CHAPTER XXV
When a rather shaky Jacky was discharged from the hospital, Lilynotified Maurice of his recovery and added that she had moved.
I couldn't [Lily wrote] go back to that woman who turned me out whenJacky was sick: so I got me a little house on Maple Street--way down atthe far end from where I was before, so you needn't worry about anybodyseeing me. My rent's higher, but there's a swell church on the nextstreet. I meant to move, anyway, because I found out that there was aregular huzzy living in the next house on Ash Street, painted to beatthe band! And I don't want Jacky to see that kind. I've got fivemealers. But eggs is something fierce. I am writing these few lines tosay Jacky's well, and I hope they find you in good health. It was realnice in you to fix that up at the hospital for me. I hope you'll comeand 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 andsee Lily; which meant, though he didn't know it, that he wanted to seeJacky. He wasn't aware of anything in the remotest degree like affectionfor the child; he just had this inarticulate purpose of seeing him,which took the form of saying that it would be "decent" to inquire abouthim. However, he did not yield to this formless wish until June. Then,on that very afternoon when Mrs. Newbolt had been so shatteringly frankto Eleanor, he walked down to the "far end of Maple Street." And as hewalked, he suddenly remembered that it was "The Day"! "Great Scott! Iforgot it!" he thought. "Funny, Eleanor didn't remind me. Maybe she'sforgotten, too?" But he frowned at the bad taste of such an errand onsuch 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 lookingfor--a tow-headed boy, who, pulling a reluctant dog along by a stringtied around his neck, was following a hand organ. And Maurice forgot hiswedding anniversary!
He freed the half-choked puppy, and told his son what he thought. ButJacky, glaring up at the big man who interfered with his joys, told hisfather 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 motherat home?"
Jacky wouldn't answer.
Maurice took a quarter out of his pocket and held it up. "Know what thatis?"
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 himto 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 southwindow was full of plants, and the sunshine was all a green fragrance ofrose geraniums. When a shiningly clean, smiling Lily appeared--evidentlyfrom the kitchen, for she was carrying a plate of hot gingerbread--shefound Maurice sitting down, his hands in his pockets, his long legsstretched out in front of him, baiting Jacky with questions, andchuckling at the courageous impudence of the youngster.
"He's no fool," said Maurice to himself. "This kid is a handful!" hetold Lily ... "You're a bully cook!"
"You bet he is!" Lily said, proudly. "Have another piece? I've got totake 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 wasenough of a lady to wash your father, you wouldn't go to the Board ofHealth about her? But there! The old gentleman's silly, so I have totake him some gingerbread.... Say, I must tell you something funny--he'sthe cutest young one! I gave him five cents for the missionary box, andhe 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; somethingwould not let him finish those denying words: "that _I_--want him."Jacky, standing with stocky legs wide apart, his hands behind him, hisfearless blue eyes looking right into Maurice's, made his father's heartquicken. Jacky was Lily's, of course, but--
So they looked at each other--the big, blond, handsome father and thelittle son--and Jacky said, "Mr. Curtis, does God see everything?"
"Why, yes," Maurice said, rather confused, "He does; Jacky. So," heended, 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 laughwhen 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 sonwhat he was going to be when he grew up; "Theology seems to be your longsuit, 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 areceipt! 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 themusic. 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 werelovely with anxiously pondering love--"sometimes I don't know but whatI'll make a preacher of him? Some preachers marry money, and get realgentlemanly. 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, Mauricefound himself thinking of Jacky as a boy ... as a mighty bright boy, whomust be educated. As--_his_ boy!
