enormously and looked at Edith. + +Eleanor neither ate nor gossiped; but she, too, watched Edith--and +listened. Bingo, in his mistress's lap, had snarled at Johnny when he +took Eleanor's empty cup away, which led Edith to say that he was +jealous. + +"I don't call it 'jealous,'" Eleanor said, "to be fond of a person." + +"You can't _really_ be fond of anybody, and be jealous," Edith +announced; "or if you are, it is just Bingoism." + +This brought a quick protest from Eleanor, which was followed by the +inevitable discussion; Edith began it by quoting, "'Love forgets self, +and jealousy remembers self.'" + +Maurice grinned and said nothing--it was enough for him to see Eleanor +hit, _hard_! But Johnny protested: + +"If your girl monkeys round with another fellow," he said, "you have a +right to be jealous." + +"Of course," said Eleanor. + +"No, sir!" said Edith. "You have a right to be _unhappy._ If the other +fellow's nicer than you--I mean if he has something that attracts her +that you haven't, of course you'd be unhappy! (though you could get busy +and _be_ nice yourself.) Or, if he's not as nice as you, you'd be +unhappy, because you'd be so awfully disappointed in her. But there's no +jealousy about _that_ kind of thing! Jealousy is hogging all the love +for yourself. Like Bingo! And _I_ call it plain garden selfishness--and +no sense, either, because you don't gain anything by it. Do you think +you do, Maurice? ... For Heaven's sake, hand me the sandwiches!" + +Maurice didn't express his thoughts; he just roared with laughter. +Eleanor reddened; Johnny, handing the sandwiches, said that, though +Edith generally could reason pretty well--for a woman--in this +particular matter she was 'way off. + +"You are long on logic, Edith," Maurice agreed; "but short on human +nature; (she hasn't an idea how the shoe fits!)." + +"The reason I'm so up on jealousy," Edith explained, complacently, "is +because yesterday, in English Lit., our professor worked off a lot of +quotations on us. Listen to this (only I can't say just exactly the +words!): '_Though jealousy be produced by love, as ashes by fire, yet +jealousy_'--oh, what does come next? Oh yes; I know--'_yet jealousy +extinguishes love, as ashes smother flames_.'" + +"Who said that?" Maurice said. + +Edith said she'd forgotten: "But I bet it's true. I'd simply hate a +jealous person, no matter how much they loved me! Wouldn't you, Eleanor? +Wouldn't you hate Maurice if he was jealous of you? I declare I don't +see how you can be so fond of Bingo!" + +Maurice, suddenly ashamed of himself for his pleasure in seeing Eleanor +hit, was saying, inaudibly, "Good Lord! what will she say next?" To keep +her quiet, he said, good-naturedly, "Don't you want to sing, Nelly?" + +She said, very low, "No." Her throat ached with the pain of knowing that +the one little contribution she could make to the occasion was not +really wanted! + +Maurice did not urge her. He and the other two took off their shoes and +stockings; and went with squeals across the stubble, down a steep bank, +to a pebbly point of sand, round which a sunny swirl of water chattered +loudly, then went romping off into sparkling shallows. Edith's lifted +skirt, as she stepped into the current, assured her against the wetting +Eleanor had foreseen, and also showed her pretty legs--and Eleanor, on +the bank, her tensely trembling hand cuddling Bingo against her knee, +"guarded" her things! It was at this moment that her old, unrecognized +envy of Youth turned into a perfectly recognizable fear of Age. Edith +was a woman now, not a child! "And I--dislike her!" Eleanor said to +herself. She sat there alone, thinking of Edith's defects--her big +mouth, her bad manners, her loud voice; and as she thought,--watching +the waders all the while with tear-blurred eyes until a turn in the +current hid them--she felt this new dislike flowing in upon her: "He +talks to her; and forgets all about me!" ... She was deeply hurt. "He +says she has 'brains.' ... He doesn't mind it when she says she 'doesn't +care for music,' which is rude to me! And she talks about jealousy! She +knows I'm jealous. Any woman who loves her husband is jealous." + +Of course this pathetically false opinion made it impossible for her to +realize that jealousy is just a form of self-love, nor could she enlarge +upon Edith's naive generalization and say that, if a woman suffers +because she is not the equal of the rival who gains her lover's +love--_that_ is not jealousy! It is the anguish of recognizing her own +defects, and it may be very noble. If she suffers because the rival is +her inferior, _that_ is not jealousy; it is the anguish of recognizing +defects in her lover, and it, too, is noble, for she is unhappy, not +because he has slighted her, but because he has slighted himself! +Jealousy has no such noble elements; it is the unhappiness that Bingo +knows--an ignoble agony! ... But Eleanor, like many pitiful wives, did +not know this. Sitting there on the bank of the river, without +aspiration for herself or regret for Maurice, she knew only the anguish +of being neglected. "He wouldn't have left me six years ago," she said; +"He doesn't even ask me if I want to wade! I don't; but he didn't _ask_ +me. He just went off with her!" + +Suddenly, her fingers trembling, she began to take off her shoes and +stockings. She _would_ do what Edith did! ... It was a tremor of +aspiration!--an effort to develop in herself a quality he liked in +Edith. She went, barefooted, with wincing cautiousness, and with Bingo +stepping gingerly along beside her, across the mowed grass; then, +haltingly, down the bank to the sandy edge of the river; there, while +the little dog looked up at her anxiously, she dipped a white, uncertain +foot into the water--and as she hesitated to essay the yielding mud, and +the slimy things under the stones, she heard the returning splash of +wading feet. A minute later the three youngsters appeared, Edith's +skirts now very well above the danger line of wetness, and the two men +offering eager guiding hands, which were entirely disdained! Then as, +from under the leaning trees, they rounded the bend, there came an +astonished chorus: + +_"Why, look at Eleanor!"_ + +"Your skirt's in the water," Edith warned her; "hitch it up, and 'come +on in--the water's fine!'" + +She shook her head, and turned to climb up the bank. + +"'The King of France,'" Edith quoted, satirically, "'marched _down_ a +hill, and then marched up again!'" + +Eleanor was silent. When the three began to put on their shoes and +stockings, Eleanor, putting on her own, her skirt wet and drabbled about +her ankles, heard Maurice and Johnny offering to tie Edith's +shoestrings--a task which Edith, with condescending giggles, permitted. +Both of the boys--for Maurice seemed suddenly as much of a boy as +Johnny!--went on their knees to tie, and re-tie, the brown ribbons, +Maurice with gleeful and ridiculous deference. + +"Want me to tie your shoestrings for you, Nelly?" he said over his +shoulder. + +"I am capable of tying my own, thank you," she said, so icily that the +three playfellows looked at one another and Maurice, reddening sharply, +said: + +"Give us a song, Nelly!" But she sitting with clenched hands and tensely +silent, shook her head. She was too wounded to speak. For the rest of +the poor little picnic, with its gathering up of fragments and burning +paper napkins--the conversation was labored and conscious. + +On the trolley going home, Edith was the only one who tried to talk; +Eleanor, holding Bingo in her lap, was dumb; and Johnny--hunting about +for an excuse to "get away from the whole blamed outfit!" only said +"M-m" now and then. But Maurice said nothing at all. After all, what can +a man say when his wife has made a fool of herself? + +"Even Lily would have had more sense!" he thought. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +That dismal festivity of the meadow marked the time when Maurice began +to live in his own house only from a sense of duty ... and because Edith +was there! A fact which Eleanor's aunt recognized almost as soon as +Eleanor did; so, with her usual candor, Mrs. Newbolt took occasion to +point things out to her niece. She had bidden Eleanor come to dinner, +and Eleanor had said she would--"if Maurice happened to be going out." + +"Better come when he's _not_ going out, so he can be at home and amuse +Edith!" said Mrs. Newbolt. "Eleanor, my dear father used to say that +women were puffect fools, because they never could realize that if they +left the door _open_, a cat would put on his slippers and sit by the +fire and knit; if they locked it, he'd climb up the chimney, but what +he'd feel free to prowl on the roof!" + +Eleanor preferred to "lock the door"; and certainly during that next +winter Edith's gay interest in every topic under heaven was a roof on +which Maurice prowled whenever he could! Sometimes he stayed at home in +the evening, just to talk to her! When he did, those "brains" which +Eleanor resented, made him indifferent to many badly cooked +dinners--during which Eleanor sat at the table and saw his enjoyment, +and felt that dislike of their "boarder," which had become acute the day +of the picnic, hardening into something like hatred. She wondered how he +endured the girl's chatter? Sometimes she hinted as much, but Edith +never knew she was being criticized! She was too generous to recognize +the significance of what she called (to herself) Eleanor's grouch, and +Maurice's delight in such unselfconsciousness helped to keep her +ignorant, for he held his tongue--with prodigious effort!--even when +Eleanor hit Edith over his shoulder. If he defended her, he told +himself, the fat _would_ be in the fire! So, as no one pointed out to +Edith what the grouch meant, she had not the faintest idea that Eleanor +was saying to herself, "Oh, if I could _only_ get rid of her!" And as no +one pointed out to Eleanor that the way to hold Maurice was not to get +rid of Edith, but to "open the door," that corrosive thing the girl had +called "Bingoism" kept the anger of the day in the field smoldering in +her mind. It was like a banked fire eating into her deepest +consciousness; it burned all that winter; it was still burning even when +the summer vacation came and Edith went home. Her departure was an +immense relief to Eleanor; she told Maurice she didn't want her to come +back, ever! + +"Why not?" he said, sharply; "_I_ like having her here. Besides, think +of telling Uncle Henry we didn't want Edith next winter! If you have the +nerve for that, _I_ haven't." Eleanor had not the nerve; so when, at the +end of June, Edith rushed home, it was understood that she would be with +Maurice and Eleanor during the next term.... That was the summer that +marked the seventh year of their marriage--and the fourth year of Jacky, +over in the little frame house on Maple Street. But it was the first +year of a knowledge, surprisingly delayed!--which came to Edith; namely, +that Johnny Bennett was "queer." + +It may have been this "queerness" which made her attach herself to +Eleanor, who, in August, went to Green Hill for the usual two weeks' +visit. Maurice had to go away on office business three or four times +during that fortnight, but he came up for one Sunday. He had insisted +upon Eleanor's going, because, he said, she needed the change. "Can't +you come?" she pleaded. "Do take some extra time from the office!" + +"And be docked? Can't afford it!" he said; "but I'll get one week-end in +with you," he promised her, looking forward with real satisfaction to +the solitude of his own house. So Eleanor, saying she couldn't +understand why he was so awfully economical now that he had his own +money!--came alone,--full of remorse at deserting him, and worry because +of his loneliness, and leaving a pining Bingo behind her. But, to her +silent annoyance, as soon as she arrived at Green Hill she encountered a +new and tiresome attentiveness from Edith! Edith was inescapably polite. +She did not urge upon Eleanor any of those strenuous amusements to which +she and Johnny were devoted; she merely gave up the amusements, and, as +Johnny expressed it, "stuck to Eleanor"! Eleanor couldn't understand it, +and when Maurice at last arrived, Johnny's perplexity became audible: + +"Perhaps," he told Edith, satirically, "you may be able, now, to tear +yourself away from Eleanor, and go fishing with me? You fish pretty +well--for a woman. Maurice can lug her round." + +"I will, if Maurice will go, too," Edith said. + +"What do you drag him in for?"--John paused; understanding dawned upon +him: "She doesn't want to be by herself with me!" His tanned face slowly +reddened, and those brown eyes of his behind the big spectacles grew +keen. He didn't speak for quite a long time; then he said, very low, +"I'll be here to-morrow morning at four-thirty. Be ready. I'll dig +bait." + +"All right," said Edith; after which, for the first time in her life, +she played a shabby trick on Johnny Bennett; as soon as he had gone +home, she invited Eleanor (who promptly declined), and Maurice (who as +promptly accepted), to go fishing, too! Then, having got what she +wanted, she reproached herself: "Johnny'll be mad as fury. But when he +gets to saying things to me he makes me feel funny in the back of my +neck. Besides, I want Maurice." + +The fishermen were to assemble in the grayness of the August dawn; and +Johnny was, as usual, prepared to throw a handful of gravel at Edith's +window to hurry her downstairs. But when he loomed up in the mist, who +should be on the porch, fooling with a rod, but Maurice! + +"What's he butting in for?" Johnny thought, looking so cross that +Edith, coming out with the luncheon basket, was really remorseful. +"Hullo, Johnny," she said. ("I never played it on him before," she was +thinking.) But at that moment her remorse was lost in alarm, for +standing in the doorway was Eleanor, her hair caught up in a hurried +twist, a wrapper over her shoulders, her bare feet thrust into pink +bedroom slippers. (Forty-six looks fifty-six at 4.30 A.M.) + +"Darling," Eleanor said, "I believe I'd like to go up to the cabin +to-day. Do let's do it--just you and I!" + +The three young people all spoke at once: + +Johnny said: "Good scheme! We'll excuse Maurice." + +Edith said, "Oh, Eleanor, Maurice loves fishing!" + +And Maurice said: "I sort of think I'd like to catch a sucker or two in +this pool Johnny is always cracking up. I bet he's in for a big jolt +about his trout! You come, too?" + +"I'd get so awfully tired. And I--I thought we could have a day together +up on the mountain," she ended, wistfully. + +There was a dead silence. Johnny was thinking: "Gosh! I hope she gets +him." And Edith was thinking, "I'd like to choke her!" Maurice's +thoughts could not be spoken; he merely said, "All right; if you want +to." + +"I don't believe I'll go fishing, either," Edith said. + +Eleanor, on the threshold, turned quickly: "Please don't stay at home on +my account!" + +But Maurice settled it. "I'll not go," he said, patiently; "but you +must, Edith." He threw down his rod and went into the house; Eleanor, in +her flopping pink slippers, hurried after him.... + +"I did so want to have you to myself," she said; "you don't mind not +going fishing with those children, do you?" + +He said, listlessly: "Oh no. But don't let's attempt the cabin stunt." +Then he stood at the window and watched Johnny and Edith, with fishing +rods and lunch basket, disappear down the road into the fog. He was too +bored to be irritated; he only counted the hours until he could get +back to Mercer, and the office, and the table under the silver poplar. +"I'll get hold of the Mortons, and Hannah can give us some sort of grub, +and then we'll go to a show," he thought. "I can stick it out here for +thirty-six hours more." + +He stuck it out that morning by sitting in Mr. Houghton's studio, one +leg across the arm of his chair, reading and smoking. Once Eleanor came +in and asked him if he was all right. He said, briefly, "Yes." + +But she was uneasy: "Maurice, I'll play tennis with you?" + +This at least made him chuckle. "_You?_ How long since? My dear, you +couldn't play a set to save your life!" + +After that she let him alone for a while. Early in the afternoon the +need to make up to him for what she had done grew intolerable: "Darling, +let's play solitaire?" + +"I'm going to write letters." + +She left him to his letters for an hour, then came again: "Let's walk!" + +"Well, if you want to," Maurice said, and yawned. So they trudged off. +Eleanor, walking very close to her husband, was thinking, heavily, how +far they were apart; but she did her best to amuse him by anxious +ponderings of household expenses. He, sheering off to the other side of +the road to escape her intimate and jostling shoulder, was thinking of +the expenses of another household, and making no effort whatever to +amuse her. His silence confessed an irritation which she felt but could +not understand; so by and by she fell silent, too, though the helpless +tears stood in her eyes. Then, apparently, he put his annoyance, +whatever it was, behind him. + +"Nelly," he said, "let's go down by the West Branch and meet Edith and +Johnny? They'll be coming home that way, 'laden with trout,' I suppose," +he ended, sarcastically. + +Eleanor began to say, "Oh _no_!" Then something, she didn't know what, +made her say, "Well, all right." As they turned into the wood road that +ran up toward the mountain, she said another unexpected thing: + +"Maurice, I'm tired. I'll go home; you go on by yourself, and--and meet +Johnny." She didn't know, herself, why she said it! Perhaps, it was just +an effort to make up for what she had done in the morning? + +Maurice, astonished, made some half-hearted protest; he would go back +with her? But she said no, and walked home alone. Her throat ached with +unshed tears. "He _likes_ to be with her! He doesn't want me,--and I +love him--I love him!" + + * * * * * + +The two youngsters had made a long day of it. On their way to the brook +that morning, crashing through underbrush, climbing rotting rail fences +that were hidden in docks and briers, balancing on the precarious +slipperiness of mossy rocks, the triumphant Johnny, his heart warm with +gratitude to Eleanor, had led his captive and irritated Edith. When they +broke through low-hanging boughs and found the pool, the trout +possibilities of which Johnny had so earnestly "cracked up," Edith was +distinctly grumpy. "Eleanor is a selfish thing," she said. "Gimme a +worm." + +"I think Maurice would have been cussedly selfish not to do what she +wanted," Johnny said; "my idea of marriage is that a man must do +everything his wife wants." + +"Maurice is never selfish! He's great, simply great!" Edith said. + +"Oh, he's decent enough," Johnny admitted, then he paused, frowning, for +he couldn't open his bait box; he banged it on a stone, pried his knife +under the lid, swore at it--and turned very red. Edith giggled. + +"Let me try," she said. + +"No use; the rotten thing's stuck." + +But she took it, shook it, gave an easy twist, and the maddening +lid--loosened, of course, by Johnny's exertions--came off! Edith +shrieked with joy; but Johnny, though mortified, was immensely +relieved. They sat down on a sloping rock, and talked bait, and the +grave and spectacled Johnny became his old self, scolding Edith for +talking so loudly. "Girls," he said, "are _born_ not fishermen!" Then +they waded out into the stream, and began to cast. It was broad daylight +by this time, and the woods were filling with netted sunbeams; the water +whispered and chuckled. + +"Pretty nice?" Johnny said, in a low voice; and Edith, all her +grumpiness flown, said: + +"You bet it is!" Then, as an afterthought, she called back, "But Eleanor +is the limit!" + +Johnny, forgetting his gratitude to Eleanor, said, savagely: "_Keep +quiet!_ You scared him off! Gosh! girls are awful." + +So Edith kept quiet, and he wandered up the stream, and she wandered +down the stream, and they fished, and they fished--and they never caught +a thing. + +"I had _one_ bite," Johnny said when, at about eleven, fiercely hungry, +they met on the bank where they had left their lunch basket; "but you +burst out about Eleanor, and drove him off. Girls simply _can't_ fish." + +Edith was contrite--but doubted the bite. Then they sat down on a mossy +rock, and ate stacks of sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, and watched the +water, and talked, talked, talked. At least Edith talked--mostly about +Maurice. Johnny lit his pipe, puffed once or twice, then let it go out +and sat staring into the green wall of the woods on the other side of +the brook. Then, suddenly, quietly, he began to speak.... + +"I want to say something." + +"The mosquitoes here are awful!" Edith said, nervously; "don't you think +we'd better go home?" + +"Look here, Edith; you've got to be half decent to me--unless, of +course, you've soured on me? If you have, I'll shut up." + +"Johnny, don't be an idiot! 'Course I haven't soured on you. You're the +oldest friend I've got. Older than Maurice, even." + +"Well, I guess I am an older friend than Maurice! But lately you've +treated me like a dog. You skulk round to keep from being by ourselves. +You never give me a chance to open my head to you--" + +"Johnny, that's perfectly absurd! I've had to look after Eleanor--" + +"Eleanor _nothing_! It's me you want to shake." + +"I do _not_ want to shake you! I'm just busy." + +"Edith, I care a lot about you. I don't care much for girls, as a rule. +But you're not girly. And every time I try to talk to you, you sidestep +me." + +"Now, Johnny--" + +"But I'm going to tell you, all the same." He made a clutch at the +sopping-wet hem of her skirt. "I _will_ say it! I care an awful lot +about you. I'm not a boy. I want to marry you." + +There was a dead silence; then Edith said, despairingly, "Oh, Johnny, +how perfectly horrid you are!" He gasped. "You simply spoil everything +with this sort of ... of ... of talk." + +"You mean you don't like me?" His face twitched. + +"Like you? I like you awfully! That's why I'm so mad at you. Why, I'm +_awfully_ fond of you--" + +"Edith!" + +"I mean I never had a friend like you. I've always liked you ten times +better than any silly old girl friend I ever had. I've liked you +_almost_ as much as Maurice. Of course I shall never like anybody as +much as Maurice. He comes next to father and mother. But now you go +and--and talk ... I just can't bear it," Edith said, and fumbled for her +pocket handkerchief; "I _hate_ talk." Her eyes overflowed. + +"Edith! Look here; now, _don't_! Honestly, I can stand being turned +down, but I can't stand--that. Edith, _please_! I never saw you do +that--girl stunt. I'll never bother you again, if you'll just stop +crying!" + +Edith, unable to find her handkerchief, bent over and wiped her eyes on +her dress. "I'm _not_ crying," she said, huskily; "but--" + +"I think," John Bennett said, "honestly, Edith, I think I've loved you +all my life." + +"And I have loved you," she said; "You are a lamb! Oh, Johnny, I'm +perfectly crazy about you!" + +His swiftly illuminating face made her add, hastily, "and now you go and +spoil everything!" + +"I won't spoil things, Skeezics," he said, gently; "oh, say, Edith, let +up on crying! _That_ breaks me all up." + +But Edith, having discovered her handkerchief, was mopping very flushed +cheeks and mumbling on about her own woes. "Why can't you be satisfied +just to go on the way we always have? Why can't you be satisfied to have +me like you almost as much as I like Maurice?" + +"Maurice!" the young man said, with a helpless laugh. "Oh, Edith, you +are several kinds of a goose! In the first place, Maurice is married; +and in the second place, he's old enough to be your father--" + +"He isn't old enough to be my father! And I shall _never_ like anybody +as much as Maurice, because there isn't anybody like him in the entire +world. I've always thought he was exactly like Sir Walter Raleigh. +Besides, I shall never marry _anybody_! But I mean, I don't see why it +isn't enough for you to have me awfully fond of you?" + +"Well, it isn't," Johnny said, briefly, "but don't you worry." He was +white, but his tenderness was like a new sense. Edith had never seen +_this_ Johnny. Her entirely selfish impatience turned to shyness. +"Edith," he said, very gently, "you don't understand, dear. You're +awfully young--younger than your age. I didn't take in how young you +were--talking about Maurice! I suppose it's because you know so few +girls, that you are so young. Well; I can't hang round with you any +more, as if we were ten years old. You see, I--I love you, Edith. That +makes the difference ... dear." + +"Oh," said Edith, desperately, "how perfectly _horrid_--" She looked +really distracted, poor child! (but that was the moment when her +preposterous youthfulness ceased.) She jumped to her feet so suddenly +that Johnny, who had begun, his fingers trembling, to scrape out the +bowl of his pipe, dropped his jackknife, which rolled down the steeply +sloping rock into the water. "Oh, I'm so sorry!" Edith said. + +John sighed. "Oh, that's nothing," he said, and slid over the moss and +ferns to the water's edge; there, lying flat on his stomach, his sleeve +rolled up, he thrust his bare white arm into the dark and troutless +depths of the pool, and salvaged his knife. Edith, on the bank, began +furiously to pack up. When Johnny climbed back to her she said she +wanted to go home, "_now_!" + +"All right," he said again, gently. + +So, silently, they started homeward; and never in her life had Edith +been so glad to see any human creature as she was to see Maurice on the +West Branch Road! But she let him do all the talking. To herself she was +saying, "It's all Eleanor's fault for not letting him come this morning! +I just hate her!..." + +That night her father said to her mother, rather sadly, "Mary, our +little girl has grown up. Johnny Bennett is casting sheep's eyes at +her." + +"Nonsense!" said Mary Houghton, comfortably; "she's a perfect child, and +so is he." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +Curiously enough, though Edith's mother did not recognize what was going +on between "the children," Eleanor did. When she came back to Mercer, a +week later, she overflowed about it to Maurice. "Calf love!" she summed +it up. + +"She didn't look down on that kind of love seven years ago," he thought, +cynically. But he didn't say so; no matter what his thoughts were, he +was always kind to Eleanor. Lily, over in Medfield; Lily, in the small, +secret house; Lily, with the good-looking little boy--blue-eyed, +rosy-cheeked, blond-haired!--the squalid memory of Lily, said to him, +over and over: "You are a confounded liar; so the least you can do is to +be decent to Eleanor." + +So he was kind. + +"_I_ couldn't bear myself," he used to think, "if I wasn't--but, _O_ +Lord!" + +That "_O_ Lord!" was his summing up of a growing and demoralizing sense +of the worthlessness and unreality of life. Like Solomon (and all the +rest of us, who see the universe as a mirror for ourselves!) he +appraised humanity at his valuation of himself. He didn't use Solomon's +six words, but the eight of his generation were just as exact--"_The +whole blooming outfit is a rotten lie!_ If," he reflected, "deceit isn't +on my 'Lily' line, it is on a thousand other lines." From the small +cowardices of appreciations and admirations which one did not really +feel, up through the bread-and-butter necessities of business, on into +the ridiculousness of what is called "Democracy" or "Liberty"--on, even, +into those emotional evasions of logic and reason labeled +"Religion"--all lies--all lies! he told himself. "And I," he used to +think, looking back on seven years of marriage, "I am the most +accomplished liar of the whole shootin' match!... If they get off that G. +Washington gag on me any more at the office, somebody'll get their head +punched." + +All the same, even if he did say, "_O_ Lord!" he was carefully kind to +his boring wife. + +But when Edith (suddenly grown up, it seemed to Maurice) came back for +the fall term, he said "_O_ Lord!" less frequently. The world began to +seem to him a less rotten place. "Nice to have you round again, +Skeezics!" he told her; and Eleanor, listening, went up to her room, and +sat with her fingers pressed hard on her eyes. "It's dreadful to have +her around! How _can_ I get rid of her?" she thought. Very often now the +flame of jealousy flared up; it scorched her whenever she recognized +Edith's "brains," whenever she noticed some gay fearlessness, or easy +capability; whenever she watched the girl's high-handed treatment of +Maurice: criticizing him! Telling him he was mean because he was always +saying he "couldn't afford things"! Declaring that she wished he would +stop his everlasting practicing--and apparently not caring a copper for +him! If Edith said, "Oh, Maurice, you are a perfect _idiot_!" Eleanor +would see him grin with pleasure; but when Eleanor put her arms around +him and kissed him, he sighed. To Maurice's wife these things were all +like oil on fire; but it never occurred to her to try to develop in +herself any of the qualities he seemed to find attractive in Edith. +Instead, she thought of that June day in the meadow by the river when he +said he loved her inefficiency--he loved her timidity, and, oh, how he +had loved her love! He had made her promise to be jealous! Eleanor was +not a reasoning person--probably no jealous woman is; but she did +recognize the fact that what made him love her then, made him impatient +with her now. This seemed to her irrational; and so, of course, it +was!--just as the tide is irrational, or the turning of the earth on its +axis is irrational. Nature has nothing to do with reason. So, in its +deep and beautiful and animal beginnings, Love, too, is irrational. It +has to ascend to Reason! But Eleanor did not know these things. All she +knew was that Maurice _hurt_ her, a dozen times a day. + +She was brooding over this one Sunday afternoon in late September, when, +at the open window of her bedroom, with Bingo snoozing in her lap, she +listened to Edith, down in the garden: "How about a jug of dahlias on +the table?" + +And Maurice: "Bully! Say, Edith, why couldn't we have a yellow scheme +for the grub? Orange cup, and that sort of fussy business you make out +of cheese and the yolks of eggs? And yellow cakes?" + +"Splendid! I'll mix up some perfectly stunning little sponge cakes, +'Lemon Queens.' Yellow as anything!" + +This was all to get ready for a tea under the silver poplar, which was +dropping yellow leaves down on the green table, and the mossy brick +path, and the chairs for the company. The Mortons were coming, and there +would be, Eleanor told herself, wearily, the usual shrieking over flat +jokes,--Edith's jokes, mostly. Her dislike of Edith was a burning ache +below her breastbone. "Maurice has her, so he doesn't want me," she +thought; then suddenly she got up and hurried downstairs. "I'll fix the +table!" she said, peremptorily. + +"It's all done," Edith said; "doesn't it look pretty? Oh, Eleanor, let +me put a dahlia behind your ear! You'll look like a Spanish lady!" She +put the gorgeous flower into the soft disorder of Eleanor's dark hair, +avoiding Bingo's angry objections, and said, with open admiration, +"Eleanor, you _are_ handsome! I adore dahlias!" she announced; "those +quilly ones, red on the outside and yellow inside! There are some +stunning ones on Maple Street, where I saw that Dale woman. Wonder if +she'd sell some roots?" + +The color flew into Maurice's face. "Did you get your bicycle mended?" +he said. + +Instantly Edith forgot the dahlias, and plunged into bicycle +technicalities, ending with the query, "Why don't you squeeze out some +money, and buy one of those cheap little automobiles, Maurice, you mean +old thing!" + +"Can't afford it," Maurice said. + +But Eleanor was puzzled. There had been a hurried note in Maurice's +voice when he asked Edith about her bicycle--an imperative changing of +the subject! She looked at him wonderingly. Why should he change the +subject? Was he annoyed at Edith's bad taste in referring to the +creature? But Edith's taste was always bad, and Maurice was not +generally so sensitive to it; not as sensitive as he ought to be! Or as +he had been in those old days when he had said that Eleanor was too +lovely to know the wickedness of the world, and he "didn't want her to"! +She was really perplexed; and when Edith rushed off to make the cakes, +and Maurice went indoors, she sat there in the garden, looking absently +out through the rusty bars of the iron gate at the distant glimmer of +the river, and wondered: "Why?" + +She was still wondering even when the Mortons arrived, bringing with +them--of all people!--Doctor Nelson. (_"Gosh!"_ said Maurice.) "We're +celebrating his appointment at the hospital; he's the new +superintendent!" Mrs. Morton explained. + +Eleanor said, mechanically, "So glad to see you, Doctor Nelson!" But she +was saying to herself, "_Why_ was Maurice provoked when Edith spoke of +Mrs. Dale?" When some more noisy and very young people arrived, she was +too abstracted to talk to them. She was so silent that most of them +forgot her; until Mrs. Morton, suddenly remembering her existence, tried +to be conversational: + +"I suppose Mr. Curtis told you of our wild adventure on the river in +August, when we got beached and spent the afternoon on a mud flat?" + +"No," Eleanor said, vaguely. But afterward, when the guests had gone, +she said to Maurice, "Why didn't you tell me about your adventure with +the Mortons?" + +"He told me," Edith said, complacently. + +"I forgot, I suppose," Maurice said, carelessly, and lounged off into +the house to sit down at the piano--where lie immediately "forgot" not +only the adventure on the river--but even his dismay at seeing Doctor +Nelson!--who by this time was, of course, quite certain that it was a +"rum world." + +That winter--although he was not conscious of it--Maurice's +"forgetfulness" in regard to his wife became more and more marked, so it +was a year of darkening loneliness for Eleanor. She was at last on that +"desert island"--which had once seemed so desirable to her;--she had +nothing to interest her except her music (and the quality of her voice +was changing, pathetically); furthermore, Maurice rarely asked her to +sing, so the passion had gone out of what voice she had! She didn't care +for books; she didn't know how to sew; and, except for Mrs. Newbolt, +there was no one she wanted to see. Often, in her empty evenings, while +Edith was in her own room studying, she sat by the fire and cried, and +broke her heart upon her desire for a child--"_then_ he would be happy, +and stay at home!" + +It was a dull house; so dull that Edith made up her mind to get out of +it for her next winter at Fern Hill. When she went home for the Easter +vacation, she expressed decided opinions: "Father, once, ages ago"--she +was sitting on her father's knee, and tormenting him by trying to take +his cigar away from him--"you got off something about the dinner of +herbs and Eleanor's stalled ox--" + +"Good heavens, Buster! You haven't said that before Eleanor?" + +"Ha! I got a rise out of you!" Edith said, joyfully; "I haven't +mentioned it, _yet_; but I shall make a point of doing so unless you +order two pounds of candy for me, _at once_. Well, I suppose what you +meant was that Eleanor is stupid?" + +"Mary," said Henry Houghton, "your blackmailing daughter is displaying a +glimmer of intelligence." + +"I'm only reminding you of your own remark," Edith said, "to explain +why I want to be in one of the dormitories next winter. Eleanor _is_ +stupid--though she's never fed me on stalled ox! And I think she sort of +doesn't like it because I'm not _awfully_ fond of music." + +"You are an absolute heathen about music," her father said. + +"Well, it bores me," Edith explained, cheerfully; "though I adore +Maurice's playing. Maurice is a lamb, and I adore just being in the +house with him! But she's nasty to him sometimes. And when she is, I'd +like to choke her!" + +"Edith--Edith--" her mother remonstrated. And her father reminded her +that she must _not_ lose her temper. + +"Let your other parent be a warning to you as to the horrors of an +uncontrolled temper," said Henry Houghton; "I have known your mother, in +one of her outbursts of fury, so far forget herself as to say, _'Oh, +my!'_" + +Edith grinned, but insisted, "Eleanor is dull as all get out!" + +"Consider the stars," Mrs. Houghton encouraged her. + +But Mr. Houghton said, "Mary, you've got to do something about this +girl's English! ... You miss John Bennett?" he asked Edith (Johnny was +taking a special course in an Eastern institute of technology). + +"He did well enough to fill in the chinks," Edith said, carelessly; "but +it's Maurice's being away that takes the starch out of me. He's +everlastingly tearing off on business. And when he's at home--" Edith +was suddenly grave--"of course Maurice is always 'the boy stands on the +burning deck'; but you can't help seeing that he's fed up on poor old +Eleanor! Sometimes I wonder he ever does come home! If I were in his +place, when she gets to nagging _I'd_ go right up in the air! I'd say, +well,--something. But he keeps his tongue between his teeth." + +That evening, when Henry Houghton was alone with his wife, he said what +he thought about Maurice: "He _is_ standing on the burning deck of this +pathetic marriage of his, magnificently. He never bats an eyelash! +(Your daughter's slang is vulgar.)" + +"Eleanor is the pathetic one," Mary Houghton said, sadly; "Maurice +has grown cynical--which is a sort of protection to him, I suppose. +Yes; I'm afraid Edith is right; she'd better be out at the school next +winter. It isn't well for a girl to see differences between a husband +and wife.... Henry, you shan't have another cigar! That's the third since +supper! Dear, what _is_ the trouble about Maurice?" + +"Mary, things have come to a pretty pass, when you snoop around and +count up my cigars! I _will_ smoke!" But he withdrew an empty hand from +his cigar box, and said, sighing, "I wish I could tell you about +Maurice; Kit; but I can't betray his confidence." + +"If I guessed, you wouldn't betray anything?" + +"Well, no. But--" + +"I guessed it a good while ago. Some foolishness about a woman, of +course. Or--or badness?" she ended, sadly. + +He nodded. "I wish I was asleep whenever I think of it! Mary, there +are some pretty steep grades on Fool Hill, and he's had hard +climbing.... It's ancient history now; but I can't go into it." + +"Of course not. Oh, my poor Maurice! Does Eleanor know?" + +"Heavens, no! It wouldn't do." + +"Honey, the unforgivable thing, to a woman, is not the sin, but the +deceit. And, besides, Eleanor loves him enough to forgive him. She would +die for him, I really believe!" + +"Yet the green-eyed monster looks out of her eyes if he plays checkers +with Edith! My darling," said Henry Houghton, "as I have before +remarked, your ignorance on this one subject is colossal. _Women can't +stand truth._" + +"It's a provision of nature, then, that all men are liars?" she +inquired, sweetly; "Henry, the loss of Edith's board won't trouble +Maurice much, will it?" + +"Not _as_ much, of course, now that he has all his money; but he has to +scratch gravel to make four ends meet," Henry Houghton said. + +"_Four_ ends!" she said; "oh, is it as bad as that? He has to +support--somebody?" + +He said, "Yes; so long as you have guessed. Mary, I really must have a +smoke." + +"Why _am_ I so weak-minded as to give in to you!" she sighed; then +handed him the cigar box, and scratched a match for him; he held her +wrist--the sputtering match in her fingers--lighted the cigar, blew out +the match, and kissed her hand. + +"You are a snooper and a porcupine about tobacco; but otherwise quite a +nice woman," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +When Edith's Easter vacation was over, and she went back to Mercer, she +was followed by a letter from Mrs. Houghton to Eleanor, explaining the +plan for the school dormitory the following winter. But there was +another letter, to Maurice, addressed (discreetly) to his office. It was +from Henry Houghton, and it was to the effect that if any "unexpected +expenses" came along, and Maurice felt strapped because of the cessation +of Edith's board, he must let Mr. Houghton know; then a suggestion as to +realizing on certain securities. + +"That's considerate in him," Eleanor said; "but I don't know what +'unexpected expenses' we could have?" + +It was a chilly April day. Maurice happened to be laid up home with a +sore throat; Eleanor, searching for a cook, had stopped at his office +for a lease he wanted to see, and brought back with her some mail she +found on his desk. + +"I knew this letter was from Mr. Houghton, so I opened it," she said, as +she handed it to him. His instant and very sharp annoyance surprised +her. "I wouldn't open your _business_ letters," she defended herself; +"but I didn't suppose you'd mind my seeing anything the Houghtons might +write--" + +"I don't like to have any of my mail opened!" he said, briefly, his eyes +raking Henry Houghton's letter, and discovering (of course!) nothing in +the fine, precise handwriting which was in the least betraying. ("But +suppose he _had_ said what the 'unexpected expenses' might be!") + +"We shall miss Edith's board," Eleanor said; "but, oh, I'll be so glad +to have her go!" + +Maurice was silent. "If she lives in Medfield all the time, she'll be +sure and run into Lily," he thought. "The devil's in it." He was in his +bedroom, wrapped up in a blanket, shivering and hot and headachy. The +chance of Edith's "running into Lily" would, of course, be even less if +she were at Fern Hill, than it was now when she was going back and forth +in the trolley every day; but he was so uncomfortable, physically, that +he didn't think of that; and his preoccupation made him blind to +Eleanor's hurt look. + +"I am willing to have you read all _my_ letters," she said. + +"I'm not willing to have you read mine!" he retorted. + +"Why not?" she demanded--"unless you have secrets from me." + +"Oh, Eleanor, don't be an idiot!" he said, wearily. + +"I believe you _have_ secrets!" she said--and burst out crying and ran +out of the room. + +He called her back and apologized for his irritability; but as he got +better, he forgot that he had been irritable--he had something else to +think of! He must get down to the office and write to Mr. Houghton, +asking him to address personal letters to a post-office box. And he made +things still safer by going out to Medfield to see Lily and give her the +number of the box in case she, too, had occasion to write any "personal" +letters, which, indeed, she very rarely had. "I say _that_ for her!" +Maurice told himself. He hoped--as he always did when he had to go to +Maple Street, that he would not see It--an It which had, of course, long +before this, acquired sufficient personality to its father to be +referred to as "Jacky"; a Jacky who, in his turn, had discovered +sufficient personality in Maurice to call him "Mr. Gem'man"--a +corruption of his mother's title for her very infrequent visitor, "the +gentleman." + +Jacky's "Mr. Gem'man" found the front door of the little house open, +and, looking in, saw Lily in the parlor, mounted on a ladder, hanging +wall paper. She stepped down, laughing, and moved her bucket of paste +out of his way. + +"Won't you be seated?" she said. Her rosy face was beaming with +artistic satisfaction; "Ain't this paper lovely?" she demanded; "it's +one of them children's papers that's all the rage now. I call it a +reg'lar art gallery! Look at the pants on them rabbits! It pretty near +broke me to buy it. The swells put this kind of paper in 'nurseries,' +and stick their kids off in 'em; but that ain't _me_! I put it on the +parlor! Set down, won't you?" + +Maurice sat down and, very much bored, listened while Lily chattered on, +with stories about Jacky: + +"He says to the milkman yesterday, 'I like your shirt,' he says. And +Amos--that's his name--he said, 'You can get one like it when you're +grown up like me.' And Jacky, he says--oh, just as _sad_!