CHAPTER XIII
The next fall, however, the boarding did come to an end, and they wentto housekeeping. It was Mrs. Houghton who brought this about. Edith wasto enter Fern Hill School in the fall, and her mother had aninspiration: "Let her board with Eleanor and Maurice! The trolley goesright out to Medfield, and it will be very convenient for her. Also, itwill help them with expenses," Mrs. Houghton said, comfortably.
"But why can't she live at the school?" Edith's father objected, with atroubled look; somehow, he did not like the idea of his girl in thatpathetic household, which was at once so conscious and so unconscious ofits 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 atFern 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 hershuddering mother a garter snake she had captured--he added, withcomplacent subtlety, "as for food, I, personally, prefer a dinner ofherbs 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; "_ofcourse_ she isn't! What put such an idea into your head?" And as Busterand her squirming prize departed, he told his Mary that her daughter wasdestroying his nervous system. "She'll repeat that to Eleanor," hegroaned.
His wife had no sympathy for him; "You deserve anything you may get!"she said, severely; and proceeded to write to Eleanor to make herproposition. If they cared to take Edith, she said, they could hire ahouse 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 iswith anyone who has such gentle manners as you."
Eleanor, reading the friendly words at the boarding-house breakfasttable, said quickly to herself, "I don't want her... She wouldmonopolize Maurice!" Then she hesitated; "He would be more comfortablein 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 afellow boarder. "No, sir!" he was declaring; "if they revise the rulesagain, they'll revise the guts out of the whole blessed game; they'llmake 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?" (Shemight meet Lily on the car!)
For a moment she accepted his decision with relief; then the thought ofhis comfort urged her: "I know of an awfully attractive house, with agarden. 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 wanther_!" When Maurice rose from the table she went to the front door withhim, detaining him--until the pretty school-teacher was well on her waydown the street;--with tender charges to take care of himself. Then, inthe darkness of the hall, with Maurice very uneasy lest some one mightsee them, she kissed him good-by. "If we could afford to keep housewithout taking Edith," she said, "I'd rather not have her. (Kiss meagain--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 hardsledding is only temporary." But she looked so disappointed that hehesitated; after all, if she wanted a house so much he ought not tostand in the way. Poor Eleanor hadn't much fun! And, as far as he wasconcerned, he would like to have Edith around. "It's only the Medfieldpart of it I don't like," he told himself. Yet Lily, on Maple Street, amile from Fern Hill, was a needle in a haystack! (And even if Edithshould ever see her, she wouldn't know her.) ... "If you really want tohave her," he told Eleanor, "go ahead."
So that was how it happened that Edith burst in upon Eleanor's deardomesticity of two. Maurice, having once agreed to his wife's wish, wasrather 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 sortof nice to have Buster in the house."
Lily had not said she must have another hundred. She did not even thinkso. "_I_ can swing it!" Lily had said, sturdily. And she did; but ofcourse, as Maurice, to his intense discomfort, knew only too well, itwas hard to swing it. Even with what help he could give her, shecouldn't possibly have got along if she had not been astonishinglyefficient and thrifty, always looking at both sides of a cent! "I ain'tsmoking 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 onMaple Street, with a sun-baked front yard, in which a few shrubs caughtthe dust on their meager foliage; and she had a border of pansies in theshade under the bay window;--"I _must_ have flowers!" Lily said,apologetically;--and she had three roomers, and she had scraped thelocality for mealers. She would have made more money if she had not fedher 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 dollarsmore a week would "come in handy." His sense of irritated responsibilityabout her made him long for that twenty-fifth birthday which would bringhim his own money. For, in spite of Lily's thriftiness, her expenses, aswell as her toil, kept increasing, and Maurice, cursing himself wheneverhe 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 hisnote was a tax on his salary; yet not so taxing as the necessity ofbeing constantly on guard against some careless word which might makeEleanor ask questions about that salary.
But Eleanor asked very few questions about anything so practical asincome. Her interest in money matters, now, in regard to Edith, wasmerely that Edith was a means to an end--Maurice could have his ownhome! The finding a house, under Mrs. Newbolt's candid guidance--andMaurice's worried reminders that he couldn't "afford" more than so muchrent!--gave Eleanor the pleasantest summer she had had since that firstsummer when, in the meadow, she and Maurice had watched the clouds, andthe locust blossoms, and told each other that nothing in heaven orearth, 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 theblock; but the dignity of the pillared doorway, and the carved windowcasings, had appealed to Maurice; and also the discovery in the parlor,behind a monstrous air-tight stove, of a bricked-up fireplace (which hepromptly tore open), all combined to make undertakers and tailors, asneighbors, unimportant! On the rear of the house was an ironveranda--roped with wistaria; below, inclosed in a crumbling brick wall,was the back yard--"_Garden_, if you please!" Maurice announced--forBingo's bones. Clumps of Madonna lilies had bloomed here, and died, andbloomed again, for almost a century; the yard was shaded by a silverpoplar, which would gray and whiten in the wind in hot weather, ordelicately etch itself against a wintry sky. A little path, with mossbetween the bricks and always damp in the shadow of the poplar, led fromthe 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 "theirmeadow," to disappear under the bridge. Maurice said he would build aseat around the poplar, "... and we'll put a table under it, and paintit green, and hav
e tea there in the afternoon! Skeezics will like that."