"You forgot the day," he challenged Eleanor, good-naturedly, when hehanded 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 forgetit 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, reflectingupon the track, and the engine, and the very expensive wonder of a tinysnow plow. But he didn't yield to the impulse to see the boy for amonth. For one thing, he was afraid to. The recollection of that daywhen Lily's doorstep had been the edge of a volcano still made himshiver; and as Eleanor had briefly but definitely refused to take herusual "vacation" at Green Hill without him, there was no time when hecould be sure that she would not wander out to Medfield! So it was notuntil one August afternoon, when he knew that she was going to aconcert, that he went to Maple Street. But first he bought a top;--andjust as he was leaving the office, he went back and rummaged in apigeonhole in his desk and found a tiny gilt hatchet; "it will amusehim," 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; thenwildly excited on learning that there were "presents" in Mr. Curtis'spocket. When the top was produced, he dropped his jew's-harp to watch itspin on a string held between Maurice's hands; then he devoted hi
mselfto the hatchet, and chopped his father's knee, energetically. "Pitythere's no cherry tree round," said Maurice; "Look here, Jacobus, I wantyou always to tell the truth. Understand?"
"Huh?" said Jacky. However, under the spell of his gifts he became quiteconversational; he said that one of these here automobiles drooled a lotof oil. "An' it ran into the gutter. An' say, Mr. Curtis, I saw arainbow in a puddle. An' say, it was handsome." After that he got outhis locomotive and its cars. Maurice mended a broken switch for him, andthen they laid the tracks on the kitchen floor, and the big father andthe 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 boardstretched between two stools; "That's a trestle." ("What growstrestles?" Jacky demanded.) Exercise, and a bombardment of questions,brought the perspiration out on Maurice's forehead. He took off hiscoat, and arranged the tracks so that the switches would stop derailingtrains. 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 thefatigue of carrying a hideous leprous-leaved begonia she had bought; butwhen she saw the intimacy of the railroad, she frowned. "He'll wear outhis pants, crawling round that way," she said, sharply. "Now, you getup, Jacky, and don't be bothering Mr. Curtis."
"He brung me two presents. I like presents. Mr. Curtis, does God eatstars?"
"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 questionsin which all parents are ordained to walk); "You see, God--why, God, Hehasn'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 cananswer him. But I wish he'd let up on God. I tell him whatever pops intomy 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 alittle 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 verysoon. But it was self-preservation, as well as fear of discovery, whichkept him away. "If I saw much of him I might--well, get kind of fond ofthe little beggar."
The same thought may have occurred to Lily; at any rate, when, fourweeks later, Jacky's father came again; she didn't welcome him inquite her old, sweet, hospitable way; but Jacky welcomed him!... Jackyknew his mother as his slave; he showed her an absent-minded affectionwhen 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 whogave him presents and who,--Jacky boasted to some of his guttercompanions,--"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 untilhe 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 ifyou're on time every morning!"
She told Maurice to what she had committed him: "You see, I'm bound toeducate 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--smokingcigarettes, and saying 'La! La!' to any man that comes along. I hatethose cheap girls. Look at the paint on 'em. I don't see how they havethe face to show themselves on the street! Well, _I_ can't make himprompt at school; but he'll be Johnny-on-the-spot if you say so. My souland body, he'll do anything for you! He's saved up all his prayer moneyand bought a lot of chewing gum for you."
"Great Scott!" said Maurice, appalled at the experimental obligationswhich his son's gift might involve.
"So I told him that next winter you'd give him a box of candy everySaturday if he was on time all the week. I ain't asking you to go toany 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," Mauriceretorted; "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 Eleanorand remembering this remark, said to himself: "Lily needn't worry; Idon't want him--and I couldn't have him if I did! But what _is_ going tobecome of him?"
His new, slowly awakening sense of responsibility expressed itself inthis unanswerable question, which irritated his mind as a splinter mighthave irritated his flesh. He thought of it constantly--thought of itwhen Eleanor sang (with a slurred note once or twice), "O sweet, O sweetcontent!" Thought of it when his conscience reminded him that he musthave 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 LaborDay (she would not go without him!). Perhaps the thing that gave himsome moments of forgetfulness was a quite different irritation which hefelt when, on reaching Green Hill, he discovered that John Bennett, too,was spending Labor Day in the mountains. Johnny had come he said, to seehis 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 dealdiscouraged; but the two families made pleasing deductions! MaryHoughton 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 whenhe forgot Jacky's future!) said, with great heartiness, "Old John's inluck!" He and Mrs. Houghton were sitting on the porch in that somnolenthour after dinner, before she went upstairs to take a nap, and Mauriceshould go over to the Bennetts' for singles with Johnny; Eleanor wasresting. Out on the lawn in the breezy sun and shadow under the tuliptree, Edith, fresh from a shampoo, was reading. Now and then she tossedher head like a colt, to make her fluffy hair blow about in a glitteringbrown nimbus.