--I'd rather +have it now, 'cause when I grow up, maybe I'll be a lady.'" + +Maurice smiled perfunctorily. + +"Ain't he the limit?" Lily demanded, proudly; "he's a reg'lar rascal! He +stuck out his tongue at the grocer's boy, yesterday, 'cause he stepped +on my pansy bed. I wish you could 'a' seen him." + +Maurice swallowed a yawn. "He's fresh." + +"'Course," Lily said, quickly, "I gave him a smack! He's getting a good +bringing up, Mr. Curtis. I give him a cent every morning, to say his +prayers." + +Maurice didn't care a copper about Jacky's manners, or his morals, +either; but he said, carelessly, "A kid that's fresh is a bore." + +Lily frowned. When Maurice, having explained about the letter box, gave +her the usual "present" she made her usual good-natured protest--but +this time there was more earnestness in it, and even a little sharpness. +"I don't need it; I've got three more mealers--well, one of 'em can't +pay me; her husband's out of work; but she don't eat more than a canary, +poor thing! I can take care of Jacky _myself_." + +The emphasis puzzled Jacky's father for a moment. That Lily, seeing the +growing perfection of her handsome, naughty little boy, was becoming +uneasy lest Maurice might be moved to envy, never occurred to him. If it +had, he would of course have been enormously relieved; he might even +have played upon her fear of such an impossibility to induce her to move +away from Mercer! As it was, after listening to the account of the pansy +catastrophe, he got up to go, thankful that he had not had to lay eyes +on the child, whose voice he heard from the back yard. + +Lily, friendly enough in spite of that moment of resentment, went to the +front door with him. She had grown rather stout in the last year or two, +but she was always as shiningly clean as a rose, and her little lodging +house was clean, too; she was indefatigably thorough--scrubbing and +sweeping and dusting from morning to night! "It's good business," said +little Lily; "and it is just honest, too, for they pay me good!" Her +only unbusinesslike quality was a generous kindliness, which sometimes +considered the "mealers'" purses rather than her own. She had, to be +sure, small outbursts of temper, when she "smacked" Jacky, or berated +her lodgers for wasting gas; but Jacky was smothered with kisses even +before his howls ceased, and the lodgers were placated with cookies the +very next day--but that, too, was "good business"! Her "respectability" +had become a deep satisfaction to her. She occasionally referred to +herself as "a perfect lady." Her feeling about "imperfect" ladies was of +most virulent disapproval. But she had no more spirituality than a hen. +Her face was as good-humored, and common, and pretty as ever; and she +had a fund of not too refined, but always funny, stories to tell +Maurice; so he liked her, after a fashion, and she liked him, after a +fashion, too, although she was a little afraid of him; his bored +preoccupation seemed like sternness to Lily. "Grouchiness," she called +it; "probably that's why he don't take to Jacky," she thought; "well, +it's lucky he don't, for he shouldn't have him!" But as Maurice, on the +little porch, said good-by, she really wondered at his queerness in not +taking to Jacky, who, grimy and handsome, was sitting on the ground, +spooning earth into an empty lard pail. + +"Come in out o' the dirt, Sweety!" Lily called to him. + +Jacky rose reluctantly, then stood looking, open-mouthed, at his +mother's visitor. + +"Say," he remarked; "I kin swear." + +"You don't say so!" said Maurice. + +"I kin say 'dam,'" Jacky announced, gravely. + +"You are a great linguist! Who instructed you in the noble art of +profanity?" + +"Huh?" said Jacky, shyly. + +"Who taught you?" + +"Maw," said Jacky. + +Maurice roared; Lily giggled,--"My soul and body! Listen to that child! +Jacky, you naughty boy, telling wrong stories. One of these days I'm +going to give you a reg'lar spanking." Then she stamped her foot, for +Jacky had settled down again in the dust; "Do you hear me? Come right in +out of the dirt! That's one on me!" she confessed, laughing: then added, +anxiously: "Say, Mr. Curtis, I do smack him when he says bad words; +honest, I do! He's getting a _good_ bringing up, though my mealers spoil +him something awful. But I'd just shake his prayers out of him, if he +forgot 'em." + +Maurice, still laughing, said: "Well, don't become too proficient, +Jacobus. Good-by," he said again. And as he said it, Eleanor, in a +trolley car, glanced out of the window and saw him. + +"Why, there's Maurice!" she said; and motioned to the conductor to stop. +Hunting for a cook had brought her to this impossible suburb, where +Maurice, no doubt, was trying to buy or sell a house. "I'll get out and +walk home with him," she thought, eagerly. But the car would not stop +until the end of the second block, and when she hurried back Maurice had +disappeared. He had either gone off in another direction, or else +entered the house; but she could not remember which house!--those +gingerbread tenements were all so much alike that it was impossible to +be sure on which of the small porches she had seen her husband, and a +fat, common-looking woman, and a child playing in the yard. All she +could do was to wander up and down the block, looking at every front +door in the hope that he would appear; as he didn't, she finally took +the next car into town. + +"Did you sell the house this afternoon?" she asked Maurice at dinner +that night; and he, remembering how part of his afternoon had been +spent, said he hadn't any particular house on the string at the moment. + +"Then what took you to Medfield?" Eleanor asked, simply. + +"Medfield!" + +"I saw you out there this afternoon," she said; "you were talking to a +woman. I supposed she was a tenant. I got off the car to walk home with +you, but I wasn't sure of the house; they were all alike." + +"What were you doing in Medfield?" + +"Oh, Hannah has given notice; I was hunting for a cook. I heard of one +out on Bell Street." + +"Did you find her?" + +"No," Eleanor said, sighing, "it's perfectly awful!" + +"Too bad!" her husband sympathized. + +In the parlor, after dinner, while Eleanor was getting out the cards +for solitaire, Maurice, tingling with alarm and irritation, sat down +at the piano and banged out all sorts of chords and discords. "Lily'll +_have_ to move," he was saying to himself. (Bang--_Bang!_) His +Imagination raced with the possibilities of what would have happened +if Eleanor had found the house which was "like all the other houses," +and heard his "good-by" to Lily, or perhaps even caught the latest +addition to Jacky's vocabulary! "The jig would have been up," he thought. +(Bang--Crash!)... "She'll _have_ to move! Suppose Eleanor took it into +her head to hunt her up? She's capable of it!" (Crash!) + +Eleanor's absorption in the cook she could not find kept her for nearly +forty-eight hours from speculation as to what, if not office business, +took Maurice to Medfield. When she did begin to speculate she said to +herself, "He doesn't tell me things about his business!" Then she was +stabbed again by his annoyance because she had opened the letter from +Mr. Houghton; then by his secretiveness in regard to that adventure on +the river with Mrs. Morton. (He had told Edith!) Then this--then +that--and by and by a tiny heap of nothings, that implied reserves. He +wasn't confidential. She told him _everything_! She never kept a thing +from him! And he didn't even tell her why he was over in Medfield when +no real-estate matters took him there. Why should he _not_ tell her? And +when she said that, the inevitable answer came: He didn't tell her, +because he didn't want her to know! Perhaps he had friends there? No. No +friends of Maurice's could live in such a locality. Well, perhaps there +was some woman? Even as she said this, she was ashamed. She knew she +didn't believe it. Of course there wasn't any woman!... But, at any +rate, he had interests in Medfield that he did not tell her about. She +hinted this to him at breakfast the next morning. She had not meant to +speak of it; she knew she would be sorry if she did. Eleanor was +incapable of analysis, but she was, in her pitiful way, aware that +jealousy, _when articulate_, is almost always vulgar--perhaps because +the decorums of breeding (which insist that, for the sake of others, +one's own pain must be hidden) are not propped up by the reserves of +pride. At any rate, she was not often publicly bitter to Maurice. This +time, however, she was. + +"Apparently," she said, "Maurice has acquaintances on Maple Street whom +I don't know." + +"The elite," Edith remarked, facetiously; "his lovely Mrs. Dale lives +there." + +Maurice's start was perceptible. + +"Perhaps it was Mrs. Dale you went to see?" Eleanor said. + +Maurice, trained in these years of furtiveness to self-control, said, +"Does she live on Maple Street, Edith?" + +"I guess so. The time I rescued her little boy and her flower pot, ages +ago, she was going into a house on Maple Street." + +"I saw Maurice in Medfield on Thursday," said Eleanor; "and he doesn't +seem to want to say what he was doing there!" + +"I am perfectly willing to tell you what I was doing," he retorted; "I +went from our office to see the woman who rents the house." + +Eleanor's slow mind accepted this entirely true and successfully false +remark with only the wonder of wounded love. "Why didn't he say that at +first?" she thought; "why does he hide things from me?" + +Maurice, however, made sure of that "hiding." Eleanor's attack upon him +frightened him so badly that that very afternoon, after office hours +(Eleanor being safe in bed with a headache), he went to see Lily. Her +astonishment at another visit so soon was obvious; she was still further +astonished when he told her why he had come. He hated to tell her. To +speak of Eleanor offended his taste--but it had to be done. So, +stammering, he began--but broke off: + +"Send that child away!" + +"Run out in the yard, Sweety," Lily commanded. + +"Won't," said Jacky. + +"Clear out!" Maurice said, sharply, and Jacky obeyed like a shot--but +paused on the porch to turn the ferociously clanging doorbell round and +round and round. "Well," Maurice began, "I'll tell you what's +happened... Lily! Make him stop!" + +"Say, now, Jacky, stop," Lily called; but Jacky, seized apparently with +a new idea, had already stopped, and was running out on to the pavement. + +So again Maurice began his story. Lily's instant and sympathetic +understanding was very reassuring. He even caught himself, under the +comfort of her quick co-operation, ranging himself with her, and saying +_"we."_ "We've got to guard against anything happening, you know." + +"Oh, my soul and body, yes!" Lily agreed; "it would be too bad, and no +sense, either; you and me just acquaintances. 'Course I'll move, Mr. +Curtis. But, there! I hate to leave my garden--and I've just papered +this room! And I don't know where to go, either," she ended, with a +worried look. + +"How would you like to go to New York?" he said, eagerly. + +She shook her head: "I've got a lot of friends in this neighborhood. But +there's a two-family house on Ash Street--" + +"Say," said Jacky, in the hall; "I got--" + +"Oh, but you must leave Medfield!" he protested; "she"--that "she" made +him wince--"she may try to hunt you up." + +"She can't. She don't know my name." + +Maurice felt as if privacy were being pulled away from his soul, as skin +might be flayed from living flesh. "But you see," he began, huskily, +"there's a--a girl who lives with us; and she--she mentioned your name." +Then, cringing, he told her about Edith. + +Lily looked blankly puzzled; then she remembered; "Why, yes, sure +enough! It was right at the gate--oh, as much as four years ago; I +slipped, and she grabbed Jacky. Yes; it comes back to me; she told me +she seen me the time we got ducked. 'Course, I gave her the glassy eye, +and said I didn't remember the gentleman in the boat with her. And she +caught on that I lived here? Well, now, ain't the world small?" + +"Damned small," Maurice said, dryly. + +"Say," said Jacky, from the doorway, "I got a--" + +"Well, she--I mean this young lady--told my--ah, wife that you lived on +Maple Street, and--" He was stammering with angry embarrassment; Lily +gave a cluck of dismay. "Confound it!" said Maurice; "what'll we do?" + +"Now, don't you worry!" Lily said, cheerfully. "If she ever speaks to me +again, I'll say, 'Why, you have the advantage of me!'" + +Her mincing politeness made him laugh, in spite of his irritation. "I +think you'd like it in New York?" he urged. + +Lily's amber eyes were full of sympathy--but she was firm: "I wouldn't +live in New York for anything!" + +"Mr. Gem'man," said Jacky, sidling crabwise into the room to the shelter +of his mother's skirt; "I--" + +"Say, now, Sweety, be quiet! No, Mr. Curtis; I only go into real good +society, and I've always heard that New York ladies ain't what they +should be. And, besides, I want a garden for Jacky. I'll tell you what +I'll do! I'll take the top flat in that house on Ash Street. It has +three little rooms I could let. There's a widow lady's been asking me to +go in on it with her; it has a garden back of it Jacky could play +in--last summer there was a reg'lar hedge of golden glow inside the +fence! Mr. Curtis, you'd 'a' laughed! He pinched an orange off a +hand-cart yesterday, just as cute! 'Course I gave him a good slap, and +paid the man; but I had to laugh, he was so smart. And he's got going +now, on God--since I've been paying him to say his prayers. Well, I +suppose I'll have to be going to church one of these days," she said, +resignedly. "The questions he asks about God are something fierce! _I_ +don't know how to answer 'em. Crazy to know what God eats--I told him +bad boys." + +"Lily, I don't think--_Thunder and guns!_" said Maurice, leaping to his +feet and rubbing his ankle; "Lily, call him off! The little wretch put +his teeth into me!" + +Lily, horrified, slapped her son, who explained, bawling, "Well, b-b-but +he didn't let on he heard me tellin' him that I--" + +"I _felt_ you," Maurice said, laughing; "Gosh, Lily! He's cut his +eyeteeth--I'll say that for him!" He poked Jacky with the toe of his +boot, good-naturedly: "Don't howl, Jacobus. Sorry I hurt your feelings. +Lily, what I was going to say was, I don't believe that Ash Street place +is what you want?" + +"Yes, it is. The widow lady is a dressmaker, and she has three children. +We were talking about it only yesterday. Her father's feeble-minded, +poor old man! I take him in some doughnuts whenever I fry 'em. Mr. +Curtis, don't worry; I'll fix it, somehow! And until I get moved, I +won't answer the bell here. Look! I'll give you a key, and you can come +in without ringing if you want to." + +"No--_no_! I don't want a key! I wouldn't take a key for a million +dollars!" + +Lily's quick flush showed how innocent her offer had been. "I suppose +that doesn't sound very high toned--to offer a gentleman a key? But +I'll tell you! I ain't giving any door keys to my house. Jacky ain't +ever going to feel funny about his mother," she said, sharply. + +It was on the tip of Maurice's tongue to say, "Nor about his father!" +but he was silent. It was the first time his mind had articulated his +paternity, and the mere word made him dumb with disgust. Lily, however, +was her kind little self again, full of promises to "clear out," and +reassurances that "_she_" would never get on to it. + +It was then that the grimness of the situation for Maurice lightened for +a ridiculous moment. Jacky, breathing very hard, peered from behind his +mother, and stretched out to Maurice an extremely dirty, tightly +clenched fist. "I got a--a pre-present for you," he explained, panting. +Maurice, in a great hurry to get away, paused to put out his hand, in +which his son placed, very gently, a slimy, half-smoked cigar. "Found +it," Jacky said, in a stertorous whisper, "in the gutter." + +It was impossible not to laugh, and Maurice swallowed his impatience +long enough to say, "Jacobus, you overwhelm me!" Then he took his +departure, holding the gift between a reluctant thumb and finger. "Funny +little beggar," he said to himself, and pitched the stub into the gutter +from which Jacky had salvaged it; he didn't look back to see his son +hanging over the palings, watching the fate of his present with stricken +eyes... So it was that, when the day came that Eleanor did actually +begin to search for what was hidden, Maple Street was empty of +possibilities; Lily had flitted away into the secrecy of the two-family +house on Ash Street. + +It was nearly three months before the search began. Edith had gone home, +Mrs. Newbolt was at the sea-shore, and Maurice was in and out--away for +two or three days at a time on office business, and when at home absent +almost every evening with some of those youthful acquaintances who +seemed ignorant of Eleanor's existence. So there were long hours when, +except for her little old dog, she was entirely alone--alone, to brood +over Maurice's queer look when she had accused him of having an +"acquaintance on Maple Street"; and by and by she said, "I'll find out +who it is!" Yet she had moments of trying to tear from her mind the idea +of any concealment, because the mere suspicion was an insult to Maurice! +She had occasional high moments of saying, "I _won't_ think he has +secrets from me; I'll trust him." But still, because suspicion is the +diversion of an empty mind, she played with it, as one might play with a +dagger, careful only not to let it touch the quick of belief. After a +while she deluded herself into thinking that, to exonerate Maurice, she +must prove the suspicion false! It was only fair to him to do that. So +she must find the woman whom she had seen on the porch with him. If she +wasn't Mrs. Dale, that would "prove" that everything was all right, and +that Maurice's presence there only meant that he was attending to office +business; nothing to be jealous about in _that_! And if the woman _was_ +Mrs. Dale? Eleanor's throat contracted so sharply that she gasped. But +again and again she put off the search for the exonerating proof--for +she was ashamed of herself, "I'll do it to-morrow." ... "I'll do it next +week." + +It was a scorching, windy July day when she took her first defiling step +and "did it." There had been a breakfast-table discussion of a vacation +at Green Hill, the usual invitation having been received. + +"Do go," Maurice had urged. "I'll do what I did last year--hang around +here, and go to the ball games, and come up to Green Hill for Sundays." +He was acutely anxious to have her go. + +She was silent. "_Why_ does he want to be alone?" she thought; +"why--unless he goes over to Medfield?" Then, in sudden decision, she +said to herself, "I will find out why, to-day!" But she was afraid that +Maurice would, somehow, guess what she was going to do; so, to throw him +quite off the track, she told him that Donny O'Brien was sick again; "I +must go and see him this morning," she said. + +Maurice, reading the sports page of the morning paper, said, "Too bad!" +and went on reading. He had no interest in his wife's movements; the +two-family house on Ash Street was beyond her range! + +An hour later, Eleanor, giving Bingo a cooky to console him for being +left at home, started out into the blazing heat, saying to herself: +"I'll recognize her the minute I see her. Of course I _know_ she isn't +the Dale woman, but I want to _prove_ that she isn't!" + +Her plan was to ring the bell at every one of the gingerbread houses on +that block on Maple Street, and ask if Mrs. Dale lived there? If she was +not to be found, that would prove that Maurice had not gone to see her. +If she was found, why, then--well, then Eleanor would say that she had +heard that the house was in the market? If Mrs. Dale said it was not, +that would show that it wasn't "office business" which had brought +Maurice to that porch! + +On Maple Street the heat blazed up from the untidy pavement, and a harsh +wind was whirling little spirals of dust up and down the dry gutter. +Eleanor's heart was beating so smotheringly that when her first ring was +answered she could scarcely speak: "Does Mrs. Dale live here?" + +"No," said the girl who opened the door, "there ain't nobody by that +name livin' here." + +And at the next door: "Mrs. Dale? No. This is Mrs. Mahoney's house." + +It was at the sixth house, where some dusty pansies were drying up +under the little bay window, that a woman whose red, soapy hands had +just left the wash tub, said: + +"Some folks with that name lived here before I took the house. But they +moved away. She was real nice; used to give candy to the children round +here. She was a widow lady. She told me her husband's name was Joseph. +Was it her you was looking for?" + +"I don't know her husband's name," Eleanor said. + +"Her baby had measles when mine did," the woman went on; "I lived across +the street, then. But I took a fancy to the house, because she'd papered +the parlor so handsome, so I moved in the first of May, when she got +out." + +A little cold, prickling thrill ran down Eleanor's back. She had told +herself that "Maurice had a secret"; but she had not really believed +that the secret was about Mrs. Dale. She had been sure, in the bottom of +her heart, that she would be able to "prove" that the woman he had been +talking to that day was not Mrs. Dale. + +Now, she had proved--that she was. + +Eleanor swayed a little, and put her hand out to clutch at the porch +railing. The woman exclaimed: + +"Come in and sit down! I'll get you a glass of water." + +Eleanor followed her into the kitchen and sat down on a wooden chair. +She was silent, but she whitened slowly. The mistress of the house, +scared at her pallor, ran to draw a tumbler of water from the faucet in +the sink; she held it to Eleanor's lips, apologizing for her wet hands: + +"I was tryin' to get my wash out.... Where do you feel bad?" + +"It's so hot, that's all," Eleanor said, faintly: "I--I'm not +ill--thank you very much." She tried to smile, but the ruthless glare of +sunshine through the open kitchen door showed her face strained, as if +in physical suffering. + +"I'm awfully sorry I can't tell you where Mrs. Dale lives," the woman +said, sympathetically. "Was she a friend of yours?" Eleanor shook her +head. "There! I'll tell you who maybe could tell you--the doctor. He +took care of her baby. Doctor Nelson--" + +"Nelson!" + +"He's the hospital doctor now. Why don't you ask him?" + +"Thank you," said Eleanor vaguely. She rose, saying she felt better and +was much obliged. Then she went out on to the porch, and down the broken +steps to the windy scorching street. + +She was certain: Maurice had gone to Medfield to see Mrs. Dale... + +_Why?_ + +She was quite calm, so calm that she found herself thinking that she had +forgotten to get an yeast cake for Mary. "I'll get it as I go home," she +thought. But as she stood waiting for the car it occurred to her that +she had better think things out before she went home. Better not see +Maurice until she had decided just how she should tell him that there +was no use having secrets from her! That she _knew_ he was seeing Mrs. +Dale! Then he would have to tell her _why_ he was seeing her... There +could be only one reason... For a moment she was suffocated by that +"reason"! She let the returning car pass, and signaled the one going out +into the country; she would go, she told herself, to the end of the +route, and by that time she would know what to do. The car was crowded, +but a kindly faced young woman rose and offered her a seat. Eleanor +declined it, although her knees were trembling. + +"Oh, do take it!" the woman urged, pleasantly, and Eleanor could not +resist sinking into it. + +"You are very kind," she said, smiling faintly. + +The woman smiled, too, and said, "Well, I always think what I'd like +anyone to do for my mother, if _she_ couldn't get a seat in a car! I +guess you're about her age." + +Eleanor hardly heard her; she sat staring out of the window--staring at +that same landscape on which she and Maurice had gazed in the unseeing +ecstasy of their fifty-four minutes of married life! "He said we would +come back in fifty years--not by ourselves." As she said that, a thought +stabbed her! _There was a child that day, in the yard!_ + +When she saw that the car was approaching the end of the route, she +thought of the locust tree, and the blossoming grass, and the whispering +river. "I'll go there, and think," she said. + +"All out!" said the conductor; and she rose and walked, stumbling once +or twice, and with one hand outstretched, as if--in the dazzling July +day--she had to feel her way in an enveloping darkness. She went down +the country road, where the bordering weeds were white with dust, toward +that field of young love, and clover, and blue sky. + +When she reached the river, curving around the meadow, brown and shallow +in the midsummer droughts, she saw that the big locust was long past +blossoming, but some elderberry bushes, in full bloom, made the air +heavy with acrid perfume; the grass, starred by daisies, and with here +and there a clump of black-eyed Susans, was ready for mowing, and was +tugging at its anchoring roots, blowing, and bending, and rippling in +the wind, just as it had that other day!... "And I sat right here, by +the tree," she said, "and he lay there--I remember the exact place. And +he took my hand--" + +Her mind whirled like a merry-go-round: "Well, I knew he was hiding +something. I wish I had seen Doctor Nelson, and asked him where she +lives. I wonder if he's the Mortons' friend?... If I don't get that +yeast cake to Mary before lunch, she can't set the rolls.... Edith saw +her with a child five years ago. Why"--her mind stumbled still farther +back--"why, the very day Edith arrived in Mercer, Maurice had been +looking at some house in Medfield, where the tenant had a sick child. +That was why he was late in meeting Mrs. Houghton!... The child had +measles. I wish I had gone to see Doctor Nelson! Then I would have +known.... I can get some rolls at the bakery, and Mary needn't set them +for dinner. I sang 'O Spring.'" She put her hands over her face, but +there were no tears. "He kissed the earth, he was so happy. When did he +stop being happy? What made him stop?... I wonder if there are any +snakes here?--Oh, I _must_ think what to do!" Again her mind flew off at +so violent a tangent that she felt dizzy. "I didn't tell Mary what to +have for dinner.... He gave her his coat, that time when the boat +upset.... She was all painted, he said so." She picked three strands of +grass and began to braid them together: "He did that; he made the ring, +and put it over my wedding ring." Mechanically she opened her +pocketbook, and took out the little envelope, shabby now, with years of +being carried there. She lifted the flap, and looked at the crumbling +circle. Then she put it back again, carefully, and went on with her +toilsome thinking: "I'll tell him I know that he went to see the Dale +woman. ... He said we had been married fifty-four minutes. It's eight +years and one month. He thinks I'm old. Well, I am. That woman in the +car thought I was her mother's age, and _she_ must have been thirty! Why +did he stop loving me? He hates Mary's cooking. He said Edith could make +soup out of a paving stone and a blade of grass. Edith is rude to me +about music, and he doesn't mind! How vulgar girls are, nowadays. Oh--I +_hate_ her!... Mary'll give notice if I say anything about her soup." + +Suddenly through this welter of anger and despair a small, confused +thought struggled up; it was so unexpected that she actually gasped: He +hadn't quite lied to her! "There _was_ office business!" Some +real-estate transfer must have been put through, because--"Mrs. Dale had +moved"! In her relief, Eleanor burst into violent crying; he had not +_entirely_ lied! To be sure, he didn't say that the woman whom he had +gone "from the office" to see, the woman who rented the house, was Mrs. +Dale; in that, he had not been frank; he kept the name back--but that +was only a reserve! Only a harmless secrecy. There was nothing _wrong_ +in renting a house to the Dale woman! As Eleanor said this to herself, +it was as if cool water flowed over flame-licked flesh. Yes; he didn't +talk to her as he did to Edith of business matters; he didn't tell her +about real-estate transactions; but that didn't mean that the Dale woman +was anything to him! She was crying hard, now; "He just isn't frank, +that's all." She could bear _that_; it was cruel, but she could bear it! +And it was a protection to Maurice, too; it saved him from the slur of +being suspected. "Oh, I am ashamed to have suspected him!" she thought; +"how dreadful in me! But I've proved that I was wrong." When she said +that she knew, in a numb way, that after this she must not play with the +dagger of an unbelieved suspicion. She recognized that this sort of +thing may be a mental diversion--but it is dangerous. If she allowed +herself to do it again, she might really be stabbed; she might lose the +saving certainty that he had not lied to her--that he had only been "not +frank." + +Suddenly she remembered how unwilling he had been, years ago, to talk of +the creature to her! She smiled faintly at his foolishness. Perhaps he +didn't want to talk of her now? Men are so absurd about their wives! Her +heart thrilled at such precious absurdity. As for seeing that doctor--of +course she wouldn't see him! She didn't _need_ to see him. And, anyhow, +she wouldn't, for anything in the world, have him, or anybody else, +suppose that she had had even a thought that Maurice wasn't--all right! +"He just wasn't quite frank; that was all." ... Oh, she had been wicked +to suspect him! "He would never forgive me if he knew I had thought of +such a thing, He must never know it." + +In the comfort of her own remorse, and the reassurance of his half +frankness, she walked back to the station and waited, in the midday +heat, for the returning car. Her head had begun to ache, but she said to +herself that she must not disappoint little Donny. So she went, in the +blazing sun, to the old washerwoman's house, climbed three flights of +stairs, and found the boy in bed, flushed with worry for fear "Miss +Eleanor" wasn't coming. She took the little feeble body in her arms, +and sat down in the steamy kitchen by an open window, where Donny could +see, on the clothes lines that stretched like gigantic spiderwebs across +a narrow courtyard, shirts and drawers, flapping and kicking and +bellying in the high, hot wind. She talked to him, and said that if his +grandmother would hire a piano, she would give him music lessons;--and +all the while her sore mind was wondering how old the mother of that +woman in the car was? Then she sang to Donny--little merry, silly songs +that made him smile: + +"The King of France, +And forty thousand men, +Marched up a hill--" + +She stopped short; Edith had thrown "The King of France" at her, that +day of the picnic, when she had cringed away from the water and the +slimy stones, and climbed up on the bank where she had been told to +"guard the girl's shoes and stockings"! "Oh, I'll be so glad to get her +and her 'brains' out of the house!" Eleanor thought. But her voice, +lovely still, though fraying with the years--went on: + +"Marched up a hill-- +_And + then + marched + down + again_!" + +When, with a splitting headache, she toiled home through the heat, she +said to herself: "He ought to have been frank, and told me the woman was +Mrs. Dale; I wouldn't have minded, for I know such a person couldn't +have interested him. She had no figure, and she looked stupid. He +couldn't have said _she_ had 'brains'! That girl in the car was +impertinent." + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +The heat and the wind--and remorse--gave Eleanor such a prolonged +headache that Maurice, in real anxiety and without consulting her--wrote +to Mrs. Houghton that "Nelly was awfully used up by the hot weather," +and might he bring her to Green Hill now, instead of later? Her prompt +and friendly telegram, "_Come at once_," made him tell his wife that he +was going to pack her off to the mountains, _quick_! + +She began to say no, she couldn't manage it; "I--I can't leave Bingo" +(she was hunting for an excuse not to leave Maurice), "Bingo is so +miserable if I am out of his sight." + +"You can take him,--old Rover's gone to heaven. Think you can start +to-morrow?" He sat down beside her and took her hand in his warm young +paw; the pity of her made him frown--pity, and an intolerable annoyance +at himself! She, a woman twice his age, had married him, when, of +course, she ought to have told him not to be a little fool; "...wiped my +nose and sent me home!" he thought, with cynical humor. But, all the +same, she loved him. And he had played her a damned cheap trick!--which +was hidden safely away in the two-family house on Ash Street. "Hidden." +What a detestable word! It flashed into Maurice's mind that if, that +night among the stars, he had made a clean breast of it all to Eleanor, +he wouldn't now be going through this business of hiding things--and +covering them up by innumerable, squalid little falsenesses. "There +would have been a bust-up, and she might have left me. But that would +have been the end of it!" he thought; he would have been _free_ from +what he had once compared to a dead hen tied around a dog's neck--the +clinging corruption of a lie! The Truth would have made him free. Aloud, +he said, "Star,"--she caught her breath at the old lovely word--"I'll go +to Green Hill with you, and take care of you for a few days. I'm sure I +can fix it up at the office." + +The tears leaped to her eyes. "Oh, Maurice!" she said; "I haven't been +nice to you. I'm afraid I'm--rather temperamental. I--I get to fancying +things. One day last week I--had horrid thoughts about you." + +"About _me_?" he said, laughing; "well, no doubt I deserved 'em!" + +"No!" she said, passionately; "no--you didn't! I know you didn't. But +I--" With the melody of that old name in her ears, her thoughts were +too shameful to be confessed. She wouldn't tell him how she had wronged +him in her mind; she would just say: "Don't keep things from me, +darling! Be frank with me, Maurice. And--" she stopped and tried to +laugh, but her mournful eyes dredged his to find an indorsement of her +own certainties--"and tell me you don't love anybody else?" + +She held her breath for his answer: + +"You _bet_ I don't!" + +The humor of such a question almost made him laugh. In his own mind he +was saying, "Lily, and _Love_? Good Lord!" + +Eleanor, putting her hand on his, said, in a whisper, "But we have no +children. Do you mind--very much?" + +"Great Scott! no. Don't worry about _that_. That's the last thing I +think of! Now, when do you think you can start?" He spoke with wearied +but determined gentleness. + +She did not detect the weariness,--the gentleness made her so happy; he +called her "Star"! He said he didn't love anyone else! He said he didn't +mind because they had no children.... Oh, how dreadful for her to have +had those shameful fears--and out in "their meadow," too! It was +sacrilege.... Aloud, she said she could be ready by the first of the +week; "And you'll stay with me? Can't you take two weeks?" she +entreated. + +"Oh, I can't afford _that_" he said; "but I guess I can manage one...." + +Later that day, when she told Mrs. Newbolt--who had come home for a +fortnight--what Maurice had planned for her, Eleanor's happiness ebbed a +little in the realization that he would be in town all by himself, "for +a whole week! He'll go off with the Mortons, I suppose," she said, +uneasily. + +"Well," said Mrs. Newbolt, with what was, for her, astonishing brevity, +"why shouldn't he? Don't forget what my dear father said about cats: +_'Open the door!'_ Tell Maurice you _want_ him to go off with the +Mortons!" + +Of course Eleanor told him nothing of the sort. But she was obliged, at +Green Hill, to watch him "going off" with Edith. "I should think," she +said once, "that Mrs. Houghton wouldn't want her to be wandering about +with you, alone." + +"Perhaps Mrs. Houghton doesn't consider me a desperate character," he +said, dryly; "and, besides, Johnny Bennett chaperones us!" + +Sometimes not even John's presence satisfied Eleanor, and she chaperoned +her husband herself. She did it very openly one day toward the end of +Maurice's little vacation. Henry Houghton had said, "Look here; you +boys" (of course Johnny was hanging around) "must earn your salt! We've +got to get the second mowing in before night. I'll present you both with +a pitchfork." + +To which Maurice replied, "Bully!" + +"Me, too!" said Edith. + +And John said, "I'll be glad to be of any assistance, sir." + +("How their answers sum those youngsters up!" Mr. Houghton told his +Mary.) + +Eleanor, dogging Maurice to a deserted spot on the porch, said, +uneasily, "Don't do it, darling; it's too hot for you." + +But he only laughed, and started off with the other two to work all +morning in the splendid heat and dazzle of the field. "Skeezics, don't +be so strenuous!" he commanded, once; and Johnny was really nervous: + +"It's too hot for you, Buster." + +"Too hot for your grandmother!" Edith said--bare-armed, open-throated, +her creamy neck reddening with sunburn. + +Toward noon, Maurice's chaperon, toiling out across the hot stubble to +watch him, called from under an umbrella, "Edith! You'll get freckled." + +"When I begin to worry about my complexion, I'll let you know," Edith +retorted; "Maurice, your biceps are simply great!" + +"_How_ she flatters him!" Eleanor thought; "And she knows he is looking +at her." He was! Edith, lifting a forkful of hay, throwing the weight on +her right thigh and straining backward with upraised arms, her big hat +tumbling over one ear, and the sweat making her hair curl all around her +forehead, was something any man would like to look at! No man would want +to look at Eleanor--a tired, dull, jealous woman, whose eyes were +blinking from the glare and whose face sagged with elderly fatigue. She +turned silently and went away. "He likes to be with her--but he doesn't +say so. Oh, if he would only be frank!" Her eyes blurred, but she would +not let the tears come, so they fell backward into her heart--which +brimmed with them, to overflow, after a while, in bitter words. + +Edith, watching the retreating figure, never guessing those unshed +tears, said, despairingly, to herself, "I suppose I ought to go home +with her?" She dropped her pitchfork; "I'll come back after dinner, +boys," she said; "I must look after Eleanor now." + +"Quitter!" Maurice jeered; but Johnny said, "I'm glad she's gone; it's +too much for a girl." His eyes followed her as she went running over the +field to catch up with Eleanor, who, on the way back to the house, only +poke once; she told Edith that flattery was bad taste the cup +overflowed! "Men hate flattery," she said. + +"Hate it?" said Edith, "they lap it up!" + +When the two young men sat down under an oak for their noon hour, with a +bucket of buttermilk standing precariously in the grass beside them, +John said again, anxiously, "It was too hot for her; I hope she won't +have a headache." + +"She always has headaches," Maurice said, carelessly. + +"What!" said Bennett, alarmed; "she's never said a word to me about +headaches." + +"Oh, you mean Edith? I thought you meant Eleanor. Edith never had a +headache in her life! Some girl, Johnny?" + +"Has that just struck you?" said John. + +Maurice fished some grass seeds out of the buttermilk, took a deep +draught of it, and looked at his companion, lying full length on the +stubble in the shadow of the oak. It came to him with a curious shock +that Bennett was in love. No "calf love" this time! Just a young +man's love for a young woman--sound and natural, and beautiful, and +right.... "I wonder," Maurice thought, "does she know it?" + +It seemed as if Johnny, puffing at his pipe, and slapping a mosquito on +his lean brown hand, answered his thought: + +"Edith's astonishingly young. She doesn't realize that she's grown up." +There was a pause; "_Or that I have._" + +Maurice was silent; he suddenly felt old. These two--these +children!--believing in love, and in each other, were in a world of +their own; a world which knew no hidden household in the purlieus of +Mercer; no handsome, menacing, six-year-old child; no faded, jealous +woman, overflowing with wearisome caresses! In this springtime world was +Edith--vigorous, and sweet, and supremely reasonable;--and _never_ +temperamental! And this young man, loving her.... Maurice turned over on +his face in the grass; but he did not kiss the earth's "perfumed +garment"; he bit his own clenched fist. + +He was very silent for the rest of their day in the field for one +thing, they had to work at a high pitch, for then were blue-black clouds +in the west! At a little after three Edith came out again, but not to +help. + +"I had to put on my glad rags," she said, sadly, "because some people +are coming to tea. I hate 'em--I mean the rags." + +Maurice stopped long enough to turn and look at her, and say, "They're +mighty pretty!" And so, indeed, they were--a blue organdie, with white +ribbons around the waist, and a big white hat with a pink rose in a knot +of black velvet on the brim. "How's Eleanor?" he said, beginning to +skewer a bale of hay on to his pitchfork. + +"She's afraid there's going to be a thunderstorm," Edith said; "that's +why I came out here. She wants you, Maurice." + +"All right," he said, briefly; and struck his fork down in the earth. +"I've got to go, Johnny." + +To do one's duty without love is doubtless better than to fail in doing +one's duty, but it has its risks. Maurice's heartless "kindness" to his +wife was like a desert creeping across fertile earth; the eager +generosity of boyhood had long ago hardened into the gray aridity of +mere endurance. + +Edith turned and walked back with him; they were both silent until +Maurice said, "You've got Johnny's scalp all right, Skeezics." + +"Don't be silly!" she said; her annoyance made her look so mature that +he was apologetic; was she in love with the cub? He was suddenly +dismayed, though he could not have said why. "I don't like jokes like +that," Edith said. + +"I beg your pardon, Edith. I somehow forget you're grown up," he said, +and sighed. + +She laughed. "Eleanor and you have my age on your minds! Eleanor +informed me that I was too old to be rampaging round making hay with you +two boys! And she thinks I 'flatter' you," Edith said, grinning. "I +trust I'm not injuring your immortal soul, Maurice, and making you vain +of your muscle?" + +Instantly he was angry. Eleanor, daring to interfere between himself and +Edith? He was silent for the rest of the walk home; and he was still +silent when he went up to his wife's room and found her lying on her +bed, old Bingo snoozing beside her--windows closed, shades down. "Oh, +Maurice!" she said, with a gasp of relief; "I was so afraid you would +get caught in a thunderstorm!" + +"_Don't_ be so absurd!" he said. + +"I--I love you; that's why I am 'absurd,'" she said, piteously. It was +as if she held to his lips the cup of her heart, brimming with those +unshed tears,--but is there any man who would not turn away from a cup +that holds so bitter a draught? + +Maurice turned away. "This room is insufferably hot!" he said. He let a +window curtain roll up with a jerk, and flung open a window. + +She was silent. + +"I wish," he said, "that you'd let up on Edith. You're always +criticizing her. I don't like it." + + * * * * * + +That night Johnny Bennett, somehow, lured Edith out on to the porch to +say good night. The thunderstorm had come and gone, and the drenched +garden was heavy with wet fragrance. + +"Let's sit down," Johnny said; then, beseechingly, "Edith, don't you +feel a little differently about me, now?" + +"Oh, Johnny, _dear_!" + +"Just a little, Edith? You don't know what it would mean to me, just to +hope?" + +"Johnny, I am awfully fond of you, but--" + +"Well, never mind," he said, patiently, "I'll wait." + +He went down the steps, hesitated, and, while Edith was still squeezing +a little wet ball of a handkerchief against her eyes, came back. + +"Do you mind if I ask you just one question, Edith?" + +"Of course not! Only, Johnny, it just about _kills_ me to be--horrid to +you." + +"Have you really got to be horrid?" said John Bennett. + +"Johnny, I _can't_ help it!" + +"Is it because there's any other fellow, Edith? That's the question I +wanted to ask you." + +She was silent. + +"Edith, I really think I have a right to know?" + +Still she didn't speak. + +"Of course, if there _is_--" + +"There isn't!" she broke in.... "Why, Johnny, you're the best friend I +have. No; there isn't anybody else. The honest truth is, I don't believe +I'm the sort of girl that gets married. I can't imagine caring for +_anybody_ as much as I care for father and mother and Maurice. I--I'm +not sentimental, Johnny, a bit. I'm awfully fond of you; _awfully_! You +come next to Maurice. But--but not that way. That's the truth, Johnny. +I'm perfectly straight with you; you know that? And you won't throw me +over, will you? If I lost you, I declare I--I don't know what I'd do! +You won't give me up, will you?" + +John Bennett was silent for a long minute; then he said, "No, Edith; +I'll never give you up, dear." And he went away into the darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +Edith's flight to one of the schoolhouses was not the entire release +that Eleanor expected. + +"Look here, Skeezics," Maurice had announced; "you can't turn me down +this way! You've got to come to supper every Sunday night!