CHAPTER XXXV
Maurice, followed by telegrams that never quite overtook him, did, someforty-eight hours later, get the news that Eleanor had "had anaccident," and was at Mrs. Newbolt's, who thought he had "better returnimmediately." His business was not quite finished, but it did not needMr. Weston's laconic wire, "Drop Greenleaf matters and come back," tostart him on the next train for Mercer. He had been away nearly twoweeks--two terrible weeks, of facing himself; two weeks of rebellion,and submission; of tumultuous despair and quiet acceptance. He hadlooked faithfully--and very shrewdly--into the "Greenleaf matters"; hehad turned one or two sharp corners, with entirely honest cleverness,and he was taking back to Mercer some concessions which old Weston hadslipped up on! Yes, he had done a darned good job, he told himself,lounging in the smoking compartment of one parlor car or another, orstrolling up and down station platforms for a breath of air. And all thewhile that he was on the Greenleaf job--in Pullmans, sitting in hotellobbies writing letters, looking through title and probate records--hisown affairs raced and raged in his thoughts; they were summed up in oneword: "Edith." He could not get away from Edith! He tripped a Greenleaftrustee into an admission (and he thought, "so long as she neversuspects that I love her, there's no harm in going along as we alwayshave"). Then he conceded a point to the Greenleaf interests (and said tohimself, "her hair on her shoulders that day on the lawn was like animbus around the head of a saint. How she'd hate that word 'saint'!").His chuckle made one of the Greenleaf heirs think that Weston'srepresentative was a good sort;--"pleasant fellow!" But Maurice,looking "pleasant," was thinking: "I'd about sell my soul to kiss herhair ... Oh, I _must_ stop this kind of thing! I swear it's worse thanthe Lily and Jacky business...." Then he signed a deed, and theGreenleaf people felt they had made a good thing of it--but Maurice'stelegram that the deed was signed, caused rejoicing in the Westonoffice! "Curtis got ahead of 'em!" said Mr. Weston. While he waswriting that triumphant telegram Maurice was wondering: "Was JohnBennett a complete idiot? ... If things had been different would Edithhave ... cared?" For himself, he, personally, didn't care "a damn,"whether Weston got ahead of Greenleaf or Greenleaf beat Weston. His ownaffairs engrossed him: "my job," he was telling himself, "is to see thatEleanor 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 hewrote his victorious dispatch, and the Weston office congratulateditself.
Maurice had been very grateful for his fortnight of absence fromeverybody, except the Greenleaf heirs; grateful for a solitude of trainsand lawyers' offices. Because, in solitude, he could, with entirelyhopeless courage, face the future. He was facing it unswervingly the dayhe reached Chicago, where he was to get some final signatures; he cameinto the warm lobby of the hotel, glad to escape the rampaging lakewind, and while he was registering the hotel clerk produced thetelegrams which had been held for him. The first, from Mr. Weston, "DropGreenleaf," bewildered him until he read the other, "Eleanor has had anaccident." 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 wayhome, and asking that full particulars be telegraphed to him at acertain point on his journey. "Let me know just what happened, and howshe is," he telegraphed. "It must be serious," he thought, "to send forme!"
It was hardly an hour before he was on a train for another day oftravel, during which he experienced the irritation common to all of uswhen we receive an alarming dispatch, devoid of details. "Economizing onten 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. Butsuddenly, while he was asking these questions, another questionwhispered in his mind; a question to which he would not listen, andwhich he refused to answer; but again and again, over and over, itrepeated itself, coming, it seemed, on the rhythmical roll of thewheels--the wheels which were taking him back to Eleanor! "If--if--if--"the wheels hammered out; "_if_ anything happens to Eleanor--"? He neverfinished that sentence, but the beginning of it actually frightened him."Am I as low as this?" he said, frantically, "speculating on thepossibility of anything happening to her?" But he was not so low asthat--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 themessage 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 MaryHoughton:
Accident slight. Slipped into water. All right now except bad cold.