"Edith looks healthy," said Mrs. Newbolt; "my dear father used to say heliked healthy females. Old-fashioned word--females. Well, I'm afraiddear father liked 'em too much. But my dear mother--she was aDennison--pretended not to see it. She had sense. Great thing in marriedlife, 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 Eleanorhadn't got in ahead! I brought a chocolate drop for Bingo. Here, Bingo!"
Bingo, silky and snarly, climbed on to her steeply sloping black-satinlap, ate the chocolate drop--keeping all the while a liquid and adoringeye upon his mistress--then slid down and ran to curl up on Eleanor'sskirt.
By September the moving and seat building were accomplished--the lastnot entirely on Edith's account; it was part of Maurice's painstakingdesire to do something--anything!--for "poor Eleanor," as he named herin his remorseful thought. There was never a day--indeed, there was notoften an hour!--when his own meanness to his wife (combined with disgustat being a liar) did not ache somewhere in the back of his mind. So hetried, in all sorts of anxious ways, to please her. He almost never sawLily; but the thought of her often brought Eleanor a box of candy or abunch of violets. Such expenditures were slightly easier for him now,because he had had another small raise,--which this time he had toldEleanor about. On the strength of it he said to himself that he supposedhe 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 totell Jacky's mother that she might count on a few dollars more eachmonth. The last time he had seen her, Lily had told him that Jacky "wasfussing with his teeth something fierce. I had to hire a little girlfrom 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 nevergone 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 hadhesitated to speak of anything so intimate as eggs... "Yes, I must giveher 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 occurredto him that if he told Eleanor he had some extra work to do at his deskhe could wedge this call in between office hours and the time when hemust go to the station--("and they call me 'G. Washington'!") He felt nospecial cautiousness in going out to Maple Street; the few people heknew in Mercer did not frequent this locality, and if any of themshould chance to see him--a most remote possibility!--why, was he not inthe real-estate business, and constantly looking at houses? On thisparticular afternoon, jolting along in the trolley car, he grimly amusedhimself with the thought of what he would do if, say, Eleanor herselfshould see him turning that infernally shrill bell on Lily's door. Itwas a wild flight of imagination, for Eleanor never would see him--nevercould see him! Eleanor, who only went to Medfield when their weddinganniversary came round, and she dragged him out to sit by the river andsentimentalize! He thought of the loveliness of that past June--and thecontrasting and ironic ugliness of the present September.... Now, thelittle secret house in the purlieus of Mercer's smoke and grime; then,the river, and the rippling tides of grass and clover, and the bluesky--and that ass, lying at the feet of a woman old enough to be hismother!
He laughed as he swung off the car--then frowned; for he saw that toreach Lily's door he would have to pass a baby carriage standing justinside the gate. He didn't glance into the carriage at the roly-polyyoungster. 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 himto. Once, annoyed at Jacky's shrill noisiness, he had protested,frowning: "Can't you keep it quiet? It needs a spanking!" After thatindifferent criticism ("For _I_ don't care how she brings it up!") Lilyhad not wanted him to see her baby. She could not have said justwhy--perhaps it was fear lest Maurice would notice his growingperfection--but when Jacky's father came she kept Jacky in thebackground! On this September afternoon she said, as she opened thedoor:
"Why, you're a great stranger! Come right in! Wait a second till I getJacky. I've just nursed him and I put him out there so I could watch himwhile I scrubbed the porch." She ran out to the gate, then pushed thecarriage up the path.
"Let me help you," Maurice said, politely; adding to himself,"Damn--damn--!" Stepping backward, he lifted the front wheels, and withLily's help pulled the perambulator on to the little porch and over thethreshold into the house--which always shone with immaculate neatnessand ugly comfort. He kept his eyes away from the sleeping face on thepillow. Together they got the carriage into the hall--Lily fumbling allthe while with one hand to fasten the front of her dress and skipping abutton or two as she did so; but he had a glimpse of the heavy abundanceof her bosom, and thought to himself that, esthetically, maternity wasrather unpleasant.
"Go on into the parlor and sit down," she said; "I'll put him in thekitchen," She pushed the elaborate wicker perambulator, adorned withbows of blue-satin ribbon, down a dark entry smelling of very good soupstock. When she came back she found Maurice, his hat and stick in hishands, standing in her tiny front room, where the sunny window was fullof geraniums and scraggly rose bushes. "I got 'em in early. And I dug upmy dahlias--I was afraid of frost. (Mercy! I must clean that window onthe 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 youwas me?"
"Why, if you're worried, yes," Maurice said, impatiently; "I was justpassing, and--No, thank you; I won't sit down. I was passing, and Ithought I'd look in and give you a--a little present. If the youngster'supset, it will come in well," he ended, as his hand sought his waistcoatpocket. Lily's face was instantly anxious.