--when I'm at +home. Isn't that so, Nelly?" + +Eleanor said, bleakly: "Why, if Edith would _like_ to, of course. But I +shouldn't think she'd care to come in to town at six, and rush out to +Medfield right after supper." + +"I don't mind," Edith said. + +"You bet she won't rush off right after supper!" Maurice said; "I won't +let her. And if she doesn't get in here by three o'clock, I'll know the +reason why!" + +So Edith came in every Sunday afternoon at three--and Eleanor never left +her alone with Maurice for a moment! She sat and watched them; saw +Edith's unconcealed affection for Maurice, saw Maurice's pleasure in +Edith, saw his entire forgetfulness of herself,--and as she sat, +silently, watching, watching, jealousy was like a fire in her breast. + +However, in spite of Eleanor, sitting on the other side of the fire, in +bitter silence, those Sunday afternoons were delightful to Edith. She +and Maurice were more serious with each other now. His feeling about her +was that she was a mighty pretty girl, who had sense, and who, as he +expressed it, "spoke his language." Her feeling about him was a frankly +expressed appreciation which Eleanor called "flattery." She had an eager +respect for his opinions, based on admiration for what she called to +herself his hard-pan goodness. "How he keeps civil to Eleanor, _I_ don't +know!" Edith used to think. Sometimes, watching his civility--his +patience, his kindness, and especially his ability to hold his tongue +under the provocation of some laconic and foolish criticism from +Eleanor--Edith felt the old thrill of the Sir Walter Raleigh moment. +Yes; there was no one on earth like Maurice! Then she thought, +contritely, of good old Johnny. "If I hadn't known Maurice, I might have +liked Johnny," she thought; "he _is_ a lamb." When she reflected upon +Eleanor, something in her generous, careless young heart hardened: +"She's not nice to Maurice!" She had no sympathy for Eleanor. Youth, +having never suffered, is brutally unsympathetic. Edith had known +nothing but love,--given and received; so of course she could not +sympathize with Eleanor! + +When the Sunday-night suppers were over, Eleanor and Maurice escorted +their guest back to Fern Hill; Edith always said, "Don't bother to go +home with me, Eleanor!" And Maurice always said, "I'll look after the +tyke, Nelly, you needn't go"; and Eleanor always said, "Oh, I don't +mind." Which was, of course, her way of "locking the door" to keep her +cat from a roof that became more alluring with every bolt and bar which +shut him from it. + +On these trolley rides through Medfield Maurice was apt to be rather +silent, and he had a nervous way of looking toward the rear platform +whenever the car stopped to take on a passenger--"although," he told +himself, "what difference would it make if Lily did get on board? She's +so fat now, Edith wouldn't know her. And as for Lily, she's white. She'd +play up, like a 'perfect lady'!" + +He was quite easy about Lily. He hadn't seen her for more than a year, +and she made no demands on him. She was living in the two-family house +on Ash Street, with the dressmaker and her three children and +feeble-minded father, in the lower flat. There was the desired back yard +for Jacky, where a thicket of golden glow lounged against the fence, and +where, tinder stretching clothes lines, a tiny garden overflowed with +color and perfume. Every day little Lily would leave her own work (which +was heavy, for she had several "mealers") and run downstairs to help +Mrs. Hayes wash and dress the imbecile old man. And she kept a pot of +hyacinths blooming on his window sill. + +Maurice (with grinding economies) sent her a quarterly money order, and +felt that he was, as he expressed it to himself, "square with the +game,"--with the Lily-and-Jacky game. He could never be square with the +game he played with Eleanor; and as for his own "game," his steadily +pursued secretiveness was a denial of his own standards which +permanently crippled his self-respect. Though, curiously enough, these +years of careful lying had made him, on every subject except those +connected with the household in Medfield, of a most scrupulous +truthfulness. Indeed, the office still called him "G. Washington." + +Jacky was six that winter--a handsome, spoiled little boy. He looked +like Maurice--the same friendly, eager, very bright blue eyes and the +same shock of blond hair. Lily's ideas of discipline were, of course, +ruining him, to which fact Maurice was entirely indifferent; his feeling +about Jacky was nothing but a sort of spiritual nausea; Jacky was not +only an economic nuisance, but he had made him a liar! He said to +himself that of course he didn't want anything to happen to the brat +("that would break Lily's heart!"), but-- + +Then in March, something did happen to him. It was on a Sunday that the +child came down with scarlet fever, and Lily, in her terror, did the one +thing that she had never done, and that Maurice, in his certainty of her +"whiteness," felt sure she never would or could do: she sent a +telegram--_to his house_! + +It had been a cold, sunny day. Just before luncheon Eleanor had been +summoned to Mrs. O'Brien's: "_Donny is kind of pining; do please come +and sing to him, Miss Eleanor_," the worried grandmother wrote, and +Eleanor hadn't the heart to refuse. "I suppose," she thought, looking at +Maurice and Edith, "they'll be glad to get rid of me!" They were +squabbling happily as to whether altruism was not merely a form of +selfishness; Edith had flung, "_Idiot!_" at Maurice; and Maurice had +retorted, "I never expect a woman to reason!" It was the kind of +squabbling which is the hall mark of friendship and humor, and it would +have been impossible between Eleanor and her husband.... She left them, +burning with impatience to get down to Mrs. O'Brien's and back again in +the shortest possible time. As soon as she was out of the house Maurice +disposed of altruism by a brief laying down of the law: + +"There's no such thing as disinterestedness. You never do anything for +anybody, except for what you get out of it for yourself.... Let's go +skating?" + +The suggestion was not the result of premeditation; Maurice, politely +opening the front door for his wife, had realized, as he stood on the +threshold and a biting wind flung a handful of powdery snow in his +face,--the sparkling coldness of the day; and he thought to himself, +"this is about the last chance for skating! There'll be a thaw next +week." So, when he came back, whistling, to the library, he said: "Are +you game for skating? It's cold as blazes!" + +And Edith said: "You bet I am! Only we'll have to go to Fern Hill for my +skates!" + +Maurice said, "All right!" and off they went, the glowing vigor and +youth of them a beauty in itself! + +So it was that when Eleanor got home, after having gently and patiently +sung to poor Donny for nearly an hour, the library was empty; but a note +on the mantelpiece said: "We've gone skating.--E. and M." "She waited +until I went out," Eleanor thought; "_then_ she suggested it to him!" +She sat down, huddling over the fire, and thinking how Maurice neglected +her; "He doesn't want me. He likes to go off with Edith, alone!" They +had probably gone to the river--"our river!"--that broad part just below +the meadow, where there was apt to be good skating. That made her +remember the September day and the picnic, when Edith had talked about +jealousy--"Bingoism," she had called it. "She tried to attract him by +being _smart_. I detest smartness!" The burning pain under her +breastbone was intolerable. She thought of the impertinent things Edith +had said that day--and the ridiculous inference that if the person of +whom you were jealous, was more attractive in any way than you were +yourself, it was unreasonable to be jealous;--"get busy, and _be_ +attractive!" Edith had said, with pert shallowness. "She doesn't know +what she's talking about!" Eleanor said; and jealousy seared her mind as +a flame might have seared her flesh. "I haven't skated since I was a +girl.... I--I believe next winter I'll take it up again." The tears +stood in her eyes. + +It was at that moment that the telegram was brought into the library. + +"Mr. Curtis isn't in," Eleanor told the maid; then she did what anyone +would do, in the absence of the person to whom the dispatch was +addressed; signed for it ... opened it ... read it. + +_Jacky's sick; please come over quick. + +L. D_. + +"There's no answer," she said. When the maid had left the room, +Maurice's wife moistened the flap of the flimsy brown envelope--it had +been caught only on one side; got up, went into the hall, laid the +dispatch on the table, came back to the library, and fainted dead away. + +No one heard her fall, so no one came to help her--except her little +dog, scrabbling stiffly out of his basket, and coming to crouch, +whining, against her shoulder. It was only a minute before her eyelids +flickered open;--closed--opened again. After a while she tried to rise, +clutching with one hand at the rung of a chair, and with the other +trying to prop herself up; but her head swam, and she sank back. She lay +still for a minute; then realized that if Maurice came in and found her +there on the floor, he would know that she had read the telegram.... So +again she tried to pull herself up; caught at the edge of his desk, +turned sick, saw everything black; tried again; then, slowly, the room +whirling about her, got into a chair and lay back, crumpled up, blindly +dizzy, and conscious of only one thing: she must get upstairs to her own +room before Edith and Maurice came home! She didn't know why she wanted +to do this; she was even a little surprised at herself, as she had been +surprised when, that night on the mountain, "to save Maurice," she had, +instinctively, done one sensible thing after another. So now she knew +that, when he came home with Edith, Maurice must be saved "a scene." He +must not discover, yet, that ... _she knew_. + +For of course now, it was knowledge, not suspicion: Maurice was summoned +to see a sick boy called Jacky; Jacky was the child of L. D.; and L. D. +was the Dale woman, who had lived in the house on Maple Street. Her +shameful suspicion had not been shameful! It had been the recognition of +a fact.... Clutching at supporting chairs, Eleanor, somehow, got out of +the library; saw that brown envelope in the hall, stopped (holding with +one hand to the table), to make sure it was sealed. Bingo, following +her, whimpered to be lifted and carried upstairs, but she didn't notice +him. She just clung to the banisters and toiled up to her room. She +pushed open her door and looked at her bed, desiring it so passionately +that it seemed to her she couldn't live to reach it--to fall into it, as +one might fall into the grave, enamored with death. Down in the hall the +little dog cried. She didn't faint again. She just lay there, without +feeling, or suffering. After a while she heard the front door open and +close; heard Edith's voice: "Hullo, Eleanor! Where are you? We've had a +bully time!" Heard Maurice: "Headache, Nelly? Too ba--" Then silence; he +must have seen the envelope--picked it up--read it.... That was why he +didn't finish that word--so hideously exact!--"_bad_." After a while he +came tiptoeing into the room. + +"Headache? Sorry. Anything I can do?" + +"No." + +He did not urge; he was too engrossed in the shock of an escaped +catastrophe; _suppose Eleanor had read that dispatch_! Good God! Was +Lily mad? He must go and see her, quick, and say--He grew so angry as he +thought of what he was going to say that he did not hear Edith's +friendly comments on "poor dear Eleanor." + +"Edith," he said, "that--that dispatch: I've got to see somebody on +business. Awfully sorry to take you out to Fern Hill before supper, but +I'm afraid I've got to rush off--" + +"'Course! But don't bother to take me home. I can go by myself." + +"No. It's all right. I have time; but I've got to go right off. I hate +to drag you away before supper--" + +"That's of no consequence!" she said, but she gave Maurice a swift look. +What was the matter with him? His forehead, under that thatch of light +hair, was so lined, and his lips were set in such a harsh line, that he +looked actually _old_! Edith sobered into real anxiety. "I wish," she +said, "that you wouldn't go out to Fern Hill; you'll have to come all +the way back to town for your appointment!" + +He said, "No: the--the appointment is on that side of the river." On the +trolley there was no more conversation than there might have been if +Eleanor had been present. At Edith's door he said, "'Night--" + +But as he turned away, she called to him, "Maurice!" Then ran down the +steps and put her hand on his arm: "Maurice, look here; is there +anything I can do? You're bothered!" + +He gave a grunt of laughter. "To be exact, Edith, I'm damned bothered. +I've been several kinds of a fool." + +"You haven't! And it wouldn't make any difference if you had. Maurice, +you're a perfect _lamb_! I won't have you call yourself names! Why"--her +eyes were passionate with tenderness, but she laughed--"I used to call +you 'Sir Walter Raleigh,' you know, because you're great, simply great! +Maurice, I bet on you every time! Do tell me what's the matter? Maybe I +can help. Father says I have lots of sense." + +Maurice shook his head. "You do have sense! I wish I had half as much. +No, Skeezics; there's nothing anybody can do. I pay as I go. But you're +the dearest girl on earth!" + +She caught at his hand, flung her arm around his shoulder, and kissed +him: "You are the dearest boy on earth!" Before he could get his breath +to reply, she flew into the house--flew upstairs--flew into her own +room, and banged the door shut. "_Maurice is unhappy!_" she said. The +tears started, and she stamped her foot. "I can't _bear_ it! Old darling +Maurice--what makes him unhappy? I could kill anybody that hurts +Maurice!" She began to take off her hat, her fingers trembling--then +stopped and frowned: "I believe Eleanor's been nasty to him? I'd like to +choke her!" Suddenly her cheeks burned; she stood still, and caught her +lower lip between her teeth; "I don't care! I'm _glad_ I did it. I--I'd +do it again! ... Darling old Maurice!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +When Jacky's father--with that honest young kiss warm upon his +cheek--reached the little "two-family" house, he saw the red sign on the +door: _Scarlet Fever_. + +"He's got it," he thought, fiercely; "but why in hell did she send for +me?--and a telegram!--to the _house_! She's mad." He was panting with +anger as he pressed the button at Lily's door; "I'll tell her I'll never +see her again, long as I live!" Furious words were on the tip of his +tongue; then she opened the door, and he was dumb. + +"Oh, Mr. Curtis--don't--don't let them take Jacky! Oh, Mr. Curtis!" She +flung herself upon him, sobbing frantically. "Don't let them--I'll kill +them if they touch Jacky! Oh, my soul and body! He'll die if they take +him--I won't let them take him--" She was shaking and stammering and +gasping. "I won't have him touched.... You got to stop them--" + +"Lily, _don't_! What's the matter?" + +"This woman downstairs 's about crazy, because she has three children. I +hope they all catch it and die and go to hell! She's shut up there with +'em in her flat. She won't put her nose outside the door! She come up +here this morning, and saw Jacky, and she said it was scarlet fever. +Seems she knew what it was, 'cause she had a boy die of it--glad he did! +And she sent--the slut!--a complaint to the Board of Health--and the +doctor, he come this afternoon, and said it was! And he said he was +going to take Jacky _to-night_!" + +Her voice made him cringe; her yellow tigress eyes blazed at him; he had +known that Lily, for all her good humor, had occasional sharp gusts of +temper, little squalls that raced over summer seas of kindliness! But +he had never seen this Lily: A ferocious, raucous Lily, madly maternal! +A Lily of the pavements.... "An' I said he wasn't going to do no such +thing! An' I said I'd stop it: I said I'd take the law to him; I said +I'd get Jacky's father: I--" + +"Good God! Lily--" + +"Oh, what do I care about _you_? I ain't goin' to kill Jacky to protect +_you_! You got to stop them taking him!" She clutched his arm and shook +it: "I never asked nothing of you, yet. I ask it now, and you'll _do_ +it, or I'll tell everybody in town that he's yours--" Her menacing voice +broke and failed, but her lips kept moving; those kind, efficient hands +of hers, clutching at him, were the claws of a mother beast. Maurice +took her arm and guided her into the little parlor, where a row of +hyacinths on the window sill made the air overpoweringly sweet; he sat +down beside her on the sofa. + +"Get steady, Lily, and tell me: I'll see what can be done. But there's +to be no _father_ business about it, you understand? I'm just a +'friend.'" + +So, stammering and breaking into sobs and even whispered screams, and +more outrageous abuse of her fellow tenant, she told him: It was scarlet +fever, and there were children in the house. The Board of Health, +"sicked on by that damned woman," said that Jacky must go to the +hospital--to the contagious ward. "And the doctor said he'd be better +off there; he said they could do for him better than me--me, his mother! +They're going to send a ambulance--I telegraphed you at four +o'clock--and here it is six! You _must_ have got it by five--why didn't +you come? Oh--my God, _Jacky_!" Her suffering was naked; shocking to +witness! It made Maurice forget his own dismay. + +"I was out," he began to explain, "and--" + +But she went on, beads of foam gathering in the corners of her mouth: "I +didn't telephone, for fear _she'd_ get on to it." He could see that she +was angry at her own consideration. "I'd ought to have sent for you +when he come down with it!" ... Where had he been all this time, +anyway!--and her nearly out of her head thinkin' this rotten woman +downstairs was sicking the Board o' Health on to her! "And look how I've +washed her father for her! I'll spit on him if--if--if anything happens +to Jacky. Yes, I tell you, and you mind what I say: If Jacky dies, I'll +kill her--my soul and body, I'll kill her anyway!" + +"Lily, get steady. I'll fix things for you. I'll go to the Board of +Health and see what can be done; just as--as a friend of yours, you +understand." + +From the next room came a wailing voice: "Maw--" + +"Yes, Sweety; in a minute--" She grasped Maurice's hand, clung to it, +kissed it. "Mr. Curtis, I'll never make trouble for you after this! Oh, +I'll go to New York, and live there, if you want me to. I'll do +_anything_, if you just make 'em leave Jacky! (Yes, darling Sweety, +maw's coming.) You'll do it? Oh, I knew you'd do it!" She ran out of the +room. + +He got up, beside himself with perplexity: but even as he tried to think +what on earth he could do, the doctor came. The ambulance would arrive, +he said, with bored cheerfulness, in twenty minutes. Lily, rushing from +Jacky's bedside, flew at him with set teeth, her trembling hands +gripping the white sleeve of his linen jacket. + +"This gentleman's a friend of mine," she said, jerking her head toward +Maurice; "he says you _shan't_ carry Jacky off!" + +The doctor's relief at having a man to talk to was obvious. And while +Maurice was trying to get in a word, there came another whimper from the +room where Jacky lay, red and blotched, talking brokenly to himself: +"Maw!" Lily ran to him, leaving the two men alone. + +"Thank Heaven!" the doctor said; "I'd about as soon argue with a hornet +as a mother. She's nearly crazy! I'll tell you the situation." He told +it, and Maurice listened, frowning. + +"What can be done?" he said; "I--I am only an acquaintance; I hardly +know Mrs. Dale; but she sent for me. She's frantic at the idea of the +boy being taken away from her." + +"He'll _have_ to be taken away! Besides, he'll have ten times better +care in the hospital than he could have here." + +"Can she go with him?" Maurice said. + +"Why, if she can afford to take a private room--" + +"Good heavens! money's no object; anything to keep her from doing some +wild thing!" + +"You a relation?" the doctor asked. + +"Not the slightest. I--knew her husband." + +"The thing for you to do," said the doctor, "is to hustle right out to a +telephone; call up the hospital. Get Doctor Nelson, if you can--" + +"Nelson!" + +"Yes; if not, get Baker; tell him I--" then followed concise directions; +"But try and get Nelson; he's the top man. They're frightfully crowded, +and if you fool with understrappers, you'll get turned down. I'd do it, +but I've got to stay here and see that she doesn't get perfectly crazy." + +Almost before the doctor finished his directions, Maurice was rushing +downstairs.... That next half hour was a nightmare. He ran up the +street, slippery with ice; saw over a drug store the blue sign of the +public telephone, and dashed in--to wait interminably outside the booth! +A girl in a silly hat was drawling into the transmitter. Once Maurice, +pacing frantically up and down, heard her flat laugh; then, to his +dismay, he saw her, through the glass of the door, instead of hanging up +the receiver, drop a coin into the slot.... + +"Damn! _Another_ five minutes!" + +He turned and struck his fist on the counter. "Why the devil don't you +have two booths here?" he demanded. + +The druggist, lounging against the soda-water fountain, smiled calmly: +"You can search _me_. Ask the company." + +"Can't you stop that woman? My business is important. For God's sake +pull her out!" + +"She's telephoning her beau, I guess. Who's going to stop a lady +telephoning her beau? Not me." + +The feather gave a last flirtatious jerk--and the booth was empty. + +Maurice, closing its double doors, and shutting himself into the tiny +box where the fetid air seemed to take him by the throat and the space +was so narrow he could hardly crowd his long legs into it, rushed into +another delay. Wrong number! ... When at last he got the right number +and the hospital, there were the usual deliberate questions; and the, +"I'll connect you with So-and-so's desk." Maurice, sitting with the +receiver to his ear, could feel the blood pounding in his temples. His +mind whirled with the possibilities of what Lily might say in his +absence: "She'll tell the doctor my name--" As his wire was connected, +first with one authority and then with another, each authority asked the +same question, "Are you one of the family?" And to each he gave the same +answer, "No; a friend; the doctor asked me to call you up." + +Finally came the voice of the "top man"--the voice which had spoken in +Lily's narrow hall six years ago, the voice which had joked with Edith +at the Mortons' dinner party, the voice which had burst into extravagant +guffaws under the silver poplar in his own garden--Doctor Nelson's +voice--curt, impersonal: "Who is this speaking?" + +Then Maurice's voice, disguised into a gruff treble, "A friend." + +"One of the family?" + +"No." + +Five minutes later Maurice, coming out of that horrible little booth, +the matter arranged at an expense which, later, would give Jacky's +father some bad moments, was cold from head to foot. When he reached +Lily's house the ambulance was waiting at the door. Upstairs, the doctor +said, "Well?" + +And Lily said: "Did you do it? If you didn't, I'll--" + +"I did," Maurice said. Then he asked if he could be of any further +service. + +"No; the orderly will get him downstairs. He's too heavy for Mrs. Dale +to carry. She's got her things all ready. You--" he said, smiling at +Maurice, "Mr.--? I didn't get your name. You look all in!" + +Maurice shook his head: "I'm all right. Mrs. Dale will you step in here? +I want to speak to you a minute." As Lily preceded him into the dining +room, he said, quickly, to the doctor, "I want to tell her not to worry +about money, you know." To Lily--when he closed the door--he was briefly +ruthless: "I'll pay for everything. But I just want to say, if he +dies--" + +She screamed out, "_No--no!_" + +"He won't," he said, angrily; "but if he does, you are to say his +father's dead. Do you understand? Say his name was--what did you call +it?--William?" + +"I don't know. My God! what difference does it make? Call it anything! +John." + +"Well, say his father was John Dale of New York, and he's dead. Promise +me!" + +She promised--"Honest to God!" her face was furrowed with fright. As +they went back to the doctor Maurice had a glimpse of Lily's bedroom, +where Jacky, rolled in a blanket, was vociferating that he would _not_ +be carried downstairs by the orderly. + +"Oh, Sweety," Lily entreated; "see, nice pretty gentleman! Let him carry +you?" + +"Won't," said Jacky. + +At which Maurice said, decidedly: "Behave yourself, Jacobus! I'll carry +you." + +Instantly Jacky stopped crying: "You throwed away the present I give +you," he said; "but," he conceded, "you may carry me." + +The doctor objected. "It isn't safe--" + +"Oh, let's get it over," Maurice said, sharply; "I shan't see any +children. It's safe enough! Anything to stop this scene!" + +The bothered doctor half consented, and Maurice lifted Jacky, very +gently; as he did so, the little fellow somehow squirmed a hand out of +the infolding blanket, and made a hot clutch for his father's ear; he +gripped it so firmly that, in spite of Maurice's wincing expostulation, +he pulled the big blond head over sidewise until it rested on his own +little head. That burning grip held Maurice prisoner all the way +downstairs; it chained him to the child until they reached the street. +There the clutch relaxed, but for one poignant moment, as Maurice lifted +Jacky into the ambulance, father and son looked into each other's eyes, +and Maurice said--the words suddenly tumbling from his lips: + +"Now, my little Jacky, you'll be good, won't you?" Then the ambulance +rolled softly away, and he stood on the curbstone and felt his heart +swelling in his throat: "Why did I say '_my_'?" As he walked home he +tried to explain the possessing word away: "Of course I'd say 'my' to +any child; it didn't mean anything! But suppose the orderly had heard +me?" Even while he thus denied the Holy Spirit within him, he was +feeling again that hot, ridiculous tug on his ear. "_I_ was the only one +who could manage him," he thought.... "Of course what I said didn't mean +anything." + +He stopped on the bridge and looked down into the water--black and +swift and smooth between floating cakes of ice. Now and then a star +glimmered on a slipping ripple; on the iron bridge farther up the +river a row of lights were strung like a necklace across the empty +darkness.... Somewhere, in the maze of streets at one end of the bridge, +was Eleanor, lying in bed with a desperate headache. Somewhere, in the +maze of streets at the other end of the bridge, was Lily, taking "his" +little Jacky to the hospital. Somewhere, on one of the hillsides beyond +Medfield, was Edith in the schoolhouse. And Eleanor was loving him and +trusting him; and Lily was "blessing him" (so she had told him) for his +goodness; and Edith was "betting on him"! ... "I wonder if anybody was +ever as rotten as I am?" Maurice pondered. + +Then he forgot his "rottenness," and smiled. "He obeyed _me_! Lily +couldn't do a thing with him; what did he mean about the 'present'? I +believe it was that old cigar! He must have seen me pitch it into the +gutter. He wanted me to carry him; wouldn't look at that orderly! What +made him grab my ear?" + +When Maurice said that, down, down, under his rage at Lily, under his +fear of exposure, under his nauseating disgust at himself--something +stirred, something fluttered. The tremor of a moral conception: + +Paternal pride. + +"_What_ a grip!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +After a tornado comes quietness; again the sun shines, and birds sing, +and many small things look up, unhurt. It was incredible to Maurice, +eating his breakfast the next morning, reading his paper, opening his +letters, and glancing at a pale Eleanor, heavy-eyed and silent, that his +world was still the same world that it had been before he had picked up +the sealed telegram on the hall table. He asked Eleanor how she felt; +told her to take care of herself; said he'd not be at home to dinner, +and went off to his office.... He was safe! Those two minutes in the +dining room of Lily's flat, while the white-jacketed orderly was trying +to persuade the protesting Jacky to let him carry him downstairs, had +removed any immediate alarm; Lily had promised not to communicate with +Jacky's father. + +So Maurice, walking to the office, told himself that everything was all +right--but "a close call!" Then he thought of Jacky, who, at his +command, had so instantly "behaved himself"; and of that grip on his +ear; and again that pang of something he did not recognize made him +swallow hard. "Poor little beggar!" he thought: "I wonder how he is? I +wonder if he'll pull through?" He hoped he would. "Tough on Lily, if +anything happens." But his anxiety--though he did not know it--was not +entirely on Lily's account. For the first time in the child's life, +Maurice was aware of Jacky as a possession. The tornado of the night +before--the anger and fear and pity--had plowed down below the surface +of his mind, and touched that subsoil of conscious responsibility for +creation, the realization that, whether through love or through +selfishness, the man who brings a child into this terrible, squalid, +glorious world, is a creator, even as God is the Creator. So Maurice, +sitting at his desk that next day, answering a client on the telephone, +or making an appointment to go and "look at a house," was really feeling +in his heart--not love, of course, but a consciousness of his own +relation to that little flushed, suffering body out in the contagious +ward of the hospital in Medfield. "Will he pull through?" Maurice asked +himself. It was six years ago that, standing at the door of a +yellow-brick apartment house, with two fingers looped through the +strings of a box of roses, Jacky's father had said, "Perhaps it will be +born dead!" How dry his lips had been that day with the hope of death! +Now, suddenly, his lips were dry with fear that the kid wouldn't pull +through--which would be "tough on Lily." His face was stern with this +new emotion of anxiety which was gradually becoming pain; he even forgot +how scared he had been at the thought that Eleanor _might_ have opened +that telegram. "I swear, I wish I hadn't hurt his feelings about that +cigar stub!" he said. Then he remembered Eleanor: "I could wring Lily's +neck!" But Eleanor hadn't opened the telegram; and Maurice hoped Jacky +would get well--because "it would be tough on Lily" if he didn't. Thus +he dismissed his wife. So long as Lily's recklessness had not done any +harm, it was easy to dismiss her--so very far had she receded into the +dull, patiently-to-be-endured, background of life! + +The Eleanor of the next few weeks, who seemed just a little more +melancholy and silent than usual, a little more devoted to old Bingo, +did not attract his attention in any way. But when Edith came in on the +following Sunday, he had his wife sufficiently on his mind to say, in a +quick aside: + +"Edith, don't give me away on being sort of upset last Sunday night, +will you?" (As he spoke, he remembered that swift kiss. "Nice little +Skeezics!" he thought.) But he finished his sentence with perfect +matter-of-factness: "it was just a--a little personal worry. I don't +want Eleanor bothered, you understand?" + +"Of course," said Edith, gravely + +And so it was that in another month or two, with reliance upon Edith's +discretion, and satisfaction in a recovering Jacky, the track of the +tornado in Maurice's mind was quite covered up with the old, ugly, +commonplace of furtive security. In the security Maurice was conscious, +in a kindly way, that poor old Eleanor looked pretty seedy; so he +brought her some flowers once in a while; not as often as he would have +liked to, for, though he had more money now, eight weeks of a private +room in a hospital "kind o' makes a dent in your income," Maurice told +himself; "but I don't begrudge it," he thought; "I'm glad the kid got +well." + +So, after that night of terror and turmoil,--when Eleanor had +fainted--Maurice's life in his own house settled again into the old +tranquil forlornness, enlivened only by those Sunday-afternoon visits +from Edith. + +And Eleanor?... There had been some dumb days, when she moved about the +house or sat opposite Maurice at table, or exercised Bingo, like an +automaton. Sometimes she sat at her window, looking down through the +bare branches of the poplar at the still, wintry garden; the painted +table, heaped with grimy snow slowly melting in the chill March +sunshine; the dead stalks of the lilies on each side of the icy bricks +of the path; the rusty bars of the iron gate, through which, now and +then, came the glimmer, a block away, of the river--"their river"! +Sometimes for an hour her mind numbly considered these things; then +would come a fierce throb of pain: "He was all the time saying he +'couldn't afford' things; that was so he could give her money, I +suppose?" Then blank listlessness again. She did not suffer very much. +She was too stunned to suffer. She merely said to herself, vaguely, +"I'll leave him." It may have been on the third day that, when she said, +"I will leave him; he has been false to me," her mind whispered back, +very faintly, like an echo, "He has been false to himself." For just a +moment she loved him enough to think that he had sinned. _Maurice has +sinned!_ When she said that, the dismay of it made her forget herself. +She said it with horror, and after a while she added a question: "_Why_ +did he do it?" Then came beating its way up through anger and wounded +pride, and suffering love, still another question: "Was it my fault that +he did it? Did he fall in love with that frightful woman because I +failed him?" Instantly her mind sheered off from this question: "I did +everything I knew how to make him happy! I would have died to make him +happy. I adored him! How could he care for that common, ignorant woman I +saw on the porch? A woman who wasn't a lady. A--a _bad_ woman!" But yet +the question repeated itself: "Why? Why?" It demanded an answer: Why did +Maurice--high-minded, pure-hearted, overflowing with a love as +beautiful, and as perfect as Youth itself--how _could_ Maurice be drawn +to such a woman? And by and by the answer struggled to her lips, tearing +her heart as it came with dreadful pain: "He did it because I didn't +make him happy." + +Just as Maurice, recognizing the responsibility of creation, had, at the +touch of his son's little hand, felt the tremor of a moral conception, +so now Eleanor, barren so long! felt the pangs of a birth of spiritual +responsibility: "I didn't make him happy, so--Oh, my poor Maurice, it +was my fault!"... But of course this divine self-forgetfulness in +self-reproach, was as feeble as any new-born thing. When it stirred, and +uttered little elemental sounds--"my fault, my fault"--she forgot the +wrong he had done her, in seeing the wrong he had done himself.... "Oh, +my Maurice--my Maurice!" But most of the time she did not hear this +frail cry of the sense of sin! She thought entirely and angrily of +herself; she said, over and over, that she was going to leave him. She +was absorbed in hideous and poignant imaginings, based on that organic +curiosity which is experienced only by the woman who meditates upon "the +other woman." When these visions overwhelmed her, she said she wouldn't +leave him--she would hold him! She wouldn't give him up to that +frightful creature, whom he--kissed.... "Oh, my God! He _kisses_ her!" +No; she wouldn't give him up; she would just accuse him; just tell him +she knew he had been false; tell him there was no use lying about it! +Then, perhaps, say she would forgive him?... Yes; if he would promise to +throw the vile woman over, she would forgive him. She did not, of +course, reflect that forgiveness is not a thing that can be promised; it +cannot be manufactured. It comes in exact proportion as we love the +sinner more and self less. + +And forgiveness is not forgetfulness! It is more love. + +Eleanor did not know this. So, except for those occasional cooling and +divine moments of blaming herself, she scorched and shriveled in the +flames of self-love. And as usual, she was speechless. There were many +of these silent hours (which were such a matter of course to Maurice +that he never noticed them!) before she gathered herself together, and +decided that she would not leave him. She would fight! How? "Oh, I +_can't_ think!" she moaned. So those first days passed--days of impotent +determinations, which whirled and alternated, and contradicted each +other. + +Once Maurice, glancing at her over his newspaper at breakfast, +thought to himself, "She hasn't said a word since she got up! Poor +Eleanor!..." Then he remembered how he had once supposed these silences +of hers were full of things too lovely and profound for words! He +frowned, and read the sporting page, and forgot her silences, and her, +too. But he did not forget Jacky. "I'll buy the kid a ball," he was +thinking.... + +So the days passed, and each day Eleanor dredged her silences, to find +words: "What shall I say to him?" for of course she must say +_something_! She must "have it out with him," as the phrase is. +Sometimes she would decide to burst into a statement of the fact: +"Somebody called 'L. D.' has a claim upon you, because she sends for you +when 'Jacky' is sick. I am certain that 'Jacky' is your child! I am +certain that 'L.D.' is Mrs. Dale. I am certain that you don't love +me...." And he would say--Then her heart would stand still: What +_would_ he say? He would say, "I stopped loving you _because you are +old_." And to that would come her own terrible assent: "I had no right +to marry him--he was only nineteen. I had no right..." (Thus did that +new-born sense of her own complicity in Maurice's sin raise its feeble +voice!) And little by little the Voice became stronger: "I didn't make +him happy _not_ because I was old, but because I was selfish...." So, in +alternating gusts of anger and fear, and outraged pride,--and +self-forgetting horror for Maurice,--her soul began to awake. Again and +again she counted the reasons why he had not been happy, beginning with +the obvious reason, his youth and her age: But that did not explain it. +"We had no children." That did not explain it! Nor, "I wasn't a good +housekeeper"; nor, "I didn't do things with him ... I didn't skate, and +walk, and joke with him"; nor, "I didn't entertain him. Auntie always +said men must be entertained. I--I am stupid." There was no explanation +in such things; neither dullness nor inefficiency was enough to drive a +man like Maurice Curtis into dishonor or faithlessness! Then came the +real explanation--which jealousy so rarely puts into words: "_I was +selfish._" At first, this bleak truthfulness was only momentary. Almost +immediately she was swept from the noble pain of knowing that Maurice +had been false to himself; swept from the sense of her own share in that +falseness, swept back to the insult to _herself_! Back to self-love. +With this was the fear that if she accused him, if she told him that she +knew he was false to her, if she made him very angry, he would leave +her, and go and live with this woman--who had given him a child ... Yet +every morning when she got up, she would say to herself, "I'll tell him +to-day." And every night when she went to bed, "To-morrow." + +Still she did not "have it out with him." Then weeks pushed in between +her and that Sunday afternoon when the resealed telegram had been put on +the hall table. And by and by it was a month, and still she could not +speak. And after a while it was June--June, and the anniversary (which +Maurice happened to forget, and to which Eleanor's suffering love would +not permit her to refer!). By that June day, that marked nine of the +golden fifty years, Eleanor had done what many another sad and injured +woman has done--dug a grave in her heart, and buried Trust and Pride in +it; and then watched the grave night and day. Sometimes, as she watched, +her thought was: "If he would tell me the truth, even now, I would +forgive him. It is his living a lie, every day, every minute, that I +can't bear!" Then she would look at Maurice--sitting at the piano, +perhaps, playing dreamily, or standing up in front of the fireplace +filling his pipe, and poking old Bingo with his foot and telling him he +was getting too fat; "You're 'losin' your figger,' Bingo!" Eleanor, +looking and listening, would say to herself, "Is he thinking of Mrs. +Dale, _now_?" And all day long, when she was alone (watching the grave), +she would think: "Where is he _now_? Is he with her? Oh, I think I will +follow him,--and _watch_.... Was he with her last night when he said he +had gone to the theater? ... Is he lying to me when he says he has to go +away on business, and is he really with her? It's the _lying_ I can't +bear! If only he would not lie to me!... Does she call him 'Maurice'? +Perhaps she called him 'darling'?" The thought of an intimacy like +_that_, was oil on the vehement flame! + +"You look dreadfully, Eleanor," Mrs. Newbolt told her once, her pale, +protruding eyes full of real anxiety. "I'd go and see a doctor, if I +were you." + +"I'm well enough," Eleanor said, listlessly. + +"At your age," said her aunt, "you never can tell _what's goin' on +inside_! Here's a piece of candy for Bingo--he's too fat. My dear father +used to say that a man's soul and his gizzard could hold a lot of +secrets. It's the same with women. So look out for your gizzard. Here, +Bingo!" + +Eleanor was silent. She had just come from Mrs. O'Brien's, where she had +given the slowly failing Donny a happy hour, and she was tired. Mrs. +Newbolt found her alone in the garden, sitting under the shimmering +silver poplar. The lilies were just coming into bloom, and on the +age-blackened iron trellis of the veranda the wistaria had flung its +purple scarves among the thin fringes of its new leaves. The green tea +table was bare: "I'd give you a cup of tea," Eleanor said, "but Maurice +is going out to dinner, so I told Mary not to keep the fire up, just for +me." + +"Maurice goin' out to dinner! Why, it's your weddin' day! Eleanor, if I +have one virtue, it's candor: Maurice oughtn't to be out to dinner so +much--and on your anniversary, too! Of course, it's just what I expected +when you married him; but that's done, and I'm not one to keep throwin' +it up at you. If you want to hold him, _now_, you've got to keep your +figger, and set a good table. Yes, and leave the door open! Edith has a +figger. She entertains him, just the way I used to entertain your dear +uncle--by talkin'. I'd have Bingo put away, if I were you; he's too old +to be comfortable. You got to make him _want_ to sit by the fire and +knit! But here you are, sittin' by yourself, lookin' like a dead fish. A +man don't like a dead fish--unless it's cooked! I used to broil shad for +your dear uncle." For an instant she had no words to express that +culinary perfection by which she had kept the deceased Mr. Newbolt's +stomach faithful to her. "Yes, you've got to be entertainin', or else +he'll go up the chimney, and out to dinner, and forget what Day it is!" + +Eleanor's sudden pallor made her stop midway in her torrent of +frankness; it was then she said, again, really alarmed: "See a doctor! +You know," she added, jocosely; "if you die, he'll marry Edith; and you +wouldn't like that!" + +"No," Eleanor said, faintly, "I wouldn't like that." + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +When a rather shaky Jacky was discharged from the hospital, Lily +notified Maurice of his recovery and added that she had moved. + +I couldn't [Lily wrote] go back to that woman who turned me out when +Jacky was sick: so I got me a little house on Maple Street--way down at +the far end from where I was before, so you needn't worry about anybody +seeing me. My rent's higher, but there's a swell church on the next +street. I meant to move, anyway, because I found out that there was a +regular huzzy living in the next house on Ash Street, painted to beat +the band! And I don't want Jacky to see that kind. I've got five +mealers. But eggs is something fierce. I am writing these few lines to +say Jacky's well, and I hope they find you in good health. It was real +nice in you to fix that up at the hospital for me. I hope you'll come +and see us one of these days. + +Your friend, + +LILY. + +P.S.