Maurice's hand shook as he folded the message and stuffed it into hispocket. He had the sense of having escaped from a terror--the terror ofintolerable remorse. For if she had not been "all right," if, instead ofjust "a bad cold," the dispatch had said "something hadhappened"!--then, for all the rest of his life he would have had toremember 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 layvery still, and when Mrs. Newbolt or Mrs. Houghton came into the roomshe closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. Edith did not come intothe room; so, in a hazy way, Eleanor took it for granted that she hadleft the house. "I should think she would!" Eleanor thought; "she couldhardly have the face to stay in the same house with me." But she did notthink much about Edith; she was absorbed in deciding what she should sayto Maurice. Should she tell him the truth?--or some silly story of awalk to their meadow? The two alternatives flew back and forth in hermind like shuttlecocks. There was one thing she felt sure of: thatletter--which Mrs. Houghton had brought from her desk, which Maurice wasto have read when she had done what she set out to do, but which now shekept clutched in her hand, or hidden under her pillow--_Maurice must notsee 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 thedark wanderings from Mrs. O'Brien's to Mrs. Newbolt's, the whole thingwould seem simply ridiculous. Some time, he must know that she loved himenough to buy Jacky for him, by dying--or trying to die! She would tellhim, _some time_; because her purpose (even if it had failed) wouldmeasure the heights and depths of her love as nothing else could; but hemust not know it now, because she hadn't carried it out. That firstnight, when she had found herself safe and warm (oh, warm! She hadthought she never would be warm any more!)--when she had found herselfin Mrs. Newbolt's spare room in the four-poster with its chintz hangingsand its great soft pillows, she had been glad she had not carried itout. Glad not to be dead. As she lay there, shivering slowly intodelicious 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 callit wicked Mrs. Newbolt, for a single suspicious instant ("She forgot itright off," Eleanor said; "she just thought we'd quarreled!"); but Mrs.Newbolt had said it was "wicked." "But I didn't do it!" Eleanor toldherself in a rush of gratitude. She hadn't been "wicked"! Instead, shewas in Mrs. Newbolt's spare room, looking dreamily at the old Frenchclock on the mantelpiece, whose tarnished gilt face glimmered betweentwo slender black-marble columns; sometimes she counted the tick-tock ofthe slowly swinging pendulum; sometimes, toward dawn, she watched thefoggy yellow daylight peer between the red rep curtains; but counting,and looking, and drowsing, she was glad to be alive. It was not untilthe next afternoon that she began to be faintly mortified at beingalive. It was then that she had felt that she _must_ get thatletter--Maurice mustn't see it! Little by little, humiliation at herfailure to be heroic, grew acute. Maurice wouldn't know that she lovedhim enough to give him Jacky; he would just know that she was silly. Shehad got wet; and had a cold in her head. Snuffles--not Death. Hemight--_laugh_!... It was then that she implored Mrs. Houghton to getthe letter out of her desk.
Yet when it was given to her she held it in he
r hand under thebedclothes, saying to herself that she would not destroy it, yet,because, even though she _had_ failed, there might come a time when itwould prove to Maurice how much she loved him. She was so absorbed inthis thought that she did not grieve much for Bingo. "Poor littleBingo," she said, vaguely, when Mrs. Houghton told her that the littledog was dead; "he was so jealous." Now, with Maurice coming nearer everyhour, she could not think of Bingo; she was face to face with adecision! What should she tell him about the "accident"?
It was in the afternoon of the day that Maurice was to arrive,--he hadtelegraphed that he would reach Mercer in the evening;--that she had asudden panic about Edith. "She was here that night and saw me. I knowshe laughed at me because I hadn't any hat on! She may--suspect? If shedoes, she'll tell him! What shall I do to stop her?" She couldn't thinkof any way to stop her! She couldn't hold her thoughts steady enough toreach a decision. First would come gladness of her own comfort andsafety, and the warm, warm bed; then shame, that she had faltered andrun away from a chance to do a great thing for Maurice; then terror thatEdith would make her ridiculous to Maurice. Then all these thoughtswould 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 shewould keep a promise...." It would be dreadful to ask the favor ofsecrecy of Edith--just as she had asked the same sort of favor ofLily--but to seem silly to Maurice would be more dreadful than to ask afavor! She held to this purpose of humiliating self-protection, longenough 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 afunny story of it," Eleanor thought; "I know her! She would make himlaugh. I can't bear it! ... I would like to speak to Edith," she toldMrs. Houghton, faintly.
