CHAPTER XXX
When Maurice got back to the firelit library, he said, filling his pipewith rather elaborate attention, and trying to speak with good-naturedcarelessness, "I'm afraid Edith thought you didn't want her, Nelly." Hewas sorry the next moment that he had said even as much as that: Eleanorwas 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; Iwatched her. She looked at you! I am not blind. I understand what itmeans when a girl looks at a man that way. And now she's planning to bein Mercer for three months? Well, that's simply to be near you. She'dlike 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, "youare in love with her?"
He was dumb. The suddenness of the attack completely routed him--itssuddenness; but more than its suddenness was a leaping question in hisown 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 ratearticulately, that he was in love with Edith. His thoughts broke ingalloping 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 isterrible 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?... _Couldthey_?"
"I am grateful; I--" He tried to speak gently, but his voice had begunto 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 thanyou have, Eleanor; I am grateful."
"Grateful? Yes. You give me gratitude." Maurice was speechless. "Ithought, perhaps, you loved me," she said. A minute later he heard hergoing upstairs to her own room.
He stood staring after her, open-mouthed. Then he said, under hisbreath, "Good God!" After a while he went over to the fireplace,and, standing with one hand on the mantelpiece, he kicked the charredlogs on the hearth together. "This room is cold. I must build the fireup.... Yes, it's true.... The wood is too green to burn. I'll order fromanother man next time.... I suppose I've been in love with her for agood while. I wonder if it began that night Jacky was sick ... and shekissed me? No; it must have been before that." He stooped and mended thefire, piling the logs together with slow exactness: "What life mighthave been!" He took up the bellows and urged a little flame to rise andflicker and lap the wood, then burst to crackling blaze. After a whilehe said, "Poor Nelly!" But he had himself in hand by that time, and,though this terrifying knowledge was surging in him, he knew that hisvoice would not betray him. He went upstairs to comfort her with kindlyassurances that she was wrong. ("More lies," he thought, wearily.)
But apparently she didn't need comforting! She was smoothing her hairbefore the glass, and seemed perfectly calm. He had expected tears, andviolent reproaches, which he was prepared to meet with eithergood-natured ridicule or quiet falsehood, as the occasion might demand.But nothing was demanded. She continued to brush her hair; so he foundit quite easy to come up behind her and lay a hand on her shoulder, andsay, "Nelly, dear, that wasn't a nice thing to say!"
She did not meet his eyes in the mirror; she only said (she wastrembling), "I suppose it wasn't."
Maurice was puzzled, but he said, casually, that he was sorry to have torush 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 thechestnut out of the fire in St. Louis, I'll have to go to some otherplaces."
She hardly heard him; she was saying to herself: "I _oughtn't_ to havetold 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 sofrightened that she couldn't finish her sentence; but he said, withkindly understanding:
"Of course you didn't!"
It flashed into her mind that if she left him alone, he would know thatwhat she had said was so meaningless that she didn't think it worthtalking about. "I--I'm going to Auntie's to dinner," she told him, onthe 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 shekissed 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 hisperplexity. What was the matter? She had got over that jealousy ofEdith in an instant; got over it, and accepted his departure without allthose wearying protestations of love and loneliness to which he wasaccustomed. "Is she angry," he told himself; "or just ashamed of havingbeen so foolish?" Mechanically, he picked out some neckties from hisdrawer, and paused.... "But she wasn't foolish. I do love Edith.... Howdid she get on to it? She is so good to me about Jacky--and I loveEdith!" He went on packing his grip. "I wonder if any man ever paid as Iam paying?--I'll call her up at Mrs. Newbolt's, before I go, and saygood-by."
No doubt he would have done so, but when he went downstairs he foundJohnny Bennett, smoking comfortably before that very cheerful littlefire.
"I dropped in," said Johnny, "to ask for some dinner."
"If you'll take pot luck," said Maurice; "Eleanor isn't at home, and Idon't know what the lady below stairs will work off on us." (It would bea relief, he thought, to have somebody at table, so that he would not bealone with his own confusion.)
"I came," Johnny said, "to tell you I'm off."
"Off? When? Where to? I thought your electric performances were panningout so well--"
"Oh, they're panning out all right," John said; "but they'll pan outbetter 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 themthrough dinner, and went on in the library, and Maurice's surfaceinterest in Johnny's affairs, at least kept him from thinking of his owndismay.
"But I supposed," he said, and paused, "I sort of thought you--hadreasons for staying round here?"
"There's no use hanging round," John said; "it's better to pull outaltogether. It's easier that way," he said, simply. "So I'm off for ayear. They wanted me to sign for three years, but I said, 'one.' Thingsmay 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 behindthose large spectacles, looked at the clean, strong lines of the jaw andforehead. A good fellow. A very good fellow. He wondered why Edithwouldn'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 outof it, and stared into the fire. Then he said, clearing his throat onceor twice: "I've bothered her, 'trying,' I thought I'd start on a newtack."
"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 makeanother stab at it, and, maybe, "get her"! He wondered if he was lookingat things the way the dead look at the living? He was not, he thought,suffering, as he had suffer
ed in those first moments when Eleanor hadflung the truth at him. "You'll get her yet," he said, vaguely.
Johnny took out his tobacco pouch, and began to fill his pipe, pokinghis thumb down into the bowl with slow precision, then holding it on alevel with his eyes and squinting at it, to make sure it was smooth; heseemed profoundly engrossed by that pipe--but he put it in his mouthwithout lighting it.
"Well, I don't know," he said; "I haven't an awful lot of hope that I'llever get her. But I thought I'd try this way. Maybe, if she doesn't seeme 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 intouneasy attention. Johnny's hopes and fears had not really touched him.His encouraging platitudes were only a way of smothering his ownthoughts. But that, "Well, I don't know--" woke a keenly attentive fear:_was_ there anybody else? ("Not that that could make any difference tome.")
"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 severalkinds of a fool, old man." But he was silent.
"Why, Great Scott!" Maurice protested. "Buried up there in themountains, 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 hersleeve. And I don't fill the bill. Imagination, you know. A--a sort ofSir Walter Raleigh business. Remember how she was always sort of dottyon 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 suddenlypounded 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 tellher I'd have called her up, but I got delayed, and had to leg it tocatch the train? Or maybe you wouldn't mind going round there, andwalking home with her?"
"Glad to," said Johnny.
When Maurice, swinging on to the last platform of the last Pullman, wasable to sit down in his section, he was absorbed in Johnny Bennett'saffairs. "What did he mean by saying that? Did he mean--" Johnny'senigmatical words rang in his ears; "I said to 'try again; nobody wascutting him out.' And he said 'She has some kind of an ideal up hersleeve.' ... 'A Sir Walter Raleigh business' ..."
Johnny Bennett, walking toward Mrs. Newbolt's, was also thinking, in hiscalm way, of just what he had said there by Maurice's fireside. "Ofcourse 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'sbeen that way ever since she was a child. And I've loved her ever sincethen, too. All the same, I'll only sign up for a year. Then I'll makeanother stab at it ..."
When he rang Mrs. Newbolt's doorbell, and was told that Eleanor had notbeen there, he was perplexed. "I must have misunderstood Maurice," hethought.
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