--Of course I'm sorry for her poor old father. + +Reading this, Maurice said to himself that it would be decent to go and +see Lily; which meant, though he didn't know it, that he wanted to see +Jacky. He wasn't aware of anything in the remotest degree like affection +for the child; he just had this inarticulate purpose of seeing him, +which took the form of saying that it would be "decent" to inquire about +him. However, he did not yield to this formless wish until June. Then, +on that very afternoon when Mrs. Newbolt had been so shatteringly frank +to Eleanor, he walked down to the "far end of Maple Street." And as he +walked, he suddenly remembered that it was "The Day"! "Great Scott! I +forgot it!" he thought. "Funny, Eleanor didn't remind me. Maybe she's +forgotten, too?" But he frowned at the bad taste of such an errand on +such a day, and would have turned back--but at that moment he saw what +(with an eagerness of which he was not conscious!) he had been looking +for--a tow-headed boy, who, pulling a reluctant dog along by a string +tied around his neck, was following a hand organ. And Maurice forgot his +wedding anniversary! + +He freed the half-choked puppy, and told his son what he thought. But +Jacky, glaring up at the big man who interfered with his joys, told his +father what _he_ thought: + +"If I was seven years old, I'd lick the tar out of you! But I'm six, +going on seven." + +Maurice, looking down on this miniature self, was, to his astonishment, +quite diverted. "You need a licking yourself, young man! Is your mother +at home?" + +Jacky wouldn't answer. + +Maurice took a quarter out of his pocket and held it up. "Know what that +is?" + +Jacky, advancing slowly, looked at the coin, but made no response. + +"Come back to the house and find your mother, and I'll give it to you." + +Jacky, keeping at a displeased distance behind the visitor, followed him +to his own gate, then darted into the house, yelled, "Maw!" returned, +and held out his hand. + +Maurice gave him the quarter and went into the parlor, where the south +window was full of plants, and the sunshine was all a green fragrance of +rose geraniums. When a shiningly clean, smiling Lily appeared--evidently +from the kitchen, for she was carrying a plate of hot gingerbread--she +found Maurice sitting down, his hands in his pockets, his long legs +stretched out in front of him, baiting Jacky with questions, and +chuckling at the courageous impudence of the youngster. + +"He's no fool," said Maurice to himself. "This kid is a handful!" he +told Lily ... "You're a bully cook!" + +"You bet he is!" Lily said, proudly. "Have another piece? I've got to +take some over to Ash Street for that poor old man.... Oh yes; I _was_ +kind of put out at his daughter. Wouldn't you think, if anyone was +enough of a lady to wash your father, you wouldn't go to the Board of +Health about her? But there! The old gentleman's silly, so I have to +take him some gingerbread.... Say, I must tell you something funny--he's +the cutest young one! I gave him five cents for the missionary box, and +he went and bought a jew's-harp! I had to laugh, it was so cute in him. +But I declare, sometimes I don't know what I'm going to do with him, +he's that fresh!" + +"Spank him," Maurice advised. + +Lily looked annoyed; "He suits me--and he belongs to me." + +"Of course he does! You needn't think that I--" he paused; something +would not let him finish those denying words: "that _I_--want him." +Jacky, standing with stocky legs wide apart, his hands behind him, his +fearless blue eyes looking right into Maurice's, made his father's heart +quicken. Jacky was Lily's, of course, but-- + +So they looked at each other--the big, blond, handsome father and the +little son--and Jacky said, "Mr. Curtis, does God see everything?" + +"Why, yes," Maurice said, rather confused, "He does; Jacky. So," he +ended, with proper solemnity, "you must be a very good boy." + +"Why," said Jacky, "will He get one in on me if I ain't?" + +"So I'm told," said Maurice. + +"Does He see _everything_?" Jacky pressed, frowning; and Maurice said: + +"Yes, sir! Everything." + +Jacky reflected and sighed. "Well," he said, "I should think He'd laugh +when he sees your shoes." + +"Why! what's the matter with my shoes?" his discomfited father said, +looking down at his feet. "My shoes are all right!" he defended himself. + +"Big," Jacky said, shyly. + +Maurice roared, crushed a geranium leaf in his hand, and asked his son +what he was going to be when he grew up; "Theology seems to be your long +suit, Jacobus. Better go into the Church." + +Jacky shook his head. "I'm going to be a enginair. Or a robber." + +"I'd try engineering if I were you. People don't like robbers." + +"But _I'll_ be a _nice_ robber," Jacky explained, anxiously. + +"I'll bring you a train of cars some day," Maurice said. + +"Say, 'Thank you,' Jacky," Lily instructed him. + +Again Jacky shook his head. "He 'ain't gimme the cars yet." + +Maurice was immensely amused. "He wants the goods before he signs a +receipt! I'll buy some cars for him." + +"My soul and body!" said Lily, following him to the door; "that boy gets +'round everybody! Well, what do you suppose? I go to church with him! +Ain't that rich? Me! He don't like church--though he's crazy about the +music. But I take him. And I don't have to listen to what the man says. +I just plan out the food for a week. Sometimes,"--her amber eyes were +lovely with anxiously pondering love--"sometimes I don't know but what +I'll make a preacher of him? Some preachers marry money, and get real +gentlemanly. And then again I think I'd rather have him a clubman. But, +anyway, I'm savin' up every last cent to educate him!" + +"He's worth it," Maurice said, and there was pride in his voice; "yes, +we must--I mean, you must educate him." + +On his way home, stopping to buy some flowers for his wife, Maurice +found himself thinking of Jacky as a boy ... as a mighty bright boy, who +must be educated. As--_his_ boy! + +"You forgot the day," he challenged Eleanor, good-naturedly, when he +handed her the violets. + +She said, briefly, "No; I hadn't forgotten." + +The pain in her worn face made him wince.... But he was able to forget +it in thinking of the toys he had ordered for Jacky on the way home. +"I'd like to see him playing with them," he said to himself, reflecting +upon the track, and the engine, and the very expensive wonder of a tiny +snow plow. But he didn't yield to the impulse to see the boy for a +month. For one thing, he was afraid to. The recollection of that day +when Lily's doorstep had been the edge of a volcano still made him +shiver; and as Eleanor had briefly but definitely refused to take her +usual "vacation" at Green Hill without him, there was no time when he +could be sure that she would not wander out to Medfield! So it was not +until one August afternoon, when he knew that she was going to a +concert, that he went to Maple Street. But first he bought a top;--and +just as he was leaving the office, he went back and rummaged in a +pigeonhole in his desk and found a tiny gilt hatchet; "it will amuse +him," he thought, cynically. + +Lily was not at home; but Jacky was sitting on the back doorstep, +twanging his jew's-harp. He was shy at first, and tongue-tied; then +wildly excited on learning that there were "presents" in Mr. Curtis's +pocket. When the top was produced, he dropped his jew's-harp to watch it +spin on a string held between Maurice's hands; then he devoted himself +to the hatchet, and chopped his father's knee, energetically. "Pity +there's no cherry tree round," said Maurice; "Look here, Jacobus, I want +you always to tell the truth. Understand?" + +"Huh?" said Jacky. However, under the spell of his gifts he became quite +conversational; he said that one of these here automobiles drooled a lot +of oil. "An' it ran into the gutter. An' say, Mr. Curtis, I saw a +rainbow in a puddle. An' say, it was handsome." After that he got out +his locomotive and its cars. Maurice mended a broken switch for him, and +then they laid the tracks on the kitchen floor, and the big father and +the little son pushed the train under a table; that was a roundhouse, +Maurice told Jacky. ("Why don't they have a square house?" Jacky said); +and beneath the lounge--which was a tunnel, the bigger boy announced +("What is a tunnel?" said Jacky)--and over Lily's ironing board +stretched between two stools; "That's a trestle." ("What grows +trestles?" Jacky demanded.) Exercise, and a bombardment of questions, +brought the perspiration out on Maurice's forehead. He took off his +coat, and arranged the tracks so that the switches would stop derailing +trains. In the midst of it the door opened, and Jacky said, sighing, +"Maw." + +Lily came in, smiling and good-natured, and very red-faced with the +fatigue of carrying a hideous leprous-leaved begonia she had bought; but +when she saw the intimacy of the railroad, she frowned. "He'll wear out +his pants, crawling round that way," she said, sharply. "Now, you get +up, Jacky, and don't be bothering Mr. Curtis." + +"He brung me two presents. I like presents. Mr. Curtis, does God eat +stars?" + +"God doesn't eat," Maurice said, amused; "I'd say 'brought,' instead of +'brung,' if I were you." + +"Hasn't He got any mouth?" Jacky said, appalled. + +"Well, no," Maurice began (entering that path of unanswerable questions +in which all parents are ordained to walk); "You see, God--why, God, He +hasn't any mouth. He--" + +"Has He got a beak?" Jacky said, intensely interested. + +"Lily, for Heaven's sake," Maurice implored, "doesn't he _ever_ stop?" + +"Never," said Lily, resignedly, "except when he's asleep. And nobody can +answer him. But I wish he'd let up on God. I tell him whatever pops into +my head. When it comes to God, I guess one thing 's as true as another. +Anyway, nobody can prove it ain't." + +Just as Maurice was going away, his theological son detained him by a +little clutch at his coat. "I'll give you a present next time you come," +Jacky said, shyly. + +Even the hope of a present did not lure Maurice out to Maple Street very +soon. But it was self-preservation, as well as fear of discovery, which +kept him away. "If I saw much of him I might--well, get kind of fond of +the little beggar." + +The same thought may have occurred to Lily; at any rate, when, four +weeks later, Jacky's father came again; she didn't welcome him in +quite her old, sweet, hospitable way; but Jacky welcomed him!... Jacky +knew his mother as his slave; he showed her an absent-minded affection +when he wanted to get anything out of her; but he knew Mr. Curtis as +"The Man"--the man who "ordered him round," to be sure, but who +gave him presents and who,--Jacky boasted to some of his gutter +companions,--"could spit two feet farther than the p'leesman." + +"Aw, how do you know?" the other boys scoffed. + +Jacky, evading the little matter of evidence, said, haughtily, "I +_know_." + +When "The Man" declared that next fall Jacky was to go to school, +_regularly_, and not according to his own sweet will, Jacky waited until +he was alone with his mother to kick and scream and say he wouldn't. +Lily slapped him, and said, "Mr. Curtis will give you a present if +you're on time every morning!" + +She told Maurice to what she had committed him: "You see, I'm bound to +educate him, and make a gentleman of him, so he can have an automobile, +and marry a society girl. No chippy is going to get Jacky--smoking +cigarettes, and saying 'La! La!' to any man that comes along. I hate +those cheap girls. Look at the paint on 'em. I don't see how they have +the face to show themselves on the street! Well, _I_ can't make him +prompt at school; but he'll be Johnny-on-the-spot if you say so. My soul +and body, he'll do anything for you! He's saved up all his prayer money +and bought a lot of chewing gum for you." + +"Great Scott!" said Maurice, appalled at the experimental obligations +which his son's gift might involve. + +"So I told him that next winter you'd give him a box of candy every +Saturday if he was on time all the week. I ain't asking you to go to +any expense," she pleaded; "I'll buy the candy. But you promise him--" + +"I'll promise him a spanking if he's _not_ on time, once," Maurice +retorted; "for Heaven's sake, Lily, let up on spoiling him!" + +At which Lily said: "He's my boy! I guess I know how to bring him up!" + +Maurice, the next morning, looking across his breakfast table at Eleanor +and remembering this remark, said to himself: "Lily needn't worry; I +don't want him--and I couldn't have him if I did! But what _is_ going to +become of him?" + +His new, slowly awakening sense of responsibility expressed itself in +this unanswerable question, which irritated his mind as a splinter might +have irritated his flesh. He thought of it constantly--thought of it +when Eleanor sang (with a slurred note once or twice), "O sweet, O sweet +content!" Thought of it when his conscience reminded him that he must +have tea with her in the garden under the poplar on Sunday afternoons. +Thought of it when he and she went up to the Houghtons', to spend Labor +Day (she would not go without him!). Perhaps the thing that gave him +some moments of forgetfulness was a quite different irritation which he +felt when, on reaching Green Hill, he discovered that John Bennett, too, +was spending Labor Day in the mountains. Johnny had come he said, to see +his father.... "I wouldn't have known it if he hadn't mentioned it!" +said Doctor Bennett; for, Johnny practically lived at the Houghtons', +where Edith was so painstakingly kind to him that he was a good deal +discouraged; but the two families made pleasing deductions! Mary +Houghton intimated as much to Maurice. + +"What!" he said. "Are they engaged?" + +"Well, no; not _yet_." + +There was a little pause; then Maurice (this was one of the moments when +he forgot Jacky's future!) said, with great heartiness, "Old John's in +luck!" He and Mrs. Houghton were sitting on the porch in that somnolent +hour after dinner, before she went upstairs to take a nap, and Maurice +should go over to the Bennetts' for singles with Johnny; Eleanor was +resting. Out on the lawn in the breezy sun and shadow under the tulip +tree, Edith, fresh from a shampoo, was reading. Now and then she tossed +her head like a colt, to make her fluffy hair blow about in a glittering +brown nimbus. + +Maurice got up and sauntered over to her. "Coming to see me wallop +Johnny?" + +"Maybe; if my horrid old hair ever dries." + +Maurice looked at the "horrid old hair," and wished he could put out his +hand and touch it. He was faintly surprised at himself that he didn't do +it! "How mad I used to make her when I pulled her hair!" Now, he +couldn't even put a finger on it. He remembered the night of Lily's +distracted telegram, when he had taken Edith to Fern Hill, and she had +"bet on him," and had been again, just for an instant, so entirely the +"little girl" of their old frank past, that she had _kissed him_! "So, +why can't I touch her hair, now?" he pondered; "we are just like brother +and sister." But he knew he couldn't. Aloud, he said, "Don't be lazy, +Skeezics," and lounged off toward Doctor Bennett's. His face was heavy. + +At the doctor's, John, sitting on a gate post, waiting for him, yelled, +derisively: "You're late! 'Fraid of getting walloped? Where's Buster?" + +"She's forgotten all about you. Get busy!" Maurice commanded. + +They played, neither of them with much zest, and both of them with +glances toward the road. The walloping was fairly divided; but it was +Maurice who gave out first, and said he had to go home. ("Eleanor'll be +hunting for me, the first thing I know," he thought.) + +"Tell Edith I'll come over to-night," Johnny called after him. + +"I'm not carrying _billets-doux_," Maurice retorted. "I suppose," he +thought, listlessly, "it will be a short engagement." He went home by +the path through the woods, and halfway back Edith met him--the shining +hair dried, but inclined to tumble over her ears, so that her hat +slipped about on her head. She said: + +"Johnny lick you?" + +"Johnny? No! He's not up to it!" They both grinned, and Maurice sat down +on a wayside log to put a knot in a broken shoestring. Edith sat down, +too, trying to keep her hat on, and cursing (she said) the unreliability +of her hair. The shoestring mended, Maurice batted a tall fern with his +racket. + +"Eleanor's sort of forlorn, Maurice?" Edith said. "Generally is." He +slashed at the fern, and she heard him sigh. "That time she dragged me +down the mountain took it out of her." + +Edith nodded; then she said, with her straight look: "You're a perfect +lamb, Maurice! You are awfully"--she wanted to say "patient," but there +was an implication in that; so she said, lamely--"nice to Eleanor." + +"The Lord knows I ought to be!" he said, cynically. + +"Yes; she just about killed herself to save you," Edith agreed. + +"Oh, not because of that!" + +The misery in his voice startled her; she said, quickly, "How do you +mean, Maurice? I don't understand." + +"I ought to be 'nice' to her." + +"But you are! You are!" + +"I'm not." + +"Maurice, I'm awfully fond of Eleanor; you won't think I'm finding +fault, or anything? But sometimes, when she doesn't feel very well, +she--you--I mean, you really _are_ a lamb, Maurice!" + +Edith was twenty that summer--a strong, gay creature; but her old, +ridiculous, incorrigible candor (and that honest kiss in the darkness!) +made her still a child to Maurice.... Yet Johnny Bennett was going to +marry her!... Maurice rested his chin on his left fist, and batted the +fern; then he said: + +"I've been infernally mean to Eleanor. It's little enough to be 'nice,' +as you call it, now." + +She flew to his defense. "Talk sense! You never did a mean thing in your +life." + +His shrug fired her into a frankness which she regretted the next +minute. "Maurice, you are too good for Eleanor--or anybody," she ended, +hastily. + +He gave her a look of entreaty for understanding--though he knew, he +thought, that in her ignorance of life she couldn't understand even if +she had been told! Yet for the mere relief of speaking, he skirted the +ugly truth: + +"I can't be too patient with her when she's forlorn, because I--I +haven't played the game with her." + +"It's up to her to forgive that!" + +"She doesn't know it." + +"Maurice! You haven't a secret from Eleanor?" + +Her dismay was like a stab. "Edith, I can't help it! It was a long time +ago--but it would upset her to know that I'd--well, failed her in any +way." His face was so wrung that Edith could have cried; but she said +what she thought: + +"Secrets are horrid, Maurice. You've made a mistake." + +"A 'mistake'?" He almost laughed at the devilish humor of that little +word 'mistake,' as applied to his ruined life. "Well, yes, Edith; I made +a 'mistake,' all right." + +"Oh, I don't mean a 'mistake' as to this thing you say that Eleanor +wouldn't like," Edith said. "I mean not telling her." + +He shook his head; with that nagging thought of Jacky in the back of his +mind, it was impossible not to smile at her dogmatic ignorance. + +"Because," Edith explained, "secrets trip you into fibbing." + +"You bet they do! I'm quite an accomplished liar." + +Edith did not smile; she spoke with impatient earnestness: "That's +perfectly silly; you are not a liar! You couldn't lie to save your life, +and you know it." Maurice laughed. "Why, Maurice, don't you suppose I +know you, through and through? _I_ know what you are!--a 'perfec' gentil +knight.'" + +She laughed, and Maurice threw up his hands. + +"Bouquets," Edith conceded, grinning; "but I won't hand out any more, so +you needn't fish! Well, I don't know what on earth you've done, and I +don't care; and you can't tell me, of course! But one thing I do know; +it isn't fair to Eleanor not to tell her, because--" + +"My dear child--" + +"Because she wouldn't really mind, she's so awfully devoted to you. Oh, +Maurice, do tell Eleanor!" Then, even as she spoke, she was frightened; +what was this thing that he did not dare to tell Eleanor?--"or me?" +Edith thought. It couldn't be that Maurice--was not good? Edith quailed +at herself. She had a quick impulse to say, "Forgive me, Maurice, for +even thinking of such a horrid thing!" But all she said, aloud, briefly, +was, "As I see it, telling Eleanor would be playing the game." + +Maurice put his hand over her fist, clenched with conviction on her +knee. "Skeezics," he said, "you are the soundest thing the Lord ever +made! As it happens, it's a thing I can't talk about--to anybody. But +I'll never forget this, Edith. And ... dear, I'm glad you're going to be +happy; you deserve the best man on earth, and old Johnny comes mighty +darned near being the best!" + +Edith, frowning, rose abruptly. "Please don't talk that way. I hate that +sort of talk! Johnny is my friend; that's all. So, please never--" + +"I won't," Maurice said, meekly; but some swift exultation made him add +to himself, "Poor old Johnny!" His face was radiant. + +As for Edith, she hardly spoke all the way back to the house. But not +because of "poor old Johnny"! She was absorbed by that intuition--which +she did not, she told herself, believe. Yet it clamored in her mind: +Maurice had done something wrong. Something so wrong, that he couldn't +speak of it, even to her! Then it must be--? "No! _that's_ impossible!" +But with this recoil from a disgusting impossibility, came an upsurge of +something she had never felt in her life--something not unlike that +emotion she had once called Bingoism--a resentful consciousness that +Maurice had not been as completely and confidentially her friend as she +was his! + +But Edith hadn't a mean fiber in her! Instantly, on the heels of that +small pain came a greater and nobler pain: "I can't bear it if he has +done anything wrong! But if he has, it's some wicked woman's fault." As +she said that, anger at an injury done to Maurice made her almost forget +that first virginal repulsion--and made her entirely forget that +fleeting pain of knowing that she had not meant as much to him as he +meant to her! "But he _hasn't_ done anything wrong," she insisted; "he +wouldn't look at a horrid? woman!" + +"For Heaven's sake, Edith," Maurice remonstrated; "this isn't any +Marathon! Go slow. I'm not in any hurry to get home." + +"I am," Edith said, briefly. She was in a great hurry! She wanted to be +alone, and argue to herself that she had been guilty of a dreadful +disloyalty to him.... "Maurice? Why! He would be the last man in the +world to--to do _that_,--darling old Maurice! He has simply had a crush +on somebody, and likes her better than he likes Eleanor--or me; but +_that's_ nothing. Eleanor deserves it; and very likely I do, too! But +he's so frightfully honorable about Eleanor--he's a perfect crank on +honor!--that he blames himself for even that." By this time the +possibility that the unknown somebody was "horrid" had become +unthinkable; she was probably terribly attractive, and Maurice had a +crush on ... "though, of course, she can't be really nice," Edith +thought; "Maurice simply doesn't see through her. Boys are so stupid! +They don't know girls," Again there was a Bingo moment of hot dislike +for the "girl," whoever she was!--and she walked faster and faster. + +Maurice, striding along beside her, was thinking of the irony of the +"bouquet" she had thrown at him, and the innocence of that "Tell +Eleanor"! "What a child she is still! And she's not in love with +Johnny--" He didn't understand his exhilaration when he said that, but, +except when he reproached her for tearing ahead, it kept him silent... + +Supper was ready when they got home, so Edith had no chance to be +solitary, and after supper Johnny Bennett dropped in. When he took his +reluctant departure ("Confound him!" Maurice thought, impatiently, "he +has on his sitting breeches to-night!") Maurice told Edith to come into +the garden with him, and listen to the evening primroses; "They 'blossom +with a silken burst of sound'--they _do_!" he insisted, for she jeered +at the word "listen." + +"They don't!" she said, and ran down the steps, flitting ahead of him in +the dusk like a white moth. In their preoccupation, they neither of them +looked at Eleanor; sitting silently on the porch between Mr. and Mrs. +Houghton. They went, between the box hedges, to the primrose border, and +Maurice quoted: + +"Silent they stood. +Hand clasped in hand, in breathless hush around! +And saw her shyly doff her soft green hood, +And blossom--with a silken burst of sound! + +"Let's clasp hands," Maurice suggested. + +"No, thank you," said Edith. And so they watched and listened. A tightly +twisted bud loosened half a petal--then another half--and another--until +it was all a shimmering whorl of petals, each caught at one side to the +honeyed crosspiece of the pistil; then: "_There!_" said Maurice. "Did +you hear it?"--all the silken disks were loose, and the flower cup, +silver-gilt, spilled its fragrance into the stillness! + +"It was the dream of a sound," she admitted + +Her voice was a dream sound, too, he thought; a wordless tenderness for +her flooded his mind, as the perfume of the primroses flooded the night. +It seemed as if the lovely ignorance of her was itself a perfume! "'Tell +Eleanor'! She doesn't know the wickedness of the world, and I don't want +her to." He put his hand on her shoulder in the old, brotherly way--but +drew it back as if something had burned him! That recoil should have +revealed things to him, but it didn't. So far as his own consciousness +went, he was too intent on what he called "the square deal" for Eleanor, +to know what had happened to him; all he knew was that Edith, all of a +sudden, was grown up! Her childishness was gone. He mustn't even put his +hand on her shoulder! He had an uneasy moment of wondering--"Girls are +so darned knowing, nowadays!"--whether she might be suspicious as to +what that secret was, which she had advised him to "tell Eleanor"? But +that was only for a moment; "Edith's not that kind of a girl. And, +anyway, she'd never think of such a thing of me--which makes me all the +more rotten!" So he clutched at Edith's undeserved faith in him, and +said, "She'll never think of _that_." Still, she was grown up ... and he +mustn't touch her. (This was one of the times when he was not worrying +about Jacky!) + +Edith, talking animatedly of primroses, had her absorbing thoughts, too; +they were nothing but furious denial! "Maurice--horrid? Never!" Then, on +the very breath of "Never," came again the insistent reminder: "But he +could tell _me_ anything, except--" So, thinking of just one thing, and +talking of many other things, she walked up and down the primrose path +with Maurice. They neither of them wanted to go back to the three older +people: the father and mother--and wife. + +Eleanor, on the porch, strained her eyes into the dusk; now and then she +caught a glimmer of the dim whiteness of Edith's skirt, or heard +Maurice's voice. She was suffering so that by and by she said, briefly, +to her hosts--her trembling with unshed tears--"Good night," and went +upstairs, alone--an old, crying woman. Eleanor had been unreasonable +many times; but this time she was not unreasonable! That night anyone +could have seen that she was, to Maurice, as nonexistent as any other +elderly woman might have been. The Houghtons saw it, and when she went +into the house Mary Houghton said, with distress: + +"She suffers!" + +Her husband nodded, and said he wished he was asleep. "Why," he +demanded, "are women greater fools about this business than men? Poor +Maurice ventures to talk to Edith of 'shoes and ships and sealing +wax,'--and Eleanor weeps! Why are there more jealous women than men?" + +"Because," Mary Houghton said, dryly, "more men give cause for jealousy +than women." + +"_Touche! Touche!_" he conceded; then added, quickly, "But Maurice isn't +giving any cause." + +"Well, I'm not so sure," she said. + +Up in her own room, Eleanor, sitting in the dark by the open window, +stared out into the leafy silence of the night. Once, down in the +garden, Maurice laughed;--and she struck her clenched hand on her +forehead: + +"I can't bear it!" she said, gaspingly, aloud; "I can't bear it--_she +interests him_!" His pleasure in Edith's mind was a more scorching pain +to her than the thought of Lily's body.... + +Later, when Maurice and Edith came up from the garden darkness, they +found a deserted porch. "Let's talk," he said, eagerly. + +Edith shook her head. "Too sleepy," she said, and ran upstairs. He +called after her, "Quitter!" But it provoked no retort, and he would +have gone back to walk up and down alone, by the primroses, and worry +over Jacky's future, if a melancholy voice had not come from the window +of their room: "Maurice.... It's twelve o'clock." And he followed Edith +indoors.... + +Edith had been sharply anxious to be by herself. She could not sit on +the porch with Maurice, and not burst out and tell him--what? Tell him +that nothing he had done could make the slightest difference to her! "He +has probably met some awfully nice girl and likes her--a good deal. As +for there being anything wrong, I don't believe it! That would be +horrible. I'm a beast to have thought of such a thing!" She decided to +put it out of her mind, and went to her desk, saying, "I'll straighten +out my accounts." + +She began, resolutely; added up one column, and subtracted the total +from another; said: "Gosh! I'm out thirty dollars!" nibbled the end of +her pen, and reflected that she would have to work on her father's +sympathies;--then, suddenly, her pen still in her hand, she sat +motionless. + +"Even if there _was_ anything--bad, I'd forgive him. He's a lamb!" But +as she spoke, childishness fell away--she was a deeply distressed woman. +Maurice was suffering. And she knew, in spite of her assertions to the +contrary, that it wasn't because of any slight thing; any "crush" on a +girl--nice or otherwise! He was suffering because he had done wrong--and +she couldn't tear downstairs and say: "Maurice, never mind! I love you +just as much; I don't care what you've done!" Why couldn't she say that? +Why couldn't she go now, and sit on the porch steps beside him, and +say--anything? She got up and began to walk about the room; her heart +was beating smotheringly. "Why shouldn't I tell him I love him so that +I'd forgive--_anything_? He knows I've always loved him!--next to father +and mother. Why can't I tell him so, now?" Then something in her breast, +beating like wings, made her know why she couldn't tell him! + +"I love him; that's why." + +After a while she said: "There's nothing wrong in it. I have a right to +love him! He'll never know. How funny that I never knew--until to-night! +Yet I've felt this way for ever so long. I think since that time at Fern +Hill, when he was so bothered and wouldn't tell me what was the matter." +Yes; it was strange that now, when some stabbing instinct had made her +know that Maurice was not her "perfec' gentil knight," that same +instinct should make her know that she loved him!... Not with the old +love; not with the love that could overflow into words, the love that +had kissed him when he had been "bothered"! "I can never kiss him +again," she thought. She did not love him, now, "next to father and +mother--dear darlings!" And when she said that, Edith knew that the +"darlings" were of her past. "I love them next to Maurice," she thought, +smiling faintly. "Well, he will never know it! Nobody will ever know +it.... I'll just keep on loving him as long as I live." She had no doubt +about that; and she did not drop into the self-consciousness of saying, +"I am wronging Eleanor." That, to Edith, would not have been sense. She +knew that she was not "wronging" anyone. As for the unknown girl, who, +perhaps, had "wronged" Eleanor, and about whom, now, Maurice was so +ashamed and so repentant--she was of no consequence anyhow. "Of course +she is bad," Edith thought, "and the whole thing was her fault!" But it +was in the past; he had said so. "He said it was long ago. If," she +thought, "he did run crooked, why, I'm sorry for poor Eleanor; and he +ought to tell her; there's no question about _that_! It's wrong not to +tell her. And of course he couldn't tell me. That wouldn't be square to +Eleanor!... But I hate to have him so unhappy.... No; it's right for him +to be unhappy. He ought to be! It would be dreadful if he wasn't. But, +somehow, the thing itself doesn't seem to touch me. I love him. I am +going to love him all I want to! But no one will ever know it." + +By and by she knelt down and prayed, just one word: _"Maurice."_ She was +not unhappy. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + +During the next two days at Green Hill, Eleanor's dislike of Edith had +no chance to break into silent flames, for the girl was so quiet that +not even Eleanor could see anything in her behavior to Maurice to +criticize. It was Maurice who did the criticizing! + +"Edith, come down into the garden; I want to read something to you." + +"Can't. Have to write letters." + +"Edith, if you'll come into the studio I'll play you something I've +patched up." + +"I'm a heathen about music. Let's sit with Eleanor." + +"Skeezics, what's the matter with you? Why won't you come and walk? +You're getting lazy in your old age!" + +"Busy," Edith said, vaguely. + +At this point Maurice insisted, and Edith sneaked out to the back entry +and telephoned Johnny Bennett: "Come over, lazybones, and take some +exercise!" + +John came, with leaps and bounds, so to speak, and Maurice said, +grumpily: + +"What do you lug Johnny in for?" + +So, during the rest of her visit (with John Bennett as Maurice's +chaperon!) Eleanor merely ached with dislike of Edith; but, even so, she +had the small relief of not having to say to herself: "Is he seeing Mrs. +Dale, now? ... Did he go to her house yesterday?" Of course, as soon as +she went back to Mercer those silent questions began again; and her +audible question nagged Maurice whenever he was in the house: "Did you +go to the theater last night? ... Yes? _Did you go alone?_ ... Will you +be home to-night to dinner? ... No? _Where are you going?_" + +Maurice, answering with bored patience, thought, with tender amusement, +of Edith's advice, "Tell Eleanor." How little she knew! + +He did not see Edith very often that next winter, "which is just as +well," he thought. But his analysis stopped there; he did not ask +himself why it was just as well. She made flying visits to Mercer, for +shopping or luncheons, so he had glimpses of her, and whenever he saw +her he was conscious of a little wistful change in her, for she was shy +with him--_Edith_, shy!--and much gentler. When they discussed the +Eternities or the ball game, she never pounded his arm with an energetic +and dissenting fist, nor was there ever the faintest suggestion of the +sexless "rough-house" of their old jokes! As for coming to town, she +explained that she was too busy; she had taken the burden of +housekeeping from her mother, and she was doing a good deal of hard +reading preparatory to a course of technical training in domestic +science, to which she was looking forward when she could find time for +it. But whenever she did come to Mercer, she did her duty by rushing in +to see Eleanor! Eleanor's criticisms of her, when she rushed out again, +always made Maurice silently, but deeply, irritated. The criticisms +lessened in the fall, because Eleanor had the pitiful preoccupation of +watching poor Don O'Brien fade out of the world; and when he had gone +she had to push her own misery aside while his grandmother's heart broke +into the meager tears of age upon her "Miss Eleanor's" breast. But, +besides that, she did not have the opportunity to criticize Edith, for +the Houghtons went abroad. + +So the rest of that year went dully by. To Eleanor, it was a time of +spasmodic effort to regain Maurice's love; spasmodic, because when she +had visions--hideous visions! of Maurice and the "other woman,"--then, +her aspirations to regain his love, which had been born in that agony of +recognized complicity in his faithlessness, would shrivel up in the +vehement flame of jealousy. To Maurice, it was a time of endurance; of +vague thoughts of Edith, but of no mental disloyalty to his wife. Its +only brightness lay in those rare visits to Medfield, when Jacky looked +at him like a worshiping puppy, and asked forty thousand questions which +he couldn't answer! They were very careful visits, made only when +Maurice was sure Eleanor would not be going to "look for a cook." He +always balanced his brief pleasure of an hour with his little boy by an +added gentleness to his wife--perhaps a bunch of violets, bought at the +florist's on Maple Street where Lily got her flower pots or her bulbs. +He was very lonely, and increasingly bothered about Jacky. ... "Lily +will let him go plumb to hell. But I put him on the toboggan! ... I'm +responsible for his existence," he used to think. And sometimes he +repeated the words he had spoken that night when he had felt the first +stir of fatherhood, "My little Jacky." + +He would hardly have said he loved the child; love had come so +gradually, that he had not recognized it! Yet it had come. It had been +added to those other intimations of God, which also he had not +recognized. Personal Joy on his wedding day had been the first; and the +next had come when he looked up at the heights of Law among the stars, +and then there had been the terrifying vision of the awfulness of Life, +at Jacky's birth. Now, into his soul, arid with long untruth, came this +flooding in of Love--which in itself is Life, and Joy, and the +fulfilling of Law! Or, as he had said, once, carelessly, "Call it God." + +This pursuing God, this inescapable God! was making him acutely +uncomfortable now, about Jacky. Maurice felt the discomfort, but he did +not recognize it as Salvation, or know Whose mercy sent it! He merely +did what most of us do when we suffer: he gave the credit of his pain to +the devil--not to Infinite Love. "Oh," the poor fellow thought, coming +back one day from a call at the little secret house on Maple Street, +"the devil's getting his money's worth out of me; well, I won't squeal +about _that_! But he's getting his money's worth out of my boy, too. +She's ruining him!" + +He said this once when he had been rather recklessly daring in seeing +"his boy." It was Saturday afternoon, and Jacky was free from his +detested school. Maurice had given him a new sled, and then had +"fallen," as he expressed it, to the little fellow's entreaty: "Mr. +Curtis, if you'll come up to the hill, I'll show you how she'll go!" But +before they started Maurice had a disagreeable five minutes with Lily. +She had told him, tears of laughter running down her rosy cheeks, of +some performance of Jacky's. He had asked her, she said, about his paw; +"and I said his name was Mr. George Dale, and he died ten or eleven +years ago of consumption--had to tell him something, you know! An' he +says,--he's great on arithmetic,--'Poor paw!' he says, 'how many years +was that before I was born?' I declare, I was all balled up!" Then, as +she wiped her laughing eyes, she had grown suddenly angry: "I'm going to +take him away from his new Sunday school; the teacher--it was her did +the Paul Pry act, and asked him about his father;--well, I guess she +ain't much of a lady; I never see her name in the Sunday papers;--she +came down on Jacky because he told her a 'lie'; that's what she called +it, 'a lie'! Said he'd go to hell if he told lies. I said, 'I won't have +you threatening my child!' I declare I felt like saying, 'You go to hell +yourself!' but of course I don't say things that ain't refined." + +"Well, but Lily, the little beggar must tell the truth--" + +"Mr. Curtis, Jacky didn't say anything but what you or me would say a +dozen times a day. He just told her he hadn't a library book out, when +he had. Seems he forgot to bring it back, so, 'course, he just said he +hadn't any book. Well, this teacher, she put the lie onto him. It's a +vulgar word, 'lie.' And as for hell, they say society people don't +believe there is such a place any more." + +When he and his little son walked away (Jacky dragging his magnificent +sled), Maurice was nervously anxious to counteract such views. + +"Jacobus," he said, "I'm going to tell you something: Big men never say +anything that isn't so! Do you get on to that?" (In his own mind he +added, "I'm a sweet person to tell him that!") "Promise me you'll never +say anything that isn't just exactly so," said Maurice. + +"Yes, sir," said Jacky. "Say, Mr. Curtis, have you got teeth you can +take out?" When Maurice said, rather absently, that he had not, Jacky's +dismay was pathetic. "Why, maw can do _that_," he said, reproachfully. +It was the first flaw in his idol. It took several minutes to recover +from the shock of disappointment; then he said: "Lookee here!" He paused +beside a hydrant, and with his mittened hand broke off a long icicle, +held it up and turned it about so that the sun flashed on it. "Handsome, +ain't it?" he asked, timidly. + +Maurice said yes, it was "handsome";--"but suppose you say _'isn't_ it' +instead of _'ain't_ it.' 'Ain't' is not a nice word. And remember what I +told you about telling the truth." + +"Yes, sir," said Jacky, and trudged along, pulling his sled with one +hand and carrying his icicle in the other. + +After this paternal effort, Maurice stood in the snow watching the crowd +of children--red-cheeked, shrill-voiced--sliding down Winpole Hill and +yelling and snow-balling each other as they pulled their sleds up to the +top of the slope again. It was during one of these panting tugs uphill, +that Jacky saw fit to slap a fellow coaster, a little, snub-nosed girl +with a sniffling cold in her head, and all muffled up in dirty scarves. +Instantly Maurice, striding in among the children, took his son by the +arm, and said, sharply: + +"Young man, apologize! _Quick!