Maurice got up and sauntered over to her. "Coming to see me wallopJohnny?"
"Maybe; if my horrid old hair ever dries."
Maurice looked at the "horrid old hair," and wished he could put out hishand and touch it. He was faintly surprised at himself that he didn't doit! "How mad I used to make her when I pulled her hair!" Now, hecouldn't even put a finger on it. He remembered the night of Lily'sdistracted 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 brotherand 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 withglances toward the road. The walloping was fairly divided; but it wasMaurice who gave out first, and said he had to go home. ("Eleanor'll behunting 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," hethought, listlessly, "it will be a short engagement." He went home bythe path through the woods, and halfway back Edith met him--the shininghair dried, but inclined to tumble over her ears, so that her hatslipped about on her head. She said:
/> "Johnny lick you?"
"Johnny? No! He's not up to it!" They both grinned, and Maurice sat downon 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 unreliabilityof her hair. The shoestring mended, Maurice batted a tall fern with hisracket.
"Eleanor's sort of forlorn, Maurice?" Edith said. "Generally is." Heslashed at the fern, and she heard him sigh. "That time she dragged medown the mountain took it out of her."
Edith nodded; then she said, with her straight look: "You're a perfectlamb, Maurice! You are awfully"--she wanted to say "patient," but therewas 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 youmean, 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 findingfault, 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 tomarry her!... Maurice rested his chin on his left fist, and batted thefern; 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 yourlife."
His shrug fired her into a frankness which she regretted the nextminute. "Maurice, you are too good for Eleanor--or anybody," she ended,hastily.
He gave her a look of entreaty for understanding--though he knew, hethought, that in her ignorance of life she couldn't understand even ifshe had been told! Yet for the mere relief of speaking, he skirted theugly truth:
"I can't be too patient with her when she's forlorn, because I--Ihaven'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 timeago--but it would upset her to know that I'd--well, failed her in anyway." His face was so wrung that Edith could have cried; but she saidwhat she thought:
"Secrets are horrid, Maurice. You've made a mistake."
"A 'mistake'?" He almost laughed at the devilish humor of that littleword 'mistake,' as applied to his ruined life. "Well, yes, Edith; I madea 'mistake,' all right."
"Oh, I don't mean a 'mistake' as to this thing you say that Eleanorwouldn't like," Edith said. "I mean not telling her."
He shook his head; with that nagging thought of Jacky in the back of hismind, 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'sperfectly 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 Iknow you, through and through? _I_ know what you are!--a 'perfec' gentilknight.'"
She laughed, and Maurice threw up his hands.
"Bouquets," Edith conceded, grinning; "but I won't hand out any more, soyou needn't fish! Well, I don't know what on earth you've done, and Idon'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 quailedat herself. She had a quick impulse to say, "Forgive me, Maurice, foreven 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 herknee. "Skeezics," he said, "you are the soundest thing the Lord evermade! As it happens, it's a thing I can't talk about--to anybody. ButI'll never forget this, Edith. And ... dear, I'm glad you're going to behappy; you deserve the best man on earth, and old Johnny comes mightydarned near being the best!"
Edith, frowning, rose abruptly. "Please don't talk that way. I hate thatsort of talk! Johnny is my friend; that's all. So, please never--"
"I won't," Maurice said, meekly; but some swift exultation made him addto himself, "Poor old Johnny!" His face was radiant.
As for Edith, she hardly spoke all the way back to the house. But notbecause of "poor old Johnny"! She was absorbed by that intuition--whichshe did not, she told herself, believe. Yet it clamored in her mind:Maurice had done something wrong. Something so wrong, that he couldn'tspeak of it, even to her! Then it must be--? "No! _that's_ impossible!"But with this recoil from a disgusting impossibility, came an upsurge ofsomething she had never felt in her life--something not unlike thatemotion she had once called Bingoism--a resentful consciousness thatMaurice had not been as completely and confidentially her friend as shewas his!