Edith, summoned by her mother, stood for a rigid moment outsideEleanor's door, trying to get herself in hand. In these anxious days,Edith's youth had been threatened by assailing waves of a remorse thatat times would have engulfed it altogether, but for that unflinchingreasonableness which made her the girl she was. "It may be," Edith hadsaid to herself; "it _may_ be that what I said to her in the garden madeher so angry that she tried to kill herself; but why should it have madeher angry? I didn't injure her. Besides, she dragged it out of me! Icouldn't lie. She said, 'You love him.' I _would_ not lie, and say Ididn't! But what harm did it do her?" So she reasoned; but reason didnot 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 toher, she grew a little pale. When she entered Eleanor's room her heartwas beating so hard she felt smothered, but she was perfectly matter offact. "Anything I can do for you, Eleanor?" she said. She stood at thefoot of the bed, holding on to the carved bed post.
Eleanor looked at her for a silent moment, then gathered herselftogether. "Edith," she said (she was very hoarse and spoke withdifficulty), "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 tellhim anything about it. _Anything._ Promise me."
"Of course I won't!" Edith said. As she spoke she forgot herself in pityfor 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 andshe was at Eleanor's side; she sat down on the edge of the bed andcaught her hand impulsively. "Eleanor," she said, "I've been awfullyunhappy, for fear anything I said--that morning--troubled you? Of coursethere was no sense in talking that way, for either of us. So pleaseforgive me! _Was_ it what I said, that made you--that bothered you, Imean? I'm so unhappy," Edith said, and caught her lip between her teethto 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 tome. 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. Edithsprang to her feet. "Eleanor!"
Eleanor sat up in bed, her hands behind her, propping her up; her cheekswere dully red, her eyes glowing. "All this talk about making me unhappymeans nothing at all. You have always made me unhappy. And as foranybody'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 happensto 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 athing, 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 withstrain of supporting her, she spoke in whispered gasps: "I am going tospeak," she said; "I prefer to speak. I want you to know that if Idie--"
"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 mybreath. I want you to know that he will marry--that Dale woman. Becauseit 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 herpillows, her eyes half closed.
There was a long silence, just the ticking of the Empire clock and thefaint snapping of the fire. Edith felt as if some iron hand had grippedher throat. For a moment it was impossible for her to speak; then thewords came quietly: "Eleanor, I'm glad you told me this. You are goingto get well, and I'm glad, _glad_ that you are! But I must tell you: Ifanything had happened to you, I would have moved heaven and earth tohave kept Maurice from marrying that woman. Oh, Eleanor, how can you sayyou love him, and yet plan such terrible unhappiness for him?"
She turned and ran out of the room, up another flight of stairs to herown bedroom. There she fell down on her bed and lay tense and rigid, herface hidden in her hands. This, then, was what Maurice had meant? Shesaw again the wood path, and the tall fern breaking under Maurice'sracquet; she saw the flecks of sunshine on the moss--she heard him sayhe "hadn't played the game with Eleanor." Oh, he hadn't, he hadn't! Thenshe thought of the Dale woman. The accident on the river. The stumbleat 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 wishI hadn't hurt her in the garden! But how _could_ Maurice--that little,common woman! How _could_ he?" She shook with sobs: "Poor, poorEleanor ..."
