CHAPTER XXII
Edith's flight to one of the schoolhouses was not the entire releasethat Eleanor expected.
"Look here, Skeezics," Maurice had announced; "you can't turn me downthis way! You've got to come to supper every Sunday night!--when I'm athome. Isn't that so, Nelly?"
Eleanor said, bleakly: "Why, if Edith would _like_ to, of course. But Ishouldn't think she'd care to come in to town at six, and rush out toMedfield right after supper."
"I don't mind," Edith said.
"You bet she won't rush off right after supper!" Maurice said; "I won'tlet her. And if she doesn't get in here by three o'clock, I'll know thereason why!"
So Edith came in every Sunday afternoon at three--and Eleanor never lefther alone with Maurice for a moment! She sat and watched them; sawEdith's unconcealed affection for Maurice, saw Maurice's pleasure inEdith, 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, inbitter silence, those Sunday afternoons were delightful to Edith. Sheand Maurice were more serious with each other now. His feeling about herwas that she was a mighty pretty girl, who had sense, and who, as heexpressed it, "spoke his language." Her feeling about him was a franklyexpressed appreciation which Eleanor called "flattery." She had an eagerrespect for his opinions, based on admiration for what she called toherself his hard-pan goodness. "How he keeps civil to Eleanor, _I_ don'tknow!" Edith used to think. Sometimes, watching his civility--hispatience, his kindness, and especially his ability to hold his tongueunder the provocation of some laconic and foolish criticism fromEleanor--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 haveliked Johnny," she thought; "he _is_ a lamb." When she reflected uponEleanor, 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 knownnothing but love,--given and received; so of course she could notsympathize with Eleanor!
When the Sunday-night suppers were over, Eleanor and Maurice escortedtheir guest back to Fern Hill; Edith always said, "Don't bother to gohome with me, Eleanor!" And Maurice always said, "I'll look after thetyke, Nelly, you needn't go"; and Eleanor always said, "Oh, I don'tmind." Which was, of course, her way of "locking the door" to keep hercat from a roof that became more alluring with every bolt and bar whichshut him from it.
On these trolley rides through Medfield Maurice was apt to be rathersilent, and he had a nervous way of looking toward the rear platformwhenever the car stopped to take on a passenger--"although," he toldhimself, "what difference would it make if Lily did get on board? She'sso fat now, Edith wouldn't know her. And as for Lily, she's white. She'dplay 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 houseon Ash Street, with the dressmaker and her three children andfeeble-minded father, in the lower flat. There was the desired back yardfor Jacky, where a thicket of golden glow lounged against the fence, andwhere, tinder stretching clothes lines, a tiny garden overflowed withcolor and perfume. Every day little Lily would leave her own work (whichwas heavy, for she had several "mealers") and run downstairs to helpMrs. Hayes wash and dress the imbecile old man. And she kept a pot ofhyacinths blooming on his window sill.
Maurice (with grinding economies) sent her a quarterly money order, andfelt that he was, as he expressed it to himself, "square with thegame,"--with the Lily-and-Jacky game. He could never be square with thegame he played with Eleanor; and as for his own "game," his steadilypursued secretiveness was a denial of his own standards whichpermanently crippled his self-respect. Though, curiously enough, theseyears of careful lying had made him, on every subject except thoseconnected with the household in Medfield, of a most scrupuloustruthfulness. Indeed, the office still called him "G. Washington."
Jacky was six that winter--a handsome, spoiled little boy. He lookedlike Maurice--the same friendly, eager, very bright blue eyes and thesame shock of blond hair. Lily's ideas of discipline were, of course,ruining him, to which fact Maurice was entirely indifferent; his feelingabout Jacky was nothing but a sort of spiritual nausea; Jacky was notonly an economic nuisance, but he had made him a liar! He said tohimself 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 thechild came down with scarlet fever, and Lily, in her terror, did the onething that she had never done, and that Maurice, in his certainty of her"whiteness," felt sure she never would or could do: she sent atelegram--_to his house_!
It had been a cold, sunny day. Just before luncheon Eleanor had beensummoned to Mrs. O'Brien's: "_Donny is kind of pining; do please comeand sing to him, Miss Eleanor_," the worried grandmother wrote, andEleanor hadn't the heart to refuse. "I suppose," she thought, looking atMaurice and Edith, "they'll be glad to get rid of me!" They weresquabbling happily as to whether altruism was not merely a form ofselfishness; Edith had flung, "_Idiot!_" at Maurice; and Maurice hadretorted, "I never expect a woman to reason!" It was the kind ofsquabbling which is the hall mark of friendship and humor, and it wouldhave been impossible between Eleanor and her husband.... She left them,burning with impatience to get down to Mrs. O'Brien's and back again inthe shortest possible time. As soon as she was out of the house Mauricedisposed of altruism by a brief laying down of the law:
"There's no such thing as disinterestedness. You never do anything foranybody, except for what you get out of it for yourself.... Let's goskating?"
The suggestion was not the result of premeditation; Maurice, politelyopening the front door for his wife, had realized, as he stood on thethreshold and a biting wind flung a handful of powdery snow in hisface,--the sparkling coldness of the day; and he thought to himself,"this is about the last chance for skating! There'll be a thaw nextweek." So, when he came back, whistling, to the library, he said: "Areyou 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 myskates!"
Maurice said, "All right!" and off they went, the glowing vigor andyouth of them a beauty in itself!