_ Or I'll take you home!" + +Jacky gaped. "Pol'gize?" + +"Say you're sorry! Out with it. Tell the little girl you're sorry you +hit her." + +"But I ain't," Jacky explained, anxiously; "an' you said I mustn't say +what ain't so." + +"Well, tell her you won't do it again," Maurice commanded, evading, as +perplexed fathers must, moral contradictions. + +Jacky, bewildered, said to his howling playmate, "I don't like you, but +I won't hit you again, less I have to; then I'll lick the tar out of +you!" He paused, rummaged in his pocket, produced a horrid precious +little gray lump of something, and handed it to her. "Gum," he said, +briefly. + +Maurice, taking another step into paternal wisdom, was deaf to the +statute of limitation in the apology; but walking home with the little +boy, he said to himself, "She's ruining him!" and fell into such moody +silence that he didn't even notice Jacky's obedient struggles with +"isn't." Once, a week later, as a result of this experience, he tried to +make some ethical suggestions to Lily. She was displaying her latest +triumph--a rosebush, blossoming in _February_! And Maurice, duly +admiring the glowing flower, against its background of soot-speckled +snowdrift on the window sill, began upon Jacky's morals. Lily's +good-humored face hardened. + +"Mr. Curtis, you don't need to worry about Jacky! He don't steal, and he +don't swear,--much; and he's never been pinched, and he's awful +handsome; and, my God! what more do you want? I ain't going to make his +life miserable by tellin' him to talk grammar, or do the polite act!" + +"Lily, I only mean I want him to turn out well, and he won't unless he +tells the truth--" + +"He'll turn out good. You needn't worry. Anybody's got to have sense +about telling the truth; you can't just plunk everything out! I--I +believe I'll go and live in New York." + +Instantly Maurice was silenced. "She _mustn't_ take him away!" he +thought, despairingly. + +His fear that she would do so was a constant worry.... His work in the +Weston real-estate office involved occasional business trips of a few +days, and his long hours on trains were filled with this increasing +anxiety about Jacky. "If she takes him away from Mercer, and I can't +ever see him, nothing can save him! But, damn it! what can I do?" he +would say. He tried to reassure himself by counting up Lily's good +points; her present uprightness; her honest friendliness to him; her +almost insane devotion to Jacky, and her pathetic aspiration for +respectability, which was summed up in that one word of collective +emptiness,--"Society." But immediately her bad points clamored in his +mind; her ignorance and unmorality and vulgarity. "Truth is just a +matter of expediency with her. If he gets to be a liar, I'll boot him!" +Maurice would think of these bad points until he got perfectly frantic! +His sense of wanting advice was like an ache in his mind--for there was +no one who could advise him. Then, quite unexpectedly, advice came.... + +In the fall the Houghtons got back from Europe. Maurice saw them only +between trains in Mercer, for Henry Houghton was in a great hurry to get +up to Green Hill, and Edith, too, was exercised about her trunks and the +unpacking of her treasures of reminiscence. But Mrs. Houghton said: "We +shall be coming down to do some shopping before Christmas. No! We'll +_not_ inflict ourselves upon Eleanor! We'll go to the hotel; you will +both take dinner with us." + +They came, and Maurice and Eleanor dined with them, as Mrs. Houghton had +insisted that they should; but only Mrs. Houghton accepted Eleanor's +repaying hospitality. + +"Mother has virtue enough for the family," Edith said; "I'm going to +stay here with father." + +"It will be a jewel in your crown," Henry Houghton told his Mary. + +"Why not collect jewels for your crown?" she inquired. "Henry, Maurice +looks troubled. What do you suppose is the matter?" + +"He does look seedy," he agreed; "poke about and find out what's wrong. +You can do it better if your inelegant offspring isn't around, and if +I'm not there, either. He won't open his lips to me! I think it's money. +He's carrying a pretty heavy load. But he never peeps.... I wish he +wouldn't economize on cigars, though; he offered me one yesterday, and +politeness compelled me to smoke it!" + +"'Peeps'!" said Edith; "how elegant!" + +So that was how it happened that Mary Houghton went alone to dine with +Maurice and Eleanor. But she couldn't discover, in Maurice's talk or +Eleanor's silences, any hint of financial anxiety. "So," she said to +herself, "it isn't money that worries him." When he walked back with her +to the hotel after dinner, he was thinking, "She'd know what to do about +Jacky." But of course he couldn't ask her what to do! He could never ask +anybody--except, perhaps, Mr. Houghton; and what would he, an old man, +know about bringing up a little boy? He was listening, not very closely, +to Mrs. Houghton's talk of the Custom House; but when she said, "John +Bennett met us on the dock," he was suddenly attentive. + +"Has Edith--?" he began. + +She laughed ruefully. "No. Young people are not what they were in my +day. Edith is not a bit sentimental." + +Maurice was silent. When they reached the hotel, they went upstairs into +a vast, bleak parlor, and steered their way among enormous plush +armchairs to a sofa. A few electric bulbs, glaring among the glass +prisms of a remote chandelier, made a dim light--but not too dim for +Mary Houghton to see that Maurice's face was drawn and worried; +involuntarily she said: + +"You dear boy, I wish you didn't look so careworn!" + +"I'm bothered about something," he said. + +"Your uncle Henry told me to 'poke around,' and see if you were troubled +about money?" she said, smiling. + +"Oh, not especially. I'm always more or less strapped. But money isn't +worth bothering about, really." + +"If you 'consider the stars,' you will find very few things are worth +bothering about! Except, of course, wrongdoing." + +And, to his own astonishment, he found himself saying, "I'm afraid +that's where I come in!" As he spoke, he remembered that night of the +eclipse--oh, those moon-washed depths, those stupendous serenities of +Law and Beauty which, together, are Truth! How passionately he had +desired Truth. And now Mrs. Houghton was saying "Consider the stars." +"If I could only tell her!" he thought. + +"If the wrongdoing is behind you," said Mary Houghton, "let it go." + +"It won't let me go," he said, with nervous lightness. "Though it's +behind me, all right!" + +Which made her say, gently, "Maurice, perhaps I know what troubles you?" +His start made her add, quickly: "Your uncle Henry has never betrayed +your confidence; but ... I guessed, long ago, that something had gone +wrong. I don't know how wrong--" + +"Oh, Mrs. Houghton," he said, despairingly, "awfully wrong! +Awfully--awfully wrong!" He put his elbow on his knee, and rested his +chin on his clenched fist; she was silent. Then he said: "You've always +been an angel to me. I am glad you guessed. Because--I don't know what +to do." + +"About the woman?" + +"No. The boy." + +"Oh!" she said; "a _child_!" + +Her dismay was like a blow. "But you said you had 'guessed'?" + +"I guessed that there was a woman; but I didn't know--" She put her arm +over his shoulders and kissed him. "My poor Maurice!" The tears stood in +her eyes. + +"I told you it was 'awful,'" he said, simply; "yes, it is my little boy; +I'm worried to death about him. Lily--that's her name--is perfectly all +right; she means well, and adores him, and all that; but--" Then he told +her what Jacky's mother had been and what she was now; and the +illustrations he gave of Lily's ignorance of ethical standards made Mary +Houghton cringe. "She's ruining the little fellow," he said; "he's not +mean nor a coward--I'll say that for him! But he lies whenever he feels +like it, and honesty only means not getting 'pinched.' She's awfully +ambitious for him; but her idea of success is what she calls 'Society,' +Oh, it's such a relief to speak to you, Mrs. Houghton! I haven't a soul +I can talk to." + +"Maurice, can't you get him?" Her voice was shocked. + +He almost laughed. "Wild horses wouldn't drag him from Lily!" + +She was silent before the complexity of the situation--the furtive +paternity, with its bewildered sense of responsibility, in conflict with +the passion of the dam! + +"I have to be so infernally secret," Maurice said. "If it wasn't for +that, I could train him a little, because he's fond of me," he +explained--and for a moment his face relaxed into one of his old +charming smiles. "He really is an awfully fine little beggar. I swear I +believe he's musical! And he's confoundedly clever. Why, he said--" Mrs. +Houghton could have wept with the pitifulness of it! For Maurice went +on, like any proud young father, with a story of how his little boy had +said this or done that. "But he's fresh, sometimes, and he's the kind +that, if he got fresh, ought to be licked. She can't make him mind; +but"--here the poor, shamed pride shone again in his blue eyes--"he +minds _me_!" + +Mary Houghton was silent; she tried to consider the stars, but her +dismay at a child endangered, came between her and the eternal +tranquillities. "The boy must be saved," she thought, "at any cost! It +isn't a question of Maurice's happiness; it's a question of his +_obligation_." + +"This thing of having a secret hanging round your neck is hell!" Maurice +told her. "Every minute I think--'Suppose Eleanor should find out?'" + +Mrs. Houghton put her hand on his knee. "The only way to escape from the +fear of being found out, Maurice, _is to be found out_. Get rid of the +millstone. Tell Eleanor." + +"You don't know Eleanor," he said, dryly. + +"Yes, I do. She loves you so much that she would forgive you. And with +forgiveness would come helpfulness with the little boy. The child is the +important one--not you, nor Eleanor, nor the woman. Oh, Maurice, a +child is the most precious thing in the world! You _must_ save him!" + +"Don't you suppose I want to? But, good God! I'm helpless." + +"If you tell Eleanor, you won't be 'helpless.'" + +"You don't understand. She's jealous of--of everybody." + +"Telling her will prove to her she needn't be jealous of--this person. +And the chance to do something for you would mean so much to her. She +will forgive you--Eleanor can always do a big thing! Remember the +mountain? Maurice! Let her do another great thing for you. Let her help +you save your child, by making it possible for you to be open and +aboveboard, and see him all you want to--all you _ought_ to. Oh, Maurice +dear, it would have been better, of course, if you had told Eleanor at +first. You wouldn't have had to carry this awful load for all these +years. But tell her now! Give her the chance to be generous. Let her +help you to do your duty to the little boy. Maurice, his character, and +his happiness, are your job! Just as much your job as if he had been +Eleanor's child, instead of the child of this woman. Perhaps more so, +for that reason. Don't you see that? _Tell_ Eleanor, so that you can +save him!" + +The appeal was like a bugle note. Maurice--discouraged, thwarted, +hopeless--heard it, and his heart quickened. This inverted idea of +recompense--of making up to Eleanor for having secretly robbed her, by +telling her she had been robbed!--stirred some hope in him. He did not +love his wife; he was profoundly tired of her; but suppose, now, he did +throw himself upon her generosity and give her a chance to prove that +love which was a daily fatigue to him? Mere _Truth_ would, as Mrs. +Houghton said, go far toward saving Jacky. He was silent for a long +time. Then Mary Houghton said: + +"I ought to tell you, Maurice, that Henry--who is the very best man in +the world, as well as the wisest!--doesn't agree with me about this +matter of confession. He doesn't understand women! He thinks you ought +not to tell Eleanor." + +"I know. He said so. That first night, when I told him the whole hideous +business, he said so. And I thought he was right. I'm afraid I still +think so." + +"He was wrong. Maurice, save the child! Tell Eleanor." + +"That is what Edith said." + +"_Edith!_" Mary Houghton was stupefied. + +"Oh, not about this. I only mean Edith said once, 'Don't have a secret +from Eleanor.'" + +"She was right," Edith's mother said, getting her breath. + +Then they were silent again. A distant measure of ragtime floated up +from the lobby; once, as a heavy team passed down in the street, the +chandelier swayed, and little lights flickered among the faintly +clicking prisms. Mrs. Houghton looked at him--and looked away. Maurice +was thirty-one; his face was patient and melancholy; the old crinkling +laughter rarely made gay wrinkles about his eyes, yet wrinkles were +there, and his lips were cynical. Suddenly, he turned and struck his +hand on hers: + +"I'll do it," he said.... + +Late that night Henry Houghton, listening to his Mary's story of this +talk, looked almost frightened. "Mary, it's an awful risk--Eleanor will +never stand up to it!" + +"I think she will." + +"My dear, when it comes to children, you--with your stars!--get down to +the elemental straighter than I do; I know that! And I admit that it is +terrible for Maurice's child to be scrapped, as he will be if he is +brought up by this impossible person. But as for Eleanor's helping +Maurice to save him from the scrap heap, you overlook the fact that to +tell a jealous woman that she has cause for jealousy is about as safe as +to take a lighted match into a powder magazine. There'll be an +explosion." + +"Well," she said, "suppose there is?" + +"Good heavens, Mary! Do you realize what that means? She'll leave him!" + +"I don't believe she will," his wife said, "but if she does, he can at +least see all he wants of the boy. He seems to be an unusually bright +child." + +Her husband nodded. "Yes; Nature isn't shocked at illegitimacy; and God +doesn't penalize it." + +"But _you_ do," she said, quickly, "when you won't admit that Jacky is +the crux of the whole thing! It isn't poor Maurice who ought to be +considered, nor that sad, tragic old Eleanor; nor the dreadful person in +Medfield. But just that little child--_whom Maurice has brought into the +world_." + +"Do you mean," her husband said, aghast, "that if Eleanor saw fit to +divorce him, you think he should marry this 'Lily,' so that he could get +the child?" + +She did shrink at that. "Well--" she hesitated. + +He saw his advantage, and followed it: "He couldn't get complete +possession in any other way! Unless he were legally the father, the +woman could, at any minute, carry off this--what did you say his name +was?--Jacky?--to Kamchatka, if she wanted to! Or she might very well +marry somebody else; that kind do. Then Maurice wouldn't have any finger +in the pie! No; really to get control of the child, he'd have to marry +her, which, as you yourself admit, is impossible." + +"I don't admit it." + +"_Mary!_ You must be reasonable; you know it would be shocking! So why +not keep things as they are? Why run the risk of an explosion, by +confessing to Eleanor?" + +Mary Houghton pondered, silently. + +"Kit," he said, "this is a 'condition and not a theory'; the woman +was--was common, you know. Maurice doesn't owe her anything; he has paid +the piper ten times over! Any further payment, like ruining his career +by 'making an honest woman' of her,--granting an explosion and then +Eleanor's divorcing him,--would be not only wrong, but ridiculous; which +is worse! Maurice is an able fellow; I rather expect to see him go in +for politics one of these days. Imagine this 'Lily' at the head of his +table! Or even imagine her as a fireside companion!" + +"It would be terrible," she admitted--her voice trembled--"but Jacky's +life is more important than Maurice's dinner table. And fireside +happiness is less important than the meeting of an obligation! Henry, +Maurice made a bad woman Jacky's mother; he owes _her_ nothing. But do +you mean to say that you don't think he owes the child a decent father?" + +"My darling," Henry Houghton said, tenderly, "you are really a little +crazy. You are like your stars, you so 'steadfastly pursue your +shining,' that you fail to see that, in this dark world of men, there +has to be compromise. If this impossible situation should arise--which +God forbid!--if the explosion should come, and Eleanor should leave him, +of course Maurice wouldn't marry the woman! I should consider him a +candidate for an insane asylum if he thought of such a thing. He would +simply do what he could for the boy, and that would be the end of it." + +"Oh," she said, "don't you see? It would be the _beginning_ of it!--The +beginning of an evil influence in the world; a bad little boy, growing +into a bad man--and his own father permitting it! But," she ended, with +a sudden uplifted look, "the 'situation,' as you call it, won't arise; +Eleanor will prevent it! Eleanor will save Jacky." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + +Walking home that night, with Mrs. Houghton's "tell Eleanor" ringing in +his ears, Maurice imagined a "confession," and he, too, used Mr. +Houghton's words, "'there will be an explosion!' But I'll gamble on it; +I'll tell her. I promised Mrs. Houghton I would," Then, very anxiously, +he tried to decide how he should do it; "I must choose just the right +moment," he thought. + +When, three months later, the moment came, he hardly recognized it. He +had been playing squash and had given his knee a nasty wrench; the +ensuing synovitis meant an irritable fortnight of sitting at home near +the telephone, with his leg up, fussing about office work. And when he +was not fussing he would look at Eleanor and say to himself, "How can I +tell her?" Then he would think of his boy developing into a little +joyous liar--and thief! The five cents that purchased the jew's-harp, +instead of going into the missionary box, was intensely annoying to him. +"But the lying is the worst. I can stand anything but lying!" the poor +lying father thought. It was then that Eleanor caught his eye, a +half-scared, appraising, entreating eye--and stood still, looking down +at him. + +"Maurice, you want something? What is it?" + +"Oh, Nelly!" he said; "I want--" And the thing tumbled from his lips in +six words: "I want you to forgive me." + +Eleanor put her hand to her throat; then she said, "I know, Maurice." + +Silence tingled between them. Maurice said, "You _know_?" + +She nodded. He was too stunned to ask how she knew; he only said, "I've +been a hound." + +Instantly, as though some locked and bolted door had been forced, her +heart was open to him. "Maurice! I can bear it--if only you don't lie to +me!" + +"I have lied," he said; "but I can't go on lying any more! It's been +hell. Of course you'll never forgive me." + +Instantly she was on her knees beside him, and her lips trembled against +his cheek; but she was silent. She was agonizing, not for herself, but +for him; _he had suffered_. And when that thought came, Love rose like a +wave and swept jealousy away! It was impossible for her to speak. Over +in his basket old Bingo growled. + +"It was years ago," he said, very low; "I haven't--had anything to do +with her since; but--" + +She said, gasping, "Do you ... love her still?" + +"Good God! no; I never loved her." + +"Then," she said, "I don't mind." + +His arms went about her, his head dropped on her shoulder. The little +dog, unnoticed, barked angrily. For a few minutes neither of them could +speak. To him, the unexpectedness of forgiveness was an absolute shock. +Eleanor, her cheek against his hair, wept. Happy tears! Then she +whispered: + +"There is ... a child?" + +He nodded speechlessly. + +"Maurice, I will love it--" + +He was too overcome to speak. Here she was, this irritating, foolish, +faithful woman, coming, with outstretched, forgiving arms--to rescue him +from his long deceit! + +"I have known it," she said, "for nearly two years." + +"And you never spoke of it!" + +"I couldn't." + +"I want to tell you everything, Eleanor. It was--that Dale woman." + +She pressed very close to him: "I know." + +He wondered swiftly how she knew, but he did not stop to ask; his words +rushed out; it was as if the jab of a lancet had opened a hidden wound: +"I never cared a copper for her. Never! But--it happened. I was angry +about something, and,--Oh, I'm not excusing myself. There isn't any +excuse! But I met her, and somehow--Oh, Eleanor!" + +"Maurice, ... what does she call you?" + +"Call me? What do you mean?" + +"What name?" + +"Why, 'Mr. Curtis,' of course." + +"Not 'Maurice'? Oh--I'm so glad! Go on." + +"Well, I never saw her again until she wrote to me about ... this child. +Eleanor! I tried to tell you. Do you remember? One night in the boarding +house--the night of the eclipse? I thought you'd never forgive me, but I +tried to tell you ... Oh, Star, you are wonderful!" + +It was an amazing moment; he said to himself: "Mrs. Houghton was right. +Edith was right. How I have misjudged her!" He went on, Eleanor still +kneeling beside him, sometimes holding his hand to her lips, sometimes +pressing her wet cheek against his; once her graying hair fell softly +across his eyes ... "Then," he said, "then ... the baby was born." + +"Oh, _we_ had no children!" + +His arms comforted her. "I didn't care. I have never cared. I hated the +idea of children, because of ... this child." + +"Is his name Jacky?" + +"That's what she called him. I never really noticed him, until winter +before last; then I kind of--" He paused, then rushed on; it was to be +Truth henceforward between them! "I sort of--got fond of him." He +waited, holding his breath; but there was no "explosion"! She just +pressed his hand against her breast. + +"Yes, Maurice?" + +"He was sick and she sent for me--" + +"I know. That's how I knew. The telegram came, and I--Oh," she +interrupted herself, "I wasn't prying!" She was like a dog, shrinking +before an expected blow. + +The fright in her face went to his heart; what a brute he must have been +to have made her so afraid of him! + +"It was all right to open it! I'm glad you opened it. Well, he was +pretty sick, and I had to get him into the hospital; and after that I +began to get sort of--interested in him. But now I'm worried to death, +because--" Then he told why he was worried; he told her almost with +passion!... "For he's an awfully fine little chap! But she's ruining +him." It was amazing how he was able to pour himself out to her! His +anxiety about Jacky, his irritation at Lily--yet his appreciation of +Lily; he wouldn't go back on Lily! "She wasn't bad--ever. Just unmoral." + +"I understand." + +"Oh, Eleanor, to be able to talk to you, and tell you!" So he went on +telling her: he told her of his faint, shy pride in his little son; told +her a funny speech, and she laughed. Told her Jacky had seen a rainbow +in the gutter and said it was "handsome." "He really notices Beauty!" +Told her of Lily's indignation at the Sunday-school teacher, and his own +effort to make Jacky tell the truth, "I have a tremendous influence over +him. He'll do anything for me; only, I see him so seldom that I can't +counteract poor old Lily's influence. She hasn't any idea of our way of +looking at things." + +"You must counteract her! You must see him all the time." + +"Eleanor," he said, "I have never known you!" + +He tried to lift her and hold her in his arms, but she was terrified +about his knee. + +"No! Don't move! You'll hurt your knee. Maurice, can't I see him?" + +"What! Do you really want to?" he said, amazed "Eleanor, you are +wonderful!" + +That whole evening was entire bliss--as much to Maurice as to Eleanor; +to him, it was escape from the bog of secrecy in which, soiled with +self-disgust, he had walked for nearly nine years; and with the clean +sense of touching the bedrock of Truth was an upspringing hope for his +little boy, who "noticed Beauty"! He would be able to see Jacky, and +train him, and gain his affection, and make a man of him. He had a +sudden vision of companionship. "He'll be in business with me." But +that made him smile at himself. "Well, we'll go to ball games, anyway!" + +To Eleanor, the evening was a mountain peak; from the sun-smitten +heights of a forgiveness that knew itself to be Love, and forgot that it +forgave, she looked out, and saw--not that grave where Truth and Pride +were buried, but a new heaven and a new earth; Maurice's complete +devotion. And his child,--whom she could love. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + +Those next weeks were full of plans and hopes on Eleanor's part, and +gratitude on Maurice's part. But she would not let him say that he was +grateful, or that she was generous; he had told her, of course, how Mrs. +Houghton had guessed long ago what had happened, and how she had urged +him to trust his wife's nobility--but Eleanor would not let him call her +"noble"; "Don't say it! And don't be 'grateful,' I just love you," she +said; "and if you only knew what it means to me to be able to do +anything for you! It's so long since you've needed me, Maurice." + +The pathos of her sense of uselessness made his eyes sting. "I couldn't +get along without you," he told her. + +Once, on a rainy April Sunday morning, when they were talking about +Jacky (Maurice had gone to see him the day before, and was gnashing his +teeth over some cheerful obliquity on the part of Lily)--Maurice said, +emphatically: "Gosh! Nelly, I don't know what I'd do without you!" + +She, sitting on a stool at his side (and looking, poor woman! old enough +to be his mother), was radiant. + +"And you don't enjoy talking to Lily?" she said--just for the happiness +of hearing, again, his horrified protest, "I should say _not_! There's +nothing she can talk about." + +"She doesn't know about books and things? She hasn't--brains?" + +"Brains? She probably never read anything in her life! She has lots of +sense, but no intellect. She hasn't an idea beyond food and flowers--and +Jacky." + +"I wish I had her idea about food," Eleanor said, simply. + +It was her fairness toward Lily that amazed him; it made him reproach +himself for his stupidity in not having confessed to her long ago! "Why +was I such a fool, Eleanor, as not to know that you were a big woman? +Mrs. Houghton knew it. Why, even Edith knew it! She told me you'd +forgive anything." + +"_What_!" She rose abruptly and stood looking at him with suddenly angry +eyes. "Does Edith know?" she said. + +"No! Of course she doesn't know--_this_! But one day she and I were +taking a walk, and I was thinking what a devilish mess I was in.... And +I suppose Edith saw I was down by the head, and she got to talking about +you--" + +"You let her talk about me!" + +"She was saying how perfectly fine you had been about the mountain--" + +"I don't need Edith Houghton's approval of my conduct, Maurice." She was +trembling, and her face was quite pale. He rushed in deeper than ever: + +"I was only saying I felt so--badly, because I had failed to make you +happy. Of course I didn't say how! And she said, 'Don't have any secrets +from Eleanor!'" + +"So it was Edith who made you--" + +For a moment Maurice was too dismayed to speak; besides, he didn't know +what to say. What he did say was that she misunderstood him. "Good +heavens! Eleanor, you didn't think I'd tell Edith a thing like _that_? +Or that I'd tell any woman, when I didn't tell you? But Edith knew you +better than I did; she said no matter what I'd done (I just happened to +say I was a skunk), you loved me enough to forgive me. And you have +forgiven me." + +"Yes," she said, in a whisper; "I've forgiven you." + +She went over to the window, and stood perfectly silent. It was raining +steadily; the river, a block away, was hidden in the yellow fog; down in +the yard, the tables and chairs under the poplar dripped and dripped. As +for Maurice, it was as if some dark finger had stretched out and touched +a bubble.... She was the same Eleanor. + +But he did not dwell upon this revealing moment; it was enough that at +last he could stop lying, and that Eleanor would help him about Jacky! +He called her back from the window and made her sit down again beside +him, pretending not to see how her hands were trembling. Then he went on +talking about Jacky. + +"His latest achievement is an infernal mouth harmonicon." + +She said, listlessly, "I wish I could give him music lessons." + +"He's crazy about music; trails hand organs all over Medfield!" Maurice +said, with a great effort to be cheerfully casual; "but, Heaven knows, +I'd be glad if you could give him lessons in anything! Manners, for +instance. He hasn't any. Or grammar; I told him not to say 'ain't,' and, +if you please! he told his mother _she_ mustn't say it! Lily got on her +ear." + +She smiled faintly. "I wish I could see him," she said. + +She had urged this more than once, but it had not seemed practicable. "I +can't bring him here," Maurice explained; "he'd blurt out to Lily where +he'd been, and she'd get uneasy. Even as it is, I live in dread that +she'll pack up and clear out with him." + +"She _shan't_ take him away!" Eleanor said; she was eager again;--after +all, Edith, for all her impertinence in advising Maurice how to treat +his wife!--Edith could not break in upon an intimacy like this! + +Her incessant talk about Jacky (which might have bored Maurice just a +little, if it had not touched him) gave her, in some subtle, spiritual +way, a sense of approaching motherhood: _she made preparations_! She +planned little gifts for him;--Maurice had told her of Jacky's lively +interest in benefits to come; once, she thought, "I suppose he's too old +to have one of those funny papers in his room? I saw such a pretty one +to-day, little rabbits in trousers!"--For by this time she had +determined that, somehow, she would get possession of him! In these +maternal moments she feared no rivalry from Edith Houghton. Jacky would +save her from Edith! + +"Oh, Maurice! I _must_ see him," she said once. + +"I'll fix it so you can," he told her. But it was two months before he +was able to fix it; then "Forepaws" came to town, and the way was clear! +He would take Jacky, and Eleanor should go and have a seat near by, and +come up and speak to the youngster, as any admiring stranger might, and, +indeed, often did, for Jacky was a striking child--his eyes blue and +keen, his skin very clear, and his cheeks glowing with health. "If he +goes home and tells Lily a lady spoke to him," Maurice said, "she won't +think anything of it." + +"May I give him some candy?" + +"No; he has too much of it as it is; get one of those tin horns for him. +He'll raise Cain for Lily, I suppose; but we won't have to listen to +him!" (That "we" so fed Eleanor's starved soul, that she thought of +Edith Houghton with a sort of gay contempt: "_I'm_ not afraid of her!") + +The plan for seeing Jacky went through easily enough. "I'll take that +boy of yours to the circus," Maurice told Lily, carelessly, one day. + +"Why, that's awful kind in you, Mr. Curtis; but ain't you afraid +somebody'll see you luggin' a child around?" + +"Lots of men take kids to the circus--just as an excuse to go +themselves." + +So Maurice and the eight-year-old Jacky, in a new sailor suit, and a +face so clean that it shone, walked in among the gilded cages, felt the +sawdust under their feet, smelled the wild animals, heard the yelps of +the jackals, the booming roar of lions, and the screeching chatter of +the monkeys. And as Jacky dragged his father from cage to cage, a yard +or two behind them came Eleanor.... Now and then, over Jacky's head, she +caught Maurice's eye; and they both smiled. + +When a speechless Jacky was taken into the central tent to sit on a +narrow bench, and drink pink lemonade and eat peanuts, Eleanor was quite +near him. He was unconscious of her presence--unconscious of everything! +except the blare of the band, the elephants, the performing +dogs--especially the poor, strained performing dogs! He never spoke +once; his eyes were fixed on the rings; he didn't see his father +watching him, amused and proud; still less did he see the lady who had +been at his heels in the animal tent, and who now kept her mournful dark +eyes on his face. When the last horse gave the last kick and trotted out +through the exit, with its mysterious canvas walls, Jacky was in a daze +of bliss. He sat, open-mouthed, staring at the empty, trampled sawdust. + +"Come along, young man!" Maurice said; "do you want to stay here all +night?" + +"I'm going to be a circus rider," said Jacky, solemnly. + +It was then that the "lady" spoke to him--her voice broke twice: "Well, +little boy, did you like the circus?" the lady said. She was so pale +that Maurice put his hand on her arm. + +"Better sit down, Nelly," he said, kindly, under his breath. + +She shook her head. "No ... Jacky, don't you want to tell me your name?" + +"But you _know_ my name," said Jacky, with a bored look. + +Maurice gave her a warning glance, and she tried to cover her blunder: +"I heard your father--I mean this gentleman--call you 'Jacky,'" she +explained--panting, for Maurice's quick frown frightened her. "Here's a +present for you," she said. + +"_Present_!" said Jacky--and made a joyous grab at the horn, which he +immediately put to his lips; but before it could emit its ear-piercing +screech, Maurice struck it down. + +"Where are your manners? Say 'Thank you' to the lady." + +Jacky sighed, but murmured, "'Ank you." + +Eleanor, her chin trembling, said: "May I kiss him?" + +"'Course," Maurice said, huskily. + +She bent down and kissed him with trembling lips--"Ach!--you make me all +wet," Jacky said, frowning at her tears on his rosy cheek. + +Later, as Maurice pulled his reluctant son out on to the pavement, he +was so moved that he almost forgot that she was still the old Eleanor; +he didn't even listen to his little boy's passionate assertion that he +would be a flying-trapeze man. As he walked along beside his wife to put +her on the car he spoke with great tenderness: + +"I'll leave him at Lily's, and then I'll come right home, dear, and +we'll talk things over." + +When he and his son got back to Maple Street, Jacky was blowing that +infernal horn so that the whole neighborhood was aware of his ecstasy. +Lily, waiting for them at the gate, put her hands over her ears. + +"My soul and body! For the land's sake, stop! Who give you that horrid +thing?" + +"An old lady," said Jacky--and blew a shattering screech on Eleanor's +horn. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + +From the day of the circus, Jacky became, to Eleanor, not a symbol of +Maurice's unfaithfulness, but a hope for the future. The thought of his +mother was only the scar of a wound, which Maurice, in some single +slashing moment, had made in her heart. She was crippled by it, of +course. But the wound had healed so she could forget the scar--because +Maurice had never loved Lily, never found her "interesting," never +wanted to wander about with _her_, in a dark garden, and talk + +Of shoes--and ships--and sealing wax-- +And cabbages--and kings ... + +To be sure the scar ached dully once in a while; but Eleanor knew that +if she could get possession of Jacky she would be protected against +other wounds--wounds which would never heal! She said to herself that +Maurice would never think of Edith Houghton if he had Jacky! But how +should she get Jacky? + +For months she revolved countless schemes to persuade Lily to resign +him; schemes so futile that Maurice, listening to them every night when +he got home from the office, was touched, of course; but by and by he +was also a little uneasy. He had told her where Lily lived, then +regretted it, for once she walked up and down before the house on Maple +Street for an hour, hoping to see "the woman," but failing, because Lily +and Jacky happened to be in town that afternoon. + +"I have a great mind to steal him for you!" she said, telling Maurice of +her fruitless effort. + +He protested, too disturbed at her mere presence on Lily's street to +notice her attempt at a joke. "If Lily should imagine that we were +interested in Jacky, she'd run!" he explained; "it's dangerous, Nelly, +really. You mustn't go near her!" + +She promised she wouldn't; but every day of that Mercer winter of +low-hanging smoke and damp chilliness, she longed to get possession of +the child--first to make Maurice happy; then with the craving, driving, +elemental desire for maternity; and then for self-protection,--Jacky +would vanquish Edith! + +So she brooded: _a child_! + +"If I could only get him, it wouldn't be 'just us'!" ... "A boy's +clothes are not as pretty as a girl's, but a little rough suit would be +awfully attractive.... I'd give him music lessons.... We could go out to +our field in June. And he would take off his shoes and stockings and +wade!" How foolish Edith's grown-up childishness of wading looked, +compared to the scene which she visualized--a little, handsome boy, +standing in the shallow rippling water, bareheaded, probably; the +sunshine sifting down through the locust blossoms and touching that +thatch of yellow hair, and glinting into those blue eyes. "He would call +me 'Mamma'!" Then she hummed to herself, "'O Spring!' Oh, I _must_ have +him!" Her hope became such an obsession that its irrationality did not +strike her. It was so in her mind that she even spoke of it once to Mrs. +Houghton. "I know you _know_?" she said; "Maurice told me he told you." + +Mary Houghton said, hesitatingly, "I think I know what you mean." + +This was in March. Mrs. Houghton and Edith were in town for a few days' +shopping, and of course they meant to see Eleanor. "I'll go to the +dressmaker's," Edith had told her mother, "and then I'll corral Maurice, +and we'll drop in on Mrs. Newbolt, and _then_ I'll meet you at +Eleanor's. I don't hanker for a long call on Eleanor." Edith's gayly +candid face hardened. + +So it was that Mrs. Houghton had arrived ahead of her girl, and the two +older women were alone before a little smoldering fire in the library. +Eleanor had left her tea tray to go across the room and give little +helpless Bingo a lump of sugar. "He only eats what I give him," she +said; "dear old Bingo! I think he actually suffers, he's so jealous." +Then, pouring Mrs. Houghton's tea, she suddenly spoke: "I know +you--know?" When Mary Houghton said, gravely, yes, she "_knew_," Eleanor +said, "Oh, Mrs. Houghton, Maurice and I are nearer to each other than we +ever were before!" + +"That's as it should be. And as I knew it would be, too. You've done a +noble thing, Eleanor." + +"No! No! Don't say that! It was nothing. Because I--love him so. And he +never cared for that woman. She has no brains, he says. But what I want +is to get the boy for him. Oh, he must have the boy!" Then she told Mrs. +Houghton how Maurice went to see the child. "He goes once a week, though +he says she's jealous if he makes too many suggestions; so he has to be +very careful or she would get angry. But he has managed it so I have +seen him; last summer he took him to the circus, and I sat near them. +And twice he's had him in the park and I spoke to him. And on Christmas +he took him to the movies; I sat beside him. And I buttoned his coat +when he went out!" Her eyes were rapt. + +Mary Houghton, listening, said to herself, "_Now_ what will Henry +Houghton say about the 'explosion'? I shall rub it into him when I get +home!" ... "Eleanor, you are magnificent!" she said. + +"But how could I do anything else--if I loved Maurice?" Eleanor said. +"Oh, I do want him to have Jacky! We must make a man of him. It would be +wicked to let Lily ruin him! And I want to give him music lessons. He +has Maurice's blue eyes." + +It was infinitely pathetic, this woman with gray hair, telling of her +young husband's joy in his little son--who was not hers. And Eleanor's +sense of the paramount importance of the child gave Mrs. Houghton a new +and real respect for her. Aloud, she agreed heartily with the statement +that Jacky must be saved from Lily. + +"She isn't bad," Eleanor explained; "but she's just like an animal, +Maurice says. Devoted to Jacky, but no more idea of right and wrong +than--than Bingo!" She was so happy that she laughed, and looked almost +young--but at that moment the street door opened, closed, and in the +hall some one else laughed. Instantly Eleanor looked old. "It's Edith," +she said, coldly. + +It was--with Maurice in tow. "I haled him forth from his office," Edith +said; "and we went to see your aunt, Eleanor. She's a lamb!" + +"Tea?" Eleanor said, briefly. + +"Yes, indeed!" Edith said. She looked very pretty--cheeks glowing and +brown hair flying about the rounded brim of a brown fur toque. + +Maurice, keeping an eye on her, was gently kind to his wife. "Head +better, Nelly?" Then, having secured his tea, he drew Edith over to the +window and they went on with some discussion which had paused as they +entered the house. + +Eleanor, watching them, and making another cup of tea for Mrs. Houghton, +spilled the boiling water on the tray and on her own hand. + +"My dear!" said Mrs. Houghton, "you have scalded yourself!" + +And, indeed, Eleanor whitened with the pain of her smarting, puffing +fingers. But she said, her eyes fixed on Edith, "What _are_ they talking +about?" Mrs. Houghton's look of surprise made her add: "Edith seems so +interested. I just wondered...." She had caught a phrase or two: + +"I can take the spring course,--it's three months. I think our +University Domestic Science Department is just every bit as good as any +of the Eastern ones." + +"Where did you two meet each other?" Eleanor called, sharply. + +"Why, I told you," Edith said, coming over to the tea table; "I dragged +him from his desk!" + +"Come, Edith, we must go," Mrs. Houghton said, rising. + +"Why don't you stay to dinner?" Maurice urged--but Eleanor was silent. +"If you are in town next week, Skeezics, you've got to put up here. +Understand? Tell her so, Eleanor!" + +Eleanor said nothing. Mrs. Houghton said she was afraid it wouldn't be +convenient. + +Eleanor said nothing. + +"Of course you will come here!" Maurice said; he was sharply angry at +his wife. + +In the momentary and embarrassing pause, the color flew into Edith's +face, but she was elaborately indifferent. "Good-by, Eleanor; good-by, +Maurice!" + +"I'm going to escort you to the hotel," Maurice said; and, over his +shoulder to Eleanor: "I've got to rush off to St. Louis to-night, +Eleanor. That Greenleaf business. Has Mrs. O'Brien brought my things +home?"' + +"I'll see," she said, mechanically.... + +Nobody had much to say on that walk to the hotel; but when Maurice had +left them, and the two ladies were in their room, Edith faced her +mother: + +"What _is_ the matter?" + +"You mean with Eleanor? She has a headache, I suppose." + +"Mother, don't squirm! You know just as well as I do that she doesn't +want me to stay with them. Why not?" She did not wait for an answer, +which, indeed, her mother could not immediately find. "Well, Heaven +knows I'm not pining to be with her! I shall run in to-morrow morning, +and tell her that Mrs. Newbolt asked me to stay with her.... Mother, how +_could_ Maurice have fallen in love with Eleanor?" Her voice trembled; +she went over to the window and stood looking down into the street; her +hands were clenched behind her, and her soft young chin was rigid. "He +was just a boy," she said; her eyes were blurring so that the street was +a gray fog; "how _could_ Eleanor?" It seemed as if her own ardent, +innocent body felt the recoil of Maurice's youth from Eleanor's age! +She thought of that dark place in his past, which she had accepted +with pain, but always with defending excuses; she excused him again, +now, in her thoughts: "Eleanor was _impossible_! That's why somebody +else ... caught him. And it was long ago. And Eleanor's old enough to be +his mother. He never could have loved her!" Suddenly she had a fleeting, +but real, pity for Eleanor: "Poor thing!" Aloud she said, huskily, over +her shoulder, "If she had really loved him, she wouldn't have done such +a terrible thing as marry him." + +Mrs. Houghton, reading the evening paper, said, briefly, "She loves him +_now_, my dear." + +"Oh!" Edith said, passionately, "sometimes I am sorry for Eleanor--and +then the next minute I perfectly hate her!" + +"She was only forty when she married him," Mary Houghton said; "that +isn't old at all! And I have always been sorry for her." She looked up +over her spectacles at the tense young figure by the window, outlined +against the yellow sunset; saw those clenched hands, heard the impetuous +voice break on a word,--and forgot Eleanor in a more intimate anxiety: +"Of course," she said, "such a difference in age as there is between +Maurice and Eleanor is a pity. But Maurice is devoted to her, and with +reason. She has been generous when he has been unkind. I happen to know +that." + +"Maurice couldn't be unkind!" + +Her mother ignored this. "And remember another thing, Edith: It isn't +years that decide whether a marriage is a failure. One of the happiest +marriages I ever knew was between a woman of fifty and a man of thirty. +You see--" she paused, and took off her spectacles, and tapped the arm +of her chair, thoughtfully: "You see, Edith, you don't understand. You +are so appallingly young! You think Love speaks only through the senses. +My dear, Love's highest speech is in the Spirit; the language of the +senses is only it's pretty, stammering, divine baby-talk!" Edith was +silent. Her mother went on: "Yes, it isn't age that decides things. It's +selfishness or unselfishness. At present Eleanor is extraordinarily +unselfish, so I believe they may yet be very happy." + +"Oh, I hope so, of course," Edith said--and put up a furtive finger to +wipe first one cheek, and then the other.... "Poor Maurice!" she said. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + +When Maurice got back to the firelit library, he said, filling his pipe +with rather elaborate attention, and trying to speak with good-natured +carelessness, "I'm afraid Edith thought you didn't want her, Nelly." He +was sorry the next moment that he had said even as much as that: Eleanor +was breathing quickly, and her dark, sad eyes were hard with anger. + +"I don't," she said + +Maurice said, sharply, "You have never liked her!" + +"Why should I like her? She talks to you incessantly. And now, she +_looks_ at you; here--before me! Looks at you." + +"Eleanor, what on earth--" + +"Oh, I saw her, when you were talking over there by the window; I +watched her. She looked at you! I am not blind. I understand what it +means when a girl looks at a man that way. And now she's planning to be +in Mercer for three months? Well, that's simply to be near you. She'd +like to live in the same house with you, I suppose! If it wasn't for me, +she'd be in love with you--perhaps she is, anyhow? Yes, I think she is." +There was a sick silence. "And, perhaps," she said, with a gasp, "you +are in love with her?" + +He was dumb. The suddenness of the attack completely routed him--its +suddenness; but more than its suddenness was a leaping question in his +own mind. When she said, "You are in love with her?" an appalled "Am I?" +was on his lips. Instantly he knew, what he had not known, at any rate +articulately, that he was in love with Edith. His thoughts broke in +galloping confusion; his hand, holding the hot bowl of his pipe, +trembled. He tried to speak, stammered, said, with a sort of gasp, +"Don't--don't say a thing like that!" Then he got his breath, and ended, +with a composure that kept his words slow and his voice cold, "It is +terrible to say a thing like that to me." + +She flung out her hands. "What more can I do for you than I have done? +Oh, Maurice--Maurice, no woman could love you more than I do?... _Could +they_?" + +"I am grateful; I--" He tried to speak gently, but his voice had begun +to shake with angry terror; it was abominable, this thing she had said! +(But ... it was true.) "No; no woman could have done more for me than +you have, Eleanor; I am grateful." + +"Grateful? Yes. You give me gratitude." Maurice was speechless. "I +thought, perhaps, you loved me," she said. A minute later he heard her +going upstairs to her own room. + +He stood staring after her, open-mouthed. Then he said, under his +breath, "Good God!" After a while he went over to the fireplace, +and, standing with one hand on the mantelpiece, he kicked the charred +logs on the hearth together. "This room is cold. I must build the fire +up.... Yes, it's true.... The wood is too green to burn. I'll order from +another man next time.... I suppose I've been in love with her for a +good while. I wonder if it began that night Jacky was sick ... and she +kissed me? No; it must have been before that." He stooped and mended the +fire, piling the logs together with slow exactness: "What life might +have been!" He took up the bellows and urged a little flame to rise and +flicker and lap the wood, then burst to crackling blaze. After a while +he said, "Poor Nelly!" But he had himself in hand by that time, and, +though this terrifying knowledge was surging in him, he knew that his +voice would not betray him. He went upstairs to comfort her with kindly +assurances that she was wrong. ("More lies," he thought, wearily.) + +But apparently she didn't need comforting! She was smoothing her hair +before the glass, and seemed perfectly calm. He had expected tears, and +violent reproaches, which he was prepared to meet with either +good-natured ridicule or quiet falsehood, as the occasion might demand. +But nothing was demanded. She continued to brush her hair; so he found +it quite easy to come up behind her and lay a hand on her shoulder, and +say, "Nelly, dear, that wasn't a nice thing to say!" + +She did not meet his eyes in the mirror; she only said (she was +trembling), "I suppose it wasn't." + +Maurice was puzzled, but he said, casually, that he was sorry to have to +rush off that night. "I've got to take the Limited for St. Louis. Mr. +Weston wants some papers put through. I hate to leave you." + +She made no answer. + +"I shall be gone a week, maybe more; because if I don't pull the +chestnut out of the fire in St. Louis, I'll have to go to some other +places." + +She hardly heard him; she was saying to herself: "I _oughtn't_ to have +told him she was in love with him; it may make him think so, himself!" + +"Guess I'll pack my grip now," he said. + +"Maurice," she said, breathlessly, "I didn't mean--" She was so +frightened that she couldn't finish her sentence; but he said, with +kindly understanding: + +"Of course you didn't!" + +It flashed into her mind that if she left him alone, he would know that +what she had said was so meaningless that she didn't think it worth +talking about. "I--I'm going to Auntie's to dinner," she told him, on +the spur of the moment. "Do you mind?" + +"No; of course not. Wait a second, and I'll walk round with you." + +She said, unsteadily, "Oh no; you've got your packing to do--" Then she +kissed him swiftly, and hurried downstairs. + +"But Eleanor, wait!" he called; "I'll go with--" + +She had gone. He heard the front door close. He stood still in his +perplexity. What was the matter? She had got over that jealousy of +Edith in an instant; got over it, and accepted his departure without all +those wearying protestations of love and loneliness to which he was +accustomed. "Is she angry," he told himself; "or just ashamed of having +been so foolish?" Mechanically, he picked out some neckties from his +drawer, and paused.... "But she wasn't foolish. I do love Edith.... How +did she get on to it? She is so good to me about Jacky--and I love +Edith!" He went on packing his grip. "I wonder if any man ever paid as I +am paying?--I'll call her up at Mrs. Newbolt's, before I go, and say +good-by." + +No doubt he would have done so, but when he went downstairs he found +Johnny Bennett, smoking comfortably before that very cheerful little +fire. + +"I dropped in," said Johnny, "to ask for some dinner." + +"If you'll take pot luck," said Maurice; "Eleanor isn't at home, and I +don't know what the lady below stairs will work off on us." (It would be +a relief, he thought, to have somebody at table, so that he would not be +alone with his own confusion.) + +"I came," Johnny said, "to tell you I'm off." + +"Off? When? Where to? I thought your electric performances were panning +out so well--" + +"Oh, they're panning out all right," John said; "but they'll pan out +better in South America. I'm going the first of the month." + +"South America! What's the matter with Pennsylvania?" + +"Well," Johnny said; "I thought I'd light out--" + +Then they began to talk climate, and consulates, which carried them +through dinner, and went on in the library, and Maurice's surface +interest in Johnny's affairs, at least kept him from thinking of his own +dismay. + +"But I supposed," he said, and paused, "I sort of thought you--had +reasons for staying round here?" + +"There's no use hanging round," John said; "it's better to pull out +altogether. It's easier that way," he said, simply. "So I'm off for a +year. They wanted me to sign for three years, but I said, 'one.' Things +may look better for me when I get home." + +Maurice, standing with his back to the fire, his hands in his pocket, +looked down at the steady youngster--looked at the mild eyes behind +those large spectacles, looked at the clean, strong lines of the jaw and +forehead. A good fellow. A very good fellow. He wondered why Edith +wouldn't take him? ("It couldn't make any difference to me," he thought; +"and I want her to be happy.") + +"Johnny," he said, "you can say, 'Mind your business,' before I begin, +if you want to. But I don't think anybody's cutting you out? Better +'try, try again.'" + +Johnny took his pipe from his mouth, bent forward to shake the ashes out +of it, and stared into the fire. Then he said, clearing his throat once +or twice: "I've bothered her, 'trying,' I thought I'd start on a new +tack." + +"You'll get her yet!" Maurice encouraged him. He wondered, as he spoke, +how he could speak so lightly, urging old Johnny to go ahead and make +another stab at it, and, maybe, "get her"! He wondered if he was looking +at things the way the dead look at the living? He was not, he thought, +suffering, as he had suffered in those first moments when Eleanor had +flung the truth at him. "You'll get her yet," he said, vaguely. + +Johnny took out his tobacco pouch, and began to fill his pipe, poking +his thumb down into the bowl with slow precision, then holding it on a +level with his eyes and squinting at it, to make sure it was smooth; he +seemed profoundly engrossed by that pipe--but he put it in his mouth +without lighting it. + +"Well, I don't know," he said; "I haven't an awful lot of hope that I'll +ever get her. But I thought I'd try this way. Maybe, if she doesn't see +me for a year...." + +"There's nobody ahead of you, anyway," Maurice said, absently. + +"Well, I don't know," John Bennett said again. + +His voice was so harsh that Maurice's preoccupation sharpened into +uneasy attention. Johnny's hopes and fears had not really touched him. +His encouraging platitudes were only a way of smothering his own +thoughts. But that, "Well, I don't know--" woke a keenly attentive fear: +_was_ there anybody else? ("Not that that could make any difference to +me.") + +"You 'don't know'?" he said; "how do you mean? You think there _is_ +somebody?" + +Johnny Bennett was silent; he had an impulse to say "you are several +kinds of a fool, old man." But he was silent. + +"Why, Great Scott!" Maurice protested. "Buried up there in the +mountains, she hardly knows a fellow--except you!--and me," he added, +with a laugh. + +"I think," said John, huskily, "she has ... some kind of an ideal up her +sleeve. And I don't fill the bill. Imagination, you know. A--a sort of +Sir Walter Raleigh business. Remember how she was always sort of dotty +on Sir Walter Raleigh? An ideal, don't you know"; Johnny rambled on: +"Girls are that way. Only Edith's the kind that sticks to things." + +"'Try, try again,'" said Maurice, mechanically; but his blood suddenly +pounded in his ears. + +"I'm going to," Johnny said, calmly; and began to talk South America. +Indeed, he talked so long that Maurice, catching sight of the clock, +exclaimed that he would have to run! + +"Johnny, get Eleanor on the wire, will you; at Mrs. Newbolt's, and tell +her I'd have called her up, but I got delayed, and had to leg it to +catch the train? Or maybe you wouldn't mind going round there, and +walking home with her?" + +"Glad to," said Johnny. + +When Maurice, swinging on to the last platform of the last Pullman, was +able to sit down in his section, he was absorbed in Johnny Bennett's +affairs. "What did he mean by saying that? Did he mean--" Johnny's +enigmatical words rang in his ears; "I said to 'try again; nobody was +cutting him out.' And he said 'She has some kind of an ideal up her +sleeve.' ... 'A Sir Walter Raleigh business' ..." + +Johnny Bennett, walking toward Mrs. Newbolt's, was also thinking, in his +calm way, of just what he had said there by Maurice's fireside. "Of +course he doesn't see why she hasn't fallen in love with anybody else. +Any decent fellow would be stupid about that sort of thing. But it's +been that way ever since she was a child. And I've loved her ever since +then, too. All the same, I'll only sign up for a year. Then I'll make +another stab at it ..." + +When he rang Mrs. Newbolt's doorbell, and was told that Eleanor had not +been there, he was perplexed. "I must have misunderstood Maurice," he +thought. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + +Eleanor had no intention of going to Mrs. Newbolt's. "She'd talk Edith +to me!" she said to herself; "I _can't_ understand why she likes her!" +Instead of dining with her aunt, she meant to walk about the streets +until she was sure that Maurice had started for the train; then she +would go back to her own house. So she wandered down the avenue until, +tired of looking with unseeing eyes into shop windows, it occurred to +her to go into the park; there, on a bench on one of the unfrequented +paths, she sat down, hoping that no one would recognize her; it was +cold, and she shivered and looked at her watch. Only six o'clock! It +would be two hours before Maurice would leave the house for the station. +It seemed absurd to be here in the dampness of the March evening; but +she couldn't go home and get into any discussion with him; she might +burst out again about Edith!--which always made him angry. She wished +that she had not told him that Edith was in love with him. "It ought to +disgust him, but it might flatter him!" And she oughtn't to have said +that other thing; she oughtn't to have accused him of caring for Edith. +"Of course he doesn't. And it was a horrid thing to say. I was angry, +because I was jealous; but it wasn't true. I wish I hadn't said it. I'll +write to him, and ask him to forgive me." But the other thing _was_ +true: "I saw it in her eyes! She loves him. But I oughtn't to have put +the idea into his head!" + +The more she thought of what she had put into Maurice's head, the more +uneasy she became. Oh, if she only had Jacky! Then, Edith could be as +brazen as she pleased, and Maurice would never notice her! "Of course he +doesn't love her; I'm certain of _that_!" she said again and +again,--and all her schemes, wise and foolish, for getting possession +of the boy, began to crowd into her mind. + +Then an idea came to her which fairly took her breath away! A perfectly +wild idea, which she dared not stop to analyze: suppose, instead of +sitting here in the cold, she should go, now, boldly, to Lily, and ask +for Jacky? "I believe _I_ could persuade her to give him to us! She +wouldn't do it for Maurice, but she might for me!" + +She got on her feet with a spring! Her spiritual energy was like her +physical energy that night on the mountain. Again she was +lifting--lifting! This time it was the weight of a Love which might die! +She was dragging it, carrying it! her very soul straining under her +purpose of keeping it alive by the touch of a child's hand! ... Why not +go and see Lily _now_? "She'll have finished her supper by the time I +get to her house; it's at the very end of Maple Street!" If Lily +consented, Eleanor might even get back to her own house in time to see +Maurice, and tell him what she had accomplished before he started for +his train! But she would have to hurry.... + +She actually ran out of the park toward the street; then stood for an +endless five minutes, waiting for the Medfield car. "Perhaps I can make +her let me bring Jacky home with me!" she said--which showed to what +heights beyond common sense she had risen. + +At the little house on Maple Street she rang the bell, though she had a +crazy impulse to bang upon the door to hurry Lily! But she rang, and +rang again, before she heard a child's voice: "Maw. Somebody at the +door." + +"Well, go open it, can't you?" + +She heard little scuffing steps on the oilcloth in the hall; then the +door opened, and Jacky stood there. He fixed his blue, impersonal eyes +upon her, and waited. + +"Is your mother in?" Eleanor said, breathlessly. + +"Yes, ma'am," said Jacky. + +"Who is it?" Lily called to him; she was somewhere in the back of the +house, and Eleanor could hear the clatter of dishes being gathered up +from an unseen supper table. Jacky, unable to answer his mother's +question, was calmly silent. + +"My land! That child's a reg'lar dummy! Jacky, who _is_ it?" + +"_I_ do' know," Jacky called back. + +"I am Mrs. Curtis," Eleanor said; "I want to see your mother." + +"She says," Jacky called--then paused, because it occurred to him to +hang on to the door knob and swing back and forth, his heels scraping +over the oilcloth; "she says," said Jacky, "she's Mrs. Curtis." + +The noise of the dishes stopped short. In the dining room Lily stood +stock-still; "My God!" she said. Then her eyes narrowed and her jaw set; +she whipped off her apron and turned down her sleeves; she had made up +her mind: "_I'll lie it through._" + +She came out in the hall, which was scented with rose geraniums and +reeked with the smell of bacon fat, and said, with mincing politeness, +"Were you wishing to see me?" + +"Yes," Eleanor said. + +"Step right in," said Lily, opening the parlor door. "Won't you be +seated?" Then she struck a match on the sole of her shoe, lit the gas, +blew out the match, and turned to look at her visitor. She put her hand +over her mouth and gasped. Under her breath she said, "His _mother_!" + +"Mrs. Dale," Eleanor began-- + +"Well, there!" said Lily, pleasantly (but she was pale); "I guess you +have the advantage of me. What did you say your name was?" + +"My name is Curtis. Mrs. Dale, I--I know about your little boy." + +"Is that so?" Lily said, with the simper proper when speaking to +strangers. + +"I mean," Eleanor said, "I know about--" her lips were so dry she +stopped to moisten them--"about Mr. Curtis and you." + +"I ain't acquainted with your son." + +Eleanor caught her breath, but went on, "I haven't come to reproach +you." + +Lily tossed her head. "Reproach? _Me?_ Well, I must say, I don't see no +cause why you should! _I_ don't know no Mr. Curtis!" She was alertly on +guard for Maurice; "I guess you've mixed me up with some other lady." + +"Please!" Eleanor said; "I _know_. He told me--about Jacky." + +Instantly Lily's desire to defend Maurice was tempered by impatience +with him; the idea of him letting on to his mother! Then, noticing her +boy, who was silently observing the caller from the doorway, she said: + +"Jacky! Go right out of this room." + +"Won't," said Jacky. "She gimme the horn," he remarked. + +"Aw, now, sweety, go on out!" Lily entreated. + +Jacky said, calmly, "Won't." + +At which his mother got up and stamped her foot. "Clear right out of +this room, or I'll see to you! Do you hear me? Go on, now, or I'll give +you a reg'lar spanking!" + +Jacky ran. He never obeyed her when he could help it, but he always +recognized the moment when he couldn't help it. Lily closed the door, +and stood with her back against it, looking at her caller. + +"Well," she said, "if you _are_ on to it, I'm sure you ain't going to +make trouble for him with his wife." + +"I am his wife." + +"His _wife_?" They looked at each other for a speechess moment. Then the +tears sprang to Lily's eyes. "Oh, you poor soul!" she said. "Say, don't +feel bad! It's pretty near ten years ago; he was just a kid. Since +then--honest to God, I give you my word, he 'ain't hardly said 'How do +you do' to me!" + +"I know," Eleanor said; her hands were gripped hard together; "I know +that. I know he has been ... perfectly true to me--lately. I am not +saying a word about that. It's the child. I want to make a proposition +to you about the child." Her lips trembled, but she smiled; she +remembered to smile, because if she didn't look pleasant Lily might get +angry. She was a little frightened; but she gave a nervous laugh. She +spoke with gentleness, almost with sweetness. "I came to see you, Mrs. +Dale, because I hope you and I can make some arrangement about the +little boy. I want to help you by relieving you of--of his support. I +mean," said Eleanor, still smiling with her trembling lips, "I mean, I +will take him, and bring him up, so as to save you the expense." Lily's +amazed recoil made her break into entreaty; "My husband wants him, and I +do, too! I thought perhaps you'd let him go home with me to-night? I--I +promise I'll take the best of care of him!" + +Lily was too dumfounded to speak, but her thoughts raced. "For the +land's sake!" she said under her breath. She was sitting down now, but +her hands in her lap had doubled into rosy fighting fists. + +Her silence terrified Eleanor. "If you'll give him to me," she said, "I +will do anything for you--anything! If you'll just let Mr. Curtis have +him." She did not mean to, but suddenly she was crying, and began to +fumble for her handkerchief. + +"Well, if this ain't the limit!" said Lily, and jumped up and ran to +her, and put her arms around her. ("Here, take mine! It's clean.") "Say, +I'm that sorry for you, I don't know what to do!" Her own tears +overflowed. + +Eleanor, wincing away from the gush of perfumery from the little clean +handkerchief, clutched at Lily's small plump hand--"_I'll_ tell you what +to do," Eleanor said; "_Give me Jacky!_" + +Lily, kneeling beside her, cried, honestly and openly. "There!--now!" +she said, patting Eleanor's shoulder; "don't you cry! Mrs. Curtis, now +look,"--she spoke soothingly, as if to a child, with her arm around +Eleanor--"you know I _can't_ let my little boy go? Why, think how you'd +feel yourself, if you had a little boy and anybody tried to get him. +Would you give him up? 'Course you wouldn't! Why, I wouldn't let Jacky +go away from me, even for a day, not for the world! An' he ain't +anything to Mr. Curtis. Honest! That's the truth. Now, don't you cry, +dear!" + +"You can see him often; I promise you, you can see him." + +In spite of her pity, Lily's yellow eyes gleamed: "'See' my own child? +Well, I guess!" + +"I'll give you anything," Eleanor said; "I have a little money--about +six hundred dollars a year; I'll give it to you, if you'll let Mr. +Curtis have him." + +"Sell Jacky for six hundred dollars?" Lily said. "I wouldn't sell him +for six thousand dollars, or six million!" She drew away from Eleanor's +beseeching hands. "How long has Mr. Curtis thought enough of Jacky to +pay six hundred dollars for him? You can tell Mr. Curtis, from me, that +I ain't no cheap trader, to give away my child for six hundred dollars!" +She sprang up, putting her clenched fists on her fat hips, and wagging +her head. "Why," she demanded, raucously, "didn't you have a child of +your own for him, 'stead of trying to get another woman's child away +from her?" + +It was a hideous blow. Eleanor gasped with pain; and instantly Lily's +anger was gone. + +"Say! I didn't mean that! 'Course you couldn't, at your age. I oughtn't +to have said it!" + +Eleanor, dumb for a moment after that deadly question, began, faintly: +"Mr. Curtis will do so much for him, Mrs. Dale; he'll educate him, +and--" + +"I can educate him," Lily said; "you tell Mr. Curtis that; you tell him +I thank him for nothing!--_I_ can educate my child to beat the band. I +don't want any help from _him_. But--" she was on her knees again, +stroking Eleanor's shoulder--"but if he's mean to you because you +haven't had any children, I--I--I'll see to him! Well--I've always +thought, what with him fussing about 'grammar,' and 'truth,' he'd be a +hard man to live with. But if he's been mean to you he'd ought to be +ashamed of himself!" + +"Oh, he doesn't even know that I have come!" Eleanor said; "he mustn't +know it. Oh, please!" She was terrified. "Don't tell him, Mrs. Dale. +Promise me you won't! He would be angry." + +Her frightened despair was pitiful; Lily was at her wits' end. "My soul +and body!" she thought, "what am I going to do with her?" But what was +all this business? Mrs. Curtis asking for Jacky--and Mr. Curtis not +knowing it? What was all this funny business? "Now I tell you," she +said; "you and me are just two ladies who understand each other, and I'm +going to be straight with you: if Mr. Curtis is trying to get my child +away from me, he'll have a sweet time doing it! There's other places +than Medfield to live in. I have a friend in New York, a society lady; +she's always after me to come and live there. Mind! I'm not mad at +_you_, you poor woman that couldn't have a baby--it's him I'm mad at! He +knows Jacky is mine, and I'll go to New York before I'll--" + +"Oh, don't say that!" Eleanor pleaded; "my husband hasn't tried to get +Jacky; it's just I!" + +She saw, with panic, that what Maurice had said was true--Lily might +"run"! If she did, there would be no hope of getting Jacky ... and Edith +would be in Mercer.... + +"Mrs. Dale, _promise_ me you'll stay in Medfield? It was only I who was +trying to get Jacky; Mr. Curtis never thought of such a thing! I wanted +him. I'd do everything for him; I'd--I'd give him music lessons." + +"Honest," said Lily, soberly, "I believe you're crazy." + +She looked crazy--this poor, gray-haired woman of pitiful dignity and +breeding. ("I bet she's sixty!" Lily thought)--this old, childless +woman, with a "Mrs." to her name, pleading with a mother to give up her +boy, so he could have "music lessons"! "And Mr. Curtis's up against +_that_," Lily thought, and instantly her anger at Maurice ebbed. "There, +dear," she said, touching Eleanor's wet cheeks gently with that perfumed +handkerchief; "I don't believe you've had any supper. I'm going to get +you something to eat--" + +"No, please; _please_ no!" Eleanor said. She had risen. She thought, +"If she says 'dear' again, I'll--I'll die!" ... "I promise you on my +word of honor," she said, faintly, "that I won't try to take Jacky away +from you, if--" she paused; it was terrible to have a secret with this +woman; it put her in her power, but she couldn't help it--"I won't try +to get him, if you won't tell Mr. Curtis that I ... have been here? +_Please_ promise me!" + +"Don't you worry," Lily said, reassuringly; "I won't give you away to +him." + +Eleanor was moving, stumbling a little, toward the door; Lily hesitated, +then ran and caught her own coat and hat from the rack in the hall. + +"Wait!" she said, pinning her hat on at a hasty and uncertain angle; +"I'm going with you! It ain't right for you to go by yourself ... +Jacky," she called out to the kitchen, "you be a good boy! Maw'll be +home soon." + +Eleanor shook her head in wordless protest. But Lily had tucked her hand +under her arm, and was walking along beside her. "He ought to look out +for you!" Lily said; "I declare, I've a mind to tell that man what I +think of him!" On the car, while Eleanor with shaking hands was opening +her purse, Lily quickly paid both fares, saying, politely, in answer to +Eleanor's confused protest, "_That's_ all right!" There was no talk +between them. Lily was too perplexed to say anything, and Eleanor was +too frightened. So they rode, side by side, almost to Maurice's door. +There, standing on the step while Eleanor took her latch key from her +pocketbook, Lily said, cheerfully, "Now you go and get a cup of +tea--you're all wore out!" Then she hurried off to catch a Medfield car. +"I declare," said little Lily, "I don't know which is the worse off, him +or her!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + + +Eleanor, letting herself into her silent house, saw, with relief, that +the library was dark, and knew that Maurice had gone to the station and +she could be alone. She felt her way into the room, blundering against +his big chair; the fire was almost out, and without waiting to turn on +the light she thrust some kindling under a charred log and knelt down +and took up the bellows. A spark brightened, ran backward under the film +of ashes, then a flame hesitated, caught--and there was a little winking +blaze. + +"Another failure," Eleanor said. She remembered with what eager hope she +had started for Lily's house; "I was going to 'bring him home' with me! +What a fool I was! ... I always fail," she said. Once more, she had +"marched up a hill--and--then--marched--down--again"! Her sense of +failure was like a dragging weight under her breastbone! She had not +made Maurice happy; she had not given him children; she had not kept +Edith out of his life. Failure! Failure! "But he loves me; he said so, +when I told him I forgave him about Lily. Of course I oughtn't to have +married him. But I loved him ... so much. And I did want to have just a +little happiness! I never had had any." She sat there, the bellows in +her white, ineffectual hands, looking into the fire; how capable Lily's +hands were! She remembered the sturdy left hand, and that shiny band of +gold ... Then she looked at her own slender wedding ring, and that made +her think of the circle of braided grass; and the locust blossoms; and +the field--and the children who were to come there on the wedding +anniversaries! And now--Maurice's child called another woman +"mother"!... Well, she had tried to bring him back to Maurice; tried, +and failed, with hideous humiliation--for, instead of bringing Jacky +back, this "mother" had brought her back!... "_And she paid my car +fare!_" It was intolerable. "I must send her five cents, somehow!" + +She sat on the floor, leaning against Maurice's chair, until midnight; +the log burned through, broke apart, and smoldered into ashes. Once she +put her cheek down on the broad arm of the chair, then kissed it--for +his hand had rested on it!--his dear young hand--In the deepening +chilliness, watching the ashes, she ached with the sense of her last +failure; but most of the time she thought of Edith, and of what she +believed she had read in those humorous, candid eyes. "She dared, +_before me_!--to show him that she was in love with him! He doesn't care +for her--I know that. But I won't have her come here, to my own house, +and make love to him. How can I keep her from coming? Oh, if I could +only get Jacky!" + +But she couldn't get him. She had accepted that as final. The talk in +Lily's parlor proved that there was not the slightest hope of getting +Jacky. So the only thing for her to do was to keep Edith out of her +house. When, at nearly one o'clock, shivering, she went up to her room, +she was absorbed in thinking how she could do this. With any other girl +it would have been simple enough; never invite her! But not Edith. Edith +came without an invitation. Edith had, Eleanor thought, "no delicacy." +She had always been that way. She had always lacked ordinary refinement! +From the very first, she had run after Maurice. "She is capable of +_kissing_ him," Eleanor told herself; "and saying she did it because he +was like a brother!" Strangely enough, in this blaze of jealousy she had +no flicker of resentment at Lily! Lily (now that she had seen her) was +to Eleanor merely the woman to whom Jacky belonged. Looking back on +those months that followed her discovery of Lily, and contrasting the +agony she had felt then with her despair about Edith now, she was +faintly surprised at the difference in her pain. This was probably +because faithlessness of the body is not so deadly an insult to Love as +faithlessness of the mind. But Eleanor did not, of course, make any such +explanation. She just said to herself that Maurice had been a boy when +he had been untrue to her, and she herself had been, in some ways, to +blame; and he had confessed, and been forgiven. So Lily was now of no +consequence--except as she interfered with Eleanor's passionate wish to +have Jacky. So she did not hate Lily, or fear her (though she was +humiliated at that car fare!). But she did hate Edith, and fear of her +was agony.... So she would, somehow, keep her out of the house! + +Just as she was getting into bed, she wiped her eyes, then cringed at a +gust of perfumery--and realized that she had brought Lily's handkerchief +back with her! It was a last abasement: the woman's horrible +handkerchief. She burst into hysterical weeping.... The next morning, +when she came down to breakfast, her face was haggard with those +ravaging tears, and with the fatigue of hating. Even before she had her +coffee, she burned the scented scrap of machine-embroidered linen, +pressing it down between the logs in the library fireplace; but she +could not burn her hate; it burned her! + +She was so worn out that when, a little before luncheon, Edith suddenly +came breezily in, she was, at first, too confused to know what to say to +her.... It was an incredibly mild day; on the shady side of the back +yard there was still a sooty heap of melting snow, but the sky was +turquoise, soaring without a cloud and brimmed with light, so that the +shadows of the bare branches of the poplar, clear-cut like jet, +crisscrossed on the brick path; in the border, the brown fangs of the +tulips had bitten up through the wet earth, and two militant crocuses +had raised their tight-furled purple standards. Eleanor, tempted by the +sunshine, had come here, muffled up in an elderly white shawl, to sit by +the little painted table--built so long ago for Edith's pleasure! She +had put old Bingo's basket in the sun, and stroked him gently; he was +very helpless now, and ate nothing except from her hands. + +"Poor little Bingo!" Eleanor said; "dear little Bingo!" Bingo growled, +and Eleanor looked up to see why--Edith was on the iron veranda. + +"Hullo!" Edith said, gayly; "isn't it a wonderful day? I just ran in--" +She came down the twisted stairway and, unasked and smiling, sat down at +the table. "Bingo! Don't you know your friends? One would think I was a +burglar! Oh, Eleanor, the tulips are up! Do you remember when Maurice +and I planted them?" + +Eleanor's throat tightened. She made some gasping assent. + +"I came 'round," Edith said--her frank eyes looked straight into +Eleanor's eyes, dark and agonized--"I ran in, because I'm afraid you +thought, yesterday, that I wanted to quarter myself on you? And I just +wanted to say, don't give it a thought! I perfectly understand that +sometimes it's inconvenient to have company, and--" + +"It's not inconvenient to have company," Eleanor said. + +Edith stopped short. ("What a dead give-away!" she thought; "she +dislikes me!") Then she tried, generously, to cover the "give-away" up: +She said something about guests and servants: "We're having an awful +time at Green Hill--servants are the limit! When a maid stays six weeks, +we call her an old family retainer!" + +Eleanor said, "I have no difficulty with maids. That is not why I prefer +not to have ... company." + +By this time, of course, Edith's one thought was to get away, with +dignity; but dignity, when you've had your face slapped, is almost +impossible. So Edith (being Edith!) chose Truth, and didn't trouble +herself with dignity! "Eleanor," she said, "I know it's me you don't +want. I felt it last night. I'm afraid I've done something that has +offended you. Have I? Truly, Eleanor, I haven't meant to! What is it? +Let's talk it out. Eleanor, what _have_ I done?" She put her hands down +on Eleanor's, clasped rigidly on the table. + +"Please!" Eleanor said, and drew her hands away. + +"Oh," Edith said, pitifully, "you are troubled!" + +Eleanor said, with a gasp: "Not at all ... Edith, I am afraid I must ask +you to ... excuse me. I'm busy." + +Edith was too amazed to speak; she could not, indeed, think of anything +to say! This wasn't "dislike." "Why, she _hates_ me!" she thought. "Why +does she hate me? Shall I not notice it? Shall I talk about something +else?" But she could not talk of anything else; she could only speak her +swift, honest thought: "Eleanor, why do you dislike me? Maurice and I +have been friends--we have been like brother and sister--ever since I +can remember. Oh, Eleanor, I want _you_ to like me, too! Please don't +keep me away from you and Maurice!" + +Eleanor said, rapidly: "He's not your brother; and it would be difficult +to keep you away from him. You go to his office to find him." + +There was a dead silence. Edith grew very pale. At last she understood. +Eleanor was jealous ... Of her! They looked at each other, the angry +woman and the dumfounded girl. "Jealous? Of _me_?" Edith thought. "Why +_me_? Maurice only cares for me as if I was his sister! ... And I don't +do Eleanor any harm by--loving him." ... Eleanor was gasping out a +torrent of assailing words: + +"Girls are different from what they were in my day. Then, they didn't +openly run after men! Now, apparently, they do. Certainly _you_ do. You +always have. I'm not blind, Edith. I have known what was going on; when +you were living with us and I had a headache, you used to talk to him, +and try and be clever--to make him think I was dull, when it was only +that--I was too ill to talk! And you kept him down in the garden until +midnight, when he might have been sitting with me on the porch. And you +made him go skating. And now you _look_ at him! I know what that means. +A girl doesn't look that way at a man, unless--" + +There was dead silence. + +"Unless she's in love with him. But don't think that, though you are in +love with him, he cares for _you_! He does not. He cares for no one but +me. He told me so." + +Silence. + +"Can you deny that you care for my husband?" Edith opened her lips--and +closed them again. "You don't deny it," Eleanor said; "you _can't_." She +put her head down on her arms on the table; her fifty years engulfed +her. She said, in a whisper, "He doesn't love me." + +Instantly Edith's arms were around her. "Eleanor, dear! Don't--don't! He +does love you--he does! I'd perfectly hate him if he didn't! Oh, +Eleanor, poor Eleanor! Don't cry; Maurice _does_ love you. He doesn't +care a copper for me!" The tears were running down her face. She bent +and kissed Eleanor's hands, clenched on the table, and then tried to +draw the gray head against her tender young breast. + +Eleanor put out frantic hands, as if to push away some suffocating +pressure. Both of these women--Lily, with her car fare and her +handkerchief; Edith, with her impudent "advice" to Maurice not to have +secrets from his wife--pitied her! She would not be pitied by them! + +"Don't touch me!" she said, furiously; "_you love my husband_." + +Edith heard her own blood pounding in her ears. + +"Don't you?" said Eleanor; her face was furrowed with pain; "Don't you?" + +It was a moment of naked truth. "I have loved Maurice," Edith said, +steadily, "ever since I was a child. I always shall. I would like to +love you, too, Eleanor, if you would let me. But nothing--_nothing_! +shall ever break up my ... affection for Maurice." + +"You might as well call it love." + +Edith, rising, said, very low: "Well, I will call it love. I am not +ashamed. I am not wronging you. You have no need to be jealous of me, +Eleanor. He cares nothing for me." + +Eleanor struck the table with her clenched fists. "You shall never have +him!" she said. + +Edith turned, silently, and went up the veranda stairs and out of the +house. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + + +When Eleanor got her breath, after that crazy outbreak, she rushed up to +her own room, bolted the door, fell on her knees at her bedside, and +told herself in frantic gasps, that she would _fight_ Edith Houghton! +Grapple with her! Beat her away from Maurice! "I must _do_ something--do +something--" + +But what? There was only one weapon with which she could vanquish +Edith--Maurice's love for his son. _Jacky!_ She must have Jacky ... + +But how could she get him? + +She knew she couldn't get him with Lily's consent. Frantic with jealousy +as she was, she recognized that! Yet, over and over, during the week +that followed that hour in the garden with Edith, she said to herself, +"If Maurice had Jacky, Edith would be nothing to him." ... It was at +this point that one day something made her add, "_Suppose he had Lily, +too?_" Then he could have Jacky. + +"If I were dead, he could marry Lily." + +At first this was just one of those vague thoughts that blew through her +mind, as straws and dead leaves blow down a dreary street. But this +straw caught, so to speak, and more straws gathered and heaped about it. +The idea lodged, and another idea lodged with it: If, to get his child, +he married Jacky's mother, Edith would never reach him! And if, by +dying, Eleanor gave Maurice his child, he would always love her for her +gift; she would always be "wonderful." And Edith? Why, he couldn't, he +_couldn't_--if his wife died to give him Jacky--think of Edith again! +Jacky, Eleanor thought, viciously, "would slam the door in Edith's +face!" + +Perhaps, if Maurice had been at home, instead of being obliged to +prolong that western business trip, the sanity of his presence would +have swept the straws and dead leaves away and left Eleanor's mind +bleak, of course, with disappointment about Jacky and dread of +Edith--but sound. As it was, alone in her melancholy, uncomfortable +house, tiny innumerable "reasons" for considering the one way by which +Maurice could get Jacky, heaped and heaped above common sense: ten years +ago Mrs. Newbolt said that if Eleanor had not "caught" Maurice when he +was young, he would have taken Edith; that was a straw. Two years ago a +woman in the street car offered her a seat, because she looked as old as +_her_ mother. Another straw! Lily supposed she was Maurice's mother! A +straw.... Edith admitted--had impudently flung into Eleanor's face!--the +confession that she was "in love with him!"--and Edith was to be in town +for three months. Oh, what a sheaf of straws! Edith would see him +constantly. She would "look at him"! Could Maurice stand that? Wouldn't +what little love he felt for his old wife go down under the wicked +assault of those "looks"?--unless he had Jacky! Jacky would "slam the +door." + +Eleanor said things like this many times a day. Straws! Straws! And they +showed the way the wind was blowing. Sometimes, in the suffocating dust +of fear that the wind raised she even forgot her purpose of making +Maurice happy, in a violent urge to make it impossible for Edith +Houghton to triumph over her. But the other thought--the crazy, nobler +thought!--was, on the whole, dominant: "Maurice would be happy if he had +a child. I couldn't give him a child of my own, but I can give him +Jacky." Yet once in a while she balanced the advantages and +disadvantages of the one way in which Jacky could be given: _Lily_? +Could Maurice endure Lily? She thought of that parlor, of Lily's +vulgarity, of the raucous note in her voice when those flashes of anger +pierced like claws through the furry softness of her good nature; she +thought of the reek of scent on the handkerchief. Could he endure Lily? +Yet she was efficient; she would make him comfortable. "I never made +him comfortable," she thought. "And he doesn't love her; so I wouldn't +so terribly mind her being here--any more than I'd mind a housekeeper. +But I wouldn't want her to call him 'Maurice.' I think I'll put that +into my letter to him. I'll say that I will ask, as a last favor, that +he will not let her call him 'Maurice.'" + +For by this time she had added another straw to the pile of rubbish in +her mind: _she would write him a letter_. In it she would tell him that +she was going to ... die, so that he could marry Lily and have Jacky! +Then came the mental postscript, which would not, of course, be written; +she would make it possible for him to marry Lily--_and impossible for +him to marry Edith_! And by and by she got so close to her mean and +noble purpose--a gift in one dead hand and a sword in the other!--that +she began to think of ways and means. How could she die? She couldn't +buy morphine without a prescription, and she couldn't possibly get a +prescription. But there were other things that people did,--dreadful +things! She knew she couldn't do anything "dreadful." Maurice had a +revolver in his bureau drawer, upstairs--but she didn't know how to +make it "go off"; and if she had known, she couldn't do it; it would +be "dreadful." Well; a rope? No! Horrible! She had once seen a +picture ... she shuddered at the memory of that picture. _That_ was +impossible! Sometimes any way--every way!--seemed impossible. Once, +wandering aimlessly about the thawing back yard, she stood for a long +time at the iron gate, staring at the glimmer, a block away, of the +river--"our river," Maurice used to call it. But in town, "their" +river--flowing!--flowing! was filmed with oil, and washed against slimy +piles, and carried a hideous flotsam of human rubbish; once down below +the bridge she had seen a drowned cat slopping back and forth among +orange skins and straw bottle covers. The river, in town, was as +"dreadful" as those other impossible things! Back in the meadows it was +different--brown and clear where it rippled over shallows and lisped +around that strip of clean sand, and darkly smooth out in the deep +current;--the deep current? Why! _that_ was possible! Of course there +were "things" in the water that she might step on--slimy, creeping +things!--which she was so afraid of. She remembered how afraid she had +been that night on the mountain, of snakes. But the water was clean. + +She must have stood there a long time; the maids, in the basement +laundry, said afterward that they saw her, her white hands clutching the +rusty bars of the gate, looking down toward the river, for nearly an +hour. Then Bingo whined, and she went into the house to comfort him; and +as she stroked him gently, she said, "Yes, ... our river would be +possible." But she would get so wet! "My skirts would be wet ..." + +So three days went by in profound preoccupation. Her mind was a +battlefield, over which, back and forth, reeling and trampling, Love and +Jealousy--old enemies but now allies!