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 putmyself in her power by having a secret with her; just as I put myself inLily'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 forher. 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 herhumiliation; she gave herself up to thinking what she herself must doto keep Maurice in ignorance. "Auntie will be sure to say something. Buthe knows how silly she is. She thought we'd quarreled, and that I hadtried ... I might tell Maurice that? And he'll make fun of her, and won'tbelieve anything she says! I might say that I went out to--to see ourriver, 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'llsay, 'Oh, well, I got delayed.' ... Yes, that's the thing to do."
So, around and around, her poor, frantic thoughts raced and trampled oneanother. When Mrs. Newbolt interrupted them with a tray and some supper,Eleanor, with eyes closed, motioned her away: "My head aches. I can'teat anything. I'm going to try and get a little sleep."
By and by, through sheer fatigue, she did drowse, and when
the wheels ofMaurice'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 seehim; she wanted to say to him: "Maurice, you can make it all up toEleanor! You can make her happy. _Don't_ despair about it--we'll allhelp 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 thesethings! "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 ofreassurances, 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 besaid 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, andtrundled off to hide herself in the dining room.
Mary Houghton could not hide, but she would have been glad to! "Eleanoris sleepy, now, Maurice," she said; "but she'll want to have just aglimpse of you--"
"I'll go right up!"
"Maurice, wait one minute. If I were you, I wouldn't get Eleanor totalking, to-night; she's a little feverish--"
"Mrs. Houghton!" he broke in, "Eleanor's all right, isn't she?" His facewas furrowed with alarm. (If that wicked rhythm of the wheels shouldbegin 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 saidshe'd slipped into the water. What water?"
"We don't really know," said Mrs. Houghton; "and she mustn't be worriedwith 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. "Iwon't disturb her."
As he started softly upstairs, Mrs. Newbolt opened the dining-room doora 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! Totell a man that his wife--"
"Hush-sh!" said Mrs. Houghton; "he's coming downstairs. Besides, wedon't know that she did--"
The dining-room door closed softly on the whispered words: "Puffectnonsense. Of course we know."
Maurice, tiptoeing into Eleanor's room, thought she was asleep, and wasbacking 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 likethis 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. Butshe might as well have told it all. For, as he listened, his facedarkened 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 inhis pockets and began to walk up and down. Mrs. Houghton had nothingmore to say; the room was so silent that the dining-room door opened afurtive crack--then closed quickly! Mrs. Houghton began to talk aboutMaurice's journey, and Maurice asked whether Eleanor could be taken homethe 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, Ithink she's got a temperature! And she oughtn't to stir out of thishouse till it's normal."
"Mrs. Newbolt," said Maurice, pausing in his tramping up and down theroom; "why did Eleanor go out to Medfield?"
"Perhaps she was lookin' for a cook! I--I think I'll go to bed!" saidMrs. Newbolt--and almost ran out of the room.
Maurice looked down at Mrs. Houghton, and laughed, grimly: "You might aswell tell me?"
"My dear fellow, we have nothing to tell! We don't know anything--exceptthat 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," andyet 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; butMrs. Newbolt's ponderous step made itself heard overhead. "She said--Oh,Maurice, this is too foolish to repeat; but it just shows how Eleanorloves you. She implied that she didn't want to get well, so that youcould--could get the little boy, by marrying his mother!"
Maurice sat down and stared at her, open-mouthed. "_Marry?_ I, marryLily?" He actually gasped under the impact of a perfectly new idea; thenhe said, very softly, "Good God."
Mrs. Houghton nodded. "Her one thought," she said (praying that, withoutbreaking her word to Eleanor, and betraying what was so terriblyEleanor's own affair, she might make Maurice's heart so ready for thepathos that he would not be repelled by the folly), "her one desire isthat you should have your little boy."
Maurice walked over to the fireplace and kicked two charred pieces ofwood together between the fire irons. In the crash of Mary Houghton'scalm words, the rhythm of the wheels was permanently silenced.
It was about four o'clock the next morning that the change came: Eleanorhad a violent chill.
"I thought we were out of the woods," the doctor said, frowning; "but Iguess I was too previous. There's a spot in the left lung, Mr. Curtis."
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