But Edith hadn't a mean fiber in her! Instantly, on the heels of thatsmall pain came a greater and nobler pain: "I can't bear it if he hasdone anything wrong! But if he has, it's some wicked woman's fault." Asshe said that, anger at an injury done to Maurice made her almost forgetthat first virginal repulsion--and made her entirely forget thatfleeting pain of knowing that she had not meant as much to him as hemeant to her! "But he _hasn't_ done anything wrong," she insisted; "hewouldn't look at a horrid? woman!"
"For Heaven's sake, Edith," Maurice remonstrated; "this isn't anyMarathon! 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 bealone, and argue to herself that she had been guilty of a dreadfuldisloyalty to him.... "Maurice? Why! He would be the last man in theworld to--to do _that_,--darling old Maurice! He has simply had a crushon somebody, and likes her better than he likes Eleanor--or me; but_that's_ nothing. Eleanor deserves it; and very likely I do, too! Buthe's so frightfully honorable about Eleanor--he's a perfect crank onhonor!--that he blames himself for even that." By this time thepossibility that the unknown somebody was "horrid" had becomeunthinkable; she was probably terribly attractive, and Maurice had acrush on ... "though, of course, she can't be really nice," Ediththought; "Maurice simply doesn't see through her. Boys are so stupid!They don't know girls," Again there was a Bingo moment of hot dislikefor 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 "TellEleanor"! "What a child she is still! And she's not in love withJohnny--" 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 besolitary, and after supper Johnny Bennett dropped in. When he took hisreluctant departure ("Confound him!" Maurice thought, impatiently, "hehas on his sitting breeches to-night!") Maurice told Edith to come intothe garden with him, and listen to the evening primroses; "They 'blossomwith a silken burst of sound'--they _do_!" he insisted, for she jeeredat the word "listen."
"They don't!" she said, and ran down the steps, flitting ahead of him inthe dusk like a white moth. In their preoccupation, they neither of themlooked at Eleanor; sitting silently on the porch between Mr. and Mrs.Houghton. They went, between the box hedges, to the primrose border, andMaurice quoted:
"Silent they stood.Hand clasped in hand, in breathless hush around!And saw her shyly doff he
r 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 tightlytwisted bud loosened half a petal--then another half--and another--untilit was all a shimmering whorl of petals, each caught at one side to thehoneyed crosspiece of the pistil; then: "_There!_" said Maurice. "Didyou 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 forher 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! "'TellEleanor'! She doesn't know the wickedness of the world, and I don't wanther to." He put his hand on her shoulder in the old, brotherly way--butdrew it back as if something had burned him! That recoil should haverevealed things to him, but it didn't. So far as his own consciousnesswent, 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 asudden, was grown up! Her childishness was gone. He mustn't even put hishand on her shoulder! He had an uneasy moment of wondering--"Girls areso darned knowing, nowadays!"--whether she might be suspicious as towhat that secret was, which she had advised him to "tell Eleanor"? Butthat 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 themore rotten!" So he clutched at Edith's undeserved faith in him, andsaid, "She'll never think of _that_." Still, she was grown up ... and hemustn't touch her. (This was one of the times when he was not worryingabout Jacky!)
Edith, talking animatedly of primroses, had her absorbing thoughts, too;they were nothing but furious denial! "Maurice--horrid? Never!" Then, onthe very breath of "Never," came again the insistent reminder: "But hecould tell _me_ anything, except--" So, thinking of just one thing, andtalking of many other things, she walked up and down the primrose pathwith Maurice. They neither of them wanted to go back to the three olderpeople: the father and mother--and wife.