So it was that when Eleanor got home, after having gently and patientlysung to poor Donny for nearly an hour, the library was empty; but a noteon the mantelpiece said: "We've gone skating.--E. and M." "She waiteduntil I went out," Eleanor thought; "_then_ she suggested it to him!"She sat down, huddling over the fire, and thinking how Maurice neglectedher; "He doesn't want me. He likes to go off with Edith, alone!" Theyhad probably gone to the river--"our river!"--that broad part just belowthe meadow, where there was apt to be good skating. That made herremember the September day and the picnic, when Edith had talked aboutjealousy--"Bingoism," she had called it. "She tried to attract him bybeing _smart_. I detest smartness!" The burning pain under herbreastbone was intolerable. She thought of the impertinent things Edithhad said that day--and the ridiculous inference that if the person ofwhom you were jealous, was more attractive in any way than you wereyourself, it was unreasonable to be jealous;--"get busy, and _be_attractive!" Edith had said, with pert shallowness. "She doesn't knowwhat she's talking about!" Eleanor said; and jealousy seared her mind asa flame might have seared her flesh. "I haven't skated since I was agirl.... I--I believe next winter I'll take it up again." The tearsstood 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 anyonewould do, in the absence of the person to whom the dispatch wasaddressed; 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 ha
d left the room,Maurice's wife moistened the flap of the flimsy brown envelope--it hadbeen caught only on one side; got up, went into the hall, laid thedispatch 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 littledog, scrabbling stiffly out of his basket, and coming to crouch,whining, against her shoulder. It was only a minute before her eyelidsflickered open;--closed--opened again. After a while she tried to rise,clutching with one hand at the rung of a chair, and with the othertrying to prop herself up; but her head swam, and she sank back. She laystill for a minute; then realized that if Maurice came in and found herthere on the floor, he would know that she had read the telegram.... Soagain she tried to pull herself up; caught at the edge of his desk,turned sick, saw everything black; tried again; then, slowly, the roomwhirling about her, got into a chair and lay back, crumpled up, blindlydizzy, and conscious of only one thing: she must get upstairs to her ownroom before Edith and Maurice came home! She didn't know why she wantedto do this; she was even a little surprised at herself, as she had beensurprised when, that night on the mountain, "to save Maurice," she had,instinctively, done one sensible thing after another. So now she knewthat, when he came home with Edith, Maurice must be saved "a scene." Hemust not discover, yet, that ... _she knew_.
For of course now, it was knowledge, not suspicion: Maurice was summonedto 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. Hershameful suspicion had not been shameful! It had been the recognition ofa fact.... Clutching at supporting chairs, Eleanor, somehow, got out ofthe library; saw that brown envelope in the hall, stopped (holding withone hand to the table), to make sure it was sealed. Bingo, followingher, whimpered to be lifted and carried upstairs, but she didn't noticehim. She just clung to the banisters and toiled up to her room. Shepushed open her door and looked at her bed, desiring it so passionatelythat it seemed to her she couldn't live to reach it--to fall into it, asone might fall into the grave, enamored with death. Down in the hall thelittle dog cried. She didn't faint again. She just lay there, withoutfeeling, or suffering. After a while she heard the front door open andclose; heard Edith's voice: "Hullo, Eleanor! Where are you? We've had abully time!" Heard Maurice: "Headache, Nelly? Too ba--" Then silence; hemust have seen the envelope--picked it up--read it.... That was why hedidn't finish that word--so hideously exact!--"_bad_." After a while hecame tiptoeing into the room.
"Headache? Sorry. Anything I can do?"
"No."
He did not urge; he was too engrossed in the shock of an escapedcatastrophe; _suppose Eleanor had read that dispatch_! Good God! WasLily mad? He must go and see her, quick, and say--He grew so angry as hethought of what he was going to say that he did not hear Edith'sfriendly comments on "poor dear Eleanor."
"Edith," he said, "that--that dispatch: I've got to see somebody onbusiness. Awfully sorry to take you out to Fern Hill before supper, butI'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 hateto 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 lighthair, was so lined, and his lips were set in such a harsh line, that helooked actually _old_! Edith sobered into real anxiety. "I wish," shesaid, "that you wouldn't go out to Fern Hill; you'll have to come allthe way back to town for your appointment!"
He said, "No: the--the appointment is on that side of the river." On thetrolley there was no more conversation than there might have been ifEleanor had been present. At Edith's door he said, "'Night--"
But as he turned away, she called to him, "Maurice!" Then ran down thesteps and put her hand on his arm: "Maurice, look here; is thereanything 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"--hereyes were passionate with tenderness, but she laughed--"I used to callyou '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 Ican 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'rethe dearest girl on earth!"
She caught at his hand, flung her arm around his shoulder, and kissedhim: "You are the dearest boy on earth!" Before he could get his breathto reply, she flew into the house--flew upstairs--flew into her ownroom, and banged the door shut. "_Maurice is unhappy!_" she said. Thetears started, and she stamped her foot. "I can't _bear_ it! Old darlingMaurice--what makes him unhappy? I could kill anybody that hurtsMaurice!" She began to take off her hat, her fingers trembling--thenstopped and frowned: "I believe Eleanor's been nasty to him? I'd like tochoke her!" Suddenly her cheeks burned; she stood still, and caught herlower lip between her teeth; "I don't care! I'm _glad_ I did it. I--I'ddo it again! ... Darling old Maurice!"
The Vehement Flame Page 22