--flung themselves against Reason, +which had no support but Fear. Each day Maurice's friendly letters +arrived; one of them--as Jealousy began to rout Reason and Love to cast +out Fear--she actually forgot to open! Mrs. Newbolt called her up on the +telephone once, and said, "Come 'round to dinner; my new cook is pretty +poor, but she's better than yours." + +Eleanor said she had a little cold. "Cold?" said Mrs. Newbolt. "My +gracious! don't come near _me_! I used to tell your dear uncle I was +more afraid of a cold than I was of Satan! He said a cold _was_ Satan; +and I said--" Eleanor hung up the receiver. + +So she was alone--and the wind blew, and the straws and leaves danced +over that battlefield of her empty mind, and she said: + +"I'll give him Jacky," and then she said, "Our river." And then she +said, "But I must hurry!" He had written that he might reach home by the +end of the week. "He might come to-night! I must do it--before he comes +home." She said that while the March dawn was gray against the windows +of her bedroom, and the house was still. She lay in bed until, at six, +she heard the creak of the attic stairs and Mary's step as she crept +down to the kitchen, the silver basket clattering faintly on her arm. +Then she rose and dressed; once she paused to look at herself in the +glass: those gray hairs! ... Edith had called his attention to them so +many years ago! It was a long time since it had been worth while to pull +them out. ... All that morning she moved about the house like one in a +dream. She was thinking what she would say in her letter to him, and +wondering, now and then, vaguely, what it would be like, _afterward_? +She ate no luncheon, though she sat down at the table. She just crumbled +up a piece of bread; then rose, and went into the library to Maurice's +desk... She sat there for a long time, making idle scratches on the +blotting paper; her elbow on the desk, her forehead in her hand, she sat +and scrawled his initials--and hers--and his. And then, after about an +hour, she wrote: + +... I want you to have Jacky. When I am dead you can get him, because +you can marry Lily. Of course I oughtn't to have married you, but-- + +Here she paused for a long time. + +I loved you. I'd rather she didn't call you Maurice. But I want you to +have Jacky; so marry her, and you will have him. I am not jealous, you +see. You won't call me jealous any more, will you? And, besides, I love +little Jacky, too. See that he has music lessons. + +Another pause... Many thoughts... Many straws and dead leaves... "Edith +will never enter the house, if Lily is here--with Jacky.... Oh--I hate +her." + +You will believe I love you, won't you, darling? I wish I hadn't married +you; I didn't mean to do you any harm. I just loved you, and I thought I +could make you happy. I know now that I didn't. Forgive me, darling, for +marrying you... + +Again a long pause.... + +I don't mind dying at all, if I can give you what you want. And I don't +mind your marrying Lily. I am sure she can make good cake--tell her to +try that chocolate cake you liked so much. I tried it twice, but it was +heavy. I forgot the baking powder. Make her call you "Mr. Curtis." Oh, +Maurice--you will believe I love you?--even if I am-- + +She put her pen down and buried her face in her arms folded on his desk; +she couldn't seem to write that word of three letters which she had +supposed summed up the tragedy, begun on that June day in the field and +ending, she told herself, on this March day, in the same place. So, by +and by, instead of writing "old," she wrote + +"a poor housekeeper." + +Then she pondered on how she should sign the letter, and after a while +she wrote: + +"STAR." + +She looked at the radiant word, and then kissed it. By and by she got +up--with difficulty, for she had sat there so long that she was stiff in +every joint--and going to her own desk, she hunted about in it for that +little envelope, which, for nearly twelve of the fifty golden years +which were to find them in "their field," had held the circle of braided +grass. When she opened it, and slid the ring out into the palm of her +hand it crumbled into dust. She debated putting it back into the +envelope and inclosing it in her letter? But a rush of tenderness for +Maurice made her say: "No! It might hurt him." So she dropped it down +behind the logs in the fireplace. "When the fire is lighted it will burn +up." Lily's scented handkerchief had turned to ashes there, too. Then +she folded the letter, slipped it into an envelope, sealed it, addressed +it, and put it in her desk. "He'll find it," she thought, "_afterward_." +Find it,--and know how much she loved him!--the words were like wine to +her. Then she looked at the clock and was startled to see that it was +five. She must hurry! He might come home and stop her!... + +She was perfectly calm; she put on her coat and hat and opened the front +door; then saw the gleam of lights on the wet pavement and felt the +March drizzle in her face; she reflected that it would be very wet in +the meadow, and went back for her rubbers. + +When the car came banging cheerfully along, she boarded it and sat so +that she would be able to see Lily's house. "She's getting his supper," +Eleanor thought; "dear little Jacky! Well, he will be having his supper +with Maurice pretty soon! I wonder how she'll get along with Mary? Mary +will call her 'Mrs. Curtis,' Mary would leave in a minute if she knew +what kind of a person 'Mrs. Curtis' was!" She smiled at that; it pleased +her. "But she mustn't call him 'Maurice,'" she thought; "I won't permit +_that_!" + +The car stopped, and all the other passengers got out. Eleanor vaguely +watched the conductor pull the trolley pole round for the return trip; +then she rose hurriedly. As she started along the road toward the meadow +she thought. "I can walk into the water; I never could jump in! But it +will be easy to wade in." That made her think of the picnic, and the +wading, and how Maurice had tied Edith's shoestrings; and with that came +a surge of triumph. "When he reads my letter, and knows how much I love +him, he'll forget her. And when she hears he has married Lily, she'll +stop making love to him by getting him to tie her shoestrings!" + +It was quite dark by this time, and chilly; she had meant to sit down +for a while, with her back against the locust tree, and think how, _at +last_, he was going to realize her love! But when she reached the bank +of the river she stooped and felt the winter-bleached grass, and found +it so wet with the small, fine rain which had begun to fall, that she +was afraid to sit down. "I'd add to my cold," she thought. So she stood +there a long time, looking at the river, leaden now in the twilight. +"How it glittered that day!" she thought. Suddenly, on a soft wind of +memory, she seemed to smell the warm fragrance of the clover, and hear +again her own voice, singing in the sunshine-- + +"Through the clear windows of the morning!" + +"I'll leave my coat on the bank," she said; "but I'll wear my hat; it +will keep my hair from getting messy. ... Oh, Maurice mustn't let her +call him 'Maurice'! I wish I'd made that clearer in my letter. Why +didn't I tell him to give her that five cents? ... I wonder how many +'minutes' we have had now? We had had fifty-four, that Day. I wish I had +calculated, and put the number in the letter. No, that might have made +him feel badly. I don't want to hurt him; I only want him to know that I +love him enough to die to make him happy. Oh--will it be cold?" + +It was then that she took, slowly, one step--and stood still. And +another--and paused. Her heart began to pound suffocatingly in her +throat, and suddenly she knew that she was afraid! She had not known it; +fear had not entered into her plans; just love--and Maurice; just +hate--and Edith! Nor had "Right" or "Wrong" occurred to her. Now, old +instincts rose up. People called this "wicked"? So, if she was going to +do it, she must do it quickly! She mustn't get to thinking or she might +be afraid to do it, because it would be "wicked." She unfastened her +coat, then fumbled with her hat, pinning it on firmly; she was saying, +aloud: "Oh--oh--oh--it's wicked. But I must. Oh--my skirts will get +wet ... 'Kiss thy perfumed garments' ... No; I'll hold them up. Oh--oh--" +And as she spoke her crazy purpose drove her forward; she held back +against it--but, like the pressure of a hand upon her shoulder, it +pushed her on down the bank--slowly--slowly--her heels digging into the +crumbling clay, her hands clutching now at a tuft of grass, now at a +drooping branch; she was drawing quick breaths of terror, and talking, +in little gasps, aloud: "He'll forget Edith. He'll have Jacky. He'll +know how much I love him...." So, over the pebbles, out on to the spit +of sand; on--on--until she reached the river's edge. She stood there for +a minute, listening to the lisping chatter of the current. Very slowly, +she stepped in, and was ankle deep in shallow water,--then stopped +short--the water soaked through her shoes, and suddenly she felt it, +like circling ice, around her ankles! Aloud, she said, "Maurice,--I give +you Jacky. But don't let Lily call you--" She stepped on, into the +stream; one step--two--three. It was still shallow. "Why doesn't it get +_deep_?" she said, angrily; another step and the water was halfway to +her knees; she felt the force of the current and swayed a little; still +another step--above her knees now! and the _rip_, tugging and pulling at +her floating skirts. It was at the next step that she slipped, +staggered, fell full length--felt the water gushing into the neck of her +dress, running down her back, flowing between her breasts; felt her +sleeves drenched against her arms; she sprang up, fell again, her head +under water, her face scraping the pebbly sharpness of the river +bed,--again got on to her feet and ran choking and coughing, stumbling +and slipping, back to the sand-spit, and the shore. There she stood, +soaking wet, gasping. Her hat was gone, her hair dripping about her +face. "_I can't_," she said. + +She climbed up the bank, catching at the grass and twigs, and feeling +her tears running hot over the icy wetness of her cheeks. When she +reached the top she picked up her coat with numb, shaking hands and, +shivering violently, put it on with a passionate desire for warmth. + +"I tried; I _tried_," she said; "but--I can't!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + + +It was after ten o'clock that night when Eleanor's icy fingers fumbled +at Mrs. Newbolt's doorbell. The ring was not heard at first, because her +aunt and Edith Houghton and Johnny Bennett were celebrating his +departure the next day for South America, by making a Welsh rabbit in a +chafing dish before the parlor fire. Mrs. Newbolt, entering into the +occasion with voluble reminiscences, was having a very good time. She +liked Youth, and she liked Welsh rabbits, and she liked an audience; and +she had all three! Then the doorbell rang. And again. + +"For Heaven's sake!" said Mrs. Newbolt; "at this time of night! Johnny, +the girls have gone to bed; you go and answer it, like a good boy." + +"Dump in some more beer, Edith," Johnny commanded, and went out into the +hall, whistling. A moment later the other two heard his startled voice, +"Why, come right in!" There was no reply, just shuffling steps; then +Eleanor, silent, without any hat, her hair plastered down her ghastly +cheeks, her face bruised and soiled with sand, stood in the doorway, the +astonished John Bennett behind her. Everybody spoke at once: + +"Eleanor! What has happened?" + +"_Eleanor!_ Where is your hat?" + +"Good gracious! Eleanor--" + +She was perfectly still. Just looking at them, during that blank moment +before everything became a confusion of jostling assistance. Edith +rushed to help her off with her coat. Johnny said, "Mrs. Newbolt, where +can I get some whisky?" Mrs. Newbolt felt the soaking skirt, and tried +to unfasten the belt so that the wet mass might fall to the floor. + +Eleanor was rigid. "Get a doctor!" Edith commanded. + +Johnny ran to the telephone. + +"No," Eleanor whispered. + +But nobody paid any attention to her. Johnny, at the telephone, was +telling Mrs. Newbolt's doctor to _hurry_! Mrs. Newbolt herself had run, +wheezing, to open the spare-room bed and get out extra blankets, and +fill hot-water bottles; then, somehow or other, she and Edith got +Eleanor upstairs, undressed her, put her into the big four-poster, and +held a tumbler of hot whisky and water to her lips. By the time Doctor +James arrived she had begun to shiver violently; but she was still +silent. The trolley ride into town, with staring passengers and a +conductor who thought she had been drinking, and tried to be jocose, had +chilled her to the bone, and the gradual dulling of thought had left +only one thing clear to her: She mustn't go home, because Maurice might +possibly be there! And if he was, then he would _know_! So she must +go--somewhere. She went first to Mrs. O'Brien's, climbing the three long +flights of stairs and feeling her way along dark entries to the old +woman's door. She stood there shuddering and knocking; a single gas jet, +wavering in the draughty entry, made her shadow lurch on the cracked +plaster of the wall; it occurred to her that she would like to put her +frozen hands around the little flame to warm them. Then she knocked +again. There was no answer, so, shaking from head to foot, she felt her +way downstairs again to the street, where the reflection of an +occasional gas lamp gleamed and flickered on the wet asphalt. "I'll go +to Auntie's," she thought. + +She had just one purpose--to get warm! But she was so dazed that she +could never remember how she reached Mrs. Newbolt's; probably she +walked, for there were no cabs in that part of town and no car line +passed Mrs. Newbolt's door. The time after she left Mrs. O'Brien's was a +blank. Even when she had swallowed the hot whisky, and began to feel +warmer, she was still mentally benumbed, and couldn't remember what she +had done. She did not notice Johnny Bennett; she saw Edith, but did +not, apparently, understand that she was staying in the house. When the +doctor came she was as silent to him as to everybody else. + +He asked no questions. "Keep her warm," he said, "and don't talk to +her." + +Mrs. Newbolt, going to the door with him, palpitating with fright, said, +"_We_ don't know a thing more about what's happened than you do! She +just appeared, drippin', wet!" + +"She has evidently fallen into some water," he said; "but I wouldn't ask +her about it, yet. Of course we don't know what the result will be, Mrs. +Newbolt. I can't help saying I'm anxious. Mr. Curtis had better be sent +for. Telegraph him in the morning." He went off, thinking to himself, +"She must have gone into the country to do it. If she'd tried the river, +here, and scrambled out, she wouldn't have been so frightfully chilled. +I wonder what's up?" + +Everybody wondered what was up, but Eleanor did not enlighten them; so +the three interrupted revelers could do nothing but think. Johnny's +thoughts, as he sat down in the parlor among the Welsh-rabbit plates, +keeping the fire up, and waiting in case he might be needed, were even +briefer than the doctor's: "Tried to commit suicide." + +Edith, standing in the upper hall, listening to Mrs. Newbolt at +Eleanor's bedside, exclaiming, and repeating her dear mother's ideas +about catching cold, and offering more hot-water bottles, had her +thoughts: "I won't go into the room--she would hate to see me! The +doctor said she had fallen into some water. Did she--do it on purpose? +Oh, _was_ it my fault?" Edith's heart pounded with terror: "Was it what +I said to her in the garden that made her do it?" + +Mrs. Newbolt, in a blue-flannel dressing gown, and in and out of the +spare room with sibilant whispers of anxiety, had, for once, more +thoughts than words; her words were only, "I've always expected it!" But +her thoughts would have filled volumes! Mrs. Newbolt had put her hair +in order for the night, and now her crimping pins made the shadow of her +head, bobbing on the ceiling, look like a gigantic spider. + +Eleanor had just one hazy thought: "I tried ... I tried--and I failed." + +Other people, however, didn't feel so sure that she had failed. She +"looks like death," Mrs. Newbolt told Edith the next morning. "We've got +to find Maurice! Edith, why do you suppose she--did it?" + +"Oh, but she _didn't_!" Edith said. "What sense would there be--" + +"Don't talk about 'sense'! Eleanor never had any. I've telegraphed your +mother to come. I wonder how Bingo is? She understands her. The ashman +has broken my new ash barrel; I don't know what this country is comin' +to!" + +Then she went upstairs to try to understand Eleanor herself. "Eleanor, +what happened?" + +"Nothing. I'm going home this afternoon." + +"Indeed you are not! You're not goin' out of this house till Maurice +comes and gets you! _What_ happened?" she demanded again. + +"I fell. Into some water." + +"How could you 'fall'? And what 'water'?" + +"I had gone out to the river--up in Medfield. To--take a walk; and +I ... slipped...." + +"Now, Eleanor, look here; if I have a virtue, it's candor, and I'll tell +you why; it saves time. That's what my dear father used to say: 'Lyin' +wastes time.' I know what you tried to do; and it was very wicked." + +"But I didn't do it!" + +"You tried to. If you and Maurice have quarreled, I'll stand by _you_." + +Eleanor covered her face with her hands--and Mrs. Newbolt burst out, +"He's treated you badly! You needn't try to deceive me,--he's been +flirtin' with some woman?" Her pale, prominent eyes snapped with anger. + +"Oh, Auntie, don't! He hasn't! Only, I--wanted to make him happier; and +so I--" She broke into furious crying. Despairing crying. + +Instantly Mrs. Newbolt was all frightened solicitude. "There! Don't cry! +Have a hot-water bag. They say there's a new kind on the market. I must +get a new pair of rubbers. Your face is awfully bruised. He's puffectly +happy! He worships the ground you walk on! Eleanor, don't cry. How's +your cold? The ashman--" + +Eleanor, gasping, said her cold was better, and repeated her +determination of going home. + +It was the doctor--dropping in, he said, to make sure Mrs. Curtis was +none the worse for her "accident"--who put a stop to that. + +"I slipped and fell," Eleanor told him; she was very hoarse. + +He said yes, he understood. "But you got badly chilled, and you had a +cold to start with. So you must lie low for two or three days. When will +Mr. Curtis be back?" + +Eleanor said she didn't know; all she knew was she didn't want him sent +for. She was "all right." + +But of course he had been sent for! "I don't know that it was really +necessary," Mrs. Newbolt told Mrs. Houghton, who appeared late in the +afternoon; "but I wasn't goin' to take the responsibility--" + +"Of course not!" Mrs. Houghton said. "Mr. Weston has telegraphed him, +too, I hope?" Then, before taking her things off, she went upstairs to +Eleanor. "Well!" she said, "I hear you had an accident? Sensible girl, +to stay in bed!" She took Eleanor's hand, and its hot tremor made her +look keenly at the haggard face on the pillow. + +"Oh," Eleanor said, with a gasp of relief, "I'm so glad you're here! +There are some things I want attended to. I owe--I mean, somebody paid +my car fare. And I _must_ send it to her! And then I want something +from my desk; but I can't have Bridget get it, and I don't want to ask +Auntie to. It's--it's a letter to Maurice. I wanted to tell him +something.... But I've changed my mind. I don't want him to see it. He +mustn't see it! Oh, Mrs. Houghton, would you get it for me? I'd be _so_ +grateful! ... And then,--oh, that five cents! I don't know how I'm going +to send it to her--" + +"Tell me who it is, and I'll get it to her; and I'll get the letter," +Mary Houghton told her; and went on with the usual sick-room +encouragement: "The doctor says you are better. But you must hurry and +get well, so as to help Maurice with the little boy!" + +Her words were like a push against some tottering barrier. + +"I tried to help him; I tried to get Jacky! I went to the woman's, but +she wouldn't give him to me! I _tried_--so hard. But she wouldn't! She +paid my car fare--" + +Mrs. Houghton bent over and kissed her: "Tell me about it, dear; perhaps +I can help." + +"There is no help! ... She won't give him up. She insisted on coming +home with me, and she paid my car fare! Then I thought, if--I were not +alive, Maurice could get him, because he could marry her ..." + +Instantly, with a thrill of horror and admiration, Mrs. Houghton +understood the "accident"! "Eleanor! What a mad, mad thought! As if you +could help Maurice by giving him a great grief! Oh, I do thank God he +has been spared anything so terrible!" + +"But," Eleanor said, excitedly, "if I were dead, it would be his duty to +marry her, wouldn't it? Jacky is his child! Oughtn't he to marry Jacky's +mother? Oh, Mrs. Houghton, I owe her five cents--" + +The older woman was trembling, but she spoke calmly: "Eleanor, dear, you +must live for Maurice, not--die for him." + +"Promise me," said Eleanor, "you won't tell him?" + +"Of course I won't!" said Mrs. Houghton, with elaborate cheerfulness. +She kissed her, and went downstairs, feeling very queer in her knees. +She paused at the parlor door to say to Mrs. Newbolt and Edith that she +was going out to do an errand for Eleanor; "I hope Maurice will get +back soon," she said. "I don't like Eleanor's looks." Then she went to +get that letter which Maurice "must not see." As she walked along the +street she was still tingling with the shock of having her own theories +brought home to her. "Thank God," Mary Houghton said, "that nothing +happened!" + +The maid who opened the door at Maurice's house was evidently excited, +but not about her mistress. "Oh, Mrs. Houghton!" she said, "we done our +best, but he wouldn't take a bite!--and I declare I don't know what +Mrs. Curtis will say. He just _wouldn't_ eat, and this morning he up and +died--and me offering him a chop!" Bridget wept with real distress. +"Mrs. Houghton, please tell her we done our best; he just smelled his +chop--and died. You see, he hasn't eat a thing, without she gave it to +him, for--oh, more 'n a month!" + +Mary Houghton went into the library, where the fire was out, and the +dust on tables and chairs bore witness to the fact that Bridget had +devoted herself to Bingo; the room was gloomy, and smelled of soot. +Little Bingo lay, stiff and chill, on the sofa; on a plate beside him +was a chop rimmed in cold grease,--poor little, loving, jealous, old +Bingo! "I hope it won't upset Mrs. Curtis," Mrs. Houghton told the maid; +then gave directions about the stark little body. She found the letter +in Eleanor's desk, and went back to Mrs. Newbolt's. "Love," she thought, +"_is_ as strong as death; stronger! Bingo--and Eleanor." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + + +Maurice, followed by telegrams that never quite overtook him, did, some +forty-eight hours later, get the news that Eleanor had "had an +accident," and was at Mrs. Newbolt's, who thought he had "better return +immediately." His business was not quite finished, but it did not need +Mr. Weston's laconic wire, "Drop Greenleaf matters and come back," to +start him on the next train for Mercer. He had been away nearly two +weeks--two terrible weeks, of facing himself; two weeks of rebellion, +and submission; of tumultuous despair and quiet acceptance. He had +looked faithfully--and very shrewdly--into the "Greenleaf matters"; he +had turned one or two sharp corners, with entirely honest cleverness, +and he was taking back to Mercer some concessions which old Weston had +slipped up on! Yes, he had done a darned good job, he told himself, +lounging in the smoking compartment of one parlor car or another, or +strolling up and down station platforms for a breath of air. And all the +while that he was on the Greenleaf job--in Pullmans, sitting in hotel +lobbies writing letters, looking through title and probate records--his +own affairs raced and raged in his thoughts; they were summed up in one +word: "Edith." He could not get away from Edith! He tripped a Greenleaf +trustee into an admission (and he thought, "so long as she never +suspects that I love her, there's no harm in going along as we always +have"). Then he conceded a point to the Greenleaf interests (and said to +himself, "her hair on her shoulders that day on the lawn was like a +nimbus around the head of a saint. How she'd hate that word 'saint'!"). +His chuckle made one of the Greenleaf heirs think that Weston's +representative was a good sort;--"pleasant fellow!" But Maurice, +looking "pleasant," was thinking: "I'd about sell my soul to kiss her +hair ... Oh, I _must_ stop this kind of thing! I swear it's worse than +the Lily and Jacky business...." Then he signed a deed, and the +Greenleaf people felt they had made a good thing of it--but Maurice's +telegram that the deed was signed, caused rejoicing in the Weston +office! "Curtis got ahead of 'em!" said Mr. Weston. While he was +writing that triumphant telegram Maurice was wondering: "Was John +Bennett a complete idiot? ... If things had been different would Edith +have ... cared?" For himself, he, personally, didn't care "a damn," +whether Weston got ahead of Greenleaf or Greenleaf beat Weston. His own +affairs engrossed him: "my job," he was telling himself, "is to see that +Eleanor doesn't suffer any more, poor girl! And Edith shall never know. +And I'll make a decent man of Jacky--not a fool, like his father." So he +wrote his victorious dispatch, and the Weston office congratulated +itself. + +Maurice had been very grateful for his fortnight of absence from +everybody, except the Greenleaf heirs; grateful for a solitude of trains +and lawyers' offices. Because, in solitude, he could, with entirely +hopeless courage, face the future. He was facing it unswervingly the day +he reached Chicago, where he was to get some final signatures; he came +into the warm lobby of the hotel, glad to escape the rampaging lake +wind, and while he was registering the hotel clerk produced the +telegrams which had been held for him. The first, from Mr. Weston, "Drop +Greenleaf," bewildered him until he read the other, "Eleanor has had an +accident." Then he ran his pen through his name, asked for a time-table, +and sent a peremptory wire to Mrs. Newbolt saying that he was on his way +home, and asking that full particulars be telegraphed to him at a +certain point on his journey. "Let me know just what happened, and how +she is," he telegraphed. "It must be serious," he thought, "to send for +me!" + +It was hardly an hour before he was on a train for another day of +travel, during which he experienced the irritation common to all of us +when we receive an alarming dispatch, devoid of details. "Economizing on +ten cents! What kind of an 'accident'? How serious is it? When was it? +Why didn't they let me know before?" and so on; all the futile, anxious, +angry questions which a man asks himself under such circumstances. But +suddenly, while he was asking these questions, another question +whispered in his mind; a question to which he would not listen, and +which he refused to answer; but again and again, over and over, it +repeated itself, coming, it seemed, on the rhythmical roll of the +wheels--the wheels which were taking him back to Eleanor! "If--if--if--" +the wheels hammered out; "_if_ anything happens to Eleanor--"? He never +finished that sentence, but the beginning of it actually frightened him. +"Am I as low as this?" he said, frantically, "speculating on the +possibility of anything happening to her?" But he was not so low as +that--he only heard the jar of the wheels: "If--if--if--if--" + +When he reached the station to which he had told Mrs. Newbolt to reply, +he rushed out of the car into the telegraph office, and clutched at the +message before the operator could put it into its flimsy brown envelope; +as he read it he said under his breath, "Thank God!" It was from Mary +Houghton: + +Accident slight. Slipped into water. All right now except bad cold. + +Maurice's hand shook as he folded the message and stuffed it into his +pocket. He had the sense of having escaped from a terror--the terror of +intolerable remorse. For if she had not been "all right," if, instead of +just "a bad cold," the dispatch had said "something had +happened"!--then, for all the rest of his life he would have had to +remember how the wheels had beaten out that terrible refrain: +"If--if--if--" + +So he said, "Thank God." + +All that day, while Maurice was hurrying back to Mercer, Eleanor lay +very still, and when Mrs. Newbolt or Mrs. Houghton came into the room +she closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. Edith did not come into +the room; so, in a hazy way, Eleanor took it for granted that she had +left the house. "I should think she would!" Eleanor thought; "she could +hardly have the face to stay in the same house with me." But she did not +think much about Edith; she was absorbed in deciding what she should say +to Maurice. Should she tell him the truth?--or some silly story of a +walk to their meadow? The two alternatives flew back and forth in her +mind like shuttlecocks. There was one thing she felt sure of: that +letter--which Mrs. Houghton had brought from her desk, which Maurice was +to have read when she had done what she set out to do, but which now she +kept clutched in her hand, or hidden under her pillow--_Maurice must not +see that letter!_ If he read it, now, while she was (she told herself) +still half sick from those drenched hours of the trolley ride and the +dark wanderings from Mrs. O'Brien's to Mrs. Newbolt's, the whole thing +would seem simply ridiculous. Some time, he must know that she loved him +enough to buy Jacky for him, by dying--or trying to die! She would tell +him, _some time_; because her purpose (even if it had failed) would +measure the heights and depths of her love as nothing else could; but he +must not know it now, because she hadn't carried it out. That first +night, when she had found herself safe and warm (oh, warm! She had +thought she never would be warm any more!)--when she had found herself +in Mrs. Newbolt's spare room in the four-poster with its chintz hangings +and its great soft pillows, she had been glad she had not carried it +out. Glad not to be dead. As she lay there, shivering slowly into +delicious comfort, and fending off Mrs. Newbolt's distracted questions, +she had had occasional moments of a sense of danger escaped; perhaps it +_would_ have been wrong to--to lie down there in the river? People call +it wicked Mrs. Newbolt, for a single suspicious instant ("She forgot it +right off," Eleanor said; "she just thought we'd quarreled!"); but Mrs. +Newbolt had said it was "wicked." "But I didn't do it!" Eleanor told +herself in a rush of gratitude. She hadn't been "wicked"! Instead, she +was in Mrs. Newbolt's spare room, looking dreamily at the old French +clock on the mantelpiece, whose tarnished gilt face glimmered between +two slender black-marble columns; sometimes she counted the tick-tock of +the slowly swinging pendulum; sometimes, toward dawn, she watched the +foggy yellow daylight peer between the red rep curtains; but counting, +and looking, and drowsing, she was glad to be alive. It was not until +the next afternoon that she began to be faintly mortified at being +alive. It was then that she had felt that she _must_ get that +letter--Maurice mustn't see it! Little by little, humiliation at her +failure to be heroic, grew acute. Maurice wouldn't know that she loved +him enough to give him Jacky; he would just know that she was silly. She +had got wet; and had a cold in her head. Snuffles--not Death. He +might--_laugh_!... It was then that she implored Mrs. Houghton to get +the letter out of her desk. + +Yet when it was given to her she held it in her hand under the +bedclothes, saying to herself that she would not destroy it, yet, +because, even though she _had_ failed, there might come a time when it +would prove to Maurice how much she loved him. She was so absorbed in +this thought that she did not grieve much for Bingo. "Poor little +Bingo," she said, vaguely, when Mrs. Houghton told her that the little +dog was dead; "he was so jealous." Now, with Maurice coming nearer every +hour, she could not think of Bingo; she was face to face with a +decision! What should she tell him about the "accident"? + +It was in the afternoon of the day that Maurice was to arrive,--he had +telegraphed that he would reach Mercer in the evening;--that she had a +sudden panic about Edith. "She was here that night and saw me. I know +she laughed at me because I hadn't any hat on! She may--suspect? If she +does, she'll tell him! What shall I do to stop her?" She couldn't think +of any way to stop her! She couldn't hold her thoughts steady enough to +reach a decision. First would come gladness of her own comfort and +safety, and the warm, warm bed; then shame, that she had faltered and +run away from a chance to do a great thing for Maurice; then terror that +Edith would make her ridiculous to Maurice. Then all these thoughts +would whirl about, run backward: First, terror of Edith! then shame! +then comfort! Suddenly the terror thought held fast with a question. +"Suppose I make her promise not to tell Maurice anything? I think she +would keep a promise...." It would be dreadful to ask the favor of +secrecy of Edith--just as she had asked the same sort of favor of +Lily--but to seem silly to Maurice would be more dreadful than to ask a +favor! She held to this purpose of humiliating self-protection, long +enough to ask Mrs. Houghton when Edith was coming down from Green Hill. + +"Why, she's here, now, in the house!" Edith's mother said. + +"_Here?_" Eleanor said, despairingly. If Edith was here, then Maurice, +when he came, would see her and she would tell him! "She would make a +funny story of it," Eleanor thought; "I know her! She would make him +laugh. I can't bear it! ... I would like to speak to Edith," she told +Mrs. Houghton, faintly. + +Edith, summoned by her mother, stood for a rigid moment outside +Eleanor's door, trying to get herself in hand. In these anxious days, +Edith's youth had been threatened by assailing waves of a remorse that +at times would have engulfed it altogether, but for that unflinching +reasonableness which made her the girl she was. "It may be," Edith had +said to herself; "it _may_ be that what I said to her in the garden made +her so angry that she tried to kill herself; but why should it have made +her angry? I didn't injure her. Besides, she dragged it out of me! I +couldn't lie. She said, 'You love him.' I _would_ not lie, and say I +didn't! But what harm did it do her?" So she reasoned; but reason did +not keep her from suffering. "Did _I_ drive her to it?" Edith said, +over and over. So when her mother told her Eleanor wanted to speak to +her, she grew a little pale. When she entered Eleanor's room her heart +was beating so hard she felt smothered, but she was perfectly matter of +fact. "Anything I can do for you, Eleanor?" she said. She stood at the +foot of the bed, holding on to the carved bed post. + +Eleanor looked at her for a silent moment, then gathered herself +together. "Edith," she said (she was very hoarse and spoke with +difficulty), "I don't want to bother Maurice about--about my accident. +So I am going to ask you, please, not to refer to it to him. Not to tell +him anything about it. _Anything._ Promise me." + +"Of course I won't!" Edith said. As she spoke she forgot herself in pity +for the scared, haggard face. ("Oh, _was_ it my fault?" she thought, +with a real pang.) And before she knew it her coldness was all gone and +she was at Eleanor's side; she sat down on the edge of the bed and +caught her hand impulsively. "Eleanor," she said, "I've been awfully +unhappy, for fear anything I said--that morning--troubled you? Of course +there was no sense in talking that way, for either of us. So please +forgive me! _Was_ it what I said, that made you--that bothered you, I +mean? I'm so unhappy," Edith said, and caught her lip between her teeth +to keep it steady; her eyes were bright with tears. "Eleanor, truly I am +_nothing_ to--to anybody. Nobody cares a copper for me! Do be kind to +me. Oh--I've been awfully unhappy; and I'm _so_ glad you're better." + +Instantly the smoldering fire broke into flame: "I'm _not_ better," +Eleanor said, "and you wouldn't be glad if I were." + +It was as if she struck her hand upon those generous young lips. Edith +sprang to her feet. "Eleanor!" + +Eleanor sat up in bed, her hands behind her, propping her up; her cheeks +were dully red, her eyes glowing. "All this talk about making me unhappy +means nothing at all. You have always made me unhappy. And as for +anybody's caring for you--they _don't_; you are quite right about that. +Quite right! And I want to tell you something else: If anything happens +to me, I _want_ Maurice to marry again. But he won't marry you." + +"Eleanor," Edith said, "you wouldn't say such a thing, or think such a +thing, if you weren't sick. I'm sorry I came in. I'll go right away, +and--" + +"No," she said; "don't go away,"--her arms had begun to tremble with +strain of supporting her, she spoke in whispered gasps: "I am going to +speak," she said; "I prefer to speak. I want you to know that if I +die--" + +"You are not going to die! You are going to get well." + +"Will you _please_ not keep interrupting? It is so hard for me to get my +breath. I want you to know that he will marry--that Dale woman. Because +it is right that he should. Because of the little boy. His little boy." + +Edith was dumb. + +"So you see, he can't marry _you_," Eleanor said, and fell back on her +pillows, her eyes half closed. + +There was a long silence, just the ticking of the Empire clock and the +faint snapping of the fire. Edith felt as if some iron hand had gripped +her throat. For a moment it was impossible for her to speak; then the +words came quietly: "Eleanor, I'm glad you told me this. You are going +to get well, and I'm glad, _glad_ that you are! But I must tell you: If +anything had happened to you, I would have moved heaven and earth to +have kept Maurice from marrying that woman. Oh, Eleanor, how can you say +you love him, and yet plan such terrible unhappiness for him?" + +She turned and ran out of the room, up another flight of stairs to her +own bedroom. There she fell down on her bed and lay tense and rigid, her +face hidden in her hands. This, then, was what Maurice had meant? She +saw again the wood path, and the tall fern breaking under Maurice's +racquet; she saw the flecks of sunshine on the moss--she heard him say +he "hadn't played the game with Eleanor." Oh, he hadn't, he hadn't! Then +she thought of the Dale woman. The accident on the river. The stumble +at the gate and of Maurice's child in Lily's arms. "Oh, poor Eleanor! +poor Eleanor! ... All the same, she is wicked, to be so cruel to him. +She is taking her revenge. Jealousy has made her wicked. But, oh, I wish +I hadn't hurt her in the garden! But how _could_ Maurice--that little, +common woman! How _could_ he?" She shook with sobs: "Poor, poor +Eleanor ..." + +Eleanor, on her big bed, lay panting with anger and fright. "_Now_ +she'll know I'm hiding something from him!" she thought; "I've put +myself in her power by having a secret with her; just as I put myself in +Lily's power by asking her not to tell Maurice I had been there. Well, +Edith is in _my_ power!--because I've made her know he'll never care for +her. And she'll keep her word; she'll not tell him about the river." + +The relief of this was so great that she could almost forget her +humiliation; she gave herself up to thinking what she herself must do +to keep Maurice in ignorance. "Auntie will be sure to say something. But +he knows how silly she is. She thought we'd quarreled, and that I had +tried ... I might tell Maurice that? And he'll make fun of her, and won't +believe anything she says! I might say that I went out to--to see our +river, and slipped and got wet, and that Auntie thought we'd quarreled, +and that I had ... had tried to ... to--And he'll say, 'What a joke!' +But maybe he'll say, 'Why did you go out to Medfield so late?' And I'll +say, 'Oh, well, I got delayed.' ... Yes, that's the thing to do." + +So, around and around, her poor, frantic thoughts raced and trampled one +another. When Mrs. Newbolt interrupted them with a tray and some supper, +Eleanor, with eyes closed, motioned her away: "My head aches. I can't +eat anything. I'm going to try and get a little sleep." + +By and by, through sheer fatigue, she did drowse, and when the wheels of +Maurice's cab grated against the curb, she was asleep. + +Edith, upstairs in her own room, heard the front door close sharply. "I +_can't_ see him!" she said; "I mustn't see him." But she wanted to see +him; she wanted to say to him: "Maurice, you can make it all up to +Eleanor! You can make her happy. _Don't_ despair about it--we'll all +help you make it up to her!" She wanted to say: " Oh,Maurice, you _will_ +conquer. I know you will!" If she could only see him and tell him these +things! "If I didn't love him, I could," she thought.... + +Maurice came hurrying into the parlor, with the anxious, "How is she?" +on his lips; and Mrs. Newbolt and Mrs. Houghton were full of +reassurances, and suggestions of food, which he negatived promptly. +"Tell me about Eleanor! What happened?" + +"She's asleep," Mrs. Newbolt said. "You must have something to eat--" +She was in such a panic of uncertainty as to what must and must not be +said to Maurice that she clutched at supper as a perfectly safe topic. +"I--I--I'll go and see about your supper," said Mrs. Newbolt, and +trundled off to hide herself in the dining room. + +Mary Houghton could not hide, but she would have been glad to! "Eleanor +is sleepy, now, Maurice," she said; "but she'll want to have just a +glimpse of you--" + +"I'll go right up!" + +"Maurice, wait one minute. If I were you, I wouldn't get Eleanor to +talking, to-night; she's a little feverish--" + +"Mrs. Houghton!" he broke in, "Eleanor's all right, isn't she?" His face +was furrowed with alarm. (If that wicked rhythm of the wheels should +begin again!) + +"Oh yes; I--I think so. She hasn't quite got over the shock yet, but--" + +"What shock? Nobody's told me yet what it was! Your dispatch only said +she'd slipped into the water. What water?" + +"We don't really know," said Mrs. Houghton; "and she mustn't be worried +with questions, the doctor says. You see, she got dripping wet, somehow, +and then had a long trolley ride--and she had a cold to start with--" + +"I'll just crawl upstairs, and see if she's awake," said Maurice. "I +won't disturb her." + +As he started softly upstairs, Mrs. Newbolt opened the dining-room door +a crack, and peered in at Mary Houghton. "Did you tell him?" she said, +in a wheezing whisper. + +Mrs. Houghton shook her head. + +"Well, I can tell you who won't tell him," said Eleanor's aunt; "me! To +tell a man that his wife--" + +"Hush-sh!" said Mrs. Houghton; "he's coming downstairs. Besides, we +don't know that she did--" + +The dining-room door closed softly on the whispered words: "Puffect +nonsense. Of course we know." + +Maurice, tiptoeing into Eleanor's room, thought she was asleep, and was +backing out again, when she opened drowsy eyes and said, faintly, +"Hullo." + +He bent over to kiss her. "Well, you're a great girl, to cut up like +this when I'm away from home!" + +She smiled, closed her eyes, and he tiptoed out of the room.... + +Back again in the parlor, he began, "Mrs. Houghton, for Heaven's sake, +tell me the whole thing!" He wasn't anxious now; as far as he could see, +Eleanor was "all right"--just sleepy. But what on earth-- + +She told him what she knew; what she suspected, she kept to herself. But +she might as well have told it all. For, as he listened, his face +darkened with understanding. + +"The river? In Medfield? But, why--?" + +"Edith says you and she had a good deal of sentiment about the river, +and--" + +"At six o'clock, on a March evening?" said Maurice. He put his hands in +his pockets and began to walk up and down. Mrs. Houghton had nothing +more to say; the room was so silent that the dining-room door opened a +furtive crack--then closed quickly! Mrs. Houghton began to talk about +Maurice's journey, and Maurice asked whether Eleanor could be taken home +the next day--at which the dining-room door opened broadly, and Mrs. +Newbolt said: + +"If you ask _me_, I'd say 'no'! If you want to know what I think, I +think she's got a temperature! And she oughtn't to stir out of this +house till it's normal." + +"Mrs. Newbolt," said Maurice, pausing in his tramping up and down the +room; "why did Eleanor go out to Medfield?" + +"Perhaps she was lookin' for a cook! I--I think I'll go to bed!" said +Mrs. Newbolt--and almost ran out of the room. + +Maurice looked down at Mrs. Houghton, and laughed, grimly: "You might as +well tell me?" + +"My dear fellow, we have nothing to tell! We don't know anything--except +that Eleanor has added to her cold, and is very nervous," She paused; +could she give him an idea of the extent of Eleanor's "nervousness," and +yet not tell him what they all felt sure of? "Why, Maurice," she said; +"just to show you how hysterical Eleanor is, she told me--" Mrs. +Houghton dropped her voice, and looked toward the dining-room door; but +Mrs. Newbolt's ponderous step made itself heard overhead. "She said--Oh, +Maurice, this is too foolish to repeat; but it just shows how Eleanor +loves you. She implied that she didn't want to get well, so that you +could--could get the little boy, by marrying his mother!" + +Maurice sat down and stared at her, open-mouthed. "_Marry?