"What! Did _you_ think he looked sick, too? I was kind of worried, butif 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 reassureherself; "he's a reg'lar rascal!" she ended, tenderly; her eyes--thosecurious amber eyes, through which sometimes a tigress looks!--lookednow at Maurice in passionate motherhood.
Maurice, putting the money down on the table, said, "I wish I could domore for you, Lily; but I'm dreadfully strapped."
"Say, now, you take it right back! I can get along; I got my twoupstairs rooms rented, and I've got a new mealer. And if Jacky onlykeeps well, I can manage fine. But that girl that's been wheelin' himhas measles at her house--little slut!" Lily said (the yellow eyesglared); "she didn't let on to me about it. Wanted her two dollars aweek! 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 ithadn't been for "it" he would probably, long before this, have slippeddown into the mere comfort of Lily; "it" held him prisoner inself-contempt; "it," or perhaps the larger It? the It which he had seenfirst in his glorious, passionately selfish ecstasy on his wedding day;then glimpsed in the awful orderliness of the universe,--the It thatheld the stars in their courses! Perhaps the tiny, personal thing, Joy,and the stupendous, impersonal thing, Law, and the mysterious, unseenthing, 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 littlepersonality which he had made was not in the least God to him! On thecontrary, it was a nuisance and a terror, and a financial anxiety. Heshrank from the thought of it, and kept "decent," merely through disgustat the child as an entity--an entity which had driven him into loathsomeevasions 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 shingleout as I c
ame around the corner."
She said she'd be awfully obliged; and he, looking at his watch, andrealizing 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 detainedhim by writing down the address, getting it wrong, correcting it, andsaying: "Mrs. Dale? Oh yes; you are Mr. Dale?"
"No--not at all! Just a friend. I happened to be calling, and Mrs. Daleasked me to stop and ask you to come in."
Then he rushed off. On the way to town, staring out of the window of thecar, 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 wouldmove to the ends of the earth; or that the brat would get well; or--orsomething."
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 wayto Maurice's house. He was mortified, but annoyed, too, because itinvolved giving Eleanor some sort of lying explanation for hisdiscourtesy. "I'll have to cook up some kind of yarn!" he thought,disgustedly...
When Edith and her mother had arrived, unaccompanied by Maurice, Eleanorwas sharply worried; had anything happened to him? Oh, she was afraidsomething 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 whenMaurice, flushed and apologetic, appeared, she was so relieved that shewas cross. What on earth had detained him? "How _did_ you miss them?"
So Maurice immediately told half of the truth,--this being easier forhim than an out-and-out lie. He had been detained because he had to goand see a house in Medfield. "Awfully sorry, Mrs. Houghton!"
Eleanor said she should have thought he needn't have stayed long enoughto be late at the station! Well, he hadn't stayed long; but the--"thetenant was afraid her baby had measles and she had asked him to go andget 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 broughtus here. But, anyhow, Edith and I were quite capable of looking out forourselves; 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 hostessthought to herself, _"Gracious!"_
However, assured that Maurice had not been run over, Eleanor was reallyindifferent to Edith's appetite, for the sum Mrs. Houghton had offeredfor the girl's board was generous. So, proud of the new house, andpleased with sitting at the head of her own table, and hoping thatMaurice would like the pudding, which, with infinite fussing, she hadmade with her own hands, she felt both happy and hospitable. She toldEdith to take some more butter (which she did!); and tell Johnny to cometo 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 Iguess he'll come. He likes food."
Edith effaced herself a good deal in the few days that, her motherstayed on in Mercer to launch her at Fern Hill; effaced herself, indeed,so much that Maurice, full of preoccupations of his own, was hardlyaware 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. Idon'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 inwhite dresses--I suppose it's her laundry I'm paying for! That littlegirl he caught it from ought to be sent to a Reformatory. I'm afraid mynew 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 theoffice the morning after Mrs. Houghton and Edith arrived. When he hadread it, and torn it into minute scraps, Maurice had something else tothink of than Edith! He knew Lily wouldn't want to leave "her" baby togo out and cash a money order, and checks were dangerous; so he musttake that trip to Medfield again. "Well," said Maurice--pulled andjerked out to Maple Street on the leash of an ineradicable sense ofdecency--"the devil is getting his money's worth out of _me_!"
He entered No. 16 without turning the clanging bell, for the door wasajar. 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!" Lilysaid; she was haggard with fright.
Maurice, swearing to himself for having arrived at that particularmoment, 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 menlooked at each other--one amused, the other shrinking with disgust athis own moral squalor. Then from the floor above came a whimpering cry,and Lily, calling passionately, "Yes, Sweety! Maw's coming!" flewupstairs.
"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 anyfunny business there?" he reflected. But he thought no more about ituntil weeks afterward, when he happened, one day, in the bank, to standbefore 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 littlepatient in Medfield made the doctor's mind revert to the possibilitieshe 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, andDoctor Nelson put his notes in his pocket, and the two men nodded toeach other, and said, "By," and went their separate ways.
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