Eleanor, on the porch, strained her eyes into the dusk; now and then shecaught a glimmer of the dim whiteness of Edith's skirt, or heardMaurice's voice. She was suffering so that by and by she said, briefly,to her hosts--her trembling with unshed tears--"Good night," and wentupstairs, alone--an old, crying woman. Eleanor had been unreasonablemany times; but this time she was not unreasonable! That night anyonecould have seen that she was, to Maurice, as nonexistent as any otherelderly woman might have been. The Houghtons saw it, and when she wentinto the house Mary Houghton said, with distress:
"She suffers!"
Her husband nodded, and said he wished he was asleep. "Why," hedemanded, "are women greater fools about this business than men? PoorMaurice ventures to talk to Edith of 'shoes and ships and sealingwax,'--and Eleanor weeps! Why are there more jealous women than men?"
"Because," Mary Houghton said, dryly, "more men give cause for jealousythan women."
"_Touche! Touche!_" he conceded; then added, quickly, "But Maurice isn'tgiving 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 thegarden, Maurice laughed;--and she struck her clenched hand on herforehead:
"I can't bear it!" she said, gaspingly, aloud; "I can't bear it--_sheinterests him_!" His pleasure in Edith's mind was a more scorching painto her than the thought of Lily's body....
Later, when Maurice and Edith came up from the garden darkness, theyfound a deserted porch. "Let's talk," he said, eagerly.
Edith shook her head. "Too sleepy," she said, and ran upstairs. Hecalled after her, "Quitter!" But it provoked no retort, and he wouldhave gone back to walk up and down alone, by the primroses, and worryover Jacky's future, if a melancholy voice had not come from the windowof their room: "Maurice.... It's twelve o'clock." And he followed Edithindoors....
Edith had been sharply anxious to be by herself. She could not sit onthe porch with Maurice, and not burst out and tell him--what? Tell himthat nothing he had done could make the slightest difference to her! "Hehas probably met some awfully nice girl and likes her--a good deal. Asfor there being anything wrong, I don't believe it! That would behorrible. I'm a beast to have thought of such a thing!" She decided toput it out of her mind, and went to her desk, saying, "I'll straightenout my accounts."
She began, resolutely; added up one column, and subtracted the totalfrom another; said: "Gosh! I'm out thirty dollars!" nibbled the end ofher pen, and reflected that she would have to work on her father'ssympathies;--then, suddenly, her pen still in her hand, she satmotionless.
"Even if there _was_ anything--bad, I'd forgive him. He's a lamb!" Butas she spoke, childishness fell away--she was a deeply distressed woman.Maurice was suffering. And she knew, in spite of her assertions to thecontrary, that it wasn't because of any slight thing; any "crush" on agirl--nice or otherwise! He was suffering because he had done wrong--andshe couldn't tear downstairs and say: "Maurice, never mind! I love youjust 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, andsay--anything? She got up and began to walk about the room; her heartwas beating smotheringly. "Why shouldn't I tell him I love him so thatI'd forgive--_anything_? He knows I've always loved him!--next to fatherand 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 tolove 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 FernHill, 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 herknow that Maurice was not her "perfec' gentil knight," that sameinstinct should make her know that she loved him!... Not with the oldlove; not with the love that could overflow into words, the love thathad kissed him when he had been "bothered"! "I can never kiss himagain," she thought. She did not love him, now, "next to father andmother--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 knowit.... I'll just keep on loving him as long as I live." She had no doubtabout that; and she did not drop into the self-consciousness of saying,"I am wronging Eleanor." That, to Edith, would not have been sense. Sheknew that she was not "wronging" anyone. As for the unknown girl, who,perhaps, had "wronged" Eleanor, and about whom, now, Maurice was soashamed and so repentant--she was of no consequence anyhow. "Of courseshe is bad," Edith thought, "and the whole thing was her fault!" But itwas in the past; he had said so. "He said it was long ago. If," shethought, "he did run crooked, why, I'm sorry for poor Eleanor; and heought to tell her; there's no question about _that_! It's wrong not totell her. And of course he couldn't tell me. That wouldn't be square toEleanor!... But I hate to have him so unhappy.... No; it's right for himto 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 amgoing 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 wasnot unhappy.
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