_ I, marry +Lily?" He actually gasped under the impact of a perfectly new idea; then +he said, very softly, "Good God." + +Mrs. Houghton nodded. "Her one thought," she said (praying that, without +breaking her word to Eleanor, and betraying what was so terribly +Eleanor's own affair, she might make Maurice's heart so ready for the +pathos that he would not be repelled by the folly), "her one desire is +that you should have your little boy." + +Maurice walked over to the fireplace and kicked two charred pieces of +wood together between the fire irons. In the crash of Mary Houghton's +calm words, the rhythm of the wheels was permanently silenced. + +It was about four o'clock the next morning that the change came: Eleanor +had a violent chill. + +"I thought we were out of the woods," the doctor said, frowning; "but I +guess I was too previous. There's a spot in the left lung, Mr. Curtis." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + + +When Maurice saw his wife the next morning, it was with Mrs. Houghton's +warning--emphasized by the presence of a nurse--that he must not excite +her. So he sat at her bedside and told her about his trip, and how he +had got ahead of the Greenleaf heirs, and how he rushed back to Mercer +the minute those dispatches came saying that she was ill--and he never +asked her why she was ill, or what took her out to the river in the cold +dusk of that March afternoon. She didn't try to tell him. She was very +warm and drowsy--and she held in her hand, under the bedclothes, that +letter which proved how much she loved him, and which, some time, when +she got well, she would show him. All that day the household outside her +closed door was very much upset; but Eleanor, in the big bed, was +perfectly placid. She lay mere watching the tarnished gilt pendulum +swing between the black pillars of the clock on the mantelpiece, +thinking--thinking. "You'll be all right to-morrow!" Maurice would say; +and she would smile silently and go on thinking. "When I get well," she +thought, "I will do--so and so." By and by, still with the letter +clutched in her hot hand, she began to say to herself, "_If_ I get +well." She had ceased worrying over how she was going to explain the +"accident" to Maurice; that _"if"_ left a door open into eternal +reticence. So, instead of worrying, she made plans for Jacky: "He must +see a dentist," she told Maurice. On the third day she stopped saying, +"_If_ I get well," and thought, "When I die." She said it very +tranquilly, "When I die Maurice must get him a bicycle." She thought of +this happily, for dying meant that she had not failed. She would not be +ridiculous to Maurice--she would be his wife, giving him a child--a +son! So she lay with her eyes closed, thinking of the bicycle and many +little, pleasant things; and with the old, slipping inexactness of mind +she told herself that she had not "done anything wrong"; she had _not_ +drowned herself! She had just caught a bad cold. But she would die, and +Maurice would love her for giving him Jacky. Toward evening, however, an +uneasy thought came to her: if Maurice knew that, to give him Jacky, she +had even tried to get drowned, it might distress him? She wished she +hadn't written the letter! It would hurt him to see it.... Well, but he +_needn't_ see it! She held out the crumpled envelope. "Miss Ryan," she +said to the nurse, huskily, "please burn this." + +"Yes, indeed!" said Miss Ryan.... + +There was a burst of flame in the fireplace, and the little, pitiful +letter, with its selfishness and pain and sacrifice, vanished--as Lily's +handkerchief had vanished, and the braided ring of blossoming grass--all +gone, as the sparks that fly upward. Nobody could ever know the scented +humiliation of the handkerchief, or the agony of the faded ring, or the +renouncing love which had written the poor foolish letter. Maurice +wouldn't be pained. As for her gift to him of Jacky, she would just tell +him she wanted him to marry Lily, so he could have his child.... And +Edith? Oh, he would never think of Edith! + +So she was very peaceful until, the next day, she heard Edith's voice +in the hall, then she frowned. "She's here! In the house with him! +Don't let her come in," she told Maurice; "she takes my breath." But, +somehow, she couldn't help thinking of Edith.... "That morning in the +garden she cried," Eleanor thought. It was strange to think of tears in +those clear, careless eyes. "I never supposed she _could_ cry. I've +cried a good deal. Men don't like tears." And there had been tears in +Edith's eyes when she came in and sat on the bed and said she was +"unhappy...." "She believed," Eleanor meditated, her own eyes closed, +"that it was because of _her_ that I went out to the river." She was +faintly sorry that Edith should reproach herself. "I didn't do it because +she made me angry; I did it to make Maurice happy. I almost wish she knew +that." Perhaps it was this vague regret that made her remember Edith's +assertion that she would do "anything on earth" to keep Maurice from +marrying Lily. "But that's the only way he can be sure of getting +Jacky," Eleanor argued to herself, her mind clearing into helpless +perplexity--"and it's the only way to keep him from Edith. But I wish +Lily wasn't so vulgar. Maurice won't like living with her." Suddenly she +said, "Maurice, do send the nurse out of the room. I want to tell you +something, darling." She was very hoarse. + +"Better not talk, dear," he said, anxiously. + +She smiled and shook her head. "I just want to tell you: I don't mind +not getting well, because then you'll marry Lily." + +"Eleanor! Don't--don't--" + +"And you can give little Jacky the kind of home he ought to have." + +She drowsed. Maurice sat beside her with his face buried in his hands. +When she awoke, at dusk, she lay peacefully watching the firelight +flickering on the ceiling, and, thinking--thinking. Then, into her +peace, broke again the memory of Edith's distress. "Perhaps I ought to +tell her that I went to the river for Maurice's sake? _Not_ because I +was angry at her." She thought of Edith's tears, and said, "Poor +Edith--" And when she said that a strange thing happened: pity, like a +soft breath, blew out the vehement flame. It is always so; pity and +jealousy are never together.... + +The next morning she remembered her words about Jacky--"the kind of home +he ought to have"--and again uneasiness as to the kind of "home" it +would be for Maurice rose in her mind. Her head whirled with worry. "It +won't be pleasant for him to live with her, even if she can cook. He +loves that chocolate cake; but he couldn't bear her grammar. Edith said +I was 'unkind' to him. Am I? I suppose she thought he'd be happier with +her? Would he? _She_ can make that cake, too. Yes; he would be happier +with her than with Lily;--and Jacky would call her 'Mother,"' Then she +forgot Edith. + +After a while she said: "Maurice, can't I see Jacky? Go get him! And +give Lily the car fare." + +Maurice went downstairs and called Mrs. Houghton out of the parlor; in +the hall he said: "I think Eleanor's sort of mixed up. She is talking +about 'Lily's car fare'! What do you suppose she means? Is +she--delirious? And then she says she 'wants to see Jacky.' What must I +do?" + +"Go and get him," she said. + +For a bewildered minute he hesitated. If Mrs. Newbolt should see Jacky, +she ... would _know_! And Edith ... would she suspect? Still he +went--like a man in a dream. As he got off the car, a block from Lily's +door, a glimpse of the far-off end of the route where "Eleanor's meadow" +lay, made his purpose still more dreamlike. But he was abruptly direct +with Lily: he had come, he said, to tell her that his wife wanted-- + +"My soul and body!" she broke in; "if she's sent you--" They were in the +dining room, Maurice so pale that Lily, in real alarm, had put her hand +on his arm and made him sit down. But she was angry. "Has she got on to +that again?" + +His questioning bewilderment brought her explanation. + +"She didn't tell you she'd been here? Well, I promised her I wouldn't +give her away to you, and I _wouldn't_,--but so long as she's sent you, +now, there's no harm, I guess, telling you?" So she told him. "What +possessed you to let on to her?" she ended. She was puzzled at his +folly, but she was sympathetic, too. "I suppose she ragged it out of +you?" + +Maurice had listened, silently, his elbow on his knee, his fist hard +against his mouth; he did not try to tell her why he had "let on"; he +could not say that he wanted to defend his son from such a mother; still +less could he make clear to her that Eleanor had not "ragged it out of +him," but that, to his famished passion for truth, confession had been +the Bread of Life. He looked at her once or twice as she talked; pretty, +yet; kindly, coarse, honest--and Eleanor had supposed that he would +marry her! Then, sharply, his mind pictured that scene: his wife, his +poor, frightened old Eleanor, pleading for the gift of Jacky! And +Lily--young, arrogant, kind.... The pain of it made his passion of pity +so like love that the tears stood in his eyes. "Oh, she _mustn't_ die," +he thought; "I won't let her die!" + +When Lily had finished her story he told her his, very briefly: his +wife's forgiveness of his unfaithfulness; her desire to do all she could +for Jacky: "Help me--I mean help you--to make a man of him, because she +loves me. Heaven knows I'm not worthy of it." + +Lily gulped. "She ain't young; but, my God, she's some woman!" She threw +her apron over her face and cried hard; then stopped and wiped her eyes. +"She wants to see him, does she? Well, you bet she shall see him! I'll +get him; he's playing in at Mr. Dennett's--he's all on being an +undertaker now. Mr. Dennett's a Funeral Pomps Director. But he's got to +put on his new suit." She ran out on to the porch, and Maurice could +hear the colloquy across the fence: "You come in the house, quick!" + +"Won't. We're going to in-in-inter a hen." + +"Yes, you will! You're going to put on your new suit and go and see a +lady--" + +"Lady? Not on your life." + +"It's Mr. Curtis wants you--" Then Jacky's yell, "_Mr. Curtis?_" and a +dash up the back steps and into the dining room--then, silent, grimy +adoration! + +Maurice gave his orders. "Change your clothes, young man. I'll bring him +back, Lily, as soon as she's seen him." + +While he waited for the new suit Maurice walked up and down the little +room, round and round the table, where on a turkey-red cloth a hideous +hammered brass bowl held some lovely maidenhair ferns. The vision of +Eleanor abasing herself to Lily was unendurable. To drive it from his +mind, he went to the window and stood looking out through the fragrant +greenness of rose geraniums, into the squalid street where the offspring +of the Funeral Pomps Director were fighting over the dead hen; from the +bathroom came the sound of a sputtering gush from the hot-water faucet; +then splashes and whining protests, and maternal adjurations: "You got +to look decent! I _will_ wash behind your ears. You're the worst boy on +the street!" + +"Eleanor tried to save him," he thought; "she came here, and begged for +him!" + +Above the bathroom noises came Lily's voice, sharp with efficiency, but +shaking with pity and a quick-hearted purpose of helping: "Say, Mr. +Curtis! Could she eat some fresh doughnuts? (Jacky, if you don't stand +still I'll give you a regular spanking! I _didn't_ put soap in your +eyes!) If she can, I'll fry some for her to-morrow." + +Maurice, tramping back and forth, made no answer; he was saying to +himself, "If she'll just live, I will make her happy! Oh, she _must_ +live!" It was then that, suddenly, agonizingly, in the midst of +splashings, and Jacky's whines, and Lily's anxiety about soap and +doughnuts, Maurice Curtis prayed ... + +He did not know it was prayer; it was just a cry: "Do something--oh, +_do_ something! _Do you hear me?_ She tried so hard to save Jacky. Make +her get well!" So it was that, in his selfless cry for happiness for +Eleanor, Maurice found all those differing realizations--Joy, and Law, +and Life, and Love--and lo! they were one--a personality! God. In his +frantic words he established a relationship with _Him_--not It, any +longer! "Please, please make her get well," he begged, humbly. + +At that moment, at the door of the dining room, appeared an immaculate +Jacky in his new suit, his face shining with bliss and soap. He came and +stood beside Maurice, waiting his monarch's orders, and listening, +without comprehension, to the conversation: + +"Nothing will be said to him that will ... give anything away. She just +wants to see him. His presence in the room--" + +Jacky gave a little leap. "Did you say _presents_!" + +"--his merely being there will please her. She loves him, Lily. You see, +she's always wanted children, and--we've never had any." + +Jacky's mother said, in a muffled voice, "My land!" Then she caught +Jacky in her arms and kissed him all over his face. + +"Aw, stop," said Jacky, greatly embarrassed; to have Mr. Curtis see him +being kissed, "like a kid!" was a cruel mortification. "Aw, let up," +said Jacky. + +When he and Mr. Curtis started in to town his eyes seemed to grow bluer, +and his face more beaming, and his voice, asking endless questions, more +joyous every minute. In the car he shoved up very close to Maurice, and +tried to think of something wonderful to tell him. By and by, breathing +loudly, he achieved: "Say, Mr. Curtis, our ash sifter got broke." Then +he shoved a little closer. Just before they reached Mrs. Newbolt's house +the haggard, unhappy father gave his son orders: + +"There is a lady who wants to see you, Jacky. She's my wife. Mrs. +Curtis. You are to be very polite to her, and kiss her--" + +"Kiss a lady!" + +"Yes. You'll do what I tell you! Understand?" + +"Yes, sir," Jacky said, sniffling. + +"You are to tell her you love her; but you are not to speak unless you +are spoken to. Do you get on to that?" + +"Yes, sir. No, sir," poor Jacky said, dejectedly. + +It was Edith who, watching for Maurice from the parlor window, opened +the front door to him. She looked up into his eyes, then down into +Jacky's, who, at that moment, took the opportunity, sighing, to obey +orders; be reached up and gave a little peck at Edith's cheek. + +"I love you," he said, gloomily. "I done it," he told Maurice. "_He_ +said I got to," he explained to Edith, resignedly, as she, startled but +pleased, took his little rough hand in hers. + +Just as she did so Mrs. Newbolt, coming downstairs, saw him and stopped +short in the middle of a sentence--the relationship between the man and +the child was unmistakable. When she got her breath she said, coldly: +"There's a change, Maurice. Better go right upstairs." + +He went, hurriedly, leading his little boy by the hand. + +"Well, upon my word!" said Mrs. Newbolt, looking after the small, +climbing figure in the new suit. "I wouldn't have believed such a thing +of Maurice Curtis--oh, my poor Eleanor!" she said, and burst out crying. +"I suppose she knows? Did she want to see the child? I always said she +was a puffect angel! But I don't wonder she--she got wet ..." + +Eleanor was very close to the River now, yet she smiled when Jacky's +shrinking lips touched her cheek. + +"Take her hand," Maurice told him, softly, and the little boy, silent +and frightened, obeyed; but he kept his eyes on his father. + +Eleanor, with long pauses, said: "Dear ... Jacky. Maurice, did you give +her ... five cents? He must have ... music lessons." + +"Yes, Star," he said, brokenly. "Jacky," he said, in a whisper, "say 'I +love you.'" + +But Jacky whispered back, anxiously, "But I said it to the other one?" + +"_Say it!_" his father said. + +"I love you," said Jacky, trembling. + +Eleanor smiled, slept for a moment, then opened her eyes. "He doesn't +look ... like _her_?" + +"Not in the least," Maurice said. + +Jacky, quailing, tried to draw his hand away from those cool fingers; +but a look from his father stopped him. + +"No," Eleanor murmured; "I see ... it won't do for"--Maurice bent close +to her lips, but he could not catch the next words--"for you to marry +her." + +After that she was silent for so long that Maurice led the little boy +out of the room. As he brought him into the parlor, Henry Houghton, who +had just come in, looked at the father and son, and felt astonishment +tingle in his veins like an electric shock. He gripped Maurice's hand, +silently, and gave Jacky's ear a friendly pull. + +"Edith," Maurice Said, "I would take him home, but I mustn't leave +Eleanor. Will you get one of the maids to put him on a Medfield car--" + +"I'll take him," Edith said. + +Maurice began to say, sharply, "_No!_" then he stopped; after all, why +not? "She must know the whole business by this time. Jacky's face gives +it all away." She might as well, he thought, know Jacky's mother, as she +knew his father. + +Jacky, in a little growling voice, said, "Don't want _nobody_ to put me +on no car. I can--" + +"Be quiet, my boy," Maurice said, gently. He gave Edith Lily's address +and went back upstairs. + +Henry Houghton, watching and listening, felt his face twitch; then he +blew his nose loudly. "I'll look after him," he told Edith. "I--I'll +take him to--the person he lives with. It isn't suitable for a girl--" + +In spite of the gravity of the moment his girl laughed. "Father, you +_are_ a lamb! No; I'll take him." Then she gave Jacky a cooky, which he +ate thoughtfully. + +"We have 'em nicer at our house," he said. On the corner, waiting for +the Medfield car, Edith offered a friendly hand, which he refused to +notice. The humiliation of being taken home, "by a woman!" was scorching +his little pride. He made up his mind that if them scab Dennett boys +seen him getting out of the car with a woman, he'd lick the tar out of +them! All the way to Maple Street he sat with his face glued to the +window, never speaking a word to the "woman." When the car stopped he +pushed out ahead of her and tore down the street. Happily no Dennett +boys saw him!--but he dashed past his mother, who was standing at the +gate, and disappeared in the house. + +Lily, bareheaded in the pale April sunshine, had been watching for him +rather anxiously. In deference to the occasion she had changed her +dress; a string of green-glass beads, encircling her plump white neck, +glimmered through the starched freshness of an incredibly frank blouse, +and her white duck skirt was spotless. Her whole little fat body was as +fresh and sweet as one of her own hyacinths, and her kind face had the +unchanging, unhuman youthfulness of flesh and blood which has never been +harried by the indwelling soul. But she was frowning. She had begun to +be nervous; Jacky had been away nearly two hours! "Are they playing a +gum game on me?" Lily thought; "Are they going to try and kidnap him?" +It was then that she caught sight of Jacky, tearing toward home, his +fierce blue eyes raking the street for any of them there Dennett boys, +who must have the tar licked out of 'em! Edith was following him, in +hurrying anxiety. Instantly Lily was reassured. "One of Mrs. Curtis's +lady friends, I suppose," she thought. "Well, it's up to me to keep her +guessing on Jacky!" She was very polite and simpering when, at the gate, +Edith said that Mr. Curtis asked her to bring Jacky home. + +"Won't you come in and be seated?" Lily urged, hospitably. + +Edith said no; she was sorry; but she must go right back; "Mrs. Curtis +is very ill, I am sorry to say." + +At this moment Jacky came out to the gate; he had two cookies in his +hand. He said, shyly: "Maw's is better 'an yours. You can have"--this +with a real effort--"the _big_ one." + +Edith took the "big one," pleasantly, and said, "Yes, they are nicer +than ours, Jacky." + +But Lily was mortified. "The lady'll think you have no manners. Go on +back into the house!" + +"Won't," said Jacky, eating his cooky. + +His mother tried to cover his obstinacy with conversation: "He's crazy +about Mr. Curtis. Well, no wonder. Mr. Curtis was a great friend of my +husband's. Mr. Dale--his name was Augustus; I named Jacky after him; +Ernest Augustus. He died three years ago; no, I guess it was two--" + +"Huh?" said Jacky, interested, "You said my paw died--" + +Lily, with that desire to smack her son which every mother knows, cut +his puzzled arithmetic short. "Yes. Mr. Dale was a great clubman. In +Philadelphia. I believe that's where he and Mr. Curtis got to be chums. +But I never met _her_." + +Edith said, rigidly, "Really?" + +"Jacky's the image of Mr. Dale. He died of--of typhus fever. Mr. Curtis +was one of the pallbearers; that's how I got acquainted with him. Jacky +was six then," Lily ended, breathlessly. ("I guess _that's_ fixed her," +she thought.) + +Edith only said again, "Really?" Then added, "Good afternoon," and +hurried away. So _this_ was the woman Eleanor would make Maurice marry! +"Never!" Edith said. "Never! if _I_ can prevent it!" + +Upstairs in Mrs. Newbolt's spare room, as the twilight thickened, there +was silence, except for the terrible breathing, and the clock ticking +away the seconds; one by one they fell--like beads slipping from a +string. Maurice sat holding Eleanor's hand. The others, speaking, +sometimes, without sound, or moving, noiselessly, stood before the meek +majesty of dying. Waiting. Waiting. It was not until midnight that she +opened her eyes again and looked at Maurice, very peacefully. + +"Tell Edith it wasn't what she said, made me try ... our river ... Jacky +will call her ... Tell Edith ... to be kind to Jacky." + +She did not speak again. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + + +"I have an uneasy feeling," said Mr. Houghton, "that he is thinking of +marrying the woman, just to carry out Eleanor's wish. Poor Eleanor! +Always doing the wrong thing, with greatness." This was in September. +Maurice was to come up to Green Hill for a Sunday, and the Houghtons +were in the studio talking about the expected guest. Later Edith was to +drive over to the junction and meet him.... + +It was not only Green Hill which talked about Maurice. In the months +that followed Eleanor's death, a good many people had pondered his +affairs, because, somehow, that visit of Jacky's to Mrs. Newbolt's +house, got noised abroad, so Maurice's friends (making the inevitable +deductions) told one another exactly what he ought to do. + +Mrs. Newbolt expressed herself in great detail: "I shall never forgive +him," she said; "my poor Eleanor! _She_ forgave him, and sent for the +child. More than _I_ would do for any man! But I could have told her +what to expect. In fact, I did. I always said if she wasn't +entertainin', she'd lose him. Yes; she had a hard time--but she kept her +figger. Should Maurice marry the--boy's mother? _'Course not!_ Puffect +nonsense. You think he'll make up to Edith Houghton? She would have too +much self-respect to look at him! And if she did, her father would never +consent to it." + +The Mortons' opinion was just as definite: "I hope Maurice will marry +again; Edith's just the girl for him--_What!_" Mrs. Morton interrupted +herself, at a whisper of gossip, "he had a mistress? I don't believe a +word of it!" + +"But I'm afraid it's true," her husband told her, soberly; "there's a +boy." His wife's shocked face made him add: "I think Curtis will feel +he ought to legitimatize the youngster by marrying his mother. Maurice +is good stuff. He won't sidestep an obligation." + +"I never heard of such an awful idea!" said Mrs. Morton, dismayed. "I +hope he'll do nothing of the kind! You can't correct one mistake by +making another. Don't you agree with me?" she demanded of Doctor Nelson; +who displayed, of course, entire ignorance of Mr. Curtis's affairs. + +He only said, "Well, it's a rum world." + +Johnny Bennett, in Buenos Aires, reading a letter from his father, said: +"Poor Eleanor!" ... Then he grew a little pale under his tan, and added +something which showed his opinion--not, perhaps, of what Maurice +_ought_ to do, but of what he would do! "I might as well make it a +three-years' contract," Johnny said, bleakly, "instead of one. Of course +there 11 be no use going back home. Eleanor's death settles _my_ hash." + +Even Mrs. O'Brien, informed by kitchen leakage as to what had happened, +had something to say: "He ought to make an honest woman of the little +fellow's mother. But to think of him treating Miss Eleanor that way!" + +And now, in the studio, the Houghtons also were saying what Maurice +ought--and ought not!--to do: "I'm afraid he's thinking of marrying +her," Mr. Houghton had said; and his wife had said, quickly, "I hope +so--for the sake of his child!" + +"But, Mary," he protested, "look at it from the woman's point of view; +this 'Lily' would be wretched if she had to live Maurice's kind of +life!" + +Edith, standing with her back to her father and mother, staring down +into the ashes of the empty fireplace, said, over her shoulder, "Maurice +may marry somebody who will help him with Jacky--just as Eleanor would +have done, if she had lived." + +"My dear," her father said, quickly, "he has had enough of your sex to +last his lifetime! As a mere matter of taste, I think Maurice won't +marry anybody." + +"I don't see why, just because he--did wrong ten years ago," Edith +said, "he has got to sidestep happiness for the rest of his life! But as +for marrying that Mrs. Dale, it would be a cat-and-dog life." + +"Edith," said her father, "when you agree with me I am filled with +admiration for your intelligence! Your sex has, generally, mere +intuition--a nice, divine thing, and useful in its way. But indifferent +to logic. My sex has judgment; so when you, a female, display judgment, +I, as a parent, am gratified. 'Cat-and-dog life' is a mild way of +putting it;--a quarrelsome home is hell,--and hell is a poor place in +which to bring up a child! Mary, my darling, you can derail any train by +putting a big enough obstacle on the track; the fact that the obstacle +is pure gold, like your idealism, wouldn't prevent a domestic wreck--in +which Jacky would be the victim! But in regard to Maurice's marrying +anybody else"--he paused and looked at his daughter--"_that_ seems to me +undesirable." + +Edith's face hardened. "I don't see why," she said; then added, +abruptly, "I must go and write some letters," and went quickly out of +the room. + +They looked after her, and then at each other. + +"You see?" Mary Houghton said; "she cares for him!" + +"I couldn't face it!" her husband said; "I couldn't have Edith in such a +mess. Morally speaking, of course he has a right to marry; but he can't +have my girl! Let him marry some other man's girl--and I'll give them my +blessing. He's a dear fellow--but he can't have our Edith." + +She shook her head. "If it were not for his duty to Jacky, I would be +glad to have Edith marry him. And as for saying that she 'can't,' these +are not the days, Henry, when fathers and mothers decide whom their +girls may marry." + +While his old friends were thus talking him over, Maurice was traveling +up to the mountains. He had seen Mr. and Mrs. Houghton in Mercer several +times since Eleanor's death, but he had not been able to face the +associations and recollections of Green Hill. This was largely because, +though his friends had, with such ease, reached decisions for him, he +was himself so absorbed in indecision that he could not go back to the +careless pleasantness of old intimacies, (As for that question of the +wheels,--"if--if--if anything happens to Eleanor?"--Eleanor herself had +answered it in one word: _Lily_.) So, since her death Maurice's whole +mind was intent on Jacky. What must he do fear him? His occasional +efforts to train the child had been met, more than once, by sharp +rebuffs. Whenever he went to see Jacky, Lily was perfectly good +humored--_unless_ she felt she was being criticized; then the claws +showed through the fur! + +"You can give me money, if you want to, to send him to a swell school." +She said, once; "but I tell you, Mr. Curtis, right out, _I ain't going +to have you come in between me and Jacky by talking up things to him +that I don't care about._ All these religious frills about Truth! They +say nowadays hardly any rich people tell the truth. And talking grammar +to him! You set him against me," she, said, and her eyes filled with +angry tears. + +"I wouldn't think of setting him against you," he said; "only, I want to +do my duty to him." + +"'Duty'!" said Lily, contemptuously; "I'm not going to bring him up +old-fashioned. And this thing of telling him not to say 'ain't,' _I_ say +it, and what else would he say? There ain't any other word. He's my +child--and I'll bring him up the way I like! Wait; I'll give you some +fudge; I've just made it..." + +Maurice, now, on his way up to Green Hill, looking out of the car +window, and remembering interviews like this with his son's mother, +wondered if Edith had seen Lily the day she took Jacky home? That made +him wonder what Edith would think of the whole business? To a woman like +Edith it would be simply disgusting. "I'll just drop out of her life," +he said. He thought of the day he brought Jacky to Mrs. Newbolt's door, +and Edith had looked at him--and then at Jacky--and then at him again. +_She understood!_ Would she understand now? Probably not. "Of course old +Johnny'll get her ... But, oh, what life might have been!" + +Edith had driven over to the junction earlier than was necessary, +because she had wanted to get away from her father and mother. "They are +afraid he'll fall in love with me," she thought, hotly; "if he ever +does, nothing they can say shall separate us. Nothing! But mother'll try +to influence him to marry that dreadful creature, and father will say +things about 'honor,' so he'll feel he ought never to marry--anybody. +Oh, they are lambs," she said, setting her teeth; "but they mustn't keep +Maurice from being happy!" At the station, as she sat in the buggy +flecking her whip idly, and waiting for Maurice's train, her whole mind +was on the defensive. "He has a right to be happy. He has a right to +marry again ... but they needn't worry about _me_!" she thought. "I've +never grown up to Maurice. But whatever happens, he shan't marry that +woman!" + +When Maurice got off the train there was a blank moment when she did not +recognize him. As a careworn man came up to her with an outstretched +hand and a friendly, "This is awfully nice in you, Skeezics!" she said, +with a gasp, "_Maurice!_" He had aged so that he looked, she thought, as +old as Eleanor. But they were both laboriously casual, until the usual +remarks upon the weather, and the change in the time-table, had been +exhausted. + +It was Edith who broke into reality--Maurice had taken the reins, and +they were jogging slowly along. "Maurice," she said, "how is Jacky?" His +start was so perceptible that she said, "You don't mind my asking?" + +"I don't mind anything you could say to me, Edith. I'm grateful to you +for asking." + +"I want to help you about him," she said. + +He put out his left hand and gripped hers. Then he said: "I'm going to +do my best for the little fellow. I've botched my own life, Edith;--of +course you know that? But he shan't botch his, if I can help it!" + +"I think you can help it," Edith said. + +His heart contracted; yet it was what he had expected. The idealism of +an absolutely pure woman. "Well," he said, heavily, "of course I've got +to do what I honestly think is the light thing." + +"Are you sure," she said, "that you know what the right thing is? You +mustn't make a mistake." + +"I may be said to have made my share," he told her, dryly. + +She did not answer that; she said, passionately, "Maurice, I'd give +anything in the world if I could help you!" + +"Don't talk that way," he commanded, harshly. "I'm human! So please +don't be kind to me, Edith; I can't stand it." + +Instantly her heart pounded in her throat: "He _cares_. Oh, they can't +separate us. But they'll try to." ... The rest of the drive was rather +silent. On the porch at Green Hill the two older friends were waiting to +welcome him. ("Don't let's leave them alone," Henry Houghton had said, +with a worried look; which made his wife, in spite of her own +uneasiness, smile, "Oh, Henry, you are an innocent creature!") After +dinner Mrs. Houghton, determinedly commonplace, came to the rescue of +what threatened to be a somewhat conscious occasion, by talking books +and music. Her husband may have been "innocent," but he did his part by +shoving a cigar box toward the "boy," and saying, "How's business? We +must talk Weston's offer over," he said. + +Maurice nodded, but got up and went to the piano; "Tough on you, +Skeezics," he said once, glancing at Edith. + +"Oh, I don't mind it, _much_," she said, drolly. + +So the evening trudged along in secure stupidity. Yet it was a straining +stupidity, and there was an inaudible sigh of relief from everybody +when, at last, Mary Houghton said, "Come, good people! It's time to go +to bed." + +"Yes, turn in, Maurice," said his host; "you look tired." Then he got +on his feet, and said good night with an alacrity which showed how much +he "wished he was asleep"! But he was not permitted to sleep. Maurice, +swinging round from the piano, said, with a rather rigid face: + +"Would you mind just waiting a minute and letting me tell you something +about myself, Uncle Henry?" + +"Of course not!" Mr. Houghton said, with great assumption of +cheerfulness. He went back to the sofa--furtively achieving a cigar as +he did so--and saying to himself, "Well, at least it will give me a +chance to let him see how I feel about his ever marrying again." + +Edith was standing by the piano, one hand resting on the keyboard and +drumming occasionally in disconnected octaves. ("If it's business," she +thought, "I'll leave them alone; but if they are going to 'advise' him, +I'll stay--and fight.") + +Maurice came and sat on the edge of the big table, his hands in his +pockets, and one foot swinging nervously. "I hope you dear people don't +think I'm an ungrateful cuss, not to have come to Green Hill this +summer; but the fact is, I've been awfully up against it, trying to make +up my mind about something." + +Henry Houghton looked at the fire end of his cigar with frowning +intentness and said yes, he supposed so. "Weston's offer seems to me +fair," he said (this referred to a partnership possibility, on which +Maurice had consulted him by letter); but his remark, now, was so +obviously a running to cover that, in spite of himself, Maurice grinned. +"Weston's a very square fellow," said Henry Houghton. + +"If you are going to talk 'offers,'" said Edith, "do you want me to +clear out?" + +"It isn't business," Maurice said, quietly; "it's my ... little son. No; +don't clear out, Edith. I'd rather talk to your mother and Uncle Henry +before you." + +"All right," said Edith, and struck some soft chords; but her young +mouth was hard. + +"Of course," Maurice said, "as things are now--I mean poor Eleanor +gone--I have thought a good deal of what I ought to do for Jacky. It was +Nelly's wish that I should do the straight thing for him. There wasn't +any question, I think, of the 'straight thing' for Lily--" + +"Of course not!" Mary Houghton agreed. And her husband said, "Any such +idea would be nonsense, Maurice." + +"And I myself don't count," Maurice went on. + +Again Mrs. Houghton agreed--very gravely: "Compared to the child, dear +Maurice, you don't." + +"You _do_!" Edith said; but nobody heard her. + +"So at first," Maurice said, "I kept thinking of how Eleanor had wanted +me to have him--legally, you know; wanted it so much that she--" there +was a silence in the studio; "that she was glad to die, to make it +possible." He paused, and Mary Houghton saw his cheek twitch. "Well, I +felt that clinched it. I felt I _must_ carry out her wish, and ask Mrs. +Dale to--marry me." + +"Morbid," said Henry Houghton. + +Edith, listening, said nothing; but she was ready to spring! + +"Perhaps it was morbid," Maurice said; "but just at first it seemed that +way to me. Then I began to realize that what poor Nelly wanted, wasn't +to have me marry Lily--that was only a means to an end; she wanted Jacky +taken care of"; (Edith nodded.) "And she thought marrying his mother was +the best way to do that." (Edith shook her head.) + +"Well; I thought it all over ... I kept myself and my own feelings out +of it." Behind those laconic words lay the weeks of struggle, of which +even these good friends could have no idea! Weeks in which, while Mercer +was deciding what he ought to do, Maurice, "keeping himself out of it," +had put aside ambition and smothered taste, and thrown over, once for +all, personal happiness. As a wrestler strips from his body all +hampering things, so he had stripped from his mind every instinct which +might interfere with a straight answer to a straight question: "What +will be best for my boy?" He gave the answer now, in Henry Houghton's +studio, while Edith, over in the shadows, at the piano, looked at him. +Her face was quite pale. + +"So all I had to do," said Maurice, "was to think of Jacky's welfare. +That made it easier to decide. I find," he said, simply, "that you can +decide things pretty easily if you don't have to think of yourself. So I +said, 'If I marry Lily, though Jacky couldn't be taken away from me, +physically, spiritually'--you know what I mean, Mrs. Houghton?--'he +might be removed to--to the ends of the earth!' I might lose his +affection; and I've got to hold on to _that_, at any cost, because +that's how I can influence him." He was talking now entirely to Edith's +mother, and his voice was harsh with entreaty for understanding. He +didn't care very much whether Henry Houghton understood or not. And of +course Edith could never understand! But that this serene woman of the +stars should misjudge him was unbearable. "You see what I mean, Mrs. +Houghton, don't you? I know Lily;--and I know that if she thought I had +any _right_ to say how he must be brought up, it would mean nothing but +perfectly hideous controversies all the time! So long as she thinks she +has the upper hand, she'll be generous; she doesn't mind his being fond +of me, you know. But she'd fight tooth and nail if she thought I had any +_rights_! You see that, don't you?" + +"I see it!" Edith said. + +"Yet from a merely material point of view," said Mrs. Houghton, "in +spite of 'controversies,' legitimacy would give Jacky advantages, +which--oh, Maurice, don't you see?--_your son_ has a right to!" + +But her husband said, quickly, "Mary, living with a quarreling father +and mother is spiritual illegitimacy; and the disadvantages of that +would be worse than the material handicap of being a--a fatherless +child." + +His daughter flashed a passionately grateful look at him. + +Maurice, still speaking to Edith's mother, said: "That's the way I +looked at it, Mrs. Houghton. So it seemed to me that I could do more for +him if I didn't marry Lily." + +Mary Houghton was silent; it was very necessary to consider the stars. + +"I put myself out of it," Maurice said. "I just said, 'If it's best for +Jacky, I'll ask her to marry me,' My honest opinion was that it would be +bad for him." + +Edith struck two chords--and sat down on the piano stool, swallowing +hard. + +"You don't agree with me, I'm afraid, Mrs. Houghton?" he said, +anxiously. + +"My dear boy," she said, "I am sure you are doing what you believe to be +right. But it does not seem right to me." + +He flinched, but he was not shaken; "It isn't going to be easy, whatever +I do. I want to educate him, and see him constantly, and influence him +as much as possible. And Lily will be less jealous of me, in her own +house, than she would be in mine." + +Edith got up and came and sat on the arm of the sofa by her father. "I +can see," she said, "how much easier it would be for Maurice to do the +hard thing." + +Maurice looked at her with deep tenderness. "You _are_ a satisfying +person!" he said. + +Henry Houghton took his girl's hand, and held it in a grip that hurt +her. "Maurice is right," he said; "things are _not_ going to be easy for +him. For, though he won't marry Jacky's mother, he won't, I think, marry +anybody else." + +"Why won't he?" said Edith. + +"There is no _moral_ reason why he shouldn't," her father conceded; "it +is a question of taste; one might perhaps call it a question of +honor"--Maurice whitened, but Henry Houghton went on, calmly, "Maurice +will, of necessity, be so involved with this woman--and God knows what +annoyances she may make for him, that--it distresses me to say so--but I +can see that he will not feel like asking any woman to share such a +burden as he has to carry." + +"If he loves any woman," Edith said, "let him ask her! If she turns him +down, it stamps her for a coward!" + +"Don't you think I'm right, Maurice?" her father said. + +"Yes," Maurice said. "You are right. I've faced that." + +Edith sprang to her feet, and stood looking at her father and mother, +her eyes stern with protecting passion. "It seems to me absurd," she +said,--"like standing up so straight you fall over backward!--for +Maurice to feel he can't marry--somebody else, just because he--he did +wrong, ever so many years ago! He's sorry, now. Aren't you sorry, +Maurice?" she said. + +His eyes stung;--the simplicity of the word was like a flower tossed +into the black depths of his repentance! "Yes, dear," he said, gently; +"I'm 'sorry.' But no amount of 'sorrow' can alter consequences, Edith." + +"Oh," she said, turning to the other two, "don't you want Maurice _ever_ +to be happy?" + +"I want him to be good," said her mother. + +"I can't be happy, Edith," Maurice told her; "don't you see?" + +She looked straight in his eyes, her own eyes terror-stricken. ... They +would drive him away from her! "You _shall_ be happy," she said. + +They saw only each other, now. + +"No," Maurice said; "it's just as your father says; I have no right to +drag any girl into the kind of life I've got to live. I'll have to see +Lily a good deal, so as to keep in with her--and be able to look after +Jacky. Personal happiness is all over for me." + +She caught at his arm; "It isn't! Maurice, don't listen to them!" Then +she turned and stood in front of him, as though to put her young breast +between him and that tender, menacing parental love. "Oh, mother--oh, +father! I _do_ love you; I don't want to do anything you don't approve +of;--but Maurice comes first. If he asks me to marry him, I will." + +Under his breath Maurice said, "_Edith!_" + +"My darling," Henry Houghton said, "consider: people are bound to know +all about this. The publicity will be a very painful embarrassment--" + +Edith broke in, "As if that matters!" + +"But the serious thing," her father went on, "Is that this woman will be +a millstone around his neck--" + +"She shall be around my neck, too!" she said. There was a breathless +moment; then Truth, nobly naked, spoke: "Maurice, duty is the first +thing in the world;--not happiness. If you thought it was your duty to +marry Lily, I wouldn't say a word. You would never know that I cared. +Never! I'd just stand by, and help you. I'd live in the same house with +her, if it would help you! But--" her voice shook; "you _don't_ think +it's your duty. You know it isn't! You know that it would make things +worse for Jacky,--not better, as Eleanor wanted them to be. So why +shouldn't you be happy? Oh, it's _artificial_, to refuse to be happy!" +Before he could speak, she added, quite simply, the sudden tears bright +in her eyes, "I know you love me." + +He looked at the father and mother: "You wouldn't have me lie to her, +would you?--even to save her from herself! ... Of course I love you, +Edith,--more than anything on earth,--but I have no right--" + +"You have a right," she said. + +"I _want_ you," he said, "God knows, it would mean life to me! But--" + +"Then take me," she said. + +Mrs. Houghton came and put her arms around her girl and kissed her. +"Take her, Maurice," she said, quietly. Then she looked at her husband: +"Dear," she said, and smiled--a little mistily; "wisdom will not die +with us! The children must do what _they_ think is right ... Even if it +is wrong." She had considered the stars. + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vehement Flame +by Margaret Wade Campbell Deland + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VEHEMENT FLAME *** + +***** This file should be named 15927.txt or 15927.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/9/2/15927/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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